Admitted - Anyone else feel anxious?

[cc11505]

Flatcoat,

I'm 33!

Fellow IS sufferers - I'm freaking out! I got into two places, and was already sure there'd been a msitake somewhere, or at least an accident. But I went acceptance, waitlist, acceptance, and since then it's been four straight rejections. The last one had me SOOOOO down. I'm perfectly happy with either of the schools that accepted me, but each rejection makes me feel more like I'm going to go to vist and they're going to realize they made a terrible mistake. I feel bad complaining when it's a tough year and I was lucky enough to get accepted early, so that the worst of my nightmares were over. But I'm still waiting to hear from six school and I'm starting to feel like it's going to be SIX more rejections and I'm going to end up as a puddle on my won driveway, and I don't even have a driveway. Help!

[inplaceofsomeone]

i really thought i was the only one out there that felt so inferior to the other candidates.

i majored in engineering at a top 10 school and it turned out to be so poor in terms of its professors and lectures ... like really horrible. i am working in a lab and i see these grad students who are so intuitive, keen on their work, and having a lovely little chit chat on some major paper that another student is publishing. i dont even understand what these students are doing. its rather intimidating and i am not sure how i can keep up at the new school (which is top 6 in the field).

will i be able to catch up in one year? how do i pass the qualifying exams?

so freaking scared ...

[Rutabaga]

yeah I'm having some impostor syndrome setting as well now.. eeep. I mean.. I feel smart and like I have a great deal of potential. I also feel like these people are way ahead of me in terms of actual knowledge about my field though :/ It doesn't help that based on the stats the average student is almost 10 years older than I am. I'm also on the board with with Get Smarter Before School plan!

[theresatwist]

aha! here i was thinking i was alone in feeling stoopid! i totally think the adcoms mixed up the papers, or at least maybe they neglected to read my writing sample? but yes, i've started re-reading basic texts in my field of study too, hoping not to make a complete fool of myself come september!

[deipnosophistry]

I'm so glad I found this topic! I spent the better part of two months thinking I wasn't going to get in ANYWHERE. Then I got two interview invites and I started to gain some confidence. Then decisions started coming...and I fell spectacularly to pieces.

Last week, I got my first acceptance (from Harvard), and promptly lost my freaking mind. I went home and sobbed uncontrollably while on the phone with my parents. I may be the only person in the history of forever to cry tears of dread at a Harvard acceptance. Part of my meltdown was my difficulty in accepting the "next big step" in my life that had just become so suddenly and imminently real. The other major component was my irrational side, which decided to exacerbate things by adding a healthy dose of Impostor Syndrome-thinking a la "Oh my God, I've hornswoggled the entire adcom into accepting me, and they'll eventually find out that I'm a complete moron." All in all, it was an exhausting emotional release that was firmly rooted in my own long-standing insecurities about, oh, EVERYTHING.

Now that I've heard back from all of my programs, I like to think that I'm developing a better handle on things. I tell myself that my prospective advisors all saw something in me worth cultivating, and no matter how clever I occasionally fancy myself, I'm neither sharp nor manipulative enough to con three universities into giving me money for the better part of the next decade. I'd be lying if I said I don't still battle my own "You're not good enough" demons, but I've at least gotten to the point where I can smile about my acceptances, and even indulge in a little fantasy apartment hunting.

So, I say to all of you fellow IS victims, let us raise a glass to ourselves--we've earned it! (However, once you've downed your spirit of choice, feel free to resume enumerating the reasons you aren't worthy of X program. I know I will. )

[slowbro]

Honestly, I've grown to dislike the phrase "impostor syndrome." While I recognize that it exists -- and certainly felt it as an undergraduate -- too many people use it as a flimsy pretext for bragging about their accomplishments.

To return to the main topic, I no longer worry about my raw intelligence or my academic abilities, but nonetheless feel constant pressure to succeed, especially when I read about the increasingly tough standards for entering the academic job market these days. Will we be expected to have two books to our name by the time we receive our doctorates? :roll:

(Ironically, having done well in my master's program has only increased my feelings of anxiety because I now fear turning in things that don't meet the standards I set with my earlier work. For example, my adviser told me to dash off a paper for a department requirement and not to worry about its quality -- in fact, he told me to spend a couple hours on it at the most. Did I? No.)

[GraduateSchoolNut]

I'm so glad I found this topic! I spent the better part of two months thinking I wasn't going to get in ANYWHERE. Then I got two interview invites and I started to gain some confidence. Then decisions started coming...and I fell spectacularly to pieces.

Last week, I got my first acceptance (from Harvard), and promptly lost my freaking mind. I went home and sobbed uncontrollably while on the phone with my parents. I may be the only person in the history of forever to cry tears of dread at a Harvard acceptance. Part of my meltdown was my difficulty in accepting the "next big step" in my life that had just become so suddenly and imminently real. The other major component was my irrational side, which decided to exacerbate things by adding a healthy dose of Imposter Syndrome-thinking a la "Oh my God, I've hornswoggled the entire adcom into accepting me, and they'll eventually find out that I'm a complete moron." All in all, it was an exhausting emotional release that was firmly rooted in my own long-standing insecurities about, oh, EVERYTHING.

Now that I've heard back from all of my programs, I like to think that I'm developing a better handle on things. I tell myself that my prospective advisors all saw something in me worth cultivating, and no matter how clever I occasionally fancy myself, I'm neither sharp nor manipulative enough to con three universities into giving me money for the better part of the next decade. I'd be lying if I said I don't still battle my own "You're not good enough" demons, but I've at least gotten to the point where I can smile about my acceptances, and even indulge in a little fantasy apartment hunting.

So, I say to all of you fellow IS victims, let us raise a glass to ourselves--we've earned it! (However, once you've downed your spirit of choice, feel free to resume enumerating the reasons you aren't worthy of X program. I know I will. )

Wow. So you nailed it. I, myself, have been going through a very bad time emotionally and I had no idea why. I got accepted to the university of my choice and I found myself almost turning them down. People in my family have been looking at me strangely because they say I've been more moody than usual and on edge and it doesn't make sense because I got into the school of my choice. Thanks for posting - it helps me to understand what I've been going through more.

[deipnosophistry]

Wow. So you nailed it. I, myself, have been going through a very bad time emotionally and I had no idea why. I got accepted to the university of my choice and I found myself almost turning them down. People in my family have been looking at me strangely because they say I've been more moody than usual and on edge and it doesn't make sense because I got into the school of my choice. Thanks for posting - it helps me to understand what I've been going through more.

Happy to help! I've battled pretty severe anxiety for most of my adult life, so I've gotten to the point where I can recognize when I'm acting a fool and letting my nerves get the best of me. It's good to keep in perspective that applying to grad school is like the ultimate masochistic endeavor: we pay people a crap-ton of money to judge us and effectively tell us if we're good enough according to some poorly defined rubric. Emotionally, it's akin to hiring the mean girls in high school to evaluate us. Only here, we actually value what adcoms have to say, and thus take it to heart when we're rejected.

Add to this the fact that graduate school is an enormous commitment and that big changes are accompanied by the unknown, and you've got a great recipe for full-blown hysteria and histrionics. So, it's understandable that we feel the way we do. The important thing is to not let it affect us to the point of forfeiting an incredible opportunity out of the misguided fear that we're not good enough.

[Rutabaga]

I'm totally anxious about the recruitment day visits now. I always get sort of nervous when I feel like I can't make a quick retreat for a moment alone if needed, and all of these dinners with faculty and being in cities I'm not familiar with is totally giving me anxiety. I mean it will be fine, I will take a deep breath and suck it up but at the moment I feel all kinds of nervous! I'm also really anxious about trying to decide. I know I will feel guilty about saying no to certain schools!

[liszt85]

I have had almost ZERO background (just two units (8 credits)) in linguistics but have been accepted to a pretty good linguistics graduate program (Northwestern). I most certainly feel like an imposter, but at the same time do also realize why my background (physics) held an attraction for them (due to the kind of analysis they carry out on music and language systems). I've got that fraud feeling all over me simply because I heard that this program accepts only 2-3 people every year (sometimes just 1 a year!) and I can't really get myself to believe that my application looked better to them than most others' especially with the kind of grades I'd been getting in my ug courses (screwed up core engineering courses which I absolutely abhorred). I did have a great writing sample though (a term paper on Mandler's work on conceptualization in infants). Maybe I'm not as bad as I think I am and I think all you guys who've been accepted into great places like Harvard must have deserved to, these schools know what they're doing. Its a lot of money they're putting into funding you, they have no reason to accept somebody whose application is weak (relative to their research objectives).

[Baryon]

I quite feel an very odd anxiety since getting into two of my top choices over the past few weeks (Duke and Stanford) and am still waiting for my third top choice, Columbia. Now my father and half my family is so caught up with Stanford that they pretty much have assumed in their minds that I'll obviously go there, but I'm not sure it's a foregone conclusion as I think the Duke and Columbia (if I get in) programs are very compelling and are rightfully great universities too. MOreover, Duke gave me a whole bunch of scholarship money and my Stanford program doesn't give aid to Masters students like me. They'll probably think I'm an idiot to turn Stanford down no matter what, so it'll be murky trying to explain and justify anything I do to my father/family. Though happy and thankful, I had sort of a muted reaction to my admission a few days ago and still can't figure out properly why I'm not super excited because I never thought I'd be in such a (in some ways) lucky position, and yet being weighed down by pressures of expectation and finances (esp. in this economic climate). There's also the slight worry about performance at these universities after admissions, like many people here have mentioned....yikes.

In any case, I didn't expect my admissions to be so anti-climactic, or maybe I'm just being a bit too morose, who knows?

[humblemumblings]

I'm glad to know I'm not the only person feeling nervous (heading toward terrified) at the thought of campus visits. I haven't been in the US - let alone on a campus - for almost two years and my first stop is... Princeton. I'm afraid I'm going to be wild-eyed, wrongly dressed and, since I don't speak much English here, totally incoherent. Joy.

[miratrix]

I really enjoy campus visits. However, I was accepted to three schools, and after campus visits, I'm going to feel horrendously guilty about turning down two. Anything involving somehow rejecting people I like makes me feel awful. (I know this is probably a good problem to have, too many good options, but it's hard not to make it personal.)

[Sonic]

I really enjoy campus visits. However, I was accepted to three schools, and after campus visits, I'm going to feel horrendously guilty about turning down two. Anything involving somehow rejecting people I like makes me feel awful. (I know this is probably a good problem to have, too many good options, but it's hard not to make it personal.)

Agreed. I spent 3 months praying I would get in somewhere, anywhere, and telling myself that I only needed one acceptance. Then the acceptance came and I was elated. Much champagne was consumed. My boyfriend's parents mailed me a tee shirt from the school. My roommate pasted a picture of the school's mascot on our fridge. Serious celebration ensued.

Then the second acceptance came. It was a totally unexpected, a complete shock. I was happy! I was confused! I didn't know what to do! I drank more champagne!

I think I spent so much time assuming that I was enrolling at School A, that Schools B through J flew out of my mind. Now that School B is in the picture, there's any actual choice to make. Bankers call this a "high-class problem", and this time last year I was sitting on a pile of rejections praying to get off the waitlist, so I understand how lucky I am. I know I'll feel terrible "rejecting people" but I keep telling myself that this year there is someone who is me last year. I know I was through the roof to get the spot someone else turned down; such should be the case for them, and the school will be thrilled to have that person, too.

[Reinventing]

Definitely feeling anxious, but mostly about funding. Am still waiting to hear back about funding on all my programs. The weirdest thing was sitting around thinking about my options, and realizing that my not-so-top choice might swing wildly into first place if I got funding from there and nowhere else. . .

I have a strong academic record/scores, but I avoided applying to top-10 schools because I knew it would give me a heart attack if I got in--for many reasons (and, also, funding/keeping costs low was key for me).

[Rutabaga]

I am feeling increasingly bad about having to say no to some of my potential advisors. They are all being super nice and saying they are looking forwards to studying with me. I know this is all the usual stuff, but it will be so hard to choose and it's even harder when I feel like I am letting people down!

[girlfromcountyhell]

I am feeling increasingly bad about having to say no to some of my potential advisors. They are all being super nice and saying they are looking forwards to studying with me. I know this is all the usual stuff, but it will be so hard to choose and it's even harder when I feel like I am letting people down!

Me too! But one advisor put it nicely...you HAVE to think of yourself first. They will have other candidates next year, but this is your one choice to pick a good school. Try to separate yourself from the personal feelings. It's really hard, though! Everyone is so nice!

[Reinventing]

It's okay--they're used to it.

[void]

Agreed. I spent 3 months praying I would get in somewhere, anywhere, and telling myself that I only needed one acceptance. Then the acceptance came and I was elated. Much champagne was consumed. My boyfriend's parents mailed me a tee shirt from the school. My roommate pasted a picture of the school's mascot on our fridge. Serious celebration ensued.

Then the second acceptance came. It was a totally unexpected, a complete shock. I was happy! I was confused! I didn't know what to do! I drank more champagne!

I think I spent so much time assuming that I was enrolling at School A, that Schools B through J flew out of my mind.

I am in the same place and you narrated my experience perfectly. I am beyond shocked to have even gotten 1, let alone 4, and now I am a complete loss on how to proceed. I had pretty much decided on school B, received just days after school A, but now schools c and d are just throwing everything out of proportion. I am so anxious and so unclear on what I should do, and the professors are all so nice, and all of them look like great options. I am even having nightmares about how I am going to turn schools down, what to write to the super nice professors, and that I am going to choose wrong. I feel so lucky to be in this position but I am a mess.

[artandrelig]

so here's my thing.

program size.

as i was applying, i sort of got excited at the prospect of applying to larger schools (in my case, divinity schools w/in larger universities), as i was looking forward to working with a larger group. i figured, hey, i have my phd years to do with only 3 or fewer other people in my life.

but then, i got into this really great (and tiny and specialized) program that fits my interests extraordinarily well, but now i'm feeling so ANXIOUS [forum buzzword] about the tiny size. i can't really put my finger on why, i just do.

thoughts? of course, people in small programs benefit from more time w/advisors, etc, but i just fear that i would lose the constant exchange of ideas that always got me excited about school since i was 4....

[Aceflyer]

Have you visited the programs and spoken with the faculty and students? By talking with the current students - and the faculty - at a program, you should be able to determine whether you could see yourself in that program or not.

[artandrelig]

Have you visited the programs and spoken with the faculty and students? By talking with the current students - and the faculty - at a program, you should be able to determine whether you could see yourself in that program or not.

visit forthcoming (april), but still obsessing over it currently. i seriously don't know what i'm going to do with myself come april 16! i'll be in anxiety withdrawal!

well, maybe that's overstating things. i'll probably immediately start to freak out about moving cities.

[Aceflyer]

visit forthcoming (april), but still obsessing over it currently. i seriously don't know what i'm going to do with myself come april 16! i'll be in anxiety withdrawal!

well, maybe that's overstating things. i'll probably immediately start to freak out about moving cities.

Hehe - I think most of us here are at least somewhat prone to freaking out.

My advice would be to just relax and wait until the visit. The school visits I went on were extremely illuminating in helping me narrow down where I'll be going in the fall.

[psycholinguist]

Hehe - I think most of us here are at least somewhat prone to freaking out.

My advice would be to just relax and wait until the visit. The school visits I went on were extremely illuminating in helping me narrow down where I'll be going in the fall.

I couldn't agree more.

[nicolesuza]

Heck yeah, I've got the impostor syndrome, and I've got it bad. Mostly, though, I get it when I think of attending the best school I've gotten into. During my interview, I even told my prospective advisor about it, and we both laughed. She's a high-achieving woman, so maybe she had it once, too.

To the poster who's now 32, so am I! Better to do the PhD now rather than getting too freaked, and then someday down the road realizing how young we really were at 32. I've a friend who is 42 and only just considering it.

We can do it, and thank goodness we didn't wait. Right?