Waitlist Movements

[acciodoctorate]

Hi all, just wanted to let you know I will probably be declining my offer from Buffalo in the next few days.  I'm not sure if they waitlist by field or not, but I can say I am pre-1800.  I know a friend of mine will probably decline soon as well.

[lesabendio]

18 hours ago, firstsummerinthesierras said:

That is really the sort of thing you have to ask the program advisor/coordinator about. Even so, knowing how things went last year or the year before does not necessarily tell you anything about your odds this year.

You're absolutely right. It's so much easier though to grasp at straws and divine answers on grad cafe than to risk coming off as impatient to a DGS or coordinator. I'm being unreasonable. Thank you for pointing that out.  

[tawodi]

I will be declining my offers from University of New Mexico and University of Nebraska. Hope this helps someone out! Good luck to everyone.

[Historiogaffe]

Seems like Toronto has a healthy wait list this year! I'll be advising them to remove me, as I've accepted an offer elsewhere.

[HumanCylinder]

Not sure that this applies to anyone on these forums, but I received an email stating I was waitlisted at Washington State University.  Since I already have a couple of offers that include funding, I will probably take myself off the waitlist at some point rather soon.

[firstsummerinthesierras]

7 hours ago, lesabendio said:

You're absolutely right. It's so much easier though to grasp at straws and divine answers on grad cafe than to risk coming off as impatient to a DGS or coordinator. I'm being unreasonable. Thank you for pointing that out.  

Whomever is in charge of liaising with waitlistees knows that it is a stressful situation to be in. The person who emailed me about my status (I think he was the graduate program's administrator) told me to feel free to ask questions and check in with him, and I took him up on that. I asked how many people were on the wait list, if people have been accepted off the list in previous years, whether the order is fixed or if it depends on the course of study, etc. He was very prompt and helpful in regards to my questions and eased a lot of my anxieties. What I learned is that the order is mostly fixed but faculty reconverge just to make sure everyone is on the same page about who they accept, about 10 people are on the wait list, 3-5 students are accepted every year depending on the funds available, students accepted off of the wait list are funded as much as anyone else, last year two people were accepted off of the wait list, I will be notified if either a space becomes available or the cohort is full, and I am apparently "very high" on the wait list. That last bit is the most stressful because it isn't specific and mostly just lets me know that I was the department's 6th, 7th, or 8th choice. 

Anyhow, just ask if you are curious. It won't bump you down points on the wait list or anything.

[EmmaJava]

 

1 hour ago, firstsummerinthesierras said:

What I learned is that ...

Fair enough, but I think the perspective needs to be broader across a range of schools. For your prompt and helpful person who answered one way, there are...eh, the others. I'm on three waitlists and I am experiencing a full spectrum. My experience on one of those waitlists matches what you're saying here, but I have learned quickly that it totally varies. Likewise, you may have been the department's 6th, 7th, or 8th choice for a given program, but I know that I'm one department's 13th, 14th, of 15th choice. Some schools take in 18-20 PhDs depending on the year and cycle. Some take less than 4. I know of one school that accepts around 10-ish but offers funding to about half of them. Some committees reconvene, but there are others in which a lone DGS has full reign after decisions are made as to how waitlisters receive their offers. I realize you were probably just speaking to your specific case, firstsummerinthesierras, but just to temper here in case people read your post as somehow definitive. Full disclosure: I originally did read it that way (definitively, that is), and then realized you probably didn't mean it that way, so - yeah, just in case this is helpful at all. If not, please feel free to downvote me, throw me out, kick me to the curb, spit on me, stomp on my kneecaps, and call the cops.

 

Oh, and hey. I'm now part of the acceptance club with a funded offer at U of Hawaii Manoa (!!!!!!!!!). And here I shall take great relish in updating my signature, posting on the acceptance chain, and soliciting some Hawaiian love. Please note that I still profess my undying devotion to this thread as my three waitlists are truly amazing fits and would pose quite the decision-making scenarios. Plus I may not only gain from this thread but perhaps even help others, too, once people know how my own situation shakes out. I will stay current, here, y'all. I beseech any accepted people at UC Santa Barbara, UVA, or Mizzou to please for the love of everything holy please please please please say if/when they decline any of these offers.

[HumanCylinder]

1 hour ago, EmmaJava said:

Oh, and hey. I'm now part of the acceptance club with a funded offer at U of Hawaii Manoa (!!!!!!!!!). And here I shall take great relish in updating my signature, posting on the acceptance chain, and soliciting some Hawaiian love. Please note that I still profess my undying devotion to this thread as my three waitlists are truly amazing fits and would pose quite the decision-making scenarios. Plus I may not only gain from this thread but perhaps even help others, too, once people know how my own situation shakes out. I will stay current, here, y'all. I beseech any accepted people at UC Santa Barbara, UVA, or Mizzou to please for the love of everything holy please please please please say if/when they decline any of these offers.

Congratulations on your funded offer! 

P.S.: I was also inordinately excited to change my signature on grad cafe when I received my first acceptance

[EmmaJava]

@HumanCylinder - thanks! And look at you, with offers across the American Southwest (and TX, which is a sort of overlapping outlier). I hope you read some Peter Heller, Rebecca Solnit, and Stephen Graham Jones. They are geographically critical, yo.

[MeNotMe]

Longtime lurker, first time poster, sitting second on the rhet/comp wait list at South Carolina. Any intel, however thirdhand, potentially apocryphal, or flat-out made up? I'd love to go there, but an unfunded acceptance at UNCG is all I've got at the moment. Thanks in advance.  

[klader]

10 hours ago, EmmaJava said:

 

Oh, and hey. I'm now part of the acceptance club with a funded offer at U of Hawaii Manoa (!!!!!!!!!). And here I shall take great relish in updating my signature, posting on the acceptance chain, and soliciting some Hawaiian love. Please note that I still profess my undying devotion to this thread as my three waitlists are truly amazing fits and would pose quite the decision-making scenarios. Plus I may not only gain from this thread but perhaps even help others, too, once people know how my own situation shakes out. I will stay current, here, y'all. I beseech any accepted people at UC Santa Barbara, UVA, or Mizzou to please for the love of everything holy please please please please say if/when they decline any of these offers.

Congratulations!! and yes, the signature thing is awesome. I only just discovered it the other day, and I feel like I've been missing out tremendously.

Also, I guess I'm now part of the waitlist club since I was waitlisted for funding at one school, so bring on the waiting on things completely outside of your realm of control and power!!!

[HumanCylinder]

10 hours ago, EmmaJava said:

@HumanCylinder - thanks! And look at you, with offers across the American Southwest (and TX, which is a sort of overlapping outlier). I hope you read some Peter Heller, Rebecca Solnit, and Stephen Graham Jones. They are geographically critical, yo.

Thanks, too, EmmaJava! I also noticed the regional overlap and thought I should plan a road trip .  I appreciate the reading recs too! As an adjunct piecing together employment, I don't have a whole lot of time to read during the semester. Now that I actually have to be a PhD student, though, I am planning some pretty epic reading lists to cover stuff I (a) should have read but didn't or (b) think I would be expected to know (as a Modernist/Victorianist).  I usually don't do as much contemporary fiction, unfortunately, but I can see myself getting into some Stephen Graham Jones.

[EmmaJava]

7 minutes ago, HumanCylinder said:

...but I can see myself getting into some Stephen Graham Jones.

I love him. I've read roughly half of his novels, and I took a workshop with him at CU Boulder. Best. Workshop. Ever.

Happy roadtripping, happy reading.

[klader]

I didn't see anyone post about getting in here or anything, but I'll most likely be turning down Ohio University's funded MA offer for comp/rhet (I just need to double check with some of my professors).

For me, it's a battle between Miami- Ohio, USF, and UNM, though I'm still waiting on funding to come through at UNM (if it does at all) and am waiting to get an assumed rejection from Penn State.

[klader]

I decided to be brave today and ask the DGS of U. New Mexico where I am on the waitlist for funding. She told me that I'm #1 on the list and that they'll probably know if they can offer me funding in the next few weeks!

Sometimes being brave is a good thing.

[sarabethke]

I also recently decided to take advantage of the DGS's offer to give me as much information as possible both at Davis and Mississippi. They've both been kind, helpful, and encouraging, even though they admit that they just don't have a lot of information at this point. I encourage asking! It definitely made me feel better.

[ashes_are_burning]

On 3/1/2016 at 8:32 PM, klader said:

I decided to be brave today and ask the DGS of U. New Mexico where I am on the waitlist for funding. She told me that I'm #1 on the list and that they'll probably know if they can offer me funding in the next few weeks!

Sometimes being brave is a good thing.

I declined my funded offer from UNM about a week ago.  I hope this helps you! :-) 

[Juneoh]

Does anyone have any news on U of Minnesota? Has anybody got off the waitlist? I've seen a couple of ppl posting their acceptance but never saw one off the waitlist...

Edited March 7, 2016 by Juneoh

[klader]

2 hours ago, ashes_are_burning said:

I declined my funded offer from UNM about a week ago.  I hope this helps you! :-) 

Thanks for letting me know! I think they waitlist by track, though, so who knows!

[EmmaJava]

21 minutes ago, genrescholar said:

I'm hesitant to bug anyone who's in the midst of making a decision, but I am anxious about Ohio State's waitlist.

I'm with you. Still on four waitlists, here, still no movement.

[Yukon]

39 minutes ago, genrescholar said:

I'm hesitant to bug anyone who's in the midst of making a decision, but I am anxious about Ohio State's waitlist.

OSU's open house isn't until the end of the month. I plan to make a decision after I visit. I would bet that's what others are waiting for, too. 

[EmmaJava]

9 minutes ago, Yukon said:

OSU's open house isn't until the end of the month. I plan to make a decision after I visit. I would bet that's what others are waiting for, too. 

I've been thinking about this. Given the April 15th deadline, and the fact that decisions are still forthcoming (I'm still waiting on 2 schools), and the fact that even people with good options are also waitlisted, and the fact that there are campus visits still shaking out, it's kind of impossible to expect many, if any, applicants to have all of the relevant info at their disposal for a hard commitment just yet. I hear that. I think the perception is that some applicants may have a handful of attractive offers, which - to be fair - is hard for everyone to really relate to, which in turn makes it harder for mortals like us to fully appreciate their timelines. There are also vastly different attitudes and ethics toward such things as vetting acceptances, negotiating, etc. I know that for myself, full knowledge of waitlist status would translate to a firm decision from me within a couple of weeks at the latest. But I suspect that's not fair to everyone.

Plus - here is something: I have discerned a pattern in which most schools seem to adhere to the April 15 deadline, while simultaneously making a hopeful request for an answer by around March 20-ish.  This is striking me as more or less conventional - and given the situation that we collectively find ourselves in, it strikes me as reasonable, too. I'm going to make a hell of an effort to honor that request...no guarantees, but I'm going to try, even if it means still not knowing about UVA or UC-SB. I realize that's quite the thing to say and I may be inviting some criticism, but whatever, it's my honest hope and desire and that's how I want to be known for rolling.

 

 

[EmmaJava]

Strike that - just waiting on 1 school now, as Stony Brook finally rejected me! 

[DaniB23]

Just found out I'm on the waitlist (towards the top) at University of Florida.  Found out by emailing the DGS.  If I got in I'd have a tough choice to make between UF and another program where I've already been offered a very competitive funding offer.

 

[HumanCylinder]

Congrats, DaniB23! Wishing my best for everyone waiting on decisions; I hope things shape up in the next week so that final decisions can be made.