From confidence to fear

[piccgeek]

OH and the worst part--I'm currently abroad and listed my phone number as either being my US cell phone number or my house phone so if anyone calls me or mails a letter to my house I WON'T EVEN BE THERE AND MY PARENTS WILL FIND OUT FIRST!

That sucks! Good luck keeping your sanity as everything goes down...hopefully you'll get your first notice through email and that would still make you the first to know!

I am basically in the same boat as everyone else. I know no one has been accepted OR rejected from my program yet, and still in about the last two or three weeks I have gone from a fair amount of optimism to being pretty much sure I'm going to get rejected. Ah well, so it goes! Just gotta ride the emotional waves I suppose.

[snorri]

Anybody else ever feel like you're sitting in a stalled car in the middle of a four-lane freeway?

[The Knife]

It's seriously weird to not know where you'll be living in 4-6 months. I've always had my life well planned, so this is the first time I've ever not known what I would be doing several months from now. It's very unsettling. At least if I had rejections I could move on with my life!

[American in Beijing]

I obviously feel the same way. On the one hand, this website makes me feel better as it gives me a place to work out my anxiety. On the other hand, it's also inspired new fears, such as "why are other people getting interviews/acceptance letters already to top schools and I'm not?" And "Why didn't I apply to Yale? I don't want to go there, but at least if I had applied I would have either received an admission/rejection and know around where I stand!"

I guess this is something we're all just going to have to get through. And think of it this way: at least grad schools were kind enough to give us the shortest month of the year for "hell month"!

[kohaku]

I can relate to how you all feel, my confidence level cannot get any lower at this time. Once I got the one and only response I have received so far, which was a rejection, it spiralled down from there. I started this process believing I had a realistic change of being accepted somewhere, at least my LOR writers made me feel that way. If I have to wait much longer, I think I will fall of an abyss of worthlessness and depression and will need psychiatric help. At this point I cannot even fathom putting myself through this process again next year, even though I so badly want it.

I am trying to stay positive, but that is becoming more difficult by the day....my plan B is going to work for a while to gain experience and make my application stronger. I had an on campus interview this week that sounds promising. But I honestly don't think I am prepared to accept the stigma of failure. I had never felt this anxious in my life!!!!!!

[micca]

I can relate to how you all feel, my confidence level cannot get any lower at this time. Once I got the one and only response I have received so far, which was a rejection, it spiralled down from there. I started this process believing I had a realistic change of being accepted somewhere, at least my LOR writers made me feel that way. If I have to wait much longer, I think I will fall of an abyss of worthlessness and depression and will need psychiatric help. At this point I cannot even fathom putting myself through this process again next year, even though I so badly want it.

I am trying to stay positive, but that is becoming more difficult by the day....my plan B is going to work for a while to gain experience and make my application stronger. I had an on campus interview this week that sounds promising. But I honestly don't think I am prepared to accept the stigma of failure. I had never felt this anxious in my life!!!!!!

You have pretty much summed up how I feel. I haven't heard a thing yet from any school and I don't expect to for another few weeks, so I don't even know why I bother checking the status of my application or get anxious when I check my mail. I'm not prepared to accept the stigma of failure either. It would crush me to not get in anywhere, and have to wait it out another year since I plan to re-apply if all else fails. On top of that, everyone knows I've applied, so then having to repeatedly explain that I've been rejected from all 7 schools sounds like a sick version of hell that I do not wish to participate in. With all of that in mind, I suppose at this point I'm clinging to the hope that I may get into to even 1 school. So, I have never felt so anxious in my life either.

[Piwi]

Back in mid-January I had received two interview invites in a very short amount of time. This boosted my confidence quite a bit, especially since they are both good programs. However, until lately I'd heard almost nothing from my other schools (besides an interview invite from a program that's a bit out of the ordinary). Now I've gotten a rejection from Stanford (not that big a surprise, but disappointing nonetheless), and haven't heard from a school that seems to have sent out many acceptances already.

My confidence has definitely crumbled, leaving me in a pit of fear. My only hope is that I hear soon from the schools that interviewed me. Their silence is NOT helping my anxiety...