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2017-2018 Application Cycle


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12 minutes ago, buckinghamubadger said:

Nada. Hope to hear soon, since it's probably my #1 choice

IT's also my first choice too. I really hope we can hear something positive from it by today. I truly don't want to spend another weekend in dark and anxiety; I would rathrer be in bliss or total despair (hopefully bliss!).

Edited by Albert01
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18 minutes ago, Qw23 said:

Saw that U Penn started to schedule interviews. Panicked again.

Anyone know how Penn interviews work? Is it that everyone on the shortlist gets an interview, or is it confirming fit for some applicants?

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19 minutes ago, Albert01 said:

IT's also my first choice too. I really hope we can hear something positive from it by today. I truly don't want to spend another weekend in dark and anxiety; I would rathrer be in bliss or total despair (hopefully bliss!).

I've gotten an offer (without funding Info) and an interview request on a Sunday, so even if we don't hear back today, you never know

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57 minutes ago, komina12345 said:

15, but assuming non-replies mean rejection, I am 0/5 so far.

Ok, hmm. At the risk of sounding flippant, I think it's way too early for you to assume striking out across the board.

To illustrate: it seems like you've applied to schools that are pretty selective- i.e. have acceptance rates that are on average around ten percent. If you had, say, a ten percent chance of getting into any given school, the chances that you would be rejected from the first five schools you hear back from are better than not: .9^5=~59%

However, the changes of getting rejected everywhere with those same odds are considerably lower: .9^15=~20.5%. From what it sounds like, you have a pretty competitive profile, so I don't think it's unreasonable to assume you have at least a 10% chance of getting into any given school, making for an ex ante probability of getting in to at least one place at 79.4% at the beginning of the cycle and 65.1% now that you've (presumably) been rejected by five schools.

Obviously these probabilities are dependent on the quality of the applicant (again, it seems like you are more qualified than average) and these calculations are extremely rough, but I hope they give you a sense of why you have reason to keep hope. Even very qualified applicants can expect to get rejections galore in an environment this brutally competitive.

Edited by luminalcoin8
clarification
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For those of you feeling a lot of anxiety about hearing nothing so far, on February 2nd the year that I applied I had zero offers. By mid-February.... I still had zero offers. A rejection from UCSD rolled in and I told my girlfriend, "Well, I guess I'm not going into academia." That same night I got my one and only fully funded Ph.D. program offer. I've got my Ph.D. now and a nice tenure-track job (at least until they figure out they've made a huge, huge mistake.) All it takes is one! And that one can take a while to come.

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