2024 Sweat Thread

[bibobibo]

Got 4 waitlists and none of them become actual offer this year. I am so fed up with this shit.

The ‘Please don’t feel discouraged…’ part of the rejection letter is possibly the most hypocritical thing. They know this is going to make you feel bad but they try to pretend this doesn’t hurt you. And they are not guilty for this.

[trope]

3 hours ago, bibobibo said:

Got 4 waitlists and none of them become actual offer this year. I am so fed up with this shit.

The ‘Please don’t feel discouraged…’ part of the rejection letter is possibly the most hypocritical thing. They know this is going to make you feel bad but they try to pretend this doesn’t hurt you. And they are not guilty for this.

Fr. An individual feedback on the profile would have been so much more useful. That would have been at least some return for the thousands of dollars I paid them. I am now mailing them for feedback. 

[LRM]

1 hour ago, trope said:

Fr. An individual feedback on the profile would have been so much more useful. That would have been at least some return for the thousands of dollars I paid them. I am now mailing them for feedback. 

To be honest I don't think you are going to get useful feedback. They will probably tell you they received over 500 applications many of which were excellent and that they had to make a difficult choice between similarly qualified applicants. I don't think they will disclose any actual selection mechanism such as GPA etc.

[sicko]

25 minutes ago, LRM said:

To be honest I don't think you are going to get useful feedback. They will probably tell you they received over 500 applications many of which were excellent and that they had to make a difficult choice between similarly qualified applicants. I don't think they will disclose any actual selection mechanism such as GPA etc.

I’ve been told that if your recommendors know people on the adcoms and can reach out on your behalf that can sometimes get you some solid info, but yeah if you reach out most of the time you’ll hear “we had a lot of very good applications and could only accept so many”

[Facultoadviso]

7 hours ago, bibobibo said:

Got 4 waitlists and none of them become actual offer this year. I am so fed up with this shit.

The ‘Please don’t feel discouraged…’ part of the rejection letter is possibly the most hypocritical thing. They know this is going to make you feel bad but they try to pretend this doesn’t hurt you. And they are not guilty for this.

Yes, not getting any offer is truly saddening and hurting. They take candidates based on the applications they receive and can't take every excellent student that applies. My student this year with a similar profile as another one I placed in top 5 last year (i.e. similar or even higher GPA, near perfect GRE, 10 papers, research experience, etc etc, though different in some perhaps very obvious other ways) couldn't even get into a top 20 this year and was waitlisted at several top 30. It's very tough all round and the schools must make a difficult decision. If he had not applied to a handful of top 100 schools, that would have been the end - zero offers.

 

If you're still interested in this PhD thingy, the best line of action would be to prep for next year and shoot for the places you believe you deserve, yes, and maybe even much higher place, but also consider some lower places that would fight to have you join them. A student told me this year that a certain top ~100 program promised to increase their stipend by a whopping 20K/year if only the student would ignore a top 50 offer to attend their own program, lol. For an international student, that is some large temptation right there.

 

Anyway, you have a right to feel sad about this painful application campaign this year. I wish you a more successful outcome next year - if you choose to still apply. If there are any comma in your profile, this is the time to start patching it against next year applications.

[bibobibo]

17 hours ago, Facultoadviso said:

Yes, not getting any offer is truly saddening and hurting. They take candidates based on the applications they receive and can't take every excellent student that applies. My student this year with a similar profile as another one I placed in top 5 last year (i.e. similar or even higher GPA, near perfect GRE, 10 papers, research experience, etc etc, though different in some perhaps very obvious other ways) couldn't even get into a top 20 this year and was waitlisted at several top 30. It's very tough all round and the schools must make a difficult decision. If he had not applied to a handful of top 100 schools, that would have been the end - zero offers.

 

If you're still interested in this PhD thingy, the best line of action would be to prep for next year and shoot for the places you believe you deserve, yes, and maybe even much higher place, but also consider some lower places that would fight to have you join them. A student told me this year that a certain top ~100 program promised to increase their stipend by a whopping 20K/year if only the student would ignore a top 50 offer to attend their own program, lol. For an international student, that is some large temptation right there.

 

Anyway, you have a right to feel sad about this painful application campaign this year. I wish you a more successful outcome next year - if you choose to still apply. If there are any comma in your profile, this is the time to start patching it against next year applications.

An update:
Thank you for your reply and suggestions. 🙂I guess what makes things worse is that I apply for 16 schools and I received 4 waitlists. (They are all Top 15/Top 20.) But when I apply for over 40 predocs, I didn't even get a data task yet. Definitely still want to apply, but the problem is that I might not even get the change to prep for next year.

Edited April 18, 2024 by bibobibo
Miss some content.

[chadinator]

39 minutes ago, bibobibo said:

An update:
Thank you for your reply and suggestions. 🙂I guess what makes things worse is that I apply for 16 schools and I received 4 waitlists. (They are all Top 15/Top 20.) But when I apply for over 40 predocs, I didn't even get a data task yet. Definitely still want to apply, but the problem is that I might not even get the change to prep for next year.

Apply for top 30/40 also. Even if you don't want to go to those programs, having some fully funded acceptances will make you feel much better. And who knows, maybe you liked one of them at the end and accepted it.

[sicko]

9 hours ago, chadinator said:

Apply for top 30/40 also. Even if you don't want to go to those programs, having some fully funded acceptances will make you feel much better. And who knows, maybe you liked one of them at the end and accepted it.

I’d echo this. The program I’m going to next year I almost didn’t apply for, and it was last on my list, but after learning about it I genuinely prefer it to others that I had ranked above it at the beginning. Your preferences can change, even within a few months.

[Latino_in_Economics]

Hey guys, 

I would like to thank you all for participating in this thread. This has been the most successful Sweat Thread of the last few years, and I hope that this trend continues in the next years so that future applicants will have a reliable source of information during the applications. 

Also, congratulations for surviving the application season, everyone! Just submitting an application is already a huge milestone. For those who received some acceptances, it's time to finally reap the benefits of your efforts. For those who were unsuccessful, life goes on (trust me, two years ago, I applied the first time and also didn't receive any offers. It felt like the end of the world. It wasn't.). I hope you all the best.