astronomy updates/acceptances

Accepted to Cornell physics dept (for astrophysics) 2/3 by email. It's funny... I couldn't care less about Princeton anymore

Congratulations!

Now Cornell Astronomy needs to send out their acceptances and rejections that I can stop going nuts wondering haha

Phone call..

"Hello, is this <ultraballer2000>?"

"Yes!"

"I'm from Chase. You have a current balance of negative five hundred dollars."


frig.

Every time my damn phone rings, I keep hoping it's someone calling to tell me I got into a grad program.

Caltech astro is now admitting

Accepted by University of Sussex in Brighton, UK. And, invited to interview at King's College of London.

U washington has started calling people 2/4

The comments on one of stein siggurdson blog posts might be of interest here:

http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/2010/02/grad_admissions_-_what_are_yal.php#commentsArea

very interesting find.

"Harvard (astronomy) is increasing admissions, 18 accepted, and a few extra wait-listed"

wow

wait does that mean they have already contacted accepted students? did anyone hear from Harvard?

I don't think they started contacting students yet. Maybe they will tomorrow?

oh whew, you scared me!

I just got a happy email from UChicago astro... at midnight central time

Just got into UVA astronomy.

Accepted to UCLA Astronomy, just got the email.

NOOOOOO!!!!!!!

I mean... Congrats to you! I'm just super anxious to hear back from them

accepted into Harvard astronomy by postal this afternoon(2/6)!!!

I have to give God all the glory, I absolutely didn't deserve a gift like this

VVVVV

lol

Yeah, "God" gives your highness a 990 and admission to Harvard but crushes 200,000 Haitians in less than a minute. What makes you so special to deserve that? I'd expect a physicist to have a better sense of reality than that.

So why is light from distant galaxies red-shifted? If they had a choice f) Because God made it this way on all the PGRE questions would you really have screwed up your future to defend that nonsense?

Now now, that's enough of that. I'm as jealous as anyone of his PGRE but that's no reason to get nasty.

I understand you're upset about his beliefs but it just comes off as whiny.

edit: disregard this, your profile is rather impressive! I still think you're being too hard on him. His beliefs shouldn't matter to you.

Not to mention, I think he was making a joke (I could be wrong, maybe he really believes in God, but I read it as a joke ...)

I think Quiz is completely serious. The guy keeps praising god all over the place--he's asking for it and he probably knows it. Have at it, folks.

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2112

I know quiz is serious, but I though bibimbop was joking ...

I happen to be an atheist with a strong disdain for religion, but I think your comments are a lot more offensive to everyone's intelligence here than bibimbop's. Trying to disprove the existence of God is not going to get you anywhere. Even if we take for granted that the universe follows a set of physical laws (as I assume anyone on this forum does), there are still plenty of places to gently insert a completely non-falsifiable God into the description. In that case adding God clearly doesn't add any predictive value to the model, but it also can't be refuted with purely scientific arguments.

Plus these arguments here in particular are just really ridiculous. I think you can do better.

There are plenty of places to insert Flying Spaghetti Monster too, but that's no reason to do so. And I think most of us would agree that Occam's razor is a pretty good reason not to, ya? I mean, there are plenty of good arguments for the compatibility of science and religion, but this isn't really one of them.

Anyway, congrats on your acceptances bibimbop. Just to clarify, I wasn't laughing at your belief in god - just at the irony of your comment.

You should post your profile when you can, btw.

To be clear, I do think there are good reasons not to believe in a God. I just think the issue deserves at least a little bit of care.

Kroner, it’s ironic that you take a shot at someone’s intelligence and then follow by completely misinterpreting what was said. I never intended to disprove anything. It’d be pointless and redundant to claim God doesn’t exist every time someone says the word God. You can find a comprehensive list of arguments for and against all over the internet and by our age everyone is familiar with the gist of most of them. Why would I even bother?

I just get disgusted when religious people boast how great God is and how much God loves them when countless people die horrible deaths or suffer other extreme misfortune. Why is “God’s will” so good for bimbo and not someone else? Why is he so special? Is God really that great? Would the people who lost their families in the earthquake want to hear him rejoicing over how good God was to him by giving him a high score on a petty physics test?

Everyone is different… I prefer to think that I earned my 990. Maybe I could give some credit to the textbooks I studied from, this forum, and the pencil I filled in the bubbles with. But I’m not going to hand it all over to a divine being, whether it exists or not.

What are all the people who bombed the GRE and had their future plans compromised because of it supposed to think about God? I don’t like when athletes do this crap either, like at the end of a game give credit for God winning it for them. If “God” made them win, what are the losers supposed to think? Religious people seem to pick and choose when to attribute things directly to “the glory of God” (typically anything good, or things that benefit them) and never blame him for anything awful, or they just say “God works in mysterious ways and we’re too dumb to understand”… (but didn’t he make us this dumb?) hmmm..

As for my “choice f)” comment, the point was that just saying “God made it that way” doesn’t tell us anything that we can apply to accomplish anything useful (as even you may have been suggesting). If God exists and you say he’s the direct cause and only cause of the redshift and terminate the conversation, you’re a retard. If you say God made the Earth and the Universe and he made the laws of physics and you cite the expansion of the universe and derive the Doppler shift from God’s laws of physics… that’s a hell of a lot better, and more useful to human progress.

I don’t need to resort to fancy jargon from logic class (non-falsifiable, fallacy, red herring…) This is common sense that religious people lack. God must exist… it’s perfectly reasonable to believe anything that can’t be proven right or wrong. There’s no proof I won’t win the lottery next year, so I should start planning what I’ll buy. There’s no guarantee this condom won’t break so I should pull out now etc… There’s no unfalsifliabiable proof I won’t die if I leave the house today. There’s no unfalsifliabiable proof I won’t die if I don’t leave… oh ***.

None of which he actually said, so I guess I'd just say thanks for the strawman and other demonstrations of complete lack of proper critical thinking skills.

I would also like to ask for this thread to go back on track so all of us anxiously awaiting grad school decisions who are obsessively tracking forum posts don't have to be subjected to manufactured e-drama.

To respond to Mataka and others, I wasn't making a joke. However, no offense to anyone here but I'm not going to attempt to justify my worldview on an internet forum. Though if I were to respond, it would probably be along the lines of Romans 1:16 and I Corinthians 1:23. If you want to have a genuine discussion about this sort of stuff, I'll certainly respond to private messages.

Also, I'm used to the jokes, and I don't take it personally, no worries



I totally agree with this, sorry for unintentionally hijacking the thread



done!

quizivex: I don't doubt you're a smart person. But I didn't think what you said was very smart. I think if you disagree with someone, you should at least go through the motions of trying to make a good argument rather than just lashing out. It just doesn't really serve anyone. Anyway, sorry. I probably went too far in what I said.

It serves me for entertainment purposes quite well

Berkely astro has started admitting

Am I the only one who wishes schools would start sending out rejections already? It's still early but I'm so sick of waiting! Even if it's a "no", it would be nice to get on with my life.

No, you're not the only one

No I wouldn't go with that.. you guys already have atleast one acceptance so thats going to work as shock absorbers, facing a rejection straight away.. is like.. ummm take out the suspension system of your car and try driving on a speed breaker

as for waiting is concerned.. yes I am sick and tired too..confidence level has plummeted down like blue ice falling out of the airplane lavatory. now I just think I will be happy even if I get into my safest school..
I thought GRE preparation was annoying, but frankly this waiting is 100 times horrendous than that.. atleast during preparation I could increase effort to increase my chances of getting a good score.. but this period.. is similar to that of the ground crew in a satellite launch, after the deployment of the satellite.. its beyond our control, if the payload works well then good, otherwise it will fall and burn down on its way back to the earth.

phew.. I ranted a lot.. now here is something to lighten the mood..

I'm really annoyed I got rejected by UW-Madison, but damn am I glad they already sent that rejection out. Now I can stop thinking about how awesome it would be to go there and start thinking about where else I'd like to go.

On that note: rejected today from the University of Washington

Not my #1 choice, but pretty high up there.

Rejected also.

admitted to cornell astro yesterday

How did you hear? Email/snail mail/phone call?

heard by email

Thanks! And congratulations

Berkeley's astro department has started admitting...

Just got an online decision from Yale saying they were 'unable to offer me admissions at this time' but would like to keep me on a waitlist with possible offers coming AFTER April 15. Am I on a waitlist or is this just a nice rejection? Did anyone else get a decision like this?

admitted to caltech physics by email today, for astrophysics

Did anyone who interviewed with UC Santa Cruz hear back with a decision yet, or are they still interviewing?

Accepted to University of Arizona (Astronomy) today!

Also accepted to University of Maryland, both by email

Also accepted to Maryland.