Physics GRE Discussion Forums

I got a letter from MIT; apparently I'm an exceptional candidate and they want to extend an early offer for admission!

MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, UCSB

Are some of the places I'm still waiting to hear from.

hi Will,

Can you share your stats with us? Or maybe personal message me if you don't want to publicly?.... Thanks, appreciated!

-Maxwell's Demon

Nice work Will. I'm so jealous, I want an acceptance letter from someone, anyone, right now!

congrats!

you (obviously) earned it!

As much as i like things getting out of hand, i'm also a compulsive liar. I didn't even apply to MIT. (not that I don't think I could've gotten in, but I miss my native cornfields and lack of things to do, and Boston just doesn't offer that.)

just think of how nervous you made everyone who applied to MIT...

Not nervous at all. Most people knew he was kidding around.

I'm so dense ( like a neutron star) sometimes. I believed him

so did I. will, you little a-hole, don't do *** like that!!

I didn't believe it when I first saw it, but when other people started responding, I started to get a little nervous.

I got a letter from MIT; apparently I'm an exceptional candidate and they want to extend an early offer for admission!

I believed him at first too... all that talk about how everything revolves around who your recommenders are and what connections you have... I thought that was from personal experience and thus didn't think twice when he got into MIT

It also would've been ironic because that post where I made up a fake chronology of the MIT application review process would have had some truth to it...

MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, UCSB

WOOOOOOWWW!!!

Are some of the places I'm still waiting to hear from.

oh

As much as i like things getting out of hand, i'm also a compulsive liar.

If you want things to get out of hand, tell RG you want to have a water gun fight with him and then see what happens... I think it'd be entertaining for all of us! [/quote]

So nobody has gotten accepted to anywhere yet? This threat is making me quite nervous...

I'd be a lot more nervous if this threat was 200 posts long and most people had already gotten their acceptance letters while I hadn't.

So nobody has gotten accepted to anywhere yet? This threat is making me quite nervous...

Um, I read this post three times, thinking I must have missed a critical word or something...

Then I looked below and found:

I'd be a lot more nervous if this threat was 200 posts long and most people had already gotten their acceptance letters while I hadn't.

And then it hit me.... why does the fact that nobody has been accepted or rejected from anywhere yet make you more nervous, xdebugger?

If you go back into the annals of physicsgre.com forum postings, you can read all the threads from last year pertaining to acceptances and rejections. Seems like most people were hearing back from the top 10 late Feb/early March

Geez, I don't wanna wait that that long. The agony of waiting for these decisions is at least an order of magnitude greater than waiting for the subject test scores. Just think, a lot of us on this board have no idea where we will living in 9 months. Kind of scary.

agreed.

That's why I've arranged to be in Cambodia at the end of February. I think there is some physical law where rejection letters don't cross the International Date Line!

I'm just nervous that all my scores and transcripts were sent to the wrong places by my school. It seems that everything always goes wrong for me. In fact here is a nice story for you guys/gals! So I asked one of my professors to write me a letter of recommendation and sent him a email giving him all the information. He says yes and I continue to send out friendly reminders every so often to all my professors. I told them all at the end of november since all my schools had deadlines of jan. 1 or later. One day after my January 1st school deadline, I notice this professor still hasn't sent in the letter. I email him and ask him about it, he emails me back and tells me he is extremely busy and never consented to write me a letter anyway! Talk about a shock! I send him his email consenting in email form(He verbally consented too but also gave the go ahead in his email) to give him some guilt. I was so furious. Now I have one school with only two letters...I just wasted about $90. I got another of my professors to write me one and he sent it in two days after my request to my remaining schools. Hopefully one of the six other schools will accept me...

Still waiting...

jdhooghe,

That's a horrible story. I can't believe profs do this kind of stuff. It's like they forgot their roots. They had to get letters sometime in their career too. That's unacceptable behavior by that prof.

jdhooghe:

That professor is completely unethical. Plus it sounds like he really doesn't like you for some reason....

I just got an acceptance from the College of William & Mary!

Congrats, Vicente!!!

vicente: Congrats on the acceptance!!

Thanks guys.

This is for their Physics program, btw.

Hello everybody. I recieved my first acceptance offer via e-mail two days ago. It was to Washington State.

I suggest everyone finds something to do. Last year at this time I was in the same boat, waiting for my replies, hoping my letters got there in time, watching this forum, my email, snail mail and the grade cafe all the time. Some of you will hear back in a few weeks, which means one of two things: you are a great candidate and you're one of the first they'll extend an offer to OR you didn't make the first cut (which means very little because every department finds some way to simplify the task of going through many appilcations, which can be inconsistent from school to school). The rest of you (like I was) will get their fair share of rejections... a few acceptances from their backups and, quite possibly, a huge delay waiting for one or two schools who are indecisive and instead put you on a waiting list. If you don't care about the waitlist school(s), then you're in luck and you can forget about them. If one of those schools is a top choice, it could be a long wait, which MAY turn into an acceptance in the end. The pressure isn't over yet, sorry...

However, the pressure is something you "choose". I was lucky, I got waitlisted and eventually accepted at my top choice school. Now, I'm looking at classes, qualifiers and research. The uncertainty is still there even once you're accepted, although it shifts to other questions and other pressures. My point is this: find an effective way chill out (other than drinking, drugs, shooting you dog with a BB gun etc), the anxiety may persist into grad school and it can ultimately disrupt your progress. It's fine to be excited and hopeful, but find another aspect to your life to focus on that is both positive and certain, otherwise it'll be a really long wait. I spent 6 months of my life freaking out, checking my email 70 times a day and it turned out fine in the end. Think about the bigger things, think about your potential research. The name of the school matters most to those who are not in your field (a big name school is great for your mom because she can tell her friends, yet it may not be right for you). Your work from this point on dictates how well you do, wherever that is. Good luck!

Got a call from home that a package arrived from Cornell Physics. Parents claim that I have been accepted w/ 9 month fellowship. Pretty much caught me out of the blue, I even made them read parts of the letter before I believed them (as I had not received any emails). Guess they did some looking over the applications early.

Good advice. I live 20 minutes from a ski resort, so I got a season pass. I've been up there everyday. That should help me keep my mind off grad school, except I keep meeting people on the lifts, and the conversation inevitably turns to school, and I end up having to explain that I'm going to grad school but I don't know where yet but these are some of the schools I've applied to. I just wish I could get at least one acceptance so at least I could tell people I've been accepted somewhere. The conversation is really getting old. I am also getting tired of telling people what I plan to do with my degree. I think next time I get asked, I might just tell them that I plan to sell vacuum cleaners.

@twistor

I think we have a good relationship. He is a bit reclusive but I am at the top of his E&M class(Recieved an A and he doesn't inflate the grades..heh heh ooooh right ). He never gave me a vibe that he didn't like me, but he is a bit odd. He is so reclusive he makes me look like a partier and I hate being around large groups of people.

Then I can't understand why he'd be such an arrogant prick. It doesn't fit...

congrats, geomar!!! Cornell is awesome!
Can you please post your status if you do not mind!

Has anybody heard from any other places!!!!
This waiting process is killing me too!!
I cannot take it anymore!

A University in Portugal hired me this week for a one year research project and I have the option to leave early if I get an invitation for a PhD elsewhere.
It's not the acceptance I was looking most forward too, but it's nice to finally study/work abroad and to have something to do while I wait for the acceptance or rejection letters to come and grad school or the application process for fall 2009 starts.

Accepted to Cornell Physics (Exp. Cond. Matter) with 2 years of a 9-month fellowship.

Like geomar, I heard nothing until my parents called to tell me a package arrived at their door.

Is Cornell typically this early? I'm pretty stunned to have heard back so soon - I was expecting to go another 2-3 weeks without hearing from any schools.

geomar and gcensr, can you post your stats?

congratulations!

Congrats people. Now I'll be fretting even more. I can't wait until the mail gets here today.

Congratualations to geomar and gcensr for those acceptances!!!


Has anybody heard from U of Minnessota (Twin Cities) yet! I got an email from them letting me know that they may inform me about possible nomination for gradaute fellowship!! I really do not understand what that email is supposed to mean!!

Has any body here gotten the similar email from them?

Yeah, I don't mind posting numbers. I also applied to experimental CMP.

3.9
800/610/5.5/990

A good friend of mine here also got the same deal, but I think he applied suggesting AMO or experimental particle physics (possibly both).

I'm betting Cornell is an isolated incident that sent 1 round of acceptances out really early - and that maybe many others will also hear good news from them soon. I'm expecting to wait until at least the very end of January to hear from any other schools and late February for some schools to even start sending acceptances out. And then the rejections will roll in come March ... but I bet by then most people on the board with so be happy with their acceptances, they won't care.

geomar, I am not surprised with your early acceptance!! Number speaks louder that admission packet or admission decisions!

Congratulations, geomar and gcensr! Cornell is a great place, especially for exp cond matter.

Thanks guys, and congrats gcensr.
I would like to think it was more than numbers. I legitimately enjoy my research work and hope that it shone through in my SoP/letters.

<edited for now>

See the profile results when I've heard from everywhere

I heard from Minnesota about the fellowship thing. I think this means we got in

for the Minnesota acceptance, can you please post ur stats (if you want to)? thx!
-Maxwell's Demon

UVa undergrad
3.63 overall GPA
3.96 physics GPA
700 Verbal
800 Quantitative
5.0 Writing
740 Physics GRE
4 (probably) good rec letters
1 REU at Wisconsin
lots of other research at UVa