How's your first week of February?

[Nishikata]

Hi all,

How's your first week of February?
Good news, bad news?

I have not heard from any of my schools.
Based on past year, a few of them would send out acceptances by Friday US time.. (it's tonight! I do not think I will sleep well).

I am writing in advance, as I would not know how my feelings will be tomorrow morning.
Will I get acceptance emails? Will I not get any emails? (which means 99% rejection in late Feb/ early March)

Will I be ecstatic? Will I be in despair?

Will I wonder whether I should have left my job earlier, so that I would no longer need to serve another month's notice period?
Will I regret not applying to more safety schools?

Will I regret not applying for US visit Visa earlier, so that I would be attending the Open Houses?
Will I know what I would be doing in the next six months?

This application journey brought me hope, and it would be very sad to see it shattered in the next 24 hours.
Please. Let it be good.

[Proheat2019]

Best of luck dude! Don't worry too much if you don't hear back tomorrow, plenty of schools will wait until a bit later.

[kronotsky]

I was also expecting at least one top 5 to release some news today, but it's starting to seem very unlikely given that it's almost 6 pm on the east coast...

[brucelyu]

I haven't gotten any results this week either, which made this Lunar New Year quite uneasy. I thought UW and Boulder would be somewhat safer for me, but based on the record on gradcafe this year, they have given many offers by now, so it's probably two rejections for me.

I was expecting Caltech's news last night, since they gave some offers on 1 Feb and last year's record shows Caltech gave offers in two consecutive weeks. Still I haven't heard anything. Sad..

[supermario42]

I just got my first acceptance to one of my safeties and got rejected from Chicago the day previous.


I know its tough if you haven't received any acceptances yet. But don't distraught, many schools send offers well into late March.

[athena123]

Got my first rejection yesterday, from U Michigan. I was really excited about this one actually, but what can one do! Having said that, I am not as bummed as I thought I would be, probably because I read on gradcafe that UMich had sent out offers and started sending rejections. So I kinda saw this coming. I guess it helps to stay updated Hoping for some good news next week. Good luck to everyone

[guckymeister]

Pretty good. I was accepted to UIUC out of nowhere. I only applied to UIUC and UM ann arbor, expecting to get into UM ann arbor and not into UIUC. I havent heard back from Michigan yet, so I'm assuming I didn't get accepted, but got into UIUC. A bit backwards from my expectations, but I'm not complaining.

With this being said, I have not slept well WHAT SO EVER since I heard back from UIUC. Still figuring out if I graduate school is what I truly even want to do

[WuLei24]

Hello User Nishikata,

I see that you have been very active on this site, and it is quite interesting to read some of your posts. It seems like graduate school application means A LOT to you (it means a lot to everyone, but given your excellent profile and your ambitious school selection, your expectation for getting admitted might be a bit higher).

I believe many of us are in the same boat, i.e. having anxiety over decisions by the programs we applied to. So be aware that you are not alone at all. Maybe this will relieve your stress/concern a little bit.

According to this site and the grad cafe, I have seen less than half of where you applied to have sent out their offers, and half of these schools might keep sending out a second wave of offers (maybe continuously on a daily base). I understand it is extremely stressful when you have not heard back from any of the schools and when you do not exactly know what is going on with the schools' admission process. But I do not think this Friday is the final judgement day, as User kronotsky pointed out in a previous reply.

One good thing for you perhaps is that you are at home (I suppose?), so be sure to surround yourself with friends and family. It really works. Just give it another week and I hope you will be in ecstasy.

I received an offer from a match/safety school in late January, which is a great relief. Then two admissions from other safety/match school followed. The rest of the schools I applied to are all match/reach or super reach schools, and I really hope I can get into one, but now I know the likelihood is very little.

Best of luck to you and to everyone who is still suffering.

[Nishikata]

It is weird that, after all the hype and worries, there was no results being released last Friday.
I certainly did not expect multiple schools to deviate their historical timeline this year, while they have followed them to the dot in previous years.
So this feels...empty? Today I am not even as hyped as last week, despite some results might be released tonight.
Perhaps I am getting used to the disappointment. After all, it won't surprise me anymore if nothing came out for everybody until this Friday.

I think the applications means much to me as it is a career change. I am not a fresh graduate who directly applies to graduate school. Out of a grant obligation, I am working in the industry on something unrelated to what i studied. (I suppose that's the case for most physics graduates ).

I decided that I want to return to grad school as I like this much better than my work. You're right that my profile might have influenced my expectations, as I think I have done my preparations the right way and now I am haunted by the fear of getting rejected to my dream schools due to my being away from academia for three years.

It was the only thing (I believe?) that I went out of the usual track, as I thought I would prefer an industrial job to a RA/TA position upon my first degree. RA/TA also pays much less, but it is not the only reason .

I realized last weekend that it is not a great idea to put unnecessary decisions over this admission process.
Resigning from my job is one decision I have to make should I get admitted, but previously I stacked more and more decisions that I could have decided regardless of the results. Maybe I was looking for an excuse to be procrastinating those smaller decisions, but now i know that this is not something that anyone should do.

[brucelyu]

I think the applications means much to me as it is a career change. I am not a fresh graduate who directly applies to graduate school. Out of a grant obligation, I am working in the industry on something unrelated to what i studied. (I suppose that's the case for most physics graduates ).

I decided that I want to return to grad school as I like this much better than my work.

My situation is similar to yours to some degree. I decided to learn physics when I was freshman. But I didn't choose physics major because the physics department in my university is average. I really want to do it right when something means a lot to me. I ended up in the strongest engineering program in the university hoping to learn math and mechanics from the most elite professors in my country in the field. After finishing all the credits, I started to learn undergraduate level physics courses at MIT/OCW and edX in order to prepare for my physics PhD application. There were not many research opportunities out there mostly because my university is strong in engineering but not science, while I'm a theoretical guy, like all kinds of interesting puzzles, mathematical structures. The research opportunities I know are most about applying known method to some specific engineering problems, which somethings look quite trivial, not interesting.

As mentioned before, I really want to do physics right because it means a lot to me, so I take a chance applying to some top graduate schools. I know my application documents are anything but conventional and my chances are infinitesimal. Transitioning to physics from a non-physics background might be way harder than I had thought.

No big deal even if I get all rejections, I can still choose to study physics --- all kinds of excellent textbooks and online resource out there. After all, nothing can stop you doing what you love.

[noethername]

In many cases, I think the extreme cold fronts that swept through a lot of the U.S. - dangerously cold weather bad enough to close many universities for a couple to a few days even in states used to harsh winters - may have delayed the process.

In warmer cases... who knows?!