Hep-ex. To any students reading this in the future... Apply to a varied ranking of schools. I was surprisingly accepted into my reach schools, ones that I almost did not apply to and was rejected by schools that I thought I had a better chance of getting into.

Nothing special, said limited spots

Got email telling me to check account for decision, saw rejection letter on account page.

Rej email after inquiry, hep-th! Application season is over. International applicant, 1 acceptance, 21 rej. (so close to all rej, can't imagine. ). An awful year, but good luck with everyone!

TTPB: I had an interview mid-Jan, was told I would get a decision in a couple weeks. Reached out mid-Feb, the interviewed said by the end of the month but could not give any more info. Reached out to coordinator early March and did not hear back :/

(not waitlist) Anyone heard back from USC, hep-th? sent email to ask about status last week, no response yet.

More applications than spots available

Just went to check the portal for the rejection; I had one undergrad publication, 3.99 physics GPA, 2 years of research, and national honors in debate + funky extracurriculars. But my essays felt weak, I came from a smaller school, and I don't have a strong laboratory background.

TTPB: Hey, no need do apologize for anything! You called me out on a comment which admittedly wasn't one of my most graceful moments and you made several good and valid points which I'm sure will be of help to future students. No feelings were hurt, it's all good! :)

TTPB Thank you for responding, and I am sorry for calling you out, and I also apologize if anything I wrote came across aggressive. I truly didn't mean it to, but tone can be hard to properly account for when writing on the internet. Also, I'm sorry for writing such a long response, it's just that grad cafe seems to me be a great resource for discussing grad school admissions, and when I initially decided to respond to you I did so with the idea that I didn't want any future students scrolling through grad cafe as they decided where to apply to to think of UC Santa Barbara as a safety school. As I mentioned before, it is my personal opinion that for schools of a certain rank, one should never really expect admissions from any individual one of them no matter how qualified a student you are because of the many factors outside of applicants control. Applying to multiple schools of around the same rank as UC Santa Barbara and believing that you will likely get into one of them is probably justifiable given a solid undergrad career, and it does seem that that is what you did, and again, I am truly glad that you got into a school you prefer, but I just wanted to make sure that future students understand to do that, instead of just applying to UC Santa Barbara if they view that as realistic for them. I posted mainly as someone who did look through the grad cafe as I decided where to apply last year, so I wanted to put it out there that when someone tells you a school is realistic or even safe for you, that means that you should apply to that school and multiple others around the same level with the hopes that you will get into one of them, but you probably shouldn't count too strongly on any particular one. Again, it does seem that that is what you did, but I just wanted to have that general rule about safeties out there so that future applicants can see it and maybe prevent themselves some heartache many experience when they don't apply to enough schools because they took words like "realistic" and "probable" a bit too seriously and chose their list of schools to apply to as though realistic and probable schools were guarantees. Also, you are totally not under any obligation to share your life story, and I definitely believe you when you say that you have gone through many difficulties, I didn't mean to imply that you hadn't. It is also definitely understandable that you didn't want to share much of that information with schools, I definitely had a very hard time writing my more personal statements as well. I think that along with simply the act of talking about something very difficult, part of what made writing it hard for me is the implication I often see that people milk their difficulties to get pity. I think that I might have been a bit overly sensitive to implications that people get an unfair advantage by doing that, not that you explicitly said that, it's just that tone can be hard to interpret online and like I said, because I did recently mention my circumstances to a few schools though I wasn't entirely comfortable with it, I think I am currently a bit too defensive about that choice and as a result I might have read more into your quick comment than you ever intended. I do believe that it is helpful for schools to try to consider these things, because I believe that everyone has difficulties and I like to believe that schools that ask for information about that sort of things are not looking for students to pity, but are trying to learn more about the context in which the student achieved the things they did. I think that it works to help level a playing field which can otherwise be heavily uneven. For careers later in life, job applications often look at a decade or more of experience, and when looking at applications with that amount of experience, the consequences of a hard year might be less visible, and it is a long enough time period that most people will probably have gone through significant challenges. Since graduate applications are really only looking at undergrad experience, which is generally only 4 years in America, having a hard year, especially during your upper division years, can ruin a students chances, so I feel that it is admirable for schools to try to consider this in applications. Thank you for your condolences, and for your congratulations, and I congratulate you on the schools you've been accepted to and truly wish you the best at whichever one you choose. I also hope that your hardships have passed and you have fewer of them in the future. I'm truly sorry for turning a quick comment into such a long conversation, and I especially apologize if my words came across as hostile, I did not intend them to. Thank you for responding.

TTPB: I am the person your long response was addressed to... I didn't intend engage in any conversation here, but since you spent so much time writing back I felt I had to reply. I'm happy for you to be going to Stanford and I'm sure your admissions to UCSB and other places were well-deserved. I had certain reasons to assume UCSB was reasonably within reach for me which I don't think would be appropriate to discuss here. Yet I completely agree that calling UCSB a safe school is a big stretch. By saying "special bonus points" I didn't mean anything specific. It could be anything that makes you different from a wealthy white boi. Moreover, I didn't mean to imply there was anything wrong with those circumstance being considered by the admissions committee. I am not comfortable sharing my life story here, but I can assure it wasn't a piece of cake by any means. I chose not to discuss my hardships in much detail in the application and in retrospect I can see how that could possibly make me come across as someone a lot more proviledged than I actually am. Please don't misconstrue this for any judgement on my part toward sharing such details; I am a very reserved person when it comes to sharing personal things with strangers and it was simply difficult for me to write about it... I am very sorry to hear about your loss. I hope you are doing alright now and I wish you the best at Stanford and otherwise. And thank you for writing back.

expected generic rejection

hep-th

Emailed to check portal