aryncita (2022-2023)

I was involved in several Latino student organizations. I also was a volunteer tutor for underprivileged kids and a translator for the Latino members of my church.

I spent three years in a PhD program after I finished my masters, but I ended up dropping out. I'm not sure if that will help me or hurt me. My numbers are kind of low for most of the schools that I'm applying to; I'm hoping that my URM status and my Stanford degree bump me up a little. (I wouldn't have gotten all these fee waivers if my application weren't competitive, right? :-/ )

1/11: Accepted at William and Mary. That was a safety, so it was expected, but it's still a relief. Hopefully it isn't the only acceptance I get this cycle. :)

I also got an e-mail inviting me to interview at Georgetown. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but at the very least, it probably suggests that I'm not an autoding.

1/25: Accepted at Washington and Lee. A safety, once again, but if nothing else, the quick response from my safeties is reassurance that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with my application. There was no money offer in the acceptance letter, but they say that scholarship offers will come early next month.

I also got an interesting e-mail from Stanford yesterday asking for clarification about some items on my resume. (Apparently they actually read those things. Even for people with relatively low numbers. Who would have thought? :) ) If nothing else, I'm hoping this means that I'm not in the "autoding" category. With my numbers, the only contact I was expecting to receive from Stanford was a thin slip of paper with "NO WAY!" written in crayon. I'm still not really expecting to be accepted there, but in this period of waiting (and checking my e-mail, voice mail, and postal mail every ten minutes), I'll take any sort of non-bad news I can get. :)

Also, my status on the Georgetown status checker went back to "complete." (It had said "interview" before they interviewed me.) Given that most people at Georgetown seemed to receive decision letters shortly after their interview, I think this might mean that I'm deferred, but this is just speculation on my part. Maybe the interview process really is random and they drew my name out of a hat before they even looked at my file? I guess we'll see.

1/30: I got an e-mail offering me $15,800 a year in scholarship money at Washington and Lee. Nice to know that at least some schools want me. :)

2/11: Dinged at Michigan. I was kind of expecting that, given that they're not supposed to be doing affirmative action any more. Oh, well.

2/14: I got an e-mail from Berkeley that says, "I write to inform you that your law school application at UC Berkeley Law School (Boalt Hall) has passed an initial administrative review and has been selected for further consideration by the Faculty Admissions Committee." I assume that means I'm deferred, so I updated my status accordingly. I suppose it's not the news I wanted, but I'll still take it over an outright ding. (Since Boalt also isn't supposed to do affirmative action and since they usually prefer high GPAs, I was kind of expecting an outright ding, to be honest. :) )

2/22: IN AT UCHICAGO!!! Phone call from Ann Perry. I'm not sure what to say; I'm still in shock...

2/27: Preferred waitlist at Georgetown. Well, better than a ding, I guess. (And it's hard to complain too much after the Chicago acceptance.)

3/08: Accepted at UNC by mail. I'll take it. It's nice to know that I have at least one option that wouldn't require me to relocate, even if it isn't exactly the most prestigious offer I have at the moment.

3/11: IN AT STANFORD!!! I found out via e-mail this morning. Unbelievable. I never thought I'd have this many great options.

3/12: Rejected at Yale. Oh, well. I have to say that being accepted at Stanford yesterday softens the blow considerably. :)

3/14: Rejected at Harvard. I'd rather go to Stanford anyway. :)

3/16: Waitlisted at UCLA. Wow, they weren't kidding when they say that URMs can have weird cycles. I also got a $36,000 scholarship at UChicago. Cool.

3/18: Rejected at Penn. You know, rejections don't even faze me any more after that Stanford acceptance. :)

3/24: Looks like the faculty committee at Berkeley decided to ding me. I'm not really surprised, nor do I really care at this point. :)

3/31: Priority waitlist at Virginia. Sigh. Well, hopefully it really was the result of my application and not a yield protection thing after they saw my profile. Had I been accepted, I would have very strongly considered it, since it's a lot closer to my husband than my other options. But I don't think I want to deal with the hassle of trying to get off the waitlist.

4/14: Waitlisted at NYU. That's nice. Doesn't matter at this point, b/c I think I'm headed to Stanford. At least eventually. The current plan is to do a dual degree program: a PhD in philosophy at Duke and a JD at Stanford. Apparently Stanford will let me count a large number of courses at Duke toward my JD requirements, so I can finish the degree with only about 2 years in residence at Stanford. (And these two years don't have to be continuous, so I wouldn't need to be away from my husband for more than 9 months at a time.)

So at this point, my cycle is pretty much done. I haven't formally accepted at Stanford yet, but I plan to do so within the next few days. (There are a few administrative issues that I need to work out; I'm going to be at Duke in the fall, and I need to find out whether to defer at Stanford or enroll as a dual degree student.) Once I do that, I'm going to withdraw from everywhere else.

4/15: Finally waitlisted at Duke. This might be an easier dual degree if I could get off the waitlist there, but I don't think I'm going to do that with Stanford's deposit deadline in two weeks. Oh, well.

5/8: I finally got a "decision letter" from Columbia today. It was mildly humorous. They said basically, "We contacted you in March asking for additional information about your file. You never sent it to us. We assumed you weren't interested any more." And indeed, that was basically what happened. :) (I didn't really feel like writing a long e-mail to Columbia with Chicago and Stanford acceptances in hand.)

I don't know if this was a "rejection" or how to classify it exactly. I'm just going to leave my status as "Pending" since there's no way to say "rejected by default because I ignored their e-mails."