I got back today from visiting Michigan, and my feelings at the moment can be summed up in two words: exhaustion and shock. These last few days have gotten crazy again in terms of graduate school-related news. I’ve now been officially accepted at all six of the universities to which I applied, have received financial offers from three of them (Cornell, Virginia, and Michian), and have a financial offer from a fourth, Duke, in the mail. I just got done sending e-mails off to the four professors who have e-mailed me in the past three days. Everyone is interested in hearing a decision sooner rather than later, and, while I understand and sympathize fully with that sentiment, this upcoming week promises to be a nasty one as it contains all of my midterms.

I learned this weekend that Michigan offered admission to about 30 students out of around 380 applicants. That’s an acceptance rate of just under 8%. The very idea that I made it into such a group boggles my mind, and I know that the statistics for several of these other schools probably aren’t all that different. To be honest, that doesn’t make me feel good. If anything, I feel like there must have been a mistake somewhere because I’m certainly not as amazing as this response would seem to indicate.