Advice regarding not hearing ANY accept/deny/waitlist from Berklee College of Music

<p>All, my son has still not received an email (a/o April 1, 2012) regarding his acceptance status into Berklee College of Music for Fall 2012. Berklee states that applicant decisions will be issued on March 31 and did issue some acceptance and waitlist emails as indicated by other posts on this site. But, I would like to know if our situation represents a unique or bigger problem.</p>

<p>He has received emails from Berklee prior to this, so it's not a matter of a bad email address.</p>

<p>Is anyone else still waiting for an email from Berklee? I'd like to know what others might be thinking if they are in this situation.</p>

<p>It is clear they don't have the most sophisticated IT department as evidenced by some "features" on their website we encountered during the application process, so am wondering what type of "glitch" this falls into. I suspect that my son is on the bubble and might be waitlisted, but we just have no way of knowing without some direct communication from the admissions department.</p>

<p>We do not want to wait around so long (assuming he's been or will be waitlisted) that we lose out on housing at other schools. However, Berklee would be his first choice, if accepted.</p>

<p>Thanks in advance for any ideas and/or advice!</p>

<p>No advice other than call them tomorrow. Poor kid, it must be making him nuts!</p>

<p>Yes, we will call them tomorrow if we have not heard from them by then. I am somewhat surprised in this day of electronic notification for everything why they can’t just send out a quick email to those kids who fall into the “we’re not quite sure yet” category.</p>

<p>On another thread, someone suggested it may be that they are just groovin’ to a great sax rift and they’ll get around to it sometime. That may not be too far from the truth…</p>

<p>While most schools say they notify by April 1, it seems that almost every year a few of them miss that objective by anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks. Hang in there and give them a call tomorrow. I know it is frustrating, especially being made to wait given the housing situation in Boston and elsewhere, but things will work out somehow.</p>

<p>If you have a second choice school where housing is particularly tight, you may want to examine their policies very closely. In some schools, admissions and housing are completely separate issues where you can send in a housing deposit to secure a room even before accepting an offer of admission. At some, the housing deposit is even refundable if you cancel by a certain date. At others, it is a fairly small sum that you might consider an insurance policy.</p>

<p>I agree that Berklee’s website is terrible!</p>

<p>I’m wondering if the “Back Bay Blackout” a few weeks ago has stirred up their IT more than they expected. </p>

<p>I do know that they continue to get more and more applications each year, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they have to process in batches, so they will continue to process starting on Monday when they return to work. </p>

<p>Good luck to you that are still waiting … I wish there was something I could do to get you an answer. I remember how unbearable the wait can be.</p>

<p>We just got the letter saying he is waitlisted for Fall 2012 and accepted Spring 2013. We never got an email, so the wait was agonizing.</p>

<p>His primary instrument is Guitar, but his intended major is Music Production & Engineering. We are waiting for any scholarship letter, but are not expecting much being on the waitlist.</p>

<p>All I can say is “WooHoo!!!”</p>

<p>Now, does anybody have any money they can afford to help him? Just kidding - he’s going to have to work his skinny little butt off for the next several months, that’s for sure.</p>

<p>Any tips on waitlist choices and dorm housing possibilities if he starts in Spring 2013?</p>

<p>And, has anyone who got waitlisted seen a scholarship letter yet? My thinking is we’d be on a waitlist for that as well, but what do I know?</p>

<p>Thanks for any advice!</p>

<p>remo1024: Congratulations!! I’m still waiting to hear back from them… Did you ever call them?</p>

<p>Fxbeast: I’m waiting for response too! Are you waiting just for the scholarship or even the acceptance letter? I didn’t get anything at all. I called them on Tuesday and they said they have already put me on the re-email list which they will send the letters again on the Friday or Saturday. They told me if I don’t get anything from them either email or mail, call them again next week. What I’m guessing is that they might not be done with the application process yet. But this makes me really frustrated!!</p>

<p>Congrats to your S, remo!</p>

<p>I haven’t heard back yet. I know I have been accepted because I deferred my admission from last year, but I’m still waiting for the scholarship email. Called on Monday and was told to wait a ‘few more days’.</p>

<p>Musicjoy: when did you audition? I auditioned on the last audition day in Boston…maybe that’s why they are taking so long?</p>

<p>FxBeast: I auditioned on the last audition day too, on March 10th. Yea maybe that’s why we have to wait longer. And I asked the admission office if they could send the emails again soon or give a response without waiting that long because we might have to plan to move over there or things like that. But they sounded like very strict and told me that I have to wait. Hopefully the emails or mails will come by this week.</p>

<p>@MusicJoy/@FxBeast,</p>

<p>My son also auditioned on March 10, so there is definitely a common thread here. We also never got an email on March 31. We called to have the email address changed to a gmail account and got it a couple days later - after the regular email. They use a third party for sending out acceptance emails, so there is a delay in getting them to process the re-email request. We get regular mail fairly quickly, so you may be getting something today or very soon.</p>

<p>I also posted other info on another thread here -> <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/1313697-berklee-college-music-admission-fall-2012-a-3.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/1313697-berklee-college-music-admission-fall-2012-a-3.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Hope this helps!</p>

<p>Okay, I just got some more clarification from the Scholarship office. They said they will be sending out scholarship details for the waitlisted folks next week. So, my earlier post was not correct. I wish all of this would have been explained in the acceptance letter…</p>

<p>More waiting is in order, but less than I thought yesterday :-)</p>

<p>Thanks for the info!! “Next week” sounds better than “end of the month” or “after May 11”, which would be outrageous! Still more waiting to do though…</p>

<p>remo1024: Thank you for the information! I have been using gmail account since I created the account on Berklee website to finish my application and everything. It had no problem to receive the audition Invitations. I even got the invitation two times without any problems because I had to reschedule my audition. So I’m pretty sure my gmail account works fine. However, nothing came so far. Not even a physical letter. It could been the third party email system’s error. Just have to wait longer I guess…</p>

<p>Okay, to make sure the story is complete a/o this post and to add a bit of commentary…</p>

<p>I had neglected to mention in my last post that my son did get an email (after changing it to his gmail account) that had the same content as the letter. It came the day after the letter arrived. And, to restate, he was getting emails to his original account from Berklee before. So, it is my guess (and it is a guess) that they are using the 3rd party exclusively for the both acceptance and scholarship emails, rather than their own email systems, which they probably used for regular email blasts that were the same for everybody.</p>

<p>What this means to me is that the 3rd party <em>could</em> have run into technical glitches that Berklee did not experience. Regardless, it would be nice if Berklee could get some feedback from the 3rd party about bounced emails and other glitches, so Berklee could follow up with those that had glitches and send their own email saying we’re still working on it. My guess is that the 3rd party is having more trouble than anticipated. This is complete speculation, of course. If it were up to me, that 3rd party would not be Berklee’s partner going forward. They should have a way for Berklee to access their site and update email addresses and resend emails immediately.</p>

<p>If you know about how long it should take to receive a physical letter from Boston, then use that as your guide and call Berklee again to resend the physical letter. You may never get an email. You might also call Admissions and have them change your email address like we did. There is obviously no guarantee this will work, but it did work for us. The email will take two days (at least) to arrive after a change of address, though.</p>

<p>Sorry for all the folks still waiting for acceptance letters. It is definitely no fun.</p>

<p>Maybe today? I’m crossing my fingers for you.</p>

<p>My son was waitlisted in April/May 2011 for Fall 2011 (accepted for Spring 2012) and then toward the end of June 2011 he was accepted for the fall (so it only took a month to move from waitlist to accepted). Due to a variety of circumstances we deferred first to January 2012 and then to Sept. 2012. We discovered along the way that Berklee doesn’t have the most sophisticated system for answering admission/scholarship/financing/tuition questions. When we deferred at the end of December 2011, we wanted to make sure that any money we had previously given Berklee was either properly refunded or accounted for for next year. It took several phone calls and e-mails to different departments before we finally got someone who could actually help.</p>

<p>Many of our phone calls were answered by students (most likely work-study students) who were fine as long as you didn;t have a question that strayed too far from the narrow list of questions they were prepared to answer. Also, their office was lightly staffed/closed in December/January. So, even though wew finally resolved our issues (through persistence) we started getting phone calls two and three weeks after we had resolved our issues because they had such a backlog of phone messages it took that long for them to get to ours.</p>

<p>I have to say that based on my limited experience visiting Berklee, they seem to plow much of their money into instruction, and not things like a comprehensive, cohesive campus or a large staff of permanent admissions/financial people. I think that is an OK trade-off.</p>

<p>Still figuring out the financing part of it for the fall – no scholarships here.</p>