I wonder if grad schools will reject people right away.
I’ve submitted my application and visited the school last week, and met my POI. My application was just completed 10 days ago due to one of my LORs taking a long time.
I already saw someone get accepted into the program on gradcafe, but then again, he/she went to the school as an undergrad and probably had it all set up with his/her POI.
obviously, this waiting period is pretty dreadful. I’m applying for Spring and they’ll notify people no later than early Nov.
I wonder if the fact that I haven’t gotten any rejection letter yet is a good thing? Or do they only notify ppl who are admitted first?
It all depends. When I do admissions, the clear rejections are done right away. The admits are done soon too particularly if we are making a funding offer. I’ll hold off on the intermediate ones if I have to make a second round.
In your case, it is likely that you are being considered still.
thanks xraymancs,
we keep on hearing about “clear rejections” and those who are “filtered out” with GRE/GPA etc, in order to make the applicant pool more manageable. Just out of curiosity, about what percentage of said applicants are filtered out immediately? Obviously this varies according to schools and even programs, but just want a ball park… 10%? 30%? 50%?
I’m aware that some ppl apply to schools in which they have no shot in, but just curious what percentage of applicants usually fall into this category for decent programs (top 10/20)
I don’t like to classify graduate programs as “top” or not. Instead, I look at a more objective criterion, the selectivity. This tells you what the demand for the program is. For funded positions, highly selective programs will probably only admit 10% or less. For self-funded degrees, the percentage is higher, limited by the intended class size. Less selective programs will have more like a 20% (or higher) admit rate for funded positions and even more for self-funded degrees. I am probably off on these numbers because programs don’t always report these statistics so I am looking at the difference between graduate programs at my university, ilinois Tech. The Electrical Engineering program has many more applicants than other departments (over 1500) while the physics program is small and has only about 100 graduate applicants. These include both Ph.D. and M.S. applicants so I can’t give you the rates for each group individually but it stand to reason that the Ph.D. (funded intake) is not in the same ratio as the applications since the ECE Department only has about 2 times the faculty as Physics.
Clearly, you have put all your eggs into the UIUC basket and this is making you very nervous. Perhaps you need to consider whether another graduate program would be a reasonable second choice for you…
Do not obsessively check gradcafe. I would be truly skeptical about any person who reported that they were accepted in early October - this person could be speculating, or could have heard “word” from their current PI that they are “all but” accepted and decided to post it, or any number of other things.
Like @xraymancs said it really depends on the department and program. For doctoral admissions the results may be a little more rolling (informing those who have no chance early, but holding into to people who are essentially waitlisted). For MS programs often the results are released all at once.
You just answered your own question…there is no ballpark. It completely depends on the program. Some programs don’t filter out anyone immediately. Other programs might depending on lots of factors, but knowing that information won’t necessarily help you judge your chances of being filtered out sooner. Just being in a desirable geographic area may have a program filtering out more than their ranking would indicate (because they get more applicants who want to move to that area or already live there and decided to toss in an app). Having an interdisciplinary or difficult-to-understand program may also increase that number (my program is a good example; it was a hybrid of psychology and public health, and realistically no one without a solid background in psychology had a chance. We still got a lot of non-psychology folks that applied.)
Develop or rekindle a hobby to take your mind off it.
You are right. The result section of gradcafe is not healthy. I’m just going to distract myself with other work and just wait.