<p>I can only extend my sympathies to those that have been either rejected or waitlisted from their number one choice.</p>
<p>I had a friend who told me it took him 5 years to finally get accepted to graduate school.
He was never told the reason for his rejection though. He assumed it was from the lack of professor letter's of recommendation and his GRE scores. He had entered the peace corps right out of college and couldn't really ask for letters from professors that more or less forgot who he was.</p>
<p>I found this from the website of a major state university:
"14. Who will tell me if I have been rejected and why was I rejected?
The Graduate School will notify you if you have been rejected. The most common reasons for rejection are undergraduate academic performance and test scores that are not competitive with other applicants. Other reasons are TOEFL scores below the minimum, a poor fit between the student's research interests or career goals and the graduate program, lack of space in the program for additional students, and no financial aid for an applicant who says he/she cannot come without financial support."</p>
<p>I can't believe this university will reject applicants for those reasons.</p>
<p>
[quote]
undergraduate academic performance and test scores that are not competitive with other applicants
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Seems fair to me.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Other reasons are TOEFL scores below the minimum
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't see why this is a problem, considering I had TAs who were well-above minimum TOEFL scores and couldn't communicate terribly well...</p>
<p>
[quote]
a poor fit between the student's research interests or career goals and the graduate program
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This is fair. If you're applying for a PhD program that's focused on one thing, and you don't convey even a hint of interest in that, why isn't that a reason to reject you?</p>
<p>
[quote]
lack of space in the program for additional students
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes, because a program shouldn't be allowed to maintain its numbers as it pleases.</p>
<p>
[quote]
no financial aid for an applicant who says he/she cannot come without financial support.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, I don't know about you, but what's the point in accepting someone who will later drop out anyway because they can't pay for the program? Isn't that a bit...silly?</p>
<p>
[quote]
I can't believe this university will reject applicants for those reasons.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I can't believe you'd think a university wouldn't reject applicants for those reasons.</p>
<p>If this is for a PhD program there's nothing unusual here. You have to remember that PhD programs are a little bit like corporations; they don't just provide you with an education, you are expected to perform research, develop results and publish, increase the prestige of the professor and the department, and hopefully bring more funding to that department. The department is going to look out for their interests here.</p>
<p>The general trend now is to reject all PhD applicants that don't have guaranteed funding. Departments usually have some fellowships(free money) as well as teaching assistantships to hand out, and individual professors have some funding to give to students they like to be research assistants. However, once all that money is claimed, you better have outside funding or be willing to pay your own entire way through. </p>
<p>I know this, because I know people who have been rejected from PhD programs solely due to lack of funding.</p>
<p>I feel the academic performance and TOEFL scores are the only legitimate reasons for rejection.</p>
<p>The website made no distinction between master's or PHD.</p>
<p>My new grad school doesn't have an FAQ section like this. </p>
<p>My feeling is someone who has a 3.75 gpa, 1450 GRE 6,who applies late could get rejected. The website had nothing indicated about waitlisting. One of my grad schools wanted a 1000 word essay on how I was going to support myself-:financially and otherwise, and a normal WHY I WANT THIS essay.</p>
<p>What's so bad about that? Schools have limited funding, limited resources, and limited space. They want people in the program who will benefit them just as much as they'll benefit that person.</p>
<p>You still haven't explained how any of those reasons are illegitimate.</p>
<p>"14. Who will tell me if I have been rejected and why was I rejected?
The Graduate School will notify you if you have been rejected. The most common reasons for rejection are undergraduate academic performance and test scores that are not competitive with other applicants. Other reasons are TOEFL scores below the minimum, a poor fit between the student's research interests or career goals and the graduate program, lack of space in the program for additional students, and no financial aid for an applicant who says he/she cannot come without financial support."</p>
<p>That list is fairly comprehensive and gives a number of common reasons why people are rejected. It is basically a business and functions as such - especially at public schools. </p>
<p>Rejection can be (very) disappointing, but if you want something bad enough there's a good chance you'll get it.</p>
<p>"undergraduate academic performance and test scores that are not competitive with other applicants"</p>
<p>surely a program will not accept people who are in danger of falling out along the way -- undergraduate academic performance is a good indication of that -- if your GPA is consistently below a 3.0 for the duration of 4 years, chances are you will also struggle with graduate classes (if there are any), and that overall you just don't know your fundamental material very well</p>
<p>low tests scores are the official universal answer to any rejection inquiries -- in reality, if everything else on your application is outstanding, no one will drop you just for the reason of low scores -- one of my TAs had a 10% subject GRE score (something happened when he was taking the test and there was no date to re-take it prior to application deadlines) -- he got a accepted into a number of top 20 programs in his field -- if someone tells you that you test scores were not good enough that always means that other areas of your application package were so-so</p>
<p>post rejection, they cannot tell you that your personal statement sucked, that you cannot write logically, that they hated your guts, or that you received less than generous recommendation letters -- yet these two parts, essay and rec letters, are the most crucial for discerning the personality of applicant for programs that lack interviews -- they just won't tell you this kind of stuff -- the answer you can receive instead is that your test scores were "not competitive"</p>
<p>there is nothing to be done about lack of space and funding -- if there is not enough money or space to accomodate students, programs will accept fewer students and reject very qualified applicants for slight reasons -- here you either get lucky or rejected -- adcoms are composed of a few people of the entire school's available faculty and staff, and this small groups either likes you or dislikes you based on your application -- if graduate school entails research, and funding is very limited such that very few students can be accepted to work for all the available professors, the adcom is most likely to pick out applicants who mentioned that they want to work for professors who is currently on the adcom -- he or she is most likely to stand up for you as an applicant and reject someone else with similar qualifications but who mentioned profs who are not part of the adcom in this particular year</p>
<p>some programs invite people to come visit their school and pay for all expenses of their visit -- in this case, if funding is strained, the program is most likely to accept people who are most likely to come -- so a mediocre program will reject applicants who are most suited for top 5 schools -- in other words, these people will be rejected because they are so outstanding</p>
<p>I am aware of the reasons for grad school rejection.</p>
<p>But, I am also aware that the majority of applicants are serious about the entire admissions process. I also know there maybe a small minority that apply to grad school just for the heck of it or because they have no other plans after graduation. I can't tell you how much I and my friends have spent on the graduate school application process.</p>
<p>What I find disturbing is a major university trying to quantify the reasons for rejection. Most schools do not formally address this issue of rejection and for good reason. Admission or rejection is a completely subjective, but individual process and thus, so should the reasons for rejection.</p>
<p>I hate to say it, but you're jumping all over the place. Your argument has gone from "these subjective reasons suck," to "they shouldn't quantify."</p>
<p>The university quantifies the reasons for rejection because they are contacted by rejected applicants who want to know why they were rejected. That's what the Frequently Asked Questions section of the application website is for: for answering questions that are frequently asked.</p>
<p>Assessment may be a completely subjective, individual process (or not), but the FAQ list's reasons for rejection are broad enough that they would cover almost any of the subjective, individual reasons for which an individual student might be denied. Poor undergraduate academic performance covers everything from plagiarism, to flip-flopping aimlessly between majors and taking ten years to graduate, to laziness during college, to lack of interest in research, to difficulty getting along with classmates and professors, to carefully enrolling in the easiest courses available and only taking those 12 credits at a time, etc. Any of these aspects of the student's undergraduate performance might be brought up in recommendation letters and some would be noted on the grade transcript.</p>
<p>The FAQ list does not tell an individual student why he or she was rejected, but gives a general, commonsense guide to the qualities that were evaluated.</p>
<p>programs quantify the reasons for rejection when the numbers are good predictors of how well you'll do in a particular field -- for medical schools, GPA and MCAT scores correlate very well with how applicants will perform for the next 4 years of schooling -- therefore i've heard that applications can be sorted out based solely on these two numbers prior to the time a med school adcom takes a look at them in detail</p>
<p>for many programs this approach does not work, therefore they do not use it -- each program is interested in picking out the best applicants, so it would be silly to orient by factors that don't tell them much -- these programs will not reject you solely based on your numbers (GPA or test scores) -- they will read into your application and then decide -- all of the information will be used in combination -- applicants are quantified only when the numbers are significantly meaningful and it makes a lot of sense for the program to do that in order to pick out the best candidates -- it is common sense for this to happen with such programs</p>