<p>OK, this is dumb, but with a May 1 deadline, does that mean that you have all of May 1 to push the accept button or is it by May 1? We've got some extremely last minute offers coming in and it's a complete stress fest. Do schools really deal with appeals on the last day?</p>
<p>My daughter received an email today from one school that said she had until 11:59 p.m. on May 1 - so I would assume it’s that way for all schools?</p>
<p>Thanks. I manned up and emailed the institution , admitting that I was a complete doofass and they emailed me back that yes, we had until the end of May 1 to push the accept/decline button. </p>
<p>OK, this is the one and only time I will be doing this, but WHY does this stuff have to come down so 11th hour? Got a call from a WL school saying kid was off WL and they would be sending an offer right away… and then told us it would be a couple of days. Arggshh.</p>
<p>I would not make that assumption. With something this important, it is worth making a phone call during business hours to the admissions office of each school that matters. If you ask nicely, you may even be able to get them to give you a day or two extension on the deadline. No guarantees, but could be worth a try to lower the stress level a bit.</p>
<p>(Crossposted with OP’s response.)</p>
<p>Glad someone else asked first.</p>
<p>jb1966, a few years ago my daughter got a WL call at 6 PM on April 30 (by coincidence, her birthday.) But it was a Friday and we had to wait until after the weekend for official word ( a phone call was great, but we felt a need for something in writing. And then there was another short wait for financial aid confirmation. So, although she had an offer, we still needed to make a deposit on another school, which we lost. Unless finances are not a concern, it may still be prudent to accept another school’s offer at 11:59 on May 1, even if you do receive admission from a waitlist.</p>
<p>My experience and those of other students is that if you get accepted to the school you want, and to the studio you wanted, it is relatively painless, you know my April 1st and have that time to decide (other then for example financial aid and appealing the decision). </p>
<p>If you end up on waitlist for the school or your first choice teacher is not available, it can be a very different process. With waitlist, either for the school or for the teacher, they may or may not tell you where you are on the waitlist, which isn’t great, because if you are first on the waitlist for a teacher or school would be a very different look then if you are 15th…some schools will tell you that, some won’t.</p>
<p>If you are in this kind of limbo, one thing I strongly recommend is to be proactive and not assume that the admissions department is actively working on your particular case, it pays to be active with them (polite, but persistent). My kid’s 1st choice knew they wouldn’t be available at one school he was accepted to at the time he was accepted, I am pretty certain they told admissions that, yet admissions didn’t try to contact #2 for 2 weeks, until my kid contacted them, and as a result, the #2 choice was full and my kid was on that teacher’s waitlist (god only knows what position, admissions wouldn’t say). Put it this way, the attitude I got was that they were so busy, it was such a busy time of year (my thought to them was ‘try working in the real world, where it is like this all the time, not just a couple of months a year’). Admissions is a bureaucracy, and despite all the things they will tell you, how they are there to help the students, etc, it isn’t all that far removed from any other bureaucracy,and treat it as such, so you will need to be proactive. Talk to the teachers, my experience is that to get things done, it often is the teacher driving things rather than the office. </p>
<p>If I had to give one piece of advice, it was something my dad said a long time ago, that nothing happens by osmosis. If you run into issues with a school, be proactive and engage the process, don’t assume it will work the way you expect it to:). </p>
<p>I would agree, that you may want to accept at a school for may 1st if other things are up in the air. After May1st it is tricky if something comes through, you will lose your deposit, plus there can be protocol if the school is NASM in terms of breaking a committment already made…but definitely worth having something in hand rather than hoping for Kismet.</p>
<p>
In my albeit limited, anecdotal experience, the NASM rules are not an obstruction, although formal measure are necessary (you need to be released from the first commitment.) Both deans assured us that this happens all the time, and everyone was cordial.</p>
<p>One has to wonder about the arbitrary application of NASM rules. This year, schools took their sweet time notifying grad students, some waiting 2-3 weeks after the March 15th deadline. This caused difficulty for quite a few students and their parents and shouldn’t have been allowed.</p>
<p>Mezzo’sMama, I noticed (reading this and the theater/mt forums) that undergraduates were also informed late by many schools this year. Of course, it is particularly difficult for grad students, who need to answer by April 15. IIRC, some grad students were not informed until around April 15-- and these were regular admissions, not wait-listed students.</p>