Fall 07: Acceptances/Rejections

Graduate School
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<p>Having just discovered this thread, I thought that as a director of a graduate program (and as an empathetic human being), I should post this information.</p>

<p>If some posters have received acceptances to a program to which you have applied, and you have not yet heard from that program, please do not assume that means you have not been accepted, or have not been funded.</p>

<p>We rank candidates, and notify our top candidates first, extending offers of fellowships and assistantships. We must wait until they accept or decline to know whether we can move to the next-ranked candidates, and extend offers to them. </p>

<p>For example, my program has notified our top two candidates, but we are still in the midst of ranking the rest. No one except those two have received either offers or awards. </p>

<p>Best wishes to all of you.</p>

282

<p>Addendum:</p>

<p>For those of you who receive emails from a department reporting that you've "been recommended for admission," please be assured that this means you've been admitted to your program, providing the Graduate School confirms the accuracy of all items on your application. </p>

<p>Departments, not the Graduate School, determine admissions. You will receive the actual paperwork from the Graduate School in a bit. Administrivia takes some time. :)</p>

283

<p>Prof X</p>

<p>thanks for your input - it's really useful!</p>

<p>just curious if u can answer another question: i'll be attending an interview day soon (march 11/12 i think). assuming i don't scare them all away (haha), how soon after the interview weekend will i get the specific offer from them? will they give it to me before i leave, when i'm there, or after i leave (and after they've debriefed and discussed it)?</p>

<p>thanks.</p>

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<p>UCLAri -that stinks. I only had to endure a year and that was bad enough.</p>

<p>My friend lives in Japan, btw. Bureaucratic nightmare.</p>

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<p>Professor X,
Thank you so much for this timely bit of information. My S is applying in a very competitive field to very competitive schools. He has recently been admitted to two of his top 4 choices for Ph.D study. However, I know from perusing various sites on the 'net, that one of the other programs began notifying candidates by email a couple of days ago. (I am sure he doesn't know this.) I'm not trying to be selfish here, thinking that he will get into his top 4 choices, but as his mother I would like him to be accepted to at least one of the other two, simply because they are geographically much closer to our home! ;) (Reasonable driving distance rather than absolute necessity to fly.) Your explanation that every notification might not go out at the same time gives me hope!</p>

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<p>14 of spades -- </p>

<p>Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing how that program works, so I am unable to answer your question with any accuracy.</p>

<p>However, it seems incredibly unlikely to me that any program would extend an offer to a candidate during a visit/interview. If candidates are being interviewed, that would mean to me that all applications are still being considered and all candidates are still in the midst of being ranked.</p>

<p>and to momof3sons --</p>

<p>I assure you that I know of NO program that notifies all candidates at once. That would be impossible -- what would a program do when their top candidate selects another program? Go without a TA or GA, and risk the administration cutting funding for that slot for next round of admissions? I think not. ;)</p>

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<p>Professor X, what you said about departments offering admission to top candidates first and then make additional offers based on their responses make sense. But I have trouble understanding how it works in practice. For many PhD programs in the U.S., candidates are not required to accept or decline an offer until April 15th. So what is a department to do if none of their top candidates respond until April 15th?
Would the department try to guess that since students have not responded, they are less likely to eventually accept? (This is like what some of us students on the board have been doing, in the reverse direction.)</p>

<p>This scenario is a bit extreme, but I think many students do not respond to offers until they've visited their schools and considered all their choices. It is quite realistic for students not to respond until late March or early April.</p>

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<p>Prof. X
Here's a question I've always wondered about...I understand programs not notifying all candidates at once, instead targeting their top candidates first. However, how do programs treat the rest of the candidates in terms of notifications? Are definite rejections sent out pretty quickly, and those on the border of being accepted among the last to go? I'm sure every school does this a little differently, but I'm curious about your thoughts on this. I would figure schools would contact the top few people they want, along w/ those they definitely are rejecting first, while fine-tuning the rest of their admit lists...and given the competition among programs, I can imagine how tough it is figuring out approximately how many offers will actually result in matriculation.</p>

289

<p>Thanks for your reply, Professor X, and my next question has been quite well framed by JYEK. How can a program hold off on notifications if the "common reply date" isn't until mid-April? Is it common practice for students to make decisions well before that date?</p>

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<p>I'll try to answer these queries to the best of my ability, using my program as an example. Please keep in mind that I cannot speak to the procedures of other programs with any accuracy, though I imagine we all proceed similarly.</p>

<p>We have X amount of funded lines each year. The committee meets, and ranks candidates. This takes a couple of meetings. Sometimes, the department agrees on the very top candidates early. As the director of the grad program, I push for early consensus on a couple of candidates, because then I can notify these top candidates with offers and incentives. They have, like everyone else, until April 15 to accept/decline, although in my experience, none of my candidates have EVER waited until that late to decide.</p>

<p>I hope to encourage them to accept/decline much earlier. That way, I can move down our ranked list and extend offers. I also know that one program in my field does not notify until the first week of April. So if a candidate tells me s/he is waiting to hear from University of Late Notifications, I know I'm going to have to wait on that candidate. <em>Sigh of resignation.</em></p>

<p>At the next committee meeting, I am going to push my faculty to get all rankings completed. I also want them to identify all of the declined candidates. That will enable me to send that list to the Graduate School immediately, so they can send out those letters. And, more importantly to me, I can notify the accepted candidates of admission. I will not be able to give them any information about offers/awards, however, until I hear from my top candidates. I find this distressing, since I want to convey enthusiasm for each accepted candidate, but my enthusiasm sometimes is not "heard" unless it is immediately backed up by an award.</p>

<p>But I must wait for our top choices to make their decisions. I COMMUNICATE with them in the interim, and I expect (and receive) honesty from them. Often, they tell me they are waiting for University of YZ, and that's fair enough. I know when University of YZ notifies. When they finally hear from U of YZ, the candidate contacts me, and I can move down the list, if necessary, and call to extend offers to the next-ranked candidate. </p>

<p>My department's applicant pool is deep enough (and our program is strong enough) so that we always have a couple of accepted students who commit to attend without support. I sometimes have the pleasure of calling one of these students a few days before April 15 with an offer of support. I love those calls. :)</p>

<p>I do hope this helps to demystify the process a bit.</p>

<p>Best wishes to all of you.</p>

291

<p>

We are incredibly lucky that Boston is a hub of schools and jobs in both of our fields (biology and aerospace engineering, for those following along at home). It helps the two-body problem quite a bit if both of your fields happen to have the same hotspots. :)</p>

292

<p>boston and cali (in general) are hubs for everything. that's where it all happens. that's where things start. :-) i've wanted to live in either of those places for too many years now.</p>

293

<p>
[quote]
We are incredibly lucky that Boston is a hub of schools and jobs in both of our fields (biology and aerospace engineering, for those following along at home). It helps the two-body problem quite a bit if both of your fields happen to have the same hotspots.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Even if we were in Boston, it wouldn't help much, since we're both not quite at the Harvard or MIT level in our fields. Oh well. Thank goodness for Southern California highways, I suppose...</p>

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<p>Professor X,
Thank you again for your explanation. The time you have taken to "demistify" the process is much appreciated.</p>

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<p>ProfessorX,</p>

<p>I also want to thank you for the time you are taking to explain how things work from a school's perspective. Like other posters in this tread I also have a son going through the graduate school application process. This time I have been out of the loop (except for the occasional use of my credit card) but it is nice to have a better understanding of what is happening.</p>

296

<p>yes thanks Prof X for detailing what goes on for all of us here.</p>

<p>and i'd like to mention that you are correct in assuming that we as students, consider how much enthusiasm we are shown by prospective universities, when deciding where to go.</p>

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<p>ProfessorX,
Like artiesdad, I have been totally out of the loop when it came to the grad school applications, with the sole exception of noticing the use of my credit card to pay for the application fees. ;) Having been through the college process, I knew about the statistical, strategic game of "yield," when a college accepts more applicants than it needs, knowing that many will make other plans. I was making assumptions based on that model. I guess I am now understanding that since these graduate programs operate on such a small scale, they cannot play the "yield" game in the same way as the undergraduate institutions do.</p>

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<p>Count me in as one of the out-of-the-loop parents as well. I can't imagine the admittance anxiety the prospective students must have, because I just keep waiting for news from him and my anxiety is rising rapidly. He's ask me to help him move, but it sure would be nice to know where....LOL</p>

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<p>Another update:</p>

<p>Brown-waiting
Caltech-waiting
Cornell-waiting
MIT-waiting
*Princeton-accepted through email
Stanford-waiting
Yale-waiting for formal acceptance</p>

300

<p>update:
Stanford - cs - phd - rejected
CMU - cs - phd - rejected
USC - cs - phd - waiting
UIUC - cs - phd - waiting
Duke - cs - phd - waiting
Columbia - cs - phd - waiting
UPenn - cs - phd - waiting
Penn State - cs - phd - waiting
U. Florida - cs - phd - waiting
UCSD- cs - phd - waiting</p>

<p>Getting really worried now :(</p>