<p>My S has applied for PhD programs in math. The deadlines for his applications ranged from December 15 to January 15. Does anyone know when he should expect to hear something? Do schools have different schedules for replying or is there a common reply date?</p>
<p>I've only heard from one so far, and that was my safety on 1/13, two days before the deadline. I might have aimed a little low with that one. Nothing from anyone else yet. My first choice will probably start emailing mid-late February. March seems pretty popular, too.</p>
<p>You can see when decisions came in for various programs in previous years at Grad</a> School Admissions Results, Tips, Forums, Discussions, Help • thegradcafe.com</p>
<p>(Edit: sorry about the stupid looking link, I can't figure out how to make the forum software here not auto-"correct" it.)</p>
<p>I applied last year and generally it seems that admissions comes in waves. If a school had a deadline in December, they review all the material over the winter break and then start handing out admissions decisions to their top pool end of January/beginning of February. Of course it varies from school to school. It can range from early February if you are very high on the program's list to end of March if you a fringe admit. </p>
<p>Some schools, like Northwestern, won't let you know about your rejection up until April 15th, which is annoying. I remember NYU rolled out around mid March.</p>
<p>Some schools still have their deadline approaching, I think Michigan is January 22nd and they won't tell me if my app is complete because of this, even though I sent in my materials almost 2 months ago.</p>
<p>Waiting sucks, and this is my 2nd time applying, so it sucks even more. I just want one admit and then I won't have to worry.</p>
<p>Last year, I applied to Princeton, Harvard, Chicago, and Minnesota. Their deadlines occurred in that order and I heard from them in that order. I heard from Princeton on 15 February, Harvard in late February, Chicago in early March, and Minnesota in mid-March.</p>
<p>Michigan is notorious for stringing applicants along forever. Don't expect a timely response for your son from there, if he in fact applied there.</p>
<p>There's a couple schools that do that because they use rolling admissions (ie, no rejections until they have a full class). If you think about it, it's gotta be pretty hard to figure out how many people to accept to get a full incoming class, especially at larger schools. You can use a wait list, but then it's the same game all over again figuring out how many people you need to wait list so that enough people will opt to stay on the wait list to plug any potential gaps. I'd imagine it's a lot easier on the school to just do rolling admissions, and also increases the chances for somebody that really wants to go to that school and is willing to hang on to the bitter end.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info. So it looks like decisions will begin to trickle in early to mid February. Good luck to everyone.</p>
<p>Yes, he's applying to Michigan. It's interesting that several of his professors recommended Michigan, but none of his classmates had it on the radar screen. In fact Michigan has more faculty in his area of interest than anywhere else he applied. And they have the best football team.:)</p>
<p>Michigan has an outstanding math department, Top 10 by most accounts. The only thing that stopped me from applying there was the mass exodus of number theorists that occurred during my senior year (they lost Brian Conrad and Kannan Soundararajan to Stanford AND Chris Skinner to Princeton), cutting out a lot of potential advisors. </p>
<p>I've just heard lots of horror stories about how long they take to let rejected students know they didn't make the cut. After April 15th, in some cases. It seems that it takes lots of badgering to get the news out of them.</p>