<p>D is narrowing her list down, and wants to start contacting the professors at the schools where she is declining so that any scholarship money awarded to her might be used to help someone else attend these schools.</p>
<p>What is the proper protocol? She has been in e-mail correspondence with these professors, is an e-mail note acceptable or should she send a hand written letter via snail mail?</p>
<p>Thanks for your help.</p>
<p>I would think that since the offer of admission and scholarship money came from Admissions, you should notify Admissions as soon as a decision has been made. Your daughter could also notify the professors that she is not coming as a courtesy. We have not however been through this process yet, and are interested in hearing from those who have.</p>
<p>It is hard to find the words when turning down offers. But keep in mind that schools know that they aren’t going to get them all. When I went through the process last year, I wrote a custom email to each admissions office and to each professor that I had any kind of sample lesson with. I took the time to really address each professor on personal level, because grad school auditions are only 4 years down the road. So whatever memory the professors have of you, you want it to be generally good. </p>
<p>The sooner you do it, the easier it is.</p>
<p>Email rather than snail mail for a declination–time is of the essence. We all know what it is like to wait and those on wait-lists for admission or money experience the agony even more acutely. You can still send a hand-written note to the prof thanking him for his support/interest/lesson/help etc…</p>
<p>Illustration of timeliness: One of my sons (not music) sent his declination to an elite program by email to both the admissions secretary and the admissions prof on a Friday evening at 9:45 pm. He had a polite response from the prof at 9:48 pm and we saw a few minutes later online that someone had received an offer for the spot at 9:50 pm. Because schools compete against each other for good students, some of them do their utmost to get their offers out in a timely manner so that prospective students have all their options available to consider.</p>
<p>Thank you for your responses. D just sent e-mail to admissions and another more personal e-mail note to the professor. Once she was sure this school was out of the running, she wanted to give up her spot. Maybe there will be a very happy post from another student here later!</p>