<p>Totally irrelevant. Apples (colleges) and oranges (graduate programs). Andison was rejected by the admission committees of COLLEGEs. There’s no such thing at the GRADUATE level. It’s individual departments (read actual profs, not admission officers) who decide whom to admit. Now, if an applicant applies to a Ph.D. program at University A one year and is rejected; then re-applies the following year, there’s every chance that that applicant will have the same experience as Andison at the college level: namely, that the applicant’s profile will have been deemed not sufficiently different from the previous year as to merit a different outcome.</p>
<p>Who do you think the “they” are? Read my previous post. </p>
<p>Every year, many departments receive hundreds of applications for admission into their Ph.D. programs. The profs who form the selection committees of these departments have only a few weeks to slog through transcripts, GRE reports, letters of recommendations (3 or more), statements of purpose (several pages) writing samples (sometimes twenty pages, sometimes whole senior theses, and all sorts of supporting documents). They really don’t have the time and energy to ask the undergraduate admissions offices of their institutions to check who, among their hundred of applicants, had the nerve to turn down their offer of admission four years earlier. Never mind that this is also the time of the year that the undergraduate admissions offices are swamped with tens of thousands of applications also. And even if they did find out that four years earlier, an applicant had turned them down for some other college, they would not care in the least. What graduate programs look for is quite different from what college communities look for.</p>
<p>D had the same experience. Applied ED to an Ivy and was rejected. Applied to a graduate program, accepted, and declined. She said it felt kind of good to turn them down :)</p>
<p>Marite explains it well. The professors who are evaluating grad school applications in their academic department do not know, and do not care, about the folder over in the admissions office that shows whether you applied there or were accepted there (by people in the admissions office who are administrative people - not academic people) while you were in high school. The professors who are evaluating grad school applications care about your college grades, your GRE’s, your experience/interest/research in your grad school field of study, your likelihood of success in the field in the future…</p>