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How do offer/rejection letters arrive?


jujubea

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I'm specifically interested in how UCSB, CU-Boulder, and UNM notify applicants, but why not share your own schools, too?

 

Does it come by paper mail? E-mail? Do you get a phone call? A singing telegram? Pigeon carrier drop it off? Bat signal in the sky? :D

 

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For interview invites:  I got mostly emails, and some phone calls.

For acceptances/offers: I got mostly emails and some phone calls with an official letter either via mail or for download electronically.

 

However I did not apply to any of the institutions that you are applying to and I am in a different field.   I would expect most of it will be via email.

 

Rejects of course also will come almost exclusively by e-mail.

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All of my acceptances came by a phone call from a professor (usually one that I named in my SOP) and then an email from that professor with an official letter as PDF form and finally snail mail of the same PDF.

 

Almost all of my rejections usually came as an email (no snail mail followup). There was one exception -- one of the rejections came as a snail mail letter only (no prior email). At least it was printed on very nice paper with a nice letterhead! All rejections were generic (i.e. just from the "Department" or the Department Head or the "Graduate School").

 

Another form of notification is a super generic email from the Graduate School simply saying that you should log into their system because your admission decision is available. For one school, I got a generic rejection email from the Department and then a few days later, the Graduate School sent me this type of email so that I could log into the system and see the rejection again. yay!

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CU Boulder - I only know about the rejection letter which is like 3 sentences or something and came via email. Notified around end of February. 

 

UNM - Was contacted by professor with good news (I contacted him previous to applying). Then contacted by department via snail mail (with funding offer attached).  Confirmed acceptance with department.  Then received notice from graduate school via snail mail.  FYI-my online stuff was updated several weeks after I received notice. Notified informally mid-February with letter arriving a week or two later. 

Edited by geographyrocks
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Not sure about your selected schools, my rejections all came in the form of email.  One was direct from the program director and to-the-point.  The others were notices directing me to check my status online, where I found very generic, form, rejection letters.  

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  • 2 weeks later...

Generic emails for all!

 

Seriously though, I know you guys want to know as soon as possible so I send generic emails as soon as the committee makes a decision. Top candidates usually get a personal email from someone in the Department. If they're funded they'll get an offer letter emailed to them as well.

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Generic emails for all!

 

Seriously though, I know you guys want to know as soon as possible so I send generic emails as soon as the committee makes a decision. Top candidates usually get a personal email from someone in the Department. If they're funded they'll get an offer letter emailed to them as well.

 

OoooooOOOhhhh. It's like the Wizard of Oz speaking!

 

:)

 

Thanks GradSecretary!

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Generic emails for all!

 

Seriously though, I know you guys want to know as soon as possible so I send generic emails as soon as the committee makes a decision. Top candidates usually get a personal email from someone in the Department. If they're funded they'll get an offer letter emailed to them as well.

Thank you indeed. You are better than a Christmas elf!! :)

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Many of my friends are receiving emails for notifications to the schools in which you applied. 

 

But does anybody know what this means?: Its December and when i checked my SFSU Gateway portal, in my application status log it says "Accept or Deny" and then when i click on it it says this on top of the log "We are pleased to grant you admission to the following program(s). Note that once you accept or decline admission to a particular program it will no longer appear on this page. Select the program you would like to accept or decline." 

Does that mean i got accepted? i applied as a Pre-communications major

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It certainly sounds like you were accepted (in which case: congratulations!) - but I'm not familiar with the school's application system, so if you're confused, email the grad coordinator and I'm sure they will be able to clarify.

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To echo what rising_star said, the results survey is also a really good way to figure out when to expect to hear from your schools. At least in my field, most programs do the same thing over and over again each year. You can use wildcards to search for your school name and program name and you can then go back many years and see the pattern of acceptances/rejections show up (with the way the applicant was notified) and figure out approximately which week of Jan/Feb/Mar you might expect to hear back!

 

And then don't forget to record your own results :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for everyone's answers - I did want to mention that I hadn't overlooked the Results Search.

 

The issue is my schools' programs are relatively small, so the data is relatively limited. Only a handful of results submitted each year for these programs (or sometimes none at all), and they're not so detailed, at that. So I put it to the general online populace!

 

Looks like SB's earliest decisions come mid-Feb, same with CU-B, UNM's come a little later. But as for how the results come, the submitted results are kind of all over the board, with sparse data to make predictions from....! 

It's OK though... makes it kind of funner that way, on one's toes and all!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I don't know about you guys but I'm pretty fond of gaiety and society

 

Ahahahaha... this looks ridiculous. Just for the record! It was in response to a spam post that repeated the phrase "fond of gaeity in society".... But of course once I reported the spam... it got removed :) 

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During my master's round of apps, interview invites came via email. I had one phone interview and one via Skype. 

 

Per the (three) acceptances, two were phonecalls from my POI's (I listened to those voicemails over and over...) and one came via email.

 

I remember clearly that I got the acceptance email while I was watching the Oscars with my parents, so that was in late February. 

 

I was sitting on the couch and checked my email on my phone during a commercial. I saw the "We are pleased to welcome you to..." message, froze for a minute, and then went upstairs to check on my laptop. I sat staring silently at it for a solid few minutes, until I went downstairs to tell my parents.)

 

The funding offers came a few days later, via USPS mail. 

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During my master's round of apps, interview invites came via email. I had one phone interview and one via Skype. 

 

Per the (three) acceptances, two were phonecalls from my POI's (I listened to those voicemails over and over...) and one came via email.

 

I remember clearly that I got the acceptance email while I was watching the Oscars with my parents, so that was in late February. 

 

I was sitting on the couch and checked my email on my phone during a commercial. I saw the "We are pleased to welcome you to..." message, froze for a minute, and then went upstairs to check on my laptop. I sat staring silently at it for a solid few minutes, until I went downstairs to tell my parents.)

 

The funding offers came a few days later, via USPS mail. 

 

Did the POI's tell you about funding when you got their calls?

And how about in the email? 

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School A: the graduate director (not the professor with whom I'd interviewed via phone) called my cell and told me over the phone that I'd been accepted, then in the same call told me I'd been awarded a full fellowship and TAship. The call came in the morning, because I remember talking to him from my car, in the parking garage at work. 

 

School B: the graduate director (the person with whom I'd Skyped) called my cell and told me I'd been admitted and that funding information would come later. After a week or so (fuzzy on the details now) a letter arrived in the mail (a single page, not a big package like you'd think) outlining the funding offer. 

 

School C: the email came Sunday evening. There'd been no interview. The graduate director emailed me a fairly short note, something like "Congratulations, I'm very happy to accept you into the program. The funding information will arrive soon." A few days later (again, fuzzy on how many) the letter arrived (again, single page) with the funding offer. 

 

School D: waitlisted via email. 

 

After I made my choice of C, I called the guys from A and B and let them know of my decision.

 

Edit: and for what it's worth, choosing between my top 2 picks was very, VERY hard, even tougher than the applications themselves. They were very different programs, at opposite ends of the country. I felt like an entire possible life was dying for either choice, like a Sliding Doors scenario, I had to choose which life I wanted. That was a tough time, full of apprehension. 

Edited by grad_wannabe
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  • 2 months later...

It seems like I'm in the minority about this, but I received an email saying that my status had been updated on the website. I went to the website and it told me to click a link to view my admission status. With all the hoopla, I assumed I'd been rejected, but they admitted me!!!

 

Generic emails are not the end! There is hope. 

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It seems like I'm in the minority about this, but I received an email saying that my status had been updated on the website. I went to the website and it told me to click a link to view my admission status. With all the hoopla, I assumed I'd been rejected, but they admitted me!!!

 

Generic emails are not the end! There is hope. 

 

Congratulations! 

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