OhMySocks

There are times when people recommended for admission are rejected by the graduate school, but this generally seems to be in the case where you don't meet some minimum GPA or GRE requirement by the university.

down under

...You would think that, but it worked the exact opposite for me. I knew that most of my schools wouldn't be sending out things until at least February and I was okay with that and wasn't even going to worry until then. Then, one of my schools sent me an acceptance on January 10th. And I've been obsessively checking since.

depressive disorder

Yeah...I get that one a lot. Particularly in Computer Science because industry jobs are plentiful. I finished my undergrad last year, and took a job as a research assistant at a university, turning down 3 industry jobs in the process (one of which offered 35k per year more than what I'm making now). Honestly, I have absolutely no regrets about this decision. I LOVE my job now. But people find it so difficult to understand why I would ever turn down a high paying job at a good company, and then take even more of a paycut to go to graduate school.

There's a confirmation bias there though. They went through it, and it worked out well for them, so they assume it will work out well for you too.

If I spent a proportionate amount of time proofreading/checking my class assignment, I would still be working on assignments from my freshman year in undergrad.

It seems like most Comp Sci schools don't do "official" interviews. I know that the one "interview" I had was a casual chat with a professor which was really more him trying to sell me the school and his group than an actual interview.

Mail man

I think it depends on department. There were some departments I applied to which said "We require 2 recommendations and will only read the first 2 you submit" and there were some that said "We require a minimum of 3, but recommend you submit more if you feel they help your application". If you can't find something like that on the departments or graduate schools website, shoot an email to the grad secretary and ask which the prefer.

And the worst part is that its *still JANUARY*. A lot of my schools don't send out decisions until mid-late February, or March.

That seems really odd and I would definitely be wary. Call and ask. If it were me, I would tell them flat out that while I'm interested in the school, I cannot accept any offer without information about funding. Unless there is something sketchy going on, they should understand that. Is this a US school, and are they a member of the Council of Graduate Schools? According to CGS agreement, schools can't force you to accept an offer of funding before April 15th. Obviously, you haven't received an offer of funding, but this agreement seems to informally extend towards offers of admission at most schools also. I would really question their motives at trying to force an earlier deadline on you.

This is definitely one of those stories that if you made up as fiction, people would fault you for being unrealistic and the irony being too obvious. Life seems to have a weird sense of humor.

Yep. Focus is definitely difficult. I have the added pressure that my boyfriend and I (of 4 years) are both applying for Ph.D. programs this year, and he already got accepted to his top choice, and my top choice is in the same city as his, while others are at least a few hours a way (one is a 45 hour drive, lol). So its hard not to get in the mindset that if I don't get in and our relationship falls apart because of distance reasons, that it was my academic failings that caused the end of the relationship. Yes, I am completely crazy, btw.

I received one official acceptance so far, which was sent directly from the graduate school, and they told me that funding information would come from the department itself. So that might be the case, that they are handled separately.

Well, I got one email at 11:30 at night. But that was on a Tuesday.

Yeah I noticed that I completely left out a word from a sentence in one of my SOP's. Of course it was to my top choice school. Its not like I reread this statement 10,000 times before sending it.

So you're the UMass person.... *glares* Just kidding. Congrats. And congrats on your other admits. U of I and Austin are both fantastic schools (If you can tolerate living in the middle of a cornfield for U of I)

Well, departments at the same school do admissions pretty much independently so that isn't at all a questionable assumption. I've blocked the results search though because I realized that there is no way that it can possibly help my mental health. At best, I could see nothing, at which point I might as well have not looked at all. But seeing my schools send out acceptances drive me crazy. I almost had a breakdown for a week when one of my top choices had sent out some interviews, and had completely given up. The next day I got an email for an interview from that school.

It seems like most don't, though I'm sure exceptions happen.

Obviously you can't do both, so you want to pick which one is more important to go to. If there is one school that you're more interested in or is a better fit for you, I'd choose that one. Also I would think that an "interview weekend" is more important than a "recruitment weekend", so read the descriptions of the weekends. I think schools will be understanding since this is something that seems to happen a lot. Pick the one that you're not going to, and email them and tell them that you can't possibly attend that weekend (you don't even have to give a reason, if you don't want them to feel like you're choosing a different school over them, or just tell them that you had already RSVP'd to a visit that weekend). However, make it clear that you are still enthusiastic about that school, and you'd like to visit another weekend if possible, or at the very least set up skype/phone interviews.

I doubt he would respond to the email just out of courtesy. Its obviously impossible to say without knowing the guy, but that seems like a rather positive response, and I doubt most people would word it quite like that if they were just trying to blow you off. Some professors really just note your interest in the group, but don't want to discuss further (often because they are just busy) until official reviews of applications. Some schools don't do interviews at all. In particular, it seems that in computer science, in my experience, a lot of schools admit students without interviews at all. Anyway, so I think this might have been him glancing over what you're doing, noting your interest and he'll remember you contacted him when it comes to official review time.

body odour

cookie cutter

Try to view this from the positve perspective: You can't check your mail anyway, so now you can't obsessively check your mail every few minutes. Its the universe trying to tell you to relax