yaman

In order to prevent these heart attacks, I have carefully set up a separate mailbox just for applying to grad schools. I thought since I did not use it for anything else, did not fill out forms or subscribe to things or sign up for accounts with it, it will be spam free and any notification I received must be school-related. I was wrong. I forgot that as a Gmail account, it is not exempt from random emails from Google plus and YouTube. Freaking Google plus and YouTube.

Fortunately though, none of my schools sent me teaser emails. Some stories here sound horrifying.

+1
 
Upvote for oddly repeating yourself without apparently being aware of it. This level of crazy is knocking at my door.

I have developed conditioned fear responses each time my smartphone beeps. Seriously, today I got a happy birthday message from one of the universities I’ve applied. I nearly had a heart attack! Then I was deeply disappointed.I have developed conditioned fear responses each time my smartphone beeps. Seriously, today I got a happy birthday message from one of the universities I’ve applied. I nearly had a heart attack! Then I was deeply disappointed.

My posts? Yours are quite fantastic!

Especially since when you said "full of gold" and followed that with a story about getting HUGE envelopes from schools/organizations I immediately thought. . . 

What if schools didn't notify you about funding, but just sent you all the money. In the mail. With confetti and your acceptance letter.

*Opens mailbox*

*Struggles to yank out huge envelope*

*Opens envelope*

*Suffocated under a gigantic pile of money, confetti, and happiness*

I'm going to pub quiz tonight and phones/smart technology is banned. Anything that will keep me from checking my e-mail every 3 minutes should be a healthy move in the right direction!

My favorite rejection comment: 
 
Didn't even want to get in. I applied for the irony. These tears are from laughter.

All of this guy's posts are just full of gold:
 
"I demand full transparency!" "So the "I reject you because I can" response is not acceptable." "I am the customer and you are obliged to respond to my enquiries. " "I told the lecturer that I expected him to value my original work" "you can't do that to me" "I guess when they were reading my SOP, they thought it was too good to be true!" "So I am genuinely interested to see if there are more people like me out there who understand the true meaning of higher education."   Thanks for the entertainment, OP. Please keep posting.

I'm with efs001 on this. I'm not sure what you intend to get out of the grad school pursuit; there seems to be a mis-alignment of expectations.
 
Many parts of the grad school enterprise are characterized by collaboration. To be successful in apps, you need to establish both what you can contribute and what resources you will draw upon to grow and thrive.
 
The attitude that you are a customer and the institution is providing a service does not establish this.
The attitude that you are arriving as a complete package that they should be grateful to have and the biggest thing they can do for you is provide access to equipment does not establish this either.
 
Your anecdote about bringing your own reading materials to class actually makes me cringe a little bit.
 
If what you've conveyed above is indicative of what you wrote in your app, then I think you needn't bother anyone at the institution to itemize why your application was unsuccessful. Perhaps you should view your experience with this application process as an exercise in ascertaining that your expectations/ideologies are not compatible with the program. You might be best served sticking with the private sector pursuits.

aryt13, I understand your rage, if everything you are stating here is true you have worked very hard to get where you want to get. It is an enormous disappointment when we are denied what we think we deserve. The problem here is that nobody owes you anything. You have an impressive resume, but to tell you the truth so do I and may other people out there. I have worked very hard to get into MIT or Harvard but entry is not guaranteed, I am competing against some of the brightest people in the world who hold a resume as impressive as mine or more. Besides, the adcom not only looks for impressive resumes but a fit in terms of research interests and personality. Yes, I believe personality is a huge factor, nobody wants to work with a person who is far from humble and might get enraged over certain problems. You worked hard and tried to give your best, but I assure you that so did I during my undergraduate and professional degrees. And many other people out there. Resilience and the ability to accept failure and move on is one of the characteristics they are looking for. I am very sorry to hear your story, but you can try next year as well, and I believe this might be one of the biggest lessons life might teach you.