pcjl

I feel getting in touch with professors who specialise in your research interests plays an important part in getting accepted. This way, you can inquire whether the prospective programme focuses on the research you have in mind. Personally, I will email the professor a brief outline of my interests and then the research I hope to do and ask for their opinion. As to getting rejected, I was rejected flat out by about a dozen places this time. More than half of those rejections were from earlier applications where I was still unaware that we can actually get in touch with individual professors. Luckily for me, I received a couple of offers later on, and for those applications, I tried to establish some correspondence with the faculty members. Don't lose heart. Take this time to focus your research interests and find programmes which fit you. Hope this helps.

Hi, I am a Malaysian intending to specialise in heritage linguistics. After having been rejected flat out by about a dozen universities I finally got an offer from Minnesota out of the blue last Friday. Hawaii indicated their interest in me later that day and they were willing to top up my stipend from my external funding. My dilemma here is that I personally prefer Hawaii as they have been in touch more and I am more familiar with the programme. On the other hand, I have had nearly zero contact with Minnesota other than some emails to the programme graduate director to inquire about the availability of PhD places. Although Hawaii has not given me an official offer, I have held off on accepting Minnesota's offer. Generally how long will I have to accept an offer? How would be a good way to inquire about the official offer from Hawaii without coming off as pushy?