GeoDUDE!

You should read Jeff Erikson's blog post about how he got into a PhD program with a 2.4/4.0 GPA. He is now a full professor at a top 5 Computer Science department and half his students are at tenure track positions. Though it seems the climate was favorable for a guy like him; today it seems your path will be hard. Also, the Peace Corps are hard to get into as well. Its not some 'slam dunk' sign up and go join. Most people do not get accepted into the Peace Corps.

It's great! Though my roommates are a little weird, but I think we will all warm up to eachother. Biking around campus is great!

You should ask the departments you are applying to, they will know the best.

I am talking about graduate students. We all understand your point. You just had unrealistic expectations, and are now calling an institution unethical.

That's the first step in research.

I don't think its wrong for public universities to prefer people who fund them (through taxes) over people who haven't contributed any money to the institution. Furthermore those tax payer dollars allow the schools to educate more students, and the goal of these universities is to educate its citizens. THAT IS THE SOLE REASON THEY EXIST. Impressive international students are great! And Public Universities shouldn't lower their standards just to take domestic students, but that being said, its hard to justify educating international students (for many reasons) when there are many qualified domestic students who are cheaper and are more likely to preserve the mission of the school. That isn't being "against' international students. Thats just coping with realities. I love my international colleagues. Half my masters lab was international.

Publicly funded universities make it cheaper to educate citizens. Thats why. It would be impossible for public universities to compete with private ones if they took all international students, even if they all were better than domestic because they would have to take half the amount of students. Having 10 Very good students can be better than having 4-5 great students because most universities see students as labor for professors. And its somewhat true.

Why don't you ask CU Boulder and Purdue?

I'm not convinced you actually understand what you are arguing.

Don't you have the answer in your own post?

Igotnothing, We understand your point, that you haven't changed since you first brought it up. The issue is that you are clearly wrong. You are misinterpreting "review" for looking at an applicants application. I am willing to bet what ever form of currency you want that what the email means by "review" is a discussion in front of the admissions commitee, which takes a great deal of time. Before it gets to the committee, the applicants have to be ranked. Often times, if you email an POI, they will bring your file to the committee despite your ranking. This is the name of the game.

Looking from where the application came from is then some sort of "evaluation" then. You have to look at the application to see where they come from right? But the whole idea of "unethical" comes from the proposition that people spend time and money submitting this application and are somehow "owed" and evaluation, which they aren't. It is common knowledge, even in international universities that the submission of the application + Fee is good for processing. Most people know this, and its unfortunate that UW Madison isn't as upfront about this as other places, but because its common practice and they are allowed to evaluate applicants however they want I do not see it as unethical unless you think that having any sort of draconian measure is unethical. And that is a different discussion.

I cannot tell if you are asking a rhetorical question, or if you are indeed, asking if I was making light of the situation. To answer the second I am taking this discussion very seriously, and do no appreciate responses like "smh" and 'Are you kidding me?".

No. You can sort applications, these days, with computers. If you want to sort with GPA + GRE, you can do that. The people at the bottom will never be read. Still has nothing to do with ethics. Perhaps you should try and address the proposition you suggested in the first place if you really want to prove your point to someone other than yourself. At this rate this discussion is going nowhere, I commend you for being in the minority but do not let pride be the reason you continue this fight. Pride much of the time makes us look foolish.

You are telling a university how they should approach diagnosing the quality of applicants. Because you disagree with how they decide this, you call them unethical. When you are looking to hire someone, and pay them once you hire them, you can decide what method you use to determine the qualities of the interested applicants. Why can't University of Wisconsin have the same rights you do?

When you pay someone to perform some job/task, you can decide on both application fees and qualifications. Why can't they?

It's not up to the applicants to decide who is qualified. They are obviously doing something right if their applicants are getting upset they do not get in. The power of true education is a simple awareness that you are not the center of the universe. That all the problems, people that get in your way are not personal; any state institution has its obligations. You can decide these things are unfair, thats your choice, but I guarantee that you will be miserable for very little reason. There are many arguments outlined above, all of them plausible. You can think that the department is trying to raise the # of applicants that apply to their program for some malicious reason, but why not consider the other options? Why should international students have an even playing field with the domestic students? Do international students pay taxes to run the university? You obviously know better, as you make statements like "The only way they can make justifiable decisions on who to admit, weighing various factors including residency, is to look at every application." POIs get emailed every month, asking if they are taking new grad students for the upcoming cycle. Often times, POIs have an idea of who they want to admit, should they tell the others to not apply? Why would they, what if their top pick decides to go somewhere else? Why should applicants have an advantage over the institution when the institution bears all the financial risk in accepting a student?

I'm going to go out on a limb(not really) and say that Letters of Reccomendation are only really important, in most cases, for what they don't say than they do. Do a google search; the amount of people applying and the amount of people with hyperbole in their letters grows and grows. Often the name of the letter has more weight than whats actually in the letter. Oh, your POI and LOR writer were friends in grad school, that means a lot more than anything your LOR could write down. What is really important in an application, once you get past the numbers phase, is there is a narrative of excellence: "Applicant has good grades, likes research, his advisors love him, and his POI is willing to take him. Looks like hes a good fit for the program" Don't focus on one part of the application, make it strong as a whole. Willing to bet that your statement could be a much bigger deal than anything LOR could do (unless there is a special relationship or bigwig).

Just to be clear, if you get all the geometry questions wrong, you would still score in the high 150s maybe even low 160s ( 160 ~ 75%)

You've got nothing.

Guess frequently means that applicants are never reviewed.

processing = acceptance of the application. It does not involve any evaluation.

Ask the schools what to do. They know best. They would probably know how 'they' would convert it.

Four points: 1) The email you described above shows that they expect to review external applicants at least some of the time. There is no way of knowing before hand how many quality applicants from the first round will accept, and, if there are enough quality applicants from the first round. It would be "unethical" (in your definition) for them to not review your application if they knew they wouldn't take on any external applicants before hand. They obviously didn't. Lets take a corollary example that was already used in this thread, but flesh it out more. Say you scored 305 combined on the GRE and were applying to MIT. You then email MIT, asking if there is a cutoff for GRE scores. They respond, like most top programs, that there is no cutoff and they look at applications holistically. You then find yourself rejected from MIT, because the score they gave your GPA+ GRE put you very low on the list, because the average MIT applicant might score 320+. You never had a chance to be admitted. Is this "unethical" ? I would suggest no. On rare occasions, someone with a low GRE gets into MIT, and that brings up the possibility of admissions for someone with a low GRE but perhaps not you. 2) There is no evidence they did not at least look over external applicants to see if they were missing out on a "special" applicant. It all depends on their definition of "review" applicants, but generally that means that someone from the Adcomm looks at it. Before all that happens, applicants are processed, and weeded out. The secretary ( or head of grad admissions from the dept) often looks for outstanding applicants from the get go, no matter where they are from. But deciding to give someone an interview requires a review first, and that generally involves a few members of the adcomm discussing the applicant, if it be by email or at a round table. 3) If you got a rejection letter, chances are your application was processed which is what the fee is for. I think it is worse when you don't get any notice of your rejection, but that also happens. 4) You have a strange definition of 'unethical'. Generally, when someone is unethical, he/she does not adhere to some sort of standard that a group of people or profession make common place; what you have described here is fairly common at public institutions in the united states, so by admissions standards its easily ethical. when you say 'upset' is close enough to 'unethical', I find that alarming. These two things couldn't be further apart! I get upset when my dog dies. Is it unethical for dogs to die? It is unethical when someone gets paid more to do the same job I do, and sure, I get upset because of that, but that is secondary. One is an emotional reaction, the other is a classification of an action. What this all boils down to is someone crying over split milk, in my opinion. I would say that trying to slander a school just because you are upset you didn't get in is more "unethical" than anything the school did.

research? graduate school is more like a job than "school". Winter Vacation is a great way to get ahead or catch up on your research!