Hi all,
I'm currently a finalist for a fellowship that would take place during the 2009-2010 academic year. The fellowship results won't be decided until late January 2010, so I'm also continuing to submit my Ph.D. applications for this year. In the event of being selected for the fellowship, and also accepted to graduate school, it would be ideal to be able to defer admission for a year.
It appears that most programs have a policy stated online not to allow deferrals, but it seems like this might be a different conversation and there might be some room for negotiation if one is actually accepted. Does anyone have a sense from their own contacts with departments, friends, etc. where it might be possible to defer? (For example, I know from a former classmate's experience that Princeton allows deferrals of one year with no loss of funding).
The schools I'm most interested in hearing about are: Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, University of Washington, University of Pennsylvania, MIT, Chicago and UVA, but please feel free to share information about any other schools too as I'm guessing that there may be others in this situation to whom this might be useful as well.
Thanks in advance & good luck to everyone in the application home stretch!