devwizard

All the process details direct from the mouth of my thesis chair/ ME dept grad advisor and confirmed with my dept (AE) advisor. I have had a few long-winded discussions with the ME grad advisor on his and others' methodology.

I too am a direct PhD applicant. Comparing the reception I have gotten from the other UC schools, and how incredibly slow our decisions have been from Berkeley, it seems logical that the previous comment about us being effectively waitlisted is in all probability correct. Most grad program directors (esp in UC system) have their own equations for acceptance or rejection based on a combination of GRE/GPA etc. Using these, they initially accept and reject applicants using just these raw equations, leaving a gray area in the middle. These gray area students are then further weeded out through LOR, resume, and SOP scrutiny, ultimately leaving us. Poring over Berkeley's acceptance/rejection data, it seems apparent that they had an initial round of automatic acceptances in Jan/Feb/early March, then knocked out all the rejects in late March/April. The fact that they have completely overshot their own (and the national graduate program standards no less) notification deadline with our apps means we must have been waitlisted somehow; no matter the number of applicants, they are not the kind of program to miss their deadline due to laziness. In my case, I also applied to two other UC schools, and that same 'equation, gray area refinement, waitlist' flow was also evident in those programs. With that in mind, I do honestly think most of us here have a decent shot of acceptance; given how long Berkeley is stringing everybody out, as mentioned by other comments, lots of students are being forced to accept offers to other schools. But....even in the fortunate circumstance we should get accepted off the waitlist....funding may be nonexistent at this point