Eigen

Then that's very abnormal, and I'd hesitate to accept. The only thing I've heard close to this is schools that garauntee funding but not source, and you have to apply. But a PhD without garauntee funding is a huge red flag, IMO. I also wouldn't just accept this early- the CGS resolution (if they're on it) puts April 15th as the agreed upon acceptance deadline.

How normal this is depends on the type of program. Is this an MPH?

I hate to say it, but grad admissions really aren't about fairness- it's not a good argument to bring into them. They're about schools (and individual faculty, in the case of many STEM fields) getting the best bang for their buck in terms of productive students. Ditto the expenditure of huge amounts of government funds in areas that are likely to bring the most return. You keep saying that you're not arguing that US academic admission norms should change, but you also argue that LoRs should be less heavily weighted from certain countries, which is arguing exactly that.

I really appreciate the field specific perspectives too- that's different than how the clinical program did it at my grad school, so it's always helpful to file away more information! FWIW, I've been in similar situations on the job market where I've had to eat the cost of interviews when something better comes along. It sucks, but you have to keep your eye on the end goal. @Clinapp2017, it sounds like your parents are certainly more *cough* ethical *cough* hiring managers than a lot I've run across. I do think it's important for applicants to realize the dual goals of an applicant vs an institution, and where they mesh vs where they might clash- it helps keep in mind how you can phrase things and make decision that make the outcome you want more likely. I also think it can be a really hard shock depending on what else you've applied for- undergrad admissions are very different than grad admissions which are very different from job searches post-graduate. The level of structure and the relative power/interests of the two players vary a lot as you move through the process.

Most of them do. But they also realize, as I hope most of us would, that grad school applications are a market that benefits the school, not the applicant. There are for more qualified applicants than there are spots. So from that perspective, a school with a late date is only going to change things to accommodate a student if they have a higher than average chance of that student wanting to attend. If that's not the case, it doesn't hurt the school to not have you come out. I understand the frustration from an applicants side, but you have to look at it from the perspective of the school as well. Grad school interviews, like much of life after grad school is about making choices in an uneven schedule. Grad schools at least coordinate acceptance dates, and that's the last time that will ever happen. When you accept an interview invite, you know it's cutting off other potential invites. When you decide not to back out of an interview for another one, you're indirectly saying the first school is a higher priority, even if it's for a combination of reasons. On the broader job market, you either go to an interview when invited, or you don't interview for the position. You take an offer or turn an offer down when it's given, and rarely have multiple offers to compare because of differing schedules.

Generally, if you're a masters student you should be doing summer research at the institution where you're doing your MS. As @rising_star mentioned, have you talked to your professors?

Why is it shitty? Asking for an alternate visit date implies to the school that you're not the first choice, and are choosing another schools visit over them. It's only fair for the school to wonder if it's worth scheduling and paying for an entire alternate visit just to suit you when you're far more likely to go elsewhere.

That's a company headhunting a grad student, which happens. Not a faculty member headhunting an undergrad to become a grad student.

Then don't string the school along and decline. All you're doing right now is keeping the school (and other applicants) in limbo. If you want to withdraw your application and would never consider an offer by the school, do so as soon as you make that decision.

I've got to ask... Why would you apply if you wouldn't want to go there? Or is this totally unsolicited (you didn't apply), in which case.... I've never heard of grad students being headhunted like that, which is weird.

What I was referring to as entitlement was you saying you would be extremely upset if you didn't get in because of this, with the implication that you would blame your letter writer. You originally gave them a deadline of the 25th, and now seem to be upset that they haven't gotten it in over 2 weeks before that. I also think it's uncharitable to then make light of the task saying that "it shouldn't be a big deal for them to do and they're not in academia anyway" with the implication that you don't feel like you're asking them to do something that you appreciate and that it's only OK for them to be busy if they're in academia. As to not responding, are you sure they got your request? Did you phrase it nicely when you asked them to move up the time table? Have you tried calling them? I understand the worry and frustration, I'm just pointing out that the ire should be with the school for suddenly pushing up the deadline and not with your recommender for not having been able to drop everything to meet that.

If that's the case, I can't see his recommendation being particularly important to your application. And despite your rationalization, I feel like my point still stands- you seem to feel entitled to this rather than appreciative of him trying to reschedule his time. Email or text another gentle reminder, and hope it works.

You've done what you can. It's kinda annoying of the department to shift things like that, and I'm sure your letter writer is doing what they can. Honestly, you seem to be expecting a lot of your writer and don't seem very forgiving of asking him to suddenly shift his schedule around to accommodate this.

I'm not really sure what updating the language in the letter would gain. They have one interview day, and you can't make it. If you're willing to cancel your other interview and interview with this program instead, I'm sure you could email and tell them that. Otherwise, does it really matter? This is a sad reality of both job searches and grad schools- sometimes you have to choose, and it's frequently impossible to go everywhere you want. So prioritize your acceptances of interviews based on your personal ranking of the school, and be prepared to either back out of one or more.

A campus interview is a balance between the school courting you, and you courting the school- that's why there's a balance. The scale ranges entirely from schools that only do visits post-admittance (i.e., no weight on the interview), to some that weight it significantly. That said, weight is probably the wrong word, as your interview performance isn't really weighted in with the rest of your application. Once you've made it to the interview, that's a separate criteria than your materials pre-interview. It's more a function of how many students the invite relative to how many they accept in terms of how important the interview is as a screening tool. On one end, a school plans to admit everyone they invite unless someone does something that really screws it up. On the other end, some schools interview 2-3 times as many people as they plan on accepting. I think with financial stressors, more schools fall on the former end than the latter- it's expensive to bring out a lot of people you're not planning on admitting.

It's understandable that it's more difficult when you move academic cultures. It's similarly difficult for someone coming from the US system to go to, say, EU or Oz. Different countries can have starkly different systems and expectations. But that doesn't exactly feed into your idea that the US should stop requiring LoRs (or valuing them highly) because other countries don't.

Sounds like a general email from the SC to me.

Both of the ones I linked are, to the best of my knowledge. Fewer of them given the group it started with, but certainly welcome. The New PI Slack has a few humanities and social sciences people, and we'd be happy to have more. It's intended for any new assistant professors or equivalent. Mostly spread through Twitter and word of mouth, so jumping fields is a lot more difficult.

Sure, just didn't want people to think it was universal such that they'd feel bad if they were asking more than that (one of the worries in this thread). Most of my senior colleagues write for around 30+ students each year, I'm sitting at around 10ish right now and expect that to sharply shoot up over the next few years as my younger students graduate.

I'll note that at least New PI Slack is currently heavily biomedical, but is trying hard to grow. It's also easy to just sub-channel more specific fields within a larger Slack community. Not sure if the Future PI Slack is the same.

FWIW, I'm at a SLAC, and I write a lot more recommendations than that- but well over half of our students go on to graduate programs, most at top 10 programs. Strong letters are one of the reasons they're able to do that. I'll have had our average major that I'm writing for in 3-4 classes, another 2-3 labs, they may have done a summer of research with me (or more), I've traveled with them to conferences, I've seen them work on committees and in student organizations, and many of them have TA'd a class or lab for me. It means I can write a strong 2 page letter covering how they work in multiple situations, and can tell colleagues at an R1 exactly why they should choose them as a student.

Honestly, the ability to get a letter writer to care enough to take the time to write a detailed and personal letter also matters. It can be hard for students coming from vastly different cultures with respect to recommendations, but it's honestly obvious when a recommender didn't write the letter, or when they had a student write the draft themselves. And while most people try not to hold that against the student, it does send up a red flag- it means that in the time they were an undergraduate, they didn't have anyone that knew them well enough and was invested enough in their future to take the time to write a recommendation. And yes, students choose the person who can write them the best recommendation- but the best recommendation I can write for some students isn't the same as others. As to recommendation fatigue, part of this comes down to norms. When I talk to my students, we discuss how many schools they're applying to, and I personally strongly recommend that they don't apply to more than 10, and usually closer to 5. It's hard to write the quality of application needed to successfully get into a top school if you apply to 30 places. It's also unlikely that there are 30 schools that have the fit of research interests and department culture that you would thrive in. And an interview over Skype can tell a lot, but that's a secondary screening tool, not a primary one. Also, a short interview over Skype won't tell me the same things as a letter written by a professor that's known a student for 3-4 years and can talk about growth and their work in a variety of situations. If a department gets 300-400 applicants, they're not going to Skype interview each of them. They'll cull through and find the ones that look most likely to succeed and fit at the school, then do Skype interviews with those. And when culling, letters are important. They tell the things that are crucial for graduate school (work ethic, work as part of a team, motivation, intellectual curiosity) that aren't seen in any other part of the application.

Any site like that depends on what you put on it. For instance, if you want something simpler to update you can host a site and install WordPress, and maintain your site that way. But yes, it's just a hosting company.

LoRs are far from useless. In fact, they're one of two parts of the application that's worth anything- the letters and the personal statement/research statement. The problem with Interfolio comes with not being able to easily customize letters. When I write letters for my students, I have one general letter that I then customize to each school and program. Also, having used Interfolio from all 3 perspectives... There are some nice thighs about it, but a good application system from the school is just as easy if not more so.

If you want it to be a long term thing, I recommend Reclaim Hosting, which is targeted to students and faculty. It's pretty cheap ($30/year for domain reg + hosting), and has great service.