TXInstrument11

Bump. These "soft rejections" are extremely annoying. Why is this necessary, UT-Austin and NYU? I'm a big girl. I can handle it. Let's just get over this crap and email me the rejection letter.

My "dream" POI waitlisted me with a 2-line email that heavily implied I was their last resort. I'm fed up and now only want to go to schools that seem like they're genuinely interested in me. After all this BS, I'm not going to be satisfied with second helpings. What is it about your dream school that makes it so? Is going there much more prudent career-wise? If so, hold tight. If not, ask yourself if it really even matters. To finally answer your question - I would say no. I'm with everyone else here and think they would just give the spot to someone else. I'm weighing whether or not it would be worth it to tell my "dream" POI that I got into a better school. I don't think I would accept any offer from her now anyways, so it doesn't really matter, I suppose.

I'm right there with you. I don't think you're going to actually contact the programs with that message and neither am I, but it's good to hear that someone else is in the same frame of mind. "Ugly 2nd girlfriend" pretty much describes the situation too, lol.

Okay, so I was just waitlisted by a second school, Wyoming. My POI said that funding was to blame and that all the faculty I interviewed with liked me, but why fly me out there if they couldn't take me on? Add the fact that I bombed the hell out of a Skype interview for my other waitlisted school, Alabama, and now I'm paranoid that I'm going around making really bad impressions. Ironically, I was accepted into a much more highly ranked program without interview - UIUC. I am flying out there soon. The most common amount of support was listed in my letter, but my specific funding information has yet to be determined. Can they just yank my funding if they become less-than-enthused with me during my visit? My POI there seems to like me, but so did my POI at Wyoming and look where that got me. I am now extremely worried that I'm somehow gonna botch up this otherwise perfect situation. Though I immediately sensed that my Skype interview was a tragedy, I was really surprised by the bad news from Wyoming because I thought I aced my interviews with flying colors. Now I don't know what the hell to think. If I can somehow get by next week without compromising my funding, I am undoubtedly going to have one hell of a time with impostor syndrome during grad school.

That's horrible. I feel your pain. :-( I bombed the shit out of a Skype interview a few weeks back. It was mortifying. But they actually started talking about elsewhere you should go to your face? Goddamn, that's just mean.

That is pretty much my attitude in a nut shell. My POI at UIUC has been very communicative and friendly and the department as a whole seems very nice. Why should I give others who treat me poorly and probably don't want me as their student the time of day?

This is true. Not only does lack of funding directly affect you, but it also indicates something about the state of the department and the research money (not) flowing in there.

That's so weird. At my uni, I'm pretty sure applied experience would actually be preferred, but then again, my department is dominated by Human Factors/I-O. Damned if you do damned if you don't. You just can't please some people.

This happened to FantasticalDevPsych too. Really shitty if they ask for applicants to show up on their own dime or taking off of work.

This! I feel like I'm going to have flashbacks of my horrible interview for years to come. I totally get where you're coming from. Not only is my Alabama POI like this, but so is my undergrad adviser, so you sound like a kindred spirit.

LOL. Hey, for some of my younger, better-looking POIs, I wouldn't at all be bothered by this line of thinking, if you know what I mean.

Thank you. I still can't believe I got in there. I actually entertained the thought for a while that my POI accidentally emailed the wrong person and I reread the email compulsively. I'm also happy I was able to cheer you up a bit. Rejection is the pits.... I've been there with the painful rejection. I knew it was a bit of a reach, but Oregon put me in a dark place for a few days, and still kind of bums me out. I really liked the research of a lot of faculty there. Their 2% acceptance rate is depressing enough as it is too. I handled my MSU rejection rather poorly as well. With each new letter, I am surprised that the rejection stings as much as it does. You pick these schools with care and obsess over every detail of your application for hours - only to get a shitty form letter in the end.

That's a good point. Our philosophies on how to apply the research on psychopathy and aggression appear to conflict as well. She takes more of a treatment and prevention stance while I tend to side more with detection and CJ. She's hard to read, but seemed to edge toward negative when I spoke with her. No ice was broken. My attempts to break the tension were like pulling teeth. It was the worst and most stressful interview I've ever done - and I basically breezed through 6 back-to-back interviews at Wyoming. FWIW, another applicant to Alabama who interviewed with her (but had another POI) said she was a tough interview.

--- infinite variations of "Why did this idiot even apply?". I'm asking that myself.

I don't have many friends, but I do have a lot of beer.

I applied there and was rejected.

So, I just recently landed myself on a waitlist following an interview. I bombed my interview. It's unambiguous. It was undoubtedly a contributor to my current predicament and it's my fault. -but I'm still having trouble not taking this personally. From my POI's fabulously terse emails [i mean, wow, what skill in saying so little!] and general demeanor during my interview, I have gotten a pretty solid idea that I'm their last resort. Now, since my interview, I've been accepted to 2 other universities with funding, both of which are much more highly ranked institutions in their respective fields. My pride is telling me to respond with an equally fabulous email politely telling my POI to stick it, but my rational side is telling me that's stupid because my funding isn't 100% spelled out at this point. I also really, really, like their work more than anybody - so there's that - but their communication style (or lack thereof) is truly driving me crazy, I feel like they hate me, and I am insulted that I'm very clearly their dead-end option. It's not like I'm the best candidate ever, but it stings. Due to all this, I probably wouldn't even accept their offer anyway unless they could really kick UIUC's funding by a large margin. I also suspect that they, perhaps out of warped sense of charity, are simply stringing me along with a "soft rejection" in their own icy way. Has anyone else been in this situation? I probably won't send the passive aggressive reply I've drawn up out of a sense of self-preservation, but it is so tempting....

Hahaha. We can dream, right? Nah, seriously. It's petty, stupid, and a bit self-defeating, but I'll probably be one of those people who holds a grudge. I know I did this for schools who rejected me for summer research programs. Purdue was at least nice enough to formally reject me, but didn't have any faculty that really interested me. The rest were permanently crossed off my list of potential graduate schools when they couldn't even be bother to send an email. I have no regrets. Departments and/or faculty that are disrespectful this round are also earning my ire. I don't know how the hell I'm going to get around citing one of my POIs if I continue with my chosen research focus though....

Wow, that sucks. It almost sounds like a shell game, really.

If you don't mind, what was it adjusted for tuition? Also, there's a Stanford post on there that's pretty crazy too.

Amen.

I'm honestly not sure. I haven't negotiated any of my stuff yet. Can you track down their current and former grad students? I would keep my questions very general like, "How would you rank funding support at University B?". They may be pretty forthcoming or would at least be willing to discuss general guidelines for summer funding. I'd add some filler questions about life at the school and the program to make the quasi interview less intimidating to them. Hopefully, someone more knowledgeable will chime in. An administrator here might know.

Yep. I contacted the grad secretary for some additional info, but a lot of this is going to depend heavily on my POI. She seems nice enough and appears to like me, so that's a good thought.

Cool. Thanks for the info.

If it were me, I would be wary of 3 year offers. At my undergrad, grad students almost got screwed over when only 2-3 years was guaranteed, but the department wanted to recruit more grad students. Funding ended up being cut sharply if not revoked for some current grad students in their 4th or 5th years even though an understanding had been reached that 4-5 year funding was expected.