idiochromatic

I agree--you should go out of your way to go. If it's not feasible or you can't afford the travel, you should write and explicitly say, "I'm unable to visit due to financial constraints--but I am very enthusiastic about your lab. Could we speak by Skype or over the phone?"

I think you have a great perspective on all of this. My two cents (and I certainly don't pretend to know more than you)--I will be a better graduate student for working before I go to grad school, and I think that taking the time to work before grad school is looked very well upon by faculty and adcoms. So I would encourage you to pursue the gap year; you're likely to emerge more focused, a better manager of your own time, and you'll pursue your grad studies with a "career" rather than a "student" mindset. If Brown lets you defer, then that is really awesome. If not, it might be worth following up with your friendly POIs at Caltech and MIT to see how your application might improve and focus on that over the next year.

Official MIT acceptance arrived by mail today! Had heard informally before but nice to see it printed on paper.

so happy to hear this! I'm very jealous--Seattle is amazing and I was so bummed that nobody with my specialty was at UW

There is usually a waitlist and some students get admitted from there, but yes, if nobody who is offered a spot takes it, then it would remain unfilled

A totally-uninformed guess: it means good things about your application, but perhaps that they haven't been able to finalize funding for you yet, or a few POIs want to get a chance to meet you, or that the cogs of the grad school adcom as opposed to the department's adcom are moving a little more slowly and they don't want to tell you anything until it's all final and formal. I wouldn't worry about it; you'll be able to gauge what it all means at the weekend by the language and tone they use.

Yeah, now that you say it, I have heard from a faculty member at Lamont say that LDEO's admissions process is a bit unusual in a few ways, including this one. And I think everywhere there is some sort of ranking of the applicant pool that affects admissions; it's not as simple as "if POI likes you, and they have money, you're in," although I do think that works as some sort of first-order approximation. But my understanding is that, even if your application is quite good, if no POI wants to pull you in at any institution, you are very unlikely to be admitted. Watching applications this cycle, it seems that my friends who are most successful are those who have specific connections to particular professors--even excellent students are getting rejected from places if they didn't develop a relationship with their intended adviser.

I've never heard of it working any other way. This could just be due to lack of exposure on my part, as I am focused on programs that tend to graduate academicians rather than industry folks. Anybody know of a program where the committee is more important than the POI? Generally, the road to admittance is something like this (at least as I've heard it): 1. First your future PI decides whether or not they want you after reviewing your application and they essentially vouch for you in the next step. They have the earliest and most absolute yes/no on your application, which is why it's critical to be in touch with them well in advance of your application submission. 2. Internal department committee decides if they are interested in you. If your PI is sufficiently senior/funded/needs a student/whatever, they cosign your application. On occasion, the internal dept will come across an application from somebody who hasn't been in touch with a PI, but this is fairly rare, and they mostly cosign PI's choices and ensure funding is distributed well, along with issues of representation across demographics and interest areas 3. The internal committee then submits a list of students for acceptance and waitlisting to the central grad school admissions group. At this point, the central administrators make sure GREs/GPAs are up to snuff because they want their stats to look good/make sure departments are making sensible decisions about the qualifications of applicants. PIs and departments can go to bat for applicants with unusually low scores at this stage, but it can be a fight sometimes. University-wide fellowship selection may also occur at this stage. 4. Campus visit may happen at some point in here, although often it happens after formal acceptance and serves as a sell weekend. While nobody should take a campus visit lightly, it is a very positive sign about your application. 5. You receive an anxiety-inducing email that you can't open fast enough

Anybody here going to MIT's weekend? Would love to chat.

Totally depends on where you apply--that is far from universal.

I don't think it's quite so sinister! The places who have invited without a formal acceptance are probably sorting through the details of funding or perfect fit, while the places who have invited and accepted probably have you at the very top of their list and they know they will accept you no matter what, so they might as well tell you. Also, if the POI has met you--probably more likely to get in before the weekend visit, I think, because you have already passed the in-person sniff test. I'll see you at UCSC's prospective student weekend!

UCSC is starting to send out invites for prospective student weekends that include informal offers.

A friend from undergrad successfully applied to a top 20 earth science program to study biogeochemistry with a biology background/no earth science background. However, that is of limited use to you as that school wasn't Stanford. To collect more useful information, I would either email current students to ask, or look at the CVs of current students, working with the advisors you are interested in--that will give you some indication. You can also always email POIs, expressing your interest and background, THEN (if they respond positively), following up with a note about your lack of earth sciences, your plan to start addressing this ASAP, and the strength of your bio background. As for prestige, I get the sense that it both matters and doesn't matter all at the same time. Your advisors might be better able to help you figure out if Stanford's program is realistic for you/if the program you're currently accepted to is worth pursuing.

How "in" or not you are really depends on the school. For one school, I recieved a visit invitation along with my acceptance; for another I got a visit and am still waiting to hear back on the decision. All my visits have been much more casual than I thought they would be. True to geological form, everybody has been dressed casually and not been formal in their questions. Mostly they have wanted to talk to me about my story and get a sense of my maturity/aptitude for rigorous graduate work rather than see proof that I have a fully articulated plan of attack for a PhD. Worth emailing the current students of your POI to ask them how their visits were.

Corroborating what others have said--MIT has visit invites out and acceptances, too. It seems like those acceptances might just be early ones with more to come. Also just received an "unofficial-official" note from POI at UC Santa Cruz, with formal notice to come in a few days. Looks like UCSB is not in the cards for me, though, as it seems like others have heard back.