Edotdl

Probably this attitude... In any case, congrats on your other acceptances.

There generally aren't transfers for grad school, esp. PhD, so you'll most likely have to reapply for the next admissions cycle, eg fall 2018. If you don't have a Masters yet and are going for a PhD, finishing a Masters at Northwestern might count for some of the course requirements at Stanford or Berkeley, which might be the closest thing to transferring.

Probably depends on your program and advisor. For me, it's like 30-40 hours/week for lab then do classes on your own time.

In my experience, people won't even know your exact age and will usually just assume you're the same or about the same age as them/the other students.

While I won't tell you whether or not you should assume you'll be rejected, I will say your chances are not good - esp. if you applied for PhD and visits/interviews already occured. Whether or not you decide to keep your hopes up depends on your personality.

Your intro is cliche and too general. I've also been warned against leading with quotes... Also your second paragraph is unnecessary - these should be on your transcript/CV. Also, I'd check your grammar in your final draft.

Not sure if you meant this seriously, but this is not strictly true. I know many students without publications who have been accepted.

I would suggest trying the latter first. Just let them know you're still waiting on other programs and if they can extend the deadline. If they say no, then you can ask the other programs if it is possible for a decision to be made by March 15. If none of the programs are willing to budge, then I would accept your current offer and if/when you get an offer from the other school decide if you would like to take the new offer. I personally know someone who has backed out after accepting an offer and it didn't seem like that big of a deal. Just be sure you're polite about it.

This has also been my experience/opinion.

Emailing the program is probably the best option. In general though, I don't think they're too strict, as long as it won't delay your research by too much.

All admitted PhD students I have talked to were interviewed.

Not officially, but I'm pretty sure most (if not all) the acceptances are sent out together. Also, last year I believe 200 students were interviewed and 120 were ultimately accepted.

All acceptances should have gone out by this time though.

Congrats to the admits!

Not sure what's going on with this document request stuff - it did not happen to me last year. However, we did receive an email on 2/8 telling us to check ApplyWeb for our decision letter. No official news, but I feel like decisions should be released soon - CS is already done.