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.

For Princeton EE PhD, I was contacted for interviews 1/19 last year. I believe they interview all candidates they intend to accept. Here is a quote from their email: "Before making final admission decisions, our department makes skype/phone calls to all short listed applicants. These calls give us a chance to confirm our impressions and provide you an opportunity to ask questions about our program." I never heard back after my interview... Combined with EE/CS people being less social in general.

When I went, I actually asked if I could do it myself and get reimbursed, and they agreed. Don't know if you'd prefer that but just letting you know.

I haven't heard anything about the post interview acceptance rate being low at UCSF. If I had to guess I'd say it's around 80%.

While I don't think you're *expected* to, it's not that uncommon either. I actually gave one of my recommenders a gift during the interview at his school, since I would most likely not see him again anytime soon depending on my school choice. FWIW, I got him some nice tea, since he doesn't drink coffee.

I kept mine fairly brief, something along the lines of "I would be delighted to visit XXX". Don't overthink it, there's no need to stress. Just be polite and let them know you're excited to visit.

They sent the same email last year, but invites started coming out late Dec (12/27 I believe). This probably doesn't help reduce the stress, but hopefully some of you will find the info useful.

This information should generally be stated somewhere on the application or FAQ. If they don't explicitly say that unofficial scores are okay, I'd assume that official GRE scores are due by the deadline too. I feel like the extent to which they enforce this will vary by program though. It seems that in your case it is too late anyways.

I got my first invite last week of Dec, most came in Jan It's most likely safe to assume rejections if you still haven't heard back and people have stopped posting about getting invites. Not all invites go out at the same time, there may be a delay of hours to days. You will most likely not get formal rejections from most programs until fairly late (eg. until after their interviews, even if you didn't get an interview invite).

IIRC my Berkeley app had something similar. From what I've heard, they're generally used to see if you qualify for funding from additional sources (eg. diversity initiatives). If you don't have a lot to write, just write something short. The SOP will address why you want to pursue grad school from an academic POV, while the PS allows you to add a more personal perspective (eg. expanding on personal anecdotes).

I'd go with the first one.