Vulpix

I've never even seen a "per credit" tuition break down... do you have a link for it? I've only ever seen the lump-sum cost.

Also, I just want to point out that I received my decision---if you don't count Christmas break when no one was working---within 3 work weeks of applying! A good sign that they are processing things quickly this year.

Yep, same place you submitted your application.

Wow, this is heartbreaking. Hopefully everything will work out for you in the end regardless, but what a royal pain. I can't imagine how someone whose *only* dream was Penn State's program must feel.... It's one thing for a school to dismantle a program, totally separate to do so after accepting applications. Such a painful tease.

Since you submitted before me, I'm sure yours is RIGHT around the corner!! Probably next week! I bet it varies by department and yours is perhaps more popular? International Educational Development Program (IEDP). It's a pretty small cohort usually, 30-40 students I think, so this is very thrilling. I have no experience in international ed really, just three years teaching in inner city NYC, so I'm glad they valued that experience and my reasons for wanting to shift careers. I basically felt like a recent college grad applying to this, because the majority of what I spoke about was my experience and course of study in college research. I think my strong GRE writing score must have helped my acceptance, as well as a good GPA from a prestigious undergraduate institution. I still can't really believe it. Penn is definitely my #1 or #2 choice at this point. $10K sounds average aid to me, but then I realized it's $70K for the program, so overall not making much of a dent. I noticed that tuition is listed as $44K for a year, but $70K for the entire program. I would like some clarification if you do the 1 year route it costs 25K less? It'll be hard to think about doing it in 1 or 1.5 years.

I GOT IN TODAY!!!!! $10K merit scholarship!!! So overjoyed! BTW, it never said "under review".... I was refreshing it ALL DAY, no change, and then at 5:10 PM EST I received an email telling me to check the website (was on my way home from work so had the agony of sitting on the subway for 40 minutes hyperventilating). I'm not sure if this is a "know before you read it thing", but when I logged in my page looked exactly the same except there was a "View Your Decision Letter" and a "Complete Your Decision Form" button, so I thought the second button was probably a sign before I viewed the decision that I was accepted, because if you're rejected there probably wouldn't be a form button to complete. Just a thought on that.

Very interesting! Is this true of undergrad too? (I'm flashbacking to legends of George W. Bush at Yale, receiving "Gentleman's C's" instead of F's ). As someone with limited experience in the field, though, I like to think that what my resume lacks is compensated for in my AW score/respectable GPA. I assume the same would go for recent college grads who may not have the resumes but have the SOP passion and demonstrated academic ability.

But 650 is the number attending, right? Not the number accepted? Not sure. Either way, I think 50% is probably high.... or at least, misleading, in the sense that it's not comparable to a state university undergrad situation where it's 50% of applicants with average credentials... this is 50% of applicants, most of whom have amazing credentials....

Awesome! Let us know when you hear, mine should be around the corner! So frustrating because mine was submitted 11/27, but my recommender didn't submit till 12/13 despite me telling her 12/1 at the latest

This makes sense You're probably right, although I though @nrvsandexcited94 is a masters candidate (fresh out of college?). Although I like to believe that they are concurrently going through masters students... I mean, it is the faculty of each program that reviews the applications, I assume... and not all of them have to be looking at PhD candidates....

Yeah, we know percentages but we don't know the number of applicants. I did just see this on Peterson, but I wish it was broken down Masters vs. PhD Acceptance Rate Applied2,891 Accepted941 Acceptance Rate32%

Thank you so much for doing this! I really appreciate it. (And you're totally not crazy.... not at all... I would have done the same crazy thing when bored). I think the V/Q scores indicate that those are not highly valued, but the 4.0 AW score is pretty telling as a minimum. It's comforting to know that you don't need a ton of experience in the field already to be accepted (after all, I'm using this masters as an introduction to get INTO the field!) But still, I can't help but feel like the majority of students will have the numbers AND the experience, and you have to be "extra special" to get in with less than that. This is Harvard after all... there's just no shortage of qualified applicants. I really wish I had *any* clue as to how many applicants they get each year. Whether to HGSE as a whole, or each department more specifically.

This makes sense. Certainly everyone who gets perfect scores applies to these types of schools, and you'd certainly get enough to fill a class. I still *really* wonder about LORs. I was able to read 1 of my 3. I don't know how detailed or personal my other 2 were, and I really have no way of knowing how much effort they put into it. I certainly picked them because I thought they could uniquely speak to skills I developed while working with them, but that doesn't mean they were able to write something moving or different for the admissions committee. I assume the best LORs tell something about the candidate that wasn't otherwise obvious from the SOP or resume, and I know my first LOR did that, with a lot of special anecdotes about me... otherwise, who knows.

Muchas gracias! You know what would be equally interesting... the rejection stats! Which, often times, are identical to the acceptance stats... makes you want to bang your head against the wall

Interesting! Mine was marked Ready for Review 12/13, and I emailed them a document on 1/7 (my new transcript) to add, and they said they were able to add it (and I can see it reflected on my app status page that it was submitted 1/7)... so I guess that means they hadn't really looked at mine yet, but they looked at yours? Unless your document wasn't as "important" to them?

I would say yes, because some programs are much bigger/smaller than others. I really don't know about L&L. Is that a more teaching-based program? I'm tempted to say those are on the higher end of acceptance rate compared to policy type programs, but that just might be anecdotal...

I'd say all you PhD applicants should have info in the next week or two, for SURE! Waiting is killing me too, just knowing I could hear back any time between now and mid-Feb depending on how processing is going! I also saw that last year/the year before, people actually received emails to check their decisions at 10:20 PM (EST) or even 1:30 AM! Beats me how/why that happens, as I'm sure there's no human being sending those out that late at night... but it makes you lose sleep thinking you might possibly hear back from them IN YOUR SLEEP! I also noticed that several people said they saw their decision on the website and then it was a full day before they received an email notifying them to actually check it... so obviously it's the Penn app page to refresh, not your email!

I think your experience and recs and undergrad will have to make up for the GRE in this case. I was looking back at data of admitted students to HGSE and there were NONE admitted with an AW score below 4, but virtually everyone had a 4.5 While I don't think HGSE cares that much about the verbal/quant (yay in your case!), they did say in an info session that they take the AW score very seriously because it most accurately reflects the success of students in the program (due to it being writing intensive).

Yeah, you're probably right, but a few masters candidates heard back before Christmas, so I'm still hopeful that they will abide by the 4-6 week thing. Or 6-8.

Well, mine has said "ready for review" since 12/13. I sent Penn an updated transcript last week and they said that they added it to my file, so I assume that means it wasn't too late (aka nobody that makes decisions has actually looked at my application yet)... sometime this week or next week will be my "4 weeks" of waiting of the 4-8 week window (i assume it's slower now than it was for those who heard back within 4 weeks prior to the holidays)... so I'll definitely be keeping my eye open for this I'd love to know also if that's true... and then I wonder how quickly after it says "under review" you would get your decision? Can you link to the other threads you saw this for? I assume it's not GSE, so it might be true for other schools but not here...

This would contradict all the evidence/PR suggesting they look at you "holistically." Although, I suppose as long as they do not "automatically eliminate" applicants with less than a certain GPA/GRE, they may in fact do this. We also have no idea how many applicants HGSE actually receives, or how many apply to specific programs, because it is those programs, I think, that actually review your application, not HGSE itself?

Can you explain what "conditional offer" means?

I've heard of many students getting in without education experience---they love diversity of backgrounds! And special studies sounds like the exact place to bring that!

They've said it during info sessions/I read it somewhere.

I'm applying to the IED program, not in that department But yeah, I've visited TC many times and know a lot of students/professors from there.