onceinalifetime

I feel that I may have an implied rejection already. What I mean by this is that a program that began reviewing and making decisions on a rolling basis on Dec 1 has not sent me an interview invite yet, even though interviews are Jan 21/22 and Feb 5/6. I'd love to hear form successful applicants about how far in advance you received interview invites. Would also love to hear if anyone has any stories where they were surprised - thought you were definitely getting denied by a program but ended up getting an acceptance later. Are implied rejections a real thing, or are there just too many factors in play to really come to a solid conclusion about it?

Ok, Ill check. I applied to two programs there at USC, and one was very nice and had all the tracking stuff. But I also applied to the chem dept there and they don't use the same system it seems, and it's a lot crappier. But hey, they don't charge an app fee to that was nice.

Damn that's not good news. That's sorta what I'd expect though, to get the invite 4-6 weeks ahead. The deadline for the school I'm most worried about was Dec 1, and the int. dates are Jan 21/22 adn Feb 5/6. So I'm not feeling good about it. I tried to email and call the coordinator lady but she's out of office till Jan 4! And this was one of the programs which I was most qualified for... Shit!!

Wow, many of you applied so early! Some people finished Fall 2016 apps back in November?? And I think I saw a few who received decisions or interview invitations as early as December - that's unfathomable! I submitted all my apps no more than a few days before deadline. So my last two, which were due Jan 4 and 5, have just been submitted in the past couple days! But now I'm officially done! I hate schools that have crappy tracking ability. UCR and USC don't let you send out emails to LoR writers until the app is fully submitted! And even after that you still can't see the status. Most schools have a status thing that will change from pending to received or something along those lines. My other reason for waiting until nearly the last minute was so that I could keep rereading my Personal Statement and SoP. I kept thinking I may have a better idea or think of a smarter way to state something. I was also paranoid about submitting them with typos, so I would reread them obsessively, and guess what - I found some pretty nasty typos haha! I have a bad habit of typing 'you' instead of 'your', and sure enough that made an appearance in the SoP. So I told some professors that I'm 'very interested in you research lol. Oh and worst of all, there was a misspelling in that I'm pretty sure I didn't catch until I had already submitted my first 2 apps - I spelled 'aberrations' as 'abberations'. I know spell check puts a red line under misspellings, but I guess I missed it among the many other red lines that were on my document because of things like professors' last names, or industry terms like 'biosensing' or 'biomaterial' which are not real words according to MS Word, but still used in literature all the time. This just goes to show that you need to actually run the full spell check thing and not just rely on you own eye balls to be able to pick the typos, even if there is a red line underneath!

Yes I emailed a few after I'd applied. I did feel kinda dumb asking if they were accepting new students after I'd already applied, because if the say 'no'.... But fortunately, I haven't had any of the 4 or 5 ppl I've emailed so far say they weren't gonna take anyone new. Also, I don't know when your deadlines are, but a good thing to do is go to your dept's website and see how much the encourage you to email PoI's. Some emphasize this a lot, and if they do, you should make sure to do it, and then mention that PoI in your SoP. However, some schools of mind have explicitly stated on their sites that acceptance is not based on 'openings' in a particular prof's lab, so for those schools, don't feel as pressured to write emails. Writing to PoI's was kinda the last thing on my application checklist, that's why I ended up emailing some of the after the app was already submitted.

I'll swap. I'm going for PhD molec biology... so how do we exchange our papers.. email?

Many of my programs are holding interviews in late Jan/ early Feb. So for those of you who have been through this process, how long in advance were you invited to your interview(s)? And on a related matter - was anyone here admitted to a program without interviewing at all?