Aldona

I work at a University so most of out staff is or was a student finishing up a degree at some point, taking advantagr of the flexibility this environment provided. I think everybody expected me to re-apply for a doctoral programme ever since I resigned from the previous one. Plus, as I work with the admissions, people are curious about admission procedures in the UK and I get to do the participatory observations—win–win, I suppose :). They're all supportive and while since I've been there for five years now and they are not thrilled to see me go (if I get in), full disclosure allows everyone to prepare for that, and I think it's fair.

I don't understand why foreign schools have such a hard time determining a specific date by which they send out notifications. I work at the Department of Admissions here in Poland, major university. I am in fact the person taking administrative care of graduate admissions, and we always HAVE TO specify a date in our schedule – published at least six months in advance – when notifications of admission go out. So much easier for applicants. But it doesn't allow for delays, so the faculty is not always happy about it. Anyway, I emailed admissions at Oxford and they said nothing is fixed yet, they will begin contacting people over the next two weeks at OII... back to reading prospective advisor's articles, I suppose.

Hi all, I only decided to post some thoughts here today, but I just keep checking this forums for the past two weeks passively, scooping for any information about interview invitations or any other information being sent from Oxford. No word on anything yet, and they only sent me a link to some kind of survey about my application experience. I mean, come on, why would you ask anyone this if you know that they're just refreshing their email waiting for any news? Not cool. Also, gave me a minor heart attack. Anyhow, I applied for the OII DPhil. Just after the application deadline, the average 3-year number of applicants went from c.55 to 67! Perhaps they just weren't prepared for some many applications and are still busy assessing...

I have a worse one: I just got an email FROM Oxford Graduate Admissions, only to learn that they just wanted me to fill out an applicant survey. (Other than learning that my application was passed over to the department, I've heard nothing since 22 Jan).