Ternwild

There's no way to know. You just have to do what all of us have to: wait it out.

Yes, email him again and follow up.

Crazy? No. Too soon to worry? I think so. Things take time.

I don't think it was rude. I was implying that my impression of the school isn't great and was curious if there was more to it than I was giving it credit for.

I've been rejected from a university with a professor who said this.

This is an appropriate response.

You, sir, keep too many tabs open. lol

Just curious. I've been to SJSU a number of times and it isn't a great campus. I admit it is very cheap, but the campus is small, the buildings are old, and, from what I've been told, the feel is similar to that of a community college. But that doesn't matter, as it is just my observation. I was just curious if there was something interesting about it, such as a good professor or quality program that drew you. ?

No. You absolutely should NOT tell her this. That won't look good on you or give them any faith in your commitment to the program/school. You know they can rescind acceptances, at any time, right? People in this industry know applicants have multiple offers. If you want to make your POI continue to be interested in you and not make them "wait indefinitely" try asking her some questions about her research. Maybe ask about the program and the university. You should be doing this anyway. You want to know as much about the school you're going to attend anyway. Esp since you have 3 universities to choose from, so far. Ask questions and build a portfolio so you can make decisions based off the quality of the program and not just the prestige of it.

That's rough. As for the application fees, we all feel that pain, even those of us from the country. That said, hopefully you see a change of power soon in Venezuela and, hopefully, in the US in 2020. Once both countries gets their toxic leaders out of office, I think things will be looking much better for you and all of us. Best of luck to us all over the next two years.

Unless he's worked on multiple graduate admissions committees, he's just an asshole. Ignore him. Sure you'll be in more debt for your 2nd masters, but use that time to really get in close with professors and the graduate admissions committee and when you apply to continue on to your PhD, you knocked their socks off before so their decision is an easy one. I'll assume you're German. While the first 3 are all possible outcomes, part d is not true. If you get rejected, brush yourself off and spend the next 6 months cleaning up your application and work on making a better application next year. But you also forgot part e. You get accepted for a great programme with funding and you knock out of the park.

So, my only issue with doing the split is most of these visit days have detailed, well organised schedules that encompass both days. I recommend you get those schedules from both, if possible, and if you plan to split between the two days, do so with knowledge of what you'd rather see with schools on those days (i.e. skipping campus tour, etc.). I know for Purdue and WashU they were very meticulously planned days with so many different things to do on different days. Just make the choices that are best for you.

A simple email is fine. If they don't feel like answering they will just ghost you. What are you expecting them to say? I mean, if you were asked that question, how would you answer it? "Yeah, it was fine." Couldn't hurt to ask, but if you're looking for acceptance confirmation, you're likely not gonna get it.

Congrats!

And to yours as well! I know what it's like being an older person competing for grad school! Hang in there.

I AM in STEM, however, and the truth is, I think you just got a big bite of humble pie. In physics, I met a number of guys just like you. They came in thinking they were Einstein's gift to physics. What they didn't realise is that the hard courses didn't hit until the second year. What happened to them? Most of them transferred into other majors before the end of their Sophmore year (we started with 210 in my 1st year course and graduated with 17). Now, I'm not sure what degree you're shooting for, but with astronomy, physics, and calculus I'm gonna gander you're hoping for physics or astronomy. The biggest mistake you can make in physics is assume you know what you're doing. Because as soon as you believe you know what you're doing, physics is going to kick you in the balls and show you how wrong you are. I have a GPA of 3.76 in physics and I worked my ass off for it. I managed to get this GPA while securing myself 4 C's, over 4 years. One advantage you have over my 4 C's is that yours were in the first quarter. When you apply to grad school, they're gonna see your first quarter. If this a trend, you're done for if you think you're getting in a top 20 school. But (and this a big "but") if you can pull your overinflated head out of your ass, you might just pull through. For one, stop thinking you're a god's gift to UCLA STEM. Number two, stay humble and work hard. You can explain in your SOP that your first semester was just you adjusting to college life and you turned it around. If you can prove to them that you got near a 4.0 in the last 3 years, the graduate committee will likely completely ignore the first one or two quarters. Additionally, there is a whole lot more to your application than your GPA. For example, start studying for the subject GRE two years in advance. Take some practice tests or even actual subject GRE exams (you can choose to send your best score). Try to get your subject GRE over 900 (990 is a perfect score, something I was not able to achieve--didn't start studying early enough). Not impossible. Get your Quantitative score on the General GRE over 167 (with 170 being perfect). But, most of all, if you are in a STEM field, the BEST thing you can do is research. Find out what you love most about your subject and get into a research group IMMEDIATELY and start working on publishable research. Publications is important in your grad application (my downfall in not completing any before graduation, though I did all 4 years of research). Get your research out there. Attend conferences and present posters. Try to apply to grad school with an idea of what you want to research in and the more focused your UG research is on the field you want to get into, the better your chances of getting accepted. In F17, right after my UG, I got accepted to Cornell and WashU (both top 20 schools), but didn't attend because I was convinced I could do better and I didn't really like the research there. In F18, I applied to 5 better schools and got rejected from them all. That was my humble pie. Now I'm almost 2 years out of UG and the further I am away from my research, the less competitive I am, as you can see from my signature. So, to summarise, don't be cocky and think you deserve to go to a better school (like I did F17/F18) because grad committees will pick up on that, for sure. Get into a research group in a field that interests you that does publishable work and hammer out as many papers as you can, and share your research. And study that subject GRE. With all these, your first semester is irrelevant. Everyone has bad semesters. You hope to transferring, however? I think that's done for. Focus on grad school, now. My words may come off as harsh or too straight forward, right now, but hopefully it gets the message across and you can buckle down and turn this ship around. P.S.: If you want to know what scores/GPAs typically get into these universities, search for the school and the program in the results page. I've seen people with 3.6 GPAs get into MIT because they had so much research. Also, start working on getting strong letters of recc from professors by working hard in their groups. I, personally, worked in 3 concurrent research groups.

I don't. But, I want to mention that I've been to San Jose State's campus quite a few times and I have to ask, was that your only choice?

That is all speculation. It could mean that your information wasn't up to date or they're considering you for funding and need to see your financial needs. Don't think to much into it. Sounds like it just means they're reviewing it.

Not all universities do acceptances/rejections at once. Quite a few of the universities I applied to do rolling decisions, which means they will fire out acceptances all the way until their deadline. If you haven't gotten rejected, you're still in it. It's also good that you haven't been waitlisted, because that means you still have the option of being accepted. Don't give up hope. That said, you need to start working on your resume and start applying to jobs. Whether you like the idea or not, you should always have a back up plan. Taking a year off may be rough for you, but being unemployed during that year is even worse.

They figure the real rejections are those who accept their admittance and have to live in Satan's fiery taint, often referred to as Arizona.

I'm sitting here wracking my brain trying to figure out what "event" this guy is on about...and then I looked at the name of the university...

Very good. I'm glad you were able to figure it out. ?

This is a fair assumption. I'm gonna have to agree. But, they are right in a sense that I am not familiar with the stresses of fields that don't translate well outside academia.

If it is their third application cycle applying to these schools and they can't do much more to improve their application, then what good would this do? This is just more of the narrative of "be better next time," but that isn't always possible. I don't know much about history and it's exposure in universities, but saying there isn't at least 20 universities with fields of research you're interested in, seems highly unlikely. They have an entire year to build a database of at least 20 universities that can fit their interest and have faculty with research in their field of study. 10 months is a suitable enough time to build this list and on top of that it will allow them better opportunity to write SOPs/writing samples that will allow them to best cater their previous work to match that of those universities and their faculty. This should be their focus over the next year.

@elx@fortsibut Use this year to save up a couple thousand and apply to like 15 - 20 universities. They may not all be your top choice, but at least you'll be able to increase your chances of getting in next year. If both of you have the stats to compete in Ivy League, then you'll certainly fair better than I did doing that this year.