Luke000

I had my first interview for a Ph.D. program this morning. It lasted for 30 minutes and was more smooth than I expected. We talked about the weather for 1 minute, then I jump directly to my personal introduction. Then professor talked about what she has been doing and what her Ph.D. students are working on. She asked me if I have any questions about her. I asked her what she expects of a Ph.D. candidate, and told her the application process requires a faculty accepting the applicant before applying for the Ph.D. program, and she responded without hesitation "Sure. I will say I accept you. You are a competitive candidate. And when you finish your SOP, I can help you to make sure it looks a good fit for my research. We can have weekly Skype meeting in the future and you can just send me messages through Skype." And Professor asked me to send her my CV at the end. Do you think the response is positive? Thank you for your time!

Thank you TakeruK! I think your phrasing is better than mine! I said "If you have opportunity for PhD next fall". Yes... I do feel this. Thank you for mentioning this. I was just hoping it would be a different case for me. I am also applying to other universities now.

Hi there, it is my first post on the gradcafe. I am a 3rd-semester master student in engineering and plan to apply for PhD in 2018 Fall. My current master adviser knew me when I took his course in my first semester. When taking his course, I came to his office 2 times a week and I got A+ in the end. In the second semester, I talked to him and he was willing to guide me through master thesis. I did not started earlier on research because I was adapting to US as international student both emotionally and academically and I intended to finish all required course work in the first half of master study. I embarked on my research since this summer and it has been for 6 months or so. We met every week for 10 minutes and kept making progress. I talked to my adviser twice that I would like to continue PhD with him, in the September and today. And his response was consistent that, as I quote, "It is still too early to make an decision." Today I was hoping that he could gave me a clearer answer, "yes" or "no", so that I know if I still need to apply to other universities. It is already November. It would be early to make a decision for students he have never met before from other universities, but not for a student he know for 1.5 years. Do you think my adviser is "euphemistically saying no to me because he is not satisfied with my work" or "he just want to explore the applicants pool to see if he can find better applicant than me?" Thank you for your time!