slifty

I realize this is super late but wanted to fill in on what happened in case it proved helpful or interesting to anyone down the line: 1) We didn't end up getting the award, so the problem solved itself! 2) If we *had* gotten the award, deferring would not have been possible. Apparently at the Media Lab you apply to specific openings, which may or may not still be open the next year. You can defer for a semester, but that's about it... This put me in a very stressful position since I didn't know what my status with the award was going to be, but again it worked out. That MIT policy seemed a little bit aggravating... But then again I did talk to the administrative person (i.e. the person who is paid to follow rules super closely). If the award had panned out I can only hope I would have been able to work SOMETHING out.

I just accepted an offer for the MIT Media Lab in the Information Ecology group. Really excited about it!

Thanks everyone for the advice (and thanks LadyL for the compliment ) -- I'm getting some confidence that this could actually work out; relief! I'll let you know how the conversation goes.

I can't believe I'm even in this situation, but I wound up here. I found out last week that I got bumped up off of the wait list at the MIT Media Lab - thrilled about it! Full funding plus RA stipend. There is no question that this is the sort of opportunity that no person in their right mind with an interest in technology would even stop to think about before accepting flat out. However back in December a friend and I applied to an innovation competition which is also very prestigious (for instance, last year Sir Tim Burner's Lee -- the man who invented the WWW -- was one of a few winners). One of our applications has a serious chance that it could win; but when I say serious chance I really do mean serious CHANCE. It appears to be in the top .01%, but they only select about .005% of the applicants to fund. If we got it, however, I would be up there getting to shake Tim's hand and we would receive $300k to work on a project that would hopefully bring transparency and information to local government and physical communities' civic issues. I have absolutely no desire to turn down the Media Lab. I especially have no desire to turn it down based on a chance. However I want to try to set myself up so that if this grant does pan out I could have my cake and eat it to. For instance, I would be happy to defer my enrollment for a year, create this system, and then start up at MIT with some bonus experience under my belt. I don't know how that topic would (or even could) be broached - this is a very generous package and I don't want to appear at all ungrateful. I owe MIT a response by April 15th. I won't know about the grant until well after that (i.e. not until late May/early June). I'm visiting Boston this weekend. Does anyone have any suggestions? My current plan is to explain the situation to the folks at MIT with the understanding that I want to ultimately accept their offer, and hope that they will help me work something out if I ended up getting lucky with the grant... but there are a lot of different ways this could be accomplished. I truly appreciate any thoughts you guys and gals have.

I'll be there -- looking forward to it

Sure thing -- I heard from a contact at the Lab that the odds were "1/5 maybe?" and that traditionally each group puts 1 or 2 on the waitlist for 1 or 2 spots. (this gave me the idea that waitlists are essentially group specific). The numbers I have heard from this year (I don't remember from where, so take them with a grain of salt) were that ~700 applied and ~40 were accepted. Several people were debating the merits of waiting for a year to re-apply if they had been put on the waitlist, and most were suggesting that it would not be a good idea. I added my two cents which were that I have no wisdom in that regard, but that I would really suggest contacting the professor that leads the group you think you were waitlisted in to ask about what your status means and (if you plan on applying again) what about your application caused them to hesitate. So long as you are smart about what you say, communication like that gets your name out, gets you some potential information, and can't hurt. I also mentioned that I was the guy who was lucky enough to be moved off of the waitlist. I had applied to Viral Communication, Human Dynamics, and Information Ecology -- I was accepted into Information Ecology. Again, contact the professors! I think that wraps it up...

Looks like the original thread was deleted... Figured I would start another. We were talking about waitlists and decisions.