Thank you for your message, Kafka777. I have not contacted the committee yet, but I hope to do so during the upcoming week.
In connection with the selection process, I don’t know what to think . Are you sure this second stage is merely a formality? Did you confirm this information in your case? I insist on this because, unfortunately, MicTric was rejected recently. It seems to me that every GSSP board defines different guidelines depending on the university and the PhD program, so it is too difficult to decipher the whole mess.
For the sake of our nerves, I just want this comes to an end soon.
Good luck to you, buddy.