Looney0504

I hear you, my friend. You even had a great GPA!So I'm really confused haha. Big hug to you, in case you're feeling low. Where are you joining now btw, if you don't mind sharing that. Is it BE specific as well? Also yes, I can't pay this tuition so not upset at all. Got through another great program at UPenn itself and will try to join it if I get some funding through external scholarships.

haha if I knew their not so obvious criteria, I would have either not applied or would have figured out a way to fit their criteria. I thought I would typically fit the criteria since I have relevant experience, a genuine interest in learning BE and a clear objective that I want to achieve through the course. I've been in the development sector in a developing nation for over 7 years. I've been working with the government closely for the last three where I've realised the extent to which social norms restrict socio-economic development, and the extent to which development interventions can be effective since they mostly assume that individuals are rational. I've also been working on identifying ways to reduce the effect of gender based norms that restrict the participation of women and other genders in several roles. I've been working with institutions and the government to identify behavioral biases in different contexts and develop interventions that counter them. Moving forward I wanted to understand how to help mitigate behavioral biases exhibited across stakeholders especially against women and against accessing mental health, for a variety of reasons that i don't need to explain here. I would think that I would be one of the obvious categories of people they would want to educate. But nope. So yeah, I don't think their criteria is obvious. I don't think my sop had an issue either- it was reviewed by multiple people who understand this space. If you do figure out their criteria then please do let me know. Would help me figure out what actually happened. Cheers!

Oh yeah, I got my rejection letter. No idea how they select though. I thought I had all that they were looking for but clearly that's not enough for them If incase you get rejected - don't take it as an indication of what you can do. They clearly have a criteria that is not as obvious and straight forward as I thought it would be, nor is it driven by what you state you want to do in the future (no matter how genuine the reason would be). There are more programs in the UK that are open and can be looked at. They're also cheaper! Good luck and I hope you all get through if this is your dream school

Not sure at all. Congratulations to your friend though! The way it is for the other course I applied for at Penn is that they send you a link to join a Facebook page for candidates that are selected and are planning to join. Maybe your friend can confirm if they have a similar thing for MBDS? And then see how many people are in the group? If it's less than 50 them safe to assume it's happening through batches.. Or he/she could speak to a few people in the course to ask them if it's just one batch of emails.. I know it's a fairly long process to get this info though haha. The website mentioned that they will inform the first batch of selected people by end of March .. Something like that.. So maybe some reason to hope? I do think results have been delayed this year.. so in case we're rejected, we might hear only after a couple of weeks.

None at all! Not sure what's happening.

My rejection came in the first week of April last year I'm guessing given that they haven't emailed yet, it's mostly a rejection. Have any of your friends heard back from them yet?

Did you folks hear anything yet? Or know of anyone who heard? I have scholarship deadlines coming up. Can't apply for them till I know if I've gotten through the course. Emailed them yesterday but all they said was that they typically email decisions mid to end March. So not very helpful in their replies.

Got it. Thanks so much! Please would it be possible for you to share the list of places you applied to and the one giving you a full ride? If they are still taking applications I'll start applying to them as well. I'm basically getting lost in the list of programs and the ones that are generally good enough to apply to.. I'm an international applicant and hence information I have access to is generally very skewed. So any information or advice that i get from you might be super helpful and balanced.

Hey there, what did you finally decide with respect to UPenn's MSSP+DA? I've applied to it as well and I'm waiting to hear back from them. The whole school search was a little challenging for me, so any opinions or suggestions that you share would be super helpful for the next cycle that I apply to. Many thanks in advance!

That's cause for some hope then thank you for letting me know!

Hey, I applied right towards the deadline. Did not hear for an interview for this course but just had an interview for another course i applied to at Penn. I actually applied for the mbds last year as well and did not get through, but I do remember reading on some forum that some folks were interviewed.. Was hence asking if this happened this year as well..

Hi there, I've applied to the course too, and haven't heard back from them yet. Were you folks called for interviews as well?