DrDodgyBird

I apologise if I didn't express this course of events accurately, but I stand behind my earlier post. Perhaps it's better to phrase this as, don't say no to anything until all the cards are on the table. As I said, this advice came from the department head - the person who made me an offer. By saying yes to all offers, the point is to negotiate the best possible outcome. When the schools know that a candidate has multiple offers, they will compete for that student and often top up the initial offer. And of course, no one knows about SSHRC until some time after initial offers go out, so schools expect this kind of shuffling around until the SSHRC results are released. I'm sorry if I represented myself as heartlessly misleading a bunch of schools, while other students were waiting to get in; that's not my style. I'm not at all suggesting that you wait until August 31 to decline. But I think it's fair to say that candidates and schools are both dancing around the offer(s) for a good amount of time. I sure hope your "accept" is informal and includes the caveat "...but I'm depending on funding." Or even better, ask to defer the decision until after you hear from SSHRC. It's really poor form to officially accept at multiple places and then withdraw.

The advice I got when I was in your position was "accept everything," and this was from my department head who knew I had competitive offers. No one will hold it against you if you say yes and then later change your mind. (I said yes to my own department but later said no and went somewhere else - by far the best choice for me.) So you might want to say yes to everyone, until you hear about SSHRC -- and last year that was the first week of May. Also, make sure you know what both schools will do if you win an external award. Most schools, I gather, will claw back internal funding if you win one.

I'm at UWO, and I got my notice today from the School of Graduate Studies that my proposal was moving on the the national competition. Last year I received the notice from SSHRC first (on January 22) that they had received my application from UWO. So, I suppose everything starts rolling right about now!