delfi

oh wow, you are so lucky Fuzzylogician!! it sounds like an ideal situation. My question was prompted because of the lack of a good relationship with me and my cohort. I am unfortunately a bit of an outsider (age, race, culture etc) and more importantly differences in learning styles/attitudes/personalities. I was hoping that the answer would be that they are not that important. Mainly, I hope one can still have a good academic career without this advantage....

All related to social sciences field: 1. Have you guys found your cohort useful in learning, that is gaining perspectives, understanding academic stuff etc? 2. After coursework, how important has your cohort been academically and socially to you? 3. I wonder how many of our professors are still in touch with their cohort members?!

what are the repercussions? Will the previous advisors put roadblocks in your way or refuse to be part of your committee or help you in any other way? Will the new advisor actually have the time to provide any guidance? Everyone wants PhD students as their advisees to put on their CV... but how do you elicit the actual guidance and time that you need?

<br /><br /><br /> OK, thank you for your advice. Chapter closed, people!

Starlajane - whatever you do, please dont spoil your relationship with your profs by communicating your anger to them! Sometimes even your well-wishers are wrong about their predictions. But they are your well-wishers, so dont be too angry with them. Maybe by assuring you, they were trying to up your confidence level.. who knows?? Important thing now is to do two things: 1. Ask yourself is this really what I want? Was I doing it only coz my profs said so? Do i really want to pursue gradate studies in this field? 2. If the answer is no, well then, thanks be to the The Lord, for this outcome. If the answer is yes, then you need to sit down (with the help of your profs) and analyse why you didnt get in. This will help you in making your app stronger for next year or whenever next you decide to apply. The answer to the first will not be easy. So take your time to figure that out. Sorry if I am being too patronizing and you already know this. As regards, anger - I dont think we should be telling you what to feel and what not to feel. We all have bursts of anger (as evinced by my post) and sometimes it helps us with the energy it brings in its wake (very important to channelize that energy in the right way), but the sooner it washes away the better. Our best decisions are taken in a calm frame of mind.

<br /><br /><br /> Moralresearcher, you and a couple of others have made the point that the length of time is what it is and one should deal with it. Point taken. I'd like to add two clarifying points for the reason of my anger, and I perhaps should clarified this earlier itself: 1. Some schools do not tell you what their time line is. This is wrong. What you say about the domino effect is true. But they can say that most applicants will be told about their decision by "X' week of 'X' month, but some decisions have been known to come out in late March/early April as well. Then you are aware that if you havent heard by that time, you are either rejected or put on some sort of an unoficial waitlist. Now, if schools do rolling admissions, then they should say that! 2. Once you have stated a timeline, you should stick to it. Lastly, yes, I am angry about the length of time too. But I suppose that can be defended. I just dont understand why some schools are able to make their decisions faster (i.e by March) and others cant. Someone made a point about measuring time only from the deadline date.. I am doing that. I strongly feel this process can be made better, and not necessarily by shortening it but by being more transparent about their timeline.

<br /><br /><br /> its ok if you wnat to look at it this way. But ( I think) if they were really spending all this time thinking about if you are the right for this Program or not - they would have picked up the phone/ or emailed to schedule an interview or something!

<br /><br /><br /> Agreed - unofficial waitlist serve their purpose. Agreed on what you say about rejections too. I can put two and two together. I know I am rejected at one school - they havent as yet sent their official email to me. Thats fine. I am not angry with them, coz I know they stuck to their timeline as they had said.

<br /><br /><br /> Dendrogirl - the adcom people are not just paid my app fee. Its part of their job (for which they get a salary) to review apps and like me there must be 100 other students who have applied to them, thats 7,000 USD right there! Not to mention the other costs that go into doing apps.

<br /><br /><br /> Dendrogirl - there is an implicit assumption in your reply that I am a less-than-top student! The schools that I am waiting to hear back from either havent made a decision. period; ( I know coz I contacted them and there have been no results on the results board) or they do admissions on a rolling basis. I too have done an internship app which took almost a year to materialize! But then that was with the UN and I had a rough expectation of their timeline coz they had made it clear upfront itself. And thats exactly what I am talking about, if you tell students upfront that its going to take "X' months, you know what to expect. In my case, my ire is particular directly at a school that said they will intimate students mid-Feb, and as yet havent made their decisions! Another school has said nothing at all about when students can expect a decisions. Again, that is wrong. Have a timeline in place, and then stick to it. Its as simple as that!

<br /><br /><br /> Well first off, reviewing applications is part of their job. So lets quit acting as though they are doing us a favor and going above and beyond their jobs to review our apps. They even take good money from us to get our apps reviewed. Secondly, it doesnt take more than 2 hours to read a SOP, 3 letters, and writing sample of an applicant. Third, none of the programs I have applied to receive 450 applications - most of the schools receive roughly around 50 to 150. So multiple 2 with 100, and you get 200 hours, or 28 working days comprising of 7 hrs each. Four adcom members could review these 100 apps within 7 days between them, if they were doing this ful-time. If half time, then lets say 14 days. Thats about 3 weeks. Anyhow, throw in another 5 weeks for re-reading, arguing, debating, etc!! And as you yourselff noted, not each app is reviewed by every single committee member, as quite a few of these would be rejected in the first round itself. So the re-reading etc i sdone only a subset of the apps. If you think more than two months is reasonable to wait, you've never worked in the private sector!! Anyhow, I really dont want to nit pick on numbers, etc. Suffice it to say, that there are (Thank God!) some schools who do seem to have their act (and attitude) together and are able to keep the applicants informed of where they are in the decision process, and get back to them in timely nature. Now these are not tier 2 or 3 schools, where you think they receive only a handful of apps. And I have seen a good mix of state and prvate schools in this category ( so please dont revert back saying prvt schools have the money to hire the staff!). Existence of such schools makes it justified to question the processes of other schools And by the way, I never once said the app process is corrupt. There is a difference between corruption and inefficiency. I said its long drawn out, to the extent that some schools think its totally ok to keep absolutely silent on the status of a candidate's application for over two months!

I agree they owe it to you - and I hope you tell as many people about your PhD application experience include the $$$ you spent and the time you spent. I am not saying people should not apply for PhDs, but more people need to be aware of how ridiculous this process has become, when there is in fact no need for it to be this way. Sometimes the US amazes me... I mean, the other place which I can think of where service does not equal $$$ spent, is the convoluted health sector! Yes, it works.. but there are terrible inefficiencies in place.

AnthropologyGeek.. I know that. Its the process that I am protesting against. When i applied for Masters, I heard back much faster than this PhD application experience. Also, in the past, it was the PhD students who would hear back first, but this seems to have changed in the last couple of years. I believe they can have a better process in place of intimating applications and having rough timelines in place. I dont like this black hole nature it has taken. And so long as we, the applicants, continue to have a victim syndrome (Oh, this is painful! Oh, this is cruel! etc) this process is not going to change. There needs to be more pressure on schools to behave in a professional manner. And civil society and journalists can do that. Its called public accountability. Right now, I feel my money and effort has vanished into thin air.. and I am not demanding acceptance, I am only demanding a more professional conduct.

I was wondering if anyone else felt just plain angry at two things: 1. Schools taking more than two months to revert back to you. Some have actually not taken a decision, and some might have but are waiting for God knows what (the most holy time?) to reject you. I have a hypothesis that you can tell a lot about departments about how soon they intimate their rejected applicants. 2. Those who do admissions on a rolling basis but do not inform candidates that this is their practice. So, I know one of the schools I've applied to does that.. but it took a phone call (international phone call may I add) from me to find that out. Seriously, people: we paid you good money. Now earn it by keeping us updated on where things stand. If you havent made a decsion, its best practice (in fact you owe it to us) to email us (and not the other way round; and monthly if not fortnightly) to let us know that you havent made a decision, and by when you'd expect to make a decision. And if you feel hesitant to reject us outright, just let us know we are some waitlist of yours. But do some work, and use your fingers to type that email. At this point, I dont even feel like going to the school from where I haven't heard. In fact, I want my money back. I dont why we guys take this behavior lying down. Some articles in the press need to be published. Ha, I'd like see how my prof behaves when I am his/her RA, and take my time to revert back with my research. Maybe I come from the private sector and will truly be a misfit in academia.