I'm not in your field, so it may be different in your field, but I don't think it's rude at all to wait til you've visited all the schools you're going to visit before making a decision. This decision affects the next 4-6 years (for a PhD) of your life and you want to make sure that you make the right decision and find the school that's the best fit for you. Just because a school may look like your best option on paper, doesn't mean that it will be a better fit. There are many cases where people have turned down an offer from a higher ranked school in order to go to a school that isn't ranked as high because the lower ranked school was a better fit. Visiting a school and speaking with profs and current students is a really good way of gauging how well you'd fit at a school, so I don't think it's rude at all to consider all offers. It's good to decline offers as soon as you know that you will be going elsewhere and it's good if you've made your decision sometime before April 15 so that waitlisted applicants can get an offer, but you shouldn't rush that decision. That's just my $0.02.
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.
