We regret to inform you

I do think it's very rude not to be contacted by a school especially when we obviously put a lot of time and money into our applications. For a previous masters, I had to go out of my way to get a response from a couple of schools.

I don't have any publications or research experience.

It sounds exactly what it sounds like. You're a longshot. At least she had the decency to stay in touch and be straightforward with you.

you have more than 4 letters of recommendation?

Yeah. But 1 of those 2 schools with a posted acceptance is having an invitation weekend the first weekend in march, so if i don't hear anything soon, i'm almost certainly out of the running.

i've applied to 5 planetary science programs and have heard nothing so far. 2 of them each have 1 acceptance posted on the results page. I figure by the end of next week i'll send out some emails asking about my status. But, i'm thinking i've been rejected from those 2 that already have results. The other 3 seem to give out results from mid february to mid march, so i feel better about those.

Just send a brief, polite email to one of the staff secretaries. It's part of their job to deal with this stuff.

You are making the incorrect assumption that everyone has an equal likelihood of being accepted, and that it is truly a roll of the die. For example, if a school has 10 spots and 100 applications, then you are assuming everyone has a 10% chance of being accepted. This is false. Stronger applications obviously have a stronger chance of making it through. There really is no way of knowing what your exact probability is of getting into a particular program since the decision is being made by people and not some sort of lottery or coin toss. But if you could make a rough guess as to your probability of getting accepted to each individual program, then at the very least, you could figure out your chances of being accepted to at least one program by doing the following: say you applied to 4 schools. estimate your probability of getting into school 1: let's say it's 25% (perhaps this is your safety school) estimate your probability of getting into school 2: let's say it's 10% estimate your probability of getting into school 3: let's say it's 10% estimate your probability of getting into school 4: let's say it's 5% (perhaps this is your dream school) the probability of getting into at least 1 program is equal to (1 - probability of getting into none). also, the probability of not getting into a school is just (1 - probability of being accepted) so for our example it would be ( 1 - (1.00-0.25)*(1.00-0.10)*(1.00-0.10)*(1.00-0.05)) = .4228 which is about 42% so in this scenario with these estimates, you'd have a 42% chance of getting into at least 1 program. For you, you applied to 16 programs. let's assume these were all difficult programs and that a fair estimate is that you have a 1% chance of being accepted to program 1, a 1% chance of being accepted to program 2, .... , 1% chance of being accepted to program 16. your probability of getting into at least 1 school is (1 - (1-0.01)^16) = .1485. so you have about a 15% chance of being accepted to at least 1 program, with these 1% acceptance rate estimates.

NO. You take 3 and raise it to the number of schools you applied to. So if you applied to 2 schools then you do 3^2 = 9 possible outcomes. proof: accepted - accepted accepted - waitlisted accepted - rejected waitlisted - accepted waitlisted - waitlisted waitlisted - rejected rejected - accepted rejected - waitlisted rejected - rejected 9 possible outcomes. You applied to four schools, so 3^4=81 possible outcomes. NOT 64. Also, this doesn't actually tell you anything about the likelihood, or more specifically, the probability of being rejected by all your programs. Why not? because the probability of being rejected by a school is not automatically 1 out of 3 just because there are 3 choices (accepted, waitlisted, rejected). Each of these choices is not necessarily equally likely for each candidate. If you have a terrible application than your chances of being rejected are probably much closer to 1 out of 1 than 1 out of 3.

I'm in the exact same boat. According to the results page, my top 2 schools have already sent out some acceptances. I figure if i haven't heard anything by next week from those 2 schools, i'll bite the bullet and send out some emails at the end of the week asking about my application status. I'm predicting it's bad though.

What I mean is, have you seen someone else get accepted on the results page, and then a day or more later you were accepted? I guess what i'm getting at is do most programs send out all their acceptances on the same day?

I will most likely be "mastering out" of my current grad program (in math) to pursue further graduate studies in planetary science/astronomy. But i'm a bit concerned about asking for letters of recommendation and if that would result in me losing my funding for the spring semester. 1. do i tell my graduate coordinator that i have made the decision to only get the masters? if so, when? before, during, or after the application process? 2. if i ask professors in my department for letters of rec, are they obliged to tell the graduate coordinator that i have no interest in carrying on in the program? if so, does it look really bad on my part if these professors told the graduate coordinator before i did? 3. since the application process occurs in the fall, but i need to finish the spring semester in order to get the masters, am i putting my funding in jeopardy by asking professors from my department for letters of rec? does anybody have any experience in this sort of situation? do departments cut funding from students in the middle of the school year? thanks for reading.

Firstly, you need to have a broader range of schools. Given your low-ish GPA and the fact that the state of the economy is certainly making things more difficult for everyone (more people wanting to go back to school, and less funding available across the board at most schools) you need to have some mid-range schools to apply to. And you'll need to be ok with going to one of these. As to whether or not some graduate level coursework is more valuable than work experience, i suppose that depends on what exactly your work experience will be and how long you've been out of school for. Perhaps you should just contact the schools you are interested in and ask the graduate program coordinators what would be more beneficial?

posts like this make me sick. boo hoo! i scored perfect on 2 sections but not the third! how should i kill myself? It seems to me that a reasonable chunk of the threads started on this entire message board are just people bragging about themselves and then trying to disguise it with a question.

1. Remember the old adage: dress one level up from your competition! Wear a tuxedo. 2. He will almost certainly be smashed before you meet up. I suggest doing the same. 3. Speak ONLY japanese. If he speaks anything else, call him a dirty gaijin and tell him his very presence shames you and your ancestors. Storm out and never look back. Then write a followup email asking when decisions will be made.

if you are already over-analyzing things at this stage of the game, you'll be having a heart attack come spring. thank the profs for their replies and move on. common courtesy.

I plan on applying to 10-12 mostly PhD programs, maybe 2 masters programs out of that.

didn't think this one through, did ya? finding out the stats of students accepted into the programs you are interested in is obviously more helpful in estimating your own chances compared to discussing imaginary cutoff stats with other current applicants - people who are potentially just as clueless as yourself. that's just a waste of time.

i've already asked for, and received great advice on the "officially grads" forum, and none of them cared that i was posting as someone who has yet to apply. in fact, they seemed like they were happy to share. so go ahead and ask others who have just as little experience as you do about the process if it makes you feel better. i'd rather get advice from a collection of people who have fresh and first hand experience about what works and what doesnt than people who are merely hoping that "this" or "that" works.

Also, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to post a "what are my chances?" thread in the "officially grads" forum of newly accepted grad students. That way they can tell you their stats and then you can compare. Asking what your chances are in the "applications" forum - among people in the very same boat as you wondering the exact same thing about their own stats - isn't going to help anybody since nobody has any real answers.

If you got accepted into a program which you didn't major in during your undergrad, could you share your story and your background and any tips? Thanks.

posts like this make me want to throw up. hey guys! look at me, i'm amazing in everything! do i stand a chance at these great schools? also, it would make more sense to post this in a forum of already accepted students. that way, some students who got into those schools could tell you about their application numbers. honestly, what could students in the same stage of the game as you have to add to this? none of us have been accepted yet, if we're posting on this particular board.

As an applicant for the fall 2012 season i figured it would make more sense to ask this question here among those of you who have been accepted already, rather than post the question among those who are currently in the same stage in the app process as myself. So, at what point during the application process did you first contact professors whose research interested you?

I spoke too soon. I just got my results back and i only got a 4 on the AW. Crap. Oh well, it's probably not that big of a deal since i got a 1390 on the other two parts, which is well above average.

i got a 1390 - 800 Q, 590 V. Haven't gotten my AW score back, but i'd be surprised if it's lower than a 4.5. I'd strongly recommend using the GRE books by princeton review and kaplan. The kaplan book gives you 5 practice tests to take which helped tremendously! But the princeton review book has a longer list of frequently occurring GRE words to memorize. The combination of both books was perfect for me.