Cantamil

Oxford University allows for skype/phone interviews. This university which doesn't, just sent me an email qualifying institutions that don't require in person interviews as "lesser universities". I do acknowledge that I've done something wrong; I'm going to review my university choices and I'll rectify my picks. Edit: The special snowflake comment was a bit tongue in cheek, but I still believe that that kind of policy doesn't put all applicants in equal standing as it culls some of them depending on income or country of procedence (visa availability). But nobody said life is fair =)

No phone, videoconference or skype interviews. And I asked twice. This is quite a special snowflake university. @Eigen If it were in my power, I'd prefer to have in person interviews myself because you get to see labs, talk to more people and meet other graduate students. In fact, English comprehension is better when you are talking face to face as you take cues from body language and reading lips also helps somewhat. The problem is that, even if they pay 200 out of the 1 thousand something the trip costs, I still can't afford it. I study on a scholarship and what I gain working goes to housing and food mostly.

Hello everyone, I'm applying for phd's at the moment, and I was wondering if any of you has had problems with inflexible (although I would like to call them something worse) administration offices, specially regarding in-person interviews. I live overseas and I cannot afford to spend 1000+ dollars on a trip to be interviewed. I'm pretty sure that some people may have trouble getting a visa for just the one day and, like me, would be excluded from doing the research they want to do in a specific university, not because they are not good enough, but because they have no money or they have been born in a country where visas are not easy to come by. I think the actitude of universities that behave in this way is quite discriminatory, more so considering they do pay the travel expenses of nationals (evidently, they pay those because it's cheaper, but it puts us internationals into more of a disadvantage). What do you think about this and how have you dealt with it if at all? Emailing the department only got me a "that's your problem" answer and if I weren't so interested in working with one of the professors I would have already sent them packing with a curt email of my own. I really want to apply to this uni, but at the moment it seems less and less likely. That the only thing stopping me is that I wasn't born with some thousands under my arm to spend on trips makes me pretty sad at this world.