regal

I received an email from a school on January 12th which acknowledged that they received my application in the department and that the admissions committee will meet "sometime after March 1, 2012". Isn't that a little late for the admissions committee to start looking at the applications? Sounds to me like I got dumped into the pre-screen reject bucket to be rejected along with the rest of the pre-screen rejects, who usually all get rejected in mass sometime in March or April. The funny thing is however that I have not seen any postings of this program on the results survey board here, so maybe they are telling the truth??

no Starlajane you get an offer you take it. Think about the real story behind most successes. I don't know, anything, like a rock band. I am sure a famous rock band got booed off stage the first time they played. I heard Prez Lincoln lost tons of elections before he became prez. It is the nature of reality. The true story is never as pretty as the sanitized version that they make for TV. You get an offer you take it, and having gone through all of this you will appreciate it more than if you were a shoo in.

quickinstinct it seems that it does not take much effort to do the massive rejection of students who clearly don't make the cut after the supposed thorough review of all applications. Seems as if schools have the whole process computerized; of course all of this is my assumption. Assuming this, why not just send out massive rejections at the same time they are sending their first admits so that the hopeless ones can at least know they are hopeless, instead of delaying it and leaving the hopeless with hope. In fact, many of the more naive to the process may even think that the long delay means that the schools are giving their applications a great deal of thought and so they have a good chance of being admitted. There must be a reason, other then they don't have time, to explain why the massive rejections are the last thing a school does.

I have a theory, so take this only as my theory, and now for my theory. How does a top program handle the hundreds upon hundreds of applications? The answer is they don't. What they do is apply an algorithm to the hundreds of applications and pop out the oh I don't know let's say top 50. And from those 50 applications they play their game. Some are offered admits, some get rejects and some get wait listed. And as for all the applications which did not make it into the top 50, well they just sit and wait until which time the university feels is a realistic time frame that it would take to actually go threw all of those applications, and then send out rejections to all of them. And so in fact the under top 50 apps are not even looked at. It is called "How do you convert 750 applications into just 50 applications". It would explain why some of us are watching others getting accepted, rejected, and wait listed while we just sit and wait.

Yes same school and the same program and I have seen admits, rejections, and wait lists posted here.

I have seen admits, rejections, and wait lists to a program that I have applied to, but I have received nothing. Is it possible to read into this at all? I have thought it possible that anything from I am in the second round, to I am in the scrap heap and is not even worth their time looking at, and I will be rejected along with all the other in the scrap heap once they are finished taking care of business with the apps that were competitive. Any thoughts?