Administrative Issues

[ShewantsthePhD101]

If you were accepted to a university who offered you an opportunity to apply for a significant grant, and then for two weeks despite repeated requests has failed to provide you with the necessary materials to complete the application, how would you feel? The department has expressed great interest in me and been thoroughly welcoming, but the administrative failure to provide me with what I need has me balking at acceptance. This feels like a harbinger of things to come. Am I overreacting? Or is it fair to assume that this may well be indicative of a more pervasive problem?

[TakeruK]

I'd feel disappointed, annoyed, and frustrated.

I think it's a legitimate thing to be concerned about and it should factor into a decision. However, if this is the main reason keeping from you being excited about this school, I would investigate further before making a decision based on this incident. Especially if the administrative failure is at the University level and not the department level. You should determine how likely you will require timely materials from the same people again if you were to be a student there. I wouldn't judge the entire admin staff based on some of its employees so if these people work in an area you would need urgent communications with once a year or fewer, this would be a non-issue for me.

There could be lots of reasons why you didn't get the interactions you needed. Typically, while the department is often very interested in prospective students, university-level staff are rarely interested in you until you enroll as a student. Many offices that aren't admissions/recruitment focussed will not even speak to you until you are enrolled as a student. Part of the reason is that they have limited time and they need to dedicate it to their current student. When you are a student, you may appreciate that your school's grad office staff is working hard to prioritize your defense date scheduling paperwork over a prospective student's questions, for example. 

If this is an issue at the department level, perhaps the department got swamped with other work they needed to do first. Maybe they believed you could have got the answers on your own (maybe incorrectly believed this). Maybe they decided they were even more excited about another candidate and wanted to spend their efforts helping that other person instead. There could be a lot of reasons, some forgivable/understandable and some not.

But I don't think it's helpful to find the reason. Instead, to find out whether or not this will be a chronic problem for you, talk to some of the current grad students. Among the other things you would ask current grad students about, be sure to ask them about bureaucracy and whether or not they feel they have good admin support. I find that this varies a lot from place to place and so it's not like it's a weird question to ask (i.e. no one will think you already had a poor experience just by asking). Of course, there's still a right and wrong way to ask these questions!

[ShewantsthePhD101]

@TakeruK, I appreciate you taking the time to craft a thoughtful reply.

As of now, this is the only university to which I have been accepted, but I do not anticipate it being the only one. There are things about the program I like, and things I have been unsure of, but until now, nothing I found expressly problematic. My undergraduate university also had administrative issues, and while they were not frequently problematic, they were highly so as their issues pertained to financing and graduation. For me, I suppose this is a "once bitten, twice shy" scenario.

The main concern I have is that this is the time (when they have accepted me but I have not yet accepted them) that they should be trying to a certain extent to get my attention. To woo me, if you will. And nothing about the "let's dangle $10,000 in front of her and then not give her the things necessary for her to achieve said offer" screams "we want you and will take care of you when you get here". I don't want to spend the next 5+ years fighting with my university to be given what I have been offered.

The department has said that they will take care of this on my behalf... several times. And while I do believe they are trying, they have yet to be successful. So now it is not just me wrestling with the administration, but the department itself. And I don't know that I want to go to a school where the administration won't work with its departments.

I know a few students there, however. I suppose asking them if this kind of thing is normal can't hurt.

[TakeruK]

As you mention, it's a pretty common to find universities where the general administration and the departments do not communicate well with each other. This happens at almost every institution I've been a part of, both in academia and outside of academia. So while this particular school may have shown you the issues with its inner workings sooner than others, just keep in mind that if you don't encounter it at other places between now and April 15 (or whenever you decide to accept an offer), that doesn't mean these issues aren't present there too!

Hope you get can the information you need from the current students. Every place has its own "culture" of how things are run. For example, at my PhD school, the departments are very independent of the general administration, such that we often joke that the school is more like a collection of "kingdoms" and there are almost no centralized services that are common across the campus. This is both convenient at times (specific policies match exactly each department's needs) but also very frustrating and inefficient (tough to work in between two departments, departments not learning from each other, hard to coordinate campus-wide changes). Especially for international students like me, who have to regularly interact with campus-wide resources for things pertaining to our international status, the lack of communication between department and the international office means a different communication strategy is required. What I'm trying to say is that every place runs differently and students generally learn to adapt. Talking to current students can help you determine exactly how you need to adapt and whether it will work for you.

Also, I'd take it as a good sign that the department has promised to intervene, but it's only been a few weeks so I'd wait and see if they can resolve it before accepting any offers! If they are successful before April 15 then that would be very reassuring, to me.