Urgent: Apologize to a professor after unofficially accepting his offer

[CAguy]

Hi all, I had an interview with a potential supervisor over Skype before applying to his university (in Canada). He offered me an unofficial offer and asked me to apply. However, he also asked me to give him my decision within two weeks (and this was even before the deadline of the university application, so way before getting any offers from other professors at his university or at other universities) and stated that it won't be appropriate to turn it down later. Since by this time I didn't have any offers, I accepted his offer as I thought it is good enough and I shouldn't leave the opportunity as I don't know my chances to be accepted at a better school or with a better professor.

Recently, I got an offer from another professor at the same university as well as an offer from another university (both are a better research fit than my former unofficial offer). Is it appropriate to decline his offer and go to the same university ? What will be the most polite and respectful way to decline his offer ?

Thanks

 

 

 

[butwhyisallthecoffeegone]

YES. Decline things that aren't a great fit for you! While it's great to maintain politeness, you have to consider the fact that you're going to be committing YEARS of your life to something. Don't do it unless it's not a great fit.

I would follow up apologizing and giving a brief explanation. Make sure to thank him and lethim know how honored you are by the acceptance, but you're looking for the best fit possible.

IMHO, it feels odd to me that he *made* you accept this early, but I also don't know all the facts, so /shrug. 

Best of luck!

[fuzzylogician]

4 hours ago, Oawad said:

Recently, I got an offer from another professor at the same university as well as an offer from another university (both are a better research fit than my former unofficial offer). Is it appropriate to decline his offer and go to the same university ? What will be the most polite and respectful way to decline his offer ?

It's usually advisable not to do this, but he's already broken rules of etiquette by forcing you to take his offer early. The main question I would have is how much of an influence he could have over your life if you go to the same program. You can't know if he'll hold a grudge and what he'll do with it. If you're in a separate lab and he can't influence decisions about e.g. funding or your grades, and more importantly, if he's not going to sit on committees that will judge your work (qualifying exams, dissertation proposal, dissertation defense), you are okay. Otherwise, I'd want to know a bit more about him as a person (talk to his students, off the record, not in writing but in person/over Skype). You are within your rights to do this, it's just a question of unintended consequences in what will be an uneven power balance. I mention this here because someone who forces students to make early decisions may be precisely the kind of person to break other rules. So, I'd watch out. 

[TakeruK]

From your other posts, I think you are in a similar field to mine and in Canada, PhD positions are often treated more like job postings. Not as much as the EU though. But for example, for my Masters degree, I was offered admission and the letter said I had the choice of these two profs. I wrote back to say that I am very interested and I would like to accept the offer to that school, but before I did, I wanted to think about the choice of professor more. So I asked how much time I had. The response was "these profs have limited funding for students and they have made other offers too, so as long as the spot is still open you can have it". This also happened before the application deadline.

Typically, the "right" thing for profs to do is to give you the right of first refusal to that position for some short amount of time, e.g. two weeks, before making additional offers to other students. Since STEM profs in Canada often fund students directly out of their own research grants, which are often quite tight, the scenario is more analogous to a job search than admission at a US PhD program. Profs may start reviewing applications as soon as they come in and they might make early offers if they see someone they really want and want to "lock them in" before they apply elsewhere. 

So, it sounds like this prof might have thought they were doing this (the "right of first refusal" thing by giving you two weeks to decide). In hindsight, you should have asked for more time or fully commit at this point (i.e. withdraw the other applications). However, I agree that you should do what's best for you and you should probably follow the other stuff that fuzzy wrote about. I would be hesitant to be in the same program as this prof though, unless you know that he would be okay with it. 

Since the other two offers are better for you and since one of them is from another university, perhaps you should write back to this first professor and apologize and say that you were too hasty in your earlier decision. Say that you have to now decline his offer and apologize for the trouble. Since the prof made it clear that it would not be appropriate for you to do this earlier, I don't think they will be very happy with your choice. But maybe through your interaction, you can determine whether or not being in the same program as this prof would still be okay.

In addition, if you are interested in the other prof from the same University and that prof is in the same department/program, you should talk to the other professor before accepting any more offer. Let them know what happened. Committing to a prof in one dept then switching to another at the last minute could cause tension between the two professors. The other prof might value their relationship with the first prof and they might not want to upset their colleague by accepting you. 

If you end up going with the prof from another school, then you won't have to worry about this too much. I personally would feel very uncomfortable staying in the same program after going back on your word like this, however, as others have said, it really depends on the individual and I don't know them!