Stupid Moves

[Milkman95th]

This thread is for people who made bonehead mistakes during their application process. I will start with mine and hopefully others will add.

My mistake was when I decided to contact a school outside of my state. Thinking that I could never go to this school because of out of state tuition (I was unfamiliar with all of the perks of grad school, tuition waivers, etc.), I decided to contact them anyway just to strike up a conversation. Anyway, after one professor referred me to another I eventually landed on the one. This one was extremely interested in my work; he even asked to see any of my undergraduate papers I had on the subject. He was apparently so enthused with what he saw that after one email, said he would love to be my advisor in grad school. However, there was a minor conflict of interest in how to go about the research and we eventually decided to part ways. This was aided by the fact that I thought I could not afford to go there anyway because of the tuition.

Flash forward to the present and I was rejected from all of the programs I applied for. Not only that, but none of the many professors I contacted showed any interest in my work. I was a lock to get into a program and turned it down because of a minor difference in methodology and my ignorance regarding grad school tuition. Would it be too pathetic to go crawling back on my knees with a dunce cap on and beg for forgiveness?

Anyone beat this or relate to it?

[captiv8ed]

Unfortunately that doesn't mean you would have gotten in. I had email contact with a serious big shot who told me he was very interested in my work and would love to work with me if I was admitted. But I was rejected. The dean of another program sent along a personal note to the committee to let them know he was interested in me and would like to work with me. And I was rejected. So unless this person was on the ad comm, it would be a crap shoot. And even if the prof was on the ad comm, it would still be a crap shoot. However, you might as well pick up the conversation again.

[MashaMashaMasha]

I wanted to study an intersection of Gender & Labor, and spoke with the Labor Professor at my safety school, who was interested! But when it came to my statement of purpose, I mostly wrote about Gender, with just a mention of Labor here and there. And the worst part was that I toiled over that SoP! I had so many people edit it, but I never really told them what I was going for.

Next year will be better. I mean, it sort of has to be.

[deckard]

This isn't a stupid move, but like the posters above I had a very positive response from the then-head of graduate studies, who basically told me that he hardly ever replies to emails and that I was one of the few whose projects was interesting to him. He told me to send him my SOP and other materials when applying.

Fast forward application time, I did as he asked. No reply. And I got rejected by the dept. Oh well.

[jacib]

This isn't a stupid move, but like the posters above I had a very positive response from the then-head of graduate studies, who basically told me that he hardly ever replies to emails and that I was one of the few whose projects was interesting to him. He told me to send him my SOP and other materials when applying.

Fast forward application time, I did as he asked. No reply. And I got rejected by the dept. Oh well.

There was a typo in one of my SoPs. Like I started a sentence and then just didn't finish it. It somethings like "This program is particularly good for me because." And I never wrote the because! (It was clear, though, and they admitted me anyway... and they were one of only two places to admit me!)