Plan B: What to do when rejected EVERYWHERE?

[Tritonetelephone]

Has anyone here ever written to a school that rejected you asking for an explanation? It would be nice to know if factors I can't really change kept me out or if I could re-apply with greater experience, etc.

I wrote to one dept that rejected me and said, "I am still extraordinarily interested in the program, and I would like to know what aspect of my application influenced the committee's decision. What specifically can I do to improve my application for the next round of admissions?" I never received a response, but my UG adviser told me that even if I did, they would've just said "we had stronger candidates this year." It was a really big school and they weren't going to pull my application out and compare it to the applications of the ones that got accepted. I was able to get through to a prof there and the grad secretary, and they both offered to help me improve my application. But they don't know what specifically turned the committee off to me the first time. I have heard of other people having better luck, though. It's probably worth a shot.

[GopherGrad]

Well, I called one school (SIPA, for all interested) and they said they'd speak with me in late May. I don't know how helpful it will be, but it sounded as though they deal with a handful of these requests every year.

[ukiitm]

@ GopherGrad: After getting rejected from a top 5 program in my field (Brain/Cognitive Science), I wrote to a professor there asking for some guidelines that'd help me improve my application in the future, stressing that I was really interested in their program and wouldn't mind waiting a year to apply just there again. I got the following in response. It's pretty general (maybe except for the advisor part ), so I'm posting it here:

I'm sorry that we were not able to offer you admission. Please keep in mind that

we received well over 100 applications, and that our entering class is typically 4-6

students.

In regard to graduate admissions, we examine lots of aspects of a student's application

(e.g., courses taken, grade point average, GRE scores, etc.) but we tend to place a great

deal of emphasis on a student's research experiences and accomplishments, and on the

letters of recommendation, particularly from a student's research advisors. My best

suggestion to you is to gain more research experience in the field, and to impress your

research advisors.

Finally, I think that its important that you (or any student) consider a large number of

departments as potential places for graduate study, as opposed to focusing on a single

department. In truth, there are many good departments in our field providing excellent

training.

Hope that helps.