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Is no news really good news?


dftba95

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Hey everyone,

Long time lurker, first time poster (and sign-er up-er). I'm in admissions limbo and it's hell. 

I've applied to 8 programs (4 clinical psyc, 3 stats/biostats, 1 speech language pathology). I heard back from one of them (McGill MA Stats - Refusal) really early on (Feb. 1st) but since then it's been crickets.

My friend and I both applied for the clinical psyc program at McGill and she received a refusal letter from them but I haven't received an admissions offer or a refusal. She has a way better GPA than me (3.85 or something vs 3.5) and we have similar GRE scores (we both scored in the mid-80%ile on Verbal, I did a little better in Quant, she did a little better in AW). My only "leg-up" is that I did better in our intro and advanced stats courses. Given that we applied for clinical and not experimental psyc though, I figured she had a much stronger application than me.

She heard back from the program 2 weeks ago, and I was absolutely certain I'd be getting my refusal any day now (she's a total star, and definitely deserves to get into the program of her dreams) but again, I haven't heard anything. My thesis advisor said that it could mean that my application is still in the running, I just wasn't a first choice. I can't calm my brain down, as not knowing anything (like will I still be living in this province in September?) is driving me absolutely mad. 

Anyone experience something like this with McGill's psyc program or otherwise? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

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2 hours ago, dftba95 said:

Hey everyone,

Long time lurker, first time poster (and sign-er up-er). I'm in admissions limbo and it's hell. 

I've applied to 8 programs (4 clinical psyc, 3 stats/biostats, 1 speech language pathology). I heard back from one of them (McGill MA Stats - Refusal) really early on (Feb. 1st) but since then it's been crickets.

My friend and I both applied for the clinical psyc program at McGill and she received a refusal letter from them but I haven't received an admissions offer or a refusal. She has a way better GPA than me (3.85 or something vs 3.5) and we have similar GRE scores (we both scored in the mid-80%ile on Verbal, I did a little better in Quant, she did a little better in AW). My only "leg-up" is that I did better in our intro and advanced stats courses. Given that we applied for clinical and not experimental psyc though, I figured she had a much stronger application than me.

She heard back from the program 2 weeks ago, and I was absolutely certain I'd be getting my refusal any day now (she's a total star, and definitely deserves to get into the program of her dreams) but again, I haven't heard anything. My thesis advisor said that it could mean that my application is still in the running, I just wasn't a first choice. I can't calm my brain down, as not knowing anything (like will I still be living in this province in September?) is driving me absolutely mad. 

Anyone experience something like this with McGill's psyc program or otherwise? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

Did you interview at any of the programs you haven't heard back from yet? 

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Two things:  I appreciate that you appreciate your friend, but you clearly put yourself down too much and you compare yourself to her too much, as well.  You need to learn how to appreciate yourself and skills, without needing to compare.

Second, no, no news isn't always good news.  There is no real method or way all grad schools follow.  Sometimes they break up their acceptances in waves.  No way to know how they separate them, but your friend could have been in a section of applications and got rejected from that packet and your packet of acceptances/rejections haven't been or are currently being reviewed.  That said, not rejected is not rejected.  So, it just means you still have a chance, it sounds like, since they haven't passed out rejections for the next wave, yet.

Edited by Ternwild
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I've heard that it's okay, as a general rule of thumb, to inquire about the status of your application if you haven't been notified by March 15th. I contacted one of the schools I was waiting to hear back from today and was told I should be notified early next week. Just knowing that the decision will come soon definitely eases my mind! The waiting is the hardest part of the whole process. 

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3 hours ago, bookworm2 said:

I've heard that it's okay, as a general rule of thumb, to inquire about the status of your application if you haven't been notified by March 15th. I contacted one of the schools I was waiting to hear back from today and was told I should be notified early next week. Just knowing that the decision will come soon definitely eases my mind! The waiting is the hardest part of the whole process. 

That’s awesome, I hope you get good news! I’ve contacted two programs, one of whom said they’d be in touch “soon” (Dalhousie MSc Statistics), the other (Dalhousie Clinical Psyc) saying that the first rounds of admissions went out and that no rejection letters are sent out in case they want to make more offers. Neither of their responses really did anything to calm my nerves so I didn’t reach out to any other programs. That being said, knowing you got a more concrete response has made me feel like it may be worth it to contact the other programs! 

As a side note, I noticed someone posted in the results section for McGill Clinical saying that decisions should be out by next Friday but I don’t know if that person had interviewed or not so I don’t know how applicable it is to me. 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Edited by dftba95
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This year I just applied to 2 schools because I didn't have the money for applications... Got interview invitations for both of them, which I'm super happy about.

 

We had a chance to talk to graduate students there in the program, and some of them said they got the acceptance letter 2 or 3 days after the interview. With that in mind, I had the expectation that I will get my letter soon within this week (I had my interview last week 3/8 and 3/9), but so far no news. I wanted to call the program so bad today but I decided to just wait things out... super anxious  T T

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1 hour ago, myler said:

This year I just applied to 2 schools because I didn't have the money for applications... Got interview invitations for both of them, which I'm super happy about.

 

We had a chance to talk to graduate students there in the program, and some of them said they got the acceptance letter 2 or 3 days after the interview. With that in mind, I had the expectation that I will get my letter soon within this week (I had my interview last week 3/8 and 3/9), but so far no news. I wanted to call the program so bad today but I decided to just wait things out... super anxious  T T

Congratulations on getting interviews at both schools! I hope you hear back soon. 

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1 hour ago, dftba95 said:

Congratulations on getting interviews at both schools! I hope you hear back soon. 

Thanks! Sorry if my comment isn't really helpful (it's more like a rant actually). I hope that you can hear back from the schools as soon as possible as well!!!! Best of luck!

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I am and international applicant. Just applied to one program in January  And haven’t heard anything yet ( Health Research Methodology at Mcmaster)  Just my application status Changed from ”incomplete” to ”complete” about 10 days.

What do you think? 

 

 

 

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On 3/15/2019 at 1:50 PM, dftba95 said:

Nope. 

 

I don't know about the other programs but for psych it is extremely rare to get accepted without an interview. I'm not sure why they don't reject the people they don't interview right away. It's like some weird backup waitlist and it is extremely frustrating. I hope that wasn't too discouraging. Best of luck!

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1 hour ago, vallaboop said:

I don't know about the other programs but for psych it is extremely rare to get accepted without an interview. I'm not sure why they don't reject the people they don't interview right away. It's like some weird backup waitlist and it is extremely frustrating. I hope that wasn't too discouraging. Best of luck!

Yeah I wish there was more consistence with the whole interviewing process. Some schools do it, others don’t, some do it if the potential supervisor wants one, it makes it hard to know where I stand. I don’t know about the Statistics or Speech-Language Pathology programs I applied to, but the websites didn’t mention interviews so I’m still holding out hope for those. Thanks for your well wishes :) 

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