April 15 Deadline Procedure

[Husserl]

Hey everyone,

I wanted to see if there is a set procedure for letting schools know your decisions. For example, what is the time deadline? 5pm? 2pm? 

The reason I ask is my situation. I have two active offers, and two wait-list spots. I would like to hold out for one of the wait-list spots because you never know. Maybe at 5pm that wonderful email comes in. But I also do not want to wait until it is too late to accept an active offer in-case the professor I will be emailing / calling goes to bed or is not available. 

In addition, since I have two offers, I am worried that if I accept one and deny the other, the professor at the school I accepted won't receive my email on time and I will lose the spot and deny the other, leaving me with nothing. I do not want a repeat of what happened to the Arizona person. Clearly these offers are highly contingent. 

What is the real deadline here? What should I do? 

[malaphor]

Talk to the DGS. I was in a similar situation. The departments I was interested in said as late as 11:59pm was fine and, if things were still unsure, there could be a conversation;  I imagine this could vary by department (not the April 15 deadline, but the exact time or any leniency). In my experience, they get these questions frequently and are very swift at replying.