Admit letters sent out weeks earlier?

[cokohlik]

A friend doing his PhD in the sciences told me that admit letters are sent weeks before reject letters in his field. Anyone know if this is true for the Humanities? (I am of course hoping it isn't true...)

[DRT23]

A friend doing his PhD in the sciences told me that admit letters are sent weeks before reject letters in his field. Anyone know if this is true for the Humanities? (I am of course hoping it isn't true...)

I think every department has its own way of doing this. So, some of them may have a procedure of sending admit letters before rejections. But, it can't be generalized. And I think it is easier to decide which applicants don't have any chance and send them their rejection letters before making any decision for the rest who have good chance for acceptence. My own idea is that it's more fair to send both kind of results at the same time.

[jaxzwolf]

I'm not sure about the humanities, but it definitely could be true in my field (biological sciences). Last year when I applied, candidates received acceptances between mid-January and early March. I didn't receive my rejection notifications until the end of March and throughout April. I'd like to think that's because I was waitlisted at all those schools, but I wasn't. I did receive a few rejection notifications early on, from high-tiered schools. So, as with everything in graduate applications, it varies school to school, program to program, and department to department. But it certainly is possible for admissions to come well before rejections.

[Eigen]

A friend doing his PhD in the sciences told me that admit letters are sent weeks before reject letters in his field. Anyone know if this is true for the Humanities? (I am of course hoping it isn't true...)

That does seem to be the method a lot of places- adcoms are more focused on finding their incoming class than they are deciding who they aren't going to admit. Especially since early offers hold a huge advantage in people actually accepting.Granted, I'm in the sciences too, so I can't speak to Humanities.

Edited February 26, 2011 by Eigen

[Sparky]

As others have said, it really depends on the program, and occasionally on the university (like if it's school policy that the Grad School sends out official letters to everyone at the same time, but the department calls or e-mails the accepted/waitlisted people)

The best way to get an idea of what is going on is to look at the results search from previous years for the specific programs to which you applied. Departments aren't *always* the same from year to year (two of mine were rather drastically not, haha)

But dude--it's still February. There's a lot of calendar between now and April 15th.