nosiness

[coho]

why do all my grad. applications tell me to "list all the graduate schools to which I am applying"?

Do they go behind our backs and make deals like, "I'll let you have Jill if you let me have Bill" or what?!

So far I've been leaving this section of the application blank because I feel like it's not their business.

[seunghwane]

Yea. That's really nosy of them.

I'm applying to A LOT of schools and I feel like this might hurt my chances with some schools trying to save money on plane tickets.

But I wrote all of them in because I didn't want to "lie."

[coho]

ooh! that brings me to another question . . . I'm hesitant to ask for fear of jinxing myself, but . . .

I'm a US citizen, but I live abroad. I know grad schools often pay travel costs for prospective students to visit the school. Is this just a state-side perk? It would be SO amazing to get a free flight.

[Minnesotan]

I would list all of their direct competitors in that box. It encourages wavering committees to snatch you up, if they think Next Door U might grab you instead. If it appears you are not in demand, they could string you along.

More on this in Playing the Game: The Street Smart Guide to Graduate School, by Frederick Frank and C. Karl Stein. (I think they talk about the psychological effects of introducing competition during the interview process, but it's all the same, really.)

[torakichi]

I found this discussion on the Chronicle Forums very enlightening on what adcoms see when they look at our list of other programs where we are applying:

http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/t ... 109.0.html

[coho]

Interesting. That thread has quite the variety of opinions.

I'm going to go with my instinct and leave that question blank. It's exactly like asking someone who asked you to the prom if you were the first person they asked or not. It's just not polite.

The only time I can see bringing up that sort of information when jockeying for funding after having been accept to schools Y and Z. But until the point where there are actually a few schools in direct competition for me (in my dreams, of course!) rather than an amorphous cloud of 10 schools of to which I'm applying, there's no reason they need to know. An adcom who thinks that an applicant who leaves the question blank is only applying to their school . . . well they'd have to be pretty naive imo.

[rising_star]

I think this was addressed recently on applyingtograd. Honestly, if your research interests are fairly specific, it'll be pretty obvious what other programs you might apply to when your prospective advisor reads your application. In all of my correspondence with them before applying, they were suggesting other programs that might suit my interests, telling me about their colleagues (on campus and otherwise) whose work I should look into, etc. So I think that even as much as we like to pretend like schools don't know where else we're applying, they can make educated guesses.

I listed my other schools when I applied for MA programs and again when I applied for PhD programs. I doubt it hurt my applications or funding since I had great success both times. If you don't tell them, they may find out if a letter writer doesn't change the university name in the letter, if you accidentally have the wrong name in your SOP, from your GRE scores (though this is a rumor I read over on applyingtograd. My point is that it's not a secretive process, even if you want it to be.

And really, if you're planning to bargain for funding, they're going to find out where else you applied. When you get to your program (either on visits post-admission/pre-decision or after enrollment), people are going to ask where else you applied and why you picked where you did.

[coho]

butcha still don't talk about it! :wink:

[rising_star]

butcha still don't talk about it! :wink:

Yea, I did and do. I was totally upfront with grad students and faculty that asked on post-acceptance visits. Totally upfront with my own program (to which I'd applied to stay) about the fact that I was very seriously considering going elsewhere (and duh, they knew because one of my LOR writers was on our department's adcom last year). Then again, I'm in a relatively small discipline (national membership 10K) and my subfield is specific-ish. It was pretty obvious to people where I was going to apply, just in making inquiries to potential adivsors. Granted, there were a few programs I didn't apply to that were on everyone's list (like Wisconsin but I hate snow) and one that no one expected (apparently it's MUCH lower in ranking than the other schools). So yea, the secretive business? Wouldn't have worked even if I tried. And, honestly, it didn't affect my admissions or funding at any of those programs.

[weeble]

Since I'm applying to ten programs, there wasn't room to list all of them in response to the "where else are you applying" question. So I listed a few that were most directly in competition with the program I was applying to. Since I'm applying to programs with an applied focus and programs with a basic research focus, I didn't tell the basic programs I was also looking at applied, and vice versa.

[jbr]

I think that some grad programs use this information to establish if you've done your homework. When I visited programs, some profs asked which other programs I was applying to. They get a better sense if you have a good idea of what other programs are strong in your specific interests.

[miratrix]

At one school where I met a professor early on, I think it might have actually hurt me that when she asked where else I was looking, I didn't rattle off the top 3 competitors in the subfield. I was still in the process of doing research on what schools to apply to, and wasn't actually aware that they stood out so much, but I definitely took note and am now applying to them. From that conversation, and another in which a member of the faculty I've worked with advised me to look into the same 3 schools, even though I'm applying to his as well, I got the impression that it shows you're a serious applicant if you know where the major research centers in your field are. So I'm not leaving those spaces blank.