If your top choice does not admit you, will you fake it?

[piccali]

I have yet to tell my parents that I was rejected by Carnegie Mellon because I don't want to deal with the "I'm so sorry! Are you okay?" bullshit that I know will come (and I was rejected almost 2 months ago) because I'm not upset about it (strangely). I figure I'll tell them soon, maybe over Spring Break.

[Sonic]

My parents and co-workers have stumbled onto GradCafe. My secrecy plan is foiled!

[slowbro]

Slowbro, no need to accuse me of unethical behavior.

I said that lying about one's admission -- which is exactly what "I am thinking I will pretend I got into my top choice" means -- is a bad idea because it has serious potential consequences. I hope you reconsider your plan.

[linden]

I'm just going to delete my entries in this post because this is getting blown way out of proportion.

[otakupaul]

Sadly in the UK I have been rejected from receiving funding three years in a row. The first time was the worst because I was close to the cutoff (the AHRC give your application a rating) and was so sure I would get it. The second two were not much easier, the third was perhaps worse because they changed the system and I didn't even get put forward. However! Because of these rejections I ended up meeting my fiance and I have just applied for some PhD programs in America. It actually feels like things have worked out better. So don't worry if you get rejected, I know its hard but you only fail when you stop trying.

The moral of the story?

I think this chinese fable sums it up: http://chineseculture.about.com/library ... 291999.htm

[seonmi]

It's so hard not to tell people where I applied. So I just tell them some programs while leaving out others. When someone asks me what my top choice is, I just say it doesn't matter and that I would be happy at any of the programs I applied to. It's not true. I do have preferences but it's better to keep it to myself. Those nosy people can satisfy having the answer but I don't have to tell them the whole story.

[lycoris]

I applied to 15 programs, so very few people have the patience to listen to what all of them are. I've been accepted so far to a couple of big state schools that have good all-around reputations, and at this point I could very easily just bill them as having been my top choices . . . almost no one I know, outside of my recommenders and a couple other grad students and faculty at the U where I work, have any idea what it is I study or where the best programs are, so it would be pretty easy to convince them.

Someone mentioned convincing herself that the school that did accept her was her first choice after all. The truth is, those handful of people who know about my field have not only been congratulating me on my two acceptances thus far, they've been chastising me for not being happier about it all. I guess I got so fixated on places I had decided were "better" (often without a real basis for that judgment) that I forgot that I didn't apply anywhere that wouldn't give me the best training available in the field that most interests me. I keep reminding myself that, in a process this competitive, it's all about "fit" - and even if I thought the fit was better at a school that rejected me, the truth is that I'm working from a limited pool of information. So are the schools, of course, but I just have to hope that they saw something in my application that I failed to see in their website, and focus on all the best points I know about the program, until the negatives melt away.

I wished for a while that I hadn't told anyone I was applying at all, but the truth is I've been avoiding applying for three years now because I was so terrified of getting rejected, and by telling everyone all about my applications (only my boss and her boss don't know, but they've probably heard it through the grape vine by now), I made myself accountable to their inquiries; basically, I forced myself to go through with it. Am I afraid that a few people might judge me? Well, yes, but in all honesty, it isn't a big deal; I've generally found that others are far less harsh on me than I am on myself. Those not in my field have no idea what any of it means anyway, and at the end of the day their opinions don't matter unless they love me - and if they love me, they'll think well of me and be proud of what I have accomplished. Those who are in my field should understand the fraught nature of this whole process and not assume that some particular Ivy English department can stare into my deepest soul and identify my true future potential any better than anyone else. This is just the first step of becoming a scholar; and, while the place where I receive my training can make it harder or easier to succeed, they won't determine my productivity nor my ability to contribute over the next five (or fifty) years.

Hooray! I get to be a scholar!

[GoodGuy]

Hooray! I get to be a scholar!

After a long day or checking emails and mailbox over and over, chatting with a prof about the pros/cons of the various programs I applied to, getting sorta pissed that a buddy of mine has heard from ALL his programs as of TODAY (!), your point there made me feel really, really happy. I feel the same exact way, regardless of how this whole thing shakes out. Hooray, indeed!

GG

[nab190]

Yeah... When I told my family, they were like "oh! You're so smart! You'll get into Yale and Harvard and Penn and all those places! Cause that's where smart people go, right?"

Ahhh, love them. Very sweet and flattering, but not exactly how it works. If I could do it over, I'd probably keep it to myself as much as possible.

Haha, I agree. Everyone who knows you just assumes that you should get in. They however, do not know my GRE scores/GPA, lol.