HELP. Accepted and Rejected to my top school in one email?

[scampb16]

So I was waiting to hear back from my top school, emailed and called at the advice of the graduate admissions assistant. When I called I was waitlisted by the admissions director. When I got a response to my email, I was rejected and accepted. Basically, since I am an international student, they want me to find an external award worth 23k per year to offset the difference between international and domestic tuition by September or else they can't accept me into the program. Anyone have any suggestions? It's this or take a year or so off (which I don't really want to do). 

[JungWild&Free]

That's very strange and it seems odd that your acceptance would be conditional upon you finding funding.  However, it sounds like your only choice is to try to find some external funding if you want to go there.  I have a friend who didn't get funding for a MA program, but found a research assistantship with one of the professors in the department.  I have another friend that works at a research institution on her campus to get funding.  Maybe you can email the department and ask if there are ways that students generally find funding or find out which professors have grants?  Also, you can apply for grants, but if you are outside of the US, I am not really sure what foundations you should look at.  There is a website called FastWeb that posts scholarships that you might want to check out but it is definitely skewed toward undergrads.

 

If you have to take a year or two off, it's not the end of the world.  Maybe you will get in somewhere fully funded next time!