GWU's pissed applicant. How could they not give me any results until July?

[John John]

my application been in the George Washington U for over 7 months already but I did not get any results! No offer, no rejection so I told them to withdraw and refund. Look what happens here.

 

1st email:

Dear admission officer

 

  I am very upset.

  Its about the beginning of the fall semester and I have not received any form of decisions yet. Please withdraw my application because even you give me an offer, I am in no condition to accept. It is too late. Also I demand a refund of my application fee because the admission committee did not fulfill their obligation for the fee I paid. 

  I have spend much of my energy to submit an application and I also asked many of my professors of their time to submit recommendations. The application has been there for over 7 months. I am unsatisfied with no results until today.  And I would not accept a rejection letter either. I demand a withdraw of my application and my application fee! 

 

Thank you

Sincerely

.......

their reply

Dear ...,
I am sorry about the lack of a decision given on your application. Unfortunately, we cannot refund the application fee, as the university does not allow us to do so. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. 
Regards,
...

 

2nd email,

Dear ...,

  No offence but do the school treat his applicants all like this? I am applying for a business school but, with all due respect, it seems the school does not know how to do business. For the price I paid I did not received any service. 

  I could be happy accept a rejection letter but I have none yet. The admission committee failed to fulfill their obligation thus I demand an answer. Not just a rejection send to everyone but someone from the admission committee specifically tells me what happened to my application. 

  May I have your supervisor's email please? I'd like to talk to him directly. 

 

Thank you

Sincerely

 

 

 

updating

 

 

Edited July 9, 2014 by John John

[TakeruK]

I understand that you are upset at not hearing anything, but it is not uncommon for rejected applicants to never get an official rejection. If you apply for a job but they decide to hire someone else, you often do not hear about it either. In both of these contexts, if you don't hear back within an reasonable amount of time then you were supposed to assume a rejection. I am not defending their actions, I think both jobs and grad schools should let the applicants know when all of the spots have been filled.

 

And I think your second email is not going to help you. It comes with completely the wrong tone for the situation. For most schools I applied to and remember reading the terms of the application fee, you are not paying for any "service". The people that review your application (at the department level) generally have nothing to do with the application fee (taken at the university level). Graduate admissions is generally not a "business" either and applicants are not "customers". And honestly, asking to speak to a supervisor is a little bit silly since your email now really sounds like you are a disgruntled customer, but the school does not owe you any "service". 

[GeoDUDE!]

If you choose to go through these types of situations thinking you are the center of the universe, thinking that these people were put on the Earth to fulfill your needs and they are getting in your way then you will always be unhappy as a result. 

 

What if the person who was supposed to write your decision letter was diagnosed with some sort of cancer, and in all his/her thoughts about mortality your letter slipped their mind. This isn't likely, however, it isn't impossible.

 

It isn't to say you shouldn't enquire, on the contrary, but enquire out of humility. if they are rude to you, sure you will be mad, but that wont stop hundreds (or thousands) of applicants applying to that program. As long as they have a strong department/program, they will always get applicants. They only need to please the admitted students; they have probably accepted the fact that they can never appease the rejected ones by nature of rejection. 

[John John]

I consider myself a client before I am student. Education is a business industry or at least that's what I think. Well, I am not expect anything from them but I just want to express my feeling on being ignored. This might be childish. I know. But my opinion is I pay for what I get. I would happily take a rejection and leave. However, being ignore is another matter. It means that they don't give a shit. and I think it is disrespectful. I work 10 hours to earn hundred bucks. and if somebody just throw your 10 hours out the window. Will you be pissed like me ? Not mentioning how many hours I have spend work on the application. 

[John John]

.

Edited July 10, 2014 by John John

[hj2012]

 

 

2nd email,

Dear ...,

  No offence but do the school treat his applicants all like this? I am applying for a business school but, with all due respect, it seems the school does not know how to do business. For the price I paid I did not received any service. 

  I could be happy accept a rejection letter but I have none yet. The admission committee failed to fulfill their obligation thus I demand an answer. Not just a rejection send to everyone but someone from the admission committee specifically tells me what happened to my application. 

  May I have your supervisor's email please? I'd like to talk to him directly. 

 

Thank you

Sincerely

 

 

I can see that you are not a native English speaker, and I am making an assumption that you're not an American student. But a form rejection sent to everyone is a pretty common practice for American university admissions. But the sentence I bolded is ungrammatical, so I'm not 100% sure what you mean by it. If you did indeed receive a general rejection sent to everyone, then I don't think you have much of a case here. If you did not, I still don't think the school will refund your application fee, but I agree that it's a pretty shitty practice not to even notify applicants that they were rejected. 

Edited July 10, 2014 by hj2012

[Eigen]

The application fee was for processing your application. They did so. 

 

There was not a contractual obligation on the part of the school to notify you in a manner that pleases you that you were not accepted. 

 

Quite honestly, you come across as exceeding self-centered and antagonistic in your emails to the department, and I would imagine they are breathing a sigh of relief that they did not admit you. Especially if that was indeed your first email to them, and you had not politely inquired about your status previously. 

 

Most of us in higher education fight every day against education being considered a business, or students being considered clients. 

[Between Fields]

Speaking as someone who works in a graduate office, yeah, your money went to pay the person who opened the envelope, removed the staples, copied it, sent it to committees, etc., not to the admissions committee itself. Being rude to people at the university level is just going to mean that they stop reading your emails/put you at the bottom of their massive pile of work they need to get done. Put another way, admissions officers and graduate secretaries are not paid enough to care about your $100 when they have other things to be doing, and the tone you used in your messages is a guaranteed way to not get helped.

 

Another possibility that you probably missed out on is that you were on a tacit waiting list. Some schools don't "reject" until the very, very last minute, so they can still offer people spots if they come up.

[juilletmercredi]

I agree with everything everyone has already said, but I also want to address this.

 

I consider myself a client before I am student. Education is a business industry or at least that's what I think. Well, I am not expect anything from them but I just want to express my feeling on being ignored. This might be childish. I know. But my opinion is I pay for what I get. I would happily take a rejection and leave. However, being ignore is another matter. It means that they don't give a shit. and I think it is disrespectful. I work 10 hours to earn hundred bucks. and if somebody just throw your 10 hours out the window. Will you be pissed like me ? Not mentioning how many hours I have spend work on the application.

 

1. If you intend to succeed in graduate school, you really need to get rid of this attitude right now.  You are not a client who is paying for a service; you are paying for the opportunity to learn things, but you have to do the work in order to get the education you want.  I promise you if you let this attitude come across in your program, your professors will resent you and they won't want to do things for you.  I have a friend who had the same attitude and we had the same advisor, and I could tell that my advisor did not like her and wanted to minimize contact with her because of that attitude that she had.

 

It's especially nonsensical to think that the admissions fee is paying for a service...you're paying for them to process your application, and likely to keep in place the infrastructure for them to keep up the application, but that's it.  Most schools send out form rejection letters because they don't have time to explain to thousands of applicants exactly why they were rejected.  Jobs do this too, so you should probably get used to it at some point.

 

2. Everyone spends many hours on the application, but the office also spend many hours working on decisions.  It is your choice to apply to graduate school - nobody is forcing you.  It could've been a simple snafu - perhaps they had accepted you but the letter got lost in the mail or never sent out.  But because of the attitude you took towards the department/school, even if this did happen, perhaps now they don't want to admit you and will rescind their offer.  The waitlist thing is also a plausible explanation.

 

The last thing is that sending letters like this looks extremely unprofessional and immature, and you never know where you might come across that admissions officer again.  They may quit their job and end up working somewhere else - where you apply for a job, too.  Admissions people also tend to know each other and have connections throughout the field, so you never know when this incident will come up again.

[bhr]

One thing in the last response is definitely worth nothing. Admissions personnel network just like anyone else, both inside and outside the university. You came across horribly here, both in your language and tone, and it wouldn't shock me if your emails get forwarded around (you have no implied right to privacy with emails to admissions, afaik).

 

It's also worth noting that, even if you aren't a native speaker, it may be worth your time to take a little longer on crafting professional emails. There are, as someone up-thread pointed out, several places in your letter that are ungrammatical, and you probably don't want to communicate, even as a customer, this way.

 

 

Back to the main point. While it's nice to expect an outright rejection, or at least some response from a program, that really isn't what you are paying for. You have no proof that your application wasn't reviewed, and to accuse the school of doing otherwise can be interrupted as accusing them of fraud. The MBA program at GW likely received 1000s of applications every year, so it's not shocking to me that some rejections fall through the cracks.

 

I have to ask what your communication with the program or graduate school was prior to this? If you haven't heard anything since submission, it may well be that a mistake was made, but it could just as easily mean that the school was waiting for you to send a missing item, or had put you in some sort of unofficial waitlist. Your better bet, at this point, is to email the adcom asking for some update for your status, and, if they confirm your belief that they never received your application from the admissions office, then you may be right to ask for answers. (this should have happened in April)

[Lifesaver]

Do you realize how rude your emails are? Be glad they even responded to your first one! As stated above, you paid for them to process your application, not to give you an answer. Sure, it sucks not getting a response and I don't think it's good practice myself, but damn dude, your attitude is deplorable! Would you act like that if you were standing in front of them in the admissions office? Hissy fits will get you nowhere.

Edited July 17, 2014 by Lifesaver

[starofdawn]

Maybe I'm the minority opinion, but I would also be upset if it was mid-July and I had not received an answer. I would have worded my emails differently, but I agree that universities owe applicants an answer, especially since the applications process is time-consuming and expensive. I just saying... mid-July! Wow! That's shocking! I may not be able to attend if they gave me an answer that late!

[TakeruK]

Maybe I'm the minority opinion, but I would also be upset if it was mid-July and I had not received an answer. I would have worded my emails differently, but I agree that universities owe applicants an answer, especially since the applications process is time-consuming and expensive. I just saying... mid-July! Wow! That's shocking! I may not be able to attend if they gave me an answer that late!

 

I agree that applicants have the right to feel upset for not hearing an answer. But it's common in both academia and real life to take silence as implied rejection. Most job applications only call candidates selected for interview, they don't usually say "sorry we went with someone else" to the majority of applicants that did not even make it past stage 1. 

 

I don't think universities "owe" applicants an answer, but I do think it would be a courtesy if they did. 

 

However, applicants that don't hear by April or so (given the April 15 deadline and all) should have at least inquired politely about their application status. If the student waits until it's too late for them to attend before they complain/ask about it, then I'd think that it's the student dropped the ball.

[starofdawn]

@TakeruK - I don't agree job applications are a good analogy. Job applications may take an hour to complete  and do not cost anything. Graduate school applications can take over 100 hours (between studying for and taking the GRE, writing personal essays, coordinating LORs) and cost approximately $40-$85.

 

I also agree that applicants should follow-up in a timely manner and not wait until it's too late, but we are not sure the first time OP reached out to GWU.

[SFGiantsFan]

This guy is off his rocker.  If he really thinks that "education is a business," why write a letter that will tarnish his own name at this university?  And as other people have said... University admissions people talk.  This is terrible "business" practice... His name will get around.  The sense of entitlement in the emails is crazy to me.  Grad school is a privilege, not a right.

[TakeruK]

@TakeruK - I don't agree job applications are a good analogy. Job applications may take an hour to complete  and do not cost anything. Graduate school applications can take over 100 hours (between studying for and taking the GRE, writing personal essays, coordinating LORs) and cost approximately $40-$85.

 

That is a fair point! 

 

To be fair, one should divide the time for things like GRE over the number of applications, so I wouldn't count 100 hours per application, but I agree that it's more than a job application (unless we are talking about postdoc / tenure track positions)

 

But in any case, I do agree that the right thing for schools to do is to send a form rejection to everyone once they have confirmed their incoming class. Some schools don't do this until a week before their year starts though. Some students are able to attend with this much late notice, but if not, they can just decline the last minute offer. I think it's better to have a very late rejection (and students should expect no news = bad news once summer begins) than reject someone in May and then reverse this decision later if spots open up. However, I'd say the majority of schools make final decisions by the end of April at the latest and they should send the rejection letters as soon as they know they have no more spots!

Edited July 17, 2014 by TakeruK

[bhr]

That is a fair point! 

 

To be fair, one should divide the time for things like GRE over the number of applications, so I wouldn't count 100 hours per application, but I agree that it's more than a job application (unless we are talking about postdoc / tenure track positions)

 

But in any case, I do agree that the right thing for schools to do is to send a form rejection to everyone once they have confirmed their incoming class. Some schools don't do this until a week before their year starts though. Some students are able to attend with this much late notice, but if not, they can just decline the last minute offer. I think it's better to have a very late rejection (and students should expect no news = bad news once summer begins) than reject someone in May and then reverse this decision later if spots open up. However, I'd say the majority of schools make final decisions by the end of April at the latest and they should send the rejection letters as soon as they know they have no more spots!

I think the point here should be that the OP never tried (as far as we know) to contact the school in April. In early March, I reached out to each of my outstanding schools to get a timeline, and each were nice enough to give me some sort of update. I never did hear from one school, though they insisted, when I notified them in April that I was going elsewhere and to pull me out, that they had waitlisted me.