early acceptance and what to do

[dunfordt@uwindsor.ca]

Hello everyone!

 

So i was accepted to Carleton phd prior to the application deadline date, February 1st, with an 88k funding package. Carleton is not my first choice (University of Alberta, followed by York) but I am not opposed to maybe going there. I was not expecting to hear back from anywhere until at least March. Is this a common occurrence or an anomaly? I do not come from an academic family and my friends are blue collar kind of people so I do not know who to ask about this. I am also kind of surprised by the interest because my research is on the War on Terror and the racist torture of detainees. My proposed phd research touches on stuff like Guantanamo Bay not being used to house the "worst of the worst" but was built for lab experimentation and the limits of physical and psychological torture. Needless to say, I don't envision my research being very popular. I have been called a terrorist and terrorist sympathizer among many, many other things. Thank god I am white or I would be placed in a gulag.

What should my next move be? The funding package is nice and all but I would need more money to even consider going. I missed out on SSHRC (was successful in my M.A.) and am waiting to hear back from OGS at York and Carleton. Would it be rude to tell the department that I don't come from money and would need to get tuition waived on top of the offer? I have heard that I should play schools against each other, especially York and Carleton.

What should my next move be? Should I thank my recruiter (she an associate professor and not a grad coordinator) but let her know that I have many things to consider? Maybe wait out and then ask for more money?

 

Anyways,

 

Many thanks in advance for your helpful suggestions.

 

[GeoDUDE!]

Your next move is to reply to that acceptance thanking for their exciting offer and letting them know that you are still waiting to make a decision. When is your deadline to accept ? 

 

 

Well if you don't have any other acceptances you can't leverage your offers: In my experience leveraging offers only works if you have a higher ranked (or similar) program give you an offer, and you probably wont get much more. I was able to guarantee summer funding for the first summer, which helps a lot but in reality is only an extra 6k or so (not much considering how much they are paying me over 5 years). 

 

I don't know the Canadian system, but I would be shocked if they offered you substantially more (tuition remission on top of 88k). They will probably just pick another candidate who is more willing at that point. 

[dunfordt@uwindsor.ca]

Your next move is to reply to that acceptance thanking for their exciting offer and letting them know that you are still waiting to make a decision. When is your deadline to accept ? 

 

 

Well if you don't have any other acceptances you can't leverage your offers: In my experience leveraging offers only works if you have a higher ranked (or similar) program give you an offer, and you probably wont get much more. I was able to guarantee summer funding for the first summer, which helps a lot but in reality is only an extra 6k or so (not much considering how much they are paying me over 5 years). 

 

I don't know the Canadian system, but I would be shocked if they offered you substantially more (tuition remission on top of 88k). They will probably just pick another candidate who is more willing at that point. 

Thanks for replying to my post so quickly. I have not received any other offers which could be because the application deadlines were so recent (the deadline has not even passed at Carleton). I have also not been given a deadline to accept either. I expect both my other schools I applied to give me acceptance because of the academic pull of my advisor. At that point, I will hopefully use my leverage to gain an advantage. I am very gracious for the funding offer but my goal has been to get out of grad school debt free, which I have been lucky enough to accomplish so far.

 

Has anyone else received offers of admission and funding before the application deadlines? Is this common and if not, what leverage could that give me?

Edited January 28, 2015 by dunfordt@uwindsor.ca

[TakeruK]

In Canada, we don't have the April 15 deadline thing (except for some of the big schools that line up with the US), so this happens a lot. But first, I need to ask/clarify, is this $88k over the entire degree, or $88k/year? If it's per year, then how much is tuition?? Most schools/programs in Canada have tuition in the $5000-$7000 per year range. (Extra note for non-Canadians: typically, Canadian grad school offers don't come with tuition waivers because they generally pay us the money as employment income and then we pay for tuition afterwards).

 

When I applied to MSc programs, I got accepted into one school in mid-January and they gave me 4 weeks, until Feb 15, to decide. However, another school's application deadline was March 1! So what I did was ask the first school to extend the deadline by 3 weeks and told my other school about the dilemma. I submitted my application early and they reviewed it early, and gave me a decision prior to March 1.

 

For your current situation, since you don't have a deadline and you don't have other offers, I think you should just let Carleton know that you are grateful for their offer and you are still waiting for other programs' decisions before you can decide and that you will get back to them. Then you just have to wait and see what the other schools say. Once the other schools give you their offers, you would want to decide which school is your favourite and then leverage the highest offer you have. But you can't do that until you have the offer!!

 

And don't forget that you can still apply for SSHRC in your first two years of your PhD, so even if you didn't get it this time, there's another chance. 

[jujubea]

No way dude - you're going to be loved and lauded the world over for your research. I'm not joking.

 

I understand your view though - when studying terrorism topics we're usually surrounded by individuals of a certain mentality, world-view, and mindset, which does not mesh nicely with those who speak out against injustice.

 

But believe me, outside of those circles (which is so much closer to the majority than one might realize), your work is going to be hot sh*t. 

 

But more to your point, I received two of my offers well before formal decisions were coming out (still have not come out). They are openly asking me about competition, and one has said they will do what they can to sweeten the deal if it means picking them over the others. Still, you need more than one offer to play those cards. Also, I didn't pull it out of them, they started asking me.

Edited January 29, 2015 by jujubea