Volunteering other open house dates, a good idea?

[Catria]

I emailed a school, asking for so that I could avoid scheduling conflicts with the schools I already am planning to go to for an open house, should I be admitted to that particular school. For this reason I volunteered the dates (but not the corresponding schools; to the staff's eyes, simply being invited to an open house would mean an offer was extended to me)...

 

I wonder whether it was a good idea to volunteer the dates of my open house invitations - on one hand it could signal that I already have 2 offers and thus it could make me more attractive to profs there, on the other hand, the profs there would assume I would likely go elsewhere.

[TakeruK]

I am not 100% sure what you meant in the first paragraph. But I would not try to pre-empt a scheduling conflict unless you actually have an offer from this third school. I would not "play games" by trying to do things like dropping dates/names of other schools to indicate you have offers elsewhere.

 

If, for some reason, you think it would help your chances of admission by letting them know you got into two other schools then just email the DGS directly and say so. I really doubt it would help though because no one likes hearing "hey other school X accepted me, so you should too!" That's not how grad admissions work. You can use other offers to ask for an earlier decision (if the other offers expire soon) or to negotiate for a better offer (but only if you already have an offer or somehow know that you will be getting an offer for sure).

[Catria]

I neither gave school names, nor gave any indication to the DGS along the lines of "hey, other schools X, Y accepted me, so you should too"

 

The bright side is that the third school didn't even start reviewing applications for my subfield.