WINE, WAIT, AND WHINE THREAD

[lbruneetoile]

So I was accepted to the UT Austin LBJ school for public affairs a couple weeks ago. And I got a call from the Dean of the LBJ School this weekend, but I had to let it go to voicemail because I was out of the country (curse my non-international data plan!). Any idea what she would want to chat about? I want to make sure I don't sound like an unprepared goober when I call her back...

[Apogeee]

12 hours ago, marycaryne said:

This is a prime example of why many schools need to get their crap together. It's not like they only have in-state applicants. There are out of state applicants. And there are international applicants. Both groups cannot wait until the last minute to hear from schools...especially international applicants. There is too much that needs to be done for a school to be all "Eh, we'll send a decision whenever we feel like. Well, MAYBE we will...".

Traditionally, one expects to hear by April 1, and have the response by April 15. 

[marycaryne]

29 minutes ago, Agrippina said:

Traditionally, one expects to hear by April 1, and have the response by April 15. 

Traditionally, maybe. But that is not always the case. Some people have never even received a response from schools they've applied to.

[ChrisTOEFert]

14 minutes ago, marycaryne said:

Traditionally, maybe. But that is not always the case. Some people have never even received a response from schools they've applied to.

I would say that happens in only extremely rare cases.  At least from my perspective, and talking with friends, and following this board for a couple of years now as a lurker, it seems that it does happen...but rarely.  In most cases I would attribute it to either a clerical error on the school's end, such as a name was left off of the mass-mail list or it bounced back and they have no way of contacting the party so they just waited for a "what the heck happened to my app" email that never came.  Sometimes it could come down to an incomplete application that again never really gets noticed by either end (the applying or the school) and it falls through the cracks.  For instance, we hear about forgetful LOR writers all of the time, so maybe someone got notified that a prof did send in a LOR but since it was well past the deadline it was ignored and the application was never pushed forward for review, thus leaving it in some sort of limbo.

I think a good way to make sure this doesn't happen to you is to mail each school you haven't heard from by the end of April.  Sure, there are a very small number of schools that still haven't made up their mind as they are outside of the weird April 15th agreement.  But I feel like by then 99% of departments have decided and have had applications for at least 2 months by that point (assuming a mega-late deadline of mid/end February) and should be able to comment.  If for some reason there is still no response, I would email every possible person that could potentially have even been in the same room as my application, be it POI, grad director, grad coordinator, SGS, dean of the faculty, grad secretary, etc.  There is no excuse to pay a fee and hear nothing.  I have heard of some places sending out super-late rejections in July/August/very early September, but I feel again that at least they heard something.  But at that point I would have sent an email a couple of months ago along with some follow up ones if I heard nothing.

[Pink Fuzzy Bunny]

1 hour ago, pterosaur said:

From my naive perspective that you got in everywhere you applied, I'd think you stand a pretty good chance. But the NSF is also a crapshoot, so if you get one reviewer who's in a bad mood when they're reading your proposal, you're out of luck.

One of my letter writers also told me he thought I'd get in everywhere I applied. So we're already 0 for 1 on predictions.

I really didn't put much effort into the application though, like literally only one person (and not in my field) proofread my essay... I'm toast. Oh well... I'm due for some rejections.

[marycaryne]

@ChrisTOEFert The number of errors we see is a big issue. In just this thread alone we've seen people being sent emails to register for classes when they were actually rejected from the school. That's a problem. And we shouldn't have to tell people to reach out to the schools if they haven't heard anything. We did our parts. The fact anyone has has to reach out at all because a school hasn't responded is another problem. And it goes back to what I was saying...there are some schools that need to get their crap together.

I'm sure we can dissect it every which way to figure it out, but if there are a number of people continually wondering what is going on, it's not a bad idea for schools to re-evaluate how they are handling their responses. Especially when there are people waiting 5+ months to hear anything.

[ChrisTOEFert]

39 minutes ago, marycaryne said:

@ChrisTOEFert The number of errors we see is a big issue. In just this thread alone we've seen people being sent emails to register for classes when they were actually rejected from the school. That's a problem. And we shouldn't have to tell people to reach out to the schools if they haven't heard anything. We did our parts. The fact anyone has has to reach out at all because a school hasn't responded is another problem. And it goes back to what I was saying...there are some schools that need to get their crap together.

I'm sure we can dissect it every which way to figure it out, but if there are a number of people continually wondering what is going on, it's not a bad idea for schools to re-evaluate how they are handling their responses. Especially when there are people waiting 5+ months to hear anything.

Hey, I agree with you.  There are definitely better ways things could be done.  Unfortunately, we, as the applicants, are in a position of no power.  We pay them and send in our stuff and hope for the best and keep our fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong along the way.  I guess that is a good metaphor for life?

[Pink Fuzzy Bunny]

I think the number of applicants that never hear back from schools is larger than you think. My friend applied to 15 grad schools two years ago, and only heard back from 9. And got into one

[hippyscientist]

19 minutes ago, Pink Fuzzy Bunny said:

I think the number of applicants that never hear back from schools is larger than you think. My friend applied to 15 grad schools two years ago, and only heard back from 9. And got into one

And people say to treat grad school like a job. How many jobs do you apply to and not hear ANYTHING from? I think that's the infuriating part is we pay to be considered by schools and some don't ever communicate with the person they've willingly taken ~$75+ from.

[Pink Fuzzy Bunny]

16 minutes ago, hippyscientist said:

And people say to treat grad school like a job. How many jobs do you apply to and not hear ANYTHING from? I think that's the infuriating part is we pay to be considered by schools and some don't ever communicate with the person they've willingly taken ~$75+ from.

Yeah... when I think about how much I paid in application fees I die a little inside...

[pterosaur]

So why does it take so long to hear back from schools? It's easy for us to complain about it from the outside, but I'm guessing that there is an actual reason, not that they're just screwing with us. Does anyone know profs who are/have been on an admissions committee that have shed some light on this?

My guess is that when you get a lot of professors involved, it's just not their highest priority at any given point in time, so with everything else they have on their plates, it takes a long time to get through.

[artsy16]

5 minutes ago, pterosaur said:

So why does it take so long to hear back from schools? It's easy for us to complain about it from the outside, but I'm guessing that there is an actual reason, not that they're just screwing with us. Does anyone know profs who are/have been on an admissions committee that have shed some light on this?

My guess is that when you get a lot of professors involved, it's just not their highest priority at any given point in time, so with everything else they have on their plates, it takes a long time to get through.

I would believe this. But in my experience + what I've seen here over the years, professors are very quick to notify accepted students. They wait weeks, months to notify rejected students (pre and post interview rejections) and waitlist students. I don't see why it's so hard to hit send on that general rejection or waitlist email when they take the time to personalize an email or have a phone conversation with accepted students. 

[Euler]

3 minutes ago, artsy16 said:

I would believe this. But in my experience + what I've seen here over the years, professors are very quick to notify accepted students. They wait weeks, months to notify rejected students (pre and post interview rejections) and waitlist students. I don't see why it's so hard to hit send on that general rejection or waitlist email when they take the time to personalize an email or have a phone conversation with accepted students. 

I think part of it is they don't want to send out mass rejections and find out not enough of the accepted/waitlisted students would be attending. Although I guess that depends on the size of the school's waitlist.

A big portion of the time taken is the sheer number of competitive applicants. When you have 10-ish spots for a program with possibly in the hundreds of applicants, most of which who are well qualified, I can't imagine the nightmare the process must be.

[artsy16]

I understand their motivations behind it, but it still leaves applicants high and dry. 

I was referring more to post-interview notifications, though. It's like pulling teeth getting a program to say "we can't give you an offer right now though we want to, we'll be in touch as other applicants decline". Waitlist and rejected applicants have to repeatedly contact departments and POIs just to get an answer. 

[yayspace]

I have a feeling one of the schools that has me wait-listed actually just doesn't reject anyone until they have all acceptances confirmed. Is this normal? I wish I could know where I was in the wait-list pool....

[ChrisTOEFert]

25 minutes ago, Euler said:

I think part of it is they don't want to send out mass rejections and find out not enough of the accepted/waitlisted students would be attending.

 

7 minutes ago, artsy16 said:

I understand their motivations behind it, but it still leaves applicants high and dry. 

I was referring more to post-interview notifications, though. It's like pulling teeth getting a program to say "we can't give you an offer right now though we want to, we'll be in touch as other applicants decline". Waitlist and rejected applicants have to repeatedly contact departments and POIs just to get an answer. 

I think Euler answered it pretty well here.  If they have 10 spots, they extend fully funded spots to 10 people.  Using admission statistics from previous years they know to give waitlist spots for, lets say, 5 people.  Statistically, I would bet 3-4 people are going to turn them down outright for other programs as chances are if they got in there, they got in at least to one other school.  Again, just being general here, obviously we know that sometimes an applicant gets in everywhere, or only gets into just one place, or gets waitlisted everywhere...but they have no idea of knowing who falls into each category.  So they extend 10 yes's, and extend 5 waitlists.  So let's say now 4 people reject the program for something else, now 4 waitlisters have spots.  However, the school has no control over when these waitlist spots open up.  In my own experience, I was accepted to one program on February 8th, and they said I could take as much time as I needed as long as I let them know by April 15th.  I declined it within a week, but in theory I could have let someone sit in waitlist limbo for over 2 months and the school still would have no new information to give that applicant other than "You're on a waitlist, sit tight."  By now, someone may have heard back from another school and accepted, but didn't notify that they wanted to be pulled from the waitlist, so now the school has to offer another new position to somebody who was maybe on a back-up list composed of another 5-6 students just in case.  I can see where the frustration comes from the students, but I can also see why it takes departments a really long time to finalize things as there are a lot of things going on that need to be taken care of.  

Is there a better way for the system to work?  Probably. The best way to do it would be to send out a mass e-mail for all accepted students, a second e-mail for all waitlisted students, and a third wave for all definitive rejected applicants.  Now a lot of you are not going to like this part, but I really think U.S. schools give you wayyyyyy too much time to decide where you are going.  I think a reasonable amount of time is one month, not the 2 they give you.  If schools followed the system of sending out the 3 groups of emails and then gave the accepted students a hard and fast deadline of one month to decide where they want to go, everybody would have a definitive answer in 2-2.5 months after the first acceptance e-mail went out in late January/early February.  But again, looking at it from the opposite side again, from the adcoms, they have to send out the acceptances, get the interested students all coordinated to come for a visit to show off the school, give them another 2 weeks or so to decide, and then notify all waitlisters who get accepted and give them the same treatment.  It really is a logistical nightmare and people who want immediate notification plus 2.5 months to decide where they want to go can't have it both ways.  One side has to give in order to make it reasonable for the other side, and at present, it seems like neither side wants to budge.

[hippyscientist]

2 minutes ago, ChrisTOEFert said:

Now a lot of you are not going to like this part, but I really think U.S. schools give you wayyyyyy too much time to decide where you are going.  I think a reasonable amount of time is one month, not the 2 they give you.  

I was only given 2 weeks to decide, and funding decisions haven't even been made yet! I think, just as with everything else in the process, everything varies by school, by college and by department and by program within! 

[ChrisTOEFert]

3 minutes ago, hippyscientist said:

I was only given 2 weeks to decide, and funding decisions haven't even been made yet! I think, just as with everything else in the process, everything varies by school, by college and by department and by program within! 

I would agree with that.  I was being pretty generalized in my description there, but it seems that most schools tend to follow the Apr. 15 deadline in the U.S.  I was given less than 2 weeks to decide on the place I decided to go.  I just closed my eyes and jumped so to speak.  I didn't have all my offers yet (was waiting on 2) and was trying to get more funding from a third but started thinking to myself there was no way I could live with myself to pass up the opportunity if I let it slide and decided too late.  Maybe some other schools will begin to push this mentality forward, it really adds clarity to a situation IMO if you have pressure.  Sitting around and hemming and hawing over a couple decisions for 2 months doesn't help things along, I feel it just makes you find equal push vs. pull factors at each school instead of going with a gut instinct.

[ChrisTOEFert]

18 minutes ago, PattiJeane said:

I have a feeling one of the schools that has me wait-listed actually just doesn't reject anyone until they have all acceptances confirmed. Is this normal? I wish I could know where I was in the wait-list pool....

I think that is reasonably normal.  It depends how deep the applicant pool is, if they only have 100 applicants for say 20/30 spots (i.e. a big program) they might just wait it out and see how everything falls into place on its own before they make a final rejection decision.  So they might line up all of the spots and wait until it is 100% confirmed before they say no.  Two schools I applied to for my Master's a couple of years ago did this, and while it sucks immensely to be told no after waiting forever, I can appreciate them getting settled in as opposed to having a chaotic system and having that IT problem happen to you :/ 

[Euler]

1 hour ago, ChrisTOEFert said:

Now a lot of you are not going to like this part, but I really think U.S. schools give you wayyyyyy too much time to decide where you are going.

I agree with everything but this- we're a month out from the final notification date, and I still have only two official decisions out of 11- I'd agree if schools were more reasonable about when they actually sent out their acceptances.

And those nine missing schools, only one is an implicit rejection (waitlist and acceptances already posted)- the other eight have had no results posted, so I know it's the schools taking forever.

[katpillow]

3 hours ago, Pink Fuzzy Bunny said:

Yeah... when I think about how much I paid in application fees I die a little inside...

Yes, that's a good way to describe it. ~$2500........

[Yunix]

Here's a Q&A on Stack Exchange Academia on this topic, with a faculty answer: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38343/time-difference-between-admission-offers-and-rejections-in-us-phd-admissions

[El Jefe]

I applied to the School of International Service at American University back in January. My status has been on "decision pending" for about 7 weeks now. i've heard of some people already hearing back from AU, a few offers of admission and two rejections. I'm getting kind of worried. Any insight?

I applied to the Masters in US Foreign Policy & National Security, specifically.

[MarineBluePsy]

14 hours ago, raaawr said:

I have yet to catch up on Castle and I already removed Young and Hungry from my list awhile ago. lol. i don't know why but Gabby is always giving me secondhand embarrassment so I couldn't watch it anymore. I did start another new show that I enjoy, Grandfathered. John Stamos aged like a bottle of fine wine. haha!

Secondhand embarassment?

[marycaryne]

3 hours ago, Euler said:

I agree with everything but this- we're a month out from the final notification date, and I still have only two official decisions out of 11- I'd agree if schools were more reasonable about when they actually sent out their acceptances.

This exactly. I don't think it would be right to be so restrictive on how long applicants have to decide if the schools themselves can't send out their decisions in a reasonable timeframe.