Accepting, rejecting and holding offers

[s2k_]

Hello everyone,

This is my first time applying for graduate study and I'm unsure on how to correctly accept or reject offers that I got. Can anyone share their experience ?

Also when you got an offer from one university and you are still holding for others, do you contact them in the mean time or simply ignore until you make a final decision (prior to their deadline). 

Edited March 10, 2016 by s2k_

[EpiGirl2016]

All of my acceptances first came "unofficially" from a professor on the admissions committee. In all cases I replied back thanking them for their support of my applications. Only one for one of them (my first one) did I mention needing to wait to make a decision to see how funding/other offers work out because for that one I found out January 6th which was much earlier than anywhere else. I realize though that even that much detail was unnecessary so I didn't mention it to the others. Once the offers started coming in I began turning down the one's I knew I wasn't going to go to. I applied to both PhD and Master's programs and once I got into a single PhD program I turned down all of the Master's programs because I knew I wasn't going to go that route. I did that by just declining the offer in the online system. For PhD programs, I narrowed my choices to 2 and let the other programs know. After I submitted my official form, I sent an e-mail to the faculty who notified me of my acceptance thanking them again but I will attend x or y university because of fit and I wanted to let them know as soon as I knew so I could potentially help someone on the waitlist. The remaining two schools that I am selecting between I am revisiting but will not say anything until I make my actual decision. If you know you absolutely won't go to a place because you got into a place that you think suits you better, I think it is a nice courtesy to decline the offer as early as you know, especially if you run a waitlist, but you are absolutely under no obligation to do so.