Haven't heard back from 5/7 schools still, is it safe to assume rejection or what?

[AuWarEagle]

So yeah basically what the title says. It's March 16 and I still have only heard back from 2 schools. They were both rejections, but it was MIT and Stanford - the 1 and 2 schools in my discipline so that doesn't necessarily say anything about the chances about the other schools, although obviously the chances would be better if they were acceptances. No decisions have been given by the other 5 schools I applied to. Of these 5, only 1 has made any contact. I had an interview over Skype with a professor in January and I thought it went well, but since then we've had a little contact and he's said some not so optimistic things like he's not sure if he can offer me a spot in his lab to pursue a Ph.D. yet because there are some moving parts or some crap like that, however even with some stuff like this I still haven't been rejected. I'm a very good applicant on paper - great GPA and GRE, internships and undergrad research, and decent school - but I know that most everyone applying to good schools are good applicants on paper too so it's whatever. It's worrisome that I haven't been accepted yet and that I haven't been contacted either, but it's also a little weird that I haven't been rejected by any of them yet either, so I don't know what's up.

[RecommendedByGuyFieri]

If you search the admissions survey on this site's front page and you find acceptances and interviews for your programs, or you happen to know that the on-campus recruitment weekend has passed for them, then your chances are not good right now. Otherwise, it may just be that the program in question makes its decisions late in the season.

Either way, you should not assume anything until you receive a formal decision. Good luck!

[DPeanutPieApple]

Same here. I applied only 4 schools, and got an interview only one. They say they will contact me back, but still haven't heard from them. And the other 3 are in silent. I even emailed one of those 3 which I saw from this site's result page that someone has been accepted, but they didn't reply me back. However, I did some research and learned that most of my desire school make pretty late decisions, like mid March - April 1.

[gbudiman]

Some schools are very quick to hand out rejections (maybe so that you can make alternate plans earlier), others wait until last minute to do so.

On the other hand, some schools are also very quick to hand out offers, others send out offers in predetermined 'waves'.

So don't lose hope yet.

[ChrisTOEFert]

13 hours ago, AuWarEagle said:

So yeah basically what the title says. It's March 16 and I still have only heard back from 2 schools. They were both rejections, but it was MIT and Stanford - the 1 and 2 schools in my discipline so that doesn't necessarily say anything about the chances about the other schools, although obviously the chances would be better if they were acceptances. No decisions have been given by the other 5 schools I applied to. Of these 5, only 1 has made any contact. I had an interview over Skype with a professor in January and I thought it went well, but since then we've had a little contact and he's said some not so optimistic things like he's not sure if he can offer me a spot in his lab to pursue a Ph.D. yet because there are some moving parts or some crap like that, however even with some stuff like this I still haven't been rejected. I'm a very good applicant on paper - great GPA and GRE, internships and undergrad research, and decent school - but I know that most everyone applying to good schools are good applicants on paper too so it's whatever. It's worrisome that I haven't been accepted yet and that I haven't been contacted either, but it's also a little weird that I haven't been rejected by any of them yet either, so I don't know what's up.

I wouldn't lose hope quite yet.  You're still a month out from when most universities require a response, which is still plenty of time to extend an offer.  Most decisions from what I understand roll out this week and next in large waves.  If you check the results board, there were very few per day last week (like only 7-8 pages) and now there are 12-17 pages of results per day by noon/early afternoon when I tend to check.  It's quite likely that they extend offers in waves, I know most universities do that.  They extend offers to the must haves and then give the rejection emails to the ones who are definitely not being considered anymore.  From that point they want to fill their roster with as many of the must haves as possible and then wait until they have their decisions and send out the rest of the accepts/rejects to those who are on first, second, and third level waitlists.  

As brutal as it may seem, I have heard of acceptances and rejections going out as late as July!!!  Some schools just have a really slow admissions process.  Don't forget, they are also human too, so things like life do sometimes slow things down a bit.  Like the loss of a loved one, a medical emergency etc. can really impede the speed of rolling out the answers.  I am in the same boat as you with one school, I haven't heard a peep.  At this point, I'm not too optimistic frankly.  Every other school has reached out to me by now so I feel like if they really want all the competitive applicants they can, they would have sent something out when all the other schools do as well.  But then again, my last school is in Europe, so they don't follow the same rules, and schools over there may have later admission dates.  Either way, I'm not really holding my breath for positive news at this point.