Beware: Overshot Acceptances from Duke Econ

[mehtap]

It's April 15, and I felt that it would be right to share this here, so that people can make more informed decisions...

I'm tuned into the rumor mill here.  So apparently Duke Econ has overshot their acceptances this year, which puts them in a tricky position financially.  They may try to "solve" the situation by weeding out a portion of the incoming class.  I hear they're not answering emails.

I know transition to grad school is a big decision to everyone, so I wanted to put out a warning...

 

[preantepenultimate]

47 minutes ago, mehtap said:

It's April 15, and I felt that it would be right to share this here, so that people can make more informed decisions...

I'm tuned into the rumor mill here.  So apparently Duke Econ has overshot their acceptances this year, which puts them in a tricky position financially.  They may try to "solve" the situation by weeding out a portion of the incoming class.  I hear they're not answering emails.

I know transition to grad school is a big decision to everyone, so I wanted to put out a warning...

 

Wow. How common is that? I'm wondering now if that might be why I've been getting the silent treatment from one of my schools post-acceptance.

[GradSchoolTruther]

If you ask a department if they are going to weed out students the first year, do you think you'd get an honest response? Common sense would suggest you would not.

[Concordia]

Back when my mother was in med school, there was a rumor that the acceptances for her class all went to the wrong 100 people (or whatever).  This wouldn't just be a variant of that, would it?

[ChrisTOEFert]

On 4/15/2016 at 10:38 AM, mehtap said:

It's April 15, and I felt that it would be right to share this here, so that people can make more informed decisions...

I'm tuned into the rumor mill here.  So apparently Duke Econ has overshot their acceptances this year, which puts them in a tricky position financially.  They may try to "solve" the situation by weeding out a portion of the incoming class.  I hear they're not answering emails.

I know transition to grad school is a big decision to everyone, so I wanted to put out a warning...

 

You really think a department does not have a concrete idea of how much funding they are going to have to offer students before they send out the acceptances?  Even if they did, chances are they are only going to see a portion of students that they handed acceptances to actually attend, freeing up more money.  I think your source is dreadfully wrong...

[BernoullisWig17]

2 hours ago, ChrisTOEFert said:

You really think a department does not have a concrete idea of how much funding they are going to have to offer students before they send out the acceptances?  Even if they did, chances are they are only going to see a portion of students that they handed acceptances to actually attend, freeing up more money.  I think your source is dreadfully wrong...

Programs extend a certain number of admits based on an expected number of student acceptances. To get 5 students, if you know your program's yield rate has historically been 30-40%, you might admit 15 students expecting 10 of them to decline. It's possible their projections were off this year, and too many students accepted. Thus they are now over the quota and in a bind.

[ChrisTOEFert]

17 hours ago, BernoullisWig17 said:

Programs extend a certain number of admits based on an expected number of student acceptances. To get 5 students, if you know your program's yield rate has historically been 30-40%, you might admit 15 students expecting 10 of them to decline. It's possible their projections were off this year, and too many students accepted. Thus they are now over the quota and in a bind.

True, but they wouldn't give each one of them funding details.  Taking even the most cursory glance at either the results board or these forums shows that a lot of students are kept in the dark about funding until after the April 15 mark or even later.  I'm just really skeptical that, using your scenario, gave out 15 admits and all of them said fully funded plus tuition waiver in their letter.  I bet 5 of those (i.e. the number they really want) were offered full funding and then if only 3 accept, then the next highest students are offered that funding, etc. until they have used up the funds.  Sure they can accept more students than they have money for, but they sure aren't paying them to be there.

[BernoullisWig17]

3 hours ago, ChrisTOEFert said:

True, but they wouldn't give each one of them funding details.  Taking even the most cursory glance at either the results board or these forums shows that a lot of students are kept in the dark about funding until after the April 15 mark or even later.  I'm just really skeptical that, using your scenario, gave out 15 admits and all of them said fully funded plus tuition waiver in their letter.  I bet 5 of those (i.e. the number they really want) were offered full funding and then if only 3 accept, then the next highest students are offered that funding, etc. until they have used up the funds.  Sure they can accept more students than they have money for, but they sure aren't paying them to be there.

I agree it would be too quick to give out over 100% of the funding to all the first wave admits, probably bordering on irresponsible. Roughly about as irresponsible as ignoring e-mails as a means of deterring students (if the story is true). I can't think of another scenario for why they could have to do such a thing, though.

Edited April 20, 2016 by BernoullisWig17

[ChrisTOEFert]

21 hours ago, BernoullisWig17 said:

I can't think of another scenario for why they could have to do such a thing, though.

But they are probably not doing this.  This is all hearsay from some random internet account with 1 post.  They are just trying to get you all riled up, and I bet it stems from the long list of "Other" posts on the results board.  They are just trying to start a panic where none needs to be.  If the university was trying to weed out applicants, I think a far better way to do this would be to inform the incoming cohort either en-masse or on an individual basis that if you haven't heard about funding by date X (whatever that may be), you get nothing.  I am willing to gamble that if you got into Duke as well as a second university, but got partial funding at the other one, you'd turn Duke down.

Seems far more efficient a method than just "ignoring" emails.  Honestly, if they ignored my emails I would probably just think I'm the problem and chalk it up to a bitchy staff and think nothing of it.  I wouldn't decline an offer over it, provided I had an equal offer from both schools, or a choice period.

Edited April 21, 2016 by ChrisTOEFert