Asking professor's opinion after PhD interview

[Bhu_It]

I mailed one professor inquiring about her research and possibilities of working with her if admitted through the graduate program (in US). We had a nice skype interview and she even obtained recommendations from my previous advisors. All of this happened before even applying for the PhD program. I'm applying for spring and the graduate coordinator says that spring admission at their school is very unusual. So I'm kinda assuming that if the professor likes my profile, she might send out a word for me to the graduate committee. I'm confident I don't have any red flags on my profile, so if she roots for me then I should be able to get in. However, I haven't got any clear statement from her expressing that she will make a mention for me to the admission committee. Would it be a good idea to ask her about this? Because if she doesn't give me a mention, I really won't have any reason to apply to this school. But if she does root for me (and I do get in), then I'm definitely joining this school. And in that case I won't have to apply for fall admissions at other schools and I would save a lot of application money. Hence would it be a good idea to ask her about how she likes my profile and my chances of getting accepted, considering its an unusual time of the year for admissions? I kind of want to have an informal/indirect confirmation from her, without trying to come off as asking for too much.

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Edited November 7, 2016 by Bhu_It

[fuzzylogician]

I don't think that phrasing the question this way will help you much. For future reference, if you have other interviews of this sort in the future, I would suggest asking toward the end of the interview what happens next -- namely, what the application process is like on their end and when you might expect to hear back. This gives the professor the opportunity to tell you if they are on the committee and how the interview informs the selection process. Since you didn't ask this, I think it's fine to follow up with a thank you email and say that you forgot to ask about a timeline when you spoke. You might also say that you'll mention in your SOP that you had this conversation (which you definitely should do anyway) and how excited you are to potentially work with her, and ask if once you submit, the application will go to her for review. Asking explicitly about your chances isn't likely to do much good; professors are usually very cautious of answering such questions, especially in writing, because some students misinterpret informal evaluations ('I think you would be a good fit') as promises and may become very upset if they end up getting rejected (because of whatever reason). Because of that, it's usually better to ask the question more indirectly. 

This aside, I would advise you to be very careful of applying to a school where there is only one person you might want to work with. You'll need to have more than one person around who you can talk to in order to form a dissertation committee and for letters of recommendations. Not to mention that things may not work out with this particular advisor - she may get sick, have to reduce her workload to care for a sick relative, move to another school, be away for extended travel, etc., and it's important to have others you can rely on, and also to get other perspectives on your work.