Asking for results early?

[RBspkRuP]

Hi everyone,

I am sure there is a thread about this, but I cannot find it for whatever reason. I received an offer of admission 2 weeks ago at my current university under my current undergrad supervisor. I was technically given till April 15th, but my supervisor asked if I would be able to make a decision earlier. I completely understand and want to respect this request as I am extremely grateful to him and everything he has done over my undergrad degree. The only problem is all the schools I applied to say on their website that decisions will be sent out early or late March, depending on the university. I regret applying to those will a January deadline instead of December now! Ideally, my professor would like to know by mid March so this may leave me in a predicament if I wait and do nothing and am forced to make a last minute decision without real thought.

Is it rude to email to universities to ask about my placement due to a time sensitive funding offer? In most cases, do they actually give you a response? Or rather send a generic email like "no decisions will be sent out till..."? If I were to send an email to each school, I was thinking about sending an inquiry for March 1st. I realize it is extremely early, but I absolutely want to respect my professors wishes at this time. 

[HiFiWiFi]

Odds are they will not be able to tell you anything useful; they don't make decisions and then sit on them for weeks, they probably haven't made the decisions yet. The communication you have should be to your current advisor. I'm certain he knows that some programs will take some time to respond, and you do have until mid-April. Politely tell him you understand the desire for a quick response and will respond as soon as you have considered all of the options available to you.

On that note, with regard to making "a last minute decision without real thought", I recommend thinking through a number of "what if" scenarios regarding acceptances and funding. What will it take to pull you away from your undergrad school? How much funding from Y school will beat out the offer you have, and how much funding from X school would be out what you might expect to get from Y? Thinking through various hypotheticals can help you feel more prepared to make a faster decision when the time comes.

[RBspkRuP]

55 minutes ago, HiFiWiFi said:

On that note, with regard to making "a last minute decision without real thought", I recommend thinking through a number of "what if" scenarios regarding acceptances and funding. What will it take to pull you away from your undergrad school? How much funding from Y school will beat out the offer you have, and how much funding from X school would be out what you might expect to get from Y? Thinking through various hypotheticals can help you feel more prepared to make a faster decision when the time comes.

I guess the reason I haven't done this is because I am scared to get invested in the idea of one school and then get rejected. I fear if I hope for one outcome and if it doesn't happen, then I will be quite disappointed in the decision and find it hard to be excited about what I currently have. Honestly, I have been actively trying to ignore other scenarios and dreaming about what it would be like to go to school there. However, in the end it probably would be a good idea to write down a logical comparison of each schools and come up with a list of reasons why I would prefer school A over B and the different scenarios I would accept (ie. min funding offers, supervisors, research opportunities, etc). 

[willyn]

I am also applying for Econ programs in Canada and I think you should hold off a bit. There is a big wave of responses coming in the next couple weeks.

[TakeruK]

If your undergrad advisor doesn't need to know until mid-March, you can wait a little bit. Let him know that your schools said they won't decide until March and that you will let him know ASAP.

Meanwhile, you can wait for now but around March 1, it's okay to send the other schools an email asking if there is an update. It's unlikely that they will tell you any good news right then and there because if they have not yet decided, then they have not yet decided. As @HiFiWiFi said, they won't decide and then sit on them for weeks.

However, in a couple of weeks, when it's early March, you could get useful information like: "you are currently on our shortlist" or, "unfortunately you did not make a shortlist and it's unlikely we will make an offer to you". Schools do sit on rejections for weeks, sometimes waiting until they deal with all the acceptances first! So asking can get you a earlier rejection notice, which isn't fun of course, but knowing that you're out of the running helps you make the final decision.

[DBear]

Totally agree with @TakeruK. Another thing I encountered was that programs may ask you this question if they feel they need to make a latch ditch effort to sway you to their program. 

One of the professors I interviewed with mentioned a couple of times during the interview and in following correspondence to contact them should I get other offers and to let them know if I was considering them and to please not make a decision before hearing their offer. 

Another thing to consider is that email text is so easy to interpret a gazillion different ways. The professor could have been asking just as the professor asked me, because he wanted to be able to respond accordingly should you want to go somewhere else. It could've just been a "hey, a heads up would be awesome" but because you're under pressure (isn't this whole application thing soooo stressful?! Can't wait for it to be over) you may be reading into it too much. 

Either way, like @TakeruK said, schools prefer to know ASAP. Both schools I declined in early Feb were quite appreciative that I got back to them so soon.