the etiquette of turning down a school

[spagett]

There are a couple schools that I haven't heard back from that are no longer in the running for me.

Is it appropriate to contact them and say so? Obviously, I'm not going to be rude about it, and my intention is to be courteous to the adcom and the other applicants. How would I go about such a thing?

Edited February 10, 2010 by karamazov

[fuzzylogician]

There are a couple schools that I haven't heard back from that are no longer in the running for me.

Is it appropriate to contact them and say so? Obviously, I'm not going to be rude about it, and my intention is to be courteous to the adcom and the other applicants. How would I go about such a thing?

I did that with a couple of schools. I basically wrote to say that I've received what I consider to be better fitting offers and so I'm withdrawing my application to the program. I thanked the committee and whoever else I was in touch in for their consideration, specifically mentioning people who took the time to email or interview me. is a version of such an email that's for declining an offer, but is actually pretty close to what I wrote for withdrawing offers as well. I received very warm replies from potential advisors to this email, and stayed in touch with some of them. Adcoms appreciate your not leading them on, so they can make offers to students who are likelier to accept them (better yield, better planning for next year's cohort). I ended up consulting some of the POIs from schools I declined regarding the offers I was considering, since they were interested in their details and could offer me insights I might not have otherwise known. So, definitely no hard feelings there.

[socialpsych]

Last year, I ended up withdrawing from 6 out of 10 schools at some point before I got an official yes or no (a few were after an interview). It was fine even at the time, but having seen a bit of the other side of this whole process, let me tell you that schools would LOVE any info whatsoever about whether you are actually still interested. So, this is definitely a good idea and no one will be offended whatsoever, as long as you send a reasonably worded email.