PsychGradHopeful14

The school you attended and a pre-existing relationship with faculty at a program can have an impact on the decision to admit you, despite what people may say. These are factors to consider because when multiple applicants are about equal, it can boil down to things like networking and school prestige. That being said, you shouldn't focus solely on that for making a decision between two master's programs. You want to boost your PhD application in more ways than just having a foot-in-the-door in one of these aspects. If it is between these two, you may want to consider where you will have more opportunities to stand out when applying to PhD programs, as well as whether you want to have options or are just trying to go PhD at your current school specifically.

Don't assume anything until you have an official decision. In my experience, feedback & contact, both positive or negative, can be misleading. Just wait and see. It sounds like they are trying to be nice and let you know they are still reviewing applications. Anything other than an admission decision should be taken with a grain of salt.

Generally the advice I see here is send a thank you email, and to generally be excited as well as say that you are still weighing your options and will be in touch with them when you have made a decision. Don't say nothing, that's a bad practice.

I think inconvenience is an understatement when we are talking about people's futures. I think it is reasonable to request that those people are at least making it priority to reach a decision and not just putting it on the backburner until closer to the deadline. I don't think they need pressure from alternates to meet a "time frame for decisions," but if you are still completely gridlocked, you may have to make some more time for yourself to sit down and think about it. Some of us would love to be in that position, but are instead having to engage in distractions while we wait to see if we will even be able to have one option, despite high qualifications.

Ask them to reject you, and I am sure they will. You just told them you are not interested in going there. They are not going to admit someone that is not interested in them. I am sure if you tell them you are not withdrawing your app but are not interested, they will not admit you.

Someone in this thread has the "belief in a perfect world" thing going on to an extreme. Clinical psychology PhD admissions are brutal, much more so than most other psychology programs, and many have argued them to be the most competitive graduate program for admission (what is it, like an average of 5% acceptance rate? But usually you have to name a potential mentor who is probably taking only 1 student). It is not uncommon to see and hear stories about highly qualified applicants getting passed over multiple years and even applicants with less experience get in right out of undergraduate. If it really were the best students, this would not be the case as many people with good grades/GRE scores go out into various settings for a couple years to gain extra experience, present/publish, etc. to help their application stand out more so than a college senior with similar academic credentials. Most clinical psychology PhD programs are just like other PhD programs, based on mentorship models and the biggest weight in the decision of whether or not to admit you is based on the potential mentor you selected and his/her decision. A faculty member may invite 4+ of the top applicants for his/her lab to interview, and from there, as they always say, it boils down to who is the best "fit." Over the years, I have begun to question what that means and have gradually seen that it generally is an umbrella term used to broadly define the subjective criteria desired by the individual who is evaluating an applicant; what he/she values most in a graduate student and which student most closely emulates that. This can be a number of things, such as overlapping research experience/research goals, career goals, grades/GRE scores, it can even be based on things like the professor's impression of your undergraduate institution, letter writers are his/her close colleagues, your personality, or pre-existing relationship with person of interest (it's naïve to think that these things do not get people admitted over others). Despite what some may think, so much is out of the applicants' control, and because of the way the process works, there are highly qualified students that do not get admission offers at all during multiple application cycles, and less qualified students who luck out on the "fit" aspect or a wait list works out in their favor the first time they apply. If it were just based on the best students, there would be no interviews or personal statements. You would just send in your transcripts/GRE scores, letters of recommendation and a resume/CV and they would just admit the people with the highest grades, test scores, most publications and presentations and base it off that. Domino's assessment above is spot on. And of course, there are easier ways out to get a degree to practice, like masters programs or PsyD's but I suppose if one is so concerned about trusting a health professional for getting into grad/med school not being an uber-student, you could always ask to see their transcripts from their undergraduate degree before consenting to anything if it concerns you that much.

Wait, that's the best strategy and all you can do. Many programs have wait lists because of a limited number of offers of admission able to be made. If offers are turned down by their first round picks, they can send them out to people on the wait list. In this case, don't petition for them to change their mind, don't start LOR campaigns, don't casually contact them to list a new accomplishment since you turned in your application, don't email the entire admissions committee to put your name out there, don't send additional materials/gifts, just leave them alone and wait it out; they already made an official decision and they are not able to just retract an offer to another individual because you did these things. The most you can do is contact your POI or an admissions contact to restate your interest in attending and thank them for considering you. If you receive an offer from another school that has an upcoming deadline, you may be able to mention this to get information to help you make an informed decision such as a general idea of how close or far away they are from getting to you on the list. Otherwise, wait it out.

^ It could not hurt, but I would be careful about mentioning you are wait listed so as not to put her on the spot. Just tell her you applied to work with her and are extremely interested in seeing her recent findings, check out the poster, and mention you are presenting as well.... if the conversation goes well who knows, she may dig up your application to take a closer look. However, wait lists in PhD programs often are due to limited spots and once you are on, it is completely contingent on whether or not someone else takes the offer, so it is likely that it is completely out of her hands and probably out of the admissions committee's hands too so avoid anything that comes off as petitioning/campaigning for admission. Really, any mention of your application should be brief. Also, it sounds like she has never met you. Were you wait listed after interviewing? Does that program have interviews? If the program has interviews and you were not invited you may be way back there, and being a top 10 would make it virtually impossible for them to get to you on that wait list

I'm not sure this should be considered a safe strategy for all graduate programs indiscriminately, unless the condition of being wait listed mentioned in the blog really IS the case at that individual program (which for any I have applied to, it is not). In many instances, things like that CAN actually hurt. Proceed with caution.

A lot of people would probably say to wait and not email. Did "by March" mean by the beginning or end of March is one question you may want to see if you can find clarification of on their website or other notifications otherwise you may be asking them when they are just starting to consider who to admit. I personally think it shows interest and eagerness if you contact to see where you stand but it's not universally interpreted that way. I think we all understand wanting to see where you stand even if its not the answer for which you were hoping. If the information is too ambiguous to figure out a solid time frame you could at least just ask if decisions have been made without pushing for your status... sometimes they will volunteer it in the response.

Year after year I'm Still not admitted. Plan B.... Is Wal-Mart hiring?

Only thing I can say is, don't lose hope, but don't get your hopes up. You have to want it, but be ready for a Plan B if it doesn't work out, which for some means throwing out the entire playbook, others means to hang out and try again with the same application as last year, and some to seek more experience to become more competitive and try again. The way I phrase it is "plan to fail," but really that means "plan for the contingency that it may not work out this year and don't get complacent just because your application deadlines have passed --- that could be 5-6 months that you could have spent building a better application." Until the day you are admitted, there are typically no guarantees in graduate admissions.

Let it go... it's usually bad policy to ask to supplement/update application materials after submission has been finalized or deadline has passed/application is under review. It may be possible to bring it up in an interview if that is part of your process but that's about it.

I refresh email Compulsively, but now my F5 key's broken

Well, we all have ideal programs and top choices, but when you accept another offer, you essentially are making the decision to move on from that as a possibility as you have committed to completing a PhD in a different program/institution. It is generally perceived very negatively in the community and can make it even harder to get in a second time than it was the first time. I would just let it go. Usually when people say extreme circumstances I have heard the most acceptable ones without burning bridges and having to make awkward explanation are things like mentor dies or quits, or other things like program loses accreditation. I would be very careful about your current program finding out you are window shopping other programs after accepting their offer and being in their program. I'm not well versed on the subject, but generally what I have heard is that this is a dangerous move.