给尚在苦苦等待OFFER的人(from a top phd student)

through

One thing to be careful about -- even if some decisions have been mailed, others may not be.  Especially at schools w/o official waitlists (which in my experience is most schools), acceptances will be in "waves" -- the program will admit the students it really wants, invite them to campus, and in follow-up conversations over the next few weeks try to get a feel about whether or not the candidate will accept.  Based on how the class is looking, they will make additional admits as needed from the "reserve" pool.

So if people have been "accepted" from a school and you haven't heard, it doesn't mean you've been dinged.  If people have been both accepted and dinged and you haven't heard, there's a chance you're still in the "reserve".  Not all letters go out on the same day, unfortunately.

Just to give you an idea of how this works (and I had no idea my program did this until I saw it from the inside) -- we had about 120 applicants for 3-4 spots.  We accepted 2 students a few weeks ago, and (I believe) just sent rejects to about 100 students.  That leaves 18 people "in limbo".  Why leave so many?  Well, for one, the profs may not have totally agreed about which to admit out of the remaining ones, and also who accepts and who rejects the offer will affect who else is admitted -- they don't want to admit a lot of students concentrated in one specific sub-field (b/c it would overwhelm the prof who oversees students).  So if 2 people in a sub-field both accept the offer, the other 2 (for example) still in limbo probably won't make it through.  I just heard we're going to send out 3 more admits this week, so there will be ~15 students still in limbo.  By April 15 everyone will hear......... it's basically a waitlist without calling it that, or telling the students.

Here's some schools that SEEM to do this, based on last year's experience (note I don't know whether any schools do this for sure, but I can't remember anyone getting a formal waitlist from these schools):  Rochester, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Wharton, Columbia, UNC.