FALL 2008 rejections

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VT
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by VT » Tue Mar 25, 2008 12:39 pm

I am willing to take some legal step now to make UIUC to send the damn decision. I never imagined that UIUC could be such an ass. I send one e-mail everyday to UIUC, and a funny thing is that I do hear back from the secretary of the grad admission everyday with the same reply that admissions commitee has not decided yet what to do.
I am pretty sure that applicants who have accepted to UIUC have not send out their decisions to them yet which is why they are keeping all of us in the limbo.
I am sure that rejections from UIUC will be flying around on April 10 or so, that is, after the accepted students have visited all the other places they have been accepted to.

All you accepted students out there, keep torturing UIUC. I do not care whether I am accepted or rejected, but you guys should definitely make those people out there in UIUC keep guessing about their incoming class size. :)

If a top 10 school like UIUC doesnot care to send all the decisions by May 15, we students( I mean, those who are accepted and I am not in) also have no obligation whatsoever to send our decision to them before 11:59 pm, April 15.
Last edited by VT on Tue Mar 25, 2008 12:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

admissionprof
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by admissionprof » Tue Mar 25, 2008 12:47 pm

VT wrote:I am willing to take some legal step now to make UIUC to send the damn decision. I never imagined that UIUC could be such an ass. I send one e-mail everyday to UIUC, and funnything is I do hear back from the secretry everyday with the same reply that admissions commitee has not decided yet what to do.
I am pretty sure that all students who have accepted to UIUC have not send out their decisions to them yet which is why they are keeping all of us in the limbo.
I am sure that all the rejections from UIUC will fly around on April 10 or so after all the accepted sutdents will have chance to visit all the other places they have been accepted.

All you accepted students out there, keep torturing UIUC. I do not care whether I am accepted or rejected, but you guys should definitely make those people out there in UIUC keep guessing about their incoming class size. :)

If a top 10 school like UIUC doesnot care to send all the decisions by May 15, we students( I mean, those who are accepted) also have no obligation whatsoever to send our decision to them before 11:59 pm, April 15.

VT---First, admissions committees are only no legal obligation to make any decision by April 15th. If they made no decision before the time classes start, then you might be able to sue for your application fee. Second, almost every place has waiting lists, and it is perfectly ok for a school to wait on a final decision for those people until they've heard from almost everyone (which could easily be around April 15th). Is there a reasonable alternative to that?

Of course, if UIUC hasn't even told you if you're on a waiting list by this point, then yes, they are being asses. But there's still not much one can legally do.

VT
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by VT » Tue Mar 25, 2008 12:50 pm

I was only joking,I do not want to take any legal step against the university that I'd really love to go.

For a moment I was thinking of NOT sending any decisions to top 30 type schools that I have been accepted to before 11:59 pm April 15.

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fermiboy
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by fermiboy » Wed Mar 26, 2008 9:49 pm

Got the UIUC rejection today via email. Not really surprised.

multigoal
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by multigoal » Thu Mar 27, 2008 2:55 pm

@ jdhooghe
Have u got acceptance from anywhere?..Do u have any idea about ur waitlist number in Syracuse?

hpharty
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by hpharty » Thu Mar 27, 2008 6:17 pm

Well I just got back from a nice run after work to find this from U Penn:
The number of applications to the University of Pennsylvania is very great every year, and unfortunately, your application was not among those we were able to accept for admission.
Weak.

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will
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by will » Thu Mar 27, 2008 8:08 pm

I liked that they couldn't even tell me in the email. I had to fish around for my username and password so I could log in to that "ApplyYourself" crap. Talk about adding insult to injury.

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butsurigakusha
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by butsurigakusha » Thu Mar 27, 2008 8:20 pm

I finally got my Caltech rejection, which I knew was coming, because I hadn't been invited to interviews. This is the first thing I have heard from them at all.

hiccupz
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by hiccupz » Thu Mar 27, 2008 8:27 pm

uc boulder is the last (presumed) rejection i'm waiting on. they haven't said anything, and they haven't replied to emails... no one else has heard anything, right?

burrub
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by burrub » Thu Mar 27, 2008 10:21 pm

hiccupz wrote:uc boulder is the last (presumed) rejection i'm waiting on. they haven't said anything, and they haven't replied to emails... no one else has heard anything, right?
I don't know anything about Boulder, but I'm in the same situation with Berkeley and Irvine. I figure that they're ignoring my emails because an official rejection letter is on its way via USPS.

myass
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by myass » Thu Mar 27, 2008 10:49 pm

Berkeley let you know your rejection if you make a phone call to Ms Sakima. She often ignores email as she gets 100s of junk a day.

VT
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by VT » Fri Mar 28, 2008 12:07 am

@ butsu..
I cannot believe that you have been rejected from four places despite your two years of research experience, 990, good GPA, domestic applicant and applied-to-experiment status. What on earth do you think went wrong on your application?
Not that I wanted u to feel bad or anything like that, looking at your status and the result, i feel hopeless myself.
I think you def deserve two more acceptances with ur status.

After looking at your result, I think it is safe to conclude that this whole admission process is like buying a lottery ticket. I may want to buy it next year again.

excel
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by excel » Fri Mar 28, 2008 12:22 am

Those grad programs may have decided that butsu is too good for them, and they wont be able to recruit him anyway. :mrgreen:

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butsurigakusha
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by butsurigakusha » Fri Mar 28, 2008 12:53 am

I think there are several possibilities as to what is wrong with my application. For one, it is possible that schools don't put nearly as much weight on PGRE as we tend to think. And even then, it might be that they don't care very much if one student has 990 and another has 850. I think there might be some theoretical score above which it makes no difference. Second, my two years of research experience produced a lot less in terms of results than they should have. I am not saying that there is a certain amount in general that someone should be able to produce in that amount of time, but given my circumstances, with the project I was working on, I probably should have published something, like, a year ago. Not any ground breaking research, but publishable results nonetheless. Plus, my adviser was also the instructor for a class I took last fall, and senioritis had already started its course, and my adviser definitely noticed my lackluster performance. I think he still wrote me a good letter, but I he is not one to embellish, and so his letter probably express a ton of confidence in my work ethic and enthusiasm. And my other recommendors were just other professors that knew me, but who hadn't worked with me that much.

The other possible problem is my grades. My GPA doesn't reflect the terrible grades I got my freshman year and later retook, because old grades aren't used to calculate GPA at my school. However, the grades still appear on the my transcript. Although my grades improved a lot since then, there is still the possibility that they might be a concern to some. I didn't have any good explanation as to why I failed several classes that year, so I didn't mention it at all in my SOP.

Considering that the schools I got rejected by are extremely competitive, I am not too surprised that I got rejected by a few. However, I was quite surprised about UCSB. If someone had told me beforehand that I would get accepted to Berkeley but not UCSB, I would have thought they were crazy.

VT
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by VT » Fri Mar 28, 2008 12:54 am

@ excel, did you have a chance to visit Brown? If so, did you like that area?

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al-Haytham
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by al-Haytham » Fri Mar 28, 2008 1:33 am

has anyone else out there not heard back from u of Texas, Austin as yet...

excel
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by excel » Fri Mar 28, 2008 9:23 am

VT, I am scheduled to visit Brown on April 4.

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dlenmn
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by dlenmn » Mon Mar 31, 2008 5:11 pm

U Colorado rejection by email today. About bloody time. Only 2 more to go.

multigoal
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by multigoal » Mon Mar 31, 2008 8:01 pm

rejected from NYU....anybody has any updates on Syracuse??

gatr1126
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by gatr1126 » Tue Apr 01, 2008 2:46 pm

It's been dead silent as far as Syracuse is concerned. I don't know what they're waiting on....

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celts
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by celts » Tue Apr 01, 2008 4:34 pm

@dlenmn

did you email colorado first and they responded, or did they just email you the rejection out of the blue?

hiccupz
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by hiccupz » Tue Apr 01, 2008 6:50 pm

(about colorado)

i had emailed them repeatedly and also got the rejection email, but i'm pretty sure it was just a blanket email to the rejectees and not a response.

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twistor
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by twistor » Tue Apr 01, 2008 6:59 pm

If they made no decision before the time classes start, then you might be able to sue for your application fee.
Realistically speaking I don't think anyone would actually go through the trouble to do so.

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dlenmn
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by dlenmn » Tue Apr 01, 2008 7:33 pm

@celts

I emailed them several weeks ago asking what the deal was and heard nothing from them until now, so I think this should count as out of the blue. The letter didn't have my name on it, so I'm guessing that it was sent out to a bunch of people at once.
Dear Applicant:

As the Associate Chair of the Graduate Committee for the Physics Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder, I would like to thank you for your interest in and for applying to our program. Your credentials and academic achievements were certainly impressive; however, I am afraid that we will not be able to offer you admission into our program at this time. This year, we received more than 500 applications. In the end, we were forced to reject many talented candidates simply because we neither have the funding nor enough available research positions to accommodate all of them. We wish you much luck with all your future endeavors.

Sincerely,


Dani Shearman
for
Dan Dessau
Professor of Physics and Associate Chair of Graduate Programs
Department of Physics
University of Colorado at Boulder
Boulder, CO 80309-0390

hpharty
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by hpharty » Wed Apr 02, 2008 3:43 pm

Columbia just rejected me for a second time :shock:

Why?! What a kick in the teeth! :cry:

deyton
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by deyton » Wed Apr 02, 2008 4:16 pm

hpharty wrote:Columbia just rejected me for a second time :shock:

Why?! What a kick in the teeth! :cry:
Me too! That is quite silly.

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jdhooghe
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by jdhooghe » Wed Apr 02, 2008 6:13 pm

hpharty wrote:Columbia just rejected me for a second time :shock:

Why?! What a kick in the teeth! :cry:
Ouch....that is almost as bad as not even applying and still getting a rejection letter...I hope you have other options :cry:

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quizivex
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by quizivex » Wed Apr 02, 2008 6:19 pm

Wow that's just f*cked up!!

I applied to an REU soph year who accepted me by e-mail in March and followed it up with a rejection letter by mail in May.

It's scary that people with such organizational incompetence are making decisions that affect the rest of our lives.

grapesmoker
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by grapesmoker » Thu Apr 03, 2008 12:04 pm

excel wrote:VT, I am scheduled to visit Brown on April 4.
I hope I'm not resurrecting a thread that's too inactive.

Anyway, excel, I was poking around and I saw that you were accepted to Brown and were planning a visit. Also, you had some questions about graduate housing. I'm currently a physics grad student at Brown (in astrophysics) and if you have any questions, you're more than welcome to contact me (email is grapesmoker at gmail dot com). I would probably have been one of the students taking you out to lunch on the 4th, but I'm out of town.

A few quick points:

Providence has a pretty nice downtown that's about 10 minutes walk from campus. It certainly has some less-nice areas, but College Hill, where Brown is located, is a pretty good place. There's stuff going on, like in any mid-sized city, but you kind of have to look for it. Graduate housing exists, but I wouldn't recommend it; you should have no real problem finding an apartment to rent that would be a much better value.

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will
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by will » Fri Apr 04, 2008 2:25 pm

I just got rejected from Penn again. They just wanted to make sure I remembered, I guess, 'cause it would've been really awkward when I started showing up for classes.

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quizivex
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by quizivex » Fri Apr 04, 2008 8:07 pm

I'd send them an e-mail saying the following: "Send me one more rejection letter and I'll sign every e-mail address in your department up for a ton of spam messages."

excel
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by excel » Sat Apr 05, 2008 8:13 am

grapesmoker, thanks so much for offering your help. Yeah, the students told me that it is possible to share a 3-bedroom apartment near campus for $ 400-600 per month--certainly seems a better deal than Brown-administered graduate housing. (By the way, it is not the physics department that I visited).

VT, I liked Brown's research etc. However, I have decided it is not the #1 match for my research goals, more like # 2 or 3.

Some of Brown's buildings are charming. However, different buildings are of different styles and did not seem to match all that well together. Providence seemed ok to me. At any rate, I would not mind living in that area if Brown were to be my #1 choice research-wise.

I have now almost made up my mind to join Cornell. So, I expect to soon send rejection letters to the other programs, which makes this post appropriate in a thread called "Fall 2008 rejections" ! :)

hpharty
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by hpharty » Mon Apr 07, 2008 9:12 am

will wrote:I just got rejected from Penn again. They just wanted to make sure I remembered, I guess, 'cause it would've been really awkward when I started showing up for classes.
I got one of those too. I am not happy about it.

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dlenmn
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by dlenmn » Mon Apr 07, 2008 10:07 am

By what medium were you (re)rejected by penn? I'm still waiting to be rejected once...

hpharty
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by hpharty » Mon Apr 07, 2008 10:13 am

Both rejections were by e-mail. The first e-mail actually said I was rejected; the second e-mail directed me to check my status on the ApplyYourself site, which in turn told me I was rejected.

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will
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by will » Mon Apr 07, 2008 11:01 am

Both y email for me, too, although the first one told me that a decision had been reached and to check the application, where I learned that I was rejected. The second one told me that a new decision had been reached. I log in to the application, and sure enough there's a new date on it, but it was the same rejection.

schandre
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by schandre » Wed Apr 09, 2008 3:36 pm

As if my day couldn't get any worse - the reasons are beyond the scope of this post - I just got rejected from UW (Seattle) by e-mail. I guess it was about time they made a decision, it's just that their timing couldn't have been worse. Well, at least they avoided making me having second thoughts on my decision to attend IU. I still got to hear from MSU, but I don't think it's going to happen that they accept me and I end up changing my mind.

megatron
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by megatron » Wed Apr 09, 2008 7:07 pm

schandre wrote:As if my day couldn't get any worse - the reasons are beyond the scope of this post - I just got rejected from UW (Seattle) by e-mail. I guess it was about time they made a decision, it's just that their timing couldn't have been worse. Well, at least they avoided making me having second thoughts on my decision to attend IU. I still got to hear from MSU, but I don't think it's going to happen that they accept me and I end up changing my mind.
I understand your position with hearing so late. I'm in a similar pinch with UW, but I haven't had the axe just yet. With only 3 more business days to hear before I have to make a decision, I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen for me.

It sucks to hear a no, but at least it's closure. (?)

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quizivex
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by quizivex » Wed Apr 09, 2008 7:46 pm

I still can't believe I was under the wrong impression the whole time that March 15th was the deadline for grad schools to notify applicants of their status. Did anyone else think that was the case?

Most of my info I got about grad schools came from this forum so I probably got that impression after reading stuff here two years ago... Did anyone ever read a post on this forum that said 3/15 is the deadline for schools and 4/15 is the deadline for students? Otherwise I can't imagine why I thought that...

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dlenmn
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by dlenmn » Wed Apr 09, 2008 9:48 pm

quizivex wrote:Did anyone ever read a post on this forum that said 3/15 is the deadline for schools and 4/15 is the deadline for students?
Do you intend to battle and destroy whoever posted this info?

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quizivex
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by quizivex » Wed Apr 09, 2008 11:50 pm

I dunno, sometimes when I think I heard something and it turns out to be wrong, I like to try to trace back what actually happened, whether I really heard it or not...

Well now that you mention it, I'll be happy to battle whoever made that wretched post!! Bring it on, April 15. Now I'm fighting two users, shateep430 and someone from long ago. Usually being double teamed is a disadvantage, but since the one user doesn't exist (until 2017) and the other user (if he really does exist) left two years ago, I think I'll win anyway...

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twistor
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by twistor » Thu Apr 10, 2008 10:25 am

My money is on shateep430.

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dlenmn
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by dlenmn » Fri Apr 11, 2008 3:29 pm

UMD rejection via snail mail. And that's all folks...

schandre
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by schandre » Fri Apr 11, 2008 6:29 pm

megatron wrote:
schandre wrote:As if my day couldn't get any worse - the reasons are beyond the scope of this post - I just got rejected from UW (Seattle) by e-mail. I guess it was about time they made a decision, it's just that their timing couldn't have been worse. Well, at least they avoided making me having second thoughts on my decision to attend IU. I still got to hear from MSU, but I don't think it's going to happen that they accept me and I end up changing my mind.
I understand your position with hearing so late. I'm in a similar pinch with UW, but I haven't had the axe just yet. With only 3 more business days to hear before I have to make a decision, I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen for me.

It sucks to hear a no, but at least it's closure. (?)
I guess so... and being rejected so late probably means they saw something good on my application.
Unless they completely forgot about my app and only remembered to reject me after I mailed them to ask about my status.
But I'll just suppose that isn't the case.

I'm glad to read on another topic you made the "other side" of the cut.
Although that could have been my spot! :evil:
Just kidding! :P Good luck in Seattle (if you eventually decide to live there)!

megatron
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Re: FALL 2008 rejections

Post by megatron » Fri Apr 11, 2008 7:53 pm

schandre wrote:
megatron wrote:
schandre wrote:As if my day couldn't get any worse - the reasons are beyond the scope of this post - I just got rejected from UW (Seattle) by e-mail. I guess it was about time they made a decision, it's just that their timing couldn't have been worse. Well, at least they avoided making me having second thoughts on my decision to attend IU. I still got to hear from MSU, but I don't think it's going to happen that they accept me and I end up changing my mind.
I understand your position with hearing so late. I'm in a similar pinch with UW, but I haven't had the axe just yet. With only 3 more business days to hear before I have to make a decision, I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen for me.

It sucks to hear a no, but at least it's closure. (?)
I guess so... and being rejected so late probably means they saw something good on my application.
Unless they completely forgot about my app and only remembered to reject me after I mailed them to ask about my status.
But I'll just suppose that isn't the case.

I'm glad to read on another topic you made the "other side" of the cut.
Although that could have been my spot! :evil:
Just kidding! :P Good luck in Seattle (if you eventually decide to live there)!
Thanks very much for your support. I wish you could have been accepted also. I had received an email in the weeks prior to my eventual (and nail-biting) acceptance that I was high on the waiting list, so I still had enough hope to not accept the other reigning offer, and now I'm glad I had that patience.

If you heard back from them so late, I'm confident that you were right on the cusp of acceptance. Many people were outrightly rejected long before this, so take that as a sign of your good worth!



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