The Endless Wait...

I have been contacted by PennState and McCombs (UT, Austin) for an interview. Another person on the BW forum has been contacted by HBS.

Do they give you only two weeks??? What if I want to wait to get in as second-best in some other school?

Hi MHM,

Congrats on the interviews - what is your major area?

MHM,

Congratulations on your interviews. That must be encouraging.

If they make you an offer, I'm sure they will give you more than a couple of weeks to respond (in fact, it will probably take at least that long to get an official offer to you). However, if you are a candidate they really want, they are probably going to try to pressure you to make a quick decision. They are going to try to gauge your interest in their program via the interview and will only make an offer if it seems likely that you will accept it.

Penn Stat and UT Austin are both fantastic schools, but they don't have the same reputational strength as Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, Wharton, etc. As such, they need to be much more aggressive when recruiting students. They need to try to get students to commit their programs before the elite schools start interviewing.

I would advise you to act very interested in their programs, secure an offer, and then wait for some of the other schools to make decisions.

Good luck!

Praveen,

I missed your question, sorry. I am applying for accounting programs at a number of schools that include Rochester, Texas, Chicago, Yale, Columbia, NYU, Cornell and Harvard. How about you?

Going by Soulution's experience, would it be mighty safe to assume that if you are not invited for interview in the first batch in the top schools, you might as well forget about it?

I am applying to 9 schools in the area of Strategy (or equivalent), and havent heard anything yet. I do not have stellar stats but have not attempted to walk the safe school path either. With interview offers pouring in I am getting jittery by the minute. Have not been able to concentrate on my work and have caught the bad habit of checking emails even during meetings.

Are they quick to tell you if you are absolutely ruled out, or do they send out the regrets at leisure, if they do send at all?

About Impatient's comment:

This is not a very encouraging comment to someone who's waiting, but my experience is that schools will tell you "you're in" much faster than "you're out" or "you're on a waitlist". However, this is still very early and I got answers from January 25 to April 7 last year (and I applied to only 5 schools).

General comment about admissions deadlines:

Many of you have probably heard the April 15 deadline somewhere. I can't remember the specifics, but I received a paper explaining where it comes from in admission papers I received last year. Schools that are part of some association ("Association of Graduate Funding" or something) _cannot_ withdraw the funding associated with an offer of admission before April 15, and they can't put any earlier deadline on an offer of admission without funding. As far as I remember, 99% of top US schools were on that list.

I was accepted by 3 schools last year and only one sent me this paper. Thus, maybe this isn't too well publicized within b-schools, so if you ask the admissions directors/coordinators, they may not know about this.

cabro57, do you mind posting bits of your application profile and the schools that you applied to? I think it will be useful for some of us here.

Cabro57 is right. It is still really early to start getting worried. I would wait until the end of February and into early March before becoming really concerned.

I haven't seen much discussion from this years applicants (on this site or on the Business Week forum). This is too bad. It was really helpful last year to have a group of individuals to share the misery with.

Thanks!
Nice to see some activity in this forum! Alteast we can wait and moan together!

My field is marketing, and major is business marketing - which is why PennState with ISBM (Institute of Study of Business Markets) would be very good for me. I am quite keen on PennState. Lets wait and see how it goes.

Thanks for the advice on "acting interested" - if thats the norm, I guess I don't have to worry about Profs getting upset if I eventually don't join?? What has been your experience in this regard - soulutions, carbo??

Just had my call with UT, Austin. Went off quite well, I feel. McCombs sounds intriguing too after all that the Prof said.

Ah yes, Wharton specifically states the April 15 deadline. thanks for that bit of info, carbo57!

Questions: How would you interpret it if you email the Profs and there is no reply?

Would you still apply to the school even if the PhD admin in that School says that you have a competitive profile, etc etc.?

tkkoh - not sure, this happened to me too. I think that they are busy people and will probably note the interest? Not sure.

tkkoh,

I would not base my decision to apply on whether I get responses from profs or not. There may be a chance that the prof missed your email, or that the prof is busy with something else or even traveling. Then there is also a chance that his / her mailbox has been bombarded by similar emails and so he / she finally decided to wait for the admission process to get over.

Does anyone know what the stipend support amounts are at the top 10 unis? Example - Harvard, Chicago, Yale, NYU etc?

You can check out the Finanical Aid or FAQ sections in the website.

E.g. NYU, MIT

For some schools (e.g. CMU), you need to email them directly to ask.[/url]

Hi all,

I am applying for Phd in finance.
a few universities had deadlines of Jan 15 so i really dont think that they have processed all the applications by now. so i think its a bit early to expect anything. besides i read the last year thread and most of the admits or interviews were sent by mid to late feb.

those guys who had interview, pls share ur experience with all of us. also share ur profile so tht we know where we stand

praveen

Hi,
I got admission from U Wisconsin Milwaukee. Though it was a safe school for me but still getting an admission offer made me feel great. Waiting for other univs. Lets see what happens. My concentration was Information systems and GMAT score 700.

MHM, if u dont mind can u share ur stats?