[分享]美国一个graduate admission director 告诉你录取过程

As a director of a graduate program (and as an empathetic human being), I should post this information.

If some posters have received acceptances to a program to which you have applied, and you have not yet heard from that program, please donot assume that means you have not been accepted, or have not been funded.

We rank candidates, and notify our top candidatesfirst, extending offers of fellowships and assistantships. We must waituntil they accept or decline to know whether we can move to thenext-ranked candidates, and extend offers to them. Forexample, my program has notified our top two candidates, but we arestill in the midst of ranking the rest. No one except those two havereceived either offers or awards.

For those of you who receive emails from a department reporting thatyou've "been recommended for admission," please be assured that thismeans you've been admitted to your program, providing the GraduateSchool confirms the accuracy of all items on your application.

Departments, not the Graduate School, determine admissions. You willreceive the actual paperwork from the Graduate School in a bit. Administrivia takes some time.

It seems incredibly unlikely to me that any program would extend anoffer to a candidate during a visit/interview. If candidates are beinginterviewed, that would mean to me that all applications are stillbeing considered and all candidates are still in the midst of beingranked.

We have X amount of funded lines each year. The committee meets, and ranks candidates. This takes a couple of meetings. Sometimes, the department agrees on the very top candidates early. As the director of the grad program, I push for early consensus on a couple of candidates,because then I can notify these top candidates with offers andincentives. They have, like everyone else, until April 15 toaccept/decline, although in my experience, none of my candidates haveEVER waited until that late to decide.

I hope to encourage them to accept/decline much earlier. That way, I can move down our ranked list and extend offers. I also know that one program in my field does not notify until the first week of April. So if a candidate tells me s/he is waiting to hear from University of Late Notifications, I know I'm going to have to wait on that candidate. *Sigh of resignation.*

At the next committee meeting, I am going to push my faculty to get allr ankings completed. I also want them to identify all of the declinedcandidates. That will enable me to send that list to the GraduateSchool immediately, so they can send out those letters. And, moreimportantly to me, I can notify the accepted candidates of admission. Iwill not be able to give them any information about offers/awards, however, until I hear from my top candidates. I find this distressing, since I want to convey enthusiasm for each accepted candidate, but myenthusiasm sometimes is not "heard" unless it is immediately backed up by an award.

But I must wait for our top choices to make their decisions. I COMMUNICATE with them in the interim, and I expect (andreceive) honesty from them. Often, they tell me they are waiting for University of YZ, and that's fair enough. I know when University of YZ notifies. When they finally hear from U of YZ, the candidate contacts me, and I can move down the list, if necessary, and call to extend offers to the next-ranked candidate.

My department's applicant pool is deep enough (and our program is strong enough) sothat we always have a couple of accepted students who commit to attend without support. I sometimes have the pleasure of calling one of thesestudents a few days before April 15 with an offer of support. I love those calls.

I do hope this helps to demystify the process a bit.

Best wishes to all of you.