UPenn Rejection Letters

[HayakWasRight]

UPenn needs to get its act together. I was told four weeks ago that letters were to go out at the end of that week. Then, early last week, I was told that letters were on their way, but they gave me my electronic rejection anyway. So, today I finally received the actual letter AND THEY SPELLED MY NAME WRONG. My last name is a very common, American/English name, and they botched it.

I guess it just hurts because they were my top choice and they couldn't even get my name right.

[reactor]

I sympathise but what makes you think that schools care about the people they reject? (or how they reject people).
The way I have experienced it is very simple: contact quickly with email/phone the people we will admit and let the graduate school send through extra-slow snail-mail the reject letters.

[vagabond_shoes]

From what I've learnt this year some schools did give a fair treat to rejected students. IMO treating a student correctly translates into letting them know as soon as possible when a decision has been reached. Some did this sending quick e-mails, like Yale, Berkeley, UCSD, UCLA. Others sent them by snail mail: like Michigan, Stanford, NYU. In most cases when decisions were to be sent by snail mail secretaries had the decency to send quick responses if there was an answer. In my list Northwestern and Penn were the only two programs that showed no respect for rejected students. It's not that I am resented because they didn't admit me, I am going to a program which ranked higher than those in my list but I just didn´t like the way they handled things.

[reactor]

I suspect that USC did not show much respect either.

[HayakWasRight]

I should probably clarify the fact that I completely expected the rejection. When I received the email response (where she spelled my name correctly, I might add), I wasn't even phased. I knew it was a long shot and am perfectly happy with the program that I have selected. It just bothers me that so much is made about being very polite to everyone with whom we correspond, because the academic community is very tight knit and word of rudeness gets around, and then to be rejected in such a manner.

If, someday, I become the Director of Graduate Studies at a university, I will handle things differently. There will be none of this "allowing even obvious rejections to wait until the very end" thing. Even low ranked candidates deserve to know their status so that they can spend more time considering their remaining schools or employment opportunities. I know they receive "many applications from qualified applicants", but I guarantee that there were some applications that they could have discarded back in December.