I was surprised with my admission process outcome

[viveco]

@state school

I chose all the schools after talking to atleat on the professors, and I was initially assured of a decent funding, while at Univ. of Oregon, the message that gave was like admissions wont be a problem but funds would be. This is how eventually i chose my schools, but under the assumption that my research interests are well taken care of.

[Tex Jansen]

Oregon may be a better program than OSU but the two programs have very different specialities. OSU should only be considered for Ag Ec (which UO does not have), while macro is by far Oregon's best area.

[viveco]

I wanted to do applied IO in which Oregon State is pretty good.

[asianeconomist]

Originally Posted by viveco

I chose all the schools after talking to atleat on the professors, and I was initially assured of a decent funding,

Did you actually contact professors (email, telephone) from schools that you applied to and they assured you of admission + funding ?

[viveco]

I know that this is something which is against what has been discussed on this platform that we should not contact the profs and pester them. But honestly speaking, not only me but most of the applicants in my country would not put their money in a school unless and until they get positive signals from the grad director. At times this signal was straight forward, at times not that explicit. Other than UNC, I had explicit discussion with the profs or the grad director regarding funding and admissions. Intrestingly, it took me the same time to prepare the generic part of the mail as my SOP.

[jenizaro]

Originally Posted by viveco

I know that this is something which is against what has been discussed on this platform that we should not contact the profs and pester them. But honestly speaking, not only me but most of the applicants in my country would not put their money in a school unless and until they get positive signals from the grad director. At times this signal was straight forward, at times not that explicit. Other than UNC, I had explicit discussion with the profs or the grad director regarding funding and admissions. Intrestingly, it took me the same time to prepare the generic part of the mail as my SOP.

You learn everyday... I wish I'd have known this before.

[asianeconomist]

Originally Posted by viveco

I know that this is something which is against what has been discussed on this platform that we should not contact the profs and pester them. But honestly speaking, not only me but most of the applicants in my country would not put their money in a school unless and until they get positive signals from the grad director. At times this signal was straight forward, at times not that explicit. Other than UNC, I had explicit discussion with the profs or the grad director regarding funding and admissions. Intrestingly, it took me the same time to prepare the generic part of the mail as my SOP.

This is really interesting !

Did you receive any stern refusals from the places that you emailed to ?

[viveco]

@jenizaro, yeah thats true, the same way that i have learnt many useful things from you guys with respect to selection of schools, once i had some decent admits.

@asianeconomist, yeah a prof from tamu told me he cant be of my help, another from Georgia told me not to send such mails to any serious econ dept. But other than that grad directors were happy to evaluate the chances, it was more true for agecon schools, where matching of interest is very important. But you see even if one or two schools dont respond or respond with harsh words, it hardly matters because they are so many similar ranked schools in any speciality out there in US that you can take your chances, and try to optimize the investment. At least this is the way I look at the things.

[asianeconomist]

Originally Posted by viveco

@asianeconomist, yeah a prof from tamu told me he cant be of my help, another from Georgia told me not to send such mails to any serious econ dept. But other than that grad directors were happy to evaluate the chances, it was more true for agecon schools, where matching of interest is very important. But you see even if one or two schools dont respond or respond with harsh words, it hardly matters because they are so many similar ranked schools in any speciality out there in US that you can take your chances, and try to optimize the investment. At least this is the way I look at the things.

I agree, absolutely. Especially the ARE bit.

[viveco]

Even one of the grad directors from a top 40 econ school asked me to send the hard copy of my conversation with him in the admission packet. And yes I got funding over there as well.