RRR3

Michigan will be making decisions on the first wave of interviewees after Monday next week.

Based on the information your interviewer gave you, I'd say the likelihood hovers between 33% and 50%.

I'm in the same spot here, but the fellowship expires in about two weeks. Hopefully I hear back from the other key school I'm waiting for before it expires...

After meeting with eight professors and a dozen PhD students at a campus visit, is one expected to send 20 unique thank you emails? My emerging practice is to send an email to the adcom director and any other individual with whom I made a notable connection. Thoughts?

That's a fair question. I would try to attend the first couple minutes of his presentation, making sure to get a really good look at what he's wearing. Then, leave the presentation early, drive to your closest department store, and try to purchase clothing to match his outfit as closely as possible. Details are important here - do NOT skimp on the shoes! Washing professors' rental car windows while wearing matching apparel has never not led to an acceptance. Good luck - let us all know how it goes!

Your best bet is to find his rental car and make sure to be washing his windows when he approaches it after the presentation.

Costanza - I agree with YaSvoboden that people tend to be too harsh when evaluating profiles. Because unless you open up your entire file to be evaluated, and unless those evaluating profiles can get inside the heads of the members of each program's admissions committee, it's pointless for people in these forums to tell you where you will/won't be accepted. For what it's worth, I have been told by several people at former and prospective accounting programs that highlighting the unique aspects of your application will give you the best chance at success. That seems to be working fairly well for me thus far (although no offer in hand... yet...). I have a 730 GMAT and no advanced math, but I have a MAcc, a CPA, and extremely relevant experience with decent letters (two of which relate to my experience). I beat my experience to death in all of my application materials, including CV, statement of purpose, personal statement, etc. I only applied to six schools, all in the Top 20 range, and I have two campus visits scheduled with consensus Top 10 schools. I don't know how it will all play out for me, but I'm sure that asking for a profile evaluation here would have led to some discouragement and might have influenced my application choices. So my advice - with the qualification that I have not been accepted anywhere - is to find something in your profile that makes you different from other applicants, and then highlight that as much as possible.

Has everyone heard of IFTTT.com? I set a recipe to check the GC RSS feed with a keyword of "accounting" and email me if anything new popped up. I thought that would help me focus, but I still refresh GC ~125 times per day.

I completely agree with the suit suggestion, although I had a professor poke fun at my suit over a Skype interview two weeks ago... Question for the group - does the shirt color matter? I have always been encouraged to wear a white shirt when interviewing for professional accounting positions, but I'm currently debating if I should extend that principle to academic settings.

Haha, I hadn't thought to check my spam folders! Just spent 2.5 frantic minutes of my own sorting through free Rx ads - and nothing...

Thanks for the response, YaSvoboden (slovno ptitsa v nebesakh...?). That was my impression as well - I only applied to six schools and those two + Indiana are my only three that seem to be maintaining radio silence.

From your list, it looks (based on GC) like Berkeley and Michigan have still not reached out to anyone... Have you heard or seen anywhere that they have started notifying applicants of rejections, interviews, etc.?