eventualprof

See if you can get an agenda/itinerary from the coordinator. This will help you plan the depth of your conversations (you may want to go deeper into a topic if you have an hour, as opposed to a 20-minute talk) and, more importantly, you may find out the name of the faculty member that you are meeting with. You will likely know these names already, but maybe you could do a little more targeted preparation for the meeting with this information in-hand. That targeted preparation should include the topics that the faculty member is interested in and how that faculty member approaches research (i.e., how do they answer their research questions?). That faculty member's view of the world may align with yours or not, but it is good to know how they see things pre-meeting. Good luck!

First off, way to get back on the horse. Your experience this year will undoubtedly help you in the next cycle. Research activity and your passion for further research should be paramount. In addition to work that you have already completed, highlight work that you are conducting and work that you dream about doing. Just because you have not executed does not mean that you do not have passion. Do not fail to mention research in your 2016 submission materials. I think that will boost your chances. Best of luck.

Ouch.

^^^ That's more like it. :-)

Umm...stop killing trees. Thanks.

This is why it is important to choose the right program. It is an individualized decision, depending on your skills and tendencies. Hopefully you can find research teams within your building. If not, those people know other people outside your university that are interested in the same things you are. I think it is also important to develop your network outside your training institution; that gives you a much bigger pool of talent to draw from. Notice that your ability to find a faculty that compliments your abilities has very little to do with the ranking of your university. It has more to do with your ability to know your strengths, recognize strengths in other people, and pinpoint researchers that can compliment your strengths. Alas, the university you attend can still open doors for you, but I think it is more important to knock on the appropriate doors, which has nothing to do with your school and everything to do with you. Go start knocking today. :)

Second round woes... The Buckeyes won the game that they were supposed to win, and that game was fun to watch.

A: Because Xanth wanted to see some high-quality basketball! That. Was. Awesome. Don't worry X-man, Duke still sucks in many regards...but not at basketball on this night.

Your CB professors will likely use SPSS. If you work with the psychology department, they will encourage you to learn R as well. If you take the psych data analysis series, you can learn both SPSS and R at the same time! They'll also strongly encourage you to write/save the syntax for SPSS, giving you some programming logic along the way. I recommend that three-course series in your first year. It is rigorous, but I've learned a lot. Also, I recommend getting as much of the stats software as you can when you get your laptop. It will come preloaded with SPSS (a hint at what your faculty has voted they want you to learn), and R is a free download. Every once in a while, you'll run into an analysis that is better-done in one software than the other. MATLAB is good at matrix manipulation, for example. If you have the tools (site licences for most packages make it free for the school to add a seat), it is easier to try other products when an opportunity presents itself.

Perhaps. It depends on what the wait list is used for. Some use it as you assume, an additional pool of qualified applicants that barely lost out in the offer competition, one that can be tapped if someone decides not to come. Others might use it this way some years and not in years when the applicant pool is less than spectacular. Still others might use the wait list as an easier let down for highly qualified (but nonetheless unacceptable in the current year) students. For example, which sounds better to you, a rejection or a wait list + rejection? The former gives no indication of your position while the latter indicates that you were close to an admit, even if there is no intent to give you one. I acknowledge that this is a far-fetched idea for how a wait list might be used, but one path to rejection is certainly easier to reconcile in an applicant's mind than the other. The wait list can be viewed as the school keeping its options open. The school has no obligation to exercise the options when they are presented with an opportunity, but they could. Individual results will vary.

It is also possible that a school makes no movement on the wait list when an admitted student declines. I'm sure that many schools move down the list after an offer is declined, but I have heard of at least two schools that just lived with a smaller cohort when an admitted student did not decide to matriculate. And this could be different for each school each year, depending on the applicant pool and the current lot of PhD students, among other factors My point is that most of us have no idea what the actual repercussions will be when a student accepts early or late. For those of you that have offers and are still mulling the possibilities, keep soul searching. You should not make a decision hastily. If you know, pull the trigger when you feel the time is right. For those of you who are waiting, you're in a tough position. Control what you can. Usually, that sphere of influence does not include other people that you've never met on an internet forum, and it probably doesn't include adcoms that may or may not decide to move down the list. Things may work out in your favor. We're still a couple of weeks away from the 15th. Remember that it is unlikely that anyone is trying to "screw" you by considering their options a little longer. There are even some on this forum who are considering your feelings when making their decision, something that is not required. Hang in there. There's still hope. Great things can come from incredibly painful situations, even if it takes longer than you originally anticipated.

Yep. A strange thing happened to me too. I received an offer from a finance program after applying to the department of management. It was only a clerical error. The office person was sending out offers to all the recent admits, for the whole business school, and just didn't change the offer letter template. They fixed it when I brought it to their attention. There was nothing fishy going on, just an honest human error. Congratulations on the offer!

Life just got better for you. Do something fun this summer to charge your batteries.

There is probably something to what myndfood and others suggest. I received an offer letter that accepted me to a finance program. This was strange considering I applied to management programs. It turned out that the offer was valid, but it was not a management faculty member that sent out the letter. It was a person that interacts with all of the b-school PhD students, and that person didn't take the time to change the form-type offer letter. The level of care placed in these letters (acceptance or rejection) does not match the level of care that an applicant has. Hopefully we can extend some grace or forgiveness to those people who are asked to send out hundreds of letters in response to the glut of applications.

And that's how that's done! Good game. :)