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instajar

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Everything posted by instajar

  1. instajar
    I believe BU has already made decisions on all incoming students. The faculty I spoke with suggested they have a school-wide finalization of their decisions, and offers have already been sent out.
  2. instajar
    I don't really see what people currently do as a good argument for what I should do. If others might strengthen their applications from transferring, I'd encourage them to do so. If this started to cause a systemic issue of too many students transferring, then I think the field as a whole would need to reevaluate their admissions procedures to correct for that.
  3. instajar
    I would be happy going to the lower ranked school. That's why I applied. I just think I might be even happier at the higher ranked school, and I think getting the Master's at the first school could improve my chances. To be honest, looking at the pre-docs, I'm worried I won't get in, and I might not hear back from them in time for the April 15th decision deadline. And I think it's rare for an applicant to know exactly what they're lacking. But surely a Master's (or a pre-doc) can help with the main things like research experience and letters of recommendation. If one has a low GRE score or something quantifiable, then that should be the focus.
  4. instajar
    It looks like NYU's was due Dec 31st, the same time as PhD applications. I also couldn't find a deadline for WashU.
  5. instajar
    Oh that's really interesting. I wish I had known about these earlier, since I think most of the deadlines have already passed. Thank you!
  6. instajar
    Thanks for the useful input, everyone. Are there any links for these predoc programs? I'm not really finding them on Google except for one at NYU, which seems quite competitive.
  7. instajar
    With application results coming in, what do people think is best to do if you get into a safety school, but not one of your top choices? Does it make sense to attend the safety, but re-apply to the top choice in future years? Or is that too much a risk of burning bridges because you will need to ask for LORs from the people at the safety school?
  8. instajar
    That's unfortunate that they got your hopes up. You can't always trust GradCafe, but you also can't always rely on interviewer feedback. I think it's just the personality of some people to be complimentary, and often they do genuinely think you did a great job. But there are a lot of applicants who do a great job and aren't accepted. It's simply the nature of PhD admissions that they will have far more qualified applicants than they can accept. Point being, you probably were favorably evaluated and did very well in the interview. But it's still very hard to say if you will get an offer. You'll just have to deal with uncertainty a bit longer.
  9. instajar
    For the folks discussing BU, that's just for quant marketing, right? Has anyone heard back from Strategy & Innovation?
  10. instajar
    I'm not sure anyone can really say for sure. Most of these programs interview and accept small numbers of students, so it's usually not like economics or psychology where a cohort is 10+ people. If you have a connection at a university, such as a professor you've emailed with, you could try to check where they are in their process, but you do risk annoying them. Sorry not to be more helpful!
  11. instajar
    Sorry to hear that. For what it's worth, I think people in general are really bad at guessing how an interview went. A lot of it has to do with the personality of the interviewer. Do they like to compliment the interviewee and provide encouragement to make them comfortable? Or do they just cut to the chase and want to get the interview done? Do they like interviewing and see it as an important part of the process? Or do they just want to check the box and not really care how it goes? If they don't ask you any questions, it's probably a more informal discussion designed to just give you the opportunity to learn more about their program. I've also heard they can be used just to check an applicant's English fluency, though I don't know if that's really true. It's also good that you overprepared! There are always a lot more possibilities than realities when it comes to interviewing. If you prepared more things to discuss and more questions to ask than you had the opportunity for, then it means you did a good job preparing enough material.
  12. instajar
    Interesting. So maybe it's just a matter of low sample size, and 2019 might have had an unusually high number of applicants posting to GradCafe.
  13. instajar
    Is it just me, or does it seem like programs haven't sent out as many notifications by now as they usually do? For OB/Management at Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, Yale, and Chicago, looking at the results on Grad Cafe, there are no results reported yet they usually have been by now. Any ideas? Maybe some programs aren't interviewing this year?
  14. instajar
    That's huge! Congrats!
  15. instajar
    I think it's better to keep everything in one location, and that seems to be Grad Cafe. My bigger worry is that some people might not be posting to Grad Cafe, and with the smaller programs, it's hard to know if I've missed a wave of interviews.
  16. instajar
    What kind of questions?
  17. instajar
    Sorry to hear that. What went wrong? FYI, a lot of people think they tanked interviews that actually went fine :) Faculty are rarely as critical towards you as you are towards yourself.
  18. instajar
    Interesting. I considered tweeting about my progress, but figured it'd be too tacky if any faculty saw, so I was just curious how they were going about it. That sounds like on the fast end. Mine have been from 2 days to a week in advance, but the faculty usually gave me a week of dates to choose from.
  19. instajar
    What tweet? They have started, yes, but I'd guess only 1/3 of schools have sent out invites yet. A lot will happen in February. You can look at Grad Cafe to see when specific programs are sending invites.
  20. instajar
    I haven't done this for a PhD interview, but I've seen it in other academic contexts. It usually is about strengths and weaknesses, like you say. Sometimes it's open-ended, and sometimes it's more specific like "What do you think of their data analysis?" or "If you could run another study to follow up on these findings, what would it be?" I think one of the best pieces of advice is to be creative, try to think of different 'holes' in the paper, but be modest and don't try to make any sweeping generalizations, especially ones that go against commonly held views in the field. (Later in your academic career this is okay, as long as you can back it up! Ideally with one of your publications.)
  21. instajar
    I didn't apply for BBP, but it seems Haas in general is taking longer to send out interviews than in past years. I'm not sure why.
  22. instajar
    Thank you! I will ask these, probably after I'm admitted. What specifically should I ask about the comps process? (I know what they are, just not sure what to keep an eye out for.)
  23. instajar
    As we're starting to compare programs and will soon need to make decisions, it seems like not many departments post detailed information on graduation and placements. Is there a way to find out how many entering PhD students (1) drop out, (2) graduate and get academic jobs, (3) graduate and get non-academic jobs?
  24. instajar
    Yes. Sorry. I was remembering a Gradcafe result that said "was happy to be among the 15 to interview, heartbroken not to be able to break into the 6 people offered place in the program." So that's really a 40% chance. I will edit my previous comment. Sorry to hear you got nervous, but I bet you did better than you think you did. I think a lot of professors also have been through many interviews themselves and understand that nervousness and applicant-quality are both factors in how people act during interviews, and they try to recognize how nervous you are and account for that. I don't have any special tips for not getting nervous. Acknowledging it, taking deep breaths, and having someone around to talk through your nervousness with before the interview seem like some steps you can take. You could also mention it at the beginning about the interview, just a brief, "I'm feeling quite nervous, so please forgive me if I misspeak," could make sense? It might help calm you down and help them understand. But I don't know.
  25. instajar
    I haven't had an interview yet, but I have 3 scheduled and I asked one if there's anything I should do to prepare, and the professor said it was about me getting to learn about them and the department. There was no mention of them getting to learn more about me. I don't expect it to be that one-sided, but I found that response interesting. Doesn't seem like it's like job interviews where the job candidate does almost all the talking. Regarding admission chance, I'm also curious and will ask the schools about this in my interviews. I remember reading in another thread here or on grad cafe that one program did something like 15 interviews for 3 slots. So it may range from 20% to 50% chance. Edit: The example I had in mind is 6 offers for 3 slots with 15 interviews, so that's a 40% chance of an offer.
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