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Fall 2020 PhD start - PhD Applicant Sweat Thread


instajar

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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.

 

They started grilling me from the word go! I don't think I handled it properly.

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Hi guys, I guess this is kind of a beginner question, but I was trying to understand if anyone had personal experience about this. I applied to several Ph.D programs in Finance for which the interview requests seems to have been sent out already. Is it possible to be admitted even if they do not send you an interview request? Or has it ever happened that people were contacted for an interview later in the game - or later with respect to the majority of potential candidates? Just trying to understand if not receiving a request for an interview when they have been sent should be interpreted as an implicit rejection or not!

BTW congrats to all prospective Ph.D. candidates who are preparing for their interviews!

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Is it possible to be admitted even if they do not send you an interview request? Or has it ever happened that people were contacted for an interview later in the game - or later with respect to the majority of potential candidates?

 

Yeah, it's possible to be admitted without an interview, and also it's possible to be contacted for an interview later. Typically it's not like that, but it's possible.

 

In the years I have been here at Urch, I've seen a few cases. Users who had almost lost hope, and then were contacted by some amazing universities.

 

This is just speculation, but these are some potential reasons I think for that.

 

One, you may be put into an unofficial waitlist. You were not one of the top applicants, but they are still willing to interview or to extend an offer to you, if another applicant decline the offer they get. Since this can take some time to happen (successful applicants usually don't decline an offer immediately), you could get an interview very late in the game.

 

Two, different professors may have different ways to evaluate applicants. Maybe your application got the attention of a professor who don't think it's necessary to interview you, or who was busy with something else and so he was late compared to other professors doing interviews.

 

When I was "sweating" here, people often said that no news is good news. And at least sometimes that's true.

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Hi guys, I guess this is kind of a beginner question, but I was trying to understand if anyone had personal experience about this. I applied to several Ph.D programs in Finance for which the interview requests seems to have been sent out already. Is it possible to be admitted even if they do not send you an interview request? Or has it ever happened that people were contacted for an interview later in the game - or later with respect to the majority of potential candidates? Just trying to understand if not receiving a request for an interview when they have been sent should be interpreted as an implicit rejection or not!

BTW congrats to all prospective Ph.D. candidates who are preparing for their interviews!

I would say it depends on the interview process of the school. For some schools I interviewed with, the interviewees were distributed to several professors, and they would contact you at their own discretion. I was contacted 2 weeks after some interview info showed up on Gradcafe.

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Hi to those reading this thread!

 

I am super anxious as I have not heard back from any schools (Marketing CB) yet! So I know my chances are slim. :(

 

There is a school that has interviewed and also offered acceptances, as seen on GradCafe. That school sent me a generic email today letting me know that my application is complete for a review by the department. I'm not sure what that really means since the deadline passed a month ago! Anyone get the same email? I had lost hope on that school, however it is one of my top choices so I'm hoping that they just now got to my application?

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Hi to those reading this thread!

 

I am super anxious as I have not heard back from any schools (Marketing CB) yet! So I know my chances are slim. :(

 

There is a school that has interviewed and also offered acceptances, as seen on GradCafe. That school sent me a generic email today letting me know that my application is complete for a review by the department. I'm not sure what that really means since the deadline passed a month ago! Anyone get the same email? I had lost hope on that school, however it is one of my top choices so I'm hoping that they just now got to my application?

You may want to reach out to the coordinator. There could've been some issues with your application that delayed the process of sending the application from the graduate school to the department. If it's true that they've sent out offers, then you can still get into the waitlist in case someone turns down their offer.

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Yeah, it's possible to be admitted without an interview, and also it's possible to be contacted for an interview later. Typically it's not like that, but it's possible.

 

In the years I have been here at Urch, I've seen a few cases. Users who had almost lost hope, and then were contacted by some amazing universities.

 

This is just speculation, but these are some potential reasons I think for that.

 

One, you may be put into an unofficial waitlist. You were not one of the top applicants, but they are still willing to interview or to extend an offer to you, if another applicant decline the offer they get. Since this can take some time to happen (successful applicants usually don't decline an offer immediately), you could get an interview very late in the game.

 

Two, different professors may have different ways to evaluate applicants. Maybe your application got the attention of a professor who don't think it's necessary to interview you, or who was busy with something else and so he was late compared to other professors doing interviews.

 

When I was "sweating" here, people often said that no news is good news. And at least sometimes that's true.

 

Do all top-10 US Finance programs interview?

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Anyone wants to start a result thread?

 

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.

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To those getting interviews and/or acceptances: did you apply early in the admissions cycle?

I am just curious and want to understand if the admin segregates the apps into a few buckets and interviews a bunch from each bucket in waves or if all the applications are reviewed together after the deadline and then a complete list is created for shortlisted candidates to be interviewed.

 

I have heard that its the latter, however I feel it could also be the former for some schools. Thoughts?

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