Are grad school admissions offices generally horrible at replying to emails?

Join the discussion
Registration is free. Start your own thread to ask a follow-up.
Sign up Log in
3 replies · 2K views
Simfish
Gold Member
Messages
811
Reaction score
2
And if so, what other routes have you tried? Does calling them usually work?

I've emailed a lot of grad school admission offices, but I generally get horrible reply rates (as in, I usually only get around 1 reply for every 5 emails). I do try to keep my questions short and simple.

Here's an example of an email I sent to the MIT EAPS department (http://eapsweb.mit.edu/contact.html):

"Hello,

I'm an undergrad who's interested in applying for the EAPS program this year. I have some questions about the "list your textbooks" part of the application.

(1) I took the Atmos 552 course at the University of Washington, and it didn't use a textbook. It did use course notes at http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~dennis/552_Notes_ftp.html, however. Is it okay if I could cite the URL to the course notes instead?
(2) Is it okay if I list textbooks that I self-studied from? Or texts that I used as supplementary texts for a course I took?

Thanks!"
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Physics news on Phys.org

Discussion

Simfish said:
And if so

Yes, they are. You're e-mail is one of hundreds they get.

I'm an undergrad who's interested in applying for the EAPS program this year. I have some questions about the "list your textbooks" part of the application.

The problem with that e-mail is that the answer is likely to be "no one knows since we haven't thought about it." The person that gets your e-mail is likely to be some overworked staffer that has a thousand other things to do. If they want an authoritative answer they have to contact an equally overworked professor that has never really thought about the question.

You may indeed find yourself in a situation in which your application gets canned because of something really stupid, but that's life, and that's why you need to apply to multiple schools. The odds of your application getting rejected somewhere for some really stupid reason is high, but the odds of your application getting rejected *everywhere* for some really stupid reason is low.
 
Ah thanks. Those are definitely good points, so I'll just leave it into increase the variance in my outcomes then.
 
Simfish said:
And if so, what other routes have you tried? Does calling them usually work?

I've emailed a lot of grad school admission offices, but I generally get horrible reply rates (as in, I usually only get around 1 reply for every 5 emails). I do try to keep my questions short and simple.

Yes, you can try calling as well, but I wouldn't unless its really urgent, and if so, then call until at least a few days have passed. I usually got most of my emails replied to within a couple days.

I have some questions about the "list your textbooks" part of the application.

(1) I took the Atmos 552 course at the University of Washington, and it didn't use a textbook. It did use course notes at http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~dennis/552_Notes_ftp.html, however. Is it okay if I could cite the URL to the course notes instead?
(2) Is it okay if I list textbooks that I self-studied from? Or texts that I used as supplementary texts for a course I took?

Thanks!"

I don't think they'll consider it ok to list textbooks you self-studied from. For me, I just left it blank or mentioned 'no textbook' if we didn't use one. I doubt that played a factor in any of the rejections I got