Now the waiting... (Status Update 3/17)

Update on the schools I've heard from:

Columbia Univ (Business) - rejected
Univ Chicago (Business) - rejected
Univ California - Berkeley (Haas) - rejected
Univ Michigan - Ann Arbor (Ross) - rejected
UCLA (Anderson) - offered
UC Irvine (Merage) - offered
Univ Illinois - Urbana Champaign (Psych) - rejected
Univ Illinois - Urbana Champaign (Business) - waiting
Cornell Univ (ILR) - offered
Univ Toronto - (Rotman) - offered
Univ Minnesota - Twin Cities (Carlson - IRC) - offered

gheffo: Congrats! Those are some pretty good schools!

accepted at Michigan State - Fall 2008 PhD Accounting!!

i'm ecstatic!

Congratz... Nice work.

Hey Kumbaya - I see that you have updated your post as denied by Seattle (sorry, buddy, they dinged me too). Do you mind me asking if you recieved notification or had to contact them? I am left with the unsettling certainty that had I not called, I would never have found out my result. That is inappropriate, in my opinion.

Anyway, congrats on SUNY - knock 'em dead.

Penny10:

I got an email on 3/14 from admiss-decision @ grad.washington.edu, titled "University of Washington Graduate Application Decision", with all the information in the email, no link to any other pages. Sometimes I do wonder if adcoms are just waiting to see who cracks and calls/emails first, and reject them out of an "inability to stay patient!", since my rejection from Columbia came right after I emailed them to ask

So just out of curiosity, where is everybody headed?

EDIT: tinkered to remove the email link...

Ahhhh... thanks. That is a different URL than any I programmed into my email safety net. So they probably did try to notify me. 'Sokay, though. Seattle is too rainy anyway!

wow, congrats! whats is your undergrad gpa (not just the 3.7 from the last two years)

i ask b/c my ugrad gpa is so so. 3.1 overall, some dropped courses etc... but my last two years were in the realm of 3.7-3.8 too.

Undegrad gpa was 3.2. I felt this was the weakest part of my application and led to me being screened out right away by some of the schools.

Some adcoms I've been in contact with stated they would be willing to let less-than-satisfactory undergrad grades slide by if the applicant had outstanding GRE/GMAT scores. Of course, I think gheffo's GRE scores are amazing... but then again, maybe some adcoms wanted somebody who was outstanding in both GPA and GRE/GMAT.

Also, I was told unless your graduate degree had something to do with hard quant, grades there don't count much towards anything.

My experience had led me to believe that different schools use different screening methods because I've either been rejected or accepted outright. The ones that rejected me likely did so outright because of my undergrad GPA. I believe that some schools have in place certain mininum standards for each criteria and if you fall below any one of the standards, they'll throw you out. If what I've heard about the admins doing the first round of screening is true for schools in general, then this makes sense. The ones that accepted me probably took a more balanced holistic perspective (where a lower undergrad GPA can be made up for if all the other areas of the application are strong (e.g. GRE, Grad GPA, References, SOP, etc.).

Yeah... it's actually not hard to figure this out, if only I had known back then. Mind you, there will always be exceptions, but some schools have websites with student profiles. Click through each and one of them and sometimes it does sorta hit home what kind of measure you were up against.

gheffo: I agree. The schools you were accepted to were nice enough to give me feedback on my application, and actually gave me almost a point-for-point breakdown in what they were looking for. Most of those did indeed take a holistic approach. Speaking of which, have you heard from UIUC?

Also, no idea if this will be of any help to anybody... most of you probably already know anyway. I just got a call from an adcom, and the prof was actually nice enough to go into some of their financials. This year lots of schools are feeling the crunch, and don't have as much funding as they would like, leading to decreased admissions. For Top 10 schools, this won't be as devastating since they don't take in more than a handful each year. For other schools, this is actually pretty horrible. Worst news? Next year isn't looking great either.

kumbaya: no word from UIUC yet, they're the last one I'm waiting to hear from.

what would one consider "hard quant"? im taking as part of my masters the calculus sequence, linear algebra, intro stat, regression, multivariate, probability thoery, as well as the usual research methods and a couple of marketing classes.

Update: I didn't get in anywhere. Time to figure out how best to improve my GMAT score and apply again in the fall.

ugh, sorry, been busy trying to finish my thesis.

Yeah, all those classes would be good hard quant courses that adcoms will like.

Take 2 for me (rejected everywhere on the first try):

3.5 undergrad - Michigan State
Econ and Accounting BA
18 months experience in IT
4.5 years in Corporate

710 on the GMAT (Q 48 V 38) (compared to 610 the first time)

Will send in apps for accounting Ph.D programs.
Prelim list (might expand to more schools in the coming months):


PhD:

UT Austin
U Michigan
U Chicago
Wharton
U Washington
MSU
HBS

Since I did much better on the GMAT, I will also apply to MBA programs:

MBA:

U Michigan
Wharton
HBS
Chicago