Day 890 of 1000
Christian has his first interview with a prospective professor in a few minutes. Those kinds of things can be pretty nerve-wracking the first time you do them. He has this and one more telephone interview scheduled in addition to his trip to Arizona State. The sense we have about his situation right now is that there is a category of Electrical Engineering research professors who need graduate students with deeper math skills than the normal Electrical Engineering undergraduate student has time to take. So, for those professors, Christian’s background is particularly attractive. Our sense is that this category of professors make up a small, but not insignificant minority in most of the universities to which Christian has applied.
Another thing we have learned is that it is not so common that he would get contacted so early in the process. Most of the phone interviewing appears to starts in February and goes on through early March. It also seems that early to mid-March is when the first round of accept/reject letters go out with April 15 as the date when students have to decide to accept/reject any acceptances they receive. So, there is another round starting in April where schools whose students did not accept their offers can be backfilled with previous rejections.
It is all pretty nerve-wracking.
Betty Blonde #55 –10/01/2008
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