Day 913 of 1000

Kelly and Christian have each received verbal commitments for funded PhD’s from top-tier universities–actually Christian has the received formal acceptance at one of the schools. They each applied at six schools and each of them have also been rejected by two schools.  The website at Kelly’s current top opportunity says 15 candidates are accepted out of a pool of about 500 who apply.  Christian was one of 15 out of a pool of 303 applicants who was invited to a recruiting event.  He has been offered plane tickets to fly out to two schools so far.  It took a little bit of finagling, but he is going to visit both schools.

The funny deal is the kids had personal and/or email contact with professors at most of the schools before they applied, but none for their current top choices.  In both cases, a specific professor identified something he liked about their applications and made direct contact.  I think that is probably the big key to this whole thing: to have something specific you want to do backed up with experience, classes, and skills that allows you to hit the ground running.  There are still visits and communications and a bunch of other things to do before either Kelly or Christian will be ready to commit, but at least now they have a choice.

Betty Blonde #76 – 10/30/2008
Betty Blonde #76
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