- About
Who We Are - Admissions
Join Fletcher - Academics
Degrees + Programs - Career Services
For Students + Employees - Students
Life at Fletcher - Research
Faculty + Centers - News + Media
Fletcher Updates - Alumni
Stay Connected
- About
Currently viewing the tag: "deadlines"
A good proportion of the callers and emailers we’ll hear from this week will be asking some variation of the question, “What will happen if my recommendation/test score/transcript arrives after January 15?” Ideally, all the bits and pieces of your application, including those that someone else needs to send on your behalf, will be here before January 15. But life is often less than ideal, and we’re used to that.
If you haven’t already submitted your application (note that there’s still time to adopt the Personal Deadline approach), just be sure that you submit all the components of the online application by January 15. (That is: the form, the essays, the scholarship application, and anything you need to upload, such as your résumé.) For the other materials, while we prefer that they also arrive by January 15, you can take advantage of a grace period until February 1.
I want to be sure that, in the process of answering one question, I don’t create ten others. What I’m saying is that if (for example) you took the GREs on January 10, and scores won’t arrive for another two weeks, you don’t need to worry — we’ll still consider your application to have arrived by the January 15 deadline, so long as you have submitted your part on time. Please don’t assume that I’m saying that everyone is free to submit all materials by February 1 just because it’s more relaxing.
The obvious reality is that we can’t process, let alone review, 1800 applications on the day they arrive. Pulling everything together takes time. So we’ll review applications in order, as they become complete, with the expectation that all materials will arrive by February 1.
And here’s one more answer to a question we’ll be hearing: January 15 means that the online application should be time-stamped January 15 by 11:59 p.m. U.S. Eastern Standard Time. But do yourself a favor, don’t wait until that almost-midnight hour.
Excuse my nosiness, but I’m wondering why you haven’t submitted your application yet.
Is it because you only recently decided to apply, and you’re still putting everything together? In that case, take your time — you have until January 15 at 11:59 p.m.
Is it because you’re waiting for some hidden voice to tell you that the time has come to hit “submit”? In that case, let me be the hidden voice: SUBMIT NOW!
Are you somewhere between the two? Then I want to suggest that you assign yourself a Personal Deadline before January 15, when (if past patterns hold) a thousand of your prospective future classmates will all finally decide to let their applications come through. We’re prepared for the paper. And for the constant hum of the printer (more of a “mmmmmswosh, mmmmmswosh”) as each page is printed and shoots out. And for the bags and bags of mail. Yes, we’re geared up and ready for the January 15 crush, so I’m not suggesting the Personal Deadline for our benefit. No, dear applicant, it’s for you.
Why? Well…first, because teeny little troubles turn into mega-hassles when you wait until the last minute. A half hour without internet access on January 3 is no big deal. A half hour without internet access on January 15 is reason to PANIC!
Also, if you submit your application on January 15, it will take a week to ten days before you can confidently check the Graduate Application Management System and expect to find useful information. Those 1,000 applications and all the transcripts, test scores, etc. that go with them need to be linked up, and that just takes time. Organization, and time. Organization, and time, and file folders.
If you adopt the Personal Deadline approach and submit your application on, say, January 5, we’ll have all your materials in a tidy folder within a couple of days. We make every effort to keep up with the paper flow, and we’re going to jump on the opportunity to put your file together.
So, please. Open up your calendar, be it electronic or paper. Turn to a convenient pre-January 15 page, and assign yourself a Personal Deadline. While your prospective future classmates FREAK OUT on the 15th, you can sip a frothy cappuccino and relax.
Applications to the PhD program are, without a doubt, the most complex each year — both for the applicants, and for the Admissions Office and PhD Committee on Admissions. In addition to the usual stuff (form, essays, transcripts, etc.), PhD applicants need to submit a dissertation proposal and master’s thesis or extended writing sample.
Because so much material needs to be compiled, we’ve adjusted the application deadline twice in recent years. First we went from January 15 to January 1. This year, we moved it up again — to December 20. Having the extra time to collect and review all necessary materials helps assure us that we’re giving every application the consideration it deserves.
Every September, there comes a day when I’m surprised to realize that the application deadline for January MALD admission is less than a month away. How can that be? We only just started the semester! Despite my schedule disorientation, we’ll be ready for those applications!
The question I’m asked most often about January admission is how it compares to September admission. And the answer is…they’re pretty much the same. Admittedly, we receive far fewer applications for January admission than September (by an order of magnitude), but we admit only a small group of students. So the “odds” are about the same, and the bottom line is that we still seek students who are academically talented and professionally experienced. After all, we want them to slip seamlessly into the student community — by February they should be indistinguishable from students who entered in any semester before them.
In addition to being the day for dancing around the maypole or celebrating the efforts of workers, May 1 is also the date by which all admitted students should notify us of their enrollment plans, and waitlisted applicants should let us know if they want to continue to wait. Both of those processes can be completed through the Graduate Application Management System.
A little side note on the waitlist. If you follow the news, or if you happen to know high school students applying to college, you may have heard that U.S. colleges and universities are building enormous waitlists to hedge against enrollment uncertainty, given the economic environment. Waitlists are always a hedge, but what’s different is that more applicants are being left in this gray zone.
If this news has been making you anxious, I want to reassure you that Fletcher did not approach the waitlist differently this year. The number of waitlist offers we made was in the normal range, and we expect to find that the usual percent will continue to wait. By next week, we should be able to get a fairly accurate count of matriculating students (though deferral requests continue to mess up our math) and then we’ll figure out our next steps.
Today’s my last day of work before I string together a few University holidays, a few vacation days, and a few Wednesdays off, that together carry me to January 4. I’m looking forward to time at home with my family (my son will be back this afternoon), some movies and reading, and a few days in New Orleans.
If you’re an applicant to the PhD program, you’re probably finishing up your application so that it will arrive before the January 1 deadline. If you’re applying to one of the other programs, you have extra time before the January 15 deadline, but remember that you don’t need to wait until the last minute!
Whenever your application is due, you won’t hear much from us during the weeks that follow. The process of compiling, reading, discussing, and deciding on applications keeps us pretty busy. I’ll post to the blog, but there won’t be as many email updates, etc., as you may have become accustomed to (for better or worse). I’d like to describe it as a break from the stresses of applying to grad school, but I know it can be an even-more-stressful period of waiting to hear. Try to relax anyway!
I haven’t provided many application tips this year — I must be out of new ideas. I encourage you to scroll through the posts archived in the Admissions Tips category. There may be something useful there for you.
Please remember that the Office of Admissions will be closed on Thursday and Friday both this week and next. Happy holidays to everyone!
Yesterday, I posted an entry on standardized tests, but I actually wrote it — and intended to post it — on Tuesday afternoon. It was about 1:15 and I needed to leave the office in time to reach Boston College for a 4:30 information session, with a stop mid-route at Kayla’s school for parent-teacher conferences. I proofread the post and hit “publish.” The little “I”m working on it” swirly icon kept swirling. And swirling. And swirling. Finally, a message about something-or-other “timing out.” Aaargh. Hit “publish” again. This time, I’m packing up the things I need while the swirling carries on, but the result was no different. Now I really need to leave, so (for insurance) I cut the blog text and pasted it into an email to myself, turned off the computer and left. The draft was still there on Wednesday and the publish button was much more agreeable.
Last Friday was the deadline for students to apply for positions on the Committee on Admissions. There aren’t many classes on Friday afternoon, so it’s completely understandable that students would leave the task to the last minute. How could they know there would be a huge explosion and fire in Medford Square that knocked out electricity on campus until the next day? Not a lot of printers will work without electricity. While the applications reached us in time (and we were grappling with the black-out as well, so it was easy to sympathize), the students were sweating over it much more than they needed to.
Dear blog reader, you’re probably wondering why I’m telling these little stories. The reason: to remind you that there are forces beyond our control that occasionally pop up to thwart our wishes to meet a deadline. So many of our applications come in date/time-stamped 11:59 p.m. on the day they’re due. Please don’t do this to yourself. The Early Notification deadline is November 15, but you really can send us the application on November 14. Really. Leave yourself a little time to solve any problems that come up. Line up your recommendations and take your standardized tests well in advance of the deadline. If nothing goes wrong, you still get to breathe easy. If you hit a snag, you’ll be glad for the breathing room.
My son Josh, to whose college application process I occasionally referred last year, is home from school. It’s great to have him around, and it’s also great to see his friends, who tend to show up whenever he’s in the house. There were fourteen 18-year-old boys hanging around my living room on Saturday, playing poker and video games, eating pizza, and generally enjoying their reunion.
I had a chance to ask a number of the boys how they enjoyed their first semester of college, and the early reviews are pretty positive. But nearly all of them described a challenge they faced — first-year chemistry; a busy class schedule; keeping up with reading throughout the semester, rather than just before exams; dormitory living; uninspiring teachers for entry-level courses; etc. Clearly, they’re all hoping that the fall was their stepping stone to greater success in the later years of their education.
And how about you, blog reader? Do you cringe just a bit when you look at the grades from your first semester or two? Depending on how much you cringe, you may want to provide a little explanation in your application. A sentence or two (no whining, please!) in the “additional information” section of the application (not in one of the required essays) could be just what you need. Acknowledge your challenge, and, if possible, point us toward information that redirects our focus away from the lower grades. For example: “Although I did not do well in calculus in my first semester at XYZ University, I would like to point to the A’s I received in micro and macro economics, as well as the strong score I received on the quantitative portion of the GRE.” Or: “I found the transition to university life to be difficult and my first-year grades were disappointing to me. I hope the Committee on Admissions will note the strong grades I received in my last three years of study.”
With two simple sentences, you help the Committee to understand a shortcoming in your application, and move on. Sometimes I have the feeling that the applicant is thinking, “If I just bury my head in the sand, no one will notice that I have a low GPA.” Sorry…we notice. That’s our job. So help us out, and don’t make us guess what was going on.
Schedule notes: PhD applications are due January 1. The regular deadline for all other programs is January 15. Please note that the University (including our office) will be closed on December 24, December 25, December 26, January 1, and January 2.
I know I said this last year, but I’m going to say it again for this year’s applicants: you don’t need to wait until the application deadline to submit your materials. The deadline, after all, refers to the final date on which you can submit your application. Waiting until the last minute means that any problems you encounter may not be solvable in time.
I certainly encourage you to take the time you need to write your essays, but I suggest that you aim to press the submit button a reasonable period in front of the deadline. And, you should already have nagged your recommenders, taken your standardized tests, etc.
The first of the upcoming deadlines is January 1 for PhD applicants. If you’re one of these prospective students, you should also take into consideration the time it will take for your thesis to reach us by mail. Please don’t hold those supporting materials until the last minute — you’ll want to give us the time we need to review your application carefully.
Everyone else has at least until January 15 but, as I’ll say each year, don’t wait until the last minute!
