A few notes on Early Notification decisions

Those of you who submitted your applications by the Early Notification deadline should by now have received your admissions decision (and if not, check your application status page!). While I think our Early Notification process is pretty straightforward, I always like to provide a bit of context for these candidates to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Obviously any decision release involves some unhappy news for some candidates, and unfortunately there’s not much I can offer to lessen that sting than to say I’m sorry for the disappointment. We received a large number of applications this year, which means that some talented individuals are nonetheless not offered admission. We appreciate the time and work it takes to put an application together, and hope some of these candidates will consider reapplying in a future term.

To those of you who were admitted, congratulations! You can expect to hear from us frequently over the coming months, and I encourage you to use this time to take a deeper dive into your research about Fletcher. Those of you who also applied for scholarship aid consideration will receive that information by mid-March, and all admitted candidates have until April 20 to make their enrollment decision. We’ll look forward to being in touch with you!

Finally, some applicants have been placed in something of a holding pattern. There are some candidates the Admissions Committee would like to review further in the context of the larger application pool that will take shape in mid-January. This gives us a bit more time for application review, and it allows these applicants an opportunity to submit additional application documents that might be available in the near term, such as another recommendation letter, a new resume detail, or an updated transcript. If you’re one of these candidates, the main thing to understand at this point is that many applications that follow this path are ultimately admitted! You can feel free to be in touch with our office at any point if you have questions.

A sincere thank you to all applicants who made the effort to apply by our early deadline. It’s a fun time of year for us as it marks the start of our main reading season, which most agree is one of the best parts of Admissions work. We’ll look forward to being in touch with many of you, and extend our best wishes to all.