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[permagrad]

I should have seen it coming.

Asked for recommendations from faculty in my program to continue from Master's to Ph.D. in same program. Faculty, who have been pressing me to continue in said program for over a year, enthusiastically agree. I get everything of mine in on time, send thank you/reminders to faculty rec writers prior to deadline.

I hadn't heard anything, so I checked on my application status. Turns out they never wrote the letters! None of them. I asked why. To a one, they said, "I forgot." They are now writing the letters (they say), but other people from "outside" have jumped the queue because my application packet isn't complete yet. (We have revolving admissions.)

I am updating my resume, because I was a dumb*** and put all my eggs in one basket, figuring the risk was worth it.

Moral of this story: don't do what I did. Guess I get to apply to other schools next year, and ask people not on my committee for recs.

[tamiam]

Absentminded professors.

Words of advice:


Nobody will ever do what they say they will without being reminded, then nagged. Nobody. Ever. Not college professors, not children, not students, not the kitchen installation department at Lowes (don't get me started), NOBODY. This is why the "customer service" profession exists. Customer service reps, in some companies, are nothing but professional nags to make sure that everyone else in the company does what they're supposed to do.

So, be a nag. Or, in fancier terms, "advocate for yourself."

Good luck! Let us know how this all ends up.

[case_insensitive]

tamiam is right, as usual. nag, nag, nag. those profs will mostly appreciate the reminders, actually.

[permagrad]

I'm nagging in writing NOW (I guess moral number two would be: "Don't nag verbally"). At least that way I have a paper trail.

I'm also covering my bets by asking a couple of other folks (whom I know to be anal) to submit recs as a secondary CYA. The more the merrier, all that.

I think the problem may be that because everyone's been treating it like a done deal for so long, they've forgotten that there's procedural BS that has to be taken care of to make it real. I'm a worrywort anyway, and it's just killing me that everything's happening about six weeks later than it was "supposed to".

I'm an older student in the midst of a major career change, so this is really freaking me out. I already have the weirdest resume in the world thanks to my previous career, and I think I just made it weirder with my Master's (assuming I have to hit the job market for a year or so), assuming I don't keep going....

[kaysixteen]

This behavior is the height of professional irresponsibility on the part of these professors, and they should be punished somehow.  They held the career of this person in their hands when they agreed to write recs for him, and they did not care.  Perhaps they did not really want to write recs for him, but did not have the balls to say so.  In any case, how exactly is a grad student supposed to nag professors for such recommendations, without risking p-ing them off?

[iomhaigh]

Oh, you can nag without p*ssing them off, k16.  I did it for eight solid years and my advisors still like me.  The key is to doing it without being brusque or sounding ungrateful or entitled.

Hey Advisors!
remember that form? 
the other 37 forms I needed over the course of my graduate career? 
Remember that rec letter?
The grant application?
The travel grant application?
The archive letter? 
The papers from last year?
My diss chapter (each and every one of them)?
The rest of the forms?

The truly absentminded ones KNOW their tendencies.  Nagging is the only way to get them to remember things.  If nothing else, OP, you'll learn the fine art of nagging without irritating. 

[shrek]

I ALWAYS tell my students to send me an e-mail reminder. I don't mind, in fact I welcome them. Too many is of course obnoxious-- the student who asks every day even tho the deadline is 2 months away, or the student who asks THE DAY BEFORE and then nags (excuse me!!). But, a friendly reminder the week before (and the day before--) is really helpful to me.

[expatinuk]

If it's the same University there really shouldn't be that much of a problem. The same thing happened to me... my file wasn't complete, so I just didn't graduate from the Master's program until the Ph.D. file WAS complete. I was taking classes in the Ph.D. program with no problem.

By the time my file was complete I had a years worth of classes under my belt. On paper it looks like I did a Ph.D. in 2 years...

[malingered]

It's true that the professors screwed up in this case: they agreed to do something and then didn't do it.

But in all fairness, the student also screwed up by taking things for granted and not following through. This is the larger issue, since the main responsibility lies on the student to look out for hus own interest.

I think the real moral here is that when your future hangs in the balance you need to stay on top of the ball and not let up until you know that it's a done deal. In the current case, this would have taken nothing more than continuing to check on the status of his application until everything was complete.

I know hus professors said that they would, in the future, write the recs. But did they at any point say they had actually written them? Did the status page say that they had been submitted? If not, and if in fact nothing at all indicated that they had been written, then why assume they were? I just don't get it.

Well, anyway. I don't want to rag on the poster when hu already acknowledges that hu screwed up. But I think it's worth making clear that the primary issue here is personal responsibility and follow-through, not the flaky behaviours of busy professors.

[permagrad]

Ah, but there is no central graduate school at this particular uni to track said app; the only thing that goes through "online" is the application form itself. Thanks for assuming, though.

I have periodically been checking in with my department's office to see how things were going. Believe me, the fight with admissions to forward all of my current records back to the department was foremost on my mind until recently (it took me a over a month to straighten that one out, and you can imagine that dropping all of my coursework, research, and assistantship duties in order to micromanage more than one entity at a time wasn't exactly foremost on my To-Do list).

I'm staying on at this university because I have folks I want to continue study with and can make some good in-field connections here, not because I think this university as a whole is great. Frankly, it sucks, and I wouldn't recommend it to any grad student who wasn't dying to work with particular superheroes in their field, which I am.

Yes, I was not smart to assume It Will Be Done. It was also not appropriate for other people to leave me to twist in the wind. If I had been the one saying "I forgot," I would have been raked over the coals.

FWIW, I got one of my recommenders to set a deadline for huself today, and emails have been going into the void to the others this week.

I really do think it was a case of taking things for granted, in the end. These are very nice people who tend to get a little, well, overfocused. As am I. Which has actually made for a pretty good fit, so far. Except in situations like this. :)

[pink_]

Well, the good part of this is that it is the same dept., where everyone knows everyone, etc.  Sometimes in this case, the letters are more of a formality than anything else.  If they didn't think you were qualified, they wouldn't have encouraged you to continue.  I didn't apply to the dept. where I did my masters since everyone told me I should get my ph.d. from another school.  Turned out that they had expected a much higher retention rate from our MA class, and when almost no one applied to continue, they pulled me aside in the hall and said, "we know we told you you had to leave, but you can stay if you want to."  I didn't, not because I didn't appreciate the offer, but because the advice to leave made more sense.

My fingers are crossed that this works out for you, OP.

[case_insensitive]

FWIW, I got one of my recommenders to set a deadline for huself today, and emails have been going into the void to the others this week.

There's no reason for you not to be making these requests/reminders in person since you are at that school.  Emails aren't working, so abandon that method and go for a more personal one.

[permagrad]

I've moved to a combination of verbal and e-mail. Verbal is nice, but nobody can later say, "Did we have that conversation?" if I follow it up with a polite email afterward -- it gives everyone something concrete to refer back to.

I originated in corporate-land. Talking is nice, but email is proof.

[case_insensitive]

I've moved to a combination of verbal and e-mail. Verbal is nice, but nobody can later say, "Did we have that conversation?" if I follow it up with a polite email afterward -- it gives everyone something concrete to refer back to.

I originated in corporate-land. Talking is nice, but email is proof.

Email is ignorable. Your presence in their office is not, presumably.

Email has not been getting the job done, no?  So, pass on the method that isn't getting results and move on to other methods. :o)

What's the quote about keeping on doing the same things and expecting different results...?

[malingered]

Ah, but there is no central graduate school at this particular uni to track said app; the only thing that goes through "online" is the application form itself. Thanks for assuming, though.

Okay, replace "status page" with "admissions officer" (or whoever is in the know.) The method of checking status is not relevant to my point.

Your original version of events was "I got everything in on time...then I hadn't heard anything (presumably weeks or months later) so I checked my application status." You have to admit that sounds pretty irresponsible, and that the reasonable thing to do would be to check on your application status sooner rather than later, whatever that entails. That was my point.

But as others have said, it sounds like there is still a chance that things will work out. Hopefully they will, but in any case I don't think it's worthwhile to hold it against these profs, especially when (I contend) you also share responsibility for the fact that the problem is coming to light this late in the game.

Well, best of luck.