permagrad
New member
Posts: 13
|
 |
« Reply #15 on: February 28, 2007, 12:36:24 PM » |
|
I think we have our wires crossed, here.
Email is only a follow-up tool at this point. It is to cover my heinie when someone says "No, I don't remember discussing it with you." After discussion in person, I send email recapping the face-to-face discussion we just had. They can do whatever they want with it. If there's no record, though, it's easy in retrospect to say something didn't happen, especially when you're dealing with people who can only focus on one thing at once (and that one thing is usually not you, but whatever their big, looming thing in life is right now).
The email is not to inspire, cajole, or otherwise get action. It is so I (and, presumably, they) have a record of the face-to-face conversation we had, what was discussed, and what action everyone agreed to take.
In short, it's there so that I have a paper trail.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
iomhaigh
|
|
« Reply #16 on: February 28, 2007, 08:24:13 PM » |
|
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...
I am so glad that I am not the only one with degrees that look like this because of administrative incompetence. |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
I am the very model of a modern major general.
|
|
|
anon4
New member
Posts: 8
|
|
« Reply #17 on: February 28, 2007, 11:21:19 PM » |
|
I'm a graduate admissions officer and there are two things to keep in mind.
1. Professors are the absolute worst group when it comes to meeting deadlines and, for some odd reason - not sending recommendations out. You'd think they'd do better but they don't. This has been true at all of the schools that I've worked at over the ten years.
2. It is YOUR responsibility to make sure that your application is complete. While they should have done what they said they would, you dropped the ball by not making sure your application was complete.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
anon4
New member
Posts: 8
|
|
« Reply #18 on: February 28, 2007, 11:24:03 PM » |
|
I'm a graduate admissions officer and there are two things to keep in mind.
1. Professors are the absolute worst group when it comes to meeting deadlines and, for some odd reason - not sending recommendations out. You'd think they'd do better but they don't. This has been true at all of the schools that I've worked at over the ten years.
2. It is YOUR responsibility to make sure that your application is complete. While they should have done what they said they would, you dropped the ball by not making sure your application was complete.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
tolerantly
|
|
« Reply #19 on: March 01, 2007, 12:08:49 AM » |
|
There are whole industries built on nagging creative types and academics. How we rate babysitters is beyond me, but there they are, and I guess it provides jobs. I've worked the paid-babysitter end, too, and I like to nag early and often. Email seems to me a perfectly good Stage 1 nagging device. I like a gentle nag to start out with. You can get the nag emphatic, you can get the nag polite, oh, you see the sort of nag depends on what you say, it depends on what you say.
Sorry.
Come to think of it, today I both gave and received.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
anglophile
New member
Posts: 3
|
|
« Reply #20 on: March 06, 2007, 04:22:18 PM » |
|
One possible solution is always asking for an extra letter to be sent- I did this because I knew one of my profs was sometimes flaky. On the other hand, Important Prof at Prestigious Foreign University had a two day turnaround from receiving my fed-ex packet to putting recs in the mail. Such a rate of response from someone who genuinely has very little time makes me suspicious of the "oh I was so busy..." response.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
acrimone
The Red Queen's Court Assassin
Distinguished Senior Member
Posts: 4,049
I am not a professor at all, despite what I say.
|
|
« Reply #21 on: March 06, 2007, 04:33:09 PM » |
|
There is no excuse for failling to write a letter you have promised to write. None whatsoever. I don't care if your mother just died -- you get the letter written before you go to the funeral.
That said...
The bad behavior of the professors in this case doesn't excuse the student. A student is responsible for completing his or her application, through whatever means the student finds necessary. If it is not finished, it is the student's fault. End of story.
I hope things work out... if they don't, well, this won't be a mistake you commit twice.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
"All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"
|
|
|
enviroabd
I'm green
Member
Posts: 219
|
|
« Reply #22 on: March 06, 2007, 06:28:06 PM » |
|
Permagrad, I know what you mean about proof (I've worked in government).
Both methods are useful.
And don't assume that your referees will get all your e-mails (I once sent a follow-up the day after I asked my advisors to add another school to my list of letters, and I got flamed for asking for reference letters in such an off-hand way).
Good luck with your application.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
I'm like a dissertation inchworm.
|
|
|
|
