Once, I got an acceptance email, called to confirm the school, to have them tell me "oops" they sent the email to the wrong person. I was not accepted. I'm at a different school now, well into the program - but reading something like this still jabs at my heart, especially in email form.

I think we all deserve a letter.

I agree - it's totally rediculous. You'd think that the $50 fee you have to submit with the application would cover a bit of stationary, an evelope and standard postage.

Also - what up with some schools calling? When I applied, i got into the same schools as a friend. He got calls from all of them, and I didn't get any. What's up with that?

Best first post for a newbee. Very funny, and sad.

Maybe they should just text you:

"Rejected, try Brown bitch"

I would suggest going to a stationary store and ordering a quantity of elegant embossed letter writing paper. Purchase a fine fountain pen and write a letter to Princeton suggesting that their method of applicant rejection is entirely fucked up.

^^^ with a wax seal, just to drive the point home!

(brilliant, as always, vado.)

The thing that bugs me about their excuse ("in this day and age, we thought you should know sooner rather than later so that you can make your decision as fast as possible") is that they are part of the problem they are supposedly responding to. The only reason people "need" to know things instantly today is because all these grad schools are requiring super early acceptance notification from their students, and each year it seems to get earlier and earlier--probably because they are taking the speed of today's communications into account. It's like a continuing downward spiral feeding upon itself. Why should they add to that vortex? Because Princeton does it, soon other schools will be doing it too, and bit by bit we will be expected to receive and return acceptances within mere minutes of the school admissions decision. Why go along with a quirk of modern life that is anti-human? How could it possibly be so time-sensitive that it can't wait the 2-3 days it takes to get mail from NJ to CA, or a couple more for applicants outside the US?! They aren't internal organs, they're LETTERS.

Stop the unnecessary stress of modern life. Slow the pace down!

keep calling them and say you havent heard back from them.....

Call, email and write them incessantly to let them know that unfortunately, you won't be able to attend next semester. Wish them the best of luck, and let them know that there's always next year.

When you call, pretend like you're talking to the answering machine even if someone picks up.



P.S. I got the same email from my grandma.

A brilliant example of how institutions that should be exemplars of civility have become victims of the very forces they seek to critically understand.

What nonsense. You embrace technology yet don't have the common sense to know when it is appropriate to use it. In today's fast paced world, why wouldn't an email be appropriate, after all you probably applied on-line. I was rejected last week too but am glad I found out sooner so that I could get my reply in to Penn (though I chose to open my email at home). Hey, it's their loss!

I think the question here, panorama, is exactly what you posted: appropriateness.

I think an email notification - of wither acceptance OR rejection - is totally inappropriate.

Good point, jkaliski.

i broke up with my girlfriend via text messsage...thats right, mdler is single again, for all the ladies out there

I was dumped over the phone once ... class.

never applied to grad school but this reminds me of one time when i was driving around dropping off resumes in person.. after going to the last firm on my list, walking up to the receptionist and handing her my resume i went straight home.. maybe 15 min. drive from downtown to my house at most. Since i was actively job seeking i of course immediately checked my email for some leads, responses, etc. when i walked in the door.. There was a rejection email from the firm i had just dropped off a resume at 15 mins ago.

Another thought with regard to the framework of the dilemna of this post which I take to be a polite questioning of seeming digital rudeness - Princeton will sorely miss the presence of one who could write such a pithy, acute, observant, and humorous post.

I got rejected from Princeton many years ago - before email had really caught on - and got the letter by mail. In fact other than the parts that discuss email, it was the exact same letter.
(And the school that I did end up attending sends the exact same acceptance letter still to this day, stating "this year's class is paricularly exceptional"...)

Back then Princeton was well known for its tendency to send the rejection letters two to three weeks after the acceptance letters. So if one of your friends or classmates got an acceptance and you didn't then it started the agonizing wait, with each day looking worse than the next. By the end of the first week you knew, but you still had to wait around another week or two to get the official confirmation in the mail.

So, as gut wrenching as this informal email experience may be, I would have preferred it strongly to my 3-week dread of opening the mailbox each day.

I think Berkeley's is even worse....they can't even address it to the individual because "There system won't let them"??!??!

jerks.

March 23, 2007


Dear Applicant,

Thank you for applying to the Master of Architecture
program at the
University of California, Berkeley.

I am writing to inform you that you have not been
accepted for graduate
study in the Department of Architecture.

The material submitted with your application has been
reviewed by the
admissions committee of our department. They have
informed me that they
are unable to recommend you for admission to the
program.

Our department has the difficult task of selecting
students with the
strongest overall records, from a large pool of
well-qualified
applicants. Due to the strict enrollment ceiling of
the Berkeley campus,
each department may only admit a limited number of new
students every
year. Unfortunately, this may result in not being
able to accept many
applicants who are capable of excellent academic work.

I am sorry that my letter does not bring you good news
and hope that you
will be offered other opportunities to achieve your
academic goals. My
apologies also that we were unable to send you a
personalized message,
unfortunately our current email system does
not allow us to do so.

Sincerely,

Renee Chow, Associate Professor
Chair of Graduate Advisors
Eva Li Chair in Design Ethics

btw, I am at work. It doesn't feel good. i am going home :(

WhatToDo, that's far worse than Princeton's and totally sucks. In fact I'm going to trot out my high school peer group's phrase of utter contempt and say Berkeley's e-ject sucks the big donkey dong.

Sorry. Hang in there.

LMOA...I have'nt heard that brilliant come back in a few years- I love it!

Anyway, after mopishly going home and walking to my mailbox, with my head down as I prepared for more rejection letters....

...wait what's this I feel in my hand? A fat envelope? From UPENN?


I GOT IN I GOT IN!!! OH MY GOD!!!!

....Berkeley who?

I think you just concluded this entry perfectly. Congratulations.

fuggem all.

hugs to ghosttown. we feel with you.

Princeton broke my heart a number of years ago. We haven't spoken since. Damn you Princeton, you were my heart, my dreams, my passion and I will never forgive you.

i was actually going to apply there in a year or so, but this has severely tainted my opinion. and with threads like "Yale Blows 07", i dont know what is going to happen...

So I think he's the dean of the graduate school, not the architecture school, so that means a whole ton of people got their rejection that way, not just the architects who are probably used to abuse by now. Pretty lame. I wonder if a letter will follow the email.

Thanks ya'll. I'm not feeling so crummy anymore...just received my acceptance letter to Rice. Everything is bigger in Texas, including courtesy.

WOW. I cannot believe this. Maybe would have been a good practical joke at least, but as a proper form of communication, this is horrid.

Aww...How Thoughtless and insensitive and uncouth of ,Princeton!Huh.
I bet if you were the spoilt airhead son of some sleazy Hollywood Movie Director ,say called Stan Stoner ,you would have got in cuz Daddy would have slipped a few hundred thousand dollars(He is tight and only offers the minimum Ivy League parental -bribe,say $250,000,'though he can easily afford $2,500,000.) under the Dean's mahogany desk n'est-ce-pas?Huh. Life ain't fair ,is it?....:(Have you applied to MIT?:)

but i thought architects are all for the green?? no?? sms is good, save paper.

I really hate the e-mail method too. I just don't like the fact that I find out my academic fate by clicking on a mouse. Its just too un-formal. I would rather want my hands shake as I open the envelope of decision letter.

Hmmm. Or they could really show-off their mit show-offiness and send it to you courtesy of morse code!?


DELTA-ECHO-ALPHA-ROMEO WHISKEY-HOTEL-OSCAR-ECHO-VICTOR-ECHO-ROMEO,

SIERRA-OSCAR-ROMEO-ROMEO-YANKEE!
PAPA-INDIA-SIERRA-SIERRA OSCAR-FOXTROT-FOXTROT!?

YANKEE-OSCAR-UNIFORM-ROMEO-SIERRA SIERRA-INDIA-NOVEMBER-CHARLIE-ECHO-ROMEO-ECHO-LIMA-YANKEE,

MIKE-INDIA-TANGO

Hm.

Or...

They could carve it out of a carbon-replenished tree-farmed-birch-sapling stick and throw it directly at you,in your face,sotospeak?
Now That is Not Nicey! And that would really hurt! Especially if they sharpened the stick with a swiss army knife beforehand and aimed it with an engineered mechanical catapult directly at your ....wherever...

That's not morse code ... it's the International Radio Operator's Alphabet.

meh, after what some of us had to go through to get an answer out of Pratt last app season, I applaud any school that bothers to contact you to communicate their decision in a timely manner, regardless of method. Send it by carrier pigeon for christ's sake, just make sure it gets there by April 1!!!

well, I hear columbia's about to start throwing their digital wangs around by sending acceptance messages in binary:

01100011 01101111 01101110 01100111 01110010 01100001 01110100 01110101 01101100 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 01110011 00100001 00100000 01101001 01100110 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00101100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100111 01101111 01110100 00100000 01101001 01101110 00101110 00001101 00001010 00001101 00001010 01110011 01100101 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100110 01100001 01101100 01101100

okay wiseguy..
huh.
i got better things to be doing than split dits and dashes with some precocious little prep school boy,i bet you are going to university of portland,eh?'cos you failed to get into mit!?huh.


--- -.- .- -.-- .-- .. ... . --. ..- -.--

huh. now if you will please excuse-me, it is 7.15.a.m.BST and i have to begin working on my campanile. now let's see what albrecht durer got to say about how best to go about it..hm.. i'll just go get underweysung der messung,from my shisham wood bookshelf/personal library....
hm..how to construct a polygon cupula....

I got one once that got screwed up somehow in their process of sending it to me as a hard copy. Apparently, they couldn;t even handle something that simple.

The body looked exactly like this:

RE: NOT RECOMENDED FOR ADMISSION



I remember applying to grad schools and I didn't want to risk anything so I applied to like ten. I was about 6 for 4. Of the six, two were waitlists that eventually turned into acceptances.

Oh and this was nothing new to me. I mean the undergrad process of applications/admissions wasn't completely different -- only back then you were more likely to be disappointed because you weren't as battle-hardened and exposed to the bullshit world of academia yet.

So my point is that I am surprised to see how many of you haven't come to terms with this in grad school. I mean you should have accepted this reality by now.

I knew this girl who was devastated because she got rejected from all three schools she applied to -- Harvard, Columbia, and Yale. I mean come on! Wen you apply to only three schools and they happen to be Harvard, Columbia, and Yale, you've got a pretty solid chance of being eaten alive.

yeah seriously... i wish all schools did this. its so much quicker to find out and relieve that stress of waiting. its about the content, not the form.

man, all this makes me feel :-(

Ghosttown, you are a genius. Screw Princeton I noticed you are going to Rice. I got a rejection letter from them saying "Sorry you're not Jesus, we only take 12 people" Well not really that but almost.

Hm.And why do you want to be an Architect,anyways!?Do you know how pathetic a Professional Architect's salary is cf. to say a Lap Dancer in Las Vegas doing her tacky oh look at me in my tacky leopard print bimbo costume doing my tacky oh how kewl am i with a de-veonmed snake hanging round my neck-next stop LA!;-)
I mean...$25,pissy grand as we say in olde worlde charm,inglaterra for AN ENTIRE GOD DAMN YEARS WORK OF SWEAT ,BLOOD AND TEARS! ($25,000 STARTING SALARY AS A PROFESSIONAL QUALIFIED ARCHITECT IS NOT UNUSUAL)
'scuse caps lock.

iT COST YOUR PARENTS $25,000 PER ANNUM TO SEND YOU TO PRINCETON,MIT,YALE,COLUMBIA,HARVARD..IN THE FIRST PLACE!LOL!

SO GO FIGURE..

YOU DO THE MATH-I MEAN...YOU ARE AN ARCHITECT,AREN'T YOU?YOU CAN DO THE MATH,RIGHT!?????????????????????????????????


Don't despair desperate 'n'destititute newly qualified professional architects...don't turn to crack just yet....


There is one Architect i can think of ,who never set foot in a SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE..Uhhhhhh

Michelangelo Buonarotti, goes by the name of...

Oh...and Giotto (Who preceded him with his Campanile ,Firenze started 1377 or somethin')

And uhh.....

Sir Christopher Wren...Uh actually...he may have gone to Oxford,so you'll have to check on that,in fact i think he did go to Oxford or he built half of Oxford, or somethin'....

Best of Luck with those Horrid Ivy League Interviews!:)

MariannaJuanaCloze (Inglaterra) RIBA-Failure.

sic:architects'
aic:de-venomed

sic:doing her tacky, "oh how kewl am i?"^routine^

historical accuracy:
sorry! i got my dates a bit muddled-up i meant:giotto di bondone born 1266-died 1337 not!1377! thus bringing an end to his work on his campanile,on account he died during construction...it was finished..a bit later on,by somebody else..

I honestly didn't care that all of my rejections came via email.

Getting it in letter form is really obvious. one piece of paper in envelope means rejection. Bulky means acceptance.

Email seems better to me, in all honesty.

Hm.I agree, i guess.I mean it is kind-of like ending a romantic relationship or liason..why waste paper? A curt,to the sharpened point note will suffice,one line even..
regards!

Hm..can we discontinue this thread now..i got a teensey-weensey bit bored with it..can we discuss the construction of polyhydra or somethin'??????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Hm.. I wonder if Anthony R from MIT surfs these pages...Not that Anthony R from MIT has to worry about a horrid rejection letter from a prestigious School of Architecture, seeing as he is Class of '08 at MIT..All he has to concern his MIT Boy Self with is how to pay back the $100,000 he has now accumulated in overdraft debt to put himself through MIT!..:(

!Buenos dias!:)

Wow, what's going on over here?