This happened to me when I applied to Harvard for grad school. I heard from everyone else, I heard about school-specific fellowships, I heard from my external fellowship; deadlines for commitments were fast approaching; and finally I had to email them to find out whether they were maybe getting around to perhaps letting me know one way or the other whether I might have been accepted. The response was a kind of off-hand, “yeah, we decided to reject you [implicit: weeks ago {further implicit: but didn’t think it was worth bothering to say so}]”.
Not like I had any high hopes pinned to that, but I was dismayed and angered by the manner of it. I also (because such is my nature) felt embarrassed and ashamed of being so forward as to ask them for an update. But in retrospect it just makes me annoyed. For pity’s sake, when you’re paying large amounts of money for the privilege of applying in the first place, you’d think they could afford a brief letter and a stamp to answer you with.
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