Okay, so this news is sorta late, but I figured I’d post this anyway. Remember how I wrote about how Georgia Tech wasn’t responding to my emails? I finally got a response! A rejection! Yeah, that’s right, Georgia Tech only takes the time to respond to a candidate when they’re rejecting them. How nice. Here’s the letter:
Dear Hung:
I’m sorry to inform you that your application to Georgia Tech’s MS program in Human-Computer Interaction has been declined.
There are many applicants we are not able to admit. The applicant pool was significantly larger than in recent years, and the overall quality of applicants even higher than usual.
If you would like advice on strengthening your application and trying again next year, I’ll be happy to help.
You have our best wishes.
At least they offered to give me advice on helping my application. I actually emailed them back immediately and got an “out of town” autoreply. So they wrote me this denial from out of town?
I’m not too upset about this. Georgia Tech showed that they didn’t care about their MS students even before sending me this rejection. I spoke with some other students at the University of Michigan visiting days and there was pretty much a consensus that Georgia Tech treats their MS students with dollar signs in their eyes.
Stumbled across your site the other day. Like you, I turned in all my apps and just finished getting all my acceptances/rejections.
Got into the GATech program, but like you mentioned, there are a couple things that bothered me. However, the academic advisor is helpful, and answered a lot of my questions fairly quickly during the application process. I also applied to the PhD program and got a reply during a Saturday for a question I had!
Also, they are having an admit day soon and it seems kinda thrown together at the last minute. In addition, they aren’t sure about MS student funding until the summer. I went to the admit day at Berkeley iSchool and that one seemed very well planned and organized. By the time we got there, all the fellowship recipients were already notified. With that said, I’m set on going to the iSchool there.
Anyway, congrats on your acceptances! Maybe we’ll run into each other one of these days at an iSchool related conference. Good luck!
Hi Mike Lee….
Stumbled across this site today, given that it comes up when Googling “Georgia Tech HCI”. I figured I’d clear some stuff up in case anyone else ends up here.
I applied to the Georgia Tech HCI program in 2008 and was accepted. I applied three months after the deadline, actually, but they were willing to work with me and admit me after taking the time to personally get to know why I was applying so late (unexpectedly graduating six months early was apparently a good excuse). The academic advisers are absolutely absurdly helpful and the program is top-notch. Your complaints seem to revolve around not hearing from them, but I’d be really curious as to who you were emailing. I’ve always received very prompt emails from everyone I’ve contacted.
Additionally, one of your complaints is that the rejection email seemed to be automated — I don’t really think it’s unreasonable that a school that receives hundreds of applications a year would send out batch acceptances and rejections instead of personally writing each one.
Anyway, I guess my point is just that your only complaint about Georgia Tech seems to be that they didn’t respond to your emails, and you’re generalizing from that that they don’t care about their Master’s students. In psychology, we call that the fundamental attribution error — over-valuing disposition and inherent characteristics and under-valuing circumstantial ones. Tech, and the College of Computing especially, definitely values its Master’s students, and I’d say your case is certainly an exception rather than the rule.
To anyone who finds this page, I highly recommend the Tech HCI program anyway. I loved it, and moved on to my PhD in Human-Centered Computing here. I’ll be happy to answer any questions anyone might have, so feel free to find me on Facebook and fire away.
@David, I’m not sure why your experience was so much different from mine. If that was how they treated you, then awesome! My main complaints were relative to how other schools communicated with me (the School of Information at Michigan was by far the most responsive).
I’m sure both schools are fine, but my experience was not that great, so I think my post holds some weight, just as your comment does