Wednesday, December 10, 2008

rejections but no interviews

What does it mean when a department sends out a bunch of email rejections but doesn't schedule any APA interviews? Would it be reasonable to conclude that one will eventually get an interview on the grounds that one has not received that rejection email? Should one read anything into this at all?

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

It may mean that you made one cut, which is good. At this point, I think most of us will treat not being cut as a small, glimmering ray of hope in the dark and dreary job market hell. Congrats!

Anonymous said...

Unless the department is Alberta, which seems to have emailed only those who made the "long-short" list but not the "short-short" list. So if you almost made it, you now know that you didn't make it. But the rest of us know only that we're either finalists or nowhere close.

Anonymous said...

Somebody on the wiki is playing with ambiguity -- those shortlisted at Alberta have been notified.

Anonymous said...

I'm wondering about those places where individuals have posted that they've been invited for interviews and other have posted that they've received rejections. I applied at several of those places. Either some part of my packet was lost or I'm on some reserve list for some reason. Ackk!

an ominous moderator said...

anon 1:42 --

I'd say in a case like that it would be appropriate to contact the department and find out what's going on.

Anonymous said...

@Anon 1:34:

How do you know that Alberta has notified shortlisted candidates? (It's not that I doubt you. I'm just curious.) And why haven't any of the nine candidates posted this to the wiki, for God's sake?

Anonymous said...

I think at this point it's too soon to conclude anything. My friend was on the market last year. She received notification of rejection from only a handful of schools although she applied to 30+ places. You could be cut without receiving notice. Likewise, even if departments have *begun* calling and emailing for APA interviews, I don't think you should conclude that you won't be called.

Anonymous said...

Anon 4:18. I'm curious--you put 'begun' in stars. To add my own spin to the false hope bandwagon, there are a number of places on the wiki with only one interview scheduled and absolutely no dittos. Do schools ever space these things out? I now realize the depths of despair of the job market.

Anonymous said...

@Anon 2:52

Anon 1:34 here. I have insider knowledge. There are six candidates, not nine: three for ethics and three for the open position. The search for the third position ('South Asian') is not being run by the philosophy department.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Anon1:34. That's what I figured, though some part of me was secretly holding out hope that you were just making an assumption. Alas.

@Aon8:04,

Here's a fun way to obsess over the wiki. There are some jobs on the wiki (though not many) where people have been contacted for interviews many days apart. Go find them. Vive le faux espoirs.

Anonymous said...

couple of lessons from experience:

- lots of people manage (somehow!) to avoid the wiki, so their interviews never appear there.

- last year, departments were still scheduling apa interviews on the 21st of December (probably some were even closer - but that was the latest I heard from anyone).

so the take home story is...wait a week or so before you really flip out??

Anonymous said...

Question for those who were on the market last year: judging from wiki activity, calls, emails, whatever, do things seem to be going slower this year than last?

Anonymous said...

As someone on 'the other side,' I can assure you all that many schools do not send out rejection letters until after they have interviewed. After all, while it is unlikely, it is possible that all the interviews will be duds. Maybe that is not much 'assurance,' given that everyone is on pins and needles. But, I think you cannot read too much into the absence of clear signals, espceically from departments at slacs, which may have little clerical support to manage all this.

Anonymous said...

As someone also on the
"other side" I'd like to emphasize the point made by the previous poster. Most Departments will not send out rejection notices at any point, even after a hire is made! I'm guessing here (I honestly stopped paying attention to the rejections after a while), but I am fairly certain that I had rejection letters from far less than half the places I applied to when I was on the market a few years ago, and that was just as true of SLACS as it was of research universities and other schools. I'm now at a SLAC; we don't send out rejection letters.

So this may encourage false hope, but only if you let it. If you don't hear anything you can't assume anything other than that according to sheer odds, you probably aren't in the running.