Daughter is devastated - grad school program "paused admissions" after her acceptance

It’s awful - a number of kids who were applying for grad school in biological science along with my kid have had their acceptance cancelled because the programs don’t know whether they will have the funds to support any grad students.

There is absolutely no rhyme or reason as to which grants are being cancelled, and the uncertainty about the ability to fund any grad students is causing chaos. There are lawsuits and court injunctions, but even if funds are made available, the people whose jobs are to disburse the funds are being fired en masse, again, without rhyme or reason.

NSF and NIH are being gutted, but the National Endowment for the Humanities is in even worse shape.

On top of that, many programs like that of @MaineLonghorn’s daughter are in the crosshairs, because they have terms like “Community Practice” in their title. NYU is private, so the government cannot simply shut it down, but there are good chances that there will be (or maybe there already are) “investigations”, which makes running a graduate program very difficult.

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Outraged on behalf of your daughter. Sending support.

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What career path did she want to pursue with this degree? Maybe NYU has another program that could lead to the same destination, and she could end up working with some of the same instructors.

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I had thought of that in general, but I like the idea of looking up specific instructors. She had mentioned a couple of them who impressed her.

I know she wants to use art to help the community, but TBH I’m not sure what that entails!

I am so sorry this happened, every parents nightmare. Doesn’t his kid go to NYU??? Why would they go after the school his son attends? Or did I miss something?

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I’m so sorry. I have a friend who works in art education and she just told me that the art world was hit VERY hard today with grants being taken away by the NEA. She lost her own grant which her employer heavily relies on. She said she expects a lot of people to soon be out of work…and the timing may be coincidental but I do wonder if the program is taking the overall job landscape into consideration right now.

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In the business school so probably disengaged from a lot of this

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It’s awful, but it’s not all that uncommon. It’s just even less common at larger schools. I know of a smaller grad school that has, in the past couple years, paused admissions in two separate programs after they began admitting. Admissions folks do not make these decisions, but they get stuck having to notify students of the decisions others make. I definitely think that funding cuts are playing havoc this year. I have other thoughts that border on political, but this is as far as I will go with comments. It’s not always a decision affected by politics, of course … there are concerns about availability resources for all different reasons right now.

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So so sorry. I just cannot believe how devastating these cuts are. This hate for higher education is going to take decades to undo.

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I’m so sorry @MaineLonghorn that your daughter has to suffer through no fault of her own.

But at least Musk and Bezos still have billions. (Good thing they aren’t politicians or my comment might get flagged.)

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I’m so very sorry for your daughter @MaineLonghorn. Not only is having her offer rescinded bad enough but the timing couldn’t be worse given that she had other offers she could have accepted.

As to that timing, it was most likely in response to the NEA announcing on Friday that they were withdrawing or cancelling a bunch of grants. It wasn’t something that NYU likely could have anticipated.

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I think this is awful…just awful. Wondering if any of the other acceptances would reconsider given the circumstances. Then again…they may have lost arts grant money as well.

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So very sorry to hear this!!! I work in Arts education non-profit and it is a funding bloodbath right now. I like the suggestion to see if the faculty from this program are teaching in adjacent programs. Maybe reach out and see what they are now teaching in the fall.

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I know it will be hard but try and enjoy your trip to Poland.

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Thank you! I hope it goes OK with our son. I think it will.

We’re on the plane in Copenhagen now. :slightly_smiling_face:

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So sorry this happened to your daughter. So unfair. Isn’t this the son who said all those awful things to you about your parenting? I hope the trip goes OK.

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Yes, that’s him. We just got here and he is acting like nothing ever happened. He’s making lunch for us now. So that’s good.

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Enjoy Poland. I’ve always wanted to go (grew up in a Polish community, but I’m not Polish). Love Polish pottery, donuts, the language.

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Thanks! We’re very impressed with Warsaw so far. Everything is clean and the trains and trams run like clockwork. Everybody obeys walk signals, too! Tomorrow we’re off to Krakow on a 5:40 am train.

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She may want to look at programs in other countries. I don’t think the US is going to have any more arts for a while. Or sciences. Or….

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