<p>My Husband is looking at FGCU (Florida Gulf Coast University) for grad school (MA in Mental Health Counseling). The deadline for acceptance into their FALL 2013 program is JULY 2013. This seems odd to us. Why would they wait until July knowing that other universities are letting students know months before hand whether they have been accepted? </p>
<p>Has anyone dealt with anything similar before? Seems sketchy to wait until the last minute to accept someone. If accepted, that means we would have less than a month to relocate (jobs, housing etc).</p>
<p>Any assistance, thoughts would be greatly appreciated!</p>
<p>Thank you!!</p>
<p>Isn’t that simply the deadline to apply and not necessarily the notification date? If I recall correctly, FGCU operates on a rolling admissions basis, so admitted students are notified on different dates, depending on when they applied.</p>
<p>Having worked at a university, specifically in a graduate program, I can assure you that rolling or late admission deadlines are not “sketchy”. Rather, this rule if often in place at schools/programs that do not draw a large applicant pool or face a lot of competition (i.e. graduate level Teacher certification programs).</p>
<p>In the program that I used to work for, and in this one, you have a program with a very vocational focus. A lot of the students will be employed either full or part-time while pursuing their studies. Unlike traditional undergraduates, graduate students in this situation have to take into account a plethora of life situations to decide if the degree program will be doable for them. They may not know this until a few months before classes begin.</p>
<p>Also FGCU is not a big draw for applicants. I do not work there, but if its anything like the college where I worked, you have to have so many people enrolled before you can justify paying the staff and scheduling a cohort to begin. Where I worked, we would push all the way up until the start of classes to get people enrolled. We even accepted people up until the drop/add period (usually the first week of classes). If not, you ran the risk of a course section getting dropped (only happened once or twice…but it’s still stressful/unfortunate).</p>
<p>As for the quality of FGCU’s program here, I can’t say. I attended grad school at FGCU in a different subject. I feel it was a great deal in the end though. Hopefully it works out for your husband in the end!</p>