I am an international student. I graduated from USC this summer. I received an admission offer from a graduate program at UPenn in August. The program suppose to starts in Jan 2018, but I received a phone call yesterday informed me that the program was cancelled because they only admitted 3 students and it’s too few to operate the program. I asked them what solution do they provide, they simply said that “we would probably start a similar program in Fall 2018, if we can run the program, we can admit you directly”. No guarantee, no compensation and no options.
They also told me that they would refund my application fee. But to me, the money is not the issue, it’s the time, efforts and opportunity I wasted. I rejected offers from other universities such as Rice, UCSD because of this program.
Actually before I applied to this program, considering this is a new program, I’ve asked them whether the program will be cancelled if there are too few students enroll. They emailed me that there is no required minimum enrollment. (The deadline of the program was in mid August, then the deadline has been defer to Oct 1st, then Nov 1st…)
I received my I20 two weeks ago, now I am in my country. I don’t even know if I can enter the US again by using this I20 and my visa. My car and my stuffs are still in the US (I shipped them from LA to PA this summer)
My whole family are frustrated. I really don’t know what to do now. I am trying to talk to them to ask if I can be transferred to another similar program. This just happened suddenly. I could never imagine that an Ivy league, a world well known university would do this.
Is there anyone who knows about similar issue? Please give me some suggestions if you or your friend met this situation before or know anything else Please
contact the graduate school admissions offices at UCSD , Rice and any other colleges whose offers you rejected and ask them to take you ASAP. Ask USC , in particular the Profs there that wrote your LORs , for their help as well. But act FAST.
You have a perfectly valid reason for your unusual request.
Wow, that sounds incredibly messed up. I would get on the phone with Upenn on Monday AM and do whatever you can to get them to help you. I don’t know if there is a graduate ombudsman at the school. (I imagine you’ve been working with Penn’s ISSS already - I’d hope they might try to work with you at this point.)
The only other suggestion I have is does USC have a similar grad program at all? How was your relationship with USC? (I’m assuming if you got in a Penn grad program your grades were competitive.) Is there any chance you could convince them to allow you to study there while you sort things out? (assuming finances could be worked out.)
But really that is just terrible, especially if you directly asked about this situation. I would hope Penn would try to find some way to help you out until you can fingure out a better situation.
^Contacting UPenn at this point is a waste of time. This kind of thing isn’t unheard of, and Penn isn’t going to do anything to help you - what can they do? They’re not going to run a master’s program with one student because you called to complain. The best they may be able to do is try to help you get admitted to a related program - like if you applied a data science program, maybe helping you get settled into a statistics program instead.
I think your time and effort would be better spent reaching out to some of the other programs you were admitted to and declined for Penn. Call their admissions offices and explain the situation; let them know that you’ve already completed immigration requirements and are ready to go. Sweeten the pot by explaining that while Penn was the best fit for you then, UCSD (or Rice or wherever) were also excellent fits; it was a hard choice to turn then down and you are delighted to have the opportunity to perhaps attend.