The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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8:12pm on Friday, 16th March, 2018:
Anecdote
I was in York today for the IGGI doctoral training programme interview day. 21 applicants chasing 12 places meant some people were going to be disappointed (and not just the students who missed out — we wished we could take more of them, but there's only so much funding).
In previous years, we ranked the students by their interview performance and their otehr qualities (because not everyone good interviews well) and then we just went with the top 12 or whateever. However, overall for the whole programme we need to have the same number of students go to each university, and this being the final year meant that some universities got more students than others to make up the shortfall. This meant some students who ranked highly but had applied to the "wrong" university were basically victims of bad luck. It's very frustrating, but our hands are tied. Also, we're onlyallowed one international (non-EU) student per year and we had three applicants any one of which was abundantly qualified. Again, that's frustrating but I can't imagine that the ones who missed out won't be picked up by some other programme.
Obviously I can't say who got in or not as the candidates themselves won't be informed until next week. I can, however, say that the system was fair and that our discussion lasted close to two hours.
Oh, I can also say that one of the Essex applicants didn't arrive until 15 minites before his interview. Lesson for prospective IGGI students #1: you can't trust public transport.
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Copyright © 2018 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).