When can you expect admission decision from your applied US Universities for FALL and SPRING?

This article will provide information regarding the admission decision from the applied US Universities. The important details like time taken by US Universities to provide an admission decision, details about the admission decision, assistantship or fellowship grants in the admission decision and others are covered in this article.

US University admission decision process in detail

When you submit your application and make the necessary US University application fee payment, your application is recorded by the University officials. When all the supporting documents such as the recommendation letters, transcripts, SOP, resume and any other relevant documents are received by the University admissions department, your file is prepared and sent to the appropriate department for review. The review committee consists of professors and officials of the respective department of the University that you have applied to. Based on discussions and deliberations, the US University review committee makes a decision regarding your admission. There are four possible outcomes – admission with aid, admission without aid, decision pending and admission reject.

1. Admission with aid – You have been admitted with some form of financial aid. The aid can be fee waiver, fellowship, scholarship or assistantship – RA or TA. The details of the amount of fee waiver are included in the I-20 as well as the admission decision letter sent by e-mail.
2. Admission without aid – You have been admitted without any form of financial aid. The details of the program and other formalities are included in the admission decision letter sent by e-mail.
3. Decision pending – Your decision might be kept in pending status. Many times, the admission review committee keeps your file aside and visits it after all the decisions are taken. This is done if there is some indecision about giving admission. Your file is revisited after completion of other waiting candidates. Also, there might be some discussion regarding granting financial aid and hence your decision can be postponed by the review committee and you will get a status as pending in your online admission portal.
4. Admission Reject – Your admission application is rejected and you will be given the reasons for rejection in detail in the admission decision e-mail sent by the University.

Time required for US Universities to inform admission decision

There are a large number of applicants every year for both terms FALL and SPRING for all the US Universities. Applicants from every country in the world apply to US Universities for admission every year. The admission process is completely manual and it takes a long time for your file to come before the review committee. It might take several months before you get some admission decision response from the University. The review of your application is made by the review committee in sequential order. Hence, if you have applied early, naturally your decision will be made early. Irrespective of the time when you have applied to the US Universities, the general timeline of your admission decision is as follows:

For FALL applicants – Admission decisions by March

For SPRING applicants – Admission decisions by October