CGS's Resolution

Intrigued in Iowa City writes in about a Council of Graduate School resolution about graduate student acceptances. Thanks for the research, IiIC.

Thanks for the great blog. I read your post re. FSU and accepting by April
15--there's actually a resolution passed by the Council of Graduate Schools that
you may want to see. After April 15, if you've accepted a funding at one school,
you cannot accept an offer at a second school without written consent of the
first school.

The relevant part of the resolution reads:

"Acceptance of an offer of financial support (such as a graduate scholarship,
fellowship, traineeship, or assistantship) for the next academic year by a
prospective or enrolled graduate student completes an agreement that both
student and graduate school expect to honor. In that context, the conditions
affecting such offers and their acceptance must be defined carefully and
understood by all parties.

Students are under no obligation to respond to offers of financial support prior
to April 15; earlier deadlines for acceptance of such offers violate the intent
of this Resolution. In those instances in which a student accepts an offer
before April 15, and subsequently desires to withdraw that acceptance, the
student may submit in writing a resignation of the appointment at any time
through April 15. However, an acceptance given or left in force after April 15
commits the student not to accept another offer without first obtaining a
written release from the institution to which a commitment has been made.
Similarly, an offer by an institution after April 15 is conditional on
presentation by the student of the written release from any previously accepted
offer. It is further agreed by the institutions and organizations subscribing to
the above Resolution that a copy of this Resolution should accompany every
scholarship, fellowship, traineeship, and assistantship offer."


From what I can tell, this resolution was passed by nearly every major
university, from Abilene Christian to Yale. Since you have such a wide
readership, I thought this might be useful to other prospective students. It's
somewhat self-serving too, since I'm in waitlist agony right now...

See the full text here:

http://gso.princeton.edu/index.php?app=download&id=32