PhD Application Rejection

Unfortunately this past week has been rather rough. On Monday I heard back from UC Berkeley about my application to the School of Information’s PhD program. They are unable to offer me a slot for the upcoming school year beginning in Fall 2025. I am pretty disheartened by the news as I really thought I had a good chance and was doing all the right things to make myself an ideal candidate. I know it is a competitive program and they only take a few people every year, sometimes under 5 but never more than 10 and they get hundreds of applicants every year for that program.

While I believe myself to be very smart I do think that I am competing with a lot of other very impressive candidates and I should not be too disappointed about it. Unlike when I was applying for my Master’s, I am still an unknown to this school and I am still a small fish here. I do not think being rejected for this term is the end of the world nor do I think it is the end of my academic educational journey but it might be just closed off for a bit more until I decide to reapply to that program and/or others as well. I also think it is also a bit of a blessing as I have been very fortunate to be able to do so many things I have wanted and put my heart into and I believe it is important to experience not getting something that I really wanted and put a lot of effort into. I think it can be really important for personal development to handle situations like that and how you learn and grow from that experience.

That being said, I do feel very passionate about the topic I was interested in doing my dissertation on and I still would very much like to pursue that research area, I hope I can find a place that will let me continue down that path. For now I will focus on what I can do and keep learning and working at the things that interest me outside of my day job and know that it is not goodbye but see you later for my time in academia.