computer science - Why would a grad school not want me to defer admission?

I have been accepted to a fairly competitive online computer science-related graduate program (in the US). It is a part-time program geared toward working professionals. During the application process, I was assigned an admissions counselor that worked with me during the application and answered questions, etc. The counselor did mention at one point that I could defer admission by one trimester, should I be accepted.

Well, long story short, I have a situation with my employer (who would be funding my graduate studies), that is now making me strongly prefer to exercise the deferral option.

I have reached out to my admission counselor seeking guidance on how to do this. I expected this to be a fairly routine, straightforward process. Instead, I am getting aggressive pushback, with the counselor trying to talk me out of it.

After several emails and phone calls with the counselor, I still do not have any instructions on how to actually accept the admission but defer by one trimester. My admission offer is still pending. I would really like to simply accept the offer (and pay the deposits), but with deferral.

All I have are appointments to talk with a current student and a scheduled one-on-one demo of the "courseware" with the counselor. I cannot help but notice the counselor is seemingly dancing around my question on how to defer.

Since this deferral option was mentioned up front when I was still just an applicant, why would I be encountering this kind of resistance? I am truly baffled. Why can't I just do "what is best for me"?

The program has three admission cycles throughout the year: fall, spring, and summer. I applied for fall 2015 and was accepted. I'd like to exercise the option to defer, essentially as if I applied for spring 2016.

I am starting to wonder: Does my request for a deferral reflect badly on someone? On me? On the counselor? Might the school have some aggressive revenue forecast that was expecting my tuition payment, and now this deferral request throws a wrench in it? Does the admission committee and/or counselor have some quota for accepted offers they need to meet? Might they simply be trying to balance class/cohort sizes? I am trying to understand this from the school and counselor's perspective: Why might they do this, and why do so in this aggressive manner?

Furtheremore, does anyone have any advice on how to proceed from this point? Should I just be frank and ask the counselor why the aggressive pushback?

Answer

The MIDS program at Berkeley is an unusual special case among graduate programs. One clue is the use of admissions counselors, which are almost unheard of in typical graduate programs but are widely used in for-profit education. (This doesn't mean there's anything intrinsically problematic about relying on admissions counselors. They are used because they are an effective recruiting technique and can genuinely help everything work more smoothly for applicants. However, it's a cultural difference in how recruiting is done.)

In fact, the MIDS program is run by the I School at Berkeley in partnership with a for-profit company called 2U. See here for a description of how 2U and Berkeley are collaborating on this. In particular, the key sentence is "2U's marketing and recruiting team supports the I School's goal of finding students who are most likely to succeed in the rigorous Master of Information and Data Science program." The admissions counselor you've worked with is presumably a 2U employee from the marketing and recruitment team, whose job performance is based on getting people to enroll. Deferring at least means you won't be enrolling now, and you might change your mind about enrolling at all in the meantime, so it would not be considered a good outcome by 2U.

So why is Berkeley working with 2U if it could lead to awkward situations like this? One reason is 2U's educational technology platform, but frankly I think it's primarily the prospect of making money. The I School is descended from Berkeley's library school, and this has never been a lucrative field. I'm sure the idea of running a professional master's program (in which people's employers pay a lot of money) is very attractive to the I School, especially if 2U takes care of recruiting students and managing the online program itself. This seems to be a common pattern in 2U's partnerships with universities.

This situation actually gives you a little more leverage than you might normally have:

1. 
   

   Feel free to be firm (but polite, of course) with the admissions counselor. This is someone who is trying to sell you something, and you don't need to worry that they have some wise but inscrutable motivation for trying to get you to enroll now.

   
   


2. 
   

   The I School really doesn't want 2U to embarrass them. If you have a bad experience with 2U, I'm confident that the I School would like to know and will try to keep 2U in line.

   
   


3. 
   
   

   In the worst case scenario, you could try complaining to the Berkeley administration (outside of the I School), or even doing something like bringing problems to the attention of someone at the Daily Californian. I'm sure many people at Berkeley dislike the idea of partnering with a for-profit company, and this gives the I School and 2U a strong incentive to address complaints effectively.

   
   

It sounds to me like you have a legitimate complaint. Either the admissions counselor is trying to keep you from exercising a legitimate option, or they misled you about what your options would be. It doesn't sound like a simple miscommunication, since the counselor could have easily addressed that by providing the correct information or context. It's not clear how things will play out, but you shouldn't give up just because the admissions counselor is uncooperative.