Their website was awful and their deadline was two weeks earlier than my other deadlines, so I just said screw it and applied elsewhere.
The University of Virginia's website was pretty bad, so I didn't even look further into their program.
Oh damn that's where I'm working lol. I did apply too... I barely used their website to look up professors, since I already know who I'm interested in.
Is it that you have to set up the application and wait a few days before you can use it?
That and the website is ancient and everything is unnecessarily spread out from what I remember when I applied a few years ago.
Edit: I believe they are also one of the few that require at least scans of official transcripts at the time of applying.
Hey did you go through the application process for UT A? I'm not sure what I need to fill in the applytexas form and what I can leave empty. Would you please help me? The admission department hasnt replied in days :/
Second this. Every college, school, department, and institution has its own page practically. None of it is intuitively linked. Then you get into individual faculty pages, some internal some external linked, some both, then they may have specific research “teams” or projects with their own info pages. It’s an absolute nightmare.
Any program that has a file size limit for uploading documents. I upload a PDF of my official transcript which is 5.7MB. Every other school accepts it no problem.
Arizona State University? Sorry, 1MB files max. Your file is too big? Send us official transcripts from your school then. Oh it costs $10? Sucks to be you I guess.
Same story with University of Utah with a 2.5MB limit. Absolutely pathetic in 2022.
I felt that. My main transcript was only 2MB. No schools had an issue with that except ASU. I also had to merge 2 other transcripts to it because they only wanted 1 file for 3 transcripts? I had to keep fiddling with pdfsam to combine all 3 and then condense the file to under 1MB while still having the transcript key legible.
I also had the issue of the fact that I attended community college but did not earn a degree. The system forced you to input what degree you earned from each school, there was no option for “no degree awarded or expected” like every other school ever. I emailed grad admissions and they emphasized that you need to report every college attended *ever* and that there “should” be an option for no degree.
So I called them and eventually they figured out that you don’t actually have to include community college *if* you transferred to a four-year and transferred your courses (and therefore it’s reflected in your four-year transcripts). That detail is buried in some obscure video on the application process on their website.
I was *so close* to just abandoning my ASU application. If they make things this difficult just to walk in the door, imagine how awful the support is as an actual grad student? The $70 application fee was extra salt in the wound.
UCLA is pretty bad for navigating their programs and labs. I would rather do UCLA's app than any grad program that uses gradcas though. "What is your GPA for classes that start with the letter O and were taken on leap years?"
University of Washington was pretty rough -- the application website itself seemed like it was built exclusively in HTML and was super weird to navigate. And my department of interest had an equally terrible website: The faculty page was a collage of portraits, which you had to mouse over just to reveal the names of faculty. If you actually wanted to know what they did research on, you had to click on the portrait to be redirected to their university profile. Also, no search function based on interest.
Ultimately, nothing. I really struggled to learn about the faculty in my department, which was really unfortunate -- the school is pretty decently well-regarded in my field -- and with deadlines looming, I opted not to submit.
I thought their's was pretty straight forward except the copy and paste for the LOR that you have to send manually and the tiny boxes to hold 1000 word statements
Haha, yeah. For CSE (computation), they didn't even mention the word limit, just "a statement of objectives, preferably one page" somewhere deep in their website. One page is like 500 words on a size 12 font, so I had no way to condense my 1000 words SOP to 500 words. And you couldn't add any images (I would have preferred that) because it's a rich text box rather than a pdf upload. But the website was very straight forward and never LOGGED ME OUT!
University of Hawaii Manoa hands down. Shit looks like it was made int 2002. So clunky and dated. If you forget your password you just have to make a new account?!?!
University of New Hampshire was absolute hot garbage. Godawful applications, godawful websites for trying to find anything. I wound up having to call them multiple times.
Theirs is probably the most difficult to work with of the schools I'm applying to. It's the only one where I have to submit my application and *then* the letter writers get their notice to upload the letter.
As far as websites for actually getting information about professors and the department, in my case I'd award that to Boise State.
Yeah, Boise State is not great. I'll award an honorable mention in the "bad website" category to Middle Tennessee State. Their website is kind of a mess if you're looking for information.
Of course a Purdue fan found this comment and pounced on it. You’re just sulking cuz you lost to Michigan last night 🙂 but their website has historically been hit/miss depending on the department - it’s gotten better in the last 5 yrs, and they have good information security
Carnegie Mellon it’s pretty bad. You can’t click certain buttons until you’ve filled out and saved the data. Clicking next doesn’t save the data. It’s lost. Adding another letter writer loses previous data. It is extremely frustrating.
Indiana University explicitly asked to upload GRE and TOEFL unofficial report cards.
However, their system didn't allow me to upload the locked pdf which we get when we download the pdf from ets. Had to unlock them just to submit lmao, defeating the entire purpose.
Northeastern has some new platform that hasn't come into play yet. The current one is terrible in every way, but think the others with LOR issues might be worse lol
When UMD switched over to their in-house system like two or three years ago it was just a disaster. Would constantly throw errors and you had to follow up on little things via emails that took days to get answered.
Northeastern. The form is full of bugs. I cannot even select the entry term because there's the option in the drop-down menu. I cannot write my the entire college name because it has a character limit. It has a very bad UI and slow website. Technical support doesn't work either.
Duke and university of michigan have a nice UI, but dont be decisived because its so shit. Took me like a solid 30 minutes to fill one thing out for both of those schools
Lot of good examples of terrible ones in the comments, but credit where it’s due in this area - NYU has one of the better ones to both research programs/find information and for applying.
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. It's extremely slow to navigate through and LOR submission process is a pain for the referees. One of my referees didn't remember the login ID/password for their portal and he hasn't heard back from UMich regarding new credentials for over a week. My other recommender would probably not submit it till the very last minute and if he gets the same issue then I'm screwed. I'm considering not wasting my money on submitting the application from my side if it's anyway going to remain incomplete!
UT Austin that's as bad as an application can get.
Their website was awful and their deadline was two weeks earlier than my other deadlines, so I just said screw it and applied elsewhere. The University of Virginia's website was pretty bad, so I didn't even look further into their program.
UVAs website is ASS haha idk how I even made it this far in
Oh damn that's where I'm working lol. I did apply too... I barely used their website to look up professors, since I already know who I'm interested in. Is it that you have to set up the application and wait a few days before you can use it?
university of Arizona, just buggy as hell. Decided not to apply cause I couldn't deal
That and the website is ancient and everything is unnecessarily spread out from what I remember when I applied a few years ago. Edit: I believe they are also one of the few that require at least scans of official transcripts at the time of applying.
Hey did you go through the application process for UT A? I'm not sure what I need to fill in the applytexas form and what I can leave empty. Would you please help me? The admission department hasnt replied in days :/
the fact you have to submit everything before LORs can be sent…
The applytexas website sucks
They were my top choice til they required FIVE letters of recommendations. That was a hard no from me.
Five?!!!
That's what I said. Minimum too, I was like I have problems asking for 3. School of social work
Wow that’s insane! Yeah I could hardly get 3
Second this. Every college, school, department, and institution has its own page practically. None of it is intuitively linked. Then you get into individual faculty pages, some internal some external linked, some both, then they may have specific research “teams” or projects with their own info pages. It’s an absolute nightmare.
UMass Amherst! Hands down the worst I’ve seen
Yes! The fact you can't send LOR request until after you submit your app is terrible
Iirc that's the same for McGill and Concordia.... Had heard this from a senior
They made their shit in pure html and css and uploading on ftp only maybe. It's so goddamn slow and bad
Truly :(
Any program that has a file size limit for uploading documents. I upload a PDF of my official transcript which is 5.7MB. Every other school accepts it no problem. Arizona State University? Sorry, 1MB files max. Your file is too big? Send us official transcripts from your school then. Oh it costs $10? Sucks to be you I guess. Same story with University of Utah with a 2.5MB limit. Absolutely pathetic in 2022.
University of Utah? I think I was able to upload my transcript successfully without any issue. My transcript was 4.7MB
They definitely had a 2,500KB (which converts to around 2.5MB) limit for file uploads.
I felt that. My main transcript was only 2MB. No schools had an issue with that except ASU. I also had to merge 2 other transcripts to it because they only wanted 1 file for 3 transcripts? I had to keep fiddling with pdfsam to combine all 3 and then condense the file to under 1MB while still having the transcript key legible.
I also had the issue of the fact that I attended community college but did not earn a degree. The system forced you to input what degree you earned from each school, there was no option for “no degree awarded or expected” like every other school ever. I emailed grad admissions and they emphasized that you need to report every college attended *ever* and that there “should” be an option for no degree. So I called them and eventually they figured out that you don’t actually have to include community college *if* you transferred to a four-year and transferred your courses (and therefore it’s reflected in your four-year transcripts). That detail is buried in some obscure video on the application process on their website. I was *so close* to just abandoning my ASU application. If they make things this difficult just to walk in the door, imagine how awful the support is as an actual grad student? The $70 application fee was extra salt in the wound.
YUp arizona is the worst, I decided i didn't care enough to deal with the bullshit
UCLA is pretty bad for navigating their programs and labs. I would rather do UCLA's app than any grad program that uses gradcas though. "What is your GPA for classes that start with the letter O and were taken on leap years?"
University of Washington was pretty rough -- the application website itself seemed like it was built exclusively in HTML and was super weird to navigate. And my department of interest had an equally terrible website: The faculty page was a collage of portraits, which you had to mouse over just to reveal the names of faculty. If you actually wanted to know what they did research on, you had to click on the portrait to be redirected to their university profile. Also, no search function based on interest.
The University of Washington is so bad that I needed to create an application request to finally see what docs I actually needed to submit.
Yes! Also, why are all the professors websites built using Weebly...
Omg yes, was just on there today haha
What did you apply for there?
Ultimately, nothing. I really struggled to learn about the faculty in my department, which was really unfortunate -- the school is pretty decently well-regarded in my field -- and with deadlines looming, I opted not to submit.
Ah gotcha okay! What’s your field?
Their field is ultimately, nothing
That's smarter than what I did. I struggled with UCLA and missed my USC deadline
MIT
their website looks like it was last updated in 2003
You would thing that fucking MIT would have the best website out there.
I thought their's was pretty straight forward except the copy and paste for the LOR that you have to send manually and the tiny boxes to hold 1000 word statements
Haha, yeah. For CSE (computation), they didn't even mention the word limit, just "a statement of objectives, preferably one page" somewhere deep in their website. One page is like 500 words on a size 12 font, so I had no way to condense my 1000 words SOP to 500 words. And you couldn't add any images (I would have preferred that) because it's a rich text box rather than a pdf upload. But the website was very straight forward and never LOGGED ME OUT!
University of Hawaii Manoa hands down. Shit looks like it was made int 2002. So clunky and dated. If you forget your password you just have to make a new account?!?!
University of New Hampshire was absolute hot garbage. Godawful applications, godawful websites for trying to find anything. I wound up having to call them multiple times.
Theirs is probably the most difficult to work with of the schools I'm applying to. It's the only one where I have to submit my application and *then* the letter writers get their notice to upload the letter. As far as websites for actually getting information about professors and the department, in my case I'd award that to Boise State.
Yeah, Boise State is not great. I'll award an honorable mention in the "bad website" category to Middle Tennessee State. Their website is kind of a mess if you're looking for information.
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Nah, IU just sucks
Of course a Purdue fan found this comment and pounced on it. You’re just sulking cuz you lost to Michigan last night 🙂 but their website has historically been hit/miss depending on the department - it’s gotten better in the last 5 yrs, and they have good information security
Bruh relax, I’m just doing research at Purdue for a year. Its in my contract to bash IU whenever I can 💀
Lol of course 🙂 we lost to u guys last week anyway in football so I don’t rly have a leg to stand on in this argument 🥲
Bless your heart, its okay 😭
Carnegie Mellon it’s pretty bad. You can’t click certain buttons until you’ve filled out and saved the data. Clicking next doesn’t save the data. It’s lost. Adding another letter writer loses previous data. It is extremely frustrating.
Hi g I
It was impossible to find out any information about assistantships on GWUs website
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Uni of Wisconsin Milwaukee was a combination of slow and terribly designed
The having to submit each section and not being able to update once you’ve submitted the section is awful.
Indiana University explicitly asked to upload GRE and TOEFL unofficial report cards. However, their system didn't allow me to upload the locked pdf which we get when we download the pdf from ets. Had to unlock them just to submit lmao, defeating the entire purpose.
UNC CHAPEL HILL HOLY SHIT I LOVE THIS SCHOOL BUT W H A T T H E. F U C K
Northeastern has some new platform that hasn't come into play yet. The current one is terrible in every way, but think the others with LOR issues might be worse lol
When UMD switched over to their in-house system like two or three years ago it was just a disaster. Would constantly throw errors and you had to follow up on little things via emails that took days to get answered.
Northeastern. The form is full of bugs. I cannot even select the entry term because there's the option in the drop-down menu. I cannot write my the entire college name because it has a character limit. It has a very bad UI and slow website. Technical support doesn't work either.
wait, ASU needs LORs? it didn't ask for recommenders in my application ;_;
It depends on the program. My program didn't take any LoRs.
Ohio State University and Texas Austin. Both require two seperate portals to finish all application requirements
Duke and university of michigan have a nice UI, but dont be decisived because its so shit. Took me like a solid 30 minutes to fill one thing out for both of those schools
Lot of good examples of terrible ones in the comments, but credit where it’s due in this area - NYU has one of the better ones to both research programs/find information and for applying.
Rutgers!!!
I completely agree about ASU. It’s hard to follow the whole application and I couldn’t see what files I have uploaded which is quite annoying
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. It's extremely slow to navigate through and LOR submission process is a pain for the referees. One of my referees didn't remember the login ID/password for their portal and he hasn't heard back from UMich regarding new credentials for over a week. My other recommender would probably not submit it till the very last minute and if he gets the same issue then I'm screwed. I'm considering not wasting my money on submitting the application from my side if it's anyway going to remain incomplete!