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human
A PhD Program posted the wrong deadline on their website. They won't consider my application after I missed the true deadline. Do I have options?

I'm applying to PhD programs. My top-choice program listed their application deadline on their department page as December 15. I planned my application season months ago and had everything ready to submit on time, and I could have submitted early if I needed to without any problems. However, when I went to submit my application on the day of the deadline, I discovered I had missed the deadline by one day.

After freaking out a bit, thinking I must have written down Dec. 15 instead of Dec. 14 in some kind of fit, I learned that the program's website had listed the date incorrectly. They had eventually updated it, but with very short notice and I (obviously!) didn't catch the change, as my application was already started at that point and I wasn't going back to their website to look up basic application information. I found evidence on the Internet Archive that their department website still showed the incorrect date as late as Nov 28, i.e. about 2 weeks before the deadline (and it's possible it was up even later, as Nov 28 was the most recent archiving). So I wrote a very reasoned and polite email, and sent it off immediately to the director and grad admissions people. I figured I couldn't have been the only person to have experienced this issue, and surely since it was their fault they'd be able to make some exception.

The director seemed to be on my side initially; she was the first to respond and apologized profusely and said she'd take care of it. (Specifically, she said in part:  "I've just left a message for our Director of Graduate Studies, \[REDACTED\], concerning this very pesky issue, and I am sure he will look into a solution at once. As the error is on our end, I am sure \[REDACTED\] will do all he can to ensure we can take your application. Stay tuned! Thank you so much for alerting us to this issue and apologies for any inconvenience and stress it has caused.")

The grad admissions people, however, don't care. They will not entertain an exception--in fact, they won't even admit the university's at fault. (I assume it's in their legal interest to do so.) They keep telling me to apply next year. They pointed to another place on the university website that listed the correct deadline, but that was on a completely different site (i.e. the general graduate college, rather than the program's department). I have pushed back with more evidence and more politeness, but they keep replying with (nearly) the same response. \*\*ETA: the program director has been included on all these emails, so she's aware of what's going on. She asked them for an exception over email, cc:'d me on it, and they also told her no.\*\*

So: do I just give up? Do I call up everyone and make a big stink about it? I'm not interested in legal action (don't have the money for it, and frankly I don't think this issue is important enough to warrant it) but it would be nice to know what my options here are, if anything.

(crossposted)
gpt
If they fuck up a simple deadline and are dicks about it now, how are they going to be when they fuck up a bigger deadline (Thesis submission date to graduate w/o paying for another semester, etc). I'd take it as a sign that this program isn't running well or doesn't care to run well. 

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