Doubts about Univ. of Western Cape

I don't know how long it usually takes a school rep to respond to email. But after leaving several this past week at UWC and getting no response, I'm starting to have my doubts about the school.

Or am I just being impatient?

Maybe someone here can tell me the average response time for a good GAAP school.

Thanks.

Roscoe

 

Jawellnofine. South Efrican university personnel are extremely erratic about responding to e-mail. Some have suggested it's due to the expense of sending it. Other than from one individual at RAU, I've waited (routinely) a month or more for replies to simple questions. If you want fast answers, get on the phone.

 

Janko's right (check this, china!); when I applied to UNISA in late 1996, my recollection is that emails were slowest, letters were slightly faster, and telephoning was best of all. It's possible to get on one of those international monthly calling plans for $3/month or so that will let you call South Africa for a semi-reasonable price (about 50 cents a minute as opposed to $2), and this is definitely the route I would go with if I were applying there now.

That said, if it's something where email would be better, might not hurt to try other specific people at the school who might make themselves useful--some people only check their email once every six months or are tardy about responding. I thought UNISA was terrible about emails, but there's someone in the theology department who responds very quickly, and helpfully, to all enquiries.

Good luck.


Cheers,

 

I appreciate Oom Janko's "Jawellnofine" and Tom's "China." Haven't heard those in a while.

I make a lot of calls to SA -- my monthly phone bill at one time was hundreds of dollars. But I have found that by far the cheapest way to call is to use prepaid cards I buy at Sam's Club. Comes to about 11 cents per minute!

I agree with the comments about phone vs. email. Don't communicate with a bureaucrat in SA via email unless he/she explicitly requests that you do so.

Vasbyt!

 

I guess I've been' lucky.' The Dean of the faculty of Theology and Religion studies, Arthur Song, of Unizul usually returns my email in 2- 3 work days. If there is a delay , he is so apologetic. My super, Alrah Pitchers, responds in 4-8 days, but he is part time. In both cases this was true in the application process and in the ongoing occasional needs to communicate after the thesis work began. In contrast, prior to starting UZ, I did email Unisa for information about its program. I received a response about two months later. I don't know the why for the contrast between the response time of the two schools.

 

I have had some luck in getting administrative personnnel to respond to email inquiries but I've had great success in contacting department heads and other teaching staff this way. I don't know the nature of your inquiries but it's possible that you're contacting the wrong person/people and they're just ignoring you (don't you just hate it when an email message that's important to you turns out to be just someone elses spam?) Also, I've made some considerable use of the US Postal Services "Global Priority" mail services. A two page letter (from Boston) costs $5.00 and takes six days to get to South Africa. I've not made much use of the telephone in these cases primarily because I've imagined (though never actually checked) that the time difference would mess me up. I'd suggest that you keep trying. Good luck.
Jack