Bsrgvty

I had some troubles following your question, but if I understood correctly then I would assume that:

1. 
   The professor interviewing you is highly confused right now. They seem to have literally nothing to do with your university, the program, you (other than having interviewed you recently), and the person that you accused of being unjust - and yet they are drawn into a conflict that they have no stakes in nor responsibility for.


2. 
   You may indeed have lowered your chances of getting accepted considerably. In the best case your email would be seen as odd. In the worst case it would be seen as grossly unprofessional, painting you as a trouble maker who will randomly lash out whenever something happens that you consider unjust. I have seen students like that, and I know of no professor / admission committee that wants to bother with this kind of drama.

However, now that I have calmed down I have realized that I should not have let even injustices affect me and it was unnecessary to email my interviewer.

I think your reflection should go deeper than that. It is true that part of being a professional is also being able to absorb smaller perceived unjustices like that (empathy and an ability to accept that grades aren't everything helps here), but I also can't help but wonder what you were trying to achieve with this email in the first place. To me (and note that I am only going by your short recap) this sounds rather vindictive, serving no other purpose than to get back at the person not recommending you. If that is indeed the case, you should take a good hard look at your actions in this case and learn from that for the future.

Firstly, thanks for being brave enough to make this post and seek advice. The responses you will get are going to be critical of your behaviour, so let me pre-empt this by saying that the fact that you are now seeking advice is a good thing. With great respect, everything you describe in your post is way out-of-line, and yes, quite obviously your email is going to severely harm your application.

Even before we get to the email, losing control at your Department Head over his selection of another student for a research opportunity is not an appropriate response to that circumstance. This selection may seem like an "obvious injustice" to you, but there are many possible reasons it could have been made, notwithstanding your superior grades and English language skills. A Department Head is an experienced academic, and they generally have sound judgment on these matters, so it would have been far better to find out the reasons for the selection of the other student. It would also have been far better to seek feedback on your own short-comings, and how to improve your chances for later opportunities.

If there was indeed some unfairness in the selection process for that application (and you do not specify what the nature of that unfairness might be) then there are ways to raise this in a professional manner. There may have been some opportunity to complain or seek a review of the decision under university rules, but even if there was not, "losing control" at your Department Head, and threatening (and then carrying out) a campaign of defamation, is not the appropriate response.

As to your email, this is also totally out-of-line, and it reflects terribly on you. The university selection panel you have written to has no role scrutinising the decisions of your Department Head, so what this email demonstrates to them is: (1) you are prone to lash-out and defame others when you do not get what you want; (2) you only see your own assessment of the "injustice" of a decision, and are not adept at seeing the matter from the point-of-view of others; (3) when you have a grievance, you take a "scorched Earth" approach rather than raising your grievance in a professional manner and with regard to appropriate procedures; and (4) you expect unrelated bodies to weight into your grievance.

Throwing accusations around without proof of wrongdoing will not make you any friends, not at your university and neither where you applied. First, let's address the accusations and why you should have kept them to yourself:

• You didn't attend the interview of the chosen student. He/she might have shown desirable traits beyond academic prowess


• Maybe the student had relevant experience that you were not aware of


• Most people are a poor judge of their own ability

Even in the case where you, objectively, were the better student, it still is not proof of any wrongdoing and learning to take defeat graciously reflects much better on you than throwing a tantrum.

Finally, this email you sent will definitely affect the way you are seen by the interviewer. At best, it will be seen as childish/petty, but it could also reflect a troublemaker personality. I suggest you immediately retract what you said in this email unless you have proof, along the lines of 'I now recognize I was too hasty in throwing such accusations, and I'm sorry for involving you in this matter'.

It seems you are missing a few key points here.

The most important one is that people sent to this "research opportunity abroad" are ambassadors of your current department.

Don't shoot the messenger: You have shown that you are entitled, vindictive and hot-headed. Taking this into account, it seems that your head professor chose wisely by not picking you as an ambassador.

A motivated student with basic English skills can become fluent abroad in a few months.

Your behavior surely affected negatively the outcome of your application, and will continue to do so if you don't work on your social skills. Good luck!

I'm sorry to add insult to injury, but @Guest1, just reading your (edited) question suggests that you are impulsive, hot-headed, fiery and, most concerning of all, entitled.

Please do a little self-introspection and analysis, and more importantly, ask those people nearest to you: family, friends, peers, and professors an honest assessment of your character.

Get that precious feedback, assure them that you will not be offended, hurt or be upset, and while they are talking, listen, do not interrupt them.

If the feedback is generally positive, then chalk the email up to inexperience and a moment of poor judgement. It will still serve as an invaluable lesson in humility.

If the feedback is mixed or shockingly bad, it will be easier to comprehend the self-inflicted damage that email has probably committed. We don't know what words were used in the email nor its tone, but if I had received an email from an “unknown” applicant who accused a professor of bias and another candidate of being unqualified, I would certainly think twice before considering that person's application.

However, in your post you mentioned that the professors to whom you forwarded the email, had actually interviewed you

I would report this obvious injustice to the leading mathematicians at the university that had interviewed me recently.

Perhaps you performed well in your interviews, perhaps you left a positive impression, in which case these mathematicians will probably overlook your (spiteful?) heated email, and seeing you have since apologised, that too should also play in your favour. A person who is humble enough to apologise when they have realised their mistake is, in my books, commendable, unless the email was clearly written by someone in the throes of a conniption fit, only you know the answer to that.

I think that most of the answers give you pertinent advice. You applied for a research program. In the future, you will probably apply for post-doc, permanent positions if you decide to stay in academia, otherwise you will still have to apply. The majority of the applications will fail, which is normal and there can be some disappointment. In order to be not too much affected, here are some advice.

• First, we have to keep in mind that there is no total ordering of the candidates. It is surely not so often that there is a candidate who is better than all the others in all the possible aspects which are required for a position. It is also hard to say "A is better than B" otherwise the role of the commissions would be easy.




• Second, as pointed out in other answers, there is a big part of unknown: about the profile of other candidates for examples and also how their interview went. Somehow surprisingly, there is also a part of unknown about your interview. The member of commissions are usually not emotional hence you do not know exactly how an answer to a question was received.




• Third, we have to consider that we only need one application which works and that when one failed, we did not lose any thing because we had nothing before (having the position was not a debt).

It seems that it is the fact that you were affected that led you to write the email. Next time, it would be better to ask for example the aspects of your curriculum that you could improve instead of putting into question the choice of the commission.