A fully funded PhD admit applied non-SDS in October 2022; months later the GCMS notes showed biometrics, criminality, eligibility and medical all
passed — yet no decision had come. The applicant asked what could be causing it.
What members offered:
- When every stage has passed, the delay is usually administrative. One theory floated from experience: files sometimes sit unassigned (e.g., after an officer leaves) until something nudges them. Whatever the internal cause, there was nothing left in the application to fix — which changes the strategy from 'improve the file' to 'get attention on the file.'
- Raise a webform — repeatedly. The concrete advice: submit an IRCC webform every ~15 days on a stalled file. Polite persistence is the applicant-side lever for a file that appears complete but undecided.
- SDS wouldn't necessarily have saved time. Asked why they didn't use SDS with such a strong profile, members noted SDS had been 'hit or miss' since the pandemic — the fast lane wasn't reliably fast in that period (a historical observation, but a useful caution against assuming stream = speed).
- Context on funded PhDs: members reminded that fully funded doctoral offers are the norm, not a red flag — a PhD is effectively a job, and existing contact with the proposed supervisor strengthens admission. The funding wasn't the problem; the queue was.