I sent an angry e-mail to my interviewers about a conflict at my home institution. Could this affect my application?
I had some troubles following your question, but if I understood correctly then I would assume that:
- 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.
- 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.
I am going to just be honest in this response.
Why would the researchers at the British university you applied to care about what professors do at another university?
If I received an email from an applicant to my university about a matter at another program, I would think it was strange. Why would I care?
"Leading mathematicians" at a university unaffiliated with the research program you were not accepted for likely do not have time to become involved in petty politics and fights that are irrelevant to them.
Now, as for how it will affect your application, your email might likely mean nothing in the end. The interviewers will likely blow it off or do very little about it. This plays in your favor. Least said, soonest mended.
This being said, sending an email like you did could give an indication to the interviewers that you are whiny and immature. I would consider sending a follow up email to the interviewers saying that you acted in haste and have realized that it is obviously not their job to referee such disagreements. More often than not, the interviewers would think it odd that you had initially emailed them, but will also move on with their day as normal if you recanted what you said and just moved on. At least for me, I do not have time to psychoanalyse every applicant I come across for maturity.
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.