Canis

Congrats on deciding on UT! The return to academia is challenging and thrilling, and you'll bring a much needed perspective.

Wound up turning down their offer b/c it was tied to 20 hours/week of TA from the first year forward, and the tuition waiver required TAing. Decided to take a funding offer that was stronger, but really wish I could have gone! Good luck and enjoy!!

Yes - that's the plan. My partner and I were both accepted there. Now it's just a matter of the study permits, finding housing, and driving to the ends of the earth come august.

That gives me a lot of confidence, knowing that my committee members were trained at McMaster.

Thanks! I guess they can probably figure it out, and assume that a huge number is for 4 years, not one... Did you also list just 4 years for the course of study?

Anyone know if in question 4 - are they asking for the total cost of all the years of study and total money, or annual cost? The instructions don't specify. For those US Americans who applied - did you submit bank info or any other financial forms - or just the funding offer from the Canadian school? Also - the instructions say to fill out the family information form, etc. but my documents list doesn't ask for those to be uploaded - anyone else notice this? This is for the IMM1294 form.

Assuming you could be equally happy living in both places, you will have more success with admissions if you choose U of T. I can tell you that anthropologists (TT faculty) here in NYC talk about UofT and UBC as considered to be equal in caliber to US schools. Those are the only Canadian schools my mentors approved of me even considering. Granted, this is for PhD. That said, I turned down UBC and am going to a different Canadian school that they've never heard of because I want to work with a small department, get personal attention, and have the freedom to pursue my interests as they develop. Watch out for the big reputation schools with well connected supervisors, make absolutely certain they will really let you study what you want. But, where do you want to apply for your PhD? For example, if it's the UK, your Canadian MA won't matter, most UK schools require a UK MA. If it's the US, your MA could be from any school, as long as you make yourself stand out in the PhD application pool by publishing, presenting at AAA, etc.

(Also, the April 15th date only applies to funding decisions, not admission, it also is only those schools who have agreed, and it's not binding.)

It's funny because so many of my friends who have finished PhDs and who are doing them now warned me about things like this and I just didn't believe that such educated adults could be so nuts - but lesson learned and now I'll be on guard.

On that note. I just formally declined my offer from University of British Columbia, in case anyone is on their wait-list. (You may want to bring a bullet proof vest if you choose to accept.)

For MA or PhD? I got my PhD rejection already along with quite a few others.

The thing is in cultural it's not the case that students are held to their admissions statement interests. In this case, it's exactly that, a POI who wanted a protege to take on his personal work. Any deviation from that, even minor ones, would not have been acceptable. What's especially disconcerting about this was that the POI never even hinted at this in initial discussions and went through 10 days of emailing about (every day) about research areas before finally being pushed to reveal that this would be the case. There are a host of other reasons I'd label it toxic, based on not only this but also the fact that students are finding it impossible to finish because of too many new admits, not enough TA spots for funding in the years after the funding runs out, difficultly getting access and support from supervisor and from committee and from department, etc. I looked at the graduate student association meeting minutes going back years and every year they brought up the same problems over and over, and the department hasn't addressed them. Also, when I reached out to the department, the faculty member in charge of the grad admissions process literally said "I haven't been doing this long" so couldn't answer my questions about how funding works - but also couldn't direct me to anyone who could. The department took days to reply to simple queries, and generally felt distant and reluctant to help me find answers to questions about the offer they were giving me. Finally, the real sign was that of all the dozens of current students I reached out to contact about life in the department - only 2 replied. At every other school, all of the students replied, usually with glowing recommendations. In this case one was somewhat positive and one was negative - but only two even bothered to reply. Edit: I should add this was the exact opposite in all regards of the other programs that made me offers. One of the scariest parts was the one student who did have positive reviews of the department said "it's great except for difficulty getting time with your supervisor, competition with other students for funding, x, y, z, etc." listing all these horrible things that aren't the case in some programs - but which this student said they assumed was normal in programs! I'm glad to have had a lot of experience (~5 years) working closely at a PhD only university with faculty and students and knowing how it ought to be!

Just had the craziest thing happen in the middle of my process. I've been trying to decide between two schools - had basically ruled out the third. After 10 days of great, interesting email conversations in which I we were discussing research ideas - the prospective supervisor suddenly emailed me and said that he didn't want to work with me, and the department couldn't support me there if I wasn't going to write my dissertation on exactly what I had written in my application essay. I've never heard of this happening, but apparently it's a thing that occurs sometimes. So - I am SO grateful that I figured out he was only willing to work on one thing and had no tolerance at all for exploration or following the research where it took me. If I hadn't I would have signed up to go study in a completely toxic situation. It's a good reminder that during the decision process it's so important to talk on the phone, to email a lot - to seriously get to know your potential supervisors, to show them who you really are in order to avoid a horrible situation later. But on the upside, it made my decision so much easier because the other school is like a dream in comparison - they completely support me, and are excited by all my interests and ideas - not just one of them.

You would think NYC would skew the results - but I was admitted to UMass (Amherst) and in my conversations with students there, it's just as bad, if not worse!