HadiBody

"You're leaving your job to do a Master's? Nobody does that." "A PhD won't open up doors for you. Stay in the industry, the job market is not good out there" "You should kiss your romantic life goodbye, otherwise you'd not be a good PhD student" "By the time you graduate, all you've achieved is a fancy degree and no money to buy a frame for it" These are the things people told me AFTER I submitted all my applications. The unreal hypocrisy is that, for the most part, the same people were encouraging me to apply for grad school by noting all its merits. I don't care about any of this honestly. All I wish for is to have a good Prof. to work with, on a topic I like. I'm doing mater's first, and yet undecided on the PhD. Two years is not gonna hurt esp. when you get to learn stuff and specialize.

Perhaps the POI has instructed the grad student to interview you. Is this your first interview? Is the grad student a "senior" at the lab? Lots of post-doctoral fellows, or older PhD students, are gonna (or wanna) be professors soon, so it's not that surprising if your POI might have delegated such tasks to them. That said, it won't hurt if you ask for verification from you POI after the interview. If the student is acting on his/her own, it's a major redflag that the lab policy isn't the best of the bunch. I say this based on a demoralizing experience that my female friend had last year.

Count me in as well. Not only I'm going crazy about admissions, I'm fretting over what I'm gonna do after it as well. Due to personal reasons, the schools I've applied to aren't globally prestigious. I wonder whether they're ever worth another 5-6 years of my life. To make matters worse, I contacted the grad office of my top choice today, and they told me no professor has declared interest in me, and my chanced are gonna decline as time goes by, but they're not gonna officially update my application status until an interest is declared, or it's past the deadline and well...I'm rejected. I hate the wait. Just tell me I'm not good enough, or update me to the detail. I hate waiting out of the loop.

Shouldn't be more difficult now to conduct research though? I mean as you mentioned, a lot of PhD candidates couldn't even get to the finish line when their studies involved intense research activities. I know schools don't expect students to publish, but they look very good on an application, and without any context. At my school, there was some research going on, but it was nothing worthwhile. I know many of my friends who just drew some shapes and graphs for a paper in LaTeX, got their name in a submitted paper, and wrote it as "research experience" on their applications. For me, a true research experience, is one that you'd struggle to describe to someone out of your research group. The research must make you the most knowledgeable person in the whole school in that particular task of yours. I really don't think this many undergrad students have been able to do that. Yet you see someone in a 4-year program with 2 years of research experience. That is pretty surprising to me.

That numerous applicants have strong research experience from the undergrad days. I see some applicants on here with 3- publications, which is insane even for some grad students. I never thought I'd be competing against so many researchers. Isn't the whole point of grad studies to become a researcher? If you're one already, then get a research job, as the majority of grad students do once they're finished. Hopefully I'm good enough for at least one of my picks, but I'm not confident about it.

24 when I (hopefully) start my MSc. I took me too long to realize I'm better in academia than the industry.

I am interested as well!

The applicants have already been informed apparently. But they have only selected the applicants from Canadian schools. In other words, if your app does not indicate education in a Canadian university, then you are ruled out for an invite (unless you're an extremely strong applicant from US and there is a faculty member who really really wants you). It's a paid trip, so the faculty wants to minimize the cost if possible. The person I talked to even mentioned Ontario schools as the main priority to fill up the limited list of invites. Bear in mind that they filter by school, not place of residence. That said, do not worry yet. Their admission procedure esp. for engineering is a long wait. I'd be seriously concerned in early June for example. Just relax for now, there is not much you can do at this stage. Good luck.