kobie

I just think that international students are not allowed to work off-campus and over 20 hours. But I guess your employer must be associated with the school in some way. Such a dilemma that your workplace is so far from your school. I can imagine how hard it is to balance the workload taking into consideration the time to commute. Just as sarandipidy said in his post, I also think that it is impossible to find a part-time that can cover tuition and living expenses. Moreover the tuition is paid by the school also. But I do get your point and actually I sometimes look at the whole thing from this perspective to make myself feel better. Thanks for your detailed and thoughtful post. That means a lot to people considering attending grad school without funding. I feel fortunate because I don't have other debt or financial burden to start with. Moreover, my field is food science and the job market in the food industry seems to be promising. I expect it to be better in the 2-3 years so that I can find a job to pay off everything I spend on grad school.

Thanks for your input, suspechosa. This advice is repeated over and over again in this forum and I have been thinking about this for the last 2 years. Actually this is my 3rd attempt already and I am already worn out. I told myself that I would never wanna do the whole cruel application process once more time. The chances are that I can be in your shoes in the next 6 month but I want to try anyway. At least for now It is better than being rejected over and over again and feeling like a loser for the past 2 years. I hope that everything will work out well for you in the second semester. Thanks for sharing, Zouzax. I am also gonna be doing master only. Working on-campus is what I want, but I guess I also need to have a talk with my advisor about this first. Is this semester your first one in grad school? Are you still looking for assistantship from the department?

Thanks for your reply, robot_hamster. I also read the thread on your assistantship frustration. Hope that it goes well for you. How many hours do you work per week? Do we need to get our advisors' admission before working or at least tell them about it? Does your major require you to work in the lab or does it focus on reading? I also hope that I can apply for TA in the second semester.

I am gonna attend grad school for my master degree next Spring without any financial assistance from the school or my advisor. Teaching assistantship is told to be quite limited and competitive; moreover, I cannot apply for it after the first semester and that is not guaranteed. I intend to find a part-time job, either on-campus or off -campus to partially ease the financial burden. But defintely I am aware that it must come after my school work in terms of priority. Therefore not until I figure out how well I keep up with my classes and research work upon attending the program, can I only decide on how many hours I can spend on part-time job. I will definitely need a part-time job while in grad school, but that leaves me with too many doubts. I wonder if any of you are in the same situation, ie. come to grad schools with no TA or RA and have to work during your grad studies to support yourself. Would you please share your story with me so that I can have a better consideration about my own case? Do you mange to balance between job and school work? Does your advisor even allow you to work at all? Any advice from your own experience that you can give about this issue?

I expect responsiveness to students' inquiry from my mentor. At least have enough time to respond to the their students' emails and be willing to be updated and mentor on their work progress weekly. I guess what I am looking for is something between what you mean by hands off and breathing down my neck. Isn't it too much to ask the the professor to care for his students and pay attention to their work progress in grad school?

Thanks for all of you guys' input! Actually I am an international students and currently not in the US so I cannot meet him in person. I have only contacted with him through emails so far. He seems nice and eager to tell me about his work and his research lab. I will take note of that question and ask him about this. Thanks timuralp! I guess this will my biggest concern when I first start the program and I expect to have more interaction with the mentor during this time to make sure I am not behind. It is nice to know that the postdocs do interact with the grad students when the prof is not around. I hope that I can have at least weekly individual meeting with the prof at least during the initial period of my program. Many people in gradcafe complained about the lack of the interaction between them and their mentors. So I am kinda afraid if that situation will ever happen to me, especially when the prof has too many students to handle.

Sorry but I don't get what you mean. Actually among those 9 students, not all of them are pursuing PhD. I believe there are about 4-5 in the master program.

Thanks for your reply Timuralp, I guess I should contact his students to see how they interact with him. But I cannot find the emails of the grad students on the faculty site. Should I ask him about this upfront? So one hour for each student per week is a norm. I wonder if this is even enough to for the update on the student's project progess and mentoring.

I am in the process of reapplying and I have also contacted a POI. I like his research fields and his well-equipped lab. His publication record is also very impressive. However, the only thing that bugs me is that he has up to 9 grad students that he is currently mentoring. I wonder if he even spend enough time with each of his current student. If I join his lab, is it a good idea after all? How many students do your professors have? If you are in this situation, does he/she spend enough time with you on your work? I post in this subforum because I would like to hear you guys-current grad students talk about your own experience when working with professor who has to handle many students.

Has everyone heard from NCSU yet? I am still waiting. They are really slow in updating the application status. I finished submitting mine in January and the status was only changed to Complete in early April even though it was confirmed that they had received everything a long time ago.

I also appied to UC Davis this year and got waitlisted. However, my discipline is not engineering program, so I guess I cannot say anything specific about the engineering program. If you are a California resident, I think there is a high chance of admission, but then if your decision to attend is contingent on funding, that may be another issue as you know about all the UC budget problems. You may want to contact faculty members to ask them about their funding situation and the chance of their accepting new students. As far as I am concerned, the funding situsation of the faculty members may change along and the chance is if they somehow find new funding resources at this late into the season and decide to take new grad students, late applicants like you and people on the waitlist may benefit from that. Anyway, good luck with your application.

It is horrible to visualize people like 2bphd as a PhD candidate.

I also applied to NCSU for Fall 2010 and have been waiting since I submitted my application back in December. So far no news yet. I contacted the department to which I applied in early March and was informed that they would try to update the application status on the website "in the next 2 months", which means May. At first I thought it was just the case for international students like me only but now hearing from you guys, it seems like this is the common situation for all I guess. I think that I will wait for 2 more weeks at most before contacting them again for more information.

Thanks pjv, Though the waitlist sounds a little disappointing at this late time, it kind of enlightens my mood in this long wait. At least it means my application is not so bad as I think it was considering I was waitlisted at a school with serious budget problems and the fact that I am an international student. As to other schools, I still haven't heard anything from them yet. I did ask them about the completion of my application back in February and March and was told that the decision should be made towards April and May. I feel kind of intimidated to ask them again so I guess I just have to keep waiting. If only I could visit the campuses and meet with the professors as you said, that would be wonderful. But I am currently not in the US any more. Actually if I were still in the US, everything would have been much easier for me in this application process. Seems like you have already settled your decision. Congrats on that! I wish you could transfer your spot at UC Davis to me instead. I hope that you will enjoy your career change. Welcome to Food Science!

Hi guys, I have just checked the application status website of UC Davis and found out that I have been waitlisted. I am not sure whether the message was sent by the graduate school or the department so I don't know if that decisionis made by the department itself or not. I don't have my hope too high with that waitlist thing at this late time into the application season, but somehow that makes me feel good about myself.