Nausicaa

This strategy worked for me.  I got an extra $5000 offered to me when I said I had another offer with better funding.  My POI asked to see my offer letter from the other school that stipulated the funding amount, passed it on to the department, and then I was given a counteroffer that matched the funding amount.  

You can still get the loans if you are enrolled full time, and the FAFSA is the first step. You should also be able to contact your institution's financial aid office for assistance with the loans. 
 
Depending on your field, I'd advise against taking out so many loans. It's often better to adjust your standard of living downward while in school than to take out loans (even if you fully expect to be able to pay them pack). No matter what, the interest on the loans is lost money.

Thanks for all the replies, so here's what I've done:
 
Since this was the College of Engineering, and the fact that my interests don't seem to mesh with the majority of people in the Mech E dept., I've asked to change my admission to another department EE where there are profs doing the exact kind of work I'm interested in. I reached out to the profs directly and have garnered some interest and am now speaking with them. The transfer of departments isn't even an issue luckily! So now I have to find someone with funds who finds me attractive. Never give up! This may also be unique to my situation because I applied cold to the program without a POI, giving me the freedom to shop around like this. Hopefully something nice happens, you never know!

Public school with in state tuition or private expensive school? Also, better ranked by how much? 5-10 spots is one thing and 50 spots is another.
 
You need to ask the department clearly how likely it is you'll get funding during your first year and later years. If it's a private school you're talking about 4-5 years here of $30 thousand/year so I don't think that would be an option. With in-state tuition, maybe it's doable depending on your circumstances.
 
I personally wouldn't go to a PhD program without funding, especially in engineering.

I am currently in a PhD program for Chemistry right now. I don't think is a good idea to attend a program just for a specific group.

After you entered the program, you will have to submit another application to join the research group of your choice. However, this is where a lot of students (some of my peers) got screwed over and some of them ended up either

(1) switched to another division
(2) joined a different research group
(3) left the program

Do you consider yourself as a top/competitive student in comparison to your cohort class?

Very, very, very overdue hydro bill.

......


Discard.

Don't plan to buy any software. Many universities have digital copies available for you once you are a student because of their licensing agreements. It is possible that you can get all of the software you need for free through them.
 
Tablets and electronics are the best for this funding, you will want to buy a brand new computer for your office and set it up with two monitors. Your productivity will skyrocket. Or you will become a more efficient redditor one of the two.

i would find it a bit obnoxious at the time but it wouldn't make me think any less of you

I think maybe this might be getting blown out of proportion a tiny bit. I don’t know who told you it was inappropriate, but unless it was a professor or something (in which case I might freak out too) it seems to be a much bigger social blunder to point it out in the first place. For the sake of honestly, I would probably not have emailed everyone on the visiting weekend, but I really dont think its that big of a deal.
 
Did someone make a comment along the lines of "don't send personal messages to CCed contacts?" I think the problem was not that you said hi, but rather that you were contacting people’s personal addresses without authorization. I'm sure not everyone will end up staying in the program, and the admissions committees have our contact information with the understanding that they were confidential. Many people won't care that they are being made semi public, but some might be bothered. Its more about a privacy issue than you. Its just a silly little mistake, not a massive crisis.
 
I wouldn’t say anything (no one else is going to bring it up either, that would be very unnecessary and kind of antagonistic). I think at the very worst it seems a bit "over-eager". I'd try to relax. Honestly, I'm weird all the time accidentally and everyone just gets over it and moves on.
 
It certainly is not going to be a problem for years. There is no way everyone is going to remember and care about one email for more than a few days.
 
If it makes you feel better, someone in my residential college in undergrad responded to 5000 people accidentally talking about his personal crisis with the housing office. It was super personal, and really hilarious and the housing office ended up having to send out an email to EVERYONE telling them to please disregard all the responses. Everyone got over that, and it was a MUCH bigger deal.

I have heard of people negotiating for funding once they have other offers.  I have also heard that this is very common among men and very uncommon among women.  My boss and a customer where I waitress (who is a tenured professor) told me that they did it at several schools, and were successful in getting more money.  The key seems to be leveraging another offer you have though, not just requesting more money.  I was told to couch it in some sort of statement about how I would rather go to the program with less money, but got better money at another school which would eliminate the need for loans. 
 
Also, it generally doesn't hurt to ask as long as you are polite and respectful about it!

that departmental prestige is the best predictor of post-PhD employment. So you might have a more enjoyable PhD but, statistically speaking, worse career prospects

This really misses the specialization in the field of Psychology. A lot of times, who you work for is more important than what program you're in. I'd rather go to #200 and work with an influential person in my field than #5 with someone I'm not as excited about. But oh well, I know some people follow these rankings dilligently. :-)

So, the short version is that I went to my interview incredibly under-dressed; while the other three applicants all wore grey suits I had on a green dress and boots...
 
The long, but not really important, version is that for Interview Day last Friday I was one of two applicants to my POI's lab and four in total to the department. I actually live in the city near the school, so I had driven there from another meeting I had early in the morning. On the way there, I spilled coffee all over my suit so I had to run home and change into SOMETHING decent; the only thing I had clean was that dress. When I got to the breakfast before the interviews and such I felt like I was getting weird looks but I explained my situation to the grad students and we had a laugh. But I forgot to mention it to my POI or anyone else; partly out of nervousness and maybe because unconsciously I didn't want to sound like I was making excuses. I don't know... 
 
Anyway, I guess my question is has anyone been in a similar situation and gotten through it? Is there any hope for me? Or should I just assume the worst? It's been over a week so it would be weird to email the advisor to explain myself. I feel like an idiot...

Due to a luggage mishap (long story), I had to interview at a top choice PhD program wearing a horse dress and moccasins. And when I say "horse dress" I mean a dress with little horses printed all over it. Yellow and blue ones. I joked about my outfit with grad students and other prospectives, but I didn't waste what little time I had with my POI talking about my clothes. It was a west coast interview, so a lot of people weren't wearing suits, but I was definitely the only person with animals printed on her clothes. I don't know if the story got around or not, but I did get the offer. Hopefully your attire won't be a deal breaker either. Good luck! 

Things that are depressing for 500, Alex.

I broke down in front of my entire thesis committee last year. Like, full out crying, not able to stop... They were pretty supportive and understanding about it, but I was still pretty embarrassed.

I don't care about your father, I don't care about your choreography, I don't care that your lab always creates PhD student or your lack of moral support.You're acting immature.

I glad you've found a place to vent. A lot of people (me included) might be turned off by your post- don't let us get in your way. This anger is a natural reaction; let it pass, observe it. No matter how hard you've worked there is always room for improvement.

Don't be so quick to insult the masters degree; maybe it isn't for you, just don't imply it is a failure and insult the professionals that have the masters.
 
Neil Armstrong walked on the moon but when he got home he still had to take out the trash.

I just sent an email to the POI I want to work with... god I can't wait for this to be over so I can stop ruminating about it.
 
I love how I spent much of the interview day talking about how awesome mindfulness and self-compassion is, and all I can do is worry about how it went! My fiancee is ironically the one who keeps telling me to stay in the present moment. Ah well...

It is possible to win a sshrc and be rejected, but you will very likely get into any program you want with a sshrc win.  People who win a sshrc and do not get into a grad program can contact the school to let them know they have won a sshrc. In almost all cases said program will admit you because sshrc will cover your expenses and grad programs want and need sshc winners ( the university gets money for  and it may increase their quota for next year).
 
If you were passed on for the MA competition you have about a 90-95% chance of winning sshrc, so congrats you will most likely be going to grad school next year.

Okay, the fact that you're mentioning an IRB and not an IACUC board suggests to me that you haven't done your research thoroughly enough.

No surely not (at least I haven't)-- it sounds like a great sign

I'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.

I used citations without the full reference. I cited the longitudinal study I've been working with and papers the pois had written. 

I want to encourage everybody to attend the "professional" or "current issues" types of sessions, maybe even make them a priority over content sessions. For example, last year there was a symposium on false positive psychology (hawt topic right now) that include a nice public--and later email--argument between Uri Simonsohn and Norbert Schwarz. Sadly, I skipped it in favour of something else, which I regret.

e.g., SPSP sent this last week: "...this year a special symposium session is being added, designed to allow the membership of SPSP to come together to discuss current issues important to the Society. Such issues might include priorities for action in the coming year, administration, financial issues, the pending reorganization of the Society’s central office, the profession’s response to recent episodes of research fraud and questions about the reliability of scientific findings, or anything else of interest to the membership. We have scheduled this session for Saturday, January 19 from 3:30 pm to 4:45 pm in Room 203-205 of the Convention Center."

"Administration" = boring. "fraud and reliability" = spicy

Other possibilities:
"Openness in scientific reporting: Potential and reaction" S-B1
"False positive II: Effect sizes too small, too large, or just right" S-D1

And the data blitz is great for those of us with short attention spans (S-B9).

Nice to meet you.  :-)
 
And yes, one can do that.  My school does not get the print versions of that journal, but has the articles through EBSCO. Personally, I prefer to have the whole journal.