kabelo

As you are from the UK, your passport doesn't need to be valid for the entire duration of your program.
 
'Unless canceled or revoked, a visa is valid until its expiration date. Therefore, a valid U.S. visa in an expired passport is still valid. If you have a valid visa in your expired passport, do not remove it from your expired passport. You may use your valid visa in your expired passport along with a new valid passport for travel and admission to the United States.' (http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/types/types_1268.html)
I had the same 'problem' and decided to simply get a new passport, so I won't have to do so while in the US, and because I really don't wanna bring two passports for traveling all the time.
 
(Edit: By the way, there won't be a paper I-94 any longer. They exchanged it for an electronic version on May 25.)

Not quite the same experience since Canadians don't get visas to enter the US. However, my passport was set to expire about 9 months after I entered the US but Canada doesn't allow us to renew our passports until 6 months prior to the expiration date.
 
So, I entered the US on my old passport, and I was able to mail in my forms and photographs to get a new passport a few months after entering the US. When I did so, I removed the I-94 form (back when there was still a paper form) and then reattached it to the new passport when I received it.
 
This also means that your passport does not have to valid for your entire stay in the US -- I'm not sure where you read that? I read that it just has to be valid for 6 months past the date you want to enter the US. For Canadians, until next month, we only have 5 year passports, so unless we finish in exactly 5 years and we get a passport issued just before we leave, it's likely that most Canadian students will have to renew their passport at some point.
 
For your visa, during our international student orientation, we were told that it's actually possible to get a visa that is valid beyond your passport expiry date. If this happens, they told us that our visa is still valid even though the passport it's attached to might be expired/invalid. You should get your old passport back when you renew it, and they will do something (e.g. punch a hole) through the identification pages but leave your visa pages alone. So, you can use your still valid visa in your old passport along with your new passport to enter the US again afterwards.
 
For your passport, are you sure that you will have to return to your home country to get a new passport? Would you be able to visit a Consulate Office or Embassy of your home country in the US to do this instead?
 
Of course, please check with your school's international office to be more certain -- this is just from my experience and what I learned from my own international office.

Wolf pack

social psychology (yeeeaahh!)

social psychology (yeeeaahh!)

Hi everyone,
 
I have found a wonderful spot in a wonderful PhD program, starting in fall. I am really excited about it and can't wait to start. And I really mean the "can't wait": I am still finishing up my MA stuff at the moment and have a really hard time motivating myself to do the work. I will have my final exams end of May. The outcome of my exams won't have any impact on my future, even if I fail, but I still would like to do somewhat well on them...
 
Is/Was anybody in a similar situation and what do/did you do to motivate yourself?

U mad bro?

I understand waiting to make a decision.  It is our future, and that can be scary.  But you can't really be torn equally between SEVEN programs/offers.
 
If all 7 offers were so great that you really can't decide, eliminate one and roll a die.  There must be a few of those that he knew he wouldn't take.  It is great to take time and think, but other people are also waiting down the line.  Hold on to a few offers and let the others go.  Then from the ones you are seriously considering, work towards a decision.
 
If you are waiting to hear from a program, or waiting for a better offer, that is one thing.  But waiting on 7 offers while others still wait to hear that magic phrase is rude.  Announcing that you are hoarding 7 offers to those on this website still waiting is worse.
 
That is how I read it.

You seriously waited this long to reply to your other 6 offers?  Might not want to tout the fact that you hogged 6 offers for weeks or months at the cost of others on the waitlist or hoping to hear from one of those programs before making a decision to attend elsewhere.
 
Take another read over your post and see how conceited it sounds.

To-Do List:
 
- Find an apartment
- Find the airline with the biggest luggage allowance
- Find a good bank where I can open an account
- Find the best-value cell phone carrier
- Find a decent road bike on craigslist
- Find funds to buy an iMac for the office

Check out the Facebook Group Yale 2013 New Grad School student Facebook - 150+ new grad students there already.

I had two advisers on the MA level. The first was a stereotypical "Professor Smith" from the PhD comics. It turned out that he was incredibly caring at the end of my program, but you could not tell it the two years that I TA-ed for the man. He was very... detached. In fact, he sort of avoided having an eye contact with you, but we did drink a lot of wine in front of his fire place while talking. His approach to mentoring was loading me up with books, loads so huge, that I once went tumbling down on the floor right outside his office. I transferred to a different adviser, and there were no hard feelings. It was over a difference in academic interests/methodology. In fact, my family still goes to his house for Thanksgiving 7 years later.

Second adviser was a dream. I remember sending her my thesis at 11 at night, and having it back with her hand-written notes at 7 in the morning the next day. And the thing was HUGE. She was thorough, respectful, fast. We ended up having a great connection. I flew across the country 5 years after I graduated to have a heart to heart with her about my academic career and what I want to do with it. Come to think of it, we stayed at "Professor Smith's" house that time.

So there you go

Yeah, I thought of that. Moreover, sports equipment do not count towards luggage allowance so I thought of taking racquet, stick, shin protectors, etc in my hockey bag. But, honestly, they are SO OLD that it wouldn't hurt buy a new one in the States.  
 
Yeah, I want new tech too. They will have to wait though....
 
 
Since I am buying everything new, I am making some lists on Amazon: urgent, not so urgent, nice clothes, etc. It's so fun!!!! :D 
 
In my urgent stuff I included (besides what I told you earlier):
Bathroom curtain + rug set
dish set service 4
drinking glasses
cutlery
 
What am I forgetting?

What Grad School gif sites does everyone frequent? I know for bio there's http://whatshouldwecallgradschool.tumblr.com and for math there's http://forthenotworkingmathematician.tumblr.com/ and for later year grad students theres http://researchinprogress.tumblr.com .
 
What do you guys like?

Anytime you connect through a US airport and are arriving from another country, you have to go through immigration and collect your luggage anyway. In that sense, it wouldn't matter if the final destination isn't the US because there isn't anything stopping you from leaving the airport.
 
However, I can imagine that it would cause red flags at immigration if you have a continuing ticket and don't plan to use it, even though you will also have a valid visa. I think you'd be better off not having a round-trip ticket back to Europe and instead having the return flight terminate in NYC. 

HI! I don't think I completely understood. You are saying that you want to enter the US on your connection place? I don't think that's possible, but you should check. 
 
I my experience, Delta Airlines had a very cheap flight to NY via Atlanta, but I wanted to go to Atlanta. A direct flight was more expensive! So I asked the agency if I could buy my ticket to NY but check my bags to Atlanta. They said they couldn't be sure that was possible. 
 
If your final destination is the UK but you want to enter the US, I don't know, after all you have a valid visa. The problem is not where you come from but rather why you don't complete the flight. Besides, I don't know how are US officers with British citizens. Check with the International student office, the DHS website and you can even call the US embassy in the UK, just to be sure. 
 
Have you been to Rio?

There was a communal household that recently advertised in Craigslist. Looks really nice. Lovely East Rock home with several rooms, shared cooking, cooperative gardens out back. http://newhaven.craigslist.org/apa/3715247402.html
 
Other resources:
http://webdev.yale.edu/livingnh/community/rental.html
 
Yale Off-Campus Housing Search Listing (you can even look for a roommate): http://offcampus.yale.edu/search-listings
 
Neighborhood profiles: http://webdev.yale.edu/livingnh/community/nhprofiles.html
 
 
Where to live: http://miriamposner.com/blog/?p=420
http://www.city-data.com/forum/connecticut/955212-dwight-st-new-haven.html
http://www.city-data.com/forum/connecticut/901707-student-moving-new-haven-where-live.html
 
 
Area schools for families: http://kidhaven.com/schoolhaven/
 
 
Will add more later.

Thanks a lot for all your help. To clarify: Yes, a return flight UK-NYC-Rio seems to be cheaper than booking one-way UK-NYC-Rio and one-way Rio-NYC. Weird enough, costs of air travel hardly ever reflect the distance traveled.

Random17, thanks for pointing out that I'll have to immigrate anyway. I wasn't aware of that. So I clearly would be able to enter the US, the question is just whether not completing my trip would cause any problems in the long run. I'll need to find out, asking the US embassy is probably best.

More generally, I'm wondering how non-citizens do stopovers at US airports? Do they need to register with SEVIS (i.e., properly immigrate, including passport stamp), or is there a special exemption for transit passengers? In the former case, I guess my plan should work. In the latter, probably not, as it would require explaining my situation to the immigration officer -- not exactly a desirable situation

If you have more ideas, please share them. I'll post an update when I know more.

PS: Andean Pat, I haven't been to Brazil before. But I'm excited to go!

writing term papers. duh!

I had 5 acceptances.  Initially, I used logic.  That narrowed the field down to two.  Between the final two, I relied on gut...the hand-wavy, fuzzy stuff.  That "methodology" led me to a decision that I still standby.  I just had a meeting with my advisor today, and it reminded me that I had definitely made the right choice.  I don't think you can ever go wrong mixing logic and gut.

I love living in New Haven. I think that part of the rap with New Haven is that it can indeed go from nice to sketchy just crossing the street. That's definitely very much true -- but if you know where the safer areas are and act with a healthy dash of common sense, you are probably going to be just fine. A lot of the actual physical violence that is potential here seems to happen in those areas where you probably won't want to go to anyways (given, as gooner_88 said, that all of the fun stuff is downtown/Yale based -- and I'd add that East Rock Park is a nice local attraction too for casual hiking/biking, etc.!)... additionally, the things about "New Haven is the 4th most dangerous city in America" are based on per capita ratings and are partially skewed on the basis of Connecticut's colonial era town-planning which means that New Haven's crime statistics are a bit artificially inflated because the city itself doesn't include the surrounding "suburban neighborhoods in the way that a city in the rest of the country would. In any event, I live in East Rock with my wife and school-aged children and have yet to feel like I'm not safe! 
 
My $.02 for what they are worth -- we all have different expectations of what our community should offer us of course, but I hope that this perspective helps a bit!

Can't celebrate properly before I have decided where to go But I'll def get an iMac for my office. And, if time allows, a month backpacking around Iran before my knack for exploration will be confined to the realm of research for the next five or so years.

Absolutely. That's what I did and I got polite replies, telling me my admission status.

Not stress-eating, but stress-drinking: coffee! I generally drink a lot of it, but currently this is getting out of hand.