Polopo

And this is a fairly well known research university with lots of international students, so it's not like they don't deal with international students often.

Thank you all for your replies. I called them multiple times and checked with them. I still don't understand the precise reason but what they told me is that since the assistantship offer can be revoked at any time in case of sub-par grades or low rating on TA performance, the certification of tuition and living expenses is necessary so that I can remain in the US. I am still confused, though. The assistantship is basically a contract that I made with the school, and if the school stops funding I am not going to attend the school anyway as there is no way I am going to pay $50k for graduate school even if I had $50k saved. My driver's license in the states is expiring soon, and I still haven't obtained my i20 to renew my license. Feeling nervous :/

I don't know where to post it, so I am asking here. So I have been admitted to a PhD program a long time ago with teaching assistantship. The assistantship will pay the tuition and leave me with a 20k/year stipend for rent and food. I just received an email from the graduate school, though, that my admission is conditional upon me providing them with a proof of sufficient funding. I called the grad school and explained that I have the assistantship from the school. They explained to me that although I have received the assistantship, the certificate of finances is required for international students just in case if I lose my assistantship in the future. So, I guess it's an emergency thing. But the problem is that I am required to show that I have 50,000 dollars. To be honest, I don't have that kind of money saved. I guess I can borrow from my family just to show that I have the funding, but it's a real hassle and it makes me worry. Are all international students required to do this? Is there a chance that they might revoke my admission just because I don't have sufficient amount of "extra" funding? They said that they cannot issue i20 without this document, so I guess I need to hurry up.

For many of the schools that I haven't heard back, I don't have a POI. Some POIs stopped talking to me after my acceptance saying that they are not members of the committee that makes financial decisions...

I am having trouble properly communicating with the schools. For example, I see lots of acceptances/rejections for one school that I applied on Grad Café, so I go ahead and send a really nice email to the graduate coordinator/POI/graduate director asking whether my application is still being considered. I "usually" get nothing. I email again two weeks later, only to hear that he/she is not the right person to talk to, that I need to contact some other person. Another example: I get into this one school and the acceptance letter says nothing about funding. Naturally I email to ask about funding - and the school never replies or keeps referring to another person to contact. It's so frustrating when I hear "nothing" at all, not even an acknowledgement of receiving my email. What is even more frustrating is having to follow through their instructions to contact other people, only to be ignored in the end. I am especially fed up with the schools that I have already been accepted to and didn't hear about funding (all 5 of them). They can at least tell me that they haven't decided yet if they don't have the answer. It's almost like they are trying to dissuade me from accepting their offer (then why would they accept me in the first place?) Anyone having similar issues?

I know that several of you have been accepted to RPI's PhD program. Has anyone gotten any form of funding offers yet though? I have been accepted in January, and two of the professors that I have been in contact with said that I was being considered for TA and the decisions will be made in weeks to come. Nothing so far. I emailed the graduate cordinator about a week ago, but didn't get any response from her.

So, I am applying to a bunch of schools (around 20 schools) and many of them are due tomorrow. I have sent my transcripts to those schools like a month ago (right before Christmas), some of them two months ago, but most of the schools that I applied tell me that they haven't received my transcripts still! Only two schools among all the schools that I applied confirmed that all the required materials are received, and that they are in the process of reviewing.I verified with my undergrad college and they said that they finalized sending out all my transcript requests by Jan 3rd. How long does it take for a transcript to be delivered? Surely less than a month...? I thought it could just be that they forgot to update my status, so I called and emailed some of the schools. They all told me that my transcript was nowhere to be found. So my thought process was the following 1. It's not like my college didn't send them correctly because two schools received my transcript 2. It's also not likely that they aren't delivered because it's been a month, and USPS can't fail at delivering all 18 envelops. 3. It's not like the online system is not being updated because when I called some of them, they all told me the transcript was literally not there, so I began taking those online status checks seriously. 4. It's not that I got the wrong addresses either. I manually checked all the addresses that I sent my application materials to probably a couple times for each. Also when there were two addresses (math department and graduate admissions office) I sent my transcript to both addresses to be sure. And even if I did make mistakes, I can't be wrong about all 20 schools! 5. So what happened to my transcript? Are they all lost while being delivered? Are the schools failing at matching up my transcripts with the rest of my documents? Is my undergraduate college lying to me and actually fulfilled only two of my twenty requests? Are the grad schools lying to me and telling me that they don't have transcripts when they actually have them? Or is it a mix of many different factors being involved? 6. What should I do now? I have ordered 25 physical copies of my transcript (signed, sealed, official) and when they arrive, I am planning on resending them myself to all the schools that I applied to with tracking info. But they won't get there by the deadlines. Some of the deadlines have already passed, and others are all due tomorrow.