alkalifly

As far as "money grubbing" goes, how about selling $17 billion in debt in order to keep its $145 billion in cash overseas so they can avoid paying taxes to the US government. Kind of despicable, if you ask me, even though I am writing this from a Macbook which I use almost every day.

I finally made my final decision and hit the SIR today, for the Department of Earth System Science. I will be starting as an employee research assistant over the summer so that I can kickstart my dissertation research before a first year full of coursework. I will most likely live in the on-campus grad student housing, at least for the first year. I've seen it in person, and it is quite nice. The only thing I don't like about it is it seems they do very little in the way of roommate matching. They just ask whether you smoke or own a cat, and whether you would be willing to live with somebody who does (smoke or own a cat). There is no way of choosing one's roommate like you can in the "real world" and no attempt to try matching people based on sleep schedule, cleanliness habits, etc.

Don't feel guilty, the people at the school may not do anything before Monday anyway, and you shouldn't inconvenience yourself just to (possibly) avoid inconveniencing other people that you don't even know.

Fortunately, it's 2013, so April 15 is on a Monday. That should hopefully provide you some relief... You (and all of the rest of us) have been granted a deadline of April 15, so there is nothing wrong with using the maximum time you are permitted, I understand your sentiment about the wait-listed students, and if you were absolutely sure you won't be attending, then there is really no reason to delay letting them know, but it sounds like you are still working it out, and you are allowed to do so all the way through the weekend and until next Monday. Take the time that you need while you have it; there are enough situations in life where you don't have the luxury of being allowed a few more days

Right now, BU is one of my top choices, but I am a bit scared by the housing prospects I have been seeing in this thread. I am an older student, so I don't have quite the same level of tolerance as I used to in my younger days, as far as noise, dumpiness, etc. It looks like if I wanted to live alone, I would need to spend more than half of my income to get a place reasonably accessible to campus (close to the T). Is it easy enough to find thirty-somethings as roommates who are perhaps on the quieter side, having already enjoyed their days of partying in their youth? Goodness, I guess I probably sound like some frumpy old man, which I promise I am not, but from what I saw of Allston and Brighton, it seemed like a lot of the type of living that I enjoyed in my twenties and would prefer to live a bit further away from these days.

Brentwood Science Magnet, which is different from the Brentwood private school, is reasonably close to campus, and it's a magnet school so the school bus is an option. But you have to apply for it and get in; the application is not skill or merit based, it is based on demographic criteria and luck. Also, as somebody mentioned, the UCLA Lab School, which is on the UCLA campus. I'm not sure what the admissions criteria are there.

I noticed that this article (which I found at http://www.uni.edu/~gotera/gradapp/results.htm rather than the link in the first post) was written by a professor of English Language and Literature. Could it be that this strategy works better in humanities fields where funding depends more on merit-based fellowships rather than in the physical sciences, where funding is based more on graduate research assistanceships? I have been somewhat surprised by the range of the stipends I have been offered (17K at the low end to 30K at the high end, more than a 75% increase!). To a certain extent, it seems the differences correspond somewhat to the cost of living in the area. However, in one case, one of the more expensive locations has offered me one of the lowest stipends, but the graduate director sent me an email inviting me to discuss the offer with him ("if funding is an issue that will affect your ultimate decision of department, please let me know"). I'm just not quite sure how to comfortably breach the subject. I know I am in a position of strength, having been already made a funding offer, but I still feel somewhat awkward talking about it. Can anyone share any experiences of actually doing this, either successfully or unsuccessfully?

I have asked some of the prospective advisors I am considering working with about this very question. Across the board, the responses I have gotten are that these professors recognize that academia is not for everyone, and that there are lots of good reasons to pursue work at the Ph.D. level outside of academia. However, this is in the field of earth sciences, so it may be different in the social sciences or humanities