rising_star

Definitely ask another person to be your backup. I was in your situation years ago and didn't do that but should have.

I wouldn't do any of what you're considering. A group email is incredibly impersonal and is not a good idea. It's also not your advisor's job to form your committee. Here's what I did: I thought about who I'd worked with and who would have good insight into my project and made a list of names. Then, I ran that list of names by my advisor. He vetoed one person*, recommended a person I didn't want because we didn't get along well, and said everyone else was fine. I then went around to their office hours and met with them for about 15 minutes. In those meetings, I explained my dissertation project in more detail (some already knew from having me in class or reading draft funding proposals) and asked if they'd be willing to serve on my committee. It went well and everyone I asked said yes. *Note: I had no way of knowing he'd veto a person who was seemingly perfect for my project. But, he'd worked with them on committees before and was adamant about not doing it again. If this happens, do what your advisor says and skip that person.

1) Your main concern should be yourself. Don't think too much about people on the waitlist because this is a major life decision. 2) I wouldn't send School A an email with the text you have above. If they ask, tell them you're still considering your options. You do NOT need to provide them with any details. (For reference, in some cases, I waited over a month after visiting before deciding to turn down an offer because that's how long it took me to be 100% certain that I didn't want to accept that offer. No one gave me a hard time about it. I still talk to most of those POIs at conferences.) 3) If you want to negotiate funding, it's generally wiser to start that conversation over the phone, rather than in an email. There's lots of threads on the forum about doing this.

It could be that you're a "maybe". It could also be that they haven't actually made their decisions yet.

This is all too personal and project specific, imo. Some people like to take notes on documents and put those in Zotero as they go. Others prefer to use EndNote to keep notes as they go. I use tons of notebooks because I prefer to work on paper. I like to have a separate notebook/file where I keep track of ideas that I come up with as I read or collect data, just to see if they become common enough to be a pattern I can write about later. Personally, I don't like to write as I go but that's because of the kind of data I collect and work with. BTW, a bunch of the stuff earlier was about the day-to-day. Read scholarship 5 days a week for 30-60 minutes so you stay up to date on the field and can make sure you're addressing the most recent/relevant scholarship in your dissertation and future publications. Setting aside dedicated time for writing once you hit that stage is also something which should be done daily. And then making time to pursue your hobbies/interests, which can be hard if you have to relocate for your research, but which is also necessary to maintain your sanity.

@svent, at this point, I don't even know what you're trying to say at this point. Do you really think that TAs for large history classes don't have to grade exams? Actually, in many cases, STEM PhD students are funded by research assistantships so they get to focus solely on research without having to worry about teaching or grading. I never said it was surprising that the PhD students in STEM get more funding than those in other fields, I just pointed it out as something for the OP to consider because it suggests that the stipend amount is likely livable, despite what the OP may think about the straight-up dollar amount.

I didn't say the OP was a weak candidate. What I said was that the OP obviously wasn't one of the school's "top candidates" because, if they were, then they would've been admitted or waitlisted, rather than rejected. If someone is a school's top candidate, then they'll be admitted not rejected. I think you may be overestimating how many truly top candidates there are once the admissions team takes everything into consideration.

I know plenty of people who have done it @mm3733 and I did it as a MA student. As long as you can handle all of your commitments AND there are no repercussions (like losing your university funding package) for doing it, I think it's no problem.

Even if there's not a planned weekend, you can and should ask if you can visit and if they have any funding available to help you check out their program in person. The multiple time commitments are something I would keep in mind, of course, but you want the most information you can have before making a decision that will determine the next several years of your life. That said, I made a spreadsheet which included some of the variables above but also other things like the price of a flight home, track record of grad students getting dissertation funding (SSRC, NSF, Fulbright, Fulbright-Hays, etc.) to do their research, time to degree of POI's students, placement of POI's students, and collegiality/atmosphere of the department and fellow grad students.

As @Demeter has said, the divide is in part because graduate students often have supervisory or grading authority over undergrads. I did have some interaction with undergrads during my master's and the first two years of my PhD because I chose to live with them as roommates for a variety of reasons. By the second year of my PhD, I was basically constantly irked by how immature they were and wanted to get out of that living situation. So, some of the divide is likely due to age and maturity level. Later in my PhD, I joined a club on campus which included a mix of undergrads and grads. I realized that I mostly hung out with the upperclassmen and grad students in the group, preferring to hang out with the grad students. Again, I think this had a lot to do with maturity levels and mutual interests.

Different departments make their decisions at different times. If you've been rejected, then you obviously weren't one of their top candidates.

How have you not learned about this already? Your program is doing you a serious disservice by not giving you this training! How you organize the year depends in part on where you are in data collection. In general though, you'll want to have a set schedule for work which maximizes time in the archives or interviewing or whatever. You'll also want to set aside an hour or so a day to stay up to date on what's being published in your area (so recent journal articles or books). But, like I said before, a lot is project-specific.

1) If you're not interested in the research now, how are you going to feel about spending 5 years of your life working on it? In other words, yes, it should be a big factor in your decision-making process.

Neither one is proper because you are directly quoting the source without including quotation marks. What you have done above, in either method, is an example of plagiarism.

@svent, not really. TA duties from one department to another have far more in common than being a software developer at one company and a study abroad advisor at a university.

REU = Research Experience for Undergraduates. They're funded by the National Science Foundation.

In order: 1) I would wait, for now, and not ask about having more time to decide until after your visit. It could be that you visit and realize that CSU isn't the right place for you based on the atmosphere and fit once you're there. So, visit on 2/22, see how it goes, see what other departments you've heard from, and then take it from there. The general advice is to both ask if you can have more time (so ask CSU) but also contact your top choices by phone to see when you might hear back about your application status. 2) I did the math really quickly so I know that the actual difference between the two offers isn't very much once you account for the student fees at NC State, unless CSU's student fees are comparably high. You also didn't say whether the CSU offer is 9 or 12 months. I think the big thing to think about with this is how much money do you need to live on? Do you actually need the extra money or do you just want it? Other things you should consider are: Is there a way for you to get funding from sources other than TAing? How long will the funding last? Is that long enough to complete your PhD? Are there dissertation completion fellowships available so you're not teaching while also trying to write, defend, and find a job? These things may be more important than the amount you get paid each month because having more money earlier in your PhD may not set you up to finish in the way in which you'd like. Also, you didn't ask this, but if you think Colorado is "a bit from [your] family", why is NC State even under consideration? Colorado is a short flight (under two hours) to Southern California versus at least a 5 hour flight between Raleigh and SoCal (assuming you could find a direct flight). The flight from Colorado will also generally be less expensive, which could help you save money on travel thereby making the smaller stipend go further. P.S. I continue to be shocked by the huge differences in stipends between STEM, social sciences, and humanities. A humanities student was asking about a $12K/year stipend somewhere around here in the last 24 hours. This isn't to say that you can't or shouldn't ask for more money. It's mostly to say that you should probably keep in mind that other people are going to that same university with an even lower stipend than you'll get and find ways to make it work financially.

There have been lots of conversations about this over in "Interviews and Visits". See also, this blog post from Tenure, She Wrote. See also:

I would explore all the options, including talking to current grad students of the department in general and of your POI(s) in particular. Visit, if at all possible. That can help make sure you're making the right decision and won't be wondering if the grass would be greener elsewhere in a year or two.

Not in your field but, what @brent09 said. Placement record matters and, if possible, you want to get a sense of what things led to attrition. As brent09 has said, some of that is personal and due to the students rather than the program. But, if your POI has a track record of their students quitting or taking a long time to finish or not placing well, that's something you'll want to know going in. And note that by "placing well", I mean placing their students at the kinds of places you (think you) want to work at. If you want to be at a top-25 R1 after graduation, then working with someone whose best students place at R2s (and not just because that's where those students want to be) is something you may want to reconsider. Placement, like attrition, is tricky because a lot of it is personal and not up to the advisor. Still, it's information you should seek out.

I would like at the placement, publication, and funding track record of each of the people you're considering working with. Have their students gotten the grants which you'll want/need for your research? Are they publishing at a pace you'd like to meet or surpass? Are their publications in well-known journals? Are the PhD students of those profs getting jobs at the places you'd like to end up? And, if that doesn't help, then I'd take the best overall funding package.

Maybe Evernote?

So I didn't actually make that transition but, I can say that as @pterosaur has said, the keys are not eating out and possibly having roommates. When I compare my FTE lifestyle to grad student lifestyle, the biggest things are that I eat out more, I go out for drinks at times other than happy hour, I travel more, and I've spent a bunch of money on clothes (related to moving to a new climate, needing to upgrade wardrobe to be more professional, etc.). But I still bring my lunch to work every day because that seems like easy money to keep in my wallet/pocket. If I did have a coffee habit, I'd probably rely primarily on stuff I brewed myself, rather than going out for coffee every afternoon.

I would like at the placement record of those known scholars and the publication record of current students to see if there are publication opportunities for them. I'd also talk to those same scholars and ask them why they joined a new PhD program, what they think the future for the program and its graduates is, etc. It's definitely a tough situation but there are things you can find out.

That's going to be tough. Most institutions will only let you transfer in 9-12 credit hours (so about one semester worth of work). Are there specific areas which you think you're lacking in? If so, could you potentially just take courses in those areas before applying to PhD programs?