silver_lining

go into a corner, curl up into a ball, and cry for days?

This is a world of winners taking all......... some top students got many offers while i only get a few admission. 
 
for all those like me who got admission without assistantships, I strongly suggest  you, like me, try to contact professors in that department ASAP, or look for funded professors  (at  www.edyssy.com).. input your program keywords such as mechanical engineering, you can find all professors's funding.......
 
and then u can register an account and send contact email to them with a click of mouse! 
 
wish all get an offer.........
 
 

In at UPenn. I'm at a loss for words. I'm hoping everyone else who has been shut out so far receives some good news soon (hopefully a few more today who also get into Penn).

I am at a top 5 program, but would maybe answer about half of those questions on an internet forum. This is really what informal sessions of recruitment weekends (parties, food, bar) are for. All the formal sessions are just informative show. As I posted elsewhere, you need to make sure you are not just talking to 1st year students, but also advanced candidates, who don't necessarily participate in these kinds of activities (too busy.) Email one or two with similar interests and see if they will meet you for coffee.
 
And learn to read between the lines of what people are saying to you. Ask direct and specific questions, but expect cagey responses, especially from those with the best information.

And I'm just being honest. If you are confident in your ability to find money for your phd funding wouldn't be a priority

Day kid- no cheap shot just the truth. I never worried about funding because I knew by the time I started any program I would have funding somehow. It's all about your skill at grant writing and being creative. If your not just giving funding but its the best school for you why not put in the extra effort and find funding thru a different department, or get a fellowship? Why not apply to all the JC and teach a couple of classes? All this takes more effort and from experience most people won't put in the extra effort.

Day kid- you must not think very highly of yourself or your research. You should only be funded by your department for a year or two max. By then your have to leave and do your research thus give up the funding and should be funded by outside sources. Maybe I just have more faith in myself than other have in themselves since funding was never a factor in my decission making and ill be graduating in may with my phd with a total of 20k student loans for undergrad, masters, and phd. Not to shabby and that 20k was while I was in undergrad

Anthrogeek, you are a bully. I don't know why you feel the need to take cheap shots at people you don't know anything about to try and make a point. You know nothing about me, my research or my self confidence. None of which is relevant to this conversation.
 
I wouldn't got to grad school without some type of funding offer. That is my decision and my opinion.

Clearly, there are lots of floating variables that are going to be unique to each individual (i.e., how much money you/parents have, if it's an M.A. or a PhD, etc.). Given your question, my answer is fit - always. No matter how much money they throw at you, your happiness is the most important. Even if they gave you full funding with "all the fixin's", if you're miserable and hate the research you will have a hell of a time finishing. That said, if it's only an M.A., perhaps you could suck it up and finish. If it's a PhD, you never want to get into any situation where it's not good fit - you will never finish. But, given the question, I'll assume you're not looking at PhD programs. Regardless, I still stand by that answer - fit = happiness = finishing = succeeding. Funding and opportunity come with success, which is grounded by passion. If you follow your passion there are no limits to what doors will be opened. People will feed off your energy and come out of the woodworks to help you succeed.

The graduate program coordinator at Harvard confirms "no notifications have been made as of yet. We hope to have admissions decisions available sometime next week -- most likely toward the end of the week."

Personally, I value stipends 1.5x more than average, and I really want the campus to be on a hill. I value hilltops 3x as much as the average applicant. I mean, who cares? What someone else values is not going to change what I value, nor should my values change yours. This thread cannot possibly be helpful to anyone, but will just serve as another circlejerk for those of us lucky enough to have multiple acceptances under the belt. As much as I love circlejerks...I just can't see this being helpful, but I can see it being harmful.

 

Here is my official decision formula:

First, I take the number of interested professors, multiply it by their PGR ranking, then divide it by 2 if I was waitlisted first. I then take the square root of the stipend and add it to the average age of my POIs to determine what I call the "K Variable." At that point, I.......
 
Really, why even post this? There is no set way to decide, its 100% up to you and what you want. You have your own set of values that your mommy should have told you is special and different from all the others. You know why you applied to each school. You know what you like at each school. You applied to CEU? What is CEU? You know, I don't. You obviously know the various sorts of considerations that people make when they choose a school (you listed them), so figure out for yourself how they work. Hearing how I make my decision should have no bearing on how you make yours, and so on.

This seems like a thread where people who have gotten accepted to multiple schools can brag about how "tough it must be" to choose between them. Woe is me! As much as I'd like to join in the fun and namedrop my schools, this thread will help nobody, and will instead make those who haven't been accepted feel bad.

TL;DR: No need for the humblebrag.

I think it worth remembering that the single most important part of placement is you, the candidate. Attending a #4 program versus a #12 has a marginal effect on your job prospects, but the effect isn't as strong as a peer-reviewed publication and a really good dissertation.

Department placement figures are obviously very very important and useful, but they are still a proxy to get at the job market success of an X person with similar attributes to future you. That is what we all want to learn, right? This is why we often want to learn about the subfield placements as well as the overall placement records. We naturally think that -say- the IR placement record would be more relevant for us if our subfield is IR. 
 
One way to diminish some of this uncertainty is to check the placement records of your POIs or people with whom you think you are likely to work. Such data is seldom available through departments, so you kind of have to ask the person herself about her students. I want to suggest another way:
 
ProQuest has a dissertations and theses database. I don't know if the database includes all dissertations completed in the US, but I think it is fairly close (if not exhaustive) for the past 10-ish years for most of the top-50 or so institutions. The search engine allows you to search dissertations by adviser. Now this kind of data doesn't go too far back, but I would argue that the most important part is the post-2007 period anyway. Moreover, for the past 5 years or so, many records on dissertations also include committee members (so not just chairs), which is extra useful. Using this tool, you can compile a list of all the students who completed their dissertations under the POI(s) that you want to work with. Then, you can simply google these people, check their CVs and see where they initially placed at. It is not terribly hard to get at, if a bit time consuming.
 
A second step can be that if some of these people who were advised by your POIs have dissertations that are sort of in the same research area as your interests, you can just e-mail these people and ask about their experiences and suggestions. They may not reply or provide useful advice, but then again, maybe they will.
 
I found this to be a useful method, hope it helps you too.

I would argue too few top programs actually stress methodological pluralism---the farthest they go in terms of methodological pluralism is to assign George & Bennett alongside King, Keohane & Verba. The false dichotomy between qualitative and quantitative methods (not methodology) is alive and well as though it is the only difference in possible research techniques. Some PhD students coming with prior exposure to advanced statistics simply don't find the underlying logic and philosophical ontological assumptions of neopositivist methodology terribly useful in answering the sort of important questions they seek to ask. Insofar as this is the case, more advanced statistics requirements will not be a solution, but a waste of time for these students. Sure, it's nice to be able to arm yourself with counterarguments, so a few stats classes should be taken by all students. But a few philosophy of science and non-positivist methodology courses should also be a part of the standard curriculum. That would certainly go a long way in getting all of us to stop talking past each other, unfairly criticizing each others' work without any concept of internal validity, and allowing for a future US political science academe in which not only quantoids are welcome. I suppose that has little to do with the immediate concern of job placement, except this: students should focus on improving how they articulate their arguments for why non-positivist methodology make valuable contributions to the field, and engage with senior scholars (at conferences, within departments, on dissertation committees) who might push back against outside the box thinking. Find natural allies. Cultivate those relationships. Network the hell out of them. But don't compromise your research to the point that you barely recognize it as your own in order to land a job or appease a committee member whose raison d'être is to unreflectively prescribe positivist methodology for any and all projects, tone deaf to the actual research question itself, and convinced that anything that isn't hypothesis testing lacks scienticity.

I did some searching through Google images to find some pictures of graduate student people at conferences or similar gatherings. Here are some group photos that I think accurately portray the range of dress (for men and women) of grad students in my field:
 
http://sirius.chem.vt.edu/~r410/PSSS08.jpg
http://www.phys.utb.edu/images/crest1.jpg
http://biology.missouri.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Graduate-Students-2013.jpg
https://www.aspet.org/uploadedImages/Divisions_and_Chapters/ASPET_Divisions/Molecular_Pharmacology/Content/ASPET2011-Grad%20student%20poster-GROUP.jpg
http://imaginingamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/IMG_1702.jpg
 
I would say that in general, for planned group photos or while at a conference/meeting (i.e. wearing name badges), most students will dress up a bit nicer than their everyday, but this matches the level of dress I notice of visiting/prospective grad students. Of course, not everyone does this so I would guess that in these photos, some of the people are dressed as they would "everyday".
However, in my field at least, if you dress like any of the students you see in the above linked photos, you will probably not look out of place. If you're worried about underdressing, then pick something a bit more "dressed up", but we get visitors dressed in all sorts of different ways. In my opinion, if you aim for the middle ground in the above pictures, you won't have to worry about your clothes making any negative impressions. I wish I could say that no one should ever have to worry about their clothes making an impression, but that might be too idealistic for our world!

Love the person who expected to get into Yale and the person above them who tells them what's up...Bless you, GradCafe.

I wrote up an exhaustive--and exhausting--list of questions before my visit last year and am pasting it below. Keep in mind that encoded within these questions are assumptions and preferences that are likely specific to me and what I was looking for. Also, though I asked many of these questions during my visits, I also found that, in the scheme of things, most of these questions--or, I should say, most of the answers--didn't really matter in my decision-making process. In much the same way that stats tell you something, but not necessarily something useful, about what programs are looking for and what your fellow applicants are like, these questions often tell you structural things about a department but not what it actually feels like to be there. Everyone's mileage will vary, of course, but I found myself not caring if, say, prelims were written or oral (though I had a preference) if everything else about the program was appealing. In the end, if it's a program you love, you'll jump through whatever hoops it presents. I highly recommend visiting schools, as there were programs at which my instinctive reaction told me everything I needed to know after about 5 minutes of being there. Additionally, visiting schools lets you make contact with people who will be important to your work regardless if you end up working with them directly. Good luck! It's an exciting, if unnerving time, and as difficult as it was last year to weigh the options, I found myself missing the sense of possibility after I had made a decision that I was (and am) very happy with.


-PLACES TO STUDY AND WORK
-Where do most people do their writing and reading?
-What study spaces are available? Do students get a carrel? Do those who teach get or share an office?

-LIBRARY
-What is the library system like? Are the stacks open or closed?
-What are the library hours?
-Are there specialized archives/primary sources that would be useful to my research?
-Are there specialist librarians who can help me with my research?

-FACULTY
-Are the faculty members I want to work with accepting new students? Are any of those faculty members due for a sabbatical any time soon?
-Are professors willing to engage you on a personal level rather than just talking about your work?
-Are there any new professors the department is hiring in areas that align with my interests?
-Students’ relationships with their professors – are they primarily professional, or are they social as well?

-FUNDING
-Is funding competitive? If so, do students feel a distinction between those who have received more generous funding and those who haven’t?
-How does funding break down among the cohort? i.e., how many people receive fellowships?
-How, if you don’t have much savings, do you make enough money to live comfortably?
-Are there external fellowships one can apply to? If so, what is available? Does the program help you apply for these fellowships? How does receiving an external fellowship affect internal funding?
-If people need more than five/six years to finish, what funding resources are available? (For instance, Columbia can give you an additional 2-year teaching appointment.)
-Do you provide funding for conferences or research trips?
-How often is funding disbursed? (i.e., do you get paid monthly or do you have to stretch a sum over a longer period of time?)

-COHORT
-Do students get along with each other? Is the feeling of the program more collaborative than competitive?
-Do students in different years of the program collaborate with each other, or are individual cohorts cliquey?
-How many offers are given out, and what is the target number of members for an entering class?
-Ages/marital status of people in the cohort – do most people tend to be married with families? Are there younger people? Single people? What sense do you have of how the graduate students interact with each other socially?
-Do people seem happy? If they’re stressed, is it because they’re busy or is it because they’re anxious/depressed/cynical/disillusioned?
-Is the grad secretary/program administrator nice?
-What is the typical time to completion? What are the factors that slow down or speed up that time?
-I’ve read that there are two kinds of attrition: “good” attrition, in which people realize that the program, or graduate study, isn’t right for them and leave early on, and “bad” attrition, in which people don’t finish the dissertation. What can you tell me about the rates of each, and of the reasons why people have chosen to leave the program?

-JOB MARKET/PROFESSIONALIZATION
-What is the placement rate? How many of those jobs are tenure-track?
-What are examples of institutions in which people in my field have been placed?
-How does the department prepare you for the job search? Are there mock interviews and mock job talks?
-Are the people helping you navigate the job search people who have recently gone through the process themselves?
-If you don’t get placed, is there anything the department can do for you? (e.g., can you stay an extra year?)
-How does the department prepare you for and help you attain conference presentations and publications?

-SUMMER WORK
-What is encouraged/required?
-If there separate funding/is the year-round funding enough to live on during the summer?
-Do people find themselves needing to get outside work during the summer in order to have enough money?
-Am I expected to stay in town in the summer, and what happens if I don’t?

-LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT
-What is done to help people who don’t have language proficiency attain it? Does the university provide funding?
-What is the requirement, and by when do you have to meet it?
-Given my research interests, what languages should I study?
-When do you recommend doing the work necessary to fulfill the language requirement? (i.e., summer before first year, summer after first year, while taking classes, etc.)

-LOCATION REQUIREMENTS
-How long are students required to be in residence?
-How many students stay in the location for the duration of the program? (i.e., how many dissertate in residence?)
-How is funding affected if you don’t stay?

-Incompletes on papers at the end of the term: What is the policy, how many students take them, and how does this affect progress through the program?

-TEACHING
-What sort of training is provided?
-What types of courses do people teach?
-Does teaching entail serving as a grader? Serving as a TA? Developing and teaching a section of comp?
-How are students placed as TAs? Is there choice about what classes you teach and which professors you work with? Do classes correspond to your field?
-How many courses do you teach per semester/year?
-How many students are in your classes?
-How does the school see teaching as fitting in with the other responsibilities/requirements of graduate study?
-How do students balance teaching with their own work?
-Is the department more concerned with training you as a teacher/professor or with having cheap labor to teach their classes?
-How, if at all, does the economic downturn affect teaching load/class sizes?
-What are the students like? Can I sit in on a course a TA teaches to get a sense of them?

-METHODOLOGY
-Is a theory course required?
-What methodology do most people use?
-Where, methodologically, do you see the department – and the discipline – heading?
-Is interdisciplinarity encouraged, and what sorts of collaboration have students undertaken?

-Typical graduate class and seminar sizes

-What should I do to prepare over the summer?

-Ask people I know: What are the questions – both about the program itself and about the location – I should ask that will most help me get a feel for whether this is the right program for me?

-Ask people I know: What do you wish you knew or wish you had asked before choosing a program?

-Is the school on the semester or the quarter system, and how does that affect classes/teaching/requirements?

-What is the course load for each semester, and how many courses are required?

-What kind of support is provided while writing the dissertation? I worry about the isolation and anxiety of writing such a big project. What does the program do to help you break the dissertation down into manageable pieces, and to make the experience less isolating?

-What do writing assignments look like in classes? Do they differ based on the type/level of class and/or based on whether you intend to specialize in the field?

-Ask professors: what have you been working on lately?

-Ask professors: What is your approach to mentoring and advising graduate students?

-How long are class meetings?

-How often do professors teach graduate courses?

-Are course schedules available for future semesters (10-11, etc.)?

-Can I see the grad student handbook? Are there any other departmental documents – such as reports on the program prepared for accreditation – that I can see?


-QUALITY OF LIFE
-Prices – how does the cost of gas, milk, cereal, etc. compare to other places I've lived in?
-Cost and quality of typical one-bedroom apartment.
-What does the university do to provide you with or help you find housing?
-When (i.e., what month) do people start looking for an apartment for the fall, and where do they look?
-Is it easy to find a summer subletter?
-How close to campus can—and should—one live?
-What grocery stores are there in town?
-How late are cafes, bookstores, malls, restaurants typically open?
-What do people do to make extra money?
-Does the town have more of a driving or a walking culture? What is parking like near campus (availability, ease, cost)?
-Where do most English grad students live? Most other grad students? Most professors? Where is the student ghetto? Do most students live near each other, or are they spread out far and wide?
-How far does the stipend go in this location?

Cheers to the funny person on the board re: UPenn!
 

Last year I was waitlisted at one of the schools I applied to, and I sent an email that said: "I am writing to reaffirm my interest in being a part of the XYZ program at XYZ university. While I am dissapointed that I was not among those initially offered admission I am still very excited about the possibility of studying at XYZ University. Please let me know if there are any question of my that I may answer and I have attached my updated CV which now includes blah - blah - blah that I have engaged in since the time of my application in December."

Within 24 hours of sending the email I received a phone call and was scheduled for a conference call/phone interview with 3 faculty from the department. My situation was a bit different as I did not have any other offers, and I ended up figuring out during the course of the interview that the labs I was interested in were wildly popular and plenty of offers were already extended so my chances were slim. However, I've had nothing but positive results when making contacts of any kind with schools, perhaps because I err on the side of not being pushy/annoying so my contacts tend to be few and far between. I would say that it is definitely a good idea to remind them that they are your top choice and try to push your way up the waitlist by also letting them know that you have another offer to respond to.

About your dog: I think that depends entirely on you and your program. I am in a social science program where the majority of my analysis and writing can be done from home, and I prefer to work from home or from a library (as opposed to my cube in the windowless cube farm). When I was taking classes I was generally there from 9-6 or so, but now that my coursework is finished I am rarely at the school itself. I go for meetings, seminars, interesting kinds of things and I do most of my work remotely. My time is verrry flexible, and if my building didn't prohibit it I would get a dog in a heartbeat. Another thing to keep in mind: a dog can be a great comfort when you're all stressed out over graduate school.

Advice?

Age:
-Don't feel like you have nothing to offer just because you are younger. I was 22 when I started graduate school. You got accepted to the program for a reason, and chances are you are just as equipped as any older students are to successfully complete the program, just in a different way.

-Your older classmates may be just as terrified as you. Talk to them. You have a lot in common. You are, after all, in the same place.

-You will feel like an imposter, like you don't belong, or like you are constantly behind. Or all three. It's normal. It will pass. (Well, sort of.) People of all ages go through this.

Adviser related:
-If you are lucky enough to get both research interest fit and personality fit perfect, congratulations! But sometimes, personality fit is more important than research interest fit as long as the research isn't too different. A great adviser is interested in your career development, likes you as a person, advocates for you, and wants to hear your ideas. Even if his or her research is quite different from yours, they may give you the autonomy to work on your own projects and just supervise you. A bad personality fit will drive you nuts, even if you love his or her research. Consider that when evaluating your adviser fit. (This will vary by field: research fit may be less important in the humanities, more important in the natural and physical sciences. Social sciences are somewhere in-between.)

-Don't be afraid to be straight up blunt with your adviser when it comes to asking about your progress. Ask if you are where you should be both academic program wise and getting-a-job-after-this-mess-wise.

-Be proactive. Advisers love when you draw up an agenda for your one-on-one meetings, come with talking points and progress to share, have concrete questions to ask, and have overall shown that you have been thoughtful and taken control of your own program. Of course, this won't immediately come easily to you, but in time you will work up to it. Every semester I type up my semester goals, and at the beginning of the year I type up annual goals. I show them to my adviser and we talk about whether they are too ambitious, or whether I need to revise them, and how I can meet them.

-Don't expect your adviser to actually know what courses you have to take to graduate. They will know about comprehensive exams and the dissertation, but a lot of professors don't really keep up with the course requirements, especially if their program is in flux. Get you a student handbook, and find out what you need to take. Map it out in a grid, and check off things when you finish them. Show this to your adviser every semester. You may have to explain how such and such class fills a requirement.

-Nobody loves you as much as you, except your mother. Keep this in mind as you take in advice from all sources, including your adviser. Your adviser is there to guide you, but that doesn't mean you have to do everything he says.

Studying:
-You will have to read more than you ever did before, in less time than you ever have before, and you will be expected to retain more than you ever have before. The way that you studied in undergrad may need some tweaking. Be prepared for this.

-Corollary: you may find that your methods change with age or interests or time. I preferred to study alone in college, but in grad school, I prefer to study in groups. It keeps me on task and the socialization keeps me motivated. You may find that you shift from being a more auditory learner to a visual learner or whatever.

-You will feel behind at first. This is normal.

-At some point you will realize that your professors don't actually expect you to read everything they assign you. This, of course, will vary by program, but there will be at least one class where the reading is actually impossible to do in one week. The point is to read enough that you know the major themes and can talk intelligently about them, and then pick some of the readings to really dig into and think more deeply about.

-For most programs, don't worry so much about grades. If you stay on top of your work and do what you're supposed to, you will probably get an A. How much grades matter varies from program to program. In some programs, a B is a signal that you are not up to par, and more than a few Bs will warrant a discussion with your adviser or the DGS. My program isn't like that - A, B, it's all meaningless. My adviser doesn't even know what my grades are. But at almost all programs, a C means you need to retake the course, and two Cs means you have to convince the DGS not to kick you out.

Extracurricular activity: What's that? No, seriously:
-A lot of your time will be unstructured. You will have coursework, but most grad classes meet once a week for two hours and you may have three classes. You may have meetings with your adviser every so often and some seminars or things to catch (like we have grand rounds and colloquia that are required), but a lot of time will be unstructured. However, since you have so much more work than you had in undergrad, you actually will have less free time than you had in undergrad. This may initially cause you great anxiety. It did for me. Some people love unstructured time, though. (I don't.)

-Because of this, you'll have to be planful about your non-grad school related stuff.

-TAKE TIME OFF. DO it. It's important for your mental health. However you do it doesn't matter. Some people work it like a 9-5 job. Some people take a day off per week (me) and maybe a few hours spread across the week. Some people work half days 7 days a week. However you do it, there needs to be a time when you say "f this, I'm going to the movies."

-Find your happy place, something that keeps you the you you were when you came in. I love working out. It gives me energy and I feel good. I stay healthy. I also love reading fiction, so sometimes I just curl up with a good book, work be damned. You have to give yourself permission to not think about work, at least for a couple of hours a week. You may also discover new hobbies! (I never worked out before I came to graduate school.)

-Your work will creep into all aspects of your life, if you let it. This is why I hate unstructured time. You will feel guilty for not doing something, because in graduate school, there is ALWAYS something you can do. ALWAYS. But since there will always be more work, there's no harm in putting it aside for tomorrow, as long as you don't have a deadline.

-You may need to reach outside of your cohort for a social life. None of my close friends are in my doctoral cohort. I've met master's students in my program, master's students in other programs, and I know a few non-graduate students I hang out with, too. Go to graduate student mixers. (If your university doesn't have any, organize some, if you like planning parties.) Join a student group that doesn't take up too much time. I had a doctoral acquaintance who kinda laughed at me because I joined some student groups other than the doctoral student one, and I was usually the only doctoral student in those groups, but I met some close friends (and future job contacts) and had a good time.

-DO NOT FEEL GUILTY FOR WANTING A LIFE OUTSIDE OF GRADUATE SCHOOL. This is paramount. This is important. You are a well-rounded, complex, multifaceted human being. NEVER feel bad for this. Everybody wants some kind of life outside of work. Yes, you may loooove your field, but that doesn't mean you want to do it all day long. Some other doctoral students, and perhaps professors, may make you feel bad about this. Don't let them. Just smile and nod. Then disappear when you need to.

Career:
-This is job preparation. Remember that from Day One. Always be looking for ways to enhance your skills. Read job ads and find out what's hot in your field, what's necessary, what's in demand. For example, in my field statistics and methods are a hot commodity, and they're not a passing fad. I happen to really like statistics and methods, so I have pursued that as a concentration of mine.

-Don't be afraid to take on volunteer work and part-time gigs that will give you skills that will be useful both inside academia and out, as long as it's not against your contract. Your adviser may be against it, but he doesn't have to know as long as it doesn't interfere with your work.

-If you want to work outside of academia - if you are even *considering* the possibility - please please definitely do the above. Even if you aren't considering it, consider the possibility that you won't get a tenure-track job out the box and that you may need to support yourself doing something else for a while. You will have to prove to employers that you have developed usable, useful skills and this is one of the easiest ways to do it. But don't overdo it - get the degree done.

-For more academic related ones - always look for opportunities to present and publish. Presentations look good on your CV. Publications look better. When you write seminar papers, wonder if you can publish them with some revision. Write your seminar papers on what you maybe think you may want to do your dissertation on. Even if you look at them three years later and think "these suck," you can at least glean some useful references and pieces from them. Discuss publication with your adviser early and often, and if you have the time and desire, seek out publication options with other professors and researchers. But if you commit to a project, COMMIT. You don't want to leave a bad impression.

-If you can afford it, occasionally go to conferences even if you aren't presenting. You can network, and you can hear some interesting talks, and you may think about new directions for your own research. You can also meet people who may tell you about jobs, money, opportunities, etc.

-Always try to get someone else to pay for conference travel before you come out of pocket. Including your adviser. Do not be shy about asking if he or she can pay. If he can't, he'll just say no. Usually the department has a travel fund for students, but often it's only if you are presenting.

-If you are interested in academia, you should get some teaching experience. There are two traditional ways to do this: TAing a course, and teaching as a sole instructor. If you can help it, I wouldn't recommend doing a sole instructor position until you are finished with coursework. Teaching takes a LOT of time to do right. You should definitely TA at least one course, and probably a few different ones. But don't overdo it, if you can help it, because again, it takes a LOT of time. More than you expect at the outset. If you are in the humanities, I think sole instructor positions are very important for nabbing jobs so when you are in the exam/ABD phase, you may want to try at least one. If your own university has none, look at adjuncting for nearby colleges, including community colleges. (I would wager that the majority of natural science/physical science students, and most social science students, have never sole taught a class before they get an assistant professor job. At least, it's not that common n my field, which straddles the social and natural sciences.)

-Always look for money. Money is awesome. If you can fund yourself you can do what you want, within reason. Your university will be thrilled, your adviser will be happy, and you can put it on your CV. It's win-win-win! Don't put yourself out of the running before anyone else has a chance to. Apply even if you think you won't get it or the odds are against you (they always are), as long as you are eligible. Apply often. Apply even if it's only $500. (That's conference travel!) Money begets money. The more awards you get, the more awards you will get. They will get bigger over time. If you are in the sciences and social sciences, you should get practice writing at least one grant. You don't have to write the whole thing, but at least get in on the process so that you can see how it's done. Grant-writing is very valuable both in and outside of graduate school.

-Revise your CV every so often. Then look and decide what you want to add to it. Then go get that thing, so you can add it.

-The career office at big universities is often not just for undergrads. I was surprised to learn that my career center offers help on CV organization and the academic job search, as well as alternative/non-academic career searches for doctoral students. In fact, there are two people whose sole purpose it is to help PhD students find nonacademic careers, and they both have PhDs. This will vary by university - some universities will have very little for grad students. Find out before you write the office off.

-It's never too early to go to seminars/workshops like "the academic job search inside and out", "creating the perfect CV," "getting the job," etc. NEVER. Often the leader will share tips that are more aimed towards early graduate students, or tidbits that are kind of too late for more advanced students to take care of. This will also help you keep a pulse on what's hot in your field. It'll help you know what lines you need to add to your CV. And they're interesting.

Other:

-Decide ahead of time what you are NOT willing to sacrifice on the altar of academia. Then stick to it.
I'm serious. If you decide that you do NOT want to sacrifice your relationship, don't. If it's your geographical mobility, don't. I mean, be realistic, and realize that there will always be trade-offs. But you have to think about what's important to you for your quality of life, and realize that there is always more to you than graduate school.

-If you don't want to be a professor, do not feel guilty about this. At all. Zero. However, you will have to do things differently than most doctoral students. Your adviser will probably never have worked outside of the academy (although this may vary depending on the field) so he may or may not be able to help you. But you have a special mission to seek out the kinds of experiences that will help you find a non-academic job. Test the waters with your adviser before you tell him this. My adviser was quite amenable to it, but that's because I told him that my goal was to still do research and policy work in my field just not at a university, AND because it's quite common in my field for doctoral students to do non-academic work. If you're in a field where it's not common (or where your professors refuse to believe it's common, or it's not supposed to be common)…well, you may be a little more on your own.

-Every so often, you will need to reflect on the reasons you came to graduate school. Sometimes, just sit and think quietly. Why are you doing this to yourself? Do you love your field? Do you need this degree to do what you want to do? Usually the answer is yes and yes, and usually you'll keep on trucking. But sometimes when the chips are down you will need to reevaluate why you put yourself through this in the first place.

-To my great dismay, depression is quite common in doctoral students. Graduate work can be isolating and stressful. Luckily your health insurance usually includes counseling sessions. TAKE THEM if you need them. Do not be ashamed. You may be surprised with who else is getting them. (I found out that everyone in my cohort, including me, was getting mental health counseling at a certain point.) Exercise can help, as can taking that mental health day once a week and just chilling. Don't be surprised if you get the blues…

-…but be self-aware and able to recognize when the depression is clouding your ability to function. Doctoral programs have a 50% attrition rate, and this is rarely because that 50% is less intelligent than, less motivated than, less driven than, or less ambitious than the other 50% that stays. Often they realize that they are ridiculously unhappy in the field, or that they don't need the degree anymore, or that they'd rather focus on other things in life, or their interests have changed. All of this is okay!

-You will, at some point, be like "eff this, I'm leaving." I think almost every doctoral student has thought about dropping out and just kicking this all to the curb. You need to listen to yourself, and find out whether it is idle thought (nothing to worry about, very normal) or whether you are truly unhappy to the point that you need to leave. Counseling can help you figure this out.

-Don't be afraid to take a semester or a year off if you need to. That's what leaves of absence are for.

Lastly, and positively…

…graduate school is great! Seriously, when else will you ever have the time to study what you want for hours on end, talk to just as interested others about it, and live in an intellectual community of scholars and intellectuals? And occasionally wake up at 11 am and go to the bank at 2 pm? Sometimes you will want to pull out all of your hair but most of the time, you will feel fulfilled and wonderfully encouraged and edified. So enjoy this time!

I guess I am just frustrated when people on the board post a rejection with something like "haha got into a better school anyway." My thoughts on this are: ok, good for you, you've made it. Now what is the point of your comment?
Are you arrogant enough to think that if you got into "a better school" you also automatically should be accepted everywhere?
Are you frustrated with this rejection—why would you be if you already got good options? So why being bitter/condescending? 
 
P.S. unless the comment is a joke. Jokes. I get those.
 
 
Edit: grammar

You usually need a compelling reason to defer. Most schools will not permit it just so you can sit home and watch Netflix. Alternatively, you could start at the program this year, and if you still aren't convinced finish up with the terminal masters and transfer (assuming you've gotten admission elsewhere).
 
Of course the question has to be: Why were you applying to programs you wouldn't have been happy to attend?

Poorly worded on his/her part perhaps, but I don't think it's terribly inappropriate for someone to regret not having highlighted structural obstacles that a person may have had to work especially hard to overcome. That would not have guaranteed admission --- we all know that, including the person who wrote that. But it might have shed light on why that person seeks to study political science. Having omitted that from a personal statement could be a very fair mistake. I spent a lot of time contemplating whether to state in my SOP that I identify as a minority in terms of sexual orientation. In the end I decided to include it because I felt it was relevant to my desire to study invisible power. So in that sense, I can relate to whomever made the post in question. I doubt it did anything except perhaps tie together my SOP in a manner that showed readers that there is a reason that I seek to do what I seek to do.