geographyrocks

She clearly says that she wants to continue waitressing in the fall for extra pocket money. Your first step should be what telkanuru said. Some programs don't allow outside jobs. If there is no problem, I don't see any issue with continuing the job in the fall. It might be awkward to wait on your students, but no one should think less of you for supplementing your income.

You would think they would send out rejection emails with the acceptances. Or they lied on their page. Has anyone heard anything at all? Edited to add: Apparently you can get the applicant list for free. No wonder I received so much spam after I applied. I'm still irritated by that.

For any state school, salary is public. I've done a little digging into salaries for my undergrad because I was encouraged by a female professor who had been with the department for over 10 years. It turned out that she was making less than male professors in the department who had been there for less time and had brought in fewer grants! While that alone was a sad realization, I learned that she made 1/4 of what a business professor made. Of course, the argument is that business schools have to compete with industry so they have to pay higher salaries to get decent professors. But even the business professors couldn't compete with the medical professors who pulled in anywhere from $300,000-$800,000. Then I looked at the administrative pay. The men's basketball coach was making close to $4 million a year. The president of the school was getting around $650,000 a year (not to mention all of those dubious 'deferred compensation' monies). With deferred compensation, the higher administration was getting over $1 million a year. The "lowly" admin staff (the ones without which nothing would get done) made between $30,000 and $45,000. It was (and is) a harsh reality. The pay seems so damn uneven.

A school has no right to badmouth you for not accepting an unfunded offer. They're upset because they won't get money from you (which it sounds like they desperately want). Thank school A for their offer and politely decline. Keep all emails. I doubt they would bother contacting school B, but if they do, you will have the emails to back you up. If it was funded, it may be a little rude to decline, but it still wouldn't make you a bad person or worthy of being badmouthed.

This is a really odd notification system. I've heard nothing which makes me wonder if they sent notifications out using telepathy...

So I'm nearing the end of my first year, and I'm trying to determine whether I had a good balance of 'other stuff' such as judging science fairs, presenting at elementary schools, helping with outreach in the dept., etc. I don't want to completely overextend myself as I still have classes and research to do, but I also want to help out. By the way, this entire thought process started while I was answering a question about service to the department on a department scholarship application. So how much 'other stuff' do you guys do? And what sort of things do you tend to volunteer your time for? What things do you think are a complete waste of time? Any other comments about volunteering and outreach?

Unfortunately, he doesn't have any friends here and his family is across the country. He has a job that is starting soon so I'll just have to spend a lot of time at the office. I'd feel like a terrible person if I just threw him out on the street with no where to go.

I broke up with my boyfriend of several years. There just wasn't a future for us. So now I go from being happy that I'm single to being sad that it didn't work to being irritated because his ass still lives in my house. And he won't be able to move out for weeks because he's been unemployed for many months. *sigh* On the plus side, I've known I don't want children for years so at least my biological clock keeps its nose out of the conversation.

Congrats!

I went through this. It was pretty rough. I was positive that they would realize it was a mistake over the summer. Then I was certain that after I started talking research with the professors they would realize they'd made a mistake. I read some really helpful articles including one that basically said this is something you just deal with and not necessarily get over which helped the most oddly enough. And now here I am at the end of my first year. Everyone loves my research, I've been nominated for department awards, and I won a NSF GRFP. My point is: imposter syndrome is like having a whiny kid whispering in your ear. It's annoying, but it definitely isn't who you are. Grad school is hard work, but I think you will all find that you're definitely supposed to (and deserve to) be there!

Doy...guess I should have read the sentence right above it before jumping to conclusions, eh?

Errr...did anyone notice that they have different eligibility rules as in: Be in a terminal master's program (your university offers no Ph.D. in your discipline). And Be returning from the workforce I did not see those when I applied! https://www.npsc.org/Applicants/Applicants/fellowshipinfo.html

I'm really surprised that they said everything would be sent out by today, but I've heard nothing. Anyone else heard anything?

I didn't think about it, but it also depends on how far away from the school you want to live. If you aren't set on living right next to campus, I'm sure you can find some reasonably priced apartments in both places. I don't remember being able to find anything that wasn't with roommates that was close to Boulder although now that I'm looking at Craigslist, there seem to be a couple of studios for rent that are close. Those cost of living calculators are pretty decent from what I saw. Food seemed to be a bit cheaper in Boulder, but rent was definitely cheaper in Houston. Again, it depends on where you want to live/how long of a commute you want to make. I always compare rent prices by looking at the map view on Craigslist. You also have to consider that a lot of places aren't on the market yet because school hasn't ended. There should be an increase in listings by the end of the month. Things to consider: Do you like cold and snow? Boulder gets 87 inches of snow/yr on average (based on the climate data from Wikipedia so take that with a grain of salt). I'm only pointing this out because you say you like warm weather. I've only visited and never lived there so I would advise reading the Boulder threads. really liked the Boulder campus, but I would've been very uncomfortable with the weather (I don't like cold or snow very much). Also check out the Houston thread: I know how frustrating it is to try and determine housing prices when you aren't in the city (especially when 3/4 of apartments aren't even listed yet). I would say choose the school over the city as long as the city won't make you miserable.

They used to require the GRE and some other fellowships still do (NPSC, NDSEG). There's been some talk about clinical psych (ex: if NSF allows it) further up on this page and on the previous page of this thread that may be worth reading.

The NSF GRFP does not even accept GRE scores.

Here's a simple cost of living calculator: http://swz.salary.com/CostOfLivingWizard/Layoutscripts/Coll_Result.aspx According to that calculator, living in Houston is 23% LESS expensive than Boulder. This cost of living comparison says rent is 6.77% less in Houston: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=United+States&city1=Houston%2C+TX&city2=Boulder%2C+CO Boulder is extremely expensive. There is and always will be housing issues in Boulder because it's a desirable location and UC Boulder is great. However, there are stipulations on how much housing can be developed. If you look at Boulder housing on Craigslist, you should read the fine print. Most of those rentals are for 1 bedroom in a 5 bedroom house and they still run around $1000. (I was tricked by that when I was looking at housing in Boulder!) I'm not trying to convince you to not go to Boulder, but it's definitely not cheaper than Houston. Try reaching out to current grad students to get a feel for where cheaper housing is. Maybe try to find a roommate.

This is the best advice.

This.

Why would you not try to get as high a score as possible? It's already more difficult to get in as an international. Do anything possible to make your application stand out.

I understand your frustration. You did point out that you were a grad student and not an undergrad, right? When I was trying to discuss apartments over the phone (I moved across the country), I got some really nasty responses. Renters don't seem to trust people that they aren't talking to in person. I even put an offer on an apartment, and they refused it so they could allow someone who was viewing the next week decide first! *grumble* I mean...I kind of understand, but that didn't make it any less frustrating. Hope you have better luck when you're there in person!

I also applied. Information seems very limited. All I know is that they'll announce sometime in April...probably.

I don't know why this got down voted unless someone REALLY isn't getting the joke. I think these are hilarious.

That wasn't even remotely what I meant, but I could see how it could be taken that way. It's pretty time-consuming and difficult to write these proposals so I have to think that there are WAY more people with excellent reviews than there are awards to be given out (much like there are often amazing candidates that are rejected from grad school). I am in no way saying that the ethnic lady with four fairs in her review is going to be bumped up to award winner over a white guy with all E's nor am I saying that minorities aren't capable of the same high scores. What I am saying is that in each category you have a spread of very awesome candidates. Since NSF is big on diversity, they will make sure that they aren't giving all 20 awards for that category to 20 white men. So they might look at the applicant pool they have and choose a mix that represents the population. Every single person in that pool is qualified. They also make sure that there is a mix of winners from state schools and ivy schools. That makes logical sense. I doubt it happens that often, but who knows!

Damnit, people! I completely forgot it was April Fools until I got on here... I wish. I envision ETS people rolling around in stacks of money laughing at the students who are furiously studying by purchasing their ridiculously overpriced (and not very helpful) books.