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I suspect that quitting now would harm your future prospects much more than finishing what you started and then transitioning fields.

TAing isn't even close to as big of a plus as research for grad school apps. Grad school is all about research, and evidence of research ability, rather than just potential, is huge.

If excellent job prospects and a decent salary are your primary goals, the graduate accounting program seems like your best bet; there is an overabundance of MBAs, but a perennial shortage of accountants.

As long as you have your undergraduate degree before you begin your graduate degree you should be fine, but you may want to check with the registrar of the graduate school.

If you are talking about borrowing the money, then no, there is no school name recognition worth that kind of debt.

After April 15th schools are trying to complete their classes and put the admissions season behind them, so an extension is unlikely. If the school gave you a week to decide and ignores your request for an extension, then you need to decide, by the deadline, based on the information you have.

When you accept an offer from one school you agree to decline offers from all others, so no, what you propose won't work. Also, if you require a student visa you might want to check with the school you choose to attend, because proof that you can support yourself for the entire duration of the program is often required.

It means a decision has been made, but you will have to wait up to three days before you will be informed of the decision by email - Good Luck!

You would need to ask at your current school if it acceptable to them that you take classes for a semester as a visiting student at another school, and then ask the other school if they will let you take specific graduate classes with them for a semester. It is not "normal" to do this in a master's program, but if you get permission from both schools you may be able to make it work - Good Luck!

The second sentence suggests that you have not been admitted, but will be admitted if you prove to them that you have sufficient funds to pay tuition for the entire program, and your living expenses during the entire program. One way they suggest you may be able to accomplish this is by finding an advisor willing to commit to supporting you financially during the duration of the program.

I didn't say the post was on the wrong forum, but rather suggested an alternative site that might better meet the OP's information needs.

thegradcafe is a forum for graduate school concerns. Since you are choosing an undergraduate school to attend you might get more assistance with your queries at collegeconfidential.com -- Good Luck!

I can't speak to your first question, but many PhD programs of the caliber to which you aspire will require you to complete their Master's even if you are admitted with a Master's you've earned elsewhere.

I just meant that a taught Master's rather than a research Master's is more acceptable for an applicant to PhD programs in the UK than the US. In STEM fields, US PhD programs care most about research experience, they expect more research experience from an applicant with a Master's than they do from an applicant with a Bachelor's, and as a corollary they tend to view taught Master's as terminal degrees, particularly at the caliber of US PhD program to which you aspire. This doesn't mean you shouldn't try.

With prior graduate degrees it seems odd that it would still take you five years to finish, but in any case, full-time enrollment does not mean taking classes full-time; you can register for research units to meet the full-time requirement.

If you don't have the experience when you apply, they won't count it as experience when you apply. Your educational background sounds like it will mesh better with the expectations of UK PhD programs -- is there some reason why you don't want to pursue a PhD in the UK?

Rankings at the 50s and 90s level don't matter. You have 5 years of "generous" funding from both programs, so don't let extra bucks the first year lure you from the better program/research fit.

Incurring $80,000 debt for a journalism degree would haunt you for decades. Follow the money and make the most of your opportunities at Syracuse.

In "top" U.S. PhD programs in STEM fields, research experience matters more than any other component of a PhD application, and an applicant in a master's degree program will be expected to have more research experience than an applicant in a bachelor's degree program. This same logic is used by many national fellowships, like NSF, where applicants are divided into pools to compete against those at the same phase in their graduate educations.

Ranking is much less important than teaching experience, and your advisor's success in getting his/her students placed matters most of all. How you paid for your graduate studies is irrelevant to hiring committees, unless your funds came from a nationally competitive fellowship program. It is foolish to turn down a funded position in a lower ranked program for a higher ranked program hoping you'll be the one in four who eventually receives funding. The second program may indeed appear to have more success in placing graduates in tenure track positions because its graduates end up teaching education classes instead of English classes. You should not even consider an unfunded PhD program in English, so what you should do is follow the money.

Life requires compromise, sometimes a lot of difficult compromise. You're in love, you want to be a parent, you like where you live, and you like your work. You may not have the education you've dreamed about, but you sound pretty content with your life. For what it's worth, nothing prevents you from reading, thinking, and writing about the material PhD students in your field study, and intellectual communities specific to your field can be found online. Ultimately only you can know whether you'd be happy giving up the relationship, home, and job you enjoy for the chance to acquire the academic experience you've dreamed about and the possibility of increasing the types of employment options available to you.

I share Sigaba's perspective and further hope that WornOutGrad's feelings of "awkwardness" suggest at least a subconscious awareness that kindness toward other people, especially in regards to their imperfections, is an ethical virtue with which s/he might benefit from greater familiarity.

As you said in this thread, "...my favorite school is only offering $20,000. I do not think $20,000 would be miserable to live on..." and this is why the school made the offer it did. The school is covering tuition and providing enough to cover basic living expenses in their locale, and asking for more will likely garner you a negative reputation within the department before you even begin your program. As long as your tuition and basic living expenses are covered, fit is far more important than extra cash.

I glossed over the five years of funding part of your post. Certainly if you decide to take the risk and attend, expect the minimum financial hit when caught to be repayment of funding, with interest.

Academics do not tolerate academic dishonesty. When you signed your application you agreed that you answered all questions truthfully. Your lie will inevitably be outed, either by technology, which makes it easier to investigate when suspicions arise, or by gossip among academics in your field at conferences where grad students' names and faces are introduced to the field at large. If you aren't outed until after you receive the degree you can expect the university to rescind the degree, and to inform local press that it has done so, because universities like to pay lip service to preserving their integrity. Nothing pisses academics off more than cheating, and they derive a special satisfaction from flogging the dishonest in their midst. Only you can decide whether you want to invest in building a reputation in your field that can be destroyed at an inopportune time, perhaps not until you risk losing the respect of a spouse and children, the peers with whom you work, and your social community. .