brown_eyed_girl

Maybe this can really be field dependent, but I can't see any future job paying less than what graduate students are paid! Although if I am unable to find work then this could definitely be an issue. However, in my program, people tend to remain as a graduate student until they find a job (i.e. a graduation date is normally set shortly after they get a job offer). Also, my school has "extended graduate student status", which allows students that graduate (in June) to keep working and remain paid / keep their benefits over the summer if their next job does not begin until the fall. It's a win-win situation because the new PhD does not have to go a few months without pay (it would be hard to find a job for only 3-4 months) and the school/supervisor gets a "postdoc" level worker at the price of a graduate student!
 
So these are things worth looking into as well when making post-graduation financial plans. I only found out about this option when people I knew in the department started to graduate but then stick around for the summer!

Mostly savings (ugh), but also Roth IRA. If you open your Roth IRA early enough, you can draw down the principal without taking any hit (see http://www.cnbc.com/id/101323957). It's a little tough because you can't contribute directly from any part of a graduate student stipend that doesn't count as earned income (even taxable fellowships may not count as earned income). But I will use savings first as necessary and dip into that if I have to. So I'm doing "saving for retirement" and "saving for a year without a fellowship" at the same time.
 
In humanities at my school we're guaranteed five years, and then we aren't forced to graduate when we don't have jobs lined up, much like TakeruK, but we aren't guaranteed continuing funding or work either. If a round of fellowship applications goes badly things can get difficult fast. Luckily I'm now assured of a sixth year of funding and I'll have another chance to apply for some fellowships before things run out, but who knows.

I am putting money aside (about 10% of income) for the future, but they are not in any official retirement fund for two reasons: 1) I'm a Canadian in the US now and I don't plan on retiring in the US so I don't want to deal with the complications of having US income later on in life and 2) In Canada, contributing to registered retirement fund in a given year reduces your taxable income by the same amount that year. You earn contribution room based on annual income (that carries over indefinitely) so I'm currently putting my savings in a "normal" savings account and when I start to make income in Canada, I'll move that into a retirement savings account and get a big tax break.

Your math score won't be a significant factor in terms of admission decisions, but it can affect your likelihood of being offered any of the special fellowships (e.g., those offering extra money or less teaching responsibilities) usually awarded to a few students in each entering class. I've been in programs where GRE scores from all sections were a primary factor in determining who would be considered for these elite fellowships.

My program took over 3 weeks from the time my POI contacted me to say I'd been "recommended for admission by the department" and getting the official GSAS letter. To reiterate what I'm sure you've heard, it seems to be a formality, but that didn't stop me from being slightly paranoid until I got the final word. 

Hahaha, love the McSweeny's piece. I laughed out loud at "we combat past discrimination by discriminating in the present."
 
My own rejection letters were pretty standard, sadly. I didn't give them much thought since I thankfully got into a great program, but in those cases where people get across the board rejections a little constructive feedback seems welcome... 

Thanks everyone, in the end I decided to stay at my current institution! Hopefully I'll be able to work in one of those internships and this will be a good experience!

I hate sensationalistic science TV shows. "This shark... is a KILLING MACHINE, SCULPTED BY NATURE TO DESTROY." "With the information from the human genome, SCIENTISTS NOW HAVE THE POWER TO MAKE PERFECT PEOPLE." And so on, ad infinitum.

I was surprised by a lot of things.
 
1. How friendly everybody is. I made a few really solid friends in undergrad (I am currently at the same institution for my MA), but I felt like my Master's would be a lot more competitive. There are definitely echelons within seminar discussions of who is going to talk and add value to a conversation and who won't, but my cohort hasn't had any crazy competition, and we're 17 people so that says a lot. It's probably not like that at every institution, but I think that our department worked hard to foster camaraderie right away - we had a potluck at the former GPD's house and everyone got hella schwasted. It was so fun and it has given us a lot of great material to reminisce upon in the not-so-great weeks.
 
2. My writing and my capacity for critical thinking improved dramatically. I assumed that I was at the peak of my writing ability post-undergrad (silly third year hubris) but I am actually embarrassed of my first semester papers and wish that I could do them over again because they would be about ten times better now.
 
3. The closer that you get to the awards person at your SGS, the better your life will become. I've gotten personal e-mails to the tune of "hey you should apply for this" for awards that I didn't even know existed.
 
4. Outlining your papers makes your writing process much smoother. Shocker, I know, but I used to just jump right in and get to writing. Now, I can't even think about writing a paper without a fully formulated outline - it always looks like it belongs on a fridge next to a two-year old's scribbles by the time that I'm done, but I can't deny the results.

Some of these have already been said.
 
1. Professors, even the good ones, seem unprepared or unequipped or uninterested (or some combination of the three) in giving graduate students good career/professional advice. Many of them are pretty good academic and research advisors; they can talk to you about the minute details of your projects, and give you guidance about ways in which to go in a thesis or seminar paper. But as far as actual explicit guidance about what it takes to get professional employment post-graduate school - either as an academic or otherwise? At best, they are clueless about how to provide this information to their students, or just don't think about it; at worst, they actively avoid it because they think they don't have to, or it's unnecessary, or think that a student's concentration in post-graduation outcomes is unnecessarily mercenary (yes, I have heard of students whose advisors believed this way!) I had an advisor who I consider to be great - a great mentor, a great person. But most of what I know about academic professionalization I learned by reading online and books about the academic world. My department almost never had any workshops about finding academic jobs, much less things like how to publish a paper, how to submit conference abstracts, how to network at conferences, or why any of these things were important. Towards the end of graduate school, they started offering a few more of these kinds of things because of student complaints and demand. But it still wasn't enough!
 
So the learning opportunity here is that you might be on your own with respect to finding out what the conventions are in your field and what will make you competitive as an applicant. You may have to explicitly and persistently ask your mentors for this information, or you may have to seek it out elsewhere. But make sure you do it, because you don't want to look up in year 4 or 5 and realize that you're uncompetitive for academic jobs.
 
2. How much I would change as a person, and how much things that weren't important to me became really important to me later on. Part of this was simply growing up - I was 22 when I started my PhD and 28 when I finished. But part of it was the transformative process of the PhD. It changed me in ways I didn't expect. For example, someone commented that their fellow PhD students seem to be more or less obsessed with their work and not given to socializing; then someone else said that's why they are excited for graduate school because they think parties are boring while reading, writing, and studying are fun. While I wouldn't have said parties are boring, when I first started grad school I felt the same - I thought it would be amazing because I loved to read, write, take classes, and study, and would have chosen to do them in my spare time at 22.
 
Now, I still do love those things, but as work. But I definitely don't do them in my spare time (not related to work, anyway - I read, but pleasure books; I write, but fiction and reflective posts). I hated TV in college and I just binge-watched the entire first season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on Netflix. The work of graduate school is so complex and intellectual and mentally intensive that I just needed to decompress in a completely stupid, non-intellectual way, so sometime in my second or third year of grad school I bought a Netflix subscription and started binge-watching Law & Order: Special Victims Unit late at night. I think I watched the first 12 seasons of that show in like two months. In college, I wanted to have deep conversations with friends; now when I socialize with my friends - who are all highly-educated, intelligent, politically active people with challenging jobs - we mostly talk about dumb stuff. I had dinner a couple of days ago with three other PhDs and two lawyers and we chatted about movies and cheap wine and people's appearances. Because our jobs are intense and sometimes you just need to decompress!
 
3. How comfortable I felt despite being a woman of color in a predominantly white department. As an African American queer female scholar I read so much about racism/sexism/heteronormativity in academia, and how uncomfortable some scholars of color/female scholars/queer scholars felt in academic circles, etc. Now, everyone's experience is different, but I can genuinely say that I didn't experience any of that in graduate school. Most of my colleagues were white and straight but also progressive and kind and funny and warm, and struck the perfect note - did not ignore my race, but did not treat me differently because of it. (Gender was not a huge problem because my field is at least half women; and my sexual identity is not readily apparent to people because I am in an opposite-sex relationship, but when I did come out to people they were generally supportive and positive.) I had a lot of interesting cultural conversations with colleagues from different backgrounds (I spent some time explaining my hair to other people - lol! But not in a way that was marginalizing; it was more just like a cultural exchange rather than feeling like a strange curious animal or something). I also felt like there was a lot of support for me because of my race and gender; rather than trying to hold me back, the significant mentors in my life were (and are) actively trying to help me get through because they recognized a lack of black female scholars and genuinely wanted to change that. Most of these people were white.
 
Again, everyone's experience is different - I do know some scholars at other places who felt discriminated against or had issues because of their race, gender, sexual identity or some other personal identity factor. And even with the support, it is tough to be the only one sometimes (I wasn't in one of my departments, but I definitely was in the other one). But...it surprised me how comfortable I was despite some horror stories I heard about before graduate school. And how comfortable I still am, despite being the African American scientist at both of my centers (and one of just three scholars of color; one of the others is a postdoc).

I think you should call/email them as soon as possible and let them know that you are waiting on your official acceptance and want to be able to make an informed decision; also call the schools that are awaiting your response and see if you can get a deadline extension in the event that you don't get your final answer by tomorrow. 
 
For whatever it's worth, it took the school I will be attending over 3 weeks from the time of my unofficial acceptance to my official GSAS acceptance. I believe there's already a thread on this topic. The department may have to really petition for you if you were recommended by the department without meeting the requirements for admissions to the grad school (i.e. a cutoff GPA of at least 3.00 or a certain GRE minimum).   

I would call them and give a last follow up email ASAP, but if they don't respond positively by tomorrow, assume rejection and accept the other offer. 
 
Have you checked the results board to see whether other people have heard back from these schools in the relevant department? 

I agree that Merced does not seem like a good fit for you, and I personally would not go there for various reasons. A PhD is a big commitment even under the best circumstances, so I think you should only do one you're thrilled about. That said, just because you didn't get in anyplace you're excited about this year doesn't mean you can't get into a place that's a great fit for you in the future. The fact that you got waitlisted at Berkeley demonstrates that you are a very strong candidate capable of getting into top programs (and you may still get in - it seems from these boards that a lot of people are waiting to the last minute to make up their minds about where to attend). Plus it sounds like you are continuing to do work in your field (writing new papers, continuing research work on your own) that will only strengthen future applications. As you said, your issue here really comes down to where you applied. So I say take this time to work, consider your priorities, and if and when you reapply, only apply to places that you could really envision yourself being for a while, including where your significant other will be happy and have opportunities. I think your advisors should be understanding of the fact that Merced wasn't a great fit for you, but that you're interested (for now) in keeping your PhD options open. 
 
Your other underlying question - whether you should get a PhD at all - is a whole other can of worms and is incredibly personal. How were you feeling about it when you applied? Did you always doubt whether you wanted one or is it just because you're questioning your path since you're unhappy with your acceptances at the moment? If it's not a reaction to your current stress, then it's definitely worth taking some time to think about... another plus for rejecting the Merced offer and taking some time to think. Academic life is definitely not for everyone. What are the options in your field for going into industry with a PhD? Would you be super excited about the idea of being in school for 5-7 years if it were someplace like Berkeley, or are you unenthusiastic about the whole idea even in best case scenario? I think it's normal to have some crises of faith at a time like this... I think application and decision season is a time of ups and downs for all of us. Just some thoughts to consider.
 
Best of luck!  

Based on what's here, I'd say B for the networking opportunities and seeing new perspectives. Do you have a personal preference for the two? Is a smaller cohort more or less appealing to you? Do you have a strong location preference? Preference for the atmosphere at either place (if you've visited)? The extra funding that a wealthy private institution has can be very helpful for things like funding flexibility (e.g. continuing to fund you for an extra year if you don't finish on time), perhaps more support for conferences, etc. Have you looked into the job placements of graduates? Is either program better at placing graduates in the careers you want?

I'd take the teacher job, that sounds like a great opportunity. Your school options right now don't sound great and I agree that they aren't worth going into debt for. That said, even if you didn't get into any top-10 schools the last two rounds, you may be able to get into some great top-20s or top-50s fully funded next time around if you're still set on the PhD. Take some time to do something different, make some money, learn to be a great teacher, and you'll return to the coming application seasons stronger. 

My sister's field is exercise science, and in the course of trying to help her find positions relevant to her area, I have found far more positions that wanted someone with a degree in kinesiology or a related field than positions that wanted someone with a degree in psychology. So I don't think that would be a problem career-wise while you work in between.
 
Conversely, for academia the name of the program doesn't matter as much as what you are learning. For someone who is specifically interested in sport psychology and aspects of that, I think a kinesiology degree that explicitly concentrates on psychological aspects is just as useful as an ed psych degree that concentrates on sports. The coursework will likely be relatively similar, perhaps with some exceptions (there are some things that exercise science/kinesiology students learn to do biomechanically).
 
Add to that that MSU is better-reputed in your field, cheaper, has good sports teams and you like the campus more - I feel like that's your answer.

I'd take the teacher job, that sounds like a great opportunity. Your school options right now don't sound great and I agree that they aren't worth going into debt for. That said, even if you didn't get into any top-10 schools the last two rounds, you may be able to get into some great top-20s or top-50s fully funded next time around if you're still set on the PhD. Take some time to do something different, make some money, learn to be a great teacher, and you'll return to the coming application seasons stronger. 

Just reply and let her know that you have been taking time considering your options but are still very excited about her program and intend to respond before the 15th. It should be fine! 

Try to set aside 10% of your paycheck for a combination of savings and retirement. You want a rainy day fund for emergencies (car repairs, you get sick, animal gets sick, relative dies and you need a last minute flight home, etc.). But, any money you can save toward retirement now would be helpful long-term. For most grad students, a Roth IRA makes the most sense since you can put in after-tax dollars and you're unlikely to make that little money again.

Okay, I have to say that there's more you can do than watch how much water you use and vote. Other things to consider include what you eat (meat vs. vegetables but also which vegetables), how much food you waste (if any), what you do with excess water (like from waiting for shower water to get hot, or from the rinse cycle of the washer), and your electricity consumption. There's more, obviously, but all of those affect how much water is being used. Food waste is actually a huge water waster (I can link to studies if people doubt this) and power generation requires a lot of water generally speaking.
 
That said, I'm not saying any of this to stop someone from accepting an offer in California. There are environmental problems everywhere that, as a country, we will be forced to tackle in the next decade or two. Perhaps living in these places even temporarily can make people more willing to identify solutions that require sacrifice from everyone, not just a select few.

Considering that agriculture accounts for 80% of California's water consumption, the most significant impact of the drought will be higher fruit, vegetable, and nut prices, which, when you consider that California grows most of the food that people in the US eat (most other ag states grow food for feed), means that the impact of the drought will effect pretty much effect everyone in the United States who consumes produce. Although it will also mean more wildfires, but except for Santa Cruz, I'm not sure how many of California's research universities are located in fire-prone areas. 

From a social science perspective, I still agree with MathCat  about many of their points. Different programs weigh various application elements differently. I too am coming from a poorly ranked university (in terms of acceptance rates) but was accepted with funding into all of the graduate programs I applied for. Something that was surprising to me while looking through this forum is how many schools some individuals apply to attend.
 
The research area I am most interested in pursuing is only relevant at MAYBE 6 schools in the United States and Canada. Less than six have multiple faculty specializing in it. It blew my mind when I saw that individuals applied for 10 separate schools. First it blew my mind because for me, each application took about 10-15 hours of work and about 100 dollars (after statement letters, requests for LOR's, essays about research interests, communications with the programs, etc). Secondly it blew my mind because, again, my research focus is very specific. 
 
I would not limit your applications to schools entirely based on school prestige and I would keep in mind all of the informal interactions you have with the program in addition to formal interactions. This sounds shallow, but the schools that had horribly not-user friendly websites and secretarial or graduate admissions staff that weren't helpful I was less interested in attending. Consider your long term happiness in that location as well- I think I'm pretty easy going in terms of where I live, but I was cognizant of the fact that some places I'd rather not be for 3 or more years (sorry University of Rutgers, Newark). 
 
Lastly, I got loads of helpful information from my academic adviser and other faculty as an undergrad. Those people all successfully navigated PhD programs and are a source of information if you have those connections. I looked at the two faculty who currently do research in areas I want to do research in, and spoke with them about schools they attended and would recommend. They had connections in the field and their LOR's greatly aided me in my pursuit. 

I'd take the teacher job, that sounds like a great opportunity. Your school options right now don't sound great and I agree that they aren't worth going into debt for. That said, even if you didn't get into any top-10 schools the last two rounds, you may be able to get into some great top-20s or top-50s fully funded next time around if you're still set on the PhD. Take some time to do something different, make some money, learn to be a great teacher, and you'll return to the coming application seasons stronger. 

As a someone who has done the law school thing, school ranking are everything.  You have to go to the best school you absolutely can.  No wiggling for "specialty" or anything.  
 
The. absolute. highest. ranked. school. possible. 
 
Additionally, IP law is fairly difficult to gain a foothold into, but internship can be found.  
 
Last point.  Law school with suck your soul.  It is like high school with drinking and everyone is crazy super motivated and good students.  Intelligence does not matter as much as knowing how to take a law school test.  
 
It is an expensive proposition and the job market is better than it was when I graduated ('09), but it is still not (nor ever was) the gold mine everyone assumes it will be.  
 
Sorry, to be Debbie Downer. 

You could ask the admissions office at your particular school. Most places I applied asked me to self-report my GRE scores (either by simply entering them into the application or uploading a screenshot/scan of the ETS results page), so that the application could be reviewed immediately and official scores would just be used to verify the self-reported info.
 
That said, applications are usually not considered "complete" until all materials are submitted, including official GRE scores, so it makes sense that you may not have been reviewed until pretty late. Most schools will tell you that you risk your application not being considered unless all materials are not submitted by the application deadline, including LORs and GRE scores. 
 
That said, "over a month" isn't very long for an application to be considered. The school that notified me soonest took about 2 months and the longest took 3 months, and that was WITH all materials submitted at once. So, don't worry yet!