Vene

Looks like you can, but that the odds are against you, even just because of the difficulty of paying for the degree: http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/medical-school-admissions-doctor/2012/07/16/3-tips-for-international-students-applying-to-us-medical-schools

I have popped in the lab for a few minor (<half an hour) tasks on a handful of weekends. I also will regularly use the time for doing some light studying/writing for my courses (maybe a couple hours, especially if an exam is near), but I generally don't get much academic stuff done on the weekend. And I like it that way. Weekends are a time for me to relax. Then, when I go in on Monday, I will be refreshed and can focus.

I honestly doubt the quality of education is meaningfully different between the two. Personally, I didn't think the winters in Minnesota were that bad, but I'm from that area. I do not deny that it get quite cold, but the homes there are well insulated, the campus buildings are connected by a tunnel system, and downtown Minneapolis is connected by skyways. It does have a huge advantage in that the cost of living is far lower than Los Angeles. This also means you'll be able to afford a nicer apartment that is better maintained. The Twin Cities is a healthcare hub, most of it is due to the presence of biomedical engineering firms, otherwise there's some large health insurance companies, plus the Mayo clinic (as you said). Outside of Minnesota, I would expect the graduates of UMN to be able to find work in Wisconsin (Milwaukee) or Illinois (Chicago). Being a Big 10 university it is a name that is known throughout the US, so you'd have good career prospects elsewhere as well. Of course, this assumes you want to find a job in the US. If you're not looking for that, it doesn't really matter if the surrounding city is a healthcare hub or not. I don't know much about California, especially not first hand. I do know that UCLA has good name recognition and that California is a biotech hub.

Ask the program admin assistant, they'll either know or will point you to who does know. This is the exact type of question they are there to answer.

The April 15 deadline also only applied to doctoral programs, OP applied for a masters.

Don't get me wrong, I have totally done weekend work myself (damn take-home exams). But I do not want to make a habit of it and an extra few hours is certainly not the same beast as regularly pulling 60 hour weeks. I also do suspect that based on the nature of the work that the exact number can vary (including things like if I spend a Saturday collecting images versus setting up an incubation experiment with 3 different drugs and 6 different cell lines. The latter is far less forgiving, whereas I can always take another picture.

From the abstract: I believe that the "unbelievable results" that they are discussing come from the studies that "studies show that the effect of these two variables is negligible." And I don't think that, conceptually, it's hard to believe that as people work more hours the odds of them making a mistake will drastically increase. In many work environments mistakes can be incredibly costly. I know that if I mix up two samples that can completely undo weeks worth of work. When I was in manufacturing QA, I saw firsthand many people making mistakes on the production lines that cost several shifts to correct. These drastically reduce total output.

Would you prefer this? (Journal link) Figures 1 and 2 are key: Sustained overtime lead to enough of a decline that they would have been better off just doing a 40 hour week. For example, that asymptote for figure 1 is below 75%, but even rounding up to 75% yields 0.75*50 hours = 37.5 hours. By week 12, they were doing less work in 50 hours than what would have been done in 40 hours if they never started 50 hour workweeks.

It's been done. This has been known about for 100 years.

That certainly explains my confusion on the matter. Thanks for the clarification. Everything I've heard about subject tests does suggest to me that they're intense (my program didn't require me to take any so I don't have direct experience).

Um... that's kind of what I did, actually. I was not a math major or even math minor. I spent an hour or so a week on Saturdays for a few weeks doing practice problems to prepare for the GRE. Then I took it and got >80th percentile on verbal and quantitative portions. The questions are just SAT questions. The math isn't advanced, they just try to confuse you with the wording.

If A badmouths you to B, that says more about them than it does about you. Accept B, decline A. This isn't even a question.

You're going to want to increase your GRE, I do think a MS helps your application (if you do well), but I imagine that the MS did not have a GRE cutoff and the PhD did (probably unofficial). When you're known to the professors involved in the admissions process you'll have a better chance of being looked at, but I still think it would be wise to retake the GRE. You should look at the handbook for your program to see if it mentions anything about changing your status from a MS to a PhD student. You can also talk to professors there about it, as it is a perfectly reasonable goal, as well as the program's admin assistant(s).

Well, if you'd rather go to where you have already accepted it's pretty simple, you politely say you've accepted another offer. If you would rather attend the school where you were previously waitlisted then it's tougher as you don't want to burn bridges at where you previously said yes. It is possible to do this, but it requires tact as well as the program being understanding about this sort of thing. Regardless, you can say that you have decided to withdraw your acceptance and say yes to the new acceptance. If you ask me, people are overly concerned about burning bridges. It is impossible to please everybody and you ultimately need to do what is best for you and your career. You don't want to piss people off without reason, but you also absolutely need to take advantage of an opportunity if it arises. I can't say if this is one of those times, that's up to you.

I've not had issues finding work with my biology BA. Although, I had a tough time finding work that paid particularly well ($15-20/hr was the normal entry level wage). Mostly, I was able to find jobs doing QA/QC in manufacturing as biology (especially microbiology) is a decent background for food or drug regulations. That said, I think a lot of people were disappointed because it's not what we tend to envision doing when we're in undergrad.

Follow the money, an unfunded PhD is a bad idea.

Ask them, nobody else knows but the school.

Very much this. It is not your job to recruit for a university, they have staff to do that for them instead. If they can't attract the students they want, that is honestly their problem they need to solve.

There are many forums out there which offer homework help, but this is not one of them.

I'd first make sure that top choice really is going to make an offer. It's April 15th is Wednesday, call them up on Monday and ask, they really should know by now. If you're not actually getting into that program all of this is a moot point anyway.

It says that, but what can school X do? School Y has no obligation to require the release as they're not CGS. And X cannot force a student to enroll in classes. I also don't believe it's a legal contract unless you're required to sign one stipulating such in order to accept X's offer. Naturally, it is something which can bite you in the ass as professors at X are likely to be upset at you and academia is a small world.

By the rules as written, if you commit to X and then Y accepts you you are obligated to enroll at X. But, I don't believe the agreement is legally binding* and even though another CGS university won't accept you, Y isn't a CGS university and may well take you. Ultimately, I think you should talk directly with both of the universities. You can ask X for an extension for making a decision and/or you can ask Y for feedback sooner due to X's deadline. Personally, what I would do is talk to Y first for an earlier decision and if they are unable to give me one, I'd take the offer from X. *I am not a lawyer

I agree with this, it's easier to boost your GPA with undergraduate coursework than it is with graduate level coursework. A masters degree would make sense to me as that could strengthen your application (maybe something like a MPH, I notice a number of MDs also have one), but a PhD is not what you should be going for if you want to enter medical school.

It's certainly not ideal to take back your acceptance, but I say do it. Finances matter. I think you could even say something to them to the effect of 'After reexamining my financial situation I regret to say that I will not be able to attend next year. I am deeply sorry, but I wish to withdraw from your program.'

Alright, thank you for the correction, I must have been remembering the bit about validating the test instead.