RunnerGrad

Personally, I think it is best to hope for the best, but plan for the worst.  Applicants haven’t been rejected yet, since only the first wave of acceptances have been sent out, but, as a UofT MPH grad, I think it is best to consider yourself on a wait list right now if you haven’t received an acceptance.  Putting your life on hold because you haven’t yet been accepted or rejected is not a good idea.  Planning for the future, in case you are rejected, is the best approach.
I’m still waiting on a decision from Queen’s re: two PhD programs. If I assumed I would be accepted, I wouldn’t be doing anything right now to improve my application or to ensure that I remain licensed as a registered dietitian.  As I don’t have an answer yet, I am proceeding as if I were rejected (even though I haven’t been), and securing myself employment in my field so that I can maintain my registration.
I think it’s good advice to start planning for the future, in case an acceptance doesn’t come through.  If people later receive an acceptance, that’s awesome!  But I think it is very important to have back-up plans.  I was fortunate to receive admission to UofT’s MPH on the first day of acceptances, but I already had three other back-up plans prepared (including an acceptance to an MSc program) in case the MPH didn’t happen.  I think that’s prudent planning.  YMMV of course.  I like to plan and to have back-up plans so that I’m not left in limbo. Others may prefer to wait and see what happens before making alternate plans.

Come on Queen’s - give me an admission offer for a birthday present!

Wow, @TakeruK, you’ve certainly had some incredibly disrespectful experiences!  It’s awful that people actually behave that way.
I’m currently working as a health professional, and where I work, we have a lot of clients who are new Canadians.  Quite a number of them have names that can be challenging for anglophones or francophones to pronounce.  When I call them for their appointment, I always make a point of asking them how to correctly pronounce their name.  Sometimes my mouth just can’t get it right (subtle differences in pronounciation that my ear just can’t pick up), but I’m not intending to offend - I just can’t “hear” the correct pronounciation.  Most clients understand; after all, they may have problems with some English or French words!

I hear you.  I’m trying to be patient, since one program I applied to only had applications close a month ago, and the other doesn’t close until this Friday!  So even though I don’t expect to hear back yet, it’s hard to resist checking the application portals, where “application complete” is still front and centre!
I did receive notice of a job that I’m qualified for, so I’ll be distracting myself by completing my application materials for that!
With snow currently on the ground, I really hope spring arrives soon!

I have a beginning of the semester survey where I ask students to tell me about themselves, and one of the questions I ask is what they'd like me to call them. Sometimes it's a case like this, sometimes it's a "Thomas" who'd much prefer to be called Tom. 
Along with asking preferred pronouns, it's a space for students to tell me what they would prefer, and then I go by that. 

Last week, on my 51st birthday, I was accepted into a PhD program for School Psychology. I am beyond happy. I had a 20 year, very successful career before returning to finish my BA 2 1/2 years ago. My children are grown (my youngest getting his BA one week before me) and my husband and I are able to relocate. I feel incredibly fortunate to have this opportunity at this stage of my life. I am doing this for myself and because I want to make a difference. I hope to enter the world of academia since I would love the opportunity to conduct research and train future school psychologists. I love my exposure to younger students and I think it provides a mutually beneficial relationship. In addition, I am hopeful that I am setting a great example for my kids and my 8 year old granddaughter. Can you tell that I am loving this??  Congratulations to all of the "older" students posting here. 

This is from personal experience, so take it with a grain of salt as what works for me might not work for you.
As you probably figured out from being in school and reading all the posts on this forum, grad school is stressful and requires a huge time commitment (I'm in my second year). A professor of mine said there are 2 extreme types of grad students:
1) The one who wants to be involved in every extracurricular and social activity, both inside and outside school (and ends up not having time to do their research) 
2) The one who isolates themselves completely to truly focus on their research and never knew there was a world outside their lab (and burns out very easily)
Both are not the best way to approach school.
Personally, I try and be smart about what I do "outside the lab." Besides the more "expected" things like attending talks and colloquia, I try to only generally get myself in activities that / where:
1) I feel is a good investment in terms of time and career
2) I feel I can make an actual contribution in, and not one where I show up because everybody else shows up (just because it works for others doesn't mean it works for you!)
3) If within the academy, my supervisor knows about and "approves." (it is extra, extra stressful if your supervisor is constantly berating you about the "useless" work outside the lab that you are doing)
4) If outside the academy, only things I am truly invested in. This can take different forms for everyone. Like some invest themselves in a cause they really care about (e.g., women's rights), or things they find helps them regroup and return to the lab refreshed every week (e.g., yoga).
Currently, I serve on one university committee that is broader than my direct and immediate area of research (i.e., I work in Neuroscience, and I serve on a committee that serves the whole Faculty of Medicine) and do outreach / workshops relating to that, I mentor students in my area / field, and I "intern" every couple of weeks at a research institute that is also broader than my area of research. I also volunteer at a local community health care centre outside school. They all take time, but not so much that I become the grad student who is never in the lab missing deadlines and/or is always being reminded to do her work.
The first two are service to the profession and academic community, the third is just for my own professional development, while the fourth is for my own personal fulfillment.
I found it takes time to figure out what you are passionate about, and how you think you can nurture that passion while still taking care of yourself. The key is to not burn out (very hard to do!). And that starts with thinking about the direction of your future career and/or life goals and then picking your battles.
I (think) am like you. I was involved in several simultaneous activities and events as an undergrad, both inside and outside school. But grad school is no longer about being that queen / king social butterfly. It is more about (for me, anyway) learning how to be a colleague, peer, mentor, professional, and learning how to give back to the next generation and what you want (or think you want) your future life to look like. And I personally think that holds true whether you decide to go into academia or not.
FWIW, nobody expects you to do it all. And it is okay to change your mind when you realise it isn't working and/or that you are spreading yourself too thinly. Also, as I learned recently, having a mentor, friend, and a network like this forum who has/have gone through the process to give you perspective about expectations, norms, and reality helps tremendously.
Give yourself some time to figure it out. Grad school, and life, are marathons (triathlon, really). You don't want to sprint like mad in the beginning and realise you can't move after a short while. (Orange turtle r.e.a.l.l.y. needs to remind herself about this constantly as well)
Good luck!

As a dietitian, I am saddened to see people without any education in nutrition giving others nutrition advice!  Nutrition is a science, and if you are interested in learning more, seek out a registered dietitian or a registered dietitian nutritionist.  Do NOT see a “nutritionist” who doesn’t have the dietitian credential, because that term is meaningless - people have certified their pets as nutritionists!  Dietitians provide science-based, evidence-based nutritional guidance, which is something that I hope anyone who is interested in grad school would be interested in.

Before I attempt to answer your question... May I ask, why a PhD, which is traditionally research heavy if you have not had a lot of research experience? Do you enjoy and want to work in research?

I think discussing this with your advisor after winter break makes sense. FWIW, I wouldn't say all of what you've said here. I would say something about how you've thought about your career goals and future plans and realized that, at this point in time, leaving with a certificate rather than a degree makes the most sense for you. I don't think your advisor or anyone else will be offended or upset by that, nor do I think it would jeopardize your future LORs. I hope this helps!

It's definitely not as competitive as PhD applications in the US, but it's still not that easy to get into a top university in Canada, especially as an international student. GPA is weighed heavily, as are LORs, and research experience is a good way to make your application shine. I applied to some Canadian masters programs along with American PhD programs, and if I recall correctly, U of T told me they only accepted something like 10 international students that year. Also, FYI, the funding they offer is pretty bad for the cost of living in Toronto ($17,500 and tuition remission).

Where did I dismiss the opinion of anyone?
And you seem to be the one setting up the false dichotomy here. I simply stated that academic MA programs at Canadian universities are not that competitive; this is a sentiment shared by numerous people I have run into throughout my 'academic' career. Nor did I use my experience as the basis of my opinion, rather as an indicator to how someone with a fairly average application (at least numbers wise) can get acceptances to top Canadian programs.
MA programs are not particularly strenuous nor especially competitive, especially in Canada, considering that virtually everyone needs one to do a Ph.D. in the country. Furthermore, a number of the best Canadian students don't do their graduate studies at Canadian universities leaving the pool of applicants a lot less competitive than they could be.

They start in March (Nutrition and Dietetics is usually first, as they want to get their offers out before the Dietetic internship programs release their offers in early March) and continue into April. I heard back on March 6th last year. The website states mid-April to June, but most of the people I've spoken with had heard back by the end of April, at least for the MPH programs.  Of course, that may have changed this year - I'm not involved in admissions, so don't have any inside scoop!
 
Sorry I don't have any better timeline for you.  I know the Graduate Director was working on admissions stuff this week!  Good luck.

Only some of the MPH streams at UofT do interviews. Nutrition and Dietetics and OEH have interviews, Health Promotion does not, and I'm not sure about the other streams. I'm in Nutrition and Dietetics, if you have questions about UofT.

My husband, sister-in-law and brother-in-law all studied at MUN, but for their undergraduate degrees.  They all enjoyed their time there.  Newfoundlanders tend to be very friendly, and with the oil and gas industry, St. John's is expanding and is no longer the sleepy little town it used to be.
 
Being stuck on the island can be a pain at times - you need to take the ferry to fly if you want to go anywhere outside of Newfoundland.   Some things are expensive due to the cost of transport to get things to the island.
 
If you enjoy the outdoors and/or history, Newfoundland is a great place to be.  I've visted Terra Nova and Gross Morne National Parks, visited Cape Spear, Signal Hill, and a bunch of other historic sites.  Been whale watching and saw a whole pod with some baby whales.
 
St. John's is obviously not a big city like Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver, so if you like big city life, than St. John's might not be for you.  Otherwise, I think MUN is a great choice.

unless you have Celiac disease, there is no reason to eliminate gluten. Most people do better on a "gluten free" diet because they are no longer consuming processed foods and lots of sugar. Whole grains (that naturally contain gluten) are healthy, and important sources of vitamins and minerals, as well as fibre. Most people who get rid of gluten would do better to eliminate sugar and processed foods, while keeping healthy whole grains (steel cut oats, quinoa, stone ground whole wheat bread, etc.) as part of their diet. We actually see a scary number of deficiencies among those who have gone gluten free without having a Celiac diagnosis. Also, most of those those who claim to be "sensitive" to gluten are actually sensitive to FODMAPs, not gluten.

My tips: eat healthy, which means local, unprocessed foods, as much as possible. Minimize sugar and caffeine. Exercise 5 days/week, at least 30 min each time, for a cumulative 150 min, or more, each week. Get plenty of sleep. Don't pull all nighters. Stay hydrated. If in Northern areas, or if you always wear sunscreen, or cover up when outdoors, take vitamin D.

unless you have Celiac disease, there is no reason to eliminate gluten. Most people do better on a "gluten free" diet because they are no longer consuming processed foods and lots of sugar. Whole grains (that naturally contain gluten) are healthy, and important sources of vitamins and minerals, as well as fibre. Most people who get rid of gluten would do better to eliminate sugar and processed foods, while keeping healthy whole grains (steel cut oats, quinoa, stone ground whole wheat bread, etc.) as part of their diet. We actually see a scary number of deficiencies among those who have gone gluten free without having a Celiac diagnosis. Also, most of those those who claim to be "sensitive" to gluten are actually sensitive to FODMAPs, not gluten.

My tips: eat healthy, which means local, unprocessed foods, as much as possible. Minimize sugar and caffeine. Exercise 5 days/week, at least 30 min each time, for a cumulative 150 min, or more, each week. Get plenty of sleep. Don't pull all nighters. Stay hydrated. If in Northern areas, or if you always wear sunscreen, or cover up when outdoors, take vitamin D.

"That got really annoying"
 
petty-bourgeoisie privilege alert.

As someone who came from a privileged background, I never flashed any sort of wealth (in fact, I prefer not to own nice furniture -- I don't like the idea of people becoming my friends because I have nice things or a nice car or whatever), but I did find it very hard to relate to the poorer people in some ways. For example, going to a movie with some friends one time. I wanted to just go to a regular movie theater that had a nice parking lot. Everyone else was whining that the tickets would cost $10 instead of $8 (or whatever), so they insisted on going to a theater on campus. This meant finding a place to parallel park and walking 6 blocks each way. When I said that sounded like a bad idea, one of the guys said "or you could just pay for our tickets." I actually considered it, but I wasn't going to do that *after* someone made a dick comment like that. Or even back in undergrad when I studied abroad, everyone around me refused to spend more than like $5 going out to lunch. That got really annoying.

Once I've sync'ed the pen with the computer, the notes on my computer are searchable.

I don't know about STEM fields, but, in the Humanities, older students are looked upon less favorably because these schools are funding students under the assumption that they will then go out and get a tenure-track job somewhere. This improves their placement rate. If, after completing the PhD, they would be too old to be considered for tenure-track teaching positions, it makes less sense to these programs to use valuable (and increasingly scarce) funding on them.

I can only give my 2 cents on this, take it or leave it.
Let's say you enter and get your ph.d. you'll be 55 or 56 when you graduate. In the increasingly competitive job market in the humanities, few schools (if any) are going to hire someone who is near retirement age. They want to get the most bang for their buck--young, enthusiastic people who are going to stick around for 20 years. Ideally, anyways. Things are changing, of course, and tenure-track positions vanish every year. But if I were on an adcom, I doubt I would accept someone who is 50, for the simple practicality of it. Not to mention that there have been unprecedented numbers of applicants this year. But I am not on an adcom, and so can't speak to what they would do. I would say that someone who is 50 and going to grad school would have to be really amazing, beating out all the younger folks, which would be pretty hard to do, I think. I don't want to rain on your parade, and I certainly don't want to discourage you, if this is what you want to do. Keep trying, if that is the case.

Not necessarily true. Even if you don't make age an issue, it's quite obvious there is an age difference when you have a husband and family, and they just have boyfriends or casual partners. Or when they talk about how old a foundational study in your field is, that it was published before they were born, but you were in high school at the time. Or when they don't invite you out to drinks and dancing, because they don't want to socialize with someone old enough to be their mother. Or when a prof mentions something that you were alive for, but your classmates weren't, and clearly addresses you as the exception. Or when you are asked to interview your grandparents, but all yours are long dead. Age comes up, even if you don't explicitly mention it or make it an issue.

I've always found it odd that the U.S. places a significant emphasis on standardized tests both for undergraduate and graduate admissions.  These tests are a significant financial burden for students from lower income families, especially if they are ill on the day of their first test and need to retake it.  As a Canadian, I'm just not used to such widespread use of standardized tests, with a few exceptions (MCAT for medical school, LSAT for law school, GRE for some graduate psych programs).  Even so, some medical schools in Canada don't use the MCAT because it disadvantages students whose mother tongue is not English.  So universities with large populations of Francophone students (see UOttawa or NOSM), or exclusively Francophone students (see most of the Quebec medical schools) don't use it.

First, I want to say that this is a very legitimate concern and something worth thinking about. I am glad that you are taking on the work of raising these concerns and I am sad to hear that the response you got was completely inappropriate and inadequate. Sadly, this is a common response I've heard when doing similar things and from colleagues doing similar things
My current department is small (< 10 profs) and until 2011, there were zero female faculty too. We now have two, both hired in 2011. @PoliticalOrder raises a point that I commonly here: "We tried searching but the best candidates were not female (or other minority)!!" This is a complicated issue that I can't address all in one post, but as academics, we bear a lot more responsibility to creating a diverse community than simply saying "oh the best candidates aren't female, sorry". And for a group of 10+ faculty, it seems really unlikely that every single time, the best qualified applicant happens to be male. (In my field, about 30%-40% of faculty-eligible scientists are female so this should only happen < 3% of the time, if by chance, but see note below).
There are a lot of reasons why female faculty aren't being hired, such as, but not limited to:
1. Female candidates are not applying because the department is all-male and that the environment there seems to be not friendly to women (given that the programme director dismissed @piglet33 so simply, it's not far of a stretch to postulate that perhaps these repeated actions by the faculty has earned this department a reputation in the field). This is something that is worth addressing, because if the department is claiming to want only the best faculty, then they should take actions to ensure that the best faculty actually want to be there.
2. Unconscious bias exists in the department and female applicants aren't truly being evaluated equally and fairly. There has been many studies to this effect. And, there are many other studies showing there are ways to greatly reduce or even eliminate unconscious bias. Things like blind reviews or even a briefing/acknowledgement that unconscious bias exists, even for "dispassionate academics", makes a difference.
3. Related to #2, a currently not-diverse group of people might have more limited perspectives and a more narrow definition of what is "successful". When they evaluate candidates, they might be looking to find someone that is similar to them. However, there are many avenues and routes to success that could be missed when only using this narrow metric. Diversity matters, e.g. see Page 2014.
These are just a few thoughts. I want to expand a bit further on something I said above, about how for a population with 30% women, the chance of 10 people being all men is less than 3%. This is a simplification, I admit, because these 10 people were not chosen all at once and the population wasn't always 30% women. There is also a further complication that departments don't hire every year---let's say they hire one position every 5 years. For a minority population (e.g. women), there will be fewer applicants, and because good applicants are rare, then good women applicants may be even rarer. What if, for example, in 2010, the best candidate was male, but in 2011-2014, the best would have been female, but the department already hired in 2010? This could lead to all-male selection too.
But there is a solution! (More than one of course). I will use gender diversity here as an example. The solution my school has implemented (we have really ramped up our work on diversity in the past 2 years) is for the University to have a school-wide slush fund help with hires in the "off" years. Let's say a department was planning to hire in 2010, 2015 and 2020. And they hire a man in 2010. They would be encouraged to keep the job search for 2015 open between say, 2011 through 2015 (it's common for faculty searches for my school to go unfilled from year to year). Then, if they find a woman candidate in the "off years" that is exceptional, they can appeal to the University-wide fund. The University, which has increased faculty diversity as one of its goals, will provide extra funding to the department from say, 2012 to 2015 to help offset the cost of an "early" hire. This allows departments to get the best talent, to increase diversity, and avoid missing great applicants from minority populations due to the small number problem. This is just one example of creative thinking that can help change the status quo (of course, this is an example that costs a lot of money, but there are other solutions too).
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Overall, to @piglet33, I just want to say that you should feel welcome to vent! And that there are many that support you. I think you are definitely right to strongly consider this as a factor in deciding where to go for PhD programs. I'm a male, so I'm lucky to be part of the dominant population, but I try to be aware of the diversity of places I go (conferences, schools, meetings, workshops). I would definitely think twice about joining a department that lacks diversity (and lacks any attempt to change that). 
It can also be tiring and draining to deal with these problems alone. As shadowclaw suggests, there could be groups on campus. There are also groups online. In my field, there are several diversity/equity/inclusion FB groups where professionals (students, postdocs, faculty) that care about these issues discuss them together. I have to say that it's very helpful and uplifting to see that other people care, and especially other faculty members and those in positions to make change. 
And you should not feel that you must be the sole champion of this cause in your department. This type of work is emotionally draining and also takes time away from research productivity. Ironically, this is part of the problem too! Academics in under-represented groups tend to take on more of this work, which makes it harder for them to compete with the majority group that does not have to take on this work. And, even in departments that want to increase diverse voice, it's a problem if there is say, only 1 woman out of 15 professor. That woman might be asked to serve on all sorts of committees (hiring or otherwise) to lend a diverse voice (see #3 above). But this creates an unfair burden on the woman (not to mention the extra pressure of tokenism! likely part of the reason why when there are zero women, it's really hard to recruit the first one). Unfortunately, a lot of well meaning people do this by mistake (by "this", I mean not realising that by asking the same people to serve on many committees, it's an unfair burden).
So it's perfectly fine for you to choose to take care of yourself first and focus on finishing your Masters, getting into the PhD program of your choice first. At the same time, I really hope that you find supporters in the majority group that will help you with changing your department's environment. And to those who are reading this---lack of gender diversity is not just a "women's issue", it's something that affects all of us! It's important for those of us in majority groups to take on some of the work to increase diversity and take the burden off of our colleagues.