jujubea

I can certainly tell you that quoting Obama is not going to help you any. It might make for a nice quote in a letter to a newspaper or somewhere else complaining about the process though. Yeah, it's possible they could ask for more documents after the waiting, but it's also possible they won't. Definitely take your trip(s) as planned, I wouldn't worry about anything there. The more you travel, the better, in my opinion. Whether or not there is a deadline for extra docs depends on what kinds of docs they're asking for.... Ah, bureaucracy. Treating humans like non-humans since...the birth of humanity. Sorry for your woes - keep us posted what happens. And enjoy your trip it sounds awesome!

Alright, thanks guys.

So crazy how different our fields are. This is also a fairly lower level conference it turns out. 300-word abstract... no sections.... just prose (ha). The guidelines are quite fluid and the topic I proposed is going over well among peers and other panel reviewers. We'll see what my panel says. How soon after the submission of the abstract (or how soon before the conference) is one usually notified of acceptance?

An investigation would only happen if there was some serious misconduct. An officer will never get investigated simply for their decision--even if that decision were, say, ultimately based on race or class or any other 'discriminating' factor. The officers don't have to be politically correct, or even righteous, they just have to make a decision according to the law (which is not very nuanced and leaves lots of room to do things like discriminate). Now, if they were cussing at you, spitting at you, or making obscene gestures, or worse.... then your complaint would surely get sent to the appropriate people. If they were doing common bureaucrat behavior (ignoring you, joking with their coworkers while you wait, being incredibly UNhelpful, being rude, or slow, or not forthcoming), your complaint will surely not be sent anywhere. In either case, my original advice still holds -- if an investigation is what you want, contact the Consular Bureau and appropriate sub-section/department for your region. The info is available with minimal digging from the main State Dept website.

This sounds so frustrating - I am sorry. If your email is something like "I want to know why I was rejected" or "What am I waiting for?" or "Is something suspicious?" or if it even hints of any of that, you are going to get the standard reply. You need to ask a non-standard question to get a non-standard reply. Emails are absolutely read, but many, many are responded to with a set of canned responses, since so many of the same types of questions come in. It is not humanly possible to respond specifically to every question ("How much longer will this take?") otherwise the world would see yet another increase in US visa fees to pay for all the extra diplomat work.... Also I just reread your original post. Since your name is very common, be ready to send in or bring in documentation showing very specifically who you are (student or other IDs, passports, birth cert, etc, as just some possible examples).

To add -- I do recommend following up about once every two weeks or so to make sure your paperwork isn't stuck somewhere. There should be an email address or phone line on the embassy or consulate website.

Hmmm good question. Depends what you mean by effective... what change do you hope to effect? I would start with looking up the Consular Affairs Bureau in DC and see if there are any contacts listed there which sound appropriate. You might contact the regional director for example of the CA region you were in. What happened that was so upsetting, if you don't mind sharing?

You're going to hate this answer, but, it really is administrative processing. All applicants are subject to some "black box" (read, difficult to discern) regulations which occasionally cause these delays, with or without visa officer involvement. There is no way to know whether the VO was in some way suspicious of you, or if they needed to learn about something special to process your visa, or if there was some pre-existing regulation you got snagged by, or if the embassy or consulate had some unscheduled training or unpredicted workload increase for those processing student visas, or if some machine broke, or if there was even some kind of embarrassing paperwork error that put you in 221g purgatory... the last one happens more than anyone would like to admit. You've got nothing to worry about, and even if you and up rejected you can always appeal.

Thanks guys super helpful info. Especially the previous abstracts from the same conference... didn't even think of it so I'll be hunting those down.

Regarding question 2: since you attended two different universities, at two different times, the admissions panel will clearly see that you had a whatever-crummy GPA 11 years ago, and a 3.92 GPA at your current/recent school. This will speak for itself. You also have a lot of great other strong points, and a legit reason that academia was a different (difficult) boat for you 11 years ago.

I would really like to begin submitting for conferences, but I know nothing about the conference-paper submission processes or criteria or etiquette or basically anything. I have past completed research I could discuss/submit, and I have ongoing directions of research with no results quite yet (what I have is evidence of a gap in our field, and an argument for the importance of filling this gap). Is it appropriate to present such things at conferences? The one I'll begin with is a subnational conference. I will be a second-year grad student this year, and have minimal publications, but extensive public speaking experience. Doing some reading up online but wondering if anyone has pointers, resources, Websites, or experiences regarding not just this specific question, but about conference 101 type stuff - including SAMPLES of good PROPOSALS Thanks

Yes, and actually, @TakeruK you are probably more qualified in ways to answer the Canadian and other non-visa-interview questions, since I only have personal familiarity with the more "rigorous" crossings.

Be sure to include the partial scholarship from the college, and also your uncle in your home country. In my own opinion - which is only my opinion and not any official law or policy - the home country source of funding "looks better" than a US "friend" source of funding, because the latter shows a tie to the US, whereas the former shows a tie to your home country.

Yes, you can use the $2k as part of the support of your wife. You may or may not need to show funds for all five years. At the least, you may be required to show how you will be able to obtain those future funds in a timely matter if you do not currently have them.

If you are not doing a visa interview at a consulate or embassy you don't need to worry about any of these details, generally. It is good to be prepared to answer them in the strange chance that they come up, but generally the interviews don't get that deep at the crossing - unless something else has made them suspicious of you.

no but i used to live there. any questions about las cruces?

Hi all - I used to be a visa officer and can answer general questions about forms, interviews, etc. regarding student visas. Some of you have found me through other posts, but I thought I'd start a thread where people can ask questions openly, too. Here's an example of a question I recently received: "If I indicate on the I-20 that financial support is coming from "personal funds" is it OK that on my visa application form it says that my parents are paying?" The answer is yes, that information is not contradictory, so you would be fine. If the visa officer asks or thinks they're different, you just tell them since it is not a business or other "outside" source, you indicated "personal." They might ask about your parents' money, then, too.

Yay! Others with kids! I have three. Now they're talking about grad school, too. Plus, they're thinking "wow, mom is totally relatable... she has gripes with teachers and grades and assignments and communication like we do, too!" haha.

Ughhhh am I the only person in the world still doing finals??? Writing a 12-pager today, doing a last interview tomorrow, for which I still need to write up a report (in an Asian language), then the big fat one: a 25-pager for the last class. I haven't written that much since my undergrad thesis! Ahhhhh!!!!!

THIS!!!!!!! I only just finally looked at some of my submitted docs, my SOPs specifically. I could barely stomach it. I accidentally opened my CV... I couldn't even look at it! Closed it right away! I can't handle it and I'm ALREADY IN THE PROGRAM! So just . don't. do it. Binge Netflix. Internetshop for Christmas presents for other people. Find cool new music you never knew existed. Go to a place in nature you rarely go (it shakes your brain up and give sit something new and stimulating to focus on). Whatever you do don't open those files.

We recently had teacher evals, and I had one professor who, though great in some respects, was consistently (surprisingly) really not good in other respects. I decided not to write all the details of the problems, but just say that I have been exposed to 7 other graduate professors' teaching styles, and this was blatantly poor quality, I was really just shocked. I have previously had "not-as-great" professors, everyone has their weaknesses, but this was just not good. Given the professor's penchant for laughing at others' opinions, everyone is afraid to talk to them about the issues. Indeed, when the professor comes up in hallway conversation, it is a big elephant in the room. HERE's the kicker. When we filled out evals, I was honest, but not brutal. I didn't give any 1's, but I think I gave a couple 2's and 3's. When I walked up to submit the eval to the folder, I noticed a few other people's papers just had 5's going the whole way down, or just 4's and 5's. Some of these were the students who had spoken up outside of class about how crappy the professor's teaching was. So what is the deal? Are we not supposed to be honest on graduate evals? Are we supposed to do eval inflation the way they've done grade inflation for the students? A "4" really means a C? I was myself very disillusioned. I respect this professor's work a lot, and the person is one of the reasons I came to my program. Their work is advancing the field and their research is cutting edge. Does that mean we are not supposed to comment on the emperor's new clothes?

I'm in a different field, but still humanities, and still international. For what it's worth, if anything, I went to a no-name undergrad (mostly anyone I speak to has never heard of it unless they grew up there), but I had a markedly unique experience there, and had outstanding work experience in international relations and my field, as well as stellar LOR's. I was definitely asked multiple times by multiple professors at multiple schools during the pre- and -post-application processes (pre-decision) about my undergrad, and none were impressed. But with the overall package it didn't matter. I am at a top-5 (or top-10, depending which list) US school now for my field. As others will say elsewhere: overall package really matters!

Oh wow TakeruK.... Such a helpful post. Thank you. I plan to bookmark this and return to it regularly.

So, this is a strange question probably. I am thinking a lot about how to choose what to specialize in, both for the thesis (master's) and for the dissertation later on, AND for my career (which I realize will be somewhat flexible and I am not going to quite determine that right now). I have noticed that there are some things I am interested in - or rather, that I thought I was interested in - that are turning out to be sort of ego-driven, rather than real interest or passion driven. An example: I always thought I was interested in the archaeological aspects of my field, but we've been assigned some readings specific to my subfield, all about the excavation and specific historical details of certain significant sites - their dates, their names, their types, their geographic location and its relevance to the site, etc. I am finding that, it is terribly boring to me. I don't care to read what period this or that artifact is from. I don't care that the number of steps indicates that the person was higher or lower ranking in society. (To note: I DO think it is interesting what certain artifacts were USED FOR, and what the artifacts say about the practice of religion at the time). BUT, as I am currently bored to tears in these readings, I am realizing that previously, it wasn't that it was some kind of passion of mine, it was that... I had always thought it would be "so cool" to know such things. As in, wouldn't it be cool to be the person someone comes to to say, "hey, we found this site and we don't know what it is, or what it means, can you help us decipher?" It is only now, as I'm reading this archaeological data, that I see how boring it is to me. I don't actually care - it was just my ego that thought it would be cool to be in that position of knowledge and sharing it. This is just an example of a few. So... I am curious from others who are further along in their Master's and PhD programs especially: did you come up against this problem? How were you able to figure out, before it was too late, that you were only interested in a topic for ego-driven purposes, rather than because you had an actual passion about a topic? I am fearful of choosing a topic that turns out to be something I am not actually that interested in!!!