MathCat
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Posts posted by MathCat
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Didn't get it either, results were on extranet on the 27th, but I didn't get an email and only checked today. Luckily I got another post doc offer a bit earlier, so I'm still feeling OK
I hope we get our ranking details soon (mine is for committee 177). I didn't get any information beyond them saying I didn't get it.
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On 5/25/2020 at 6:55 PM, history110 said:
And right now international students can't get in CA and classes will be online.
Can't you enter Canada if you already have a student visa?
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47 minutes ago, cavalior7005 said:
Does anyone have experience with scholarships being taxed? I have my base stipend and then additional funding from a scholarship I received - I think they might be taxed separately?
I'm in California - both my stipend and fellowship amounts are taxed at the same rate federally. I believe California does not tax the fellowship, but does tax the stipend.
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If you are very confident that the shelter would look after her well, it is not the worst option, since you've said they're a no-kill shelter. But you might be able to find a better local rescue, perhaps ones that specialize in senior cats or those with medical issues. Even if the shelter is no-kill, a cat with health problems may be there for a very long time. Some rescues have better environments than shelters.
However, given that you say that the issues may be behavioral, I would probably take her with me and see - it's my attitude that getting a pet is a commitment for life (but if you are unable to care for her, the responsible thing is to find somebody who can - I'm not trying to make you feel bad about this.) You can do some research in advance to verify that there are good local shelters/rescues that you could take her to in your new location if it is still needed.
If you keep her, I would recommend you sign up for some pet insurance. It is likely that you wouldn't be able to get any of this covered, if there's anything in her vet file showing this is "pre-existing", but you can avoid such high bills in the future. If there's nothing in her record, I suppose it is possible that pet insurance could cover much of this (there's no diagnosis yet, which might make a difference). You'd have to read the small print. If you're in the US, I've had good experiences with Healthy Paws.- mackattack and Anonymouse124
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I adopted a somewhat old cat 2 years into my PhD (she was around 6). There's the obvious things to worry about: finding housing that accommodates pets, including roommates that you trust with your pet, and necessities such as food, litter, toys, etc. But you should also consider pet insurance, especially if you plan on adopting an older animal (which I think is a good idea, as younger cats require a lot more play time. I wouldn't ever consider a kitten as a graduate student.) Pet insurance does not cover routine costs, but is totally worth it for the unexpected emergencies - and older cats will have them at some point, and can easily cost over $1000 if tests like x-rays or ultrasounds are required. I've had good experiences with Healthy Paws pet insurance.
For routine costs, if you're in the US and there are any locations nearby, Banfield pet hospital has a wellness plan you can pay for which is really good value - I pay about $50 per month. For this, all visit fees are waived (about $60 saved per visit I think), vaccinations are free and flea and other parasite preventative medicine is included. They also include two comprehensive physical exams per year, as well as one tooth cleaning. I believe there is a cheaper plan that doesn't have the annual dental cleaning.
As an advanced PhD student, it is somewhat inconvenient to have a pet, as I have to find somebody to care for her whenever I'm away at conferences. But overall she has been very good for my mental health, and I do not at all regret adopting her. I do spend close to $200/mo. on the cat, including the insurance and wellness plans, but I feed her pretty expensive food. If my budget required it, I think I could do it for under $125/mo.
I do recommend waiting a year to see how things are going before making any decisions.
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On 4/13/2018 at 8:27 AM, jakeopolis said:
Hey by the way, does anyone know what the deal is with CGSD? Are they just offering PGSD now and then potentially upgrade people later? Or, if we have already received PGSD, that means we were not ranked high enough for CGS?
It means you weren't ranked high enough to be in the first round of CGS-D offers. If you are ranked high enough, you may be upgraded to a CGS-D if one is declined. A fair number of them do get declined, as you can see if you look at previous years' threads. (A common reason they are declined is that they cannot be held at foreign institutions - so people in that situation downgrade to a PGS-D instead.)
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I moved to another country (the US) after living with my parents my whole life. I was very nervous, but it was fine. It was a bit lonely at first, but pretty quickly I clicked with some people in my cohort. I think moving for grad school makes it easier than it could otherwise be, because when you meet your cohort most of them will be in the same situation of not knowing anybody.
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Mine would go up more than $5000 according to that calculator, and that's not taking into account the lower base deductible amount for non-resident aliens. It's also unclear to me if/how the proposed changes would impact my state taxes, or my taxes in Canada.
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On 11/5/2017 at 9:22 AM, TakeruK said:
However, even in these cases, aren't some Math people supported by NSF fellowships and such? These awards have tuition funding that would be lost to the school.
In regards to other comments about removing tuition or reducing tuition, there's a ton of behind-the-scenes money transferring to fund grad students. For example, even in a dept that funds students by TAships, the dept still likely have to pay some $$ to the university for tuition of their students. In return, the university provides $$ to the dept that run courses in order to hire TAs and pay for their tuition waiver. This system keeps things in check: a dept can't just give 100 TAs/tuition waivers out unless they are earning it by running enough survey/undergrad classes (resulting in undergrads paying tuition to the school that they can use to pay the depts).
At other places, like my PhD school, tuition is paid for by the dept or the advisor and it is linked to the stipend. So it works kind of like overhead. If you pay your students too low, you get charged a huge tuition to discourage paying students below the university minimum. But the more you pay your student, the higher tuition you have to pay as well. On paper, tuition was like $45k per year but the profs say the real amount paid is something in between $10k and $45k (no one ever gave an exact amount). Tuition was still charged at the full cost, it's just that the grad school "discounted" it for the advisor or department if they meet conditions. Having a higher on-paper tuition value also allows the dept and advisor to request more money for tuition payment from grants, donors, and external funding sources, I believe.
Yes, some people are supported by fellowships, but it is a pretty small portion at most schools. Things would be different at the very top institutions I imagine. The school would lose money from those, I'm not disagreeing with that.
In my department, the annual TA wage is about $19,000 if you don't get summer funding - though I'm not aware of anyone who can't get summer funding if they need it (either through grading, TAing or being funded by their advisor). With average summer funding the annual wage would be about $25,000 gross. The cost of living here is very high (e.g. rent on a ~500sq ft apartment near the university starts at approx. $1600, with 2 bedrooms being over $2000 generally - and these aren't extravagant places. The cost does not decrease much as you go further from the university, either.). This wage is livable but very tight right now. Students literally couldn't afford to have their tuition taxed, especially out-of-state or international students, whose tuition waiver is worth about $36,000. So, if the dept. wants to retain their graduate students, and hence their TAs, they would either need to significantly increase the wage, or do something to reduce the value of the tuition waiver. I'm not even sure that a public school can do anything about the latter.
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2 hours ago, Sela said:
The biggest problem with reducing the tuition that usually the university receives funding for their PhD students from external sources. Typically, the adviser gets research grants from various sources (for example the NSF), and this money is used to fund the PhD students among other things. The adviser uses his/her research funds to pay for the student's tuition and stipend, and this way the university receives some of the grant money and use it to maintain the facilities, pay for the staff etc. Without paying for the tuition, the university might not be able to get money from the grant.
This depends a lot on field. In my field, almost everyone is supported through TAships, not their advisor's research grants.
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1 hour ago, TakeruK said:
Is this a Canadian fellowship or a US fellowship? If it's Canadian, then you should have received a T4A. When I had a Canadian fellowship (NSERC), they issued me a T4A. You just have to ensure you code it with the correct income code appearing on your T4A (that tax form is used for a lot of different things).
If you are not using tax software, I highly recommend that you do so. The software will determine if your T4A income needs to be included as taxable income based on its source (i.e. the income code). My friends and I have found that many tax accountants in both Canada and the USA are actually quite unfamiliar with the complicated taxes of international students and academic income, so I would trust software to know all of the ins and outs.
If this is an American fellowship, then that would be different. I never had employment income while in the US, it was all income specifically marked with the "no services provided" letter. When I called the CRA hotline to ask about whether I needed to provide this on my Box 104, they said that I should not include it if the income was specifically for my education only. By extension, I also did not include my tuition waiver as income. Therefore, I do not think you should include $Y in your Box 104.
In your case, since you specifically have employment income, your situation may be different for the $X.
However, I am still surprised to hear that you would owe taxes in Canada despite already paying taxes in the USA. Did you also claim the Foreign Tax Credit benefit? It prevents you from being double taxed.
For the TL11A, I also got that request the first time I made the claim. I called the CRA to ask what they needed and they just wanted a physical copy of the TL11A form with the school official's signature on it to verify my student status and the amount paid. Since then, I always include the hard copy with my filing and I've never been asked about it again.
It is US income, I had no income from Canada for 2016. Specifically, it's part of my stipend from the university which is classified as fellowship income (basically, I TAed at half the usual amount, and the 'fellowship' amount included a top up so I was paid the normal amount for a full time TA). I will call the CRA.
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It's me again, with yet another tax return mistake! Well, I'm hoping it is a mistake. For the 2016 taxes, I had income only from the US: TA wages (say $X) on a W-2, and fellowship income (say $Y) on a 1042-S. A tax accountant in the family (informally) helped me with my Canadian tax return, but honestly I am not that confident in some/much of what they did. The result was that on my T1, in box 104 'other employment income', the amount entered was $(X+Y). I believe this is a mistake - after all, my fellowship income is not employment income! This definitely seems to be what earlier posts are explaining. As entered, I would have owed a significant amount to CRA (I had a large fellowship amount that year).
I did not include my tuition waiver as income, but I did file the TL11A for tuition credits. I think this was also a mistake - CRA has contacted me asking for justification for this, and from what they ask for it seems that I should have included it in my income as well, which makes sense in retrospect. Should I simply have added this amount to my income and included the TL11A? No other forms required (e.g. showing the tuition waiver as income in some way - I do get billed for it and then it gets paid by the dept, but it doesn't appear on any tax forms)?
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If you get your funding year round, it's not surprising to me that they ask you to do something to earn it during the summer. My program does not require students to take classes or TA during the summer (in fact, there are no courses to take in the summer), but students can apply for TA positions if they need summer funding. There are also other funding opportunities as RAs, e.g. for REUs or just grant funding from your advisor.
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I would recommend posting this in the 'languages' sub-forum: http://forum.thegradcafe.com/forum/39-languages/
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When I TAed for classes that were in a fairly small classroom, say seating at most 50 people or so, I would mostly stay at the front with the professor and only walk through the aisles to answer questions from students. I think walking around in a relatively small classroom can be disruptive. I'm now TAing a larger class and the exams happen in a 150-200 person lecture hall. I do think it is worth walking up and down the aisles a couple of times during the exam, both for shy students and to go stand at the back. From the front, it's easy to see if somebody always has their eyes on the exams in front of or beside them, but from the back you may identify other kinds of cheating. I wish I didn't have to be so vigilant, but my school has serious problems with cheating in many of the large introductory courses from many departments. We also require students to bring their exams to the front and leave their phones if they need a washroom break. This doesn't really prevent cheating during a washroom break, since we don't escort them, but I guess it's something.
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This is my first year filing as a factual resident (long story there, but suffice to say I have to correct my 2015 tax return...), and I'm uncertain on how to answer the question for my province of residence on Dec. 31, 2016. I guess I am a factual resident due to my ties to BC, and that is where my permanent Canadian address (i.e. my parents' house) is. But it is not where *I* lived on Dec. 31. So do I answer British Columbia? I'm using UFile online right now. The options are: say BC, or choose one of 'deemed resident' or 'non-resident', neither of which applies to me, I believe.
edit: nevermind, I found the answer: I do indeed say BC. Found here: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/nnrsdnts/ndvdls/tmprry-eng.html "For each tax year that you're a factual resident of Canada for tax purposes, use the General Income Tax package for the province or territory where you keep residential ties. Generally, this is the province or territory where you lived before you left Canada."
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My department has a lot of non-math TAs, mostly from fields like engineering or physics. Never enough people to TA for all those calculus classes! I also frequently get emails advertising TAs for language courses, usually the speaking/conversational component of the course. Usually they want a native speaker.
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1 hour ago, namastayingalive said:
I had no idea so many people got offers from the waiting list. I'm an alternate, but haven't received anything by mail. I've applied to CGS-M. Did people have any success with directly emailing NSERC?
CGS-M process is quite different from the PGS-D/CGS-D process. CGS-M is institution specific - they are the ones who will know how the waitlist is organized.
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4 hours ago, Liv57ac2 said:
Is it me or is NSERC taking a while to reply to emails? I sent an email accepting the scholarship on the 27th of March but haven't got any response back yet. I would think over a week would be long enough =)
I don't want to email them and add to the backlog just yet.
I sent my acceptance in the evening of the 23rd (Thursday) and they sent me a confirmation that they got it on the 29th.
Apparently there were 96 applications sent to the Mathematical Sciences committee. I expected there to be more, based on the ~1500 application numbers in recent years. Perhaps some fields have far more applications? Also, I suppose these numbers do not include the applications that were not forwarded, and I don't know what proportion gets forwarded...
I also think it is weird that they don't say at what ranking they stopped giving awards. Even if this could change with people declining, it would still be a useful number for people who will be applying again.
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15 hours ago, Oshawott said:
Honestly, I didn't think that the social sciences were so underfunded that SSHRC can't afford emailJoking aside, I do wonder why SSHRC is so far behind the times with regards to electronic applications.
I also wonder that, but to be fair, this is the first year that NSERC has emailed the PGS-D results.
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They told me that the 'authorized institutional official' signature must come from somebody who can confirm you will be conducting your studies at that institution, e.g. dean, acting dean, or department head.
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3 hours ago, TakeruK said:
You are talking about Form 1-B right? The one you filled out to formally accept the award? Part II ("To be completed by an authorized institutional official") is supposed to be filled out at the school where your award is tenured, so this applies to both direct applicants and applicants through a Canadian school.
I got the Dean of Graduate Studies to sign my form because the blank line for the signature and name says "Dean of Graduate Studies".
It is unclear to me if I have to submit such forms (meaning 1A and 1B). The email/letter just says to email them with proof of citizenship to accept. To actually begin payment, the award holder's guide says we must send in the form " Request for Instalment and Reinstatement of Award" form, found here: http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/_doc/Students-Etudiants/InstalmentReinstatement_e.pdf
The bottom right corner is the bit I am asking about.
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They told me I can accept my award in May. They didn't provide any explanation of what "coincides with your insititution's calendar" means, just said I could start in May.
For direct applicants: do you know if the required signature of the 'authorized institutional official' on the installment request form is applicable to us, or just those at Canadian institutions?
NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship 2021-2022
in The Bank
Posted · Edited by MathCat
Got my ranking letter, I ranked 17/47 (and was rejected).
Seems the success rate of applications is lower this year than recent years.