MathCat

2/3 of my Canadian offers required paying tuition. Only U of T waived it. In practice, I think that their waiver usually means they give you the money to pay your tuition, in a lump sum, on top of the funding they've given you.

Wait to get official funding information before you accept! In writing!

No, you didn't do anything wrong, and no, telling them what you were offered there does not commit you to accepting their offer if they do bump it up. It just means the want you! They asked, not you. If you had asked them to increase your funding by saying you'd attend if they did, that would be different. It does not sound like that is the case, so don't stress out about it.

I don't think there's much for international students in Canada. When I said I'm international, I only meant for US considerations - I am a Canadian citizen.

My offer at U of T (which I declined), was $17,500. That's standard in the math department. It is also below the poverty line in Toronto. As for the US, this can vary hugely, and it also depends a lot on field (STEM funding is usually higher than humanities). Some prospectives I was talking to at a recent visitation weekend said they had received offers on the order of $15,000 to live on in the US. The cities are cheaper than Toronto, though (mostly small towns). My highest Canadian offer was about $19k after tuition initially. I was offered external funding that bumps that to $24k. I didn't apply for external funding in the US, since I didn't realize there were any I was eligible for as an international student - I'll do that next year. Excluding the external funding, all my US offers were higher than my Canadian ones in actual dollars, but not necessarily by a lot. One is around $21k, and the cost of living is high in that city. Another is very generous, at ~$30k with a relatively low cost of living. The third is a similar amount, but the rent is so astronomically high that it's really not so fantastic. All of them are enough to live well on, though, which cannot be said about all of my Canadian offers. Edit: all my US offers included tuition waivers and health care.

Signing on to a school specifically to work with somebody untenured is risky. If you want to go into academia, a top 75 school probably won't help you. Your interests will likely change, and even if they don't, you are not forever tied to exactly what you worked on in your PhD (as long as you learn the skills/background to do what you want, it doesn't really matter what you are working on). I would recommend the top 15 school if you want to go into academia.

There's some discussion about La Jolla in the San Diego thread.

It sounds to me like you need to get out now. Would it be a problem to be briefly without an advisor? Like, could you leave his lab and find another after? I'm naive about these things so maybe this is a dumb question.

I misread it as 5 years of guaranteed funding, sorry. Would you be guaranteed the $20k per year after that, or is it risky? Would you be responsible for tuition either way (even if you can't find a TA/RA)? That's quite a gamble. But if you are guaranteed the $20k, even with the high cost of living in Boston that looks better than the net $6k Waterloo has offered you (unless the $17k is after tuition. Maybe I'm misunderstanding.)

Northeastern looks great unless you have something against their program. I wouldn't recommend choosing Waterloo over them without a very good reason (since it looks like you'd go into debt there).

That really sucks, I'm sorry. I had a terrible time travelling this week as well, but it was on the way back from a visit weekend. I had an extra day there with the other prospectives whose flights were cancelled.

I think how honest people are depends on the program and the person you are talking to. However, every visit I went on felt very honest, in that both professors and grad students were not mentioning only positive things. On one visit, a student flat out told me if I wanted to study X then he would not recommend doing it there. In all cases, when I discuss my other options (they have always asked), everyone has mentioned pros and cons of their program vs. those. Another told me that it would probably better to accept one of my other offers (much higher ranked). I'm sure some people will be less honest, though. I do think one needs to be wary of relying too much on the first impression you get from a visit day - the opinions of current students, if you believe them to be honest (you have to judge for yourself), should probably carry more weight. One thing is to ask the same question to multiple students at different times, so you are not relying on only one person's answer.

There is not enough of a ranking difference to matter.

I excluded some very good programs from my list of schools to apply to based on their location. There are some days when I feel silly about it, but I really do think it matters. I only applied to places I thought I'd be willing to live. One of them, when I visited, was obviously not such a place though....

I think it depends how well you know what you want to do and how well each program fits for you. For me, I am unsure of my interests (not unusual in math), and so other factors are more important to me than the research interest fit. The atmosphere and other students, how much I like the location and how well I feel I would fit in, etc. are very important to me, and can only be gauged by visiting. However, every visit I have been on has been at least 75% covered by the department. If I had to pay entirely out of pocket, there are some I would probably not have bothered visiting.

Some schools do have minimum scores in each section. At several schools I applied to, I believe that minimum was 20 in speaking. You might have trouble getting a TAship, but I would guess that if it does not affect your admission (that is, as long as it's above any set minimum requirement), you would be able to improve your speaking before TAing.

Location affects your happiness. Your happiness matters. I think it is a significant factor.

I think it depends on whether or not the program sends their acceptances much earlier than rejections. For example, UC Berkeley routinely sends their admissions a month before they reject anyone (I don't know why, it seems unnecessary). If lots of people have been admitted much earlier and nobody has yet been rejected, I think it is generally safe to assume you are either rejected or on a waitlist. The waitlist might be informal - you aren't part of the "first round" offers, but as people decline, they will admit more, and they don't officially tell you you're in this pool. There will always be exceptions, so don't make any decisions until you have officially heard one way or another, I'd say.

It's possible it's fake. People do upload fake results. Alternatively, they may have some special circumstance that led their application to be reviewed a bit earlier (e.g. pending early decision deadline), and that they stood out as somebody certain to be admitted, so they got an offer. This was the case for me at one school - I don't think it means anything for the other applicants really, so I wouldn't stress. (I didn't post that result for this reason! It would only stress out the other people waiting, and isn't a real indicator of anything.) Another possibility is that they reviewed applications in the last two weeks, but just don't update their application portal. I don't trust the portals too much - the schools I was admitted to took a long time to update it to that, and one of the ones I was rejected from never changed my status.

Does this mean you will likely be able to switch to working with one of them? I am not sure if I am reading it correctly. If so, that is great news. It sounds like a really horrible environment to be in, and you are right to get out as soon as you can. Good luck, please let us know how it turns out.

It sounds like you wouldn't have a good personal fit with this POI. That is something to consider, if you do get an offer. I think that is more important than research interest fit. In any case, definitely wait until you have formal funding offers from your other programs before doing anything.

I was frequently warned that deciding is the hardest part. It's definitely true for me.

If you mean an unofficial offer, as TakeruK described, then you may have to wait. For most of my acceptances, I was first unofficially admitted, and then the official offer came later and included the funding information. Sometimes it comes separately, but it should definitely come before you have to accept. You should ask.

I'm in pure math, and know very little applied, so take this with a grain of salt. I've also only visited as an officially accepted student (and like braindump said, all my unofficial acceptances became official within a week or so, it was just waiting on the grad school to stamp the paperwork). There were no interviews at my visit weekends, but there were some one-on-one meetings with professors I requested to talk to. Mostly professors just asked about my interests, discussed their research, and answered my questions. I think it's pretty much assumed that an undergrad in math knows nothing, really - they expect you not to understand their research, but they'll try to give you an idea what it's about. They may ask what you've taken so that they can explain it in a way you might understand. It's basically a conversation about your interests, their interests, and some small talk.

You should ask the department what conditions there are on your offer. Completing the stated degree is usually one of them, but since it's a double it might not matter (they may only care that you finish a bachelors, not necessarily if it's both of them). The only way to be sure is to ask. What jenste said is also true though.