EnfantTerrible

Thanks for the sympathy, encouragement and links! IQ84, could I possibly message you about the best places to look for roommates/apartments in Toronto? I'm sure you have some good insight!

Are you American?

I've been told by a current Toronto grad that leases usually start on the first of the month. If I'm hoping to have a place for September, how early should I start looking? I'll be working in Europe until the second week of August so the timing is pretty tight but I could of course keep an eye out online (though my experience of flat hunting in European cities is that you really need to visit...). What are the best ways to find fellow grads looking to flatshare (I found both of my last two flatshares through postings on university Facebook groups)? Thanks!

I appreciate all this insight into the way early decisions affect hireability later on! Could anyone who is doing an interdisciplinary PhD speak to this (specifically in terms of whether or not they tried to gear their trajectory towards a particular department or discipline, or whether that just seemed to happen naturally, or whether they tried to actively resist it)? Apologies if this is better posted elsewhere.

Yeah, the situation in Toronto is atrocious. Even if they achieve a 17.5K minimum funding package - which seems likely - that will hardly make a dent, especially for the students in ABD with (ridiculously!) full fees to pay. I reckon I can survive there financially because of a bit of additional scholarship money and support from my family (plus, more than likely, loans), but for moral reasons I almost want to turn it down. It's an abominable model for how grad schools should function.

Hi janaca! Welcome to the Forum. From my imperfect knowledge, I reckon that the kind of programmes you're talking about do not usually over-offer, i.e. they only make offers for the exact number of places they have and being first on the WL means you're the first person they call if one of the original offers is turned down. This has been the case in my own personal experience, though I'm sure there are some variations.

Sorry, no, but I feel for you!

Thanks for your encouragement! I sent an email yesterday, but someone on another thread has said the department in question has no freedom to increase funding without a concrete from another university to bring to the administration. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but I'm not very hopeful. I'll update you when I know!

Thank you - that's good to know. I've already sent them an email, so I'll brace myself for a let-down. I suppose this applies to incidental money (moving expenses, book grants) as well? I can't help but think I should have applied to a US school I wasn't interested in but which would have offered me more money. For the application fee and a few hours of SOP adjustment, I could now be negotiating to go somewhere I really love.

I'm underemployed at the moment, plus have a running injury which has derailed my marathon training, so it's been a little bit difficult to stay afloat (so much unstructured time.......). The keys for me are making and following through on plans with friends, getting outside (I'm lucky enough to live by a lake), getting to the gym, making sure I do the banal things that boost my self-esteem (going to the hairdresser's, even when it feels like a luxury), making sure I have a creative project (or two, or three!) on the go (need to keep feeling inspired!). When I did my MA, I put much less pressure on myself as I saw it as an exciting experiment: one year, in the same city I was already living in. I was just so excited to be a student again. This time around I'll be making the same transition from working into studying, but this time it feels like I'm holding the well-being of my future self in my hands. Trying to focus on how excited I am to learn and research and write new things, rather than on whether, in my heart of hearts, I'm an interdisciplinary medievalist or a comparatist or a Germanist or none of the above (a question a POI pushed me on recently). The academics I most admire spent/d their lives eluding those sorts of categorisations - I suppose I had better get used to embracing the ambiguity!

Hi, All. I have received an offer which I am very keen to accept, but the funding is not sufficient to live on. Both the DGS and the POI at this university have encouraged me (in writing and in phone conversations) to negotiate for improved funding if I have another offer because they say they want me to be able to attend. I feel like they are assuming that because I'm a good candidate I've received more generous offers of funding from programmes elsewhere when in reality I applied to very few schools - I had very limited funds for applications - and I don't actually have another offer to leverage them with. Nonetheless, funding is still a serious obstacle to me being able to attend. Do you reckon I should email the DGS with my concerns about costs of living and ask whether there is any possibility that they could guarantee me more teaching work/find some extra incidental funding? Clearly there is some room for manoeuvre or they wouldn't have advised me to negotiate.

I have received an offer which I am very keen to accept, but the funding is not sufficient to live on. Both the DGS and my POI have encouraged me (in writing and in phone conversations) to negotiate for improved funding if I have another offer because they really want me to be able to attend. I feel like they are assuming that because I'm a good candidate I've received more generous offers of funding from programmes elsewhere when in reality I applied to very few schools - I had very limited funds for applications - and I don't actually have another offer to leverage them with. Nonetheless, funding is still a serious obstacle to me being able to attend. Do you reckon I should email the DGS with my concerns about costs of living and ask whether there is any possibility that they could guarantee me more teaching work/find some extra funding? Clearly there is some room for manoeuvre or they wouldn't have advised me to negotiate.

I second MidwesternAloha's advice: if you are sure you wouldn't accept an offer from the university who's waitlisted you, removing yourself from the list could save a day or two of emails back and forth should that space come up, giving the next person down the list valuable extra time to make a decision. Worst case scenario, you wouldn't have been offered a place anyway and you've wasted five minutes writing an email.

I did a medieval history MA in the UK after an undergrad at Oxford where I gained French and German but no Latin. I wouldn't underestimate how much Latin you can pick up in a year, especially if you find learning a language from a book (as opposed to by immersion) pretty easy. Oxford is a wonderful place to spend a year!

Thanks very much, both of you. It's hard to get a balanced perspective when none of the friends I speak to are interested in academia or have heard of the CMS!

I wouldn't read too much into the tone of the notification, they seem to vary wildly between institutions and administrators without any substantive difference in content. I have been urged to be patient and hold on for a while longer but I also know that I am not at the top of the waiting list (for a programme that few people are likely to turn down), so if anything, the positive tone of the message is misleading!

Hello, Gradcaféers, I am British, have a BA in French and German (focused on pre-modern literature and translation) and an MA in Medieval Studies. I knew during my MA (completed last year) that I wanted to apply to PhD programmes in North America for reasons of funding, programme organisation and academic traditions. Unfortunately, I applied pretty badly (I hadn't discovered Grad Café at this point!): too few places, no real discussion of POIs in SOPs, haphazard discussion of my interests in SOPs (rather than tailored to the department), slightly unpolished WS (though, frankly, I think this was the least of my worries). I have high GRE scores and am fortunate enough to have received very strong LORs from senior faculty at highly ranked institutions. My situation now is that my only offer is from Toronto. I am on the waiting list for Stanford, but I think it's extremely unlikely that I will be taken off, as there is no one in the department (Comp Lit) who is a good fit for my research interests (yes, I should have applied to a different department - tantalisingly, a complete rockstar academic in my field is in French and Italian...sigh). Toronto is an amazing place to do the work I want to do, I have a great supervisor set up, the financial package is significantly better than their standard offering (obviously not great that the TAs are currently striking, but still). I also like Toronto as a city. HOWEVER, I wholeheartedly am in this for the long game and I am concerned that Toronto does not have a reputation to compete with those of the US Ivies (and top Californian schools) when entering the (extremely small and incestuous) job market. Should I accept Toronto's offer and just hope I manage to do well enough there to get a prestigious post-doc, or should I work for another year and go through the application cycle again (this time much better informed about how US applications work)? Thanks! tl;dr Accept Medieval Studies PhD at Toronto or reapply to US Top 20 next year for better job prospects?

Congratulations on your offers! I don't know very much about your field but I know quite a lot about LSE and a bit about Stanford. I wouldn't worry about Stanford's degree being too vague because the university's reputation will counter that and you'll develop more of a focus while you're there. In terms of student experience, LSE and Stanford are extremely different (sprawling, sunny campus vs. no real campus in the heart of an enormous city), so if that's something that matters to you, it might swing your decision. I did my master's degree at UCL and my roommate was at LSE, so if you have any questions about living in London as a grad student, feel free to hurl them my way!

I agree with what the others have said. It sounds like you could do well out of both of the programmes, so I suppose you have to reflect on why you chose two different programmes to apply to and what your future goals are. Good luck! And congratulations on your offers.

Congratulations! That's so exciting.

I found out some info about Stanford's package at interview, but I don't have the full details! Please feel free to complete/correct my entry.

I agree with the others, Magoosh is great.

Waitlisted at Stanford, post-visit, so I've met all the other candidates and know there can't be more than another three people on the waiting list, competing for a total of four PhD spots (and how many people turn down Stanford?!). Reading this thread has encouraged me to send an email to the director of the dept (alas, all POIs mentioned in my SOP are not in the dept but elsewhere in the division...hardly surprising they put me in limbo!). However, is this a little bit precocious seeing as they clearly know who I am and are familiar with the (very disparate) research interests of the people on the waiting list? Should I email to reassert my enthusiasm or is that futile and embarrassing? As an international student, I find it hard to gauge the etiquette...

I was told April 15th, but that "it would be great if you could let us know sooner". I'm definitely not going to be able to accept for another couple of weeks (waiting on decisions from other places), but I reckon I should be able to let them know by the end of March.

Thanks! I emailed them yesterday and received the official offer through today. It was pretty much exactly as you said: 15K + tuition + a few thousand extra dollars in the first three years from some fellowships. They also said I should tell them if I'm considering accepting another offer on solely financial grounds. Does anyone know if it's possible to live in Toronto on 15K a year? I've lived on very low wages in other cities, so I can definitely scrimp and save, but I don't know what the living costs in Toronto are like.