shinigamiasuka

I had really bad impostor syndrome before starting college (but, to be fair, I had never been taught in a classroom or taken tests, so it really could have ended badly.) and I have it again now.  I'm also trying to take a lot of free courses and such, but I'm also working full time and stuff, so I don't think I'll nearly know the stuff I need to.  And I don't want to quit sooner than I have to because I'll be broke and have nothing to do but worry then.  Added to that, I haven't been in school for three years, so everything is a little fuzzy anyways.  What if I've forgotten how to study? Then I remind myself I never learned how to study in the first place, it was innate, and since I left college, I've had to study and pass five standardized tests, so I haven't really stopped studying...  Doesn't really work, but oh well.  What works better is talking to my friend who's a post doc.  He is surprisingly good at listing to my worries and allaying them.

I had it really bad last January when I was trying to write my personal statement to get into the PhD program at the same school were I am finishing my MA. I was reading examples of a good personal statement for my field, and thinking "I am definitely not functioning on the level these people are!"
 
I got a post-doc friend to help review my statement, as well as allay my fears, and turned it in. Not only did I get admitted to the program, but I ended up getting a fellowship!
 
When you think about it, to question your own status as a graduate student is to question the competence of those who have admitted you into the program, those who have given you 'A's on your exams, those who have allocated funding to you, and those who have written your recommendations. Don't insult them - just remember you owe it to them and to yourself to keep doing your best.

Sometimes people just grow up. I know I did.

You're worrying too much, IMO. Being lonely and miserable isn't a good idea. Stick with B. Convince yourself that everything is going to be all right. Try to collaborate with POIs from A if possible while at B. Do your post-doc there afterwards.

(emphasis added). This is certianly a personal decision and I am all for whatever makes you happy! I just don't think that the reason I bolded above is a good reason for anyone (American or otherwise) to convince someone to change their ways when living in another country. I think this is a personal decision! I am not surprised that US professors are suggesting people switch to US English though, because one of the things I notice about the US is the "melting pot multiculturalism". I am more used to the "multicultural mosaic" in Canada, where we encourage people to keep their roots and adopt Canadian values in a way that complements but does not take over, their backgrounds.
 
In the same vein, I am upset when Americans suggest that foreign students, especially those with names that sound strange in English, to adopt "English" versions of their names. And especially when there are cultures that identify themselves as "LastName FirstName", sometimes Americans will even tell them to change their name and refer to themselves as "FirstName LastName". I think this is a terrible practice and we should not be telling people to change their identity in order to conform. Of course, what's important to each person depends on each person, but only that person should be the one deciding whether or not they want to conform any part of their identity while living in the US (or anywhere).

always always change in Europe if it is possible. Domestic American flights are like public transportation. Very effective but very inconvenient. No free food no free drinks , limited entertainment, small spaces.  staff is a toss up - stewards/stewardesses can be nice or rude. pilots are usually good. cleanliness can be bad.  So choose the European/ international airline between Europe and your target city, it will be much more pleasant (drinks, food, cleanliness).
 
JFK is one of the worst airports to transfer too in the US because it is very busy and you have to get out of the airport to get from international to domestic. If you are on a domestic flight you are basically left to fend for yourself, they will not wait for you (guaranteed international connections will wait for you or if for some reason you are really really late they will arrange the next flight It only happened to me after a 9 hour delay. But within a 2 hour delay the next plane waits for the passengers! I have waited too for late planes from Africa mostly, several times). So all you have to do is to get a ticket from your starting point to the endpoint through one airline, all your international transfers will be guaranteed and your luggage will travel automatically to the endpoint.
 
On the other hand once I almost missed my flight with a 3 hours layover in JFK (and my bag was transferred almost automatically). I just stood in lines for over two hours.- border control,customs, pick up luggage, drop off luggage at transfer, check in domestic (not transfer you have to go out), security domestic. JFK is not an easy airport to navigate.  I would not recommend JFK even if you have to change in the US, even though their border control is probably the most experienced.....
 
This is said take off and landing is a huge waste of time, it is exhausting etc. Spending a couple of more hours in air is much better (just imagine sleeping instead of being buckled in /transferring /being buckled in . Usually long haul flights are better serviced/equipped too.
But I would still take the long flight on an intercontinental flight (and small European ones) over a long haul domestic US flight. Also inside Europe flights are still international so you will get food and drinks even a short distance.

The last few times I've passed through JFK airport I've been impressed with the speed at which I got through Border Control - it was under 30 minutes on my most recent trip.
 
I learned the hard way that you should leave at least 60 minutes between connecting flights. Plane 1 was delayed by ~30 mins landing at Heathrow, and it would have taken ~10 mins to get through the terminal to my second flight...so I missed it. If you need to get through any kind of Border Control/Security then you will obviously need more time.
 
My personal preference is for the most direct route. Airports are dreary, expensive places to hang about it. If there's any wifi it almost certainly ain't free (or you only get 15 min free internet). At least on a plane you can watch inflight movies to amuse yourself, or fall asleep without the risk of missing a connection. 
 
Another thing to think about is what time you'll arrive in the USA and how far you have to travel to get to your accommodation. If you arrive at midnight there may not be any public transport to get you to where you need to be. You'll be really tired and jet lagged after the long trip, which can make even a short subway ride seem like an eternity. 

^ I second that. I have experience with both JFK (and other US airports) and YYZ (and other Canadian airports) and without a doubt the US Customs experience has been more pleasant and faster every time I have been able to do it at a Canadian airport. They are also easier to navigate than some of the monsters where international flights land in the US. I also like Air Canada, but regardless I think flying through Canada might be a good way to fly if you're choosing between a layover in Canada or one in the EU, especially since for Detroit you may need a connection within the US anyway. 

Toronto Pearson International Airport has US Preclearance, which means you will be crossing the US border in Toronto, not at your final airport destination. So, in theory, this carries the same risk of border delays causing you to miss a connection as if you connected in JFK. 
 
Major airports in Canada have 3 different areas: International, United States, and Domestic. If you connect through Toronto, you will likely land in the International terminal and to enter the US terminal, you will go through US Border Preclearance where you will talk to a Customs/Immigration officer just like you would at JFK. US Customs / Border Patrol says that Preclearance is more effective and I think they are right. I always go through customs much faster at a Preclearance site than at a US airport. This is because out of all the people entering Toronto from the international travel, only a fraction of them are going to the US. However, everyone international entering JFK will need to go through US Customs. And also, these preclearance stations are fairly recent and they were built with efficiency in mind!
 
In addition, you will have way more options if you connect through Toronto instead of a EU country. The reason that US has preclearance in Canada is to help streamline travel between our two countries. Not every airport in the US has the full customs set-up necessary to process international travelers so if you are coming from a EU country, you must connect through a major hub airport (e.g. JFK). Once you go through a Canadian airport with pre-clearance, then you can in theory land at any US airport (as long as a flight exists) because you have already "crossed the border".  (Note: this is the some of the same advantages as choosing JFK over a EU connection as I wrote above).
 
In summary, the differences between connecting through Toronto Pearson (YYZ) and JFK are:
- potentially shorter US customs lines since fewer people enter the US through YYZ than through JFK
- YYZ may be easier to get around than JFK (I don't have experience in JFK but I think YYZ is well organized and easy to get around)
- It is less busy than JFK (JFK is the 21st most busy airport in the world. YYZ is in the mid-30s)
 
Otherwise, everything else is the same. My advice would be to consider connections through YYZ or other Canadian airports with US Preclearance the same as JFK. Personally I would like YYZ better because it's less crowded but for you, it might be easier to not deal with a connection in yet a third country. But if you are choosing between Toronto vs an EU connection, definitely go for Toronto.

So you're funded for 5 years... you'll get into at least one of the schools on your list (probably multiple) based on that alone. Look at it from their perspective, there's very little risk in accepting you at this point so they probably will. You've got a strong application

It's reading threads like this that makes me an unwilling participant in that xkcd comic about somebody being wrong on the internet.
 
 
 
 
Airports have regional and international terminals, and you will always need to exit one to enter the other. Depending on the airport and country, this may mean that you need a transit visa, or it may not. For instance, if OP is flying A (outside EU) -> Frankfurt -> Paris -> B, then they will need to exit the international terminal in Frankfurt, enter the Schengen zone (for which they will need a visa), board a regional flight in a different terminal to Paris, and then get out of the Schengen zone again in Paris. If OP, however, were flying A -> Frankfurt -> somewhere in the US, then they will likely not need a Schengen transit visa because they will remain in the same international terminal throughout.
 
Additional warning regarding London HRW- unless you are flying British Airways, international flights will arrive into Heathrow Terminal 4, and unless your connection leaves from Terminal 4 also (which it will not, in many cases), you will need to exit the terminal on a transit visa and take the underground to one of the other terminals.
 
 
 
 
Sigh. There's a lot of well-meaning people here. The UK is not part of the Schengen zone. Any kind of Schengen visa (the visa you get to visit France, Italy, etc) is invalid for gaining entry into the UK. There is a British visa for anybody who is not a British or EU citizen. There is also a Switzerland visa, a Norway visa, and an Ireland visa, because those countries (among others) are also not part of the Schengen zone.
 
I'm a person with a third-country passport and I travel frequently through Europe to the US. In general, I would recommend as few layovers as possible, because the journey will be extremely taxing as is. Which side of the Atlantic you should layover depends on where your destination is. I prefer to layover in Europe because I don't need to take another plane if I land in BOS or NYC, but if you need to get to, like, Indiana or somewhere else that no European airline flies to, laying over in the US may make more sense. I would avoid the UK because the visa process and border control are a lot shittier than the EU. The best airports to go through in the EU are Schipol, Frankfurt, and (this is a personal opinion - many people think it's too big, but I like it because it's new and clear-cut, like ATL) Madrid. I would avoid Charles de Gaulle (Paris) and anything in Italy. But frankly, this is all facetious because any airport is ultimately fine. I wouldn't transfer in anything less than 1.5 hrs - 1 hour is cutting it extremely short, and anything less than 1 hour means that if your connecting flight is late or if there is a line at border control or if you suck at spatial reasoning and get lost frequently that you're gonna miss your connection.

I'm late to this thread by a couple weeks, but messenger bags are something I deeply researched before settling on one, so feel a compelling need to pass on that knowledge.  
 
Backpacks are of course the best for my back, but I found that they caused some of my nicer clothes I'd wear for teaching to pill in the small of the back and at the shoulders. Plus for other followers of "The Professor Is In," the advice "don't wear a backpack!" is a mainstay of Karen Kelsky's spiel re. how to comport yourself as a professional, instead of a sloppy/hapless grad student. I tend to agree with that. I went through a few terrible messenger/computer bags from Target or the like that squeaked or started to tear at seams very quickly.
 
I really looked into Timbuk2, Fossil, etc. based on some of the earlier threads here. I was very close to pulling the trigger on a Timbuk2 bag twice I'd already customized online, but for that amount of money, I wanted near-perfection. The webbing strap really put me off -- I've had others where that part was much too slippery. The Fossil bags looked a bit too much like fieldwork bags, and very bulgy with lots of side pockets.
 
I finally found this seller on Etsy and couldn't be happier with my bag. $55 (+ int'l shipping) for a robust canvas bag with neat pockets, and you can request some customization (I asked for non-leather pulls on the zippers, and for a different color combination). They tend to be a bit wider than portrayed in the pics, but I find that minor -- and that it's on me to limit how much I actually carry so that I save my back, and keep the bag looking sleeker.

In June of 2014, at the age of 37, I decide to try to go back to school for a Ph.D. I went to Barnes and Noble and cracked open a GRE prep book for the first time. I studied for 5 months and took a Manhattan Prep GRE course. I did well on the exam, but not as well as I had hoped. I continued to study and took a 2nd exam on December 16, 2014. Mind you, I left my job and was studying AT LEAST 5 days a week for 8 hours per day. After studying, I was working on applications, statements, writing samples, etc. 
 
I finally achieved a good enough score on 12/16 to feel as though I could relax... boy was I wrong about the relaxing! I never figured that the waiting for decisions would be so gut wrenching. I was accepted to a program on Jan 26th. I was awarded full tuition and fees plus a stipend as  TA. I was relieved, but I wasn't happy. 
 
On March 6, I got an offer for a TA position at the University of South Carolina... I was ecstatic, but once again, starting ALL OVER AGAIN. Now, it was time to pack, sell my house, buy a house, move to SC.... holy crap! 
 
It is now June 25, 2015. It is just about 1 year later. I sold my house for $450,000. I bought a house in SC for $224,000 in cash that I got from the equity in my old house. I have never lived outside of New England.  I have never lived in the shout... but here I am, with my wife and 2 dogs in 100+ degree weather. The thing that really blows my mind is that this is not the end... in fact, I haven't even STARTED yet! I start in August with TA training.
 
How far have YOU come?

I echo everything fuzzylogician said.
I also want to address your question #2. Fuzzy already mentioned how School B might know and recommends not being deceitful. I also want to echo that to emphasize how important I think it is that we are honest in our applications. Integrity is crucial to academia and I believe the existence of academia requires all of us to act with integrity. We use public funding (e.g. taxes) to fund our schools, pay for our stipends, pay for our research expenses. We rely on fairness of peer review to communicate our work and evaluate our work. Researchers must earn the trust of both the general public and each other. So, in addition to the practical risks/dangers of getting caught in a lie, I also implore you to think of academia as a whole and think about the negative impact you can have on your (our) community if you act without integrity.

Assuming that you are not leaving with a Masters degree, I don't think there is any set procedure. You will probably have to schedule a meeting with your advisor and perhaps with someone else at the program (DGS or department head come to mind) to inform them of your decision. They will likely ask you why you have decided to leave, and what your future plans are. You are under no obligation to tell them, but you might want to think of something to say nonetheless. If you stay in the same field and attend another school, they may find out. If you hide this information, they may conclude that something was fishy -- e.g. you never intended to stay at their school and therefore had ill intentions when joining, you abused their advising and funding, etc. On the other hand, if there is an explanation that makes sense -- e.g. your interests have shifted, or you want a degree they don't grant, or your career goals have changed, somehow making A less appropriate and B the place where you should be -- then they should understand. It's always better if you can have their support than if you burn a bridge.
 
 
 
Depending on the size of your field, one way people find out these kinds of things is that they talk to their friends. E.g. you apply to B; someone there calls your recommenders and asks about you and what you're doing now. Your recommender says you are currently studying at A. Another alternative: you may be asked what you are doing this year, if you withhold the fact that you are attending A from your CV. You tell a lie, and later get caught because details don't match or you forget them. Another alternative: you presented at a conference or wrote a proceedings paper this year, which shows A as your current affiliation. This information can be found on the conference website, your co-authors' CVs, etc. 
 
I highly recommend not starting a new program by being deceitful. If they ever find out, that could end poorly. 
 
 
 
Following up on the reply to your first question, if you burn bridges = upset people at school A in some profound way, it's conceivable that they could call up their friends at school B and dis-recommend you. I don't think it's a likely outcome, but it's not impossible. Probably more to the point, school B will probably want to have some explanation for why you are switching programs/degrees mid-way through. The concern would be that you can't follow through and might leave them as well, and therefore admitting you means wasting time and money resources that could be spent on a student that would actually stay the duration. This is especially true if you can't get any recommendation letters from advisors at school A, and there is no good explanation for the switch. It is much less of a concern if there is a reasonable-sounding story behind your decision and you have the support of your former advisors from A for the switch. 

Are you applying to schools in the US? If so your test scores are a bit low for a lot of programs. This doesn't mean you can't get in anywhere, but it will make it that much harder. To give better advice, you have to specify what your research area(s) of interest are for graduate school. Also many private schools in the US tend to be more welcoming of international students. 

So sorry to hear that!
I also think it is unfair. I hope you get it next time you apply.
I hope I will not be facing a similar situation later.

Besides the Psychology GRE, she'll also have to do the General GRE as well. Most schools actually look closely at the latter rather than the former. Beyond that, assuming she has the grades and scores well on the GRE, she will definitely need to pick up on some of the fundamentals that will make her application sufficient. Namely, she will have to dedicate some time to actually exploring through work/volunteering in research. There's almost no way around it given the climate that psychology graduate programs are like these days. Without proper training in labs or experimental settings (or clinical if that's what she wants to pursue), she will find it hard to adjust and also be competitive. 

So after the standardized testing, make sure your friend is well aware of what area of psychology she is interested in pursuing and then look for opportunities that allow her to be exposed to that particular line of research and maximize her chances. This may take a year or so, but where there's a will there's a way!
 
Good luck to her!

There is a difference and while I think a lot of what shinigamiasuka says is true, I do not think this is the main reason why there is a different standard. For example, I was told the same thing and I'm from Canada, where our education system is pretty much identical to the United States.
 
The main reason for a different standard is because at most public US schools, the tuition rate for international students is about 3 or 4 times more expensive than the tuition rate for domestic students (although our stipends would be the same). This ultimately results in the total cost of an international student to be around 2 to 3 times more than a domestic student. The reason for the tuition rate difference is that public schools are funded by the government (taxes) and Americans pay taxes towards this while international people like us do not.
 
This means that public schools often have a low rate of international students. In most US schools, this is around 10% or lower. So, if a school is accepting 40 students, there would be only 4 international student spots. As an international applicant, this means we would have to be in the top 4 of the international pool to get in (but if we were American, we just have to be in the top 36). 
 
Then, on top of this, certain schools, especially the University of California schools, are very very popular with international students. I know one professor who worked there and he said that 75% of their applications are from international students!! But only 10% of their spots are awarded to international students. The entire world is very big, it's much harder to be the top 4 applicants in the entire world than the top 36 from the United States. 
 
When I applied to US grad schools, my mentors told me that while I should still try for the University of California schools, I should apply to more private schools because tuition there is the same for everyone and thus there is no difference in cost! And they were right--I got into some top private universities but rejected from all of the University of California schools (even ones that are supposedly less competitive than my current school). At my current private school, the international student population is around 45% !! Much larger than 10%.  
 
Therefore, my advice to international students with strong profiles is to focus mostly on the top private schools and/or apply to a very large number of schools because the chances of getting in is much lower for international people like us!

It sounds like a MOOC.
 
MIT open courseware and Yale Online Courses have similar offerings. 

Replicability/reproducibility is becoming more talked about in psychology, yes, but not more prestigious - at least in my experience. APS, especially, has spent a lot of time discussing what steps we should take in replicating research, like the registration of data you mentioned, spunky. But there's no reward in it, and that's the rub. Early career scholars need publications in order to get TT jobs and replications are difficult to publish and to convincingly talk about in job talks. Tenure-track scholars need publications for tenure, and the same issues come up there. And tenured scholars aren't going to be spending their time on replicating experiments. Some of them are still interested in promotion, and some of them have to fund significant portions of their salaries on grants, and the NIH and NSF aren't funding huge replication grants most of the time.
 
I think LaCour's story is an interesting entry in current rumbling conversations about academia and the need for reform in the field. I think LaCour lied because he's a lying liar, and the subsequent questions about his dissertation data, other papers he's published, and some awards and grants on his CV pretty much support that. But it does raise some questions about the pressures on young scholars, especially those at high-flying programs. I went to a top 10 program in my field and the pressure and expectation is very much on for you to get an elite R1 job just like the university you came from. It's so unrealistic and stupid - there aren't enough of those jobs to go around, and it's not like they really prepare you for that eventuality anyway. But it's also ridiculous! We hired 3 assistant professors in the time I was in my department, and I got to see the CVs of the finalists they invited to campus (we typically invited 5 instead of 3; don't know why). These people obviously never slept. As graduate students, postdocs, and assistant professors with less than two years of experience, they had 15-25 publications (that's a lot for my field at this early stage), grants, and teaching experience, plus awards. The one guy who had 10 pubs (which is still a lot for a grad student) had a first-authored publication in Science. But they all had some splashy, sexy area of research. None of them were doing replications of other people's work, or anything close.
 
Most people when confronted with the pressure wouldn't completely make up a study and fake some data, so LaCour's on his own. But when p = .06 means the difference between another first-authored publications and years of work wasted...yeah, I think a lot of people massage that data to get it down to p < .05 (which is generally the threshold for statistical significance, and by extension a publishable paper, in psychology). When you want the brass ring of a job at a top R1, or some new grant funding, or tenure - or all of those things - yeah, I think some shady things go down, and I think a large number of scientists probably do those shady things.
 
I don’t think researchers have a duty to verify the papers we cite. First of all, that’s an enormous undertaking - how could I ever? You have to trust that the majority of people are telling the truth (mostly) and that the journals have done their job in peer review. Even in peer review, reviewers aren’t paid - so it’s not like they have time to re-run study results. Journals have to take it on faith that authors are not making up their data and analyses from whole cloth, until we get to the point that we’re banking data on a regular basis. Collaborators are a different story, though. If you’re going to put your name on a paper, you should verify that the results in the paper are correct and valid. That’s why I have disdain for this famous Columbia professor who’s trying to distance himself from the whole thing and put the blame on LaCour. Yes, LaCour bears the most responsibility, but each author on a paper is responsible for the paper as a whole.
 
Would I turn in a fellow grad student? It depends on the extent of my knowledge and what they were doing. If I knew for a fact that they were making up data and I could prove it, and we worked for the same PI or they worked for a PI I felt comfortable with, then yes, I might say something. Otherwise…probably not.

For post-paid plans (i.e. the "traditional" kind, where you pay a monthly fee plus any overuse charges), it actually counts as opening new credit. This is because you use the phone, then they figure out how much you owe, then they charge you. So, they want to make sure you are reliable and are actually going to pay the amount you owe. This is also true for utilities (electricity, gas, water, etc.) -- they measure how much you use and then charge you afterwards.
 
It is tough for international students because we don't have any US credit history (note: credit card history is not the same thing, credit cards are one type of credit that is part of your credit history, but not the entirety of it--you don't need a credit card to have a credit history). I don't know what company or when Crafter used in the past, but in 2012, T-Mobile was happy to accept my international student documentation in lieu of a credit history. However, the utility company was less forgiving. They charged me a deposit of $250 to open an account with them ($250 is a year's worth of electricity!) in case I don't pay my bills. Sometimes many places that require a credit history will charge a deposit instead, so be prepared for that.

I can definitely relate. I have been waiting, as well. Just about every week, the director of admissions tells me that the faculty is meeting "this week" to make their decisions and that they'll let me know by the "end of the week". The week goes by and nothing. This then starts over the following week. No idea what they are doing, and it's driving me mad, because I have a lot of decisions of my own I need to make, and I can't make them until I know either way. I wish that these programs would be more forthcoming with the process. Anyway, good luck.

If you have admitted as a undergraduate student from the school you mentioned, what you said may be correct. However, if you are supposed to be a graduate student, I highly recommend you to know that research fit is more important than any course works.

I had a 2.9 as well and applied to some top schools in my field. I was able to get into two top programs for Master's programs and I've heard that you can transition into the PhD program if you perform well in your first year so that's something to think about. I would suggest you take the time to evaluate the ease at which you would repay the loans if you were to incur more loans. Work on your total package (GRE, LOR, SOP etc.) to take some weight off of your GPA but I would say Master's is a more realistic goal right now since PhD programs tend to be much more picky about GPA. Ultimately though, if your professor knew the right people, I'm sure it would help a lot. Still apply, the worst you can get is a no. A lot of schools will evaluate you for Master's if you didn't get into their PhD program so inquire about that when you apply. Be relentless and show your determination to the admissions committee! Good luck!