Crafter

I don't think its good to think that just because one situation is shitty another place should also be shitty. That is essentially your argument, in case you want to revise. 

Usually a bank statement is necessary for tourist visas, as proof of funding of your travel might be required during your interview. A letter from your employer and a property title (like a house or something) is useful, so you can show that you have strong ties to your country and are not intending to travel as a tourist and then stay illegally.
 
I must say that, in my experience, it is advisable to have as much as possible in terms of documents to prove that you will not stay illegaly (better have more than necessary than needing a document and not bringing it over to the interview). Although, sometimes the consul will not even look at the documents before coming to a decision. But it is best to be prepared.

In the biomedical sciences, for example (and not sure if this is true for other fields) a Masters program will confer you an academic degree. A Fellowship is more a practical training that does not lead to an academic title. Fellowships also vary a lot in length, while Masters programs in the US are about 2 years long.

You can go ahead and tell him how you feel, but from the sounds of it, don't get your hopes too high. 
 
It sounds to me like he's not interested in pursuing a commitment with you, and unfortunately he might have only been interested in having sex (which, if true, is a big douchebag move on his part). As a 29 year old, he might be taking advantage of the naivete of a 19 year old undergrad - not cool.
 
Also, the 10 year age gap is fairly large, and you are at very different points in your lives - you are still in your early years of undergrad, he's probably near the final years of graduate school. He'll be looking for a job or postdoc soon at who knows where while you're still taking finals.
 
Finally, what indicates to me that he's not interested is when he agreed to get dinner with you and then rather than cancelling, just told you to drop the food off at his place. This is quite rude. I am a graduate student too (although I'm a younger one so if I were to date an undergrad it wouldn't be too far fetched in terms of age difference), and no matter how busy I got, this is not the way I would treat someone, especially a girl I'm interested in. No matter how busy I was, I would've done my best to keep my appointment with you, or at the very least contacted you to say something like "Hey I'm sorry, but I'm swamped with work tonight and won't be able to make our dinner. Maybe we could reschedule?" or something like that. 
 
In my view, it seems, from what you said, that for your best interests this is not a guy you should be pursuing further. Of course, you understand the situation better than I do so follow your gut instinct and I wish you the best. 

Great thread!! I wish I have seen this before I started my applications!! 
 
Besides the  "no such thing as safety school" "Fit is the best way to increase your chances, don't apply to schools where none of the faculty is doing research of your interest" (and to this I would add "don't apply to schools where only ONE faculty is doing what you are interested in" -unless that faculty has showed interest in you) and "don't apply to schools you don't want to go -because of the city or the school itself" or "don't rely on school ranking". 
 
If I knew then what I know now....
 
I would have applied to more private schools.
 
As a foreign applicant to US schools, I did not realize how relevant the funding issue was for international applicants!! I got rejected to every single Public School and the main reason I was given (when given) was funding. I found out that most of the schools I applied to only take one or two international students per year and none of them posted such relevant piece of information on the program's website. Some schools post that information but some others don't. Unfortunately, the ones I applied to did not stated anything like that. 
 
This is, of course, a generalization and should not be taken as if carved on stone. Many public schools have enough funding to take international students, but my advice would be to apply to public and private schools in a balanced way Out of my 10 applications, only 2 were private schools!
 
I disagree with people saying that applying to, say, 10 programs will hurt your chances. I only got asked where I was applying to in 3 of my 10 applications. And in the 3 of them I just answered with 5 names (out of laziness, not to be secretive). 
 
I also disagree with people offering advice about not worrying about GRE or GPA. I used to be very vocal about the poor value of GRE as predictor of grad school success. I still mantain that GRE is a useless way to measure research and grad school sucess. BUT, when it comes to grad school applications, it is part of your entire application package and the better your scores, the higher your chances, whether the schools claims to be reviewing your files as a whole, this is, somewhat bullshit in most cases. If you got mediocre scores in your GRE (or in one of the components that happens to be of relevance to your field) somebody with better scores will likely take your place.  With this I am not saying that an average or poor GRE score will ruin your, otherwise, brilliant application, but unless you really have an impressive CV, great GPA and LORs, a poor GRE will be something that will put you in disadvantage. Also, a good GRE could compensate for other small faults in your application. So, study with plenty of time in advance for your GRE. As somebody said in this same thread before: GRE will not help you, but will certainly kill you (if bad).
 
If I new then what I know now, I would have only applied to one school. The one I got in!!!! (and saved lots of money).

I am really enjoying reading your stories!
 
I wish I could feel like I am bragging at least once!! But for whatever reason, all my family and friends react the other way around: everybody seems to think they know more about things related to life sciences, medicine and microbes than me (they all know that I have an MD, a microbiology MS and will start my PhD this fall, none of them are educated in life sciences), and yet, conversations go like this:
 
- relative or friend: I am no longer eating bananas because it is bad to your bladder. I read it alters your molecules and degrades your cells.
- me (after years of enduring this type of conversations): where did you read that?
- relative or friend: in a blog.
- me: have you considered that blogs are not necessarily a good source of scientific information, unless it is from a well known scientific source?
- relative or friend: but I have a friend who eated lots and lots of bananas and ended up with a bursted bladder.
- me: so? that doesn't prove causality at all.
- relative or friend: of course it does!! how do you explain such incident??
 
and so on.....
 
or:
 
-relative or friend (a different one): did you know that ebola was created by the US government!!!?????
-me (more enduring): that is not true. Where did you get that from?
- relative or friend: read it online.
- me: did that website also referred to zombies and apocalypse?
- relative or friend: ha-ha very funny. I am serious. You should know about this!
- me: I happen to know about that. And no, ebola is not a man made virus.
- relative or friend: then, why it holds a patent by the US?? aahhh!!! explain that one, micro girl!!!!
 
(I love them all, though)
 
my life is so hard....

Be confident.
 
I do think you should have waited until your visa approval before quitting your job. But now that it is done, be confident you will get it.
Many visas are denied in my home country as well, but think about this: you are not some guy trying to go to the US to visit a relative or to check out the statue of liberty. You have been INVITED by an american higher education institution to join their advanced program. Feel confident in the fact that:
 
1) You are regarded as someone skilled and smart (yes, that's what the VO will think of you, because getting into grad school as a foreigner is hard).
2) You don't have criminal record or have overstayed your visa or broke any law.
3) Visas are denied if the consul thinks you have "nothing to do" in the US and will likely stay illegally. That is not your case.
 
Take it easy. Be prepared to offer good and intelligible answers. Be cool and confident. Everything will be fine.
 
I don't have a visa interview scheduled yet (I got mu MS in the US too, so this is not my first student visa). I am a bit nervious because I am travelling with family and I know I will be granted the visa. I just hope my husband get's his too. But I am keeping positive.

Now that is bizzarre. VO is not who decides if you are a good prospect for a PhD student, only your admissions department is. Probably in those cases (in case that is what really happened) they rejection of the visa was for some other reason and either the VO wanted to justify it by saying something about the fit of the candidate (but I think that is odd) or the applicant just misunderstood the whole interview and reasons for visa denial. You see, I can think of a VO asking your GRE scores and GPA as part of their interview and to make sure you are the prospective candidate and not someone else (or just to make you nervous... even just to small chat while he fills out a form, and sometimes if you have english a a second language, certain language nuances will be lost to you). But if your scores or GPA are or not enought for a particular program in a particular school is nothing the VO can actually assess. Actually, I don't even think they know those numbers anyway. If asked you can say you got skyrocket scores and won't need to prove it. 
 
Honestly, I don't believe that story of a VO denying a visa BECAUSE he/she did not think your scores are suitable for a PhD program. 
 
Remember this is the internet, anyone can post anything and it will not necessarily be true. 

I can't answer all of your questions, but the fact that your school is not listed in the USNews rank does not matter at all. It just have to be an accreditted school in your country.
 
I think you have a good profile and if you find a good research fit, your chances are really good. Apply to top schools in your interested area if your numerical profile is good (GPA and GRE). Also apply to good schools that are not necessarily too high in their ranking but that you would like to attend anyway (fit is what matters most).
 
As a foreign student, I advise you to apply to several private schools. Funding is a major issue for international applicants acceptance and unless you have your own money or have a scholarship, it is best to apply to schools that have funding for international students. Private schools and large programs in public schools are your best shot.

Again, I think you are interpreting what GeoDUDE! and I are saying in a way that lets you best present our statements as ridiculous statements. Or maybe it's just because we are not saying things very clearly. So I will try again:
 
1. I don't mean that all scientists should literally memorize and rehearse an exact 30 second elevator pitch.
 
2. I don't mean that if you do not do exactly this, your chances of getting grants is severely decreased.
 
3. What I do mean is that we should take the time to think about what parts of our research is important and/or interesting to each specific audience. For some people, it really might mean memorizing an exact 30 second pitch because they are the type of people that do that well. For others, like me, it means preparing myself for every scientific conversation (with scientists, since now we're talking about grants and career stuff rather than small talk at a party) by outlining a few key points that I want to make sure I get out in 30 seconds or so. I like the not-memorizing part because I am bad at memorizing and I also feel that this method gives me more room to customize to each audience.
 
4. When people evaluate your grants, they are not going to call you up and say "Give me a 30 second pitch, NOW!". The sentiment behind our statements was simply that researchers should take some care to think about how they are communicating, not just what they are communicating. If you don't take time to think about this, it will reflect poorly in other ways when it comes to grant proposals. Off the top of my head, it can hurt your grant proposal because i) your proposal (with strict word/page limits) may not be the tuned well enough to convince the judges, ii) proposals in my field are NOT blind, so the better you communicate your work at conferences or other presentations, the more people already know about your research and your ability prior to judging your proposal, and this helps, and iii) good communication ability will help you supplement your scientific ability by showcasing what you know and can do in the best possible light; this will indirectly help you do things that are good for your career and getting grants (e.g. getting oral presentations instead of posters, being invited to give talks at conferences or seminars, etc.)
 
Overall, I hate it when I go to a conference and I meet someone at the poster session or coffee break and I ask "what do you work on?" and then they spend 10 minutes boring me (and I'm too polite to just walk away) or they have clearly not thought about what they wanted to say to me, so the narrative is convoluted and I don't remember it as well as they could have. This means I probably will not talk to them again in the future and will know less about their awesomeness. Similarly, some people give incredibly poor oral presentations at conferences and this not only causes me to tune out (and not learn what awesomeness they are doing) but I will also remember this person in a bad light. In a field where there is a lot of interesting work going on, when I have to pick what talk I attend in the future, there's no way I'm going to waste more of my time listening to someone I know is bad at communicating when there are tons of other people that do it so much better.

I really hope one day you will join the list of sub 3 achievers. HOWEVER.... (sorry about this, but I came here out of curiosity and read your post and felt I had to tell you this): 
 
As an international student things will not necessarily go as good as for american posters with stories of sub 3 gpa success. Competition for PhD spots is really hard for international applicants because of the limited amount of funding that can be offered to non US citizens or permanent residents. I read how people with GPA lower than 3 and average or slightly high GRE scores get into good schools in my field, schools that, with better general profile than those applicants I was rejected. I got to understand how relevant funding is if you are an international student.
 
My advise to you would be to apply to several private schools, since they tend to have better funding for us, international applicants.
 
My GPA is higher than 3 and I have an MS from a US school and yet it was hard for me to gain admission because I only applied to 2 private schools (I did not know about funding issues before applying). Fortunately, I was admitted to one of the private schools I applied to.

Yeah, I've never heard of a contract personally.
 
But when we start writing a paper, we do sit down and figure out authorships at the start- although things have had to change for me before.
 
I've also had to go to my boss and tell him I feel I should be on a paper that I wasn't originally on, not the easiest conversation, but it went well.

This is definitely important to keep in mind--ultimately, the responsibility lies on us to make sure we are credited with authorship where appropriate. It is definitely nice if you have someone looking out for you but you can't rely on that. Sometimes if there is another coauthor (maybe your supervisor or a senior graduate student) that is already on the authorship list, having them on your side can help make the conversation with the first author go smoother. 

You have several avenues available to you, depending on the situation and scope of the paper, you may say anything from "I don't know" to "well, the paper makes a broad argument for X and the data from my thesis only supports a small part of that argument." I am guessing here, but you say that the paper mentions not only your work but the work of several other people; if it's more of a survey article of work that has come out of the advisor's lab, you could say that. Specifically if it's an invited contribution, that's easier to explain.

Also worth perusing through this recent thread on the Chronicle (http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,181727.0/topicseen.html). Not in STEM, but lots of discussion of authorship and being clear about it. Some other good ones that I don't have on hand at the moment as well. 

I am really enjoying reading your stories!
 
I wish I could feel like I am bragging at least once!! But for whatever reason, all my family and friends react the other way around: everybody seems to think they know more about things related to life sciences, medicine and microbes than me (they all know that I have an MD, a microbiology MS and will start my PhD this fall, none of them are educated in life sciences), and yet, conversations go like this:
 
- relative or friend: I am no longer eating bananas because it is bad to your bladder. I read it alters your molecules and degrades your cells.
- me (after years of enduring this type of conversations): where did you read that?
- relative or friend: in a blog.
- me: have you considered that blogs are not necessarily a good source of scientific information, unless it is from a well known scientific source?
- relative or friend: but I have a friend who eated lots and lots of bananas and ended up with a bursted bladder.
- me: so? that doesn't prove causality at all.
- relative or friend: of course it does!! how do you explain such incident??
 
and so on.....
 
or:
 
-relative or friend (a different one): did you know that ebola was created by the US government!!!?????
-me (more enduring): that is not true. Where did you get that from?
- relative or friend: read it online.
- me: did that website also referred to zombies and apocalypse?
- relative or friend: ha-ha very funny. I am serious. You should know about this!
- me: I happen to know about that. And no, ebola is not a man made virus.
- relative or friend: then, why it holds a patent by the US?? aahhh!!! explain that one, micro girl!!!!
 
(I love them all, though)
 
my life is so hard....

Unless there is an authorship contract signed, it kind of is the arbitrary decision of the authors to decide who the coauthors are. These decisions depend on the norms of the field so this also depends a lot on field.
 
In my field, your contribution will certainly merit authorship. In general, if you contributed something that was directly used in the data analysis or discussion (whether it's collecting data, making a plot (out of your analysis), writing one subsection to provide one analysis, or performing some computation), you would be considered a coauthor. For some projects I've been on, we signed a contract indicating authorship order and inclusion (the contract stated everyone who built the (balloon bourne) telescope would be on every paper that uses the data from that flight and the lead scientist on that paper's particular analysis would be first author with everyone else in ABC order (regardless of contribution).
 
We also tend to invite** people involved in writing the telescope observing proposal to be on our author list. Big telescopes come at a cost of just under $100,000 per night, so these proposals a lot of work. Usually people who are involved in the proposal are also part of the analysis but not always--sometimes they are there because they help conceive the idea or their expertise helped make the proposal stronger (by providing yield estimates, for example). 
 
**By invite, I mean the first author will go through the whole analysis and put together a first draft of the paper. They will send it out to all proposal coauthors, even the ones that did not collect the data nor work on the analysis thus far. The invitation to join the author list usually has some clear commitment requirement (generally, to read the paper carefully and provide edits). The scientists who respond accordingly are added to the authorship and are expected to remain involved in future revisions and submissions/referee responses.
 
Overall, in our field, the general rule is that it's better to have your invitation to coauthor declined than to have someone feel slighted that they were left out. Our papers are generally 6+ authors anyways (due to the nature of observational astronomy) so at this point, adding a new author (even if they do not contribute much) does not hurt anyone very much, but getting into a fight about authorship inclusion can really hurt you, especially if the first author (the one responsible for the paper) is a graduate student, as the case generally is. Because of this, the norm in the field is that you'd expect the first author to be the one who did almost all of the work, the second author to generally be their supervisor, and the third author also contributed a significant amount. Beyond that, coauthorship meant that you were critical to some part of this paper (i.e. you still contributed something important) but you were probably not so special that the authors couldn't have found someone else to do it instead. 
 
So, it's important to find out the norms in your field before deciding what to do next!

I am really enjoying reading your stories!
 
I wish I could feel like I am bragging at least once!! But for whatever reason, all my family and friends react the other way around: everybody seems to think they know more about things related to life sciences, medicine and microbes than me (they all know that I have an MD, a microbiology MS and will start my PhD this fall, none of them are educated in life sciences), and yet, conversations go like this:
 
- relative or friend: I am no longer eating bananas because it is bad to your bladder. I read it alters your molecules and degrades your cells.
- me (after years of enduring this type of conversations): where did you read that?
- relative or friend: in a blog.
- me: have you considered that blogs are not necessarily a good source of scientific information, unless it is from a well known scientific source?
- relative or friend: but I have a friend who eated lots and lots of bananas and ended up with a bursted bladder.
- me: so? that doesn't prove causality at all.
- relative or friend: of course it does!! how do you explain such incident??
 
and so on.....
 
or:
 
-relative or friend (a different one): did you know that ebola was created by the US government!!!?????
-me (more enduring): that is not true. Where did you get that from?
- relative or friend: read it online.
- me: did that website also referred to zombies and apocalypse?
- relative or friend: ha-ha very funny. I am serious. You should know about this!
- me: I happen to know about that. And no, ebola is not a man made virus.
- relative or friend: then, why it holds a patent by the US?? aahhh!!! explain that one, micro girl!!!!
 
(I love them all, though)
 
my life is so hard....

I am really enjoying reading your stories!
 
I wish I could feel like I am bragging at least once!! But for whatever reason, all my family and friends react the other way around: everybody seems to think they know more about things related to life sciences, medicine and microbes than me (they all know that I have an MD, a microbiology MS and will start my PhD this fall, none of them are educated in life sciences), and yet, conversations go like this:
 
- relative or friend: I am no longer eating bananas because it is bad to your bladder. I read it alters your molecules and degrades your cells.
- me (after years of enduring this type of conversations): where did you read that?
- relative or friend: in a blog.
- me: have you considered that blogs are not necessarily a good source of scientific information, unless it is from a well known scientific source?
- relative or friend: but I have a friend who eated lots and lots of bananas and ended up with a bursted bladder.
- me: so? that doesn't prove causality at all.
- relative or friend: of course it does!! how do you explain such incident??
 
and so on.....
 
or:
 
-relative or friend (a different one): did you know that ebola was created by the US government!!!?????
-me (more enduring): that is not true. Where did you get that from?
- relative or friend: read it online.
- me: did that website also referred to zombies and apocalypse?
- relative or friend: ha-ha very funny. I am serious. You should know about this!
- me: I happen to know about that. And no, ebola is not a man made virus.
- relative or friend: then, why it holds a patent by the US?? aahhh!!! explain that one, micro girl!!!!
 
(I love them all, though)
 
my life is so hard....

I cannot disagree with this statement enough. If you cannot explain something to a non-specialist you have not really learned it. For many NSF grants there is a public abstract (one for the general tax payers to read) and a specialist abstract. While you might go into detail with a specialist, but I can explain my research to someone without a college education. I know because I've talked to high schoolers about it. 
 
Perhaps my research isn't as esoteric or technical as some others here.  

I know!! I have an American friend that moved to Canada for grad school (she did her PhD at my undergrad school, I am doing my PhD at her undergrad school) and we both have spouses that need to find work and we compare experiences often. It's completely the opposite -- Canada does so much to let her and her spouse work and we had to jump through so many hoops for us to get the same. 
 
Also, the thing I completely do not understand is that foreign student status in the US requires you to have ties to your home country--basically they just want you to come, learn, and leave. Time as a foreign student does not count for any green card/permanent residence/citizenship! Even though tons of taxpayer money (and American donor money) is being spent on training foreign people!! But in Canada, there is a pathway to PR/citizenship for PhD students so that we keep Canadian-trained people (trained with Canadian money!) in Canada. I feel the American way is so weird and backwards. 

Oh -- I forgot to add: Another disadvantage/difference with J-1 is that the financial support requirements are different.
F-1: You need to show enough funds to cover yourself and your dependents for 1 year (funds can come from any source--personal, TA, RA, fellowship, family, government etc.).
J-1: You need to show enough funds to cover yourself and your dependents for entire length of degree. Also, the "majority" of the funds must not come from personal sources (i.e. not out of your savings or your family savings, but from the University or fellowships or government). No clear definition on what "majority" means though--some schools interpret it as 50%. It's up to the school to decide whether or not they will sponsor you.
 
 
Yes, it is theoretically possible to change status from F-1 to J-1. However, it is not allowed for J-1s with the 2-year home residency requirement to change to any other status unless a waiver on that requirement has been granted. 
 
That said, I get the impression that it is very difficult to make this change and you will have to have a good reason for US Immigration as to why you didn't start with J-1 in the first place. Specifically, one school's website says that US Immigration will reject your request if they think that the primary reason for the change is so that your dependents can attain permission to work in the US. Website: http://internationalcenter.umich.edu/immig/jvisa/j_chngstatus.html
 
Since having dependents work in the US is really the only reason I think most people need J-1, I don't see an advantage to starting as F-1 and then switching to J-1. The only possible thing I can think of is that you don't have funding for all years yet but this will still make the J-1 transfer very difficult. 
 
 
You're welcome Good luck!!
 
 
That's a common misconception! J-1 PhD students are rare but we exist (usually exchange students or postdocs are on J-1). It's confusing because there are about a dozen different types of J-1 statuses, such as high school exchange student, au-pair, camp counselor, postdocs, visiting scholars, and PhD students!
 
However, it's each school's prerogative to decide whether or not to sponsor you for J-1 status (i.e. by issuing the DS-2019). Schools are not required to sponsor you on J-1 status even if you meet all of the J-1 requirements set by the Department of State. So at some schools, they might tell you that J-1 is only for their exchange students or postdocs because they do not want to sponsor PhD students on J-1. I encountered this at the University of Arizona and that played a big role in my final decision. 
 
If you are interested in J-1, you should talk to the schools' international offices as you are making your final decision. My current school also helped students with spouses complete the paperwork necessary to obtain employment authorization for our spouses (it takes about 3-4 months to process).

Slightly off topic but I found it similarly interesting when I was in Australia and U.S. citizens were stigmatized as internationally ignorant and gun crazy. Sure some people in the U.S. are interestingly staunch gun supporters and support politicians who "meddle" in other country's affairs, but that is clearly not all U.S. citizens. 

I have a lot of issues with the assumption that unless you work nights and weekends, in addition to 9-5, you'll never been able to land an academic job.
 
I'm slightly oversimplifying here, but the major things for succeeding in academia are (1) publishing interesting papers in good journals, (2) networking through having a presence in your department and attending/presenting at key conferences in your field, and (3) a willingness to move anywhere for a job. (3) is obviously not related to your work style and I'll argue that it is completely possible to accomplish (1) and (2) while working a 40 hour week if you're also willing to have occasional nights/weekends for events, deadlines, etc. The caveat here is that you do need to be organized and efficient with your time, which means things like actually writing when you're supposed to be writing and not reading Facebook, figuring out all your technical procedures before you start so you have all the reagents and equipment ready to go, maximizing your meetings with your supervisor/committee by going in with a list of what you need from them, but it is completely possible. 

Married and living with my spouse, but no kids yet. This is also a research-only semester for me, so my schedule would be slightly different if I had to work in teaching and marking. 
 
Lab days:
7:00-8:15 Get up, walk dog, eat breakfast, pack lunch
8:15-9:15 Commute to campus (subway/bus or carpool)
9:15-12:00 Mostly lab work, but also data entry, analysis, writing, reading papers, etc. depending on how much hands-on time my lab works requires and what deadlines I have coming up
12:00-12:30 Lunch with friends (the exact timing of this varies a lot depending on when we all have breaks in our work and will sometimes get skipped if I only have a 5 minute break)
12:30-5:00 Lab work, etc.
5:00-6:00 Commute home
Evening: Make/eat dinner, clean kitchen, and hang out with my spouse, usually sitting in the living room reading books, browsing the internet, or watching a tv show. Once or twice a week we have friends over for dinner or go over to their place, but that's the same routine, just with 4 of us instead of 2. I almost never do work in the evenings (probably a handful of times in the past 2.5 years).
10:30/11:00 Bedtime
 
Work-from-home days usually consist of computer work (analysis, reading, writing) from 8ish-6ish, with a half-hour break for lunch and an hour afternoon walk with my spouse and our dog.
 
When I'm TAing, I try to do a lot of my marking on my commute or during office hours, so it doesn't cut into my research time too much.
 
Weekends involve planning meals for the week, grocery shopping, errands, fun/social events. I probably end up working 3-4 hours one weekend morning a month, usually making up for time I took off during the week for one reason or another.