svent

Those numbers are what I saw when I was in CA (different cities in CA, so I assume the numbers are pretty standard -- though I'm sure you can do better if you buy in bulk). I don't know how you can feed 2 people on $50/week unless you're eating Ramen every day. Maybe if you weigh 100 lbs and don't ever eat out (meaning stuff like going to Subway or some other place on campus for lunch).

There are significant COL differences. If you're renting a crappy little room in California, you can get your own place in the midwest. Utilities are more expensive in CA. You might need to commute to save money on rent in CA, which makes gas and car maintenance very expensive. In the midwest, you might even get free gas from grocery points since you can probably afford to live close to campus. Food is much more expensive in CA (maybe $8.99 for a lb of ground beef instead of $6.99, or $6.49 for a lb of chicken instead of $3.49). Now if you're comparing schools in Arizona vs. Michigan, it might not matter a whole lot. I don't see why people don't understand that, say, a 10% increase in income makes the biggest difference at low income levels. Sure, getting a raise from $100k to $110k is nice, but it's a luxury. Increasing your income from $20k to $22k is HUGE. Never underestimate the impact living in squalor for your entire 20s may have on your mental health. I know this is a forum about grad school, and you're expected to live very frugally, and money isn't everything, but it's very reasonable to think about your mental health and your quality of life, especially since PhD dropout rates are pretty high and there's no guarantee of finishing (or even if you do, of landing your "dream job"). A 1% increase in income may not be worth changing your decision over, but 10% is quite significant.

If you're gonna go that route, go by COL/stipend I guess. Depends if PhD or Masters too. Actually I think it's also a good idea to consider going by where you feel more welcomed. Big difference between getting accepted in January and having them want you to come vs. being a backup choice and getting accepted 4/15. For me after I got my first few acceptances, I probably spent a good week going back and forth, one day thinking I definitely want to go to school A, the next thinking I definitely want to go to school B, etc. The past couple weeks I've been pretty much dead set in my mind on a certain school. Of course I still have some other schools to hear back from.

It's important. Not just the weather, but the city as well. Mental health is a very serious issue in grad school, and it's better to go where you can be successful and where you can feel comfortable. It's also important to think about the job prospects. If you're an academic, you're probably not as ready to enter industry as someone who never had any interest in grad school. So if you end up dropping out (which is a very real possibility, as hard as it is to imagine now) with no technical skills or work experience and a limited network (since your network is largely in academia), finding a job can be very challenging, especially from out of state. It's easy to get stuck in the wrong city -- something to think about.

Because dropout rates are around 50%, give or take, depending on the school.

I say go to ASU or UGA. If you're basing on weather, well Phoenix gets hotter, but GA has the humidity. Depends if you prefer sweating by the time you get to your car or feeling like you're standing underneath a giant blow dryer. If you go by reputation and are unhappy, you won't do as well as you could ("well" to be interpreted as you see fit) and the name won't help you too much. Unless you're absolutely set on being a professor at a top school and no other career path will do. But in that case you probably shouldn't have applied to ASU or UGA anyway.

Yeah, this postdoc talk is crazy. You don't owe anyone anything. There's a decent chance you end up not finishing your PhD anyway.

When you get rejected by a program, they don't write a personalized rejection letter. They certainly don't tell you who they chose over you. When the shoe is on the other foot, you don't owe anyone anything.

Actually I didn't realize how close Madison is to Chicago and Minneapolis (and Milwaukee). Maybe getting an industry job wouldn't be so bad there either.

Don't do a PhD without funding. Just focus on other schools that actually want you there. No PhD is worth debt.

I've met PhD students who came in married, whose wife had no job, and wondered how they got by. I think finances are a very legitimate concern. There's no guarantee the OP will finish the program. Many people end up dropping out and get nothing to show for it. Wisconsin probably has a better math department anyway.

Seattle is expensive, I assume because of the tech boom. Rent is similar to Chicago. You can get roommates and survive on $2k, but it won't be fun. Let's put it this way: you may need roommates in Seattle, but in Wisconsin, you can get your own apartment. Forgot about the wife working factor though. Stipends are adjusted for COL, but not completely. I'd rather have $1800 in middle of nowhere, Illinois than $2800 in the bay area, that's for sure.

I'd imagine Washington would be better for industry, both are fantastic if you want to enter academia (though the academic job market is a challenge). I don't think there's much of a job market in Wisconsin. Then again, depends what kind of industry in Seattle. I guess most of the software jobs are taken by CS majors. Wisconsin would be easier to get by for now though, on a grad school stipend.

I typically just respond if I have any questions. I think it also depends on who's sending it. If it's the dean of the graduate school, no need to reply. If it's the chair of the department, a short reply wouldn't be out of line.

I've gotten 3 offers so far. One of them was directly from the university, and two were from the department in the past few weeks. Still haven't gotten a letter from the graduate school for those two yet. How long does this stuff normally take at this time of year?

Actually, come to think of it, when I was a calculus TA at a big public university, lectures were normally MW/F, and recitations on TR. I think exams were during the evening on a M or W, and we were expected to go over the exams (and return them) during the following recitation. I guess that's why we were expected to grade everything so quickly. There seems to be a bit more hand-holding in lower-level classes at public schools.

It's true that it becomes quick once you get the hang of a problem. But my experience TAing calculus at both a small private school and a huge public school is that they always need to return the calculus exams the next day, but for upper level classes (or classes in other departments), they'll take a good week to return the exams. I'm not quite sure why this is. I've also done grading for HWs in upper level classes where they have to write proofs, and grading, say, 50-100 of those myself went by more quickly than grading a huge number of calculus exams with a bunch of other people. One reason for this is also that your colleagues at a grading party will take time to share answers they find humorous with you, laugh at some of the things they see. This can really slow down the process. As for undergrad TAs, that's my own experience. Granted, I only had to run one recitation as an undergrad, and wasn't obligated to stay as long grading exams sometimes, so my point isn't perfect, but the undergrad TAs were still severely underpaid compared to grad TAs for performing essentially the same duties, especially when you take tuition waivers into account. Not really. I just said one can make that argument, and that it holds up based on my personal experience. I will admit that STEM folks have it better since they do make a lot more money, even though the money still sucks. If I'd had a $1200 stipend as a grad student instead of $2000ish, there's just no way I could have afforded my own apartment.

What if the rankings get switched in the next couple years? By the way, UC Davis is #1 in USNews for vet school, and Cornell is #2.

I think fit (as well as location, funding) is extremely important. I got into a top program, unfunded, and highly doubt I'll go. I think chasing prestige is a poor decision. Having this school on my resume would help me out a little, but not enough to attend a program that's not a great fit for me, especially without funding in an expensive area. Now in your case, Ithaca would be cheaper to live in than Davis (though Davis isn't too bad by CA standards). That said, public universities tend to have worse teachers who are more interested in research. This may be more important at the undergraduate level, but I wouldn't discount it either. By the way, Ivies are overrated. Sure it looks cool to go to college there, but as far as rankings/prestige within certain fields... in CS for example, Harvard, Penn, Yale don't compare to UIUC, Berkeley, Stanford, UT Austin, Georgia Tech, etc. People in specific fields know how good schools like UCLA/Cal are, compared to, say, Penn, and they probably also know they're hard to do well at, whereas Penn loves to give out A's. I guess that's why Penn is 2-4x as expensive (depending on what state you're a resident of). If they're going to hold it against you in the future that you turned them down for a #2 school, well... you can go somewhere else and have a successful career I think.

I would push the other programs for some answers. Keep in mind that February is probably the busiest month for admissions, so I'd expect some more answers the next couple weeks. Otherwise, pick whichever program you like better. Sounds like that's CSU for you. The money sounds pretty comparable... not sure if Fort Collins or Raleigh is more expensive to live in. If you need some extra cash, I'm sure CSU will have plenty of kids needing calculus/probability/stats tutoring. "Do you actually need the extra money or do you just want it?" I disagree with this. At this level of income (barely above poverty), every extra dollar goes a long way. I don't know if you should decide based on the money, but I wouldn't discount the effect of a 10% income increase. Keep in mind there's no guarantee that you get a good job after your PhD, or that you even finish your PhD. You may end up wasting a few years of your life with nothing to show for it.

You didn't say you were surprised, you said you were shocked. Of course history TAs have to grade exams. Actually I never took a history class in college, but I did take polisci. The classes were pretty small though, even the freshman level classes. Doesn't compare to the freshman calculus classes with 500 students, where the TAs periodically have to stay until midnight or even later grading exams, be back by 8 AM to go to their own classes, then pick up and grade the smaller batch of exams taken the next day by students who had a schedule conflict, and submit all the grades by noon. For some reason in those math classes they had to have the exams graded in less than a day, but in polisci they might not return the exams for a week. Anyway, I said one could argue this being a reason. I could be wrong about some of these social science TAs, but that's the sense I get from my own college (and grad school) experience. You can also argue how unfair it is that undergrad TAs are paid so poorly (probably around $500/semester) for doing pretty much the same work, but that's a different story.

Nope. 2/15 for internationals or TA. 1/15 for fellowships.

So the sciences are funded more seriously, just like tech jobs. Not sure why this should surprise anyone. I suppose you can argue someone teaching math or physics needs to know more than someone teaching a history class. Or maybe they're sometimes required to stay at the university very late grading exams for huge classes.

Isn't that like saying a software developer making only 60k (let's say in California) should question whether to ask for a reasonable salary because a study abroad advisor is only pulling in 40k?

I think I'll wait 2+ weeks (meaning the last Monday of the month) to bother people. Hopefully I hear back by then anyway.