dant.gwyrdd

I'd say the highlighted part is more or less what I think. To take its/it's as an example--say someone writes: Its a nice day today. If that is really a grammatical error, then that would mean that the grammar of whoever wrote it allows (1) possessives which don't modify anything, and either (2) entirely verbless sentences or (3) sentences with an omitted copula (essentially a special case of (2)) in much wider contexts than allowed in standard English. (For examples, see (1), (2), (3).) Granted, in isolation one couldn't really tell whether the sentence above contains a spelling or a grammar error, but I think we can agree that it is far more likely that native speakers who write things like the example above don't really intend to use a possessive form of it, but are, in fact, trying to write the contracted form of it + is and think that the way to do it is to write 'its'. Otherwise, they would be using a really funky way to write a nice day today belongs to it... whatever 'it' may be.

Most of the errors mentioned here are not grammatical but spelling errors.

Well, an inch or two of snow is nice and can make everything look pretty, but it stops being fun when you have to wade through a foot of snow just to get out of your house and walk on the road since the sidewalks are completely under it as I had to do yesterday... then it just becomes very bothersome. And wet.

Both my username and avatar are movie-related: the avatar is, as some probably know, Johnny Depp as Raoul Duke in one of the weirdest (I mean that as a compliment) movies ever--Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (after the book of the same name by Hunter S. Thompson). The username is a reference to a character of a Serbian (Yugoslav) movie, a made up funky http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPQZNnLG_4k... sort of: "a fighter against boredom, of a sharp wit with the superpower of highly refined sense of humor which makes his enemies go amuck" (btw. his arch-nemesis is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz0yFVtn4hk. His name is "Zeleni Zub", meaning "green tooth" and I first used it when I had to think of a username for something while having a toothache. Over the years it morphed into Welsh ("dant gwyrrd" meaning the same thing... as far as I know), because Welsh is so darn cool.

I used (and liked) Word Smart for the GRE (2nd ed.) from Princeton Review, but I hadn't used anything else so I can't really compare. I ended up getting 620 on the GRE, I'm a non-native speaker, but I've also had two years of Latin in high school, and about four years of French, which I think was very helpful considering the origin of a lot of the GRE words. (Plus, I've been studying English for ages, including the academic level of study.)

You need the DS-2019 (the form in question) to get a J-1 visa and to prove your legal status once in the US. However, if you'll be going to the US on an F-1 visa, you will need the I-20 instead.

Some linguistics PhD programs don't require it. (Namely, MIT & UConn, I don't know if there are more.)

Don't pretty much all modern-day carriers use GSM? The main difference between the US and Europe in that regard is that they use different GSM frequencies--specifically, most providers in Europe work on GSM 900/1800 while in the US most of them use GSM 850/1900. The problem arises if your phone can only work on one set of frequencies, i.e., you can't use a dual-band European-market GSM 900/1800 phone in the States since it won't support the GSM frequencies used in the US and vice versa. However, a lot of phones nowdays are quad-band, meaning they support all four frequencies and can thus be used either in the US or in Europe--you just need to check that in your phone specifications. Maybe it's not a scam, but simply a case of low-level support not really knowing how stuff works. I used a pre-paid ATT card in my locked ATT phone, unlocked ATT phone and unlocked non-ATT phone and it worked just fine in all of them.

I'm also not from the States and I wrote everything myself. I would agree with you that it would be very unethical to write anything for her. However, I do think going over her material would be perfectly fine, especially since you're a native speaker and she's not. Personally, I regularly proofread some of my friends' papers and even comment on content and how comprehensible they are. (I never correct anything myself--even my technical corrections come in the form of comments.)

Actually, it's the other way around, since I'm fairly certain that the most common paper size used in the States is letter (I never encountered anything else there while printing), which is slightly wider, but shorter than A4. (Which also answers your question regarding which one you should use.) Edit: Potentially useful link: http://betweenborder...4-vs-us-letter/

I'm looking forward to (hoping for) a European-S. American final, and I would really like to see Germany in it.

Who knows, at one of my institutions Thursday was shortened to X. Anyway, the only logical option would be T, but that's already taken by Tuesday, so it has to be something else. On topic: I haven't registered yet--my info letter says it's recommended to do it after I meet with my adviser; however, I've already heard from a current student (who was my official current student welcoming committee) that my first semester is fixed, and she already told me which classes I'll be taking (and what books she recommends I read to brush up for each).

I think the whole app is more geared towards tourist/business visas where it's more natural to refer to the whole thing (i.e., flights, food & logging, etc.) within "the price of the trip" than in our case where the "stay" part is measured in years instead of weeks and where most of us will probably have several physical trips to the US during that period.

@lion22: Yeah, I agree with Bumblebee: in your case I'd put "self" as well. @Bumblebee: I'm pretty sure that "trip" in this sense is not just the physical trip from where you are to where your school is, but your entire stay in the US. I decided to go with the evidence (I-20) and put "my school" there since it's listed on the form as the source of funds for that more expensive part of the trip.