eternallyephemeral

I always like to ask faculty (including my POI) why they're passionate about their research specifically, or how they got interested in it. I like hearing people talk about what they're passionate about, and it helps me get to know them better - plus they seem to enjoy discussing it too!

There's certainly a few things you can ask non-POI faculty members! You can ask them about the culture of their program, for one thing. Hearing it from more than one source is a good way of checking to see what the strengths and possible weaknesses are, and to get an idea of what to expect. They will probably draw from their own grad students' experiences, so you'll get a sense of the dynamics of the other labs and see how comparable students are doing (i.e., what kind of resources are available, how the other faculty members treat their grad students, what opportunities do they get that you can think about when you're in the lab of choice). Also, ask them about the opportunities for collaboration! What kind of research roles can you find yourself being involved in outside of your own lab? Does your POI work alongside the other ones and publish regularly? (fact check: you may also want to take a look and see if they do!)
All the best!

I am not in your field, but I am a Canadian student with a Canadian partner that moved to the US for a PhD program in 2012.
The transition is certainly a process but manageable. I'll be happy to discuss any specific questions you may have, either here, or in a PM if there are personal details. Most of my issues involve ensuring my spouse had the right to work in the US, which is only possible for me as a foreign student on J-1 status, whereas the typical foreign student status in the US is F-1. 
I'll address the two issues you present here first though:
1. The higher tuition rates does not directly affect us, assuming that your field fully funds graduate students (I think so, right?). Fully funded means that the department covers our tuition, higher rate and all, as well as pay us a stipend (whether the stipend is good or not depends though!). It does indirectly affects your chances to get in if you are applying to schools that charge higher tuition to international students (e.g. mostly public schools). At my school (a private one), tuition is over $40,000 per year for every student, but I don't see this charged anywhere (it gets charged directly to our advisors). Therefore, while being an international student decreases our admission chances at some schools, if you are admitted with a funding package, you don't have to worry about the higher tuition rate. In fact, at least in my field, in almost all cases, graduate students are paid better in the US than in Canada.
2. Health care: This is definitely a concern! When we first arrived, not all the provisions of the ACA (Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare) had been in place yet, and my spouse was denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition. My spouse had to then get coverage as a dependent on my school program (school plan covers everyone regardless of conditions) but that costs $7200 per year (!!!). The school awarded us extra money to pay for this cost, fortunately. However, this no longer became a problem when ACA kicked in and my spouse was able to be covered through an open plan. Then, my spouse eventually found a good job that has very good coverage. (Note: a few years later, the other ACA provisions kicked in and did not allow insurance providers to charge a higher rate, $7200, for dependents compared to the primary insured ($2700 per year)).
For your specific case, I would still apply to US schools but look out for schools that actually provide you with health benefits. For example, the student coverage of my school's plan is great (the dependent coverage is great too but as I wrote above, potentially very expensive). Our plan costs $2700 per year, but the school pays $2200 per year and we pay only $500 per year. Overall, I actually spend less money and get more coverage in the United States than I did in Canada (in Ontario, OHIP is like $900 plus I paid $300 more for supplemental coverage). However, I don't have something like Type I diabetes.
Your actual cost due to maintaining your health could be quite high and I recommend that if you are considering offers from US schools, you should talk to other students with Type I diabetes when you visit! But, for now, I have some info on what is covered by my school's plans (again I think my school has one of the better plans available to students, so don't assume all schools do this level of coverage, make sure you check!):
The deductible per year is $150 (this means that you pay $150 first before some of the coverage starts).
The co-pay (what you pay) for most services is 20% (that is, if you see a specialist and the visit costs $300, you pay $60 and the insurance pays $240). However, the deductible is charged first.
The co-pay for most prescriptions is also 20%. Example: I have a nasal spray that costs $20. I pay $4 for each refill and the insurance covers $16. There's a caveat though: insurance providers are allowed to exclude certain medicines from coverage. Each year, they publish a new list of medicines and rank them as "Tier 1", "Tier 2", "Tier 3" and "Excluded". The higher the tier, the more restrictions there are on getting that drug covered. Most restrictions are things like you can only get X amount each time, or you must have the doctor get prior approval etc. The brand-name drugs are the ones that go on these Tier lists typically, as you are supposed to only get generic drugs unless there is no substitute or there is a special reason that you need the brand-name one. Note: for my plan, the deductible does not apply towards drug benefits.
The co-pay for a regular doctor's visit is special because the deductible doesn't apply. My plan's co-pay is $15, which means I pay $15 every time I visit the doctor and insurance covers the rest of the cost (usually a visit is about $60 to $100). If I get a test though (lab exam, x-ray, whatever), that counts as a separate thing and there's the deductible and 20% copay. 
There are two other important numbers to look for when comparing US health insurance plan. There is the annual out-of-pocket maximum. If your covered costs (i.e. copays and deductible) reach this number in one insurance year, your copay becomes $0 for the rest of the year and the insurance will pay for everything. My plan's out of pocket maximum is $1500. This means that no student on my plan should have to pay more than $2000 per year for health care ($500 for the premium, $1500 for the out of pocket max). In reality, some people still have to pay more because they need services that are not covered.
The last important number is something called Lifetime Maximum Benefit. This number is the most that the insurance company will ever pay for you in your life. Once you reach this number, you have to pay for everything yourself. This sounds terrible because it is terrible. Fortunately, it's so terrible that the ACA made it illegal for insurance companies to have this limit. So, right now, this must be "unlimited" by law. But I mention this because if the ACA is repealed, this law is also repealed so I don't know what the future will hold. Therefore, always check for this value when choosing plans.
To summarize, the values I quoted above, $150 deductible, $1500 max, $15 doctor visit, roughly 20% copay for everything else is usually known as a "Gold" or "Platinum" plan. Other plans "Silver", "Bronze" etc. cost twice and three times as much. (e.g. Silver is $30 doctor visit, 40% copay, deductible is $2000! and Bronze is $45 doctor visit, 60% copay, $4000 deductible etc.). Just to give you an estimate on the range of plans available. I remember that some schools have absolutely terrible plans and some don't even have prescription coverage.
All of the above is very generic and general and you'll have to determine the specifics for you when you have offers from US schools. I just wanted to give you a general idea. Basically, a lot of the horror stories we Canadians hear about the US system are true. ACA did fix some of them, but we have no idea what will happen next with that. In general, if you are well off and have a good job, you will mostly be fine within the US system. Sadly, a grad student with a livable stipend and a good student health plan is "well off" compared to the general US population---the ones really in trouble without ACA are people without the guarantee of insurance and/or a job. That said, because there are no longer any guarantees of future good healthcare laws due to Trump, I have no idea if this will be true in a year or two. No one knows.

If you were an earlier interview then it may take some time. POIs are busy and want to properly weigh candidates (including you!) along with regular academic duties. This is a great time for you to practice coping and 'waiting-it-out' strategies because you'll be applying for many things in the future (fellowships, awards, internship, post-doc, faculty positions etc etc). Its tough; believe me I know! I got so antsy I wrote 2 status inquiry emails to separate professors to relieve stress then deleted them. Just writing the emails was therapeutic even though I didn't plan to send anything.

It seems like you're a top applicant--- I'm assuming they think so too since they want to interview you. So they have to know that you have interviews elsewhere. If your going to cancel anyway, I don't think it's wrong to say something like: I am honored to receive an invitation to interview. Unfortunately, I am unavailable to interview on that particular date. Is there any flexibility in terms of when I can set-up my interview? I am open to Skype interviews as well, if that helps to provide more possible dates. I would hate to miss such a great opportunity to meet you and the rest of the department. 
Thank you for your consideration, 
Blah Blah

@stereopticons - pantsuit or skirtsuit will be the same color and material, and will be designed to "mesh" (so any little details will match, cut will be similar, same weight fabric, etc.). Slacks with a blazer can match and look nice, but unless they were designed as a set they aren't a pantsuit. I don't care much for fashion myself, I chose pantsuits just so I wouldn't have to worry about matching two articles of clothing together. 

I agree with everything @swil92 said. I actually came from a more biological psych/cognitive neuro background (though my degree was in psych) and went into an I/O program because I want to be a consultant as well!
Having a research background is a bonus for you; I/O programs are still research-focused, and don't care as much about work experience as you might think. Some schools also understand that people dont always get exposure to I/O in undergrad, so they may be forgiving about your switch (I was in a similar position and people understood/accepted me).
As said above, I wouldn't necessarily mention that you want to go into industry until you know what the school's attitudes are towards that. I'm referring more to combined Masters/PhD programs and to direct PhD programs, but you don't want to rule these out if you're interested in consulting, because a Masters in I/O may not be enough to get into consulting, depending on what type you're interested in and how fancy of a firm you're trying to go to. PhDs usually enter a consulting firm at the MBA level, and masters-holding graduates usually enter at the undergrad or entry-level. So there can be a big benefit of doing a PhD, in addition to being funded. However, you should make that decision based on what you want.
I also wouldn't advise that you apply to general psych. Those are often cash cow programs that don't really advance your standing as far as research or specific job opportunities are concerned.
Have you thought about doing the Psych GRE? Perhaps this way you could demonstrate that you have psych knowledge, not that there will be much I/O in there. You should start looking up some researchers and reading their papers to prepare, which can give you some ideas for your SOP (even if you don't want to do research as a career, any good I/O program will have you doing primarily research and a bit of other things).
Best of luck!

Things I asked included:
1) Are you able to live comfortably on the stipend that is provided or are you forced to seek out other sources of income or make sacrifices you would prefer not to make in order to have the basics (food, shelter, clothing, medical care, transportation)?
2) What is the POIs communication style?  Hands on or hands off?  Constructive criticism?  Only points out mistakes, never successes?
3) What is a typical week like for you in terms of how much time is in class, in lab, doing clinical hours, doing homework, etc?
4) Are students supported if they wish to collaborate with other labs or different departments?
5) If students are interested in gaining clinical experience with a population that is not included in the current practicum choices, is the department open to creating an opportunity?
6) What are you expected to do during summers and are you provided a stipend and medical care for that time?

My advice is to ask specific questions that are personally relevant to you, instead of general questions. As a grad student, a prospective student is a stranger, but someone I'd like to help if I know that my answer can be helpful. Sometimes giving an honest answer will put me in a vulnerable position or potentially at risk so I think a prospective student should ask the question in a way that ensures to me that this risk is worth it and that my answer will actually be valued.
This means that you should decide exactly what you want to find out ahead of time and ask these questions. It's really hard for me to answer vague and open-ended questions like "Do you like the program?" or "Are you happy?". I would say you should ask specific things and share something about yourself in doing so (makes me feel like my answer can be helpful).
So, if you are worried about your background in topic X in the coursework, just say that and ask about the courses. An example question from my field would be, "My undergrad degree was mostly in physics and astronomy, so I have had very little earth science experience. What would the courses be like without a lot of geological science experience?". I think this is a much better question than something like, "How much geology do I need to know for the courses?". The first version tells me about your specific concern, so that I can tailor my answer to your particular case.
Also, don't make the student feel like they are being tested/judged. If you are asking a subjective question, I would say that you should share your opinion first before asking about mine. Using another example from my field, let's say you are looking for an earth science program with a lot of field work opportunities and chances to do field trips. Don't ask something like, "Are there a good amount of field trips?" or "How do you feel about the field trips in the department?". Some students will like doing them and some students won't and if I say that I don't really like the field trips but I get them out of the way, and you say that you love field trips and want to go on as many as possible, then you put me in an awkward situation. Instead, I would suggest that you start out saying that you are interested in field work opportunities and want to go on many field trips, then ask about the opportunities. If I'm a fellow field-trip fan, I would be happy to share your excitement and tell you about the great trips. But if I'm not, I can tell you this (knowing that you are a big fan) and then tell you about the opportunities I know about plus also direct you towards the other field-trip fans that I know.
Some people might say that by revealing your expectations before asking your question, you might get a biased answer if the student you're talking to just wants to only tell you about the good parts. However, I think if this was the case, then you would still get biased answers. On the other hand, if you are talking to a student who is willing to be honest to a stranger, and you make them feel like you are testing them, you might catch them for one question, but it might reduce their willingness to answer future questions. Also, if you do end up attending the school, remember that these students will be your colleagues. 
In general, I'd say you should structure the questions for topics #1, #2 and #5 in your list as "I am looking/hoping for X, what are your experiences with / what do you know about X in the department?". For topic #3, I'm not sure how you can get this information. Something that is a setback for one person might not be a setback for another. I wouldn't ask this question directly. It might come up in general discussion with students about their life. Topic #4 is also tough because if you are talking to current students, we haven't graduated yet and we don't know what happens next for us. You could ask about what recent graduates have done, but remember that you don't know these people and haven't met them, so their outcomes can be very different than yours.

Good luck to all of you applying to I-O programs this year! It's a pretty stressful time, but you will all make it through. Feel free to private message me if you have questions. I went through the process a couple years ago and know the whole process can be a bit of a mystery. Always remember there is no guaranteed way to get into grad school, so you may receive different advice along the way. Try to make it all work for you.

My experience in grad school has been that almost all relationships between grad students in the same department have ended well**. So from my perspective, it's not just that something occasionally works. Instead, I would say that the really bad breakups where there is lasting drama/conflict and awkwardness is pretty rare. I can only recall one instance out of the 20-30 relationships I know of. 
** To clarify, when I say "end well", I don't mean that they ended with the students married to each other. Sometimes a relationship is just meant to try something out and if it doesn't work, both parties move on to other things. Ending well just means that the relationship ends but both parties can still interact with each other as professionals. Maybe there are a few weeks of initial awkwardness between both parties and their social circles but if it fades with time, then it's fine. Also, maybe if the two students were friends before but are no longer friends after the relationship ends, that's fine too. The whole department doesn't have to be friends with each other!
At one point, there was a department I know that had about 25 grad students and I think there were 5 or 6 couples within the department (i.e. almost half of the students were dating or married to each other). I think it was a fluke though, people graduated and the density of couples dropped soon after.
(Although I wonder if there is significant confirmation bias happening here. Do I not remember the bad breakups because I suppress bad memories? Or do people remember the dramatic endings/breakups more than the relationships that just fizzled out? Probably some of both?)

Generally, dating someone in your own program is a bad idea. It is relatively awkward to ask them for a radiocarbon sample and it is much cheaper and more accurate to just ask them how old they are. 

@wlsWKglaemfek I am sorry that you were assaulted and your trust betrayed.
Please give thought to contacting the ombudsman's office/department at each of the schools to which you're applying. Give the facts, outline what you'd want to do, and hear what they have to say.
Pie in the sky, the ombudsman at a particular school uses her good offices to contact the department to which you're replying and/or the graduate school and gets you a green light for sending in two LoRs while maintaining a level of privacy that you feel comfortable.
IRT your concerns for being perceived as weaving a "sob story," you might mitigate that concern by doing research on how each of your preferred schools approach sexual violence. It may turn out that a department has addressed similar situations and has ways to work with you while not cutting you any breaks (e.g. substitute an interview for the third LoR). 
It's unclear from your OP if you're currently in the United States or if you're in your homeland. If you're in the U.S. give thought to reporting the attack to your school and the police. This may not be the first time this has happened and your disclosure may lead to your attacker being held accountable, if not convicted of a crime.
 
 

@wlsWKglaemfek I have so many things I want to tell you but let me start by quickly saying this, just on the practical side of things (and please don't take this to mean that I in any way underestimate all the other implications of this terrible thing that has happened to you): I think you may run into trouble if you only submit two letters. At least in some cases, it may automatically disqualify your application because it is an official requirement that you've not met. So asking to only submit two letters would be difficult. If at all possible, I would suggest trying to replace the offender with another letter, even if it's short or not as strong. This may require telling some white lie to some secretary about this person encountering a problem getting letters done in time and asking that they be replaced in the application system, in cases where you may not be able to do this alone (some systems won't let you change LOR info once you've entered it). And I'd say ask someone, anyone, else for a LOR, and do it as soon as you can. It's very often the case that LOR writers get extra time to submit their letters beyond the official deadline given to applicants. So it's worth a try, and they may still have 2+ weeks. If your other two letters are strong, a just so-so third letter shouldn't be a big problem. It's quite often the case that students don't have that many strong personal relationships with professors at the undergrad stage and end up with one letter that's weaker than the others.

Hi,
I am really sorry to hear that such a terrible thing has happened and I am very impressed by how strong you are being. You are absolutely right not to let this derail your career. When you say that your supervisor may threaten you with not giving you a reference you seem to be suggesting that you are still having to see him. I hope for your sake that this is not the case. In all of these instances I would advise that you see if you can speak confidentially to a counsellor (if your current school has them). If you do not want to speak to someone on campus I know that there are other helplines and it is likely that they will have knowledge of similar situations and how to handle them. As a foreign student you may also find that there are resources/helplines specific to your country that you can speak with - there is an American one called  http://www.866uswomen.org for Americans overseas and they may be able to direct you to an equivalent for your country, or I would suggest you could call https://www.rainn.org/international-sexual-assault-resources. 
It is unclear from what you wrote whether or not you will ask for an alternate reference from your current school or from someone outside of it. On many of the forms I filled in you could request more references than needed, so If it is someone external (who won't be communicating with your professor) who you would ask for reference then you could simply put that into action and not tell your current professor that you have found an alternate. This way you may receive 4 references and can ask for his to be discounted.
I have read on many forums here that schools accept late letters of recommendation if the rest of the form is complete and submitted by the deadline, it is possible that this may apply to your programmes too. So perhaps you could checking by contacting the universities - you do not have to explain all of your reasons at this stage but ask what their policy is on late recommendations.
I hope that this advice is any way helpful.

I think downtown toronto has become way more family friendly as the move suburbs has kinda slowed and more and more people stay downtown and have kids. The Annex is a good place, the St. Lawrence area, and my sister condo on Yonge and St.Clair has a ton more kids then I would have ever thought. I think schools are generally okay. Some schools might get lower or higher ratings but that's mostly due to the school population (a school with a poorer and high ESL student population is gonna receive lower test scores etc) but the level of education is pretty standard. If your from the States school funding is completely different. The poorer schools actually get alot more funding and resources than most schools in posh neighbourhoods. Tons of things to do in Toronto as a single or family, especially in the summer! http://cityparent.com/events?city=2 

OK, in my response to this, I want to make clear that I am not trying to convince you to apply to nonprofits, @wildviolet, nor am I trying to dissuade you from applying to faculty positions. I completely respect that choice! It sounds like it might be the right one for you. I'm merely offering my response because I think your comment has some interesting misconceptions - some of the same misconceptions I had about non-academic work myself when I started looking - and I just want to offer a response to anyone who might be making the choice.
Qualitative work: Many, many non-academic institutions do and appreciate qualitative work. I have mixed-methods training from grad school, but when I started applying for non-academic jobs in the private sector I assumed that my qual background would go unused and undervalued. Not so! In fact, I think I do more qualitative research now than I did in graduate school, lol, and my qualitative training was a huge factor in my getting the job I currently have an the value I have on my team - I'm one of the few formally trained qual people on my team and we need qual work done seriously all of the time. I do qualitative research in education currently in support of a product that I support (a well-known video game that recently released an educational version).
Autonomy: This is something I've been reflecting on a lot recently. It's certainly true that non-academic researchers have less autonomy than academic ones, at least big-picture. But I have a lot of independence as a researcher in my role, and many non-academic researchers do. It just depends on which kind you value.
I think if you (general you, not wildviolet specifically) need to direct all aspects of your research agenda - from what you study to how you do it to how you report the results - and you want little to no oversight, and you'd be unhappy otherwise, then an academic career is probably the only way to go.
But if you're willing to accept something different, there's a spectrum of autonomy. Think tanks are going to be the most like universities and academic settings in terms of the kind of autonomy you have (I'm thinking RAND, RTI, Booz Allen Hamilton, American Enterprise Institute, CATO, etc.) A lot of researchers at those places operate almost exactly like academics, in that they have to compete for grant funding (either internal or federal or both), have almost complete control over their research agendas and methods, publish regularly, etc. A lot of nonprofits, NGOs and agencies assign you a specific research area (say, income inequality and education) and you conduct research within that area, but you get to decide how and what exactly you investigate.
I think my job is somewhere in the middle. In my corporate, private-sector job, I am assigned to a project but then have the autonomy to conduct research within that project. So for example, my job might be to give product support to a specific game(s) or franchise, but I decide what that research support looks like, plan out the studies I'm going to conduct, how I'm going to build relationships with my team stakeholders, what the research priorities are for those games, etc. I can also propose spearheading new horizontal lines of research - like research into online multiplayer gaming or streaming games or e-sports or something - but the research has to be related to the business goals of company and I need to make a good case for how it'll help the company operate towards our end goals. That sounds super corporate, but honestly it's really not that much different (and honestly, far easier) than writing a grant. I'm quite good at it, it turns out, and really it involves more of a presentation or a discussion instead of spending 8 months writing a 6-page grant
Again, I am not trying to convince anyone! Just offering some nuggets from the non-academic world.

Good luck in your quest to have the board avoid reality. I'm sure you'll have a fine career as a barista.

Yes, also I forgot to mention that some of the other evaluation criteria that do not explicitly mention the research proposal is "The ability or potential to communicate theoretical, technical and/or scientific concepts clearly and logically in written and oral formats". The description says this is evaluated based on your past performance and letters etc. but the way you communicate your proposal will probably affect this too. 

Although I am not in your field and I was not applying to the same agency (I won the CGS-M from NSERC in 2009, and CGS-D from NSERC in 2011), I agree with what @eternallyephemeral says. I would recommend that you read the selection criteria for the CGS-M very carefully.
In particular, the research proposal is one factor in the "Research Potential" criteria, which has a weight of 30%. If you look at the list of "indicators of research potential", you see 7 items, and only 2 are related to the research proposal: "Relevance of work experience and academic training to field of proposed research" and "Significance, feasibility and merit of proposed research". 
The first indicator is not really something you can do much about, because you can't change your work experience and academic training. However, this does mean that if your experience thus far as been in subfield X, you should write a proposal for subfield X, instead of subfield Y. **Note: Back in 2009 and 2011, you are not obligated to work on the actual proposed research at all, but that may have changed. I wrote my proposal for something completely different from what I actually did work on.
The second indicator is the important one. In a 1-page proposal, you basically have room for just 3-4 paragraphs and you want to spend one paragraph on each of those three criteria (significance, feasibility, and merit). Remember the audience for your proposal---they aren't going to be experts in the topic you're proposing for. A good format for a short research proposal is something like:
1. First paragraph, demonstrate why the area of research is interesting or noteworthy.
2. Second paragraph, introduce the specific problem you are studying and why we want to know the answer. Paragraphs 1 and 2 should include a few citations to other studies working on the same problem so that you can later demonstrate how your proposed research will fit into the field's knowledge.
3. Third paragraph, discuss your plan to answer this question and why your plan will work. You can discuss general methods here and cite other works that have used the same methods successfully. But you don't have to have specifics like the details you asked about. 
4. Fourth paragraph (this can be combined with the above), discuss your expected results. If you are proposing an experiment with multiple possible outcomes, discuss what each outcome would teach you and show that this is a worthwhile thing to do (i.e. you gain some knowledge no matter what, whether it's finding evidence for some hypothesis or a null result constraining other ideas etc.). Here is where you connect back to your introductory paragraphs and show how your new findings fit into your field.
---
The detailed instructions for this year's CGS-M research proposal are copied below (hopefully it's clear how the 4-step framework fits this prompt).
Provide a detailed description of your proposed research project for the period during which you will hold the award. Be as specific as possible. Provide background information to position your proposed research within the context of the current knowledge in the field. State the objectives and hypothesis, and outline the experimental or theoretical approach to be taken (citing literature pertinent to the proposal), and the methods and procedures to be used. State the significance of the proposed research to a field or fields in the health sciences, natural sciences and/or engineering or social sciences and/or humanities, as appropriate.

If you are applying to multiple schools, there's no way you could specify this information for each school. Also, that is not the most important part of the proposal, even if it did impact your friend's proposal. I have done the CGSM app twice now, and neither time did I put this information down, and no one recommended it either time as well.
Just make sure your proposal is clear, well-written, and convincing. Those types of methods-section details are not what you should focus on.

Here are some links you might find helpful:
https://sites.google.com/site/gradappadvice/application-essays
http://neoacademic.com/2014/01/09/grad-school-how-do-i-write-a-personal-statement/
http://lauraemariani.blogspot.com/2008/12/applying-to-graduate-school-statement.html

@eternallyephemeral Just FYI, most people in PhD programs in cultural studies—history, art history, regional studies, anthropology, sometimes poli sci, English literature of the non-US, etc.—will end up spending a lot of time in the region they study by the time they graduate. This does produce a classist effect for anyone lower class who wants to study a region to which they a) don't have family, regional, or cultural ties, b ) have no work experience in and c) go to unsupportive PhD programs that only provide support for a few months' of work abroad, you're right. There may be ways to ameliorate that further, but because you can't be an armchair researcher of other cultures any more (i.e. studying it without leaving your metaphorical house), somewhere between most and all cultural studies PhD programs support their students getting significant experience in whatever region they're studying. You're right that you do, in almost all cases, need experience working in that region to get an academic job...but it needs to be professional experience, which most PhD programs should be designed to give you. Personal experience often helps, but you can also acquire personal experience with a culture even if you start doing so past age 18.

You're absolutely right. I should have clarified that when I meant Canadian applicants vs American applicants, that I meant Americans as in people from the US with US degrees. However, that wasn't clear, so you were right to misinterpret what I said.
It is the case that Canadians go to American schools and then get hired back in Canada. But it's also the case that you could get citizenship after being in Canada for your degree, though I know it's really difficult to do all of the PR requirements if you're not working full time (or so I was told by an international student). The citizenship and hiring thing is much more complex than just Canadian vs American applicants, but it is also rare that two applicants, one from the US and one from Canada, will have identical qualifications. What I meant here is that in my experience at U of T, the applicants from Canadian schools were not as attractive applicants as those from American schools. Many of the professors hired had no ties with Canada, so it's my assumption that they did not have Canadian citizenship. In this case, because of the higher-ranked schools in the US (like the ones you mentioned), the American applicant (who is more likely to be a US citizen) is preferred over the Canadian applicant (meaning a Canadian coming from a Canadian school).
Forgive my ignorance about cultural studies - I don't know what it would take to be qualified. I would find it difficult to be an expert in a region if I had never lived there or experienced the culture. You're absolutely right that people can be Canadian and their heritage could be another country; in the case I was thinking about (which isn't communicated well there), I couldn't see a person from one country who has no ties to the country they study or has no experience being immersed in that culture being a better candidate than a person who has personal experience with that area. But like I said, I have no idea what the study of other cultures entails, so it's possible one could be an expert without having personally experienced the culture. Of course, one can study other areas, like heart transplants or personality disorders, without personal eperience. What I intended to say was that it seems the legal requirement to choose a citizen of one's own country could be problematic if the country did not have qualified applicants with the right experience. For a country less diverse, I wonder if they have difficulty hiring for these positions if they are focused on or obligated to choose citizens of their own country.
Thanks for your clarification. I made a lot of assumptions when I was writing that weren't fully fleshed out, and based on my own experience. That wasn't communicated properly, so I unintentionally misled people and for that I'm sorry.

You're absolutely right. I should have clarified that when I meant Canadian applicants vs American applicants, that I meant Americans as in people from the US with US degrees. However, that wasn't clear, so you were right to misinterpret what I said.
It is the case that Canadians go to American schools and then get hired back in Canada. But it's also the case that you could get citizenship after being in Canada for your degree, though I know it's really difficult to do all of the PR requirements if you're not working full time (or so I was told by an international student). The citizenship and hiring thing is much more complex than just Canadian vs American applicants, but it is also rare that two applicants, one from the US and one from Canada, will have identical qualifications. What I meant here is that in my experience at U of T, the applicants from Canadian schools were not as attractive applicants as those from American schools. Many of the professors hired had no ties with Canada, so it's my assumption that they did not have Canadian citizenship. In this case, because of the higher-ranked schools in the US (like the ones you mentioned), the American applicant (who is more likely to be a US citizen) is preferred over the Canadian applicant (meaning a Canadian coming from a Canadian school).
Forgive my ignorance about cultural studies - I don't know what it would take to be qualified. I would find it difficult to be an expert in a region if I had never lived there or experienced the culture. You're absolutely right that people can be Canadian and their heritage could be another country; in the case I was thinking about (which isn't communicated well there), I couldn't see a person from one country who has no ties to the country they study or has no experience being immersed in that culture being a better candidate than a person who has personal experience with that area. But like I said, I have no idea what the study of other cultures entails, so it's possible one could be an expert without having personally experienced the culture. Of course, one can study other areas, like heart transplants or personality disorders, without personal eperience. What I intended to say was that it seems the legal requirement to choose a citizen of one's own country could be problematic if the country did not have qualified applicants with the right experience. For a country less diverse, I wonder if they have difficulty hiring for these positions if they are focused on or obligated to choose citizens of their own country.
Thanks for your clarification. I made a lot of assumptions when I was writing that weren't fully fleshed out, and based on my own experience. That wasn't communicated properly, so I unintentionally misled people and for that I'm sorry.