collegesista

Hi everyone! I just accepted a PhD offer, and was wondering if anyone knew of good, quiet places for grad students to live? I do have a car, but don’t know if I’ll be bringing it. My stipend is $26,426 for the year, with an added $5,568 for summer support. A studio or 1-bedroom apartment would be ideal! When I visited campus, current students in my program suggested using Craigslist..does anyone know if this is a good option?

You want to kill someone for doing something that confused and inconvenienced you? Can we just pause and note that that's not okay? 
Changing the grading scheme mid-way through the course shouldn't be ok. At most institutions I know, that wouldn't be allowed. More to the point, why don't you schedule a meeting with the professor to ask what prompted the change, and how he wants you do deal with precisely the questions you bring up here? What happens when someone doing as well as before gets lower grades on an assignment, and someone who has even improved still gets what looks like a lower grade? Maybe the solution is to have the professor explicitly discuss this change in his policies in class. Either way, it should be his responsibility to address this problem, and your job is to do what he tell you. 

My understanding is that this fellowship tends to trickle in over the course of a couple weeks, but even so, we must be getting close here.

Haven't heard anything yet!

So, I grew up near here, and lived in Ithaca for fun for a while.  You don't NEED a car.  The TCAT is the bus transportation service (you can see their schedules on their website).  It runs a ton to Cornell campus.  BUT!  It's not like a large city where you can have groceries delivered, and you'll have to deal with bus schedules to get groceries.
 
So, in short, you don't NEED a car.  But it is actually helpful here.   Check out the TCAT.

I know of two companies (Los Alamos National Laboratory and MIT Lincoln Labs) that have not picked all of their fellows as of yet. I would recommend reaching out to the companies (look up office of diversity) to see if it could be a match.

Looks like they tore down the old maple wood and are in the process of building a brand new community. After making 9 calls to the leasing office, I decided that they offer better housing options than the listings on Craigslist for an international student like myself. The reasons include: late lease starting date (8/20), utilities included in the rent, close to bus stops to campus and Wegman's, grad student and staff only community, and a roommate pairing system called RoomSync where you can find a roommate if you want to co-rent but don't know anyone. They are also pet-friendly and provide parking for a relatively low cost. I talked to a friend already attending my program and she agrees that's a good deal. 
If anyone is interested, here are the links:
http://www.livemaplewoodapartments.com/
https://maplewoodithaca.com/

Should we be choosing the school that we are planning on attending through the GEM portal or wait until a University reaches out for a fellowship?

I use my Kindle when traveling to read for pleasure. It's awesome.
The only thing I'd add is that I keep a prepacked, 1 quart bag of toiletries on hand at all times so I literally just have to throw that into the suitcase and I know that the toiletries is taken care of in the TSA-approved way. It's made my life way easier. 

Great list. During the last couple years of grad school, I was travelling quite a lot, so I just bought an extra copy of all the "basics" that just stayed in my suitcase. I also had a mini supply of travel size items at home (went to CVS and bought like 5 of everything I needed) so that I can just grab what I needed/refill etc.
Another useful trick that helps me save paper is to forgo the travel binder and get PDFs of all of my travel docs onto my Dropbox, then offline-sync them so I can access them on my phone without an internet connection. I used to always print everything but realised I never touched that file during most of my trips (but then I could use them to prepare the expense reports). My contingency against cell phone not working (battery dead?) is to have a single page with all the flight, hotel, etc. confirmation numbers.

I thought about it as well and I agree about effort and money part. Still, I think that this process is very inefficient (as you mentioned earlier) especially comparing the number of open postdoc positions (almost every lab has them) to the number of accepted phd students. It looks like training process fails to supply the demand in good researchers. Or maybe the field (ML/DL) is new that's why there is a shortage of good researchers in this area. 
But that's the reality we live (and apply) in. 
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

So I have an internship offer from a non-GEM employer, and my status is "released" in the portal. I called GEM to determine if I have an imminent employer offer or not and got the following feedback: they only know an employer is going to make an offer when they make an offer. They told me the typical timeline is end of February for when they stop making offers, but as of today (Mon, 3/5) employers are still making offer. I was also told that your employer status in the portal doesn't mean anything.

I've been iced out by UCSB and UCR --- sooooo I think I'll be taking my offer from Howard University, tuition remission, with a stipend, so that works with me!

I was accepted into the University of Utah for a M.S in the School of Computing.

Long time reader first time poster. Appreciate all of the updates and congrats to anyone who has been accepted for a full fellowship with an employer and to their respective programs.
 
I wanted to double check with anyone here to see if I misinterpreted things. The process to become a University or Associate Fellow somewhat makes sense. We get accepted by a University. The GEM Program can offer us a University or Associate Fellowship. The University can then accept us as a GEM Fellow. However, I am wondering if there is a certain timeline for this. Is there a deadline to declare on the GEM Portal which University you plan to attend? From the information provided it seems like there is one for mid-March. For example, if a University does not make you aware of their decision until late March but the deadline to let GEM know your school of choice is mid-March what should you do?
I have been accepted to about half of the programs I have applied to which are partner schools but haven't heard back from anyone else yet. One of them is unlikely but is still one of my top choice programs. Any information would be helpful. I could be misunderstanding something very simple but I've read over things and still am not confident. Thought I would ask you guys before contacting GEM. Thanks!

I agree with your comment wholeheartedly. I'm reading a lot of assumptions from the original poster, but not enough first-hand evidence. I think you're trying to make yourself feel better if you turn down an Ivy and that's perfectly fine – but go to visit day, talk to professors, and get insight from students to see how it's really like.

Congrats! Downtown and Fall Creek are where most grad students live. Starting rent for a studio is $1100. Roommates can get your housing costs down to $600 roughly. Avoid Collegetown at all costs because its mostly undergrads with a heavy frat culture. There is also the option of graduate housing on North campus, which will save you a bit of money but is not located near a bus stop with a bus that runs as frequently as Downtown or Fall Creek. For property companies I recommend Travis Hyde Properties.
You can always message me if you have more specific questions about grad student living in Ithaca. 

YES. Decline things that aren't a great fit for you! While it's great to maintain politeness, you have to consider the fact that you're going to be committing YEARS of your life to something. Don't do it unless it's not a great fit.
I would follow up apologizing and giving a brief explanation. Make sure to thank him and lethim know how honored you are by the acceptance, but you're looking for the best fit possible.
IMHO, it feels odd to me that he *made* you accept this early, but I also don't know all the facts, so /shrug. 
Best of luck!

I think the other key piece you're missing here is that you can turn down any program, including an Ivy league program, but if you applied to this program believing it was a great fit, you owe it to yourself to make sure that your conjectures about the program are actually true. It seems like you have a lot of preconceived notions about what an Ivy league school is like, but not enough interaction with the actual people and program to base them on. As someone mentioned above, even within a single school, the culture can vary widely from program to program. Visit the program, try to check your biases at the door, and you might surprise yourself with what you find.

MIT results are out! And I've been admitted! 
Still shaking, it was my only application!
 

I just accepted an offer with an employer, the turn around time was very quick, I interviewed on Thursday, best of luck everyone! 

Agreed with above poster. Just don't send your fall grades in unless the school specifically asks you for an update. Don't worry about your grades once accepted unless you don't graduate - even if you fail classes, as long as you graduate you will be fine. 

Not to stress you out or anything, but if you're an undergrad, most likely you'll get provisional acceptances, pending successful completion of your BA. In that case, you'll most likely be required to submit a final transcript at the end of the year. That might make your questions here moot. But in any event: 
1. Possible, but highly unlikely. Bs aren't failing grades, after all. More likely, they just want to verify the information you submitted is correct.
2. I wouldn't submit anything that wasn't helpful unless I was explicitly asked to do so. 

accepted to Cornell this past Sunday. Letter will come in the mail next week!

Congrats!