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Thank you, @Sanskriti Prakriti! Do you have a sense for what will happen if the strike happens? Like, would classes continue, or be cancelled? Does the union continue to pay your stipend and insurance costs? I'm just curious about the logistics.

Old post, new cents! Your individual school may have already addressed this or have best practices. If it were my school (state university, not private), I would consult the diversity center and ask them for best practices. Whatever you do, develop a consistent approach that applies to everyone, regardless of their religion, and put it in your syllabus. If your department frequently covers religion (if you're a religious studies scholar, for example), then your department head might consider putting the same blurb in all syllabi.

You and me both. My methods class literally made me cry. It's both what I'm most looking forward to, and most dreading!

Absolutely there are! I've been a manager for 10+ years (going back for a PhD is a switch for me), and I've hired people from all sorts of walks of life - anything from HS dropout to MA/MS. No PhDs yet. Do you have a resume or LinkedIn yet? I'm happy to help. If nothing else, even if you do get accepted to a PhD program, it's good to have a resume up-to-date. After all, everyone has a price tag...if someone came and offered you six figures to leave your PhD program and go into the private sector, nobody would blame you for accepting! For real, hit me up, I'm happy to look over your resume and offer suggestions.

Unintentionally so! Although I didn't apply there (more for financial reasons than the aforementioned), Northwestern is beautiful, and the people who I know who work there are really happy. That kind of stability speaks to the university environment. Said advisor thought it might be due to the coursework being so theory heavy that it was difficult to transition to the practicalities of academic work, so if you accept their offer, maybe look for opportunities to engage in practical research, not just theory. Either way, maybe it's not actually true. The second-hand opinion of one person based on a limited sample size with zero knowledge of your personal interests shouldn't be taken for much, other than - perhaps - inspiration to ask about post-graduation placement rates at the interview.

For whatever it's worth, one of my advisors in my MA program told me that Northwestern graduates have a hard time getting faculty positions than some other universities in the area. So perhaps being left off their list is a blessing in disguise.

Have you checked the results page of this site? Have other people been notified of acceptance? If not, it's worth calling the university. I called one of mine and asked, "Hi, do you know when decisions will be out, and when campus visits will be? I want to make sure my schedule is open." Given that you're an international student, I think it's a very reasonable request. How many places are you applying to?

For me, right now, my biggest decision comes down to my spouse. He won't have to change jobs (he can work remotely), but his family is a lot closer to one university than the other. He says it doesn't matter, and he'd be happy with either, but I still have to consider his support system. Of course, the one university that I'm still waiting on (decisions out next week) is where my family and support system is. So there's that too. But I'll make a new support system at whichever university I go to....right? One of my advisors told me not to make any decisions one way or another until you visit campus and talk with people; his decision changed due to that visit. So I'm trying to keep an open mind. Two campus visits over the next two weeks will hopefully help.

I live in Illinois now. I ruled out applying to the many applicable programs here, although not due to your specific reasons. My master's institution had furloughs for 2 years because the governor refused to pass a budget. I refuse to put my academic future on an unstable, incredibly corrupt state.

I can't speak to South Africa or West Oakland, but I would not recommend living in North Lawndale. Here's an interactive crime map so you can look at the types of crimes in that area: https://data.cityofchicago.org/Public-Safety/Crimes-Map/dfnk-7re6/data In general, I would suggest living a little further away, but close to the train line. You'll probably be looking at Roger's Park, which is on the north side of the area, or somewhere south of there. Here's the search string that I used on Trulia. Compare available apartments against the crime map. Generally, the west side and south side are the more dicey neighborhoods. Feel free to tag me if there's a specific neighborhood you'd like my 2 cents on.

Here's the list I'm working on. It's mostly on the logistical side. Do most professors let you write notes with a laptop, or do I need to figure out an alternative note-taking apparatus? What kind of research will I be able to do my first year? Do I start with an assigned POI? How is that determined? I’m working on a book review. Should I list my current institution, or where I’ll be when the review is published? What reference tool do people use the most? Endnote? Mendeley? Notecards? Is there one the university provides for free? Are there funds for going to conferences? For non-presenters? Can I get a sample schedule or at least start talking about what classes would be when and a time line? When they say a major area and a minor area, do they mean within the department, or in the rest of the school? Do people who are teaching get a university laptop? Summer funding?

Sure! They said it would be just fine, I sent some alternate dates, and I'm now going a week before everyone else.

I had a similar conflict, and I emailed the school and let them know that I had another conflict. Here's the email that I sent: Hi <Coordinator>, Thank you for your email! I did want to ask a question. I have another commitment that weekend for which travel has already been booked, and isn't refundable. I’m sure this has happened before, so there’s probably a set way of dealing with it. I could come a day earlier, or come another weekend, etc. What’s the best way to handle this so I can still get the on-campus time I need to make a decision? Thank you so much for your work on this, and your help with this issue. <Name>

@GreenEyedTrombonist I can +1 on the PITA of divorce piece. My former spouse and I were great friends, but shouldn't've ever gotten married. I felt much the same way after my divorce, but I found another divorcee, and we have much better and more realistic expectations of one another and our partnership. We got married, flash-mob-style, at the Shedd Aquarium. Granddad was our witness, and we were briefly famous in Australia when he died. Life is strange sometimes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I hear your pain. That's actually the main reason that I didn't apply to UIC. It's a great school and has people researching things I'm interested in, but I can't afford to stay in my condo and live here, even with a partner who has a job. I just finished paying my student loans from undergrad; I want to minimize any more I have to pick up.

Assuming all this happened in the US, you might consider consulting an attorney. A case could be made that they were illegally discriminating against you for health issues, which is protected under the ADA.

Unknown. I figure that whomever ends up being my faculty advisor will tell me. How do you know that you're going? Are you planning on paying your own way?

I would've liked to go last year, since I was in Dallas to see relatives while it was going on, but my institution wasn't willing to pay for me to just go and observe, and I had no desire to shell out hundreds of dollars of my own money. Plus, last year's theme was kind of sad. It felt more like, "We're relevant! Please believe us! We promise!"

FYI, I just talked to the graduate coordinator. If anyone else is waiting, they're going to be sending out decisions (including funding information) the week of Feb 19th. Their welcome days, at least for the Media Studies program, are March 22-23.

So might you! Methinks a material scientist has a better chance than a Comm scientist.

You think? I didn't know everyone's GPA in my program, but 4.0 wasn't routine (although now I want to check and see if my recollection is correct). Do you think the people who don't have 4.0 also just tend to self-select and drop out? I do recall that my first class had about a 25% dropout rate by the end of the semester.

I like Torchy's, although it's definitely a sometimes treat. I could eat my weight in Chuy's, though...right after I drink my weight in Texas martinis.

Yeah, I think I googled "grad school acceptance status" or something like that. I've known about it for a while, but didn't actually join until I needed SOMETHING to do while I waited.

I grew up in Texas. I can't speak specifically to CS, but in general...I don't think many people commute from CS to Austin or Houston on a regular basis. Especially not Austin. I think I knew one person who made that commute for a year, but he changed jobs pretty quickly because he hated it. So, depending on what your husband does, he might be able to work remotely? If he could reduce the number of times he went into the office to a couple of times a month, that would be very doable. There are probably coworking spaces that he could rent an office in locally to CS if he needed to. One thing to keep in mind is that public transportation in most of Texas is nonfunctional, or nonexistant. So you'll both want to have cars, and both those cars will need to have air conditioning. LMK if I can answer any other general "Living in Texas" questions. I'm happy to help.

100% normal. We all deal with varying degrees of imposter syndrome and insecurity. To a large extent, I think that the only reason we didn't feel it as undergrads (or at least I didn't) was because we knew we'd get in somewhere, or (in my case) we were overconfident. So yeah, it's totally normal.