neechaa

I second that. 
I did a MA in philosophy in India before getting into in a PhD program in the US. I had similar worries about the pedigree of my MA because there's virtually no chance some one outside of India would have ever heard of the MA program, but things worked out pretty alright for me- so I can say with some confidence that you would be wise to focus on the parts of your application in your control- the ever important writing sample and your statement of purpose. 

Excuse me, but who do you think you are to tell me that my husband, family, friends, pets... they are "non-necessities?" You may be able to live without those things, and that's totally fine, but you have absolutely no authority to tell anyone else that we "don't need them" and that they are potential hindrances. 
 
I particularly take issue with your insinuation that anyone who doesn't "give up everything" to devote themselves 200% to their studies is somehow less committed than you. 
 
I find your arrogant tone appalling, especially from someone who hasn't even STARTED grad school yet.
 
Good luck. With that attitude, you're going to need lots of it.

I would argue that emotional support and regular sex are definitely necessities, especially when launching yourself into a potentially demanding and stressful environment. I wouldn't underestimate the benefits of finding a romantic partner during grad school; yes, they require work, but their benefits can be numerous. 

Sure. I'll put my marriage on hold (so long husband, go find a gf for the next 7 years while I finish my PhD), give my pets away, etc., just so I can focus on research. That doesn't seem like a recipe for disaster. 
 
I am a pretty successful student, I think, and I work maybe 6-8 hours a day (I'm in the humanities, so no lab work, but I do have to work on independent research and I also have teaching duties). That leaves 8 hours of sleep, and the rest of the time to the other so-called distractions. You see, I found that after working more than 6 hours, I was no longer productive. I'd sit in front of the computer staring into space, or rereading paragraphs from a book over and over unable to concentrate.
 
If I didn't have a partner* at home willing to look at my drafts or bounce ideas with (not to mention the emotional support, the cooking when I'm not in the mood to, etc.), a cat to snuggle up to me when I'm having writer's block, or a dog to force me to go outside a couple of times a day so I can go and process ideas during a walk, I would not be successful. Productivity isn't about spending every waking hour "at work," but about making your working hours count.
 
* this could also be a friend/roommate. It just so happens to be my partner.
 
Going out to beer with friends isn't just a "social" activity. We talk about our research... we bounce ideas back and forth. It releases tension but it also allows us to "work" by developing our thoughts. I find inspiration in those moments.
 
The people I know who struggle the most are those who don't have any of those things and who focus exclusively on "work." They live by themselves because roommates are too distracting. They don't have pets. They don't go to anything "social." There's no balance. Their work suffers... they don't really exchange ideas with anyone else, and what they produce reflects that.

Accepted at Duke with a generous funding package. 

Hi guys, I get an offer from U of Kentucky just today!

I've been having a pretty rough go of it for the past week or so, checking my app portals religiously, posting here on the gradcafe far more often than I ought to, and generally stressing out about these applications. I seem to vacillate between total overconfidence ("What grounds could any program possibly have for rejecting me? I've got a 4.0, a 170 verbal, letters from preeminent philosophers, my writing sample is the best thing since the Tractatus! I'm going 12/0/0", etc.) and total despair ("I absolutely tanked the writing sample; paragraphs such-and-such and such-and-such are unclear, the introduction is too long, the conclusion is corny, I should have cited this paper and that paper, nobody even cares about my topic. I'm going 0/0/12 and I better accept it", etc.). It's all unhealthy.
Coursework doesn't really help except as a distraction - I'm taking one course that has nothing to do with any of my AOIs, and another in an area that I already know like the back of my hand from multiple courses in undergrad. Once I put my work away my post-application insanity remains intact, and it's hard to get excited about my courses when everything seems to pale in importance by comparison with the great verdict on my philosophical ability that the infallible arbiters at twelve PGR-ranked programs are about to deliver. 
I've tried playing video games to distract myself, but this seems such a obviously trivial pursuit that I can't enjoy it, even when playing games that I've enjoyed in the past. 
But, quite surprisingly, the one thing that has worked to restore my sanity is doing philosophy. Since this afternoon, I've been editing my sample, trying to strengthen its weaknesses not for applications but until I'm happy with it as a paper. I'm re-writing an old term paper, thinking about new ways to make the argument and considering new objections that I might have to respond to. I've been doing independent reading - which I used to do like a maniac in my undergraduate days, back when I was single and under 21 and had nothing else to do - reading some monographs in phil mind that I've had on my bookshelf for years but whose contents I haven't really read past the introductions. 
I don't know why it helps to do philosophy, but it does. Perhaps doing independent work like this, with no deadline and no real stakes, allows me to enjoy philosophy without the attendant stresses of having to keep up with a syllabus or wait for my work to be evaluated by my professors or by adcoms. Or perhaps strengthening myself as a philosopher by editing my work and reading new material helps me to feel more confident in my abilities, and relieve the feelings of self-doubt that inevitably come with the application process. Perhaps it's even that feature of philosophy that I used to find so appealing before I began to think of philosophy as a profession and a career, with which philosophy has been associated since antiquity: philosophical repose; the coolheaded sense of being aloof from worldly concerns that comes from sustained contemplation of philosophical material. Or maybe it's just being off my desk and back in my dear friend the armchair. Whatever it is, it's worked for me. I've checked my portals and my email only once over the past twelve hours, and that's saying a lot. 
So, if you're feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or obsessive about your applications, give it a try. Turn off your phone and computer, grab that one book or article you've been meaning to read for months, or print out some of your old term papers and give yourself some comments. See how it makes you feel. It's helped me go from a chain-smoking nervous wreck to being myself again for the first time since December thirty-first.
 

1. Your professor is an asshole and should know better than to do something like this to a student.
2. Other people will recognize that fact. 
3. People know that a B+ in grad school means the professor failed to support students. 
4. As long as the other grades are As and continue to be As, you don’t have anything to worry about. 

What follows are recommendations that others haven't already been discussed in great detail (or I just flat out missed). I offer no comment on previous recommendations that I find controversial. I offer no guarantee or warranty that any of the suggestions that follow will work for you.
My background
I was trained and mentored by a professor who won a university award for teaching and a national award for teaching, wrote a well regarded pamphlet on teaching history, and was ultimately the university-wide SME on teaching undergraduates. (Hereafter Professor Sierra)
I did my outside field in the school of education' with a professor whose many hats included training teachers to teach, consulting, and some session work. (Hereafter Professor Charlie)
Prior to graduate school, I had aspired to be a professor known for teaching. With this objective in mind, I deliberately studied under historians who struck me as great teachers to the point where I dropped professors who were clearly awful ones.
My experience
Ten (10) total sections in the history department, all but two (2) in my areas of emphasis.
Recommendations
From Professor Sierra.
Hold the line on grades at all costs. Grade inflation is a blight upon the Ivory Tower that diminishes the reputation of a department and the value of a degree. Develop and adhere to well-developed evaluation rubrics. Give comprehensive feedback to students so they understand why the deserve the grade they received. Make office hours mandatory after midterms Do not throw students curve balls when preparing them for exams. Every question he ever posed on an exam or allowed me to write were right out of the course materials. Fastballs at 119 MPH. A syllabus is a contract. Hold the line on grades at all costs. (After penciling in grades, go through everything again.) From Professor Charlie
If a student is motivated to learn and does not achieve her educational objectives it is the teacher's fault. (This one stings.) If a student is motivated to learn, do not attempt to alter that student's motivation. Technology is a tool no more, and often less, valuable than other resources. (He could point to the research backing this up.) Give information in small clusters of 7 +/-2 . (This tactic is related to the concept of "working knowledge" in cognitive psychology.) Students are like "abused children" and can respond as such, so don't take feedback too personally. The second best tool he shared -- distribute an evaluation form at the beginning of each and every class meeting that allowed for anonymous feedback. Sometimes, the feedback was brutal. Most of the time, the feedback was painful (because few hand in the forms). The best tool he shared was a frame of mind that made supporting students so they could reach their goals the only objective of teaching. "You're going to tell me what you want to achieve, and I'm going to give you some support." This position means that if a student wants to pass a class, it's your job to support that goal. My Lessons Learned
Having students complete, by hand, a student information sheet that includes fields for interests, course objectives, contact information, and schedule can pay huge dividends if: You schedule your office hours in a way that accommodates the schedules of most schedules. You read carefully their interests and objectives. Memorizing the names of all your students by the second section meeting will earn a lot of respect. FWIW, I used an instant camera to take photos during the first meeting, had students write their names with black sharpies, and spent as much time as necessary that night to learn the names. For the rest of the semester and beyond, I paid students cash out of my pocket if I couldn't remember a name. Make a commitment to your students. Throughout the semester, I would beat the drum that I was their advocate with the professor who had final say on grades. I implored "Put me in a position where I can make a convincing case that the high B you earned by the numbers should be a B+." Many students responded to this offer and worked harder and harder as the semester wore on, and they got the bumps (and in a few cases, the lumps) they deserved. Grading blue books Time consuming, often painful, I eventually found a workflow that saw me going through all the responses for a specific ID term, short essay, or long essay so that I could understand what better responses looked like compared to less thoughtful ones. From there, I'd work on the responses that merited a straight grade and then the pluses and the minuses. Throughout, I'd use the rubric which also had abbreviations for recurring issues. Extra credit With a professor's prior approval, I'd offer extra credit opportunities. In general, they were easy to evaluate because the task would be something I'd already read/seen/heard and students would often not want to pay the cost in free time. Have a realistic sense of who you are as a person. "Yours is not a smiling face," Professor Sierra told me after three undergraduates cried in my office on consecutive days, the third would go on to start in the NFL. From that point forward, I've worked on softening the edges, but I understand that an edge will probably always be there. Your department will form opinions if you are placing too high a priority on your TAing. During midterms and towards the end of the semester, there would be multiple 18+ hour days on campus, doing the TA thing.  Recognize, document, report, and avoid the crazy Use in-class group projects to put the burden of disruptive students on other disruptive students. That is, if you have five students who are constantly causing you issues, divide your section into groups of five with those five students on the same team and appoint the chief trouble maker to be team captain.  The other teams will pretty much run themselves and do well so you can focus your support where it's most needed. Luck of the draw is a huge factor in how well a section goes. One semester, you can have a critical mass students who "get you," like the class, and love the professor and off you go. Another semester, you can have a critical mass of students who are in the class because nothing else was available, don't like the materials, don't get the professor, and have a "fuck you very much" attitude no matter what you do. Big smiles and fun times await. Before the first day of the academic year, you want to get a clear sense of how your department, the college, and the university value academic integrity. As a collegian, the riot act on plagiarism was read during every first meeting of every class. As a graduate student, such a process was not in place. So, when I caught some students doing shady things and did my job as I understood it, I found out that my expectations were out of whack with established practice. I am not bitter; it's purely and absolutely by coincidence that I've made a living in the private sector since then.

I use a binder for each section I'm teaching, as a previous poster mentioned, but instead of lecture notes, I have the course roster and a page for each student. I add their rubrics and research proposals into it as I get them, too. Anytime I meet with a student, I turn to their page and take a few notes. Students love it when you remember what they said, and you'll quickly find that even though you think you know your students' names, you're never going to remember which student asked for what in office hours, unless you write it down. I also do my attendance on paper in this, and keep copies of the syllabus and assignment sheets. Don't let them sucker you. Students will have trouble adjusting to college (especially in the first semester), but when a student comes up with sob story after sob story, refer them to the appropriate campus offices (disability services, counseling, etc.), because if you keep accommodating them without documentation, you're going to run into issues. This is going to sound petty, but don't loan books (or anything, really) to students. I let one of mine use a very expensive Greek history book my first semester teaching because the library didn't have a copy, and it came back with creased pages, a few stains, and a torn book jacket. Suffice it to say, it made it very difficult to be objective on his paper.  When you're meeting with students, leave your office door open. I'd say leave it open, even if they ask for you to close it. Grad students are vulnerable to false accusations, and I know that most students would never do anything of that nature, but the wife of caesar must be beyond repute, right? (This is a tip I got from my supervisor.) If you're meeting with a student and you're concerned about their reaction to what you're going to say (i.e. if you're accusing them of plagiarism or something of that nature), it's ok to have a colleague with you "grading/reading/sleeping" in the corner, so that there's a third party witness. I did this when I had to confront a student about falsifying rough drafts. Don't assume that students can read, not even at an SLAC. Give your assignment a few different ways: verbally, online, and in paper. They still won't read or listen, but at least you can cover your bases. Monitor your international students' progress in the first few days of the course. Make it a point to talk to them and try to get a feel for their ability level in English, especially if you're teaching an English course. This really helped me my first semester, because I discovered that a student had skipped the required pre-req for international students to get into first-year composition, and had I not talked to the department, I probably would have had to fail her. (She got a very low grade the second semester, even with that pre-req...) At the PhD and MA level, most of us are not equipped to deal with TESOL issues, so become friends with the professors in your department who are certified, and get all the resources you can, if you need them.

I really appreciate the kind response.
As it turns out though, one of the schools that had earlier rejected me got more funding and offered me admission after the April 15th deadline (which I have accepted), so I was not shut out after all!  

I don't really know much about MA programs in the US but I was in a fairly similar situation, so here's my two cents.
Last year I finished an MA in philosophy at a university in India, which I'm pretty sure none of the philosophy departments in the US must have ever heard of. I did have decent GRE scores (V167/Q165/AWA5.0) and good grades but like you I was quite apprehensive about my chances of getting admitted to a PhD program because I came from a university that is not well known. But the results were in the end not all that bad- I got admitted to Mizzou and I was waitlisted, though ultimately rejected, at UVA and Minnesota, out of 6 total applications. 
So based on my case alone I would be willing to bet that you do not need an MA from an american university in order to get into a PhD program in the US. Though whether you can get into a 'good' PhD program would be more tricky to say; I think an MA from an american university would improve your chances . Also, in most programs you earn an MA on your way to the PhD anyway, so whether you wish to do an MA before that is something I personally would consider seriously, given that you are already doing an MA. I don't see any reason why you wouldn't be allowed to apply for a second MA, particularly since its a different country, but my guess would be that spending time working on your writing sample would be an equally good way to improve your chances of getting in the next season.

I don't really know much about MA programs in the US but I was in a fairly similar situation, so here's my two cents.
Last year I finished an MA in philosophy at a university in India, which I'm pretty sure none of the philosophy departments in the US must have ever heard of. I did have decent GRE scores (V167/Q165/AWA5.0) and good grades but like you I was quite apprehensive about my chances of getting admitted to a PhD program because I came from a university that is not well known. But the results were in the end not all that bad- I got admitted to Mizzou and I was waitlisted, though ultimately rejected, at UVA and Minnesota, out of 6 total applications. 
So based on my case alone I would be willing to bet that you do not need an MA from an american university in order to get into a PhD program in the US. Though whether you can get into a 'good' PhD program would be more tricky to say; I think an MA from an american university would improve your chances . Also, in most programs you earn an MA on your way to the PhD anyway, so whether you wish to do an MA before that is something I personally would consider seriously, given that you are already doing an MA. I don't see any reason why you wouldn't be allowed to apply for a second MA, particularly since its a different country, but my guess would be that spending time working on your writing sample would be an equally good way to improve your chances of getting in the next season.

I don't really know much about MA programs in the US but I was in a fairly similar situation, so here's my two cents.
Last year I finished an MA in philosophy at a university in India, which I'm pretty sure none of the philosophy departments in the US must have ever heard of. I did have decent GRE scores (V167/Q165/AWA5.0) and good grades but like you I was quite apprehensive about my chances of getting admitted to a PhD program because I came from a university that is not well known. But the results were in the end not all that bad- I got admitted to Mizzou and I was waitlisted, though ultimately rejected, at UVA and Minnesota, out of 6 total applications. 
So based on my case alone I would be willing to bet that you do not need an MA from an american university in order to get into a PhD program in the US. Though whether you can get into a 'good' PhD program would be more tricky to say; I think an MA from an american university would improve your chances . Also, in most programs you earn an MA on your way to the PhD anyway, so whether you wish to do an MA before that is something I personally would consider seriously, given that you are already doing an MA. I don't see any reason why you wouldn't be allowed to apply for a second MA, particularly since its a different country, but my guess would be that spending time working on your writing sample would be an equally good way to improve your chances of getting in the next season.

I am a Canadian on J-1 status. Most students are on F-1 status. There are a few differences, but ultimately, it really boils down to this:
 
If you have a spouse who will move with you to the US and your spouse wants to be able to work, get the J-1 status. Otherwise, get F-1.
 
That is really the only reason to get J-1. 
 
There is no difference in the number of entries you get with J-1 vs. F-1. As a Canadian, we do not need a F-1/J-1 visa (i.e. a page in our passport) to enter the US, we can enter as often as we want. However, we do need to maintain F-1/J-1 status (Form I-20 or DS-2019) in order to remain in the US for studying. 
 
Other than the spouse working issue, the second biggest difference is the 2-year home residency requirement. If you get an NSERC (home government funding) then you will be subject to this requirement. I have a NSERC PGS-D right now and my DS-2019 has the "home government funding" box ticked off. The requirement means that you must live in Canada for 2 years before you can immigrate to the US. You don't have to go back to Canada right away, just before you immigrate to the US. You also don't have to leave the US. J-1 students can undergo 2-3 years of "Academic Training" (AT) right after their PhD if they get work in their field of study (e.g. a postdoc). This is an extension of your J-1 status. Note: F-1 students have the same benefit, it's just called OPT.
 
Finally, the last difference that I can think of is that J-1 students must maintain a minimum level of health insurance in the US for themselves and their dependents. You must explicitly get insurance that will repatriate your remains to Canada if anything happens to you. Gruesome, but legally required!
 
Overall, as you might notice, there are far more disadvantages/requirements for J-1 than F-1. However, the one advantage for J-1, that your spouse can work, is a huge one and for most people, more than makes up for the disadvantages. This is why I say that the only reason to choose J-1 is if you have a spouse that wants to work in the US (and your spouse cannot get their own work authorization).

Thank you! 

I really appreciate the kind response.
As it turns out though, one of the schools that had earlier rejected me got more funding and offered me admission after the April 15th deadline (which I have accepted), so I was not shut out after all!  

Congrats!!!!

Wow! Congratulations!

Waa hooo!!!
Congratulations!

I really appreciate the kind response.
As it turns out though, one of the schools that had earlier rejected me got more funding and offered me admission after the April 15th deadline (which I have accepted), so I was not shut out after all!  

I really appreciate the kind response.
As it turns out though, one of the schools that had earlier rejected me got more funding and offered me admission after the April 15th deadline (which I have accepted), so I was not shut out after all!  

I really appreciate the kind response.
As it turns out though, one of the schools that had earlier rejected me got more funding and offered me admission after the April 15th deadline (which I have accepted), so I was not shut out after all!  

I really appreciate the kind response.
As it turns out though, one of the schools that had earlier rejected me got more funding and offered me admission after the April 15th deadline (which I have accepted), so I was not shut out after all!  

I really appreciate the kind response.
As it turns out though, one of the schools that had earlier rejected me got more funding and offered me admission after the April 15th deadline (which I have accepted), so I was not shut out after all!