GeorgiaTechPhd

You are right in assuming that not attending the welcome event will give the impression that you are probably not interested in them. However, it's hard to guess how that might impact the funding status. 

I would also like to tell you that if this university is one of your top priorities, then you should attend the welcome event, as it is a great opportunity to learn more about the program before making your decision.
However, if you have absolutely made up your mind that you don't want to go, then the safest bet is to send an email to the program coordinator (or admissions coordinator), explaining them your reasons for why you can't attend the event (i.e.,  work and travel related, don't mention the other welcome event  ), but you are still interested in the program. 

I personally feel that a 'thank you and look forward to working with you' mail is more than enough.
I can totally relate to where you are coming from. When I valued something too much, I would also spend a lot of time trying to come up with something really nice, but overtime I have realized that a simple email with no extra information is really the best response in such situations.  

I personally feel that a 'thank you and look forward to working with you' mail is more than enough.
I can totally relate to where you are coming from. When I valued something too much, I would also spend a lot of time trying to come up with something really nice, but overtime I have realized that a simple email with no extra information is really the best response in such situations.  

I am from a CS background so I can't tell you about your specific field, but I can advice you on general matters. When I had my visit days, I was an international student and I couldn't have gone to all the visit days, and eventually decided to only attend the visit day for my top priority school. Reflecting back on it, I feel it wasn't a very smart decision, and therefore I can tell you a bunch of things that you should definitely look out for --
1) Talk to as many current students as possible -- understand the overall environment in the university and your program, how happy/content are the current students, how friendly they are,  does it seem like a closely knit community or is everybody on their own, what is the trajectory of senior PhD students
2) Talk to anyone and everyone who has worked with your potential advisor -- understand their working style, the environment in the lab, how friendly they are, do they get along well with other people or not, funding situation
3) Have a very straightforward conversation with your potential advisor -- make sure they know what your expectations are, and if there is anything particular you are looking forward to. 
4) Try to estimate about your financial situation -- how much stipend you will get in hand, any fixed expenses from university, living expenses, additional funding options etc. 
5) Get a sense of life in the university/city -- what kind of activities you can see yourself becoming a part of, how is the city life in general, what is there to explore, if you are an international student (or a minority community in general), do you have a presence of that community in your university/city. 

Some obvious red flags can be -- if your advisor is too busy during the visit days and is unable to take out enough time to you. And this extends to everything, if you want to talk to someone or want to know something, but you cant find enough people who can help you or meet with you, I feel you need to be careful about it, and try to find out why it is, and if that is how it is going to be if you become a student there. 

Remember that most schools will try to project their most ideal version during the visit days, so you should be careful about even the small issues that pop up. 

@MarkySharky @LazarusRises thanks for your inputs! I really appreciate it, and I think now I'm going to talk to my mom and partner about what happened, and tell them I'm leaning towards school one. I'll also work out a plan for helping my mom with winter work when the time comes so she doesn't have to worry about that anymore :).

I don't know how to interpret the 'no-visits-from-GT' thing, but I have said this in other places as well, GT does its admissions on a rolling basis, and different students often get admits at different times. So hang in tight folks, and best of luck! 

I don't know how to interpret the 'no-visits-from-GT' thing, but I have said this in other places as well, GT does its admissions on a rolling basis, and different students often get admits at different times. So hang in tight folks, and best of luck! 

I don't know how to interpret the 'no-visits-from-GT' thing, but I have said this in other places as well, GT does its admissions on a rolling basis, and different students often get admits at different times. So hang in tight folks, and best of luck! 

I don't why most people are projecting it as a binary choice -- to complete it or to give it up. Have you considered the possibility of a middle ground?
A colleague of mine was an international Ph.D. student in the US, got married in between, partner couldn't travel because of visa issues, so the colleague wrapped up their course requirements and moved to their home country to live with their partner. They found a nice job back home -- the work aligned with the broad theme of their Ph.D., and they continued to work on their thesis, interfacing with their advisor and their lab through skype, etc. They were still enrolled in the Ph.D. program, but their advisor was no longer funding them so they had more freedom and continued to work at their pace. Of course, their Ph.D. was in computing, so it was possible to work remotely as you don't need any fancy lab equipments or apparatus for your work. 

Based on what you have described in your post, you might be able to work out something similar. Instead of spending all of the next 3-4 years, you can also break it down into chunks -- spend the next year or so gearing towards your goal, and becoming more independent, so that you can easily move to your home, and then work remotely from there. And since your partner already has a job in the home country, I believe that is not your major concern, and you could also just focus on completing your Ph.D. while also being by their side. 
 

@BlakeWhite I can understand what you are feeling right now. It is already very hard to stay calm when you are just waiting for decisions, and on top of that, seeing others get some admits only makes it much harder. 
However, remember one thing, often the rate of success is over represented in forums such as this. The people who get admits are more likely to post here than people who don't get anything. Most people who don't have an admit are probably just staying out of the discussion. 
It's great you have put it out here what you are feeling, and I am sure you will find many others who are like you, but just aren't coming out yet. Also feel free to start a new thread, if you think getting support from others might help you. 
Lastly, just stay strong and believe in yourself. I am sure you still have a few schools left in the pipeline for you. 

You already have two strong LORs from tenured faculty in mathematics. The third letter does not need to be from a professor! Many people apply to graduate school after several years of work experience, and get letters from their supervisor/boss. If you can get a strong LOR from an employer, it will look much better than a mediocre letter from a professor who does not know you well at this moment in time. 

Oh yeah, that is unfortunate, but I wish you all the luck for your remaining applications  

I personally feel that a 'thank you and look forward to working with you' mail is more than enough.
I can totally relate to where you are coming from. When I valued something too much, I would also spend a lot of time trying to come up with something really nice, but overtime I have realized that a simple email with no extra information is really the best response in such situations.  

Oh I am so sorry to hear about that. And that sounds quite weird to me because in most cases that I have seen, the interview doesn't get that technical. 
I apologize if you got carried away because of my advice.  
I hope you have other options to look forward to. Don't give up yet, and stay strong. 

The answers to most of your questions have changed based on the field that you have mentioned. ML/NLP is literally the buzz topic in most of the CS community right now. Almost everyone wants to do that. So consequently, the bar for admissions is much much higher. And more so for PhD. 
Some of the things that can make your application stand out -- a direct contact with the potential advisor (like someone from your undergrad school or a contact from industry who could introduce you); a publication at a top-notch venue where the topic (which is usually quite niche in the ML/NLP domain) relates to the work of some faculty members; the quality and relevancy of your prior experience (for e.g., i can imagine that experience in cloud computing could be useful for doing systems research within ML)
Most students in ML/NLP apply with a good publication record (peer-reviewed publications), so your papers by themselves might not add much value. But the thoughts that you express and your writing style can sometimes impress some folks, so doesn't hurt to put them out. If you have a website, that would be the best place to put them, otherwise CV should also be okay. But you shouldn't mention it under 'publications' or something, coz that's misleading. 
It never hurts to reach out to professors. But you should know that the response rate is going to be very low. Your email should be very polite, something that doesn't require much time to read, and there's a clear question at the end for the professor, so they know what you expect. Anything that requires additional effort is only going to reduce your chances of getting a reply. I used to write a simple email -- 'I read your paper X, and had this idea/question Y about it. Would it be okay if I share my views with you via email?' And then at the end of the email, I would also mention what i am doing in life right now and that i plan to pursue a phd in this domain.
Some profs have a separate page on their website on how to reach out to them, so make sure you follow anything that you find there. You can also find some generic advice from good faculty members who have written from their personal experience on what works and what doesn't. Just google about it. 
If you don't already have a direct contact with potential advisors, you should definitely reach out to faculty members via email. A good time to do that might be during the summers, or the start of the fall term, so you have enough time to build some rapport via email exchange, before you get to the admissions deadline. 
Another good way to get in touch with potential advisors is by attending conferences, so that's another option that you can explore. 
 
CV is probably not that important. Your statement, recommendations or any personal references will make most of the difference. About bragging/egotistic, it requires multiple cycles to get it right, the idea is to write whatever comes to your mind, as extensive as possible, and then iterate over it, while collecting feedback from others.
About individual research/studies, ideally you should write anything that relates to the area where you are applying. But practically, the point of writing anything is either to show that your work had a very tangible output (for e.g., a publication, or a real world deployment), or you learned something from your experience. An independent study might satisfy the second condition. Whatever you write about it should not be something trivial or generic, but something that shows that you indeed worked hard which allowed you to develop this understanding. 
 

No problem. Best of luck for the interview and let me know how it goes.
 

Thank you! I'm shocked. I'm from a small town in western Kansas that no one has heard of, with the worst funding in the state. In my town, everyone goes to the hometown college and it was a big deal to even move 3 hours away. My mom sobbed when she found out I got in. She had me really young and gave up her education for me.  I feel overwhelmingly grateful today. 

My background is not in neuroscience, so I can't help you with that. But I have been in the same situation as you (moved from engineering background to human-centered computing) and know many other who have done something similar (maths to information science, computer science to finance, etc.). 
So just make sure that when you prepare your statement, highlight the factors that motivated you to choose this field, what prepares you for the field, what are the gaps that you see in terms of your skills, and you have filled them up/plan to fill them up. 
From what you have written, it seems like you have all of this in mind, so just remember to also highlight this in your statement. I am pretty sure many people do a switch similar to what you have described, and it's a matter of convincing everyone else that you know what you are saying, and understand what you are getting yourself into. 

While that is definitely one way to go about it, some schools also have an empirical/historical idea of attrition rate, and they hire a few extra students to account for that. Most schools do this for master's program where students are admitted in larger numbers, and most student are admitted generally and not to specifically work with one faculty member. But some schools do this for PhD admissions as well. And of course, some times they do end up having a few extra students more than what they expected, but usually they are able to accommodate everyone. 

I don't why most people are projecting it as a binary choice -- to complete it or to give it up. Have you considered the possibility of a middle ground?
A colleague of mine was an international Ph.D. student in the US, got married in between, partner couldn't travel because of visa issues, so the colleague wrapped up their course requirements and moved to their home country to live with their partner. They found a nice job back home -- the work aligned with the broad theme of their Ph.D., and they continued to work on their thesis, interfacing with their advisor and their lab through skype, etc. They were still enrolled in the Ph.D. program, but their advisor was no longer funding them so they had more freedom and continued to work at their pace. Of course, their Ph.D. was in computing, so it was possible to work remotely as you don't need any fancy lab equipments or apparatus for your work. 

Based on what you have described in your post, you might be able to work out something similar. Instead of spending all of the next 3-4 years, you can also break it down into chunks -- spend the next year or so gearing towards your goal, and becoming more independent, so that you can easily move to your home, and then work remotely from there. And since your partner already has a job in the home country, I believe that is not your major concern, and you could also just focus on completing your Ph.D. while also being by their side. 
 

Hey Guys, 

I am from the CS background, and I just came here to tell you that I love looking at this thread. There are so many of you out there together, helping each others out -- well mostly sharing anxieties I guess?  
And it seems like this thread is one of the longest ones on the forum. Keep going guys, and I wish you all good luck, hope you all get in. 
 

Hey Guys, 

I am from the CS background, and I just came here to tell you that I love looking at this thread. There are so many of you out there together, helping each others out -- well mostly sharing anxieties I guess?  
And it seems like this thread is one of the longest ones on the forum. Keep going guys, and I wish you all good luck, hope you all get in. 
 

Hi, 

I am an international student, and I was also admitted to multiple programs. The dates wouldn't have allowed me to attend all of them, so I just chose to visit my top school. Reflecting on that decision, I feel that I should have visited all the schools, to really make an informed decision. 
So if you have that option, I feel you should do that as well. 

If you don't have that option, there are a couple of other things you can try -
- Reach out to the schools, explain your situation and ask if it is possible for you to visit at an alternate time (may be during the first week of April?). I know many people who have taken that path, and the schools have been more than happy to oblige by setting up a custom visit weekend for them (ultimately, they do want you to come)
- The other option is to do all the legwork by yourself -- reach out to your PI or the program coordinator, ask them to connect you with current students, students from your lab, may be some other faculty member if you want to talk to them? Basically try to connect to as many people as possible, to find out whatever matters to you and helps you make the decision. 

I am assuming that the interview is in the context of admission to a program. 
Some of the questions that you should be prepared to answer -- 
- Tell me more about your background (make sure you cover the part that is relevant to the program and/or the faculty member, and not just cover everything in it)
- A project of your liking (again cover something related to the program)
- Why have you applied to this program (say something specific to the program/school/faculty, and not the usual generic response)
- What other schools you have applied to, and what is your priority (try to answer this as honestly as possible without blowing up your chances  )
- What do you expect out of the program

While there may or may not be a direct question around this, it is a good idea to read up the faculty's work, and try to relate some of your ideas/past experience with that, and just casually cite their work to let them know that you have read their work. 

People who excuse their rudeness as a dislike of stupid people... Get over yourself. You aren't that smart. Also, being smart doesn't mean you can't respond to people with grace. Being rude because you think you're smarter than everyone is just a sign of narcissism. 
This isn't aimed at anyone. I just saw it on a t-shirt someone posted on facebook. As someone most people would classify as "smart" I think that this attitude is toxic. And it's usually perpetrated by people who aren't actually that smart in the first place, haha.