fuzzylogician

Sounds like you're all set -- your I-20 says that you have sufficient funding from your school, so there is no reason why anyone would want to see proof of extra funds (unless you have dependents who are getting a F-2 visa, in which case you may be asked to show that you can fund their stay). You could get a copy of the affidavit of support from your department, just in case, but it should already be clear from your I-20 that this support is guaranteed. [disclaimer: I am NOT an immigration expert]

This sounds suspiciously like a homework assignment. This forum is dedicated to advice for students applying to graduate school and students attending graduate school. It is not meant for help with homework. I suggest you consult your teacher.

You truly baffle me. There is just one course of action available to you here, there is nothing to think about. You are letting these people psych you out. It should be abundantly clear that you should not go to A, if for no other reason than for how they treated you (if I take your word for it, but seeing how you are blowing this discussion out of proportion, I wouldn't be surprised if you are also over-interpreting how they treated you). But regardless, there is another reason -- funding. Seriously, just do it.

I see -- that clears it up. Can he say "shovonreza exhibited curiosity and enthusiasm and spent his free time in my lab" or "shovonreza contributed to projects X and Y and has interesting ideas about Z"? That is, what did your hanging out in the lab include? If he can attest to your abilities that would make it a great LOR. If he can only say you were interested but can't actually talk about your potential to succeed, as evidenced by your past work, that would make it a less strong letter but given the alternatives it may still be a good choice.

I worked longer hours during the coursework stage of grad school, then realized that I couldn't possibly continue to work so much and stay healthy and slowed down some, some time in my second year. After that I feel like I had a good balance and I felt like it was both healthy and productive. I am a night person so a 9-5 schedule wouldn't really work for me, but I made sure to have a life in addition to my work. The dissertation stage allows you a lot more freedom. For someone like me, who doesn't need a lab for most of her work, this meant that I could really work on my own schedule and take breaks whenever I needed to. The only time when things got completely crazy again was right towards the end. Between roughly April and July of my dissertation year I think I took maybe 5 days off altogether, because there was just so much to do. This doesn't mean that I worked nonstop the whole rest of the time, but work was always on my mind and I tried to make steady progress without getting distracted. The looming deadline gives you a different perspective.

I would just completely ignore that part of her message. I'd just say "Thank you for writing, I enjoyed our meeting a lot and I am looking forward to the opportunity of talking to you more once school starts in the fall." You don't have to make decisions about your rotations just yet and it's possible that you'll change your mind once the school year starts, so why say anything? Keep it short and positive.

The great thing about grad school (and to some extent, having an academic career) is that you can largely make your own schedule. If you're a morning person, you can work in the morning. If you're a night person, you can work at night. You can decide that weekends are off-limits or that you want to travel Wed-Fri and make up for that over the weekend. Grad school and research in general can take up as much or as little of your time as you let it. What's most important is to set boundaries and stick to them. If you decide that you want to only work 9-5, you can definitely do it. You need to make sure you actually work during that time, as opposed to wasting time on the internet. I've said before that I have gone as far as scheduling my sleep, housework, social events, etc. in my calendar; I find that it helps me have a balanced schedule, and it helps to be able to say "no, I am not free at that time, I already have something scheduled" if someone wants to schedule something at a time where I wasn't going to work. And you do need to keep in mind that occasionally you may need to cram before an exam or a deadline, but that will be the exception, not the rule. So -- doable, but you need to learn to set your boundaries and stick to them. It can be hard, but it helps if you are conscious of it.

School 3 sounds best to me. Interests often change during school and a masters project should not lock you into the same subfield for a PhD, as long as you can still talk about your interests in a coherent way in your SOP. Probably you will want to find an angle on your project that will allow you to say "I worked on X, which allowed me to strengthen my background/skills in Y and Z. For my PhD, I want to concentrate more on W, which my background with Y,Z makes me suited for. W and X interface in whatever ways; my strength in X will make my uniquely qualified to contribute to W because blah." It's fine if there is also an aspect of your project that is less relevant. You are allowed to grow and change your specialty. (Of course, you didn't mention your field so this is a bit speculative, but I have yet to hear of a field where a masters project dictates the whole rest of your career.) School 1 seems not great because of your gut feeling about the people. I would trust it. School 2 might be good but the funding situation makes it difficult. At the end of the day, I think the people are the most important and the topic is less so. This is just a masters project, so it's not like you'd spend that long on it anyway. You don't want a topic that you are completely uninterested in, but I'd rather take a project that does not perfectly match my interests over working with someone who I don't get along with any day.

Whatever you do, do not lie. You are also not required to reveal information that no one asked you about. Answer all their questions truthfully but concisely. It may be wise to think ahead of time of a clear explanation for what you do, in case someone does look you up or ask what this "security research" is about. I think there is a high likelihood that you will need to go through TAL. It sucks, but really all it means is that processing of your visa (and all subsequent visas--keep that in mind!) will take longer. So I suggest you get started as soon as possible. [disclaimer: I am NOT an immigration expert.]

There are quite a few existing threads that discuss your question from a general (not psychology specific) perspective. Here are a couple of links: For more general advice, check out (or search) the Officially Grads forum.

I am going to say the same thing as the 30 posters above me. Regardless of how much you think the administrators at A are mad at you, the chances that they will "badmouth" you to B (and say what, exactly?) are miniscule. It would reflect poorly on them. They have exactly nothing to gain by doing it. You are not that important or that special, they deal with lots of students all the time; they may be pissed or even outright mad, but they will get over it. You have only one option here: Accept B's offer, get confirmation, and rescind from A. It is very simple. Even if all the terrible and unlikely things you are imagining will come true, this is still your only real course of action. You should not go to A, who is treating you poorly before you even got there, and is not even giving you any funding for the pleasure. If A does cause your offer from B to be rescinded, you won't be any worse off than you are now, given that A is not a viable option anyway. So just go ahead get this over with. The longer you take to make a decision, the bigger deal you make of it, the harder it will become. You are giving A too much power, and you need to stop that and do what is clearly best for you.

It's generally not a bad idea, though it's better if the majority of your LORs come from people in your field. It does mean that the adcom won't know him and therefore it might carry somewhat less weight than a letter from someone the adcom knows and trusts, but in the end a strong letter is a strong letter, and that matters most. In this case, I am not sure how come this professor can write you a stellar LOR, since you say you took just one course with him and it was in freshman year. What does it mean that you know him personally? It makes me a little bit suspicious.

Done.

So you're saying that unreviewed proceedings papers cannot be turned into articles to be submitted to peer-reviewed journals? If you can do both, then the entire spiel above about getting the paper into the best possible venue becomes redundant. The proceedings paper just becomes a step along the way in turning the paper into a peer-reviewed journal publication. The usefulness of the step is in getting your work out there more quickly, and as I mentioned some proceedings can be considered quite prestigious. Of course, if one precludes the other you should go for the best possible venue. And you should always try to get peer-reviewed publications out of every work you have, regardless of whether you also have a proceedings paper.

At least in my field having a non-peer-reviewed conference proceedings paper does not affect one's ability to also submit the same paper to a peer-reviewed journal (often after some revisions for style/content have been made, stemming from the fact that proceedings papers tend to have a low page limit whereas journals have a much higher page limit). Some proceedings can be quite prestigious, though they are obviously less prestigious than a journal publication. They can be a good way to get started and be productive, since proceedings often come with a submission deadline, unlike journals, which allow you to submit any time. That said, OP, if this seems like too much work and isn't worth the effort, you could take the paper and submit it to a journal making only the revisions you deem necessary. Maybe the reviewers won't request some/all of the changes you are currently being asked to make. Withdrawing from the proceedings isn't a big deal. More generally a R&R counts as a rejection in my field (but with the promise that if you make the changes and resubmit, the paper will go back to the same reviewers you had in the previous round). You are not required to make the changes, you can always decide to start over with another journal.

Please do not cross-post the same question in multiple forums. Click here to reply:

^This. MIT is so much richer, you can't even begin to compare. There are a lot more opportunities there. That said, McGill is also very good, at least in my field, and would be considered "top tier," if that actually mattered for anything. They are both very good schools. I find these rank comparisons kind of useless, though -- you should always relativize this question to a particular domain (better placement record in X? More publications in top-tier journals in Y? More grant money?), and once you do, there are usually better ways of determining the answer than just looking at rankings.

Can you write back and ask how to handle the situation, since you've been promised the TA assignment but haven't received the paperwork yet? I'm sure you're not the first person to have had this problem. I'd assume they will have you hold off on filling out the forms until after you get whatever official approval you require. No reason why they would want to do the work twice or have information that is not current.

Your SSN is for life. If you already have one, you're all set. You don't need to apply for a new one.

Consult with your advisor. My guess is that this would be serious enough to warrant an attempt at a change of schedule, but this probably varies by department.

A link to a relevant discussion (with more links):

Your question is, "no offense" but are all students from China dirty/loud/otherwise bad roommates? The answer is no, there is no such generalization. No one can predict how the one Chinese person you will meet will be. However, I think it's a safe bet that if you assume you will not get along and that they are a bad roommate, that won't help. Just go in open minded and see what happens.

Publication >> No publication Publication in good journal >> publication in ok journal >> publication in obscure journal If the paper can be improved so it appears in a better known journal, that's better. We all can't know what the chances of that are or how much work it would take, but it's worth thinking about before submitting the paper as-is to an obscure journal. Obviously, though, having any kind of publication would be great, as opposed to not having any.

It doesn't matter when you submit. What matters is when you did the work. Along with the others, I would recommend aiming as high as possible with this. If you get rejected, you can always then submit to a lower ranked journal. Three years should be a long enough time to go through the review process, even if you need to do it twice. Since it sounds like you are off to an MA program, I would consider whether or not it would be beneficial to have someone from your new school look the paper over and see if there are ways of improving it so it goes in as good a venue as possible. A good publication will help you more than a publication in an obscure journal, even if it means that you spend a few more months polishing the paper or doing some more work on it.

I would strongly advise against going into debt for a PhD. The job market is in miserable shape and the last thing you want is to be in debt and have a degree that can't get you a good job. You should ONLY do a PhD if you are ok with not getting a job in academia after you graduate, and possibly not getting a job at all related to your education, and even then ONLY if it's funded. Do NOT take out loans for this, it will NOT be worth it. I can't stress this enough. I would also advise against getting an unfunded MA, for the same reason. It's less debt, but it's again a qualification that won't likely get you a job. If the only three options are the ones you listed above, then take the teaching job, regroup, apply again later if you still want the PhD.