fuzzylogician

I'll bite one last time because having a debate with a troll is not exactly the best use of my time. Good linguistics programs (like the ones people on this board are applying to) offer full funding for their students, including a tuition remission and a decent stipend. Go spread your negativity where it is relevant (=not here), and leave the misogynist remarks out of it if you want to be taken seriously.

(I've been away for a bit, so a collective congrats(!!) to everyone who got acceptances and interview invites, and |fingers crossed| for those who are still waiting!)

Another current trend suggests an overwhelming # of misogynists, especially ones who deny that they are sexist, like to point out the number of women in different professions as a way to devalue them.

Before you make your decision, you should have a meeting with the prospective advisor(s) at this other school. It's one thing to have interesting research, but it's in my opinion far more important to have an advisor who you get along with. If you can't visit in person, at least have a Skype conversation with them. Make sure that you can carry a conversation and that you have compatible views about expectations from your as a student and from them as an advisor. Also talk to other students in the lab about their experience and how they like the work and the advisor. These conversations can be very revealing and sometimes you might learn that someone whose work is very exciting is not a good match for you because of your personalities. This is something that happens on a personal level so requires some in-person interaction, at least as a phone conversation. Personally I think it's infinitely better to work on a less interesting topic with someone you enjoy working with than to have a very exciting topic but an advisor who makes you hate your life. Your interests will change and evolve over time, but your advisor will have a lot of influence on your life and should be someone who you get along with. That said, assuming that you get along with this potential advisor and you find their research more interesting, I think you don't need to feel obliged to stay with your current professor. Do what's best for your career.

Can you submit a cover letter with your application? Or include some text in an email if it's submitted that way? If so, I'd put the references on a separate page and not worry about the word limit, and say something to the effect that you weren't sure from the description of the grant whether or not a full references list should be included, so you are attaching one to the application as an appendix. If one is not necessary, please ignore that page (or: you are happy to submit a revised version without that page).

That is true for sure. You can't refer to other people's ideas without giving them credit. I understood the question as asking about including a separate reference list spelling out the full information of each in-line citation.

The one time I had a similar situation (a one page limit, not a word limit, but still it was pretty limiting) they did not want references. I wrote things such as "I build on research showing that the earth is round (Smith 1345, White et al. 1566) and more current research showing the effects of the moon's gravitational force on tides in Mozambique (Black 1999, Black et al. 2001) and argue that, in fact the earth is oval shaped." Even though I didn't include full references for these citations, I don't think this is plagiarism since it clearly attributes existing work to its authors. That said, I agree that you want to ask and get an answer one way or the other. I basically did what other successful applicants did before me, and it worked for me.

Business schools and PhD programs are very different beasts. Business schools (as in, MBAs) are something you pay for and you do as an investment in your future. They are not usually funded by the school, though some people might get their work to cover their tuition. PhD programs, especially the ones at top schools, will fund their students. This would include the tuition, some reasonable stipend, and health insurance. Usually the offer is for X number of years and it's highly advisable to finish the PhD within that time. If your funding runs out, different schools handle it differently. At some you could take a leave of absence to work on your research without getting paid, then come back to defend. At some, you could be hired as an instructor and that helps pay some tuition and fees, perhaps get you health insurance. Some schools have reduced tuition for students who are done with everything but their dissertation. At yet others, there is not much to do and you'd have to pay full tuition. If you attend a private school, that could be in the 30-40K range a semester, and maybe 10-20K (or more!) for public schools, which are all pretty expensive. If you are concerned about not finishing on time, there are two kinds of questions to ask. First, how long to people usually take to graduate (also: what percentage of students graduate vs. drop out), and second, what happens if you need more time than the funding offer is for? The schools you're applying to should have answers to both of these questions.

There are online calculators that can help you get some idea of the cost of living in different places. I think it's also very helpful to talk to the graduate students. They will usually be very honest about how far the money goes. It's tricky with a family because you have other considerations like school districts and work for your spouse to consider. I'd ask to talk to current students who are married and/or have a family to get their opinions in particular. There should be some, though perhaps not many such students in each program. In fact, I'd be somewhat concerned if *no one* in a particular program had a family and would want to know if it's just a fluke or if this is a program that is not family-friendly. Re: not teaching in the first two years, I think what it means really depends on the person. Any way you look at it, it helps not to have to worry about teaching and be able to concentrate on just your research. But if you teach, it matters what your teaching load is like. E.g., would you TA or be instructor of record? How much grading would be involve? Are there materials already prepared that you could use, or would you have to develop your own materials for each class? How many students would you have? These considerations could entail very different amounts of work. It furthermore matters what your post-graduation plans are. If you might want to have teaching-centered jobs (at community colleges, liberal arts colleges, etc) then having the extra experience is more important than if you want to go into industry or a research-heavy academic job. I personally went for the offer with the least amount of teaching (not for that reason, really, but still) and I think it was very beneficial for me. The main downside was that I had to actually go out of my way to gain some teaching experience, but on the other hand it was paid, and I had a lot of influence on how and when it was scheduled.

Is there any chance you know someone who has applied before (preferably someone who actually won the grant) who would be willing to share their proposal with you? If you know such a person, email them and ask. People are often very generous; I've received proposals from others this way and I've shared my own with people who've asked. It's extremely helpful to see a proposal that was funded. If not, I think these are questions that you need to ask of your advisor or other professors. Expectations may vary depending on the grant/fellowship and the field so it's hard to give an answer without knowing more details. Do you know who will be reading your proposal? Is it people in your subfield/field or people from other fields, or non-academics? You probably want to pitch things very differently depending on your target audience and the description of the grant. If it were me, I'd probably spend more time describing the scope of the project and why it's important and less on the actual details for something this short. This is assuming that most of the time in these situations, and especially given how short the proposal is, at least some people evaluating it will be non-experts, so you want to hold their hands and help them see why your project matters. I'm also assuming that there is some other place to justify why you need the money and roughly what you'll do with it. I think it's fair to contact the grant admin person and ask about the references; if I had to guess, I'd not include references if they weren't asked for. But again, these things depend.

I am now debating whether to submit an abstract to a conference that costs ~$350 in registration fees. Right now, I'm leaning towards 'no.' It's different if you're in a field where grant money covers these expenses (like CS), but to me that seems unreasonable as someone who usually attends conferences whose registration fees are in the $50-75 range. I have to say, though, that norms vary widely across fields in this respect.

I mean, you don't have to, but why not? In cases when I sent these emails before I made my final choice (I was debating between my two top choices and decided I was definitely not accepted some other offers) I think without exception the professor would write back and wish me luck and also ask what offer I ended up accepting. Your affiliation is not a secret, so I didn't see a reason not to share.

Generally prepare as you normally would prepare for any interview. Read up on the department and have questions prepared about that; polish your answers to questions like "tell us about yourself" and anything to do with your research interests or past projects; read up some on the work of potential advisors so you know what their interests generally are. You don't need to read papers by every person on the faculty or even have specific questions in mind for each POI, just have an idea of what they generally do. If you are being interviewed by someone with a very different specialization they will not expect you to know the specifics of their research because it's just not relevant to why you may or may not attend their school. Keep in mind that when talking to smart people from outside your (sub)field, it's important to better define the parameters of the discussion - e.g. why is your research question interesting, what has been said about it, what technical terms mean. Assume that they will understand what you say but that they don't know the specifics of your problem because that's not what they think about on a daily basis. Being able to explain your research/research interests to a non-specialist is very important.

Unless things have changed recently, there is some amount they cover for domestic students and some (sometimes larger) amount they cover for international students, but it's not actually enough to cover an international flight. However, you can combine funding from several schools, if you are lucky enough to have several acceptances, to cover the cost of the trip to the US and travel in the US. Of course, this is only possible after acceptance. They won't offer reimbursement if you're visiting on your own initiative pre-acceptance. On the other hand, contacting schools to try and arrange visits while you're in the area seems legitimate to me, and at the very least they might be able to tell you (roughly) when to expect a decision so that you can better plan your travels. Once you have one acceptance/open house and are starting to make travel arrangements, I think it's fair to contact schools to ask about their process and expected timeline so that you can plan accordingly.

Partly it's because specific departments do acceptances, but it's the graduate school that does the rejections. Acceptances need to be approved by the graduate school too, but accepted students are normally contacted by the departments earlier on about the good news. You probably wouldn't want to unofficially contact someone about a rejection, for legal reasons. The graduate school appears to first take care of acceptances and then rejections, which makes some sense since there are fewer acceptances and there is other bureaucracy that needs to get started once a student is admitted (e.g. immigration docs for international students, all kinds of funding issues, etc). There are (unofficial) waitlists that some departments utilize. The form rejection emails somehow don't seem to be high on anyone's to-do list. But yes, universities can be much better about informing applicants of outcomes.* * This is also true when applying for jobs post-PhD, btw. Normally you never hear back at all, you just find out that others moved on to an interview round that you didn't and figure things out from there. There are wikis, kind of like the gradcafe results website, where people update what they know about different jobs. If others got an interview invite and you didn't, well, then, you do the math. Or, you might find out that someone else got the job that you interviewed for, and no one bothered to let you know. It sucks, but happens pretty often.

Everything TakeruK said. This happens, and I have to say the new plan sounds much better to me than the original. It's much better to have a thesis that is smaller is scope but is tight and actually works. It's good that you found out about this now and that you can still work to change what you're doing. It always happens after the fact that we find things that aren't perfect in our work (or, you know, that are plain wrong) but I have a policy of not writing up things that I already know are wrong. Writing a lit review and proposing a study to follow up on your current work seems like a very respectable MA thesis to me. Especially if you're working on something that hasn't been done before and you're taking the time to carefully define the parameters of the study. That is a very important component of any research. My advice is going to be on a very practical level. First, you deserve a day or two off to be upset about this big change that you have to make and the part of your work that will be lost. That sucks. But pretty soon you'll need to regroup and come up with a plan for what you're going to do now. I think it'll probably be good for you to think about that by yourself first and have a meeting with your advisor with the express purpose in mind of devising a new schedule. Come with a draft and be ready to make changes. In this meeting or soon after, I think it'd be good to have your advisor/committee's express agreement to what the new project is going to be about, so there are no surprises later on. That is, spell out what is required and make sure that it's doable in the time that you have left. The next step from there is kind of up to you and what would be easier for you. For me personally, when this kind of thing happens I feel better if I am able to take what I already have and transform it so I know what's already done. It feels good to know that X chapters or X experiments are ready and written up, and it helps me to know how the part I'm going to work on next fits into the written piece. For others, it helps to just get the work done and worry about writing it up as a last step. Either way, I think it's good to choose a part of the project where you think you can make easy progress to just get that feeling of momentum going again. Good luck! It's hard but this is definitely doable. Two months is enough time to turn things around and end up with something you're proud of. Later, you can choose to continue working on it or change direction completely; you just need to get it done now, you don't need to worry about working on it for your PhD!

I don't think you're committing a faux pas. I don't think it's common to send thank you notes to POIs, though of course it's perfectly fine if they were helpful throughout the application process. I never did anything more than write them a nice short email letting them know how things turned out if I didn't end up accepting an admissions offer from their school. They were all appreciative of the follow up and were glad I ended up in a place that I was excited about. OP: as someone who used to host prospective students every year, most say thank you and bring a small gift, e.g. a chocolate bar or a snack from wherever they are from. Few later send a card, and we'd put it on the fridge and enjoy it for a while. I think a "thank you for hosting me" is fine, but a "I hope the program has a good feeling about me" is a little bit awkward. Just thank your host for their hospitality.

I kept it short and simple, Dear X, I am writing to let you know that I have chosen to accept an admissions offer from Uni Y. I wanted to thank you again for your support throughout the application process. I greatly enjoyed {meeting you / talking to you / corresponding with you} and learning more about your research. I look forward to meeting you (again) some time soon. All my best, -F. Logician

Lets just say that: # of people who think they are funny >> # of people who are actually funny Think you can pull it off? Good luck. I think it's much easier to piss someone off with a bad attempt at a joke than successfully make a good impression, but if you think you can beat the odds, go for it; but in the name of all that is holy, please have multiple people read it before you send it off.

I would actually be very concerned about choosing a committee member/chair who everybody who is more experienced in the program is advising against. It's one thing if it's some people but not others, and especially if he is serving on other committees and those people further ahead who are actually working with him can attest that working with this person leads to favourable results. It's a whole other matter if basically everyone who has recently worked with him is advising against it. In that case, I would think very carefully before going against their advice. That said, working with someone with high standards is not a problem per se, it's more a question of how it manifests itself. If he has high demands but lets you pass if you meet them, that's one thing. If his requests just get more and more demanding and you basically can't meet them, that's a different story. You want someone who pushes you throughout the process but then lets you finish, not someone who can't let go unless everything is perfect (because things rarely are, and students should get to graduate with imperfect theses, if they've met a certain standard). From your post, it's not clear what kind of person you're dealing with, but that's the kind of question I would try and ask the people who have been advising you against having this person on your committee. Some people don't like working with demanding advisors, but that can be very beneficial for your work as long as you get along with them and, as I said, they know when to let go.

Probably a more pertinent question is, do they know you're currently enrolled in another school for a PhD? If your application explains that you are looking to leave because of a bad fit, then I think it's kind of obvious that it would entail stopping your current program either after a semester or after a year, and in that case I don't think there needs to be any concern about leaving after a semester. I'm not even entirely sure why your programs would need to know about it at all, but either ways there are obvious reasons to explain why you left early if the whole purpose of reapplying is that the current school is not right for you. If you neglected to mention this detail, then the leave part is probably the least of your worries, the lying about already being in grad school is going to be the deal breaker.

Hi there, please don't cross-post the same question in 5 different forums. Your other posts have been removed. You can check the Results Search to see if anyone has submitted updates regarding the universities that you are interested in.

Sure, as long as it doesn't prevent you from submitting a better worked out version of the same work to a peer-reviewed journal. Contributing to a working papers or proceedings can be a good way to motivate yourself to get something written, which is nice, and it's a good way to get your CV going. But working papers and proceedings are not considered too prestigious* so if you have something decent, the end goal should be the best peer-reviewed venue that would take it. * With caveats, some can be pretty good, but still a peer-reviewed venue is almost always better.

Visit weekends have good things and bad things about them. Good: you get to meet everyone at the same time--including part of your potential cohort, you get to be wooed in a special way. Bad: you don't get to actually see what the place is like (this one is a big one, if you ask me), there is less attention to you. So yes, maybe you'll miss out on the special events and whatnot, but it's not like you won't get to go. You'll go and get a special dinner just for you, and more time for everyone to talk to you, and you'll get to see what things are really like on a normal day, not on the one day when everyone is on their best behavior. It'll be a much more realistic view of what it'd actually be like to attend school there. (And congrats for the invite -- either way, it's good news )

Alright, both of you stop.