fuzzylogician

That is awesome news! I am so happy for you, congratulations!!

It depends on the field and particular anthology and journal you are comparing (e.g., in CS the most prestigious publication venue is conference proceedings, not journals). Generally, anything that is peer-reviewed is better than a non-peer-reviewed venue. In my field, journals are normally considered better than edited volumes (with caveats for particular journals and particular books edited by particular scholars). However, if the anthology is widely circulated in your subfield and is well regarded, it may be a better choice compared to a journal that will yield less exposure for your work. This is really something you should consult with your advisor about, because they will know the specifics about the publication venues in your (sub)field and how well your paper fits with particular venues that your work might be suited for. Not knowing your work or the venues you are considering, I think it'll be hard for anyone here to give very specific advice in this case.

What the others said. Once you arrive, seek advice from the more advanced students. In particular, find out from them who the person is in your department who is in charge of the graduate program and actually knows all the requirements. It could be the DGS, someone in headquarters, the dept head or one or more of the professors. It may *not* be your advisor - professors are often not up to date on requirements and relying solely on their advice could mean you miss something important. If there is a grad handbook that lists requirements or if there is a portion of the department website devoted to it - read it thoroughly and remember to revisit it once in a while; it's easy to forget all the information that they tell you at the beginning of first-year.

Then just say that - you already have a job that you would hate to give up because this contract that you have been offered is only temporary while the job is not, but you are available (and willing) to teach 1-2 courses a semester. Sounds like a perfectly legitimate response to me.

Why worry about something that hasn't happened yet and is unlikely to be a problem to begin with? I have two thoughts: the first is that if you're denied visa, you should contact the international students office at your prospective school and get their help in dealing with the situation. None of us here are immigration experts. The second is that if you're denied, there is no reason to think that anything will change if you go back a second time with the exact same documents and same story. So you'll need to think why you were denied and work on collecting evidence to prove that they got it wrong and whatever they were worrying about is not a problem. At that point you should probably not be dealing with the embassy alone but rather get some help from an expert. But, again, these what-if debates are hard to make sense of without actual information.

There have been SO MANY discussions of this topic. Search the Applications forum. Generally speaking (and the other threads you should search for will illustrate the exceptions): GPA, GRE, TOEFL << LORs, writing sample, research experience, SOP BUT: for grades (of all kinds on the left) there is sometimes a cutoff you need to get above to even be considered and in some cases to get priority for funding and TA/RA assignments. For the intangibles, the ranking differs among fields and programs. A strong SOP and LORs will get you very far. In some fields the writing sample is crucial while in others it's not clear how important it is. Research experience and publications are good for proven research ability but mostly they will help you write a better SOP and get stronger LORs.

You're definitely not alone. See here:

Yes, do write and tell them how things worked out for you. They went to the trouble of writing letters for you - meaning, they supported your efforts - so the least you can do is tell them what the outcome is. You can choose to share anything from the whole list of acceptances/rejections to just the decision you made about where to do. It's also a good opportunity to thank your recommenders again; connections are a good thing to have, you should keep the ones you have. Just Chill gave a good suggestion for wording, though if it's a professor you have a good relationship with I might suggest being a little bit more enthusiastic and/or giving more details (e.g. "I wanted to share with you the outcome of my application process. I got admitted into Schools X and Y and have chosen to attend School Y. I wanted to thank you very much for your support throughout the process and for your letter of recommendation.") As for the subject line, you could say "(Update on) grad school decisions."

Try the Meet and Greet and the City Guide forums. You'll find a lot of relevant information there, whereas the Officially Grads forum is not meant for questions about cities or specific programs.

Congrats!

We don't have any formal status of "PhD candidate" but it took me 5 semesters (~2.5 years) to complete all the other requirements beside defending my dissertation (coursework and two qualifying papers, we don't defend a dissertation proposal). I'm not sure if that means I should choose "2 years" or "3 years" in your poll.

Well for starters I would want to know if this option is even allowed by both programs. Many either assume or require that you devote you time completely to studies in that program - so, either officially require that as part of what you sign on to when you join the program, or they just fill up your time completely so as not to allow you to do anything else without seriously slacking off on both sides. Assuming this is in principle possible, I would next want to know if anyone is actually doing anything similar or if anyone in recent history has done so, and if so how they pulled it off and how they are doing now. It'd be best if you can find a current student with relevant experience who you can ask all these questions. This should give you a good idea of how you might perform if you try to pull off something similar.

Not to state the obvious since you already said you want to be in the Western US, but there are great programs you are not considering that sound like they would be great at supporting your interests, including U Chicago, UMass, NYU, MIT, Rutgers.

There is some good advice in old threads:

You can certainly withdraw at any time but unless this coordinator is the person you'll be working with at this school, I'm not sure I would recommend giving up without a fight. If you have some other POI, try getting them to help you by involving them in the scheduling process. I think it's perfectly reasonable to say "I would like to have the interview some time before May (or by the first week of May or whatever), so I have all the information in front of me with enough time to make a decision about which school to attend. I have already received an attractive admissions offer from another school and I need to inform them of my decision some time in the near future" and follow that up with a reasonable set of suggestions for a meeting time. Right now you're also in a position to deliver a very soft threat of losing interest, which should be taken seriously (at least by your potential advisor). But I'd reserve that last suggestion for a later communication if this latest attempt doesn't succeed.

Advisors often don't know the specifics of courses you have to take. Get your department's handbook (or other official document where this is specified) and study it. Ask older students or the DGS. If you rely solely on the advice of your advisor, you may find that you're lacking a crucial requirement down the line. Only ask questions that aren't already clearly answered in these documents, or at least be prepared to be sent to read there instead of getting a helpful reply. That aside, I'm not sure asking her for course recommendations is particularly helpful. You could ask if there is anything she would like her students to take or recommends, but for more up to date recommendations about classes and teachers you should really go to other students. They will also be able to give you a real assessment of workload and whether anything is/isn't recommended for first-years. Things your advisor has more exclusive knowledge about might include - what would she like for you to do in first year (or by its end)? How much time should you devote to research (not classes)? How often would she like to meet with you? Is there any research goal you should obtain (join existing project, find your own topic for a small paper, try and submit to some conference, just concentrate on classes for a while, etc).

In that case, I have a bag of fresh high quality air I'd like to sell you.

Maybe Amazon Mechanical Turk? You can restrict participation to just in the US, but I'm not sure if it's possible to restrict to a particular state. You could ask about the participants' location but that would get you lots of data you can't use.

Welcome! Feel free to PM or ask on the forum if you have any questions I'm also curious to hear where others are going!

I recently participated in a panel discussion with professors who discussed this very question. Their answer - publish in diverse journals. Make sure your work is perceived as relevant to a wide audience and also don't give the impression that you can only work with one editor or editorial process.

1. Depends on the market and how much the landlord wants you as a tenant. Where I am at, I think it'd be difficult, if not impossible.Things move too fast and I don't think they'd normally be willing to wait that long without making a profit. But maybe you can just find a lease that starts at a time that works for you without having to negotiate - that's be better for everyone. 2. Yes, it's possible (I did it my first year). Again, you need to be able to have a landlord that wants you enough. I filled out everything and faxed it over, they called someone for a recommendation and they also met my roommate, who was already there. It ended up working out; I signed the lease in person when I got there, even though I'd already faxed over a signed copy much earlier, and they were ok with the arrangement.

Not knowing anything about your interests and how these programs will serve them, it's very hard to decide. Since you only provided concrete information about funding, the only advice I can give is the obvious one - the one-year program in Chicago will get into the least amount of debt of the options you listed. So now the question is whether or not this program will help you achieve your next goal (which should be more tenable than "ambassadorship" -- more like the positions that might one day lead to that). You didn't provide that information, so I don't know. Assuming it's not as good as the Georgetown program, you have to ask yourself if it's worth all that extra debt. Again, I can't know. But assuming you didn't apply to Chicago for no reason - that is, assuming that it goes at least a part of the way towards achieving your goals - it sounds like it makes more sense than the other options.