fuzzylogician

Just like I suggested in the other thread, ask your advisors and current graduate students in your department, if there is a graduate program. Talk to graduate students of your potential advisors and ask all the tough questions. Skype/phone is better than email. Graduate students are normally very forthcoming, if you ask very direct questions. They may not say anything negative, but look out for lack of positive opinions about a person. Publications and grants tell you something about a person's success in their research, but not about what kind of advisor they are. Talk to them about that and also to their students.

If you have a spouse, the J-1 is significantly better than the F-1 because it will allow your spouse to work. If you are not married then the differences are much smaller; the J-1 is maybe still more convenient locally but you should find out if there is a restriction on how long you can be on it. If there is one, then getting a post-doc in the US could become more complicated because I think many times you get a J visa, not a H1B. You should ask the international students office at your new university. Maybe there are other differences I am not aware of. FWIW I could choose between the F and J when I arrived, and I chose the F. So far I am as happy with it as I think I would have been with the J.

The best way to get a feel for how a certain professor is viewed in your field is to ask others what they think about him/her. This will not give you an objective answer by any means (for that people above have suggested publications and the h-index) but you'll certainly get very interesting responses. If someone is well-known, graduate students at your current school should know the person at least by name. Maybe they've seen the person present at a conference or met them at a visit and can offer stories of how the interactions went. Professors will know more, and if you ask strategic questions you could get information that will be helpful. You want to ask how X is regarded in the field, what X currently works on (if your advisor knows), if your advisor has seen X give a talk and how they came across, and if they can think of previous students of X. All those things will give you some indication of what X is like. You could then just ask what X is like, but you might not get an honest response. Still, it might be worth asking. Take rumors and personal anecdotes with a grain of salt -- people have opinions about things they know nothing about all the time! Also, graduate students can often be very forthcoming. We don't want to have someone join our lab/department who will be unhappy and drag everybody down. I personally will not straight up say something negative about my professors (at least not in an email and before I know you) but there are ways of asking questions that can get that information across. In particular if the question is just about prestige, that's easier for students to talk about. Just ask and see what happens, and again take the replies with a grain of salt.

If you are going to start a 5 year program, no one will expect you to have a job or property in your home country, or much else that could be used to show ties. If you happen to have proof like Arezoo suggests, that would work, of course. Normally nothing much is asked for (unlike in the case of applications for tourist visas) because there is little you can show. Just be sure not to say anything during the interview that would make it seem like you want to stay in the US after graduation (e.g. say you plan on getting a job back in your home country).

It is certainly a great boost to someone's application to have published in a journal. Given the time it takes to do publishable research and get it through the publication process, you'd have to be very fast, very lucky AND start very early to have a paper by yourself before applying to grad school, or else be added to someone's existing project as a junior writer. I'd bet that the latter happens sometimes when a student works as an RA on a successful project; the former is less likely but I bet that if you look hard enough you'll find examples of that too. Either way, it's rare and NOT a requirement for getting admitted to a good program, though it helps a lot. More realistically, a conference presentation and proceedings paper will help a lot too.

$700 is doable only with roommates, as others said. From Kendall and Central you could walk to campus in maybe 15-20 minutes, depending on where you are coming from. On that budget, East Cambridge near Lechmere may also be something to consider, and you'll also be near a grocery store and within a decent walking distance from campus. Further out in Somerville will also be cheaper, but the commute will be significantly longer - probably more like 30+ minutes once you get further away from the T. On the other hand, some parts of Somerville are nicer to live in than the places that are close to campus but otherwise have nothing much going on.

I'm not sure what field you're in and how review articles work in it; this would be something to consult with your advisor about. In particular, before beginning such a project you'd want to make sure that it's the logical thing to do to help your CV and career along. It may be the case that writing a review article isn't really the best strategy, and instead it would make more sense to invest your time in some side project that would yield publishable results but would not necessarily be your dissertation project. This is something that an experienced professor who knows you, your progress and your field will be able to give you better advice on than we can here, since we don't have any of that information. In addition, you should find out how review articles work in your field; in mine it's not really something you just write; instead you get invited to do so and normally these things are done by experienced professors, not graduate students.

I'm going to guess here that the presentation style in philosophy may be totally different than it is in linguistics, but if it were me I'd make whatever changes are necessary between when my abstract was accepted to the conference and when I present (including radical changes like "you may have noticed that my abstract says that I will argue for "X", but in fact today I will be arguing that "not-X," based on new evidence that I have recently discovered. I am happy to take questions about this during the discussion period"). The rationale being that any natural development of the same project is fair game, and that I want to present my best research at the time of the presentation, not at the time of writing the abstract; projects develop and sometimes things change. It's rare that changes are radical, but I've had that happen too. Same goes for having N arguments in my abstract and choosing to present only a subset of N, for clarity or for time reasons. I think the best advice is to present the argument in the way that is the most compelling for the audience.

I'm actually not exactly sure what definitions you are using - in particular, I'm not sure what you mean by "phrase marker" here - but clearly "just" is not required in this sentence, because "I have arrived" is also a grammatical sentence. Therefore "just" is not a necessary part of the sentence --> it is not a complement. Instead, "just" appears to be modifying "arrived," so the VP here would be "just arrived," with "just" acting as a time adverbial or modifier of the action described by V. "have" is tense/aspect and occupies the Tense node (I or T, whichever you prefer), and "I" is a subject in the specifier of that same projection. So we have here: [TP I [T have [VP just [V arrived]]]]. Does that help?

This looks like a copy-pasted email that was sent to god knows how many dozens of professors. You'll get more serious replies if you do some of the leg work yourself. Right now it's just a very vague list of too many potential interests.

Many undergrads live around Kendall. It's walking distance but honestly a little boring. Grad students also live further out - in Central Square, Harvard Square, Porter Square and Davis Square. Those neighborhoods are near the T and therefore accessible from/to MIT. Other neighborhoods that are cheaper include Inman Square, Union Square and Teele Square. My personal favorite is Inman. Prices vary depending on number of roommates and proximity to the T, among other things. If you bike, you might want to check out the topography of the area; some places in e.g. Union and Porter are up hills that can be unpleasant to bike up.

All - you're welcome, but it seems to me there may be others who also get too excited occasionally when posying here. I hope you all take this opportunity to calm down and keep the discussion pleasant for all participants.

Guys, thismessageispaidforby... has been temporarily suspended for using offensive language. I hope everyone else can stay civilized. I don't enjoy using such strong interference in threads but this was getting excessive.

1. You'll get a formal document from your university stating on the one hand the expected costs at your school and on the other hand the amount that the school will pay you. If the second offsets the first, you're set. Otherwise the school will ask you for a bank statement for the remaining amount and consequently the statement you'll receive from the school will have fields like XXX funding from school, YYY self-funding, where the total XXX+YYY will be the total cost of going to the school. 2. You need to have your SEVIS number before you can apply for a visa. The SEVIS number is written on your I-20 so unless your school can tell you what it is in advance of your receiving the I-20 and the financial statement, you'll have to wait. Either way, you'll need these documents before you can do an interview at the US embassy. 3. I don't think you need to apply for the I-20 separately, as far as I recall the process for issuing it was initiated by the international students office at my school after I accepted the offer and without me doing anything about it. They contacted me about the financial statement I mentioned and then sent me the documents together once they were ready.

If you mean someone to help with your English, write the paper yourself and pay an editor to correct any problems. If you mean someone to help with content, that would have to be someone you know like a professor or a colleague.

It sounds like a legitimate reason to leave and reapply. If your SOP explains things that way and you get strong supportive letters of recommendation from your advisor and other professors at your current school, I think you shouldn't have any trouble because of this issue.

Congrats and good luck!

PM sent. If anyone knows of other applicants who went through a similar accepted-then-declined story with Santa Cruz, I'd be very interested in hearing about the details.

I do, unfortunately. But the nature of the situation and the attempts at lies and deception that followed my discovery of the cheating quickly took away any bad feelings I initially had. You have done nothing wrong -- they have. You should not feel bad about taking action. You're not being unfair to these students. Rather, you are being fair to the rest of the class who actually spent the time doing the assignment and being honest. Remember this when the proceedings wear you out (there will probably be a long process of fact finding and appeals following you report), and also make sure you have support from the instructor in charge or your advisor, just in case. You did the right thing by reporting these students.

Phonolog, this all sounds terrible, but I don't understand what happened exactly. The only way this makes any sense to me is if you're an international student. They've been having problems with funding for international students going at least as far back as when I applied (PM me if you want the details). It sounds like something like that has happened again, but they are handling it very poorly. The only other reason I can think of something like this happening is if the department accepted you but the graduate school at UCSC decided you don't meet the general university requirements. I think it's important to point out that this doesn't necessarily need to reflect badly on your POIs because they are probably powerless in the situation, but it definitely sounds like they are not being clear about what is going on. Even if you have already decided not to attend UCSC, for your own future peace of mind I would strongly encourage you to follow this through and find out what went wrong. The best way to get to the truth is to talk to someone on the phone - probably either Sandy Chung (the graduate program director) or Jaye Padgett (the department chair). I would encourage you not to take no for an answer. Regardless of how this plays out, in the future you'll feel better about knowing you didn't just let them rescind your offer without asking all the difficult questions. Finally, I wish you luck with your last pending school!! Such bad luck must be offset by a good amount of good luck, too.

Listen, you need to just be direct and ask. It again sounds like an email a department would send an admitted student, but you should just make sure. "I'm sorry but I'm still a little bit confused. Have I been officially admitted to your department?"

Sounds like an acceptance to me, but if it was sent to 22 students then maybe it's only a list of finalists but not necessarily admitted students. 22 would be quite a large cycle - too large for the ling programs I can think of. I think you should write back to thank them for the exciting email, and ask if this means that you're a finalist or that you've been admitted. There is no shame in asking for clarification!

It varies and depends on what I'm doing and what my needs are. Right now I meet with my advisor about twice a week; we have several things going at the same time - a workshop we're co-teaching, a paper we're writing together and a few experiments in different design/running stages. I also have my dissertation project that I sometimes need feedback on. When there's less going on, once a week or every other week has worked too, and I ask any questions I have via email. I have friends who prefer less frequent meetings with their advisors (e.g. only when they've hit a wall or have made significant progress) and they are happy that way, so it's all about what works best for you. The key for me is to know that my advisor is available and responsive when I need his help, and that we have a good working relationship and clear ways to communicate with each other.

Guys, please tone down your language. It's making the forum unpleasant and that's unacceptable. I'll be monitoring this thread and the users who post in it; I'd hate to have to suspend or ban anyone but I will if you don't stop this behavior on your own.

Well, I have a unique name (google it and you only find me). It's a combination of a first name from one language and a surname from another language, both not clearly Western. People do just fine with my surname but normally aren't sure what to do with my first name. They often assume I'm male and from a completely different culture than I am, and will pronounce it with an incorrect stress pattern (which I wouldn't mind except often it means I don't recognize what people are saying as my name). So for everyday things I have a starbucks name and for anyone who actually needs my name I will spell it and in the end it'll work out. So honestly for my everyday life I often think it would have been much simpler if I had a simple common name. For academic things I think it's helpful to have a recognizable last name such that if it appears in a citation you immediately know it's me. I think that is indeed an asset and I don't think I'd want to change it. But I don't think I would change my name just to make it unique if I had a common name.