fuzzylogician

Bad personal fit with your advisor will make your life as a graduate student very hard to bear. If there is a person you really get along with at one school but no one similar at the other, that's an important factor in the decision. On the other hand, there are good reasons for wanting to have more than one potential advisor at a given school; it is possible that your advisor will leave the school (new job, denied tenure at current job?, illness) and you'll need to work with someone else, or you might find out that even though you get along now, at some point in the future some crisis will make the relationship difficult. Furthermore, you want to have possibly 2-3 other professors who are reasonably knowledgeable about your subfield, because at some point in the future you'll need to have a committee with 3-4 members to judge your dissertation (and maybe qualifying exams or papers, if those exist in your program). So it really depends on whether or not it's just this one prof at school A or if there are others that are reasonable matches in terms of research and personality fit.

This discussion is quite old but it's very relevant:

Given this state of affairs, I'd propose trying to schedule a time to talk to the professor at her convenience. I know that when I teach, sometimes I have another class or appointment right after class so I can't stick around to talk to my students even if they are waiting there for me. It's nothing personal, but the time right before/after class is not necessarily free time that students can just assume they can take up. As for the trash talk, I don't understand how you'll know in a few days. Are you going to draw a correlation between the admin decision and this potential trash talk? Is it not possible that this decision (whatever it turns out to be, and I hope it goes your way!) will be based on factors other than gossip?

It's hard to know exactly but it seems to me that you are making connections between (imagined) events where there are none. I'm wondering how it is that you know that trash talk is happening in the first place. Seems to me that the things you described could be chalked up to normal professor-student interactions--but your interactions with the married prof. needs to stop immediately and you need to stop trying to contact him, since he clearly is trying to avoid you. He might have been a potential inspiration in the past, but your (pl) actions have taken this opportunity off the table. As for getting short emails from another professor, that doesn't strike me as out of the ordinary and I'm not sure how to decide whether or not you're reading too much into someone "pretending not to see you" or avoiding you. Have you tried scheduling a meeting with this professor to talk about whatever questions you have, or are you just hanging out after class trying to talk to her? After class she may be busy and not have time to talk to students. Honestly even if a prof. was spreading rumors about you, it's hard to imagine another professor going out of their way to ignore you because of it. Furthermore, I think it's a stretch to imagine that the gossip got so out of hand that grad school admins are basing their decisions on it -- I really can't imagine the admins I know doing anything of the sort.

two full days in the department + one day to explore the city. Add plenty of time to arrive/leave without being in a hurry, and you're left with 3-4 days overall. More than 3-4 nights gets excessive, especially if you are being hosted by a grad student.

FWIW as far as I know I'm still waitlisted at one school (close to 5 years now!). Never got notified of acceptance/rejection. Some schools just suck at handling rejections.

This should give you some idea:

Generally I am all for leaving general advice for posterity (I do it all the time!) but I think it makes more sense to do it for general interest posts than rather unique situations that are unlikely to extend to anyone else who might be roaming the boards. But yes, fair enough, it's always better to help than not

I understand and appreciate the good will I just think it'd be a shame to spend time giving detailed advice to someone who's no longer here to read it!

It probably means that you were not accepted as part of the first round of admissions. Therefore it might either mean that you've been rejected but the rejection letter hasn't gone out yet, or that you're on a(n unofficial) waitlist and you won't be notified of a decision until the school finds out how many of its admitted students accept the offer and hence whether or not they can offer spots to students who are on the waitlist.

If your project uses a methodology that has already been approved and does nothing out of the ordinary - then yes. You do the training and you're essentially covered for all your "normal" everyday needs. Most students in my department will never need anything beyond this protocol to work with their language consultants or do behavioral experimentation. I'm also on other labs' protocols other than my department's, where the studies are more invasive (involve kids, or involve actually touching subjects and scanning them with EEG/MEG) and those projects required their own IRB approval, each.

Indeed. Some studies along these lines are completely non-intrusive and can undergo an expedited process or you can apply for an exemption. But whenever you work with people, you need to have your work approved by your university's IRB before you do anything. My department has an umbrella protocol that everyone who's undergone the mandatory human subjects training (CITI) is covered under. It covers many of the studies we do on a regular basis, like basic informant work, etc. OP - maybe your department has something similar that you could be added to with minimal effort, you should ask your advisor about that.

What s/he said. Choose according to fit, not according to what transcripts a school requires. And if you're serious about getting help, you should ask better questions. At the very least, tell us what degree you're applying for and in what field. Do you care about linguistics programs that didn't want all my transcripts? I suspect you don't.

This is such a broad question. Yes, some schools only care about transcripts from your degree granting institution (usually if all the credits transferred and also appear on that transcript). Occasionally we hear on the board about schools that don't care about colleges where you only took one class, or colleges that you attended during high school. You need to figure this out with the schools you want to apply to, but if you say it doesn't matter then why even bother with this question? Re: GRE, depends on how much studying you need to do and how much time you'll have to devote to your studies. You have a lot of time, assuming you want to apply during the next Fall application cycle, so you could schedule an exam for some time in the summer and therefore be absolutely sure you have enough time to prepare for the exam.

Any kind of work with human subjects requires approval from your university's IRB. That includes interviews as well.

You realize that this is a 6-month old post from a user who only posted this one question and then left the board?

This year's LSA institute fellows have been announced. Congrats to the winners! http://www.linguisticsociety.org/news/2013/03/07/linguistic-institute-fellows-announced

What is the goal of this interview? What kind of data are you supposed to collect and for what purpose?

Well, in that case clearly they think they can advise you on your stated research interests. All the more reason to meet with them and get the full picture.

School or department? Irrespective of advisor reputation? I can't tell you school name never matters (I'm sure it sometimes does) but at the end of the day I think there are other elements of fit that matter more, including department reputation and the advisor. Hiring committees are sensitive to that and are aware of strong departments even if they are at less known schools. Though yes, having the "brand name" never hurts, I'm sure. Either way, I think at the end of the day you need to have a good enough fit with your advisor/department to not suffer during your graduate school education, because if you're unhappy you're much less likely to produce good work. That may or may not be the better ranked school.

Send the letter and contact the professor at the same time. Let the prof know you've decided to accept the offer and are very excited about coming to the program next Fall. This might also be a good opportunity to ask about funding opportunities (RAships, TAships) if it's relevant, so you could mention it in the same email or in the follow-up once you get a reply from the prof about accepting the offer.

First of all, you need to visit school A and learn more about it. You should also read up on the labs and the research being done there, so you have all the information you need to make a decision. That said, if you want to go into academia then the ranking of the school is not a very important criterion for how you'll do on the job market. If anything, the department ranking matters more, but even more important will be your research and the recommendations that you'll get. So the important question is who will be your advisor at each school, what their placement record has been, and how well you two fit together (in terms of personality, not just research). To know that, at the very least you need to talk with your POI at both schools, but if you can meet with them in person that would be even better.

It's not rude to decline an offer after visiting a school. It sounds like this school might not be an ideal fit but it's still worth finding out why they admitted you in the first place (I assume your SOP mentioned the people who were gone, and the adcom was aware of that) -- meet with the faculty there and see if you can make it work. If so, it sounds like an overall better choice than the school that is not offering you any funding right now.

It's a perfectly legitimate question. You can politely ask if they will help with the travel costs and also mention that the timing is problematic because it's in the middle of the week. At my department we always get some prospective students visiting not during the open house, and I think they get treated just as nicely as anyone else. The experience is different because you'll miss the planned events and you won't get to meet your potential cohort, but other than that meetings with the faculty should be the same, and you'll get more of an opportunity to see how the department actually operates on a normal day. If you're worried that all the funded positions will be gone by the time you visit, initiate conversations with POIs ahead of time. Talk to them about your interest in their research and potential funding, and ask to continue the conversation when you visit. That should help quite a bit.

I'm not sure why trusting some LORs more than others is a sign that the process is unprofessional or involves nepotism, as you put it. Of course professors are likelier to trust a letter from someone they know - either because they are personal acquaintances or because this professor is well established in her field and has a strong record that can be trusted. Wouldn't you prefer to rely on the opinion of someone who you know and trust, or someone who has a proven track record of giving good advice (i.e., writing letters for students who have succeeded in your program in the past) compared to advice from someone who you've never met before? The fact that you put more weight on advice whose source you trust compared to other advice is not something to hide or be ashamed of. I imagine people on adcoms share whether or not they know a LOR writer and how much they trust his/her opinions. Furthermore, it's possible that a professor will call up or email a friend about a student - this again is not unprofessional. It's a useful way of getting more information, and I don't see why it's not legitimate. That's exactly why you want to develop connections with well-established professors and work hard to impress them so you will have good LORs when you apply. Anyway, if an adcom member decided to get more information from an acquaintance LOR writer, there is no reason why they wouldn't share with others on the committee.