fuzzylogician

No stories to share here, but it's Monday morning - get on the phone and contact the graduate school as well as the department. Explain the mistake and ask if it can be fixed. Most schools will have some grace period so it's possible that something can be done.

Like Sparky says, it depends on the school and can vary a lot. In case it helps, for the schools I visited, some didn't reimburse at all but most did, with amounts ranging from $300 to $550 per school. Since I combined all my visits to one trip, I ended up getting reimbursed for pretty much all of my travel (one transatlantic flight, two domestic flights, one bus ride). The schools would send checks, usually several weeks after I returned, after I sent them original receipts and tickets. All the departments made arrangements for me to sleep in current students' apartments and they took care of food, so mostly I didn't have any expenses from that trip.

I'm curious to know what people usually write in letters of recommendation, because I've never had the change to see my own letters or any others for that matter, but I am not particularly curious about my own letters. I know that my letters were very strong (it was one of the things that was constantly mentioned in interviews and visits after I applied) and I know that any letters I obtain in the future will be strong too, because I trust my advisors and mentors.

Stick to what they ask for. Research interests, fit, relevant faculty. And while you're at it, rethink how you could possbily have 2900 *relevant* words to tell an adcom -- that sounds beyond eccessive. It must be 6-7 pages of text, three times what other applicants will write. No reasonable faculty serving on an adcom and reading hundreds of other documents will throughly read a text that long.

They are informal conversations, not formal interviews, but they will color the way these PIs will view you and how likely they will be to fight for your acceptance when the adcoms make their decisions. You should take this opportunity very seriously and treat it like a serious interview. Congrats and good luck, this is a great opportunity!

There are some threads in this forum that address your question precisely: The short answer is that grades matter less than your research but they are still important in some cases - for example, to stay in good standing in your program and to be competitive for certain fellowships, grants and/or jobs. The bottom line is that if you get great grades in classes but can't produce strong research, you will have a hard time getting a job. If your research is very strong but you didn't make good grades, you are in better shape. Of course the ideal is to have strong results in both areas.

Make sure there is nothing medically wrong with you. Especially since you mention a different-from-normal kind of tired, there are medical conditions that can cause that - not only vitamins and iron deficiencies. Feeling tired can be a symptom of serious illness or depression but also of e.g. certain hormone deficiencies or problems with the actual process of sleep. If you've been tested, like others have said burnout is a probable cause of the exhaustion you're feeling. The best thing you can do for that is simply take some time off to rest and recover. I won't repeat what others have said except to say I agree with the advice, especially taking a break and also resting during the day. I'd also suggest for you to keep a work/sleep log. It can become very difficult to keep track of your sleep and work schedules over time. Having that information can help you discover patterns in your productivity and level of tiredness that could help you adjust your schedule. It's not only about how many hours you sleep, it's also about when, and in addition how much you work. You might discover that less work but at better chosen times is more productive than spending whole days being frustrated in the office but too tired to really work. This is a serious concern and you shouldn't be afraid to decide that you need to stop completely for a week or two, or if that's not possible then do the bare minimum and spend the rest of the time recovering. In the long run, it'll be worth it.

Everything you submit should enhance your application. I agree with emmm that submitting something well-written should be a given -- it's certainly not going to do anyone any good to submit a poorly written paper to a school that doesn't even require a writing sample so I think it should be assumed that all strong applicants will have well-written papers. Now - I'm not sure how exactly it will show that you did a lot of reading for the paper (a long reference list is not enough), if the arguments in the paper are not strong. If, in addition, the paper is outside your field, it can only do you very little good. It will show the adcom that you can write, but not that you sustain an argument about anything in your field. In that case, it seems to me like you're not really helping yourself by submitting this paper, especially since I think it's too short to really demonstrate good writing. Anything closer to your own field would serve you better than this option, in my opinion.

I am going to send thank you notes to two of my professors this year. They are my advisors and mentors, not only my teachers, but it's the same idea as yours. Since both I and they are away, I am simply going to email them. It's the thought that counts, and like you say I want a small gesture of appreciation and not something that could become awkward.

Where the choice is between an incomplete application and a complete one with a different letter than what you originally planned? Choose the letter, of course. There's nothing stopping you from contacting the school to let them know you changed recommender because of a problem, so there doesn't even need be a discrepancy in your file.

They are said to be, and it's probably true in most cases. Adcoms don't usually meet the day after the deadline because applications usually go through some administrative process of getting them ready to be reviewed. Besides, it's the holidays and many people will be gone until after the new year. The question here was about a missing letter, not a late one, and the answer changes accordingly.

That's great, good luck!

I think the reasons you state for wanting to leave are completely valid and legitimate. If a place is good for professional reasons but bad for personal reasons, it's overall not very good for you. The question is really if there are ways to improve the badness of your personal situation, because I agree that suffering for a year and half is not worth it. My experience with moving far away home is that it takes me about a year to really feel acclimated, though things improve significantly after the first 6 months or so. It just takes time to get to know people and not feel lonely (also to understand the language, the customs, the food -- if any of those apply). As ktel suggested, it's worth trying to give this another semester if you feel that you can. I just wanted to stress again how different my first year was from my second -- the second was so much better.

Well, if you need three letters I would suggest using all your options, as follows: a. Joint letter from #3 and #4 (in particular, under the assumption that #3 is also #4's supervisor). b. letter from #2 c. letter from #1 Professional programs of the type you're applying to are not something I am very familiar with, but it seems to me that you can submit letters from a wider array of sources than is customary for PhD programs. If so, you can take advantage of all of your options, as I suggested. If you need to only choose two letters, I'd have to know more about your goals and the programs' requirements. There are clear advantages and disadvantages to both #1 and #2 but it's not clear to me which aspects of the letter are most important in your situation.

I'd say that's unnecessary. You should know what your potential advisors are up to -- that is, what kind of research they are *currently* involved in and what their interests *generally* are -- but you don't need to read whole papers for that. It's enough that you show an understanding of their research and ask smart questions about what they are doing, no one will expect you to read all their papers (or, if someone expects that for one short interview, I would not want to have that person as my advisor).

The name doesn't matter. The only question is whether these visits are pre-acceptance or post-acceptance. If you (and a select small group of others) are invited to visit the school as a finalist but before decisions are made, you might want to behave differently than if you've already been admitted. Presumably there would be more meetings with faculty and less with students, though I've actually never been to one so I'm not sure. If it's post-acceptance, there is emphasis on also showing you other aspects of the program and the city beside its academics. In both cases, however, these visits are mutual interviews on both sides - you want to convince the department that you would fit there as a student and they want to convince you to choose their school, if admitted.

Events and socials will vary by school and department. Similarly friendliness of cohorts and amount of socializing within departments. But if you decide to make your social life - friends, relationships, hobbies - a priority, you will have time for them. Otherwise, grad school could easily take over your entire life. Personally, most of my friends are from my department but not from my cohort. We usually go out and do something fun once during the week and at least once during the weekend, not counting lunches/dinners/coffee study sessions. We are all international students and we are basically each other's support system, so we spend a lot of time gossiping, complaining and talking about our joint acquaintances - professors and students. Our department usually has some sort of social event every other week or so, which most students but not many professors attend (at least not the ones that are outside the department).

For grad programs, every program I applied to specified a code for sending GRE scores through ETS. If you use the correct code the scores will go to the correct place. You don't really need to worry about whether they go straight to the department or through the graduate school first. Every school will have its own administrative process. For fellowships (and for programs too), if they don't specify, ask. No need to worry about not finding codes before you even look.

I don't think the circumstances under which the letter was not obtained really matter all that much. There are enough qualified applicants who submitted complete applications for adcoms to choose from, most won't be very interested in hearing why yours is incomplete. OP: yes, every year we read posts from applicants whose applications were tossed because of missing materials, including LORs. Find a new letter writer as soon as possible; you can explain why the letter is late *when you submit it*, but it's best to deal with this without appearing to make excuses because in the end it's up to you to make sure all your application materials are submitted on time. Committees understand that letters depend on more than just the applicant, though, so you can get some slack there. If you get this done within the next week or two, you might be fine -- it's close to the holidays and many programs won't start looking at apps until after the new year.

We could just as well answer "I'm 5' 6", where should I apply?", with the information you've provided. What are your interests? Do you have any relevant research experience? Publications? Presentations? What are your post-degree goals? What kind of letters of recommendation do you think you'll be able to secure (very strong? only "did-well-in-class"?)? How strong is your writing sample?

The link is broken.

I'll be away for about three weeks starting the day before Christmas. Not much sense in flying far away for less time, I think, given the cost of flights and the jetlag. I'll try and give 1-2 talks at my old university and there are a few work-related issues I'll have to attend to while I'm away, but aside from that I hope for a mostly work-free vacation.

I bet it varies not only based on field but on many other factors that you are not controlling for, not least of which is your sample size.

Be careful how you ask - schools might not be happy if they learn that you are planning to defer before you've even been accepted. In general schools need to plan their cohorts based on present considerations and funding concerns so knowing in advance that someone will not take advantage of their offer (in some cases, even leading to loss of potential funds that could go to another student) may cause schools to reject you straight away. More generally, it's not customary, at least in fields that I am familiar with, to apply for any year other than the coming one, even if the option of deferring is in principle available.

You always ask these impossible-to-answer general questions. If you're worried about discussing LORs with your professors, why don't you just ask them if they will be around over the break? I don't really see how it would help you to know what my professors are doing ... but in case it does, most of them will be away for a short time during Christmas and then will be back in January.