fuzzylogician

Happy to help 1. I believe that you have to pay the SEVIS fee again when you renew your visa. But usually the visa is issued for the duration of the grad program so there is no need to do that. And yes, the visa-related fees are annoyingly high; but they're a monopoly, they get to do that. If it helps (?), there are other, larger, expenses involved in the process to worry about.. 2. I imagine that this changes quite a bit from place to place. My anecdotal and perhaps not too helpful knowledge is that the down payment ranges from half a month's rent (that's what I payed) and 1-2 months' rent. That money is kept by the landlord or apartment management company as assurance that you won't cause damage to the apartment and that you'll pay your rent on time, and is returned after a certain time period that should be specified in your lease or at its end. Once you get it back, you can use if towards rent or whatever else you want. Before then, it's not yours to use--rent will be extra money. There are, of course, also places to be found that don't require a down payment. For example, if you're just renting a room in a shared apartment that's already established, chances are that the current/former roommates already payed the down payment. Whoever has the full lease may still require some securities from you, but many times they'll be less than a full down payment that landlords require.

I have a lenovo T400, it's about 1.5 years old right now and works great. No viruses, no collapses, battery lasts 5+ hours. I bought it when I started grad school and before it I had another lenovo, T41 (I think) -- it lasted 5 full year without breaking down even once. I gave it to my mom when I got my new laptop and as far as I know she's changed the battery once and otherwise it's as good as new. I have to work on macs for part of my work but honestly I prefer win7 to osx, and I don't think the pretty looks are worth the higher price of a mac. Whatever you choose, though, you should find out if your school offers discounts through certain vendors. That could save you quite a bit of money.

I'm in linguistics, so my experience may be totally different, but if bioengineers are anything like linguists (or like cs people, who I see all the time) then a suit would be overkill here too. Nice pants and shirt should do it. Good luck!

This. I usually try to come to every meeting with a handout, but at the very least I always come with a list of the things I want to discuss. Professors can also get easily distracted! Talking points help keep everyone on track. Good luck, Zouzax, and congrats to everyone on your acceptances!

That's a strange situation to be in. What field are you in? Do you know students in other labs that you could ask about the committee and the goings-on in your department? Your advisor would be the natural address for all of your questions, but if you're posting here after 7 months of work in your lab, obviously something is not going right with him/her. Is there a Director of Graduate Studies or any other professor that you could turn to? Maybe the department chair or the grad secretary? A guide published by your department? -- even the online description of the program requirements would help. If you're not getting any proper mentorship, you should try to actively seek the answers you need. I'm guessing the meeting with the committee will be about you explaining what you've done so far and maybe outlining what you plan to do next.. but these procedures can vary quite a bit from school to school.

In my program we are required to write and defend two "Generals Papers" which are original (publishable, but not necessarily published) research papers in two distinct subdisciplines of linguistic. The defense consists of a 1-1.5 hour presentation of the work to one's committee followed by a question period. In some cases the committee will request that changes be made to the paper. The grade is just pass/fail--only pass, really, because they won't let you defend if you're not ready. We're supposed to defend the first paper after the 4th semester and the second after the 5th.. though in reality most people take longer to finish both papers.

Well, generally everyone is invited who is accepted (or shortlisted, depends on the school). Schools realize that not everyone can visit, especially international students, but they still notify everyone that there is an open house and give them the option to attend. Don't lose hope, Zouzax, there can still be some good news in your future - a waitlist or an acceptance.

That is terrible news... my condolences to her friends and family.

I can't really help except to suggest that you discuss your concerns with current students at AU and see what they have to say about them. But - what I really wanted to say was that I love your username

Unfortunately it's not that simple. The financial situation in certain states puts schools in an almost impossible situation where they could end up with a small cohort and not making use of the limited funds they do have if they just make admissions offers in the usual way; they need to be sure their offers will be accepted, or else they may end up with no international students at all (that was my case - they could only offer admissions to one international student and couldn't re-offer the spot), no students in a particular sub-field, or worst - no students at all. I think we should be understanding of their predicament. That said, my advice above was to fake enthusiasm, as long as it's generally there, because in the end us students need to do what is best for us, not what is best for the school.

It's an awkward situation and unfortunately I don't have good ideas about how to get out of it. In general, it seems that because of the funding situation, certain (mostly public) schools are in the position of [a] only having very limited funding for graduate students, and it may be impossible for them to "re-offer" a funding package to someone further down the list, if the first student they offered it to declines. In that case, schools may find that they prefer to first give a "hypothetical" offer to applicants to test their response, and only make real offers to those who seemed enthusiastic about the offer and likely to accept it. The trouble is, oftentimes they do this before they have exact details about the funding package, and before applicants hear back from other schools. When I was confronted with that situation, I withdrew my application. But then, that school wasn't one of my favorites. It seems to me that the school is putting you in an impossible situation. To give yourself the best chance, you should say that you are very enthusiastic and would certainly accept an offer, if made (assuming that this *is* one of your top choices). If you end up choosing another offer, however, you have to take into account that you may upset people at school A and you may burn some bridges there. If they are honest, understanding people, they will know that they placed you in an impossible situation and you had to do what was best for yourself. But some people may be nonetheless peeved, so you have to weigh your options carefully. Sorry that I can't give you a more helpful answer.

In the end it doesn't really matter whose fault it is. All that matters is that your file gets passed to the adcom for review. I would suggest asking your recommender get in touch with the school to clarify what part of the letter was "incomplete" and to have it settled to everyone's satisfaction. It shouldn't take long, I assume the letter was written and maybe some standard form was not filled out correctly or some such. If the recommender is willing to cooperate, this could be resolved in a matter of days.

You didn't tell us which program you applied to, and I imagine that funding policies vary from one program to the other. The best thing to do is contact people in that program and ask - the grad secretary is one option, current students in another. They will know the ins and outs of the funding system much better than people on this forum will.

Well, if they didn't accept anyone off the waitlist, why would they bother maintaining one in the first place? I'm sure there are people out there who got accepted to ivy league schools off the waitlist.

My final choice came down to two schools that were both the best for the kind of research that I wanted to do, call them A and B. School A is in a large city, B is in a small town. Both locations have comparably bad weather. School A offered a higher stipend, but there are also more expenses at that location so I figured that my offers were also comparable in that regard. School B required more TAing than A (6 or 8 semesters vs. 2 semesters). B had a reputation for being very friendly, A for being competitive and unfriendly. I consulted with my professors, who said I should go to school B. But I honestly couldn't see myself living at that location; I ended up choosing school A, and I am very happy with my decision. Reputations aren't always true descriptions of reality. Location factored into my grad school choice twice: First, when I decided where to apply. I applied to the top 3 schools that were the best fit for me, and added to that several schools that were not as good a fit but I thought had other advantages -- one of which was a location I liked. I did not bother applying to schools in places that I could never see myself living in. Second, deciding between offers. Eventually a combination of location and fit decided it for me. I declined an offer with funding that was substantially higher than the offer I ended up accepting (think ~15K higher), because I wasn't excited about the fit or location of that school. I declined another offer based on hints from students that their professor was about to retire and I shouldn't count on him as advisor, and others because I felt I didn't have the right chemistry with POIs that I talked with at those schools [even though the funding, location, weather, atmosphere in the department were all appealing]. As I said, it came down to the two schools with the best fit, and the one with the location I preferred won out. Once I knew my stipend would be sufficient for me to live (reasonably) well off of, money was no longer a factor for me [though I don't have a family and I don't have any debt, and it may be very different for other people]. What matters is that you're happy the next +5 years of your life, and you are the one who knows best what kind of factors have the greatest impact on your happiness.

I don't think there's be any problem with that. I've had occasion to change the names of papers between the abstract and paper form, and definitely between presenting at one venue and another (even though the content didn't change that much).

I'm in a different field than you but my guess is the answer varies widely within disciplines as well. It depends. On the professor, on the other students, on the program requirements. There's less structure and less pressure to get X material across, so I think in general it's easier to go on excursions into unplanned topics of special interest to the students in grad classes. There are whole threads about grad school grades but at least in my program the grades really don't matter that much. Anyone who does decent work will get an A. Classes are designed to support your research, they are a means to an end, nothing more. Yes, there are requirements you have to sit through even if you're not terribly interested in the material, that is almost unavoidable. But in the end it's the research that will get you a job after you graduate, not a 4.0 GPA., and that is something that the professors know and keep in mind. ETA: I didn't do my undergrad in the US but I wouldn't be surprised if undergrad classes at my school turn out to be much more structured and allow less "freedom".

I'm quite serious. Look at and the ones following it.

There is a recent discussion in the linguistics subforum that indicates that not only do professors read the forums (some of them, occasionally, at least) -- but they are also [a] able to identify applicants based on their posts, and use that information in the recruitment process. In that specific case - trying to get an applicant to consider an offer from a school that he did not specify as one of his top two. Scary, I know.

Out of pure curiosity, they TOLD you that they follow the GradCafe forums? They told you that they were able to figure who you were based on your posts here, AND were able to reproduce the contents of your posts? Wow. That level of stalking just might cause me to finally stop surfing here and disable my user account.

He is offering to write you a "Did Well In Class" recommendation that will in essence not help you in any way, except satisfy the formal requirement that you submit 3 LoRs. A DWIC is nearly useless in a rec letter because the adcom can already see the grades on your transcripts and know what classes you did well in or not. It won't address your potential to do research--one of the most important components of a grad school rec letter--at all. In short, this is not a good option for a letter.

From my experience TAing for a class where most of students were at least my age, if not older, and as a female TA to a mostly male class, two important things to do is dress appropriately (=nicely, in a way that makes you stand out and differentiates you from the other students who are just there to take the class), and to be very careful about telling jokes. Telling jokes in general, and making fun of oneself in particular, may be completely acceptable for older/male TAs but for younger/female TAs it could be perceived as signaling insecurity, and that could lead to the class respecting you less. I know it's hard, particularly if you know some of your students from social settings or took classes with them in the past, but when you're in class you're not their friend. You're their teacher. People come into these social situations expecting to play certain roles. If you clearly take on your role as 'the teacher,' most students will be perfectly happy accepting their natural role as 'the students.' Just don't send mixed signals while you are in class, and be confident of yourself.

If you say you'll do X intending not to do it, that's dishonest. If you say you'll do X, try hard but don't make it in time and need an extension - that's not dishonest. Depending on the situation the question may arise why you didn't finish on time. It's possible that the expectation that you would be able to finish on time just wasn't realistic, or that you should have been able to do it and you either slacked off or need to learn better time management skills, or that you had a particularly difficult week with other things that unexpectedly increased your workload, or that you were sick, or that the task was more complicated than the prof anticipated, etc.. There could be many reasons, some justifiable, some less. It's not dishonest not to make a deadline, but you should identify the difficulty in time and consult with the prof about getting help and/or extending the deadline. And again, I don't think you should be working non-stop or feeling bad about taking reasonable breaks. Not every waking hour should be devoted to work. (Edit: I also don't understand why you think that dropping a class is dishonest. It's just part of how academia works.)

No. If it helps make you feel better, block out some time in your calendar for "relaxation" so it's not free anymore. You can't just work all the time, you also need to rest, and you shouldn't feel bad about not devoting ALL of your time to juggling assignments. I suppose it also depends on your relationship with your advisor. Mine knows that I'm very productive and work hard, so if I say I can't something done in X time he knows it's not because I'm out partying. I don't feel bad if I take some time off to rest and recover (or, frankly, go out once in a while) that I could have, in principle, used to do more work. It's possible, under deadlines and unusual circumstances, to spend large amounts of time on a project but you may find that there are too many of those too and you need to put your foot down and start saying 'no' when the work gets too intense. Overworking is just not a good way of doing things in the long run. It took me quite a while to learn this form of being assertive and, in a sense, less generous with my time (especially as a young female student working mostly with men, though that could be a topic for an entirely different post), but it's essential for a healthy life as a grad student and beyond. Again, grad school is a marathon, not a sprint.

Credit history is a record of your past borrowing and repayment of loans. The easiest way to think of American credit cards, in my opinion, is that using them basically means taking a loan from whichever company issued the card--which doesn't have to be a bank. It's your job to repay the loan each month *in full*, or else you'll be charged (often very high) interest on your debt and your credit score will suffer. Your credit will improve if you pay everything on time. AFAIK things like rent and utilities aren't usually payed with credit cards, so they won't help you build your credit history...but you should still pay them on time, of course. You can start by getting a secured credit card; using one would mean that you first make a deposit of say $500 or $1000 and then that's the limit of how much you can spend on the card. Some banks will also issue regular cards with a low limit (my credit union did that when I just arrived, obviously without any credit history). You then put small amounts on that card, like one week's groceries, and pay them off in full on time. After a year or two (or three?) I think you're supposed to already have a decent credit score. If you don't plan on staying the US after you graduate, or doing things like buying a house or a car while you're studying, you may not need to worry about your credit history at all; some people will still get a credit card 'just in case,' though, since it's a way to take out a fast 'loan' for unexpected emergencies like medical bills, if you don't have any other way of paying for them. You'll pay high interest on a credit card 'loan', though, and I would not recommend thinking that it's a good strategy for dealing with emergencies. For things like contracts with phone companies you will need to pay a deposit, which you'll get back (with interest) after a while (a year, I think) when they see that you pay your bills on time. In general I usually advise people to start with a prepaid phone, since you likely won't need to use the phone that often anyway and a plan could end up costing more than the pay-as-you-go rates. Finding an apartment without a credit history can be a bit more tricky but it's still possible, since as we all know foreign students arrive without a credit score at all and obviously all manage to find places to live.