fuzzylogician

Glad to help I should add that in my department many of us have other students from the department as roommates. That's very convenient for many reasons, not the least of which is that it weeds out most of the crazies and it ensures that you are living with someone who you know has funding and who is generally interested in the same things as you and has a similar schedule. It doesn't guarantee you'll get along, but it mostly works great in our case. You could try to find out if someone in your department or any of the admitted applicants are looking for a roommate. In some cases you could have an arrangement where you share an apartment with an American student who can come earlier and do most/all of the apartment-hunting, or with someone who already has a place and is just looking to replace a roommate. Again, there is some trust/luck element involved here. The idea of coming early for a visit and finding a place is also great, if you can afford it. And again, you should ask current students for advice about available places, where they recommend living (or avoiding), how much rent should generally be, etc.

The first thing to do is get your visa. Your school should send you visa forms depending on the kind of visa that you'll get (an I-20 form for an F-1 visa, or a DS-2019 form for a J-1 visa). Your I-20 will contain your SEVIS number, which you need to schedule an interview at the US embassy in your country. There are other forms you need to fill out which may change from country to country, so you should read the requirements on the US embassy website for your country. If I remember correctly you need to fill out a visa application - DS-156, DS-158, in some cases also DS-157 and/or DS-160 - and to have visa-approved photos (the website will have instructions on that). You also need to pay the SEVIS fee and the visa application fee and bring the receipts with you to the interview. In the interview you'll need to prove that you have enough funding to support yourself while in the US; your school will send you documents detailing how much support you will from them, and they will tell you if you need to provide bank statements for any additional funds. After you have the visa, you can use it to enter the US up to 30 days before your program begins (according to the date on your I-20). There are several ways to find a place to live - some people sign up for dorms. Others find a short summer sublet or live at a cheap motel and search once they get to their new city. Sometimes you can find an acquaintance or current student who will host you while you search. It's possible, but not recommended *at all*, to find a place from afar; if you try that, you should at least have someone you trust see the place in person for you and send you pictures. you should not sign a lease for a place sight unseen. Home owners in university towns are versed in renting to international students so it's not too hard to find a place that doesn't require a credit history, though some options may be limited and you may be required to pay higher down payments than others. Apartments in the US (unlike dorms) usually come unfurnished, so you'll also need to buy furniture. You can rent a U-Haul and drive to the nearest ikea or find used stuff on craigslist. There may be other local options that you should ask students in your department about. Opening a bank account it easy. Some schools have credit unions that are very good at catering to the needs of students and will know how to handle an application from a foreign student. Large banks like Bank of America and others will also know what to do. You should ask about branch availability near your university; current students will be able to give you good recommendations. Once you have an account, get checks and a debit card. You should learn about how American credit cards work before you get one. For utilities, phone, internet, etc - you can do all that without a SSN, but you may be required to pay a large down payment. You issue an international driver's license in your home country, if I am not mistaken. However, I'm not sure you necessarily need one. Check out the agreements between your country and the US - in some cases your license from home will suffice. You should get a local US license once you move. States differ in how long they allow you to drive with your foreign license, you should find out the specific rules for your case. It can be anything from 10 days to 3 months or more. You'll have to retake the theory exam, get a driving permit and take a practical exam. You do all that at your local DMV. You may need a SSN, or a waiver if you can't get a SSN, to start this process. You should be able to find all the details on the DMV website.

An Open House is a 1-2 day event during which accepted/short-listed applicants visit the school; the day usually consists of meetings with different faculty, chats with current students and other admitted applicants who are also attending the Open House, sitting in on classes, some lunch/dinner event with the current students and/or faculty, tours of the campus and city, etc. This event can occur both before and after admission. If it's before admission, you are at the very least on the short-list and you have great chances of being accepted--especially if the school is paying for you to come. In that case, it will be important for you to attend, if possible, in order to make a good impression and have a better chance of being selected for admission. If you've already been accepted then it's still good to go, but less crucial. If possible, you should try and visit every school whose admissions offer you are considering. Seeing the school and town in person and talking to faculty and students may change your mind about a place. If you are coming from far away, try combining all your visits to one trip. Many schools offer partial travel funding that could add up to cover most of your expenses (depending on costs vs. how many places you were accepted to). If the school is not offering funding or you are otherwise incapable of going, you should still request to have phone-interviews/conversations with faculty and students at the school. That's important both in the pre-admission case and in the post-admission case.

Yes, there is nothing wrong with telling school #2 that you already accepted an interview invitation from school #1 for the same weekend so you'll have to reschedule the visit to school #2 to another time. Schools know that students apply to many places and that strong applicants will have several offers to choose from. It doesn't need to be a secret that you have another interview, no one will be offended.

Congratulations on your acceptance and your interview! I understand your anxiety and your worries about grad school, which are completely natural, but I don't think you have anything to worry about. I doubt anyone will decided you plagiarized, since we're talking about not more than a sentence or so that sounds like the original--which you did cite--so it's not like you copy-pasted whole pages without referencing the source. As part of your interview you may be asked some questions about your writing sample, which I am sure you will be able to answer because you did write your paper yourself, and that will be the end of it. In any case, I doubt they will actively blacklist you or cause you trouble with other schools.

I'll just echo what everybody else wrote. It's completely unreasonable to expect new grad students to have publishable work after just one semester. Hardly anyone will have publishable work after their first year! Most students I know don't have projects that are far enough along to be presented at conferences, let alone published in journals, until at least their second year, if not their third year.

The general wisdom is that a LoR is considered more reliable if you waive your right to see it, because it shows that you are confident in the writer's opinion of you, and the writer can feel free to write whatever she feels is most accurate without worrying about you seeing it later. There have been debates on this board in the past about the soundness of this logic (and I agree that it doesn't make that much sense) but some professors may still give more weight to confidential letters, regardless of how much sense it makes. It's important to know that even if you don't waive your right to see the letter, according to FERPA you can only request access to your file at the university that you are registered at, so you won't be able to see your letters for schools that reject you anyway, only your letters for the school whose offer you accepted. So, it's not a good way to find out if a letter was damaging and caused you to be rejected, and if you're accepted I think it's a safe bet that the letter was at least decent. Bottom line: sign the waiver, there's nothing to gain from not doing so, and potentially there is something to lose.

It turns out I did very well my application season, but who could have known that in advance? I applied to schools I thought I could see myself studying at, but obviously I had my favorites. It really was the interviews that made me realize I didn't want to go to those schools. For Penn, that was the year Maribel Romero left but the website still listed her as faculty when I applied...but not when I interviewed. She was my main POI there, the other people I talked to during my interview didn't have research I was that excited about. For Santa Cruz, my main concern was that I would be one of very few international students in the department, and in general in that town, and that I would not fit in. That came out of the funding situation that was explained to me during the interview. Not to mention, it's farther away from home, flights would be much more expensive, and the money situation there in general didn't seem that inviting. For Brown, well, honestly at that point I had offers from my top schools, and talking to PIs on the phone didn't get me that excited about their program; I already had a university visiting schedule that would take me from the west coast to the east coast, and Brown's open house would have forced me to start on the east coast, fly out west and continue on my schedule, which I thought would be too exhausting. If the situation arises that you are only accepted to one of your least-favorite schools, you'll have to ask yourself if you can still see yourself working and being happy at that place. I think two major components of the decisions are ones you don't have yet - the funding situation and how you get along with faculty and students during a visit. The visit re-arranged a lot of my preferences and impressions of schools, I can't stress enough how important it is to visit, if you have the chance. I don't have any special tips for that interview, it was just like any other. There are general phone-interview advice threads on the GradCafe that I've contributed to that you could look up. It was a strange interview, a conference call, with Robin Clark talking from his office and Florian Schwartz talking on his cell-phone while driving somewhere. It was very hard to follow, the connection wasn't great, they were sort of talking at the same time sometimes, and I was foolishly being shy about asking them to repeat their questions or comments--so I couldn't get past the initial stress and wasn't comfortable throughout the conversation. They asked the usual questions - what research I was interested in, why I applied there, some specific questions about my profile. They spent a lot of time telling me about their work in the department, and about the program in general. I asked some questions about the requirements and funding. It took about a half an hour, I think. Good luck with your interview!

I actually find that these kinds of tools are helpful precisely for that reason. You enter and rank some criteria, the machine spits out an automated answer, and your gut either goes 'YAY' or 'Oh..'; and right there you have your answer about that specific option. I usually end up playing with the rankings to get a specific option that makes me happy, and I know both that the decision is made and how 'rational' it is, given my initial stated preferences.

Schools I was interviewed by: UPenn, Brown, UCSC. Schools that accepted me without an interview: UMass, MIT, UCLA, NYU, Rutgers. The three schools that did interview me were the ones that were really not a good fit for my research interests, and I think that was the reason for the interviews. Talking to PIs at all three schools (2-3 profs per schools) made me realize that I would not be happy in those programs so I ended up withdrawing my application from all three, which means I declined the invite to Brown's open house and I have no idea if there were any further steps after the first round interviews and before the adcoms at those schools decided who would be accepted. For four of the other five schools, I got a "congratulations!" email without having any contact between submitting the app and the decision. MIT notifies via phone, not email, but again no prior contact. Congrats!! It's too early to be worrying about not hearing back from schools, don't worry about UMass.

If you have something you need to know before you arrive, go ahead and ask. Otherwise, you'll get better and more candid information in a personal conversation than in an email, and it'll be a good way to pass the time you have to spend together.

Since you'll have a gap year anyway it really does makessense to stay on and finish the thesis. It'll look much better on your record. How long it takes to complete a thesis varies from school to school and depends quite a bit not only on the general requirements of the program you are in but also on how happy your advisor is with your progress. In Europe many Masters degrees are completed in two years, such that you do coursework in the first three semesters and you write your thesis in the fourth one, so it's at least possible to finish a decent paper in a few months. I think UK programs are often just one-year programs that include both coursework and a thesis, so I imagine they also don't spend more than 2-3 months actually doing the writing. I have less experience with American degrees, but I'm sure others will be able to tell you more about that. Logically, it would make the most sense to pick a topic that your advisor will be happy with, even if you are less pleased (optimally, find one that doesn't make you suffer even though it's not your favorite). At this point the goal is to finish the degree as soon as possible, while staying on good terms with your advisor, whose LoR you may still require when you apply next year. Unfortunately the best way to do that is to write a paper about a topic of your advisor's choice. It may be harder to stay motivated when you don't care about your topic, but motivation can come from having the end in sight. It's just a few months. At some schools you can request to have the residency requirement suspended if all that you have left is writing the thesis, maybe that's also something to look into.

Listen to your prof, he is doing you a HUGE favor. Walk away from abusive people like this Prof Y and don't look back.

Well, ultimately that *is* how you decide what school to attend. There are different factors that enter into the decision, different people care about them to varying degrees, and even if you don't sit down and write an equation with weights and ranks, in the end considering all the options and coming up with the winner amounts to just that. (I'm also willing to bet that there are more people out there than will admit who actually had weighted criteria and came up with a full-fledged formula for ranking schools and offers..). OP: this looks like a useful tool, good luck with ti!

You can (should, must) have several professors on your dissertation committee, some of which may be from other departments on universities (how easy/hard it is to add an outside member to your committee changes from school to school). It's much less common, though it is possible, to have several advisors that you work with throughout grad school. It may be useful if you are working on an interface area where you need people with different expertise to help with your work, but otherwise it sounds to me like it could create a hassle trying to satisfy the (sometimes contradictory) requirements of two or more primary advisors. That said, at my department we don't have advisors but rather we are encouraged to work with as many people as we like on our projects. I meet with three professors on a regular basis (all within my department) and so far it's been great.

Be careful with this strategy. I was consistently told bad things about my current school by students at other schools that were just completely wrong. They were relying on rumors more than anything else, which is no replacement for actual first-hand experience. Frankly, students and professors who made an effort to tell me why other schools sucked instead of convincing me why their program was the best fit for me achieved nothing except completely turning me off their schools.

Yes, I found that grad students were very honest about their programs when I talked to them AFTER I was admitted. I do the same: I answer applicants' questions honestly when they visit, but I wouldn't just go around saying bad things about my program to some random person who emailed me during the application process. Also, it's easier to say these things in person (even in a skype/phone conversation) than write it down in an email.

Sure, anyone can get a tourist visa to the US. The process should be just as you describe. The visa is usually issued for 10 years so if you visited the US before it may still be valid, check your passport. The comment about the invitation was just in case there were no available appointments in the next week and pearls would need to petition for an expedited date. It may not be needed, it depends on the appointment schedule at the embassy (s)he needs to visit.

Congrats!! You have to have a visa to enter the US. A tourist visa B1/B2 is good enough, unless you are from one of the countries that participate in the Visa Waiver Program and your passport has the electronic chip (should be in any passport issued in recent years). Contact the embassy in your country *now* and ask for an expedited interview date; it's worth a try. Explain your situation, forward your invitation if needed. There could be other interviews in your future--most were in early-mid March the year I applied--so you should get the visa even if you can't attend Michigan's event. In terms of funding, most schools refunded international students between $350 and $500 the year I applied (with the exception of UMass, which didn't give any refund), so if you get invited to even 2-3 events you'll be able to get a full refund. The only catch: you have to have the money in your bank account to spend, because the refunds don't arrive until several weeks after the visit. Anybody else who is international and reading this -- check that you will be able to visit the US, if invited! Get yourself a tourist visa now.

You'll notice I wrote "if I can get a good education and a good stipend from a school in a place I enjoy living in, why not take advantage of that?" That is to mean, location was not my only consideration. I applied to all of my "dream schools", and then decided to apply to an additional 3-4 other schools that were not my favorites but were still a good enough fit for me in terms of research. Among those schools, I chose not to apply to schools in locations I didn't think I would enjoy living in. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

From what I understand adcom members pay careful attention to the writing sample. Several profs commented on my paper when I met with them after I was accepted and even offered ideas for applying the solution to other data, so they definitely look at the details. Some even read other papers on my website beside my writing sample and commented on it as well. I think that they mostly want to see that you are capable of identifying an interesting question or data set, and as a bonus that you can come up with an analysis that derives the whole pattern (but also that you can flag any problems that your analysis may raise, or show why existing analyses can't deal with your data - even if you can't come up with something better). A lot of the squibs we write for our seminars are just identifying a problem and not necessarily coming up with a solution, so I think it should be entirely acceptable as a writing sample.

Two thoughts: Some schools will let you attach an "addendum" to your SOP. It's never an official (required) part of the application, but it could be a way to address your issues without wasting space in the SOP itself. Maybe schools you are interested in allow for this? Other applications have a field for "anything else you feel you need to explain and hasn't been covered elsewhere" or some such, that could also be used for the same purpose. Your LOR writes are another important resource here. They can address the reasons for your leaving, if you ask them to and explain the situation, even if they didn't know you before. And more importantly, they can speak to your abilities after you returned. Generally, I'd go about finding which schools to apply to based on fit, then approach the grad coordinator in each of them and ask about a way to explain unusual circumstances. Choosing schools based on SOP word-limit seems like a backwards way of doing things.

It's hard, but don't take it too seriously. As you say, it's usually the very happy or very upset who take the time to complete evaluations, especially the open comment section, and unfortunately the very upset students are usually louder. Some people can be very hurtful and not understand how seriously some of us take these comments. The first time TAing can be difficult (I would even say 'daunting' was appropriate for how I felt!), and the only way you learn is from experience. Look at this as an opportunity to grow and learn - what to change, what to keep, and maybe also how to better represent yourself in front of your students. You could be doing everything right, but a lot goes on behind the scenes, and students either don't notice it or don't care. Take the time to write up your experiences from this semester, including specific things that you would change (you should do this right after each class you teach, so that when you go back the next year/semester you'll know where you got stuck last time, what was harder for the students to understand, where you should give a better example, etc). If you haven't done that this semester, at least you'll have your notes from whatever you remember now. You can use that in future semesters, and you'll improve with time and experience. Some of the comments could help you here, others may just be mean and useless. It happens, and you have to learn to choose what to take from them. Don't let them get you down!

It does sound like she's invested quite a bit of work into her letters. Given that, she should be interested in seeing her letters get you accepted to all your schools. Try engaging her in a way that doesn't blame anyone but rather concentrates on getting your app completed. Can you attach a screen shot of where it says on your app that the letter hasn't been uploaded? Just show her that there's still a problem, and ask for her help fixing it -- by trying to upload the letter again, using the link you sent. Once everything is uploaded, thank her again and maybe give her something small. Make sure she knows you appreciate her efforts.

If a school has a word-limit, you DON'T want to go (noticeably) over it. The SOP is not going to be the last document you write in academia that has this kind of limit -- abstracts and papers often have similar restrictions. A reviewer (and similarly an adcom member) will simply disregard your submission if you make them work extra-hard. Why should they spend more time on your work, and why should you be given this unfair advantage over others? Bottom line: being able to convey a strong message within an allotted space is crucial in academia. Don't just ignore the requirements.