fuzzylogician

The extent of the relationship really depends on the personality of the advisor and advisee and to some extent on the overall departmental culture. In my department we have parties in honor of our colloquium speakers (roughly every 2-3 weeks) where there is alcohol, and both the students and professors attend. No one is offended if someone doesn't come or doesn't drink and obviously conversations happen in small groups and you can simply talk to other grads if you're uncomfortable with talking to a professor who is holding a beer bottle. Personally I don't see the problem with having a cup of coffee or a beer with a professor, I don't think that has any effect on our mentoring relationship. Honestly, I'd be more worried if the professors and students at a department I was visiting had a cold distance thing going and really didn't get along than if I found out they occasionally went out for a beer together. That would suggest that the faculty view grad students as their inferiors and not as colleagues in training, which I think is worrisome.

I assume MIT was aware of your background when they accepted you -- that means that they believe you can manage the workload. It can be harder for people who come with less background, but if you work hard you should be able to catch up to the more experienced students. You might want to ask about the departmental culture; in my (MIT) department we make efforts to help those who have less background in a specific area, so people who struggle still end up doing very well in all their classes. It'd be much harder to get by without any support from colleagues and professors. But generally, I'd say you should go where your interests take you.

Based on the numbers alone UBC is the clear winner. Re: reputations, contrary to what you write, I don't really think there's any large difference between McGill and UBC on the university level. Outside of North America I'd doubt how informed people are about the status and reputation of all three of your options; within the Econ field people will be likelier to know, but then they'll care about the department's reputation more so than the school's. Within North America, I'm sure that potential employers will have heard (good things) about all three, but again will care more about the specific department than the school. If you say that UBC has the stronger Econ department, then it's clearly in the lead in the reputation/recognition category as well. The question to ask yourself is really where you would like to work after you graduate, or what options you would like to have available. Then find out if it makes a difference if you have a Canadian degree and try to obtain a job in the US or elsewhere, and vice versa.

I agree with the other posters, you need to figure out exactly why this professor is intimidating you. I'd also suggest that you try and figure out what kind of personalities his current students have; if the people who get along with this advisor are all pushy and strong minded, that might not be a good fit for you if you're too timid. If quieter students do find that he is a good advisor, then you could reconsider what it was that made your gut uneasy. I don't think it's too uncommon for a visit to cause people to change their minds about a school. I can tell you that before I visited schools last year I had two top choices, but after visiting and meeting with professors and current grads it was clear to me that one of those school would be a much better fit than the other. I'm sure there are stories out there of people who completely changed their minds about where they'd rather go before and after meeting potential advisors. The human factor is a major part of the decision, and I think it's important that you listen to your gut and really understand what it's telling you.

Cornell sounds like the overall better choice. I'd be wary of going to a school that only has one potential advisor--that's dangerous on several levels. What if he leaves? what if you don't get along? what if your interests change? what if the project doesn't work out? what if you get tired of the isolation from the other students even if all of the other things do work out? I think you'll have a lot more options at Cornell.

Monthly bills aside (I don't know anything about the area you'll be going to; you should check out the page for your school in the city guide forum, you might find a lot of the information you're looking for there) - if you're planning on renting an apartment off campus, you will have a lot of one-time expenses in the beginning of the year. You'll need to buy furniture (+rent a truck to move it in or pay movers), you'll need to stock up on food, cleaning supplies, pots and pans, you might need to buy books, pay something extra for dental/other insurance, etc. You might also have to pay deposits for the apartment (e.g. 1-2 months rent) and for things like telephone and internet, since you don't have a credit history. That will depend on the specific deals you'll find, but be prepared to have an fairly large amount of money to put as down-payments. Then depending on the weather, you might need to buy a new wardrobe (it depends on what you'll come with and the conditions in your area - again, I don't really know). I'd estimate that I spent at least $2,000 my first month on all of the above (that's for: deposits, basic furninure, some food+other supplies, books, some winter clothes, dental insurance--leaving things like more clothes, more non-essential furniture, internet, more supplies for the next month or two). Starting a life in a place far from home is very expensive.

Yeah, it was like that for me and for everyone I know. These kinds of things that take forever to prepare for, but are then decided in a second, are all anticlimactic in the same way. For example, submitting a paper for publication. Months of scrambling to get everything done on time, data collection, writing and rewriting, meetings with advisors--and then one click on the 'send' button, and that's it. Like hitting the pause button in the middle of the an action movie. You go out for a beer with friends, but then nothing. I guess life in academia is just like that. You work for months and months to achieve some goal, but then once you're done the slower pace is suddenly very disturbing. For me, at least, that's always the catalyst to starting a new project, and I like it. For what it's worth, you're going to be so busy come fall that you should use the meantime to relax a little. I know it's almost impossible, but at least try Oh, and congrats on the acceptance and fellowship!!

I think there are acceptable indirect ways of asking a professor to intervene on your behalf. The simplest one that comes to mind is to thank the professor for his offer and let him know that you are still wait-listed but would gladly accept the offer if admitted, because the school is your top choice. You can follow that up with asking if the professor knows when wait-listed applicants should hear news of their status. This way you are reaffirming your interest, and the professor can choose to promote your application, if they want to.

Some schools take forever to update their online system, some never get around to doing it. It doesn't mean that your application is incomplete, though schools do occasionally decide to accept applicants before receiving all of their materials. In that case they will usually tell the applicant that admissions is pending them sending X document. You can trust your admissions letter that you were in fact accepted (congrats!) but you should also contact the department just to make sure that the mistake doesn't cause any trouble (it shouldn't, but just in case).

There's still more than a month to go, but so far I'm very happy with what I've accomplished. The fall semester had too much emphasis on courses, but starting in the spring semester I've been doing a better job of integrating research with courses. I managed a 5.0 last semester and I'm pretty sure I'll keep that average for my spring semester as well. I presented (the developments of the same project) in two conferences and I'll have two publications by the end of next month. I've found a summer job as a research assistant in my department and I plan to continue developing my project, maybe even finally making a journal publication out of it, though there's still work to do before that happens. My initial doubts over my choice of school--having gone against the advice of all my professors--have dissipated. My department has a reputation for being uber-competitive and unfriendly; nothing could be further from the truth, the people in my year have become close friends whose help and support is invaluable to me. The first year can make a lifeless hermit out of you if you're not careful, but I've been actively taking the time to do other things besides work. It's really about your priorities in life, and I'd rather skim through a paper or two and have time to go out for a drink with friends once a week than to always be well prepared for all my classes but have no life.

I think that's something you could ask in person, if the conversation goes that way, but it's not something that looks good in an email. It's always interesting to hear what professors think about other programs - I found that most professors were very honest about where they thought I would fit and talked up other programs' strengths. Those who went to the trouble of putting down other programs I did not like one bit, but it certainly was helpful to know that they had such a negative attitude. If you're visiting and have conversations with professors at a certain school, they will often ask you where else you're visiting, or you can casually bring it up. It obviously shouldn't be the first thing you ask, but conversations do tend to lend themselves to discussing competing offers. More factors to consider about your specific situation: how long ago did the professor graduate; will her opinion still be relevant? Remember that she can't really compare the two programs, she only went through one of them as a graduate student, and I'm sure things look different from the faculty's side of a program. There might be a reluctance to say anything negative about former professors who are now colleagues. But you should be able to get an idea of what the town and professors are like in general.

Well, because of the marvelous architecture and acoustics of the Stata center (can you detect my cynicism?), I sit in an office with 7 other people, that is part of an open space so that it is basically connected to an office with 5 other people on one side and to the hallway, kitchen, some chairs, tables and computers, and open space of the floor below us[1]. We do not have a door. We can hear whatever anyone is saying in all of the places I mentioned earlier, whisper or not. So I completely sympathize. In our case what we did is first off hang signs in strategic places outside reminding people that we can hear them, and we have an agreement within our office and with the people in the next office about talking in the office. You can't really prevent anyone from talking, but you can let others know if something they do particularly bothers you, or if you're doing something that requires particular concentration. If it's just you three in the office, you could tell the other two people you'd rather they just talked in a normal voice. They're obviously trying to be polite. If there are more of you, you should definitely have a conversation among all of you and come to some understanding of what works for you all in terms of sharing the space. In the meanwhile, and in general, get headphones and listen to music that doesn't have words - classical, jazz, instrumental. For me at least, as long as I'm not doing something that requires extra concentration, that solves the problem. [1] but aside from that it's really a great large office with a great view and wonderful people; it's the traditional 1st year office so everybody in the department remembers what it was like when they were there and try to be mindful of how loud they speak.

I think your scores are very good, there's no need to raise them. In general, I didn't get the feeling the GRE was important for admissions decisions, certainly not for the schools I was considering. Some of the higher ranked schools didn't require GRE scores at all, and none of the others seemed to care too much as long as the scores were reasonably OK. As the saying goes, GRE scores can only keep ever you out of a school, not get you in. Once you've clear the cutoffs, the exact score doesn't matter anymore (and a 1350 should clear any cutoff). I suspect, though I don't have any confirmation for this except for common sense, that cutoffs are used in bigger departments that have so many applications that they have to weed some out initially so the adcom can divide its time more reasonably, concentrating on applicants who were likelier matches. Linguistics departments don't get much more than 100-150 applications and I'm pretty sure that all of them get looked at with some level of detail or other. The only place that GRE scores *might* play a role is in winning university-wide fellowships, but since linguistics departments tend to fund all of their PhD students (in all of the cases I know of), it's not like you'll ever be left unfunded. In any case, I think that a score of 1350 is very respectable and shouldn't cause you any trouble whatsoever. Your time and effort will be better spend on the parts of the application that will really make the difference between a good and a great application - the SOP and the writing sample. If you have a chance to gain some research experience, either by joining a project as a research assistant, or by doing independent study, that will also be very helpful to your application. Good luck!

It sounds like school A is the better choice, both in terms of research and of in terms of funding. If you only met married students there then you didn't really get a good picture of how most students interact with each other. Married students often take less time to socialize with the other students in the department so they have more time to spend with their families. The weird animosity that people at school B had towards school A would have completely turned my off school B, to be honest. I wouldn't worry about it too much; you can try and check if what they said about conferences is true -- it should be easy enough to go on some of school A professors' websites and see if they present at conferences/publish in proceedings and such like. The only thing I would be worried about is school A's placement record, which you didn't mention. However, not having to go into debt/worry about money/work you ass off, and having many research opportunities, it sounds like you will have a good supportive environment where you could write a good dissertation. The rest will be up to you.

For the last two admissions cycles, funding has been problematic in a lot of places. Many schools, mostly public schools, take longer to figure out their budget for next year and can't decide on funding for new students until they do that. For some departments it means that decisions as a whole are being delayed, others admit people first and make funding decisions later. It is unusual compared to graduate admissions in previous years, but not too unusual compared to how it's been since the financial crisis started. The April 15 deadline is only for funded offers. If you didn't receive any funding, it doesn't apply to you. You should get in touch with schools to ask about your funding situation every so often (I'd suggest once a week) just so they know you're still interested. Unfortunately there's not much you can do but wait.

My roommate used a realtor, she found the apartment and we both signed the lease. It probably helped that she was local so most of the process wasn't done from far away; I got a letter of endorsement from my department saying that I was going to attend and that I would receive a stipend, which cleared up any problem my (lack of a) credit history would have created. The landlord was fine with me faxing him a signed copy of the lease, and after I arrived in the States I went by the realtor's office and signed a real copy.

After accepting my offer (late March) I had virtually no contact with my new department until I arrived in the States (late August). My POC for the 1-2 things I did need--visa/funding related issue and such--was a junior office administrator. Since the year started I've had just about no contact with her, and furthermore I am being treated wonderfully by the department as a whole. I wouldn't make too many assumptions about how the professors and administrative staff will treat you once you start the program based on random contact with one office person 6 months before you actually start.

Yeah, it's an unusual sleep/work cycle. A lot of people will stay up late if they have to, but I don't think too many people actually *prefer* to work that late. I've always been like that, even as a child. A day in which I have even a 10am class, not to mention an 8am class, is one in which I won't get enough sleep (at least not quality sleep--it's not enough to go to bed earlier in those days, and never mind that I can't fall asleep before 1-2 am anyway--I really need to sleep in certain hours of the morning, at least until 9am if not later). Those days, and often now the day after them, I can't get quality work done. I can't wait until I get to *choose* my classes again so I don't have to take morning classes!

This may be unpopular or may depend on field, but I say your summer will be best spent resting and having fun doing non-work-related things, because you're not going to have time to do anything for a while after you start graduate school. There's no need to try and impress professors before you get to your school, you'll have more than enough time to do that once the semester begins.

I'm just a first year so I'm not going to pretend I have all the answers but it seems to me that there are two kinds of people who quit - those who simply figure out they don't want to have a career in research, and those who work themselves to the ground and as a result feel that the program is too intensive for them and drop out. If you're going to be one of the former, there's nothing you can do against that, sometimes things just aren't what you imagine that they would be like. Other than that I guess my strategy for not dropping out is not taking things too seriously - taking time off to rest, having other interests, going out and doing non-work-related things. I think that if you keep everything in proportion and have other things you love and care about, and at the same time you really do enjoy the work you are doing, then you will get past the hard times and be successful in grad school.

That is AWESOME!!!! Congratulations !!

If the wait-lists you're on are not ranked, I'd suggest you contact all the schools you're wait-listed at and reaffirm your enthusiasm to attend. If/when a slot opens for a wait-listed applicant, the adcom has to make an educated guess who to offer it to. The later it gets in the year, the less likely it gets that someone will accept the offer, so it's best for them if they can make the offer to someone who they are confident will accept (or that they at least know is still interested). If they make an offer to someone whose status they don't know, it's possible that that person will waste more time and end up declining the offer - making it even less likely that someone further down the wait-list will accept.

I doubt in my field it made a difference whether I submitted my app two months before the deadline (not!) or a day before the deadline -- the adcoms convened when they convened and announced their decisions only after they'd gone through all the apps. Most departments have visit days in mid-March so they have to make all the decisions some time before then. For what it's worth, it usually took them about a month and a half after the deadline - so I heard back in early February for Dec15 deadlines, and closer to March for January deadlines. ....and I'm still waiting to hear if I got off the UPenn waitlist, so my longest wait is one year, but I don't think they're planning to get back to me *grins*.

It just started happening to me. I've always been a night person - that's when I do my best work and it's the only time I can really concentrate on my writing. I am the sharpest between 10pm and 4am but I can go on until ~8-9am if I really have to and still do good work. I have a paper to submit by the end of the month (my first real publication, ahh!) and I'm doing the final draft rewrite back-and-forth routine with several professors for the past two weeks or so. I meet with one of them, I spend the day making changes, I send it off to the next person and make a meeting with them for as soon as possible. I find it's better than getting the same comments from several of them. This week was spring break so I pulled two all-nighters after meetings to speed the process along, but for the first time I got so tired that day that I spent the whole next day being completely unproductive. It used to be that I would bounce right back and could still do some brainless work the next day--not anymore. I'm completely blown away by how differently my body reacted to the sleep deprivation this week compared to even last semester. I'll be 27 on Thursday...I guess I'm getting old.

It should be OK to bring your boyfriend with you. If the department is paying for your accommodations/transportation, make sure you offer to pay for your boyfriend's costs yourself. Some events are guest-friendly - like parties, city/campus tours or even a night out with the graduate students (but always ask if it's OK to bring a friend!). I think it's awkward, not to mention unnecessary, to bring your boyfriend to meetings or interviews. You'll make a bad impression, and your boyfriend will be out of place. He can explore the city on his own or find something else to do while you're doing the formal parts of the visit.