fuzzylogician

Glad to hear your interview went well! I don't think you need to worry about not attending the interview in person. People can't make it to Open House events but still get accepted all the time (you know, internationals, people with a full-time job or a family who can't get away, people whose flights were canceled because of blizzards.. ). Just concentrate on the positives, and I'm sure you'll be hearing good news soon enough!

It's more for your sake than the professor's sake. It's not that important what you talk about as much as that you are able to have a pleasant conversation. The professor will probably tell you about his current projects and ask about what you have been doing in the past or are interested in doing in the future. If you have any questions about life in the department - advising styles, course load, requirements - or about the city itself, this is the time to ask. Professors are less likely to be able to tell you how students get along with respect to funding, workload or similar questions, but some do know and it can interesting to find out how involved this professor is in his students' lives.

+1 to this, it's exactly what I did last year. It's not like I could really afford to take time off work and travel twice anyway, not to mention the costs. Almost every school I was accepted to (with the exception of two state schools which shall not be named) offered funding in the range of $300-500. Get 2-3 of those and you're pretty much set, assuming you are hosted by grad students at each department. Even the schools that couldn't afford to reimburse me for my flight funded my trip locally (buses/subway), payed for lunch and dinner, and housed me with a grad student--so by far the biggest expense was the flight.

Thanks

This is not going to end well.

Your situation is very common among internationals, and many of them still manage to make good choices without visiting. However, if you can somehow afford it, do visit. A school that looks great on paper may turn out to be not-so-great in person (and vice versa). If you can't, you need to gather as much information as possible about each of your options. Have phone/skype conversations with all the professors who work in your subfield and are likely to be on your committee. You want to know that you get along with the people who will guide your research for the next 5 years. Talk to grad students -- both of your potential advisor and others -- ask how they get along with their advisors, with the other grads and generally in their lives. Look up housing prices on craigslist and ask about where students live/how they get by on their stipends. You are interested not only in the academics, but also (moreso, if you ask me) in how your life will look if you accept a certain offer.

I went to several campus visits that had some kind of party at a professor's house, and none of the prospective students ever brought anything. It would have been awkward, I think. A bottle of wine would have been unnecessary as well, because (at least in my experience) these parties were funded by the department so someone already took care of the drinks. Besides, we always went directly from the department to the party, and you don't want to have to carry a bottle of wine with you all day.

They expect about a 75% yield, so they're aiming for an entering class of 7-8. UMass usually has a 5-6 person class, but overall they have the same number of grads in the department because more people there stay for a 6th year. UCLA had a pretty big entering class last year, I think they had an exceptionally high yield. Rugters wanted a relatively very small cohort last year (I think they said 3 or 4?). The only other CA school I know anything about is Santa Cruz but I've heard they're having a very rough time with funding so what's happening now is probably not indicative of how things usually go.

To qualify just a bit: the en masse info is extrapolation on my part from the fact that the other three (four?) people that I met last year while visiting, who were accepted to MIT, were all notified the same day as I. MIT made 12 first-round offers last year, so if a random 4 out of 12 were notified the same day, it stands to reason that everyone else was too.

As far as I know the adcom met for the first time this Wednesday. I doubt they've made final decisions yet, though I don't really know. You only need to be alarmed if MIT starts notifying accepted students and you don't hear anything, because AFAIK they notify everyone around the same time. That probably won't happen for another two weeks or so, I would guess. A rejection update on the results page is nothing to worry about.

I was reimbursed by 4 different schools, so that they split the cost of my trip between them. The biggest expense was the flights/buses, I always stayed with graduate students so there was no hotel to pay for. All the schools wanted me to pay first and present them with receipts later. While visiting each place, there was time allotted to travel reimbursement. An administrator in charge of finances would come by, make a copy of my passport, ticket stubs and (in some cases) receipts, and that was it. I got checks in the mail approximately 4-6 weeks after the visits. There was never a binding agreement, but in all of the cases, once they said they would fund me there was no problem.

You don't need to write them personally every time you get a reply from a school, even if you post about it on FB. Send them a personal email or talk to them to thank them and let them know the final results and your decision, once you've made up your mind. I would do that before posting on FB, but I don't think it really matters.

It depends. The 'definitely yes' and 'definitely no' applicants usually hear sooner than the 'maybe's, but there is no obvious pattern to how long it takes a particular department to make its decisions and/or to how it chooses to notify the applicants of the decision.

You're making wildly different assumption about the student body at the OP's department than I am. You could very well be right, and in that case other students probably can't be very helpful. However, I would think that in a "political" department like the one you are assuming, it could cause a student harm to complain about one faculty member to another without first being very aware of the balance of power in the department. That's why I still think that if other students are approachable, they are a good source of information.

There have been multiple threads about this question in the last few days. you can find links to some of them (and one of the links contains links to further posts). Also try searching on google, this search probably has 4-5 relevant results on the first page alone, and if you change the search to "in-person interview" and some other variations, I'm sure you'll find many more good results. Lastly, is particularly relevant if you want to read about someone's detailed experience at a interview weekend.

Since linguistics departments accept relatively many students who don't have a linguistics major, I assume it means that they have been successful in whatever field they came from. High stats and awards are probably expected to some extent, as well as (more importantly) a proven track record of good quality work. I've recently had a conversation with one of my professors and it came up somehow that what they look for in applicants is the potential to do innovative work. They're not necessarily looking for someone who has published in peer reviewed journals or presented at national conferences. They are looking for a person who can convince them that she will do all that once she gets the training the PhD program offers. I think the way you show you have this potential is by submitting a strong writing sample, writing a very focused and field-aware SOP, and by having strong LORs in which your current professors praise your work so far and predict great things for your future. I'm sure if each of the three writers favorably mentions a (different) paper you wrote for them, that helps. If you've TAed/RAed and have practical experience, that also helps. If you worked on any kind of project, even if there was no publication, if you are able to talk about the project's goals/methodology/findings and what it taught you intelligibly - that's a big plus. It's about showing you have the foundations to do good research - having insight, as evidenced by analyses you've proposed in your previous papers.

I can only offer practical advice: consult with other grad students in your department. Talk to other minority students in the department, or advisees of this professor, or anyone else you trust; have a chat with them and ask what they think about the professor. If she is discriminating against minorities, consciously or unconsciously, she will have done it before and someone will have noticed. If everyone thinks she treats all her students equally, then maybe she has an issue with you specifically, for some reason. Or maybe she just has a way of making some students uncomfortable, but isn't even aware of it. Whatever the issue is, other students should be able to tell you if this has happened before and how you should handle it - if she's approachable and you can just tell her how you feel, or if she is doing it deliberately, or who you could talk to (on the faculty) about this.

I gave everyone a nice bookmark (from the airport, but don't tell!) and wrote a short thank you on the back. I don't think it was necessary, but everyone appreciated it. An email would have probably been enough.

On the one hand: if you can afford it, why not? (you could ask if there is a grad student you could stay with, to save accommodation costs) On the other hand: what would you gain? You've already met the POI twice, and you've already visited the school. Do NOT assume that this is the interview if the POI didn't say so, in my experience professors are very clear about it when that is the case. The program has most likely not made decisions about finalists or interviews yet, if notifications don't go out until March.

It depends. If you've previously communicated with a POI at this school, you could contact them again to say you're coming to this conference from out of town and would appreciate a tour of the department/facilities. That would be a non-pushy way to get to know the prof and have some one-on-one time with them, in a non-committal way. If you had extensive communication with a POI, I think it would also be OK to say you'd love to have a cup of coffee with them during one of the breaks. However, if you've had no contact with anyone at the school it might come across as pushy and I think it would be better to strike up a conversation near to the coffee table than send an email in advance, if you have the courage to do that. Some people are open and friendly, others seem unapproachable, unfortunately you won't know until you get there. Edit: another option that comes to mind is to contact one of the current students you know will present at the conference. Students are much more approachable, and it won't seem like you're pushy or trying to influence decisions. At the very least you'll get to hear a current grad's view of the program; at the very best you'll also get introductions to professors out of it.

As quadsbaby said, it depends. At the very least it means you passed the preliminary elimination round, and in some cases it means you're a finalist. You can expect to have interviews with several potential advisors and other professors, to interact with current grads, to have informational sessions about grad life and have tours of the campus and the city. There will be lots of food, maybe even a party. It's lots of fun. This topic has come up often recently, for example:

Here is what UMass ling department writes in its FAQ section. I used it as a guide for all my essays: Notice that they mention experience, fit, and motivation. Fit is mentioned several times. The GPA and GRE scores are not mentioned anywhere on the FAQ page--I assume it's part of the first bullet point, being successful, but there are other important aspects to being successful. Oh, and did I mention how important fit is?

I try to read something non-school related every night before I go to bed, regardless of how late it is. I solve sudokus, I watch the daily show and other random shows on hulu. Every other weekend or so I go out for drinks with friends. My cohort and I take turns organizing a house party with home-cooked (ethnic) food on Fridays, so we get to eat real food and hang out at least once a week.

Too bad! but phone interviews are also nice, in a way. You can have your notes right in front of you the entire conversation so you can be much more organized than in a personal interview. I had 3 phone interviews and in all of them I had multiple documents open on my computer - a list of questions I wanted to ask, information I wanted to find out; a word-for-word answer to "so tell me about yourself" (didn't end up using it, but it made me feel better to have it there); my homepage, cv, sop, writing sample; the program homepage, the interviewer's homepage+recent papers.. it helped me sound sooo much more knowledgeable than I really was