fuzzylogician

1. (There was no question here. I'd argue against taking on a lot of debt, if asked.) 2. Seems plausible, but it's hard to know for sure for every school. As a general rule, one has better chances coming from a better known school, having references that are known to the adcom members, and having grades that are easier to interpret. That said, if students from your department routinely go on to good PhD programs in the US, that would suggest that profs in the US know how to interpret their applications.. 3. That's a question only you can answer. The considerations are as you put them. If you specialize more earlier, you'd be a better candidate for jobs of type X, but you'd have a harder time moving laterally to other topics and other jobs later on. But if that's what you want to do, then maybe that's the right move. Otherwise, my opinion is that keeping more options open makes more sense at early stages.

Yeah, this really depends. I've lived in university towns with a set move-in date some time in the summer (July 1, August 1, and September 1, at different places). This means that with 2-3 months' notice, the good places would go on the marker some time between April and June. Right now I live in a city where the university is not the main business in town, and there are leases year round. There is no particular set date when the best apartments go on the market, and apartments will go on the market with a move-in date within a few weeks in the future, so you won't really find much of anything for next fall at this point. In addition, if you look for a place with roommates or for a sublease, those will usually come up later in the year than whole apartments. This would be something to figure out for your own new city. As for university housing, you could talk to the housing office to see if there are some apartments reserved for first-years (in mine, that was definitely the case) or what the chances are that you could get something, and go from there. Often your department will have current students who can provide more information, who may even be willing to go look at a place for you in person if you're trying to rent an apartment from afar.

Seconding the above. All you can do is offer your friend your support. If you have that kind of relationship, you could also offer her your thoughts on the topic, but really the best that you can do is support her, especially if you think that one thing she's missing is socializing and a network of friends.It sounds like you've already tried to tell her what you think. I don't think there's much more that you can do other than continuing to be there for her. You may be right that it won't be the right solution, but frankly you don't know. For some people, bad experiences can become associated with the places where they happened, so going away could be a big help, even if it does mean taking a step back professionally. Ultimately, you have to trust that your friend knows herself and what's best for her. Just be there for her and help her through this tough time.

For starters, knowing a bit more about the field of study you want to pursue a PhD in seems to be in order. Why do you want this degree? What are your interests? What schools might you want to attend? Once you get that far, you can also start looking at application requirements and at current students to see what their backgrounds look like. That should give you some idea as to your own chances given your background.

You’re welcome!

No financial repercussions that I know of. There may be professional repercussions, though: It may make it harder for you to come back and try another program later in the future, and it may burn some bridges with faculty.

Fingers crossed for you.

Sending another email sounds reasonable, but I wouldn't ask all these questions you listed above. Really what you want to know is when you might expect to hear, and if the program can give you some indication of the likelihood of acceptance (while you understand that there are no promises). I'd just ask that -- above yourself, not others -- and reiterate your interest in the program.

The I-20 is an immigration document that allows you to be in the United States for a certain purpose (studies). Based on it, you can get a visa to enter the United States, the F-1 (student visa). Now, to get the I-20 you need to show that you can fund your studies, since you are not allowed to work in the US. So far I was with you on your question. But where I get confused is where you say that you "need to get the Certificate of Eligibility (I-20)". To my understanding, that's simply not what the I-20 is. I assume that the Certificate of Eligibility is a loan-related financial document. If so, it'd be entirely independent than the I-20, which is an immigration document. I'd go back and re-check precisely what you need to submit.

Hard to know as these things can vary greatly, but it sounds to me like you'll only get admitted if the program can fund you. Frankly, you shouldn't do a PhD without funding anyway, so that sounds entirely reasonable to me. The fact that an offer may come after April 15 suggests that they are waiting to see if the first batch of candidates who have offers will accept or decline. If enough of them decline, some funding will free up that could go to waitlisted candidates. Whether or not you're officially waitlisted, it sounds like that's what your situation is. Good luck!

Sorry to hear that, but I'm not sure what else anyone here can offer. If you didn't get funded and you need it to go, what other choice do you have other than to do something else for the year? Some combination of working to save money and improving your application come to mind. You could also reach out to your intended supervisor to ask if they know of any other sources of funding; the chances aren't high, but you've got nothing to lose.

Well, as a first step I'd get of the mindset of interviewing them for a position that they are interested in. You have as much of an interest in this than they do, if not more. Think of this as a conversation, not an interview. You can't really know from one conversation how an entire advising relationship will look like. So I'd just think of it as the potential first conversation in the relationship. Tell them about your ideas and potential topic and see what they say. Ask them how they approach working with a student: how often will they meet with you? Will they read parts of drafts or only whole chapters? Do they expect you to come with fully formed ideas or will they guide you through confusion? You should also discuss these questions with their other students, to get a sense of how the other side of the relationship views it. Talk to them about how they think about the timeline to completion; what your post-MA plans might be; if they encourage you to talk to other faculty or not; whether they think submitting to conferences/journals early is wise or if you should wait. If you have any non-traditional plans (take extra courses, get a certificate, whatever), how do they feel about that? But frankly, mainly, you should just have a conversation to get a feel for how you'd get along.

Not the same, but. I'm a linguist who doesn't study her own native language. I get asked if I plan to/want to study my language (or: why I don't) all the time. I don't really take it as anything other than curiosity at what seems like an "obvious" choice I could make. You can already see how the story tells itself. I just reply that maybe in the future, but right now my research has taken me in other directions, and that's always where the conversation ends. I know that the background isn't quite the same, but it seems to me that these questions aren't malicious, at most they are ignorant or just plain curious. So I take it as such and move on.

It's a bit hard to know. At many schools, the April 15 deadline was more like the 16th or 17th this year, since the 15th was a weekend. At that point, schools expect to hear from their admitted applicants. Once that happens, they can make some decisions about waitlisted candidates, but that can take a few more days, as the dust settles and funding matters become clearer. This means that you may still hear this week, and there's no way we can know how it will go for you. There's still hope at this point, but no promises.

^ There is little point in getting a letter from someone who can't say much more than that you got an A- in their class. Can this person speak to your qualifications as an academic? It's best to get letters from those who know you best and can make the strongest case that you will make a strong candidate in your field, and/or as an academic. Adcoms can see your grades on your transcript so a letter that can't say much more than how you did in a class won't get you very far.

There is lots of advice you can find by browsing this section of the board. Here's a place to get started:

Hold on. You emailed someone and asked them to read your proposal. I'm going to venture a guess that they weren't sitting breathless by their computer just waiting for you to email; they might have actually already had plans for how they were going to spend their time this week, possibly even next. If you're in the US, the semester is wrapping up. They probably have other students, publications to work on, and many other demands on their time that are already in place. I think it's totally reasonable for them to take a week to read your proposal. This seems like an over-reaction, or unreasonable expectations for what you should get from your advisors and on what timeline.

Listen, multiple people have told you that this scenario you're imagining is entirely implausible. Now you're telling us that you can't even find the supposedly plagiarized part. What's the worry, then? There is no way your professor will go back and look through this paper for plagiarism -- why would he ever do that in the first place? And apparently there's nothing to find. Again, no one will revoke a PhD degree because of a problem with one third of one sentence in an undergraduate paper. Take this as a learning and growth opportunity. Stop working last minute in the middle of the night, so you're not causing yourself this kind of anxiety again. And for the love of god, have mercy on your professors and stop writing sentences that are 62 words long.

And with that, I think this thread can benefit from a cooling off period. I'm locking it for the day.

Is there anyone else you could meet with instead? Maybe you can add a second advisor instead of replacing your current one, so you don't have to have that conversation with her. A lot of the fit that goes into a supervising relationship is personal, not professional. If you need more attention than she can give you and that's affecting your well-being, you need to seek the support you're lacking. I'd try and view it as an incompatibility between work styles, which then means you don't need to blame her for anything. It's a simple reality that she's chair and is busy, and you would prefer to work with someone who's more available. This said, it'd be advisable to have someone in mind and to have at least some idea that they'd actually be a better fit and willing to take you on before you make any moves. So, what are your other options? Have you tried chatting with your advisor's other students about how they handle working with her? Try and talk to those who are a year ahead of you about how they went through the process. They might also have thoughts about who among the faculty gets along with your advisor and would be a good candidate for a second/replacement advisor and who might not be. The last thing you want is to hit some political hornets' nest. (As in, picking a second/replacement advisor who doesn't get along with your advisor, leading to either resentment or in-fights.)

Seems to me that if you're more excited about school A and you can make the finances work, it's at least a more direct route to your goal than school B, which would require you to essentially start over again and reapply in two years. I don't think that teaching experience will make a big difference at this point in your career. So I suppose the question is whether you want to be at location B or work with B-scholars and give it another go later. Or in other words: is school A your dream school, or would you like to try again for a better option in two years? If A makes you happy and has a direct route to the PhD, it seems like the better option.

Outsider's opinion here: it seems to me that the problem in your application is in seeing the broader picture. First off, just because you've only studied Plato so far and you think that's all you'll want to do in the future, that's a bit narrow minded. You don't know that this is true, and it's important to at least allow for the possibility that your interests will develop over time in grad school and beyond. More crucially, as scholars, we need to be able to communicate our research to others, within and outside our (sub)field; a critical part of that involves telling others why they should care about our research. In this case: why is it important/interesting to study Plato? What do we learn from doing so? How does it fit into the broader scheme -- does it influence our theories, or how we should think about anything else? If all you can say is that it's interesting to study for its own sake but you can't see any broader implication or interface with any other area of thought or life, that's indeed a very hard sell. It probably also means you haven't given your proposed area of study enough thought, because it can't possibly be true. I'd suggest that communicating this broader understanding is what matters most in your application. The fact that your actual current publication or classes were about Topic X aren't all that important, given that we understand that you've had limited exposure and a limited amount of time to study your subject. What matters more is how you digest it, as an indication of the kind of scholar you'll become, if and when you go to grad school.

The person is not invalidating anyone's experiences by asking more questions, but by not listening to the answers. I'm glad I stayed out of the debate since it went precisely as I had predicted. But a short version of my reply to some of the more outrageous posts above would be as follows: I don't have a penis, and don't expect to grow one any time soon (nor would I want to). Any system that inherently advantages men simply by virtue of them being men is one that I would fight against, because it inhibits my own growth and development, as well as that of my students and friends. The idea that I should "adjust" to a system that disfavors me by its very nature could only be uttered by someone blinded by their own privilege. The (wrongheaded!) belief that e.g. women aren't good decision makers or whatever other bullshit was written above is a symptom of this ailing system. Recasting the debate in terms of "evidence" (male) vs "emotion" (female) is likewise misguided. But in my experience having this kind of discussion is simply useless: it's too abstract. Young men, find a young female scholar (poc scholar, disabled scholar, etc) near you -- a fellow student, a postdoc in your lab, an assistant professor, etc -- buy her a coffee and *ask her* about her experiences. *Listen* to the experiences of women in your field. Do some reading. Develop an awareness. It's totally fine to be skeptical and ask questions, but you have to be willing to listen to the answers. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not happening.

I'd want to know what the COL in both cities is. I'd also wonder whether the stipend improves when you go from MA to PhD at school A, because I can't imagine that 7.5K gets you very far even in low COL areas. Then another question is how often students from school A continue on to a PhD there, and how often students from school B are accepted. If the plan is to go to a PhD anyway, frankly at this point I think that the main goal of the MA should be to get you there in the best shape possible. I'd also argue that getting there debt-free or at least with minimal debt should be a top priority. There are other aspects you didn't mention; you'd work with different professors, maybe different coursework, etc. And there's the nebulous "more/less excited" that only you can evaluate. Bottom line, which school will help you get into the best PhD program for what you want?

Yes, you're supposed to develop into an independent scholar by the end of your PhD. But if you were already a fully formed independent scholar, you wouldn't need the PhD training, would you? The difference between your undergraduate degree and your graduate education won't be in that you're suddenly expected to know everything. It'll be in how you go about asking questions and finding out the answers to things you don't know. You'll still have some coursework that will allow you to learn some subject matters in a guided way, but often you'll discover that have to teach yourself what you need to know from here on out. That means identifying what you don't know (crucial first step!) and then what to read/teach yourself to fill the gap. One of the best ways to do that is to *ask around*! This is one of the things your advisor is there for. It's perfectly fine to say you're not familiar (enough) with X. But now, instead of expecting someone to just teach you what X is, you might instead want to ask for some main sources to read to get up to speed, and do the reading yourself. That's what being independent means in this context: not knowing everything, but learning how to develop the tools you need to do your work -- which often means precisely saying that you don't know something and asking for pointers for where to go from there.