fuzzylogician

@historicallinguist, you do realize you are replying to a question from 2013? And @MOSES B, finding a suitable topic is one of the most important steps of writing a thesis, and not something anyone on an anonymous internet forum will just do for you. We *might* be able to help you narrow down a research question to make sure it's appropriate for an MA thesis, but the ideas have to come from you. You need to do your own legwork and certainly you need to be able to say more than that you're looking for a topic in "language variation, sound change, bilingualism and multilingualism", each of which on their own is already extremely broad. A good place to start is a class paper that you've already written and was interesting to you, as presumably that would be something that you've already done some reading on and that there are professors around who could advise you on. Alternatively, build on topics from classes or seminars you've taken during your MA, where presumably the professor had a reading list and discussed some background and pointed out open questions. You should consult with your advisor and course instructors to get the help you need. We can't really help you here.

Can you be vaguer? Seriously, the answer will depend on the structure of the program, the teaching needs and availability of instructors at a given time, the structure and size of the undergraduate program, etc. In small programs many courses are often cross-listed as graduate and undergraduate (with different requirements for the two groups). It's also likely that there will not be a set of "first-year" graduate courses that a student has to take, and probably few if any set "programs" as you call them. Students from different cohorts are likely to take courses together, and courses may only be offered every other year or so. There is likely to be flexibility in how the coursework phase can be satisfied, in a way that would ensure that it's actually possible for students to meet the requirements given the department's course offering. This flexibility can actually also be found in larger departments, as well (officially or unofficially). You can often design your own personal "program", possibly taking courses outside the department or the set track, depending on the needs and goals of a particular student. It's also possible that you might be able to replace some requirement with an independent study, again depending on context (and again both in large and small programs).

1. There are other ways to read that comment. What I would take from it is that the other candidate demonstrated clear fit with the particular program in question, and you didn't do as good a job. They can see you pursuing your interests at a variety of other places and it's not clear why this school is the right one. If correct, it means that you should work on better demonstrating fit with the program you are applying to. You could also work at hinting or straight up saying that the program is your top choice (but don't lie, you can't say that to everyone). It is possible that they chose someone who they think doesn't have many other options, but if so there is not much you can do about it. You can improve your own application, but you can't control how other applicants' applications look or what considerations go into making an admissions decision. I don't think it's ever just one thing, though, so I don't think it's as simple as you put it. And sometimes it really is just a matter of luck. There are often more good candidates than open spots, and each one would truly be a good choice. The decision may very well come down to details that are completely outside of your control. 2. So many things could have happened to the money. I don't think there is a clear answer to that. If I had to guess, I probably would say no, there is no guarantee that there would be an extra spot next year. You need to look at pattens and think beyond just what happened this one year to this one spot you interviewed for. Maybe the money went to another student this year who would work with another professor. Maybe it went to better funding for current students. Maybe it means they can hire two undergraduate research assistants for some professor's project. There are questions of advising loads and funding and sabbaticals and who knows what else at the departmental level. Maybe there are no new students but five will graduate and need more attention next year. Maybe a grant is running out. Or a new one is starting. There are so many moving parts that we don't have any information about. 3. Maybe. Probably. Doing interviews in person is usually better than on Skype. How much better, how knows, could be a little, could be a lot. Whether it's worth the expense is totally up to you. In this particular case it's not clear that it's the (Skype) interview that was the deciding factor.

Having publications is an obvious plus, but they are not required to get into good programs. It'll matter much more that you can discuss your research experiences in detail in your SOP and that you can articulate your research interests and fit with the programs you are applying for. Those research experiences should also help you secure strong LORs, which are also crucial.

Dear Professor X, Please find attached my CV and cover letter, submitted as part of my application for Y (or: as per your request, or whatever). Please let me know if there is any additional information that I can provide in support of my application or if you have any questions. All my best, ObserverAnalyst -- Which is to say, yes, you don't just send an email with attachments and no explanation for who you are and what they are for. If you are so inclined (I usually am), you can also ask for confirmation that the prof received the materials and/or ask when you might expect to hear from him/her, so you know the email arrived safely at its destination and have some timeline to look forward to.

The PhD in Canada would normally assume that you've done a Masters, which would be similar to the first year or two of the PhD in the US in terms of coursework. Then you go into the PhD with less of a need for intensive coursework. You've chosen a program that has a very light courseload; this can't be a surprise, I'm sure it's in the graduate student handbook and/or on their website. I don't think you can reasonably ask to do a whole lot more. If the expected load is one course per semester, I don't see how you can take 3. Maybe you can ask to audit a second course once in a while. This said, coursework is usually an underappreciated part of the PhD. You will get postdocs and jobs based on your research. I can't remember anyone ever once asking me about my coursework or caring about it one way or the other in interviews. What I can suggest is that you find out where graduates from your program/lab end up and ask yourself if that is what you want for yourself. That would be a good indication (though there is obviously no guarantee) of where you'll likely end up. Of course this is something you should have done before applying and certainly before accepting the offer, but it's not too late to at least know where you stand now.

This works differently at different schools. There is a chance that a department might interview a candidate who they consider a finalist, and post-interview decide that they would not want to make that candidate an offer, regardless of whether or not anyone else accepts their offer because of fit or any other issue. Assuming that is not the case, based on what you were told, two things might happen once an offer is made: some schools might have a waitlist and would be able to make an offer to a second candidate if their top choice declines. At other schools that may simply not be an option -- they may only get to make one offer and hope that the candidate accepts, but they can't reuse the money to make an offer to a second choice, in case the first choice declines. The reasons behind this funding setup are complicated but the bottom line is that whatever the other candidate chose to do, it's possible that once you were not selected, there was no way of changing your outcome. So options for what might have happened include at least the following: - there was no waitlist, you were out as soon as the offer went to someone else; - you only have partial information, and in fact there were other candidates who were interviewed who you are not aware of, and one of them was selected instead of you, so the position was filled. - funding is distributed to the department more generally; you may have been on a waitlist, but others were ahead of you on it and accepted their offers, so your potential advisor might have ended up with no students because there wasn't enough funding to go around for everyone, and other professors got their choice instead. - some other unknown reason why the money didn't go to you even though at some stage it may have been temporarily available

As long as the research assistant co-writes the letter with him, that should be fine. The letter should be personalized and include specific examples of anything he says about you, so he needs help from someone who actually knows you and can provide those details. It probably wouldn't hurt to meet with him in person at least once, so he gets some sense of who you are. You could also talk to him about your school choices, if you think he might be appropriate to ask for advice from. Just have a friendly conversation about your research interests and goals for the PhD.

I am in a different field so I can't give you a qualified assessment of your profile, but it doesn't sound that bad to me. It sounds like your grades are good enough to get you past any automatic cutoff, which is really all they need to do. And it sounds like you have a clear idea of what you want to study and the ability to articulate why it matters and why the schools you chose are a good fit for your interests. You've done everything you can to get experience, and as long as you can talk about your classes/papers/internships/etc insightfully, that's really all that matters. Your LORs aren't bad, either. I am not sure why it's a big deal if a professor has a different approach to the theory than you do; what matters is whether or not she thinks you will be successful as a PhD student, and that is a question that goes well beyond this approach to theory or that. I understand your concerns, I wasn't much different at that stage of the application cycle, but as much as anyone can guarantee anything in this process, you are doing everything right, as far as I can tell. And it's birds you kill with the stone, not flies

I understand the uneasiness at the uncertainty, but that uncertainty will remain whether or not your grades were converted to the American system. The process is holistic, there is no action you can take or standard you can meet that will guarantee admittance to any program. Although you don't mention what field or degree you are applying for, if this is a research PhD program, your grades will matter but they will by far not be the most important. Prior research experience and your ability to describe it and your research interests more generally in your SOP, your writing sample, the strength of your LORs, and how well the school you are applying to is suited to support your interests (and how well you can articulate that in your SOP) are going to be crucial. One thing you can do is go to the 'people' page of the departments you are considering, and read up on the current students to see if you can detect any characteristics of a successful application (concentrate on 1-2 years so you're not overwhelmed by what they' done while in grad school, what matters is what their profile looked like entering the program). This won't be any guarantee, but can help you get an idea of what the student body looks like, and whether your application will look at all similar.

The vast majority of the time, you are *not* going to be required to provide an official conversion of your grades from your local system to the US one. Universities are going to do that on their own, and they have experts who know how to interpret grades from different countries. You are most certainly not going to be the first German student they encounter. They will understand how to interpret your grade (and it's a good one, so you have nothing to worry about!). Beyond that, your LORs will also say that you get good grades, and your transcripts will clearly show that your grades are from a German university so a 1.3 should be interpreted in that context, not as a failing US grade. If your transcript doesn't provide it, the one thing you might try to obtain from your university is a description of how to interpret the grades; that is usually provided as part of the transcript, but if not, maybe someone in your department will be willing to write a quick explanation (or sign their name to something you can find online). At this point, the advice I would give is to use your grades as they appear on your transcript if the system allows you to do so, or leave it blank if that is an option and you are worried (although I don't think you need to be).

Listen, this sucks and you have a right to be angry. I think the best thing you can do is take at least a day off, maybe two, and allow yourself to just be upset and do whatever you want. Then you need to regroup and come up with a new game plan for what to do given these new circumstances. Reviewing some of the material you've already learned is a good idea, and you can spend a bit of time on vocab every day, but you can also afford to slow down for a few days and then get back into serious prep mode for the last 7-10 days. Do the same thing you did before: some practice exams simulated in a real-like environment, go over tips, solve problems in areas where you know you're struggling more. You've got this -- you were ready before and you'll be ready again, and even better than before because you have this extra time. Don't stay mad at yourself, things happen that are outside your control. All you can do is react to them well, but you can't always change them. So allow yourself time to process, and then choose to put it behind you and do the best with what you have. Once it's over, it'll be all the same if you took the exam in July or in August. This is not a major obstacle, and you shouldn't think of it as one.

Time. And patience. You get to know them better, they get to know you better. If they are open and willing (and you can't make them, if they are not), they will come to understand where you came from and when an assumption they are making just doesn't hold for you, at least to some extent. You can't expect them to change their assumptions about the world after just talking to you once, but you can hope that if you have multiple conversations with them over time, that they will begin to be more inclusive of your point of view. It's really hard to imagine someone's life when it's completely different from yours, even if you are the best meaning person, certainly if you are not even aware of your privilege. Having actual personal contact with someone who lives that life is the best way to lead to change.

I don't know where you are going or what exactly you are studying, but I know exactly no one who got regular financial support from their parents at my grad program, which was also at a top school. Maybe you just need to look for friends outside of your cohort/department. It happens that one doesn't get along with people from one's cohort, for a variety of reasons, and the best solution seems to be to do a combination of becoming more flexible in talking to your cohort and what you expect from them, and looking for friends elsewhere. There are threads here that you can find on where to look (e.g. meetup and similar, and other suggestions). And as for thinking that one's experience is the norm, isn't that entirely commonplace? You know what you know and you view the world from your own perspective. If you and everyone you know does X, and you don't give any thought to the fact that there are other people in other parts of town (or, you know, in other cities/states/countries, etc.) who do Y, you might generalize more than you should. There is a reason why we talk about white privilege and male privilege, etc.

No one can give you odds. Much will depend on how the rest of your application will look. There may be schools with official or unofficial cutoffs that your GPA may not meet, and there is not much that we can do about that. Sometimes if a school wants you, they can go to bat for you even if you don't officially meet the requirements, but it's not guaranteed, and they have to really want you. It does mean the rest of your application needs to be strong -- there can only be one thing obviously wrong with it. It will work in your favor that the bad grades came from unrelated classes from several years ago and that you have good grades in your major. If you can keep it up and show how your current performance is different from the past, that will help. The fact that you took a break and did something else will also help. You'll need to spend some time crafting an SOP that puts the past in perspective and showcases your more recent strengths. I don't think that retaking these unrelated courses with low grades will help much, unless the new grade will replace the old one on your transcript and you can get your GPA above 3.0. If not, I think you want to concentrate on getting good grades in your major, making connections with the faculty for LORs, getting research experience, and making sure that you have at least one strong paper to serve as a writing sample. When the time comes to apply, you might consider reaching out to faculty ahead of time to get them interested, and also bring up the low GPA so that they can look out for you and fight for you if there are problems. You might also learn about firm cutoffs that would make your application not viable at certain schools and save yourself the time and money. But it sounds like that is far enough in the future that you don't need to worry about it now. For now, concentrate on your grades, connections, and getting some research experience.

1. Whether it's a good idea to contact professors depends on the field, in some it's necessary and in others it's not generally done. 2. There is a lot less of a reason to contract professors after applying. Your goal is generally to find out if the professor is taking on students and whether they would be a good fit for your interests. If you've already applied, what's the point? 3. Have someone you trust read your emails. Are they personalized and sent to professors who would be a good fit? If you aren't getting any responses (or the few you're getting aren't encouraging), it's possible that the emails aren't well-written. Professors get too many "form" emails from students who are obviously a bad fit or whose text reads like they've sent the exact same email to 500 people, 499 of whom are a very bad fit, so they might not bother replying. 4. It's early in the summer. People might be on vacation and might not even know what their funding situation will be like next year. I think a better time to do this might be late September, for applications with December deadlines.

To me this sounds like a situation where you do not want a letter from your advisor. She has already said that she will not support your application right now, and you have to know that means that the letter will not be (entirely) positive and will include some discussion of her perspective for why you're not ready to go to grad school now and why you couldn't be successful as her advisee. This doesn't sound like a letter that you want to have, although yes, not having a letter from your advisor is also a red flag. I think that there are two options here. One, if you are able to, have a meeting with her where you say "I understand and appreciate your advice, but I nonetheless hope to apply to PhD programs this coming fall. Will you agree to write me a letter?"; now a lot will depend both on her actual verbal response and on her body language. If she says some form of "yes" then you should explicitly ask what she will say in the letter, so you can decide if that is something you want to have. The alternative is not to ask her (or to talk to her and decide that she is a bad option) and get instead a letter from someone else at your school who knows the situation up close and can explain why you are not getting a letter from your advisor and why despite that, you are still a strong applicant for the PhD program. I think that even with a letter from your advisor, you really need one unmitigatedly positive letter from someone else at your program who can talk about the advising relationship from an outside perspective and be fully supportive of your application (which I assume your advisor will not be).

Please don't post the same question multiple times. I've removed your other posts. I suggest that you search the site for relevant information (e.g. search for "KAUST" and browse the interviews subforum) and come back with more specific questions, if you have any.

If you have a friend you can trust, you could set a forwarding address to their address. There is a service with the US postal service, not for free but not too expensive. Or if your department will agree to it, set the main office as your forwarding address and give them permission to get rid of junk. Switch to online bank statements. Every bank I know also allows you to make online payments on your credit cards and anything else you need. For your phone, do you have a contract? if you do, you should probably end it because otherwise you'll continue to get charged. If you committed to being signed with ATT for a certain amount of time and you haven't reached it yet, it may cost you money to break the contract and if that is the case you can calculate whether it'd cost more to break the contract or wait it out. If you don't have a commitment, it shouldn't cost anything. If you have a pay-as-you-go plan, you don't need to do anything. Although you didn't mention it, if you have utilities in your name, you should update the relevant companies, and if you have internet service I hope you returned any borrowed equipment and you should also cancel that service.

Three thoughts: - Content-wise: if he is not reading and you need feedback, stop sending him dozens of pages to read and expecting that this time, unlike all others, suddenly he will read everything. (Yes, he should, but it doesn't seem to be happening.) Come to your meetings with a short handout, be able to summarize in words what you are doing, and ask your questions about whatever you're uncertain about. Yes, you'll spend part of the meeting discussing something that he could have come prepared for if he'd read the chapter, but if that isn't happening, stop counting on it and help yourself by teaching him what he needs to know in the meeting. - Format/writing-wise: make use of colleagues and the writing center as much as you can. Are there other committee members who can help with the writing (and content)? - Complaining-wise: I am not sure that's the best way to get what you want. If you do choose to go down that route, going to the dean skips one or two important steps along the way. (1) you need to explicitly tell your advisor that you need more feedback/are unhappy with the level or frequency of the feedback you've been getting, and have a conversation about how to improve it. There need to be documented attempts to solve this problem before you go over his head. (2) you need to talk to someone inside your department, e.g. the DGS and/or the chair. At this point I'd concentrate on the concern of not finishing in time, and try to get assurances on that front. (3) complaining openly might be the right thing to do on some level, but your career is more likely to suffer because of it than your advisor's. The ombudsperson can sometimes be a good resource for anonymous complaints and getting things to change without directly sticking your neck out there, especially if this is a systematic problem. A conversation with him/her can also give you perspective about whether your expectations are within reason or whether you are expecting more of your advisor than you should. You might be able learn tools for managing your expectations and the communication with your advisor to help you get the feedback you need.

I don't see the problem. If you're worried about what your advisor will say, schedule a meeting (or email if meetings are hard over the summer) to say "I just wanted to run this plan by you: I was going to ask to have my MS coursework count towards the PhD, take course X, and start working on project Y (by doing ABC). Does that sound like a good plan for next semester?". If your advisor has any problems with this plan, s/he will let you know. Otherwise, just do it. I don't think it's lazy and you can always audit classes or take them P/NP for anything you're genuinely interested in, but without needing to worry about the grade. Being able to spend more time on research is a good thing.

Were you expecting an answer from him? Like, did he promise to comment on your SOP and give you a timeline for doing so that he's already behind on? Because if not, there is nothing he would need to communicate with you about any time soon -- not until there are deadlines coming up. I don't think he would be mad that you didn't mention him by name, frankly I don't think it's necessary to mention anyone from old institutions by name, and certainly not everyone who's been influential. The SOP is a forward-looking document and you should spend most of your time discussing your current/future research plans and how the particular school you are applying to is a good fit to support those interests. You talk about your past with the express goal of demonstrating that you are well prepared to pursue those future goals that you are applying to grad school to achieve. That usually doesn't need to involve too much discussion of your undergrad professors (certainly not discussing each one by name) because what matters is what you did and what you learned, not so much who they are. You should mention this professor only if it advances the narrative you're creating, but you are not compelled to do so just because he is writing you a LOR. He will explain how he knows you in his LOR. In any event, if he was supposed to reply and missed a deadline, I'd give it a few days if there is nothing urgent, then simply follow up without assuming that anything is wrong. There can be a million reasons why someone might forget to reply to an email, and they very rarely have anything to do with anyone being mad. If there is no reason for him to reply right now and you don't need anything from him, I'd leave it alone. You can send a newer draft of your SOP in the fall when you start finalizing it and you can be in touch when you have your full list of schools that you plan to apply to, to let him know about their deadlines and to set up a reminder system. Other than that, it's early in the summer, there is nothing more you need from him right now. I would not assume that there is any problem unless there is clear and explicit evidence of that.

@TakeruK there are interesting questions here that are probably not relevant to the OP's worries so maybe they should go in a different thread because they might derail the discussion. But it seems to me that there is a question for you which is irrelevant to the OP of what it means to be a Canadian (or American, for that matter) immigrant, and how your language is tied to your identity. I don't want to make assumptions about how you think of yourself, but I think that your reaction goes as much to pressure to conform to be a (more) "typical" Canadian/American (whatever that means) as it does to the more practical considerations of "how do I make myself maximally understood." It's sometimes very hard for me to think of Canadians as international students in the US. I know they technically are, but the language and culture are so similar, I am not sure you have all the same struggles re: fitting in. As an international student you can usually make one of two choices, either you make friends mostly among people from your country (when and where possible), or you embrace English and you have a diverse group of friends (often, I think, non-American, but that again is probably a whole other discussion). If you choose the English route, I think it's inevitable to spend some time thinking about how to fit in, but we never have that thought of how to balance being a "(more) typical American/Canadian" with keeping our own original (national) identity, because that's never an expectation. I think that makes a big difference in how you think about things. At least, that's what I've always thought. Some of the people with the most difficult (for me) to understand accents have been British/Scottish/Australian. Obviously, they are native speakers, but I know several who have made no effort to adopt a more American way of speaking, sometimes proudly so.* I've always thought that it's their way of maintaining their identity and not assimilating, if that makes sense. I understand it, but honestly I really appreciate those who at least don't use their strong regional dialect, even though I know it takes an extra effort, because it can be hard enough for non-native speakers as it is. * As an anecdote, I actually know a native speaker who didn't get a job in another English-speaking country (with a mainstream dialect that is considered very similar) because they said they couldn't understand what s/he was saying. So, as far as accent reduction and jobs go, there is only so much you can do...

No offense but that sounds at least partially like coming from a place of privilege that not everyone can afford. I already don't look (or sound) like the typical academic in my field. You assume people are going to make the effort to listen to you and if they do, they'll realize that you have valuable things to say; I can't afford to make that assumption. I am not necessarily advocating for accent reduction classes here, but for someone who's truly an international student and didn't grow up in an English speaking country -- which I think is true for the OP but not for you, TakeruK -- there can sometimes be no instruction on how to speak in English classes in school. You learn grammar, but very little time is spent on pronunciation (or actual speaking, for that matter). I think that having some active awareness of the sounds of English (and other languages!) can be very helpful. You can read online and watch some YouTube videos about basic phonetics -- how sounds are physiologically produced -- and that can sometimes help you understand how to say sounds you might struggle with. Sometimes there can be things that are easy to fix with just a little bit of awareness. Even more important sometimes is to give some thought to the overall melody of (American) English and where stress goes in words. Humans are predictive creatures; there are studies that show that we have (usually correct) expectations about what the other person is going to say before they even say it (or even though there might be some noise that wipes out/distorts part of the utterance), but that is based on cues that the accent might mess with. That can be greatly helped by imposing an English-like stress pattern on your speech, even if the actual sounds that are coming out of your mouth aren't perfect. If people can have a reasonable guess about what you want to say, they will make up for the deficiencies and might not even notice them. None of this is to say that having an accent is any kind of terrible disaster. It is absolutely not. You can be as successful with an accent as any local person. Plenty of people are. The accent does lessen some with time as you use your language, and your immediate environment will also learn to understand the specific quirks of your speech, which helps too. It's important not to let it silence you in class discussions, although I know it can be hard in the beginning. The goal is not (necessarily) to make it go away (that is really really hard!), but to make it manageable, which I think does mean having some awareness of where your difficulties are and seeing if there are small changes you can make to help it along. I also think that TakeruK's strategies for dealing with nervousness are great.

Yeah, this is normal. Many of the students in my program ended up doing something at least somewhat different in school than they pitched in their SOPs. I know I did. It takes time to build enough familiarity with the literature to figure out what has been done and what are (interesting, feasible) open questions. Of course you don't know that now; you can expect it to take time to figure it out. Your professors and courses will help some, and there will be some process of trial and error that's also normal, but eventually you'll realize that there are recurring themes in your final papers and in what you enjoy reading, the talks you feel you learned from the most, etc. It may (and in my experience, often does) come after a long period of uncertainty, there's a lot of that in the PhD. I think it's important to be aware of that and embrace it, because otherwise it can be very intimidating and discouraging. Especially the following thought, which you should get out of your head right now: "everybody else is so sure of themselves/knows what they're doing/has their shit together, and only I don't." Nope. Everyone's been confused at some point, maybe even right now.