fuzzylogician

Best advice I have for you would be to stay in touch with your POI and reiterate your interest in the program. They will have an interest in finalizing their admitted students list and they would prefer not to make an offer to someone who won't take it but will delay the process of moving further down the waitlist by a few weeks. I don't think that having someone who declined mention your name would make any difference. If they told you you're at the top of the list, all you can do is wait and hope someone with an offer declines.

This thread is almost four years old. You'll probably get more out of starting a new topic and asking your questions right here.

You won't ever achieve fluency by just taking a university class. The best way to learn a new language is through immersion. Be forced to speak the language -- get better at it more quickly. Maybe summer courses are the solution. Maybe the solution is instead to employ a local translator to help you. Picking up three distinct languages from scratch during a PhD program sounds very difficult to me, and I say this as someone who speaks multiple languages and picks them up fairly easily.

I'm sorry. I don't see another way of interpreting the email you got.

Sounds like you weren't accepted, since they say that all of their offers have gone out, and you haven't received one yet. It's possible that rejections will be sent much later, after the entire process is completed.

Your first and most important priority is yourself. No one else is going to care about your future more than you will, and you have worked hard to give yourself this opportunity. You deserve it, and you should make the most of it. Other people will do the same for themselves. FWIW, PhD admissions are competitive enough that very good students end up getting rejected simply because there aren't enough spots for everyone, so it's not going to be impossible to find someone good to fill a spot in April (or later, for that matter). And in any event, this is not up to you; this happens every year and your POI will know how to deal with it. (And you can stay on good terms with this POI even if you don't attend that program; you'll see them at conferences, and who knows, maybe you'll get a postdoc there one day. It's totally normal for good students to have multiple offers, and they shouldn't be offended if you decide to take another offer.) Again, you've earned the right to do the best for your own future. As long as you're undecided, everything you do is fair. Once you've made a decision, that's when it's time to communicate it as quickly as possible. But take as long as you need first.

After three weeks it seems to me that you actually could write him to ask for an update. I'd do it, if I were you. I'd personally much rather know that it's a 'no' than to stay in the dark. Or if there's an actual delay, that'd be good to know, too. Good luck!

Unless you already know that something is a no-go, my personal opinion on these matters is that you apply, and if you get to the interview stage you go and you try to figure out if the place could work for you. No sense in closing off opportunities before you even have them. You can also have even more of the conversation once you get an offer, especially if you talk to junior faculty who aren't necessarily the ones who are trying to recruit you.

This depends on the particular college but I know that in some cases faculty don't need to practice the official college religion, but they do sign some pledge/commitment to uphold certain values. It's up to the individual whether they can live with that. Otherwise, how present religion actually is in the college daily life may vary a lot. You may want to do some digging to find out information about colleges that might be of interest to you.

Like you say, we're comparing apples and oranges here. Which one do you like best? These will likely lead to different future careers, perhaps in different parts of the country, and no one here can tell you which one is better suited for you. Only you know that. Do you know anything about placement rates at each program and what jobs students tend to take? Cost of living? graduation rates (do people drop out a lot)? Name recognition? A part of the country you'd rather live/work in post degree? (Is this a masters or a PhD?)

At the end of the day whatever you do, you're choosing one option and letting go of all others. That's unavoidable. If you've gotten feedback from trusted advisors and you've talked to everyone yourself, there's not much more to do than take the plunge. I usually like to spend a day or two pretending as if I've made up my mind and getting myself excited about the next steps (new city, new program, moving there and apartment hunting, new people) before making it final. But then that's all that's left. You'll never know what's down the road not taken, such is life, but all you can do is make the best decision given information you have available. Do that and trust yourself.

If you're going to replace an exam question, you need to replace it for everyone, to keep things fair. You might email the prof to say you think you may have overshared with two students you ran into, and propose new questions to replace the ones you discussed with them. It should probably be up to the prof to decide what to do, unless there's some understanding that you're in charge of designing the exam. And repeat after me: "I can't give you more information than was given to your classmates, that wouldn't be fair. We discussed the material in class/you have a study guide/whatever. You are responsible for everything in there. If you have specific questions about anything, I'm happy to answer them."

I routinely tell my students "pay attention now, XXX will be on the exam". I only wish they'd listen. What I find a little off about this is that you didn't give all of your students the same shot at success. You let the two that you randomly ran into milk you for information. If you basically revealed exam questions to them, even if you didn't explicitly say "this is an exam question", that's going a step too far for me. Broadly saying "make sure you study X", though, is fine.

Getting things in writing is always wise, especially when you anticipate trouble. Pretending things didn't happen is easier said than done when you're not the one in the position of power, but you can try it and see what happens. Involving someone else seems wise at this point. An admin, an advisor, someone who can serve as a third-party witness. People don't pull this crap (as often) when others are watching whose opinions they care about. Is there a union or some way to limit your responsibilities? Have you documented how much time you are spending on this? You have the right not to get over-involved beyond what is reasonable given what you are getting paid for. Sadly, students in these large classes don't understand how much time goes into admin work, nor do they care who is actually responsible for what. Don't spend too much time trying to make everyone happy, that's not even possible in these large classes. But maybe there are subtle ways of conveying to students (verbally, without leaving a written trail) who is actually responsible for f*ckups. At the end of the day, the buck should stop with the prof, not you.

My #1 piece of advice to anyone applying for a degree in the Humanities is not to pay for it out of pocket. The job market is tough; you may or may not get a job in your field down the line. You already have student debt. I think you already know that you shouldn't do it, but the appeal of the name and circumstances make it hard to say no. My $.02: you should still say no. It's not worth it, unless you can secure some funding.

This board is not here to help with homework questions. This is what you have instructors and TAs. In any event posting a question without showing that you've done anything to try and solve it yourself won't buy you too much good will in a forum designed for people who are pursuing advanced degrees and independent thinking/research.

I'm not aware of programs that do this, but I suppose it might happen.

As long as you think there is a chance you might decide to go to this school, it would be wise to go on the interview and see things in person. Have unmediated conversations with the students there about their well-being and location. I attended a school that generates a lot of rumors, all from people who never attended, and all entirely false, as far as I am concerned. Get the info you need firsthand. Do this especially if you don't have other offers in hand yet. Keep all your options open and consider this a networking opportunity. On the other hand, if you have better options and you don't think this one is for you, then I think it would be a very nice gesture to relinquish the spot for someone else before the interview date. You've earned the right to do what's best for you first, but once you have a decision, communicate it to whoever needs to know.

When you say school 1 offers more teaching opportunities, does that mean TAing or actually designing and being instructor of record for a class? You can easily hit the point of diminishing returns with simply TAing large intro courses over many years; doing just a few of those will give you about the same level of experience. If you're actually designing and teaching your own classes that obviously gives you more experience, but that will be a serious time-suck and will hurt your research. Personally I think the School 2 offer is better. You can concentrate on your research, so you could (if you wanted) have a better shot at research-oriented jobs. And you could seek out teaching opportunities if you want to concentrate on those kinds of jobs. These days, even for teaching jobs, search committees look for applicants with stellar research. I'd make sure I had that available. Edit: I had the tab open for a bit! @TakeruK basically said the same thing above. There's good advice there.

^Seconded. Don't send a physical card. If you really want to contact someone, you might email someone in the department (likely the graduate student coordinator) to reiterate your interest in the program and to ask when you might expect to hear more. It's not impossible to get off a waitlist even at top programs -- students with an offer will often have other good offers so they'll have to turn some down. In any event, for this kind of impersonal communication and lack of any more personalized contact, I'd probably just follow their procedure and respond online through the portal and not even email. A physical card would be over-doing it.

I'm saying there is no such thing as "feeling like an adult". Everyone feels like a weird nomad. That doesn't change when you first move out, or start your first relationship, or get married, or have your first child, or get your first "real" job. (Or when you have your first grandchild, or your first great-grandchild, according to my grandma.) We're all just making it up as we go along. Sorry I don't have better news. As for people around me, they know that I am working toward a particular career goal and they're supportive of that. That's all I ask. (But my family lives an ocean away and most of my friends are academics, so there's that.)

My 90 year old grandmother tells me she still feels like she's 18. I don't think you ever start "feeling" like an adult. But you are one at almost 30, for better or worse, and having a "regular" job or not doesn't change that. You can definitely treat your graduate school career like any other career; you can work regular hours if you want, you can get dressed and go to the office every day, and you can attend multiple meetings a day. Up to you. You can also work from home in your pajamas at odd hours. That's one of the things I personally love most about the job -- some things are fixed, but I get a lot of freedom. I don't think that makes me any less of an adult, whatever that would even mean.

Sounds like if accepted you could have anyone on the faculty be your advisor. The people you're talking to are likely involved in the decision-making. You might write whoever is doing your schedule and/or your POIs to see if some of them could be added to your schedule, or you could Skype with them before or after the visit. You should ask these questions about how students pick/are paired with advisors when you visit. Ask both faculty and students.

You'll probably get more responses if you ask a better targeted question. It's unlikely that you'll find someone with the precise same application, but many others have experience with a variety of applications, so just ask your question.

There's a natural progression to one's publication trajectory. Posters can be very useful for having one-on-one interactions with interested audience members in a way that a talk doesn't allow for, but in most fields talks are more prestigious. Frankly, neither will buy you nearly as much credit as a publication. That said, in early stages of a student's career, presenting posters doesn't hurt; it shows that you're taking initiative and that you're doing good work. You should talk to your advisor about this, but at some point later in your career, if posters count for less and it seems like you have too many of them compared to talks, you can remove some of them (certainly the ones from undergrad) and keep selected ones only. I don't think that's a concern for you right now, though, and in general if you're doing good work that you're proud of, being at conferences and networking is usually a net positive.