fuzzylogician

No need to memorize anyone's CV even if you did know the schedule ahead of time. Be able to describe your interests and plans, and come prepared with some questions for them: ask about their research and teaching; for faculty, ask how many students they have, if they collaborate with them, what their former students are doing now. For students, ask how they like the program, if the funding is sufficient. Just have a conversation. If you want to get fancier, ask students what is one thing they would change. Ask both students and faculty how often they meet with each other; ask students how available faculty is (especially your POI). Ask about the graduation rate and placement rates (what do people do post-PhD). You really don't need to know too much about the people themselves to have these conversations. Also, instead of a schedule, ask if they know (roughly) who you'll meet with. That might be easier for the school to answer, and is more important to you anyway.

It's usually advisable not to do this, but he's already broken rules of etiquette by forcing you to take his offer early. The main question I would have is how much of an influence he could have over your life if you go to the same program. You can't know if he'll hold a grudge and what he'll do with it. If you're in a separate lab and he can't influence decisions about e.g. funding or your grades, and more importantly, if he's not going to sit on committees that will judge your work (qualifying exams, dissertation proposal, dissertation defense), you are okay. Otherwise, I'd want to know a bit more about him as a person (talk to his students, off the record, not in writing but in person/over Skype). You are within your rights to do this, it's just a question of unintended consequences in what will be an uneven power balance. I mention this here because someone who forces students to make early decisions may be precisely the kind of person to break other rules. So, I'd watch out.

This is literally one of those "it depends, we can't know" kind of questions. You can use the Results search to see if anyone's posted about the same position in previous years to get some idea. Beyond that, at best we could guess, but we could be off by weeks. It depends on the people (how many applicants, how many committee members), the process (everyone reads everything? some earlier stage of cutoffs with some applications never being read? interviews?), and other commitments the committee will have (are there job hires at the same time? midterm season? personal factors? teaching obligations? travel?). Point being, I don't think we can help, unfortunately.

If you are still considering the offer, it's definitely worth going. You are not responsible for worrying about other students on the waitlist as long as you are still unsure -- you have earned the right to care for your own future first. However, if you already know that there's no way you're taking the offer, then I think it's only fair to let it go. Everyone, including your POI, will appreciate that more than you leading them along to milk things out of the other school.

Email to schedule a meeting. Ask in person. Come prepared with some ideas but be ready for her to lead the conversation. She's done this before and will have ideas about whether it's best to continue your ongoing work or start something new. If you have a preference, you can state it and negotiate to find something you're both happy with. You don't need more than ideas -- certainly not a fully fledged proposal or anything of the sort.

There is no good way to do it. You can simply ask and share concerns about what happens if they leave. But you can be fairly certain that they won't share any private plans. If they are thinking of leaving and their institutions don't even know yet, there is hardly any chance that they'll share those plans with a prospective student. And even if they have some vague thought of leaving in 3 years, that too is not exactly something to share with a prospie. It's more a wish than a plan. So, you can ask, but I don't know how informative the answer will be.

Hm, I'm sorry to hear that. If you want to maintain some privacy (and you should definitely avoid lying!), this might be one case where you want to say that you don't feel comfortable discussing the question. People will have heard that answer before, and they shouldn't be upset or surprised by it.

I think it would be useful to talk to some current students about how they manage their finances before you make any decisions. If you can wait and see what happens with the negotiations before you need to decide, that's probably useful, too. But overall, yes, finances are an important component of the decision and could certainly influence one's decision one way or the other.

Cross posted. To reply, go here:

1. They want to know who their competition is. 2. Tell them who else you're considering. Or you could say you're not comfortable saying, but I'm always confused by why that should be a secret. You can pick 2-3 of your favorites. Unless you're somehow doing something completely out of the ordinary, you're not going to surprise them.

Yeah, I had less than half that amount for the entire 5 years of my program, so be sure to adjust your expectations. But there are a variety of tricks for making your money go a long way; I gave 15 conference presentations during grad school and another 13 were given by co-authors (without me there)... but we digress.

Taking the initiative isn't a bad thing. No one is going to hold your hand after you graduate, and you want to learn independence. Pick your favorite professor(s), schedule a meeting, and tell them about this project you're contemplating/working on/completing. Get their input on your thoughts. Develop a relationship. This shouldn't be a one-time thing: you want to go back and talk to the ones you got along with on a regular basis. You want their guidance in developing the project, their comments and questions, their suggested readings. When the time is right to start writing, you then ask to talk about possible publication venues and which ones might fit the work. At that point, they should know it well enough to be able to direct you, or offer input. Likewise for presenting, you may find advisors who suggest things to you, but you should also be on the lookout yourself, and ask for their opinion on your *plan* to submit to conferences and present the work.

A place to get started: https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/linguistics-profession

That sounds like fine wording. Or if you got that admit letter from someone in the department, then you write back and say something like "Thank you for the great news!" and follow that up with your question about funding. You are entirely within your rights to ask, so don't feel like you're doing anything wrong. And congrats!

A suit would be over-doing it. A nice skirt or slacks and a blouse, possibly (but not necessarily) a jacket or blazer. A nice sweater would work, too. There have been various previous threads on this question. This one is particularly long and will likely answer all your questions. You can use the search function for other threads. Also: https://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/50070-womens-dress-tips-for-interviews/

Yes, that's fairly common.

I might ask how the collaboration got started, what direction the POI imagines it taking in the next 5-10 years, how students have been involved in the past; and then broader questions, is this common, how it's funded. You probably won't need to ask more than 1-2 questions at the end of the interview.

in the context of graduate admissions "shortlisted" is a bit of an unusual phrasing. In the job search context it means you are one of very few finalists who are invited to campus to give a talk and interview, before one candidate is hired. For grad admissions, I can imagine it either being a mistake, where "waitlisted" is meant, or it might mean something like "invited to campus to interview/visit". I think the best thing you can do is write back and ask what this means (or: something like, "could you explain what the next steps in the process would be?").

I don't think I've ever heard anyone use the term "academic productivity" but if I had to guess, I'd say for faculty it means publishing and bringing in grant money. For students it would mean making good progress in one's program and working toward presenting/publishing/getting grants. As with everything else in academia, there isn't going to be some magic number to beat, more like vague estimates, and those depend on field and department so there's no use for me guessing what those would be for you. This is what you have advisors and mentors for (and as a student, perhaps, also the graduate handbook for your department).

You write a paper. It takes a year or two. You submit to a journal. You wait 6 months. You get your first round of reviews. You take a month or two to reply, you resubmit. You wait another 6 months. If you're lucky, you get an accept (with minor revisions), or you do the whole reply/wait again, or you get rejected and you start over. Eventually you get the paper into the journal, but now you want another year or two for it to appear in print. It'll take another year or two for anyone to write a reply, if any, and for people to start citing the work. It's a slow process. (Likewise for thesis writing, or grant-writing -- projects are at the 3-5 year scale usually.)

This is not the right venue for this type of question. I suggest you reach out to your local department, they may be able to hook you up with a student looking to do some tutoring.

I'm confused. Have you tried simply writing back and saying that you have a prior engagement on the date the offered, and could you reschedule? Why all the back story and planning?

It's Tuesday morning. You've already emailed twice despite the out of office notice. For now, you wait. You didn't mention when the actual interview would be, but unless there is some urgency to do it right now, check back in in about a week, if necessary.

Have you tried using a thesaurus?

PIs will value their students' input differently but if they are unanimous in the opinion that someone is a bad fit, I can't imagine that person being admitted. In general, there's not much meet-the-lab-specific advice; just be professional. Even if you don't join this lab, it's likely that the people you'll meet there will be future colleagues who you'll see at conferences, etc. Be friendly, but remember that these are colleagues, not long-time childhood friends. Also be polite and friendly to staff. Their opinion counts too (and it's just common sense to be polite and friendly to everyone). Remember that the interview goes both ways: you can also ask them questions and evaluate how they behave.