fuzzylogician

People have different preferences, considerations, price ranges... there is no such thing as "the best" when it comes to things like backpacks in my opinion. That's why we can have 6 different threads and still need a 7th . Just wanted to make sure those older threads don't get forgotten--I'm sure at least parts of them are still relevant.

There's probably not going to be a list that completely caters to your needs (though I am not in your field and could be wrong about that). My field's society advertises all conferences in the field, including some I'd like to go to and a whole bunch that are unrelated. I have an RSS feed that I check once in a while. I keep a list of conferences I would like to apply to with dates and link to their websites. After a while, you get to know the relevant ones -- there aren't going to be that many.

I've never heard of such a thing as "not qualifying" for a visa interview. The most that might happen is you might not be able to get the visa issued on time because all the interview dates are taken, so you might have to start your program a bit late. However, given that it's not even June now I don't think we're anywhere near that being a problem. I can imagine some suspicions if you try to apply for a visa for a program long after it starts, but not if you are getting the earliest possible date from when you got notification of funding. You can easily explain that at the interview if anyone asks.

Unless the actual courses are relevant for anything (they're most likely not) I would just say University of X Masters courses in Y

- Each person that enters the US will need his or her own visa and will need to have their own interview. You could probably schedule your appointments together so you can help them if their English isn't very strong. - I don't think your mother and brother will be considered travel companions. Your own travel arrangements don't matter for these official purposes. - The duration of the visa will depend on the officer who will be conducting the interview. Usually visas are issued for 10 years (I think), but they may decide to limit it, especially for young people. - Similarly (though you didn't ask about this), the immigration officer at the border can decide how long your brother and mother will be allowed to stay in the US. Usually people are allowed a 6-month stay but the officer can choose a shorter time; you will need to check what is written on the stamp in the passport once you pass through immigration.

Your I-20 indicates the start date of your program. You can enter the US on the F-1 visa up to 30 days prior to the start date. See e.g. here for more information: https://internationalaffairs.uchicago.edu/page/arriving-us-airport-or-port-entry

I don't think there is such a thing as 'too early,' really. Some exposure early on is good. The most important thing is to make sure that you give a good presentation, so I would hope that even though it's work you bring with you from another institution, your new advisors will be willing to help you prep for this presentation. The more inexperienced you are, the longer it will take you to prep, so you will want to start early and give at least one practice talk. Keep in mind: a not-so-good presentation by a young student will usually be forgiven, but a good one will be remembered. Your Masters work will surely have lots of interesting and varied content so this will be a good opportunity to learn how to turn that into an engaging talk, which is not an easy skill to develop. It will also give you a low-stakes opportunity to see what conferences are like and to meet some new people. If there is any way to use this work in your PhD program (develop it into a qualifying paper, use an extension for a final paper for some class, develop it into a journal submission), this is a great opportunity to do so and involve someone from your new school in the process. I would say, go for it. The main reasons I would see not to do it are if you don't get any support from your new institution, if you've completely changed directions and this work is not pertinent to what you do anymore, or if your travel will not be reimbursed.

Booking a flight or hotel room before getting your visas will not help you. I wouldn't mention it at all. The advice I usually see on this is not to book flights/hotels before you get your visa, in case you are denied. The most common reason for problems obtaining a tourist visa has to do with ties to the applicant's home country. For people of a certain age (just out of school, no steady job, no family, no property, etc.) the Americans tend to be suspicious that they may enter the US under false pretenses and then work or stay in the country illegally. The best way to avoid this problem is to show as many ties the home country as possible (e.g. a statement showing your brother is a student at a school/university in the country, a receipt showing payment for application fees for some university, a statement from his employer certifying that he has a job, a clear plan for what he'll do while in the US and when he'll leave), and dress and act appropriately and respectfully during the interview. (Disclaimer: I am *not* an immigration expert.)

Do as you are asked. Submit the abstract. If they want to read more, they know how to contact you. Are there guidelines for how long the abstract should be? If so, do not stray from them. If not, 4-5 pages sounds far too long. In my field, common standards are 500 words, 1 page, or 2 pages, with the most frequent being 2 pages (12pt font, 1 inch margins). If there are no specifics, I suggest you follow the standards in your field.

Contact someone immediately. Can you do something to improve your grade in the class? Extra credit, retake exam, or change retroactively to pass-fail? Can you retake the class or take another one over the summer or next fall to replace this class? Maybe you can do an independent study with someone to replace this grade or some other arrangement can be made. Don't wait too long as it's possible that an appeal could be time-sensitive. This sucks, but don't give up! Good luck, and please let us know how this turns out.

Studying and taking political asylum are two different things in terms of immigration status. Becoming an asylum seeker is not easy and places all kinds of restrictions on you, while being a student is in a sense easier but you're not guaranteed to be able to stay long-term. It's just two very different things. I have to say that I am confused by the notion that you might take up studies in another country as a form of political protest. We're talking about a personal decision of one individual here. It'd only be protest if you took active steps to, well, protest. I know plenty of people who came to North America to study because conditions there are better than in their home countries on many grounds, including access to resources and funding on the one hand, but also personal safety and freedom on the other. Frankly, I find comparing your (perhaps extreme) dissatisfaction with Canadian education policies to escaping dangerous living conditions and poor education in other countries somewhere between naive and offensive. If this is how you've been framing your decision to go to the US for your graduate studies, I hope you reconsider. As someone who comes from a country with actual serious problems and who knows others in far worse situations, I would have a hard time listening to the points you are trying to make -- which I am sure you care about deeply -- once you made that comparison.

They may be "less influential" in the sense that it's likely that fewer people know these adjuncts and therefore their word may carry less weight than a famous professor. Note: the distinction is about how well known a person is, not their employment status, despite the obvious correlation. That said, the best letters will come from the people who know you best and can write you the most positive detailed letter. You don't want a "did well in class" letter from a famous person that can't say anything specific about your accomplishments and fit with the school and degree you're applying for. You'd much rather have a strong detailed letter from someone not as famous. So, you should only bring this factor into consideration if you are deciding between two similarly strong letters, one from a well-known author and one from someone relatively unknown.

There are different opinions on this one. I certainly submit a version of the same abstract to multiple conferences with close deadlines, because you just can't know what will be successful and what won't, and there is some element of luck involved. The most conservative opinion I've heard is you can present once and you're done, but that tends to be from older faculty and I don't think it's too common. I think the most common opinion, especially from younger people, is that it's ok to submit your abstract to several conferences around the same time as long as you don't have the results yet (so, basically, the scenario you're describing). If the conferences are not back-to-back, usually you can find ways of making the talks somewhat different. I do find it in poor taste when people go around giving the same talk multiple times over a long period of time (think over a year, so circling back to conferences you've already been at with a version of the same talk). It just makes them seem unproductive. It's never good when large portions of the audience think "oh, I've heard this talk already." An exception where people tend to think it's ok to submit the same abstract even after you've already been accepted to another conference is if it'll be very different audiences (e.g. specialized workshop vs large general interest conference, West Coast vs East Coast, Europe vs large US conference, or conference without and then conference with a proceedings series), and you can give the same talk you've given before at the LSA, there it's accepted and even expected, especially if you're on the job market.

Your advisor should know. Beyond that, contact the IRB office at your school. In my experience IRB offices at different schools can be more/less strict, and what one officer will worry about a lot the other might not mind at all. Usually they have "office hours" where you can either walk in or schedule an appointment with someone and describe your research to them. They can help you determine whether or not you need to submit an application and what kind it would be. Based on your description I would guess that you do need to submit an application, even if it's just for an exemption. The fact that you are doing the study online does not mean that there are no actual human subjects involved -- who do you expect to interact with your online manipulation if not humans? What you want to say is that you can't ask them for consent because that would undermine the purpose of the study. I don't know what you do in that case, but it's something you need to figure out ahead of time. One good place to start is published papers that used a similar methodology: what did they do? If they don't say in the paper, you might consider emailing the authors to ask. This, of course, only in case your advisor can't just tell you what the procedure should be.

At this point I would assume rejection, but email all the programs to follow up. It is sad and unprofessional but unfortunately it happens all too often; if it's any consolation, it's absolutely not personal.

I am sorry to read about your bad experiences, but thank you for sharing. I am glad to hear that you are able to move on to a PhD program, so hopefully this hasn't done you too much damage. Take it from someone who also started but didn't finish an MA, that it doesn't matter in the long run if you have good outcomes from your PhD. Good luck!

I would personally err on the side of caution. Do both: mention that your paper builds on this previous work, and in addition make it clear in individual sections where what you are saying is essentially the same as what was said previously, where you are expanding on it (and specifically what part is the expansion), and where you are disagreeing or saying something completely different or new. Your contribution should be clearly delimited and previous work should be clearly acknowledged.

Alright, can't find anything good to post that won't reveal my identity. Look for a PM. Yep, the idea is to make it the most prominent thing, and hence first thing, that people's eyes will go to. There are ways of doing that without putting the box in the top left corner -- like, for example, by having a take-home message across the top of the poster. Whatever works for your design.

No one in linguistics uses business cards. Not saying you can't have them, but I have never seen them exchanged. People might write their contact info on their handout, but that's it. It's a small enough field, it's not that hard to find someone who you were talking to. I'll try and look. Stay tuned. Putting an introduction in the top left corner is the "traditional" thing and there is nothing wrong with that. But think about it this way: the first box is the first thing people are going to read. If they read just that and have to decide based on that if they are interested, will the background set up an intriguing problem? Or is it technical stuff you need to know to ask the question? Or is it possibly confusing without knowing the rest or what the point is? The goal of putting a take-home message there is that if they read no further and move on, they still know the gist of your poster even if they aren't going to find out why you say the things you do. It maximizes the chances that the people who should read your poster actually will. I find it the most effective. (But yes, it possibly makes for a less traditional structure.)

Write your current affiliation. You won't be affiliated with your new school until September (or whenever your program starts). If it's after then, you write your new affiliation and you could have a box in the corner that says "This work is based on my MA thesis, written at X University under the supervision of Dr. Y."

The LSA has very good poster guidelines: http://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/lsa-poster-guidelines. It answers some of your questions, e.g. about font size. It sounds like you're going to be prepared and you have nothing to worry about. A poster is a great opportunity to meet people one-on-one or in small groups and to tell them about your work. You get to tell them as much or as little as they want, and you can just ask them "do you want the short version or the long one?" and they'll let you know. Things that I have found to be useful: Make a self-explanatory poster: Have a very clear box labeled "take home message" or similar that summarizes the main points. This should be *the first thing on the poster that people's eyes go to*, so probably the top box on the left. The way these things go is that there will be a large room with lots of posters in it and people will walk around trying to decide which ones to look at more carefully. People are usually first intrigued by the title. Once they are nearby, they will skim your poster quickly, trying to identify the main points. Make this step easier for them. Don't just stand there and wait. Say "hi" to people who come near your poster. Ask them if they want you to tell them about the poster or just look at it first. Ask them if they want a handout. Don't be afraid to ask people for their name if they are not wearing a name tag! (This is a perpetual problem, especially among older (male) researchers who assume everybody knows who they are, so be polite and explain you're inexperienced if you suspect you might be talking to a famous person. But if you are, you want them to remember your name so it's good to have this "formal" introduction). If you don't have a readymade handout, it's fine to just print your poster on a sheet of paper and use that as a handout. Put examples and main points in numbered examples and try using colors or boxes to highlight them. It will make it easier to point at them when you speak. Make an outline on a piece of paper and imagine how you'll want to tell the story of your poster. It will help you construct it more efficiently.

I took a language class for a couple of years after I was done with all my other coursework. I can think of 4 other people in my year and the year above me who also took language courses. I'm sure there must have been others as well. So, not entirely uncommon.

I was in a sort of similar situation; I applied to PhD programs during the first year of my two-year MA program. I had lots of credits I could transfer from previous work, so I could finish in one year if I wrote my thesis in the spring semester, at the same time as TAing, working another job, and traveling for grad school visits. I started out hoping I could do that, but there were some difficulties that would have forced me to work throughout the summer so I wouldn't have had any time off before my first year of the PhD. I contacted my PhD program to ask if they would mind if I came with just a BA, and they said no. So I ended up putting my degree on hold, which would have allowed me to come back to it within X number of years in case the PhD somehow fell through, but I have since graduated with my PhD and have not gone back. I can tell you that the issue of the unfinished MA has not come up even once in any fellowship application or job interview. No one cares, except perhaps my MA program, but I was also a BA student there and they consider me an alum either way. I recently gave an invited talk there and they didn't even remember that I didn't finish my thesis. If you do choose to finish your MA, I would strongly recommend doing so before starting the PhD program. I think it's important to finish one thing before moving on to the next, and honestly the first year of a PhD program is hard enough without having this extra requirement hanging over your head. The longer it takes, the lower the chances that you'll actually finish, and I think it will hold you back from devoting your full attention to your new program. As for wasting time and burning bridges, I wouldn't consider it a waste of time since your work has gotten you into your chosen PhD program. I think you are experiencing the famous sunken costs fallacy; it's hard to stop after you've spent so much time and effort on the MA, but that doesn't mean that continuing is necessarily the best course of action. It's really a question of how much more work you'll have to do and whether it's worth the effort just to have this official conclusion to the MA. Perhaps consulting with your advisor about the necessary work left to do and trying to devise a plan to make it work before you leave will help both you and your advisor see whether or not it's feasible and reasonable. If you can get to a place where your program considers you their student -- someone who they are sending off to a good PhD program, despite perhaps not finishing their thesis -- then they should have your best interest at heart, whatever that may be.

I don't know if you can attend the interview without the official I-20. I would guess not, but you should find out from a more official source. If it comes to it, maybe you can ask your school if they could Fed-Ex you the document and you will pay for it. That would speed the process along. As a first pass, I would let them talk and lead the interview. If it doesn't come up, you can bring it up as a question: tell the VO that you think you may made a mistake in your DS-160 after you submitted it and explain exactly what it is. I think it should be easy for them to fix it in their computer. Not having publications, etc. should not be a problem -- you have been accepted to your program and it's their job to decide academic fit, not the VO's. As long as it's a reputable school and not a visa mill, there should be nothing for you to worry about. You may get asked what you are going to study, why you want to study in the US, and why you applied to your particular program, but I have never heard of anyone being asked why they didn't have any publications (which most people don't, btw). (Disclaimer: I am NOT an immigration expert. This advice is based on experience and common sense, but I could be wrong. Ask your ISO if you have any doubts.)