juilletmercredi

Judging based upon your previous posts, it looks like you didn't have the kind of undergraduate social experience you want, so you're looking to improve that on the graduate level. And since your undergraduate college's social scene is somewhat dominated by Greek life, that seems to be naturally where you're turning to. I'm not Greek, but I have some friends who are, and there is nothing quite like Greek life on the graduate level. Even alumni chapters of fraternities is not quite the same; nothing really replicates the collegiate experience. That's not to say that you can't experience brotherhood, cool parties, and dating - you just go about it in a different way. Graduate social life is much more chill. One of my closest friends was the president of her university's Panhellenic and the way we chill is drinking wine on her rooftop and having dinner together If the graduate students at your university skew a little younger, or if there is a range, you might find a group that you want to go out and party with. I started graduate school when I was 22, and I found a group in their early to mid 20s that still wanted to do the partying and drinking thing and so I hung out with them. But it's still not quite like undergrad...you go out a lot less, you try not to get as drunk so you won't be useless the next day. I joined some student orgs and found tight-knit groups there. I'm African Americans, so I joined the Black and Latino Student Caucus and found a lot of friends there. I also worked in residential life and some of my closest friends I met through that. Most universities also have other grad student organizations like the SGA, or the general grad student org, or maybe science students or whatever. You can join some grad student orgs, join some Meetup groups in your community, and find other creative ways to meet folks (i.e., I joined a social sports club - kickball, to be exact. It was fun!).

^Having people who play nice with each other on your committee will save you loads of headaches and mountains of stress. This includes having people who won't use your dissertation process and defense as a platform upon which to hash out the fundamental theoretical disagreements of their sub-sub-fields. In addition to the admin assistant (who knows everything), you could also talk to the director of graduate studies. Your program website and/or student handbook should list who the current DGS is, and they are the perfect faculty substitute for an advisor until you get one.

It's not always true that you get an email if you are accepted; I don't think I got my grad school uni email until I had arrived on campus. Some universities are more on the ball than others. I also had to wait until I got on campus to get the email for my postdoc uni.

I think I took a week off before my comprehensive exams to review and prepare, but definitely not 2 months. You'll have to learn to balance your studying with your research work, although I would be sure to negotiate some protected time for studying.

Well, there are three main ways. Some funding packages come with travel funds attached. My training grant in my first two years came with a pretty sweet travel budget ($1300 a year) and my training grant in my last year had a decent one too ($1000 a year). That was enough to go to one conference, or two close-by conferences if flights were not involved. The best part about travel funds is that you can go regardless of whether or not you are presenting. In other cases, your department may have a travel budget from which you can pull funds. Both of my departments had the opportunity for graduate students to apply for a small amount of funds ($500) to support conference travel. However, you had to be presenting in order to get this money. Second of all, they were reimbursements, not up front costs. My primary department drove me completely nuts because 1) they required a ridiculous number of receipts, including the boarding passes from my flight which they did NOT apprise me of before I went on the trip - who saves boarding passes unless they know they have to? And they wouldn't accept just the damn receipt, because apparently people buy plane tickets and then don't go...except they totally don't and 2) they took 8-12 weeks to reimburse you, which is just too long for me to be out of $500. Needless to say I didn't deal with them much after the first time I got a travel award. And three...some grad students pay their own way. I personally refused, because as you said I was barely making enough to live and I believe that paying for conference travel is something that departments should do, since it's a professional requirement. Of course, this is a personal choice, and in some fields this can hurt you (my field cares less about conference presentations than papers, so I focused my energies on publishing). I did sometimes have to supplement outside awards with my own funds, as $500 is not enough money to go to a conference that involves a flight - the flight alone eats up at least 50% of that. I only did this if the only things I would have to pay for out of pocket was food, because I would have to pay for that anyway at home. Sometimes your PI can subsidize your travel with his/her grant funding. My PI has done this before but usually as a supplement to outside travel funds. Many conferences/associations also offer travel scholarships to students who are presenting. They are competitive, but I have found that they are not difficult to get if you apply early. Volunteering also gives you free conference registration like TakeruK said, but you usually need to arrange that pretty far in advance. I think the volunteering announcements usually go up shortly after the call for papers, or 3-4 months before the conference actually happens, and they fill up quick for the popular conferences. Still, you should try it, as that can save you anywhere from $50-150+ depending on how expensive conference registration is. As a result, I have far fewer conference presentations on my CV than do most graduate students, but I don't really care. I agree that you gotta find ways to reduce costs. The Greyhound from NYC to DC is about $50; that's how I usually got to DC for conferences. Amtrak is more comfortable but also more expensive (I did that once when someone else was covering it!) Crash with another grad student friend or acquaintance, or see if any DC-area universities offer cheap conference housing to students (some universities do this). Or see if anyone else who is going wants to share a room - often these societies have listings for grad students and you can email each other to find roommates. When I was in grad school we grouped up in rooms and had grade-school level sleepovers to afford hotel rooms, lmao. I hate hate hate traveling for conferences, for just this reason. I am so philosophically opposed to paying for this out of my pocket because it's only something I do for professional benefit, and yet I always end up spending at least a little of my own money on conferences. And conferences are just so pointless to me anyway. I network, meet interesting people and see awesome presentations usually, but they're so overwhelming and odd academic rituals. UGH. That's why I tend to concentrate on the smaller professional conferences (<3,000 attendees) and stalk interesting people.

I'm in social-health psychology, btw. My first thought was that this doesn't sound exactly like a study to compare residents and CNAs in green homes and traditional nursing homes; it sounds like a 2x2 design, in which you are investigating 1) the impact of an intervention - the workshop - on people's willingness to use technologies and 2) the differences between the two types of homes. And actually, your method seems more geared towards testing the effectiveness of the workshop than the differences between the two homes. I think you need to emphasize in your methods how you plan to compare the two types of homes. Also, is the workshop/intervention necessary? Are the homes that you intend to use already equipped with these technologies? A simple way to do this is to adminster surveys at both types of homes with questions about attitudes and use of these technologies and compare them. A more complicated but more internally valid way is to design some kind of experiment that requires the use of the technologies in both kinds of homes to do some sort of task, and compare the two homes. But only do the 2x2 design if you are actually interested in BOTH the effect of the workshop/training AND the differences between the homes, and in order to do this you'd need to have a control group that didn't do the workshop. I also don't know what stage you are in of proposal writing, but your advisors will likely be interested in more details on the methods of this study. What does this training look like - are you going to design it yourself or is there an existing one? What specific technology use are you evaluating? (The more technologies you examine, the more complicated this gets.) What do you mean by accepted? Do you want to actually measure acceptability (like, do the residents actually want to use it) or do you want to measure outcomes (like does it reduce loneliness, depression, increase engagement)? Or both? What do you mean by demographic variables? You should also include some hypotheses. What are your main research questions, and what do you expect is going to happen? I also find myself wanting more in your significance. I think that should be moved up before the method, first of all. Second of all, I cognitively have a difficult time making the jump from "implementation of technology in green homes has been slow" to "we need to investigate this." Is there any indication in the literature that this may be due to lack of acceptance by CNAs and residents of the homes? What is it that makes you think it might be due to attitudes/acceptability instead of something else, like costs?

My own PhD program required proof of the BA degree if you had graduated one year or less prior, but didn't require an MA. I did have to send them a copy of my diploma (which the rest of my cohort found amusing, since the next youngest person had finished their BA 3 years before) but someone in your situation wouldn't be penalized for not finishing the MA. That said, I think you need to get over your fear of your advisor's response and talk to her. You're an adult, she's an adult, who cares if she gets angry? You have to approach it from that angle. You are attempting to move onto a PhD program, and her holding you up would be petty. If it's pretty common for MA theses in your department to not have an oral defense, then you're not being outrageous. BUT it sounds like the oral defense is only one, potentially small, component of the delay. It doesn't sound like you are actually finished with your thesis, and that that's what's holding you up from the MA. Personally, I would not consider deferring the PhD admissions, since the MA is not required for your PhD program. My steps of action would be this: 1) How long do you need to finish your thesis project? Who's holding it up - you, or your advisor? If all that remains is writing and editing, and you are nearly finished, this may be something you could bang out in the first semester of your PhD program before your research requirements ramp up too much (although there will be many sleepless nights and work-filled weekends). If you can accurately assess how long it will take you to finish and your MA advisor agrees with that assessment, set a hard deadline and get to work. Only after that can you negotiate the oral defense thing - it may turn out that you can postpone your oral defense until, say, December after finals are over or early January or whatever, and since it's September you can schedule it far in advance. 2) If your thesis project will take more than a semester to finish to satisfaction, personally I think I would just cut my losses. You really need to be able to devote your time to your new PhD program, getting involved in research and scholarship there. You can probably pick up an MA in your PhD program if you don't formally get it from your original institution. Your advisor may be a bit disappointed - or she may not be. She probably won't be pissed off, as it doesn't really affect her personally. Your unfinished thesis may affect any letters of recommendation you'd want to get from her, so you'd need to work around that. In either case I don't think you need to tell your PhD program unless the MA is required for admission (which you said it's not). In the first case, you just need to make sure that your thesis work doesn't interfere with your coursework and work for your new PhD - which is why I am telling you to limit work to one semester at most, since the first semester has the most flexibility and understanding. The F-1 transfer issue you should ask about at the international student office at one of your institutions. I recommend asking the original one if it is possible for you to still earn the MA if you submit your thesis in December, if you don't have F-1 status there anymore. That will also help you make the decision. If they say that they can't award an MA to students who don't currently have F-1 status at their school, that's another vote for simply dropping out of the MA program, because it's frankly silly to jeopardize your funding and reputation in your PhD program to complete a largely unnecessary MA.

My short assessment is that this sounds like a case of bad fit. As was already stated, you have three options: adjust your expectations for working with this professor, find another advisor in your department, or leave and go to a different program altogether. To be quite frank, nothing sounds particularly wrong with your advisor. Some people have warm, friendly relationships with their PIs and others don't. Some PIs are happy and interested in being mentors and friends to their students, and others simply want to serve as professional guides or research overseers. Nothing is wrong with any of that, but only you can make the determination of what you're willing to accept and whether you're okay staying with your advisor given that you now know how he operates. Part of a mentoring relationship in graduate school is asking, explicitly, for what you want. You said that your meeting with your advisor was scheduled for 1 hour but turned into 30 seconds, with no chance to ask questions or respond. Why is that? Did your advisor push you out of his office, or did you simply feel uncomfortable asking? Did you sense a note of finality from his statements or get the idea that he wanted you to leave? You need to feel prepared to ask for what you need from your advisor, so if you had questions about the thesis process, you need to ask them. Another thing about the email...how exactly did you expect your advisor to respond? 1 single-spaced (most emails are single-spaced) page in TNR 12-point is about 500 words, which is pretty dense for an email. It doesn't sound like your one-page missive had any questions, just that you would update him once a month on how you were feeling. Which, frankly, is not really what advisors want. Even the most caring and warm advisor doesn't really care, solely, about how you feel, nor do they want monthly updates on your emotional wrestles with the program. They want to know what you plan to do. What did you want him to say? When I contemplating leaving my own program in my third year, I told my advisor. I told him succinctly how I felt, but in the context of my work and the decision I made made about wanting to leave the program. I spared him the 3-4 months of torturous contemplation ahead of that. He was disappointed but sympathetic; he did seem a little alarmed, but less about the impact of my departure on his own work and more about my mental health status at the time (I was really depressed). When I changed my mind and decided to stay, I explained that to him in a separate meeting. In the middle, I did need to deal with my feelings, but I enlisted a counselor on campus to talk it out with and help me make the decision. I did meet with my advisor several times in between that, but I honestly have a really hard time remembering that period of my grad program other than the crushing depression, so I don't remember what we talked about. Your advisor isn't necessarily the appropriate person to do that - they're not going to beg you to stay. A great advisor will talk to you a little about it, perhaps give you some advice and wish you well. A decent advisor will be like "Let me know what I need to do so you can withdraw." I'm not sure what kind of response you were expecting, since you only told your advisor that you were thinking about dropping out and weren't sure. All of this might be irrelevant, though, because it sounds like you are looking for a different kind of mentoring relationship than you are getting from your advisor. I did forget a fourth option above, though - which is to continue working with your advisor as your primary research advisor, but to 'adopt' another professor as an informal or formal mentor. This second professor might be someone you collaborate with on a side project, or they might be someone you place on your dissertation committee. They may meet with you infrequently (like once a month or as needed), and might agree to look over your papers and job search materials or whatever. I had a few informal mentors like this - most of whom I called upon when I was dealing with the depression in the middle and for other things, like being a woman in academia (my two main advisors are men). You might even get some peer mentoring or advice. I have had ( ) a peer in my lab who started her doctoral program the same year as me, but had done a master's in the same department with my advisor, and so she had a lot of insight on the field and was able to give me a lot of great advice. It was a mutually beneficial relationship, as I often edited/proofread her written documents There were also a couple of senior students I wouldn't describe exactly as peer mentors, but who did give me a lot of insight and advice and motivation and are just genuinely awesome people who I still love. However, adopting an informal mentor may or may not be an easy thing to do - as professors are busy and some are disinterested in mentoring a student who doesn't collaborate with them or work in their labs. So this depends on the culture of your department.

^Agreed with Eigen - start with your interests, proceed forward to find faculty that do that work, and then find out where those faculty do research. One way to start is to look at the NRC rankings list and start looking at all the departments on the list, but I find that an impractical way to do it - especially since neuroscience is so interdisciplinary and you might actually find the perfect program in a psychology department or a biology department. Also, don't worry overmuch about your GPA. It's not that it's nit important; it's just that there's nothing you can do to change it now, so press on. Is your major GPA significantly higher (3.6+) and are you otherwise an outstanding candidate? It looks like you are in good shape otherwise, so like I said, just press on.

I use a Mac and am a devoted Mac user, so my suggestion is the Retina display MacBooks - but any high-definition laptop screen will work. I think most mid-range monitors these days are IPS as opposed to TN. I also don't know very much about this but the graphics card might also be a concern for rendering those engravings? But I don't know; you'd want to ask someone who knows about it. You could do a Google search about it (but don't ask the sales associates at Best Buy, because in my experience most of them will simply try to upsell you rather than impart any interesting information). As a side note, you may want to consider getting a Retina screen iPad + an inexpensive desktop with a monitor, or at the very least purchasing a monitor and external keyboard + mouse to go along with your laptop. Working on a desktop monitor is way way way better than working on a small laptop screen.

I contemplated quitting my graduate program in my third year. I ended up not doing it, and I'm really glad I did not quit, but I respect people who know when to pull out and my reasons for contemplating quitting were different. So here was my takeaway from that experience: Feelings of frustration, resistance to doing work, isolation, even mild depression/low-grade "blues" are quite common and - unfortunately - normal in graduate programs. I hate to say it like this, but they are misery-making experiences. That doesn't mean you can't be happy - indeed, the last two years of my doctoral program were two of the best years of my life, both personally and professionally. You just have to make a conscious effort to do it But the key is to remember why you are there. If you have compelling reasons for being in your program and you realize, after contemplation, that you really love your field and program but you're just feeling frustrated by normal grad student type stuff, you can get help dealing with the stress and press on. I was frustrated because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my life and I was making the transition to being more independent (from classes and papers to qualifying exams and my dissertation). But I knew I loved my field, and I wanted to be a researcher in my field, and all of the jobs that got me really excited required PhDs. There are cases in which your malaise/depression are really indicators that you should quit, though. If you are unenthusiastic about the work - that's a key predictor. It's one thing to be like "Sigh, I don't feel like writing this paper today" occasionally, but if you are like that all the time, in every class, with every assignment, I think that's a sign that you're unenthusiastic about the work and maybe the program isn't a good choice for you. If doing your work makes you so miserable you want to cry or hide (but you are otherwise a happy/content person), then that's a good sign that you're not in a healthy place and you should leave. If you think deeply and you can't think of any good reasons to do an MFA professionally or personally - other than "it's free/cheap and not what I was doing before, in theory," then that's probably another sign that you may not want to stay. That's a sign that you needed to find a better job and/or a career that really fulfills you, not that you need a random graduate degree. As a last thought. When you begin to discuss these things with friends, family, and acquaintances, you are bound to get at least a few and maybe many people who will say "Just stick it out!" They will say that you finish what you started, that you only have X years/semesters to go, that they're sure it sucks now but it'll be so great when you finish, that your job prospects will be so much better when you are done, that you took the place of someone else who really wanted to be there and thus you should feel guilt if you leave, and other drivel. You might be telling yourself these things in a guilt-ridden moment. They're all rubbish, and the people who say those things usually don't know what they're talking about. I was really, really surprised when I discussed quitting with people - the people in my field, who had gotten PhDs or were in the process, were all really sympathetic and understanding and tried to help me find resources to solidify my decision and find jobs to move on to. It was only people who had never attempted a PhD who said stuff like this. And like I said, they are all rubbish. 1) You shouldn't always finish what you start. Sometimes, the prudent thing to do is quit! If you start doing something and you realize it's useless, why persevere? For example, if you started painting your living room pink and decide 1/3 of the way through that you really want it to be blue, and you're totally sure, why the heck would you finish painting it pink. 2) It may only be X more years but that is X more years of YOUR life that YOU have to do, nobody else. Sure, in the grand scheme of things 2 years is not a lot of time. But life is too short to spend 2 years of your life miserable especially if you don't really want or need the prize at the end. And 2 years can be a looooong time if you are sad. That's also 2 years of experience you could be gaining doing something you really like, and 2 more years of savings and retirement investments. 3) It's actually not that 'great' when you finish. Scientifically, people tend to be really bad at predicting how they will feel in the future. I thought I would be absolutely elated when I defended my PhD! In reality, I actually felt really tired, and relieved. It's been 3 weeks and elation is not what I'd describe any moment since then. After my defense (which happened at 1 pm), I crawled into my bed and took a long nap. My committee asked "How's it feel?!" and I was like "It feels like nothing. I just feel numb. And tired. I want to sleep for like a week." And they laughed and said that was totally normal and they all felt like that, too. Besides, even if you did feel really elated for even like 2 weeks straight at the end - which isn't going to happen - is that really work 3 years of misery and discontent? NO! The only good reasons to finish a graduate degree IMO is because a) you realize that you really need the graduate degree to do what you want to do, even though you are unhappy and/or it is so, so personally important to you to finish the degree that you would be more miserable if you quit. And I'm skeptical about B. 4) Your job prospects will probably not be much better with an MFA, and honestly, they might be worse. Some employers will wonder if you expect to be paid more because you have an MFA in an unrelated field. Others will be afraid you will jump ship at the earliest opportunity if a more relevant position comes along. So it's not really a given that an MFA will lead to better job prospects. 5) Finally...this doesn't matter. You shouldn't feel guilty that you got accepted over someone else. That's in the past, first of all, and second of all, it has no bearing on whether you decide to leave or not.

Since the topic at hand isn't really about cheating, I just wanted to address this: Did you know that I am with a continuous contact with American University, Harvard Kennedy School (Government Dept), Duke University, Georgetown University, Texas at Austin University faculty members are cooperating in several academic papers and they actually have shown interests for my papers to reference in their academic subfields? People in Internet fora frequently claim such things. It's difficult to confirm such things, but there are reasons to be skeptical. Number one, the last university is the University of Texas at Austin. Second of all, this sentence is not grammatically correct and its structure impedes comprehension, so I'm not really sure what you were trying to say - do you mean that a group of researchers are working together on a paper, and they want to reference your paper in their paper? If that's the case, that's not actually that uncommon - all papers reference other papers, and occasionally the authors contact the author of the referenced paper for clarification. And normally, I would not be a dick and point out the grammatical structure of the sentence - but I only did so because it's so difficult to read and to address your other claims. As has already been pointed out, the TOEFL is a very basic test of English comprehension; it doesn't ensure that the test-taker is actually ready to write at an academic level or study English literature. It just ensures that you can understand fairly basic written and spoken English communication. Actually, I think I will answer the question now. When I was in college, I was never really that concerned with my GPA. I know that sounds trite, but it's true - I wanted to learn the material but in most cases I didn't really care whether I got a B or an A. (In fact, I got a few Cs - my undergrad GPA was a 3.42.) Given this, I never asked a professor what was going to be on the test. If she was giving a midterm, I assumed that everything she had taught up to midterm was fair game and made sure that I had a grasp on it. (Honestly, I wish my students would just do that. What's going to be on the test? EVERYTHING. ASSUME EVERYTHING. If we've gone over it then it might be there!) As such, I can't really recall a situation in which I thought only chapters 1-3 were going to be on the exam, even though we read up to chapter 4, and the professor introduced stuff from chapter 4. But let's say that I did fall into this hypothetical situation. No, I wouldn't cheat. Personally I would just suck it up and resolve to do better on the next exam, and make sure that I prepared ALL of the material we read, not just part of it. In fact, if there were only a few questions from chapter 4, then most likely I would still do pretty well on the exam - maybe a solid B, which would satisfy me. Especially if you are a grad student, you know that asking what's going to be on the exam 1) irritates most professors and 2) is an irrelevant, obvious question. The answer is everything. Everything is going to be on the exam. This is especially true of qualifying exams, if you are trying to get into PhD programs - they give you a reading list and you should assume that you can be asked about anything on the lists, and probably some things that aren't. Also, I would really like you to look up "oppression," because a professor assigning you a few questions from a chapter you've already ready but just didn't expect is not oppression.

1. Aside from what victorydance already said...algebra and geometry actually have a lot to do with social science quantitative research methods. 2. Because high school transcripts are difficult to obtain for many people, whereas the GRE is an easy standardized measure. 3. I don't think graduate programs care whether you are native or non-native; what they care about is whether you, as a non-native speaker, can function verbally on the same level as a native speaker - or at the very least, at a level at which you can understand your classes and write papers. Many of the words that appear on the GRE also appear in higher-level academic writing. 4. The outward answer is that they want some standardized way to compare students from different backgrounds. Your undergrad might have had serious grade inflation or deflation, so they want a "standardized" way to compare your ability. In addition, GRE scores are used in the rankings of some programs, so that probably plays a role. 5. It doesn't. Also [qupte]4- Writing. Briefly, The subjectivity plays a substantial role on how markers evaluate. If you write a decent essay and you know it, give it to at least three professional academics in its field. I am 100% sure that atleast TWO would give contradicting evaluations. This is simply the defect in the writing part.

I think the issue with the 'offer' to do more cleaning than your share is that you tacitly (and perhaps inadvertently) suggested that they were dirty/less clean than you, and that's probably why there was odd looks. I would also approach that with apprehension because I would be afraid that the roommate who was doing more cleaning would get resentful, no matter all her promises that she wouldn't. The thing to do is that if you feel like you need to do more cleaning, just do it. You don't need to ask for permission to clean your own tub or wash the dishes or anything, as long as you put things in the right spots. Also, nobody is going to care if you decide to clean the tub twice a month if it's not your week or whatever, especially if you do it right out of the shower or whatnot. I mean, are they slobs? Is the place crawling with filth, or is it just that they don't clean once a week or on a regular schedule or whatever? I'm one of those people who dislikes regular cleaning schedules. I clean my things when they need cleaning, which is probably more often than I would on a schedule (e.g., I've cleaned my tub twice this week). As someone who is picky about the way my kitchen is organized, I would also be a little peeved if a new roommate came in and tried to unilaterally change it - especially if she also suggested about a dozen other things that she had issues with. (For example, I would rather have counter space and keep my spices in the cabinet because I like to spread out while cooking. This may not be an issue if you have tons and tons of counter space, but most apartments don't. I would also dislike keeping my pot lids in a drawer.) If it was just two of us and she was making suggestions but willing to compromise or trying to come up with something that worked for both of us, that'd be okay, but since there are two of them AND it kind of comes across as though you are suggesting things that make the kitchen more convenient for you, I can see why they might have been a bit irritated.

Absolutely no way for us to tell. 1) We don't know your research interests and whether they fit with the department at Brown 2) We don't know the strength of your letters of recommendation 3) We haven't see your statement of purpose Even with all that information, we don't know who you are competing with. Top PhD programs turn away many excellent candidates every year. I will say, though, that if by BME you mean biomedical engineering then you want to have a higher Q score than a 154. You'd probably want to aim for at least a 160.

I'm also assuming that you have multivariable calculus and that the probability course you took was calc-based. If you don't, then no, you don't have a chance. I'm also not sure what is meant by your acadmic performance not being outstanding - you have a 3.73 undergraduate GPA, which is excellent, and a 3.72 master's GPA, which is also pretty good. I think a major concern is your research experience. Biostatisticians don't just do applied projects in which they use statistics to answer questions; they do applied statistical research to develop new statistical methods to apply to biological/biomedical problems. Is that really what you want to do? If you want to do higher-level statistical analyses - and even some development of tests and measures - you might also consider 1) Epidemiology 2) Quantitative psychology 3) Measurement, evaluation, and statistics - they are usually in colleges/schools of education and focus on educational issues

Getting straight As is more difficult then just deciding to do it, especially with junior year major classes. There's nothing wrong with waiting a year (or a little more) after college to apply to grad school, and in fact, I encourage it. This is especially true, OP, if you haven't begun to get research experience yet and/or you don't really have a solid research area identified (not necessarily something too specific, just something in general). You sound like you really want to wait an extra year and you just need validation, so I'm going to tell you - it's totally okay and very common.

Every year I buy a pretty paper planner and every year, I stop using it around the end of September. It's just so much more convenient for me to keep track of things electronically. I use Cal on my Mac and it syncs across all of my devices (one of the reasons I asked for a Mac at work). I stick everything on Calendar in different colors for different types of appointments and I make it remind me if it's something that doesn't happen at the same time every week. Womp. I did, once again, buy a pretty paper planner this year. My goal is to use it to jot down notes about journal article progress, but I'm not sure if I'll actually do it. I agree with the note that I know I always have my phone on me, which is more than I can say about my paper planner.

I recently moved from New York to State College, PA. They're about 250 miles apart, so a 4 hour drive in a car. To save a bit of money, instead of hiring a full-service moving company (who would come load my stuff, drive it to SC and then unload) me and my husband rented a UHaul. We loaded the stuff on my end ourselves, since we had an elevator and ramps in my building and had rented utility dollies. On the other end, I hired movers to help because I live on the third floor of a building with no elevator. (As a note, I got a UHaul about 6 days ahead of time with no problem. So I think it varies widely depending on the moving market in your area. If I tried to get a U-Haul now in my current town I probably wouldn't be able to, because I live in a college town so college it's called State College.) I used Bellhops in State College - they're a national moving company that basically pays college students to move. You have to hire them for at least 1.5 hours, but they are $40/hour per person. I hired two. It took the four of us (because me and my husband helped them unload) just 1 hour to move my stuff into the building (I didn't have a whole lot). The Bellhops were AWESOME. Courteous, sweet, careful, just really nice individuals. They weren't professional movers, of course, just a couple of college kids who didn't mind lifting heavy stuff for extra money. But given that I didn't have a lot of stuff and that most of the stuff I had was IKEA furniture I don't plan on keeping forever...that was fine. So I paid $120 for the movers, plus ~$550 for the UHaul including the dollies, taxes, and the rental fee. I think I spent like...eh $100 in gas on the truck? So I spent a bit under $800 for the whole shebang, but a moving company would've cost me at least $1100. Oh yes, that was one think I found out about U-Haul, is that they guarantee your reservation for the truck but not the equipment. That was very unpleasant, because I got to the U-Haul and they told me they had a truck but neither of the two dollies I reserved. What is the point of reserving equipment if you are not actually going to reserve it? I was going to do U-Haul's UBox but they were going to charge me $1500.

I think every other week is a good amount. More than that and you haven't done enough in the mean time to warrant another visit, unless you are working on something particular. Fewer times than that and you might find yourself needing guidance in between. I met with my advisor every other week. I only met with him once a week for about 1-1.5 hours when I was working on my dissertation proposal. I also met with my secondary advisor (who was also on my committee) every other week. I didn't meet with anyone else on my committee on a regular basis. Our committees at my graduate university didn't seem to expect that.

I think it depends on what the personal reasons are. Personally, I think the majority of emphasis should be on the academic reasons. I think personal reasons should only be mentioned if those personal issues will be solved where you move, and are related to family closeness. For example, if the school you're trying to transfer into is located nearby an elderly parent or grandparent you need to care for - that might be relevant, although you do then raise the issue of elder care and how much time that will take out of your schedule and may introduce unconscious biases on the part of the professors. But if you want to move because your university is in the middle of nowhere and you are bored on the weekends, or because you like to hike and your university is in a large city - then no, I wouldn't mention this in a statement. It's irrelevant. I think it's safer to focus on your statement on your academic and professional reasons for moving on and maybe mention personal reasons, if they are compelling, in an interview or in-person visit.

I agree with the advice that location concerns should come last, after you figure out research fit. Obviously you don't want to apply to any place at which you would be absolutely miserable, but places that are okay but not your first preference should still be applied to if they are otherwise an excellent fit. So don't worry about location just yet. (I think the one exception might be like continent/country; I'm a U.S. citizen and wasn't really willing to go to a PhD program outside of the U.S. and Canada, for example, for a variety of reasons). I have a different perspective on prestige. On the one hand, I do think it's possible to be too prestige-focused - comparing single numerical ranks as if they were absolute, for example ("I really want to go to the #4 program - it's perfect! But I got accepted to the #1 program!" - there's really no difference between them.) Also, fit and adviser can be more important than a program's ranking. The third thing is that rankings within fields are done by program, not by university - so the best program in your field may be at a large public institution rather than some elite private. With that said, though, program reputation is important insofar as it plays a role in what you do afterwards. This differs by field, but in many fields that have far more PhD graduates than tenure-track positions, the ones who go to the top programs fare the best on the job market (and conversely, the top programs do the best at "placing" their students into TT jobs and competitive postdocs). Also, there's a reason why certain programs are well-reputed - they may have a lot of money; the research focus there may be phenomenal; they may have resources that aid you in your career. Note that I am using the word "reputed", though, not "ranked." Reputation is different from rank. I think absolute numerical rankings are meaningless but broad groupings of programs ("top 10", "top 30", "mid-ranked," etc.) may be meaningful in your field or subfield. In the social sciences you really need to select a program based on the availability of professors to help direct your interests, as well as a program of study that satisfies you. So for example, you're interested in using a social science approach to study the interaction between humans and computers. Many of those programs may actually be called HCI, but some of them may be called something else - like science, technology, and society (like Virginia Tech's or MIT's). I know that HCI and STS aren't the same thing, but I'm not sure what angle you are planning to approach it from. Straight HCI programs will require you to have a bit of programming knowledge, although many places will allow you to pick it up once you're in the program. Asia is a humongous continent with many regions and many universities. Whether it's difficult to get into one of them is really dependent upon which one you are talking about. That said, you shouldn't select your program on the basis of location. Also, you should definitely take the GRE. Virtually all reputable PhD programs in the U.S. will require it.

This may be department dependent but in my experience, even your advisor cannot access your grades - regardless of the avenues they go through. My advisor certainly did not have access to my grades or even which classes I had taken, and we never discussed my grades in classes. His only interest in my coursework was 1) whether I was meeting the requirements for the program and 2) whether it was preparing me for the quals.

I second the recommendation to visit counseling services. If it's personal and not professional within the department, then seeing a counselor who can help you talk through solutions and emotional ways of dealing might be the ticket.

I second the tuition concern - unless you have significant aid at USC, the cost alone would make me decline. But do you want to work in schools, or do you specifically want to be a school counselor? If you want to be a guidance counselor you have to go to specific programs to get licensed for that, and so you should turn down the MSW. But if you just want to work in schools, one way to do that is as a school social worker. You won't really be doing college advising, though - more like helping students with issues navigate the school setting.