juilletmercredi

I'm glad someone started this thread because I have to purchase a car in the next month or so. I'm also planning to get a newish cheap fuel-efficient car, either a compact or subcompact. I've been eyeing hatchbacks because of the storage capacity. Been checking out the Nissan Versa and Versa Note, Nissan Sentra, the Honda Fit, and some used Honda Civics. I've also seen some relatively inexpensive Priuses. I'm looking to stay below around $16K. I'm graduating soon, though, and this is for my postdoc years. I was looking at Corollas, but then my husband made a joke about Corollas that I can't get out of my head, lol.

Do you have a chance? Yes. Your profile so far is good enough to potentially gain you admission to clinical psychology PhD programs - the only thing I think that is sort-of detrimental is your research experience. 2 semesters isn't a lot, but I'm assuming that you're a rising senior that will continue next year, and sometimes people who started research in their junior year get into PhD programs straight from undergrad. But does that mean you will absolutely get in? Well, no. Because clinical psychology is so competitive, programs turn away many competitive, qualified applicants every year. The biggest factor is probably research fit with the program - you need to find programs that have professors that do research in which you are interested, and will supervise you in that research during your program. But I'm in psych myself (although social), and I know several people who have had to go through 2 or even 3 application cycles before successfully getting in anywhere. I also know that it is really, really common for clinical psychology hopefuls to go work for 2-3 years after college - usually as a research assistant or lab manager - to improve their application and their chances of getting in. (The good news is they are typically successful after that). It's usually 1) how you got interested in research and your specific area, 2) what things have you done that uniquely prepare you to be excellent in this program, and 3) why does our specific program meet your needs. Some people (including me) follow up with a short paragraph discussing future career goals and how the program will help them get there. That's all you need. You can look up examples on the Internet, or you can get Donald Asher's book Graduate Admissions Essays, which was a great help to me.

^Yeah, basically your professors are going to write 1 letter that they will then tweak to send to different schools. I think they expect to be asked to submit several letters to many programs in the 10-15 range for each student.

^I'm going to third the above two. In fact, I have even heard it said that some folks get suspicious when they search for you and find nothing. Bizarre, I know, but as a future academic/researcher/professional you do want to establish an online presence for yourself so that people can look you up and see positive, professional things about you when they search. Also, it's only natural for people to want to find out more about you and your work. So you probably want your name on your lab supervisor's website, as people will find it when they search for you online and can get to know your work/which lab you are in. And I also agree with the website advice - one of my original goals this summer was to begin a website for myself, although it'll probably have to wait as I'm busier than expected.

You say you'll be carrying this around as your way to stay connected; that makes me lean towards iPad. Were I you I would go for an iPad with a Retina screen - I just upgraded from my iPad 2 to an iPad Air and it's made a huge difference. But it depends on what you mean by "connected" and also where "home" is. If you are just bringing something to school to take notes, surf the net, read articles, etc., I think an iPad with a comfortable Bluetooth keyboard is more than sufficient for that. I didn't have an iPad during my coursework phase, but I sure wish I did in retrospect because most of what I did on campus could've been replicated with an iPad + keyboard. If you have no need of analysis programs and will do most of your paper-writing at home on the desktop, you don't really need a laptop for campus - plus, you can use Microsoft Office and Google docs on an iPad. I wouldn't do any extended paper-writing on my iPad, but I could do some limited work. However, if "home" is a far commute for you and you're going to be on campus all day long, you might want a laptop. You might want to work on a paper in-between classes and if you're not close enough to go home in-between, you might need to use the library computer or public labs. Depending on how plentiful they are, that could get annoying (they are not on my medical center campus, and thus computer space is difficult to find). Also, I have a laptop for traveling. When I go to a conference, I often need something more substantial than a tablet to get some serious work done, but obviously can't lug my desktop. So I have a laptop. My ideal setup would be a Mac mini at home, a MacBook Air for travel and an iPad for the reading and such. That, of course, is expensive. So what I have instead is a laptop that I hook up to an external monitor and keyboard and use as a desktop at home, and an iPad Air. If you don't already have a desktop, consider doing this instead.

In the beginning of my program, I definitely spent more time on coursework than I did in undergrad. My courses were more difficult - I had more reading and deeper thinking to do. (I was also taking four of them; most doctoral students take 2-3.) I didn't have a whole lot of free time, but I did have some. Not enough to take a class, but enough to go out with friends and read the occasional book. But I was also terrible at managing my time then, too. During quals I learned how to manage my time and during my dissertation writing phase, I felt like I had gobs of free time. I had learned by then to manage my time efficiently, so I got things done in chunks of time and found myself with time to invest in new and old hobbies. My dissertation phase was actually kind of awesome because of that.

I'm really curious because an estimate of about $14,400 for 3 years indicates that the rent for a one-bedroom or studio apartment nearby the school is about $400-500/month (depending on whether you are using a 9-month or 12-month estimate). That's...really low. I guess that's possible in many places, but even a lot of the college towns I know of rent one-bedroom apartments out for more than that (the cheapest I am finding in the college town I'm moving to are around $700, and I just rented one for $900). So I'm curious - how are you calculating the estimate? Also, although you might be able to do the program in 2 years, I would still compare costs using the 3-year estimate if your professor is telling you that's how long students typically take the complete the program. 60 credits is a lot. I had to complete 60 credits for my doctoral program and it took me 2.5 years, and that's because I used TAing and research hours as part of the credit. If I had to take 20 graduate-level seminars at 3 credits each, it probably would've taken me the full 3 years (unless you can take summer courses or something). If you're taking max 12 credits a semester, then it will take you 5 semesters or 2.5 years to finish, unless you can take summer courses. Well, you know what it is like to live there as a child. You are much older, and so are your grandmother and your mother. Are they going to treat you like an adult? Are they going to give you the space you need to do work? Are they going to respect the fact that an MA program is not like going to undergrad college? I agree that you can try this out and see if it works before making a final decision about whether to move out. Yes, and 2 hours round-trip can get exhausting, especially if you will be coming back at 9-10 pm at night. That means you won't be getting home most nights until 10 or 11 pm, after potentially spending all day on campus. This can get really wonky with a car with 200K miles on it. Clinical psychology PhD programs vary a lot in how they fund their students. The top clinical psych PhD programs provide full funding for students - which means they cover your tuition and fees, your health insurance, and they pay you a stipend that is meant to cover your living expenses. The stipend usually varies from about $25,000 to $30,000 a year - which is enough for you usually to eat and rent an apartment, although often not by yourself (sharing with roommates). These are the "clinical science" programs (clinical psychology programs that focus primarily on training new researchers and professors, although they are APA-accredited and you can practice) and the top scientist-practitioner programs (programs that integrate both clinical training and research training; most graduates of these programs go onto become practitioners and clinicians, although some do go on to be researchers and some do a bit of both). Then there are a bunch of clinical psych programs in the middle and towards the bottom that offer limited funding. They may fully fund some of their students, but not all. Or they may offer partial funding for all students, or partial funding for some students. "Partial" funding could be anything from a tuition waiver (but you're expected to borrow to cover your own living expenses) to a small stipend (but you have to pay your own tuition) or anything in between. Some clinical psych PhD programs don't offer any funding at all, and expect students to borrow the cost of their program. PsyD programs almost universally do not provide funding. They are structured like MDs or DDS programs - the idea is that this is a practice-oriented, clinical-based program that is training you to be a health professional, so you are expected to borrow the full cost of your education. They are generally shorter, though (about 4 years, compared to 5-6 for the PhD) and the dissertation and research requirements are minimal and focused on practice. This is just my opinion, but I do not believe that people should pay for a doctoral program in psychology. The cost is too great, and the salary is not great enough. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, clinical psychologists' median salary is $69,280 a year. That's pretty good, but a full-pay PsyD program could easily cost you $50K+ per year, or a total of $200K. That kind of debt is unsustainable. So my advice is to only agree to attend a clinical psychology program that agrees to at least partially fund you (and personally, I wouldn't go to one that didn't fully fund me). You can find out whether programs give full, partial, or no funding on their departmental websites. Most departments that fully fund mention it on the webpage somewhere. I'm in a fully funded PhD program, so I paid my rent with my stipend. I did take out a small loan to finance moving costs.

This school has the most ridiculous rules. They seem to be making it purposely difficult for recent grads to become employed by the school if not in a full-officer position. No need to burn bridges. I would simply tell the PI "I understand that you are having issues with HR, but I cannot work without compensation. If the program is unable to pay me, I'll have to find alternate employment for the summer." I also agree with talking to someone in HR directly - even if it means going to their office and sitting in their face. They have to acknowledge you then, and can't reroute around you. If they continue to hem and haw, yes, quit. Once your labor is already given away, the program has no incentive to hustle their buns to pay you. They are stealing your labor - and it wouldn't matter whether your parents are independently wealthy or whether you had millions in the bank. You deserve compensation for your labor; you were promised it and it is not being paid to you. Honestly, at this point it kind of sounds like they are attempting to avoid paying you, especially since they hired you months ago. At best, though, it's amazing administrative mismanagement. Don't work without pay. At least if you are going to not get paid this summer, you deserve the break you'd get if you weren't busting your butt for them.

^This is true. I've known quite a few people who have transferred units without much difficulty once they were in the system and had lived in UAH for some time.

Well, in some ways I agree with GradSecretary. What I was trying to convey is that I think it's right to tell *anyone* that s/he is unqualified or can't follow simple instructions (as he inferred about the deadline), when that is not the case. In a field like EE where women earn far fewer PhDs (asee puts it at about 17%), I think that's especially a bad idea if you're trying to recruit women to the field-- which may or may not be the case for a department. I, too, am baffled by the sentiment that it's somehow "not right" for a program director to tell anyone that they are unqualified for a program, or can't follow simple instructions. I'm not saying that the program director was right in this particular instance, because I don't know the circumstances of it. But of course some people are unqualified for some programs, and of course program directors and professors should tell those people that they are unqualified so they do not waste time attempting to reapply (at least not without improving themselves). It doesn't matter if women earn fewer PhDs. Part of the goal of pipeline programs is to make women more prepared to do STEM PhDs, which I wholeheartedly support (being a woman myself). But refraining from telling a woman that she is unqualified to protect her feelings is not doing her any favors. You're not giving her the information she needs to potentially improve her application. I'm not going to judge you for feeling hurt, but I do agree that a thick skin is a requisite for science/academia, and that you probably shouldn't take this personally. The program director is likely wrong about you, and he's being a jerk, but if he directs the program then you don't want to be there anyway. The best thing you can do is distract yourself, move on to something else and forget about this whole thing. The best way to move on is to live well and accomplish your goals some other way. Prove him wrong (at a distance).

Whether or not orientation is mandatory will depend on the program. Whether or not it's skippable also depends on the program, but in my experience most are. Both of my departments have a one-day mandatory orientation; lucky me, they were scheduled on the same day at the same time my year. I attended my primary department's orientation, which was a waste of time. I did help organize my secondary department's orientation in later years (and also advocated for the two to be scheduled on different days for the students coming in behind me - I was the first person to have done my joint program in 6 years) and that one was marginally more useful. But in the case of both, you could get all of the information you needed either from the handbook, the departmental office or your fellow classmates (and that's what I ended up doing for my secondary department).

GoodReader is the most useful app for me - they are having a sale and selling it for $2.99 instead of the normal price of $9.99, so you may want to snap it up now. It's a document-reading app, essentially - you can read PDFs and Word docs along with other file types. But what makes it worth it is the markup tools - OCR'ed and text-based PDFs give you the option to highlight, and with all kinds of files you can add drawings (ovals, lines, squiggles, whatever) and annotate with pop-up notes. It's what I use to read all of my journal articles. You can also connect it to cloud servers like Dropbox or Google Drive and use it to either download directly from the cloud or you can sync it to the cloud to update all of your documents as you change them on your computer. Available for both iPhone and iPad; buy it once and use it on both devices. I'm still trying to figure out whether I want to settle on Zotero or Papers2 as my citations manager. Right now I am using Zotero, but because I like to write in Scrivener (a writing app for Mac and Windows) I need something that will play nice with it, so I'm contemplating moving to Papers2 (which I have). Anyway, there are mobile versions of both, but the mobile version of Papers is better. For Zotero, there's ZotPad, a third-party mobile client which allows you to access your Zotero library on your mobile device. For Papers, there's the Papers mobile app. I'm leaning towards Papers for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the mobile app is better and you can cite in any writing application. (I tried Mendeley and I didn't like it.) I use Popmoney to send money to my friends and family who don't have the same bank when divvying stuff up. There's a $0.95 fee but that's better than my bank's fee, which is like $3. Google Drive is also a useful app - Google has improved it by a lot. There are also new Docs and Sheets apps to allow editing documents and spreadsheets on the go. (I'm not a fan of Dropbox.) I love feedly (an RSS feed basically) but I also use Newsify. I use them mostly for fun though, lol. I think I am the only grad student who doesn't like Evernote. I used to use it more, but I kept having issues with it crashing and losing my stuff, and it moves slowly for me. I prefer OneNote, personally. (And tenguru, no - Evernote is not a reference/citation management app. It's a note-taking application.) Not all universities offer free versions of Endnote for all users (mine, for example, only offers it free for students in certain schools). I haven't used the newer versions of Endnote - the last time I used it was probably in 2009 - but I remember it having the same functionality as Zotero and Mendeley for a lot more money. I actually prefer the way Zotero works, and another thing is that Endnote messed up my citations SOOOO many times. I spent more time fixing my references in Endnote-generated lists than Endnote actually saved me, especially for shorter lists. So I used Zotero. I used Zotero for my dissertation. I literally had 50 pages' worth of references and I would say about 5-10% were done incorrectly, and in that case, it was because they were downloaded incorrectly in Zotero. And then I could just fix them and hit "refresh" and voila, it's perfect.

I tried it and didn't keep up with it, but then again I had very few fixed bills at the time. When I move for my postdoc in two months, I will have more, so maybe I'll try it again.

This is a time management issue. I was in a very demanding program myself - in my first two years, I had to take 4 graduate courses a semester and did 20 hours a week of research (which could easily turn into 30). In my third year, my courses were reduced but I was also teaching. The work didn't really slow down until halfway through my fourth year. But I still found time to make friends and socialize - not as much as I would like to, but definitely more than zero. I did, however, live a 10-minute walk from campus, so that changes things. You can't spend all of your time studying. I understand that you want to get top grades; that's important. But you might need to start scheduling or blocking off time for studying as well as for socializing. Sure, commuting to campus may take away 2 hours a day that you can study - but if those 2 hours for one or two extra days really makes a difference, then it could be that your courseload is too heavy or that you haven't yet learned to effectively and efficiently study your program's material (which is no judgment - it took me a while myself!) You have to take the initiative to plan things. If you know someone you might like to be friends with, invite them to go grab lunch or dinner when you are on campus for an hour or so. Sure, that takes an hour away from studying - but that's important for your mental health. You may get back home a bit later than anticipated. If your cohort-mates are big on social media, make sure you're on their Facebook pages or whatever so you can find out about impromptu or informal events that you might want to go to. Honestly, the way I see most of my friends these days is just chilling in their apartments or them chilling in mine. We're all busy, and you don't have to go paint the town red in order to have a good time. A few bottles of wine and people who like to talk can satisfy your needs. My ideal situation would be to find other people to sit around and study with so I can get my stuff done but also not be lonely. That's not ideal, honestly. You do need to study, but you ALSO need non-academic normal human social interaction. Besides, the people who I sat around and studied with were people I was already friends with, and had done friendly social stuff like after-work/class drinks. We then jointly decided that we needed to study and that peer pressure during study time was productive.

I told my family members and friends directly. I'm a first-generation college student and will be the only one in my large extended family with a graduate degree (and I'm currently only one of two with a BA - my younger sister is the other one), so I got a lot of interesting reactions. Most of my friends were fellow college students, and so they generally said congrats and understood the gravity of it. My mom was excited 1) because she knew it was something I always wanted to do, and 2) because I got accepted to some big-name schools she had heard of - she was excited about telling her co-workers that her daughter got into Yale and Columbia, lol. My mom has just been incredibly supportive through the whole thing - I know that she doesn't really understand all of my reasons and motivations, but she's the kind of mom that's just like "whatever you want to do, I'm behind you." In fact, she has a long memory and seems to remember me as a child saying that I wanted to be called Doctor and work at a specific government agency, which I don't remember at all, but that's actually what I DO want to do so I know she's right. My dad was confused about why I wanted to do MORE school. He's definitely the "get what you need and then get out" kind of person, and again since I'm first-generation, he assumed that BA = $$$$. But I found out later via my mom that he was actually pretty proud and brags about it to people. He did try to get me to quit after I explained that I got an MA along the way to a PhD ("OH, so you have a master's now? Why don't you just leave?") He actually told me that I could make a lot of money being a principal in Mississippi. It was totally random because 1) it is false; I am not in education and in no way qualified to run a school and 2) we live in GA and my graduate program is in NY, so why he randomly brought up MS I am not sure. My sister's reactions were probably the funniest, but tenderest. She asked me about what it took to get a PhD and her eyes bugged out when she realized I had to write a long paper (she was just beginning college at the time). She didn't understand the concept of liking something so much that you wanted to go to more school for it. She also could never remember what my PhD was in or my research interests were, and gave people amusing incorrect answers when they asked her (for a time, she was telling people that I was working on the cure for AIDS - which is kind of related to what I do, but makes me sound way smarter and more STEM-y than I actually am, lol). But over the course of her own college degree, she became more interested in her own major (exercise science - related to mine) and decided that she wants a graduate degree, too, although not a PhD. My in-laws have been super-cute about it; they've been cheering me on the whole way and keep asking if there is anything they can do to help. My cousins thought I was in medical school until about my second year of my PhD. They just knew I did research on medical stuff and they assumed that = MD. Even now, I have to constantly explain to them that no, I won't be licensed to provide psychological services after I finish (my PhD is an interdisciplinary psychology program).

Yes, I'm confused about what you are asking, too. If you are accepted to get a master's en route to a PhD - i.e., an MA/PhD program in which you earn a non-terminal MA along the way, and funding - then you are a PhD student. If you want to quit after your first year to attend another school and you haven't even started yet, then I think you should completely rethink going at all. If you have to reapply for the PhD, then you haven't been accepted to attend an MA program "en route to a PhD." You're just accepted to an MA program, and you personally have the intention to go to a PhD. In that case, you'd be expected to apply to other places besides your home department, and there'd be no hard feelings if you finish the MA there and move onto somewhere else. However, I do agree with Sigaba that you should make plans to finish the MA at your home department before leaving. Not only can it look bad if you ditch after one year, but you can also learn valuable stuff in the MA program. (The caveat, of course, is if you are unfunded in the MA program but get into a funded PhD program after your first year. If you can save a year's worth of student debt, I would totally do that.)

I have an iPad Air for this reason - I have the Kindle app on it but also apps to read and annotate PDFs. I like reading PDFs on my iPad because I'm far more motivated to read them carefully and annotate them (if I'm on my laptop, I tend to skim, and I definitely don't annotate). You can also find apps to read ePubs and you can read electronic books using the browser or a proprietary app. My husband said yesterday that the tablet solved a problem nobody had until the tablet came out, and I agree with that. You don't <i>need</i> one, of course, but they are certainly nice to have. I also use mine to take notes and it's a lot lighter than carrying my laptop around. I agree, though, that an e-reader is too small to read academic works on. I had a Kindle and although the processing for PDFs has improved (I had one of the earlier ones and they looked awful), the screen is still smaller. I think the iPad Air (or other 10" tablet) is the perfect size for them - sometimes I have to zoom in on the ones arranged in columns, but that's easy to do on an iPad, whereas it's a little more time-intensive on a Kindle.

Here's how I feel about money: Why live with less when you are awesome enough to make more? Not to mention that applying for grants is a GOOD thing. "You already have funding, so why bother?" is the exact wrong mindset to take and probably explains why your colleagues are stuck making half what you do. That said, I agree with the advice not to talk about grants or money in front of them, because they are reacting with jealousy. I also would be careful to never split anything big with them unless they are paying up front. I agree, though, that it's weird your external fellowship has doubled your stipend. Most external fellowships I know of pay about $30K per year, so that would mean that your stipend is $15K? That's super low, and might explain some of the resentment - if they are struggling just to pay their rent and eat, the resentment may be towards the program but misdirected onto an easier target (you) whenever it comes up. I also like TakeruK's answer to the question in your title - except that I think the stipend itself should be equivalent to what someone with an undergrad degree in the field would make, on average. In most fields that's right around $30K. In some higher-paid fields (STEM, especially the T and E part) that might be closer to $40K. And that would mean that postdoc salaries need to be pushed up to around $50-60K, which is what I think they SHOULD be, and I think professors should be starting around $70-80K. Alas, I do not run the world. Most humanities stipends at my university, I think, are between $20K and $30K for 9 months. The STEM salaries I think tend between $30K and $35K. I live in a very expensive city, as well; splitting a 2-bedroom can cost pretty much any amount (sky's the limit) but in reasonably affordable but safe areas of the city is generally between mmmm about $900-1100 a month. I swear that TakeruK and I must share a brain sometimes because so often he says exactly what I'm thinking. Basically everything he said in the above post is what I was going to write. This is not really directed towards you, bsharpe269, but I believe that this is a partial fiction that graduate universities hand to us to keep graduate stipends low. The truth is, though, universities need us. Why do you think so many universities run so many low-ranked PhD programs? Doctoral programs bring prestige and federal monies to universities. In many STEM fields graduate students do work that is necessary to keep labs churning - without us, professors would be hiring research associates that they would pay the same amount or perhaps more to do the same work. They also need us to help teach their classes - grade their papers and give their exams so that they have time to do the research they want to do. In humanities fields (and sometimes, in the social sciences and pure math), students are often sole teaching basic service classes, sometimes in their first year. In fact, it's become such a problem at some universities that students are taking many more years than necessary to graduate because they are stuck teaching freshman comp or sociology 101 to survive. Besides, I think that the benefit to paying a decent salary is that you attract good students who might have done something else. I disagree that students will go to PhD programs who don't have the commitment; if you could make the same amount of money doing something else in the field, it would probably be overall easier to just do that. (Now if the stipend were a lot HIGHER in a PhD program, yeah, then we'd get a lot of dud apps.) Instead, I think we'd get students who love research and really wanted to do a PhD, but have family obligations or got tempted by a more highly-paid job within the field elsewhere. I also think it's difficult for working professionals to leave their full-time jobs and lives to take a significant pay cut and get a PhD - but the experience gleaned in work before a PhD is very valuable! I also personally think the grad school = sacrifice trope is kind of bs, to be honest. I can truly want a PhD without being willing to sacrifice my personal or financial well-being for it, especially if I have children or a mortgage or other family responsibilities to take care of.

Take the ETA. I am turning 28 this year, and I definitely don't feel like I wasted my youth in graduate school or something. You'll still be alive, and you will still be young and able to do young folks things - besides, your life doesn't end when you turn 30 or something. I dislike the idea that your mid-20s are the "prime of your life". Every stage carries new challenges and new delights. I, for one, am really looking forward to the end of the instability (both financially and emotionally) of my 20s and the professional career development and the family I plan to begin in my 30s. But, I do regret not traveling for a few years before I began graduate school. It was something I had always wanted to do (a Fulbright ETA, specifically) and in a few months, I'll no longer be eligible for the Fulbright program because I'll have a PhD. Not only that, it's difficult to slip out of and back into a career - now that I'm finishing, I'm going to a postdoc. But if I want a job in my field, I can't exactly take 2 years off to go teach abroad in Japan or Malaysia or what not. So if you want to travel abroad for the ETA for a year, do that. Defer the MS program.

The academic year usually doesn't include the summer months, although I don't go to NYU. Columbia does its housing pricing for the dormitory-style housing the same way - the academic year is usually September through the end of May, and you have to pay for June through August separately. (The apartments list a monthly rent that stays the same throughout the year, although they do raise it by about $50 every June). Even if the $20K did include 12 months, though, that's nearly $1700 and you cound definitely get cheaper housing in Brooklyn or Queens and commute. If it only includes 9 months, then that's $2200+ a month, which is really outrageous. It is a great deal - for the neighborhood NYU is in. Greenwich Village is a really expensive neighborhood.

Hey neighbor! Or, kind of. That apartment complex is huge. Nittany Gardens, Vairo Village (owned by the same folks who manage Toftrees, but cheaper), The Allenway, University Terrace, Parkway Plaza (I think this one has a lot of undergrads). You may also want to check out Craigslist. Sometimes people are subletting. http://pennstate.craigslist.org/search/apa?sale_date=-&bedrooms=1

Jesus Christ, I had no idea. I've worked with data from the ACS before but much smaller subsets, but yes, I guess it makes sense that the ACS (and Census) would have that many cases. Oh, well finding something with 8+ GB of RAM is pretty easy these days. Here are some: 14" Lenovo Z40 - 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 6GB RAM, 500GB standard HD + 8 GB SSD, up to 5 hours of battery life - $679 (http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/z-series/z40/) 15.6" Lenovo G510 - 3.10 GHz Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB RAM, 1 TB HDD, up to 6 hours of battery life - $579 (http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/g-series/g510/) 15.6" Toshiba Satellite L50 - Intel Core i3 processor, 8GB RAM, 1 TB HDD - $480 (http://www.toshiba.com/us/customlanding.to?page=Satellite_L_Series) A variety of Dell Inspiron 15" laptops (new Inspiron 15 3000 with an i5 processor, 8GB of memory and 1TB of HDD space is $550) You can customize an HP Pavilion 15" to be about $600 with specs pretty close to the ones above. The HP Envy laptops are around this price with 6 GB of RAM and 750 GB of HDD space. I would also check out Amazon.com and Newegg.com - they both usually have discounts on Windows-based machines. There you can find Asus notebooks (which I have heard good things about). I think this is one of those YMMV things. I've had two Dells and everyone in my family has had a Dell at some point, and I don't think any of them lasted longer than 3 years. They were all from the Inspiron line. However, we did get the cheaper versions (around $500-600) so that may have something to do with it. I've heard people to say stay away from Toshiba and HP while others love the brands.

2 & 3 are DEFINITELY what I am thinking when I put those things in an email to my advisor. I totally use "Thanks in advance" to be passive-aggressive. It's my way of saying "You're totally going to do this." Otherwise I just put a regular thank you, lol.

Darn it, you took my answer. Therefore, I submit that I am Nightwing. Or Sailor Venus. No, I got it...I am the adult love child of Nightwing and Sailor Venus. YES.

If you didn't get accepted to the PhD program at Arizona State even with the third professor, I'm doubting that it is just your recommender. I mean, it could be that, but I doubt that it was only that factor. Why do you think one of your recommenders would give you a bad recommendation letter? Could be research fit. It looks like you applied to about 15 PhD programs, which is a lot, and I agree that that could potentially be indicative that your research interests are not narrowed down enough. Perhaps you didn't write compellingly about them in your statement of purpose, or perhaps you didn't select programs at which there was someone interested in supervising someone with your interests. I'm also not sure what a 72% or a 7.9 GPA are. If a 7.9 is like a 3.8-3.9 on a 4.0 scale, then that's fine. But if a 72% is anything like a 72% in the U.S. (which is a low C average) then that could potentially be the answer.