juilletmercredi

Ok, your last post changed things. I was going to say absolutely School A, but if you will have more debt at School A than School B, that changes things. The question is - how MUCH more debt? Is it a significant amount, likely to make a big difference in your ability to repay the loans? If they're pretty close as far as debt goes, I'd go with School A. As far as I know, getting your field work paid is very uncommon (I had a few social work friends and none of them got paid for their field work) so that's a huge attraction on top of the scholarship. Plus it's closer to your family and partner. I am positive that at an Ivy League school of social work there are plenty of professors doing research, some of which is probably interesting to you. In an MSW program the research with professors isn't as important as fieldwork placement and funding, especially if your goal is direct practice. If School B is significantly cheaper, though, I'd choose B. Really, on this one, the money would be the deciding factor.

The purpose of the fellowship isn't to avoid the undergrads (as you pointed out, if you want to teach you can't avoid them forever - plus, they're rather pleasant) but to give yourself some time to adjust, finish up some intensive coursework and figure yourself out before you teach. Teaching takes up a LOT of time and your first semester teaching can be stressful. You don't want the stress of being a brand-new instructor added on top of the stress of being a brand-new grad student. Personally, I think it's kind of cruel when PhD programs require brand-new students to TA in their first year - especially the first semester - but most of them do it anyway. I had a research assistantship my first year and that was far better than TAing - it takes time, too, but the time plays into your requirements because you can use your research to write seminar papers and get publications, as well as prepare for your eventual dissertation. The RA work I started in my first year ended up being the basis for my dissertation later. So yes, take the fellowship! You can always teach later - trust me, they'll be beating down your doors when they need teachers. I've never been supported through a TAship (only RAships and fellowships) but I have had plenty of opportunities to teach, and always for extra money.

Of course you'll get new experiences in life - going to grad school is different from undergrad. School #2 is a top-ranked school; you will have a guaranteed internship of your choice for 2 years instead of one; AND it's an amazing funding offer. You also have the potential to save a lot of money by staying with family. You should definitely pick School #2 and not even look back! And yes, you can always move to the South later. And once you're ready, you'll have much less debt.

I think this depends on how the apartment is set up. My old two-bedroom apartment was set up so that the living room was truly a separate room, and you didn't have to walk through it to get to any of the other shared spaces (kitchen or bathroom) or to any of the other rooms - when you entered you could walk down a long hallway to get to the bedrooms, bathroom and kitchen. So it would've been pretty easy to flex that into a 3-bedroom and the roommate in the living room would've had plenty of privacy. CCNY is in a mixed area. There are parts around it that are kind of sketchy - I would say mostly in the high 130s and the 140s east of St. Nicholas. But I had a couple of friends who lived there (one at 133rd and Lenox, and one at 141st and Lenox) and were just fine; both lived in really pretty newly renovated units. There are also close-by neighborhoods that I consider fine and would totally live or actually have lived in. I actually live relatively close to CCNY - it's two stops away on the train or a 10-minute bus ride from me - in a nice neighborhood. If you looked in the 130s and 140s along Broadway, or in the 120s between Broadway and like Amsterdam or St. Nicholas (that's Harlem) I think you'd be fine. You should also look at Washington Heights - which starts in the high 150s/early 160s. If you look around 165th to 175th St that's the area of NYP Hospital and the Columbia University Medical Center, so lots of students live around there and it's a very safe area. That's where I lived when I first moved here; it's called Washington Heights. If you share with people in any of those areas. you will probably pay anywhere from $700-1000 a month - with the most common amount being between $800-900. What information about budgets do you want? How easy it is to find a part-time job depends on your skills and degrees. I found it very easy to find a part-time job on campus, and after I earned my MA in my MA/PhD program, it was extremely easy to find part-time work in the city - lots of nonprofits and corporate firms want people with my skills and an MA (I do statistical analyses and know a couple of different packages). If you have any research experience you could work as a part-time research coordinator or project manager. It just depends. It also depends on when you're looking - when you move in August there will be tons of other students also looking for part-time jobs, but if if you're looking in the winter to early spring months there's less competition. When I first moved to New York I shared a two-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights. I paid $900 for my half of the rent; my half of the utilities (gas/electric) was usually around $30-60 depending on the time of year (more in the summer with the air conditioner running) and $15 for Internet. I think I spent about $250/month on groceries. The monthly unlimited MetroCard back then was $81 but I think it's like $112/month now. My cell phone bill was about $100/month, but you can definitely get something cheaper.

Is this for a master's? Tulane is more recognized within public health. It also depends on what you want to do after you finish the program.

I would definitely go to Emory. Sure, Harvard is Harvard - but Emory is also a top 10 program in public health and you can get the MSPH at far less personal cost than going to Harvard because of your family in Atlanta and the scholarship there. The MPH is the generalist degree in public health (and Emory's MSPH is an extension of that model), so it makes sense that the Emory program is more broad. An MS is a more academic degree in epidemiology. But as long as you take the coursework you really need to do epi practice, I don't think it will be a problem. Atlanta is also a city with tons of public health orgs - including the CDC - so you can get internship opportunities there. Also, Emory will ALSO allow you to get awesome research experience - there are many great researchers in public health at Emory, not to mention that the CDC is like literally next door. Seriously, follow that money and don't look back.

This may becoming late but work-study is not really enough to supplement a PhD program, and usually full-pay places will advertise that they have limited scholarships and TA positions when there's really not enough to go around. So I would check and see what your chances are of actually getting a scholarship or a TA position are. Grants are also very competitive, and you probably won't be in a good position to write a grant right away. Also, I wouldn't rely on loan forgiveness. For one, if you make even one payment even one day late, you are no longer eligible. Two, you have to pay taxes on any forgiven amount. Three, unless you are in certain types of public service you will still be paying the loans for 20 years, and private practice is not public service. And four, the current administration is discussing capping loan forgiveness at around $57,000. It's way better to wait a year than to borrow money you know you can't repay.

I think you will get better and clearer answers if you just post one thread and actually tell the truth about yourself, then just describe your preferences. Just because you have already applied to master's programs doesn't mean that you actually have to go to any of them. You could turn them down and spend next year applying directly to PhD programs. You can, indeed, go straight into a PhD program if you want to - just not in the Fall of 2014. You'd have to wait until next fall at least - but in your case, that might be better than spending 2 years getting a master's and then another 5-6 years getting a PhD. But the short answer is that if you absolutely want to begin a master's in psychology this fall, if you want to get a PhD in the United States you will almost certainly have to spend at least 5 years getting a PhD - regardless of the fact that you have a master's.

Personally, I would definitely NOT do the MA in clinical psychology at Columbia. It's very expensive, and as you mentioned it won't license you to practice anything. The only thing it can do is maybe raise your chances of getting into a PhD program - but I think that's only in certain circumstances. If you have very low grades from undergrad, getting an MA can help prove that you can do graduate-level work. But your grades are fine. Honestly, the thing that really makes you competitive for clinical psych programs (and any psych) is research experience, and it seems like you have plenty of that as a clinical research coordinator. Once, quite some time ago, a professor from the clinical psych program at UVa came to my graduate school and recommended the MSW as a stepping stone to clinical psych degrees, if one can't get into a PhD program straight from grad school. Honestly, I think that would be the better choice here, if you absolutely want to choose one. IMO, it opens more doors. If you want to do clinical work and do research, after getting an MSW you can either go to a PhD in clinical psych or you can continue to get a PhD in social work. And if you have an MSW, even if you get a PhD in clinical psych, you could then teach in either a psych department or a school of social work. And if you need to take a few years after your MSW to get into a PhD program, you can get licensed as an LCSW and do actual clinical work, which you can't do with the TC degree. If it's affordable to you and it won't put you into fantastic debt, that's what I'd do. If the debt is great, though, at the MSW program...I'd try to investigate the reasons you're not getting into clinical programs. Your grades are great and your GRE scores are decent. You spent two years as a CRC and I'm assuming also have at least some undergrad research experience. So maybe it's fit? Or perhaps it's your written materials (personal statement)? Also, clinical is very competitive, so it's not uncommon for even qualified candidates to take 2-3 cycles to get into a good place.

^Ditto the above. Send a short email concisely describing your background and interests, ask if they're taking students, and ask which subfield you should apply to. I'd also look at course and exam requirements, and also think about marketability as well into the future. Within psychology, cognitive psych seems to be the "hotter" area - I see far more ads for cognitive psychologists (relative to the number of applicants there probably are) than for developmental psychologists. For example, the psych jobs wiki seems to list roughly equal numbers of positions for cognitive and developmental but I'm willing to bet that there are far more developmental psychologists than cognitive psychologists. I also think cog is a bit more desirable/applicable outside of academia, if you're looking to go into non-academic work, although it really depends on what you want to do.

I agree with the former post - pets are for life - but at the same time, I find it a bit hard to believe that the discrepancy between places that allow cats and places that don't is literally $1200/month everywhere. I also find it hard to believe that all of the 2-bedrooms are literally twice the price of the one-bedrooms, to the extent that sharing an apartment doesn't save you any money. That's not the way the housing market has worked anywhere that I've lived, and I currently live in the most expensive U.S. city. Are you exhausting your search? I know that Craigslist is a great way to find an apartment in my city but in other cities, it's not actually the best way. What about apartments.com, roommates.com? Does your university have an off-campus housing office that has listings or recommendations for where to find apartments? Most do, and that's where I found my first apartment.

I'm a Columbia grad but not at TC. I do, however, live about a block and a half from TC. Personally I think TC's housing is way overpriced for the area. Prices are here and they are per term, which means per semester. As you can see, the efficiencies with no private kitchen are $8,000+ for one semester, which is about 4 months - that means $2,000/month for a studio with a shared kitchen. This building is essentially in Harlem, where you could get a studio with your own kitchen for less than that if you really wanted. The efficiencies in Whittier are cheaper (more like $1500/month) but I had a friend who lived in one of them and they are very small. They're more like single rooms than an efficiency, really. The only thing on the list that's actually almost kind of in line with market prices is the one-bedrooms, and that's probably more than you need. Finding an apartment in NYC can be a challenging process but it's definitely doable, especially in this neighborhood. TC is located really close to Harlem, which is where some of the most affordable housing in Manhattan is. If you are willing to share an apartment (so to have your own bedroom in a 2-4 bedroom apartment), you can pay anywhere from $700-900/month in Harlem or the next neighborhood up, Washington Heights (about a 20-minute commute from TC; there's a shuttle that goes from uptown by the medical center campus/New York Presbyterian Hospital, around 168th St. & Broadway, and stops right in front of TC). You can find apartment shares on Craigslist - this is actually how I found most of my roommates when I had a 2-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights, by listing my apartment on Craiglist. I got sane, normal, friendly people, primarily other students. Often you can find people who just need to get someone in the space but don't need you to sign the lease, which was my arrangement. If you really want to live alone, expect to pay at least $1200/month and more realistically between $1500-2000/month. If you're going to do that, it actually may make more sense just to go with TC's housing, although it'll be much smaller than anything you can get on the market. I also found living in residential housing to be more of a hassle - you have to get packages at the package center rather than getting them delivered to your door; you have to go out front for food deliveries because they're not allowed in the building, etc. etc. If you want to look for housing on the market, I would suggest looking primarily in Harlem as that will be pretty close to TC. Generally speaking you can look between 120th and 140th-ish and between Riverside Dr and like...Amsterdam, or maybe St. Nicholas. In Harlem, anything further east than that gets into Central Harlem and you'd have to take the crosstown bus to TC, which will be a pain in the butt. If you live further north than around ehh around 130th St. living close to the 1 train will be best because that stops relatively close to TC. There's also a couple buses that go down Broadway and stop pretty close (the M4 and M104; the M11 also goes down Amsterdam and stops on the other side). You could also look in the 140s-170s west of Broadway, especially if you look in the area between 165th to 175th ish because you'll have access to the shuttle bus that goes straight to TC. However, since the prices will be about the same, I'd say start with Harlem - the commute will be shorter. Another option is to apply to live at International House. I've had a variety of friends who've lived at I-House throughout the years and they've all loved it. The room rates are here. The place is also pretty expensive, but still cheaper than TC's housing with more amenities. Check out the website; it's a really unique living environment. If you don't mind sharing a bathroom in a corridor-style residence hall, you'll pay $900-1200/month. If you want a private bathroom, it's like $1300-1500/month. The rooms are tiny. If corridor-style dorm living isn't for you anymore, you could get an apartment share for $1200-1500/month. Again, though, that's way more than you'll pay on the open market, although you get more in the experience.

You can also mark up digital books, and in some cases it's easier to do that than on hard copy books. Personally, I'm a huge fan of digital books, and if they were big when I needed textbooks I would have 100% gone with them. -They tend to be cheaper than hard copy books. -You can make markings, highlights, and annotations in a digital book just as easily - and sometimes more easily - than you can in a hard-copy book. Your annotation can be typed and will be saved across multiple devices, and the annotation can be literally bigger than the physical space in the margin of the book. -You can also flip to pages much more quickly and find your annotations, highlights, and bookmarks faster than you would in a hard copy book. So if you need to flip to a passage for a paper - that happens more quickly. -They take up less space. As a grad student with a small apartment, preserving space is important to me. -They're less expensive to move when it's time to move. -The majority of my textbooks become redundant after the semester is over. But even if they don't, digital textbooks last past the semester too. Once I got used to reading most of my things on the computer, I didn't find it any harder than reading in hard copy. I have a tablet and I do most of my book reading on the tablet. I love reading articles on my iPad - highlighting and annotating is super easy. I also don't feel like renting is a waste of money. If a textbook is $200 but I can rent it for $70 for the semester and I'll never need it again, why would I spend an additional $130 to have a book that is just going to sit on my bookshelf after I'm finished taking the class? That seems more like a waste of money to me, personally. I have bought hard copies of reference manuals that I will be referring to a lot - like I have a hard copy of two books on structural equation modeling on my shelf. I find those easier to use because finding the pictorial models and the syntax for the statistical programs is easier in hard copy. But if the book is primarily text, I'm all about the digital. Also, FWIW my program actually didn't require a lot of textbooks. We had a lot of article readings you could find in the library and we had a few paperbacks. The one textbook I knew I was never going to use again I borrowed from the library for a semester and then returned it after the class was over. I bought a couple of other ones I knew I was never going to use again used, but if they had been available in digital copies for cheaper I would've done that. Honestly, I would just go with whatever's the cheapest option for those books. Sometimes you can find a used book or an older edition on Amazon for like $5-15.

I was already leaning on the side of deferral, but the knowledge that the next 5 months of work can basically eliminate any debt for you makes it more solid. Your advisor is being a little ridiculous, but if his major concern is you being out of sync with the other students you could ask to defer for a year - then you'd be in line with other Fall 2015 start students. You can also make it clear that while you appreciate the funding, working at your current position will allow you to offset the costs of the program, which is very important to you. Don't worry about what he'll say - he's human, he's not going to eat you and you need to figure out where you stand for the future. You need to be equipped with all of the information possible so that you can make a decision. That's more important than his feelings, quite frankly. Wanting to defer school to finish a contract you agreed to at a job you love and save up enough money to pay for school doesn't make you flaky at all.

I think if you're a first-year in graduate school it makes sense to have two of your letters come from undergraduate mentors. You haven't really formed a relationship with any graduate advisors yet, except maybe just your primary one, and you'll only have been there for 2 months when you start. You'll probably want a letter from your primary advisor just saying that he/she supports you and your work, but otherwise the people best equipped to comment on your work are undergraduate professors. Now as a second-year applicant, all three of my recommenders were grad school professors. I believe you can defer in your first year if you are still in school but using another source of funding. I remember investigating my institutional funding and trying to decide whether to take my NSF in its first year or take the school's funding (the NSF was much better, so I went with that).

Most schools don't actually make you sign a contract. I would definitely check this because it's different from school to school, and I would imagine that at most schools you are actually not legally liable for the first years' tuition. But with that said, I agree that I wouldn't pay for grad school if I didn't have to. Still, yes, it is possible for you to do that. There's generally nothing legally binding you to the school you accepted; it's just seen as a relatively unethical thing to do.

Nope. The only fields where that would make sense are 1) law and 2) business, because those are prestige-focused fields where graduates of the top programs are the ones who get the six-figure jobs with the ability to repay those loans. In IR, you can't really hope to make $100K+ soon enough to pay off those loans, and since you're international you're not eligible for federal loans with any of the repayment programs that make it easier to repay heavy debt with a low salary. So I would choose the second or third choice. By $40K less, do you mean total? $80K is still a lot to go to grad school, although more manageable. If it's $40K less per year (as inlike $40K for the total program), I'd definitely take that.

Does Michigan not place students in great academic positions? Given that they are a top 10ish program, I would imagine that they do. Which one is a better research fit for you? What's most important is placement, not rankings. Rankings are more or less arbitrary, anyway, and both Indiana and Michigan are in the top 20ish programs. So if people from Indiana are getting great academic positions and you would prefer going to Indiana, then don't hesitate to choose them. But if you would rather go to Michigan, I'd wager that they also have excellent placement rates as well (if they're not publicly available you can ask). Sociology's not my field, btw - so this is more general advice.

So on the work front: -One thing I began very recently is a writing schedule. I'm far more loose with it (I kind of schedule my writing blocks on a week by week basis) but I'm intending to work my way up to having actually scheduled writing times per day and sticking to them. I have found (as promised in the book How to Write a Lot by Peter Silvia) that the more I write, the more I want to write. I get more done, and I am more creative - I get endless ideas and writer's block is not a problem. Also, the writing goes more smoothly and I have plenty of time to go back and edit and revise. Also, if you put yourself on a good schedule, you leave yourself a good amount of time to do the other things in life that you need to do to stay sane. Honestly, this is probably the best thing you could EVER do for yourself. You'll also be more productive, finish things on time, and have the publications you need to get a job. So. WRITING SCHEDULE. I'm a huge proponent of this now. -You can also get a LOT done in 2 hours. You can get a lot done in ONE hour. Every little thing counts. If you can read 3 articles in 2 hours, that's 3 less articles you have to read during your writing time. You can probably write 2 pages in 1 hour. That may not sound like a lot, but they all add up. I am three chapters into my dissertation so I've been thinking a lot about writing and the entire thing has just been one big project made up of little tiny projects. I broke it down into sections that were no bigger than 3 pages. Some of them were 1-2 pages. So you can sit down for 2 hours and say, f it, I'm going to write this 2-page section today and do it! So don't waste those 1-2 hour blocks of time. For my personal life: -I've built up a tight group of friends here and I try to socialize with them at least a few times a month. Very important. They're all busy too, but we schedule things in advance and it turns out fine. I always have a lot of fun and feel recharged. -I've slacked on this recently but I used to exercise 1 hour 3x a week. It was the kind of thing where, if I was in the middle of something and my run time came along, I would stop what I was doing, go run, and come back and pick it back up. I fell off the wagon when I got surgery but I'm trying to get back on. -I always have a side job. It means a lot for my mental health to be able to buy what I want, like clothes or make-up or pay for movie tickets every now and then. I use this as little rewards when I finish something on deadline. I currently work 10 hours a week at an academically-related job (teaching undergrads statistics, basically) but I have worked as many as 20 hours a week at a non-academically-related job (residential hall director for res life here). I loved it and that's where I met most of my closest friends. -Volunteering is important to me, so I volunteer as a mentor to two high school students trying to go to college next year. The commitment's not much - it was something like every other Saturday plus ad hoc meetings as needed (I would help them prepare for college interviews and write their essays and such). I've also done one-off volunteering, like I judge my city's science and engineering fair every year and sometimes do SAT tutoring. -Yoga is great! But I always sign up for a class and then don't go consistently, lol. -I eat breakfast every day. Well, almost every day. It's my little me-centering time - I sit down with a small breakfast and a cup of coffee and just chill before the day. This centers me. -I always try to make time for pleasure reading. My pleasure reading sometimes gives me just as many good ideas as my academic reading (probably because sometimes my pleasure reading is medical nonfiction, lol). BUt it's a nice calming thing to do, and I loooove to read and I don't want to lose that. -Oh also, SLEEP. It's very important. Ever since about my 3rd or 4th year of grad school I make sure that I get at least 6 hours of sleep a night. More ideally, I try to get 7-8 as those are optimum levels for me. If it means I won't make a deadline, oh well. I stop what I'm doing 6-8 hours before I need to be up and I go to bed. I can't write very well when I'm sleepy anyway, and I feel miserable, so it's far better for me to be well-rested and get something in a day late than try to turn in a horrible mess at 3 am.

I agree - unless you're wealthy or willing to borrow the big bucks, living on the UES nearby Hunter is unaffordable. But you can easily commute from East Harlem or Queens. Brooklyn Heights is a really nice neighborhood and one of the more desirable neighborhoods in the whole city, let alone Brooklyn. So yeah, it's a great place to live, and definitely a viable commute for an NYU student. It's about 15 minutes and you can take the A/C or the F. Easy cake. It's a relatively new building - I remember seeing the advertisements for it when it was newer, and I've lived here in 6 years, so probably younger than 6 years. However, I think the Brooklyner may be a little more expensive than what you're looking for. The studios start at about $2300. Also, I don't think there's a pool, although there is a fitness center. I'm not sure if you're aware, but NYC apartments work really, really different from apartments anywhere else. I'm from Atlanta, and in an apartment complex down there you would expect a pool, probably a fitness center in a mid-priced complex, and definitely a washer/dryer in the unit in even a budget unit. But in NYC, you pay through the nose for even things that are basic in other places and even if you are willing to pay through the nose, sometimes those things are difficult to find. First of all, there aren't really "complexes" here, rather buildings. The only complex I can think of is Stuyvesant Town I think most luxury apartment units will definitely have washer/dryers in unit, but even some of the luxury places might not have that. Many of them will have fitness centers, but I think few of them will have pools. I had some friends who lived in Trump Towers and even they don't have a pool. You might want to consider instead living in a place with a W/D in unit that's on the same block as a great gym with a pool, like a NY Racquet Club or Equinox. I also agree with the advice to look in the Financial District - that's a pretty short commute to NYU. I have a friend who lives in a building quite like the one you want (fitness center, I think there may be a pool, definitely w/d in unit) in the Financial District - she works at a big financial firm and walks to work every day. Personally, if I had $2,000 to spend on a studio or one-bed, I'd take advantage of that and live in a building in the Village (or SoHo) really close by NYU, and join a gym on my block. The neighborhood is really great - lots of great food and shopping! But I do think that the allure of having a fitness center in my building and a W/D in my unit would be pretty amazing.

I had some more time today so I went back to see how prominently the health-related goals featured in my NSF application. The answer is very prominently, lol. At the time NSF was asking for key words and a hypothesis at the top of the page, so here were mine: Key words: substance use, men who have sex with men, sexual behavior Hypothesis: Perceived racism acts as a stressor in ethnic minority men who have sex with men, which contributes to substance use and unprotected anal intercourse in this population. I tried to weave the broader impacts of my research throughout my research proposal, but I did write a paragraph that explicitly addressed it. Here it is: Examining a relationship between perceived racism and substance use has important implications for the public health. Substance abuse increases risky sexual behavior in MSM; when substance abuse is involved, MSM are two to three times more likely to have unprotected anal sex than when drug use was not reported, which can lead to sexually transmitted infections such as HIV (Wilson, Cook, McGaskey et al., 2008). Understanding this connection is critical for developing culturally-relevant secondary prevention programs to improve ethnic minority MSM’s psychological and physical health, including HIV prevention. My research work clearly addresses a minority population (Black MSM) and contributes to health-related and even disease-related goals. I made sure that the research proposal was really strongly theoretically grounded on the basis of advice from a professor, and I think that's what helped me to overcome the technical prohibition against health-related research. Sure, my research had health related outcomes, but I was specifically interested in how discrimination and prejudice was connected to well-being in people, which is a very social psychological research goal. I'm also staring at 3 glaring-to-me typos in my research proposal, lol. In my personal statement, I did mention in passing that I am a Black woman myself, but not "woe is me, give me money, for I am Black" but more "as a Black woman interested in science, I didn't even know anyone with a bachelor's degree, much less a graduate degree. That's part of the reason I became so freaking fascinated when I found out people got paid to satisfy their own curiosity." I also discussed how growing up amid social inequality in NYC had made me start wondering how things could be so different for people from different social/racial/economic backgrounds. For the BI criterion, I started by noting that I realized how important mentorship and role modeling were when I started considering my own research career in early college. Since I had been so helped by other professors, I mentioned that I wanted to do the same thing for students behind me (Having had these experiences, I realize how crucial it is for students from diverse backgrounds to be able to look up to scholars with backgrounds just as diverse as their own). But I don't think you have to be an underrepresented minority to say something like that - my primary adviser in undergrad was a white woman. You can just as easily say that you realize it's important for budding science students - especially those who may have been less encouraged to consider science as a career, like women and minorities - to have professors who attempt to understand their struggles and are willing to work with them and push them towards a career in science. I also discussed how my research - which is community-based - drew me closer to the communities I studied and how I really wanted to be steeped in this reciprocal process with communities, disseminating my research in a way that can help them immediately. I stated wanting to work for a government agency like the CDC, and have my research used in policy. I also included a little paragraph towards the end about how the NSF GRFP could help me accomplish these goals (and directly alluded to health research: While at Columbia, I hope to integrate social psychology and sociomedical sciences to develop the skills necessary to look at sexuality and racial identity from a psychosocial health perspective,which can in turn contribute to the designing of effective preventive sexual health interventions.) and ended with one last paragraph about wanting to teach and mentor undergraduate students in science, especially in statistics and methods research. * I also agree with Eigen. It's not enough to just pick something to slap it on your CV. It needs to be something that you are deeply invested and passionate about, and something that you can very clearly see and explain the connections to science for. Tutoring high school students is nice, but some of the examples of things they give are "establish special mentoring programs for high school students, undergrads, grad students, and technicians conducting research", "partner with researchers and educators to develop effective means of incorporating research into learning and education," and "participate in the training and/or development of K-12 science and math teachers." So maybe you can volunteer at an after-school program that's specifically targeted for math/science enrichment, or teach a summer program for underprivileged kids interested in science careers, or partner with a science teacher at a local high school to come in and give a lecture or do a simple experiment with students. Find a way to judge your city's high school science fair (I know this is possible and desirable in NYC!). Serve as a mentor for a student's science fair project. Volunteer in a mentoring program, like Posse Foundation (which is in several cities all over the U.S.) When I was applying the NSF had a broad sheet that explained examples of activities that would satisfy the BI criterion (I found it: it's the first link on this page: http://serc.carleton.edu/research_education/linkage.html). Obviously a lot of them have to do with working with underrepresented groups in science, since that's an NSF priority. But others are "enhance infrastructure for research and education," which includes things like discovering new ways to collect and disseminate science. A new protocol probably isn't big enough for your field, but identifying collaborations between institutions and industry or developing a way that new scientists/students can use big research sites are listed as things that can count. Another is "broad dissemination to enhance scientific and technological understanding," which includes partnering with museums to develop science exhibits, involving the public in research and education activities, give science presentations to broader audiences, publish in non-technical journals, and participating in multidisciplinary conferences. A third is "benefits to society." You have to give specific examples for how your science research will help the community and society at large. Obviously some of the stuff on the sheet is targeted at more established professors since it's the general broadsheet for all NSF proposals, not just the GRFP, but they want to see you doing some deeply-connected stuff trying to get the word out that SCIENCE IS AWESOME, Y'ALL.

Congratulations to all the awardees and the HMs! Yes, I had a 3.4 GPA in undergrad, and not in a field where lower GPAs are common/acceptable (psychology). I was an NSF fellow from 2010-2013. So your GPA is only one small part of the application - especially if you are a graduate student. I was a second-year graduate student so my undergrad GPA became less salient. It also varies from reviewer to reviewer - reviewers care a lot about it, and some reviewers think it's mostly irrelevant. But you know, that brings me to the point that I wanted to make - that's science in general. Pretty much everything you do from here on out is going to be judged by 3-4 of your peers - your conference abstracts, your papers for publication, your grant proposals, your job applications, your tenure decisions, your promotions. EVERYTHING. And for most of them, you won't get detailed comments/feedback because your peers are extremely busy and are reviewing whatever it is between trying to run their own careers. Now is the time to develop a thick skin! You're going to face a lot of rejection, and some of it will seem arbitrary or unfair. Part of being a successful scientist is being able to remind yourself that you're awesome, remind yourself that your worth isn't connected to what Reviewer #2 thinks about your application, then pick yourself up and work on whatever thing it is got rejected and make it better. Often it will seem like Reviewer #3 didn't really read your application or that Reviewer #1 misunderstood the core part of your paper. Part of our jobs as scientists is to get frustrated but then use that frustration to figure out how to make it even MORE clear what you are trying to say. (And FWIW, most scientists seem to actively skim rather than deeply read most scientific papers, so if the reviewers are confused chances are a general reader will be too.) Also, granting organizations have priorities. The NSF has funding priorities. They openly state that they want to increase the diversity of the science workforce, so it makes sense that they want to award their fellowships not just to outstanding researchers but also to outstanding researchers who are invested in increasing the diversity of scientists. You don't have to be a minority or a woman to do that, though; you just have to show evidence that you are reaching out to diverse groups and that you value diverse voices and perspectives in science. Similarly, the NSF places a huge priority on disseminating scientific research to the general public because it's a taxpayer-funded agency. So the question becomes, why should Joe the Plumber supporting his 4 kids in rural Ohio care about your research? He's paying the taxes that support your fellowship. What's it going to do for him - and for the millions of Americans who will never read your papers and will probably never hear of you even if you become a famous scientist? I bet you most people don't know the names of the folks who sequenced the genome or invented the fMRI scanner or realized that racism and stereotyping have huge impacts on children's achievement in school, but they still had a huge impact on the lives of every day non-scientists.

I'm imagining you'll meet more Cornell alums once you actually start and meet people in your program and in other grad programs I don't live there yet; I've only visited a couple times. But State College doesn't seem like a place I'd want to live without a car. Seems like you can get to campus easily enough, but it seems a car would be especially important for grocery shopping. I made a post about my experiences looking for apartments up thread a little (I decided to move to Toftrees Apts, which seems like it might be difficult to do without a car. The CATA bus runs by but less frequently than it does in other places). I've heard good things about the Allenway, which is a very short distance from campus and only rents to professionals and grad students. There also seem to be a lot of options close to campus if you don't intend to bring a pet. I think you can live quite cheaply if you want roommates. When I was looking, the two-bedrooms didn't seem a whole lot more expensive than the one-bedrooms; they ranged from around $900 to around $1400 (for very fancy ones). So I think you could probably pay anywhere from $450-700/month if you were living with just one other roommate, and probably less with two roommates. And I think you'd only pay close to $700 if you were living in one of the really nice complexes. I saw on Craigslist some people were already advertising for roommates to live with them in February, so I would imagine between now and the end of May there will be lots of ads for roommates to move in August. I just decided that I really wanted to live alone (and I'm married, so when my husband visits I would prefer not having a roommate).

For the roommates from MSM and Columbia looking to room together - none of the on-campus options will allow you to do that, and I-House - as far as I know - will only allow domestic partners and married couples to apply for housing together with the guarantee of ending up in the same unit or room. I'd look for off-campus housing on the open market. Morningside Heights may be more than you want to pay for a two-bedroom; if you were willing to flex a one-bed you could probably find an apartment on the market in the area for <$2,000. If you wanted separate bedrooms then you should probably investigate Harlem or Washington Heights. I lived in Wash Heights and it took me 20 minutes door to door to get to Columbia, and me and my roommate lived in a big two-bedroom for $1800/month. I 100% agree with the crosstown bus thing, though, in Central Harlem. You can get a decently-sized and priced apartment there, and it might even be newly renovated in a brownstone. A friend of mine and her roommate lived at 133rd and Malcolm X/Lenox (Central Harlem) in a newly renovated two-bedroom in a brownstone with exposed brick and stainless steel appliances - including a dishwasher!! - for $2000/month. BUT. You could wait aaaaalllll day for the M60 to come by, and I have a friend who lives at 141st & Lenox (Central Harlem) who has to take the 2/3 down to 96th and then switch to the uptown 1 train to go to 116th/Columbia. (I hate the crosstown buses.) I agree with the two weeks estimate. My roommate went to scout out an apartment probably like 3 weeks ahead of time, found one, signed a lease. When we called to arrange for me to sign the lease, the landlord had rented the apartment to someone else who was going to move in sooner and start paying pro-rated rent sooner. We found our actual apartment on Monday, signed the lease Thursday and had moved in by Friday. And the only reason we waited the four days is because it took me that long to cobble together my security deposit (they asked for twice as much as I expected they would). I also did the LIRR thing to Port Washington every morning and evening for a summer internship - I was commuting from uptown by CUMC. It took me 2 hours each way, but it was a pretty pleasant trip - only one change (A to Penn Station was about 45 minutes and then the LIRR to Port Washington was about an hour). I also tried to find a way to save money but found none - the student discounts are only for those in K-12. So yeah, it does look like it'll be about $40 round-trip and also about a 2-hour trip (the 1 train from Penn Station to Columbia/116th St is about 30 minutes). The only way you could save money is if you were always coming at off-peak times and could by a 10-trip off-peak pass. But then you'd have to get to Penn Station after 10 am every day and department from Penn Station before 4 pm or after 8 pm, which is probably unrealistic for your program.

My credit was actually pretty bad emerging from undergrad. For the first 3-4 years of grad school I couldn't get a credit card, but I was able to get one last year - I want to improve my credit before I'm on the tenure track and wanting to buy a house and car and things - and they've since raised my credit limit. So if I can get one from weak credit, you can get one from no credit. All you have to do is show proof of steady income - and even then, "proof" is relatively. I got my credit card online and typed in my income from the online application; it's not like I showed them check stubs or anything. I wanted that Discover it card but my credit wasn't good enough, lol. I have a Barclayscard, which has the benefit of free FICO scores. That satisfied me as I got the card to build my credit, although the interest rate is understandably high because it's designed for folks with fair to middling credit. Also, whether or not you need good credit to get an apartment depends on the market. In an unsaturated market, or a market with lots of vacancies, you may be able to pretty easily secure an apartment without credit or with fair credit. I think that in places like that, it's just like themmases said; they're looking to avoid people with red flags like evictions, defaults, liens, etc., and not people who missed a couple payments on a $600 credit card 4 years ago. I just secured an apartment in rural PA for my postdoc with fair credit with no issues, and a few years back when my husband was in college he was able to get an apartment in suburban Atlanta with no credit and just $250 deposit. But in a completely saturated/low-vacancy market, it's more difficult. but in NYC the landlord wouldn't even look at my credit - my income alone was so low that I needed a guarantor for the apartment, and my stipend was actually pretty high as stipends go ($31,000). NYC's also like that because tenancy laws heavily favor the tenant and it's really difficult to evict someone, even if they aren't paying you. Landlords can lose up to 6 months' rent if they have a hard-to-evict tenant on their hands who's not paying, but because the market is so saturated they also have dozens of people to choose from. If they don't like you today, someone else can walk up tomorrow. So they tend to have very stringent policies when it comes to renting out places. You also have to pony up a lot more money up front (I had to give them first and last month's rent AND a security deposit!)