InquilineKea

If the rental costs are at around $1000/month and I'm staying for 5 years, then it all adds up to $60k that will go permanently down the drain. If I bought a house worth around $60k (maybe with some temporary assistance from my parents), however, then I would be able to resell the house and I wouldn't lose money on renting costs. With that said, feel free to use this thread for more general inquiries too (I'm interested in hearing about what situations others are facing, as I'd like this thread to be useful for everyone).

Ah - thanks very much!

Wow - that's incredibly amazing! Thanks!

How does the cost of food (especially vegetables) compare with most other places like Seattle?

I'm visiting again the first couple weeks of April. Does anyone else seem to notice that the professors at Brown seem to be SO much nicer and SO much more approachable than professors anywhere else? Also, does anyone else have access to The Brown Book? Except that I went there, and can't find it anymore..

Wow I see - thanks for all the helpful advice, everyone! What about electronics like external hard drives? And what about fragile items? (like maybe childhood items that I might be a bit sentimental about?) Hmm - and should I pack everything into boxes before I move in? (and then get my parents to deliver the stuff to the post office so that I won't need a second trip back home?) Also, is it possible to ship my books in something like this?

Is http://sswstudentservices.com/homepage/default.aspx a good service? What about Amtrak? For the record, I'll be moving from Seattle to either Chicago or somewhere on the Northeast.

Chilling with penguins? Really? Do they actually interact with them?

another prospective at uchicago (climate science): accepted by uchicago and NYU (applied math), waiting on columbia and MIT.

Met 2 prospectives at UChicago yesterday. Prospective 1 (female, mineral physics): Accepted at UChicago and Michigan (and deciding between the two) Prospective 2 (female, mantle dynamics): Accepted at UChicago and applied to a bunch of others (but somewhat hesitant to reveal the other schools)

I'm sorry to hear that. I did tell a professor to look out for your app.

Ouch, people are finally starting to hear back from MIT.... This is going to make me terrified to check my email...

Ah yes - good points about how they are more outdoorsy. I'm a computational person, so I sometimes feel a bit lonely.

Sorry to hear about that - I wish that you could have gotten in. hmm... well they gave me my official offer via website today - $21,500 + $1,405 fellowship + $7,935 summer = $30,840/year for the first year.

I guess the problem is that there is a lot of fragmentation in the field, so none of us hang out in one place. We're trying to get something started with this proposal at Stack Exchange though: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/37851/earth-atmospheric-and-planetary-sciences

Woah - is this for all divisions of their program? I get the sense that the divisions each have different timeframes - the climate science division, in particular, seems particularly late (as I know top applicants who only got offers in March), and no one I knew from the Yale Open House had offers from Columbia at that point (of course, that sample is highly biased towards climate science applicants). Granted, this probably wouldn't be reassuring to anyone who applied outside the climate science division... Though like I said before - I do get the sense that a lot of people turn it down because it is somewhat fragmented (though some people are more okay with the fragmentation than others). So there will definitely be openings. In fact, even if 17 have been taken in early admission, that still means that the vast majority of slots are still open if we assume a yield rate of 50%. And the chances are very high that the yield rate for top students is much lower than the yield rate for non-top students. (with that said though, I highly doubt the incoming class size is going to be 31 students. So there's still a lot of uncertainty. We're going to have to wait until the visiting weeks for all the other places conclude first. And I'm really not sure if one could set a maximum number of students to send offers to, given that this number is harder to set than the number of students one has open positions for) That being said, there is always a lag between when they decide to accept someone and when they actually send the offer. I know that I got accepted by Brown a week ago, but I still haven't received any official offer yet (so I would still be in the dark if I didn't visit). PS: Brown likes to spoil all of its visiting students.

Haha - I'm glad that I still don't know how to log onto my Gmail account with my smartphone.

Wow - that's very useful information. Thanks!

Keep in mind that the schools are paying for the flights (up to a limit of $500.00) I'm too lazy to get them even though I'm booking everything through the cheapest options on Google Flights. But is this laziness too excessive?

Reddit could also be used for this. I've had several people offer to host me - just post a couchsurfing request on the school's subreddit. I've had several people offer to host me on the subreddits, but the one thing with Reddit is that there is no "trust system" so a lot of people are REALLY flaky and might decide against hosting you at the last moment (which happened to me twice). I did find a Yale grad student to couchsurf with for several days from couchsurfing.org and that worked out pretty well.

Hm - I've talked to a huge number of Brown PhD students today. They almost universally agree that Geoscience students have it far better off than almost any other field - and they also agree that Brown students have it better off than students at almost every other university (though I couldn't find anyone who had both Brown and Yale to compare with). But student conflicts at Brown have happened (though they do get through it without resentment). The dept does guarantee funding for 5 years, but if the adviser has a grant, then yes, the funding will take a chunk out of the adviser's grant. So yes, this could possibly lead to conflict. (the same is true for the Yale students too. In fact, some of the Yale students I talked to couldn't even relate to PhDComics since they simply didn't have those problems that so many other grad students have - though they still find it fun to read).

Also got my official Caltech rejection: Just wondering - did anyone else get the exact same message? It's obviously a mass-emailed message, but I do wonder if they inserted the last sentence for all applicants, including the ones that were completely unqualified.

Wow - these are all really good points. Wish I could comment more, but I'm tired (as visiting schools tends to do to people). (and yes, the extraordinary funding situation really is true).

Just got accepted by Brown over dinner with a Brown professor (and got a fellowship for being a top applicant)

So the open house is about to finish, and from talking to (a lot of) people there, I get the sense that EVERYONE is so happy and enthusiastic. I'm just wondering if this is unusual (either for Yale or for Geosciences). The department does seem very close-knit. Maybe the open house has its effects. Or maybe it's because Yale has so much money that it guarantees full funding for ALL of their grad students for 5 years, and NONE of it is deducted from the adviser's grants at all? That probably prevents a lot of student-adviser conflicts from springing up, since professors won't feel like students are taking money out of their grants? With that said though, Yale does seem to be an unusually happy campus.