Aroma Black

I am sure most grad students do not receive support from their parents. Reducing the amount of loans you are responsible for is absolutely a good thing. I think the school is being quite responsible in advising you not to take on more debt. Given that you are negotiating with a state school, they are also probably unable to change their figures at will. The $600 rent number doesn't seem that unreasonable, unless you are in an expensive part of New York or California. Many grad students make ends meet by having roommates.

I turned in my medical form over a month ago, and still no confirmation. What gives?

AFAIK there are only three documents to submit to the IIE portal for Japan: Data Release, Grant Document (the one page form with yen amounts as far as I can tell), and Terms and Conditions. I submitted Data Release 3/21, and it still hasn't been approved. I submitted Terms and Conditions 4/1, and that was approved right away. No rhyme or reason as far as I can tell. I did submit the Grant Document and that hasn't been approved yet either.

I assume the reason is that the eventual benefits of your time on the Fulbright are supposed to accrue not just to you but to the United States, and as such that it's a political requirement in order to maintain the ongoing public funding and make the outcomes clear.

Thanks; this works for a non-commission country, and it's kind of what I'd expect, but the terms and conditions I received from the commission for the country I'm headed to don't have anywhere to initial or anything at the end to sign like that one does.

Hmm. The pre-grantee portal seems to ask for a "Fulbright Program Terms & Conditions Form" to be submitted along with the Grant Authorization, but the commission didn't send me a form of this type, just a booklet full of terms and conditions. Anyone else facing this issue? Thinking of just making and signing a form that says "I agree to the terms and conditions in the booklet" or something like that. I'd send something to the area contact, but they already didn't answer my last e-mail about the grant authorization document.

It is still and/or again working for me, like it was overnight.

The Student Service Portal is open. There isn't much interesting stuff to do there at the moment, though.

If it makes you feel better, I haven't heard of anyone who got accepted actually getting their official letter/financial information yet.

Mostly savings (ugh), but also Roth IRA. If you open your Roth IRA early enough, you can draw down the principal without taking any hit (see http://www.cnbc.com/id/101323957). It's a little tough because you can't contribute directly from any part of a graduate student stipend that doesn't count as earned income (even taxable fellowships may not count as earned income). But I will use savings first as necessary and dip into that if I have to. So I'm doing "saving for retirement" and "saving for a year without a fellowship" at the same time. In humanities at my school we're guaranteed five years, and then we aren't forced to graduate when we don't have jobs lined up, much like TakeruK, but we aren't guaranteed continuing funding or work either. If a round of fellowship applications goes badly things can get difficult fast. Luckily I'm now assured of a sixth year of funding and I'll have another chance to apply for some fellowships before things run out, but who knows.

I'm saving a significant portion of my stipend working under the assumption that the years between the end of the initial university stipend and the start of a good job (knock on wood) will be the leanest I have to face.

Most schools are not supposed to make you reply to a funding decision before April 15 as part of their adherence to the April 15 Resolution. LSU is listed as an institutional member at http://www.cgsnet.org/institutional-members. There is an informative post about this at http://www.insidetheadcom.com/applications/april-15-graduate-school-deadline-day/. I'm not in library science and don't know whether their policies are different, but would hope they'd adhere to the rules if you ask them to. (I know Illinois is a top choice, but didn't know they offer stipends to grad students except as part of assistantships.)

have you heard from fulbright one more time?

+Japan

For Japan, the affiliation that you sent with your application generally sets the university in the case of study/research fellowships. You had to send in a faculty affiliation with your application, right?