runonsentence

This.

Generally yes, this is possible. I haven't done this because I went to a small liberal arts school that didn't have grad instructors, but here's how I'd do it. I'd approach the GSI and ask if s/he would be willing to write a letter and have it co-signed by the full professor; tell the GSI why you want her/him to write (i.e., s/he knew you well as a student, you participated a lot in class, etc.) and about your plans for graduate school so that s/he has some direction. Since the GSI is a grad as well, I don't think it'll take much explaining as to why you want the letter co-signed.

Congrats on your plans to pursue graduate school! It sounds like a generalist master's degree is the way to go for you, and I think it sounds like you could pitch yourself as a strong master's candidate. I'll latch onto one question you asked, about taking classes. Hard to answer about the willingness of professors to help work with, since it'd probably depend on the person (or program)—but in general I think it's a good move, especially since undergrad is so far behind you. It'll help you get back into the academic swing of things, look good on the application, and hopefully get you some guidance, if not a letter, from the professor. This is anecdotal, but I'll share nonetheless: one of my colleagues from my MA program moved to my city because his partner was coming to medical school. For "fun," he signed up to take a literature seminar that interested him. The professor was so impressed with him in class that she convinced him to apply to the program and helped him get in past the deadline.

The previous two make an excellent point that I overlooked: my advice is pretty humanities-specific (or possibly English specific). There's some ethos behind my feelings—I just came from a conference in which, during a roundtable on professionalization, the mentors told us that publications are rarely a bad thing for a graduate student, unless you're being really sloppy about it—but it may be more specific to my field. It's also good to get into the habit of cyclical projects: that is, always having a project on the back-burner while you're working on a current one. Unless you think these pieces have a lot more potential and don't represent your best work, I don't think you should hold onto them. At some point, projects have to be "finished." Eligen brings up another good point: are the journals reviewed? If so, I'd say it's not dangerous to publish in them, even though they're grad-student specific. In sum, if I were speaking to someone else in English (or in Rhet/Comp), I'd tell them this: unless the journal was just absolutely awful or your piece was really sloppy, I don't see how it could hurt you on a PhD application. (Job market search might be a different story.) Adcoms in my field wouldn't be expecting top-tier journals in a PhD applicant—in fact, a single-authored publication in any kind of reviewed journal would be fairly competitive.

Yes, definitely. I don't mean to imply that reputations and impressions aren't important in departments—they certainly are, and (as you mentioned) they're certainly remembered. But when I arrived in my department, my professors hadn't been reading/reviewing my application materials or my bio to figure out if they wanted to work with me on my research (an experience others in this thread have mentioned—e.g., the quoting of SOP excerpts on the first day); beyond involvement in the adcom, I haven't had the impression that faculty here did any "research" on me as a student. That kind of intellectual "sizing up" has happened for me through coursework and other opportunities over time.

If your name looks unusual or in any way difficult to pronounce, I'd actually be surprised if your panel chair didn't come by to ask you how to pronounce it beforehand. At every panel I've been on, the chair has at least shook hands with us and said a quick hello before the panel began. This should be no sweat.

I include these kinds of things in section titled "Manuscripts and Projects." It's good to show that you have some projects in progress that your'e working on (in grad school, it's valued to have cycles of projects—moving from one project to another). Just frame it as a project you're developing to present or publish. Also, it's GREAT to have a project "under review" on your CV. So you could also try sending it out to journals/conferences for consideration while you're applying.

Sure. I don't see why not, especially if you've only applied once before. If you're nervous about it, you could always email the DGS and ask for feedback on your rejected application. Why did the department reject you, and what were they looking for?

Publications never look bad for graduate students, unless you're doing sloppy work or over-doing it (trying to cram like 8 publications in will probably mean that you're sacrificing quality for quantity, for instance). Be proud of your accomplishment—you've had publications accepted. Go ahead and publish them.

I'd recommend you contact some current grad students (or even the DGS) at Columbia with your questions about taking electives. They'd have the best and most accurate information on that. As to which program to choose, that depends. The name's not the only thing that's important—some measure of fit matters, as well. You want to get along well with faculty and build relationships so that you can get some good LoR. Also, does either program offer opportunities for research, teaching, administrative responsibilities, or other opportunities that you can add to a CV and/or talk about in a personal statement?

This must be a hard sciences thing (which makes sense, since PIs and incoming students are all doing lab assignment dances). In a lot of humanities programs, I think, the sizing-up happens in classes and conversations as you work through your first two years of coursework as a PhD.

That's exactly what happened to my former roommate—he used Media Mail, and a lot of his lovely Norton literature anthologies were replaced with weird self-help books or just missing altogether. Keeping a detailed packing list would also be prudent, to ensure that all of your books make it safely.

I'd hesitate to bargain in this position because of the message it will send off. Usually when one bargains with schools offering an acceptance, the chip they hold in their hand is that they might not come. That is, I can ask School A for more money because of the threat that I'll choose School B instead. Since you're already in, by bargaining you're essentially asking the school to pay you not to back out on your offer. That is, if we boil this down, your "threat," if School A doesn't ante up, is that you'll back out on your agreement to attend School A and attend School B. I'd personally hesitate to enter that kind of game. Backing out of an agreement to attend a school is risky in the first place—to ask a school to pay you more in order to fulfill the agreement you already made will, I think, burn more bridges than the average bear looking to jump ship post April 15th.

Have you looked into freight shipping? I studied abroad in the UK for one semester in 2005, and I vaguely remembered that there was a super slow and slightly dodgy option of having your belongings chucked onto some barge or ferry. Some of my friends did this after we spent the night madly trying to shove everything into our suitcases but realized it wouldn't all fit. I was lucky to have some friends who were Americans in the military, stationed at an RAF base. This meant they essentially had both a U.K. address and a U.S. address (an APO). I was able to ship a box to them at the RAF base domestically and they were able to ship them back to the U.S. for me, also at a domestic rate.

I did change residency. This was partly because my school only funds the out-of-state tuition charge for one year; after one year (when one is officially considered an Ohio resident by virtue of having lived and worked in-state for a year), my department no longer covers this fee of $3k-something per quarter. Apart from that, having the proper residency probably makes for fewer hassles with things like paying parking/traffic tickets and using public services (e.g., the local public library). You might also find that tax season becomes a huge headache if you're filing as a CA resident but paying your taxes in MI. However, I don't know the extent of your personal situation with your parents. Would you still be able to help them out (still help them keep up on their car insurance, for example) without being a CA resident?

I'd agree with this if you were shopping around for schools/still applying—after all, funding is an important thing to know when choosing schools, and knowing what kind of funding a school generally offers students is a standard question to ask during the admissions process. But I think it becomes a touchier subject after one is already admitted as an incoming student.

This. At my institution the master's students are all on the same funding package, but the PhD students are not, and it's a bit of a touchy subject. In fact, after two years, I don't know how much most of my colleagues make. Other programs will have students who are perfectly forthcoming about how much they make, but there's no way to know for certain until you're there. I'd reiterate StrangeLight's advice, and recommend that you ask about tips for living on the amount you have. After all, that's the kind of question that will be productive in the end—not knowing how you compare to the other stipends out there.

I wasn't trying to correct you, fuzzylogician, just add onto your advice. The OP is in English.

I think that listing conferences attended is fine, as long as it's very clearly separated from service and presentations (so fuzzylogician is astute in observing that they may not yet be separated clearly enough). Listing conferences attended is a somewhat common practice in English, I know, for those who are coming from undergrad or otherwise have little in the way of graduate-level experiences but want to show that they're making efforts to expose themselves to conversations in their field.

I wrote handwritten thank you cards and I baked each of them a loaf of banana bread. I had originally thought that baking something would seem kind of commonplace or third-grade-ish, but they were all surprised and touched that I took the time to bake them something and made a big deal out of receiving it. I have developed a close, personal relationship with all 3 of my writers, but they know exactly how much $$ the master's students make in our department, and I think they would have found it weird if I'd gotten them something that very obviously signifies "I spent money on this" (like the Starbucks giftcard I was originally considering...). And in fact, one of my letter writers tried to refuse my gift (on the grounds that grad students don't need to spend money thanking professors for doing things that are part of their job description). But I was able to force it on him.

I wouldn't sweat it so much—there's nothing wrong with writing to your instructor once the semester's out and asking about the possibility of writing a letter then, since as you mentioned he'll need some extra lead time for writing. What you might consider doing is writing to ask about the possibility of getting a letter written and identifying a target deadline (say August or September) when you could send on additional materials to help him write, like your SOP draft and list of schools. If your letter writer's time is truly a concern, what will be just as important as when you ask for the letter is when you get a finalized list of schools to him. I had a letter writer also under time constraints last year, and it was a huge burden that many schools' electronic application systems (though not all) required that I submit the entire application before it would send a notification to my instructor that allowed her to login and upload her letter. So what I did was check with all of my schools to make sure they accepted hardcopy letters and let her mail them all in at once, so that she didn't have to wait on me when sending in her letters to my schools.

The distinction between the MFA and the PhD is the nature of the work you undertake. Namely, the MFA is a studio degree (largely based on creating your own art/writing/etc.) while the PhD has a stronger research component. Some disciplines, such as fine art, consider the MFA a terminal degree and a qualification for teaching. Other disciplines, like creative writing, are more and more turning to candidates with PhDs.

I agree that it's really just like any other roommate situation. I lived with a colleague from my department (whom I had known before coming to the program) last year and I have had plenty of friends in the department room with other grads in our department. As an incoming student, who doesn't yet have a feel for the department culture or the person you're potentially rooming with, I could perhaps see the hesitation. But I agree that it doesn't have to be a big deal.