Armadilla

it's also because the Grumpy Cat herself is gonna be in town for sxsw, so a lot of people are heading to austin and clogging the highways just to see the celebrity!

TeaGirl, great advice, but one very important correction: you can be unemployed on OPT only for 90 days during your whole OPT period (12 months, or 120 total if you apply and receive the STEM 17-month extension)

Seeking, if you look up the current Eb-2 backlog for India (bulletin issued by the USCIS every month), you will notice that it takes them several years to actually start a GC filing process. Even if an individual pursues a career in academia, it's still the same EB-2 process (there are cap exemptions in the H1b program for academic jobs at certain institutions, but not in the EB-2). A lot of people just get tired of this whole immigration extravaganza and go to Canada.

dardie, well, they do stay for up to 6 years on a H1b, but afterwards, unless an employer files for an EB-2 green card, they have to leave. Also, when an employer files for the green card, the employee needs to keep working for this employer and the wait even for EB-2 can take years unless you are ROW ("rest-of-the world", as of now, the green card in the eb-2 category is "current", whereas India and China (and some other countries) have backlogs. In fact, this past year even the rest of the world had a backlog in the eb-2 category, so people are stuck in the US with the same employer for an indefinite period of time under a shaky legal status-welcome to the dead-end of the US immigration system!). There are a lot of forums and blogs you can read on the subject, even the USCIS website is very informative. I suspect that "thousands of people who stay here" you are thinking about are predominantly individuals who went through "family-based" immigration.

what is their regional concentration?

exactly!

dardie, also, if you look at the country stats for h1b's on the USCIS website, you will notice that for the past several years, India has been number one in terms of visa approvals

I totally second that. The new "Comprehensive" Immigration law does not seem to be wanting to address employment-based green cards and therefore, there is not going to be a legal employment-based path to permanent residency in the US. There is a slight chance they will pass a provision for STEM majors (and create a special EB green card category/allocate a Congressionally defined quota for international students with STEM graduate degrees from US institutions) but this may or may not happen.

I would completely agree with TakeruK, except larger corporations actually have even more requirements and are responsible for extra H1b fees under several regulations passed during the Obama administration. There are A LOT of reasons why an employer would not sponsor an H1b and they are not limited to budget issues. Such reasons may include a high degree of legal responsibility an employer would need to take on while filing with both the Department of Labor and the USCIS, the famous "repatriation costs" responsibility (which can be exorbitantly high), the necessity to wait for April 1st to file a petition (and when it's approved, an employer has to wait till October for the employee to start working), the Congressionally-allocated QUOTA, a problematic visa stamping procedure (for instance, Mumbai and Moscow consulates may occasionally have higher "administrative processing" rates, meaning your documents can get stuck in the embassy for an indefinite period of time and very few employers can wait that long), occasional RFE's, attorney fees, and all these other trials ad tribulations that really have nothing to do with your nationality but rather, with an extremely confusing and disorganized US immigration system which currently does not offer a reliable path to LEGAL, employment-based immigration. *This is just my opinion and not a legal advice, I think only a professional immigration attorney can explain those things in a more reliable manner. In the meantime, I could read various immigration web sites and blogs on the subject, a lot of them are really helpful.

pears, you are applying to my alma mater, good luck!They have a really good forensic anthro program!

Really sorry to hear that!Did they send it in the mail like last year?

mp429, congratulations!I am sure you did waaaaaaaay better thank you think!Congratz!

Atlas.ti! It seems to be pretty good for interviews and any language-related data (such as audio and transcribed interviews). I also heard they have a pretty good video and photo integration option but I am not familiar with it. Back in the days, they had a free trial package for students, they still might offer it now.

I would not worry about it--I am sure the professor was just looking for any additional information not listed on your submitted documents. And he/she probably realize that a lot of people do not update their Linkedin profile constantly unless they are actively looking for a job.

ohgoodness, why is STATA goog for regression, in your opinion?I've just been recently trying to reduce everything to one software package (or at least two, like matlab and Arcgis), but then I noticed a lot of people give accolades to stata, so no I am tempted... Other than regression and descriptive stats, would you recommend it for anything else?