liszt85

This is a matter for speculation and its best that we don't engage in it. So go ahead, send 3-4 applications to your dream schools, send another 3-4 applications to mid range schools which you reckon you can get into easily.. and maybe have 2 safety schools. So apply to around 8-10 places and hope for the best. Most importantly, you seem to be focused on rankings of schools. Have you tried looking at faculty research interests? Where do they do the research that you want to be doing? Is it being done at Stanford, Berkeley and Princeton? Research fit is much more important than GPA and this is true for school ranked 1 and school ranked 50. They all want to get good research done, invite more funding, make a name for themselves, etc.. So if you prove to them that you can contribute to their research activities, they will overlook your UG GPA. I know of people with ug GPA of 7.0/10 who have got into MIT and such places but they had amazing research work and publications and great letters of recommendation.

I like all of the above. I guess I'll do just fine in Ohio in that case..

I think you should contact the directors of graduate studies at these other schools and let them know that school A wants you to convey a commitment to them by the 17th and that you would be unable to attend without financial aid and that if school B (or C or D) were to make a fin aid offer to you, you might want to consider attending B (or C or D) instead of A. So tell them that you need a response positively before the 16th at least.

I think though breaking a commitment is bad, it is acceptable if your acceptance from the other school comes only after the 15th of April. It is perfectly legitimate and in keeping with the council of grad schools resolution.These schools deal with this kind of thing all the time and they won't go around telling schools that you are one big traitor if you tell them that you wish to attend the other school. They would sign a release and let you move on. Its a matter of 5 long years and a matter of your future and you should absolutely go to the school which you want to attend if it accepts you after the 15th. For the time being, accept the offer from the other school. I however don't know if you should mention this to your prospective adviser or somebody from this school that has already made you an offer. If you are confident about your chances at the other school, maybe you should. You could maybe ask the other school one last time about how good your chances are of making it off the waitlist by the end of this month or so..

Yea, I got that, but like I said, you may have meant to put in that extra "from". Ah ditch, who cares. About what you said about Ohio, those things (whatever they are) may be true about Cincinnati or Cleveland or wherever.. please tell me Columbus is alright :|

What might those be? Other than tornado warnings, that is..

Columbus, OH, because I'm going there and I have to believe its the best On a more serious note, its safer than most other cities I've considered (eg: Atlanta!), housing is very affordable and the city seems accessible but you can live away from it. I do not know much about the city area of Columbus though (malls, things to do, etc).. Austin, TX is also inexpensive from what I hear. Can somebody (combined effort) post a list of such comparable affordable cities/towns and then talk about their pros and cons?

Shouldn't you put in an extra "from" ? This is ok too, but I think you may have meant to put in an extra "from". We had a discussion on such repeated word structures in the linguistics forum. Look it up, it is interesting!

With great power comes... er.. great power! Who can predict my native language? Teaganc? Lets play! You can maybe give me grammatically incorrect sentences and ask me to identify the mistake(s) in them. A game almost like "20 questions", what say? All that you said about non-native English speakers did not in the least offend non-native English speakers like myself. In fact, the only time I've been offended by comments on these forums was when somebody commented that I probably lacked the skills to succeed at grad school, and I found that "borderline racist" (as all that followed from a question that I had asked based on some unique circumstances I'd been in and due to very important cultural reasons)! I however want to check how good your ability to guess is. Do not cheat, I've posted about my nationality various times in these forums, if you've seen one of those posts, the game ends before it has begun.

Like I said earlier in this thread or another related one, I contacted www.promove.com and I think its a reliable and free service. You may want to check them out, they will help you find an apartment.

Hey all.. How's the beer in Columbus? I mean, I've been to Vienna and some other parts of Europe and the beer there was just awesome, so many to choose from. What brands do you get in the US and more specifically in Columbus, OH? I only drink a bottle occasionally but when I do, I like quality. I've not been drinking for a few months now because we don't get good beer here ? Recently though, Carlsberg set up a division here in India and so that is good.

I'm from India. Yes, I will ask them about this. THey've already sent me an I20 but if its possible for me to get a J1 hassle free, I would definitely prefer that!

hi, I'm in a similar situation. I will be getting married in June. I will be accompanied by my wife. People advised me not to get a J1 visa however because it has many restrictions associated with it. We are supposed to go back to our home country for at least two years after the duration of the visa, etc. So I have decided to apply for a F1 visa and then hope to find my wife a suitable MS program so that she can change her status into F1 too once(if) she gets admitted. I see no other option.. but if you said you're going to manage on a J1, I guess it must be possible! Can you give me more info about J1 and the rules associated with it? I thought it was for visitor exchange programs.. and not for regular PhD programs.

This question leads to this one: So since the autumn term starts only in mid Sept, I would have an annual income of only about $5K for 2009. So I guess this won't be taxed as taxes are calculated on a calendar year (is that right?)?

WHat is the minimum annual income that is taxable? I'm getting around $18K in Columbus (including the summer stipend that comes from a professor's research grants). Does anybody have any idea about the taxes on this income? Also, I hear from some people that they had got back ALL of the tax money when they filed for returns at the end of the year. Is there some India-US tax treaty that does this?? (I read about some such Ind-US treaty on the IRS website but couldn't make much sense out of it, so if anybody has an idea about this, please do let me know) As far as I'd understood, you could only claim the money that you spent for academic purposes but some Indian students seem to tell me that they'd got back all their tax money! How is that possible?

They said that to you?! They told me that if I hadn't received an invitation to the interview, it meant that I'd been rejected. The application website also says as much. So its not as if they hadn't informed us that we wouldn't be getting official rejection letters from them. It is because I read that part that I decided to email them to ask if the procedure was the same for international students. They said it was and so that was settled. It still is unfair though. What if your package gets lost in the mail? Nobody would even notice unless MIT contacts us and asks us if we got the package which I doubt is likely to happen..

They sent out interview invitations way back in February. I had emailed them to ask about my status and to ask if the procedure was the same for international students. The grad secretary confirmed that and said that I was rejected if I hadn't received an interview invitation. So I think you may safely assume that you've been rejected. They don't send rejection emails/letters. I have no idea why we have to pay so much for these applications! The least they can do is send us some generic email letting us know of the decision..

Are you a sniffer dog soul trapped in a human body that you end up judging everything based on how they smell?! :|

These times however are funny. I was recommended for admission at McMaster (got an email from the professor) but then got rejected by the graduate admissions committee due to insufficient funds. They were seemingly cutting down on their intake of international students. So yes, it can happen.

Absolutely the former! The quality of your work is what will land you a job. Even if its a postdoc position, you will be sought after for the research you have already done and for the expertise you would bring into a certain lab or department. So go where you think you can work the best. I, unfortunately, had to give up the offer from the place where I would have surely done better work at due to purely financial reasons. I'm just hoping that things will turn out alright, that I would like the research that I'd be more or less be forced to do (due to the nature of the sources of funding, so my adviser is fixed. His grants support my summers, so I have to work for him). Since you are not in that unenviable position, please choose the place where you'll be happiest at and where you think you can be most productive at!

Trust me, I know of at least one. The top ranker of my dept has acceptances from Penn State, Syracuse, Stony Brook, CMU and U Chicago (for Physics) and he's 100% sure that he will attend U Chicago. However to satisfy his ego, he is still waiting on a few others to count how many offers he'll end up with. His own close buddies (batchmates of ours) are on waiting lists at Stony Brook and that's their first choice! He simply refuses to withdraw/decline now. I guess these guys have to wait until the 15th but they have a few other second string offers which they HAVE to accept. Then things become complicated if Stony then offers a place to one of them. They would then have to go through the unpleasant procedure of getting a release from the schools they'd accepted offers from. There do exist jerks who do this for fun, trust me!

It probably means that they don't admit students without giving them support and they could therefore offer support AND admission only to 27 students.. Do call them up if you can though!

So stanford would cost you around $60K more than UCLA? Depends on if you're in a position to afford it, or if you're willing to take out loans. I'd have gone to UCLA though. Reasons: lesser coursework, probably only what's required, might not have the hassle of having to pass out of courses due to redundancy (with my BS coursework), and takes one year lesser than Stanford. Also environment preferred. Much lesser debt, if any. That said, if you think you can get a high paying job (much higher than what a degree from UCLA will get you) and if you can pay off that debt soon enough, and if you think the quality of academics there is really much higher than UCLA, I'd vote for Stanford.

Decline the offer right away! I mean, if that's the professor's attitude, I don't see how you'll be able to work with him.

I tend to disagree with the advice given here, but maybe I'm biased because I did something similar: opted for the young friendly adviser and I'll probably be amongst his first crop of students too.. so he will also be motivated to guide my work such that it turns productive. Like yours invited you to his house for dinner, mine invited me to play cricket with him! That clinched it for me, you may call me silly.. but I believe that a relaxed atmosphere is very important to foster creativity. I'm a physics major and I've found that sometimes you work well under pressure but I really don't think that holds for a field like art history!