liszt85

You should probably ask "what has the better prospects for autonomy?" The answer would be history. Job prospects in the normal sense of the world might be better for the IR MA but if its happiness you're after, do the MA, think of doing a PhD if you want to after that.. you can always teach and maintain some level of autonomy, at least much more than what your husband got in the navy (or what you'd get in an IR analyst position)! I'm no expert but this is my guess. I might be wrong.

I'm stuck with a difficult decision to make between Gatech and OSU. Gatech has offered very little funding and the health insurance that I'd have to pay for just is out of bounds for me and I'm responsible for certain other fees which cannot be waived too. The reason why I still want to go do this MS at Gatech is because it will let me keep my options open as I'm shifting fields and would be nice to give myself some time to decide if I really want to go on to do a PhD. Now we're getting married in June and my finances are not good enough to be able to support her if its Gatech I'll be attending which means we'll have to do one year separated by half the circumference of the earth and that too just a month after our wedding! Though Gatech looks the best option possible for my future, I'm still very much considering the PhD offer from OSU as the funding is good enough for us to live a comfortable life in Columbus. I'm going crazy trying to choose between Gatech's promise of future prospects and OSU's immediate comfort of a well funded PhD (job prospects back in my country with this particular PhD is close to 0)

Hey Tulip, I got rejected by McMaster due to some financial trouble they're facing THe prof had recommended my name for admission but it didn't work out. Anyway, like you said, its a tough choice between the Gatech MS and the OSU friendly PhD. I'm going crazy here.. more input very much welcome!!

To undo a little bit of scaring that the above post may have done you (but she has some excellent perspective on the issue as well, especially about the applying first, deciding later part. You will find yourself dynamically changing throughout this application procedure, things become clearer as you get entangled in this process), let me tell you about my writing sample for Northwestern (a highly selective linguistics program into which I got accepted). It was just a 5 page term paper done in a matter of 3-4 days, cited about 8-10 papers. It was a review about Mandler's work on conceptualization in infants and I had included a section on my thoughts and the justifications I had for them based on what I'd read. Seemingly it went down well the the adcomm. They only look for coherent thinking, research potential, originality, etc in your writing sample. People tell me that even if your sample is not in the field you're applying in, as long as these characteristics are present in your paper, it should serve you well.

Great suggestion about promove! I emailed them and they called me within minutes! Its all set up, they'll work with me to find what's best for me. They seemed very professional and very understanding. Cool tip, thanks!

Thanks snowden, I think you're right. I got in touch with a student there who is on the same GRA stipend and is from my country. He said pretty much the same thing and that I shouldn't face a problem. Its a huge relief! Thanks for your input.

You probably won't like to do it and justifiably so (you shouldn't get into any more trouble than you already are), but if things are so screwed up, it might help other applicants if they knew which school and dept this was! :|

http://www.gradadmiss.gatech.edu/status/application.php Click on the link for status check. When I was accepted, the director emailed me and also called me to discuss the offer. My status said "Decision made: you will receive two letters in the mail, please do not call or email before you do"

My wife prefers that I do the MS since she really wants to have the option of returning to India at some point. She doesn't like the idea of having to raise kids in the US for reasons best known to her but I respect that totally. OSU is decently ranked in Cognitive Psychology (which is the area I've been accepted to). There was some ranking based on no. of faculty citations and OSU Psychology was ranked 9th. Other rankings rank it pretty good too (top20-30), not top tier, but a top program amongst public schools. NU is ranked very high for Linguistics. PhD org ranks it at 10-12. My wife's preference goes: Gatech (she might not even accompany me but she prefers that I do this to keep options alive) > OSU > McMaster > NU She prefers Hamilton to Chicago based on purely lifestyle differences but she would be willing to come to Chicago too if that's going to be better for our future.. Thanks for your input, what do you think now?

Hi all, I have an offer for a MS in music technology from Georgia Tech. The offer letter however guarantees tuition waiver + stipend only for the first semester and says that they "hope to continue this level of support for the entire duration of the program". So I'm guessing the I20 that they will issue would talk about only this first semester of funding?? If that is the case, won't the US consulate require me to show them proof of funds for the remaining three semesters worth of tuition and expenses? Please do reply if you know anything about this because if this is the case, I have no way of making this work and this is my first choice

Don't assume any such thing.. My surname starts with S and my status has not been updated either. I however know from an email from the professor that its most likely going to be a rejection. The grad school people are probably just lazy to update the status of the rejected applicants.

I'll tell you what I know from my experience. People may disagree with me. Here's what I did. I contacted the DGS of the school (a very good one that is a good research fit for me) and told him that I might have some financial worries because the city is a very expensive one and I'd have to support my spouse too. So he said he understood completely and then gave me details about their position and ended up telling me that there existed no possibility for them to offer me any extra money in exchange for any extra work because extra work opportunities were very rare and would be allowed only in extremely exceptional cases. He and I always agree that academically the school and I would fit each other very well but that he understands very well if I have to consider all these financial matters as its important for a graduate student to remain as free from extra financial worries as possible (though like many people have suggested, a grad student in the humanities will always have financial worries). I do not know about mentioning the other school's funding, I did not do that. I only wanted enough money to get by in that particular city. My advice to you is to do the same, do not mention explicitly about the other school's name and funding. You could say "I'm considering other offers which offer attractive funding deals but I really think I'd be happy academically at your school and am just exploring options that might give me a little bit more to live on in this city, especially since I do not have guaranteed summer funding. I would love to make this work" Your call.. just telling you what I'd have done.

Hey guys, Its finally time for me to make a decision and be done with this. I've posted on the decisions forum too but thought this would be relevant here as I'm considering offers a department of Linguistics as well. I'm in a somewhat confusing situation and would really like some input from here. So the options I'm considering are: 1) Northwestern University: Department of Linguistics, PhD Research fit: Good. I get to work on language and music at the interdisciplinary center hosted by the Complex Systems Institute. Since I'm a physics major (bachelors + Masters degree in Physics) and since my primary interest in physics is nonlinear dynamics and chaos, its a very good place for me to be working in. Funding: Since I'll be taking along my wife, their funding package is not quite sufficient for life in Chicago ($20.5K before taxes, fixed amount for all years, includes summer support, strictly forbids any part time employment even while I'm on their fellowship during years 1 and 5). However my family is willing to sell of some property to give me about $15-20K extra to serve as emergency money and if that happens, I might be able to make this work. I however really don't like the idea of accepting this money as I wanted to do this absolutely on my own. Atmosphere: From what I've heard from people here who've visited, its a small program (they accept only 1-2 people a year) and the students seem genuinely happy. From my correspondences with faculty there, all of them seem warm and nice and they've been thoroughly professional about this whole thing. I got my offer letter on Jan 23! They really do want me to attend and I suspect I'd be very happy academically here too. ONE IMPORTANT CONSIDERATION HOWEVER IS ABOUT JOB PROSPECTS: My Linguistics professor here in India tells me that universties here don't hire people without an undergraduate degree in the field. So if I do opt for one of my PhD offers, I would find it extremely difficult to find work in my country in the future though my area of interest is one in which there is little or no work in India. So I don't intend to come back to settle down here but if some emergency does pop up, I will have to return and I'm afraid I'll be jobless if that happens. 2) The Ohio State University, Psychology, PhD Research fit: Adviser has to be fixed right away and I've found only one who is willing (and extremely keen, might I add!) to support my summers. So his work is on language, using concepts from physics (from the areas I'd mentioned above) and also some work on memory, attention, etc using some nice equipment (tracking facial expression changes by automatically clicking photographs when that happens, etc). There is this professor in the dept of music there who has agreed to work with me on some occasional projects and he's top notch in the field of music cognition research (which really is my primary area of interest) and he advises me to do my dissertation in a "traditional" area of Psychology because only that would make me a competitive applicant for jobs since music cognition does not have jobs (he says on an avg about 1-2 tenure track positions open all over the world!). Funding: Its great for Columbus. An increase in stipend level is expected and since I come in with a masters, I'd be coming in on the higher scale. I expect to be paid around $1400-1500 per month and my prospective adviser has guaranteed summer funding for all years at the maximum possible level of $1610 per month. He has also assured me of covering conference travel and accommodation costs. Excellent health plan for couples. Pretty cheap one too. So financially, OSU will afford us (my wife and I) a comfortable life. Atmosphere: My prospective adviser, from his correspondences, told me that our lab would be very relaxed, family friendly, and that my wife would be welcome to spend time in the lab, and that we might even try to convince her to apply for grad studies! He's gone to the extent of offering to play cricket with me since he's Australian and I'm Indian. He looks like a great chap to be working with in a relaxed atmosphere. Also that thing he said about encouraging my wife to spend time in the lab, etc looks quite enticing to me as both she and I wish that she could study too. Since she comes from a small town and a relatively unknown university with no research experience, we expect that it would be extremely difficult for her to be accepted into a program but if she gets to do some volunteer research for some time, I guess she might be accepted by a grad program, maybe an MS so that she gets to move ahead in life too while I finish my PhD. 3) Georgia Tech, Music Technology, MS Research fit: Have excellent faculty members doing some cool work. They tell me that this program would give me 2 years to explore different areas since I'm making this shift from physics to another field. So it would probably be a good idea to give myself some time to decide which field exactly it is that I want to do a PhD in or if I decide that I want to work in the industry (audio/music), I could do that too. This program would give me useful and practical marketable technical skills that could come in very handy in either case. I might also stand a better chance at being accepted to graduate programs at my top choices which I wasn't accepted to this year. I might want to apply to places like MIT media lab or Stanford CCRMA for PhD later on. There are students who've published as many as 10 papers during their 2 year program here. So the professor told me that if I was willing to put in enough work, the options are plenty. Funding: poor but excellent keeping in mind that this is only a new program and is only a MS program where funding is normally not available. I've been guaranteed my first semester (tuition waiver + $1500 per month). They expect that they would be able to continue that support for the whole duration of 2 years. The director told me that all these 3 years (right from the beginning of this program), they've never had to withdraw support to their GRA's but things "might be slightly more difficult keeping in view the economic downturn". I really have no idea what to make of this because if my funding gets pulled, taking a loan to pay for my tuition fee is not an option ($14000 per sem + living expenses) as I have no able co signer or collateral to offer a bank to even consider taking a loan with! So IF my funding gets pulled IF the economic crisis somehow worsens, I could be in a thick soup. Will be stranded with a debt (~$20,000 which I have to take now to pay mandatory fees + insurance for two people that I have to pay which are not paid for by the department) but I think the possibility for that to happen is around maybe 2-3%. The most important factor about this offer is this: GIVES ME MANY MORE OPTIONS. CAN FIND A JOB ALMOST ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, SO DON'T HAVE TO WORRY TOO MUCH ABOUT FUTURE JOB PROSPECTS UNLIKE THE OTHER PHD CASES. Atmosphere: Don't know much.. have been in touch with an Indian professor who does some great work on hindustani music. I have a western classical music background though. Musically this place might have a lot more to offer me as course work sometimes require us to be close to music. Being close to music is important to me too. 4) McMaster, Psychology, PhD (tentative, name has been recommended for admission, professor "hopeful", but not certain) Research Fit: Neurocognition of music, esp in infants. Looks very exciting, top notch researcher in the field, major conferences held often at the university and nearby universities (Canada is very active in the field of music cognition). Funding: $20,000CDN out of which I have to pay $5000CDN per year towards a part of the tuition fee which is not waived. So after taxes, I'll get just over $1000CDN per month which might not be enough for two people in Hamilton. Atmosphere: No idea, she looks like a person with many graduate students under her and I really have no idea how accessible she is. Job prospects, based on the advice of the professor of music from OSU, might be bleak in the field of music cognition. So that will restrict me geographically as well as in other ways. Now please help me decide!! A major consideration is future prospects. Remember that my country has a problem hiring people without a ug background in the field. So a PhD in Psychology or Linguistics would restrict me to those fields and would restrict me geographically as well whereas the risky MS (I have to go into debt too to be able to attend) will give me much more options and definitely looks like the better choice to make keeping in mind that I'd love some flexibility in my future options but the major question is is the financial risk worth taking? Will I be stranded mid way with my funding pulled? THey also have no summer funding. So I'm left to find myself employment during the summer months and my F1 visa restricts me to work only 20 hrs a week and that too only on campus. I hope I'll be able to find some kind of summer internship. I'm highly confused. Leaning slightly towards Gatech but VERY attracted to the OSU offer as well. NU is a great place to be too but job prospects worry me a bit. Same about McMaster. So the orders of preference are: Job prospects (first and foremost priority): Gatech > OSU > NU > McMaster Research fit: Gatech/McMaster > NU > OSU Atmosphere: OSU > NU > Gatech/McMaster Financial comfort: OSU > NU > McMaster > Gatech. Help me weigh these options please! Thanks.

Hey guys, Its finally time for me to make a decision and be done with this. I've posted on the decisions forum too but thought this would be relevant here as I'm considering offers from departments of psychology as well. I'm in a somewhat confusing situation and would really like some input from here. So the options I'm considering are: 1) Northwestern University: Department of Linguistics, PhD Research fit: Good. I get to work on language and music at the interdisciplinary center hosted by the Complex Systems Institute. Since I'm a physics major (bachelors + Masters degree in Physics) and since my primary interest in physics is nonlinear dynamics and chaos, its a very good place for me to be working in. Funding: Since I'll be taking along my wife, their funding package is not quite sufficient for life in Chicago ($20.5K before taxes, fixed amount for all years, includes summer support, strictly forbids any part time employment even while I'm on their fellowship during years 1 and 5). However my family is willing to sell of some property to give me about $15-20K extra to serve as emergency money and if that happens, I might be able to make this work. I however really don't like the idea of accepting this money as I wanted to do this absolutely on my own. Atmosphere: From what I've heard from people here who've visited, its a small program (they accept only 1-2 people a year) and the students seem genuinely happy. From my correspondences with faculty there, all of them seem warm and nice and they've been thoroughly professional about this whole thing. I got my offer letter on Jan 23! They really do want me to attend and I suspect I'd be very happy academically here too. ONE IMPORTANT CONSIDERATION HOWEVER IS ABOUT JOB PROSPECTS: My Linguistics professor here in India tells me that universties here don't hire people without an undergraduate degree in the field. So if I do opt for one of my PhD offers, I would find it extremely difficult to find work in my country in the future though my area of interest is one in which there is little or no work in India. So I don't intend to come back to settle down here but if some emergency does pop up, I will have to return and I'm afraid I'll be jobless if that happens. 2) The Ohio State University, Psychology, PhD Research fit: Adviser has to be fixed right away and I've found only one who is willing (and extremely keen, might I add!) to support my summers. So his work is on language, using concepts from physics (from the areas I'd mentioned above) and also some work on memory, attention, etc using some nice equipment (tracking facial expression changes by automatically clicking photographs when that happens, etc). There is this professor in the dept of music there who has agreed to work with me on some occasional projects and he's top notch in the field of music cognition research (which really is my primary area of interest) and he advises me to do my dissertation in a "traditional" area of Psychology because only that would make me a competitive applicant for jobs since music cognition does not have jobs (he says on an avg about 1-2 tenure track positions open all over the world!). Funding: Its great for Columbus. An increase in stipend level is expected and since I come in with a masters, I'd be coming in on the higher scale. I expect to be paid around $1400-1500 per month and my prospective adviser has guaranteed summer funding for all years at the maximum possible level of $1610 per month. He has also assured me of covering conference travel and accommodation costs. Excellent health plan for couples. Pretty cheap one too. So financially, OSU will afford us (my wife and I) a comfortable life. Atmosphere: My prospective adviser, from his correspondences, told me that our lab would be very relaxed, family friendly, and that my wife would be welcome to spend time in the lab, and that we might even try to convince her to apply for grad studies! He's gone to the extent of offering to play cricket with me since he's Australian and I'm Indian. He looks like a great chap to be working with in a relaxed atmosphere. Also that thing he said about encouraging my wife to spend time in the lab, etc looks quite enticing to me as both she and I wish that she could study too. Since she comes from a small town and a relatively unknown university with no research experience, we expect that it would be extremely difficult for her to be accepted into a program but if she gets to do some volunteer research for some time, I guess she might be accepted by a grad program, maybe an MS so that she gets to move ahead in life too while I finish my PhD. 3) Georgia Tech, Music Technology, MS Research fit: Have excellent faculty members doing some cool work. They tell me that this program would give me 2 years to explore different areas since I'm making this shift from physics to another field. So it would probably be a good idea to give myself some time to decide which field exactly it is that I want to do a PhD in or if I decide that I want to work in the industry (audio/music), I could do that too. This program would give me useful and practical marketable technical skills that could come in very handy in either case. I might also stand a better chance at being accepted to graduate programs at my top choices which I wasn't accepted to this year. I might want to apply to places like MIT media lab or Stanford CCRMA for PhD later on. There are students who've published as many as 10 papers during their 2 year program here. So the professor told me that if I was willing to put in enough work, the options are plenty. Funding: poor but excellent keeping in mind that this is only a new program and is only a MS program where funding is normally not available. I've been guaranteed my first semester (tuition waiver + $1500 per month). They expect that they would be able to continue that support for the whole duration of 2 years. The director told me that all these 3 years (right from the beginning of this program), they've never had to withdraw support to their GRA's but things "might be slightly more difficult keeping in view the economic downturn". I really have no idea what to make of this because if my funding gets pulled, taking a loan to pay for my tuition fee is not an option ($14000 per sem + living expenses) as I have no able co signer or collateral to offer a bank to even consider taking a loan with! So IF my funding gets pulled IF the economic crisis somehow worsens, I could be in a thick soup. Will be stranded with a debt (~$20,000 which I have to take now to pay mandatory fees + insurance for two people that I have to pay which are not paid for by the department) but I think the possibility for that to happen is around maybe 2-3%. The most important factor about this offer is this: GIVES ME MANY MORE OPTIONS. CAN FIND A JOB ALMOST ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, SO DON'T HAVE TO WORRY TOO MUCH ABOUT FUTURE JOB PROSPECTS UNLIKE THE OTHER PHD CASES. Atmosphere: Don't know much.. have been in touch with an Indian professor who does some great work on hindustani music. I have a western classical music background though. Musically this place might have a lot more to offer me as course work sometimes require us to be close to music. Being close to music is important to me too. 4) McMaster, Psychology, PhD (tentative, name has been recommended for admission, professor "hopeful", but not certain) Research Fit: Neurocognition of music, esp in infants. Looks very exciting, top notch researcher in the field, major conferences held often at the university and nearby universities (Canada is very active in the field of music cognition). Funding: $20,000CDN out of which I have to pay $5000CDN per year towards a part of the tuition fee which is not waived. So after taxes, I'll get just over $1000CDN per month which might not be enough for two people in Hamilton. Atmosphere: No idea, she looks like a person with many graduate students under her and I really have no idea how accessible she is. Job prospects, based on the advice of the professor of music from OSU, might be bleak in the field of music cognition. So that will restrict me geographically as well as in other ways. Now please help me decide!! A major consideration is future prospects. Remember that my country has a problem hiring people without a ug background in the field. So a PhD in Psychology or Linguistics would restrict me to those fields and would restrict me geographically as well whereas the risky MS (I have to go into debt too to be able to attend) will give me much more options and definitely looks like the better choice to make keeping in mind that I'd love some flexibility in my future options but the major question is is the financial risk worth taking? Will I be stranded mid way with my funding pulled? THey also have no summer funding. So I'm left to find myself employment during the summer months and my F1 visa restricts me to work only 20 hrs a week and that too only on campus. I hope I'll be able to find some kind of summer internship. I'm highly confused. Leaning slightly towards Gatech but VERY attracted to the OSU offer as well. NU is a great place to be too but job prospects worry me a bit. Same about McMaster. So the orders of preference are: Job prospects (first and foremost priority): Gatech > OSU > NU > McMaster Research fit: Gatech/McMaster > NU > OSU Atmosphere: OSU > NU > Gatech/McMaster Financial comfort: OSU > NU > McMaster > Gatech. Help me weigh these options please! Thanks.

Hey guys, Its finally time for me to make a decision and be done with this. I'm in a somewhat confusing situation and would really like some input from here. So the options I'm considering are: 1) Northwestern University: Department of Linguistics, PhD Research fit: Good. I get to work on language and music at the interdisciplinary center hosted by the Complex Systems Institute. Since I'm a physics major (bachelors + Masters degree in Physics) and since my primary interest in physics is nonlinear dynamics and chaos, its a very good place for me to be working in. Funding: Since I'll be taking along my wife, their funding package is not quite sufficient for life in Chicago ($20.5K before taxes, fixed amount for all years, includes summer support, strictly forbids any part time employment even while I'm on their fellowship during years 1 and 5). However my family is willing to sell of some property to give me about $15-20K extra to serve as emergency money and if that happens, I might be able to make this work. I however really don't like the idea of accepting this money as I wanted to do this absolutely on my own. Atmosphere: From what I've heard from people here who've visited, its a small program (they accept only 1-2 people a year) and the students seem genuinely happy. From my correspondences with faculty there, all of them seem warm and nice and they've been thoroughly professional about this whole thing. I got my offer letter on Jan 23! They really do want me to attend and I suspect I'd be very happy academically here too. ONE IMPORTANT CONSIDERATION HOWEVER IS ABOUT JOB PROSPECTS: My Linguistics professor here in India tells me that universties here don't hire people without an undergraduate degree in the field. So if I do opt for one of my PhD offers, I would find it extremely difficult to find work in my country in the future though my area of interest is one in which there is little or no work in India. So I don't intend to come back to settle down here but if some emergency does pop up, I will have to return and I'm afraid I'll be jobless if that happens. 2) The Ohio State University, Psychology, PhD Research fit: Adviser has to be fixed right away and I've found only one who is willing (and extremely keen, might I add!) to support my summers. So his work is on language, using concepts from physics (from the areas I'd mentioned above) and also some work on memory, attention, etc using some nice equipment (tracking facial expression changes by automatically clicking photographs when that happens, etc). There is this professor in the dept of music there who has agreed to work with me on some occasional projects and he's top notch in the field of music cognition research (which really is my primary area of interest) and he advises me to do my dissertation in a "traditional" area of Psychology because only that would make me a competitive applicant for jobs since music cognition does not have jobs (he says on an avg about 1-2 tenure track positions open all over the world!). Funding: Its great for Columbus. An increase in stipend level is expected and since I come in with a masters, I'd be coming in on the higher scale. I expect to be paid around $1400-1500 per month and my prospective adviser has guaranteed summer funding for all years at the maximum possible level of $1610 per month. He has also assured me of covering conference travel and accommodation costs. Excellent health plan for couples. Pretty cheap one too. So financially, OSU will afford us (my wife and I) a comfortable life. Atmosphere: My prospective adviser, from his correspondences, told me that our lab would be very relaxed, family friendly, and that my wife would be welcome to spend time in the lab, and that we might even try to convince her to apply for grad studies! He's gone to the extent of offering to play cricket with me since he's Australian and I'm Indian. He looks like a great chap to be working with in a relaxed atmosphere. Also that thing he said about encouraging my wife to spend time in the lab, etc looks quite enticing to me as both she and I wish that she could study too. Since she comes from a small town and a relatively unknown university with no research experience, we expect that it would be extremely difficult for her to be accepted into a program but if she gets to do some volunteer research for some time, I guess she might be accepted by a grad program, maybe an MS so that she gets to move ahead in life too while I finish my PhD. 3) Georgia Tech, Music Technology, MS Research fit: Have excellent faculty members doing some cool work. They tell me that this program would give me 2 years to explore different areas since I'm making this shift from physics to another field. So it would probably be a good idea to give myself some time to decide which field exactly it is that I want to do a PhD in or if I decide that I want to work in the industry (audio/music), I could do that too. This program would give me useful and practical marketable technical skills that could come in very handy in either case. I might also stand a better chance at being accepted to graduate programs at my top choices which I wasn't accepted to this year. I might want to apply to places like MIT media lab or Stanford CCRMA for PhD later on. There are students who've published as many as 10 papers during their 2 year program here. So the professor told me that if I was willing to put in enough work, the options are plenty. Funding: poor but excellent keeping in mind that this is only a new program and is only a MS program where funding is normally not available. I've been guaranteed my first semester (tuition waiver + $1500 per month). They expect that they would be able to continue that support for the whole duration of 2 years. The director told me that all these 3 years (right from the beginning of this program), they've never had to withdraw support to their GRA's but things "might be slightly more difficult keeping in view the economic downturn". I really have no idea what to make of this because if my funding gets pulled, taking a loan to pay for my tuition fee is not an option ($14000 per sem + living expenses) as I have no able co signer or collateral to offer a bank to even consider taking a loan with! So IF my funding gets pulled IF the economic crisis somehow worsens, I could be in a thick soup. Will be stranded with a debt (~$20,000 which I have to take now to pay mandatory fees + insurance for two people that I have to pay which are not paid for by the department) but I think the possibility for that to happen is around maybe 2-3%. The most important factor about this offer is this: GIVES ME MANY MORE OPTIONS. CAN FIND A JOB ALMOST ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, SO DON'T HAVE TO WORRY TOO MUCH ABOUT FUTURE JOB PROSPECTS UNLIKE THE OTHER PHD CASES. Atmosphere: Don't know much.. have been in touch with an Indian professor who does some great work on hindustani music. I have a western classical music background though. Musically this place might have a lot more to offer me as course work sometimes require us to be close to music. Being close to music is important to me too. 4) McMaster, Psychology, PhD (tentative, name has been recommended for admission, professor "hopeful", but not certain) Research Fit: Neurocognition of music, esp in infants. Looks very exciting, top notch researcher in the field, major conferences held often at the university and nearby universities (Canada is very active in the field of music cognition). Funding: $20,000CDN out of which I have to pay $5000CDN per year towards a part of the tuition fee which is not waived. So after taxes, I'll get just over $1000CDN per month which might not be enough for two people in Hamilton. Atmosphere: No idea, she looks like a person with many graduate students under her and I really have no idea how accessible she is. Job prospects, based on the advice of the professor of music from OSU, might be bleak in the field of music cognition. So that will restrict me geographically as well as in other ways. Now please help me decide!! A major consideration is future prospects. Remember that my country has a problem hiring people without a ug background in the field. So a PhD in Psychology or Linguistics would restrict me to those fields and would restrict me geographically as well whereas the risky MS (I have to go into debt too to be able to attend) will give me much more options and definitely looks like the better choice to make keeping in mind that I'd love some flexibility in my future options but the major question is is the financial risk worth taking? Will I be stranded mid way with my funding pulled? THey also have no summer funding. So I'm left to find myself employment during the summer months and my F1 visa restricts me to work only 20 hrs a week and that too only on campus. I hope I'll be able to find some kind of summer internship. I'm highly confused. Leaning slightly towards Gatech but VERY attracted to the OSU offer as well. NU is a great place to be too but job prospects worry me a bit. Same about McMaster. So the orders of preference are: Job prospects (first and foremost priority): Gatech > OSU > NU > McMaster Research fit: Gatech/McMaster > NU > OSU Atmosphere: OSU > NU > Gatech/McMaster Financial comfort: OSU > NU > McMaster > Gatech. Help me weigh these options please! Thanks.

If you are very confident that your interests won't change and will remain in this specific sub field, then I'd have to vote for Cornell. Most students however find that their interests change, even if only by a little, once they enter grad school, do course work, get introduced to exciting work in other sub fields, etc. So if you think you'll be one of them, Harvard is the place to be.

One school told me that if I got an external grant, they'd adjust the university funding such that the total support remains the same.

How would you commute to Gatech from your place? Could one walk (is it too dangerous) or does one have to use MARTA? Could you also list out safe, not very expensive, areas that are near Gatech where a graduate student who intends to stay with his wife could look for apartments in? Also to be kept in mind is that the wife wouldn't be allowed to work due to restrictions on her F2 visa and would have to stay home all by herself for most part of the day. So safety is our first priority (but I simply cannot afford the graduate family housing). Any suggestions/advice?

I was made an offer from Donders (neuroscience PhD) but rejected it since I really want to do more coursework alongside flexible research projects than just being a paid employee working on some fixed project.

Minnesota Cognitive Science (on some kind of a waitlist) and McMaster Psychology (official letter awaited though my name has been recommended by my prospective advisor to the committee for admission. Have no guarantee yet about admission. The professor said that she was hopeful) So though I HAVE heard from these two places, it has not been about a final decision on my application. So I still am waiting to hear from them.

Thank you for one of the few kind posts in here. A breath of fresh air. Turns out I might in all probability be rejecting a MUCH higher funding package (PhD) and go into debt (to pay mandatory fees that are not part of the waiver and also for supporting living expenses once my spouse gets there), leave my spouse behind in my country at least for a few semesters (I'll leave a few weeks after our wedding and this is the solution that she proposed to me, although with a heavy heart. Rising star might disagree because she knows such a lot about my life, but my girl loves me enough to make sacrifices), to be able to do a MS which would offer me work closer to my research interests and then apply again to PhD programs 2 years down the line so that I stand a better chance of getting into my top choice(s) (to which I was unable to make it this time). This after all the assumptions that were thrown at me over here when all I was talking about was one specific school in a highly expensive city and about a 6 year commitment (where such sacrifices would have been impossible). I'm sure I'll face some stupid juvenile argument again but since so many of you are fed up with it, I'll try my best not to respond anymore. Try, I will.

2 term papers, 1 project report, 1 thesis + defense + possible writing it up for publication, 1 theory project presentation and report + 2 end semester exams in April + MAKING A FINAL DECISION ABOUT WHICH OFFER TO ACCEPT by the 15th of April.. I'm surprised I'm still sane. :|

More research in primary area of interest + more work opportunities and networking + accessible faculty + summer fellowships = Yale = my vote. I'm confused though, you said your primary interest was Infectious Diseases and UC Berkeley's degree is called MPH in INfectious Diseases whereas the one at Yale does not but still does more research on it than UCB?! If UCB does good work (albeit lesser amount than Yale) in this field, and if its costs significantly lesser, I might reconsider and opt for UCB, especially because the degree would specifically be a MPH in infectious diseases and a degree from the top ranked school, UCB, would surely find you jobs even if the networking might be better at Yale. I started my post by voting for Yale and am ending it by voting for UCB Sorry its not more helpful than this.

The professor I'd worked with, entirely voluntarily (no course requirements, no thesis requirements, nothing), for more than two years told me that he'd heard from some other professor that I was lazy!! WTF! I have done 4 courses with this person and have a 9/10 avg in his courses. I have also sent a first authored paper (with him as second author even though he met with me only twice or so during the entire time and contributed almost nothing) to a good journal. So this guy goes on to tell me that my grades in some other courses were not as good and so he would not be able to write me a stellar recommendation. If graduate schools were to go by only grades, they wouldn't be asking for recos, would they! Moreover, those bad grades came in courses that were not even remotely close to my intended field of study. I now have taken a theory project under the same guy (I have no reason why, maybe its because he lets me do whatever I want to because he has no idea about the kind of research I've been doing). Now, I needed to meet him for a few clarifications regarding some theory he knows that I wanted to use in my research and he told me that he was extremely busy organizing a conference (which is to be held only in June) and he wouldn't be able to meet me. I have a committee evaluation coming up for this project of mine which I had to do totally unsupervised. If I ever become a teacher, I've learnt from some of these guys how not to do it!