Usmivka

While some of your criticism is valid, it isn't particularly useful for people who have decided to move there. I can only laugh that you prefer the weather in Helsinki to Seattle (it rains more in the summer in Helsinki, and freezing rain the rest of the year!) or anywhere in the tropics over Seattle (mugginess, monsoon season!), the public transit in any "sunny state," or the diversity of most Asian capitols--note, "different from you" and "diverse" are not at all the same thing, and even Singapore's much vaunted diversity is primarily South Asian culture, whereas at least Seattle has influences from Asia, the Middle East, Europe, North and South America, and North and South Africa, like any large American city (and more than many, if you include satellite cities like Bellevue, Federal Way, and Tacoma). It's easy to cherry pick the things that are wrong with any city, but Seattle has a lot going for it too. I'm sorry you couldn't make friends, but I'm not sure you are placing the blame in the right place given that Seattle has a population of half a million. Maybe if you went out instead of holing up in your apartment hiding from drizzle ("I didn't even want to go out or anything"), you would have had better luck and met more interesting people. I can't imagine why you've applied to the UW if you find the area so offensive either.

This is exactly the attitude I was talking about. Lots of older profs in the sciences say this to their undergrads contemplating grad school--but by the time those same students are a little into grad school they stop believing it (myself included). I've met only a handful of faculty under 65 that still echo this line. By the time you finish your PhD I suspect the generational turnover will be more or less complete and no one will care one way or the other--I've watched this happen first hand in my field as schools transition to actively poaching their best undergrads. Again, with the age of the internet and frequent academic conferences, you can do the collaborations and get exposed to the different viewpoints that previously you would have had to move somewhere else for. Such reasoning should be fairly far down the list when deciding where to study--as always, advisor and research fit are by far the most important things.

I cant find the link, but there was a discussion on this just a couple days ago, and answers seemed to vary from a) no more than there are slots, then go down the waitlist when some decline, to b ) 40% in excess. No one responded with higher ratios than that.

Same difference I suspect. And basically your scenario, was posted earlier this afternoon.

a couple, not a all.

It won't happen. That is asking them to hold funding in reserve for way too long. No department can predict their financial situation that far out. You'll have to reapply. Now you are already one year deferred, so I realize this is a little different, but even so, the broader university admins generally have a blanket policy that overrules any specific desire by the department. Think of it this way--right now, they can't take someone who could be doing productive work because they are holding a spot for you (the budget has to be there, they aren't just pushing you into the next year's applicant pool), and you are asking them to do that again? Had they just accepted someone else in your place previously they would have a student who would have completed their masters in the time it has taken you to decide to attend.

"Are you [or your peers] happy here?" People are surprisingly honest.

Sounds like it is exactly what he described. It sounds like he had a lot of applicants, so he is giving you the courtesy of telling you where you fall in his applicant pile so you can adjust expectations accordingly. If you are high on the list, you will be expected to say whether you are interested or not--seems like you are--and if not you should say so right away so he can bumkp someone else up the list. If you are low on the list, he'll probably give you some idea of what time frame you might expect to get off a waitlist, or whether you are unlikely to be admitted.

Contact them ASAP to let them know you won't be able to attend the open house. They will save as much money as they can. The longer you wait, the less likely they are to be able to cancel.

Actually I disagree with this premise. Rankings are arbitrary and subjective, rarely have any meaning for the specific subfield you will apply to, and have much less to do with the quality of doctoral students that come out than your advisor relationship and the factors QB identified above (this has been discussed ad nauseum in the forums, the magazines doing the rankings are running rackets with abysmal methodologies). Unless you work in a singularly tiny field, there is no real difference in the "top" 30 programs. And who is this Jon character anyway?

Totally normal, where you live is an important consideration for where you decide to go. They should still cover your expenses back to the airport as well, since they would have covered all transit related expenses regardless of day and time. Let the school know you plan to stick around, they often have discounted rates at local hotels and may book/extend the booking for you so you end up paying less for those extra days.

If you are just planning to read pdfs and text, then why not a kindle, not one of the fancy ones with color and touch screens and such, just a basic black and white reader? This is the primary way I use my kindle. You can still annotate and take notes on them if desired, they have crazy good battery life (month plus), and they are dirt cheap. I think you can buy last year's model for less than $100.

I've seen apartments with no kitchen, just a hot plate and a mini fridge. You don't want to go there. But I too assume what you actually mean is that there is no dining room, which, meh.

For an MS only, full funding will be significantly rarer than when applying for a PhD program (which may or may not include a masters). But I suspect this varies a lot by program, and I don't have a clue what happens with Music. I suspect full funding even for domestic students is rare.

You'll want to highlight it either in the CV or your statement of purpose. But if the difference is only 0.1 or 0.2, it is tacky, as you suggested.

This

As long as you don't plan to work there afterwards, seems fine to me. West Coast schools have a hiring bias against their own grad students, they seem to like least coasters. But the younger the faculty the less of this "you must go elsewhere and expand your horizons" mindset I hear. I mean, the internets is two decades old at this point...

My backup is quitting grad school...everything SSP said about TFA, but applied to the doctorate.

Exactly this. There are far fewer funding pots for international students, and even those that come with money from their home countries don't often come with enough to cover the true cost of the program. For example, it is great if you are Canadian and have an NSERC award, but the money rarely covers even your full stipend, much less tuition, health care, and ancillary costs. My impression is that Chinese and Korean governmental fellowzships for study abroad are similarly too small to overcome the funding bias. Only the Germans seem to come with enough money to compete on a level playing field. And sorry for not attributing this, but to answer: in general, at the graduate level, everyone is in the same pool of applicants. Top picks are selected, and then there is a lot of horse trading to decide who gets their favored student and what they have to give up to secure pooled funding. Profs who want international students have to give up more/fight harder since their picks are more expensive (health care in particular is much more expensive for foreign students, because US insurers are bastards). I just asked someone deeply involved in our programs process about this, hence the last minute inclusion. And this as well, but less so, and not because it is "hard" to do research in US labs. European and Middle Eastern programs in particular seem to push through a lot of papers, but they are not necessarily of the same quality or or in the same caliber journals as the US students who do publish. US undergraduate programs also tend to have broader studies (and more may produce more independent students) and more opportunties to demonstrate PhD potential. A major consideration is that BS degrees from most other countries are 3 years, and you simply cannot cover the same amount of material that US undergrads do in 4-5 years, so there is the question in ad coms minds about whether an international student has sufficinent background to get up to speed quickly. A US undergrad applying to grad school is expected to be ready for a PhD directly, whereas someone in the European system would be expected to do a MS first. A final note, "research" means different things depending on context. I see a lot of Indian students especially that have three or more highly structured, short duration research internships. These have more supervision and less opportunity to take charge of the direction and personalization of research than US universities afford--working in a lab for 3 years may not explicity be labeled a "research experience," but often involves a lot more research and skills development than a 10 week summer "research experience."

The fellowship adds a complicating factor, but I think it is reasonable to say what you did above: "they have made a generous offer and I can see myself being happy and doing good work there." I also think it is fine to say you can't make a decision until you hear back from other programs and get an idea of how everyone's offers will differ, and you'd like to visit the program (if their is an admitted student weekend) before you commit. Find out if what you said above is true. If they have a tight timeline to nominate for the fellowship, and they will lose it if you decline, then I think you have to be very honest and say when you expect to be able to commit by. If it is after their deadline on the funding, you need to say that so they can nominate someone else who will 100% be attending--by hoarding the option and then declining you would be depriving the school of support for another student who may not have any other options.

I can't speak specifically to biology, but REUs seem to be more or less as you described. They have a couple of disadvantages and advantages compared to a longer term research experience in a lab at your home institution that are worth considering: 1) They tend to be short term, which makes it harder to take a project from proposal to publication. 2) You are exposed to faculty at different institutions, which can either help or hurt very specifically for applications to that institution--if you are a flake or don't meet expectations (maybe you were having too much fun with all those other REUs, happens surprisingly often) it certainly won't help, but if you act like a prototypical grad student and spend insane hours in the lab and come to a neat conclusion to boot, clearly this is a major bonus when faculty there remember you. 3) If you are applying to a different university than where the REU took place, it is more or less like any other research experience on your resume (maybe a little more prestigious in acceptance, but not as informative or impressive as working with your home lab for 3-4 years). My program (including many biologists studying the subfields you mentioned above) appears to take roughly half its students from former REUs (actually called something different, but same idea). I think that is mostly because more former REUs apply than otherwise, not necessarily an acceptance bias--if you ask individual faculty, the experiences of hosting REUs are on net neutral. In other words, as many former REUs are selected against becuase of how they spent their time here as are are given a boost. For perspective, my program is one of the top handful in my field globally, so we get more guest students than the average.

Central AC just means there is a central compressor. You will still have to pay your own utilities. Of course it still will have windows |D. Central AC is generally more energy efficient (unless it is a really old unit), and will cost you less in bills. Here is an article describing the trade offs. If there is central AC, there is more likely to be central heating as well, which is definitely a good thing in places with cold winters.

Agreed. My comfy biking distance is 4-6 miles (25-40 minutes depending on traffic), and I think neither option fits that bill. Lake City is close to the Burke-Gilman trail, which is a very safe, flat ride directly to the UW, but it is >8 miles. Northgate is a little closer if you take arterials, but farther if you stick to safer streets and trails. Serious bike commuters (you have a road bike, lots of reflectors/lights/bright gear for all weather) will have no problem, but in my experience that is a small subset of grad students. Bus connections are good to both, and it is right on the freeway at the farthest Northern edge of the city, so if you have a car it is easy to escape the city and go hiking or take a road trip North (or West via the Edmonds ferry). Cost of living is significantly lower in both areas than some of the trendier neighborhoods mentioned elsewhere in this thread.

I'd treat this like CouchSurfing or being hosted by distant relatives--a small gift (~$5 or less) or taking them for a small edible treat (coffee, ice cream) would be polite and appropriate. The student will get reimbursed for expenses by the school, but they are volunteering their time, and you ought to let them know their time is appreciated. Besides showing general good will, these are folks that will be your peers/colleagues in the field, regardless of whether you go to that particular school or not. Nice gifts I've received include highly local food specialties or novelty items from the place my guests live. I've also had small gifts that were only meaningful in context of how I interacted with my guests. For example, a couple Germans commented that there were American flags everywhere, but we didn't have one. So at the end of their trip they bought us little American flag window stickers--these cost all of a dollar but were much appreciated because there was a memorable story behind the gift, and I still think of our guests when I see the stickers!

I might try posting this in the "Applications > Letters of recommendation" subforum, but I'm sure people will respond here too. Let's start with what the goal is: Between your three letters of rec, you need to have your research ability, academic potential, outreach activities/broader impacts, and what you are like to work with, the first and last being the most important. A is a shoe-in because s/he can cover at least two of those bases. Similarly I'd say C is desirable, because s/he has known you long enough to also be able to cover most of those four categories to some degree. So really what you are asking is "Do I pick Prof B or D?" and the answer depends on which of them can speak strongly to one of the areas where A or C can't or has only general knowledge. So is one of them a former instructor that you've had classes with? Is one of them involved in an organization you do outreach with? The trouble with each as you've presented them is that B doesn't really know you or have any interaction outside of a paper that your stronger recommender (A) was also involved on and can already talk about, and D (at least with the limited info you've given) doesn't necessarily speak to any of the above categories. When selecting references, I passed up on a letter from someone who sounds like D for some of my applications because he couldn't talk about research or academics, but selected him for others because he could speak to outreach and long familiarity--it was a judgement call for what was more important in each setting, whether a particular school or fellowship apps. But for the applications that were really focused entirely on research potential (eg NDSEG fellowship) I went with someone more like B. I'd say D would be a better choice for most applications if s/he can cover any of those non-research bases. Hold B in reserve just for applications where research is the be all and end all. Also, not all applications will be limited to three, most just require "at least three," so you could still ask for letters from B if he has anything novel to say that won't already be covered by A. PS: remember you can ask your recommenders to focus on specific topics, so even if one could speak to everything, they could spend the bulk of their time on 2 of the main bases (then each pf the four above would be a focus in at least two letters). The ensemble can be stronger than if everyone goes over everything with diluted emphasis.