ktel

I'm mostly in the same boat, but I do have my boyfriend here which is at least something. It's still lonely though, because he works a lot, and it kind of depresses me to think that I have no social life outside of him and his friends right now. This feeling just hit me last weekend, I too was high on the excitement of new things. I'm doing my best to get involved: playing on a sports team and joining the department's student society, but it takes time to make friends.

That's a very cold indoor temperature, definitely not comfortable at all. 14 C for us Canadians, which has me wearing a jacket for that kind of outdoor temperature.

I am also thinking about all the what-ifs about other professors I could have worked with or other projects that I could have done. The only reason I'm thinking this is I'm very overwhelmed because I know very little about the subject matter I'll be pursuing, so it's always easier to think that something else would have been better. Is there a way you could make your studies more interdisciplinary or take more interesting coursework? I would work at it a little harder to try to make the program suit you before you decide to leave.

Well it looks like you don't have any research experience and your GPA is pretty low (typically grad schools want over a 3.0, but things might be done differently for international students). That doesn't look like a terribly strong profile.

If you explain the situation the same way you explained it here, a reasonable adviser would probably understand your reasons for leaving. You're going to have to tell him anyways, because if you ask 3 other professors at the same school, he'll probably find out anyways.

I'm no criminology expert, but murder of manslaughter could be homicide, right? Is that what's meant?

I forgot about U of Ts per department fee. So silly. I applied to two programs there, so $220 and another $100 for Ryerson. $320 total. Luckily I can get as many transcripts I want from my undergrad for free! Even though they secretly charge all of us in our fees, I think I have MORE than taken advantage of that. U of T does not give out free transcripts, but I shouldn't need any anytime soon.

What profile??

I would say wait it out a little bit longer. I've just started my program, and I will say it's not amazing right now, but I know it will get better. The combination of moving, knowing nobody and starting a new program isn't a good combination that makes for instant happiness. Perhaps the fact that you turned down another offer makes you think "what if" but you might have felt this way even if you went to Columbia. It's too soon to tell if this is truly indicative of the Harvard experience.

I put awards and scholarships on my CV/Resume. I don't see what is unprofessional about it. I certainly don't include them on a resume I use for jobs, but for my CV that I use for other scholarships/awards and for grad school applications, absolutely.

That's insanely expensive. I'm living in an old building right now and have lived in older buildings before and it was never that expensive. We also use natural gas. All my utility costs are luckily included in my rent. Even so I wouldn't expect heating to be much more than $150 a month.

If you need more information, yes. Just make sure you do as much research as you can first (for example you could look up papers written by these professors) and ask intelligent questions in your email or phone call.

I sincerely hope you mean your heating costs you $150/month, not $1500. Unless you're leaving all your doors open.

I'm doing an MASc in Aerospace Engineering and it's completely funded through scholarships and fellowships. A LOT of grad school programs provide this kind of funding. I suspect your degree might be more of a professional degree, in which case you might not get any money.

Even if they aren't super relevant, the professional recommendations are likely to be much stronger than a professor from 8 years ago. Given your situation I think even getting 1 letter from an old professor is good, and the admissions committee realizes you've been out of school.

The money you receive is all relative to where you're living though. That's very doable in some places, and others have a much higher cost of living.

It's a 4 hour, $500-600 flight to visit home, so I'm definitely not able to just get up and go home if I want to. Once my rugby season is done I could take a logn weekend if I wanted, but by then it will be almost Christmas so I might as well wait.

I only have class 2 days a week, which is the only time I HAVE to be on campus. Some people in my group come in a lot, some people hardly ever. Everything can be done from home, if desired.

It has something to do with the banking regulations being provincial, I think. I went to another Scotiabank branch here and they couldn't touch those investments because they were made in Alberta. My dad (an accountant) thinks it sounds funny, but my boyfriend encountered similar issues when trying to set up an RESP in Alberta for his little sister in Ontario. I think I might have a TFSA GIC...not sure. I am not very good at this whole investing thing and just did what my dad told me 3 years ago. Besides I don't want to lock in a ton of cash, because I will need it later. I need to look at how much money I can put away and then I'll deal with it when I go home.

So far it is manageable. I just finished my first assignment (worth 15% of my final grade!) and all the concepts were fairly simple to deal with. I anticipate getting a high mark on the assignment, but we'll see. I'm only taking two classes, and I don't think they're that much more difficult or time consuming, although the expectations aren't totally clear to me yet.

I've just started my Master's and am applying for external scholarships where it is expected that my new supervisor writes me a LoR. While he doesn't know me very well, it would look unusual if he wasn't willing to write about my strengths and potential, considering he accepted me into his research group based on these things. The best you can hope for is to try to provide your future supervisor with as much information as possible to guide the letter writing process.

They're considered two of the best schools in Canada, and on par with many great American schools.

We probably spent about $5000 on furniture, the first grocery trip was $400 and then first and last month's rent was $2500. My boyfriend works full time, so we weren't quite as cash-crunched as I would have been doing this on my own. You can very easily do it for cheaper (maybe not groceries or rent, but furniture certainly)

I just experience my first bout of homesickness this weekend. I don't think the rainy weather helped my mood. My boyfriend tried his best to make me feel better, and I mostly do now. It is lonely moving away, but it will get better.

My group is fairly large, probably about 15 students. I haven't had to meet with my supervisor very often yet, but I get the impression that he is available if you need him. There are a few postdocs who help with the more detailed stuff, and that's good enough for me. I like to work very independently and would rather bounce my ideas off of my peers than my adviser.