Duna

I personally didn't think you were bragging by including information about your institution or the NSF grant in your profile signature. 
Just be careful - if you identify your department, university of study and that you are on a particular fellowship...well, it won't be hard for people to identify you. 
 
Though there is a significant difference between saying that "MA students are discriminated against here" and "I feel like I'm getting discriminated against here". Or even "I feel like I'm getting discriminated against here" and "I'm suffering culture shock here". It's hard for people on the Forum to help out if you can't accurately tell us what the real problem is.
 
If you feel that the problem is one of culture shock, then maybe hold back on the questions and try to observe how the natives behave. Is there a way that East Coast students phrase their questions that is less direct/more formal than how you usually do so? Do Ivy League academics expect to be addressed in a specific way that is different to their midwestern counterparts? 
(I know from experience that choosing the wrong option from Professor, Dr. or [First name] can cause academics to bristle - and that the preferred term of address varies between regions. So it might be something trivial that you're unknowingly getting wrong.) 
 
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From what you've said it does sound like there is a gap between your expectations of how you should be treated and what the professors think is acceptable, most likely based on regional norms. When you remark "I expect to be treated with common courtesy" - it is entirely possible that the professors are giving you what they consider to be "common courtesy at an elite institution on the East Coast". 
 
It is also plausible that what you considered "presumptuous" - a professor casually suggesting that you drop the course - might to her have been a helpful suggestion (I mean, sure, if you are running into difficulties within the early introductory stages of the course, it is not completely unreasonable of her to suspect that you might really struggle with the material once you get into the harder concepts later on). 
 
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For me as an international student, the best way to deal with culture shock in a new place is to at least try and meet them halfway (rather than rejecting the new culture entirely). If people commonly wear suits for class...maybe dress a bit smarter in your own daily "grad school" wardrobe? It's also about taking a step back and thinking "Does their remark *really* mean what I assumed it must mean?" 'Cause an awful lot of the time...it doesn't.

My advice could not have been THAT bad, otherwise you would not have changed your signature and profile info
 
You wanted support in bashing professors, a program and a school as being discriminating against MA students in general. What did you expect? 
 
Yes, I am still going through cultural shock. Kids from Orange County at my school wear more on their body on one day than I earn in a month here but what does the clothing style have to do with you being discriminated against as an MA student?
 
I'm sorry to hear you're having a hard time adjusting to the culture at your new school. I still am adjusting to a new culture and a vastly different educational culture and sometimes it's fun but most times it's just frustrating and extremely exhausting but it will get better if, and that's really the important take-away here, you see reactions of people as what they are RE-ACTIONS. Instead of going against those, try changing your actions and see where it might take you. If people still react shitty, then... And do talk to other people from your program. They are basically the only people who will totally get what you're talking about. No one on an online forum can really understand what's going on without being involved in the culture.
 
Good luck. 

Sometimes it takes an outsider to tell you that you're likely interpreting things the wrong way, or it may be something you can change about yourself. In my first post, re: discrimination against MA students, I'm pretty sure I told you to go for it and work hard to make sure you get the best education possible. But then in your follow-up posts, it became more clear that (to an outsider), your examples don't quite mesh with what you think the problem is. Yes, the advice and responses on this forum have been blunt, but sometimes that's needed. Our advice is based on our own experiences, and you can choose to take it or leave it. I also went through a master's program, which is why I was interested in this thread in the first place.
 
Why don't you talk to people in your program and see what their experiences have been like? If it is blanket discrimination against master's students, then they should have had the same experiences and can lend you some advice. If they haven't been experiencing a similar issue, then possibly it will point to individual characteristics that you need to consider. Also, I've taken multiple classes at your institution, and I'm pretty sure I wore sweatpants to class many times without feeling out of place. I understand it can be difficult to fit into different educational cultures- I've done it a LOT of times over the years. Good principles are to be less defensive, try to be more self-aware, and reach out to people in your program. Also, try to have an open mind.
 
PS. You say your posts are "not formalized accusations claiming causality"... yet the title of this thread is "discrimination against MA students". Just saying.

Well I clearly should not reach out to this forum for support. I do not access this account on a computer, so I cannot see my signature. I am so sorry I don't obsessively come to forums and update my signature from the past application cycle. I was hoping to gain some solidarity from someone else who was going through culture shock -- students around here dress in expensive clothing and wear suits to class, and I have had a completely different experience with a few professors thus far -- or to hear from others who have felt similarly as a first year masters student. These are perceptions and feelings, not formalized accusations claiming causality. I am appalled that this thread has turned into bashing someone you know very little about while selectively reading my explanations.

To be quite frank again, the way you phrase your posts ("at an Ivy League School"), while your signature is saying "Harvard" and even that you are on an NSF fellowship (which is great! Congrats!) just implies to me that you really "DO expect" to be treated in a certain way. This weakens your comparison argument a lot in my perception. 
 
It is a completely superficial statement I'm making now because of what I'm reading here and in no way means I think you're an awful person but, uhm, why would you tell the world on Grad Café that you have a prestigious NSF fellowship in your signature (i.e. completely out of context) and then emphasize it again in your post? Well, I suppose because you want people to treat you in a certain way, otherwise there would be no need to communicate it to everyone, right? What if some people, including professors A and B got the same vibe and think you might feel entitled to a different treatment which they are not willing to give? 
 
Or a maybe more reasonable explanation for the office hour scenario which is pretty obvious: Maybe other people, who received much better treatment than you did in your perception, emailed the professor in advance and made an appointment for office hours? Not every professor has office hours that are drop-in hours. And if other people announced themselves, they would have been prioritized. Just as a possible alternative explanation. 
 
Right now, you're presenting a general claim and are giving anecdotal evidence in form of 2 situations that you've experienced with 2 of your professors but you're calling the thread "Discrimination against MA students". That's pretty rude and vastly over-generalized, don't you think?
I just think that running into 2 incidences would not make me open a thread about something. I'd first try to find alternative explanations, ask people from my immediate environment (which might be smarter anyways if you're posting with a signature that probably identifies you directly on a public forum), you know, find empirical evidence for the causal claim you're making and then make an appointment with your director of graduate studies or the professors trying to figure out what's been going on.

just as a minor updated, i did end up getting a TA position! 
 
thanks for everyone who helped give me the courage to apply!
 

First, is this still UBC for the PhD? I'd think there would be some form of guaranteed funding. Second, yes, TAing is great experience and something that should be done if you're pursuing an academic career. Third, I don't sympathize with your guilt at all, sorry. You're going into a PhD program; you should be mature enough to be financially independent if you wanted to be.  

You will most likely not find a program that does not have faculty working on new media and how it impacts on culture or society. While reading it, I actually kept thinking what you might want to study in communication that does not have to at least loosely touch on new media technologies and their influences...

You might have not spelled it out for us here but that's such a broad description of your research areas that it will be hard to give you feedback on that.

Yes, we were only talking about our "not qualified" stipend and not about the fellowship money that pays for our tuition, fees, books, travel etc.(because this part of the fellowship is obviously qualified and also labeled as qualified on the tax form, I9...something).

Srsly, just ask yourself whether all the money goes to tuitions and fees and you have receipts / account statements / whatever there is to prove that. In this case you don't pay taxes. Don't get hung up on what they call it. Think about, what it is used for. As I said before, as soon as you spend the money on anything else except tuition, fees, books, it will be considered taxable income. No matter what the school calls it.

Aaaand I just saw you're from Canada. Are you already receiving this? It might even be that you get taxed before payment. Our international students are. The amount depends on the tax treaty conditions. And yes, it is considered fellowship money and no, it is not considered income but they still pay around 15% on it right away.

But hey, I'm collecting degrees in communication and not accounting...

Uhm. To be honest, I haven't read all of what's been written here but I just spotted one of your posts, Wildviolet, which I found quite interesting. You said he doesn't seem to be introvert because he volunteers to mentor incoming students?

I feel like you're totally mixing up two completely disparate things here. Wearing a professional hat, he might have learned to overcome his shyness to some degree (given that we have experienced some acknowledgement for our abilities by now). However, romantic interactions & relationships are a completely different thing.

I think dating in this country is an awfully complicated thing and judging on my experience now, I can see why you are confused about whether the "I am looking forward" line was just him being polite and nice. I've heard quite a few of those and they were mostly just west coast nice formulations. I'm not saying that's the case here but I needed to note that in response to some of the comments saying: guys mostly just say what they think & mean. They don't here. And it's annoying the shit out of me. :/

Then I would suggest not talking about it on GradCafé where you have a picture and a pretty good description of who you are. Given that you sign off on an application saying that you swear to have made all of the statements to your best knowledge blah...

Just saying. People, this is the normal Internet. It is not anonymous.

Edit: Just read Sigaba's post and fully agree...

Uhm. To be honest, I haven't read all of what's been written here but I just spotted one of your posts, Wildviolet, which I found quite interesting. You said he doesn't seem to be introvert because he volunteers to mentor incoming students?

I feel like you're totally mixing up two completely disparate things here. Wearing a professional hat, he might have learned to overcome his shyness to some degree (given that we have experienced some acknowledgement for our abilities by now). However, romantic interactions & relationships are a completely different thing.

I think dating in this country is an awfully complicated thing and judging on my experience now, I can see why you are confused about whether the "I am looking forward" line was just him being polite and nice. I've heard quite a few of those and they were mostly just west coast nice formulations. I'm not saying that's the case here but I needed to note that in response to some of the comments saying: guys mostly just say what they think & mean. They don't here. And it's annoying the shit out of me. :/

Then I would suggest not talking about it on GradCafé where you have a picture and a pretty good description of who you are. Given that you sign off on an application saying that you swear to have made all of the statements to your best knowledge blah...

Just saying. People, this is the normal Internet. It is not anonymous.

Edit: Just read Sigaba's post and fully agree...

I don't get this approach. If you are into him and don't take the time to "pursue him" (say, ask him out on a date or just for coffee), why should he find you worth dating? Being a woman doesn't automatically make me a damsel in distress; I don't need to be rescued by a man, and I'm not a trophy to be pursued.

I'm too lazy to do the whole quoting thing right now:
1.) Define "stronger applicant" because even if this is a PhD program, there are other factors to consider than merely research skills or knowledge in one area.
2.) Your tone and choice of words makes it very obvious that you have a strong opinion about the whole "sneaking" material in as if it would better your chances if people can see more of what you've written. I do not think that quantity of material in whatever form it is, is the issue here at all.
3.) I can totally properly compare the factor "has website". It's a pretty simple dichotomy: yes / no. (or true / false if you are an engineer and like to put it that way).

What you have been circling around all the time and are basing your argumentation on is your opinion about what it means to be the best applicant and what you think schools are looking for. And I am telling you that this is a very naive view of how things work (even in academia). Yeah, I know double blind peer review but come on, in a small scientific community you know who has been doing what kind of research, you know who titles their papers in a certain etc. You also know from which institution they are, who they work with, which grants they have, how visible they are and when it comes down to it all: how well connected someone is.

Now, by no means am I saying that you can network your way into being a successful researcher. However, it is and increasingly will be a factor that is crucial to a successful careers. Does having a well maintained website show that you understood this? – Maybe.
Does not having one if 80% of the other strong applicants have one show that you have either not realized that the Interwebs is a useful tool and/or not spent as much time on your application and/or not thrown all you got in the application process? – I would think so.

Do schools want a student who does exactly what she is supposed to do and does it really well or do schools want someone who does even more than she is supposed to do and still does it really well? Another way of thinking about it... (not saying that it's true but it would be sensible, I'm just crapshooting here).

Aaaand since a lot of this is assuming things that are not known to us, or probably anyone because they are not generalizable at all, it might be best to end this discussion now

I only applied within commuting distance, but I'm not sure my husband is ready. He kind of had to go through this before -- a decade ago -- when I was in med school/residency. I quit that time, since it was not possible to give the kids the attention they needed, so I'm really not prepared to give up my goals again. He'll have to adapt.

I know for a fact that people searched for me online and looked at things on my website beyond what I submitted as part of my application. I agree that it wouldn't be the first thing I'd spend my time on, but I would also not be that pessimistic about the advantages of having a website.

Hey Ly! I am sure I am speaking for all of us Annenberg PhDs when I offer to come talk to us about all of your questions. We're totally happy when our undergrads decide to move on to a PhD!
rhetormethis went straight from undergrad to grad school and is doing great... Send her a pm Or me. Or come downstairs and talk to us, or your TAs.

Well I'm sorry that you think your life is over with 28. I believe there are many grad students out there who will think: "WTF, only 28? Where's the problem?"

I am truly sorry about the rejection, though. However, even the best scores, grades and whatever don't spare you those because you simply cannot fit in perfectly everywhere. And if you would have tailored your SOP perfectly to all schools you might not get happy in these programs since it isn't what you really want to be.

Yay! Optimism!

I went straight from undergrad into a PhD program (I'm actually at USC Annenberg, so if you'd like to PM me I'd be happy to talk to you about it more). There were parts of it that weren't as difficult as I expected it to be and then there were things that ended up being challenges that came out of nowhere.
 
Part of the problem you have starting a PhD program without an MA (although I think this would be less of a problem if you're doing a combined MA/PhD) is that you just aren't anywhere near as familiar with the way academia works, especially at that level. There's also a huge adjustment in the amount of work and reading you're doing and how much of the work is self-directed that's much greater if you're coming straight from undergrad. It's totally do-able though, so if you know a PhD is something you want to do, I wouldn't let the fact that you don't have an MA scare you off from applying straight to PhD programs. What I might do, however, is apply to a mixture of MA, MA/PhD, and PhD programs, so that you've got options.

Actually someone on this forum once said that it's never good to weigh more than two choices against each other because it gets hard to control for certain criteria. This person's advice (which I thought was pretty good) was to always make a decision between two schools as the acceptances come in. If you decide in favor of school B between A & B, why would you suddenly prefer A over school C that just sent an acceptance? It's always good to make the decision as "easy" as possible to that you a) don't get completely overwhelmed and feel shitty and make a good decision you will then be happy with in the long run.

Perfectly okay to ask them, I think. Although at my school, for example, they don't really do ranked wait lists but have a replacement for every student they admit... But call them and ask nicely (in this case I think calling is better because it adds a personal note to it and you can also reassure them that you're interested)

Same, except it's doubly weird because over here in civilisation 20 is well past the drinking age!

Well I'm sorry that you think your life is over with 28. I believe there are many grad students out there who will think: "WTF, only 28? Where's the problem?"

I am truly sorry about the rejection, though. However, even the best scores, grades and whatever don't spare you those because you simply cannot fit in perfectly everywhere. And if you would have tailored your SOP perfectly to all schools you might not get happy in these programs since it isn't what you really want to be.

Yay! Optimism!

Um, what? You think that an unmarried professor is walking around all secretly envious of a married student ... because lack of a spouse represents a "position in life" that one must be  "grumpy" about? Why not take the next leap--this female professor is obviously bitter because she isn't getting laid.
 
Please, we're grad students. Let's not perpetuate such sexist crap.