goldheartmountaintop

It doesn't! I've never heard of a program not accepting anyone because they have an MA (whether from Canada or elsewhere). Half of my cohort of eight has an MA (myself included). By the way, I'm also Canadian, and I'm currently doing my PhD in the US after doing my BA and MA in Canada. Feel free to PM me if you want!

Congrats!! I'm currently in the program (and also specialize in morphosyntax/fieldwork, re: your earlier post about Rutgers), feel free to PM me if you have any questions!

The notifications are coming out slightly later than usual this year. I believe the adcom is meeting sometime mid-next week!

Typically they invite a "shortlist" of students to their open house in March and admit a subset of these students. I'm under the impression that they do this every year (someone correct me if I'm wrong), so, unless they totally changed things around this year, I think your POI was talking about the open house decisions. I guess you'll see soon enough, in any case!

I don't think this is true! Not in my experience, anyway -- I've never approached anyone and I'm also an international student (and I was also accepted to UBC, one of the schools you listed). So don't lose hope!

Sorry for derailing the thread for a sec, but this bothers me and I feel like it should be addressed. Most people do find grad school stressful, especially at first, including people who have already breezed through grad courses as undergrads. The expectations are just different, both from faculty and from yourself, and there's a lot of pressure in doing high quality research while juggling your other program requirements/your life. I would suggest waiting until you've been in grad school for awhile to adopt this kind of attitude (though even then it's still kind of ill-advised). Back to the original thread: I am in the same boat as others, coffee-wise! Inexplicably, drinking coffee (even one cup) gives me shoulder tension (?) and toothaches. Does anyone else experience this? But I can drink cups upon cups of black tea (which I do), with no problem, so it seems to be coffee-specific, rather than a caffeine thing.

I'm a Canadian citizen in grad school in the US. I agree with fuzzylogician on most points, but I wanted to clarify/expand on some things: 1) Here's roughly how the F-1 stuff works: You submit a request for a SEVIS I-20 form and it gets mailed to you sometime in the summer. You have to get it signed at the International Students Office of your school every six months if you're travelling to Canada or Mexico (1 year, everywhere else), and also have to bring this form with you whenever you travel outside of the US. Finally, shortly after you cross the US border for the first time, you have to fill out some online forms, also through SEVIS. You don't go through the embassy at all (you also don't have to do much at the border). I forget some of the details now but I think this is pretty much it. It's very straightforward! 2) You can get an SSN now as an F-1 student (as of this year), which makes filing taxes easier than with just an ITIN. Otherwise, my experiences were the same as fuzzy's re: not really needing an SSN. 3) You can get a cellphone contract (I did). The only problem was that, because I didn't have an American credit score (my Canadian credit doesn't transfer), I had to choose a particularly strict contract with some annoying features (like automatic payment). I'm using Sprint; not sure about other companies. One annoying thing about Sprint in particular is that I don't have cell service in Canada at all (apparently T-Mobile and other phone companies are different, though). When I'm in Canada, I have a very cheap monly plan with an old phone I had lying around (I can activate it whenever I want and it lasts for a month). 4) No social problems at all! 5) Re: surprising things about living in the US, I can't think of much. I live in Mass., and I find that it's culturally very similar to southern Ontario (where I'm from originally), though there are some small differences like the currency and using the imperial system. There are some annoying things about being a student in the US that I didn't really know about, like having to file both Canadian and American taxes, but this wasn't a big deal in the end. Also, I had to decline my SSHRC fellowship and accept a smaller one because the one I originally received doesn't transfer out of Canada; the same might go for NSERC but I'm not sure. Hope this helps! Feel free to PM me if you have any other questions. Ultimately, I find that, once you get past the first week or so of dealing with moving to a new country, living in the US as a Canadian is quite comparable to living in a different part of Canada.

International student here! This is correct. Some schools will reimburse you only up to a certain amount (at MIT during my cycle, it was $400 per person), so it won't cover your entire airfare if you're coming from/returning overseas, but works out if you're visiting multiple schools in North America. It's possible that some schools will totally reimburse you regardless of cost, but I haven't experienced this/don't know which ones do. Re: timing of open houses, a lot of depts seem to often plan their open houses so that there's little/no overlap with other depts and occur relatively sequentially, which makes going on an open house "tour" easier. Alternatively, if you find that the schedules are quite inconvenient financially, you can opt out of the open house (if it's for admitted applicants, not shortlisted interviewees), and arrange to visit independently.

Unfortunately, the admissions process there (possibly in many Canadian programs) is a bit different, in that the waitlisted people can be contacted as late as July/August (I know someone who was contacted late summer). Unfortunately, when people get off the waitlist really depends on how the admissions process is going (i.e. how quickly admittees make their decisions and when they inform the department). So I don't think it hurts to leave your application there for now, but do be aware that you could find out ANYTIME, including after April 15.

I guess this depends on what your estimated budget is! I'm living at the Cambridge/Somerville border and I think the prices might be comparable-ish to Allston/Brighton? If so, my room/apartment is on the expensive side compared to most of my classmates', but still affordable enough that my dept's funding package covers all my living expenses fairly easily. Keep in mind that the listings you see now (assuming you're looking for places online, like on Craigslist or whatever) may not totally reflect what you will see during the spring/summer, just because there will be so many (like, SO many) more rooms/apts available later.

Hi, I did my undergrad and my MA at U of T in a humanities/social sciences department. I chose to go elsewhere for my PhD for various reasons (one being the academic incest issue), but I actually had a really great time in my department and would have been quite happy to stay, so I guess people's experiences vary. I second what a previous poster said above about seeing whether you can meet with a few current grad students in your department. Additionally, some departments pay for potential students to visit, so you could try to set such a visit up and see for yourself what the culture seems to be (and you seem to live in Toronto or have family there, so it would probably be pretty easy to set up a departmental visit!). A few questions you might find useful to consider in making your decision: - Re: funding, if you don't find your funding package to be very competitive, you should consider how simple/difficult it might be to supplement it. Are you eligible for SSHRC? OGS? Are you able to take additional TA-ships, say, over the summertime (most people in my department were able to do this) or at UTM/UTSC? Are you able to get an RA-ship? Can you get an instructorship at any point? - Re: culture, I agree with this comment from your original post: "I found the education of very high quality but the support lacking," but would like to note that I experienced much greater support and much fewer bureaucratic issues as a graduate student than when I was in undergrad. This is partly because a lot of the admin issues I had as an undergrad were dealt with through my college, not through my department. How big is the graduate department that you're potentially interested in? What's the approximate faculty to student ratio? How many students do your POIs generally supervise? I can't really say anything about the other departments/schools you're interested in, but I hope this helps! Feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

Longforit, I did my BA and MA at Toronto (I'm now at MIT). Feel free to PM me if you have any questions about the program/the admissions process/the city!

Well, I can't speak for everyone, but I have found that, both times I applied, I applied to way fewer schools than I had originally planned to. Both times it was some combination of money, effort, time, early application deadlines, school getting in the way, second thoughts on research fit, etc. So I don't think there's really anything wrong with planning to apply to 10-12 schools (and in fact it's a good thing because you'll have done research on all these schools), but you might find once you start writing your applications that certain schools on your list just don't appeal to you anymore, or you just don't want to go through the application process 10-12 times (it's a lot of work!).

I second 4-5. I applied to only two (partly out of sheer laziness) and waiting was TERRIBLE.

I think I'm looking at a busy summer, so I chose 30-40 hours. I'll be writing my MA thesis and gearing up for a conference, plus I have two summer RA-ships.