TakeruK

If there is a conversation with a group of people and then in the middle of that conversation, people switch languages and leave someone out, then yeah, I agree that is rude. But let's say I'm in an office with 4 people and 3 of us speak one language and I decide to start a new conversation with these 2 other people, I don't think it's rude at all to speak in another language with those 2 other people only. Even if I spoke in English, I would still want my conversation to be directed towards those 2 other people only. I would actually say it's rude if the 4th person who just happens to be in the same area joins in without being invited. Here, I'm talking about a directed conversation, not an "open" one where everyone can join in. Maybe I interpreted the OP description differently because my experience with people enacting "language rules" has left me jaded (for the record, I only speak English fluently). Some people seem to think that if they only know English then automatically every conversation that occurs near them must be in English otherwise it's rude because they are being left out. My stance is that this is an incredibly privileged mindset---the English speaker does not have the right to automatically be included in every conversation that happens near them! But on the other hand, if the conversation does include the English-only speaker (or should include the English-only speaker, e.g. it's a group project and the English-only speaker is part of the group), then yes, 100% agree it is rude to speak in a language that a conversation participant does not understand.

Submit it now!! I understand how you are feeling and sometimes I feel the same way. But there is 0% chance that submitting it late will put you in a worse situation than you are now. It might not even make a difference. Things vary from school to school, program to program, but typically, there is a deadline. After the deadline, the admin staff compiles the application materials and sends it to the professors on the committee. Then, the committee finds a time to meet and discuss. The time in between each of these steps can be long because it's hard to get faculty to agree on a date and be all there at the same time. So, if you send it in between one of these steps, the admin staff may be able to update your package before most of the faculty are even able to read it. They might not even know it's late. So, submit it now. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Being in a temperate climate for all of two years of my schooling, I never really thought about this too much. But there are things other than snow days that can unexpectedly cause you to lose class days such as the instructor being sick, family emergencies, conference travel (although usually this is planned in advance), holidays (e.g. maybe you have a course plan fully laid out for a semester with a different number of holidays and now you have fewer class days this time around!). Here, I'm assuming you mean a University or graduate level course, rather than elementary/high school (no experience with the latter!). My advice is to be flexible in course planning. I wouldn't plan every single lecture out ahead of time because something might happen and you might lose a class day. In the classes I TA, I am usually involved with the instructor in deciding what materials to be covered and we usually leave one week at the end unscheduled. This gives us some wiggle room, so that if the class is struggling more than we thought, we can slow down and provide more review material early in the semester, and then push classes back. Or, if something happens and we have to cancel class, we can make it up in this week. If we somehow go through most of the semester without needing the extra classes, then we can introduce new "bonus" material. In senior and graduate classes, we often have a final project rather than a final exam, so the final week can also be workshop time to work on these projects. Another suggestion is to simply skip the class and cover less material than originally planned. This doesn't work unless you have control over the curriculum though. But I am of the opinion that an instructor should tailor each course to the interests of their students, so maybe not everything is required and even if you had all of your classes run, you would be choosing to highlight certain topics more than others anyways. For graduate level courses, my experience is that we often vote on a "backup class time slot" that everyone is available for in cases where something like this happens. I've never had a graduate class where the instructor was there for 100% of the scheduled class dates because conferences always run during the semester (so either class is cancelled/moved [because often the students in the class are also at the same conference], or we get a guest speaker, or classes rescheduled to another week). Finally, for another option, you can also just assign reading material for the missed class and expect students to learn it on their own. Maybe have extra office hours the following week for those who have questions.

I also agree with all of the above. I changed my opinion of several schools after visiting and the change was much larger than I had anticipated!

This is a tricky situation and I know it's a common topic of debate at my school and other schools too. I'll just present my opinions: 1. If you are uncomfortable about something, you should certainly express your discomfort. However, simply doing so doesn't mean that other people are obligated to change their actions. Also, I would ask you to first seriously reflect on exactly what is making you uncomfortable. If it's because you're being left out, then present it that way, instead of saying "I don't want you to speak your language around me" 2. I agree with PoliticalOrder---I don't know why you say it's "rude" to speak another language around someone who doesn't understand it. It's not rude. It's everyone's right to speak whatever language they want. 3. I do think that not including you is not very nice though. But I don't think you should think of this as a language issue. Because even if they were all speaking English, a group of people can still bully and exclude another person. 4. This is becoming a big debate in my hometown too---about 80% of people living there do not speak English as their first language (this is not to say that they don't speak English, but instead to say that they all know another language well). In some areas of town, there are store signs and businesses operating almost solely in another language. Some people who only speak English are getting upset because they don't understand the store signs. But I don't agree with them. I don't think a person has a right to always be in a place where they understand everything around them. I think it's a very privileged position to have, and I don't think it's right for an English speaking person to always be able to understand everything they see and everyone they interact with. 5. Some labs/groups here have "language rules" where you can only speak English in the lab. I disagree with these rules strongly but I have no power to do anything about it. I think it is important, for things like safety and science communication that all scientific conversations (or e.g. while doing an experiment) is in a language where everyone who needs know what's going can understand. But if you're in the lab, just joking around with a friend, or having a casual conversation, I don't think there should be language rules. 6. Finally, I think it's really important to think about it from the other person's point of view. In my department, there is a large group of international students that primarily speak Mandarin (there's also a sizable French speaking group too). I don't speak Mandarin. For most department socials, all language groups mix relatively well. When there was a lot of debate on campus recently about language issues like this, I asked some of my Mandarin speaking friends what they think. Their answer was profound (to me anyways). They say that they feel stunted or limited when speaking English. To them, they learned it growing up because it was the language of science, the language of work. So, they are fluent and gladly speak English for scientific communication, but they cannot properly express themselves in English. They say it's a lot more difficult for them to express sympathy for their friends, express their emotions, make jokes, and basically all of the other things people use language for other than strict communication. When I realised this was when I realised that it is wrong to require someone to only speak a certain language. In my opinion, doing so limits their ability to be themselves, and I would never want to do that. It's not right for me to ask someone to do this just because I want to know what they are saying.

Most schools do not fly international students (except for nearby countries like Canada, Mexico, etc.) for visits. My school has a reimbursement limit of $300 for flights. Most schools offer somewhere between $300 and $500 for these trips. The only international students that visit are from these nearby countries, or if they are already in the US (e.g. they are at a US undergrad school), or if they are combining multiple school visits in one trip. What I would recommend is first ask. They will probably say there is a limit of X dollars. Then, see if they are open to the idea to splitting costs with multiple schools (the schools don't even need to be in the area, as long as they are on the same coast, it would probably save money). Then, see if you can move the visits so that they are all back to back. You might have to pay out of pocket for a few days in between visits but you can make it into a vacation. You might also have to visit on days other than the official visit days. No harm in asking!!

I agree with you that getting a PhD from a better school maximizes your potential for any goal. But I am sure you would agree that there are such things as diminishing returns and that there are other costs to attending a better ranked school as well. For example, let's say for an example applicant, attending School A increases your chances of getting a TT job by X% compared to attending School B. But, for this same applicant, they have a lot of other personal reasons to prefer to be at School B. Maybe a partner has a job in that city. Maybe they prefer the weather. Maybe they have family nearby. Maybe they prefer living in B rather than A. So, then whether the X% increase in chances is worth the whatever decrease in happiness is worth it is dependent on each applicant. It's a personal decision---I don't think it's correct to generally say it's always better for the applicant to attend the school that maximizes their chances of acheiving their career goal. In my opinion, it's better to attend the school that maximizes your overall happiness (and yes, achieving career goals contributes to happiness, but I personally would take a decrease in TT chances in order to avoid living in certain areas, for example). And by "diminishing returns" I mean that X% is a number that also changes based on what kind of jobs you're looking at. For example, using the same names as above, when it comes to placement at the very best schools, X% might be a large number, but if you are looking at small schools that aren't as well ranked, then School A and School B might look more similar to a hiring committee. In regards to your last paragraph, yes I agree that we don't know any of this other information about a person's goals and motivations. However, if we only use the limited information (i.e. the only two choices are UBC and U of A) then I would still say picking any one of the two choices will have a higher chance of getting a TT job than picking none of them (since this would be 0% chance). In addition, the original question is not "how do I best maximize my chances of getting a TT job?" (if this were the question, then I'd agree that a better ranked school would further increase the chances) but it is "out of these two options, which one has the better placement rate?". So, I don't think "none of the above" is a good answer to a question that asks to pick one out of two.

I did something like this. One difference is that for me, these were post-acceptance visits (for the purpose of recruitment), not pre-acceptance interviews. But they were still interviews in the sense that this is your first in-person contact with potential advisors and both faculty and students use this as a chance to determine who they would want to work with. Anyways, I was in Eastern Canada and I had two visits to schools in the Southwest: one in Arizona and one in California. They each had different restrictions on how much they would reimburse and what they would reimburse. I contacted each school separately and asked whether or not they would be able to reimburse me if I split the costs between the two schools and save both the schools and myself some money (and lots of time). I was 100% upfront with everything and both schools said "we'll do it if the other school agrees" so that worked out. The Arizona school paid for the flight to Arizona, half of the flight to California, and all expenses in Arizona (I stayed at a grad student's home). The California school paid for half of the flight from Arizona to California and the flight from California back to where I was living. They also paid for expenses in California (e.g. food). There were two extra things I had to do to make this work out. First, I had to remove the days in between visits. So, I asked the Arizona school if I could visit a few days later (they originally scheduled a visit for me for a Thursday & Friday and I asked if I could visit instead on the following Monday & Tuesday). So I arrived in Arizona on Sunday night, did my Monday & Tuesday visit, flew to California on Wednesday, and did my California school visit on Thursday & Friday. The second thing I had to do was ask for more money from the California school. They were originally only going to reimburse up to $300 for travel, and flights from Canada are easily over $700 roundtrip. However, they normally put visiting students in a hotel. I actually had a friend who was already a grad student in the very same program, so I asked if I could get another $100 towards airfare if I stayed at my friends' place instead of the hotel. So, with those two changes, I was able to get everything paid for and it was win-win-win for me, the California school and the Arizona school. Submitting receipts afterwards was also an extra challenge because each school wanted me to prove that the other school is paying their half too, but both schools worked at different paces so it took a little bit extra bookkeeping. But it was worth it. So my advice for you would be: 1. Be upfront with the schools on what you are doing. 2. Consider asking the schools to move your dates (although for an interview, this might be tougher) in order to make it work. The school might choose to reschedule in order to save money for them too. See also the note below. 3. Keep very very careful documentation of everything and be very clear in your communications, especially after the travel and you need to submit expense reports, on exactly what each school is paying for. Especially for the split expenses, you're now working with two potentially different sets of travel policies! 4. Keep every receipt, and ask for itemized receipts for everything just in case one of the schools needs it. Final note: I would not be surprised if all of the schools refused/declined to pay for the hotel nights for the days in between visits. Even though it might save them money to do this instead of flying you cross-country round-trip, due to the source of the funding, they may not be able to pay for extra hotel nights. When dates don't match up on an audit report, some schools are not able to justify that expense for the interview weekend. Such is bureaucracy I mean, you can and should ask. But depending on how many nights you need to stay in between the schools, you might be better off flying back and forth. You can also consider paying some nights out of pocket and make it into a mini vacation---an extra day in Los Angeles or San Francisco (either to be a tourist or to scout out potential places to live) isn't a bad idea. Remember that if your visit is a Wednesday & Thursday, and if the school is already paying for your hotel (or arranging other accommodations) then you should be covered for Tuesday night through Thursday night, typically. So, how many extra hotel nights would there be?

Your stress is legitimate! You are not crazy!! I have not been in your situation but I think you have every reason to be stressed and worried. And I also think you should have much more support from your program director. The director has no right to tell you to "put it off". I argue a lot for student parent rights on my campus and whenever a faculty member makes frustrating comments like "grad school is not the right time to have children", my response is to tell them directly: "Faculty members should not dictate students' reproductive choices" or something to that effect. I don't have any advice for you regarding whether or not to continue because I don't think I'm in a position to give this advice. As @St Andrews Lynx said, the right choice is the best choice for you. However, I could provide some suggestions on where to get help on campus. Unfortunately, it sounds like your department is not supportive at all. This must be very frustrating because I feel that most students identify most with their own departments, and it must be very disappointing to find out that your own program doesn't have your back. But usually, there are other resources on campus. Can you talk to your school's Graduate Office, or similar entity? At my school, this would be the right office to talk to in order to get support on issues like this. The Dean at my school would talk to your department (with your consultation and permission) and mediate some kind of agreement to first help the faculty understand that they have no right to comment on your reproductive choices and second to work out a fair compromise between the research & course commitments and the time you need for your treatments. This might mean ensuring that you are not over-worked compared to your TA/RA appointment and maybe a reduction in course load. It could also mean some combination of this and taking a formal leave of absence. You might want to know that Pregnancy and Parental status are protected by Title IX laws---your program cannot discriminate against you for it (however, unfortunately, I don't think there are any laws about trying to get pregnant, but a reasonable person should extend the idea behind the Title IX laws to your situation.) Edit to add: Also, the graduate office can also do things like help you break the news to your department and ask for help (it doesn't have to be them coming in as the "calvary"!) They likely have helped students through similar things in the past and they might even be able to help you identify an ally on the faculty side that you can approach first. Other resources (if your graduate office doesn't do things like this) may be your school's Diversity Center, Women's Center, Counseling Center, Health Center etc.)

Don't do this. What would happen is that both schools (and the faculty involved) would be expecting you to keep your word when you say you want to work with them. They will allocate money and time to pay you and supervise you. Then, when you eventually tell one school that you lied to them and aren't actually going to be attending their program, they will be upset with you. They might have declined another student in order to make room for you in their group/lab. Now, that other student might have gone elsewhere and they might not have any good candidates at all. You will burn bridges at that department. And, to be honest, Canada is a pretty small academic community, and given that Ottawa and Toronto are close in proximity, there may be plenty of Southern Ontario academic events. So the faculty at the two places will know each other and people will know what you did. Don't do it. Instead, take whatever time you need to make a final decision. Talk to both programs. Ask them questions. Tell them that you're deciding between these two. Maybe ask if you can visit and see the labs, meet the people, see the city. If you are waiting to hear back from a 3rd school, find out when that school will give you their decision and ask Toronto & Ottawa to extend the deadline. Is there another factor (e.g. a partner's admission status) that is preventing you from making a decision at this point? I don't know what you mean by "too early"---in my opinion, the only time it's "too early" is when you are missing some information. But if you are not waiting for a decision from another school/person, and if the only missing information is some unanswered questions from Toronto and Ottawa, then there's nothing stopping you from asking them!

Yes, but as ultraultra says, it depends on the OP's goals. If you want to just work at any school in Canada, then the placement record is pretty good. I agree with you that since top Canadian schools are not competitive with top US schools (across almost all fields---at UBC Physics, almost all of the professors have PhDs from top US schools), if your goal is to end up on the TT at top international schools, then there are many choices better than UBC. But this isn't everyone's goal!

Also, as Neist pointed out, read the text of the CGS resolution carefully. There are a few caveats in addition to the voluntary nature: 1. It's not the entire school that signs the agreement, it's only the Graduate School division/office/faculty (or whatever entity that is part of the Council of Graduate Schools) of that school that is part of this agreement. This means that programs in things like Education, Public Health, Social Work, Health Science, Business, Law, etc. that are typically outside of the Graduate School's purview are not part of this agreement. 2. The resolution only applies to offers of funding support, not offers of admission. So, in your case, it sounds like they have offered you admission but no funding. They are asking you to apply for funding. To me, this means that they are not subject to this CGS resolution because they aren't offering you money. Of course, once they do offer you money if their program signed onto the agreement, then they should give you until 4/15 to decide if you want to accept the GSA position. So, I think the first thing you should do is ask whether applying for funding constitutes accepting their offer. It might not be so. I think it's bad practice for programs to require students to accept an offer before they learn about funding, but there's nothing stopping programs from bad practices

When you got the interview information, did you get background info / context on the rationale behind choosing your interviewers? For example, for one school that interviewed me prior to their decision (via Skype), they told me that the profs interviewing are selected from the admissions committee and there would not be overlap between my interests and their interests. I think they might even do this on purpose, because you tend to like people with similar interests better, and it's easier to find interviews that don't have the same interests as each candidate than it is to find someone with the same interests for each candidate. However, if the point of this visit/interview is to meet potential people to work with, then you should probably ask if you can meet your POI. It's weird that if this is a recruitment visit (as well as an interview) that the people organizing the schedule did not ask who you wanted to meet with. I think the first thing you should do is email the person that sent you the schedule and ask if it would be possible to meet with your POI. I think this is the best because your POI is probably meeting with a lot of other people and it's easier when one person manages all of the faculty's schedules. If they cannot do this, then asking for an informal meeting like nevermind suggested is a good idea too!

Usually, in Canada, similar to Europe, the PhD application process is more like a job offer where an graduate admission offer is often tied to a research position in a lab/group and that lab/group might have an agreement to sign to join that lab. Or, this could be due to the fact that your school has RA or TA unionized (most schools in Canada do) and this formal contract is just part of the paperwork. A "letter of agreement" could mean a lot of things---if you don't mind sharing some of the details of the letter (either here or via private message), maybe people can help you figure out what the letter is saying.

I guess it's a difference of field. Usually the papers in my field say something like "Author A is grateful for funding from Grant #123, Author B is grateful for funding from Grant #456" etc. Typically, "Author A" is just going to be the initials of the author. And typically, you don't list every single grant that every single author has, only the grants that fund work used directly in this paper and grants which the authors are the PI of. So, normally you do not see more than 1 or 2 grant acknowledgements (unless it's a special paper that combines the data from many authors, each of whom has their own grant to get the data in the first place). My collaboration groups typically contain people across many institutions and funding sources, but I know that elsewhere in my field, if the same grant funds the entire project, it's true that the acknowledgements will not name the PI specifically and just say "The authors are thankful for funding from XYZ" (e.g. if it's a paper with a PI, their grad student and a postdoc funded by the same grant).

First, I want to say: Ask your advisor for the best advice on the specifics of your field (and they would know your situation a lot better). Here is what I think, from the point of view of a third party: I think that since you did not write a major part of the grant itself, and because you are not a Co-Investigator, you cannot claim "authorship credit" for the grant, unfortunately. At least, you should not list this grant under a heading like "Grants awarded" or "Awards received" etc. However, if you want to indicate that your project was cool enough that it received such a grant, I would note it under the description of your research project. In my field, I might make a note like "Projected funded by NASA Origins grant" etc. To me, co-PI and Co-I are different things. I think that Co-PI means the PI role is shared between 2 or more people (think of it like co-first-authorship). On the other hand, Co-Is are more like coauthors on a paper---they might contribute to a specific part of the proposal and if funded, they might be responsible for completing a specific part of the project (rather than managing the whole project). In my opinion, I think like the big difference between "Co-I" and "Participant" (could also be called "Trainee" or "Student" or "Other Personnel") is that a Co-I has some stake in the grant as well, while "Participant"/"Student"/etc. are personnel that will work on the funded grant. As such, many grants (and also institutions) have policies that do not allow graduate students to be a "Co-I" on certain external grants. In some sense, the grant is actually awarded to the school to be disbursed to the investigators, so if you "own" a part of the grant, then you may be considered an employee, and also your actions (e.g. mismanaging) the grant can have negative implications for the school. On the other hand, if you are simply a graduate student working on a project funded by the grant, you're not responsible for grant management and there's liability to the school. For example, there is a fellowship awarded by NASA to students in Earth & Planetary Sciences that is funded as a grant. The instructions make it very very clear that the student must write the entire proposal by themselves (input from advisor is OK but they cannot write any part of it). All of the legwork in putting together the documents is on the student. And the grant is evaluated like a fellowship (we submit LORs and transcripts too). However, when you submit the actual grant proposal, the faculty member is the PI. The student is listed in the role of "Student", not Co-I. The grant comes with a small research budget that is meant for the student to use as desired (usually for conference travel) but as the PI, only the faculty member can actually authorize disbursement of these funds. One notable thing (and I think this is part of the difference between Co-I and "student" roles) is that if I wanted to change projects, since the grant is attached to the faculty member + project, the grant can be easily reassigned to another graduate student who will replace me on the original proposed project. (For what it's worth, since this grant is effectively a fellowship that comes in a research grant form, I would list it in a CV the same way as I would any other scholarship/fellowship). Maybe for an internal grant, things work differently and you are allowed to be a Co-I on your school's internal grant. After all, it's a lot less liability because an external funding agency isn't involved. So again, ask your advisor for the best practice in your field. But typically, for an external grant in my field, it's very very rare for graduate students to be at the Co-I level (unless it's a grant specifically for student PIs) and a little rare for students to have contributed enough to a grant that one would put it under a "Grants awarded" type section in a CV.

Don't panic! This is pretty early in the season for our field. Of course, it's always a good idea to have backup plans, but don't count yourself out yet!

I also second the advice to take the time to visit and make a decision based on your experience there. I've found that, especially in academia, there can be many pockets where there are very strong and passionate opinions. Sometimes it's the University "vs" the town, sometimes it's even differences between disciplines on campus. And, in some cases, all of these strong and different opinions mix together in a healthy way, while in other places, they cause a lot of friction and tension. I think it's really important to go to a place that you are comfortable in. This is not to say that you must go to a place where everyone believes exactly the same thing as you. But to me, I need to be in a place where I can feel comfortable expressing myself and not feel like I have to hide who I am in order to not piss off the faculty or my colleagues. What comfort looks like is a personal choice that is best observed by visiting and being yourself One last point: I guess this will depend a lot on your field and also your personality, but I personally don't think the "school's" political leanings make a real big difference to my day-to-day life, so it didn't really matter much for me. For example, I would describe myself as a fairly liberal person but I think the governing bodies of my school is fairly conservative. This leads to occasional frustration where the governing body (e.g. The Board of Trustees) refuse to act on some issues. For example, when the California State Assembly was debating AB2350 in 2014 (a bill to prevent pregnancy discrimination by mandating certain protections for pregnant graduate students), there was a group asking for schools to sign on in support of this bill. Many schools did, but my school refused to get involved. However, my school's current policies already exceeds the minimum requirements mandated by AB2350 (and recently, they even increased paid maternity leave). The school just did not want to get involved and "take sides". I mention this because even knowing the way my school prefers to operate politically, I would still recommend my school to someone like me. Yes, you will be occasionally frustrated here, but it's not something that affects your day-to-day life. And to be honest, my interactions with other schools' board of trustees (or similar governing bodies) tend to be more conservative. I know that some of the schools discussed here are far more conservative than the schools I've experienced though, so maybe that would affect your day-to-day life there! Also, while not completely divorced, I think some scientific fields (such as mine) are less related to political viewpoints so it's not common for politics to come up in conversation.

Yes, you can always ask. However, I do not think that right now is not a good time to be asking. If you want actual useful feedback that can help you in future years, I would wait until after April 15. Maybe at the end of April or early May (once all of the April 15 last minute chaos is over), send the program an email thanking them for considering you this year and ask if there is any feedback available because you hope to apply again next year. I think this is a better method because: 1) This is a very busy time for the admissions staff since they are likely organizing visits and fielding queries from the accepted students. You will be a much lower priority and it is likely that you will either get no response, or a very vague/useless response. 2) It can be misconstrued as an appeal for admission (i.e. whatever they say, there is a chance that the asker will try to refute them or make an argument for reconsideration). So, schools will be less likely to give details/reasons for fear that you will use it against them. 3) After April 15, you should know the result from all of your applications. If you did end up accepting an offer from somewhere else, then you no longer need to know the reasons for being rejected at another school. You will save both you and the school a lot of work if you do not ask about rejection reasons until you knew for sure you would be re-applying for Fall 2017. I also think that feedback for reapplying next year is the only valid reason to ask for rejection reasons. So, waiting until after you know for sure you must reapply also shows the school that your request is sincere and it will hopefully motivate them to help you by providing useful feedback. --- All of that said, you should still be prepared for the possibility that you will not get a response or that the response won't be very useful. I don't think many schools keep detailed notes on each applicant's profile so you will not be able to learn what the faculty discussed about you (and even if they did, it's unlikely they would share this information). Also, for fear of litigation, some schools might refrain from telling you about any of the subjective considerations and they might just tell you quantitative numbers that are objectively true, but not always useful (for example, they might say things like "your GPA was lower compared to the accepted candidates" etc.) I say it's not as useful because admissions are considered holistically so a low GPA is usually not enough to completely break your application, but if it's the only objective/quantitative detail they can disclose, it could sound like that was the main reason. However, after April 15, you really have nothing to lose by asking, so I would encourage you to do it if you need to reapply for Fall 2017. In the ideal world, a polite request after April 15 from those who need it would get a helpful response from a faculty member interested in that student. I hope that if I ever become a faculty member, I would be able to provide helpful feedback to unsuccessful candidates that were interested in my group, but I don't know how realistic this goal is. Good luck!

Yes, send them an email to be sure. I would wait until either: 1) It's been 5 business days since the score report was sent or 2) It's the last business day before the deadline, whatever is earlier. I have a similar problem, but with my middle name: I have a two-word middle name (it's not two middle names, just one that's two words long!) and this got my transcripts matching confused at some schools. I emailed and checked and learned that a human did properly match it, but the online system won't show that since it was manually matched.

I was surprised to realise this too when I started my MSc! Also, the jackets-in-shopping-cart thing, it's been almost 4 years since I last lived in a place with snow and I realised I completely forgot what I did with my coat during the 2 years in Ontario. Even after reading the tip to put jackets in carts, I had to think back to my old shopping trips before I realised that yes, that was actually what I did. Shopping baskets just don't work!

I agree that it's okay to gauge spoken language skills for graduate student admissions. I even think it's okay to interview specifically for this purpose only. But, I don't think it's okay to single out international students for just a language interview. If they want to ensure that a candidate has strong enough spoken language skills, they must apply the same screening to all candidates and treat everyone the same/fairly.

If the interview is the 2nd week of February, I would not follow up until the end of January Good luck!

I think that ultimately, you have to do what the PI wants because the PI chooses the direction of the lab and also your research. However, I think the PI is not acting in good form here. The point of training PhD students, in my opinion, is to develop them into independent researchers, not to use them as cheap labour for your own scientific goals. I also think that this is a big sign of a bad fit between the level of independence you want and the level of independence your PI is offering. I don't know if this is the only problem you've had with your PI so far? If it's not, then I would seriously consider switching to a different lab. When I worked for a PI that was a bad fit, it made my life miserable, impacted my ability to do science and impacted my ability to be happy even outside of the lab. No science is worth that, to me, so I switched. In my case, the prof wasn't a bad person, just not a good direct supervisor for me---that prof still mentored and advised me in other ways.

Good point! I was thinking advisor = academic advisor instead of research advisor (since it's more common to say "supervisor" in Canada).