TakeruK

I know we are talking about a third party here and I'm not really advocating that you take one course of action or another, especially not on behalf of someone who may not want you to do anything. But I do feel the need to clarify (in case it's useful for other readers or future situations): Title IX does protect against comments like "If I had known you were going to get pregnant, I would not have accepted you!" and other similar things like "I think women grad students are a bad idea because they get pregnant and leave". They do not have to be directed at any particular person and the pregnant student does not have to prove that the professor has done something to sabotage her (e.g. gave a poor grade just because she is pregnant). I believe that the comments mentioned here would contribute to creating an bad environment for pregnant students, and that is something actionable by the Title IX office. But not all actions by the Title IX office are punishments. At my school, the most common outcome is the Title IX office calling the professor (or whoever the offender was) into their office to have a conversation. Basically, it could be something like training/education to help the offender realise what they are doing wrong. Not everything the Title IX office does results in a full investigation with discipline.

Your CGS-M research proposal is not binding. Especially if you are applying as an undergraduate, there is no expectation that you will carry out the research in your CGS-M proposal during the tenure of your CGS-M award. So, it would be a good idea to structure your CGS-M proposal around one of the five institutions you're applying to with the CGS-M, but you don't even have to do that. My CGS-M proposal was very different from what I actually did in my Masters degree. My CGS-D proposal is also very different than what I am doing in my PhD (but for the Doctorate awards, you must file a new description of project if you change supervisors/projects).

You can mention poster presentations if you are already using a sentence to talk about other presentations or outcomes. For example, if you are writing about the outcomes of a project and you say something like "I gave an oral presentation about this work at Student Meeting X", you can then append something like "and a poster presentation at Regional Conference Y". Or if you are using some space to discuss presentation experience, you can just mention that you have presented posters. But you can also not include this information and just leave it in the CV.

Professional programs like the OP wrote about might be different than research-PhD programs (your sidebar says Oceanography, so I'm assuming you are applying to research PhD programs). As others said, the research programs tend to be a lot more flexible (and they tend to follow the April 15 convention if in the US/North America). It's a little more complicated if applying outside of the US as well, but should you get a deadline from a non-US school before you hear back from your US school, you should definitely ask for more time (and give the reason why). Also, if it's past the normal time for the US school to get back to you (e.g. the Results survey here says answers by February but it's already mid-March) then it's also reasonable to email the schools you're waiting from to hear an update (you might find out you're already rejected but just not yet informed).

The norms are probably in different fields so I can't comment on the consequences and such. But a question would be: When do you have to make a decision on your offer to American? If there is a strict deadline, can you ask them to extend it? If the deadline is far away, then I think it's best to tell American that yes, you are interested and that you will spend time thinking about the decision. Meanwhile, you can wait until Fletcher makes its decision about the waitlist. Again, different fields here, but in a lot of other fields, schools agree to the same decision deadline (April 15) so that students can always make the best choice. But not all schools do this and many of us face similar dilemmas. I guess, at this point, I don't understand why you need to tell American anything at all (unless of course, your deadline with them is coming up fast!)

I found something that backs up what I was saying, in case you were interested in something more concrete than a random internet person's thoughts :) http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/dcl-know-rights-201306-title-ix.html

This is the nature of academia. There will always be a scarcity of resources and thus competition for them. But there can be healthy competition and unhealthy ones. I don't think this in itself is a sign of a unhealthy environment unless the department is actively encouraging direct competition between students or if you feel that the students are competitive with each other. Responding to your points (and building on what telkanuru said): 1. I know it's easy to resent the other student, but it's very likely that the other student was told the exact same things by CoolProf. How would you feel if the roles were switched and this other student resented you for no reason? I second telkanuru's advice here, especially the never bring up the topic again. 2. I don't know all of the details (and you don't have to provide them) but I don't really think anything unethical or fishy happened. There was no commitment from either party to you joining the group/lab. But you don't know for sure that the other programs would have been as good for you. In fact, I would say that self-doubt and uncertainty that you picked the "right program" is a very common feeling in the first semester of grad school. You are now in a prestigious programs with a ton of other opportunities that a ton of other people would really want. You didn't get your first choice advisor? Oh well. There are so many other great things you can do there! 3. I feel that you are being too rigid and inflexible here. It sounds like you are still trying to plan a way to get back into your original area of interest after grad school? This would be treating your grad school time as a "detour" or "side project". But honestly, this is now your new career path. Graduate school is where your research career really begins. I know that a ton of new grad students often feel like they must continue whatever interests they had before grad school or whatever work they did before grad school. But in many cases, this is because they are familiar with that first (few) thing(s) they did and/or it's the only thing they know really well. Try new things within the field and be more open minded about what could interest you. It might help to think about what aspects about the work with Cool Prof that interested/excited you and then find new advisors/work that can meet those interests. 4. For now, move on from Cool Prof's area. Instead of thinking about what could have been or might have been, focus on the present and the future. Now that you are here, in this great school, with great faculty members, what else interests you? Maybe there are certain things happening here that can't happen elsewhere? Take advantage of this opportunity. In my field, after 2-3 years as a PhD student, it's a good idea to start taking on side projects and establish yourself in more than one area (well, you would be "established" in your dissertation's area of research but then near the end you should be trying to get your feet wet in other areas too). If this applies to your field too, then maybe you can do something with Cool Prof as a side project or a mini project in 2-3 years. Even if you can't do direct work with Cool Prof in the future, it would certainly be the right time to start talking to Cool Prof and Cool Prof's group about their work and get the advice you're seeking. --- Overall, academic careers are not meant to be single-tracked. You don't just pick an area of specialization and then stick with it forever, unless you are supremely talented and supremely lucky. Academics must be flexible. Even if you were to work with Cool Prof, what happens if you can't win grants to pay for your work with Cool Prof? Or if you do have funding from Cool Prof (or elsewhere), what if you don't win postdoc fellowships that allow you to work on what you want? You might be working as a postdoc for a department or supervisor that wants you to be doing something different. If you are not able to diversify and develop flexibility in what you do, you are closing off opportunities for yourself later on, which means you are decreasing the already low chances of a career in academia. Beyond these considerations, there are others too---what if you really want to work in Area X but all the profs in Area X are jerks (or you might not just get along with their work styles)? At the grad school level, it's far more sensible and possible for you to change your research interests than it is to try to change your professors. As telkanuru pointed out, most academics do not have single-track careers, but instead, they/we evolve our work and interests based on the changing state of the field, the changing funding environment and the opportunities that are offered. This won't be the last time that you are not able to work on exactly what you want due to something outside of your control. There will be rejected grants, rejected job applications, rejected research proposals etc. in our futures. When one path does not work, we will try another.

EEOC rules may not apply to graduate students as we are not employed, but as we are students of an educational institution, Title IX does apply to comments that discriminate on the basis of sex and create a hostile environment. My school's Title IX office does interpret discrimination based on pregnancy to be discrimination based on sex because denying resources to pregnant students means that one sex is disadvantaged compared to another. The way I understand it, the Obama administration has directed schools to apply Title IX more widely than just athletics. At my school, there is a major campaign of awareness than Title IX is more than just athletics and definitely more than just sexual assault or sexual violence. Here, it is about creating an equitable and hospitable climate for everyone, regardless of their sex, sexual orientation, gender expression or gender identity. However, I do understand that not all Title IX offices in the United States are following these directives (in fact, many major schools are under investigation for failure to comply with Title IX). And some Title IX offices really do exist only to protect the school, not serve the students/community. It's your call of course on what is the best action for you. I just wanted to let you know that Title IX should be protecting students from this type of discrimination and that it may be the right place to go to.

I have had similar experiences. I don't look like a native English speaker and I speak with a accent so I don't always sound like a native English speaker either. Although English isn't technically my first language, it is the only language that I am truly fluent in. In an oral presentation class, one instructor suggested that I "refrain from speaking my native language with my friends and speak English more to practice it" (they assumed my native language was something else based on my appearance, but actually few people speak it here). Although I don't do the same fieldwork as you, the reasoning behind this suggestion is because my English with an accent sounds "juvenile" so that when I present at conferences, I don't sound "professional". Despite this person's best intentions, I got the feeling that they were saying that I should retrain my speech so that I sound more like a white person (i.e. "professional"). In my case, this instructor isn't a faculty member in my academic department so I did not have to interact with them much more beyond this unnecessary and incorrect feedback. However, in your case, it sounds like you have being much more seriously affected by this person's insensitive behaviour. Do you have a support system in your school to talk to? For example, is there a Diversity Office, or the Graduate Office that can help you fix the uncomfortable situation? I guess this might be harder in your case because the person making these remarks is off-campus and probably not affiliated with the school in any way. But your school and program is still sending you to that site, so they should have some responsibility to ensure their students are going to a safe and hospitable work environment. (If this person was a faculty or staff member on my campus, our Graduate Office would have a talk with this person to ensure they understand what they are saying is not appropriate and creating a bad environment). I'm not saying that you have to do this / take any action. But I want to affirm that what you are feeling is legitimate and this person should not be saying these things to you. If you want to or feel that you need to, seek help from your school.

Ah I didn't realise that you were including two Canadian schools as well. They might work a little differently than US schools, but I'm not in your field so I can't say for sure there. I know that most programs at Canadian schools admit students by professor rather than by committee. A committee may exist in order to pick out the top candidates, but after that, a professor must "speak up" for you in order to get an offer. This is mostly due to experience with the Physics programs though, so Chemistry may be different. But my impression of the system at the PhD level is that if the school has funding for say 10 students, the committee may identify the top 20-30 students and then send those profiles to all professors. If a professor wants any of those students, they speak up and the committee can make a shortlist based on how many professors speak up for a candidate. If there are more interests than spots, then some "horse-trading" or negotiating might be done to make a final list of offers. In addition, sometimes Canadian schools will make offers ahead of the deadline if a professor for sure wants an candidate and is already fully willing to pay for it. There was one school that was a great match for me and I ended up receiving an offer from them before the application deadline because another school only gave me 4 weeks to respond to their initial offer (which would have been before the first school's application deadline). Basically, I would treat Canadian PhD applications to be more like job offers where you are admitted directly to a professor's group, rather than the department. However, all of this is based on my experience with Canadian Physics programs---Chemistry may be a different beast! But what does this all mean? I think you should treat the priority deadline as the actual deadline for you. Get everything in by then and tell your LOR writers that this is the deadline for international students. That said though, it's common for Canadian schools to have an early deadline for your application itself and then a later deadline, often 2 weeks later for transcripts (if they are requesting paper copies) and LORs to arrive. I remember that for my U Toronto application, the online application deadline (which was just basic biographical information) was January 15 and then all of the supplementary materials (SOPs, transcripts, LORs) had to be in by February 1 (because they wanted hard copies for some reason, but that was 2010). Despite all of the speculations above, the best thing to do is to not speculate and just ask the programs you are applying to for the deadline which the letters should arrive. Then, communicate this to your LOR writers (you can forward them the email if you'd like). You should not try to submit an incomplete application---get the letters from the best possible people to arrive at the proper time.

Yes, they exist but they are rare. I don't know any off the top of my head right now but I think you should be able to search for them. You can use things like gradschoolshopper.com to help you sort through the large lists of schools! It might also require a lot of time reading each department's website and/or contacting departments to clarify their funding schemes. One helpful tip is to look for schools that offer terminal Masters programs, because those that only award "consolation prize" Masters are unlikely to fund Masters. Also, you can consider programs outside of the US. For example, Canadian masters are funded because they are the same as the first two years of a US PhD program (a Canadian student would go BSc-> 2 year MSc -> 3-4 year PhD while an American student goes BS -> 5-6 year PhD).

This depends a lot on each award. In my field, for most research based awards (e.g. fellowships for graduate students to do research), need is not considered as a determination of whether or not you would receive an award. Every award that I apply to always lists its criteria very plainly and clearly and need is never one of them. That said, need is often considered in determining how much to award. I often have to submit budgets and outline existing funding. In your case, if I wrote that my budget was $5,800 and that I already had $5,000 in funding, then while the award may be up to $10,000, it would mean that had I been successful, the award amount would just be $800. However, just because I'm only asking for $800 does not mean that my proposal could be less competitive than others. (i.e. I don't encounter award committees that would have lower standards for a small request). To clarify though, the amount requested could play a factor because committees sometimes do consider things like "output per dollar granted". So, if you are making a request for $10,000, the output would have to be "worth" much more than another request for $2,000. However, if this is a factor, then it's usually spelled out in the award criteria, in my experience. That is, as expected, proposals with bigger budgets must justify the increased cost. Finally, I am sorry to hear that your proposal was rejected without much feedback or evaluation. Sadly, this is a very common occurrence for both me and all of my friends in all fields. Some grants/awards have better feedback systems than others but many people, even with lots of feedback, get messages that are very cryptic and/or conflicting. I don't have a good long term solution to this. Some short term solutions are to talk to those that did win awards! In almost all cases where I was successful, I had talked to a previous winner and received a copy of their materials. I personally pay it forward by always agreeing to share my own materials with anyone who asks (that I know well enough). My personal policy is that I would do this even if that person is also applying in the same cycle (as long as they also share theirs). Another good short term solution is to commiserate with your colleagues over drinks or other shared hobby!

I think what you have planned sounds good, and I definitely second rising_star's suggestions (especially the inclusivity with regards to program planning and the "decompression time"). Many places have an alternative alcoholic event with every alcoholic event that is just as awesome and fun (e.g. consider a dessert crawl at the same time as the bar crawl). One personal thing that I would be worried about is the part where I'd stay with a graduate student. I know that a lot of programs do this and that it is useful to many prospective students and that it is a successful model. I just want to say that my experience hasn't always been great in this model (but sometimes it was great!) and I personally feel fairly uncomfortable when I have to stay in another student's residence. If at all possible, I think having an alternative option would be good. In your example case, since the school is paying for accommodations but only until Thursday night, I would suggest that you make the mandatory programming end on Friday, so that students can leave Friday evening if they choose to do. Then you can make the staying with the grad student and whatever Saturday events be optional. The school can inform students that they could leave on Friday evening, or if they choose to stay, they would be responsible for their own lodging but several grad students are volunteering their couches/spare bedrooms etc. But since your visits are interviews, not recruitment visits, it is a little tricky, especially if the department is expecting to use information from the graduate student hosts to help them decide. If so, then probably have to set ground rules about not including anything after the mandatory programming is finished in admissions decisions since it would disadvantage those who do not want to stay. Just a thought---I understand it's a super tricky thing. And for accommodations (both with grad students or with prospective students sharing a room), one consideration is how comfortable people would be sharing a room with another person, and what their roommate gender preferences are. I'd say you should definitely ask these things and give people a way to request alternative arrangements. I know money is always an issue, but is your department willing to allow students who do not want to share a room (or is unable to, due to a variety of potential reasons) to have their own room? If so, would the department still pay for it, or would they only pay for half (or none?). I think as organizers, you should find this information from the department so that you can communicate it to students who want to know. In your shoes, I would even push for more inclusivity so that additional requests does not cost the student extra, but sometimes that is not practically possible. I also have another thought unrelated to accommodations. I'm part of a group of students on campus that are trying to improve our version of interview/visit weekends campus-wide. One thing we're doing is to connect students, in particular students from under-represented groups, with resources and support. This is because our campus is small and the combination of small admitted numbers and the lack of diversity in STEM fields results in some cases where students from under-represented groups will find themselves very much in the minority and may not even be able to find someone that they can identify with. This creates a "feedback loop" problem because they don't feel welcome, so they don't matriculate, which increases the gap, which leads to the next cycle of students feeling the same way etc. So, we're organizing campus-wide events that will be happening during the "visit season" so that all prospective students will have a "coffee hour" or "ice cream social" or something similar with the campus' Diversity Center. This will allow for some students to have concerns addressed (e.g. "I heard this department is really male dominated. What is it like being a a woman on campus?" as well as more intersectional issues that might be hard to find mentors or role models within just your department).

I think out of your three options for letter #3, you should go with the LOR from the postdoc from the LOR#2's lab. It's not great to have two LORs from the same lab, but it's not that bad. It's better than #1 (unless #1 has some other professional/academic relationship with you) and certainly much better than #3. Things like "credentials" and "impact factor" do not really matter as much as it sounds like you are implying them to be (by focusing on these aspects instead of how much they know you). The content of the letter is much more important than the importance of the reviewer (but both are important, yes).

@Gvh: I agree! And I think we are indeed thinking of two different things because in my field, whenever I hear "student writes the draft LOR", it's always the prof just making small edits and then signing it. It's never the process you describe where it's collaborative like that. And in your case, I'd say that functionally, it is the same as providing a list of highlights and then the professor writing up a letter. And I agree that a letter you never see can also be subpar. This is why I think it's important to think about who you are asking and consider all of the factors in determining who to ask. But that's not foolproof, sometimes you will end up with a subpar letter. But I would rather take the risk that an "independent" LOR be subpar than know that the LOR writer is not enthusiastic because they ask me to write the letter for them. (Again, going with my example of "student writing a letter", not your experience). I agree that it is difficult to generalize and I do not mean to. I do think avoiding LOR writers that ask you to write your own letter is useful advice in my field, but it seems like coauthoring a LOR is common in many others. But although I've experienced a few different application cycles at different levels in my field, I can't say that I've experienced it all either! I think your example is the first case where I hear of a student and faculty member co-writing a LOR :)

@Gvh: I think that it is a sign of a weaker letter if the LOR writer does not respond to your request to write a letter with enthusiasm. But this might be a difference in field? In my field (and I think many others but I can't speak for them), letter writing is one of the responsibilities of being a research supervisor. When faculty take a student, they know that they have now committed some number of hours of their future into writing a letter for this person. So, "farming" this work out to the student is a concern for me that the faculty member does not care enough to write a meaningful letter. If a faculty member does not want to spend the time writing the letter, it's easier for them to say "write the draft for me" than it is to say "no, I don't want to support you". I do see some exceptions---perhaps they are from a place where LORs are not common at all and they need the student's help to write the first draft. And I do want to clarify that this reason alone is not, by itself, a reason to not use a LOR. I still would consider being asked to write my own LOR draft as a negative when determining letter writers but if everything else is great, it wouldn't stop me from using a LOR. But in this particular case, with all of the other concerns listed, it does add to the case of "not using this LOR". And finally, I want to also second fuzzy's point that being asked to provide a list of points to include, or even several sentences that describe certain things specifically would be okay. For example, if you had some personal or medical issue that you want your LOR writer to address, it's reasonable for you or the LOR writer to request that you write 2 sentences that say exactly what you want to say about that issue. And it makes a ton of sense for a letter writer to ask you to provide a list of the achievements you want emphasized (especially if they are writing about things they had limited involvement with and don't have time to review the rest of your application package too).

I think it would be dishonest for you to say that you are still working for this company if you quit the job a few months ago. It's typical to only put years of employment in a CV though, so you can put something like: 2014 - 2015 Job XYZ at Company ABC instead of: Sept 2014 - July 2015: Job XYZ at Company ABC Having an "end date" there on your CV makes it clear that you are no longer working there but it leaves out unnecessary details like exactly when and why you left. You won't have to bring up your personal situation at all. And it's not weird at all for a person applying for graduate school to stop working in their current job when they decide to apply. --- To answer the question of "would they check?", the answer is that they are unlikely to call up the company and ask but I know it could happen. They would probably only do this if your employment with this company is a deciding factor in admissions. I don't think it is routine for admission committees to check every line in your CV. --- So, in my opinion, you have nothing to lose by being honest in your CV and making it clear that you no longer work there. It won't hurt you at all and you won't have to reveal any personal details you don't want to. On the other hand, if you are found to be lying on your CV, it will hurt you a lot. It makes a lot of sense to edit your CV and submit an application that is truthful---you have nothing to gain and a lot to lose otherwise.

This is not a typical LOR writer but that doesn't always mean that you should not include them. I think some more information would help. Currently, it does not sound like you should include this person because 1) typically, LOR writers are employers, research supervisors or instructors and 2) this person is asking you to write the letter (if I understand it correctly??) instead of writing one themselves. I think a big part of whether or not this LOR is appropriate is the nature of the relationship you have with this person. You say this is a mentor-protege relationship. Are you part of a formal mentoring program run by your school or some national organization for your field? If so, this is more legitimate. If not, then how did you get to know this mentor? Are there any non-academic relationship or connection between you and this person? If so, I'd be hesitant to use it. Have you done anything with this mentor that would allow them to honestly and reliably evaluate your capability for success in a research program? What would this person base their recommendation on? Similarly, what kind of attributes do you want this letter to portray? It sounds like you are looking for something like a "character reference" (i.e. a letter saying things like AjjA is very motivated, very bright, works very hard, etc.) This is not the type of letter you want a LOR to be, but if you have no other options I guess it's better than no letter). Why did the mentor ask you to draft the letter?

You should only submit an application ahead of the deadline if: 1. The school indicates that early applications will be given some favourable treatment (usually only true if it's a rolling admissions process or the actual deadline is really late, like March). 2. You are 100% certain that your application is 100% complete and will not change (i.e. all your best LORs are submitted, any papers that you are waiting on for review has reached their decision etc.) Otherwise, there is no point submitting early (well, submit a day or two early to avoid last minute computer issues). Don't rush your LOR writers into writing a letter early. What normally happens is that most schools have deadlines in December. During December, the staff work to put together portfolios of all applicants and maybe there is an initial vetting to remove obviously uncompetitive applicants (depending on the volume of applications). Then, completed applications are sent to the committee for review, which may be late December (if deadline was early December and faculty want to review over the break) or more likely, early January. Sometime in January or February, the committee meets and makes decisions. Some schools may deviate from this standard approach. But for schools that do the standard thing, your time of application does not matter. This is why it's often okay for things like test scores or LORs to come after the deadline---as long as it's all there by the time the committee finishes reviewing applications, it will be fine.

Here's a similar story, maybe you can draw some useful conclusions from it. I took the Physics GRE twice, scored 640 and 690 (44th and 53rd percentiles) in 2009 and 2011. The school I am currently at (top 10 for planetary science) "strongly recommends" a PGRE score submission. I read "strongly recommends" as "you better submit one unless you have a good reason not to" so I submitted both of my scores. I got in! Afterwards, I found out that "strongly recommends" doesn't mean what I thought it meant at all. In fact, only one other student in my cohort wrote the PGRE (the others did not even write the PGRE). One person explained to me that since Planetary Science is a very applied and interdisciplinary field (others in our cohort come from geology, chemistry, biology undergrads as well as physics/astro), it doesn't make sense to write and submit the PGRE unless your background was in Physics. But then I later found out that the other Physics majors did not write the PGRE either. I think there are many parallels to my story and yours ("strongly recommended", similar scores, and fields that are "applied" versions of the subject GRE test in question). My own takeaway from my story was that if a subject GRE score is only "strongly recommended", it seems like they will give the score a low weight, since my test scores are well below the typical PGRE scores for this school.

This was also my approach. I even started with something that was a little bit cliche (but it was just 2-3 sentences). I kind of hate my own SOP but I also take solace in the fact that my own writing has improved a lot since 4 years ago! Definitely agree that you don't have to be interesting, but you also don't have to be boring This is how my field views SOPs. It's just a cover letter to add a little bit of "flavour" to your application. For most applicants, this will just be the standard stuff and your SOP will have little impact on the admission decision. However, just like real jobs with cover letters, some applicants have some special cases where the rest of their "on paper" application does not really show how great they are. For these cases, then the SOP is worth a bit more time. Of course, this doesn't mean that one should slack off on their SOP. If you write poorly or otherwise stand out negatively, this is bad too! But unless you are in a case where the rest of the application materials doesn't allow you to show your true ability and experiences, the SOP is something that you just want to do okay on because the extra time to make it great won't help. (Well, on the other hand, if crafting fun and expressive SOPs bring you joy, then the extra time will have little cost so go for it!)

I am in a different scientific field and I also do not think this is a good way to start a SOP. There is nothing wrong with the content of this paragraph---that is, you should not feel like you have to hide your personality, how much you like the field, or how excited you were about your wedding. However, as brown_eyed_girl points out, you want the main point of your SOP to be the "purpose" of you applying to this graduate program and you are not providing what the reader is looking for in this first paragraph! In addition, the last part of the paragraph (being with "thus, following a six-year....") sounds very out of place. First you are writing a story about a personal moment then it abruptly jumps into standard "SOP-speak". My suggestion would be to start with the point up front. Don't tell a story in the first paragraph. Instead, say exactly what you want to do. Answer the questions that brown_eyed_girl wrote in their second paragraph. What kind of research do you want to do? How do you want to do it? What are some big questions/themes that interest you? What are some methodologies that you want to try? Then, you can tell them a bit more about yourself and your past experiences. As others have written on these forums recently, there are two common ways to do this. The first is fairly common in the sciences and you would present your experiences in a chronological order. This has the advantage of making the story clear in the reader's head, especially if you did other things besides high school --> undergrad --> applying to grad school. Also, I chose this method because I wanted to show how my interest and skills developed, as one experience led to the next. The downside is that this style can be a little boring and it risks you just repeating your CV in long form, which means you wasted the SOP space to tell something useful. Sometimes when people write chronologically, they just list basic details instead of telling the reader the story of their "purpose". The other common way is to group your experiences into various themes and/or other statements you want to make. For example, someone in my field might want to discuss all of their experiences and interests in one particular methodology in one paragraph and then another complementary methodology in another paragraph. This method is great if you have several strong common themes to write about and if you have experiences that you want to highlight different aspects of. This might also be good for someone like you, who is applying outside of their original field of study. It would allow you to pick out the things in these other fields that are really suited for computer science and highlight them. The potential disadvantage is that if you are not careful, you can confuse the reader with what event happened when. For example, when discussing experience X in topic paragraph Y, it might not be clear if X is an experience during undergrad research, during your industry years, or something else. A reader with your CV can probably figure it out, but since you have some industry experience, it might be helpful to include a few words when describing your experiences that help the reader know approximately when in your life they happened. Finally, if you really want to tell the story of your wedding website, I think it's perfectly fine to do so. I would remove some of the extra-flowery language because it sounds a little like you are trying to place much more importance on it than it would sound to a third party. I think this experience is also relevant because as you say, your degree was in EE and this demonstrates your own personal interest and some work on computer science. It's also okay to reveal a little bit of personality and yourself in the SOP. After all, you are a person and you want the committee to also "meet you". Sometimes, people take it too far and spend way too many words doing this though, and as StyleD said, it makes more sense to do this while also answering the SOP prompts. I just don't want you or another reader to think that the takeaway is "Don't write about personal experiences in a SOP", because that's not true (in my opinion). We are defined by our personal experiences and when they are relevant to the "purpose" then we should certainly write about them. In my SOP, I wrote about my own marriage too as the reason why I did a MSc in Canada but now want to go to the US for a PhD (because if I had applied for a US PhD right away, my partner would not have yet been married to me and thus they would not have been able to move to the US with me, so we stayed in Canada until we got married). Although this is another topic, you can also save these stories for an interview, if your program does that. (For me, another reason to apply to California schools was because we preferred the west coast and California is closer to our hometown than Eastern Canada, but that wasn't relevant enough to include in SOPs, but I did say it in interviews). That said, these are just generic tips and people have certainly been successful not following them at all. One person I know submitted a SOP with a bunch of photos of their undergrad experience to a hard sciences program and they got admitted. It's certainly riskier to take a non-standard approach though, so it's your call :)

I am glad that you have sought help and have found a solution that will work for you. I want you to know that leaving a graduate program is not a "failure", and as GradSchoolTruther has said, it's better to leave now when you know that this is not what you want than to stay longer for no reason. I advocated for staying the first year in the beginning because it sounded like the typical "funnel effect" that you described in your blog, but after seeing more, I think you have sought the right help and are following advice meant in your best interests. So, I wish you the best of luck in whatever you do in the future Don't rule out the fact that you can still return to academia later on, if that is what you really want later.

There are almost no differences between a Canadian applying to a UK school and an American applying to a UK school. Canadian and the UK are part of the Commonwealth but that does not make a difference in terms of cost and acceptance rate etc. The small difference exists because of scholarships that are either specifically for US or Canadian citizens to study in the UK. Usually these are scholarships provided by US or Canadian organizations rather than the UK school though. You would have to look up each of these scholarships individually to determine if you are eligible to apply for them (i.e. some of them only require you to be a Canadian or US citizen, but others require things like a degree from that country and/or residency).

I think you would have to ask the school for more details. I think just that information alone does not make it clear what they are going to do with applications submitted after Dec 1. For example, in addition to the possibility you wrote about, other potential options are: 1. Dec 1 deadline is for students who are submitting extra information (e.g. some schools have an earlier deadline for international students in case things need to be resubmitted or translated etc.) 2. The committee is meeting in early January and the Dec 1 deadline means that the staff will have time in December to compile your application material and be 100% certain to get it to the committee on time. The Jan 5 deadline means the staff will work on the applications ASAP but no guarantee that it will be ready for review by the first committee meeting. But otherwise, no preference for either groups. 3. Applications submitted by Dec 1 would be sent to professors over the break while Jan 5 applications will be sent later, meaning Dec 1 applicants get shown to professors first (however, there may or may not be any advantage to that). Just a few examples of what they could mean, based on my experience applying to schools with two deadlines. It's best to just ask the school.