TakeruK

I think this is an interesting way to look at it, because prior to 2011, everyone always used the free score reports because you never get to see your scores before you send it! With ScoreSelect, I think the right strategy is this: Do you plan on taking the GRE more than once? If not (I think most people only need to take it once), then use the free score reports! If you are already going to spend the extra $$$ and time to pay for and study for a GRE retake, then you might as well make the most of it and not use the free reports so that you have the most control over the scores. There can be some hybrid strategies where you use the free reports on the "less competitive" schools where you don't care as much which scores are submitted. Also, maybe it's just confirmation bias, but I've noticed more and more students here retaking the GREs or planning for more than one attempt now that ScoreSelect is an option. In the past, schools will always see all GRE exams taken in the last 5 years so I felt that I had to do well on my first try because even if I tried again, they would still see my first score. I wonder if ETS publishes the # of tries per test taker stats. Personally, I think ScoreSelect has got to be one of the best business decisions they've made as it seems to have both increased test taking as well as willingness to give up the free score reports!

Thanks for the interesting perspective from the other forums. The response is indeed from a UK academic but I don't think there was anything that was UK-specific, except for a brief mention to the 3-4 year length of the PhD (which is the same as in Canada as the Canadian and UK systems are similar).

Although the first article is published in a UK publication, the authors are currently at Canadian institutions according to the biographies at the bottom of the article. Since this doesn't mean they have always been in Canada, I did a quick look to find their department pages and learned that they both have PhDs from UBC, so they at least also did grad school in Canada!

Agreed! But I guess if it's the other way around--that is you have already fund sufficient support through other means and your only option to a PhD is an unfunded one, then I guess who am I to judge how you want to use your resources! I certainly would advise very strongly against relying finding support after the fact. But if you somehow already have the resources lined up (e.g. a company sponsorship, a military appointment, a rich relative/family member, your own savings) and you're willing to spend that money on yourself to get a PhD, then sure, in ideal circumstances, I don't think the fact that your money is coming from your company/the military/your family/yourself is going to make you any more or less likely to finish a PhD program. I say "ideal circumstances" because it's often the case (at least in my field) that if a school does not offer you funding, they are either 1) going to treat you as a second-class student and/or 2) do not think you can actually succeed. If that's the case, then you may be wasting your money (but hey, it's your money to waste I guess). So while I could imagine a very limited set of circumstances that would make funding-your-own-PhD a good piece of advice, I also think that it is a little irresponsible to give the advice the way this author did because it does seem like they are saying "don't worry, you can work it out later". Highly do not recommend that.

It seems like these rules are always changing, too! Currently, I don't have to submit any receipts for meals/incidentals expenses while traveling as long as it's below the per diem rate; however, when I get cookies from the grocery store for seminar snacks, I still need to submit a $5 receipt. That gets paid out of petty cash though, so the turnaround is very fast--I usually get the reimbursement in a few hours or the next morning. But then for the same seminar series, one speaker was not able to get a receipt until after they returned home and asked if they needed to mail it in, and the answer was no, since it was under $75. So, I don't even want to pretend that I know exactly how it works--I'm sure it really does all make sense from the administrative point of view. But I do want to point out that there is no "one policy fits all" and for any student with reimbursement issues, they should certainly talk to the admin staff because the admin staff will know what to do and how to best help you!

The Canadian organization that is analogous to the NSF would be NSERC (Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council). However, these awards are for Canadians only, just like NSF awards are for Americans only. This is a common issue amongst all students from any country looking to apply internationally--the amount of awards available is tiny. There are two exceptions that I know of though: 1. If your school is in Ontario, then the provincial level Ontario Graduate Scholarship is available to foreign students. There is a quota to how many foreign awards are given so it will be much more competitive. You apply for this award directly to the school you are applying to. Look on their website to find the information (each school sets their own deadline and application process). 2. The Government of Canada also funds the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship (http://www.vanier.gc.ca/en/home-accueil.html). This is like an NSERC/NSF award, but at a much much higher level. The value is $50,000 per year for up to 3 years. It's open to foreign applicants because it's a program that is meant to encourage talent to stay in Canada / move to Canada. See the linked website for application information, but keep in mind this is a highly competitive award that will require sponsorship of the Canadian school in question. Good luck!

Just to clarify, purchasing cards/P-cards are certainly a policy that varies from university to university (or even between departments within a university). I don't mean that this is going to be a solution that will work for you, but it's something worth inquiring about. For example, it is not at all clear that graduate students can even be issued P-Cards unless you end up reading all of the HR memos to find the one that says they can do this (or you know a graduate student with a P-card). Also, at this school, our admin staff handles all of the paperwork for us, but at my previous schools, the paperwork was our responsibility! I think my current school also has a policy of not requiring receipts for expenses less than $75, however, this is complicated because this depends a lot on the source of the money (e.g. if it's being paid by an endowment of a donor, receipts are generally required to be accountable to the donor).

You should submit all transcripts that you are asked to submit. Sometimes, a school will only ask for transcripts from institutions where you completed a degree program. I'm not sure there is much more you can do other than let the school know you are retaking the courses. Hopefully, the program in Geology/Geoscience will not weigh your physics/calculus courses that much so it will have little effect. If you don't get in this year, then perhaps trying again next year with improved grades might help.

I guess it is a little hard to give specific advice without knowing the details? In general, yes, you should submit reimbursement forms for lab/research related expenses. However, this shouldn't be a surprise to the PI--i.e. it's something you two should have talked about, unless there is already a blanket clearance for these types of expenses. To give a concrete example, I do not spend my own money on research related expenses. Even when I need to purchase a $10 battery recharger for my wireless mouse, I asked my professor if I could do this and then it was charged to our research grant. The only time I spend my own money is when it's my own things I would like to purchase for convenience and I would keep for myself later. For example, the USB ports on my computer are tough to reach, so I purchased one of those USB hubs things. I didn't bother getting this reimbursed because I wanted to own one of these eventually anyways, and I plan on taking it with me when I graduate. As for the reimbursement forms, it's too bad but yes, it is normal for graduate students to spend the time doing this and I would say it is part of our job. It is unreasonable for a PI to expect their grad students to pay for lab expenses but it is expected that grad students spend the time filling out reimbursement forms in order to charge these expenses to the right account. If these forms are taking a lot of time, can you have a talk with your PI on perhaps consolidating the ordering into one order per month or something so you can do it all at the same time? Also, if you are not able to put the charges on your own card and get reimbursed, then that conversation might need to happen too. I don't think there is a general $$$ amount that is considered "unreasonable" for a grad student to pay for upfront. The number depends on each grad student's personal situation and sometimes a $50 charge is okay and sometimes a $10 isn't okay! Students should have a conversation with their PI if their PI is causing undue financial burden by having the student pay upfront. Finally, there may be an easier solution. When I need to order something, sometimes my PI gives me their P-Card or sometimes I just ask the admin assistant for our group to use their P-Card to make the order. I just get everything all set up on the website that I'm buying from, then I ask the admin assistant to come over with the P-Card and fill in the payment detail. Everyone likes this method better because I don't have to pay upfront costs and it's less paperwork since it charges to the grant, instead of a reimbursement. I also know that at my school, grad students can be issued P-Cards in very special circumstances. One student I know orders a ton of things for her lab all the time so she got a special P-Card so that she can just charge the stuff to her lab.

Also, I want to mention that this is not universally true. To clear this up, there are two things you are confusing: visa vs. status. A visa is permission to enter the country. It is a page in your passport and for most countries, you will have to go through an interview process in order to get permission to enter. When you get your visa, you will notice that it will have a time limit and/or a number of entries limit. A typical time limit is 5 years with unlimited entries, however, this depends on the treaties between your home country and the United States. Certain countries have very limited visas--some of them expire the moment you use them. However, a visa is only permission to enter--once you are in the United States, it doesn't matter if your visa has expired. You will have to get a new visa if you leave the United States though (e.g. for a conference). You cannot renew any visas, you always have to apply for a new one (although if you already had one and are applying to another one, some people call this "renewing" but it's the same application as your first visa). On the other hand, status is permission to remain in the country for a specific purpose. This is determined by a piece of paper called the Form I-20 (for F-1 status) or DS-2019 (for J-1 status). You must keep this document up to date and you will have to get extensions if you end up staying longer, beyond the expiration date. This form must also be valid whenever you enter the United States. One thing you must do whenever you enter the United States (except the first time) is have a "travel signature" on this form that is no less than 1 year old. To get the travel signature, you bring the form to an office at your school and they will sign it to confirm that you are still a registered student and meeting the conditions of your status. This is a confusing topic and it's easy to mix up the two because you would use an I-20 to show that you have F-1 status in order to get a F-1 visa. Due to the similarity of the names and the fact that you first get them both at the same time, it's easy to confuse them.

Sorry to disappoint, but no, that is not what a J-1 visa is. I am on a J-1 visa and I am certainly not an employee nor do I receive staff benefits. Whether or not you are paid/funded/hired as an employee depends completely on the school and the program you're applying to. It may be possible that the schools you are mentioning are willing to hire you as such and because of your job, you will need to get J-1 status, instead of F-1. That is, your job determines your visa status, not the other way around. J-1 is also a different type of PhD student visa. The main difference is that a spouse of a J-1 student has J-2 status, which allows him/her to obtain permission to work in the US. A F-1 student's spouse is on F-2 status and would not be able to work at all. Other differences include: - J-1 students must have secured funding for the entire length of degree, not just the first year (unlike F-1) - J-1 students funding must come "mostly" (most schools consider this to be 50% or more) from non-personal funds (i.e. TA, RA, fellowships, anything other than your own bank account or a family member's bank account) - J-1 students have Academic Training (AT) options post-graduation instead of OPT (functionally, these are the same). - J-1 students must have a higher level of insurance than F-1 students - J-1 students may be subject to the two-year home residency requirement, where you must return to your home country for at least 2 years before you can apply for any immigrant-class visa. Whether or not you have this condition depends on your source of funding (government funding tends to lead to this requirement) and whether or not your degree is on a special list of "skills" designated by your home country's government as needed. This is the main purpose of the J-1 distinction, as a J-1 is really an "exchange scholar" rather than simply a "student".

Just wanted to second this. It's the difference between legitimately letting people know what's coming out soon vs. "CV padding". I would not list papers as "in prep" if I am not the first author though. And it's a little strange if you have a large number of "in prep" papers listed!

Also just to clarify: as far as my school is concerned, when we/they say "spouse" or "married", they do not require legal marriage because we recognize that not all couples have always had equal access to marriage rights and/or might choose to make different decisions regarding marriage due to societal pressures, family pressures and personal choices. The school only cares about our legal marital status when we have to report it to an external group that cares.

No, I'm not at a UC school. Your first paragraph sounds very similar to what my school is doing. When I had my spouse on my student plan as a dependent, it was charged through my student account, so I am the one financially responsible for it. However, my spouse was still eligible for ACA plans because the school was not contributing any money towards this plan at all (**in our first year here, ACA was not yet available and due to pre-existing conditions, was not eligible for private plans--the school recommends spouses get a private plan due to the high cost, but keeps the expensive plan as a last resort due to the ability of insurers to reject applicants in the past; also our international visa status requires a certain amount of insurance, so the school must provide an option). In our later years, my spouse was eligible for ACA plans even though this other option still existed. The school plan is also much cheaper than $2600/person for more than one person. But again, this is not because of the school contributing money towards the plan, but just due to the price negotiated by our school with the plan provider (e.g. it's a "bundle discount price"). I am a student representative for the faculty committee on student health and I know that each year, they make providers bid on plans that cover our needs. Because the plans are highly customized and not available as a general market plan (e.g. due to the stress of grad school, every student has access to 25 visits per year to a mental health professional for free, and then $15 copay per visit after that), this is why I think we would be "safe" from the IRS regulations mentioned in this thread. You are right that the school (my school, the UCs, any school) should not have the sole responsibility of subsidizing dependent health care (or any care) because there are other agencies, such as the federal and state governments that do this too. This is a common line of reasoning our student government and our allied administrators have faced against the Faculty Board and other administrators. I agree that any additional support from our school should consider the current support available to our students. And so far, we have been successful with two lines of counter-argument: 1. The majority of the government subsidy available through Obamacare/ACA/marketplace plans are available to US residents/citizens only. Non-resident aliens cannot claim the portion of the subsidy that is available through our income tax return because it is only available for married couples filing together. IRS tax laws requires that married non-resident aliens file as "married, filing separately" which eliminates almost every tax break available. Since my school chooses to admit a lot of international students--on average, 45% of our graduate population is international, we argue that it is our school's responsibility to make sure we support the students we admit. It would be immoral for our school to knowingly admit students that have extra expenses and not provide adequate support. 2. The cost of living where we are is high and although our stipend tries to adjust for that, some populations of graduate students are still not able to make ends meet. It is just enough to support one adult, but almost impossible to support any dependents on a single graduate student's stipend (single parent graduate students have it the hardest, but international students' spouses generally cannot get work authorization either). So, our school targets populations of students in need and ensures that these students are not disadvantaged financially, so that they can be as productive as everyone else. Overall, the Dean of Graduate Studies here approves about $100,000 in extra funding for students here (we have about 1000 graduate students total). I suppose that the Dean could just split that $100,000 one-thousand ways evenly and give each student $100 per year extra. But this will have almost no effect (sure $100 is nice, but it's probably not going to make the difference on whether you are able to pay rent or not). Instead, they decide to split the $100,000 so that it goes to those who need it most. ** Note: Not all of the $100,000 just goes to students with dependents, the Dean also helps out students (single or not) who have unexpected and expensive bills to pay such as hospitalization, needing to fly home for a parents' death, etc.

I asked professors in Sept-Oct "informally" so that they know I am hoping for a LOR from them. This was also a good chance to get school selection advice. In early November, about 1 month before the first deadline, I gave them all a 1-page cheat sheet. At the top, I listed all the essential stats (GPA, GREs) and a 2-3 sentence description of my research and academic goals. I also gave them a list of the schools I'm applying to, sorted by deadline, with the department name and the names of 2-3 professors I would be working with at that school. I waited until 4 weeks prior to the due date to input my recommenders' names into the online application form, which generates an email to the LOR writer with a link that they will use to fill in the LOR. I didn't want to do it too early and have it disappear in the inbox. For one LOR writer, they requested my CV and SOP too so I provided that LOR writer with a CV and a sample SOP (for the first school's deadline) at this time. As requested by my letter writers, I sent a reminder 2 weeks and 2 days before the due date. The reminder was sent by the automatic application form, not a personal email so that the reminder comes with the automatic link to the LOR. All of my LORs were electronic. However, if any snail mailed LORs are required, I highly recommend making pre-addressed envelopes ready and providing them to your LOR writer along with the blank LOR forms. Then they can just fill it out, seal it, and leave it with the office staff to mail out!

To clarify, if insurance is available for dependents at a subsidized rate, then there is no access to government subsidies via Obamacare and the Exchanges (not just simply "available"). My spouse was on a ACA plan when my school offered a dependent health plan at a very high price ($7000+ per year). Currently, the latest ACA rules require schools to offer dependent rates at the same rate as the unsubsidized student plan ($2600-ish, per year) so this is the most pro-student move possible, because it ensures an affordable option for dependents without requiring any dependent to take the plan (i.e. they still have the exchange plan option if they desire or if it is more beneficial). In addition, since $2600/year is about 10% of our income and about half of our students are international which means dependents cannot work, $2600/year isn't actually affordable for some students. In these cases, the school offers a special benefit of $100/dependent/month. However, they are careful to word and advertise this as a general "special needs" award instead of a "health insurance subsidy" to avoid what you wrote here. So I think this is another way schools can act carefully and deliberately in their students' best interests.

I agree with fuzzy: if a professor has agreed to do something, there is no reason to assume they are going back on their word at this point. LORs are an important part of their job and they will treat it seriously. At the same time, managing deadlines is another very important part of their job, and something that is 2 months away is a very low priority (even if it's a very important thing). For comparison, the majority of the professors I asked to write my LORs told me ahead of time that I should not expect to see it submitted until a few days before the deadline. They asked for occasional reminders in case they have time, and that in the last week before the deadline, I should not worry about "bugging" them by sending repeated reminders. I ended up sending (an automated) reminder 2 weeks prior to the deadline + 2 days before the deadline and LORs were submitted right after one of those reminders. However, letters can arrive after the deadline too, in most cases. Although not ideal, usually if a LOR is coming late, you can explain it to the school and they will understand (as they are also going to have to send a letter late once in awhile too, themselves). Of course, as the deadline approaches, you should be in contact with your writers so that they can let you know it might be late, ahead of time. Finally, it is also helpful to keep in mind that your LOR will probably take about 1.0 to 1.5 hours of your professor's time in total. For a task that is not due for several months and will only take 1-1.5 hours, it makes a lot of sense for professors to prioritize this to be a task to be completed in October/November, after the initial rush of classes have begun (or even after fall term final exams, for deadlines in late December / early January).

(re: #3), I was also speaking from experience! Although luckily the way it's set up, it's not that awkward to end things with one of your projects here within the first two years because everyone has at least two simultaneous projects in the beginning. I did naively think that I would somehow be a special snowflake, but since our system is very open to supervisor changes, no long term "damage" was done, so I'm still glad for the learning experience.

I guess it depends on whether you read it as calendar years, or chronological years, or NSF fiscal years, or academic years (but even these vary from school to school)!

Don't forget that academia is a very international field and you will not be the first nor last applicant with a UK degree applying to the program. Professors will likely already be familiar with the UK grading scheme, and if they are not, you can count on them being smart and resourceful enough to find out for themselves instead of just assuming that everyone does things like America There may even be several people in the department with UK degrees that they can ask for help!

I think this is a good article overall. It summarizes a lot of the thoughts and tips that many experienced people here have said and is similar to a lot of things my friends/colleagues have said to each other as well as to our undergraduate mentees. I also found reading the article helpful--even though I am more often on the "giving advice about grad school" side of things rather than "getting advice" (I'm now in the "getting advice" stage for postdocs!), you sometimes forget things and being reminded of things you already know is good. I'm going to pick out a few of these points that I would discuss further, if I was going to share this list to an undergraduate student or a new graduate student. I'm going to rephrase the section titles to reflect the advice given: 1. "Don't stay at the same university": Lots of good reasons given to back up this advice. It's certainly true if you want to maximize your chances of getting the most opportunities available. The authors seem to define this as "success". However, I don't think it's the only way to be successful. I know a bunch of academics that stayed at the same university for BSc, MSc, PhD, and now works there as a permanent member of the research staff (with a few teaching duties). These people are very happy and I think most people would agree that they are "successful" because they achieved their goal: a steady job doing what they like living in a location they like. I know for others, this would be considered very unsuccessful, since to some people, their goal would be a tenured position, for example. So, the caveat to this advice would be: when you get advice like this, consider carefully what the author means by "success" and whether or not your definition is the same. Also, these authors are Canadian and we have a undergrad-masters-PhD path, which is why they refer to "three degrees" as the norm. It's a little hidden in the paragraphs, but this doesn't mean you have to be in a new university for every degree--just not the same one for all three! 3. "Don't choose the most charismatic supervisor": Very good points here. Just remember that everyone works differently so someone who is great for person X might not work at all for person Y. And, someone who was a terrible supervisor for person Y might be a great match for person Z. However, don't get caught in the fallacy that you are special and that although this professor had problems with many students, you and him/her will get along great! Although every student is indeed a little different, be honest with yourself when you are comparing yourself to the past students with good/bad experiences. Are you comparing the traits that are actually there, or just what you want to be there? 8. "Don't write like the stereotypical academic": I like this paragraph a lot! Academic writing does not have to be an exercise in flexing your GRE vocabulary muscles. In my opinion, we should strive to use as simple words as possible, even when writing to other academics. Sometimes, another more obscure word might have a slightly more precise meaning, but using it will come at a cost of being harder to understand. I hope academics use judgement in making these decisions. Some of my colleagues disagree on this, and call it "dumbing down" academia, but I think if we really want our work to be international, we need to write at a level where people who don't work in English can still understand. To use some examples, just yesterday I read a paper that used the word "exacerbate" when they could have very easily used "made worse" or "became worse". 9. "Don't have a thin skin": Normally, I disagree with this advice because it's normally phrased in a way that means "grad students will get abused and treated unfairly and you just have to suck it up". I don't think that is true--if we find a situation where the conditions are crappy, we should make a big deal of it and get it changed. However, the example the authors gave here made it clear that the advice is really "Don't take academic criticism personally" and I think it is really good advice. Although our work becomes our passion, we should not take an valid, respectful attack on our ideas as an attack on us as a person nor as an attack on our abilities. Being too "attached" to an idea for non-academic reasons might also make us blind to an exciting discovery and we might end up "barking up the wrong tree" for awhile, so to speak. In terms of interpersonal interactions, I don't think a "thick skin" is necessary to be an academic. But in terms of receiving constructive criticism on our work, we should definitely not take it personally. I'd like to hear other thoughts too!

In addition to the advice above, here are some suggestions: 1. Taking Real Analysis while in a graduate program doesn't necessarily mean taking a Masters level Real Analysis. It might actually mean taking the undergraduate level course. This might not count towards your PhD credit requirement so it would be an extra course. 2. Can you pull a Hermione and overload? I never heard of this before, but apparently, at my current PhD school, the undergrads here can purposely register for courses that have a time conflict if they get permission from both instructors and have a valid reason such as yours. I've TAed students who are only there for 1 out of 3 lectures per week (the other 2 out of 3 are in the other course)! You would have to do a lot of self-learning this way and if you have a friend who will take notes (or if the instructor agrees to make the course notes available to you), then it might be possible. Even if you have never heard of this at your school before, one big rule about academia I've learned is that you never know what is possible until you ask.

I should add that I think your health should come before any deadlines/issues with applications and admissions. Even if you have to schedule your surgery in, say, February or March, you can make alternate arrangements with schools to do interviews or visits at a later time!

You don't have to Canadian to attend a Canadian MA program and get funding for it. However, a lot of the funding sources either require or prefer Canadian citizenship and schools that promise funding, like most Canadian MA programs, will only accept you if they can fund you, so this means your chances of admission to a Canadian program may be lower than if you were Canadian. This is an issue that affects international students everywhere though. I am Canadian and did a Canadian MSc program before going to a US school for a PhD. US PhD programs generally do not allow you to count your time/courses in any Masters program (whether it's Canadian, American, or elsewhere) so I don't think it makes a difference in terms of "less value". However, a one-year Masters program is tricky because if you intend to go to a PhD program right afterwards (whether in US or elsewhere), you will have to apply for the PhD program just 3-4 months after you start your Masters program, so you won't really be able to use your Masters program as much leverage since not much will be complete. There may also be field-specific things though. In my field, astronomy/physics crosses the border well so even the systems are different, schools will care about what students have achieved in each program (in terms of courses completed and research done). In my field, it doesn't matter if it's one or two years, except for the logistical reason above (which you can overcome if you finish your MA first and then apply to PhD, but that might not be ideal either).

You can only get a sure answer from your department. In addition to potentially being a typo, have you also checked: 1. Have you considered taxes and/or other automatic deductions? Or is the $1200 the "gross income" 2. The $1200 might be for the work period of 8/16 to 8/31, but paid out in the 9/1-9/30 pay period because you started after the cutoff date for the 8/1-8/31 pay period. It is very normal for payroll offices to put the first or last paycheck in a different pay period. I've received multiple paychecks for the same pay period before. That is, the pay period is an accounting thing, it does not always correspond to the actual time you did that work. Or, if they make a mistake on a previous payment, the difference is normally applied on the next pay period. 3. Is 8/16 the official start date of your RAship? Or was it just the day you arrived and started working? In most cases, if you started early, you/your department can make arrangements to pay you extra for the early start date. However, if these arrangements are not made, then you can't be expected to start getting paid before your RA contract begins. 4. Do you have multiple sources of funding? Maybe the $11000 per semester is not all from your RAship and you will receive separate paychecks for each source of funding that will eventually add up to $11000 per semester. 5. If you have multiple sources of funding that don't pay out at the same time, your department might "stagger" your payments. For example, at my MSc school, I was paid via a combination of RA, TA, and fellowship. The TA pays biweekly during the school year, the RA pays monthly during the entire year and the fellowship is paid out in 3 lump sum per year. In order to help us receive a consistent stream of income instead of some months with high income and some months with nothing (and to help the department pay out expenses consistently), they staggered my RA hours so that I received very little RA pay during the school year (as my TA pay covered it) but then received a lot more RA pay during the summer (since there was no TA pay then). At the beginning of the year though, our department clearly lays out our pay schedule and works with us to resolve any issues. Anyways, just a bunch of guesses of potential things that make payroll weird. When you talk to someone, it should hopefully get all cleared up! If I had to bet though, I would bet it's either a typo or #2.