[What is the "PORTAL" everyone looks at?]

Yes, that portal you mention is usually the portal people talk about. Some schools provide a different website to login and track your application status but in some cases it's the same system you used to submit the application in the first place. 

Note: Not every school updates the portal when decisions are made (some schools may never update the portal). It really depends on each school.

[Admissions decision inquiry etiquette?]

Generally, the rule of thumb is if you have some other deadline to meet or if this information is the only thing preventing you from making your final decision, then it's a good idea to inquire.

It sounds like you have some offers to decide between plus you have this unknown school. So here's my suggestion: Spend the next few days to 1 week to consider the offers you already have in hand. If you only had those offers, where would you go? Make that decision in your mind. If there are any schools you will for sure not go to, decline those offers now (you don't have to hear back from every school before you can start sending declines). You can probably decline all but your top 2 choices at this point.

Then when you are basically ready to accept your current top choice, that would be a good time to ping the last school and find out where you stand. If you find out you're going to be rejected then you can accept that top choice and decline the 2nd choice. If you are still in the running, think about whether you even want to go to that school any more or if the offer you have in hand is more interesting to you. If you prefer the offer you have, then withdraw your application. Otherwise, wait. 

It might be the case that while you take the time to decide between the offers you have in hand, you'll find out the result of this last school too.

[Letter Only Guarantees Funding for the First Year?]

20 hours ago, schenar said:

Hey thanks for your input! I have reached out with questions along this line. Their current students seem fine, and I just wanted to make sure. I did come into the application season thinking that 5-year guarantee wouldn't be normal...but an earlier offer I have has a presidential-level fellowship that makes it more secure on paper.

This also makes me really torn because both are great programs, but they have different sizes and cultures; the "less secure" program has an adviser with a closer research interest fit. I guess more thoughts need to be put into the decision making process.  

Congrats on the presidential level fellowship. You bring up a good point---the only offers I've personally seen that promise multiple years are offers with fellowships like those. Typically, this is when the fellowship comes from a source external to department.

If you do the due diligence that you seem to have already done, I would no longer consider the wording of the funding offer as an important factor. What's important is whether students continue to be funded at an appropriate level throughout the degree

[Letter Only Guarantees Funding for the First Year?]

8 minutes ago, schenar said:

 a paragraph about how the students have "routinely received financial support for five years" and that the "financial arrangements are made on a yearly basis". 

This is the standard / normal type of offer, at least in most STEM fields. Very few schools promise money for more than 1 year because it could mean that even if the PhD program is shut down, they still have to provide funds or some other extreme situations like that. It is normal for programs to offer a guarantee of a specific amount / funding source for the first year only and make a statement about the availability of funds for the remainder of your degree, as in this offer. Typically, the only way you will not get funding is if you get kicked out of the program due to poor performance.

Maybe your field is slightly different or you have been very lucky to get offers from rich schools only that are able to promise you funds for 5+ years. I would also point out that a promise for 5 years isn't necessarily better because very few grants provide money for 5 years so it could be a case where the school is promising something that they can't actually keep if things go south in terms of finances. (Some exceptions are very well funded department with large slush funds).

With this typical type of offer, the key questions to ask are: 1) do 100% of continuing students get funding (and if not, why not?) and 2) whether the funding level promised in the first year continues to future years. 

Unless you get red flags from the above two questions (e.g. a few students slip through the cracks funding-wise, or future year funding can be a lot lower) then I would consider the offer you got above and the "guaranteed for 5 years" to be equally secure and good.

[Tips for negotiating packages]

This is in addition to what TMP said about valuing how the students do rather than the name.

It's too bad that you completely removed the top tier / reach schools from your initial list. I would generally advocate for a list that is mostly "reaches" ! 

But in your case, if Minnesota is not the best program for you, you could also consider not doing an MA at all and just reapplying to the reach tier plus the tier you already got into this year. You can even reapply to the same schools that accepted you this time around (if they ask why, you can just say that you wanted to take some time off before starting grad school and decided you wanted to delay it by a year). It will cost you money to reapply but doing a MA will also cost you without necessarily providing that much of a benefit. Although I am in different field, I feel that MA programs are great at bringing someone who isn't PhD-level yet into PhD-level but if you already got into decent PhD programs, I'm not sure having a MA will make you any more likely to get into a top tier program.

[Tips for negotiating packages]

I am assuming you mean that you are not happy with any of the doctoral programs you applied to and would only do a PhD if you got into different programs? If that is not the case, then I would second TMP's advice. Take the funded PhD offers now.

However, if you do think doing a partially funded MA will truly boost your chances and it is worth the cost of a partially funded MA, then I think the best way to ask for more funding is to just directly ask for it. You have the "advantage" of not being able to attend if they say no, so you don't have anything to lose at all.

I would just write to the MA program of choice and say directly: I am very interested in attending your program but I would be unable to do so without funding covering at least 50% of the program tuition. Is there any other funding that is available?

The only "don'ts" I have is:

Don't do this unless you are prepared to immediately accept their offer if they meet your funding ask. So decide where you would want to go first and then start with the ask. If they say no, move onto the next school. But I would highly recommend asking one school at a time.

[Funding Question]

Tuition waiver counts as part of funding, so if you are truly unfunded, then you would pay for tuition too. However, it is possible that some very limited funding offers just include enough to cover tuition and/or a tuition waiver with a very small stipend. 

[Paying taxes on stipend]

8 minutes ago, FishNerd said:

Thank you @TakeruK! My fellowship amount will actually be the majority of my stipend rather than my TA funds, but perhaps I can still look into increasing withholdings from my TA paychecks. If I'm not able to do that will I likely have to do quarterly tax payments? I am always used to all money I have taken in being automatically taxed at time of disbursement so I had no clue what would happen with my fellowship money in this case and you've definitely helped cleared it up. My aunt typically does my taxes for me so maybe I can consult with her to see what she has to say about it all (I will definitely mention increasing withholdings on my TA paychecks as something that could maybe be done since this isn't something I had thought of or knew was a possibility).

I did forget to say something above: you (probably) don't have to worry about it for the 2018 tax year since if you are starting this fall, you will only have 4 months of income at most from non-withheld fellowship. So this is something you can figure out once you are settled (yay). 

The IRS page I linked is a little confusing (I'm really glad that I never had to properly parse it). But if I understood correctly, you only need to pay estimated taxes if your total tax owing and your tax paid thru withholdings is more than $1000 and that your total withholdings and possible refundable credits (to apply against the tax owed) will be less than 90% of the total tax owed this year (or less than 100% of the total tax owed in the previous year).

So, for the 2019 tax year, you basically would have to be in a case where the tax on the fellowship itself is more than $1000 and your withholdings from the TA work is less than 90% of your total tax owed. Since you say that most of your income is from the fellowship, the second condition is likely true. So, if the tax owed from your fellowship is more than $1000 then you might have to pay quarterly taxes unless you increase your withholdings. Your effective tax rate is probably around 10% if you are a resident taxpayer that can claim the $12,000 standard deduction. Therefore a quick check is that if your fellowship is valued at $10,000 or more, then you should look into this a little further. 

If it is more than $10,000, then you should see how much is being withheld from your TA paycheck. Multiply that by 12 and that's an estimate of how much tax you would have already paid by the end of the tax year. Then, estimate the total actual tax you'll pay by calculating 10% of your total stipend (maybe 11% if you want to be safe). If the difference between actual taxes to be owed and your withholdings is more than $1000 then you might want to think about increasing the withholding. If it's only a little bit over, the fine is not very big so it's up to you to decide if it's worth acting on. 

See here for info on changing your withholdings: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/employees/tax-withholding 

[Paying taxes on stipend]

1 hour ago, FishNerd said:

So at one of the schools I've been accepted to I have received a TAship and a fellowship. The TAship is taxed at time of disbursement since I would be technically working for that money, but in my award letter for the fellowship it states that taxes are not deducted from that part of my stipend at time of disbursement. The pay from these two sources of money will be disbursed to me separately (one at the beginning of the month, the other at the end). I realize that I will still need to pay taxes on my fellowship awrd though as you state (and as my award letter states), so I guess my question is how that is done since taxes are not taken out of that money when it is disbursed and is that money taxed at a different rate than my TAship will be taxed?

This difference caused a huge problem at my PhD school a few years ago when the school decided to switch from withholding taxes on fellowships to not withholding them in the middle of a tax year. This caused some people to have to pay penalties to the IRS because they suddenly needed to pay quarterly taxes and the school made this change 2 quarters into the year. It worked out in the end---the school agreed to pay everyone's fines but it was a stressful time for all resident taxpayers (non-resident taxpayers still have withholdings from fellowships).

Now to answer your actual question. No, your tax rate is the same for both sources of income. When you file your taxes at the end of each tax year, you will likely have a W-2 for your TA work that shows how much you earned and how much tax was withheld. You will also get another form for your fellowship that will show the same thing (but no taxes withheld). At my school, American students got the 1099-MISC for their fellowship income, but it can vary I've heard. Non-resident taxpayers like me got a 1042-S. 

So. when you file your taxes, you add up all the income from all sources and then you (or the tax software) determines how much tax you are owed based on your income. It is compared to how much tax you already paid through withholdings and you probably have to pay the difference since you did not have taxes withheld from your fellowship. 

However, there is a complication. The IRS has some rule where if you have a tax owing of some amount then you must pay taxes during the year, either through withholdings or quarterly estimated tax payments. Of course, the IRS doesn't like it when you are late on tax payments throughout the year and will charge interest on accumulated taxes but they have no problem on holding onto your withholdings until you file your return! For more info see this page: https://www.irs.gov/faqs/estimated-tax. For my friends in the above story, they were 100% paid through fellowships so they definitely had to make estimated tax payments.

In your case, if the TA is the majority of your stipend, then you are probably okay. But it would be a very good idea to figure out how much total tax you will have to pay in one full tax year. Then you can ask your school's Human Resources department to increase your withholdings from your TA paychecks so that by the end of the year, you would have paid enough taxes so that you don't have to make estimated tax payments each quarter and/or you don't have to make a giant lump sum tax payment each April. 

[giving students exam answers]

I'm super glad it worked out. I would have been very stressed about it too. I did experience something similar and it was a very good learning experience for me and it sounds like it will be for you too. We improve best when we make mistakes!

This has led me to have policies such as "I won't answer any questions within X hours of the due date/exam date because I won't have time to pass the information on to everyone in the class" where X is 24 or 48 or something like that. And whenever someone asks me a good question that isn't specific to them only, I will email the question and answer to the whole class (I wouldn't include the asker's name though).

At my PhD school, all of our exams and midterms are take-home, self-proctored exams. So, our class policy is usually to make everyone aware of a single webpage that will be updated during the exam period until a certain date and all "clarifying questions" type Qs that we get via email will be posted online and emailed out when we answer them so that everyone has the same information. When I proctored on-campus exams at other schools, if I answered a question for one student, I gave the same answer to the whole class (however, most exams I proctored had a rule of absolutely no questions).

P.S. I think you made the right choice to not get into the "why" of the situation. 

[Paying taxes on stipend]

38 minutes ago, CandideCoating said:

I'm so confused about this stipend business. If we have to pay taxes on it, because we are 'employees' of the school, then why is it considered 'aid' for calculating your "estimated financial aid"? It isn't aid - it is work. 

I am not sure how the US student loans/financial aid works, but it makes sense to me that work income is included in determining how much needs-based student loans/aid you can receive. I guess it's weird to call it "aid" when it's your employment income, but if you are granting money on a needs-based basis, it makes sense to award more to people who do not also have employment income from their school. 

Also, some US schools consider your RA or TA ship "aid" because they believe they are "overpaying" you since the arrangement, in their minds, is that you get a big pile of money and the small amount of work you do is not really as employment. I think this is how schools take advantage of the dual student/employee status of grad students

P.S. One last note: The IRS taxes income whether or not it's employment-based. So at my PhD school, we receive fellowships and a letter saying we provided no work in exchange for the money (i.e. we're not employees). American students get the 1099-MISC tax form, not the W-2. However, we still pay taxes on it! (In Canada, non-employment based income isn't taxable if it's a scholarship/fellowship/aid to support studies).

[The subtle art of emailing to ask about admissions decisions]

I would only ever email to ask about decisions if you need to know this information because of a deadline on another decision. For example, if your 3rd choice school has made you an offer and want you to respond by March 15, then it would make sense to email your top 2 choices to see if you are even still in the running. 

Otherwise, I think it is more professional to find another way to release the stress/anxiety/frustration of not yet hearing while others have heard back. 

[Accepted! But Confused]

The # of hours thing is how many hours you are expected to spend on the assigned work from your Grad Assistantship in order to earn your stipend. If it's a TA or administrative work then this is clearly something in addition to the work you have to do to complete your PhD. If it is RA work, then it depends on the RA assignment and field. In STEM fields, we often are assigned work as RAs for our advisors, so the RA work is work towards the dissertation. However, the assignment is still only 20 hours per week so it's nowhere near enough work to actually finish a PhD. 

The 100% time thing probably means that you are 1.0 FTE (full time equivalent). This is important for Human Resources and other things like benefits or other school/work policies. It basically means that you are counted as a full time worker in policies where it matters. One big one common to many grad schools is whether or not you are eligible for health insurance benefits. Often, only people with at least X% (sometimes 50%, sometimes 100%) qualify for these benefits. So 100% time is a good thing. 

It could also mean what iwearflowers said about not being able to find outside work. Although this could still be true without them saying 100% time.

[giving students exam answers]

I agree with the above posts that the problem isn't what you said, but it's because you only said it to a few people. 

I think probably a good idea to discuss next steps with your professor if you think you need to talk to your professor first.

But I actually don't think there is any problem at all with mass emailing the class telling everyone pretty much exactly what you told those two students. My philosophy is very much "if there is some advantage gained unfairly, the right action is to nullify this advantage" and I think the best and most neutral way to nullify the advantage is to email the class or replace the question for everyone. So, talk to the prof about it.

[Should I give my letter writers stickers as a thank you gift?]

I don't really see a problem with it. If they like those things, they would be thrilled. If they don't, well, at least the stickers are easy to re-gift or throw out (i.e. it's not going to be offensive or any worse than any other gift they might not like).

["Fringe benefit" for grad students]

On 2/27/2018 at 9:45 PM, rising_star said:

More money does not equal better when it comes to health insurance for a variety of reasons. It's more that your undergrad health insurance is being subsidized by the institution and by the abundance of young (presumably healthy) people. 

Indeed. For my PhD school, both the employee and student plans were very very similar, except the students' plan cost way less because of the demographic. Also, the student plan has specific benefits negotiated by students (e.g. lots of mental health benefits, sleep disorders etc.) while the employee plan had more benefits that were relevant to the staff demographic.

[Timing and decisions]

Seconding rising_star: why wait until you hear back from your top choice? The only reason to not decline is that this is your personal #2 choice school and you think your partner will move to this area for you if you don't get into your top choice.

[Postdoc PhD advisor?]

Great! Good luck It sounds like a good opportunity!

[School that accepted me emailed for an update on my decision status. I'm still waiting on one school. Is that bad?]

You are fine. No one expects you to only have one application in the works and it is generally expected that every applicant has some other schools they are also interested in. That's why the question "where else are you considering" is so common on interviews and visits and that's why schools have visits to try to convince you that they are the best choice for you!

Some people might have chose to phrase things in different ways but it seems like what you said was fine. 

For the other school, I don't think you need to do anything right now because it doesn't seem like the first school is putting any pressure on you to decide. I would just wait unless you needed to know sooner for some reason. Possible reasons are: first school wants you to decide sooner, the two schools are close together so you want to plan a single trip to visit both places, you have very important other things happening in March/April that you can't miss so you want to put aside some dates for that school now. Otherwise, just hang tight, tell the first school that you are very excited for the trip and wait and see what happens. If/when you get the second offer, then it's time to make a decision.

Also, if at this point you are sure that you will pick the school you have an offer from over the other 6 schools not mentioned, then it's also a good idea to contact these other 6 schools and ask to withdraw your application. But if you will still consider them then don't do this just yet. It might be wise to wait until you visit the first school in person before making any permanent decisions about the other 6 schools (sometimes things are very different in person than on paper!)

[Follow up on interviews]

Profs are busy but that is no reason to not contact them. In North America, I would say that understanding that profs are busy and being respectful of their time means that you contact them for legitimate reasons and you wait patiently for a response, rather than to assume they would be too busy and not email them at all! So if you have something to say, then send them an email!! Don't write back just for the sake of writing back but if you do have questions from the papers they sent you, you should definitely write back. Let them decide whether they want to respond to you again or not. It would only be "rude" and "bad judgement" if you wrote a response, then continued writing them over and over again before they replied to you. Some other rude behaviours might be to expect responses within a few days and to continually ask them about a response! But if you send a message and are willing to wait until they have time to respond, that's perfectly fine

[Is getting a work visa in the US more difficult for some degrees?]

19 minutes ago, Lena_Regina said:

Like Lemma said most students use their year of OPT to establish themselves in the job market, with a STEM degree you can extend to get a second year of OPT.

Although this is an older thread, just wanted to point out that F-1 OPT for STEM students is now 36 months (i.e. three years in total) instead of 27 months as before. (See: https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/students-and-exchange-visitors/students-and-employment/stem-opt)

Also for foreign students on J-1 status, AT (Academic Training) for STEM students has been and is still 36 months. But this status comes with other restrictions for future visa applications.

21 minutes ago, Lena_Regina said:

(who knows where we're headed with the current administration ) 

And of course, all of this is just current for now, anything can happen in the future (although some types of changes do take longer than others, e.g. the increase in F-1 OPT for STEM took many many years to put into place even though it was a popular and supported idea; the process is just slow).

[How much should I divulge to POI?]

Glad to hear it all worked out  

[Future collaboration with a professor whose admissions offer you declined?]

No one will be offended that you didn't take their admissions offer (as long as you're not a jerk about it, of course!). So you shouldn't have to worry about losing out on future collaborations because you said no to them this time.

However, I am not sure if it's the best idea to instantly start research with the prof at the school you're not attending. Grad students are generally expected to be more focussed on their work and it might not be feasible to make good progress on your actual PhD program coursework and research work while also making progress on an outside project. 

In addition, if the prof at the other school is looking for students, if you turn down the offer/project, they might prefer to have one of their actual students take the lead on that project instead of you since you would be a student elsewhere already. They might want to have someone full time on it, plus there are other reasons to want to have your own students instead of just using someone else's. And similarly, your own advisor/dept at your grad program might not be happy that you are working on a side project with a professor elsewhere at this stage.

Personally, I found that starting a new PhD program is a demanding enough time and the period up to the quals exam is quite intense. I am glad I waited until later on in my PhD to start external collaborations and side projects. I found it better for me to be able to fully focus on doing well in my grad program and PhD project first instead of splitting my time and energy across multiple projects. But you're a different person than me of course. Just letting you know my own experience so you can decide what's best.

That said, if you were thinking of including this other prof on as a collaborator to the project you would work on at your actual grad school, then it might be possible earlier on (although I'd wait until I have talked to my advisor at my grad school and wait until a semester or two has passed before bringing it up). However, you said that these two profs did very different stuff so I didn't think this was the case.

But going back to your title, I read "future collaboration" as in 4+ years from now, not instantly! You can definitely still work with this person in the future. If they are the type of person that would never want to speak to you just because you took another offer then it's probably not a person you want to work with anyways. Don't make any plans now but keep them in mind for the future. When the time is right for you to start thinking of new avenues of research, then contact them again. You don't even have to refer to your past discussions as a prospective grad student, because in 3-4 years, you'd develop much more as a researcher and it won't really matter that you had applied to their program in the past (i.e. if you find another prof somewhere that you would want to work with but you didn't apply to them in the past, you can still reach out). Talk to your advisor at this point for tips and advice. In my field, near the end of the PhD, the student is expected to start thinking and planning for post-PhD work, which often includes reaching out to other profs and starting new research ideas.

Also keep in mind that while most people do choose to stay in the same area of research as their PhD initially, this is mostly because they want/need to be productive right off the bat as a postdoc. But during this time, people will often start shifting focus too and it's a good time to be going into other research directions that you were interested in before (and maybe you'll find other things to be interested in while a grad student). So it's not like whatever you choose for your PhD closes all doors forever and you must only work on this one single topic. As researchers age, they often expand their projects further and further. For many tenured profs, their PhD dissertations are nothing like what they are doing now.

[Should I trust an unofficial offer ??]

43 minutes ago, Oawad said:

I have recently sent my 1st preference at school B to ask him if my offer is guaranteed, and he replied with "yes" and that he already asked the admissions to send me an offer. Yesterday, I sent school A for extension, but don't know if this too late to ask for an extension (official offer expires tomorrow). Anyways, I'm waiting for their reply today.

Thank you all for your useful advice ! 

It sounds like your offer at B is safe, but I would still try to get an extension from A until you have the official official offer from B. Asking for an extension one day before is a bit late but hopefully it will work out. If not, and they cancel your offer from A, at the very least it seems like you are safe with B.

[Should I trust an unofficial offer ??]

2 hours ago, cochra13 said:

Hello, 

I'd like to share a personal experience to help answer your question. I applied to a Clinical Psychology program at a Canadian university. My application was re-directed to a different advisor than the one I applied to work with due to a personal crisis with my initial POI. Basically, my application made it into the new POI's hands after she had already completed her interviews. She told me that she had already chosen a student to admit and had given this other student a verbal unofficial commitment. I'm saddened for this other student to say that after my interview with this new POI she decided she would actually like to admit be more and because nothing was officially official yet with this other student, that's just what he did. I am now a master's student under this POI's advisorship and this other student who was given unofficial acceptance is not. I know this sounds terrible but grad school is terribly competitive and you must take whatever advantage you can get. 

The moral of the story here is that you should definitely ask school A for an extension to make your decision. They will almost always grant this to a student they are perusing. Don't take anything unofficial with credibility. 

Good luck with your decision!!

I had a similar experience applying to my Canadian MSc programs too. After getting an offer letter, I was told that I could be admitted to work with one of two professors subject to availability. The letter said I should decide as soon as possible but didn't give a deadline on when to choose which POI. When I inquired, I was told that professors are always reviewing other applicants so while the offer letter for admission to the department was valid for a good long time, the openings as RAs for specific profs are up to each prof. So, I had to decide as soon as I was ready to commit. Luckily for me, the prof was someone that also wanted to hire me, so they said they would check with me before making an offer to someone else. Communication is important!