TakeruK

As far as I know, most grants that professors apply for to fund their graduate students do not come with restrictions on the nationality of the graduate student. However, almost all fellowships that graduate students apply for (e.g. NSF) do come with such restrictions. This makes a difference to the # of international students admitted because admitting domestic students means that there is a chance that student will win something like a NSF and reduce the cost to the department. But if you accept an international student, it is much less likely they will ever reduce your cost. This factor makes it harder for international students to be admitted in both public and private schools. (In public schools, there is an additional hurdle of international students costing more). Also, as others point out, even though international students cost more, training them to be PhDs might be a fairly cost effective way to do humanitarian missions too. The US wants to send money overseas to help developing countries and training PhDs can be part of that mission. I'm certainly not qualified to comment on whether this makes quantitative sense, but I think it's important to point out / recognize that there is value to the US for them to train international students while also recognizing that international student admission should be harder because American taxes fund most schools.

I wonder(ed) that too. But I've never encountered any official position on that. My experience with the OGS and seeing how faculty refer to the OGS, to me, it sounds like an award that many view as an "early grad career" award (as I wrote above). Also, and this is pretty much just speculation (but based on experience): in general, almost all graduate fellowships of this nature (i.e. awards that fund you as a student rather an award that funds a specific project or task) give me the vibe that they are for new students. That's why there are limits on how many years you're into a grad program before you are not longer eligible to apply (regardless of how many years of previous funding). I find that most awards meant for senior grad students will actually be funding a specific project and it's more like applying for your own research grant than a scholarship/fellowship. (But this can also be field dependent).

Ah this must have been a recent change. I applied for OGS for the 2012-2013 academic year and at that point, it was 4 years max instead of 6.

I certainly agree with both of you that the professor is involved and a power dynamic makes things complicated. I just don't think she should feel obligated to apologize on behalf of her partner. I'm not saying the professor is not at fault. I don't have the original post in context so I was responding to the general situation and the fact that people here seem to expect a faculty member to be responsible for another person's actions. What I mean is that whether or not the professor is guilty of anything in this situation should not be dependent on whether or not she apologizes. Saying that one should not apologize for their partner's actions is not the same as "I think the University should not do anything". I hope that in this case, the University offices responsible for handling this situation finds a fair solution. For the scenarios that ProfLorax brought up, I would hope these solutions might involve something like not allowing the professor's partner to attend departmental events and allowing the student to take a course from another professor in lieu of that course, if that is the appropriate response after considering all the facts. At least, these are the actions that my school's Title IX and Graduate Offices would take in situations that involve something like this.

I do think people will react differently. Again, only commenting on the general idea of "partner-of-employee-harasses-student", if I was in the professor's shoes, I would not apologize on behalf of my partner, unless my partner asked me to deliver the apology. My partner is an independent agent, and when they express how they feel, I don't think I should invalidate their feelings by apologizing on their behalf. In the specific (deleted) situation of the OP, maybe there is more to it. It would certainly be unprofessional/unethical of me, if I am having problems with someone and then I get my partner to do the "dirty work" for me. But if I (ethically) complain about someone else to my partner (ethically as in not revealing privileged information due to my position) and my partner decides to take matters into their own hands, although I might not condone it, I'm not going to apologize unless my partner wanted to apologize. Especially if my relationship with the other person is already strained, I would feel no obligation to make them feel better. However, as in ProfLorax's example, if the offended person was someone I cared about, then I would care about the fact that they were hurt and try to "smooth things over" (i.e. address the fact that they were hurt, but I would still never "apologize on behalf of my partner" without my partner's permission). I'm not saying one way or another is right in general (and certainly not trying to comment on this specific situation). I just wanted to respond to Crafter's (and a few others') comments that imply that in general, we should apologize for our partner's actions. I think there are very valid reasons (as I wrote here) to not want to do this. Of course, ideally, all interactions between me and others on campus would be nice and happy, but if I don't like someone, I don't think I should be obligated to ensure that they feel good about every interaction with me. I just have to make sure I'm not responsible for any harassment. And I am certainly not going to be held responsible for what my partner, an independent agent, does and nor should I "police"/control their actions. They have the freedom to act as they wish (within the law).

I like advisor. But I occasionally use adviser. For one reason or another, I tend to use "advisor" when it's a title like our "Thesis Advisor", or "Financial Advisor" or when referring to people in these positions. I think "adviser" for just the general word for someone who advises? But now I will also think robot defender when I use "advisor"!

I think this is a question best answered by your University. In general though, the OGS will only be awarded to students with less than 4 years of total OGS, SSHRC, CIHR, or NSERC support. So if your only other national/provincial support was the 3 year CGS, then you would still be eligible for one additional OGS year. However, if you had another award prior to that CGS, then you would no longer be eligible for the OGS. Note that NSERC (and I think SSHRC and CIHR?) also have 4 year maximum support limits. However, OGS awards do not count against NSERC limits, but NSERC awards do count against OGS limits. I do think the number of years of previous awards is a factor in the decision (but I don't know if it's a factor that just determines eligibility, or like you said, OGS will favour earlier stage students). It might depend on the the OGS committee whether or not they tend to prefer to grant awards to those with really high potential or if they prefer to grant them to senior students with demonstrated talent. In general, I would consider the OGS an "early" award meant for new(er) students though, but that's just me. I don't have stats to demonstrate either way because most people I know with a NSERC CGS-D3 also won the NSERC CGS-M so they would have exhausted all 4 years of funding before needing to apply to a OGS.

Without the details, I can only write about the general case of "a non-employee-that-is-connected-to-an-employee-in-some-way harasses a student off-campus" because I don't want to speculate on any missing details. This is based on my experience in training and working with some related issues. I think the school can do a few things. First, the school may be able to deny access to campus for the non-employee. This might also depend on public vs. private schools. At my private school, we have a general "open-campus" policy but if someone is bothering us**, we can call security who will ask them to leave or security will call the local police to come and arrest them for trespassing. I don't know if it is possible to "trespass" at a public school though. (** believe it or not, sometimes random people walk into our buildings and demand that we pay attention to their own pet scientific theories, or sometimes vendors make unsolicited visits and try to aggressively sell their product) Also, in general, "workplace harassment" is something that is centered more on the worker rather than the location of the incident (for example, if two employees harass each other via email or at a coffee shop in town, it's still covered under "workplace harassment" policies I'm familiar with). What matters is that the people protected by the policy (i.e. students, staff, faculty, etc.) are protected. The school might be limited in what it can do if it happens off-campus and if the offender is not affiliated with the school but they can take measures to ensure that the student does not face further harassment while on campus (such as, but not limited to, denying access). Finally, while confronting the professor in private could clear up some details and provide answers, in the general case, once the situation has deteriorated to a point where a student does not feel comfortable addressing the issue (due to the nature of the harassment), the student should not feel any obligation to resolve it privately first. That is, in the case of harassment, the right reporting office (whether or not it's Title IX or something else depends on the specifics) should not have expected the student to try to resolve it on their own first. My past training would tell me to advise the student to just go ahead and report it to the administration and only ever talk to the people involved when there are other people in the room.

If I recall correctly, test taker photos were only required for some testing centers when I took the GRE. But now, I think it's standard procedure. I think it's a little weird, since the graduate school reviewing your application is not going to be able to use these photos as proof of anything, since most US schools do not require you to submit a photo with your application (maybe for programs with interviews, they can verify your identity in this way). But I know ETS does administer a lot of other tests and maybe they found it was easiest if they used the same protocol throughout all of their tests. I think my General GRE testing experience was the highest amount of security I had ever had to submit to, even more than entering foreign countries, and even the United States! I also think it's weird/hilarious how little security there exists at the GRE Subject Test sessions compared to the General GRE!

Yes, it is after arrival. Paper I-94 used to be the norm. I got a paper I-94 when I first entered the US in 2012. You would have to get a blank I-94 from the customs area first, then fill out basic information (name etc.) before heading to the CBP kiosk/desk. Just FYI in case you come across older websites (or older posts here) that discuss picking up a I-94 prior to arrival.

I think you did a good job of picking out the questions that need to be answered in order to decide whether the housing price increase is reasonable/valid. The suggestions I would have are: 1. Make it clearer that it was in Pine County, not Maple County, that the housing price increased happened. 2. Make a mention of Chestnut County's result (10 years ago, but no drastic housing price increase). 3. You can strengthen your analysis by calling into question the difference in location as well as the difference in time. 4. Another question you can raise is how did the prices in Pine County rise? For example, what if Pine County doubled in price 12 years ago (before Chestnut County enacted these measures)? 5. I think your paragraphs can be clearer if you rearranged them to state the question that needs to be answered first, and then provide your reasons why this question is important. Right now, you give reasons and build up to a question, but since the goal of this essay is to communicate the questions to be answered, I think these paragraphs should begin with these questions. Note: I'm not an expert at this, just some thoughts!

To be clear, I was not trying to say your approach is bad/less ideal. I was trying to understand the differences and provide information to people reading this thread to help them decide which approach they want to read

I also agree with the other posters that it would be a good idea to find out from other people working for him whether or not this is normal. Most Universities are faculty-driven and they have the power. The only way to get a professor to change their supervising style is when they choose to make the choice themselves. In general, there is very little that any other group on campus can affect the behaviour of professors (as long as the professor is not acting against policies). Administration will not force professors to meet with students X hours per month. In theory, the Faculty might be able to place requirements but it is very unlikely the faculty would choose to constrain themselves. At our school, we have tried hard to address the problem of bad mentorship. Good mentorship can really make a difference in a grad student's trajectory. We have considered a wide range of solutions and consulted with administrators at many levels. Ideally, we would like the school to have something like "Mentorship Training" for faculty, but this is not very popular amongst the people who have the power to make it happen. The next step is to consider co-authoring a "Best Practices" or "Guidelines for Student-Professor relationships" document with representatives from the Faculty but it's possible that in order to get the faculty to cosign, the content would be very vague and general and thus have no effect. Ultimately, I think the most practical path forward is to recognize when a professor has a working style different from yours and then either choose to: 1) change supervisors or 2) change your working style.

The OP does not have this prerogative. Once content is posted, TheGradCafe determines what remains and what disappears, not the original poster. Again, I refer all users to our policies and in particular, a recent post to clarify the edit/delete policy: was posted by rising_star, but the contents were coauthored over many weeks by everyone on the moderating team. As I said above, TheGradCafe is not the ideal place if you want complete anonymity and the ability to delete your personal details after you get help or see some responses. Unfortunately, for complicated situations, it is impossible for another person to give advice/thoughts without specific details, but these specific details are usually relevant to the topic being discussed, so they will not be removed. It is the responsibility of each user, prior to making any posts, to weigh the pros and cons of getting specific advice at the cost of providing potentially personal details and take action accordingly.

The Markov Chain and Brownian motion stuff is why I recommended the "applied" Ross book. It has entire chapters dedicated to these topics while in the other book, these topics are sections within a single chapter. The applied book and the course I took did have some useful "math stuff" like learning about the moment generating functions and how to get the mean, variance, etc. from differentiating said functions (so, fewer things to memorize). It also teaches some useful things like if you have two random variables X and Y, how do you determine the distribution of another random variable, Z, that is a function of X and Y. I guess the "applied" book is like a "toolbox" of probabilistic models and other tricks you can apply to whatever problem you are trying to solve. I don't consider myself an expert in probability theory at all, but instead, I feel that given a data-driven problem and a question, I know what tools to use to answer that question, and where to find those tools in the book. I certainly do not know how to derive/prove these theories myself, and I am not qualified to develop my own statistical methods; but I do know enough "math stuff" to follow along someone else's proof.

There won't be a problem. You will probably get asked on your travel plans in the US, so you should be able to describe to them how you are going to get from B to A. They also usually want to know where you plan to stay in the US (e.g. "hotels in city B then I have an apartment in city A" for example.

I agree with you that ideally, being able to read some of these literary works (confession: I don't recognize most of the works mentioned here) should be as valued as being able to ask directions in Paris. But then, in my opinion, there are a lot of other things with the same value: learning to play hockey, learning how to cook, sewing, how to run a business, touch typing, etc. Unless you have unlimited teachers and unlimited space, the school will have to pick and choose what to teach. At my school, based on the expertise available, we had classes like Cantonese, Business, Yearbook, Photography, Calculus, Psychology, Peer Mentoring, etc. as elective courses that would count towards graduation. However, we did not have Latin because we had no teacher who could teach it. I wanted to take a Creative Writing course but it was cancelled due to lack of interest. I think schools have to make tough decisions and if they finally have money to hire another teacher, and there are still many gaps to fill, Latin is probably going to be a lower priority. Unless of course, there is a foreign language requirement and Latin would fulfill that, then I think the school should prioritize Latin over some other general elective, such as Psychology or Calculus. But if there is a "modern language" requirement rather than just a "foreign language", then I think adding a course like Latin should be a lower priority than adding a course that fulfills a diploma requirement.

I haven't heard of the other book by Ross before so I searched for an online table of contents. It seems like the two books are quite similar. First Course in Probability: http://www.pearsonhighered.com/bookseller/product/First-Course-in-Probability-A-9E/9780321794772.page Introduction to Probability Models: http://store.elsevier.com/Introduction-to-Probability-Models/Sheldon-Ross/isbn-9780124081215/ However, it looks like First Course in Probability is more focused on the mathematics and theory while Introduction to Probability Models is more about applied problems. So, I think it might depend on what you want to get out of the self-study. I'd recommend Introduction to Probability Models if you are not that interested in things like "how does the exponential distribution come about?" and are looking for "okay, taking the exponential distribution as a given, what can you do with this?" I personally like this book because, as you can see from the Table of Contents, there is a short intro to basic concepts (Ch. 1-3) followed by how to apply various probability theories to problems in the physical sciences. I am going to guess that "First Course in Probability" is more about the math from the Table of Contents and reading how the publishers market this book vs. the other book (but again, not having seen the whole thing, maybe svent can provide more information).

My undergrad degree required a Calculus based probability course and we used "Introduction to Probability Models" by Sheldon M. Ross. We used the 9th edition, but it seems like it's on the 11th edition now on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Probability-Models-Eleventh-Sheldon/dp/0124079482/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1435707897&sr=8-3&keywords=sheldon+M+ross&pebp=1435707905227&perid=09M0FVB3C4SB6PWHKD9M I really liked this book. It's very comprehensive (but our course didn't cover all of the book). I think this might be the kind of book you are looking for. This was a third year course for me, and at that time, I also had approximately the same math background as you (I also had ODEs and PDEs but they are not necessary here). In grad school, I took (and now TA) Bayesian statistics so if you are into that as well, I highly recommend "Data Analysis: A Bayesian Tutorial" by Sivia (http://www.amazon.com/Data-Analysis-Bayesian-Devinderjit-Sivia/dp/0198568320/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1435708020&sr=8-1&keywords=sivia&pebp=1435708022354&perid=0XQF4FZ88RFQVQJMA298). This book is very short and concise so at some points, a lot of steps are skipped. Notation and concepts from linear algebra is used A LOT here to simplify the notation so it's good that it's recent for you (when I took this, my last Linear Algebra course was something like 4 years ago). Edited to add: Sivia's book jumps right into Bayesian stats assuming you already have introductory statistics, so I think it's better to start with Ross and move onto Sivia. Also, Sivia has some C code / pseudo code that is pretty helpful to illustrate some of the more complicated material. I find that some concepts, such as Markov Chains, are so much more understandable when you see it in action rather than as a series of equations and proofs.

In reading some of this over, I realised something: I do think if the requirement is a "foreign language requirement" (i.e. the purpose of having this requirement is to expose the student to another language) then I absolutely agree that Latin should count for these credits. However, if the requirement is a "modern language requirement" (actually the way it's worded in some places) where the purpose is to provide the student with some basic functional ability in the language, then I do agree with the school's decision to not allow Latin to count. Latin should still count as elective credits towards a high school diploma though. Also, I would disagree that high school language courses is not enough. Maybe this depends on each program, but when I was in high school, taking a foreign language from Grade 9 through 12 (as I said above, anglophone Canadians must take French up to Grade 8) is usually enough for a student to speak, read, and write the language at a functional level. For example, enough to read a newspaper, write a letter, have a non-technical conversation. In order to be fluent, further practice would be needed, but students who do well in the Grade 9-12 classes would be proficient enough to get around if they were traveling to a country that speaks that language and enough to add "Basic X" to their resumes. If you want a comparison, based on looking at typical college syllabus, French 9 through 12 in Canada is equivalent to the French language instruction you might find through the first 2 years at the college level (in both Canada and the US).

In addition to reaching out to ETS, you may want to address this in your application itself too.

I think the conversation here did evolve a little bit from the original question. We went from discussing that particular case (at a private school) to discussing attitudes towards courses like Latin and Calculus in general at public schools to now discussing what we think are good general goals for public education as a whole! I think it's fine for discussions to evolve though, I wrote my opinion on the specific case (yeah, I think it's good to offer enrichment courses as long as the core curriculum doesn't suffer) and had nothing further to say on that, so I moved on to the other issues being discussed here.

To the first point: It is my opinion that Eigen and fuzzylogician have not accused you to misusing the Title IX office. It seems like both of these people have seen your original post and it sounds like that Eigen saw parallels between your situation and the Northwestern situation, and that fuzzylogician is giving you their opinion that you are over/mis-interpreting your professors' actions. These are valid opinions to have and they seem to be based on your original post (but I cannot see that post). No one is saying you are going to be in mis-use of the Title IX office. On the other hand, people have been saying that they think your interpretation and plan of action might not be the best one. Also, yes, you are certainly able to write whatever you want in TheGradCafe forums as long as it is within forum policies. The reaction was mostly to your request to delete the thread and your request for other users to stop talking about the situation you posted. I do think it is reasonable for people to stop discussing your character/identity though. The the second point: Yes, TheGradCafe does "own" the thread. I meant that no individual user can take "ownership" and decide what parts of the thread stays and goes. Everything that gets submitted to this website will stay or go at the discretion of the moderating team and administrators. The moderating team are all volunteers and we choose to do this because we have been long time members of the community, have found this community useful, and would like to continue to keep this community helpful. We do this by 1) removing spam posts as soon as we can, 2) ensure that discussions here stay archived and thus useful to all readers, 3) protect user privacy when appropriate, and 4) mediate disputes between users. Generally, the more active and involved members are asked to be moderators so it is not surprising to see conversations here with many such users participating. However, just because we are a "moderator" or "administrator", it does not mean every single post we write is from the "staff" point of view. In fact, unless we are writing about forum policy (as I am doing here), I would encourage everyone to treat all posts by staff members as any other user. If you read other discussions here, you will find that we are also a diverse set of people with diverse experiences and we will disagree with each other on the topics of discussion. But, when we are "on duty" and working on a forum policy related issue, you will find that our response will be unified. There is more than one way to run a forum for discussions to help/advise graduate students. I definitely see the benefit of a place where users can post things very anonymously and then have it completely disappear after a short time. There are certainly many sensitive issues that are best discussed in this manner. However, TheGradCafe is not this type of resource / not this type of forum. These forums grew from this website's "Results Search" database, where the goal is preserve information like test scores, decision results, decision timelines for people. So, naturally, the forum grew from this philosophy of archiving and storing information for future users. A single website/forum cannot meet all needs of a community. TheGradCafe is not a great place for things that you want to post and then have disappear after you get your answer. TheGradCafe is also not a great place for homework help or getting advice on your research. However, I do think it is a great place to discuss (and read about) issues that might come up during grad student /early career academic life. And it's a really good place for people to share perspectives, learn about differences between other programs and other fields, or even other countries. I completely understand and agree with you that sometimes sensitive issues are best discussed and then removed. But TheGradCafe is just not the right place for that.

The main idea behind academics encouraging each other to attend different schools for different graduate programs is to broaden one's horizons and gain more diversity of experience. But in recent years (in some fields more than others), it's been a lot easier to gain diverse experiences even staying at the same school. Communication with and travel to other scholars is much easier now with modern technology, so the "stigma" of staying in one place is lessened. But hiring committees still contain people from the decades where the stigma was still there, so this preference may still be reflected in hiring decisions. In addition, with your life/work experience, I think you would be less of a concern than someone who finished high school, then did an undergrad, Masters, and PhD all at the same place. As I said above, the goal of going to different places is to gain diversity of experience, but you would have that already (albeit not in your field of study, but still). --- For this next part, I apologize if you already know what you're doing and this part is just patronizing. I am writing it though because you asked for guidance. You mention a TT position as your career goal. You might have read a lot already about how academia is a very tough job market and that only a small fraction of graduates end up on the TT. It is my opinion that any incoming graduate student with a TT position as a career goal should treat it as a "shoot for the stars" goal and also have different career goals and motivations for entering a graduate program. Also, I notice that many students considering graduate school say they want a TT job but this is mostly due to a mistaken belief that the only possible job with a PhD is a TT position (in reality, at least in my field, the TT position is the exception rather than the norm). Your wife has a PhD in math and it sounds like she works in academia as well, so maybe you already know this (if so, sorry!). The point of this part is to ask what specifically do you want to do in academia? Is it TT job or bust? Or are you open to a lot of other things as well? I think knowing exactly what you want to be doing will shape the plan you take during graduate school, which then shapes the guidance others can provide. Again, I don't mean this as an attack/interrogation! You don't even have to answer here since it might be information you rather keep private. But I just wanted to guide your thoughts to setting a more immediate goal than TT job and then using those goals to determine how to best take advantage of your resources in your Masters and PhD programs.

I wanted to put this in a separate post since it's a little separate from the ideas in the last post. From this sentence and the general tone of your latest post, I sense a worry that your identity might be associated with your account on TheGradCafe. If you have not already seen this, I would also like to refer you to a clarification post we (the moderating team) recently wrote: