TakeruK

I am sorry if I was unclear. I don't mean to say that I think your reason to adapt to American English is not a good reason for you. Like you said, it's not for me to judge whether or not you made a "good" decision. I was directing this to the professors who are asking students to adapt. My meaning is that I don't think that the argument "You chose to come to the US, so why would you make an exception of yourself while in the US?" is a valid argument to make to foreign students in the United States. It should be solely up to the student what they choose to do, and professors should stay out of it. To me, cultural respect would indeed involve respecting the style guides of whatever publication you write for. As I said above, I write in American English for all American journals and conferences where the style guide requires American English. If there was a requirement for my dissertation, I would do so as well. But my program does not have such a requirement. And, if I was editing work started by someone else, I would always preserve the original author's style. I certainly would never edit another person's work for different English unless I was editing to conform to a specific style guide. At my school, there is no requirement or style guide for homework, term papers or dissertations. I agree that it is incorrect for a student to not use American English if the course policy states an official style guide. However, if there is no requirement, there is nothing wrong with choosing to not use American English. (And to be clear, there is nothing wrong with choosing American English either). Edited to add: That is, in my opinion, cultural respect extends to following the guidelines and regulations of the schools in your new country, and maybe even going beyond that if you want to. But just because a student chooses to stick to their own dialect unless required to does not mean they are being disrespectful.

I think you should tell them when you make your decision to defer because it will reflect poorly on you if you do not. I agree with you that since funding is not guaranteed, it is reasonable to apply to other places. I think you should say the example you put in your post. I think it is highly unlikely that they will decide to give you guaranteed funding once they hear that you want to apply elsewhere. Don't worry about that. Basically, by telling you that you can defer but there's no guarantee of funding, they are effectively allowing themselves to reject you next year if you don't compare well to the Fall 2016 applicants because an admission to a PhD program with no funding is effectively a rejection. However, they aren't making you completely reapply because the reality is that if you got in one year, you will likely get in next year. Although if you have a stronger application, you should send them updated materials. But you really really sound like you don't want to be attending this school and I don't think it makes sense to go through all of this deferral stuff just to hang onto a safety school. To me, it sounds like the best course of action is for you to thank them for their time, let them know that you are not planning to attend grad school in Fall 2015 for the reasons you said above, and say that you will think about grad school again for Fall 2016. Then, apply to whatever schools you want, including this school if you would like a safety. Since a deferral means you must compete with other Fall 2016 applicants for funding anyways, it's not that much different than reapplying and your new application might be stronger than the old one. I think all of this reapplying business is making the whole deferral process super complicated (and you won't get what you want out of it anyways) because this is not what the deferral process is intended to do. Like I said above, if you got in for Year X, you will likely get in for Year X+1, so if you want a safety school, just reapply to this one next time.

Toronto Pearson International Airport has US Preclearance, which means you will be crossing the US border in Toronto, not at your final airport destination. So, in theory, this carries the same risk of border delays causing you to miss a connection as if you connected in JFK. Major airports in Canada have 3 different areas: International, United States, and Domestic. If you connect through Toronto, you will likely land in the International terminal and to enter the US terminal, you will go through US Border Preclearance where you will talk to a Customs/Immigration officer just like you would at JFK. US Customs / Border Patrol says that Preclearance is more effective and I think they are right. I always go through customs much faster at a Preclearance site than at a US airport. This is because out of all the people entering Toronto from the international travel, only a fraction of them are going to the US. However, everyone international entering JFK will need to go through US Customs. And also, these preclearance stations are fairly recent and they were built with efficiency in mind! In addition, you will have way more options if you connect through Toronto instead of a EU country. The reason that US has preclearance in Canada is to help streamline travel between our two countries. Not every airport in the US has the full customs set-up necessary to process international travelers so if you are coming from a EU country, you must connect through a major hub airport (e.g. JFK). Once you go through a Canadian airport with pre-clearance, then you can in theory land at any US airport (as long as a flight exists) because you have already "crossed the border". (Note: this is the some of the same advantages as choosing JFK over a EU connection as I wrote above). In summary, the differences between connecting through Toronto Pearson (YYZ) and JFK are: - potentially shorter US customs lines since fewer people enter the US through YYZ than through JFK - YYZ may be easier to get around than JFK (I don't have experience in JFK but I think YYZ is well organized and easy to get around) - It is less busy than JFK (JFK is the 21st most busy airport in the world. YYZ is in the mid-30s) Otherwise, everything else is the same. My advice would be to consider connections through YYZ or other Canadian airports with US Preclearance the same as JFK. Personally I would like YYZ better because it's less crowded but for you, it might be easier to not deal with a connection in yet a third country. But if you are choosing between Toronto vs an EU connection, definitely go for Toronto.

This might be true for a lot of labs and groups, but it's clear that in this particular case, this will not work because the PI has already said that their expectations are different than this. I think it is weird that some people are reading "The PI is complaining about tardiness" and think "there must be some other reason that she is upset at the student!". I think the PI is being very clear that she is expecting her students to physically be in the lab more. There does not appear to be any reason to try to guess that the PI really means something else when she is saying what she wants plainly.

Issue Essay: I agree with the above poster that you do not seem to have a precise response to the actual question/issue but instead, are just writing several tangentially related thoughts. You have the prompt in your post and I just want to highlight a few key phrases: Overall, I think you can improve this essay by being more explicit in "the extent in which you agree/disagree" and then use your current paragraphs/examples to support your agreement/disagreement. Your current essay does come up with several good ideas that are for/against this statement, but you do not tie these ideas/examples with your position on this issue. I would ensure that you clearly state your position at the beginning and then give examples. Also a few notes: In Paragraph 1, I find the combination of "modernization comes in waves" and "exponential increase" confusing, because the latter implies constantly accelerating growth while the former either implies periods of growth and decline, or periods of growth followed by periods of non-activity. In the body paragraphs, I feel you get a little side-tracked by writing about technology and apps contributing to problems due to lack of human interaction. However, the prompt is about the increasingly rapid pace of life, not technology/apps. I think it's fine to use lack of human interaction due to technology/apps as evidence of a problem that the increased pace of life causes but I think your body paragraphs veers too far off topic. That is, you have two paragraphs developing this idea when I think since the main topic is the pace of life, you should have at least two different ways the increasingly rapid pace of life causes more problems. Argument essay: I think your response here is much stronger and more on topic! I just have one thought though: You say that the argument presented may not be valid because it contains assumptions. This is an incorrect statement, because arguments are generally a logical conclusion that you arrive at from a list of premises and assumptions. I think you should focus on the fact that the assumptions may not be correct (and show why) and how an incorrect assumption can break down the argument. You do this in your body paragraphs, and that's great. I just think you should rephrase your introduction and conclusion so that you are questioning the validity of the assumptions, rather than the existence of assumptions.

My degree requirements are 11 courses in total. We are on the quarter system (courses are 10-weeks long) so it supposedly the equivalent of 8 semester-length courses. We have six core courses that we must take in our first year. We also have five elective courses that we can take anytime before the end of our 3rd year (all courses must be complete before we can advance to candidacy and the University requirement is that we must reach candidacy by the end of Year 3. Usually, students finish all courses by the end of 2nd year (and usually pick up an on-the-way Masters at that point) and it feels like there is an "expectation" that we finish all (or all but one) courses by the end of Year 2. Some people (like me) want to front-load courses and finish everything in 4 quarters (i.e. by December of my 2nd year) while others take 5 or 6 quarters (end of 2nd year). Some courses might only be offered every other year, and if you can't take it in year 1 due to a conflict with a core course, then year 3 is the only option. As you might imagine, once-every-2-year courses are a priority in year 2 because year 4 is too late to take more courses. So, when you decide on a course plan this summer, I'd second GeoDUDE!'s advice to talk to your advisor to find out what future courses will look like and have a rough plan for the next few years. You mentioned TAing here too so just for completeness, the TA requirement in my program is one quarter each in our 2nd, 3rd, and 4th years (15 hours per week, 10 weeks/quarter). However, we have way more students than TA positions (there are basically no undergrad courses in our program, all the undergrads take grad courses) so some 4th year students get exempt from TAing if there aren't enough spots (they assign 2nd years first, then move upwards). Our funding/stipend is not tied to TA work, so we get paid the same whether we TA or not. Some of our TA assignments require a lot of time (e.g. field trips) so the professors try to balance assignments based on time committed in the past and interest (e.g. if there are five 4th year students but only 3 TA spots left, the ones who are interested will get it). Overall, it seems to work out pretty well and the ones that want to TA will get to do it while the ones that prefer to do other things aren't forced to. Even though the assignment system isn't 100% transparent, I don't think it causes a lot of issues since the overall TA load is so small. Most positions don't use up all 15 hours per week, but even if they did, this would only be 150 hours per year, and only 450 hours total in your whole degree! I know many other programs require 20hrs/week for all your years, and 20hrs/week would be something like 600 hours in just one year (~30weeks).

I'm a little confused--you said funding is not guaranteed, but now you say it might be? My above advice was written with the "no funding guarantee" in mind and that it would be like you said: you will be compared with the Fall 2016 applicants and find out about your funding offer when they make the Fall 2016 decisions.

(emphasis added). This is certianly a personal decision and I am all for whatever makes you happy! I just don't think that the reason I bolded above is a good reason for anyone (American or otherwise) to convince someone to change their ways when living in another country. I think this is a personal decision! I am not surprised that US professors are suggesting people switch to US English though, because one of the things I notice about the US is the "melting pot multiculturalism". I am more used to the "multicultural mosaic" in Canada, where we encourage people to keep their roots and adopt Canadian values in a way that complements but does not take over, their backgrounds. In the same vein, I am upset when Americans suggest that foreign students, especially those with names that sound strange in English, to adopt "English" versions of their names. And especially when there are cultures that identify themselves as "LastName FirstName", sometimes Americans will even tell them to change their name and refer to themselves as "FirstName LastName". I think this is a terrible practice and we should not be telling people to change their identity in order to conform. Of course, what's important to each person depends on each person, but only that person should be the one deciding whether or not they want to conform any part of their identity while living in the US (or anywhere).

No, you do not need a return ticket to enter the US on J1/J2 visas for graduate school. It's not possible to know when you will leave next when you are here for such a long time! I have entered the US on J-1 (and my spouse on J-2) 3 times since 2012 and every time I entered on a one way ticket. I can see that you might be expected to have a return ticket if you are on J-1/J-2 for a short program or if you were entering on other visas for a short trip (it would be suspicious if you said you were visiting a family member for 2 weeks but only have a one way ticket, for example).

If you really want to apply to different schools next year, then don't defer. Tell them that you have now decided that you are not certain yet for your plans for Fall 2016. You can mention that you will reapply, however, if you do so, they might ask "why not defer, then?" and saying that you want to apply to other schools as well would be a risk. This might end up reflecting poorly on you as it shows you are indecisive. But, it might also be helpful for you, because they might explicitly say something like "okay go ahead and apply to other schools, your admission offer will still be valid next year". If you are content with deferring this school's offer and attending in Fall 2016, then I don't think you have to worry too much about funding. It might depend on field, but I don't usually see huge variations in incoming classes. If you were competitive for funding for Fall 2015, you will likely still be competitive in Fall 2016. Excpetions are for very small programs or if you happen to be near the bottom of the pool (or if you were admitted off a waitlist, whether it was an explicit or implicit waitlist).

I would certainly miss class to attend a wedding of someone I'm close to. In the year leading up to my own wedding, I missed class and rescheduled exams in order to fly home to plan my own wedding (we had moved for school but wanted to have the wedding at home where everyone else was). But again, my experience is in research based graduate programs. I know that at one of my old schools, some professional programs made it clear on their application page that you cannot miss any class or take any time off during the (12-16 month) program at all, or risk failing.

Hi also fellow Canadian It sounds like you got your issue resolved, yay! But for others who might be reading this, it might be helpful to know that since most TAs at most Canadian schools are unionized, you technically have to "apply" to every single TA position. At Queen's when I was there, it was just a matter of emailing the department with your resume and a list of courses you would prefer to TA. Then, the department grants TAships as specified in the Collective Bargaining Agreement. The exact process varies with each contract, but in general, the order is 1) first people who are still in their X years of guaranteed funding, then 2) people in the department, and then 3) based on seniority. Your seniority date is often the date of your first TAship with this school, which is "never" for an entering student so you would be at the lowest seniority level. This makes sense--you want to make sure older students who are already there get the funding they need to finish. However, this process is only super formal because of the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Departments usually want to document their TA assignment process to ensure they comply with the Agreement. At Queen's, I was there prior to and after the Agreement took effect and there was no real change in the procedure, just a little bit of extra paperwork. In my opinion, this is a good thing because although the system works now, I feel better having a clear and transparent process in the unfortunate case that the future holds more students than TA positions. Also, although my department was fine, I know there was a lot of confusion for some students in multiple departments and some students felt they were being unfairly passed over for TAships because of favouritism.

I echo everything fuzzylogician said. I also want to address your question #2. Fuzzy already mentioned how School B might know and recommends not being deceitful. I also want to echo that to emphasize how important I think it is that we are honest in our applications. Integrity is crucial to academia and I believe the existence of academia requires all of us to act with integrity. We use public funding (e.g. taxes) to fund our schools, pay for our stipends, pay for our research expenses. We rely on fairness of peer review to communicate our work and evaluate our work. Researchers must earn the trust of both the general public and each other. So, in addition to the practical risks/dangers of getting caught in a lie, I also implore you to think of academia as a whole and think about the negative impact you can have on your (our) community if you act without integrity.

In my program, it is typical for students to take about 9-10 hours of coursework (in-class/in-lab time) plus about 10-20 hours of research per week. Our program does not have a TA component for the first year. However, our quals exams are a 3 hour oral exam at the end of first year that is research-based (we have to complete two mini-projects). We spend approximately 10 hours per week for a typical 3-hour-in-class course (the 10 hours includes the 3 hours in class). So, with 3 classes plus research credits, this is a load of 40-50 hours of combined coursework+research. In your case, you need to include the 20 hours of TAing too. You could and should talk to your advisor and other graduate students to learn more about this 20hr/week commitment. Sometimes TAships are 20hrs/week "on paper" but in practice, they can be more or less. Personally, I would be okay with a workload that is something like 20 hours on courses (so 6 hours of in-class time), 20 hours of TA and 10 hours per week of research for my first year. I probably would not try to add another course because that would be a 60 hour work week (if I was going to work a 60 hour week, I would prefer the extra 10 hours go towards research rather than a class). But, as I said above, my program is very research heavy. If it was not, then perhaps it would not be unreasonable to have 30 hours for classes, 20 hours for TA and 10 hours for research.

Definitely true about class sizes but my program have classes around 5-10 people (sometimes only 2 or 3 students) and people are still absent when necessary. Although I would say it would take more for me to choose to skip a class of 5 people than it would for me to skip a class of 30 people. Also, my school has a weird system that lets undergrads (who often take graduate classes with us) purposely double-book themselves with the instructors' permission (like Hermione in HP3, but no time turner). So I had students that I TA where they regularly missed half of the classes (because they're in the other class). Makes it an extra challenge!

When you cross the border (and are issued F-1 status), the official will be checking to ensure that you don't intend to use your student status to secretly move to the United States and stay there. Normally, the very fact that your PhD program is temporary is more than enough to demonstrate this. I've crossed into the US many times on my status now and I have never had to prove ties to Canada with documents. Officials are trained to know that students are generally young people that are unlikely to own real estate or other property. However, if you are feeling extra worried, you could bring bank statements (don't bother with notarizing though) to show that you are maintaining ties. Make sure you answer all of their questions accurately and do not have any plans to violate your F-1 status. Your parents' address is still your permanent address until they move (then their new address is your permanent address). Don't go into the specifics of how they are going to be moving soon unless specifically asked. Finally, one thing you can do is that if you live near an airport with pre-clearance, you can enter the US via one of these airports (there are many, but I only know of Vancouver and Toronto). You can then "cross the border" and go through all of the US Customs thing while in the Canadian airport, before you board your plane. If you go extra early (3-4 hours), then if there are any weird last minute issues (oh no, you forgot your I-20!) then you can either quickly go home and grab it or ask someone else to bring it to you. Alternatively, if you live near a US border with a US airport, you can also opt to cross the border by land (then there's no problems with timing things with a flight) and then fly from the nearby US airport to your destination (this may also be cheaper) ---- There's also another way to answer your question (the sense I thought you were asking from just the title). Next year, when you are a PhD student in the US, you will have to file taxes with Canada as well. You will be filing as a deemed or factual resident of Canada (which is good) because of 1) your student status and 2) your residential ties with Canada. Your student status means that for the first 5 years, you cannot file as a resident alien in the US, so that helps you make the case of filing as a resident of Canada. Your residential ties with Canada strengthen this argument (e.g. keeping your parents' place as your permanent address, and keeping Canadian bank accounts with your savings in them). More info here: http://travel.gc.ca/travelling/living-abroad/taxation

My school's international student office sent us all an email today about this. The reason is that the Department of State has temporarily suspended ALL visa issuance due to a technical problem that is currently being resolved. More info here: http://travel.state.gov/content/travel/english/news/technological-systems-issue.html. No estimation of when this will be resolved. They also informed us that this weekend, the entire SEVIS system will be down for maintenance from June 26 to June 28. More info here: http://studyinthestates.dhs.gov/2015/06/be-prepared-for-the-june-26-sevis-outage Sorry that I don't have good news. But I hope this information is helpful in explaining why it's not working.

I think you need to find out your school's policy on outside work before you speak to your advisor again. You have to also make sure that in addition to ensuring you satisfy your advisor in terms of how many hours you do externally, you also meet your school's campus-wide policy. At my current program, if you are working with an external company (even if it's just at Starbucks or at a restaurant), you have to report it to the school and file "conflict of commitment" paperwork. In my program, there are no explicit hourly limits on outside work but depending on the source of your funding, you need to make sure that 1) the school doesn't set limits on you, 2) the source of your funding doesn't set limits on you, and 3) your advisor is happy with how much outside work you're doing and that it does not create a conflict of commitment. The problem might not just be the number of hours, but more in the idea of a "no-compete" clause. When you are paid as a RA, the usual expectation is that graduate school is your full time commitment. Having another full time job might raise the question of whether or not you are able to maintain your full time commitment to your graduate degree progress. As Eigen says, the individual details here really matter. If you are literally only being paid as a RA to do 20 hours of work per week then in my opinion, you should be able to do whatever you want with the rest of your time. However, if it is something like "you are funded on a fellowship that supports your graduate degree progress and in return you work 20 hours per week for this professor", then I think you would be in a conflict of commitment if you have a full time job as well.

The summer stipend thing is field dependent. Also, "era" dependent. I know that in my field, there was no summer funding in some programs decades ago (at least not for the first summer). My professors told me that back in the day, you would rarely get a RAship for your first summer, so most people just go home for the summer and study for quals. Maybe work a part time job or something to earn extra money. But nowadays, in STEM fields, we either get 12-month funding, or it might be only paid for 9 months but it would be enough to last for all 12 months. Competitive stipend packages in most STEM fields do not usually require students to scramble for summer funding, as far as I know.

Usually, people don't bring up money unless it is asked first. A very common question that I get from prospective students is "is the stipend enough?" because they hear things about how expensive the area is. I tell them the truth and I even give example numbers that reflect how much people are actually paying for things like rent etc. I am honest about how I feel about the money, whether it is enough to make me happy (I believe that money does "buy" happiness, to a certain extent). Sometimes if I sense that the prospective student is trying to ask the question in a "tactful" way, I might come out and just say it without further prompting. Sometimes I can see that they are relieved that they didn't have to be the one that brings it up. While I'm happy to start the topic because I know it's really important and that I would like to know the same when I was a prospective student, ultimately, prospective students are the one responsible for their future and these direct questions (about fees, benefits, living expenses, insurance costs etc.) are the ones you have to ask. Don't ask vague general questions like "What's life here like?" or "Are you happy?" and expect to get these details (although maybe those are good opening lines to begin a deeper conversation). Be direct and ask about numbers! ** Note: Although I wrote this with a quote from educdoc's post, I don't intend to direct this at you! Maybe you did ask all the questions directly and the grad students in your programs just didn't know or didn't give you a straight answer. It's not your fault! I'm just responding to the idea that sometimes prospective students don't get the information they're looking for when talking with current graduate students. I see this when I'm talking to students and I notice you mention it in your post, so I wrote this post to encourage future prospective students to plan ahead for their meetings with graduate students and be sure to ask the questions that will get you the answers you need!

The vast majority of science graduate degrees are research based rather than course based, so that might be part of the reason why the advice from STEM majors skew towards "skip class". I saw that someone wrote it's possible in some programs to only attend a couple of lectures and still get an A. I agree that in the sciences, this is the logical extension of my philosophy on classes (i.e. they are there for you, only attend what you need to and if you can self-learn then you don't need lectures). However, this would still be a worrisome case for me because most classes are not organized well enough that there is enough material in the reading to cover everything. Also, more importantly, I think the system is screwed up if it is requiring a graduate student to physically attend a class that they can get an A on based on their current/prior experience and knowledge. For students that know the material well enough already that they would only need one or two lectures to get an A, my program will exempt/waive these course requirements (sometimes to be replaced with tougher classes). I know there is a graduate program in my field that actually has zero formal course requirements. You can get a PhD there without taking a single course at all if you demonstrate you already possess expertise in those topics (e.g. by passing the qualifying and candidacy exams). I do think grad classes are important but I think that as graduate students in a research-based program, we should also be able to set our own priorities and skip classes without people thinking we're not "committed". To reconcile these two viewpoints, I think it is important for graduate programs to allow their students to waive/opt-out of certain class requirements if they possess satisfactory knowledge so that no one wastes their time.

The good thing about funding being a sensitive topic is that everyone feels this way, not just you. We would all love to pretend funding doesn't matter and that we just want to do great research, but everyone knows that we don't live in a pretend world. So, even if it comes out a little awkwardly, your professors will understand because they have been and are currently in similar situations too. If you read blogs online by professors, you'll see that they also encounter similar uncomfortable-ness when discussing things like salary, promotions, lab space negotiation, making arrangements on how to split the pay of a group/lab member etc. I feel very comfortable talking to my supervisor about things but it is still a tiny bit awkward to ask about getting money to attend a conference for example. In many cases, I know the money is there and I know they will agree to pay for it, but I still need to ask because I don't want to develop an attitude where I just assume I'll get all the money I need. But talking about money is a critical part of this job as well as many other jobs outside of academia. Also, it might be a touchy topic or make you a little uncomfortable to talk about, but the way I see it, the consequences of not talking about it and then missing an opportunity or getting screwed is way too high. I'd much rather endure a slightly awkward conversation than suddenly find myself with way less funding than I expected.

Also, what do you mean exactly by "graduating in the Fall"? If you mean that you will finish your degree program between June and August but you won't have your ceremony the fall of that same year, then you could actually be applying to begin graduate school in the Fall of the same year!! For example, if your undergrad degree finishes in June 2016, you could apply for admission for Fall 2016. However, if you mean that you will need to take courses in the fall semester as well, then you should wait until the following year to start grad school, for reasons given above. That is, if your program ends December 2016, then you would be applying to start grad school in Fall 2017. And don't forget that if you want to start grad school in fall of year X in the United States, you usually have to start applying in November/December of year X-1.

Sounds like a good idea

If you are really concerned, check with the school that issued the DS-2019 and make sure they are aware that your daughter is traveling with you and that the DS-2019 only shows J-2 dependents, not dependents that don't require J-2 status! But it sounds correct to me--I know some American students in Canada with Canadian children that do not show up on the student's Canadian study permit.