TakeruK

Maybe we should make an academia parody of Bowling For Soup's "1985"

The auto response probably means he is out of town or otherwise unable to respond to emails until June 1. Most academics set this when they are traveling so that people know not to expect a response from them. They might even set this when they do have access to email (but limited time to read/write mails) so that they will be only responding to high priority messages at this time. My advice to you is to be patient and wait until June 3 or so. Then, send a reminder email. Do not send any further emails from now until June 1. It's a good idea to send a reminder email after they return to the office because there is probably a large number of emails in their inbox that they will have to get back to, and they might miss yours if you don't resend.

I would say it's only unprofessional if you do not receive a response by the start date of the program you're applying to. It's almost June now and most programs do not start for another 2-3 months. I think it's fair to say that anyone without a response by now should assume rejection or at least they are on the very bottom of the priority list. In theory, schools can make admissions offer through the summer, so I don't think they are required to give a response by now. (I agree with everything else though, but personally, I think there are a lot of other things more worrisome about graduate programs than non-responses).

While the exact rules/policies of your school should prevail, I agree with Between Fields and think you should 1) include it as a table in your list of tables and 2) recreate the table yourself, using data from the other table. Another reason is that If it's just an image that is copied and pasted, then a reader cannot "search" to find key words in that table!

Note: Unionization is much more common in Canada (where my MSc school was). Universities are used to working with unions because there can be as many as 6-10 different union locals/chapters on campus (representing students, postdocs, administrative staff, plant ops/custodial staff, construction, professors, researchers, etc. although sometimes they are combined). Graduate students are also generally considered public service employees because we work for provincially funded public schools and provide services to the public (e.g. teaching). So, grad student unions are the norm, not the exception in Canada. My work with the union was the Physics representative to the Union. At first, I was the one of two representatives from the STEM fields (almost all of the other disciplines that were doing well didn't even want to participate). A large part of my time was spent simply convincing other physics students that unions are a good thing for graduate students. This was a relatively new union (on the other hand, all other major Canadian schools have been unionized for many many more years). There was a lot of misconception that the students in the social sciences/humanities are trying to lower science students' stipends so that they can get an increase. I think a union (or other collective action) can still benefit those who have their needs met. Prior to unionization, the science students have good stipends and working conditions through the grace of the department (and potentially through market forces--if they don't pay well, students can do other things). However, collective bargaining make these good conditions into contractual obligations that are independent of market forces. Once they are signed into the contract, if the University wants to take them back, it will cost them. Also, while perhaps 90% of the STEM grad students had benefits like proper sick leave and vacation time due to having reasonable supervisors, there are still some who did not. Without a contract, a student is subject to the whims of their supervisor and/or their own charisma/ability to stand up to their supervisor. And since the number of marginalized students (by definition) is small, little action is taken to help them. Overall, yes, the idea behind collective action will not help the few who are both currently well off and have the ability to negotiate for their own benefits and protection. Usually, these are people who generally have more influence in academia. But, if you have this privilege, then why not use your position of power and privilege to help those who have less? In general, I believe that those with more should help those with less. Especially since those without these privileges are going to have to spend more time on other things just to catch up--they might not have the resources to speak up for themselves. For example, if a PhD student is making $16k/year and working a part time job to support themselves, they might not have time to organize students or arrange meetings to discuss raising student stipends, even if the administration is open to such discussions. Or, a student with a less-than-ideal advisor-advisee relationship might be afraid of backlash if they tried to lobby the department for better sick leave policies. If we want to be responsible members of our community, then, when we have privilege, we should speak up for those who cannot. Otherwise, we risk creating a community where there will only be people like us. In some industries, this might not be a big deal, but in academia, where the diversity of ideas/experiences is supposedly critical (e.g. all the worry about doing all your degrees in one place), I think we're hurting ourselves when we make academia more exclusive/restrictive.

Regarding abuses: Yes, there will be a small number of people that abuse this kind of system and it will be at the expense of everyone else. But it will also help the majority of other people in need. To me, this is worth it. This is why I support socialized healthcare in Canada, even though some argue that people who don't take care of their own health (e.g. choose to smoke, eat unhealthily etc.) abuse the system and cause an extra burden on everyone else. But, socialized healthcare also helps a ton of other people--people that would have no access to care otherwise. It's worth it, in my opinion. But I understand that there are other ideologies that do not agree with this. I'm just stating mine. Regarding the choice to have children (and other industries etc.): Choosing to raise a family is a choice. And I agree that there are already existing programs from the government that help low income, so the burden shouldn't just be 100% on the school. Someone brought up the point that other jobs don't do this. I'm not arguing that academia should do this because other jobs are doing it. I'm arguing that we know that our community is marginalizing and pushing people who can't handle the financial expense of being a grad student out of the field. Therefore, we should do something about it. If we value the diversity of ideas and backgrounds in academia, and if we don't want academia to only include people that choose career over children, then we should do something about it. Sorry to have derailed the topic, but I brought up children because of a tangent to this point you're making. I think it is a real problem that there is such a big wage gap between disciplines. My point was that when I work to improve stipends of graduate students, my goal is to target the bottom--I would prefer to make life significantly better for the bottom 20% than to incrementally improve everyone. Raise the minimum, rather than the average. Some student parents are in this category. At my MSc school, I worked on the TA union to improve conditions for students in the humanities and social sciences mostly. As a physics grad student, all of my needs were met and I had no problems with how my department treated us. But, the drive and need for unionization came from the humanities and social sciences side, and we worked to improve conditions for those who needed it the most. We used the way STEM departments were treating their students as the model to what to negotiate for in our collective bargaining agreement, so that everyone can be treated better. For example, the University provided the union with X dollars per year as health benefits to distribute as we see fit. We had a choice between writing every student a small cheque, or creating an "emergency medical fund" that students can borrow or be awarded money from, based on need. We went with the latter, because it would help those who needed it most. Obviously we disagree here and I don't think anything we say will change each other's mind. But just to be clear, I am not saying that students should have an automatic collective sense of community. I personally have a very strong sense of community and I think all workers in any field would benefit from collective action. Personally, I think the individual is better off when the community is better off. But this isn't automatic, this is something I decided over time and something I work to convince people about, when they are interested in listening.

I agree with the others--go for the double major. In addition to everything else said, if you are planning on graduate school, I think having more courses in University will help you. I'm surprised that you were able to get so many credit hours from high school counted (2 years equivalent it appears?). While this is a great achievement, I think some people might view university credits earned in high school a little differently than university credits earned while in your undergraduate program. In my opinion, you have more to gain if you use your dual credit hours to allow you to take more University courses and get that double major instead of simply finishing University earlier. Also, GeoDUDE mentioned, if you want to be a strong candidate for theoretical work, it might help to have an official certification of a double major in Math. Sure, you can take all of the useful math courses, but someone that does a quick glance of your degree name / CV might not realise that you have the math background. And as eteshoe said, there's always fluff in any major--things that are not directly useful to you, but very important to help you think like a person trained in that field.

Not always. For example, my current program does not allow us to earn any more stipend no matter how much we TA or RA or get external grants, unless we happened to get an external grant that either explicitly provides a stipend above the current stipend level, or pays both our tuition and stipend and leaves us leftover money (this would need to be an award worth over $70,000/year. Also, my counter argument is that by setting this higher standard for student parents, you are placing them at a disadvantage (i.e. in order to have the same stability, they have to work more hours or win more fellowships than another graduate student without a family). This exchange basically sums up the main ideological arguments currently presented by both sides on my campus right now (note: there are students, faculty, and deans on both sides, it's not simply a students vs. administration issue!). And there are students who have children before starting grad school. There are plenty of different groups that are marginalized in academia and that face the message "Academia is not for you", and "you don't belong here" over and over again, that we don't need to add to it by inequitable financial policies. I think it's important to fight for these issues because I want academia to be a place where we are all able to succeed, regardless of our family and reproductive choices.

Yes, I'm doing this right now. I'm actually working on two side projects, one within my department and one outside of my department. However, both side projects and my main project have a common theme and I plan to put all papers resulting from all projects into my thesis. So, they are side projects in the sense that they are not what I'm being paid to do, and not directly related to my work with my supervisor. But they are not side projects if you define side projects as strictly things outside of my thesis work. It is important to note that my program is a multidisciplinary one though, and our dissertations tend to be very broad rather than narrow and focussed (i.e. in other programs, my side projects might not be allowed to count towards my thesis).

Responses to these abuses (note: it might matter to clarify that these stipend supplements are in the $1000-$5000 range): 1. So what? People with dependents will have higher costs, whether or not they can fend for themselves. However, it is possible to make this a needs-based award too (based on total household income) 2. What do you mean by "intended"? It's the parents' intent to have as many children as they want--the school should not dictate their students' reproductive choices. (but again, if they wanted to, they can make it a cap so you get the same supplement whether it's 1 kid or 10 kids). 3. The school should not have a say in when it is "too early" to have children. 4. I agree that having the spouse feel like they need to stay home in order to receive the stipend increase is a bad thing. Currently, my school offers a supplement up to $4000 for use towards childcare only if the student is a single parent, or if the other parent works at least 20 hours per week. Also, daycare costs about $20,000 per year, so it's not really possible to abuse the system. I would be in favour of an additional stipend increase that is not dependent on the spouse's employment (40% of our students are international, and their spouses are not eligible to work)--and the independence of employment means that there is no incentive for the spouse to not work to get more money. In fact, this allows the parents to choose whether they want to return to work or not.

I agree with you that this is tricky. There are strong points for and against things like family subsidies. In the "for" column, I argue that you can't say "real jobs don't provide X, so why should students get X?" because unlike real jobs, students have very little negotiating power once you start your program. In a "real job", if you have children, you can start looking for a better paying job at a different company and/or negotiate a higher pay rate. A PhD student cannot just up and leave after 3 years. I believe that because graduate students commit to their PhD school for a long time and provide a lot of good work for the school and are generally underpaid, the school should be responsible for the students' well being and ensure all of their students get the support needed. In the "against" column, it's tricky because if the school subsidizes dependents, then the school is making some value judgement on what their students should be able to do or not do. Sure, maybe "not allowing children to starve" is a clear "yes we should do this" (although I know some people would argue against this too) but there will be other cases where the school will have to make decisions. And even though I think the school should subsidize students with dependents, I'm uncomfortable with the school having the power to decide what is "allowed" to be subsidized and what isn't. As for "abuses", what kind of abuse of the system are you afraid of? I think this is a very common complaint people bring up but they often are not substantial complaints.

To answer each question individually: 1. Yes, the stipend amount was an important factor in my decision in places to apply. However, I consider it a "cut-off" factor. Most schools in my field do publish stipend amounts and with use of GradCafe + PhysicsGRE.com results databases, I was able to know the funding amount for most places I applied. There was one school where I didn't apply to in part because of the stipend vs. cost of living (tons of people report going into debt even with $30,000/year in Hawaii). Our requirement was stipend was that it supported a comfortable lifestyle. When considering whether or not to go for a PhD, we (my spouse and I) decided that we didn't want to live as a "starving student" for 5+ years without a guarantee of a good job in the end. (Similarly, we had geographical restrictions on where we were willing to live as well). So, my minimum stipend level was something that would pay for half of**: rent for a 1 bedroom place, have internet/netflix/cell phones, own a (used) car, eat out about once/week (takeout, not fancy places), take one or two trips per year (road trips or combined with conferences to save money) and save about $3000/year. (** I say "half of" because my spouse would be working and earning at least the same, if not more, than me. It took about a year to fully sort through the work authorization, for her to get a permanent job, and to recoup losses due to non-employment at first, so it was not until a year later that we got luxuries like netflix, cars, eating out, taking trips, and saving money). In my opinion, one would likely be disappointed if one sought graduate school to live a very nice lifestyle and I think there are a lot of things one has to give up to attend grad school. A lot of these things are long-term things that I think could be hurting us in the long run, for example: saving up for a home down payment, saving/investing for retirement, paying down past debts, etc. Overall, I think grad school does require a modest lifestyle (e.g. I don't expect to be able to afford to shop at Whole Foods, or take vacations at exotic places, or eat at fancy places often, or buy fancy toys etc.) but I think it's reasonable for a graduate student to expect to be able to live comfortably, instead of being able to just barely afford basic necessities. 2. Yes, I would definitely be in favour of a movement to support an increase in pay at my University. In fact, I am actually part of such a movement right now, being part of my school's graduate student government. Currently, the policies require the minimum stipend be $28,000/year and the maximum stipend is $38,000/year. There are two main "peaks" in the stipend distribution--one around the minimum and one around $30,000/year. For reference though, the maximum stipend to qualify for Section 8 (i.e. government assisted housing cost) for a single student in my University's city is $29,500. Given the rent market in our city, a graduate student needs to earn around $32,000 per year in order to make housing "affordable" (i.e. 1/3 of income on rent+utilities). Our efforts are currently focussed on increasing the minimum stipend though, rather than increasing the average/median. Note: The U Houston student earning $33k/year in Houston would be, according to a COL calculator, earning the equivalent of $42k/year where I live now. We live in a very high cost of living area. My current stipend is $30,000/year and our annual household expenses total around $55,000/year for the lifestyle I wrote about above. Bonus Q: This is a topic I'm passionate about, so there's another aspect to this topic, which the article does hint at too. Arguments for paying a "fair wage" to graduate students aside (there's plenty of threads here discussing what is fair, what "market value" do we have etc.), there's another good argument for paying graduate students more. And that is to increase socioeconomic diversity in academia. At my school and in my field, this is something we're working on. If we pay graduate students minimal income, we are 1) discouraging potential students that can't afford to live like this (e.g. have high health costs, or need to support children, or need to support parents) and 2) placing students who have higher costs at a disadvantage (more stress, might have to work side jobs, less able to focus on studies). My school currently has some programs that supplement your income based on need (e.g. graduate students with dependents effectively get a $1200/year per dependent supplement for dependent health insurance costs), but we are working on increasing this. I guess this is related to question #2 above. We are approaching the "increase stipends" issue in two ways. We use arguments for paying a "fair wage" for our "market value" to raise the overall/mean/median stipend on campus. This is a hard argument to make, because the University generally counters with "your degree has market value to you", which is true--the students and the administration just do not agree on where the balance is. We use arguments for diversity and equity to argue for raising the stipend of those who need it the most: the students earning the minimum stipend on campus and the students with extra costs (whether it's health or dependents or something else). This is generally an easier argument to make. The University will counter with arguments like "it's the student's choice to do X" and sometimes they are right, but a lot of the times, these are sexist or otherwise discriminatory so we have a way to attack these counterarguments. In addition, the thing they care about most is attracting the most talented people, so here, we can make the argument that without certain income supplement programs, excellent applicants who have higher expenses because of X are choosing other schools instead of our school (and we have testimonial data to back this up!). This seems to be the line of reasoning that gets the most attention.

It's never too early! I presented at conferences during undergrad! In my opinion, as soon as you have research done and interesting results (or even preliminary results to share), you should present. And at some types of conferences in my field (e.g. the one organized by our national society), the idea is to just update people what you're working on--so people present even if they have no results, especially if they are more junior people (e.g. undergrads or first year grad students). It's never too early to get some practice and get your name attached to your topic. Just one tip as a fellow Canadian: If you are attending prior to starting your PhD program, don't introduce yourself as a Masters student! I would just say "grad student". I presented at a US conference at the end of my Canadian MSc and I introduced myself to people in this way and they all made comments like "Oh not everyone needs a PhD" or other vaguely patronizing comments since a Masters student in a US is either in a non-PhD route, or failed out of their PhD program. If you are going to have time to explain our grad program, then sure, go for it, but often, you only exchange one or two lines as introduction and then it gets awkward if you have to spend extra time explaining yourself!!

Someone mentioned unions--usually the union covers a specific type of work only (e.g. RA or TA). The last TA union I was a part of required the school to pay TAs the full salary after the contract is signed, even if the course is cancelled. However, each TA assignment had a separate contract, which we would only sign in the week or two prior to the course's start date. So, since it sounds like you only accepted the offer of admission, I don't think there is anything you can do here. As for legal action, I really do not think you have any recourse and I do not advise you to do so, unless you think they are acting in some sort of bad faith (i.e. lying to you about shutdown, or accepting other students but rejecting you). If the program is truly shutting down, then why would you want to force yourself into this program?? There's no point trying to jump onto a sinking ship. FYI: In academia, when programs shut down, a lot of people are SOL. The program tends to do whatever it can to salvage the current students/staff/faculty in said program, but there's not much to do sometimes. Professors have told me that even tenured faculty will lose their job if the department/program shuts down (at some places, you are tenured with your department, not the school, so if your department no longer exists, neither does your job!). Also, it's pretty common in the "real world" for job offers to disappear if the company goes under. I'm sorry to hear about these circumstances, but my advice to you would be to accept it has happened and focus your energy on making the next best move for you. It would be a very good idea to contact any other programs you turned down earlier and see if they still have a spot (at my school, many programs will keep their offer "active" for a year after they make it, even if you turn them down at first). Finally, if you want any recourse at all, I think the most you can get is to try to get your application fee refunded. But it might be a lot more work/trouble than it's worth.

Disagreement among committee members is normal. Find out what your program's policies are. For my Masters degree, following the thesis defense, there are 3 different "pass" options the committee might decide on: 1. Pass without revisions (rare) 2. Pass with revisions as approved by advisor (most common) 3. Pass with revisions as approved by committee (for problematic cases) Most people pass with option 2, and in this case, it's up to your advisor to sign off on the final copy. Other committee members would have to sign that thesis form too, but they don't get to see the final copy before signing (i.e. they put their trust in your advisor to decide what changes need or does not need to be addressed). So, I would advise you to talk to your advisor right away. Don't make it look like you are "going around" anyone and act as if the two people are not married and do not read each other's emails. Tell your advisor about the changes requested, your concerns about timeline and ask what their advice is. In my case, after receiving revision notes, my advisor and I went over all of them and we decided what needed and what didn't need to be change. We chose not to implement about 1/3 of the committee's suggested revisions. In academia, you are always the one in control of your work. Even in peer-reviewed papers, the referee will make suggestions that you do not agree with. You don't have to make every single change your referee or committee member asks of you. In my paper's referee reports, there are points where I disagree so I address it by explaining why my way is better and the referee has always accepted that. The point of these revisions is not a command from the professor to you, but opening a dialogue on how to improve your work. Opening a discussion between you, your advisor, and (eventually) the committee member is the right thing to do.

In the sciences/engineering, your RA project is almost always your PhD/MSc dissertation project too. The plus side is that you are getting paid for your dissertation work and you don't have to work on other people's projects in order to get funding for your dissertation work. The down side, as the OP's dilemma shows, is that you have less freedom in choosing your dissertation project -- you are limited by what funding options are available to you. However, this is the norm in the science/engineering fields. As a grad student, you generally do not get to define your own project--you have to work on what your funding providers want you to do (in many cases though, they are very flexible). As a postdoc, unless you have a very good fellowship, you will either be doing work that your postdoc supervisor has funding for, or what your funding agency wants you to do. And even as a professor, you will generally be expected to bring in grants, so you have to focus your research on what your granting agencies want to fund at the moment. To those in similar situations in the sciences/engineering, my advice is to be more flexible in your research interests. Definitely avoid the projects that you know you will hate or that you know will not help you reach your career goals. But, I would say new grad students should be very open minded about what their interests are. You might have had a lot of experience in one particular field in undergrad, but as an undergrad, it's hard to get both depth and breadth of experience necessary to truly know what your biggest passions are. Grad school in the sciences/engineering is a great time to try different projects and find out what you like/don't like. I always say that it's easier to change your research interest (or learn to like something you didn't like at first) than it is to change a lot of other important factors (like your funding amount, how well you get along with your advisor, etc.)

Note: This is all speculation. It might be a good idea to seek legal advice. This is the opinion of a stranger on the Internet--use at your own risk. I don't think they can officially "blacklist" you or reveal your personal information to other schools. If you were supposed to work for a specific professor and can no longer do so, your professor might remember your name if it comes up in conversation with another professor. I think that the best bet is to be honest with the school at this point. Ask them if your admission offer still stands given this new information. Hopefully, while they won't be happy that you lied to them, they will then re-evaluate your application with the new information. I think if you wait to be caught, the consequences will be severe. If you admit the mistake now, you might still get to go to the school, but the worse that could happen is that you are rejected and can never apply to this school again (i.e. same as just declining the offer and never reapplying). If you don't want to risk earning a reputation as a liar, then maybe withdrawing and never reapplying to this school (and being honest in all future applications) is the best bet.

I forgot to mention this explicitly in the above thread, but in terms of disadvantage due to international status, I think the UC has it worse than many other public universities in the US. Based on experience of professors formerly from the UCs and other public US schools in my field, the UCs are a much more popular public school for international students than other public US schools. This might be field dependent, but given that certain UCs are some of the best public schools in all the general rankings, this is not surprising.

I agree with Eigen that technically, they are not obligated to give you a response at all. I would interpret that "review application" involves making a decision, not simply looking at it, but simply a form/automatic rejection on August 31 when the computer system deletes all outstanding application still counts. Or, if they say "If you have not heard by X date, consider it a rejection", then I think that counts as a decision too. I also think that there is a difference between what a school is obligated to do in terms of the law and what the school should do, in terms of being a "good neighbour" in the academic community. I think it's silly to consider this "theft" or "stealing" but it's certainly not "good neighbour" behaviour for the school to give no response at all.

I'm still pretty new to California (only have been here a few years) but I do know that some people at UC schools were worried recently because at the last election, there was a critical proposition that needed to be passed to avoid huge cuts to UC schools. Luckily it did pass, so that worry is over, but I guess being a big public state school, there's always worry that voters/government will choose to axe funding. For example, other states (e.g Wisconsin) are choosing to make their budget cuts in education . I see you're also from Canada! You might have also heard the advice to avoid the UC schools because as an international student (unless you also have American citizenship), your tuition will be very expensive, which means it costs the department a lot more to pay for you. The advice I got matched my experience -- I was able to get into well ranked private schools but rejected from lower ranked public schools. My current (private) school has a 40% international student population, while the UC schools have about 10% international. This is true for many other state schools too. Professors with experience in America told me that it's not as bad on the east coast but generally, I would advise you to apply for private schools as an international student. Caltech is a tech school. There are no undergraduate programs in anything other than science or engineering. There are professors in political science and other social sciences/humanities but they mostly teach courses for undergraduates to meet breadth requirements. The professors also do research, but there certainly isn't a political science department. I just looked up their "Humanities and Social Sciences" (HSS) division (http://www.hss.caltech.edu/content/graduate-studies) and they offer 2 PhD programs in this division: a PhD in Social Sciences (http://www.hss.caltech.edu/content/social-sciences-phd-program) and a PhD in "Behaviorial and Neural Social Science" (http://www.bsn.caltech.edu/academics/phd.html). The first program is a very broad multidisciplinary program.

I agree that the application fee aspect of the process makes it slightly different than a job posting. However, unless the application form says you will hear your decision by X date, you cannot impose such a deadline. In my opinion, every school should inform their applicants of a yes or no (could just be automatic) by the start date of the program they are applying for. I think this is actually true--most systems have a process in the summer that will search for all remaining applications and send an auto-reject. I don't think schools need to inform applicants by April 15, or even within several weeks of April 15. But they should do so before the program you are applying to actually starts. I know some students who get a last minute offer just weeks or days before the program begins. Not ideal, but the student is free to choose to attend another school if they don't like it.

I'm just curious what you mean by protesting via graduate study abroad, Catria. Definitely understand why choosing to go to the US is a good move when you don't like how the Canadian government treats/funds scientists, but I don't see the political protest side of this. I mean, in order for it to be a useful action, the group that you are protesting against needs to know what you're doing and be impacted by what you're doing. And in honesty, I don't think having us Canadians go to the US for grad school has any impact on the Canadian government. And if you do plan to return to Canada, then this is basically a good thing for Canada -- they get a trained PhD but didn't have to pay for it. Some ways you could protest might be to: 1) win a NSERC fellowship and take it to the US--the Canadian government will notice if a large number of their prestigious graduate fellowship winners are going abroad or 2) actively write to your MP or other government representatives about your thoughts (however, by physically being out of their riding might make them less interested in you, although you can still vote for/against them!). I'm sure there is more, but other than (1) above, I don't think simply attending grad school outside of Canada will mean very much--I encourage you to take action and stay involved in the Canadian scientific organizations too. For example, I am still a member of CASCA (Canadian Astronomical Society) while in the US because I believe they are the strongest voice for Canadian astronomers in the Canadian government. When CASCA leadership asks for feedback from its members, I participate. Perhaps you can do the same and voice your own concerns and your profession's society can help you let our government know that their policies are causing scientists to leave Canada. (That said, I think they might care more about Canadian PhD holders leaving rather than grad students leaving, but everyone matters!)

I'm not in chemistry, but another physical science field. But I think this is general enough advice. To build your list: First, decide what your goals are for graduate school. Do you want to work on a particular topic? Do you want to gain a particular skill/technique? Then, find labs/PIs that will enable you to reach these goals. For me, I wanted to develop observational astronomy (i.e. using telescopes) skills and apply them to research on exoplanets. So, I first searched for people who write papers on this topic. Do a literature search and note the names and institutions of these people. Telescopes are quite expensive and are sponsored/owned by one or more schools. So, another angle of attack was to go to these telescope websites and look up the partner institutions. Once I got the list of institutions, I also went to these department websites and tried to find names of people that might be good advisors (i.e. help me reach my goals). Ultimately, you want a list of people, not schools. In addition to reading the literature, other ways you can find people that might make good supervisors are conferences, talking to your mentors, etc. To narrow down your list: After getting all the people, I looked up the schools they're attached to. For some people, I crossed them off right away because I did not want to be at that school/location. This is a good time to consult with your mentors/advisors as they might be able to help you narrow your list down and/or add more people you didn't think of. They might also provide perspective you didn't know about (e.g. I didn't know how difficult it would be for a Canadian/international student to get into a US public school). Another thing you want to check for is to avoid schools that only have 1 person you're interested in. In some cases, you just want to cross this off, but if you are really interested in that one person, perhaps you can find more people there that would work. I think especially in the lab sciences, entrance to a particular lab/group might be competitive and you need to have a good alternative in case you don't get your first choice lab. At this stage, if you have too many schools, another way to narrow them down is to look at group sizes/research fit, like bsharpe suggested. I also check the publication history of the professor's students. Do their students write good papers (good as in interesting/original projects, rather than just "turning the crank" of some research machinery the group has set up), and what does the publishing policy seem like? For example, in my field, I'd look for groups where students lead their own papers, rather than the prof getting first author all the time. By reading papers authored by different students in the same group, and comparing writing styles across these papers, you can get a sense of whether students are writing their own papers or if the professor is doing the writing and/or how heavy handed their editing is. To decide on which schools to apply to: Finally, you do want to consider the distribution of your schools. This depends on your goals. I've said it before on GradCafe but I think most people make the mistake of not reaching high enough in their applications. I see a lot of people list maybe 2-3 top schools, 6-7 middle schools and 2-3 lower ranked "safety" schools. I think this is a mistake. Even for the best applicants, top schools are still a crapshoot and you probably have a 10%-20% of acceptance. This means that the best students will only get into some of their top choices and so if you're a great student, applying to just 2-3 means you have a fairly good chance of getting rejected from all of them. At the top level, the best thing you can do is increase the # of schools you apply to. Also, quality of offers is much better than quantity of offers. It's far better to have 2-3 top schools to choose from than 6-8 middle range schools to pick from. In fact, if you have 2-3 top schools to choose from, then it doesn't matter how many lower ranked offers you get at all! Some people choose their school list so that they get a "high mark" (i.e. acceptance at 80% of places). While high grades like that is great for problem sets, it's not important for grad school offers---one acceptance at your dream school is worth more than acceptance at all your other schools. So if a student like you (i.e. competitive for top programs) was applying to 10 schools (you can just scale these numbers if you are applying to more or less), one good scheme would be to apply to 6-7 top schools, 2-3 middle schools, and 1 "safety" school. Here, by "top" school, I don't necessarily mean ranking-wise, but the most competitive and best fit. The "middle" schools are schools that you feel you have a strong chance of acceptance (i.e. more than 60%). Pick your "safety" school carefully--don't pick one that you won't actually want to go to (I'd say a safety is one where acceptance probability is > 90%). Here, your goal is to get one or two offers from one of your top schools. The middle/safety schools are just there in case all of the top schools don't work out.

They should apply for Tourist visa statuses. You can (and should) check with your school's international office or other authorities since most of us here on GradCafe are not going to be experts, but we can provide advice/help based on our experiences.

I can only give advice based on what I would do. This is a personal choice and it is a tough one. But it's good to have this choice, right? My advice is to not base it "99% on research". I went with a 50-50 split of research and personal choice. In your shoes, I would definitely pick school #1. The way I see it, it is far easier for me to change my research interests than it is to change things like the school culture, the TA load, my preference for climate, and everything else you said for School #1. However, you didn't mention advisor fit (only research fit). Like rising_star, I think advisor fit is the most important career-based factor in picking a school. I'd worry less about whether or not I applied to do the same research as the advisor because as I said, it's easier to change your research interest than it is to change your advisor's personality and how well you get along! In the end, for an academic career, your advisor and how well they support you goes a very long way towards helping you be successful. And finally, I would generally advise new graduate students to not be so specific/narrow in defining their research interests. I don't know how far out of field School #1 is, but in general, you don't really become that much of an expert in any field after undergraduate education. I certainly didn't and I worked in research for 16 months full time during my undergrad degree (it's a 4 year of classes + 1 year of work degree). So there's no need to be in the same major topic for undergrad and graduate work -- it's not like you are going to "fall behind" or anything. As long as you are interested in the work (or can train yourself to become interested), you will be fine. Personally, I see myself more of a "planetary science mercenary" when it comes to research topics. Instead of focussing on a particular research problem, I am instead directing my PhD work and studies in building a particular set of skills, which I will then apply to any research problem that people are willing to pay me (or award grants to me) to do.