TakeruK

I am actually trying to say the reverse of this first sentence. Of course getting good at mistake-free computation will help you do well on the GRE Q. What I'm saying is that getting good at mistake-free computation (in the time-limited exam environment of the GRE Q) is not that useful of a skill for being an effective graduate student. It sounds like we do agree on this though--we both say that the GRE does not measure your success as a grad student, but I seem to take it further to say that I don't think being good at tests is a necessary criteria we want to set for incoming graduate students. I interpret your posts as saying "students write tests all the time, therefore, a good student will be good at tests, so a poor test score is no excuse for a new grad student". My counter-argument is that because "doing well on exams is not the intended goal of education, it is possible for a good student to be terrible at tests. Therefore, there is more than one type of good student, and if we have the attitude that good students must have high GRE Q scores, then we are only going to admit one type of grad student--the type that is good at tests." And I am worried about this attitude in general because if we continue to choose to expect that good students must have good test scores, then we are only labelling one type of good student as "good" and because we often spend resources (time, opportunities, etc.) on the "good" students, we are potentially limiting academia from other types of good students. I agree that the reality is that exams take place more often in education than we would like. In some ways, they are necessary to have some kind of standardization. But as I wrote in previous posts, there are ways to make exams less like the standardized GRE exams and better at actually evaluating knowledge, even at big schools (I went to a big public university with 45,000 students). Given that these exams are a reality, we (albeit just current graduate students, but eventually some of us will be professors) have a choice of whether or not we want to continue to judge people based on exam performance. So I reject the fatalistic idea that "this is how it is, we'll just have to deal with it forever". Obviously, we must still be practical (no one here is saying to protest the system by boycotting the GREs completely) but we can still critically examine the realities and take actions for small changes towards what we'd like.

You linked to a SIM card service, which definitely a real thing and people have used it before. However, it's really best used for a temporary purpose, unless you plan on using your phone very little. As the advertising for this service (and many other SIM card services) state, they provide cheap monthly plans without a contract. So, this is ideal for an international undergraduate student who is only in the country for 7-8 months per year, or a tourist here for a few weeks or a few months. But you are going to be here for quite awhile (it sounds like?). This means if you plan on using your phone a lot, you would be much better off getting a phone from a provider like AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, etc. and signing onto one of their monthly plans. Depending on the plan and the provider, you may have to sign a contract. Many providers nowadays will allow you to bring your own phone (if it's unlocked) to use in their network -- you might have to pay a one time fee of $10 to $20 for one of their SIM cards, but then you have access to much better plans. Even if you are not planning on using your phone very much, I think a prepaid plan from a big provider like one of the above will get you better access and better prices than these temporary SIM card services. But shop around! Basically, I'm just saying don't limit yourself to just these SIM card services--look at larger providers too. Finally, just want to reiterate cs_phd's point that US phone system is pretty great compared to what I'm used to in Canada. You can call anywhere in the US without paying long distance and if you are on a big provider network, it should work everywhere!! The big networks are all nationwide.

No, I disagree with you that taking exams is what students "train" to do. Exams are not the purpose of our classes. We don't "train" for exams any more than we "train" to sit still for 50 minutes for a lecture. Exams are just things that happen because of the way the education system is set up, they are not the point of the education system and they are not a measure of how successful the system is. To use a baseball analogy, I would say taking an exam is analogous to a baseball player putting on his or her uniform correctly. It's part of the game, but how well you do this task does not correlate with your baseball ability. Arithmetic skills are important, agreed. I also agree that I think professors and TA that don't care about arithmetic and make sloppy mistakes on the board are not respectful of their students' time. Missing negative signs or factors of 2 can really impede understanding and learning. However, the arithmetic tested by the GRE Q does not reflect the arithmetic necessary to be an effective instructor. For example, when I teach, I always always prepare my examples ahead of time and work out all of the math. I double check everything, even things so simple I take for granted, to ensure I don't create more misunderstanding, and to ensure I am clear (since my students might not take these things for granted). Arithmetic/calculus/math ability is important in teaching quantitative classes but the real grad school applications of these skills do not match what the GRE Q tests at all. That said, I don't believe that "not making mistakes" is a necessary quality of a good teacher. As I said above, good teachers should not be sloppy and make mistakes out of negligence. But I don't think the idea that you must be perfect and all-knowing is a good one to have towards teaching.

I'm happy to agree to disagree as well. Your pre-quals (and quals) experience seems to be very different from my own pre-quals experience, so maybe CS is more of an exam-based field than physics. Ever since I finished my first year of undergrad, I have never been in an exam environment comparable to the GRE (both General and Physics Subject GRE). There were exams in my 2nd and 3rd year Physics courses, sure, but they were mostly open book (or at least 1 page of notes) and the professors do a good job of not using time as a factor. That is, I believe the GRE uses time as a testing factor in the sense that it measures how many questions you can get right in a limited number of time. For my physics courses, the exams are often designed to be finished in much less time than allotted, so that time management or speed is never a factor. Then, in my 4th year physics courses, almost every course had a project or paper instead of an exam, or the exam was a completely open note take home exam. Grad school is most similar to my 4th year courses, and my quals were 100% oral and focussed on my research rather than coursework. As such, the Physics Subject GRE test score is not very heavily considered in my field. Many people, such as myself, get into top programs with very mediocre test scores (both of my Subject test attempts, 2 years apart, resulted in approximately 50th percentile). I was very frustrated that my understanding of physics is not the type of understanding that the Physics GRE subject test evaluated. Luckily, most grad schools in my field recognizes this! And I do not think "bad test taker" is "just an excuse". You are right that the years and years of test taking practice prior to the GRE means that people who are capable to developing strong test taking abilities certainly have had the chance to do so. But I don't think this is a good thing, or even a good reason to trust GRE scores. If we only accept high GRE scores, then we are limiting graduate education only to those who are good at taking tests (or those capable of developing good test taking practices). This is not useful for academia or research--we want to attract a diversified group of people with strong and relevant skills. Test taking ability might certainly be a byproduct of our education system, but it is definitely not a useful skill in my field of research. I think it would be bad practice to use a measurement of test taking ability (what the GRE measures) as a measurement of knowledge in that field (and it would definitely be bad practice to use this as a measurement of ability to do research work in that field). And finally, not everyone can just take the GRE as often as they want. Applying to schools is already expensive for a lot of people. I had to take the General GRE in a different city that was far enough away that I had to travel by train but close enough that I didn't qualify for my own testing center. There are also other factors, such as current jobs or family responsibility that might prevent an applicant from taking the test more than necessary. Or, there may be other learning disabilities that will negatively impact your ability to write the GRE but does not impact your ability to succeed in your field of research (e.g. dyslexia). Again, by choosing an attitude that places such importance on GRE scores and trivializing the struggles people might have to overcome to score highly (as I feel you have done in your post above), I believe this hurts academia and limits access to academia/research to just a subset of people. Your analogy of driving and baseball does not work here because while following directions correctly is an essential skill in navigating and while hitting fastballs is a useful and desirable skill in baseball, answered timed arithmetic questions correctly is not a useful/relevant skill in STEM research.

Yes, this is appropriate, but as Jay's Brain notes above, you should be careful how you word things. If you are unsure of your writing (not targeting this at you specifically, annabee, just for anyone who might read this), I would recommend short and brief. It's very very easy for something you think is innocuous to be interpreted as a negative slight against School B by a prof at School B. For example, if you write something like "School A has such great telescopes!", a prof at School B might interpret this as a slight against them for not having great telescopes. Even if this is true, they might be insulted. But then if you go on and try to say great things about B as well, then you risk coming off as patronizing. Of course, if you got to know the prof at School B well during this process, then you should know how they will interpret your sentences and you can write accordingly. But if you don't know them that well, you can never be sure how it will be interpreted so I'd be more careful. Also, you don't know who else the prof might forward these emails to and how these people will interpret your words. Generally, my advice is to never give specifics about why you chose School A when writing these personal emails to School Bs' profs. I just say something like "we eventually decided on School A because it is the best fit for us". Then I thank them for all they did during the visits (using specific things to personalize the letter). I prefer to add the "flourish" here rather than on my reasons for my choice. And like Jay's Brain, end with something that says you will meet again. For me, the field is small enough that I expect to see all of these people again at our academic society's annual meeting, so I usually refer to that. I agree with Jay's Brain that this is a good opportunity to maintain contact with people you might want to speak to again in the future. Finally, programs really do like feedback on your decision though. This information is helpful for them to determine who their competition are and what they can do to secure more students in the future. But this personal informational email is generally not the right place to give this feedback, unless you know the prof well and they request it directly from you (but still, be careful what you put in writing). Note that often times when you officially decline an offer, you will get a link to an anonymous survey where you can give more detailed feedback on the reason you chose another school. Most of these surveys have a checklist of reasons you can tick off and ask about the details (financial, TA commitment etc.) of the offer you did take, which is helpful for the school to know. Usually this survey is run by the Graduate Office, rather than the department, so the results are aggregated before anyone sees them, which increases your anonymity. In my opinion, if you have any feedback you are dying to give, this is the place to do it!

Different fields have different norms that one should definitely be aware of and make decisions with these norms in context. But that aside, the first semester of grad school is an important one. As Sigaba suggests, it's a good idea to start working as hard as you can and then easing off, since many people find this is an easier transition than the reverse. Also, it's safer in that you're less likely to end up with a "slacker" reputation if you end up undershooting what the "norm" is. However, I think this should also be balanced by the fact that for other people, routine is really important in setting time limits. So, if you want to do something like, take a tennis class from 4pm-6pm on Tuesdays/Thursdays, you should start in your first term, so that your "down time" is firmly set into your routine right away. A lot of grad students find it hard to force themselves (or at least not feel guilty about) taking time for themselves and it's easy to neglect other important priorities because "you're too busy". If you set a routine that involves non-academic activities right away, you may have an easier time scheduling your work around it so that you can achieve the balance you want. Don't be afraid to take on more "fun" activities than you might want to settle into--like work, you can always cut back on these activities and ease up as you determine what balance you want. In my opinion, it's just as important to "go full steam" in your academics and your non-academic pursuits when you start grad school. Exactly how you achieve this and what balance you want is your personal choice, but I encourage all new students to do as much as they can when they start, because it's the time where you have the most opportunity and most flexibility in developing your eventual routine. Don't neglect one part of your life for another, because it's pretty easy to fall into the trap of "Oh I'll do that next year" over and over again (this applies to both academic and non-academic stuff).

(emphasis added) Yes, this is exactly one strategy I (and many other people) employ to reduce the amount of time spent on coursework. In the sciences, there are less readings and more homework problem sets, so the equivalent there is to just do enough to get the majority of the points. I find that I can usually get to "B" level with only 3 hours/week spent on homework, but it might take another 6 hours/week to get to "A"...so depending on the course, I might stop at 3, or do a little more to get to that A- and stop. Another efficient strategy is to work together, when your school/course policies allow it. Instead of fully reading all of the assignments, split them between your colleagues and then meet up for a study session where each of you explain/summarize your assigned reading to others. But again, be careful to stay within the bounds of your school/course academic integrity policies. Usually, if readings are just assigned for learning, this is okay, but if the summaries are also your homework assignments, then this would very likely be not okay! And finally, for me, I find procrastination to be a very effective tool to curb perfectionism. Sometimes I just really like the material and if I don't be careful, I could spend 10 hours on a problem set to get everything perfect. Or, I would keep thinking up new ways to improve my calculation and go back to the set. This is a poor use of my time though, so I often try to wait until the day before something is due before doing it. Some my colleagues are better disciplined and they schedule one single day to work on it, and then force themselves to never look at it again. I find that waiting until the last day is often a good idea, since sometimes the professor will extend the deadline, or you will learn something closer to the due date that makes the problem set a lot easier.

I agree that we seem to be interpreting the question differently. I am taking for granted that since the OP is asking for Engineering graduate programs, all applicants are already going to do well in the GRE Q. This is why I also said that "as long as it's above some cutoff", e.g. a very low GRE Q would be a red flag and would severely hurt your application. Maybe I should phrase my answer in this way: Given that an engineering applicant will do well on the GRE Q, the most important part of the General GRE to prepare for is the Verbal Reasoning part. By "most important part", I mean the part where your score will actually distinguish you from other applicants, and the one section where I think admissions committees will actually use the numerical value of your score to distinguish applicants. Here is why I think this: 1. If you have the top GRE Q score out of all applicants, that is not very meaningful because even if you have Q=170, there are going to be tons of people with Q in the 165-170 range. However, if you are the top GRE V score out of all applicants, you will stand out a lot more. 2. The GRE Q does not test any abilities that is relevant in graduate school. On the other hand, the GRE V tests a lot of relevant abilities. 3. The GRE Q quantitative materials are much lower in difficulty than college level classes that uses any kind of math. 4. For international students, the GRE V is another useful test of language ability. TOEFL etc. will test for basic understanding, but the GRE V is a good way to compare an international student against native speakers. However, I agree with you that if you are talking about absolute importance, then the GRE Q is more important in the sense that you can probably do okay with an absolute low GRE V score (50th percentile) but an absolute low GRE Q score (50th percentile) will be very bad. But GRE scores are not meant to be compared in the absolute sense, only the relative sense. So, when I say a "good GRE score", I mean different cutoffs for different sections. Also, I think it is silly to answer this question without considering that we have prior information -- the applicant is an engineering student and is likely to score high enough on the GRE Q. Finally, I do think "being bad at tests" is very forgivable for graduate school applications in general. There are many good graduate students that do very poorly on standardized tests and many people who are very good at "training for the test" but do very poorly in graduate school. "Training for the test" is not a useful skill for a graduate student. This is why most of the graduate courses in my field do not have exams and why GREs and transcripts generally have lower priority in the admissions process than real experience like LORs. Many professors have discussed their worry that an applicant might "look good on paper" with high test scores but turn out to be very bad at basic graduate student abilities, like critical thinking, working independently, communicating ideas, etc.

This situation isn't uncommon, but it sounds a little strange that you are so limited in your options. To ensure I understand correctly, they are saying your options are: 1. Accept the top University award and a half-year TA, which totals $40k/year of support. 2. Accept the SSHRC ($20k/year) and take $20k/year from the University award, but no TAing is allowed since you're already at $40k/year. Have you asked them about a third option? Which is, take the SSHRC ($20k/year), take $10k/year from the University award, and do a half-TAship for $10k/year, which also totals $40k/year. SSHRC (like NSERC) will allow you to TA along with the award, and SSHRC (like NSERC) will allow you to accept other awards, so I don't see any problem with this from the SSHRC point of view. Also, since Option (1) above involves the school award and TAing, I don't see a problem combining the University award with TAing either. So, the only thing that would stop you from pursuing this option is if the department simply does not want you to do this!! In my field, in Canada, it's very common for science students to have funding like this. During my MSc, I was basically in the same situation as I describe above: 1/3 of funding from TAing, 1/3 of funding from a department/school award, and 1/3 of funding from NSERC. However, I'm not even sure that TAing now will help your job aspects later. Presumably you were a TA in your Masters degree? This might be a field dependent thing, since in the sciences, TAing is not a lot of responsibility so doing it once or doing it 5 times does not make you any more "qualified" for a teaching position. If you were in my field, I would advise you to take option 2 above and get teaching experience elsewhere, on your own terms (e.g. tutoring, outreach, etc.). But you should talk to those in your field to decide how valuable TA experience is to the type of career you want after your degree. Finally, I don't think volunteer TAing would work at many schools. At my MSc school, our Collective Bargaining Agreement clearly states that all Bargaining Unit work (e.g. TA work) must be paid at the TA rate. Overall, I think this is a good thing because otherwise schools can implement rules like "mandatory volunteering before eligibility for TAships" and take advantage of free labour and exploit students even more!

Exactly. This is why if I see a STEM major with a Q score of 160, I don't think "oh this person doesn't know how to do math". Instead, I would say this person probably just made a few silly mistakes on the GRE (or does not do multiple choice math tests well) and ignore the Q score. There's also a ton of other metrics that measure your quantitative ability (e.g. all the college level math courses or other math-intensive courses on the transcript) that the Q score provides very little new information. And as I argue above, I would even say that it provides no useful information because the Q sections do not test any quantitative skills relevant to graduate work in STEM.

Agreed that the cutoffs for V and Q are not the same. But if there were three candidates: Person A: V: 80th percentile Q: 90th percentile Person B: V: 85th percentile, Q: 90th percentile Person C: V: 80th percentile, Q: 95th percentile I would say that person B (higher V percentile) is more preferred to person C (higher Q percentile). This is assuming all candidates meet minimum cutoffs for Q and V.

Actually, my opinion is that Quant is the least important part of the GRE for students in STEM fields. Why? The GRE Q tests only basic high school math and pre-calculus algebra. If you have a Bachelor degree in science or engineering, you know way more math than the GRE Q so your performance is not very meaningful. Everyone is going to score in the 90th+ percentile and honestly, how is someone who scores 170 in Q better than someone who scores 167 in Q when the math being tested is well below the level of math needed for graduate school? Caveat: An abnormally low GRE Q score will still be a bad thing though, but in terms of competitiveness, I don't think this section is very important. I think the most important part of the GRE for science/engineering majors is the Verbal Reasoning section. I think this section tests a lot of useful skills required for graduate school. It is a very good test of logic and reading comprehension. It tests your ability to communicate and understand information as well as relationships between words/concepts. I'd put GRE V over the essay portions because while writing persuasive essays are important for STEM grad students, the scoring is simply one number out of 6--it's not like the admissions committee can read your actual essays. I don't think the essays you write for the AW section is that similar to the kind of writing you do in STEM, so there's also not a direct correlation there either. However, that said, I would say that all three sections are usually determined by "cutoffs", as Mechanician2015 said. And the GRE overall is not likely to be very important compared to the other parts of the application. I just think that the GRE Q is the least informative score, for reasons stated above, and that if you are going to spend time improving any section, it should be GRE V.

Well said. Sometimes I find myself thinking things like "ugh it's sunny AGAIN today :(" but then I usually stop myself from saying this before someone slaps some sense into me

The actual annual cost for just the car right now is a little under $3000 ($1300 for insurance, $500 gas, $500 maintenance, $300 parking, $200 registration). We took out a very low interest car loan to buy the car, so it's only because I'm including these car payments that the cost swells up to $5000+ per year....if you already have a car and it's already paid off, then your cost should be lower, I hope!! My wife and I would not have been able to afford buying a new-ish used car in LA county if we weren't both working! In fact, we did not buy a car until we both have established incomes (took about a year).

@Bleep_bloop: I agree with your points and like random17, I was approaching it from a science perspective. My entire teaching load per year is something like 50 hours. So, while 50 hours in one quarter does mean it's about 10% of my workload in the quarters I am a TA, in the grand scheme of things, it's nothing. Also, I should clarify that I don't count homework as part of my "40 hours of work". It's just a personal accounting thing. I count the mandatory part (e.g. time spent in lectures) as part of "work" because I have to be there to get funding to go to school. But homework is something I can choose how much effort to spend, so that's not "work". So, for the 1.3 years I had classes, I was probably spending more like 50-60 hours per week on grad school. Now that I am out of classes, I spend 40-50 hours per week. In the sciences (or at least my field), my performance in class has almost zero effect on my future career prospects. @bsharpe: I would categorize my classes into similar categories too. For (1), I would do 100% effort, aim for the best grade I can achieve. For (2), I would probably aim for a A- (as much effort as I can afford to spend), unless the prof in question is my advisor, in which case the class is probably category (1) anyways. For (3), I would aim for a B (minimal effort I can get away with). In my program, the professors tell us not to get straight As. A 4.0 GPA is a sign that we are working too hard on classes. But a 3.0 GPA would be too little effort. I think they wanted us to average around A- (3.7). In my undergrad program, impressing profs through coursework really helped me. It landed me my first full time summer research project, which lead to my first publication and started a series of other things that helped me get where I am today. However, in my current grad program, impressing profs won't help in this manner nor will it help in the manner you said. Everyone is guaranteed full funding for the entire degree, so there are no internal fellowships/scholarships or internal competition for TAships. We are not paid more or less depending on our TA assignments. I am international and I'm also not eligible for external fellowships, except for one. Also, for fellowships for senior students, and for jobs beyond my PhD, few applications put much (or any) weight on class performance. Sure, this is a place where a 4.0GPA will make a difference over a 3.5 GPA, but having an extra publication is way better than 0.5 GPA points. Overall, what I mean is that it might be a good idea to de-prioritize coursework in favour of other things that help you more, like research. But sometimes if research is slow that week (e.g. I might have to wait for data to arrive from the telescope), then there's no harm in repurposing that time on coursework.

Like 1Q84, I am also a desk addict (although I don't have a Keurig, and the fridge/microwave is in another room). I also like the climate controlled environment of my office But I do occasionally read outside, if I have a paper copy of what I'm reading. However, this makes it pretty hard to write notes when I don't have a hard surface to work on. I also like to take walks outside to clear my mind. Usually, while thinking about my code on a walk, I come up with several ideas on how to write the next algorithm or how to debug something. So if that counts as working outside, that's probably what I do the most! I do like having meetings outside though. If I'm meeting with a visitor or other people to discuss some project, I like to go to the patio outside my building or to the campus coffee shop.

Are you getting funding from the school as well? Maybe the cost for you+spouse is $5000 more than what the school's financial package is already offering, so they just need to see the difference.

Another way to phrase what random_grad said is that the same population of applicants do not apply to all the schools, so there's another reason you cannot directly compare two school's acceptance fraction to measure their "selectivity". In addition, different schools have different criteria. As an international student, I got into some top private schools but rejected from many top and second-tier public schools since international students cost a lot more at a public school! Overall, I do not think "selectivity" (as measured by fraction of applicants accepted) is a terribly useful metric and I would only expect weak correlation between prestige and "selectivity".

As Sigaba said, this information is helpful to schools so that they can find out what their "peer" schools are. They don't know what your final decision will be and sometimes the student will say schools that rank well above them. This doesn't mean that they consider themselves on the same bar, but they do want to know where else people go. And the current students want to know too. I just recently got a spreadsheet from my school listing every admitted's student final decision. It's interesting to see where some of our favourite prospectives end up going. For my program, there is a definite trend--in the last 5 years or so, all of the students we "lost" only chose 2 other schools (and 90% of the "lost" students went to the same rival school). This usually means we can predict whether a student will attend our program fairly accurately (i.e. if they didn't get into one of the other two "rival" schools, we'd be pretty sure they will accept our offer). Anyways, for your specific situation, my suggestion will be to not reply at all right now. Wait until you actually make a decision and then let them know. There's no rush to respond! And finally, I do agree that you don't "owe" them an answer, but as you say, you want to keep a good relationship with School A, so you should tell them when you know. Your final decision is not a secret because people will find out very shortly when they see you publishing or presenting with your new affiliation. In fact, I would even say it's in your best interest to tell people where you go because if they were interested in you enough to ask, they would pay more attention and know where to look for new work by you and that's a good thing!

To play devil's advocate / point out a useful factoid, sometimes not meeting the right person at a conference could cost you a job opportunity. Although again, for this particular case, I normally would not advise dropping $1000 to attend an academic conference when you don't have anything to present. However, from talking to people do make hiring decisions, what often happens is that when people put up job solicitations, they do so with a potential candidate in mind. They tell me that the process of getting a job posting approved by HR, then interviewing the requisite number of short listed candidates, and all of the approvals is a lot of work and cost a lot of time. They don't want to go through all that and find that all 10 shortlisted people are not the right match. Plus, they will get flack from HR if they repeatedly put up the same job search. So, "they" tell me that the way a lot of positions are filled is through networking. They search out people and wait until they find a candidate that they would consider hiring. Once they know that someone that they would actually want to hire exists, then they put up the job posting and go through the whole official process. During this process, they might find someone even more qualified, which is a win for them. But at the very least, they know their efforts will yield at least one viable candidate. While not networking won't mean that someone less qualified than you will get the job, not networking might mean that there is a job out there that is perfect for you but will not get posted unless the company that wants you actually meets you and decides you're a viable candidate!!

The Texas DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) website can probably give you these estimates. In California, the license costs about $35, the plates and stickers (i.e. registration) costs me about $200 per year. The bigger cost is car insurance--I pay about $1200/year for fairly good coverage (I know others who pay about $600-$800 for less coverage). Overall, including maintenance, gas, insurance, parking, etc., I estimate owning a car to be about $2500/year here. If you include depreciation (or car payments), it is more like $5000/year. I'm not sure about the thing about driving back to Mexico since I know almost nothing about Mexican vehicle laws! I do know that these rules can be weird/tricky--for example, Canadians are not allowed to drive US rental cars back into Canada (but Americans can). However, this rule might have changed recently.

quilledink, no problem! I am not sure if this type of program is common across US schools or if my school is special though. Hope I didn't set you up for disappointment if your school cannot offer something like that! MathCat, we looked long and hard but there are no banks in California that has synergy with Canadian banks We are using Citibank right now (which is international and there are investment offices in Canada, but no regular banking) and they are fine. We mostly chose them because they were closest to us, but they just decided to stop opening on Saturdays (for all but one location in town). I think the big banks down here--Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi--are pretty much the same. Also, ScotiaBank doesn't have good deals on their accounts at all in Canada! As I said above, we also looked at a lot of different Canadian banks to find the best deal and with BMO, we can get a very good service plan with no fees for a fairly small minimum balance. The service plan even includes a limited number of no-fee ATM withdrawals internationally, which is good for emergencies.

I don't think they matter "to graduate admission boards the way it matters in undergrad", but I agree with Eigen that leadership positions do make a difference. I think your application will be judged for research potential first and foremost, but departments also want to recruit graduate students and hire postdocs/professors that are able to work well with others, be a leader, etc. These are "intangibles" but these attributes also help in direct ways. For example, departments want students who can win NSF GRFPs and those awards require a strong "broader impact"/public outreach component, which your service learning project will help! So I agree with everyone else that you should definitely include these experiences/activities in your application but make the emphasis be on your scholarly activities. I have a section in my CV for these activities and also wrote a short paragraph in my SOP where appropriate (often, my applications asked for these activities in a separate essay).

Welcome to the forum! Hope you will enjoy your time here, but please don't post the same thing in multiple places. Please continue the discussion in the Journalism forum:

Welcome to the forum! Hope you will enjoy your time here, but please don't post the same thing in multiple places. Please continue the discussion in the Journalism forum: