TakeruK

Usually, April 15 in the US for schools that follow the CGS Resolution.

Yes, at least in my field, future fellowship committees do look at your award history and you usually see that the winners of the big postdoc fellowships often won grad school fellowships as well as undergrad fellowships. Winning prestigious external and competitive fellowships signals that you proven yourself in the past. Note that this only applies to external and competitive fellowships--some grad school admission-based fellowships do not fall into this category.

MathCat's description is one version of how a waitlist could work. However, I know that some programs do not operate waitlists in this manner. Especially programs that admit smaller numbers, they want to make sure they get a balance of students. So, the waitlist might actually be several waitlists for different subfields/PIs etc. Or, the waitlist might not be "ranked" at all, and after they hear enough students decline (and need to make more offers), the committee might meet again and revisit the waitlist to decide who gets offers now, based on the earlier decisions.

Personally, I find taking the "apologetic" route makes some awkwardness smoother. Like, "Sorry for all these questions, but this is a big move for me and my family etc. etc." But perhaps I say sorry a lot due to Canadianisms . I also think it is not a lie if you answer "Yes, I am committed to 2 full years" at this point because you have not made any other commitments. Also, you might want to mention that you are used to seeing contracts that are for 1 year + renewal so you might want to negotiate for that. Maybe your field is different from mine, but you can negotiate postdoc offers to get things that are important to you. It sounds like some questions/negotiations you might want to make are: a. How much of your time can be spent on your own research vs. working for this PI/lab? b. Moving costs for you and your family c. A research grant for your own work (in my field, good postdoc positions usually offer ~$10,000/year or so for research expenses). This could be really important for you in order to travel a lot while in Europe to develop the connections you need to get that permanent job in Europe. Or if you change your mind later and want to stay in North America, that could be the funding required to fly back regularly to maintain old connections. d. Startup fund for your office/lab bench if necessary? Also, I would not worry too much about a 2 year commitment since academic jobs tend to appear on an annual cycle. So, the earliest you can get that dream job is probably a year from now, at which point it might be easy to negotiate for starting after your current postdoc ends. Or, if you have to break a temporary contract for a permanent job, I don't think anyone could fault you for that (can't make everyone happy and you have to look out for you and your family first). And finally, can you talk to the other postdocs in the group via Skype or phone call? Send them an email and ask for an appointment. Or, can you track down former group members to their new locations and email them to talk to them? Most group research websites have lists of alumni and where they are now! Or look for papers with the PI from a few years ago and see who the first authors are and where they are now.

Programs usually let you visit. Why don't you visit them and make sure your expectations for each school matches reality? I found that several of my schools were better/worse than I originally thought. I think the best decision is something only you can make based on your personal experiences with your interactions at each program. It'd be pretty hard for one of us here to help you with that

Yes, I'm not suggesting that you fly out earlier just to open a bank account I was just using it as an example that you can open one prior to securing an apartment and perhaps a more knowledgeable bank or credit union can help you out when first arrive in the US! Also, be careful of using your credit card to "deposit funds" since that's not normally how credit cards here work (perhaps this is okay in your country though!). But if we did something like that here, it would be a cash advance which carries a very high interest rate from the moment of the advance as it counts as a loan. I believe the most convenient and safest way to transfer your money is a wire transfer but the second safest way would be a bank draft or money order!

I don't think this needs to be a "vs" thing. Depending on your career goals, you should factor rank into preference. Also, often, rank is correlated with preference (for example, the things I prefer in a school generally cost a lot of money that only high ranking schools can provide). But ultimately, if it comes down to you choosing a place that you feel intuitively is a good fit and would make you happy versus a place that is high ranked but would make you unhappy, go with your preference/gut feeling!

Try a different bank or credit union. Some places just don't know all the information or they don't train all of their employees on how to help non-American clients. I actually opened my US bank account while just visiting the US prior to even officially entering the US on a J-1 status. They did require a US address so I used my friend's address (the bank said this was okay as a temporary measure). I know that many banks near the US-Canada border will be able to open a US bank account for Canadians without a US address. You do not need a ITIN in order to open a bank account but they do need some kind of identification number. My bank allowed me to open a bank account using my Form DS-2019. Try another place. Edit: It's been awhile so it might have been the case that the bank opened the bank account with my DS-2019 but also helped me fill out the form to apply for an ITIN at the bank and they submitted all the paperwork for me. In any case, opening the bank account was something I did on a visit to the US (as a visitor, not as a J-1) and something I did prior to leasing an apartment.

Open houses are almost always intended to persuade students to decide to accept their offer. Attending one does not imply you will accept and in fact, most people will attend multiple open houses. I found that schools in colder regions tend to have open houses later in the winter (e.g. mid to late March) to avoid most of the bad weather. My program has open houses in February usually because the weather is so nice. I think part of the strategy is to take students currently in super wintery conditions and then show them the contrast of Southern California! I remember visiting one school in another warm state and thinking it was amazing that I can walk down the street in a t-shirt and shorts and eating an ice cream while everyone back home was still under several feet of snow!!

Right -- I was writing my response from the point of view that the OP already tried to ask for more and it was not possible. I thought the OP was asking for a case where they already know they will decline the offer and just want to say why. Definitely don't take my approach if you are still trying to get them to increase the offer!

An alternative to bringing actual cash is a bank draft or money order in US funds. This was how we did it! It's a tiny bit more secure that you can report the missing money order if lost/stolen (and hope that the thief hasn't cashed it yet since basically the holder can cash it even though it has your name on it).

I think this is the same situation as I am describing. But perhaps the numbers are not the same. In Canada, a small bonus is more common and in the US, it seems like it just replaces your internal funding (if higher than internal value) or the school supplements it to match internal funding (my current situation).

The above advice is good. Another opinion though is that you should not be specific at all when you turn them down. There's a chance that someone will view your reason as whiny and/or ungrateful. Instead, save this important feedback for the exit survey you'll get from the University once you officially decline their offer. However, it does sound like you have a good relationship with this POI and being honest and sincere (without sounding ungrateful) should work too.

I also arrived on a J-1. You should look into your school's international student orientation dates and make sure you arrive before that! I did not have a SSN or ITIN when I first arrived but I was still able to set up a bank account (yes, do this on day one) and rent an apartment. I used my offer letter that states my annual income as proof of income. I would recommend that you are careful to describe yourself as a "researcher", not a "student" because some people will still think student = no income. Also, a lot of places will require a deposit because you don't have US credit and/or you don't have SSN/ITIN. For example, cell phone companies. Sometimes, they will know to ask for a I-20 form (or DS-2019 for J-1) and they will accept that in lieu of a giant deposit. However, in other cases, you will have to deposit some money. For electricity bill, I had to put a $250 deposit that they still have (I can't get it back until I move). There is also a deposit on the apartment. Some states allow as much as 2 months rent as deposit. You will need US funds for this so I would recommend bringing in at least 6 months rent worth of savings as a minimum -- you'll have to pay first month rent right away, and up to 2 more months as a security deposit and sometimes it might take a month to get paid so having 3 months extra rent should hopefully cover most expenses to the first paycheque. If you have the savings, perhaps consider up to 1 years' rent to have some on hand in case of emergencies. Some schools will also offer no-fee no-interest "startup loans" to help if you don't have a lot of savings. If you can get a US Driver license, the sooner you do so, the better. If you are planning to arrive a month before your program start, and you already know how to drive, this might be a good time to spend the day lining up the at the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) and take the tests. Once you have a US driver license, there's nothing on that which indicates you're not an American so when I use this form of ID, my life becomes a lot easier. Finally, perhaps the most important thing, you should check in at your school's International Office the day you arrive, if possible. They will get you to fill out a lot of important paperwork. The most important thing though is that they will give you a letter that you take to the Social Security Administration and they will be able to issue a SSN. It will take about 5 days before they will be able to give you a number and a few more days for it to arrive in the mail. And one tip, a lot of people are more familiar with F-1 students than J-1 students. If they ever ask for a I-20, just show them your DS-2019 and explain that it's the J-1 equivalent to I-20.

I agree that you should not write extremely sloppy acknowledgements. But statements like "Thank you to my advisor for his/her patience" or "for not kicking me out" etc. is common and appropriate in my field. In fact, there are usually a series of lame jokes / cliches that usually go something like: First, thank you to my advisor for patience/not kicking me/ putting up with me. Then, thank you to friends who suffered with me / went camping with me / offered "beverages" etc. Then, thank you to pets sometimes. Usually some jokes about how cute they were or how it was nice to be able to talk to someone about research and not have them roll their eyes at you etc. Then, a thank you to family. Finally, a thank you to their SO (usually with some joke about putting up with them and providing support). I think there's a difference between that and something like "Hey, Friend X, remember that time where we got totally wasted and broke into Prof Smith's office and rearranged all their books??", or have inappropriate jokes etc. I agree with you that everyone should write their acknowledgements knowing a future employer may read it. But that doesn't mean you can't have fun too. And I want to state again the humanity aspect of it. Future employers could read it but there's nothing wrong with reading a few lame jokes. But a PhD work is often never completed alone. Although the research might be, the actual work of completing the PhD is supported by the graduate student's friends and families. The acknowledgements may be the only part that is understandable to their friends and families and I think it is a great way for the student to show their appreciation, by putting it in print, permanently, on their final product symbolizing their graduate school time. In my field, people rarely read theses for information. As I said above, a thesis is often just a collection of already published (and read by others) papers, so unless someone really prefers to see everything in double space and wide margin format (or they don't have access to a journal subscription), they are just going to look up the actual paper themselves, not the thesis. It's true that years were spent to create the parts of the thesis, but many of us feel that our collection of published papers and the citations received represent our actual academic work and achievements. The dissertation itself is just a symbolic representation of years of work. Consequently, in my field, dissertations are usually things people throw together in the 1-2 months prior to the defense date. At that point, the student usually has a job offer lined up already (academic or not), and everyone (student, committee, advisor) just wants to get the thesis done and out the door. Therefore, priority is placed on expediency and meeting minimum University requirements, not on actually creating a true representative sample of your work. But I understand that different fields may have different norms.

In general, external funding does reduce internal funding as internal funding usually comes with the stipulation that you don't have other funding. For example, when I had NSERC funding for a Canadian program (CGS-M, $17.5k/year), my offer went from $24k/year (all internal)( to $32k/year ($15k internal, $17k NSERC). At my US school, I took the PGS-D down here, and my funding went from $30k/year (all internal) to $30k/year ($9k + tuition internal, $21k from NSERC). So you might be able to negotiate for a small "bonus" with an external fellowship but it's rare that you will be able to have both completely. Also, many schools have a cap on what they're allowed to pay their graduate students (my current school's cap is $38,000/year).

Usually these meetings are scheduled by a staff member in the department, not between professors and students directly because as you can imagine, it would be a ton of work to track everyone down! I'm not 100% sure how to ask for help though. When I visited grad schools in 2010 (for Canadian MSc programs), I did not visit during official dates since I wanted to visit during my 2 week reading break (extended break since the Olympics were in town!) so I just emailed a professor at each school I was visiting and said that I would be in town -- would I be able to visit the department? In each case, the professor said they would be glad to host my visit and then set me up with their admin assistant (or the department assistant responsible for grad admits). But it might be a little forward for you to email one of these assistants directly and ask them to do work for you as they are likely super busy at this point! My suggestion would be to first reach out to the professor that has already agreed to meet you. You could say that you would like to meet a few other people (profs and students) too, and ask how they suggest you go about that. Hopefully that will lead to them asking an admin assistant to help you with scheduling the rest of your meetings. However, my (sub)field is pretty small -- almost all departments I visited in 2010 and 2012 have < 10 faculty members in the subfield so perhaps in larger departments, maybe getting help with scheduling is not the norm. If you do schedule meetings yourself, I would do it individually for profs then group-email for grad students. Go in the order of people you would most like to meet and I would suggest you offer a specific time in your email (but invite them to suggest an alternate). That way, if they agree, they can just say yes to your time or "no, I would like X o'clock instead" and the whole exchange can be wrapped up in 3 emails (your first one, their response, your thank you). I find that when working with busy people (e.g. profs) it is much more efficient for both parties to suggest a specific time (but offer flexibility if necessary) so that they can just make a quick yes/no decision instead of a range of times, which usually means more planning is needed so the task might be deferred (and maybe forgotten). Send the emails in order of people you would most like to meet because if your favourite prof can only make one specific time and you had another person scheduled, you don't want to have to go back and say "sorry need to move you!". Once you have the profs scheduled, I would group-email many students, e.g. the ones who work for the prof(s) you are meeting and give them all a list of time slots still open and ask them to get back to you if they are interested in meeting with you.

Although I should clarify that I do agree that acknowledgements should be concise and while there is space for you to be personal, there's still such a thing as overdoing it. Most people write about 1-2 pages in the "thesis format" reminiscing about their grad school hijinks. And of course, there is a difference between a few lines to highlight your appreciation of the important people in your life and going on a long rant of in-jokes and TMI. But the comments in the OP's example do not detract from professionalism. In addition, few people in my field would consider our thesis to be our "greatest work to date". In general when we are ready to graduate (i.e. have a job now) we take all our previously published papers, copy/paste into the thesis file and convert to thesis format. For most students, the thesis and defense is simply a hurdle/formality that stands between you and the next great/fun thing. The student does not get to the writing and defense stage if the outcome of the defense would be in question.

To each their own of course, but I really disagree with the idea that we should encourage others not to be personal and sincere in your acknowledgements. In fact, this is often the only place in your whole thesis where you can express yourself the way you want, instead of the stuffy academic-ness of the rest of the work. I personally really enjoy reading people's acknowledgements and I've leafed through former students' theses just to read the acknowledgements. It really gives you a sense of who they are/were. I feel that this is where you see the "human" behind all the great work. Also, in my field anyways, very few people will read the thesis (maybe not even your committee). One recent graduate of my program wrote "If you read this sentence, let me know and I'll buy you a beer" near the end of the thesis and only one professor on their committee went to claim the drink. My own MSc thesis had comments mysteriously stop 1/3 of the way through so I only know for certain that my supervisor read the whole thing.

A lot of times, faculty have nametags that identify themselves as such. But I agree with everyone that if you introduce yourself, they will introduce themselves too. And if it's still not clear, asking a question like "What do you work on?" will work. And don't feel bad if you don't recognize a faculty member. During one prospective student visit, I thought one professor was another prospective student. Oops! We had a good laugh about it and everything was fine.

I think this really really depends on your field, what type of school it is, and what country you're in. For example, at Canadian public schools in physical science fields, your funding is usually divided between a specific prof/group/lab (can make up from 1/3 to 2/3 of your total funding) and the department (usually comes in the form of TAships). Sometimes having a fellowship (internal or external) can decrease the amount your prof has to contribute (and sometimes decreases your TA load). Either way, since a significant chunk of your stipend will be coming from your lab group, the second of two options you list is the "norm". However, since it's not 100% of your funding from a prof, it still not impossible to switch advisors if both your new and old advisors agree to it. On the other hand, it seems like most US schools in the physical science fields operate at the "departmental" funding level at least for the first year. My current program will guarantee funding to all students for the length of the degree. The first year is departmental funding so that we can work with a few professors and pick an advisor. The second year is a mix of department and advisor funding, I think. The third year and beyond is advisor only and you should have a thesis advisor in place by that time. So it is very important to discuss whether or not the advisor has funding for you when starting a first year project with them. In my program, profs behave ethically and will only consider you for a first year project if they can potentially fund you later (i.e. they are not going to just take everyone on and only agree to fund a few).

At every school, changing your PhD program is pretty tricky and rarely happens. I would strongly advise against applying to one program with the intention to transfer to another because you will likely not succeed and then you might end up in a program you don't really want to be in. I think advice for you would really depend on what is your real goal here. If your real goal is to do research in chemistry or cell biology and you have a reasonable collaboration in mind then you can totally make this work as an engineering student. I'm assuming that when you say you are a "medical engineer", you have applied to a program with a name like "biomedical engineering"? It's not rare at all for graduate students (at most schools) to have projects that span two programs. You'll just officially be a biomedical engineering PhD that does research on chemistry/cell biology problems (i.e. applying your biomedical engineering background on chemistry/cell biology problems). If you want to go this route, when you visit your program, you should let them know you're interested in a cross-discipline project and see which professors would be interested in doing this with you. Not everyone likes having their students do this and you want to make sure you find a supportive advisor/lab! However, if your real goal is to not only do research in chemistry but also actually have a chemistry PhD, then this is not the right path to take. I agree with jenste and GeoDUDE! that you should consider getting a Masters or postbac in the new field first instead of trying to get into one program at Caltech and then switch. Doing this is disingenuous and will definitely make you look bad. Ultimately, for the chemistry program to consider allowing you to switch into their program, they are going to consider your application compared to all the new chemistry PhD application. If you don't think you could get in originally, I don't think a switch is any more likely to be successful.

In my opinion, you should never write negative things about anyone (even if they deserve it) in your SOP--it's a place to demonstrate your ability and positives, not a place to highlight other negatives or make excuses. What did you end up doing after taking the first language course? Did you switch to a different language? If so, focus on your experience with this other foreign language instead. If you did not take any language courses at all because your preferred foreign language courses were not taught well, then I don't think you should mention the instruction quality in your SOP. I will give you an honest opinion here and that is I think it was a mistake for you to stop taking language courses because they were poorly taught. It's not that I don't believe your course was poorly taught, but given that foreign languages are very important to the programs you're applying to, it does not make sense to discontinue these courses. Or maybe this is just a difference in field but there are tons of poorly taught classes in my field that graduate students are just expected to endure because the material is a fundamental part of our core knowledge and/or critical to our research success. However, I don't think all is necessarily lost! Here are some options you can consider: 1. Don't mention this at all. If you don't get in this time around, can you take these foreign language courses before reapplying? 2. Don't mention the poor quality of instruction in your previous experience. Don't mention that you only took 1 out of 3 possible courses. Instead, dedicate a small paragraph (a few sentences) outlining your current experience in this language (undergrad, the grad class you took, any other experience) and your future plans to improve in this foreign language. Include your study abroad if relevant. Maybe you will take classes in between now and the next grad program's start date? Does the school you're applying to have night courses in this language? Make sure you phrase your plan as a way to improve your language skills without highlighting/drawing attention to your deficiency too much.

rising_star is right and it's definitely important to compare against the norms in your field before making judgements based on these actions! I will qualify my earlier statements that if you are in a field where research is generally funded by grants (i.e. it would be extremely worrisome if a graduate student had to fund their own work related travel), then it would be a red flag if the school did not offer some money towards visits!

Well, not much we can do at the moment. But I hope some of us will remember this when we are in a position to do something about it in the future and maybe we can create certain initiatives to help the future generations. For example, we might advocate for advance reimbursements (one of my past schools will give you an advance up to $1000) or help enable programs that will allow for these expenses to be paid directly from a grant instead of on a reimbursement basis.