TakeruK

In addition to what rising_star said, I would not ask for a higher GRA stipend because GRA rates are often set university-wide or by some other standard. I would just ask in general if there is a way they can offer a larger financial package (give the reasons you give here). I think it's worth asking and no one should fault you for asking. If they are able to increase your stipend, it would likely be through a fellowship or some other "award". It sounds like you are a an international student, which means that they can't increase your hours beyond a limit.

In addition to juilletmercredi's advice, I think you should talk to the Faculty of Graduate Studies / School of Graduate Studies or some equivalent body to check in on school-wide policies on this issue. For example, at my school, this counts as a leave of absence and you must get permission from your advisor in order to do this. It doesn't matter what your source of funding is, because the school does not allow you to remain registered as a student and also work outside of the school without prior permission. However, as juilletmercredi pointed out, the amount of support you can expect to get from your advisor will depend on the source of your funding. In addition, at my school at least, I know the Graduate Office will be on your side and they will help you convince your advisor that this opportunity is a good thing for you and that your advisor should agree to this. Alternatively, if you cannot find this support from the Graduate Office, you can also consider talking to other professors in your department (especially if they are on your thesis committee). Ultimately, I think it is very hard for a graduate student to go against their advisor's wishes and have everything end well. Sometimes it is necessary though for your own good. However, I would strongly advise you to find allies, preferably other professors, whenever you need to go against a professor, especially your own advisor.

I definitely agree with the bigger picture argument. I think I interpreted the advisor's (and original poster's) request differently. When I read the original post, I read this as a request from the advisor to find someone who would be a helpful RA, not to find someone who would be a good graduate student for the program. I don't know how big the stack of applications that the advisor gave to the OP, but it sounded like, since the OP was not invited to be part of the department's admissions committee, there might have been some other vetting going on and the OP's task is simply to pick out the top 3 for the specific task of data collection. But after reading your post, it actually might sound like the advisor is asking the graduate student to help the advisor pick new graduate students for the lab/department (i.e. prior to any other vetting by other faculty members). In that case, I definitely agree with the bigger picture argument, and that the OP should take the opportunity to "think like a faculty member" and pick the best candidates for the graduate program. To me, this was not my initial thought because in my field, when graduate students are involved in admission decisions, we actually sit on admissions committees and have the full discussion with the other faculty about the department goals/priorities for this year, etc. I think it would be extremely hard to pick out the "top 3" from a stack of applications without involvement and discussion with other members of the admissions committee.

You mentioned Western Ontario, which is a Canadian school. With this information, I would disagree with some of the above posters and say that you should ask. At least in my field, Canadian graduate admissions work differently and they are more like job applications. I agree with MathCat that you should not ask directly, but just tell the other school that you have an offer from somewhere else. This is what happened to me: I was interested in School A (application deadline Jan 15) and School B (application deadline March 1). I was in contact with POIs from both schools in early January and made plans to visit in mid-Feb (during my undergrad school's reading break). By Feb 1, School A accepted me and gave me 3 weeks to respond. However, this is before School B's application deadline! So, I submitted my application to School B early. I also visited both schools in mid-February. While visiting School B, I let them know that School A already accepted me and wanted me to respond within a week at that point. School B said that they will get a decision to me ASAP. Just in case, I asked School A for an extension of 2 weeks so that I can hear back from School B and School A granted the extension. About a week after my visit to School B, they notified me that they decided to accept me! This was still in February, prior to their March 1 application deadline. So, now that you have an offer, you should ask all your other schools about your application status and let them know that School A asked you to respond by X date. Ask them when they would know their decision (don't rush them) so that you can ask School A for an appropriate extension. It is likely they will accelerate your application decision process, if possible. (This is because in Canada, there isn't often a committee that makes decisions, but instead, each individual prof will say yes or no and you get a letter saying you are accepted to work with the profs that said yes).

I think the first link in the above post is for US GPAs which are very different than Canadian GPAs. A B average (3.0 GPA) is Canada usually means you are in the upper half of your class. That is, most class averages are in the B/B- range. I think it might correspond to a "Lower Second Class" standing (not sure the exact name you use) in the UK. But you should definitely check with Queen's to find out what they want exactly

I enjoyed them a ton as a visiting student and I look forward to them every year as a current graduate student. For all the reasons above. And it's even better as a current student because it's only the fun socializing/meeting with prospective students part (either at meals or one-on-one) and none of the 8 hour days with back to back meetings part

I think even at this stage, it is a holistic process (i.e. they will still consider all parts of your application). There is often a lot of what people call "horse trading" at this point, where different profs might have different favourite candidates and must negotiate with each other to decide who to admit. When making an argument for or against a candidate, I am sure a prof would use all of the information available to do so.

One of the newly hired faculty members here was in a real rock band (as in actually selling albums). I recently bought their album on iTunes Hobbies and other interests should not hinder your ability to get a tenure track positions.

UBC Physics also follows the April 15 thing. I think the best option is to first try to figure out how long the other schools will take to get back to you and to ask your first school to extend the deadline. My experience with all Canadian schools was that they are generally willing to extend it if you are waiting (i.e. they are not trying to get you to make an early decision). However, they don't want to just give you until April 15 in case people just procrastinate. I also had a mid-Feb deadline so I asked another school (whose application deadline was Mar 1) when they would make a decision. They ended up accepting me prior to the end of February! So, I think you should first act in good faith and try to figure out a decision timeline and ask for an extension. Only if the schools absolutely refuse to "play nice" should you take the action of accepting and then rejecting them if another offer comes along.

Would you need childcare? Have you compared the childcare facilities at these schools? I did a check of waitlist/financial support policies of schools in California and I believe the UC system has better support than Stanford. Also, check out family leave policies in case you plan on expanding your family in grad school! There are often big differences between a big state school and a private school on these issues.

It's definitely all about balance. My point is that it is easier to achieve balance if you are more flexible. If you are more open-minded about your thesis topic, you have more opportunities and some of these opportunities might help you achieve better balance. This might not always be true though and whether it's worth it is a personal choice. For me, as I said above, I decided to find a school/program/advisor that I felt would support me best as a scientist and as a human, and then went with whatever projects was available there, since being happy with my life is more important to me than being happy with the topic I am working on.

I agree with thr0waway in that it's not up to you to choose the best student for the program etc. That's your professor's / department's job. Pick the student that you think will be the best co-worker for you. Make sure you would get along well with them and make sure that they have the specific skills you need to best assist you in the project. I would not worry about things like "will they be able to pass the courses?" etc. because that's the department's job.

Conceal this information until you find the ones you can trust with the info. Many professors and programs still have the old mindset that if you do not continue in academia, you are a failure (even that is not realistic). More modernized programs might be happy for you to do research or other work in non-tenure tracked astrophysics positions too. But I think few programs will be happy spending all these resources on you to train you as an astrophysicist and then have you not work in astrophysics. During school visits, I asked one prof if he had any students do well in non-planetary science / non-astrophysics careers. He said that he had one student that left the field to work for a video game company and that the prof was super pissed about that. The prof said he felt that he wasted 5 years of his time training this person for no benefit to him or the field. I stopped asking any other professors this question after that experience. But once I got to know the professors in my current program better, I did talk to them about this topic again. I mentioned my interaction with the other prof and they said that of course every prof would want their student to continue in the field because our future work is basically an extension of their work and collaboration. But they also said that they see the University's main role as a place to train experts that will benefit society as a whole, and while it's not ideal for them to "lose" a grad student to another field, it's not terrible either and they would prefer to see the student succeed in what's best for the student. So, you'll meet a lot of different people with a lot of different viewpoints and support for you. Since you don't know who these people are in advance, I would strongly suggest not mentioning it in your application materials and just leave it vague. You're not expected to know exactly what to do at this point anyways. However, seek out mentors and supervisors that will support you and talk to them about your goals. My current program is very supportive of alternate career paths and our thesis committees want to know what each student's post-graduation goals are and will make suggestions to help you achieve them. But again, I would say this part is something you should worry about after you get accepted, not in the application stage. To make sure you are choosing the right school, you might want to ask a few probing questions to profs and students while you are visiting / calling them on Skype (without making it sound like you only want to go to their school to get computational training etc.)

I do have a car loan actually (1.5% interest rate through my school's credit union). We decided to take out a car loan for our car instead of moving our savings from Canada over to the US to pay for it up front. Since the Canadian dollar isn't doing so well against the US dollar, and there would be exchange fees, paying 1.5% interest is better! I guess I was only thinking about debt from the costs of going to school itself (i.e. rent and basic living expenses, not "luxuries" like a car!) We did get a used car, but still "new" enough that we needed a $10k car loan. We tried to move as little money to the States as possible, and we got this car after 1 year here, so we didn't just have $10k US just lying around after trying to support 2 people on 1 grad student stipend for a year! This is our second car together (our first was a much older vehicle that we had to retire when we moved to the States) and we bought it as an investment for our future.

I don't have such specific research interests that I needed to find a school that did exactly what I wanted. Today, I submitted my research statement for candidacy and I had no idea this was what my thesis would be on when I was applying to graduate school. Instead, my thought was to find a school, program, and advisor that I liked and then do whatever research they would pay me to do. Obviously it would all be in the subfield I want to work on, but I didn't have any preferences beyond that subfield. In addition, I searched for schools based on their ability to train me in a specific set of skills (in my case, observational astronomy) instead of working on a specific problem. I didn't care what my thesis was on as long as I was able to develop this particular skillset. Top 1 and Top 4 are basically identical rankings in my opinion. The cutoffs would vary by field. In mine, there are about 5 schools that are clearly the best in the country so I would say they are "Tier 1". Then there are about 20 other schools that are also very good but just lack one small thing that the top 5 have--I'd call these "Tier 2". And finally, everyone else is "Tier 3". I would say that I only considered ranking between these "tiers", not within them. I think in bigger fields, there might be as many as 20-30 schools considered "Tier 1", and perhaps more than three tiers!

I guess it depends what works for you. It's funny, because your last sentence rings very true for me, but in the opposite sense. I also did many other things (academic and non-academic) where I could always be myself, so I didn't feel the need to be myself in my thesis work. That is, I got enough happiness out of life through my passions outside of work, so that work could just be work for me, it didn't also have to fulfill another passion all the time. I am still passionate about my work, but since it is not my only passion, I don't feel that bad about it when things don't go the way I want. So, for me, I find that spreading my passion across many activities is good for days where one of the things I care about goes poorly. That is, if my research is complete crap this week, I can always go and do a sport, or if I'm doing poorly at the sport that week, I can take solace in writing up some code for my research!

I'm in planetary sciences. To me, $1 in debt is too much debt -- I would not have applied to or attended any program that did pay for all expenses and also paid an acceptable stipend/salary on top of it. In my opinion, most graduate stipend packages are undervaluing our skills, even considering the fact that we are getting an education.

Just to add, the Geobiology program here seems to be a "Biology program with applications to Geology", rather than a "Geology program with applications to Biology". That is, it seems like the geobiologists here are biologists by training and want to apply their expertise to work on geobiology problems. Same for the geochemistry program and my program (planetary science). Our whole geology/earth science department seems to be "take people trained in X and have them work on geo-X problems". I think this works really well and creates a very stimulating multi-disciplinary environment. For example, going by BS degrees, in my office there are 2 Geologists, 1 Chemist, 1 Atmospheric Scientist and 2 Physicists. We all work on planetary science research. The ones with Geology backgrounds get to skip the Intro Geology course, which is taught as if it was your first geology class ever (it was for me!).

You definitely don't want to be in a position where you are paying for a program and you don't like it! As I said above, my thoughts are coming from a research field (where they pay me to be here, not the other way around). I think if you are not getting any financial support at all from the school, then your responsibility to them is much less. That is, if you are a paying student, instead of a colleague that the department is paying to work with them, then I don't think there is anything bad with what you are doing at all. I mean, the current program probably won't agree and will probably be unhappy (probably the worst case is that you can never get admitted to this school again) but that's a better consequence than paying for a school you don't want to be in.

Both your options are legally okay. There are no binding legal agreements in the admissions process (perhaps in accepting money for RA/TA work but not in admissions itself). Ethically? I would first ask for an extension. But only do so if you are actually seriously considering the offer and after you have done all you can to find out the other school's decision dates (so that you can ask for a specific extension, not just a general one). I don't see a real reason for them to deny your request, an early deadline might just be there so that students don't procrastinate if they already heard back from everywhere. No school really wants to force you to accept them. If you have done absolutely everything you can (including calling the other schools to ask about admissions) and you still don't get an extension, I think it is fair for you to accept the offer at the last minute and then decline it if you get another offer somewhere else. You should be as clear about this as you can with Kansas though--say something like since you won't grant an extension, I have no other option right now but to accept the offer. I think if you do this, then you have acted in completely good faith during the whole process and if they get screwed over because you end up declining them, then it's their fault for being not flexible enough and hopefully they will stop setting deadlines prior to April 15. But if you go this path, keep in mind that Kansas and/or other people might still fault you for this action. In the end, you must do what's best for you, and in real life, sometimes there are negative consequences for either decision no matter if you were right or wrong.

I think the true concern is whether the professor's involvement in the lab will mesh well with the way you work / the way you like to be managed. Age does play a role, but we have some much older professors who are very active in research and our community (e.g. kicks butt at table tennis with grad students). Instead, I would recommend that you interview with all your potential PIs and ask them questions about how they see their role as PI in the lab and how they like to manage and how they like their students to work. This way, you can find a professor/PI that you can work well with and you'll get actual useful information, instead of trying to infer it based on age.

In my department, it is also very common for students to come in with almost no geology background (the foundation is covered in the core graduate classes). Also, prestige is important, but not for bragging rights. High rankings are often correlated with resources available to carry out your research and otherwise support you as a researcher and a person. You want to be at a place where you can reach your full potential as an academic and the more resources you have available, the easier this is.

I don't know the norms in your field, since it is a professional field while I am in an academic field. But to me, when you accept a school's offer and defer it, you have still accepted a school's offer. This means, when you apply to other schools, I think it would be unethical if you do not disclose to Fletcher that you have already accepted an offer from your current program. Also, when you have accepted and deferred an offer, you are making a commitment to attend that school and that you are no longer seeking other offers. That is, I would consider applying while deferred to be the same situation as applying to a new graduate program while in the first year of a current graduate program. It's not good to quit programs like that, but sometimes you need to do what's best for you and your career. It's rare but not completely abnormal for a student to start a program, find that they don't fit well, and apply to a new one. Usually new schools will be wary of someone that did this, but the applicant can justify this by citing lack of fit or changing career goals. It would be tough to justify this when you have not yet started your first program. But perhaps the norms are different in your field! (Not judging, just letting you know my thoughts).

In California, it takes exactly 1 year to gain in-state status so this type of offer is normal. But make sure you are going to be able to do so! (e.g. international students can never attain residency, and you must stay the whole year!)

I don't think I would do well on the lottery question. My answer would be something like: "Well, if I did win the lottery, I probably would not be sitting here interviewing with you right now." Because honestly, if I did not actually need money, I would not be as invested in my job and that's just unfair to someone else who would want my position. If I were rich, I'd pursue science as my passion/hobby, not as my career.