TakeruK

Don't do this. The ethical / generally accepted practice is first come, first served. Your top choice school will just have to reschedule your interview for another date. This is why schools often fight each other to be the first one giving offers, so that they have the easiest time scheduling visits/interviews, which is good for applicants all around. You won't look bad if you ask your top/higher choice school to reschedule because you already committed to another interview. In fact, this is the ethical and responsible thing to do. Your top school doesn't want another person doing the same thing to them so they will respect and understand that you need a different interview date. You will definitely look bad to the lower choice school (and whoever else hears of it) if you cancel after already committing.

I think statements like "dependent on international student status" might mean you having to maintain legal F-1 or J-1 (international student) statuses during your time in the US. If you lose legal status (by doing something against the rules of F-1/J-1 status like taking unauthorized employment), then the school will have to kick you out, and thus, they will withdraw all funding. Like Safferz said, at US and Canadian schools, if you are in a fully funded program, then you are funded regardless of citizenship. At some schools, international students may cost more (higher tuition etc.) but usually this means the school accepts fewer international students, not pay international students less! Finally, there are some awards available to Canadians studying in the US. For example, in the Natural Sciences, we can take the NSERC PGS-D to the US. I think SSHRC might have something similar? In addition, there is a $15,000 Fulbright award that you can apply to through the Canadian government. You'll find few opportunities in the US to fund non-Americans, but there is sometimes one or two.

I think that's a really good idea!

The movie (Serenity) closes up a lot of the plotlines from the 1-season series. I don't think it got them all, but enough to satisfy me as a "complete" story. The "honour" of "my favourite sci fi series" changes as my mood changes, but Firefly is on top of the list more days than not

As others said, if the general trend is "X is true", then specific cases of "X is not true" does not mean that the general trend is not correct. For those that asked for data, here it is: Nature jobs article: http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj7504-303a One professor's take on this article: http://mahalonottrash.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-gre-test-that-fails.html (this second one shows that even the Physics GRE is a better indicator of gender than ability) Also, ETS published its own study: http://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/snapshot_test_taker_data_2014.pdf

Cool, it sounds like that too! Thanks for resolving my curiosity Good luck!!

First of all, I think it's important to point out that while opinions of older graduate students are usually very valuable, they are not the same person as you and every individual will have a different experience. I think it is important to incorporate their advice/wisdom into your decision, but you should not just make a decision based on what they say. It sounds like you have thought long and hard about including this professor so don't just dismiss your previous thoughts right away! From your post, it really does sound like this professor would be a great match for you and perhaps you have had a different relationship with this professor than other students did. I am saying this because personally, I feel that I subconsciously weigh recent information over past information, so for important decisions, I always try to take a step back and let all the info "age" a little bit before taking about it again. Maybe this is not you, but just a thought that might be helpful. Second, I think it might be a good idea to review what the committee chair/head's role actually is. In most of my previous programs, the chair/head is actually the least important/influential person on the committee. Their job may just be to ensure committees follow protocol and often ask very little questions. At my last school, they don't even get to vote on whether to pass you or not (unless they need to break a tie). How about asking your supervisor for advice? Perhaps they have sat on a committee with this professor before and they would know how they behave in a defense. And finally, I understand your reasons and it does make sense for you to ensure that you are not just creating extra work for yourself by choosing this professor. But it sounds like this professor understands your work the most and that might actually mean less work for you. I've defended undergrad and masters theses before, and honestly, some of the most annoying/pointless work/suggestions came from people who were less familiar with the field (especially if they are just familiar enough to ask interesting questions but not familiar enough to realise how difficult/complex but useless some of the work might be). I don't want to give too many details but one of the most frustrating moments of my MSc (i.e. related to your point #3) was from one committee member that wanted to me write about an alternate method to my work that was completely unrelated and not practical to the problem I was addressing in my thesis. So, replacing this professor with someone less familiar with your approach might not save you any work/frustration at all.

That's too bad NSERC used to have really weird rules. When I was in a MSc program, I had the NSERC CGS-M (similar to the NSF GRFP but just for 1 year in a Masters program), NSERC had a weird rule that if a student held a NSERC fellowship, then a professor cannot use any NSERC grant funds to pay for the student?!! However, the NSERC student award does not cover all of the stipend! So, it put schools in a weird situation where if a student brings in external money, it actually cost the department more money since the department had to make up the difference in stipend as the supervisor was not allowed to do so. But I also had to turn down an American school for the same reason. Their offer was $18k in a city with the same cost of living as Toronto and this was with 20 hours of TAship per week for all years. Like you, equal (or better) schools were offering $24k-$30k on average, so I had to turn that school down purely because it did not make good financial sense. PS -- just curious, was it $16k/year at Toronto with or without TAships? It's pretty standard in Canada to be TAing at least one course per semester for all 4-5 years. But TAs in Canada are unionized so our work is on a contract basis. When I held the NSF-equivalent fellowship, I had a half-TAship which was very manageable at 4.5 hours per week (a full TAship is 9 hours per week).

I agree with geographyrocks -- if you meet the minimum requirements, you should apply. If you do not, then it depends on how much work is required for the scholarship. For example, if the application requires letters of recommendation from professors, then I think it is inappropriate to ask them to write you a letter for the scholarship that you do not meet the minimum requirements for. The only exception is if you believe that the award committee will make an exception for you for one reason or another.

I should clarify and say that for fully funded programs, the take-home funding for an international student should be the same as the take-home funding for Canadian students. In general though, the top Canadian programs (e.g. Toronto) will not fund students as well as the top American programs, mostly because we have much less money available than American programs. In my field, without considering fellowships, Toronto's funding package was also well below my US school offers, and Toronto is a very expensive place to live Like I said above, the main disadvantage you'll have financially is that you won't be eligible for many fellowships and thus have to take the lowest funding package. There's also additional considerations like taxes. Canada does not tax graduate student income** (actually the government gives us extra money because of our low income status), but the United States does, so you also have to account for roughly 10% of an American stipend to go to taxes. And finally, TA expectations in Canada are much lower than in the States--I might get an offer from a Canadian school for $24k/year (after tuition) for 10 hours/week of TA work, vs. an American offer of $30k/year ($27k/year after tax) for 20hours/week of TA work. (**Note: simplification but effectively true) And finally, I found that Canadian schools were much more willing to negotiate with me than American schools (I have been to both). However, in order to be in a position to negotiate, you must be bringing in some kind of external money, like a Canadian fellowship, so it's understandable that an American would not be able to do this in Canada, just like how I was not able to do this in America!

Telling people information earlier is actually not as efficient because some number of the early rejections will likely email back with something like "Thanks for considering me" and another fraction will email back with questions on why they are rejected and what they can do better next time etc. Having all these emails (the bottom 50% might number in the hundreds) can clog up the inbox of the admin assistant who is trying to send offers to accepted people, coordinate interviews and/or plan visit days (not to mention all of the other work they normally do). I think it's actually more efficient for schools to wait until after the accepted students visit and all of the expenses processed before they send mass rejections. I think it's especially not useful to notify students of an early rejection because if that's the only decision we have heard thus far, we would panic and wonder if we would be rejected everywhere and want to know answers to the questions I wrote above. Instead, waiting until March/April to reject students usually means some of the rejected students might have got in elsewhere and would not be as worried / less likely to respond. Basically, I think the optimal strategy for both parties is to send acceptances as soon as possible and rejections later (but before April 15). It reduces the work for schools, which increases communication efficiency for applicants. Reducing unnecessary work for admin assistants is also better for the current students in the program. And, as applicants, it's much less stressful for the first decision we hear to be good news -- personally, I find getting a rejection much easier / less stressful if I already had an acceptance.

They won't care. Also, you do not generally need to have your degree conferred in order for it to count. Schools generally just care whether or not you have completed all of the requirements, and most schools will issue you a letter stating so when you get this far. For example, I defended my MSc thesis in late August 2012 and I started my grad program in late September 2012. However, my MSc degree was not conferred until November 2012. My PhD program didn't care (they just wanted to see the degree or the transcript stating degree completion by the end of 2012 calendar year). For another example, my current school only confers degrees once per year, in June. So if you graduate in July 2013, say, your degree is not conferred until June 2014. However, in the meantime, newly defended PhDs need to get jobs that would start in Fall 2013! It's pretty common for post-PhD jobs to accept a letter from the school stating that you've completed all of your degree requirements until you actually get your degree conferred.

I did what GeoDUDE! did in between undergrad and masters. I worked as a paid research assistant for 2 months to finish up my undergrad project (not to manuscript level, just tie up loose ends / train another person so that it did become a manuscript a year later). However, I also made my move across Canada into a month-long vacation so all money saved was quickly spent, but it was an awesome trip! The 4th and final month of summer was spent in new grad school city, getting stuff settled etc. and relaxing.

To me, this means what the email says -- the school is interested in your application but they won't be able to confirm a decision with you until late February. This might be for many reasons, such as: they need to confirm the extra funding needed for graduate students, or they need to interview everyone and the process takes awhile, or the department needs to make some other financial decisions before they know how many graduate students they can take next year etc. In the second part of the email, they ask you to keep them up to date on any other offers you might have. This is a normal request in my field. This just means that they want to keep the option of admitting you and they are worried that if they do not respond until late February, you might have accepted an offer elsewhere. For example, if another school admitted you next week, you should tell them that you got an offer from University X with funding for $Y/year. Then, the school can decide if this is a big enough "threat" that they need to respond right away. If they really really wanted you and they knew that you had a good offer elsewhere, they might try to expedite other decisions/processes in their own program in order to get an offer to you sooner. In addition, not all schools (especially non-US schools) follow the "April 15 convention" so they wrote this email in case another school says "Here is the offer, please respond in 3 weeks". In this case, they would probably try to make the decision sooner (if they wanted you) because they would not want you to reject them simply because another school gave you a strict deadline. So, overall, the email is a good one to get (they even say "the committee remains very interested in your application"), but nothing is certain. All you have to do now is wait and follow their request to keep them updated.

This is an interesting problem! I think it is actually made of two distinct parts: First, the less important part, is the question whether we (other grad cafe users) think this is an academically okay thing to do. In my opinion, I do not think the principle/idea of using your old class notes to help you do better on assignments is cheating. I think it is really the professor's responsibility to know that students will do this and if they care about it, they should change the assignments. However, if I was the TA for this class, I would be extremely annoyed that the student is doing this in the lab. But again, does it matter if this student does the copying in the lab or on their own time? And the student can easily share answers with other students on their own time too. Secondly, there is the question of what your responsibility as the TA is. Although we might have opinions on what is ethically right or what academic honesty means to us, ultimately, it is our job to act on what our employers (the University and the professor) deems is right, not act on our opinion. If the professor says this is not cheating and acceptable in their class, and if there are no superior policies/rules that contradict the professor's judgement (i.e. department or University wide policies) then there is no cheating problem. So in that case, I'd completely agree with GeoDUDE's post. That said, academics are also professionals that have responsibility to ensure they are not supporting academically dishonest actions. That is, if the professor is actively encouraging cheating that doesn't always make it okay. But I don't think the right action in this case is to pursue this any further. As a TA, I would say that if our professor asks us to do something we find academically dishonest, our only real options are 1) do it anyways, 2) report it to their supervisor (or your University's whistleblower program), or 3) resign. However, I do not think grading this student's assignment would be so against my own "moral code" that I would have to take one of these actions. Finally, if you are interested in how other schools handle this situation, at my current program, our course policies almost always explicitly say that you are not allowed to refer to any old assignments (your own or other students) at all in this class. If students have any such materials, they are expected to store it somewhere safe and not look at it again until the course is over. This is all "self-policed" because our school runs on an honor code (all of the exams are take home, but students must time themselves and if it is a closed-book exam, they also self-restrict themselves). Therefore, this action would certainly be considered cheating, but only because the course policy (i.e. the professor) says so, not because it is innately cheating. Also, as an interesting side note, if you were a TA at my school and suspected another graduate student of cheating, the correct action is to not report it to the professor, but instead, report it to an independent board that will investigate all cases of alleged graduate student cheating. This policy is based on the fact that a wrongful allegation of cheating can be very harmful to a graduate student, so this independent investigation is intended to encourage reporting suspected cases instead of people not reporting cheating based on the worry that the reporter might be wrong.

I chose to reschedule one of my visit weekends (moved it from a Thurs/Fri to the following Mon/Tues so that I had two visits in the same work week instead). From talking to people that attended the "main event", there didn't seem to be that much difference in the important parts. That is, you still get one and one time with a set of professors of your choice and you still have lunch/dinner with a group of professors and current students. The biggest downside is that you don't get to meet as many of your potential new classmates (although you might meet a few too, it's likely that other people have the same conflict as you). The second downside is that perhaps if there was a big "party" planned for prospective students, then it might not get repeated for you but I'm sure there will still be something smaller and still nice! Also, I would say that you should always give priority to schools based on the order they asked you to confirm a visit date/interview. Once you/they have made flight/hotel bookings, you should not go back on your word! (It sounds like you are doing this anyways but just saying).

The number of schools on your application list does not really matter. Also, if you simply wanted to list more schools, you can list more schools without actually applying to them. (I changed my mind about one school in late December, so my early December applications listed a school I didn't actually end up applying to). There's no point applying to schools you don't want to attend, and the schools you did apply to are not going to base their decisions on the number of schools you listed!

I think the way you described it in this post is good (could have less detail if you need more space). When you write this part, I would keep this thing you said in mind: "The only difference between myself from then & now, is that I learned how to deal with my circumstances better. " and write your paragraph to convey that message. I think it would be a reasonable request to ask the professor that suggested you mention this to read over what you wrote. They might say no, but their comments would also be very helpful.

In my field, it seems like most 2 or 3 year postdoc contracts are actually a "one year contract with option for renewal based on performance and funding" and from talking to many postdocs, it sounds like the unspoken agreement is that both parties have the option of continuing or not each year. Also, it seems like very few TT jobs in my field would be for an immediate start. It's most common for people to be hired at least a year in advance (or sometimes two years). Of course, non-academic or non-TT jobs might work on different timescales, so in that case, I think you just have to give as much advance notice as possible.

Actually, in most programs, much more than half of admissions go to Canadians for the reasons I mentioned above (i.e. not a policy or law or anything, just limitations on funding). I would say probably ~15% of the graduate population in my old department were international. If it was only 50% Canadians, I would be really surprised.

1) For fully funded programs, yes, there is a disadvantage because Americans (like other international students) pay a higher tuition fee. At one school I've been to, the difference is about $9000/year and the University (in order to encourage departments to admit more international students) provides "International Student Awards" to each department so that it does not cost the department any more to admit an international student. So, although there is rarely a quota set by law, the limited amount of money available for these "awards" sets a de facto quota on the number of international students admitted. However, it is flexible. For example, at a Canadian school, I sat in one of our department meetings where the professors discussed what they wanted to do. In the end, they voted that each professor would contribute $X more per year to a departmental fund that would supplement the University international tuition award (allowing for a several more international admits). Another option if a professor wanted to admit an additional international student but the department is out of funding from the international tuition award account, the professor can choose to pay the extra cost themselves, out of their own grants or other funding sources. 2) For all the programs I've encountered, international students get the same minimum take-home funding/pay as Canadian students. In Canada, we are first paid directly and then we pay tuition out of our salary, so an international student's gross income will be higher than a Canadian's in order to offset your higher tuition costs. There are also other costs too, such as paying additional fees for health care etc. Since the value of the additional "international student tuition award" is not directly linked to the actual increasing costs (managed by different groups), some of my international student friends report that in some years, the additional salary does not fully cover all the additional costs. However, the difference is small, in the order of hundreds of dollars (i.e. a few % of the total salary). That said, the maximum funding available to international students may be lower. This is because many programs in my field do have "tiered" funding schemes where you get paid different amounts based on what fellowships you may have. Some of the high paying fellowships are only available to Canadians, so international students are often only eligible for the minimum funding. (There are some exceptions though but they would be tough to get!)

No, they will only see the final Analytical Writing score, which is out of 6 points. They will not see the essays themselves and they will not even see the individual scores for each essay.

Sometimes humor can fit in a SOP but I think you would have to be pretty good at humor in order to pull it off. I know I'm not so I don't try it. The example joke in the first post would be something I would leave out! I am not even clever enough to think of a good example of humor right now even. However, I do think it would be appropriate (for SOPs in my field, can't say for sure for others) for an applicant to tell a funny story in their SOP as long as it is a relevant anecdote about why they want to be in grad school / why they are a good fit for University X.

Oh also, to respond to this specific point, I don't think it is your responsibility to worry about this beyond what was said above (i.e. withdraw only when you are 100% certain you will not accept). If it's not 100% certain, do not worry about the issue you raise here! My program is also one that only makes one set of offers and because they only make one, they factor in the likelihood of people declining when choosing to make the offer. In some cases, the cutoff they decide is based on the quality of applicants, not necessarily the exact number. For example, my program often makes about 40 admits, but the precise number usually depends on where the cutoff naturally lies. That is, if they have 39 offers that they committee have already agreed upon and there's two additional almost-equal candidates, they are going to take both of them (or none of them). In cases like this, your early withdrawal would not make much difference.

For some schools, you might be able to get a partial reimbursement. For example, they might be willing to pay up to say, $400, for a flight. If you have enough schools that are close enough together and each is willing to pay $400, you might be able to make a trip work out!