TakeruK

I agree with MathCat on both parts (international students cost more, so domestic students preferred and that it's really unlikely two applicants will have exactly the same credentials). Even for private universities (where tuition costs the same for both domestic and international students), international students have fewer opportunities to apply for external fellowships (most are US citizens only) so there is always potential for higher costs for international students than domestic students. In Canada, there are no private research universities, so you will always cost more as a Mexican than a Canadian would. But the difference in cost in Canada is less severe than in the US, so perhaps this difference is not as strong. Finally, there is another effect that is hard to determine in advance. Schools usually choose to "project" a certain image of themselves and the number of local vs. international students make up part of this image. Sometimes, schools want to advertise themselves as "more international" because it shows that they are so good, they attract the best people from all over the world. If the school is trying to do this, they will likely provide more incentives/money for departments to take on international grad students so they can boast about their high international student fraction. In other cases, schools will want to show that they are "a Canadian school designed to educate and support Canadians" so they might want to make sure their domestic enrollment is high. It's very possible that the same school might have one attitude for a decade and then switch strategies as they need to. I would say that it's pretty much impossible for us to know what each school's long term plans / internal politics are so it's not something we can really worry about or affect. I think that on average, it's a disadvantage to be applying as an international student, though.

Just wanted to provide an update....the NESSF deadline is Feb 2 and recently, our advisors and admin assistants have talked to us about the application process. Throughout this, there has been no indication that our projects must use satellite-derived data (or any data from NASA missions at all). Instead, the only requirement is that our work supports one of NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD) goals. So, theoretical or analytical work is eligible. That said, I still don't know about any "unwritten" rules and it might be true that data driven science is preferred. In any case, many of us here are applying to this without use of any NASA mission data. If you or others reading this are still considering the NESSF, I think it's worth the time to apply. In my case, applying to the Astrophysics division has very low odds, but I think the experience of applying will be helpful for future proposals and/or having a good plan in place for the rest of my PhD! Good luck to all!

I just want to second fuzzy's advice in this thread, it is spot on. It also does not sound like either party (you or this prof) has done anything wrong. I think the main lesson to be learned here (if you are looking for one for "next time"), it is that professors often need reminders to put things back to the top of their inbox, so resending all the stuff you prepared for him is a good idea. I know it's stressful, but look at it this way -- at least you are just resending stuff you already have, it would be a lot worse if you had to pull all this together within one day! I also agree with fuzzy that it really should only take them one hour to write your LOR, especially if they have a lot of experience doing this and can just base it off one of the many they have written (just have to add the personal details!). Also, I think it's important to remember that in academia, 1 day before the deadline is the same as 10 days (or more) before the deadline. In my experience, we are always submitting abstracts, LORs, problem sets, etc. right before the deadline. For some people, I would even advise putting off starting a homework set until a day or two before the deadline to prevent our inner perfectionists from wanting to spend the whole week on it and getting nothing else done.

I don't think you need to be intense and you do not need to have the traits on that list in order to succeed in academia. I don't think I am intense, and I think I am successful I see very many professors that are very successful and would not be considered "intense".

One thing I didn't mention in the other thread was that you and your partner should be prepared for the potential that it might take the other person a longer time than expected to find work in the new place. Depending on the particular demand of their skillset and the job market in your new city, it might not be possible for your partner to find work before you start. This can be a very stressful time for a relationship. Your relationship is your business and I don't want to tell you what to do, but from our own experience and from seeing others go through the same thing, I think it's a good idea to discuss this possibility early on and talk about what solutions you both would want or not want. For example, would you be okay with a long distance relationship until they find work in the same place? Would you be okay with moving there anyways and looking for work later? If he doesn't find work right away, how will you both deal with it? How long would you both be willing for him to find work in his field before he starts looking for work in other places? I think discussing these expectations, worries, and contingencies beforehand can really be helpful. If you want some numbers, my spouse did not get meaningful work until 8 months after moving with me (we had enough reserves to live on my stipend alone for a year), but part of the wait was because we're Canadian (4 months extra for authorization). Some of our friends' significant others found work within 3 months, and others took almost a year, and still others did not ever find any work and had to move elsewhere. Maybe it's just the market where we live, but so far, no one we know had SOs that prior to moving to school here. Definitely hope for the best, but being prepared for that possibility might help make the transition smoother.

Oh, I forgot to mention job databases run by your discipline's national society (e.g. American Astronomical Society for me). And from talking to people doing hiring, like in the "real world", a large portion of academic jobs are not actually advertised and you can go quite far with cold-calling/emailing as fuzzy suggested. My high school career advisor often said that more than 80% of jobs are not advertised! (but I don't know where they got that % from ) I talked to one HR person that says posting official jobs is a huge nightmare (they have to justify why they make no hire if there is no fit). So, it's often the case that they will "scout" for an (or more than one) ideal candidate first, and then put the job offer up (and then invite their ideal candidate(s) to apply). This way, they are sure to get at least one (or more) person they would actually want. All of this really really underscores the importance of networking** in academia (so that when people are looking to hire, they will think of you) and having a supportive advisor that will be your champion when it's time for you to go on the market. (** I feel that the people that tell us to network are really aggressive because some (many?) academics are not used to / naturally willing to network.)

My PhD program has an average matriculation rate of about 50%. I've heard that other programs have rates that range from 30% to 80%. Sometimes, within one year, the rates can be far from average for one reason or another. Within my particular subfield in my program, the matriculation rate varies wildly (between 0% and 100% in the last 5 years), but this is also because of small number statistics. The number of offers can really depend on each program's ability to absorb extra students / their willingness to take risks. Some programs take fewer risks and make several waves of offers until they fill their quota (many Canadian schools do this) while others will make 40 offers for 20 spots and hope that not all 40 matriculate!!

The_Space_Cowboy, that was very well said and I completely agree with everything you say there. Again, I don't have reserve or regular force military service experience but I am familiar with the culture. In addition, my Canadian graduate program has a lot of connections with the Astronomy graduate research program at Canada's Military College. I've spent time on that campus, taken courses and worked alongside fellow graduate students who are also reserve officers. In addition, almost of my leadership, instructional, stress/time management abilities I rely on today come from my cadet training, which was delivered by reserve and full time Canadian Forces personnel. From these experiences, I completely agree with you that the military does an excellent job training people to become excellent learners, teachers, and leaders. However, I don't think this is the complete military paradigm. For example, everything I've learned about the chain of command and respect for authority does not fit well in the North American academic setting. I'm going to provide some examples where I feel that academia conflicts with this part of the military paradigm. However, as I said above, since I am not part of the military community, perhaps I am wrong about it and please do correct me: I've called my professors by their first name since my second year of undergrad. Academics are encouraged to challenge each other (both peers and superiors) to ensure the best quality of ideas emerge. In the end, it is not your rank or experience that matters, but only the validity of your ideas. Professors start treating graduate students as peers soon after enrollment. After a few years, graduate students are expected to be the expert on their topic in their department/institution. Professors will turn to graduate students for advice and expertise and this won't be a sign of weakness. Senior graduate students, without PhDs, sometimes are asked to peer-review papers submitted to journals by established professors. Graduate students often chair conference talk sessions, having authority to cut off professors who go over the time limit and direct the discussion away from professors or other PhDs who are dominating the question period. And finally, graduate students and postdocs often sit on grant review panels that decide whether or not professors get grant money to do their work. All this is meant to show that once you start establishing yourself as a researcher, you are now a peer of the academic community. It doesn't matter what your title or degree is. In short, I think the only real place where the North American academic paradigm and the military paradigm are in conflict is the way authority is established. In the military, authority has a very clear structure and there are orders that describe who you would report to and who would report to you. In academia, there is still an order to authority. However, it has nothing to do with rank or position, but everything to do with experience and expertise. So, in my opinion, as long as we don't conflate titles like "Professor" or "Doctor" with actual rank/authority, the military paradigm works pretty well. Again, from my limited experience, when you're new in the military, you're just there to soak everything in, learn as much as you can, and not screw up. When you first start grad school, it's the same way. Once in awhile, a new grad student (who might have been a very good undergraduate) comes in and acts like they know everything. Eventually, it catches up with them, they will screw up and they will look foolish and hopefully learn from that. So like The_Space_Cowboy said, it's the formalities that don't really fit, but the professionalism will be an asset! And finally, some people might say that "formalities" are trivial and I would disagree. Even tiny things like the way we address each other in academia changes the environment in which we work. In academia, graduate students move from being simply "students" to becoming peers/colleagues and by addressing each other on the same level, it helps establish this transition. In addition, as I said above, "rank" and titles/positions do not matter much in North American academia, only expertise does, so I think removing rank/titles from everyday usage helps eliminate the idea that "prestigious title = more correct" and encourages more collegial conversations and discussions. Of course, fancy titles are still used in slightly formal settings, or when you want to add some pomp and ceremony, such as introducing an invited speaker/lecturer, or at special ceremonies!

Yeah, that does make sense. But we never know for sure! I think January is probably the worst month in terms of grad school applications; stay positive!

In my field, we usually do reach out to a few potential supervisors prior to starting and perhaps begin setting up some research projects. Even in programs where we don't select a thesis advisor right off the bat, we usually work with a few profs on mini projects before choosing a thesis project. So, for the most popular/busiest profs, they might only have a few slots open and waiting until September to approach them about working with them might mean that they are full by then. Almost everyone that comes into my program "locks in" one of their mini projects sometime between the visit weekend (after acceptance) and the start of the school year. If your field is like this, I don't think you have to respond right away. But you should start seriously looking into a few profs that you want to work with (more deeply than you did when applying). Find out when there is a prospective students weekend (hopefully they will tell you really soon). Then, reach out to the profs you like with the intention of meeting them at the visit weekend. This gives more of a "purpose" to your emails. Also, you want to meet these people in person, you'll learn way more about them and get more of their time in person than via email! So, once you know about the visit weekend dates you can say something like, "Dear Prof. X, I am excited for the opportunity to begin my PhD at University Y this fall! I am interested in working with you on ZZZZ and I hope we will be able to meet on ABC day during the prospective student visit." Or something like that If you have not emailed them ever before, then perhaps you want to inquire whether they are taking students for next year. If you have emailed them before and asked that, you can probably begin the email with something like "I'm excited to say that I received an offer from...." etc. The main idea is to let them know that you're in, and that you want to work with them, and that you want to meet them. This will allow you to e.g. set up a Skype call or whatever if it turns out that they will be away during the prospective students weekend.

If you have finished your final year, then give the average for your 4th year grades. If you are finished half of your 4th year, give the average of the last 1 year of courses (i.e. second half of 3rd year + first half of 4th year). If you are not certain, you should check with the department. In reality, it won't matter very much because they will also have your transcripts and can compute your averages too.

Good question -- I was assuming single student in this scenario but I am actually a J1 with my spouse working as J2. For the United States: If your J2 spouse is NOT working (as was the case for us in the 2012 tax year): 1. You do not get an increase in the personal exemption 2. Your spouse does NOT file a tax return. Instead, there is a special form you fill out that indicate they did not do any work and were legally present in the US. I forgot the form # but it will be part of your tax package if you use something like Glacier to prepare your own taxes. However, you have to mail this form separately. If your J2 spouse IS working (as was the case for us in the 2013 tax year): 1. You do not get an increase in the personal exemption. Instead, you must file as "married, filing separately", which is the least favourable status to file as (the IRS doesn't like us non-resident aliens). 2. So, you file your own tax return with your own personal exemption. 3. Your spouse will file their own tax return for their own personal exemption. 4. But, each of you will have tax brackets as if you were single. This is usually bad, but not always. However, for Canada, you do definitely file together. In fact, because your US income is for graduate studies, it does not count as taxable income in Canada. So, for the 2013 tax year, we filed as a family of two with only my spouse's income, which is well below poverty levels for a family of two. Therefore, we qualified for a ton of rebates and we ended up getting a $300 refund ("Working Income Tax Benefit") even though we had no income in Canada that year. It made me really appreciate how our country treats young working professionals. --- One word of warning though: Like I said above, Canadians living abroad pay income tax to Canada on all worldwide earnings. Let's just use a concrete example with fake numbers. For my J2 spouse, her US earnings in 2013 counted as taxable income in Canada. Let's say she paid $2000 in taxes to the US government and would normally owe $1400 in taxes to the Canadian government for the same income. What happens is: 1. First, all Canadian tax credits are applied (e.g. Canadian personal exemption, education tax credits, etc.) to pay off the Canadian tax owed ($1400). 2. If any tax is still owed, any money already paid to another government (e.g. the States) also count as tax credits in Canada (i.e. so you are not double taxed). So, in this made-up example, J2 spouse would not pay any money to Canada since she paid equal or more to the US government. However, notice that Canadian credits are applied first. This means that if your J2 spouse has leftover educational tax credits, this would be all exhausted before the foreign tax credit kicks in. So in this sense, you are "double taxed" and I called the CRA to check and they confirm this is the intention of the law. If your J2 spouse is not working, then this would not affect you unless you stayed in the US for a postdoc. Then, before you can apply any US taxed paid as credit against owing Canadian taxes, it is likely you will also exhaust all of your Canadian educational tax credits.

lifealive, those are all great points I especially agree and notice that gender does change the way our actions are perceived and I think your advice is practical and excellent. I guess our only real disagreement is whether teaching is part of our job or not. Maybe this also depends on each graduate student's career goals? I completely agree that if your goals are tenure-tracked research positions or other research-intensive positions, then teaching is not really relevant to your goals. Sometimes, working as a TA might be just out of necessity to pay the bills. I definitely agree that the current culture in academia is that we graduate students are not going to get academic jobs based on our teaching portfolio! However, I do think it's a shame that our current system places so little value on teaching ability/experience. In my opinion, when professors and established researchers don't put effort into teaching or treat it as a chore, we are actually hurting our future because the undergrads today are the grad students, postdocs, profs, deans, etc. of tomorrow. In addition, the undergrads today taking our freshman survey classes are the voters of tomorrow that decide where the tax money goes! Of course, the responsibility is not just on us. And it would be unfair to ask graduate students to hurt their career to become better teachers. We have to be realistic about what the current culture is like! My argument is just simply that if our contracts or agreements is X hours of teaching and Y hours of research, then I'll spend split my time the way I'm paid and put 100% effort in doing the best job in both aspects. In that sense, I feel that teaching and research are just different aspects of the job of "graduate student".

I'm going to comment on the data only, not the authors' "recommendations". 1. First, the fact that many tenure-tracked English professors come from top tier schools (>50% of profs have degrees from top 28 schools) does not mean that we do not have a meritocracy. It is conceivable that the top schools accept higher-qualified applicants and/or the top schools have better resources and facilities to create more productive scholars. That is, it's not necessarily true that "most profs come from top schools" is correlated with "profs are hired because of their degree name, not their qualifications". 2. I don't think a meritocracy is actually an ideal we want in academia. I don't think meritocracy is actually fair. We don't have an objective way to measure "merit". Also, we live in a world where small differences in merit can lead to much larger differences in qualifications. For example, a small difference in merit/qualification can lead to student A's selection into a certain group over student B. And if student A's group has more resources and facilities, they might train A into their full potential, while B's group might not be as equipped to get B to their full potential. This could compound at each stage where a "meritocratic" decision has to be made to allocate resources. I think the observation that "most profs seem to get their degrees from top schools" could be related to this.

I agree that our primary responsibility is to ourselves. I should make a couple of things clear though: 1. When setting office hour options, I only pick times that are already convenient to me! For example, recently, I had a block of time between 1pm to 3pm and I couldn't care less whether my office hours were 1pm-2pm or 2pm-3pm. So those were two of the poll options. I made the comment above as a response to people who think it is a good idea to purposely set office hours at times inconvenient to their own students. I agree that we should not bend over backwards to accommodate our students though!! Sorry if that was not clear. 2. I also definitely agree that we should never offer services on demand. I know that the undergraduates in my class often do their homework at 1am and that it would be great if I could respond to emails all the time. I make it very clear that I only offer help during office hours and they should expect a ~24 hour response time if they send something via email. I agree that we have limited time on all our duties so I make sure the limited time was used most effectively! 3. I don't think there is really a dichotomy between "work" and "teaching". To me, "teaching" is as much a part of my job description as research. This was more clear when I was in Canada, where I was on contract for X hours per semester to teach and Y hours per semester to do research. But both X and Y are hours of "work" where I was employed by the school/department/supervisor. 4. Finally, I would say that "polling for office hours" only works in some cases. In Canada, at "big state schools", my classes were still really small (20-30 students) and while I didn't poll for exact time slots, I just asked if they preferred Monday afternoon vs. Tuesday afternoon given that assignments are due Wednesday. Now, at "tiny private school" in US, my class this quarter has 5 students. It is also a graduate class so some of my students are my colleagues/friends/collaborators. So I am usually a little more flexible and in return, my students/colleagues understand what being a TA is like and also do not ask for unreasonable things. But I think my first three points stand even without this last thing being true. (However, it does make it easier/more fun to be a "nice TA" when your students understand the difficulty of being a graduate student, a researcher and a TA at the same time!)

Oh, an important note: the order you should complete your taxes is: 1. US Federal tax 2. US state tax (often requires copy of federal tax return) 3. Canadian income tax (you will require copy of your US tax return if you want to claim paid US taxes as credit towards income tax in Canada [i.e. to avoid double taxing--only important if you are not a graduate student though])

Okay I am back. If you are a Canadian citizen and you are in the US for school you are a "deemed resident for tax purposes". When filing taxes as a resident, you must always file all your international income. Therefore, while you are a grad student, you will always file taxes to Canada, no matter what country pays you and what country you live in. In addition, if you are a Canadian in the US for school, you are most likely a non-resident alien (NRA). In order to file as a "resident", you have to be in the US for a number of days per year, however, the first 5 years on F-1 or J-1 status do not count. Therefore, unless you did an undergrad in the States, it's almost certain that you are a NRA for taxes in the US. In the US (and most countries), non-resident file taxes only on US-based income. I'll just use some simplified numbers. My income is $20k from NSERC (Canada) and $10k from my school (American) plus a $40k tuition waiver. This is how I file my taxes in each country: 1. Canada: I tell the CRA about all three sources of income: the $20k from NSERC, the $10k from my US school and the $40k for tuition. I also claim my tuition paid because this counts as paying my school $40k/year for tuition, then getting it reimbursed. You have to get your US school to fill out a TL-11A (see here: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pbg/tf/tl11a/README.html).They fill out this form, sign it officially and you file it with your Canadian taxes to claim the educational tax credits. At this rate, I'm going to rack up about $250k in educational tax credits by the time I finish (but it's not as good as it sounds, but that's another story). My total taxable income in Canada is $0 because all income that support graduate studies are not taxable in Canada. But I still should declare these income sources. And you cannot NETFILE because you are not living in the US. Instead, you must use tax software (I recommend the online UFile software) and then print out the relevant forms and mail it to the CRA's International Tax Office. 2. You must also file US Federal income tax. As a non-resident, I only pay US tax on US-based income but tuition waivers are tax exempt. There are some US-Canada tax treaty that might affect you. You need to use special tax software for non-residents in order to file your US taxes as a non-resident. I highly recommend these software because they automatically detect all eligibility for tax treaties. My school provides Glacier tax prep software for free to us; it costs $35/return otherwise. Worth it though. The US does not tax-exempt grad students and as a non-resident we get very little tax deductions. Most likely, we can only claim the $4000 or so "personal exemption" so you will pay about 10% tax on the remaining taxable income. In one of my years here, my US income was less than $10k and that resulted in a tax treaty being applied that made the first $10k earned tax-exempt. This was a very good year because I got all of my US Federal tax back!! You must also file by mail as a non-US resident. 3. Finally, you also file US State tax. The rules vary for each state. In California, non-residents do have to declare all world-wide income if it is paid for work done in California (so the NSERC would count in this case). I paid state tax on the entire $30k income (the tuition waiver is tax exempt). State tax was the hardest because the non-resident federal tax software does not include the state tax forms (unlike the version for residents). I had to do it by hand and it took many more hours! All to find out that I still owed the State $8 in taxes!

Don't talk about how you read the texts and articles of sociology grad classes in your SOP. This is not the type of thing I would put in a SOP. Instead, I would focus the SOP on why the school you are applying to is a good fit for your career/academic goals. Show that you are passionate and knowledgeable the field by discussing your research project and previous work. Do not name drop authors/works/classes at UW-M. In addition, if a prospective student told me that they read the books assigned to my program's grad classes prior to applying, I would not be impressed at all and I would not think this made them a better candidate for grad school in my program! However, perhaps this is a difference in field. But the second question, yes you should absolutely discuss why you want to go to grad school in sociology and part of that should address why your interests change from political science to sociology. I think the answer to this question should be one of the main takeaway messages you put into your SOP and in answering this question, you will address a lot of questions that the adcomm will have about its applicants.

I usually decide my office hours by class poll. In my opinion, when we perform teaching part of our jobs, we should work as best we can to help our students learn, not just the ones we deem "worthy" of our time.

(Emphasis added). This is what I meant. Non refundable means you can never get that money back from the airline, but it might be able to be used towards other costs (after the cancellation fee). But that's a good point about name...I forgot about that complication. For a research trip, I had to cancel at the last minute and I did this with United to pay for the new flight (but yeah, that was still in my name). Thanks for the clarification.

My application season was for Fall 2012 but I'll say what we did anyways. My spouse and I had a really long discussion (over a span of several months) where we planned what we wanted to do with our careers and discussed/decided our life priorities. Over this time, we decided on a few things: 1. We do not want to do long distance. 2. My spouse thinks my career plan is more fruitful than opportunities currently available to her. 3. My spouse would prefer a career arrangement where she can be the stay-at-home parent (I actually think it would be easier for me to do so, given the more flexible schedule of academics but this was what we eventually agreed on). 4. We recognized that we are kind of falling in the traditional/stereotypical situation 5. We know that we want to live in our hometown, near both of our families, in the end, no matter what. 6. Therefore, it is worth trying to pursue an academic career "for me" but we are not willing to just move to any place or accept any position. If we don't get offers for grad schools / postdocs / permanent jobs in places we like (or our hometown), then we will leave the academic career path and hope my training is good enough for a non-academic job in our hometown. 7. In short, we felt that we were both mutually invested in where we move for my PhD program and (hopefully) jobs beyond that, therefore we should both have exactly equal say in where we go, and that we should both be equally excited about where we move. So, the way we made this work was that we made sure the list of schools I applied to were in places that both of us were willing to give a chance. She suggested places based on where it would be fun to live and has good opportunities for jobs she's interested in , and I created a list of places where I thought it would be fun to live and good research fit. Then, we looked at each other's lists and vetoed the ones we did not like. After I applied to the schools, we visited schools together where possible. I made it clear to all schools that we are making this decision together and many schools planned visit day events for my spouse while I was talking to professors. Being Canadian made things a little more complicated because I needed a special foreign student status or my spouse would not be able to work. We worked with the schools to ensure they were willing to sponsor us on this different status (one school did not, so we did not consider their offer). After the visits, we both made lists considering both of our interests. Big cities are generally better for her job prospects so we definitely considered that. It turned out our top 3 choices were ranked in the same order so our decision was clear! For the future, we will be doing the same for postdoc offers etc. We are probably going to have a family at that point so considerations like salary (to visit home and pay for children expenses) and location will be even more important. In addition, our eventual goal is to live in our hometown so we will be really selective in applying for postdocs (i.e. we are probably only going to go that route if I get some prestigious postdoc and/or a position that improves my ability to get a non-academic job in my hometown). Otherwise, it might be better to cut our losses and move back to our hometown now instead of taking a low paying postdoc position, suffer for a few more years, and end up moving back home anyways. Ultimately, we both know what we want, what we are willing to sacrifice in the short term, and that we are moving forward in this together. I feel that our commitment and support for each other really helps both of us, especially in bad times in the past 5 years (and yes, there has been a lot of bad times for both of us, but a lot of good times too). I do think that having one of us being a non-academic does make things a little easier, and although moving around for a decade of our young lives is also an adventure that is fun most of the times, it's also sucky some of the times! Having a good partner makes the difference though. I started writing this as others responded, and I guess I would say that for us, I don't feel that science/my research is that much of a calling. If either of us wants out of this meandering/nomadic academic life, we are going to drop everything ASAP. Similarly, if our only postdoc/job options are places we don't want to live or salaries we don't want to live on, we are not going to continue. To me, science is work / a job that I am passionate about, but not the only passion I have, so I would rather have a different job that pays well enough for me to pursue other passion than to live a life that follows the all-consuming passion of academic research. Just my perspective!

If there is no deadline, then wait as long as you can. You might also be able to interview on a special alternate date if nothing else works. These things are more flexible than they seem, usually.

I agree that you should still visit this school. After all, you still liked it enough to spend the time and money applying there. I found that visiting can really change your opinion about a school, in either direction. So, if you feel that you can spare the time to do the visit, then you should visit with an open mind. However, if you are 100% (like actually 100%) sure that you will turn them down, then you should do so. They should not ask you to pay the non-refundable costs if they did not tell you in advance. After all, that's their problem, not yours. Note however that "non-refundable" does not mean "you lose all the money". For example, for most airlines, if you book a $600 roundtrip flight that is "non-refundable", what it really means is that if you choose not to fly with them, you pay a "cancellation fee" ($250 let's say) and you keep the remaining credit for a different flight ($350 in this case). So the school is only out $250. But, the decision on whether or not you should visit should be made based on how it affects you, not how it affects the school. They can take care of themselves.

I would say that you want to fly back on a different day (say when) because you want to visit a friend in (other city X). If you end up getting an offer from the school in (other city X) prior to your visit and the other school agree to pay for your visit, then you should disclose this to your first school and work on a fair way to split your reimbursement between the two schools. Otherwise, you don't have to worry about it.

This should be totally fine. At one school, I asked them to reschedule my visit to a few days later so that I can visit that school on a Mon-Tues and another nearby school on a Thurs-Fri of the same week. They were fine with that because I can then split costs with the other school and everyone wins. Also, at the other school, I asked if I could stay with a grad student I already knew there to save them some money. I also spent an extra weekend there to visit my friend and see the city a little longer. Of course, I made it clear that all of the expenses not related to the visit would be on my own dime! It's pretty common to do this in academia. When my school pays for me to go to a conference, I often tack on a few extra day (or a week) and have a mini-vacation. I pay for the extra days myself and as long as the return flight is the same price as returning immediately after the conference, the school still pays for the return flight and there is no problem. In fact, this was how I got half of the flight costs for my honeymoon to Paris subsidized (we paid for my spouse's ticket of course).