TakeruK

I agree with everyone else. Also, it's not your problem to worry about. It's the POI's responsibility to exclude themself from debate on your application if their department policy prohibits it. In my field, undergrads often do summer research projects at different universities and it's very common to apply to those universities for grad school. This is usually seen as a very good thing to do and you are totally expected to use the extra advantage of knowing / having previously impressed the profs there. In my program, I would say between 20% to 40% of admitted students actually worked for professors in this program in the past. Also, like rising_star said, some programs require you to reapply even if you stay at the same school. In Canada, since MSc and PhD programs are separate, you reapply and you need a LOR from your own supervisor even if you want to stay and work with the same supervisor.

Usually if they interview students, they will still interview international students via phone or Skype. It does not make much sense for someone to specifically not get any interview at all because they are international. That is, there may be many reasons they might not interview you (e.g. you didn't make it on the first round of interviews) but it's probably not solely because you are international.

I also agree with everyone that you should not say this. In fact, it contributes nothing useful to your SOP because there isn't usually much correlation between academic performance and research results. Many great researchers also perform well in classes but I very very rarely ever hear anyone say that their academic preparation is what enabled them to succeed in research.

You might have this already figured out but I would suggest that you don't sound so anxious/apologetic and you don't have to make it sound like you like them ("A") over the other options you already committed to interviewing. My reasons for this would be: 1. It makes it sound like you are sucking up to them, which isn't really "attractive". 2. "A" should and does realise that their applicants apply to other places and they should know that it's first come first served. If I was in your shoes, I would instead simply tell them that I would really like to interview with them but I already agreed to interview at schools X and Y on those dates. I would then ask if it was possible to interview on a different date. Keep it simple, don't apologize (it's not your fault)! Yes, even a Canadian is saying to not apologize

I have direct experience on this matter, however, I am away at a conference right now and will provide more details for both of you next week. PM me if I forget It is complicated but I heard the hard way and I can help!

Here are my answers to your questions. Definitely agree that a lot of this will depend on each school's policies though. 1. Yes. I would expect that your chances to getting into University B in your second year would generally decrease. They don't want you to reject them again! This is because in some cases, the fellowship or spot in program you rejected means they can't offer it to someone else. I'm not saying this is your fault--the school decided to make the offer to you and decided it was worth the risk the first time around. 2. I'll assume that you will properly notify University A that you will not register. I think if you just reapply again, this can have a negative impact on you (see answer above). 3. You should ask for the policies if you end up having to not register next Fall. As jujubea alluded to, you want to ask about "deferral" policies. That said, I think it might be helpful to look at it from a different point of view. I would not ask about any of these policies unless you do end up in the situation where you cannot attend the program. Here's what I would do: As soon as you know you cannot attend, you should notify University A immediately and ask if you can defer your admission for one year. Many schools will allow you to defer for up to 1 year for personal reasons like visa rejection or health/family matters. If they agree, then you should be all set! Sometimes a deferral does mean a different financial package though, so keep that in mind. If University A does not allow you to defer, they will make you apply again next year. In this case, I would also call up University B (and all the other universities that accepted you) and ask if their admission offer is still valid. Explain your situation. Some schools actually will allow you to enroll within 2 years of the initial admission offer, even if you rejected them in the past (no school will guarantee that their original offer will still stand after you reject them but they might still grant it on a case-by-case basis). Keep in mind that if you get in this way, you might have a different funding package if the fellowship was assigned to someone else instead. Then, If University B (or another university that gave you a funded offer) says yes, you can still enroll with a financial package that is still desirable to you, then you have a decision to make! You can either take University B's offer or you can reapply to Universities A and B. It would be very dishonest though to take University B's offer while also applying to other schools. That is, if you take B's offer now, you should be ready to commit to B. On the other hand, if University B says no, then you basically will be reapplying to all schools next year. Finally, I have a question for you! Are you just preparing for all the worse case scenarios, or do you think there is a very real chance that you will have personal reasons interfering with your ability to start a grad program next fall? I guess you can never predict the health or family reasons, but if you do end up with fully funded offers from schools, you probably do not have to worry about failing to get a visa. For the personal reasons, I think if you do not feel ready to start grad school next fall, you should wait until you do feel ready before you apply. I think applying, being successful, and then not taking any offers does hurt your chances at the same schools next year, so don't "waste" an application (and the school's time) if you are not really ready for graduate school. Of course, it's hard for most of us to know 100% that we are ready, so I'm not saying you have to be 100% certain! Just that you should know the consequences of rejecting a school and that you should feel that the risk is worth it. That's something only you can decide!

Agreed with the above with the caveat that if you are talking about a UK school, a "Lecturer" there is basically a tenure track professor position, so it's perfectly fine to list them as a POI.

What field are you in? In case it's relevant to you or another person reading this, here is the astronomy one: http://www.astrobetter.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Rumor+Mill(there's a link to the Faculty job version from that page too).

In my opinion, these personal relationship should exist because: 1) you are genuinely interested in the field, and 2) your professor is genuinely interested in your career development (could be as simple as making sure you ask them for a LOR, or mentoring/guiding them through the whole process). I have found that some professors like mentoring more than others, and some professors will go out of their way to provide opportunities to promising students. Other professors have opinions that are like "undergrad/grad student = labour source", so they might not really think about their students much more than the work relationship they have. I'm oversimplifying the complex nature of advisors (after all, they are human too!) by only using these two categories of course! I think that if you are lucky, you will get professors that are of the mentoring kind. After that, you know to seek out future supervisors that are also the mentoring kind. This is what happened to me, I think. I think that while ideally, these personal relationships should form naturally out of shared common interests, it doesn't always have to be that way. Sometimes the best help you can get requires you to go out and seek it. Some professors are not natural mentors (after all, they get no such training, and they might not have had mentor-type supervisors themselves) and some of them might even be very willing and happy to help you, but they don't even know you need/want it unless you ask. In addition, in academia, I really think we should not be so afraid to take "interested" actions. I would consider it just part of strategizing. For example, I am forming my thesis committee right now, and I am purposely inviting certain professors that will serve my own interests. I don't want to write too many personal details, but one common thing most grad students have to worry about is finding 3 good LORs at time of graduation for application to post-doc jobs. So, finding committee members to collaborate and work with is one good way to get that. Other examples of "interested" actions are purposely seeking out people working on the same topic as me at conferences to form new working relationships (not necessarily collaborating, but knowing about each other so we can talk about each other's work, or send pre-prints of papers etc.). So, I don't think seeking out a professor with the goal of getting application help is that much different than what academics regularly do. A good personal/working relationship still requires the ideal mutual interests thing, but you don't have wait for it to naturally happen. There's nothing wrong with trying to spark a relationship by seeking help and taking other "interested" actions. And especially in academia, where some people might be more used to working alone, or professors being too busy to worry/think about all of their students, such initial actions might be necessary and the only thing in the way of a very rewarding mentorship for both parties! After all, there are probably many people out there that would be really happy to help you, but only if you ask for it/let them know you need it. (e.g. look at all the responses this thread got because you asked!)

Up to a certain point, yes, I think applying to more schools increases your chances of admission. Especially when you are applying to mostly highly competitive schools. The reason for this, I think, is limited spaces. For example, let's imagine a scenario where there are 10 "top schools" and they each take 5 students. So, in theory, if you are one of the top 50 students, then you should expect to get in! But let's say you are the 21st best student, and you only applied to 4 schools. It is possible that the students ranked 1-20 all decided to take all 5 spots in these 4 same schools, and you will be out of luck. But if you applied to 7 schools, there is no way that the 20 students ahead of you can take all 35 spots at these 7 schools. This is a very contrived scenario of course, but I think it illustrates the principle I am trying to demonstrate! But if you truly have super specific research interests then it might not be a good idea to apply to more schools and get into a program that does not match you. Although I would generally warn against having such specific research interests that only a few schools match you, because there is a little bit of room for you to expand/try something a little different in grad school too. In my field, students are generally encouraged to take on multiple interests and adjust their research focus to match changing conditions like the profs available, the jobs available etc. I find that it's much easier to change my research interest to fit my ideal supervisor or school than it is to change the supervisor/school to better fit me. I don't mean to say that I think you made a mistake applying to only 7 schools. You might have had experiences that made it clear to you that your super specific interests are the best for you. And in fact, I think 7 schools is plenty (I "only" applied to 8 myself). If you want a more quantitative answer, I think applying to fewer than 6 schools might decrease your chances of acceptance (for reasons mentioned above) but the "more schools, more chances to win" benefits start to taper off after 6 schools.....I'd say more than 12 would be past the point of diminishing returns! Obviously, I chose this range so that my "8" fits in it perfectly

Yeah, my school helped us double check the documents for J-2 employment authorization document (EAD). We still made a mistake though. Apparently, US Immigration wanted to see a copy of our marriage certificate (even though they already saw that in order to grant the J-2 status in the first place, but I digress...). We got that request for more info in December, so if we had known to include that, it might have come even earlier. The online info we got was "3 months" ish, though, so January was still within 3 months. Also, my spouse got her EAD approved for 4 years in total. Apparently the length of the EAD can vary, and it can be as short as 1 year. It costs about $300-$400 to pay for the processing, which is sucky if you had to pay it every year You are encouraged/expected to submit renewal documents about 6 months prior to your EAD's expiry. It also seems like the EAD application process is fairly routine. The hardest part, I think, is to find a school willing to sponsor you on J-1 status, instead of just F-1. One of my schools, in Arizona, refused to do this I hope you enjoyed your time at UBC! I really enjoyed mine! If you have further questions about the whole J-2 EAD thing, feel free to PM me for more personal details. It's probably too early to worry about that now but once you do decide where to go, I'll be happy to answer any more questions about it. We definitely found misleading/contradicting/confusing info online too.

Hi, there are additional details that might change things, but basically, if you are on J-1 status (so your wife would be J-2, the only status that allows for a work permit), then it would take about 3 months to get the work permit. My spouse applied in October and received the permit in January. She found a suitable job (i.e. one that matches her skills) in April. The second part would also depend on where you end up going of course. But hope that helps some of your concerns!!

I felt like I "won" in the sense that I got to visit 3 schools/places without paying anything out of pocket. The total value of money reimbursed to me was about equal to the money I spent on all my applications (not just the places I visited). And the trips were worth doing because they were 1) fun, 2) I had friends already enrolled in 2 out of those 3 places so I got to see them too, 3) I learned a lot about other people's research and resources available at each school (good to know for future job prospects) and finally 4) actually seeing the schools made the choice a lot easier and I felt much more confident that I was picking the right school in the end But as fuzzy said, I definitely was lucky that I was able to pay the fees upfront. Canada's low tuition rates helped me save money for such an "investment"! I can't know for sure, but I would guess that if I could not afford to just pay the fees, I would feel the whole process was a lot more like a gamble than a "wise" investment.

True, I didn't mean to imply that you were going to extrapolate, but just suggesting a reason for your observation that people online seem to all be applying to top schools. Sorry for the confusion. And I guess I also misunderstood your question. I thought you were asking our motivations for not applying to "Direction State University" instead of the riskier, more competitive programs. Sorry about that too! To answer your actual question about why I felt confident enough to apply to such programs, the primary reason is from extensive discussions with my mentors and advisors. In Canada, we have to do a Masters first and then go to a PhD program in my field. I actually had no idea whether or not I would be qualified at all when I was in my last year of undergraduate work. I was doing research with my honours thesis advisor and talked to him a lot about grad school. I am the first person in my family to go to college so I didn't know anything about academia (didn't even know that grad school is generally funded etc.). When I started talking to him about actual schools and I mentioned that I am not sure if I would be able to get into my top choices in Canada so I would probably want to apply to almost all of them etc. etc., he stopped me and told me that he was sure I can get into any astronomy grad program in Canada so I should only apply to places that interest me. And he was eventually right, but I think having someone I respected and looked up to telling me that I can do it made a huge difference in my self-confidence. Prior to that conversation, I didn't have much confidence in my abilities. I took the Physics Subject GRE and scored around 40th percentile, which is good (hey, being average out of the subset of people who want to do grad school is not that bad) but it's not what I thought was "top student" material. I had also applied to summer research awards in the past and was not successful. My university also recognizes the top students in the program with special honours, and that was something I never achieved either. So, I had always evaluated myself as a "good" student, and that there exist "top students" out there much more qualified than me! But I guess it turned out my perception was skewed. So then, 2 years later, when applying to PhD programs, I had a lot more confidence in myself to set such high goals that I outlined in the post above. I again talked to both my undergrad mentor and my Masters supervisors and went over my list of schools with them, getting their advice. I also felt more confident at this point, since over the past two years, I won fellowships that were the Canadian equivalent to the NSF grad research fellow program. I did retake the Physics GRE and my score went to 50th percentile, but now I know that I should not let that score make me feel bad. And finally, I reached out to many profs before I started applying to ask them questions about their research interests and they all responded very positively and encouraged me to apply (although they might just say this to everyone?). I would say the most important part was having my mentor tell me that I could do it. And the smaller successes along the way helped reinforce the idea that I did belong to the group of people that might one day work at these top institutions. Finally, I did not view the money spent on applications as a wager. Instead, I felt it was an investment. If I got into one program, although grad stipends aren't super competitive, they are enough to offset the application costs after one year, and the additional career opportunities is worth it. If I didn't get into any program, then I would end up working in a different field that would pay more than a grad stipend, so I'll also be able to recover the losses and I think it would have been worth it to know that I tried my best to follow that career path.

That's exactly why my spouse visited with me whenever possible (uprooting her life as well). The first two schools were too far away / required too much time off work for her to join me. The third school was very understanding and very good at making sure we were both able to visit. They included my spouse in all social events and even set aside a desk in a visitor's office for her to work at while I was meeting with professors. Don't be afraid to ask for additional considerations (e.g. bringing a partner, allergies to dust, dietary needs) if it is important to you.

My experience talking about this with professors in my field also indicate that General GRE scores are not usually judged on a "competitive" level for STEM fields. That is, if it's really low, it might be a flag, but there is no real difference from e.g. 85th percentile vs. 75th percentile. I would be pretty confident in saying that STEM graduate students should figure out where they might expect to score and put in the time to get a decent score. Beyond that, it's better to spend your time improving other parts of your application.

I agree with fuzzy -- you should take actions and make friends that will best support you in the way you want to be supported. You should not feel any pressure to prioritize your grad school friends over your existing friends if you don't want to do that. Like fuzzy said, it's nice to have grad school friends because you have a shared experience, and I personally think that everyone should have multiple groups of friends that provide different types of support. Friend groups are often formed from shared experiences and by the time you reach grad school age, each person generally has a lot of experiences. So, it's pretty normal for grad students who are friends with each other to also have other friend groups outside of grad school. Each of your new grad school classmates will have their own group of friends, and it would be incredibly overwhelming if in order to be friends with them, you also have to be friends with all of their friends! So, I don't think you need to worry about combining your old friend group with any potential new friend groups And as for the people who will think your old friends are "inferior" or who think less of you because of who your friends are, then honestly, do you really need that kind of people in your life? Find the people worth being friends with! I agree with fuzzy that assuming people won't want to be friends with you will make it harder to be friends with them. I don't think you need to worry about "disclosing" your existing friends to any new friendships you make. I mean, I don't think you should "hide" them either (or feel like you need to keep it a secret). Everyone else you meet will have other existing friend groups from college or their hometown etc. People will naturally talk about existing friends in normal conversation and your existing friend group could be no different.

Another factor to consider is that the people in online communities like this one are definitely not a representative sample of the actual population of graduate students that exist! If you look at the posters from my field (and even counting those tangentially related to my field), it would look like there are like 20 graduate students that study planets. In reality, there are probably like 1000 or so of us in the United States. It's extremely dangerous to extrapolate from just 2% of the population! To answer your question though, (not in your field, but I think my answer still applies), I only applied to programs that fit my long term life/career goals, and brand recognition is part of these goals. I did apply to some schools that only had "brand recognition" within my field (i.e. a non-academic wouldn't recognize the school the same way they might recognize the name "Harvard"), but when making my final decisions, I did consider brand-name-to-non-academics as a factor. This is because I know my long term goal is to work in my hometown and I personally care more about living near my family than I do about working in academia. Therefore, it was important to me to go to a program where a potential employer will recognize my PhD school name, even if that employer is not an academic. Secondly, I still intend to apply to academic jobs in my hometown's geographical area, and it is hard enough to get an academic job, even without geographic constraints. Therefore, if I am at a school with a ton of resources, I will be more likely to produce good research, and this will make me much more competitive for jobs in the future. Thirdly, location is very important to me and my spouse. We want to live in metropolitan areas with a lot of diversity, access to ethnic foods, a place where people don't look at my spouse and I funny for being together, a place where my spouse can find work, and a place without harsh winters. This also rules out a lot of "Direction State Universities". And finally, we were moving from Canada to the US for school. The best US schools are better than the best Canadian schools, but our top schools are generally better than lower ranked "Direction State" schools. So, if we were going to go through the hassle of moving to another country, dealing with immigration issues, getting proper work authorization for spouse, etc., we would only apply to US schools that provide something the best Canadian school could not provide. So all of this added up to me applying to a lot of highly competitive programs. Our plan was that if I did not get into one of these programs, I would not even go into grad school at all. We did not want to spend the next 10 years of our life (PhD+postdocs) in programs/places that didn't make us happy, with little pay, with little return on investment of our time. Our backup plan if I did not get into a PhD program that we felt was worth our time, we would just move back to our hometown and find other work to do. Science is my passion, sure, but I have other passions that are also important. Currently, this will be our approach for the post-PhD job market as well. Prior to applying, my spouse and I will sit down and decide on some minimum criteria for quality of job and I'll apply to positions that match those requirements. Although this opinion might change in 2 years, our current position is that we would still rather not have any postdoc position at all than to work as a postdoc in a position we did not feel suited our long term goals.

I would also be upset, but it would not be unethical to me. My opinion is that ethics is subjective, so I think it's perfectly normal for us to disagree on what constitutes ethical actions. That said, communities (like academia) generally do have a collective sense of what is ethical so the only reason I keep bringing up my subjective view of what is ethical is because I think that academia's collective ethics does align more closely with my view than yours in this case. I bring it up because I think it is important for us "newcomers" to the community understand the "pulse" of the community and what is commonly done. However, communities are made up of people and the collective "ethics" will change and vary as the people that make up the community change. As academia gets even more internationalized, I do think our collective sense of ethics will shift and evolve. I think that's good and I think it is good that we have debates like this about what is ethical (as long as we refrain from personal insults or other attacks). In my last paragraph, I imply that it is important (especially for newcomers like us) to "fit in" but this does not mean that as we become more integrated in academia, we should not work to shape the community to better fit what we want our community to look like. After all, some of the graduate students of today will (hopefully) be the professors, department chairs, and Deans of tomorrow! A lot of things in academia are based in "tradition" (a.k.a. "that's the way it's always been done!") and ironically, even though some of us work on cutting edge technological research, the processes we use for admission might be embarrassingly outdated (one of my schools required handwritten snail mailed letters? wtf!). I think this is partly because by the time you get to a tenured or full professor position and are able to make policies for your department, your grad school experience was probably 15 ish years ago, and things were much different back then (much fewer technology to connect us across the globe). So, I predict that we will see slow changes that will actually lead to more fair and open admission procedures in the future. I hope that the way we admit and train people can be as international as the way we collaborate and do research! For example, I think schools should actually drop the in-person interview process completely and interview all of their candidates via the same medium. I know that some Canadian schools are now doing this, choosing to do all interviews via Skype, even for applicants that work in the same city! I believe this is a much more fair way to conduct interviews, so that people who are unable to make the in-person visit (either because of money or time or other needs) are not disadvantaged. I think this makes it more fair for "non-traditional" American students as well, who might not be able to take time off work to interview, or students who might not be able to find childcare for their dependents to travel to a bunch of interviews. I hope schools like U. Wisconsin will get on board with this change and stop requiring in-person interviews soon (their website currently says that they will do in-person interviews for people in US borders but only telephone interviews for applicants abroad). But again, I would count this as "preferred practice" or "best practice", not "minimum practice required to be ethical".

I think this is something you might get a lot of different opinions on so I'll just contribute my thoughts here: First, I think the most important aspect is that you feel comfortable about where you are staying. I think this is the highest priority and if you will be much more comfortable staying with friends instead of with a stranger and/or in a strange/dusty environment, you should do what you are more comfortable with. I think it's more complicated than just simply saying you are allergic to pets, because a pet-free place can still have enough dust to trigger allergies or other breathing issues. Second, if the first concern is met, then I would pick the choice that allows for more graduate student interaction. But keep in mind that you will still learn most of the things you want to learn about the grad program through the normal prospective visit program, it's not like your one-on-one time with the grad student will give you significantly more information. See below for examples. With that in mind, I'll share my experiences for all 3 schools I visited in 2012. At each school, I did something different! 1. At the first school, the school arranged for me to stay with a graduate student host and I stayed with them (they had a guest bedroom). They picked me up at the airport and drove me from their home to their school. I did get a little bit of extra socializing time with them, their cat, and their S.O. and it was nice to meet them. However, the visit day program had stuff scheduled from 8am to 9pm basically, so it's not like the extra few hours total I got with the grad student (most of it spent in their car) made much difference. I would say that 95% of the information I needed to know about the program / what grad students are like came from the actual visit itself, and only a little bit of extra insight came from random conversations with my host. 2. At the second school, the school usually puts all the visiting students in a hotel. However, I had a friend already in that same program and since the school was not offering enough reimbursement to cover the flight from Canada, I asked if I could stay with my friend (and save them the hotel money) in exchange for an extra $100 towards my flight reimbursement. They agreed and this was good because it removed all out of pocket expenses for me The downside was that I didn't get to spend as much time with the other prospective students, but like the first school, events were scheduled from early morning to late night so again, the only extra interaction I would have missed would be having a stranger for a roommate. Also, staying with my friend allowed me to also spend the weekend immediately after the visit exploring the area on my own (this part was out of pocket expense but it was a mini vacation anyways). 3. Finally, at the last school, my spouse visited with me and originally the school offered to have us stay with one of the current graduate students (who also had a non-student spouse) in their house (this place had low enough cost of living that most dual income grad student families owned a home). But we felt more comfortable staying on our own (spouse can then set own schedule for exploring the town, looking at job opportunities etc.) so we asked if we could just stay in a hotel instead. We were saving the school some money since we lived close enough to drive instead of needing to fly in, so I asked them how much would they normally reimburse for a flight and we made sure the cost of mileage + hotel was under that maximum. At this visit, I felt that my spouse and I got a lot more out of *not* staying with grad students and doing our own thing (i.e. finding our own way to campus and around town) because it was more of a simulation of what it would be like if we did move there together. So, I think doing what you feel most comfortable with is the most important. I personally really dislike staying in a stranger's home, and I don't really like sharing a hotel room with a stranger either (although I don't mind at all sharing with a colleague I know to save money during conference travel). I did it for school #1 to save money and because the way the town is laid out, there was no convenient way to get to school other than a ride from the person you're staying with. I was much happier to do the visits for schools #2 and #3 on my own terms and arranging my own accommodations. The only tricky bit is to properly balance getting what you want and not being a pest. For your case, since you are still interviewing, it might be trickier to get your own terms, but honestly, if the school is unwilling to make reasonable adjustments for your comfort, is it really a place you want to be? In my case, I already had the offers and these were "recruitment" visits instead of interviews, so I probably had more "power" to ask for what I wanted. However, I think you can still be reasonably accommodated if you are asking for things that will not require more money or more work from the program (in all three cases, the things I asked for actually requires less money or work on their part).

In your case, teddybrosevelt, don't change your letter writer. You are currently working with this person and you said they will be your strongest letter writer. Like everyone else said, don't worry about it. If the deadline is Jan 1, and the letter has not been submitted by the end of the day on Jan 5, I would check in with your prof one more time. If they say they will need a few more days, then let the school you are applying to know. I am currently in a earth/planetary science program with a Jan 1 deadline (I think, maybe it's moved now). The general timeline is that the first two business weeks of January will be spent reviewing applications. Then there will be a big faculty meeting. Then, decisions are announced in the third week. In my opinion, the admissions committee will have enough information to "generally" evaluate you with 2 out of 3 letters submitted. No single part of your application can be so positive that it completely changes your ranking/evaluation. If you are extremely strong, then they will be willing to wait until the last letter arrive (just to make sure it's not super negative) before they make the offer to you. If you are extremely weak, then it's unlikely the final letter can do anything to make you competitive. If you are in the middle and it's basically down to you and a few others for the last few offers, then as long as your final letter arrives before they make the final offer decisions, it should be okay. It's not like without this final letter, the admissions committee has no opinion about you! Just remind your prof once school opens again! Good luck

Clearly there is a difference in preferences when it comes to what counts as a meal Catria is right though that the quality of free food does "seem" to correlate with "ranking" because higher ranked programs tend to have more money (which is how they get science done to achieve the high ranking), and more money means more opportunities for food. At my Canadian grad school, there is no food at all for seminars, not even cookies. The only time we get free meals were: 1) pizza at the first seminar of the year to welcome everyone back, 2) the once-a-year reception for all new students, 3) the once-a-year lunch with prospective grad students, and 4) the very occasional chance to have a meal with a visiting speaker (any individual student might go to 2-3 of these meals per year). Also, my preference is that I would rather cook my own food and pay the approximate $1.50-$2.00 per meal cost than do something like eat chips+beer for dinner, or 10 cookies for lunch Sometimes even when you get actual food, these free meals aren't very healthy and it makes me feel like crap the rest of the day. I would not want to depend on free meals to save money, because if, for some reason, the free food plan falls through (maybe you couldn't get out of the lab at that moment due to science) and you're stuck buying a lunch at $8-$10, then you've spent 4 to 5 times as much as if you had just cooked for yourself! One missed free meal can negate all the money you might have saved that week on free food.

Another analogy: You are accepted to three schools, X, Y and Z, and all three schools paid for you to visit them and consider their program for matriculation. You know that you are more likely to attend schools X or Y, but school Z isn't out of the question. Each of the school paid for your costs up front (made flight booking etc. for you). Some time later, but before the visit begin, you realise that you can no longer accept School Z's offer because of whatever reason (maybe your SO didn't get into any schools near Z, or family issues means you have to stay close to home, etc.). Because of this, you cancel your visit with Z (i.e. you do not review their program for your matriculation decision). Is it unethical that you took School Z's money (in the form of the flight booking)? Should you refund them the cost of their cancellation fee? No, because at the time when you accepted their offer to visit, there was still a chance you would accept Z. It is only later that you find out you can no longer take Z's offer. Getting rejected by you without a visit is the risk that Z decided to take when they made your booking in advance. I definitely think all Universities should be more transparent and open about their admission process. It would be nice if they did warn applicants that very few international students are admitted. In my field, a lot of schools are very clear about this -- they say that they admit 5-6 students per year, and that on average, 10% of their grad student population are international. This is a very clear statement that on average, only one international student is admitted every 2 years. When I read that (I'm an international student too), I appreciated the warning because I knew not to get my hopes up and to apply to a lot of backup schools. However, while I think ideally, Universities should post this info, I do not believe it is each department's responsibility to do so. I think it is the applicant's responsibility to do their due diligence and do this research. Thus, I do not think it is unethical for the department not to indicate this prior to the application. Otherwise, what else should they warn students about? The fact that < 10% of graduates will get a tenure tracked job? The fact that working as an adjunct professor could pay almost minimum wage? The fact that Prof X is a terrible supervisor and no one should work with them? The fact that subfield Z is dying and no one will hire in 5 years? All these choices and factors are the applicant's responsibility. For example, the school I am currently at has a whopping ~45% international population, which was something I was very happy to find out when I was researching this school. It indicated to me that this might be my best opportunity so I worked really hard on this one. That said, I do think it is the University's responsibility to publish school-wide stats though, such as the number of total grad students, the number of grad students accepted each year, and the fraction of international grad students. This information is usually generally available, and U. Wisconsin definitely has all of it--I checked when this post was originally started. Universities have to publish this information so that students can make informed decisions. --- Overall, to be clear about what I'm trying to say: 1. If a school collects applications and application fees from international students, I think it is not unethical to reject them without review (other than to sort them by international status) as long as the school actually did intend to review the applications at the time of application. See my previous posts and the above analogy. 2. However, it is not good/ideal/best practice either. I agree with everyone that says the school could have been more transparent about this. I just don't think it's unethical if they do not. 3. But I do think the University should be required to make school-wide stats available on graduate student admissions. This is not as helpful as department-by-department stats but it is much easier for the aggregate stats to be compiled. Also, for very small departments, I'd be worried that no useful numbers can be reported.

I agree with rising_star -- even though you are local, try to experience as much of the visit as a visiting graduate student as you can. For the specific example of getting a ride from the hotel, do this if it's not a huge hassle for the department (i.e. if you are the extra person that requires a whole new vehicle then maybe don't do it). I became friends with some of my current cohort during our visit and it turns out that it's pretty common for cohorts to my program to decide collectively to all attend or not. I know I kept in touch with many people I visited with when making my decision. In addition, you might see some of the other visiting graduate students to your current school when you are visiting other schools as well. Maybe this really depends on your field, but each year, there are multiple visiting prospective students that know each other from another school visit (one rival program does their visit weekend the week immediately before us, so some of our prospective visitors already know each other when they get to our school). As for the drinks thing, if you are comfortable being around others who are drinking, definitely show up and socialize with a non-alcoholic drink. Grad students are generally mature and we also have diverse backgrounds so you won't be the weird one that doesn't drink! I know that our program does make sure that we don't plan any social events at places that require you to be 21+ since it's not that rare to get a 20 year old. In fact, our program has admitted 16 or 17 year olds in the past! Funny story -- in one year, we took visiting students to a place with one of the best selection/variety of beers in town ... only to find out that more than half of the prospective students are not drinkers! Oops!! We still all had a great time with beers for those who chose to drink and hot chocolate/teas/coffees/sodas for those who didn't. No one harboured any ill feeling towards people who didn't drink -- instead we (the current grad students) mostly felt like idiots for making such a bad choice. We definitely learned to ask our visiting students prior to making evening social plans in the future!

Oh one thing you should keep in mind while you are visiting departments this Spring during recruitment/interview visits: During these weeks, at most (but not all) programs, the budget for seminar snacks, or basically any kind of free food, is generally increased. Part of the reason is innocent--more people around, so more food needed. But it's partly to look good too. So, don't be surprised if you see less free food around when you start the program for real than when you were visiting My program provides a pretty good weekly happy hour but we're always happy when prospective students visit I guess that's another thing to keep in mind when gauging how happy the current students look