TakeruK

If you have not already done so, you might want to check the "Results Search" part of GradCafe! You can find a link to it on the GradCafe home page, or using the Navigation Bar links under the GradCafe logo in the forums. I would recommend you do a search like "Yale Neuroscience" (without quotes) in order to see when other students reported finding out about interviews/acceptances/rejections in past years (or if anyone has already heard anything for this year). Of course, replace "Yale" with the schools you are actually applying to (just made up an example school). Pay special attention to the "St" column too, which indicates whether the applicant is American, International, or "U" for international student with a US degree. This can help you determine whether or not the school notifies International students separately from American students (or if they only skype-interview or phone-interview far away students). And when you find out your own info, please add it to the Results Search too! You might be able to help out another stressed out student! If you already know about this feature of the GradCafe, then sorry for subjecting you to this post! Just want to advertise this resource since the more people know about it, the more useful it becomes!

I agree with you that in my ideal world, I would also have it so that an outstanding applicant, regardless of any attribute, would have a chance at admission. But our ideal world is not the only world that is "ethical". I'm simply arguing for the statement that schools like Wisconsin are not being unethical if they end up not being able to review international applications at all because domestic applicants filled all their spots. As long as they didn't accept applications when they knew for certain that they would not admit any international students. I also agree that there are parallels with the controversy you linked to. Namely, at almost every campus in the US, there are debates about diversity (not just Asian-Americans but other minority groups too). But I want to point out there is one important thing to keep in mind when trying to make parallels between these two situations: Asian-Americans (or African-Americans or other miniority groups) are still Americans. In places with Affirmative Action laws, certain groups are considered "Under-represented Minorities" (URM) and people are trying to implement programs that will encourage hiring/admitting the qualified people URM people and looking into ways that the system might be (unconsciously) putting URM people at an unfair disadvantage. But note that only Americans qualify as URM. For example, a Latino-American is considered part of a URM group, however, an international student from Mexico is not. There are very few documented programs that worry about representation of international (non-American) students in the United States. So, it is important to remember this because this distinction drives a lot of the policy that schools and programs must adhere to.

Sorry for the confusion -- my examples were just a bunch of possible reasons where a "less qualified" candidate can be admitted due to better fit, to show that it is reasonable and common for schools to use factors that do not indicate applicant quality in making their decision. This academic example does not directly apply to the current situation being discussed but I presented these examples to show that the situation under discussion (deciding admission based on residency status) is in fact a subset of the more general practice of "deciding admission based on factors other than qualification. The example that does directly relate to this situation is the one related to citizenship status. If the program has a maximum quota of 10 international students at any time, and the one(s) that are expected to graduate in June encounters a setback which will delay their graduation by a year then there is simply no more room for international students no matter how qualified, and thus no review beyond checking the citizenship line is necessary. Or, if the University suddenly reduces the quota of international students. Or, if the funding source changes its requirements. Or, if the University/department decides to change its goals -- maybe they want to market themselves as prioritizing Americans more for one reason or another.

You are right that residency status is not a "credential". That is, schools should not use an applicant's status (citizen, permanent resident, non-resident alien legally present in US, foreign national living abroad, etc.) to determine whether or not the candidate is qualified for admission. Therefore, I would agree with you if the only purpose of graduate student admission to seek out the best qualified candidates and admit them to the program. However, this is not the way graduate admissions work. In fact, this is not the way academia (or any workplace really) works! I'll say it again: The goal of graduate admission is not to seek the best qualified candidates. Instead, most graduate programs seek to admit the best fitting candidates to meet the goals of that program. I'll give examples for both graduate admissions and for post-PhD academic jobs. Sometimes the goals of the program are academic: sometimes programs are looking to admit a graduate student in a certain subfield, or with a certain qualification. This is an example where a program might admit someone with lower GPA, GRE and even research experience all because they want someone willing to work on Subfield X when better qualified candidates all want to work on Y but Y is over-subscribed. You see this on the academic job market as well. I know plenty of highly qualified PhD graduates and post-docs who cannot find jobs because their subfield is not hiring, while other subfields are much less selective. Sometimes, the goals of the program are driven by policy. As others said above, publicly funded state universities have a mandate to educate their citizens. It's perfectly reasonable to reject highly qualified international or out-of-state applicants because you need to meet your goals of providing service to domestic applicants. It could be that the funding source the program must use that year for new students are for Americans only. In almost every academic job posting that has government funding, you will see a line that says something like "All applicants are invited to apply, but preference will be given to citizens of Canada/United States/EU/etc.". This is a reality of the world we live in -- even though the intellectual side of academia has no borders, the practical sides is very political and grant money (or donations) often comes with many many strings attached. Sometimes the goals of the program are driven by practical non-academic reasons. The examples here will be mostly for post-PhD jobs because graduate students rarely have this much negotiating power for admissions. For example, perhaps the school might have 2 postdoc openings with a salary of $50k. They might really want to recruit a particular candidate but that candidate might have a competing offer of $55k, so the school decides to match that offer but now they only have $45k leftover. The school might then decide to make the $45k offer to candidates lower in their list because they are more likely to accept their lowball offer. Basically, what I am saying is that you should not expect graduate school admissions to be a pure meritocracy. Being the best qualified candidate does not mean you will get admitted. The above examples are just a few factors not related to applicants' qualifications that are important in making both admission decisions and academic job hiring decisions. And I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, and it's definitely not just in academia. These factors are important in many workplaces outside of academia. Making decisions based on factors other than qualifications is not unethical. Again, if the school knew for a fact ahead of time that they will not be admitting students with attribute X, then accepting applications from students with attribute X would be unethical. But if they cannot know for sure at time of application because the information is not available until later, then I don't see an ethical problem.

What do you mean by scholarship-oriented application? If you mean application for fellowships or scholarships, then it would depend on the organization granting the award. From my experience, these organizations usually require official versions of everything at time of application though. If you mean application to graduate schools with funding (i.e. school scholarships for PhD students) then the answer would probably be the same as above. This is because most schools will consider you for all scholarships you're eligible for at the same time as your application, since admissions is often considered at the same time as funding. There will be some scholarships that require a separate application though, especially for normally unfunded programs, and I can't answer that question since I am not familiar with that! But maybe someone else here can!

You can't use seminar refreshments as meal replacement in my department/program! It's just coffee, cheese/crackers, fruits and we have a budget of $15 for about 20-30 people. However, post (or pre-) seminar meals with the seminar speaker are a pretty good perk, but not something you can get every week! Also, over in astronomy, they have a full wine and cheese spread every week at around dinner time. It's a nice incentive to get over there if a planetary science talk is happening! You can get several free meals per week if you know where to go though. Like Eigen, due to various lunchtime meetings (very few classes are scheduled at noon), I probably also get 8-10 free meals per month. There are also many more free meal opportunities that I pass on partly because the food is not always great and partly because I feel like the "free meals" aren't really free! It usually requires an hour of your life that you could spend doing something you're actually interested in. I also think I am a decent cook and it's pretty cheap for me to cook my own lunch and spend my lunch hour eating it with my friends instead of listening to a seminar I'm not really interested in.

I know you are being sarcastic, but this is literally the essence why many people here think it's fine. It is the same as discarding any application with a GPA under 3.0 without any review (other than a computer filtering out GPAs under 3.0). I don't think the school acted unethically because at the time it was accepting applications, it was still considering international admissions. If the school knew ahead of time that there will be 0 international admissions and they accepted applications anyways, then it's unethical. If circumstances beyond their control led to 0 international admissions (and this information was only available after applications were due) then the school is ethically fine.

I think your second request is more direct (although the first version is fine too) and you should choose the wording/tone that feels best to you. After all, he already agreed to meet you at a conference so whatever you were doing before must have been fine! If you want to overanalyze: Personally, I would always give the professor an "out" so they don't feel obligated/pressured into talking to me, and I think your second version does this quite well. Many professors do work at home during this upcoming week (schools are generally closed) so this might make it more/less likely to get a response, depending on how this professor operates! Still a good time to email and schedule a time for the week of Jan 5 though.

I do not think you should put this in your SOP at all, and you should definitely not badger one of your other letter writers to mention it in their LOR. I think pushing it any further with your new letter writer will damage that relationship too! This is an issue between you and your former advisor; don't drag your new letter writer into it. Instead, almost every school will have a final page on the application form that asks "Anything else you would like to include" or something like that, with a big blank text box. I would simply write one sentence in this space, something like: "My MA thesis supervisor, <<Dr. Supervisor>>, retired from <<Crappy Bad School>>, while I was writing my MA thesis and is unfortunately unavailable to write a letter of reference for my application." Definitely do not convey any negative thoughts at all about your MA school no matter how much you want to. It's too bad that your MA supervisor isn't around to write your letter, and that is all you need to say. Anything additional negative thing you try to convey will just reflect more badly on you than on the MA school. Also, there may be very good reasons why the professor is not willing to spend any more time writing your LOR. Although I agree that writing LORs is one important part of being a professor, they might have very personal reasons to retire abruptly and cut off all ties with their old job! Your very long statement in your first post seems to imply that your supervisor has no integrity and that is a very serious accusation which you do not back up in that statement. Perhaps it is true that your supervisor has no integrity and perhaps you can back this up in a much longer statement, but your application is not the right place to make a case against your supervisor's integrity, whether it is well founded or not. Instead, you just need to focus on the single aspect that is relevant to your application, which is the fact that your supervisor is now retired and you cannot get a LOR from them. Without that single sentence, it would be a "red flag" to <<Dr. Nice Guy>> because it would look like your supervisor refused to write you a letter, instead of the just being unavailable.

Things might have changed since the Fall 2012 admission season, but in that year, about half of my schools wanted official mailed transcript for applications and the other half were happy with unofficial transcript (only require official when you start the program). So, I don't think there is a "general rule"--to me, it seems like both are equally common. I do think schools are moving towards unofficial though, because even if a school required official transcripts for the application, they will still want another official transcript before you can enroll (to see that you really did get your degree).

At my undergrad school (big school!), this is definitely true. As much as I would like to have scheduled my classes the way I wanted, due to conflicts and such, I pretty much never actually had a choice on what time to take what class. And when I worked with some of the professors (as an undergrad research assistant), they sometimes would complain to the research group that they got a crappy timeslot or classroom location. It sounds like at big schools, Classroom Services does all of the scheduling of times and locations based on class sizes and availability, with very little input from professors themselves! Because of this, many of my physics classes (small) get scheduled in the English department in classrooms designed for discussion groups and my English classes (large) gets put into the large lecture halls of the Physics (or other sciences) buildings! I didn't have science classes in the science buildings until my senior year, where classes became small enough (< 10 students) to fit into the really small classrooms in the upper floor of my Physics building.

As the author notes, they are in Canada and in Canada, the science graduate student selection system works quite differently from the US. I don't know if that blog is Canadian centric, but I want to point this out when you are considering these perspectives: One very important difference is that generally speaking, American science programs have committees that select a cohort of students that they think will meet the department's needs. The cohort will then begin the program and take courses in the first two years. During this time, they might work with a couple of professors, or do lab rotations, or get a RA appointment for the summer first and then eventually choose their PhD thesis group. That is, in most cases, American science graduate programs admits students without requiring them to commit to any particular professor or research group. The matching comes later, after the student begins the program (sometimes as early as a few months in; sometimes as late as 2 years in). On the other hand, you can think of Canadian science program recruiting as more similar to applying for a job (in fact, most Canadian grad students are considered employees of the University). A committee might exist simply to vet candidates to meet minimum requirements but for the most part, it is up to each individual prof to say yay or nay on each applicant. At the schools I've been to, the general procedure is: Application is received; committee reviews to make sure it meets minimums; committee forwards application to all professors. Each professor decides yes/no on taking that particular student. If they all say no, the student is rejected. If a few say yes, the student gets an offer letter specifically saying "you may come to our school to work with Profs X, Y, and Z." Each program will have variations on this format, but in general, students are admitted directly to a supervisor. This is why the author implies that he/she makes these decisions every year, on every student; not just the times where they are on an admissions committee; and they always talk about admitting to their own lab. And this is why the author refers to themself as a "recruiter" -- openings in certain labs are sometimes advertised like jobs and a professor looking for more students might actively and directly recruit grad students through their colleagues and/or at conferences. Unlike in the US, when this happens to you with a Canadian prof, you know that prof is the person ultimately deciding your admission decision (when an American prof "recruits" you, they always end with something like "Please apply to the program and I wish you the best of luck in the admissions process"). I just thought I would point this out to put provide some important context!

I think this might be a good idea for a program that receives much more than 10 times the number of available spots. One potential problem might be that applicants are usually compared against each other, so the cutoffs for pre-application might not be known until all the applications are received. For example, a program might ask a computer (or a secretary) to sort through all the applications and only select applications that are at least the 70th percentile in one of GRE, Subject GRE, or GPA. If that returns something like 100 profiles and they only want to admit like 10 spots, that's probably a good enough initial cut. I think it would be hard to know what the cutoff would be beforehand. Alternatively, I think being transparent about cutoffs would be much more beneficial for applicants. If programs could say things like "In the last 5 years, the distribution of GRE scores accepted are ____" (and similar for GPA, subject GRE etc.) then that would allow applicants to decide for themselves whether they think their application will be deeply reviewed. One problem with this might be that they are not allowed to report data on their applicants. I do not think a school makes that much money on application fees. I think almost all of it goes right to the cost of paying the third party (applyyourself, embark, etc.) for using their system. Assuming that a school admits 5% of its applicants, this means for every grad student they admit, they collect roughly 20*100 = $2000 in application fees. That is pretty much nothing compare to how much a graduate student costs for tuition waiver + stipend over the entire length of their degree. I think the primary purpose of an application fee is to offset third party software costs. And the secondary purpose is to provide a financial disincentive against students applying to all of their dream schools without serious consideration whether they are realistic goals. I would agree that a financial disincentive might not be the best or most fair way, but it is one of the few options available to the graduate school. Financial disincentives should always be accompanied by fee waivers for those with financial need so that it doesn't become an actual unsurmountable barrier. I notice that most current fee waiver programs only applies to American citizens and I think that is fair if the funding from these fee waiver programs come from government programs (i.e. American tax dollars). But I do remember seeing some programs that waive application fees if the applicant is from a list of countries that have more financial need.

I agree with you that if say, in October 2014, they know for a fact that they will not be able to admit any international graduate students for Fall 2015, they should clearly indicate this on the website. However, what if they don't know this ahead of time. The following example is what might have happened at Wisconsin and many places: In Fall 2014, they are still open to all students and accept applications from everyone. They close applications on Dec 15, 2014. In January 2015, they start to decide on the applications. The school splits the pool into domestic and international applicants. They evaluate the domestic students first because they don't intend to invite international students to visit the program (too expensive). They want to notify domestic students ASAP so that they can make travel plans. At this point, they can also easily reject/ put aside a lot of domestic applicants without actual review by professors. After all, if there are 20 spots, there's no need to review in detail anyone not in the top 100 in terms of GPA, etc. There is no reason to carefully review the bottom of the pile to distinguish the 175th best application vs. the 180th best application. This filtering might be automatic (i.e. the committee might say "just show us the top 100 domestic applicants" first and then only go lower in the list if they can't find enough good candidates from the first set). They plan visits for February 2015. At this time, they might also start planning for funding and determining how many spots they actually have. International students cost more and most schools have a Graduate School-wide grant to help the department offset these costs. Usually, the Grad School might offer money to offset the cost for X students, and sometimes the department might have other funding sources to supplement this funding for Y students. Thus, there is an effective maximum quota of X+Y=Z international students in the department at any one time. Let's say the department learns the number of X in February 2015 and can then determine what Z is. At this point, they might also know how many of their current international students are planning to graduate this summer, so they know how many international students they can accept this year. The admissions committee can now look at the international applications pool with this number in mind. In years where this number is zero and no other professor is willing to pay the difference out of their own grant, the committee does not even need to evaluate the international pool. However, at this point, both the domestic and international applications have been processed by the University and department staff, which is what the application fee pays for. The only part that didn't happen is the evaluation of applications by professors themselves, which is part of their job description, not covered by the application fee. Therefore, I do not think it is unethical for a school to collect an application (processing) fee and not have professors review the application. In addition, while I totally agree that in the ideal world, the school would know the value of Z at the start of the application season and therefore can just let international applicants know not to apply if Z is equal to the current number of international students, for reasons stated above, most schools just do not know this number until well into the decision period. I can think of only a few alternatives that would not involve collecting fees for applications not reviewed by professors, but I do not think they are desirable solutions (in my opinion). These alternatives are: 1. Only allow domestic applicants to apply in December. Wait until March 1 or whenever "Z" is known and then open the application to international students only if there is room for international students. International applicants will probably have only a very short time between notification to apply and deadline (in order for decisions to be made prior to April 15). -- I do not think this is a good solution, because this will severely stress out international applicants even more. It means international applicants have to have a separate set of deadlines for many of their schools, and will have to be preparing applications from December through March. In addition, this is not good for the department because most quality international students will probably have offers from other schools at this point and they will not be wanting to put together an application in February. In addition, this might delay everyone (domestic and international) decision notification, making it hard for schools to stick to the April 15 CGS resolution. 2. Refund the application fee for students if there are no spots for international applicants. -- I also do not think this is a good solution because this means international applications are still processed and incur a cost. In order to offset the cost of processing but not collecting a fee, they will likely have to raise the application fee for domestic applicants. I don't think the cost outweigh the benefits here. -- Also, by this logic, I would argue that the school should also refund the application fee for the domestic students who are filtered out by GPA, GRE, whatever because they did not get a careful review (or any review) by professors either. This does not sound sustainable. -- Overall, many schools DO NOT publish GRE cutoffs yet they might still implement GRE cutoffs. I would argue it is the applicant's responsibility to determine if their profile is worth the risk applying to the school. With resources like gradschoolshopper, applicants can learn the median GRE score accepted and determine if they want to take that risk. Similarly, international applicants can learn the fraction of international students at a school (through the school's international program webpage normally), realise the extremely low numbers, see that in some years, no international students are accepted at all. They can then decide whether or not the risk is worth it. 3. Do not collect any sort of application fee at all. -- I think this will result in too many applications and it will mean more time taken away from the professors and staff members other duties, such as research and teaching. This will result in negative consequences for the currently enrolled students (international and domestic). Part of the reason the application fee exists is to prevent people from just applying to 50 schools each year. I agree that having a financial barrier is usually bad in academia, but most schools try to offset this by waiving fees in cases where there is financial need and I think this is one instance where a financial disincentive to apply is useful (for the benefit of currently enrolled students and professors and staff). That is, when most schools do not know "Z" until Spring, I believe the cons of implementing either alternative above are even worse than collecting money from students who do not get their application reviewed. Do you have another alternative solution? In my opinion, when balancing priorities for current students, domestic applicants and international applicants, it makes complete sense that international applicants have the lowest priority (with current students at the highest priority). I am also an international applicant myself. Finally, to address the discussion about quality of international graduate students, most graduate programs do not simply admit the best X students. They usually admit the students that best fits their needs, which change from year to year, and might involve many other factors than qualifications. So I don't think it is very relevant to be concerned about the fact that by rejecting the entire international pool, they might reject some applicants that are better than any of their admitted domestic students. That is, the system we currently have is not perfect. Far from it. But I don't think actions like Wisconsin's are unethical. I think it is almost the best solution currently possible. I do agree that it would be nice if Wisconsin and all other schools are much more transparent in their admission process. In fact, if I was Supreme Ruler of the Ivory Tower, I would make it mandatory that all departments write a set of policies/rules for their admission committees (to ensure consistency through the years) and publish this set of rules/policies online so that all applicants know what will happen to their applications!

I don't think they are purposing withholding information from students! The grad students at the program are sometimes involved in planning the interview/visit weekend too and we don't usually find out any sooner than you do. The biggest constraint is probably professor availability -- all of them are so busy with classes and conferences and other duties that it is pretty tough to both find a time that they are all together and get them to schedule that time this far in advance. Many profs only plan a few weeks ahead at a time. The other reason it might be slow is in small fields like mine (<10 students admitted per year in most departments), they might actually plan the visit days around their favourite candidates (if it's a post-acceptance visit rather than an interview), or the dates that agree with the most candidates. If this is the case, they usually ask candidates to rank some dates upon acceptance.

Sometimes it is an "informal interview", where they will still be evaluating you during your visit. However, I would take it as a very good sign because they would not pay for you to fly out there for nothing. I know that in my field, many schools are starting to do their prospective student visits in this way so that they can get one last screening in case there is a student that is completely different in person than on paper. Thus, I would guess that they want to admit almost everyone they invited, but want to have one last check. But since you don't know for sure, it would be safest to not assume you are admitted. Don't go overboard to try to impress them, but just be your best professional self Have fun!

I started with a Macbook for my home use (and in cases where Linux didn't meet my needs) and Linux (department provided) computer for work use. Two years later, I asked my supervisor to buy me a new computer (the old Linux one was really slow) and I got a 27" iMac, which is much more productive and useful than Linux. I still work on Linux machines (I use the Mac OS terminal to ssh into the department Linux clusters). I prefer using Microsoft Office products for Word Processing, making presentations, making posters, viewing class slides (most profs here use Powerpoint because it's free for all staff and students) and even simple things like text editing (e.g. for LaTeX documents). I also prefer the much more pleasing and easier to use (in my opinion) GUI that Mac computers have. You might be surprised--but I ended up doing a LOT more "filling out forms on PDFs" than I thought I would. There are forms for reimbursements, forms for applying to travel grants, etc. etc. I had planned to only use my Macbook at home, but eventually I needed to take it into work every day. With my new work iMac, I never have to bring in my laptop. So, in the end, the only thing I actually need or want to use Linux for is to run computations or analyses. I mount my Linux's cluster home directory onto my Mac so I edit the code using nice Mac software, and I have a terminal where I can run the code for debug / for science! I would say that if you are buying your own machine, you should buy a machine you like to work with, and keep in mind that most of the world (including your University admin departments) work in the Microsoft Office suite, so you want something compatible with that. I think it's much much easier to make a Windows or Mac computer connect/interface with any Linux machines (using putty or cygwin for Windows; Terminal for Mac) than it is to get all of the non-Linux stuff you need working on a Linux computer.

I'm not in your field, but just to throw in my two cents: $0.01: As others said, a A- is not going to screw up your GPA. It will still be insanely high after your fall semester. This meant you got 0.33 grade points less than you wanted. Out of ~30 or so courses, a 0.33 difference is about 0.33/30 = about 0.01 difference. $0.02: Consistency is much more impressive than best appearance. Grad school is a marathon, not a sprint. That is, it's much more impressive to see a 3.9+ GPA after 3.5 years instead of a 3.9+ GPA after 3 years. And this part might be field dependent, but the last 2 years are always weighted more. Grad schools usually do not see the final semester until after the decision, so showing that you have almost all As in the years that count (junior and first half of senior) is more impressive than showing almost all As in junior year only.

Congrats on a great score! In STEM fields, I would say that TOEFL and General GRE scores are evaluated more at the "minimum" level than the "competitive" level. That is, if your score is above the minimum/cutoff, the advantage you get from a higher score is only minimal. But of course, having a great score can never hurt you, so congratulations! In my opinion, schools should never competitively evaluate candidates based on English speaking/comprehension/writing ability. Obviously, you must be minimally proficient in order to attend the school, so they should have minimum TOEFL/other test scores. However, I do believe the practice of favouring a candidate who speaks perfect English over a candidate who knows the minimum amount of English to succeed at the school is discriminatory. That is, if a school wants to only work with candidates of a certain English ability, they should set this as their minimum proficiency. In addition, I also think it is discriminatory for a school to set something like 85/120 to be the minimum English ability to attend the school but 100/120 to be the minimum to do TA work other than grading. For programs that are typically funded by "human contact" TA work, the program should set the same minimum for acceptance as they do for TA eligibility. Otherwise, they are accepting students with either the intention of giving them work that is at a lower level than their peers, or they are accepting students knowing that they are not eligible for most of the TA positions and thus might not be able to fund them. I know that at most Canadian schools, this "two tier" system is abolished and a student's ability to speak English is not considered when assigning TA positions.

This sounds about right if your courses are 3 credit hours (so then you need to spend 9 hours in the lab per week for it to be the same commitment as a single course). I definitely agree you don't want to prioritize research so highly that your courses suffer, just like you would not want to prioritize any single course so highly that the other courses suffer. However, what I meant by treating it like a course was to prioritize it the same way as any other single course. So, just like you wouldn't always choose one course over another, don't always choose coursework over research, or research over coursework. The only reason I give this warning is because unlike courses, research often does not have tangible and immediate feedback like grades, so I know sometimes it's hard to justify spending time on research when you know you could use those 10 hours to make that A- into an A in another course. But ultimately, your research experience is much more valuable than grades if you are thinking about grad school. 14 hours of in-class work + research course sounds doable to me. Based on my own ratio of "homework to classwork time" (2:1), that would mean I spend 42 hours per week doing classwork and 10 hours per week doing research, for a total of 52 hours working per week. Not that you need my approval or anything, but if you were writing this to ask for feedback, I'd say your schedule sounds reasonable. Of course, you are the best judge of how many hours you're actually able to put into school/research per week since I don't know anything about you or your hobbies / other commitments! And to echo peachypie, typically, large chunks of time are more useful than many small chunks. But probably best to talk to your supervisor to find out what the best use of your 10 hours would be. In general, I would say that two 5-hour days are going to be much more effective than four 2-3 hour days. It would also mean less commute hassle for you and give you the option of adding a third 5-hour day when you can. But it sounds like your class schedule might not work out this way!

I think 10 hours per week (about the equivalent time commitment to one course) is the minimum amount of time needed in order to make it worthwhile for both you (learning new skills) and the postdoc (getting useful help). The exact minimum number would vary based on the project, but I think 10 is a good ballpark estimate. I think the other important thing for you, especially with the commute, is time management. How busy did you feel prior to starting this project? Are you just going to add this extra commitment on and somehow hope to find an extra 10-15 hours per week? If you felt you were taking a full courseload prior to this project, I would recommend that you take one less class next semester and treat this new project as if it was a graded class. If I was supervising an undergrad, I think this attitude of commitment would be more important than how many hours you pledge to the project. That is, I would want to know that you consider this project a priority and a valuable learning experience just like your classes, not just an extra "side" thing you are doing when you have spare time. Just my thoughts! And coming from my own experience working on research projects while taking classes as an undergrad!

No, I did not physically show anyone my list. I just included it with my shipping paperwork since the U-Haul pod traveled separately from me (I paid UHaul to take it for me). It is very likely that no one actually looked at the list at all. In theory, if they decided to check my shipping pod, they would audit that list and even potentially ask me to open the pod at a special warehouse to go over the contents with them. This is not unlike getting pulled over for additional inspection when driving across the border. That is, whether it happens is somewhat random and is not something you would normally expect to happen. Yes, in theory, you can always lie about your list. Just like if you are crossing the border, you can omit some things when you declare. But this is not legal and you will get in trouble if you get caught! I do not expect anyone will cross-check my list of things I brought into the US with the list of things I will bring back into Canada when I move back home. Anything I bought in the US for personal use and owned for more than 1 year is fair game to bring back into Canada under NAFTA anyways, so the two lists do not even have to be the same.

The school usually tells you how to get from airport to school. At one school, the grad student that was hosting me picked me up. At another school, they gave me a discount code to use to book a shuttle (which they also reimburse).

Most of the schools that hosted me asked about any dietary requirements right when they invited me to visit. I think some places will be very open and be very conscious of different diets while others will not be. At one school, I would say that over 60% of the grad students were vegetarian (in a very "hippie" city). At other places, vegetarian diets might not be as common, so you might only have one or two choices. But hopefully, if you tell them well in advance, they won't schedule a social event at a BBQ restaurant (or catered by a BBQ place), for example, since some cuisines are just naturally less vegetarian friendly!

Hi there, I am in your shoes too, but I moved in 2012. The short answer is that yes, you can bring all of that stuff without worrying about being taxed because of NAFTA. There is a lot of fine print but generally the items that belong to you for more than 1 year and are for your own personal use only (i.e. not importing products to resell in USA) are okay under NAFTA. You technically do have to declare them all on the itemized list but they will rarely check unless you are bringing something major down. For example, when we moved in 2012, we had a U-Haul pod full of stuff. We had to submit an itemized list--we probably went a bit more detailed than necessary (better safe than sorry was our thinking, especially since we were not traveling with the pod). So we had a 13 page itemized list, with things like "203 books" and "21 forks" etc. You can be pretty general (i.e. no need to list all the DVD titles, just the number of DVDs -- and we probalby could have said "102 pieces of kitchen utensils" instead of breaking it down into forks/spoons/knives). We moved almost everything we owned this way. But like you, we came back and brought random other pieces of things we owned later on. For example, just last month, we went home and my spouse's mom gave us her own sewing machine. We took it down to the States without any problem -- we did declare it at the US Customs though (although we almost forgot, they had to ask us what was in our checked baggage). But we didn't write it down on a form or anything, just verbally said it. In 2013, I also brought my guitar down in this way -- just verbal declaration at Customs when they ask "anything to declare?" No, we do not get more than $800 max exemption. So, if you are bringing back stuff from the States that will remain in Canada, then you need to make sure the total amount is less than $800 in value. However, again NAFTA is important because it allows for certain things to not count towards this $800 limit. For example, some items made in Canada, United States or Mexico do not count. If you are bringing into something that you purchased in the USA but will take back with you to the USA (e.g. a laptop you bought down here and just want to bring so that you can use it in Canada), it does not count since you are not leaving it there. It sounds like you have already done this, but definitely look carefully at the Canadian Border Agency website for official information -- I'm not qualified in any way So, if you are just going back to visit Canada, the only thing you really have to worry about exceeding the limit are gifts for your Canadian friends/family. Remember that the limit is 60 CAD per item and the total limit is 800 CAD. Last month, we bought back about $300 worth of gifts (no item exceeding $60 though) and that was fine. If you are worried about bringing new Canadian items back to the US, the limit is about the same, I believe (your old Canadian items are covered by NAFTA as mentioned above). Eventually, if you do move back to Canada for good, you don't have to worry about the $800 max exemption because, again, under NAFTA, you can move all your personal belongings across the border without having to pay taxes. Hope that is helpful