TakeruK

It's usually just a formality. But a formality doesn't mean that the grad school never overrides the department. Generally, this would only happen if the department wants to admit a student that doesn't meet the University standard/minimum for grad admissions. These minimums are generally quite low compared to how competitive the PhD programs actually are, so the chances of it happening are quite low, although sometimes the dept will want to admit an exceptional student that doesn't meet one or more criteria. Then, it will be up to the department to lobby the school to make an exception. Anyways, what you received is basically an actual acceptance, so congratulations! Just don't make concrete plans until you have signed the official offer letter from the University though (using "signed" in the general sense, since nowadays this might just be an online form).

Here are my commutes at various times of my life: Undergrad, first few years: 90 minutes each way on two buses (including time built in for transfers) Undergrad, later years: 60 minutes each way (drive to a park and ride, take one bus)---had to change because the bus routes changed Masters: 15 minute drive+walk or 15 minute bus drive (same time because have to park further away from campus to get free parking lol) PhD years 1-3: 10 minute bike ride PhD years 3-5: 15 minute drive Now (postdoc): 15-20 minute drive (no public transit available to work site). However, considering a move to a different area of town which might make the commute between 20 minutes to 60 minutes, depending on traffic (would have to drastically change work schedule to make it more like 20 minutes).

They won't know either since how do they know if it's a normal year or not until the season is over? You have got all the information you could get at this point. In the future, if you are facing a deadline to choose whether or not to take an offer from another school or wait for this one, then that would be a good time to inquire again for an update.

No one can really know whether the people who chose the phrase "high on the alternate list" in their communication to you decided to follow this guideline or not. And furthermore, you, nor anyone else here would know if this is a "normal year" for that particular school or not. But if they are following the operational definition, then it sounds like the school is indicating that you have a reasonable chance of getting admission, but not necessarily funding, due to others choosing other programs before April 15. Not sure how anyone else can provide more information for you though!

If you are filing as a resident (for tax purposes) of Canada, you will be taxed on all worldwide income. You should have two options now: 1. You can try to get a declaration from CRA that you are a non-resident of Canada. Fill out NR-73 and send it to them: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publications/forms/nr73.html If you are a non-resident of Canada, then you only get taxed in Canada on Canadian-sourced income. I think you can easily be deemed non-resident if your family is living with you in the USA and you have no strong ties to Canada. 2. When you report your income to the CRA, did you also claim the Federal Foreign Tax Credit (Line 405)? https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individuals/topics/about-your-tax-return/tax-return/completing-a-tax-return/deductions-credits-expenses/line-405-federal-foreign-tax-credit.html If you are a resident of Canada (for tax purposes), then you need to report BOTH your US income and your US taxes paid. Your tax software should help you do this and ultimately, you will file a copy of your US tax return to Canada. You should not be double taxed on your US income! What they do is first determine how much tax you would have had to pay if it was Canadian income. Then they look at how much tax you paid to the US government. If your US-paid taxes is higher than what you would owe in Canada, you should owe nothing to Canada. However, if you were supposed to pay more tax to Canada than you did to the USA, then you must pay the difference to Canada. (For example, if your tax in Canada would have been 2000 CAD, and you paid the equivalent of 1100 CAD to the USA, then you still owe 900 CAD to Canada). Usually for student level stipends, you normally pay way more to the IRS than you would to the CRA so you shouldn't owe anything to Canada. Check if you correctly claimed this credit in past years. If not, you should file a correction and get your money back!

I'm not sure what you are asking exactly. It sounds like whatever you are telling them will reveal that you didn't use them as a letter writer? For both grad school and postdoc job applications, I didn't use every potential letter writer for every application. Like you, I used the ones that fit the best to each application. If you're sharing good news, such as "I got into X program" but it turns out that you didn't use this person's letter for X program, then I don't think it would be a problem. I wouldn't even mention it. Just share the good news. Chances are that 1) the letter writer won't remember if they wrote a letter for that program or not, and 2) if they did, they probably wouldn't care since they understand that people choose the best fit letter writers. If for some reason, they ask you about it directly, you can say that you ended up not soliciting a letter from them for this program because you already had enough letter writers. If you're contacting them for some other reason, then maybe the above also applies, but if not, perhaps some details might be helpful. Finally, if you are anxious about all of this, and the reason you want to update your letter writer is to share news of acceptance, you could wait until you have all offers in hand and have decided where to go before updating the letter writers.

I have never heard of this being a concern at the graduate level. Undergrad and grad admissions are very different processes and there's no need for a department to boast about high matriculation rates or anything like that. Departments make the admission decisions and they don't care about university-wide matriculation rates and department-wide rates are used for planning purposes, rather than aiming to get the highest number possible. Or, put another way, there are always way more students that the department wants to accept than there are spots. This isn't just a nice thing they say on a rejection letter to make you feel better, it's actually true! Schools do want to know how they compare to other schools you're considering because it helps them plan. If they have 10 spots, they might normally make 15 offers, based on their past matriculation rates. However, if their top 10 candidates all say they are considering their main rival school(s) and they know that typically they get a lower rate when people consider these other schools, the school might plan to make a few extra offers. So they might make 18 offers instead, because if they have a ranked list of candidates and they wait until only 7 out of the original 15 accept to make the 3 extra offers, candidates ranked 16-18 might have already accepted offers elsewhere. Just example numbers here of course. Also, sometimes they might want to nominate some candidates for university-wide fellowships that might have to go in before April 15. The department might have a limit on the number of nominations and they might not get to nominate someone else if their candidate(s) decline the admission offer. So they might want to gauge your level of interest before they commit to you. This question may be part of the process they use. Finally, sure, there is a non-zero chance that a school will consider the fact that you are even thinking about other places as a reason to reject you. I think this is highly abnormal behaviour and it doesn't make sense for school to do. But no one can guarantee you it won't happen. My philosophy is to not plan for these extreme scenarios and not let unlikely extreme scenarios dictate your behaviour! One exception though: It might make sense for a school to consider where else their applicants are accepted to if the school is typically a "safety school". If that safety school doesn't have a ton of funding so that they can't afford to go over (i.e. if they have 5 spots, they only have 5 offers and only make more once people decline). In this case, I can see why a safety school who is considering a candidate that got into their top schools already might decide to not make the offer right away because if the candidate sits on that offer, they can't offer it to someone else who is much more likely to accept. However, this is usually self-correcting, as lower tier schools tend to make decisions after the top tier schools so that candidates who are applying to them as safety schools already have offers and can withdraw or decline. Still, many schools may choose to contact the applicant and ask them about their level of interest in attending before simply rejecting them (after all, there may be other reasons why the candidate prefers that particular school over a top tier school they already have an offer from).

I'm sorry about the terrible experience at your university health center It sounds like the opposite of everything we designed our campus' health center to be! I am glad you have a new psychiatrist now. Hopefully you are able to find the right balance of what information to reveal to your advisor. One note: although you may be worried that your advisor will be shocked about the change in productivity, another perspective may be that your advisor has seen you at the height of productivity and may not be that worried that you need some time off since they know you can get back there? Just thinking positive.

Not always. I did my PhD at a private school and the funding wasn't technically tied to TA and RA work, but we were all expected to do TA and RA work anyways. The TA work was "part of our education" and although it was light (about 10 hours per week for 30 weeks total in the entire PhD), we did not receive any payment for it. Sometimes grad students are assigned to TA classes in areas where we didn't do as well in our quals exams so that we can get an extra review of the material. As for RA work, these counted as course credits. We enrolled in full time research coursework and we did RA work through there so no extra money there either. However, we only did research work towards our dissertation, so we could treat it as if our fellowships were paying our research work and the pay was okay. Every year, we even get a letter from HR to "confirm" that our stipend was a fellowship paid to us and that we provided "no services" in exchange for these money. I think the above setup plus the letter is designed to specifically exclude us from the "employee" class and therefore restrict our right to collective bargaining/unionization as well as preventing us from claiming certain rights for employees. However, the National Labor Relations Board recently ruled that we could still be unionized. And, due to strong student advocacy on campus, there were plenty of good policies that exceeded the state's minimums for employees (e.g. we got paid maternity leave). Compared to what I was used to in Canada though, having all these benefits existing only because of the "goodness of the University's heart" instead of being required to by law was a little unnerving. To clarify: not really complaining, just pointing out that not every place pays extra for TA/RA work.

Hello! You should ask your program how likely you are able to get a TAship. If there is a high chance of TAship, then 30,000 CAD of funding is 2500/month, which is more reasonable to live on. It will be a little tight to support 3 people on that income in Vancouver, but it's not impossible. However, unlike the USA, most Canadian programs pay students the full amount and then we still have to pay tuition from the stipend. So, check if a tuition award is included, otherwise, find out how much tuition you will have to pay. Almost all government grants are for citizens, so you will have to find out about UBC or school-specific grants. For the schools in Ontario (Queens, York), there is the provincial government's OGS (Ontario Graduate Scholarship) which specifically puts aside 1% of its funds for international students. This is not very much which means it is very competitive. Finally, there is the Vanier Scholarship from the Canadian national government that is also very competitive and open to international students. It pays 50,000 CAD per year but most schools can only award it to one person across each of the three major fields (health science, science/engineering and humanities/social sciences). Definitely can't count on those but worth applying if you are eligible. Overall, grad stipends in Canada are quite low in Canada. Without TAship in addition to other sources of funding like a fellowship, it can be very difficult to live in an expensive city like Vancouver. But it has been done! Some pieces of good news though: Canadian fellowships/scholarships aren't taxable, unlike the US stipends. Also, you say that you are spending some money on childcare. If your spouse can find work in Canada, then that could help with costs. I believe that it's much easier for a spouse of a student to get a work permit in Canada than it is for the USA. So, look into that too as an additional source of income.

It's okay to tell your advisor this if you feel comfortable doing so. It's hard for me to say what would be the best thing to do since I don't know you and I don't know your advisor. Some advisors are very understanding of this and know exactly what to do/say because they might have had students go through this before, have friends going through it or maybe they have gone through it themselves. Other advisors can be very terrible with this, either because they will think less of you for no justifiable reason, or because they simply do not know what to do. I am glad you are taking more care of yourself now. Did you find a new psychiatrist? Sometimes the school's counseling or mental health centre can be a great resource because they might have more experience with students talking to professors about their needs. So even if you are seeing someone off campus, checking in with the campus resource could be helpful. As for telling your advisor, again, this is something that is okay to do. You should not have to feel that you are whining or being lazy or overburdening your advisor. That's not true. If you have a good rapport with them and think they will be supportive, then tell them. But if you are not sure, then you can decide how far you want to go. For example, you might not choose to share all the details and instead you can say that you have been dealing with some personal problems in the past few months but you have resolved most of them now. You've fallen behind but will be able to catch up in X weeks. Whether you tell them all the info, most of the info, or just a little bit of information, decide ahead of time exactly what you want from your advisor. How can your advisor best support you? Then ask for that. Serving on grad student health committees during my PhD, this topic has come up a few times and I found that most faculty want to help their students but they generally ask, "what should I do? how can I help my student?". So think about what would help you best (perhaps in consultation with your doctor), whether it's an extension of a deadline or just saying "let me suspend this project for X weeks while I catch up on classes" etc. I am not sure what the consequences of being behind on your research project is. If there is an exam/milestone associated with it, it might be worth asking to move it back by 1 semester. But if it's just a project you will be working on during the entire PhD without any upcoming deadlines, then it shouldn't be a big deal to slow down a bit on it in order to focus on other aspects of your schooling.

I'm not in your field but my experience in academia would be very surprised if this was done on purpose! I get the sense that schools are already bad enough at coordinating intra-campus and even intra-department events that being able to pull off coordination amongst schools at this level would be very surprising! Again, not in your field, but this would also be strange. Why would being desired by other schools somehow make you less desirable to the first school? The first school might refuse your request in order to have you commit to them, but rescinding the offer because you even dared to think about another program seems...unreasonable!

I think you should definitely ask for clarification. If the hotel booking doesn't name the roommates, it could be that the room fits four people so that's what the department asked for in the reservation, but they might not actually fill all the spots. I think four to a room is a bit excessive, unless this is a giant hotel room or something. I know many hotel rooms with 2 beds get counted as "4" for the occupancy even when only two people stay in it. However, definitely better to ask now than to get a surprise when you arrive. There are different ways you might want to do this, depending on what style you like. Some suggestions: 1. Just ask directly. Say that you want to confirm that your roommates would also be women. 2. Ask the department if you would be able to get the names and contact info for your roommates ahead of time. This isn't foolproof but it might give you some information if you don't want to bring up the topic directly, for some reason. 3. You could do both 1 and 2. 4. You could ask a student in the program instead of the dept directly if you are given contact of a current student regarding the visit. 5. You could call the hotel and ask about your reservation. I think this is a reasonable thing to be concerned about and ask, so I don't think there is anything wrong with the direct approach at all. But just giving some suggestions for indirect approaches if you prefer.

Yes, if this is not a US school that has agreed to the April 15 resolution and if accepting you means funding for you comes out of their research budget. They want to know if they are able to count on you actually accepting later if they put aside money for you. Also, depending on the school, these are actually two different decisions. The decision with the prof is committing that you will attend the school and you will work for that particualr prof. The official school deadline could just be a deadline to accept the offer of admission. Finding a prof to fund you could be a separate step. If you cannot commit to the offer by his deadline, you should ask for an extension. If you do it politely and professionally, it will not reflect negatively on you. It's your right to ask for an extension. But yes, it could affect your chances, depending on whether the prof is thinking of accepting another student. It could be that there is another student who has expressed interest in working for this prof but the prof prefers you so they gave you two weeks to decide. If you say you need more time, the prof might decide to go with the other student instead if they believe that the other student is more likely to commit and that this is worth it to them. Hope that helps you decide what to do.

From your other posts, I think you are in a similar field to mine and in Canada, PhD positions are often treated more like job postings. Not as much as the EU though. But for example, for my Masters degree, I was offered admission and the letter said I had the choice of these two profs. I wrote back to say that I am very interested and I would like to accept the offer to that school, but before I did, I wanted to think about the choice of professor more. So I asked how much time I had. The response was "these profs have limited funding for students and they have made other offers too, so as long as the spot is still open you can have it". This also happened before the application deadline. Typically, the "right" thing for profs to do is to give you the right of first refusal to that position for some short amount of time, e.g. two weeks, before making additional offers to other students. Since STEM profs in Canada often fund students directly out of their own research grants, which are often quite tight, the scenario is more analogous to a job search than admission at a US PhD program. Profs may start reviewing applications as soon as they come in and they might make early offers if they see someone they really want and want to "lock them in" before they apply elsewhere. So, it sounds like this prof might have thought they were doing this (the "right of first refusal" thing by giving you two weeks to decide). In hindsight, you should have asked for more time or fully commit at this point (i.e. withdraw the other applications). However, I agree that you should do what's best for you and you should probably follow the other stuff that fuzzy wrote about. I would be hesitant to be in the same program as this prof though, unless you know that he would be okay with it. Since the other two offers are better for you and since one of them is from another university, perhaps you should write back to this first professor and apologize and say that you were too hasty in your earlier decision. Say that you have to now decline his offer and apologize for the trouble. Since the prof made it clear that it would not be appropriate for you to do this earlier, I don't think they will be very happy with your choice. But maybe through your interaction, you can determine whether or not being in the same program as this prof would still be okay. In addition, if you are interested in the other prof from the same University and that prof is in the same department/program, you should talk to the other professor before accepting any more offer. Let them know what happened. Committing to a prof in one dept then switching to another at the last minute could cause tension between the two professors. The other prof might value their relationship with the first prof and they might not want to upset their colleague by accepting you. If you end up going with the prof from another school, then you won't have to worry about this too much. I personally would feel very uncomfortable staying in the same program after going back on your word like this, however, as others have said, it really depends on the individual and I don't know them!

I also want to point out that an undergraduate's experience at a particular school may be very very different from the graduate student's experience at the same school. (In addition to all the things that change with time, advisor, department, etc.). I feel like the type of student that would excel and thrive as an undergraduate where I did my PhD would be very different from the type of student that would excel and thrive as a graduate student there. I felt like it was an excellent and nurturing place for me as a graduate student. I don't think I would have done very well as an undergrad there at all and I am very glad that my undergrad school was very different than my PhD school.

I think a better/more correct phrase is "inferred rejection" not "implied rejection", unless the school specifically said something to the candidate that implies rejection without actually saying they are rejected? As others said above, I think most cases of these "implied rejections" are actually the applicant inferring that they are rejected based on the fact that the school has sent out a large number of acceptances. But sometimes these guesses can be wrong! Especially in my field, where there aren't usually an explicitly waitlist. Some schools just make all the offers then send rejections two weeks later. Some schools accept in waves but they only notify the acceptances---not hearing yet might mean they are way down on the list and will be rejected or it could also mean that the applicant is likely to get accepted in a future round. The reason that my field doesn't seem to do explicit waitlist is because most schools don't just rank waitlisted people and make offers down the waitlist. Firstly, they often make more offers than they have spots for (like how airlines overbook flights) because they know not everyone will accept. So, even if a bunch of people decline the offers, they aren't necessarily going to make offers from the waitlist---not until more than the expected number of people decline their offers. In addition, schools often seek a balance of representation of fields/interests in their incoming classes (since students work with profs, it would be more efficient to spread the students around the faculty, not have them all concentrated in one area), the offers made to the waitlist will likely depend on the interests of the students who have declined. Because of these reasons, I think schools in my field prefer to not notify about waitlists because they often make a large waitlist (in order to meet the two criteria above, especially the diversity in interest one) which means that notification of waitlist can give false hope! Although usually if a candidate inquires about their status later in the season (perhaps they need to decide on another offer), they can get some sort of information. All of this is to say: make educated guesses/inferences as you feel comfortable but remember it's not over until it's over.

Did you ask your professor what they mean? I am assuming a "taught Masters" means a coursework-based Masters, not a thesis one. In general, Canadian PhD programs expect thesis-based Masters so if you go this route and want to do a PhD in Canada, you may have to do a Canadian Masters with a thesis first (2 years, as you probably know, rather than typical 1-year Masters in the UK or USA). How true this is will depend on your field---in mine, there's only one program that generally accepts students right out of undergrad. However, for a US PhD program, they normally accept students from a Bachelors degree. A Masters in the USA means something very different than a Canadian or UK Masters. So you would have no problem getting into a US PhD program with a UK masters since you would already be eligible with your Canadian undergraduate degree. But maybe your prof knows something extra? Or maybe your prof means that since you will be physically removed from North America, it will be harder to visit North American schools and your letter writers in the UK will be less known to North American academics. This might be true, but I wouldn't worry about it too much for the MS->PhD stage. As @avraven said, it might also depend on how well known the UK school is. When I was in my (US) PhD program, there were tons of people with UK Masters, including Americans who wanted to do a Masters before a PhD. However, all of them were indeed from Cambridge or Oxford, i.e. the really well known English ones! To expand on this topic though, I do think that a UK/EU PhD would make it harder to get a postdoc/permanent job in North America, at least in my field. Here, your connections do matter more and the length of a UK/EU PhD is so much shorter that it would be hard to compete with North American students who had a couple of extra years to publish papers (of course, if you are very productive in the UK/EU, which you could be, since there are no classes and no teaching, then this won't matter).

In addition to what fuzzy said, if they don't/aren't able to tell you who you might meet with, read up / prepare for the people who are most related to your field of research. If you show up at an interview and don't quite know all of the details** of the person way outside your field, people won't really care, since they'd know you didn't get a schedule and this person is way out of your area. But if you show up to an interview, meet your POI's collaborator or someone who might be on your committee and don't know anything about them despite working in a very closely related field, it might be a problem! ** I don't literally mean all of the details. As fuzzy said, no need to memorize their CVs or anything. But just be aware of their work and interests. When you meet a prof there that does work similar to yours, hopefully you would already know that upon introduction rather than being surprised that you share interests!

Ask the first school for an extension. You could also ask the other two schools on their expected timelines, perhaps mentioning that another school wants you to respond by Feb 26 but you would like to ask that other school for an extension. If you ask the other two schools in this way, you're not asking for earlier notification (which you shouldn't do, unless you somehow think you have leveraging power over the school---most students do not). But it will give you a timeline so that when you ask the first school for an extension, you can specify exactly how long you need (or have an answer if they ask). It would be awkward if the other two schools were planning to release decisions on March 12 but the other school only gave you until March 10 or something (then you would have accomplished nothing with the extension and have to ask for another one).

To be clear, I wouldn't read too much into this. They might just be full for students this year or maybe there is some super important commitment they couldn't break. It would be also pretty hard to figure out who aren't meeting with students since you won't know everyone's visit schedule. I meant the advice more like "here are some things that happen that allows profs to not have to directly tell a student that they will take them while also planning a way to leave". But in general, if you requested a meeting with a certain prof that you think have a great research fit, and they don't end up on your schedule, and you see them around the department on those days, and they don't say anything to you in the lines of "sorry our schedule didn't match up etc.", then it's a red flag to me in any case. It might be that they are planning to leave, but even if they aren't, showing that little interest in meeting you might mean that they aren't that interested in you after all. I might try to reach out once again for a Skype chat but it's something I would be concerned about.

Like fuzzy said, you can definitely ask and I certainly think there are several ways to phrase it politely. In my field, funding for students often come from the professor, so one way to phrase it "politely" would be to ask if they have enough funding to support you for the entire PhD degree, for example. It is not a direct ask, but it brings up the idea that you are seeking someone who can support you the entire length of the degree. This gives them a chance to reveal any plans they might already have and feel comfortable revealing. However, as fuzzy said, unless the information is already public, the chances of them revealing any plans to leave to a prospective student is very low. Instead, I know professors might find reasons to not meet with the student at all. This might not be possible if they have plans to leave but no one else knows yet, since they would be expected to meet with you and it might raise flags to their dept head if they suddenly stopped being interested in new students. That's just part of how academia works, I guess. One other thing you can ask is to ask about tenure rates and how often faculty are hired / leave during your visit. Most of my visits included a chat with some sort of department chair or graduate student coordinator or director of grad studies for the dept, or some person in a similar role. I asked this question to all of the depts I met. It's good to know, although you can't count on, whether or not they plan on adding more faculty members soon, and whether the dept will seek to broaden its expertise or reinforce current strengths.

Three worked well for me. Although I only applied to places I was really interested in, after getting the decisions back, there were 3 schools that stood out as slightly better fits than the rest. I ended up visiting the 3 schools in just under 3 weeks from late Feb to mid-March. I moved one school's visit to be a few days later so that I could visit it at the beginning of the week, then visited another school nearby at the end of the same week. Took a week off and then visited the last school at the end of the 3rd week. It also helped for scheduling purposes that the other visits were all later (late March) so my plan was to only visit the other schools if the first two visits turned out badly. But after the first week of visits, I was pretty sure I would attend one of those two over the other offers (except maybe the 3rd) so I was able to decline those visits after that first week. The decision was also made easier since one of those schools would cover very little of the visit expenses due to their budget so while I would have still visited if it was one of my top choices, I felt it wasn't worth the time and money if I was no longer as excited about it.

Depending on the source of your income, your school might withhold taxes (often more taxes than you actually owe). So, if you don't file a return, you might end up losing more money. Beyond that, if you are choosing to break the law (depending on what country you are talking about though, since not all countries tax their students), then I don't really have any advice for you here. Probably should talk to a lawyer.

This is one of the questions I always tell people to ask the current students and the professors when they visit a school during a recruitment or interview event. Some schools would love to help you out but they just don't have the funding or the infrastructure to do it and you'll have to find it yourself. I would also say that especially at the PhD level (and even at the Masters level), it should be your responsibility to find external funding outside of the department for things like travel. Faculty might be able to lobby for you to receive internal funds within the department by talking to whoever holds the purse strings, but external travel grants are the students' job. That said, you also mention research grants and such and yes, my experience in STEM is that there are workshops and such to help you submit. For one big grant in my field, we are all assigned admin staff to help us with the official grant submission and to ensure we follow grant rules. It's tricky because it's an official NASA grant in our advisor's name (but we actually do all of the work), however, since it's still an official grant, it needs to go through the steps that faculty grants go through (office of sponsored research etc.) that we normally have no interactions with. So ask about things like availability for funds to present etc. when you are visiting. When talking to profs, a good way to phrase it is something like, "How often do you send your students to conferences?" and you can follow up with questions like what types of conferences etc. For me, a good answer is something like 2 or 3 conferences per year, usually one "expensive" one and up to two "cheaper" one. Funding amounts varies with field and also with school though. For a school with $$$, I'd say that STEM students can expect something like $6000 per year for travel. For a school without this kind of money, you can't expect that though and be careful not to sound out of touch in the way you ask! When talking to students, ask them how often their advisors send them to conferences. Ask them what their advisors cover. Some profs apparently only cover expenses there and not travel (??) and others don't cover meals because the reasoning is that "you have to pay for food at home anyways". The ideal case is government per diem levels. Basically ask if they feel they have the funding for travel required to advance/support their careers. Often, people talk about rank just being a number and that it shouldn't factor into your decision too much. And to some extent it's true---a good research fit and a well known advisor will do much more for you than a brand-name school. But, often a brand-name school is correlated with how much funding it has for its students!