TakeruK

What Vene said. Some schools will even accept GRE scores after the application deadline (check first though).

Normally I agree that using research first to narrow down schools is a good idea, but if you are limited to a certain geographical area, then it makes way more sense to start with only those schools. The fact that a school outside of this area is the #1 research fit for you is irrelevant when you are limited to a geographical area. I think the OP did a good job of narrowing down the schools. I think it's not surprising that only 2 out of 12 programs in your limited area turned out to be perfect fits in all ways. My advice for the next step depends on how much you want to go to grad school (vs. other interests): 1. If you want to make sure you attend any grad school, even if it's not perfect in every way, then I would rank all 12 schools in order and apply far down that list as you are willing to attend. 2. If you only want to attend schools that are 100% perfect for you, and you would be happy pursuing other interests if you don't get in, then just apply to those two. Personally, I would lean towards option 1 and apply to a few more schools that might not appear like good fits for now, but this might change when you get an offer and have a chance to talk to people in person. In my opinion, what you did was a good start to determine fit but it's not really a fair sample of what the professors are actually like (some people, like me, are terrible at talking on the phone).

I just want to add that many EU/UK benefits require not only citizenship in the EU/UK but also recent residency. I noticed this when I was looking at UK schools (being Canadian, there were also some benefits to moving to the UK in terms of my spouse being able to work without special permission etc.). Also, I have a UK citizen friend who did a Masters in Canada and said that if he were to go back to the UK for PhD, his absence from the UK would mean that he would be considered a non-resident for admission/fellowship purposes.

Here's what I did: 1. I put my name, application number (if applicable) and page number (e.g. page 1 of 2) in the "header" part. My title was "Statement of Purpose". 2. I also would not mess with the margins. When you are staring at hundreds of SOPs one after another, you will notice when a margin is different. 3. Many schools in my field ask specifically for you to mention professors you would want to work with. I don't think this counts as "name dropping" because you are using their name to describe your research plan, not just mentioning the name in hopes of their favourable reputation will transfer to you. I also mention the name of my previous research advisor in the course of discussing what work I have done in the past. In my field, I would strongly disagree with the "focus on program coursework" comment. I don't think I mention the courses at all in most of my SOPs because the programs I applied to are all research intensive PhDs. In my field, I think it would be a red flag if a prospective grad student said they wanted to attend a particular school because of the courses, since 1) schools want research oriented students and 2) pretty much all schools have the same coursework. 4. I am in the camp that the people who think this is a hinderance are terrible people and I would not want to work for them / I don't care what they think. I don't have children but I specifically mention other family/personal reasons for why I chose X school in my SOP. But, one downside of doing this is that the people on the admission committee might be terrible people that will want to reject you, while you might still actually be happy there if the department is large and you'll just end up working with the people that would support you. If I had to write my SOP again, I definitely would still include all my family/personal reasons though.

Picking a good fit PI is extremely important, in my opinion. And getting timely and useful feedback is one quality that I personally really look for in a PI. For me, when I am stuck on a problem that I've worked on for a few days, I would like to be able to come to my PI, sit down, and spend 30-60 minutes working specifically on that problem, instead of the PI just telling me general things like what papers to read. I personally like a slightly hands-on PI--someone who would sit down with me every week and is invested in the project as much as I am, instead of someone that is merely observing me do my work and offering a hint here or there (but without real concern about my progress). In my opinion, I would weigh the PI personality a lot higher than how much I like a project. I find that it's far easier to change my own research interests to fit my PI's than it is to change my work style to fit my PI's, or even harder, to change my PI's work style to fit mine! But juilletmercredi makes a good point that if this is a brand new prof, they are still learning and can change. My current advisor is a new prof but she was around for a couple of years before I started.

I think the above comment has a lot of helpful tips. SOPs are pretty personal and subjective so each person will have their own favourite way. My way would be: 1. Start with your goal: "I want to pursue a PhD program in X at University Y to study Z." You can go on for a few more sentences to help the reader categorize you. For example, in my field, I would use words to indicate whether I am interested in building instruments, getting new observations, analyzing existing data, or doing theory. 2. Then, I would discuss your research and academic experience that led you to where you are today. Focus/emphasize especially the events that support your claim that you will be good at whatever you said in the first paragraph. I would put any explanation of "weird stuff" in my history here. For a single low GPA semester, I might just write one single sentence (or let my letter writers address it if they know about it--most of my letter writers were research supervisors so they might not know about it). For me, my "weird stuff" was explaining why I chose to do a 2 year Canadian Masters program instead of doing a direct entry American PhD program. For me, the above took up about 75% of my SOP and basically remained the same for all schools. In the remaining 25%, what I wrote depended on each school and I addressed: 3. In this section, I transition from my previous skills/experience to what I want to learn in a PhD program. Similar to paragraph (1) but here I would do more than just "classify" myself as a "type" of scientist and go ahead to discuss my research interests. I would not go into the level of detail of proposing or describing a particular research project. Instead, I would describe a phenomenon I want to study (e.g. atmospheres of exoplanets) and how I would go about doing it. I also discussed what I wanted to get out of a PhD program. 4. Why the chosen school/program is a good fit for your goals listed in (3). I would discuss expertise of the faculty, the nature of the program, and the experiments/equipment/facilities available to students in the program. 5. I usually end with the practical reasons for attaining a PhD--i.e. career/long term plans (most SOP prompts ask for this explicitly).

In Canada, being married means you are allowed to legally use both your maiden name and your married name (although most authorities prefer you be consistent). I think this is the same in the US too? So, I would just continue using my maiden name with ETS. If you have ID with your maiden name, use that at the test center. If you only have ID with your married name, then use your new ID and your marriage certificate, as you said above. As for risks with this option, while yes, the grad school application will allow you to list aliases and maiden names, it might create some inconvenience with their automated system. For example, at UC Santa Cruz, my transcript displayed my middle name differently than my application (extra hyphen) so the computer was unable to automatically match up my transcript, so the online portal kept saying "Transcripts not received". When I called to check on this, they said the people processing the application figured out the right file to match the transcripts, but the online system is stuck that way since the names are mismatched. This didn't affect my application at all--just an inconvenience. Of course, if you go with Option 1, there is the same risk if you use your older test scores! So it's not really a pro/con, but something to watch out for.

If it's under review, then you can cite it the way you would normally cite such a paper in your field. In my field, we cite papers that are not yet published as one of the following depending on the status: Smith, J. et al (2014), "Title of Article", Name of Journal, submitted. (for papers submitted but you have not yet received a review) Smith, J. et al (2014), "Title of Article", Name of Journal, under review. (for papers where you have a review and are currently addressing the comments) Smith, J. et al (2014), "Title of Article", Name of Journal, accepted. (for papers where you have received confirmation that it will be accepted) Smith, J. et al (2014), "Title of Article", Name of Journal, in press. (for papers that are going to be published but there is no volume/issue/page numbers yet) Depending on the journal, sometimes more than one of these steps might happen at the same time. Some people don't distinguish between submitted and under review, and others don't distinguish between accepted and in press. If the application allows it, include any DOIs or URLs where possible. For example, in my field, the arxiv.org preprint server is very popular so people can post submitted papers there and then you can include URL to that.

No, I don't think this would bring up any flags and I doubt they would actually use information from past application cycles in the evaluation. However, some fellowships are time limited based on when you start grad school or finish undergrad so that would be the main concern, I think.

H&R Block said the right thing, but you just stopped reading too early! Here's the full text: So, if your tuition is $15,000 per year and you get a tuition waiver and a stipend of $20,000/year, then you only pay tax on the $20,000/year part (since the income from tuition waiver pays for tuition and is not taxable). The text also says "related expenses" and for grad students, this could be another few hundred dollars for textbooks...just keep the receipts! And as for the person that said they were expecting 22% tax rate--this is higher because non-students pay FICA taxes but graduate students do not pay FICA taxes (Social Security and Medicaid). So this saves us about 6% or so in taxes. For a student with a stipend (after tuition is paid) of around $20,000 to $30,000, the tax rate will be around 10% to 12%. If you are married and are able to file together (international students may not do this) then you can take advantage of lower tax rates!

I just wanted to point out that Bach Rescue Remedy is a "homeopathic" remedy and therefore has no effect and is just a way to con us out of our money. Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bach_flower_remedies Just to be clear, "homeopathy" is not a synonym for holistic/herbal/natural remedies, but is basically based on some very weird and unscientific principles, including the idea that 1) water can retain the memory of whatever molecules it was in contact with and 2) the more you dilute something, the stronger it gets. However, the other suggestion, is a good one. Feliway is one example of synthetic copy of cat pheromones and this has a calming effect on cats because its the same pheromone they use to mark things as familiar to them.

I am not sure what field you are in but I think most conferences in the US do not have debates at the conference. In fact, at least in my field, strong disagreement is frowned upon and considered rude or tactless. For example, sometimes you will be in a session where there will be person who is very aggressive with their questions and will "attack" the speakers who present research they do not agree with. When this happens, everyone is uncomfortable, and usually the "attacker" looks bad. So, I would say "debating" is really not appropriate at an American conference, unless I misunderstand what you mean by "debate". Many big American conferences have websites which might also have information for first time attendees. For example, what to wear, how to talk to people, other "unwritten" rules etc. But here is a few "unwritten rules" type of things that I have noticed from American conferences in my field: 1. Talks are very very short--usually only 5 minutes for the presentation and then 3 minutes of questions before moving on to the next person. So, be a gracious question asker. Do not use up all 3 minutes of the question time by asking one question after another. Also, unless no one else is asking questions, make sure other people have chances to ask questions too, don't be the person that asks a question every single talk. 2. The question period is not the right place to tell someone they are wrong or attack their research. Remember, it's only a 5 minute talk so some details are definitely omitted. Also, it might be hard for the presenter to think up a good defense on the spot. So, the right time to raise serious doubts or concerns is to do so privately during the breaks or some other time. This is not to say that you can ask more simple questions like "how did you know that assumption X is true?" etc. but you should not ask something like "Have you read the papers by A, B and C where they say this entire method is all wrong??" 3. The question period is also not the right time to "self-promote". This will happen and it's annoying but some people won't really ask questions but will raise their hands to say something like "Do you know about X?" where X is their own project that is only very loosely related to the topic at hand. Even worse, some "questioners" might raise their hand and then instead of addressing a question to the speaker, they will just address the audience and say something about their own work instead! 4. Something other than talks/questions: try not to corner anyone during the breaks or between sessions. It's great to meet new people by walking up to them and saying hi and talk about something relevant, but try to always make it easy/possible for the other person to end the conversation and move on to other people. This is mostly recognizing when a quick chat is over and it's time to continue to circulate the room to find more people to meet.

Fortunately, I have not had anyone in academia mention my accent so far. The instructor for this presentation class was an outside professional (i.e. not a professor/researcher). However, I have seen reviews on sites like ratemyprof giving negative reviews to profs/TAs with accents and that's a bit worrisome. So I hope this was just an isolated incident!

My preference for my poster is that I don't want anyone to read it at all, except for something like the "research question" and "conclusion". Other than these sections, almost all my text is just labels or headings. This creates a clean look but the definite downside is that the poster makes very little sense if someone was just looking at it without me to explain it. So I have (and want to) spend a lot of time near my poster. In my field, I find that this works very well--I get positive comments about the design and my explanation of my work!

In addition to what everyone said here, I think it's a lot easier to make friends in the first ~4 months of a new program, when everyone else in your cohort is new and friendless and looking for friends too. So, every time I go to a new place, I force myself to be a little bit more social and outgoing than usual. Say "yes" to almost every social event in the first few months. I would even say that you should "overdo" it a little bit and commit yourself to more social events than you would normally want to. I say this because I am normally a person that likes to hang back and test the waters slowly whenever I am in a new or unfamiliar situation. However, I don't think this is a good way to make friends in grad school, from my experience. If you start saying no to things, people won't invite you to other things (that you might enjoy even more). Once you've established yourself as someone who will go out and do things with your colleagues and that you are a fun person to be around, you'll automatically be invited to future outings and people will accept your invites to things too. After the first 4-6 months or so, once you already know them, you can decline more invitations and people will be understanding and still invite you to future things (as long as you don't completely shut down your social life!) In general, this is part of the advice that I like to give to new grad students and that is, in the first 4-6 months, you should prioritize the "life" part of the "work-life" balance. When you are just starting, it's the perfect time to commit yourself to things like social events, joining clubs, starting sports. I say this because if you want to commit to 50+ hours per week of research and coursework right away, you will feel tired and drained and not want to do anything else that is good for the "life" part. But if you start early and make it part of your routine, whether it's going to the gym, going for a hike, seeing movies on weekends, going to the beach etc. it will be a lot easier to balance with the "work" part if you ramp up the "work" part later.

I agree with fuzzy but with one exception. If you were working during the school year to support yourself and you choose to discuss this in your personal history statement (or diversity statement or some other part of your application), then I would still list "irrelevant" jobs on your CV. That is, if you want to draw attention to the fact that you managed to excel at school while also working 20+ hours per week then including it on the CV makes it even more noticeable. Also, at my undergrad, full time status is 60% of the regular courseload to finish in 4 years, so it's still possible to be a full time student at my school and take 6 or 7 years to finish an undergraduate degree, which might look weird on a CV without an explanation like also working 20+ hours per week to support yourself/your family.

What I mean is that you shouldn't be afraid to sound like you would only go if you are funded if that is actually true. But I'm not saying you should go right out and say that "I must have funding or else I can't attend!" Just to clarify I think if you discuss the lack of funding as one reason for seeking a new program then that is enough.

Interesting--when I first read "higher degree program", I also thought what DMCH thought and that this college wanted someone to finish Bachelors+PhD in a total of 7 years. "higher degree" sounds a lot like "higher education" to me, which means Bachelor level and above. However, upon further research, I learned that "higher degree" could be a synonym for "advanced degree" which does mean Masters or higher. Maybe it's just where I'm from but I've not seen "higher degree" used before today! Anyways, as to whether it's legal, the answer is yes. There are tons of post-doctoral fellowships in my field that have time limits like this, for reasons similar to what Eigen said. Basically, if the intent of the fellowship is to support up and coming PhD graduates, then this limit is important since it's pretty tough for a newly minted PhD to have more papers than e.g. someone applying for their 3rd postdoc!

If the directions say "Only submit 3 LORs" then definitely do not do it, and stick with 3. However, most schools say "3 LORs are required but we will accept up to X". In this case, you might consider submitting the 4th LOR depending on the scenario. Here are some pros and cons: Con: Profs tell me that they basically read all of the letters and then get an "averaged" or overall impression from you based on the letters. So, if you have 3 great ones and 1 "okay" one (as you only did coursework with the 4th), it could "dilute" your average and hurt you. Pros: However, when it comes to LORs, the letter writer matters as well as the letter content. A letter from someone the admission committee knows personally could go a long way, especially since you do have 3 strong research LORs, the "reputation" of your 4th letter writer might make it strong enough to be worth including along with the other 3. I was in a somewhat similar situation where I had 3 research LORs and one potential LOR from a prof whom I didn't work with but this person knew my academic ability very well. So, what I did was talk to this 4th professor and showed him my list of schools and POIs and asked him whether or not he thinks his letter would work as a 4th LOR at any of these places. In the end, I submitted his LOR as the 4th letter for about half of the schools--only the ones where he regularly collaborated with a number of faculty there, and in one case, a letter to a school where one of his former students was accepted and he thought he could make a favourable comparison of me to this student. I ultimately do not know whether or not this 4th LOR made a difference of course. There was no correlation between acceptances/rejections and whether or not this 4th letter was submitted (not a large enough sample size even if there were!). But that's one idea you could consider.

I like this blog/website: http://betterposters.blogspot.com/ because they provide design tips for scientific posters as well as they post critiques of posters that have been volunteered by readers. A lot of design related stuff is very subjective so it's helpful to read a whole bunch of these posts to get a wide variety of different opinions. Then, you can choose the strategies that you like best and what you think works best for your work and your field. I know this is also in the Psychology forum and I'm not in Psychology but there really is a lot of common themes when it comes to poster design, so I think that blog/website should have something useful to all fields! But of course, senior students in Psychology (here or in your department) can let you know if there are any field-specific "rules" you should follow Finally, just to answer your question: I like lots of colour in my posters because you want it to look interesting from across the room and entice someone to make the trek over to see it up close. But I try not to "overdo" it by keeping almost all text in black or white (or some high contrast colour) and only use colour to highlight key phrases, as part of the design, or as part of the figures. And maybe this is a field specific things but since you mention "APA guidelines", I want to say that in my field, we try to make our posters look very different from a paper. I don't think the guidelines for journals in my field look very good when it's in poster format!!

Also, why put yourself through that pain again?

As the OP discovered, the expiry date is when you are no longer able to send the scores, so as long as you send them before they expire, ETS will provide your school with the report. As others said, although ETS will send scores up to 5 years old, individual schools can have other requirements on score age, or they might not want to accept a score that will be expired during their decision period (which might go as late as March 2015). Some tips though: 1. Some schools will say it's okay to just unofficially report your score and they will only want to see the official ETS score report once you accept their offer. Since your scores will expire, you might want to send the official scores in advance anyways! 2. I experienced some problems with ETS score reports for one school where the school did not get the score. They asked me just send them a scanned copy of the test-taker's score report and only resubmit the official score if they accept me and I accept their offer. 3. So, I don't know if you will automatically get a score report when you order them, but if not, make sure you order yourself at least one score report since after your score expire, ETS will no longer keep any record of the score and your copy will be the only one!! I just checked and my April 2009 Physics GRE scores are completely gone...as if they never existed (fine by me!).

I would mention it -- after all, no funding (and thus no chance to do research, one of the main reasons to do a PhD) is a perfectly fine reason to want to leave and go somewhere else where you can be funded and do research! I would keep it brief and very direct--don't make excuses. Something like "I am currently in an unfunded PhD program where I am not eligible for an RAship. I am planning to graduate with a Masters in Spring 2015 and I hope to start a PhD program in Fall 2015. I am applying to University of X .... etc etc" and then along with the standard reasons you give for wanting to go to X, you can emphasize the fact that you are looking for a chance to do research in topic Y etc. etc. Maybe those sentences could be worded better but I think you just need 2 or 3 sentences before transitioning to what you want to do in the new PhD program instead of dwelling on why the old program isn't good for you. In my opinion, I would not want to do an unfunded PhD program so I don't normally mind if people look down upon me when I directly seek funded offers. But if this is a worry (i.e. you would prefer to get an unfunded offer rather than no offer at all), then I guess you could make sure you don't come off as sounding you want funded offers only?

I agree with you completely. I feel fortunate to be able to go through this the "old" way. In addition, in the "old way", a lot of schools offered extra $$ for students who come in with tri-agency funding (Queen's gave me an extra $5k the first year for bringing in this money). Now, I don't imagine schools are going to be as generous when it's their own pot of money that they are granting with NSERC CGS-Ms. However, it might still happen (I'm not at a Canadian school now so I don't know how it might work) since the CGS-M money comes from a University-wide fund while these "bonuses" came from a departmental fund. So, although it's not as much of a "feather in a cap", it still can be viewed that way by some departments, since the applicant will still be bringing in some money that's external to the department. Of course, it's still possible that the school might reduce the department's allocation somewhere else if they provide CGS-M funding though!

I agree with Gvh, and if you are still not sure (and/or the form doesn't allow you to report grades in your own system), then just ask the admissions staff in the department. In most cases, they told me to just leave that field blank. Sometimes there is a "notes" field that goes next to the GPA field and I usually say a quick note about how it's computed (i.e. all 4 years, out of /100, out of 4.33, major courses in years 3 and 4 only, etc.)