TakeruK

Well, this has recently changed with NSERC (not sure about the other 2 agencies). In previous years, the NSERC P/CGS-M is administered by NSERC itself, so while you would apply through your undergraduate school (if you are at a Canadian school), NSERC ultimately decides who gets the awards and the P/CGS-M award holders can choose where to use their award. However, in recent years, each school is now given a quota of CGS-M awards so you apply to the CGS-M award for each individual school. So, now, indeed, getting the award is very closely tied to acceptance because the school will only give the award to people they accept. For the NSERC -D level awards though, you still apply through NSERC and NSERC makes the decision. The graduate school will not see your NSERC application and the only way they will know about it is that you would indicate that you have applied for NSERC funding when you apply to the Graduate School. So, the contents of the research outline has no impact on your admission at all. The decisions for the NSERC -D level awards are usually made at the end of March / first week of April. For most schools, this is well after they already made their initial decisions for admission, so it's also unlikely that there is a causal connection between the two. However, there is definitely a correlation because top students tend to get admitted and top students tend to get NSERC CGS-D awards. I would say I would be very surprised to hear about someone who was good enough to get a NSERC CGS-D but did not get into any Canadian grad school. In general, it's far harder to get a CGS-D than admission. Oh and for timing to write the research proposal--I would say approximately 12-15 hours on it, including the time to read all the background papers, write and make edits. I did it all in about 2 weeks (I applied back when you applied directly to NSERC for both -M and -D awards so the deadlines were around mid September to mid October). There are a lot of other things you have to write for the NSERC application too though, and you have to get LORs. Overall, I would say it's about 40-50 hours of work (i.e. one full work week) for me when I applied to these awards. It's time well spent though, since the potential value of the award is $105,000 over 3 years (for the NSERC CGS-D).

In my field, this is fairly normal. You would work with your former advisors and in my field, advisors are always coauthors on the paper. I have done this on multiple projects where I left the first school and started a new program. On paper, I became an "external collaborator" at the old school instead of a "student", which also allows me access to important things like journal subscriptions etc. When the work was published, I had two affiliations listed with my name.

I'd follow up after a month or so. However, if you sent your first email like 2 weeks before the application deadline, I wouldn't follow up at all, since I wouldn't want to be sending these kinds of emails after the application deadline has passed and they are making decisions. Like you, I sent my emails to ask if they are interested in a student for topic X so that I can decide whether or not to apply to the school, and obviously this is pointless when the application deadline has passed! In general, I sent the first set of emails around October and a followup in November. My response rate was roughly (I sent emails to approx. 24 professors): 1/3 of professors did not respond at all 1/3 of professors gave very short emails that range from neutral (standard info about applications/saying that US schools don't usually hire grad students directly into a lab/no commitment on whether the prof would want to work on topic X) to potentially slightly annoyed (i.e. statements like "Please apply and talk to me when you have a decision") 1/3 of professors gave actually useful information and wanted to discuss potential work further with me, or also equally useful, telling me that they are no longer working on X and/or they have no funding for X (so that I would need to do extra TAing and apply for grants if I wanted to do this work). On average, I emailed 3 profs from each school, and coincidentally, for most the schools I received one reply of each type! I don't think the negative responses hurt my application success rates and I definitely think that while the negative responses don't make you feel good, the positive responses are well worth it. I actually don't worry too much about the negative responses because I really wanted to work on a certain subfield in my PhD and I didn't want to be in a program that made no promises on what kind of work I could do. That is, I wanted to jump right into work in a certain field instead of spending the first 2 years trying a bunch of stuff and then starting dissertation research. So the negative responses helped me figure out which profs/programs I might not get along with as well.

I was in a similar situation, however, in Canada, it's completely normal for students to apply to a different school for their PhD after finishing their Masters. In fact, you have to reapply to the same school even if you want to stay in the same place for a PhD because the Masters and PhD programs are two different programs (you count as a "new student" again and you almost always must have a Masters before applying to a PhD). So I started my Masters in 2010, applied for PhD programs in Fall 2011, defended and graduated with a MSc in August 2012 and then started my PhD program September 2012. One of the reasons I wanted to go somewhere else was a very similar reason to yours--there weren't any courses or training in my specialization; but my advisor and I got along great. After a year there, I talked to the professors about this and they were honest with me that they don't really have any plans to change things and encouraged me to apply elsewhere for my PhD because they knew they would not be changing their program any time soon. All of the professors, especially my advisor, were very helpful in preparing me for PhD applications and did everything they could to make sure I could succeed. During the PhD application process, I met a lot of other students (in Canada and the US) who were in somewhat similar situations--that is, applying to PhD programs while currently in a Masters program. The majority were still applying from undergrad, but it wasn't as big of a majority as I thought it would be. Even though the US system is direct to PhD from undergrad, at every school I visited, I found plenty of people entering with Masters. That is, while it's not the most common path, it is definitely not totally abnormal for students to apply for graduate programs while enrolled in another graduate program. For your situation, it's not exactly the same because you are in a PhD program and they are expecting you to stay for 4 years. Here is what I think about the various complications: Don't expect anything in terms of the department bringing on people in your specialization. There are just way too many factors here, e.g. does the department even have a professorship open, will they want to fill it with your specialization (i.e. gain breadth) or continue to hone their expertise with more people in their current areas of depth. As a single graduate student, we have pretty much no sway in the department decisions. Also, the timeline for hiring a new person can take several years! Many times, a department is perfectly willing to wait 1-2 years for a new hire to finish up their current postdoc or something. In my experience with my department hiring people, the whole process takes on average, ~2 years, from the announcement of the job posting to the person actually arriving and starting work. If there's not even a job posting, I wouldn't hold my breath and the "possibility" of hiring someone is meaningless. Thus, you should make your decision whether to stay or go based on the current structure of the program/department. I would not expect there to be enough changes between now and 2018 for it to make a significant difference in your PhD. However, since you might have only recently started, I would also say you should give it some time to see what the department is like. I'm assuming that you are fully funded since it's a PhD program, so you are not going into debt for a program that might be not great for you? If so, then I'd say to just go with the flow for this first year and see where it leads you. Perhaps you will find yourself interested in a new specialization that this program is great for. If in Fall 2015, you still feel like the program is a bad fit, then it might be a good time to think about whether you want to continue or not. You really do need support from your current program for a new graduate program to feel comfortable taking you on so it might be a good idea to be honest with your department in Fall 2015 if you want to leave. Do what's right and let them know that you would like to leave with a Masters and start a different PhD program in Fall 2016. This might have consequences like losing your funding / TAships etc but it would be professionally good for you since you can wrap up whatever project, hopefully not burn any bridges, and get strong LORs for your PhD applications. However, full honesty might not always be the most viable choice--you'll have to decide in a year or so!

I have to agree with surefire's statement that you are really pushing buttons with this approach/attitude, not pushing boundaries. Academia is not that much different from many other workplaces--think of it this way: if you were an employer and set up your job application a certain way, would you want to hire an employee that criticizes your approach to hiring and/or tries to use as many loopholes to get around your requirements as much as possible? Sure, there may be one or two cases where a creative job applicant can earn a job this way, but that's definitely not the norm. So, why would you expect academia to be different from this? The application requirements are there because the professors want them to be there. They are not "surface level" and treating them that way isn't going to help you in the long run. How are you going to feel when your paper abstracts are limited to (for example) exactly 250 words? Obviously the quality of research is not tied to this magical arbitrary requirement, but that's the limit for journals in my field. Like any other workplace, in academia, there are many arbitrary rules that people just have to follow to practicality and/or fairness (it wouldn't make sense to allow 1000 word abstracts, but it also wouldn't be fair if some people were allowed more than other; thus some arbitrary limit must exist). Instead of trying to find ways to "get around" or circumvent them, find ways to meet them instead! You don't need all 3 of your LORs to be super glowing to get into grad school. Even in more research based fields, some students find it pretty hard to get 3 LORs from research supervisors. Most people get as many as they can (usually 1 or 2 depending on the opportunities they had) and they fill in the rest with LORs from as closely related professors as they can get. In your case, you have 2 LORs from your field. Just ask the next best person you can think of to write your 3rd LOR--even a standard bland LOR is better than an empty slot or an incomplete application (which might not even get reviewed). I'm not sure why you would even want to "get around" this. As for your other requirements, it seems like you're set. As you said, your GPA can't be changed and it's great that you are getting more research to make up for it. Your school doesn't need the GRE which is great. I think it's a terrible test too, but since the schools I wanted to get in required it, I took it. If you are applying to schools that made the choice to require the GRE, it's not wise to declare to the school that you're too good for the GRE, or that you should be granted a special exception somehow, even though every other applicant is doing so. I do appreciate people with the courage and determination to push boundaries where necessary. But, there is a right time for boundary-pushing. It is absolutely the wrong time to push boundaries when you have no power at all (i.e. in the applicant stage), If you want to create change or influence people to accept a different, probably better, viewpoint, you need to first gain mutual trust and respect. You can't just come in telling everyone that they are doing it all wrong and that your way is the best (even if your way is better!). Keep in mind that some of the boundaries you are trying to push might also be boundaries that people already in the department are trying to change too. And the "come in with guns blazing" approach to cause change might actually undo or otherwise undermine the efforts of those who have worked to gain mutual trust and respect and trying to change things for the better. Finally, the above about my appreciation for boundary-pushers only applies when the boundaries you push are indeed for the greater good. For example, convincing the department to do away with (or reduce the importance of) GRE scores after you've already been admitted might be a "greater good". But, your situation here sounds a lot like you want to do this for personal gain--i.e. make an exception for you! "Pushing boundaries" has noble connotations to me, but not when it is only for personal gain!

If I understand your post correctly, you are already almost done your second undergraduate degree right? If so, I am pretty sure the grades in this second degree will weigh the most strongly in your application and doing well here will definitely show the admission committee that you are not the same student you were in your first program. So, I would say go for the research or if applicable in your field, relevant work experience. I would not worry as much about your "overall" GPA (i.e. all courses from all 3 degrees) and I think schools will mostly care about the GPA in your most recent 4-year degree. This is from a sciences and Canadian school perspective, though.

It might help you to know that Caltech's school year begins on September 29th this year. I applied to Caltech in 2012 and although I don't remember exactly when it opened since it was already open when I started, but it will definitely be open by Nov 1! I'd guess the applications begin some time in October, once they start the 2014-2015 school year.

Here is an example case that does control for various fields of study. The Physics subject GRE is often a required exam for many astronomy grad programs. Here is a blog post from an astronomy professor at Caltech who collected data from their accepted applicants: http://mahalonottrash.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-gre-test-that-fails.html The prof shows the distribution of the PGRE scores of accepted applicants, sorted by gender (the black and red histograms). It shows the median score for male students is 740 while for females, it's 660. If you are not familiar with subject tests, the scores range from 200 to 990. In addition, the blog post also writes about some other studies on the distribution of the General GRE scores based on race and gender; and also an old study (back to 1996) showing basically no correlation between GPA and Physics GRE score. The prof provides all this as evidence to back up his claim that the GRE is a better predictor of gender / race than it is of undergraduate academic performance or ability. I think there are at least two reasons to be disturbed: 1. The first might be that if schools use very strict GRE / PGRE cutoffs then some students from disadvantaged groups (in terms of GRE scoring) might miss out on opportunities that they are qualified for and would excel at. I feel that many schools in my field do not weigh the GRE scores very highly so this may not be as big of a problem, however it's still something to worry about. 2. The second is something the prof also brings up in his blog post: "stereotype threat". This is the concept that if a student knows they are part of a group that is expected to do poorly, then it can influence that student's performance negatively. There is more information in the linked blog post as well as other studies of stereotype threat.

Hmm, it might make a difference. Here are some sample MBA application resumes that I found with a search: http://www.mbaadmissiongurus.com/sample-resumes#

I also do not think this is a good idea for grad school resume/CVs.

The GRE is an American invention for American schools. So, it's really only US schools that require the GRE. I think some Canadian schools will ask for GREs for international students (but not Canadian students) and I think some fields (e.g. Psychology) in Canada require at least the subject GRE. As a non-American, I was really surprised to learn that there was even a standardized test at the graduate school level!

How does the Pakistan grading system compare to Canada? In Canada, a 2.48 is really low and well below many cutoffs. However, it depends how this GPA was calculated. In Canada, 2.48 is something like 65% or so, which is not so low that you are only barely passing, but it's not considered a good grade at all. For some courses, this grade is not high enough to allow you to take the next level. That said, I know that many other countries grade differently and a 65% in some places is actually really good, so if you just convert % to GPA, it can give inaccurate results. It might be helpful to consider the student's standing in comparison with their class. In Canada, I would say usually the top 1/3 of students go into the large graduate programs and maybe students that are at least in the top half of their class might be able to attend a middle tier grad school. For international students, I'd imagine the criteria to be a lot harder because they cost more to Canadian schools. It might also help to know that Canadian schools rarely do "auto-rejects" based on GPA cutoffs. Instead, what happens is that the department first gets the applications and then decides who they want to admit. They make the choices and forward the applications to the University Graduate School, which usually has some kind of GPA cutoff (in top schools, this is about a 3.6 and in other schools, it might be 3.0). If the department wants to admit someone below this cutoff, they will have to appeal to the University Graduate School to make an exception. And finally, many schools in Canada will consider the GPA based on your 3rd and 4th year classes in your field more strongly than your overall GPA. In fact, at my undergrad school, the 3.6 GPA cutoff is only considering the "upper level" (3rd and 4th year) classes related to your major (e.g. if you were a physics student, this would be classes in Physics, Astronomy, and Math).

I saw this claim and I checked their numbers -- they have 4700 international students (according to the Director's letter) and a total population of 42000 students, so this is about 11%. Most state schools are in the ~10% ballpark, so while 11% might barely beat 10%, it's a pretty weak claim. And state schools have much smaller rates than private schools. Harvard has 4,500 international students out of 28,000 students, which is about 16%, however the population of international students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is 34% (http://www.gsas.harvard.edu/dean_and_administration/gsas_fact_sheet.php). Similarly, at my current (also private) school, 40% of students are international. So, while UW-M could have "one of" the highest international student populations in the US (i.e. perhaps right behind all of the private schools, which there aren't too many of), I would say that it is only marginally higher and not really a significant statistic!

Right--the NSERC applications are divided into about 10 or so different committees that evaluate your proposal and since there is a quota on # of awards per committee, you have to stay within your committee. For me, that committee was "Physics and Astronomy", so that's quite a large range of topics!

Not sure if you mean NSERC CGS or SSHRC CGS. If it's NSERC, the CGS "outline of proposed research" does not have to be an actual project you will be working on, just a possibility. In both my -M and -D awards, I talked to a professor whose work I was interested in, told them about my interest in working with them and that I was applying for a NSERC CGS award and asked if they would spend some time with me discussing a research idea. That would be an approximately 30 minute conversation, then I went off and wrote up the 1 page proposal. In both cases, the prof gave me something like 6-8 papers to read and answered any questions I had. The prof that helped me with my -M award also volunteered to proof-read and gave feedback on my draft. I found this to be really helpful because this way, you are can tap into the professor's wisdom and experience in knowing what a well-defined grad student level research project is. For example, you want to make sure the material is both interesting to the field and the scope is small enough to be completed in 2 or 5 years! Make sure you are up front with the prof about the nature of the application and the non-binding agreement for both supervisor and student. Maybe I was lucky but it was easy to find people to help me with this part. Again, the research you propose is non-binding (at least for the NSERC CGS-M in 2010 and CGS-D in 2012**; maybe the rules have changed). In both cases, I did not work on the project that I proposed, I did not work with the prof I proposed with (their name does not appear on the proposal though) and I did not attend the school of the prof I proposed to work with. (**Note: For the NSERC CGS-M, the proposal was completely non-binding; for the CGS-D, the rule was that you change your project at any time if you submit a new proposal) So, check the rules that apply to you (i.e. which agency and which award) and if possible, remember that you are not bound to the research so you just have to pick a good project to write about, not necessarily one you will like. In my opinion, they evaluate the proposal to determine your suitability to perform research and your preparation for your field!

In most Science/Engineering fields, international PhD students are fully funded, just like American students. However, many schools have higher tuition cost for international student than American students, which means you will cost the department more money to fully fund you. Usually, it is the public state schools that have this issue, while private school have the same tuition for everyone so it's not as big of a problem. So, that is why it is usually much harder for international students to get into US state schools. In the University of California (UC) schools (public), only 10% of graduate students are international. I am at a private school in California and here, 40% of graduate students are international. My professors predicted that I would have a much harder time getting into the public California schools and they were right--I was rejected at all the UC schools I applied to!

Definitely agree with this. How many schools to apply to depends strongly on your situation and goals (e.g. you might be geographically constrained, or trying to get into top tier programs only or trying to get into a school in the same area as someone else etc.) That said, I do think a good safe number for most cases is about 7-12. Yes, that's a big range but it depends on the field! Some people split their schools into "reach", "match" and "safety" schools and like to think about their applications in that way. In my opinion, graduate school admissions are a crapshoot because there is a lot of unpredictable factors involved. For example, you don't have very much information to estimate the other applicants. What is good enough for a certain school in 2012 may not be good enough in 2013 as both the number of spaces change and the quality of the applicant pool change. That is, for a typical applicant, I believe you should select your "match" schools so that you has a good chance of getting in 2 or 3 out of the entire set. Usually, I'd estimate the chance of getting into any one particular "match" school would be around 30% so choosing something like 6-9 "match" schools is a good idea. I think it's also important to select tough "reach" schools too! This would make up the remainder of your application set. If you would rather attend any school instead of no school at all, then one or two safety schools is a good idea too. I'd characterize a "safety" school as one where you know you will get in...like >95% chance! But if you want extra insurance in case you picked "match" schools that weren't really "match" schools, then perhaps you would want more than just one safety. Overall, if you can afford the time and money in submitting "typical" numbers of applications, then you should not be afraid of rejections! Applicants who get 0 rejections may have been aiming too low (of course, there are exceptional candidates that will get into the top schools)! Grad school is a place for us to challenge ourselves and push our limits. **However, all of this is predicated on the fact that you are also picking schools that are great fits for you in terms of personality and research, too! Don't pick schools just because they are hard/easy to get in

I agree that this is tricky and that it's tough to tell for us, as an outsider, because we likely don't have the full story. It also depends on the experiment? That is, what is the reason for having 60 different datasets? If all 60 are supposed to return the same result but only a small number did and you only report the small number that agree with your interpretation, then this is likely poor research practice. However, if there are 60 different datasets that are not likely to return the same result then it might make sense for a short talk to only discuss one result. Or, if you are not certain that all 60 datasets have been experimented on correctly, or analysed correctly, you can present your one experiment that works as a "proof of concept" that whatever you are trying to show could potentially work. But this means you have to clarify that you are doing 59 other datasets and so far you have not yet replicated this result. If it matters, I'm in a field where talks are not as important as papers. I would say that if you did something like this in a paper though, it would definitely be very fishy!

In my opinion, I think you are thinking about graduate admission the wrong way. Graduate programs want to admit students that they believe to be the most beneficial to their program/department, not just the ones with the best GPAs, LORs, or test scores. For some programs, they simply want the "best" candidates, regardless of background or experience or research interest. These programs believe that if you take the top people, they will do great work no matter what their interests are. Other programs have a different strategy where they try to recruit the best "class" at once. In these cases, the top 5 candidates might all have the same subfield interest but if they only want a max of 3 from any subfield, then some "lower ranked candidates" from different subfields might get admitted instead of some higher ranked candidates from a saturated subfield. That is, the program is being selective at the holistic class/cohort level, not at an individual level. In addition, factors such as GPAs, GREs, LORs, research experience measure more than just individual skills. Some students, based on their family socioeconomic background, or gender, or race, or sexual orientation, etc might have different opportunities to fully demonstrate or develop their skills. For example, consider two students with a 3.7 GPA. One student did really well in high school and had a full ride scholarship. Another student did not do as well in high school but worked really hard in college to get the same GPA. In addition, the second student worked a part time job during the school year and full time in the summer in order to earn money to pay for college. Even though the GPA is the same, I do not think they tell the program the same thing about both students. So, my point is that grad schools want to admit people that they feel are the best for their program. Sometimes this is GPA based, sometimes it's GRE based, sometimes it's personal history/experience based (as in your example), etc. I do not think this is "flexibility" or some kind of decrease in selectivity as you might be implying. Instead, all of these factors are equally valid and important for schools to consider. I would argue that all of these factors are potentially part of the school's decision and "selectivity". Of course, which factors are important to each school will vary.

Interesting. My school had an independent program funded by the Graduate Studies office itself, separate from the McNair program. Because this program targeted especially students from non-traditional backgrounds, such as students from families with less money to afford these kinds of trips, the program paid all expenses fully. However, perhaps the reason the program ended here was the same as the McNair--maybe the programs were not as effective as they had hoped and they decided to invest that money elsewhere (or the funding source ended).

I'll respond to these latter points, as a fellow first generation university (of any type) in my immediate family and first generation graduate student in my extended family. I will try to avoid making science-centric statements if I can! 2) For Canadian schools, it's almost always MA first then PhD. It's fairly normal and I'd say equally likely for Canadian grad students to either stay at their MA school for PhD, or go to a different school for their PhD, or enter the working force with a MA (i.e. no further school). 3) Here is a good timeline from astrobites.org: http://astrobites.org/2014/08/28/applying-to-grad-school-in-the-us-a-timeline Note that this is for US schools and is originally written for astronomy/physics grad programs. However, if you are a first generation grad applicant, I think this is a great start to see the big picture/overview of the application process. Specific details will vary from country to country and field to field (e.g. the fellowships) but general process (e.g. getting LORs, GREs etc.) are the same. If you are applying to Canadian schools, note that most of our deadlines are Jan-Feb rather than Dec-Jan. 4) The only way to know if you can do it is to try! Go do that undergrad thesis and learn. Try to get research experience if you can. My most helpful resource was my undergrad thesis advisor. He was a mentor to me and basically an "academic parent" that taught me the "unwritten" rules of academia and helped me understand how everything works. Above all, believe in yourself and it might seem very daunting to be part of this completely foreign world but take every opportunity you can and don't be afraid to fail. Go for it!

For extra fun for the cat's human companions, you can decorate the outside of the box too. We had a giant, strong cardboard box that was decorated like a castle and had openings for cat to poke its head/paws out and attack invading mouse toys.

Wow this seems like a tough issue. Just to clarify: You are starting a new, temporary position which insists on getting a LOR from every single former research advisor. However, one of them does not want to write you a LOR and it sounds like they would not write you a positive glowing LOR. In my opinion, I think it is best to be upfront and honest with the national lab / new employer. I would tell them that you do not keep in much contact with one of your undergraduate research groups and after inquiring about a LOR, the prof said that they do not want to write a letter. Then, I would ask the national lab / new employer if they would waive the letter requirement from this advisor. You should not need to compell/insist on your old prof giving you a letter unless you feel there was no other way. So, I would first check with the national lab to make sure they really really want the letter. If they insist on the letter or else they won't hire you, then perhaps you could decide if you want to let your advisor know about the situation. Unless it's some weird bureaucratic thing, I would doubt the national lab needs the LOR from your advisor to make a hiring decision, especially since the advisor could just send a 1 sentence letter saying "This student did work in my lab." or whatever. I think the national lab would already have enough information to make a decision knowing that your adivsor didn't want to write the letter. That is, either this will be a red flag for them, or they won't care, and there's no point for you to further pressure your previous advisor unless they absolutely demand it.

I'm curious -- since you say you've been "accepted to attend", I am assuming this implies a competitive process to get a spot in the recruitment visit. Does this mean that your expenses will be fully (or at least partially) reimbursed by the school? My current school used to pay to for exceptional candidates to vist prior to applications, particularly from under-represented student groups, to encourage these students to apply to the school. These students also have their application fees waived. This program has stopped, unfortunately, but I wonder if other schools are still doing it!

I am not an American and I still agree that you are trying to make this into a bigger deal than it is. When I was applying, I knew my chances at publicly funded state schools are crap. I didn't apply to UW-M, but I did apply to the University of California schools. I saw the stats--10% of grad students are international and their incoming class is about 5-6 students per year. That means I would not only have to be the best international student in the pool this year, I would also have to be better than whatever they think might apply the next year. Sure, I still applied to a few public schools, but as an international student, I did my due diligence and knew the factors I had to overcome. So, I adjusted my application strategy and applied to more private schools than public schools. I became most interested in the school I am now at, where 40% of graduate students are international. None of the schools told me this information -- I found this out by talking to professors, talking to students, reading online forums like this one to see stats. At PhysicsGRE.com, many people post the text of the rejection/acceptance letters like "We had X spots for Y applications" so that gave me a lot of ideas too. I believe that all of this work is part of the application process and is no different than doing your research to make sure the profs you want to work with are a good match for you etc. In that line of thought, I do think it is a good idea you originally wrote this thread. It's important to let other international students know that UW-M will de-prioritize their applications, in case they didn't already know. After all, it's places like this where I got my information in the first place. However, we don't agree that this is wrong at all. I do feel that schools that require an interview should let applicants know about it ahead of time. No matter what they say, it's pretty obvious that an applicant who is able to make it to an in-person interview would have a much better chance at impressing professors than an applicant who can only do a Skype/Phone interview. So, if they let students know that an interview is to be expected, then students can decide if it's worth applying. I decided that I should check the UW-M genetics website to see if they mention interviews: So, from this text, it's clear that interviews were expected to happen! Finally, this leads me to wondering something though. Are personal interviews a good practice? As I said above, doing personal interviews actually provides a huge advantage for students who are able to make it to an interview. This means international students, applicants who are currently working, applicants requiring childcare etc. are disadvantaged if they can't fly out for an interview. I know that some jobs in my field have eliminated the practice of in-person interviews for early rounds and instead, only do phone interviews for the initial rounds so that everyone is on a level playing field. This means my friends who apply for jobs in the same building actually have to call into the interview so that it's fair for everyone. They won't do in-person interviews until the number of candidates is small enough that they can accommodate everyone's needs (i.e. afford to fly everyone out, afford to pay for childcare where necessary, afford to make interview schedule fit around candidate's other ogli etc) so that again, everyone is on an equal playing field. So, as I have said above, I definitely agree with you that UW-M does not follow what I consider to be "best practices" but they are certainly behaving within ethical bounds. In my opinion, I think you do have a valid point if you are simply trying to point out a way that UW-M can improve its transparency. However, this is very different from what many others have interpreted your tone of your posts, which is that UW-M has acted very wrongly and unethically.