TakeruK

For a do-it-yourself option, I think the IKEA glass tabletops might work (normally you buy the legs separately and it becomes a table, but you can probably just get the top and attach it to the wall somehow. Here is the item: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/80221465/#/60221471 I have this item (as a regular table though) and the glass is very nice. Haven't tried to convert it to a whiteboard though.

No, I'm not part of the production

There is the "PhD Movie" by the PhD Comics people. There is about 2 days left in a Kickstarter campaign to fund a sequel--I don't want to link it here since I don't want to be advertising anything, but you can find it if you search the Google!

Like Academicat, I chose to go to grad school because I feel that a PhD is necessary for what I want to do / achieve in my future career. I don't know exactly what will happen after I graduate but I will be apply for jobs in all career paths that interest me! Like many others, I have noticed more and more of the jobs that I want requiring PhDs (or desiring PhDs) so I feel that the time and energy put into a PhD is a good investment. Ultimately, my career goals, in order of decreasing importance are: 1. Being valued for my skills and ability to think rather than my physical labour =2. Work that allows me to impact people in some small way (whether it's teaching, mentoring, or even just collaborating with others) =2. Using my analytical skills and experience to solve problems 4. Ability to travel as part of my work! *(= indicates a tie I guess) If it really came down to it, I would have career satisfaction with just #1 fulfilled. Currently, grad school fulfills all 4 of these desires and will set me up for future career paths that will continue to meet all of my career goals! #4 is more of a "wish"/"dream" though, and one of the reasons I would prefer academic work over working in "industry". However, one of the major reasons I chose to work in Astronomy was because of all the great travel opportunities!

In addition to what fuzzy said, it might be a good idea to check the Graduate Handbook or Catalog or whatever you call the book of policies governing degree requirements. At my program, the minimum time in residence for a PhD is 1 year, which means, in theory, a student can complete the rest of their degree in absentia, if they just need to write. Like fuzzy said, it would be a good idea to distinguish what is necessary and what your advisor just prefers. The grad handbook would be a good place to find these things!

Online rates are very unreliable, don't count on them. They are either way too high because they don't consider a lot of discounts you might qualify for, or way too low because they assume you get all of the discounts. When I first started looking at online rates, I saw quotes that were as low as $50 per month to some that were $300+ per month! To get a realistic rate, you should actually go to an insurance agent (either in person or phone) and give them your actual details. There is a lot of stuff that comes into the calculation of your insurance rate, but the major factors that impact the basic coverage rates are 1. The value of the car you own 2. Your driving experience (sorry to say, you really should have gotten that US driver's license the moment you were able to because that adds years of driving experience and reduces rates). However experience on an international license might count (and would require further proof that might not show up on an online rate). I had to get a letter from the Canadian version of the DMV to my insurance company. 3. Your past claims history (you should be okay here) 4. The usage rating (commute? pleasure only? how many miles/year) 5. Your age, gender, and marital status My spouse and I pay $120 per month for our 2012 Honda Civic but we have a lot of additional coverage on it (some of it is required by the car loan we got). Our rates have decreased by about $5/month each year as the car's value goes down and our driving experience goes up (although I think I am going to max it out soon--I'm currently at 9 years). I know some people who go as low as $40 per month if they just get minimal coverage, but I think this is very risky. We got rear-ended once (not our fault, so no insurance rate increase) and just a light bump with very little exterior damage (but lots inside) cost over $3000 just to repair plus they us additional compensation for lost wages etc (well worth the extra $0.25/month for that coverage), and no one was even seriously injured. I can't imagine how much I would have to pay if a bad accident ever happens in my life, so I would much prefer to pay an extra $600-$1000 per year in additional coverage instead of being hit with a 10+ thousand dollar bill at some unknown time in the future. Anyways, if you are serious about buying a car, you should get that license right away and also talk to several insurance agents to get quotes for various types of cars. They will ask you a bunch of questions to set up your profile and after you do that, they basically can just swap out the type of car you want to buy and tell you that car's rates. You can then determine what you can afford etc. They can also let you know what you can do to reduce your rate and get additional discounts!

Hi there, This sounds like a very tough situation. My spouse and I have similar concerns about our ability to eventually afford children and our current living costs, but we are currently happy with where we are. But, I think both of you have valid concerns about your current and future lives! I bring this up because I think there is one thing about your post that really stuck out to me and it is when you say: I don't think this is true. I can see why it has not made a difference because I really do not think life is magically going to get better for academics after grad school. Grad school is not a time in your life where you can just put everything on hold and resume it in 5 ish years. Maybe some people can do it, but not us. When I first started grad school, my spouse and I felt that way too (i.e. let's just tough it out for awhile) but we have since changed our way of thinking. Life is happening now! If you continue the route for an academic job, post-docs are even more work and I know the tenure track is more work still, from the people I know following this path. Although each person's priorities and ideal balance of family happiness and career happiness is different, and no one can really give advice on that, I think it is really important to not consider grad school as a "phase" you have to get through in order to reach whatever goals you have for your PhD. Instead, grad school is a part of the journey towards that goal! I think allowing yourself to be unhappy during grad school and hoping things will get better afterwards is a good way to remain unhappy for a long time. For your actual questions: 1. I think you should be as direct with them as possible. August is in one month, there's no time to dally now. Let them know that you are leaving and provide as much details as you want. If you want to get into future grad schools, you will definitely need strong recommendation letters from this school and you need to give them as much notice as possible so they have the least amount of impact. In addition, the department is probably scheduling TAships soon and all that, so they need to know you won't be around. 2. Having quit a prior grad program will affect your application. You can definitely still get into other programs though, if that is what you want. You will need very good recommendations from your current school (see above) and as long as you demonstrate that you chose to leave for personal reasons, and not academic or research reasons, then it should not hurt you too badly. They would justifiably be worried that you will leave again because you are unhappy, but at the same time, they know that if you are in a place where you and your family are happy, you will be much more likely to stay. 3. I guess I answered this question with the stuff at the top. I'll add that I am like you, I will choose family over school 100% of the time if it came to an ultimatum. But a healthy work-life balance, to me, means not having ultimatums such that you always have to choose one or the other. I would strongly encourage you and your family to consider all options moving forward and pick a path (whether it's grad school or not) that will make everyone happy. I am a little troubled by your words that it sounds like you want to "convince" your wife/family that grad school is the right path, instead of actually making a decision together. I hesitated to write that since it seems like a very personal situation that I really don't know anything about and I don't mean to be all judgmental, but I hope that is helpful. If not, obviously just dismiss this paragraph

I am not 100% sure how I would approach this. I don't think I would really bring it up too strongly because of the reasons you said but also because I would not want to appear too close-minded about my future research paths. That is, I don't think it's helpful for you to imply that you will only want to do your PhD with this data, unless you really only want to get accepted into schools that will let you do this project for sure. Otherwise, I think being this narrowly focused at the time of application can hurt you a lot more than having your own data can help. In addition, at this point, you don't actually have the data in hand yet. I would be hesitant to make future plans based on a verbal agreement like this, even if it's a professor you know well. I just would not make major research plans like this when you don't know your future plans just yet (since you are still in the applications stage). So, in my opinion, I wouldn't mention it at all. But this part might be more field dependent. I would use my SOP to mostly speak about my past experience to prove that they don't need to hold my hand etc. I would also briefly discuss what research I might want to do in grad school, which could be the research project you're talking about here, but I would stop short of making it sound like I actually have plans to go ahead and do it. Instead, I would just discuss what a potential project could be, and model this hypothetical project off this real possibility. I would wait until I started grad school and bring up this other fieldwork opportunity as a potential project during an early meeting with my future advisor and see what they think. Again, this part might be more field dependent, because in my field, grad students are more like hired research assistant to work on existing project ideas, rather than to come in with totally new research projects/ideas. However, this opportunity is potentially something you can convert into a new collaboration between your new and old supervisors etc. after you start your new program. But like I said above, I'm not 100% certain what I would actually do and that field specific practices might really be different for this scenario.

I know I am not eligible for the exchange (in California) because my school offers a health insurance plan that is about the same level or cheaper than the exchange plan. When my wife applied, she had to provide info about me too and while she qualified, the website gave this reason for me not qualifying (I wasn't even applying but they automatically check everyone's eligibility apparently). But, I don't know what the actual cutoff is and I suspect it might really vary by state and plan too. It sounds like you are saying your health plan costs $900 per semester, and 3 semesters per year so $2700/year, right? This is $225 per month, which is about the same level as the "Silver" PPO plans on the California Exchange. In honesty, I think this is a decent deal because we were paying $7000+ per year until the Exchange opened (pre-existing conditions suck). On the California exchange, I remember seeing Bronze plans at $100-something per month and Catastrophic insurance-only plans at around $100 per month. Perhaps you might still be eligible for these Exchange plans if your school's option is $225/month? Might be worth a check in November. Another alternative is to shop for private health insurance outside of the Exchange. We did this too to compare. We found some pretty competitively priced plans outside of the Exchange as well. So, if you don't qualify for the cheaper Exchange plan, you could work with an insurance broker to set up your own plan that covers the things you need at a more affordable price? If you do this, you should be able to waive your school's plan and save some money. This might go without saying, but obviously you should be careful to make sure your new plan covers enough so that premiums + out of pocket expenses is still cheaper this way! Finally, one option is to see if your school lets you opt out of a plan in the middle of the year. Sometimes you can choose to renew your school's plan by term, so you might enroll in the plan for the first semester/term and then when the exchange opens up this fall, you can compare options. However, really make sure you can opt out mid-year because not all schools/plans allow this!

My MSc program was in Canada, where we do things a little bit differently. Students are often either paired up with an advisor upon acceptance (i.e. the offer basically says you can do a MSc here with Profs, X and Y and you pick one when you say yes) or find one within the first few months. Since all grad students in Canada start in a (funded) terminal MSc program, we are always encouraged to start research from day one. However, in reality, most grad students do not actually start doing real research until the summer. The first year is a lot of time spent learning how to TA, research and balance classes all at once. Students might start learning the very basic stuff of their research, but I would probably say that in my first 8 months of a research-based Masters, I still probably managed to only get 3-4 weeks of actual research work completed (if I had worked on it full time). So, even in a system where things are supposed to be lined up and ready to go, many people do not begin research in earnest until the summer. So, I don't think you have to worry about being "behind" if you are not able to start work right away. Of course, it is probably a good idea to start as soon as possible, but even if you get swamped by classes or need more time to adjust to grad student life, I'd say that if you get nothing done until the summer, at the worst case, you would just be a few weeks behind, not an entire year!

Sorry, I should have been way more clear about the notepad thing. Yes, bring it, but don't take notes as you talk. Keep your pen in your pocket or someplace out of the way! Only use it if you need to draw a quick diagram to explain something, or jot down a paper reference they want you to read, or if they tell you to talk to X or Y etc. Basically, only write down explicit instructions from them to show that you are serious about what they are saying--and also so you won't forget!!

Like many others said in their responses to criminologist, it's fine if they wants to devote all of their time to research--it's not for me and I think it might be a little naive but if that is really what makes them happy, then all the power to them! But the reason for the downvotes and responses is that criminologists' posts also imply that devoting everything to research is objectively the best thing to do and that students who do not are not "serious" or "committed" enough. And I think this is incorrect as well as a poor attitude to have towards one's fellow students.

I agree, I think 9 out of 10 CarFaxes we looked at were used rental cars. We were lucky to find one that was not a rental and also had everything else we wanted! Our (subjective) reasons for not wanting rentals were: 1. They tend to have really high mileages--much higher than average driving rate. This usually means fewer time left on the warranty. 2. Health problems mean that if previous users smoke in the car, it might affect us. Even though Enterprise and others don't allow smoking and charge a "cleaning fee" if you do, I think people break these rules and I'm not super certain that they actually clean the car nor am I certain how thorough of a job they might do. 3. I treat rental cars pretty poorly and I think many others do too. I think for us, it was worth the time we took to find exactly the used car we wanted. But these were just our personal fussiness and I agree that if these things don't matter to you, then a used car is a great deal.

I agree with not buying from a car rental company because I know I don't treat my rental cars very well when I rent them! Also, check the CarFax reports and see what was the registered use of the car by previous owners. Most of them are rentals and I'd avoid that if possible!

These types of meetings can go a lot of different ways, depending on how the prof is and how the group works etc. When I was a second year student emailing a bunch of profs to look for my first research position (if this is what you are doing), my meetings were really just meetings, not formal job interviews. It was basically me and the prof sitting down and learning more about each other--mostly him trying to figure out what I was interested in, what I knew how to do, and what I could do in his group that would be a good learning experience for me as well as provide useful stuff for him. If it's this kind of meeting/interview, then I think the most important thing is to be prepared and interested in what research they are doing. Reading a paper and having questions is a good way to do this. Definitely bring something to write with and it's perfectly fine to have a few notes about what questions to ask. I think you should be able to articulate your interests clearly and concisely. It is fine for a second year student to just say something like "I just want to do research to see what it's like", because that's probably the truth, just make sure you convey the enthusiasm and passion sincerely. You don't need to approach this like a full job interview where you have to sell your skills (because it's rare for a second year student to have many), but you do want to portray an image of someone they would like to mentor/advise. Ask intelligent questions, be knowledgeable in the subject area they are working on (make sure you know the stuff you should be expected to know from your coursework), be well prepared, be professional, and have enthusiasm! It would not hurt to assess your own abilities though and make sure you know how to bring up any relevant skills though, especially if you have developed in courses or lab classes. Another type of RA interview I had was when I was applying for a specific job posting that was advertised. I think these meetings/interviews are a lot more like "real job" interviews. You should have already submitted a cover letter and resume--make sure you bring an extra copy with you to the meeting. Definitely bring a notepad and a pen too. For academic jobs, these interviews tend to begin with a few introductory questions about you and what you know (classes you took, skills you have, etc.) and then they usually spend some time explaining the fine details of the project to you. This is where you can really shine if you did your background research and if you are applying to a job that fits your knowledge. In my experience with these interviews, they will often also describe the kind of work they are looking for a student to do and then ask if you have done something like that before. So, if you are well prepared and know how to sell the skills you have, you can do really well here. When I was an undergrad, I added the co-op option to my degree, which was an extra year (actually 16 months) where you do full time paid work in your field. You have to interview for new jobs every 4-8 months so I have gone through a lot of undergrad RA position interviews of both kinds!

Yes, I agree with this! Most of what I wrote above was about funded graduate programs where tuition isn't completely real. And, in Canada, there are no private universities (that I know of) except for religious schools (definitely no private prestigious research schools like Harvard et al.). So I definitely forgot about the undergrad side of things since undergrad tuition in Canada range from $2000-$7000 per year. So, what you said above is something I really agree with although fortunately, I did not have to deal with it!

In principle, I don't see a huge problem with the idea that universities/researchers should provide some return on investment of public/taxpayer funds. But I agree that if schools solely think like a "business" (i.e. the return they want is money) then that is too bad! Canadian TA labour unions can prevent undercutting graduate TA work through their collective agreements. They make it mandatory for schools to hire graduate students to do the TA work that is normally done by a graduate student. I think this is a good thing because it protects graduate students but it also prevents schools from screwing over undergrad students by hiring a less-qualified undergraduate student to do graduate-TA work for cheaper. This is not to say there are no undergrad TA positions at all in Canadian schools. Many schools hire undergrads to grade homework, grade exams, and proctor exams, which is all fine since it's not something you really need a bachelor's degree to do. Agree! I think that the idea of "if something is not profitable, we should fix it", is good. As I said above, as long as you don't narrow-mindedly consider literal profits, since there are tons of benefits to having a society with educated people at various levels that can't really be quantified as a literal profit. In my field, there is a push to change PhD programs from the old style of "training a full well rounded scholar" to more of a program whose goal is to produce someone able to do independent research within 4-5 years. When I visited schools and talked to different departments, I definitely noticed this divide in types of programs. Personally, I was/am much more attracted to the second type of program. To me, a PhD is an apprenticeship stage for an scientific career (whether in academia or industry or elsewhere). I notice this as programs slim down course requirements (reducing breadth requirements), reduce the number of degree checkpoints/quals/exams and getting students started in research right away. In my opinion, in today's world, people can't afford to take 7+ years to learn everything about their field simply for the love of the material or the sake of knowing it. If grad programs remain this way, it will mean that only the wealthy that can afford the opportunity costs of grad school can do it (i.e. back to the old days of science). I would be supportive of PhD programs moving towards a "vocational" path where the goal is to train employable skills. I think that learning stuff simply for the sake of learning is still valuable, but not something that should be part of graduate school in today's world.

This sounds crazy! I am not in your field so I am not sure if this is just your program or your school. But in my field, it is not the way it works in North America at all. In my program, even with class sizes of like 10-20 students, it's uncommon to attend a lecture and find every single person registered in the (graduate level) class actually present. Every week, there is probably someone at a conference, or have a research meeting that takes priority over class, or doing field work, or needing to be physically present for an experiment etc. I have never been in a graduate class where attendance is taken/enforced. Most graduate students are treated like professionals and we are trusted to make decisions that are the best for us. For your situation, how about emailing the instructors directly yourself instead of going through the graduate advisor? I think the grad advisor's job is to follow the Graduate Handbook, but since ultimately, it's the instructor that makes the decision whether it's okay to miss class, you should talk to them directly? Sometimes the Graduate Handbook/department policies are just very strict on paper but professors are actually much more lenient when it comes to enforcing it. So, the handbook might just have the "must attend all classes" policy because having lenient official policies might lead to students taking advantage of loopholes etc, while in practice, as the graduate advisor alluded to, professors will probably be okay with it. Of course, I have no idea how your future department works so I can't say that this is the case, but I just wanted to mention that it's common for schools to have stricter policies on paper than in practice.

Many Canadian schools have a "soft" time limit. By "soft", I mean that most schools in my field will offer incoming students a guaranteed TAship for X years (usually X=5) and after that, they only get TAships (and thus TA money) if there are still openings after they assign the new(er) students. This doesn't mean you get kicked out after 5 years though, since in my field, most of our stipends and tuition is paid through research work with our advisors rather than teaching. But this does mean that your advisor will be paying a larger share of your costs after 5 years, which puts greater incentive for advisors to ensure their students are on projects that can actually be complete in 5 years (and to make sure the advisor actually advises/helps the student finish in 5 years). I think limits like this can be good if they are implemented properly. Some advisors take advantage of the cheap labour that is grad student work (or perhaps the grad student offers a certain skill to the group that would cost more if they hired someone with a PhD already) and want to keep their students around for 5-7 years. By limiting the school/department's contribution to student costs to X years, this makes sure the profs are not hanging onto grad students as cheap labour. It will make professors reconsider their department's PhD programs to make sure students can actually finish in the time limit, which may change degree requirements etc. I think this is all good--most people in my field feel that PhD programs are already too long (I think the median time to degree in my field is between 5 and 6 years, with the median at my school being 5.7 years). However, limits can also be implemented poorly. If the current median time to degree is like 6.5 years, then it is *not* a good idea to immediately put the 6 year limit in place!! That is, if a limit is implemented, it should not be implemented as an attempt to force a majority of existing students to graduate faster! A change like this needs support from all levels to properly implement. So, I think if a school wants to implement an X year time limit (a good idea), they should first make sure that their students actually already graduate in less than that time limit and first work on reducing the median time to degree before implementing a time limit. That is, I think a time limit is good only when it is present to prevent outlier cases of students taking 6+ years to finish. Such a time limit should also be implemented along with program requirement reviews to make sure the majority of students will not reach this limit! But if a time limit is simply slapped on to "address" the issue of students taking too long, without any review/changes to program requirements, it will have no benefit for students at all. Also, another important part of the support system would be reviews of student progress to ensure that students are moving forward with their PhD work at a rate fast enough to finish before any limit. Committees should review both the student and the advisor and provide feedback to both to ensure the student is on track.

@bsharpe: It sounds to me you are in great shape and on track to putting together an effective and strong application. I answered your question in the other thread too before reading this one, and I think having your advisor go through your list with you is one of the best resources. For me, that really was one of my main sources of information. I also agree that it's tough to really get a true feel for personality fit over email. I was just looking for really obvious red flags at this point--otherwise, yes, the best time to judge personality fit is during visits etc. However, sometimes an initial email will lead to a Skype chat or a meeting at a conference. @victorydance: I agree that it's not very useful and likely frowned upon to email a prof just to see if they can help you with admission. But I also don't want any professors to be surprised by my application either. I definitely emailed every single person that I ever mention by name in the application form or the SOP. I want the professor to find out that I am interested in working with them through a conversation with me, not from reading it on an application package or having the admissions committee tell them. If I met any POI at a conference or if they came to my school to give a talk, I would definitely introduce myself and say hi, and I think email is just a natural, electronic, extension of that.

I applied to 8 schools, each with at least 3 people. That's 24 professors and I didn't have time to read 3-5 papers * 24 = hundreds of papers for applications. Like others above, there are some professors who are well known enough that I did already know their research pretty well without having to read everything they wrote in the last 3-4 years. Or, I came across their work in past conferences, from my honours thesis or from my Masters thesis. I would say that it's helpful to at least read the abstracts of the articles they were involved in. Maybe read one paper that they first authored. I also found it helpful to look at articles in which they are a coauthor and see who the first author is. Is it their graduate student, or is it always themselves or their postdocs? For me, I wanted to make sure I was joining a group where grad students are trusted and trained to take the lead on projects and write it up. In addition, it's important to see what kind of papers have grad student first authors and which papers do not. For me, the most useful information I got about my POIs was from my MSc and BSc supervisors. I went through almost every name/school with them and we talked about what we knew about each person--what they work on, what they are like to work with, how they are regarded in the field, whether or not they were on their way up or declining etc. You don't need to know every POI's interests and history super well at the time of applications, in my opinion. You just need to know enough to 1) show that there is a fit and 2) prove to yourself that it's worth the $100 or so to apply to that school. I spent my time reading up on each professor when it was time for interviews (if you have them) or when it's time for you to make a decision.

I didn't personally email professors ahead of time so that they can directly make a difference in my admission. If you happen to be such a great candidate that a professor would go beyond the normal admission process to get the committee to notice you, well, then you are probably going to be noticed anyways without a professor advocating for you! Instead, I did it for other reasons. First, it's a good way to see who is actually able to take on students and who is actually doing the work you're interested in. In more than one case, when I emailed the professor, I learned that the professor was no longer doing the work listed on their website and has new interests now. Sometimes this was good--the new interests might have matched my own better, and sometimes this was bad. Some professors said they were not planning on taking students from my year. Another one told me up front that he does not have any funding for the project I wanted to work on so I would have to take on extra TAing or find my own funding if I wanted to do that. So these are all useful things to know to help you decide where to apply to. I think this information can also help you shape your SOP to show better fit with the department. So, there might be indirect benefits to admission. Finally, choosing a school / advisor is a big deal to me. I think it's just a good idea in general to talk to people in the department you want to be at just to see how you interact with them. If someone is going to be super rude to me because they are not interested in talking to a new scientist in the field, then I probably won't get along with them. I can understand someone being busy and ignoring my email or sending a short form response, but if they take the energy to react negatively towards me, it's not really a good sign. I kept my notes to these professors fairly short. Just mentioned that I was finishing up my MSc and was planning on applying to PhD programs in X. I told them I was interested in doing work in Y with them and asked if they were planning to take on students in Fall 2012. Also, where appropriate, I mentioned that I will be attending the next [Annual Meeting of our field's national society] and asked if they would be there and if they would like to chat. Most professors either did this or said they would miss the meeting but please talk to Z instead (where Z is their grad student or postdoc etc.).

So I looked up the specs for the 2015 Honda Fit and the 2014 Honda Civic and here's a side by side comparison of some interior dimensions. (http://automobiles.honda.com/fit/specifications.aspx vs http://automobiles.honda.com/civic-sedan/specifications.aspx) (first number is rear dimension, second is front) 2015 Fit | 2014 Civic Headroom: 37.5-39.5 in | 37.1-39.0 in Legroom: 39.3-41.4 in | 36.2-42.0 in Shoulder room: 52.6-54.8 in | 53.3-56.6 in Hiproom: 45.1-51.5 in | 50.5-51.4 in Cargo volume, seat up: 16.6 cubic ft | 12.5 cubic ft Cargo volume, seat down: 52.7 cubic ft | none listed Passenger volume: 95.7 cubic ft | 94.6 cubic ft So I was really surprised to see that these numbers are basically comparable (Civic wins in hiproom as noted above but I think Fit wins overall by a small margin). I had always thought of the Fit as a "smaller car" and I think this probably biased my judgement when I saw a real model of it. Anyways, I take back what I said about the Civic being bigger than the Fit! Thanks for people that pointed this out

We started out the same way too when we were first looking. We checked out the exact same cars and in the end, if we had closed the deal on an automatic transmission car of that size, it would have been around $15k to $16k after all the fees. We were hoping to spend more in the $14k range, but it did not seem possible unless we wanted to go for a manual tranmission (or we were really bad at negotiating!). In the end, we went with a slightly used Honda Civic, because the extra $1500 or so is totally worth a bigger car that can actually fit 4 people comfortably. It was a lot easier picking up our parents from the airport with all their luggage, for example, than the previous year where we rented a subcompact car (mostly to try it out)--the Chevy Spark is super cute but doesn't really make for comfortable seating! Ultimately, we ended up deciding to pay $1.5k more now for a car that we could "grow into" (i.e. when our family grows and needs more space) instead of getting a "Honda Fit" sized car that we might grow out of in 5 ish years.

Our 2012 civic is blue and is named George! As I said above, we got it used in 2013 but the original owner actually bought it in 2011!