TakeruK

Prior to my MSc program, my SO and I spent a month on a road trip from our hometown to my MSc school (i.e. combination of moving trip + vacation). We arrived about a month before my program start date, intentionally, and we spent most of that month getting settled; standing in line at various government offices getting our health cards, driver's licesnes etc.; figuring out a good daily routine; and doing touristy things in the area since well, it was still summer! I went to school/work once that month to "check in", get my keys, claim a desk etc. but I basically tried to spend the two months doing as little academic related stuff as possible!

This is a good money saving tip too. If your car is rated for "daily commute", the rates will be much higher than if you rate it only for "leisure" (i.e. use on weekends only). My spouse works and commutes with the car so this is not an option for us (I bike to work though). Still, we don't use our car that much so we are able to get a slightly discounted rate by limiting our annual miles to 7.5k per year. So far, even with a couple of road trips, we are only at 6.5k miles and it's less than 1 month left in our insurance year. Also, we save money on our insurance by taking out three policies instead of one: auto insurance, renters insurance and personal liability umbrella policy. Having more policies mean a greater multi-line discount on all our policies. Also, most of our liability is covered from the umbrella policy--we take out minimal liability policies on auto and rental because our umbrella policy will cover it, which saves us some money too.

Although I might start prep for TAing a course one week or two early, the main worry of me starting prep months in advance is 1) I'm not getting paid for it at this time, yet I am still working. This is okay in my books if it's work I will have to anyways and I have nothing else to do in the summer so this would lessen my hours later on in the term, though. 2) Starting too early might mean I spend more time on the course that I would like to / are supposed to / are paid for. For me, I find the best strategy is to stay about 1-2 weeks ahead of my students and spend approximately the same amount of time on the material as the students are supposed to. This prevents me from spending too much energy on TAing (as much as I love it, the school is paying me to work on research for X hours and teach for Y hours) and also keeps the material fresh.

Almost all societies have student rates. Some student rates require one or two "full members" to vouch for you and/or a professor at your school to certify your student status. It makes the most sense to join after you already started since it's a lot easier to get these signatures when you have arrived. In addition, some societies have special deals for new members (e.g. CASCA gave me the first year free, AAS gives you 2 years for the price of one). While some societies extend this "new member deal" to any new member, others limit this deal to your first year only. So, if there is a "first year only" deal, it's a good idea to join within the first year. If not, you probably do not really need to be in the society until the first year you want to present at that society's conference/meeting. I find that a lot of the other nice society membership perks isn't super critical so if you are in a PhD program, if you are a member for years 1-5 or years 2-5, it won't make a huge difference and might save you $70-$100 on dues.

My first car (that I officially owned) was my family's old "second car" that my parents gave to me after I finished undergrad and I used it to move me and my SO across the country for my MSc program. I didn't really "look for anything" since I was happy to be gifted a car! But I really liked that it was something I was familiar with and used to driving, especially since our vacation/move-across-country was a 6000km trip! We sold that first car before moving to California for my PhD program. We went the first year without a car because my single grad student income didn't really pay all the bills for 2 people, and it takes a lot of paperwork and time for my wife to be able to get permission to work (as a Canadian) as well as find something suitable for her skills and experience. So, last year, we bought a (very lightly) used car (2012 Honda Civic--it was 1.5 years old and only had 8000 miles on it). We had a lot of time without a car to think about what we really wanted to get in a car and in the end, we decided to invest in a new-ish car rather than buy a ~10 year old car for just a few thousand dollars. Here are things we looked for in our car shopping: 1. A car model with a reputation for a long life and easily sourced parts. A Honda Civic or similar is great for this. 2. A used car, but is only a year or two old. Cars depreciate a lot as soon as they are driven off the lot, so it makes sense to get an "almost-new" car. 3. We tried to get as much information about the car's prior history--better to not get an old rental car. Our used car history said that it was a "company car" and given that it only got 8000 miles on 1.5 years, we figured that it's prior use was pretty low. 4. Car still under original warranty. Most major dealers have 3 or 5 year warranties and add on an extra year or two when you buy a certified used car from the dealer. 5. It wasn't a necessity but it was really nice that our Civic has a digital display (speedometer, odometer etc.). With one easy button, we can convert all the numbers from metric to US units This is important so that we can easily take this car home to Canada one day and not have to always squint to read the smaller metric numbers or do mental math! These above criteria were important to us as a long term investment. We expect to use this car for the next 10-15 years so to us, the increased price of buying a newish car was worth this investment. Thus, we were planning on keeping this car way beyond grad school. I could totally see another scenario where we might have just wanted a car to last us for a few years and push "investing in a car" down the road. But we figure that we will probably remain on this continent for the next while and we plan on starting a family in the next few years so a car would be essential. Since we have the income now (with both of us working) to pay off a car, we figured this was a good time to invest in one instead of trying to pay off a lot more bills later on in life along with the car. In terms of cost, we paid around $17,000 last year for the car. We made a decent downpayment with some savings and took out a really good car loan (2% per annum interest for 5 years) from my school's credit union. We're making sacrifices in other places to pay off the car in the next couple of years. However, we figure that owning a car generally costs around $4000 to $5000 per year when you factor in all costs (especially insurance). So if we do get to use this car for the next 10-15 years, if we split the cost of the vehicle across this time, it's another $1000 or so per year to operating costs. Basically, we thought about buying a newish car now as making a commitment to pay $5000-$6000 per year for the next 15 ish years and in return, we get the benefits of being able to drive where we need to. Whether or not this kind of investment/expense is something each student can take on comfortably really depends on each person's income and personal situation. My field pays its students well and having two incomes really help. Random internet searching says that we should not spend more than 20% of our take home pay on cars, so perhaps that's a good guideline for what you can afford. For perspective, our car expense is probably our third biggest item in our budget (first is rent and second is health/medical/dental costs). Finally, we generally choose the most basic package of options that come with the car, since things like leather seats are not really worth the extra price (and not really something we can afford to add). In addition to what I wrote above, our main priorities were a reliable car that is easy to maintain. We are not "car people" that really love our cars, I think of it as a tool and an investment! The only add-on that we usually picked was automatic drive instead of stick since neither of us knows how to drive stick. But if you do, that can save you about $1000 or so. That was a lot of random stuff and hope it was what you were looking for. Feel free to ask more specific questions too, either here or via PM (if it's more personal).

I have a similar section to your "leadership" category but I call it something like "service" instead. I didn't include things that were not related to my career though. That is, I did not include something like "president of basketweaving club" but I did have things that are academic (e.g. VP of a physics student society) or things outside of academia but involves related skills (volunteer instructor for youth group).

The brightness issue is exactly why I love my Kindle Paperwhite. The e-ink screen is not like a LCD/monitor screen because it doesn't emit any light of its own. It really does work like paper, except the "ink" can change The light comes from a small bulb at the base of the device and lights up the e-ink area, so the light is not much different that having a reading lamp. You can adjust the brightness of this lamp or have the Kindle automatically adjust based on your ambient light. This was one of the features of the Kindle Paperwhite that made me want to buy it compared to just reading things on my laptop (and it's much smaller too!)

I only belong to two societies: the American Astronomical Society (AAS) and the Canadian Astronomical Society / Société Canadienne d’Astronomie (CASCA). However, the AAS has divisions for specific fields of study, and these divisions hold their own annual society conferences too so I am also a member of two divisions related to my work (membership dues are like $5 more for these divisions). As for how much is too much -- I would say that it's probably worth it to be a member of 1) the national society for your field in the country/countries you want to work in and 2) the societies for the conferences you regularly attend and 3) not to be part of so many societies that you are wasting your money on dues. One good tip is some American ______ Society/Associations have partnerships with their equivalence in other countries (e.g. AAS and CASCA) so you can be a member of both at a reduced rate sometimes.

This is so confusing in Canada because we borrow a lot of UK words, so some official documents will refer to MA/MSc/PhD students as "postgraduate students" but we also borrow from the US a lot so other official documents will also say "graduate students". Graduate student is slightly more dominant right now, but I remember the first time reading "postgraduate student" and thinking "there's more school after a PhD???"

I think that you can include this. In my field, I see academics include this as a type of service, along with things like "Referee for _____ Journal", or "Served on panel for _____ grant" or perhaps as a chair/co-chair of conference session. I don't usually see this, in my field, listed in the same way as one might list a conference publication/presentation or as a paper though. Usually only senior grad students are asked to peer review papers so this type of stuff doesn't generally show up until a student is closer to the end of the PhD. So, for you, if you don't have anything else to go in this section, it might be strange to have a section by itself. If you have only this item, perhaps you can include it with other service that you have completed or just as a major entry in your "experience" section where you describe this internship.

You should clarify with the department what the provisional statement means. As jeffkiller said, usually funding comes with an admission letter, so if you didn't see anything in the letter, it might mean you have to self-fund. But check with the department to see whether or not funding will come later. I would say that you should be careful to not count on any funding until it's in writing--so assume you won't get any until they give you a written funding offer. Usually provisional admission means that the department will accept you but the graduate school has to give final approval still. Or it might mean that you will be accepted as long as you meet certain requirements within some timeline. Ask them to clarify. Or perhaps in this case it really just means that you have to prove that you can show them enough money to pay for all tuition + living expenses before they can admit you since you can't get an I-20 without proving this. TA and RA money can count towards meeting the roughly $45,000 you need to provide. If you don't have a TA or RA offer, then you must show that you can pay all these costs from your personal/family money or an external source.

My Canadian education experience is the same as surefire's In Canada, I have only ever met one person that insisted on being referred to as a PhD Candidate instead of a "PhD student". In the US, I have yet to hear anyone refer to themselves as that outside of an email signature. Candidacy requirements vary a lot from program to program so it's not always very meaningful. In my current program, candidacy is satisfied as soon as you form a thesis committee and finish all your course requirements and get them to sign off on a plan to finish--there's no exams or anything! So I think many of us in my program feel like candidacy isn't really an accomplishment, but I know other programs at my school have actual exams and/or oral defenses for candidacy!

I answered this in your other post as well. In summary though: 1. This is not a visa interview because we are not being granted a F-1 visa at the border, we are granted F-1 status. 2. The questions I got were: a ) Can I see your documents? b ) Is this the first time you are entering on this particular F-1/J-1 status? c ) What are you studying and where? (your I-20 says your school and program details so I think they are just checking) d ) Have you ever been in the US before? (they want to know if you have had other visas/statuses--I told them I have visited the US on vacation before and they don't seem to care)

I noticed that you are a Canadian from your other related thread. It is very easy for Canadians to enter the US! We don't technically get a Visa ever. Here is the general flow of events for an international student wishing to study in America: 1. School issues I-20 to student to certify that they will sponsor student on F-1 status when they arrive. 2. Student uses I-20 and other necessary proof (proof of income/savings etc.) to apply for permission to enter the US. This is called a visa, sometimes referred to as a F-1 Visa because it's the permission to enter the US on F-1 status. The Visa is a page that goes into your passport and has your photo and all that biographical stuff on it as well as a potential expiry date. **Canadians skip this step**. 3. Student takes the visa and I-20 and crosses the border. At the border, the customs official reviews your documentation and grants you F-1 status. They do this by stamping your passport with the date and location of entry and they will write "F-1" and "D/S". The first is your status that you were granted and the second is the length of time your status is valid for. D/S means "Duration of Studies", so you will be legally on F-1 status as long as you are a student, or until your I-20 expires, whichever comes first. You are also issued an I-94 form at this point, however, this is all electronic now (when I first crossed, it was a page stapled into your passport). Generally, at step 3, you do not go through a very thorough interview. This is not the visa interview that other citizens have to do. My border agent just asked to see all required forms, asked where I was going to go, and asked if I had ever been issued any visas/statuses in the past. However, it is possible for you to have to go through "secondary screening" at this point. In case it matters, my crossing was at the Vancouver International Airport. I am writing all this stuff because I wanted to make sure that you knew that Canadians do not actually get a visa at all, and that you knew the difference between the F-1 visa, F-1 status, and what actually happens at the border! In summary: F-1 visas are generally issued by a US Embassy or Consulate and grant permission to enter the country for a purpose. An interview is required. These may expire or have limited entries. Canadians do not get this. The I-20 form is issued by your school's international office and is proof that you are eligible for F-1 status. F-1 status is actually granted by the border agent when you actually enter the US. This is indicated by a passport stamp and an electronic I-94 record. The I-94 also proves you entered the US legally. You can print a paper version of the I-94 record after you enter the US. Once you are in the US, you will use your I-20 form whenever you need to prove that you are a legal non-resident alien (for getting a driver's license, signing up for health care, getting a social security number etc.) When people had paper I-94s, some places wanted this too, but with electronic I-94s being more common, you are not asked for this as often. Still, I would recommend printing your paper I-94 as soon as you are able to, just in case. Hope this all makes sense!

Hold onto the physical copy of your degree, at least from the BSc level and upwards. Some schools don't issue replacements easily (or have expensive fees to do so). I have only used my official BSc degree once, when I needed to prove to an insurance company that I am a college graduate in order to get a discount on my rate. I used my MSc degree once too, to prove to my current PhD program that I finished my MSc program. I keep all of my degrees with other important documents, filed away in a safe place. Just good to have in case!

I agree with everything Fuzzy and Gnome had to say about quality of letter over reputation of writer (although both are important factors!). In my opinion, out of the 5 letter writers you mention, the first 3 are clearly the better choices. The last one is definitely not a good choice because she does not have a PhD yet -- this is still sometimes a good letter but since you have so many other better choices, I would not choose her as a LOR writer. I am not sure if the 4th person is as good as the first 3 either. In my field, research supervision is the best type of letter and "did well in class" type letter are only better than no letters at all. If you didn't have as many opportunities to do research, I'd go with the 3 professors that know your writing and your work the best, which sounds like the first 3 on this list, by a large margin!

I say whatever term that has the most meaning to whoever is asking. For most of my family, they do not really know the words "undergraduate" and "graduate" (and more confusing "postgraduate student" is the same thing as "graduate student"). So, I just say "I'm working on my PhD" and that's something they understand, because they recognize the degree title. Actually, for most people not familiar with academia, I just tell them that I'm working as a researcher and occasionally teach because a description of what I do is a better answer to their question than the label of graduate/PhD student. Also, the label of "student" implies that I'm not getting paid and I am tired of hearing random relatives who don't know me telling me to "get a job" etc. In the US, I usually say graduate student to most English speaking academic people because that's basically synonymous with PhD student in my field (the people with Masters in my field are those who left early or just got it on the way to a PhD). But I don't really think about it, sometimes I just blurt out PhD student.

I would upvote WriteAndKnit too if I didn't already run out of votes for the day! Both the above gave good advice. I don't think there is a "right" answer to how much is too much. It all depends on what you can afford and what you are willing to live without. My spouse and I got a lot of furniture when I first started grad school but this was because 1) it's a lot easier with two incomes and 2) my spouse isn't a student so I would say our needs/desires for comfort might be higher than the stereotypical graduate student living conditions. Personally, I also need/want a lot of creature comfort, especially after a long day at work--I want to be able to go home, feel comfortable and relax! That said, here are some tips that I think can help save money (sure, two people = two income but also some increased costs, and grad students / young adults don't generally get paid much anyways). 1. Kitchen sets can be really expensive. But I would personally choose to skimp on the kitchen table chairs and spend it on a couch because we spend much more time on the couch and really only sit at the kitchen table for < 1 hour per day for meals. However, I would say to get a 5 piece set (table + 4 chairs) instead of a 3-piece one since the price difference is usually something like $30. But chairs individually can cost as much as $50 each. Since we don't spend that much time on them, we just got very simple wooden ones and then added a IKEA cushion ($6ish) to make it hurt our butts less. Much cheaper than buying nice padded chairs for $50+ each. I think a couch + 4 kitchen chairs is plenty of seating if you have guests over. We also picked up a couple of folding camping/lawn chairs to increase seating when we have more people visiting. 2. We chose to invest in a very nice mattress. Both of us have back issues so a crappy night's sleep can really ruin our productivity for the next day. Given that we spend almost 1/3 of our life in bed, it's worth the investment, I think. You can haggle the price on these, don't pay the ticket price. I agree with getting a floor model where possible as long as it still looks good. Given the long lifespan of a mattress, it's easier to think of it as an overall cost per year! 3. Ikea desks are really cheap. You can pick a surface (even a nice black glass one) for like $15 and then get some legs for $10 or so and you have a super cheap desk that looks sleek and is also easy to wipe down. 4. We started with very little in the kitchen and slowly purchased items as we had more money / needed them. One kitchen/home-goods store in our area has a coupon for like 25% off an item and if you say, buy an item in May, you get a coupon that is valid in June only. So, by buying the bigger ticket items one at a time, one per month, we were able to save a lot of money. 5. We like to use the Ikea Expedit shelving system (the 2x4 size, not the 4x4 or 5x5 giant ones) for pretty much all of our living room furniture (bookshelves and TV stand). They are generally a lot cheaper than an actual TV stand and can hold a lot more stuff.

Generally, when you get a deferral, you are making a good faith agreement that you do want to attend the school but cannot do so at the moment. It may not be illegal, but it would be a bad faith move for you to also use your deferral as a way to apply to more schools in the meantime. Obviously, it's up to you what you want to do and I don't think anyone will actually stop you from applying to other schools. I am just letting you know that I think many people will frown upon this action and it might have negative consequences for you!

$2000 per month might be enough, depending on where you are going to be living. In my current location, one bedroom apartments range from $1000-$1600 per month, so $2000 is definitely not enough here! To help reduce costs, you could look to see if your school subsidizes any costs of having dependents. My school will grant up to $100 per person per month (i.e. $1200/year) to help offset health insurance costs for your spouse and your children. Generally, students with children have much higher expenses and some schools have extra money to help these students out. They usually do not widely advertise them to prevent people taking advantage of it. But if you arrive and find that you are struggling to pay for everything, you can perhaps look to see if these resources exist. I know my school has them but I am not sure if this is common or if I am just really lucky that I chose a supportive school. As for working on campus, the F-1 visa's 20hr/week limit includes the work you would be performing as an RA. So if your RAship is for 10 hours/week, then you would be able to find additional employment on campus for the remaining 10hr/week. But if your RAship is 20 hours/week, then you will have already reached your limit. Note that the 20hr/week limit is only for the months where school is in session (i.e. classes). During the summer, you can work full time on campus, so that might help. However, all of this assumes that your department also is okay with you working somewhere else on campus. Also, most on-campus jobs are really aimed at undergraduates, not grad students and the hours are not likely to be regular (e.g. one job might be giving campus tours). The on-campus allowance for grad students is meant to cover your RA and TA work. For your wife, F-2 status means she cannot work or earn any income at all. So, ahlatsiawa's suggestion of online freelancing work is likely to be against F-2 regulations. I'm not going to comment on how likely someone can be caught with unlawful employment, but I don't think it is worth the risk!! In every case regarding employment, I would suggest you check with the international student program office on campus before taking on any work other than your RA/TA. Edit: It seems like fuzzy has beaten me to the punch! I also forgot to add--there are special circumstances where you might be granted a special work permit that allows you to work off campus due to unforeseen economic hardship. You would have to talk to your international student office to get information on how to apply for this, but I don't think this is likely to be granted as a way to supplement your current income. However, if something happens and you suddenly have much greater expenses, don't forget about this option.

To clarify, if you have a connecting flight with the same booking/reservation, then it's less of a worry because if the flights are delayed, they will generally rebook you on another flight. However, if you are flying on two separate bookings/reservations, then you will probably have to deal with a ton of change fees!

Honestly, I would not want to rent from a company that is this unwilling to provide some basic and necessary information. I would feel that this company would be just as unreachable and uncooperative if I needed them to fix something later on in my lease. For me, this would be a dealbreaker and I would look elsewhere! However, if you are so sure that you want to rent this place even with the property manager's attitude, perhaps it's worth to try asking again one last time for pictures before you sign. In my opinion, not wanting to show pictures and demanding a 12 month lease is a major red flag that something is wrong. If I was moving from very far away and have no way of seeing the location, I would not want to sign for a long lease so that it would be easy to move again if I don't like the place.

Here were my guesses when I made my bracket last week: Advancing from Group Stage (bold for winners of second round): A: Brazil, Mexico B: Spain, Netherlands C: Columbia, Greece D: England, Uruguay E: France, Switzerland F: Argentina, Bosnia & Herzegovina G: Germany, Portugal H: Belgium, Russia Quarter-finals (bold for winner): Brazil v Uruguay Spain v England France v Germany Argentina v Belgium Semi-finals (bold for winner): Brazil v Germany Spain v Argentina Finals Brazil beats Argentina in an epic all-South-America match!

If you are a current undergraduate student applying for research positions meant for undergraduate students (or a recent graduate) then GPA might be something they care about. I wouldn't be sure about putting it on the resume though--if the employer cares about your grades, they will signal this by asking you to include a transcript in your application. However, beyond this, very few research positions will ask for your GPA. Many of my friends have applied for post-PhD research positions and no one needed to supply their GPA or even their transcripts. Like Vene said, at this point, your undergrad grades are outdated and not meaningful and grad school grades do not really have meaning either. I agree that perhaps a few academic achievements might be helpful if you don't have more directly relevant skills. I found that in my interviews (for academic and non-academic jobs), the interviewer tries to find something to point out / discuss further on the resume. So in this sense, having academic things might be a bad thing because they might (randomly) choose to point out e.g. a Dean's Honour List line instead of something that might have more relevance to the job you're applying for and then you end up spending 2 minutes talking about that instead of how you are qualified for the job. If you do list academic achievements, I think you should limit it to the really outstanding ones, i.e. the ones where you are one of a few people that achieve it (e.g. Best Undergraduate Thesis), not something that every top candidate would have (e.g. Dean's Honour List). I should say that this has been my experience, which is subjective of course, and I'm sure the differences in the types of jobs, fields, and location/culture can make this advice useless! But I wanted to add my experience for you to consider too.

What do you mean by submitting a ticket anonymously? Again, the purpose of all of us suggesting the mental health center is not to report Person A and it is not to simply let them know about Person A (as you said, they already do). I suggested seeing the mental health center for you to get personal advice on how to "handle stuff like this". So if submitting an anonymous ticket means you can get anonymous online help (perhaps through a chat app or anonymous email), or if that is how you set up an appointment to come in person to speak with an expert then that's great. Otherwise, I think if you feel that you need help with the stress and/or the situation, the best course of action is to go to mental health / counseling services yourself. Remember that the experts there do not solely help people with disorders, they also help people who work with people with disorders. At my school, 20% of the entire student population has been to the mental health center at least once. They are there to be a resource for students in situations such as yours! --- And if there is a direct threat to you, you should follow emergency procedures on your campus. This might mean calling 911 but at most schools, we are supposed to call Campus Security instead. They can contact the police for you and also lead the authorities to your location (as telling the 911 dispatcher you are in Building X of Campus Y might not be very helpful to them).