TakeruK

For McGill vs Western specifically, there are a lot of other factors too, such as the main language of the city/province they're in! We were very interested in McGill for both grad school and postdocs but my partner not speaking French would make it hard for them to find work and that affected our decision too. I think both are very good schools too and you're right that traditionally, McGill tends to rank higher on many lists. But it does depend on the specific department/speciality as well. In my field, Western is well known for meteorite work while McGill has more cosmology and astrophysics (and now exoplanets too). Sounds like a hard choice. I'd probably base the final decision on other factors besides just reputation since those other factors matter too!

There was only one school for me where the stipend factored into my final decision and it was U Washington! The stipend offer at the time was 18,000 for 20 hours of TA per week. Definitely not affordable so it was the only case where I had to decline an offer mostly for money reasons.

It's okay to say that you already have another commitment and ask for another date. You can leave it at that or you can name the other school if you want. In my field, no program will turn you away because you are visiting somewhere else---we often chat about your other options because we want you to find the best place for you, even if it's not with us. But I am not as sure about your field, so check with your advisor or others here

It depends on a lot of things, but some of it might be personal info you don't want to share, which is okay. I think it really depends on what you want to do after your Masters degree. If you want to enter a top ranking PhD program, then I think you should go for the school/reputation. A MSc is a short program so it's about gaining credentials rather than finding a project you're passionate about. Personally, for short periods of time (e.g. 1-2 years), my motivation/drive can be fueled by short term goals and knowing that I'm on a good path to something better. So, I don't need to find a project I especially enjoy or am passionate about for a MSc degree. If you want to do a PhD outside of your own country, then the prestigious school is often the better choice. If you know there is a good path to a PhD program from the other school then that might be okay, but think about what you want to do after school is finished. If you are in Canada* and thinking about grad programs in the USA, then I especially recommend going for prestige (of either the school or the supervisor). (*A guess based on your choice of words and the time of your post, but sorry if I am wrong!) If you want to join the workfoce after the MSc degree, then it depends on your field and what employers in your field care about. Often, employers may not really care what you actually did in grad school and they are hiring you because of your quantitative or analytical skills. In that case, I'd probably lean towards the prestige too, because you want a name brand that employers recognize as excellence. However, if you are especially interested in careers that the other school is known for, or in the area where people know a lot about that other school, then the other option could be good too.

If the email came from a real person then yes, it is a nice thing to do. Also lets them know that you received it. If it's an automatically generated email from the admissions portal, then no.

I wouldn't worry too much about this. In addition to what others said, the admissions process is holistic, so the interview is only one part of the decision factor. Just like someone might have a lower than average GPA and still get an offer, someone might not have done super great on an interview and still receive an offer. And in your case, this was one part in the interview, not the whole thing. I have limited experience on the "selection"/"evaluation" side of things, but the way most people and I have made decisions is not to look for the perfect candidate that has zero issues. That person pretty much never exists. We encounter weaknesses in every candidate/proposal/etc. The question is whether the candidate's strengths and the program they are entering will be able to overcome their weaknesses. For example, when looking for an undergrad research student, one not-big-deal weakness might be the lack of background knowledge/courses in Astronomy because we can teach that to them. But zero training in mathematics will probably be a deal-breaker. I think in your case, you would be fine. You may still not get the position since there are lots of other factors at play, so don't beat yourself up over this part of the interview, i.e. you could have aced that part and still not get the offer. It's still a good learning opportunity for other interviews though! Good luck

I take the funding offer, subtract out estimate for rent (look on craigslist etc to get an actual good estimate) and other major *necessary* expenses. Look at what's left over and that's the discretionary part. If you can pay for the luxuries you want to have with this part (including things like travel!) then I wouldn't worry about stipend further than that. If you can't pay for the necessary expenses, then definitely not worth taking that offer. If you can't pay for all of your discretionary stuff, then it's worth thinking about whether you are willing to sacrifice. In my field, after adjusting for cost of living, the difference between a stipend that allows you to live a decent but modest life and the top stipends is only about a few thousand dollars per year. Over 5 years, this might be 10,000 to 15,000 total. I think that choosing a school that is a better research fit, more prestige, better chance of a good career after grad school etc. is worth much more than this. But I guess if you have two equally good offers from top schools that you are equally excited about then going for the higher stipend isn't a bad idea, either.

Generally, profs know when their own admin assistants will be out of the office!

Each person has their own goals, motivations, resources, and priorities! Personally, if I was in this situation, I would never take an unfunded terminal Masters. My thought is that there aren't any post-PhD career paths that would be worth an unfunded graduate degree (at any level). So even if the unfunded Masters led to a great PhD program, there's nothing beyond that which would make up for the unfunded Masters. But this is my opinion based on what I value/prioritize. So, if the okay PhD program will still allow me to accomplish my career goals, I'd consider that. If I was not happy with any funded PhD offers then I would either take a different career path that doesn't require a PhD or apply for funded PhD programs again in a future year. When I applied to PhD programs, I aimed high and only applied to programs that I would be excited about and led to good career prospects. My reasoning was that I wouldn't want to attend an okay PhD program like you described---I would rather not be in grad school / academia at all.

For these types of questions, whether you get them as an essay or as an interview question, it is likely that the admissions committee has identified some traits they would like their candidates to have and they believe that the answer to this question can help them determine if their applicants have these traits. So, some example traits that this question might address are things like perseverance, conflict resolution, resourcefulness, and so on. They might also be interested in your problem solving approach, and maybe how you might handle interpersonal conflicts. You know more about the field you're applying to than I would, so you can probably think of other traits that would be good for a student in your field to have! In addition, you can probably google this question and see what interview tips you can find. The other reason they ask this question might be to ensure they are holistically evaluating every applicant. They might want to put your accomplishments/experience/opportunities in context with the challenges you have faced in life. Either way, I think a true story that demonstrates positive attributes about yourself is the best way to answer this question. Don't worry too much about squeezing in every attribute you want to mention etc. because it will make the story sound contrived and uninteresting. But it could be helpful to keep these things in mind so that you don't ramble and your story has a point.

It might be a good idea to email these schools specifically and ask them if they have data on what their MS in statistics graduates do after their degree.

For manuscript advancement, the only advancement that matters is in-revision to accepted. in-prep to submitted is nice, but it's no guarantee that it will become a paper. Accepted to published is usually just a formality. However, while I would certainly advise students to let the admissions committee know about this change if decisions have not yet been made, if you already received a decision (either a rejection or a waitlist) then I do not think this is not enough to make a difference. The significance of an abstracted accepted for a presentation at a big conference depends on how conference abstracts are valued in your field. In my field, they don't have much value, so this is not worth notifying the admissions committee even prior to decisions. But I know that in some fields, conference presentations instead of publications are the valuable thing, so then the above advice applies. Maybe. I have two thoughts about this. 1) It is not in the student's best interest to simply be a workhorse to boost the PI's reputation. Grad school is about training to become an independent scholar, not another "worker bee" in the PI's research hive. 2) I know many profs are reluctant to take on volunteers because of ethical reasons but also that many profs think of students as trainees that are a time demand rather than a time-saver due to the training and mentorship they would provide. Sometimes the limit is not that they don't have money to fund a student but they don't have time to mentor another student. --- Ultimately, I think if you already received a negative decision from a particular school, the mature thing to do is to accept it and move on to another opportunity. Dealing with rejection sucks but it's a part of being in academia. It's especially sucky because most people only focus on their successes (see also: the "CV of failures"). But many very successful people now have dealt with rejection in the past (and probably even in the present). You may wish to apply to this school again in a future cycle (or for a future position) so demonstrating maturity and the ability to accept rejection is a good idea; trying to find a way to get in despite their decision will look desperate and reflect poorly on you. Also, if a school does let someone have another shot because they pestered the profs enough, that wouldn't really be fair. As such, I doubt very many schools would be interested in reconsidering applications once they have made their decisions, barring extraordinary circumstances.

Yeah, that price point sounds about right. I got mine in Canada, where we have a 12% tax which basically eats up the discount I had! No experience with magic mouse 2, only the original magic mouse. I have used the magic mouse for all of my work computers (iMacs during MSc and PhD, Mac Pro now at my office) and I love it. If you need an actual mouse, I think for a desktop, the magic mouse is the way to go. I really like the ability to swipe on the mouse itself and that it knows what is a left/right click based on where I touch it. So if you are going to buy a mouse at all, I'd recommend the magic mouse, unless you can find a generic version that has all the functions! The swiping and smart clicking is worth it, to me. For my laptop though, I don't use a mouse. I find that having a peripheral defeats the purpose of a portable laptop! Outside of my home, I don't usually use my laptop in an area with space for a mouse as well. At home, my laptop is my only computer but I mostly do work at my office so I don't really need a mouse. The new ForceTouch touchpad is awesome and works even better than the original Macbook touchpads. I find that dragging and dropping on the new ForceTouch model took a bit of time to get used to, but once you've adjusted, it's okay! My muscle memory kept wanting to do one thing, which opened up the file instead of moving it. Since you're moving from Windows to Mac then you might not have the same issue.

The prof instructed you to make an appointment with their admin assistant, so that's what you should do. If the admin assistant is away for some time then so be it. Note: If a prof has an assistant to help manage their schedule, it is a good sign that their schedule is already very full and it is unlikely you will get an interview within a week anyways. So wait until the admin assistant returns and schedules your appointment.

The computer you're looking at sounds like what I have. I ended up also upgrading the processor to the 3.1GHz Intel i5. This means I had to get the new TouchBar, which I was meh about since I was hoping for quad cores instead of a touchbar announcement at the big apple event where they announced this line of laptops. But it's pretty fun to use and quite customizable. Now that Chrome and other non-Apple apps I use are adding more touchbar functionality, it's better than before, I think. I still wouldn't upgrade just for the touchbar, but it's not a reason (for me) to avoid upgrading. I get a discount through work that is about the same as the education discount I got for my last Macbook. So, if you don't currently qualify for an education discount, wait until you start your grad program! These things are pricey! This laptop is the second most expensive invoice I've ever signed for (other than my car) and it was scary! The discount helped a bit though. Civ5 worked okay (a little slow). It's a good way to kill time on flights or sitting at airport terminals with no free wi-fi. Just for fun, I looked up the Civ 6 requirements. I have the "Intel Iris Plus" graphics card with more than 1GB of VRAM so it might work? The help pages say "Iris Pro" will work and "Iris HD" will not work but nothing about Iris Plus. Anyways, nowadays with a small baby at home and less travel, I am mostly looking for games that I can drop/pause at any time and still playable in chunks of 5-10 minutes. I remember putting a ton of hours in Civ 3 growing up and I love the series but it's too hard to manage an empire and remember what's going on when you only have 10 minutes at a time! I'm mostly playing Hearthstone (online card game) as a way to relax now. Games are about 10 minutes long which is perfect. Although multiplayer games are not pausable, the games are low stakes that I can just abandon the game and forfeit if something more important comes up! It used to run quite slow on my old computer even on the minimum settings but now I can run it on the most visually pleasing ones and it still goes very smooth

No, there is no reason why being rejected from one program means you're automatically rejected from another. Unless there is something connected with these two programs that I don't know about since it's not my field? But in general, admissions are very stochastic/random, especially at the top levels. This is why I generally do not recommend people apply to just one "dream" school. If you are shooting for your dream schools, then you should apply to like 4-5 of them! An example: Let's say these dream schools accept 5 people only. And let's say you're really good, you're actually in the top 25 of all applicants to these schools! But for one given school, you might be ranked 6th and not get an offer. If you had only applied to that school then you're out of luck! But if you apply to many schools, you have a higher chance of getting into the top 5. In addition, even if you end up being ranked 5th to 10th for all 5 schools, you might still get an offer because there is likely a lot of overlap between the top 5 students at these top schools and each student can only take one offer, opening up their spots to lower ranked applicants. But if you only apply to 1 or 2 schools, you might end up choosing schools where the spots didn't open up. So to increase your chances, you apply to as many schools as you can, so that the factors out of your control (i.e. which schools the other people choose to accept) are more likely to end up in your favour.

Yes, since you are coming from another continent, this is a reasonable thing to ask. Make sure you phrase it as a request though. Do you need to ask the schools to move their visit dates or are the two schools close enough together in time that you can visit both in one longer trip? Before you ask, keep in mind that you might still get more invites (if there are more applications outstanding) so you might want to keep your top choice schools on their original dates and then ask other schools to fill in the gaps. Typically, people from outside North America don't visit schools in person in my field but if they do, they usually plan for a 2-3 week trip, hopping from school to school, visiting friends or doing personal travel in between. Plan for some time to adjust for jet lag too, if you are coming from a place with a very different time zone.

I love typing on my mac keyboard. My first Macbook Pro 13" (2012) was great for all non-compute intensive workloads and even some mild compute-intensive at first. After 3 years, it slows down quite a lot but I only had 4GB of RAM and most apps these days take up a lot more memory. I finally replaced it after 5.5 years. I am currently using a higher-end Macbook Pro 13" (upgraded processor, 16GB RAM) to do some compute-intensive work too and it's fine. I am hoping the higher RAM will keep this computer fast for compute-intensive work for 2-3 years and for non-compute-intensive work for awhile longer. If it helps you to know, Mac is the favoured operating system for most astronomers, and we do a lot of compute-intensive work on our machines. I don't think choosing a Mac will hinder your ability to do work but it's not like it's necessary either. Although these things do not matter to me, here are some limitations (not work related) that others I know have had with Macs: - My parents do not like that they cannot use their tax software on a Mac (all tax software, at least in Canada, seems to run on Windows only). It's okay for me, since I use the online version of the app. - Many of my friends do not find Macs high performance enough for games with fancy graphics. There are also fewer games available on Steam for Macs vs. PC. This is also okay for me since I don't really have time for these games anyways! I have some games I like to play to relax / during limited downtime and they work fine on Mac for me.

It's not over the top but it will also not really affect your chances. It's just polite to do so.

Usually they will tell you a little bit about their research and ask you about your research. They will want to know your past experience as well as what you hope to get out of your experience for grad school. If they are looking for students in their lab, they would use the chance to get to know you and decide if they would like you to join the lab. Some profs will also offer to answer questions about the program itself, such as coursework and degree milestones etc. I say "some" because some profs are very good at keeping up to date on what is required of students while others have no clue and you may even get wrong answers from them (most of the ones that have no clue will at least admit they don't know). You're right that it's your chance to learn about them, their research and their lab. I think most of the time, the prof takes the lead on the conversation but prepare enough to take the lead if the prof expects you to. Even if you already have an offer to join the department, it's still kind of an evaluation, on both parties. They might want to know if they would have you join their lab and you might want to know if you would like to join theirs). Also, it's okay to ask similar/same questions to multiple profs because each person might have their own opinions/perspective. I wouldn't have too many questions and be smart about which questions to ask to whom (e.g. don't ask profs about living on the stipend, ask the students etc.) Some good questions to ask, beyond the details of the research, are things about their advising style or how they run their lab, if you are interested in joining it. Ask about things like how often they meet with students in the lab, how often they hold group meetings, whether they send students to conferences / how often, etc. You can also ask things like, "what do you expect from your graduate students", or "what is one important piece of advice you would give to new students joining this department?" or things in this vein.

Sorry to hear that you are unhappy in your current situation! If I understand the most correctly, you are currently in a Masters program and were originally thinking of a PhD program but now you are no longer doing so? If so, despite the difference in yours and the advisor's work habits and management styles, this doesn't mean you're stuck with advisors like this all the time. Would you be able to continue with your original plan of finishing the Masters and moving onto a PhD? If this is a Masters program, the research situation sounds not ideal, but it certainly does not sound like you are doomed. You just need to finish and move onto a PhD program. If that is still what you want to do, despite the current bad experience.

Definitely do not accept this offer until there is a funding offer in writing. Although this might still happen before the decision deadline. It's still January so I guess if they are very limited in funds for TA/RA, then they wouldn't necessarily know for next year yet. However, the fact that they are so strapped for funds and would even make admission offers before they know they have funding to support their students is worrisome for a field that fully funds its students. I wouldn't worry about it for now. If you get better offers from other schools, you can just write it off as you said. It's certainly okay to nudge them again when you are close to the decision deadline or if you have a better offer elsewhere but still really want to go to this school.

As you mention, it's a pretty common to find universities where the general administration and the departments do not communicate well with each other. This happens at almost every institution I've been a part of, both in academia and outside of academia. So while this particular school may have shown you the issues with its inner workings sooner than others, just keep in mind that if you don't encounter it at other places between now and April 15 (or whenever you decide to accept an offer), that doesn't mean these issues aren't present there too! Hope you get can the information you need from the current students. Every place has its own "culture" of how things are run. For example, at my PhD school, the departments are very independent of the general administration, such that we often joke that the school is more like a collection of "kingdoms" and there are almost no centralized services that are common across the campus. This is both convenient at times (specific policies match exactly each department's needs) but also very frustrating and inefficient (tough to work in between two departments, departments not learning from each other, hard to coordinate campus-wide changes). Especially for international students like me, who have to regularly interact with campus-wide resources for things pertaining to our international status, the lack of communication between department and the international office means a different communication strategy is required. What I'm trying to say is that every place runs differently and students generally learn to adapt. Talking to current students can help you determine exactly how you need to adapt and whether it will work for you. Also, I'd take it as a good sign that the department has promised to intervene, but it's only been a few weeks so I'd wait and see if they can resolve it before accepting any offers! If they are successful before April 15 then that would be very reassuring, to me.

I thought you were going to miss an entire day of events. Leaving on Saturday evening after the last official scheduled event but missing any unofficial social events is fine. You just do what's best for you. You don't have to justify why you are leaving. It could be that you have to go to another interview, or you have a lot of work to catch up on, or you have a family to care for. So if you want to go home on Saturday evening instead of socializing, that should be fine. We had a prospective student once miss an entire day of events (left after dinner on the first day) because they had another visit weekend to go to. Sure, some of the grad students thought it was weird to go all the way out here for just one day and certainly some students thought poorly of this and discussed it for a short while. But the student did attend our program and there was no real issues at all. Everyone forgot about it after a few days. Like @WhyTry said, there are like 30 other student visiting that we were busy with, so it's really not a big deal. Some students don't visit at all so one day is still better than zero.

I'd feel disappointed, annoyed, and frustrated. I think it's a legitimate thing to be concerned about and it should factor into a decision. However, if this is the main reason keeping from you being excited about this school, I would investigate further before making a decision based on this incident. Especially if the administrative failure is at the University level and not the department level. You should determine how likely you will require timely materials from the same people again if you were to be a student there. I wouldn't judge the entire admin staff based on some of its employees so if these people work in an area you would need urgent communications with once a year or fewer, this would be a non-issue for me. There could be lots of reasons why you didn't get the interactions you needed. Typically, while the department is often very interested in prospective students, university-level staff are rarely interested in you until you enroll as a student. Many offices that aren't admissions/recruitment focussed will not even speak to you until you are enrolled as a student. Part of the reason is that they have limited time and they need to dedicate it to their current student. When you are a student, you may appreciate that your school's grad office staff is working hard to prioritize your defense date scheduling paperwork over a prospective student's questions, for example. If this is an issue at the department level, perhaps the department got swamped with other work they needed to do first. Maybe they believed you could have got the answers on your own (maybe incorrectly believed this). Maybe they decided they were even more excited about another candidate and wanted to spend their efforts helping that other person instead. There could be a lot of reasons, some forgivable/understandable and some not. But I don't think it's helpful to find the reason. Instead, to find out whether or not this will be a chronic problem for you, talk to some of the current grad students. Among the other things you would ask current grad students about, be sure to ask them about bureaucracy and whether or not they feel they have good admin support. I find that this varies a lot from place to place and so it's not like it's a weird question to ask (i.e. no one will think you already had a poor experience just by asking). Of course, there's still a right and wrong way to ask these questions!