TakeruK

Congrats on the CGS-D2 This is something dependent on your school. I had the CGS-M back when the CGS-M was more like the CGS-D instead of the OGS (i.e. NSERC pays the school which pays me) and all fellowship awards at Queen's paid out at the beginning of each semester. So, in September, January, and May, I would get a cheque from my school's financial awards department paying 1/3 of the CGS-M award each time. The pay I got for TA/RA work came in monthly paycheque, from the school's Human Resources department. I got all of this information from Queen's at the beginning of August or so, and your school should let you know soon too! For comparison, I currently have a PGS-D at a foreign institute and I get my paycheque twice a year, in September and April. It makes budgeting much more difficult when most of your pay comes only twice a year (and uneven intervals -- 7 month + 5 month instead of 6+6). With the CGS-D, you should have plenty of reserve/emergency cash (unless you have a lot of expenses) but if you want some tips on how to budget when you only get paid twice or three times a year, I can help out with that

Just to throw in a "at my school" example: Full time status at my school is 36 units (1 unit = 1 hour of work per week) per quarter. A course is usually 9 units (sometimes 12). During our first year, we usually take 2-3 courses per quarter (18-27 units) and spend the rest of our time doing research (we sign up for whatever # of research units to make our total equal to 36 [or more, but having more has no benefit]). In reality, we probably work closer to 50 hours per week including seminar attendance etc. So, to me, a manageable load is where I work a total of 50 ish hours a week, and no more than 27 of those are spent on classes. For the type of classes I take, I budget 2 hours of work at home for every 1 hour in lecture but I think this depends on your field (in mine, readings much shorter and more optional--they're more like a secondary resource). We don't TA during the years where we have heavy courseloads, but when we do, the "on paper" hourly commitment is 15 hours/week. So, in order to manage a productive 20-30 hours of research per week, I wouldn't want to take more than 1 class when I am TAing and not more than 3 classes at the same time when not TAing.

I think it really really depends. I think there would be a lot of other issues present if one SO said to the other, "You must choose me or school, not both". I don't think it's fair for one person to demand that of another and I am with fuzzy in these cases--probably not the kind of person I might want to be with. But, for many people in relationships where one is an academic and one isn't, the lengthy PhD program and delay in "entering the real world" (whatever that really means) can be frustrating for the SO not in academia. To me, I view life with a SO as a partnership--us against the world, so things like whether I go to school or not depends on what both my SO and I think. For example, after doing a Masters and before starting a PhD, my spouse and I had thought about what we want our future to be like a lot before I accepted a PhD offer. We considered all possibilities and decided that the path we now chose was the best for us. I say our life is a partnership because my spouse had equal say in where we went for my PhD--I picked the schools with interesting programs and my spouse picked locations that were interesting / had good opportunities and I only applied to places that were good for both of us. If I thought about myself only, then sure, it did mean that there might have been some places I wanted to apply to but did not because I wanted to make sure we were both happy. But since I knew we would not both be happy with that arrangement, it no longer became a place I wanted to apply to. And ultimately, if the result of our long discussion after my Masters was that it was in our best interest for me to not do a PhD at all, stay in Canada, get a good job, etc. then I would have been happy to not do a PhD. I think that outcome is a lot different than an outcome where one SO gives an ultimatum to each other. So I think the true answer to the original question is really dependent on the circumstances leading to the question, as others have pointed out!

If you are 100% certain that you have made the wrong decision, then it should be okay to send the school an email and apologize for your previous email but you have changed your mind. Obviously, there is no going back after this--it would be completely unprofessional to continue to waver on this. I think you send your corrected decision within a day or two it should not be as bad. There will still be some consequences, since people don't like it when someone backs out of a commitment, even if it's only by email. However, you didn't actually sign the official acceptance (so it sounds), and ultimately, you need to make the right choice for yourself, so I think if this is truly the wrong decision for you, it's worth the potential harm that might come. Of course, I am sure you have thought about this already, and only you can decide for yourself, but also consider whether you truly don't want this program. It's common for there to be "decider's remorse" after accepting an offer because accepting one means turning down a lot of other opportunities!

This is not the case at every school, just saying! I know many people who drop out of grad school in the middle of the school year, and you might be on the hook for tuition through the remainder of that quarter/semester, but usually not for the rest of the year. I would find it very strange if you were liable for tuition this far before the semester started (which is why you usually have to pay a registration deposit at this time).

I would go with travel insurance because it's a lot easier to set up, but that's just for convenience!

Just to clarify, prior to all these CGS-M changes, schools were still limited by a quota of how many applications the school is allowed to forward to the national NSERC/SSHRC/CIHR allocation committee. These allocations were also split up into different categories. The main difference this year is that UBC itself decides who gets the award, and instead of UBC forwarding its own students to the national committee, departments now forward their own applicants (who come from all schools) towards their own school's committee. So, it's up to each school if they want to set 1/3 of their applicants as "alternates" or whatever fraction. It sounds like UBC decided that 1/3 is a good number to try in their first year, but I think this number may be different at other places (potentially higher at schools where top students tend to decline their offers). As far as I know, from the main NSERC websites, there will still be an equal number of awards. This means that for bigger schools like UBC, Toronto etc, they are going to get a larger share of NSERC/SSHRC/CIHR awards. So if UBC has 12 CGS-M awards available for Psychology, that doesn't mean other schools will also have 12 awards available! Maybe that was obvious, but just clarifying that CGS-M are allocated based on school size!

It's not too difficult to switch from Windows to Mac. I made the switch at the start of Grad School too. I really like Powerpoint for Mac and Word for Mac is decent too. I used to use OpenOffice for things like this but now that these software are free at my school, I've been using them! Check with your new school to see if you can get free software too!

Oh that's probably good. As far as I know, most students are not paid solely under a grant from their supervisor--usually the department covers a part of your pay too, so you might still see an increase even if your advisor's grant is limited. And, often when new profs move to a new school, they are able to negotiate for additional startup grant. (e.g. my supervisor was paying me out of her startup grant before she was successful at applying for a grant for our work).

I think $1500/month in LA will be tough. It will definitely a big decrease in quality of life compared to $1500/month in Phoenix, I think. If I understand the situation right, you will still be a ASU student and will graduate with a ASU PhD. It's just that you will be at UCLA working with your professor? If so, then it's normal that you don't get a pay increase. In these cases, you are just considered a ASU student who is doing work away from ASU campus. But if you are completely switching and will be graduating with a UCLA PhD degree, then you should probably be on the UCLA pay scale and system. In either case, I think if you are worried about it (and there's no reason to *not* be worried), you should directly ask your supervisor and bring up your concern that your ASU stipend won't be enough in LA. She might be able to negotiate more money from UCLA to use to pay her students that move with her. You should also bring up moving expenses and see if you can get anything covered. If this doesn't work, would it be possible for you to switch advisors and stay at ASU and/or stay at ASU and work remotely with your supervisor?

If it's the norm to attend conferences but not present in the social sciences and humanities, then this is a really good point too! In my field, it's basically only undergrads hoping to network that will attend a conference but not present. Usually when you don't have a fully completed project, you just present a small part of it as a poster and give people a sneak peek on what you're doing. Obviously, you have to take precautions to avoid being scooped, but in my discipline, a lot of the originality of the work comes from the fact that you are the only one with access to the data, so no one else can do it anyways (you tend to present something you've at least worked for 6 months - 1 year on, so you have a head start over anyone who is trying to scoop you). I think it's important to present something because the most interaction I get during a meeting is directly related to my presentation. For example, I've found that during the coffee break right after my talk, that's when I get the most amount of random people interested in my work coming up to talk to me. Similarly, during the multiple hour long poster sessions, I get to talk to many people. I feel that at a large meeting with ~1000 people, it's hard to really get people to notice you if they haven't seen your work and know that they are interested in you! Of course, my field is different, but I am just wondering if there are similarities in the humanities/social sciences. I agree with this a lot! The real value of the conference comes from getting feedback/networking during the meeting, not adding a line to your CV. If you were an invited speaker (rare for grad students) then it might be pretty impressive though. I also don't list every single conference on my CV--I just write "Selected Presentations" and basically pick the most prestigious conference I present for each project/paper, and limit it to only the 3 most recent projects if I need to reduce space etc. I agree that having a ton of presentations and not many publications near the end stage of your PhD is a bad sign, and I would say to not list more presentations than publications.

We also had this rule to help keep the size down

It probably means you have to pay, but they won't withhold taxes from your payments, which means you will have to pay all of your taxes owed when you file your return for the tax year. Depending on your situation, you may also have to pay quarterly taxes (i.e. pay 4 payments a year instead of 1 big one). It's good that your school has a tax service office that offers advice--they will be able to give you the right information for your specific case! As for budget, plan on paying between 10% and 15% of your total income in taxes. As grad students, we don't have to pay FICA taxes (social security, medicaid) so that saves us a big chunk of money too.

I think 1-3 per year is a good amount. I would say that I'd like to go to one general annual conference that happens every year (e.g. the annual meeting for your discipline's national society) just to keep in touch with other people in the field and see what else is going on. Usually, these meetings are very wide in breadth so you won't find a lot of depth on your topic but you can meet a variety of people and also stay up to date on what else your field does. Then, I think it's a good idea to go to one or two more focussed meetings where you can really explore and learn about specific issues in your field. I think 3 is a good upper limit because it takes like 1-2 weeks to fully prepare for a meeting, then a week for the actual meeting, and probably some time afterwards to catch up on what you missed. So any more than 3 meetings and it's potentially 2 months a year where you are just doing meetings instead of advancing your research. But I think if there is a good opportunity, then no need to stick to the 3 meetings/year rule. I have never paid for a conference out of pocket and I would probably never choose to do so (i.e. if I can't find funding for it and/or my supervisor does not think they should pay for it, then I won't go). I don't think it's ever worth the cost, unless you can get most of it covered through small grants and/or volunteering at the meeting for free registration (or if the meeting is close enough that you can just commute).

I don't think this will really be a problem. When my spouse applied for J-2 work status, one of the things you have to do is explain what you need the money for. This is because in order to qualify as J-1, I need to have enough funding from my school and/or fellowship to support all my expenses and would not have to rely on my spouse's income. However, it is allowed for my spouse to work as J-2 in order to save up money, or spend it on vacations, or classes, or our kids (if we had any--we don't). From the way I understood the paperwork to get J-1 in the first place, US Immigration only cares that I make enough money to support myself and pay for tuition & fees. I don't think they really care how I actually spend the money and they do not ask to audit your expenses!

I agree it's a matter of perspective! I guess what I meant to say was that personally, I would not choose to go to a PhD program if I had to greatly reduce my standard of living from when I was at my MSc program. To me, this just means I can afford to have my own place (well, share with my spouse), a car, get actual food instead of ramen (although I love ramen as a treat) and afford to get a coffee or buy my lunch etc. if I feel like it once in awhile, without worrying about finances. Also, I would want to actually save up money towards a down payment on a home or something, not just surviving. I've found that I can generally live comfortably when my housing costs is about 1/4 of my income, so in e.g. Vancouver, 1 bedroom places go for $1000-$1200 ish per month, which means I would want to have a combined household income of $48k to $58k/year, or if in a two-income home, we each need to make $24k to $29k/year. And, there are extra costs when you are doing a PhD program--have to save up for emergency flights home for family etc. It does work out that in the sciences (like the OP's program), the standard range of stipends is about $25k to $30k per year, so as Vene said, this offer is not terrible, but it is on the lower end for this field. It's just my personal opinion that a PhD program is not worth the investment if I am not able to save money towards life goals (e.g. buying a home one day). 5 years is a decent chunk of my working life and if I don't end up with a job after my PhD, I don't want to be worse off (at the same financial state) as I was 5 years ago! Just to clarify, I didn't intend to say that you were implying the OP shouldn't ask for more (I was replying to the OP's feelings of guilt for asking for more and I was trying to say they don't need to feel this way!). I also am not trying to attack your opinion, and I am aware that my standard of living is far above the "minimum". But I strongly feel that grad students should not be content with "minimum livable income" and that the idea of an academic being someone dedicated to their scholarly work and does not need creature comforts that a good income provides is outdated and harmful. In my opinion, the practice of paying graduate students as little as possible and expecting them to be okay with it because they love the scholarly life will favour those who are able to afford the financial risk of 5+ years working for almost no pay. So again, I want to say that I am not intending to "look down" on the poor (but if I am doing this, please let me know how I can adjust my viewpoint to be more open-minded). I just wanted to point out my perspective and emphasize that graduate students tend to be underpaid for the quality of work they can achieve (and especially compared to the options they have outside of grad school).

In North America, many schools charge tuition based on how many courses you take rather than a "flat rate" (although most graduate programs do the flat rate thing, not tuition by "credit hour"). So, if you take more classes you pay more, if you take fewer, you pay less! Like TheGirlWhoLived said, there will be a certain number of credit hours (or just "credits") you need before you finish a degree program. The way each school determines "credits" really depends on the school. Most places charge/grant one "credit hour" for each hour of in-class or lab time you have in the course, which is typically 3. However, my school considers "1 credit" = 1 hour of work spent on the course, including homework etc., so most courses here are "9 credits". The last school I was at considered 1 year-long, 3 hour per week course to be 1.0 credits, so most of my courses were 0.5 credits. So, you can look up how many credits you must take per year and multiply by $1250 to get an estimate of your tuition cost. But you also said that tuition is between $12,000-$17,000 per year, so that's probably the right estimate (if so, then it sounds like you have to take between 8 to 14 credit hours per year, give or take). But, it also sounds like you already have a number that you must meet: $44,000. I think this sounds pretty reasonable. The I-20 amount is usually much more than tuition (unless you are at a place where tuition is very high) because it accounts for estimated living expenses, student fees on top of tuition, and books etc. If your school is telling you that you must show proof of $44,000 of funds, and you only have a tuition waiver of $4500, then you must show bank accounts that have at least $39,500 in them. But if you have a funded offers (e.g. fellowship, TA, RA, etc.) then this money counts towards the minimum too, so if you have a TA/RA offer for $30,000/year, then you only need to show savings with $9,500 etc.

You should definitely ask to visit anyways. They might not cover the costs because they can't afford to, but usually they are pretty happy to schedule an actual visit day for you and might even pay for the meals. Sometimes, they might say they don't do visits but if you ask to drop by while you're in town anyways, they might even help you plan things like get the university discounted rate on your hotel etc. One school originally told me I could not visit outside of their official date but after I asked to at least meet the people while I was passing through (on my way to visit other schools), they changed their minds and paid for everything (as if I was visiting on an official day). I would say that you should definitely not just drop in unannounced. We have a few people do that each year here and it's always a bit weird. I mean, I think an unannounced visit is better than no visit at all, but it doesn't take much planning/effort to at least contact the department admin staff like a week before. (You might arrange to visit / get invited to visit through a prof, but it's usually an admin person that sets up your appointments and schedule!)

A TA's work varies a lot from program to program and school to school. You might simply grade homework assignments, or lead discussion groups/review sections, or maybe help out in a lab while students are working on code or an experiment, for example. Many schools may require TAs to pass an English test (or score above some level on the international English tests, which may be higher than the minimum level for admission) in order to directly interact with students. I don't think they would have accepted you if you are not qualified and they will definitely give you more information and guidance (and if you're lucky, training too!) when you get there. It's hard to just give advice on how to be a good TA because there is a lot of different advice that applies to different situations and also a lot of different philosophies. As for taxes, yes in the US, we pay tax on grad student income, unless you have a special scholarship. You will pay federal tax as well as state tax. I think you should budget in general, to pay about 10% to 15% of your total stipend package in taxes. As an international student, it's possible that the school will deduct this tax ahead of time, and they usually deduct at the 14% level and then you get any overpaid tax back when you file your tax return each year. So, for month to month budgeting, estimate that you will only have 85% of your stated income available for bills and rent etc.

I strongly second this advice, especially the bolded part (that I added). In addition, if you have external fellowships, it can help! Not every school will let you bargain, for example, my current program said that they pay everyone exactly the same amount, no matter what your status is or how much external fellowships you have (unless you have one that covers all tuition and stipend, which would be over $70k/year here, so that is extremely rare). I think different people have different standards of living and that's fine. I am not sure $25k/year would be sufficient in a place like Toronto or Vancouver (or similarly, San Francisco or Seattle in the US), for me. I would estimate that if I live the way I want to in a place like Vancouver or Seattle, my total cost of living will be around $24k to $26k per year for just me. Since you pay taxes on this in the US, it means that you will either just break even or even dig into savings a little. I agree with the OP that $25k/year isn't very much at all, and I would want to be able to save something like $3k to $5k/year while in grad school. In my opinion, $25k/year really means losing out on up to $15k-$20k/year on opportunity cost if you did something that is not grad school. So, to dxvforte, I don't think it's greedy to ask for more than $25k/year. But like the above people said, it's tricky to do so, and I think you should just try--the worse that could happen is that they say no. For science/engineering fields, I would say that $25k/year is on the low end, unless you are in a very low cost of living area. However, my experience, at least in Canada, is that schools in very low cost of living areas tend to also be in undesirable parts of the country to live in, so the stipends are much higher at these places to entice students to attend! I agree that external grants are great, but there are pretty much non-existent for international students! NSF does not fund non-Americans, for example.

What do you mean by "does anything towards immigration"? While on OPT, you are still either F-1 or J-1 status, which are non-immigration statuses, so no time spent on F-1 or J-1 status (whether OPT or not) will count towards time earned towards permanent residency. So, no, whether or not you do OPT will not help you get closer to permanent residency (i.e. a green card). There will be some changes though--if you stay long enough in the US on F-1/J-1 status, you will begin to be treated like a US resident for tax purposes (which also affects your Canadian tax purposes). Normally, to be considered a US resident for tax purposes, you need to spend at least 181 days living in the US in a given tax year, however, the first 5 years on F-1/J-1 status does not count towards this. But if you do, say, a 5 year PhD, and then stay in the US for a 3 year postdoc, then you will be paying US taxes as if you were a US resident in the last 3 years. But, this is not really related to immigration! OPT might indirectly help you get a permanent job that can lead to permanent residency though. In order to get permanent residency through employment, you need to have an employer willing to sponsor you for an immigration-class visa, the names that I do not know right now. So, doing OPT after graduation in the US means you are still in the US job market, making US contacts, and gaining experience that might lead to an employer willing to hire you and sponsor you for immigration!

You don't have to invite your coworkers. I got married at the end of my first year at grad school, and the wedding was in our hometown, on the opposite side of the continent! We had a pretty small wedding (60-70 people)--at least small according to the standards of my culture (where basically everyone remotely connected to any member of the extended family is invited...yikes!) We did a "courtesy invite" for our friends in grad school, but we did not expect anyone to actually say yes. I mean, grad students have limited budgets and limited time for travel, and it could be a burden on someone else to be invited but not know how to say no. So by "courtesy invite", I meant that we just brought it up as "if you happen to be traveling there, please let us know"--we didn't send formal invitations except for my supervisor (he had a son attending my undergrad school) and my officemate (who is also from the same place!). We made it clear that we didn't expect either to come though. I think if you are really worried about offending your coworkers (which I don't think people will actually be offended) or if you would like to celebrate with your grad school colleagues, you can just hold a mini celebration in your grad school city before you leave for the wedding (or after you come back). Just something simple like go out for dinner and/or drinks. We kept our wedding to basically family only, plus a few close friends, so for most of my undergrad friends, we bought several platters of sushi and drinks and just had a good time with our friends a few days before the wedding!

Maybe things have changed a lot with all the other CGS-M changes, but I think it's more common for current MSc students to get a CGS-M for their second year of their MSc than it is for a finishing undergrad to get a CGS-M to start grad school. Or, maybe "more common" is not the right word, but I would say your chances actually go up, not down, since you will have much more research experience and other qualifications applying the second time around

Congrats My very first credit card (when I turned 18..or was it 19?) had a $500 limit, but that's how you build it up. Assuming you will use the card responsibility (i.e. pay it off every month) your credit should build up really fast. You might even start getting spam mail soliciting you to apply for their cards in a few months or so. Most of these offers and the Capital One cards tend to have really crappy terms (very high interest rate, no real rewards/benefits etc.). I would say that you should consider switching to a bank-issued student credit card when you can. Another good thing to note is that your credit score/history is stronger the longer you have credit and you should never cancel your first credit card. Since this card might not be the greatest, you might not want to keep it and if you get a bank-issued card in the next few months or so, it won't make much of a difference in the long run. However, if a few years down the line, you want to get another credit card, don't cancel your first card / close the account. Keep it there and never use it because this extends the length of your credit history (if the card requires you to use it once every X months, then do the minimum to keep it open). Finally, usually people can request a credit limit increase every 6 months or so. Probably a good idea if you are finding that $300/month limit isn't very useful. Also, the bigger credit limit you have, the better your history looks (as long as you don't carry large balances) because if e.g. a bank trusts you with $2000/month, then someone else would be more likely to trust you too. If you pay off your balance once a month when you get your statement, I think the ideal ratio is to make your regular monthly statement 1/4-1/3 of your total limit--i.e. if you spend $1000/month and you put it all on your card, you would want your limit to be like $3000-$4000.

I would bet that this policy varies with every single school!