TakeruK

Just FYI, the study permit rules are changing for students entering after June 1, 2014. Just minor changes, but here is a summary: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/media/notices/2014-02-12.asp Also, this page will tell you all the things you need, provide checklists etc: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/applications/student.asp

The Apple Education discount page for my school shows a Macbook Pro (not Retina) 13" 2.5GHz machine for $999--if your school has this option, it's a lot cheaper than the Retina versions. Also I bought my computer at my school's store and there was an extra sale so look out for those too.

My undergrad and Masters were in Canada and I'd say that untenured profs advise just as many, if not more, PhD students than tenured ones (for the same reasons I said above). I can see the case where a prof who is 2 years away from a tenure decision and isn't sure about the outcome might not want to take on a PhD student. But a newly hired prof usually has 5-7 years to gain tenure, and that is time to graduate at least one, if not two, generations of PhD students (assuming a 3-4 year PhD program since in Canada, all PhD students have a 2year masters). But this part might be a field difference. Also, I do agree that most students seek out experienced profs for their committees. I'm definitely going to ask good mix of untenured and tenured profs to be on my committee! At my Canadian Masters program though, the Chair is automatically the department head and the Chair actually does not really take place in the thesis defense--their job is to mainly ensure that all the defenses follow the same standard. At the PhD level, the Thesis Committee will actually play a role in advising the student (through annual progress reports and Candidacy exams), but in the sciences, the majority (if not all) of the advising comes only from your supervisor. The Committee is there mostly to ensure that you are progressing well each year (i.e. to catch any problems between you and your advisor that you might not even know about) and to do your candidacy and final thesis defenses.

You don't have to go into detail. They might not be interested and then it just gets awkward! I'd say that a thank you card is also unnecessary, at least in my field. It's going to arrive like a week after your email! For me, one school rejected me via email and then also sent a rejection letter that arrived a week later. That was not fun to receive

The way I see it, the Air's only advantage is lighter and smaller. I got my Pro before they only had Retina displays so my Pro was even cheaper than the current 13" Air price. I had the education discount too. I'd go with the Pro for the same reasons you said (more disk space, ethernet port etc.) Also, my Pro is my only personal computer of any kind--if you have a Desktop you regularly use at home or something, then you might not need all these fancy things and can go with the Air. I am not sure how often you'd use the optical drive--I have not used mine once in the 2 years I have this computer.

Love this site!! I would say that we have pretty similar "cooking styles" so I found these recipes to be very easy to follow! But the author is way more imaginative, experienced and creative than me so I've learned a lot just trying different things from the past week!! Thanks for the recommendation This blog looks promising too, looking forward to trying some of these!

My PhD advisor is a non-tenured prof and if all goes well, I think my advisor will have tenure and I will graduate at about the same time (+/- 1 year). My department chair says that no prof here has been denied tenure in the last 20-25 years (but they are pretty picky on who they hire). Their philosophy is that as long as they hire someone who is a good researcher, with all of the resources that our University gives to its professors, there is almost no way they won't become super successful! I hope they're right haha! It might depend on the field (and country as rising_star pointed out) as well because I would say in the sciences, you usually get tenure by doing research* and you get research done by hiring grad students to do research. At my university, all new professors have their first year free from teaching so that they can just do research and set up their group. They also have a startup fund to hire new students (like me!) and start a group/lab while they apply for more grants. I would say that the new professors in my department have groups that tend to be larger than established professors because they are trying to get more research accomplished and make a name for themselves in the community (although all of the recent hires have already made names for themselves, I'd say). (*Note: the amount that research matters (vs. other things like teaching) depends on each school)

I agree with a lot of what has already been said. Especially 1) people with weird social behaviours exist in all fields of employment (from fuzzy) and 2) not all corporations are evil and all of academia is good/moral (from St Andrews Lynx)! I don't know what your department is actually like. It does sound like there are a few people that you have not had good encounters with. Every department, if it's large enough, will have at least one or two people like this. It sounds like this person is not your advisor, and I think that's a good thing for you! I'd see it as a positive that you found out that you and this person don't seem to get along very well--avoid working with them! Find someone else who can be a better advisor for you. Every person has different working styles so what works for some might not work for others. Also, I'd say it might be useful to think about this from the other point of view too. Maybe, the prof also thinks your style doesn't mesh well with theirs. I'm not exactly certain, but it almost sounds like you expected to be able to just pick and choose who you want to work with. Matching up advisors and students goes both ways. Don't be discouraged if you find that the person you really want to work with does not feel the same way about you! Like any other relationship, both parties have to get along well for it to work

In your shoes, I would contact the safety school and say that you are happy to receive their offer and you are currently considering your options and will let them know ASAP. Or you can also say nothing, but I personally like to at least acknowledge receipt. Also it's a good chance to ask any questions you might have. There is no reason to tell the #1 school about your other offer unless the deadline for the safety school offer is getting close and you want to know if they have a decision estimate for you. But if you haven't talked to #1 school in awhile, it might be good to just touch base and see if they have an update for you--if they were actually full now but haven't got around to informing the waitlisted yet, you might find out the bad news earlier and allow you to accept the safety school sooner. Or they might provide other information that can help you determine if it's worth waiting further or not. Finally, you could tell #1 school about your offer if you get an offer from #1 school and would like #1 school to match it or something. But whether this works depends on your field. Also, to be honest, if you are coming in from a waitlist, it might mean you won't have very much negotiating power anyways.

If you ask for an extension, I do think it would be useful to at least request a specific date and then see what they say/go from there. If the April 30 school has indicated that you will know your funding before April 30, then it doesn't make sense to request an extension until April 30. But if not, then I guess April 30 is a good nominal starting point, hopefully you will know all your funding info by then! I would say that at the very least, you should consider all of the other information so that you can make a decision shortly after knowing the funding. Unless there are other circumstances, I think that as soon as you have funding information from more than one school, you can at least decide your top choice between those schools and decline everything else. That is, if you have two (or three) funded offers and waiting for funding information from the third (or fourth), you can at least make a choice between those two/three schools right away and just hold onto one offer at a time!

I just want to note that admissions-only offers are not included in the CGS April 15 resolution. That resolution is specifically for financial offers only. For admission offers, whatever appears on your offer letter is the terms/deadline for that offer. Whether it's typical for admission and financial offers to come separately may really depend on the field. In mine, for PhD programs, almost every offer is funded, so they usually come together (but not always). I agree with everyone else that funding is an important part of the offer and I would not count on any funding until you have a written financial offer in your hands. Also agree that you should keep in touch with the schools that have not yet told you about the offers and ask for updates since it's a major part of the decision. My advice would be to not accept any offers until you get funding information. I would not accept multiple offers and then decline them later unless there was no other choice (i.e. it's April 14 and the school says funding information will come later). I would let the school know that you need the financial info before you can make a decision and then wait as long as you can! Ask for extensions past April 15 if necessary.

I did not do a visa interview myself, since Canada and the US have a visa waiver program/treaty/whatever. But I still had to apply for J-1 status and have the DS-2019 and all that stuff. Just no interview basically. From our international student orientation, we learned that the most important part for both F-1 and J-1 is to establish that you have strong ties with your home country. Since both F-1 and J-1 are non-immigration class visas, they don't want us going to school in the US and then staying! At least they don't want that to be the intent of our time in the US. For many people on J-1, we have the 2 year home residency requirement. Also the J-1 is a "exchange" program. So, I would probably emphasize something like you want to get your PhD at a world-class school in the US and take this knowledge home to your own country etc. I think the J-1 2-year home residency requirement actually helps us prove these strong ties to our home countries. I think it's also important to be honest because I think giving off a dishonest vibe is probably not a good idea even if you are not hiding anything actually bad. Finally, like I said above, I haven't gone through this process, but this is just a thought. I don't actually know if it will be bad to say I want a J-1 so my spouse could work. I told all the schools I applied to this though, when they asked me if I wanted them to issue me a I-20 (for F-1) or DS-2019 (for J-1). I told them that I would like J-1 please, so my spouse could work and they said "okay!". They said the only reason they asked me why was that for most people without spouses/dependents, F-1 is a better choice. But of course, this is my school asking, not immigration officials! So, I would strongly suggest asking this question to your school's international student office!!

Hi, It's think it is not true that you are ineligible for the ACA plans (aka Obamacare, aka Marketplace plans through heathcare.gov), but as a non-American, a lot of this is new to me so there may be a lot of differences from state to state. However, I am in California and my spouse is eligible for these plans! In California at least, you need to be legally residing in the US and for us to not have employer provided health care. So, for me, the school pays 85% of my health insurance premium on the student plan which means I am not eligible for ACA since I have an affordable alternative. For my spouse, she has been on my plan as a dependent until ACA plans opened. The school does not subsidize dependent health insurance so we were paying $7200/year for her. Her job (she is J-2 status) does not cover insurance either, so she is eligible for the ACA plans, which will have premiums of about $2400/year, and we estimate our total out of pocket to be something like $4000 including the premiums. The school told me the reason that dependent health care is so expensive is that very few people enroll in it. My school recently showed us the numbers on their plans. Basically, the insurance company wants to make it so that all of the money they pay out to students is equal to about 70% or 80% of the money they collect in premiums. So if only say a small number of students have dependents, then even if say 10 dependents have serious health costs, this would really cut into the insurance company's profits so they charge a very high rate to ensure they still make money. I am not defending this at all, I think it's a terrible system, but it is what it is. Don't use travel insurance! As you said, it covers very very little. The problem with ACA plans is that I think March 31 is the last day to enroll for this open enrollment period. I am not 100% certain but I don't think you can enroll again until October 2014. This means you might have to be on your school's plan for awhile or maybe travel insurance for a month? Alternatively, you can get your own plan directly from the major insurance providers, e.g. Anthem Blue Cross, BlueShield, etc. Their plans were way more affordable than my school's plan for dependents but they only insure healthy people or they might raise costs if they suspect you are unhealthy and will cut into their profits. My school plan was a flat rate for all, no denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. But the ACA might also have changed the rules for these private plans too. I would advise calling one of their agents in the summer and figuring out a plan!

It really depends. Some scholarships have fine print that only cover amounts not covered by other scholarships. Your situation is different since it doesn't sound like an actual fully funded program (i.e. ones that cover tuition plus a livable stipend). However, in one of my past schools, I had a tuition waiver, an external fellowship and funding from the department as an internal department-wide fellowship. The department nominated me for a university-wide fellowship. I did get the university-wide fellowship and the department reduced their departmental fellowship by the same amount as the university-wide fellowship. So, if one of your scholarships has a similar condition, or if they all say the money can only be used towards tuition and fees, you might not get to keep any leftover money. Definitely ask all three sources!

Agree with the above. I would just say to email these people separately, not just a mass email. Send the official official decline to the Graduate School itself via web form or whatever format they want. Send a formal email to the DGS to inform the department directly of your decision (instead of them having to hear it from the grad school). Also send personal emails to the profs that you had a good connection with and let them know too.

I've not noticed any putrid or bad smells from chicken breasts. Ideally, I would try to buy whole chickens and separate the meat myself since you avoid the saline solution and also it's way cheaper! But my spouse and I eat a pretty limited amount of meat so a whole chicken isn't very practical. In the end, we still go with the supermarket chicken breasts since it's more convenient.

I was never a graduate student at UBC and I'm not there anymore (was there for undergrad), but I knew plenty of grad students there. Here are some thoughts about Green College (sorry that I don't have direct experience, hopefully someone else can provide that!): Meal plans all over campus are super expensive. Generally, residencies at UBC do not require a meal plan for anyone beyond the first year of their undergrad, but you might notice that Green College is special because the meals are a special community event! As you pointed out, Green College does have a built-in social life, and I think the community meals is a big plus for many Green College residents! I would say that Green College is not a typical graduate student residence! After all, you have to apply to join the college, and there aren't very many new spots per year. It is designed for a specific purpose of building a scholarly community, which is great if that's what you are looking for. I do notice that many international students tend to like Green College too, because it's a great way to meet other like-minded individuals when adjusting to a new place! But, if you are looking into on-campus alternatives, have you looked at/considered the Thunderbird Residences? http://www.housing.ubc.ca/thunderbird/thundebird-overview There are shared units (separate bedrooms, shared living quarters/kitchen) as well as studio, 1-bedroom, 2-bedroom units). Some of the units are like townhouses, and they are almost like renting a small apartment anywhere else! While Thunderbird isn't technically a graduate student only residence, it is meant for mature students. There is a minimum age limit (19 or 20). Also, I noticed you said Green College is far from campus! I don't think this is true at all, to me, Green College is about as close to campus as you can get. Sure, it's on the north end of campus, but basically all the residencies are on the perimeter of the campus. But I guess what made me think it was strange to see Green College being listed as "far" was that UBC is very much a commuter campus. The majority of students live off campus and commute by bus. Almost all of the graduate students I knew did this (the ones that did live on campus mostly lived in Thunderbird). This page from UBC has some good advice about living off-campus: http://www.housing.ubc.ca/off-campus-housing/deciding-where-to-live.

I would go further and advise against taking offers that won't pay all the bills (i.e. you would still take on some debt and/or require help from family etc.). My viewpoint is that even the most generous PhD stipends ($30k-$35k in my field) would still be lower than the earning potential of an undergraduate degree, especially when considering the amount of work you have to do in grad school. So, a stipend that pays all the bills is still an "opportunity cost" to me. However, the "opportunity cost" is one I'm willing to pay to continue my career in my chosen field. But, any higher than that would be too much for me though. Of course, the price each person is willing to pay would vary!

Geologizer--glad you found this! Maybe my link in the other thread wasn't super clear. I agree that we should definitely hold our students accountable for their work. But I think there are plenty of ways to do this without violating our students' privacy. I am not saying that grades are automatically negative. However, it's a private trait/feature/characteristic of a person that only that person should have the right to share. A student needs to be able to trust that the TA has their best interest at heart, and not some distant, aloof, impartial* evaluator. (*I say impartial in the sense that the TA doesn't care how the students do, not that the TA is biased towards favourite students etc.). Sharing your students' grades without their permission violates that trust. Like hashslinger's example, when the TA is not seen to be on the students' side, you create a "students vs. instructors" mentality, and that is not a productive learning environment! As a TA, you also have access to quite a bit of personal information about the student. You will know their grades for your course. Your class roll sheets might show their middle names. Your class roll sheets may have their photos and perhaps this person has gone through a lot of physical changes since their photo was taken (they are typically only taken upon matriculation). Do you think it's fair game to share any of this information? After all, it's just names--why don't we just post everyone's middle names? Or, it's just physical appearance, people have seen them looking like that before, why don't we just post everyone's photos on the class website too? I would argue grades are just as private as your image, your name, your medical history etc. In addition to this, we now live in a world where information is very easily shared. If you email a grades list, you don't know how that information will be distributed. If you post it on a bulletin board, people can easily take pictures and share them. Maybe a student doesn't really mind that their classmates and friends know their grades. But some students might have certain people that they don't want to share their grades with. One good thing about FERPA is that it prevents overbearing parents from calling the school and discussing their children's grades with you. Finally, I really think that the group of us that are in grad school / applying in grad school does not represent the same distribution of population as our students. Grad students have survived undergrad, enjoyed school, and want more. We are probably motivated by academic challenges and we are probably pretty proud of our academic abilities. So, if we see a challenge to something we're proud of, we might respond well to it and persevere. However, not everyone is like this. I know many people who will react poorly to this type of challenge. I think your main argument is that we should not be afraid to have people react poorly to this type of challenge. While I agree that we should not compromise academic integrity to "protect" these people (i.e. do not inflate grades so they don't feel bad), I don't think it's a good idea to have the attitude that "I want to create students who have a certain mindset/set of qualities that I deem to be useful". This will only hurt the academic community, because we would be creating a filter to only select certain features. I know some academics who think that academia is only for the thick-skinned. They say their opinion without filter because they don't think it hurts to speak the truth. But, I think there are plenty of ways to achieve what we want without making others feel bad. As hashslinger pointed out, there are a ton of ways to hold students accountable for their work and give them useful and honest feedback. You don't have to publicly praise or criticize in order for it to be effective. Not everyone responds well to that. As others also pointed out, in the "real world', it's also super unprofessional for a boss to chew out an employee in front of everyone. I'm not saying that it doesn't happen, and sometimes the power dynamic means that the employee doesn't really have an recourse, but no one thinks that it's good when this happens. So, if we can avoid it, we should!

That's a nice website! At my department, we all have computer accounts on the department servers, which runs Linux. We each have our own special folders/directories on the server and everything we put in that folder is accessible online through the server's address and your username (e.g. www.dept.school.edu/~name). So, in order to get this to work, I just had to email the IT people in my department and they set up that special directory for me (and also a shortcut for me to access it from my own computers easily). Now, when I create my website, whether it's coding the files myself, using Wix/Weebly/etc, or using Dreamweaver, or getting a friend to design it, the website itself is just a collection of files. I copy the files into this directory, change permissions so that it's publicly viewable and it's updated! If you ever notice your professors or classes have course websites that look like www.dept.school.edu/~somename, then it should probably be fairly simple for your department to set up a website for you too! Again, I don't know if it's just because my field is so computer-dependent, or if it's true at all types of departments, but there are always several people working in IT for each department that can help you with this, no matter how much or little computer experience/knowledge you have!

I am sorry if you felt my sidetrack into FERPA was distracting. The reason I posted that was because 1) I did not think your analogy/metaphor was valid/related to the issue in the topic at hand (i.e. a TA telling his/her student that they are failing is not connected at all to a stranger telling another stranger that their psychological issues are their fault, for the reasons I put above) and 2) I responded directly to your analogy/metaphor instead of what you are trying to connect it to because I thought it was relevant in relation to the larger theme discussed (i.e. are we "coddling" people too much in this world, which is what you just said here). I also think that your example "choices" for a TA is extremely unprofessional behavior for a TA and although I could have just said that instead of the whole FERPA thing, I wanted to provide justification for my opinion, instead of just saying "I think this is bad!" But since it has been brought up again now, and you mention that you don't buy the ethical argument that you can't announce grades properly, I think it's worth addressing. But since I don't think we should derail this thread further, I've made a new one for the Teaching forum, here:

To avoid sidetracking another thread, I thought we should move our discussion of whether TAs should announce their students grades publicly (either verbally or through a class list). Here are a few snippets to give context: I had responded that FERPA regulations actually mean a TA cannot do Option 2: The counter-response was this: So, I'll make my response here to prevent derailing a different thread (where this discussion started). I think the FERPA rules are in the right. A student's academic performance is private information, just like a student's health records, transcripts, academic record, etc. I do not think a school should be an environment where those who are doing well or not doing well should be publicly known. Also, independent of this point, I think it is a TA's professional responsibility to not reveal information about the people they are helping (i.e. their students). This includes not revealing other people's grades, or leaving graded homework in a place that other students can see other students' grades. But it also includes things like if a student makes a silly mistake on their homework and I want to make sure no one else makes the same mistake, I wouldn't tell or email the class "Don't be silly like Bobby and forget to convert inches to centimetres!" When you do actions like this, you are causing your students to lose their trust and confidence in you. A TA should always be a person of support and positiveness -- i.e. a resource for the student to use to conquer the material. This doesn't mean the TA has to bend to the students' whim (the TA should still enforce class policies), but it definitely means the TA should not act in ways that make their students uncomfortable and unapproachable! So, I think actions like publicly shaming the students who are doing poorly will not encourage students to approach the TA for help. It also makes the TA on the "other side" (i.e. the TA is someone they have to "beat" to get a good grade) instead of viewing the TA as an ally and a resource to learn the course material. What do others think about the arguments for/against public announcement of grades?

Hmm, I think one issue here is my lack of understanding of how jobs actually work in the US and/or what I think tenure actually means. I agree with you on all your points in the second paragraph, and from my knowledge of how things work with unions in Canada (for professors as well as public school teachers), everything you describe is job protected in virtually every collective bargaining agreement. So, I may be wrong here, but I figured that tenure means you have a permanent permanent job--that is, the only way for you to lose your job is if the department shuts down. However, job protections that most collective bargaining agreements effectively gives "tenure" to all teachers. But jobs can still be lost if there is a huge budget cut and they have to let the most junior 25% of their faculty go (usually many of the senior people will choose early retirement so that the younger ones don't lose their jobs). Caveats to the above: 1. This only applies to permanent teaching positions, not contracted adjuncts/sessional lecturers (I think it is bad practice for Universities to continually hire contracted teachers instead of an actual permanent position when a permanent one is actually needed. But some unions have regulations to prevent this from happening--whether they are effective, I don't know.) 2. I am speaking from my experience in Canada, which is obviously different from the US. But I don't know how different. I might also be wrong about how Canada works, but from everything I know, employers can't really just fire their unionized teachers because they got bad reviews. The employer would have to prove beyond doubt that the teacher is not actually performing their job duties and/or not actually qualified for the job in order to fire them. Bad reviews from students, even multiple terms in a row, does not get a teacher fired. It might get the employer to look into the potential teaching problem and utilize their own internal review process to evaluate a teacher's performance though. So, this is why, from this worldview, tenure doesn't make sense for a teaching-only position. However, perhaps my worldview is not an accurate reflection of reality (or at least not in the United States). If a permanent teaching position (i.e. not based on renewal of contracts) does not carry the protections that you wrote in your quoted post, then yeah, I definitely agree such protections are necessary for a teaching position! An effective instructor needs to have the freedom to experiment in their classes and try new things and not be shackled to their student evaluations! I didn't know US public schools have tenure. I guess Canadian public schools unions basically afford their teachers the same things as tenure, just without the name. Actually now that I consider this again, I am no longer sure what tenure actually means anymore. At this point, I can only think that a tenured position can basically appear to be completely crappy at their job (when measured by some metric) and not run the risk of losing it. So, this is why I thought a researcher needs tenure--there is no good metric to measure research productivity. That is, tenure is necessary only in work roles where common ways of measuring output (e.g. # of papers) might not be an accurate representation of the person's actual value. For teaching roles, even if a professor is trying new techniques and gets bad reviews or doesn't teach a class as well, it's hard to imagine a case where an instructor can completely fail at teaching (i.e. majority of the students failed to learn the material). But perhaps I am not thinking hard enough, please let me know what I could be missing!

I got a small souvenir from the campus bookstore from many of the places I visited in the process of making a decision. Most of the programs also gave all visiting students something too. My "loot" includes a coffee mug, a t-shirt, and some simulated Mars dust (my favourite!).

I don't usually see FERPA policies heavily enforced. But it could be a generational thing--older profs who were around before FERPA will probably continue to things their way. I have noticed that every single one of my TAs in my current school (who have had the FERPA training recently) have been very good at following these policies (I have noticed zero things that might be FERPA infractions in any of my dozen or so classes). So, I would imagine that eventually, keeping grades private will be second-nature. I think it's pretty easy and not any real extra work to comply with FERPA.