TakeruK

I moved to the US for a PhD program in 2012. But from about 2009-2012, I was on a Solo Mobile plan (Solo's parent company is Bell). When I moved though, they said Solo was no longer taking any more customers. My plan was $25/month + $10 for caller ID and voicemail. I got 100 minutes of talk per month and unlimited text, however after my 2 year contract ended, the "reward" for staying a customer was to get unlimited talk as well (I used like 10mins/month though). The unlimited talk was only local calls though and texting was Canada-wide. So it wasn't a very good plan at all. Before Solo, I had used Rogers/Fido pay-as-you-go plans. Right now, in the the US, I am paying about $40/month (only $5 more) for 2GB data, 1000 minutes and unlimited text across all of the US. Also, no contracts. I hope the new regulatory laws in Canada will make our market more like the US though. If you are going to be living in an area covered by WIND Mobile, I'd suggest looking into that! We were trying to find a plan for my mother-in-law, who would have very limited uses for a phone and we found some very useful and affordable options!

I also love using my Mac and greatly enjoy it, however, I don't see this particular example as a plus! I also have to replace my charger once in the last 2 years (and my SD card reader stopped working, also fixed now though). My friend has replaced his charger twice in the last year. I am super glad that Apple does have great customer service (as long as you buy/have AppleCare) but my pet peeve is that I should not even need this service in the first place. I think the fact that their hardware fails often enough that you need AppleCare is one of my less favourite things about Apple stuff. I am worried what will happen when AppleCare runs out! All of my non-Mac computers in the past usually work for at least 3 years without any issues! In the long run, I think it's still worth it to get Apple computers as long as I can afford them, but what seems to be a high failure rate of their hardware is disappointing!

I don't think that's unfriendly either! At one school I was at, a B+ was the minimum passing grade for a PhD student. The class grade distribution usually meant As for everyone who met expectations, A+ for those exceeding, A- for those who were just below and a B+ was a minimal pass. Also almost every offer will have stipulations on continuing funding only if you "make satisfactory progress" or something vague like that. Usually "make satisfactory progress" means "do not get kicked out". So, this is just a more concrete way of saying the same thing (check also to see if getting less than a 3.25 GPA means you get kicked out).

I would say one big difference is that since we pay for grad school applications, I think it is reasonable for us to expect that we do get a response by e.g. a month or so before the semester we applied for begins! But they are not "required" in any way, as far as I know. But I do wonder that since they take our application fee, what service are they actually legally required to provide? Maybe the grad school itself has some automated program that sends rejections to all applicants not explicitly rejected by a certain date? I don't think it's bad form to call up a school you're waitlisted at, especially if you're waiting for your top choice. Maybe not right on April 15, but maybe like (just making up a number) a month after your initial waitlist notification, you can call back to see if there are any updates. And then maybe again a week or so before April 15. I don't mean that you have to choose before you ever hear back from your top choice school. I think that once you have visited (if visits apply in your field) and talked to the profs you need to talk to, you have all of the information necessary to make a decision based on the schools you've heard back from. For many people, this happens in like mid- to late- March, if not earlier. In this case, if you have e.g. 6 offers and waitlisted at top choice, then by late March, you should at least know which one of the 6 offers is your favourite if you don't get into the top choice. I agree that everyone is different and for some people, there may not be a clear "second choice" (so have 2 second choices) or perhaps their second choice depends on other factors out of their control (e.g. a SO also applying to schools, job offers etc.) So, once you know your best "second choice", I think the best thing to do is to decline the other 5, and hold onto your "second choice" until you hear back from the top choice. You should stay in contact with the top choice (as above) to see how likely you are going to get a spot there. Ultimately, if you think you will hear back from top choice right after April 15, you might be able to ask second choice to give you an extension for a day or two beyond April 15. This may be possible because not every school/program will replace someone who declined the offer with someone from the waitlist. Perhaps a school wants to fill 7 spots so they might accept 10 people and only fill from waitlist if more than 4 people decline! So it might be the case that your "second choice" does this and you are person #8 for "second choice" so they would be okay with or without you. Just a contrived example of course, but what I intend to convey is that you should narrow down the choices when you can, and then stay in touch with your schools if you are hoping to get off a waitlist. And be patient as best you can!

Cool, good to know for the future where I might find myself in area that TD Bank serves At least a phone call wire transfer is more convenient than our current method of moving money across the border (wait for a trusted person/myself to go back home, or get someone to mail it [makes me uneasy!]). Thanks for the clarification (as I don't have a TD Bank account, just a TD Canada Trust one).

I do the same as bsharpe29 in the very rare cases where the material I am reading is not in PDF form (I guess I'm lucky that everything in my field is PDF, more or less). I use Mendeley and I enter these books into my repository/library as well (so that I get automated referencing/bibliography). Mendeley also allows me to enter things in a "notes" field for every entry, not just annotating PDFs so I also type up a few key points for each item. This way, when I search my electronic Mendeley database, I am effectively able to search my handwritten notes too. In my field, most useful books are actually a collection of lengthy and influential review papers so they are also usually available as PDFs too. But in some cases, it's worth it to actually purchase the book and when I have the actual book, I just write in the margins themselves. Just to be complete, there are some cases where I might also choose to scan important articles that are old (and not available online) from a library's copy of the journal issue!

Like job postings, schools are not "required" to notify you at all. But I think most schools will eventually send you a reject notification if they did reject you. Sometimes they just have far too many rejections to be able to respond in a timely manner (they might wait until they sort out all the details of the accepted people first). I agree that it would be best to hear bad news sooner rather than later, but as an optimistic, I'd like to think that it's not like they are purposing being cruel, but limited time/resources makes some responses very delayed. It's not like they have anything to gain by being mean to a bunch of us! As for April 15th, if you are on a waitlist, it usually means that they are waiting for the accepted students to decide first. These students generally have until April 15, so if people decide earlier, you might hear before April 15, but if everyone decides on April 14, then you might not hear until shortly afterwards. As you can imagine, the week of April 15 can be a very hectic and stressful time as people might need to hear back before making decisions. So, I think the best practice is for applicants to make decisions as they have enough information. If you (the general you) e.g. get into 6 schools but are on the waitlist for your top choice, it doesn't make sense to hold onto all 6 offers while waiting for your top choice to get back to you. Instead, while waiting, I'd encourage you to think about the current 6 offers and narrow it down to just 1 or 2. Once you've done so, decline the other 4-5 offers so that people on those waitlists can make their decisions. Maybe someone who is holding an offer from your top choice is on the waitlist at one of your accepted schools! While I don't think anyone should be forced into making a decision before they are ready, I don't think something like a 6-way tie between schools is reasonable for most people. There has to be one or two that you prefer more (unless it's really early in the season and you haven't had any info yet).

Thanks for the cell phone plan update! I heard that in the past year, a lot of cell phone law reform has taken place in Canada and now we're closer to the better US model! Yay! Also, regarding the US/Canada bank accounts, you are right, you will not be able to access a US bank account and a Canadian bank account in the same online bank session (or with the same bank card etc. if you visit a branch or go to an ATM). Perhaps I was not clear enough, but what I meant was that many banks, such as BMO, will allow you to have a US Dollar Bank Account, not an account with a US bank (which I'll call a US Bank Account). When I log into BMO online banking, I see my Canadian Dollar Savings, my Canadian Dollar Chequing, and my US Dollar Bank Account. I am able to transfer money from my Canadian dollar accounts to my US dollar accounts online (paying the exchange rate of course). If I wanted to take the money in the US Dollar Bank Account to a US Bank Account (e.g. Citibank), then I would have to get a US Dollar Draft from BMO (aka Money order), which is free, and then physically take the money order to the US and deposit it there! However, TD Bank / TD Canada Trust, does offer "Cross-Border Banking" (http://www.tdbank.com/personal/cross-border-banking.html). It even says you can view both your US and Canadian Bank accounts online. You will also be able to transfer funds from your US Account to your Canadian Account (and vice versa) with no fees. Of course, these services already exist (e.g. Western Union) but they cost money--if you do it internally within TD, then it's all free and there's no third party involved (although you could argue that TD Canada Trust is technically a separate entity from TD Bank in the US). So I hope this clarifies what I wrote last year about banking in Canada and the US!

The president of KAUST is the former president of Caltech -- http://www.kaust.edu.sa/about/admin/president/presidentoffice.html. He just changed jobs last year. I don't know how effective it will be, but it does seem like KAUST is making symbolic and practical connections to "the west".

I have not seen any funded offer that requires you to actually attend that program later no matter what. Usually the funded offer will require you actually attend/complete the semesters for which you are funded in order to receive that funding, so if they pay for Sept-Dec in Sept and you quit in October, then you will probably have to pay back some or all of your funding. As a student, you can quit anytime, including before you start. In your case, if you know you will make the decision (job or school) before April 15, then you should just wait until you are ready to decide and then decide (decline all your other schools though so there is room on the waitlist if that exists). If you won't know about your other job until like August or whatever, then just proceed as if you will attend school and change your path later! In general, quitting before you start will probably mean you will lose whatever deposits you might have paid for registration hold, but since you would probably not yet get paid in advance for your funded offer, you won't have to do things like pay back fellowship/scholarship money etc.

Oh, yeah, we have such a crappy cell phone market I was so surprised when I went to the US and "long distance" meant another country, not like 200km away! When I moved from BC to Ontario for my MSc degree, I sent an email with my new number to the people I wanted to keep in touch with. For everyone else (random people in class), I didn't bother. I used that chance to clear out my contact list basically. Basically, if I didn't talk to them on the phone in the last 30 days or whatever, I probably would not have kept them on my list after I moved.

I am assuming you mean a cell phone, not a land line right? If you are in the US, you can most likely keep your old number! When I scroll through my contact list for my grad school friends, they all have different area codes and it's kind of fun/cool to see the different area codes matching up with the state they came from!

These thank you notes (email, letters, card, whatever) are basically going to be glanced at and then discarded/forgotten about. It makes more sense to go with email since that does not waste paper! Also, email allows the prof to easily reply back to you if they have more to say!

Being not in your field, I can only answer this last question. I would say both yes and no. The technical answer is "no" though. I would say "yes", because most Canadian schools (including U of T political science) will fund domestic and international students to the same minimum level: http://politics.utoronto.ca/graduate/financial-support/. Note that you will be paid at minimum, a stipend of $31,400 because you will have $16,400 in tuition and fees, leaving you with at least $15,000 take home (Canadian students are paid $22,400 because they have $7,400 in tuition and fees, leaving them also with $15,000 take home). This usually means that departmental funding or school funding will supplement whatever external awards you may not be able to get as an international student. However, I would also say "no" because there are definitely many awards that are only available to Canadians. I remember seeing many of these when I was in a Canadian school (awards that span all fields). I also know that many American sourced awards are only for Americans studying in the US. I think the biggest/most common award you will apply to at Toronto will be the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS). It is a provincially funded award that used to be administered provincially, but starting this year, the province simply provides some amount of money to each School, and then the School decides how to distribute the award between its own students/applicants. You would basically be competing with other U of T students (from all programs) for the money. When it was provincially administered, there was a quota on how many international students may win the award but I am not sure if that still exists with the new school-centered system. For the OGS, the deadline was Feb 24 2014 for your program, so if you didn't already apply to it, you missed it this year. Note that most Canadian schools will also require all of their students to apply to all awards possible so starting next year, you will have to apply to the OGS each year. In my Canadian MSc program, winning a OGS means an increase in stipend of about $3000 above the minimum funding level. But with your increased international fees, I am not sure if you winning a OGS will mean you will get any increase in funding (i.e. they may replace your department/school sourced top-up for international fees with your OGS money). You will not be eligible for the national level awards from the SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council), similar to the NSF but focussed on Social Sciences/Humanities only. The U of T financial support page mentions many department and school-funded awards, and usually these awards do not care if you are Canadian or not. You will be limited when you seek awards from external sources though. Hope that made sense/was helpful. If you are seeking to move into Canada permanently, note that, unlike the US, Canada does have an immigration pathway for PhD students (you can apply to become a permanent resident as early as after 2 years in the PhD program [if you meet other criteria] and as late as 1 year after PhD graduation). But given the context of your question, it sounds like you want to find jobs in the US in your field (which I have no idea about!) Good luck

If it was e.g. 32k at the second school vs. 30k at the first school, I would say that the stipend should not play a large role in your selection. I'd say go with the program that will set you up the best for your goals/career post-PhD. However, you imply that you might go into debt with the first school, so this sounds like a much larger difference. In this case, I'd say go for the funded, less stressful offer! I also agree with the others to show the first school the offer from the second school. If they agree to match it, or increase their funding enough so that you won't be in financial trouble, then go there But you should only do this if you will definitely go to the first school should they match your offer.

I like this (emphasis added) as a rule of thumb!

I can't really speak to what's legal, since I am not a lawyer but it doesn't sound like anything illegal is happening here. But is it ethical? It's less clear. I also think there is a lot of different things going on at the same time and here are my thoughts: 1. The PI is only accepting students from China. -- I do not think this is ethical if the PI is purposely using nationality/ethnicity to select his/her graduate students. I have heard of cases of a foreign PI only hiring students from their home country and then using this to take advantage of them. However, the PI might be doing this unconsciously. If so, they should reconsider their evaluation scheme to make sure they are fairly selecting graduate students. 2. The PI uses US funds (public and private) to pay for the training of international students. -- This is totally ethical and fine, as long as there are no weird stipulations from the source of the funding. A school that admits international students should also fund and treat international students the same as domestic students once they are admitted. 3. The PI's students move back to China after their PhD -- This is also fine. In fact, my J-1 status kind of requires me to go back to Canada after my PhD. Also, US Immigration has repeatedly made it clear that the purpose of F-1 and J-1 is to simply complete studies in the US without any promise or expectation of future work in the US afterwards (although there are programs like OPT that can help you get US work experience in your field). -- So I would say that the whole purpose of training international student is not really to keep them in your country but to send them back to their home countries with US training. This is a reciprocal process of course, US students can go to other countries and bring that training/experience back to enrich US culture. 4. The PI's former students form their own research groups which compete with the US group. -- Also fine I think. The point of the PhD program is to train independent researchers (i.e. forming their own research group). Many PhDs will do research in the field they are trained in (initially anyways) so the nature of the PhD program is that you train people that might be future collaborators but also future competitors. Competitors are not inherently bad though. 5. The PI has another research group in China. -- This may or may not be okay depending on whether or not the PI has disclosed this other affiliation with their US employer. I know many professors who might hold joint appointments between two different institutions though. A lot of international schools also recruit and pay US professors to be something like 10% joint with them. As long as the PI has properly disclosed this potential conflict of commitment and/or conflict of interest with both schools, there is no ethical reason why a person cannot lead two separate academic research groups at two separate institutions. 6. The PI owns a company in China. -- Same as #5 I think.

I'm not a law expert but I have had some training in workplace harassment and sexual harassment in general (required for all public service employees in some parts of Canada, which includes graduate TAs). Although I have had a bit of similar training in the US during orientation and other workshops, the laws of US and Canada are similar enough that it's entirely possible that I will confuse one for the other in cases with subtle differences! So, my interpretation of what is happening here would be that it is sexual harassment because (at least in Canada, but I think this was covered in my US grad orientation too) for someone to show sexually explicit materials to another person without their consent. A workplace (e.g. the school/the classroom) should be free of harassment so I am confused why this is "academic freedom". Obviously, every person, student or otherwise, should be free to watch whatever they want (as long as it's not illegal) in privacy but I don't think it is reasonable to infringe on others' rights to a harassment-free workplace/classroom in order to uphold an individual's first amendment rights. I don't know if there is a US equivalent, but the very first article of the Canadian Charter of Rights & Freedoms is And in Canada, there are laws that prescribe that workplaces/classrooms should be harassment free. So, to me, it completely makes sense for a student to not be able to watch pornography (and thus make other people see it without their consent) in public places such as classrooms and libraries. But that was in Canada -- is there not some similar restrictions to the US Bill of Rights? Like I said above, I am not a law expert! But my previous harassment training would definitely tell me to talk to someone / escalate it if I saw something like that happening at my school!

It usually refers to the standard convention that most grad schools that make you an offer will give you until April 15 to decide. So it's normally meant to refer to a deadline for you to decide, not for them to contact you. However, as April 15 approaches, people will make decisions so schools might make offers to other people lower down on their list. So April 15th is a busy time for both applicants and schools as the deadline forces decisions to be made.

In my field, it's pretty common to be advised by assistant professors. After all, graduating students is one of the things that help you earn tenure. There are differences between working for an advisor who is young and untenured vs. a middle career tenured prof vs. a full professor closer to the end of their career. And there will be differences from person to person too. So, I think what works for you should really depend on fit and who you click with the best. I've worked with all three "types" and my PhD will be supervised by an assistant professor. It is a valid/important concern that your advisor won't get tenure and be forced to leave. But even tenured professors might choose to leave for one reason or another (one example I know about is a prof who left because her spouse did not get tenure so they moved to a place where both of them could get tenure). You might want to ask around to find out how often people are denied tenure in your program. My department head was very honest with us when we (some current students) asked. He said that they hire people with the expectation of granting them tenure and no one in the last 20 years have been denied tenure. In another related department, one professor did leave and his students had the choice of changing supervisors or moving with him (but still receive a degree from their original school). What actually happens in each case will depend on the negotiations the prof has made with their old and new institutions though. In my opinion, while there is a small risk involved with working for an assistant professor, I don't think it is significant enough to sacrifice a good personality/research fit. There is also risk that an older tenured professor will retire (perhaps unexpectedly) too. And it doesn't make sense for students to only seek to work for middle-career faculty. I think that every student (no matter who their advisor is) should go to a program with multiple faculty members that are a good fit and to keep their options open! If possible, it might be a good idea to work on side projects as well that might take over as your main project if necessary (and if not necessary, extra papers are always good).

I disagree--I don't think it's appropriate to use your current offer to squeeze a decision out of the school faster unless your current offer is going to expire really soon. If you have until April 15 and it's March 1, there's no need to rush the other school. You might also want to ask about a decision timeline if you are visiting another school/place in the area and want to combine visits to save money for everyone. I also think it's perfectly acceptable to use other offers to increase your funding but only in the cases I mentioned in the my post above (i.e. you are ready to accept their offer if they match it or make a good attempt to do so).

I think this would also be considered a different case because it is sexual harassment, not just a distraction. I hope when you said the TA excused him, he meant that the TA asked the person to leave the class (instead of make an excuse for this person)!

I'm not sure if it's really possible to say which places are accessible at the entire campus level. Environments can vary a lot between a single department/program. For example, my program is only one floor and not very large. The most anyone has to walk from one office/classroom to another is probably something like 100m and that's only if you are going from one end to another. The classrooms in our building are conference room style--no giant lecture halls. There are chairs (with and without armrests) and several rows of long tables (no annoying flip-desk thing that is attached to a seat). But I have no idea what other classrooms on campus look like because I rarely see them. Grad school is very different from undergrad. You don't have to rush between buildings to make it to class etc. We mostly stay in one building all day and never see anyone else from other departments on campus! I think a common experience for grad students is to be stopped by random people on campus looking for a certain building and we would have no idea what's on campus other than the few buildings we work in or visit. Our general strategy is to direct these people to an undergrad who actually knows what's going on. On many days, I go from home to my office and never even leave the building I work in until it's time to go back home--so I interact very little with the people outside of my program on these days. As for the culture, I think this also really depends on the individual programs, not the whole campus. And this will change over time as new students enter and old students graduate. Again, graduate students are generally much less involved in the whole "campus culture". In my program, there are a pretty wide range of "active" levels, just like any group of people in the world. Some people are very active and basically work out or do a sport more than once a day. Some people do a few things a few times a week. Some people mostly just do recreational stuff like play tennis, go hiking on some weekends etc. And some people don't do anything at all! I think the best way for you to judge what environments you feel comfortable in is by visiting the programs. I think you should apply to programs that you are interested in academically and worry less about what the culture is like unless you actually know people in the program and/or have visited the specific program. Otherwise, for people that are not you, it's hard for us to say where you would be comfortable or not! Good luck!

This might work if you have an external fellowship. I had one and although the stipend for everyone in my program is the same no matter your source of funding, because of the financial difficulty of a dependent with a $7000+/year health insurance premium, the school was able to help me out with a special healthcare supplement for one year only. This gave my spouse the time to find a job and now we are able to pay the premium cost (and starting April 1, she will be on a more affordable ACA care plan!). Finding work was difficult for my spouse because of the combination of the extra paperwork and approval to get work permission (we're Canadian), which took many months as well as the tough job market in our area. But it worked out in the end.

I also put my name (and application # if one was assigned) and something like page 1/2 etc. in the header. I figured it was a safe thing to include in case someone printed out my files and then the pages got moved around, it would help them reassemble the pieces of my application. This was required for one of the scholarships I applied to as well as many class papers so I thought it was a good practice to continue doing!