TakeruK

Being Canadian, I have not experienced the process myself and only know some things because of what my non-Canadian friends have told me when they considered Canadian permanent residencies. My friends were referring to the quotas and limits on PhD students filing for residencies, which is also summarised: That was taken from this article: http://www.thestar.com/news/immigration/2014/01/06/immigration_phd_candidates_believe_they_were_systematically_rejected_by_canadas_federal_skilled_worker_program.html which tells the story of two students that failed to make it through the system (I am not sure if their experience is really representative of the system, I was mostly looking for a confirmation of the recent law changes). Also, my friends originally brought up these concerns to me in 2012, when the quotas were first introduced (and were stricter) and it wasn't really clear if the quota was annually or otherwise. I think when these changes were introduced, there was a lot of uncertainty and concern. Fortunately, from reading updates from the government website and from your story, it sounds like a lot of the system has been ironed out and could be working much better now! I am not sure I agree with having a quota for this class of immigration but if 300/year (or 1000/year for PhD students) is high enough to accommodate the demand and also keep processing times low, then I guess it might be okay!

I understand your complaints but I also would agree with aberrant that student visas like F-1 is not intended as a pathway towards permanent residence in America. So, it makes sense that these restrictions are in place! However, it is my opinion that governments should make it easier for foreigners who have finished their PhDs in America to become American citizens. After all, isn't it in the country's best interests to keep the American trained talent in America? Who cares if they were born outside of America? If they intend to stay in America and pay American taxes and contribute to American economy then to me, that is a good American citizen! (At first I was worried I was putting too much "America" in this paragraph but then I decided to just roll with it). I am not an American though, but recently, Canadian immigration law has been changed to make it harder for foreigners with Canadian PhDs to become Canadian permanent residents, which I think is the opposite of what I'd want Canada to be. For some reason, our current government isn't very supportive of new Canadians. Maybe the "brain drain" problem isn't a big deal in the US but in Canada, we often worry about our best talent moving to the US, yet we pass laws preventing Canadian-trained foreign talent from staying! So I am sympathetic to the frustration that immigration laws make it very hard to stay in a country where you intend to be a useful, productive member of the society! Also, I am not sure about the wisdom of these restrictive working laws (fine, require F-1s to work on campus, but then don't make on-campus jobs give priority to non-F1s!).

I obviously do not fully understand the relationship you have with your classmate, but I wouldn't think twice about making a photocopy of my notes for anyone else in any of my classes as long as it is not a chronic thing. Even if I don't know the reason for their absence or if I don't know them very well. If I feel like there is a continuing problem (i.e. happens pretty much every week) then I would stop doing it but if it's the first request, I'd give them the benefit of the doubt. In your case, I'd probably be annoyed at this person for not actually following through on your own notes request, but I'd just ask someone else. I'd actually be confused that the other person thought they needed to "butter me up" in order to ask for the notes. In my department, it costs nothing to use the scanner and it would literally take me about 4 minutes of my time to scan a week's worth of lectures. In my old department, we didn't have such access to fancy equipment but most of us were happy with cellphone pictures of our notebooks. I don't know if you just wanted to vent about this person or if you were asking our opinions/experience with borrowing/lending class notes. If it was just the former, then sorry for going on for longer than necessary!

I think you have some good credentials and have a good shot at top programs. But I think what the "right" advice for you is will really depend on what your longer term career goals are. So maybe that is the most important first step--decide for sure what you want the next year(s)! Also, depending on your goals, it might not be necessary to apply to mid-tier programs. If you want to be in grad school no matter what, then you should definitely apply to a good range of programs including top and middle tiers. If you have other goals as well and only seek top programs, then I think it makes sense for international students to be more selective and only apply to the top programs. There may be little reward to go through all the hassle of being a grad student in a foreign country when you have other goals/options you can pursue. In my application year, I had only applied to top programs and had alternate non-academic plans if I didn't get in anywhere. To respond to your specific questions/options: I think if you want to pursue science/academia and if you can start in Fall 2014, your best option is to do the Masters (#2). Canadian Masters programs are generally fully funded in STEM and basically is the same as the first 2 years of a US PhD program. Doing this will prepare you very well for graduate school, give you access to academics at your program (LORs), and give you a lot of research experience. Having a Canadian MSc will also set you up for a Canadian PhD program if you choose that route afterwards (i.e. more places you can apply to PhD programs). If you are not able to start a Masters this fall, then you might want to consider Option #1 if you feel that you can do really good work in a specific lab and if you really want to start a PhD ASAP (although I don't really think a few years is a big difference). I think that if your goal is academia, then you would be best served in an academic program. Option #3 is a fine idea too, but I don't think you need to worry about "saving money for grad school" since most PhD programs in the sciences are fully funded (although some are better funded than others). You can still come back to science after 1-2 years away (I know plenty of profs and grad students who have done something else between undergrad and grad school). It's harder of course, but if you are not 100% sure your ultimate goal is academia, I think Option #3 is a pretty cool opportunity you should take up. Like you said, it will be a good way to determine if you are still interested in that career or not! Also, a lot of people who tried other things before grad school said they were glad that they did because while grad school can suck at some points, they at least took comfort in knowing that they tried something else and didn't like it as much. It prevents "grass is greener on the other side" type thoughts. So I think Options 2 or 3 are the best for you, depending on how sure you are about your future goals! Good luck!

I'll just echo what iphi said! Sorry!

I don't know how useful/meaningful this will be but here are some fun stuff you could do! Note: I think a lot of the suggestions below have tons of other caveats and issues that come with looking at large datasets that might not be properly representative etc but they are still fun: 1. For PhDs, visually, it looks like the peak in the rejected distribution is later than the peak in the accepted distribution. This agrees with our experience that schools tend to send acceptances first then rejections later. However, the bin difference is only one, which means I would be concerned about the effects of binning. Can you bin by half-weeks instead? Or be more strict with your bin edges so that each bin covers an entire business week? 2. In general, I am wary of histograms because of binning. How about doing something like this instead: a ) For each year, determine "folded" time of decision by determining the number of days since Jan 1 of that year where the decision was made. It seems like you have already done this for the histogram, but I would say do this by day so that you don't lose information by binning. b ) PhD decision distribution seems like it is normally distributed, so assume that it is, and then determine the best fitting mean and standard deviation of the distribution that describes the acceptances/rejections (individually). I don't think it would work for Masters though. c ) Compare the mean values for each decision type and the standard deviation of each decision. Are they statistically significant from each other? My guess from visual inspection is that no, the difference in peak should be much less than the 68% interval. 3. You can go even further! You can ask if it's likely that the two distributions (acceptances and rejections) are drawn from the same overall distribution. This can answer the question "does the day of the decision matter?". You can do this by comparing both PhD accepts vs. PhD rejections but also PhD accepts vs. Masters accepts. a ) One easy (but not super duper great) way to do this is the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. It's not ideal because it assumes a ton of stuff about the data distribution, but basically you want to compare two distributions by making a cumulative probability plot (percentage of total population on y-axis, days on x-axis) and then determine the largest vertical separation between the two distributions. Then there's some statistic thing that you can do to determine the probability that the two observed populations (e.g. PhD accept dates, PhD reject dates) actually come from the same distribution (i.e. the null hypothesis). You probably know what I mean? I usually have to look this up every time I try to do it. b ) There are Bayesian methods of model comparisons too, but I don't really know how to do that, right now! From visual inspection, it really does not seem like there is any real correlation between date and decision for any degree or any decision when we combine all the programs. I think if you did it on a per-school basis, there would be differences but the sample size would be much smaller (and also searching one school at a time is easy enough on the Results Survey database that we don't need fun plots ) Happy data-analysing

Glad to hear the update and that the news is all positive Hope you get your extension!

I would mention the school name because it sounds natural to me to mention that when you start discussing your undergrad experience in your SOP. I think if you do not mention it, people might be left wondering "where did this guy go again?" and either get distracted looking it up or be distracted thinking about it. I know that normally when I talk to someone and if I say anything about my undergraduate experience, someone will ask "Where did you do your undergrad?" if they didn't already know. I do this to others too, so I think location of undergrad is a good way to help give an anchor to you. Sure, maybe naming a nice school will help, but there are tons of bad applicants from nice schools. I don't think of it as a prestige thing but more as a way to remember who you are. I know that when I meet people in academia, I often think of them as "Stacey from Santa Cruz working on X" or "Bob from Ohio State working on Y", etc. I don't think naming a non-prestigious school will hurt you. I think having a name/location at all helps the reader "ground" themselves when reading your experiences. I did not include my GPA and I don't really think it's necessary to include it for the reasons TheGirlWhoLived stated. But you said you are very proud of your GPA and if that achievement is part of the narrative and tone of your SOP then it shouldn't hurt to include it either.

I agree with you that Berkeley definitely has a far stronger research program and reputation. Until my PhD program, I was in Physics departments and I have to say that while I heard a ton of good things about UCB, there wasn't much about UCSD. However, I think you should visit both schools, if possible, and then factor that along with everything else so far in your final decision. When I made my final decision, it was really the visit that played a very large role. You learn a lot about the city and the department and the people there that you just can't find out from the department website. Some people had much different research interests than I had originally thought so I was very glad I visited. Stipend is important, but to me, I think I would just mostly worry about whether or not UCB and UCSD are offering enough to live comfortably in their respective cities. So if UCB is already offering a decent stipend, the extra $14k from UCSD isn't going to be a huge factor, in my opinion. Basically, if you want to look at it in practical terms, I really think the calibre of UCB's program will earn you much more than $14k in lifelong earning potential. However, the extra $14k in the first year (basically a bit less than $3k/year) can make a huge difference if UCB's stipend offer is too low to live comfortably. 5+ years of living in constant financial worry can be a big drain on your life and well-being.

These are all very good and important points and I am glad you have taken the time to explain them to me! Your point that the other students do contribute to the overall learning environment is very true and it's something I didn't consider before. I agree that it is important as an instructor to ensure a positive learning environment when possible! I also agree that in some circumstances, such as when you want to get a class discussing a topic together, it makes sense to ask students to put aside their laptops and contribute. I know that if I was in a group where a fraction of the class wasn't even into the topic, I probably wouldn't speak up either. I guess the tricky part is that there is no easy one-rule-fits-all answer to this. You make a good point that preventing instructors from banning technology at all can be harmful in some cases. But I also think that some of my former instructors have been too heavy handed in their own classroom policies and they tried to set some kind of environment that didn't sit well at all with the class and it was a very terrible experience for everyone. So, how to make sure that neither extreme case happens? I don't know. Maybe more training on pedagogy would be better. You said in the above post that we should know something about teaching, and I agree--we should. However, many of us have practically no training at all. TAs are generally just assigned a class and we learn from our past experience as a student while professors mostly learned to teach from their TA experience. The main issue with this is that all of us, all the graduate students, and especially the ones that end up as professors, are a very small subset of the student population. I think if we are not actively thinking about different perspectives, we might be fooling ourselves when we think what we liked/would have liked as a student would work when we are instructors. I really wish more graduate programs placed more emphasis on teaching and that we got this training from trained educators, not just other professionals in our own fields. I have only formally learned to teach for a Canadian youth group and that dynamic is very different from college students of course. The rest have been learned from trial and error but I don't think this is very effective. My graduate school orientations included a few hours on being a TA but it was more to do with general TA rules/policies than pedagogy. There has been occasional teaching workshops and they have been helpful but I wish for something for substantial and directly part of our graduate student training!

I think it's still an ongoing process. A huge change happened for me when I started grad school. But I agree that everyone is basically faking it until they make it. When I was a kid, I remember trusting adults my age (e.g. my elementary school teachers) thinking that they have everything in life figured out and knew everything. Like, if I saw them cross the street, I'd know it was safe. Or if I saw one around then I would know I was safe. But, once in awhile, I realise that I am now older than many of my elementary school teachers and I don't know that much at all! I am afraid when I realise that little kids might look at me the way I did to adults when I was their age. What if I screw up?? I don't think there's a magical moment where you realise you are fully equipped for life. But when I think back to my life 5 years ago, I realised that a lot changed in these past years and I didn't even realise it

Oh, I also wanted to add that, at least in my field, at professional events like conferences, there are always tons of people on their laptops and cell phones during invited and contributed talks. I often see faculty members checking emails or even putting together slides for their own talk later that day or later that week. And, many people are now live-tweeting or live-blogging conference talks for their colleagues who are not able to attend. Conferences often encourage this by publishing a hashtag that attendees can use to discuss the event. One faculty member even asked the audience a question during his presentation and wanted attendees to answer by tweeting it to him with a certain hashtag. It was a "guess the value of a certainty quantity--closest answer wins!" type of thing. So maybe it's a difference of perspective that in my field, we might not feel that using a laptop/phone during a presentation is a rude thing.

I think any time you show the fine details (e.g. what I would guess is the level of a writing sample, or even a conference talk/poster) of your research, I think you should always be ready to publish your results/paper ASAP. Some exceptions are cases where you alone have access to the model or data required to do the work. In your shoes, since it sounds like you have your work pretty much ready to go, I would go ahead and submit the manuscript as a writing sample. However, if you are submitting it to a peer-reviewed thing, then keep in mind that the peer review process might take awhile too. If you are publishing a non-peer reviewed book or something like that, then I have no idea what that process is like! In my field, pretty much everyone, starting at grad school, keeps track of what gets published on their topics. There are pre-prints servers that gets updated daily as people submit preprints (usually either a copy of the article submitted to the journal or after peer reviewed corrections, or even after publication) and you can set up journal databases to send you daily/weekly/whatever updates on new items that contain certain keywords. So, this way, I am able to know about any new research published on my specific topic/interests pretty much right away and it would be easy to see if someone did the same thing as you! While making sure you are not scooped is important, what is more important, I think, is to do this in order to stay up to date on what people are doing on your topic! Finally, it's actually pretty common in my field for multiple people to come up with the same idea/result independently. For example, someone might publish a theory and then multiple groups might independently come up with calculations/data that support that theory. Usually, when people find out that there is someone else working on the same thing, they communicate with each other to find out their progress. Sometimes see two papers appearing in the same issue of a journal on the same topic, and that both papers will disclose that during their work, they found out that the other group was doing the same thing independently, so they both agreed to submit at the same time. This is beneficial for all since no one will rush and produce sloppy science in an effort to be the first one published!

Yes, you should tell the school the truth. I don't think they will make you pay the deposit though, if you have not paid it yet.

I think there are two issues that I am addressing here. The first is the specific example of whether or not students should be allowed to use cell phones and laptops in class, and the second is whether or not professors/TAs should have the ability to create policies on cellphones and laptops. So firstly.... Sorry, I think there might have been some mis-communication on my part here! I agree that not using your phone is equivalent to expecting them to become future scholars. I think that not using your phone to email/text is a polite thing to do in class and all students should do this if they want to get the most out of the class. However, I am also saying that I don't think an instructor should require all students to get the most out of the class. If a student chooses to disengage themself from the lecture/discussion, they should be able to do so, as long as they don't directly impact another student's learning (i.e. noisy phones, or not participating in small group discussions/work). I mean, this is definitely unprofessional behaviour and not ideal, but as instructors, I don't think we should force/require all of our students to care about the class. We should definitely encourage them to do so, though. To me, staring off into space and thinking about something else (my grocery list? my homework in other classes? what I want to make for dinner tonight? my TV shows?) or making random doodles on my notebook is the same level of disengagement as writing emails on my laptop or sending a text during class (or even falling asleep in the back of the lecture hall). If I did these things, these are all poor choices on my part. But if I am daydreaming about dancing apples in class, it doesn't detract from another student's learning. Thus, to me, there is nothing wrong with a student choosing to disengage from the class. Whether or not the student uses technology to aid them in their disengagement is not important. What is important is that the disengaging student does not distract others in the class by a beeping cellphone or a noisy computer or images flashing on a screen and being disruptive. So, I don't think rules like "no cellphones in class" make sense to me, as an instructor and as a student. I think rules like "keep your cellphones on silent" or "be respectful of your classmates' learning" make more sense. I understand that your "seminar"/"job talk" examples were just examples relevant to us as graduate students. But what I meant is that to us, class time is important to us and valued to us. But this is not always true for our students. I think it is reasonable for a student to want to pay full attention while at work in their employer's board room (and thus not take out their phone) yet do not care about our classes as much. i.e. just because a student is irresponsible (uses a phone) in class doesn't mean that student will be equally irresponsible in other parts of life. I don't think a professor or TA can have the same authority over their class as a CEO might have over their boardroom. In the classroom, the professor and TA are providing a service to the student body. I won't go as far to say that the students are clients/customers but when I sign up to take a class, I don't see myself as signing up for obligations the same way as when I sign up for a job. In my opinion, the instructors should adjust their teaching style and class format to meet the needs of their students, not expect the students to conform to whatever style the prof or TA prefer to use. I think that while ultimately the prof/TA gets to decide exactly how certain aspects of their instruction is implemented, however, the classes at a university should be structured the way the students want to learn. The department and university should be open and actively solicit student feedback and apply pressure on instructors to adjust their classes to respond to changing student wants/needs. Okay, now this leads to the second issue--how much control should a professor/TA have over their classroom environment? The statement that "students can always take another class" is not always true. In my major, there is usually a strict set of required classes and not enough people to justify more than one section, so there is only one class. But, I also don't think professors should be allowed to have arbitrary rules about their particular classes. Even if there are more than one professor/section of a particular class, it's not fair that some students are allowed to use computers to take notes and some are not. Other rules I think should not vary so much from class to class are policies on whether using past years' exams/problem sets to study from is allowed, whether certain types of calculators are allowed, etc. Rules like this should be standardized and enforced at at least the departmental level, instead of allowing individual instructors to decide. My concern is that allowing individuals too much control over a classroom can cause personal preferences of the instructor to put some students at a disadvantage (perhaps unknowingly by the instructor). I think that in general, Departments and/or Faculties and/or Universities should have general regulations that apply to all of the classes under their jurisdiction and do not allow instructors to create a classroom environment that deviates from it. For example, many schools require instructors to modify exams to ensure that students with certain disabilities are not disadvantaged. There are usually standardized hours that classes must take place on, and I don't think it's fair that some instructors want to schedule classes outside of these hours (I've experienced this with some graduate classes). I am passionate about this argument because I really think schools should enforce a policy where professors are not allowed to create "no laptop" policies. I also do not think an instructor should be allowed to kick a student out of a classroom (if they are actually creating a disturbance/being violent/being unsafe, call security; if the instructor doesn't like a student's attitude, then too bad) or prevent a student who is late to class from entering (unless it is an exam and/or some other instance where academic integrity can be comprised) or prevent students from leaving class early. Profs should not threaten to damage students' cellphones if they are used in class (who takes these threats seriously anyways) or take a phone out of a student's hand and talk to whomever is on the other end. I also do not think they should have the authority to confiscate such items. Basically, I think that a student's right to take a certain class using electronics (or even just plain not paying attention) takes priority over an instructor's preference that their students do not use cell phones or laptops.

You should not just show up on Admitted Students' Visit day unannounced! I am assuming that you did tell the school you had already booked your flight and you would like to attend the Admitted Students Day anyways, right? I am just checking, just in case!! If you have not, you should definitely ask them to let you visit anyways because you already booked your flight and time off as soon as they told you (wrongly) about your admitted status. Don't say/imply it's their fault but it's totally their fault. They should let you visit even if they don't normally let waitlisted students visit. I am saying this because normally, you can't just expect to show up at admitted students day and be able to see everything. Usually, each student has a personalized schedule filled with meetings and/or classes or seminars to attend. No one will be scheduled to meet with you if you don't let them know you are coming! Also, if they normally reimburse flights and other travel expenses for admitted students, they should do the same for you too. I don't know what the best way to bring this up would be though. Probably play it by ear to see how willing they were to let you visit on Admitted Students Day in the first place. Maybe wait until you are actually visiting and ask the department head about it and/or the admissions coordinator. Usually, during these visit days, you are scheduled some time with the office staff so they can process your expense forms/receipts. So have them ready. Even if they have not made a decision on whether they will reimburse you yet, you should leave the paperwork with them (make yourself a copy) so that they can process it if they decide to reimburse you. Finally, I do think this is your best chance to gain acceptance to the program. At many places, the number of spots open is a bit flexible and they might be able to accept another person if the candidate is good enough / impressive enough. Or, at least, you might get put at the very top of the waitlist. You wouldn't meet and greet directly with the admissions committee, but you should definitely talk to people you might work for/with and make your best impression on them Good luck!

I think there is a difference between us (graduate students who want to continue in our field and/or academia) sitting in a seminar or job talk and our students who are potentially just taking the class to fulfill whatever requirements or just to have a passing interest in our course. I always try to remember that my undergrad students are not mini versions of me. Not all of them want to go to grad school, and definitely not all of them want to continue in Physics (what I TA'ed mostly). Some of them are just taking that class because they must have some kind of physical science elective. Some of them are a little bit interested in science from a non-professional point of view and just want to expand their horizons. Of course, some of them also are potential "mini-me"s and want to seriously study science/physics in the long run. So, keeping in mind the diversity of my class, I do not try to treat my class as a training ground for future physicists. That would alienate a lot of people in the class. I don't expect them to spend hours outside of class studying the material--a lot of them probably have a lot of other commitments they would rather do / need to do instead of my class. Even when I am teaching at the junior level, most students are not interested in future graduate work. So instead of trying to do everything as a TA (professional development etc.), I just focus on helping the students achieve the learning goals of the course. It's a waste of everyone's time if I tried to teach them to be physicists, instead of just teaching them physics. Of course, I would still encourage further studies in Physics, let them know about seminars that week, etc. I remain approachable so students who are thinking of graduate school come to me and ask me about GREs, applications, how to choose research projects etc (and many of them have). I encourage students to pursue funding for summer research project. I've kept in touch with a few of my students that I TA'ed in the past and they recently started some really great graduate programs. My bottom line is that I try not to expect arbitrarily high bars/hoops for my students to jump through because I know there is a large variety of goals and backgrounds. I don't treat all of my students as if they are going to be future graduate students or even professionals in the field. I just want to provide a place for them to learn about my course's topics with as minimal impact to their other lives as possible. I don't want a non-science major to think that Physics/Science is stupid because of random arbitrary rules or even for them to spend their time trying to conform to these rules instead of spending their energy learning the material. For example, most scientists in my field use LaTeX to typeset reports and some journals absolutely require it. For my students, I strongly encourage LaTeX and I will help them get it set up and use it, but I never say that the reports must be written in this way. As long as their final report is legible, I am happy to accept it and I will care much more about the content than the style/format. So, I feel that arbitrary requirements like 100% complete attention/participation or not being allowed to take notes on a computer (or phone) etc are more appropriate for a class of students who all want to become professionals in the field. Maybe some classes are like this. But most of the undergrad classes I have experienced are not like this and I don't think it's reasonable to expect everyone to act as professionals (or professionals in training) in your field.

I think you are overestimating how much you will have to pay for US taxes. I mentioned it above, but see the tax tables here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States I would estimate your federal tax owing to be: $22,000 income - $3800 personal exemption = $18,200 taxable income You pay 10% on the first $8925 = $892.50 tax from first bracket And you pay 15% on the rest (18,200-8925=9275) = $1391.25 tax from second bracket Total US federal tax: $2283.75 There's also state taxes which vary but I don't think they are very high but they would depend on your state. In California, it would be several hundred dollars. So, I think you will get to keep a bit more of your income than you estimated. However, your current estimate is a good working budget because it's likely the school will keep as much as you originally overestimated and you will only get a refund when you file taxes. I can't comment on your owing to the Netherlands of course. But I will note that if I was a Canadian living in Canada and received foreign income (e.g. maybe I own a property in the US that I collect rent on) then I would normally have to pay Canadian taxes (social security premiums etc.) on my US income. But if I am not actually living in Canada and not benefitting from Canadian social security programs (e.g. most situations for PhD students in the US) then I don't have to pay Canadian taxes on my US income.

I think quarters in grad school is a lot different from quarters in undergrad. At my grad program, we rarely have midterms and only about half of my classes have finals (the rest just have projects). But in my STEM classes, in both grad and undergrad, we almost always had a regular assignment schedule, e.g. weekly work due on Fridays, as soon as we hand one in, we get another. This was true for both quarters and semester programs! To me, the difference is that you spend a lot less time in classes in grad school than undergrad, so that makes the biggest difference in increasing independent study time!

Agree with everyone else--since you are pretty much certain to decline this school, then don't visit. (If you are still not sure, then go ahead and visit though). Also, "non-refundable" flight cost doesn't mean the school will lose all of their money. If it's a $200 cancellation fee and your flight was $400, then the school can still reclaim $200 of flight credit for use on someone else. If you attend anyways, the school pays the entire $400 plus all the other costs associated with your visit!

Probably yes. There may be certain situations where you might have a fellowship that is non-taxable, but I would assume yes to taxes unless you know otherwise. Your country may also have a tax treaty with the US that states otherwise but most Europeans and Canadians and Asian students I know have to pay taxes to the US government. Many tax treaties basically say that all US incomes will be taxed by the US only, and that for example, I won't have to pay taxes to the Canadian government for my US income (since Canadian tax laws generally require you to pay taxes on all worldwide income, but in some cases (e.g. students living outside of Canada), we only pay taxes on Canadian sourced income). Sometimes it's pretty hard to figure out your exact situation until you actually sit down and file your taxes. Your university might withhold a fairly large amount of your income anyways just in case. So, I would plan on not actually receiving up to 14% of your income each pay period and on average, expect to pay about 10-12% of your income in taxes (federal and state levels). At my program we generally get just over $3000 withheld and income tax returns give us about $700-$1000 back.

Haha, I did vaguely remember seeing that word in my GRE list and I know I did learn it at one point (when I looked it up, the definition was familiar to me). But at this point, all I could remember (and deduce from context) was that it was some negative connotation, which would probably not be enough if this was a GRE question and I needed the precise definition to give an antonym or fill in a blank or whatever! Anyways, to throw in my opinion about "when LORs are necessary", I would say this: LORs don't need to be read to reject an applicant. Depending on their applicant pool and number of spaces, they might only skim LORs or use other means to narrow down their list. However, I think LORs are absolutely necessary to accept an applicant. I think it would be very rare if an applicant was accepted to a competitive program (i.e. pretty much all programs) without all parts of their package, including LORs, are reviewed. The author of the original article didn't say they read none of the MFA applicants' LORs--just that they only read the ones that had strong applications otherwise. They said that over 800 out of the 1644 letters went unread, which would mean this person only read the LORs of the top half of applicants (still a lot!). This very busy person still read about 800 LORs for their MFA applicants (4 spots!) so I don't think it's as extreme as 36 LORs being too much already. Also, I don't think the adcomms will cut it down so small to just a dozen shortlisted applicants if there are only 4 spots. In my field, I think profs try to make sure they get all sorts of applicants, not just those who have high GREs or GPAs, because sometimes the best students don't score super high in these metrics. So, I would think initial cuts are fairly conservative to avoid accidentally weeding out someone really good because of a low GRE score. However, there are still cuts for large applicant pools! I would think a single admission committee member is capable of fully evaluating much more than a dozen applicant. Assuming the author of the original article is a typical busy faculty member, this person read the LORs for about 100 applicants. Maybe reading LORs doesn't mean fully evaluating an application though, and maybe by "read" the author just meant "look at". Perhaps the right number of how many applicants a single admission committee member can fully evaluate is somewhere between 50 and 100? For large programs that admit 50 people at a time (and get over a thousand applications), I would guess that they split up the load between committee members. If I was doing it, I would arrange it so each application is viewed by at least 2 people but that is basically just a guess! So, I don't think that this article means that LORs are not important nor does it mean that people can be accepted without their LORs read. The author definitely does not say that they did not read any of the LORs--in fact they said that they read about half of them, which sounds like a decent initial cut. Thus, my opinion is that the LORs may not always help you survive an initial round of cuts, but they will be very important to get you further in the process, and absolutely essential to getting an admit.

I did some searching through Google images to find some pictures of graduate student people at conferences or similar gatherings. Here are some group photos that I think accurately portray the range of dress (for men and women) of grad students in my field: http://sirius.chem.vt.edu/~r410/PSSS08.jpg http://www.phys.utb.edu/images/crest1.jpg http://biology.missouri.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Graduate-Students-2013.jpg https://www.aspet.org/uploadedImages/Divisions_and_Chapters/ASPET_Divisions/Molecular_Pharmacology/Content/ASPET2011-Grad%20student%20poster-GROUP.jpg http://imaginingamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/IMG_1702.jpg I would say that in general, for planned group photos or while at a conference/meeting (i.e. wearing name badges), most students will dress up a bit nicer than their everyday, but this matches the level of dress I notice of visiting/prospective grad students. Of course, not everyone does this so I would guess that in these photos, some of the people are dressed as they would "everyday". However, in my field at least, if you dress like any of the students you see in the above linked photos, you will probably not look out of place. If you're worried about underdressing, then pick something a bit more "dressed up", but we get visitors dressed in all sorts of different ways. In my opinion, if you aim for the middle ground in the above pictures, you won't have to worry about your clothes making any negative impressions. I wish I could say that no one should ever have to worry about their clothes making an impression, but that might be too idealistic for our world!

Also to clarify, I didn't think you were actually advocating that but I felt that your wording wasn't clear and that your heresay facts were wrong (as I explained in the post above) so I just didn't want other people to come to the wrong conclusion about what to do when you hold Canadian awards and are attending a US school Hope it didn't feel/sound like an attack on you, I was trying to clarify my understanding/experience with taking Canadian awards to the US!

Definitely. I view my role as a TA as a helpful resource to assist my students with their learning. If they choose to "waste" this resource by not attending office hours/discussion groups/whatever or by not paying attention to me, it only hurts them. That said, I would care if they were disrupting others who are trying to learn, and I would still reflect on my policies/teaching styles to make sure I am not totally boring students and actually providing helpful/useful material. Teaching is my responsibility but actually learning/retaining the material is theirs.