TakeruK

At most schools I've been to, faculty members get pictures of all the students in their classes (from our school ID). And for graduation, they ask us how to phonetically pronounce our names so that the name reader person can say it correctly. So, I hope for the future, students would be able to enter things like pronouns, name pronunciation, name they want to be called into their student portal and this information would be populated into the class list each semester. Still probably would be a good idea for instructors to ask though, in case that info is outdated or if students are uncomfortable with recording this information into a database. But it would be great to have it standard to ask people about these things so no one needs to feel they are imposing on others.

This is great! I encourage you to share your code/data on something like github, so it would be easy for someone to update it in future years (so that you don't have to repeat it each year) It would be really cool to see the acceptance decision timeline distributions for all disciplines on one plot, just out of curiosity.

I don't even know what to say. It's not your responsibility to manage how your advisor uses their office hours and even if the undergrad waved or poked their head in, it's not your job to check if there are others waiting or how your advisor's time should be spent. Ultimately, it should have been their decision to cut you off at say, 3:30, if they wanted to leave time for other students. That said, I don't think there is much to be gained from arguing this point. Maybe our fields are different, but I never meet with my advisor during their office hours (which are for the students in their classes). Instead, I schedule separate meetings with my advisor. We have a weekly 30-minute time slot that we use pretty much every week for topics ranging from my research to job application to help outlining a lecture. Each advisor does things differently, but my advisor generally has 8 or so of these meetings per week with their students and postdocs (sometimes meeting twice per week when a project is at a critical point) and they have blocked off 2 half-days, arranged all of these meetings back-to-back and we sign up for these time slots each semester (since teaching schedules etc changed each semester). This is all in addition to their 1-2 hour per week office hours (reserved for the grad and undergrad students taking their classes). Maybe one possible way to respond would be to say that you regret that the student was not able to meet with the prof (without taking blame) and suggest that in the future, you and the prof can arrange for a meeting outside of office hours when you need their advice? Again, exactly what you suggest depends on the norms of your department! But scheduling a meeting to discuss a specific topic when you need your advisor's undivided attention could be a good idea anyways, even if this weird situation didn't happen.

Some options: 1. Sometimes "dream" things are nicer in the mind/on paper than in practice. I don't know a gentler way to say it, but it is also important to objectively consider all of your options once they are on the table and just because something is the "dream" choice right now, doesn't mean there aren't other better or equally good options out there. So, definitely ask about 2nd year options etc. but don't discount other places yet! From your signature it seems like you have yet to hear back from many other places. 2. Talk more with your Dream PI about the following cycle. I don't know how much of a relationship you already have with this person. If you are able to have a good conversation with them where they know how much you want to work for them and they also want you to work for them in the future, then it could still work out. Some programs don't really have you begin with your dissertation work until 2nd or 3rd year so you can focus more on coursework in the first year. Or maybe you can even defer admissions for one year so you can start next year in the Dream PI's lab. However, if you take this route, you really should make sure you have a good relationship with the Dream PI and that both of you clearly understand and are comfortable with how committed you will be to the lab next year. It would be really bad if one side expected one thing (e.g. definitely will take you into the lab) and the other expected another ("maybe" take you into the lab, depending on the next year's applicants).

I usually write my thank you emails right after the interviews, especially for panel interviews since when it's just a bunch of voices on the phone, it's easy to mix up who said what unless I note it down right away. But then I save it as a draft and don't send it until the end of the day or first thing the next morning, as rising_star suggests.

You can ask the instructor on what kind of things you should mention in the letter. You can also find the chair of the Promotions Committee (or whatever they call themselves) and ask what they are looking for. If it's just the Dept Head decision then ask them. You can also find some info online, but be aware that whomever is reading your letter will be looking for different things than a typical promotion LOR since they are specifically looking for a former student's point of view when requesting yours. Whatever they are looking for (teaching excellence, mentorship of students, rapport, etc.) make sure to provide specific examples. I'd try to highlight things that are unique to your perspective as a former student if possible. For the letter itself, check whether they want electronic or paper versions. If your school allows its students to use letterhead (I thought most did, but then I learned that some others did not allow it) then you can use it, however, since you're a student at the same school, it doesn't really matter.

Sounds great to me.

One example of what @rising_star mentioned for my field: The American Astronomical Society hosts a job register (https://jobregister.aas.org/). You don't need to be a member to see it since it's all online. Also note that the American society hosts the list but they accept job ads from everywhere. So astro students interested in jobs in Europe, for example, will find listings there too (but still, it's US-dominated). From this list you'll see some cultural differences, e.g. European schools will post job ads for PhD students because those positions are more like jobs in the EU, but you won't see that from Canada/US schools on this list. In order to get access to the AAS email lists though, you do need to be a member. But see if you can find something similar for your field(s). Hope the example helps. (P.S. Also, other places to get information, in my field, is Twitter, the "Astronomers" Facebook group, the "Young Scientists for Planetary Exploration" Facebook group, and various other Facebook groups for professionals in a specific field. Try doing a search for your areas and see what's there!)

Yes, it does sound like you are rejected. From your description, it appears that the school wanted to prioritize people who made it to the in-person interview day and after this date, they already found enough people they wanted to admit, so they aren't planning to Skype-interview you. They said they would be in touch after the interview day because they wanted to keep the possibility of interviewing you open if the attendees at the interview date did not work out.

@basketballfrost: I'd second what @StemCellFan said! Also, if you have not done this already, you should do a little bit of research into any interviewers that you know the name of. I would say that this is general advice that applies to basically any time you have an appointment to formally meet with another academic! For something high stakes like an interview, I'd spend a bit of time (maybe 15-20 minutes? or even 30 minutes if you have the time) on each person. Read their website, their CV, look at their recent papers. For someone outside of your area of expertise, try to understand the basics of their research area. You should at least know: 1) what is the big picture question they want to address, 2) what are the major challenges and 3) what is their biggest contribution to this area. It's good to know these things so that you don't make a mistake I made a long time ago and basically said I don't think X is true when the person I'm talking to has done a lot of work arguing the opposite! Oops. In the future, for less high-stakes/more informal meetings, I'd spend 5-10 minutes to at least read their website, CV, and publications list. Every time we have a seminar speaker visit our department and we sign up for meetings, I do this just before meeting them so that I have some ideas on what to discuss! Finally, the above was all about the other person's work, but conversations are a two-way street and you'll spend at least half of your time talking about your own work (probably more if it's an interview). So be prepared to speak about your work concisely and in a way that will excite your audience! When you've spent countless hours on a project, you might be mostly thinking about the fine details. But to prepare, take a step back and think about the big picture. Start by motivating your line of work and then explain your specific contributions. This is important when talking to both experts in your area as well as non-expert interviewers. Of course, you may want to change your approach based on the audience. Extra bonus points (i.e. don't worry too much about it, but if you think of something then great) if you can draw an analogy between your work and the other person's work (but warning: make sure you're right!)

These meetings aren't always with people you might work for and throughout your academic career, you will meet lots of people who don't share research interests with you. So, just have a general academic discussion about their work or your work, or something else general. I'd say let them lead since it's a meeting during an interview. During my visit days (not interviews), I had tons of meetings with various academics. It was fun to hear and ask questions about a field of work I don't know much about or think about often. Some of these conversations veer towards non research things too! I had a 15 minute meeting with a prof who just talked about climate change, which was fun! And keep in mind that since this is an interview, it will likely be part of the final decision. Not to add more stress or anything, but it's not implausible that they purposely arrange for some out-of-field interviewers for candidates to see how well you can converse outside of your field and whether you show interest beyond your narrow scope. Although I am not a fan of sneaky interview tactics, I do think these traits are important for an academic/scholar to have! Or, in a less sneaky alternative, maybe these people outside of your field are just other admission committee members.

My PhD school had a policy that in order to register for your 7th (or later) year of grad school, you need special permission from the Dean of Grad Studies' office. It was fairly simple to obtain, basically just form and something like write a one-page description of your efforts thus far and the reasons for staying longer. It needs to have several signatures of people who oversee your graduate education. It is not meant to penalize students for staying longer, but instead, to ensure that someone other than your advisor and for an entity external to your department (e.g. the Dean) knows about your progress and it's mostly to protect you against advisors who want to keep their students forever since it's much cheaper to pay a grad student than a researcher or postdoc! And it's to connect you with campus resources to help if necessary (e.g. writing centre if the struggle is with writing, etc.) If there are legitimate delays, it's a very painless and easy process, but it's also very effective at catching problematic cases!

@JustPoesieAlong: I'll send you a PM I forgot to also say in this post: we moved 3 time zones away for my Masters degree and to a small city far from any hub airport and that made things a lot tougher. It usually took 16 hours door-to-door to go from where we were living to visit our family and 8-10 of those hours was just getting to the hub airport and waiting (4 hour bus ride away, plus mismatch of bus/plane schedules mean lots of waiting around). Half of the schools on our list of 8 were in the same time zone as our family and our final choice was on the west coast! We were only 1 hour from the hub airport and just a 2.5 hour plane ride away. It was so much better. And it's so much easier to Skype family when you're on the same time zone! Being 3 hours ahead meant that we had to stay up late to skype our families after they returned from work. Good luck

This is a great summary! Everyone has their own ranking/weights so here's mine: Most important to me: People, Opportunities, Family Also important: City, Cost of Living Less important to me: Coursework Reasoning: The main goal of attending grad school, for me, was to become a strong independent scholar in my field. So "opportunities" is definitely one of the most important. Here, I am lumping in things like research fit, advisor fit, funding for research, travel, etc. all within "opportunities". I was very happy with my decision in the end---I attended a grad program where I never had a request denied due to lack of funds from my advisor/dept (sometimes they were denied because they were just bad ideas lol). Family is also very important to me. I moved with my spouse for grad school and we had to be happy where we were living. From my MSc to PhD, we moved back into our family's time zone and this made us a lot happier. Finally, "People" is very important to build a strong support system. Also, my colleagues are now all over the world and we have a great academic network. I would just note that for "people", the other students in your cohort are also important, not just the current students. You'll probably interact with the students in your cohort the most (but not always). During visit days, I made lots of friends and we stayed in touch and found out where we were going etc.

I'm married with children now (graduated, on a postdoc), but at the time of grad school applications, we were married without children (but was planning on it). This definitely affected where I applied. My spouse is not an academic and could work in most cities (the more universities type places the better). As Canadians, the only way for my spouse to work in the US was to be sponsored as a J-1 international student (the typical international student status is F-1). Our life is a partnership so grad school applications were the same. This was our strategy: - I made a list of places with interesting graduate programs in my field; Spouse made a list of places that would be interesting to live or work at - Spouse had veto power over any place they didn't want to live/work at; I excluded places without programs I'd consider - We also had a discussion on long term goals: we both wanted to live in a certain geographical area in the long term (where our families are) so our short term goals became "get into the best schools possible to make this long term goal a reality" With all of the above in mind, we came up with a list of 8 schools to apply to. It was heavily towards places we both would like to live (weather and size of city were two big factors) and places with very strong academic programs (to help achieve the long term goal). There were some places that compromised one or the other because we wanted to keep an option mind (i.e. worth at least an application and the plan was to decide after offers were sent and visits are made). In the end, I got 5 offers and I only visited the top 3 schools. My spouse visited the schools with me whenever possible. For the visits without my spouse, I took lots of pictures and careful notes of the city. There were usually some specific questions that one or both of us wanted answered so I did my best to find those. When possible, I scheduled some extra time in the visit to explore the city a bit and even look up some potential rentals. I also tried to talk specifically to other graduate students in similar family situations to figure out if they were happy with the work-life balance, if the department was supportive of families, if the dept/school/campus was generally family friendly etc. I made it clear to all the schools that the final decision is 50% me and 50% my spouse and all the departments were supportive of that. Many of them did extra work to provide us with information (e.g. setting up specific meetings with students in similar situations, offering to help my spouse find work in town) and in many other cases, the current grad students introduced me to referred me to specific resources on campus. It turns out one of the schools refused to sponsor any students at all on J-1 status so that was quickly eliminated. After all the visits, my spouse and I discussed the pros and cons of each place and offered our own final rankings. We had the same ranking so the final choice was easy. I've now graduated from there and there were even more good things about my old program for families that I didn't even know about at the start. Specifically, two things we really liked about the school was 1) extra financial support from Human Resources to defray the cost of childcare (**available to all faculty, staff, postdocs and students) and 2) pretty much every event on campus for students was also open to their partners and there were a lot of family focused events in my department specifically. In the end, due to various reasons, our baby was not born until after graduation so we never took advantage of (1) but even the presence of the program was a good sign for us.

Most likely scenario: Whoever told you it would be a week was over-optimistic in their timeline estimates or something unexpected happened. Potential scenarios: committee member had something come up so they moved the committee meeting to discuss post-interview results back; one of the interviews had to be rescheduled; extra interviews were added; weather closure; etc.

You have two choices: 1. Ask school B if they will allow you to interview on a different date. If they have alternate dates, then you should be able to attend both interviews with no negative effect. 2. Take school B's offer and ask School A to reschedule. This would likely negatively affect your chances with A, but if you have just accepted A's offer and they have not yet booked anything, it could be possible. You could also try #1 first and then #2 if B has no alternate dates. The longer you wait though, the less likely #2 will work though. If you want to make sure you get to B on the original date (for whatever reason), then I'd try to reschedule A sooner rather than later!

If it makes you feel better, I only applied to 7 schools in the US and one Canadian school (no GREs etc for domestic students). So five schools is a fine number. Sure, some people apply to a lot more but if you are limited by money or professor's time, then you can put way more effort into each application than others who apply to more. I'll be honest---admissions can be very competitive and be based on luck so a good student with 5 applications may not get in anywhere. But at the same time, you only need one offer and a student that applies to 15 places and get into 4 places isn't that much better off than a student that has one acceptance out of five. In total, it cost me about 1500 CAD for everything. There was no GRE test centre where I lived so I had to travel to another city and pay for a motel for my Subject GRE. For my General GRE, I was able to stay at a friend's place. But I still had to pay the travel costs and basically take 2 days off for each test. Google says 1500 CAD is about the same as what you spent. At that time in my life, 1500 CAD was not a small amount of money. It was 2 months of rent for me. I don't know how much of a burden your cost was and I hope it wasn't too much. I do want to point out that many North American schools do waive application fees for students from certain countries determined to be developing countries. I do not know if Egypt qualifies, but often you have to ask for the waiver, it isn't automatic. Maybe even now you can ask and get it refunded? Or if you apply again in future years, definitely ask about it. I do want to reassure you again that yes, good admissions committees do take into account the circumstances of the student when evaluating them. For example, at my old school, I know that professors value research experience but also factor in the student's ability to get research experience. So, if you are an American student at a small school with no graduate program and have zero or very limited research experience, that won't really be considered a mark against you. However, if you are an American student at a top US school with tons of research opportunities but you weren't interested in them, that would raise questions. That said, there are circumstances that could mitigate this too, such as having to work in the summers to support your family. So these adjustments / different approaches to evaluation do happen, for all students. In my opinion, grad admissions committees are looking for signs of excellence when they are making decisions. There is often a huge list of things they ask for and things to be evaluated on: GPA, GRE, essays, letters, experience, CV, personal history, etc. However, these are all different ways to answer the question, "What makes the applicant excellent and would help them thrive in our program?". Some people think the application is supposed to excel in all of these categories. They wonder what are the minimum scores, what should go in a LOR etc. But I think this is the wrong approach. Grad admissions is holistic and the committee reviews the entire package for excellence. Due to personal circumstances, a student may not have had chances to excel in some areas but they can still show excellence in other areas and that's what the committee wants. An example: my GRE and GPA wasn't that great but I had a very strong research history and my professors said that's what impressed them the most and helped me get admission. My good friend in the same program had zero research experience but an almost perfect GPA through 5 years of undergrad and that's what got him in. I think he is the only student I know through a 10 year history of students in my PhD program that got in with zero research experience. This is why no one can say "minimum GPA is X" or you need Z papers/research experiences etc. Even average number doesn't help because these metrics are considered independently. Anyways, I hope this information is helpful to know. Best of luck in the application season!

Pick only weekdays. Best to pick a day adjacent to a weekend so you can use that as a travel day (and/or a day to explore the city on your own, if you want) since that minimizes classes you miss. If you visit on a weekend, there will be no one around. Keep in mind that these visits require a lot of admin support and they definitely do not work on weekends. Professors might do some email or work at home on a weekend but they won't be in the building. Also everything will likely be locked. It's tough to miss classes but ultimately, you will learn a lot more and get a lot more out of these visits than a class! I would recommend choosing a Thursday and Friday visit. Use Wednesday to travel to the school, visit and Thurs and Friday, then pick a later flight home on Saturday (or Sunday morning) if possible so that you can explore on your own if you wish. Also, choosing to stay for a Friday evening usually makes it more likely that students will do social things with you that night (compared to a Wednesday night or something). But this depends on the culture of the department. For my old department, grad student visits are a huge social event and there's a small committee of students that form to create a fun experience for visitors! Another strategy is to check the department website and see if there are major events happening on certain days. For example, when is the weekly department seminar? Or, is there a seminar series where grad students present? Attend those days. It gives you a very good feel of what it would be like to be part of that department. Personally, I would pick Thurs/Friday over seminar days because the social events and the interactions with students was a high priority for me in choosing schools since this is a time where you can informally interact with students and get candid and honest answers. However, if that doesn't work, then the seminar days are good too. The caveat is that it's a small sample....all seminar series have hits and misses so if you go on an abnormal week, you won't really know if it's the same every week. But it's better than going on a day without anything. Finally, your sidebar info says "Planetary Science" and I think the nature of the visit could really depend on the department. I did my PhD in a Planetary Science program that was part of a bigger geological/planetary department rather than an astro/physics one. I noticed that geo/earth science departments tend to have more community events in their visit dates with grad students doing a large part of the planning and there were things for me to do all the way until bedtime, while my astro/physics visits were just the "business hours" and the students might take me to dinner but then that was it. Could just be my limited experience though. Also, one of the geo/earth science departments included a field trip in their visit dates! Might not happen if you're visiting by yourself though.

Ethical issues with lying on your application aside, did you know about the National Student Clearinghouse? (http://www.studentclearinghouse.org/) It is a database that most US schools participates in. This is probably how the above user's school was able to find out their past attendance. In Canada, we have a provincial education number which tracks our educational history. I am sure other countries have similar systems.

I am the type of person, especially 10+ years ago when I was a freshman, that would have appreciated an "double check" or an explicit invitation to use my real name by an authority figure. But I agree with @ayasofaya that it can also risk coming across as not accepting his decision already. Ultimately, no single solution works for everyone, so you have to use your judgement. I also misunderstood the original post, I thought the student has said something to the effect of "oh you can call me Leo instead" but now re-reading it, it sure sounds more like the student told you to call him Leo instead of his other name. In this case, calling him Leo as he requested should cause no problems. If your relationship with this student gets to the point where you can discuss these things with him, you could ask him again if you think it's right.

Yeah, I agree with @Eigen that this isn't something you'd want to accept unless you had no other options that worked for you and you think the risk is worth it. The least-secure type of funding offer for a PhD that is still somewhat "normal" is something like: "You will be funded through TAships or RAships which you will apply for each year, subsequent to available funding". Many schools have policies that do not allow them to automatically grant students a job (TA or RA), especially if the school is unionized. So, you have to apply each year so that the school can demonstrate that only qualified students are appointed etc. In a situation like this, you will have to talk to students and professors to find out the funding environment. If they know they usually have X positions and always ensure their student population is below X, then you should be okay. But if only some fraction of their students gets these jobs, then it's not great. Note that in this example, I'm just saying that it's the least-secure scenario that is "typical", not that it's even a good offer to have.

This happens all the time. I have stopped caring, and I only check for really obvious typos or typos that change the meaning and cause misunderstanding. For me and for most people in my field, it's not a big deal at all. There was a really important paper in my field last year that gave a very comprehensive review of an important technique. In one of the figures, there's an obvious typo. It's much harder to change text in a graph. But this figure appears in tons of presentations/talks etc. and no one bats an eye. We all know what it's supposed to say.

This is an important issue to me! Personally, I think people should be called by the name they choose. I agree with you that it's all of our responsibilities to call others by the name they identify as. I think it would be okay to ask him, in private, whether he would prefer to go by his Chinese name or his English name. It is likely that he would still choose to identify with his English name because while people like you might care enough to learn his Chinese name, he might already have established an identity for himself as "Leo". However, asking him is the best practice, in my opinion. It lets him know that he has a choice. I think emailing him or finding a time to chat with him in private about it would be fine. I know many students who initially go by an "English" name and then after they feel more like they fit in, they start using the name they prefer instead. So I would say that we should just respect their decision, let them know that we support their choices, and not be surprised if the student chooses a different option later on.

It's hard for me to do work at home. During grad school, I lived with my partner and I want to spend that time together since we're both working during the day. Of course, there are exceptions when deadlines are tight and I have no choice. However, in these cases, I usually drive back to my office and do work there. It was a 10 minute drive. Now, as a postdoc with a less accessible workplace, I basically try to do zero work at home (we also have a baby). I find myself much happier leaving work at work and spending time at home doing things I actually enjoy. That said, the things I do best at home (whether it's during grad school or now, during my postdoc): - Writing emails. If I know I have a busy day at work and will want to spend some time at home working, I queue up all of my emails to write and write them at home. - Reading papers - Editing writing (both my own writing as well as things for which I am a coauthor) - Doing peer review (I usually print the paper at work, take it home, read/mark it up and type up comments in my computer) - Making powerpoint presentations - Grading work (when I am a TA)