TakeruK

[Exact numbers changed for privacy reasons and/or I don't really remember!]: What happened was that my advisor and I booked tickets to our research site that were $600 roundtrip. These tickets were marked "non-refundable, no cancellations, change fee $150" [sorry if I had said "cancellation fee" before, I meant change fee!!]. However, a few weeks before we were going to leave, we were told that the telescope was not functioning and that we would have no reason to go there. So, I called United and asked if I could cancel the ticket and what would happen to the value of the ticket. They said that since my ticket was non-refundable, they can't give me the $600 back. However, I can "change"/"cancel" the ticket and they will apply $600-$150=$450 towards another United flight. At this time, we had no idea when our telescope time will be rescheduled so I was concerned since I didn't know what flight I would need to take in the future. However, they said that it's not really a "change flight" because what happens is that they will give me $450 of flight credit that I must use within 1 year and I can apply that to any future flight booked with United (it could be to any destination, not necessarily the same itinerary). Our telescope time was rescheduled later that year, and when I booked the next flight (it was like $500), I only had to pay an extra $50 because I had $450 credit from before. So, at the end of the day, the extra cost to our research grant was only $150. In my case, everything, including the change fee, was covered by our research grant so it didn't actually cost me anything. But in your case, if your prospective schools won't cover expenses for a visit that won't happen, then you will only lose the cost of the "change fee" (or "cancellation fee"), instead of the cost of the entire flight! Hopefully you can find some other use for the flight credit (maybe a visit home during the holidays next year etc.)!

Sometimes this is the first question you get in an academic interview. If so, I would begin with undergrad education and keep the content mostly academic. I would say where I went to undergrad, what major, what research projects I've done, who I worked with, what methods I am familiar with etc. Usually, they will ask follow up questions to what you say during this phase (in my experience anyways). Once I am done with my academic journey, I'll also talk about other aspects of myself--where I grew up, some things that I enjoy doing etc, but this part doesn't need to be in chronological order. If you get this question later in the interview (after you already talked about your academic self), then I think you should focus mostly on the personal stuff. I would say that you should not be giving a biography in response to this question!!

That's a good idea--the professor will have a better idea of what is the norm in your field than we do Also, just a note, last year I had to cancel a United flight (the telescope I was travelling to was broken). My ticket was labelled "non-refundable, no cancellation", which sounds pretty final. But if you call them and ask what that actually means, they told me that non-refundable means I can't get cash/credit card refunded and no cancellation means I can't get the full value of my ticket put towards another one. The wording is pretty confusing since it said "No cancellation" but also said "$150 cancellation fee". So, sometimes, calling the airline will make the policies a lot clearer!

It's unlikely that the schools will still reimburse you for a plane flight you did not end up taking. You can try and ask though. In this case, I would contact the airline and try to cancel the ticket and see if they will let you keep the credit towards a future flight (usually they will, minus a cancellation fee). For others reading this in the future, I would strongly advise against buying plane tickets the moment you get your interview notice, especially if that school is low enough on your list that you are sure that you would accept another school over that one. Plane tickets don't change too much in price until about 2 weeks prior to the interview, so it's safe to wait until 2-3 weeks prior. It's also a good idea to learn the fluctuating price patterns of airlines so that you don't confuse the normal rise (and subsequent fall) of prices as an indicator that prices are going to continue to rise! Also, it's far better to wait and pay $30-$50 more for a ticket than to be stuck in a situation where you no longer want to go and potentially not get any reimbursement!

I agree--if you have not actually 100% decided on a school (officially or not), then it's fine to visit the other schools to help you make a decision. But do this in good faith--not "well, I am 99.9% sure about School A, but I just want to see how bad School B is so I can feel better about my decision." We're all grown mature adults now, it's time to be responsible and critically analyse our choices, instead of just delaying the decision until you've seen all of the schools even though you know have already truly decided. Again, this is only in the case where the person has already decided and just wants to visit to feel better about themselves/their choice. On the other hand, if a person feels strongly towards one school but is still considering other places, then visiting them all and keeping an open mind etc. is fine. Yes you have earned the visit or the interview but that doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want with other people's time and energy. The purpose of the visit/interview is to evaluate your fit for the program and/or for you to determine whether or not this program is a good fit for you. It is not for you to make connections with professors you have no interest in working with. Like I said above, a lot of people have worked very hard to put the visit together and it's poor form to take advantage of their efforts for unintended personal gain. I think getting flown out to meet the profs/students and to see the campus/city/labs is a very important tool in helping us decide where to go and spend 5+ years of our lives. We have to keep in mind that this comes at a cost of both money and effort. If we abuse this privilege, then we might not have it in the future.

I don't think you will burn any bridges if you politely withdrew, especially this early. The biggest hurt to you is probably going to be the plane ticket cost. However, "non-refundable" does not mean you will lose all of that money though. Usually this means you can cancel this ticket, with some penalty fee, and the remaining credit can be applied towards another flight with the same airline.

Whether or not you'll get to fly out for an in-person interview really depends on how much funding the POI has probably. As rising_star said, it's unlikely that the POI's old department will fly you out for someone who is leaving. However, the POI might have their own funds to fly you out! I know that when a prof left my current school, he had a ton of funding that had to be used up before he left. So, he flew all of his current students to his new school to help them decide whether or not they would want to move with him or stay here and change advisors. If the POI convinces the new school to accept you as a new student, then you would may be treated like any other newly accepted student (but you might also not be) and thus get to visit like any other newly accepted student (if they fly in newly accepted students).

Even though you have not officially accepted the first school's offer, if you have already 100% made up your mind to go to a certain school, then I think it is not ethical to attend visit weekends/interviews under the false impression that you are still considering attending these other schools. I am assuming that you have already 100% made up your mind otherwise why would you tell the first school unofficially/via phone your decision (unless that was just a mistake in the heat of the moment). If you are not 100% sure about the first school, it's perfectly fine to visit all the other schools first and then make a decision. However, if you are 100% sure about the first school, then I can't think of a good reason why you would want to visit all these other schools anyways. I think it would be pretty selfish to do this only so you can talk to other professors and try to impress them / show off how good you are. A lot of people--students, staff, faculty--put a lot of time and effort into arranging these visits so that they are informative and fun for the visitors. You would be a waste of their efforts, or even worse, you'd be taking advantage of these efforts in order to try to network/talk to these professors! If you want to network, attend a conference, that is what they are for. Prospective visits are for providing information about the school to the applicants/prospective students! If you need more reasons to not go on a visit when you have no intention of attending the school: 1. They take a lot of your time. 2. You may be denying someone else who is actually interested in the school a chance to visit (even if you sign the official letters by March 15, it may be too late for a waitlisted person to even visit). 3. You will have to keep up false pretenses the entire time. 4. It could burn a lot more bridges than it's worth if people find out. Again, what I said above only applies if you are 100% sure about the first school and you have absolutely no intention at all of attending the school you are visiting. If you are still not sure, then it's fine to visit to help inform your final decision.

I haven't had the exact same experience as you in that I have not managed a lot of undergraduate researchers in a research setting. However, I have TA'ed some lab/project based courses where my job is to help them get their projects going and analyse the data etc. I have a limited of time I can use to help them and I did get a lot of people asking very easily google-able questions, which became a problem when other students have "legit" questions that actually needed my help. I definitely did not want to spoon-feed/hand-hold/whatever-you-call-it so that they can develop independence on their projects (which was for a course, but the skills are applicable to research too) and know when it is appropriate to ask for help. The way I was able to manage this was to not give direct answers to things that they can figure out on their own. One course I taught was a computer programming course and they had to do a physics-related project using computers (e.g. a simulation). If a student wonders how they can use the "copy" command to copy an entire directory at once instead of a single file at a time, I could tell them to use the "-r" option, or I can attempt to give them skills to help them figure it out themselves. So, I will tell them that linux commands can take options, which usually have a minus sign in front of them. And then I'll tell them that they can usually google a command name, or use the "man" command to get the manual page for the command. Hopefully, if I do this, they will learn to use these skills so later on, when they want to delete an entire directory, they can use the same skills and realise that the "-r" option works for this too! It might take longer at first to show them how to use the manual, but that will prevent a ton of questions later on. In many cases, I will start the explanation with "I'm going to show you how to find these things out in general, so that you can use this for other future problems too" or something so they know to pay attention and that I'm not going to like it if they keep asking me the same thing over and over again. I would never directly say to one of them to "not bother me" or otherwise discourage questions. Instead, I would try to always encourage them to try to find the answers themselves, and just ask them to try things. For some students who were used to TAs just giving them the answer, it takes them a couple of times to realise that I am basically telling them to do the same things each time (e.g. look it up on Google etc.) and then they know that the next issue that comes up, the first thing I would say is to google it. Then, I find that these students will google future problems and only come to me when they don't understand what they are seeing (which is a fair/legit question) and I get a lot fewer questions and can spend my time solving the real/big problems!

I definitely agree with fuzzy that the current graduate students will remember strange behaviours from prospective students. Even though you are already admitted, this is your chance to make a "first impression" on all of your future colleagues. It's almost prospective student season for us again and as we prepare for it, we remember and retell stories of "memorable" interactions with prospective visits from years past. For example, [details changed to protect privacy], there was one person that told everyone they already were accepted to and were planning to attend another school, however, they just wanted to go on the visit to our school just for the free food. Obviously, this left a very bad impression as many current students do work very hard to provide a fun and informative visit for the prospective students. From the point of view of the current students, we are looking for people who we can see as future colleagues and/or friends. There will be "business-like" meetings (mostly with profs) where you discuss research as well as formal and informal interactions with the students. We'll probably ask you some things like where you're from, what did you study before, what do you study now, who do you want to work with when you get here, where else you are visiting. We'll be able to provide our impressions and thoughts on various profs and it's likely we visited some of the same schools you did so we can share notes too. Useful questions to ask us are stuff like "why did you pick [this school] over the others?" etc. But also talk with us about non-school things. We're looking for friends too! When meeting with us, I think something like a 50/50 split of personal/research or even a 60% personal / 40% research. Research is a safe/easy topic to introduce yourself with and it helps us know you academically. But when you are having lunch with us or dinner or drinks etc. tell us about yourself! What do you like? TV shows? movies? music? books? sports? We want to get to know you as a person too, maybe even more so than as a researcher.

That sucks. Usually professors will say "Unfortunately, I don't have funding to take on more students" when they really mean something like [sorry for being super blunt] "I don't have enough funding for a student of your skill level." It's really a way to say no to someone without making it about the applicant. Or, it might be like Usmivka said and this student has an external source of funding (or has a good chance of getting it), or maybe even internal funding from the University. Or, this student may be interesting enough to the professor that he/she is willing to move things around in their budget to fit this in. Or, the prof might have planned for this student to join the lab a long time ago, and because of that, had put money aside so that they were no longer able to fund you. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say your feelings of betrayal are invalid! I would feel the same way and I sympathize with the crappy situation. However, I also don't think the prof has done anything really wrong. There was no promise of a PhD project in the future and so they have the right to hire/pick the PhD student they want the most for their lab, and unfortunately it was not you. It might also depend on each school/lab but generally the ideas that you come up with while working for a school/lab will belong to the school/lab, not you, so I think it's also usually okay if the project will transition from being what you work on to what this new student work on. I agree it's no fun to have to train someone to basically replace you! However, the lab should still give credit where it is due and if you came up and designed this idea, you should be involved in some way (unless the project significantly changes after you leave). So, now would be a very good time to talk to your PI and lay out an agreement/plan on what is expected of you to graduate and what is "extra" stuff (like training the new PhD student). In this plan, you should make it clear whether or not you will be contributing to any papers that come out of this work and whether you will be a coauthor. Maybe it will work out that you can still finish one small part of the project and write that up while the PhD student does the further analysis and writes up the later papers. You definitely should come to an agreement now (and get it in writing) about whether or not you will be a coauthor on the results of your proposed ideas.

I agree with the above. Your first school probably gave you until April 15 to decide. If so, what is the point of even trying to gain "leverage". You can gain nothing by letting the other schools know you got into a school. I would think that the only time this can help is if your first school gave you a deadline to respond that is fast approaching and you would need either the first school to extend your deadline or the other school to make a decision faster and/or let you know when a decision will be made.

We do this for some professors. Obviously, only if they are okay with it!

It really really depends on the program. Also, some schools (like mine) will let you take a leave of absence (up to 2 years) to do what you want to do (i.e. start up a company). My school has a policy that if you are in a position like the CEO, CFO, CTO etc. then you must take the leave of absence because it is a conflict of commitment. If you are in an advising type role, then you are allowed to remain a full time graduate student while you do this stuff on your off-time. However, I don't remember if most schools will require you to be enrolled for a certain amount of time before you can exercise these leaves options. You will also need permission from your department/advisors etc. I would recommend that you ask these schools as soon as possible, and provide the reason you would want to defer, because maybe there is a "no deferrals" policy but they can fit you in on a "leave of absence" type policy.

Sure. Money isn't usually just given out, so it's a good thing that you earned it. You can use a generic name like "Departmental Scholarship" on your CV.

That's fair--on reflection, my comparison might not be that great. I also agree with Loric's advice to pull up the cost of a one-way flight from A to home. If A refuses to fully reimburse for your Home-A-Home roundtrip, and if the one-way from A to Home is more than half the cost of your original roundtrip, you might have a strong case to argue for this level of reimbursement instead of only getting half of your original cost. Hopefully this will be better than no reimbursement at all. It is common for financial departments to audit your expenses by comparison to market costs of your flights. Don't get me wrong, I also think School A should reimburse you for the flight you did not take because as Loric said, you booked it in good faith and all that. It's not anyone's fault that the schedule worked out the way it did. I just think you should be upfront about it instead of telling School A that you took a flight which you did not (otherwise then I think you would have done something wrong). As for United, that is a really crappy cancellation policy What incentive would any traveller have to pay the cancellation fee instead of just not using their ticket! Boo United I have other crappy experiences with United too, but for the most part, I am stuck with them because LAX is a big United hub and they end up having much cheaper fares than other airlines (so department policy means I must book them).

I think the letter from the volunteer coordinator is going to be infinitely more relevant than your retail store manager's letter. For an academic program, I would say that the retail store manager's letter is basically useless, except in cases where you have no 3rd option at all and you must submit 3 LORs or they will throw out your application.

In some fields, like mine, an RA-ship from your advisor is meant to be paid work for work towards your own thesis. If this is the case, then you should find out what the norms are and make sure your RA is getting you progress on your own work, not towards others when everyone else has RAships for their own dissertation. But in other fields, an RA ship (from your advisor or otherwise) is meant to be paid work towards whatever the employer wants you to do--which may or may not be work towards your own thesis. This work might be towards another paper that the lab is producing, or to help on someone else's work. Let's say I am an expert in X and another student in the department is an expert in Y and doing their thesis on Y. However, they want to use method X to analyse a part of their research. It doesn't make sense for this other student to learn all of the intricacies of X just to get a very small part of their dissertation completed. Even if they did, it might not be as good because I might have spent years doing X and having experience in X. So, instead of them spending 8 months to get X to work, the prof might hire me as an RA to spend 2-3 months on it and finish it better and faster. However, if the prof wants to pass off my work on X as his/her student's work then it becomes a problem! You should get credit for your academic contribution to the other student's thesis and this can't be replaced by your RA payment!

That is the situation I did understand. I still maintain that it is fraud to claim an expense for a flight you did not take. It's not about how much money School A actually spends, but expenses have to have legit paper trails. As I said above, the whole reimbursement process hinges on the honesty of the academics that make the claims. Claiming a flight you did not take is fraud. If you let School A know what is really going on, and they agreed to pay for that flight you did not take anyways, then that's another story. But based on my experience claiming expenses like this, it is rare (but not impossible) that this will be the case. From my point of view, as an academic dependent on public funds, I am calling you out on this because I feel that fraud committed by academics will hurt all publicly funded academics. Obviously you are free to act in whatever way you want, and I'm not going to try pester you any further about this after this post unless you wish to discuss this further. But, based on what is presented here, it sounds like you do have an alternative to fraud (i.e. tell School A the truth and/or tell School B that you already booked for School A and thus must reschedule). No one forced you to change your plans and fly to School B first--this is a personal choice you made for yourself so you should bear the extra costs. I would say this is similar to booking "economy plus" for extra legroom--many schools will only reimburse for the cost of a standard economy ticket. If you want to make the personal choice of purchasing extra legroom, you'll have to be willing to pay for the additional fees. Maybe you do have some other reason for arranging the trip this way though that you are choosing to not disclose. So, I do have some actual experience with filing expense reports/visits that might be helpful to you if you do choose to not tell School A the whole story. You should keep these facts in mind (I do mean this as sincere advice because if you end up choosing to do this, I will assume that you have a good enough reason to do so): 1. How are you getting from Airport in School A to School A? If you are going to be claiming e.g. a shuttle or bus ticket, remember that the financial office at School A may audit your receipts and you should make sure that the timing of your flight from home to School A is consistent with the timing on your bus/shuttle ticket. If a graduate student picks you up, make sure you tell the department the real time you will be arriving at the airport, so they don't go off your ticket. 2. If you booked a roundtrip ticket from Home to School A, some airlines will cancel your return ticket if you don't actually board the plane on your departing flight. So, check with United to make sure this won't happen to you. 3. My experience with United's cancellation policy is that the fee is not an extra fee charged on top of the cancellation. That is, when I booked my $500 ticket and had to cancel it because of science issues, they gave me $350 credit towards a future United flight. This was a flight that had no cancellation/refund policy, which really means you cannot cancel the flight and get the money back, but you can still cancel the flight and get credit. In your case, since the flight is less than $200, it would probably mean that you just won't get any future credit, not that you have to pay an additional $200 (otherwise, that would just encourage their customers to just not show up for the flight, which is not ideal). Check with United though. If so, then since you are still using the second half of your round trip ticket, then at most you are losing out on $100 if you come clean with School A and they decide to not reimburse you and you choose not to / cannot reschedule School B. $100 is not small change, though, but I'm not personally sure if it would be worth the potential consequences if your fraud is found out (or even stressing about being found out). 4. It's unlikely that the faculty/grad students you talk to will compare stories with the people who will file your paperwork, so it's probably okay to answer honestly when they ask you questions like "where else did you visit?". But I guess if you want to be super careful, make sure everything you say to everyone at School A is consistent.

Schools are sometimes able to reimburse for cancellation fees, but there are probably certain conditions. For example, last year, one of the research trips I was supposed to take was cancelled for reasons out of our control (the equipment we were to use was not usable). We had to rebook for a different date, so the school reimbursed me for all costs, including the change fees ($150 in this case). So, this type of fee is not necessarily strictly "reimbursable" (if that's a word). However, in your case, I agree with others that I don't think School A would be keen on paying for the flight you didn't use because you wanted to go to School B first. Also, it may not be possible for School B to cover all the costs of traveling from B to A. When I did a multi school visit, I went from home to A to B to home. A would only pay for half of the total travel costs, so that would be home to A plus half of A to B, while B will pay for the other half of A to B, plus B to home. So, you might not be able to get B to pay for all of the trip from A to B. The boarding pass issue is very easy to resolve. I always save PDFs of my boarding passes. In the past, I used to print multiple copies--one to leave at home, one to take with me, and one stored elsewhere in my carryon in case I lose the first one. Now, I am able to use my mobile phone to check in, so I just keep the PDF as a backup. Finally, I would argue that you are committing pretty serious fraud if you claim expenses for a flight you did not take. When you sign those expense forms, you are signing that you are not making any false claims. I think making a false claim here is pretty much equivalent to lying on your applications. It might even be worse, because academics are funded by public funds based on an understanding of trust and many public institutions are under scrutiny for "wasting" these funds. This is why many schools will not reimburse alcohol even though in the grand scheme of things, the money academics spend on alcohol/meals while traveling is tiny compared to all the other costs to taxpayers, but academics are an easy target. When we commit frauds like this, we are really hurting our credibility and potentially, future support. Normally, I am a person that believes in committing small transgressions to prevent a bigger one, and all that self-preservation stuff (e.g. I might choose to lie to a prof if they ask me about my plans for having children in grad school), but in this case, you have a ton of other choices that do not require fraud and would not hurt you significantly. I think it would be very irresponsible to choose the fraud route (unless there is something else you haven't considered). If it was me, I would call School B and let them know that I can't make it to their interview because I have one scheduled with School A already. Ask if School B can reschedule me. It's perfectly fair to prioritize School A's invite over B's because they asked first.

You should answer honestly. Sometimes they are just curious--I often ask visiting prospective students of the same thing. They are also trying to see if they are a top choice for you, or not, so that they can gauge how many offers they will make. If they are looking to fill 5 spots, then they would probably make 7-8 offers to people who said they were their top choice, or maybe 15 offers to people who aren't their top choice, or some combination of top/not-top choices. Basically, they want to be efficient and fill as many seats as they can in the first wave of offers as possible! Also, it might be important for them in terms of funding. They may be able to nominate some quota of their accepted students for some University fellowship, so they only want to put you in the running if you are going to be likely to take the offer! They would not want to waste a nomination on someone who isn't likely to attend their school.

I was open with all of the schools about other decisions since I had no reason to withhold/hide that information. So, when I contacted Schools B and C, I told them School A had given me a deadline of X. But I didn't add extra emphasis on the school name or anything, it was just easier to say "School A has given me a deadline of X" instead of using generic words to avoid saying the school name.

I am not sure what you are asking for now. Feb 17 is very far away--3 weeks away! I don't know much more about your situation so it could be hard to give more specific advice, but here is some advice assuming that you are Canadian and living in Canada and you've applied to Canadian schools. Let's call "School A" the school that has accepted you with the Feb 17 deadline. First, you need to decide if you want to even take School A's offer. This might involve setting up some Skype calls to talk to various professors. Normally, the best way is to visit the school--ask if they will fly you out and give you the tour etc. In my opinion, once you have all of the information about the school (i.e. through the visit), you should not need much time to decide "yes" or "no" to the school. If you can't decide after all of the information, I don't see how having an extra 2 months (to April 15) will really make a difference. However, although the first decision is easy, the second decision is hard--once you have decided all the schools to say "yes" to, you have to then determine which one of these schools you actually want to accept. This is the only part where the deadline can pose a problem--what if you don't have all the information about the other schools (i.e. the visits) before Feb 17? I think this would be a valid reason to ask for an extension so that you can get all your information. The first 2 weeks of February are usually very active in terms of decisions. You might get all of your decisions back by then. I don't know how many more schools you've applied to. If they are other Canadian schools, then they should be aware of each others deadlines, and you'll probably hear back soon. Like I said before, maybe send a polite email to the other schools around Feb 7 saying that School A has given a Feb 17 deadline and you were wondering what their timeline is (i.e. not telling them to speed it up, but just letting them know about School A). After you hear back (or a few days later if you don't hear back), send an email to School A asking for whatever extension is necessary to cover all of the other schools' decision timelines. However, Feb 7 and Feb 17 is far away. Spend the next 1-2 weeks researching your offer and seeing how you feel about the school, the research fit, the personality fit, the city. Contact the program to ask about a visit date (if they haven't already invited you). Contact profs and students and talk to them. If you end up not wanting to go to this school at all, then you don't even need to worry about extension, you can just decline the offer.

At one school I applied to, I had mailed a paper transcript over a month before the deadline. However, even a week past the deadline, the online system for that school still said "Transcript -- not received". I emailed the graduate school about it and asked if they actually received my transcript. They replied that they actually got my transcript a month ago and it was properly filed in my application etc. However, since my middle name on my official transcript was punctuated slightly differently than my application (i.e. in a way that a human can clearly tell they are the same name but a computer cannot), the automated system could not match my mailed in transcript with my electronic record. They said that this is pretty common and there is no way for them to go in to the system and manually change my transcript status so they never did. You should definitely check with both the sending school and the receiving school but I would not worry too much about what the online status says. Sometimes they are just plain wrong and in some cases, they probably have nothing to do with the actual application decision.

I have only had cats, no dogs, but everyone else has given really good advice already! I only want to add that it's useful to look up the rules/laws in your future home. For example, in case anyone is reading this is planning to move to the province of Ontario, Canada, the laws are very protective of pets. In Ontario, landlords cannot have "no pets" clauses and they cannot charge extra rent or extra fees because of pet ownership. There is also no security deposit allowed in Ontario rentals (but you do have to pay last month's rent up front, and they can bill you for damages after you leave). The rules in Ontario are very different than most states and even different from other Canadian provinces! So I would strongly advise that you make yourself knowledgeable about your tenant rights/responsibilities before paying a fee you didn't have to pay etc.