TakeruK

If you see this as 4 interviews, it could seem super stressful. But as fuzzy said, it will probably be the same interview just with 4 different people. If you'd like, you can see this as getting 4 tries to do something, so if you are super nervous in one interview or something, it's not as big of a deal since you have 4 chances to really impress someone

I think this should be fine. You probably have seen this too, right: http://www.vanier.gc.ca/eng/selection_criteria-criteres_de_selection.aspx It looks like this would fall under some categories listed with "Involvement in academic life". However, if you have other people that can attest to your strengths in the other categories listed on that webpage, it might be better, because your experience as a lab coordinator could also be addressed in your academic letters of reference (since this is the crossover between academic/non-academic parts and your academic letter writers will be instructed to address all three selection criteria). That is, if: 1. you have things that are more not-academic to write about, and 2. your boss/supervisor you worked for as a lab coordinator can say great things about your academic and research potential also then, your application may be stronger (more breadth) if you got your leadership letter through the other non-academic thing and then use your boss/supervisor to write a very strong letter addressing your academics, research, and leadership! Of course, I don't know all your details, so I can't really advise you on what is best. I am just presenting a different idea for you to consider as well.

I think what K80laf said is true for many Canadian programs, in my experience from applying for my first graduate program.

I agree with Eigen that unless you are 100% externally funded (i.e. your outside fellowship pays 100% of your tuition, fees, and a stipend) and that your tuition is a flat rate, not based on the number of courses you're enrolled in, then it's possible that taking additional courses does represent an addition expense to your department/advisor. Also, some fellowships will pay a certain amount but also require a certain amount to come from the school too. In addition, your cost to your advisor/department is not just money--it's the time they spend advising you and the costs of operating a lab/research group/overhead costs of having a graduate student. Also, I agree with St Andrews Lynx in that the purpose of a PhD is to develop your research ability and independent learning through research work, not necessarily to take more classes and further your education. It's not really the purpose of the PhD to allow you to take as many graduate courses as you wish just to learn more. Put another way, I would say that while courses are meant to teach us things that others already learned, research is meant for us to learn new things not known before. While undergraduate and the foundation courses of a PhD is intended to give us the former, the true purpose/training of a PhD student is to accomplish the latter. That said, I do agree that grad students should be able to take some "extra" courses if they wish. Lifelong learning is important and valuable. From your post (which is only one point of view, of course), it does sound like your advisor is being a little unreasonable in how much they do to really prevent you from taking further courses. You have a valid point that you should be able to take courses if you want to, as long as they don't interfere with how much work you are expected to do as a PhD student. It is unreasonable for your advisor/department to expect you to spend all your energy solely on research (or resting to perform more research later). But, that being unreasonable doesn't mean that it won't happen! In my opinion, I would say that a graduate student should generally have the right to take a very limited number of additional courses (or do other extra activities not related to research, whether it's on campus or not) if it does not cost the department any additional money for tuition etc., even though it is not the intention of the PhD program to provide more coursework for its students. Like the OP said, if they are progressing in research, they should be able to spend the extra time on official courses if they want (as long as there is no extra cost--but I find it strange that the department/advisor would not just tell the student up front that their tuition waiver won't cover non-essential courses). Graduate students are more than just research machines--we don't have to optimize our every action to make as much research progress as possible. (**Here I am assuming that everyone is being reasonable and we're not taking the extreme case where the student neglects all research for coursework, but in the case where the student puts as much effort/time into research as they would have without courses and spends their free time doing courses, instead of trading out research time for courses**) But in the OP's shoes, I'm not sure it's really worth it to fight to take these courses officially. It seems like you can get just as much benefit out of these courses by just auditing, unless you are planning to get a minor in another field or something (which would require official permission!). Or maybe you want these courses to officially show on your transcript for future job applications? Otherwise, like Eigen said, you can still officially "audit" a course but put as much real effort and time into the course as if you were taking it for real. Your status in some university database should not affect your ability to learn in a course (unless at your school, auditing means that your work won't be graded and you won't get feedback etc.)

I'm not in Sociology but I don't think this is necessarily a problem just for Sociology? In some other fields (e.g. the physical sciences), we call it the "Two-body problem". If it helps to read about others in similar situations, a google search for that in academia will bring up a lot of blog posts and other articles about others going through similar things. And there's lots on GradCafe here as well! I just want to add that relationships do take a lot of time and effort, and you should not feel pressured to put relationships first, or career first! I think it's very important to have whatever balance that works for you personally and make you happy. You should have to feel that things like relationships or other non-career/academic priorities should come second to your career. Of course, if you want to put career/academics first, you should be able to do that too, without others pressuring you otherwise! I also agree with dreammer3119 that grad school will put a strain on any relationship. My spouse isn't a student, and even though we think we had a strong and equal plan for me going to get a PhD, it still put a slight strain on us. Our plan was basically a decision that we made together because we viewed my PhD program as something that will improve the future for both of us. So, I only applied to schools that were acceptable for both of us (I made a list of schools/cities I was interested in, and my spouse had absolute veto power over any place she didn't want to live/didn't think she would be able to find work). I applied to the remaining schools and we visited them together where possible and made a decision together. But even with this plan that we both came up together and were both on board with, there were/are still moments where we question ourselves for making the right decision for both of us. It's understandable that my spouse might felt that she might have had more job opportunities where we used to live, or maybe we chose a place with a cost of living that was too high, or I would feel guilty because we made a decision to, for now, move for my career instead of my spouse's. I don't know your exact situation and I'm not trying to advise you one way or another on your relationship! I just wanted to share that there are a lot of people in similar situations. Also, that I don't think there is such a thing as a perfect relationship where the strain of moving/starting/completing a PhD program would not affect at all. Anyways, hope sharing my story was helpful

You can do it! Make sure your LOR writers know right away and order transcripts/test scores if needed, since that's the part that would be the most time constrained. In my application year, I had thought one school's deadline was early January but at the end of November, I found out that for international students, the deadline was really Dec 1!! So, it's definitely possible to put together an application in about 3 weeks

What about talking to a legal professional and getting their opinion before even talking to FAFSA? In your shoes, I would want to know exactly what FAFSA would require me to do before they tell me to do it, so that I don't end up agreeing to do something I didn't need to agree to, or lose a chance where I could have argued a point because I didn't know what my rights were etc.

MIT's living wage calculator also seems to agree with my location, although I would note that this is basically the minimum amount of money to survive, but not really enough to have luxuries (such as a car) or if you have larger than average expenses (such as increased health costs). I think the way to approach these numbers depend on the context. If you are looking to see how much you need to dig into any savings (or loans) to complete a program, then I'd consider these numbers as a minimum. However, another reason to ask this question is to figure out how much of a stipend do you need at each school. That is, to judge whether or not the stipend you are being offered is "enough". In my high cost of living location, the minimum living wage is similar to Juilletmercredi's numbers (maybe just a little bit lower). Grad students in my program are paid about 25%-30% above this minimum number, which I think is a good level to set as the minimum stipend you should accept (in my opinion). Getting about 25%-30% above the minimum means that most students here are able to enjoy not having to constantly stress about finances, being able to eat out or go for drinks in moderation, save up money for the future, and if you save for a couple of years, most people are able to buy a used car. At many other places though, the stipend offered is somewhere around 50% to 70% higher than the minimum living wage, which would be really great if you can get that. Don't forget that even though we get school and a living stipend paid for, grad school is a long time and a lot of work, and ideally, we should be able to come out of this being able to save up (and able to pay for the next move!).

For housing in dorms vs. off-campus, you should talk to current graduate students and get their thoughts. I visited a few places and the differences are pretty vast. At my current program, on campus housing is usually much cheaper than the market rate off-campus. My campus also has "off-campus", but University-owned apartment buildings (some furnished, some unfurnished) that are rented out to students at a subsidized rate. At other schools I visited, the off-campus market rates are so cheap that grad students own their own homes. For cost-of-living comparison, I found that standard cost of living calculators are useful to get a general feel but they don't always provide the most useful information. I think these cost-of-living metrics include a lot of things that the average graduate student would not care about (e.g. property taxes). Our biggest expenses are probably going to be rent, food and health insurance, with rent really dominating. I think the CNN link above is handy to compare two stipend offers quickly, though. However, I would recommend using something like padmapper and scoping out the actual rent market prices for the types of place you want to live and the area you want to live in. Maybe the nice area you like near campus is some weird region that is much different than the averages used in these cost of living calculators. So, I would really figure out how much rent would cost, subtract that off your stipend offer, subtract costs of health insurance (some schools subsidize a lot more) and then see if what's left over is enough to pay for everything else. At this point, for most students, the cost of everything else--food, phone, Internet etc. will all be pretty much the same from city to city and will depend more on each person's usage/needs than the location, I think.

Hmmm, I am not sure why the link doesn't work (I just tried it again on my computer). But maybe you can google some of these things to find it: Blog title: Women in Astronomy http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com The article is titled "My Successful Experience with Sexual Harassment" (the article explains why the author chose the word "successful") It was posted to this blog by Laura Trouille but the article was written by an anonymous person. The date was Jan 22, 2014 Hopefully that will be enough for you to find it without the link!

I am fully funded by my program too. All of the offers I received were also fully funded offers, from both public and private schools. All of these offers came with varying research and teaching assistantship requirements, of course. In my field, it's usual for both international and domestic students to end up with about the same level of funding--the department bears the extra cost of international fees etc, which is why it is much harder for an international student to get admission to a program. It's common for physical science programs to fund their students. But as fuzzy says, you should check what the norms in your field are!

I agree with the spreadsheet thing. I get paid a small amount of my stipend monthly, but the majority of my money comes in two lump sum payments, in September and in April. This means I have to make the big chunk of money I get in September last for 7 months, basically!! I find that making an annual budget for myself is helpful in understanding how much money I am able to actually spend on certain things (necessities as well as treats for myself) and it does reduce the amount of stress--instead of worrying about whether or not I have enough money for the next few months of rent and food, I have data that tells me it's all okay! What I did when looking at PhD offers was make a spreadsheet that started with the annual stipend offered, then I had lines listing the large expected expenses. I researched the rent market to figure out average housing cost (by far your biggest expense, I think), and then I estimated food costs based on my previous annual budgets. Sure, cost of food varies from place to place, but unless you live in an extremely expensive location, even like a 10% price difference normally only amounts to a couple hundred of dollars per year. I also included other big ticket expenses, like health insurance and if applicable, auto insurance. This can help you determine if the stipend offered at University X in City Y is actually livable or not, and can help you compare two offers from two different cost of living areas. I agree that cooking for yourself, and cooking healthy is really important to save money. I spend about $200 per month per person (there's two of us) on groceries and I cook most of our meals. We can easily feed ourselves on real food at this cost and this works out to something like $2/meal/person. When I look at it this way, I see that going out for dinner can easily cost something like $15-$20 for a meal per person, which is like 7-10 times more expensive than cooking at home! I also have a budget for occasional eating out and social activities with friends of course, but I wanted to point out that cooking for yourself is really inexpensive, even if you get real food and not ramen. If you eat crap like ramen all the time, you might be able to scrape it down to $1/meal/person and maybe this might be necessary over time, but in my opinion, I would rather sacrifice my eating out budget in order to save the extra $1/meal/person to get real food instead of ramen. I also strongly endorse the "cook enough for extra meals" and eating yesterday's dinner as today's lunch is a great plan. Also, I think it's really important to work some kind of "splurge" into your budget, based on your income, even if it's only a small amount. In our first year of living together, my spouse and I realised that when we kept really strict budgets for ourselves, we would be okay for a few months, but then if we ever got a chance to treat ourselves for some reason, we would overdo it and actually spend more money than if we had allowed ourselves small but regular rewards/treats.

If it helps, I recently read this blog article and I thought it might provide some helpful insight or at least a story of someone who went through the process of taking further steps in a way that did not compromise their professional relationship with the other person involved: http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-successful-experience-with-sexual.html It's not the same situation as yours, but it sounds like this person was able to do what you want (have someone hear them, start documentation if necessary, and in the end, informally resolve the issue in a positive way for everyone).

I think it depends on how close I feel to this act of violence as well as how I feel about whether this is a "freak act" or a symptom of a bigger problem. For example, if the violence happened to a graduate TA in the department I was applying to, then that would be pretty uncomfortable to me. I do consider how safe I would feel at a school/city when deciding on PhD programs though. During a school visit, I heard a several very pro-gun commercials on the radio and multiple sources telling me stories about how gun laws are very liberal in that state (including stories of interactions where people would take out their guns and appreciate them in public places), and that definitely swayed me against attending that school. I would not even describe myself as someone who is against gun ownership but my experience in that state definitely made me uncomfortable. Maybe my world view is very different though!

I think this is a tricky situation. I think it would be unethical for your PI to vindictively remove you from the author list because you left the lab, especially if they are going to still use your analysis. At the same time, it is completely ethical, if the situation was that new analyses needed to be run and the PI chose to have someone in the lab perform them, instead of you. Since you left the lab, I don't think you would have the "right to first refusal" of doing the analysis. So, if the other student replaces your work with theirs, it's okay for you to be removed from the paper since your contribution isn't used anymore. However, if the PI is purposely replacing your analysis for no reason other than to exclude you, then that would be not ethical (although pretty difficult to prove). I agree with Eigen that you should talk to your PI and make a clear plan ahead for what you would contribute to and what you won't be contributing to. Say what you want to do and see what your PI says, and keep in mind that they have the right to not accept your offer to work with them. Also, I am assuming that you left this lab to join another one, so you should also talk to your new lab PI to make sure they are okay with you spending time on this past project. In my program, we all do two projects in our first year and then after our quals, we kind of have to talk to each PI and decide how much more work we'll be spending on each project (and whether it's worth finishing up at all). I think conversations like this are normal, and you should aim to come out of the conversation with both parties knowing what work is expected from you and how you will appear on the author list. It might depend on field, but it's also not super rare for large collaborations to sign contracts stipulating author order/inclusion etc. But I'd be wary of bringing this up unless it is a norm for your group.

Definitely. Canadian schools don't always follow the US-based April 15th deadline. From my past applications, I know that UBC and Toronto (2 of the 3 major schools) do follow the April 15 thing, but McGill (the other major school) gave me exactly 4 weeks to respond! This put their deadline a whole week before the application for another school was even due (March 1). So, I asked McGill for an additional 2 weeks, and notified the last school that McGill was giving me the deadline. Overall, some Canadian programs do a "rolling admissions" type thing, so the last school ended up making a decision about my application 3 days before the application due date, so everything worked out. Here is the actual agreement: http://www.cgsnet.org/ckfinder/userfiles/files/CGS_Resolution.pdf Although most schools will give you until April 15th, it's important to notice a few important caveats: 1. The agreement/resolution is for offers of financial aid only, not for admission, although these usually go together (except for unfunded programs). 2. There are no real penalties for breaking this resolution, thus a program can violate the resolution all they want!

If it makes you feel any better, even though I'm not in the same field, when I applied to UBC MSc programs as a UBC undergraduate, I had to order physical transcripts from the UBC registrar, then mail them back to UBC, basically =/

In your shoes, I would take some time now to research UIUC as if this was a few months ago to see if you would actually be interested in being a student there. Keep in mind that this prof is moving there though. If having this POI there isn't enough for you to want to be in that program, then I guess the only thing you can really do is decline your POI's generous offer. When professors move schools, they usually have some sizeable negotiating power, especially for funding for their current students, which is probably how this POI's students are going to be able to move with her. So, to me, it sounds like she is asking if you are interested so she can know whether or not she should spend time trying to add support for you along with negotiating for her current students. Ultimately, the Graduate School at UIUC will have to accept you for you to be able to go there, but I think having this POI on your side will really help. So, if this is your only offer, then I would probably take her up on it unless you think you rather not go to grad school (or reapply another year) than go to UIUC. Otherwise, if you are still waiting for other programs, it might be best to do the research mentioned above, and if you are interested but not completely sure you want to go to UIUC instead of another potential offer, then you should probably tell your POI that. It's okay to let her know that UIUC wasn't originally on your radar but you would be interested in working with her and would like to continue the conversation while keeping in mind that you are still waiting for other schools. It will probably take a while for UIUC to approve the "transfer" anyways. I guess one tricky situation is that if UIUC becomes your top choice but they have not fully decided if you can attend there while another school has made you a guaranteed offer! But you can worry about that when it happens! Finally, on the bright side, you're in a much better position than students who have their advisor move in the middle of their degree (it's not common, but not that rare either). At least in your case, you know about the move before starting, and you would end up doing your PhD all at one place, instead of having to move in the middle. If UIUC approves your "transfer", you have a lot more control over your situation than the students who have their advisors move unexpectedly in the middle of their PhD!

It seems like TurboTax is one of the different software avaialble that will let you file for free if your income is low (for federal taxes but not state ones). Other software listed here: http://taxes.about.com/od/preparingyourtaxes/tp/freefile.htm

I think this depends on how you interpret the question! I think of it as 3 different questions: 1. What time periods do I enjoy learning about / reading about / seeing stories about etc. I think the first half of the 1900s, particular the years just before and just after World War II, really fascinate me. I think that was a crucial time period where we were inventing dangerous things (tanks that worked, nuclear weapons, submarines) very quickly and I think our technological ability might have been growing faster than our ability to comprehend what the consequences of our actions could be. In modern times, we can easily reflect back and say well, X was a good decision, but Y wasn't etc. However, we don't really know what it was like to actually grow up in that time, and stories or documents like old letters that can immerse us in that time really fascinate me. There are also other periods of history that are interesting too, but I like this one the best because it's more recent and thus more artifacts are saved! 2. What time periods would I like to "visit" as an disembodied being / fly on the wall? For this version, I think I would have liked to be in France during its revolutionary periods. I think the big shift from power of the monarch to "power of the people" is really important and I see some parallels between the rule of a monarch and the rule of big corporations today. The American revolution was earlier and while that is also interesting, I think the revolution of a faraway colony is pretty different from the revolution of the subjects of a monarchy in the capital city, for example. I would want to hear the speeches and rhetoric of people that believed in some principles so strongly that they would die for them. 3. What time periods would I want to actually time travel to and visit in person? I would interpret this part as on a permanent basis, because if I can just go home whenever I want, it's a lot like #2 but a bit less safe. For this actual question, I don't think I would want to do it at all. There are tons of problems in the world still, but I do think our current state is the best humanity has ever achieved and that we will continue to improve ourselves in the future! Maybe that's too optimistic

I had a similar issue. I visited all of my west coast schools in one trip to save on expenses and I was able to just make it in within all the expense maximums. I was even living in a small town so I had there was an extra cost just to get to a hub airport. In order to make this work though, I had to reschedule some visits, so don't feel bad about asking schools (especially the ones with expense maximums) if you can visit on an alternate date in order to make it all in one trip.

I really just meant like not asking only a few days before. So, you said your deadline is Feb 17, maybe you should ask around Feb 7 or Feb 10 or something. I also think you should at least give some kind of reason and if possible, specify how much more time you would need (so you should contact the other programs you applied to and ask if they know the approximate timeline for their decisions--you can mention that you currently have an offer with a deadline for Feb 17 and that you are trying to ask for extra time to decide). I don't think you should just email them back right now and ask for an extension without any real reason. The reason extensions are granted is because you are waiting for some other piece of information, and if it turns out that all of your other schools get back to you by Feb 17, then you wouldn't really need an extension (or maybe only a few days). But if you know that there is a school that won't be ready to decide until like Feb 20, then it might be okay to ask for a 2 week extension.

I guess technically, they can always revoke your offer (although it might be a lot of work on their part), but practically, they will not revoke an offer because you asked for more time. You should make your request for more time with enough notice that they can think about it and get back to you with a decision before their original deadline has passed. The worst that could happen is that they do not give you more time so then you must decide how to respond before the deadline.

4 is definitely do-able. It won't hurt to name too many profs anyways (within reason) because they may not be able to schedule everyone with some really "popular" professors. You might end up meeting with professors that are not on your list anyways. When I did my visits (mostly 2 days), I was basically always in a meeting with a professor or a graduate student from 9am to 4pm, with a break for lunch. Meetings are like 15-30 minutes long, so you can actually meet quite a few people.

I think as soon as possible too. I know it's definitely true for my program, since I know when I got the notification in 2012 and for the last two years, we've all known when the professors are meeting. In addition to logistical issues with planning visits etc, I think that getting your offer out early increases the chance that the student will accept. At the very least, it will keep the student thinking about your offer for a longer period of time, and any future offers will be compared to your early offer, instead of the other way around. Unless the department needs some kind of approval from a higher authority, I don't think there is any advantage into delaying notification of acceptances.