TakeruK

I think the schools will understand if you don't have enough vacation days to visit everywhere. However, since you will be spending 5ish years of your life there, it's definitely worth a few vacation days, in my opinion! From an applicant side, these visit days were absolutely essential to my final decision and a lot of my preconceptions about certain programs were changed when I came. From the point of view of a graduate student already in a program, we look forward to these visit days because we are meeting potential new colleagues! In your shoes, I would look at my offers and choose only a few schools to visit and do as full of a visit of these schools as possible, instead of visiting all the schools for only 1 day each. Once you get all/most of your offers, you should probably be able to narrow down your top choices a bit. When I was visiting PhD programs, I was busy in a Masters program, so I couldn't take tons of days off either. I decided that I would have time to visit 3 schools, made my top 3 choices, visited them, and then made my final decision. So, hopefully you would be able to have enough vacation days to fully attend a couple of visits? Also, you can reschedule visits, in some cases. You might not be able to visit with the full crowd, but that's better than not visiting at all if it's a top choice for you. Rescheduling can help because you might be able to visit one school on Mon/Tues and another on Thurs/Fri and use Wed as a travel day --that way you only take 5 days off instead of 6 days to visit 2 schools. Or, let's say you are interested in schools A, B, C but you only have offers from A, B, D so far. You might be able to ask D to postpone your visit until you hear back from C, and then if you get into C, you can just visit C instead, or if you don't get into C then you can decide whether it's worth your time to still visit D (maybe your visits to A and B has already made your decision)!

I've had short timelines like that before. Sometimes you can ask for an extension though, especially if you give a reason like you know another school will be making their decision on Feb 21 or something like that.

I think this is really true. When I grew up in Vancouver, I would often feel "cheated" if we had an unusually rainy summer, because those precious few weeks in July/August of perfect weather were exactly that--very precious! I think that would be my most major complaint about the weather in Vancouver--you feel like you have to take advantage of every nice day because there aren't that many of them. Sometimes it would even be stressful because you might not feel like a beach day but due to the combination of busy schedules and rare nice weather, there may only be a few weekends per year where it's warm enough to swim in the ocean!

I also mostly do exercise for fun and de-stress, and I'm not really working towards any particular fitness goals. I think, in addition to what was said above, that in grad school, you can't always just "find free time" to do something. If you want to do something, you have to go and make the time available. This might mean setting appropriate priorities on things like research, classwork, socializing, etc to match your own goals. In grad school, I feel that we could always be working more (spending a bit more time polishing up the problem set, writing that next paper, thinking about the next project/experiment, reading the literature, etc.) . It is very rare that we would ever be "done" and have nothing left to do!! So we can't just say "I'll do X when I have free time", I think we have to decide what is important to us and know when it's time to stop working and do something for our own health/sanity!

I always thought the lucky numbers are supposed to be like...lottery ticket purchase suggestions. OR MAYBE IT IS CODE AND SOMEONE OR SOMETHING IS TRYING TO COMMUNICATE WITH US!

I have one but I only created it after I already started my PhD program. I think they might be helpful to have, if you have the time to create one during your applications. However, I don't think it makes such a difference that an applicant absolutely must spend their time doing this! I do think that all academics, especially current graduate students, should have an academic webpage. It's a good way to introduce yourself to others who are curious about you (e.g. people who saw your name on a talk or a poster, or people you meet at a conference). I don't get very many hits on mine and I think most of them are actually just web robots crawling the web, but I do notice spikes during and after I present something at a conference. So, if you are able to start one now, it's great

I found this tricky as well, because even if I preferred to be addressed as Mr. X, I think it's really weird to sign an email as Mr. X. So while you probably won't look bad if you use the person's first name because they signed it with their first name, it's not always true that signing with the first name means they prefer being addressed by the first name. That said, I think it is common practice in North American offices for people to address each other by the first name, even if they do not personally know each other. I've noticed that staff at all of my schools do this (e.g. I may be sitting in an office and the person calls another staff member that they have not met before and they would use first names). So, I think it's well within protocol to use first name in official correspondence. However, you should keep in mind that sometimes these emails are sent from faculty members (or as another person said, they may also have degrees) serving in positions such as TA Coordinator, Graduate Coordinator, Director of Graduate Studies, and so on. In any case, you should always treat everyone with equal respect, regardless of their position in the department. I think the way you phrase any requests or questions is more important than the salutation used in your address.

I do the same as you. I have an electric toothbrush so the base and charger is on my nightstand and I just grab the base when I wake up and go to the bathroom. The toothbrush head is in the bathroom, but in a drawer. I keep my towel in the bedroom because the humidity in the bathroom is generally higher and it will stay damp for a really long time in the bathroom!

I think they will understand! One school called me just as my wife and I were about to head out to dinner (and we were running a little late). I was also pretty surprised to be getting a phone call so the combination of surprise and distraction made my reaction to the good news incredibly lame (something like "oh. that's good news, thanks."). I managed to get a hold of myself by the end of the call to say more excited sounding things before hanging up, luckily, but I felt pretty dumb about the encounter for awhile afterwards! Everything worked out though, I think all the schools know that we all didn't put ourselves through the application process if we were not excited about the chance to study at their school!

You should let the schools know about your conflicting schedule. I think no one will be upset at you if you gave priority to the one that invited you first and you already RSVP'ed to. I think this is a safe and fair way to assign priority without sounding like one school interests you more than another. So, in your shoes, I would let the MA school know that you had already planned on attending the IN school interview on Feb 7 and could they please schedule on a different date? Edit: Oh also, I think it doesn't hurt to follow the policy of "bringing solutions, not just problems", so you might want to suggest some dates that could work for you instead (so that they don't suggest another day that is also not good) and mention that you would be able to fly directly from MA school to IN school (and save time/money for everyone) if you had your MA interview on Feb 5, or something. But be careful to not step on any toes or sound like you are telling them what you want the schedule to be!

That really explains a lot and clears up some confusion I had about how things worked as well! Thanks Usmivka!

Sure, if you're proud of it, why not? I don't know if it will help, but I don't think that it will harm your application. At worst, the committee will think it's not important and ignore that listing.

You don't have to do all of them. But it is expected for you to do some of them, especially the ones you are really excited about. It's a good way to start making some connections and recognizing a few faces before you start completely fresh next Fall! For me, I had 5 offers to visit but I had already knew what my top 3 choices were so I only visited those places. You should definitely any place that you might want to go to. But if you already know one or two schools are not likely going to be your final choice, then you might not want to visit. If the visits are far enough apart (my last visit offer was 1 month after my first visit), and I already knew that the 3 schools I visited early on were going to be one of my final 3 choices, so I was able to decline the visit and admission offer after seeing the first few schools and liking what I saw. Finally, although you want to be careful to not completely disregard your final classes, I think you can benefit a lot more from a visit than attending lectures in your current class. I probably would not visit more than 3-4 schools though! Also, you might be able to save time by combining visits from nearby schools. I asked one school to reschedule my visit to a different date so I could visit two schools in the same week (instead of having to go back home for 2 days before flying out again). This saved money for both me and the schools!

This is what I do, even for TAships in my own department. But this is from experience TAing in a unionized position where we had hourly contracts. These contracts explicitly state that any mandatory training sessions related to TA work count towards our hourly contract. In one example, the provincial law required all public sector employees (e.g. grad student TAs because universities are public sector employers) undertake Workplace Harassment training. When the university notified grad student TAs that we had to attend this workshop, during the summer, where we normally do not have TAships to deduct hours out of, we argued that we should be paid the normal TA rate for the 3 hour workshop. The University refused, stating that since as graduate students, we were not "employees" but "students" (although for other purposes, they treated us as "employees" when it benefits them). We countered that if we are not "employees", then we are not covered under this law change and thus should not be forced to attend the workshop. However, It was a very awkward scenario because we believed the workshop was very important, but at the same time, our ability to be treated fairly as employees was also very important. It did lead to uncomfortable conversations between me (our department's TA union steward) and the prof who was the TA coordinator for the department. But I think these conversations are important to have, because everyone else has their priorities and graduate students are vulnerable to be taken advantage of since we want/need to earn the respect and reference letters for our future careers. What happened in the end? The decision was made that since it was the summer, none of us were employed at TAs at the time, so the training will not be mandatory nor will it be paid for. However, this would only delay the problem until the fall, when most of us would be employed as TAs, and thus required by law to undergo this training. But, they will have another training session in the fall, and then the current TAs can deduct these hours from their hourly contracts. So, it worked out in the end, except for the small part where the University still "encouraged" current grad students who would be TAing later in the fall to attend the workshop voluntarily anyways (and for free). But I think this is still a reasonable compromise and allows for each TA to make the individual choice whether or not to voluntarily go to the professional development program. (I think the correct and most legal/contract binding resolution would be to credit the students that attended the summer session for hours worked in their next TA contract). So in your case, it is a tough scenario. If you don't have a union, you might not have the same protections I theoretically had when I brought up this issue on behalf of the TAs in my department. Graduate students are in a vulnerable position and we have to pick and choose our battles wisely. This is why I think properly run unions are important, so that we are able to make arguments in situations like the one above without burning bridges etc. (since the one representative would speak for us and individual TAs would be protected by the group). But without that, each TA would have to make their own decision whether or not to speak up. In the example above, since I was the representative, it's pretty easy for the department to choose to subtly retaliate against me even though I should be protected, but I "chose" that battle because it involved people I am not academically involved with and took place a few months before I was going to defend and leave (and thus would not be TAing in the future with this school anyways). I also attended that workshop voluntarily.

It's definitely a problem due to actions of both committees and students though. But given that the committees generally have more power and information, I agree that the responsibility is more on the schools to provide timely information for applicants to make decision. But consider this simplified example. There are 4 students: A, B, C, D and 3 schools: X, Y, Z. Let's say each school has room for 2 students. Let's say School X wants to admit A, B, C, D, in that order. School Y wants B, D, C, A School Z wants A, C, B, D So, let's say X makes offers to A, B. Y makes offers to B, D. Z makes offers to A, C. All 3 schools give their students until April 15 to make the decision. Let's say these offers were made March 1. Let's look a preferences of students now. Let's say: A has the option of X and Z, but they are not sure what is best for them yet. B has the option of X and Y, but their top choice really was Z. C has the option of Z only. D has the option of Y only. To keep it simple, let's say C and D are happy with their offers and they accept Y and Z right away. However, B really wants to wait to hear the final decision from Z. In this case, Z would make an offer to B only if A doesn't take the offer from Z. So, here is an example of where if A waits until April 15, then B has to wait until after April 15 to hear from Z. I think of this example when I say that students like A should make decisions prior to April 15 whenever possible (assuming that A really does have enough information to choose between X and Z but did not take the time to carefully weigh the pros and cons). I know sometimes applicants, when facing the difficult decision, decide to procrastinate and delay the decision until the last minute even though they won't have any more information to help them decide on April 14 than they had back on March 5 or whatever. And you can imagine that in the real world, there are way more than 4 students and 3 schools, so other people might be waiting on B's decision. I am all for taking the time necessary to get the right information for such a big decision, but in cases where an applicant does have all the information possible, I would encourage them to make decisions as soon as possible! So, I don't think it's only the admissions committee that deserves the full blame for the scenario. It's just a matter of unequal information distribution (students don't know about the waitlist and schools don't know about all the factors that might influence a student to pick one place or another) and when this happens, there will be inefficiencies. This happens in everyday life too. Imagine a restaurant that only have tables for 4, but a group of 7 shows up, followed by several groups of 4. In order to seat the group of 7, the restaurant needs 2 nearby tables to clear up at roughly the same time. Once a single table clears up, they have to decide whether to seat the group of 4 behind the group of 7, or wait and hope another table nearby opens up. Both choices are inefficient though--the first choice is unsustainable...if they keep doing this, the group of 7 is never seated. The second choice means that there will be a table sitting empty while people are hungry! I just think inefficiencies like this are part of life and we have to deal with it. I definitely agree that one major source of problem is the admissions committee generally being very very guarded with what information they reveal, and also taking a long time to make their decisions. I wish they would make their process and decisions more transparent (particularly timely notification of accept/waitlist/rejection) and not having overly huge waitlists. To achieve maximum efficiency, I think we would have to give up some privacy. For example, if the schools were completely open and honest about their decisions (and who would replace whom in the waitlist for example) and if the applicants were completely open honest as well (every school would know where else their applicants got into) and if everyone (schools and applicants) did not use this information to gain any advantage while making decisions, then it would be maximally efficient. But this is obviously an idealised scenario that won't work practically! In the restaurant metaphor, the maximum efficiency would be achieved if there were 2 tables of 4 that opened up but were not near each other and the restaurant manager was able to move a group of 4 that was already eating in order to create 2 adjacent empty tables. But this is not something people eating in a restaurant would generally like! Similarly, I don't think either applicants nor admission committees would like having everything revealed and open either.

Yep, but it's not the exact same presentation or the same audience. In the example I gave above, the audience for the 3 presentations were completely different (first one was basically only other students in all fields of science at my school, second one was all physics undergrad students across Canada, and the last one was a "real" conference, where the audience was undergrads, graduate, postdocs and faculty members doing physics research.) Also, the presentations were, in total, separated by a year, so each one had more details and I finished more work. And I would not count the first two presentations described as the same type as the last one. I think that graduate students and beyond will be mostly presenting in the third type of conference, and I would probably not present the same work at multiple conference with other full time researchers (i.e. not just undergraduates) unless I had major progress/updates. In my field, most researchers are members of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), which has two annual meetings, and usually also members of one of the many divisions of the AAS, e.g. the Division of Planetary Science. These divisions have annual meetings as well, and it is not too uncommon for a person to attend and present similar work at both meetings in a year. However, it would be ideal to have different work to present of course. And, if you are working on a big project (e.g. your PhD thesis), you might present different aspects or updates to your work every year at the annual meeting.

I will keep all my peer-reviewed publications on my CV for quite awhile--for all fellowship applications in grad school and probably when I apply to postdocs too. I will probably think about doing "Selected Publication" when my number of publications reaches like 20 or so, but that is pretty far away still. I do have "selected presentations" and I only include the most recent/most prestigious instance of each presentation/project. For example, I first presented one of my undergrad projects at a conference for students doing research at my school. Then, I presented it at a Canada-wide student run physics conference. Then, I presented it at a American Physical Society meeting. After each presentation, I removed the last entry for this project and replaced it with something better. Overall, I have one presentation listed for each main project I mention in my "Research" section of my CV.

Definitely read the link in Canis' post carefully. Also, note that there is no binding agreement for schools to set their deadline to be April 15 because there is practically no consequence for a school on that CGS resolution to decide to make their deadline March 1. So, you should go by the dates written in your acceptance letter, however, keep in mind that most programs will use April 15 as the deadline (even if it's not a finanical offer) because it's easier on everyone to have a common deadline. In the case Platonist described (you have offer from choice #2 school but choice #1 school has waitlisted you), the optimal course of action would be to ask choice #2 to give you a few extra days past the deadline and see what they say. If they don't agree then, you will have to decide to take #2's sure offer or wait it out and hope for #1's offer. You might also do something like take #2's offer, and then change your mind and take #1's offer if you get it later, but that can have serious consequences for going back on your word, including #1's reversing their decision since many schools only allow you to accept an offer if you have not accepted elsewhere (if you had, you would need a release from #2). To get the best possible scenario for everyone, people should avoid waiting until April 15 to make their decision even though it's within your rights to do so. For the people who have heard back from every school, you should be able to make a decision within a week or so. At the very least, if you can't decide between two (or three) schools, you should decline all other offers promptly. Those who get all their decisions early are in a privileged position and if they can make decisions earlier, then it can help reduce the number of people in Platonist's hypothetical scenario (which is very real for many people!).

Right now, the ad is for www.degreeleap.com/GRE and it advertises as "No GRE Graduate Schools". I get this one pretty often. There seem to be a rotation of a few that I see regularly. I also see one for Amazon with things I've been looking at, Best Buy, my online Bank, and my undergrad Alumni association asking for donations.

I am usually able to access theses from other schools too. But like journal articles, make sure you are accessing them from within your school network (or do whatever proxy networks your school told you to do) in order to have the right subscription/access rights.

Just to add to the great stuff others have already said: In some schools, grad student housing residents are not subject to dumb meal plans. At all the places I've been to and visited, grad student housing all have (shared) kitchens and are exempt from meal plans (although some places allow for meal plan opt-in). To save money on books, you might be able to get them from the library. Most of the time, the course instructor will put the course textbooks on reserve and you can just use it at the library. If you're lucky, you might even be able to check out the book if there are multiple copies (usually only a couple of copies go on reserve). Sometimes book titles are announced/released ahead of time so you might be able to do this before the first class and the syllabus is distributed. A good guess is also to look up the course syllabus/website from previous years and just check out those books ahead of time in case they are the same this year. If you have had the credit card for a while (maybe a year or so?) you can probably ask to be approved for a higher limit. If you want to increase this limit, you can probably ask every 6-12 months. If you use your card responsibly, the credit card can be really helpful in delaying payments without having to incur interest or service fee charges!

This is true, at one of my old schools, the official University wide policy is to only guarantee funding for 4 years even though the average time to complete is more like 5. I think the student group is arguing against this by citing such numbers, but I don't know how far they are getting. As stereopticons said, no guarantee doesn't necessarily mean no funding. At programs like this, if there is a visit weekend or a chance to ask questions, it would be good to ask what fraction of students are funded past 3 years.

Yes, what you are doing is a great and helpful thing to everyone involved! Good on you! Keep your decline email very short (like 3 sentences) and polite. Do not give any reasons. Also, don't be "patronizing" or make it sound like you feel bad that they will feel bad that you didn't take their offer. It might be true, but it might also not be true--they have tons of students saying no (and will probably get lots of others that say yes too), so don't make a big deal out of it In all of my programs, the Graduate School (not the department) will send you an "exit survey" a few days after they get official notice of your decision and that survey will generally ask you for the reasons and where you did end up going. You can wait until you have your final decision before completing these surveys.

I am not in Psychology, but sometimes I see this in my field too. When I inquired further about it, they usually say something like the department promises you funding (through TAships and fellowships etc.) for the first 3 years, and afterwards, you're responsible for getting your own RAship through other profs or your thesis advisor etc. In my field, getting an RAship from your advisor is pretty much a given (otherwise you flunk out). In many programs in my field, the candidacy exam may represent this transition and you basically won't pass if your advisor does not think you are capable enough to finish a PhD in order to fund you. But maybe Psychology is a lot different--just offering some thoughts. The best thing to do, I think, would be to ask for clarification if you get an offer from them.

I agree with fuzzy. It's okay to not reveal everything. Sometimes, students might still be working on a project at time of interview and the results may still be embargoed so it's okay to decline to reveal sensitive information. Definitely try to get the confidentiality issues sorted out when you can though, because you may have to discuss these projects in the future too.