TakeruK

I agree that timelines really depend on the location. Right now, I live in a very non-college town (students probably make up less than 3% of the population) so other than the areas immediately adjacent to campus, the rental market is like any other "regular" town. We have been following the rental listings all year because we are looking to move if there is a good option and it's very rare to be able to find a place more than a few weeks in advance. In California, the law is 30 days notice to vacate, so at the earliest, you will see something up for 1 month from now. But most places will want you to move in much sooner than 1 month! We did fly out to pick out an apartment about 4-5 weeks before our move-in and we were almost too early. Luckily, while responding to a "move in ASAP" ad, the landlord told us that they actually have another tenant who is planning on leaving by September 1, so we were lucky to be able to sign a lease to begin Sept 1 when we visited (about August 1). It really looked like we would have to sign a lease to begin in August and pay double rent for awhile! Alternatively, there are other places where the market is almost the opposite. In another town we moved to in the past, students make up almost 40% of the population and the law was 60 days notice to vacate. For all of the decent, well upkept properties in town, they are almost immediately snatched up within a few days of being available. In that place, we signed our August 1 lease back on June 1 or so. When we moved away, the landlord notified us that someone else has already agreed to take our apartment within 4-5 days of us giving our 60 days notice (which was great, since we would not be disrupted by them showing potential tenants around our place). For people who are able to get paid visits to their schools, I strongly suggest spending some of that visit time talking to students about housing. If you plan to live off-campus, spend some of the time walking around and getting to know the neighbourhoods so that when you look at ads later, you know how the area feels. You can and should ask students where they live so you know which areas are safe etc. Also, see if you need to sign up for any on-campus housing stuff earlier. Some of these places have applications that open in March or April. At my current school, there is a first-come first-served waitlist for off-campus unfurnished campus owned housing and you're allowed to put your name on the list as soon as you are accepted (you don't even have to accept their offer yet). So, once a school accepts you, look into all of this and put your names on any waitlists or sign up lists that you are able to. You can always take your name off the list if you decide that you don't want that housing option.

I agree with Loric's step one (that most of us cannot write--I know I sure can't). I just want to say in some fields, you don't see people busting out fancy words just because they can! In fact, I often have the opposite problem. Many of the papers I read are so condensed, and they pack so much meaning into every sentence that a naive reader like me can read an entire sentence and while I might understand what the words mean, I don't always get the consequence/significance/implication of that sentence without thinking about it for awhile. I feel like this is a combination of my lack of skill and the writer's lack of communication ability. In my field, 27 page papers are either large review chapters that go in a book, or papers that contain a ton of figures/equations/data, or really poorly written papers. I can't think of very many things that would take 27 pages to explain, and if you have more than one idea to explain, it usually is written as separate papers if the ideas are not directly related. Also, Mendeley (or equivalent software) is a lifesaver, not just for markup and making notes. I have never formatted a bibliography past first year English because I have software like this to compile BiBTeX files (which software provided by journals can translate into whatever bibliographic form that journal wants). And Mendeley can read in a DOI number and automatically fill in all the info like author names, journal names, page numbers etc. It's a lifesaver for organizing the literature and I just spent about an hour last night getting about 100 papers organized (they were sent to me by a colleague, also via Mendeley! so convenient!). This would have taken me many days if I did it the way I first learned to organize my research sources in high school/early college.

It's okay. There are tons of papers that get put up on pre-print servers (e.g. arxiv.org) with tags like "to be submitted to <Journal>" but then never get published at all. Maybe they were put on hold, or the results didn't work out, or they decided to combine with other results and submit as a different paper instead. You might have to explain it in an interview, if they ask, but I wouldn't worry about it -- in academia, we usually know that projects in progress can always hit unexpected snags at any time, even at the paper writing stage (and sometimes retractions are made even after publication!)

I agree that websites are a very important part of your academic and professional presence. I think you can still make very nice sites without weebly or wix or other services like this, even without any HTML or CSS knowledge. I'd show you my example but since it's nice to not blatantly reveal one's identity on this forum, I'd rather not post a link to my website (even though anyone who really wanted to can probably track me down based on my signature and posts, I think it's still better not to directly link!) I like hosting the website code on my department's server because then I can have a URL like www.dept.school.edu/~myname instead of www.companyname.com/myname. Also it feels like I have more control! You can do this with weebly or wix too but then you'd have to pay!!

This might really depend on the field. In my field, and in most physical sciences, there is no database that records who gets "acknowledged" for what. This basically means that acknowledgements are essentially worthless in the context of a metric of measuring your contribution to the field because 1) there is no easy way to verify it and 2) the fact that is there is no database means it's not important enough to warrant one. Overall, I am seeing more and more things ask for a paper citation instead of an acknowledgement--for example, a supercomputer centre might publish a paper about itself so that people can cite if they use the cluster, which gives them a way to measure their impact/usefulness to the field (and thus help them get funding). In the past, one would only write something like "This worked made use of SuperComputer Cluster XYZ at ABC" in the acknowledgements section. So, my advice for you is to not include this in your CV, at least not in the same way as you would a publication. I think that you should instead mention your contribution to the specific paper(s) under the "Experience" part of your CV where you explain what you did on certain projects. Or, explain it in your SOP when you write about your work on a certain project. Finally, this might really be field dependent (even more so than the above), but in my field, people usually only get "acknowledgements" for activities that aren't really scientifically important to the particular paper. For example, they might have provided a few interesting comments, or proof-read the draft, or maybe they were the referee for the paper. If you made an actual direct science contribution (took some data, made some models, analysed some data, allowed use of your data/models), you would be a co-author. So, I would say that for my field, the actions that gives you an acknowledgement aren't really something you would put in a CV. They are still important and I still think papers should acknowledgement this kind of work, though.

In addition, if you have a job now, even a crappy minimum wage job to save up, you can apply for a credit card (if you don't already have one) and that can help cover necessary expenses if you are responsible with it. I always pay my credit card bill before the due date so that I don't have to pay interest. The due date is usually 3 weeks after your statement is issued, which usually happens monthly. So, if you know your statement is issued on the 15th, then for example, if you time big expenses (e.g. your first grocery run in your new place) to be on e.g. September 16th, right after you move in perhaps, then your statement won't be issued until October 15th, which means you don't have to pay it off until 3 weeks later, in early November. Hopefully that would be enough time for a loan to come in. This only works if you only use your card for things that are absolutely necessary of course, and you have to be sure you're able to pay it back so that you don't waste money on interest charges. But when used correctly, a credit card can help you delay some charges and save yourself taking out a loan with interest (but again, be careful because credit card interest is usually much higher than personal loan rates). Some landlords will allow you to use your card to pay rent (they may charge a small fee) but this might be necessary for the first month. But not all will allow this. You can use the card to delay some costs like utility bills (which won't come right away anyways) and utility deposit (one place wanted a $200 deposit because we were new to the US and had no US credit!!).

The above advice is good! I just want to add that I also find it very hard to read them, even with the above ideas in mind. It does get easier with time, and I am sure some people become whizzes at reading papers and get everything (or are persistent enough to get everything after enough re-reads). However, for me, I still struggle a lot with trying to get everything out of a paper in a reasonable amount of time. In the end, I always get what I need out of a paper, but it takes a lot of time for me. I find that discussing a paper with at least one other person is incredibly helpful though!

If you move for a job, you might be able to claim moving expenses as tax credit (http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc455.html). The tax you save from this credit might help offset (or even take care of) whatever interest you might have to pay on a loan for physically moving yourself / your stuff, and paying for rent, deposit, food, furniture, etc before you first get paid. If you move for school, your school may offer extra loans that pay you up front. But this might only happen for funded programs (where they know you will get the money later to pay back the loan within a year). My school offered a 0% interest, no fees "startup loan" of $2500 paid out in September (school starts in October so our first pay period was not until the end of October), and we had about 2 years to pay it back.

Glad to have been helpful!

Well, in many cases, the "application process" is still just a formality. Most Collective Agreement only requires that a TA be "qualified" to be a TA for the course, so there is no requirement for the department to assign the "most qualified" person to TA the course. And "qualified" is pretty loosely defined--i.e. in many cases, a person is considered qualified to TA any undergraduate Physics course if they have a BSc in Physics and/or have taken the similar course in the past. In my old departments, profs do kind of choose their TAs beforehand, and as long as it fits within the official protocol and scheduling works, then it will likely happen. But the system isn't designed to be a meritocratic system, it's designed to protect graduate students from departments going back on their funding promises. It ensures that if everyone was promised 3 years of TAships when they entered, then the department can't give a 4th year student a TAship and deny one from a 2nd year student that they have some grudge against. In the ideal case, the department and TAs will have the mutual goal of providing a good education for the undergraduates and providing PhD students with fair stipends and benefits! And usually, if a prof wants a certain student to work for them, and the student is okay with it, there is probably a good reason and it will probably end up with better education for the students in the course. So if the department acts fairly, the Collective Agreement should only impose a small cost of extra paperwork for everyone. In the ideal case, the Collective Agreement should never get in the way of providing the best education or force a sub-optimal situation on either employer nor employee! Also, in my above writing, I used the term TA to mean actual teaching assistants -- i.e. we would run tutorial/recitation/discussion sections or supervise labs, and usually hold office hours and also grade assignments. TAs are not normally responsible for course content, although they might get the chance to run one or two lectures. In the sciences, these are basically the only teaching type jobs we get, but I know there are "adjunct" like positions in other fields. At my MSc school, "adjuncts" were called "Teaching Fellows" (TFs) and they were also in our union and covered under the same Collective Agreement, but some clauses are different for TFs. For example, while TAs at Queen's are paid on an hourly basis (about $38/hr), TFs at Queen's were paid per course--a 12 week course was paid at $7800, with a 10% increase if enrollment was greater than 120 students or something. I don't remember if UBC treats these positions differently or not! I think UBC TAs are not paid as high as similar schools in Canada and I know that this was one of the main things they were fighting for at the last Collective Bargaining sessions (along with increasing the minimum # of years with guaranteed TAships) but I don't know how that worked out in the end!

I am not 100% sure how your program will work, but UBC has a university-wide union for TAs and RAs, like most universities in Canada. This means that TA assignments must follow the protocol set out in the Collective Agreement and be transparent. The best practice for this usually involves graduate students "applying" for positions as if they were jobs and the department keeps all of the information on file in case they need to later prove that they did follow the established protocol. I don't know the exact protocol of the UBC TA union's agreement off hand but at most schools, they usually work like this: TA positions must be assigned in the following preference groups: 1. Students that are: -- have the necessary skills to TA the course, -- in the department offering the TAships, -- still have years of guaranteed TAships/funding remaining. 2. Students that are: -- have the necessary skills to TA the course, -- in the department offering the TAships, -- no longer have years of guaranteed funding left. 3. Students that are: -- have the necessary skills to TA the course -- not in the department offering the TAships -- but have TA'ed for this department in the past 4. Students that are: -- have the necessary skills to TA the course -- none of the above applies For TA positions within a department, every potential TA will fall into one of the above groups. The department must assign a TA position to everyone in Group 1 first, before anyone in Group 2 gets a spot, and so on. Definition of each group will vary based on each Collective Agreement, but the above is just an example to illustrate this point. Each student's offer letter should state how many years of guaranteed TAships they have and how many hours of TAships they are promised--this becomes the contract. So, it's really important for departments to keep track of who is qualified to teach which course (by way of these TA applications) so that if, for example, there is a TA needed for a course but no one in Group 1 is qualified to teach it, they can assign it to someone in Group 2 and they need to keep the application material from everyone to prove that no one in Group 1 could teach that course. Also, in some multidisciplinary fields, TAs may be hired from different departments, so keeping track of everything is very important. Or, due to an unexpected budget change, the department may have more students than available TA positions, so the positions will go to the most qualified/eligible students. And, if a TA engages in inappropriate conduct, a note will be placed in their employment record and this information is part of the TA assignment decision as well. Although ultimately this means more paperwork, I think this makes sure the whole process has a written protocol and is completely transparent, so everyone is treated fairly/equally and there will be little chances for favouritism or other prejudices to impact important funding decisions. --- So, to answer Canis' questions: 1. It is still likely that every admitted student will be promised TAships. In my MSc program, we all had TAships and the department was even able to pay a TAship for some students who had already passed their limit. But for record keeping reasons above, you still have to formally apply for them. In these cases, it's just a formality in case something happens. 2. You should create a CV that contains all of your teaching experience. You can even emphasize teaching if you want and if the CV you are to submit is used solely for TA applicants. 3. I would suspect that every graduate student, new or current, has to resubmit the application, including updated CV, every single time the department makes TA assignment decisions (which is equivalent to a hiring decision). At most places, this is every year. Also, most Collective Agreements require departments to officially post all of their openings in case a qualified student from a different department wants to apply (at a much lower priority level than students within the department). So, don't panic if you see job postings for your anticipated TA position, it's just a formality to ensure transparency!

My reason of playing the finance card is assuming the OP wants to visit the school. In the OP's shoes, if given the choice between a Skype call and an in-person visit, I'd go with the visit, unless I could not afford it. So, I would prefer to push for the paid visit and if the school can't afford it, then I'd settle for the Skype chat.

I strongly agree with this sentiment! And I have read all of the comments that Pinkster/CorruptedInnonence has written. Some of them are, in my opinion, narrowminded and lacking in compassion, but that does not mean that she will be this way forever. This is why social workers are not just magically created right? There is a training program, as jenste pointed out, and certifications one will have to go through to become a social worker. People learn and evolve over time. I have taught Physics to pre-med students and sometimes they solve a problem for e.g. blood flow rate and get an answer like 1000km/s. I would usually expect the student to look at this answer and realise that 1000km/s is a ridiculously fast rate, even if they are not a physics major. But many of them think it's perfectly fine and I don't say "Well, I hope you are never going to be a doctor because you don't have physical intuition!!". So while it's valid for people to have the opinion that they would not want Pinkster/CorruptedInnonence to be their personal social worker, I don't think any of us here on this board is qualified to advise her to not even try to be a social worker. She has every right to do so, and even the right to go into a social work program and quit halfway through to marry someone else. Or even go through the entire program and choose not to practice in the end because she is happily married and prefers to stay at home with her new family. We all have the right to say what we please of course, but I think it would be very irresponsible of this community to play "gatekeeper" to career paths.

Oh okay, I understand now! I don't think it will be so bad if the LOR is writing from the list of facts, especially since it sounds like you said this was the kind of letter you would have expected from this prof anyways. What else would you have wanted to be in your LOR other than the facts from your CV, SOP, and transcripts? Normally, the LOR writer may be able to include their thoughts and impressions about you and your abilities because they had some kind of working relationship with you. But since you were saying you would expect this to be a pretty generic letter, it doesn't sound like you and this prof have this connection (i.e. the prof doesn't remember). This is fine though, it sounds like your professional reference will be very strong. If you are worried that the letter will go off topic / comment on things the prof has no awareness of, then my advice would be to use your 2-page summary to shape/craft your own letter. So, maybe focus your 2 page summary only on things relevant to your relationship with this professor? It doesn't have to be things that involved the prof. I think it would be okay for this prof to discuss your achievements while a student at their university even if they were not related to the achievements at all. Stuff like GPA, involvement in student groups, awards, etc. Overall, a generic letter that states what the prof knows about you is better than no letter at all, if you need this letter to meet the minimum letter requirement.

Are you saying that you sent him your CV and SOP already but he still made this call? Or are you worried that the LOR will just be the same content as your CV and SOP. If it's the former, then I think it's still a good idea to make the 2 page summary that he requested. Make everything point form so he can decide what he wants to talk about or highlight in your LOR. If it's the latter, then you probably should have sent him your CV (and SOP if it was ready) with your original letter request. It's not a problem that the LOR will contain information from your CV and SOP. Ideally, your CV and SOP would cover 100% of all the things you want the admissions committee to know, so the LOR is really the same information but presented differently. Also, ideally, all of your LORs should say the same great things about you! So, repeating information is perfectly fine! I don't think it's fair to expect a professor to be able to write a LOR for you just from their memory of you. They write tens to hundreds of letters per year, for their past students, current students, past colleagues and current colleagues. Also, I would not want to have a LOR written about me with just the professor's memory. It's a good thing that they are asking for a list of things that you want mentioned about yourself! So I think you should go ahead and prepare this 2 page summary!

In my field, graduate students usually only act as TAs and have little responsibility in making course policies so we don't usually write the course syllabus. We have a set of responsibilities that vary form place to place and class to class. Usually, the syllabus says something like "The course TA(s) will be X and he/she will let you know about [....] and how to contact him/her." where [....] are the things we are responsible for. In most cases for me, [....] is helping students understand the material through office hours and/or helping them answer questions in labs or tutorials as well as grading assignments. Usually, the prof goes over the syllabus on the first day and when they get to this part, they let the TAs speak about their responsibilities and expectations. In the past, I have handed out a single piece of paper detailing what I expect from my students when they hand in homework. These expectations cover basic things like "must have name on all pieces of paper" and "hand in your own work even if you work in pairs in the lab" and "please email me your computer code instead of printing it out, but hand in hard copies of any plots you make" and "please write words to explain what you are doing instead of just a page full of equations" and "I won't deduct points for spelling/grammar/legibility in your assignments unless I cannot understand it" and a basic marking rubric if I'm going to be marking a lot of assignments in the same way. I also provide my contact information (Office location, office hours, and email address). I don't usually write any rules for correspondence. I go over this sheet with the students to make sure they understand their expectations. I usually go over it again, briefly, just before the first assignment is due. I usually only verbally tell the students something like the following. "The only way you can be sure to reach me is to speak to me during office hours or during the tutorial and/or lab sessions. If you cannot make office hours, please speak to me during tutorial or lab sessions to schedule an appointment. You can also email me to schedule an appointment but I can't promise I can make it in time for your assignment due date. You can also drop by my office and I will help you only if I am not busy." However, I am noticing growing expectations from students that TAs should be there to help them at any possible time, so I might make this part of my normal written handout in the future. In the past, I have always worked as a TA where my contract stipulates a limit on the amount of hours I can work on my TAship so if an individual student asks me why I can't help them (or the class) more, I gently explain that I have a lot of other responsibilities and I can only provide so much TA support to this course. If I felt that the students are not getting much less support than they need to do well in the class, or if I get the sense that the students feel that they need more support, I would petition the department to assign more TA hours (either extending current TA contracts or assigning additional TAs) to the course and also encourage my students to do the same. Sometimes, enrollment changes faster than TA scheduling fluctuations so the TA to student ratio may be very off in some years. Obviously, doing this sooner rather than later would be best and I would do my best to get changes made to the current semester but at the same time, the department probably already fully budgeted all of their TA resources at the beginning of the year. I will also do whatever I can to reschedule my own work hours to provide the assistance required (e.g. spend less time grading, more office hours, or talk to the prof teaching the class to see if we could reduce my TA work on grading by reducing the number of questions assigned or reducing the number of assignments or maybe the prof would want to grade one or two problem sets themselves to free up more time for me to spend "face to face" helping students).

When I use the word "funding" in the context of graduate school education, I mean a "guaranteed" source of income to cover tuition and standard living expenses for the duration of my studies. I say "guaranteed" because few schools will actually promise money for X years, but they will usually say "up to X years, as long as the student makes satisfactory progress", which is good enough (usually unsatisfactory progress = expulsion from program). So, in the past, there were some years of grad school where the department provided only the tiny bit of funding needed to cover costs above my external fellowships. I have not ever gone into a program without a certain source of funding though because I had won the fellowship before I started the program (I found out shortly after I heard from grad school decisions). I agree that if, for some reason, you are 95% sure that you can get your own funding and there will be no or manageable gaps, then it might be worth it to go. However, there are non-monetary reasons to want funding, primarily because when a department spends money on you and pays you, it's an implicit recognition that what we are doing is actual work and that our time is valuable and not an limitless resource. Also, I don't know what you mean by "in the real world a lot of people go without funding". Do you mean the non-academic real world? Everyone else in my family and my spouse's family is not in academia and not one of them have ever gone "without funding" which would be the equivalent of working in a job for no pay. Or do you mean in reality, many graduate students do not have funding and have to pay for their own programs? If so, then I agree, but it's really field dependent as you say. In professional fields, the expectation is that your eventual income will pay for your schooling later on. I think that if your field is one where the norm is not to receive funding, then it's perfectly acceptable for someone who is thinking about grad school to make that part of their decision on whether or not to go to grad school. I love doing my research and science but I will never do it for free--if for some reason, my field's norm became unfunded PhD programs, I would rather do pretty much anything else!

I just wanted to add, in case there are any international students reading this thread, that if you are on a F-1 or J-1 visa/status, then even if we pay in-state taxes and even if we have resided in the state for a long time, we can never claim in-state tuition! We are also not a resident for purposes of tuition but according to the DMV, we are a resident for the purposes of requiring an in-state driver license! We get the worst of both worlds

I don't agree with your assessment. When you waive your right under FERPA, it is an agreement between you and the institution only--the recommender is not involved. However, the school does inform the recommender about your decision. Under FERPA, schools must make every part of a student's record available to the student and the student only. Thus, without the waiver, if the school keeps a copy of your LOR in your permanent record, then you will be able to request access to it under FERPA. So, a recommender might be worried about you using your FERPA rights to see the letter and if you sign the waiver, it makes the recommender and school feel better about FERPA. However, the only right you are waiving is your FERPA right to see this part of your student record. The recommender can choose to release the letter to you if they wish. The school can also choose to release the letter to you if they wish. The school can also choose to not place your LOR in your student record so that you might not ever access your LOR even if you didn't waive the right. I learned this information from conversations with professors at US grad schools and through some FERPA related training. Also: 1. If you are rejected from a school, then you will have never enrolled in that school, which means you will never be a student of that school. Thus, even if you did not waive your rights, you cannot use FERPA rights to view your LOR from rejected schools because you don't have any FERPA rights since you are not a student. You can still ask the school to provide the LOR to you, but they are not required to under FERPA. 2. If you are accepted to a school, the school can still choose to release your LORs to you even if you waived your FERPA rights. In one example, when a colleague graduated, their school turned over all of that student's files on record to the student, so that the school would be no longer responsible for maintaining security on that student's file. Among the giant folder of stuff was the student's LORs from years ago. 3. However, in some cases, it's likely that the recommender and the school may also have their own confidentiality agreement. It is possible that when the recommender submits their LOR for you, the school agrees to keep it confidential and not release it to you unless required to by law (e.g. FERPA). So, in summary, the FERPA waiver is an agreement between you and your future school only. It is not a promise to anyone that you won't see or know the contents. You are only promising to give up your FERPA granted rights to access this particular component of your future student record.

I prefer to modify my behaviour to the 9 to 5 workday (well more like 9 to 6pm) instead of modifying my workday to match my optimal behaviour. The reasons are mostly practical -- my spouse works a "9 to 5"-like and I cook dinner so it's easier to be home by 6pm ish and then get dinner ready by 6:30. When a deadline is looming, I usually get a lot of work done between 10pm and 2am if necessary. I almost always go back to the office if I need to work extra though because I feel like my mood is really set by the environment. My home environment tells me not to work and I prefer it that way -- I don't want to be working at home or thinking about work at home if I can help it. So on that related note, my other reason to prefer fixed "standard" working hours is so that I feel like I am working a standard X hours per week job and that way I can set limits on how much I work instead of feeling pressured to work until everything possible is done (which will take infinite time). I think if I really worked the hours where my brain functions the best, I would work 1pm to 6pm then 10pm to 2am. But that is very disruptive to the other parts of my life so I prefer to get all of my work done in a solid 9 hour block if possible. But being able to work at night is helpful on occasions where I have to work at night on the telescope!

Just because it's an option doesn't mean that if you choose it, your application will be accepted Maybe they are just making their system general enough to accommodate any type of program, some of which may not require the GRE in the future? Or, maybe this option is only here because the GRE is classified as a "test score" type entry and they want to standardize all of their possible answers to "test score" type entries (e.g. TOEFL etc is optional in some circumstances). So, I'd think it's best to not overthink it

(emphasis added). I think this is a very valid feeling for people right after college. This was a very strong feeling for me right after college and I still feel it sometimes too. I call it a "quarter life crisis" where we first realise that all of our lives, e.g. as a child and as a teenager, we'd been dreaming about what we would do when we "grow up" and "become adults". In college, we were "sheltered" in some way by staying in academia and mostly interacting with other students, so we "grew up" and turned into adults without us knowing it. Now, all of a sudden, we are like "wow, we are adults! we are old! Why haven't we achieved anything? Are we even sure that we're spending our time doing what we want in life?" I think getting out of college is the first transition for many of us where we go from the child/teen mindset of "adulthood is so far away" to "adulthood is now!!" I am not trying to lecture here, because I felt like I went through the same feelings. So I will share my experience and hope it is comforting. Also, I am still in my mid-twenties, so it's not like I am all old and wise so also consider what the older students/people are saying too. Although right now it might feel like you are far behind in life, that you haven't really gained much from the last 4 or so years in college, I think it's mostly because of the big transition from undergraduate student mindset to working adult mindset rather than an actual change in your ability to effect change in your life. For me, realising why I was feeling the stress and pressure to do something with my life allowed me to use that as a motivator to make small positive changes in the way I want my life to go instead of feeling inadequate. It is tough because it's really easy to look at other people who are the same-ish age living the lives you might feel like you want. But they are likely feeling some similar things to you! I feel that when I was growing up, I had all these visions and ideas that romanticized what growing up would be like. I realise now that most of what I "learned" came from unrealistic sitcoms like Friends or from already successful 30- and 40-somethings talking about the fun times they had in their 20s. Few people will tell you their actual struggles and how slow positive changes will come. So, I think right when I got out of college, I was like "Okay world, let's go out and do something awesome!!" and then....nothing happens automatically and I feel like I've screwed up or made some horrible mistake. But the reality is, I think, positive changes in your life take an extremely long time to achieve with a lot of effort put into really small steps. In films and tv shows, characters undergo dramatic life changes, usually in some epic montage with scenes like shaving one's head or going overseas or doing something completely out of character. While this is possible, I think most people undergo their dramatic changes in smaller bits over a longer period of time. Have a big goal in mind but also smaller ones and keep working at it all the time. So if your goal is to get out of your current town and experience something new, it might be better to start with smaller actions. Ameri corps sound like a great longer term goal and from the others' posts, it sounds very hard to get in. So don't be afraid to start with smaller steps. Like others said, volunteer with more local groups and build up your experience. Real life isn't like dramas--unlike the movie or tv characters, we can't just undergo an epic montage and reach our big goal immediately. It takes time and patience. Make all your actions today be a small step towards your distant goal. Also, I know this might be useless because when I was 23 I thought I was super old. Now I am 26 and I feel so young. Also, the 3 years between 23 and now feel like an eternity--you have a lot more time than you think Finally, I have this on my office wall to inspire me: http://zenpencils.com/comic/106-chris-hadfield-an-astronauts-advice/

Something like that would be good. Many PhD programs will provide funding for you to visit, so I think this is a polite way to ask about that without directly asking for money to cover your travel expenses (it's still possible to be polite and directly ask for money, but I would also write something like you did).

Don't forget that you may go and have lunch/dinner/drinks with faculty and/or current graduate students, and these places may be up a 15-20 minute walk away from campus/the department you're visiting.

I agree with you that it will probably not hurt you at all. I think that you should go ahead and do what makes you feel more comfortable/happier about yourself if you are not sure whether or not to write to the school to clarify this point.