TakeruK

This is a tough one, which was why I didn't include it in my earlier response! I had a very similar situation actually. I asked some professors at my school for advice and they said I could ask, or I could not ask. My field is one where the school pays for all the cost of the visit, so it's not a big deal if I don't ask since it's not my money being spent. In addition, if this other school wasn't planning to hold interviews in the same week, it might be better to wait for their official visit date to visit. In the end, I decided to take a week to think about it. During that week, I got a rejection, so my dilemma was solved for me lol. However, if I were to ask, I would phrase it something like: "I applied to your school; I'm still very interested; I will be visiting School X nearby on Dates Y-Z" then politely ask if they know their timeline for making decisions / visits / interviews / etc. This won't sound like you are asking for an early decision, but instead, allows them to tell you their decision timeline so you know whether or not to wait to buy tickets. It also allows for them to gracefully say that you won't be invited (i.e. "we already sent out decisions X weeks/days ago"). If I were to do it again and if I didn't get that rejection, I wouldn't ask. In the years afterwards, I met many prospective grad students that end up traveling a lot for visit dates. But again, it's not my money to fly back and forth across the country to do these visits. If your field doesn't pay for these visits, then I'd probably ask!

Agree with everything @fuzzylogician said. In addition, the reason why they are on weekdays is because you want to be visiting on a "typical day" at the department. You want to see professors while they are at work to meet with them, see students in their offices. Sometimes you attend classes or seminars at the school. If you went on a weekend, then there would be no one there! Sometimes they overlap with a weekend so that you have one day for on-campus info stuff and one day for social activities that the grad students organize. Usually they are 2 full weekdays though. I think it makes sense for classes to require attendance, but to not make allowances for students in their final semester to attend grad school visits is a harmful policy. If I was in the situation, I would either drop the class or take the lower grade. It is far more important for your future to attend these visits than it is to have this class. For me, these visits provided the critical information I needed to make the right grad school decision. That said, if you end up with 5 or more visit offers, you don't have to attend them all! I narrowed down my top 3 choices and only attended those. I was in a Masters program at the time so I couldn't take too much time off my work schedule.

Second everything @GreenEyedTrombonist said. Communication is so important. Another thing to keep in mind is the mantra: A good dissertation is a done dissertation. Don't be a perfectionist to get every detail exactly so. From my field's perspective, we generally do 3-4 small projects during our 5 year program and put it together to form a dissertation. So, my advice to students in my field is to do exactly enough in a project to publish it and no more---move onto the next one. Also, when it's time to put together the dissertation, do the minimum work necessary to produce a dissertation! A good dissertation is a done dissertation.

Repeating the above that you should consult with your school's International Students Office for definite advice. Some additional notes: - Your current status is for your PhD program. This means you can only use OPT during the times where your program is not in session or after you complete your degree program (i.e. PhD). Since most PhD programs run year-long, I don't think you can use OPT until you finish your PhD. You also need to be in your current program for at least 1 year to be eligible for pre-completion OPT. - However, while on a F-1 PhD program, there is something called CPT (Curricular Practical Training) which you could use to take a break from studies in order to do work relevant to your field of study and if it is part of your degree program (e.g. if your program allows you to go on internships, co-op, etc.). Most grad programs don't allow this, but just mentioning it in case. Talk to your international student office about this if you think you might qualify. - You can change programs though. I think (again, check with experts) if you want to stop at the Masters degree, you should first change your program and your F-1 status to be on a Masters program. Then you can finish your Masters and graduate, allowing you to be eligible for post-degree OPT. This means that you need to reapply and get into a PhD program later, if you want to do that, which will put you on a new F-1 status for PhD program. I think these are the main ways you can do some OPT before finishing your PhD. Again, talk to your international students office. Hope this info helps you to have some info before going in the meeting though!

@nushi: I will try to respond to all of your points. I am sorry that I made you feel that you were not doing your best. I wrote my earlier post in response to your point that your country's culture is different from the North American academic culture. I agree with you all about the unfair financial barrier due to the GRE. I have done lots of work when I was in the US to advocate for schools to remove this requirement as much as possible. I don't know how to say this in any different way. The North American system is based on getting our professors to take time out of their work to advocate for us. This is part of the professor's job here and it's a way that is used to evaluate students. If a student cannot get a professor to spare 4 hours of their time to write a letter plus 10-15 minutes to upload each letter, then it's a red flag. As I said above, there are a lot of issues with this style and I can't say that I agree with all of it. However, this is still the reality. If you want to join the North American system, you must conform to its standards and culture. You need to go to your professor and ask her in the appropriate way to support your application to North American school. You will have to explain what this means she has to do and you need to convince her to help you. If you think your letters are not great because of this, you should think about explaining this in your application package. Most good and conscientious committees will do as you say and consider each applicant's ability to get LORs (or research experience etc.) in addition. Still, I know this is unfair because it means you have to do a lot more work to get admission than a student from Canada and the USA, but unfortunately, it really is unfair. See the next point too. I think you misunderstand what I said above. It's not that universities "prefer" to admit local students. When you look at most public universities' mission statement / charter/ values, and look at their reason to exist, it is usually to educate the people from their province (Canada) or their state (USA). Our schools are chartered by our local governments in order to provide education and benefits to the people they serve. This does not include international students. In fact, the reason why North American schools admit international students is not to educate the world. The reason they admit international students is to improve their own rankings by showing that they can attract international talent. It's to recruit the best international talent in order to do work that benefits North American schools. Maybe there are a few exceptions but the vast majority of schools exist to serve their local state/province, not to be a good global citizen to provide education to students all over the world. You are right about what you said above. I agree that many developed countries have taken advantage of developing countries for centuries and this creates a ton of injustice. But I would say that many North American schools, being mostly funded and regulated by the government of these developed countries, are more part of the problem than the solution. I don't know how to fix it, other than to work towards dismantling the balance of power at the international stage (which I don't know how to do).

I certainly agree with these points! Whether the prof in question is acting against the norms of the field or not is something I can't comment on since I'm not part of it! I'm glad lots of clinical people have put their thoughts here so that the OP can decide what to make of the professor's question. I guess I interpreted the "not sure if I can reschedule" very differently. In my experience, one prof does not make this decision so they would have to convince whatever committee it is to do so. To me, it sounds like the prof is willing to go to bat for this applicant only if the applicant actually wants to attend this program. So this is why I interpreted everything very differently. I didn't get the sense that the prof wants the OP to cancel the other weekend at all, but instead, the prof wanted to know that the OP is serious about their program before scheduling an alternate date. After all, even if the student is paying their own way, I don't see any obligation at all on the school's part to have alternate dates. The whole process is an optimization problem for both school and applicant, and if the school thinks they are better off with the other applicants in the pool, then why do they need to entertain any particular applicant's request for an alternate date? As for scoping out pre-interview rankings, I still personally don't think it's an unethical or wrong thing for the professor to ask, because asking if this school is your top choice is a totally legitimate interview question too, so what's the difference if it's asked before the student spends $500 visiting this school or within the first hour of the interview weekend? That said, whether these actions are in the norm or whether it's an okay thing to ask, it doesn't change what we both agree on above! It might not even matter. Ultimately, my advice would be: 1) If this school is more interesting to the OP than the already committed school, then if an alternate date is not possible, I'd cancel the already committed school. 2) If this school is not more interesting, but still of interest to the OP, then tell the prof whatever they want to hear (including inflating how interested you are in their program, within reason) in order to convince them to get an alternate date. It's not the best thing to do, but it's just part of the "optimization problem" and most academics will face more of these choices if they continue in the field. (P.S. This is no way intended to end the thread! Others should continue to add their opinions! As I said before, moderating actions will be stated so, and if we needed to end the thread, we'd toggle the "lock" setting so no one else can post!)

Just to clarify, I am not posting in my role as a moderator here (and I don't think Eigen is either). When I do feel the need to put my moderator cap on in order to ask users to stop doing something (or other moderating action), it will be very clear in the post (usually I use a different colour and bold text). You may also know that moderators here are simply users who have been around for awhile, so for the most part, we should be treated as any other user unless we are actively acting as moderators. So, please, no need to be deferential. Fighting is bad, but disagreeing with me is fine and please do point out when I am wrong! Moderating actions are limited to cases where people are harassing others or otherwise violating policy, and discussion/disagreement is certainly not that. Okay, so with that out of the way, I see your point about having to pay for these visits mostly out of pocket. I agree with you that this makes a difference. That said, as someone who have been on the other side of arranging these types of visits, it does take up a ton of extra time to do so. And, I would say that if the department already expects students to pay for themselves, then it sounds like they would value their own time even higher than the student's. However, this information would slightly alter my advice. Since you're paying your own way, then I would say that as long as you are still interested in the school at this point, then tell them it's your top choice or one of your top choices. To me, #3 and #1 are essentially the same in the sense of what the professor is asking. (But if I am still misunderstanding your point, please let me know). But remember that this is a type of negotiation so if the prof is asking you about rankings so early in the process, I would say that you are justified in reasonably overstating your interest in their program. Hence, as long as you will still seriously consider an offer from them, then I'd say tell them what they need to hear in order to make the visit happen (within reason). I personally still do not think the prof has done anything wrong. It sounds like competition is very fierce and they are justified in trying to get extra info out of the applicant. So, at the same time, the applicant is justified in saying what needs to be said to advance their own goals. It's not the ideal case but I see this happening for both academic and non-academic positions. Of course, some programs and industries might choose to act differently (good, in my opinion). But when the prof is "playing the game", you can either choose to also play, or, if this is a red flag to you then it's also a good idea to just withdraw and choose not to play.

What are your long term goals? Which of these two options will get you towards these long term goals? Also, as an international student in the US, you are probably on F-1 status? Don't forget that you can be eligible for OPT that lets you stay and work in the US for some time after graduation. I think it has to be related to your field of study though, so maybe only robotics work for this case. So, if your long term goal is quant, it might be worth it to apply to both robotics and quant internships, so that you can stay in the US and continue to apply to quant positions (you'd need them to sponsor you on some other status though) while on robotics internship.

Sorry to hear that you did not get into these two programs. As rising_star said, this is common and you probably will never know what happened. Usually, almost every grad program gets way more qualified candidates than there are positions. So, many qualified and very good candidates get rejected because there are only so few spots. Best of luck in the remaining applications!

As others said, there are such systems that combine LORs in the way your suggest. Interfolio is one. AcademicJobsOnline is another system I used for several postdoc job applications that allow one generic letter to be uploaded per letter writer. When I apply to a new job in the system, I can choose to use the generic letter or request a special letter for that job. In my field, we always request special letters. A generic letter is pretty harmful in job applications. Like others said here, in order for this to change, the US and Canadian school system needs to change to accept generic letters. However, as others also said here, the way we use these letters does not work with generic LORs, so this will be a big and very slow change if it ever happens. One smaller change that could happen is to defer the LOR request to the shortlist stage. This probably will not work for grad applications since they move very quickly. But for postdoc and professor job applications, the committees could wait to request LORs until the candidate is shortlisted. If you think about it, for each postdoc/prof job, there are several hundred candidates. Each candidate requires 3 letters, so approx. 1000-2000 letters are submitted per job application. Most of these letters aren't even looked at, because there are other cuts that one can use to narrow down the field of several hundred applicants! What a waste of everyone's time. It should make you feel better to know that most admissions committees do consider the origin of students when it comes to evaluating things like LORs and GPAs. Every country has a different grading system and it's well known that letters from North American professors and EU professors are very different in tone and style. I think schools that want to have a large international population will know to consider things at different weights. However, the goal of most schools is not to have a large international population. Most schools don't have the money to support that many international students and the main priority for most schools in any country is to support their own country's students. From your post, it sounds like you think schools are obligated to be fair to international students, but I don't think this is necessarily true at all. As you may already know, most US and Canadian schools have strict limits on how many international students they admit. Because of these limits, there are many international students that would have been admitted if they were American (to a US school) but they did not because there are limits on international students. Schools should be fair to international students within the international student pool (e.g. if they favoured or disfavoured certain countries then that would be bad). But there's nothing wrong with a school favouring domestic students over international students when it comes to admissions. In addition, in the real world, you always always have to tailor your application to your audience. When you are applying to US schools, you should make sure your application looks as much like a US application as possible. It's your job to advocate for yourself to your professors to write these letters. You need to know what your evaluators are expecting and provide it. Just like any other job you apply to. For example, you wouldn't show up to an interview with Google carrying your iPhone and using Apple terminology. If you had a PhD and you're applying to industry/business jobs, you would learn the business buzzwords and vocabulary and be able to present your work in a business framework. So, while I agree with you that admissions committee should be aware of differences in academic cultures around the world, it's also the student's responsibility to ensure their application meets the standard of the culture they are applying to.

I don't understand why anyone would be upset at the school for only agreeing to an alternate visit date if the student thinks the school is their first choice. If I was the POI and looking for a student and I graciously extended an offer to come visit and interview, only to hear that the student already committed to another interview on the same date, then why should I reschedule the interview if I think the student would pick another school over me? If the POI said, "if you don't cancel the other school's visit and go to ours instead, then we'll no longer consider you for our program", then I would say yeah, that's pretty shitty/bullying/etc. However, the POI said, "okay I understand you have another commitment, so before we go and spend a whole bunch of money and effort to accommodate another visit date, I want to make sure you that you are still seriously considering us". I hope that difference is clear. Also, I hope you have not yet sent your original message!! I think it's a very poor idea. You can't send something this vague and expect anything good to come out of it. Before you respond, you need to make a decision. Forget what you felt towards each school when you made the school list, and focus on what's available to you right now. Out of all the current interview invites you currently hold, is this program at least tied for your top choice? Note the part in bold---at this point in time you can only consider actual offers or interview invites you have in hand, not theoretical invites you may receive from other programs. If the school in question is on or near the top of your list, then you should respond to your POI saying that yes, you are very interested in their program and although you cannot make a final decision until school visits are concluded, their program is a top choice. Note: If it's really your top choice, then you can say it a bit more strongly. If it's in your top 3, I would say that you can say "a top choice" or even just say "your top choice" since top 3 is close enough to top 1, in my opinion. However, if you have 5 other interview offers that you are more interested in, then you should just be honest and withdraw your application. Finally, just to reiterate: I think you and others in this thread are being too literal in interpretation of the professor's words. The professor is not really asking the student to rank the schools on the spot. The professor wants to know if the student is actually serious about this application, or whether it is just one of their backups.

Generally, when filling out these applications, you list degree programs that you have finished or plan to finish. Here are some possible scenarios: If you aren't planning to finish the degree, then you probably don't need to list it (and probably shouldn't list it). If being a current student is a pre-requisite for the job (for example, this is an internship that you're applying to) then I would list the expected degree date according to whatever your school says. If you plan to finish the degree but the graduation timeline is flexible, or depends on whether you get the job then you should either put i) the earliest date you could realistically graduate or ii) the latest date that the company will accept if it requires you to have a PhD (probably either a date before the job start date or the date the job posting says you must complete degree requirements). I would then discuss the actual plans for finishing your PhD only after you get an offer from them, or in the interview if it comes up.

In my opinion, the only time it's reasonable to ask this is when you are just about to accept another school's offer or do something else that means you will be no longer interested in the school. For example, - if your #1 choice school has not got back to you yet and you have an offer from your #2 choice school - you already know your final choice will be down to these two and have declined all the other schools - it's late enough in the season (mid-March ish) and you're ready to make a decision Then, this might be a good time to ask #1 choice if they have finished making decisions yet. This prevents you from keeping School #2 waiting for another month until April 15 and allows the waitlist process etc to proceed for everyone. Usually at this point, asking something like this will either result in #1 choice school telling you that you were not accepted (schools don't usually send out rejections right away) or that you are on a waitlist. Either info would help you proceed through the last part of applications. Another example, - it's really close to April 15 - your #1 choice school has not got back to you yet - you have an offer from your #2 choice school that expires on April 15 Then, asking #1 school can help you either make a decision (#1 school tells you that you're rejected) or they might say you're on their waitlist and will get a decision by say April 20. Then you can ask #2 choice school if you could get an extension to April 20. (This scenario applies too for other deadlines but April 15 is common).

I don't think you are pestering yet. Unless I misunderstood, you just sent one single email so far to ask this last letter writer to submit it earlier now due to the school changing deadline. I would say that if you push it further at this time, then you would be pestering. There is nothing wrong with asking the letter writer to submit it earlier because your school asked you to submit ASAP. I think it's also reasonable to expect a timely response to your email (but I would say a reasonable timeframe is more like within 2 weeks). But what others and I think is unreasonable is that you seem to be unhappy or annoyed at your letter writer for not changing everything to meet the school's unreasonable deadline change. As others said, your ire and annoyance should be on the school, not the letter writer. You shouldn't expect your letter writer to submit anything before the 25th. If they do, then it's a huge favour they have done for you, not something you are entitled to.

In a different field, but interestingly for me: - One of my last application deadlines (1/1) returned results the earliest (around 1/20) - My earliest application deadline (12/1) did not return results for anyone until mid-March.

Google Scholar generally inflates your citation counts and metrics though. I find that for my papers, Google Scholar counts 20% to 25% more citations than my field's abstract database service. This is because Google Scholar counts things that may not be peer-reviewed articles as well, while the abstract database generally doesn't. To answer your general question though, yes, I do think admissions committee cares about your past history of work. But they likely evaluate this via your CV and application materials instead of relying on 3rd party applications. For some postdoc job applications, I had to provide a link to my author profile on my field's abstract database so I would think that if they wanted that particular metric, they would have asked for it. Otherwise, it wouldn't be useful as some people would have one but others would not. In addition, for people at the grad school applications stage, it's not expected that your papers have large number of citations (or that you even have papers at all) so I don't think this is a big deal. That said, I think having such profiles is important in general, especially as you progress in your career. On my research website, I have links to my author profiles in several databases. I use the NASA Abstract Database Service, ORCiD, and Google Scholar. These are useful for others searching for your work and your history to find you.

Yes, this is an update worth submitting.

I quickly learned after starting grad school that usually when students try to guess hidden meanings behind a professor's email, we often over-interpret things and get it wrong! Most professors will let you know if they want you to change something.

Sure. But remember that these are just examples of what could happen, not necessarily what would actually happen in any specific case. As you know, academic integrity is vital to our line of work. Often, this expectation of each other acting with integrity extends beyond strictly academic cases. Academics generally expect other academics to stay true to their word. Committing to a program and accepting their offer is generally a commitment people will expect you to keep, even though there is no legally binding reason for you to do so. Other examples are things like writing a reference letter on time, providing a fair assessment when asked, submitting your referee report on time, giving credit where it is due, etc. Acting against these expectations can make some people upset and cause them to lose their trust in you. In this specific case, I would say that the "infraction" is fairly minor and I would totally understand why someone might accept an offer and change their mind later because the school refused to extend deadlines to match the standard convention. However, this will probably cause the student to be less likely to be accepted at the same school again if they applied again in the future. I don't expect the consequences to go beyond that though. That said, I don't really know if the people on the other end are also reasonable people. Academics talk and you might end up with some sort of negative reputation. Through these gossip/rumors, the exact nature of what you did might be lost so there's a risk that you get labelled with something negative. This is unlikely though, since to be honest, grad student applicants aren't important enough that people will remember us (this is more a risk for faculty or postdoc applications). In an even more extreme/unlikely case, the "Dream School" and "Interview School" talk regularly (maybe the potential PIs at those two places are friends/collaborators) and when "Dream School" finds out what you did to "Interview School", they might revoke your offer. This is extremely unlikely though. In fact, this whole final paragraph is very very unlikely but just listing potential risks. Ultimately, my personal decision would be to avoid accepting an offer and backtracking whenever possible. However, if I end up with no other choice, then I think the risk is worth it. But each person needs to make that decision for themselves.

Sure, if they are in the USA and signed onto the agreement. Typically the three things that all have to be true for the Resolution to hold: 1. They have to be offering funding, not just admission (as you said, but not certain if this applies in the case here), and 2. They have to be a signatory of the CGS Resolution (http://cgsnet.org/april-15-resolution). Typically, the most common reasons why some programs aren't are that i) the school isn't signed on, or ii) the program itself is not part of the Graduate School but instead part of the Professional School or the Law School or some other entity at an institution that is listed but isn't part of the Council of Graduate Studies, and 3. The program has to choose to adhere to the Resolution (the resolution is not binding in any way and there are literally no consequences if the program chooses to ignore the resolution).

No, I wouldn't generally copy the PI on such emails. It's nice that the PI reached out to make sure you're all set but you shouldn't interpret it as though they expected you to have done so and you did something wrong. You did nothing wrong

I think that unless something states otherwise, it is reasonable to expect candidates to know that if you do not attend the interview, it means you are no longer interested in the program. I am sorry that you and the school seemed to have a misunderstanding, but like any other job search etc. not interviewing rarely leads to receiving an offer! I think it is too bad that after you asked for an alternate date, you didn't hear anything back for weeks and the only response after several weeks was that you were rejected from the program. This is poor communication on the school's part and if they should improve anything, it is that they should have told you sooner that no other date was possible so that you could decide whether or not to cancel other commitments. In the future, or for other candidates, my advice would have been to follow up in other ways (phone calls) if you don't hear back about your alternate date request sooner. Also, one cannot assume that any request for alternate dates would have been entertained. It is possible that when you request an alternate date, you might get a response right away wishing you "best of luck in other endeavours" as they might rightly assume that because you are committing to the other school instead of their program, you are not as interested and therefore they are no longer interested in you. I personally think this is a poor practice for a school to have so you might even consider yourself dodging a bullet here. I think schools should have a little more two-way communication on scheduling dates. That said, I think it is reasonable for a school to de-prioritize applicants who chose to attend another school's interview date over theirs because it is an expression of interest.

The same advice I gave above applies to your situation too.

When academics visit, the usual protocol is to have a detailed itinerary either the night before the visit or the morning when you arrive. This is true at almost all levels, from grad admissions interview to when you later visit departments as invited speakers and when you're on the job market. As someone who has planned many of these visits for prospective students as well as visiting scholars, it's really really hard to get people to commit to time slots and you have to juggle all of the scheduling conflicts. Especially when there are more than 1 visitor at a time, you can't lock in a schedule because you might have to move everyone around again because Prof X really wants to meet with Student A but they can only meet at these specific times etc. And, you don't want to ask people for these time slots more than a week in advance otherwise they will forget and add other things to their schedule. For small meetings (1-3 visitors), I generally start 3 work days ahead of the event and finalize everything the afternoon prior to the visit. More lead time is necessary for multiple visitors, but I find that you can't finalize things until the day before anyways. However, as you get closer to the date, you should get some overall information. I am usually able to tell people something like, we start meetings at X hours, your talk will be at 2pm (just an example) and we'll arrange for lunch and dinner and that you should expect to have meetings during the day. However, exactly who you are meeting with at what time won't be known until the night before or the morning of!

I think there are three categories of good questions to ask during visit days. The first is for specifics of the general things you find on the website and/or that particular prof's opinion/advice on things where you have decisions. For example, the website may say something like students are allowed to have co-advisors outside of the department, and you can ask something like "what fraction of students do this?". Or, it may say something like you take X electives---you can ask what electives they recommend, how many students normally take etc. Of course, only ask questions that are relevant to your situation (i.e. if you aren't interested in an outside advisor then don't ask about that). You can also ask about specific outcomes from their own students, e.g. "has any of your students gone into industry" etc. is one question I have asked. In general, most academics enjoy being asked about their opinion! The second category is questions about the future. When I met with department chairs or similar positions, I would ask questions like, "Do you plan on expanding the faculty [i.e. hiring more] in the next 5 years?" If they say yes, or only replacing retiring faculty, I'd usually ask if the general department strategy is to pick a small number of areas of expertise and hire around those, or if they are thinking of building more breadth in their expertise. Through talking to my own departments and on visits, I found that most schools either choose some areas of expertise and do targeted hires, or they have a policy of "let's hire the best people we can recruit" and then department expertise hinges around who they are. If you're meeting with individual profs, you can also ask similar questions but about their own body of research. Are they thinking of going in different directions? etc. Finally, the last category is for people who you are considering working with. You can ask things like how they view the student-advisor relationship. Might be too vague to ask that directly, but you can ask things about important aspects such as what are their expectations from you as their student? What is their advising style---i.e. do they typically want students to follow a detailed plan of research? or do they have the student mostly direct their research topics, or some mixture? Are their students funded through grants or mostly through TAing? etc.