TakeruK

What Usmivka said. I think it's pretty rare for a grad student to be awarded a research grant upon admission to a graduate program though. Usually, our research is paid for by our supervisor's grants (depending on the field though). I would never spend my own personal funds (e.g. TA income, grad stipend, portion of fellowships that pay my salary) on any research related costs, but I know people in other fields have to spend their own money to travel to field sites etc. Some grad fellowships do come with research grant funding, which can only be used for research purposes and generally has a lot of rules about what you can and can't buy with it. Also, sometimes once you start a grad program, you might be able to apply for research grants as a PI, but there aren't very many grants that are meant for grad students -- usually the PI has to be a faculty member. Finally, these grants usually require a budget, so having a lot of "left over" means you budgeted incorrectly in the proposal and is generally a bad thing! Sometimes a lab group might have a small amount of money leftover and they might have to make sure they spend it all before the time limit on the grant is up! So this might mean an extra conference that a student can attend, or upgrade some equipment, or refill some supplies etc.

I wouldn't count on being able to just catch him right after the lecture and expect him to have time to have a serious conversation with you. I know you are planning to email him ahead of time, but I would also strongly recommend making your intentions immediately clear in the email so that he knows what to expect in the meeting. If you just randomly write to a professor that you want to talk to him about his research, I feel that the conversation can go so many different ways that he won't know if the meeting would be important / worthwhile to him (as he may be very busy with other commitments that day) and thus might even just ignore you or does not prioritize it. So, I would suggest that you don't try to hide your real intentions. It sounds like the goal of this meeting is for you to introduce yourself to this professor, because you are interested in working with him in grad school. The goal isn't just to talk about his research, and it might be hard to find the time to talk about two things at once, especially if you will only have like 5 minutes with him. Of course, talking about you wanting to work with him would also involve talking about research, but I feel like you might be better off if you initiate the conversation with the "real" topic (grad school) and then your research discussion can be framed around that topic. I would write an email to him ASAP saying who you are and that you are applying to grad schools in X this year and that University Y is one of the places you would like to go to. And that you are interested in his research, especially in topics A, B, and C. You can say that you are attending the Conference, and that you hope he can find some time to meet with you during the conference. Then hopefully he will schedule a time with you or something vague and then you can have a discussion with him about his research goals and your research interests and see how they line up. Maybe he will even suggest other people he knows for you to talk to and/or introduce you to them at the conference. Maybe he will get you in touch with some of his current or former grad students. At least in my field, I think it's best to get directly to the point in the first conversation / email. Don't beat around the bush!

I think what the OP might mean is that for many MSc programs in Canada, they will mostly (or only, depending on particular schools) consider the most recent X credits of courses in your relevant field for computing your admission average. The school will still want to see all of your transcripts and grades for all of your post-secondary schools, though. Since credits mean a lot of different things at different schools, I found that most of the programs I applied to will generally compute your admission average (for competition purposes) based on your grades for all the upper level courses (3rd and 4th year courses) relevant to your field*. *"relevant to your field" for me (Astronomy MSc) would have meant all of my Physics, Astronomy, and Math courses. Not sure what that would mean for you, though. If your last completed degree is a BSc, then they will mostly care about your BSc grades, not so much your offshore medical school grades. Also, if you attend a school as an unclassified student just to take 10 science courses, it might help if you do really well, but I think they will still consider your BSc grades in determining your admission average. However, since by the time you apply to grad school, your BSc would be long behind you, the committee would likely care about both your actual admission average and how your grades have changed over time. That is, doing well in the 10 extra science classes would show the committee that you are serious about improving your studies and are capable of doing better than you did in undergrad. There is no way to completely erase the past though.

I think I spent about an average 1 hour per school to fill out their application form online. Luckily a good number of my schools used Embark so my personal details (name address etc.) are saved so I don't have to fill it out again every time. I made a sticky note on my bulletin board of all of my schools' mailing addresses (who uses that??), phone numbers etc. Some schools were very straight forward so it was quick but some schools have very complicated and strange forms/questions which took longer! The longest part was writing my CV and SOP and PHS (for a few schools). I think I spent maybe 6 hours of actual work time writing my CV and 6 hours to write my template SOP, plus 30-60 minutes to customise each SOP to each school. I might have spent 2 hours on a PHS for the 2 schools that required it. A few schools had extra difficult things to fill out, such as a listing of all of my courses relevant to my degree, in addition to uploading a transcript. But overall, I spent 14 hours doing things common to all schools, plus 2 hours to do school-specific things. I applied to 8 schools, so that is a total of 30 hours of work in total to fill out applications, or just under 4 hours per school. Maybe add another hour for ordering transcripts (one of my school required handwritten snail mail forms!) I would consider this not too bad, since it is on par with the total time I spent on the GRE and Physics GRE, each. The 30 hours of total work was spread out over a period of 1-2 months, with gaps filled in by complaining about stupid forms, getting frustrated at confusing instructions, and generally procrastinating! The bulk of the work was completed in the first month though (started writing in about November, first deadline was early December), so the things like CVs and SOPs were written in November.

Yes. http://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/gre_guide_table1b.pdf The table shows you how your scaled scores compare to other people who took the test (i.e. your percentile ranks). A 4.5 AW score is the 78th percentile, well above the median. Also, Table 1C tells you the average (mean) score, which is 3.61. Note that these are in comparison to all test takers, not just the comparison with others applying to your program/field! Whether or not you should send the first set of scores again to the 4 schools (negating your 4 free schools advantage) depends on whether or not you think the improvement in Quant is worth the drop in AW for your field. Don't forget there are other aspects of your application (e.g. writing samples?) that might also help demonstrate your writing ability but maybe not as many other ways to show your Quant ability (if it's even important?) Now that ScoreSelect is available, I usually recommend that people use their 4 free schools for the schools they are least interested in, so that they can the most control over which scores their top choices will see!

I would also advise to put dollar amounts in, because if you got a institution-specific, or state-specific, or a prestigious award in another country, your admission committee might not know what your award is at all. I would only do this for my application CV though, not for the version of the CV I put online, so if others are like me, if you look at CVs online, you won't see it. I know that many profs in my field, especially those at "soft money" institutions often list their grants and their values to show their ability to bring in research dollars. I wouldn't put this in the awards part. Instead, I had a section for "Research Experience" where I listed all of my research completed, with short summaries (in bullet point form) and I only very briefly describe the work. I also mention in this section if the work was funded by a specific fellowship. I also have another CV section for publications / papers presented. I saved the long form, full sentence descriptions of my previous work for my SOP. I think this is unwise. The "Publications" section of your CV should read like a bibliography in your field -- i.e. just a listing of the citation to the paper. Include a URL to the DOI if you can / are allowed. Again, you should put the details of your research in the "Research Experience" part of your CV. If you are worried that it might not be clear which papers correspond to which work, you can put it part of your "Research Experience" bullet point. e.g. 2009-2010 Undergraduate Research Assistant at University ABC - Worked with Prof. X to study Y - Funded by Scholarship Z - (short description of what you did) - Work published in Journal R, and presented at Conference S

I think it's perfectly fine to contact your POI and discuss research interests in order to determine your fit. They might politely (or not so politely) tell you to talk to them only after you've been accepted (some profs replied in this manner) but I don't think there is a real problem with initiating the contact and letting the prof decide whether or not to proceed. I think that paragraph is mostly there to discourage people emailing solely for the reason of getting into someone's "good books" and increasing their chance of admission, and/or to discourage people from sending in CVs and other application materials and asking questions like "Would I get in?" etc.

Your practice exam scaled-score-to-percentile tables are likely very much out of date. The practice booklet I got (for Physics) had a table that was more than 10 years old! Here is the most recent ETS table: http://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/gre_guide_table2.pdf On this updated table, for Chemistry, it looks like a scaled score of 730 should be between 52% and 59%, so I think 57% sounds right!

I think your strategy sounds good. The difference between my description of previous work on my CV and SOP was that my CV is very factual, e.g. I worked for X at University Y and did project Z. I used procedures A and B and got result C which we published/presented at D. etc. In my SOP, I wrote about my experiences with a focus on "how does this make me a great applicant for your program". So the tone was a little different -- I explained why I took certain positions (some of them were out of my field) and why I made certain decisions (i.e. how these positions helped me achieve my goals at the time) as well as what I learned from each experience (i.e. how these decisions have set me up for future success in grad school). I'm not saying my method is the best or anything, just telling you what I did!

I have always called profs by their first name, even during undergrad. After about my second year of undergrad, my profs almost always introduced themselves as "First Name Last Name" or sometimes just "First Name" on the first day of class. Very rarely does a prof in my field introduce themselves as "Prof. X" or "Dr. X", except for during the super large first year classes. I would use Prof. X. when talking to a prof for the very first time and usually they would let me know what they prefer to be called. I would also use "Prof X." when talking to another prof (Prof Y) even if I was on first name basis with Prof X, unless I know both Prof X and Prof Y pretty well that Prof Y would know I am also on first name basis with Prof X. I might also use "Prof X" when referring to the professor of the course for which I am TAing and I'm talking to students in that course (and if that prof has not established first name basis with our students).

If you are a Canadian in Canadian program right now then the "All are American" comment might imply that it's hard/expensive to do grad school in America and you might want to consider having at least one Canadian "backup"/alternative. Otherwise, I don't really know why he would say that! Maybe you can ask him what he meant by "4 max" -- it could be him hinting that he doesn't want to write more than 4 LORs, or it could be him just suggesting that you don't need to apply for more than 4 schools. Again, if you are a Canadian in a Canadian program, this might be because most Canadians don't apply to as many programs since there just aren't as many schools in Canada and maybe he's giving this advice from this perspective (which isn't helpful for those applying to the US). Considering that there are about 15 research intensive universities total in Canada, applying to 10-15 schools means you are pretty applying to every single school!! And, it's also not clear what he means by "generic" letter. It could mean that he will write a very bland letter, that isn't very personal at all. Or, it could mean that he is going to write a great detailed, personal letter documenting all the great things about you and the "generic" part just means that he will submit the same (or virtually similar, with only school names changed) to all the schools. So I would ask him to clarify if he would actually write more than 4 letters and say why you want to apply to all six and see what happens. I guess his response to you isn't very clear at all! But maybe the response to this question might let you gauge whether or not the letters will be good and whether or not you can get more than 4 letters from him. I feel like you might be better off getting a LOR from someone else if this recommender doesn't want to submit more than 4 or if you feel that the letters won't be very good at all.

I also agree that this question is not a good reason to avoid that school. Like fuzzy said, some applications just have this as a standard question. Also, it might even be possible that your department won't even see the answer to this question, and instead, the information is simply collated by the Graduate School for statistical/planning purposes. I also think that this is a legitimate question and that it's okay to answer honestly. You should be prepared to answer this question in a face to face meeting/interview or a phone call. One prof that I had talked to a few months before applying asked me where his school/department ranked on my list of considerations. I hesitated and he explained that he understands it's a tough question but they like to know so that they can plan the number of offers to give out as well as identify their top competitors. This can help them assign a likelihood of you accepting their offer, based on your application and other places you are applying. For example, if you are applying to a mid-tier program with an average profile and put all top ranking programs ahead of theirs, then they might figure they have a good chance to getting you if they make an offer. But if you are a superstar and you are showing that you applied to top programs as well as their middle ranked program, they might figure there is a lower chance of you getting an offer. So, if they want to have 5 new students for Fall 2014, and the top 5 choices in their applicant pool show very high likelihoods of going elsewhere, they would know that they probably want to initially make something like 15 offers in order to get 5 acceptances. On the other hand, if they guess that almost all of their applicants will go to their school, they might want to be more cautious and just make 10 offers at first, to avoid having too many students! Ultimately, I think it would be ridiculous for a school to reject a great applicant because they were not that applicant's top choice. I do not think they have any incentive to do so, except for maybe saving money in flying out a prospective student that has no desire to actually attend the school and just want a free trip! So, it's my opinion that your answer here would not affect your admission decision so why not be honest. On the other hand, one could also argue that there's no real disadvantage to a white lie and put this school as #1 or #2 instead of #4 either. In the end, I would say that do what you feel better about and don't worry about how this would impact your chances, since I don't think it has any real effect.

Yeah, I think if you can demonstrate that your job is helping develop some skill that would be useful in your graduate program, like the example you gave, then it's a good thing to mention in the SOP. For me, I did a research project in undergrad where I analysed images in a medical physics field. When I mentioned this work in my SOP for astronomy grad programs, I highlighted the aspects that are relevant to an astronomy grad program. For example, image analysis in medical physics is pretty similar (but not exactly the same) as image analysis in astronomy. Also, the experience of working in a large research group, writing programming code for multiple types of users, having both in-person and teleconference meetings with group members in the same department and collaborators elsewhere etc. were all useful things, I think, to include in my SOP. It sounds a lot like your job could be helpful to include in your SOP -- if it's a skill that you will use in grad school, it's worth mentioning. You don't have to use a lot of space -- I only wrote a few sentences for each project I had worked on in the past. Also, 5 months of full time work is quite a bit, much more than most undergraduate work experiences, which are usually a few months in the summer or a full year part-time. So, I think this is something that you can really use to your advantage, if the skills and experience (both technical/research skills as well as experience with presentations/communication/software/protocols) you are gaining in the job will help you in graduate school. Also, by the time your committee reads your SOP, it might be January/February, so I think it's okay to project a little and describe what you are doing currently and will do in the future, not just what you have already completed at time of application. It takes judgement to decide how much you want to "predict the future" but I think this is standard practice. After all, when we submit abstracts to conferences months ahead of time, we write the abstract stating what we will have finished by the time of the conference, not the status of the work at the moment of writing.

I don't think it's a general rule that says you must indicate your current status in SOPs. But even if the job isn't directly related, it could be a good thing to mention, if you choose to (I have no idea if your job is even partially related to research or not). But if you think mentioning it would be detrimental, then you can avoid it and it should be fine!

Glad that it worked out. The profs that haven't seen your old file yet might not even know there was a correction made!

I also agree with not trying to spin it. They are not going to believe you that the GRE is not a real representation of your skills any more or less if you say so. They will just look at the whole application and decide for themselves!

I think this is a question specific to each institution's application system. But here are some options: 1. Enter both majors in your "major" field -- sometimes this is hard to do due to space limitations so you might have to abbreviate things. Also, if you write "Biology & Biotechnology and Biochemistry", it might not be clear that it's a double major. You could try to include "(Double Major)" in there but that is already pretty long. Maybe you have to abbreviate or leave something out and then list it in full on your CV. 2. Sometimes there are multiple boxes for "Major" 3. You might also be able to enter your second major in the "Minor" box and then label it as "Double Major" 4. Sometimes there is an extra "comments" box for each school and you can note that this is a double major there. 5. If you have to pick majors from a dropdown menu instead of self-entering, then maybe choose an "Other" option and enter extra info there? 6. Ask the school's grad office (not the department) if nothing else works!

Sorry, I was responding to Loric's suggestion for you to do an "incognito visit" and explaining why I thought that would be a bad idea. Loric and I seem to disagree about this approach but as you pointed out, this isn't even something you are planning to do! So, it's probably best for Loric and I to stop derailing your thread now Sorry again. Back on topic -- In my opinion, I don't think it will reflect poorly on you if you explain the circumstances -- i.e. you will be in town at these times and wonder if they would be willing to show you around. As I said way above, if they don't think this is appropriate, then they will let you know that they can't have visitors at this time. But I doubt this will be the case. Also, it's perfectly fine to use the visit to help boost your application, but obviously don't do it in a super obvious way (but they will know that you have applied and if they allow you to visit then they are okay with this). I know some cases where a student was not accepted with the original group but then after a visit, they got an offer. And while it's true that you will have an upper hand over those who can't fly in and visit, that's just how the system works. Maybe these people will be living near another school they want to attend and would be able to drive or take a bus up to visit. At the post-doc level, many people will give talks to places where they know the review panel for certain fellowships take place in order to increase their exposure. These talks may be made possible by being really interesting and getting invited, or by your advisor having enough funding to send you, or by knowing people in that department who would speak up for you to be invited, or some combination of these three. So I think it's all fair game and you should use every advantage you can get. I think it's all fair because these advantages can only help a great applicant get noticed, but it won't really make up for lack of skill or experience in a substandard applicant.

So, the idea is to show up unannounced and then not even announce yourself -- just hang around the department discreetly and have a look at how things are run? I would say this has limited usefulness and not worth the money and effort to travel to the school in the first place. I think that while you might learn a few things from quietly/discreetly observing the people in the department, you would have gained so much more if you scheduled a proper visit and people took the time to show you all the things, include you in events/seminars/classes, and set up interviews/meetings between you and people you want to speak to. I also think you can't really get much from discreetly walking the halls and trying to figure things out. You might hear things out of context and misinterpret them. But most likely, you won't hear/see anything at all. At all of the departments I've been to, all of the "real" things happen inside offices and you can't really just walk into an office and be an invisible observer. It will also be pretty obvious if you just hang around outside of office doors -- you can't stay for long without drawing suspicion. Asking questions of random people -- like who? or what questions? If you talk to anyone in the department, they will likely remember you later on. They will probably either ask you if you're a visiting student (then what will you say? if you lie and accept the school's eventual offer, remember these people will be your colleagues!) or figure it out and wonder why you are being so secretive. If you ask random people not affiliated with the department (e.g. an undergrad just taking a class in the building) then they can't really tell you much about the grad program. They might still be useful -- see my post above about random questions. Peeking into classes -- unless you are in a program where the classes are huge, a stranger is noticed pretty quickly. And it's not like you wouldn't be able to do this as an official visitor. So, I think trying to do it discreetly doesn't give you any advantages. Finally, you are assuming that the grad students won't be honest in the first place. I am 100% honest with all prospective students and I don't try to mislead anyone. Most students will be very willing to tell you both the positives and negatives, especially when it's an in-person talk during an official visit. Dropping in unannounced and then asking probing questions will probably end up with more guarded responses. I don't know about the visits you've been on, but when students visit my programs and when I visited others, the prospectives usually have at least one evening of hanging out / having dinner with the current students and that's usually when you get a good feel of the social dynamic of these people. For the most part, both the professors and students will want to portray an accurate version of their department to you so that you will choose it if it is a good fit for all. Sure, small superficial things might be present during visits to entice prospectives (e.g. more/better food at seminars, people might talk to you more, higher density of free-food events / social events to give everyone a chance to interact etc.) but it's usually pretty easy to see what's regular and what has been enhanced for your visit! And if you ask the current grad students, they'll probably let you know what is special just for you. After all, we're also pretty happy that you are here to visit, because it usually means more events/free food for us In summary -- I think an incognito visit isn't worth it because if you develop a good rapport with the current students, you will probably find them to be very honest. A discreet visit will also likely yield very little information, and what information you might get may be out of context and lead you astray. It's much more worth your time and money to schedule an official visit where you will get a good overview of how the department/program operates.

As much as I would also want the world to be a nice idealised place where everyone has the opportunity to pursue all of their interests, the reality is that resources are limited and grad programs will want to have some strategy on how they allocate their resources (time of profs as well as money). For each school, this usually means getting the best / most talented students they can. Thus, the application process is for each school to determine how much they want each applicant to attend their school and this would largely depend on how good of a researcher each applicant is. There is also other aspects such as fit that come into play, but ultimately, every school want to get the most talented people possible. And so the application process is designed to help them decide who are the most talented + best fit out of the application pool. Most programs cannot accept every applicant who is good enough / qualified for the program. So, things like LORs need to say more than whether or not the candidate is qualified to pursue a PhD -- they need to help the grad program decide how the candidate compares to others that the LOR writer has seen, and ultimately, how the candidate compares to all of the other applicants. This level of competition is present all through academia, at least in my field. Research grant funding is limited -- we cannot (and should not) expect that taxpayers or other agencies to give us unlimited resources to do research. Many great research ideas will go unrealised and unfunded because while they may be worthwhile things to study, they just might not be as good as other ideas in the competition. So, while I would like for all of us to have all the resources to do everything we can dream of, I think it's important to know that in reality, resources are limited and so pretty much every single resource (PhD positions, post-doc positions, grant money) is awarded at a competitive level.

Is there a 1 page limit? If so, then going over is probably a bad idea. If not, then you don't have to stick to the standard "1 page resume" that we learn to write for most job applications. Grad school application CV/resumes can be longer than one page -- many are much longer -- but don't just fill up space with "filler" material. I wouldn't have a section for "achievements" but instead, I would have: Education Research Experience Awards/Fellowships (prioritize the ones that are competitively awarded and/or for research -- e.g. NSF; don't list every single award) Publications and Presentations (put your conference presentation here) Teaching Experience (put your TAship here) [if necessary, an "Other Experience" or something like that here, to list things like student group leadership, outreach, etc.] You should probably reorder these based on what you are strong in (e.g. switch Awards and Research Experience if you have lots of awards but less experience etc.) And I agree with the grad student to remove MS Office related skills. That's for job applications, not for grad schools! Instead, list your research skills / lab skills with each research experience posting, I think, unless you feel it's better to have its own section! I would recommend looking up research websites of grad students and post-docs that you might know in your field and looking at their CVs online. Model yours after theirs!

I think following open/online courses is a good way to supplement or even to teach yourself the material when you cannot get it where you are currently. Because these open courses are usually not certified in the same way as a traditional degree program, you might have problems getting them counted towards something like grad school. However, this is not the only reason people take courses and if you simply just want to learn mathematics, then this is a good way to do it. I also don't think there are books that are just absolutely better than others and it's probably best to just use what your course is using (easier to follow along) or what you already have (save money). But if you would like another book suggestion to consider, I learned my Linear Algebra from "Linear Algebra and its applications", 3rd edition by Lay (http://wps.aw.com/aw_lay_linearalgebra_4/ -- it seems like there is a 4th edition now but probably still good). Also, you can try looking at Wikibooks for other online and free resources for learning.

As emmm said, ranking is pretty common in some fields, such as mine. It gives a quantitative way to compare applicants. For example, Prof A might think the top 25% of their students are "excellent" and Prof B might only think the top 10% of their students are "excellent". So if they both write "Student X is an excellent researcher", they can mean very different things. The ad comm in my field would want to know how strongly your prof endorse your application -- are you one of their brightest products, or are you an average student in the lab? Also, being ranked in the top e.g. 15% of a very prestigious lab/group might be much better than being the top 5% at a lesser known lab.

Mentorship between graduate students and undergraduates are a good thing, but this doesn't mean that every graduate student is a mentor for every undergraduate student. If the relationship between this particular graduate student and undergraduate student isn't working out, then it's probably best for the undergrad to find a new mentor. Mentors don't necessarily have to be in the same lab/sub-field as the mentee!

My opinion is that in the ideal case, you would want to know that your LOR writer will write a good letter without you needing to ask. My LOR writers and I talked so much about which programs I should apply to and who would be good POIs for me that it would be pretty silly to ask, after all that, if they were going to write me a positive letter. But, I definitely don't want to say that this is generally true and that if you are actually not sure, then it doesn't hurt to ask. In your case, with the few details provided, it sounds like until recently, you were sure that this would be a good letter and would not need to ask. But now you are afraid that the letter might not be good after all, now that the prof might have found out about the "pot issue" (I don't really know what happened so let's just call it that for simplicity?) At the same time, you don't want to bring up the issue in case the prof doesn't actually know. Here are some options I think: 1. Ask anyways and pass it off as a joke if the prof is confused as to why you even need to ask if it's a positive letter. If your relationship is as good as it sounds, then you can probably just make this part of one of your normal interactions. Hopefully you will get a response that will alleviate your worries, or at least a response that is honest. But remember that sometimes people have a hard time saying negative things to someone directly! In addition, if the prof now thinks negatively of you, but they don't know how to tell you that they don't want to write a letter anymore, asking them directly might give them a chance to politely suggest you get a letter from someone else. 2. You could also just not bring it up at all, and rely on the prof to come clean if he feels like he can no longer write a positive letter for you. The pro would be that you won't have to deal with a potentially awkward/uncomfortable conversation/confrontation. The con would be that you will not know what your letter will say. However you should also consider what your prof might do with information about the "pot issue". Do you think he will factor that into your letter, somehow -- i.e. make you sound like a bad candidate and write negative things about your abilities as a researcher just because he knows this information, or do you think that although he may or may not approve of the "pot issue", he would still keep the letter professional and only discuss your abilities as a researcher. Similarly, do you think he will just randomly attach information about the "pot issue" into the letter, which doesn't seem like it would be relevant. If you think he would, do you think that the profs at the places you are applying to will just ignore this irrelevant piece of information, or do you think they will view it negatively (or positively)? I guess what I'm getting at here is that even though it might be a big deal to him about the "pot issue", it might not affect the quality of your letter from him after all. So it's up to you to decide whether or not it's worth the "cost" of the stress/anxiety of not-knowing or having a confrontation because this "cost" is dependent on each person! Finally, the UC-Boulder comment might due to legalisation of pot there, but it could also just be a coincidence -- it's possible that your prof's spouse found out something good for you at that school. I wouldn't really read too much into the comment. Like I said above, you might have nothing to worry about at all, or if you're comfortable with it, just directly asking won't really hurt!