TakeruK

No, you don't have to buy their phones to get a sim card. When I moved to the US from Canada, my brother gave me his old Samsung Galaxy S2 from a Canadian provider. It had been unlocked so I took it to the T-Mobile and showed it to them. They put in one of their SIM cards to make sure my phone was compatible with their network and it was! So, I signed up for a monthly plan through T-Mobile and they gave me a T-Mobile SIM card to use. They also offered (and I accepted) their insurance program (usually only available to new phones) to protect against loss or damages. As far as I can tell, as long as your phone will work on their network (i.e. unlocked), then they will be happy to sell you SIM cards for their service! Basically, bringing in an unlocked phone is equivalent to buying a phone from them -- you'll get all the same benefits.

A couple of notes about how TAships work in Canada: 1. Unlike the US, TAships in Canada, especially at UBC, are paid on an hourly basis. In many US schools, you just get some amount of funding and you're expected to TA whatever you're assigned in return for the support. In Canada, TAships are specific employment contracts for a set number of hours. So, your letter of offer will generally say that you are accepted with X hours of TAships. The pay rate is generally high -- up to $40/hr at some schools in Canada, but this is because the school wants to be able to pay you enough money to live without requiring that you work 20 hours per week! 2. Also unlike the US, Canadian schools have unionized their TAs. So, at UBC, you will be part of a TA union which governs the way TAships are assigned. This ensures that TAships are distributed fairly and that you get all the benefits of an employee (e.g. sick leave, conference leave, etc.). Most importantly, this means the TA pay scale is constant across all of UBC -- TAs in the humanities are paid the same hourly rate as TAs in the sciences. There used to be a big divide (with TAs in the humanities being paid less and thus must work more hours than TAs in the sciences) but this is no longer an issue! 3. The bottom line is that you don't "apply" for TAships at UBC and many Canadian schools. What happens is that if a school accepts you, they put together a funding package to pay your stipend. This funding package could consist of TAships, RAships, fellowships, or other awards. When they give you your offer letter, this letter will say "you will be supported by X hours of TAships, etc" (Note: it might not stipulate the number of hours directly, but in terms of "units", where 1 unit is some number of hours). This usually means you cannot get more hours of TAships than your offer letter -- after all, the department only has the budget for a limited set of hours, which they have to distribute to all their current students in a fair way. So, the only way to get more hours is to wait until all the hours have been allocated and if, for some reason, there are leftover hours, then the department could choose to put the application up. Here is the UBC Geography program's funding page (assuming this is the relevant department): http://www.geog.ubc.ca/graduate/funding.html It clearly states how much money you should expect from a TAship (about $11k). At the top of this same page, the department commits to providing every student with $20k of income. If this is AFTER tuition, then it's not so bad, but if this is before tuition (in Canada, we usually get paid our stipend and then we have to pay the tuition ourselves), then it could be pretty hard to live on in Vancouver. Note also that this page says most students accepted are guaranteed TAships for the first 4 years of their PhD (it will say this in your offer letter). This means that if you are in year 5, you will have to convince your supervisor to pay you more in RAships, or hope that there are some leftover TAships after the people in the first 4 years of PhD (i.e. guaranteed TAships) are assigned. In addition, there are usually extra fees due to your international status. Like surefire said, the department usually takes care of this -- that is, that $20k number above should be net of any additional international fees. Many departments have special funding from the University to offset the cost of hiring an international student (and this will show up as an award of some kind). There may be some leftover fees not covered, but for the most part, I think you can expect to be paid so that your "take home" income is roughly the same level as a domestic student. Finally, work permits are pretty easy to get in Canada, much easier than in the US! I have a friend from the UK that exceeded his guaranteed years of funding and had to supplement his income by taking an adjunct teaching position at a different university elsewhere. This is an extreme case though. Another easy way to supplement income is to do private tutoring on the side. At UBC, the going rate is something like $30 to $40/hour, but depending on the material that you know, it might be hard to find students. First year undergrads (especially pre-med students) would be your main customers and I'm not sure if there are a lot of them taking intro geography classes. If you know enough to tutor Calculus or any of the intro sciences though, you can make a good amount of money this way!

Good point! I would say that it seems pretty rare that a tenured faculty from e.g. a second tier school would be recruited to a "top" program though. I have seen some examples of lateral movement between top programs, or untenured profs at top programs accepting a tenured position at a lower ranked program.

In your original question, you mentioned faculty positions at the top schools. Let's say there are 10 such "top schools" in the US. At my school, which I would consider a part of this, there are about 10 profs in the field and the oldest one has been here for maybe 30-40 years. So, as an estimate, let's say that each of the top schools will hire a new prof every 3 or so years. I think this number is actually too high and in addition, hiring here seems to come in waves (a bunch of people might retire, then they hire a new batch etc.) "Bunching" up increases the "luck factor", if you're a great candidate but job-searching when the schools aren't hiring, then you're out of luck! Anyways, let's say on average, a tenure-tracked position is open at a top-10 school once every 3 years. So, that's 0.33 positions per school per year, so 3.3 positions in total for all the top-10 schools in the US. In my field, it seems like the top-10 schools will produce about 3-5 PhDs per year. So, this means each year, on average, there are about 3.3 positions in the top 10 schools, and there are 30-50 people looking for jobs every year with PhDs from the top 10 schools. In reality, the competition will be even stiffer, since the 27-47 people that didn't get jobs the past year will likely try again. Plus, there are people from top-20 and top-50 programs applying too. The point of the above is to say that it's naive to think that being really good is all you need to land a faculty job at a top school. Getting a PhD doesn't mean that you will get work in academia. During your time in grad school, you should figure out what job "market" you want to work in, and hone your skills and experience to target that "market". One important note is that I know some people think that "liberal arts colleges" or "teaching colleges" are a great backup if you can't get a tenure track position at a research school. This is not true! I think that these positions form a completely different "market", and the steps you take during grad school to prepare yourself for this market is different than what you would do to prepare for a research oriented position. Especially in many science programs, the basic experience you get from TAing is generally not enough to make you competitive for teaching position. One example of properly preparing yourself would be to seek out opportunities to design/teach a mini course, or take a larger role in course planning and teaching by getting permission from your instructor/department. Finally, I want to add that I think if you properly prepare yourself for an academic job market, it is definitely not impossible to get a tenure-tracked position. It won't be easy and the higher ranked the school, the more likely that factors such as luck come into play. It is not realistic to come into grad school expecting to end up as a faculty member at the top programs. But it is realistic to come into grad school knowing what the job market is like, knowing what skills/experience you want to gain from it, knowing what you would like to do at the end of school (and how the program will help you), and knowing that some of these things will change as you go through grad school!

Definitely agree -- it's naive to think that simply being the best researcher will get your recognized! There are a lot of things you can do (doing great research, finding great mentors, "market" yourself accordingly [e.g. talk circuits]) that can mitigate the amount of luck you need, but in the end, you kind of have to be in the right place at the right time. All of the above work that fuzzy mentioned can help increase the chances of "right place at right time".

I also used to think that pricing in Canada (especially for Apple) is a lot higher than the US, but I just looked up Apple Education pricing on the Canadian website and it's exactly the same as the US as far as I can tell! Here is the link: http://store.apple.com/ca_edu_108250/mac/family/macbook-pro You can compare this with the US version: http://store.apple.com/us_edu_487334/mac/family/macbook-pro (Just using Macbook Pro as an example, you can click on the tabs at the top to see the various other models). I also know this is the same thing as Eigen said a few posts above, but here is the "proof" I guess.

I also agree with fuzzy that the reputation of your department/advisors is very important in your eventual academic job position (coincidentally, UC Santa Cruz is also a big name in astronomy!). Every single prof at my current school has also worked at a top tier school at some point in graduate school and/or post-docs. However, post-docs at top schools tend to go to graduates at top tiers. Also, even the schools in Canada (the highest tier in Canada would probably be second tier in the US) tend to have a large fraction of faculty from top tier US schools. I don't really think it's solely "special connections" at the top schools that magically give you access to jobs at these top schools. I think it's a combination of skill/merit to get into these schools in the first place as well as the vast resources at your disposal if you are working at one of these top programs. Anyways, I would state that if you have goals of working as a faculty member at one of the big name schools [here, "big name" means big in your field, not necessarily famous worldwide], you would want to join one of the "big name schools" as soon as possible. I think it would take a very very special person to somehow land a faculty job at one of the big name schools with a background at solely second- or third- tier schools (mostly because if you are someone that good, you would probably already be at a big name school). But to answer your question, if you aren't trying to get a faculty position at one of the big name schools in your field, it's not really that big of a deal to be at a big name school in your field for grad school! I don't know very many people who has "faculty member at big name school" as their career goals though. So, depending on your goals, being at a big name school might not be as important as other criteria, such as the location, or academic/advisor/personality fit.

This is because in the Canadian system, most science students are expected to complete a BSc, then a MSc, and then a PhD. The MSc and PhD programs are distinct/separate from each other and it's not unusual at all for a student to completely change project, supervisor, or even schools between these programs. In fact, even if you stay at the same school, on the same project, with the same supervisor, you would have to submit all of your transcripts, LORs, essays, etc. all over again, since you count as a new student in a new program. Sometimes, some programs will allow strong students direct entry to a PhD program or fast-track a MSc student into the PhD program after their first year. To the OP, I think a 2.6 GPA is definitely too low for the big Canadian grad schools. I know that UBC has a campus-wide minimum of A- to be admitted by the Faculty of Graduate Studies, for example (if you're good, the department can fight for you, but the difference between A- and 2.6=B- is pretty large!). I think your chances will be better if you apply to places where people know you and can look past the low GPA since they know that you're capable of good work! For example, consider applying to work with your old supervisors and/or at your own undergrad school. In Canada, the "don't do your grad work at the same place as undergrad" stigma is much less since there are much fewer schools. Also, you could do a Masters and then go elsewhere for a PhD too. You probably also had collaborators that saw your good work, so maybe contact them to ask if they would consider you as a grad student!

Since you asked for thoughts -- I like the general idea of the blog. I think it's definitely something that most PhD students think about and many people can benefit from the collection of previous wisdom. I think this is informally done in many programs -- i.e. from talking to senior students, newer students will find out things like which places have student discounts, what's the best place for haircuts etc. But it's nice to also put more general thoughts into a more "formal" (i.e. written instead of orally transmitted [ew, that sounds gross now that I type it]). I'm not sure about the "blog" format, since it makes it hard to just pick out tips that I might want to find that's relevant to me specifically! But maybe as you write more and more, you will reorganize it in some other way (or maybe not -- it's your blog after all, but you asked for an opinion). Finally, to address your most recent post about laptops, especially since there are a lot of people wondering about new laptops right now, I would say that it's a bit of a stretch to say that a new Macbook Pro costs "up to $1500". I purchased my Macbook Pro 13'' (no retina display) for $1050 last fall, and it came with a $100 App Store gift card. I think it is worth mentioning that the best way to get a Macbook is to take advantage of both the education discount and a sale that your campus bookstore might have (it was a one-day sale that gave an extra $50 off). I've seen these sales happen in September of each year. Here is the webpage that you can visit if you click on the "Apple Education Store" link from my school's bookstore: http://store.apple.com/us_edu_487334/mac/family/macbook-pro As you can see, there is a Macbook Pro for $999.99! Granted, Macs are still overpriced as you said in your post and everything else is still true (i.e. you get easily get as much power for much less cost if you don't go with Apple). I ended up buying my first Apple product last fall because I felt like I wanted to treat myself to a slightly prettier computer for an extra $200-$300. This is not in the spirit of saving money, but I just wanted to point out that you don't have to get "Retina display" which also means Macbooks aren't $1500 all the time.

I also want to preface this with the same warning by fuzzy -- that we aren't experts in immigration law! Under some conditions, a F-1 student is allowed to work while on F-1 study status. There are two separate programs, called "Curricular Practical Training" (CPT) if you are going to be working while still enrolled in your degree program. The main restriction is that this must be either required for your degree (e.g. a co-op) or something that you can get credit for (i.e. if your supervisor decides to let you count this work as "independent study" or something. There is also "Optional Practical Training" (OPT) which you can apply for during your program or after you graduate. It is basically a work permit approval for paid work in your field of study. You are limited to 12 months of this (29 months in some fields) and the International Office told us that many students prefer to use their OPT after graduation instead. Here is one possible resource for more info, in case you want to find out some more info before seeing your International Office staff: http://www.isso.cornell.edu/immigration/f1/F-1work.pdf However, talking to them would definitely be the best idea!!

Community colleges in the US are usually just called "colleges" in Canada (while "university" is the same as "university" or "college" in the US). These colleges sometimes only offer 2-year associate degrees (students interested in a Bachelors would transfer after 2 years to a university) but more and more of them are starting to offer 4-year BA/BSc degrees. I think by law, you have to offer a certain number of Bachelor degree programs before you can be a "university", so some of these colleges have now "upgraded" or "rebranded" themselves. However, the main difference between them and a "traditional" university is that they are much more teaching oriented than research oriented. The minimum requirement for most of these colleges is a Masters degree. But, I think the general trend is that now the market is "saturated" with PhDs so from looking at some Sociology departments at colleges near my hometown, I see that there are more and more PhDs being hired. I also get the sense that the younger faculty all have PhDs and it's mostly the ones hired a decade or more ago that have Masters only. I think this is a trend common across all fields in Canada actually, and it's something I'm interested in because it's a possible career path for me! Here are faculty pages for two Sociology departments: http://www.kwantlen.ca/arts/sociology/faculty.html and http://www.langara.bc.ca/departments/sociology-anthropology/sociology/faculty.html You can see that not everyone has a PhD, but I think you would be much more competitive for a job if you had a PhD. Also, I don't think a PhD is a "shoe-in" for the job either -- I would say that it is important to develop your teaching portfolio and experience during grad school, especially if you are at a very research heavy school.

Yes, I think this would be fine. If there are copyright restrictions on how the POI is allowed to distribute the paper, then contacting the POI directly is probably the best way because they can send you preprint or other draft copies that aren't copyrighted. But, generally, the author of the paper gets a lot of freedom on distributing their own work.

I'm usually a big advocate for two people talking out the problem between themselves before involving any others. But this is only practical and possible if the two parties feel comfortable discussing this with one another. For example, if, for example, the person in the office next door (or the desk over) plays their music too loudly, talks on the phone all the time, etc. then it makes sense to talk to that person first instead of going to a third party. However, if it is a situation where one party is uncomfortable talking to the other (and this is what the OP seems to suggest), then it's perfectly reasonable to bring in a third party. In fact, it should be possible for this situation to be resolved without the OP ever talking to the prof alone again. Most department policies that I have experience with generally have an escalating scale of problem solving, starting with the two parties talking it out between themselves, then involving people at the department, faculty, and then university level. There should be neutral/impartial third parties at every level and both sides can find representation by someone else (e.g. union, student council, department members, etc.). So, if the OP definitely does not ever want to be in a conversation with just the two of them ever again (even in a public place), it does not have to happen. I agree with your post but I got the sense that you seem to imply that the OP would be shirking their responsibility as a professional if they did not try to resolve the issue before escalating it. I might have misinterpreted your message, but I wanted to point out that it is perfectly acceptable and professional to skip the "informal discussion" phase and move directly to more formal procedures if the situation causes one or more parties to feel uncomfortable directly speaking with one another.

You don't have to submit your Fall 2013 grades unless the application specifically says so. I think it's unlikely that one semester's worth of grades will have a significant effect on your GPA and many transcripts will show courses "in progress" so that they will know the titles of the courses you are taking in Fall 2013 (and perhaps even Spring/Winter 2014). If you think, for some reason, that your Fall 2013 grades will be very different than your current grades, then it might be a good idea to wait until you get those grades on your transcript! But if not, then don't worry about it and just submit your stuff before the holidays.

In your other post, you mention spending some hours background reading but that you aren't sure if it is something interesting or if it's too obvious/trivial. It sounds like you have done your due diligence in terms of doing some checking out of your idea and I think it's a good time to talk to a faculty member about this. Depending on the prof, some might be okay with their students just coming in to brainstorm/discuss ideas with them while others might want their students to spend a fair amount of time thinking about it first (but it sounds like you have). I view grad school as the ideal place for people to think up new, "risky" ideas, discuss them with colleagues and mentors, and then decide whether or not it's worth the time to pursue. So, I think it's something that you should talk to others about and they might be able to provide feedback to refine your idea and/or help you gauge whether or not it's possible. One thing you might be wary about is that if you talk to people now and get people on board with your idea, they might want to work with you on it and it sounds like you want to do this as your PhD project instead. So, you should be clear with the people you're talking to that this is what you're planning. Depending on the people in your department, you might want to make sure you talk to someone you trust who won't want to "steal" your ideas. Finally, to actually answer your question, I personally do not think the SOP is where you want to propose research problems. I would use the SOP to describe why you are a good fit for their program, in terms of past experience and achievements as well as showing how your future interests lie with the department's faculty. For the latter, I think it is enough to describe the kind of research (experiments, instruments, methodology, theoretical approaches) you want to do, but it would be far too specific to describe an actual research project. In addition to the risk of your research project not being significant enough, there is also a risk of constraining yourself so much since if no one wants to work with you on this project, you might convince the committee to not admit you on basis of fit. In my opinion, statements like "I am interested in developing [skill X] during my PhD and with access to [Facilities A, B, C / Profs D, E, F/ Labs G, H, I, etc.], your school would be a great fit for my goals." are the kind of statements you want to make in an SOP. I would only propose actual research projects if I am asked for a research statement (e.g. many fellowship/grant applications want this) and if I have discussed the project with people I might work on that project with first (to take advantage of their wisdom and experience). Thus, I think it's great to have new ideas and you really should not see it as a risk! Grad school is a great time to try out random ideas! I would feel that if I thought up something potentially interesting, my supervisor would be fine with me taking a few days to explore it and decide whether or not it's viable or if it's too difficult etc. If it doesn't work out, a week spent exploring isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of a PhD and what I learn during that week might be helpful later anyways. So, don't feel like you are taking a risk when you bring up a new idea with a faculty member. But, I personally do not think it is the kind of thing you want to put in a SOP, even if you have a fully thought out idea. That is my opinion though -- I'm sure others here might want to bring up a different viewpoint.

I agree with St. Andrews Lynx. I know it's easier said than done, but "moving on" might be the best course of action at this point (since you've already finished and can cut most ties with old mentors). You probably will not need things like LORs for awhile (not until you are about to finish a PhD) and by then, you would have lots of time to develop even better connections with faculty in your PhD program. One of the few ways the old mentor can really directly affect your career is that you'll never be sure if he will write you a good LOR. Fortunately, few people will care about your Masters program once you have a PhD so I would direct my efforts towards developing a good connection with profs at the new school, then you won't need any LORs from your old mentor. When I feel upset about a situation that I can no longer control, or if I've decided that I should just "move on" and not confront the person, I find different ways to vent my frustration and anger. For example, sometimes talking to family or really close friends (those you really trust or those outside of academia) can help. One of my favourite methods is to write a long angry letter so that I feel that I am able to express my feelings and thoughts. I would rip it up or otherwise destroy it after writing it though. Sometimes it takes more than one letter, and you can address it to the offending person, or if it helps, you can write it as if you were writing a LOR for that prof! These are just some things that I find helpful for me, but every person is different! It might help you, or it might give you ideas of other ways to help release the negative thoughts from the previous bad relationship so that you can focus on a new relationship with your new supervisor. In addition, if you still feel that your previous bad experience is affecting your current relationship, you might want to consider talking to people at your school's counselling centre. I think most PhD programs have one and your health insurance probably covers it fully (at least if you use the on-campus services). There is still a bit of a "stigma" about using these services even though mental health is just as important as physical health and no one bats an eye if you go to your physician! Fortunately, I think many people are more open about this -- some profs I know have even blogged about it, so I feel that the stigma is lifting. At my school, about 1 in 8 students have used the counselling centre, so it's definitely not something for extreme cases only!

The "throw grad students into TAing without any real training" is unfortunately a common approach. I think being trained to do our job is important and we should not be expected to "train ourselves" (especially not without being compensated for the time). At the schools I've been to, it is through students voicing their concerns to the department/school that TA orientation and teaching development workshops were built. I would also argue that there is a huge difference between TA orientation (which is more logistics, like how TAing works, where to get help, what is expected of you, and the rules and policies governing TAing) and actual teaching workshops (where you practice and develop teaching skills). Sometimes there are also optional/extra training courses through the school's Center for Teaching & Learning. Unfortunately, most schools view this as "enrichment" training where they will allow students to do this on their own time, but they don't consider it employment training so that we are not compensated or credited for this time at all. So, it is sometimes quite difficult to meet all the other commitments and also find time to take one of these workshops! I hope that more schools, especially the science research heavy programs, would value teaching more and send their grad students to these training workshops!

Your best resource would be looking into the NSERC Award Holder's Guide: http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Students-Etudiants/Guides-Guides/PGSCGSIndex-ESESCIndex_eng.asp Click on "Policies and Requirements" in order to get the full listing of rules and regulations behind your award. Another good resource is to talk to the Awards person at your school -- typically there is someone who is assigned specifically to deal with NSERC, SSHRC and CIHR and they would really know the rules too. You will also have to make sure that Mitacs is okay with you holding an NSERC concurrently (that is, you have to satisfy both sets of regulations simultaneously). To answer your question with the best of my own knowledge of NSERC graduate awards, I would say that it depends. Here are two paragraphs from the Award Holder's Guide (under "Other Sources of Income") NSERC expects award holders to devote the majority of their time to the expeditious completion of their degree program. As a guideline, NSERC strongly suggests that award holders limit the number of hours of employment per 12-month period to 450 hours. Universities may, however, set their own guidelines. Contact your university for further information. You may not hold full-time employment during any period of time in which you hold the NSERC award. Payment of the award during paid internships and co-op work terms is permitted, regardless of your registration status, provided that they are a requirement of your program of studies. You may not concurrently hold another award from NSERC or from another Canadian federal granting agency (CIHR or SSHRC). You may, however, accept awards from other sources, regardless of value (e.g., foreign sources, provincial awards, private organizations or your university). The last bullet point listed here show that NSERC is okay with you getting funded concurrently with a Mitacs grant. I think the main issue that might come up is how much time this company expects you and your colleague to spend on their work. You should keep in mind that the 450 hours of work per year limit includes your hours on a TA ship or RA ship. But, if you are interested in this project, maybe you can give up your TA and RA ship (and the income related to it) so that you can spend more hours on the project. Note that the 450 hour limit is a NSERC limit -- your own school might have an even smaller limit. You also cannot be employed full time by the company, which makes sense, since the NSERC is supposed to be funding you so that you can focus your full time efforts on your grad program/research. Basically, it sounds like if this project with the company is a small side-project then it should be fine (it's as if you took on a side project) but it's not clear from your post whether or not this is actually the case. You should definitely talk to your department about this and get the details in writing once you decide on how to proceed. I'm not sure how much the Mitacs grant would be and how much you want to work on this project (maybe it can be even better for you than your MSc work) so you should consider all possibilities, including giving up and/or suspending/deferring the NSERC in favour of spending more time on this other grant, if possible and necessary.

I would definitely look into changing your research group. Having outside funding can really help you get into a new group since otherwise you might represent a large unexpected extra cost! I think a good first step is to talk to the "Director of Graduate Studies" or some similar position in the your department -- basically the faculty member responsible for graduate students in general. They can help you figure out the best route to go and also be an advocate in your best interests. Also, you should read more carefully into the NSF rules for changing projects. In Canada, the NSERC is the equivalent for the NSF and the rule for changing projects is that they don't really care as long as you stay in the same field and you have approval from your own school. That is, you can't apply for a grant in Biology and then use it to do Astronomy! I'm not saying NSERC = NSF, but just saying that there are other national agencies that allow it, so it's worth the time to check if NSF would too.

Accepting a spot in a graduate program is a serious responsibility because as Lisa44201 said, you are likely taking a spot away from someone else. However, this doesn't mean that it is unethical to change your mind later. If a student's situation changes just before their program starts, or even just a few months into the program, it's perfectly fine to change your mind and withdraw. It would be unethical, in my opinion though, to accept a graduate program spot with no real intention of actually attending the school. I think that at the time of the decision, as long as the student has every intention of following through with their commitment to attend the PhD program, it would be fine to accept the offer. The OP did do this -- info about School B came much after the School A decision. So I don't see any problems with ethics there. The OP also told School A what happens and School A was the one that offered to defer the OP's admission for another year. This sounds like School A really wants the OP at their school so that they are offering to let the OP attend School A after his/her Masters are School B. So, I don't think doing a Masters somewhere else first then going to School A for a PhD is unethical either -- after all, School A implicitly gave the OP permission to do so because of their offer of deferral. The only iffy part is School A is expecting the OP to enroll in their PhD program in Fall 2014. OP might want to do a PhD at School B if the opportunity arises. But it sounds like the OP intends to let School A know that if they get an offer from School B, they won't be attending School A. So, if School A still keeps their deferral offer to the OP after disclosing this fact, then I don't see any ethical problems with this situation. If the OP ends up in a PhD program at School B, then that likely means a student lost their chance to start a PhD program at School A. But this is not the OP's fault -- School A decided to risk not getting anyone in order to have a chance to get the OP. It's only unethical, in my opinion, if the OP intends to mislead School A about their intention to enroll.

This is my favourite way to make stir fry veggies: I do my stir-frys in a wok and I start with a little bit of olive oil and like the above person said, I chop up some fresh garlic and add it to the oil. I usually do this first and then heat up the wok and oil/garlic, which allows the garlic flavour to seep into the oil. There is some differing opinions about whether to add the oil/garlic to a cold or hot wok though. I then add the vegetables and maybe 50mL of water if necessary. I try to only initially use a small amount of oil and sometimes this is not enough liquid so I add water as necessary to avoid adding more oil. If the vegetables are really hard (e.g. carrots, brocolli), then I cover the wok with a pot lid of some kind and let it steam for a few minutes to cook the veggies faster. Then, I uncover and let the heat fry up the veggies and evaporate the water away. I usually take the veggies off the heat and finish with maybe 5mL of pure Sesame Oil (I use this one brand specifically -- one bottle lasts years: http://www.shoptheeast.com/buy-oil-vinegar-cooking-wine/1879-yeo-s-pure-sesame-oil-375-ml-077521941037.html) I almost always cook the protein separately from the vegetables because of different cooking times (don't want to overcook the meat while waiting for vegetables to soften) and also because of the water release issue mentioned above. Also, my protein is often tofu, and stirring it up with vegetables will shred it to tiny pieces! Other ways I like to flavour is to cook something that is very flavourful first. Garlic is the above example, but onions and celery are also very good. A "mirepoix" is a mixture of finely chopped onions, celery and carrots and it's commonly used to create a base for wonderful flavours. So, sometimes I cook this mixture in a small amount of olive oil initially, cook until the onions and celery are translucent, then add the meat. I don't have to worry about these vegetables being overcooked since they are pretty "hard".

I agree that it is not useful to consider options that are no longer available or not certain in the future. It makes sense to only consider what is on the table. I also agree that you are not in a race with your colleagues and it's important to do what's best for you instead of what makes you comparatively better than your peers. In your thought experiment, it is true that later finding out that the same work doesn't negate the original benefits of taking the unpaid position in the first place. I would still get whatever I wanted out of the position. But, in my opinion, it does change the overall situation. In your thought experiment, it might probably be too late to change the decision anyways. But if the new information was available prior to making the decision, I would think it would make sense to consider this new information when weighing the pros and cons of the job. It does not affect the pros, but I do think not being paid in a situation where you should be paid is definitely a "con". To me, this would be an expression that the employer somehow undervalues my work and this would lead me to believe that either the employer is actively trying to take advantage of me, or does not have the resources to support me as much as the colleagues. Also, as mentioned briefly in my last post, schools can take unfair advantage of students in situations where it still benefits them to do an unfunded PhD (where the norm is a funded PhD). It is basically exploiting the needs of these students. If students in this situation allow themselves to be exploited, then they might personally benefit but it could also make things worse for everyone else! I'm not saying that people should always be noble and act in the greater good. But I think it's also bad if everyone acted for personal good only. I think there should be some balance between the two and in order to find a balance, it's important to consider things like how much other people are getting paid for the same work, which is necessary to determine if you are being treated fairly.

I wrote 1 paragraph (4-6 sentences) per research project I did and I included all of them (I have about the same as you). I used about 2-3 sentences to describe the project and the rest of the paragraph to attempt to weave the project into my narrative which was meant to answer the question "Why am I interested in graduate work and why would I succeed". I decided to treat each project as a chapter in my "career" and discussed why I chose to take on each project as well as what I learned from each project. I think this second part might be more important than what you actually did! When talking about the specific research project though, I tried to use specialized words in a way that would tell an expert exactly what I did but also give a non-expert a general idea of what I did. For example, I might have written something like "We divided up the [Population X]'s phase space into x,y,z cells and used the SWIFT numerical integrator to determine residence lifetimes of [Population X] test particles in each cell. From these results, we computed a [blah] model." I hope that a Physics/Astronomy prof would understand that my project was a computational one to compute the distribution of Population X in space. They might not know what SWIFT is, but I hope it would be clear what it does, in general. An expert in the field would know that I have specific experience with that software and that I would be able to use it on other projects. Overall, I had an intro paragraph, then one paragraph per project, then one longer paragraph about why School X, and a conclusion paragraph that says the almost obligatory desire to be a PI etc. etc. I opted to spend maybe 50% of the time on my experience (i.e. "Why pick me?"), 30% of the time answering "Why I picked them", and 20% on intro/conclusion/filler. If I had to do it again though, I would have cut back on my intro a lot! Finally, I wouldn't mention things like awards unless they are connected to your research paragraphs e.g. you won an award for the research or you successfully applied for a grant to do your project (but definitely not a whole paragraph just for awards -- that's what the CV is for). I also would not mention teaching or anything else that can be found in your CV, unless, again, it's a significant thing you want to really highlight. The SOP is a chance to provide your own personal voice/tone to your application since almost everything else is either very formal or in a concise list form! Just my thoughts.

I would echo fuzzy's post and opinions. I'm not certain if this is a healthy way to approach the problem. Maybe I don't understand because I have never been in a position where I felt like I needed to come to the US. But I feel that if international students/applicants adopt the attitude that they are willing to accept a lower status level (i.e. no tuition waiver, no stipend, no benefits) than domestic student just so they can be in the US, this can cause problems. International students are doing the same work, so they should be treated at the same level. Thus, I think it is important to compare your offer to others -- would you accept an unpaid job position knowing that your colleagues doing the exact same work are getting paid instead? I don't mean compare it down to the dollars and cents level -- some departments pay students slightly differently and holding fellowships can adjust your pay level. However, there is a huge difference between no pay (or rather, negative pay since you have to pay tuition/fees) versus the standard grad student stipend.

I like "fresh" (as opposed to dried) pasta that you can buy at grocery stores. They can be expensive but they are often really cheap at Costco. For $10, I can buy a 2-pack of e.g. tortellini where each pack can feed me for 4 meals or so. The "fresh" pasta cooks in only 2-3 minutes as opposed to something like 10-15 for dried pasta. This cuts the cooking time in half especially when it might take up to 10-15 minutes to boil the water in the first place. While the water for pasta is boiling, I heat up a jar of sauce in a separate saucepan and throw in frozen veggies, e.g. peas. After the pasta is done, drain the water and add the sauce! Dinner ready in less than 20 minutes, only two pots to clean, and leftovers for the next few lunches too. If you have bread or rolls around, they make a nice addition too.