TakeruK

I enjoy almost everything I do in grad school. Except maybe not some of the pointless aspects of some classes, but really overall, I'm happy to be learning it. I think people complain about it because firstly, humans like to complain. But seriously, it's not that we don't like what we do, it's because we are working very hard with not much guaranteed rewards. Grad students work 50-60 hours per week (some even more) for under $30k/year, usually. This goes on for 5-6, or even more, years, and there is a lot of stress in the job as well. Not to say that other jobs aren't as stressful, but for example, there are other jobs that easily pay double the salary of a grad student, for only 35-40 hours per week, and when you go home, you don't have any work left! So I don't think it's that we don't like our work, but generally, the quality of life as a grad student isn't as good as someone with a "real job". When I see what my non-grad school friends are doing, I have to admit sometimes I am a little jealous. But I view grad school as a training phase to get through, rather than the dream (i.e. most people I know don't think "Yes!! I am finally in grad school!" but instead, they are thinking "Yes! I made it to the next stage of my career/life goal! Let's get through this!"). However, all that negatives aside, there are huge amounts of positives that outweigh it (or I wouldn't be here in grad school)! My number one reason for going to grad school is to increase my ability to get a job that I will enjoy. Sure, that job might have longer hours and won't pay that well compared to how much effort one needs to put in to get the job, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life hating the 40 hours of week I work and only looking forward to evenings and weekends. The second reason is for the ability to travel. I love travelling, seeing new places, meeting new people, and academia gives me tons of opportunity to do that. When I was growing up, two of the places I wanted to see most in the world were Rome and Paris. Our family thought about a family vacation over there once but when we saw the cost of flights, we knew that it wasn't going to ever happen. But, in 2011, I went to a conference in France and was able to include sightseeing in Paris as a part of it! Grad school gives me the opportunity to have experiences that are not possible any other way. This is also the reason why I am pursuing a PhD instead of just a MSc (in Canada, MSc is what's required to teach at colleges) because lecturers don't get to travel but researchers do! It's also a reason why I went into astronomy-related fields -- observers travel to exotic places and the theorists, being jealous of observers, often plan their conferences in tropical/exotic places too! The third reason is personal freedom and flexibility. I like being able to set my own schedule and to some extent, make decisions in my work. I would not be as happy with a strict 10 days holiday that have to be booked in some strict protocol and a supervisor that tells me exactly what to do all the time. I know this is not true for all jobs, and that academics are still constrained by funding, grants etc, but having worked in "blue collar" jobs before, I know I definitely prefer the freedom of an academic. Finally, the last reason is that I enjoy science and the process of research! Although this appears last on my list, it doesn't mean I don't like academia at all. But if I had to prioritize what I was looking for when choosing an ideal job, I wouldn't mind a job that doesn't involve science or research if it fit the other 3 desires! Anyways, I like grad school because I am surrounded by people with similar scientific interests and motivations. I enjoy the sense of family with my cohort, that we are all doing this together and I know I can count on their support. I also like the sense of community in my field -- conferences are like mini-reunions with people you haven't seen in awhile. You also quickly build up an entire network of people whose couch you can crash on all over the world!

I think that's fine too. Most schools expect to get a pile of these so they aren't going to read it too carefully -- they'll just be happy get a response! If you are worried about curtness, you could add a fluff sentence about how you would like to meet again in the future or something. I'd say to keep decline emails to a max of 2-3 sentences!

It depends on the school and department too. I would think Physics and Biology and other STEM fields are similar. Most schools will guarantee something like 17k to 18k per year after tuition, like selecttext mentions. By this, I mean the Graduate School will have some policy for this minimum across the entire campus. Individual departments will generally fund their students at higher levels -- and I usually find that physical science departments fund their students better. Not sure if you are Canadian, but I think most Canadian students think of their stipend packages in terms of stipend + tuition award (if any) because in most cases, we get paid first and then pay our tuition on a monthly payment plan. Tuition+fees for Canadians range from around $5000 per year to $7000 per year. So, with this in mind, I remember the majority of my offers in Physics MSc/PhD programs in Canada were on the order of $22,000 per year to $25,000 per year. Again, these are general total support numbers (i.e. what they will write on offer letters and what you could use to show proof of income for banks or leases etc.) However, if you have external fellowships, your stipend can go up a lot higher! NSERC CGS-D is a $35,000 and can push your total funding support to about $40k (see for example http://www.phas.ubc.ca/graduate-program-financial-support). Most schools will offer a top-up and some schools will still have you TA as a NSERC holder. CGS-D's are hard to get, but something like the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS) can increase your funding too -- Queen's funding levels were something like $25k for no-scholarship, $30k for OGS and even more for NSERC awards.

I think one thing to keep in mind is that conversations at conferences don't have to be super long and you don't want it to awkwardly drag out. And, if you just catch them in the hallway or foyer or something, they might actually be on their way to something else (of course, if this is an appointment then that doesn't apply!). So, once you've had a conversation and you sense there is a silence coming, it might be a good idea to end the conversation before it gets awkward! But, if that's not an option, or if you don't want to end the conversation just yet -- I would prepare some questions ahead of time to ask when the conversation dies down. I think it could be a good idea to ask about upcoming research plans. For example, March 1 was the Hubble Space Telescope proposal deadline, so that might have been a good conversation starter/continuer back in February (e.g "So, are you planning on submitting a Hubble proposal?"). At these kind of meetings, I think it's important to talk about more than just research. Conversations are fun when the topic is something both people are interested in, right? But it can be hard to switch from talking about research to personal hobbies. At conferences, it's usually easier because you can always bring up the place you're in and what cool stuff is going in the city and that can be a nice transition from research to personal stuff. Then, maybe you'll find some topic/similar interest you share and build a stronger connection.

I agree with you that professors/departments should take great pains to prevent this kind of inequality. However, I think the OP is in kind of special case where funding is not guaranteed for everyone (i.e. Masters programs). In a situation where funding is guaranteed for everyone, then there really should be standardised funding level. Some schools have a standard stipend that everyone gets. Others have tiered funding for different situations (i.e. external fellowships) but I think it's important that the process be transparent (i.e. publish these levels on the website). Students should not have to worry about losing funding (or getting less funding) because the grant for their project runs out / does not get renewed / offers less money than other grants. The way I've seen this rectified in other departments is to have standard funding rates and every prof who agrees to take on a student have to pay a set fraction out of their grants/their own funding while the department covers the rest (e.g. through TAships or department fellowships). There is usually a slush fund by the department that covers any unforeseen circumstances like a prof losing their funding unexpectedly. Of course, in order to pay for all of this, usually the department would have to take some overhead from the grants / sources of funding from each prof. So, in essence, every student is indirectly funded in part by every other prof in the department so then it doesn't matter if your supervisor has a really great grant or not! A grad student stipend (in a program where all students are guaranteed funding) should not be dependent on what grants fund the project -- if a grant has more funding for stipends, then this should enable the prof to hire more students!

I don't usually use FB as a way to make academic connections but sometimes people I meet on a visit or conference will friend me. I like the ability to keep the contact, but I put them in a special FB group and I don't share everything with them (e.g. if you want to ask your other friends about application stuff, you can just exclude those new grad student friends!)

For some poster design tips, I would recommend this blog: http://www.betterposters.blogspot.com People volunteer to send in their posters and the authors give a critique and everyone learns! In the past, I've used PowerPoint (actually OpenOffice Presentations) because it was free. If you can get free access to something like InDesign, that would be super awesome! As for posters vs. presenting a paper, I guess this is field oriented, since we don't usually "present papers" in mine. Most conferences are either poster or oral presentation (which may or may not be a paper that's already written -- sometimes it's just an update of their work or a single cool result). Oral slots are generally more prestigious than poster talks because when there are time/space limitations (almost always), oral presentations are generally assigned in some priority order and then the remaining spots get posters. In addition, some conferences will limit you to just 1 talk submission but unlimited (or many more) poster submissions. I guess the hierarchy would be Invited Talk > Contributed Talk > Contributed Poster. So, I would recommend that people always select "Talk" when given a choice between Talk or Poster but a poster is still better than not attending the conference sometimes! That said, posters are still a good way to get people talking about your research, to show that you have experience presenting/communicating your work on a CV, to network and it's usually what most people present at their first conference. I also like presenting posters because (1) it forces me to get the poster finished and printed before leaving for the conference, so that I don't procrastinate and end up working on my slides during the conference and (2) I feel better speaking to people in small groups / one-on-one during poster sessions than to talk to everyone in the audience at once! However, the downside is that a talk is over in about 15 minutes (in most conferences in my field) while you might have to stand next to your poster session for 3-4 hours while everyone is at the coffee table!

If you are worried about not receiving the letters, you could contact the Graduate Office and/or your departments and let them know you would like to change the address on your application. However, I received email (or phone) notification for all admission offers weeks before the snail mail package came. Only one school responded purely with snail mail and it was a form rejection letter. According to results here on GradCafe though, that same school and program notified its admitted students by email though!

Most US schools that are offering you a financial package (e.g. fellowship, TAship, or RAship) and that are part of the CGS Resolution (http://www.cgsnet.org/ckfinder/userfiles/files/CGS_Resolution.pdf) have mutually agreed to not make their students decide before April 15. But there is nothing practically stopping them. I think it would be a good idea to let your other school know that you have a time-sensitive decision with the school that has already accepted you and that you would like to know what timeline you could expect for their decision making process.

Maybe this is a field specific difference, but I would disagree with "pick a group of letter writers who can speak to your different strengths" in the sense that you've written here (i.e. research, coursework, teaching). I think the ideal "crop" of letters would be all 3 letters from professors who have directly supervised your research in one way or another. Research experience, ability, and potential, I think, are very important. The set of letters zabius suggested is not bad though, and it's a good way to go if you don't have more than 1 research related letter. I just want to say that I don't mean to criticize your choice of letters but I just don't think it's the (imaginary) "ideal set". I don't think letters about your performance in class is especially useful since the transcript conveys the same information. There is some special merit to using a prof who taught you for so many classes and it's especially useful if you had shown leadership or done something to distinguish yourself in his/her class. However, a letter that says you are a wonderful researcher would trump a "did well in class" letter most of the time. Similarly, teaching is not really a priority in many graduate programs. They generally expect you to learn how to TA as you are doing it and while it's nice to have a good instructor, in their point of view, it's even better to have a good researcher! I feel really bad saying this because I feel that many research powerhouses are making a mistake when they relegate teaching duties to something that is undesirable but must be done. I wish teaching would be a bigger aspect of grad school but the reality for most places is that teaching as a TA isn't important so get a research-related letter if possible! I would highlight teaching experience by putting it in a separate section of my CV, listing all the courses taught/TA'ed. To the OP: It sounds like this director would be a great LOR writer though. Getting hired as a lecturer after your MA is a bit different than the TA teaching experience, in my opinion. If he is enthusiastic about writing, then that's even better. Also, he can probably write about your abilities and qualifications in general -- after all, you probably had to compete for that job posting so he can talk about why you have been an asset for his department and why you would be a great asset for University X! I don't think it's a big deal at all that you did not take any classes with him.

Stefanka -- it likely depends on each school, but in general, I think it's the department that determines who gets accepted and who gets on the waitlist. After all, it's the department who has to balance its budget, not the dean's, so the department is the body that decides how many students are "too many". The graduate school office / dean's role is to make sure all students admitted/recommended actually meet University-wide guidelines (e.g. English language requirement, GRE scores, etc.) and to do all of the paperwork to formally enroll someone as a student.

Ah okay -- our department also fought for MSc funding and treats us really well too! After the principal said that, the reaction from all of the profs was encouraging. I believe this is probably true through most of campus, but it's unfortunate that the administration isn't so supportive!

I don't think you will be at a disadvantage to have to "catch up". Now that I reflect on my research experience as an undergrad, I realised that it took me months to do some things that would now take me just a week to finish. I believe that the biggest hurdle to "getting into research" is getting used to "real world problems" instead of just nice textbook examples in coursework. Once you have learned to critically think about what you're doing and how to read and communicate in your field, you can pick up other topics in the same field fairly quickly. And that's what the bachelor's degree is for! In my field in Canada, sometimes people think it's a step backwards if you switch projects/supervisors between your Masters thesis and PhD thesis. But, once you become a quasi-expert in one topic of a field, it is usually a lot easier to get to the same level in another topic! Like others said, by the time you finish your PhD, you should be THE expert on the topic. You should know more than your supervisor! As one of my profs here put it, your committee should go into your thesis defense hoping to learn something from you. However, in the sciences especially, it's pretty rare that people will continue to exclusively work on their PhD topic in the future. When I read my profs' CVs, most of them no longer work in the same topic. It is pretty common to develop a very specific skillset during your PhD and then use that experience and knowledge to solve other problems! Don't think of a PhD thesis as locking in your specialty for life. Instead, think of it as a way for you to develop independent research skills that you could use for the rest of your life. And as for relatedness of thesis chapters, many schools will now allow you to do a "manuscript thesis", where you "just staple" three (or so) papers you've written together and hand it in. I'm exaggerating here, a little -- you will have to justify some central theme to the 3 papers and probably write an intro and conclusion to wrap everything together, and format everything in thesis format. But the papers could have been submitted in different journals with different writing styles!

I used to go to Queen's University. It is definitely NOT a top ranking Canadian school. Maybe it's in the top 10, but that's not saying a lot in Canada since we have so few schools. I am also slightly biased because I really disliked the way the administration treated graduate students on campus. For example, the Principal (Scottish system, so a Principal instead of a President) visited our department one December and told us that in order to save money, we should stop funding Masters students. He said this knowing that Masters students were part of the meeting! Not funding MSc students in the US may be the norm, but in Canada, the regular path is BSc then 2 year MSc then 3 year PhD -- i.e. he was basically suggesting that the department stop funding students for the first 2 years of grad school! Anyways, I don't know how Queen's compares to WSU though, so maybe it's still a better choice. I'll also stop publicly ranting about Queen's but if you're interested, you can PM me for more details or questions. But I can tell you a bit about Kingston! It is a very historic city and it used to be Canada's capital. It's also nicknamed the Limestone City, and many of its buildings are made of beautiful limestone. In fact, many of the buildings are historic so they don't tear them down. So, there are beauty salons inside converted houses and your doctor's office might be in a house too. It's really really nice in the summer but not so great in the winter. It's on the shore of Lake Ontario, which sometimes freezes enough in the winter for you to skate on (at your own risk!). There are also a lot of good food places, all sorts of European and North American restaurants. Not so great for other kinds of foods though. It's also kind of nice that Kingston is 2-3 hours away from Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal (in different directions), so it's not too far from the big cities (but far enough that it's not super convenient to get there). This means sometimes big ticket shows that are touring in Toronto and Montreal will stop along the way and play in Kingston too. Some netural aspects -- it's a University town. There are about 120,000 residents and a good fraction of them are students! Between Queen's, the Royal Military College of Canada, and St. Lawrence College, I think it's something like 30,000 students. So there are lots of things to do at night during the school year. But I really think Universities towns are better suited for undergrads than grad students! Being a big university town means that the area near campus is very poorly maintained and landlords overcharge for rent! There's some tension between the residents and the students as well. There are some downsides too. It's definitely not a diverse town. Over 95% of its population is Caucasian, so it's very homogeneous. It's also where Canada puts most of its prisons, so when a convict is committed, the rest of their family moves to Kingston and then they usually all stay there after the sentence ends. So there are some bad areas in town. Kingston does have most of the major stores (except for ethnic groceries) but you kind of need a car to really get around. One of the worst parts is that it is really hard to get from Kingston to anywhere else that's not reachable by car. You basically have to get to Toronto or Montreal to fly anywhere. When I had to go to places on the west coast, the total travel time was about 14-16 hours. It would take about 3-4 hours to get to the airport (by bus) and due to bus schedules not lining up with the flight, I would usually have to wait around another 3-4 hours before my flight leaves. So more than half of the travel time is spent just getting out of Toronto! Although it wasn't all horrible, my wife and I were still very happy to get out of Kingston (and its cold winters) when I was finished my MSc! Your experience may be different though

I took 5 years to finish my Honours BSc in Canada. I was in a co-op program where you have to do 16-20 months of full time paid work in your field (either in research or industry) and 8 of those months must be during the school year (i.e. most people take a fall semester, winter semester, and 2-3 summers off to do this). During these work terms, you are also allowed to take 1 course per semester if you are working close enough to school. This was really helpful for me to gain more research experience (and LORs) when applying to grad school but also, the 16 months of full time work helped me pay my tuition. The majority of my classmates also took 5 years. Many of them were on the co-op track like me, but for many others, the extra time was because people changed their majors (or added a second major/minor), transferred from a non-degree college (after 2 years there), or couldn't take 5 courses per semester due to competing interests (usually having to work to pay for school, or involvement in student government, varsity, other responsibilities etc.). A small fraction actually did have enough credits to graduate after 4 years but took an extra year to get a better foundation for graduate schools. A lot of times, the 5th year was very light on courses and most of the time was spent on a research project / honours thesis. I was in a Physics undergrad program and pretty much every single one of my friends took 5 years. I don't think this hurt us at all and the department/school doesn't care as long as we retain full time status (3 courses/semester) and they would rather us take more time if we needed it to do well. All of us that took 5 years are now in MSc/PhD programs, Law school, or Med school, so I think it all worked out!

I think that "nepotism" matters. Maybe the word "nepotism" comes with negative connotations but I don't think this is a bad thing. I don't think graduate admissions, job hiring, etc. should be purely objective and based on data/stats. Like any other professional work environment, networking and connections matter. Academics who shy away from the concept of "selling yourself", being political, or actively cultivating connections are making a mistake, in my opinion. I think a good advisor will help his/her students cultivate these connections. For example, when their student is close to graduation and considering certain profs/schools for post-doc applications, a good advisor could invite these profs to give department seminars so that their student can have a chance to meet the people who may hire them in the future! Whenever possible, I would encourage students to get LORs from people who know profs at the school you are applying to. I don't think LORs are supposed to be read objectively, because unlike peer-reviewed referee reports, they are not anonymous. If the admissions committee wanted to hear an objective opinion of you, they would hide the name and affiliation of the recommender from themselves. But I am pretty sure that is not the norm! (Also, they would be able to figure it out pretty quickly anyways). LORs are supposed to be personal recommendation from a former/current supervisor. This is why it helps if your LOR writer is famous/well-known -- if you have impressed a leading scientist in the field, then it would mean a lot more to the admissions committee, I think. However, it's not always true to assume a letter from a famous scientist is better -- sometimes these big shots are very busy and have lots of students so they might write something pretty vague about you. I think it's far better to have a glowing personally crafted recommendation from a respectable professor that has supervsied your research. The ideal LOR would be from someone that the admissions committee have heard of. They would talk about your accomplishments and what made you stand out from their other students. They would hopefully rank you favourably (maybe top 5%? 10%?) out of all the students they've supervised. If one of their former students has gone to the same school as you're applying to, hopefully they can compare your favourably to that student too. If they have supervised people who are currently promising post-docs / young profs in the field, etc. they might compare you to those as well. They would also write about your personality -- are you easy to communicate with? easy to get along with? etc. But overall, I think the theme of the LOR is to compare you to some standard that the admissions committee would hopefully be familiar with. The way I see it, the objective/stats side of your application is from your test scores and GPA. But there are many students who look great on paper but lack the abilities to effectively perform research / succeed in academia. This is why developing good relationships with professors and getting LORs are important. The best way to show that you are a good researcher is not good grades or test scores, (or even publications, since it's not clear what your contribution would have been) but to have someone give examples of your ability.and accomplishments. That said, I don't think this is unprofessional. Unprofessional evaluation of LORs would be something like "Well, Dr. Joe made me look bad at my last conference talk so I'm going to reject his student! mwahhahaha!" or even worse discriminatory practices. But things like "All of Dr. Joe's former students have done really well and Dr. Joe really likes this kid -- sounds promising", or "Dr. Joe said the same great things about the last student of his we admitted and that guy turned out to be really useless -- better keep this in mind" are all professional and the whole point of LORs, in my opinion. And I also agree that I think profs call each other up (if they know them well) and ask about their students. I applied to several schools where my supervisors had connections (e.g. formerly held a job there) and when I visited, it was almost like meeting relatives you've heard your parents speak of but never met before. In addition, in interviews where the interviewers knew my former supervisors, they always had positive things to say and it helped break the ice sometimes too. In the beginning, I said I didn't think "nepotism" is a bad thing in academia but of course, that is only true if people remain professional. But I think it's a self-regulating process. If a supervisor is too generous with his/her praises, then they might not be worth as much anymore in the future. In addition, like the above poster said, having good connections doesn't automatically mean you will get an "in". Academics are professionals and you still have to be a good researcher to earn the strong LOR and their willingness to help you gain these connections.

It sounds like an appropriate email to me!

Unlike a PhD, a master's thesis does not have to be original research! The precise rules will depend on the school, but most places will not require Masters theses to even be publishable quality. Of course, if it is publishable material, that's much better! Instead, the goal is to demonstrate that you are able to perform research work and communicate what you did. Also, it is to show that you will be able of doing PhD quality work in the future. Many MSc theses are not going to be original work at all. Some MSc projects might just be redoing something that has already been done, but in a slightly different way. Or repeating previously completed work (with a code, experiment, protocol that is reliable) to get more data to analyse. Also, theses can be written in a more pedagogical way. I wrote mine so that a college student with only 1 (or 2) years of physics could understand. Again, if you have publishable work, it's better to do what juilletmercredi did and just write it for publication, but if not, you don't have to stress about "not having enough material" -- if there are page minimums (unusual I think), you can stretch your content by explaining more details. At my last school, the suggested length is no more than 100 double-spaced, thesis formatted (which wastes a lot of room) of content (including figures). Anyways, like the others said, you are close to being finished, so just work on finishing up the thesis. You don't have to worry too much about creating a masterpiece. Just get it finished!

I wouldn't really find this weird. Although I would not have done the same thing, I would not mind that if you had emailed everyone just a quick message to say hi and/or excited to meet everyone next weekend! (or whenever it was). If you tried to have a full conversation with everyone at once though...that might be strange. Like others above said, if I had received your email, I would be more surprised and annoyed at the school for not BCC'ing us (instead of at you). Actually, most of my schools last year did not BCC us, so I was able to figure out who else was going to attend some of the visit weekends before it started! Meeting each other is one of the most important parts of a visit weekend -- you want to make sure you like your cohorts as well as the school/current students and profs. After the visit, we traded contact info and we let each other know when we had made our decisions. You are just getting a head start

In Canada, you can carry over unused tuition tax credits from year to year (actually this is true for almost all of our tax credits). Maybe you can check if the IRS allows you to do the same thing?

Like others said, it really depends on the department. I think it's important to stand up for what you believe in -- personally, a career in academia is not worth compromising who I am. Also, keep in mind that what your department here thinks might not be how other departments you might apply to in the future might think. That said, it also depends on how far along you are in your grad career too. If you're a first year student, it might not be the best time to disrupt whatever the norm is at your department. On the other hand, if the norm is really bad, if you wait too long, the more likely you'll just be complacent with the way things happen. Find a balance that you are comfortable with, I guess. At my MSc program, I was the Department Steward for the TA Union. I didn't agree with everything that the Union was pushing for so like others said, I only participated in causes that I supported. However, I did bring up some cases where the Department were violating our Collective Bargaining Agreement and had some rather tense meetings with several profs and the department head. In one case, when I mentioned that students should be paid for attending a government mandated training workshop for [issue X] as it was an employee requirement and thus covered under the CBA, one prof accused me of not being supportive of [issue X] (which is obviously not true). There are some professors in the field whom I know to be not very nice people but I don't use that to judge the quality of their research. I try to separate their personal and professional aspects and I hope that those who don't agree with my beliefs will do the same for me.

I think it's important to ask to make sure you know how your department works. At my school, we don't get a research advisor right away. Instead, we are assigned an academic advisor for the first year. Before we attend, this person answers any questions we might have about the school. At the beginning of the year, they help us plan what courses we would need to take. We can also meet with them later on in the year for any academic reasons (like more questions about what courses to take etc.) So this might be the case for you! If you are not comfortable asking the person directly, maybe you could ask someone else in the department that you have had contact with.

I got a donation solicitation a few months ago from a school that I had applied to but never even attended as an undergrad or graduate student!

I agree with selecttext, whenever you talk to POIs, you should mention that you are bringing in funding. I think it's important because applications contain a lot of info and that piece of data might be missed or not known to someone not on the admissions committee. But I don't know how to randomly bring it up out of the blue! But bringing in funding doesn't mean you'll be favoured to get in. It depends on the source of your funding too. Sometimes external funding is correlated with admission because the funding comes from an agency that the school knows and trusts to pick out good candidates. I don't know the source of your funding -- it might not be as helpful if the schools don't know what it is! Even though the scholarship pays full fees and your stipend, you aren't 100% free to the school. It will cost the profs' time to train you and departments/profs have to pay overhead to the school for each student (supposedly it cover things like office space and other resources). If a department had to choose between a good student without external funding and a mediocre student with external funding, I think that most departments would choose to pay for the good student. I don't mean to imply that the OP isn't a good student, though!!! I just want to illustrate that having outside money alone isn't going to necessarily make a big difference in admission. There IS a correlation between students with external funding and students who are admitted but I think it's because the best students win fellowships, not because of the extra money. In addition, I see many departments that normally fully fund students now having a paragraph that explains they will NOT accept students who are "self-funded". I don't think it will hurt you if you say you are willing to pay for tuition yourself (unless you come off with an attitude of trying to buy your way into grad school), but it's probably not going to help.

I'm not sure that schools are really worried whether or not the students will see what their LOR writers write about them. Instead, I think the schools are actually worried about the LOR writers feeling unable to be honest because the LOR writer knows that their student might see the letter. So, the schools add requirements like "sealed envelope" or asking students to waive their right to see the letter under the Freedom of Information (or whatever it's called) Act in order to guarantee to the LOR writer that their letter will be "safe" and confidential. However, if the LOR writer chooses to share their letter with the student, then obviously the quality/accuracy LOR writer's letter isn't going to be negatively impacted by the fact that the student has seen it. Thus, while I still would not recommend someone to ask to submit a 4th letter and cite the reason that the current letter "isn't good enough", I don't think it's a big deal if the school finds out that a student has seen one or more of their LORs, with the permission of the author.