TakeruK

To the general question of "how to find an apartment when I can't go see it": Does the grad school have on-campus or off-campus housing for grad students? My current school has both and the on-campus housing is a commitment until next July but you can break the lease for a $300 fee, which is tiny compared to the rent in this area. The off-campus housing here only have a 1 month minimum stay and a 15 day notice to vacate after 1 month. So, many students from far away choose to live in school-owned housing while they look for an apartment to rent and/or a friend to share a 2-bedroom place with. Another option is to fly out ahead of time and look at places and sign a lease. Check what the standard notice-to-vacate is in Shreveport. You can ask the current grad students too. Last summer, to move for grad school, we flew out about 5-6 weeks before we were planning to move and spent a week looking at places and then signing a lease. It would usually cost about 1 month's rent for a trip like this but I think it's worth it in order to not get stuck with a dump for a whole year. I would personally never want to rent a place without seeing it! If you really can't go ahead of time at all and if you are unable to get grad housing (or it's not so easy to get out of) then maybe you can ask some of the current students very nicely to help you out?

I think if the application explicitly says that they will only accept 3 letters, then it would be unfair for them to accept a 4th letter from you but not everyone else. However, if you really feel that you will be rejected without the 4th letter, then you have nothing to lose by trying. But what do you mean by "kind of short" -- you don't have to be long winded to say great things. I'm assuming you were able to see it so as long as you feel your strongest points were included in the positive letter, then I'd wouldn't worry too much.

What I did was create a spreadsheet to help me properly compare numbers. You could use the online "cost of living" calculators, but I feel like the factors that they give might be some overall average that doesn't really affect the day-to-day life of a grad student (e.g. if we don't have cars or own property, we might not care about fuel costs, insurance or property taxes etc.). So, what I did was make a column for each school and start with the post-tuition stipend amount (since it's likely that they will deduct the tuition before you even take it home). Then, I researched how much fees you would have to pay, if any. For example, health insurance is a big variable -- at some schools, it's fully covered as part of the RAship, at others, it's just heavily subsidized. For me, I had to factor in the cost of dependent health insurance too and that really varied wildly from school to school. I also made an estimate of how much out-of-pocket expenses I should expect (but this is probably pretty small) since different health plans have different coverage and co-pays (one plan doesn't even cover prescription drugs at all and they can be quite costly!) Next, I subtracted the biggest cost, which is housing. Figure out what kind of place you would want to live in and then use something like padmapper to get an overall feel for how much you would expect to pay per month. Like crate says, this is the biggest factor in cost of living, especially for most grad students. If you really just want to quickly compare stipends, I would just compare the "take home stipend" minus "cost of housing" values for each school. But you can include small factors like fees above, or other things like cost of food -- however, unless you are considering e.g. Hawaii or Alaska, I don't think the cost of food will vary significantly (variation is probably less than $1000 per year between most places in the US). Finally, it might be worth it to factor in how much you plan to visit family etc. If you live far from a hub city airport, it can be quite costly to get to the airport!

The CGS Resolution is not binding at all and you shouldn't expect the offer to be valid until April 15 if you don't say anything. You will know if the school plans to use the CGS Resolution in your offer because as per the CGS Resolution, they must tell you about the CGS Resolution in your letter offer and either include it or the link to it Thus, if they don't include it, I would assume that they are choosing to not follow it. Boo! However, as you said, they might just be trying to lock people up right away. If so, extension requests are probably always approved -- they probably don't really want to gain any potential negative reputation as the "CGS Resolution breaker" so it's likely they would back down from any challenges but will hope that they can either lock up anyone who really wanted to go there or discourage anyone who was already thinking of another place. There's no accountability for following the CGS resolution but maybe we could publicly shame (e.g. on a website) the schools that have signed the resolution and are blatantly ignoring it (like this case). Currently, the only real "damage" done to violators is potentially harming their reputation, but that doesn't work if the cases are rare and no one hears about it. I'll even put my money where my mouth is -- if people are interested in following through with this website, I'll set something up.

Some places don't actually pay you more to TA more (they use the euphemism of calling it "part of our education, like our coursework"). It's far better to have money without strings attached (e.g. TAship) or with responsibilities that will help your career more (e.g. RAships). I'm not saying that TAing is a bad thing -- I love TAing and teaching. However, it's always better to have the choice to TA more instead of being obligated to. Also, I recognize it might be different in Psychology, but this also depends on your future career goals. If you are looking for an eventual teaching position, then more TAing where you lead discussions or even teach lectures is good but marking-type TA jobs aren't going to be that helpful. If your goal is a research based position, I get the sense that TAing is one of those things where it's bad if you don't have anything on your CV but more is definitely not better. Your CV would be better off spending that time doing research and getting more papers. If you're not sure what your goals will be, then I would try to keep my options open by having as few strings attached to my funding as possible, so that I could choose to do more research and/or teaching in the way that fits my goals. For the OP's dilemma, I personally would not choose to go to a school that would put me in debt. And Lisa44201 makes a good point of factoring in cost of living when comparing stipends instead of just the absolute dollar amounts!

I don't have a landline and my cell phone is my only phone. It's really inconvenient to sign up for things like utilities etc. when you don't have a phone. Smartphones aren't necessary but really useful, especially when traveling (for conferences etc.) If you want to save money, you can drop the data plan -- just get talk (and maybe text). You will probably have internet at home and you'll definitely have internet at work so you can always use wifi if you need to connect your phone to the internet for whatever reason (downloading apps?) At both my grad schools, texting was the most common way of getting in touch with our cohort-mates, and planning get-togethers so you might miss out or feel left out if you aren't able to receive texts. However, if your budget is really tight, then this is obviously not a necessary expense, but just something to think about. Finally, some schools have corporate discount rates with local phone and internet providers (or even banks). Most companies will accept a graduate TA or RA as proof of employment!

I agree that fit with the PI is the most important. If you really want to look at it with an economical point of view, having the right PI / project would set you up to be much more successful overall and you'll probably end up making more money in the long run. Alternatively, having the wrong PI can really make your life miserable and your ability to succeed/finish and your happiness/sanity is worth more than a few thousand in that first year (or even each year). As long as you can survive and not have to worry about affording rent or food or occasional treats to yourself, then I wouldn't put too much weight on the stipend.

This is what I think, but I don't have any evidence to back it up. It makes sense to me that the more prestigious the fellowship, the better it looks on the CV. Obviously, 1-year departmental fellowships are not as helpful as multi-year university-wide fellowships. Departmental fellowships are sometimes given to every single student that enters, and it's not really a "fellowship", but it's just money that the University has allocated to the Department to pay its grad students. Sometimes multi-year university-wide fellowships are awarded on the same basis -- for example, every International student from one of my old schools is awarded a fellowship that is equal to the difference in domestic and international tuition. In my opinion, I wouldn't use the "prestige" of internal awards to sway my decision. Some schools do have very competitive and prestigious internal awards but for the "CV effect" it might not do very good since others might not know about this internal award. There are some exceptions of course -- I think Harvard's Pierce Fellowship is very well known (a 1-year $18k award). I also think there's a huge difference between national fellowships (e.g. NSF) and internal fellowships. And usually you can take your national fellowship anywhere, so it wouldn't really factor into a decision either!

In my experience, most science PhDs are paid as RAs while they work on their own dissertation project. Usually, the RAship is whatever amount necessary to fulfill the difference between any other fellowships, TAships, and your actual stipend amount, and they are paid at some standardized hourly rate so your RA hours can be pretty arbitrary. For example, during my MSc, my RA contract was 20 hours per month. I obviously worked many more hours than that though. On the other hand, I know some other fields, you don't get paid for thesis work at all and your RAship is an extra project that may or may not be related to your own work. That's probably not the case here since your POI talked to you about starting work with them. In your case, it just sounds like your POI wants you to start school early. Most schools will pay you for starting early (and benefits should begin early too). You should definitely clarify this though.

The ironic thing with wine-infused wine gums? One version of the story is that wine gums were invented for recovering alcoholics!

It makes the most sense to go with the Department norm, but personally, I prefer first name. I am pretty sure that I want people to call me by my first name in every situation and most academics in my field do this too. I think that it's symbolically important for everyone in academia to be on a first-name basis, as a symbol of reducing hierarchy in academia (i.e. the idea that an idea should be treated equally in academia no matter if it came from prof or grad student or undergrad) and that we're all equals. The reality is not so, but I think enforcing the Dr./Prof. titles and the Mr./Ms./Mrs. titles will only further distance the faculty and the students. After all, scientific thought is all about challenging ideas and testing them rather than accepting the experts' opinions as fact. If a student is afraid to contradict a professor, it would only hurt academia.

In many cases, just being honest and saying something like "I am really interested in your program but I cannot make an informed decision until I hear back from other schools. Would you be able to extend the deadline by X weeks?" I think it's also okay to tell them that they are currently your top choice if you want. Pick X weeks to give yourself enough time but don't overdo it. At this point, I would put X=5 or 6 weeks but you can look up previous results to figure out when you expect to hear back from the other schools. You can even name the other schools if you want -- maybe they know how long those programs will take. I say pick a large enough "X" because it might be a bit awkward to ask for an additional extension if you underestimate X! Also, is your school on the CGS Resolution? http://www.cgsnet.org/ckfinder/userfiles/files/CGS_Resolution.pdf If they are a signee of that resolution, since they made you a financial offer, they should give you until April 15th to decide. However, the resolution is not a legally binding contract or anything, just a mutual agreement between all the signed schools. There are no formal imposed consequences for signed schools to go against the resolution, so it might not do much good to bring it up. But, maybe people should start some website that "shame" CGS resolution breakers! Sometimes schools will initially ask for a tighter deadline just to weed out people who already know they are no longer interested and will always grant extensions to those who are still interested enough to ask for one though!

From talking to my international student friends last year, Canadian immigration is really getting worse and worse, especially with our current government. There are backlogs of paperwork that are years and years long so they recently just wiped everything clean, meaning everyone had to reapply and lose their place in the "backlog line". In addition, they decided to start putting a limit on the number of applications for permanent residency that they would accept (something like 750), and it's not clear if it's "per year" or until they get through those 750. And it's true that it's really hard to get a professional job in Canada if your qualifications are international. Especially health care provider type jobs. It makes sense to make sure all health practitioners in Canada are certified to Canadian standards (which may or may not be different from the other countries) but the current system is designed to discourage outsiders rather than be there to support them in the transition to providing services for Canadians. One of my favourite fast food places in my hometown is run by a Chinese doctor who gave up trying to get re-certified after 10 years in the system and just went full time on his restaurant. His story has been in the news several times and many Canadians disappoint me by saying things like "Good, we don't want foreigners doing medicine on us!!!". Fortunately for this person, at least his business is a success but it's a sad story still.

It's normal and I think you should actually tell both schools that you want to do this. They will be much happier because although it's more work, it really does mean savings for both schools and yourself. I suggest that you should talk to both schools because there may be some rules/restrictions on which school can reimburse what and it's much easier for you to work with the admin staff on paperwork when everything is in the open.

I also agree with others and your friend who say that being silent isn't going to do anything. If the prof is not noticing that several students are dominating the discussion and if the students themselves don't notice, what's the chance that they will notice your silence? I can appreciate that Education might be a different field, and I also recognize the danger in letting a few voices dominate the discussion. I notice this when I was TAing for physics labs -- sometimes in group work, one student would totally dominate the discussion when I'm talking with their group about their experiment. I had to be careful to make sure to ask direct questions to the quieter group member(s) to make sure they can get their questions answered and to ensure they also knew the material. However, I think success in academia is more than just knowing the right things. You have to be able to present it well and be assertive. One prof described it to us as being "in your face" but I think that's taking it a bit too far. However, I do think in grad school, at conferences, in academia, we need to take action to make ourselves heard and seen. We cannot expect to simply do really good work and wait for others to notice us -- we need to tell others about the great stuff we're doing! So, back to your classroom example, what do you really hope to gain from refraining from discussions. Are you hoping the prof would realise, "Wait a minute, wildviolet used to talk all the time, but now she isn't. I wonder what's wrong?" or something like that? Why wait for someone to notice your inaction when you can be proactive and take action instead. In your shoes, I would go to your prof's office hours (or set up an appointment) and let them know your concerns about their class. They might not even be noticing it. Or if you really want to speak out, bring up the topic in the middle of class. Or you can just write this in an email or leave an anonymous note. When I taught in the past, I try to get feedback from my students. Sometimes it's helpful for a prof to send out an anonymous feedback form in the middle of the term. One format that I've seen work well is a simple page that says "Start _____" "Stop ______" "Continue _______", where students fill in the blank with something they want the instructor to start doing, stop doing, and keep doing. Another way is to assign a spokesperson for the class and have all the students email that person who will then forward to the prof, anonymously. This might work better in small classes or grad classes though. I'm usually not shy about being upfront to profs when I don't agree with what they are doing in class, so I tend to prefer to go to their office hours or write an email. I'm always respectful of it and I don't present it as a demand of changes, but rather, some feelings I have about the way the course is run and my ability to learn. I don't always expect change to happen, but I think it is important for instructors to receive direct feedback and for the students to shape the course into the experience that we want to have. So, while I agree that in grad school, students have to take more responsibility for their own learning, it is disappointing to hear about a case where the instructors seem to be completely unaware of the one-sided discussions!

With regards to "eliteness", the overall reputation and especially the undergrad program ranking of schools are not very important if you're going to try to pursue an academic career. The "eliteness" of the particular department/group you want to work with is far more important! That said, going back to general rankings, I've only recently learned that Northwestern is a highly ranked school. Before moving to the US (I'm from Canada), I have never heard of it in the same way as Cornell, John Hopkins, Berkeley, etc. I only found out that the school existed about a year ago. So maybe it isn't as well known outside of the US. But I'm just one sample/data point!

Working out the details could mean that they are figuring out exactly how they are going to fund you. Most optimistically, it means that they have nominated you for an internal fellowship/award and that hasn't been decided yet. Maybe profs are trying to fight for their favourite student to get a departmental award. Or maybe you are not involved in the award but depending on who it goes to, it could cause ripple effects downstream in terms of who gets TAs, who gets RAs, etc. It really does sound like you will be fully funded, but exactly how is the question. That's how I would interpret the situation, anyhow!

As for quotes in email signatures, I've seen them a lot in faculty emails (but never from grad students!) They usually come after the standard "signature block" (Prof Name/School/Phone#/Address etc.) that often get automatically added. One faculty member I know uses a quote from Carl Sagan and I have noticed it changes once or twice a year.

Whether or not your stipend is enough to live on really depends on the program, stipend, and city. I know that some U Hawaii students are going into debt to just survive while some students at Tucson, AZ are buying homes, on about the same stipend. So you should definitely ask this to current students (not the profs who might not really know what it's like) when you are visiting or emailing. In any case, saving up money before grad school is a great plan. Sometimes your stipend is paid out in 12 equal chunks but the startup costs can be pretty high!! Some schools have a no-fees, no-interest loan to help with this. For my wife and I, we will probably be losing money this year, until my wife gets her work authorization approved and finds a job (we're from Canada) but fortunately, we did save up some money during my MSc degree when we were living in a low-cost-of-living town!

For "non-professional" email, I usually just end it with my name, no closing. "Non-professional" to me means "internal" emails, e.g. a note to my supervisor, or an email to a colleague/friend. I only do this for the first email though -- for long email chains, I usually just type the message -- no greeting, no closing. One exception is when I am making a request of someone (e.g. asking for a class notes) then I usually sign it with "Thanks" even if it's "non-professional". For "professional" email, (i.e. mails outside of my department/school), then most of these are requests, so I use "Thanks". If I am responding to a request (usually answering a question), I use "Sincerely". I don't think I write very many external emails that are not one or the other, but I suppose I would occasionally use "Regards" or "Best wishes" or "Have a good day," or "See you soon" (if applicable).

Like others said, you should say that you can't fully commit right now without full funding information. I think very few grad students are ever offered a stipend large enough that it would be "greedy" to ask for more. Although I understand why some schools have to oversubscribe and can't promise funding until they know who's coming, it's really unfair -- would any of the faculty there have accepted their job offer without salary information? Sometimes schools ask/probe their candidate students in advance, in hopes of knowing who really wants to go here and who just applied as a "safety" so they can better gauge how many offers to actually make (they won't want to make too few offers and have everyone go elsewhere and then it's too late to get more people to come in). Two big questions are: 1. Are they giving you a deadline to reply? 2. Is this your top choice school/program? Scenarios: A: If there's no deadline and this isn't a top choice (i.e. you would attend other places if they gave you offers) Then just sit tight. Let them know that you are still waiting to hear back from other schools and you can't make a decision right now, especially not without financial information. If you're more interested in other places, then having the financial information right now isn't going to make a difference. In the end, if this is your only offer, you can just accept, see what the funding is, and if you don't like it / cannot live on it, then withdraw and apply again next year (or do something else completely -- the idea is that accepting now doesn't mean you're locked in). B: If there's no deadline but this is your top choice (i.e. you would attend this place if the funding is good enough) Then you could let them know that you really do want to go there but you can only do so if you are funded. Again, even if you accept the offer now, it is NOT legally binding -- after all you can always drop out of school whenever you want. You might lose any deposits but it's unlikely you have to make deposits until it's time to register for class. C: If there's no deadline but this is one of your top choices (i.e. you are strongly considering this place still) Then, I think you should wait and see what the other schools say. If you get funded offers elsewhere, tell this school about your offer and see if they can at least make you some kind of promise on funding if you do attend. If you end up not getting in anywhere else, then it's basically the same situation as B. D: If there's a deadline and this isn't a top choice Then this is probably a safety school for you and you would want to hold onto the offer until you get into somewhere else. So, I would ask for an extension -- they would probably give it to you since I think the main purpose is to weed out people who already know they are going elsewhere. Keep asking for extensions until you hear back positively from a better choice. Once you have a more favoured school, then you can decline this offer. If you don't get in anywhere else OR if they decline your request for extensions, then this is Scenario A -- just accept the offer and withdraw if you don't like the financial package, or if you get into a better school. E: If there's a deadline and this is your top choice, or it's one of your top choices. Then, I think you should let them know that you are very interested in going to this school and accept their offer. Again, you are not legally obligated to anything so you can withdraw at any time, including after finding out they don't have funding for you if that's the case. Also, if you end up getting accepted to another school that you end up liking better, withdraw from this first school. Basically, the bottom line, I think, is that accepting an offer is not a contract that you have to attend. (Unless it says so when you go to accept but I've not seen that before). The CGS resolution that requires you to go through some process to get out of this first school before accepting an offer from another school doesn't even apply since there is no funded offer here, so the CGS resolution doesn't apply. You would still have to formally withdraw from the original school, but you aren't usually even officially registered as a student until later on in the year. So it might be just as easy as writing a letter to the DGS stating that you no longer wish to attend their program.

Letting them know you are Canadian won't be a real difference in your admission decisions. However, if you end up going to a US program, be sure to let them / the International Office know that you are Canadian -- it will make immigration paperwork etc. much easier (for example, Canadians do NOT need a visa to enter the US, we just need to get F-1 or J-1 student status, which is much easier -- everything done online). Canadians might have advantages over other international students when applying because: 1. The Canadian schools and grading system may be more familiar to the US schools. 2. We are trained in mostly the same way as the US schools. But these factors should already be in your application because your transcripts etc. will show Canadian schools. Unless of course, you didn't go to school in Canada! Otherwise, everything else is the same -- Canadian tuition costs the same as any other nationality. There's no better funding unless for some reason, your school has a special award for just Canadians (I've never seen this). However, if you have finished one degree in Canada, you are usually eligible to apply to Canadian government funding, e.g. SSHRC, NSERC, CIHR. You can take NSERC awards outside of Canada, not 100% sure about the other two agencies! One last place where it might make a difference is during grad school visits. If you are in Canada now, once you are admitted, you can let them know that you aren't actually living in whatever country you used. Sometimes they don't invite/pay for international students to visit since a flight from Europe or Asia (for example) could be really expensive. But getting to the US from Canada isn't too much more work!

I think if the "opportunity cost" of an award is low (probably true since you probably have all these essays and stuff from PhD applications), you should apply to everything you're qualified for. Even if it doesn't represent a real increase in your own stipend, it still saves money somewhere! I'm not saying that you should be altruistic either, if your department saves money on you, it's in your own best interest! Here are some advantages: 1. Prestige of the award -- if it's a big name award, it will look good on a CV. Winning awards also helps you win more awards in the future (e.g. post-doc fellowships?). In addition, if you intend to stay in academia, a large part of your success will be your ability to write funding applications and succeed in getting them. If you have a proven history of securing funding, you will be much more attractive to people looking to hire junior faculty members or post-docs. You might even want to work for a "soft-money" institution in the future too. 2. Less cost to your advisor = more freedom. If your tuition/fees would have come out of your advisor's grant but now you have your own external funding, this can save your advisor a lot of money. In a program where you might not get matched up right away, this could help convince a prof to take you on as a student, since it will cost them a good deal less money. In addition, you might be able to have the freedom to pursue your own side-projects with other faculty members at your school or even elsewhere. 3. Less cost to your advisor/department = more benefits. Again, if you picked a good advisor/department, it's likely that the money saved by your advisor will go back to you in some way. Maybe they can buy you a nicer desk/computer/chair. Maybe they can use that money to buy out your TA requirements and you'll have more time to do research. Maybe they will be able to send you on more conferences, or you might not have to share rooms with as many people etc. Travel is expensive! So far, my total travel expenses in the last 2.5 years of grad school have totaled over $5000. If you are really lucky, you might even be able to negotiate your advisor to set aside some money in a "research fund" for you to use at your discretion. Maybe this is more likely if you get a large sum of external money when you're a proven researcher though, instead of just starting out. Personally, I would probably spend the time to apply to any award that is worth at least $10,000. But what is an acceptable "opportunity cost" for you could be different.

If I understand you correctly, jehane, you are saying that you would still be officially employed (under paid leave) from your old employer, in your home country, for the first few (days? weeks?) of your F-1 status in the US? My impression is that F-1 status prevents you from seeking employment in the US. If you are paid from someone in your home country, into a bank account in your home country, then I don't even think US Immigration or the IRS would even know about it. Of course, this does sound like a special situation so seeking advice from authorities, as you have done, is definitely the right course of action.

In addition, some employers can take advantage of their employees "stuck" in the H1B backlog, especially if they know the employee is trying to get a green card to stay in the US permanently. They can delay promotions or treat them as second-class employees because it's not like employees on H1B can leave the company and find a job elsewhere. Someone described the US Immigration system as a machine that prefers "reuniting families" over "bringing in foreign skills" and I think that does sound right, just from the anecdotes I've heard.