TakeruK

I also used Google Documents Spreadsheet so that the other TA and the prof could easily access the most up to date scores (without having to email back and forth countless revisions). The students get their assignments back and twice a term, I tell them their grade so far. I do this by exporting the spreadsheet into a different one, and hiding their name so it just lists student number and grade. I re-sort the spreadsheet so it goes highest grade to lowest grade, which prevents people from knowing that so-and-so has a last name beginning with Z so they must be the last person etc. The grades ordering also helps students know how they stand vs. the average. I suppose students can guess at the student number with the highest grade if they know their classmates well, but this is easy enough to do if they look at all the numbers anyways. I don't post this sheet though, I bring it to the next class and go around to each group, showing them this information. But I only have 20-30 students at a time so this is feasible -- if not then I would probably post it online, or if institutional rules prevent that, just ask students to request the information specifically from me.

It's up to you! No one will really care though, except it might be a conversation starter if someone reads your nametag. Since you're not presenting, it really isn't a big deal though. Listing your new school will help people who do meet you connect your name to your new place though Or you can leave it blank too!

I think if you phrase it properly, it's okay to ask for vacation time now, but probably better to ask on your first day or something (when they ask you if you have questions etc.) If they give you vacation days, then they should not care how/when you ask for them, it's something they have already given. (Similarly, if you have sick days and you have to take them because you are sick, you wouldn't feel bad for missing a day, so it's the same idea) But pinkrobot is right -- you will have to buy roundtrip tickets when you go home anyways! Also, depending on your lab/group, many people might not be around during the holidays anyways. A lot of times research schedules are pretty flexible and no one cares / keeps tracks of your days off as long as you do your work. So, that's another reason to wait until the semester at least starts and you get a feel of how yoour group works.

Also agree that you should never send anything more than what is asked for because they won't have time to look at it! You can mention the project in your SOP or CV too if you think it's necessary but your letter writers is teh best way to get this information out.

I know a few people who have done this. What they did was they first talked about it to their graduate coordinator to find out the process as well as any details about how the department normally handles things like this (it's more common than I had thought). Then they talked to their original supervisor first (with the grad coordinator as mediator), and then all of them approached the 2nd person. It's easier when everyone is on the same page, and then the two supervisors can sort out funding and stuff like that. Another route I see happening is for a person to start doing side projects with the 2nd supervisor, and slowly ease it to transition the side project to be their main thesis while the original work becomes a side project. However, this is more for switching projects / supervisors than adding one on, but maybe a modified approach could help too! This is coming from another Canadian graduate program so maybe departments are more similar here than others in the US. I feel like I could trust my graduate coordinator and department head to be a neutral third party that would keep my concerns confidential. So they would be my first point of contact if I had a problem that I didn't want my supervisor or other profs to know. Sometimes it might be scary but actually helpful if you also let your supervisor know about your issues -- but I don't actually know your full situation so I'm not trying to give advice, just stating something I've seen! Good luck

I spent about 20 hours total writing my SOPs for 8 applications (including time to make a specialized version for each school, but NOT including time spent thinking about my SOP -- that is 20 hours in front of a computer). I just wrote crap down for a first draft, just to get it all out there, and then spent a lot of time making it sound like a coherent statement instead of a brain dump. The only thing I changed for each school is the last paragraph about who/what I'm interested in at School X and why that department is good for me. Some schools had extra length requirements that required tighter editing or expanding on some points. I felt like I should spend enough time on the SOP to clearly show the department that I am a good fit for them and also that they are a good fit for me. Remember, you are also shopping around for schools, not just the other way around -- they want to know that you actually want to be at their school. I didn't try to hide the fact that I am using a template -- it's pretty clear from the way my SOP reads that I only edit the last paragraph for each school (for example, I don't even mention the program I'm applying to until near the end). I also try not to be too philosophical/cliche in saying things like "I always loved science as a child ... blah blah". I did have a few sentences to say why I am interested in science (solving mysteries). I say this because the departments have tons of SOPs to read and they KNOW we have tons of SOPs to write so they expect templates etc. (one school even gave a gentle reminder to not forget to actually use the right school name on the SOP submission page). Unless you are in a field where writing style is important, I think they read SOP primarily for content, not writing ability (and even so, I think thats what writing samples are for!). Of course, I'm not saying just do bullet points or neglect style altogether -- your content will be stronger with good writing, but I would say spend more time on content than style.

Although I haven't seen any really crazy stuff (e.g. screaming matches) from couples who are dating each other in the same department, I don't think I would view these people differently if I did see one. I think I can differentiate someone's social and professional life, even if they mix up sometimes. For example, at conferences or other social activities, I see people sometimes overindulging perhaps. But that doesn't make me think "oh well, so-and-so likes to get drunk, his or her research must not be that great", or "wow this presenter looks like they are having a hangover, no need to listen then!". Sure it's not 100% professional, especially if you show signs of it while presenting, but I don't think it really strongly affects how I feel about a person. The dangers to yourself I think are more important than your reputation, for dating in the same department, I think (e.g. how would you feel seeing them around all the time). I think outside of department is probably the same as dating a non-student, except with the benefit of them understanding grad school life. What about people who date before entering grad school and are in the same field? I don't think anyone will purposely avoid applying to the same programs as their partners!

I think a Pass would be as good as a B, probably. I say this because for many grad schools, a B is the minimum grade for a pass, and although this is for undergrad (I think), usually Universities expect their incoming students to at least get B's (3.0?). But the grade for any one course is probably not going to make or break things. I'd only change it to a Pass if I was going to get below a B, and if others think this way too, then you changing it to a Pass might make it look like you were expecting to get lower than a B.

This might be something that the system automatically puts up because you are flagged as an international student. Also, sometimes these "To-Do" lists on the application portals are not correct even -- one place said they never received my transcripts but when I emailed the admin staff to check, they said not to worry, the names didn't match up exactly so the system didn't automatically recognize it. A lot of schools I applied to (as a Canadian) also said that you need a TOEFL score of X in order to TA, unless you have a degree from an English speaking University. Another school asks if my native language is English in order to assess incoming students for TA positions -- English is my second language but it's the only language I can fluently read and write and speak at a level better than a polite 6 year old. When I asked the admin staff about this, they said to just put English as a native language anyways. I would write an email to either the department admissions staff people and/or the graduate school admissions office to clarify!

Nice! I had to fill out a W8BEN for 2 out of the 3 schools I visited to get the reimbursement. My friend said that although he would have owed about $2200 in taxes, he got all but ~$300 back. He said that the treaty is for federal taxes only (so he still had to pay state tax -- he's in California). But I don't know if the approximate number he gave was federal+state or just federal. (Also it's great that your letter spells out the tax amount so clearly...I wish mine did too so I can budget accordingly But if it's 14% across the board like your letter says then that's helpful info too.)

One perk of grad school is that you can usually choose how much time to put into it, with the exception of attending courses or seminars I guess. I am married and my wife moved (and will move again) with me for my education so I make sure I am spending a fair amount of time with her. I treat grad school like a job and usually work ~50 hours a week (9-5 or so on weekdays, and a little bit on weekends or evenings). When I had courses, studying for finals and doing assignments took more time, but otherwise I tried to keep away from any kind of school work at 5 or 6pm (at this time my responsibilities become cooking dinner and doing chores around the house!). My idea of a social life is probably about one night a week at the pub with my friends, the occasional party or dinner party, and doing stuff with my wife (seeing a movie or show, day or weekend trips to things etc.), and I never feel like school gets in the way of this. I think I am doing well at school too, good GPA, making the expected progress on my thesis, etc. Note: Although I admit that all my friends here are also grad students at the school....but I'm only here for 2 years, and there seems be a huge split in the local vs. university population. But I think it might be a common thing that most grad students have time for a social life, but most of it revolves around people at school (this may be by choice, but it does take less time for a social life with other grad students than with "real people").

On applications, whenever something is "optional", I always interpret it as "Only do it if helps you". So if your overall GPA is lower with the final transcript, don't send it in, unless you really want to show that you have a certain grade in a certain course or something. As long as you still meet the admission requirements in the end, it should be okay. Good luck!

Before I applied to PhD programs, I sent an email to profs that I was interested in at each school, said I am applying for Fall 2012, said that I'm interested in their research and confirmed that they are still interested in these problems (as research websites could be fairly out of date). Then I also said that I'm interested in working with them and whether or not they would be taking on students that are joining in the Fall 2012 cohort. Not everyone responded, but most of them interpreted this as a less blunt "do you have funding" question and answered it that way. One person said that they would be interested in me, encouraged me to apply but warned that he currently has no grant to cover the work I wanted to do with him, so that I would have to do TAships until we applied and won a grant together. So it seems like asking if they are going to take on students in the future is an indirect way of asking about funding. When I visited profs for my MSc programs, they usually took the initiative to tell me about their funding status. My current supervisor handed me a copy of his NSERC grant proposal and said that he recently applied and won this grant. It was also a good way to summarize all his research interests for the next few years! I understand that some profs may not like to talk about it, but most should understand that we need financial stability. If I had to choose one or the other, I'd rather offend a PI by appearing to be appropriately concerned about money than do science that I love but won't feed my family. I actually asked about funding to POIs during my visits this year and I didn't run into any problems, I phrased the question something like, "Does your group have funding to take on thesis students in the Fall 2012 cohort, and how many do you think you will take on?" I didn't want to choose a school because I really wanted to work with Prof X. but then find out after arriving that Prof X. isn't taking on students right now etc.

Syllabi may be easily available in courses where lots of reading is required (it says your program is English, so I will assume that is your case), but for others who may read this general forum, organization of graduate courses may be very informal, especially in the physical sciences. The prof may not have prepared our syllabus until the first day of class (other than an email possibly to say what textbook we will be using) and most of the time, we won't have time to cover everything on the syllabus. Also, most profs I know are not in "2012-2013 mode" yet, that is, they probably have not prepared/decided on the material in the courses (and in some cases, the courses to be offered this fall aren't even decided yet). When I was in courses, I had recurring nightmares about my instructor! It's funny now though. One example nightmare was that all the students in the course were put into one big house (reality show style) owned by the instructor and each day, he would introduce challenges or other rules that were designed to make our lives harder.

You don't need to have a US address to open a US bank account: http://dan.matan.ca/US-Bank-Account-For-Canadians-Save-on-Currency-Exchange-Paypal -- I don't know how trustworthy this is, though! For the person thinking of opening a US dollar bank account, it might not be super useful. I recently opened a US Dollar Bank Account with Bank of Montreal, and it was handy to deposit the US cheques from school visit reimbursements without losing on the exchange rate (I'll withdraw the money in US funds when I make my move). However, although you can write cheques out of this account, they are Canadian Cheques for US Bank Accounts, and new US regulations will NOT allow you to cash these cheques at a US bank. So, you can only write them to transfer from one Canadian US-Dollar Bank Account to another -- not very useful. However, you mention that TD is in the US, and it sounds like an "internal transfer" is the best idea! I was just going to say thanks for this tip but then I checked and saw that TD Bank in America only has locations on the east coast =(

In talking to PhD students who are about to graduate (I'm in a masters program now) and their post-doc/real job hunting process, a huge fraction of the job applications do not ask for a transcript at all. Most of them have not submitted any, and a few have submitted 1 or 2 transcripts out of a dozen+ applications. When I visited Caltech for the PhD program, the advice I got was to aim for a B because that was a passing grade. An A is nice for our egos but it doesn't help us too much. Although this may be a comment on the quality of instruction as well (i.e. it's not worth trying hard since the courses may not be too great). Most people who go into PhD programs may be overachievers -- I think the advice is that if you are going to do more than the minimum/standard amount of work, put that extra effort into research!

Oh I didn't know it was US tax law to force tax deduction from your "paycheques". Cause even though federal tax rates are the same everywhere in Canada, not every employer has to deduct taxes directly from your paycheque. If you fill out the TD1 form and have enough tax credits, you can choose to not have taxes deducted and just pay the difference at the end. But from people I know, at some schools, some fellowships are not tax deducted when they are paid out, but you still have to pay tax on them when it's tax time. At the schools that do it this way, the current graduate students warned us about it so that we put away a bit of the paycheque each month to pay the tax in the end. However, for them, it worked out that they only had to pay a small amount anyways. Also I couldn't find the information online but when my Canadian friend filed taxes this year, he said apparently there IS some tax treaty between Canada and the US. But I have no details. The International Office I mentioned that gave tax advice hires a third party person/group to run the "tutorial" session, so they probably have some waiver thingy that excludes from liability!

Some more ideas. My father worked for Chrysler in the past (in the parts warehouse) and we get an employee discount on vehicles. However, like an above poster said, some dealers will inflate the price / haggle more conservatively knowing that we will get discounts, so that someone without employee pricing is likely to haggle the dealer down to about the same price. So, here is what we do, and a suggestion for you when you trade in your old car: Don't tell them you are trading in an old car. Find a car you like and negotiate a final price first. Then, bring up the fact that you want to trade in your old car as well. They might still try to undervalue your old car, but there's the "black book" (or whatever colour it is in the US) that lists standard trade in values, so they can't go too far off that. Also like any purchase, shop around and see what other dealers would offer. Another thing to consider was that when we were buying car insurance, the person told us that going uninsured for awhile makes things more complicated and might affect your rates. It sounds like you will be continuously having a car and insured, but for others, I don't think it's worth it to go carless for time periods on order of several months.

Are they asking for updated transcripts at this point? I had thought schools don't usually want the final final super official transcript until they've accepted you and you need it to officially register/enroll. Even if your GPA goes down a bit, it shouldn't matter too much, since for everyone else they had already accepted, they made the decision based on December/January transcripts anyways, so why should your case be different?

It ranges wildly. In 2010, I visited 3 schools in mid-February and I received 2 of my reimbursements by the end of March, and the last one took until the end of May!! It turns out that they needed a physical signature on a form and the prof that hosted my visit was away so he couldn't contact me until April to sort out the mailing of forms back and forth. This year, I received 2 of 3 reimbursements within 3 weeks of getting the material to them (I had to mail in receipts) but the last school took just under 2 months to get. Delays can happen because the claims first have to go through the department staff and they make sure everything is okay (i.e. you didn't try to claim things they didn't agree to reimburse) and that you have all your paperwork filled out. Then they send it on to the University's finance department who have their own auditors to check things out. If you combined personal travel with this, or if you visited multiple schools in one trip, they need to make sure that the split was done correctly. After they approve it, the University's Financial Office writes you a cheque and mails it to you, which could be slow -- I find that mail sent out of a University might take longer to get to the post office than dropping it off at the post office directly. I think I have a pretty good and clear system of submitting receipts so that everyone is happy -- I tape them onto a piece of blank white paper and write whatever notes/labels necessary on the paper beside the receipts -- but some places want loose receipts. This also lets me easily make a photocopy and/or a scan of the receipts for my own records in case they get lost, and also for the department staff to make a copy of it before sending onto the Financial office. To answer your question though, I would be concerned after 2 months and I would check in with whoever is responsible for reimbursements. For the last school this year, I emailed the person after about 3 weeks to check and they said that they had approved the claims and the Financial office has them now.

I find it super complicated too! I know that some schools' International offices actually have tax seminars, where you bring all your documents and tax forms and everyone fills out their forms together, led by some expert! I have a feeling those will be a huge lifesaver for me next Spring. And there should be a few other students in our position that we can ask for help. So we definitely won't be alone! I think this might be dependent on the school? Others have told me that if they are being paid for TA or RA, then taxes are withheld upfront so you might get some of it back when you file taxes. But if you are funded on a fellowship, you might get all of the money right away but then have to pay back taxes each year.

When my wife (at that time, not-yet-wife) and I first moved for my MSc program, it was a ~4500km/~3000 mi move across Canada. We didn't have much stuff so we just packed boxes in cars and drove out. Got IKEA furniture etc. at the new city (our place is pretty much an IKEA catalogue...we spent the first week building stuff -- we didn't have internet connected yet so it was a good way to pass the time). We invested in a nice bed because we figure we spend 1/3 of our life there and having a good rest makes a huge difference for us. Now, we're moving again, to the US and it's probably the same distance? Maybe further? Ironically, we will actually be closer to our hometown and families! But we have a bunch of furniture now (not too much though) and lots of useful kitchen stuff that make me feel like a mature grown-up. We mostly want to move the bed, because it was expensive and very comfortable! We are planning to do a U-Box move from U-Haul (rent a box for $80/month, load up the box here, they ship it over for $1500, we unload it on the other side). Including extra costs for taxes and renting a truck to load/unload our things, we expect a cost of $1800-$2000. This will probably be about $500 more expensive than trying to sell everything here (which will be hard because it's a college town so everyone else is selling / giving away their things too) and then buying everything again on the other side. But then we would have to rebuild all the IKEA furniture and not to mention we won't have a car to go around to buy /pickup everything. So we figure $500 is worth it for the convenience (and we get to keep all the things we like / are familiar with). We will be able to claim these expenses on our taxes and even if you add up all the total moving costs, including the flights, it will cost a little over $3000 for both of us. Not really budget friendly, but we can sell our car to help. Also we will be at the new place for ~5 years, so it feels better if we think about it as a cost of $300/year/person.

I also appreciate hearing about your/a different point of view and it is interesting and useful for me to realise/know how graduate schools work outside of Canada! Being paid as a salaried researcher is pretty good if you do get all of the benefits that the faculty get (but just less money) such as health benefits, vacation time, pay adjusted to cost of living, and so on. Some of the schools that offered salaried type funding packages do not offer health benefits at all (or they just offered a minimal coverage student health plan that is different than their other salaried positions), and some provides a tiny subsidy. Salaried positions tend to have benefits that cover dependents as well, but few schools have that. I would also be worried about how secure these benefits are -- usually funding is guaranteed for so many years, but I rarely see a guarantee in maintain the same standard of working conditions and benefits. If salaried graduate students were really treated like (very) junior faculty members with all the same benefits but scaled-down finances, that would be great! But it seems like some places scaled down the salary and forgot to include the other benefits that make a salaried position desirable (especially when with some lab work or in certain groups, hours aren't all that flexible). So sometimes, it could be more beneficial work as a contractor basically for your stipend. In fact, some schools in Canada now allow students who work as RAs to declare themselves as "self-employed" for tax reasons (i.e. you are a skilled person that the school contracts to do research work). I wouldn't want to count tuition as part of my salary even though the school pays it for me. This is because it's some arbitrary number. If tuition goes up but the school still covers it, it's not really a raise. Instead, I would consider the entire grad school experience (the mentorship, coursework, research experience) as a non-financial part of my benefits package or something. We do definitely get some equivalent monetary value (if we want to think about it that way) from our education as well, but I wouldn't say it's worth how much tuition really is (i.e. the international rate, since the difference is supposedly paid for by taxes for domestic students). It's good to keep in mind that our salary is only a little bit below a post-doc's -- I think your numbers are what I'd expect in my field too, unless you have one of those fancy fellowships. However, I'm surprised at the rate you quoted for assistant professors. In Canada, with a MSc, a lecturer at a non-research college can make at least $50k a year, with pay grades ranging up to $80k if you have a PhD and after working there for awhile. So I guess it's a bigger opportunity cost for me to go to school in the US where a Canadian MSc is pretty much worthless. There's no guarantee that I can get such a nice job in Canada though (but then again, no guarantee on post-doc or tenure track positions either). Sessional lecturers in Canada are generally paid by the course, at a rate of about $5000-$7000 per course, depending on the school (this is from people I know who did this). Assistant professors make at least $70-80k at UBC, though, with tenured professors having starting salaries close to 100k or more. Canadian public entities (e.g. universities) have to publish the names and salaries of all their employees who make over some threshold ($75k in some places, $100k in others) so this is how we know this information! Overall, yes, most places, at least in the physical sciences, do treat their salaried graduate students well and pay a reasonable rate. I am just worried about how secure this is due to the lack of detailed contracts etc. Some places do not have fair compensation packages at all, in my opinion, and would expect their salaried students to spend all their time working for the department. Finally I just want to note that although it may look like I'm complaining about the stipend package at the school(s) I'm currently at / will be attending in Fall 2012, the problems I mention are mostly from policies at other institutions. I mention this because signatures and profile information will change over time but these post contents will not! Of course, there are issues with every job/stipend package, and despite all my whining about the way things work in the US, I'm still pretty excited to be attending this Fall!! =)

I also agree that having a lab coordinator makes a huge difference! When I was an undergrad co-op research student at a medical physics (PET) lab, I only ever talked to my official advisor once every 2 weeks during group meetings. She was actually on sabbatical in Germany so it was through Skype and I only met her in person a handful of times!! My main advising was with the lab coordinator/manager who did her MSc with the same lab too. She knew about all the experiments that were going on and coordinated activities between the IT people, the neuroscientists and the physicists, set up meetings / job interviews, worked with ethics boards, and still found time to do her own research. The main structure was 2 students, 2 IT people, 2 research scientists (one in neuroscience, one in physics), and 3 lab technicians that actually run the scanner and do experiments.

I feel that sometimes a mentor relationship can evolve out of an advisor-student relationship. It might also be easier to have a mentor who is/was your advisor because they have spent a lot of time working with you and know your abilities well. But as others said, it's important to have a good relationship with other faculty as well and having more than one mentor is helpful. So I don't think it's neither appropriate nor inappropriate to have your advisor also be your mentor! It's up to both of you to choose