TakeruK

For MSc in the physical sciences in Canada, you should expect a stipend around $24k to $30k before tuition, based on what scholarships you may have. Here are some sample numbers from my applications this year and in the past: At Queen's: No fellowship: $24k, OGS: $29k, NSERC CGS/PGS M: $32k + $5k top-off. Tuition is just over $7k. At UBC: No fellowship: $23k, BC PGS or NSERC: $25.5k. Tuition and fees is just under $5k. You also get some yearly top-up if you have an NSERC. 2 years ago, McGill offered me $18k and the difference in Quebec- and out-of-province- tuition (so I would only pay the in-province tuition rate which is $2k). This year, Toronto offered minimum funding of $20k AFTER tuition and more if you have fellowships. But they only have astro direct-PhD programs. This is numbers for physics (because that's what I'm used to) but I would imagine most physical sciences are about the same ballpark. Usually if you search the department webpages, you might find something like this: http://www.phas.ubc....nancial-support Bottom line: Without scholarships, across Canada, MSc's get paid about $18k on average AFTER tuition, even though cost of living could vary considerably. You will get more with fellowships though, especially if you end up with an NSERC (which itself is valued at $17.3k or $17.5k for 1 year).

A great part about grad school, I think, is the ability to choose your workload. This is very evident here since different people have provided pretty different viewpoints! I know another person who chooses to work 16 hour days for a while, then does nothing for a week, and repeat. But you definitely get out what you put in, it's just up to you to decide what your goals are / what you want out of school and then put in the required effort. I really appreciated this freedom when I also planned a wedding during my first year of MSc and took ~1 month off in total to do this since the wedding was in BC and we were living in Ontario! Definitely agree that you have much more control over your workload when coursework is finished -- a main reason why I have so much control in the past two years is because of the low course workload. Next year, I expect to have a much higher workload (9 quarter courses and 2 research projects, with oral exams on these projects 1 year later) but then there are no more exams of any sort until I defend my PhD. So, including coursework, I am planning on a 60-70 hour work week for 2012-2013, and then 50-60 hours for the rest of the degree. When I visited, this seems to be what most of the other students had done / are doing as well, with outliers on both ends, of course. PS: A friend of mine started logging in hours for the last year and it was cool to see how the trend varies over time. I am planning to do this for my PhD program too, as a self-diagnostic (if I'm spending many hours in the office and not getting much done, it could be a sign I'm spending too much time doing things such as writing GradCafe posts! ) But it could also help me make sure I do spend enough (or not spend too much) time at work!

Yes -- there is a clause somewhere in the IRS documents (can't find it now, but maybe it's in the links above) that explicitly excludes F and J visa holders from the normal resident status for the first 5 years in the US. That is, normally, to be a resident for tax purposes, you basically have to be living in the US for 183 days out of the last year (with some weighting calculation for days in the last 2 and 3 years). However, F and J visa holders are always non-resident until 5 years has gone by, then we get the same treatment as everyone else....so most likely we can file as residents in our 6th tax year. A friend told me that once you are a resident though, you can go back and revise your last 5 years worth of tax returns and re-file as a resident and thus get all those tax credits back. He said he wasn't sure if it was actually legitimate, but his tax person did it for him and it worked. Maybe there were some other circumstances though.

Ethical reasons aside (someone else writing parts of your SOP for you would likely be unethical, and making major edits would be a grey area), I'm not sure paying for this would even be worth it. You do have to tweak your SOP slightly for each school so unless you plan to pay an editor to help with every SOP, you would probably write a generic/master SOP with an editor and then tweak each one yourself for each school. This could introduce inconsistent voice/styles from the parts that the editor helped you write vs. your own. I'm not sure about your field, but do graduate committees really care whether your SOP is a masterpiece of writing or not? I think they would judge it mostly for the content and as long as it's not horribly written, it won't send up any flags. With so many to read, I doubt that an individual SOP would be especially memorable unless it is really stunning, and I'm not sure even professional editorial services unfamiliar with graduate admissions could really do that. In addition, you will have to write many of these essays in the future. Applying to funding for a conference, workshop or summer school? Applying for summer schools themselves? Research proposals? Are you going to pay for this every time? It is an important skill for a researcher to be able to make a case for themselves/their work to an unknown audience in a concise manner. So now is as good a time to learn as any! Finally, I don't think it's worth it because you can get so much help for free online and from mentors/peers. You can see tons of example SOPs and some schools even explicitly say what they want to see. There are lots of articles with tips on what to mention. But most importantly, you would want someone who is actually familiar with the whole process to read it over -- for example, a mentor/supervisor/prof at your undergrad institution. My friends and I also read over each other's SOPs and while it may be "the blind leading the blind" here, it's good to get an outsider perspective on your own writing.

Hi, I'll try to answer your questions as best as I can -- my undergrad was in Physics & Astronomy, so while it's not the same field, there are many aspects that are similar across the Physical Sciences. But also please see some notes at the end of these answers. 1. Honours classes -- I would recommend that you take them. At UBC (just on the other side of the border!), every science major takes first year chemistry and most of us don't intend to major in Chemistry at all. Since it sounds like you are very sure about what you want to do, taking honours classes in first year will help you get much more out of your courses. This is also a good way to form good connections with other students and profs in your department. In addition, these classes will better prepare you for research and future chemistry courses. Personally, I think it's a little premature to worry about research at this stage (but I don't know you -- maybe it's not in your case). Unless you have something already set up, most profs do not take on freshman students as research assistants. Undergrad research is mostly done in the summer semester, and during your final year (honours/undergrad thesis). It is very rare for a student to get a research position after their first year and most don't get one until 2 or 3 years of completed coursework. I do notice that you said "3 years at UW" so maybe you have a bunch of IB or AP credits or something. My general advice is to focus on courses in the first 2 years, then worry about research. My undergrad had a policy of scaling the honours class average in a way to avoid negatively affecting our GPAs because we were in an honours course. So the average grade was pretty high. Your transcript will say Honours though, probably, so grad schools will see this. I think, for example, an 80% in an honours course is valued more than a 90% in a non-honours course, anyways. Exactly how much more is completely subjective. In Canada, the normal requirement for entry into grad school is an honours Bachelor's degree, but I don't know what it's like in the US. But that's what I mean when I say I think honours courses prepare you for research and graduate work better. 2) and 3) -- I can't really answer this for you since I don't know the field! Sorry. 4) I don't think there is much you can do now to prepare yourself for something after your PhD -- it's a long ways away. You could consider going into applied science instead of science though. When you start UW though, there would be much more information -- UW will probably have info sessions about careers in chemistry and probably have people in industry come in. You can try to get co-op or summer work placements in industrial positions instead of academic ones. But I'm sure others in the forum can help you with this better. 5) Again, I will defer this one to someone actually in Chemistry 6) I honestly think getting your name on publications is a matter of luck. You can do good work in one group and the project might not go anywhere soon so no publication. But you can do just as good work in another group and if the timing is right, you'll be in many papers! This is from experience -- my first co-op work placement was with a group that had been working on a telescope for the past 8 years. I had joined the group when they were near the end stage of the analysis work, so I helped with that and they published all their data and analysis soon after and I was on the publications where I contributed. If I had joined the group a year earlier though, my contributions may be less remembered/out-dated since I wouldn't be there to be revising them as we learned new things and the publications would have come much later, maybe not in time for my first round of grad school applications. The best answer to this is to put 100% effort in all research work you do and have the attitude that you expect papers out of it. If you work with the idea of doing good science in mind, the papers will come naturally. If you do end up with a choice between research placements, you can try to gauge your chances of getting a paper based on how often your supervisor/group has published in the past, and whether they are young and active or getting old and closer to retirement. 7. Check with the schools that you want to apply to for graduate studies. You probably don't have to worry about GREs right now though? Just as an example, I checked UW Chemistry grad program, and they don't require a Subject GRE at all. I think it's unusual for an applicant to have more than 1 subject GRE. Even in a cross disciplined field such as Planetary Science, most schools I applied to gave me the option of taking ANY subject test that is related to the field. I'm not sure why you would need to take the Math subject GRE -- it's not like the SATs where you would take a Math Subject test to demonstrate your proficiency in Math. The related subject GRE test will be enough to show that you can do the math at the level required, for example. I hope those general grad school answers were helpful. But I think it may be a little premature to think about grad school before even starting your undergrad! It's good that you have a long term goal to aim for and that you seem to know what you want to study. Based on this one post only, it sounds like you want to optimize your undergrad experience for one goal only -- to get into a great PhD program for chem/biochem. I would instead advise that new undergraduates be a little bit more open, or at least set themselves up in a way to not put all their eggs in one basket, so to speak. It may be unlikely, but what if you decide that you no longer want to enter a high ranked PhD program 3 years down the road? It may make sense to plan your courses and time to allow for other opportunities as well. Finally, the last piece of advice is that you don't have to do all your research in your subfield to get into a good grad school. I think the best decision I ever made in undergrad, in terms of getting into grad school, was to enter the co-op work placement program at UBC. I took 3 years of courses, then took 16 months "off" (in the co-op program, I still registered as a full time student) to do full time research work (in my case, both on campus but it didn't have to be), and then did my final year of courses and honours thesis. I worked for 8 months in extragalactic research, then 8 months in medical physics (PET), and my honours thesis was the only thing in my subfield -- planetary science. At some level, graduate schools value breadth as well as depth, so fine-tuning/focussing all your energies in undergrad on one thing may not be the best.

Thanks, I'll be sure to keep a record of my moving expenses too!

I don't see how any of the above examples you listed counts as "cheating", or even "colouring outside the lines". A student that changes margins, uses extra whitespace, fluff words, whatever, to make a 4 page essay into a 6 page essay would end up with a lower quality essay than an essay written to fill 6 pages. If the student is able to write an excellent quality paper in only 4 pages, and then expands it to 6 pages -- well then I think that student deserves the marks (i.e. it is silly to mark an essay based on its length rather than its quality). A late/un-prepared student will suffer in their work. If they don't, sure they won't leave a good impression on their TA/instructor, but it's their prerogative to do so. Same thing with the late appointments -- it's a bad trait, but their prerogative, it's not "cheating". As for the library book thing, if the library doesn't have a rule against holding a book for the whole term, then it's okay too. It's common practice everywhere I've been for students to check out a course textbook to avoid paying high fees to buy it. Usually libraries have a rule where if another student requests it, then the current holder must return the book in 48 hours or whatever. A graduate student could reasonably say that the restriction on employment outside of school time is unreasonable/unjust. If I ever felt like I needed to take part time work, I would of course discuss it with the department first -- if they refuse, then I would explain how I spend my time is my business -- I am upholding my end of the contract as long as I make satisfactory progress in my PhD. In other words, I believe that any such contracts only have "jurisdiction" over the academic part of my life, not everything I do. If they still refused, then I would take the work anyways and accept the consequences of breaching the contract. It will probably end badly for me, but I would fight it. Obviously I would only go this route if it meant I ran out of money (and thus would quit school anyways), not just because I wanted extra spending money. But it is my belief that just the fact that something is a rule (or law) does not make it justified. The way to change unreasonable/unjust rules is to go do something to challenge it. Again, to be clear, I think the unjust part is that these funding contracts want to control how you spend your time even outside of academia.

For me, I am working way less than I did in undergrad. In undergrad, I spent 18-20 hours a week in classes, worked one evening a week at a tutorial centre, volunteered 2 nights a week with a youth group, took Friday night and half of either Saturday or Sunday off. The rest of the time was homework and undergrad thesis. Now in grad school, I work regular hours, about 9 to 5 and I don't usually work on weekends, except when I am taking classes and have homework. I always try to never work when I'm home with my wife in the evening -- I do chores, cook dinner, spend time with her etc. However, in the last few months, I've been working ~3-5 hours on the weekend because I'm near the end of my MSc. Overall, I work about ~45 hours per week on research and related TA activities (i.e. what I'm "paid" to do). For coursework, it adds an average of 10-20 hours per week on top of that, depending on the time of year. But my school has a relativity low course requirement for masters students -- we have to complete 4 half-year courses in 2 years. But since the profs know this, they really pile on the assignments. In general, I would say my graduate courseload is equal to about 60% of my undergraduate courseload. And for stress comparison, I feel that in undergrad, my stress / pressure level varies wildly between beginning of term vs. end of term, while as a grad student, I feel that the workload is very constant. There is slightly higher workload at a big final (but it's only 1 or 2 exams, not 5 at once!) and at conference deadlines. Because I am living with my wife, who moved across the country with me for my school, I avoid burning out by not taking my work home with me (unless really necessary for deadlines) so once I leave the office, I turn off "research mode" until I get back in the next morning! Also, when it's time to go home, I go home -- my simulations will still be there tomorrow morning. Ironically, this is not true in the last 2 weeks due to a very upcoming deadline, but that's my general philosophy.

Thanks for the TurboTax.com suggestion. I was worried about the size of the tax payment because the amount of taxes I pay and whether or not I'd get it back determines whether the stipend is enough to live on or not! But in recent good news, I received an award from Canada, so while my total funding package will be adjusted so my stipend is the same, this splits my income across 2 countries and hopefully this means I will owe less tax to each country...but more paperwork!

Yes you are right -- what I'm saying may not apply to you and your current situation. I was writing about the idea of TAing/working for free in general. Everyone indeed should do what is best for them. I write my views on this thread because I think it's best for me (and in my opinion, graduate students in general) if other students do not work for free and cheapen/devalue my labour. Sure, we may not be at the same school (I don't know where you are) so your decisions may not directly impact me. But if more and more students decide to work for free, it will eventually directly or indirectly affect me. I understand your reasons because graduate students do not generally get to teach very much in the physical sciences. I would really like that experience for myself as well. However, because students like us desire the opportunity to teach so much, we are liable to get exploited. Instead of paying us in actual money, the University can pay us with "teaching experience" instead, even though they normally do pay graduate students with both actual money and "teaching experience" for people funded with TAs. I am glad that conditions are good for graduate students at your school right now. Generally, physical science graduate students are treated very well, much better than our peers in humanities or social sciences. However, things may not always stay this good. Doing things like working for free sets a precedent for the University to exploit students if things get worse and they start overworking graduate students. But at least in the short term, it sounds like everything is fine. It's good that there is a graduate student association that can communicate well with the administration, and it's good that you would be able to push for change if things go bad. But that means things have to go bad first and when working rights are given up, they are generally much harder to get back. In Canada, all major universities have unionized their TAs (and for some places TFs and RAs as well). So almost everyone in Canada has structured contracts that define our "job description" as TAs, RAs, and TFs. This ensures that every graduate student gets the same working rights, no matter what discipline nor who their TA supervisor is. Everyone has the same sick leave policy, the same conference leave policy, the same parental/maternity leave, etc. At the beginning of each TA assignment, we sit down with the prof and draw up a rough outline of how I'm expected to spend my hours. For example, if I'm assigned 3 hours per week to grade, then I know how to pace myself and whether I can write detailed explanations in graded assignments or simply write down a mark. This also allows me to plan how many office hours I want to hold, and ensures that time for administrative things such as the meeting, training sessions, time spent reading the lab manual, time spent entering grades, etc. are all accounted for. This allows me to schedule my own responsibilities such as studying for exams, doing research -- I won't be surprised with a sudden expectation to spend 20 hours marking midterms one week. We are supposed to keep track of our hours and stop working when we run out (the prof then decides to either pay us more or do the work themself) -- however we aren't very rigorous about it and just aim to be within the contract by ~10% of the hours, and we reassess the time budget during the term to make sure the we aren't going to run out of hours in the middle of the contract (i.e. if hours are being used up too fast, maybe the number of office hours will be reduced, or the number of assignments, or the we would have to spend less time marking in the future, etc.) So, for me, despite how much I really do want teaching experience, I'm not going to do it for free. The cost to my job security and those of my peers (present and future) is too high. Maybe right now, with the current situation in your department, you are getting what you want out of the situation without much harm (if any) to yourself or your peers. But in general, I am getting the feeling that graduate students in the US are paid like the faculty members. That is, we get some stipend and then we are expected to devote our time working in the department, whether it's research, teaching, etc. (similar to how profs don't get paid per course, they are paid a salary to compensate for all services such as teaching, admin, research, and so on). The only difference is that profs get paid a much more reasonable salary, work benefits, reasonable expectations on hours to work, and they have some kind of job security (that is, they actually have a job while we are training in hopes of getting one). (Although I can see untenured profs working their butts off but again, they are doing it for an actual tenured position while we are just doing this in hopes of eventually getting one!). I'm expecting quite a bit of a work-culture shock when I start a US PhD program! It would be nice to be a part of a union so that we have legal recourse and protections (contracts, right to negotiate our working conditions) not available to graduate student associations. But I have not heard of any US schools with unions for their students (a lot of places don't even consider us as employees!).

That article was based on a Wall Street Journal publication of US Census data. It shows that 0.0% of people with astronomy majors in their bachelor's degree are unemployed. That may be true but that doesn't include all the information! Firstly, I think employed on the census simply means "have a job", not necessarily meaning working in astronomy -- it could be a McDonalds worker and still count. In addition, you can see the popularity rank of each major -- Astronomy is very near the bottom. In fact, almost all of the low popularity majors have 0.0% unemployment rates. I am thinking this means there aren't a lot of astronomy majors in the census so it could be a low number statistics effect too! Both the image macro and the WSJ article were circulated through our department, it was amusing at least

In my undergrad department, they encouraged senior undergrads, especially those interested in research/grad school, to attend the weekly departmental seminars or colloquia talks. Usually most of the faculty will be there, and you should ask questions if you have them! There is usually a coffee/donut/tea time either before or after the talk. That could be a good way to talk to some of the profs without bothering them (since when they choose to go to coffee time, they are choosing to take a break instead of you coming into their office). But the best way is seamlessly integrate into the grad student/faculty group is to start doing research. In places I've been to, senior undergrads doing their thesis research are basically treated as grad students in-training, so you'll be a part of the "community".

However, let's say that next year, enrollment increases so that all class sizes increase by some small percentage. To use some concrete numbers, there used to be 500 students taking Basketweaving (BW) 101 and 10 TAs are assigned to grade assignments and run tutorials for BW101. Next year, for some reason, there is a 10% overall increase in freshman student population (perhaps the University is expanding), so now there are 550 students in BW 101. To keep the same TA:student ratio, BW 101 now needs 11 TAs. The BW department can't just move a TA from another course to BW101 because enrollment has increased across the board. So, without free TAs, the department has two choices: 1) Spend the same budget on TAs so now each of the 10 TAs for BW101 has a higher workload. This means they either have to work more hours for the same pay (i.e. a pay cut), or spend less time on each student, which results in decreased education quality for BW101 students. or 2) Plan for these increases by increasing their budget accordingly, which may include increasing graduate student class size etc. so that they have 11 TAs available for BW101, or paying the current 10 TAs more to cover the additional hours of work. Basically, in order to teach more students at the same quality of education, they have to spend more. But with free TAs, the department can just get someone to work as the 11th TA for free. So now the school/department gets the best of both worlds: they increase their income and "production" (more students = more tuition collected = more graduates etc.) without having to pay for it. They don't have to pay for it because TAs are willing to work for free and absorb the cost for the school. Even though the need for TAs are growing, they don't have to grow their employees -- their current grad students can just work harder. This is a serious issue and some of the financial offers I had this year had many strange clauses because of things related to this. For example, one place said that I would be expected to TA for X amount of courses because that is where my stipend money is coming from. That's fine. But then it says, if I choose to TA further courses, I would "get to" keep half of the extra money paid to me for that TAship (they would decrease some other part of stipend equal to the other half of my TAship). Another school said that although I will have TA contracts with X hours to work per term, my course supervisor will ignore those numbers and I'd be expected to work as much as the supervisor expects. It might even one day become the expectation that "good" students will always volunteer to TA for free (or work more hours than they are paid for). If you don't, then you aren't considered a student who is serious about education. If you don't, then you won't get a good LOR for your post-docs. If you don't, your relationship with the department or your PhD committee could be strained. I feel that by working for free, you are lowering the working conditions for both yourself and your peers and devaluing your skills. You may contribute to preventing future graduate student positions from opening up. You are allowing the department/University to get the benefits of additional graduate student labour without paying for it (or to spend it on something else instead). But, this free labour may not even benefit your department -- if the University sees that fewer paid TA positions are needed for your department, instead of spending money in your department to deal with larger class sizes, the University can spend that money elsewhere.

I'm moving from Eastern Canada, so a little further than Chicago even! We are planning on using U-Haul's "U-Box" service: http://www.uhaul.com/Ubox/ It will cost us about $1500 to transport 1 box and the cost of renting those boxes is $80/month/box (or portion thereof). They will keep the box on their site until you ask them to ship it, and then keep it at their destination site until you either pick it up or ask them to bring it to you (for a cost). But it's convenient storage and transport all in one. Maybe it will be cheaper for moving within the US. We figure that using U-Box will cost us about $400-$500 more than selling all our furniture, small kitchen appliances, pots & pans and then buying it again in Pasadena. But, we won't have a car in Pasadena and getting all the things again would be a major pain -- probably worth the extra $500.

It depends on if you will be busy this fall (i.e. last year of school) and how much prep you need. Taking it "early" will NOT count against you -- all they will care about is whether the scores are valid, and test scores are valid for 5 years. So even if you took it a year or two ago, it would have been fine. It was convenient for me to take my General GRE in June 2011 and subject GRE in November 2011 and my first applications were due in Dec 2011. Scores for my subject GRE were sent to my schools in mid- to late December even though some applications had due dates of Dec 1. My schools didn't care (and I'm guessing most others won't too) that the scores were not ready when I submitted everything else as long as they knew the scores were coming. Most of my programs don't even look at the applications until January though. So, earlier is better because you get it out of the way and you may be less busy in the summer. However, just to be clear, you can still write the GRE in September, October, and maybe even November for applications due in December, if that's better for your timeline.

Upon rereading my post, I think I was expressing my opinion more strongly than I had intended! If both of you have the same goals for career and family, which it sounds like you do, then it does sound like you're making the best decision for yourselves! But to continue playing devil's advocate/being pessimistic.......(if you want me to stop, let me know; otherwise I hope it's helpful to think about these things?) I don't think that "not getting into the best program" = "fail" (i.e. when you say "if one of us is bound to fail"), unless your goals really are to be the best you can be in your field. And the other thing to point out is that while we do see successful couples at the same school/department, this may be an observation bias, I think. That is, there may be any number of couples who don't end up in this position for every couple we do see -- but we don't observe the "unsuccessful" couples! I worked in a lab that hired two post-docs (who were about to be married) just as I was finishing though Wikipedia informs me that senior med students apply for residencies at the beginning of year 4 and find out in March. I guess you are certain you can finish a NYU PhD in 4 years then? Even if you finish in 4, you will also be applying to post docs at the same time she applies for residencies. I don't know if this is true in all fields, but in physics/astro, the unofficial decision deadline for post docs is Feb 15. So she won't know where you got in when she is applying for residencies. However, if you take 5 years (intentionally or not) to complete, then she will start her residency first and you can then apply to all the post doc positions in that city. It would be a big constraint for you since in any given city, there's probably more resident positions than post-docs, I would imagine. But like you said, if you have a strong PhD, then you increase your chances to getting one of those few positions! Of course, you could also continue to do long distance. Okay that's enough pessimism from me! I'm not usually this much of a downer, I promise But if you still feel good about your plans even after considering the most pessimistic outcomes, then it's probably a really good plan. And even though there is something negative about all three choices, there is also something positive about each of those three choices you have too, so GOOD LUCK!

Sounds like you are in a really tough situation, because the only way to be in the same place is for one person to give up their best acceptance, which is never a fair thing to ask of another person. Even though it sounds like you are already leaning towards the long distance choice, which probably means you have considered these things below already, I'll mention them anyways (maybe it will help someone else making a similar decision): Firstly, I think the real question is what are both of your goals for the next ~4-6 years. Do you both want to prioritize your career ahead of everything else, even relationships and family? I don't know how old you both are -- maybe you aren't planning on things like having kids or buying a place together etc. in the next ~5 years. But remember that ~5 years is a long way away, and this is kind of a "lock in" situation -- if you decide 2 years from now that you rather start a family sooner, it will be tough. Next, although you are making a decision for the next 4-6 years, you might want to think about what happens next as well. If you want to do the academic career, this means post-docs at several different places. For your girlfriend, she will do residencies, I think? What happens then -- are you both going to pick the best location for yourself again and do long distance? When will this end? Eventually, unless you are both incredibly lucky, chances are, one of you will have to pick the less-than-ideal choice for yourself in order to be in the same place as the other person. Maybe it does make sense to continue picking your best choice until one of you "makes it big" and then the other person can compromise. But how long will it take? Basically, I'm saying the reason the 2 body problem is so hard is that you will have to make choices like this again and again. So maybe your MD and PhD programs are only 4-5 more years, but you will be in the same position again at that time. And if by then you decide that you've had enough of the long distance and one of you chooses a less-than-optimal choice, would it have been better if that choice was made now? My opinion is that if one of you is prepared to compromise on the best decision for themselves down the line, eventually, then you might as well do it now and be happy during grad/medical school. Going to a non-top-ranked program is not necessarily the end of your career. And if I may be frank, since I don't even know you at all, but being together 6 years is more than enough time to know whether you want to be committed to each other, so you probably don't have to worry that one of you will give up your dreams and the relationship doesn't work out. I'm a family oriented person, and so is my wife, so I'm obviously biased towards a decision here. I'm not trying to say that it's better to be career oriented or to be family oriented, because it really really depends on you two. Just giving you some things to consider, since these were things my wife and I considered too. (Her decision was to stop going to school since she decided that a career would get in the way of what she really wants -- starting a family and raising kids). Finally, I want to say that from visiting schools and talking to other prospectives, there seems to be a "shame" in picking a school based on non-academic reasons. Obviously, academic reasons are the driving force behind going to grad/med school but you need to be happy too. If the best school for you is in an area of the country you don't like (weather, culture, distance from family, size, whatever), then those other reasons are perfectly legitimate factors to consider as well. Since my wife was going to move with me, our final decision was an even weight to academic fit and how much we liked the city/area and our ability to raise children during my PhD.

I visited in March for an open house but we will come back in end of July to find an apartment (in case we don't get a good place from Caltech housing). We will move all our things on Sept 1!! Exciting

It doesn't hurt to ask the other school if they will still take you. The guidelines are just guidelines, not actual laws or even a contract. If the other school says no, your home school won't know about it, so no harm done. If the other school says yes, and their offer (potentially different now) is acceptable to you, then you can let your home school know about your decision change. They won't be happy but you have to make the choice that is best for you. If the cost of upsetting people at your home school is reasonable for how much the new school is a better fit for you, then go for it.

My wife and I had a similar choice for my current program. We didn't have a choice C and our choice B is still in the same city (20-25 min bus ride because of the crappy bus system, but centrally located). My wife definitely did not want to live in the "A" option (i.e. in students-ville with tons of undergrads) and I didn't really want to either. We also considered where my wife would probably work -- being centrally located in the city makes it easier for her to get places. For you, choice B sounds promising because 20 mins isn't really that far away, and your boyfriend might be able to find work in either city/town (if he is looking for work). When we moved, my wife was finishing up her school and not planning to be a student any longer -- so it wouldn't make sense for her to be forced to continue living the student lifestyle. Since she moved to be with me, it did make more sense that we found a nice enough place that she could be comfortable in, so we are halfway between "students" and "real people".

I'm sorry to hear that, trr =( That makes things really tough. It would be really tough to balance the thought that students should not have to pay their own way for research/work related things with the fact that we really need to be doing these kinds of activities to further our own careers. And while it's true that everyone should be prepared to take a hit when it's that bad all around, this is effectively taking a "pay cut", which is always easier to give up than to take back, even when things get good again (if ever!). And not to mention this creates a barrier for those who don't have the personal income to attend conferences out of pocket! Best of luck to you though, in finding a way to get this great opportunity without breaking your bank account! Hope you find a place =)

I think international conference travel is only worth it when it's directly related to your (sub)-field. A trans-Atlantic flight alone adds ~1000 dollars on top of all the other costs! I'm not in your field so I don't know what this group is all about. 460 USD for registration is large, but not outrageous, if this is going to be a major conference. I've paid fees as high as 350 EUR (about 500 CAD at the time) but that was for a very large conference (>1500 participants). But all this was covered by my supervisor(s) grants, never out of pocket. Conferences are work trips that your school or supervisor sends you on, so they should pay your expenses. I think most of the time, a student attends a conference because either the supervisor says "hey, you should talk about your work at this meeting coming up" or the student finds out about an interesting conference and discusses it with the supervisor. I think it's rare that a student would try to attend a conference on their own. A former supervisor and mentor of mine advised me to never ever spend my personal money to attend a conference. If I was in your position, I would wait until a domestic conference closer to your field happens and present there. Get your supervisor involved if possible!

Because you are calling it "BSc" and "MSc" (instead of BS and MS) and you are talking about a funded masters program, it sounds like you are in a Canadian school? If so, the stigma of staying in the same place in Canada is less than in the US. I think it's because there are much fewer options for Canadians who are staying in Canada. I had asked my BSc supervisor about this too and he said it's really common for students to stay at the same school for their MSc (if it's a good research fit, as it is in your case) and go elsewhere for a PhD -- these students won't be at any disadvantage to those who go to another school for MSc and PhD.

I believe that when your supervisor/research group/school sends you to a conference, you are on a working trip. You are taking time away from your life and it's different than regularly working at your school (you may have to rearrange a lot of things, child- or pet- care being one example, but even other things like getting a contractor to come fix something, or recreational or volunteer commitments). Also, you are doing your supervisor/department/school a service by presenting your work -- you are getting them the "name brand recognition", so to speak. Sure, you also greatly benefit from this work experience, but you also benefit from your RA and TAships yet you are still paid for that. Since it's work, whenever I go to a conference, I think my necessary expenses should be fully compensated by your supervisor/department/school. Although my expenses while traveling would be more than it would cost if I had stayed home (e.g. meals), I feel it is justified for the inconvenience reasons listed above. I try to be reasonable though -- I won't spend $50+ on a meal, but I don't think my supervisor expects me to live on fast food to save money either. I definitely pay for alcohol and other frivolous things out of my own pocket though. And for air/bus/rail travel, I price things out in advance and search for the best prices, as if it were my own money. I always apply for every travel grant possible from the government, conference organizer, department, school, etc. to help my supervisor out. I'm not wasteful, but I'm not going to pay out of pocket for work. So, when it comes to a place to stay, I always choose the hotel suggested by the conference because there is a special rate. In my experience, these are not rip-offs (except for a meeting happening next month at a ski lodge) -- most of the time the cost is about 100-120 per night for a room that normally costs 160+ per night. In addition, I try to share a room with someone I know as often as possible (so far I have found a roommate every time). The suggested hotel is also usually where the conference is held, or is across the street or something similar. This allows you to spend more time actually attending the conference events, meeting people, etc. And again, on the convenience/comfort thing, it would be less ideal to stay at a stranger's place, or at a cheap place where you need rides every day. But since this thread exists, it seems like there are many instances where the student is expected to pay their own way to a conference? Are these conferences that their supervisors aren't willing to fund but the student feels it's in their own best interests to do so? Or is it uncommon for supervisors to pay for their students to attend conferences outside of the sciences? Or maybe some students prefer staying with a local and getting to know the area better? I just wrote this post thinking that people are looking for inexpensive places because they are expected to pay out of pocket but now I'm thinking that assumption could be wrong...but I'll post it anyways There was one conference that I had wanted to attend but I would need to secure funding from two sources. I suggested that I could cover a bit of the costs myself since I thought the conference would really help me improve my abilities and my supervisor advised me to never ever do that (saying that he made that mistake in the past) because I would be taken advantage of. In the end, I was fully funded from both profs, so it worked out

This is how I feel about my degree too. Well, at least I think it's like an "apprenticeship". The monetary pay is horrible (working out how much I take home after tuition deduction and dividing it by the number of hours I work....I make less than minimum wage!) but I am receiving valuable training (and courses, which are somewhat useful). From what I've seen and heard on this forum and visiting schools, it seems that it's easier to do this in Canada than the US. Canadian grad students are treated like employees -- most of us have TAships and/or RAships that are unionized. Most schools allow students to take 1 year off for maternity/paternal leave (unpaid of course, but without any negative impact in continued funding or academic status), get paid overtime for working holidays, etc. All of these are basic employee rights (in Canada). I treat homework as "not employed work" though, so I don't count time spent on homework as part of my 9-5 -- but I do count time spent in class, seminars, colloquia, etc. as part of my 9-5 though! I try to spend ~40 hours a week working on research, attending seminars, and TAing and try not to spend more than 10 hours a week at home doing homework. Thanks for sharing this