TakeruK

I second everything fuzzylogician advised. You can't really appeal the "verdict" that you cheated because 1) you did actually cheat and 2) you admitted to doing it. As advised above, your best path forward is to continue to be honest, accept the consequences and take steps to learn from this mistake. If you feel that the eventual punishment/consequences is not fair, then perhaps an appeal at that point would be warranted. The norms for punishment of this type varies a lot from school to school. At my school, for undergrads, if you cheated on an exam or a homework set, the usual steps are: 1) it gets reported to a University-wide committee to determine whether you are guilty of a violation, 2) steps are taken to correct the unfair advantage you gained by cheating---for example if you cheated on the exam, the points earned in that exam won't count towards your final grade, and 3) steps are taken to protect the community from your actions---so you might have to do something to demonstrate you learned. At my school, because of the stress levels similar to what you describe, the punishment for cheating is very rarely failing the course---you just get a zero on whatever sections you cheated on. However, this consequence is typical because most people will be honest about their mistake and actually take steps to remedy it. If you don't take responsibility for your actions and try to blame it on your stress, and not your own decisions, the punishment is generally more severe. That said, this policy at my school is very different than the policies at most places! Also, when you do apply to grad school, the admissions committee isn't going to care whether your punishment was failing the class, failing the exam, or just getting a lower grade. What they will care about is whether you have learned from the mistake and moved on. So fuzzylogician's advice is best: take responsibility and think about how this will look years down the line. The short-term consequences (repeating the class, for example) are going to be small compared to the long term affects.

This makes sense to me and I can't think of a reason why it would cause problems. (But again, I don't have experience with this). Good luck!

I started writing the above post, left for a few hours, and then saw that there were other replies in between. I feel like perhaps some additional clarification due to field differences could be useful. In my program, the route that 95% of students wanting to go on in academia take is something like: 1. Work hard and publish papers 2. You and your advisor feel like you are ready to move on 3. Apply for jobs (usually in Oct-Jan) 4. Get an offer (usually in Jan-Mar). If you don't get an offer, most students will stay another year, so go back to Step 1! 5. Check in with advisor/committee to see if you are ready to write; usually 3+ publications and job offer is a green light. 6. Write dissertation (April) 7. Defend (May) 8. Graduate! (June) 9. Either take the summer off, start postdoc early, or continue work at PhD school as a temporary postdoc during the summer (really depends on how much you need the summer income) 10. Start postdoc in the fall. Most people do not even start thinking about putting together a dissertation until they have a job offer in hand, and very few committees will refuse to let a student defend if they already have a post-PhD academic job offer. This is why it really feels like a final hoop to step through. Unlike other fields, we always publish first, and then put into dissertation, rather than the other way around. I know other fields will also defend first and then apply to jobs, so I will say that in those cases, it does also make more sense for a dissertation to be more than a "hoop" since the dissertation itself might be part of your application package.

I meant that the entire degree progress is a career qualification, not just the dissertation itself. I can't speak for all fields, but if you spend 5 years in a planetary science program and only produce 5 pages of material to put into a dissertation, I can't see how that would be enough to get the qualification. I also don't understand what you meant by requiring "effort" to produce a dissertation. I would say that the time spent writing a paper is also a lot of effort! I spent at least 100 hours writing each one of my published papers (just on the writing part, not counting the time it took to generate the analysis that goes into the paper. Each paper took up about 50-60 pages in the thesis format, yielding a ratio of ~2 hours per page of written text. This doesn't count the time it took to get everything in the right format (another 40 hours or so, or 0.2 hours per page). It took me about 40 hours of work to write those 15 ish pages of introductory and summary materials, so that's about the same ratio too. So I would really say that it's not like a "staple papers together" thesis is "easier" but it meant that the entire work of writing the text in my dissertation was spread over 4 years, instead of all in the last few months. Some people in my program do end up spending 2-3 months in their final year just writing because they did not publish any (or enough) papers and needed to write whole chapters on their work in progress. Ultimately, what I mean when I say it's just a "checkbox" is that there is nothing inherent in the dissertation writing process that is necessary to produce a good PhD. A dissertation is meant to show to your committee that you have done the work to earn your PhD. If you show this by writing several papers accepted into peer-reviewed journals (i.e. producing work like a fully trained researcher) then that would meet the qualification. That is, I don't see how treating the dissertation as a checkbox/qualification means that you can do less work and still get a PhD.

I just submitted my dissertation yesterday! I would advise AGAINST looking at dissertations from different schools. The dissertation is *not uniform*, it's simply a department and University requirement. Just like every PhD program has different qualifying exam procedures, different candidacy exam procedures, different course requirements, and different instruction styles, each program will have different dissertation requirements too. So, to me, the dissertation is just a formality, only another checkbox to get the piece of paper. My dissertation is my previous publications combined together, plus 10 pages of introductory material, 1 page that summarizes all my previous publications and 3-4 pages discussing a project still in the works. The total length is just under 200 pages. I don't view my dissertation proper as a contribution to the field. The introduction is not useful at all to anyone who is already an expert in the field---the point of my introduction is for someone who is new to the field to understand the papers I've included as part of my thesis. Because no one ever reads a dissertation, my advisor's advice was to write it for the only audience that might ever read it: an senior undergrad or first year grad student wanting to work with me and needing a background to read the papers. However, the contents of my dissertation are indeed a contribution to the field. The real part of the dissertation is the papers I wrote and published. But these have been published over the past few years and the dissertation is simply proving to my school and my department that I did create something of value for my field and that I am ready to graduate with a PhD. My philosophy is that the mark of a successful PhD is someone who the field recognizes as a useful contributing member. I have papers published that people cite, I have a postdoc position lined up, and I have demonstrated myself as a member of my scientific community. At this point, the dissertation and the defense itself is just a formality. Following my advisor's guidance, I spent about 1 week writing new material for the dissertation and about 1 week total work time getting the previously published works to fit the thesis format. In my opinion, programs that require students to spend months writing are doing a disservice to the students---in these months, I have produced even more science and results that won't go into my dissertation and will give me a running start to publishing in my postdoc. Finally, I don't really think these practices depreciate the value of a PhD. To me, a PhD is a mark of qualification/certification, not ability. A PhD means that you are now recognized as a full member of your field, no longer "in training". It doesn't mean everyone with a PhD is equally able to do research or equally talented. I mean, sure, there is some minimum standard in order to get the qualification, just like any other certification program. But there are people who are graduating with me this year that have 2 or 3 times the papers I do and they are going to make a much bigger mark on the field than I ever will. One student from my cohort is shortlisted for a faculty job at an R1. Another student from my program in the past received a tenure-track faculty offer before they even crossed the stage for the ceremony. All of us have exactly the same degree though. I don't think this changes the value of the degree though---it's just a certification / minimum ability.

Sorry to hear that. I hope you are able to find a way to bring this up without burning bridges. In terms of claiming credit for your own work, I think one thing you can do (in addition to what fuzzylogician already wrote above) is to be less specific on your own CV. When you have a public CV up (if you don't already have one), you can say that you have trained X people/groups in this protocol. You don't have to name them though. Most of the people that look at this CV (scholarship judges, random academics interested in you) won't need to know---they will be able to get the gist of it by knowing that you know this protocol well and you have experience training others. If you do apply for jobs, you will likely get asked more details in an interview and you can explain what you did (without mentioning what the prof is claiming credit). As I wrote before, more than one person can claim credit for a thing, usually.

Are you writing about the Canadian Common CV? I know that many Canadian fellowships use similar language to what you describe because when a prof in Canada gets grants, they need to justify their output and one of the outputs is training people. Maybe this is a field-dependent thing, but other than the fact that your names are left out, everything sounds kosher to me. You and your lab partner are paid from his grant, I presume, so therefore all the work you produce is "owned" by the professor and the professor gets to claim credit in the sense that he applied for the grant money, and this was the good that came out of that money. Even if you are not fully paid by his grant, the protocol was created by him from some other grant money, presumably, so all output from that work is still claimable as part of his output. What I mean is that there is really two types of credit. One is the intellectual/academic credit and you and your lab partner should get credit for this, since you actually carried out the training and the work. But the other type of credit is for grant accounting, and showing that previous grant awarded was money well invested. For this, the credit should go to whomever is the PI of the grant that funded all of this work. For example, there was a project where I worked mostly with a postdoc as my advisor but we both belonged to a lab run by a faculty member. I met the faculty member maybe twice per month, but in the end, I counted as a "qualified personnel" trained by the faculty member's grant, not the postdoc's (since the postdoc doesn't have a grant). However, the postdoc still could and should list me as a student they co-advised on their academic CV (not the one for funding applications though). So, this may or may not be a problem. If this is the Canadian Common CV that is used for applying to grants, then this CV is really just about grant proposals and accounting, and I wouldn't worry too much about it, unless you see other warning signs (see next paragraph). In this case, for your own application, you can still list that you were involved in training the people you trained. Similar to what fuzzylogician suggested, you can discuss this with your advisor without accusing them of anything---ask something like, "how would you advise me to write about [the work you did] in my CV?". It's okay for more than one person to get credit for training someone! However, if this is not what I think it is, and this is just the prof's main CV and they go around claiming credit for all of your work and never talk about your contributions, then this is a big red flag. I am not quite sure what to do next, since you don't want to burn bridges and throw away relationships since the power is all against you. It really depends on what stage you are at...are you a new grad student? an undergrad about to finish? a grad student about to finish?

I'd be interested to hear why people shouldn't be a data scientist? The majority of people leaving my program (with or without degrees) and also leave academia go on to positions as a data scientist of some sort or another. Ultimately, to me, the type of work that a data scientist does matches my ideal career path: find answers to questions by learning how to analyze large datasets. Academic positions are the same skills but applied to academic questions, while the many other industries that use these skills to solve a wide variety of problems. Some types of problems won't interest me or I wouldn't want to contribute to but I feel that there are many other worthwhile problems to solve that will make a positive impact in the world

It definitely depends on where you are. Notary publics where I come from have a lot more powers and are more like lawyers than in California, where I am now. In California, the notary doesn't actually certify that the copy is true, instead they are only able to certify that you presented yourself in front of a notary and their signature verifies that you are the person you say you are. You may also choose to make a signed statement such as "I certify that this document is a true copy of my diploma" and their signature simply states that you proved to them your identity and that you did make that statement in front of them. This may or may not be enough for whomever you are submitting this copy to. In California, the UPS stores will do this for you for $15 per signature. There are tons of other notary services in the area as well---many are "mobile notaries" so you can call the service and set up an appointment and they will send someone to you.

I don't have experience in your situation to answer your specific question, but I do know many international married couples that came to my school on their own F-1s, from India and other countries. I think if they ask why you didn't book a group visa appointment, you should just tell them the answer?

I think it depends on what you mean by 9-5. If you mean 9-5 as in literally working the hours of 9-5 (or some other set hours) then yeah, academia isn't going to be an escape from that. As a postdoc, researcher, or faculty member, you'll generally be expected to be around during the day and even if you don't have work hours written down on paper, your other commitments (committees, teaching, meetings, etc.) will be scheduled during the 9-5 workday. But academia is still kind of flexible, like you could probably take an hour off from 1pm-2pm to go for a swim even if you are a faculty member. Or, you could likely work some other mostly-daytime routine, like 8-11, 1-4 and 7-9, if you wanted. But when I hear people say they want to "avoid the 9-5", I don't think they mean it literally. Instead, I think they mean they want to avoid a job where they do the same repetitive thing for 8 hours a day, every day. And I think academia is a great way to avoid feeling like that (but it's not the only way to avoid "the 9-5"). I keep a regular work schedule as a grad student (8am to 5pm) but I still really enjoy it because every term, week, and even day is a little different. Some days are meeting days where I spend a lot of time talking to other people. Some days are teaching days where I plan my recitations or grade homework. Others are for working on presentations. Others are for writing, or for reading. And unless there is a deadline coming up, I can choose what I want to do each day. Maybe it's a nice day and I want it to be an outside-reading day. I can do that if I want. Compared to other career paths, academics do get a lot of freedom in what their day-to-day is like. Of course, many will still complain that they have some obligations like teaching or meetings, but compared to the non-academic world, it's a lot more freedom.

In some ways, much more stressful and brutal than I thought it would be, and I thought I was prepared! The numbers of postdoc openings vs. applicants for this year was like any other, knowing the ratio feels a lot different than living and competing in it! But in other ways, I found community in ways I didn't expect. My subfield is small, so I have met almost everyone else graduating in my subfield at conferences or during visits. We all apply to positions that are generally in astronomy though, not just my subfield, so at least sometimes a "no" to me meant a "yes" to someone else in our subfield (i.e. a friend), so that was nice. It was really nice to have friends at all institutions to share the stress of the job market with me. I can write more details later including what seemed to work well and what didn't etc. but the next few weeks is busy with submitting dissertation (tomorrow!), defending and moving for the new job Remind me in mid-June if you want to hear more.

Definitely agree. Also, a lot of the crappy things about grad school is not exclusive to grad school either! I wouldn't say that anything I listed is reason enough to choose grad school over another path. For example, it's nice that I get to travel a bunch for my grad program (one of the main reasons I enjoy grad school) but if I was working in a "real" job, I would be paid 2-3 times as much and can just use that money to pay for my own travel, lol. I contributed to the thread with the spirit of, hey, we made the choice to go to grad school, so let's think about the positive consequences of this choice, rather than, "Here are some reasons to choose grad school over other options".

I think you can do whatever you want. Don't worry about "authenticity" because academics have to write to conform to style guides anyways. For example, I generally use Canadian English (weird hybrid of American and British English) for most things without a style guide, including my homework assignments for grad classes here in the US. But I write in American English when submitting to US journals and British English when submitting to UK journals. My American colleagues also switch back and forth to conform to the style guide of their publisher as well. So it's not a matter of "authenticity" at all.

Congratulations @lyonessrampant!! From one-about-to-defend-student to another!

One of my friends went to UBC for their PhD while living in Bellingham. It's certainly possible but with a lot of work, inconvenience and sacrifice. The main reason they did it was because their partner had a job that required them to stay in the US. With a NEXUS card and timing your commutes, you might be able to manage. In the beginning, it was very hard for my friend because they had class or TAing every day. However, in later years, they only needed to come in for seminars, meetings with advisors, and TA work, which they could schedule to only be 2 or 3 days per week. They would work 10-12 hour days (to avoid the rush hour traffic) on the days they were in the office and work from home on the other days. Whether this is possible for you depends on what your program needs from you. This decision did mean that they had to make the most of their 2 or 3 days in the office because a big part of grad school is the great interactions you get with your colleagues! Also, now, the Canadian dollar is worth about 0.75 USD, so if you live in WA, keep in mind that you are being paid in CAD but spending USD!

The short answer is: yes, but it could create complications. There's a page from another University (not mine) that outlines this process: https://iss.washington.edu/procedures/change-status/b-1-b-2-to-f-1/ I would highly recommend you consult your new school's international student office and follow their suggestions. They would know best if people from your country will typically have trouble making the switch from B1/B2 to F1 while in the US and/or if traveling to a 3rd country (e.g. Canada or Mexico) and re-entering would be straightforward or not. After consulting your school's office, you will have to determine which choices and risks are acceptable to you: 1. Rebook your tickets to the US to arrive on August 1 or later. Note that for many airlines, even "non-refundable" tickets are still cancellable and you can still use the funds paid for that ticket for another ticket with the same airline, minus a cancellation fee (usually $200-$300). It sucks to lose this money, but it might still be less than the costs of the other two options. So I'd consider that. This would be the most straight-forward and surefire path. 2. Enter the US on July 12 as planned, then go to Canada or another country after August 1, and re-enter the US on F-1 status. Off the top of my head, the additional costs are the cost for the trip to Canada and the potential risk that the border agent will wonder why you are entering from Canada instead of your home country. However, it is fairly common for international students from faraway countries to apply for their second (or third or fourth...) F-1 visa from a US consulate in Canada or Mexico and then re-enter there instead of going all the way to their home country to get a new visa. My school's international office presents this as an option but also points out a risk: if your visa application is delayed, then you cannot re-enter the US and you are "stuck" in this other country. However, since you would already have the F-1 visa, then this risk may not apply to you. ** There's also option 2b, where you go to the US on July 12 as planned, then return home to your home country and then fly back to the US again within 30 days. This might make sense if there is some reason why you really wanted to be in the US on July 12 3. Finally, you can also just stay in the US and apply for a change to F-1 from B-1/B-2. The main cost is the filing fee, of 370 USD, in order to make the change, according to https://www.uscis.gov/i-539. In addition, US Immigration isn't known to be very fast on their paperwork. So, even if you apply for the change the day that you are eligible, there is a risk that you won't get it approved before your program starts. If you are not approved, then you cannot start your program! So this could be very bad!! Again, please talk to your school's international office and find out more information, in case my info here is wrong or outdated. But, given the high cost of option 3 and the risk of delay, I would personally not want to do that at all. Option 1 (just rebooking) makes the most sense unless you are going to lose a lot of money or you have another pressing reason to be in the US by July 12.

This is completely normal. At least in my experience, other than some message you might get from the Dept Chair or Grad Studies Coordinator after April 15 (or after you accept your offer), you probably should not expect to hear anything more until you arrive at the school (or in the weeks leading up to it). However, you will probably get more correspondence from other parts of the University, e.g. the Faculty of Grad Studies, the Registrar, the Health Center, etc. as they will want things like your final transcript, having you officially register, create an email account, tell you about orientation, have you opt into health insurance if you'd like etc. This is not to say that contact between you and the department is "forbidden" or anything! If you have a specific question, then you should certainly email the relevant person. Some students like to contact their potential advisor ahead of time and maybe get a head start on some reading, but this is not necessary at all since many others choose to take a break over the summer. Grad school is more like a job than going to school. So, you'll get all the information you need to know on the first day and you'll meet everyone on the first day, like any other job. We're all adults now, so we are responsible for initiating our own contacts and figuring out move logistics ourselves. But as I said above, if you do run into an issue and need help, definitely ask a specific question to the right person. (e.g. if you are having problems finding a roommate or other housing, it's fine to ask the department to send an email to other students, especially other new students to see if they are interested). But until you ask for help, it doesn't make sense for the department to hand-hold you.

It's hard to find answers on this because there aren't any general answers that would be true for all situations. A large part of the grad admissions process is highly dependent on the specific people on each admissions committee and the specific needs that department has for that particular year. So, you can only get the exact answers you want if you could somehow ask the members of your specific admissions committee(s) in the week they make the decision. Of course, this is not practical (nor even possible, because the decision is often made much later than the due date). But if you think about what general traits that professors look for when deciding on future graduate students, this could help answer the themes in your question. I believe that faculty members look traits or details in an applicant that demonstrate that they would have a high chance of excelling in the graduate program and produce quality research while enrolled. This is weighted with which subfield(s) the department happens to be looking for that year, which is something completely out of your control. So, yes, all of the things you mention could play a role. Participating in and doing well in a competition shows that you have drive, ambition, talent, etc. Internships in industry can demonstrate ability to work with others, and general work experience is nice too. Tutoring can show that you are passionate about teaching and care enough about your area of study that you continue work on it even outside of the your studies. But it really depends on how you present these experiences. And, usually with these types of things, more isn't necessarily better. Winning one or two competitions isn't much different than winning five. Tutoring for 3 years is pretty much the same as tutoring for one. However, which things are going to specifically excite the members of a specific committee are going to be unknown to you. So, it's not really possible to know exactly how to optimize/maximize your time. Also, optimizing for one school may hurt you in another school. Instead, just do what you want to do. If you don't have direct research experience and an opportunity comes up, I'd say it makes a lot of sense to choose to do that over the other things you list. But if you really want to do that internship making apps? Do it. If you want to tutor on the side, do it. If you want to enter that robotics competition? Do it. Applying to grad school is not spending years of your life in college maximizing every aspect of your life to get in. Instead, it is reflecting on your college or other past experience and highlighting the parts that make you a good grad student. Ultimately, you are more than just whether you get into grad school, so pursue your interests where you can. There's no magic formula to get in, and trying to stick to this might just make you miserable instead. Plus, following your passions and being happy can make you more successful and productive in other aspects of your work, and demonstrating passion about things, even things outside of your field, makes you interesting.

Whether or not Dropbox will suit your needs depends on what you need and what are your concerns regarding Dropbox. For me, I just need something that will save the text files for my writing (and the figures that come with it) on the cloud so that I can access the files on any machine and synchronization is automatic. So Dropbox is perfect for me and I've been using it for 7 years. My main gripe with Dropbox is that the amount of "free" space you get isn't very much and in order to get more, you have to buy 1TB, which costs $100/year. I don't need 1TB! I would happily pay for Dropbox if I could buy like 100 GB for $10/year. However, since they don't give me that option, I have split my storage across a few different cloud platforms. All of my academic stuff is still on Dropbox while personal things (photos etc.) are stored on Google Drive now. I think some other academics don't like Dropbox because they don't like the terms and conditions that Dropbox has on how they use the data in your Dropbox. I don't have an issue with any of that. I also do not work with any human data that requires special protections by ethics boards and the such, but I can see why this is not a good option for those who need to store data from their research subjects on Dropbox. All of the actual data files (raw and processed) for my work are stored on machines in my office and my department, not in the cloud, because it would take up far too much space on Dropbox and I don't need that data accessible from anywhere instantly. I can always remotely connect to my work machines via ssh or other clients in the rare case when I need to do so remotely.

I'm actually not sure what you are asking about in your post, i.e. are you asking how to build closer relationships with your cohort given that they are very cohesive and you're not around as much? Or, are you asking for general advice on how to be at peace with the current situation in your program? Most of what I wrote here is for the latter rather than the former. I don't know how to join a social group that is constantly doing things together, but personally, I wouldn't want to be part of such a group! I need my alone time. (bolded part added by me). I think the bolded statement describes many grad students in most places, including me! It's been over 7 years now since I lived in the place where I developed all of my non-grad-school friendships. But I can provide some general advice, I think! I also empathize with the first part of what I quoted from your post---not being around as much. I moved to grad school with my spouse and we tend to do our own thing. I would say that my cohort and the other students in my department do many more social things than we do. There seems to be one or two things every week, especially in my first year, and I don't have time (nor the inclination) to be spending that much time socializing! During the first year, I probably participated in about 33% of social activities with my cohort and throughout the five years here, I think I average one thing per month (or maybe 3 things every 2 months). This is fine with everyone though---I think it's the right balance of being active just enough that we still get invited to everything, we just decline more often than we accept. And, I stay connected with everyone in the department during the work day by visiting people in their offices, sometimes having lunch with people and other departmental events. Also, we organize/initiate the event once in a while, which I think helps maintain connections even more so than just showing up to things. So, I don't think you necessarily have to be present at every single social event in order to stay connected to the group. Of course, every group dynamic is different so the balance would vary. Another piece of general advice: grad school is a long process and people/groups/dynamics change over the years. I think the social dynamic of my department was very different in my first year than it is now. And, in my first year, I mostly hung out with my cohort because we had the same classes and stuff but now, my main social group is a mix of people in various years, so that I am able to spend time socializing with people who are more similar to me in terms of what things we do and how often we go do things. I'm sure there are other subgroups that I don't even know about which might do things a lot more frequently, but that's okay, I don't need (nor want) to be part of everything. So that also leads to the last piece of general advice: You don't need to feel like you must be close friends with everyone in your cohort. If you value close relationships, then perhaps finding a few people that you really enjoy hanging out with and focussing on building good relationships there. I personally find it much easier for me to have 1-3 strong friendships at a time, instead of being close with everyone. Usually, as people change over time, the friends I'm close with also changes; some people go from being very close friends to just regular friends while others who might have been acquaintances before become closer to me. Again, not saying that this works for everyone, just saying how I try to find balance in my life.

If it makes you feel better, students doing experiments in the last weeks before defending is not that rare where I'm at. My officemate just finished an experiment a few days before their thesis draft was due. At my school, however, you can still add to your thesis between the first draft submission and the final submission. You just need enough done to pass the defense. Another one of my officemates added an entire chapter to their thesis between the defense and the final submission. I also agree with the common saying that a good dissertation is a done dissertation. I would agree with @fuzzylogician that putting time into the publication in Nature/Science will be much better for you in the long run than polishing your dissertation. The advice I got and the advice I would give is to put just as much effort into your dissertation as you need to pass. So, if you are having trouble working on the dissertation and the publication because you want the dissertation to be very good, my advice would be to prioritize the publication. However, if you mean that you need to get the dissertation done so that you can graduate, then definitely ensure that you can move onto the next stage of your career. 90-95% of my dissertation will be previously published manuscripts. I will have about 10-15 dissertation formatted pages that is original content, everything else is previously published material. Some of the students in my program only write 3-4 pages of new/original content. I don't know about the policies in your department though (but you say that your manuscript will be part of your dissertation, so perhaps working on the publication also helps you finish your thesis!)

Oh, wow, I guess that is a thing specific to Boston? I have not yet encountered a market where Sept 1 leases are signed before the summer even begins. My bad for extrapolating from my limited experience!

Here are some related thoughts Deposits In the last week, we just found an apartment in a very fast moving market in Canada! Luckily the laws in that particular place limit the maximum security deposit to be half of one month's rent and that is the only fee they allow. In California, the maximum is 3 months rent! So there is a lot of variation and these large costs are very difficult. My school offers a $2500 startup loan that is no-interest and no-fees and you don't start repayments until 6 months after you start your program. Check if something like this can help with these initial costs. Timing I am assuming that you are not moving to Boston until the fall, so by then, you will surely have your I-20. It is probably way too early to be applying to apartments now for a lease starting in the fall. My tip would be to figure out what the "rent cycle" is like in Boston. If tenants generally give their landlords 30 days notice to vacate (typical for most states, some places in Canada require 60 or 90 days), then the apartment will be listed shortly after notice is given. Some tenants will wait until exactly 30 days to give notice while others will do so a little bit earlier. So, typically for a lease starting on September 1, the best time to look is probably the last week of July and the first week of August. However, a good idea that worked for us is to look at several rent cycles ahead of time. For example, throughout May, look at the listings and count how many come up for June 1 and how many for July 1. You should mostly see June 1 at the beginning and then more July 1 at the end. If you see that a particular weekend hits peak numbers for July 1, you can expect it might occur again for the month you are moving. This strategy helped us in our move...in February and March we notice that the peak number of open houses/listings for Apr 1 and May 1 were in the 3rd weekend of Feb and March, respectively, with a few more at the last weekend of the month. So, we timed our apartment hunting trip for the 3rd weekend of April (we want to move in on June 1) and were successful! We had a backup plan to travel again in the first weekend of May (the 2nd highest peak listing) if the first trip didn't work out. Financial documentation In a competitive rent market, having good credit is really important because they want to make sure they can get their rent money from you. For an international student, this is a challenge because we don't have well established credit histories. Here are things that worked well for us this time around and also when we first moved to the US: - Get a copy of your credit history report in your home country. We got ours from the Canadian credit reporting agencies and included it in our packages. - Have enough money in your bank account and show them your bank statement. Having something like 6-12 months rent in savings can help. Not sure if this is feasible for your case, but it will help - Proof of adequate income: an offer letter saying your stipend will be great - Cosigners: For the very first apartment I ever rented, without any history, I needed one of my parents to be a "guarantor" for the lease, someone who is legally liable for the rent should I fail to make the payments. Reliability documentation - Landlords want to rent from people that they can trust to not destroy the place or make trouble in other ways. Typically, they will ask for employment and rental history along with references so that they can check whether you are a good person. If you haven't rented before, then you might want to strengthen your personal and professional references. References from previous landlords are great because you want them to know that you've paid your rent on time, didn't break any terms of your lease, and didn't cause any major damage. - In my experience, some places ask me for my DS-2019 (equivalent to I-20) in place of a SSN, especially before you get a SSN issued, because it's a federal number that can "track you" in case they need to send collectors after you. It is also proof that you are an international person and it would allow them to waive the SSN requirement. - If you are viewing apartments in person, being presentable could make a difference. Dress well (no need to overdo it with a suit or anything, just don't wear dirty/messy clothes), and be polite and nice! - When we learned that our new city will be super competitive, we made little packages with a cover letter that introduces us with our photo and things that landlords care about: contact info, our jobs, whether we are smokers, whether we have pets. We had a "rental CV" that lists our rental history and contact info for those, and all of the typical required documents (above) all in a little package. Although I don't know whether this made a difference in the end, we got a lot of positive reactions to it. In any case, it will help you be more prepared and be able to answer whatever questions come up in their application forms. Finally, as @fuzzylogician said, Boston has tons of international students coming in with MIT, Harvard and other schools, so this won't be a new thing and even though you might not have all of the above stuff, it should be fine. Your education will help you appear more reliable. MIT is a well known school so that could work in your favour too. Also, if the landlord has rented to MIT grad students before, that might help you as they will know what MIT students are like. I know that many landlords in my local area that have rented to my school's students will advertise on campus especially for our students before listing their units on the open market.

You should talk to the professor about this issue, as soon as possible. I think you are in the right that because your professor has given one deadline and then effectively moved the deadline to 4 days from today, with very little notice. I am assuming the original deadline would have been sometime after the final exam and the grades due date right? Because this is graduate school and TA work is what you're paid to do, I believe this means mutual respect and responsibility between TAs and the professor. If the professor changes the deadline without adequate notice, the professor will have to decide how to handle the fact that some of the TAs will not have finished grading in time. In addition, I feel like the professor has changed the nature of the assignment. If the students aren't getting their papers back, you're providing summative feedback instead of formative feedback. i.e. I'd just assign a letter grade with a few overall comments. But now that the students are getting papers back prior to the final (presumably so that they can learn from it to improve their studying for the final), you are being asked to provide formative feedback, which is a lot more work, in my opinion. That said, whether or not you want to have this fight/battle is up to you. I don't know how long it will take you to grade all of these papers. I think a reasonable conversation with the professor where you don't start a fight but just bring up your concerns about meeting the deadline and see where it goes. Maybe the professor will change their mind about getting the papers back before the final. If they do not change the deadline, I can think of a few things you can do: 1. Accept this and have a miserable 4 days but get everything done. 2. Let your professor know that you would appreciate having more time to provide more feedback, but if the deadline is important to the professor, you will reduce the amount of time on each student in order to get the work done in time. 3. Do the same as #2 but don't tell the professor, just do it. 4. Tell your professor that you would spend as much time per paper as you would with the old deadline, taking the risk that not everything will be done in time. 5. Same as #4 but don't tell the professor, just do it. 6. Argue more strongly for an extension, using arguments laid out above regarding how you feel about the last minute deadline change and the amount of work. None of these choices are really ideal and they come with different costs. Personally, if bringing this up with the professor does not work, I would take option 2 or 3. ------ Finally, I have to say, what's the deal with your co-TA??? Whenever I TA'ed with someone, I always discussed any "suggestion" I wanted to make (especially if they result in more work) with the other TAs before bringing it up with the professor!!!