TakeruK

As @phdwanttobe said, it really depends on what your field is and what your career goals are. UBC and UofT are two of the best schools in Canada. In general, I would compare them to some of the best schools in the USA, but the top schools in the USA are often superior to Canada's school. For example, Canada really does not have an equivalent to top private schools such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Princeton, etc. These US schools have tons of private donor money. There are no privately funded elite research schools in Canada---they are all publicly funded and often have less resources than the top US schools. So if we were to compare UBC/UofT to US schools in terms of world rankings, for most fields, the top private US schools would take the first 10-20 spots. The Canadian schools would rank along with other large and good US public schools, so I'd put them in the 20s. In my field though, there are many graduates from UBC and U of T that end up at top private US schools later on. This is true for both undergraduates from Canada going to top grad programs in the USA as well as PhD graduates from Canada doing postdocs in the USA. So I would say that although it may depend on field, in mine, going to U of T isn't going to significantly hold you back from other opportunities in the USA later. And really, it's only worth to compare U of T with the top private US schools when you have offers in hand for both, as the top US schools are also hard to get into.

I agree with you. Upward trajectory is good, but I don't think that means we should be content / think that our work is done. I see a huge juxtaposition of ideas here. You say that the system isn't perfect and has traditionally favoured men. This is discrimination against women. (The system doesn't only favour men, as you point out). Telling people to adapt to the system nicely glosses over the real issue (in my opinion), which is why is it that men like me get to benefit from a system that favours me? I don't want to be part of a system where I automatically get more respect and recognition because I present as male and have a male name. So I think I should work to change it, not demand that everyone change to the system that conveniently already favours me. In addition, how do we even know that the current system is actually the best one? If we were truly scholars/innovators and we desire to see a better world, we would not be afraid to lose our male privilege in order to create a better system. Discrimination is not just overt actions like you have said here. And by the way, I have seen men in their 20s and 30s have the same attitudes and mentalities that you ascribe to these old guys. I agree that I notice it much more in the older generation of scholars but I don't think it's safe to say that all (or even a majority) of these people will disappear in the coming decades. For example, one case of overt sexism I know about from my school was spoken by a young assistant professor. Perhaps you have heard of micro-aggressions? I only started to notice them more and more in recent years when I started to be more involved in addressing these issues and listened/read to more women about their experiences. They are little actions that generally create an impression on a woman (or minority group) scientist that suggests they don't belong in science. They are often unintentional in the sense that the person doing it does not intend to cause harm and often come from a system where there is already an imbalance in demographics. Each micro-aggression on their own is usually pretty innocuous. You can often chalk it up to some other reason that isn't sexism. But the problem is that women and other minority groups face many of these throughout their career, much more than men, and it could lead to pushing these thinkers out of the field for no reason other than their gender. Here's one example article (although the article seems to focus on some of the more direct micro-aggressions): https://www.nature.com/news/speak-up-about-subtle-sexism-in-science-1.19829 and some stories shared because of the article: http://www.speakyourstory.net/stories The article also makes an interesting point. The author tells a story from when her colleagues question her math background. She isn't sure if it was because of her biology background or because of her gender. If a man was questioned by his colleagues in the same way, he likely would have not wondered if it was because of his gender, only because of his training. The article mentions this as an example of not a microaggression, but it is an example of the not-overt discrimination I mentioned above. We are not operating in an level playing field because women (in this example, but is true for other minority groups too) due to this. (e.g. see also: http://mahalonottrash.blogspot.ca/2014/10/race-and-racism-why-wont-you-believe-me.html for a similar discussion).

I don't disagree with you at all that this is how things are, more so in some fields than others. But whereas you are saying this is the way it has to be, everyone needs to adopt this style, I'm saying that we should reconsider whether this way actually works or if the fields just got to be this way because these fields are/were dominated by men. Instead of seeking women who "have masculine qualities", why don't we actually we take a step back and decide what qualities are actually desirable. In the setting you describe here, the loudest opinion and/or the quickest opinion will win. Or whoever says it the most confidently will win. But that actually doesn't jive with what most people say they want when they talk about the goals of an academic discussion. Do we want to be publishing papers, awarding grants, and spending time/effort on science presented by the loudest, quickest, most confident people? Or do we want to publish, award and spend time on the best/correct/meritorious science cases? In addition, if we do accept your statement that in some cases, we must take the first opinion and not wait for the best ones, I would hope that whatever field you work in is not one where shit hits the fan every day. Not every decision needs to be made this way and if we only hire/promote/train people who can think the way you describe, then we are missing other critical points of view, especially when we are in cases without this urgency. We are denying the opportunity to work in our field. And we are creating areas of weaknesses for our field because we are choosing to ignore important contributions. But I actually think that even in most shit-hits-the-fan cases, there are ways to get to the best/right decision quickly without resorting to just listening to the loudest/fastest/most confident. Proper mitigation of risk may have some protocols in place such as a chain of command or key persons authorized to make important decisions and act on them. You can decide these key positions ahead of time through a careful selection process. You can also plan for several contingencies when it's not an emergency so that you can have the whole "circle discussion" thing in order to ensure you didn't miss out on the best solution because the source of that solution doesn't have these "alpha male" traits. In my opinion, the situations that you describe should be the exception, not the norm. And maybe when your team is new and inexperienced, they come up a lot. But the difference between a good team and a great team is that the great team should be going back and involving everyone in their debrief. Come up with new solutions so that these cases are avoided in the future. Handling situations with the loudest/quickest suggestion is an act of desperation, where you've already screwed up so badly that you can't even afford time to think of the best solution because every second of inaction is hurting you more. This is hardly an ideal model and I don't know why we would want to hire/promote people who can work in this way, instead of hiring for diversity of perspectives.

Yes, you will be taxed on this. Disclaimer: I am not a tax expert and this is not legal/expert advice---I'm just sharing my experience in hopes that it helps you. Basically, the breakdown is like this: - If you get paid money as a scholarship and no work is expected in return for this money, then it is a true scholarship and you are not taxed as long as you meet student status conditions in the Income Tax Act (i.e. enrolled at a real school etc.) - If you are paid money in exchange for research work (e.g. as a research assistant) or teaching work (e.g. as a teaching assistant or teaching your own class) then it is considered employment income and it is taxable. It doesn't matter if the name of the money is a "scholarship" or a "fellowship". So, what the CRA cares about is what you have to do in exchange for the money, not what the money is called or where it comes from. For more information, read this official info from the CRA: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/technical-information/income-tax/income-tax-folios-index/series-1-individuals/folio-2-students/income-tax-folio-s1-f2-c3-scholarships-research-grants-other-education-assistance.html Many Canadian grad students have support from several different sources (e.g. when I was a MSc student in Canada, I had some fellowship money that was not taxable, some RA money that was and some TA money that also was taxable). So, as @eternallyephemeral points out, you will either not be taxed at all (if the taxable portion of your stipend is within your deductions) or just taxed very little. In addition to the basic personal exemption (around $11k this year), you will also be able to claim money paid to tuition and fees as non-refundable tax credits. And if you have some of those leftover from undergrad, that can be rolled over until you need them. If your school's HR doesn't get you to fill out a TD-01 then you can print off your own and submit it to them. On it, be sure to include educational tax credits from that year. That number plus the basic personal exemption could be enough to have the school not withhold any taxes. Note that even if you get to do this and don't owe tax / don't need a refund, it's still important to do a tax return each year because you might qualify for things like the Working Income Tax benefit and you'll get other refundable tax credits back! During my time in grad school in Canada, I never had to pay any income tax** and even got money back because of these credits (on the other hand, I have paid tons of taxes to the USA for my US grad program stipend!) (**I don't remember if I had to make EI/CPP contributions or if I got them all refunded. I think I did pay them though).

Well, if the prof made the offer then the prof gets to choose when the deadline is. The prof could have chose any deadline they wanted. Just to be clear, the April 15 convention is just a guidelines/agreement between all grad departments to make offers that have deadlines no earlier than April 15. So first, there is no requirement and despite what the convention says, the actual deadline on any offer is what the offer letter states (i.e. the convention is an agreement between grad schools, it has nothing to do with any individual offer) and second, after April 15, the convention does not suggest any sort of coordination between schools.

(emphasis added) To me, this is a description of one of the ways gender discrimination is indeed happening in STEM settings. We (well, the people in power) get to decide how STEM settings work and the choice to organize them in ways that favour traditionally masculine qualities is one of the ways discrimination manifests itself. And when the field (especially the group of people in power, which are often more senior) is over-represented in one gender, it creates possibilites for that gender to choose to favour traits that they have themselves instead of valuing diversity/differences.

You can always email the conference contact address and ask. Sometimes there is a separate contact for these issues or it might be some general mailing list that goes to all of the organizers. It is very often the case that organizers are optimistic and/or unforeseen things happen and the decisions aren't made when they thought they would be. In my field, the accepted abstracts are often posted online at the same time when decisions are made, so if the accepted presentations aren't online yet, then decisions either have not yet been made or they were just made.

Yeah, the FBI background check application specifically says that the FBI will not run background checks for employment purposes, that's for state and local authorities. For me, it was actually Canada that required me to show them my FBI background check because I lived in the US for awhile before my postdoc (i.e. for grad school).

The deadline should be specified on the offer letter. The CGS April 15 resolution is just something the graduate schools agreed upon, but it doesn't automatically apply to every offer unless the graduate school wrote it out in your individual offer letter. If your offer letter does not have a deadline specified, it would be a good idea to ask them.

It really depends on the jurisdiction doing the background check. Usually not too long. For my postdoc, I needed one from the FBI and that took 3 months---usually local or state level checks are much shorter. But it can also take awhile to get the official letter from the University, so 2 weeks isn't a length of time to be worried.

My family here has also suggested finding a mortgage person. Here they are called "Mortgage Brokers". There's no fee because the banks pay the brokers a commission for finding a client for them. I've now heard of many people who were turned away when applying to banks/credit unions directly but succeeded with a mortgage broker. I think the only instance where it might make sense to try to work with the bank directly first is if you already have a good long standing relationship with a bank (i.e. long time customer, put all your money there, have investment products etc. with them etc.)

Sorry if I was unclear: in the role as an advocate for students through the grad student government, it was our mission to help students advocate for their needs. It was not our place to decide whether or not their needs are objectively necessary/founded/etc. To be more clear, in this role, my main advocacy was to talk to students who had an issue in order to learn about their situation and then use our knowledge of the available resources and/or the people we knew in the administration that would be sympathetic to the student's request. Or, in the above case, we might help them look up information to make their case (e.g. searching for policies at similar schools). We would pass on this information or make introductions as necessary, but ultimately the request for a special consideration was the responsibility of the individual student. Sometimes the student comes back to us with updates or shares good/bad news, so I sometimes know what happens, but sometimes not! However, in these cases, we aren't representing all graduate students and we don't directly interact with the Administration as the "Grad Student Government". We simply empower students to be their own advocates. (Through the grad student government, we do sometimes directly interact with the Administration as the official "Government". These cases are much fewer and when we do so, there is a lot of background work like what you have listed here because now we are indeed representing the entire student body and we need to ensure we are advocating for something that is a overall good for the community and does not cause any undue hardship on any other parts of the community. As you can imagine, this things are much more slow moving and projects like this have timelines of months or even 1+ years. Sometimes they are easy to support [e.g. a campaign to increase everyone's stipends] while others require careful consideration to earn student body approval [e.g. increase health insurance coverage for certain things that greatly reduces financial burden of a few people while increasing the cost of insurance by a few dollars to everyone else]). Yes, I was referring to Ontario. And yes, you are right that the system does set it up so that people lie. In addition, it also probably sets it up so that landlords can secretly take action against a tenant due to a pet but hide it under some other reasoning. However, I think the fact that a no no-pets-clause exists means people are more open to having pets in their rental units. Maybe my experience was biased, but when we visited many rental places in Ontario, we noticed a lot more places that includes pets compared to California, where the leases all have restrictions for pets and pet sizes. There were even places that charge extra rent for pets. Another clarification: in my above post, when trying to connect state/provincial laws with University housing, I was thinking of University-owned off-campus lease properties rather than on-campus housing. I don't know how it works everywhere, but I do know that some of the off-campus lease properties from my PhD school had policies that were driven by local/state laws. For example, there was an apartment complex that is meant for (and advertised as) family housing. However, state laws forbids landlords from using family status as a reason to rent to someone. So, there were students without families living there too. State laws did allow for setting a minimum and maximum number of tenants per bedroom (but not on the ages of tenants) so the most they could do is stipulate at least 1 person per bedroom. All of the units were 2 or more bedrooms, so you wouldn't have a single person renting a 2-bedroom there (at half the market rate) so it would mostly be couples/families or people who found roommates to share with.

It's normal. Once the offers go out, the list of offers go to many different departments and mailing lists. These other groups aren't always informed when you make a decision on your offer though. It may take some time for you to be automatically removed from mailing lists, or you may never get removed. The worst offender for me was 3 years after I turned down a school for a 2-year Masters program, that school called me, greeted me as an alumni and asked for a donation!

My understanding from working with students to help them get their ESAs in student housing is that the ESAs are not considered service animals covered by the ADA (source: https://adata.org/publication/service-animals-booklet) However, it sounds like many schools will still try to accommodate such requests. While working on the grad student government and helping students gain access to ESAs and pets in student housing, we looked up policies at other schools and found many schools with wording such as "consider requests on a case-by-case basis" and "subject to availability of housing". (To be clear, I'm not defending these practices or saying that they are right, I'm just providing information based on previous work!) I suppose there may be differences from state to state in terms of rental agreements. In one (Canadian) province I lived in, there is actually a no no-pets clause (i.e. any rental properties must allow tenants to have pets with only few exceptions). I think student housing often falls under the same rules are state laws for renters, so the state may have some jurisdiction over the schools in this sense. My school was in CA and there are no restrictions on landlords forbidding pets in housing there.

At my PhD school, the official policy is no pets at all in graduate student housing. The official reason is to keep apartments free of allergens etc. for all student tenants (also most grad housing is shared). However, the less known policy is that some single occupancy units are indeed "marked" to allow pets (i.e. they would only put someone who doesn't have those issues there). The number of available units is very low though. And, the cost for single occupancy is a lot higher than the typical grad housing (which is either 2 bedroom or 4 bedroom apartments with shared living spaces). Because of the higher cost, these units are sometimes less desirable so if you require a unit suitable for pets and you are willing to pay the premium price for a single occupancy unit, then you have a decent chance of getting what you want if you were at my school. Of course, every school would be different. But just pointing out that despite what the official rules say, it doesn't hurt to ask to see what would happen.

Ah, I misunderstood. When you said your UW funding was "upwards of 20,000", I thought you meant like 20,500 or something like that. Almost $24k in Seattle is pretty much the same as $18k in State College (as @Warelin also pointed out).

I'm not sure where you are moving to, but apparently at the location of my PhD school, there was actually some issues getting your kids enrolled in the schools there if you are moving from out of town (I don't have first hand experience). But whatever the issues are, the University made a deal with the school board that all children of postdocs, staff and faculty members at the University will be able to enroll in a specific public school, no matter where in the city they lived. This ensured a spot in a school (especially if you first move into one place and then move around the city later on) as well as some convenience of everyone's kids at the same place. Anyways, I bring this up because very few grad students at my school had school-aged children (most student parents had kids aged 0-4), so this is not automatically offered to students, but sometimes the school can make things work for students on a case-by-case basis. So what I'd suggest is to check out what the school does for faculty who are parents and then if any of those are useful to you, ask if you can have the benefit too. You might get a "no" but it doesn't really hurt to ask.

I don't see any reason to be worried, since you've committed in the portal and secured yourself a spot in the program!

Indeed. There is a high chance that you will get a generic, "We don't have any individual notes, but there were a large number of qualified candidates this year with only a small number of spots available." Many schools don't reject anyone until they have their admitted class fully confirmed. So, they might actually just hold onto everyone's application. Or you were indeed in the "middle ground" pool. From my experience evaluating academic profiles (proposals, applications, etc.) the general procedure is to first review all of the applications. There should be some number that are very clearly "must accept". And there is likely another set that is clearly going to be rejected. The hard part is then ranking the ones in the middle and deciding where the cutoff line is. It might be the case that this school decides to hang onto everyone who is in the middle category, no matter if you are near the cutoff or very far away. It's easier to just hang onto an application than to decide whether or not to cut it.

A couple of things to consider: 1. It sounds like Penn State is not promising you admission to their PhD program (you said "if I'm allowed to proceed..."). Is UW offering you a direct-entry PhD (since it's a 5 year funding offer). 2. Can you stack/combine both the UW offer and your government's funding? $20k in Seattle is not a lot, and when I was applying to PhD programs, UW's offer was the only one I rejected primarily because of their low funding offer (mine was slightly less at $18k/year and no fellowship: TAing the entire degree). I personally would not want to live in Seattle for less than $25k per year. Penn State is in a lower cost of living place, so that offer might go a lot further. (But you should get some number for the PhD funding too). 3. If you end up preferring UW, can you ask to defer the start date by 1 year (especially if this will allow your government funding to supplement your UW funding). This way, you can still take your time.

In my field, you should chat with your POI/potential advisor to see if they would be able to fund you if you start early. Alternatively, some schools (like my PhD program) offers a no-fee, no-interest startup loan ($2500, paid back over 18 months after a 6 month grace period) to help with these initial moving costs.

I think it is a good habit to ensure you respond to emails in a timely manner. To me, this means within a few business days, unless the circumstances of the email require a quicker response. In order to achieve this, I use a system to sort my emails (it's not very elegant....I just use a Gmail label/tag and star it and every morning and after my lunch break, I check my starred emails for things I can respond to). Sometimes, I make a to-do list or set calendar reminders to ensure I get to an important email on time. Except in rare situations, I would encourage you not to write emails like you said "Thanks, I'll think about it and get back to you.". Most academics have a problem where there are too many emails. I don't like getting emails like this because they say nothing. I don't think it's more professional at all. The exceptions are something that seems urgent (they need a response within 48 hours so you want them to know you are on the case) or when there is something that means you will have a longer than typical response time (i.e. more than 1 week). In these cases, it is helpful to let the other person know you're thinking about it. But don't write something like this if you are going to follow up with the full answer in 3 days or less. Finally, since grad school, I have been purposely delaying sending some emails. I try to avoid sending emails after 5pm and before 8am as much as possible. But I do enjoy the flexible academic schedule, so sometimes I do work in the evening and take time off during the day for things like less busy grocery stores or doctor appointments. However, I don't want to set the expectation that people can reach me at a moment's notice and get an instant reply from me (and now that I am supervising students, I don't want them to feel like they need to do that either). So, I often write emails in the evening and save as draft. I don't send them until the next morning. I am pretty sure my advisor did this and they set a great example for the group to have a work-life balance, and I am trying to do the same. I think keeping email to work hours only is actually more professional! (Of course, exceptions when there is a really important deadline and everyone is working extra hours. But that is the exception, not the norm.)

No, why would they be annoyed or upset? If they want to give you an extension, they would say yes. If they don't want to, they would just say no.

Sorry to hear about this happening, it is pretty rare though. Although it may have been true that if you had accepted earlier, you might still have your offer (i.e. when this happens, departments might prioritize those who responded first). But it is definitely possible for students who have accepted and even students who are already attending to suddenly lose funding due to unforeseen circumstances. This is true even if your offer letter said "guaranteed funding". Usually the offer letter always says "subject to availability" and even if they don't, generally unforeseen circumstances will void these guarantees. This scenario is obviously very rare and departments will do almost everything they can to ensure their current students are funded, including revoking funding from new students. Another thing I've seen happen is to quickly graduate some students sooner than normal (or a student having to finish sooner or run out of funding). So, honestly, don't beat yourself up over not accepting sooner. You may have even dodged a bullet if these funding programs are indicative of the department's general financial health. You may not have the resources you need to do your work there, or even worse, you might lose funding in the middle of your program!

Yes, tell Carnegie Mellon now that you would like an extension past April 15. See how long they give you! Ask for more time if necessary. I think it would also be a good idea to reach out to Minnesota after April 15 to check up on your status (so that you know whether there is still a possibility or whether you should take Carnegie Mellon's offer). And of course, if you have not already done so, you should withdraw your application from Oregon State University now. If Carnegie Mellon is your 2nd choice, then there is no way you will attend OSU so you should withdraw to keep the process moving along. If there was someone who was still on the Minnesota waitlist but was no longer interested, you would hope they would withdraw too, instead of delaying the process, right?