TakeruK

I think your approach here is good but I would say that you should actually ask about summer funding, ability to work outside of school and also about additional internal/external sources of funding all during your face-to-face meeting. I always fear asking for things in email because if I write too little then terseness might sound rude but if I write too much then it's more info than necessary. I feel that I can best demonstrate my gratefulness but also my need for more funding in an in-person meeting. That said, I don't think you should explicitly ask for more money during the in-person visit. Just ask about the ways one might get more funding, as suggested above. Maybe a week later, you can make a specific request for more funding. I think that in general, asking sooner is better than later, because if there is indeed a source for more funding, it will eventually be depleted. You should only move onto this step though when you are sure that you will take this offer if they increase your funding (i.e. it's really bad to ask for more money, they approve it and then you still go elsewhere). I think pointing out that your funding package is $2k less than their graduate student budget is your strongest argument for more funding. So maybe that should be the number you ask for. I am not sure how they will view your need to contribute to a household. I think this is a very valid concern for an applicant to have but my experience with graduate programs shows that they don't really feel the same way. How much you ask for would depend on whether or not you would still take this offer if they did not approve any funding increase.

Something along the lines of: Yes, I am very interested in the offer and it is one of my top choices. Right now, I am still waiting to hear from one other school before I have all the information I need to make my final decision. I expect to receive this information by X. [End with some statement showing appreciation for the opportunity to attend their program.] --- What you should do before you reply though, is to email your first choice school and let them know that you are interested in their program and that you have an offer from 2nd choice school (name it, instead of saying it's your "second choice school" lol). Ask them when they expect to have a decision for you. Then you can fill in "X" in the sample statement above.

The only people that can really help you are the international student office. If you need a new I-20, they are the only ones that can do that.

Sometimes it can take awhile to get funding offers together. There are often lots of moving parts behind the scenes. For example, maybe a prof was thinking they would have money for X students, but now one of their students had a set back and might have to stick around an extra year, so they need to see how that situation resolves before they can offer you funding. So I wouldn't think this means they will not offer funding, since it could be a situation out of your control / has nothing to do with you. I know you want to get on with your life and make a decision. Your signature says you have 3 offers, I am guessing two with funding and one still pending. If you already know which of the two funded offers you prefer, you can at least decline the other one. Then you just have to wait to see if the delayed school makes you an offer that causes you to choose it over the other funded offer. I know it sucks to not make a decision right now, but you can decline the other school and know that you will be ready to decide almost as soon as you get that last piece of info! As for being patient vs. asking for updates....I would say at this point, you should ask for an update every 2 weeks.

It's common for many programs (although I'm in a different field) to not interview every single applicant, only the ones that are borderline between acceptance and rejection. (i.e. they need the info from the interview to make a decision). For example, if they want to accept 20 students, and they have 100 applicants, they might choose to do an initial ranking and then: - Admit the top 10 applicants without interviewing them - Interview the applicants ranked 11-40 to select the next 10 admits (and maybe to select the waitlist too) - Reject the applicants ranked 41-100 without interviewing them You don't need to treat every applicant the same way as long as you have fair and clear rubrics ahead of time that apply to every applicant. If a school chose this scheme but then still interviewed a candidate ranked 57 because someone wanted to interview them, then I'd be concerned of unfairness. (The fair way to do this would be for the champion of #57's application to convince the committee that this applicant should be ranked #40 instead). Given that they told you that you are being "considered for acceptance", you are likely going to get accepted, not rejected. I know you're not really worried about this and it sounds like you were just wondering whether it's fair to allow some applicants a chance to make an impression via an interview, I think some implementations can be fair such as the example above.

Hello! I am not an expert but here's what I know. As @jujubea said, if you are already a student in the US, then this is more easily covered as part of OPT or CPT on your F-1 status, depending on whether this internship is required for your degree requirements. If, on the other hand, you are not currently a student at a US school, then it's up to Stanford to determine what kind of status they will sponsor you for. If they count you as one of their student while you are their intern, then they will likely sponsor you as a F-1 or J-1 student. F-1 and J-1 students are allowed to work on campus during the course of their educational program. If they decide to consider you as a foreign worker, then they will sponsor you on a foreign worker status. There are many possibilities. Depending on the field of your work, TN status is something available to Canadians (through NAFTA). In any case, you definitely need to be sponsored for some kind of visa. You should talk to Stanfrod ASAP and find out what kind of status it is. I do not think you can just enter the US and work and get paid a stipend. One point of clarification though: It's easy to confuse/conflate visa and status. Visa is permission to enter a country for a specified purpose. It is a page that gets attached to your passport and will have your photo, looks like your own passport photo page. Status is permission to remain in a country and do certain activities, such as work or study. For F-1 students, the Form I-20 is proof of status and legal presence in the US. For J-1, it's the DS-2019. I don't know the name of the forms for the other statuses. These are pieces of papers with a lot of info about you and your sponsor. It can be easy to confuse these two because you have people referring to F-1 visas and F-1 status and often people use word "Visa" to mean both. Canadians do not need visas to enter the US. But we still need sponsorship for legal status. Typically, the process for new students is that their sponsor (school) issues the Form I-20 to grant F-1 status and the student uses this form to apply for a F-1 visa to enter the country. After appearing for any interviews and going through the visa process in their home country, they enter the US with the Form I-20 and the F-1 visa page in the passport. Canadians bypass the visa application process. We still need to have a sponsor issue a Form I-20 (or, in your case, the right form for whatever status). We skip the application for the visa and we can go straight to the border with just the I-20 and whatever other evidence you need for legal status. Finally, to answer your last bit: having significant ties to your city won't really make a difference here. If you are on a non-immigration class status (e.g. F-1 or J-1), the border agent will be looking for intent to immigrate and would deny you entry if you had such intentions. So, having ties to Canada will help mitigate this, however, it won't make a big difference unless there are other things going on that would cause them to suspect that you are lying about your non-immigration intent. If you were from a country that required a visa, you would also have to satisfy this non-immigration intent for the visa officer too, but as a Canadian, you don't need a visa, so it plays a smaller role. For a summer internship, you pose much less of a immigration risk since you are in a temporary short term program. These ties to Canada can also help you claim taxes in the US as a non-resident and taxes in Canada as a resident---usually working in the US means that Canada will treat you as a non-resident, having "left" the country. These ties will allow you to remain a "deemed resident" or "factual resident" for Canadian taxes. However, since this is a short term summer program, this doesn't really matter, you're clearly still a Canadian resident for tax purposes. These ties are much more helpful to prove residency if you are going to be in the US for more than a year and spend more than 6 months outside of Canada. Also remember that you will be taxed in both countries for your Stanford stipend. Luckily, since it is only the summer, you might make less than $10,000, which qualifies you for a Canada-US tax treaty that exempts you from paying US taxes on your Stanford income.

Find out what's the norm in your field too. The contribution you described may merit authorship in some fields but not in others. I have been in the same position as you before, in my field. The equivalent would be me taking telescope data, but then having the senior student analyze the data and report the results to the first authors of the paper. The norm in my field is that most people err on the side of inclusion for authorship, i.e. the first author would invite both me and the senior student to be authors. My personal philosophy is to always decline authorship if the only thing I did was obtain the data / create the material. I do accept authorship whenever I am active in the analysis/characterization of the data though. The reason is like fuzzy said, middle author papers aren't very helpful to me. Also, I don't feel comfortable being an author if I do not know what happened to the data I took. Instead, I just ask for an acknowledgement and politely decline authorship. I try to avoid doing work that don't result in authorship though. The above scenario only happened 2 or 3 times, in the earlier part of my grad school career. I agreed to do the work because it was a good way to 1) gain favours from other people and 2) practice/demonstrate my abilities. After a couple of times, it no longer benefited me so I stopped doing the gather-data-only step. But this doesn't mean I stopped helping people! Whenever people ask for a favour, I agree and volunteer to collect the data and analyze it, so that I would be a coauthor (and an "earned" coauthorship, in my opinion). Doing this also gets me a lot more exposure to collaborators at other institutions, something that becomes very helpful when you apply for talks at conferences (these people will be on the committees) and applying for jobs. In your situation, I second fuzzylogician's advice to basically "pick your battles". Talk to your advisor first and your advisor should be the one advocating on your behalf if it's the norm to grant authorship for your contribution (it would be easy for your advisor to also tell the first author: thanks for including my student X on the paper but you should also include spectastic as they created the material!) etc. If it's not the norm to be a coauthor for this work, tell your advisor that you learned a lot from your experience making this material but you would also like to learn how to do the senior grad student's analysis/characterization as well, so that you can be involved in these collaborations. Maybe the advisor will have the other student teach you (I've also been in the senior grad student's position and am always happy to train junior students).

My opinion of Golden Key is also the same as others: it's mostly a way for them to get your membership dues. However, if you do spend a lot of time doing Golden Key activities and getting involved in the program, it could be pretty rewarding. I didn't join but some of my friends did and got really active so I think it was worth it for them. However, my impression is that they mostly exist because a lot of people will think that if they pay the dues and get to add the line on the CV then it will benefit them. It probably won't. You'll only get as much out as you put in and there are other organizations you can work with to get good leadership opportunities and build networks.

I think this is a good time for you to learn one of the first important lessons of being a graduate student: Stop comparing yourself to your peers. As you start graduate school, you are becoming a professional academic. Each one of us is going to go on very different paths in both our careers and our research focus etc. It is no longer logical or useful to simply compare things like GPA and GRE scores. These are only a very very small part of the decision making process. Remember that you don't know everything about these other accepted students and it is not right to judge them on these metrics only. In addition, not everything that appears on the Results database here is correct. There is no explicit question for research experience so many people don't really put their experience here (I didn't, for example). For my field in particular, the questions you get asked when filling in the Results Survey is almost completely useless: those factors are not really going to make a big difference in the admission decision. To answer your last question, yes, it makes sense to want to go to a school that will challenge you and will make you into the best researcher that you can be. However, no, I do not think the method you are using to judge the school is fair. You should not judge the school by the other people they accept especially if you do not know all the details of their profiles anyways. Remember the lesson: keep the process focused on yourself. Ask yourself: Will this school provide the resources you need to succeed? Never mind the other students accepted.

Oh I see, sorry for misunderstanding. Yes, Americans definitely count as international students in Canada!

Will you attend the UK school if they cannot increase their offer to you? If the answer is no, then you basically have nothing to lose by asking for more. Let them know that you cannot afford to attend without more funding and see what happens. The worst that could happen is that they say no and you're in the same position as you are now. If you might still consider the UK program then I think it's still worth asking but I understand that you don't want to commit a huge faux pas before accepting an offer. One safer way to ask is to ask if there are any other sources of funding that might be available for you to apply to, instead of just straight up asking for more money. But maybe someone with more experience with UK schools can provide guidance here. That said, as almost all foreign students here will tell you, it's a lot harder to get a good funded offer as an international student, especially for a Masters program. Usually the best funded offer will come from your home country (don't forget all the costs to move to the UK too). Tuition as a foreign student, in any country, is often much higher! Also, foreign students are eligible for far fewer sources of funding (Canada actually has one of the better government programs to fund international students compared to the US and the UK). So even if the school wanted to offer more money, they might not have the means to do so.

In your situation, I personally would not go for the unfunded MS. However, I think you have more options other than "take this offer" or "give up on pursuing a PhD". My questions for you would be: 1. What difference would a PhD make in your career trajectory? Are there certain career paths you want to follow that absolutely requires a PhD? How do those differ from the career path you are on now? (i.e. I know that some data science companies try to recruit PhD students, but I think that MS + actual work experience in the field counts for more than a PhD + no experience). 2. When does this school make decisions about TAships? Can you wait until they decide before you decide? 3. Can you reapply to more PhD programs next year? In the meantime, you can do things to improve your profile for schools. You don't have to give up now because you didn't get in this year! (Edited to add: I started writing my reply with your original question wording, so now the intro part doesn't make sense anymore, but the rest of the general idea of the post is still the same, I think!)

I can't speak for all schools, but one advantage of this method is that it gives more freedom to both students and professors. For example: - Students might not know what they really like to study at the start of grad school. This option allows students to take some classes, get to know some professors and try new ideas before committing the rest of the degree to it. Many new grad students have a "research interest" but this doesn't mean it's their only interest---it might be the only thing they have done in the past. - This also gives a chance for professors to see how students perform in classes and get to know the students better before committing time and money in a new student. Some students are amazing on paper but not actually that great when working with them. However, despite the lack of commitment, there is often some kind of understanding that there is some professor interested in a student before they are actually accepted. - If a professor decides to leave the department or turns out to be a terrible personality fit for the student, it gives the student time to find a new supervisor. I find that my perceptions of professors and research interests changed a lot during my first year. In Canada, we often enter PhD programs with a specific professor too (maybe that's where you're from?). However, my US school does it the reverse way as well. At first I was skeptical but I think it is actually a much better system now that I have experienced it. The way my department admits students is: 1. Students are admitted with a department fellowship the first year (no professor pays for them) and we are required to do at least 2 separate projects (not related to each other) with 2 different professors. Projects aren't fully completed, just "proof of concept". 2. We take a qualifying exam after the first year based on these two projects (at the level of a Masters defense except only at the "proof of concept" stage). 3. In the 2nd year, we are funded by a professor who had originally committed to us when we were admitted. They don't tell us this up front though. 4. By the end of the 2nd year, we need to formally decide on a thesis advisor. It's often clear well before this stage, but we basically need to have it set by the 3rd year. This person pays us for the rest of the degree. Usually it is one of the two professors from the first year project but it doesn't have to be. Typically, about 3/4 of the way through the first year, the student knows which of the two advisors they want to keep and there is one "main project" and one "side project". But it doesn't have to be this way. Some people change to a completely new project in their 2nd year. I personally enjoyed and benefited from this flexibility. If I was stuck on the topic I applied with, I would have been a lot less happy and I didn't even know about the subfield I'm currently in when applying because I had no exposure to it at all. Here are some tips though, for this different system: - You should not count on being able to work with one specific professor. If there is only one person you would work with if admitted, think twice about accepting the offer. - You should talk to current students to see how often students are turned away from their top choice professors. Even if schools do not formally match students with profs upon acceptance, most schools do consider this when deciding. If they are making 20 offers (for example), they are not going to make all 20 offers to people in the same subfield. Usually there is some consideration for a balance of interest but it varies from school to school. Ask students to find out how often people have to take a 2nd choice advisor. - Keep an open mind about what you want to do. Focus on the skills and experience you want to develop as a student instead of the field of research.

A visa is a document that allows you to enter a country for a purpose. Americans generally do not need this to enter Canada (it's granted at the border). A work/study permit is a document that allows you to remain in the country and work/study there for a period of time. For Americans, you are eligible to apply for a study permit at the Canadian border instead of submitting an application ahead of time. This is much easier, according to my US friends, but allow time for this when you enter Canada. Here is some more details: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/tools/temp/students/application.asp (when you click on the R214 link, it shows a list of people eligible to apply at the border and it includes "a national or a permanent resident of the United States;") However, it's not clear what you are asking here. You said the school told you that you were on a "visa student waitlist". Schools don't issue visas. Have you been admitted to this school yet? If not, then I think what the school means is that you are on a waitlist to get accepted. Some schools have separate admittance streams for Canadian students (non-visa) and international students (visa students). So, if you have not yet been admitted to the school, what they might mean is that you are on a waitlist for acceptance and this is the waitlist for visa students. And they are imprecisely using the term "visa student" to mean "all international students" regardless of whether or not you need a visa! The reason why there are separate streams is that international students cost more so they often have a quota/limit on how many students they can admit.

Please don't double post. Don't worry about it though---I've removed the extra posting Most official background checks can only be done with your permission (or you apply for it and submit the results to the school). So, you would know if you had a background check. I guess a school could unofficially try to look you up via various Internet searches but it's unlikely any Human Resources department will allow them to make a hiring decision based on something like that. For a background check to work in the US, it is done at the state level and it depends on the state you're in. I recently submitted an application for a background check with the FBI because I am starting a postdoc in Canada and the employer requires background checks in both Canada (country of citizenship) and the US (because I was here for more than 6 months in the last 3 years). These are criminal checks though. The verification process that you experienced sounds different and I haven't heard of any school using a service like that. Schools are often more understanding of glitches though, so I would not worry about it unless the school asks you to get verified via HireRight again, and at that point you should just let them know what happened last time.

Geology/earth science departments on the west coast are very informal, based on my experience. Definitely do not wear a suit! For men at my school, a polo shirt and khakis or nice* jeans are a great choice for visiting students. Current students dress will vary from t-shirts to polo shirts. When someone comes in a dress shirt, it's probably because they have some event they need to be dressed up for! As a visiting student, I'd aim for a slightly dressier look, so I would recommend a polo shirt (or equivalent in terms of formality). (* by nice jeans, I don't necessarily mean those $100+ jeans, just jeans that are clean, fit well, and not ripped) Another tip: Many earth science visits include a field trip or hike of some sort. Check out your itinerary before leaving and be sure to pack comfortable clothes for that!

Reaching out for an update when you have another offer deadline is perfectly fine if you remain highly interested in their school. Don't do it if you have already decided to take another offer. But if you prefer this school equal to or more than the one you have an offer from, you should reach out. That school will want to know too, because if they want you, they wouldn't want to make an offer a day after you accept another one! So, I would say this is encouraged as long as you do it in good faith as mentioned above. The wording could be something like, "Dear X, My name is ABC and I had submitted an application to the [name of your degree program]. I am very interested in this program but I have some other offers with a deadline of X. I was wondering if there is an estimate on a decision timeline so that I could request an extension on the deadline from the other programs." You can choose stronger language still, but I prefer this one because it asks for information rather than makes a demand.

That's my understanding, and in 2012 when we entered, we received the advice of having proof of insurance upon entry. It was not checked though but I guess it could have been? I don't know if the rules have changed since then. Another option is to consider traveler's insurance but that will only cover you for a short time. Could be enough to get onto the ACA plans though. P.S. Even if the rules don't require insurance from day one, given how much health care costs in the US, I would highly recommend having it all the time. Hopefully it will not happen, but a bad accident on the first few days could end up costing you a ton of money!

Unless you are one of the top applicants and got into all the top schools, it's my opinion that if you don't get mostly rejections, then you probably aimed too low for your school selection. Exceptions being cases where you only have a small number of schools that fit and you applied to them all etc. Hopefully you got one or two acceptances from schools you like!

@tere93: At my school, they pay 0% of any dependent health insurance through the school. However, your partner will still qualify for the "Obamacare"/ACA marketplace plan (provided it still exists this fall). You don't have to be American to be on these government-supported plans (you just need to prove legal presence, i.e. your DS-2019). My school does offer funding support to help pay for dependent health care (up to $1200 per year) and you can use it on any plan, it doesn't have to be the student plan. Typically you can expect to pay about $3000-$4000 per year for a good health plan, if that helps you budget. But costs vary from state to state. Note: You can often buy the school's plan one term at a time (4 months), so if the school plan isn't much more expensive than the state's plan, it could be more convenient. Don't forget that as J-1 and J-2, you must be both be insured from day one (we have different insurance requirements than F-1 and F-2). We opted to put my spouse on the school plan at first, then transitioned to Obamacare plan (spouse's first job didn't provide health benefits but their later jobs did).

I'm not the person that had this experience, but when I read this, I thought that it was good of the prof to not say anything until after the semester so that this information does not influence the TA's grading/perception of this student.

At the big annual conferences in my field, undergraduate and graduate students have the option of choosing to enter the poster competition, in which judges will evaluate your poster on a specific day using a specific rubric. Postdocs & faculty evaluate graduate student posters and graduate students, postdocs and faculty evaluate undergrad posters. I've evaluated undergrad posters for two years now. Here are some tips that would also apply to graduate student poster presentations (the rubric is generally the same, just a different standard): - If you can find the rubric ahead of time, take a look at it. Our society's evaluation guidelines are clearly specified. There is a list of 6 standard questions all the judges must either ask or receive answers naturally through the course of your presentation. - Make sure your presentation is complete. Include the background, methods, data analysis, results, implications and future work. - Be prepared to answer questions that put your work in the big picture context, such as, "If you could have the capability of determining any currently unknown data/property, which would be the most helpful and why?" and/or "How does your result inform other studies in your field?" - Practice your spiel. Make a special spiel just for the judges and assume that they are a researcher in your field but know nothing about your subfield. Don't be afraid to repeat some stuff that a specialist would know---it will show that you know it too. - Don't do your entire spiel from start to finish. Plan to have lots of natural breakpoints to allow the judge to ask questions. Remember that the judge is also spending the entire day at the conference and trying to fit in their judging assignments in the limited time they have and also see the posters they want to see. They will be tired, potentially distracted and you don't want to lose them after the first minute and continue talking and have them miss your points. - Don't forget that your speech is not the only part of your evaluation. You might be evaluated on your attitude/demeanor so don't slouch away in the corner---stay near your poster and engage people as they walk by. And of course, a big part might be on poster design as well. It's the only part you can spend time on prior to the conference, so take some time to ensure a nice readable poster design. That said, this award is not going to make or break your career. It's nice to win but as fuzzylogician said, no big deal if you don't. I would spend time preparing to win because it will have a lot of good side effects, such as improving your presentation to every other person (non-judges) as well. I think making a good impression by thorough presentation will actually do more for your future than winning this prize, so it's a win-win situation

Hello! My spouse and I are/were in the same situation. I am on J-1 and my spouse is on J-2. I only pursued graduate programs that will grant me J-1 status because we want both of us to be able to work. In order to get permission to work in the US, your spouse needs to obtain the I-795, otherwise known as the Employment Authorization Document or EAD. It looks like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_authorization_document Our school's international office helped us with the application process. It is a little lengthy but it does seem to be routine. You will have to provide a lot of documentation. My DS-2019 (J-1 status) is valid for 6 years and they granted my spouse an EAD for 4 years. It expired a few months ago, but before that, we renewed it so my spouse has an EAD valid until the end of my J-1 status (since J-2 status is only valid as long as the J-1 is in valid status). The instructions for applying for a EAD are all here: https://www.uscis.gov/i-765. Most of the documents you must submit are things that prove your eligibility for the EAD. For example, marriage certificate to prove that your spouse is your spouse (yes, even though you already provided this proof when your spouse applies for J-2), your own DS-2019 to prove that you are on J-1 status etc. You will also need to prove that you do not require the J-2's income in order to meet your basic living expenses, as you said. This is because you must be able to provide for both you and your spouse on your own stipend in order to qualify for J-1/J-2 in the first place. They don't want you working to meet this minimum expense. To prove this point, you will have to provide details of your living expenses and your current income to prove that you don't need the J-2's income. This can be done via the Form I-795WS (worksheet). My school recommended writing a letter with some detailed budget breakdown instead of just the total (e.g. rent, food, insurance, etc.). Keep it simple, only 7 or 8 categories. Note: You only need to prove that it is possible for you to live on just your income, you don't necessarily have to only live on your income. That is, show that your minimal expenses are low enough to survive on your income and you can use your spouse's income to upgrade your living conditions. My school also suggested we provide some examples on what we would spend my spouse's income on, and good categories are things like vacations, travel home to visit family, buying a car, taking recreational classes etc. (to be safe, I would not mention anything that might be construed as a living expense). You don't have to provide proof of what you actually spend the money on. The whole process took about 3 months for them to approve us. It seems like it is a formality, provided you meet all the requirements since I don't know anyone rejected for a EAD but my experience is limited. When your spouse gets the EAD, they should apply for a SSN right away, no need to wait for a job. Your spouse does need the EAD before they can start any work though. It took my spouse another 3 months to find work but this will depend on what type of work your spouse is looking for and the availability of such jobs! Note that the EAD is used for a wide variety of visa statuses, so be sure to enter the right information into the form. The above stipend requirements seem a little weird but they actually work out quite well for grad students, since grad students are generally paid just enough to live but not much else. Good luck! Let me know if you have further questions.

This is a good question and some students and I actually talked to our own department head about this a few months ago as well, in order to clarify some things. The official course requirements in my department are 6 core classes and 5 elective classes that form some sort of theme. We are on the quarter system, so these are 10-week classes (3 quarters per academic year, typically you take 2-3 classes per quarter). The core classes are fundamental classes and we are a multi-disciplinary department, so depending on your background, you may have taken equivalent material during your undergrad or Masters program. If you did meet these requirements, you are to talk to the instructor and department head, who will grant you a waiver from the core class if they determine that you already know the material. The elective classes cannot be waived in this way---no matter how many classes you've taken elsewhere, you must do 5 elective classes (graduate-level) at my school (can be from outside the department) while you are here. The clarification we asked for was that in the past, some people were granted credit for the core classes that were waived and others were "suggested" to take an extra elective class instead (e.g. if you were waived out of Intro to Geology, you would take Mineralogy instead). But it wasn't clear if this suggestion was a requirement. The recent clarification states that you are indeed exempt from taking the class and you don't have to replace it if you don't want to (i.e. getting a waiver does reduce your courseload). For another data point, at another school I visited, I asked similar questions. I also have a Masters (from Canada, where our system is different) so I asked this of all the schools I visited. At this school, there were a LOT more courses required. 16 semester-length (16-week) courses which would take 2 full years to complete at 4 courses per semester. Part of these requirements are a "minor" in a related field (can be the same field as your major, for some reason). Anyways, this is 4 courses in a different field. However if you have a Masters, then you are exempt from this "minor" requirement. At yet another school, there are no official course requirements at all. Instead, when you start, you have a Graduate Advising Committee and this committee reviews your background and decides what courses you must take. So everyone gets a personalized/customized course listing. And finally, at a 4th school, there are 12 required semester-length courses (3 per semester for 2 years). These courses make up the qualifying exam at the end of the 2 years. If you have prior knowledge due to Masters courses, you can challenge these courses and take an exam and get the course waived (you still have to pass the qualifying exam based on the course material that you skipped though). ---- To answer your last question: How to convince the department to waive courses for Masters experience? I don't really know what will work best for your department. I am not sure what they mean by "low enrollment". To me, this sounds like the department gets money for number of students enrolled and losing this money would be bad. Alternatively, they could mean that the Department is audited by the University and if enrollment is low, they might cancel programs. So, I think whatever counter-argument you propose must address the concern for low-enrollment. For example, does your school offer a pass-fail system instead of letter grades? One idea would be to have students with MA classes take the seminar classes on a pass-fail system. This requires them to still do the work and they get officially counted as students. But this reduces the stress a lot. Often a "B" level work is considered a "pass" in a graduate pass/fail class. So, there's no worry of getting a poor grade etc. However, I am a little confused still---in all of the above examples I gave, students with Masters are only exempt from PhD classes that are directly related to previous Masters coursework. Things like seminar classes usually vary greatly from dept to dept, even if the topic is the same, right? So I think it's actually a good thing to take them again even if you already have a previous version of the class. It's also a good way to get to know your colleagues and professors. I also think that PhD programs have the right to require all classes to count towards their degree to be from their departments because they are "certifying" you when they grant your PhD so it makes sense that they want to ensure a MA applicant meets their standard. But I don't know how many courses you are talking about---if there's more than 1.5 years of required classes, then yeah I can see how it eats into your research time. One last caveat: the last paragraph was written from the point of view of a science PhD, which are 5-6 years and usually have 1.5-2 years of classes. Not many science PhD students have Masters. Most people with Masters in my school/program are international students that come from different systems or Americans who studied abroad.

It won't hurt to check in with the GSD in case they did mail it and it got lost or something. However, typically, the formal letters come from the Graduate School, not the department, and that could take a few weeks to process. Since you are visiting next week, you can also just bring it up when you see the GSD next week.