TakeruK

Oh okay, I thought you meant you were contacting professors at places you have not yet applied to. What are you writing in the emails? What kind of response were you hoping for? It would be hard to guess why there is no reply because I am not a professor! But some reasons are: - You did not write anything that required a reply - They want to wait until decisions are made before replying to you because they have no information for you at this point - They aren't interested in you - They don't like to be emailed while they are trying to make decisions There could be a lot of reasons! But I am actually not sure why you want to email professors after the deadline but before any decisions. I think the best time is actually to write them before applying so that information you learn can be used in the application. But many professors won't want to correspond with any applicant until the applicant is accepted since they get so many emails.

It's not automatic. Your school may ask you to fill out Form W-4 (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw4.pdf) when you arrive, however, this is mostly used for American earners (if non-resident aliens fill out this form, we have to do special things to it, as specified in the instructions for non-resident aliens). I honestly do not remember if I filled one of these out 5 years ago, but I know my spouse definitely has for their "real person job". The W-4 is the form that tells your employer how much to withhold etc. Your school and country's treaty may be different than my school and the Canada-US treaty. In my case, my school's HR department knows nothing about my treaty. The international student office always try to stay out of taxes because they don't want to give advice they are liable for. The office won't advise me on taxes but they do run workshops led by actual tax attorneys to help us. The Canadian-US tax treaty is simple: Canadians who are non-resident aliens in the US earning less than $10,000 in a tax year are exempt from all US taxes on that income (they will still claim this income in Canada though). However, this is not a "progressive" limit. If you earn $9,999, you pay no taxes. If you earn $10,001, you pay the full amount of taxes. I am not sure what happens if it's $10,000 (i.e. I don't remember if the wording is "$10,000 or less" or "less than $10,000"). Because it depends on the total amount earned at the end of the year, there's no good way to get the school to withhold less taxes. It is something you have to pay first and then claim later if you're eligible. I am not sure if this is true for all tax treaties or just the Canada-US one. In order to claim it, you fill in a part of the 1040-NR (the main federal tax form) citing the specific section in the US Tax Code. I use tax software designed for non-residents that figures out automatically whether or not I'm eligible each year based on my income. The school provides this software for free, and if yours does not, make sure you buy specifically the non-resident version of any tax software! Finally, no, I don't think state taxes are part of these tax treaties. State taxes can run very differently. For example, as a non-resident alien in the US, I do not pay US federal taxes on my worldwide income, however, as a California non-resident, I still pay California taxes on any income earned while in California. For example, I had a Canadian fellowship for a few years and the payment came in the form of a cheque sent to me by the Canadian government. This income is not taxable by the US federal taxes but I still paid California tax on it because it was income earned for work in the state, despite the foreign source. State taxes are usually way less though: it's about 1% to 2% for me, and California has one of the highest state taxes. As your quote says, funding that pays for your tuition, required fees, books, supplies and equipment are tax free. So if your tuition is $15,000 and you get a total package of $25,000, then the first $15,000 is tax free. However, with many grad programs, we get a tuition waiver plus a stipend of (for example) $25,000. In this case, the entire $25,000 is taxable (minus any deductions) since you already got a tuition waiver.

Okay in that case, it is totally fair to be honest and say that you aren't able to attend with the current scholarship offer. I am not an expert on negotiating so it's up to you which tactic to use. If I were in your shoes though, since you are simply unable to attend without an increased offer, I would feel comfortable being direct and honest about it. That is, you should ask for a specific minimum amount. It sounds like you are an international student, based on your comment about the exchange rate. This means that you need to also prove that you either have enough scholarship money from the school and/or from your savings to pay for the cost of the first year in order to get your visa/status approved. I would look at the school's published "Graduate Student Budget" or "Cost of Attendance" and ask for that number. It's the number you'll have to show in order to get your visa. I would explain that I don't have enough savings and must rely solely on school funding to pay for your degree. If you do have some savings, then say how much you can contribute and ask for the difference between the cost of attendance and your savings. However, note that most US Masters programs don't expect to be able to pay for all your costs. They expect you to pay a lot out of pocket as well. So, what you are asking for may not be possible for them to provide. But if you are honest and polite about it, you have nothing to lose. After all, if they say no, then you can't attend, and if you don't ask then you certainly can't attend. Therefore, you need to let them know that you need more money to attend and precisely how much more. Be polite and show understanding that your request may not be possible. If it's not possible, then you'll just have to decline and try again in the future. If you do try again in the future, maybe consider applying to PhD programs in the US (they don't use the same Masters->PhD system that most other countries use). If you need to do a Masters in your home country first, then do that since it might be more affordable (but note that most US PhD programs accept students right out of undergrad; but this depends on your field which I do not know).

In the US, taxes are all very dependent on your personal situation so it is hard for someone who isn't in a similar situation as you (e.g. your program director) to be able to answer that question. Don't ask this to your program director. Instead, look at this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States A few key things to keep in mind: 1. You have to pay federal tax as well as state tax. There may also be tax for your specific city. 2. If you are not a resident alien for tax purposes (if this is your first time in the US then you will not be a resident alien), you cannot claim the standard deduction mentioned in the Wiki article. You can only claim the personal exemption of around $4,000. Therefore, you will be taxed on $24,000 of income. 3. On average, a grad student earning $25k-$30k per year will be taxed at a rate around 12%. But a lot of things depend on what state you live in, whether your home country has a tax treaty with the US and whether you support dependents (but your spouse, if you have one, won't count). Safe thing to do is to budget 15% for taxes and treat the money returned each year as a bonus.

If your plan is to simply say nothing until as close to the deadline as possible in hopes that they will raise your offer, I'm afraid that it is very unlikely to work. They can't read your mind! It is perfectly fine to wish that your scholarship offer will be higher. But the school won't know this unless you tell them! You need to start the process sooner rather than later because if there is a limited amount of money they have to "top up" offers, it might already be used up by late April. However, before you begin, you really need to decide which school is really your top choice. I would not go down a path of negotiation with a school unless you are prepared to take the offer if they meet your needs. So, once you are sure you want to attend this school, contact them and let them know that you are interested in their offer but you are worried about the financial offer meeting your needs. If you have a competing offer from another school that is higher, then use that offer to leverage your negotiation (be sure to use two comparable schools though). If you have nothing to leverage your request other than you simply want more money, then you can certainly still try that if you wish but it is unlikely to be successful.

It depends on the nature of the scholarship/fellowship/award. If there is a metric for need, then you should still apply but know that you will be considered a lower priority than someone without any funding at all. There are also many scholarships/fellowships/awards that do not consider "need". They will still want to know about your tuition wavier and stuff but it won't play a role in whether you win an award. It may play a role in how much money you get though. Also, take into account your school's policies on stacking awards. At many schools, there is an upper limit on how much you can get paid. Your tuition award and other internal awards might be reduced if you win outside awards. For example, my department pays everyone a stipend of X amount plus a tuition waiver. We are encouraged to apply for external fellowships, but if we don't get one that is larger than our X amount stipend, there is usually no difference. I'm going to make up some numbers to keep it simple. A bunch of us got a fellowship valued at $20,000 per year for stipend and $5,000 per year for tuition and research expenses. Our standard stipend is $30,000 per year. Winning this award made no difference to the money I earned: I now receive $20,000 per year from the fellowship and $10,000 per year from my school. However, it does mean my advisor pays less for me, freeing up more funds for other useful things (like research expenses). I also got to use the $5,000 per year research expenses to do more work travel and open up more opportunities for me. Just something to watch out for. In most cases, when you apply to other awards, you will need to disclose your current funding scheme. And in almost all cases, your internal school-provided funding requires you to disclose any additional funding sources. This is to prevent a conflict of commitment (usually your stipend comes with the stipulation that you work full time as a student) as well as to prevent "double dipping" (i.e. if you have a tuition waiver, you can't apply for and win an award for tuition without reducing how much the school gives you for tuition!)

I'm in a different field, but I want to strongly second this point. I didn't really realise how different things are at the top schools until I experienced both. When I first arrived at my PhD school, I was very intimidated because I have never attended a school of this calibre before. I thought I would be way out of my league (standard imposter syndrome stuff!) and that my colleagues would somehow fearsome research beings. Although my colleagues are indeed excellent people, the difference between a grad student at a top 10 school compared to one at a top 50 school is nowhere near as big as the difference between the resources available to these students. This extends beyond the grad student stage too. In my first year as a PhD student, there was an event where students had lunch with our Department Chair to get to know each other better and for students to get some advice and for the department to get feedback on the student experience. At that time, my advisor was also new to the department (arrived one year before me), so I asked the Chair on their philosophy on hiring faculty and the tenure process as well as how to they determine which subfields to hire yet. I was surprised to hear that the answer was that they aren't really super concerned about hiring the "very best" people. Their philosophy was to hire great people and provide them with so many resources that there is no way they would fail. Being a top school, they already attract the top of the applicant pool and instead of having to worry who is #1 or #2 or #3 etc., they just need to pick the people they feel would fit into the department the best. They hire everyone with the expectation of granting tenure because they expect that the huge amount of resources they will pile on the new faculty will translate to great research.

As fuzzylogician said, whether this is possible and practical depends on the policies at each institution. A few things to keep in mind: - Usually your home institution is the one paying you and you would hopefully be able to go on some special student status at your home institution to allow you to be paid while not physically present (at my school, this is called "detached duty" and requires special permission from a few people). - Since your home institution is paying you, if you are spending a long time at the visiting institution, you might run into issues if the cost of living of the areas are very different. For example, your stipend at your home institution might be $25k/year and that might be more than enough where you are living now, but that won't go very far if you visit New York City or some other expensive place! - If you are visiting for a short time, you might have to end up paying double rent to keep your old apartment and also have a new place to live. - To offset costs, many people will sublet their apartment (if allowed) while they are away. Some schools or organizations may also offer small grants to help with these extra costs for visiting students.

The official guidelines for the CGS-M doesn't include any instructions or specifications on how the GPA is to be computed. It only requires that the GPA be used as part of the evaluation of the "academic excellence" criteria (which itself is worth 50% of the weight). Therefore, since the CGS-M is evaluated by each school separately, this is something that might vary from school to school. I would imagine that most evaluation committees would look at both cumulative GPA as well as the last 60 credits (or equivalent) and maybe also the GPA for upper level courses in your major. There may be different weights for these GPAs that vary from school to school. This is part of the reason why they want to see your transcripts---they can then calculate whatever metrics they'd like from it.

Networking is an essential part of success in academia. My view is that academia is not just about producing knowledge, but also communicating and sharing it as well. In order to do your job effectively, you must be good at sharing your knowledge with others. So, I would say that networking is one of the core skills that an academic must develop as part of being a good researcher, not just as a necessity to find work! Academia is not about shutting yourself off from the world, putting your nose to the grindstone and producing good work. But as others also said, "who you know" isn't meant to replace "what you know". A lack of a good network might hurt your ability to find a good postdoc or faculty position. But, an awesome network with little skills to back it up won't get you very far. Your network gets you noticed by the decision makers, but your actual ability to produce good work will eventually land you the job. "Networking" sometimes has a bad connotation because it brings up images of "sleazy car salesman" type actions and being overly aggressive. This isn't really how networking works in academia. To me, networking is really more about building good relationships with your colleagues and taking time and energy to maintain these good connections. We all take time to maintain our abilities, whether it's coding, keeping our equipment clean, reviewing the literature, virus-scanning/backing up our computers etc. so I think maintaining our connections are just as important. My view of networking is something like, "how I can help this person I just met? Do I have some particular skill to offer? Do I know someone who might?" etc. Some concrete examples for things I do as a graduate student to build and maintain these connections: - When visitors and guests come to the department, I sign up for meeting slots with them to ask them about their research and to tell them about mine. - Conferences are a great way to meet other people in my field. I talk to my peers, junior students, senior students, postdocs, faculty. I especially focus on catching up with people I don't normally get to see everyday. There are some friends that I only ever see at conferences so I ensure to have at least one lunch or dinner with them each time. - I have a research website and maintain an online presence that is related to my professional work - Throughout the above means, I will meet many people who are interested in my work. They often ask if I'm writing a paper and I say yes, I'll let you know when it's ready! Then, when I submit it to a journal, while waiting for the official peer review, I also send a copy to 3-4 other people who could help me make the work even better and ask for their thoughts. I pick these people in conjunction with my advisor based on how well I (or my advisor) knows them and how much interest they would have in the paper. After all, we're asking to impose on their time so we want to ensure this is something they actually want to do. (**Note: for some journals, you are not allowed to do this) - After the paper is accepted, I send it to a wider network, basically anyone who expressed any sort of interest in my work beyond just "polite interest". (I keep a list of names). - I volunteer to host visiting speakers or to join committees to select/invite speakers. It's extra work but people enjoy being invited to come give a seminar and they will remember you. When you need to give talks elsewhere, they will hopefully think of you and invite you to their institution. - When people ask me for favours, I say yes when I can (obviously not to the extent where it is detrimental to my own work!). Usually it is just proofreading or providing my perspective on their work. Sometimes, it is because I have a piece of analysis already made and they want me to run their data through my code. I provide a nice little writeup and get coauthorship, but more importantly, developed a new relationship with someone who sees value in my skills/experience.

No it will be okay to also speak to your supervisor at the same time as the admissions people speaking to the department. Ultimately, someone in the department will have to make a final decision on whether or not to fund you, and having the admissions person relay your message is not as efficient as also having your proposed supervisor advocate for you. You should also write to the department directly too. The more lines of communication, the better, in my opinion. However, I am a little confused about how you can have a supervisor if you don't have funding. If you have a supervisor, it means you are working for someone (or will work for someone). Are they asking you to work without pay?? Finally, in addition to the visa issues you'll face if you don't have funding from the school, I don't think it's a good idea to pursue this PhD as an international student without funding unless you are also independently wealthy. I would treat an offer of admission without funding equal to a rejection since your field does normally fund PhDs (according to your post).

This is a weird time of year to be writing to professors. If you are hoping to start in Fall 2017, are you writing to professors at universities that are still accepting applications? Many schools have closed applications for Fall 2017 now. If you are hoping to start in Fall 2018, it is way too early to write to professors. Try again in 6 months.

I think it's up to you. I am the type of person that will send an email even if it just says "Thank you" so if I got a personalized rejection email, I would write a very short message back thanking them for the interview/opportunity. But there are many people that don't like writing emails that basically just acknowledge receipt. So it would be fine to not respond too.

I'm glad you like it. Another grad student told me about Mendeley on my first day of grad school and it is one of the most useful things I've learned!

It is unethical to spend grant money outside of the guidelines and conditions in which the money is given. However, from the information here, it's not really clear what these guidelines are and it will highly depend on what type of grant it is. For example, If the grant is just awarded for having a good proposal and it's like a prize rather than a typical research grant, then you can do what you want with the money. If the grant is awarded for the project but doesn't have restrictions on exactly how you spend the money, then as long as you spend the grant money towards completing this project, it should be okay. i.e. maybe you decide that you won't fly for fieldwork but you spend the money on some other research expense instead. But some grants require you to spend it exactly on what you propose only. So in this case, if you no longer need to spend the money you asked for, you will need to give it back. So, you should consult the conditions that come with the money/proposal and talk to the person in charge of sending the grant money to you. Usually grants in the 2nd or 3rd category above aren't managed by an undergraduate so if it's managed by someone else at your school, you need to talk to them too. Finally, to answer the other question, yes, institutions that want to confirm how you spent the money will ask you for proof of the expenses. They will want receipts and potentially a copy of the boarding pass.

I have not had direct experience with this. But many of my friends were in group interviews for other things. They were informed ahead of time that it would be a group interview though, and explicitly told that they would be evaluated not only on how they interact with the interviewers but also with each other. So, yes, their experience was a test. It is hard for people to guess what your experience was since we're not the ones that designed the activity! It might have been a test. It might just be that the interviewer is super busy and have to interview people six at a time. I'm not sure what "fair" means when it comes to things like interview. To me, an interview is "fair" if the process actually selects for candidates that meet the criteria they are looking for, without introducing biases. For example, if you interview candidates by waking them up with a 3am phone call, then the biggest selection criteria is probably how coherent people are on the phone at 3am. If this ability is not what they are looking for, then it's not a fair interview. But if for some reason, they really do want people who respond better on the phone at 3am, then this is still a "fair" interview. (Now, whether or not this is a good criteria is another topic!) In your post, you mentioned that you thought some candidates unfairly hogged time because there were no time limits. Maybe you are right and it was a poorly designed interview. But maybe they wanted to test how candidates respond when they are put in a surprise situation. Do they freeze or adapt? What do they do when their colleagues are hogging the time? Or they might wanted to see how candidates behave when they aren't given time limits---maybe they are looking for people who are aware that other people have things to say and they want to see how well candidates "share" the time. My point is that at this point, it's finished now and there's nothing you can do to change it. For situations like this, I would say that the best you can do is to be your best self. There's no point beating yourself up over what you did or didn't do because you don't know what they are looking for. Good luck!

I'm sorry you had a bad experience with the staff there. However, you should know that you are asking very unusual questions and you likely caught the person by surprise. This doesn't mean that they were right to be rude to you, and you probably didn't know that the questions you asked are not appropriate. I'm telling you this now not to chastise you, but to hopefully help you for the future. There's a lot of stuff that happens "behind the scenes" so it's not like everyone is expected to know what's appropriate or not. The person that answers the phone is not likely the person that makes the decision and so they don't know the likelihood of acceptance. And even so, if they had said "90%", that is not helpful to you because it doesn't matter what the overall rate is, for you, it only matters for your file. The evaluators at the Graduate School level is likely the Dean and/or their delegates. These are very busy people that you can't just call up and chat with! Also, it is generally considered inappropriate to talk to evaluators before the process is complete, because that gives the appearance that you want to influence their decision. Maybe it was all a misunderstanding, but at this point of the process, all you can do is wait. If you are worried that your application got lost, you could call the Graduate School to check. But this time, instead of asking what you did before, the only appropriate question is: "Can I check on the status of my application? On date X, the mechanical engineering department informed me that they have recommended me for admission and that my application has been forwarded to the Graduate Office." Then they will either hopefully say, "yes, a decision has been made and you will get notice soon", or "sorry, the decision has not yet been made and we will let you know once it is ready." You should not expect to get an actual decision over the phone like this. The only reason to call is in case you fear that something went wrong and they didn't actually receive your application (however, unless it's been like a month, I would not worry about it).

I think you should go for the TT position because I think you should go for every position you have a shot at and have some interest in. It's the committee's job to decide whether or not you can make it, so you don't need to reject yourself. I also think you should continue to pursue your interests in industry. I think you should read some blogs by data scientists who were PhD graduates and maybe reach out to some people you might know in order to conduct "informational interviews". Learn more about what data science really is like. I've been looking into this field a bit and I actually find that it's a lot more like academic research than I had originally thought. Obviously, it's not the same, but for me, personally, most of the aspects that excite me about academic research are still present in a data science position. The one thing I notice that is common across almost every single person I talk to who got a PhD and went into data science: they don't regret it at all and are very happy with their choice.

Yes this is normal, as the above poster already said. In addition, even if you don't quite meet whatever University-wide minimum, it's not the end of the world, your department can still petition the Graduate School to make an exception for you, or to accept you with some conditions (e.g. a minimum GPA in your first year etc.). This all happens behind the scenes so you won't really know unless they tell you. It could also be the cause of the delays. However, a delay doesn't mean that you fall into this category. I think most schools might take 2-3 weeks between the "recommendation" and the "official" decision. The Graduate School probably waits until they get a whole bunch of recommendations from all over the campus and then approves them all at once. Then, it takes some time for the staff to prepare all of the official acceptance letters and double check all the terms etc. (remember they are doing this for programs all over campus with very different funding or TA/RA requirements etc.). So 2-3 weeks in between the "recommendation" and "official" is not atypical.

It sounds like your main goal is to tell the prof that you don't want to join his lab as a grad student. But, when you talk to him, I think you should have a full conversation about grad school plans in general, not that you don't want to join his lab. - Either soon or near the end of this school year, ask your advisor if you can have some time to sit down with him and get his advice. Say that you are thinking about applying for grad schools this fall/winter. - Prepare for this meeting. Think about what you want out of grad school and what you are looking for in a grad research experience. Look up some potential programs where you would be a good fit. - When you start the meeting, take the initiative and take charge of the conversation. Start by saying that you have really appreciated the experience in his lab and that you also appreciate his time today. Then say what you are looking for in a graduate program, talk about your goals** etc. Then tell him the list of schools you are considering and ask for his advice on the list: are there any schools you're missing? any schools to remove? (**these goals can both be personal, e.g. wanting to live somewhere away from home, as well as research based) - Ask also about general grad school advice (for both applications and beyond). End with a request for a letter of recommendation. These are the steps I would recommend any undergrad considering graduate school to have with their advisors, whether or not that advisor has asked them to stay on as a grad student. In your case, a slight modification could be to either: - Do this very soon, assuming your advisor only very recently begun talking to you about staying on - Or, if your advisor asks you about staying on again before you have a chance to ask for a meeting, you can respond with something like, "Actually, while on the topic of grad school, can we talk sometime soon about ..." and then do the first step above. Ideally, if you take the lead on the grad school conversation, you will be able to convey what you want and make it clear that you are more interested in other programs. It's not super helpful for you to simply say no you don't want to stay on as a grad student and a full conversation about grad school allows you to say that you would like to move on and also start discussion on what to do next. Finally, it's not clear if your advisor will really even be that upset if you don't want to stay on. It could be as you say and they would really want you to stay. Or, they might assume that you are interested in grad school and are likely applying to lots of places and they are just offering you a spot in the lab to let you know that you're welcome to stay if you want! So, just start the conversation and find out what's really happening

Just to point out, while having your own funding might fully pay for all the cost of your tuition and stipend, you still take up time and effort for training, mentoring, teaching etc. So, it is not quite true that you don't "cost" anything. And, at top schools, they are much more constrained by time and effort than by money. I think the best thing you could do is: - Let them know that you cannot accept your external scholarship unless you have this 1 year research thing and defer. Check whether or not you need to have this external scholarship to be admitted. - If you don't need to have the external scholarship, and you would rather be at this top 3 school than to take the scholarship, then decline the scholarship and accept the school and start this year. - If you rather have the scholarship instead of the top 3 school, then you should just apply again next year. You can also see if another school would be willing to accept you with a deferral.

As fuzzylogician said, the norms totally depends on each field. You should definitely have this discussion with the other two coauthors before you start writing the paper to ensure you are all on the same page in terms of authorship ordering. For this conference though, ordering doesn't matter as much (but still discuss it!). Typically, if you are presenting, it makes sense that you are the first author, and perhaps the agreement between the 3 of you will be that whoever presents is the first author for that presentation. You should decide how to list the remaining authors though. Finally, to provide another example, the papers I write use this authorship order: Me, my advisor, List A, List B. List A is a short (3-5 names usually) of people who made a significant contribution to the project, in the order of their significance. These are people who generally have performed some of the analysis for me. List B is a longer list of people who made minor contributions to the project, sorted alphabetically. Minor contributions usually mean something like: they were part of a grant proposal to get the equipment/funding/telescope time or they provided helpful guidance in writing some of the paper. We don't typically decide the exact order of authorship ahead of time though. If there are people who might be in List A that aren't already in List B (e.g. new collaborators that I bring in for a specific expertise) then I always make it clear that if they help me, they will definitely be a coauthor. List B is typically the "standing collaboration" that I generally work with (i.e. we write grants together) so when it's time to send around the first draft, I send an email to everyone on List B inviting them to be a coauthor if they wish, with the understanding that I would expect good feedback on my drafts. Sometimes people on List B politely decline because they didn't end up contributing much to the paper at all, or they were part of the general collaboration but not on this specific project. It's no big deal and I've been on the other end as well!

For #2, definitely ask now. Ask the program how the MS advisor is assigned: do students pick one prior to arrival or is it something you sort out during the first semester. You should also contact your top MS advisor choices and see if they will take students. Note that some MS programs do not have thesis components and thus no advisor (assuming this is not the case since you are mentioning a thesis but just double checking). You wouldn't want to accept an offer to a school where all of your top advisor choices don't have time for you.

I would figure out what School D means by competitive funding. What fraction of students are fully funded (at the $23k level) for the entire degree? Is summer funding on top of the $23k or would you only get $23k if you are able to obtain summer funding? To me, the only sensible alternative to School D is School A. B sounds like it's not enough funding, plus the high RA/TA minimum can hurt you. C doesn't sound competitive at all. Another question to answer is whether $2000 per year will make a big difference based on the locations of A and D. That is, is $23k/year a livable stipend in the location of School D? How does that compare to $25k/year at location of school A? In my opinion, the money difference between A and D is not important unless $23k/year is not livable at the location of School D. If it is enough to live on, I would only be concerned with how often students go without funding. Because otherwise, $2k/year for like 5 years is only a $10k difference and I think the better program will more than pay for itself.

Do both. Write to your Canadian school and let them know that you are very interested in their offer but you would like to hear back from a few other places in the US first. Let them know that you are now going to contact these other schools to find out their expected date of decision and that you might need an extension. Don't actually ask for one yet though. At the same time, write to all the schools that you would still be interested in attending and let them know that you have an offer from the Canadian school and that the Canadian school has given you a deadline of X to respond. Tell these schools that you are still interested in their programs and ask if they have an update on your current status and if not, if they have an estimate on the decision timeline so you can ask for an appropriate extension from Canadian school. Phrasing it this way helps to eliminate the appearance of asking them to rush a decision. Then wait to see what happens. Often schools will "silent reject" candidates and not really inform them of a rejection until much later. Asking about it directly will allow you to find out if they had already removed you from consideration. It sucks to get a rejection but now at least you know and can move forward with your decision making process. Hopefully the schools where you are on a waitlist or have yet to make a decision will be able to give you some useful timelines. If there is a school that you would prefer over Canadian school that gives you a later decision timeline, then ask for an extension to April 15 or whatever appropriate date. Overall, you should remain honest and truthful in the whole process. It is important to also keep the lines of communication open and clear. Make decisions carefully and deliberately but ensure you act promptly as well---don't keep a school in waiting once you have the information you need to decide. That is, you don't have to decide on what school you will accept before you turn down other offers. Good luck!