TakeruK

Usually the Cost of Attendance by the school could be a lot higher because 1) they often include the cost of the board program at the school, not actual groceries, which is a lot higher and 2) they include the books and supplies cost for a typical undergrad courseload and buying all new things. For example, my school's CoA for books and supplies is almost $3000 but I actually spend like $100 per year on average. But yeah, don't forget to include all the day to day expenses and special expenses that Warelin wrote. Other costs you might have missed (small but they will add up): Are utilities included in housing? (e.g. gas, trash, water, internet?) Whether or not the costs are worth it depends on your program and your career goals!

Oh I thought you had to file a 8843 with every tax return as a F-1 or J-1 student. If you are unsure, you should go to H&R Block or some other qualified tax agent that will take financial responsibility for your returns in case of an audit (not sure if the tax service at Walmart covers this). I know that at H&R Block, they will guarantee that they do it right, and will pay for any costs you face due to an incorrect return. They are pricey though, however, H&R Block offers a free audit of past returns. I did this for the past returns and it turns out I missed claiming $30 of credit. You only pay if you want them to file an amended return on your behalf. I chose not to, since it's $100 to do that and I would only get $30 in credit. I don't have any good tax advice for you since you are in a more complex situation than I ever was! But I do have some advice on tax filing: 1. If you are seriously concerned about whether or not you need to file amended taxes, I would definitely pay a professional to do it. If I tried to do it myself, I would spend tens of hours and probably still do it wrong. So if you decide you need to do something about the past returns, I would recommend paying someone. 2. The best tax advice comes from professionals who will take financial responsibility for their advice. So people like me on the Internet can provide experiences that help you decide what to do, but we're not experts! Similarly, the international student office are not tax experts. My school's International office has a strict policy of not providing any tax advice because they are not qualified. Instead, they pay for tax lawyers to come to the school and give workshops. I think it's unfortunate that your international office told you what they did, because I think it might be wrong.

This will vary even within the same field! Here are some examples within my field. The numbers are not really "average" numbers, but the number of papers you'd publish in order to be competitive for the top postdoc positions. I don't include other numbers because we rarely have a minimum paper count to graduate and if you're not aiming to go into academia, then your paper count isn't as important. The degree length is about 5-6 years. If you are an astronomer that works on building instruments to go on telescopes or designing software to run telescopes, you might have 1 or 2 papers at the end of your degree. If you are an astronomer works on from large survey sets that takes several years to complete then you might have 2-3 papers by the end of your degree. If you are an astronomer that works on specific stars or planetary systems, then you might end up with one paper for each system, which could be like 4-5 papers. And if you are a theorist that works on new ideas of star/planet interactions, then you might have 6 or more papers. How do committees evaluate these differences? Having your letter writers talk about the work you put into the paper is important, especially if you are in one of the subfields that produce fewer papers because each paper takes a lot more effort. Also, committees do consider the number of years in your degree. Writing 4 papers in 5 years is more impressive than 4 papers in 6 years, with all else being equal.

I don't think so? I'm not sure what you mean though.

To go to the mountains it would be a lot easier with a car. There may be tour buses that take you out there but it's not really that cost effective. Transit in Vancouver is great within the city but not really helpful to get out around the province. Also if you are seriously looking to explore the whole province it's a really really big place! You will definitely need a car for the stuff outside of the city, like the interior region (wine country) etc.

This is a complex situation that I don't have full knowledge of. But here are some thoughts that might be helpful: - If you file as a resident alien in the US, you may not be able to file as a resident of Canada anymore. This means that you cannot claim the TL11 thing and your parents cannot claim your tuition benefits. If you are a non-resident of Canada without Canadian income, you just file a blank return essentially. (My Canadian spouse living in the US with me makes no Canadian income and they do not file in Canada). - I have no idea what's better for you. I highly suggest a consultation with a tax agent at H&R block or something. - You won't go jail! - I use a Mac with UFile online (not the software). I have always been able to print out the documents. There's an option to download the PDF paper return. Actually, when I file my Canadian taxes with UFile online, they automatically detect that I am not eligible to NETFILE and direct me to the PDF. So look for that. If UFile doesn't say that you can't file online, make sure the info is correct! i.e. ensure that you are using your US address, which indicates them them that you are filing from outside of the country

I don't think it's possible for anyone to force you to attend any school. You will likely lose your deposit though. This is a possible option but I would ask NYU to extend the deadline first.

If you are not clear about the decision deadline for this (for now) unfunded offer, it would be a good idea to email the person that sent you the offer letter to ask if there is a decision deadline. For unfunded programs, it might be as late the registration deadline for the next school year (maybe in the summer). It's not necessary but personally, I would do this check because it would be unfortunate if the deadline was something early like March 15 but you don't find out about funding until April 15 so when you try to accept later on, it's too late! If you ask about a deadline and learn that it's early, then you can ask for an extension closer to the deadline if you still have not yet learned about funding. Even if the unfunded offer deadline was also April 15, it's worth asking since the funded deadlines being on April 15 means that some students may decline a funded offer on the 15th and it might be the 16th or 17th before they make you a funded offer. I would always encourage clear lines of communication about deadlines and your decision making process. It's also worth checking in with your safety school. When is that decision deadline? You want to ensure that you do not have to accept that school's offer until you know for sure that you won't be getting a funded offer from your top choice. This might mean having to ask the safety school for an extension if their deadline is prior to April 15 and you might not hear about funding until after April 15. (But cross that bridge when you come to it).

I think this is fairly normal. But remember that other students who are interested in this PI's lab are likely also waiting for other offers as well, like you. So it's not like if you don't decide TODAY then you will lose the spot. But it certainly is stressful to have a deadline that you won't know about. You will just have to balance how much you are interested in this school and this particular professor vs. the other options that might crop up later. While you are waiting for other schools, this is a good time to make a preliminary ranking of how much you are interested in each school and each research group. At some point, you will have to decide whether or not it's worth waiting to hear back from the schools higher on your list. Maybe the "Results database" here can help you estimate when you would expect to hear back. Some schools will not send a rejection until way later, so if you suspect that the school has already made some decisions, it's fine to email them to let them know that you are interested in their program, and ask if they have an estimate of when they will have decisions since you have a time limit on another offer. Sometimes, you will get notified of a rejection right after you ask because you were on a list of planned rejection notices to come later on. This isn't fun but it is necessary information to help you decide! If you are interested in the school, but could also work with other professors, then I wouldn't rush things as much. If you are really interested in this professor but would also really want to hear back from just one or two other places, i.e. this prof is still one of your top choices, then I would let them know that they are one of your top choices and you will be ready to decide once you hear back from a few more places since it's still pretty early on in the "season". If you do find out the decision dates for the other schools, e.g. March 9, then you can let the prof know that you will decide by March 9. Keeping an open line of communication is helpful!

5 years ago, I was deciding between three schools, all with very similar rankings but vastly different research fits. I went with the school that had the most research fit and highest ranking, but it was also the lowest stipend offer after adjusting for cost of living. The other two schools paid well enough that grad students can buy houses! The school with the highest offer was the lowest ranked in my subfield (but not by much) but the worst research fit (it looked a lot better on paper than it did when I actually visited---part of the reason why I always encourage people to visit their top choices). I think after adjusting for cost of living, that highest offer would have paid me about 60% more than the offer I actually took. Cost of living can be misleading though---if you are interested in saving money for the future (beyond grad school), having an extra $1000 in the bank in a low cost of living city is worth the same as $1000 in the bank in a high cost of living city! However, after ensuring that the offer from my best-fit school was enough to live on, I made the same decision as fuzzylogician and rising_star and decided that attending the best fit school was worth the difference in pay. Grad school is only for 5 years and at least in my field, postdoc pay is way higher than student pay so it makes more sense to take the action that will result in better career prospects and earnings in the long term. I don't regret my decision at all, especially after finishing my job search for postdocs this year (wow, the market is way more competitive than I thought and I thought I was prepared for it). I ended up getting just one job offer, but it's to my top choice postdoc and I know that the specific experiences that I developed at my top choice grad school was a critical factor in getting this position. Looking back, I have no regrets but there were certainly tough times along the way where I wondered if I made the right choice. Seeing all of my friends from high school and college with "real jobs" that allowed them to buy homes or go on nice vacations etc. was hard sometimes, even if I knew that I was on my own path that will eventually get me the things I want. And, there were many moments where nothing research-wise was working and I was wondering if all the work was really worth it. That said, I would have certainly gone for a higher stipend offer if my top choice school didn't offer enough to actually live on. It would not have been enough if my spouse was not able to work in the US or if I had to support additional family members. I guess it was the right choice for at least three of us here who have gone through grad school (or almost finished it!) but it's something that will certainly vary from person to person.

Congratulations on getting into your top choice school Fuzzy's list covers the main stuff. The only things I would add are: - As part of the learning about when the housing market gears up, learn the typical "notice to vacate" rules in your New Location. Some places require tenants to give their landlords 60 (or 90) days notice to vacate, so if you are looking for a rental to begin September 1, it will likely already be on the market by June 1 (90 days) or July 1 (if 60 days). Most places in the US are 30 days though. But watch out for places with longer notice periods so that you don't miss out on some good deals. - Look into health insurance as well to ensure you don't have a gap in coverage. If you are staying on existing insurance, be sure that you can get the services you need while in the new city/state. If you are switching to student insurance at your new school, make sure you arrive after the insurance takes effect, or make sure you have some backup insurance if you move early. Finally, are you moving internationally? If so, there's a few more things to consider.

In the US, many programs do not accept a student directly to join a professor's lab. Instead, you are just accepted to the department in general and you decide on the lab or group later. This has positives and negatives. Positive: You get to join the program, do some coursework and get to know people before you commit to a lab. Negative: You are not guaranteed a spot in a specific lab, so if you were hoping to join a specific lab, you might not end up in that lab. Personally, I think the positives outweigh the negatives. However, the department does know your general interests and they normally admit people to have a diverse set of interests. That is, most programs won't admit two people with the same set of interests unless there were really two spots for them. It is definitely appropriate to email the professors that you are interested in working with. Let them know that you are accepted to their program and that you would like to talk with them about their research and the potential to join their lab/group. They should hopefully let you know how the process works. Some schools might not put you into a lab before the year begins but you can still secure yourself a spot by talking with the prof. Other schools might not want you to commit to a prof until after your first year. So, talk to the profs you are interested in and see what the procedure is like. This will also help you decide which offer to accept. You might change your mind about your interests after you learn more about the profs. Or, you might rethink whether you want to accept an offer to a school if there is only one single prof you would work with and that prof's lab is already very full and you may not get a spot.

Hello! I am also a Canadian in California and I can answer your questions Here are some tips, separated by country, and then some tips that relate to the Canada-US tax treaty. This is super duper long so if you want the very short answer: Expect to pay about 13% in taxes total to all US tax sources. To be safe, budget 15% of income to go to taxes and get a pleasant bonus each year when you file taxes. More details below. US tax tips: 0. In California, you will pay federal taxes and state taxes. Unlike in Canada, you actually file your federal and state taxes separately and you must finish your federal tax first in order to be able to complete your state taxes. Depending on the city, you may also pay municipal taxes. As soon as you enter the US, you should keep a clear record of every single time you enter/leave the US and separately, every single time you enter/leave the state of California. You will need this to complete your taxes and it's a pain to try to reconstruct this each year at tax season. The number of days for the federal taxes is not as important now because you will be a non-resident for quite awhile, but for the state, it's important because taxes are pro-rated by the number of days you are physically present. For each trip out of the state/country, note the day you leave, the day your return, and what kind of lodging you stayed at while away. You will need this for your tax return. 1. Your stipend is likely going to be considered taxable income. I think there are only very few special fellowship cases where your stipend is tax-exempt. Like @UnawareInGeneral said, in the US, monies spent towards tuition and required book fees are tax-exempt. So you will NOT be taxed on your tuition waiver in the US. If you keep all receipts for required books and supplies, then you will also be able to deduct these costs from your taxable income as well. However, you must keep receipts and you must be able to prove that they are required in order to complete your class. So, for example, if you must buy a special book or if you must buy a special calculator then it's deductible. You cannot deduct things like pens, notebooks, optional textbooks, or other things aren't specially required for the class. 2. This Wikipedia page has a great breakdown of the US progressive tax brackets for federal taxes. Again, as @UnawareInGeneral said, as non-residents, we cannot claim a few things. In addition to their list, note that we also cannot claim the "standard deduction" of $6,350 (as of 2016). We can only claim the "personal exemption" of $4050 (as of 2016). If you are familiar with Canadian taxes, the "personal exemption" is analogous to the "personal amount" deduction we have in Canada (which is $11474 in 2016), but just worth a lot less. (And they say we pay more taxes in Canada, eh?). 3. If you are married, you and your spouse must filed as "Married, filing separately". As pointed out above, this basically means you cannot claim dependents and you cannot take advantage of the better tax rates for families. 4. So, from the Wikipedia page, you see the marginal tax rates. There's an example there that you can follow to estimate tax owing too. Here's a quick guide, assuming your stipend is $25,000 per year. First, you take off the personal exemption and any deductions for books etc (from #1 above). Let's say you have no books, so it's just the $4050. So, your total taxable income for a year is $20,950. The table says the first $9,325 is taxed at 10%, so you will owe $932.50 from the first $9,325 earned. The remainder is $20,950-$9,325 = $11,625 and this portion is taxed at 15%. So this is another $1743.75 owed in taxes for this tax bracket. Unless you are making more than $40k per year, you won't ever reach the next tax bracket. So you can estimate your total federal tax owing to be $2676.25 for this example, which is approximately a 10.7% tax rate. 5. Now, you need to pay your state taxes. @UnawareInGeneral is correct that the highest tax bracket for state taxes is 13.3%, but as humble grad students, we will never reach this level of taxation. You can use this tax calculator from the state of California to estimate your tax owing. Enter the number after the federal personal exemption (there are other California specific exemptions too, but as non-resident, we rarely qualify for any and also our tax rate is low enough that it won't make a big difference). So, continuing this example, you would enter $20,950 into that calculator and see that your tax owing to California will be $376. This is a 1.7% tax rate. In addition, as a non-resident, your taxes and exemptions are pro-rated for the number of days you are in California. 6. Finally, you may have to pay municipal taxes. I don't know it for all the cities. I am not sure if students have to pay the municipal tax in my city, but I know that my spouse paid about $30 in taxes for income approximately the same as a student's (but they were not a student). So this is a small number. 7. As also pointed out above, you do not pay FICA taxes (Medicaid and Social Security), which is around 6%. You should not pay this as a grad student, regardless of your foreign status. But being a non-resident doesn't always exempt you from paying FICA taxes. My spouse had to pay them even though we've been here less than 5 years. It's a little complicated and I admit I don't fully understand all of these details. Nevertheless, as a student, you shouldn't have to pay them! 8. So, ignoring the tiny municipal taxes, you should expect to pay about $3050 in taxes for a stipend of $25,000 to IRS and California. This is a total tax rate of approximately 12.2%. I generally tell Canadians to budget 10%-15% for taxes. Also, keep in mind that your school will likely withhold taxes from your income. If you fill out the proper paperwork upon enrollment (they will give it to you), your withholding will be about 14%. So you should get a little bit of money back each tax season. But this also means that you should budget your month-to-month expenses to consider a 14% withholding. Sometimes, the school doesn't give you the right form and the standard practice, without this form, is to withhold the highest tax bracket from international people!! So if you are seeing a 30% or more withholding on your first paycheck, you should immediately talk to HR to sort it out. 9. Misc. notes: As a non-resident, for federal taxes, you are only taxed on US-based income. So if you are receiving income from Canada from any source (e.g. a Canadian scholarship, a side business you might have etc.) you don't have to claim it on your US taxes. However, for California state taxes, you are taxed on any income paid to you for work in California, regardless of source. So, if you are receiving a Canadian fellowship to go to school in the US, you will pay California tax on that. But if you are making money from your side business in Canada, then it's not taxable in California. 10. Remember, US taxes are due earlier than Canadian taxes (April 15 instead of April 30). However, you also typically get your tax forms in the US much faster than you do in Canada. This works out because you have to file your US taxes before you can file Canadian taxes. You must do them all either by hand or with tax software and then print it out and mail it in. You just need to have it stamped by the post office no later than April 15. Most schools will provide free federal tax software to international students (I think it's required to) but not state taxes. Doing state taxes by hand is a pain and I think it's totally worth the $25-$35 to pay for the software that will do it for you. If you do buy software (or via an online service), make sure it's specifically for non-resident alien taxpayers. A lot of software are only for residents and they won't help us! Canadian tax tips: 1. Unless you are required to for some other reason, you probably should NOT claim non-resident status in Canada. I find that there are a lot more benefits to keeping resident status in Canada than to switch to non-resident status but you should decide for yourself after reading the list below. @UnawareInGeneral listed some of the things you can't do as a non-resident in the US and they are all negative. Similarly, when you are a non-resident in Canada, you also lose out on a lot of benefits as well. I'll get into that below. The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) allowed me to keep my Canadian-resident status while I'm in the US as a student. They required my spouse to change to non-resident though because they are not a student. 2. As a Canadian resident taxpayer living abroad, you must report all taxable worldwide income to the CRA. In Canada, graduate student stipends are not taxable if they are being used to support your graduate education. When I was in my Canadian MSc program, I did not pay any Canadian taxes on fellowships and scholarships, only Research Assistantship and Teaching Assistantship income (i.e. things where I receive a T-4 slip). However, in the United States, for my particular school, we might work as researchers and teaching assistantships, but the school is adamant that we are not employees. So, when I talk to the CRA agent (on the tax hotline) about this, they deem that since we are not working, the money is not taxable in Canada. They say I should not claim it at all. 3. However, since you are going to a UC school where you would be unionized, I assume that maybe you might have employment income that might be taxable. I'm not sure since I've not experienced that. But I do know what happens when you do have taxable income because my spouse moved to the US with me and worked (as a "real person", not a student) so they paid taxes to the US and to Canada on their US job. What happens is that first you convert your US income into Canadian dollars. Then you fill out a form to determine your "foreign tax credits" along with your CRA tax return. Basically, you calculate how much taxes you would have owed in Canada if that money was earned in Canada. Then, you determine how much taxes you already paid to all foreign tax collectors (at all 3 levels). This counts as "paid tax credit" towards how much you owe in Canada. The point of this law is to prevent you from being double taxed. That is, if you would have owed $1000 in taxes to Canada but already paid $900 to the US, you only owe $100 to Canada. Unless you are making a ton of money in the US, you are very likely to owe less to Canada than you would in the US and therefore not have to pay any extra. Let's say it's the worst case scenario and you are taxed in Canada for all of your UC stipend. Continuing our $25,000 income example and assuming an exchange rate of 1.3 CAD per USD, this is $32,500 CAD in income. Deduct $11,474 CAD personal amount and you will be paying Canadian taxes on $21,026 CAD of income. At a 15% base tax rate, this is $3153.90 CAD in tax owing. Now, you already paid $3050 USD in taxes to the IRS and the state of California. Convert this to CAD and the CRA sees that you've paid $3965 CAD to foreign tax collectors, which is more than the $3153.90 CAD you would have owed in Canada. So you would not have to pay any extra taxes to Canada. 4. As a Canadian resident attending school in the US, you are eligible to claim education tax credits in Canada just like you did when you were at University in Canada. You should ask your school to fill out the TL-11D form (link: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pbg/tf/tl11d/) to claim amount paid towards tuition as tax credits. Some people on these forums in other threads reported that their school refused to do this so your mileage may vary. I have been able to this at my school with little problem. You can claim this tax credit even if you don't directly pay tuition. That is, if you have a tuition waiver, it's like you were paid the money and then spent it on tuition. Tuition waivers definitely are not taxable in Canada. However, if you do have tuition tax credits and if you must pay Canadian taxes on US-income, the CRA laws require you to "spend" any tax credits (including carryover amounts from previous years) before you can apply the Foreign Tax Credit. I checked this with the CRA agent. So, in this sense, you are being "double taxed"---you won't pay more money out of pocket but you are losing credits that could have been applied later on. They are aware that the current law is not consistent with the intention of not being double taxed. The nice CRA agent said that they receive many calls about this question but until the law is changed, this is what happens. 5. As a Canadian resident living temporarily abroad, you are also eligible for the refundable income tax credits as well as the non-refundable credits mentioned above. So by filing my Canadian taxes with a $0 taxable income, I still get a few hundred dollars per year for various refundable tax credits. 6. Unfortunately, as a resident filing from abroad, you may not NETFILE your CRA taxes. So you also have to mail in your paper tax forms! You also need to attach a copy of all your US tax forms with your CRA tax forms. So, you must do your US taxes first, then your CRA taxes. The order I work in is US-Federal taxes (Form 1040-NR), then California state taxes (Form 540NR) and then Canadian tax forms (Schedule T1). 7. So, overall, you should decide whether you are better off changing to non-resident to keeping resident status in Canada. Compare the benefits of Tip #4 and #5 vs the costs of potentially losing carryover Canadian tax credits. US-Canada tax treaty tips: There exists a tax treaty between Canada and the US where if your taxable employment income is less than $10,000 in a tax year, then you pay zero US taxes on your income. So you might be able to claim this on your first year in the US (if you arrive in September, you will likely earn less than $10,000 in the first few months). Non-resident tax software will automatically detect which tax treaties you are eligible for and help you make the claim. Note that this is not a progressive tax thing, so if you earn $9,999 USD then you are eligible and pay zero taxes, but if you earn $10,001 USD, you pay the full amount of taxes. I don't know what happens if it's $10,000 USD exactly. So, I hope that was helpful. It's basically a brain dump of everything I know and what I try to tell to Canadians who come to my school.

Start by responding to the person that made you the offer in the first place. They might pass you directly to whoever else is supposed to do this, or they might work with you to determine what your request is and then pass it to someone else for approval.

I think you will have to check with both FL and CO state residency requirements. Usually, you have to physically be in one state for most of the year to maintain residency in said state. The exception as you said is when you temporarily leave to go to school. However, since you aren't going to CO for school, I don't know if this applies. You should check with FL to determine what you have to do to maintain state residency. And, you should check with CO to ensure that you aren't required to switch to CO state residency! Note also that there are different requirements/definitions for residency when it comes to the DMV, tuition costs, taxes, and state benefits.

What type of program are you applying to? Your left side-bar info says MPH in Dietetics but I'm not sure if you are currently in that program or applying to that type of program so I thought I would ask to make sure. If you are applying to MPH programs, then I don't have experience with this but the 9 paragraph defensive response does sound very odd. As you said, MPH programs don't fund many of their students so maybe they just copy and paste that to anyone asking for funding? In any case, it's weird! Anyways for your current situation, this advice assumes that you will only take the top choice program if you are part of the 7% that get a TAship and you would attend the in-state school otherwise. In this case, you don't have to do anything unless it is close to the decision deadline for either your top choice program or the in-state program. I think you should continue to wait. You could to the top choice program saying that you are happy to receive this acceptance and that you hope you are a good candidate to receive funding or something like that. When it's closer to the deadline to accept either school's offer (maybe when it's 10-14 days away), it's time to email the top choice program and ask them about a funding decision timeline. You can explain that you are very interested in their school but you cannot afford it without a TA-ship so that's why you are asking if they have made TA-ship decisions yet and if not, when would they have the decisions. If they tell you it is still weeks/months before a decision, then you could ask both schools to give you more time to decide. If they won't do this, then you just have to decide whether it's worth doing either program without funding. If only one school gives you an extension, then accept the other school's offer and then renege if you find the other school more desirable after funding decisions have been made (**note: you may lose a deposit if you do this, but I don't think it's a bad thing to renege on an unfunded admissions offer).

I don't want to push on this point too much, and maybe it's totally fine for the department you have in mind, but since it has not been mentioned before, I think I should at least bring it up. First, remember that it can be hard for some people to express their discomfort, especially if they don't want a confrontation with you. And, hypoallergenic doesn't mean it will be okay for everyone's allergies as each person is different. Maybe it's just me, but I always thought of workplaces as inappropriate for pets except for very rare cases when you have your own enclosed office (e.g. maybe your pet is sick and needs to be watched over for the day). I would say to get explicit permission from everyone before bringing your dog in, instead of waiting for someone to make a fuss about it. And when you do this, be sure to ask in a way that doesn't pressure people into agreeing with something they don't want. It's not even about allergies or barking, because I know a few people who are really uncomfortable around dogs (or animals in general) and people should have the expectation of not having to interact with your dog when they are at their place of work. Remember that your office is not just an extension of your own personal space.

Yes, you should eventually expect an email. From my experience, sometimes the notification of decision and the email to coordinate things like the details of the offer and the visit dates (if any) might come a few weeks apart. But if you are worried, it doesn't hurt to send the department an email saying that you got notification from the graduate school and you have some questions about the program. You could then ask if you should expect an email with more details or if you could ask some questions now.

I'm not in the same field, but for what it's worth, no I don't think a PhD is a PhD. When I applied to PhD programs, I only applied to top programs (top 10) in my field. My plan was that if I did not get into a top program, I would not pursue a PhD but instead follow one of the many other career paths that interested me instead. I applied the same approach to postdoc positions---if I were not able to get a "good" postdoc position, I was not planning to continue in academia. I did not want to do an "average" postdoc and then do another one and another one and then eventually learn that I'm not competitive enough for a permanent academic position. My academic/career plan has always been to only stay in this path as long as I could see others like myself advancing to end/permanent positions that I want. Although I am not the top student in my field by any means, I think I did do very well in my PhD and out of the ~16 or so top tier postdoc positions I applied to, I have received one offer (although not everything is decided yet). Fortunately for me, this one offer is the one I wanted the most!! However, it is very scary to think about what could have happened instead. There are 300 or so academics in my field that are in their final year of their PhD (like me) or within 3 years of their PhD all applying to about 40 or so available positions that would be considered "top tier". For any given opening, there are usually 50-100 other applicants also applying for it. I knew from the posts from older students on these forums and from talking to others in my field that the job market is competitive, but I did not really appreciate how competitive it was until I actually started applying. During the interview stage, it seems like my experience and skills were the deciding factor in getting the position I wanted. However, the only reason I was able to develop the specific experience and skills that impressed the hiring committee was because I was at a top 10 institution with access to world class telescopes that no one else can use. It is not all about school name of course. There are some people from my department that did better in the job market because they are more insightful, more intelligent and more productive than me. So yes, what you know is also very important. However, the people with this level of skill and ability are also the people who would get into the top schools. What I mean to say is that having a nice school name isn't enough to land you a good job. But if you take two equally skilled/experienced people and put one in a top school with unlimited resources and one in an average school with decent resources, I'd predict that the student from the top school will fare better generally. Nurture wins over nature, when it comes to graduate education, in my opinion.

Agreed with the above. Sometimes, students visiting us meet with a prof outside of the regular meeting time due to some last minute conflict that prevents the prof from meeting with the students they want. For me, there was one visit where I ended meeting with a prof for coffee the morning after the official visit dates because that was the only viable time.

If your undergrad advisor doesn't need to know until mid-March, you can wait a little bit. Let him know that your schools said they won't decide until March and that you will let him know ASAP. Meanwhile, you can wait for now but around March 1, it's okay to send the other schools an email asking if there is an update. It's unlikely that they will tell you any good news right then and there because if they have not yet decided, then they have not yet decided. As @HiFiWiFi said, they won't decide and then sit on them for weeks. However, in a couple of weeks, when it's early March, you could get useful information like: "you are currently on our shortlist" or, "unfortunately you did not make a shortlist and it's unlikely we will make an offer to you". Schools do sit on rejections for weeks, sometimes waiting until they deal with all the acceptances first! So asking can get you a earlier rejection notice, which isn't fun of course, but knowing that you're out of the running helps you make the final decision.

I still disagree with you on the appropriate-ness of that question. But nevermind, it's a minor point and I'm happy to agree to disagree. On the second point, I completely agree with you that other departments may do things differently. My own department does it exactly the way you describe the department you visit. We accept about 40 and expect about 20 to take the offer. Like the school in your example, there is enough funding to act as insurance...if we get 25 acceptances this year, we might only make 35 offers next year. We also take it to another level: our department hosts a number of different PhD programs and we don't pay too much attention to the number of acceptances per program, only long term averages. So for my particular PhD program, some years we have 7 new students and in other years we have 0-2 students. We also rarely make a second round of offers. This is the ideal scenario for students for the schools that have the means to do so. But not every school could do this, so some may employ strategies like I wrote above. I only meant to provide it as an example of why @scarvesandcardigans had this experience in hopes that a logical explanation might ease some of the frustrations. I personally think it is an appropriate strategy and that everyone will encounter more of this as they progress later on in academia for postdoc and faculty hires, where the numbers are even smaller and the stakes are even higher. In these cases, even the top schools may want to know as much about your willingness to accept as they can get.

If they are not paying for you to attend this, I would not think it's worth attending.

As I wrote above, very few schools will do this. If they do, if the department gets shut down, or if all of the profs lose their grants, then will they still have to pay you? I think the wording is to avoid that scenario. On that note, I also do not think it's useful to get it amended from "availability of funding" to "guaranteed funding" because the guarantee is worthless if they run out of funds to pay you with! If the department loses all its money, a guarantee won't mean anything. I think "availability of funds" plus some wording like jnf has about "intends to fund every student" plus anecdotes from students and faculty in the department that every student in the past 10 years have been fully funded would be enough for me, personally. You want to confirm that the department intends to pay you and has a plan to do so, but you can't insure against catastrophic changes. For things a department going under, you have to enter the PhD program on a "shared risk" basis.

In that case, I would feel confident about it. It would be a good idea to ask about this when you visit or if you have a chance to ask professors and students in the program. The way I would phrase the question would be something like to quote or paraphrase the offer wording and ask how often is it that someone is unfunded. If they say it never happens, then it's basically guaranteed! In most programs with language like what I wrote or what you wrote here, if you don't get funding, it means that they are kicking you out too due to lack of progress/failure to keep good standing. Programs that intend to fully fund their students will not say someone is not good enough for funding but good enough to stay, except in some rare/extreme cases.