TakeruK

Hold out as long as you can. So if Carnegie Mellon is offering an extension to April 22, then wait until then.

Just a note that using your phone's mobile data as a hotspot for internet may not be included in some US provider's "unlimited internet plan". But I know that people can definitely do this, just be certain that if you plan on doing this, your mobile plan supports it!

Do you mean for the mortgage or for the funding from the school? For the mortgage, I am not sure but you would still owe them money etc. There may be insurance or other things you can buy to protect your ability to pay the mortgage but this is outside of my experience. For the school funding, if you quit your program, then depending on the source of the funds, you may have to repay part of the money awarded to you. I know some people who left their PhD programs in the middle of a term and they had to repay all non-employment sources of income to the school for that term/semester. That is, they did not have to pay back money earned from TA work (and in fact had to stay and finish their TA contract) but the university/department fellowships had to be repaid. For some others, they didn't have to repay the money from the semester but they just immediately stopped getting any further payments. This is why if you plan on quitting, it is important to read the fine print and it is usually much better to quit at the start of a term instead of in the middle of one, if possible. For finishing later, your offer letter will usually let you know if there is a time limit on your funding. You should talk to the department to find out their funding policies for students who stay beyond their funding offer. Some programs guarantee you funding for as long as it takes, while others only promise funding for X years and then you may still receive funding via TA/RA etc but only if the money is available. I know some PhD students who have to drop to part time and find other work in their last few years in order to earn money (e.g. teaching at nearby schools).

There's no general award like this for students in Canada. Maybe your specific field or school has some, but an award like this seems unlikely (i.e. everyone would want to apply for it and I'm not sure if it would even make much of an impact compared to using the same money to fund stipends etc.)

Oh forgot to mention---for home internet, each apartment building needs to be connected to whatever network you're using. So even if AT&T or whatever company is operating in your city, if your actual building isn't wired for that company, you won't be able to use it (or you may have to pay them a big fee to set it up). So definitely just find the best contracts separately and if they happen to be the same company, great!

Yes, there are some providers that offer both Internet and mobile phone (AT&T is one that comes to mind). However, there is rarely any bundled discounts for doing so. I think you are better off finding the best provider for both Home Internet and Mobile Phone independently, since you will likely save more money that way and get a plan that you like. Often, the internet providers available to you vary from location to location while phone providers are nationwide (i.e. more choices). My favourite US phone provider is Google! Look up "Project Fi". It's perfect for my phone needs when I was in the US (i.e. basic phone functions plus a little bit of mobile internet data since I am almost always connected to WiFi at home and at work). Their plans cost $20 for the basic phone functions (calls, text, voicemail, etc.) and then $10 per GB of data. The data/internet is charged to the $0.01 or nearest 10 MB (instead of many other providers requiring you to purchase a "bucket" e.g. 4 GB and charge you the same no matter how much you use). So, I usually used between 0.75 to 1.25 GB of data per month, which meant I paid about $27.50 to $32.50 per month for my phone. There is a catch though: You must be using one of Google's newest phones to have this plan. I love their phones so that was fine with me (I purchased and am still using a Nexus 5X for this plan; but they don't sell those anymore). A few other things I was not used to re: US phone companies. 1) The only long distance is out of the country (in Canada, calling outside of your city is often long distance!) and 2) most plans have unlimited talk/text (including the Google plan I mentioned).

The only thing you can really do is ask nicely and hope for the best. You could ask your department or your supervisor to buy the computer for you. Usually this means that the school / the prof owns the computer, not you, so you cannot use it for personal things and you'll give it back to them at the end of the program. At both of my graduate programs, my supervisor/advisor purchased a work computer (desktop not laptop) for me to do work on. Another thing you could do is to ask your department for additional funding in order to make this purchase. This works best if you already have an external award and will save the department some money anyways. You can then mention this award and ask if they could increase your funding package by $2000 (or something) in the first year so that you can buy a computer. This would be your own money so it would be your own computer, not theirs. Note that this tactic only works if the school isn't already giving you extra funding for bringing in an external award (if so, then use that extra money!).

Sure! Many Canadian schools do not follow the April 15 resolution (the Council of Graduate Studies, the organization that wrote the resolution is a US organization and only US schools are signatories). However, some of the large Canadian schools will also set a deadline of April 15 because they know that students also applying to American schools will have April 15 deadlines. The one school in Canada that operates the most like a US school (in my field anyways), including both the April 15 deadline and admitting from undergrad direct to PhD is the University of Toronto. Most other schools do their own thing. Although I don't know for sure for your fields/programs/schools, most Canadian grad programs operate more like Europe and the UK, where you're admitted directly to work with a POI and it's more like a job offer than the US admission system. For example, for all of my Canadian grad school offers (except Toronto), I was originally given 2-4 weeks to make my decision rather than April 15. And I know that other students hear back later on, in May or June after profs know what kind of funding they will have for next year. So, if you are waiting to hear back from a Canadian school (i.e. the top choice waitlisted school you mentioned earlier), I would not assume that you'll hear anything directly after April 15 (although that date may still be significant if others are going to be making decisions on that day). In this case, I would definitely check in with the Canadian school this week to get an update on their timelines. If you are in touch with a professor directly, talk to them too. Like I said above, Canadian admissions do work a bit differently in some cases, where the admissions committee may just approve/deny applicants based on some lower level/generic criteria and then profs "hire"/"pick" candidates from the approved pool (i.e. the final decision is up to the person that's going to be paying you).

I know plenty of grad students in geoscience programs that own houses! Maybe it is partly related to the fact that many of the best geoscience programs are in low cost of living places lol. I've only started the house buying process as a postdoc and it seems like they mostly only care about income at the time you are pre-approved and close the deal (most pre-approvals are good for a few months only). They don't seem to care that my postdoc has a termination date in 1-2 years, I guess they figure that if I have a job now, I can get another job in the future. However, frustratingly, my partner had a job but took time off for parental leave but they won't count my partner's previous income as earning potential. Oh well. We will probably wait until we're both working again to be able to afford what we want. Co-signing could be a good idea for you---we're considering it too. Right now, we are waiting to see whether our dual income would be enough to qualify for a mortgage we need. The big down side of co-signing is that all of our parents have retired (one of mine is working again because they are bored but they would like to stop soon) so if they co-sign, they need to keep working. They offered to do this because they are great people but I really don't want to make my parents keep working so that they can co-sign. There's a calculator (from the NYT, I think) that lets you figure out whether it is really worth it to buy for X years and sell or just rent for those X years. Personally, we're considering buying even though my postdoc is quite short because I really do intend to stay in the area if possible and because I plan on keeping it as a rental property if we do move away. But we'll see what happens.

I see. I think it is important to take a step back and consider why you want a PhD in electrical engineering at this time. Then consider what it is worth to you. If you have been working after your undergraduate and have money saved up for a Masters program and you feel that spending that money would be a good investment in yourself, then School B might be a good idea if you think it's worth your savings. Another similar option is to tell School B that you are very interested in their program but you need to save more money first since you don't have funding from them. Ask if they can defer your admissions for 1 year, so that you can work for 1 more year and save up more money. However, another good option, in my opinion, is to not do graduate school at all. In your shoes, I would probably choose this option and not spend the money or time to switch fields in electrical engineering. But this is a very personal choice, so it's up to you what is worth your time and money. And yet another option is to take School A and change your interests to match what school A has to offer. If I was in a position where I needed a PhD to advance my career, but I was not able to get in a PhD program for my intended field, I would instead do a PhD in another field and follow that career path instead. Finally, keep in mind that while you do need academic letters of reference, if you have been out of school for awhile, it is usually okay to have 1 or 2 letters from non-academics (depending on your situation). That said, I think you can definitely ask for letters again next year. However, if your current work isn't academic, I see you point about not really improving much next year. Still, if you apply to a different set of schools, you might be able to get into one with funding (like School A) but perhaps in a field/area more interesting to you.

I agree with @rising_star, if I were in your shoes, I would not attend either school. I would only go to graduate school if I were accepted to a program that had good funding, good research fit, and will provide me with good career options. Otherwise, grad school is not worth it.

Better to also send an email, in my opinion. But maybe the norms in our fields are different.

I know right? Canada doesn't tax the majority of graduate student income so I've paid way more income tax to the USA in my 5 years there than to Canada the rest of my life (so far, that will change eventually though). For the $20k to $40k tax bracket, I really do think Americans pay more taxes than Canadians, despite what people often say about the tax rates in our two countries. I am assuming that you did put aside some money to pay for taxes based on what your expectations were from the last year. You should file your taxes and pay as much as you can. See this page from the IRS on your options: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/what-if-i-cant-pay-my-taxes. For example, you might be able to ask for an extension or they might choose to not collect on your account for some time. If you have a family member you can borrow from, that would reduce interest/fees from the IRS. Otherwise, talk to the IRS to figure out what you will have to pay in terms of interests etc. and consider whether a loan makes sense. In the future, I would follow @Emily Roberts's advice and especially look at that linked blog post. I think you would owe enough that you should have paid quarterly taxes and you will likely also get hit with a fee for not doing so. In addition to saving money on that fee, paying quarterly taxes prevents you from having a giant bill at the end of each year.

Then it sounds like the person communicating with you is asking you for financial information in order to process the paperwork necessary to get your foreign student visa/status for study in the USA. In order to qualify for F-1 or J-1 status, you need to provide a certain amount of proof of financial support, either from the department or from your own savings or another funding source. This is a requirement from US Immigration that you must have enough funds to match the published cost of attendance for your school. It seems like even though you will get a $20,000 stipend, that is not enough to cover the cost of attendance. You should of course make sure this is actually the case. First, double check that they have accounted for all of the department funding (upload the offer letter if you have it). If so, and if you have $x,xxx ready to go in the bank, then you should ask them how to best provide this proof and then do so. Here are some example proof of funding documents from a blog post: https://blog.iefa.org/2012/04/proof-of-funds-for-your-f-1-visa.html Finally, disclaimer: This is all advice based on what I know about this process but I'm not an expert. Definitely talk to your school's international student office for help and specifics on your case.

Based on your other threads, I am guessing that you are asking whether you will get in some sort of academic integrity trouble if you do this. If so, then my answer is that no, you will not. However, this is a bad idea because it is lazy writing. If I was grading your work and noticed that you are just repeating yourself like you described, it would be poor writing and your grade will reflect that.

Are you a citizen/resident taxpayer/otherwise able to claim the standard deduction? If so, then here's a quick estimate of how much you should be paying in taxes: Income: 26,000 Minus Personal Exemption of $4050 Minus Standard Deduction of $6350 What you pay taxes on: 15,600 The first tax bracket is 10% on the first $9350. So you owe $935 in that bracket. $15,600 minus $9350 is $6250, so that is taxed at the second tax bracket, which is 15%. 15% of $6250 is $937.50. Therefore, you should owe a total of $937.50 plus $935 = about $1870 on your federal taxes. However, the above does not include FICA taxes (social security and medicaid). For self-employment, this is taxed at 15.30%, I believe. So 15.3% of $7000 is another $1071 owed. NOTE: Students are exempt from FICA taxes I believe, but this is only on their grad school stipend, not their own side employment. So federal + FICA is about $2950. I am not sure what your state tax rates are. But $550 for state taxes on $26000 of income sounds reasonable (would be about 2%). Did your school withhold any taxes at all? If they did, make sure you included these amounts to ensure that you don't have to pay taxes you already paid.

As @brainlass said, in the majority of cases, the take-home stipends international graduate students receive in Canada are about the same as the Canadian students. Yes, you will cost the school more money, but typically, most programs address this by reducing the number of international students accepted rather than admitting students with less funding. Or, another way to put it: there is usually enough money for X number of international students, so all of the international student applicants compete for this smaller quota and therefore, you generally need to be a stronger candidate if you want to be admitted as an international student. Note that this general framework is almost the same in every country: non-citizens generally have more limited opportunities. Whether it's worth your time to apply or not is something that is hard for anyone to consider. A 3.5 GPA is not going to get you automatically rejected from any school. But your application depends on a lot more than just your GPA. Also, in many fields, Canadians enter a Masters program after their undergrad degree, then follow with a PhD. The Canadian Masters is very different from a US Masters, and you can consider it as the first 2 years of a US PhD program (whereas the Canadian PhD program is more like the final 3 years of a US PhD program). Maybe your field is different though and there is direct-entry from the Bachelor's degree. I only mention this because you should not be deterred if you see that PhD programs require a Canadian Masters, you should then apply for a Masters program there. Finally, unlike the US, time as a PhD student in Canada will count towards permanent status here! It's not a perfect/ideal system as there are many delays and there are certainly a lot of rules (not 100% familiar with them as I am Canadian so I never had to deal with them) but I know many academics who attend school in Canada and then become permanent residents and/or citizens. So it's definitely possible and unlike the US, your time as a student will count!

It is okay to ask for feedback in your case and it won't be something that is "frowned upon". Maybe wait until May or June to ask though since this might be a very busy time as they try to fill the last few spots left. I think the best way to ask, from your post, is "What would make my application stronger if I were to reapply in the future?" This will be something that they can answer and also something that is actually helpful to you. In my opinion, it is not appropriate to ask for the notes they wrote about your application (honestly, there may not be any notes, and usually these are quite confidential so they are likely destroyed ASAP). Also I think if you ask for this, they might just say no instead of providing anything useful at all. So, I think something more future-focused and positive pointing would be a better way to ask, such as what I wrote in the previous paragraph. If they choose to share additional info, they could do that too. It's okay to ask, but be prepared for them to not provide anything. It really depends on the school and the individual you are speaking with whether or not you get lots of info or just very generic stuff. To be honest, for many schools where there are 10 times as many applicants as there are spots, a large fraction of applications are removed from consideration very early on so there are no notes or memory associated with the reason for this removal, so there really isn't any feedback to give. In addition, the role/job of the admissions committee is not to evaluate these applications the same way they might evaluate an assignment or project (i.e. with feedback intending to both evaluate accomplishment and to also teach the student). Instead, the purpose of the evaluation is to determine whether or not the application gets on to the next stage and/or is admitted to the program. So the notes taken sometimes does not really provide useful feedback and few faculty members are going to want to spend extra time with an application to provide this detailed feedback. In your situation, since it does sound like they have spent some time considering yours, you might get some useful feedback. Finally, just from my opinion if I was going to give feedback on the applications I've evaluated (I've not been on a grad admissions committee but I have been on other committees / made hiring/selection decisions). If a candidate contacted me and I was allowed to give feedback, I would most certainly only give information that is positive and future focused because I don't think it's useful to talk about things the candidate cannot change. In addition, I am sure most evaluators/committee members will not want to get into an argument/back-and-forth with the candidate about interpretation of their evaluation. For example, if I say something like, "We did not think you adequately made a case for why your project would make good use of the archives/equipment/telescopes/labs/etc. that we have in the department", then the applicant might point out specific lines in the SOP where they made this case. Then, there might be a debate on whether we interpreted their words correctly or not. This would be an awkward and terrible position to be in, and I think part of the reason why many departments don't provide feedback at all is to avoid these scenarios specifically. Therefore, I think it's good idea to focus on your request on what can be improved for the future, rather than critique of your application, because it is less likely to signal to the department that you might be a person that will want to try to argue with them.

Once you are sure that you will not attend a program in Fall 2018 and will do the Fulbright ETA, it's also okay to just ask the program you're interested in whether they think you would be more competitive with a Fulbright ETA. Or, another way you can ask is to ask about deferring admissions and ask whether you can be reconsidered for scholarships without applying again (i.e. submit a scholarship-only application).

Glad to hear that you can find a way to move forward with your project while also ensuring you are doing the right thing!

Coming here to also chime in: Don't attend program A. You've listed all the warning signs of a terrible mentor-student relationship and like others have said: you're in his good books now, but what about later? How long are you willing to have to put aside making your own decisions to please this guy? Eventually, inevitably, there will be something that you want to do that will upset this guy and burn bridges. It sounds like whether the bridge is burnt now or later will make no difference to him (i.e. he's not going to be any happier with you later than now) but you would have already invested all this time doing what he wanted. So I'd say it's better to cut him off now, than later. In addition, I feel like this guy is super creepy/sleazy/unethical/manipulative. Getting himself on the admissions committee so he can let you in? Telling you this? Making you feel like you "owe" him your admissions and your success? Say no to that. You don't owe him anything. You say that he put his name on the line at your home dept to get you in, but he didn't really do it for you. He did it for himself. Committees are supposed to act in the best interests of the department, but he forced his way onto the admissions committee to get what *he* wanted. He told you that he did all of this for you, in order to make you feel like you need to do what *he* wanted. No wonder the rest of the department does not get along with him. He sounds like a terrible colleague and an even worse mentor/supervisor. If you can be happy at School B, go there! You don't have to do anything to actively burn the bridge with this guy---remain friendly and keep communication open but don't do favours for him or anything. If he wants to cut you off, then I think you might actually be better off. After your PhD program, you won't need his letter and from the way he acts, I would not be surprised if everyone knows what kind of person he is.

No, in fact, if you win the CGS-M, you are likely to also win the OGS (as you have already experienced). I wrote: But, what I did say was that the Ontario Government sets a limit on the number of years you can hold an OGS or CGS-M / CGS-D in the past and still be eligible for the OGS. Holding the CGS-M counts as one year towards this eligibility. This is not a good reason to *not* take the CGS-M though, since holding a OGS also counts towards this time limit! Maybe I was a little unclear on how this influences future OGS applications. To be clear, what I mean is that as long as you are eligible, then the number of past awards won't count against you (actually will probably help you). Hope that clears it up

A PhD program is a long marathon. Although I am in a different field, there were certainly some times where I had to dig deep within myself to find motivation to get through tough challenges. My colleagues and I got through it by going back to our interests in the subject matter and knowing that we were doing the best thing for our future goals (personal and career goals). In addition, quite frankly, I think PhD students are generally overworked and underpaid, but students have little power/say in changing in the system and it's something we have to do to achieve certain goals. So, I would advise a person to only enter a PhD program if it truly met their goals and they absolutely needed it for their goals. Don't do a PhD for the sake of a PhD and if you aren't interested in the program any more, there's nothing wrong with turning it down and applying to programs you actually want to attend next year.

Yay!

Glad you found a place to live! Finding a lease is always one of the biggest stresses of moving (for me) and for all of my moves, signing that lease is just a huge weight lifted. Congrats