TakeruK

Contact your school now and explain the situation. They will let you know what is necessary. You should ask now because they might want a letter from your school to explain why you cannot get another copy of your transcript. If so, it will be much easier for you to get that now when you might be closer to your university and before you have to deal with all the other stresses of moving. Yes, most schools only want to see the documents for verification, and you will get to have your documents back. They will probably just photocopy it for your records. If you are not sure, just confirm that you can get the documents back before presenting them.

1) Yes, you should ask for more monetary help if you need it. You may not get it though. Usually, international students from outside of North America only visit if they are already in the US (e.g. as an undergrad or some other purpose) or if they are combining a few visits together. If you have applied to other schools nearby, maybe you can try to visit more than one school in one trip and split the costs? When I was visiting schools in California and Arizona from Canada, the cost would have been too high for just one school's travel allowance but I was able to visit both by combining them. It did mean that for one school, I visited at an alternate date instead of the official visit days (but there were 2 other students visiting with me too, so it wasn't just me!). I visited one school on Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday was a travel day and then visited the second school on Thursday and Friday. If you are asking for more support or to split costs, it is helpful to present the costs and proposed expenses so that you are asking for a concrete number and can justify it. This will likely have a better chance of succeeding than just asking for a higher number. 2) Whether or not it's easy to get a visa completely depends on your country of origin, what passports you have, and your own history. You would likely visit on a tourist visa, there's no special visa for visiting grad schools. So, you can judge what the process could be like by finding out what people from your country normally do if they want to visit the US. If people from your country can regularly get visas to visit the United States, then it should be straight-forward! You may ask your school for a letter of invitation if that is necessary for your visa application.

Yes, since you have had good dialogue about your application, it's not a bad idea to just email the prof to say something like thanks again for your time and to let them know that your application is now submitted. You should not expect a response (so don't feel bad if they just acknowledge it without replying). You might want to also email the students you talked to and thank them for their time. I'm not saying this to improve your admission chances (although sometimes students are involved in decisions) but just to be a nice person. I know that as a current grad student, I sometimes get emails about the program from interested applicants and it's nice when someone follows up

Thanks!

This is cool Just a friendly reminder to everyone using this tool and other similar tools: please be considerate of others and realise that every time you run this, you are basically loading up the webpage. So, please don't do something like set up a cron job or other automation tool to make a request every second. You can imagine if a large number of people were making a large number of requests per minute, it would ruin things for everyone!

I think your advisor is giving you great advice and they are going to help you fix it. I understand the feeling of not wanting to feel like you let your advisor down but it sounds like he really wants to help you. I think it's important to become accustomed to showing your advisor work for feedback. You don't have to be perfect in front of your advisor at every moment. I want to second everything fuzzy said, especially the "really good presentation" part. People can forgive an incomplete or preliminary study if it was well presented and you motivate the problem in an interesting way. People may be less forgiving if your presentation doesn't show any concrete results and it was also poorly delivered, because it makes people feel like you wasted their time. However, that said, most people come to conferences to hear about your work, not to poke holes in your results and "tar and feather" you! Finally, one additional piece of advice would be to consider showing what results could look like once your data is complete. Perhaps you can show some projected data and describe possible scenarios/hypotheses and what the data would look like if these scenarios/hypotheses were true.

Whether or not you can do this depends on each school's policy. At my school, everyone is paid the same amount unless you have a fellowship that covers all of your cost (then whatever excess is yours to keep, up to a certain maximum wage on campus). So, at a school like this, you can try but you won't be able to get more money. At my school and probably most places, it won't hurt you to try as long as you ask politely---you'll just get a polite no back. I think you need to have some sort of reason/leverage in order to be successful. For example, if you have more than one offer, and the other offer is from a school that is comparable to your school (in terms of quality, fit and cost of living), you might be able to say that you really want to go to #1 choice school but this offer from #2 school is better, would #1 school consider increasing their offer? However, be careful how you do this. I would only do this if you really thought both schools are almost equal and that you would prefer to go to #2 school because of the money. It might be a little weird if you make this ask, they say no, and then you attend #1 school anyways. It may or may not be awkward, depending on how your interactions went. Another way to "leverage" is having external funding. If you have some external funding source that reduces your cost to the school, you might be able to ask for more money along with something like another offer from another school. So now, you can say that school #1 is offering X but school #2 offered you $X+$3000, and since you are bringing in Scholarship XYZ worth $10,000 per year, would it be possible for you to be paid the same as school #2? This method is better because you are bringing something to the table instead of just asking for more. And it doesn't leave the implication that you would prefer #2 if #1 says no. Having a good reason for more funding could be the key factor. If you can explain why you would not be able to attend their program (or would be severely disadvantaged) without additional funding, then you might have better luck than if you are just asking because you want to have more savings or to have a more competitive offer. For example, you might have some extra costs for health maintenance that make the current offer not enough to survive on. Finally, the most important factor is something you can't really control, and it's whether or not the school even has a means of increased funding. Some departments have "funding tiers" where some students might get a few limited fellowships and get paid a little more than those without (paid as TA/RA, for example). If this is the case, having at least one of the reasons above might convince them to bump you up to a higher funding tier. Even if they already offered fellowship spots to everyone they have room for, you might convince them to draw from a future year's budget to fund you. Or, maybe they know someone is about to decline their fellowship so you can have their spot. On the other hand, some schools (like mine) believe that their funding offer is enough to survive on (I would say yes it is, and with a few thousand to spare each year too!). In that case, you are very unlikely to get a stipend boost in order to match the competition. I think that your best bet in a school like this is to combine reason #2 (external funding) and #3 (a demonstrated need). To end on a personal anecdote. I had an external fellowship from my home country's government and asked if I could keep any part of it. I didn't make this part of a "negotiation" though, I just wanted to know out of curiosity since it's common in Canada for these fellowship holders to get a little bonus. Also, the fellowship results come out much later than admission decisions so I had already accepted my place. I got a polite "no, sorry, we don't do that" from my school. A few months later, for various personal reasons I won't get into here, I ended up having to pay almost $10,000 in medical costs. I asked for help with this and they decided to retroactively give me a first year stipend bonus to cover these costs since I am bringing in external funds (the total value of my outside award was about $60,000).

Maybe. You should wait until they contact you then you will know for sure.

It sounds like the USC fellowship is a much better fit then! Hope you are able to avoid the blacklist

Thanks for the update, it's always nice to hear how things turn out Glad that things are going well now!

If you are 100% sure you are going to accept your dream school or you are 100% sure you will not attend the interviewing school, then yes you should cancel the interview. If you cancel, you might just waste some hotel costs (although they can probably get those refunded pretty easily). If you don't cancel, you waste that money PLUS all the time invested in you by interviewing you. It is acceptable to send them an email on Monday saying that you really appreciate the interview invite but you have now accepted an offer from XYZ school (or just "another school") and you would like to withdraw your application and cancel your interview. Apologize for the inconvenience. If you are not 100% sure you are going to accept your dream school, then go through with the interview. Keep an open mind because you might still want to take this offer.

Congratulations on your offer! This is a tough decision. I am surprised at all of the restrictions of the government fellowship (especially if declining means you are blacklisted). Have you discussed these possibilities with the school yet? That is, some schools will allow you to defer their award if you have your own. Can you ask USC to allow you to be funded on the home country fellowship for 4 years and then on their fellowship for 1 year? (If you are leaning towards home country government fellowship, then this will at least remove one difference). Also, are you able to take the home country fellowship and get a "top up" from USC so that your total stipend is $26,000? But after reading what you said about the other aspects, I would also lean towards the USC fellowship. The blacklist thing is worrisome though, unless you know for sure that you don't want to work in your home country in the future. The money difference is also substantial. The USC fellowship will award you $15000 more in funding in 5 years. The extra money from your home country is probably valued at around...$7000? Is the home country government value fixed at 22,950 USD or would it fluctuate with changing currency rates? Taxes will be something like 10% for you, so I guess that makes the funding values almost the same for both fellowships. To what extent is the dissertation copyright transfer required by your home government fellowship? Note that the standard practice at North American school is that while you hold the copyright to your dissertation, you must also grant the school an unlimited license to reproduce the work and share it. Note that a copyright applies only specifically to the way the material is put together in a dissertation. That is, if I turn my dissertation into a book at another date, the University would not have a license to copy and distribute the book version. I would be very worried about academic freedom though. I guess I don't know what your specific field of study but if you wanted to take the home government fellowship, could you choose a topic that doesn't involve your home government? You can always work on those questions later on. And finally one last note, the University of Southern California is in a very expensive part of the country. I am at a nearby school and we just got our school to raise our minimum stipend to 33,000 per year because of the cost of living increases in the last few years. I think the difference between 26,000 and 23,000 per year is a big deal. Okay so what would I do? I come from a field where I can change topics pretty easily so as long as censorship only applies to one topic and I can choose another topic where I'm not worried about censorship, I would try to negotiate with USC. The USC fellowship is basically valued at 130,000 USD and requires 2 years of TA/RA. I would offer to take the home country fellowship, ask for a top-up of $3050 per year for the first four years, and then the full fellowship value in the final year. This is asking for $38,200 in total from USC, which is much less than $130,000 that they are offering. You can also offer to TA or RA for 1 or 2 years too, since that's part of the USC offer. If you can find a topic that allows you to avoid censorship/interference from your home government, then I think the above request will let you have the best of both worlds. It's commonly done in my field. It will also allow you to avoid being blacklisted. Oh also, unless there is some specific tax treaty for your home country, you only pay tax to the US on the US-based income, so it will be effectively no taxes for the first 4 years. However, if USC doesn't agree to it or you cannot find an acceptable way to avoid censorship, I'd pick the USC fellowship.

Just to add a few things to fuzzy's excellent advice. I would encourage people who are considered the "paranoid" route of waiting to make the final decision and accepting before declining others to reconsider. If you have 7 offers and you know your top 3, you can decline the other 4 without waiting to accept. You are well within your rights to wait until you make your final final decision, but if it's a really hard decision, it might take awhile (and more conversations with people). So in the meantime, you might want to decline the other 4. Some exceptions are if you are waiting for some other uncertainty (e.g. partner is waiting to hear back from other schools, etc.) Also, I just want to point out that you often do get another chance to provide "feedback" in a more anonymous way after you decline. After some time, the grad school (not the dept usually) will send you a survey type thing where they ask you why you declined and what school you went to. Often, the drop down menu choices include things like "funding offered". They might even ask for the value of the funding you ended up accepting. I find that this is a much better way to give honest feedback. I think it's important to talk about money because if the low funding was truly the reason you declined, the school needs to know that in order to change for future students. Again, if you are worried that this info will somehow get back and hurt you, then don't answer it. But if you feel comfortable, I think it's a good way to give feedback you might not want to put in this email.

This is true, but note that answering the questions of applicants is rarely their only job. Perhaps some places do have people hired solely for the admissions season, but these are likely administrative staff with many other duties so I wouldn't treat it as a blank cheque to ask them as many questions as you want! (Or to expect responses immediately).

I think you worded the email very well and you did everything right. If you want some nitpicky comments then I would say that I am not sure why you refer to the situation as "urgent", because from the email at least, you do not describe anything that suggests you are under pressure to make a decision quickly. That is, as long as the school is not making you decide prior to hearing about financial aid and you don't have a deadline at another school before this school's financial aid, then there is no reason to rush things. But I do think you did the right balance of stressing how important this funding is to you. If it's not possible for you to attend without funding, it is important to say that outright. You can only hope you get funding. If it makes you feel better, many people (including me) basically treat an offer without funding as a rejection. Then it's not like you are losing an opportunity (since it's not a viable choice to go into that much debt). Good luck! I hope it works out!!

Yes, I know some people joke about that (especially since Canada is home and it's relatively close!), but this was really my backup plan. I never had to do it, but there was a short period of time where I thought I would have to choose between continuing my degree or $10,000 in debt for medical expenses. In the end things worked out though, luckily.

Most programs offer medical insurance. However, the amount of coverage and the cost of coverage varies a lot from school to school. There are some programs, for example, that do not have any prescription coverage in their school-offered program. Other schools will only pay for your insurance premiums in the semesters you work as a TA. And when schools pay for your insurance premiums, the amount of benefits ranges a lot (some only pay 50%, some pay the whole thing, others pay like 80%). Finally, even with coverage, there are still lots of out of pocket expenses for serious conditions. I know several people that need to pay several thousand dollars per year to manage their health, even with insurance. The stories in the linked website highlight the fact that many PhD stipends barely cover basic expenses so many students who have additional costs might go into debt. If you are on a fellowship, you don't get a W-2 for that income. You get a letter every year from HR saying that this isn't earned compensation, ie. it says "you are awarded this money but you provided no services" or something like that. For Americans at my school, they get a 1099-MISC instead and there is no withholding. But this doesn't mean that they don't pay taxes. Instead, now they must file quarterly taxes or potentially pay the penalty at the end of the year. For international students, we get a 1042-S instead of a W-2 if we are paid on fellowship funds. There is withholding though. Mine is withheld at 14%. Finally, to clarify, sometimes you are told that your money is coming from a "fellowship" even though behind the scenes it is not. This might be true for internal fellowships. So in those cases you still get a W-2. So while most things called fellowships are considered fellowships for tax purposes, note that sometimes there is a difference in how things are treated in the tax code and the name of the money source.

It would be a good idea to ask. But until then, I would assume 1" margins, Times New Roman, font size 12, single spaced. But maybe there is a big difference between fields. I'd say that double-spaced signals "incomplete" or "draft" work while single spaced is finished work.

Ah okay, then most of what I said doesn't apply! Definitely spend time in a dialogue with the prof If you are still concerned about bombarding the prof with question, then be sure to just send a few at a time.

I was going to write something similar to what @DogsArePeopleToo wrote, with an additional note. I don't want to be alarmist so this shouldn't be read as something we need to constantly worry about but I think it's important to consider less favourable possibilities. I think one of the most worrisome aspects to this for those who aren't from one of the seven countries is the unpredictability of the administration. I'm not confident that policies and agreements in place now will always be in place. In addition, some US government institutions have weird rules that affect foreign-born Canadians or dual citizen Canadians. Right now, these rules mostly affect Chinese-born Canadians. For one reason or another, some senator is really against any government funding towards China, and in my field, NASA is a big source of government funding. There were issues with conferences/workshops funded by NASA money where one of my friends, a Canadian (only Canadian not dual citizen) born in China originally had their participation banned until they successfully appealed. Another one of my friends, also a Canadian but born in China, is currently working at a NASA site and they are required to have their supervisor escort them around the premises at all times (they can't even enter work without an escort). Typically, all foreign nationals have a probation period where an escort is required but after they conduct extensive background checks, this restriction is lifted. However, this is a permanent thing for my Canadian friend because they were born in China. I mention this to highlight that maybe more countries could be added and that dual citizenship or being born in a country where the US does not have good relationships with could lead to issues if you hope to work at a US government site.

It is appropriate to find out most of this information before you make a decision on your offer. But don't do this by email! Ask for a skype or phone call. In North America, it's common for schools to invite their accepted students for a visit where most of these questions are answered. However, many schools can't afford to invite students as far away as you are. So, asking for a phone call or Skype chat is very reasonable. You can also ask if you could be put in contact with some of the current grad students as they are going to be better able to answer a lot of other important question (quality of life, cost of rent, affordability of the city etc.) That said, I would focus on the big picture and critical details. I would not worry about the small stuff---i.e. you don't have to find a "perfect" program because one probably doesn't exist. Basically, ask yourself: is this detail a dealbreaker? Or if there were 4 or 5 such "details" that aren't favourable, is it a dealbreaker? If not, then maybe don't ask it. Finally, I am not sure what your field specifically does for an MA. But in many North American programs, unlike Canada or Europe, you don't really worry about the details of your graduate research at this stage. It's something that gets hashed out in more detail after you arrive. However, you do want to make sure that the project is something that will help you achieve your goals. So you should know a few things like: the big picture question that this research addresses, the general methods that it is going to use, and the skills required to complete it. You can also ask for suggestions of a few papers they might want you to read before you start---that will also give you a sense of where the subfield is at.

I know that most people would not want this at all. It's also why we waive our rights to use FERPA to view our student records and thus access our letters of recommendation. It's to allow our professors to write openly about us and for the committees to know that our letters were written in this way. I think if deliberations were recorded, it would severely limit open and free discussion. I also struggle with the balance between "secret" information and the effects it has on diversity etc. I agree it is problematic and it should be addressed. But I don't think making deliberations public is the way to do it. Instead, what I'd imagine would happen is that there would be a lot less discussion and everyone would just make their decisions privately and there would be even less transparency. You can't even have other committee members noticing bias (intentional or not) and calling out their colleagues for it. I think there are better ways to address this, such as more transparent and descriptive criteria. I wrote about this above mostly for the benefit of the applicant, but I think it's important for uniformity among the reviewers too! With an explicit list of evaluation criteria, (un)intentionally biased reviewers would have to justify their evaluations with reference to the uniform criteria. Studies have shown that this does reduce bias in decisions, especially unconscious bias. Even training in the effects of unconscious bias does a lot. Regarding the FAQ on contacting profs, sure I think it's a good idea for most departments to have a FAQ for the department in general. I thought you meant one specifically for each professor. Most professors will not prioritize the time required to keep a recruitment page up to date and active. I've seen this question in various departments before, and the FAQ answer is usually helpful to know the general mood of the department, but it often comes with a qualifier that some profs might expect different things. I understand the frustration of not knowing the "unwritten rules". I think that teaching these "rules" to everyone is the way we can achieve fairness and more opportunities for everyone. I know that some physics profs have started teaching this to their 2nd and 3rd year undergraduates as part of a "seminar" class or "research methods" class. I think it makes more sense for schools to teach this to their undergraduates than for applications to have every single piece of information possible. This type of class would have been really helpful for me as an undergrad. I had no idea what grad school even was and I was lucky my undergrad advisor was a great mentor or I would have missed out! If I ever get into a faculty position, I hope to be able to push the department to allow me to teach a 1 hour per week, "research skills" type class where we learn things like these "unwritten rules", hear about different things you can do with your major (academic and non-academic), learn how to do a literature review etc.

I joined years after it started, sorry! I think rising_star was one of the first users (joined 6 years before me!)

This is how so many current/finishing international PhD students are feeling too, when thinking about the future. Especially those near the end, traveling to international conferences is a big part of the networking that helps you find a job. Last Friday's executive order means that many of these students just got severely disadvantaged in their ability to find work anywhere (not just the US). Who knows what's coming next?

The percentile scores are calculated based on how your scaled scores (out of 170) compare with everyone who took the test in the last 3 years at the time of score submission, not the time of your test. This is a rolling 3 year period window, which means the percentile scores are updated every year. There are at least two possibilities: 1. Maybe you took this test before the percentile update (happens in July I think) and you also sent the score report prior to July so the version of the score report received by the school is last year percentile rank conversions. Or, maybe it's the reverse---the online score report you're viewing is from the old conversion table and the school has the new ones now. 2. Or, as @Wackstrom suggested, the school only inputs the scaled scores from the ETS report and uses a computer program to calculate the percentile scores. Their data might be outdated. Either way, it shouldn't be a big deal as most schools care more about scaled score than percentile (after all, they care about how you compare with the applicants to their program, not every single test taker in the last 3 years). Also, if the problem is #2, then everyone else is scaled the same way so your relative rankings are still the same.