TakeruK

@samman1994: I just want to point out that the types of biases I'm talking about are unconscious biases, which by their nature, are not immediately obvious/observable. Here's an example from my field, where the analysis shows that male applicants for time on the Hubble Space Telescope are still more likely to win time than women, even accounting for the difference in the number of men and women applicants. Article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bubble-telescope-time-gender-bias/ The article shares the experiences of the reviewers, none of whom thought they saw any bias or unfairness. Although I have seen some overt sexism (e.g. a prof saying that they always rate women students poorly for their lab because they often go and have babies so they are less productive), the thing that makes it hard to address is that there is unconscious bias at play, which is harder to fix. As for the Hubble Space Telescope, the next step is to evaluate the proposals in a dual-anonymous way (i.e. proposers don't know the reviewers, which is already the case, but now the reviewers will also not know who proposed for time). We'll see if that makes a difference!

I agree and I apologize if I implied that a mismatch of the gender distribution of graduate students and the general population means there is discrimination at the graduate admissions level. (Aside: I do, however, think that each field of academia should have roughly equal distribution in demographics of academics as the general population. One reason is that people are often personally motivated to do research, often in areas of disease treatment etc. Another is that it is my opinion that the only point of doing any research is to benefit humanity and therefore, the people doing the research should represent humanity, not just a subset of humans who have the opportunity to do so. However, this is problem at a much larger level and I'd say it is beyond the scope of whether there is bias at the graduate admissions level or not.) Back to the scope of this thread: The "control group" we must compare to is the pool of which the graduate applicants come from. So, if you accept the basic premise that men and women are equally brilliant**, then you would expect that the demographics of people accepted into grad school should match the demographics of people applying to grad school. If we do not see this, then there is something introducing bias at the admissions committee step. This is why I also brought up the fields medal example. The fraction of women in Math is much more than 1 in 56, yet the Fields Medal has only been awarded to a woman once in 56 times. The bias could be many things, including unconscious ones due to the committee choices, conscious ones due to prejudiced committee members, and systematic ones that unfairly favour men over women that aren't directly in the control of the committee. An example of the last one is GRE scores. Findings from ETS show that men score higher than women. Again, if you accept the premise that men and women are equal, the only logical conclusion is that the test is biased to favour men. Incorporating these metrics into the evaluation means the committee will (knowingly or not) favour men. Why does everyone think it is happening if no one can actually provide evidence for it. That doesn't sound like logical thinking to me and this also leads to observation/confirmation bias. I have had colleagues comment on the gender bias in conference sessions (i.e. "too many women were speaking") but when you actually count, it was representative of the field. When the norm is under-representation, equal-representation appears to be over-representation. Also, I want to address this point too. I think you are setting up an unrealistic imaginary scenario and then trying to draw conclusions from it to apply to circumstances you appear to be observing in the math departments. For any pool of applications to grad school, it is very unlikely for two applicants to be otherwise identical. However, there have been lots of actual studies done where reviewers/evaluators get two applications/proposals/resumes/etc. that are indeed identical, except for the name, and the result is that men are picked much more often than women. Here is an example. Same resume, different gender for a STEM job: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/study-shows-gender-bias-in-science-is-real-heres-why-it-matters/

In my committee work, we have seen clear empirical evidence to the contrary. That is, we find women underrepresented in the candidates that were accepted to the program. In all of the STEM fields. We find further underrepresentation in the number of women that choose to attend (i.e. the fraction of women that attend our school is lower than the fraction of women accepted to our school). Our school is a top tier program. I don't think there is a bias against men at all in STEM admissions, if that is what you are implying. If we want to discuss Math specifically, I can point to many examples of gender bias against women / for men. For example, the Fields Medal in Math has been awarded 56 times since 1936, to 55 men and 1 woman (in 2014) [citation]. There will be another round of medalists this year so maybe that number will increase. Yes, I am aware that the Fields Medal is certainly a different type of competition than a graduate school application, but to match your statement, I would say that anyone familiar with the field of Math would contend that the field itself has a bias towards men and the Fields Medal list is just one example. As @Comparativist said, can you provide any evidence for your claim that math graduate schools are biased towards admitting women?

Ah, I should clarify that my advice is based from my perspective in a field where conferences, travel for research etc. are already all paid by the school and not out of pocket! However, this does remind me of advice I got too. Sometimes a school isn't as willing to give you a stipend increase because of internal policies etc. There could be a set stipend level for RA and TA for example. And they might not want to do the paperwork required to grant you a $2k fellowship. So, instead, if they can't match the stipend offer, you can also ask for a $2000 research grant each year. You're basically asking your advisor or the department to set aside an additional $2000 for you to spend on research as you see fit. You might just get a one-time grant. But this is great for both fields where you are expected to pay for these costs as well as fields like mine where you wouldn't have to pay, since this means an extra conference for you!

What would you like to discuss / debate, specifically? I ask since it sounds like you want to speak about a specific issue. But if you'd like someone else to start, I have some thoughts! During my time in grad school, I worked with other students to address the issue of unconscious gender bias in admissions to STEM programs at our school specifically, so it's something that's been on my mind!

This is great! The advice you received is also great. In my field, there's nothing wrong with asking for slides. It's quite common for a visiting speaker to be asked for slides either by someone in the audience or by the seminar organizers because sometimes talks are archived. And many places also live stream their talks for people who can't make it in person. However, be sure to phrase it like a request and know that you are asking for a favour, rather than a demand. I'm sure you already know this though. Also as others point out, yes it is very likely that the speaker has some slides they aren't ready to share in digital format yet. But they have a chance to remove them before sending them over to you. Some people may even already have a "cleaned" slide deck ready for sharing, in addition to their presentation ready slides. Finally, if your department allows it, try to get on the meeting schedule for every visiting person that you might be interested in. It seems like it varies a lot from department to department whether students are allowed to have one-on-one meetings with visitors. One of the most useful networking part of my PhD was meeting for 30-45 minutes with a visiting scholar and/or joining the faculty for lunch or dinner with the speaker. I always try to sign up right away if it's relevant to my field and when it's only tangentially relevant, I wait until near the end and if there's an empty spot, I don't feel bad about taking it. And if a speaker has a ton of empty slots for some reason, I might sign up to meet with them anyways if I have time that week. It's always interesting to speak to someone in your field! I had a stack of figures from my current work that was my go-to visual aid for these meetings. Sometimes I have stuff on the computer but I like paper because I can just grab it and go if the meeting can't happen at my desk (sometimes there are too many officemates in and I don't want to disturb them, or they may be having meetings of their own). Also, I often offer to take a walk with the speaker if they want some air and/or to go grab coffee at the nearby coffee shop.

The short answer is to not worry about this. But a quick note: it sounds like you are worried about plagiarism and your concern is that you very poorly paraphrased 8 words so that they look very similar. This has the implication that if you paraphrased it better so it looked different, it wouldn't be plagiarism. But it would still be plagiarism if you paraphrased and didn't cite it. That said, again, it is unlikely anything bad will happen to you. Even if you got caught by your undergrad school, it would be ridiculous to revoke a degree because of this.

I had to make a similar choice. It was $29k from a top school in a very high cost of living area with low TA work and very good research overlap vs. $37k from a top school in a very low cost of living area with moderate TA work and not as good research overlap. I ended up choosing the lower stipend for the better research fit and now that I've graduated and experienced the job market etc, I don't regret it one bit. In terms of how much money I could have saved, I probably walked away from $60k total over 5 years. However, the "value" I have received in terms of the job I have now and the research direction has already paid for this difference and I think I will continue to benefit more than $60k worth in the coming years. Note: I did try to ask if I could have more money because I had an external funding package from the Government of Canada (my PhD school was a US school). The school did not change my stipend because they have a policy of paying everyone exactly the same no matter what. That sucked for me personally but I think it's a really good policy for morale etc. I did get some financial support for an emergency expense later while enrolled and they said the fact that I had saved them some money with an external award earlier helped free up money to help me. Especially at top ivy-esque schools, there may be less room to negotiate actually. They might have the same policies as my school (no differences in stipend) but also they might not want to pay their students more. To be clear, my experience at my school was awesome and I really enjoyed working with almost everyone there. But like all places, there are some people that aren't as pleasant. One of these people told all of us students that the school can totally afford to pay us more, they just choose not to. So be prepared for people like that too. I will be honest in hopes of being helpful. This is silly. You got accepted to a top tier PhD program with full funding. That's definitely a sign that you are wanted. If you didn't know, grad students actually cost a lot more than our stipend value because of overheads and such. A grad student at my PhD school costs around $50,000 to $100,000 per year. Or, it takes a $1 million endowment to fund a grad student. The fact that they have chosen to invest in you in this way shows that you are wanted. Top tier grad schools with tons of money don't become top tier grad schools with tons of money because they accept people that they don't want. And to walk away from School B over $5000 over 5 years seems unthinkable to me! I wouldn't ask it this way. Given the circumstances, I would be more honest. Tell them that you want to choose their school and you plan on doing so. However, you have been looking at cost of living and you're worried. Tell them School A has offered X dollars and you wanted to know if there was any way of increasing your current package. That is, I don't think this is a "negotiation". It is a "request" instead. I think schools are more likely to respond positively to you if you tell them that you will choose their program. I would only phrase it the way you suggest if you would for sure choose A over B if B doesn't increase the stipend because B's stipend is not livable right now. Just my 2 cents!

Hello! Unfortunately, every place does things completely differently (e.g. my PhD school considered domestic and international students together), it's hard for anyone here to know the answer to your specific question. In regards to your April 15 question though, if the school/program agrees to follow the April 15 convention (they don't have to), then if they make an offer to an international student before April 15, then they have to give the international student at least until April 15 to decide. The April 15 convention does not distinguish between domestic and international students. However, in your case, it may be the case that the school won't know how many domestic students will be taking spots until April 15 (or close to that) since if the school follows the April 15 convention, they need to give those students until April 15 to decide. Finally, just to be clear, the April 15 deadline is not the deadline for the school to tell you their decision. Instead, it's the deadline for an accepted student to tell the school whether they will attend or not.

Unless you were told otherwise, your school's international office will get in touch with you about the paperwork needed for the I-20. My school's office waits until after April 15, when all decisions are finalized before processing I-20s etc. for everyone. Unless you are in a situation where you think you need the processing faster, I would wait until later this month before asking about it.

Although every place will have its own process, here are some generalities: 1. There is no good reason to frown upon accepting multiple students from the same undergraduate school. It's also not a fair comparison. 2. Evaluation committees (of all types) will often have to choose between two models: comparative or absolute scales. If they are going to be comparing candidates against each other, then there's no reason to extra-compare two people from the same school. They would compare you two against each other but also against every other candidate they are considering.

Do not go in person. Really, don't do it. Assuming by Monday you mean Monday Apr 9, you should email today. It doesn't matter if the person hasn't responded to emails in the past, that should be your first mode of contact (the email from 1 month ago is way too long ago and this counts as a new interaction/issue now). Try emailing the assistant again. If you don't hear from them by Friday, call the assistant. Now it's a little less awkward to say it on the phone, hopefully, because you can start by saying you are calling to follow up on a question that you sent via email on Wednesday....etc and then explain the situation. Yeah, it will probably still be awkward no matter what but by Friday you don't have much to lose. If you can't reach the person for whatever reason, I think you could also try fuzzy's advice to email the grad advisor directly and explain. Hopefully you have until the **end** of the day on Monday to decide so that leaves Monday for followup calls or to hear back from the grad advisor. Finally, I understand your frustration and you are probably just venting here, but when you do contact the assistant and/or the advisor, please let go of feelings like "the assistant sucks at her job". Admin assistants have a ton of responsibilities and they have to prioritize their work. Often, this means that queries from non-students or people outside of the school are de-prioritized. There are only so many hours in a work day and if they don't get to your email because higher priority things keep coming in, then that's life. Maybe this person really does suck at their job, or maybe this person is actually doing work meant for 2-3 assistants (I personally know many people who work in this role and they often wear multiple hats and/or assist multiple faculty members, so although being a point of contact for this advisor is one of their jobs, it may not be their only one, and maybe not even their most important one. The assistants I know often tell me that they have way more work than they can complete in one day, so they have instructions from either the faculty members themselves or their admin bosses to prioritize some work over others. Ideally, the best solution is to hire more assistants but that costs money!) In any case though, whether this person is doing a poor job or they are super busy, it does you no favours if your annoyance is conveyed through any of your communication. So if you do write directly to the grad advisor, take care to ensure your words don't imply that you are reaching out directly only because their admin assistant is not doing their job.

This sounds super familiar to me. I even called the CRA to inquire about it because I thought the tax software was doing it wrong (after all, if the purpose of the Foreign Tax Credit is to prevent double taxation, then wouldn't forcing us to use our education credit for taxes already paid in the US be double taxing?). The CRA agent said that they get this question a lot and the agent that it is indeed true that we must apply our educational tax credit before the Foreign Tax Credit. The CRA agent also says they agree that this is inconsistent with the intent of the no-double-tax thing. However, they said that's how the law is currently written. So, if we want to do something about it, we should be writing our MPs. I feel like this is something few people act on because 1) it affects very very few people and 2) most of the people affected are outside of Canada! I only found this out because we had made a mistake for my partner's tax return. My partner was working in the US (not a student) and therefore we thought their income was taxable in Canada. So my partner would have had to use their educational credits (they attended school in Canada prior to moving to the US with me). So we sadly filed my partner's taxes and used up all of their education credits :(. But then, when we got our notice of assessment, they told us that my partner was NOT a resident for tax purposes in Canada because 1) they had no income and 2) they had no other ties to Canada, so they changed my partner's tax return to a non-resident tax return and therefore, US-based income was NOT taxable in Canada. So my partner kept their educational credits after all. So, based on this, there is indeed one way to get around having to use up Canadian-earned education tax credits and it's to get yourself declared as a non-resident. Then you won't be taxed by Canada on income outside of Canada. However, this would mean you won't earn educational tax credit from your US school either, so if by "work-around" you mean to find a way to preserve your US school's educational credits then it won't work.

Maybe our fields are different with different norms. But I would actually advise against playing schools off each other and getting counter-offers. It can hurt someone in my field to do this. The general culture in my field is not for schools to "hold back" when making these offers in the first place. They generally start with the best offer they can give to the student which they genuinely believe to be enough to live on. If the student asks for more, they can't just magically make the money be available, it means they will have to redistribute some funds, perhaps make an appeal to a higher authority to get the spending approval etc. That is, it takes work and my opinion is that if you are asking for a higher offer, you are implying that you will take it if your request is granted (and you might take it if the request is partially granted). In my field, if you ask for more money, get what you asked for, then come back and say that you now have even more money from another school, it's not going to reflect well on you. You should have just asked for what you needed in the first place. In addition, if you ask for more money, get everything you asked for and then go somewhere else, it's not as bad but the people who had to do the extra work to find that money for you won't be very happy with it! Note: The above only applies to fully funded PhD programs (i.e. full tuition coverage and a living stipend paid). If you are talking about partially funded programs, then this doesn't apply and I'd agree that you need to do what it takes to get the offer you need to pay the bills!

Your advisor is likely right---in our field, there ARE tons of valuable insights that remain to be made from the precious data, especially data from missions! For most of these missions, even when they have ended, the existing dataset is going to be the best data available for a good long while. It takes so much time, energy and especially money to get missions to other planets/moons and there are just so many cool places to see in our Solar System that unless you're studying Mars, there may only be one mission (two if you're lucky) to your favourite celestial location in your career. You are also right that you should be working with your advisor during your first year(s) to develop projects into a PhD. I don't mean to insult you but it's not that worrying that a prospective grad student is unable to come up with ideas that haven't already been done by other researchers. If you can do this, then you would already have a PhD The reason why it is hard for your specific case is that with missions, the "low hanging fruit" and the most obvious studies to conduct are done first. In fact, they are often already planned by the science team years before the mission even launches (of course, the missions themselves yield data that leads us in more directions!). So, in your shoes, I would not worry that I can't come up with a novel way to analyze the data that the rest of the field has not already considered. There is way more data out there than people in our field to work on it and your advisor can help you carve out a niche for yourself. I consider grad school to be an "incubation" process to becoming an independent researcher. At first, you would "rely" on your advisor more to come up with project ideas. You should definitely still try to come up with your own but it's okay if these ideas are already done by others (in fact, it's a good sign, because this means that your thinking is in tune with the field's). Discussions with your advisor can help you figure out how you can take a different approach than others have in the past. Planetary Science is also a beautifully multidisciplinary field (in my totally unbiased opinion :P) so during your grad studies, you will be meeting other people with different approaches and you will get opportunities to combine something you learned from one area with a dataset from another area to develop new results. In fact, during my grad studies, this happened quite often amongst our students As I said, grad school is a training/incubation process. The goal is to leave with a PhD and the ability to not only come up with good ideas for yourself but also some wisdom/experience in knowing which ideas are worth pursuing and how to really refine an idea into an actual project. If you could do all this already, then you wouldn't need a PhD. So don't beat yourself up if you are only at the "ideas" phase (which is already itself a great start).

My advice would be to tell them about one offer that you would like them to match (no need to send them all) and ask if that was possible. You don't need to send the offer letter right away but you can offer to send it if they would like to see it. I would pick an offer from a program that is considered a "peer institution" to this program and in a similar cost of living area.

Oh okay, sorry for misunderstanding! I would have to say this really does depend on how each program does their post-April 15 shakedown. The short answer is if you're going to be hearing from your POI or a prof in charge of these things about a last minute offer, then you may hear from them over the weekend, but if you're going to be learning about the offer from a department administrator, then you may not hear until Monday the 16th. I know of some programs in my field where they basically have a plan to quickly notify waitlisted applicants as soon as their original offers are declined. So, the faculty there may have emails ready to go as soon as they get confirmation that someone else is not attending. I know people who get phone calls or emails from faculty over the weekend or during typically off-hours. Usually an offer like this has a pretty short decision timeline (e.g 24-48 hours) although they should include at least one business day. From people I know who have been in this situation, they are notified of this possibility ahead of time, usually by their POI. The POI might even have contacted the top waitlist candidates in the days leading up to the April 15 deadline to gauge the likelihood that the waitlisted applicant will accept a last minute offer. This is a critical time for departments too, because if they wiat 3-4 days for their top waitlist applicant who decides to go elsewhere, they might have already lost their 2nd waitlisted applicant by then. So, departments like this often meet to discuss and agree on various backup plans during the week leading up to April 15, once they know if they will have room to accept anyone off their waitlists or not. There are also other programs that take a different approach. They might schedule a committee meeting on the morning of April 16 to assess what happened for the April 15 deadline and whether they want to make additional offers. Sorry it's not just one clear answer. Some advice specific to your situation: Stay in touch with your top choice school(s) and make sure you know what the top choices for you are. Often what separates the best choice from your other top choices may be the details of the offer letter (e.g. funding level, TA/RA commitment etc.) So, I'd personally advise you to try to decide ahead of time what things in an offer letter from a waitlisted school would make/break their status as top choice. Also, in the days leading up to April 15, let your top choice school know that they are your top choice. Depending on how your interactions with them have been going, you can ask questions about their process of admitting from the waitlist (e.g. when would they plan on making waitlist offers etc.) This will also open up a line of communication so that if they did want to tell you more things, they have the chance to do so!

If the offer letter says the deadline is April 15 then the deadline is still April 15.

Yes, definitely. Check with your advisor to see the norms in your field. For me, I am always presenting unfinished work at conferences and have been for years. I did not have a "completed" work until my 3rd year of my PhD so conferences in years 1-2 were always "here's what I'm doing and here's a glimpse of what we've found". Afterwards, the presentations were "here's what I discovered, now it has lead to this other research question and here's what I'm doing on that" I think this is different in other fields because I've gotten some surprise from others here, but we generally give the same presentation over and over again in my field because there's different people at each conference and there's always a little update you've made since the last conference. Later on, when we're more senior students with multiple projects then we could present different projects at different conferences. However, the typical presentation in our field is either a poster (jr student) or 5-7 minutes so it's not like we present enough information that we can be "scooped" or whatever. Consequently, no one expects a fully completed project to be presented at a conference (it would take way more than 5 minutes to properly go over) and it's easy enough to give a short presentation on a project-in-prep without worrying about someone scooping you.

lol before I read this thread, if you asked me what the slogan was, I would have said, "TheGradCafe has a slogan??" I think I've been here way too long to have an objective opinion on what would draw people into this website in the first place! But in terms of what I'd like to see for a motto that represents our community, I'd pick something lighthearted ("aaaaaahhhhh" and the current motto works well) as my view of this place is a support environment where people go to get advice and/or blow off steam. I think there was a thread awhile ago about changing the whole banner/logo/motto altogether. A few people expressed interest but I am not sure any actual new designs were proposed!

Depending on the nature of your program? If these are unfunded Masters or professional programs, then yes, this is probably fine. But if you are considering funded research PhD programs, then this is a very bad idea at this point. If you do something like this, you will likely burn bridges at one or both schools. If you end up with no other option then you will have to do this but I would not risk professional repercussions of accepting while still waiting to hear back from another place. Ask UMich about your application specifically and ask your current top choice to extend their deadline. If that does not get you anywhere then accept the best offer on April 14. In the end you have to make the best decision for yourself and if that means changing to UMich after April 14 then it might have to be that way. But don't take this drastic action now without waiting a little bit longer first and trying more options. Note that in about 7-10 days, UMich may have more information on your application and the other school may be more willing to extend your deadline.

Sounds like a tough choice to make. for (1), I've found it hard to compare the way people spend money with how I financially secure I would be. Everyone has lots of difference circumstances---some people might have large undergrad loans they want to pay off so they spend less, or they might need to support their family, or they might get help from their family, or they might have savings, or they might value saving for the future more etc. Most of these things are fairly personal so it's not like they would share this with a prospective student. So I wouldn't look at current students' ability to spend on fun things as a measure of how I would be spending money. Some exceptions might be a school where every student owned a home or every student was taking out more loans. Those might be more telling signs. So, since places like those are less common, instead, I'd ask what their living arrangements are and how much rent costs, for example. For me, being able to afford a 1-bedroom if my spouse and I both worked was the minimum stipend needed for housing. For others, they might look for a stipend that allows them to share a 2-bedroom with someone else. And others may be okay with (or even desire) to share a larger house with many more housemates. Good luck on making a choice!

If the information is not available and not on the official offer letter, then there is nothing guaranteed to you. That doesn't mean you won't get funding, it just means that you can't be certain what it is. Because there is no funding commitment to you, I don't think you are obligated to attend if the funding is not enough to cover your costs to the level you need. Since you already asked and they don't seem to want to answer, I would just wait until May and see what the funding is. If it's enough, then continue as planned. If it's not enough then you can tell them that it isn't enough funding and you will not be attending. You shouldn't incur any additional costs between now and May so it won't hurt you to wait. However, if you do have another offer with definite funding then I think it would be a really good idea to consider that one instead. If you still prefer this NY school more than another offer, you can tell the NY school that you have received a funding offer from X with $Y and that you would prefer the NY school but you need to have a funding guarantee.

It's done. This is the 3rd pinned thread in this subforum as of now. We don't yet have a policy for pinning posts but three seems reasonable still. Just mentioning this because it may be an issue of too-many-pins in the future, so pins may change in the future. (aka all pins are provisional for now :))

1) We should clarify what we mean by "live acceptably". When I said it above, I meant enough of a stipend where you can afford to pay rent and all the necessary bills. You might not save a lot of money per year, but for me, if I can pay for all necessities, then there's no need to worry about money 24/7. Yes, I would still worry about things like saving up for the future (house, retirement etc.) but in my opinion, earning a few thousand dollars extra per year during grad school is not worth potential opportunity costs in the long term. For me, out of my 3 options, I picked the one with the lowest "effective" stipend (i.e. adjusted for cost of living). It was still enough to pay for necessities though. I don't know what you mean by "stress in housing". I definitely agree that if you cannot feel relaxed at home, it would affect your productivity and success though! I would count "being able to afford to live in housing that doesn't cause you stress" as part of "live acceptably" though. So if School 2 doesn't grant a stipend large enough to have this, then my answer above may change of course! 2) Oh okay. My own field is incredibly multidisciplinary so I naturally favour breadth over depth in terms of exposure/experience. But for your own thesis work, you'll definitely want depth. I wrote my answer because of the example you gave. For a student in my field, it's far more valuable to be able to do the side analysis yourself instead of sending it off to another group to do. I personally find a lot of value in taking leadership/ownership of my own project and doing the various parts of the analysis. I want to be able to know exactly what happened in every part of my analysis from work that I am leading as a student. That is, no black boxes. I think this level of knowledge is valued in my field and I can see it when students are evaluated---the ones that know how every step of the analysis went do better than the ones that have to answer with something like "Our collaborator X ran this analysis so we should ask them" etc. Also, maybe I misunderstood, but I read your chart as both School 1 and School 2 having a lot of depth in your own research area, however, School 2 also allows you to have hands-on experience in other areas. And although not directly related to hands-on ness, your chart seem to show a lot of excitement and good research fit for School 2. But nothing for School 1 (you say there are people you're interested in but you don't mention any particular ones that excite you!) 3) Yes, a little bit of TA experience is good for you. However, unless you are an instructor of record, the typical TA experience for us in the sciences isn't real teaching experience and it won't do very much for us in terms of getting teaching jobs. In general, I would rank TA opportunities like: i) No TA requirement, but opportunities to pursue TAships if you want. ii) Minimal TA requirements (e.g. 1 course per year, on average, or less) iii) Full TA load for some years but chance for you to earn a RAship or win a fellowship and reduce TA load iv) TA every semester If you are not interested in academia, or interested in a research career, you only need to TA maybe 2 or 3 times before you reach diminishing returns and having more TA work won't help you. But for these paths, even zero TAing won't really hurt you at all. If you are interested in a teaching career, then the type of science TAing isn't going to be good enough. In this case, I would say that some limited number of TAing is better than zero TAing, but I am not sure if full TA load every semester is better. Even teaching schools want to see good research from their applicants and if you are TAing then you are either spending less time on research or you are not sleeping/have free time etc. Also, I would say that if you really do want to beef up your teaching CV, there are plenty of things that might even be better for you than TAing. Sometimes a local nearby school will hire grad students as adjunct lecturers/sessionals and you can teach that way. Or you can work with other community groups and do science outreach in a way that can build teaching experience. This lets you teach on your own terms, with time commitments that you can tailor to your needs from year to year instead of being required to TA when the department wants you to. I had a minimal TAing program (I only TA'ed for 3 quarters during my entire program) and instead, I spent a lot of time volunteering with a local educational organization and developed lectures and classes for them and that I also taught. I got a lot more out of these experiences than TAing. It is a hard choice! Again, I don't think there is one right choice for everyone so the good news is that you will probably do well at both! As for the difference you bring up here, is that really the two choices you have? I don't see anything here that prevents you from being exceptional in the area of your research and being good at related fields.