TakeruK

If I understand what you are describing correctly, then this is all very normal. In my field, collaborations are often with many people. Maybe not as big as labs, but the papers I've led are usually with around 10 other coauthors. Some of these coauthors contribute directly to the paper, either by providing data that they have analyzed and/or plots they have made. I trust them to have not lied to me. But in addition to the trust, it's the responsibility of the "leader" to ensure that they believe the results they have been given. So, I make sure I actually understand their work. I have my coauthors explain their analysis to me and when they do, they use citations to works that prove their method is correct. I ask questions until I am satisfied that I understand what they did and everything about their results make sense. But you are right that I don't actually go and do the work myself. They might have said all of the correct explanations but made a mistake in the code, or in the worst case, actually just made up the results and didn't do the work at all. This is why we are all coauthors---when we collaborate, we all stand behind each other's work together. It is a necessity because one person cannot do all of the work independently. Science requires collaborations. In this example, I am the "person A" in your analogy. I just published a paper as a "Person A" but in the last few months I have been a "Person B" or "Person C" in 3 or 4 other papers. Everyone else is in a similar situation too so no one wants to be a lying "Person B" because when they are a "Person A", they don't want their "Person B"s to be lying to them. This is why in academia, our reputation as honest researchers are so important. This is why academic honesty and integrity is so important and when you see people posting about ethically dubious things on these forums, other researchers are quick to shut it down. The system is not perfect and there are many examples of paper retractions and careers being ruined because of bad decisions. But it does work most of the time. It's also important to choose collaborators wisely!

Oops!

You say Part 2 is only offered every other year, but it's being offered this fall. Does this mean that Part 2 won't be offered again until the 2018-2019 school year (i.e. your 3rd year as a graduate student while most MA programs are 2 years or less, right)? If this is so, and if you want to take them both in the first two years, then I can see two options: 1. Find out how often Part 1 happens. If Part 1 is offered every year and Part 2 only every other year, then I would suggest taking Part 2 now, replace Part 1 with an elective and then take Part 1 next year. 2. If Part 1 is also only offered every other year and if you want to have both parts done before Year 3 (for whatever reason) then you might have to end up taking both this year. If Part 2 is still being offered next year, then my advice is to also take the elective. You don't have to worry about making sure every single course fits a nice theme. Grad school is certainly a place for specialization, but a little breadth in coursework doesn't hurt anyone. You may even be exposed to different ways of thinking that can help you with your main research. Electives are a big part of my graduate program, we have 6 core classes and 5 electives, so about half of our coursework will be different from our peers. I pretty much took electives every single semester along with core classes. I would say to make a (short) list of courses that interest you and when you talk to the DGS next week, present each option to the DGS with your main reason for being interested and see what their input is. Also, side question --- does the elective have to be outside of your department? No other elective options within department (i.e. is the 2 theory courses you mention the only two courses offered by your department?)

8-10 schools is a good number I don't know about your field so I don't know which schools are good fits for your interests (or even which schools offer good programs). I can think of one more private University with graduate programs in the humanities and it's Claremont Graduate University. Maybe others in your field here can help though!

If you have the time and money for the applications, you can consider adding the private schools on top of the UC schools. I say this because I don't think difficulty of getting into a school (or winning an award, or getting a job) should be the main reason you don't apply for something that you want. Sure it's going to be hard, but you are definitely not getting in if you don't apply. It would not be wise to only apply to UC schools as an international student though. But unless you have a strict limit on the number of applications you can send in, don't cut out a UC school just because it's harder for international students. It may not be a good idea to apply to "most of them" because maybe not all of them are good fits but don't limit yourself because you are an international student.

I second the advice to find a lawyer and to communicate with your future school. Let the International Students office know. They might also be able to help with things like getting you a deferral for a semester if you are not able to get your F-1 before school starts etc.

For a first time poster maker, I recommend reading this blog for lots of great poster tips: http://betterposters.blogspot.com/ Many poster tips apply to all fields of research, but the blog covers a wide range of research fields. So, you can also choose to focus more on the ones from your field after you see the general overall tips (font size, white space usage etc.) The most helpful type of posts from the blog, in my opinion, are the ones where users submit their poster (or poster drafts) and the blog critiques them and provides constructive feedback. It's especially striking when the user returns with an improved version and you see them side by side. Of course, there is a lot of subjectivity in poster presentations too, so don't just take what you read from one source as the only right answer. You'll find differing opinions even on the same site, and you should read through a good number of these "critiques" from betterposters and also read information from people in your field specifically. Now, to answer the specific question about bullet points: I keep text on my poster very minimal. I rarely use complete sentences, only sentence fragments that convey the meaning I want. I let my figures do most of the communication (and don't forget, you are also standing next to the poster to provide context)**. So, on posters, I often write like I would write bullet points, but sometimes I don't have the actual bullet point "symbol". But this can be field-dependent. **Note: Most conferences in my field have posters with the intention of an audience viewing them while the presenter is standing next to that poster. I also choose to design my poster to be minimalist and only to serve as a visual aid to my talking. I want the person to be looking at me most of the time and only look to the poster when I point out a specific thing. The text on the poster is barely enough to tell a minimal story if I don't happen to be around, but my goal is to get the viewer to come find me and ask me about that poster. This isn't always the best strategy though, just what I prefer to do when possible!

Ah okay, that makes sense. I didn't think about that scenario because most jobs I can think of won't also let you apply that far in advance, but if they are also an academic then perhaps this is the best route forward. I am thinking that if you ask them if they will let you defer in the application itself, they might just tell you to reapply next year. If you don't want to waste the application fees, then you can ask them about this prior to applying. That said, I am not optimistic that you will be able to get what you want, because you are in essence asking to be considered for admission in a later year and it's not really fair to consider you for admission in Fall 2018 without seeing the other Fall 2018 applicants. Not to mention that they may not know what funding is available in the future and may be hesitant to commit themselves to funding you in the future. You could also try the route of not telling them and then asking for a deferral only after they have admitted you. Doing this runs the risk that they will refuse to grant a deferral. Or, they will let you defer but won't promise funding (i.e. you'll compete again with the Fall 2018 applicants). It's fairly normal for couples where one (or both) is an academic to apply widely for jobs/positions in many different locations at the same time, though. However, some job cycles start after you find out about grad schools, so your plan still may be possible even if you wait a year to apply.

As others said, the fraction of international students at public schools is a lot lower than private schools. For example, across the UC campuses, about 10% of grad students are international but at my private school, we are currently at around 45% international students (this is a bit high compared to other schools though, many other private schools have a ratio around 20%-30% instead). There is variation across fields but I'd just like to put one more piece of advice that is generally true across many fields. It's true that applying as an international student at any public school will pose extra challenges, but it is especially challenging for some schools specifically that receive a higher than average number of international applicants. I have heard that the UC schools are in this category, especially the more well known UC campuses.

When did you write the draft of the paper that you recently sent to your supervisor? If it was written when you were an undergrad, then the comment sounds like she is asking you to rewrite it. If it was written recently, then it sounds like the comment means that she thinks you will do a better job of it than her? Here is a point where fields might differ, but in my opinion, if it's a good paper and a paper that's worth your time to write then the journal invite shouldn't matter. Because it's been so long and because your research has moved onto a different area, I think that if it's a paper worth spending your time on, then it shouldn't need a journal invite. It should be a paper that is good enough to get in without an invitation. (NB: In my field, unless you are writing an invited review for a high impact journal (e.g. Annual Reviews of Astronomy & Astrophysics), there's no extra prestige for an invited paper vs. a contributed paper in a print journal. If your field is different, then this may not apply.) Another question you want to consider is whether this is worth your time. Where are you in your career now? If you are a graduate student about to finish, there may be other papers close to completion that you would rather work on instead since these papers may actually be relevant to your current and future research interests. If I were in your shoes, I would find it hard to just say no to my old supervisor though. It might help to make sure both of you are on the same page in terms of expectations. You don't want to spend a week working on this only to realise that your old supervisor was expecting you to spend months on it (or vice versa). So, I would be honest and upfront with my old supervisor and say something like: It was nice to revisit this old work but my research interests have changed since undergrad. I'm currently working on X, Y, Z. But, I do have X hours/days/weeks to spare to finish up our paper. I think we need to work on A, B, C, D before we can submit it. Would you be able to call or Skype in order to split up the tasks? (or something like that). Remember that now, your former supervisor is no longer your boss and if you are going to go into this paper together, it should be as colleagues/collaborators with a shared interest, not supervisor/student. I would suggest the above approach because I find it much easier to say "no" during a discussion where everyone is on the same page. For example, we might discuss what still needs to be done and it turns out to be 250 hours of work but I can only spare 100 hours. Therefore, if the collaborator is not able to put in the other 150 hours, then we can both decide that it's not in our best interests to move forward at this time. Or, it might be easier to come to a conclusion where the collaborator will do most of the work and I'm okay with being second author. I personally would find it weird/awkward to just outright say "I don't have time, why don't you be first author and finish the paper?" on the initial ask, so I think the best way forward, if I were in your shoes, is to ask to discuss expectations and tasks and then decide how to assign them and how authorship would be settled based on the level of each person's contributions.

I am thinking the same thing as DerPhilsoph but also, regardless of whether or not programs are reluctant to let you defer, if you cannot begin a program until Fall 2018 then why not wait until 2017 to apply to Fall 2018? Typically, people defer because either something comes up between application and acceptance that causes them to no longer be able to accept the offer as planned, or because they also applied to other non-grad school opportunities and got into both and would like to do the non-grad school thing first. But if you are already certain that you cannot start until Fall 2018, then it makes sense to wait until the Fall 2018 season to apply!

Also prefacing this all with the fact that I'm not an expert, but just that I faced similar decisions myself. If your school/employer is not matching funds, then there's very little reason, in my opinion, to contribute to a pension plan in the US right now. For most grad students, the amount of income we have available for savings isn't that much that the school-provided retirement plans are going to earn you that much more money. Instead, my advice would be to take whatever you are able to save and invest it in other means. Maybe it's just savings accounts, mutual funds, investing in your home country's retirement plans etc. For me, given that right now the USD is much higher than the Canadian dollar, and given that I still have room to contribute to tax-free Canadian savings accounts, I'm moving extra money from the US to Canada and investing it at home. If your school/employer is matching your contributions, then wow, you are really lucky! Very few schools do this for students. In this case, if you do have extra money to invest, you might want to contribute because you will get "free" money from your school. Check what the rules are for early withdrawal though (you may be able to withdraw money after you graduate).

I can't say for certain in Nursing, but in the fields I'm familiar with, it really doesn't matter. One issue is that the meaning of "fellowship" varies a lot so even just knowing that you are the Robert Wood Johnson Future of Nursing Scholar Fellow does not really tell me much about how you compare to someone who isn't a fellow. Especially hard to compare what your fellowship means compared to someone at another school that isn't a fellow, or has a different fellowship name. As long as you don't misrepresent who you are in your CV or your cards, it should be fine. For most CV and cards needs, what the reader wants to find out is whether you are an undergrad student, grad student, postdoc, staff scientist etc. so that's why I think "Graduate Student" or "PhD Student" (or candidate) is great. When it really matters is when you apply for other fellowships or jobs, and in these cases, you will have way more stuff in your application package that makes the meaning clear.

Typically, I find that people use different titles depending on the context. For example, to describe my overall status, I would put "PhD Student" (or PhD Candidate if you prefer) regardless of the source of funding. So for something like a business card, your overall title on a CV, your website etc., I'd use this. I use "Teaching Assistant" when describing my teaching work under the Teaching section of my CV. And "Research Assistant" when describing my research work under the Research section of my CV. I list my fellowships under a separate section for Awards and Fellowships in my CV. If a fellowship is related to a research position I held, then if it's appropriate, I also mention the fellowship under that position in addition to mentioning it in Awards and Fellowships. Overall, even if you have a fancy fellowship, e.g. "The Norma E. Jones Graduate Fellowship" or whatever, very few graduate students would use this in their title. This might be different in different fields though. In my field, the only people who use fancy named titles like that are postdocs on highly prestigious fellowships (i.e. those that would be known nationwide) or full professors with an endowed position.

The answers to both questions depend on the program you are being admitted to. For question 1, you can try checking the Results Survey on TheGradCafe for your programs and see if they are listed. Otherwise, asking the schools you've applied to would be the best bet. Question 2 depends on the school's ability to fund you. At my school, classes begin either in late September or early October but as long as your advisor has funding, you are able to start around June if you want to start early. And you will be paid / be on the benefits etc. So it's definitely possible that you can start on a RAship before classes begin. This is also true for international students at my school---I think the school just changes the start date to the summer term start so, if your programs takes care of this too, then you don't have to worry about the "cannot enter on F-1 more than 30 days before program start date" rule. That is, the rule still exists, but your I-20 start date does not have to be the first day of class if your RAship is relevant to your degree progress.

What you are describing is normal and you don't have to worry. All of the "special topics" classes I've ever taken only appeared on my transcript as "Special Topics in Astronomy" or "Special Topics in Planetary Science" etc. I don't think you are expected to have these course titles on your transcript. When my PhD schools asked for a listing of pertinent coursework, you are able to just enter them directly into the application or create a PDF of the coursework. You don't have to have the exact course title if you can't remember it. However, for the future, for you and anyone else reading this, I highly highly recommend saving a copy of your course syllabus. I've used old syllabi to retrieve course titles and I (and my friends who took the same course) have used them to show to a graduate school that we have already completed some pre-req and that allowed us to get some courses waived. For your specific situation: Can you ask your friends who took the same classes if they remembered the course titles? Can you ask your former professors (most transcripts list who taught the course)? Do you have any old materials from the class that can help you determine what they called the class? Did these courses have websites and are they archived somewhere?

California sends me registration renewal notice almost 3 months before the due date. Since I rather not give the state an interest-free loan, I generally wait until 2-3 weeks prior to the deadline and pay online. It takes about 5 days for me to get my stickers. So if your home state sends out early reminders too, this increases the time you have to get home and pick up stickers!

My opinion is that for most schools that have deadlines in December, including Dec 1 deadlines, it's a good idea to send emails around mid-September (like after Labor Day in the US as rising_star suggested) or a week after the Fall quarter/semester has started (at my school, this would be October 1), whatever comes later.

In addition to everything already said above, another benefit of quitting/dropping out is that you can potentially preserve future relationships with people in the department. Clearly, you have to leave so there's nothing to change that. Choosing to drop out can make it easier for both you and the department. If you have to leave because you failed courses or other academic requirements, this will hopefully enable you to preserve a relationship with some people who saw you succeed in other ways. You may be able to reapply to other grad schools in the future when you can show that your academic performance has improved. This might not be as relevant if you are being forced to leave for other reasons though, e.g. inappropriate behaviour etc.

Because of inspections, most students I know choose to change their vehicle registration, even if they don't have to. Some people are moving from NY to CA, so that's a really long drive for an inspection!

I love BudgetBytes!! I have her book now. I really liked it because it was one of the first food blogs/recipes site that emphasized the practical-ness of cooking. All of the money saving tips were things I already learned from my parents and it was very practical/realistic instead of many other food blogs / recipes sites where it seems like the author has 4-5 hours every day to cook and select the best ingredients etc.

I'll answer this anyways although from your sidebar info, it seems like we are in fairly different programs (it seems like you are in a professional program while I'm in a research based program). With one single exception, I have not had any evening classes as a graduate student. Generally students & faculty decide on a time that mutually works and few people will choose evening timeslots. So my general plan is to go home and cook dinner after the work day is done (around 5pm for me). During busy times, I do eat out more often, but this isn't ideal. Sometimes I am able to cook many meals ahead of time and freeze them, so then cooking in the evening is easier! The one exception was a class that wasn't really a class but more like a weekly workshop on presentation skills. That class met in the evenings over dinner time, so the students and instructors ordered pizza and ate that during the workshop/class. Free pizza was nice, but I'd still prefer to have class during the day!

First, note that "residency" means a lot of different things depending on which organization you're talking to. For example, as an international student and non-American citizen, as far as tuition purposes go, I am a non-resident and I would pay the non-resident tuition rate. To the IRS, I am a non-resident alien for the first 5-6 years that I live in the US, afterwards, I will be a resident alien. For immigration purposes, my time as a foreign student is all non-resident and does not count towards a green card or anything. To the California DMV, I am a resident and must register my vehicle in California. So, as you can see, you would need to figure out which each authority considers a "resident". You can always contact the authority in question if you are unsure of your status. But just to answer some of your questions: Registering your car: Find out the laws in your new state and also your current state. I know some students that had to register in California, while others were able to keep their home state registration. Most students register in California though because California has pretty strict laws on what must be registered here. If you register in the new state, you should "de-register" in the old state. There may already be systems in place to make the transition smooth (I've only done this in Canada, not the US). Usually you can get a pro-rated refund for your registration in your old state. Car insurance: This depends on your parents insurance company and whether or not they will let your parents have insurance for the car with you as the primary driver out of state. This might cost more than you just getting your own insurance. Also, you might want to get your own insurance so that you have insurance in your own name, which can help reduce insurance costs for you in the future. Making the change official / time limit: Usually, you just need proof of address in the new state before you can do any of this. If you have a lease in your new state, that is good enough. Typically the timelines for these changes are 10 days to 90 days after you move. Voting: Like doubledyno said, it varies. I know a student who votes in their home state because California isn't a battleground state. I know another one who chose to switch to California so that they can vote in the state referendum (I'm told California has a weird system). I agree that Health Insurance should be the primary concern and it looks like if you are taking the school plan, then you should be all set. You can decide whether or not to also stay on your parents' plan. Check to see if your parents plan allows you to be on their plan as secondary insurance (that is, if you have a claim, your school's insurance will be primary and then your parents plan may pay for any costs not covered by your school's plan). Talk with your parents to find out whether or not it's cost effective (usually, if they have to pay extra for you to be on their plan, then probably not, but if their work pays for their dependents too, then no reason to get off their plan). Next, vehicle concerns should be the second priority. The DMV in California gives you 10 days to switch to a California Driver's License. I think 30 or 90 days to register your car. So it should be one of the first things you do. You should also make your car insurance decisions ASAP. If you plan to be with a company with physical offices, you can pick one out ahead of time and maybe even make an appointment for one of the first few days in your new state. Basically, my recommendation is that in order to sort out this independent adult business (if that's what you want, since many things allow grad students to stay as dependents) then plan your move so you have a few days (maybe even a full work week) between arriving and whatever you must do first at the school. I've moved between Canadian provinces and to the United States and each time it's 2 or 3 days of bureaucracy and waiting in line for hours at a time.

It depends on each program and school. Here is a typical, generic thing though: 1. You apply to the graduate school. 2. The graduate school compiles all of your materials and forwards it to the department. This is probably done automatically. Usually, some of the material will be filtered out for the graduate school only, not the department. For example, there may have been some questions on financial need or your ethnicity etc. that the school wants for stats but the department does not need/use for their decision. How much filtering gets done depends on the school, I can imagine some schools will not pass on incomplete applications to the department etc. 3. The department reviews the applications they get and make their decisions. (See more below). 4. The department decisions gets passed back to the Graduate School in the form of admission recommendations. At this point, you will often get a notification from the department that they have recommended you for admission. 5. The Graduate School does a final check to ensure the accepted applicants actually meet minimum university-wide requirements, such as GPA. If there is a problem, they will work with the department to sort it out. Usually a department can advocate for a candidate that doesn't meet a minimum requirement but are extra qualified in some other way. 6. You get an official notice of acceptance from the Graduate school. --- Step 3 above is where there is going to be the most variation. Most departments will form an admission committee and only this committee reviews the applications. Membership in this committee can vary from place to place. In my field, it's often true that newer faculty who are looking for students will generally be on this committee. In other places, the committee makes a shortlist of the most excellent candidates and then forwards these packages to all faculty and waits to see if any other faculty member is willing to sponsor them. Funding and admission are highly linked but the amount of correlation depends on the school. In some places, like my undergrad school, you absolutely need a professor to be willing to pay for you in order to get an offer. At other places, there is funding from the department and/or TA work, so you may not be funded directly by any professor for your first 2 years. In this case, you don't need a faculty member to explicitly sponsor you for an acceptance---the idea is that you'll find someone who will pay for you after 2 years (or you won't pass your quals etc.). However, in any case, funding is often one of the main limiting factors in admissions. Even if there is no requirement for a professor to pay for you, the department only has so much money for new students and there are only so many TAships to go around. It will often be the case that there are way more qualified applicants than there are spots for admission, because the department/faculty will be unable to pay for every qualified person.

I think this may depend a lot from field to field. When I said that there were no Canadian schools equivalent to schools like Harvard, MIT, Cornell, etc. I was mainly referring to privately funded, research focused schools. The private schools in Canada are generally not research focused and/or are religious schools with non-research priorities. I agree it's not strictly true that privately funded (i.e. more funded) research programs are "better" than publicly funded (usually "less funded") schools like U of T, but this was what I was assuming in my generalization above. For my field, I would say that Cornell is better than U of T. But I agree that one can always pick out elite US schools that aren't good in a particular specialization. For example, Stanford isn't a very good school for my specialization so I would certainly say Toronto is better than Stanford in exoplanet research. However, I do think that when taken as a whole, the "elite tier" of privately funded, research focused schools that exist in the United States offers something that is not generally available in Canada.