TakeruK

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.

I second fuzzylogician's advice on determining what you want as your long term career and personal goals. What is it that you value and do you need a PhD to get what you want out of life? If you want to be able to continue your graduate work and also be closer to your SO, then I think the first option to try is fuzzy's suggestion to find a way to complete some or all of the remaining PhD work remotely. I know many people who have successfully done this. You definitely need your advisor's support for this. You'll have to ensure you can meet the teaching requirements (e.g. front-loading them as fuzzy suggested or confining them to one semester). Beyond that, you and your advisor can work out what is an acceptance ratio of time spent away from your school vs. time spent at your school. It can range from spending 95% of your time away and only returning for degree milestones, to something like 3 weeks out of every month away and 1 week back, or even just visiting your SO for 1 week every month (or 2 weeks every months) etc. You should still consider starting over at a new school, but it's up to you to determine whether it's worth it. 2 more years of long distance (or semi-long-distance if you can work something out) would be hard, but so is starting over again at a 5 year program. And, it is likely you will not be able to get into as competitive of a program the second time around (as fuzzy also said). Thinking about the long term is important here---ultimately it sounds like you and your SO would like to live and work in the same city. If you are in a good graduate program right now, staying in the program for another 2 years might not be very fun in the short term, but it could be the thing that will allow you both to achieve your long term goals. Also, at this point, you are 2 years away from earning a decent salary but going back to year 1 of grad school means you are reducing your earning potential. Does having a reduced income affect your ability to achieve your long term goals? Of course, I don't know what your long term goals are---the above is just an example of why I think it's important to consider them when you consider transferring/starting over as one of your options! Good luck!

From the admissions side, if it's not a rolling applications department, the time of your application makes no difference as long as it's on time. So no need to feel rushed to get your application in early. There could be personal benefits to applying early. Some people like getting stuff out of the way so they can think about other things, for example. If this is a benefit for you, then do that. Otherwise, I would complete the application whenever I have time but probably wait until I'm sure nothing will change before submitting. Since I don't like to submit on the day of the deadline (in case something goes wrong!) I mostly submitted 24-48 hours before the deadline.

Are you a current Masters student applying for their 2nd year or an undergrad student applying for the first year? If you are a current student, then your advisor should know best. Apply to whatever agency has been funding their own research program. If you are an undergrad (or not yet a graduate student) then you can ask potential advisors and try to find out what students in your future department tend to be funded by. Sure, there are way more SSHRC awards, but there are also way more SSHRC applicants. I'm writing this from the NSERC vs CIHR point of view as many of my friends have overlapping interests. They have told me that fit with the agency is really important. So it doesn't really matter whether there is more of one award or another, if the evaluation committee doesn't feel that your research is a good fit with the agency, then they won't fund you. So I'd say find out which agency tend to have funded your research topic in the past and what people in your department have received in the past and go with that.

Just want to point out that a course titled "Graduate Seminar" with no text description, to me, sounds like a placeholder in the Calendar/Catalog and the fact that it's called a "seminar" does not necessarily mean whatever course is offered in that slot is actually a seminar with guided discussion. It might turn out to be a "regular" class when the course is renamed and given a description, or it might literally just be a seminar where you listen to visiting or local speakers. Or it might be reading/discussion groups like mentioned above. But the course name doesn't always line up with what is actually taught, especially when it's a placeholder name.

Here's how it works at my school. Our school has strange naming systems, where we have departments for each field (e.g. "Geology") and these departments are grouped into administrative units, let's call them "Super-Departments". "Super-departments" usually administer between 3 to 10 departments. Often, in my department, we only admit 0-2 students per year, although our typical cohort is 4 students. The "super-department" admits about 20 students in total. There are some courses that are required between ALL students in the "super-department", so the 0-2 students in our department have classmates. There are also some courses that are required for more than 1 of the departments, so even though there may only be 1 student in our department, they will take a course that is also required by another department in our super-department. And, finally, for the courses that are required by our department only, even in years with 1-2 students in the department, the classes still range from 5-10 people. Undergrads often take graduate classes here (they are allowed to take graduate classes starting in sophomore year). Other students within the "super-department" might take the class as well because although it may not be required for their core classes, they will take it as an elective (we have a number of elective courses we must take). And, due to interest from other super-departments, students from the other side of campus may choose to take the class. Once in a while, there is a class where the faculty to student ratio is 1:1 or 1:2, but it's rare. Often, the other seats in the class will be filled by undergrads or grads from other departments who are interested in the class. We never force our own students to take a class elsewhere because of low attendance. If it's a required class on our degree program, we run it even when there is only 1 student enrolled.

If there are lots of classes with such description, then it's basically a filler class. At my school, we have classes with titles something like "Special Topics in Geological and Planetary Sciences". I've taken this class now two times and each time it's whatever they want to teach in that particular year. Typically, it is an advanced graduate class that revolves around reading papers and discussing their results, rather than following a traditional syllabus with exams etc. Sometimes they are worth the same # of credits/units as a traditional class but often they are only 1/2 or 1/3 of a regular class because they take less work. Another possibility is that these are credits allocated to things like the department seminar/colloquium/journal club etc. Some schools make it mandatory to attend these things by making them courses and grant credit for them. In any case, this is something you won't have to worry about until you get to your new school and discuss courses for the year with your advisor (or whomever you should be discussing course selection with).

1. I agree with this fuzzy that this comment seems to imply that you did not demonstrate a strong enough fit with this department (see also response to #2 below). Directly (and honestly) telling your top choice program that it is your top choice could help. But words are just words sometimes. If you truly think this is the best place for you to do your research, you need to convey this message in your application. You can still do this with a "versatile" research interest. In your SOP, express exactly why this specific program is the best place for you to achieve your graduate school goals. To do this, my recommendation would be to describe what your graduate school goals are. Go beyond the research topic here, and discuss what you want to get out of graduate school. Then, describe how you are going to achieve these goals and how this specific program will have the right resources to meet them. For example, in my application, I was not that specific in my research topic. In fact, the topic I am working on now for my PhD thesis wasn't even mentioned as an interest in my SOP. Instead, my SOP was about what skills and experience I wanted to gain from graduate school. I wrote that I wanted to learn how to be an observational astronomer and use my existing knowledge of theory to gather data and develop new research programs. My school was the best fit for this because they own and/or have access to the best telescopes in the world. 2. This depends on where the money came from as well as what the department wants to do. If the money came from outside of the department (e.g. from the school), then it is probably gone. Usually school-wide fellowships are awarded to the Top X candidates from across the campus so if your dept's candidate turned down the offer, it would have either disappeared or went to another department's candidate. If the money would have came from department-level funds, then it may or may not be there next year. Maybe one student will take a year longer than expected, so the department would prefer to use that money to support that student for an extra year. Or, maybe a student is having a bad fit with their advisor and need to change advisors but has no one willing to support them for this current year, so the department will step in. Or, this money really is put aside for accepting a new person next year. If the money came from the professor that was specifically looking for a student, then it's also not certain. Funds from grants may expire by next year, so maybe they decided to hire a part time research associate, or use it to partially fund a postdoc etc. to do this work instead. But it's possible that it will be available next year too. However, with all of that said, I want to echo what I said above---admissions is not a competition for the X best candidates by some objective means. Instead, it is a search for the X best-fitting candidates by a metric subject to the current department's year-to-year needs. I feel like you are trying to keep track of spots and "quantify" the process when it's not really about accounting. Note: It also depends a lot on what kind of school this is. At top schools with lots of money, they have the means to absorb losses from year to year. As I said before, my program is not afraid to take 0 students if that is the outcome of the application process. It seems like we aim for 20-24 students total, and admit on average, 4 students per year. But, we have admitted multiple years above average (one recent pattern was 7 students, 5 students, 7 students). 3 years in a row above average means this will deplete the "savings" of the department a little bit, but because they have a big pot of money, they can survive the long term average. This allows my department to not lose a chance at a student they really want just because there are also 4 other good students that year. At the same time, this is why my department won't take another student even if there is a lower number than normal. They would prefer to wait 2 or 3 years for the best-fit candidate than to take whoever is available in any given year, even if there is money for an extra spot. 3. Nothing else to add to what fuzzy already wrote!

My department is an example of a department where once we make a final list of people to admit, then that is the final list. Even if no one from this lists accepts, or everyone defers, we do not take more students. There is one year in recent memory where we had no new students and a few other years where we had very few (2 or fewer). In addition to the funding situation, another resource that is constrained is time/effort. Accepting a student means investing 5+ years of people's time into training this person, which can be costly even if the department has the funding. So, I would second the words of your potential supervisor. Don't think of admissions as a competition between "who is better". It's not about looking at the pool of candidates and trying to fill X spots with the "best" people. Instead, it's about finding the best match between the student applicant and the needs of the department, within the financial and time limitations of the department. The first part (best match with needs) will certainly change from year to year. I definitely notice changes in how many admitted students are from particular subfields from year-to-year, as the department seeks to find a balance it wants in its interests.

As fuzzy said, Canadian PhD programs expect you to have some coursework already done during the Masters, my experience with Canadian graduate program is because you are only expected to do one course per term, the professors will generally expect more from you. So, while I spent about 30 hours per week on coursework when taking 3 courses per term in my US PhD program, I probably spent 15-20 hours per week on a single course during my 1-course-per-term Canadian MSc program. In addition, generally, Canadian programs are much less focussed on coursework than US programs are. We tend to take about 5-6 courses in total, but my US program is 11 courses (equivalent to about 8 Canadian courses, due to the different length of our terms). My current program being an exception, it also seems like US graduate programs are very coursework focussed---i.e. lots of programs have quals or comps that are directly based on courses, while this is less important in Canada. My Canadian MSc program had 4 courses over 4 terms as the requirement, but only half of them even have to be in the department (as long as your supervisor and department head signs off on the other two then you can have it count towards your degree). Sometimes if you feel a specific course could really help your research but it lies outside than your course requirements, you might be able to get permission to take it. Or at least audit it. For jobs though, it will likely not matter. It could depend on the field, but jobs in my field do not request transcripts. Having coursework makes very little difference to employers in my field.

A. A. A. A. A. A. A. Definitely A. In addition what is said above, everyone I know (including myself) who has heard warning signs about an advisor and thought "oh, but it will be different for me", was wrong. Most people who hear warning signs will think they will be okay, and I think that's normal because as academics, we are trained in the value of determining things for ourselves. But everyone I know who thought this was wrong. Some people were able to still make it work, or change advisor after a year or two, so it's not like it's the end of your career if it doesn't work out. So go with PI B if you're willing to take the risk. However, from your post, it's so clear that A is the only sensible choice, for me. Finally, to reiterate St Andrews Lynx's advice: your research interests and passions will change over time but an advisor's style is almost certainly fixed. For a better work experience, I'd pick advising style and working relationship fit over research topic on any day.

Usually not. In addition to what is already said above, sometimes multiple schools will use the same application software (e.g. in my year "Embark" was used by a couple). When this happen, you can use the same Embark account for the common schools and it will auto-fill-in basic information like your name, address etc. But all actual things you're evaluated on will be separate. If it does do this, it would be wise to ensure the names etc. are correct !

That sounds good. The Canadian schools will still look at your undergrad GPA and they will probably still use it to evaluate you. Note that when schools say you "need" a certain GPA, that's usually the minimum to be considered. It doesn't mean that if you have that GPA you will get in. But it is a good thing for you that your Masters GPA is higher than your undergrad and that will help you. Also, keep in mind that Canadian schools and US schools grade differently. A grade like "A" means different things in each country (and varies with each school). Usually, in Canada, grades are awarded for knowledge and achievement---for example, if you are able to meet all the learning goals fully, then you will get an A. So for tough courses that are only taken by top students, usually everyone gets an A. However, it seems like in the US, the grading is comparative. An A in the US tend to mean that you were one of the best students in the class. Finally, I have no idea how Texas Arlington compares to McGill or Toronto.

According to the University of Chicago international office, you should be able to enter on July 16. On their website (https://internationalaffairs.uchicago.edu/page/arriving-us-airport-or-port-entry#30days), they suggest students use this calculator (http://www.timeanddate.com/date/dateadd.html) to determine the 30 days before. In addition, in standard North American English, the phrase "X days before Y" does not include Y. For example, if it was "1 day before August 15", that should clearly be August 14. Note that the 30 days before is not a strict rule. This means that the border officer can choose to let you enter more than 30 days before if they want to. But you should not count on that. I would recommend planning to arrive on July 16. However, if you are very worried about being turned away, then arrive on July 17. For most cases, arriving one day later won't make a big difference so if you are worried then this is the safest way.

It's not an easy question to answer, because schools in Canada are different than schools in US and also because "competitive" is not an easy term to define. Here are some thoughts that might help. Note that this can also be very field-dependent! We're not in the same field, so these are just generalizations, and you can probably find exceptions to everything below: 1. The top schools in Canada are not as good as the top schools in the US. There are no privately funded research schools in Canada. In the US, the very rich private schools that are research focused will be more competitive than Canadian schools. There is no Canadian equivalent for schools like Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Cornell, etc. 2. In Canada, international student tuition costs less (tuition in general costs less). So the additional cost for an international student in Canada is less than the additional cost for an international student in the US. So, in this sense, you may have an easier time to get into a Canadian school as an international student. 3. However, the sizes of Canadian programs are smaller. Not only that most programs are smaller, there are just fewer schools. So, even if you applied to every school in Canada and every school in the US, there will be more spots available to you in the US simply because they are bigger. So, there's no easy way to say one way or another. It will really just depend on your personal situation and the specific schools you apply to. What I can say is that if you apply to schools that are good fits for you, then your chances will be much higher and that doesn't matter if it's Canada or US.

So, you are asking if you need to have financial proof of support documents before you apply to Canadian universities? The answer is no. You apply to Canadian schools first. Then, you see if you get an admission offer. Usually the admission offer comes with a funding offer. Then you apply for a study permit, if necessary. For information on whether you need a visa and a study permit, see this page: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/study/study-who.asp At this stage, you do need to have some proof of financial support. Usually, this is coming from the school but if you don't get a funding offer from the school, then you need to show you have this money available.

I don't understand what you mean by "define our monetary status" ?

Funding in Canada for graduate school is not typically integrated like the US because we generally treat the Masters and PhD programs as two distinct programs. Here is the typical path and funding scenario for a student applying to Canadian graduate school. During the 4th and final year of undergrad, student applies to Masters programs. Student is admitted to Masters programs and offered funding along with admission. The funding offered can be a combination of TA work, RA work, and/or fellowships. Typically, the TA pay rate is the same for all students across all fields (TAs in Canada are usually unionized), but some science fields will usually have you TA for 5-10 hours per week and TAing is about 1/3 to 1/2 of your stipend, while in humanities, you may have to TA for 20 hours per week and TAing can be up to all of your stipend. There aren't usually tuition waivers in Canada. Instead, your pay is high enough so that you are meant to pay tuition out of your paycheque. But how much leftover money for rent and food you get depends on your field. At one of my past schools, it can be as low as $12,000/year (about half of what you need to actually live) to as high as $45,000/year. Tuition for Canadian students is around $5000-$7000 per year. Tuition for international students is about double of that. However, international students get a higher total stipend (usually through a special award) that makes up the difference between domestic and international tuition. This means your take home pay should be about the same as a Canadian's. (Not quite because you may have higher fees for health care etc.) During your 2nd year of your Masters, you apply to PhD programs. The process is very similar---you must submit transcripts, letters of references, writing samples, essays etc. all over again. Even if you are applying to work with the same supervisor at the same school. But many people will apply to PhD programs at different schools too---it's not atypical to move between a Masters and a PhD. The two programs are considered distinct and when you start your PhD program, you will be considered a "new student" (just like if you finished your undergrad and started a Masters program at the same school). So, certain awards that are only offered to "new students" are now available for you! Now with all of that said, it's not impossible for an undergrad student to be admitted straight to a PhD program. Also, there are sometimes "fast track" programs where a first year Masters student enters the first year of their PhD program right afterwards, instead of finishing a Masters first. Or, if your international credentials is deemed equivalent to a Canadian Masters, you can start as a PhD student. Note that most Canadians do prefer getting a Masters and then a PhD so although some students may be able to "fast track", many will choose to do a 2 year Masters first and then start a PhD program afterwards.

The bare minimum you need: - Valid passport - Signed I-20 - Paid SEVIS fees Extra things that you should have with you but you may not have to provide (in order of most likely asked to show to least likely): - Acceptance letter - Proof of funding - SEVIS receipt (only necessary if their computer system is down and they can't access proof of payment, or you paid it hours or a day before entering the US so it's not in the system yet) - Immunization records* - Bachelor degree certificate* (* It is very very unlikely you will be asked these things unless you get pulled aside for additional screening. However, these are things you should bring with you to the US anyways as you will need them for non-border related things. And, if you are flying, you should always take all important documents in your carry-on, not your checked bag, so you should have them accessible at the border anyways). Also both starred items can be obtained after you enter the US because they are required by your school, not by the border officials. Some students don't finish undergrad degree requirements until August so they won't have the actual certificate itself when they enter the US. Overall, you will be fine and you have everything you need!

You are 100% understandable and I can hear everything you say very clearly. You should have no problems in the United States No need to worry!

If it would make you feel better, you can send me a link to a youtube video (or similar) of yourself speaking via a private message or you can just post it here if you don't mind many people seeing the link.

I am not in this field, but I also want to second the advice of going for the best programs you can get into, as long as you feel like it is a good fit for you. There could be many good reasons to turn down a top 20 program in favour of a lower ranked program, for example you dislike the atmosphere at one of the departments, but it is incorrect to think that graduates from top schools go into research positions and graduates from lower ranked schools go into teaching positions. Here are some reasons I think you should go to the best school that is also the best fit for you: 1. There are far more graduates from top 20 schools than there are R1 TT positions. As PoliticalOrder said, graduates from these top programs will dominate the job market in all types of positions. 2. I'm going to repeat another thing that PoliticalOrder said because I think their post is very on point. You can make/find your own opportunities to develop your teaching portfolio. TAing more than 2 or 3 classes isn't going to help. If you are able to teach a class then that could be pretty good. You can also find teaching work outside of your graduate program. My advice would be that since you know you are interested in a teaching career, do your research on which of the best schools would value teaching or have programs that can develop you as a teacher as well as a researcher. My school has not been particularly well known for its teaching opportunities but I made my own: asked my profs to teach some of the lectures instead of just grading, volunteered with the Teaching Center on campus to get additional training and also to plan TA training etc. 3. This part might be field-specific but the advice I got from people who hire primarily teaching positions (e.g. at SLAC or similar schools) tell me that they prefer a candidate with a strong research background. Even though the job solicitation might have a lot of words that indicate they want to hire a good instructor, they also want someone that can do a little bit of research and expose their students to research as well (since SLACs want to train their graduates for grad school as well as other career paths). So, the advice I've heard is that given everyone applying would have some sort of good teaching portfolio and teaching philosophy, the thing that will make you stand out is your research. One thing you can do is to look at the CVs of recent hires at the types of schools you want to work at. Where did they do their PhDs, and if relevant, their postdocs? Make sure to look at recent hires because the ones that were hired decades ago were competing with a very different job market. In my field, I've noticed that there is a big trend to new SLAC professors being hired after a PhD and/or a postdoc at top R1 universities. 4. Top ranked programs will be better at providing you with the resources you need to pursue the career goals you want. I talked about volunteering at my school and in my community. I'm able to do this because I have won national fellowships so my advisors don't have to pay me as much, which means I get more freedom on how I use my time. Also, at these top schools, most of the faculty have plenty of grants, so there is little "jealousy" of grad students---that is, the faculty aren't logging our hours and making sure that they get the maximum research output for their grant dollars. This actually improves my quality of life and work-life balance because I can just work my 40 hours per week without feeling the (implicit) pressure from faculty that since grant money is so limited, I have to do other things. Also, at a R1 school, my funding is very secure---I don't have to do RA or TA work that take time away from my own thesis progress in order to fund myself. This leaves me with more free time to do outreach in the community or other things to help me advance my career. 5. Finally, I noticed that you wrote I think it is a fallacy to assume that prestige is correlated with someone who doesn't enjoy their job or someone who doesn't have a healthy work-life balance. Sure, when you visit a R1 school, you will find some people working 60+ hours per week. I would not enjoy that and it doesn't sound like you would either. However, in most cases, this is a choice they made due to pressures they are placing on themselves. And maybe they are happy doing this---I have colleagues who really love their work and would rather spend their time working than doing other things, so they are happy with their 60 hour work week. It's important to remember that you don't need to compare yourself to others and someone else working 60+ hours per week doesn't affect your own work-life balance. Now, of course, if the general expectation in the department is that everyone has to work 60+ hours per week or they get judged for it, then yeah, that is not a "good fit" and you shouldn't apply/go there. But I think few R1 schools are actually like this. Sometimes it's much more easy to notice the 60+ hours/week workaholic, because well, they are there all the time and you see them more. My experience at lower ranked schools showed me that there are going to be people that prefer working over everything else at all schools.

I want to second everything fuzzy wrote here. I did a Masters program before going to a PhD program too (in Canada, this is the normal route). Although I can't say for sure what your case will be like, typically when a student is defending a Masters thesis and is going to start a PhD program then the Masters thesis is just a formality. And remember, a Masters thesis is just graded as pass or fail, there's no difference between minimal pass and pass with flying colours. Accordingly, your advisor and your committee may feel the same way and they might not really care about making your thesis perfect, just good enough to pass. With my own Masters thesis, I don't think my committee read it carefully past Chapter 2 because all of their notes to me after my defense (and all of the questions they asked) were about the content in Chapters 1 and 2 only (there were 6 chapters in total). I'm not saying this to advise you to not care about your Masters thesis. You should definitely not just "let it go" because it might become a problem later! But the reason of sharing this is to say you might not have to worry as much as it sounds like you are worrying. If you follow the advice in fuzzy's post, you should be fine.

Just a reminder to check both the department-specific requirements at the department website and the university-wide requirements at the Graduate School's website, just in case