TakeruK

Good luck

Generally, it is not rude to ask for more money because schools understand that students are people that need to pay rent, bills, and buy food! My opinion is that you should ask for more money if you cannot accept the offer as it stands because it is not enough to live on. But even though schools understand this, many schools are not actually able to increase the stipend (but they will understand and not think poorly of you for asking). However, I do think it will reflect poorly on you if you are just asking for more money because you want more money (everyone wants more money). I might be wrong, but I can't imagine $700 per year making a huge difference on whether or not you are going to attend the top choice. For a 5 year degree, this is $3500. I think that if you ask for more money, you are basically saying either: 1. You deserve more money than other students just because you asked for it, or 2. You value the difference between your top choice and the other school as $3500 or less over 5 years. Both options do not look good on your part and in my opinion, if you are able to afford cost of living at the top choice school, then you should accept their offer. Note: I do think that grad student offers should be more like job negotiations and that we should have more employee-like rights. However, the reality is that 1) schools don't really have as much flexibility in grad student funding as they do for actual hires and 2) trying to make a statement like this for $700/year is not worth the harm it could cause you. Finally, be sure to compare other things like cost of living (some states are really big!) and health insurance coverage. Maybe the top choice school will cost you a lot less in health insurance. Do your research so that if you do ask for more money, you can back it up with numbers otherwise you'll also look bad.

This is one of the cases where it's fine to wait until April 15 and actually the reason, in my opinion, why we have a common deadline in the first place. Imagine if there was no April 15 convention and Great Program University said you must respond by April 10 and Top Choice University gives their top candidates until April 12, so they won't be able to tell you about getting off the waitlist until after April 12! You would be forced to accept the Great Program offer and then go back on your word if you hear from Top Choice University. The April 15 convention is meant to prevent scenarios like this and ensuring a fair environment for students and schools. What a person in your situation should do is: 1. Inform Top Choice University that you are still very interested in their offer and find out your current status (i.e. confirm that you are actually on a waitlist with a reasonable chance to get in, instead of a silent rejection). Ask for an estimate of decision timeline. 2. Tell Great Program University that you are interested but need to hear back from one other school before you can commit to Great Program University. Tell them the other school's timeline. You can ask for an extension beyond April 15 if Top Choice University tells you that they won't know until, say, April 18. 3. Contact all other schools you might have applied to and either decline their offers or withdraw your application because you already narrowed down your top 2 final choices. This will help other people in similar situations as you at other schools. 4. Stay in touch with both Top Choice University and Great Program University and let them know if anything changes ASAP. 5. Wait until April 15, it's almost there!! I think from your description, you have done all of this already, so it sounds like to me you have done the responsible and correct thing! Hope the wait from Top Choice University isn't too long for you.

You can take the NSERC doctoral award outside of the country---but with a bunch of conditions: most prominently, there are two levels of the NSERC doctoral award at 21,000 CAD/year and 35,000 CAD/year and you can only take the lower level award out of Canada (if you get the higher award, you can decline it and receive the lower award). For NSERC, the rules are in the "Awards Holder Guide" and when I looked up the same phrase with SSHRC, I get to this page: http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/funding-financement/using-utiliser/guides-eng.aspx There seems to be a version for "SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship award holders registered at foreign institutions" so it seems like the answer is yes? I don't know the SSHRC award values, but with NSERC, if you are going to a US school, they pay you the CAD equivalent in US dollars, and you have to factor in the exchange rate! Because this can change during the course of your award/degree, you should ensure that whatever financial package you're getting from your school takes this into account. Since my NSERC award did not cover my entire stipend, my school agreed to pay me whatever amount necessary to bring my total stipend to the standard level. I bring in my award cheque stubs every 6 months and they recalculate their contribution to my stipend based on how much NSERC paid due to the changing exchange rate. The only other award I was aware of (and applied to) for study in the US was the Fulbright Traditional Student Award. You apply for this through the Fulbright Canada office. It's only a 9 month award (at $15,000) and it will require you to be on J-1 status with potential for requiring a 2 year home residency requirement because it's federal funding (but maybe this can be waived). There may be additional field specific awards that others in this sub-forum could help with, but I think the Tricouncil and the Fulbright are the only wide-reaching awards from Canada that specifically allow (or designed for) Canadians to study in the US.

One of the grad students in my cohort took up marathon running after starting grad school. There is a PE class at my school that helps you train for a marathon, for those who find structure helpful. My friend even finds time to travel to marathons in-state and out-of-state (often combining with a personal visit or giving a talk at the institution!) But depending on where you live, there are also lots of local races. In planetary sciences & astronomy, marathon running seems to be a pretty common hobby actually. The old department chair and his wife are both ultramarathon runners---they recently did a 100km race. Another professor in the department decided to try to start training for and then completed a triathlon a few years ago. I think the goal is to eventually complete an Ironman race. It's true that professors have different time constraints, but I don't think it's any less. If anything, I think professors work as much or even more than grad students and generally have additional responsibilities/commitments. Sometimes I use this fact to motivate myself to schedule more time for hobbies!

If you have already decided to accept another offer (i.e. you are 100% sure that you will not attend this school), then withdraw your application. Sending a personal email is a good idea if you have had contact with the department individually. Doing this may really help them because as April 15 approaches, they need to make decisions on who to accept from the waitlist and having you out of the equation (I mean this in the nicest way possible) would be very helpful as it's one less unknown they have to worry about. Otherwise, if they rank you higher than other people on the waitlist, it could waste everyone's time for them to contact you, make an offer, have you say "no thanks" and then they have to do this to the next person. It saves you time, it saves them uncertainty and it might bring a decision to someone on the waitlist faster. Your timely withdrawal once you have accepted another offer will be appreciated.

Actually, I am not sure if the Fulbright is limited to PhD students only. There used to be multiple Fulbright awards with different criteria. You apply for these through your country's Fulbright office, a google search for Fulbright China returns this page: http://beijing.usembassy-china.org.cn/fulbright_program.html. I think it's a great place to start (clicking on "How do I apply ...") to see if you are eligible! Good luck!

It's important to have hobbies! I think our own pressure on ourselves is the biggest hinderance to having hobbies in grad school (i.e. thinking that we're too busy or feeling guilty for doing these hobbies). So, do what you need to do to convince yourself to prioritize your hobbies too. One way I do this is to adopt the philosophy that I need to be healthy physically and mentally in order to do good work. So, things like my hobbies are just as important to being alive as a human as eating, showering, brushing my teeth, sleeping, etc. I wouldn't go for a week without sleep, so why would I go for a week without my hobby?** (**I know it's not strictly the same and of course there are some weeks where it's crunch time for work, but adopting this outlook helps me remember the importance of self-care). Practically, one of the hardest skills to learn in grad school, in my opinion, is saying no to yourself (and others). I practice this by setting a limit on how much work I'm willing to do, and then only taking on and doing work that fits in this time limit. It varies as my responsibilities and goals change from year to year and quarter to quarter. This semester, I am TAing and I want to get a couple of papers out before I go on the job market, so I am probably in the 50-60 hours per week of work (for the typical semester, I usually work 40-50 hours---the extra 10 hours is for TAing and I don't want to reduce my research productivity while TAing but I also don't want to do a lame job TAing either). After determining this number, I find it helpful to sketch out my time budget for each week. You don't have to stick to it precisely, but being aware of how you are spending your time can allow you to spend your time the way you want. Maybe you find that you are spending a lot of time on X but you would really be happier if it were on Y. And lastly, I feel like a lot of people cut back on outside life when they start grad school and then plan to slowly add in outside stuff once they get settled in. I don't think this works very well because you end up in a routine and then it's hard to see that you actually have time for another thing. Instead, my advice is to start out doing everything you want to be doing. Do school and all the hobbies that you want to be doing that semester. Then, cut back on things if you do get overwhelmed. I think once that you get into a routine, it's much easier to maintain it! Of course, all of this is just what I found works for me, hope it was helpful for you!

With the usual caveat that things may vary from field to field and department to department, my advice is actually to not count on this search/hire going through and you should not count on having this person around to play a significant role in advising you. It may work out and that would be super awesome, and it's useful to know that there are plans to keep the department faculty roster at approximately the same size but I would not consider this person as a potential advisor/committee member at this time when making the final decision on where to go. Here are some reasons: 1. Usually, a new professorship appointment is approved at a level higher than the department level and your department may be one of many departments competing for a new hire budget. Scheduling a search is not the same as getting an opening and the department may later choose to trade/give up this spot for some other advantage. Or, things outside of the department's control (e.g. budget changes) may result in the search or hire not working out. 2. The search might not result in a hire. Not every search results in success. Because spots are so limited, most departments may not make an offer if there is no one that they like enough. Or, they might only be interested in 1 or 2 people and those 2 people might take an offer elsewhere. It's also common practice for people to apply for positions, get an offer, and use it to renegotiate a better offer at their current institution, with no intention of taking the position they applied for unless their current institution cannot or does not give them what they want. If this happens, the department may choose to try again next year instead of hiring a candidate lower down on their list. 3. Job search/hire timescales can be long, especially compared to grad student timescales. The search and job negotiation process could take up to an (academic) year, especially since, like grad applications, it works in cycles and people will wait to hear from their other applications before accepting offers. Negotiation the final details could take months and then if it doesn't work out, the school's second choice may already have taken an offer elsewhere. Also, once an offer is finalized, the new hire's start date may be 1 or 2 years away. In my field, many new hires are currently postdocs with prestigious postdoc fellowships and most people want to finish up these fellowships before starting a faculty job. With all of this in mind, I would not count a new addition to the department until there is an announced start date! When I visited grad programs, they would tell me about any new hires they planned to make in a few years but they also advised me, for the same reason, to not count on them in making my own decision.

These are very limited! It might help to say what field you are in. I know of only one single fellowship for my field. There are some national level awards that are open to international students because their purpose is to attract international researchers. For example, the Fulbright program has one for PhD students. You generally apply through your home country's Fulbright office. (Note: Fulbright offers a lot of programs, including one for Americans to work/study outside of the US, so make sure you find the one that is relevant to you). Other than that, I think most international students I know with fellowships have them from their home country/government. If your home country has something like the United States' NSF, they might offer a fellowship for graduate study outside of your home country. These fellowships may or may not have some conditions when taken out of the country, so keep that in mind too!

I find that most travel insurance providers will cover shorter trips, but it's hard to get one for 14 months! Also, most of these policies cover trip cancellation, medical expenses and lost baggage, which doesn't really help for fieldwork, so you are paying a big chunk of money for things you don't need. (e.g. Trip cancellation and lost baggage may already be covered by your credit card benefits, if you have one) Also, is the fieldwork within the US or international? Your school may have a specific set of policies for coverage internationally. We have a PPO-based student plan without the need to specify a primary provider, so if I was doing fieldwork in the US, I would just have to make sure there are some providers in the area within our network. Internationally, since there are no in-network providers outside of the US, my student plan covers any provider as an in-network provider, unless I am in my home country. So, this is a really good plan and it means a student at my school probably won't have to worry about additional health coverage. I second the advice to check with your school and compare with other external plan providers!

I don't think you should list two schools like that. I don't even think one needs to say the phrase "X fits my research interests better" but it's a common choice that works in a lot cases. I personally chose to say something like "After thinking about the best overall fit for me, I decided to attend X" or something more vague than just research interest (and the people that met me during the visits knew that I was considering things like weather, job prospects for my spouse etc. too). If you are not yet decided between the two schools, I'd do one of two things: 1. Only send the formal email and the DGS email for now, and don't mention what school you're attending instead. When you make your final decision, send the personal emails. 2. Send all the emails now without your final choice's name. The ones that are interested may ask and when they do, wait until you make your final decision and then respond. This is time specific advice since it's only 10 days away from the final decision deadline!

Yay!

I have a Kindle Fire HD10, which is not quite an iPad but still a tablet. I have it purely for fun and entertainment. I don't really find it very helpful for productivity/work at all. I think tablets are too unwieldy for email on-the-go (I use my phone instead) and current e-reader software on all platforms is no good for reading academic papers (in my field) in my opinion. I really like putting books for leisure reading, downloading videos (with the Kindle, it's well linked with the Amazon ecosystem so you can download Amazon Prime streaming videos for offline use, e.g. on airplanes!). Of course, this is a matter of personal tastes/preferences, but I just don't find a tablet helpful to my work life (although I LOVE it for entertainment purposes). One can also make an argument that it helps make travel for work more fun and therefore helps your work life I think if your phone needs an upgrade, that might do more for work/productivity than getting a tablet (or a new computer, since you already have a newish one). But there's nothing wrong with a new device to increase your quality of life, either! P.S. Super cool of your grandma to do this for you and to communicate it via text message! lol

For me, smaller conferences are much better for networking, as I said above. There are two ways a conference can be small---it can be regional or it can be highly subject specific. In my own experience only, I find that networking is much better at a small, subject specific conference than a small broad-topic but region specific conference. That is, in terms of "getting your money's worth", in my field, I think it's better to wait for a subject specific meeting to come to your area than it is to go to the next regional meeting. This is why I think location in terms of "academic centralness" for your field is a factor in making grad school decisions too! But maybe this varies a lot more from field to field.

I listed pros/cons but how much I weighed towards each pro/con was based on "gut feeling". Like for example, a "pro" might be "Weather in location is nice", but how much "nice" means and how much this factor mattered is based on instinct/gut feeling. That is, I didn't quantify it or give places a "weather rating" of 4/5 etc. I made the pros/cons list to help me see all the factors that mattered to my spouse and I (i.e. the systematic part) but then the decision itself was unsystematic (also there were two votes, one for my spouse and one for me, and we both agreed beforehand that it has to be unanimous).

I think you are overthinking this! You don't have to email every person you met with (remember, they met with tons of people too). This is what I would recommend (for the schools you visited, since it seems like you got the other schools figured out): 1. Do the formal decline thing with the school (whether it's a form or whatever). This is your official decision. 2. Email the "main person" that have been communicating these decisions to you. This is probably the DGS. This is a formal letter, so what you wrote above is good (without the last 2 sentences about meeting/working together). The point of this letter is basically professional courtesy so that the department hears about your decision from you instead of the Graduate School. 3. Now, you can write personal letters to individual people that you felt a strong connection to. You don't need to include every single person you met. You should be professional, but you don't need to be super formal like the example you gave. Write it in the way that fits the level of familiarity you have with each prof. Some guidelines on who to include would be those who you had have email conversations with before/during/after the application+visits and those you met at the visit that you really clicked with and really want to keep in touch with. Basically, if you don't have anything personal to say and it would just be like a form letter, then don't do send one. The purpose of this letter is not to officially inform anyone of anything, the above steps take care of that. This is just wrapping up personal correspondence that you may have had during the whole application process. I highly recommend including where you will be attending instead in this letter because again, you want these people to remember you and be able to find your work in the future if they are interested. If this is not the case, then don't send this letter.

Personally, I feel this is a big red flag. The professor chose to not meet with any visiting students because of a disagreement with another faculty member. But who does this decision hurt? The visiting students! I would be concerned that a professor is willing to act in a way against the interests of potential students because of a disagreement with another faculty member. I mean, it's hard to say for certain without the full story. Maybe the professor isn't actively recruiting as MathCat says, and feels like he doesn't need to meet with any potential students because he doesn't want/need any right now. That would not reflect poorly on the professor, but it's still a concern to you. Hopefully you are able to speak with the professor soon on Skype and find out whether or not you would want to work with this person, if you get off the waitlist!

This probably depends so much on the field and the particular program. At the schools I've experience in, TAships are quantized in hours per semester (with a weekly hourly estimate given as a guideline, but the limits are actually on the semester-total not weekly-total). At most programs, they come in "units" of 10 hours per week (but I was at one school where one unit was 5 hours per week). (**Note: the 5hrs/week per unit is basically grading-only or discussion section only because it's hard to fit both in just 5 hours per week. At this school, the 5hr/week appointment is usually 2 hours face-time with students in tutorials, 1 hour office hours, and 2 hours of prep time---the grading was done by senior undergrads who are paid as undergrad TAs; unfortunately since there is no paid time left for the TAs to attend the lectures, this means the TA does not attend lectures). So, a student with 20 hours of TA work per week will probably do 2 "units". This might mean being the TA for 2 different courses. Or, it might mean being the TA responsible for grading & discussion sections for 2 sections of the same course. Since doing 2 units of the same course should, in theory, take less time than 2 units of 2 different courses, I can see why some schools might count this as a 15hrs/week appointment instead of 20hrs/week. In my field, TAs generally do not teach the full course (although they may cover a lecture here or there). There are sometimes "Teaching Fellows" (TFs) that are graduate students who teach a full course, but when this happens, they are paid a salary instead of by hours. But I know that in other fields or schools, there may not be a distinction between the titles of TA and TF so everyone might be called a TA whether or not they are responsible for course development + teaching or just grading and office hours. If you want some anecdotal data: I've had two different type of TA appointments (at two different schools). At my MSc school, I was on a school where it was 4.5 hours/week per unit and in 1 year, I TA'ed 4.5 hours/week for 2 semesters (it was a 2-semester long class). It was a lab course so it was approximately 3 hours in the lab with the students, 1 hour of grading and 0.5 hours of prep time each week (in reality, I front-loaded the prep so I did lots of prep at the beginning and then nothing later once I knew all of the lab equipment). The next year, I had 9 hours/week for one single semester (normally the class has 2 TAs but they decided to make me do the work of 2 TAs in one semester and then not TA at all the following semester). This course was a computer-based lab with lots of assignments, so my time was 3 hours of in-lab time with students, 1 hour of office hours/responding to emails, 3 hours of grading, and 2 hours of prep work (no lectures in this class, it's just the prof, me and the students 3 hours per week in the computer lab learning stuff). At my PhD school, it's 10 hours/week of work for one class, but we only TA for one semester per year. My time is spent approximately 3 hours in lectures, 1 hour for combined office hours + tutorials, 1 hour for responding to student questions via email or drop-ins to my office, 3 hours of grading, and 2 hour of prep work (to prepare for the tutorial session plus to do the readings for the class---these are all class I took before, so I just read to refresh myself).

When I think "shotgun approach", I think of a person applying to a lot of programs that they know very little about and then hoping some of their applications will stick and get accepted. If this is what you mean, then I agree that it's not the right way (in my opinion) to apply to grad schools. You will waste a lot of time and money on applications! But, I don't see a lot of that here. As others said, asking for more details is not a bad thing. And neither is applying to something like 8-12 programs. Admissions is both random/stochastic and competitive so except for the few candidates that would be selected at every school, one would want to apply to many schools where they have say....a 20% chance of admittance in order to secure at least one offer. Because you need to apply to a lot of schools, you can't do your full research before applying. When deciding what schools to apply to, you are basically just doing enough background work to decide if 1) it's worth the application fee and 2) would you strongly consider attending it if you were accepted. It's not possible to find out enough information to know that "yes I will definitely attend if accepted" because it will take way too much time to learn that. Also, in order to know this, you would want to visit the school, talk to the professors and students and have deeper conversations. And you might want to know the financial offer. All of this is not possible to know prior to getting accepted since most faculty and students are too busy to field every question/request from an applicant. However, once you are a prospective student (i.e. accepted) then it's reasonable to ask all of these things and make these visits. And finally, most people apply during their final year of undergrad. In my opinion, you basically start developing as a researcher in your 3rd year of undergrad and you will learn and grow a lot during your 4th year. You almost double your experience as an academic between applying and deciding! Also the process of applying and the senior thesis help you learn a lot about yourself as a researcher too. You'll still grow a lot more in grad school, but a new academic may grow so much between applying and deciding that some schools they applied to needs to be seriously re-evaluated.

I think a comfortable standard of living (i.e. live with roommates, eat real food not just ramen but can't just eat out all the time, save a little each year but can't afford a car, etc.) would need a stipend of something like $28,000-$30,000 pre-tax in this area. I don't live in LA but I do live in Southern California and it might be true that my area is a little more expensive than the USC area (or maybe not, I'm not sure!). To find housing, I would use craigslist (https://losangeles.craigslist.org/). Or there are sites like PadMapper that take listings from Craigslist as well as other websites and plots them on a map for you and you can slide filters to adjust price ranges etc. It's really hard to find good housing in the LA area. I would plan to invest a an hour every day for a few weeks looking for places and making a lot of phone calls. Unfortunately, it will be pretty hard for you to see the places before you arrive if you are out of the country and a lot of online apartment listings are actually scams. My advice would be to consider starting in University Housing. Ask your school if you can move in early because you have the early orientation date. I am sure you are not the only one in this situation. If this is not possible, consider staying at a motel for the first week until move-in date. I think it's really bad that USC puts move-in date way after international student orientation---my school tries to set everything up so that students can move in, start health insurance etc. all by Sept 1 (international orientation is mid-Sept, all-campus orientation is late Sept). For things like food, etc. it depends on what you eat. You can probably feed yourself for $25-$40 per week (so...$100-$150 per month ish) if you cook all your meals and use cheap ingredients. Maybe $200 per month is more comfortable. Utilities (for a household) may cost something like $40-$50 per month for electricity (assuming bigger household and using more electricity than a single person), $30/month for gas, $50/month for internet and I don't know how much trash costs because it's always been included in the rent where I live. Some places include gas in the rent too (or other utilities). Remember, you would be splitting these utilities cost with everyone living there. Cell phones can be cheap if you get cheap pay-as-you-go plans ($20/month or so). Otherwise, plan for $40-$50 per month for a full service plan. Google just released Project Fi to everyone and they have cheap plans ($20 for basic phone functions then $10/GB of data, charged based on use), but you do need to have a new Nexus 5X ($350+ retail) or Nexus 6 ($500+ retail).

I agree with this. It's not as big of a deal as you think it is. Because it sounds like you do want this person involved in your dissertation, you can approach it a few ways: 1. Tell your advisor that you have been working really well with the other professor and that you would like them to be a co-advisor on your dissertation because they will be making your work so much better. 2. Tell your advisor that the other professor is requesting to be a coadvisor/cochair because of the time they have invested and that you agree with this since they have been very helpful in advising you. Either way, I support being direct and straightforward. This isn't a tricky situation where you have to phrase it carefully because this is a standard professional request in academia. I don't think you have to worry about hurting your first advisor's feelings (unless for some reason, there is something you didn't say here that would suggest your own advisor would be against this).

No problem! The whole funding thing also discouraged me from US grad schools for a long time before I realised that in a field with funded PhD, it's actually a non-issue since the funding covers that. I certainly don't have that kind of money in my bank account! Good luck on the GRE. I also had to travel a bit to get to my GRE too (3 hours away, had to arrive the evening prior as the exam is 8am in the morning!). And had to do this twice---once for the general GRE and once for the subject!

I don't know if it's true but even though I entered my middle name correctly, it still displayed incorrectly on some reports and many schools were not able to automatically match my score with the application. However, the scores were all eventually matched without any action from me (a human reviews them too). But because automatic match didn't happen, this means that some of the online application status displays didn't update to say "Scores received". When I contacted the schools about this, they explained that a human matched the scores and when this happens, they can't manually change the auto status update thing. Weird. I don't know what the best advice for you is. If you haven't registered for any tests yet, I would just create a new account anyways.

1. Yeah, I have also had great experiences with the agents. I didn't specify RA/TA on the phone conversation since I didn't think the exact job title matters. However, I remember something now that might matter! My school does not consider RA and TA work as employed work. In fact, we are not technically employed as RA or TAs at all. Instead, they just give us a bunch of money and they ask us to do work "as part of our education" (although they issue a W-2, they are adamant that we are not employees). I think in theory, I am not obligated to actually work but they are also not obligated to give me money. So, this might be why the income isn't taxable even though the equivalent thing in Canada would be. I know that other schools actually employ their students! I'm also surprised to hear that your taxes paid in the US (T2209) doesn't cover all of the tax you would owe in Canada? For most grad stipend ranges, e.g. $25k-$35k, you would be taxed more in the US than you would in Canada (since the basic personal exemption is much higher in Canada than the US: $11k in Canada vs. $4k in the US for non-residents). I'm not doubting you (and no need to share your personal details!)---I'm just surprised. 2. My spouse is in the US with me as J-2 and they file as a non-resident (i.e. they don't file at all because they have no more Canadian income). Last year, we didn't know this and filed for both of us and they did not process my spouse's return and said that my spouse is likely a non-resident so it's not necessary. I think it's good if you are not a student. I talked to many different phone agents to verify this is the case even if the spouse is a student and they said yes, it's possible for one person (me) to be a factual resident but the spouse be a non-resident. You don't actually have to sever ties---you don't need to take action to become a non-resident because they will just stop accepting your tax returns. However, if you want an official evaluation of your residency status, you can file a RC-92 (I think that's what it's called) where you fill in a long survey and then the CRA will give you its decision on your tax status based on that survey. I did not bother doing this because the CRA says this is just "advice" not an official decision. After all, taxation is the law and the CRA are just the agency in charge of collecting taxes---they cannot make legal determinations (just like a police officer can't tell you "it's okay to steal this" and "waive" the law for you!). My reasoning, which may not be wise, is that the worse that could happen if I'm wrong is that I have to refile a bunch of old taxes and maybe pay additional tax + interest (I don't expect to since I have enough educational credits from undergrad + T2209 credit to offset if necessary). I think I have followed all due diligence that it's not tax fraud? Hope it works out lol 3. I got a request for further documentation in my first year too. I supplied it and it was accepted. Then all future years were accepted without question. Weird. I had thought I would only be asked once, so I guess this is good to know that I might get asked again in the future! On the fellowship: thanks! It was the only fellowship in my field that was open to non-US citizens