TakeruK

Oh okay---I had thought when you said 10-11 hours of travel time, that would surely mean a flight! Since the expense is small, I still think that if you are no longer interested, you should politely tell him that due to changing circumstances, you will be withdrawing your application and thank him for his time etc. However, only do this if you are certain that you don't want to attend School A. When it comes to job or admission offers, I really believe in the "don't count your chickens before they hatch" mindset. So, if you are not 100% sure that you don't want to go to school A, I would still visit with an open mind. Sometimes things are a lot different when you get there (either School A might be a lot better or the other schools might not be what you expect).

If you are paying your own travel expenses to School A, then there's no point in visiting if they are not a top choice for you anymore. I think you should cancel it and get your money back. It's really weird to me that a professor would insist that you come and visit but make you pay for your own expenses!

In my opinion, the etiquette is to do this only when you absolutely have to know. For example, if your top choice school is School A and your second choice is School B and you have an offer from School B but School B wants you to commit by March 1**. In this case, it might make sense to ask School A about the general timeline of decisions---if they tell you it will be before March 1, then that's great. If they say "We plan to release decisions by March 8" then you can go back to School B and ask for an extension on the decision to something like March 12, or March 15. This is just one example of a scenario where you do need to know about timelines. If you don't absolutely need to know the information, then I would suggest that you do not contact the school and ask. And also, if you do need to know, I would be careful to phrase my question as "when is your expected timeline for decisions?" instead of implying that you want them to make an expedited decision for you. ** This can still be within the convention of the CGS April 15 agreement if School B offers a basic financial package to the student, with a deadline of April 15, but they are interested in nominating (not offering) the student for a university-wide fellowship that is just lost if the student doesn't accept, so the department wants to know how likely the student will commit before nominating the student to this fellowship so that is why they are asking for a decision on the admission by March 1.

If they say interview specifically, then it's not necessarily true that you're accepted. I know that many schools will now still reject people after interview and still pay for the travel expenses. Our field is not like med school or other professional programs where you're expected to pay for the interview costs out of pocket. So, I think most schools will still pay for interviewees to travel. However, it's true that they are probably not planning on narrowing the field much more after this since it would be very expensive (i.e. it's unlikely that they will still reject half of the interview invites for example). Usually, during the interviews, they will also ask if you have questions. I think asking about "what happens next" during your interview is a good and fair question.

Seconding @fuzzylogician experience---as an international student, I also did not have to convert my GPA to an American system. Most applications asked for the GPA in the format that your school provides them (in Canada, we often get graded on a scale of 0 to 100, so I wrote my GPA out of 100). In my field anyways, I also notice that US schools don't usually ask for the 3rd and 4th year courses GPA separately, while other systems, like Canada, will basically only consider the 3rd and 4th year GPA for graduate admissions. However, they always ask for the transcript and it's my understanding that they will look at this and weigh the upper level courses more strongly. This can vary from field to field though.

This depends wildly on each program. It is something you should ask each POI directly (whether they are taking new students) and you should ask the program itself on how new students are matched to faculty. After hearing the official answer, you should also talk to current graduate students and ask how it works from their perspective too. A good time to find out all of this information would be when you visit the school (if a visit is arranged). Note: Be aware that some POIs are immensely popular. At the Chem department in my school, there is a faculty member that literally half of the incoming class wants to work with and they only have a few spots each year. The current grad students warn all incoming students about this fact each year but of course, most people will still come here hoping to work for this guy since they all think that they will be the special one that will stand out against the rest. The ones that don't make it aren't bad, but when there's that much interest and not a lot of space, some people don't get to work with who they want. So, when you are visiting, try to find out from the current students whether or not people generally get to work with their top choice POI. And talk to the students about the particular POI you have in mind---how popular are they? how many people are interested / how many get a spot? And finally, some programs do match up students and POI before admission---i.e. you are admitted directly to someone's lab, not through a rotation process. In this case, I would secure a spot in someone's lab before I accepted the offer, if that was possible (this is generally how my field operates, not 100% sure how others do it).

This is perfect. If you have any immediate questions, this is a good time to ask, but otherwise, you don't need to say anything else. You definitely do not need to say that you are considering other offers.

One of my past letters for a graduate fellowship application was shown to me and it was just a list of bullet points. It didn't really affect me negatively (I think) as I still won the fellowship. So I don't think you need to worry about this.

Like burgundywave, I also only visited my top 3 choices. There were two other offers that had visits after these first three and once I visited the first three, I knew I would be deciding between those three so I did not schedule visits to the other two schools (and also declined their offers while trying to make up my mind about the final 3). For my Masters, I also only visited 3 schools. I feel like 3 is a good number to visit. When visiting PhD programs, I was in the middle of trying to write my MSc thesis, so limiting it to just 3 schools meant only 1.5 weeks away from work (visited 2 schools in one week-long visit, and another school over a weekend).

I agree with the above. Also this depends a lot of the field. I think I would evaluate financial offers in STEM fields based on these three main criteria: whether you have to work RA or TA for it, the quality of life it buys you, and who is paying you. I would say a competitive STEM offer (where competitive means a really good offer that will make a difference) is one where: 1. The money is not tied to TAing (you might still have TA requirements but it's not necessary to depend on TAing to fund it). Some people want some TA experience, so I would say a "half-TAship" is good (something like 10hrs/week instead of 20hrs/week). 2. The offer is significantly higher than the rest. You can afford many luxuries (for a grad student) such as a nice apartment, a car, etc. One school offered me $36k/year in a very low cost of living area. Grad students there can afford houses! Another highly competitive offer is the Canadian Vanier fellowship ($50k/year). 3. It's probably some sort of University-level fellowship or maybe even department level. The good thing about it is that it's not coming from your supervisor (i.e. you don't cost your supervisor a lot). I would say a "good" STEM offer would be one where: 1. The funding structure is mostly RA rather than TA. It could be 50% RA, 50% TA. Or, it could be TA for the first 1-2 years then RA for the rest of the time. Whatever works out so that you are being paid mostly for research instead of teaching. 2. The offer allows for a comfortable standard of living. One metric would be that you are paid enough to be able to afford all of your expenses and have a little bit leftover for a few small luxuries, but not quite a big luxury, such as a car. I see a lot of offers in this range, where if you saved for 2-3 years, you could probably get a used car (if that's what you want). For most places, if you want a numerical value, I'd say something like $25,000 to $30,000 per year (need to adjust for cost of living!). 3. The source of the money is either department level or from your supervisor. I would say a "bad" STEM offer would be one where: 1. You are almost fully dependent on TAships for your funding. It usually means that your supervisor doesn't have a grant to pay for your work. Note that "bad" here really only means relative to other STEM fields---it's normal for some fields, e.g. theoretical physics, to be completely reliant on TA funding since there are few supervisors with grants that can pay RAs for this. 2. The offer barely pays for enough to meet basic needs and you will probably have almost no money for any luxuries. Some places are poorly funded enough relative to cost of living that you may have to take out small loans or really really tighten your budget. For some numbers, I would say I've seen offers around $18,000 to $24,000 (depending on cost of living) that would fall into this category. 3. The source of money is almost entirely from your supervisor or your TA work. The reasons why I chose these three criteria are: 1. Ideally, you want all of the hours you're working to go towards your career goals, not just to make ends meet. TAing is good for career goals, but only to an extent---if you have to TA every semester in order to keep your funding, this means there is a big chunk of your time going towards things that generally don't help you get a job afterwards. Teaching jobs would value actual experience like being an instructor of record vs. plain TAing and the former is very hard to get in STEM fields. You'd want to be paid for the hours you are spending on your thesis! 2. This one is obvious---more luxuries = happier person = better work and quality of life. 3. The less that you cost your supervisor, the more funds they'll have to spend on your other needs (e.g. equipment, travel to conferences, etc.) Also, if you don't cost a lot to any particular advisor, you will have more options on who you can work with.

My CGS-M and PGS-D proposals were nothing like the actual research I did. In fact, I wrote both of these proposals with a specific professor/school in mind but I did not even choose that school in the end. This was for NSERC, and it was in 2010 and 2012, respectively, so I know rules have changed a bit since then. But I don't think you are bound to the proposal even now. The CGS-M is only one year, so it just has to be in the same evaluation committee (I'm not sure how SSHRC splits up its fields, but I was in the Physics & Astronomy NSERC evaluation committee so as long as I stayed within that field, it was fine). For the my PGS-D, since it's a 3 year award, after I decided I would not be doing the original research topic, I had to write a new proposal to request a change of topic (this was straight-forward though, it just needed to be approved by NSERC and they want it for record keeping purposes, not evaluation purposes). However, in NSERC documentation of my award, it's still granted for the original title, even though I did not work on it at all. But that's okay.

I think location is really important. You can look at it two ways. I work 40-50 hours per week, sleep about 50 hours per week, which leaves about 68 hours per week where I interact with the "outside world". But it's more than that. Location is what colours all of my waking interactions. Examples: 1. I feel very different going into work now when it's basically sunny and clear every morning when I arrive and every evening when I leave, instead of having to fight through snow. 2. I'm able to go to the store, buy ethnic vegetables, cook food that I had growing up and bring it to work for lunch, or go home and be able to eat something that makes me happy. At other locations, there were some food items I could only get in a town 2 hours away. Similarly, I can go out to restaurants that serve a large variety of foods that make me happy. 3. I'm in the same time zone as my family again, and most of my friends, so if I want to make a Skype call, it's a lot easier to arrange. I don't have to alter my work days or rearrange other things (like stay up late) in order to make a call. 4. I live close to a big hub city airport now, so traveling is both cheaper and easier. My last location usually required 8 extra hours of travel just to get on the flight at the nearest hub airport (4 hour bus ride because of the route and on average, 4 hours wait at the airport because the bus only arrives at certain times). --- So I want to second GeoDUDE!'s point---it's not just about the hours that you're not working. I think everything about the location affects how you work. And rising_star brings up another especially good point---what are the long term goals? I was okay with living in the cold parts of Canada for just a couple of years because I know it would help me get into a good PhD program. When I applied to PhD programs, I only applied to schools in places that I would consider living (i.e. the worse the location was, the more opportunities the school had to offer me in order to make it worth applying). Depending on your career goals, I agree that it might be worth living in a less than ideal location for awhile so that you can have more opportunities to live where you want later on. I'm currently in a location that I would consider pretty good, but not ideal (still too far from family, and it's not in Canada); but I think the opportunities I have right now will help me get to a better location in the future. For my PhD, I made the choice 50% on location, 50% on research. But my long term future career plans will be 95% based on location (it's more important for me to be in a particular location than to do any specific career). So, when you say "less ideal", how far less ideal is it? Would you still be happy there? If so, I'd personally pick the top 10 school because even though it's less ideal, it sounds like you will be able to have more opportunities later with better location choices. But that's just taking your scenario and applying it to my life---you'll have to decide what's best for you!

This is now 4 years ago for me, but one school called me just as I was putting on my shoes since my spouse and I were going out to dinner. Being from Canada, long distance calls are super expensive and I was expecting a telemarketer so I was a little grumpy at answering the phone (didn't say anything bad just a grumpy hello I guess). It turns out it was a prof from the dept telling me the good news. I was both shocked and didn't know how to recover from the beginning that I kind of just froze and said "Thank you for the good news" in the most flat and monotonic voice possible. The prof asked if I had any questions (I didn't, since I was completely unprepared for the news!) and said that someone else will follow up via email about planning a visit etc. Then we hung up. Afterwards, I was kicking myself since I thought I sounded like a jerk for sounding completely unexcited at the news. At the actual visit, I mentioned this to the professor that called and of course, I had over analyzed everything and he didn't even remember me sounding unexcited. In fact, he said he was the one that felt bad because they actually called me 3 days after everyone else got notice because they forgot to assign a person to actually call me. lol The way I "bottle" the feeling is to save all of the emails like this to a gmail folder. I call it my happy folder and I put all good news in it (admissions, fellowships, "your abstract is accepted for a talk", "your paper is accepted", etc.) Grad school has a lot of downs and there are some days the imposter syndrome really kicks in and I feel like I don't have what it takes to make it. So, when this happens, I open up my happy folder and re-read all of the emails affirming that I am capable of this and it helps a lot.

I think I might have misunderstood Fallen's original question, so I want to clarify: Yes, for the formal one-on-one faculty interviews, you should have a notebook, or a pad and pen/pencil handy. It's okay to jot down the occasional thing they say, especially when it relates to research. For example, they might tell you about 2 or 3 potential projects in their lab for a new student and you should absolutely write these things down. Also, if they give you some references for some of the methods or current research for these projects, you should definitely write them down. No one likes it when they make a suggested action item and the other person doesn't seem to make any attempt to actually record it to do later. When I wrote my above response, I was thinking about the "hard questions" like the ones I listed above and others have also listed. Also, I was thinking about the less informal conversations with grad students (in my field, on the interview days, prospective students are scheduled to meet with faculty as well as graduate students in their offices). When you ask questions to the grad students like "What is Prof X like to work with?" or "Are you happy with the department?" etc. then you should not be jotting things down! I think you might want to avoid doing the same thing when asking the "hard" questions to faculty and department chairs etc. as well. If there is something that you just learned that you feel like you absolutely have to record because it's so important, I would excuse myself at the end of the meeting and take some time to write it down before going to the next meeting. I did this for a couple of meetings where I received some important info with specific numerical details for things like how much monetary support the school provides for childcare etc. Finally, I do think it's professional for you to have a notepad/clipboard/scrap paper etc handy when you do these interviews. It shows that you are prepared. And jotting down an occasional note is a good idea. But don't go the other way and be constantly writing/note taking/taking a transcript!

I wouldn't take notes during these sessions. Honestly, you don't really need to know exactly which words were said by whom at what time etc. I think taking notes would make people uncomfortable and much less likely to answer truthfully. The point of asking these questions is not to get exact answers that you can then put into a spreadsheet and compare exactly what each school said. That is, you're not going to use these responses by comparing things like at school A, the grad students said "I am happy with our stipend" vs. at school B the grad students said "I am really happy with our stipend". After all, it's not like anything people say at this point is binding. If a prof says "oh I like my students to work 40 hours per week" and then you get there and they lay out a schedule that puts you in the lab 50 hours per week....well, it's not like you are going to say "But you promised 40 hours per week!" etc. Instead, the point of asking these questions is not to get specific responses but to get a general overall feeling/sense of what life is like at the school. What I did was at the end of each visit day, I wrote a half-page to one-page "reflection" on my thoughts/impressions on everything I experienced that day. If you prefer more frequent note taking, then I would maybe take some time at lunch or a coffee break to jot a few quick thoughts/impressions during the day and then combine it all at the end of the day.

I agree with most of this. In the application stage, we have to act based on how schools actually use GRE scores, not how we want them to be used. But that is not the same as writing things like "330 is not hard to achieve" etc. because it also gives applicants the wrong impression that if they don't have a 330, then they might as well not apply. Finally, I don't think we need to wait until we are actually on these committees to move to de-emphasize GRE scores. As I shared in my link above, there is already a current movement to do so in Astronomy. The link was a letter from the American Astronomical Society (AAS) President and the link shows a draft letter---in January 2016, the AAS Council met and approved this resolution and they will be preparing materials for people to present at their own departments to convince them of this change. So, yes, at the stage where change actually happens, it has to come from someone with a lot of power and respect. These are all tenured faculty members on the AAS Council. However, this letter and actual commitment to change is the result of several years of work by a lot of people, including junior scientists like grad students and postdocs. There has been a quieter campaign in the last year where some researchers (the Nature article from 2014 cited in the letter) have been going around to various schools and presenting the data showing the lack of correlation. These researchers got talk invites because people at these schools (students, postdocs, and faculty members) wanted to hear from the researchers and asked their department to invite them. And this is necessary because a change like this cannot just come as an "order" from the AAS (the AAS doesn't really have any legal power). We see this letter today because it's a result of a ton of influential universities already buying into the concept. And these universities bought into the concept thanks to work by a lot of people at all stages of their career. So, yeah, there's not much you can do while you are still applying, but you also don't have to wait until you are on an admissions committee to help start changing things!

I'm in a Earth science department too and I think the left option would make you stand out as much more dressed up than the typical candidate. I think the right-side option would be a tiny bit more dressed up than most other applicants. I don't want to say "inappropriate" because it's no one's business how you dress. But if it helps, I hope the comparison to the typical amount of dressed up from candidates help. One typical outfit would be to wear a blouse as a top. For the bottom, there are lots of options which can be summarizes as "at least as nice as a clean pair of jeans or better". So, many choose clean pair of jeans. Some will wear dress pants or a skirt. Many people also wear a scarf or a light sweater since it gets colder in the evening/early morning. Another typical outfit at my school (it's in a warm area) is a dress. Not like a cocktail party dress or a formal dress, but maybe a sundress if that's the right term? Or if it helps, pretend you are going to go to a restaurant with *patio seating* where the entrees are like $25-$40 each, and dress for that. Ultimately, I say you should dress in an outfit that makes you feel comfortable and expresses yourself. I think what you have in mind (collared long sleeve shirt with suit pants) is a great choice. I don't think it matters whether you wear a coloured shirt or a white shirt. Pick the one you like best!

Oh okay, I thought 4-day means 4 (week)days of scheduled activities. If you are counting travel day and weekends then yeah, most of my trip were 4 days too (arrive Wednesday, full event days Thursday & Friday, return home Saturday (sometimes a few fun activities in the city on Saturday for those who are around).

I disagree with your definition of what is "easy". 90 hours of study is not that affordable to many many students. This is 90 hours on top of the regular courseload in a bachelor's degree---why should this be a necessary step in order to go to graduate school? Studies have shown (see this and references therein) that there are no correlations between GRE performance and other measures of graduate school success (whether it's grades, post-PhD placement, papers, etc.). Instead, there is strong correlation with gender and race. This is why I think we should "demonize" the GRE because by doing so and by putting pressure on our departments to do so, it is the way we can remove the GRE from the admissions process. I do agree with you that we do not want to be misleading though. Under-emphasizing the GRE could do more harm than good right now because you're right, many departments still use GRE scores as cutoffs despite ETS recommendations on their guide to interpreting their scores. So, we should make it clear the importance of the GRE. However, this doesn't mean we should refrain from demonizing it. And I definitely think we should not perpetuate the false statement that if you can't do well on the GRE, you can't do well in grad school. (or that there is something wrong with you if you can't achieve 330)

Ah okay, I wasn't sure if it was a super structured job format like that or not. If unpaid personal days are not allowed (in my experience, at jobs like this, these are also limited) then you might have no choice but to call in sick. I think the laws and rules vary a lot from place to place but while yes, you would get in trouble if they found out you weren't sick, it would also be very difficult for them to find out. Some places have laws that prevent them from asking for doctor's notes for example (and not all sickness requires visit to the doctor!). Just don't mention it to anyone, not on facebook, not to coworkers, etc. Also I agree that it's not feasible to do this for all schools! Even if you had unlimited sick days, visiting 7 schools would be a lot of time and energy! I only visited my top 3 choices so I think if you prioritize your top schools for visiting, you should be able to do it within the vacation day and sick days. I agree that there is financial impact though, and I wish schools would think about this more when scheduling visits (especially that 4-day visit school, what are they thinking??). Ultimately, I feel it's worth the lost pay in order to make a decision that would affect you for up to 5-7 (or more!) years!

I think you are fine, too!

I agree that if you are seriously considering this school, it's a good idea to visit! I find that the visits were the most helpful towards making my decision. A graduate program is a long time, and to me, it was well worth the extra effort required to attend. Calling in sick is a very common thing to do to attend these visits. It's also common outside of academia---this is how people attend interviews for other jobs when you are already currently in a job. I also think it's important to come on the weekday, not an actual weekend. You want to see how the school/department operates on a regular day. There will be no (or very few) people around on a weekend and you'll miss the chance to meet with lots of people. However, there are some potential compromises that can hopefully meet both the needs of your current job and making the best decision for yourself in the future: 1. Ask to move it to another Thursday/Friday....if it was early or mid-March, would it be easier to take time off? 2. Compromise and come for a Friday+Saturday instead?

Oh, I would have thought it would be a given that if you are attending a conference that would be a work trip and therefore your advisor/department would pay for everything. But I guess you say you are also not presenting so even in my field that might make it hard to get expenses covered by a grant or other travel fund. But just to be clear, when I mention saving money above, I don't mean my own out-of-pocket money (I would never pay out of pocket to do a work trip), but instead, saving my advisor money (by sharing with another grad student) or saving money from any research funds I have access to, so that the money can be later spent on something else beneficial for me (e.g. another trip). But you do bring up a really good point about a benefit of sharing that I forgot about. Networking is a lot easier when you have a roommate to encourage you to go to things. Or, if each roommate has their own existing group of "conference buddies" then both roommates can meet a lot of new people. And, a lot of the post-session conference hangouts form spontaneously and informally, having a roommate letting you know what's up and inviting you to something they are going to is great. I was able to learn about and meet lots of people this way when I was starting out. Now, when I go to a conference, I already know a bunch of people and it's a lot of fun

Cool! Good to know!

I can't say for sure about your field as I'm pretty far removed from it! But in the STEM fields, taking 1 or 2 (or even more) years off between undergrad and graduate school is completely normal and it should not hurt your chances of getting into grad school at all. It could make getting reference letters more difficult, but as long as you keep in touch with your undergrad advisors (and it sounds like you are still working on papers with them so that's great) then you should not be any different.