sbh_astro

Got PDF rejection in Boston today. However I am not that sad after seeing so many others with higher qualifications were rejected too. What's going on with NSERC?

Congrats Tasneem! Don't worry, the J1 2-years out of US is only important if you wanna apply for a permenant residency. You can extend your J1 visa and if you find a job in US and wanna stay with a work visa or even apply for green card you can legally do that. The purpose of J visa is that your resedincy country sends you to be trained , etc. and they want you back. So if you provide papers from Canada that you are allowed to stay in US from the Canada side, this 2-years out of US policy will be waived. We have a postdoc from Sweden who got a facualty position, and just is in the process of switching from J1 to a work visa (H?) . There is also options to apply for Green Card on especial circumstanses, (for example as high quality scientist, etc.) immigration lawyers can help with that and if you are confident on yourself, even as a high standing postdoc you can apply by yourself. The risk is if you be rejected you can NEVER apply for a US Green Card again. Good luck with your life/research in wherever you wish!

It totally depends on the university, city and supervisor. I know at least the health insurance will be paid in most universities. And know two NSERC PDFs who got top ups as much as 15k from their instituations, but this amount was required to get the group plan insurance in their institute at Boston (which is relatively high cost city)