<p>D's visits to Humanities departments were also expense-paid..airfare,hotel,meal with grad students,etc.</p>
<p>Yes, hard science PhD programs from physics to engineering to chemistry and biology offer all-expenses-paid visits. I have never heard of a reputable program not providing such a visit.</p>
<p>In the humanities, some schools do pay for such visits (Harvard, for example), but many do not -- some schools have more money for such things than others. If you can afford it, it is worth it to visit before accepting an offer of admission, to meet professors, tour the campus, and especially to talk with other graduate students to find out about the program.</p>
<p>Cathy;</p>
<p>Thanks for the encouraging and very sympathetic reply.</p>
<p>plus a fellowship stipend which meets her living expenses in her midwest city</p>
<p>That is one matter of concern for me. I have heard that sometimes it is necessary to take loans to meet the total expenses, and for a foreign student the mere idea of a debt in the US is scary, to say the least. I am doing my best to evaluate the costs of living in the relevant cities. Right now I feel the need to deal with taxes; I was forgetting stipends are taxed.</p>
<p>I guess you'll find out what your dept will do with your prior coursework once you arrive.</p>
<p>Good to know that. It was new to me.</p>
<p>Best of luck to you in your new American adventure!!</p>
<p>Thanks a lot. All the best to you and your daughter.</p>
<p>Maioli
Daughter feels fortunate to have found the midwest city (St Louis).Frankly, the living costs didnt surface as a consideration at the time, of course her first concern was the quality of the department, the advisor situation, the financial(fellowship) situation. She was willing to take some loan $$ to cover costs but its proved unnecessary so far.The living costs in St Louis have been an eyeopener and Daughter is a convert LOL.All of her other choices were on the two coasts.You could use Craigslist.com to try to look at housing costs in your cities, and the Universities should have off campus housing websites which might help you from afar as well.Also, there may be a Graduate Student Association which you can contact to get localized info for that Universities area (Daughters University had an extensive Grad Student Assoc site with info and links).
And you are correct, the fellowship is taxable but since it is considered "low income" for D's status (single,no dependents) she's gotten a tax refund each year even with her additional small income from the Music Library added on.</p>
<p>My dh and I were both on a stipend in grad school and we both worked long hours (lab work, part-time job as well as course work). However, we did find time to attend movies on campus, subscribed to a concert series at the city's orchestra, worked as ushers to see plays. The ironic thing is that when we graduated to post-docs, we had to give up some of those - we lost our student discounts!</p>
<p>I am sure you will be able to squeeze out time and money to have some fun. Hope you do, otherwise it will be a long and exhausting 5 years.</p>
<p>I talked to my mom about grad school and PhD programs. If I don't get accepted locally, my mom said she'd be willing to move. Given the fact I have a diagnosed disorder I need someone nearby who knows me well and if I went to, say, St. Louis (I'm in Pittsburgh now) I would have no doctors, counselors, etc. that I knew. This would also eliminate the need for an apartment, give me a house to garage my car in to prolong its life (my car is older), and would make some costs (like food and utility bills) zilch.</p>
<p>Once I earned the degree I would have probably gotten to know some docs, counselors, etc and would have enough money to be able to find a place, although I'd probably continue living with my family for another few years to pay off whatever expenses I had left. Might also get a new car before I move out and would want to pay that off.</p>
<p>Of course, if I didn't want to stay in the area I was in for grad school/PhD, I would probably have to find somewhere where I knew at least one support.</p>
<p>Argh! Having a disorder makes life impossible sometimes!</p>
<p>Most of my professors are PHD students adjuncts here in nyc.</p>
<p>they seem pretty relaxed, but most of them have jobs and classes too</p>
<p>This may only be relevant to those of us in the sciences but - all of the grad students that I have worked with for the past 7 years have completely stopped taking courses after their prelims (they call them comps at CU). I know that they are allowed to continue taking coursework, though with the demands of the thesis, not more than maybe a course per semester. Why don't they? I am a lab tech and have this arrangement, would it be impossible to continue this while working on a thesis?</p>
<p>Eventually, you will almost certainly not want to take classes anymore. I'm past my prelims and still need to fulfill my course requirements, and I'm taking a course this semester and want to claw my eyes out. </p>
<p>At the point I'm at in my thesis, it's really hard for me to squeeze in an extra three hours a week for class, plus reading the weekly discussion paper, plus writing the paper that's due at the end of the semester. There are only so many hours in the week. Once you start working on your thesis and specialize, there are also very few classes that are relevant enough to be appealing.</p>
<p>More fundamentally, first- and second-year grad students are usually funded by NIH training grants. Third-year students and up are usually funded by PIs (unless you are smart enough to get a fellowship), and the programs will charge a higher tuition fee to the PI if you're taking a class. So PIs tend to be against taking non-required courses, since they are both expensive and divert your attention from what the PI considers to be your purpose in life.</p>
<p>So does your PI have veto power over your activities? Does this extend beyond coursework as well? I am part of a group called "alternative careers in science" which deals with...well I am sure you can guess...if I were a grad student, could my PI nix my involvement in the group? What if I decided that I really got a thrill out of teaching and wanted to TA, could the PI prevent me from doing that too?</p>
<p>Your PI has veto power over basically anything you do on the PI's dime, like coursework and teaching. (My baymate wants to teach two more classes while in grad school, and our PI told her she had to pick one.)</p>
<p>Things you do outside the lab are up to you.</p>
<p>Why on earth would you want to take any course work after your quals? I'm only a first year and I don't want to take any more courses! I just want to do research!</p>
<p>In any event, in my main department we get departmental funds, so my "PI" (who I call my advisor) doesn't have veto power over anything, although I certainly listen to his advice. In my secondary department, the students there do have to do what their PIs want, but they have a lot more freedom because they have so little course requirements (they're only required to take 5-7 courses whereas my course requirements are more like 20, but I am in a joint program).</p>
<p>No money for traveling really, besides short-term domestic travel. I mean, unless you have a sugar daddy or a rich husband or something. Me and my fiance had to choose a toned-down location for our honeymoon and save a big trip until after grad school. My rent alone takes up almost half my salary. But there is time to do things other than studying. That depends on your research. I go out with my friends at least once a week, because otherwise I would die in my little bedroom in my apartment. But I don't have a formal lab because I do social research, so most of my research is spent doing literature searches, interviews, giving people surveys, etc.</p>