Graduate Students and Obama

Finally, I have set a date for my Master's thesis defense. So, I have more free time to do some stuffs I enjoyed. To kick start my blog writing again, I want to share a joke with you all. This is going to be a short post.

Let start the joke with a question. There is a common number that arises during the end of Obama's first presidential term and when a graduate student tries to graduate. What number is that?

Four. While Obama wanted to be 4 more years of president, grad students who are going to graduate students typically would not want to get themselves into the next term. One term of study is typically 4 months in North America. So, US presidents would love to have 4 more years, while normal grad students would hate staying in school 4 more months.

Blog Writers Wanted

My apologies for not being able to write for this week. As my graduation approaches, I am getting busier. This will mean less time for me to write for this blog and to generate content for it. Also, I will be starting my new job in The MathWorks in late October, this will mean that less time for me to write after I graduate. In consideration of these two situations, I am hoping to find someone (or even better a group of people) to take over this blog.

4 Useful Website related to Grad Studies

 By now, I believe a lot of people have already received the notice of acceptance/rejection for graduate schools. If you are one of those who got acceptable, congratulations! However, if you failed, then I would suggest you to not to give up and find a job while you continue to work hard in getting into grad school. Being in grad school is very different from undergraduate. You find yourself doing research, courses and teaching all at the same time. So, I decided to share with you 4 websites that provide advices on grad school.

Managing your Grad School Funding @ UofT

In my previous post, I mentioned about funding and tuition issues at University of Toronto. Based on a rough estimate, it is safe to assume you will have roughly $1200 per month after paying tuition. So, is this amount enough to cover living cost? How do you manage it? Are there any other financial aid? I will try to address these questions in this post.

Understanding Your Grad Funding at UofT

 

One of the most attractive features of University of Toronto (UofT) is that they provide to most (if not all) research stream graduate students with funding. This makes your graduate education virtually free. However, in engineering, our (lowest) base funding is $23,000 per year before paying tuition. Tuition itself is now roughly $8500. Now, although the total funding obtained by international students is way more than that, they pay more tuition too. In the end, you are left with $14500 annually or $1208 per month (regardless of whether you are a domestic or an international student). But, you are not paid $1208 every month and the finance in your first year can be quite complicated. Read on the learn more.

Quick Introduction to Toronto

In my last post, I introduced some of the important places in University of Toronto. I thought it might be a good idea to introduce some of the interesting places in downtown Toronto too. In this post, I will introduce you to places where you can shop and eat. Also, I will show how to get around in Toronto.

View of CN tower, the symbol of Toronto, from UofT

Quick Orientation Tour Guide to Universtiy of Toronto

With September being a month away, I am sure a lot of new first year students, both undergrad and grad students, are excited to start their new student life. Now, there are probably a lot of people who can't wait to get to know your new campus. So, if you are coming to University of Toronto (UofT), then this post is for you. I will introduce you to the St. George Campus of UofT.

A busy summer day in front of University College

New Logo and Title for the Blog

I am facing a great deal of pressure with my thesis writing and decided to procrastinate a day by creating a new logo and title for my blog. I decided to create a square like logo as shown below.

Currently, I am trying to gather some opinions regarding this logo. Please help to rate my logo so that I know if it looks good by clicking on the survey below. If you have any other comments on how to improve it, please feel free to leave a comment. Thanks! [ I also want to mentioned the borders of each section are now changed to roundish square. I would like personally thank Shan Huang for helping me out.

Support the PhD Placement Project

Awhile ago, I posted a short article on PhD and the Job Market, which I referred to one of Chronicle's old article. The numbers given in the article wasn't a big picture of the entire academia in North America. Just a week ago (June 18), Chronicle has announce the PhD Placement Project.

Problems, Issues and Challenges

What do we often encounter not only in life but in grad school as well? That has to be - problems! If you are in grad school, you are probably old enough to know that life is full of problems. For us (grad students), I guess most of the problems come from our research. So, to help you lighten up a bit, I want to share with you this comic strip.

My Transition Experience from UNB to UofT

I am taking a week off heading back to New Brunswick, where my home is and where I did my undergrad studies. I did my undergrad in University of New Brunswick (UNB) and, coming back home, reminded me of my undergrad life. My undergrad life is very different from my grad life at UofT and this motivated me to do a comparison between my life at UNB and University of Toronto (UofT).

Toronto Angel Hack

During last weekend, I got together with a bunch of friends and started to create a project at AngelHack Toronto. Hopefully, one of these days we will be able to show you guys our completed product. For those who don't know what this competition is all about, read on!

Grad Life @ UofT - Cherry Blossom Viewing

Spring has arrived not too long ago, roughly 3 weeks ago. With Spring on its way, it means that undergraduate and graduate courses are coming to end. Free at last from teaching and it is time to enjoy ourselves. There are a lots of activities to do in Toronto, but what I love the most is probably cherry blossom (or rather sakura) viewing.

Disappointment in Malaysia Politics and How Pakatan Rakyat can Win (next time)

First of all, I have apologize to post an article on politics on my blog that relates to grad school. This will be the first and last time that I will be doing on this blog.

When I first heard of Pakatan Rakyat and the buzz they have been creating, I was excited. I was hoping for new change in the government and a new system that allows Malaysia to have 2 major parties (BN and Pakatan Rakyat) that compete against each other fairly. If you look at US and Canada, that is how they maintain competitive politics. I was convince that Pakatan Rakyat would have an upper hand in this election (2013) because of Google Trends.

Grad School (or PhD) exposed

Is this what comes to your mind when you think of grad school?
Let me assure you, it is not that bad.

I read this article that gives advices (or rather exposures) to grad school. I find it to be quite a good article that reflects how grad students' life are. So, I decided to write a summary on it and point out some of the few places that I disagree with the author.

A funny comparison of undergrad and grad life

I found this funny comparison of undergrad life versus grad life. While not all of them are true, in my opinion, most of them describe the differences pretty well. Be sure to check the comments too! I hope you get a good laugh.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicamisener/what-grad-school-is-really-like

Enjoy!

My Grad Life

Have you ever wondered how life of a graduate student would be? If you do, read on! I will share my graduate life experience at University of Toronto with you.