Things happened this year so far in chronological order:

Applied to PhD and got all rejected

Graduated without a job because I thought the last event wouldn’t happen

Decided to take more shots at universities in Europe and Canada

Paper got published and got best paper honorable mention

Interviewed by couple professors and the one in Canada seems to be interested in me

School in Canada, which rejected me before, reopened my case for review

Bank account got closed because my parents transferred me some money to support my unemployment ass and bank thought it was a fraud

The review process took so long I got hopeless and thought, if I end up writing webpages for other people, why not doing it now? And did two webpages which are in my previous rant, pretty good and highly recommended imo

Canada school promised a date but didn’t follow that date, depression attack

Finally sent them an email and got an answer saying the admission approved my application and they are working on paper work. But I still don’t believe it because I’m paranoid

Got an email from a professor today confirming they are doing paper work and I should receive official paper soon.

You can see the dramatic ups and downs, but in the end, guess I’m going to Toronto for phd

Longest offer process ever.

Best of luck. Hope yours goes better than mine did.

@SortOfTested what happened

@N00bPancakes yes, and I may defer it to January because I can’t get visa before school starts

@K-ASS
Advising professor dicked me around for 2 years, just adding random shit and declining advancement so he could use me as slave labor to do his undergrad classes.

@SortOfTested that sucks, I have a passion for teaching classes but idk if it’s the same for you
There’s one semester I was a TA and also grader for two classes, was fun

@K-ASS
I have a passion for not paying $23k/year to teach someone else's classes and not get my PhD.

@SortOfTested yeah I feel you... did he not pay extra for the classes? If so he’s an ass

@K-ASS
Nope, just got basic work study, and that barely covered living expenses. He didn't get any competent candidates in the second year, so his solution was basically to force me into year 3.

But yeah, I meant it. I hope yours goes better 😆

Looks like.. school system needs some development in common sense direction

@PurgeXenos not only schools, but companies as well.

@pxeger
For the past 20 years I've been a hard advocate for free education in the US. We disadvantage ourselves in our own system through a mixture of capitalist greed and a willfull blindness to the fact that the bar is lower for foreign degree holders.

The game is this:
- get a degree anywhere else on the planet, 3 year, free, etc. Doesn't matter. It Usually takes ~5 years to get a US undergrad, started when you're almost 19, so you're going to be around 2 years ahead of any native.
- pass the boilerplate admissions tests, get a pass on the language portions
- generally get work study preferentially
- take a few "upgrade" classes for the linguistic bits (money for the university, mostly)
- finish a graduate program for the cost of a US undergrad
- if you need money, intersperse a year of taking a full time job before returning to school (you can work for 17 months between semesters on an educational visa without failing renewal)
- after graduation, file for a green card, get 4 years carte blanche on the OPT visa. If you're not from India (the queue is massive due to the millions upon millions who have applied over the last 30 years) there's a chance you'll get it in that time period. If you don't get it, convert back to an educational visa and re-enroll in a second masters program or post-grad.

The disadvantaging bit is this: you leave school with 45k debt USD on avg after a graduate program. Undergrads are about the same, but without the ability to obtain high five, low 6 figure employment. I estimate on the next 15 years, you won't be able to get a tech job in the US without a master's degree just due to the glut of people pulling this tactic.