Unfortunately, GRE scores are required for international students (at most Canadian / American universities I believe). That being said, with all your accomplishments, I’m sure if you put the time into working through a few study guides you’ll easily get a decent GRE score.

Not all profs are in love with undergrad marks / GRE scores, so if you can connect with the right supervisor who is interested in working with you, the GRE score may not matter (although you might still be required to write it, just to satisfy university requirements).

I’d recommend calling a few universities you’re interested in attending directly and asking them (the grad studies office of the department you want to study at). Usually they can clear up any requirements that are unclear…

Well if I come directly to the point, with all the above stated, I am supposed to show up a GRE score still?:(( Coz I dont have one, but surely I do have a Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering Score card with a considerably high peprcentile which is organized by the Indian Institutes of Technology for admission into Masters and Research programmes. This was the parameter with which I had got into DAAD addmission programme of Germany. Your guidance will be much appreciated my mail id.

I would follow up your website. Thanks in advance.
sai

Part of the explanation behind stipends is also that grad students are doing research that helps their supervisors, and if they’re not paid they’re out working to make ends meet and doing research only in their spare time (and thus taking decades to finish and making the whole affair look really unappealing to potential recruits). It also gives the supervisors reasons to get the grad students working on projects other than their main thesis (everything from helping the supervisor update his CV, which I’ve had to do, to contributing to a group/multidisciplinary project). My understanding is that students who do that in the states get research assistantships…

TAships vary by department. Those with large undergraduate populations (and thus large TA needs) tend to have nearly mandatory TAships, whereas other departments hardly have any. TAships are usually pay above & beyond your stipend, except when they’re a mandatory part of it… 10 hrs/wk is the guideline for the maximum non-thesis-research time from the university, whether you get a job waiting tables or as a TA. However, while you may get paid for 10 hours of TA work, it generally takes a lot more time investment to do a decent job. For example, when I was a lab demonstrator TA I’d spend a half hour preparing my 15 minute intro/theory/instructional talk, then 3 hours on my feet in the lab, leaving me 1.5 hours to mark 40 lab reports (this was a “half-TAship”, so 5 hrs/wk). It usually took me closer to 10-12 hours to mark. I didn’t mind since the TAship was a nice injection of cash and I somewhat enjoyed it… but it does lead to some conflicts of interest. Your supervisor wants you to be in the lab 60 hours/week doing research for him/your thesis, while the course instructor you TA for wants you to do a good job marking, not just handing out marks but also explaining mistakes to students. I know a few TAs that found it easier to balance the demands by just being exceptionally lenient in their marking — if they didn’t mark things wrong, students didn’t ask the instructor for an explanation, and it didn’t take them very long that way so they didn’t get in trouble with their supervisor.

After you’re accepted, generally you do have a “course year” and you also spend a lot of time delving through the published research of your field. You then figure out what you want to do for your thesis, and about 8-12 months in you form an advisory committee and present your thesis proposal to them. In theory, they can find you lacking and flunk you out, but that’s exceptionally rare at this stage (only one known case in the grad student gossip in my department, and that was 6 years ago now). Then with your committee you plan out your experimental design details and how you’ll spend your time over the next 4-6 years. After that, you’re off and researching!

I started my MSc in January (I was aiming for Sept then had a marks snafu coming out of undergrad — a course I got 90% in was registered as a 54% and it took 3 months for them to find that I did indeed give and ace my report). It’s a little different not starting in September. Most classes start in September, so if you start in January or May (especially May) your initial class load is a lot lower. However, you really don’t have a lot else to be doing at that point except your background literature search, and helping out around the lab with other projects, since your thesis experimental design won’t be ready yet. Plus, a lot of bonding/socializing/getting to know each other amongst a cohort in a department is done in classes, so you miss out on a lot of that stuff early on. Finally, many university training things (WHMIS, orientation, laboratory health and safety, radiation safety, biohazard handling training, etc.) are done in October and June for students starting in Sept. and May — if you start in January (though this will depend on the school), you may be SOL for a while! So, I would have to recommend thinking of a September start if you’re not in a hurry to get going. In fact, a good compromise can be starting your degree in Sept, but getting the lab to hire you as a RA for the summer. You generally get paid better than a grad student, and can get a lot of hands-on experience in research…

For your application, don’t neglect your cover letter. You can really impress potential supervisors if you mention an interest in or knowledge of research going on in the department…

That’s about all the advice I can give you as a PhD student at UWO. I haven’t gotten far enough back in the archives to know if you took a research or course-based master’s, so you may or may not already know all of this…

Have you ever been tempted to teach at a university? Maybe later in life?

Congrats on getting NSERC, that’s great!

Was it a hard decision to stay home with the kids?