Planning for USA FN visa in 2023, whether it's for summer or fall intake, I truly believe that starting early is going to be the key this year. In this video, I'm going to cover the latest updates about the availability of slots and some interview preparation tips. So keep on watching. Hi guys, my name is Shachi and I'm a travel and visa coach. On this channel, you'll find lots of useful videos on the US visa process. We have two playlists for FN visa dedicated specifically for FN visa. So make sure to check out all of these videos. Today's video, I'm going to cover all the latest updates about availability of visa slots for FN students, what has changed this year, how should your strategy look like for this year. Followed by that, I'm going to cover three important points for interview preparation. So make sure that you have your notes handy and let's get started. So let's start by talking about the availability of slots for FN visa in 2023. And here is something exciting which is going to happen this year. The availability of slots for FN visa is expected to look very, very different in 2023 compared to the previous year. And here's why. This is because of a new rule by the US Embassy in India and it is called the 365 day rule. Now unlike earlier where you could book a FN visa appointment only 120 days in advance, now as for the new rule, you can book a visa appointment 365 days in advance. That means you can start appearing for a visa interview one year ahead of your program start date. Because of this new rule, things are expected to look a little different. And I predict that this year, FN visa slots will not have any bulk openings or just bunching of slots together. So if you've been following the FN visa trend for some time, you would know that in every intake, the slots have been opening up only in one or two bulk openings. That means for the entire intake, they're just one or two days where the entire list of slots or the entire bunch of slots come into the system and these are called bulk openings and you have to get a slot only on those days. Now that puts a lot of pressure on the Embassy and of course they have to handle huge volume of students giving interview at the same time. To ease this out is why they have introduced the 365 day rule and since you can now book for a visa slot 365 days in advance, I highly doubt there will be any bulk openings or bunching of slots this year. We can expect the slots to be released gradually into the system every 15 days or every one month and this would allow the Embassy to manage the volumes of students better. In fact, just last week we saw that a bunch of slots were released for the April month so I think somewhere between 12th to 17th April, they released quite a bit of slots for FN visa. By the way, a lot of you DMed and messaged us that you missed that April opening and you're really worried. Well, I think at this point of time, there's nothing much to worry about if they've started opening up the slots, it's expected that more and more slots are going to come into the system. So just stay on track, make sure you have paid your visa fees, make sure you're monitoring and tracking the system regularly. On this note, let's also discuss about people with a previous refusal. Again, for somebody with a prior refusal, the opening of slots is expected to look different this year and like the previous intakes where you had to wait till the end of the intake to get a slot. I don't think that is what is going to be followed this year. Even for people with a previous refusal, it's going to be a gradual process and you might seeing the slots into your system or into your account much sooner. In fact, even in the April opening that we just spoke about, even people with a previous refusal were able to book. So if you have a prior refusal, don't give up and think that I'm only going to get a slot at the end of the year, it might be much, much sooner. So again, pay your visa fees, start your preparation and keep tracking the system regularly. So given all these changes which are going to happen into the system, what we really need is a new strategy for approaching the FN visa interview. We need a new strategy as to when you should appear for the interview. It should neither be too soon, right? You don't appear for the interview so soon that you don't even have the I-20 players. You don't even have the admin from the university that you really want to go to and of course it should not be too late. So what we need is a just right in the middle strategy and this brings me to my second point. So let's talk about the second point, university selection. Now given the new rule that you can book a visa appointment 365 days in advance, special attention and care needs to be given to which university you select and which university you go for for the visa interview. Just because you can book a visa interview 365 days in advance does not mean you need to be in a rush and go for the interview with the first admin or the first I-20 have got. In fact, many of you who booked the slot for April 2023 DMed and told us that you don't even have the I-20 in place and that's because the visa slot might be available 365 days in advance but the universities are not going to issue I-20s 365 days in advance. Most universities take their time and they issue I-20 only three to four months before the start of the program. So what you need here is a calculated approach to ensure that you are going for the visa interview with the right university and the right course because if you get this right if you get the right university and the right course in place then this covers a significant portion of your interview preparation and can significantly improve your chances of getting a visa approval. So let's see what this approach should be. So for all the universities that you have applied to select the top two and if you feel that you have a good chance of getting an admin from these two universities then plan for the visa interview only once you have an I-20 in place or an admin in place from at least one of these universities. Do not be in a hurry and go for the visa interview with any I-20 that you have. Remember every rejection sets you back and makes the process one step harder. So special importance should be given to which university you go for with the visa interview. So if you're wondering which is the university I should go for with the visa interview and how do I know if it's the right university? Well in my opinion there are four to five parameters which you should be considering and some of them are the course curriculum. So look at the course and see what is the specialization that you're being offered. What are the unique subjects? Scholarships significantly improve your chance of getting a visa. So see if you're getting a scholarship from any university. Third of course the ranking how does a university rank in comparison to other universities in the US and fourth the industry exposure. What's the kind of exposure that you're going to get from this university? Does this give you a chance to study in a big city? Does it offer you a lot of industry projects? Does it offer you a lot of capstone projects and so on. For a more detailed explanation on how to justify a university to a visa officer do check out this video linking right here on the channel. So make sure to pay special importance to university selection and also remember that you always have the option to postpone your visa interview. So even if you want to go ahead and book the visa interview for now that's completely fine. But if you feel that closer to your interview date you don't have the right I-28 place you can always postpone it to the next available date which could be let's say a couple of weeks or even a month into the future. So if you're still here still watching this video give this video a thumbs up and comment down below which university and which course you're planning to go for 2023. This brings me to my third point which is super important but I think something which is also ignored quite a bit and that is building your profile. So over the last one year we have analyzed and studied FMEs interviews a lot in depth and in this we found that a lot of importance is being given to the profile of the students. What is their academic track record? What is their work experience? Do they have any gaps in their education right and this period that you have this lull period that you have right now where you're just waiting for the slots. This is a great time to build and boost up your profile. So if you feel that your profile needs anything maybe it needs an internship it needs some courses it needs some certification programs or maybe you need work experience itself. This is the right time to do that. Often in the rush for preparation somehow the course the university funding all that gets taken care of but it's the profile which gets neglected and this is something which we cannot fix at the last minute. So don't do that take a look at your academy and work background and if you feel there's anything you need to do to cover gaps to align yourself more with respect to the course that you're going for in the US or to just make your entire BS 160 and resume look much better this is the time to do that. So on this note let me tell you about a detailed way in which you can prepare for your F1 visa interview and this is the F1 7 day program. So this program consists of seven individual sessions with me and through all these sessions we cover everything right from understanding your profile filling your BS 160 form structuring your answers and putting you through multiple mocks. So this really ensures that you are 100% prepared for the visa interview and especially if you have a previous refusal this is going to be super beneficial. So starting early is the key here because we need time to schedule these sessions and plan out all of this for you some of you are already enrolled. So if you're looking for the comprehensive stress free way I would say to prepare for your F1 visa interview do check the 7 day program the link for this is in the description box below. So now coming to the next point and this I believe is a hygiene check or a hygiene factor for F1 visa approval and that is law of financials. So for F1 visa approval we need to have sufficient liquid funds in place when I say liquid funds it basically refers to the savings in the bank accounts, FDs, mutual funds and other savings like PF and PPF. So at this point of time you should do a quick check of the liquid funds of your sponsor and see if you're meeting the minimum cutoff. What is this cutoff? For Masters it is 1.5 times of your first year expense and for Bachelors it is 2 times the first year expense. So just total up the liquid funds of your sponsors and make sure that it is meeting this cutoff. If not you can think of adding other sources of funding such as applying for a loan, adding other sponsors and just seeing if there are any other sources of your sponsor that you could include. So do all of this right now so that the funding part is sorted and you also have enough time to prepare for the documentation. So these four points that we spoke about understanding when to apply for a visa interview, which university to select, building up your profile and planning your financials. I truly believe that these four should be the basic starting point of anybody looking to apply for an FN visa interview in 2023 be it for summer or fall intake and I really hope that this has given you a sense of how you need to prepare and plan ahead. If you have any more questions feel free to leave them in the comment section below. You could also DM me on Instagram, Instagram handles at shachi.mull and there are more ways in which you can prepare for me. Apart from the 7 day program we also offer short packages. This is called the core package which consists of the DS160 review, one session for answer structuring and a mock session. And we also have individual sessions that you can take. You can take a one-to-one consultation session to structure answers, clear all your doubts and you could also take a single mock session. We also have a self-preparation course. This is the FN prep course and this is a video course. You can watch it and prepare on your own at your own pace. So details of all the good stuff is in the description box below. We also have some study material for you. So we have a question bank, we have document checklist. So make sure that you are making use of all of this. Thank you so much for watching. I really, really hope that all of you succeed in your FN visa journey and more and more of you come to the US in 2023. Stay tuned. We are just getting started for the FN season and there will be a lot more useful content coming up. So make sure that you subscribe and stay tuned. See you in the next one. Signing off for now. Bye.


In this video, we're going to talk about the top three mistakes made by basketball trainers and coaches with their business. My name is Coach Nick Aldero, I'm a success coach with Make Money Coaching Sports. And if you're looking to connect after this for a free call, you can text me at this number right here,<PHONE_NUMBER>, or you can schedule a call on the calendar. The link will be in the description. So number one mistake that I made when I first started my business and most people are making is you're simply not, you're not charging enough. You're charging a little bit amount at a time instead of creating a program. So you're doing, you're doing lessons, you're doing lessons, all right, first of all I hate that word and you're not, and you don't, and you don't have a program if you can't see this I'm typing it on my screen right now.  So most people starting off they don't charge it up and that's okay eventually when you grow your business and you grow your confidence you'll start to charge more but you also have to be good at what you're doing. So if you're good at what you're doing you should, you've got to make sure that you're charging enough for your services so people value it so they show up. That is one of the biggest mistakes I see coaches and trainers make. Number two, not having terms and policies within their program. What happens if somebody cannot make it? What happens if somebody calls you 10 minutes before and they're like yeah we're not coming and we're not going to pay you either. Like you need to have these in place especially when you're working with a good number of people even if you're not but the more people you work with the more things that come up. So you need to have a policy in place that protects your business. I was talking to a coach like a month ago and he told me he had $2,000 in refunds. So that's $2,000 that he should have had in his pocket because he did not have proper terms and policies in for people who just couldn't make it. Guess what? There's always going to be something that comes up with people and if you don't have your terms in place and they could be whatever you want I'm not going to tell you what they should be then you're going to be losing out on a lot of money and people are going to be treating the business like it's their business. So number two is for our top three biggest mistake is not having terms and policies in place in writing people agree to them. Number three is not having reoccurring automatic payments. Now obviously if you're doing like a one-off session which you should be doing very little of those unless it's a clinic where you're collecting the investment from a lot of people your main program we want it to be reoccurring whether it's a monthly fee, three months, six months, eight months, a year. Most people start off monthly and then they grow more when you get more confidence. But it needs to be reoccurring where you don't touch it anymore. You don't have to go and say, hey you're going to pay me. That's like the most uncomfortable thing to do is like waiting to collect money from people and here's a bonus for you and it might actually be the most important one but I'll give it to you as a bonus. Not speaking to potential clients over Zoom or over the phone. That is key. You need to connect with people, let them see you.  They're more likely to want to do business with you when they know who you are and you're not just texting them. If you find this video of any value please click that like button and if you're looking to connect text me at this number right here or schedule a call on the calendar that's in the description below. There'll be a link. All right, I'll see you guys next video.


We had a lot of little children growing up. My son was the first to be born of Erie staff in July of 62, but after that there were quite a few being born and also more staff was coming with young children. So we had a lot of traffic of children and nannies and maids on the road going up to the swimming pool and going to school and going to the playground and just going across the street to play with each other. And the director and his wife were real fast drivers. They would come zooming down that hill. And so we young mothers at the bottom of the hill decided that this was a dangerous thing to do. So I initiated a petition and I got all my young mothers to sign this petition and I gave it to Bob. And because of that we have those speed bumps. Those are my speed bumps. Oh, is that right? And it was really directed at Bob and Sunny because they were the ones that, you know, they're busy and they're just zooming down the road or zooming up the road. And that slowed people down and I was famous for that.


Poland deployed tanks near the border with Belarus. Poland has deployed a new tank battalion near the border with Belarus equipped with K2 tanks produced in South Korea according to the Ministry of Defence of Poland. The new tank battalion will be stationed in Chatevi, a settlement near the border with Belarus in the Brest region according to RBC Ukraine. Here in the Semyatitsk district there is already a tank battalion that will be part of the 1st Legion Infantry Division Podlasy Division whose task is to deter the aggressor looking at the direction of the attack from the east said Mariusz Blaszczak the Minister of Defence of Poland. It is reported that in case of a threat from the east the new units task will be to create an effective barrier to halt the enemy's offensive actions. In recent years Poland has actively pursued a policy of modernizing its own army manifested in the acquisition of modern weaponry and the creation and restoration of combat units. Poland has been actively purchasing various military equipment to strengthen the country's defense. The telegraph previously noted that Poland aims to build the largest ground army in Europe amid the threat from Russia. In particular Warsaw has already ordered tanks Abrams and 486 units of the Himmars rocket artillery system from the United States. It was also later revealed that the Polish government had signed a deal with Britain worth over five billion dollars for the supply of air defence systems.


And welcome to the session in which we would look at the five types of other tests to determine whether the financial statements are fairly stated. Look, at this point in your course, we have looked at the five types except today we're going to look at them from an overall perspective. So you should be familiar with test of control because we already covered this. You should be familiar with the test of details transaction. We should be familiar with the test of substantive test of transaction. You should be familiar with analytical procedures as well as the test of detailed balances. But in this session, we're going to look at the overall picture. We're going to look at a map showing all these steps or all these steps, test how do they fit together in an audit. Now, before we start, if you are a CPA candidate or an accounting students, I strongly suggest you take a look at my website, farhatlectures.com. Most likely, if you're a CPA candidate, you have a CPA course and that's great. Keep your CPA course. It's great. You need it. What I serve is a supplemental tool, a useful addition to that CPA review course. And by helping you understand the material differently, you can understand your CPA review course better. You can perform better on the CPA exam. I can help you add 10 to 15 points by explaining the material differently. Your risk to try me is one month of subscription. Your return is potentially passing the exam. Are you willing to take that risk? And if not for anything, take a look at my website to find out how well or not well your university doing on the CPA exam. If you haven't connected with me on LinkedIn, please do so. Like this recording, share it with others as well. Connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and please connect with me on Reddit. So as I mentioned earlier today, we're going to be looking at those five tests starting with the first one. So I'm going to kind of count them, name them. The first one is the risk assessment procedure. That's the first basically procedure, test procedure, whatever you want to call it. And we talked about this. We had like almost a whole chapter about the risk of assessment procedure. It's basically assessing the risk of the financial statements due to error or fraud. Now, how do we do so? This is an overall picture. Well, we obtain understanding of the company, its environment, and its internal control. And specifically, when it comes to internal control, we are interested in the design and implementation of the internal control. So the first thing we do is we look at the overall picture of the company, management, industry, the big picture. This is called risk assessment procedure. Then after the risk assessment procedure, assuming we're going to rely on the internal control, we're making an assumption here. Now we're going to test the internal control. And why do we test the internal control for one purpose? Listen to me carefully. It's to assess the internal control. We're going to look a little bit. We're going to have one slide about the internal control. But we had one whole chapter. I have like maybe 12 recordings about internal control. So this is step two. But this is just an overview to see how all fits together. After we test internal control, we come down to the substantive testing. Under the substantive testing, we have now some people might say, two, I'm going to say three. Then I'll explain. Under substantive testing, now you are actually doing the test. You have what's called substantive test of transactions. That's one. So this is three. You might have test of details of balances. That's four. Okay. And usually those are under substantive testing. And the third one under substantive testing, which is the fifth for us, the fifth type is analytical procedures. Now in some textbook, what they do, they would consider those two test of transaction and test of details separate from analytical procedures. That's fine. If you, if your textbook or if you're going to look at them that way, but I like to keep analytical procedure under substantive testing. So those are the five things we're going to look at. We already finished one. So we're going to be looking at test of control. Basically, this is an overview. I'm going to do an overview of all of these because substantive tests of details, it's covered heavily in every cycle. Test of details cover heavily in every cycle and analytical procedures cover heavily in every cycle.  At this point, but I'm going to cover them again in every single cycle. Let's start with the test of control. Okay. Why do we test control? Why do we do this control again is to assess. I know I'm repeating myself, but it's important to assess the risk, the control risk for each transaction related audit objective. Remember, you only test the control if you are going to rely on it. Okay. If you believe it's effective, effectively designed and implemented. Otherwise, you don't test the control and say, I'm not going to use it. If you don't think it's good, you don't test it. Okay. So you assess the internal control and you assess the control risk at a level that reflect the relative effectiveness of those control at a medium, high or low. And we already talked about this. Okay. Now, how to obtain evidence about the internal control. Again, this is should be a review for all of you. You can do inquiries, talk to personnel, management, examine, which is usually the word review is used of appropriate documentation, records and report. Observation. That's how you do internal control. Observe activities. Make sure they don't know you are observing. Repreform, redo client procedures.  How do you do so? You perform a system walkthrough. And we spoke about system walkthrough one whole lesson. For example, you take a sales trans, you take the sales transaction from the beginning till the end sales transaction and credit approval. Okay. You'll start with the sales initiation till it's approved. You just walk through, just walk through system. Or you might select 50 sales transaction from various time during the year and examine them for whatever, whatever we are looking at for certain approval for certain procedures. This is how you understand the internal control.  Okay. So that's the test of control. And for example, you select 50 sales transaction to determine whether credit was granted before the goods of shipment. You just want to see if it was the credit granted before the goods were shipped. The next thing we're going to look at is that big area substantive testing. What's substantive testing? It's procedure to design, procedure design to test the dollar amount. So test of control. You're looking for something like yes or no. Do they do this procedure? Yes. Or no, they don't. This is test of control. This is test of control. When it comes to substantive testing, remember, now you are looking at the dollar amount, monetary misstatement. Okay. Directly affect the financial statements. Are they correct? Are they correct or not? The financial statements number as well. Obviously the disclosure. Okay. So the auditor relies on three types of substantive testing. I said two or three because again, some of you might say, you know, analytical procedure, keep it separate. I don't care whether you keep it separate or you combine it with substantive test of transaction, test of details and analytical procedures. This is what we had on the prior slide. Now I'm going to go over each one of those briefly. Again, I say briefly because we're going to go each one of those for every specific cycle, sales, expenditure, purchase of property, plant and equipment, cash, investment, payroll, personnel, HR, so on and so forth, inventory. So we're going to go through all of those. But in other sessions, which I already have on YouTube anyway. So substantive test of transaction or ST of T, if you want it for short. They are used to determine whether the seven related seven transaction related audit objective has been satisfied for each class of transaction. Here you are looking at transaction itself like transaction debit and a credit. So you look at that transaction. Now you want to remember the seven type, the seven transaction related audit objective, the seven transaction related audit objective. This should be a review for you. The first one is occurrence that the transaction that actually occur or the disclosure that actually happened to completeness that we include. All the transaction that already happened completeness three accuracy. What's accuracy is the information accurate and related disclosure accurate for posting and summarization. Are we transferring the information from from the recorded transaction in the journal to the sub to the subsidiary record and the general ledger. Basically, are we posting to our general ledger, which will eventually make it to the financial statement or not posting in a summarization. Classification. Are we classifying the accounts in the appropriate account. So when we have a transaction, is it being recorded. For example, if we purchase supplies, is it being recorded into supplies, supplies as an asset or is it supplies as an expense or is it recorded as cost of goods sold and which account are we doing. So what what's the classification. Six timing are we recording the transaction on the proper date. So we're not moving revenues and expenses back and forth transaction are recorded on the wrong day. This is the timing and seven presentation presentation is the auditor counterpart to management presentation and assertions. Basically, when they present, we have to check this and those are the seven transaction related audit objective and you should be again familiar with them. This is only a review and overview. Okay, but this is what the substance substantive test of transaction does. It will look at these seven transaction related audit objective test of details. They look at those as well. Now here we're focusing on the ending a general ledger balances. We're not looking at the transaction. Remember the transaction. For example, we debit cash credit revenue. Okay, this is a transaction. Balances is we're looking at the revenue account and the revenue account totaled one million. Let's say rather than revenue use account receivable is a better example. Debit debit account receivable credit sales. So we made the sales on account. This is a transaction. Now what happened is for account receivable, we're going to have a general ledger. For example, our account receivable general ledger is a million and this is what we're testing here. We're testing the total the test of detailed balances. Now we can look for the ending balances for the balance sheet or the income statement. Usually accountant or auditors use the balance sheet because it's the end of the year. We use the income statement for something else. We also look at the test of balance detailed balances for related disclosure because the disclosure has to match the balance. If we said we have 1.2 million of property, plant and equipment and the notes of property, plant and equipment. We need to show 1.2 million. Okay, examples of test of details would include confirmation of balances of account receivable. So you have ending balances. You're confirming the ending balances sales cutoff test making sure it's in the in the right time. Basically, those are two related sales cutoff test physical examination of inventory because when we count the end. It's the end of the end of the period examination of vendor statement of accounts payable. Okay, so why this type of test is essential? Why the test of details is essential? It's because usually the evidence provided in this test is coming from an independent party. The source document is coming from a third party. And if we know anything about evidence from our evidence chapter, that type of evidence is highly reliable. That's why the test of detailed balances is good is good. Okay, and just like the the previous test, you must satisfy all balance sheet related audit objective. Okay, for each balance, just like with the substantive test of transaction, just like with the substantive test of transaction test of detailed balances, you have to meet those seven audit related objective. How much of this testing do we do? So how much test of details do we do? It depends on many factors. It depends on how good or not good their internal control is. Okay, if the internal control is really good, we might do less of details of test balances. If it's not, then we have to do more substantive test of transaction. How much substantive test of transaction we did? Is it a lot or not a lot? Okay, and the analytical procedure. How much are we using analytical procedures in our testing? I just want to make you aware that when you are doing test of control, it can be performed separately. You remember that step one or more efficiently what some auditors would do. They will do the test of control and the substantive test of transaction together. It's basically it's more efficient. For example, apply the test of control involving inspection and performance to the same transaction and test that transaction for monetary misstatement. So you do the TOC and you do the dollar amount at the same time. It's just simply put, it's more efficient. You're saving time, you're saving time. The third type, the third type of testing of the dollar amount is analytical procedures. And hopefully the third type of substantive testing. Hopefully you know what analytical procedures are. Basically you are comparing a number to some expectation developed by the auditor. Okay, that expectation could be the prior year, the prior quarter, something to do with the industry. Now, when you do analytical procedures, you could have financial numbers to financial numbers or financial numbers to non-financial numbers. For example, financial numbers to financial numbers. For example, you could look at interest expense on the income statement and compare that relative to the balance sheet account of debt. Well, if you have 1 million of debt and with, you know, your overall interest rate is 10%, we should see 100,000 interest expense. So this is basically, this is an expectation. If you have a million dollar of debt and we know that your average interest rate is 10%, your interest expense should be around 100,000. That's, well, if the interest expense is 150, we need to question that. And if the interest expense is 70, we need to question that. It's based on the analytical procedures because they make sense. Or some companies, they have a stable cost of goods sold to sales. For example, some companies, you can look at some companies yourself. For example, if they have $100,000 in sales, they will have usually, you know, on average $60,000 in cost of goods sold and the profit is 40%. So, if we compute the gross profit percentage, the gross profit percentage is 40,000 divided by 100,000. It's 40%. Or cost of sales is 60%. And guess what? For a lot of companies, not all companies, but a lot of companies in many industries, these ratios are pretty stable. Pretty stable. So, when they sell something, usually 60% of it is cost, 40% is gross profit. So, what you do is you would see the first thing you want to compute those percentages and find out if something is unusual. For example, the cost of goods sold suddenly is 62. Or the cost of goods sold is suddenly 58. You might be saying, but what is one or two percent? You know, what's the big deal about one and two percent? Well, that's a big deal. If you have sales in like billions, if you have five billions in sales, then one or two percent, it makes a huge difference, okay? So, that's why those small changes, for example, for retailers, if you're looking at a company like Amazon or even Wegmans, not Wegmans, Whole Foods, their profit margin ratio is very small. They make a little bit amount of money. So, if it makes one percent, it's a huge difference in their cost of goods sold. So, you can look at that relationship. You can look at industry data. For example, you can look at hotel occupancy rate and revenue. For example, you're auditing a hotel in, I don't know, in the Poconos. And you know, under Poconos, the hotel occupancy from the industry data is 80% on average. And the hotel has 100 rooms. You would say, okay, if 100 rooms, 80% should be filled. And 80 rooms and times on average, they charge $200 per room. On average, then you can develop an expectation of the revenue for that company, okay? So, it should be around $16,000, if my math is right. Okay, that's nothing basically, but let's assume per month. 80% occupancy, they have 200 rooms. They have 80 rooms on average and $200 per room. So, per month, they should be getting around $16,000. It doesn't mean they might be getting more. They could be more than the industry average or less. But you want to see what's going on. Another one of those comparisons is sales per square foot. And this is basically good for retailers. There's industry data about various retailers. What's the sales per square foot? And basically for retailers, this is becoming less. It's going down and down for most retailers, especially after COVID. But like a company like Apple, their square per foot is the highest. It's just FYI, just as an informational thing. So, you need to know about analytical procedures. So, analytical procedures, you need to know they are required during the planning stage and the completing the audit stage. So, at the beginning and at the end, you have to do analytical procedures at the beginning and the end. What about in between? Okay, now, they could be the same analytical procedures or different one at the beginning or the end. In between, not required. So, as a substantive testing, analytical procedure is not required. But analytical procedures is a good way to kind of eyeball the numbers, see what's going on. I did a lot of analytical procedures. When we did audits, we did a lot of analytical procedures at the beginning, we did throughout the audit and at the end, especially the partner, the manager, the person that's in charge of the audit. I was never a partner or a manager, but I got to a point where I can, you know, I started to learn how they could immediately know what's, if there's something wrong or something unusual, if you understand the business, analytical procedures can give you a lot of good information. The purpose of them is they're easy, easy to use, and they could easily tell you what are the red flags in the company, what's going on. This number does not make any sense. At the beginning, I was like, wow, I thought my manager and my partner, I thought they were geniuses. But after two years, working on the audit, yes, I remember when they taught me this, hey, this makes sense now, inventory should not be this high or there's something wrong with cost of goods sold. Maybe there's a transaction that has been misclassified because it's too big or too small. So you'll get from the analytical procedures it gives you a lot of information. It provides a form of substantive testing, and that's why I put it under substantive testing. Some of you might disagree. It's by itself, that's fine, it's okay, but it's substantive testing. So if analytical procedure is reliable and it should be reliable, test of detail balances, they could be eliminated or the sample reduced, it's gonna save you a lot of time if you trust the numbers and if you're doing the right analytical procedures. And basically, what's analytical procedures? Taking two numbers and dividing them by each other and comparing them to some expectation. So how good is analytical procedures? Well, it all depends on the expectation developed by the auditor. If your expectations are good and precise, then it's good.  So if you are comparing year to year and for a company, it's not really a good comparison. You wanna compare maybe quarter to quarter or even month to month to kind of make sense of the data. So if we go back to that hotel example, I told you in the Pocono, you know, the monthly should be 16,000, but in the summer, they could only have, the monthly could be 5,000. So you don't wanna look at the whole year and compare year to year. You wanna compare January to January, January of last year to January this year to find out if there's a huge difference in those figures. So the smaller, the more disaggregated, the better off you are in those analytical procedures. The predictability of the relationship. You guys remember we talked about the retail industry. The retail industry, those are very stable industries. When they sell, they make 45% net profit and their gross profit is around 30 to 35%. So the industry is very stable. For example, if you're dealing with a software company, well, it's not stable because each project will have a different gross profit. So depending on the industry, whether you are using income statement numbers versus balance sheet number, income statement numbers, believe it or not, they're better because the income statement number, they go for the whole year. So sometimes they're up, sometimes they're down, but they average up. The balance sheet are point in time. So at the end of the year, that number could be way higher or way lower. So it's not really good for analytical procedure, the income statement, but you can use both. Also accounts subject to discretion like that, that expense where the company decides how much is that number, they could change their opinion from year to year, depending on the economic situation, their collection practices, what's going on in the economy. So really analytical procedures may not be the best. Also the reliability of the numbers you are using. If those numbers are being generated that you are using from good internal control system, then yes, analytical procedures is more reliable. Also if they're coming from industry, remember I told you about that hotel in the Pocono? Well, there's industry data. The industry data is an outside data, it should be reliable. Then it's average, then it's better than the analytical procedures are good.  And also when you're looking at the prior year, the prior year is audited data. So the ratios that you use are covered in much, much more in details and other lessons. And for every cycle, I do cover the ratio. So if you look at my auditing course, in every cycle I have like 10 to 15 minutes about ratios about the cycle. And I do have lessons about all sorts of ratios as part of my audit course or as part of my CPA exam review course. So if you are looking to study for the CPA exam, I hope you have a CPA course because you need it. But all what I can be is a useful addition to your CPA review course. Don't risk failing the exam. Try me out. I could be a solution for your problem one month and I could save you. Study hard, good luck, and of course, stay safe.


Good morning, good day, good evening, wherever you are, I'm thrilled to see you even if it's on the screen. And I'm waving the director of the urban planning PhD program. And since you are on time, we'll start on time and it is being recorded. So I hope that's okay with all of you. And if you don't want to be, you know, on the recording, you can turn off your video. What I thought I would do today since, you know, I really only have an hour post also because of the time zone differences is getting to be midnight in many parts of the world from where you some of you are dialing in. So I want to focus more on your questions. I thought I would just share a very brief introduction of our program. And then another faculty colleague of mine will also likely be joining me to answer your question. So while you're listening or you already have some questions, so feel free to type in the chat box. We'll see our program manager will be collecting those and then addressing them to me quickly. So yeah, I see Hibba Hibba you want to introduce yourself really quickly. Hi, hello everyone. I'm Hibba I'm a professor in the urban planning program. Welcome everyone excited to see so many people from around the world. I'm Hibba Hipping and I are happy to answer any questions you have about our program. It's morning for us, but from wherever you're dialing in. So yeah. Thank you Hibba. And then Emily you want to also introduce quickly so that you know in case you get questions. Folks know who you are. Okay, Emily will be there in a minute. Excellent so let me then start with this very brief presentation. Really I want to focus focus quite a bit more on the unique opportunities in our program and how we work with doctoral students so you know if you have philosophical questions about what doctoral programs should do what people can do after doctoral program that this is probably not a place for that.  So, of course, you all have made up your mind or at least are thinking about coming to a PhD program. So why Columbia urban planning PhD right so that's really the key question. I really want to say that, similar to our master's program, our curriculum is dynamic and flexible so we do require students to take courses in the first two years, but we don't have a large number of required courses, so that our students can take advantages of the entire campus and really connecting knowledge across disciplines and we find that tremendously important for our students and we often tell our students. So you have five years of unfettered, you know, or up to time to explore about your intellectual worlds to decide what kind of scholars you want to become or what kind of policy practitioners or researchers you want to become and it's really to go beyond the regular bounds and to really explore deeply about your intellectual interests. So that's one thing that I think makes us very unique and very very sort of to us a great opportunity. Second, we do very much center, center social ratio and climate justice in build environment so the relationship to the built environment is important. We have a relatively moderate size of full time faculty. So we're not able to cover every single aspects of planning or urban inquiries. And so we really focus on a number of aspects which I will just spend a minute to elaborate a little bit. And then we have a very strong competitive perspectives through faculty and courses, bridging global north and global south. We do have faculty with regional expertise, and that is a big plus. And so, however, we really emphasize, you know, understanding global south and theories based off of global south, and in the way connecting to the issues that are presenting to, you know, across different countries, you know, and we also have really in the recent years built critical strength in urban science and analytics, not in a way of pure technological or quantitative or putting co scientific expertise but really from a very critical vantage point to examine using those tools to determine important planning and urban issues. So notice I do focus. And in my, you know, kind of presentation, not just planning but also urban in our master's degree we very much focus on planning. There's a lot of courses on urban issues and we do so even more in the PhD program. And we are very much preparing our students for not just being ready for academia, but also other kinds of research and professional careers. And so, and you can quickly see that our program has been along in history since 1953 for the master's program and 1935 for the master's program. And the dynamic and the flexible curriculum. And you can see here that the required first two years, the courses are essentially six courses and three of which are colloquium, and then one in advanced planning theory, another planning history so I won't read them you can see and this recording will be posted on the website if you want to see details of this presentation, you can certainly spend a little more time after today, we should be able to post it towards end of the next week, probably. And then we would like our students to be really home their research methods or methodological approaches and so you're going to take other courses. The courses to the to an area of specialty that you hope to focus on. And that area of specialty also becomes the exam area for your comprehensive exam. And then for those of you who are coming from a non planning background or even if you're coming from a planning program but in a very different context we highly encourage students to take our history and theory of planning course in the master's course or because we approach that in a very global close colonial way and very unique among many planning programs. And then our geographical information systems required course for master students is also very unique not just you know clicking through to know how to use to produce maps but really is a critical examination of how we use spatial tools to understand urban and planning issues. And so opportunities across Columbia as can see so this is just a, you know, of course includes all of the schools at Columbia but the various programs I include here. And programs from which our doctoral students have taken classes in, and you can see the range of opportunities and if not all but most of these programs have doctoral students of their own. So it's also building peer groups, building communities of scholars by taking these courses. So to say, you know, about the, the importance, the critical positioning of racial, social, and climate justice in our curriculum I just, this is the list of courses that we have for our master's students, and all pictures things are welcome for these. Some PhD students take here and there one or two but some take quite a few, and these are completely open some are more introductory for master's students but others are quite critical and in depth, or technical, technically comprehensive. So we have courses in the bill environment direction, and then community and economic development direction, we also have a set of courses, all of these courses are offered at least once every two years most of courses are offered every year. So you can plan when you get in. And then this comparative perspectives bridging global north and global south is also growing that in terms of our course offerings, and this is just in the planning program. This does not include courses in SIPA School of International Public Affairs which is very strong international front. Also, we have political science and sociology for instance in arts and sciences that our students get to take, and then the committee on global thought. And then the critical strength in urban science and analytics, it's also growing and there's a new degree happening at GSAP on more computational design practices that will start next year. So we're hoping that this is going to become a quite a critical cluster within GSAP and then of course there is the Data Science Institute at Columbia. So the readiness for academic research and professional careers comes through in a number of ways. Of course, the beauty of coming to a doctoral program is the one-on-one relationship that each student builds with their faculty, right, not only their advisor, but also other faculty in the program or even sometimes beyond the program. In addition to those, we have a number of ways of supporting and resources for students, and so you can take a look really quick. The one that we are very proud of is the financial support we offer to our students. So as long as you are admitted, a student is admitted, and then that student is entitled to at least five years' post of scholarship, which includes tuition and a stipend, as well as annual summer stipend, which is on top of the regular stipend. And then so each student in their second to fourth year will perform either as a teaching fellow, usually they are teaching fellows to support core courses for the master's program like planning history, methods, and economics, and planning law, and studios. And occasionally there will also be opportunity for a student to become a research fellow to work with an individual faculty. And then so that means the first and fifth year there is no responsibility required of the doctoral student to perform any of these support role for the master's program. And we felt like the second to fourth year fellowship is important for students also to build up a teaching portfolio if they're going into academia, or a research portfolio in terms of publication collaboration, and then these other kinds of opportunities are out there. And so our doctoral students, for instance, are really instrumental in putting together and connecting with scholars across the world in being the sort of the main organizers of our weekly lecture series. And so that's in the second year of doctoral studies. Now to the nitty gritty in terms of your application and the review of your application. Just keep in mind that we have pushed forward the application deadline to December 16 of this year. And it's really important that your application is on time. Because we will start reviewing shortly after, you know, the holidays, and all details about the application and the process you can find through the link from GSAP actually goes to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, because even though this is a GSAP program, the administration in terms of awarding the diploma and degree is through Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. And just want to share with you a little bit of thoughts on the application, right. Some institutions require a doctoral applicant to have a proposal for the research that they intend to do well in the doctoral program. We approach this in somewhat different way. We really feel that, you know, the intellectual exploration and understanding of your own strength and development potentials is really important once you come in to the program. So we really don't ask for that. We ask for sort of, you know, to see some evidence from you on the way of thinking that you use to approach different challenges or issues on the ground or theoretically, conceptually, however you want to couch it. And then you show us that you can carry out independent research, and the evidence can be multiple different types, and then your writing ability is really, really important. And so a writing sample or two is very useful. I would discourage a very long writing sample so we would not have the time to really read like an entire thesis, but maybe a chapter would be good.  So the personal statement for us is an important space for us to look. It's that we want to see your academic preparation but not just that we're not interested like which high school which college. I mean that's, that's all going to be on your transcript. But how you prepare yourself for the doctoral program is what we're looking for in terms of academic preparation. You are interested in one or two areas of urban studies or planning. Tell us why are you interested. Tell us how you see about that topical areas. Tell us your understanding of the major theories and arguments and debates around those topics. And where do you stand. It's okay and you stand across from some major theorists, but we want to see how you reasoned and how you approach a important issue in the field or even neighboring fields. Today if you come from landscape, that's fine right landscape architecture, but your interest must be somewhat related to urban and planning and tell us how you see that linkage and connection. And we also would like to see in your personal statement, your experience with analytical reasoning could be quantitative could be spatial could be qualitative. And last in terms of the review process that we review as a faculty collectively. So we do not match advisors at the reviews us stage certainly, maybe not even in the first year of a doctoral program we would like the students to explore. As long as we have capacity to direct a student in terms of topical interest, we are fine with, you know, admitting a student. So then we'll have will host a group discussion with a much smaller number of finalists and this will probably happen in early February or so. So we'll be in touch to with those of students who we would like to invite for that. And then we hope to send out admission or waitlist decisions in March, but some decisions may come a little bit later but certainly the more positive decisions will come earlier. So last would be I would encourage you to explore and discover by going to our website we have past dissertations of our students all you know you can see their full dissertations, you can see our alumni placement on our website. And if you have questions be given that we do have a lot of interest both in the PhD program as well as in the master's program. We cannot guarantee that we can answer to your inquiry fully each time. And so be prudent in reaching out and do your homework and really kind of discover what we already have posted on the website so with that. Let me stop this part and we already have questions so hit button I would then start answering these questions you can also raise your hands. If you want if you want we think you want to start with the questions in the chat I can take some of those. Yeah, absolutely yeah let's do that. Okay, so I'm just going to go off some questions of the on the chat so the first set of questions is about the over over all tuition and it's already said that we cover. We cover all the PhD students we admit we do admit only three students a year so that is unless there is some circumstances going on that's the limit upper limit for our for the number of students admit a year.  But yeah so this is advice with the student advice with the topic. You can always of course get external funding and people do get that depending on the topic you have. I mean I suggest because we have short time and there's many of you to keep space for more. There's a lot of information you can find online if there's specific question about specific course you can raise it later. Just general questions about the courses that is a big question and it's also depends on the what kind of course what what is the question is asking about so feel free to be more particular if you want to raise it again. In terms of the questions. Does the content of writing sample have to be related to potential PhD research interest topics. It doesn't have to be. I think it just show us that you can make an argument it's solid it's well written it's solid it's making an argument.  It doesn't have to be like oh you've studied this before so you can study it at the PC. So I don't, you can you can do that you can submit samples that are not necessarily what you're planning to study. Like we've been said, we appreciate proposals that show that you've done your homework. So this is, I just want to reiterate this so PhD proposals are very different or statements are different than masters and masters you can get away by saying, oh I'm interested in this I grew up in this city, I like this, my neighbor is that you know, that's, but for PhD you have to like demonstrate a little bit of knowledge about the knowledge about the topic you're interested in and show us why you're interested in again like we read a lot of these so you want your proposal to stand out by demonstrating solid knowledge and an exciting opportunity for for for research and to open up new research topics and also the thing I say to my students who are thinking of applying for PhD. When we accept people we are also learning so we're also excited about the students we accept so you're coming to learn we're also learning from you so it's so we're very much invested because with a small program we're very much invested in the learning environment we create. We're not excited people who are excited also to be here and proposing exciting things to study that are that resonate with this with the fields with the fields that we've been already outlined that we are, we have expertise in. In terms of saying my research interests are related to climate change adaptation that I have to submit the writing sample again you don't have to. Let me so i'm reading through questions. That specific so if you want to know about the courses I have posted in my presentation you go to the master programs website. So Emily can share that with you in the chat box, there is a booklet there for all, all of the courses have a description in that booklet so again. Our PhD program and doctor and master program are really kind of staffed by the same set of faculty so you will find there. In terms of whether or not you want to include a ready sample that must be related to your proposed topic. Not really. I mean, as I mentioned, your intellectual interest will evolve. We use writing sample primarily to see how you reason how you conduct critical analysis how you write how you organize your thoughts. So the writing sample is for the writing. It's called writing sample right. That's what we look for. Yeah, so him. Yeah I mean, there are a lot of questions so in our personal statement we should avoid being explicit on which advisor would like to work no you don't you don't have to avoid just just be yourself but we're just saying that we do not assign people we give you the liberty. To kind of if you want to do typologies there are two kind of PhD programs when you come in urban planning there's people who assign you an advisor when you immediate when you join, and there are programs who don't. We are the we are the kind of program that doesn't assign you an advisor when you join and then you can figure it out by the second 30 we're all working with you in different colloquium colloquium stuff until you get to that point. So that that is the kind of program we have but you can say I'm interested in this advisor that advisor that actually helps sometimes to figure out your interest but yeah so no just just go with what you feel like you want to say in that statement don't like censor yourself. The advisor are the only ones in the PhD web page or can we pick someone from SIPA for example I will, I will leave this to a pink to. It is quite possible to have a committee member from SIPA any school in Columbia actually to be a sponsor, meaning the real advisor, you really need to have it from the within. Basically, really more within the urban planning program that are occasional cases where if it's really important for someone to have an outside sponsor. The situation is going to be like co sponsoring so there's an internal member and then there's the outside of GSAP but still within Columbia, you can, they can be co sponsors for dissertation, particularly on the topic that maybe the planning faculty isn't quite in that area of expertise. Let me also just address some more logistical issues that if you have undergraduate or graduate degree from an English speaking institution, I believe you can waive TOEFL you'd really need to read the GSAS application requirements more carefully. If you have any questions you can address to them directly or you can address to GSAP admission so Emily can you type in the GSAP admission email so that folks can email them directly. In terms of visa process and all of that, we have absolutely no control, and we really try to get the mission letters out, you know, by March and, you know, obviously everybody by law, not my law by general practice have until April 15 store accept. And so from then to September is five months, not quite four months should be fine for visa process but we have absolutely no control over that. Yeah. Yeah. So, and I want to answer the question and I think maybe my whipping and I will will answer it differently about contacting the professor before, before, before applying I get I get a lot of emails. And if you, my, my take on this is that you have to see that kind of the number of emails we get every day and so I would only contact in general, just as an advice if you if you really related your field is really related to that person and if you've done your job, but like, generally emails like I'm interested in like transportation I personally don't do anything related to transportation can you zoom with me that's not like, gonna, that's not going to work out you know so only if you're really, if there's you can, like, beneficial to you from that conversation, specifically that professor can help with something. And also, it's very difficult to the request to read proposals is not is not going to work because we cannot like, we cannot read for one person and not the other that will be a little bit of preferential treatment. And so I cannot say yes to one person and say I can't read to the other and we have limited times. So, personally I cannot read proposals. Sometimes if someone is asking something related to my research, I can answer that that at least my my take on this. I don't know way thing maybe have actually I have the same take completely we get. I mean, I don't know how many emails right. And I always try to encourage my own students who want to apply for PhD students, you know, that first email is so important whether you know someone will answer or not. It all has to do with how what you do with that email. You're asking for a meeting that is a lot to ask, right, you know, our students. But if you send a writing sample and the writing sample really speaks to your interest you've done your homework you know what we do. You know what the faculty does, you have a burning intellectual question. That's a little bit of a first in different first email of a kind right and you'll, it's the same thing when you apply for jobs, it's really the same. It really is. Unfortunately, we can't possibly answer all the emails. I try as director at least I sort of encourage students to, you know, provide whatever evidence to strengthen your application. But really I cannot sort of guarantee any subsequent responses on your personal part. So I always ask, you know, if you're truly interested in this area which seems to relevant send me a writing sample I'll take a look at the right. And I think sometimes that's because there's a misconception that you need to like, you need to get the attention of some professor in the pro in the program so that you can like have high chances to be admitted to be admitted and I speaking from experience both as a student who was on the admissions committee for three years at Berkeley and then now as a faculty at Columbia that's not the case it's usually really the statements and the CVs and the letters that push themselves to the front rather than who spoke to who. So, that's a really good point Hibah really you know we've admitted in fact most of the students we've met it in the last few years, we have we had no clue, you know who they are we had no initial contact, but they're writing. They are thoughtful kind of statements the recommendation letters I can't tell you how important those are those letters need to be so speaking to your critical thinking to your research abilities with details not just you know kind of a lot of information but no details. I mean, I can tell you most good recommendation letters for doctoral application should be at least one page single space completely full, possibly two pages possibly three pages I mean, really speaking to what your interests are really speaking to how good you are in doing this and that, or even pointing to maybe some challenges you have that we can help you know what you, I mean, of course if you're a great scholar you don't. So everybody has room to grow and we'd like to see how we can support that. And so I can't tell you how important those three letters and the more letters you get probably the better but they really should be at least two letters should be from an academic background to speak to intellectual growth. And let me also tell you really quickly and help us absolutely right matter doesn't matter whether we know you are not know you your application has to arrive has to rise to the top.  Sometimes it's not because your application is not strong, and sometimes it's because we don't have the faculty to really support you, we want to be responsible. Also, yeah, so I think we should take some questions who have been patiently raising your hands. So, Tiffany, and then Amanda. Thank you, weeping. Thank you, but for. Can I can can you both hear me. Okay, great. Yeah, thank you for hosting this and info session for us. I have two questions actually the first one is regarding the TA or are a requirements teaching assistant or the researchers to fellowship requirements do you have a minimum or maximum number of semesters for those. And then the second question is, I heard that you are currently interviewing for maybe three new hires in the department, which sounds exciting and I was just wondering when we might hear more about that. Yeah, that's it. Thank you. Okay, that's why I have to end this right before 12 o'clock. Anyway, yes. So, second to fourth year, quite likely most students will need to do all six semesters as teaching fellows because it's really critical that we, our master's students are supported. So, it's also really important for a doctor student to build a teaching portfolio because they actually each needs to hold like a lab session or disk lead discussion groups and so really responsibilities that prepare the student to become faculty right down the road. If your career goal may not be to become a professor. We really think that the cross training in different aspects of planning is important and for instance we might just ask the student to do more the studio which is more practice oriented teaching. It's also possible a teaching fellow may be actually becoming a mentor, sort of more on an individual basis to master students so we do have one or two every year of doctor students doing that. And when the research fellowship is likely that's usually when we, our needs for the supporting master students are met. We do have more doctoral students then, especially project needs of one or two faculty members, then it could be a good match. Then we do that. So it's pretty kind of integrated with the master's program, shall I say I want to be completely honest with you right so because we do have students who want to do field work in their fourth year, we absolutely give a flexibility so that they can complete the fellowship maybe in their fifth year, right so that they can go do field work and then come back when they write and they do the fellowship. In terms of the faculty search, yes, we are full force on that we really very much are aware of the importance of supporting doctoral students with that will be a senior faculty at least one. And we will know by next spring who will be joining us and they will be joining us in the fall so for any new students coming in. Next fall, and you will know what faculty will be studying with Amanda. Hi. Thanks so much for this session I have a question and it's a little bit of a concern around the three person cohorts, beyond just the application. I'd love to hear a little bit about the culture and sort of the social culture and the culture around working together. Three is a small number and I'm at the urban planning program at Berkeley. Now and there's quite a few more than just three and so the collaboration seems to be really important. What are ways that you can collaborate across different departments. And with master students which I think way paying you are just speaking to. Yeah, maybe you can answer because he was also went to Berkeley. I did my PhD at Berkeley and I teach here. I've never seen such a tight knit community as the one here, frankly, it's amazing I Berkeley we will it was I love Berkeley to so I'm not, I'm not, I'm not saying anything not not great but we were like three. We're still segregated into groups of three depending on your interest, but here because the way we select students. They're usually people who can speak to each other intellectually and stuff so it's very not tight knit we have a PhD room. Everyone is there all the time they eat together I mean covert has changed a little bit but like there's always meals together events together it's a very supportive environment people sharing all the time like their teaching notes their courses they. There's always like picnics and stuff so and then we're also there isn't some kind of we try to remove a little bit the hierarchy will also very collegiate with our PhD students so we have a very. We just had a PhD dinner on Tuesday with our PhD students, and it's just like a fun environment and so I actually that's, although it sounds small but because it's small. There's a lot of relationships across across incoming classes like so they're friends across the different graduation glasses. Yeah, so Amanda I'm fully aware of that when I went to PhD at Rutgers, my cohort had two people. So it was very tough. And so we are kind of aware of that. So in addition to what he was saying, you know, then you know when you are TA, say planning methods of planning series so right now in the planning series they have first year and I'm sorry second year and third year students are working together that really kind of binds them together because they actually as the instructional team they actually have to be talking to each other quite a bit understanding how to teach how to even assess learning outcomes so that and then quite interestingly, you know we have quite a bit students working together on publications right you know now I know to 30 years students are doing together one fourth year students just published article she just sent it to me, in terms of collaboration with the edge on faculty right so the key of the smaller committees is you actually do know each other quite well and there isn't the so I don't know how big. I'm not clear about all of the bigger programs how they found their students. One nice thing here is there isn't that sort of quitting cool competition for funding right everybody's fun exactly the same way for five years. They even playing field right, and so they removes that kind of sense of, you know, juggling that some students in some programs you have to do. Yeah. Maybe we can combine the two questions. One is about whether working professionals can be in the PhD program and another is about for someone coming out of working in the past few years, are there any kind of prerequisites that they need to fulfill. That's a really good set of questions so we welcome students I noticed also some questions about if you are from a policy background with that be okay, we welcome students from all sorts of background right and and and they do come from also to background. You must have a master's degree, however, before you can enroll. And many of our doctoral students have had work experience and that's actually an asset, not a distraction at all because planning is very much of, you know, professional field putting cool and when you graduate and you go out to become a faculty you most likely will be teaching master's students and they are graduating to become practitioners. And so the understanding and familiarity with challenges in the planning practice can be really, really useful as you begin to explore what top topics you want to, you know, put a few years on to do your dissertation or just to become a scholar of such that is very anchored in that connection between theory and practice. Okay. Ah, well so so I guess this question about choosing between teaching and research. So when I say, well, of course, most faculty, especially if you are teaching in four year university or with graduate programs you faculty all need to be teaching and research at the same time. Of course, there is a really nice and interesting and important career path as to become researchers right so say to think tanks international organizations. Now even NGO large NGOs that have research functions. The research kind of ability that you need to home for those places or in that career is very, very similar to a faculty who are teaching in graduate programs. The teaching part of course is a little bit different so we do have students currently with interest in that direction, and we are mindful of that. But if you talk to any of them, they will tell you teaching master's students is a real good preparation for research because the students can challenge your thinking on the, and sometimes, you know, can be quite a sort of jumping ground for your thinking and doing research. I have a question that says if you don't if I don't have any publication does it mean that I won't have any chances to be admitted. Just a clarification when we're talking about the writing sampling we don't necessarily write talking about a publication like something that got published in a book. It can be something that you wrote for class if you're applying directly from undergrad, as long as I'm not undergrad, the cat. That's something if you're applying as from masters, it can be a paper that you wrote for as long as it's polished so it doesn't have to be like out in a journal. But of course if it's out in June it's great submit that but if it's not, don't let that stop you from applying. Do we so Emily did we answer most all the questions in the chat box. Yes, there's just one new one about between the focus on socio economic processes for spatial analysis and urban design could you describe where Columbia stands or whether you have a more hybrid approach. Yeah, I think for planning in general is more on the social economic analysis side. Urban design. Yes, you can occasionally see students in our program we because in G stop there is separate program on urban design it's more sort of integrated with architecture. We actually don't have faculty right now who at least in a full time basis, who are very very strong in urban design. So this is not a place I think where you would really pursue more of a design oriented doctorate. Yes, if you are doing let's say analytics with design so let's say street networks or even design sort of algorithms right that's a little bit different so we had a colleague who had a very strong design background, a lot of mobility research using that design background that's different right. And this question. What kind of comparative study is a school focused on are we talking about how the global south can learn from North urban planning experience. Other way around once you get into the program you will start honing that question we don't do that sort of kind of large scale ambitious kind well for students it's very challenging. Generally, let me give you an example, right. We just have a recent graduate who was looking at land governance issues right so land use regimes in different places. And one of the students looked at a city in Latin America, a city in the Middle East, I forgot have a dish you look at another, I thought it was three cities. Yeah, to in Mexico, and one in the middle one in Syria. So, it's not about, you know, how who can learn from it's looking at for in a sort of important conceptual that the how land regime is governed right. It's a very similar question across three different places. And to discover, you know, on the ground, how practices of planning actually converge or diverge on that question. I think the more a PhD research question is less about, okay, what we can do on, you know, in a different city based on a city as experience that's what we call, you know, what we called a crystal ball, we don't have a crystal ball. A dissertation research is more propositional. That is, you construct a set of reasoning based on evidence of different kinds to answer a conceptual or what we call empirical question. And so it's not about really just sort of crystal ball projecting plus for sure we're not we're not like selling global knows what to do a global south what to do from the global knows that's that's definitely something we're not doing. Yeah, we have maybe five minutes if there are other questions I think we did this pretty well in terms of time. We're going to have, what are some examples across disciplinary or PhD students have pursued during their studies. Yeah, that's a good question. In terms of action. So I know one of our recent grad who's now teaching in California, she did some work with anthropology doctor students, you know they were friends but they were colleagues because her approach to film work she looked at public housing in New York, so it was a very sort of ethnographical approach. And so she was in kind of a dissertation writing group with at least one maybe two anthropology PhD students, whom she met actually through classes that were together so I mean PhD program is really a quite a bit about self exploratory self discovery, and you go out that and, and find your peers of course the students in our program are, you know, very supportive peers each other, but they all have peers on campus that are beyond the program. And also like guy for example, who's a very strong theoretical like planning theory person who ended up strengthening her work in like coding and now she does like use use coding and using like use very, very sophisticated like coding and GIS kind of research design to explore the research questions and then reflect on them theoretically to so you have people who are really like mixing methods and research mixing anthropology, political science and urban planning so you have people crisscrossing, because I mean you have four courses or four courses you have to take here and then the rest is that you can take around campus and meet all sorts of people and this is what people do. And actually, since, since I mentioned that she just sent me her publication like essentially just came out today, you can take a look, you know she has a publication now in urban studies using Yeah. Um, if you have a question, you should ask now I'm, we probably won't have another meeting session or open house. From the faculty perspective, why did you choose the planning department at Columbia.  Thank you so much. And that was my question about wondering about why you chose Columbia as a faculty member to come. Thank you so much. Um, well I can really quickly I've taught in two other universities for, you know, more than 15 years, I think Columbia strengths are, I'd say, what really attracted me to things. It's global outlook. And the second, it's interdisciplinary. We don't just say we really do it. That it's not as kind of a typical planning programs that very go into very technical, go into kind of narrow range of expertise, we really are interested in big questions, we're interested in questions that really speak to what's at stake for cities or planning myself more for cities. Yeah. Yeah, same for me, a global outlook interdisciplinary and I'm also some of them. Most fascinating brains for me, like, not not only in a G sub and campus are here and just to be the opportunity to be here and having this opportunity to be always having these conversations with them is great and because it is in some ways a compact campus, you have these encounters with people and we're all serve on committees outside G sub so we're always encountering people that you previously I've read in books or something so I really appreciate that intellectual stimulating conversation. And for me, I work on international context on New York, and it's global outlook is pretty, pretty exciting. So we have one last question, all of our rata positions are only available to matriculated students so we also have those for master's students. Unfortunately, you know that whatever positions and opportunities have we really try to see as a way of supporting our students. So thank you all very much. Really enjoyed meeting you all even though it's virtually I wish you the very best in your application and we certainly look forward to reading your applications, and even if you can't join us. I wish you all the best in your next pursuit of your doctor studies or career wise. So, again, thanks. Thank you everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.