2005, Berkeley, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UIUC, and my alma mater UT Austin. Ended up at Cal. Granted, I was EE and admitted as EECS, so maybe a bit different.
While I agree the application process needs improvement, I think this entry greatly exaggerates how hard it is to get into a PhD program. Since when do you need to be published to even get into a PhD program? When I went through the application process, I got accepted by 6/6 schools that I applied to, with no publications and no real ideas for what I wanted to research on. In fact, most PhD students actually don't even have a research topic until the second or third year of grad school. I think more than anything, your personal statement is the deciding factor in a lot of cases. What had worked for me was to have a list of research topics and faculty from each school that you're interested in working with, and directly address them in your statement. Other than that, of course whatever supporting evidence to differentiate yourself is helpful. I thought proposing to use offer letters from Google or YC (both have much lower acceptance rates than a PhD program) just to prove you can code is pretty hilarious.
I think the key to smooth reimbursement is meticulous documentation of everything! (Invoice, receipts, bank statements, credit card statements, etc.) It's not uncommon for me to have 4 different docs for a single expense item, but you'll get used to the bureaucratic ways of Chile soon enough. That said, I've been here 3 months, and so far have gotten most hardware purchases including a new Android phone reimbursed. One more thing to mention is that electronics here in Chile have like at least a 30% markup compared US prices, more for iPads and such. Just FYI.
Here, we're referring specifically to annual revenue of event-based service industries. (Catering, Venues, Photography, Decor, etc.) The global market size for special events industry have been estimated to be around $500 Billion. Our initial focus is in US, which is THE top consumer for event services.