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This is absolutely not the case. PIs do not hand out authorship. The first author is the lead in determining coauthorship. Ideally, all authors should collectively agree. I said nothing about it being black and white. 

This is absolutely not the case. PIs do not hand out authorship. The first author is the lead in determining coauthorship. Ideally, all authors should collectively agree. I said nothing about it being black and white. 

I would first ascertain the precise relationship the potential PI has with your old one. I think it's unlikely that your previous PI would say anything negative about you, as that would force the question and spread the fact that there is some disquiet in their lab, so your main goal should be presenting yourself positively. Until you get to know your prospective PI better, I would try to find some simple answer to why you left your last lab that does not involve Sarah or reflect poorly on your previous PI.
Glad to hear you're landing on your feet!

Or that if Sarah has been manipulating results to produce negatives, who says she isn't doing the opposite too? And that would blow back on the professor.
When you have time and space, I would encourage you to reflect on how you handled this politically. My read is: not particularly well. Not that you should have - this isn't something we're trained explicitly for. But remember the lessons going forward.

Having a just cause is not enough.
Your posts here focus on your obvious disgust at Sarah's manipulative and unethical behavior, but the way you chose to resolve the issue was entirely based in the hope that others would share this disgust. You didn't really consider that the people with the power to address the issues you raised might be at best disinclined to do so and at worse complicit in Sarah's behavior. As a consequence, your behavior, particularly how you talked about the problem in your community (as @St Andrews Lynx noted above) made it very easy for your professor to pass this off as two squabbling graduate students.
Politics is the fine art of getting what you want. In many cases, as it would have been here, what you want is an ethical and just outcome. But achieving such an outcome often requires a great deal of (ethically ambiguous) finesse, since what you want is at odds with what someone else (Sarah, your professor) want. If you had been more deliberate and careful in this portion of your campaign, I think you would have been able to either marginalize or remove Sarah while keeping your position.
As I said, none of us are trained for this, and few realize how important such skills are. This was an expensive lesson; don't let it go to waste.

When you begin new research, nothing will ever be "clear/cut step-by-step" unless maybe you're doing a very specific and delicate scientific experiment or test. I have no idea what your project is, but if you're starting with a lit review, that should be fairly straightforward. Find publications relevant to your topic and read through them for information that relates to your current project, then summarize and evaluate those publications. I'm not really sure if anyone will be able to give you very clear advice without knowing what the goal of your publication will be--is the publication itself going to be a literature review? Is it a presentation of new research findings? 
Lit review can be difficult mostly in the way that it is time consuming and it can be hard to find material on a subject that has not been researched extensively. I wrote an honors thesis during undergrad (pretty much like a Masters thesis) on a very under researched area of archaeology. I spent 3 years on the overall research, and I spent an entire semester during one of those years doing an independent study that was only lit review. If you're working on a topic you're not very familiar with, then you should be using this lit review as an opportunity to learn as much as you can about it. Consult academic journals in your field, and whenever you find a relevant article or other publication, look through the references to explore other sources that could potentially be useful. I always find that my specific research goals become more concrete and clear once I've familiarized myself with all of the existing information related to my topic. You'll figure it out. 

I spoke with my supervisor and research coordinator and apparently, my feelings of not knowing where I must go with this research are normal since it is an area that has little literature on it. But still. It makes me anxious to not have a clear/cut step-by-step way of approaching this topic, I have never done this before and it makes me feel a little bit insecure of my ability to work for my supervisor and my research coordinator. 

Hello,
I am a new RA for my master's thesis supervisor. I've been working with her since the beginning of my undergraduate studies. I started this new work this week along with her research coordinator. We're supposed to do some kind of lit review (scoping study/scoping review) and publish an article something in the next couple of months. The thing is that I have never done this before, I am unfamiliar with the topic we're working on (even if it does interest me). I am feeling quite confused about what I am supposed to look for in the articles I find. They both told me to not pressure myself too much, but I still feel confused.
Anyone been in this situation too? 

sincerely, you suck. Be happy you got in anywhere

Yes, I understand. I thought that your initial comment was very good at putting rejection into perspective and comparing academia to things outside of academia. I'm in no way saying that people who were once in my shoes can't be empathetic, but I am saying that grad students and grads/professors have the gift of certainty in terms of being in a program and hindsight in terms of being able to reflect. I have the gift of certainty with college; 5 years ago I was a wreck waiting for undergrad schools to get back and I didn't know what was gonna happen. I thought that the world was gonna end because I didn't have a concrete plan. Now I think "well, now I'm in a different place and I'm facing new struggles." People in the workplace will probably always feel this way, especially when it comes to job security. I could go to an undergrad forum and give some good advice to some kids in agony, and I'll have a certain understanding of that, but I also have the sort of "bias" or whatever because I've been where they're trying to go. Again, this doesn't mean that advice from me wouldn't be helpful or that I wouldn't be empathetic. That being said, I think that everyone's struggles are relative and they all should be acknowledged as valid, so someone struggling to get into grad school and someone struggling to get a job or to get grants have something in common. We're all at different places.
I got one acceptance last year, but it was to a MA program with minimal funding in a very expensive city, so I decided not to attend. The decision not to attend ended up being for the better because now I'm really glad that I didn't go to grad school right away. Hindsight is a gift because only now do I understand that the choice not to attend was a good one. 1 year ago if you had told me this, I would have called you crazy because I was hellbent on going to grad school.
 

@AP had great advice. I'm not dismissing them. I'm talking about posters in general on here. Although most posters mean well, I do think that thinking about perspective is important, however, because not everyone has been to grad school and has past experiences to reflect on. Someday, maybe we will. Grad school is a place where many of us want to be and have tried to be, and have failed basically. Many of us don't have the experience or the privilege to say "ok, this is how I felt at this time in my life. Now I feel this way still, even though I'm where I wanted to be years ago." Not that exactly, but I think this goes for everyone who can look back. Some of us can only look forward. It's not a criticism of posters. It's just a product of where we are in our careers. I'll say the same thing about my professors who made it through grad school and who now have jobs in academia: good job, you made it. I see that there will always be troubles. But...you got there. You still made it. Some of us haven't even gotten there and we don't know if we will.
I'll also say that if I ever make it into grad school, I will never again understand what it's like for an applicant who hasn't gotten in. I may be like "well, it took me a couple tries, but eventually...." okay. An applicant who gets rejection after rejection doesn't even know if they'll get in "eventually." It's the uncertainty that sucks more than anything. People told me, "oh, you're an excellent applicant. You'll get in!" and then I didn't. It's a total crapshoot.

I don't say this with any malice. But you are being ridiculous. In the future, you are going to face rejections that both have a tangible impact on your life/goals and hurt much, much more than not getting into one of many graduate programs. 
Perspective. It does a psyche good. 

Sorry, I just had to laugh at this one... she's not covering much.. just all of (what would be) your largest expenses. Also takes all the responsibility to make sure everything is paid on time, I assume. 
I can't help with the Quebec-specific question, but moving out to the dorm would be a good first step toward independence. It's still not quite all the way out there, but still, it'll help with some guided first steps into being an adult, and that's important. If you can afford it, I'd say go for it.*
*Note: *if you can afford it* means if you are *sure* that you will have sufficient funding, not "I usually get XYZ" which is no guarantee of any kind.  
 

SUNY Buffalo (mechanical engineering):
I applied for PhD, but accepted into Maser's degree without financial aid. They are unbelievable bastard! I emphasized in my application that I only want to study PhD, NOT MS. Such a crappy school. Don't go there otherwise your urine will start to build up a stalagmite in this harshly cold place :))

Stanford University Rejected:

Couldn't believe my ears when my valet read the news to me. I'm telling daddy; he'll take care of it.

dude, I'm just happy to have this gig I'm in right now. I was basically shut out by grad schools twice (to this day, I have no idea why), and wasted 2 years of my life in a job that I absolutely hated. It did paid well, and I grew a lot, but not a great deal for me. the third time, I applied to one school, not sure whether I'd get in or not. I hustled around to about 4-5 different professors, to their offices, and one of them gave me a chance. It's not the best group, we struggle with funding, and I'll probably stay here longer than if I were in a different group. But I'm still glad to be here, because I could've ended up like one of those salary slaves. For me, it's not about worrying about getting the best draw of the cards, but more about playing my best hand, and working my ass off to earn what I have.
 
do I think about what if I had gone to a different college where there were more opportunities that are better aligned with my interests, or wish I could have a 4 hour conversation with my 17 year old self? sure. but you live you learn. not all the lessons will come easy.

To answer your question, you should NEVER misrepresent your goals. This could lead to you possibly entering a program that you have no interest in completing, which is arguably worse than not getting into a graduate program at all.
Since it seems you now have a much clearer idea of what you want to do, look for programs that accommodate your interest in computational biology/chemistry and explain in your personal statement what inspired you to abandon the work you were previously doing. 
If it helps, my major research project as an undergraduate investigated fern ecology, but I'm going into a Biochemistry PhD program that is more in line with my core interests, namely chromatin-mediated gene regulation and other topics in epigenetics. It may have helped I did some biochemical research one summer and cell biology during an REU, but I don't think the fact my major project was totally unrelated hurt me. Considering I'm where I want to be, it all worked out. 
Does your institution have an introductory bioinformatics course you could take?  I took one semester of bioinformatics; it covered how all of the next-gen sequencing technologies work while also introducing me to Python, command line, and the general principles of bioinformatics.
Overall, I don't think your odds are that bad so long as you communicate your change of focus in your personal statement. 

In the long run, it will be better for you and everyone else if you are honest about your true interests. There are actual students who are passionate about biochemistry and they should get those admission spots. Its likely you will be interviewed for these programs, and unless you are a good actor, you will most likely come across as having a lack of passion for biochemistry. Practically speaking how easy would it be to transfer to more computer centered research once you got in? Likely the advisors you would want to work with could be in the computer department not biochemistry department so its unclear how you would transfer. When you apply to grad school you apply to a specific program. However, there could be computer centered labs in the biochemistry department and you could maybe rotate into those labs. However, from what I understand, its not like you can choose which lab you want to work in freely; it still has to be a good fit. I think it would be best to be honest, apply to the computational biology program, and argue in your SOP how you can transfer your skills and qualities to computer-related research. 

Unless my reading comprehension is very much failing me, OP has had several years to get past it.

How are you a philosophy scholar if you can't accept new paths?  Seems a bit odd to me to have such a black and white perspective about graduate school, and to study philosophy.  Admittedly, you said it ended up being worth it.  I will hold no resentment if I don't get into my #1 pick because someone else deserved it more than I did (most likely), or they don't have the resources to train me in my field. 

We all get bummed out about things not going our way, but you have to buck up and move on because if you stay in the past, those negative thoughts are just going to stunt your potential.

After looking at job ads for a while now, many employers outside of academia prefer or require a PhD. A masters is simply not enough to cut it for a career in research outside or inside academia especially if you want to head or run a lab.  Employers know they can get a PhD since there is a surplus of them. 

After looking at job ads for a while now, many employers outside of academia prefer or require a PhD. A masters is simply not enough to cut it for a career in research outside or inside academia especially if you want to head or run a lab.  Employers know they can get a PhD since there is a surplus of them. 

Typically yes, but it may vary from 9 month to 12 months depending on the program. I would recommend looking at the graduate program handbook (they are usually on the specific department website) or contacting the graduate coordinator at these programs. If you cannot get insurance you may qualify for medicaid or low-cost insurance.