Monochrome Spring

Is Ferrari judged poorly due to their lack of mini-van, commuter car, etc prowess?
 
If someone is looking for a specific field, they are looking for that specific field. I have a hard time believing someone who wants a pure mathematics person will say "wow you are really good at exactly the thing we wanted, but your school isn't known for the things we don't want so, we won't be able to offer you a position...".

I think you put this wonderfully. I think that Loric does give good advice in his own field, as he has a lot of work experience. And that has proven to be valuable to those applying for the first time in his field. But he doesn't accept that the majority of the people on this site are not in his field. Every field is going to operate in its own unique way. I don't expect anyone in his studies to follow the same 'rules' of my own, just as I don't assume that I must follow any of the 'rules' in his. I think the underlying issue here is that, since he is not in the typical field of study that is present on these boards, he probably feels outed as the minority. However, that is no reason to be hostile toward those who are in the majority on the boards and do want to go into academia.
 
Regardless of the field, however, it is never appropriate to lie to your professors, bosses, or advisors in order to gain letters of recommendation before the deadline. This is supposed to be a recommendation of your ability to succeed, not only in academia, not only in whatever field you go into graduate school for, but also in life. This recommendation is supposed to speak about your work and academic experiences, as well as your moral character. Lying is not good character, and as was stated before, two wrongs do not make a right. Despite Loric's disrespect for academia and those in it, and despite the examples of late letters which have resulted in too many disqualifications for hopeful applicants, lying in this manner is not, and never will be, justified. I hope that future applicants who read this thread will see how many members, both experienced and not, disagree with Loric's opinions on manipulating his superiors for letters of recommendation and will not follow the advice that he has given.

I haven't been accepted. But in my recent phone interview with my top choice POI, I was told that having the experience for independent research is what he finds to be the most important aspect of the application. He said that students who have done work specifically related to their graduate level research stand out, because they can jump right into their own research and don't need as much training.
 
He also made a very big point to talk about how I should start my SOP early on, and that I should make it very clear how my previous experience will benefit the program. He also talked about having a clear goal in mind for what kind of research I want to do, even if it's not a specific project.
 
I think for STEM fields that are very field-work centric, having a strong background stands out. It shows a previous focus in that area, as well as an ability to learn the required processes. He also noted that a demonstrated ability to work on independent projects in the field showed a lot of potential.

also, ragu tastes like shit. 
 
which makes me wonder is prego better tasting because they put even more chemical additives in it? is there a easy way to get my pasta/parmesan sauce and still be able to get something somewhat fresh and natural?

I could go on parent rants for days... My mom is refusing to understand how I don't have summer off. She's been a teacher her whole life so she has that luxury... She doesn't get how I can't just leave if I don't have class.

I've been spending my winter break at my mom's house. Worst. Break. Ever.
 
We had no celebration for Christmas. No gifts. No meal. Power went out. On top of that, the fridge broke, so we have no good food. And I'm not allowed to leave the house because heaven forbid I borrow the car and see any friends I've been missing. I have literally sat inside without interacting with anyone other than my mom for the entire break. We didn't even go see family because she didn't book the plane tickets in time.
 
And I've been playing a lot of video games over break to relax after a stressful semester. But all my mom does is bitch at me and with her friends whenever I play. I'm sorry I'm relaxing and enjoying my hobby? Whenever I go out to the living room with her, she is on her computer or watching some show I don't care about. Maybe if we were going to do something together, I'd be cool with taking a break from playing and go hang out with her. But I don't feel obligated to just sit around and do nothing, waiting for her to engage in conversation. I can't wait to go back to school, simply because I don't have to see her.
 
On a similar note, if I have nothing new to report every single fricking week, she gets pissed off at me. I'm sorry that when she asks what are you up to and I say "reading and thinking" that it's true. My life is consistent. Get over it. GAHHH! I hate people and I want to be a hermit. Let me enjoy my hobbies, and I will come out to tell you when something important happens.

For anyone with an iPhone, I highly recommend the Pomodoro app. It keeps a timer so you work for 25 minutes and rest for 5 minutes in between. It also schedules in longer 15 minute breaks after a series of 4 pomodoros (or 2 hours). You can put how many you want to finish in a day and it helps you visualize how much more time you actually need to work.
 
It has been helping me keep up with reading and without getting too tired from a long stretch of work.

I have a linkedin, academia.edu, and researchgate, but I don't ever update them. I link them to the Weebly personal website that I update regularly.
 
There are a lot of labs in my subfield that use weebly, so I don't feel like it's unprofessional.

I have a linkedin, academia.edu, and researchgate, but I don't ever update them. I link them to the Weebly personal website that I update regularly.
 
There are a lot of labs in my subfield that use weebly, so I don't feel like it's unprofessional.

Follow the rules for grants and fellowships you apply to. The end.

Follow the rules for grants and fellowships you apply to. The end.

But if you cant follow the rules, you are not qualified, are you?
I agree with GeoDUDE! completely. It is the applicant's sole responsibility to follow the (very simple, imho) guidelines. There are a lot of things one can do to maximize the use of 2 pages without "pushing the limit". This fellowship is so prestigious and $$$ that it is definitely worth your utmost care. 

That really sucks dude, I'm sorry that happened.  Wishing you good luck for the final!

Bombed a stats test because I was dealing with personal issues during pre-test prep time. Oh well. You win some and you lose some. That just means I have to work harder for the final.

@maelia8,
You are attending one of the top universities on the planet. You are in a department with a well earned reputation that is matched by a mere handful of others.

I very strongly recommend that you lean forward and learn all you can about your craft from these conversations. If you have the opportunity to share knowledge with your peers, do so.

If you want to change things up, bring up issues that are still related to the craft but present opportunities for playfulness.

However, under no circumstances do I think you should attempt to change the conversations. Those talks are arenas in which participants are sharpening their skills and building bonds of intellectual fellowship, if not also life long friendships.

It is not enough to love Klio. She will, sooner or later, break your heart. When that happens, it will be your skills as a historian that will get you through.

Soldier of Love - I'm not really qualified to comment on your chances of admission (as I'm in the application process myself). However, I am familiar with the Ecology program at Penn State. You probably already know this, but you must have a faculty member committed to you joining their lab in order to be admitted. That said, what will probably happen is the faculty member will recommend a few promising students who have contacted them to the adcomm and let them decide. So if you have a faculty member who told you to apply or said that they are looking forward to your application, then that's a good sign that you will at least be considered. I am in this same situation at UNC... I had a Skype interview with a PI, and he told me to apply at the end of the interview, as well as told me about the timeline of the interview weekend and admissions decisions. So that means that the adcomm won't immediately throw my application out and I have a good chance!
 
I personally think that your stats look good aside from your GRE score. Your GPA is great, you have plenty of research experience, some poster presentations, and TA experience, which will all work really strongly in your favor. I think it would look better if your manuscripts were under review at this point, but that's not something that can be changed. Your GRE scores aren't bad, but for the school that you are applying to, they could be better. However, I think the rest of your application will far outweigh them. This would especially be true if you told the PI's about your scores and they didn't say anything about them.

Trying to figure out the balance between personal life and research life is not easy.

I don't think that someone should necessarily look into some lower ranked programs simply because their quant GRE score isn't very high. It entirely depends on the program and the potential advisors. Also, the rest of her package seems competitive, and she could be a great interviewee.

Trying to figure out the balance between personal life and research life is not easy.

I don't think that someone should necessarily look into some lower ranked programs simply because their quant GRE score isn't very high. It entirely depends on the program and the potential advisors. Also, the rest of her package seems competitive, and she could be a great interviewee.

I use Mendeley for exactly what is requested here. I've used it on Windows, Mac and Linux with no issues at all (same features everywhere). This is how I usually use it (there are other great ways too):
 
1. Find the PDF for the paper I want to read/add to my library
2. Download it into a special Mendeley-watched folder and Mendeley automatically imports into my Mendeley library.
   (alternatively: I just download it elsewhere and import the PDF from the Mendeley menu separately)
   (alternatively #2: I sometimes use the Mendeley web importer tool to do this directly from the website with the journal article)
3. If you are importing a new-ish paper with meta-data, the author names, titles, other bibliographical information are loaded automatically; otherwise, I copy and paste the DOI or PMID or arxiv ID into the sidebar in Mendeley and hit a search button to automatically import this info.
4. I manually add a few more items if necessary (sometimes I copy/paste the abstract, add my own search keywords/tags [think Gmail labels], add a URL for the article if one isn't automatically imported and I want to access things like online datasets attached to the paper, add a citation key for BiBTeX)
5. I can now read the article and use Mendeley's highlight and sticky note tools to annotate the paper. The sticky notes are searchable and you can view a list of all notes for a certain paper (clicking on notes jumps you to the location of the note)
6. I can also write a summary of the paper in my own words
 
Other cool things I use Mendeley for:
7. It works like iTunes in terms of file organization -- I can tell it to organize my PDF by author / year / journal etc. whatever. This means once I import the file into Mendeley, I can delete the original and Mendeley takes care of the rest of the organization. I generally used the "Watched Folder" feature and once the file is imported, I clean out the Watched Folders once in awhile. I love this because I never have to think about where to store things or how to name PDFs in a logical way.
 
8. I have never written a Works Cited / Bibliography by hand since I started using Mendeley. I use BiBTeX so all I have to do is export my library as a BiBTeX file (there's a hotkey for it) and then I compile it in my papers. I know there are also Word plugins if you don't use LaTeX but I have not used that myself. 

We had panel reviews of our GRF proposals in class today and I got a great review from my classmates! So, any guilt I had about not working as many hours as my classmates is gone, because I am still producing high quality work. Great way to start the weekend.

I agree that time frames can vary greatly, and a substantial project is one that would be meaningful to your field (e.g. publishable as a paper), not necessarily one that takes three years or the length of the proposed program.  
The only explicitly multi-year projects I've seen in Ecology proposals have been ones where collecting a long-term dataset was necessary to address the proposal question. And most of the successful proposals I've read didn't include a timeline.
 
For what it's worth:
My proposal addressed a two-part research question and had three related components: an observational study with a timeline of two years (two field seasons), an experiment with a timeline of one year (one field season), and an analysis of a pre-existing long-term dataset with no proposed timeline. Presumably I would have completed this project during the first two years of my program. What questions I would have pursued next would have depended on the results of this proposed project, and I alluded to future directions within a single sentence in my Anticipated Results section. 

How would the NSF reviewers know that it's a longer-term vs. short-term project anyway?  The project I proposed was a tentative dissertation project, but I did not include timelines or any indication of how long it would take me to do the project.  In fact, since I proposed a daily diary study in my NSF, it might have looked like it would've taken shorter than it actually did (the daily component was two weeks, but not all participants are recruited at the same time - it's taken us a year and a half to complete the data for this project, and it's not what I did my dissertation on because of that fact).  Most people in my field would have never done a daily diary study or even necessarily knew what it was, so it's not like it's a standard protocol they'd all be familiar with.
 
There were not several components; in fact, I spent more time talking about the theoretical underpinnings of the research and the impact I hoped it would have than I did talking about the actual method, which was only about 1 long paragraph.  That's because this isn't about the methods of the research; they are not really evaluating the project itself.
 
I suppose you could include a timeline, but this is a fellowship, not a grant.  As was already mentioned - the NSF just wants to know that they are funding a budding researcher who can think critically about interesting, feasible (in a very broad sense), innovative research.  They don't expect seniors and first- and second-year grad students to be able to write a full grant proposal with a detailed, realistic timeline.  What they do expect is that you know a little background in your field - enough to position your work theoretically - and that you've thought about where your work fits both within science and within "broader impacts."  I could see a 1-semester planned project doing that just as well as a 3-year project, and besides, your reviewers may have no idea how long the project is going to take you anyway.
 
The NSF says:
 
 
  And also  
 
Emphasis mine in both cases (except for the "don't get bogged down..." sentence).  The BEST advice I got when writing - which took my application from not even HM to funded in a year - was after I described my project to an informal mentor of mine, she told me "Well, I wouldn't fund that either!  What's the theoretical framework?  You need to have a theoretical framework on which your research is based."  Judging by the NSF's (totally new and much more informative!) website, that seems to be spot on and the most important part of your graduate research plan, far more important than the specific project you select.