DropTheBase
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Posts posted by DropTheBase
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PI's want data. If you have enough data, a PI doesn't care if you work 30 minutes a day. Congrats for having enough data for a JACS paper 7 months into the first year! But unfortunately the PI has higher expectations, otherwise she wouldn't complain about tardiness.
I agree with Fuzzy, I'd find out exactly what research progress the PI expects from you. This forces her to spell it out in plain text, meaning you don't have to guess what she wants. Then explain to her that you will meet those goals.
Also, student health is the top priority. If it hurts physically to get up in the morning, stay in bed and make up the hours later. In a real job you need to worry about sick days and time off, but grad school is not an ordinary job. Grad students seldom work "normal" hours unless they have a family or other outside commitments. If your PI wants to drill you about tardiness, just say it's for health reasons and that you'll have new data soon.
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In my opinion, take NSF.
More pay. More flexibility (5 year tenure vs. NDSEG's 3). There's also XSEDE and GROW if you care about that.
NDSEG is statistically harder to get, but on your CV, you can say that you declined NDSEG. So prestige isn't an issue either.
EDIT: congrats, btw!
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In addition to what GeoDUDE! mentioned, you might still be applying to fellowships in the future, which do take into account grades. Other than that, it makes little difference.
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I wouldn't worry too much about more/less money. Your PI should fund you at either institution. At the end of the day, you're not making any money anyway. You'll have enough to live comfortably.
Having fewer requirements is certainly nice, but not something that will hold you back from completing your PhD or prevent you from doing great work.
Quality of life heavily depends most on your colleagues and your adviser. It sounds like you have quite a few options to choose from at MIT. This is important since you won't necessarily get your first choice.
No arguments about the weather, it just comes down to how much you care!
Good luck!
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Yes. By masturbating.
Fact: the PI's doing the same.
- gorki, PhDerp and gr8pumpkin
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I like option B as well.
As mentioned above, you're going to get stuck on your project no matter what. It's better to be interested in what you're doing in order to help you break through the "wall".
In addition to the project itself, make sure that you and your potential advisers share the same values. I turned down the number 1 school in my field exactly for this reason, and I'm confident that it was one of the smartest decisions I've ever made.
You're impression of future colleagues also matters a lot since you'll be seeing and dealing with them much more than your adviser.
Good luck!
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Here's a suggestion, take it or leave it. I think everyone has probably heard of the gigantic trash islands floating in the middle of the oceans. I've seen some fairly horrific documentaries of aquatic animals and birds killed by the plastic.
Anyone have any preliminary ideas for an economically feasible/attractive method of solving, or at the very least alleviating this issue?
Solved!
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Having gone through this last year, I'll go to sleep at a normal hour. Regardless of the outcome, I think it's best to maximize feeling good tomorrow in any way possible. Similarly, for those of you waiting until tomorrow, it's probably a good idea to eat breakfast before reading the result.
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Last years is not available but previous years still show up
N'oh my God....Inception!
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Wow! Are all US campuses going to be like this?
Hey! If you don't like America, then you can geeeet out!
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I get what you're saying. I've always respected your opinion on here. I'm just wondering if being so soft on people is such a good philosophy. I was reading the grade inflation thread the other day, and the consensus among us grads and soon-to-be's was that it's a bad thing to reward people simply for just showing up to class (or not). Yet, when it comes to the real world, these same people are handing out A's and A-'s to everyone. What good is it to not say anything when someone is hurting themselves and can still turn things around? When I was a kid, if you had a weakness, the other kids would terrorize you until you did something about it. And for the most part, it worked. We birthed a lot of tough kids in that neighborhood.
If a person is fat, it most likely eats away at them all the time. The only people I know who are proud to be fat are those ghetto black chicks who are like, "Girl, I'ma shake my shit!" People think that telling them they're fat does nothing but depress them even more. But they're already depressed enough as it is. Just keeping your mouth shut allows them to continue to stay stuck in the same state and never break out. The fat kids we used to tease are in better shape than all of us now.
I just don't see the good in being soft on people. We see the results everywhere. Even in the classroom, I think a little competition would do people some good. There are a lot of kids who just sit in the back of the class, happy to get a C. Imagine if they got called out on a consistent basis for being stupid. They might try to prove everyone wrong and pull a few all-nighters. They might even end up getting the highest grade in the class. In sports, when I was a kid, you got teased when you sucked. You know what you did? You spent the whole summer busting your ass so you could make the team next year and tease everyone else for sucking. Nowadays, they make a team full of sucky players, make them play the other team full of sucky players, end the game in a tie, and go out for pizza, where all the parents say, "I'm so proud of you, Little Bobby." Fuck that. Let the kid get his ass whooped by the other kids a few times after practice. He just might spend his weekends in the gym instead of the basement playing Halo.
It's not your fault.......It's not your fault....
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You remind me of the pony-tailed guy in Good Will Hunting.
I was thinking the same thing!!! hahaha
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Also, I just accepted an offer at UW, but they're only giving me TA funding for my first year. So now, I'm freaking out because no part of me wants to TA for my first year in graduate school, so I NEED this fellowship.
There are quite a few programs that require you to teach, take classes and conduct research simultaneously in your first year. There's a huge difference between "need" and "want".
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Ugh, I'm so anxious! I really need this fellowship to come through.
You already have the GEM!! You need another one???
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If you look at previous years' threads, 5% of each thread is about the actual application and the rest is about hearing back. It seems to be around or later than when we all hear back from NSF.
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With that resume I'm honestly shocked that you were not extended any offers.
There's clearly something else at play. If you didn't do this the last two times, you should ask some trusted professors to look over some of your application materials. Maybe there are some red flags that they would more easily be able to identify and help you deal with. One of my advisers ripped apart the first draft of my statement of purpose, which was probably really important in the long run.
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I don't really like when people assume they've had the hardest life. I don't know what happened to you and I don't want you to tell me (this isn't a contest), but my parents were both drug addicts who died when I was young and I slept on the New York City trains as a kid. So when you come around here saying things that other people did to you when you were growing up justifies your negativity is a bit insulting.
A suffering student comes here for help and you feel insulted? If anything, your upbringing explains why all your posts reflect a teenager full of angst.
+1 to SunDevil22's first reply.
- pears, LittleDarlings and Sigaba
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Everything the Lynx said.
Change the conversation: when you plan to visit the other schools, how much you're looking forward to visiting, how much fun you had, how interesting the research is...etc.
Every excuse you come up with about MIT will only delay her fixation on it, so just avoid the conversation.
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There are plenty of research groups without a website. Over 70% of the physical chemistry research groups at my school either don't have a website, or have a website that hasn't been updated for over 10 years. Professors are not required to have a website online, most of them only have a short version of CV, which typically don't have the information regarding what happened to the former students.
I'll concede on this point. The way I decided which schools to apply to was by finding 2-3 professors whose research interested me. A few of those professors were personally recommended to me by my undergraduate research advisor, but for the majority: if the professors didn't have websites, I likely wouldn't have found them, meaning I wouldn't apply to their schools. So I don't have any experience with this situation.
How would someone focus on fit without selecting a group? Shouldnt we be applying to the grad programs where the top 10-15 people in our subfield are?
Let me clarify: "selecting" a research group refers to actually committing to a single professor. For all the schools I visited, professors were very much prohibited from promising students spots in their labs. Things change by the time you arrive: the professor doesn't get funding renewed, there are other grad students who want to work for your POI but there's limited space....etc. It's very dangerous to select a school based on your hopes of only working for one professor. The best thing to do is keep an open mind and find more than one professor that you think you can be happy with, in addition to all the other factors that influence grad student life.
(At risk of derailing this thread...) applying to schools where the top 10-15 in your subfield are is a fine strategy, but making a decision to attend a school based on that is a very different story. There are numerous threads on GradCafe about research fit vs. ranking.
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Asking the grad students isn't going to give you anything useful either. At most, they only know the experiences of a few group members who graduated. No one can make a decent conclusion based on a sample size that small.
This question can easily be answered by looking up where all the group alumni went. That information is usually on the group webpage. If not, you can usually Google all the names of the group alumni.
Not to mention, there are so many factors that influence job placement that it would be absurd to even consider this while selecting a group. Students first have to make it through their PhDs before even thinking about landing a job.
Lastly, prospectives shouldn't think about selecting groups during visitations. There's no guarantee they'll even get to work with the professors they like most. They should just focus on fit.
Help! UCSF or Berkeley for Biophysics
in Decisions, Decisions
Posted
I haven't posted on this forum in years! But since I'm procrastinating on writing my thesis:
My personal opinion is that none of these are cons.
- The campus is actually relatively small compared to most universities. No one takes the bus from one end to the other unless they have time to kill.
- The program being spread out is not necessarily bad at all. The places you get your best ideas from will never be where you expect. Having to walk by people from other departments might help you in ways you wouldn't expect.
- There's a very good reason undergrads and tourists visit Berkeley all the time.
- Large labs have their own pros and cons. (They got large for a reason!) It's more important to have options in case it ends up not being for you.
Other things:
- Did you take into account that Lawrence Berkeley Lab is right up the hill as well? I knew several people who did their PhD's with PIs up there, and I knew many more who collaborated with them.
- Biophysics is about as interdisciplinary as it gets, and Berkeley also comes with world class math, physics, and chemistry departments as well. Research from those and other departments have serious overlap with biophysics. Often times the help you need will be a five minute walk away.
- Berkeley's alumni network is gigantic. This will matter a lot when you get toward the end!
Despite this shamelessly biased post in favor of Berkeley, congratulations by the way, because both USCF and Berkeley are excellent programs!!