Angua

One thing that you can do to at least mitigate the "scooping" problem is to make sure that, if you're working on something interesting, people in your field know about it. This may be counter-intuitive, but if you do a good job publicizing your project on "The Role of Feminism in Third-Level Widgetmaking," then folks will recognize it as your ideas when they see a scooped paper on "Third-Level Widgetry and Feminist Theory." Does this prevent you from being "scooped"? No. Not at all. The only way to truly prevent it is to publish your work faster and/or wait until you are at or near publication to present. But short of that, make a network of scholars in your field and talk to them about your work-- build a name for yourself. One thing that's becoming quite common in my field is "publishing" working papers online (on SSRN). Again, this doesn't help you beat scoopers to actual journal publication, but it does help get your ideas out there (and in a way that is "provably" earlier than scoopers' work).

On the litter box: When we made a 14-hour trip with our cats, we had all these great ideas about letting them out of the carrier so they could be more comfortable, etc. They were terrified outside of the carrier -- one of them stood there, hair on end, panicking, and the other one immediately jumped down as low as she could and peed. So, back in the carrier they went! They were much happier there. We stopped once or twice for litterbox and water. They both had collars on, but it still made me really nervous, so I set up the travel litterbox (get a short box with a lid!) inside the car, then let them out to use it with the car doors shut (reaching over the back seat). They didn't use it at all -- they had already peed on the car floor and in the carrier. If you use this method, I recommend laying out some old blankets or towels in the back seat to protect the seats. For the second day (and the trip home), we stopped only once for the litterbox -- they still didn't use it. For calming (because ours really needed it), we used tryptophan-laced treats recommended by the vet and bought at PetSmart. That seemed to help -- they could at least calm down enough to nap.

Just another new UChicago PhD student here... *wave*

The best advice I got on the GRE Subject Test was take it if (and only if) you will do well on it. Unless, of course, you are applying to a program that requires it -- but none of mine did.

Generally speaking, yes. At the PhD level (as opposed to, say, undergrad or professional school), being wait-listed is usually not a sign that you "just missed" the cutoff for admission -- those people are usually just rejected. Instead, it means that someone thought you were a great candidate, but some other candidates were just better fits, or some other professors were higher in the pecking order this year. Next year, against a new field of candidates, you may shake out differently (for better or worse, unfortunately), but it may also be that the professor who wanted you (and didn't get you) will be at the top of the list this year. The biggest pitfall in re-applying anywhere is that you risk being "stale" -- that is, they've seen your application, and it's not as exciting or interesting as it was before. I think the best way to combat this is to make sure that there is something new there -- your SOP should be new, and there should be evidence that you've done something productive with the extra year. Good luck!

You can definitely get by without a car, but as a grad student I recommend having one if you can. Snow is not a huge problem, as they're fairly good about getting the roads clear after big snows. Chains aren't necessary; there aren't any hills, and you'll be just fine as long as you exercise caution while driving in the snow!

In addition to what you've identified, there are a lot of "JD preferred" positions at my (large research) university. These wouldn't be "lawyer" jobs so-to-speak, but a JD may be required or strongly preferred. They include, not surprisingly, a lot of the positions at the law school itself (even our IT guy has a JD!). Outside of the law school, they also include: pre-law advising, policy writing (in areas like IT Security or Healthcare Records), compliance officers (to ensure compliance with those policies), some HR personnel, some "lobbying"-type jobs in the administration, and positions with the Institutional Review Board. Many, many areas of law apply to universities, and there are often jobs for JDs in assuring compliance -- information security, healthcare records, student information, research protocols, research participant rights, state and federal grant funding, intellectual property issues, etc, etc. In addition, a law degree may make you a more appealing candidate for many upper-level administration positions.

I can't help with Mechanical specifically, but for your second question -- the work should be about the same. Think about it: both 4 courses per semester and 4 courses per quarter means taking 4 courses at a time, right? In any given term, you are taking 4 courses. In a quarter system, the courses are just a little shorter. Also, keep in mind that a quarter system includes a summer quarter, so over the academic year (approx. August-May), you do 3 quarters or 2 semesters. So the difference really isn't that great.

That all sounds way more negative than I want to be about this. I'm working towards this, and I think it's great that you are, too, and I think we can both do it! Also, I met some really cool people on law review. I wouldn't say I loved it, but most of what I didn't like about it was that you really have to give up anything else to be involved in the leadership -- the senior editors don't have time to do moot court, or trial team, or TA, etc. Which is a bummer, given that we encourage the best and brightest to do law review first. But I learned a lot, and it will definitely make you a grade-A expert on the Bluebook. And isn't that what we all want?

Definitely talk to your professors -- I got some really frank, helpful advice from them when I decided to shoot for legal academia. My profile was similar to yours - top-25 law school, top 10%, law review, etc. I clerked after graduation in a state supreme court -- as you point out, federal appellate would probably have been better, but it can definitely be a crapshoot, especially given the state of the legal economy. I knew I wanted to clerk when I started law school, but I had to compete against thousands of applicants with similar profiles, some of whom were actually interested in clerking, but many of whom would have gone straight to a Big Firm if they could have. The biggest hurdle I have to overcome (and you will, too) is that a vast and ever-increasing majority of law professors went to law school at a very small handful of schools: Yale, Stanford, and UChicago... plus a smattering from other Top 10 schools like Harvard and Columbia. There may be a pushback against this trend in the works, but it is likely to hold for the foreseeable future. It used to be that students at these schools could graduate with law review, clerk, and then get hired right away (or after 2-3 years practicing). Now, even a lot of these students go to VAP (Visiting Assistant/Associate Professor) programs or fellowships (like Chicago's Bigelow program) before they can get tenure-track jobs. You say you are at a top-25 school, so I'm going to assume that (like me) you aren't at one of these super-elites. For us, the traditional model was to graduate with law review, clerk, and then work for 7-8 years or more while publishing. This is still possible, but it is increasingly competitive, and many of these candidates are also turning to VAP programs first (in turn making VAPs harder to get as well). Plus, you may be like me -- not interested in practicing for almost a decade (and you'd rather spend that time really developing scholarship, in a PhD program). The PhD route, however, is becoming increasingly common as well. As more schools look to hire faculty with extensive non-law knowledge, candidates with strong PhDs are becoming more appealing. As someone who was in a good-but-not-great law school, I think the best way to take advantage of this trend is to position yourself so that your PhD is the headline on your CV. This is going to be literally true no matter what, but it should be holistically true as well. In other words, if another field (like sociology) really interests you (and if it doesn't, consider seriously whether you want to spend 5 years working on it for a PhD), make yourself an exceptional scholar in that field first and foremost. Be a strong, impressive sociologist who just happens to study its implications for law, or whatever. One note that may be controversial (and make me sound even more credential-obsessed): this route means that you need a PhD that will be impressive to law school hiring committees. One thing you have probably noticed about lawyers already -- we generally consider ourselves to be experts on everything. And many hiring committees, staffed with lawyers and professors who know very little or nothing about your PhD field, will assume that prestige in law equates to prestige in all other fields. So you will have to be careful selecting a PhD program -- if you end up at a university where your program is #2, but the law school is #40, you are going to have some trouble. (Just for the record, because typing this makes me so very sad: I am not endorsing the super-credential-obsessed culture of law schools, but I do believe you need to be fully aware of how it impacts you and your goals.) Now, about the JSP program. It's actually a really good route, especially if you don't particularly want to make yourself a first-rate scholar in some other field. It is a very law-oriented program, and it places about half of its graduates in law schools (this is, I'm guessing, a better law school placement rate than any other PhD program in the country). As you mention, it is very competitive. Like any other PhD program, you need to have a really good sense of your research interests, and they need to fit well with the faculty there. You may be a better candidate than you think -- I'd recommend some empirical research experience if you can get it to strengthen your application (this, incidentally, is true no matter which PhD programs you wind up applying to). One other thing: a total lack of practice experience will hurt you, even with a PhD. This is less true with a PhD than it is without, and it is less true in a field that is traditionally not very practice-heavy, such as Con Law, than it is with, say, Family Law (where you will have major issues with no practice experience). No matter what, some deans just will not look seriously at candidates without practice experience. Not all deans -- but some. The advice I was given was to get practice experience anywhere I can before I go on the market -- look at pro bono work or consulting, for example. Consider getting involved with non-profits that relate to your interests in a professional capacity if you can. Look for opportunities, and take them -- so even if you don't plan to practice, do plan to pass the bar and get a license to practice. Feel free to PM me if you have questions or want more specific details about my experiences than I'm willing to post here. Good luck!

First, I thought about my profile and my goals to determine what "level" of program I would be applying to (or, more accurately, what mix of levels). This will give you an idea where to start. I needed this to help narrow things down, because I am a transplant from a related field, and I wasn't as familiar with the scholarship in my area as some people are. I also have relatively broad interests (my focus is in application of ideas more than specific theories), so I had a big potential pool. Then I spent hours (seriously -- you can't start this soon enough) reading through faculty research interests. I made a spreadsheet (I strongly recommend that you start this early, too - it will save you time in the long run) of schools, and noted when I had gone through the faculty in my area. If there were any good matches or potential matches, I listed them along with some notes about their interests, and considered the school a "possible" application. Any school that was a "possible," I made note on the spreadsheet of when the application deadline was (you'll thank yourself in October if you do this now!), and I read through the requirements to make sure there were no surprises. I also noted the application fee, along with anything else I thought I might want to know later but was likely to forget after combing through 50 school pages. Once I had a list, I went back to faculty members that seemed the most interesting and did more research about them. I also started talking to faculty in my area and asking them for ideas about people I should look into -- this is really a important step, but it's much better to already have a list yourself when you start to do this, because you will have a better idea who people are, and it's easier to give you advice if you already have some ideas. I didn't email potential faculty POIs ahead of time -- you should. Everyone agrees that you should, including me, I just...didn't. For the record, that worked out okay for me, though I probably wasted a few application fees. But it's good advice to do it. I also didn't filter heavily on "program type" at the application stage. If there are major, inflexible program attributes that are deal-breakers for you, then absolutely filter them ahead of time. But I really felt that I was pretty flexible, if I could find the right fit. I didn't even limit myself to departments labelled "psychology" -- I applied to faculty that I thought were good fits, regardless of the program label.1 I visited small departments and big departments, and as a result I got to really talk with students and faculty about the advantages and disadvantages of both. Similarly, I visited programs where teaching is required and where it isn't, where there are a lot of required classes and where there aren't, big universities and small ones, a mountain town, a few big cities, and some rural schools. I think it's really difficult to know how you'll feel about these kinds of things before you've seen them up close and as a prospective student, and if you're like me, even your established preferences about these things can be overcome by a great fit. If I had filtered my applications based on my pre-application preferences, I wouldn't have even applied to school I wound up choosing. Once you have a really comprehensive list, you can start to look at some bigger-picture things and narrow the list. I thought about how much I could afford to spend on app fees (and then spent more, because, you know, I only wanted to do this process once!). I thought about how good the fit was with faculty, and how many potential faculty POIs each school had. I ended up applying very broadly, but I probably could have saved myself some time/money/hassle; the schools that were most interested in me were, universally, those with professors I had identified as the best matches for my interests. It worked out well, but at the time I wasn't willing to bet too heavily on my assessment lining up with theirs, so I put in applications to faculty that were "good" matches but not "great" matches. Then you can start getting application materials ready -- you'll probably make more cuts as you apply, if you're like me. You'll want to prioritize your applications, keeping in mind due dates. Know which applications are okay to cut, and which *must* get submitted. Good luck! 1 I should say that, although I advocate applying to anyone who is a great fit for your interests, in at least one case I did rule out a program that was just "too far" from my field. The real problem wasn't label, though, it was that only one POI matched my interests. Because the department was in a totally different field, there was no overlap between me and any other professors, which would have put me in a very precarious position.

For something a little different, I recommend Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise. Probably not listed as a "psychology" book, but it's definitely an exploration of decision making.

I think it depends on how you approach it. I think it's a fine (actually, a very good) idea to talk about how your interests line up with the professors to whom you are applying. This could include discussion of the "labs," but it doesn't have to (depending on your field). The biggest risk of this approach is coming across as uninterested in those you don't mention, but if you've done your research, that shouldn't be a problem. Don't spend a lot of time in your SoP talking about their work; keep your statement focused on your own work and interests. But you pointing out that you understand the work that they are doing and how it relates to your own interests can work very well.

I agree. Also, it sounds to me like you're envisioning discussing papers or projects at length and specifically in your SoP -- that's not really necessary. You can write a really effective SoP that focuses on the areas you want to pursue in grad school and the questions you want to ask. You should make brief reference to your experience with these areas, if applicable, but you don't need to go into a lot of detail about what you've done unless it's directly relevant to what you hope to continue doing. Focus on what you want to research and how you want to research it. Having said all that, the lack of research itself may limit you a bit -- I don't think it's a killer, and I think you can write an effective SoP without it, but it will be a weakness in your application. Just be prepared for that weakness, and consider back-up plans that include more research experience. Maybe research assistant positions or paid internships in your field?

I agree with this 100%, and I would add: you don't have to limit yourself to just one field. As someone who is between fields, my strategy was to apply to professors who were doing work that interests me. Those are the people you will want to be working with, those are the people who will introduce you to the people and literature you need to know, and those are the people who are going to be interested in you as a candidate. When you are interviewing, talking to students, and visiting schools, you can get a better feel for whether the department/field is where you really want to be. I ended up in a different kind of place than I expected, but I think it's a great fit for me and my interests. And it's a place I never would have considered if I had been caught up in department labels. If I had only applied in my "primary" field, I would have ended up somewhere that had a bunch of people doing a bunch of things, but only some of which was exciting to me. By broadening my approach, I found somewhere that has a small group of people doing work that is all interesting and exciting, and into which I can bring a new perspective. Good luck!

+1 for a prepaid/pay-as-you-go phone. That way you can save money, but you can still be reached by your colleagues by phone/text. You can also use a Google voice number to get calls and texts in your email.

I think it helps to have some idea what you are interested in, but my impression is that nobody is going to hold it against you if you refine or change your ideas along the way. As a researcher, you want to be able to hire someone who will be engaged and interested; the easiest way to ensure that is to look for someone who expresses a specific interest in your work. I don't think that means you need to figure out exactly what your interests are now, though. You just need to be sure that you are interested in the positions you are applying for, and you need to be able to articulate why. As for finding them, I found Higher Ed Jobs very helpful. Good luck to you!

One other note -- for estimating walk times, it really does matter where your program is on campus. Orchard Downs is south and slightly east of campus, so if you're in Engineering (north end of campus), it will be a much longer walk to school than if you're in Art (SW), Music (SE/E), or Law (SW). Most other fields are somewhere in between. It would be a longer walk from Orchard Downs to groceries, but it would be a fast bike ride to the Co-op, and there are a lot of good buses.

If you're willing to sublet your apartment during the summer, you could sign a 12 month lease. I think there are some landlords in town who will give you a 9 month lease, but most are 12. Similarly, if you need to start a least earlier than about August 15, it really depends on the landlord and the particular location. I'm way off campus, with Regency (highly recommend them, btw), and our lease was very flexible on start and end dates. It can't hurt to just contact the companies and ask them.

At least one of the two offers they made has accepted. Not sure if that helps, but thought you might like to know.

Just a note that some of what you may be particularly interested in is also going on in business PhD programs -- don't forget to check out Organizational Behavior profs as well.

I think this is really good advice. I might frame it on the wall for my own decision process. Based solely on what you've said here, I think A sounds like the better choice. As long as both are good fits (by which I mean: you will be able to do the kind of work that you need to do to start your career on the right path), if you really have the sense that A sets you up better for the future, that's huge. On the other hand, you've made another good point about alternate POIs. If there really isn't anyone else at A, you might have a point, but is that the case? Nobody else is doing anything close to what you are interested in? If your first POI doesn't work out (at either school), you will likely need to be slightly flexible in finding an alternative anyway. And, as tip3r pointed out, there is a higher risk of not working out when you don't really know what the lab will be like. Good luck!

I don't think you're overthinking it -- it does sound like you are being sought after by the professor who contacted you. There are a few possible alternate explanations -- for example, it's possible that this prof is the admissions chair or something (and thus, contacts everyone), and it's possible that your host assignment was coincidence (I've been given hosts who were not in my area). However, if this prof is recruiting you for his/her research group, you have a few options. You should try to feel out what his/her students are working on -- it's possible the prof has students working on things that will interest you, or that the prof wants to expand/shift into your area. Also, you should try to find out how flexible the mentorship is at this department. In my field, it is not uncommon for there to be a lot of mobility and flexibility -- students are often encouraged to work with multiple profs. In that case, you could still work with one of your POIs at your top choice. You can also reach out to your POIs to try to get a feel for whether they are interested in you. Otherwise, I think the way to decline is just to treat it like any other offer, and cite fit issues as the reason for declining.

...and I just spit out my coffee.

I agree that in this case, the reputation divide is so huge that I think it should be a major consideration. The CS department at UIUC is big, impressive, and well-regarded. There is a lot going on, both in CS and in the related fields, and engineering as a whole gets a lot of attention and resources on campus. The other University of Illinois campuses, including UIC, are often thought of as "lesser" campuses -- whether this is right in all fields is an open question, but it is certainly true in CS. If I met a UIC student or graduate who had a CS degree, my first assumption would be that they had not been good enough to get into UIUC. Again -- that might not be fair, but that's the kind of disparity we're dealing with between the reputation of the two schools/programs. If you think you would be happy at UIUC, I'd strongly recommend it, even if you think the fit might be slightly better at UIC.