St Andrews Lynx

At this point, if you really want to get the PhD I don't think you have any choice but to just keep going. In regards to the data fabrication I would probably speak to a university ombudsman or a similarly impartial advisor: if you want to whistle-blow then you will need a strong paper trail and to know what the official policy & procedure is (whistleblowing to the university vs the funding body, etc). Bear in mind that once you whistleblow the whole lab could be shut down/dissolved, and your name will be associated with that PI in the process. That's not to say don't do it - just think about all the possible consequences and how you would prepare for that. Also, find friends. They don't have to be fellow grad students - although they would be easy to meet - but try to do something outside of the lab that puts you into contact with new people. With regards to the issue of you labmates - how often do you try and engage them in (non-work related) conversation? It sounds like at the moment you are hiding from them - if you only work at nights they will assume you want to be left alone. I would make more of an effort to engage with them - the more they like you the more they will try to accommodate you. Although Chinese culture & language is very different from Western culture & English...at the end of the day we're all human with the same needs & emotions. Try to find common ground rather than focussing on the differences.

Honestly, if a 3 equates to "good/meets expectations", then what Professor 2 said to you about being "perfectly happy" with your work matches up with that score. Your TAing abilities didn't blow him out of the water...but you met his expectations and were consistently good. I'd say that 3/5 is a positive rating and nothing to stress about. Some people are just harder to squeeze marks out of, even if they are pleased. Other people are overly generous with their marks. All the professors probably have different internal criteria for judging their TAs - getting marking in on time might not be important to some (if say the marking is graded thoroughly and fairly) but explaining stuff clearly & helpfully to students counts for a lot.

DanieleWrites - go away and only return to this thread when you've eaten a crepe with Nutella & banana filling. Then try to tell me that you don't like crepes...

If we're still thinking about the economic & business model of academia... Narrowly restricting the types of grad students reduces the risk of attrition...but it would also reduce the creativity, cross-fertilisation of ideas and other such awesome things. Taking a chance on an applicant with an atypical profile - perhaps their bulk of research experience is in a different field, perhaps their stats are low, perhaps their educational background is non-traditional - means bringing in new perspectives and new strengths. It's a gamble because these students may not complete or bring in anything new; but the school could gain a lot if that gamble pays off. I agree with Loric that higher stipends, better working conditions and all that are good ways to reduce attrition in PhD programs. I've read reports about female STEM grad students and the leaky pipeline and that's are what those reports recommend. Some international data on attrition rates would be useful - from what I've heard about Scandinavian PhD programs, their salaries are a lot more generous than those in the States...

It sounds easy. Just weed out the "climbers", the "quitters", the non-"top applicants" and you'll get grad programs with 100% completion rates! ...Except how to do you do that? From what has been said in this discussion already, the "top applicants" overlap with the "climbers". Isn't "professional ambition" and "wanting to better oneself" important/desirable traits in grad students? It wouldn't make much sense for a grad program to recruit mediocre deadwood if they want a strong teaching & research profile. Then how to do you determine if somebody is a "quitter" or a "climber"? Was there anything in Loric's 1st MFA application that would have told the adcom that he was going to drop out? Should grad programs start psychometrically testing their potential applicants? Honestly, I think that adcom's are probably doing a good job of admitting candidates that they think are going to complete.

Tell me how the adcom would be able to predict that.

I've seen personality traits that lead me to suspect somebody is going to quit their PhD program. But these traits may not come out in the applications or LORs (the traits might not be apparent until they're in a grad school environment). I've also watched a very smart candidate (has research experience, a fellowship, does well in courses) make the mistake of trying to get into a PI's group to the extent of neglecting all other options...only to watch that PI's funding fall through, and find themselves placed in like their 3rd choice group. I've seen other talented "top applicants" have similar issues trying to get into their group of choice (the PI just liked someone better, there was really limited funding). I wonder if those students will still be here in 4 years' time... I would say that's it is all well and good being a "top applicant"...but even the most fantastic, experienced grad student will require optimal conditions (say a hands-off supervisor, small research group, living in the same city as their partner). Put that fantastic grad student in sub-optimal conditions and they're going to be miserable and contemplate dropping out. Of course the admissions committee tries to match grad students to PIs in the admittance process, but the adcom can't control how many or which applicants eventually accept the school's offer. Side note: I'm a chemist, one of the first things you learn as a chemistry student in high school is about entropy (disorder). One of the Laws of Thermodynamics says that the entropy of the universe is constantly increasing. Most of what you see out there is just disorder.

As has been said already in this thread, a lot of the reasons that people don't finish have nothing to do with the applicant's skills or abilities. It's also the case that if you are a "top applicant" it means (i) you're smart (ii) well-qualified (iii) have gathered work/research experience in your chosen field (iv) you've cultivated good LORs before entering grad school. What I've seen with top applicants like those in my field is that they realise they've actually got a good stab at the professional job market and decide they want to get on the career ladder now, rather than wait 5 years.

"Completion rates" might be a misleading term. I believe that some schools omit the students who left with an MS from their "PhD completion rate". That means the school can conceal the number of students who entered the PhD program but who changed their minds/dropped out/were made to leave, etc. with the obligatory MS.

I have seen this happen in industry as well: short notice for a job interview, on the logic that "If they're serious about getting this position, they will come." I imagine that the search committee uses it as another weed-out filter: invite a short-list of 10 candidates at very short notice, then you'll only probably need to interview 7 of them. Can they expect people suitable for the job will come at such short notice? Of course! That's the economics behind this approach: if you can get away with it, you can bet somebody is busy doing it. Of course it favours the people who are able to make such a short-notice trip: adjuncts, people with families/dependants, those who don't have a spare $1000 floating in their account aren't.

Is this data for both full and part-time Masters courses? They way this is written it sounds like most of the MS students who drop out are part-timers (perhaps being sponsored by their employer) holding down a job at the same time. In that case I don't think it is necessarily a costly mistake for those people to drop out of their MS programs...

It really, really depends on where you are in the USA as to how much these things will cost. It will usually take a couple of weeks for the school to process your forms and get you on their payroll (assuming you are able to give them bank details immediately). That might mean you have to wait closer to 2 months for your first paycheque. Personally would bring at least two month's rent. Probably 3 would be better, for the reason I've given above. Other costs you need to factor in are - Hotel or temporary accommodation while you hunt for apartments. - Food. You might be eating out more in the first few months before you move into a place of your own. - Temporary Travel insurance. The school's health insurance is probably not going to start until a couple of months after you have arrived (it took about 3 months for mine to start). You are expected to have some kind of health insurance coverage in place from the moment you enter the USA. - Textbooks, stationary and other study materials. Textbooks for graduate courses can be expensive, although there will usually be older students willing to lend you their older copies.

I think as long as what your LORs say you did matches up to what you say you did in your SOP then there won't be a problem (ie, you worked in Professor X's lab as an analytical chemist, worked with a GCMS to do ___, Project 1 involved __). To me this doesn't sound like deception - just normal research. The exact details of what you researched matters less than (i) your level of independence, intellectual input & general competency (ii) your ability to get publishable results from a project (which you did). After all, the odds are that you won't be researching the exact same thing you did as an undergrad when you are in grad school anyway - so in that sense the research project itself isn't all that important.

For NYC I think you can hold off several months - it isn't exactly what you'd call a small college town. Also, there's more than students living in the city, so the start & end date of leases won't be tied to the academic year as much. Looking through the archives of housing messageboards at your university of choice should tell you when the majority of students start advertising for spare roommates and how long before Fall semester apartments are put on the market.

First thing I do when I want to really understand a paper is to print it out. Then (if I'm completely serious about understanding what's going on) I make myself a cup of tea. I'll then go through the paper and underline, annotate, summarise. Exactly how I approach the paper will depend what I want out of it. Am I simply acquiring background information? Do I want to use their experimental procedures? Was I attracted by a snappy, cool title when browsing for something else? If there's a term I don't understand or a concept I've never come across before, I'll sometimes search for additional literature reviews of said Concept. Or even use Google to get the 2 sentence summary. Often a detailed knowledge & understanding of the jargon isn't necessary to understand the paper itself, at least...

I'm all about the strongest espressos, so the Ristretto and Indriya have what I've been using lately. I've not attempted to do anything fancy beyond black coffees with my machine...

I suspect that most schools will have some kind of off-campus messageboard or listings (either official or unofficial) that current students will post on when they're looking for roommates. Personally I'd check on those before I went to Craigslist - at least that way you get to choose from a pool of fellow graduate students. Cash-wise I'd go ahead and beg my parents for a donation or no-interest loan. There's also enough time to hunt for a stop-gap menial job (stocking shelves in a supermarket, waiting on tables, cleaning) before Fall 2014 and start saving. It might take a couple of months to find such a job...but that still gives you 5-6 months of payslips before the move.

That's not necessarily a good thing. Of course you want to get the project moving...but you will also look bad in the eyes of your PI if you aren't seen to "work well with others", or come across as arrogant & aloof towards fellow group members. Nor is it necessarily fair to say that somebody would be best suited to a lab technician role, when it doesn't sound like they've been given much of a shot at independent "legitimate" research. It takes more than 1 or 2 brainstorming sessions to turn someone into an independent scientist. You might have to take a step down and say "We are going to vary X, Y, Z variables because ___. Then to make a good publication we need to prove that __ happens. Here are some good reviews on the area we're looking at." Then delegate work so you aren't dominating the project. Respect their input and ideas, even if their first "interpretations" are way off base, be polite in explaining why to encourage them to keep contributing intellectually. I don't see why this has to be a disaster, just because their stats aren't as good as yours.

I wouldn't worry about the reputation of your school - I'm sure it can take care of itself. Talk to the individual and make your expectations clear for working jointly on projects. Help him out by discussing strategies for thinking critically about problems (treat somebody like a lost cause...and they usually end up acting like a lost cause) - everybody had to start from scratch at some point. If he's really problematic then talk to the PI and suggest that with the individual's lack of experience he could benefit from working with a more senior group member/post doc.

...Why is this a problem? What does it have to do with you?

There's no guarantee that somebody with a 4.0 UG GPA, publications, immaculate GRE scores and a fellowship would actually succeed in a PhD program, though. In fact I've seen people with those sort of stats get passed over for their top choice research group, because their research abilities just didn't cut it. If they've got a Masters then that means they will have some academic research experience, surely? For all you know they did a damn good job on their research project, even if it didn't lead to a publication. Or you've not heard the full story (maybe they had major health problems whilst in undergrad). I don't think there's any need to be snobbish or bitch about somebody else's prior record and how your stats are better than their stats.

Dealing with the stress. Physiologically and emotionally. I felt stressed in ways I don't usually feel stressed.

I can emphathise with the sensations after the grad school admission offers came in. For me, once the immediate delight of the offers came in...it all felt a bit anti-climatic. That I should have been more excited than I was about such a major thing. It's OK to be scared, especially as you get down to sorting out the details of such a large move. It helped me to really micro-plan the first few weeks in a new location from the comfort of my old home - looking at the website of new activities/social groups I could join, playing with Google Streetview of new neighbourhoods (to work out where I'd go when I arrived), checking out Yelp or tourist sites to get some ideas for places to explore. That way, once I actually arrived I felt (i) I had everything under control (ii) it wasn't as stressful or confusing (iii) I had A Plan. My moods fluctuated a lot in the run-up to my move from the UK to the USA. Everything from sadness, anxiety, uncertainty, excitement, determination - often within the space of hours. If I didn't have the fear of being without friends, I don't think I would have been as motivated to go out there and make the friends I did. So hold on. Spring and sunlight is coming back!

It's some kind of arty, theatrical MFA you're applying for, isn't it? Tell us its title, and we can tell you how stupid we think it is.