St Andrews Lynx

There are a lot of academics out there who don't have the best social skills. There are plenty professors who can diplomatically tell a prospective student that they don't have funding/space* and think you should join another research group. But to me this sounds like a professor who doesn't really want you to join their group but isn't managing to give you an outright rejection. He's stalling for time ("go away and think about this"), bringing up multiple concerns (funding, hobbies, do you know what you're getting in to). I mean, accepting someone into a research group isn't difficult ("You want to join our lab? Great! Let's meet next week to talk about projects."). It's like when someone is trying to dump you: "I don't know if I want a serious relationship," is a face-saving way of saying "I don't want a serious relationship with you." Except in this case "Are you sure you want to do a PhD in my lab?" could well be a way of saying "I'm not sure that I want you to do a PhD in my lab." * Sometimes academics use a concern about funding as a way of rejecting someone they feel would be a bad fit personality for their group. Because you can't argue with a lack of funding in the same way you could argue about "motivation" and "fit", and it avoids hurting the grad student.

I'm not sure that a Masters degree would add that much. Especially if you have research experience already from your undergrad time. Personally, I'd always go where the money is. It's perhaps a stupid question of me to ask - but are you sure about the MD route? Do you have medical experience and does it excite you as much as the chemistry research does? Something like a biomedical PhD might solve your issues of funding (because they would pay you), be less challenging that a combined MD-PhD course...but still allow you to make an impact in the world of medicine and do the research that you enjoy.

Glad to hear from you, and I'm pleased that you're doing well. Good luck with the licensing exam!

Google Scholar shows the number of citations a paper has, and you can search by PI name. That you don't need any kind of institutional access for. If you're enrolled in an institution then you can use SciFinder and Web of Science - both of which will give you citations and allow you to analyse the publication list by year, journal name, etc. You can also look for an individual PI's "H-index". Chemistry's my field, but publication rate can vary a huge amount between subfields, and depending on the size of a group (e.g. a 10-person lab publishing 15 papers per year vs. a 40-person lab publishing 20). And as hippy scientist has said, there's a lot of other factors involved in choosing a lab/being happy in a lab.

Sometimes professors forget that you emailed them a document last week. Or the email got buried in their inbox and they don't want to waste time hunting for it. Laziness and absent-mindedness seem to be the main reasons. So yes, I'd say what you describe is fairly common. Don't take it personally if they can't remember where they left the printout of your paper.

If you're getting along well with Professor B, then I'd ask them directly if they will be around to serve on your committee. Don't take a No answer personally. Be proactive and approach the other professors: at this stage you can just say that you're interested in having them on your committee, and see what their response is. Even if your borderline emeritus prof does plan to serve on your committee, it doesn't hurt to talk to the other faculty.

If your boss asks you to do something, you can't just not do it. You can try and negotiate ("I'm overloaded with course work this week, can I present my research idea at the next meeting instead?"), or ask for clarification ("What is involved in presenting a research idea in this group? Is there an approach you'd recommend for doing this?"). But if I was a professor who asked a student to come up with an idea, have the student either say "Yes" or not reply (which would imply consent to a lot of professors), but learn that the student hadn't done what I'd asked...I would be annoyed. If the student then argued with me instead of apologising, I think I would be even more annoyed. In the OP's place, I would try and put more priority on my research, and focus on saving energy with the TA work (you don't need to be perfect as a TA, it might mean relaxing how strictly you grade the papers or how closely you look at the answers to cut down on the time spent with the assignments). After my first semester as a TA I did become a lot more efficient, simply through experience. As others have said, getting the perspectives of other PhD students is important, as is communicating with your advisor about expectations as soon as they ask you to do something. This doesn't strike me as an issue about suitability for grad school: rather, learning about how to balance all the competing demands within the PhD experience.

I'd start with talking to your friends and acquaintances. Who do you know working in the career areas that you're interested in? If you don't know any, try asking around to see who has connections. Find out about their qualifications, their routes into their career and how they feel about their job. Hunt around online for the fora where specialists talk/vent about their work (as just one example: reading The Chronicle of Higher Educations' forum on academia is a must for anybody interested in academic careers). As others have said, hold off on the grad school/online program thoughts until you've got a better idea of what you want to do. If you really want to go for online courses, be sure to vet them very carefully: you don't want to waste your money on a paper mill university that no employer will value.

It wouldn't hurt to check in with your letter writers to ask about places they would recommend you apply to. I'd take their advice with a grain of salt (their knowledge of schools might be outdated or biased), but it will be useful info and hopefully multiple profs say roughly the same thing.

Always assume that your PI forgets everything. Always assume that they are unreasonably bad at joining the dots. Of course it would be reasonable to assume "multiple grad students discussing with PI about a travel grant application over ~6 weeks" => PI knows that the deadline for letter of rec must be coming up soon and so should be on the lookout for grad student's reminders. But that was not the case. As others have said above, you need to be explicit and break down your demands into single chunks that couldn't be lost in the middle of any other messages (be it email, in person chat meeting). For this case, I'd just apologise profusely. Say that you thought you had sent an earlier reminder and leave it at that. I don't think arguing would make her read her emails more closely in the future.

What's the problem with the schools you were admitted in to? Is it location? Research not a great alignment? Bad funding? More problematic PIs? I ask because even if the alternative programs don't excite you, it still might be better to go to another school, do good research (even if it's not quite what you wanted to explore) and consider leaving with an MS if it doesn't work out. It might be better than staying put, since I'm not sure how supportive this PI is going to be towards your PhD applications (they sound spiteful, neglectful and something of a hot mess).

I don't think you can really determine safety schools by their ranking alone. Even though the schools suggested above are a bit lower in the rankings...every other student who is trying to get in to an elite school will be applying to those as "safeties". I'd focus on applying to good program where there are 2-3 professors you could see yourself working for (check that Grubbs is actually still taking on PhDs, I've heard that he's close to retirement and most of his PhDs are jointly-supervised). If you're a good fit then your application will be what gets you in, not your fine-tuned definition of "safety" and "reach".

Yes, I get it. It happens a fair amount when I TA: my students are often applying to med school (and care about their GPA) or this is the first course where they are being challenged and getting lower grades than they are used to ("I'm an A student. Why aren't I getting an A in this class?"). Some of my strategies: Name-dropping the professor. "Oh, Prof X specifically told us that if the student didn't show __ to only give them a B+" "Prof X grades several of the essays with the TAs every week." That's a great way of shutting down students who are threatening to escalate. Telling the student to go and discuss it with the professor if they're still arguing in circles with you. "Look, I've explained this several times. If aren't happy with my explanation then I suggest you take it up with Prof X." If you're the one who brings in the idea of escalation, the students know it isn't something you feel threatened by. Stopping the argument if it goes in circles too many times. Just tell them that the discussion is closed. Don't indulge an argument for longer than useful. Thinking when I grade. Does this fit the rubric? If a student came back and argued about my grading, how would I justify myself? It makes me more confident in my decisions and ensures I've preformed my arguments before the student has seen their paper. From my experience, students only argue with me about grades once. When they see that I'm not the kind of person who budges they tend to knock it off, or at least refrain from arguing so doggedly next time. If students are repeatedly coming back at you to argue about every single assignment, then there may be an issue with how you're presenting yourself to them. Or they're just obnoxious sexist jerks. Those exist.

I'm not sure that my initial letter came with details about the visit weekend (I was also an international applicant). I think I emailed the adcomm head and told them I wanted to come visit (...and could they cover some costs). The schools all want to recruit you. And if you frame your request as increasing the likelihood that you will be recruited then I think they will try to help you.

My personal advice would be to see if a friend could substitute in for you on TA duties for 1-2 days. When I was applying to US schools from abroad they did actually offer me either partial or full reimbursement for transport/accommodation to the visitation weekends. From what I've seen, schools are pretty flexible when it comes to visits - you don't have to attend the official visiting day, the admin will nonetheless arrange meetings with POIs on your behalf.

That's an over-generalisation. From what I've seen, there is a decent mix of lab sizes in the Top 10 Chemistry departments: from 10-40 people is the range. As others have said, you get a mix of very competitive lab environments, as well as ones that maybe work long hours but the people aren't as cut-throat. From what I've seen a single lab can also change its personality over the years: if there were grad students who didn't get along then it turned the whole lab toxic...but once they left everybody chilled out a bit. Or the PI was going crazy trying to get tenure...but ever since they were promoted they calmed down. I'll also just say it: it's OK to decline an offer from a Top 10 school in favour of a lower-ranked place (that fits you better). I know of folk who felt strongly conflicted, like they must join the best lab at the best university they were admitted to, even when they could see it was a bad match. There's no point being miserable in a lab, you can't do good science that way.

There are plenty of hands-on advisors that love to have weekly meetings with their students, who will expect weekly updates and are happy to talk to their students whenever they happen to knock on the door. Sadly, it sounds like your advisor isn't one of them. In answer to the question in the title: I don't think you have a bad advisor, just a hands-off one. It is unfortunate that your advisor wasn't comfortable communicating their dissatisfaction with your meetings/drafts, but I'm afraid that happens a lot with academics. Advisors aren't obliged to help their grad students with things like SOPs, work-in-progress paper drafts or to drop other commitments to talk to their students (there are plenty of administrative or research issues that will be higher on a PI's priority list than an update meeting with an MA student). My advice would be to avoid bringing this up with the DGS, since I don't think there is much they can do. As I said, they can't force a PI to do all the things you seek, and it will probably annoy your boss that you are escalating something that you should be able to deal with one-on-one. Go the office hours - I'd suggest monthly - and only submit "polished" drafts when you are close to the final product. Maybe a more senior grad student can look over your drafts and give some feedback?

I'd be surprised if you got total freedom to do your own research project in Chemistry. The best-case, most likely scenario I can think of would be "hey, I saw based upon my preliminary results that X happens. Maybe we could extend it to Y and then use it to solve problem Z?" But this would all be in the context of what your PI's research interests are. If they specialise in DNA repair your research has to come under that umbrella. It will be your PI's equipment, lab space & reagents that you are using, so in the practical sense it also needs to be aligned with what the PI is doing. The "how screwed" part? Well, that really depends on why the PI is less than ideal. It might be that their research doesn't excite you as much...but you still learn a lot, get publications and do well on the job market once you graduate. If the PI is bad from a personality/lab management style/funding standpoint then you could be miserable. My advice is to be open-minded. Both in terms of research and PIs. The grad students who spend their entire rotation period adamant that they must work with Professor A or in Subfield B often get badly disappointed.

Don't be afraid of being a little bit jerk-ish! Or to simply read off a list of bullet points on a piece of paper when you're meeting with your PI. It could be that in your attempts to be polite you're in fact being so indirect that your PI isn't picking up on what you actually want, or thinks you are satisfied with responses they are giving. This is at heart a professional, business relationship - you don't need to apply small talk rules if that isn't helping. I'd try and figure out - either through former students or older grads/researchers in your Dept just what the deal with your PI is.* A low number of former graduate students could be down to several things: a lack of funding, students just not interested in that subfield of interest...or that the PI is difficult to work for. If there are a lot of students that started with your PI but dropped out then that would be a big problem. If most of their students graduated (under a reasonable timeframe/ended up with good jobs/etc) then it might be not as a big a problem. But you need to find out this information. * There's always someone in the Dept who knows all the juice and will be delighted to share it. Corner them in private and simply ask "Hey, it seems that Prof X has only graduated 5 students in the last 20 years, do you know why that is?"

Taking a bit of time off between undergrad and a PhD program really benefitted me. I got some useful work & life experience in the process - lived in some new places, tried out a job in my intended field of study. I'd wholeheartedly recommend taking a year or two off, if solely for getting new experiences and making cool memories. I wouldn't say that being young was a detriment...but being older was definitely an advantage.

From personal experience, being proactive in starting conversations helps. Same as how even if you were in an English-only setting some people might not think to include you in their conversations if you didn't indicate that you wanted to chat, or they didn't know you. If they see you as more of a friend perhaps these people will start including you in their conversations as a result of that. I've been on the other end of living in a foreign country and learning a foreign language as I went along. It can be kinda embarrassing or nerve-wracking to start talking in a new language that you've not mastered: you worry about making an idiot of yourself, it takes a lot of effort to string together a sentence that you wouldn't even think about constructing if you were speaking in English. And this foreign language was from the same linguistic family as English (so the pronunciation wasn't alien, nor was the grammar). If I was trying to learn Mandarin or Korean I imagine it would be a serious struggle. I'm sympathetic to people who are learning a new language in a foreign country, and understand why they'd find it a whole lot easier to speak in their native tongue.

I'd deal with the placement issue on a lab-by-lab, rather than a school-by-school basis. It's hard to tell from broad statistics whether (I) there are some labs that are better at placing their graduates than others (ii) if the people who wanted to get a tenure-track academic job (for instance) were able to do so. Some PIs have good connections with industry or seen as good breeding/training grounds for future faculty. You can look on group websites or LinkedIn to try and find out if people found good jobs quickly. And try to ask grad students at the recruitment weekend (they're more likely to be honest and actually know about placements than the admin or PIs).

It might help to email your soon-to-be former PI telling her that you want to meet and perhaps bullet point the things you want to talk about. That way you won't be dropping the news on them, they'll know in advance what you want to talk about. You should also have a chat with your new PI about how best to wrap up your current work. It might be that your new PI would be OK with you spending some time on finishing up your current projects. Or they'll tell you that you have to start work on new project(s) and focus exclusively on that. In either case, you can get a better understanding of how much you should be realistically doing with your former lab. It sounds like your former PI is trying to be optimistic, perhaps to save face. Which is why she sounded confident about getting an extension and getting your projects published. Just be polite but firm about what you are or are not willing to do.

I'm sorry that you and your partner are going through this. Yes, it does sound crazy-making stressful. Don't feel that you have to disclose everything to the Dept. I think it is enough to say that you are struggling and have been experiencing "health issues" without getting too specific. You also might need to push back against your advisor and re-negotiate their suggested course load. The only other question to what has been asked above is whether the PhD program will get easier after this semester. Do you have further semesters of classes & coursework? Is there a way to get a research appointment that takes up fairer quantities of time vs. credit? If the IVF is going to continue for several years, how well will you continue to balance it with the demands of the program? Ultimately, if you believe the final decision you make is best for you...then it almost certainly is. Take care.

I'd say it depends on your personality how well you adjust to living with roommates. I'm a stereotypical introvert - I need private "down time" at the end of the day to offset being around people. I also need a lot of personal space so tend to retreat to my bedroom so that I'm not around anyone. This makes me a bad roommate: I don't really interact with other roommates, I'll maybe stay out of their way, too. But...there are plenty of people who are looking for that in a roommate. Some people want roommates they can be friends with and hang out watching TV with in the evenings. Other people prefer to have more space and want to get on with their private lives. I've had plenty of what I'd consider "good" roommate set-ups in the latter category...but I'm living alone now and that feels awesome. If you are keen on your own space then you might want to look for older roommates or those holding down jobs & not in school. I had a positive experience acting more as a lodger: my roommate owned the house and rented out the spare bedroom.