lewin

The important thing is to be perceived on an upwards trajectory so this..... ...is perfectly fine. I have a friend who did her undergrad at arguably the top program in the country for her specialty, then continued with the same advisor for graduate school. You'd be nuts to begrudge someone for doing that. But this... ...isn't always true in my experience. Maybe they're exceptional for that program but if the program is bad then it doesn't speak well to stay there. Go to Harvard, stay at Harvard = great. Go to nowhere college, stay at nowhere college = bad.

Just my two cents but bad idea. First, your advisor said so and this early in your PhD that relationship is important. Second, they say 3-4 hours prep for each hour of new lecture, so I'd expect 2-3 full days each week prepping, lecturing, etc. That's going to hurt your research a lot. Third, if your fellowship doesn't allow TA work it might not allow this either. Usually the point of external funding is that you don't have to teach.

In this job market funded > unfunded. Always. PhD at same place I think isn't so bad anymore. Doing a postdoc where you did you PhD, however, still screams "I didn't have other options", I think.

As others have said, a phone call is the way to go, ideally to somebody like a department secretary or grad coordinator who wouldn't conceivably be holding a grudge against you. No need to mention that you're not coming. "I submitted my receipts for a campus visit to [person] on [date]. I haven't heard back from them, so I'm calling to confirm that they're being processed and check on how long it might take to be reimbursed." ETA: I was reimbursed just fine from three different places I turned down, so I don't think "rejected, still want money" is an unusual situation.

There was a recent case of somebody diagnosed with PTSD after prolonged harassment over the internet. That could spark some discussion of whether/how your criteria apply to the case. Just google "twitter PTSD" and be mindful of the tabloid hysteria, which is thick with this one.

I'm in your field so I can speak to those norms. Your advisor's rationale is a bit silly because most review masked so prestige shouldn't matter. Moreover, I've never submitted to a journal that required authors' degrees, so BA or PhD shouldn't come into it. (APA convention is that degrees aren't listed.) But here's the crux of the matter: "His contributions are that he generated the grant and designed the study, and was also central in the execution of it, so he's rightly going to be the last listed author." If you stated that correctly, your conclusion is backwards. When I see "designed the study" I also infer that the ideas were his in the first place. All in all, "having idea, designing study, executing it" would warrant rights to first authorship, in my opinion. Actually paying for it shouldn't matter, except to the extent that if it's grant-funded it means he developed the ideas. To be blunt, no offence intended, analyzing the data is a relatively minor contribution unless it's exceptionally complex data. Even writing the methods and results is a minor contribution compared to the other things you listed. And in writing, it's the introduction and theoretical frame that are much more critical. So in sum, I don't think you can just "push ahead" with anything without your advisor's blessing. Norms in psychology would strongly say that it's his data and ultimately his decision about how this goes.

This might be too late for the OP, but for other people it's often a good idea, if possible, to propose a master's project that aligns with the purpose of your advisor's grant so that he/she will pay for it.

I don't know anything about this program (or cognitive neuroscience rankings) but a general strategy might be to find the top five journals and top two or three conferences in cog neuro and see how often faculty from Trento publish/present there. In a research database you could search by affiliation and most conference programs are online.

"PhD Student". Like Eigen said, "Candidate" usually means you've passed comps and had your dissertation proposal approved.

^^Oh yes, good catch. I said "definitely say PhD Candidate" but I also meant "assuming that you ARE one."

I don't know what the letter's about but in this context it seems to me that's most relevant is your job title, e.g something like : Name, M.A. Counsellor, University of X Clinic If it's about insurance it really doesn't matter that you're a PhD candidate. (In academic emails I would definitely say "PhD candidate" though).

Check with your advisor first. Some love collaboration, but it wouldn't be unheard of to get a response like, "You have an extra 10 hours per week? Maybe you should be spending more time in the lab."

Not to jump to conclusions because I clearly wasn't privy to the experiences you've had with your current advisor, but the one example you give ("such as the fact that I am not suited to go to grad school") is not necessarily the mark of a bad advisor. Some people aren't suited for grad school and it's a good advisor who is honest with his/her advisees about their chances. It's not necessarily a slight either; grad school is a hard slog with bad job prospects at the end of it. All I mean is that it might be worth a bit of introspection or seeking a second opinion where you ask somebody to honestly evaluate your credentials and prospects. Another thing I'm sensing is the search for an advisor who "truly cares" and "truly supports" you. A good advisor is someone with whom you can have a mutually beneficial and productive relationship, not someone who will just support you. There's an element of that, of course, but it's a two-way street. More so, a pre-graduate-school RA job isn't necessarily one where you should expect your research interests to be supported. Your advisor might be thinking that he/she hired you to help do research. A good boss here will give you a good reference letter, not necessarily encourage whatever (possibly) idiosyncratic research interests you might have. So, suggestion #2 is that it might not hurt to re-evaluate your expectations of what to get from an RA job or from an advisor.

Just FYI, MTurk doesn't allow requesters from outside the United States, though there are some workarounds like getting a friend with a U.S. credit card or going through an intermediary company that uses MTurk's AOI (e.g. CrowdFlower). They won't confirm but we all think it's something to do with money laundering laws, e.g., people outside the country funneling money to people inside.

I don't want to be crabby, but do you think that explicitly telling people the study is about "dark triad" traits or narcissism might create social desirability concerns and bias your results? Seriously.

By coincidence I came across this article today: "Broward College Adjunct Professors Make Maximum $16,000 a Year; They Are Now Unionizing, May Strike". Doesn't get much worse than that! I made more money as a PhD student.

This. Could you train to be a dentist or nurse online? No, it just doesn't work that way and any program that purports to give you the same training, in my opinion, is bordering on fraudulent.

The problem is that those usually have virtually no job security and near-fast-food-level wages.

I wrote research but should have said "graduate school success". Some the research on this was actually done on medical students too. Here's one example of a study that reviews the literature too. Conclusion: "People form confident impressions [from unstructured interviews] and these impressions can interfere with the use of valid information. Our simple recommendation for those making screening decisions is not to use them."

That NYU MA program comes up every year. I think consensus is that it's a cash grab. High tuition, no funding, and would you have any access to good faculty? I got in but passed on it.

I'm glad the interviews seemed helpful for you, but the data suggest that when they become a part of the accept/reject process they don't actually predict things. So visiting and meeting people might have seemed really helpful for you as a candidate--I'm not aware of research on campus visits in their entirety--but interviews are not; professors who think they can "feel out" or predict who will be a successful graduate student based on interviews are mistaken. The hypothesized explanation for this is that the set of skills required to perform well on an interview is different than the set of skills required to be a good researcher. And to be a bit snarky, you only think you got insight from the interviews. It's too early to tell whether you'll be successful at the school you chose. Maybe you would have been just as successful at a program that was chosen based on other criteria.

There is research showing that performance on unstructured interviews isn't uniquely predictive of graduate school success over and beyond the written record. My program didn't do pre-acceptance interviews but did invite people for campus visits for recruiting. Edit to add: But everyone who likes interviews thinks they have some special insight that allows them to predict things from interviews. That's mostly illusory. Future clinical students! Your assignment is to go read some Paul Meehl, especially this article. Go forth and be anointed by the power of statistical prediction.

I don't know anything about this school or education programs, but I know of at least one psychology program that does this and, in my opinion, it's just a cash grab. The PhD program is world-class, but the MA program is expensive and students get no resources or funding. You already have a master's, I can't imagine how a second one would help.

To be blunt, the career you're hoping for doesn't exist. To teach university-level psychology you almost always need a PhD, which is a research degree. This is because the underlying philosophy of academia is that students should learn from people who are active researchers (professor = research + teaching + service). It used to be that maybe you could get away with a master's to teach at a community college somewhere, but there are so many PhDs on the market that I think this isn't true anymore. If you tell PhD programs "I'm interested in teaching, not research," you won't get accepted. And even if you do get in, slog through 5 years of research, and graduate, there are very very few teaching jobs with any job security. If you just teach, you're probably doomed to contract positions that pay terribly and are renewed term-to-term. Most adjucts do it because they (1) have something else and like teaching on the side (2) want an academic job eventually and are doing this to pay the bills and stay in the system.

Also it's been a while since I looked at the requirements, but I think the NSERC USRA can only be held with somebody whose lab is NSERC funded. In that case, I suspect it would be more useful for you to work in a clinical psychology lab than in a lab that does less relevant research (cognition? perception?). And as a grad student you'll probably be applying for CIHR, so that "NSERC leads to more NSERC" idea (which I've heard too) is less relevant for clinicians.