lewin

Will it be difficult? Yes. Most candidates have GPA's of > 3.5. The graduate-level courses is a good idea; it gives you an opportunity to show that you can handle graduate-level work. Make the most of it! You have an odd situation, having a bad GPA yet co-authoring several(!) papers, which is something that few undergraduates get to do. How the heck did that happen? Did you spend so much time on research that you didn't study? (I'm genuinely curious.)

Great advice from the above posters. I'd also recommend some hard self-examination. What led to a 2.5 average this year? Is it a factor that you can change? While it may be mathematically possible to end up with a 3.0 or 3.2, it requires getting all 4.0's from now on and that's easier said than done.

Agreed. If your friend is actually taking three months off (i.e., not working at all) that's a surefire road to an eight-year degree and eventual unemployment. If by "three months off" you mean "free of other responsibilities and able to focus on individual research for that whole time" then your friend is lucky and should make the most of it.

Look under terms of study on that link: I bet there's a good chance you'll have to repay your OGS. (edit to remove comment -- missed that you're a continuing student)

Agreed. Math helps to the extent that it teaches you to read formulas and do basic calculations, which you'll probably do in undergraduate stats, but the actual calculations you'll be doing are pretty simple (e.g., algebra). The more complicated stuff (e.g., hierarchical linear modelling, structural equation modelling) is really complex but in my experience most graduate students don't need to understand the underlying math unless one is specializing in methods. tldr: Statistics and probability are mandatory, anything else is above and beyond.

Well, I think so too but those outside the academe often do not

In my opinion a good letter has to be detailed in addition to being positive, and if your graduate advisor is going to be brief or vague (by necessity, because you two don't know each other well yet) then a letter from undergrad is better.

If you get a PhD you can call yourself "doctor", then explain to people "but not a real doctor".

There's an article called "kisses of death in the grad school application process" that could be helpful. It gives specifics to avoid. Just google that phrase in quotes and it will come up.

1. No, it's entirely merit-based. 2. No, but you need to register to take up the award. On your application you indicate when you'd like the award to start (e.g., September, 2012). 3. Application deadlines are in the fall, so you'd apply now for the 2012-2013 school year.

TA's at my university are $5000 each term for 10 hrs/week, or $2500 for 5 hrs/week/term. No tuition waiver, but here in Canada tuition is like $7000/year and TA's aren't the only funding; they're part of a more complete funding package provided by the university. But that's just for comparison. In 100 different schools, you'll find 100 different TA systems. Edit: And our group health plan is extra but is < $300/year.

People are usually unwilling to answer that first question because of concerns that others will scoop their ideas. Most likely, the only things someone will share are papers already in press, nothing earlier. If you'd really like to collaborate, my first suggestion is to offer your study ideas first and ask whether she'd like to run those studies with you, then see how it develops. This is also dangerous, because the person could decline and scoop your ideas. Definitely talk to your new advisor first. He/she might have advice or opinions about starting a collaboration somewhere else, such as wanting you to focus on your local work, not collaborate somewhere else. Another option is to run a few studies first, then send her an email saying "These are the studies we've run. I know you do similar work. Would you like to compare notes? Maybe by combining our data we have a paper." But again, this is something you should run past your advisor. My recommendation? Don't bother. Run your studies with your advisor and publish your paper the two of you. The other prof hasn't done anything yet and many "reading and planning" ideas never coalesce into actual studies. But you know she's working on it, so that's an incentive to work fast. And practically speaking, almost nothing exactly replicates something. There's always a way to make something look novel--with the theoretical framing or by running follow-up studies.

I have a desktop in my office and a laptop at home. At work, I like the large screen and that I don't have to lug my laptop to school each day. Also, my supervisor said he'd buy me an office desktop but not a laptop, so that decision was made for me. Otherwise, I've never--not once--used my laptop to take notes in class, but it's handy for taking to conferences, doing presentations, and working in coffee shops. For home use, I would never go back to a desktop and lose the flexibility of working anywhere (or watching TV in bed, etc). Unless you're doing something that requires crazy amounts of computing power a laptop is fine. I use SPSS, AMOS, word, excel, etc. on my Intel Core 2 duo 2.0 GHz with 4 GB ram just fine, purchased in 2007. Edit: I second the recommendation of dropbox.

I have heard that it's not a problem, so long as your new research still qualifies as SSHRC-funded research. You can't switch from English to Chemistry (for example). This is more an issue in my discipline, psychology, where a lot of research could fit into any of the three council's mandates.

There's certainly a relationship between the two, but it might be a third-variable problem. That is, having an MA SSHRC doesn't causally increase one's chances of a doctoral SSHRC, but being a strong candidate gets you both of them. In fact, I've heard that NSERC is much more predictable about funding people consistently and SSRHC is more unpredictable. Speculating, I think it's because NSERC committees are more homogeneous (i.e., natural scientists and engineers) while the evaluators on SSHRC committees can be more varied (e.g., english, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, history...).

For SSHRC PhD in 2009, the total success rate was 20% and among those passed on nationally it was 56%. I don't know why, but they don't break down the master's results like that on their statistics website.

Might it have been a really late rejection letter from her university? People who didn't get passed on to national competition have been rejected already.

It's never "necessary" it's just prudent, saving time and money if your potential advisor isn't taking anybody. And it can be good if the person reviewing your application later has seen your name before (see Mere Exposure).

Gotcha. You're right, "lazy" was a poor choice of words. I had meant it as a summary of "worked less hard than I did". Sorry, was this your interpretation of my program description, or how it works in your department? If mine, I should have been clearer: Internally funded students get $22k/year, and they have to TA 10 hours/week for it all year. Externally funded students get their award plus $10,000 and TA 5 hours/week for one term. For SSHRC master's, that's $27,000 and for doctoral that's $30,000 or $45,000. Their overall funding is WAY higher and all this is spelled out in the admission letter so nobody should be surprised. The disparity is in both money ($8k to $23k) and time (10 hours/week). And I can't speak for other programs, but for our heavily research-based program it's not reduced hours, it's hours redistributed from TA work (read: busywork) to research (read: the stuff that gets you a job). My point was that much of the awards are, in practice, random. Without going into the boring details about statistics and measurement error, let's say there are 100 applicants and awards are determined using a cutoff score. People scoring above are funded and people scoring below are not. It's likely that the top ~25 people correctly receive funding and the bottom ~25 are correctly rejected. But for the people in the middle, it's essentially random which of them happen to fall above or below the cutoff. It's more lottery than people realize.

...and I forgot to add that it will save you application fees if your potential POI isn't taking anybody.

You might have more luck in the fall. Now is often too early for profs to know whether they're taking students. Write something like: Dear Dr. So-and-so. I am a senior at X university and I plan to apply for the PhD program in ABC in Fall 2012. If you know already, will you be taking any new PhD students? I am interested in X and Y, and I especially enjoyed your paper on Z. I would be happy to provide more information on my background if you are interested; if not, please expect to receive my application in a few weeks.

Dislclaimer: I had NSERC MA and now SSHRC Doctoral, so I've had my share of funding and am quite satisfied with my own personal outcomes. I empathize with you and agree with a lot of your rant. But it's not as black-and-white as funded = works hard, non-funded = lazy. For SOME, yes. But for most there's a huge grey area in the middle of the curve, people who could go either way. Put another way, there is a LOT of measurement error--I've seen real data--in who gets funded. Getting funding both recognizes and exaccerbates differences between students. At my university some students enter with OGS or a master's SSHRC/NSERC. They get the award + $10,000 and a 75% reduction in TA load. No wonder they get more research done than somebody without an award who has to TA 10 hours/week all year. As a result, funded students are in a better position a year later when they apply for doctoral awards (because research counts, and TA's don't). Even assuming that the people who received an MA award were deserving, there's a lot of "rich get richer, poor get poorer" going on.

Many places in Canada and the U.S. adjust their internal funding if the student wins an external award, to save the school some money and to keep things more equitable among students. It can create some strife if some students--because everybody knows which funding people have--get like $40,000 and others only $20k or $25k. That's a big disparity between people who are basically doing the same work.

If you know in advance that you want out after two years but give the impression you will stay for your entire PhD, this is unethical. Advisors put a lot of resources--time, money, reputation--into their graduate students. Few students know what they're doing the first year or two, so it's really only in those final years (as a senior grad student) where you're producing quality work independently. Advisors "put up with" the first few years because the investment is worth it. It's like taking a term contract knowing you'll only be there for 33% of the term. People do it, but it's still unethical and burns bridges. (Of course, if you're frank with your advisor then all this is moot.)

If you know in advance you only want a masters, yes.