rising_star

Nope, not unreasonable at all. My advisor didn't hood me because he wasn't available. I got another professor who I respected and had a good relationship with to hood me instead.

I think it's pretty common for people to apply to multiple apartment complexes since you don't know if you'll be accepted. I did it a couple of years ago when I moved to a college town, just to make sure I'd have some place to live.

You should ask but, in my experience, their concern is that you have graduated before you start your graduate coursework. I moved my MA graduation from May to August and no one even asked me about it.

This really varies by department. If you can find out what other grads have worn, that might be helpful. Because, for example, no one ever wore a suit for their defense in my department as that was against departmental culture.

The Table of Contents is pretty easy if you set it up right in MS Word. You want to use one of the "Heading" styles for all of your titles and subheadings within a chapter because then you can easily create a ToC that will automatically update page numbers if you have to change other stuff. That is actually one of those things that only takes an hour or so.

You could try Scrivener if staring at long blocks of text is a problem. Or, you could try switching to a paper notebook if staring at the screen is presenting a problem. I find that unplugging and working on paper can force me to either write more sentences or write more clearly.

You definitely cannot get all of your references from people you work with if you want to be successful. You need to get at least 2 letters from professors who can attest to your potential to succeed in graduate school. Perhaps the person you oversaw your senior design team? Also, I bet you have more research experience than you think. What did you do during your internships? What did your senior design team do? Those probably involved doing some research, even if there wasn't a lot of it. That's something your recommenders can talk about and experience you can highlight in your CV and your SOP. To be really successful, you'll need to narrow down what you want to do somewhat. Read up on what people are doing right now in your field. Look at the lab pages of professors to see what they're working on. Read the abstracts of recently funded projects from NSF, DoD, etc. to see where the research funding is going. Spend several months doing that (so now until August or September). Only after that should you contact individual professors to see if they're accepting new students, explaining your interests, etc. Right now, when you're uncertain about what you want to do, you should not contact them.

Your reasons for going to UCLA are... weak. Georgia Tech and Cornell are far better options from what you've said. I hate cold so I'd say Georgia Tech.

Getting a hitch installed actually isn't complicated. Your mechanic should be able to do it or, if not, there are some U-Haul centers that will install it for a charge. For books, shipping via media mail isn't a bad idea. I moved my books cross-country that way and it was pretty affordable. Just don't use giant boxes so you don't hurt yourself or a postal worker.

CrashJupiter, if your wife is going to Kentucky and you may end up there, you may want to hold off on buying a house in Louisville. Certainly both of you living in Lexington and studying there would make for an easier commute...

I don't mind a hands-off advisor and value someone that can really help me make progress on my research so I'd stick with Advisor A. But, I'm also not you.

That sucks but, as GeoDUDE! has pointed out, it's also fairly common. It's still demoralizing and depressing when it happens. Take a few days for some self-care, dat_nerd.

Ah, sorry about that, victorydance. There's no compelling reason to buy a Yoga 2 over a Yoga 3, at least according to the computer reviews I've read. I don't usually see anyone even talking about the Yoga 3, which is probably why I assumed it as the yoga 2 under discussion.

If you need the extra time, ask for it. It's really not that big of a deal.

Without a fellowship or an assistantship, you shouldn't go to either program.

Funded PhD. You can always leave with a master's.

When you think about Northeastern's placement record are you factoring in that PI's placement record from previous schools? Because I wouldn't pin my future just on that. You need to be thinking about where graduates have been placed in the past 3-5 years since that is more likely reflective of the department's current performance (this is true of all departments, btw).

Am I missing something or is the starting price $749 on there? See also: http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/portals/students/?if you're an enrolled student. Regularly cheaper, though not if there's a holiday sale.

Dartmouth, without a doubt. A loan is a loan. Dartmouth is rural and isolated but a MA is only 2 years.

This totally depends on the department. In my MA department, the expectation was 3 graduate courses for both MA and PhD students. If you took a language class, then that meant you were in 4 courses. But, in my PhD department, the expectation was 2-3 graduate courses per semester depending on what was being offered. Some people did take 2 grad seminars plus a language course. The downside to taking fewer courses at a time can be that it takes you longer to complete your coursework. Also, some graduate schools have a minimum number of credit hours you must take to maintain your assistantship or fellowship.

I would include where you're going since they're likely to find out anyway.

Let us know what you decide!

Hi James, This is a forum for people applying to graduate school, not to get a bachelor's degree. You'll need to post elsewhere to get a good answer to this, so I'm locking this thread. Best of luck to you!

Actually, I'm not sure why the $1200 price tag for a Yoga keeps getting thrown around. They are routinely under $800 because of the frequent sales Lenovo has (both on their main page and on their education page). That makes them not dissimilar at all from the price of the Dell 13s that were mentioned above. As someone that basically always needs a computer around, I will say that the weight definitely matters. I walk, uphill, to get to my office so I can tell the difference in adding a pound or two to my bag. If you walk or bike a lot, the weight of the computer is something you should consider if you'll be taking it with you regularly.

I just use Google Calendar to schedule everything, but I've never had to do the kind of thing you're talking about.