rising_star

I wouldn't bother visiting unless you've already applied and been admitted. Why? Because at that point, they'll be paying for you to visit. As for languages, you'll need both Arabic and German. The German to read scholarly work, the Arabic for your fieldwork and to read secondary and primary sources. So, take both.

This totally depends on the state and the university. Where I'm doing my PhD, PhD students don't qualify for in-state tuition unless they do something else full-time for a year or do something else part-time for a year without being enrolled or are married to someone meeting the aforementioned criteria. So, I've never bothered to register my car in this state and didn't get a driver's license here for years because there were no benefits to doing so.

Like I said before, examples will only help you if they're from your institution. Every institution uses different forms and has different language that they do and do not allow. For example, the language that I used for participant observation at my MA institution would not fly with my PhD institution. You need to reach out to people at your university if you want samples.

Honestly, the grad students that aren't traveling pretty much always help out those who are by watching their pets. I've checked in on cats, dogsat, etc., to help out colleagues that wanted to travel. They've usually paid me in pizza, beer, or by returning the favor.

I've kept my car registered in my home state, but that's because they don't require admissions tests or anything like that. I think your plan sounds like a good one. Just know that to transfer the registration over, you'll need to have the title and probably something notarized by the other person if the title is in their name.

Try other departments that are related to yours. So, maybe political science, law, speech, etc.? Also, if all you have invested is an application fee, it could be worth it to just walk away. I've never paid more than $50 to apply for a place, which isn't a serious commitment.

Gramsci, Marx, Polanyi, and Foucault should be at the top of your list.

It depends. Would you be renting or buying regalia? Are there people that would come and see you walk? I didn't participate in my MA graduation, in part because I was about to start a PhD program so I knew there would be a big graduation for my family and friends to attend.

graduate33, I would check with your registrar first to see if there's any difference in the way they mark a Fail and a F. At my current institution, the only difference between the two is that failing a Pass/Fail course doesn't count in your university-calculated GPA.

PyschGirl1, why would the latter NOT make sense? Typically, if you're doing a project that involves two universities, you need approval from the IRB of both. I worked on a multi-university study (we were at University A and conducting interviews with students at College B and University C). Our school, University A, handled the bulk of the IRB. But, we needed to get approval from the IRBs of College B and University C.

Turnaround varies widely. For fully exempt, turnaround at my current institution is 4-6 weeks. At my MA institution, it was 2-4 weeks. Either way, that means wasting a decent chunk of your internship. My advice is to write broadly and include as many potential topics/categories as you can, submit as soon as you can, and then revise/modify with the IRB as necessary.

Even with completely anonymous research, you'll still need IRB approval and a disclosure form of some sort to give to participants, or at least have them read and verbally agree to.

SSP, this is going to be a brief reply but I'll come back to this in a few hours and add more information if I remember. If I don't, send me a PM. Okay, so I'm sure I and many others have examples of IRBs. But, the forms are different at each institution (and the ones at my institution have changed 3-4 times in my 5 years here), so I doubt looking at those would be of that much help. What you really need is to look at a recently approved IRB for someone doing similar research (so someone doing participant obsrevation). Some of this is, I think, you not understanding what IRBs really do. Even observation has the potential to be harmful to the participants depending on how that data is used. For example, you're observing in a lab. What happens if you see someone breaking scientific protocols or fudging data? Do you report this to their supervisor or do you just record it in your notes? If you opt for the latter, what happens if/when you go to publish something based on these data and those notes? Do you out the breach of protocol then? And, no matter when you do so, will reporting the breach of protocol cost someone their job? These are the kinds of things IRBs are concerned with and that you have to make clear in the methods section of your proposal. When you say that "no harm will come to participants", you have to offer options for what you'll do in the event that someone reports to you (or, less likely, calls your IRB or department) that they've experienced harm. Do you stop the study? Do you refer them to counseling services? Again, these are the kinds of questions they're looking for answers to. You can absolutely create a procedure without doing interviews. How many hours a day will you be observing? How will you decide who to observe and when? Are you following a person, an experiment, a lab? How often will you record your observations? What types of observational data will you be recording? Are you going to record what people do, make notes on their conversations, write down quotes, take pictures, etc.? Are you going to make the data anonymous and, if so, how? (By which I mean, how will you protect the confidentiality of the people you are observing? You have to think about this in terms of your data collection and any subsequent writing you might do using these data.) I think you might be better off thinking about this in terms of what kinds of research questions are you interested in that could be answered by collecting this data. Then, what kind of data do you need to collect and how? Hopefully this is a decent starting point. Good luck!

I took a class for fun and audited another both during the same semester of my MA. I haven't done that as a PhD student, but that's mostly because there hasn't been loads of stuff that I'm interested in and that fit with my schedule. Andean Pat, I pursue several interests outside of school and it hasn't been a problem. Lots of my classmates spend their time volunteering in the community and no one frowns on them for doing so. I train capoeira somewhere between 2 and 5 times a week, and it's not a distraction from my work at all. I even kept training through my comprehensive exams (so, I was taking 2.5 hour breaks during the evenings while I was writing my exam answers). If you want to make time for something, you will. That's really all there is to it.

I'm currently reading "Death at SeaWorld," partly for fun and partly for academic reasons. I'm also planning to re-read "Good Omens" this summer. As far as recommendations, I can make many. Any Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett, "Water for Elephants", "A Visit from the Goon Squad," and "Molokai" are the first things that come to mind. Oh, Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man".

Yes, leave of absence is still preferable. You want to be on good terms with everyone at your current institution because that's basically the only way you'll get into another institution.

Also, if you're being paranoid, you shouldn't keep the external backups in the same place. For example, if your external HD is with your laptop and both get stolen, you might be screwed. I shared an office with someone that backed up at work to a flash drive which lived in the office and at home to an external HD, which she put in a fireproof safe.

No problem, ak48. The way to find it is by logging into your account online and looking at the various options. I end up logging into my account all the time for things like discounts on online purchases or extra cashback by using their link. So, it's definitely worth investigating the customer service center of whatever cards you have.

I have lots of credit cards that I pay in full each month. I use different cards for different things but the commonality is that all of them are cards with no annual fee. Other than that, I focus on rewards, aka earning cashback or points that I can redeem for airline miles, hotel nights, or other things I might want. So, in a sense, some of my cards are through big banks but none of them are through banks that I have a checking or savings account with. I picked the cards for the rewards, and/or having a low introductory APR (very useful for moving if you don't have a few thousand saved up, but will be able to pay it off before the low APR goes up). I don't pay any attention to APR or other factors. ak48 makes an interesting point. That said, if you're shopping online, pretty much every major company now has an option that you can use to generate a dummy account number for online purchases that's good only once and, in some cases, even has a cap on the spending on that number. I've done that before when I didn't want to give out my real CC number and it hasn't been a problem.

Anyone else seen/read this blog post? I'll admit that there's some interesting insight into the structure of economics PhD programs and what happens in the academic job market for economists, but I take issue with the author's characterization of most PhDs as "lifestyle PhDs". I'd love to discuss this, since it's somewhat different than the usual "PhDs are worthless" and "Don't go to graduate school EVER" things that are often posted.

I haven't rented from big companies very often, but I recently did so with a spotty rental history and credit background (was living outside the USA for a while so my cards were open but not being used and there was no real way for them to call my last landlord). Since they rented to me anyway, I'm guessing that they were going on the fact that I was upfront with them about the spotty recent history (the VP of the company told me he appreciated my openness and honesty, which he said lowered rather than raised red flags) and that my record of paying is very good. Not sure how much this info helps but, you can always ask the company directly how your credit history affects your application.

This varies widely. My tuition is around $25K a year, and I'm only obligated to work 20 hours a week in exchange for that being waived. That's a pretty good "salary", but then I also get financially compensated for those 20 hours. The result is that my department spends almost $40K/year (not counting health insurance) to have me around.

I started my MA early but, partly it was because I wanted to and partly because I didn't have another job and needed the income. I definitely would not have done it without guarnateed money upfront. And honestly, if I were you, I'd stand up to make your supervisor respect your time *now* rather than later. If you have another job, then you can't just renege on your prior commitments. That said, I'd also ask if you could just come out for 2-3 weeks all at once and then find someone to sublet from during that time. Or, if you can make the move earlier, then do that. But don't drive 3 hours each way to be there for 8 hours. That's an incredibly long day of work and driving and you'll be exhausted (and thus a dangerous driver) by the end of it.

I would not talk about why it is that you don't have research experience. Instead, I would focus on the experience you do have. Have you written research papers for classes, analyzed data sets, collected either quantitative or qualitative data (for class, for an internship, as part of your job)? Have you taken courses on either qualitative or quantitative research, statistics, research methods, etc.? If so, then write about those things as having given you insight into and preparation for doing more in-depth research at the doctoral level.

The thing, for me at least, is that once I made my original CV, it never takes more than like 20-30 minutes to update it. All the sections are already there, so I'm just changing the content under them (like updating my dissertation title, adding a grant [so funding source, amount, and year], etc.). It's actually not a lot of work, which might be why I put it off. But the consequence of putting it off is that I sometimes send out a CV without all of my small (travel) grants listed. For me, this is not a big deal because I have a bunch of travel grants for conference presentations anyway but, it would have been a bigger deal if it was happening in my first year or two of the PhD when every accomplishment mattered since I didn't have that many.