rising_star

It all depends on how you talk about them. If you say something like "I have been in contact with Drs. X and Y about our shared research interests and their willingness to take me on as a student" then it should be fine.

Graduate assistantships from the department, in addition to applying for external funding from X, Y, and Z. That's what I would say and I'd keep it incredibly brief.

If you have the test scores to get into a top MBA program, why do a post-bacc first? Just go straight into the MBA program! You don't need grad level experience in econ to get into those programs though you do need good quantitative schools. Another option would be to get a job working in management/economic consulting and then transition from there into a MBA program. Given your goals, getting a DBA doesn't make any sense.

Something like this could work if you don't want to use an online service: http://download.cnet.com/PDFill-Free-PDF-Tools/3000-18497_4-10435051.html or see here for additional resources: https://www.princeton.edu/~clusters/printless/pdf-manager.html

Yes, this is where you enter the contact information for the three people writing your recommendation letters.

I've never shared a room with my advisor, nor has such an offer ever been presented to me. Personally, I would try to stay with fellow graduate students instead though I guess it really depends on the relationship you have with your advisor.

Are they asking for a deposit along with your acceptance? If so, that definitely changes the decision-making calculus.

There's a variety of free programs you can find on the Cnet downloads page which will do this. Small PDF is one option but there are many others. Just make sure whatever you use doesn't leave watermarks in your documents.

I wouldn't consider it ironic at all, actually. Just like I don't expect the best neuroscientist to be the best neuroscience professor, I don't expect all education researchers to be good at teaching, especially since there are many who get a PhD in education without spending any time teaching or TAing in a college classroom. Like I said in my post, it wasn't meant as an attack on you. It's in response to a trend I've been seeing among graduate students to devalue teaching and teaching experience and assume it's something they can just pick up. I've long found that offensive since there's a great deal of scholarship around teaching and learning, knowledge of which can make you more effective in the classroom. For example, I'm constantly amazed and surprised by the unwillingness of graduate students to avail themselves of the Teaching Center on their campus. It surprises me because if you wanted research help, you'd go to an expert in your field or contact a librarian but, for teaching help, people tend to just ask their peers and not even consider consulting those with specific expertise in teaching. It irks me, in case you can't tell. And, for those who might want to be at a LAC or regional comprehensive, it could be the difference between getting a job and not getting a job. I work at a school in that group and we pay more attention to the teaching philosophy statement than we do to the cover letter because we're hiring someone who can teach first and foremost.

How did you receive this notification? Is this program to start in a different semester than the other potential programs? Is this an offer with funding? More information would be helpful.

Definitely! What was super awkward for me was that I didn't get accepted to stay in my department until after prospective admitted students already started visiting! It turned out that students looking to stay went through a different (and, to be frank, more difficult) admissions process which nobody warned me about.

THIS. 100%. The cover letters I sent out in my second year on the market were much better than the ones I sent out my first year. It probably helped that I entirely scrapped the letter from the first year and started fresh with brainstorming how best to present myself. I also got friends who had been on the market and landed TT jobs in other social science fields (I'm in the social sciences) to read and pick apart my cover letter, which helped tremendously. Because they knew me well, they could also point out important things about me and my background that were either not well conveyed or were buried too late in the letter to catch someone's attention. I trust them and their feedback because they have recently (in the last 3-4 years) gotten hired at the very types of institutions I want to work at (I've never aspired to be at a R1 or RU/VH). A good cover letter can help though. I've had a number of phone/Skype (so first round) interviews where someone on the search committee has explicitly asked me about something that's in my cover letter. So, to me at least, it's clear that you can do some signaling in your cover letter about your potential to do the job they want by thinking about the gaps/weaknesses in their program/department, how you'd fit into the school's culture/mission (more important outside of R1s, trust me), and the classes you'd teach. It helps to make sure you explicitly address the courses they list in the job ad, not just the fancy fun electives that you want to design and teach in the future. Showing that you're willing and able to teach the gen ed or core departmental courses can go a long way at a teaching-focused institution (whether that's a regional comprehensive or a LAC).

Three things come to mind: 1) Yes, it's a hard decision but it's not all-or-nothing right now. You can and probably should apply to a mix of departments/jobs because you never know what will happen. Some R1 departments have a 2-2 load, others 2-1, and some the mythical/magical 1-1 (granted some of this is achieved by negotiation rather than being explicitly available information). Having a job offer, even from a place you don't necessarily want to end up, can be a valuable bargaining chip for other jobs. So, I would say to keep the doors open until you can't anymore. For the record, even though I knew I didn't want to work at a R1, I still applied to some R1 jobs because they were in places I wanted to live or I could fill a particular niche in the department. Do I regret it? Not really. Was it extra time? Yes. But, honestly, once you've got your cover letter template, it's pretty easy to vary and tailor it to the specifics of a particular job/department/university. I would estimate the tailoring only takes about an hour once you've got the system down for yourself. Coming up with the template is admittedly far harder. 2) If you're thinking about the transition, keep in mind that at a R1, you're building your research skills but, those aren't the skills that will land you a job outside the R1 institutions or very elite LACs. To work at a place like regional state university or most LACs, they're going to be far more concerned with your teaching skills and how you interact with undergraduate students. At many LACs, undergraduates are on the search committee and if you don't impress them on your visit, you're done. I really hate that PhD students, especially those focused on research, are sometimes so dismissive of the skills required to be good teacher (note: not accusing you of this wildviolet but it's a growing pet peeve of mine since I see it a lot). I've honestly found developing new research projects to be easier than developing and successfully implementing new teaching strategies, though that may be field-specific. 3) My mom has a PhD in an education-related field and has never worked in higher ed. She's made a career working for school boards, the state government, and the federal government. It's worked for her, in no small part because she never wanted the professor lifestyle. It may help to do informational interviews with PhDs in those types of fields to see what they're doing and how they got there.

You should be able to find the date online. If not, you could call them to find out.

So, I'm more like Eigen in that I knew after the first year of my PhD that I didn't want a job at a R1. For me, it was the realization that I didn't want to have to work 50-70 hours a week every single week, to have my existence and value entirely determined by my ability to attract major grants (whose funding rates are declining as they have less money available and more people applying for it) and publish articles in journals which are too expensive for most people to access or read. It just didn't and doesn't seem worth it to me. Honestly, part of it was talking to faculty on the tenure-track, especially those at the advanced assistant prof stage, about what things had been like since grad school and what their advice would be. I was lucky enough to get a range of perspectives, including from those who were TT at a R1 and weren't exactly thrilled or who pointed out how much they rely on their partner to carry the household. I also gradually realized that they weren't lying when they said that being TT at a R1 is way more work than being in grad school. If you think about it, you need to do the same amount or more of research and grant writing, you need to teach more classes (the 1-1 load of a grad student is unlikely to happen, though a 2-1 load is possible), AND you need to supervise grad students. If you think about the amount of time all of that will take up, it's just going to add on work hours to whatever you're accustomed to. That was another major factor for me because I realized that I want to have a personal life and time to pursue my hobbies and interests which are not connected to academia or my research agenda. Transitioning from R1 to other kinds of colleges/universities is NOT as easy as it seems. When you apply for a job at a R2 or SLAC, they're looking to see if you can balance a heavier teaching load (3-2, 3-3, 3-4, 4-4) with doing some research. They're looking to make sure you won't totally flounder, flail, or fail when they put you into the classroom with 2-3 different preps in your first semester, some of which you've likely never taught before. In your application materials, they're looking for a research agenda which is realistic for the setting (so not one dependent on getting a major NSF award, requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars of specialized equipment, etc.). Honestly, having read the materials of R1 aspirants who are applying widely to TT jobs, I can't even tell you how common it is for them to apply to a SLAC and then talk about how they'll work with grad students, manage their lab, and about the $500,000 NSF grant app they're currently prepping. Your materials have to be tailored and that can be hard if you're coming out of a R1 where you weren't focused on teaching. Last thing on transitioning: I think everyone underestimates the amount of time/energy involved in being in your first year on the tenure-track somewhere. If you are trying to get your research off the ground, teach courses you've never taught, and adapt to a new institution all at once, you're going to find yourself with minimal time (at least in the first few years) to send out competitive applications for jobs at other institutions. And, the reference situation becomes very different once you're in a job because you'll need at least one reference from your current department, which means at least one person is going to need to know you're trying to leave. That's a big risk to take, especially if you end up not leaving... At any rate, I decided in my second year that I would prefer to be at a regional state university or liberal arts college. I don't like lecturing and prefer teaching smaller, discussion-based classes, which I figured out by teaching and TAing both as a PhD student. Knowing what kinds of classes I wanted to teach and who I am as an instructor has made it easier for me to both identify the types of institutions I want to work at and sell myself to those institutions in my application materials, interviews, etc. Doing some soul searching around what it is you want to be doing is always a good idea, imo. So, I think there is gendered advice which happens around this. By this, what I mean is that I think women and men are given different answers when it comes to being on the tenure-track and married. If you look at almost every discipline, you'll see that there's a lot of attrition between female undergrad majors, female PhDs who finish, females PhDs who get tenure-track jobs, and females who actually get tenure. The typical argument is that this represents women opting out and that more of them need to "lean in". That said, there's also a lot more going on there. Women are frequently penalized for needing to leave work early or stay home because of a sick child. A woman who wants children has to deal with the physical effects of childbearing (note that this is actually considered a short-term disability in the USA), which tends to have an effect on one's productivity not counting when one can actually take (often unpaid) maternity leave. So, while I wouldn't say that I've heard you can't be on the tenure-track and married, I have definitely been told that it can be difficult for women to have children while on the tenure-track.

As stated above, part of what I'm doing (or trying to do) is teach students about email etiquette which will apply when they're completing a summer internship or working a summer job. What I hate more than anything is getting negative feedback from an employer/internship supervisor about a student I sent their way because it's a poor reflection on me and can make it more difficult for me to get other students into that program/job. That said, I also really had a thing about students telling me what class they were in when I was in grad school and TAing for two different classes and a total of about 150 students. Having to look up their class to see what they meant was an added annoyance and time suck from an already demanding position. It's really not too much to ask people to be specific about what they need in an email. (And, it's even more confusing when said student is in both classes and you answer about the "wrong" class because they weren't clear in their initial email.)

Honestly, no, I can't help you make sense of this because it strikes me like a calculation error happened somewhere. That said, one thing to keep in mind with income-contingent is that they're expecting your income to rise over the years, enabling you to pay more on your loan. I know several people who have chosen the standard repayment plan but dedicated extra money to paying down the principal on the loan each month, thereby enabling them to pay it off early.

So, I've actually done this before. Basically, I made the fit paragraph/sections even more tailored than they already were. I also used phrases like "I look forward to continuing to work with Dr. X, given our successful research together in the past on A and B" or "I have spoken extensively with Dr. Y about continued collaborative possibilities given our ongoing research together." I mean, duh, you know that this prof knows you but, you also want to make it clear about how you'd benefit from the resources of the entire program, which means thinking about the coursework, who would be on your doctoral committee, etc.

Yea, this part confuses me. If you know that they only require three letters, why are you surprised that your application would be deemed complete once three letters are submitted?

There's likely nothing that you can do. Applications are typically deemed complete when everything has been received, which means that the minimum number of rec letters required has been met. If they only required 3 but you were trying to submit 4 anyway, you're probably out of luck. You can hope that they still read this fourth person's letter, assuming it gets uploaded in time, but that will be entirely dependent on the whims of the adcom. If you really needed this letter, then you should've chosen this writer over someone else for schools that only require three rec letters.

I would call rather than email.

That depends. Is there any information on their website about whether or not they are accepting grad students? Can you check to see if the group/lab has any major grants that could help fund graduate students? Also, when did you contact the professor and how long did you wait for a reply?

You have to go with what you can get, right? Do you have at least two recommenders who can vouch for your academic skills and potential as a graduate student? The HSBC thing doesn't sound like an issue for me since I doubt anyone will really care what email address was used to upload the recommendation letter.

Fair trade coffee or chocolate? It's something I've given as a small gift a lot and that has generally been appreciated.

Double spaced is generally what they mean when they specify length. But, you could always call or email and ask just to be sure.