rising_star

eyepod, that depends on how many credit hours the teaching practicums are. If they're only 1 credit hour, then you should be fine. I'm also not sure why you'd want or need to do two different ones in the same semester. Teaching practicums and teaching courses will be available throughout your graduate career so there's no reason to rush into them and possibly be overloaded.

Duplicate post. To reply, go here:

5? Ummm, no. This is not undergrad. 3 is usually the max number of courses one should take if you're at a school on the semester system.

I'll only answer a few of your questions. You definitely need at least 2 rec letters from professors. One thing you might consider is taking another undergrad anthro class or public health class. That would show your interest, help you refine your research interests (which will help you write a compelling statement of purpose), and perhaps give you a chance to get a more current letter of recommendation.

These threads might be helpful: I don't have any specific advice other than to secure a champion at institutions that's willing to accept you and fight for you to get into their program.

Here's what I'm thinking after reading all of this. You have a few choices and I'll outline them below. 1) Go to this program, taking on the debt, and with no guarantee that this will help you get into a PhD program in the future. This is the option you're considering but one that I am hesitant to support even a little bit. 2) Get a job working with marine mammals, possibly at an aquarium or in a research lab. That would help you gain experience and connections, which could ultimately make you more competitive for the MS or PhD programs you want to get into. There's websites that can help, like the Wildlife & Fisheries Job Board at Texas A&M. The positions will be hard to secure but, it could make a difference for you in the long run. 3) If funding is really the issue, then write an amazing proposal for funding to the NSF or another organization. I'm thinking NSF GRFP, Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship, etc. You won't know in advance if you'll get it but, if you do and you apply for grad school at the same time, you may have some leverage to get into a program that otherwise wouldn't have funding for you. 4) Expand your focus area. That is, would it be acceptable to do a master's or PhD focused on other marine organisms or other mammals and then hone your focus to marine mammals through postdocs or in a PhD program? What I'm thinking here is that you could do a more general master's or doctorate in marine biology, biological oceanography, or ecology, then move into your very narrow interest in marine mammals after doing a degree or two. This has the advantage of potentially giving you more options for graduate programs, though it also means not getting to do exactly what you want to do all the time. (And it's probably worth mentioning that basically no one gets to do exactly what they want to do their entire graduate program for a variety of reasons.) I hope this helps.

The political scientists did start a discussion on this but it didn't really take off:

I do know that some programs let people delay their start by a semester. Someone in my PhD program had to do it, though it wasn't for medical reasons. They started in January and took the fall core course the following year. You may want to see if that sort of thing is possible in your program, rather than just jumping straight to either starting while sick or having to reapply. It might also be possible to defer your acceptance for a year. Check your department's handbook and the overarching graduate school rules for more information about this.

Simple answer is that you don't buy them all. Buy the ones most closely related to what you study and borrow the rest from the library or share copies with a classmate.

If you reapply, it's likely that none of the coursework you do at School B would transfer to School A... Honestly, everyone second guesses their decision. It's totally normal. Go to School B with an open mind and see where that takes you.

Bring water to drink. Try not to do the interview in a place with a lot of background noise. Listen to your early interviews before doing more so you can get a sense of what you sound like to the interviewee (also, this tends to lead to talking less and letting the person you're interviewing talk more). I've used Sony IC recorders in the past but am in the market for something different. I'm curious to know what others use.

Not that important unless you're also trying to get funding.

I would definitely not go to that master's program. Instead, boost your application (ask schools what your weaknesses were and see if you can bolster those with more research experience, stronger rec letters, etc.). $50K is way too expensive for one year and especially for a master's program.

Similar to Eigen, I don't back up any of my research data on Google Drive unless it's already anonymized (and even then I'm careful about it). I use SugarSync instead (current pricing is on their site but I have a grandfathered plan). SpiderOak is another good choice depending on your needs. I personally am fine with having my personal backup in one place (Box and Google Drive) and my research stuff elsewhere.

If you can't identify a specific topic, then you need to take some time off before going to graduate school. Seriously. If you insist on going to grad school, then do a master's program, not a MS/PhD program.

This is a thing at pretty much all colleges and universities and it holds true for faculty members too. But really it's because if they're buying it with a federal grant, the money goes through the school so everything bought is school property. Same for start-up funds when you're a faculty member. If you buy computers or fancy equipment with the university's money, then that stuff is their property, not yours, so you don't get to keep it when you leave. As for what they do with it, that really varies. At one of my grad institutions, those computers were later used in computer labs for students who couldn't afford to bring their own computer to campus. At another, they went to grad students whose advisors/labs couldn't afford to buy new computers for each incoming student.

If it helps, knp, psychologists are well known around here for applying to more schools than folks in other fields. If you were to ask on the history specific subforum, I'd think you'd find a lot of people saying 15 is WAY too many. My guess is that historians are more in the 8-12 program range...

My guess is that a lot of the specifics that you want are very much field-specific, which is why people tend not to list or discuss them. For example, my strategies for reading articles may not apply to you because, if you're into computational work, you likely pay far more attention to methods sections than I do. As for apps, a lot of that depends on whether you're PC/Android or a Mac user so again, it can be hard to say. The main thing is to find whatever works for you and stick with it, regardless of what others might think. If you write best on paper, then continue to do that even in grad school.

One of the pinned posts in this section is full of advice for first year PhD students.

serenade, I would definitely withdraw the paper. You'll probably need to significantly up the quality of the work to get it into a top tier journal though.

Some of them are in MLA fields (not just English but other MLA fields too), some in the natural sciences, some in the social sciences. I'm lucky enough to have a diverse group of PhD-holding friends that I associate with. The difference between us and you is that we're all employed and you, as you admit, are not. I'm fighting what you say because you keep acting like most of the SLACs in the top 100 are doing what you say. And they aren't. Trust me. They really are not. You can spend your time doing research at your peril because, even if as you say the newer hires are hiring people with a higher research profile, those newer hires aren't the ones making decisions about tenure and promotion (or at least they won't be for another 5-15 years). Outside of the elite (top 15) SLACs, increases in sabbaticals aren't coming down the pipeline because it's not financially possible or sustainable. Start-up funds are limited. You'll never be competitive for major sources of funding, whether that's NSF, NEH, or NIH. That makes it harder to produce top-notch or cutting-edge research, which people recognize. For those of us who work at SLACs outside the top 25, we all know that we're looking for a colleague that will do some research with students, excel in the classroom, and do service on campus. If they want to be well-known as a researcher and/or can't figure out how to work with undergraduate students, then they need to find another job ASAP.

Why don't you look at the educational history of some of the people who are currently in the type of job you want to have? That should give you some insight into what the job market looks like and which degree you should complete.

What's trending or hot in the market when you're ABD may not be what's cutting edge when you actually finish your dissertation and go on the job market... In my own field, topic X was cutting edge in 2010-2012 but is decidedly not anymore. If you started a dissertation on it in 2012 and finished in 2014 or 2015, you would find that not many jobs are that interested in that now... There are some topics that have lasted over several years. This is one of those times where it pays to keep track of old job ads so you can look at what the trends were and how those have changed over time.

1) Write every day. Set aside a dedicated block of time for writing. Turn off the internet, your phone, the TV, etc. during that time and just write. 2) Break down what you need to do into the smallest tasks possible. If you need to say, write the introductory chapter, break that down into each of its components. And then break those components/sections into subsections. 3) Write with a goal in mind. That could be finishing one of those subsections, writing a certain number of words, etc. 4) Take at least one day a week where you don't write or even look at the dissertation.

You're right, lifealive. Clearly my friends and I, quite a few of whom work at SLACs in the top 100, are absolutely wrong about what it takes to get hired. They're so wrong that they got those jobs and obviously have no clue what they're looking for or doing when they're on the search committee for new hires. Like I said before, maybe English is entirely different from the social and natural sciences where my friends and I are but, in our experience, teaching experience and skills outweigh one's research profile. Research isn't what gets you tenure at the medium-ranked SLACs. As a social scientist, I've been told that 3-5 peer-reviewed publications (and no, I don't mean in top-ranked or high-impact journals) is all you need for tenure. Anything more than that suggests you aren't spending enough time on your teaching. And, in quite a few cases, they count publications that came out when you were ABD toward your tenure file. If one's research profile were really that important, then they would be expecting more research in higher impact journals both out of candidates and when you go up for tenure. But at many, they aren't. They want you to advise and mentor undergraduates, recognizing that this means that the research process will be slower than it is if you work with graduate students. They want you to average 4/5 (or higher) on your teaching evaluations in every category. They want you to show knowledge of and have the ability to use active learning techniques in the classroom. Some of this is hard to evaluate on paper but, I can tell you that the students that talk about their research for more than a paragraph in their cover letter, go on and on about their grants and publication plans, and can't explain at all how undergraduates might engage in their research do NOT get offered a job, assuming they even make it to the campus interview stage. That's the nature of the modern SLAC especially those ranked 50-100. I realize you're going to continue to assert that I'm wrong, lifealive. I just hope someone else sees my posts and realizes that I might, just maybe, know what I'm talking about. ETA: Here are some links from Inside Higher Ed that discuss hiring and getting tenure at a liberal arts college.