rising_star

Would it make more sense for you to minor in math, rather than doing the major? It might maximize your ability to take the classes you find useful and also your ability to pursue other courses in related areas like physics, chemistry, and biology. You should also try to take advantage of any internship opportunities you school offers, in addition to pursuing NSF REU and other summer research programs (like SURF).

If you're hoping to use your master's GPA to offset your undergrad GPA, applying in the first semester of your master's is not a good idea.

It seems like what you're saying is that anyone can do what people in English do. If that's the case, then why aren't the political science, chemistry, biology, and sociology grad students and faculty teaching the first year writing courses? I mean, if the English folks are less skilled, why not get someone with more skills to teach them the same thing? Note also, victorydance, that in the process of writing this you've assumed that everyone in the hard sciences designs experiments, can be a lab technician, and has strong statistical and quantitative skills, which is not universally the case. You've also assumed that all political science students do statistical and quantitative analysis, which again is not the case. And somehow magically they're all good writers (at least as good, if not better than the English students) without needing any training in that, at least according to what you say. So now I'm curious, what universities have you been at where all of these things are universally true? Your experiences/assumptions don't match my experiences at any of the now 5 universities I've been at, so I'm trying to understand where these departments full of "hard" scientists that can write well, are quantitative whizzes, and can design experiments are, especially ones that don't have any exceptions to this. (Note: just trying to understand victorydance's logic here, not at all saying I believe this is true.)

It depends on how you define "need". In the sense that many PhD students in the liberal arts teach general education courses, then they might be needed. I mean, they could be replaced with adjuncts or full-time faculty but, that also might not happen. I know that in my PhD program it was considered cheaper or equivalent in cost to hire a PhD student to teach a class rather than an adjunct (we had relatively high adjunct pay whereas the university subsidized some of the grad student stipend). At most large universities, if you got rid of half the liberal arts PhDs, there'd be a lot fewer people around to teach English 101, introductory history courses, and other gen ed courses. Moving beyond the liberal arts, I'm assuming you'd have to find lab TAs somewhere for all those intro chem/bio/physics/math classes that get taught... Anyway, I'm glad this has sparked an interesting discussion. I think the issue of children is separate from the issue that this article focuses on. The wage gap between disciplines (and sometimes within disciplines) can be a real problem for graduate students. Is there any reason that a political science PhD student makes $18K, an English PhD student makes $14K, and a biology PhD student makes $25K?

Serenade, not sure why you would say this here. The OP's issue would have been the same regardless of whether or not there were spouses involved.

This is something that's been talked about on here before but, this piece brings numbers and stories to the issue by focusing on the University of Houston: https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1012-the-ph-d-pay-gap My favorite part might be this from a business PhD student with $33,000 per year in stipend support. I have to say I'm having trouble feeling sorry for her. That said, this is very much a real issue for graduate students. So, I'm curious. Did/do you consider how much of a stipend is offered when you decide where to apply? (I'm assuming people consider it when deciding where to enroll but I'm wondering if it's something that gets considered before then.) Would you support a movement on your campus to raise the pay university-wide for graduate students?

It's definitely not too early, especially since you'll be presenting on research you've already completed. It would be different if you were in the planning stages of doing the research and had no findings/results to report. You should definitely talk to your new supervisor about the presentation. They might have advice for you, want you to practice your talk in advance, etc.

Take post-baccalaureate classes somewhere and do well in them. It won't boost your GPA but it will show that you are capable of doing undergraduate work. Then, after you've done well in several upper-level anthro classes, try to take a graduate course and excel in that. Again, it won't erase your GPA from college but it will show people that you can do the work. Taking these additional classes will also give you a chance to get strong letters of recommendation, which you'll need to get in to a graduate program. It sounds like your undergrad college may not be the best place for you to return to given all the issues you had there. Are there any other nearby colleges you could attend? Or, if you're planning to move for work, perhaps you could find a college/university nearby where you could take some anthropology classes in the evening. Good luck! It IS definitely possible, as the "sub-3.0 GPA" thread on this forum shows.

THIS. You already asked your advisor what to do and were already told not to make substantial changes. So, listen to your advisor and don't make any major changes. If you want clarification, ask again. It is completely normal for committee members to disagree about whether revisions are needed and the extent required. In the case of my MA thesis, people wanted varying degrees of revision and my advisor ultimately decided what I needed to do and what I didn't need to do. The other committee members did NOT review my thesis again to see if I'd made those changes. But, that had already been decided by them when they met privately to discuss my thesis. My advisor suggested that they didn't have time to read it again, and they agreed to let her supervise the changes that were made. In other words, every situation varies but, your advisor is the one who should be determining what needs to happen from here. And ASAP since the deadline is this week!

It's worth noting that that for many funded master's programs some people are admitted with funding and others are not. So an overall acceptance rate of 30-50% may not be helpful to you if only 5% of those get funding, for example.

I'm still not really understanding what the issue is. My PhD university did something similar but it wasn't a problem. If you're getting funding that covers your tuition, you don't need to take out a loan for tuition. If you're getting a stipend, then you shouldn't need as much in loan money to live off of. Take a look at what funding you do have, before considering loans, and see how/if you could live off of it. Surely there are other people in your program who have figured out how to do so. Look to them for advice.

If you're really interesting in studying media and politics, you might also want to look at Communications programs. Of course, that assumes that you can see yourself teaching intro courses in that field one day in the future.

It depends on what your research is going to require. If you're going to be doing quantitative research, then make sure you take that class. If you want or need a broader overview of research methods, then take the more general course. If this is a two-year program that you're doing, you should ultimately have the opportunity to take both. In my experience, the broader research methods course is the most important to take first since it can help you see the range of possibilities for your thesis research. YMMV, obviously.

That makes sense. You can and should also list the classes you taught as an instructor. I have every class I've ever taught on my CV even though I've taught in... three different departments.

Before you email them, I would read through everything they have posted online. Your situation is probably discussed in a FAQ, checklist, or form on their website as it's something I've come across many times.

It sounds like you're in a lab field so this may not work for you but I made my decision almost entirely around who would be my advisor. That is, who would be the one writing those rec letters, serving as PI or co-PI on grants, and overseeing my dissertation research. I also went with the biggest name whose personality I got along with because I wasn't sure whether or not I wanted a career as an academic. Having a top-notch advisor and going to a good program position you well for a variety of career options. So in my case, I decided to do my PhD under one of the top names in my subfield, which meant turning down more money at one school and having to TA much more often than I would have at several schools I rejected. There were times when I looked at my bank account or the stack of papers waiting to be graded and regretted my decision. Now that I'm done, I'm pretty sure (like 95% sure) that I made the right decision.

2-3 quarters of support isn't going to keep you from graduating with a huge amount of debt from Stanford. I would say that you don't go. If your goal is ultimately to do a PhD in CS, then just apply to PhD programs this fall and go with a funded option. The MS doesn't seem to make you much more competitive from what I've seen on this site, though you should also check the specific "Computer Science" subforum for more on that.

While this is about the job search and search committees, I think it highlights the value of having a 30 second pitch: https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1007-career-lingo-the-search-committee? In particular, this part: Yes, it's about cover letters but the same thing applies when you're in person. When you sit down with someone, you want to be able to clearly explain your qualifications, even if they aren't a specialist in what you do.

I can't say that I personally know of anyone who had kids and then that led them to drop out. In fact, many of my grad student peers chose to have children while in graduate school because of the flexibility grad school allowed to share childcare responsibilities, for example. That said, having kids can definitely make it more difficult in terms of time management.

Most common: advisor issues; failure of comprehensive exams; personal circumstances change (death in family, need to take care of relatives, disabled child, become gravely ill); change mind about getting a PhD; funding runs out. Some of what I've listed above is unavoidable. I doubt anyone chooses to get MS during their PhD, or have a parent have a stroke and need a caregiver, or have a "special needs" child. You can make sure you don't fail your comprehensive exams, that you write a good dissertation proposal, and you can maximize your chances for not running out of funding by applying for every grant you're eligible for and starting that process in your first year in the program. I'm sure others will add more to this.

Online doesn't mean exempt from going through IRB by any means. You should look at the website for your IRB and see whether or not they have any forms or checklists you can utilize to figure out what they might require of your project. Even if your project is "exempt", that doesn't mean you don't have to fill out paperwork where they verify that this is the case.

At least in the US, you can do research as a physician without having a PhD. What are you hoping to gain from the PhD that you won't have already learned or gotten experience with?

I wouldn't list that you're ABD in psychology on your CV unless it's somehow relevant. I definitely wouldn't put the number of credits you learned or anything like that on your CV. Is there any way that you could still earn a MA or MPhil in psychology so that you had something from that time to put on your CV?

This is going to sound crazy but, I found that once I had business cards, I ended up exchanging them way more often than I exchanged contact info before I had business cards. I mostly got them when I was on the job market so I could pass them out to grad and undergrad students I met with who wanted things like references that I couldn't just easily give them on the spot. I also drop my cards into all those giveaway things at restaurants and conference book exhibits in the hopes of winning free stuff, though it's never panned out for me. One thing to keep in mind when presenting a poster is that the poster session room is often crowded with a lot going on. You'll need to be fast and engaging with your message so that people get interested and get what you want them to get from the poster. In terms of design, you want to use some colors that draw people in without being distracting or difficult to read.

The reason I suggested business cards is because the OP's affiliation is going to change soon, which may make them harder to find. I'm not in linguistics and, at least in my field, finding someone by their institution is easy but becomes less so when they move from one institution to another. (Also, it's something people told me when I changed institutions between MA and PhD because they'd emailed my MA email acct but the university had shut that down so they ended up emailing a faculty member there to get my current info.)