Munashi

Mayonnaise

Really feeling the end of the semester approaching and it's crazy!  I cannot believe how quickly things are going.  Let's hope everything that needs to get done gets magically handled somehow...  Hope you're all well.

I emailed them about the issue with the right margin, asking if they could take a corrected copy as my submission, since this didn't actually give me any unfair advantage. Got this response:
 
 
So apparently they actually know this is an issue with Google Docs.

I think there have been plenty of chances for people to lecture LD over why she wants to get married ect... and at this point i think its extremely immature to continue to lecture her. People's voices have been heard. 
 
The core of her question is an ernest one: how to be friends with someone you are jealous with. I think we should be focusing on answering that one. 

My hat is officially in the ring - I submitted my application last night.  Good luck, everyone!  Happy waiting.  

Good luck!

Hey 2015 I/O applicants!  Just stopping by to say I hope you're doing well.    Keep pushing!

Welp, I've got my first midterm tomorrow morning.  Wish me luck, everyone!  Hope you're all well.

Hi guys,
 
Just wanted to throw in my two cents of advice. I was lucky enough to get the award last year (in the ecology section). A few thoughts for you going through the process:
 
1. I used IM and BI headings and I think it was helpful. Reviewers read a ton of these. It's as much about making their life easy as anything else. 
2. Write your personal statement as a story, but use IM and BI headings. Stories are memorable. A bunch of good-sounding sentences are not.
3. Obsessively study past winner essays, then write essays better than the ones you read. Google "Alex Lang NSF GRFP". His site is the best resource out there.
4. If you don't have excellent LORs, you are wasting your time. Harsh, but true. They should be from profs or scientists when possible. Mine were 3 profs.
5. If you don't have BI, you are wasting your time. You need to demonstrate that you are a leader and that you impact society. If you can't do that, you will not get the Excellents that you need in BI.
6. Your documents must be perfect. No mistakes. Lucid writing. Edit them about a million times. Bounce them off your advisor. Have your friend who is an English major read them. Twice.
7. You must sell yourself. Everyone who applies is smart and ambitious. You must have a story that stands out. Make it a package. This is why the LORs are so important. You must stand out as a package, not just have a good idea.
8. I'd suggest writing a longer document, then cutting it down to the best. My original research proposal was 4 pages. It was nearly impossible to get it to 2, but when I did, it was all the good stuff.
9. I probably put 80-100 hours into my application, the majority on the research proposal (reading papers and writing).
 
Good luck to all! Go Google Alex Lang now!

A compelling letter from a postdoc is better than a bland letter from a professor. It would hurt your application more to have a bad letter (a bland letter can be considered bad).

As I understand it, the research statement is the most important piece anyway so I doubt you're missing much in that respect.

I wish you would apologize to the person who really wanted to get into UCSD but was declined because they offered the spot to you.

Note: Undergrad rankings =/= graduate program rankings
 
Edited to note that at the graduate level, rankings vary wildly by field.  A somewhat extreme example - in my field, there are no ivies that even offer my area at the doctoral level.  The brand name matters much less than the connections you make and the work you do.

I'm not going to say you should consider a another career field, OP, but I don't disagree with the folks who have suggested it.  Moreso I think that you are going to have to do a lot of work in the interim to make yourself attractive to PhD programs.
 
First of all, no, there is no website that hosts separate statistics.  You have to look at each program individually.  Few programs advertise their average GPAs and GREs, and when they do, they are generally in the 3.5 range and the 600s-700s range (on the old GRE).  I think a 155 on each section is like the minimum that you want to score; with a low GPA, you really want to push into the 160s if possible.  No PhD program is going to openly advertise that they accept people with low GPAs (and, as someone already pointed out, "low" means a 3.0 or 3.1 instead of a 3.6 or so).
 
With alumni success - a few schools will have lists of where their recent alumni have ended up.  Most do not.  The best way is to ask the departmental secretary about placement rates in the last few years.
 
Is social psychology lucrative?  If you mean financially remunerative - no, not very, not relative to the amount of time you have to put into training.
 
Basically, in order to give yourself a shot you will need to prove that you have the ability to undertake graduate level work and that you have grown and matured past your undergraduate mediocrity.  Furthermore, you need to show that you have sharp skills in research in the area.  You have not worked in the field in 3 years.  So you have a lot of work to do.
 
One way that you could, potentially, do this is get a job as a lab manager at a psychology lab (or related one - like a psychiatry or public health lab).  In this role, not only will you be getting research experience but you can also probably take some graduate-level classes for free as part of your job benefits.  Given your history you will need more time at this - I would say at least 3 solid years.  If you do this and get some As in grad classes and glowing recommendation from your PI, that could go a long way towards helping.
 
If you are unable to get this kind of job, you may be able to find another research associate position (market research, think tank, nonprofit) and then take graduate courses as a non-degree student at a nearby university.  You will have to pay.  But you really need to take a few classes and show that you can get As.
 
Basically, you need to re-start your research experience and show that you still have a passion and that you know the skills.  You also need to study for the GRE and get those scores  up, given your low ugrad GPA.
 
You will need 3 letters of recommendation.  So if you can only get 2, you will need to do something to get a third (take a class, volunteer in a lab, etc.)
 
Also
 
 
Please do NOT do this.  Your personal statement is not the time to exemplify your creativity and resilience.  Nor is it time to discuss the obstacles you have overcome.  Academics roll their eyes at these types of statements.  Instead, your personal statement is where you discuss 1) your prior academic professional experiences - research experience, primarily - and how they have uniquely prepared you to undertake a PhD and led to your interest in group decision-making; 2) your current interests, and why X university will be an excellent fit for you given your interests and prior experiences, and 3) briefly, what your career goals are and how X university can help you get there.  Think of it like an academic cover letter.  You do not want to draw attention to your shortcomings.
 
I know you said this tongue-in-cheek, but I also want to point out that the Peace Corps is also very competitive these days!

If you are still at the application stage, I don't think you should rule out any places on the basis of location (unless you think you will be utterly miserable).  I thought I was a big city girl and could never imagine myself in a small college town.  I'm doing a postdoc in a small college town, and I really love it.
 
You never know what a place might be like - you might carve yourself a little enclave in a large city.
 
Also, big cities don't necessarily have high crime rates.  Many large cities in the U.S. are very safe.  I did my PhD in a large city that has a popular reputation for being unsafe based on media conceptions that come from the 1970s and 1980s (when most cities were undergoing blight).  In reality it's one of the safest urban areas in the U.S.  On the other hand, one of the most dangerous towns in America is not much larger than the small college town I currently live in.  The 100 most dangerous places (take with a grain of salt) have a mix of large cities, small cities and small towns on it.  The very, very large metropolis in which I did my PhD is not on the list.

No one will ever like you with that attitude, no matter how prestigious of a school you go to (and UCSD is very prestigious) you cannot succeed acting like that. Perhaps academia is not for you.

*Raises hand*

I don't see how any of this is directly relevant to what the OP asked.  The grad student may be interested in her - it's definitely not unheard of for older people to be interested in, date, and marry younger people.  A 9-year age gap isn't even the largest I've ever seen.  What averages are and whether women typically ask out men or vice versa is sort of unrelated...because we are talking about a very particular man, whose preferences we cannot divine from statistics.
 
That said, I think, OP, that our interest in others can cause us to over-interpret the signals they send to us.  It's possible he was interested in you, and possible that you are just that cute girl he saw at the gym and interacted with on a regular basis.  He may have not asked you for your number because he was nervous even though he liked you - or maybe he's just nice, but not interested.
 
Anyway, the only way to know is to ask him directly.  He hasn't made a move, even though you left the opening for him, so if you really want to see what's  up with this guy, take a risk and ask him out.  Since you want to go hiking, be bold and just ask "Hey, I found this cool hiking trail.  Wanna come try it with me X day?"  The coy hinting and waiting for him to ask you doesn't work, so go for what you want.  If he says no, you're none the worse - just in the same place you are now.
 
As for the Psych Today article graphs on page 2 - as a social scientist myself I can't resist pointing out that this is a pretty unreliable survey to draw conclusions from.  I'm not unwilling to believe that men ask women out more often than women ask men out.  But the survey was done with just 31 men and 55 women, the majority of whom were college students and thus probably aged 18-22 (and also the other demographics that go along with college students - probably mostly white; decidedly all heterosexual; probably mostly middle or upper-middle-class, etc.)  We can't really generalize from 87 heterosexual teenagers, basically, what adult dating patterns are like.  I would imagine that the gender balance of preference and action becomes more equal as people get older.

So you're stating absolute facts about people you don't know based on your vast years of experience (23) and aren't open to, you know, discussing things on a discussion board?

Then why are you posting in a thread you have no interest in discussing?

Seems like you just want to judge people based on your limited world view, and then defend it to the end without listening to anything anyone else has to say.

Also, based on your posts, you do seem to need a lecture on relationships. Especially since you seem to want to "lecture" other people on their relationships. Turnabout is fair play, no?

I have personally dated guys who were 8-10 years older than me after having terrible relationships with guys closer to my age, including my child's father. As a young, single mom I found I could not relate to guys my age who were going out, partying and living off their parents when I was raising a kid by myself while working and putting myself through school. So you really can't judge someone based on age--it is just one of MANY factors that goes into choosing a mate. Maturity is much more significant when it comes to BOTH people in a relationship. I find that people who have life experience, have suffered or struggled or had responsibilities atypical for someone in their age group tend to feel removed from that age group. It's not like each new crop of 18-19 year olds is going to experience life in exactly the same way.
 
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and, yes, their own judgment. But having such a narrow view of what factors should be taken into account when forming relationships suggests a level of immaturity, or at the very least a very surface understanding of human interactions.
 
OP -- it sounds like this guy either had a brief flirtation with you and has moved on, or maybe he's just a flirty dude and you misread his messages in some way. I'm not saying give up, as I cannot accurately judge the situation from in front of a computer screen, but based on my personal experience I would move on. Or, at the very least, not close the door to other potential guys that come your way. At the end of the day, every little or big relationship is an experience for you--you enjoyed your flirtation with this guy, and that's awesome! Try to maintain a positive/healthy/open attitude toward dating and relationships and I am sure an awesome guy will be drawn to your mature and upbeat demeanor.

Late 20s is old? That's news to me.
 
Seriously though, everyone is different.  Your way of doing things is not necessarily the right way for everyone.

H&R Block said the right thing, but you just stopped reading too early!
 
Here's the full text:
 
 
So, if your tuition is $15,000 per year and you get a tuition waiver and a stipend of $20,000/year, then you only pay tax on the $20,000/year part (since the income from tuition waiver pays for tuition and is not taxable). The text also says "related expenses" and for grad students, this could be another few hundred dollars for textbooks...just keep the receipts!
 
And as for the person that said they were expecting 22% tax rate--this is higher because non-students pay FICA taxes but graduate students do not pay FICA taxes (Social Security and Medicaid). So this saves us about 6% or so in taxes.
 
For a student with a stipend (after tuition is paid) of around $20,000 to $30,000, the tax rate will be around 10% to 12%. If you are married and are able to file together (international students may not do this) then you can take advantage of lower tax rates! 

Well, I've made it through 3 weeks without dying.  It's going well so far, can't really complain.  Very busy, but in a good way for sure.

This completely depends on the people involved.  For what it's worth, my SO and I have a 9 year age gap.  I've known my SO for 10 years, dated for 6, and we're getting married in less than a month.
 
Is it going to work for everyone?  No.  As others have noted, it's less about age than it is about maturity.
 
Honestly, I'd be more worried about the potential for an inappropriate power dynamic if the guy ends up TAing one of your classes (as someone else already noted).  Otherwise, *shrugs*.  Be careful as you would in any dating situation where you're putting yourself out there.  Again, as has been noted, he may have just been being friendly.

One possibility that comes to mind is that he's already in a relationship, and thought that he had built a casual flirty rapport with you that wasn't going to go further. It's not really something that would be widely considered appropriate, but it also seems that casual meaningless flirting can be pretty common for people in relationships, and most people wouldn't come straight out and call it cheating. He might have been enjoying the flattering interactions until you tried to make it less casual, and then he realized that he better reel it in or he might be looking at real trouble. Anyway, it's nothing you should seriously worry about. A part of growing up is realizing how little things like this should affect your self image. 
 
For the record, as a 19-21 year old I had two relationships with men who had 9-10 years on me. I was mature for my age, and they were immature for theirs, so we met in the middle. Of all the things in this world that people do that are outright wrong and malicious, it's a sad comment on someone's character if this is what they're going to clutch their pearls about.