lemma

I do similar talks and I would never think of charging.

That happens. It's not ideal, but there's a lot of stress over graduate applications and no one manages it perfectly. Just keep that in mind when you word emails to the university - make sure you express it in a way that doesn't look like you let this fall through the cracks, as that may not be the image you want to portray.

Thanks everyone for the help. There are quite a few really useful suggestions here - based on these and my own research, I will be registering. In the past I've been quite stubborn about avoiding accommodations where possible, even despite the urging of doctors. I'm not too used to having these conversations with professors or managers, so I'm just hoping they'll continue to treat me how they already do.

Why did you apply to a department where you didn't have a backup supervisor that interested you? I'm having trouble understanding that, and I think that professors might too. You're going to have to be really careful about how you communicate your situation, because you run the risk of seeming like you didn't do proper due diligence before applying. Joint supervision across departments might be possible - explore that if you can. One of the schools I was considering suggested joint supervision might be most appropriate for me.

Would you consider deferring the PhD and doing another year at the small company? Having industry experience apparently helps a lot when trying to enter industry post a PhD. The few months you have at this point would be considered negligible. I'm in a different industry, but when I was changing jobs, headhunters usually expected 2+ years before they were willing to work with you. Spending another year working in industry before your PhD might be better for your overall goals, and might mitigate this somewhat.

Documentation won't be the issue - around diagnosis I spent months of my life in hospital for this, so I have a lot of paperwork in order. Confidentiality is my concern, and also how people perceive students with disabilities. I called the disability office and they said only accommodations will be shared with my advisors and professors (rather than a diagnosis). My concern is that my professors may think I'm less capable, or that I'm exploiting the system (I'm not). I would also not want to walk through the specifics of my health with professors. Part of me is considering not even registering to avoid stigma, but that would not be in my best interests. Accommodations were necessary during my undergrad, and though I have reason to be optimistic this time around, if things return to how they were, I will need assistance.

Hey, good on you for thinking of taking this step - it's pretty brave. From my own experiences and the experiences of my friends, the first few months are the hardest when moving away. This is the period before solid friendships form. However, if you keep on pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, within 12-18 months you have a group of people who will have your back no matter what. I found joining interest groups (sports, music...) useful at making friends. Sometimes you also need to be the person to propose something - be it an ice-cream hangout with your cohort, a study session at your apartment with the people who sit next to you, or finding someone to walk with you to pick up lunch. Skype is so helpful. It makes a huge difference. Something that might seem paradoxical is that my classmates who had the hardest time integrating were the ones who spent an excessive amount skyping home at the beginning of the year. This was because they were spending time online instead of meeting new people and forming bonds. Skype a couple of days a week is usually fine, but when it turns into everyday at the beginning of the degree, it can be hard. If you decide to move away, I would recommend getting a mental health treatment team set up well before semester starts. Moving is stressful for everyone, and given your previous experiences of mental illness, it would probably be helpful to have someone work through the transition with you.

I've had episodic health issues, some of which have been serious and lifelong. I am not in the throes of the severe symptoms anymore, and am doing what I can to avoid relapse (I have been successful at this). However, I did want to register with the disabilities office: if I relapse I will need accommodations and won't be able to register while unwell, and there are a few accommodations that would be very helpful in reducing the risk of relapse. Are there any hidden downsides to registering? I don't want to face discrimination for having a disability registered, but I also want safeguards in place.

When I was hired, the headhunter said they expected me to stay for 4-5 years. I've been there for less than a year. Though I'm hoping to forge a career in academia or central banking, my employer is in the industry affiliated with my area of study, and is very well connected. It's less about my contractual requirements and more about managing a sensitive relationship. I will be resigning on the next day that my manager is in the office. I hope they let me work for the next month for financial reasons, but we'll see.

If the worst case happens and you don't get in anywhere this year, you may still have a great career as a researcher. I had a few friends who got rejected at all of their programs first time around (incidentally all physics). They were all devastated. A year later, and one had been accepted into an ivy for a different quantitative discipline, one had topped a masters program in a different field more closely related to his career ambitions, and another was doing a research internship at a top tech university. I would say things are far less dire than they originally seemed.

Can you attach additional to your application? At the very least, I would attach it there with an explanation. If they explicitly ask for all degrees attempted, I would put it in the main section. If they only ask for completed or current degrees, I would include a disclaimer in the additional information section and offer to provide the transcript upon request.

I'm really surprised you were declined. My university encouraged me to take leave when my circumstances were very similar to yours (bipolar I or schizoaffective depending on who you ask, with episodes of severe depression like what you've described. I am pretty healthy now though aside from my anxiety, and I feel very lucky that my meds work well enough to have a normal life). Take time off. Don't worry about grad school. Don't worry about anything other than your health. I know you've been battling this for a while, so you know just as well as anyone how hard it is to work when you're unwell. You get one shot at this PhD, and it's best to do it when you're well, even if it means spacing things out. You know your situation better than anyone, though. The lease will work out (subletting if needed). Personally, I look back on my undergrad and wish I had taken time off sooner or spent time working on treating my illness. It all worked out in the end, but I was pigheaded and there are small things that still sting, like my thesis not being nearly as comprehensive as I would have liked. I would have changed things if I could. If you feel up to it, let us know what you end up deciding. I'm really hoping that everything works out for the best for you.

Not much to add, but I also came from IB and also found banking brutal. Maybe you can apply some of the coping strategies/approaches that you used then to your relationship with your advisor? Like maybe look carefully at what made you get through being treated poorly in banking, and maybe some of the strategies can be tweaked slightly and applied here.

I wouldn't. You don't know what the admissions committee knows about him and if there are any deep emotional responses to his misconduct. I would not want to be tainted with the same brush, just in case.

This is wise! Another thing that helps is to think about what really matters in a partner, not just what we might think of initially. I can't imagine someone who would entertain, challenge and support me like my partner, however, if I had met him a few years earlier I might not have gone on that first date. I had pretty rigid ideas of what made a good partner, and given what my previous relationships were like, I wasn't honing in on what really mattered to me.

Ah, it's definitely hard once you've seen where you want to end up! What has helped me in the past is thinking of how everyday life would look in a granular manner if it wasn't a good fit. What it would be like to choose a less interesting project because my top choice professors were too busy already. What it would be like if I wasn't adequately prepared for the coursework, and I was up all night, struggling in class, and felt too self conscious to ask my classmates for help. What it would be like if I found out that there weren't enough professors with interests that aligned with mine. How grocery shopping, rent, dental and medical bills would look if I was on the lowest-tier scholarship because I had been ranked towards the bottom of the admitted cohort. What if the department didn't have enough travel money to go around because they admitted too many students and I couldn't go to my top choice conferences. This may sound pessimistic, but for me it reminds me that things can go wrong if it's not the right place for me.

I recently found out I was accepted into my top program with a much more generous scholarship package than I had imagined. I will absolutely be attending. However, I am currently working full time in a professional job that I was expected to be in for at least another four years. I've been here less than a year. I really need some help on how to resign. I've been having bad insomnia and anxiety attacks because it's been stressing me out so much. Though I sat the GRE almost four years ago, spoke to professors about this PhD six years ago, and worked in my new department a few years ago, I did not expect to be going to grad school when I accepted the job. I am happy at work, and I am doing my job well, but I am a researcher and my job has repeated exposure to academic and commercial research. This has made me realise that academia is where I want to be, which is what I also thought for most of my studies. It's a long story but I kind of fell into industry when I graduated a few years ago. People have been kind to me and have invested in me, which was the opposite as at my last job where I was bullied. This piece is making the whole thing so hard.

My guess is that they either see you as their direct peers so don't like anything that implies you are higher on the ladder, they're cutthroat and are ready to pull you down or may even see themselves as smarter because they didn't "need" to get a masters to be where they are. All are unproductive views. It's their loss ultimately. I'm sorry you have to put up with it.

I only found out my application outcome recently, but something that struck me was how much trouble I had sleeping while waiting. I would recommend keeping an eye on this, as less sleep means less emotional resources to deal with application results and other aspects of life. I found exercise helped with sleep, and if anyone needs guided meditations, I finally found a few that work for me. Keeping busy probably kept me sane. Now that the holiday season is here, it's a perfect time to bake/make jam/set up a christmas tree/listen to christmas music/find interesting gifts for people. Hope everyone is doing OK. The waiting game is a rollercoaster of emotions.

Something I would recommend is organizing something that makes you feel accomplished, useful - or even simply good. That means that bad news one day is partially offset by something positive. A few years ago, when I was going through a very hard time (where there were definitely more negatives than positives), I forced myself to write down three positive things about each day before I went to sleep. It helped to remember that even when bad things kept on happening, I was still lucky in many respects. More specifically to graduate schools - the best outcome from graduate school admissions isn't necessarily getting into a particular school, but is getting into a program where you can thrive, feel supported and feel like you belong. During applications for graduate school (and a few years earlier when I was looking for jobs), I kept on telling myself that if I wasn't accepted or hired, it didn't necessarily mean I wasn't capable. It just meant that I wasn't a good fit. Fit can be research interests, preparation, culture, expectations coming into the program... ultimately, even if a program sounds awesome on paper, if it's not a good fit, it's not somewhere you want to be.

These things happen. Good on you for going back to study! I would recommend registering with the disabilities office at university to get any accommodations you need. You'd be surprised by how many students are registered. It would depend on the university, but a close friend of mine who has bipolar II was recently accepted into a PhD program straight from undergrad with funding. Due to his mental illness, he had several fails and low passes on his transcript, but had a strong thesis and good recommendation letters. I'm pretty sure his overall GPA was lower than 2.1 when he applied, though his thesis was very solid.

I was really worried about not having enough references (I worried about this for about three years, no joke). I found that the people I reached out to were very receptive, especially once I explained the situation I was in to them. In your shoes, I would sit down and write a list of everyone possible to ask from class and research settings (even relevant work experience if you have to). If you email people to reach out, I would attach a copy of your resume for their reference, because in my experience this can be a very useful tool for professors to use to fill out a letter.

I will be starting a PhD in a very quantitative field in a few months, but I've been out of my undergrad for several years now and I'm rusty. I'll have to take a statistical inference class aimed at PhD students in my specialty, and though I've probably taken more advanced math than the average student in the program, I have only taken one statistics class (it was proof based). I was wondering if anyone had any resources they would recommend to get ahead? I've been looking for good MOOCs or e-books, but need something that is at least as advanced as a later-year undergraduate course.

Got notified that I received two scholarships for my top choice PhD program. What a good email!

That may be true, and I'm not trying to say that they hand them out like candy, but that it is much easier to get an extremely high score in science in Australia than at a school like Princeton (which has less than a handful or Australians admitted annually, with almost all non-athletes having perfect ATARs - that is your baseline). It's not easy, but it is easier. I was saying this in the context that a 2.6 at uom or anu wouldn't be regarded on par with a 3.6 from MIT. A wam in the 80s is still cause for celebration. I have a lot of respect for Australian universities and the work done there, so I hope it didn't come across otherwise. Just to clarify, I think the poster in reference has an awesome application and is obviously great at research. I think it's important to go in eyes wide open though, and as someone with more-than-average experience navigating between the two education systems, I wanted to comment on something that really didn't add up with my own experiences or all of the materials I've had to fill out.