themmases

...OK? It was their choice to take a contract for ghostwriting, which I didn't know when I accepted what I thought was an editing job. Feeling pressure to complete it doesn't make it OK to take advantage of our friendship and demand that I drop work at my assistantship. I asked them about the deadline for this project multiple times and they responded in writing to say there wasn't one and that my longer proposed timeline was fine. Then all of a sudden they're contacting me urgently at work, acting like we never made that agreement, and treating me as though I was refusing to return the project on time. Working on your side project while you're on the clock at your day job is incredibly unethical and a firing offense basically everywhere. It's none of my business if someone I don't work with anymore wants to operate that way, I guess, but it's incredibly crappy to make me part of that too. "Startup" isn't some magic word that turns unethical behavior OK. Also, this is far from their first round of clients. They've been accepting legitimate editing jobs for over a year.

I think you just need to get used to being at the office 9-5, honestly. What you're describing is the exact same transition people need to make to start working in any office after getting out of undergrad. Over time you can learn to concentrate in an office environment and eventually to find it more conducive than working at home or the library. Doing your work at the office, with set hours, can actually be really good for you as a grad student because it can help prevent your work from bleeding into your life. There are other perks like not lugging your laptop around, getting to use the university's computers and equipment instead of your own, and having the same schedule as most other professional adults. Having a set schedule will help you learn how long a task should take, which will eventually help you manage your time better. I did work for a few years before going to grad school and I can tell you the office environment is really very similar. Decorate your cube a bit, bring in any books and supplies you will want if you'll be studying there, and get some headphones. Think of it as your work space and enjoy the fact that your work space is not your living room and that you get to go home at the end of the day. Getting your advisor to like and trust you will help you get support from them in the future and not always have to be a TA. And it's more likely to get you permission to work from home sometimes than pushing back.

You should check the student handbooks of the schools you're interested in applying to. There are at least two separate issues to consider when transferring coursework: waiving the requirement to take that specific course, and getting credit for the hours. Some programs might have their intro epi course in the PhD curriculum because of course, no one should ever finish a PhD epi without learning basic epi... But it is mostly there for people straight out of undergrad. Most people with an MPH would be able to waive out of it rather than sit through an intro course all over again. Some schools will also give you the credit hours as though you'd taken their Intro Epi, and some won't-- then you'd just need to earn those hours from an elective. This could be good or bad depending if you have some other skills you want to develop through coursework. The final decision about which of your courses will transfer, and what you'll get for them, will most likely be made by your advisor and your division when you get approval for the plan of your program. In general you'll probably get the most courses to transfer by staying at the same school, staying in the same system, or going to a school that frequently admits students from your MPH institution.

Wow, why would you recommend that site? It is selling papers and even claims to do your dissertation research for you! And the site itself is terribly written... Someone who actually used it would get exactly what they deserve.

You should definitely keep trying. The thing about GRE math is, it's high school math dressed up with unfamiliar questions that look a lot harder than they are. The first time I took the GRE, I basically panicked at some of the scarier-looking questions, barely tried to answer them, and did terribly-- like 25th percentile. The thing that helped me the most was just the free SparkNotes introduction to GRE math. It goes over strategies for answering the questions and provides a refresher in some of the concepts you may not have used in a while. The thing they pointed out that really helped me was that, with a short test time and only a basic on-screen calculator, no question can really be that hard or complicated-- it just looks like it. So when you see something come up that you think you can't do, take a deep breath and start looking for the shortcut because there definitely is one. Go through that whole intro, work the example problems, even the ones that seem easy, and that will help a lot. After that I worked through the Manhattan Prep big book of questions. I'd recommend doing sets of 10-15 in any one topic, checking your answers, writing out the corrections, and moving on to a new question type once you find you're getting most or all of them right. You can always go back and finish a full topic if you have time; it's better to get exposed to all the topics IMO. This will get you making fewer silly mistakes, and recognizing the types of shortcuts you can take on a typical GRE problem. My GRE retake after doing this was about the 75th percentile. Obviously those materials didn't teach or re-teach me math, but they did help me learn some strategies and be less intimidated so I could work calmly and show the reasoning abilities I actually do have. You may find you do a lot better once you know that the exam isn't some kind of subject test for math majors.

Don't worry about responding, I just really need to get this out... Today I am going home and firing a friend as a freelance client. One of my best friends from a former job, and a manager from that job, started an editing company after I left. I have been doing some work for them for extra money and today my friend gchatted me at work to ask when I would be finished with something. I told her and I guess she didn't like that answer because she immediately started a new chat with the company owner who started telling me about a super-short turnaround time they had promised the client and never told me about. Not only was there no apology, they acted like I had done something wrong for proposing a longer timeline and lectured me about how important this client is to them. They already approved a longer timeline that I proposed after they told me in writing that there was no hard deadline, but today they acted like we had never discussed the timeline before at all. I told them I am in the middle of moving, and got a condescending response from the owner and pressure to return the project even faster. I am also starting to feel like the whole thing is just shady. I signed on to do editing for authors whose first language isn't English, and to give advice and critique analysis plans. But this assignment is basically to ghostwrite their intro and discussion, and do their literature review for them. They also don't seem to get that it wasn't OK to contact me at work, or to treat me like their employee when I am just a freelancer. Based on the times that the company owner contacts me, I am pretty sure she is conducting company business while she is at her own main job. I don't think that's acceptable to do, and am really angry that I was put in that position today when I thought I was answering a quick question from a friend. Normally for a friend-- or anyone really-- I would finish the job and just not accept future work. However in this case I think I just need to turn over the work I've done so far and quit. I believe the least I can do after getting roped into side job talk at work is to not profit any more from the side job (and make up the time obviously). I basically can't meet their deadline anyway. I basically got nothing done today because I was so mad. And I'm extra mad thinking about how I will look bad for abruptly quitting, when it's their project and behavior that are inappropriate. My contact is one of my best friends and was awesome at the job I met her at... I have no idea where all of this even came from or why she thought it was OK to facilitate. Never working with or for a friend again.

Whoa, I would want to hear about that too. The things I don't want to hear are way farther over on the trash talking side. For example once two classmates told me they hated our instructor's accent (a US regional one and we are in the US, so it was a rude but not xenophobic thing to say). And that a case study we discussed-- that I knew from working in the field was on point-- was the most boring thing ever! It sounded like they had made a hobby of trash talking her and couldn't even see the value in her class anymore. People have told me more legitimate stuff about my advisor, like that they find him disorganized and hard to get hold of. All I can really say to that is that I've worked with a lot of medical researchers, he's very normal, and getting the attention of people like that is a skill you need to learn to work in this field. It would be like someone complaining their emails never get a response but they've never tried calling or visiting. So maybe I also hate it because I don't want to be in the position of lecturing or correcting people.

Walking a mile in Chicago is usually not a big deal. That's like a 15-20 minute walk for most people. We will occasionally have days where the wind or rain/snow is really bad and you might want to wait until that's over to walk, but it's still possible. You will also have a transit pass called UPass as a full time UChicago student. It gives you unlimited transit rides during the semester for a low flat fee (and it's not optional-- if you are full time it will be in your fees), so being close to a bus line could be another option for you. When it's very cold out, it's more comfortable to walk than to wait around for a bus-- the walking keeps you warm. CTA has mobile bus and train tracking so it's not difficult to see if a bus is coming and walk up the line until you run into one. Definitely get good rain and snow boots. I have ruined shoes before because I didn't have a good pair of rain boots, and snow boots will let you walk even if people haven't done a good job of shoveling. I rarely wear my heaviest coat because the buses and trains are quite warm, and I like to walk so that keeps me warm too. Personally I would get boots, mid weight winter coat, and hat/scarf/gloves, and wait on any serious winter clothes or a ton of sweaters. Some people feel the cold more than others.

If you are totally starting from scratch, I would recommend taking a practice exam to see what you need to work on. Most test prep books will include at least one, and you should have access to an official one when you register for the GRE as well. If the test date you want is available, I would go ahead and register for it so you can get access to the official study materials and then see what else you want. Decide what to study based on your practice exam scores, what questions you perceived as being really tricky, and what parts of the exam are important to your programs. (They should say how they evaluate GRE scores somewhere in their admissions materials.) The math on the GRE is not very advanced, but it is full of weird patterns, trick questions, and things that look a lot harder than they are. I would recommend studying it for that reason alone even if you are strong in math. I found it very worthwhile to read up about common types of GRE math questions on SparkNotes so I could recognize a trick question, then do practice questions from the Manhattan Prep books. I didn't need much help with the verbal section, but there are many helpful comments on this forum about how people improved their score there.

It does depend on the program. Some (I believe Michigan) wanted you to list faculty that you would be interested in working with. It didn't seem to be a requirement that you contact them, although I felt weird listing people I'd never met so I wished that I had. On the other hand UNC's instructions said not to do that because match with an individual faculty member wasn't how the decision was made. They do consider the possibility of matching you with a mentor-- they interviewed me but ultimately decided they couldn't because of my heavy interest in GIS-- but it's not about your match with any one person. I would open your applications with the schools you're interested in as soon as possible, because I found that there were often additional instructions inside the application that weren't out on the website. You could also contact admissions staff at those schools and ask how they prefer it to be done.

I just finished an MS in epi and I bought most of my required books except for an intro course I really had no interest in. I did go back and reference my intro biostats book in subsequent classes. One hard thing about looking up help with biostats is that not everyone will use the same notation... It's hard to jump into some random author's explanation of a concept when they are using notation that looks familiar but means something different. So at those times I preferred to just go back to a book that I knew. Also, there are a few very well-known epidemiology textbooks that are commonly assigned and you will start to see them referenced in other work. Some of their authors (e.g. Greenland, Kleinbaum) are a big deal in epi methods and biostats so it's helpful to know who people are talking about. One book-- "Epidemiology: Beyond the Basics" by Szklo and Nieto-- was actually assigned to me twice. These are important reference books if you want to stay in epi, especially the more advanced texts like "Beyond the Basics" and "Modern Epidemiology". Many of my classes had an optional text that was just a suggested reference, or a book from which they shared the needed chapters on Blackboard. If the professor says that's the case, believe them and don't buy the book unless you're really interested. Get it from the library or don't get it at all.

I use a combination of credit union and Ally. I highly recommend Ally. Based on my experience with them and their rates, my partner and I are planning to open joint accounts with them after we get married next week. Ally offers interest checking with no fee. The interest rate is not high unless you keep a lot of money in your checking account, but it's still a better deal than fee checking accounts. I believe either there is no minimum balance, or the minimum is quite low. I keep my savings in an Ally money market account which earns a decent interest rate-- lower than the savings account but they give you a debit card so you could access the money in an emergency. The interest is a decent amount even though I don't have a ton of savings, and the way I see it I would be sacrificing free money if I didn't use a savings account. Ally has no branches, but I rarely visit a branch anyway. Their website and their mobile app work great. I transfer money and deposit checks through the app and have never had a problem. (In contrast my credit union's website is pretty dated and I have never gotten their app to work.) They will also reimburse a certain amount of ATM fees per month.

I'm staying at my MS school for PhD so I'm just keeping my jobs, but I had a transition summer before starting the MS because I couldn't get out of my old job fast enough and grad school provided a good excuse. At my school I was eligible for hire as an hourly RA the summer before my program started. If you're able to be in the area during the summer, that could be an option. Mine turned out to be great-- I have some great contacts in other divisions because of it and I still work for that boss. The project eventually gave me funding. I also do some freelance editing in a field I used to work in for researchers whose first langage isn't English. That is pretty easy, interesting work-- the only thing was I had to buy EndNote for my personal computer, luckily with a student discount. Another of my friends swears by tutoring and test prep-- she is always suggesting it to me whenever I have any sort of transition.

I hate when people complain about professors to me. Even if I agree on some level, I am trying to look for the good in this person so I can work with them for a semester or more and take their advice... I don't need to be nitpicking them or gossiping about them. People have even said stuff to me about my advisor! A) He's my boss so you're putting me in a weird position; B ) he's my mentor so obviously, if you thought about it for a minute you'd realize I don't agree. The things people have said to me about him and other faculty members, you would just get over in any other work environment. I think this might be a work/life experience thing... I'm sure in undergrad I felt free to do that. As an adult I only had one close work friend with whom I would be candid about our boss-- and I never said anything to other people about their bosses. In general just don't say anything around the department that would embarrass you if it got back to that person.

I would definitely take option 3. $80K is plenty of money in Chicago! And 5 years is a long time, especially in a big city where you should be able to find something else. A couple of years before leaving my job, I wrote my priorities out to think about. Actually I haven't felt the need to make changes to it since I wrote it in 2012. Use and am recognized for my skills: data analysis, content area knowledge (trying to get away from doing as much writing and editing unless it's for my own work or I'm getting paid extra) Collaborative environment My work makes a positive contribution to society; it's a meaningful and moral use of my time and skills given that I can't invest them everywhere. I can meet my own needs; I have basic security in terms of health care, compensation, feeling safe and respected at work, and so do my coworkers. Part of that for me is that if I feel I need to leave a certain project or pull back from working with a certain person, I could. I chose my field in large part because of my first point. I like study design and data analysis but was feeling passed over at it when I worked in medical research. I contributed a lot but people who really didn't know much about epidemiology would fail to include me or include me but act like they were doing me a favor. I specifically sought out training in this field so that the whole point of having me on a team would be to have my input into those things. I am not really interested in ever leaving Chicago although I would be open to another city, preferably Midwestern, for the right opportunity. I work in a public service field, I am interested in health inequities, and all my life I have benefited from IL public services. I think staying and using my skills to serve my neighbors is the right thing to do, and I'm optimistic about getting to do it because my research is very tied to conditions in Chicago specifically. Sorry I sound like my SOP right now but... That is my real opinion. I'd love to do academic research right here in the future, because I'm pretty familiar with the health care field in this city and I know I'm at one of the better places to be. I'd also be interested in being part of a methods core or a staff epidemiologist or statistician for a health related organization such as a hospital, public health department, or professional medical organization. I actually really like working on other people's projects as long as the respect is there. It's more of a challenge to solve a problem on someone else's project you might never have thought of. Chicago is not that high cost of living for a major city, and my partner and I already live comfortably even though I don't make that much money. I don't mind not having a lot of space as long as I'm near parks and campus or coffee shops or something. I think after we finally move to a 2-bedroom apartment this year (so we can have a home office), I will be set for a long time.

I returned after four years working in a related field and I found that the work experience cut both ways. On the one hand, I'm way more responsible and better at managing my time. I can anticipate how a given person will want my work product to be, take criticism, and just fix stuff without getting bent out of shape about it. And I'm less intimidated by everything because I think of it all as a job. As an MS student I wasn't offered an RA appointment with admission but I found one really quickly and now I have two. I'm keeping them as my funding source when I continue on to a PhD in the fall. On the other hand some parts of being a student in class are just not closely related to a job. I struggled with those. The idea of turning things in where we wouldn't be going back and forth to polish the final product together intimidated me a lot and I just had to push past it (and allow myself more editing time than I would at a job where I know I'll get comments). I probably didn't make as much use of instructors and TAs as resources I could ask questions of, because at work my approach would be to exhaustively try to find the answer myself. It was hard to know at first, and then reassess each semester, how much time I had. I have two RA appointments, class, research, and some freelance stuff available to me when I have the time. I handled it by trying to arrange my schedule so I didn't come to campus one day a week, and worked a full day from home instead. I did it that way because my commute was terrible, but if you have a desk on campus that you like and is easy to get to, it would work just as well to schedule a day with no interruptions. My undergrad was radically different because I studied history and now, cancer epidemiology. Obviously I'm a pretty different person now as well. I got lucky in that my partner's career progression was well-timed with my decision to make less money. So we changed the proportion we each paid for stuff, but not the amount, and skipped upgrading anything for a couple of years.

I decided to go to grad school while I was working in medical research. I liked the work a lot, but medicine can be very hierarchical. I reached a point where it was going to be hard to get any more responsibility, or even recognition for work I was actually doing, without a degree. I picked epidemiology because I like study design and analysis and I wanted to make sure I was positioned to fill that role on teams in the future. I liked my plans B and C for using the degree, too. After getting about halfway through the MS I had decided to stay for a PhD because it seemed like a practical way to do the work I want to do. I prefer the job options with a PhD, and I don't want to leave and come back again. My program and mentor have been great, and I have a clear way to extend the concept behind my MS thesis, so I have a good sense of what the work will be and how I will finish. My RA jobs are also similar to what I would hope to get if I left, so I feel that I'm doing the same work but with the opportunity to run my own project and earn a degree. I believe this really has to be a career decision because depending on the field, the opportunity costs of attending can be huge. Doing the MS was a great choice for me and I think it was because I've approached it like a job. It's tempting to attach hopes and dreams and ego to the decision, but I think that is how people get stars in their eyes and pursue degrees they really don't need.

Most of my jobs as a public health student have been in applied public health/built environment interventions. My experience has been that there is recognition on both sides that public health and planning professionals should be working together. Environmental, and particularly built environment, determinants of health are a big topic in public health right now. On the other side I think planning professionals, particularly in parks and transportation fields, are recognizing that a lot of the benefits of their services can be framed as public health benefits. Depending how you spend your time, a public health degree can also help you with more transferable skills such as program evaluation and data analysis that are valuable regardless of the topic area you studied to get them. If you will be attending a university that also has a school of urban planning, you probably have a lot of options. You could do a dual degree, but there may also be certificates in either your SPH or urban planning that would be open to you. Your school may have contacts that would help you do your practicum or internship with an organization that has a planning focus. Or you could just choose to spend all your elective hours in the other college. IMO exposure to the other field (such as through taking a couple of their core courses and choosing an interdisciplinary practicum) and picking up a technical skill such as GIS will give you a lot of value for your time without necessarily needing to get two degrees. I spent a little time in my school's college of urban planning to learn GIS for my thesis research, and even that short exposure has been really valuable. It really helped me see how closely related the two fields are, and I got a second research assistantship based on the GIS skill before the semester was even over.

Macs are not uncommon in my program, so it's not impossible, but I'm not sure I'd recommend getting one. Maybe if you already own one you're happy with, wait a little bit and see if the barriers are acceptable to you. SAS will be difficult to install on a Mac and many of my classmates have had delays at the start of the semester while they get everything they need installed. While you might not have to use SAS later if you don't want to, I found that a lot of my classes still only gave instructions for SAS programming of the material. Other programs I ended up using, including ArcGIS and SEER*Stat, were also difficult for my classmates to get working. I'd second the recommendation that you need a numeric keypad. This is usually only available on bigger/wider models so keep an eye on the weight and battery life (so you can avoid carrying a charger). Most people in my epi program either carry a laptop that will allow them to run SAS/R/whatever, or don't carry anything (i.e. no one here is bringing a Chromebook just to take notes on). The most common PC I see around my program is Asus and I have one too. Mine came in at 15.x", which was bigger than what I wanted, but fairly thin, light and affordable for its specs. The charger is a very reasonable size and weight. I have an hour commute on public transit so I bring it in when I know I will be coding in class and have a tablet for the other days.

I had a similar talk with a professor from UNC and it turned out to be that they really liked my application but weren't sure if they had a good mentor to pair me with or not. A method I used in my MS thesis is not as big a thing in their department, so I think they wanted to see how wedded I am to that and just get to know me better. Our talk was also about 15 minutes. It was a nice experience, I had thought UNC might be a reach for me so the attention from someone I thought would be a good potential mentor was very cool. I'm waiting to hear the decision but I'll be happy either way.

UIC can be rather late, at least in Epi/Bio-- I can't really speak to the other divisions. When I was admitted to the MS Epi program in 2014, I heard by email from the student coordinator near the end of March. When I checked in before that I was told they had faculty out of the country and were behind on both MS and PhD applications. This time around I heard back from the Cancer Epi PhD on 2/18. My application was treated as a transfer request (they even had me withdraw my SOPHAS application because apparently they didn't need it) and I was given the impression that they were getting back to me early since I'm internal. However I assume they must have also made decisions about some other people, or at least about rejections, to be able to get back to me. My impression was that they'd started reviewing PhD applications in late January, but wait for in-person meetings to move anything forward. The coordinator for Epi/Bio was really nice to me as a nervous applicant when I emailed to check in, so I would recommend just contacting him. He was pretty clear with me about the timeline for my MS review once I asked. Good luck!

I applied to four PhD Epidemiology programs for Fall 16. This week my current school accepted me to stay for a PhD, I got an interview with (I suspect) my potential advisor at a big name in my field, and I heard from another school I've been very interested in for years that they can't review my application because it was never finished. As far as I knew, I submitted it in time for the priority deadline months ago. Like many schools of public health, this place uses an external common app called SOPHAS. After some digging I found that SOPHAS either lost or never received *one* transcript so they never verified my whole app. I have proof that this transcript was sent to them. Obviously it was my responsibility to make sure they verified my app, but the thing is, I thought I did. The whole site was redesigned recently as a set of dashboards that are supposed to tell you about the status of all your programs, materials, etc., and I checked it regularly and used it for other apps. My program list said my app was complete and this information was buried elsewhere. The site claims to alert users of upcoming deadlines. I contacted both the school and SOPHAS. SOPHAS sent what sounded like a form email only ruder. But the school was lovely, and the coordinator even offered to have their staff bother SOPHAS and advocate for me with the faculty. Part of me wants to pursue it because I'm in the right (or at least 80% in the right), I love this school and almost went there for my MS, and I just think the prudent thing to do is maximize my options before making a decision. On the other hand, I suspect I will already have a big decision to make and I don't want to waste their time when I know now that I may not go. I'm interested in what others would do in this situation. Have others even been successful if their materials were lost? Am I just getting greedy? Thank you!

Oh wow, an unsourced graph? Guess I'd better slink away, I'm beat!

Because it's a sexist assumption that is not even necessarily true? Plenty of people regardless of gender hang around waiting for the other person to make a move. Lots of women make the first move at least some of the time. If it's your experience that they never do, then it sounds like your personal experience is limited.

I think you should try and get your hands on a practice test to decide. Some people need more prep time than others. It's usually better to be earlier so you have time to retake if you need to, but that assumes you have some time to study. If your scores are close enough to where you want them, go earlier and just do what you can to study, because at least you'll have time for another shot if you're wrong. If you find out from your practice test that you'll need a lot of prep, take the later test and use your study time to make it count.