Eigen

I can't think offhand of a windows program that annotates like you want, but it's not hard to do manually. Just open a word document next to your article, and type notes as you go. I keep a folder in Dropbox of PDFs an one of annotation files, and then link both to the article citation in endnote.

I was just point out an interesting relationship. Correlation doesn't imply causation, but strong correlation is always worth thinking about. I think prospective graduate students underestimate just how much most grad students hear, directly or indirectly, about the application process. Whether it's casual comments about things from the current years crop of applicants or discussing what the program is targeting or looking for this year, you hear a lot. Professors start looping graduate students more into such matters as they progress, often, to help prepare them for academia. The PhD is a progression from student to a young colleague, and what you pick up along the way shows that. You don't have to be the one sitting on your departments admissions committee making the decisions to hear why at least some of those decisions were made. Back to the topic at hand: I certainly wasn't meaning to imply that mentioning work experience would damage the SoP irreparably, but it's a risk/reward analysis. I see next to no chance of the mention of completely unrelated work experience helping, and there's a chance that it might hurt, however slightly. In the highly competitive applicant pools we're currently experiencing, why risk a potential negative, even if a slight one, for no real potential gain?

I find it interesting to note that, predominately, those that are saying "don't do it" are all well into our graduate degrees, while those that are saying "do it" are currently applying. Something that might be worth considering.

It's funny you should mention this... Late nights working and getting our asses handed to us by coursework was one of the best bonding experiences our cohort had. We still sit around and laugh about clustering around the blackboard in my office at 2 or 3 am arguing about the proper derivation for our QM homework.

This. I think it's the inherent issue with a multiple choice test. Ideally, this type of exam would be short answer asking for summaries of the articles... But that would be so much more difficult to subjectively grade, leaving us with a poor but objectively fair substitute (it punishes everyone equally).

That's only really for the first semester. Past that, you can get funding based on your faculty members personal responses to you. It's not uncommon for program to take in borderline applicants with no initial funding and then decide to fund them (or not) based on their first semester interactions and progress.

A lot of this really depends on your field. You said social science, but there's a huge difference between psychology and anthropology, for instance. My stipend was enough to support me and my wife my first year, and it could have supported a child as well. With your wife not working, there's a lot that can be done to help save money that you might not have the time/energy for if you were both working/in grad school full time. But then I had a good fellowship in a STEM field, so your mileage may vary. ::edit:: Just noticed you said MA- that's going to be a lot harder to do. It's much rarer to get full funding/good stipends for an MA vs a PhD.

And since most SoPs are length limited, if something isn't going to make your SoP, why put it in? As was said, if the work area is relevant to your field, put it in- if you're in labor history, the work becomes at least partially relevant. The implicit assumption that the OP is making is that it would make him stand out for other applicants that he worked to support his family while he was in school. I don't think that's a reasonable assumption to make at this level, as I think most people applying to graduate school are less likely to be there on "Mommy and Daddy's dime". Additionally, many academics *do* look down on people working full time while doing a graduate degree. You may not agree with it, but there are several threads on the CHE forums with people asking about working while in graduate school (granted, many are talking about PhDs, not Masters), and the near-universal response is "Don't do it!"- either get funded or buckle down and get through it as fast as possible. Also, I think Says a lot about how the OP views it, and that's going to slant how they bring it up. It's not quite the extreme you suggest, but it's definitely heading in that direction.

As I said, I think some of it is definitely masters vs. doctorate. You have longer in a PhD program, so it's more acceptable to have a slow start.

This is a very good point. I put all my work experience in my CV, something I'm sure you've done as well. The adcom will see it there.

I think if you really don't have much of an idea of what you want to do, it might not be a bad idea to consider doing a MS in one of the areas that interests you. They serve the purpose of letting you get a little bit more in depth and see whether it's really for you or not. Only having a vague idea of what you want to study isn't a good way to start off a PhD- you're expected to be quite specific in your interests by that point. Personally, I found doing research really showed me what I did and didn't like. And reading lots and lots of journal articles.

I agree with both of the previous posters to some degree. I don't think it's enough to just be interested in the process and way of thinking- you'll get bogged down in the minutia of a very specific area, and just a general interest in learning won't carry you through. That said, it's not uncommon to have a specific area of interest that overlaps several fields- I could have applied to programs in several different fields, and ended up applying to programs in several different subspecialities. It comes down to deciding why those two fields interest you, and specifically what within those two fields interests you- then you can see the overlap and the commonalities that you're passionate about. Finding, as GutLogic said, the continuity in what research you want to be doing is the right way to go about it.

I would say it's not at all customary for the advisor to just give a topic to PhD students (possibly MA students). You're expected to build research ideas and projects around what your group has done/has funding for, but they need to be your ideas. It does happen, but it's really not good for the students development or really they're future career to just plop them on a project and tell them what to do. It's possible that you might start on a project that's already underway to get some experience with techniques, etc., but most people don't stick with it. Projects that PIs have gotten funding for are usually pretty broad, with a large range of possible research projects within them. Additionally, most PIs are always looking for ideas to expand the project.

This is true in my program too. Prof's will periodically remind the class what they consider acceptable and unacceptable grades for graduate students to be receiving.

The IRS has good estimated tax calculators, as does Turbotax, if you want to give it a shot.

We've covered this some in the other thread, but I'd recommend asking first. My guess is that most institutions won't accept letters that you mail in unsigned envelopes, as there's no real way to verify that you didn't just write the letter yourself.

You don't have to go back and visit, just e-mail your writers and ask them to send recommendations to your schools. This is a necessary part of most applications- either sealed envelopes from the school, or online submissions from the faculty. Just like the requirement for sealed transcripts from schools.

Most fellowship granting institutions (NSF included) seem to be really hands off with explaining how to pay taxes. I think they just want to cover their asses by using vague "you must pay taxes according to IRS guidelines" statements. The other problem is that unlike wage earnings, it's almost impossible for the IRS to *know* whether you owe taxes or not. No one sends in a W2 form or any other slip showing how much you've been payed, the IRS would have to dig for/request fellowship records in order to track it down. I think this leads to a lot of misunderstandings about how to pay taxes, since most people are trained to pay what gets shown on tax forms- W2, 1098, 1099.

Actually, if you look at it, the NRO is much more than 1k. It's a comprehensive support for travel (up to 5k, I think) and living expenses- partially payed for by the NSF, and partially funded by the Science Foundations in those partner countries.

I completely agree.

My department doesn't do rotations either, hence why I said formal or informal rotations. Even our Ecology program will allow students to spend some time in a lab they're interested- it's rare that a prof will ever turn down no-strings attached work. That said, research isn't all about the time in the lab. Doing the background reading and work to develop a research plan is a huge part of it, and shouldn't be rushed. If you can couple it with doing basic lab-tech like things in a lab you're interested in, it works out great- you get to learn new techniques and keep your skills up, but you're primarily working on developing your own ideas for a research project.

Also keep in mind that sealing them and submitting them yourself could be considered fraud in your application. And could result in your acceptance being withdrawn later if it's discovered. Not a huge chance they'd find out, but a pretty severe risk to take. Just get your writers to send them.

If they weren't sealed, I think you'll have trouble with most universities accepting them. Sealed letters are the norm- your writers would give you a stack of letters, each sealed in an envelope.

You did indeed say that. I was more responding to Bigant's comment that the GRE writers should be at the "graduate" level. I just thought it worthwhile to point out that these aren't articles that are mass produced just for the GRE, but rather a large pool of articles cut from journals.There seems to be a large sentiment that it's what "ETS" is doing to "US", or put another way, that some things are acceptable for ETS in their writing section but not for those taking the test in the AW section, and I thought the reminder that ETS isn't writing the selections they're using might be helpful to offer some perspective. This is also an argument that goes back for 6 months, it's hard to keep the different parts of it straight in my head!

You guys do realize that the GRE passages aren't written by some anonymous "GRE writers", right? They're all sections pulled from journal articles. Hence, they're supposed to be a wide smattering of what you might encounter in your graduate career... ETS just doesn't select out those they think are written "poorly" from those that are written "well". They're all peer-reviewed examples of academic writing, generally from reputable journals.