Eigen

Usually, your cumulative GPA refers the cumulative GPA at that institution. Hence, transfer credits are usually not calculated into your GPA. You have a cumulative GPA from the community college, and then you have a cumulative GPA from your liberal arts college, and then two cumulative GPAs from your masters programs. You should probably report each separately.

RH: Just because your school doesn't take it out of your paycheck doesn't necessarily mean you're legally exempt from paying it. There should be no differences between US schools as far as what you owe in taxes- it's all considered income (even tuition waivers) and as such is subject to the same federal tax code no matter where you are.

I like real books for actual texts... Where the iPad shines for me is storing/reading tons of PDF journal articles- but I'm not usually reading those for as long of stretches at a time.

It really depends on everything else in your life- what you can take as deductions. The IRS has tax calculators, and I find Turbotax's calculators are also quite good. Also note that aside from owing money on April 15th that if you underestimate your withholdings too much and owe more than $1000 when you file, you'll also need to pay interest/penalties at that time. I'd estimate you'll end up paying about $200-$400 per month in federal taxes + SS + Medi.... Then you'll have state taxes on top of that, which can work out to be somewhere from 1/2+ of your federal taxes, but I have no idea where Mass. falls in that range.

How are you scoring on practice tests? Are you usually a good standardized tester, or do you suffer from anxiety/other issues?

This. Not to mention, it's a lot of fun to tell them the next day over lunch the things they don't remember from that night.....

Every time I go out and don't drink, the bartenders almost never charge me for water/soda... The rest of the party is buying plenty, and most are pretty nice about the odd one out that isn't drinking.

Yeah, our departmental seminars serve alcohol, and our departmental BBQs/holiday parties serve it as well.

It depends what you mean by teetotaler... I couldn't exactly tell from your original post. If you meant you don't want to hang around other people who are drinking, or have moral issues with them doing so, then you might have difficulty. Otherwise, not drinking/drinking very little shouldn't be a problem. Most of my cohort drinks, a lot, and I drink very little, if at all. Most of the time, they're more than happy to have someone there sober and reasonable, and I've never had any pressure to drink at all. And this is in New Orleans, with a huge and pervasive drinking culture.

Ok, It was another site, but very similar. The discussion there might be informative.

It seems like something very similar came up a few months back.... Was that you guys as well? It was an anonymous rating site for PIs.

A lot of it depends on if you have an office/carrel/place on campus to leave stuff. I have two different backpacks (small and large) and a good soft briefcase. I use different ones depending on where I'm going and how much stuff I have to carry that day. For the most part, though, since I have an office on campus, I just carry a few papers/notebooks back and forth, so something small works well.

I know people that have done the working while writing up thing- it always seems to make it take much longer than it should have. If (as Rising_Star mentioned) it's a job that's beneficial to your career path, that might be worth it. For instance, for those who want to go forward with teaching as a primary goal, adjuncting during the last couple of years of their PhD isn't uncommon, and helps them gain good teaching experience for their resume.

I would say absolutely. They may not have had you in a class, but they've had a lot closer interaction with your work through your thesis- and that's a much more important thing to be able to attest to for a letter writer, imo.

I wish we had a technician! That sounds like all the stuff I do in my "spare time". I love the "how professors see undergrads" one.

You're asking aout your chances but really don't give much else to go on. In general, unless your scores are really low, the GRE is e least important part of your application.

It's interesting... There's a parallel thread to this one on the CHE forums, with most of the posters there being moderately supportive of the measure, with the opinion that you should either (a) be supported or choose another school, or ( that you should be responsible for supporting your own debt at this point. Being as it's mostly faculty and admins, it's interesting to see the difference of opinion.

Ask. Some of the programs I applied to required that you at least have started the application online before you sent anything... It never hurt to e-mail the grad secretary and check.

No one wants you to lie, just stop generalizing your experiences to everyone. You're having a bad time in graduate school, it happens... Not everyone does.

That's what I've been trying to get across, but let me re-iterate: You can get married, have children and enjoy life while working on a PhD. You don't need to spend 70-80 hours in the lab each week, and if your advisor is too driven, perhaps you should consider finding someone a bit less so- finish your MS with her, look elsewhere for your PhD. Work hard when you're in lab, work reasonable hours (8-10 hours per day, 5 days per week, maybe a few hours on the weekend), and let it go when you "clock out". Sometimes projects will take you outside of your schedule, but it shouldn't be an all the time thing. At some point, you have to make a conscious choice which is more important to you- your degree and career, or the rest of your life. You have obviously chosen the latter option- so don't feel bad about it. It's the choice I made when I started grad school, and it's worked well for me- my advisor is happy, I work hard the 50-60 hours per week I'm in lab, and I enjoy my hobbies and my family when I'm not. This course doesn't mean you can't be successful, either- I won both outstanding graduate student in my department and an NSF graduate fellowship, so the two aren't mutually exclusive at all. I find separating your work and home life is very important- I almost never take work home with me. If I have a project that I need to work on in the evening, I go back to my office. This makes "home" a space for the rest of my life- I'm not carting around papers, trying to work from a desk in my bedroom, or anything else. When I walk out of my lab/office and close the door, I'm done for the time being. I know a few German grad students that work like this- they come in at 8 or 9, work a solid 8-9 hours and get a lot done, and then they're off. They enjoy their evenings and their weekends, while still getting their work done, it seems to be the norm for them.

Good grief- he's trying to help you by pointing out how you're coming across, and how that will effect other people (including admission committees) views of you. He's said over and over that he's not saying that's "you", just how you're coming across. It's useful advice.

You say you're just speaking from your experience, but then you generalize. Grad school does not drain everyone in every sense of the word, nor does it have to. Sacrifices have to be made, but the number and severity varies hugely based on the program and the individual- sometimes you just have to stand up for yourself and say you won't make the sacrifices that are being asked of you. Since you are in Art, and the OP is in the sciences, some of your suggestions (part time, classes online) are less applicable, since lab work is the primary component of their work now, something that can rarely be done part time or online. I think the better advice to Wornoutgrad is to just start scheduling time into your schedule for yourself, and making sure you take it. Put in a solid 8-10 hours of work, and then stop. Turn it off. Spend time with friends, skype with family. Or, work longer days for a few weeks and then take the time off to go home and visit. Have confidence that you're putting the time into your work, and that when you do you can put time into yourself as well. For your continued sanity and productivity, nothing is more important than making sure you have enough time to keep yourself going.

There's a lot to be said for making a conscious choice about your priorities. When I started grad school, I decided that it was something I wanted to do, but it wasn't, nor did I ever want it to become, the most important part of my life. Going along with that, I understood that it might mean I wouldn't wind up at an R1 school, or even in academia- but none of that was something I liked enough to give up 5-15 years of my life to obtain it. So I make sure I'm home in time for dinner with my wife most nights, I take long lunches with friends when I can, and I make sure I keep up on my hobbies. If you don't want to get a PhD, don't let anyone convince you that you should- and also remember that you can come back and do the PhD later, when you feel like you have more control over the rest of your life. Don't feel like you're trapped in your degree, either- you can leave at any time- and that's true for an MS or your PhD. It's your education, and your choice, no matter how much other people might make you feel like it isn't.

Woohoo! 7 months straight

I know our university is encouraging it- in the job market, teaching experience is becoming more important, so it makes our graduate students a lot more competitive if they have some of it. They're working to set up "mentoring" teaching programs, wherein the professor is still the "teacher" of record, but with a senior graduate student listed as a co-teacher.