Eigen

On the "time to publication" thing: Most of the higher tier (and more desirable) journals seem to have acceptance rates of 10-20% or so, depending on the field. Therefore, as mentioned, it's often necessary to write, submit... Then get a rejection, do more experimental work/re-write, resubmit... And repeat the process. Additionally, it's often common for things in my field to remain as "accepted" articles for 5-6 mos, while the journal waits for the best time to get them out- they usually get published online earlier, but the journals try to group papers by theme, so they wait for the ideal time to publish the article.

For my field, we're "expected" to have around 1 first author publication per year, although it's usually none early on, and more than one per year towards the end. I got started off (as someone a few years ago mentioned upthread) with a major review article- my PI had been asked to write a chapter for a book, reviewing a pretty broad subfield, and he passed it off onto me. It really got me into the literature, and helped me familiarize myself with most of the major players in my field, and their recent research. It also gave me a good bit of writing practice (it was a 60 page review). As Ktel mentioned, though, it's very field dependent- and even subfield dependent. Some areas of Chemistry, 1 publication from your PhD is good... Some, you need closer to 10 to be really competitive. It depends on the pace of your research, and how much you need done (data, etc) to have something worthy of a publication.

Our cohorts are around 6-12 students, which is about "mid-sized"... And I consider it just about perfect. It's a tight knit group to hang around with, you get to know everyone, but it's not too massive. For a doctoral program, that transfers into about a 50-70 student program, which is a nice middle of the road size. It means most of the "first semester" classes have around 12-15 graduate students in them, which is on the large side- but then once people choose subfields, you get down around 1-6 people in a class, which is ideal. Any more than that, and the lectures really can't be personalized enough, or allow enough time to really get into discussions/debates on the topics. A cohort of that size means all the faculty in the department know you, the staff know you, and you get to know all of them quite easily. It allows for easily organized departmental functions (we do 2-3 per semester). And once you choose a research group, it means you (usually) have lots of 1 on 1 time with your PI- I talk to mine every day, we have several fairly in depth meetings per week- our offices are right across the hall from one another. Also keep in mind that larger class sizes, while they usually translate into more spots to be accepted, can also mean the university plans on pushing a fair amount of the graduate students out in the first couple of years. In my field, there are several universities that take 100+ students per cycle, but many of them "expect" that about half of that class will drop out/be pushed out. It makes for a lot of competition between people of that year, as opposed to fostering a cooperative/peer-like mindset. Also, if there's a huge entering class there can be a lot more competition for the few research spots in some of the high profile groups- whereas schools that take smaller cohorts usually try harder to take people in who will get to work in their first choice lab.

Woohoo! Tulane! Whee! Sorry. It's not often I see people apply here in Chemistry- as an aside, I'd be glad to answer any questions you might have about the department via PMs. At this point, I'd really start narrowing down the list by more specific interests- what research do you want to do, and who is doing it?

Yeah, but at 5 years old... Make a new post and link to the old one! Otherwise, it can get very confusing for those who pile onto the discussion.

Haha, and I thought the last one was dredging up an old post at 2 years.... 5 years from the last post is definitely pushing it!

While good advice, being that it's been two years since the original discussion too place, it may or may not ever make it to the right people.

Is it possible to swap him out for someone else at this stage? Honestly, from my understanding, most of the "committee wrangling" of this nature should be up to the PI- I would sit down and talk with yours, and see what they suggest. If he truly isn't returning feedback you need, that might be enough for you and your PI to go to the department head about swapping him out with someone that's actually at the school.

I would suggest swapping out one of your current courses for the Neuroimaging one. Our normal courseload is no more than 3 courses... You *might* get away with taking 4 your first semester (here at least), but not if you're doing research as well. Most people only routinely take 2 courses any semester after the first.

I'm in the sciences, which might tint this some: MS Office (2007, 2010, Office for Mac): The version doesn't really matter, but unless you want the headache of dealing with converting Tex documents to the corresponding .doc/.docx format when it comes time to submit it to a journal... The best one out there. Most journals in my area require a word formatted document, and usually supply a similar template. Most won't accept Tex files. Origin: Awesome data analysis package. I don't use excel anymore unless I'm doing something light/personal. Quite expensive as I understand it, but we have a departmental subscription. For those running Macs, Prism is quite good as well. Dropbox: I don't know how I transferred documents/kept things synced before. Endnote: Well worth the ~$100 for easy management of references and papers. The new version allows you to annotate PDFs within Endnote, which is quite cool, as well as upload/backup all your full text documents to the Endnote Web servers, which is also awesome. Adobe Illustrator: How else do you make professional quality graphics for papers? Takes a while to learn, but really the only way to make figures that really look good. Expensive, but worth it- thankfully we have a departmental subscription. Adobe Acrobat 9: As was mentioned above, nothing else does PDFs like Adobe. Expensive, but worth it. Thankfully, we have a departmental subscription.

As I mentioned earlier, cold-brewing coffee cuts down the acid content by about 70%- you should give it a shot. It's pretty mild at that point.

As brief as possible, and attachment free (is what I've heard from Profs). Most PIs I know get in the range of 50-100 e-mails per day.... If they have to dig through attachments (CV/Transcript, etc) or read through a long e-mail, it's not likely to catch their interest. Additionally, I have found it's better to include some discussion of their research in the letter- ask some questions- instead of just talking about yourself. You're probably more likely to spark a conversation/get a response that way. PIs seem to have a "sense" about template letters that get sent to them, and the most common response I've heard is to simply delete it. You want it to be as personalized as possible, while still remaining short and to the point. I'd suggest going with: Professor X, I'm currently a senior undergrad at XXX interested in pursuing a MS. As I've been looking through the journals, your article on XX caught my eye, and I had a few (hopefully quick) questions about your research. (insert a few short but insightful questions about their work here) Also, do you currently have any room for new students in your group? The overall theme of your work makes me feel I would fit in quite well, assuming you are taking students for the XXX school year. Regards, Your Name Here

The moving expenses can be a lot- it took most of our savings for the set up costs. But they slowly build back up if you're frugal, the first year can just be hard. I ended up moving to the new city and starting research during the summer, so it let me get on the payroll a month early, and it also meant I started drawing from my fellowship right away- there was a 2-4 week delay for those who came just before the semester started.

I actually preferred the accountability for who liked a post... Is it possible to have both the up/down system (a like/dislike system) and concurrently show who chose each?

Depends on the person. I have a few colleagues with whom we regularly take long lunches and argue over lots of recent political developments... And I have a lot who I just avoid the topic with mostly/entirely. As you're in the program, you develop some people who are close friends, some who are reasonably close, and some who are just acquaintances/colleagues.... Discuss your personal life/views accordingly.

I know we rarely pay our undergrads- they work for the experience, and/or credit. We only start paying them after they've had several years of training and are really worth the money. I will caution that training undergrads can often be more time put in than you get back out, at least on the timescale you're looking at, although I'm sure it depends on the project. I would say it's taken me an average of 6-8 months before I'm getting more work out of the ones I train than I'm putting into them- and if you're on a year long timescale, that might not really be worth it, especially as overworked as you are.

This. I have several different types of texts I read with regularity- research papers, review articles, and books. Research papers, I usually read the introduction/abstract, then skim through the figures/methods, and read the discussion/conclusion. If the paper is pertinent to my research, I file it away to look over in more detail when I need something from it- no need to go in depth into the specific procedures months before I plan on performing them, I just need to know they're there, and in general the techniques they used. If it isn't pertinent to my research area, a general idea of what they did/why/what the results were is usually all I need. Review articles: In their entirety, usually by sections, over the course of several days. I usually read a section/make notes on it, and then look up the referenced articles relevant to that section/my work, read them, and then move on to the next section. Books: Most of the actual books I read I use as reference- so a few pages here, a few pages there. Sometimes I find a good general text that I'll sit down and read all/most of the way through, but it's rare. I usually make notes on a separate sheet of paper next to me while I read- I find fitting what I need to in the margins can be quite difficult. If it's a paper I'm more familiar with, or I'm looking for some specific supporting information, I'll forgo the notes and just underline/circle parts that I find particularly relevant. I usually go back and type up these notes later, which gives me a more detailed literature review type framework I can use when I need to refer to the article again, or I'm trying to find out who did that neat work on XX topic.

It depends on the agency, from what I understand- some of them allow multiple chances for support and some don't- you'd have to check each program and it's specific funding guidelines, I don't think there are any "general" rules.

Thanks for doing snarky. I had a snarky one posted, but decided that I should at least try to take it seriously at first brush... But I'd been itching to come back and do the snarky one and you saved me the trouble!

In my mind the ethics of lying on your application in order to get free funding aren't field dependent- although you are right, the dynamics of MS vs PhD do vary from discipline to discipline, and CS is probably one of the more unusual ones out there. In these cases of too much money- is it money for students, or money for equipment? Grant money can't be spent on whatever you want, and funds for grad student salaries are an earmarked portion of the total, usually.

They *do* try to reject potential dropouts. That's one of the major points of the application process- to find a cohort of students they believe can successfully complete the graduate program.

Two things: One, PIs don't need TAs. Departments need TAs. TA salaries come (primarily) out of the departments funds, RAships come out of a PIs grant. If the department was really that hard up for teaching time, they could just hire an adjunct for ~3k per class per semester as opposed to 50k+ that they'd need for a graduate student. Two, it reflects badly on a department when people leave prior to completing their degree, so no, I doubt it would be encouraged in any case. I'll also add that "too much funding" is not a situation I've ever heard people talk about. ::edit:: damn iPad autocorrect

There aren't rules against having a job on the side, perse, but there are quite commonly rules against having a job on the side while receiving any funding from the school- including tuition waivers. Our student handbook is very clear-cut on the issue. If you can earn more with the side job than you would from tuition waivers + other funding combined, then it might be worth it to you to do so. We've had several people in the department that got caught working off campus jobs, and they were told to either quit on the spot or pay back the tuition for the current semester. Other schools allow you to work on the side, but reduce your funding by the amount you're making at the other job- this makes them primarily useful for experience/networking, not increasing your funding sources.

If he applies for a PhD position... And he only intends to do a Masters.... He's lying on his application from the start. If he applied for one of the MS positions, it wouldn't be a problem- but otherwise, he's directly lying in his intent to stay through to the PhD. If something changes down the road that forces someone out/causes them to leave graduate school, the intent in the application was still to finish. Our OP here, on the other hand, never has any intention of getting a PhD, yet he's applying as if he does to improve the strength of his application and make it more likely that he will get funding. He's not competing on the same ground as anyone else, he's lying in order to get in. As for the SoP being as important as the other application materials.... The SoP and Letters are probably the most important parts of the application- GPA and GRE scores are formalities or things that are used to easily cut down the number of applications.

I would say it completely depends on what you want to do within astronomy- they each give you a very different skill set to work with, and would set you on (in my mind) a different path.