Eigen

Glad I could help! I remember finding NO a pretty intimidating city to move to- the neighborhoods are so varied in such a close area that it can be hard to find out where, exactly, safe places to live are. What program are you coming into here at Tulane?

Transferring between grad schools isn't common at all, and isn't particularly easy- especially not the way you describe. You pretty much have to tell your current school you want to transfer in the fall semester, and get letters of rec from your current faculty. Schools really want to see a "blessing" from your current school about you leaving, and they'll want to know why- so have a good reason. Don't try to do it under the radar... If someone finds out, it will screw you over far worse than if you're up front about it. I knew someone that applied to another school in his first year... And the first thing that department did was call his advisor and ask what the deal was. Since he hadn't told his advisor, it made for very uncomfortable situations all around. If you want to go to school B, you really should either hold off on school A, or go to school A, finish a masters, and then apply to school B. Going somewhere with the intention of switching isn't good for the school (you don't usually become worth your funding right away), and risks giving you a bad rep overall.

Reserve periods and tenure periods are both exactly 12 months- you only get two 12 month reserve periods, and three 12 month tenure periods. But past that, what Husky said- you really should talk to your institutions CO, they are the ones best placed to help you figure this out.

I'd really avoid making that commute if you can. It's discipline specific to some degree, but a long commute in grad school is much worse than such commutes as an undergraduate, from what I've seen- at least your first year or so. That said, the shuttle system from off-campus commuter lots onto the main campus is pretty decent- but you're probably looking at about an hour either way to actually get to campus from Metaire. Parking is nearly non-existent on the campus itself. If you're worried about rent, I'd contact your department- you can usually get in touch with some current/other incoming grad students, and find a place to split. Alternatively, there are usually some decent studio apartments that come available over the summer in the $600-$700 range close to Tulane. If you have any more specific questions, feel free to PM me- I've helped several incoming students find apartments recently, and I keep pretty good tabs on apartments/prices in general. Welcome to New Orleans!

Not to mention that a lot of those side effects can be attributed to *any* time consuming career, the first two to any type of desk job for sure.

Again, if you've passed Quals (which you have), you will likely graduate from your current institution no matter where you finish the work from. And if that name is on you degree, does it really matter that some of your work was done at a lower ranked school? As to the ponzi scheme... I'm not saying it doesn't exist in the sciences, but it's much more of a humanities issue.

You may not be comfortable with it, but is still true- he has spent a lot of time and money on you, and you're thinking about swapping to another group. You still haven't mentioned what discipline you're in, but you mentioned lab work... I know in chemistry (or related subjects) it can be quite difficult to change advisors part way through a program- especially past the first year. And you usually need your previous advisors blessing.

If you're in the sciences (which I gather you are), moving with your advisor is the usual course- it's quite rare for someone to switch to another lab in order to stay. That said, if you passed Quals, you should receive your PhD from your current institution even if you move with your advisor- something to keep in mind. We have a group that moved from a top-ranked program to ours about two years ago, and all the students that came with the PI who had passed quals would be receiving their degrees from said top-ranked program, even though they were finishing the work here. I'd reiterate the above advice about making sure you have things lined up at your current institution... Especially making sure that you won't lose time in swapping groups. In my field, the swapping of groups could set you back 1-2 years in your degree, depending on how far apart the research was.

I'd love to see the Officially Grad's section beefed up. I actually didn't know about TGC during my application season... I didn't find it and join until I was most of the way through my first semester. PhDComics seems to do pretty well with two "Grad" sections- stuff relating to Academia, and then just a "General" forum. I think one thing that might help get more posts from current grads wouldn't so much be expansion as re-organization... Moving the "Meet and Greet" to another subsection (probably under the "Applying to Grad School" section) and then moving the "Grad School Life" section of the boards up closer to the top... Unless you minimize sections, the current grad student sections are way down the list, which I think hurts traffic to some degree. Alternatively, you could just move "Jobs" and "Officially Grads" up to the "Cafe" subsection. As to moderation, if there's a need I'd be glad to help out. I have several other forums I moderate, and it's not that hard to just go through reports/tickets on a regular basis as part of my visits to the site.

Alternatively, get used to living on about 4 hours of night and lots of coffee! Seriously, making sure you get sleep is really important. It's still not something I'm consistently able to do. There have been some interesting polls of graduate students vs. incidence of insomnia, and the data seems anecdotally solid. I don't recommend the 4 hours+ coffee approach, although it's mostly what I've been doing the past few weeks.

Definately discipline specific. In chem, our first year is the busiest too... You have to combine research, coursework and teaching. The second year, you're usually dine witn most classes, and are mostly settled in to your lab/research. I would add that you should do your best to reach out to other students.. Get to know your cohort. If you can bond witn them, they'll be the best support system available to you for the rest of your PhD. Reach out to older students as well... Don't be afraid to ask for help with coursework or research. It's worse to not ask and miss out on a good source of information tha. To look stupid because you didn't know something. Also realize that everyone in your cohort will have differernt strengths, since you're all coming from different backgrounds. Use that to your advantage! Swap help in one class for help in another. Keep in mind that grad school is as much about endurance as anything else. Pace yourself! Take time off, take time to go out and make friends/make time for friends. Don't work every evening and every weekend, you'll burn out fast. Grad school is where you start to develop habits that will last for the rest of your academic career... It's closer to life as a professor than undergrad by far, and you need to start looking for a balance that you will maintain for the rest of your life (assuming you want to stay in academics).

Penn State doesn't require entrance exams, from what I recall.

You could e-mail either the graduate advisor, or one of the current students. Our entrance exam was basically the ACS standard exams for each canonical area (Org, Inorg, Physical)... I don't think anyone got "held back" from the grad level courses in my cohort, you would have had to do pretty badly for that to happen. I just went through and reviewed the texts I had used for the undergrad courses in the week or so before the test- there's only so much you can cram into your head! As for preparing for the courses, you could see who's teaching what, and ask what texts they used... I didn't find that to be necessary starting off for me. I did end up needing a lot of math review for my QM course first semester- I had a Russian theoretical physicist, and he expected us to know all of our complex integrations off the top of our head, and it had been like 3 years since I'd had Calc3. All the courses allowed for enough lead time at the beginning to catch up, especially because almost everyone in the course had different amounts of background in the subject area. Not sure if it will be the same at Irvine, but I'd imagine there would be some similarities.

Your thesis/dissertation is *your* contribution to your field, not your advisors. Guidance is expected, but not hand holding/leading, in my opinion. Most of my peers and I spend a ton of time combing through journals... You find something, try it- if it works, great. If not, you figure out why it didn't work, and go back into the literature to figure out workarounds. From what you say, it's possible he's not frustrated with the lack of ideas, but with the fact that you give up on them if they don't work. Heck, it's not unusual for us to bang our heads against the wall for months trying different things until something works- that's what research is all about!

In my field, if your advisor is very well known it is common to meet with them only every few months- I know some students that only get to talk with their advisor once a semester. I think a lot depends on the PI- some want their students to be very self directed (as yours does) and some are a lot more hands on. In the end, though, I think most are of the opinion that within the broad areas of research done in the group/that others are working on, a thesis should be primarily the result of the students innovation. That said, it does seem like switching to another advisor might work best for you.

Sure thing. I'm sure the situation might change depending on how the school wants to handle it, but from the response I gather that as long as it's not (a) another federal fellowship and ( you're not trying to receive funding from both sources simultaneously, NSF is OK with it. That's supposed to be the point of reserve years anyway; allowing students to take advantage of other sources of support as they come available.

I really wouldn't worry about classes filling up. It's routine here for grad students to register the week before/first week of classes, and in fact as incoming first years, you *can't* register until the day before classes start. I have yet to hear of any grad student not getting a seat in a class they want/need to take... Professors usually make room.

Hey guys: A quick update in response to the questions about first year reserve status & departmental/institutional fellowships. I have a 4 year fellowship I'm currently on, and wanted to use it next year while on reserve with NSF (so I can extend my funding a bit longer). I asked my program officer, and he wasn't sure, so I e-mailed the NSF. Here was my question and their response, for anyone else in a similar situation: Is it permissible for me to declare reserve status for the first year of my NSF fellowship to make use of my current support for the 2011-2012 year? Yes, it is.

I was going to say you left out health insurance, but in this case the school is providing that. Yeah, I'd say that is a very livable salary with the information you've given us. I was able to support both myself and my wife on a 30k stipend in a city with a very similar cost of living... And no free health insurance.

It really is... I think I'll be getting one of the Apple bluetooth keyboards for when I'm doing any serious typing.

Deferring means you don't take the fellowship that year. Reserve is taking the fellowship, but not using one of the years of funding that year. NSF gives 3 years of funding over 5 years, each May you choose whether to take the funding for the next year or not.

Yeah. At least there aren't "penalties" for failing a cume, so you get a lot of tries... But it can be demoralizing after you fail your first half dozen or so. We also have a presentation we have to give in our second year- we have to give a departmental seminar (as part of our normal seminar series) that's a comprehensive review of a field *not* directly related to our research. It's always fun to prepare

I like NoteTaker HD... And although I'm currently using GoodReader for PDF Annotations, I'm thinking about swapping to PDF Expert- more expensive, but seems like its more fully featured. Dropbox is definitely a must. I was using the HardCandy Stylus, but the caps were a bit of a pain- I ordered one of the 2nd Generation ACase Styluses, and it just got here- so far I like the feel a lot more, it's thinner and a bit longer- feels more natural to write with. I'll see how well it holds up the next batch of notes I take. The nice thing about NoteTaker HD for taking notes is you can make and use any background- so I have some pre-set templates I made using Adobe PDF Forms that I can use for different types of notes/lab notebook pages, etc. This means you can also use it to annotate PDFs, although the process is a lot longer than GoodReader (the whole import process)- but if I was going to take extensive notes on a PDF, I'd use NoteTaker. Some of the features take a bit long to get to (shapes, etc), but I don't use them all that much.

It takes some getting used to, but I can see using it for that. I was able to keep up in a 2 hour class the other day- important diagrams, bullet points, etc.

For GradCafe, you need to use the mobile version of the site. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of any page here, and then swap from IP.Board to IP.Board Mobile. As to GoodReader not opening articles, I'm not sure... I've never tried to directly download them off JSTOR though, I always just pull them from my endnote library on dropbox or from e-mails. Generally, you'll open the PDF with the native viewer (safari, mail, etc), and then there's an icon at the top that's a little arrow out of a box that is the "open in" command that you can use to open it in GoodReader. The locked down file system isn't Mac vs PC... Macs file system is in many ways more open than PCs are... It's the fact that the iPad runs on a mobile OS, not a desktop OS, and as such just takes some getting used to. It was like the "pocket" version of Windows back in the day- it performed very differently than a desktop version of windows. Have you downloaded DropBox? Everyone I know uses that as their file structure. You can organize it however you like, have folder tiers, etc. And then you can access any of your PDFs, and sync them back to your computer with annotations when you're done. I also use it to pull up figures in meetings, give powerpoint presentations, etc.