Eigen

Are you talking about undergraduate, or graduate? Out of our 17,000 student university, only about 10-15 people would graduate with 4.0s... They are quite rare for undergraduates in most of the US. And most classes I took were graded to a Gaussian distribution centered on C. Graduate school tends to be much different.

Most of ours will have at least 4- Grad student, Bio Collaborator PI, Instrument Collaborator PI, PI. Depends how much collaboration you routinely do- we usually have at least 3 PIs on our papers, and then the grad students who worked on the project. And since almost all of the grad students in my group have at least one undergrad working with them, you get the undergrad in there.

A PhD comic for every occasion! http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1413

You're in developmental psych? I'd imagine most of those programs would fall under the 12 month system, and I'd imagine most of the research would be quite hard to work on from home. As for going home a few weekends a month, I managed that pretty nicely my first year (I live about 3 hours away), and my boss never really minded me leaving a bit early on a Friday to beat the traffic. As my research has gotten more intense, I've gone back less and less. From a personal standpoint, I'd urge you to try to separate your work from trips home- trying to work while you're back visiting friends and family tends to lessen both the enjoyment of the trip, and the amount of work you get done. I'm more a fan of working a couple of 7 day weeks in a row, and then taking a long weekend completely off. I also suggest trying to separate your work from home, if you can- especially if you have an office on campus. If I need to work, I come in to my office... If I'm home, I'm spending it with my family.

I think there's a definite difference from the hard sciences and not about the 9 mo vs 12 mo stipend... I don't know anyone that isn't on 12 month support, you have to ask to be knocked off for the summer- either we TA the summer labs, or we're in an RA position for our PIs. But then the hard sciences are also a bit different in that RAs are mostly for our PIs, doing research towards our dissertations, as opposed to some of the other fields (social sciences, humanities) where you might have an RA position working for someone other than your committee chair, doing research not directly connected to yours. Might also be the difference in 9 vs 12 month funding.

You get time off, it's not usually summers and breaks, though. At least in most of the science programs, once you've picked a lab, it pretty much becomes a regular job- you work your 40-60 hours per week, and you get a week to three of vacation a year. To quote one of our professors "you get payed for 52 weeks of the year, you work 52 weeks of the year". When we have international students that want to go home for a month or so, they usually have to request to have their funding put on hold/stopped for that month. We have a few that go home for about 6 weeks at some point during the year, but they usually don't get payed while they're gone. My boss has offered for people to "not work the summer" before, but you'll have a huge pause in your work, and you don't get payed for 3 months. It's a lot more flexible than a regular job, though, and a lot of it depends on what works best for you- if you like your weekends completely off, work longer days on the week. If you prefer more long breaks, work more 7 day weeks in the meantime. Summer is usually considered "a good time to get research done", as is winter break. The other random, shorter breaks through the year... It just depends. I haven't taken off more than 5 day weekends or so since I started here, although I'll probably take off a week coming up this spring. I think the people who talk about working 80+ hours per week are piling a lot into their work hours. My schedule now is usually 8am-6pm (with a 10-90 minute lunch break) or so in the lab, about 4-10 hours sometime on the weekends, and nights and more on the weekends as my project needs it. I have some insane weeks when I'm juggling a few projects that I'm in at 7, work til 5, take a two hour break for dinner and go back to the lab until midnight. It all depends on your projects, whether you're close to a publication, a grant deadline, etc. I took off about 6 days for Christmas break, split out into two 5 day weekends, and I took a couple of days off for Thanksgiving as well. A lot depends on how much of your work you can take with you- if I have data to work on, papers to write... My boss doesn't mind me doing that at home or on the road, as long as I stay in contact.

Non-first author papers aren't nearly as important... Really, when you "count your papers", you should look mostly at first author papers with a smattering of second authors that you contributed significantly to... At least that's what I've been told.

The NSF Graduate Fellowship doesn't require GREs (or even allow them to be submitted), but does require both undergraduate and graduate transcripts.

See, at my school, a C for a graduate student is "go before a committee and explain why we shouldn't kick you straight out on your ass". A "B" average is the minimum allowed, and anything lower than a B- in any class puts you on probation. It was similar at my undergrad (for graduate students). Similarly, making our Honors Convocation was 3.5 for undergrads, and 4.0 for grad students, the reasoning being that if it were 3.5, basically every grad student would be invited. I know it varies from school to school, but a lot of grading seems to be a combination of "you should be good enough to get As" with less intense grading.

I'll tag my referral code in here as well: More space is always good! http://db.tt/W8xN7MR

The results are completely anonymous, from what I can tell.

What you want is the PhDcomics forum (when it ever comes back online), or the Chronicle of Higher Education forum. The Chronicle Forum is populated by PhD students through emeritus faculty, with nice sections devoted to post-docs- Job Searches, early TT positions, etc. The PhDComics was mostly PhD students, post-docs and young faculty, with some older faculty mixed in.

Our university has a daycare, but don't be too reliant on them- or start planning really early. It took my boss 2 semesters of waiting to get his son into the daycare- both he and his wife are TT- and they were having to drive half an hour to an hour morning and evening to the nearest daycare with an opening. Much easier now that they got him in the university daycare, but something to keep in mind.

Oh, that's easy... We're bored! And I don't think in any way serious

I think a lot of it depends on your adviser/department. My wife and I have been married for a bit over 4 years, I'm in the 2nd year of my PhD, and she just started hers. I'm not going to say it isn't challenging, but we try really hard to make time to spend together. My boss is fine with me wanting to be home for dinner and spend the evening at home, and he knows I get my work done when I come in. An early schedule helps me a lot, I try to get into the lab around 7-8am (or earlier if I can), and then work til 5 or 6. Lots of time to get work done through the day, and enough time to spend with my family at home- we can usually manage to grab lunch or coffee together throughout the day. Finances were a bit of a stretch when we were both living on my fellowship, it's a bit easier now that we're both on stipends. I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be having kids yet, though- either timewise or financially- not with both of us in grad school.

Honestly, if you want a more applicable job, I'd go to a Molecular Bio type program. Traditional biochemistry has very little industrial appeal these days (from what I've seen), whereas molecular bio has far more applicability. And as far as applications, I mean things that are applicable to actual problems. Not basic research, research for researches sake, but research actually targeted at solving specific and relevant problems with practical solutions. You want to be able to get patents out of what you're doing in the lab to accompany your papers.

When you quote a line of jabs back and forth and ask "Seriously?", it leaves me confused

The biggest pro I've heard for making yourself industry viable is to pick your boss well- pick someone that's working on applications! Industry will always be impressed by patents you've secured, systems you've developed, techniques you've worked out, etc.

I don't think it's very common for grad schools to offer an en-route MS.... That said, people who fail out of grad school after a certain point are often given a "consolation" MS. And because it's given for people that didn't pass qualifiers, or had too low of a GPA or somesuch, it does carry a stigma. I do know a few people that have switched from PhD track to MS track around the 2 year mark, it all depends on approval from your boss at that point. What particular part of the private sector do you want to work in? Everyone I know in drug design/development and biopharm companies have PhDs.... The ones that don't are basically just lab techs. The entry level salary might be the same, but you'll never really rise that far without a doctorate, from what I've seen. Just my 2 cents worth. And the post-doc pay depends on where you work, too... And your specific subfield. NIH funds post-docs at around 50k per year, another friend of mine is getting 40k+benefits. The typical biology post-doc, from what I've seen, is around 3-4 years, and is a chance for you to develop your reputation and career. The more pubs you had as a grad student and the better known your name was, the less time you need to spend in a post-doc. Sometimes there's a need for several post-doc positions before you've developed the network you need for jobs.

Hmm, I don't think they 5 paragraph form is strictly necessary. I got a 5.5 and I don't think I did a strict 5 paragraph format on either of my essays, at least not purposefully. The other summations are pretty spot on, I would say. The big one I would add is "don't worry about it too much, most places don't lean too heavily on the AW score anyway". I mean, maybe if we're talking scores around 2-3 it would be a problem, but I really don't think I'd worry about scores around 4-6.

That's the right idea, imo.

I wouldn't call it an "aha!" moment so much as realizing one day that after several months of slogging through hundreds of papers, I felt like I actually knew what I was talking about. I came from a very synthetic chemistry background, and then got thrown into a bioorganic lab working with DNA, Proteins and cell studies- it took a lot of catching up, but after 3 semesters I feel like I'm starting to have a pretty good grasp.

I had the same problem with a state fellowship last year. The IRS has a publication on scholarships, which is actually quite helpful. Basically, you have to self report the full amount of the scholarship, less the amount spent on "required school expenses". You report it under "other income", and mark it "SCH" (scholarship). The school rep for NSF might have better information for you.

Being older can be beneficial in some fields- you'll be taken more seriously. I have a friend in Theoretical Chemistry, and his PI tells him not to bother rushing, he won't be taken seriously in academia (in his area) until his mid-30s.

For me, the spring, summer and fall are quite different times... But coming around here to my second spring semester, I understand the feeling you're getting. I'm back to TAing the same course, but new students... Familiar and very different at the same time.