Eigen

One of the more common things I hear from our faculty about our first year students is that they spend too much time on classes, and care too much about grades. Also, while close to a 4.0 is easy to maintain, I see no reason to shoot for it to the detriment of anything else. For a PhD program, your research productivity is the primary concern. With good research, no one really cares what your grades are, they don't matter much anyway. Do well, learn the material, publish papers, and get a good reputation from that. When it comes to grades, minimums and probation.... Most schools have set times you can stay below a minimum, or on probation, with exceptions granted either by committee or by the PI. Since generally if you're doing well research wise it's your PI that funds you (RAships), making them happy is usually the most important thing. I've never heard a faculty member say "Man, Eigen did really well in my class, he'll go far". Getting back to the GRE- there was a comment about being able to take the test multiple times to raise scores. Personally, I can't think of many things that are more of a waste (time and money) than re-taking the GRE unless you had a particularly abysmal score to begin with. It's only useful for getting into graduate school- nothing else- and other things will likely benefit you more. Also, Velua- just curious, but are you currently in a PhD program? I notice you have a 2016 application season on your profile. I ask, because the advice I'd give for a MS program is totally different than what I'd give for a PhD program- they're quite different.

I think things have changed a bit now, but I have never considered rote arithmetic that useful for graduate school, or that indicative of someone being intelligent. Accordingly, doing long division by hand (old style GRE) was not very useful to determine a "good" physical scientist, or engineer. In the real world, you'll always double check with a calculator anyway. No reason to rest the results of a costly experiment (time, materials, etc) on the result of back of the envelope math. I strongly, strongly disagree that taking exams is what we're trained to do. If you feel that way about your education, I would personally say that school failed you. I also consistently find that the least prepared graduate students were the ones who "did really well in class" or "did really well on exams". A thorough knowledge of your subject area is important. Being able to work things out is important. Being able to have ideas that have the potential to revolutionize fields is crucial. As is the ability to practically troubleshoot and carry those ideas through. Personally, I'd argue that the more elite schools are less reliant on scores- they're getting more than enough applicants with publications and research experience that allows them to not rely on scores that they really don't care about. Also, who cares about being on probation due to low grades if you're publishing? I know plenty of fellow students that spent years in grad school on academic probation because of grades, but came out with great publications, grant proposals, etc. and went on to do fine. None of the faculty really cared either.

I don't think you're well versed in what qualifying exams generally are. And I think you'd also be surprised at the difference in tests between undergraduate and graduate courses, as well as the relative importance placed on tests vs projects. Past a certain threshold a better Q score doesn't really benefit you as much as a better verbal. In physical sciences, last I saw the statistics, over 20% of applicants had perfect Q scores. Far fewer had perfect or near perfect verbal scores. Accordingly, having a high verbal score will set you apart more than a high quantitate score- it's rarer. I know I got comments on having a high percentile verbal score when I applied, with people saying it was usually indicative of a larger vocabulary, and more ease writing & reading. All of which are quite important for grad school, as the further you go the more time is spent writing. Your grades in math courses matter more for physical sciences in showing whether or not you get math- the GRE is pretty much arithmetic anyway.

On quarterly taxes: I end up owing around 1500-2000 per year. The penalties for that degree of underpayment are quite small- if you'd prefer to budget and not have to file quarterly, you'll probably be fine.

Exactly. Having a ton of extra-curriculars won't make you a promising candidate if you don't have the research chops to back it up... But since there are usually a lot of applicants that have good grades, good GRE scores, and research experience, a lot of the tighter decisions tend to be made based on more intangible things- fit, other experiences, etc.

Hmm, talked to my CO, and they said they haven't heard anything yet.

Wooohoo! Will make going off of the fellowship this fall a bit less painful.

It matters, and will likely continue to matter post- grad school. Especially leadership positions.

Yeah, we play patents very close to the chest, with a preliminary patent application filed at the same time as the first publication submission, with no presentations of "useful" material on the project until that point.

Just for the record, having proof that an idea was yours will do you very little good in the long run. Journals really don't care who originated the idea, it's the first person to get a publishable manuscript in. It's why many research groups won't present findings at meetings that are unpublished/not close to publication. I've had friends present unpublished data at a conference, have someone snap pictures of their poster, take the idea and push it through to publication first. An email record can be nice for, say, convincing your PI that you thought of the idea, but in the broader community it really won't do any good. Sharing ideas is always a calculated risk... Someone might take your work. Someone might take an idea and develop it. Share ideas with the people you trust, and work with good collaborators. Getting scooped happens. It sucks, but you move on.

Log on and check. If it appears in your "to do list" in FastLane, you need to do it. You shouldn't need to submit a report, though- just update your status, which it seems like you already have.

I would hope prospective graduate students would be more understanding of copyright law. Locking this thread.

Just to weigh in, there are indeed students who have sued (and won, or had the University settle) based on bad recommendations. There are perennial discussions on the CHE forums on what to do for students for which you can't write a strong recommendation.

Compared to Tall Chai Latte, I don't think your PI thought the rotation didn't work out- she wouldn't have asked you to work in the lab if she didn't. As mentioned, different PI's take different approaches to grading- I've had a lot that take the "it's perfect, or it's not" approach. Perfection gets an A, everything else gets something slightly lower. They aren't trying to communicate that you did badly, most don't expect high grades, or let lower grades effect their judgement of you. They consider it worth their time and your time to hold you to high standards and push to develop you as a colleague. From my read of your situation, this is more descriptive of what happened to you, rather than TCL.

I generally take off weekends, but I have projects that often necessitate a couple of hours at least every day. My trend lately has been to pick one day on the weekend, and my wife and I both take it entirely off. My boss, generally, expects us to be doing ~40 hours of productive work per week. Sometimes a bit less if our projects necessitate working odd hours/schedules. I try to treat it as much like a regular job as possible- the schedule is good for health, for productivity, and for keeping up ties outside of school. My only major deviation from a typical work week is taking off early on Fridays (around 4), and getting together with some faculty/staff and other grad students to drink a couple of beers. Definitely a worthwhile deviation.

Here's the most recent thread: Paying taxes on a fellowship works basically like paying taxes on cash wages/tips, with one minor change: you don't pay tax on any amount of the fellowship used for educational purposes (tuition, fees, required books). Fellowship stipend used for educational expenses is non-taxable. The rest of it, you report via "SCH" off to the side of your earned wages. As for amounts, you can use any of the online tax calculators to estimate the damage- put in your income, married/single, and it will estimate, roughly, how much you owe minus standard deductions.

I probably spend closer to 5-10 hours per week on "service", broadly defined. It's a lot. I've been the head of our graduate student government for the past 3 years, and usually involved in half a dozen University level committees or taskforces. Definitely given me a very interesting insight into the inner workings of the University that's been quite helpful, career wise. I've finally gotten all of my responsibilities handed off, and am definitely looking forward to a reduced load going into the summer.

How long has it been since you've emailed him? Anything short of a week... And this seems pretty typical.

What I'm saying is that there's no way I know of to switch departments. An interdisciplinary project would have to come out of your current department, more than likely, which wouldn't be possible since you're being kicked out. If you want to work in another department at the same University, you'll likely need to apply to that graduate program. Some of your credits may transfer (hopefully), or you might have to largely start over.

Far more than my advisor would like. I think he'd prefer that I did nothing other than sit in the lab. Personally, I look at it as preparing for a faculty position- I do departmental/university service (committees, etc) outreach to the community (science fairs, but also projects with specific local schools) and teaching in addition to research. It can definitely be easy to overextend yourself, and it will probably add to your time to degree, but it's all stuff I've enjoyed and found worthwhile. I've also got a ton of references from administrators and other parts of the University I never would have had otherwise.

In general, you can't switch programs within a University. It's not like undergrad in that sense. Different admissions process, different funding, etc. You'd generally need to re-apply to the new department and be admitted. If you've been told otherwise by the program you want to switch to, they may be willing to make an exception for you, but it's not common. Generally, your dissertation chair has to be in the department from which you're getting a degree. People who are co-advised are generally getting an interdisciplinary PhD. I know our school requires the dissertation chair to be a full time faculty member in the department, and from what I've seen many others are the same.

Please do not double post topics. I've merged your other post in with this one.

I don't think so, but it would be nice if it comes through. The reason we got the $2k boost before is that the increase to 32k was supposed to come a year earlier, but was delayed by budget issues. So when it came through, we got it retroactively.

Locking this, as it's highly inappropriate. Not only is this not the appropriate place to ask for homework help, but the ethics of doing so are questionable for a future academic.

I had a couple of friends that this happened to. They ended up leaving with an MS and going to work in industry. Getting into another program will, as Jentse mentioned, depend on how good of recommendation letters you can get from your current faculty.