Eigen

I've made several of those posts- this topic comes up about every 8 mos! I wouldn't say anything has really changed, as I mentioned above there are lots of pros and cons. But as I've seen more and more PIs of all ages, I'm more convinced that many of the traits that we'd like to attribute to length of service or experience are more personality traits that may or may not be highlighted by experience. Take funding: In general, more established labs have more funding. But on the flipside, it can be harder to get renewals, and their funding is often more tied to specific projects that they've entrenched themselves in over the years. I know more people in established labs that have run out of funding over the course of their PhD than new labs. New PIs often will get one or two large grants to start themselves off- a career award, an RO1, etc. In the meantime, they usually have significant startup funding from the department. To them, getting and keeping funding is crucial to their career- if they run out of funding, they won't get tenure. So you have pros and cons to each situation, and I'd argue that the fit of research and personality is going to be more important than which set of pros and cons you choose based on the situation. Research space and equipment: Some older labs are in the rut of dealing with arcane and failing equipment that needs lots of babying and expertise. Rarely do you find a new PI with such a situation, because they usually set up their lab when they started. Generally, new faculty are most likely to get renovated lab space in a department, since they don't have to move in order for the renovations to happen. But again, I'd say that it's more of a situational variance than dependent upon the age of the PI. So since your chances of coming across two situations (PIs) that differ only in age and experience is pretty minor, I think it's more important to focus on what type of work environment you want, and choose the one that fits that better, since I'd imagine there will be one clearly better fit in most real-life scenarios.

They're good points, Boron, but I've seen all of those things happen in a lab with a senior PI, and not happen at all in a younger PIs lab. That's why I say personality is the most important. A PI that cares about his/her students careers won't keep them too long at any stage, and one that doesn't will.

Definitely. I think if it's someone you could see yourself working with, and having a good relationship with, they should be someone you can talk to about the future/options.

If you're worried about the PI not getting tenure, you can always talk to the department. I asked my chair point-blank before I started what would happen if my PI didn't get tenure, and what the department would do for me.

And I gave you my opinion that you're focusing on a tiny factor. Personal fit matters, research fit matters. Only if you have two identical people in those terms do you look at the rest, imo. Else, go with the better fit. In response to your new reply: I'm not saying stage in career has no effect, but I'd consider it minimal to negligible, mostly because there are balanced pros and cons. It won't be the same in either case, but I wouldn't think the career stage would almost ever be a deciding factor for me between two faculty members.

You're focusing on age when it's rarely the relevant issue. Pick the PI you fit better with and who's research you like better. Personality matters far more than age. The chances that you'll have two PIs doing research you're equally interested in, who you fit with and respect equally as scientists and mentors, with the only difference being age is very, very slim.

Oh, I was actually thinking about if you ended up with a last summer or something that wasn't covered. But no practical idea how the GI bill works, either way.

So very not worth it. Granted, I have no idea what your field is, but I can't imagine this being worthwhile in any field. You don't do well in research because you have an A in a related class. You do well in research by doing well in research, and in the end that's all anyone will care about.

Thankfully, a 3 credit summer research registration is usually pretty cheap. Even with 20k+ semesters, summer grad tuition is only around 2k here.

Also note that, depending on exactly how your funding plays out, even through your stipend is getting paid your department usually has to pay tuition for all the side courses you take. It's a behind the scenes thing, but it does transfer money (usually) from your department to the school. So while it's great to take classes, unless you can make a strong case for why they're relevant to your research, it's probably not in your programs financial interest for you to actually take them. Auditing or sitting in, on the other hand, doesn't carry the same financial burden. And it shouldn't be any less structured for you. Just do all the assignments everyone else does.

Just as an aside, the reason you're paying 2k in the summer is so you maintain a full time registration status. You'll likely be registering for ~3 credits of thesis research. If you don't maintain full time, year-long registration status, there are pretty serious tax implications, as you aren't considered a full time student. Most schools also require a full time enrollment for you to be considered a student and progress- registering in the summer when you aren't taking "classes" is pretty typical- I don't know any school that doesn't require it. As to the financial side of things, it sucks, but what you're getting is actually pretty generous relative to what I'm used to seeing for masters programs. Funding is much tighter, and usually harder to get, especially for MA programs. I'll also note that while you accuse other people of being mean, you're being as harsh if not moreso than the people you're responding to. Also, WOW that's a long and detailed signature.

I think you're assuming a lot. For instance, you assume that if you fail you're immediately kicked out of the program with nowhere left to go. While that may indeed be the case, it's not what I've seen at any other program. More likely, if you fail, you're put on the MS track to graduate that semester and leave with a coursework only MS. At least, that's what I've seen happen to the friends who've been in your situation. But it's something you should ask about, for sure.

I had really bad luck with it last year, and ended up doing mine by hand. It had absolutely no idea how to handle my fellowship, and ended up saying I owed more in taxes than I made, due to it doubling and tripling up the tuition remission part of my "income", with no commensurate deduction. That said, it was fine the previous 4 years I used it, so it was definitely an update in last years version. By that point, I was familiar enough with my taxes that I just got the paper forms and did them by hand, and it ended up taking a lot less time than I'd have expected. In general, there's a good chance you won't (at this stage of your life) make more from itemized deductions than from the standard deduction, so you can file an EZ return.

I can think of very few cases were someone left the lab but stayed on to do additional work, so yes, it might be the case if they're going to redo the analysis and have someone else do it that you would lose authorship. But either way, I think you're being overly concerned about something that hasn't happened- your title is "removed as a coauthor because I switched labs", but you haven't been removed yet- you just think you might be. So go in person to talk to your advisor about redoing the analysis. Don't rely on hearsay. See what they say, and go from there. Honestly, if you were going to be a lower author, it's not going to be a huge loss on your CV anyway. If you were a co-author, maybe, but you usually on talk about being a co-author on a two-author paper where both contributed relatively evenly. For your CV, what really matters is first author papers, with some 2nd and 3rd authorships being OK, but not hugely important.

I think you're worrying about something that may or may not happen. In general, there are some valid reasons for being bumped down the list of authors if you leave a lab- you might not be able to do follow up work needed for revisions, you may or may not be doing the written revisions, or the work may be included as part of a combined manuscript. I've never seen people bumped off papers entirely, though, usually just to a 2nd/3rd/middle author position, with a grad student in the group who's taking over the project taking primary authorship. This all depends on the relationship with your advisor, though, so I wouldn't see any reason to worry just because in other situations it happened to other people in the past- they may have been students who just didn't respond to e-mails, or didn't have the time to keep up with the writing/revisions needed to move the paper forward. Just to be clear, I also wouldn't assume and jump the gun in talking to your advisor. I think the best tact, if you think it necessary, is to take drafts by her office one day and talk them over with her acting as though you're still going to be co-author. Or e-mail her and see if you can get together to work on the submission, or any number of other things.

Granted, not in philosophy, but I do know faculty who read and post on these forums. I think in general, the advice to not be a giant asshole is good. I assume that it's not that difficult to find out who I am, and go from there. I've had several PM's sent to me from undergraduates at my school asking to meet up and look over application materials, and from prospective grad students looking to apply to my school. I don't have who I am anywhere on my profile, but it's really not that hard to find out.

Not all LORs are great. Most are good. Some are average. IE, a professor can't write in all of his letters that in the 25 years he's been teaching, you were the most talented young researcher he's had work with him. Theoretically, they can only write that once every 25 years. Practically, there's always a huge gaping chasm of descriptors between "good" and "great". Can a professor BS and say every student is the best they've ever had? Sure, but their recommendation won't be worth much after that. Especially not if they write that for some not-great students, and word gets around.

This is highly field dependent. In Chemistry, stipends range from 22-24k (low end) to 35-40k (high end). The low end is usually TA with low-COL places, high end is more likely research fellowships.

This depends a lot on how the school structures them. We may have a couple of prospectives on at once, but interaction between them is minimal.

We had a law student admitted here after conviction and serving time for murder. I wouldn't think the school would hold MIP strongly against you, but might have issues with lying on the app, if it was found out.

I've seen the same thing as Rising Star- this happening in student affairs, not academic affairs. Maybe also in the more administrative positions in academic affairs (IR, for example). But for those, you wouldn't go the faculty route at all- you'd get an MEd/MS/MA and then work in administration, usually starting at a low level and moving up, maybe at the same time as an EdD. But it's the work experience that's crucial there. I can see the possibility at a CC, maybe, but with the number of PhDs on the market this is getting less and less likely as time goes on. Even the regional R2s (and R3s) I know of, as well as SLACs would want someone with a PhD for a chair/dean/provost/assistant provost type position. All of those positions hold positions of power over faculty, and most have some say in tenuring faculty. As such, generally only people with "easy" tenure cases that have been tenured and are respected faculty/researchers get those positions, as it makes less friction down the road. Again, even at a CC, I think you'd need to be FT/TT and have a senior rank before being promoted up, if the institution doesn't have tenure. I haven't seen this issue posted on the CHE forums- I'd still strongly recommend posting there. You'll get a range of administrators from all over the US at all different types of institutions.

And this forum is for general discussions, not necessarily for matters pertaining to grad school. Unless people cross lines in their posts (the last two are coming fairly close) we're not about censoring topics or ideas around here. That's kinda antithetical to the idea of academic freedom.

I think it can help you, but won't necessarily hurt you, if that makes sense. Going to a top-5 or top-10 school and doing well is a benefit to your CV, but doing well at a lower-ranked (or unranked) school won't keep you out of a top program, from my experience.

Just echoing that not all transcripts are clear. Half of my upper division courses on my transcript just showed up as- Special Topics, Chemistry with a number. Would have been pretty useless without me providing the details of what the course contained.

I don't think that's true, at least not in the STEM fields. It's quite common to see "the best" applicant turned down if they haven't demonstrated that they fit well at the school, or if the school thinks they're likely to take a better offer or try to "climb" out of the school. The same is definitely true for faculty searches in STEM fields, at least, where showing you want to stay at the school and like it is as important as your qualifications.