Eigen

From what I've seen, a lot of people don't start looking nearly early enough. The best recommendations I've heard are that you should start looking two years before you gradaute, and putting out feelers, and start seriously reaching out at least a year before you graduate. As mentioned, hiring happens (if you're staying in academia) on yearly cycles. Not only that, but openings only pop up, generally, when someone retires. And that's often something you know a few years out, or can predict. Putting feelers out a few years early gets you a sense for places that might have an opening in the right time-frame for you. Also, as you get more specialized (PhD) there are fewer available jobs- you can't really just go work anywhere. More specialized jobs mean it takes longer to get things set up, there are more rounds of interviews, etc. But I'd also hope that most people coming out of a PhD aren't planning on having a job right away. In STEM fields, you get a flexible post-doc until you can find a job, or adjunct, or a combination of the above.

I would say the usual expectation is a bit more than the normal work week. If you want to stay competitive, probably more on the order of 50-60 hours rather than the usual 40. Some people prefer to work longer day, some people prefer to work on weekends. Also, when you're applying for post-docs, your work may not show how many hours you worked a week... But your letters of rec probably will. It's not an either/or thing: it's not work more hours and slack some, or work fewer hours and be focussed. If you want to be competitive for top postdocs, you need to work more hours *and* be focussed. Either working too few hours or not being focussed about your work will drop your productivity, and your future chances. And as addressed, there are definitely crunch times where you'll be working a bunch of 15-16 hour days in a row. The expectation in our program was that you should be able to, after your first semester, balance your class requirements such that they weren't significantly eroding your work day. Even in the first semester, the general expectation was that you'd do homework and study when you went home at night, for the most part, and spend your days between the lectures and your lab. Also remember, if you're going into academia, that the expectation for hours that post-docs is higher than that of grad students, usually, and faculty are often putting in significantly more than 40 hours per week (although probably not the insane 70-80 hour weeks post-docs frequently do).

Just to clarify, since no one is mentioning times: I'd give a week to 10 days before expecting a response and following up, unless there is truly a time crunch and you need to know for some reason.

Wow. You guys realize this discussion was 8 months old, right? Bringing it up to re-frame it is one thing, but you're giving advice to someone who has very likely already made a decision and moved on.

You're in a quite different field than I am, so I can't really comment. But the discussion here (both the OP and I are in Chemistry) is certainly field dependent. But also constrained to that (and similar) fields.

I'm not sure if it would effect a specific "grad GPA", but here it will effect your overall GPA, and would have the same consequences as anything else for grade-based academic probation (B- or below) or GPA requirements.

I think your second two points are great, but my experience would tell me that your order of importance is off on criteria that admissions committees use. I'd rank it: Research Experience = Letters (since the letters should emphasize your research experience) > SoP > GRE/GPA. In short, GRE/GPA can keep you out of programs, but they'll rarely get you in, if you're lacking the first 3. Also, from my experience, letters from "big shots" that don't know you as well are much less persuasive than an unknown or lesser known faculty member that knows you really well, and writes a good letter. As to general undergrad research experience being low, most of my cohort had 3-4 years of in lab research experience, and several conference presentations and either publications or an undergraduate thesis that showed that they really did know their project. The same could be said for undergraduates that have worked for and with me at my current graduate institution. Many start as freshmen or early in their sophomore years, and most end up with publication authorship and/or a project of their own that the can present and do a thesis on. TL;DR: Showing you have research experience will trump almost anything else, imo. Faculty want someone who can come and get started in the lab right away, and has shown that they can solve problems and direct their research. You need to have a base level of competence that shows you'll get through your coursework and can understand the chemistry you'll be working with, but it's a "floor" more than anything else.

See, I'm the opposite. I wouldn't recommend a keyboard at all. If you're going to be typing a lot, get a laptop, netbook, ultrabook- something made for typing. That's not the iPad. There are some writing apps, but honestly, it's not made for writing, and the software pales compared to what's out there for Macs/PCs (Scrivener, etc.) Nor do I like carrying my work around with me all day. That said, I do like being able to carry one digital portfolio that has all copies of my current data and work, schematics, etc. as well as all of the papers in my library, and a lot of books that I use for reference as well. When I get tired of working in my office, and want to go work somewhere else (outside, carrel, a coffee shop) I can then take my laptop and iPad, and not have to worry about taking several three ring binders full of papers. I have something that easily lets me read and reference what I'm working on. Could I do it on the laptop? Sure. It just fits my workflow a lot better to have it as a stand-in for all of my books and papers, and focus the writing and data analysis on the laptop.

Just out of curiosity, are you guys saying what you think a decent/average GPA is, or a *good* GPA? I was answering based on an above average definition of good, but with the 3.5 range answers, I'm thinking maybe I'm going in a slightly different direction.

I use Best, Cheers! and Thanks, as appropriate.

Yes and no. You can try it, but a lot of the "top" schools still often won't reverse the decision. Funding is rarely the limiting factor there, and if they decided you didn't have the right fit, getting a grant won't change that. Again, see the posts of this happening the last few years. It's also worth noting that an NSF fellowship still carries a large financial burden to the University. It doesn't cover (much) tuition, so the department/school still have to cover that out of their budget- and at least here, what NSF doesn't cover in tuition is more than the stipend. Also, an NSF fellowship is only 3 years, vs. a usual PhD of 5ish, so the department will have 2 years then anyway- and then there are supplies, overhead, etc. It's not that getting an NSF isn't a benefit, but it's rarely the "completely turn admission decisions around" card people seem to think it is, especially not at higher ranked schools.

I don't know about a lot of schools, but there have been posters here from years past that got an NSF fellowship, but didn't get accepted anywhere.

This is not true at all. First, the April 15th CGS resolution only effects offers of funding, not offers of admission. So it doesn't apply to this situation. Secondly, a school doesn't have to abide by it, and in fact not all graduate programs are even signatories of the resolution. You can try to use the CGS resolution to negotiate more time to decide, but it's hardly some set-in-stone rule.

So many reports in one short day. If someone says something you don't like, you can ignore it and move on. I know everyone is tense, but seriously, this English forum is especially vicious this year. Please try to behave. If you can't, take a break. If you can't behave and can't take a break, we'll be glad to help you with that.

So many reports in one short day. If someone says something you don't like, you can ignore it and move on. I know everyone is tense, but seriously, this English forum is especially vicious this year. Please try to behave. If you can't, take a break. If you can't behave and can't take a break, we'll be glad to help you with that.

My wife and I primarily edit each others work. It's a great first pass, and we're close enough fields but not overlapping, so we're a good representation of the potential audience. Sadly, our writing center won't take grad students. That, and even if you can weasel your way in, most of them aren't very good (sophomore english majors). I've also done a lot of manuscript swapping with my cohort- more eyes helps. And we all help out when someone's writing up, and each take a dissertation chapter to copyedit.

This is exactly what I do. And it works between Mac and PC, which I need, since I swap back and forth. I found using the Endnote reference IDs as the start of the file name helped me keep them in chronological order based on when I added them too, which is how I am most likely to find them. And the newest ones to read and annotate are always at the top.

I think the project that finally "hit" for me was #3, or maybe #4. The first one, I spent 6 months designing, and another few months ramping up the initial synthetic portion.... And then I found that the major literature I was basing my work off of had published a retraction a few months ago, but instead of in a major journal, they published in a very minor one that few people read. So I scrapped it. My next project I worked on for a few months following the initial steps, and hit a brick wall. I just couldn't get a particular step to turn out, no matter what I tried. We finally decided that it wasn't worth it to pursue it further, and I switched topics almost entirely to a biological project, that took me the better part of a year to get caught up on literature wise. It definitely happens, but none of the time is wasted- it's exposure to literature, techniques, problem solving, etc. All of which are valuable long-term!

I think it's something that the more you do, the easier it gets too. Just like presentations- the first few I gave I was nervous, now they don't bother me much at all. Meetings with invited speakers usually follow one of two formats for us- more formal & 1 on 1, or more informal and over a meal. For the former, it's usually a chance for us to have half an hour or so to present our research and get comments on it, and get it out there. For longer spots, and especially with younger speakers, I usually take the time to ask about the job search, their path to where they are, etc. For the latter, it's a lot more talk about the field in general, interesting things they've done, travel, etc. And a chance to hear fantastic stories about big name people in the field.

That said, the IRS has been surprisingly helpful when I've had questions. And they actually know. I've both gone to our local office, and called the national hotline.

Yup! That's the IRS publication I was referring to. It's actually fairly straightforward.

I'll add: Both of the fellowships I've had were listed by my university as non-taxable. What they meant by this wasn't that I didn't need to report them as income and pay the appropriate tax, but that they didn't consider them a wage, and weren't going to withhold taxes from them or issue me a W-2 for them. It meant that they got reported as "other" income on my taxes, with SCH in the margin. The IRS has an entire booklet devoted to scholarships and fellowships. Indeed, money spent on tuition, (some) fees & (some) books is non-taxable- you can either count those as education expenses, and deduct accordingly, or, if it's a fellowship, you can reduce the amount of the fellowship by the amount spent on those items. Tuition waiver's count as a fellowship too, just one that's offset by an exactly equal amount of tuition.

The vast majority of the time, your fellowship is taxable. Most of the time, the schools was their hands of it, and say something to the effect of "You are responsible for paying whatever taxes may or may not be owed on this money, as defined in the tax code". Also, H&R Block seems wildly inconsistent on this. I have heard of a few fellowships in special situations which are non-taxable, but I would say they are the exception rather than the rule.

Don't intend to use it for note taking. Using it for annotating PDFs, however, works great. It's just much slower than pen & paper for writing long things, but highlighting, underlining, circling, and quick notes in the margin work great. And at least with my workflow, notes are quite seamlessly synced via DropBox to both my Mac and my PC, and new PDFs I download are syncd to my iPad, so I have access to my entire library of digital PDFs at all times.

You'll need a VGA adapter, but it runs Keynote very well. My iPad 1 will just display some things, the newer ones will mirror the screen, from what I understand.