Eigen

Great caveats to my advice- I completely agree. I was thinking more from a perspective of "don't join 9 clubs in one semester just to have them on your CV"- which I see a lot with my students. It's great advice in general to not be afraid to change course in life. That may be leaving a research lab, it may be severing ties with a student group, it may be deciding you do or don't want to go to grad school- or that you want to leave your graduate program. They aren't easy decisions, but a lot of times leaving something you're not happy with has to happen before you can find something new that's better.

Honestly, you should go with things you genuinely enjoy for extra-curriculars. Things that will get you leadership experience are a plus, as you can show how that translates into leadership elsewhere. Don't jump around just to get a bunch of stuff on your CV, pick things you really like and stick with them. Also, don't just design what you do around getting into grad school. Make it things you enjoy that keep you sane.

To be honest, I don't expect students to tell me when they skip class or apologize. It's why I have an "everyone's an adult here" attendance policy. I do like to know you're OK, but if you show up for the next class, I'll assume that.

Most of my interviews have at least a dinner out with faculty (usually 2), and one meal with students (for SLACs). For alcohol, I usually just make sure I order last to get a since for what other people are having. If most of the table are having drinks and I want to join in, I can do so knowing I won't be the odd one out. I've also had water when everyone else was drinking, and that was fine. Most faculty like the meals out too- it's a relaxed chance to get to know the candidate, and often for them to get to eat out somewhere they might not otherwise frequent. On another note, I'd completely forgotten about this thread. Been a productive year for me so far- 35 applications submitted so far. One campus interview, 9 additional phone interviews. I was starting to worry a bit, and this week has been huge for phone interview invites. I think I have 6 of the above scheduled for next week alone. As with last year (for me), the waiting post-interview is the hardest. You liked them, you thought they liked you, and then you have (usually) at least a few weeks up to a couple of months of radio silence. Either you weren't the first pick, you weren't a pick at all, or the administration is dragging feet. Scheduling interviews with a full teaching load is hard, and I'm thankful I have supportive colleagues to cover classes.

Seems pretty legit to me. If there isn't any work that matches your paper in the journal at all that you would cite... Why are you submitting there and not somewhere that's s better topical fit?

I came to help out future applicants. Didn't join until after I started, and have stayed around to help out now that I'm out. I'm betting everyone is here for a lot of different reasons. A lot of people only come in for one or two posts, some stay for years because they make friends and want to give back. Some fields are also a lot more active here than others.

Very good advice, and I'm glad you have this to lean on. I was at a faculty development workshop this summer, and they talked about the importance of building a committee to help you with decisions and difficulties. People that you trust as scholars and as friends that can help you navigate difficult times, whether it's dealing with struggles in your job, struggles in your scholarship, or struggles in your teaching/service. I know some of my friends from grad school are busy, and we don't talk as much as we should- but when I have something I need to talk about, I can text them and we will Skype that night- and I do the same thing for them. I have lots of friends outside of academia, but it's the ones that are in it with me that I trust to give me honest and tempered feedback when I'm making decisions.

I'm guessing this is a losing battle. My guess is like anything else, it was a contract that ASEE lost and SCI-TEK won. The DoD isn't likely to care all that much about applicants complaints, my gut tells me.

Usually those cases you submit a sealed letter- does this university not do that?

Yeah, this is a huge no-no. You absolutely don't edit someone else's letter without explicit permission. Personally, I find it ethically shady when writers show a student the letter at all, and find it an abrogation of professional responsibility when they ask the student to help write it. But that aside, it's not just shady to edit someone else's letter, it's obviously ethically wrong.

Just because there are exceptions doesn't mean it's not a general statement. There are scholarships for graduate students, but in general scholarship is more commonly used for undergraduates, and fellowship for graduate students. That said, they're pretty synonymous, and sometimes used interchangeably with grants. Wording isn't something to get hung up on. Kinda, but you're still thinking that "stipend" mean's something. A stipend is just an amount (from any source) that doesn't go to tuition and benefits.

You're overcomplicating things. The vast majority of the time in STEM fields, you have a single funding source at a time, and they don't usually "stack". If you get a fellowship, you give up your TA/RA support. There are some small fellowships (usually recruiting funds from a school) that can be used to increase the stipend, but it's not frequently by much. Most of this is also not something you really need to have any idea of when applying, or even during graduate school. Fellowship, Scholarship and Grant can be used relatively interchangeably when the grant is to the student. There is no simple dividing line on how any of these are awarded (need vs. scholarship vs. research proposal). Generally, fellowships are awards at the post-graduate level and scholarships are awards to undergraduates, but that's not always the case. Grant funding also appears as an RAship, where the student hasn't received a grant but the advisor has, and uses grant funds to pay students for research. The other thing to keep in mind is that it's usually a semester-by-semester thing. You may TA for one semester, have a fellowship another, and work as an RA over the summer paid from grants. Fellowships such as the NSF-GRFP are flexible in how you take the funding, but it has to be in year chunks. So if your program requires teaching, you might TA for the first year and delay the fellowship until later. The main takeaway is that in STEM fields, you will always be funded (if you're not, you shouldn't go) but that you can apply for external sources of funding. These frequently don't supplement your income (and in some cases discussed here can result in a stipend decrease) but they allow freedom and prestige that TA/RAships don't. You also asked about what a "stipend" is- in general, any portion of funding not given to the institution (tuition, benefits, etc.) but paid to you is a stipend. All sources of funding have stipends.

You're asking something that is impossible for them to commit to. You will never get the answer you want.

Which is why I said "or research center".

This can also be a courtesy appointment from another school/research center. So you might have someone at Research Center A with a courtesy appointment at Local University B. It lets them apply for things with the school, and often is done to let them serve on graduate committees easily while not paying them/giving them official duties in the department.

But that's not sending them the thesis. That's sending them new work based on the thesis, which isn't really what was asked for.

Since this seems to be a recurring issue, I'd try calling their office sometime during normal working hours. I can't tell chronology from your post, though- did he respond once this year, or was the "last time" he agreed and didn't get your email sometime a year ago? Also, you don't mention how long of a time-gap there is. Personally, if you sent one email and it's been around a week, I'd send a follow up. If you don't hear from them in another week, maybe try giving them a call. I don't think using LinkedIn to message them is a problem, per-se, but I'd bet they check it infrequently and have notifications turned off.

It may take me a little while to get to it, but you can PM me for an email address to send it along to.

I know you probably didn't mean it this way, but the exception is obviously people who specialize in method development, where NMR is very much a question. Just putting it out there for people reading this in the future.

Just to add, I think the difference here hinges on not your training from your advisor, but what the travel grant required. If the travel funds were contingent on you collecting data, then I think it's within rights to require you to either get the data or reimburse the travel funds (basically what they're asking you to do). I know most granting agencies are pretty strict about data management. Also, to be clear, since @TakeruK and I seem to be interpreting it differently- is it your advisor that's requiring this, or the director of the site where you worked this summer?

I think you're overestimating what an email can do. For the first part of this, why do you want to introduce yourself? What's the benefit? Lots of people think this way, but an email introduction is next to worthless for anything practical, especially when PIs like this are probably getting a handful of unsolicited introductions a day this time of year. For the second part- projects change. There's just as much of a chance that you'll love what your PI is working on when you start, and you have to switch projects a year in. You don't pick projects, you pick a PI. And then work on varied things. When you're a PI, you get to pick projects- until then it's all just gaining skills. And you don't know how many other people your year are going to want to work on the same thing. You're expending a lot of effort for something with marginal (if any) real benefit. For the final part- again, emails don't create relationships, and there's only a small chance that they can advocate for you. The worry here isn't that they'll just say "email me when you get accepted", it's that what you're doing now has the potential, if done wrong, to create a negative association. It's not likely, but it's a non-zero chance.

To me, if I got it cold from a student, that second paragraph reads very abrasively. It comes across less as interest, and more as questioning the validity of the work and asking them to justify what they're doing and why. Especially leading into your third paragraph, where you basically assume they'll respond. Nowhere in your message do you mention anything like "I'm sure you're busy", or "if you have time, I was curious"- things that take the tone from entitled to polite. But now we're also getting back to the "why are you doing this" question. What are you hoping to gain from it? Introducing yourself through email doesn't help much with admissions in chemistry, and if you set the wrong tone it has the potential to hurt. You don't want to get lumped in with the large number of people that send what are basically form letters to a bunch of different faculty that everyone treats as spam.

I'd ask someone other than your PI, because that is not my impression at all. Especially not in non-academic circles, but even in academia. The advice I got a while ago when I was looking into grad school was to not back yourself into a niche corner instrument wise in terms of skill, but get as much breadth of general techniques as possible. It's relatively easy to pick up a skill set like protein NMR later on, but harder to sell yourself as anything else if you specialize early. IMO, the sure set of skills is mass-spec, chromatography, and informatics. Those are all growing, and constantly spinning off new sub-areas, and all are high throughput enough to see broad industry use, without the need for single expensive instruments.

Hate to be a downer, but very few people hire for that skill set at the graduate level either.

Honestly, 50 jobs is very few. I was on the low end looking for faculty jobs last year with around 56, and friends of mine going the industry route are well over 100. This is the nature of the industry. There are thousands of qualified PhDs entering the market each year, and tens of thousands of BS Bio/Biochem students. You're also competing with all the people moving from one company to another with years of work experience.