Concordia

Others closer to the industry can weigh in, and should-- as I am quite the Luddite. However... I've come to rely on Lenovos. Solidly built, good keyboards, etc. My current one is the X260 from a year or two ago. Many of its best features can probably be had elsewhere. I've found that the prospect of an easily-replaceable battery is a good thing. Before, I used one of the early X-1 Carbons. While fantastic in many ways, it eventually started to lose its battery power. Replacing that would probably have required a new mother board. I might do that someday, but no hurry. In the meantime, I have power cords to pack and have the option of getting an extra battery or two if I am going to be writing or analyzing stuff miles from proper electricity. USB-3 ports are good. Also whatever the input is called for ethernet-- that can be useful in hotels or places where wifi is erratic. Some notebooks won't have that because it takes up too much space. You're seeing more and more solid-state hard drives. I like the idea, just because a multi-piece, hi-rpm hard drive gives me the willies if it is going to get thrown around the way I sometimes throw things around. Make sure you are OK with the mouse arrangement. Lenovo has the famous IBM pencil-eraser (clit mouse), which some like. I actually prefer the flat panel near the thumbs. There will be alternatives, so try them out if you're not sure. They're like dinner forks in that respect. Screen quality varies a lot. Find out how much you care, and get at least your minimum. Decide if you want or need DVD/CD inputs and recording. Probably not, these days, but you can always get an external one if you change your mind.

Depending on the branch of Psych you are aiming at, you might want to make sure the beard is short and well-groomed enough that some wacko isn't going to make your life difficult by grabbing it. You'll notice that a lot of shrinks wear bow ties, largely for that reason.

If you're still in undergrad, you should talk to the people at your college/university who will be winnowing the recommendations down. For Rhodes, anyway, and I think Marshall, you have to get put forward by your institution.

That probably depends on the department. But were the "sub-par" elements temporary-- due to health, family issues, mis-matched major, etc.-- or otherwise irrelevant to the fabulous researcher you've become now? A good recommendation might help someone see things that way. There are a bunch of threads here from people with low GPAs who managed to right their ship and move on.

Sturgeon's Law applies as much to the workplace as anything else. The trick is to find a job where you can tolerate the "crud", or -- if you're really lucky -- you like it.

I applied at the January deadline and heard from the department toward the end of March. The college rejection was maybe 3 weeks after that, with a shorter wait for my invitation.

I had at least one classmate who became pregnant at business school (or arrived pregnant). The usual remedy was one semester off, which can kind of mess up your course sequence if it is in Year 1. If a second-year elective has a pre-requisite that can only be met with a core class from the spring you were away, then you're sort of hosed. Taking a full year off would get rid of that problem, although it then means you're a bit out of the game for longer than just a few months and that would send the wrong signals to all who care. Our first child was born in my second semester, but I was her father. Luckily, her mother was incredibly prepared and motivated to take care of her. That caused some tension later, but was a life-saver while in school. The only real sacrifice, not that it was significant, was that I looked at summer internships closer to home than I might have if I'd been completely footloose and fancy free.

Punctuation is also a little different-- mostly with how they handle quotation marks. Cambridge has style guides online for some of their departments. http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/undergraduate/pdfs/faculty-style-guide/at_download/file

52. Slow learner.

Has anyone compared the softwware planners to YahooMail's? I know not everyone uses Yahoo--especially now-- but it's been my main personal e-mail for a while and I've become used to the calendar.

Confirmed with St Antony's (14 days to pull back if I freak out). I'm still not sure what to make of the St Antony's placement-- I've never been an exotic foreigner before, and it will be potentially interesting to have so many classmates looking at the social sciences. I have a bunch of other interests that are not offered there, as well, so I will have to look into the university societies and try not to be such an introvert. The fallout will be unpredictable, but potentially fantastic. As soon as I got the receipt from Oxford, I sent a note to my contact in London who'd been recommended so often, and who wanted me there. A gracious reply-- there aren't a ton of people looking at his area, so we have to be nice to each other, I think. Cambridge is still pending-- I think that while the most logical supervisor there is fantastic, he's been pretty non-committal about signing on to my project. I will likely withdraw there after the requisite night's sleep. If the timing on that works, I'll be able to say I went to Oxford because I was accepted nowhere else!

To Daniel: Boston is both very cosmopolitan and provincial. The top levels of academia, medicine, and tech are quite global but the neighborhoods can be rather closely-knit. Tribal, actually. Student neighborhoods will be less so, as everyone will come from everywhere and not be too firmly planted. But it is worth keeping in mind. One place you might find interesting to visit, especially if you spend a day on the Freedom Trail, is the North End. Old North Church and Paul Revere's house are there, of course, among other sites from the Revolution, but it has become known more lately for being an Italian neighborhood. As you know both languages, you might get an interesting window on Boston's culture by walking around there.

I'm a late arrival to the post-grad scene, but one thing that helped me on my particular path (which could change, I suppose!) is a bit of happenstance. I didn't so much find an area that I knew would be fantastic, but stumbled on a primary source and context that demanded to be written up. That was the master's-- and there's no way I would have done that had I made a top-down decision on area and then looked for a topic. (Of course, I was using a somewhat micro-historical framework, so maybe that explains everything.) :-) I couldn't develop a pure, unadulterated sequel for the doctorate, but I have taken a tangent off my last paper and seem to have discovered something not normally considered in this detail or from my perspective. Some day, I'll discover why that was the logical thing for me to do-- in the meantime, I'm just glad I didn't completely bore an admissions committee with it.

Well said. My third option may actually go too far in that direction--the supervisor thinks he may be abandoning my area of interest. A shame, as he could be a real nice challenge to work with. But that is a first-world problem at the moment.

That's where I will likely come out. My Option A has a very good department, a wonderful (if inexperienced) supervisor who is focused on the same decade and region as my proposal, and at least one colleague who could help touch on some of the angles I'm interested in but the supervisor hasn't addressed. Option B has the supervisor who helped me on my master's dissertation (which went very well), and a ridiculously better environment for learning. We're talking proximity of excellent and related departments, massive institutional clout, and a social atmosphere that will probably work better for an introvert who is easily distracted. The supervisor there is only tangentially involved with the particular problem I am starting with, but seems to have a good notion of how I can get better at what I need to do. He is also inexperienced with doctoral supervision, as is the guy at A, but ya gotta start somewhere. My needs aren't necessarily typical, but I'd rather be a good historian with a ton of fabulous contacts and the possibility of discovering approaches that I haven't begun to consider--(B)-- than an expert on my thesis topic who couldn't focus on my work or expand my view in useful ways (A). [While I'm looking at this particular period because I stumbled upon it and it does need work, it's not one I would have necessarily planned in advance.] A liberal arts approach? At some point you do need to specialize a little, but at the moment I'm not relishing the thought of narrowing my focus too much.

Anyone who wants to be a sophisticated adult while eating a hot dog is barking up the wrong tree. And I love ketchup on them-- with or without mustard.

For overseas long-distance calls, get a Skype account. It removes the inhibitions in a remarkable way.

This is very sensible-- even if a year off doesn't produce paydirt with funded programs, you might at least have a little more cash in the bank. Can you defer in order to keep the MAPSS option open?

Have you phoned in to see if there is some method to the madness?

You may want to talk to the career service offices at places that are doing both to see how they're marketing these, and who seems to be biting on either one. I'd guess that MBAs in recruiting will assume that the MBA is the best option. After all, it was what produced their own brand of perfection. I was at Yale back when we called our degree an MPPM, and there were some on-campus recruiters who actually would ask "so, are you also going to get an MBA?" Maybe they were just trying to see how you handled dumb questions, but the possibility is out there.

I have a Mini 4, and will be bringing it. No idea of exactly how useful it will be, but I am guessing that with Kindle, SugarSync, and Zotero or whatever else I learn to use, it might be a useful way to keep reading material close by. FWIW, that model just fits into the side pocket of a suit jacket, so it is much more portable than a laptop. I'd hate to do real work on it, though.

That's the other thing. As said above, the relevant departments may be sending a really odd signal if they aren't giving him funding for science/engineering.

True enough, and I am about to start an unfounded DPhil in history. BUT... it's only for three years, and I won't be carrying debt around when I am done. I am also old enough to have given up the notion of tenure-track gigs. If OP is in my position, then no problem. If he's going to be exiting with the equivalent of a good-sized mortgage without a house and needing a job to pay it all off, then that is different.

Lab ethics are an important consideration, which I don't know much about. If it's on the shelf where you once worked, what sort of footnote should you get for re-use? If it were a consulting firm, probably nothing. But if this guy is asking for a lot of your help as well as use of the product, that gives you leverage, assuming there are choices to be made. You could ask for the mother of all footnotes and an acknowledgement, or maybe a co-authorship if you feel it necessary to make sure your work doesn't get misused. Presumably a call to the supervisor to work out a protocol will protect you now and stop too many people from taking unfair advantage, as well as giving you less to think about in future cases.

Is this enough of a trade/professional degree, like an MD, MBA, or JD, that you can justify the cost with higher compensation down the road? The opportunity cost (= $200k in checks written + five years' foregone wages) makes that worth a little thought.