robot_hamster

I can try that (submitting my CV and a cover letter to other departments).

As far as difficulty-level goes, I haven't really had any problems. To my surprise, some of my classes have even been "easier" than I was initially expecting. For undergrad, I went to a private college where expectations were high. I am used to having to put a lot of effort into things and to hand in "professional-quality" work. I now attend a large state university and it feels like the expectations there are not quite as high (although it depends on the class). This doesn't mean that I haven't had difficulty with my grad-level classes. I have shared on here before that I SO do not fit in with the majority of students. Our ways of thinking about the world are very different. It is good to exposed to different ways of thinking and points of view, but it can feel very overwhelming at times. Suddenly, I find myself reading stuff that I wouldn't normally read to prepare myself for class discussions. It can be very frustrating! So I think everyone probably has feelings that grad school is not the way they were expecting at times. It can come in different forms though.

I can try to answer some of these. Time depends on whether or not you need to do field work. I have seen people work on their thesis starting shortly after their first semester and finish their final semester (so let's say 3+ semesters and the summer in between). I have also seen people do it during their final 2 semesters. As far as length goes, it can vary. I think 50 pages is manageable, usually they expect it to include a pretty deep literature review (at least at my school you do) so that takes up some room. Let's see, my school just has you present your thesis to your committee and anyone else you want to be there. I haven't heard of anyone being rejected after defending their thesis since their committee would be approving everything prior to this. Finally, in regards to depth of the research, my thesis is really just a large expansion of a research project I thought up. I have seen other people do something that would practically qualify as a PhD dissertation. I suppose it depends on what your research topic is and how far you are able to "run" with it. Sometimes you stumble upon something really good and it takes you farther than you originally thought.

As far as difficulty-level goes, I haven't really had any problems. To my surprise, some of my classes have even been "easier" than I was initially expecting. For undergrad, I went to a private college where expectations were high. I am used to having to put a lot of effort into things and to hand in "professional-quality" work. I now attend a large state university and it feels like the expectations there are not quite as high (although it depends on the class). This doesn't mean that I haven't had difficulty with my grad-level classes. I have shared on here before that I SO do not fit in with the majority of students. Our ways of thinking about the world are very different. It is good to exposed to different ways of thinking and points of view, but it can feel very overwhelming at times. Suddenly, I find myself reading stuff that I wouldn't normally read to prepare myself for class discussions. It can be very frustrating! So I think everyone probably has feelings that grad school is not the way they were expecting at times. It can come in different forms though.

What's wrong a discussion-style approach to learning the material? I like discussion sessions and find I learn more from listening to other people. Aside from being occasionally annoyed when someone completely monopolizes the discussion, I find them quite enjoyable.

Eigen has a good point. Have you been reading through all the recently published articles in this area? Is there something that jumps out at you and really interests you? From there, you can try to look for gaps. Why didn't they do ______? Could ______ be done and would it be valuable?

There is no difference between masters and PhD courses at my school. Grad level classes are just grad level classes.

People actually save money from their stipends? Haha! I have to work an extra part time job just to make ends meet! My stipend is less this semester than it was last semester as well, so that makes it tougher. From my paycheck at my job, $20 automatically goes into a savings account (so that's every 2 weeks). Sometimes the money doesn't stay in there though. I am often tempted to take it out because I need gas or something toward the end of the month (when funds are running low).

I suppose if I had a larger stipend, I would probably put a small amount toward savings. However, I would rather put extra money toward my student loan debt (from undergrad). I don't "have" to pay on it right now, but it would have been nice to have the ability to pay it down a bit before I have to enter the "real world".

I can understand her not wanting to come in another day. If she isn't already there on said day, then why would she want to make a special trip? I understand how you feel as well though, I would want to get the heck out of there! Haha! I agree with the others, try making a compromise where you stay late some of the time and she comes early some of the time. Or, if you are really good at piecing things together, some of the group could work on things without everyone present all the time. I have done that before, but it works best when other people in your group have similar a similar style of writing, etc. People who couldn't be there would just agree to work on X, while everyone else worked on Y. Then everything could be combined later with some carefully tailoring, of course.

Sometimes seemingly irrelevant classes are really not that irrelevant. You may know how to "read and write", but many incoming college students do not know how to write professionally or how to cite sources correctly. In most areas of study, it is important to know how to write professionally. You never know when you'll be out in the real world and are asked to write a proposal or whatever. I think English courses are important for all majors and that is probably why they have remained a core requirement.

I think a cat is a little bit easier than a dog if you are the only person there. They are more independent and usually don't require a lot of training. Typically they already know what a litter box is and how to use it, so there isn't a lot of effort that needs to go into house breaking. Don't get me wrong, I love my dog. It would have been hard to take care of her by myself though. If you have the time and patience to train a dog, then they are definitely worth the commitment.

Oh yes, make sure to have an emergency fund set up. Nothing like unexpected vet bills to put a strain on an already tight budget.

I don't know where you're reading this. That's not what the poster said at all. The ex decided to keep the dog. This is NORMAL. When I got divorced, we each kept the dog we were closest to (we each had "our" dogs) - I have not seen his dog in a year and a half because we did not part well. Doesn't make the OP fickle anymore than my not having relationship with my ex or his dog makes me a bad owner.

As for the last sentence, that is TOTALLY uncalled for. It's a personal attack. It seems YOU are projecting from something.

runonsentence - I don't think it was all that tedious. I mean, I had to download the word documents anyway since that it how the students submitted stuff. As I read the assignments, I would use the notes option to add notes/comments. The rubric was broken down into sections, so at the bottom of the document I would type in some comments for each section explaining why they got the score they did for each one. Since I had to do all of that anyway, it wasn't a big deal to then upload the altered documents on Blackboard for the students to see.

Like I'd pass up the chance to comment on this topic.

I agree - it's overall good for newbs, though I wouldn't say grad school is similar to a job. It's more like an ass-backwards unpaid internship. And not allowing grad school to consume your whole life is really funny - I'm sure if you give up meals and bathroom time and sleeping, then you can make time to do other things. But if you want to eat, pee, and sleep, then that'll be your only free time while in grad school, sadly. I love that they suggest forming a band as a hobby - really? Ph.D. and master's students have that much time? In what universe, I wonder? That's the part I have the biggest issue with. As long as you're a student, grad school IS your life. Period. Even at meal times at my school, all people talk about is their classes and homework. People don't even talk about their hobbies or lives or jobs - they are just consumed 24/7 with school, so I don't want to hear anyone telling me that I'm making this up. I've seen this with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears.

Other than that, I'd say it's decent advice, and written in an understandable and relaxed tone. As if to imply, "Relax, this isn't that bad." And that may hold true for many students, so if they can reach out and alleviate the fears of most of their target audience, then I'd say they've succeeded in their purpose. I would have liked to see them offer advice on how to keep your job once you begin grad school, or how to find jobs once you graduate since you probably won't find something in your field right away and need to sling nachos at 7-11 for a while. I'm not being negative when I say that (or anything else I've said) - I think it's a very realistic concern grad students should keep in mind. They got most of their points correct, so I give the article a B+. Fix the nonsense about free time and jobs and they can have their A.

Just have to echo what a few have said already, JustMe, do you think you're in any position to be giving advice to anyone who is actually interested in grad school or has any kind of investment in it? This isn't meant to be rude or condescending, I'm asking out of curiosity. If you never wanted to be there from the onset and haven't found any redeeming qualities in something that should be your choice to do or not do then what can you offer someone who is very torn between leaving and staying? It's only depressing because you hate being there and won't do anything to get out, not because it's inherently soul crushing. I just don't think your characterizations are at all fair, accurate, or indicative of the average experience. Do the other people in your program share the same sentiment? Probably not or they wouldn't still be there. Your perspective/mindset is particularly miserable and not of appreciation for grad school for very specific reasons and therefore not all that applicable to the average experience or advice seeker. You have to understand that on some level. No one around here has even suggested that you're substandard in anyway, especially in terms of being a human being, that would not be OK for anyone to do. But based on everything you have revealed about yourself in this forum, it is clear that you're not in a position to offer any kind of encouragement or support other than "get out before grad school kills your soul." The admonishment directed your way is a result of the constant stream of negatively that flows from you in regards to grad school, which is still a little baffling being that this is of course a forum dedicated to the positive nature of it.

Someone who has a passion for their studies doesn't need to hear that higher education will drain them of everything they have inside them. That's over the top, they're looking for ways to figure out what to do to alleviate their anxiety over it, not remove it from their lives completely and forever. And even if WornOutGrad decides to give it up entirely, that's a change that he's willing and able to make for the better. If you made a real effort to do the same you might start to find joy in your life... hey just sayin'

Sometimes seemingly irrelevant classes are really not that irrelevant. You may know how to "read and write", but many incoming college students do not know how to write professionally or how to cite sources correctly. In most areas of study, it is important to know how to write professionally. You never know when you'll be out in the real world and are asked to write a proposal or whatever. I think English courses are important for all majors and that is probably why they have remained a core requirement.

Well, definitely glad I could give you a chuckle...but no, I am being quite serious. I will give grad school credit in the sense that they don't offer bullshit classes nearly as much as undergrad, though. In undergrad, waaaaay too much unnecessary nonsense. For example, I needed to take two English classes, a math class, two art history classes, and at least one elective every semester. I think I know how to read and count by the time I get to college; I think if all I had were core art classes (okay,I'll bend and say give me one obligatory art history class), my degree would not have been as expensive and I wouldn't have needed to be there as long. That degree could have cost thousands less and took maybe one year less to obtain without the cushy nonsense classes.

But colleges have to make money somehow, so they tack on unnecessary courses and say they are required credits in order to get the degree being sought. But like I said, I think colleges could probably convince people to take those unnecessary classes by offering an incentive. That way, they can milk a little more money out of each student while maybe only losing a tiny bit if they offer a reward in the form of lowered tuition the following semester. But hell, colleges aren't interested in losing money, so they'll throw a year's worth of extra crap at you and call it required credits. Helping students to learn is a priority, but so is wringing a student's wallet dry. I wonder if it won't be too long before four-year degrees turn into five-year degrees.

On the other hand, I also understand that, more and more, you need a college degree in anything in order to even be considered for the crappiest, lowest-paying janitor job in town. So I think it's kind of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of thing.

If doctoral students don't TA for MA classes in some of your programs, then who does? MA students? But if that's the case, and you don't think that people should socialize with people that they might teach, wouldn't that stop the MA students from socializing with each other? And the PhD students from socializing with each other? After all, they might end up teaching each other.

And what about undergrad and 4+1 master's TAs for undergrad classes? I've taught friends when both I and they were undergrads, and I've been taught by friends when I was an undergrad and they were undergrads or 4+1 MEng students. Like I said, professionalism is important - I remember one class, with many TA sections, in which the staff made a great effort to put people in sections not TAed by their friends, and I think that's entirely reasonable if you have enough sections - but I'm used to an environment where anybody might end up teaching anybody if one is further along than the other in the same area. What are you supposed to do, not take a class in your area because the TA is your friend? So I do not understand the idea that such friendships are absolutely verboten. Not take a TAship because you know that some of your friends (who, again, might be on the same professional-hierarchy level as you, and thus legitimate friendship candidates by even the respect-the-hierarchy proponents) are going to take the class that semester?

Zee, I think this MS/PhD divide is a program-by-program thing, rather than a sciences thing. I'm in the sciences and it hasn't been so rigid anywhere that I've been, though it is slightly more of a thing in my MS program than it was at my more we're-all-part-of-the-same-university-community undergrad school.

I find the concept of different classes for master's and PhD students to be a questionable practice, but my own program does it with a few classes (the others are just normal grad classes), so I'm aware that it exists. My undergrad school didn't have this distinction, and it also allowed undergrads who met the prereqs to take grad classes at will, which seems like a sensible setup to me.

I think a cat is a little bit easier than a dog if you are the only person there. They are more independent and usually don't require a lot of training. Typically they already know what a litter box is and how to use it, so there isn't a lot of effort that needs to go into house breaking. Don't get me wrong, I love my dog. It would have been hard to take care of her by myself though. If you have the time and patience to train a dog, then they are definitely worth the commitment.

Oh yes, make sure to have an emergency fund set up. Nothing like unexpected vet bills to put a strain on an already tight budget.

Just wondering if it's normal for professors to say "I wrote this paper" when you really wrote it or to take credit for work you've done in other ways by submitting the paper with notes written about "the author's" experiences, excluding any mention of you?

Anyone have any such experiences?

I was always taught that it is best to pick an area of interest first and then look to see what has been done in that area. As you read through papers, you may say to yourself "okay, they did this and this, but why didn't they do this?". You keep going from there until you see somewhere that you feel is lacking and has a question that is worth trying to answer. At my school, you have to write up a proposal anyway that includes a literature review, so you're given a chance to explain why this research is important and demonstrate how other studies failed to address the question you wish to answer. It sounds a lot easier than it really is! But I think that you have a good idea, to look at what others have done in your lab and see what has been left unanswered.

I think this is a simple case of disagreement about the value of quantitative methods of inquiry. It's quite clear, though not in so many words, that ZeeMore simply does not believe that any regression model could capture the complexity of the admissions process enough to have any degree of predictive power. Behavioral has a much greater faith in quantitative measures, which is unsurprising given his background. Although I am generally a qualitative person in an increasingly quantitative field (political science), I do think that regression models can be tremendously helpful, and in the case of graduate admissions, I'm inclined to think a good model can be constructed (perhaps already has), which will give statistically significant and meaningful results. ZeeMore, when you talk about various things which can't be 'covered within a formula', you'd be surprised. Anything can be measured and quantified. There are, of course, all sorts of validity issues which are the stuff of endless argument in the social sciences, but, as they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Quantitative models just are; they're neither good nor bad. It's up to the author to construct models which would be convincing to their colleagues.

I think you're overstating the arbitrary and individualized nature of the admissions process just a bit. You're right that, in the actual decisions process, each application is considered individually. That doesn't mean that, in the aggregate, patterns don't or won't show up. Surely, the admissions process isn't that chaotic. A regression model in political science, for example, might show that region and religious affiliation are heavily correlated with vote choice, which tells us something interesting and prompts further, perhaps qualitative, research. But that doesn't mean that any particular individual, say, a born-again Christian from Alberta (if you're Canadian, you'll know what I'm talking about), can't 'buck the trend', as it were. Statistical methods are about overall, aggregate patterns, probabilities, and likelihoods. I don't see that graduate admissions, in any discipline, would be wholly immune from such measurements.

And just to repeat his own defense, Behavioral isn't saying that admissions committees actually make decisions using formulas or regression models. In the first instance, he was simply outlining a theory from economics which might explanatorily capture the specific case of MA to PhD, etc. His point is that regression models might be used by an outside observer to analyze patterns in graduate admissions. In addition, it has nothing to do with field, except, perhaps, in so far as some fields rely on explicitly quantitative measures (GPA, GRE, LSAT) more than others, which may mean regression models which are more convincing. In this, I don't think there's a strict sciences/humanities divide; I've been told that the GRE is very important in philosophy, for instance, as is the LSAT to law school, while the somewhat vague notion of 'research experience' in the sciences isn't explicitly amenable to measurement.

Who the heck said it is a discrete formula? Regressions are essentially how all estimates are made, whether you use an actual formula or something that's similar to a formula. Do you think anyone actually writes out a formula to say, "Yes, we will admit this person."? That is NOT what I proposed. A regression is a POST-HOC analysis (i.e., DONE AFTER decisions have already been made as a way to explain what predictors may have the most explanatory value in a decision). A regression can be used to test predictions if they are empirically established to see whether or not a theory holds true. Very rarely does one EVER begin to actually USE a regression model as a diagnostic for whatever was tested.

Also, regressors are ESTIMATORS. Any person in a quantitative field could only wish they could find a regression model with an r^2 value of 1.00. How a regression model is estimated is by aggregating past decision criteria along with the result and then finding some least-sqaures (variance-minimizing estimator); i.e.:

Candidate 1: 4.0 GPA, Good research experience, 1600 GRE - Result Accept
Candidate 2: 3.5 GPA, Good research experience, 1300 GRE - Result Accept
Candidate 3: 4.0 GPA, No research experience, 1500 GRE - Result Reject
...etc

This would be a case of a binomial distribution regression model, which could also be called a linear probability model (since you can only be rejected or accepted and not something in between [i.e., you're half accepted], thus 0 = 0% and 1 = 100%)

Anyway, I'm done here. If you have problems with what I said earlier, I already apologized and tried to qualify my claims by saying that I don't believe that Masters-degree holders are "second-rate" as some of you claimed I was implying. Apparently there are 0 other posters here with any kind of economics background since I seem to have to explain every one of my posts, so all I'm doing is clogging up this thread with needless tangents.

It may depend on what the fellowship contract considers to be "the department". You may need a signature from a department chair or director. I would ask to be sure.

I find it interesting that aside from this, all of the things described in this article are pretty obvious. We all know that grammar/spelling errors in a statement of purpose would be bad, as well as including stuff that falls in the TMI category. It's almost like a game of "What Doesn't Belong?". Why is so much emphasis placed on the disclosure of a mental illness? Hopefully I'm making sense here.

So does this have something to do with the fact that this study focused on psychology graduate admissions? I suppose I could see the connection there (i.e. you don't want a "mentally unstable" person studying psychology). What would you call that? It's almost like a conflict of interest or a contradiction. I'm not saying I agree with it, I'm just saying that I can sort of see where it comes from.

As for the mental health stigma being a problem in general, I think it still is. But as UnlikelyGrad said, it is getting better as old attitudes begin to fade away and mental health issues become more widely accepted. I personally have no experience with being rejected or feeling judged by an admissions committee, but I also did not disclose information about my personal history with depression and anxiety in my statement of purpose. There are people who know about my issues including my adviser and the associate director. This didn't come out until after I was admitted. But it wasn't like I was consciously omitting the information from my statement of purpose, I just felt it wasn't an appropriate place to discuss it. Really, it didn't even occur to me to discuss it there. It just isn't relevant information (but I suppose I could see why someone wishing to study psychology might feel it is relevant). Anyway, at no time did I feel judged by anyone. If anything, it seems like they were genuinely concerned and wanted to help me that much more. This is especially true of my adviser, they want me to succeed.