TheLastJedi

If I apply to only or mostly schools that are likely too ambitious for my profile, and I am willing to accept the risk that I may very well be rejected everywhere – could that make a negative impression on letter of recommendation writers? Maybe I am imagining things, but could it lead them to think of me as a cocky and arrogant person, or become reluctant to write LORs because they feel it’s a waste of time when I’m not going to be accepted anyway? The reason why I’m suggesting this is because I feel getting a PhD (or any other degree) is a high risk career move – it is in general, but particularly for my situation since I’m an older/mature student, would have to quit my job, and already have a Master’s and therefore can’t get another one on the way. So I think getting a PhD would be worth it in an ideal situation, but if not it may be too much of a risk and that I’d be better off not going. I don’t mean to sound negative or judgmental, but I’ve seen websites about how graduates of some schools in my field are more likely to get academic jobs than others (and I presume similar trends go for industry), and how some who got PhDs won’t even put it on their resume because it hurt them to appear overqualified. I know people don’t go for PhDs for the money, and I realize there are people who fail at a top school and succeed in a low ranked school. But I feel I need to be confident going into a program or else I might drop out. It’s possible I may find schools that aren’t highly ranked that I still would want to attend because of the program or research area – but if it turns out that at the end of the day all the schools on my list are reaches, then I want to be able to live with my decision and not purposely look for a low ranked/presumably safer school that I don’t feel confident about attending. My safety would be to just stay at my current job. If I get rejected everywhere and still think I want to go for a PhD, I would reapply the following year. But I don’t know if this would give my recommenders the perception that I’m not a serious applicant.

How do you know how many applications is too much? That is, putting aside the issue of any time or money limitations on my part. I see that someone here said 20+ applications is too much, but I have had a case in the past where I asked a (non-academic) reference and applied to 6 schools, which I don't think is much, but after maybe the 5th application he expressed annoyance at having to write so many letters. Perhaps it's best to ask reference writers how many letters they're willing to write beforehand (and then possibly limit my number of applications based on that)? Also I wonder if there is a cultural difference between countries - this was a Canadian reference, and maybe Canadians expect applicants to apply to fewer places than Americans do.

I have a Canadian Master's degree and I'd appreciate if anyone can answer any of my questions. In Canada, you usually complete your Master's before applying for a PhD, which from what I heard at my Master's institution is expected to be completed in 4 years, but I think sometimes can be done in 3. But in the US, you normally apply for a PhD after your Bachelor's, and I think PhD is expected to take 5.5 to 6 years (in STEM fields) and possibly longer. If I already have a Master's which took 2 years to complete, will this shorten the amount of time to complete an American PhD (and if so, by how much) or will it make no difference? I've tried looking for this on universities' websites but I have a hard time finding a good answer - some universities seem to say a few courses can be transferred, some say they can't, and others say it depends on whether they consider the Master's courses to be on par with theirs. But even if transfers are allowed, it seems that I have to petition for the course transfers as a PhD student. Is it possible to find out how much of my Master's can count towards the PhD before accepting the offer or before applying to the school? This also applies for whether my Master's thesis can be counted. This is important to me as I'm an older applicant and would rather not spend too much time getting the PhD. I know I can't get another Master's along the way if I'm going for a PhD in the same field so I think it's risky I have to spend as much time as Bachelor's applicants without the insurance of getting a MS degree along the way. I'd probably prefer doing a PhD in the US but if it saves time to do it in Canada that would be a factor in my decision. Also, how would it be different if I did a PhD in a different field than my Master's/undergrad major? If anyone knows the situation in other countries such as the UK it would be helpful too. Also, I know that international applicants have much lower acceptance rates for grad school in the US compared to American citizens (and similarly for Canadian schools). But most of them are from overseas. If I'm a Canadian citizen, how does that affect my admission chances? (It all depends on why international applicants have lower acceptance rates).

I am no longer in school and am currently working. I am considering applying for graduate programs in fields outside of my major, in which I may need to take prereqs for. However, it is not clear to me if I really need academic credit for something that may be a "soft" prereq. In my case, I'm a computer science major, and I may want to apply for a program in biomedical engineering or computational biology/bioinformatics (or maybe electrical/computer engineering). However, I don't have any biology courses on my transcript. Is that going to be an issue? Some schools don't mention if any prereqs are needed at all, while others seem to want most applicants to have some biology (or chemistry or physics) background, but isn't clear on how formal that has to be. I'd think med school would want formal credits, but do programs like PhD/MS engineering care about how you obtained your "background"? I am making a distinction between learning something, versus getting recognition for what I learned for the purposes of admission. I am comfortable with learning biology or some other subject through taking MOOCs, OpenCourseware, books, etc., and I believe I can learn as much as I would in a real life class, but will the admissions committee accept it? There are two ways to approach this: (1) Take MOOCs (Edx, Coursera, etc.) in the subject and mention somewhere in my application that this is where I got background from. If they can accept this, then does it matter if I pay for a verified certificate vs. taking it for free? Would it even be OK if I said I went through a course on OpenCourseware which doesn't come with a certificate, or read up something on my own? (2) Take a course for official academic credit. This will almost certainly have to be an online course. There is a local university near me, but they don't have evening/weekend courses that I need. If I have to do #2 then where do I take online courses then? My guess is to go to an online school like Athabasca University or Open University UK, but I know when graduate schools look at a transcript they want courses from a "top" school - so would credits from these schools be looked down upon? Maybe I could check places like Penn State World Campus or University of Maryland University College that may be more reputable, if they offer individual courses. I would prefer not having to pay a lot for this though (which is why I prefer #1 if it is possible). Does anyone know of an reputable/inexpensive online school that they can recommend? A caveat is that I can't do lab/experimental work with an online course - if grad schools expect that, then that's going to be pretty hard to resolve. Thanks for any advice.

I'm an older than usual applicant, I will be 32 by the time I start grad school if I apply this year, which means I may be 36 or 37 by the time I finish my PhD. I'm on the fence about whether or not I should even go for it or just keep working, but I feel like I'm at the point where it's "now or never" and if I wait much longer than this it will be too late, and that I may regret later in life having never gone for a PhD. Not meaning to sound negative but I've heard - I don't know how true this rumour is - but that universities often practice age discrimination when hiring new tenure track professors with an age limit of no older than 35-38. So I feel like I have to make a decision about this soon, even if I don't feel completely confident about it.