fuzzylogician

This often depends on your field and how funding is structured. In lab-based sciences, often funding comes from grants awarded to the PI and the PI can then directly hire students to work with him/her. Other fields are rotation-based and so you don't need to have someone who agrees to take you on before applying, but there should clearly be some labs that you can see yourself working in. In non-lab-based fields, often funding doesn't come from grants but from the school, or else grant money is pooled. Either way, the department will accept students as a whole, sometimes to work with a particular advisor and sometimes not. If that is the case, the advisor may have some say in who gets admitted, but not as much as if they just get to choose themselves. Well, maybe, but it's still worth asking. He may think that it'd be helpful if he answers questions about the department, even if he is not accepting new students himself. Anyway, given your answers, I'd ask for information about the lab and about the department that is not easily found on the lab/department website. E.g., what projects are going on right now, which ones are planned? What are recent alums doing now? What is the profile of a successful student in the lab? Would I have access to [spiffy new equipment]? Could I collaborate with [relevant off-campus entity, or another dept on campus]? Are there opportunities to visit other universities as a visiting student? What is your opinion on having side-projects while in your lab? Who determines the dissertation project for students - are they derivative of existing grants? How much input can students have? [you'll notice that some questions only make sense depending on your situation, so if there is no reason to go study at another university or use whatever equipment, don't ask about it.]

Where are you in the application process? Have you submitted an application? When would you expect a reply? And will she get to choose a student to work with, or do you get admitted to the department as a whole and only later choose an advisor?

I would suggest updating the Education section of the CV (which should be on the first page of the CV!), e.g. "2011--2014 Undergrad University, BA in Chemical Engineering (cum laude), minor in Basket Weaving (summa cum laude). 2015-- Awesome University, PhD student in Chemical Engineering." (I don't think estimated graduation date is all that important when you're a first-year. When you go on the job market and want to stress that you'll graduate that year, then you can add it.) Otherwise, there is no need to add anything else to the CV.

GradSecretary is often a good contributor to our discussions on the board so I would try and ignore the tone of the post and take away the message that there is probably a right way and a wrong way to put the question (i.e. as a question vs. as a demand). That much I am willing to believe is true. I don't think, though, that asking politely should come across as entitled, or be harmful in any way.

I've heard this said too. I'm on the job market now so have never served on a hiring committee but judging based on who is getting on shortlists and getting jobs these days, that seems fairly accurate. I can't think of anyone who's gotten a job without at least one accepted (in press, if not published) publication. More often than not, people also have some postdoc/assistant prof experience, and the publishing record that goes with that. Beyond publications, it makes a huge difference when you apply before you have your dissertation. Things look much better once you actually have your degree in hand. To get one publication out by the beginning of your fifth year (assuming a 5-year program, and going on the job market in your 5th year, with mostly October/November deadlines), you probably need to submit a first draft at least by the beginning of your fourth year. The reviewing process can be lengthy, but varies wildly between journals. This would be something to consult with your advisors about, so you choose a venue that is both appropriate and relatively fast. Assuming a 3-month wait for each round of reviews, and a quick 2-week turnover between revisions, and at least one round of revise and resubmit (which happens almost without exception these days), at the very minimum you are looking at ~7 months from submission to acceptance. If that happens, you are very lucky. Likelier you need to double that, so about a year, or a little over that, from submission to acceptance, assuming that all goes well. The first papers take the longest to write, so this would be a project that you will have been working on for a while, possibly one of your qualifying papers from 2nd or 3rd year, which you work into a journal submission. It's doable, but not every advisor is good about encouraging their students to do this, so it's good that you are aware of this. Rule of thumb for me (which took a while to arrive at): every half decent project I have should end up in a journal. Maybe not all of them at top journals, but don't leave proceedings papers hanging. It's not that much work to take those and turn them into a full-length submission.* Before getting to this stage, it helped me to present my work at large conferences. It's good for networking and for getting proceedings papers out. The nice thing about proceedings papers is that you can write whatever you want, and they can serve as a good basis to work off of. They also give you a timeline for completion and a nice frame. Some proceedings are quite prestigious, so it's not bad to have. At some point, though, you want to stop traveling and just submit to a journal.** If you're a first year, I don't think you need to worry about conferences just yet. I know some people who start that early, but I think it's fine to start in your second year. My first batch of conferences happened in the spring of second year, so ones with submission deadlines around December-January, with projects from the summer after first year and the fall of second year. If you only start in the summer of second year or in your third year, that's fine too, in my opinion. You really want to be out there by your fourth year and beginning of fifth year, because that's when you go on the job market and need to be visible. ... I got a little rambly. Does that help? Any other questions? * The first time one of my advisors told me this, I thought he was crazy ("well you're a genius but we can't all be like that!") but no.. now I think it makes a lot of sense. ** Same advisor, same reaction. It's so annoying how they are always right

My thoughts: 1. I think they shouldn't be annoyed if you explain yourself exactly like you did here. Your reasoning seems very sound. The only thing is to make sure that you're making appropriate choices next time around, because you don't want to do this twice. Some of your LOR writers might even discuss the reasons why you're applying a second time, so you want to make sure they can present your choices in a positive light (and also that they think of them that way, of course!). 2. This should not be a problem. I would strongly advise anyone applying to grad school against taking an unfunded offer, I am not alone in holding this view. Schools realize that accepting unfunded offers is problematic for many students. Again, you may want to address your previous application head on in your SOP and outline all the ways in which your application is better this cycle than the previous one. 3. If you already know that your offers are not from places that would be good for you, then my personal view is that there is no point in getting started in such a program. One year is not that long in the scheme of things, and I think it's totally worth it to reapply to better fitting schools. Sounds like you already have a plan for improving your application and for choosing good schools for your interests, so I'd say go for it. The process is always easier the second time around, especially when you're not doing it at the same time as trying to finish your degree. Of course, there are no guarantees so you take the risk of not succeeding next year, but again I don't think it makes much sense to attend a program that you already know won't train you in the way that you want to be trained. Grad school is hard enough even when everything works just as it should. You want to do your best to maximize your chances of success, and an important factor in that is choosing the right school. I say go for it, take the risk. Sounds like it'll pay off.

You could ask about it. Some programs have more money that they can play with, others are on a tight budget. I think I had one offer that mentioned moving expenses, but the school I ended up going to doesn't help with moving expenses and made it very clear when I asked. Another thing you could inquire about, if the school doesn't cover moving expenses, is whether it might be possible to get an advance on your first paycheck or alternatively if it would be possible to get an interest-free loan through the school to cover your initial expenses until your paychecks start coming in. Some schools will not cover your expenses but will help in other ways, like an interest-free loan that can help tie you over until you actually start getting paid. That first month can be very expensive, as you already noted.

Then you ask more open ended questions, e.g.: - Do you plan to collaborate with students? - (For grant based fields:) Are you applying for grants / what is your next grant going to be? - Tell me about your advising experience; this may include asking about how they were mentored, what they liked about it, what they would like to change. - How often would you want to meet with students? - (If the conversation is going well and you feel like being a little blunt:) How do you plan to balance your own need to publish/get tenure with my needs as a student? Is there an advising component to your tenure case -- are you expected to graduate a student before you can go up for tenure (should give you a timeline and some idea of what's at stake for them).

- What makes someone successful in this program? (What are the characteristics of a successful student who works with YOU (ask your potential advisor)?) - What do students do after they graduate? Do they get jobs in [good universities / companies that you might want to work for]? - Do you tend to collaborate with students? Do you encourage collaborations with other students/faculty? - What is the travel funding like? If I use all the money, is it possible to apply for additional funding? - Do students ever get the chance to spend a semester away as a visiting student at another university? - Is there a policy on changing advisors, in case something goes wrong with my first-choice advisor (ask the DGS, not the potential advisor! also ask students if/how often this happens) - How many students start the program in an average year, and how many of those graduate? What are the main reasons people drop out? (ask both faculty and students) - What is the average time to completion of the PhD? What happens if someone doesn't graduate on time? Is there extra funding? - (ask students): Do you like it here? Do you like your advisor? What is the one thing you would change about the program? Does your stipend suffice? Where do students tend to live? Do you need a car? How much do you spend on [groceries/transportation/utilities/rent]? Do you feel that the program does a good job preparing you for the job market? If relevant: - Are there opportunities for additional summer funding (for programs that do 9-month funding packages)? - Are there opportunities to do internships? collaborations with other labs/departments/universities? - If I got interested in [using expensive equipment that only exists in another department on campus], would I be able to have access to [the equipment]?

Watch your language. There are other, more constructive ways, to indicate that you didn't understand what someone said.

Actually I think starting either last year or this year, CUNY is going to start funding its PhD students. I don't know how many students they plan to admit, though. I'm sure it's new for them and there may be some quirks.

It helps because I am tired of always checking what I did wrong to deserve to be treated differently than my male colleagues, and I am tired of the assumption that I should (and could!) work hard to "fix" it. I am just as good as my male colleagues. In fact, I don't think I am the only woman who feels like she sometimes works twice as hard to win the recognition that men get for free. Why should I always have to doubt myself? It's hard enough even without this extra layer of crap.

Victorydance, I unfortunately do not have the time to carefully address everything you say in your post, so I hope others will take the time to do that. I just want to point out your interesting choice of comparisons out of the long list of words I gave above. You look at "nice" and "helpful" vs. "boring" and "funny." I also mentioned words such as "best," "worst," "great," "terrible," etc. These have nothing to do with how men and women are perceived on average, unless you want to say that men are simply better than women. I don't know about you, but if that's where we're going then we might as well stop the discussion now because we are not going to convince each other of anything. I think a more useful way to look at this data is that men appear to be judged more often on professional attributes, and tend to generally be judged more favorably, and women tend to be judged more on personal attributes, and tend to be judged more negatively. Men and women are different, but that alone can't explain the data (or, again, we end up saying that men are better than women). For more along these lines, compare "caring" or "helpful" vs. "brilliant" or "genius," and also "early" vs. "late," "fair" vs. "unfair." Telkanuru has posted links to several other studies that show this finding: men are judged more favorably, given more constructive criticism, and are judged on professional, not personal attributes. This is a systemic problem, and I don't know how else you explain it except as a problem that needs to be addressed. I don't know why the word "bias" is so difficult for you to deal with, but what else do you suggest accounts for these differences? "Different" is not enough.

Then why do you insist on derailing the conversation with what you yourself admit has nothing to do with it?

And what would be an unbiased source, exactly? Maybe the study I linked to that clearly shows a gender bias in teaching evaluations? And lets not be naive, this bias also comes up during the semester, and it affects people's careers through hiring decisions and promotions, not just people's feelings (in case that isn't enough). I don't understand why people think it's acceptable to argue that "I am a man and this has happened to me too, so there is no problem of gender discrimination here." The study (and it's not the only one out there) clearly shows an overall trend, and that doesn't mean that there are no exceptions but there is something here that we should pay attention to. People write about their own experiences as a way to share and to learn that they are not the only one that this has happened to. The OP specifically asks for these stories. It can be a lonely place to be in when you think you are being discriminated against but aren't sure. There aren't too many places where you can share this. As I already wrote, it's really hard to know, when you feel something like this is happening to you, why it is and whether it has to do with your gender or the color of your eyes or just that the student isn't sure how to pronounce your name, or a million other things. But the data shows that it happens, so I am inclined to believe that at least some of the "anecdotes and opinions" that you say come from "biased sources" are real. We should listen to people when they tell us they feel discriminated against.

I had an interview with UPenn in 2009. I'm still waiting to hear back. Never give up hope!

Network early and often. Identify the things that are trendy now and ALSO where your field is headed: do "sexy" research (caveat: what is done now might not be done anymore in 3-5-7 years. Trends are important, not just the current state of affairs). Present, publish, get grants, collaborate with people in and outside your institution, and in neighboring fields if relevant. Build a clear research profile that you can sell in one quick sentence--be the "buzzword guy/gal," the expert on [thing people have heard about and might actually care about]. Be diverse in some way - in your research questions, collaborations, methodologies, data sources, etc. Think about the "why should I care about your work?" question, aim to answer it simply by how you present yourself to your field.

Relevantly: http://benschmidt.org/profGender/# Try: smart, clever, knowledgeable, cool, awesome, excellent, great, best, worst, terrible, awful, horrible, unfair, incompetent, annoying, crazy, insane professor, lecturer, teacher, instructor (also compare: handsome, beautiful) (and because it's fascinating: male vs. female; men vs. women) ((fun with language data: the reason I'm a linguist))

See, gender discrimination is difficult to detect and easy to dismiss. Unless someone flat out tells you they are treating you differently because of your gender or it's somehow obvious (and sometimes even then!) it's very easy to assume that the behavior comes from another source. Maybe they think you are more competent, or they don't like the other TA's tone of voice or shoes or god knows what, maybe your office hours are more convenient or your name is easier to remember, or they get the impression that the professor likes you more than the other TA. It may be easy to see that you are treated differently than a male TA, but you don't ever know why. Maybe it is because they think you are "cute" or incompetent or a pushover. I think in these situations it's very important to acknowledge and validate a person's feelings if they think they are being treated differently, and at least acknowledge that it's possible that gender discrimination is the reason why. TMP -- I have a similar "treated differently but god knows why" story. My second semester TAing as an MA student, it was me and a male TA covering two sections. We would prepare our materials together and teach our sections one after the other. They both did equally well on the exams and assignments. At the end of the semester, he got very positive comments on his level of preparation and his notes, and I got negative comments. They were the same! I have no explanation for why the students perceived it differently. But if it helps, that same group also gave me my favorite comment so far on any teaching evaluation, "the TA is too short, she does not use the blackboard properly," in the suggestions for improvement section.

No. I'm sorry, but that's not ok. It's exactly the kind of behavior that makes us feel like we are not being taken seriously.

Here are my thoughts about interviewing with dyed hair: Most of it applies here too. The entire thread might be interesting for you to read. The short version of my answer is: There is a delicate balance between feeling comfortable and dressing for the occasion. You need to choose where your priorities lie. Personally I tend to conform in these situations, but I respect that others might not want to suppress important aspects of themselves. If your piercings are an important part of how you present yourself, would you want to go to a school that would hate it so much they would actually not admit you if they knew about it (all else being equal)?

Here is how I imagine doing it, though disclaimer: I've never had to actually do anything like this. - First pass: look at research fit/interests, training. Can this person do the job? This might involve scanning the SOP, CV, and possibly LORs but only for a description of interests and relevant background. - Of the people who have fitting research interests, do they have the skills? This might involve looking through transcripts, SOP, LORs. If writing is important, at this point I might pay more attention to the SOP and writing sample, if you have one. If they are lacking some skills, does it look like they are able to learn new skills and apply them quickly? Are they eager to do that and express and interest? - Of the people that have the right skills, do they seem like hard workers? This might involve looking at GPA and GRE scores, though I wouldn't trust them too much; also looking at what the person has done - involvement in projects, any presentations that have come out of previous work, an engaging SOP that spells out excitement and an genuine interest in what I do. - Finally, the intangibles. Do they seem like a good personality fit? This may be hard to know but based on SOP and LORs there might be some indication. It'd be helpful to be able to talk to top candidates on the phone, though I realize it may not be possible. Hopefully by this point there aren't that many applications left standing, though, so you can pay attention to the content of what they did submit. This might also be the time to google them and see what comes up. Writing this out, it seems potentially time consuming, but personally I think it's worth it for someone I'm going to work with for several years and that my research will depend on. Then again, who knows, I'm sure there are more efficient ways to go about this.

I have to say, at this point in my application cycle I think I had only heard back from one school. There are still quite a few schools that will take another few weeks to finalize their decisions. Re: interviews/open house visits, it depends on the school and situation. If you know the school interviews all its candidates pre-acceptance (I believe Stanford and Harvard might be good examples, though my information is somewhat outdated), then not getting an interview invitation probably means you are out of luck. Some schools only interview people unofficially to follow up on anything that wasn't clear in the application, so the interview is not an integral part of the process and not getting one doesn't necessarily mean anything. Same for campus visits; I think some schools have funding issues and may not invite people from very far away, but I imagine that in that case they may want to talk on Skype. It's probably not a good sign if you know invitations have been sent out and you didn't get one. However, hard as it is, at this point you have to keep the hope alive, until you know otherwise.

Unlike the previous posters, I think that contacting the department and asking them to update your CV is appropriate. This is assuming that your conference acceptances are relatively prestigious (e.g. not undergraduate conferences at your own department that you happen to be organizing) and that they are in fact relevant for your current/future work as it relates to this program. Two conference presentations can make a big difference in terms of how experienced/successful you are perceived to be. That said, I'd keep the email very short and professional. This is not the time to "tell them more" about yourself or to gush about the program. Simply point out the change "I have recently had two papers accepted for presentation at conferences X and Y and was wondering if it would be possible to update my CV to the one attached to this email, which reflects this development. Thank you again for considering my application. I look forward to hearing from you soon, -Lorelai"