fuzzylogician

I emailed to say thank you after they submitted their letters and again to let them know how things turned out and to thank them again for their help. Never gave anyone gifts, but I did send them a card for the new year, since it was around the time the letters were due. I also try to keep in touch with them all roughly once a year if I don't see them at conferences. I just sent them all my dissertation with another thank you email a few weeks ago. I think they all appreciate the periodic updates and don't expect anything more.

It's not too late but you should contact them soon. The question is not just how long it actually takes to write the letters, but also when they will fit this new requirement into their schedule. I'm sure they don't just sit around all day waiting for students to ask for letters; they have other things to do, like their own research and teaching, and grant writing, and meetings, and personal obligations. You need to respect their time and not expect that they'll drop everything last minute and write you letters on short notice.

Do you know anyone on the organizing team? If so, you could email with an informal question. Otherwise, I think I'd just show up and play it by ear. If you can get into the room without being stopped by anyone, I'd do that. If not, stop by the registration desk and let them know you're only there for a couple of talks, ask to enter without paying. The people at the registration desk will most likely be students who won't care too much, so I am willing to bet that it'll work out fine.

If you're a student at the school where the conference is being held, things are normally pretty lenient. If you're at another local school and the conference organizers know you, it's also possible to get in without paying if you explain that you only want to attend a couple of talks. It gets complicated when people start asking for preferential treatment; you say that the conference already has a student price, and I don't think it's fair to give an additional discount to students from nearby. If anything, the ones from further away are spending more money to attend the conference, since they also need to pay for accommodations and transportation. I am on the organizing committee of a large conference right now and I can tell you that we would not mind it if someone from a nearby school attended a couple of talks, but we would not appreciate it if someone was there the entire time without paying. No one has asked for a special price but I imagine we'd only do it if there was a good reason to, not otherwise. There are enough things to worry about other than special prices for special people. If you do crash, I think it will make you look unprofessional to basically hang out at the conference venue for the duration of the conference but not have a name tag and not seem like you belong. Furthermore, coffee and refreshments (and often the room itself, even if it's at the university and not a hotel or conference center) cost money, and if you're going to be there for more than just a couple of talks, it's only fair that you pay your way.

Life is what happens while you are making plans. It just doesn't make sense to avoid getting into a relationship because it may not "work out" (easily) several years from now. You also can't evaluate a potential relationship with someone you just met in terms of what might happen several years down the road. It puts an unfair burden on the other person and it's just looking at things from the wrong perspective. Life is happening now, not later. If you are planning on a life in academia, you won't be in permanent place for a very long time. You are looking at 5+ years in a PhD program, plus 1-3+ years as a postdoc (perhaps 5+, depending on the field), and then perhaps a TT job, which may not be your last. But even if you're just in school for 2 years and then get a job, who's to say that that job will be for life and you'll never move? And who's to say your partner won't need to move away for school or for a job? Having to move for jobs will force you to evaluate your relationship and actively *choose* to stay with your partner, if things are good. Or it may speed up the end of a relationship that was slowly dying anyway. If you choose to keep the relationship, you may have to make some sacrifices for it. You have to be aware of it, but keep in mind that juggling a career and a personal life always involves work and some sacrifices. You have to decide whether having a relationship is important enough to give up some advantages of being completely unattached and able to move around. It's a choice. If you choose the relationship and work at it, I personally believe that things will work out, one way or the other. I can't tell you how, but since I see it happening around me all the time, I know it's possible. And if it ends up not working out, I think it's still better to have tried. Anyway, that's how I live my life. I just moved for a postdoc and I know I'll move again at least once soon, and my partner is also an academic, so things aren't easy. But I wouldn't give the relationship up just because I don't know yet how it'll work out. Life is not just about the end result, it's about the process, and having someone to share my life with is more important than the complexity it adds to my choices on the academic job market.

I'm not sure what 'methodologies' mean in History, but by extrapolation, for me it would mean one of two things. The more straightforward one is that some components of my work are experimental, and clearly it makes sense to talk about how a particular program can support my work by having the right kind of lab/equipment and by using the kinds of designs/analyses I think are right for my work. At least the school/lab should not be outright opposed to the way I think experimentation should be done. There may be some correlates of this for History, I'm not sure. Then a second component of 'methodology' in my field involves the kinds of theories people work with, which informs how they ask questions and how they go about answering them. Lots of people call themselves Linguists but are actually engaged in vastly different kinds of work. Linguistics can be anything from very lit-heavy Humanities research to a more analytic Social Science, all the way to things that could be reasonably housed in a Biology or CS program. Here again I would not apply to a school that has a completely different view of linguistics that is incompatible with what I want to do. However, I wouldn't spend space in my SOP discussing this because it's a very fundamental part of how I chose where to apply and it's abundantly obvious that the schools I chose have the same fundamental approach to language as I do. I would only choose to address this for schools that have more variety in how they study language so it's less clear how my approach fits in. Either way, though, for a 200 word statement I don't think methodologies is something I would discuss at all, assuming you mean by that something like what I described above. I would stick to a discussion of your research interests and how the school could generally support them, perhaps mentioning particular professors or resources that are important to your work.

I would not mention your friend in your SOP, for all the reasons people have already mentioned. Have him help you tailor your SOP to this school and proofread all your materials. It might work to your advantage to have your friend mention to someone on the adcom that you are applying and that you're a great student. This could be beneficial if your friend is advanced and/or trusted by the faculty in this program. Caveats: it might backfire if for whatever reason your friend is not well liked or not trusted. And even with this extra good word on your behalf, it's unclear how much influence your friend could have (probably not a lot) or whether this would impact your outcomes in any way.

This has been discussed lots of time in the past. Here is one thread I found: You can search for more. The short answer: they want to know who their competition is.

If the plan is to have a career in academia, then peer reviewed papers are crucially important to your success. Stopping all work on papers from an older project just because you've moved on to a new position seems like a bad idea to me. You could, if you want, tell your advisor that you're no longer interested in being a co-author. I assume he would be ok with that, though possibly pissed or disappointed, and he'll just move on. However, given that the majority of the work on the project is done and revisions are likely not to be all that time consuming (compared to starting a new project from scratch), it's probably a wise investment to give it another shot and get a publication out of this. You could try and be very honest with your advisor about your current priorities and when (and how much) you can work on this project. Maybe you could work some arrangement out where either the advisor takes on more responsibilities or he could bring in someone new as an author who could take care of the changes. Might be worth a try if you think it's too much work or you don't care anymore, but would still like to get some kind of publication out of it.

Unless you can replace Dr. Y's letter with another letter that is as strong, I think getting the strongest letters possible is more important than getting letters from PIs from different labs. I am assuming that you will have a third letter from someone outside this lab, which could provide more breadth. The only reason I would be concerned about the choice of Dr. X and Dr. Y would be if this means that some aspect of your application is not discussed at all in your letters (e.g., no one talks about your teaching experience, if you have any; or they all talk about technique A but fail to mention or discuss at length that you are proficient in techniques B and C); and at the same time you have two letters that basically say the same things. In that case, it would seem that a better choice would be to replace one of the two similar letters with another that would be more distinct (unless it's substantially weaker, and then it's a difficult call). From what you describe, although Dr. X and Dr. Y are from the same lab, you worked with them on different projects and therefore they should have non-identical perspectives about you. Since these are different letters, I don't think you need to worry.

A travel grant could go on your CV. I'm not sure what was involved in the research experience abroad, so that one is more difficult. If it was a research assitantship, that's something that could go on your CV. Otherwise, I think it should probably only be mentioned in your SOP.

It's called structured procrastination . I can think of lots of less productive ways to avoid editing my research statement right now, but this one makes me feel like I'm still doing something useful (even if it's not what I'm supposed to be doing). And you're very welcome

I'm not a grad program director but I've been editing SOPs for several years now. And, you know, it's not like this is a grant application. This is me helping you figure stuff out at midnight on a school day on a grad school message board. I'm sure it's possible to get in without a personalized fit paragraph, but you'll be forcing the adcom to work extra hard to identify fit for you instead of helping them see it. A personalized fit paragraph normally indicates that you've made the choice to apply to the school for good reasons and have actually thought it through. I have to wonder how much sense it makes for you to apply to a school that you have nothing good to say about. Suppose you get in -- if there is no one there you could work with, what kind of education will you get? Anyway, if there is nothing good you can say about BU, then I guess don't say anything. Same goes for MIT. I can't do this work for you; this is the hard part and this is where you need to do your own legwork.

I don't know of anything and I'd be surprised if there is a ready-made template like that, because the steps you'll need to take depend on the project and your progress. Outlining what needs to happen and working out a timeline is something that you should do together with your advisor and committee (if you have one).

It's definitely a good idea to clearly define what you mean by 'language evolution,' both in terms of what the term means to you and in terms of the kinds of questions that you want to study. You're right that biolinguistics doesn't go over well in many North American linguistics programs. If you want to study in a traditional linguistics program, it'll be important for you to explain how this program can support your interests. This would involved a detailed discussion of "fit," in particular addressing why you want to study your interests from within a linguistics department. A question that I imagine will be on adcom's minds and that you'll need to address in detail is how they are supposed to support the aspects of your interests that aren't traditionally done in linguistics programs. The interests you describe (which I am looking at over at the Fall 2015 applications thread) involve some aspects that linguists in the programs you mention can support you in, including studying the theory, psycholinguistics, modeling, but also aspects that it's harder to see how you'd combine into a traditional program (e.g. application to dancing, AI). You want to identify the faculty members who could help you with the diachronic aspects of your project, and the ones that can help with the modeling, and the ones that could perhaps help with AI, etc. and you want to explain how you'd deal with it if there is no one around to help with something (which, given the nature of your project, seems fairly likely). You should also be aware that not everyone is going to find a project about dance acceptable, so I think you need to be very explicit about why you think that studying dance can be informed by a linguistics education, and you need to be aware that if you go to a traditional linguistics program, there will be a lot of theoretical work you'd need to do, especially in your first year or so, which may not involve the study of dance. I think in your case it'd be important to discuss this very explicitly and say why you think that getting a strong background in various subfields of theoretical linguistics will inform your work. Basically, work very hard to tie your research to what's traditionally done in the program, and show them how you'd deal with the expansions to areas where there will be not a lot of support for what you plan to do. Show them how you can be a successful student in their program. This may be a case where it's useful to explain what you don't do, though you'll need to be very careful about how you phrase it, so it doesn't sound negative and doesn't come over as too presumptuous. It's a tricky one. My inclination is to say to keep that out, and instead concentrate on being precise and detailed about what you do want to do. Your profile says you're in Montreal. If you're studying at McGill, most of the professors there attended programs like the ones you're applying to, so hopefully they can read your SOP and give you feedback on how a professor with an education like theirs sees your proposed project. If there is anyone around who can do that for you, I think it'll be very beneficial.

OK, I'm back. Lets assume that all paragraphs are the same length. Then you are planning to write a statement that is 80% research interests, no background on who you are, and no fit paragraph. That seems problematic. I also worry that discussing many unrelated interests will make it seem like you're all over the place. I think it would make more sense to have some combination of intro+body 1 as your first paragraph (you don't need to summarize previous work in your SOP; just say what you want to do, perhaps mentioning work you would like to build on if you feel that it's necessary, but not as a lit review). Explain what research questions interest you, and (if you can) why they are interesting/important. Then I'd like to see a discussion of why the school you're applying to is a good place to study your interests, and a discussion of your background and experiences which have prepared you to study those questions. If there are any significant projects you've worked on during undergrad, you could summarize one/more of them and describe what the outcomes were and what you learned from the project. If your discussion in the beginning of the SOP is very narrow (that is, if you're basically proposing one particular project or asking one particular question), then it may be a good idea to have a paragraph that discusses other research interests that you hope to study in grad school--mention that you have broader research interests in syntax and semantics and give examples of topics that interest you. You don't need to propose a project or research question for each one, though if you've thought something out then elaborating on one idea might be a nice addition. This could be a fine conclusion to your SOP, along with a very short discussion of post-PhD plans (which, since you really can't know at the moment, will probably say something vague about a career in academia, building on the education you'll obtain at school X and exploring in even more depth questions about Y).

I can't guarantee that anyone will indeed customize their letter; they may add a "school X is a great fit for LeventeL" paragraph, or not. They may change who the letter is addressed to, if they know who is on the adcom at each school, or not. For most applications, even if they use a completely identical letter, there is a form they need to fill out in addition to the letter that asks general questions about how they rank you among their students (current and past), etc. Extra apps do take more time, but not that much. Unless they are unwilling to do more than X applications, I think it's best to choose solely based on what you want to do. I think worrying about your POI's age is very reasonable. There is a very real possibility that someone who is 73 now will to be retiring or dealing with personal issues by the time you are ready to work on your dissertation. Your ideas for expanding the possible advisor pool sounds very reasonable to me, too.

Well, are there actually 12-14 programs with a reasonable-to-good fit for your interests, which you would like to attend? That is, for each one, if it were the only school that accepted you, you would be happy to go there? This is sort of an individual decision; the costs of applying to many programs are mostly monetary. The main investment will be in creating the application materials in the first place, and customizing for the different schools is much less time-costly. Same goes for your LOR writers -- the main investment for them is in writing the a recommendation letter on your behalf; whatever modifications they will need to make for the various school you apply to obviously take some time, but much less than the initial investment in writing the first draft of the letter. The main question is whether there are enough good schools that are worth that additional investment, and also how confident you feel in your application and what your plan B would be in case you apply to just 4 places and don't get in. Personally, if I had the money, I'd apply to every school that seemed like a good fit because losing a year because I didn't give myself enough of a shot seems like a bad plan. [of course this plan means you might spend more time and money than necessary, in case you have a strong application and end up with lots of acceptances.]

I'd keep it short and straightforward: "in 20XX I attended a MA program at the university of X, from which I had to withdraw for personal/medical/health reasons. Since then, I have worked as [blah]/done [blah], and I am now ready to attend the graduate program at X." If possible, work into the sentence that whatever problem you had before is resolved now and should not affect your studies. This is now long enough ago that most adcoms won't be too worried, but I think it'd look odd if you completely ignored this part of your past. All they want to know is that whatever happened before won't stop you from completing the program now.

Sorry, I am preparing materials for a seminar I am teaching tomorrow so things are slow, but I'll try and get back to it later tonight or tomorrow. The short version is I think there is sort of an imbalance and there are parts that are missing from the essay right now, and I'm not sure how that will come across to the adcom. I'll say more later. (Ziggy, same goes for you!)

Oh, I see. Sorry about the confusion. I would still advise you to keep an open mind, for your own sake. You're about to embark on a 5-year+ program and what you think is the most fascinating topic now may morph into something else, or be abandoned in favor of another project, who knows. You'll learn things you don't even know about now, and one can only hope that they will inform your research 5 years from now. As I said above, if you leave with the exact same knowledge and beliefs you came with and you aren't open to the possibility of change, what's the point of going to grad school in the first place? You know what you want to do coming into grad school, and that's what you should be talking about. Defining your dissertation project now just seems premature. You can still include all the same discussion, but just talk about it as the project you hope to pursue once in school, which is a more immediate (and feasible) goal. The outcomes of this project that you propose to start now may very well inform what you choose to do for your dissertation, but -- again -- that will only happen several years down the line.

Two things. First, never say never. Seriously. If you have ever told yourself "X is so boring, I don't understand why anybody would care. I will never work on X," mark my words. At some point in your future there will be more X, and it will be unavoidable. Sometimes you suffer, but other times you learn it's actually interesting, now that it affects your research and you have a personal connection to the data. (Ask around, everybody has topics like this in their lives.) Second, I just completely fail to see how it's relevant. If you were a prospective student who came to me as a professor and instead of telling me all the things that you're excited about, you'd spend your time telling me how other subfields don't interest you, I'd just be confused about what you're trying to achieve. It's fine not to like all the subfields. It probably won't get you out of first-year classes, but either way once first year is over you can just be done and move on with your life. This is grad school, everybody expects that you'll develop specific interests in a specific subfield (or an interface) and that you won't care about everything equally. It's the natural progression of every program out there. Why would this be a topic for discussion with anyone? Again, the SOP is a place to discuss your interests, not the things that you don't care about.

(thoughts on the second half coming soon.)

I am only skimming right now. Forgive the frankness, but: 1. It reads very conversational, like you're telling me your life story over drinks at the bar. 2. It's longer than it needs to be. 3. Despite being long, the important pieces are either short or missing: the emphasis is almost exclusively on the past (~800 words); you only briefly mention your current interests and your future plans (~350 words). 4. It's very self congratulatory. You want it to be inferred that you're great, but it really doesn't sound good when you just come out and say it yourself. 5. There are typos and misused expressions. (e.g. "have a hold off;" "I came back and was ready for another spectrum of Science", "morbidly curious," "Huntingdon's disease," "fueled in me a desire," "dab my fingers") Some specific comments (this is not an exhaustive list): - After reading the second paragraph, I don't feel like I actually know enough about you to justify reading all of that. All I know is that you generally like biology/chemistry and you enjoy experimental work. I'm sure that can be said more concisely. - The beginning of the third paragraph needs to be deleted. Your trip to Bangkok is really not relevant to anything. There is some interesting stuff there but it's obscured by the story in the beginning. This: "There were so many experiments in molecular biology that I wanted to work on but my university did not have the necessary equipment that was needed thus I fell back on immersing myself in the scientific literature instead in order to see and read exciting avenues of research" sounds like you're making an excuse before anybody even blamed you of anything. I'd get rid of it. The last sentence in the paragraph indeed has problems. Rewrite or (preferably) delete. - The fifth paragraph probably comes dangerously close to offending the people who have worked on AIDS/HIV all their academic lives. It's another "hook" paragraph that occurs in the middle of the essay, almost like you strung two essays together. That's too much. Come to think of it, the first anecdote (=the entire first paragraph) didn't connect back to anything that you said later. - The last paragraph is way too fast -- it needs to be expanded upon. You use too many generalities combined with phrases that seem like they came out of the (wrong page of) the dictionary. Your reasons for wanting to get a PhD don't sound well thought out and it's really not clear what you are there to do. Unfortunately, my advice is to essentially start over fresh. I suggest thinking about this as a version of a grant proposal, with an expanded personal background section that you normally wouldn't write in such proposals. Clean up the language; this is a formal document and your one chance to make a good first impression on the adcom. This doesn't need to be a story of everything -- you can pick and choose. In particular, stay positive; tell us what you did, but don't make excuses for what you couldn't do. Give details; saying you got extremely fascinated or expanded your horizons doesn't tell me anything about you as an applicant. What specifically did you do? What did you learn from it? How did it inform your future choices? Have all the discussion of your undergrad experience in one paragraph, including a selection of the things that are in the second and third paragraph. The rest I would probably suggest you leave out (the first two sentences and last sentence of the second paragraph; Bangkok, your industry job, the discussion of things you couldn't do). The story of how you got interested in experimental work might be a good way to begin the essay and set the tone for your research interests. Have one paragraph about your general Masters experience. I think the story of how you got interested in AIDS/HIV needs to be modified to be more professional (there is no need to you weren't "remotely interested" in it before; leave that up to the reader to infer) and shortened. It should probably be just one sentence attached to the following paragraph. If this is what you want to study for your PhD, you need to make that clearer and explain why it's interesting and what specifically you hope to work on. There could be a separate paragraph on your Masters research and what came out of it. Not just "I worked on X under the supervision of Y" but also what you actually did and what you learned from it. Finally, expand on the final paragraph. You need to be much more specific about your research interests, and you need to be much more specific about the fit with the school you're applying to and why you want to go specifically there.

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