fuzzylogician

The answer below may change depending on your field, which you didn't specify. Generally speaking (assuming you're applying for a research PhD): Yes, you can apply. Yes, the grades might affect your application. Grades aren't everything but low grades will reflect poorly on you and will make it harder for you to get into a good school. However, if you have strong letters of recommendation, a good SOP and a strong writing sample, you still have a chance. Do you have any kind of research experience? Conference presentations, publications, research assistantships? those will help you demonstrate that you're a good fit for graduate school even though your grades were low. A lot will depend on the kind of support you might get from your advisor and other professors -- strong LORs can go a long way towards helping your application. If there are mitigating circumstances behind the low grades, you may want to try and explain the problem; otherwise, yes, there will be the question of whether or not you can make it, given your lackluster previous performance, and you'll have to work extra-hard to make the answer a clear 'yes!'.

Advising has a professional side and a personal side to it. Sounds like your former advisor was not an easy person to get along with, and therefore even though I don't think I read complaints about the professional side of your relationship, it still didn't feel good at all. The good news, as others have pointed out, is that this person shouldn't have too much of an influence on you in the future; your PhD training should lead to new strong relationships with professors who could write you strong LORs and support you later on when you're on the job market. As mentioned above, you should be very careful about badmouthing him in public because the only way he might be dangerous is if word gets back to him that you're talking about him behind his back -- in that case he may very well use his influence to your detriment. When you start your PhD program, I propose that you think about separating the "advising" role of a professor from that of a "mentor." Those could (and sometimes should) be carried out by different people. An advisor needs to give you good professional advice on your work and help you become your own independent scholar. It's awesome if you also have a strong personal relationship with this person, but sometimes that doesn't happen and that's ok. It may also happen that your advisor is closer with some other student than you, and that too is ok. You may, in addition to your advisor, try to seek out someone who is more of a mentor - an older more established professor who you trust to confide in. I imagine that that's the kind of relationship that you wanted to have with your former advisor, but it's important to keep in mind that not every person wants to be close to his/her students and that doesn't necessarily make them a bad advisor. My best advice is to meet with several people in your first semester/year in your program to get a feel for who you get along with. Usually these things are easily apparent, so a few meetings should be enough. It'd be good to seek out more than one person who you get along with to help with different aspects of your work. Once you have established relationships, it's still a good idea to talk to everyone who might be helpful to your work once in a while, though perhaps not on a regular basis. This should ensure that by the time you are ready to graduate, you have strong supporters on your side and your old Masters advisor will have been all but forgotten.

In my field proceedings papers and not peer-reviewed and are usually 10-15 pages long. Journal papers are peer-reviewed and more like 30-40 pages long. What (really) counts as a publication, at least for jobs and tenure purposes, are only peer-reviewed publications. Proceedings papers are nice to have, if you don't have anything else, but they are not really highly regarded. It's a nice end-point for small side-projects but not for major contributions to the field. In my field, you can (and should) take your proceedings papers and turn them into journal papers, but usually some serious work is needed in order to go from one to the other. If you've accomplished that, then it shouldn't be a problem that there is a proceedings paper because although the journal paper will be based on it, it'll also be substantially different. I don't remember needing to even point out having a proceedings paper when submitting a journal paper about the same topic, but even if you are asked to, I don't think it would be a conflict. For your-field-specific advice, why don't you ask your advisor?

Once you graduate and start grad school you should not have any kind of GPA on your CV at all. At this point, you can get away with it because you haven't graduated yet and it's relevant (also, the standards for professionalization are set lower and as long as you don't do anything outrageous, more will be tolerated). As for listing courses, if you list any at all, I'd list all that are relevant regardless of where/when you took them. Again, this is something that you should remove once you start grad school.

I'm not sure I'd put my GPA in an email to a professor to begin with, but on your CV or if it comes up in an email I think it's fine to use the cumulative as long as you're clear about it. As for self-reporting in applications, you should check what appears on your transcripts and report whatever is listed there. You don't want schools to detect mismatches between self-reported numbers and official documents.

"Are unfunded PhD's common?" No. As far as I know, most PhDs are funded, while there is substantially less funding for MA students. The thought is that an MA prepares you for a professional career where you will earn enough to cover your education, while a PhD is more of an academic training (not debating the logic of this thought nor the practicality of it). "Can I expect to be funded soon?" That's impossible for us to know. It depends on things outside of our knowledge, like how much of the funding came from sources that were cut, how likely it is that some funding will be restored or that the university will find other sources to fund its students, and -- more importantly -- what the priorities of the department are. For example, will new funding go to incoming students or current ones? Will it even go to students (I'm sure other things were cut too)? Is there a preference for domestic students over international ones? Is funding contingent upon certain grades or service? How much you depend on your advisor and how they allocate their funding will probably matter a lot. "Is it worth it?" That's a very personal question. Personally, I was determined not to go to grad school unless my expenses were covered because I didn't think it'd be worth paying my own way. I still wouldn't advise anyone to go into debt for a PhD in linguistics. However, your situation is different because the terms were changed on you very late in the game. You could try and pursue official venues at your new university to try and get better support from your department, but at the end of the day they don't have the money and they don't seem to want to make you any promises (besides, we also know that they don't feel too bad about going back on promises they've already made, too). Based on the current state of national funding agencies, I'm guessing that it's risky to trust that you'll be funded in your second year and beyond; I'd decide now based on the assumption that if you go, you'll have to fund your own way. Only you can know if it's worth it for you, for the opportunity to gain skills that you need and a foothold in a new job market that you want to enter. However, before deciding anything, I think you should try contacting your employer and see if you can go back to work for a year (or two). Maybe it's possible, and if so, I'd advise you to re-apply and try again! This school sounds too risky for my taste.

See here:

Information you find Out There on the Internet that is provided by Internet Strangers should, of course, be taken with a grain of salt. That extends very naturally to advice you read on the gradcafe (and elsewhere). It's ALWAYS a good idea to check the source of the advice and ask yourself how knowledgeable that person is. That said, it's not true that you can't get very good advice here (and elsewhere). Lots of posters have some experience of N>>1 quality, but clearly it's not without confounds. Even if someone has served on their department's admissions committee, their advice may not extend beyond their department/university/field. Even within an adcom, we know professors sometimes value the components of an application differently. Many times the source of conflicting advice is posters who assume that all of Academia works like they know from their undergraduate experience at their school (and it doesn't!). However, if you've been on the board long enough or if you're in grad school, you'll probably have information about a good number of students who got in (or encountered difficulties) in certain situations and you'll be able to share those stories. You'll have experience talking to professors about what they think is important, you'll visit other universities and professionalize.. it's obviously not perfect one-size-fit-all advice, but you can find here more than just the random ramblings of totally inexperienced undergrads.

Having a publication can make your application strong because it shows proven ability to conduct research and take from idea stage to published state, or at least (and likelier, though I'm guessing without knowing your field) that you have made a substantial contribution to some PI's ongoing research that is sufficient to add you as a middle author on a publication. Either way, it shows experience doing actual research and it shows dedication. It should also mean that you could have a strong LOR through this experience, and that's another huge advantage. How much good it will do you depends on how well you write your SOP; you should be able to use this experience to have a more realistic view of your field and to therefore construct more viable and focused research interests, and to show that you have the background necessary to study them. So this experience can be the backbone of your SOP, where you explain the interests that you developed while on the project, what you did on the project (and what the outcomes were), and how your future interests relate to what you already have some experience doing. I wouldn't advise using the paper as a writing sample, unless you wrote it yourself, but again, you should still get a LOR out of it. Generally, a publication will be given much greater weight than your GPA; this is not to say that the GPA is not at all important, but you can think of things like the GPA and GRE as getting your foot in the door (=passing cutoffs for admissions and for funding) and the "intangibles" - strong SOP, LOR, writing sample and publications as getting you noticed ahead of the pack and eventually admitted.

Yes.

No, I think the relevant measure that posters are suggesting is not "don't like as much as other schools" but "would not go there if it was the only place I was admitted into." The suggestion is to think carefully about the places that for whatever reason are not as high on your radar as other schools and ask yourself whether they should be on the list at all: you might get in there (hence, you might consider them safety schools) but would you really want to go, if you were admitted? If the answer in 'no', whatever the reasons for it might be, then save yourself the time and money and don't apply there at all.

Oh, sorry if I wasn't clear. The warning is not for you but for anyone else who might post in this thread following you! This is a problem we sometimes encounter in the GRE forum, and I'd like posters to be sure that what they are posting is legal and free for general use.

Topic pinned. This is a great initiative! NOTE: please do NOT post any plagiarized materials here. As future academics, I hope you understand that we must respect other people's hard work and intellectual property.

Many people change their concentration after applying to grad school. The SOP is rarely a binding document (in US grad schools, unlike some other places) and whatever project you may have described there is NOT something you will be expected to pursue. I wouldn't worry, except if you were admitted specifically to work with a certain advisor and this person doesn't work on the topics that you are currently interested in. In that case, you may need to find a new main advisor, and that may not be straightforward. At this point, however, worrying is premature. Wait until you've started the program and have a better sense of your interests; I promise, you won't be the only person who develops different interests than you came into the program with. (Honestly, I think that's both expected and encouraged in PhD programs - if you leave the program doing the exact same thing you came there with, what did you learn and how much growth did you achieve? at least you want to do more and better of the same, but some changes are perfectly fine.)

Oh yeah, I also back everything up on dropbox and on two external hard drives (one attached to my work computer, one to my home computer). I scan everything once a semester - all my handouts, hand-written notes, printouts, etc - and get rid of the paper copies. During the semester I have trays for each class / topic to keep my papers in order. I try to read only on my computer, or if I wrote comments on a hard copy of a paper, I'll copy the notes to a pdf so I can find it all later.

1. Lists. Lots of them. I've been using workflowy for a year now and I like it a lot. 1.1. To do lists: I have weekly, monthly, and semester/year lists that contain different goals with different fine-grainedness. 1.2. Meeting notes: I summarize my meetings either during the meetings or right after, that way I have a documentation of everything that happened and down the line I can search my notes for relevant examples or whatever. 1.3. Deadlines: All conferences, abstracts, one-time things go on a list way ahead of time so I don't forget them. 2. A good calendar. I used to have a physical planner (I likes moleskin) but now I just use google calendar with 5-6 regular calendars (classes, meetings, teaching, regular events, irregular events, private). Everything I need to do goes on there, otherwise I won't remember it. 3. Schedule your off time in your calendar or make it a habit to have certain times off, otherwise your private life can easily get consumed by your work. 4. Learn to say no. Not everything out there should make it onto your calendar or to-do lists.

I didn't contact anyone and did just fine, and so did most of the students I've ever had this discussion with, so I think you can not contact anyone and still do just fine. However, it's maybe not a bad idea to establish some contact with people of interest. I don't think that changing subfields at the stage you are at in your education is any problem. You basically do as NoontimeDreamer says: you email the profs, say a bit about yourself and ask them whether they are accepting students next year. Since you're changing fields, you could also take the opportunity to ask for their advice on how to handle the explanations or how to enhance your application, given this complication. I'm sure many will respond warmly if you just reach out.

Just to add to the domestic/international tuition question: A presupposition of this question is that you're applying to a school that has this distinction in the first place. The in-state / out-of-state distinction only exists for public (state) schools. If you attend a private school, everyone pays the same tuition. For public schools, you may pay according to your resident status (in-state, out-of-state, and -- in some schools -- international); the conditions for acquiring resident status differ across states - for example in some states you have to have lived there prior to starting school for a certain amount of time, otherwise it doesn't matter that you live there for 5 years you still can't be a resident; in some other states after your first year in school you will become a resident and pay tuition accordingly. As far as I know, international students (on a visa, not a green card) cannot become residents for tuition purposes. Like other things this may differ by state and I don't know about them all, but where it was relevant when I was applying I was told the tuition would remain at the same (high) rate for all years of my program. As TakeruK says, many schools will cover your tuition fully, whatever it is. This means that some (state) schools will have a strong preference for US citizens, who can become residents and pay lower tuition, and they'll have less funding for international students. Sometimes they can admit 3 domestic students or just 1 international, and you can see how they might prefer the former over the latter. Your citizenship status should not matter at all when you're applying to private schools because tuition is not predicated off of your nationality. If you're applying to public schools, I'd strongly advise you to inform yourself about the schools' funding situation for international students. Some schools admit very few international students per cohort, and if so it might be a waste of your time and money to apply there.

Excuse me?

I don't get this approach. If you are into him and don't take the time to "pursue him" (say, ask him out on a date or just for coffee), why should he find you worth dating? Being a woman doesn't automatically make me a damsel in distress; I don't need to be rescued by a man, and I'm not a trophy to be pursued.

This question should really be addressed to the Director of Graduate Studies in your program or to your advisor. If not them, then more senior students in your program. Not knowing how your program is structured and how credits correspond to actual work, it's hard to give definitive advice about what's a reasonable course load. Without knowing more, I'd say 3 courses doesn't sound too bad, but since you're moving abroad maybe trying to keep a lighter load might be wise. The question I would want to know more about before making a decision is how your courses would be distributed over the other semesters in case you take a lighter load now, and whether having a heavy load later might interfere with your timely progress in the program (that is, will it interfere with your ability to spend time on research or devote time to writing).

Keep in mind that Kai is strictly a formal theory researcher. He doesn't do programming or experimental work, and moreover that kind of work has only recently started being a major part of MIT linguistics' research on a departmental level. The more applied speech pathology and 2nd language acquisition aren't really represented there at all. Kai is giving advice from his perspective of the kind he would give his own students (I heard him give very similar advice in a panel on the job market at the LSA in January), and I think it fairly accurately reflects the situation that most MIT graduates, who only do theoretical work, would be in if they left the field. It's also important to remember that people that leave the field end up having full productive lives, even if moving to a new field is not easy, so the difficulty associated with having to find a new job or career would not be a reason I would give anyone for continuing to pursue a PhD or job in academia if they no longer wanted it.

My way to get out of a slump: allow myself to go deeper into the slump and recognize that I deserve the time off. My logic: I'm not being productive anyway, so I might as well take the time to recover. I try not to work (for a day, two or three, depending on how much time off I can afford myself) and get work completely off my mind. Go away or stay home, sit on the beach or hike, whatever it is that helps you relax completely. It's important to be conscious about the choice to take time off from work, because it's a way of acknowledging your hard work and that you have a right to some sanity. Normally after some real rest I feel refreshed and I can slowly think about getting my head back in the game.

Of course the school prefers it if materials are not all sent right near the deadline (together with 99% of the other applicants' materials) but I would not change my plans because of that. Any time before the deadline is a fine submission time. What's more, if the scores only reach the schools (a little bit) after the deadline, that's also not the end of the world. Most of the time you can submit an unofficial copy of your score report via email or directly in your application, and the official scores can be updated later. I'm not recommending that you submit late, but this is a thing that happens - scores get lost, exams get delayed - and in my time on this board I think these things almost always get worked out in the end.

ALSO, "page x out of y" so they know there's something missing to begin with!