fuzzylogician

I know for a fact that people searched for me online and looked at things on my website beyond what I submitted as part of my application. I agree that it wouldn't be the first thing I'd spend my time on, but I would also not be that pessimistic about the advantages of having a website.

Yes, definitely. Have a website; beside your CV, put on it your writing sample and whatever other papers you have that you want the adcoms to know about. Link in your CV and you can mention the paper is online on your website at the top of your writing sample.

Contact your former letter writers from the CC to inquire about a letter. They might still agree to write even though it's been a while. At the same time, the best thing you can do is start reaching out to professors at the program you're applying to. Start with those who you took a class with, and if there are many start with those you think you'll also get to work with in the future. Briefly explain your situation and ask for their advice about getting a letter. Some of them will end up being on the admissions committee this year or will have been on one in the past and they will know what kind of letters you need to get. If they don't remember you but you took their class, try and set up a meeting with them (if you are in the same city) and get advice in person. Or set up a phone meeting. Talk to them about your plans, show them any papers you wrote, ask if they will write you a letter. I realize they didn't know you for very long and might not remember you but it sounds like you're out of good options and really getting a letter from someone in the program you're applying too will help your case tremendously. You might have been shy but even if not, 5 years is a long time and you have a legitimate reason to need to remind them who you are. Many professors realize this situation and will be willing to help, so you should try. For the CC teachers and for the professors from this program too, offer to help them write the most informative letter they can -- offer to provide them with any documents that they need, talk about your interests and future plans, what you've been doing since college, etc. Basically, be proactive, because you don't have many options and you need to make the ones you have work as best you can.

Yes, that happens, I get these emails occasionally. They're obvious scams. They send these emails that are clear form-letters that they insert authors' names and paper titles into. Here's the most recent one I received, about 10 days ago (anonymized). Now that I actually read the whole thing, I noticed this one didn't even bother to pick a paper. FWIW, the organizations that are mentioned in this email are not on Beal's List.

All things being equal, I'm with the others -- R is so much more powerful. However, before choosing you should find out what others in your lab or department use. Ask your advisor if s/he has a preference, and ask more advanced students what they use. It'll make life easier for you when you need to communicate with others, when you need help with your code and when (if) you inherit code from others.

Do you want the job? What have you got to lose? Try it.

I don't hate grad school. Never have. I enjoy bitching about it once in a while but I can only take so much complaining, especially when the complaints are framed as if grad-school specific but really they would have been the same in any normal job. I've had ups and downs in grad school like I imagine everybody does, but I've tried to do my best to improve on aspects that bother me where I can and learn to ignore the others that I cannot change. I am also somewhat nontraditional and have other experiences working in other jobs, studying and living in other countries and generally doing things that have nothing to do with academics and my research field. They all had good aspects and bad and they all sucked at times but were great most of the rest of the time. I don't think grad school is any different.

My field is fairly small and I imagine anyone who gets one of my papers to review can guess who wrote the paper quite easily. There aren't that many researchers working on the problems that I am working on, and even less who have my approach and use the methodologies that I do. Still, papers are always anonymized for journal submission and the review is double-blind. Of course, when I get to review a paper, since the field is small, I also have a good bet as to who wrote it, but the paper is still anonymous and a guess is still a guess. I think it's quite customary in my field for editors to have a paper reviewed precisely by the person whose theory is being criticized in that paper. It helps the editor get the best reaction they can to the problems the paper raises, and of course they know to take the review with a grain of salt. The author of the work you are criticizing is uniquely in a position to question your criticism and you need to be able to respond, and none of this is a conflict of interest unless the reviewer tries to sabotage the paper by writing a review that is impossible to satisfy (I'm sure this happens sometimes) and then it's up to the editor to know which parts to take and which not to take. Since these days papers also get posted on archives and personal websites and get cited as manuscripts, it's not like being held up by review can really prevent a paper from being influential. It still sucks for tenure reasons and I hope it doesn't happen often, but I also can't think of a case where I've heard that someone was denied tenure because they had multiple papers held up in review for an exceedingly long time, so I hope it's at least not a frequent problem. As for grant panels, those are treated differently in my field. Grant proposals (for the NSF at least) are not anonymous, though the reviewers are. I got comments, and I've seen comments others got, that directly addressed the authors of the proposal and the reviewer's opinion about the feasibility that the authors can carry out the proposed project. Actually, there it can get quite nasty because the reviewers get to remain anonymous while the authors are not. There's a lot of politics at play where money is concerned.

Yep, that's what I meant before when I said I like to put myself out there and be known for having certain ideas. I also post submitted papers and proceedings papers on linguistics archives as well as my website and recently I started posting links to my papers on facebook and twitter and they sometimes get picked up by others and shared. Can't get the word out fast enough once I have a new paper--being known and getting feedback and both very important. What has really helped me is having a mentor who is very active on facebook and is also friends with pretty much every linguist out there who has an account! After I saw the reaction the first time he posted a link to a new paper I had put on the archive, I started doing it myself (if he doesn't beat me to it!), with great reactions. (But I suppose doing this is field-specific so I'm not sure this is a habit everyone should just pick up without knowing how their field like to play.)

There's a relevant thread you should check here: There are some results there posted by anthro applicants.

Indeed, the above advice is very sound. You don't need to connect your entire past to your present research interests and future plans. It's enough that you connect whatever is connected and the other stuff can just stay on your CV and transcript. You want your SOP to clearly define your current research interests, explain how you are prepared to pursue them and explain why the school you are applying to is a good place to pursue these interests. You can also define short-term and mid/long-term goals for your degree. Think 70% present and future, 30% past. This is not a story of how you got here but of where you're going, with the past serving as an example of how you're ready for the journey. What the adcom will want to know is what (you want to study), how (you'll go about doing it--what research questions you're interested in posing, even in somewhat vague terms, and how you're prepared to pursue them) and why (you want to attend this particular school).

There are lots of sole-authored papers in my field. If you can have one, that's great for PhD apps. However, a second- or third-author publication in a major journal will probably do you just as well, if not better, than a sole-authored paper in a lower tier journal. The two main advantages you can gain from having a publication are (1) the experience, which will go a long way towards establishing fit and a sensible view of grad school, and (2) strong letters of recommendations from your (professor) collaborators or your advisor. If you do the whole thing solo you might get into a lower tier journal and that's not in vain but if I were on an adcom I'd wonder about your ability to take guidance, get your work into the best shape it can be in and get it in the best venue it can go in. I'd also question your judgment in not using this opportunity to get a good letter of recommendation from a professor. So, I'd recommend consulting with your undergrad advisor before jumping the gun and not being that worried about having a collaborator. Any publication you get before even starting grad school is simply icing on the cake.

That a PI or advisor is listed as a last author doesn't affect how your contribution as first author is viewed. Most fields have clear customs about what first means, what the middle authorship means and what last means. If you are first and your PI is last, these contributions do not contradict each other and each is associated with a completely different role. This really depends on the conventions of individual fields but for PIs (especially untenured ones, but others too) the number of papers on which they last author is essentially the most direct measure of the productivity of their lab. This helps them obtain funds both within the university and without and in a sense if you are working in that lab and enjoy the funding, it is in your best interest to have your PI be a co-author on your work, because productive labs do better at obtaining funding than unproductive ones. Consider what happens if the advisor is not a co-author on your papers; I work on an interface between two subfields, one theoretical and one experimental. In the experimental subfield, the professors who I work with are always co-authors on all my papers and in the theoretical subfield they never are. Mind you, they may be some of the same people, and their contribution to my work is more or less the same, but depending on the type of work and the resulting paper they may or may not end up being co-authors. Now, these professors are measured against others from fields where it is customary to have professors as co-authors on all student papers. These fields may be very closely related and the distinctions may be obscure. Deans and other Higher-Ups use the number of publications as a direct measure of productivity. It's not easy to explain why Prof X publishes 1-2 papers a year while Prof Y has 6-7, never mind that many are actually students' papers and in terms of direct productivity the two professors produce quite similar amounts of work, and they also do a similar amount of advising. The advising that goes into our sole-authored papers doesn't count, or counts for less. There is no good way to prove that a certain professor contributed some amount to a student's paper, especially since we don't have just one advisor and instead work with several people on each project. Anyway, the bottom line is that their last-authorship is just not in competition with your first. As for second- and third- authorship, this obviously counts for less than first, unless it's a field where authors are ordered alphabetically, but I wouldn't be so quick to discount the work done by others that goes into your paper. Writing, in particular, is very hard and in my field it's a chore that is left to the first author, not relegated to someone else. Doing time-intensive analyses and coding is also not something to dismiss. At the end of the day, unless there is a paragraph stating who did what on a paper, there will be some amount of guessing as to who did what (therefore, if the contributions are very uneven I recommend insisting on writing such a paragraph). Normally people will guess that the first author did most of the work and others contributed to certain aspects. But what really matters for jobs is how your advisor describes your contribution to each paper in their letter of recommendation. You will also describe your contribution in your research statement, so potential employers will have a better understanding of what you did. I don't think there is any reason to prefer sole papers to first authored ones, but this depends on the field. In some it's highly unlikely that one person can complete a project alone from beginning to end, but in others this can be done. If so, it's probably good to have sole-authored work to show that you can do that, but also co-authored work. Ask your professors about your field and also check the CVs of recent graduates who got jobs like the ones you'd like to have when you graduate--what is the ratio of sole:co-authored works on their CV? Aim for a similar mix. Finally, I think your advisor has a point about doing good work that is interesting to the community, because that's the kind of researcher that will get hired later. You want to work on problems that are attractive and you want to develop skills that are normally sought after in job searches. Ideally you want to find a topic that you are interested in, but you don't want to get sucked up into doing something that only you are interested in. If you work on something others like, you will get attention and hopefully also publications. You'll also have an easier time creating a research program and describing a future for such a project that others will be excited about, once you're looking for jobs. A dissertation is not the end of a project, it's merely the beginning. As TakeruK says, you don't have to be in love with the project, just find it reasonably interesting and with a reasonable future. Those kinds of projects also tend to produce publications, if successful, so that's another plus. But from where (I think) you are in the process, being too publication-driven is not the best idea - publications should not be forgotten but before then you actually need to sit down and do good work for a while, and preferably on something on that interface between what the community values and what you find personally exciting.

That is infuriating! I am so sorry to read this. If I were you, I'd be looking into possible official steps I could take, possibly trying to enlist my advisor to my aid and if not then seeking the next person up the chain to mediate. But then there are bigger considerations, as you say, that might affect your whole career. That's sad but true. I don't have any advice here, I hope never to be in a similar situation. I just wanted to express my outrage! :-/

Contact the other TAs for answers to your questions that apply to your department. We can only give you vague answers that may or may not fit in your case. In general, teaching three discussion sections means that you teach three different groups of students once a week each, not one group for three hours (normally, at least). It happens that more than one TA will teach a section at the same time. Some times of day are more popular with students than others. As for the scheduling conflict, I'd consult the other TAs and ask if this has happened before and how they would suggest going about working it out. Also ask about expectations and requirements, they can help you understand what your department expects much better than we can.

Is this essay a formality or is this class competitive so you need to invest serious effort into this? Could you (informally) ask around? If the class is required, I bet this is just a formality. In case it's a serious requirement, I'd stick to the bare essentials - you need to take this class to fulfill a language requirement; you work on X, specifically on X.1 and X.2 and you will need the language skills to do Y and Z and work on question X.3. I don't think you need to be too imaginative here.

See here:

Donald Asher's book. See here:

A public portion of the defense is optional in my department. If someone chooses to have a public defense (I'd say less than half of the students per cohort do so) they will send an email announcement to the whole department and then everyone who is in town usually attends, so probably 30-40 students and faculty. The defense consists of a 1-hour lecture followed by a Q&A from the general audience about the presentation, followed by a private Q&A about the whole dissertation attended only by the student and the committee, followed by champaign and a celebration. It's not customary to invite friends or family members to the defense, except to that last part

Those are some hard questions! I guess (as always) it depends on the situation. Many seminars I've participated in (some of the best, in fact) were created around current research of the faculty leading the seminar, and I've never thought I was entitled to any particular credit if the professor then ended up producing work based on the seminar. I don't think anyone was stealing ideas from me just because I sat in on a 3-hour discussion with 10 other smart people in a room once a week. After all, it's the professor who compiles the reading lists and leads the discussion, it's the professor who produce handouts for the class and it's him/her who spends the rest of the week thinking about the topic of the seminar. If I all I did was read (skim, lets be honest) some papers and make some smart remarks, I consider that fair game. It's the same as if a colleague shows me work in progress or has me read a draft of a paper and I make some suggestions - I'd want to be thanked in the acknowledgements but that alone doesn't make me then see the work as partly my own, certainly not to the extent that I deserve co-authorship. If I pick up on a comment I made in class and develop my own project based on it, that's a different story. I know of cases where students have developed projects out of class papers or discussions, and there too it's clear where the credit goes: my project is mine and I thank the professors for their help and comments, but they don't get to be co-authors on my paper.* Or it might become a joint project with the professor and then authorship is obviously shared. I suppose I should make clear here (and with regard to my previous post) that I try not to present half-baked ideas before actually thinking them through, but I do occasionally make half-baked observations in class or in department-internal presentations and I think I've benefited just as much from colleagues' comments on these ideas as others have benefited from mine. Within a class environment and in my department, I feel safe doing these things. I don't know if I'd thrive in a program where you have to be secretive about ideas - the contributions of colleagues is essential to my work. It seems to me that your question is based on a premise that I just don't accept - essentially that you need to worry about anyone and everyone around you, that everything in the system is set up to use you and abuse you. * My (main) field is actually somewhat weird with regard to authorship - professors are almost never co-authors with their advisees, even if their contribution is quite substantial. I know other fields are different, some with the advisor always being co-author on all of their advisees' papers. I have papers with professors, but it's always been a choice and when the project was really joint, not just me coming in for a meeting once a week and the advisor not really giving the project a second thought the rest of the time.

Something similar has happened to me in the past. The reviewer must have looked me up (which I suppose was not difficult, since I was presenting similar materials, though with a different title, at conferences at the time) and took the opportunity to take a stab at who (s)he (incorrectly) thought was my advisor by being quite cruel in the review, but the editor and my reply were effective in diffusing the situation and the paper has been accepted for publication. Overall I work on a problem that not that many people work on; when it comes to reviewing, the paper is sent to experts who can easily guess where the paper is coming from. I can also quite easily guess who the reviewers might be. But we all still make the effort to make sure the paper does not reveal the identity of the author, and beyond that we just have to trust that our colleagues are honest scientists.

If you don't have anything to put on a CV, don't submit one. You should make every document count, especially extra ones that were not solicited by the application. Nothing you wrote above sounds impressive enough that I would submit a CV just for that reason.

I also always submitted a CV, even when it was not required. Additionally, I made sure to update my website with all relevant papers I wanted professors to read and put my CV there and gave a link to the website somewhere in my application. I know that at least some professors either googled me or used the link because they knew about things that were only on the website and not elsewhere.

I second that and also https://sites.google.com/site/gradappadvice/. Though as for the Asher book, I found that I liked everything about it except the essay samples, because I felt that most of them did not apply to how my field is structured and it pushed too hard to have a "hook" and personal story. It took me quite a while to realize it was ok to move away from that format and have the personal touches be in my research interests and the way I presented my scholarly work. I also think this article, though geared specifically towards psychology applicants, is very helpful and many of the points it raises are relevant for everyone.

I really wouldn't put it the way you just did. That is, I would not mention immaturity or being unmotivated. I'd have a short explanation: "unfortunately during the first two years of undergrad I chose a major that I later realized did not fit my interests - XXX - which caused my grades to suffer. However, since discovering/switching to YYY (your current major) my grades have been on an upward trend and both my major GPA and my overall GPA from the past two years are 3.8." or similar. It may also be a good idea to have a recommender address this issue instead of doing it yourself, if you have a trusted professor you can ask to explain this (e.g., someone who only knows you from the new major and knows you do well there, who could talk about the lower previous grades as resulting from a bad fit). But just to make sure - is it not clear from your transcript that your lower grades are in a different major and the upward trend started once you discovered your current major? That is, will this addendum to the SOP or to the LOR add anything the adcom won't already know from looking at your transcript? I think that many people have a hard time adjusting and therefore have low grades from early semesters, and what matters is how you deal with it and how your later years GPA looks. If you're simply stating the obvious, I'd maybe advise to keep this in an addendum (if at all) -- many apps have a "is there anything else you want to tell us?" question, so this is still out there but not as a component of a major document.