fuzzylogician

I think the focus should be on your own work, not on a description of other people's work. If your work is inspired by, or based on, the work of a scholar who is not at the school you're applying to, that's perfectly fine -- you might want to make sure that people there are not secret (or not-secret) haters of this person or theory, but I assume you chose your programs wisely so this is not a problem. I think it makes more sense to talk about being inspired by such-and-such theory or working within such-and-such framework than to mention a person by name, unless there is good reason to talk about the person rather than the research. If there is, I don't see why anyone should be offended or concerned that you mention an influential person who teaches at a different school -- but under most circumstances I think you want to talk about the research and not the researcher.

No offense, but for someone who professes to have no experience in a PhD program, what is this advice based on? The OP is more than 5 years in and not past the comprehensive exam yet, talks about not enjoying any of the major components of a PhD program (research, writing/publishing, teaching) and doesn't like their PhD project, which they also can't get funded. This calls for a major evaluation of the OP's career path, and only if they decide that a PhD is needed to get them where they want to go - or at the very least, that it doesn't interfere with the plans or hold them back - does it make sense to continue. Staying just because you could make it work out is not good enough. We're talking about another 2-3 years out of this person's life, and they shouldn't be spent doing something the OP doesn't enjoy now, nor need for their future. A PhD is not something you do just because you can stick it out; it's a difficult time-consuming endeavor even under the best of circumstances, and the circumstances the OP describes are less than ideal. ETA: edited for clarity.

Can you just change your project? If you're not past the comprehensive exam stage and you're not funded to do the other project, maybe you can redefine a new project based on the local work you're doing? Something that excites you now? I think you should also seriously think about the time investment vs. potential benefits of staying. I'm not sure it's worth it, based on what you describe. Certainly I think that staying to do a project you don't care about anymore for an additional 2-3 years with no funding, and in the end not even earning the education or credentials that would allow you to do what you want to do with your life after your PhD is a bad decision. I understand the emotional investment (which I think is even greater than the time investment for many of us) and how hard it is to let go. There's a sense of accomplishment and success in just graduating, especially after being in the program for so long. If you can make the local project you want to do fit with your PhD plan, it may be worth sticking it out and making it work. Otherwise, maybe it's time for some serious thought about quitting. It may be hard to explain to family and friends, but if it's no longer the path you want to be on then you should find out what will get you where you want to go and get yourself on that path. I'm sure you'll be happier and more satisfied if you're on a successful career path, and that's more important than whether or not you have the title 'PhD' after your name. I hope your family and friends will see this and support you in doing what makes you happy.

If your letters are strong and the school allows it, I think it's good to have all these letters and it shouldn't upset the adcom members. Submitting 5 letters but having 2 that are only mediocre could be viewed as a waste of the adcom's time, however, especially since you can't order the letters according to strength. The 5th letter does sound like a good addition, and if you think the other 4 all also deserve to be read by the adcom, I'd submit them all.

Sounds like you made an unfortunate choice of program.. and I think I would be upset too if I was made to work with people who are clearly not equipped to be part of the same program I am and my grade depended on it. But since it's just 4 more months, sounds to me like it's worth sticking it out and spending the summer/fall researching better schools for your next degree and crafting your application. Having a Masters in a related field can only help, not hurt. It's your job to get that message across, and I think that shouldn't be too hard to do, once you figure out exactly what you want to study and why. Good luck! Heh, that's nice to hear, thanks for the compliment!

The question you want to ask yourself is whether or not you need this degree - or the advantages and disadvantages of staying and finishing the degree. If you want to stay in a related field, your past academic record will be relevant and questions will be asked about events of flakiness (such as quitting in the middle of a graduate program in a closely related field). You may be able to justify leaving with the "not suited for my needs" explanation but if you can do a good job of finishing the degree by just staying on for another 4 months, I think that will look much better. The only reason I think it would be a good idea to quit is if it turns out that having this degree could actually hurt your chances of being admitted to an Advertising program in the US (which sounds doubtful to me but I don't know the field), or if you think you'll do very poorly in the Marketing degree you're currently enrolled in a way that would look even worse than just quitting and blaming it on bad fit. As a sort of side remark, I am always slightly irked when native speakers of English expect international students to arrive at their universities with already fully developed spoken language abilities. As an international student, I have excellent writing ability (I edit native speakers' papers, for example) and I'm a fast reader. I have many years of experience doing both of those tasks and I've been professionally employed as a translator in the past. But before I had the chance to live in an English speaking country, my everyday life was led in a different language and there were limited opportunities to speak English at all, let alone with native speakers. In my experience, that's the case for most international students - you may have excellent passive knowledge but applying it actively takes a while to master. Put that together with moving to a new country and starting a new degree, and I think you can understand why expecting immediate good performance is setting the bar quite high. Usually, people take a few months (about a semester) to adjust and acclimate, and with the adjustment comes an improved ability to orally express ideas in English. Bottom line, I think next semester will be better for you in terms of dealing with non-native speakers in your class, and I think an adjustment in your own expectations might help as well. Certainly I wouldn't mention this as a reason for quitting your program, in case you choose to do so.

Any research experience will count for a lot. Maybe in Human Factors it's also crucial to have research experience within the subfield, that I don't know. But any proven ability to conduct research, carry a project through, design and run experiments, write up a final product, etc. is extremely valuable, even if it comes from a different field.

At the very least, you'll need to have a complete Masters and you'll need to have a research project in mind. You should also find potential advisors in the area you'll live in and contact them. A PhD in European countries is usually research heavy and requires little to no coursework. You essentially get hired to work on a certain project, sometimes through a funded project your advisor might have (and then you work on a question that has already been defined for you by your advisor) and sometimes not. Either way, you're expected to quite independently work on your own project right from the get go, so you need to be able to formulate research questions that you think you'll be able to answer with the tools you'll have by the time you graduate from your Masters degree.

Maybe because the OP defined the scale as 1-5?

As I think I mentioned twice in this thread, the structure of the class did not support ppt presentations. But thanks anyway.

Admins have to approve posts by new members. If I have something to say I will often approve a post and reply immediately, so I'd say you are the fast one here, not me And procrastination means I'm approving and replying to lots of posts these days, because I have so much work to do before the semester begins! The goal is to finish 3(!) first-authored papers by the end of the month. Right now it's one finished, one all-but-discussion finished, one just started. All depend on other people reading and commenting on things, which is slowly driving me insane.

Well, it may be too late now. Whether or not you contact professor before applying is field-specific. In some really need to have a professor who wants to work with you lined up before you submit your app, and you do that by contacting them and verifying that you fit and they are interested in advising you before you submit the app. In other fields you're accepted to the department as a whole (as opposed to directly by an advisor or a lab) and you might not have an advisor right away. In that case, I think it's less important to contact professors ahead of time and it might not be customary. I don't know what your field is like, but either way it'd be difficult to contact professors now that the applications have been submitted - it would be very conspicuous.

Although it's possible to be advised by an emeritus professor, it might complicate things; if you think/know your advisor might retire during your studies, you should ask about procedures involving having an emeritus advisor. Some schools will not let an emeritus professor be the sole/main advisor on a dissertation, and having to add a second advisor at some point may lead to conflicts. It's at least something to keep in mind when applying, and making sure there is someone suitable who could take on this role. There are also the difficulties associated with having an advisor who is away some/most of the time but that's a more general worry that people with a very hands-off advisor face even if the advisor is very much still active in the department. It's probably going to be hard for the potential advisor to tell you exactly how they might support you after they retire, because I'm sure they don't have all the details figured out themselves; but it's worth asking about if you are seriously considering working with this person. I'm sure it's possible and may be very beneficial. I wouldn't dismiss the option without thoroughly investigating it first.

As for the grades question, you can approach the student and ask him about the conflict you noticed. "I see you said your GPA is X, but unless I'm mistaken your transcript says it's Y. Could you explain the discrepancy?" - ask without assuming a lie and in a non-confrontational way -- but only if you're really contemplating writing the letter. If not, I wouldn't bring this up. As for the Mac and the project, it doesn't really matter why the project hasn't been completed. What's relevant for you is that it's not and therefore you can't use it to evaluate the student. You should contact the student and talk to him about the quality of the letter you could write given that his GPA is low and you have not seen the final product for his work with you (or any product?). If you're looking for a way out of writing a letter, you can give this as a very compelling reason: you can't write a good letter because you haven't seen enough of his work. (And, if you're lucky, he'll realize he'll get a weak letter and retract the request.)

In my program, in previous years they would accept 12 aiming for a class of 8 and it usually worked out. However recently we had 10 students accept, leading to a class of 6 the following year, and then 11 students accepted just last year. I think this may lead to a change in how many offers the program makes, but I guess we'll see in a few weeks.

Depends on the field, the school, how competitive you are. In my field you usually get accepted without any interview or (less frequently) after an informal phone conversation with the potential advisor. Only a handful of school have serious pre-acceptance interviews. Many schools have an Open house event for students who have already been admitted, so the meetings/interviews there are much more relaxed.

I'm going to reply as if you're in my field, even though I realize things could be very different in your field in ways I know nothing about. There are two things I've found helpful in getting criticism out of a non-confrontational advisor. The first is to ask for it very explicitly, and follow that up with a very specific set of questions about actions I've taken or situations I was in that I wanted his feedback on. These are things he knows about already, so I can say "I had problem X, I talked to Y/did Z to solve it. Does that sound like a good strategy for future problems like this? What would you have done in my place?" It's hard to get direct criticism because he's not used to saying anything bad but I've pushed on the one hand and I've learned to ask leading questions that emphasize "improvement for the future" instead of "criticism of the past." The "what would you recommend doing?" strategy, as soon as there is a problem, is also useful. I've also learned that an advisor doesn't have to be a mentor - at least not for every aspect of my academic development. I've found myself other people in my department that I can go to with questions about progress and decisions that my advisor is sometimes not great at. Developing a support network of experienced professors who may not work in my field exactly but have the experience and the willingness to guide me through graduate school has helped me quite a bit.

If you have a chance to visit, (discreetly!) ask her students if there are rumors about her retiring. You can also ask her point blank but I'd only do that after meeting her and sensing she was open to the question. I don't think upper 60s is too old, though.

I'm pulling from the owa website. Nothing critical, though, I'm sure it'll be back online soon too.

Email is down too. Looks like they attacked the routers, people on campus could still access mit internal sites and google (but nothing else, apparently). Most other things are back online now (Stellar, athena, libraries, scripts), but web.mit.edu is still down.

In addition to hopeful80's very good edits - you should point out that your GPA was higher before the illness affected your studies (in case it was), and if this illness no longer affects you now it's also worth stating in the addendum. If this illness will stay with you for a long time to come, you should explain that you've now got it under control and know how to deal with it. Basically not only explain the past but also address the adcom's concerns about the future: can you graduate on time and be successful in the program, despite this problem? Good luck!

I think a thesis excerpt is fine and probably preferable to a full paper if it demonstrates a better level of writing and research. Unless a school specifically asks for a full paper, I'd choose the sample that best showcases my abilities - the thesis. There are two things to do to improve on just sending an excerpt. The first is to have a summary of the rest of the thesis, to help situate the excerpt in the context of the thesis. The other is to make the whole thesis available to the adcom - either send the whole thing with an indication of which pages to read (ask about this option, some might not appreciate it if you send a 50-page paper when the limit was 15), or put the whole thing online and list the link prominently in your writing sample.

Both of these questions need to be answered by the schools you're applying to. Most times they're not going to want transcripts from dual enrollment or study abroad if the credits transferred but some schools will still insist on the "all" in "all transcripts" and ignore the fact that they can have all the information just from your alma mater transcript. Same for the transcript you can't get - it's probably fine but you need to get it cleared with your schools so your app doesn't get flagged as incomplete and tossed without consideration.

I vote for PI over project, too. At the end of the day your dissertation project is going to be your entry ticket into the academic world, it doesn't need to be (and shouldn't be) your utmost achievement. That aside, interests change and develop while in grad school and you can't know for sure that the topic you have in mind now is what you'll want to do 2-3 years from now. What's most important is to have a PI who you are comfortable working with and who will support your work as much as possible. If that means a slightly more out of the way topic - but still one that interests you - that sounds like a good deal to me. However, if what you're saying is you might get stuck with work so uninteresting that you might lose interest in completing the project, that's a different matter altogether.

Ok, then let me follow up with more questions: "when we form a correct sentence we follow some rules like in mathematics" -- correct, how? syntactically? semantically? something else? what rules do we follow? "to form correct equation (I mean to solve it correctly) when need to follow some rules" -- what rules? are they the same? why is solving an equation like forming a correct sentence? I fear this may be a very large question, especially since it's not very well defined right now. If you are able to identify a certain rule that is used in both processes, then maybe it makes more sense.