fuzzylogician

This seems probably correct. He's not your friend -- he's your boss. Even if he's friendly and cares about you, that doesn't mean the relationship is equal. It's not. At this point, I would say, give it a bit more time. It's hard to know if what you're feeling is right, because you're also primed to see things this way now, given your latest interactions. If it does feel the same for longer, the best approach is probably the straightforward one. "Lately I feel like something isn't right. I wanted to bring this up because I value your support and want to continue working with you, so if something is wrong, I want to have a chance to make it right" or some such. No blame of any kind, just an opportunity to save face and go back to the previous status quo (or frankly, better yet, to a new status quo where the nature of the relationship between you is clearer).

This. More generally, while there, you are *always* interviewing. Meals, smalltalk with whoever is walking you to your next appointment, chats with the secretary or a random student all still count.

You answered your own question here. He misread your tone, maybe you're misreading his. Or maybe he was being immature and snapped in an unhelpful way, but would take it back if you had a conversation when you're both calm. As a general rule, if up until now things have been good, and you independently know that he's stressed out with things that aren't about you, it might be best to simply wait this out. Everyone has more difficult times; he really should be better about handling it in front of students, but unfortunately he's not. It's up to you to decide if this is a deal-breaker and you want to work with someone else, or if you can let this go. But I think it's important that you not continue working with him and *not* let this go, because it'll impact your relationship in negative ways. It's okay to be upset and to take time to work things through, but at the end of the day, you have to find a way to move on.

Well first off, you can get rid of half of the words in your sentence without loss of content. "After graduating with my BA from XYZ, I enrolled in a Masters? program at the University of ABC. <Sentence about what you learned; "further my development in research and statistics" is incredibly vague; be specific!>. My (currently in progress) thesis proposes to study <question>. By <doing things>, I plan to <find out stuff>. This will teach us <interesting things that are important, and here's why>. <Something about methodology, advising, timeline, etc. Be specific, give details where you can>. This background has prepared me to pursue a graduate education concentrating on <relevant things> at <your institution>, etc etc"

Frankly it just sounds like he's busy and under a lot of pressure, and isn't handling it terribly well. It's probably got nothing to do with you. I understand that you don't like his tone when he's in this mood, and I can imagine that I would be the same. So that much I think is justified. That said, people aren't always good at taking criticism in real time, and especially when they're under pressure. Sounds like your conversation just pushed his buttons at a time when he wasn't ready to listen. Just like in other types of relationships, there are people who want to work things out immediately as they happen, and there are people who need to calm down and think things over before they have a conversation about what happened. If he's the latter type of person, you insisting to hash things out when he is telling you to let them go might cause this kind of blowback. I don't know you or him, but I think that it'd probably be best if you ease off and try to have this conversation again at a later time, hopefully when whatever is on his mind is over. Meh, I don't know what led up to this and what he meant exactly, but again, things that are said in the heat of the moment might be things we later regrets. You might also not be in the mood to interpret him generously, given your interaction. In any event, the fact that he would be okay with you working with someone else does *not* mean he doesn't respect you. I think that good professors should always be happy to have their students meet with other profs, and if a student ends up choosing to make someone else their primary advisor, a good professor can understand and accept that and not be offended. Unless he told you he is no longer interested in working with you, I'd avoid over-interpreting anything. Wait, there's a long time between qualifying exams and graduating. And usually an even longer time between graduating and no longer being dependent on one's advisor (as in, unless you get a job immediately out of grad school, you'll need LORs from him for a while longer). I don't think suffering from a non-functional relationship over years is advisable. For quals, I think you don't want to touch anything at this point. I guess there are practical questions about the track record of this person and the department, but unless you have some specific concerns, I'd just leave it and concentrate on prepping for the exam. After that, when it's time to concentrate on your dissertation, there are ways of gently rotating people off the committee or replacing the chair. But I think this may be entirely premature. This sounds like out of character behavior, so why don't you give your advisor the benefit of the doubt and trust that there may be outside Life factors (or Work factors) affecting him that have nothing to do with you. It's a shame that he's not better at handling it, but this can happen to anyone, and maybe at this point you should just wait a bit to see what happens.

Verified, how? You don't have the authority to investigate, do you? Have you thought about issues of liability? Maybe an accusation on some internet website will cause action. Maybe not. Maybe all administrators aren't male... Yes. That much we can agree on.

Frankly this thread is all a bit overly naive for me. You really think that you can become the watchdog of all of academia and uncover some hidden nefarious agendas, where power and politics lie, as an obscure student? Good luck. I personally don't know that I'd trust a random website to report on this; I also don't know that I believe that you have the ability to actually investigate allegations. Collecting allegations, unfounded or not, in one place, doesn't do much to help the situation. Universities already have procedures in place to lodge complaints and to investigate them, which have a lot more power than you do. If you don't trust the process -- justifiably or otherwise -- then what are we to make of a collection of claims that can't even be properly confirmed? "objectively, carefully and responsibly share knowledge"? but who's supervising you to ensure that allegations on your blog are actually well-founded?

This is one of those places where no news doesn't necessarily mean good news. I would suggest having an explicit conversation with your advisor where you ask for their evaluation of your progress in the program. If there are concerns, you want to head them off early and not be caught by surprise when it's too late or after enough time has passed that there is an entrenched less than positive opinion of you. If your advisor thinks you're doing fine and isn't worried about the grades you got in their class, great! You don't need to worry. Either way, I don't think that trying to over-interpret silence or comparing your situation to perhaps-similar things that have happened to internet strangers is particularly useful here. It may be hard, but it's important to have this conversation once in a while.

That depends on the field. I never contact any professors before submitting applications, and I did name several in every app.* @WildeThing read up on the instructions for your schools. Unless they advise otherwise (some do!), you could try writing potential advisors to ask if they're taking new students and if they think you'd be a potentially good match. There's always the chance that someone is retiring soon or considering taking another offer, but even if you reach out to them they may not be ready to share that information with new applicants. All you can do is try, and work with the information that you have. There's some chance that you'll get things wrong, but if your people of interest are retiring or not taking new students, you probably don't want to go to that school anyway. One way to address this concern more generally is to only apply to schools that have several potential advisors for you, and name several of them in your application. This isn't just about the application -- this is about your actual time at your prospective school; things do change over the course of 5+ years and it's very important to have as many options available to you as possible. * And I mostly got things right; there was one case of someone who was on the faculty when I applied but left that year; I have no idea if she would have told me if I'd emailed. Another prof who would have been an obvious advisor at another school left the following year, so there's nothing I could have done about that. One of my main committee members spent years 3-5 of my time in my program abroad and we mostly talked on Skype, including for my defense. Life happens.

Yes.

Advice from outside your field: I don't think a lower GPA in an unrelated BA degree should be all that important given your high grades in your other BA and both MAs. You also sound very motivated and like you're doing all the right things. I'm not sure why you think that your research experience is insufficient; you have a total of 6 years of experience, including five posters and two theses. That's not bad at all for an MA student. Most applicants will not have a paper published before their PhD. The main goal at the PhD applications stage is to show *potential*. My main advice to you is to think about how you tell your story in a way that weaves all of your experiences together and tells a coherent and compelling story. You actually have so much experience that, if it were me, I'd wonder why you need two of each (two BAs, two MAs, to theses) instead of going the "usual" route; if your interests changed midway through that's fine and you concentrate on your more recent ones. If you just have multiple ongoing interests, the question will be how to tie them together in a way that shows that you can actually make them work and that you're not a risk (as in, that you won't change your mind and go do some other PhD program instead of your "first" one). I could be totally off here -- again, I'm from outside your field. But overall, that's my first impression.

Definitely ask the schools. I assume you're not the first person to be in this situation. For a fairly similar situation, what I ended up doing was creating a "transcript" of my own that reported all of the classes I took and grades I had gotten, and then I had the department secretary print it on official university letterhead and sign it as correct, after she verified that the information I had put there was in fact accurate. That was good enough for all the schools that required the transcript.

Talked to 5 customer service reps today, got one thing fixed. If another person tells me to call [someone else] and to ask for a manager "if they tell you to call us back," I will reach through the telephone and strangle someone.

Usually transfers at the graduate school stage mean simply re-applying and starting over at a new program. It sounds like you could have a good explanation in your SOP as to why you're leaving and seeking another program (but be careful about how you frame it! negatives may not go over well, even if true and justified). It would be a big help if you still have your advisor's support and if she'd agree to write a LOR for you explaining what happened and still showing support for you. If that's the case, you might also talk to her about what would be better fits for you, and see what her advice is on where to apply and what to do next. An alternative, if you got admitted to another program and chose this one instead is to reach out to them again and see if there's a chance to go there next year. No guarantees, but in that case if they still like you, you might have an easier time getting in. This time at your program that you're leaving will raise a red flag, but one that you can explain away, so be sure to do so. Otherwise, usually, there is not much more to it. It's not like undergrad; you actually have to go through the application process again.

This is the kind of research you need to do on your own, and no one here can (or should!) do for you. It's a *lot* of work. First off, you don't even mention a field or whether this is an MA or PhD or something else. Second, what school is a good fit for you depends on your interests and goals. You didn't tell us anything about those. Third, acceptance to graduate program is based less on scores and more on other aspects of the application such as your SOP, writing sample, and letters of recommendation. You need to learn more about the application process. It's your responsibility to take the first steps. Come here to ask specific questions about specific departments, and we'll be much more helpful.

Have you asked explicitly for an evaluation of how you're doing and whether there is anything else you should be doing? Instead of trying to guess and stressing out, try asking explicitly for feedback and adjust accordingly. This should help with the stress and should also eliminate any surprises down the line.

First off, I nearly laughed out loud at your "I only got a 169, I don't know what happened" bit. You do realize that's a good score, right? Obviously not worth re-taking for this one. I'll leave it to others to chime in about your verbal, but my guess is that it's less important and not something worth worrying about. Second, your GPA is also great, and again not something to worry about. Making decisions about where to apply based on deadlines and wanting a higher GPA doesn't sound like the wisest way to choose, given that you're in the diminishing returns portion of the scale. Third, you should choose schools that fit with your research interests, which you did not mention here. If those lead you to top schools, apply there. You are the most likely to have positive outcomes if you apply to schools that are maximally equipped to support your research. A corollary: you need to be able to articulate your interests. If you don't have any research experience, you'll need to work extra hard to explain how you know that a PhD is right for you and why you're applying. Finally, some professors might indeed look down on someone who doesn't want an academic career. More generally, I think you might as well keep your options open. Frankly, you have no idea what might happen in the next 5-6 years and what you'll want on the other side of a PhD. I think it's fine to talk about preferences, but just refrain from absolutes. Talk about exploring areas where you have less experience (teaching), and seeing potential in both remaining in academia and returning to industry.

I have exactly nothing productive to say (not my field), but I keep reading your title as "carbonated advisors". Didn't want to just keep it to myself...

Yes.

General answer, since I don't know the program you're applying to: - Most often: you enter an email address for each of your LOR writers in the application webpage -- a professional one, not a personal one -- and your LOR writers are then emailed a prompt with a link to where they can upload the letter and answer a few questions. Depending on the application portal and settings, the prompt is sent either as soon as you update the email addresses or only after you submit the application on your end. You'll have to figure that one out as you fill out the application. - Sometimes (less and less these days): you mail the letter in a sealed and signed envelope. Sealed+signed meaning that the LOR writer signs across the envelope flap so it's clear that you didn't open it or tamper with it. - Rarely: you mail the letter without the added precautions, or your LOR writer mails the letter. The instructions for what to do in each specific case should be clearly listed on the application webpage. Read the instructions.

At most R1 institutions, such a person would be considered successful. To get tenure at such an institution you need to publish and have a successful research program, and you need to not suck at teaching and service. Doing great at those two but not succeeding in research will probably not be enough for a person to get tenured. As a result of these tenure requirements, people learn to apportion their time, and students may not come first. That's unfortunate, but in some cases very true and encouraged by the system. There are actively bad advisors and teachers out there, but more often than not they're just not as good as they could be, or they have priorities that aren't the same as yours. So now the question is how you manage it, and that depends on the people involved and the situation. Maybe you need a second advisor who's more available. Maybe you need to learn how to communicate with your advisor better (if they're not good at email, maybe there are other ways to get a hold of them, etc). Maybe you need to be better at managing the time you do have (I personally like it the best when a student has a pre-prepared list of things they want to discuss so they don't forget anything, and bonus points if they email it ahead of time so I know what to prepare for). Maybe you need to have an explicit conversation about what you need that you feel you're not getting, and how to go about getting it. Some (many!) advisors will not know something's wrong or missing unless you tell them, and when you do, they will work to help you. But not everyone is good at guessing there's a problem, even if you think it's glaringly obvious. Or maybe you just need a new advisor, because you've discovered that your work styles and expectations are incompatible.

Some low-energy activities for tired pregnant ladies: - Movie screening (if your department has a seminar room with screening equipment, you can pick your own movie and screen it at basically no cost if you do this over the weekend); you can order pizza and share expenses, that is usually pretty cheap per person - Potluck lunch at a local park - Apple picking / fall leaves viewing / other seasonal attraction near you - Picnic on the beach (potluck style!) - Attend a local concert if you can find a cheap/free one (e.g. at a church, a local choir, etc) More energetic activities could include scavenger hunts, walking tours, etc.

Yep, so this is usually entirely common and not something anyone should be upset about. I think saying very honestly that you are hoping to make the best of this opportunity and you're applying to a variety of schools to see what happens is totally fair. Similarly saying that you want to study abroad is another way to explain why you're applying elsewhere that doesn't imply anything negative about your current lab.

As a general rule: do not provide information that wasn't required, but if a school does ask, *do not lie*. I've seen students get in much bigger messes by lying than they would have ever gotten into by telling the truth. (I know you didn't ask or suggest otherwise, but it's worth repeating anyway.) As for the actual explanation, you should keep it short and factual: when the offense took place, what the outcome was, how it was a one-time thing that never repeated itself, how you take responsibility and have grown since. 3-4 sentences, tops.

As someone who's been on this site for close to a decade, it's been my experience that vague questions don't get answers. It's also been my experience as someone who answers *many* of these questions that I'm a lot less motivated to spend my time replying myself when it seems like the question asker has done so little work of their own to research their question that they can't even formulate a proper question. While people do read old posts, you'd be shocked how often we answer the same questions over and over in new threads. I try to only spend my time helping people when I think that investment will actually lead to some discernible positive outcome. In your particular case, I think you need to tell us a bit more about what precisely you are interested in doing in the social sciences. I assume you don't mean academic jobs. You should know that getting other jobs in industry as a foreign national can be very difficult, as a general rule. But help us help you: what specifically are you asking about?