fuzzylogician

Your situation sounds like a medical condition (though not an emergency). I think you just put it that way and ask if you could get a deferral for that reason ("I am receiving treatment for a medical condition, and this treatment is expected to continue into the fall of 2017. For this reason, would it be possible to defer my admissions to your department to Fall 2018?"). Only the department will be able to give you a definitive answer, no one here will be able to do that for you.

Yes, you can and should do that.

Yeah, that's why I asked.. I can't help with that, but I hope someone else comes around and answers your question

You reply to whoever sent the acceptance email (probably chair or DGS, but possibly a potential advisor). When in doubt, I would email the DGS, as the person who is most likely responsible for graduate admissions. If you had a lot of personal communication with a potential advisor, you could email them personally to thank them for their support, but you don't have to. You don't need to inform graduate students who emailed to congratulate you.

Contact the school right away to correct the mistake. As for transfer possibilities, only the relevant school can tell you, we can't even begin to guess.

1) it happens, yes. 2) contact the schools and ask. There's more than one way of doing things, and only the relevant schools can tell you their procedures. (Also check to see if there is information online on the department's website or in a graduate student handbook.) 3) yes, talk to professors. I would suggest talking to everyone who is a potential advisor. Personal connections are going to be very important to your success as a student. It's best if you can have a meeting in person, but even a Skype conversation will give you valuable information about how you feel interacting with each person. Also ask to talk to current students at the relevant labs you are considering, to get their take on their lab and school. Again, try at least for Skype conversations; email won't be as useful, because people may not leave a written record of their negative impressions, but they are much more likely to tell you in a one-on-one conversation.

Possibly because everyone doesn't have your experience? I would take this as a learning experience; if and when you have a choice to make again about a place where you'll live and work for several years and will determine your next career move(s), the atmosphere and your connection with the people is just as important as factors like pay, location, and prestige. All I can say is that I (fortunately) didn't have an experience that is anything like yours; I have very fond memories of my grad school days. It's too bad that you don't, but then you're only going to be there for a few more months, so maybe try to see past what's going on now to help with your mood. You can already start planning for things to come, and one can only hope that they'll be better than they are now.

Employability in academia or industry?

Just walk away people, nothing to see here.

It depends, norms change by (sub)field so we can't give you a sweeping answer. Often, the person who did the majority of the work will be first (often: this will be a student or postdoc); the advisor or PI will be last, and others will be in the middle, depending on how much they contributed. In other fields, you go strictly alphabetically. In some fields, the advisor is a co-author on all of their students' work, in others not. The authorship question is often a delicate and complicated one, but I suggest that you bring it up early, before you commit to doing the work. Simply ask your advisor how he expects to determine authorship on the project, and specifically if you will be first. I think that's entirely fair, and you might even want to have it in writing (as in, after the meeting you send him an email saying "just to confirm what we said in the meeting, here is what I understood: [blah]"), so there aren't any misunderstandings later.

I have a student right now who is very involved with our local union.* It is important to him and he's invested but he's definitely spending a lot of time and mental energy on it. I think you do it if you care, not for a line on your CV. (Though yes, it can go on your CV as service, but it should be clear to you that no one gets a job because they were active in a student organization, or for any other service activity for that matter.) * or rather, with the current attempts to establish a union...

To an extent this depends on individuals. Both those giving the feedback and those receiving it. It's entirely possible that some people really are just critical in an unpleasant way. It's also possible that at least in some cases, people are trying to be helpful by correcting small errors in (what they believe is) a stress-free environment in the hopes that it helps you when it comes time to do writing that will receive an evaluation. There are differences in how students take these corrections -- if you think of them as criticism and a constant judging of your abilities, that's very different than if you take them as someone taking an extra effort of helping you improve your English outside of an evaluation context (so it doesn't affect your grade). I also realize that there are different stress levels that come from regular meetings for different students, but it's not always easy for professors to see, and it's also not always easy to know what to do with it. And of course there may be differences in how the feedback is provided and how it comes across. Bottom line: sometimes behavior may be well-meaning but still hard to deal with, and sometimes maybe it's just over-critical. And yes, it's unlikely that someone will correct a native speaker's use of language in a spoken context. But they definitely do also receive criticism of their writing in written contexts -- that's just something you have to learn to deal with.

What do you mean more severely? You're expected to write at a certain level, no more no less than native speakers. This comes naturally to some, with time, and for others it remains difficult throughout their graduate career. The best way to train yourself is to engage in speaking, reading, and writing, as often as you can. You might also want to have someone (preferably a native speaker) read your work and help you with style and grammar, and you might want to use the writing center at your new university. FWIW a lot of these things are also true for native speakers -- everyone can benefit from getting feedback from colleagues, and native speakers aren't always particularly good at academic writing. (In fact, in my experience, hardly anyone is when they start out; undergrads are terrible writers!) It's a skill you have to learn and develop. So yes, you'll be expected to reach a certain level by the time you produce publishable work, but no, you won't be judged more severely than anyone else on your writing.

Yay! Thank you for the update. I'm glad things worked out!

Things to try: (1) one more email, *saying* that you'll try to call next if you don't hear back. (Say it nicely, not as a threat, obviously.) (2) shoot an email to the admin person where he's at, see if they can't get in touch with him in person and see what's up. (3) browse the People page where he's at to see if there is anyone you know. Talk to them and get them to personally show up at office hours to try and help you. (4) talk to your other recommenders or someone else at your PhD school to find out if there is any reason why your advisor has stopped replying to email (maybe there's a personal crisis you're not aware of). Also ask what they suggest you do if you don't get that letter -- I would guess the answer is add another recommender so you have a complete application if it's past the deadline and get that letter from your advisor as a supplemental. I'm sorry this is happening. I think getting another letter as a backup is wise so your applications aren't tossed for being incomplete. Maybe that could be another person from your PhD institution, a committee member who can explain that there is nothing wrong with you or your relationship with your advisor, that letter is missing for reasons outside of your control. FWIW I replaced my committee chair with a committee member one year because my chair had some personal trouble that made him very unreliable. It doesn't seem to have caused any problems, although I do know that this is field specific. Good luck!

Since this looks like a competitive university-wide fellowship that it's in the department's interest for you to get, I would suggest you simply write them and ask.* I would guess, though, that it's not going to increase your chances of getting this fellowship. It's there as a recruitment tool, so if anything, already accepting the offer would make you less attractive (they don't need to court you if you've already accepted their offer). But really, I don't think it matters either way. You do, of course, have to be enrolled to actually get the money. * or you might call them and ask without giving your name, if you're worried about how it might look to ask the question (you can easily find the number online, here is the announcement for last year's fellowship, which btw also explicitly discusses the selection criteria: https://www.purdue.edu/gradschool/documents/funding/fellowships/doctoral-announcement-2016-17.pdf).

You don't need to justify anything; you just say thank you, you appreciate the opportunity, but you are leaning another way. You wanted to let them know as soon as possible so they can move on to others on the waitlist, if relevant. Even if you did know what you were doing, I would still advise not to get into details of funding or fit, at least not in the initial email. If someone wants to follow up and ask about how you came to your decision, you might consider explaining.

I would assume it means that they think you have a shot at these fellowships and wanted you to try and get them. If you win this funding, that would both make you more attractive to the program, and more likely to accept an offer from them. Both net positives for the program. I would imagine it also means you have a fair shot at getting in, but I don't think anyone can make you any promises.

Short, professional, and to the point. No need to tell a long sob story of being torn between great choices. Thank them for their time and support, express a desire to stay in touch and meet again. There is also no reason why meeting at conferences should be awkward, unless you make it so. This is just a part of the process; everyone expects that some admitted students will have multiple offers and will turn some down. And yes, there is no reason why one of these people can't end up on your committee a few years from now, or you might spend a semester as a visiting student at one of these schools.

Cross posted. To reply click here:

This thread is from 2012. No need to give the OP advice at this point.

For anyone who asks the question, in my opinion the answer is 'no'. You need to know that you want and need PhD. You need to be okay with the PhD being the last step in the path of whatever you're studying and not leading to a career in your field, because the reality is that it might not, or it might be difficult and unrewarding for a while before you get to make any step in the direction you want to go in, if at all. So if you don't want to do a PhD because you think you'll enjoy the process itself, don't do it. Specifically in your case, I don't think a PhD is useful for a career in journalism. It's not like it'll hurt; you'll do a lot of writing and learn to teach yourself about subjects, and that may be useful to a journalist. But there are many shorter and more direct ways to learn those skills and others that are useful for a journalist. I don't think that accepting an offer and attending a semester or year in an English PhD program would do you much good. I'm also not sure if applying to journalism schools next year is necessarily the right choice. I think you might want to do some informational interviews with people who have relevant jobs you'd like to have, and look into internships or the like. Take time to actually decide what you want to do, and then learn about how to get there. School may or may not be the right next step, but you need to take the time to figure it out first, before you commit to a multi-year plan of any kind.

Three suggestions: 1. The long paragraph starting with "In 2013" should be split into two paragraphs (at least). As it stands, it's long and hard to digest. You might also want to cut some details and concentrate on those parts that are relevant to your current/future course of study. 2. The paragraph about your job with the Senator and the subsequent sentence and a half of the next paragraph could be consolidated into one paragraph, or alternatively you should give more details about this internship. 3. The Last two sentences, starting with "there experiences" should be fleshed out into at least one whole paragraph, and it needs to be much stronger and more detailed than it is at the moment. This is the weakest part of your otherwise quite powerful statement, but it's really the most important component of the SOP: why are you applying for this degree, what do you want to do with it, and why this particular school? You hardly answered any of these things beyond the very broad statements in your second paragraph. Also a general comment: this statement is probably over 90% past, 10% present/future. But an SOP should be a forward-looking document. So you need to find a way to tie your past experiences *directly* into your future plans, and you need to be a lot more detailed about those plans. If you have a word limit, consider cutting some discussion of your past accomplishments and also tightening up the intro (you don't need a whole paragraph about your childhood ailments, a sentence or two would suffice); don't keep all of those details at the expense of giving more details about your future plans.

It's hard to say without seeing your SOP, but just listing POIs without explaining how your interests match with theirs probably leaves something to be desired. Everyone knows that whatever you pitch in your SOP is unlikely to be what you end up doing, so I don't think you need to worry about committing to a topic. Especially at places like MIT, you won't even start working on a project until at least the second semester of first year, and you're able to meet with whoever you want and switch at any time. You're not obligated to continue doing anything you're not interested in. (UMass is slightly different, but still.) I agree that it's good to be open-minded, but that can be interpreted as having a broad interest (or set of related interests) with some specific and well-articulated sub-questions that might change over time (and might even be preceded by a "for instance"). Being vague isn't a good solution here. You want to show that you can formulate interesting, relevant, and well-thought-out questions and that you are prepared to study them, given your background. Also that Awesome U is the right place to go if you want to study questions like the ones your discussed. If you can do that in your SOP, you'll be able to do it again if and when your interests change in grad school. If you can't do this now, who's to say that you'll be able to later, or even that you are ready for a PhD or that the program(s) you applied to are a good fit? Those are the questions that your SOP's readers will be asking themselves.

Or, you know, stop comparing yourself to others in any platform (including real life),* because it's not like not visiting the gradcafe is magically going to stop you from doing that. And come back here and be contributing board members that do things other than stress and freak out. That's much more fun all around, and what this board is really all about. * and when you stop doing these useless comparisons, stop comparing yourself both to internet strangers and (as importantly!) people you know. You never know the whole story, and it's nothing more than a good way to psych yourself out for no good reason.