fuzzylogician

The likelihood that a professor will ask you why you didn't have them write a letter for school X is small, if you ask me. Just don't bring it up yourself. If anyone asks, I would say something like "I'm having Profs A and B write letters for me. Unfortunately the school doesn't have space for a third letter, but I really appreciate your support!"

FWIW, I submitted a "regular" paper as my writing sample. Did just fine.

The writing sample is supposed to showcase both your writing abilities and your research abilities -- that is, your ability to construct and sustain an original argument about something (preferably in your field of interest). A lit review that is co-authored with your advisor will not be good on either count, as it doesn't teach us much about your research abilities, and it would lead to questions about who did the planning and the writing (and if your advisor was involved in serious editing) of your writing sample. For these reasons, I think the other paper is the better choice here.

This is the better version of "writing your own letter" where I think you are licensed to ignore wording and style. I'd just create a list of everything you'd want to have in the letter and ignore all the rest. So include things like where this prof knows you from, for how long, courses you took with her, grades you got, the papers you wrote for her, and other relevant things (did you often go to office hours? did your work stand out in any way? did you win awards while there? did you present anything at a conference? did you TA? etc.).

Keep in mind that even if they are supposed to know, they have other students and things on their mind. Your grades, papers, awards, etc. might not be as vividly recalled by them as by you. So help them make sure everything that should end up in the letter indeed does.

Assuming that your text wraps at 80 characters and not some other setting, that sounds correct.

This seems pretty straightforward. No more than 120 eighty-character lines => your essay has to be less than 120*80=9,600 characters long, including spaces, punctuation, and everything else. Text editors like WordPad or TextWrangler (on a mac) can be set to wrap text at 80 characters a line, and then you can easily count how many lines of text you have. There are also online tools that can do this for you, if you google for them. For reference, the average word length in English is just over 5 letters, so 9,600 characters would give you roughly 1,900 words, assuming no line breaks between paragraphs, and every line of text utilized to the max. This estimate would obviously vary depending on your writing style and word choices, etc., and I do think empty lines between paragraphs would be good, so you'll probably actually be left with less space than the absolute max -- let's say maybe 1,500 words or thereabouts. That's a pretty generous limit, so you probably shouldn't have too much trouble meeting it.

To be maximally prepared: - Know what programs you're applying to (or at least, which ones you are considering and roughly how many schools you'll apply to overall). Also, in case they ask, why those schools and not others. Be able to provide a short description of your interests and grad school plans. - Know the deadlines, and most importantly the earliest ones. - Ask if submitting electronically is okay (it should be for the vast majority of professors, but make sure), and verify the email address and contact info you'll be providing (should be the prof's academic email address, so just make sure that's the one they want you to use). - Agree on how you'll communicate with the prof (emails, most likely) and set up a reminder system ("I'll send an email to let you know when you should receive email prompts from my schools, once I've updated your contact info. Would it be ok if I send a reminder 2 weeks and then 1 week before the deadline, if you haven't submitted your letter by that point? Would you like more/less frequent reminders?") - Know what you'd like them to highlight in their letter. Offer to provide a bullet-point list of things that would be relevant for the letter. Offer to send them your CV, SOP, and writing sample(s). They may also want to see a transcript.

I think there are substantial enough differences between our fields that I'm not sure if this is helpful, but I always have at least a handout with all my data typeset before I start writing. I create a skeleton and place my data along with keywords for what text needs to go there. Then when I flesh out the text, it's easier to remember what I'm working on at any particular time. If something comes to mind that needs to be added in a footnote, I do whatever works for my flow at that moment. That's usually one of two things: either I make a quick note about what should be there (in latex, just a commented out line with some text that I will later use to structure my fn), then quickly go back to my previous train of thought on my sentence/paragraph; I go back to the fn when the flow breaks, which could be a sentence, a paragraph, or a page of text. Or if I'm working in a place where my outline is clear and stopping won't cause a major interruption, I just write the footnote as it comes up. Either way, I always leave myself some indication that I thought a footnote was needed, so I don't later forget. Some footnotes get added when the text is done, while reading and editing, and those I always add as soon as they come to mind. That said, I don't think footnotes in my field get as substantial in yours. In most cases it's "for an alternative analysis see Doe (1999)," "although a remaining issue is blah," "more data supporting this analysis comes from [other language]: [data]," or after reviews "a reviewer suggests [clearly wrong thing]; however [that couldn't possibly work, and here's why]."

Imagine this not unlikely scenario: the letters in applicants' files are ordered by their submission date, not by whether the applicant ranked them as 1/2/3/4. A professor picks up the file, see 4 letters, and decides: "we required three letters. Therefore, I will only read the first three letters in this file" (or: the prof reads the first three letters, unexpectedly encounters a fourth, and decides to skip it). Will you be okay with any 3 of the 4 being read, or will it make your application weaker if this 4th letter is read instead of one of the original 3? If it would be all the same, you could include it. If it would make the application weaker, that is an argument against including it.

I think it's generally fine to submit 4 if the system allows it and there is no text that says not to do it. However, only submit this extra letter if it is as strong as the other letters. Additional materials should be there for a reason, since you're creating extra work for your readers. Or worse -- one of your original 3 might be ignored instead of your extra letter. This is why this extra letter has to be at least as strong as the others.

I think this comment means that this is a responsible professor who knows that she can't write you a very strong letter, and telling you as much. If she had wanted to say 'no,' she would have. I don't think that should be a concern. She asked for all the materials that would help her write the most detailed letter that she can. That said, if you have a chance to get a stronger letter, you should wait to see about the other professor. It's not very clear that that's the case, and I don't think you can really tell from the level of enthusiasm in the email reply what the level of enthusiasm in the letter will be. In both cases, the letter will have to be pretty generic, given the circumstances. But, I don't see why you shouldn't wait for the other prof to see what kind of reply you get, and take it from there. I don't think it'll be very different, but who knows.

I've had people ask "what would you like me to highlight," or when updating a letter, "could you provide me with a list of things you've done over the past year?" but to me, that is very different from asking me to write a draft of the letter. Asking what I think should go in the letter is entirely appropriate and will help the recommender write a stronger letter. But asking me to write a draft? That means I would spend most of my time agonizing over wording and structure, which shouldn't be something I have to deal with at all.

I get the feeling that things are done very differently in the Humanities so take this with a grain of salt, but I would not submit to a journal that targets specifically undergraduate research. I think that would be generally pretty useless. It won't count as a serious publication down the road and at the same time it'll be out there, and if it's not very good then the OP might rather not having out there. OP, talk to your advisor about your plans and seek feedback on your revisions. Ask for help picking the highest ranked journal that would take the work, and submit it there. You probably don't have the ability to pick the correct one yourself, but your advisor should know what journal is likeliest to be sympathetic to the arguments and also to accept work of the caliber of your paper. If you're concerned and have the chance, once you've picked a journal but before you submit, find a way to chat up another professor and ask them their opinion of the journal you selected. Hopefully they don't find the journal subpar. You might decide not to submit now, but hold onto this work and revisit revising it for publication maybe in your second your of your PhD. You'll have a new perspective and more experience, and you might see things differently then. Finally, there is no point in fearing rejection. Yes, you might get rejected. But already have a 'no,' so worst case scenario is you stay with a 'no.' But if you're successful, a 'yes' could be very helpful down the line. On the other hand, if you don't have this publication, it won't be a big deal either. You might even get some useful feedback along the way. I'm not sure what an "obvious undergrad submission" is--if the paper doesn't read well and isn't polished, then it's not ready to be submitted. If you and your advisor think it's good enough, let the editors and reviewers worry about critiquing it. I guarantee that they will have concerns that you've never even considered and that they won't even blink an eye at some of the parts that you worry about most. If it gets rejected, that should not hurt you with that journal down the line. Rejections happen all the time, we just don't talk about them.

The entire process sounds very different from anything I know. Perhaps not surprisingly, since I'm in a social science, not engineering. The publication requirement would not be something anyone in my field would ever begin to entertain; there is so much that goes into the process beyond whether the paper is good enough. I don't really know what to say, asking your advisor seems like a good way to go. If the paper is now accepted and published and your advisor and/or other LOR writers say it's a good paper and would serve as a good basis for your PhD proposal, that should help. Is there any way to petition to have the thesis grade changed retroactively, since you now meet the requirement?

- Admissions committees look at application files as a whole, so this grade will be looked at in the context of your other grades, etc. The thesis is a larger project and therefore all things being equal I would expect it to be a reasonable reflection of the potential of a student to succeed in similar and larger-sized projects in the future. Conference presentations are another such indication. Yet another consideration is the opinion your professors express about your potential in their LORs. So an important question is what led to this lower grade. - Concentrate on the things you can change. At this point, assuming your deadlines are coming up in a month or two, that is probably your SOP and writing sample. - That is something you need to consult with your advisors about. You need to understand why you only got a pass, and how you can improve. It's possible that there are parts that are very strong and maybe one of them can be used as a writing sample, and it's possible that your grade indicates that the entire piece is weak. We can't know which of those options it correct, or if it's something else that led to the lower grade.

Have at least one faculty member read your SOP and pay special attention to this part of it. As you wrote it here, it doesn't sound like something I would recommend adding to the SOP. It doesn't paint you in a good light and I would not consider it an acceptable extenuating circumstance.

No. There is a difference between getting a pass in a pass/fail system and getting a pass in a system that allows for several better grades.

We have done our best but tachik doesn't seem to want to help him/herself. I think it's time to stop replying and let this thread die.

Ok, I officially give up. You did not answer a single question knp listed or give us any information that could help us help you. I am done trying, apparently it's a waste of my time.

For heaven's sake, it means plainly and exactly what she said. She still thinks you plagiarized, and she is giving you another chance to prove otherwise. She does NOT think that the meeting you had resolved the matter. I don't understand how you could possibly not be getting it. Stop saying that she has decided that there was no plagiarism, because she is TELLING YOU, not even hinting, that she thinks that there is. Also, she is saying this is an assignment for her course, not for next summer. So that is yet another discrepancy between what you say and what the situation appears to actually be. knp lays out some good questions; why don't we start with those.

Congrats! Also check out this thread about public speaking: http://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/21568-public-speaking/

FWIW, linguistics sounds basically like what TakeruK is describing. Students don't publish very often and the publication cycle itself takes much longer that in the sciences, from what I can tell, but the principle is the same. You don't publish "work in progress," but the goal is not a paper that "stands the test of time." My goal for a paper is not that it will "stand the test of time," maybe because I'm not even exactly sure what that means, but instead I all hope for is that (a) I think it's an interesting idea that should be out there, and (b) I don't know that it's wrong when it's accepted for publication. I fully expect some parts of my proposals to be incomplete or incorrect or for others to later improve upon them. But I hope that the data I contribute is interesting and important to the community, even if it's later used for another theory, and I hope that the ideas are useful, however they might later be used. If you write your paper well, and if your readers are savvy readers, it's possible to use parts of a proposal without necessarily buying the whole. You might agree that a phenomenon is as I describe it but not agree with why, or you might like my idea but not think my data is conclusive, or you might find my data interesting but disagree with how I characterize what's going on, that's all fine. All I hope for is that the paper contributes something. Once in a while it's nice to also have bigger contributions, that people adopt and use wholesale and think are insightful, but not every paper needs to be like that. Some just report some new data and a proposed analysis, and nothing more. The only time I would think it's good to advise someone not to publish is along the same lines as TakeruK laid out. Alternatively, if you have a big paper in the works, you might want to hold onto it longer and publish it in a high-impact journal, instead of writing several lower-impact papers, but that's a judgment call on a case by case basis.

I'm glad this was resolved in your favor, but I don't believe that you were accused and it came to a formal departmental procedure without any reason. I take your repeated lack of ability to provide any details about this incident as indication that you don't really understand what happened or why. Since you didn't get any clarification, now is the time to schedule a meeting with the professor and ask for clarification of why she suspected you in the first place, and what you can do to avoid this ever happening again. This should be a learning experience for you, because if you don't fix anything, I think there is a great chance of this recurring. And if they continue to suspect foul play and initiate formal procedures, eventually they will not be as patient with you. So, you need to understand why this happened and how to make sure it never happens again.

Of the topics you pitch, I would choose topic #1. I think it's the best way to talk about who you are by elaborating on actions you took and initiative you had, as opposed to things that happened to you (how your childhood steered you in a certain direction for a future career, how you deal with being introverted). On the other hand, I don't think it matters much, I think the content matters more than the topic. It could be that this would not be an original topic, I don't know a lot about your field. So, take this with a grain of salt.