fuzzylogician

That wasn't the question that was asked. Garyon, in case it's still relevant, I'd double check whether or not you're really allowed to use your foreign license. There is a lot of uncertainty about that. I know a lot of rental car companies will rent you a car, but I personally worry about the insurance company trying to get out of paying me using this as an excuse in case anything happens. I imagine if there was ever an accident and serious damage, I wouldn't want to be fighting the insurance company then. So, just putting it out there. As for driving across state lines, I think you should make sure you are legal in every state you drive in. This is, again, one place where having a local license makes life much easier, even if technically you can drive with your foreign license.

It's okay to mention it in the SOP if there is a way to naturally bring it up as part of a related discussion, or it could just be on your CV. It's good to have the experience and it says good things about you, but it's only 3 months so it's also not something to waste too much ink on. I think it's entirely fair to ask the professor to mention this in his letter, as well as anything else that it's important for you that make it into the letter. You certainly have a better memory of everything that you've done than your professor does.

I turned down several offers to accept another one (so not exactly the situation you are describing). All of them entailed moving very far away, the nearest location being over 5000 miles away. Two things I think are important and why I mention those facts: one, I applied knowing full well that I would move away from home, and I was as prepared as one could be. Second, I did not apply to schools that I did not want to study at. It could be lack of good advisors, or bad weather, or a town that's too small for my taste, but if for whatever reason I did not see myself accepting an offer if it was my only choice, I didn't even bother applying. I think you skipped some of the introspection that should, in my opinion, go into choosing where to apply (and whether to apply in the first place), and so now you're having to go through an expedited and stressful version of this process. Is there a way to accept the offer but defer for a year? It sounds to me like you need some more time to think about your priorities. If you can't defer, if it were me, I'd decline. Nothing is ever guaranteed, but since you got a funded offer and an interview, it seems that you are a strong enough applicant. You just need to decide what you're willing to sacrifice for your education. Going away when you don't really want to, for a project you're not excited about, sounds like a recipe for at least some hardship.

I don't think it matters whether or not a professor is tenured. (There is an obvious correlation with fame and reputation, which matter more.) There could be a question of how well an instructor who is not on the tenure track (or tenured) can talk about your ability to succeed in academia, post PhD, but if they have a PhD of their own they do have some perspective on your ability to go through graduate school and do good work. Considering a professor from another field, they will likely lack the fame/reputation boost that you get from someone in your field. As experienced faculty they can still talk about your intellectual abilities and your potential to succeed in graduate school, and they can compare you to their own past students; that carries more weight the more similar the fields are (so if e.g. a Math prof says you can succeed in a History program, that might count for less than if an Anthropology prof says that.) In many ways, this is not unlike getting a letter from a less experienced TT professor. At the end of the day, the way to decide is not based on the employment status of the professor, but the content of the potential letter. Choose the stronger letter.

For the love of god, don't fluff the thing. It'll be better if it's shorter but tight. I don't know anyone that wants to read in 25 pages what you could have said in 19.

No quandary there. There is basically no use for a "did well in class" letter from a professor who doesn't remember you at all.

I don't know why "plagiarism" is in quotes there. Maybe we have a definitional problem here, and if so you need to resolve it quickly. Beyond that, I don't think that you are approaching this is a healthy way. Comparing yourself to others isn't the problem. Apparently plagiarism is the problem, and you need to fix it now. You also need to realize that just because a classmate hasn't told you she is in trouble, doesn't mean she isn't. And even if she isn't, that has exactly zero relation to the fact that you are, and for the sound of it, that's as it should be.

^ This. I've ranted about perceived shininess (I like that word!) and reality many times, so I'll keep it short. Everyone might seem shiny from the outside, but I guarantee you even the shiniest ones look at others and feel insecure about something. You are there just as they are, and you have just as much the potential to succeed. Some of this feeling of inadequacy will pass away with time, and hopefully as you interact more with others you'll discover that everyone shares a version of this feeling. As for talking in class, I don't know what you're doing at the moment but maybe it'd help to both print out and bring with you a copy of your blog entries, and also create bullet points in case you're called on in class. It's easy to get flustered or confused, and bullet points should help you get your main points across. This, too, is something that should improve with time. I also support the suggestion to talk to your professors about this. Most of them will be very understanding. I don't think you need to talk at all about feeling inadequate or tell them your life story, it's enough to just explain that your mind goes blank and you feel anxious. You are not the first or only one that this has happened to, it's a common issue with lots of students (for one, I can tell you that a version of this happened to pretty much every international (non-native speaker) student I know, and to lots of North American ones as well).

Are you? What's the situation like with your advisor's other students? Do you know that whatever is happening between you and him isn't also happening with other people? I want to trust everything you say, but I am not sure I understand why your advisor would try to get you into trouble. What's in it for him to gain? Can you describe what you mean by him stealing your ideas? What year are you in? It'd help to have a bit more information here.

If your advisor is doing all these things, you need to find a new advisor. If there is not one in your department who will support you, I'm afraid I don't see another way out than to reapply to another program. This will bring with it a whole new set of challenges, mainly explaining why you left and getting a LOR from someone in your current department. Another option (which I personally couldn't do) is to choose to ride it out, *if* your advisor is famous and has connections he will use to get you a job after you graduate, if you're able to hang on for that long. If not, I don't see any benefit to staying, even if you think you could handle it. This partly also depends on how far along you are in your program. If you're a first year, it's easier to say it was a bad fit than if you're a fourth year, for example. Same goes for how glaring of a red flag it would be if you can't secure a LOR from anyone in your program.

You'd need to check with the particular schools you're applying to. I think for most of the ones I applied to, you'd be able to get a waiver. Programs that didn't have an official provision for students who attended an English-taught program said that students can contact them to get waivers on a case by case basis. They might ask that one of your LORs address your language proficiency, but that shouldn't really be a problem given your situation.

My US citizen friends who went to California schools were expected to establish residency in CA after the first year of their program, and there were clear instructions on what they had to do to make it happen (see e.g. here: http://registrar.berkeley.edu/Residency/establish.html). It didn't matter for decisions before that time, including for admissions. I would recommend following the instructions your school provides and not lying.

Nope, I do it too. I have my immediate ancestors as part of my "about me" page on my website, and it's easy enough to trace it back from there.

You'd have to check the policies at your own school, but I've never heard of a policy that prohibits a professor from helping a student with editing.

It'd be good if you could ask all your related questions in one thread, instead of starting a new thread for each one. You've started 5 in the last hour, and as far as I can tell they are all basically about the same problem. Professors are not required to edit their students' work. Some do it more, some do it less. On just everyday assignments (as opposed to theses, etc.), many won't bother at all because there are just too many assignments they have to grade, and they are there to teach you professional material but not writing. Your advisor will usually do more of it than professors you just have for one class or two. If you are having difficulties with your writing, you may need to visit your university's writing center or get some other type of help specifically for that.

I don't think asking for help with an assignment amounts to anything like plagiarism. But in any case, you are not obligated to help her if you don't want to.

I am not sure how the question in the title relates to the content of the post. Are you saying you suspect that she might be plagiarizing and you want to "fix" it for her? If you are each writing your own section of the assignment, the easiest way to avoid being suspected of foul play is to add a note to the assignment specifying who wrote which part. It doesn't sound like you have a particularly functioning group, though. You should really be talking to one another throughout and you should leave enough time for you both to read the entire assignment and agree on the content.

You have another related recent thread about a similar concern, if I remember correctly. Has that other meeting with your professor happened already, and what came of it? I suggest that you schedule a meeting with your advisor and/or the director of graduate studies ASAP to learn how to cite things correctly, to keep this from happening again. Clearly, there is something that you are missing. The 2% I assume means that you didn't straight up copy and paste things from some other source, which is a good start. But this kind of service can't say much about whether you are citing your sources correctly (=not only paraphrasing others' thoughts and ideas, but also giving them credit for it, in the form of a citation, every time you take something from someone else's work). I would bet that is where the problem is. The professor can probably recognize ideas from published work that appear in your paper without appropriate credit being given to the source.

If your other two letters are from professors and you feel like the postdoc will write you a stronger letter, then in my opinion that should be fine. If you feel like you have a strong enough relationship with the postdoc, you could include him in this deliberation. Tell him what the other option is and what the other letter will look like, and ask for his opinion for which letter would be the better option. It sounds like the postdoc has your best interest at heart.

The postdoc is right that all things being equal, it's better to have a letter from a full-time faculty member. The question is whether things are indeed otherwise equal. What will the letter from the professor be able to say about you, and what will the postdoc say? Were the classes you took with the prof advanced? Can the prof say anything about you other than that you attended their class and got XYZ grades? How about the postdoc? Also, are your other two letters from full-time faculty? If so, it makes it less important that the third one might not be. As for asking for the LOR, try to keep in mind that writing letters is part of the professor's job description. I know you still feel like you're inconveniencing them, but you need to not worry about it. If it helps, remember that they are where they are because others took the time to write letters for them. It's part of the process and now it's their turn to return the favor. One day down the line, you will do it for people who you supervise. I would suggest making an appointment and just asking. Make it as easy for them to write the letter as possible -- give them a list of the deadlines, and any materials they ask for (your SOP, writing sample, etc.). Some profs might want a list from you of things they should focus on. It's in your interest to provide it, because it's much more likely that you remember all of the relevant details about your interactions with them than that they do. So, be thankful and helpful, be respectful of their time, but don't be afraid to ask!

If this is a pissing contest, I am not entering. I still maintain my point that your generalization is exactly that. A generalization. People learn languages differently and not everyone has an easy time with it. I don't think your point above was at all helpful, even if it were true. There is no such thing as an "easy" language. Most of your examples could be turned on their head to show how knowing any one Semitic language would help with another. Most of the "complicated" things you listed in Arabic have parallels in Hebrew that I don't know why you chose not to list; Just for fun, if in Hebrew you have "televiziah", in Arabic you have "tilfizion". I don't think I want to spend the time going through all of your examples like this. And with that, I grant you both the crown and the scepter. Yours is bigger.

Unless you signed a contract, I don't think there is any legal obligation for you to stay. You'd want to think about how not to burn any bridges when moving, so you'd need to be careful with who you tell what and when.

Sorry, it always just amazes me when people make such ridiculous generalizations about languages. Based on this I suppose we should all be able to pick up a Mandarin grammar and be able to speak fluently before long (writing might take longer). I always spend at least one whole session in every intro to linguistics class debunking this myth and others. (I promise to do my best not to reply if you want to come back and explain how I'm wrong and you're right, because I don't want to derail this thread.) Yes, you can have a line in your SOP explaining what happened or just saying you've overcome it and you're proficient now. Or a LOR writer can address it. Or in some cases no explanation is necessary. That wasn't the question, though.

I think maybe one of the eight schools I applied to wanted a CV. Once I had put it together, though, I submitted it as a supplemental document wherever that was an option. Other application systems have short essay questions that allow you to cover much of the same information, so you might want to just quickly click through the applications for your schools to see what they look like. And to answer the "why don't they want a CV" question, I think the reason is that most students don't have anything substantial to write in it at this early in their career, and if so then they can address it in their SOP or it can be addressed in their LORs. So, it's one less document to look at, and not much danger of losing important information. Later down the line when you have multiple presentations and publications, then things are different.

One failing grade in one class is not going to sink anyone's chances of getting into a good PhD program. You list Hebrew as one of the languages your friend speaks, so obviously he recovered from that failed class. He should do perfectly fine.