timuralp

As others mentioned, if you're going after PhD, there is the bare minimum you need to fulfill not to flunk out and beyond that it's really only important for scholarships. Another thing to consider is your advisor's expectations. If you're expected to be a star in every class, that may be a problem. If, however, you're expected to meet the bare minimal requirement in classes outside your core area and ace the ones that are in it (hopefully, that won't be that hard). In my experience, the latter is the more common requirement and the students are expected to spend more time on research and not getting all As is ok.

If you're going after a PhD, at least in my field, no one cares. Actually, people don't even look at the MS GPA. It's useful for scholarships, etc, but the important thing is the work you've done and what you've published. Each subfield is tiny and everyone knows everyone else, so you get judged by your work, rather than grades in classes.

This is also field dependent, but a couple of things: 1. Only the first author counts for anything, but publication count, which brings me to 2. Once you have 3 or so first author, top-notch papers, people look at the total publication count. It is impossible to have a somewhat high publication count without collaborating frequently with others. In your case, it may be that the person did not do any actual experimental work. However, one thing that commonly happens is authorship for the help with the actual writing, such as related work sections, editing, framing the paper, etc. Some small help with experiments can also lead to the same. Finally, I would talk with your advisor about what the lab authorship guidelines are and how you're expected to collaborate.

I have not had to do this myself, but a few of my friends have done that. It varies by department, but the protocol, as far as I can tell, in my department is to speak with the professor you're interested in working with and express your interest in working with him/her. This lets you make sure you can actually switch. Then talk to your current professor and explain that you've realized you would rather work on something else and are switching to work with the other faculty member. This is not an uncommon thing, as far as I know, and it's important for everyone that it's easy for graduate students to find projects and advisors that are a good match. You should ask people around your department who have been through a similar experience and see if they have any advice. Best of luck!

I honestly believe my first year was the easiest by quite a bit and it just got down hill from that, even as classes ended. I can relate to the feelings of loneliness, confusion, and feeling lost and the way I got through that was through finding random hobbies. I took up running, which helped me clear my head. I actively looked around for various clubs or activities I might want to attend and meet people (e.g. wine tasting club). I took a bunch of pictures of the campus and tried to see what I can do with the whole photography thing. And I started going to the gym on pretty regular basis (at least to shoot a basketball around). I was busy with stuff, but in reality, while I was being pushed to do research and do it well, there was no expectation to publish something immediately and the time I would spend on all these little hobbies, I could get back by spending more time in the lab on the weekends or working a bit later. In the end, you gotta figure out what works for you and how to feel relatively happy, otherwise it'll be really hard 3-5+ years.

If this is happening repeatedly and it is clear that the points were taken off wrong, I would bring this up with the professor. The TAs do the grading, but it is up to the professor to reel them in when the grading gets too ridiculous. I would keep fighting on this, especially if this is the only graded part of the course. Further, you'll find a lot of times TAs don't care very much about grading and at times barely read the submitted work. If it's obvious that that's the case, bring it up with the professor. As to the embarrassing part, as long as it's clear that there is a grading error, as opposed to something along the lines of "I believe I'm entitled to more partial credit", then it will be fine. It's only coming off desperate when it's the really subjective calls on "how right" you were.

This is one of the forms of normal responses you're likely to get. By and large, you can interpret it as follows: I have no bearing on the admission process, but if you're admitted I may be interested in working with you or, more harshly, don't bother me until you're admitted. This is more specific, and may imply that the professor will look for the application in the pile during the admission committee meetings. However, this still implies no promises and I would not read very much into it. Don't get discouraged! Most professors will either never reply or say to not bother them. While this does not promise anything, it's better than the other two options. However, my general opinion is that it's more important to start talking to professors once you are admitted and, more importantly, you'll find they are MUCH more willing to talk to the admitted students.

I did that when I visited schools. It's a perfectly legitimate question: how do you typically interact with your students and what are the expectations? The one hour thing is true in CS (still, there are exceptions). It may be different in your discipline. Is there anyone at your school you could ask about how their typical advising is going? Do you have any feel for what kind of advisor you're looking for: more hands off or more breathing down your neck to get things done? Answering that question could also help you.

It is hard to judge this. You may want to consider contacting some of the current students (before or after being accepted, depending on field etiquette) and ask how they interact with this person. It could be that the prof makes time for each one of them to talk for an hour every week or it could be more of a tiered setup. Further, this also depends on what you're looking and that may not be clear until you have some experience of working with different advisors or even just one advisor. I know of professors who have 15-17 graduate students and others that have 3 and anything in between. The number of students is not the only thing that determines their availability. Faculty are busy people that attend meetings, sometimes do consulting, teach, apply for grants, and often have a life outside of school. I am aware of one professor with 15 students who spends an hour with each of them every week. I don't know how he does it, but I guess it's possible.

I worked for Microsoft for the summer. It was fun and to me felt like a vacation (most of the time)

Your story's pretty odd. At least in my program, I don't know of many people who give out unsolicited advice. Personally, if someone gets on my nerves, I do my best to not be forced to interact with that person. It sounds like that would be the better thing to do. On a more general note, it's good to get different view points, but also don't be afraid to go with what you think is right, if you're not compelled by any other arguments. In the end, usually, you're the one that deals with the consequences, not the person giving the advice.

I guess my approach has been different in a sense that I usually ask questions and try to learn if I have any common interests. We don't have some sort of a group hangout and people generally do whatever suits their fancy better. All the friends I've made are from playing sports together and otherwise I don't really worry about it. The other thing... I seldom had housing questions come up in conversations beyond the typical question of where someone lives. I guess the whole point of this post is there is no point in trying to be friends with everyone.

Ha my first year was spent in search of the right and interesting work to do. One game I kept playing with myself was to have a list of ideas every week that I could either explore on my own or bother my advisor with. Most of those ended up being tossed in the trash, but the process is very valuable, as I learnt to identify what the interesting questions are. Enjoy the time you have now, as once you dive deep into the work, it will disappear quickly, leaving you wishing you had more time to do things. At least that was my feeling.

Coming from PhD, my advice is skewed only because the goal for me was to pass classes vs excel in them. However, for me, finding some sort of hobby (be it exercise or anything else) that clears my head entirely has been crucial. It is impossible to spend 16 hours a day thinking about work and doing it, but taking a 30 minute to an hour break of doing something completely unrelated would often give me new ideas when I came back to the task at hand, as well as more perspective on how to prioritize better. I don't know if the add-drop is over or not, but it may also be good to consider if there is a possibility to swap classes for others that either let you combine the work (do one project for 2 classes sort of thing or at least one set of research work) or ones that are less open-ended and less time consuming, maybe?

To me, these data seem to highlight that quantifiable metrics are often times not what one is looking for. That's an interesting, yet maybe obvious, result in of itself.

When I was applying and I asked the faculty at my university that question, the response was "no, not until you're offered acceptance". However, I contacted a couple before asking people (was a little too anxious) and one response was "Please don't email me until you're accepted" and the second was "Go look at my publications". So... I feel like it's not a common practice, at least not in my field of CS (Systems). Further, check the sites first. If you see something like this note: "Decisions concerning admissions and financial aid here at [insert school] are made by a small committee. Because I am not a member of this committee, I have no input to or influence over the admissions or financial aid process. Therefore, please do not send me mail requesting that I intervene on your behalf, as I cannot do so. As you might imagine, I tend to get many such requests; their volume forces me to ignore them without response." it will answer both your questions Ooops, didn't notice the first response already mentioned it. Sorry to reiterate.

See, you started the argument. The whole thread was resting peacefully for a while, so it sounds more like you really need to throw your opinion into everything. The books example has been pointed out before, as well as multiple others. You haven't refuted any of the IRS links that I posted regarding this. They explicitly went over which parts are taxable and which are not. I'm glad you're done with this thread, because it was fine before you came along and offered no help and tried to add more confusion. There is a caveat here that you forgot and came up almost two pages ago. The caveat is that the books have to be required by all students in the courses and used for educational purposes. Either way, this thread has a lot of answers early on, with excerpts and references to the IRS. It is not meant to replace reading the tax code for oneself but offers a good starting. I'm not sure what the problems with it are that you see.

That means the university won't withhold taxes from it. How does that impact your tax liability under the federal income tax? Here is more on the subject of what is taxable with a nice table: http://www.irs.gov/publications/p970/ch01.html Actually, only subsistence pay for ROTC is listed as tax exempt. And it said that it may be taxable income. They really went over in detail as to how the pay is disbursed and whether taxes are withheld. That is a terrible statistic to cite. Here is a simple math problem based on this number: the tax code is 13,000+ pages, what is the percentage spent on higher education? Oh, you can't answer? But you know the total size! That number is meaningless here. If you said "the tax code for higher education expenses, as applied to graduate students, is [some number] big" it would be more convincing. Well, sure, I itemized deductions on my last year's return and ended up saving more money, but that is not the common case for graduate students. The reason I could do it was because I have a mortgage. I just replied about the common case in this matter. The standard deduction, for most people, gives a rough estimate. I am really curious when your stipend was not taxable income, because, as before, everything I've found from IRS on the topic states that it's an impossibility.

Was this article about graduate students? They typically are not referred to as "seniors", but what do I know? Ok, can we then have your posts appear in the year 2014 when they matter or at least 2013? Thank you for admitting you're not contributing to the conversation.

Considering I looked through all the things IRS has to say about taxable and non-taxable scholarships and stipends, I'm going to say again, please give me an example of a tax-exempt stipend. IRS explicitly stated that whatever is used for living expenses is taxable income, whether it's payment for services or scholarship funds. I also posted links to the relevant pages on the IRS site. IRS actually posted specific examples of the funding and how it is classified. If you look through the tax code, living expenses are always classified as taxable income, and same goes for Payment for services (i.e. TA, GSRA). There are MORE relevant statements available from IRS. Please find me how any funding for living expenses is not taxable income. Everything I have looked at states that there are no exceptions. OR you could look at your income, apply the standard deduction and see if you have to pay any taxes by looking at the bracket you're in. It's not THAT complicated. There is also Earned Income Tax Credit, and the guidelines for it could be found here For the record, I assume anyone asking for advice on forums would verify the information either with IRS or someone competent. The advice, as usual, does not come with any guarantees, etc, similar to asking your neighbor. I cited relevant information from IRS previously and pointed to where everything can be found. It is up to the person asking the question to follow up on references and make a decision. Some how you made it sound like people will take it as gospel.

While I'm not taking classes anymore, the PhD students were always on the two classes/semester schedule, barring some extraordinary circumstances. Since most CS classes are 4 credits, that translates to 8 hours of class/semester and then research. Sometimes people would also take a 1 credit seminar. That's the typical load.

But... it's not. The question asked in the thread was "are stipends taxable and what are the taxes?" For the upcoming year and a few subsequent ones, your post is irrelevant. Further, a number of schools require students to either have the school health insurance or submit proof of insurance through other means. Finally, now you've reduced the argument to the 3 months of coverage in the summer after the next 3-4 years. Are you kidding me? This is on-topic, relevant, and meaningful? Give me a break.

You should look up the definition of a troll. Never mind that most university PhD stipend packages include health insurance.

Is your school starting after September 1st? The reason being that it's damn close to it and the filing schedule is such that 3rd quarter taxes are due September 15th and the last quarter starts September 1st, with the payment being due January 15th. If you haven't filed them yet, this year and didn't make much money in the third quarter, you can just not worry about it, as it already doesn't make much difference. For reference, if your income after applying the standard deduction ($5,500 last year) is less than $8,000 you do not owe any tax. Thank you. I'm actually really curious at this point because I couldn't find any references to such magical fellowships. Fair enough. Just in sciences, I know the books can be expensive and even taking 2 courses per semester, that could be $400-$600 for the year, or up to $90 saved in tax if subtracted from income. So I just wanted to make sure people knew about that. Yep, you're right. I can't pull up exactly what they called me. The GSRA could've been just the departmental designation, as I was working on research with a professor. The money, however, came out of the "Student Refund Group" (whatever that is) and was paid once in bulk for the whole semester. So, it was definitely classified differently for tax purposes.

Are you gonna be receiving a stipend with no additional stipulations or is it for being a TA or RA? Make sure to check the NY state tax laws about this as well. Also, if you had no tax liability in the previous year, you don't have to file estimated taxes for this year. More here So... in the end I still can't verify if these exist at all and you can't provide an example of one and the IRS seems to be unaware of such things. Yes, it does take a narrow view, however required textbooks could amount to a few hundred bucks each semester. Again, that's what I was trying to point out, as saving a few tens or hundred dollars in the end could make a difference to some. By the way, I was called a GA, or GSRA in particular, but because my fellowship did not require TA/RA duties, it was not classified as payment for services.