spunky

my Erdos number (as per http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/collaborationDistance.html)  is 5. i thought it would be less
but i'm much closer to other statisticians that i admire so that's OK
but i always thought this whole "academic lineage" thingy was more of a Physics/Math thingy. i didn't know now all the sciences are jumping into the bandwagon.
now the real question is... WHAT IF PEOPLE END UP DATING THEIR ACADEMIC RELATIVES WITHOUT KNOWING?!?!?

 
 

my Erdos number (as per http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/collaborationDistance.html)  is 5. i thought it would be less
but i'm much closer to other statisticians that i admire so that's OK
but i always thought this whole "academic lineage" thingy was more of a Physics/Math thingy. i didn't know now all the sciences are jumping into the bandwagon.
now the real question is... WHAT IF PEOPLE END UP DATING THEIR ACADEMIC RELATIVES WITHOUT KNOWING?!?!?

 
 

my uni (University of British Columbia, UBC) has a handy-dandy list of awards/fellowships/funding opportunities. although many of them are exclusive to UBC students, there's a sizable bunch that come from independent institutions and anyone can apply. the fact that they went through the trouble of compiling a list of all of these has saved me quite some time. maybe you'll find it useful as well?
https://www.grad.ubc.ca/scholarships-awards-funding/award-opportunities

also please do keep in mind that it is a lot more expensive to fund an international student than a domestic one. and we're in a  time where more and more students are applying for graduate school and the pools of money used to fund students are constantly being reduced. i know for a fact, for instance, that my school (University of British Columbia, UBC in Vancouver, Canada) is going through some tough financial times (long story) so the first thing they cut was funding for virtually anything.
sometimes it's not your "apparent" lack of ability/credentials what's hindering you. it could just be the money... (unless you have funding of your own in which case then i have no clue why you got all those rejections)

i'm betting my brownies that you'll be just fine with those GRE scores (contingent on everything else that you mentioned happening and working out for you).
in the very unlikely even that you get rejected from everywhere you apply (which will you won't, but still) at least you'll know it was those darn GRE scores coming right back at ya 

have you considered jumping into the "sharing economy" like becoming an Uber driver or posting on TaskRabbit?
from what i read in one of your other posts (and because i assume we are in somewhat similar programs) i can tell you that if you're willing to do data analysis for other people, you can make a pretty decent buck. and i'm speaking from experience here. god knows i wouldn't have been able to afford graduate school without putting some of my quantitative skills to work

Well, I started off pretty early (3rd year undergrad) because I needed money to finish paying for my degree. At that time there was a website (which I think ended up being bought by freelancer.com) where people would basically just post a brief description of their project, the budget they had available and then people (like me) would bid for those projects. I always took on the social science ones because I knew from my brief stint in psych classes that this is a widely untapped market by people who are mostly familiar STEM areas so I knew I had an angle there.  Little by little I started building up some rep and cut the middle man (the website which takes its share of your money) so I would deal with clients (and referrals) directly. Everything happened online: they would email me a description of their project, I’d give them half of it, I get half of the agreed price on my PayPal and then I’d finish everything for the 2nd half. I can’t tell for sure, but just by the type of questions and project descriptions I got, I’m pretty sure there are a few thesis/dissertations/published articles where all the analysis was done courtesy of yours truly.


 
When Kaggle became available I only kept my best online clients (from which I started building a more “official” looking business as a self-employed data analyst) and devouted my time to Kaggle competitions.  They take a lot of time but even if you only get one right, they pay REALLY well. At the same time, my graduate program opened a position for a “student consultant” to which other graduate students go to looking for advice in terms of running their statistics for their own research or methods questions. And I just straight up started offering: I can either “consult” you for free (because my meagre salary was being paid for the university) or I can do the whole analysis and write up a report with pretty graphs and colours, everything APA style and unlimited follow-ups in case revisions were requested. And from there I just ended up building a client base of students that, as expected, recommended me to their advisors and profs (who have lots of grant money) and then I just starting getting hired by the advisors directly.


 
Overall, the one thing life has taught me is that there is always more data out there than people able to analyze it properly. And if you know how to analyze things (and, more importantly how to effectively communicate the results of your analyses), work (and $$$) will never run out. 

Well, I started off pretty early (3rd year undergrad) because I needed money to finish paying for my degree. At that time there was a website (which I think ended up being bought by freelancer.com) where people would basically just post a brief description of their project, the budget they had available and then people (like me) would bid for those projects. I always took on the social science ones because I knew from my brief stint in psych classes that this is a widely untapped market by people who are mostly familiar STEM areas so I knew I had an angle there.  Little by little I started building up some rep and cut the middle man (the website which takes its share of your money) so I would deal with clients (and referrals) directly. Everything happened online: they would email me a description of their project, I’d give them half of it, I get half of the agreed price on my PayPal and then I’d finish everything for the 2nd half. I can’t tell for sure, but just by the type of questions and project descriptions I got, I’m pretty sure there are a few thesis/dissertations/published articles where all the analysis was done courtesy of yours truly.


 
When Kaggle became available I only kept my best online clients (from which I started building a more “official” looking business as a self-employed data analyst) and devouted my time to Kaggle competitions.  They take a lot of time but even if you only get one right, they pay REALLY well. At the same time, my graduate program opened a position for a “student consultant” to which other graduate students go to looking for advice in terms of running their statistics for their own research or methods questions. And I just straight up started offering: I can either “consult” you for free (because my meagre salary was being paid for the university) or I can do the whole analysis and write up a report with pretty graphs and colours, everything APA style and unlimited follow-ups in case revisions were requested. And from there I just ended up building a client base of students that, as expected, recommended me to their advisors and profs (who have lots of grant money) and then I just starting getting hired by the advisors directly.


 
Overall, the one thing life has taught me is that there is always more data out there than people able to analyze it properly. And if you know how to analyze things (and, more importantly how to effectively communicate the results of your analyses), work (and $$$) will never run out. 

sorry... couldn't help myself

i'm glad i could help
 
well, i honestly always try to believe that people don't make mistakes like this on purpose  **cough Diederik Stapel cough Michael LaCour** but sometimes it's just the lack of awareness about methodological issues combined with the lack of interest that a lot of people have when it comes to data analysis. Denny Borsboom has an awesome article with the even awesomer title The Attack of the Psychometricians (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2779444/)where he comments on the fact that, more often than not, methodologists within the social sciences and applied social scientists exist in somewhat parallel worlds and we don't really talk to each other very much. so our developments in data analysis do not inform your practice and your data analysis concerns do not always manage to make it to our computers/desks because there's just too many of them. that leaves a good chunk of what i would consider to be good, honest and bright scientists doing some pretty horrible data analysis jobs because they don't even know enough to question whether what they're doing is right. and then this goes on to be reviewed by people who are not intimately familiar with quantitative methodology/statistics and the cycle repeats itself over and over again until a few years down the line people start wondering why so many results fail to replicate
 
but, ultimately, you're the only one who can judge whether this leap is worthwhile for your or not. like if you were to tell me something like "i'm unsure about my job prospects once i graduate, i need a back-up plan that will get me a job, any job that pays more than waiting tables" then sure, absolutely, soldier on through your MSc and you'll be thankful that you have that as a back-up plan. but if you've already established a career route for you that maybe involves more research in psychology, maybe a tenure-track position, etc. then i would devote my time to get more pubs out and getting my name known as opposed to getting an MSc.
 
the good thing about the internet today is that you can maybe enroll in a MOOC or watch Khan Academy or something like that and get a feel of how things are. if you see yourself getting interested then maybe you can progress more into taking Statistics but if you don't like it then at least you're not in a program wasting years of your life for something that's eating away your soul. 

if this is a formal Statistics degree, the calculus that you will learn won't actually be needed for data analysis itself. you'll usually need to understand calculus to understand something about the properties of estimators or how certain probability density functions become something else. when it comes to the application part of things, the calculus is usually done behind the scenes in the computer. but you'll now be able to say "aha! i know where these numbers come from!" 

I guess this can be either a hindrance or an advantage depending on how you work with it.
 
I come from a Math background and jumping into a social science/education/psych background did help me bring in some skills that I know your average student in these programs does not have. Most of the methodology courses that you take in Psych or Ed departments are much more focused on the application of statistics or how to use the methods. Very little attention is devoted to the actual theory or why they work. Whereas this probably serves the needs of your average graduate student, it does leave them at the disadvantage of not knowing how to proceed if they’re dealing with an unusual dataset with complicated dependencies (spoiler alert: those are the types of datasets where the most interesting results are found). A degree in Statistics might not prepare you to become a skilled data analyst in the social sciences but it will give you the necessary background to jump in with new ideas. But then again if you plan on working on research areas where there are standard methodologies in place, then there really isn’t much value in getting an MSc in Statistics aside from fostering your own personal knowledge.
 
 
Will it make you a better researcher? Well, it depends on what you’re researching, right? It made me a good researcher because my research is very technical in nature. But if say you were interested in doing research in... oh I don’t know, standardized tests or scale development then it would benefit you much more to get some sort of degree or specialization in Psychometrics and not formal Statistics (very little to no Psychometrics are covered in a standard Statistics department). If you see yourself working in areas like neuropsychology or neurobiology, maybe a degree in Biostatistics (with emphasis in fMRI imaging which is a VERY hot topic) would serve you better. It seems to me that if your ultimate goal is to be a researcher more than a methodologist, you’d need to tailor your degree to cover the methodologies that are used in your substantive area of content. Or you can always become just a methodologist… I mean… we’re kinda short on those right now
 
Will it make you more employable in the job market? Oh, it most definitely will! But here’s the catch… will it make you more employable in jobs you are interested in? Like, big pharma companies pay well for DNA sequencing analysts… but last time I worked on something like that I wanted to gouge my eyes out of sheer boredom.
 
So all in all I think this is not a bad idea per se as long as you have a good game plan. I mean, you’re still committing a year of your life to something that you’ve already admitted to you’re not super passionate about.

i find this both insulting AND hilarious

Halloween costume parties
 
Christmas/Holiday dinners with the colleagues.
 
the rest of the year is a barren wasteland of loneliness and despair. 

This is the last thing I was say on this thread, but when I posted, I expected that I would be treated with some respect. I do not believe I was treated with respect by the site monitors when my post was available. Sometimes people are disrespectful and short-sighted without realizing it--particularly when talking across lines and gender and power--and I believe that's what happened here. That does not mean that I cannot tell people that I find their comments on helpful, though, or that I cannot make efforts to stop disrespectful comments aimed at my post. So I took down my post, I am not putting it back up--no matter who tries to act like I owe my post to Grad Cafe. I have not used Grad Cafe in months and was not aware of the edit policies when I made my post. Now that I know the site policies and have had the experience of posting here, I won't be using the site anymore. Problem solved.

if there is any consolation anotherapplicantanotherapp, i'm 100% with you and your initial assessment of the situation would have been the same exact same as mine. my husband runs his own business and he has taught me how to follow your gut in situations like this. at least in the business world/office politics, it is incredibly common for people to do things and then "pretend" they didn't happen or make sure to use other people/fake email accounts/etc. to do their dirty work so they can at least have some sort of plausible deniability excuse. 
 
i may entertain the possibility that this person's boyfriend acted of his own accord if there had been some sort of apology or reaching out on her behalf. had my husband done something like this i would have probably slapped him right that moment because of just how ratchet that kind of behaviour is. but the convenient sequence of events  that you described and her apparent lack of response seemed just too convenient to me for this to just be an accident of sorts. 
 
i personally would confront her in private before going all the way. like "hey, i'm not stupid here. if there's anything you need to say say it now to my face". 

if there is any consolation anotherapplicantanotherapp, i'm 100% with you and your initial assessment of the situation would have been the same exact same as mine. my husband runs his own business and he has taught me how to follow your gut in situations like this. at least in the business world/office politics, it is incredibly common for people to do things and then "pretend" they didn't happen or make sure to use other people/fake email accounts/etc. to do their dirty work so they can at least have some sort of plausible deniability excuse. 
 
i may entertain the possibility that this person's boyfriend acted of his own accord if there had been some sort of apology or reaching out on her behalf. had my husband done something like this i would have probably slapped him right that moment because of just how ratchet that kind of behaviour is. but the convenient sequence of events  that you described and her apparent lack of response seemed just too convenient to me for this to just be an accident of sorts. 
 
i personally would confront her in private before going all the way. like "hey, i'm not stupid here. if there's anything you need to say say it now to my face". 

if there is any consolation anotherapplicantanotherapp, i'm 100% with you and your initial assessment of the situation would have been the same exact same as mine. my husband runs his own business and he has taught me how to follow your gut in situations like this. at least in the business world/office politics, it is incredibly common for people to do things and then "pretend" they didn't happen or make sure to use other people/fake email accounts/etc. to do their dirty work so they can at least have some sort of plausible deniability excuse. 
 
i may entertain the possibility that this person's boyfriend acted of his own accord if there had been some sort of apology or reaching out on her behalf. had my husband done something like this i would have probably slapped him right that moment because of just how ratchet that kind of behaviour is. but the convenient sequence of events  that you described and her apparent lack of response seemed just too convenient to me for this to just be an accident of sorts. 
 
i personally would confront her in private before going all the way. like "hey, i'm not stupid here. if there's anything you need to say say it now to my face". 

if there is any consolation anotherapplicantanotherapp, i'm 100% with you and your initial assessment of the situation would have been the same exact same as mine. my husband runs his own business and he has taught me how to follow your gut in situations like this. at least in the business world/office politics, it is incredibly common for people to do things and then "pretend" they didn't happen or make sure to use other people/fake email accounts/etc. to do their dirty work so they can at least have some sort of plausible deniability excuse. 
 
i may entertain the possibility that this person's boyfriend acted of his own accord if there had been some sort of apology or reaching out on her behalf. had my husband done something like this i would have probably slapped him right that moment because of just how ratchet that kind of behaviour is. but the convenient sequence of events  that you described and her apparent lack of response seemed just too convenient to me for this to just be an accident of sorts. 
 
i personally would confront her in private before going all the way. like "hey, i'm not stupid here. if there's anything you need to say say it now to my face". 

if there is any consolation anotherapplicantanotherapp, i'm 100% with you and your initial assessment of the situation would have been the same exact same as mine. my husband runs his own business and he has taught me how to follow your gut in situations like this. at least in the business world/office politics, it is incredibly common for people to do things and then "pretend" they didn't happen or make sure to use other people/fake email accounts/etc. to do their dirty work so they can at least have some sort of plausible deniability excuse. 
 
i may entertain the possibility that this person's boyfriend acted of his own accord if there had been some sort of apology or reaching out on her behalf. had my husband done something like this i would have probably slapped him right that moment because of just how ratchet that kind of behaviour is. but the convenient sequence of events  that you described and her apparent lack of response seemed just too convenient to me for this to just be an accident of sorts. 
 
i personally would confront her in private before going all the way. like "hey, i'm not stupid here. if there's anything you need to say say it now to my face". 

Fuzzy logician, you are really, really unhelpful. I discussed a completely unrelated issue with the harassment office at my university once before. I was mistaken in thinking that that office also served as the Title IX Office. 
 
I also did not know what you meant when you said it sounded like a Northwestern case brewing. I have not been following the Northwestern case recently, and I only knew about Northwestern's policy update and Kipnis's response. I was assuming that was what you were talking about at first, and I only found out about the Title IX retaliation complaints brought against Kipnis later on, after this thread had been going on for a while.
 
I do not think it is in any way disrespectful of me to delete a post when people are jumping to unreasonable conclusions about me and my character, based on the limited information I provided. I thought there used to be a way to delete a post shortly after posting, if the poster decided that he or she had provided too much personal information, but I guess I was mistaken.
 
I do not appreciate the responses I have received, though, regardless of the precious time that the posters devoted, and I do wish there was a way to delete this thread or at least my account. Maybe there is a way to delete my account, and I am just not seeing it?
 
In the meantime, continue the discussion about terrible students who abuse Title IX if you must, but stop referring to me. That problem has absolutely nothing to do with me, and I find these accusations abusive.
 
Also, please remember that it was not my idea to use the term "Title IX Office," and that in saying that's where I would go, I was just echoing rising_star's advice and trying to sound agreeable. It was my intention to do my own research and figure out the appropriate reporting venue at my university, not to actually, blindly march into the Title IX Office and tell them my story. 

i bet my brownies that your prof sent her bf over so she could circumvent any responsibility for those actions...
 
 
... now i sometimes wonder how come stuff like this never happens to me? the most salacious piece of gossip i've heard in my program so far is just someone who forgot to lock her office on a Friday and remained unlocked ALL WEEKEND. nothing was taken from the office though #truestory

i think it's this one, right?
 
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005
 
it was somewhat of an eye-opener to me. i actually ended up switching unis for nothing else but the ranking of the one i'm now VS the one i started graduate school in. it's a tough world out there

yeaaah.... good luck with that one. but if we're being honest here, i wouldn't hold my breath with that happening anytime soon. ergo, we try to look around for more practical solutions?
 
and in a relatively tangential argument, i'm almost sure there are a few articles here and there where it was mentioned that millennials (who i guess are most of us) were using graduate school as some sort of "diversionary tactic" while waiting for the job market to look better? the jump from potential unemployment to a  (hopefully regular) stipend/fellowship sounds like a really smart move to me. but then again it probably sounded like a smart move to hundreds of other students and now we have more PhDs graduating than society can absorb (unless you look for alternative/industry options)

yeaaah.... good luck with that one. but if we're being honest here, i wouldn't hold my breath with that happening anytime soon. ergo, we try to look around for more practical solutions?
 
and in a relatively tangential argument, i'm almost sure there are a few articles here and there where it was mentioned that millennials (who i guess are most of us) were using graduate school as some sort of "diversionary tactic" while waiting for the job market to look better? the jump from potential unemployment to a  (hopefully regular) stipend/fellowship sounds like a really smart move to me. but then again it probably sounded like a smart move to hundreds of other students and now we have more PhDs graduating than society can absorb (unless you look for alternative/industry options)