starmaker

I think it's at least possible, but I'm still confused about this early admissions thing. Like I said, I'm not aware of any programs that have a defined early admissions round (though you occasionally find one with rolling admissions). And it's highly unclear to me that there's a correlation between getting your app in early and having better GPA/GRE. Is this different in environmental policy? And if early admissions isn't the issue, I don't know how they would skew their numbers without just lying. I guess in fields where people aren't necessarily funded, you could only report the numbers for funded admittees. The thing about the US News subfield rankings (as opposed to the US News field rankings) is that they only poll deans, or department chairs, or something like that, as opposed to polling faculty in general. Which seems like it would aggravate the problems of the field rankings. And it means the rankings don't go as deep. Being a CS person, I'm glad that they consider CS a field rather than a subfield. I think it's pretty stupid that they consider all the various disciplines of engineering, for instance, to be subfields.

Er, I don't know what rankings flotsam is referring to, but the most famous ones (US News) don't use GPA or GRE for science and humanities rankings (they use quant GRE for engineering). They're a pure measure of reputation - the US News people survey professors in the field, and the professors rate each program from 1-5 based on their perception of how good it is. That's it. That's the sum total of their rankings, in the sciences and humanities. No GPA involved, no school-provided data involved at all, for that matter. And the other really famous rankings that I know of, the NRC rankings, are done over a long period of time anyway, and don't have strict yearly deadlines. I know it's fashionable for applicants to bash on rankings, and the bashing is often warranted too, but a program whose field is not ranked using incoming GPA/GRE is unlikely to manipulate the numbers for the purpose of looking good in the rankings that don't use those numbers. I'm not sure whether environmental policy falls under US News' academic rankings (which do not use GPA/GRE) or their professional school rankings (some of which do). It doesn't look like they have environmental policy rankings per se, which might be why some of the best programs in the field aren't well-ranked, because they're being ranked for a more general field like "public affairs" or "political science". I'm also somewhat confused about the allusion to early admission - are we talking about a formal early admissions round like many schools have for undergrad, or simply the evaluation of applications that get submitted early? Because I've never heard of a PhD program with a formal early admissions round. Is this a field-by-field deal?

At work, we (four authors) recently submitted an abstract to a conference. Not only was our abstract accepted, but it was picked to be the keynote talk! I'm not the one who will be giving the talk (the first author is). So I wouldn't put it in a talks section on my CV. But, it seems worth putting somewhere on my CV that I co-authored a thing that got picked to be the subject of a keynote. How should I indicate this on the CV? Should I have a section for abstracts and then put "keynote" in parentheses before (or after) the abstract in question? Should I put a bit about "Keynote talk delivered by [First Author]"? Something else?

It might be a function of GradCafe. People who bother to post on a board like this tend to be pretty driven. It might also be a function of the phenomenon where not everyone on the Internet tells the truth. Back when I did the CollegeConfidential thing, it was generally accepted that some people made up high numbers for themselves to fish for praise and intimidate other applicants (or to bolster their case for why Preferred College was So Wrong to have rejected them, and get sympathy). At the PhD level, as long as your numbers aren't bad, fit is more likely to matter anyway. I had a friend a few years ago, who had excellent research experience and recommendations but mediocre grades and a lowish GRE, apply to 10 programs and get rejected by all except the most prestigious two of them (both of which were top 10 in her field).

Boston Bus Maps is nice, but it sometimes takes ages for it to update with certain bus lines, as I noticed at my previous job (when there was one and only one bus that I could take to get home from work, and it only ran every half hour, so missing it was very annoying). "What do you mean, you last updated your info for this bus 450 seconds ago? I can't even tell if I've already missed it or not with that kind of timing!" That said, it's free, so it's certainly not like you're losing anything from it.

To some extent, I feel that if you have a license to carry, you should be able to carry while going about campus and such. There might be particular contexts in which you shouldn't, just as there are in the non-campus world (e.g. no carrying guns into the campus grad student pub). The key is that you should need a license, and that the relevant regulatory/licensing agencies should make sure that the people obtaining licenses are people who can be trusted with them. None of this "You go to a gun show and buy a gun on the spot, with no waiting period and no license required" stuff. Also, you should have to store them very carefully (like in a locked safe that's bolted to the wall, or a container in your car that is designed for firearms transport, or in a secure area at the campus gun range) when you aren't carrying them. My undergrad institution had a championship pistol team that ran into logistical issues trying to get to competitions and stuff, as that required transporting their guns some place other than the campus gun range. My uncle, who lives in a rural area and was a hunter and woodsman by trade before he went back to college to study nursing, got suspended from his program because a campus cop who was hassling him for looking too much like a hick, found that he'd mistakenly left a hunting rifle under the seat of his truck - I think it would have been entirely reasonable to make him leave campus and store the gun elsewhere before coming back to campus, even to give him a warning that he would be in serious trouble if it happened again, but the school had a "zero tolerance" sort of policy, so he got suspended. I think that a private institution should be allowed to ban firearms if they want (and a public one should be allowed to do so if we decide that that's what we want to happen with government property), but there's a difference between "I think they should be allowed to" and "I think it's the best option." Though I can see why a school in a state with very lax gun regulations might want to ban the carrying of guns, as they might consider the regulations surrounding who's allowed to carry one to be insufficient. I know how to shoot and plan to get a license once I quit being lazy and actually get my butt to the relevant city office to do the paperwork, but I wouldn't carry a gun for personal protection on campus. Too much chance of things going badly wrong - a situation escalated that doesn't need to be, a mugger getting ahold of the gun or interpreting it as a signal to shoot me rather than just take some cash, an innocent person getting hit in the crossfire. I don't necessarily agree with all of wtncffts' points, as should be obvious, but I agree that there are too many cowboy-wannabes in this debate (in general, not on this board), who think they're going to be the one to shoot down a mass killer, like in a movie.

I think your statement of purpose will be key here. You can use it to tell a compelling, accurate, story about why you are seeking an MS now. It's the place to put your degree history in context.

I don't know if the OP, not being a US citizen, is eligible for any of them, but there are several other companies in the Boston area with similar programs. In addition to LL, there are options like this at MITRE, Draper Lab, and BBN (you might be noticing a pattern - these are all government contractors). Possibly other places; those are just the ones that I know about.

Psychology? The OP is listed as being interested in CS, and this is the CS forum. Yes, you can get a PhD while working, but it's hard, and not all programs will let you. And most programs will require you to be a full-time PhD student. So you can work full-time and go to school full-time, or work part-time and go to school full-time.

This is some pretty detailed advice from a tenured science professor, complete with a template for an "excellent letter". http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2007/12/writing-to-me.html Here is some more do/don't advice on the same subject. http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2009/11/you-choose.html http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2010/11/getting-to-know-me-and-you.html Here is advice about how to arrange to meet with a potential advisor at a conference. http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2008/12/help-full.html

I had a 2.5 as an undergrad (from a big-name university), and I got into an MS program with a prestigious scholarship from the college. I got into the other MS program that I applied to in that round, as well. In the year and a half between finishing my undergrad and submitting my MS applications, I worked full-time as a junior researcher in industry, took five non-degree classes (in which I got decent but not outstanding grades), had two peer-reviewed publications as second author, was president of the women in CS group at the place where I took all but one of my non-degree classes, and won a conference attendance scholarship. I'm applying for PhD programs this fall (I'll be submitting applications 4.5 years post-bachelor's), and have continued building up my credentials. They are pretty strong if you take out the undergrad grades. We'll see how I do. I'm also going to apply for some fellowships. If you don't ask, you don't get, and the time that I've spent working in industry means that I'm not cash-strapped.

You absolutely can have a research career in CS without a PhD. I do, right now. I have for 4 years. However, the PhD will help you out, open some doors. It also helps for getting a job with a (US) government contractor, because the government likes to see credentials. I once had a proposal get rejected and one of the reviewers explicitly stated that thought the proposal was very good but they had a problem with the fact that none of the team had PhDs. If you're worried about money, you could spend a couple of years working non-PhD research jobs and saving money, to give you and your family a cushion for when you pursue the PhD. There are also research-oriented companies that will pay your way through the PhD (usually in exchange for some commitment time either before or after the degree, and possibly working part-time during the degree). I know of at least four companies within 15 miles of my house that do this.

It is extremely common for neuro grad students to come from fields other than neuro. And your research, while not directly neuro, is certainly relevant (in terms of providing a useful research background) for many subfields of neuro (like neurochemistry and neuropharmacology). Yes, this will count as research experience.

When you visit an apartment, it's not just the building itself that you're looking at. You want to get some idea of what the landlord is like (is he a slumlord? is she going to throw a fit and threaten to evict you over the slightest mess?), and you want to get some idea of what any neighbors whose apartments are right next to/above/below yours are like (will they be angry that you had an all-night party on a Friday night to celebrate passing your quals?). I would be pretty uncomfortable taking an apartment unless I or someone I knew and trusted had checked it out, and unless I had at least spoken to the landlord over the phone.

Most of my prospective PhD programs are CS, but a couple are bioinformatics/bioengineering-type things, and I'm vaguely interested in the NIH Graduate Partnership Program (where you collaborate with an NIH scientist on your research, and the NIH pays your stipend). I've read the NIH GPP website, but there are still some things I don't understand. Mostly, I'm wondering how much time you have to spend physically at the NIH. Obviously, you'd be there often, as you're collaborating with one of their scientists, but is it something where you travel frequently but for short periods of time (e.g. a week every month), or is it something where you actually have to go live in DC for the whole time you're working on your dissertation? Or does that depend on your subfield and project and who you're working with (one might be able to work remotely on the computational side of bioinformatics work, for example, in a way that can't really be done with wet lab work)? Has anyone done one of these (either institutional or individual)?

Yeah, um, anyone who tries to pull that with me when I'm in a PhD program, regardless of its rank, can kiss my ass. I can just go right back to industry if my advisor won't respect my ability to manage my time or the existence of my non-school life. I work full-time in industry, I'm a part-time MS student, and at the height of a semester I'm probably doing 60 hours a week between work and school. During lower-intensity times it's more like 50-55. Next school year I'll be writing my MS thesis as well as taking normal classes, which could be interesting at times. For the record, I have a number of friends who are grad students in top-10 programs in their fields, and they are able to have personal lives, don't regularly have to work 80-hour weeks, and are satisfying their advisors, making good progress toward their degrees, etc.

This is one of those field-by-field, program-by-program, things again, isn't it? One of the ones where half the posters claim that anything lower than an A in grad school is a warning sign that you are sucking, and the other half claim that anything above a C+ is totally fine, and both sides are correct for their own programs and fields? Most of us don't know the standard for your field and program, so we don't know if an A- is actually a good grade that you are freaking out about unnecessarily (this would be true in my program) or a signal that you really need to get your act together. But even if it is the latter, a single grade misstep is unlikely to hurt you in PhD admissions unless it's in the area that you want to specialize in, and possibly not even then.

I don't know what the standards are in your field, but in mine, full conference papers (as opposed to abstracts) and journal papers are both peer-reviewed (and both counted in things like faculty productivity measurements), and would both go under "Publications". I wouldn't list it under "Presentations" unless I was the one presenting. Edited to add: If conference papers are not considered "real publications" in your field, then perhaps you could have a separate CV section just for conference papers. Either way, I do think it should go on your CV in some fashion.

Verizon is usually very good, AT&T sucks beyond belief, not sure about anything else.

It seems like it would be overwhelming to live with someone who is in the same school situation that you are. You won't be able to ever get away from the department. I'd rather live with a grad student from a different department. (It's irrelevant for me, as I live with my husband, but I'm talking hypothetically here.)

This seems like it would negatively affect people who did reasonably well at universities with unusually strong student bodies. A median, or below-median, student, at, say, Caltech (to choose an example without much grade inflation), or Harvard (to choose an example that does have some grade inflation) is probably still smart enough and a strong enough student to be a fine grad student. Won't it only hurt them to get transcripts saying that they were average, or even below average? One would hope that the people making admissions decisions realize that you have to be very strong to be at these schools in the first place, and don't hold it against them, but who knows. It would probably help people with relatively good grades at schools without much grade inflation. I don't think it would hurt people from gentler schools much - there's a range of number grades that warrant an A, and something like this could distinguish a top student's A from a less stellar student's A, in a class where everyone gets As. Mostly, I think it will promote grade-grubbing and excessive competitiveness within classes. Now it's not enough to just get your good grade and then spend the rest of your time doing interesting things that actually mean something outside of the undergrad and grad/professional school admissions bubble worlds, like projects and research and internships. Now, you have to beat everybody else while getting your good grade it in order to impress the grad schools...students will go whining to their profs over a few points, refuse to study together or help each other, spend more time on classes instead of gaining research and work and other professional experience. For that reason I oppose it. Do we really want to assign such fine-grained, competition-oriented, scales, to such an imperfect tool for measuring merit? Heck, I think even counting pluses and minuses in GPA is too fine-grained.

And I am pretty sure that the ones who are doing this successfully aren't doing it with their email signatures. There are a bunch of contexts in which it's not only appropriate but necessary to play up your accomplishments. For example, an application of any sort (job, graduate program, fellowship). People who do well in these tend to set themselves apart by a combination of being proactive about finding opportunities, having good work to show, being able to write and speak well about their accomplishments and their potential, and (depending on what they are applying for) having good connections and social/professional networks. Putting the highest-profile items from your CV in an email signature just seems odd. You could have professors with an email signature that went on for half a page. If you really want people to be able to find these things from your email signature, include a link in the signature to your professional website or your LinkedIn profile, and mention them there, since those are both great places to put lists of accomplishments. Since you asked, no, I don't have an NSF, but I have one of my school's two most prestigious internal master's student scholarships, and I don't put it in my sig.

They might have worked in industry before. At least in my industry, it is very common for people to put their job title, department, and company, in their email signature. I've never done it in a school context, but I can see where someone might carry on the habit without having given it much thought. However, I have never seen anyone, in academia or industry, list awards that they have won in their email signature. I would find that weird.

Really, it all depends on what you want. I wouldn't want to live up there, because I don't like stereotypical suburbia. I like places with public transit and real commercial districts that I can walk to and easy access to Boston. Given your situation with your relationship, you might prefer somewhere that works for both you and your SO, even if it does not have those conveniences. Or you might just care more about getting more house for your money. As far as biking goes, I think biking is great, but it is important to remember that the weather is sometimes a problem in the Boston area. Even if you're a hardy sort who doesn't mind biking in below-freezing temperatures - and many folks are - you end up with icy roads, bike paths that aren't plowed (some towns plow theirs and some do not), piles of snow and ice shoveled directly into bike lanes, and drivers who somehow forget how to drive in icy conditions every year. I like biking, but I would not want to be bike-dependent for a commute. It sounds, though, like you can get around this by driving on the days that you can't really bike.

For living near Tufts, as long as you have roommates, 650-800 is entirely reasonable. The upper threshold might or might not include utilities depending on the place. Melrose has some bus lines, some commuter rail, and almost has the Oak Grove Orange Line stop (it's on the Melrose/Malden border). Not great public transit, but some public transit. None of the public transit goes to Tufts, though. I think Stoneham has some buses and that's about it. You can certainly get quiet in Medford or East Arlington, if it's loudness that you're worried about, and the cost will still be within your range, and you'll have an easier time getting to Tufts.