juilletmercredi

^I think it's partially that, and partially just that quite religious people in monotheistic religions tend to have the firm belief that God will provide. It's a core tenet of Christian faith and I think of Islamic and Jewish faith, too. The idea is that God created the world and God created us, so God will always provide everything that we need and we don't have to worry about things running out (on a global scale). I grew up in a conservative Christian religious household and I remember having a conversation with my mother about overpopulation. I remember her saying something like "God would never let the world become overpopulated. He created it for us to live on and he'd make sure we all have enough room." That was literally her answer to the problem - it was something she didn't feel like we should worry about (as humanity) because God would take care of it. (No explanation of the physical mechanisms of how, though.) I've had similar experiences with other conservative Christians. And, if you don't have a strong science background, you do know that other resources are renewable (like wood and water) and you may only have a vague recollection of where oil and gas come from from ninth grade earth science. It comes from the earth and the earth grows stuff, right?

Mmm, I have a different opinion. Two things. One, the best MBA programs practically require their students to have gotten some work experience - usually at least 2 years - after college. There are many reasons for that. The business school curriculum is structured in a way that students with business experience benefit the most from coursework. Also, an MBA is a degree that prepares you for higher-level positions; few people want to hire an MBA with no work experience. With only three years of undergrad you also presumably have had less time to acquire internship and part-time work experience. So I'd plan to work for a few years before graduate school, especially for an MBA - at least two but ideally 3-5. Two, I would not plan to go to a graduate program and try to play a sport. I would say if you want to use up your eligibility, spend an additional year in undergrad. Graduate school is time consuming. It's a lot of work. And you should be spending your time doing things that will increase your chances of launching your career after the program. Graduate professors will be much less tolerant of you having to miss a class because you are away at a tournament. And there's a lot of group work in business programs.

As opposed to what? The Eastside? Other U.S. cities?

I don't think public administration is necessarily more rigorous in and of itself. It kind of depends on where you go and what you do there. Breadth doesn't necessarily mean rigor. Also, political science is absolutely a discipline/field. Do you like math? Are you good at quantitative analysis? It's my understanding that most of the good jobs for economics MAs involve a lot of econometric and statistical analysis, and that students who get into good MA programs in this field have solid mathematics backgrounds. You say you want a career in NGOs or government offices. But what kind of career? Those organizations have all kinds of employees, including accountants and lawyers and HR managers. What do you want to do? That will help answer your question of what to pursue.

I sort of half-agree with your post. It's true that a single metric is often not enough to get you rejected - many programs use a holistic review and won't toss out your application if you are below some imaginary threshold. It's also true that an otherwise outstanding application can make up for a low metric in one area, like a low GPA or low GRE scores. That said, first of all, I don't think it's "passion" that makes the difference. There are many very passionate students who really want to go to graduate school, but programs are concerned with whether you can do the work and successfully complete the program. It's an otherwise outstanding packet; the other elements show the committee that your one or two low metric(s) are not really reflective of your true potential. Most professors do not see a 2.86 and say "here is a student who just didn't want to take the easy way out! He took the hard classes!" (Quite frankly, simply attempting hard things doesn't matter quite as much as doing well in them. As Yoda would say, there is no try.) They may wonder "Does this student have a strong enough grounding in the undergrad work to succeed here?" Second of all, it is true that some programs do weed people out on the basis of low GRE scores or low GPAs. Some schools have stated cutoffs and they do not accept people below them, except in exceptional circumstances. Other programs have sort of unofficial minimums they like to try to adhere to - sometimes unconsciously. That said, a 3.44 isn't that low of a GPA, especially in engineering, and especially with a major GPA of a 3.71.

Not that I don't think that a prestigious undergrad helps, but some of this is not really evidence. I'm only speaking from my experience, but I was just accepted to Penn for a masters in International Education Development, a field I have very limited experience in. I have a pretty good GPA from a brand name UG school. I am of the opinion that if that GPA was from a different school, I may not have been accepted. I also feel like the only reason I got my first job was because of my UG school, that my job applications stand out and obviously so do my grad school apps. This is just confirmation bias...there's no counterfactual. So there's no way to know for sure. Thank you for your honest and thoughtful post! It's quite disheartening to read some of that, but realistic. I can personally corroborate some of your experiences: my undergraduate degree is from a prestigious school, and I have a 3.69 from that school. My master's degree is from a public CUNY, and I have a 4.0. Now, personally, I believe I had to work my ass off for the 3.69, and my 4.0 masters required very little effort/far less rigorous, but that's a separate issue. As I am currently applying for a second masters (to switch careers), and am applying exclusively to name brand schools (mostly because those are the only ones that offer my program in the Northeast), having talked to people in-the-know, they said that they much more highly regard my 3.69 than my 4.0, because the 4.0 is non-reflective of academic excellence because of the school I earned it at. Now, this next statement may be pretentious, but I actually do agree with them: if you can earn a 4.0 and not feel intellectually or academically challenged, a school is not as strong as one where you feel like you strained every last brain muscle to achieve a lower grade. In this circumstance, I'm grateful that the rigor of my undergraduate experience is recognized and valued. Well, one, I don't agree. The teaching styles and methods of the second school might be better suited to your learning style, so you may have found it easier to grasp the material than you did the first time around. The first school may have been more sink-or-swim whereas the second school was more nurturing. Or maybe this is a field in which undergraduate preparation is difficult but graduate work is easier once you have a foundational knowledge. Personally I tend to be amused when people assume that brand-name schools' GPAs carry more weight because those schools are rather well-known for their rampant grade inflation. Having attended a brand-name school for graduate school and TA'd and taught some undergrad classes, I don't think I would ever give them more weight than a different school. In fact...I might give them less. I think people make a lot of concomitant assumptions about prestigious or "brand-name" schools - that they are harder, better, more rigorous, more intellectually stimulating, tat their students are smarter, etc., simply because of the prestige. Some of those things may be true some of the time - prestigious schools do tend to have better resources to attract the top students. But I wouldn't make assumptions about the rigor of a school I didn't know anything about. In that sense, I think it's the same as what someone said above - a more well-known school may confer some benefit but non-well-known schools are just neutral. And what's well-known is different from what's prestigious, and will vary from program to program and professor to professor.

My apartment was so tiny that there was no way I could work in total isolation. But I did make my husband (the only one I shared it with) aware of my writing schedule. Because he knew what it was, he generally left me alone when he knew I was deep in dissertation writing - he would only interrupt me to bring me something to eat or massage my shoulders or give me some encouragement. (Love that man.)

Honestly, I'm not sure I would tell past-me to go to a PhD program, if I had the chance. Assuming that I would, though, I would tell past-me to apply to more PhD programs. I only applied to one, because I was afraid I wouldn't be competitive anywhere (I was planning to get a master's first). I'd also tell past me to take 2-3 years off after undergrad and before graduate school to work in my chosen field (public health). I think then past-me would've had a better handle on her own research interests and been better prepared to hit the ground running in graduate school wrt publications.

This, plus - it's difficult to articulate, but female and minority students also shouldn't be "ghettoized" either, if that makes sense. Every female student having a woman to look up to is a good baby step, but I think the ultimate goal is that every professor should be examining their unconscious biases and become the kind of professor who can give good mentorship to women and students of color. I've had some truly excellent mentors who were white men or women but who still had a good understanding of even some nuanced race/ethnicity and gender issues, and weren't afraid to learn from me, learn from others, and adjust their thinking or mentoring style to help me the best they can. Because I could die waiting for them to hire another black woman for me to 'look up to,' lol. Moreover, sometimes the best mentor for your research or where you want to go professionally isn't the black woman; it's the white straight guy.

I think the fact that there's so much dissension on this topic is a clear sign that there are no hard and fast rules. I mean, like resumes - conventional wisdom is that your resume should be one page long unless you have something like 7-10 years of full-time work experience, but I got considerable interest with a 2-page resume only a year out of graduate school (at which point I did have 7 years of work experience, but all part-time and internship positions). I've seen people with truly awful resumes and cover letters get hits, too. The order that you write about it in probably doesn't matter as much as the way in which you write about it. As rising_star indicated, if you make it clear that you recognize that teaching is a priority for these positions (especially the non-elite SLACs that have loads of 3/2 or higher) in your writing and the way you write about both your research AND your teaching, you'll probably be okay. That said, if I were writing to a teaching-focused institution I'd put the teaching first. The only exception might be if I were applying to some of the elite SLACs - Middlebury, Swarthmore, Wellesley, et al. - that have 2/2 loads and, in my field, hire people who would be competitive for R1 positions.

In addition to what rising_star and TakeruK have said, I actually think it's more difficult to move up from an RU/H ("R2") or DRU (Doctoral/Research University) university than you think it is. I suppose it depends a lot on the kind of RU/H you're at - there are some RU/Hs that approach smaller/less well-funded RU/VH institutions in terms of research funding and tenure expectations. But if you go teach at a regional state university at the RU/H or DRU level, and you're expected to teach a 3/2 teaching load, in 3 years when you're on the market for other positions you're competing with colleagues who went to RU/VH (and the handful of top RU/H) universities where they got a teaching reduction in their first 3 years to 1/1 or 1/0 (and even after that are only expected to teach a 2/2). They had way more time to write and publish the 2-4 publications a year that keep them competitive for RU/VH jobs. They also have way more infrastructure to write the grants that make them competitive for the RU/VH jobs. In addition, your institution has less money overall, so your startup funding might be less, which may mean that your lab has less of the equipment and support (in terms of doctoral students and research assistants) that you need. And maybe your department attracts less capable doctoral students to help you churn out your paper - or maybe you have no doctoral students at all. It's not that it's impossible, but it's very difficult.

The requirements for family housing at Weill Cornell are available on their website. Their studios, 1- and 2-bedroom apartments are limited, so they have instituted an eligibility policy. If you're not married, you have to be domestic partners, which means you have to have registered for a domestic partnership in NYC. You also have to show joint management of household expenses for at least one year prior to moving in, which could mean a joint bank account, joint mortgage or lease, designation of your boyfriend as an insurance beneficiary or registration as domestic partners in some other jurisdiction. So if you have been living together for some time and you have one of those above, and are willing to get registered as domestic partners in New York City within 30 days of moving, then yes, you can probably get a one-bedroom or studio to yourselves if they have any left when you apply. I'd advise you to take a two-pronged approach. Apply for housing with Weill Cornell, but also look for housing on the open market. Familiarize yourself with neighborhoods in the area and be prepared to launch a search over the summer of 2016 if you don't get housing. (The Washington Heights neighborhood, where New York Presbyterian Hospital and a lot of the laboratories and clinical facilities for Weill Cornell are housed, is pretty inexpensive relative to the rest of Manhattan. However, if most of your classes and your lab are going to be on the UES where the residence halls are, it's a pain in the butt to get from the west side to the east side. However, I'd also look in Queens, like Astoria and Long Island City. Those neighborhoods are nice and a straight shot to the UES.)

Chapters are the bane of graduate school existence. You will write them. They will take up inordinate amounts of your time. But they will not matter. Okay, so I'm being overly dramatic. But in seriousness, in many fields, a book chapter means little to nothing for your CV. In my social sciences field, it doesn't. However, they often take around the same amount of time if not MORE than peer-reviewed articles. So grad students are often advised to minimize the number of them in favor of spending that time on other CV-building activities. (And yet, tenured professors keep asking us to do them.) Yes, talk to your advisor about it, and consider the other things you have planned over the next several months.

Tough? Pre-med students are the worst grade grubbers. On some plane of existence, I have a little sympathy for them - medical school admissions are insane and the competitiveness adds ridiculous pressure. However, not my life choice and not my fault you got a B+! (Which is, after all, a good grade.) The AAMC actually has a table of medical school applicant info that may be useful. Basically, even if she got a B+ average throughout college (3.3-3.5 GPA), if she scores well on the MCAT (30+) she's got pretty decent chances of being accepted to medical school. However, it's probably not very productive to share that with the student...assuming that you have good documentation of your grading, you can just re-explain that the grade is determined such and such way and thus the grade is fair. There's really nothing you can do.

I don't think it's impossible to deem someone not well-suited for a PhD in their first semester. That's 3-4 months. There are some huge red flags that can be identified in the first 3-4 months. That doesn't mean that you kick the student out immediately - you give them a chance to improve, support them. BUT you can definitely tell them what they are doing wrong and let them know that if they don't shape up they are in danger of being booted. Sounded like that's what OP's PI did. Generally in the first year, a new PhD student is expected to 1) take the required coursework, usually about 9 hours; 2) TA 1-2 sections, usually about 20 hours' worth a week; and 3) start doing research, assisting in the lab with basic and intermediate tasks and starting to come up with their own research ideas. Publishing a paper usually comes later but the earlier you publish the better, and it's not unheard of for students to publish a paper in their first or second year. In my field, it's common for students to start publishing their work by their third or fourth year. At the very least, though, a first-year PhD student should be able to come up with at least a rudimentary research idea. And yes, of course this "episode" would have a negative impact. Usually if you want to apply to a new PhD program, you'd need to get a letter of recommendation from someone in your department - ideally your advisor, but if that's not possible then another professor who believes in you and will give you a strongly positive letter. Is there another professor in your department that thinks highly of your work?

I used Kelsky's services once - a "quick" review of my cover letter for $125. Given that I've priced editing services before, I think $125 for an hour or two's worth of work is pretty reasonable. I can't say that I would necessarily recommend her services - I think it depends on what you're looking for. I think I got out of it what I paid for, and were I launching a full academic search I'd probably have paid for the 3-document review. But I will say that my overarching advice is that you can't expect it to be something that it's not. If you read her blog, you know how she interacts with people: her tone and manner is blunt, straightforward, sometimes abrasive. Moreover, no one can guarantee you results: you still probably won't get the job. (I didn't, although that's a good thing in my case, and I only applied to 2 institutions.) Probably my biggest problem with her is that she has rigid rules about writing materials. First of all, there aren't really any hard-and-fast rules about writing materials. All kinds of formats can work depending on who's doing the writing and who the audience is. And second of all, some of her rules are simply wrong. For example, I think most of what she has to say about applying to LACs is wrong, because it flies in the face of actual recommendations from actual LAC professors. (Why would you discuss research first at an LAC that has a 4/4 load? Why would you not describe how much you love teaching and mentoring, with proof, at a school that explicitly says that's important for professors?) But that's true of everyone you consult with. Your R1 professor may have some really wrong or outdated ideas about how to write a letter for an LAC. Your dissertation committee member may not know how to spell himself and thus misses all your typos. Your PI may be a great resource for materials but their method of improvement is berating you mercilessly. Basically, what you are paying for with Kelsky is another set of eyes on your work from the perspective of an academic who's hired people before, albeit in her own field at two R1 departments. No more, no less. You can take or leave the advice that she gives you. A lot of it is good, some of it is bad. In my case, after I finished my quick edit service with her, I went back and added some stuff I knew she would disagree with (I was applying to a small liberal arts college, and everything I had read and heard about applying to LACs from actual LAC professors themselves was at odds with what she says in her blog.) That said, I will say that she most definitely does not overcharge. She does charge by the hour, but she does not promise to spend an hour per draft. She says that she will spend an hour per document, and she charges accordingly. Most people ask me to work on 3 or 4 documents–job letter, cv, and teaching statement, and/or research statement. One document is one hour of work. 3 hours of work at $150/hour, with the 10% discount for 3-4 hours, comes to $405. If her work includes 4 drafts and she promises 1 hour per document, then theoretically she's spending around 15 minutes per draft. However, having received back her work, I truly do believe she spends much more than 15 minutes on your draft. However, I will say that $150 for a back-and-forth review of your document until it's in short-list-worthy state (and really, it's $135 if you get the 10% discount), with someone at her level of education, who isn't just copyediting but is actually commenting on substantive topics, is actually pretty good. I priced editors when I was looking for a dissertation editor and most of them charge much more than that. And I know statistical consultants who charge that much and more for their work. I will also say that I would disregard pretty much anything the CHE forums have to say about her work. She's not perfect, but the CHE commenters are just needlessly mean and vicious when it comes to talking about Kelsky. Notably, many of them seem to have a problem with her charging for her labor, while neglecting to realize that they themselves get paid to do the same thing (albeit more indirectly).

I can give a perspective from the other side - how I decided that the R1 path was not for me. I'm currently a researcher in a non-academic position in industry. It was less of a "when" than it was a "how." The "when" was in the mid-to-late spring of 2015, about 6-8 months into the first year of my postdoctoral fellowship and about 4-6 months before I expected to go on the job market. But really, the signs were there all along; I'd always had my doubts about academia and actually never really intended to go into academia at all when I started my PhD. It wasn't really a lightbulb moment; it was a slow culmination over time. However, three things happened that probably catalyzed my realization. One, I wrote a grant for the NIH; long story short, I spent 4-5 months writing that thing and the mock review revealed that it'd need several more weeks of work (which was normal for the level I was at). I realized that in no lifetime did I ever want to spend 6-8 months working on 6 pages of text. Second, I went to back to back conferences and I suddenly realized that I hate academic conferences. Hate them! I'd always hated them, too, I just never admitted it to myself. Thirdly, an offhand comment from a postdoc colleague who was struggling a bit with her PI hit me like a hammer. Her PI was assigning her to work on some projects she didn't really care for, and she said something like "I don't really care if he gives me 4-5 projects that I hate to work on, as long as I can write just one paper on something I love I'll be fine!" I realized that I did not share her sentiment, and I did not want to compete for R1 jobs with people who did. So here were the three major factors that made me opt out of an R1 career: The kind of work that I would have to do was not personally appealing to me. I'm a very solutions-oriented, applied-work kind of person. I wanted to see my research have a very concrete, visible impact on something in the short-term - weeks or months intead of years or decades. I hate writing scientific journal articles; I hate the stilted language and the fact that they are designed only for other scientists to read. In my current position, I work on shorter term projects - ones that usually only last a few months, with the planning and execution of research studies being just a few weeks. I write reports in plain English directed at non-scientists, and my work goes directly towards improving products that millions of people use. The lifestyle and work-life balance/blend did not appeal to me, either. As you noted, all of the R1 academics in my life - first, professors and advisors, and then over time, friends and colleagues - seemed to have no time to really develop their personal lives. I have yet to run into an R1 professor who just feels like they have lots of free time to develop hobbies, volunteer, travel, or spend with their families. I discovered in grad school and in my postdoc that work/life balance was really, really important to me. I especially hated the way that academic work seemed to follow you everywhere, all the time. I got married in graduate school to my long-term partner, and our relationship was really struggling along when I was in graduate school. Now I work 9-6 and I leave work at work, and I have copious free time on the weekends. My colleagues and manager actually encourage all of us to take time off to recharge, and people try to stay off work email and do no work when they are on vacation. (There was a silly contest over the Thanksgiving week amongst some of my colleagues in which people lost points for coming into the office or sending emails.) Half the time I don't know what to do with myself. And now that I am out of academia, I can see even more starkly how much my relationship was struggling due to my academic work. It's not impossible to balance the tenure track and marriage, but it certainly difficult. On the other hand, my job encourages and embraces family relationships! I've learned more about the family and personal lives of my colleagues, and met more of my colleagues' spouses and kids, in the 3 months I've worked here than I met of my professors' and colleagues' families in the 6 years I was in grad school. I think I can actually name all of my coworkers' kids and MOST of them have children! Where I lived geographically was really important to me, and I had little to no control over that in academia. Being a planner, I started monitoring the job market for a couple years before I was ready to go on it. I noticed that a lot of the jobs - especially the R1 jobs and the jobs at small liberal arts colleges - tended to pop up in small college towns that were several hours from large cities. I wasn't sure that I wanted that; the R1 at which I did my PhD was in a large city. So I undertook an experiment during my postdoc - I did it at an R1 in a small college town that was 3 hours from the nearest large city, in part because I wanted to see if I could handle it. While I didn't completely hate the town I was in and I actually managed to make some great friends, I decided I couldn't do it long-term. First of all, I had no idea where my spouse would work. There weren't a lot of job opportunities outside of the university. Second of all, getting out of the place - or getting friends to the place - was difficult (there was one small airport that required a connection to virtually anywhere I wanted go, and flights were expensive). Given that I knew I wanted to travel, that was problematic. Third of all, many of my hobbies and the things I like to do require access to an urban area. And fourth, the area wasn't the most socioeconomically or racially diverse town, which was more or less important to me because I'm African American. There was nowhere for me to get my hair done, for example. My current job is located in a metropolitan area of a large city, and I live just a 20-minute drive from the city in an excellent suburban area. I love it. Yeah, I know exactly how you feel. My PI was the kind of person that if I went to the biggest conference in my field, people would not only know who he was (and thus the kind of work that I did) but also probably knew him personally. His recommendation would've meant a great deal in an R1 job search, and he thought very highly of me. My university was like that too - the name generates eyebrow raises. I realized, though that none of that matters if your life is miserable once you're in the job. You're not throwing it away by any means. For one, all of that stuff may help you land a non-academic job. My advisors knew some researchers who were in research positions at non-academic places, too (mostly think tanks and government agencies, though). My university is equally impressive outside academia as it is inside, and all of my colleagues are PhDs in psychology who stay familiar with program reputations. And you never know - my past experiences in academia have influenced my current work in unexpected ways. Also, you may be surprised with how your PIs react. I was convinced that my postdoc PIs would be upset or disappointed with me for my choice, but they were supportive and happy for me when I got my current position. One acknowledged that it would be difficult to transition back into academia but mentioned that he'd help in any way he could if I decided I wanted to. (I do think, however, that was largely influenced by the company and the position I ended up in - it's a household name company.) I did have an unpleasant conversation with the director of my postdoctoral program (he essentially said what you wrote above, to my face) but I decided I didn't give a flying [flip] what he thought. Also, I can't find it, but I do want to address something else: Someone here said something like wanting to keep their options open or alternatively not wanting to close the door to opportunities. I just want to say that after I left academia and went into research in industry, I felt so liberated. I don't feel like I have fewer opportunities - I have MORE! I reinvented myself once, why not again? The research I do is applicable to a variety of fields - I'm a user experience researcher but I could follow the management track in my current position, go into marketing, transition into science & technology policy...these are all fields I'm interested in. The non-academic corporate world is a lot more forgiving of career changes and reinvention. So yes, I did close the door on academia - but it wasn't a door I wanted anyway, and I have so many other open doors to consider.

Everyone I know who has a personal laser pointer uses either the Kensington, the Logitech, or the Targus, in that order of frequency. I have the Logitech R800. I sprung for that one because of the green laser pointer and the countdown timer built into the LCD display. I also love the ergonomic feel of the grip. http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Professional-Presenter-Green-Pointer/dp/B002GHBUTU/ref=sr_1_1?s=office-products&ie=UTF8&qid=1449739952&sr=1-1&keywords=logitech+pointer Logitech also sells the R400, which is the same except the pointer is red and no LCD screen/timer. http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-910-001354-Wireless-Presenter-R400/dp/B002GHBUTK/ref=pd_bxgy_229_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=01P0RAB8M7YPPH9A5G0F I don't think I have ever had to change the batteries, and Amazon says I bought it in Feb 2013. (I had the R400 first - I actually snagged it in Nov 2010 during a sale for like $20 - but I lost it.)

I found a typo (I can't remember whether it was a missing word or an entire missing chunk of a sentence) in one of my statements after I got the award. I don't think a typo necessarily removes you from the running.

You sound uncertain about what you want overall. It is possible to change fields if one takes the appropriate prerequisite courses, but in the course of the two posts here alone you went from wanting psychology to thinking about gender studies to then saying that you could settle for literature. What is it that you want to study? Do you have a research question or area of scholarship you are deeply interested in? Because that should guide your PhD program choices. If you want to practice as a therapist, you'll need a degree that will allow you licensure to do that, of course. If you want to be a professor, think about what you would want to teach on a daily basis, and in what department, but also about the kind of research you want to do and through which lens you want to do that research. Psychology is very different from literature. Women and gender studies is an interdisciplinary field that could take a literature major granted your major was relevant to what you wanted to do (e.g., representations of African American women in late 19th century American literature). But you may find faculty options more limited with that PhD.

Just be honest. The less vague you can be the better, but you don't have to share every detail - you can say that you were very excited to go to X Program and work with Professors Y or Z, but shortly before you found out about your admission, you were unexpectedly diagnosed with a serious medical condition/someone close to you got ill or passed away/you encountered serious financial strain/whatever the case actually is. You thought it best at that time to decline admission and sort out your personal stuff. Happily, you've got it sorted and are now ready to begin graduate study, and you think X Program will be an excellent fit because of [reasons]. Keep it short, sweet, and positive/upbeat; emphasize that it was a *serious* problem but one that is resolved, aka, will not cause you to potentially decline again. And when you are reaching out to these professors, you may want to include a shorter version of this. "Hello Professor x, [intro]. I was actually admitted into your program for the fall of 2015, but I was unable to attend because of serious personal illness. I'm currently excited about the prospect of being able to attend again. [Go on about your normal email]."

I agree with both rising_star and TakeruK on all points. Make sure the job is a done deal, then meet with your advisor and tell them what's happening. Take a leave of absence. And don't work for free. My only addition is about managing your emotions. I think it's normal to feel a little guilty, but don't let that feeling hold you back. Acknowledge that you are going to feel a bit uncomfortable and awkward, and get used to the idea of feeling awkward while you have this conversation with your PI. Once you realize that you're going to feel weird but it's not the end of the world, you can push through it. Only you would have to spend 4-5 more years in the PhD program wondering what could've been, so don't let guilt stop you from taking a position you really want.

I'm assuming that you're in the U.S. and by "two year transfer degree" you mean an associate's degree at a junior college. Which provokes the question: is there some reason that you don't want to do a four-year degree at a brick-and-mortar school, or something that is preventing you from doing that? Because that would probably be the best option. The answer your question really depends on what programs you're talking about and where they're from. There's a difference between getting an online bachelor's at Capella or Walden and getting one at Penn State's World Campus or University of Arizona online. Generally speaking a bachelor's will offer you more opportunities, because many jobs do require a bachelor's degree, but some employers may not consider you if your bachelor's degree is from a for-profit or unaccredited online university.

We don't know. The best people to ask would be UPenn's EE department. However, what you said seems to make sense. Since both admissions cycles are for fall 2016 but the people who apply November 15 seem to find out their status earlier than the people who apply March 15, there are by definition fewer slots left over by March 15. There also may be increased competition - people who decide later in the game to apply, people who didn't have all their stuff together in mid-November, etc. That doesn't necessarily mean that you'll have a better chance of admission. If you are already an outstanding candidate it probably doesn't matter when you apply. Conversely, if you are not a qualified candidate, it also doesn't matter. When it probably matters if if you are borderline; the department may be more willing to admit a borderline candidate in November when presumably have fewer people to compare you to, and less likely to admit a borderline candidate in March with they have fewer slots available. However, the flip side of that could be that they are less likely to admit a borderline candidate in November in the hopes that they get better candidates in March, and more likely to admit you then once they have already admitted all their best candidates and still have spots leftover. Which is all just a longer way of saying we don't know, and you should ask Penn's EE department if you want to know.

I don't think you should try to address it because, as was stated above, there's not really much you can say about it other than that you aren't a good test taker (which sounds like an excuse). Instead, use the space in your statement to focus on your outstanding qualities - particularly anything that may set you apart from other applicants that makes you uniquely qualified for graduate study at one of those departments.