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juilletmercredi

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Everything posted by juilletmercredi

  1. You want to pay a postgraduate economics researcher ~$6.63 USD an hour to write a paper?
  2. ^Basically this. A glance at the PhD GPA would be more of a simple check, and I think anything below around a 3.5 or so would be a red flag. But most PhD students are going to have a 3.7+ GPA just because the standard grade is an A.
  3. Yes! I got an iPad when I was in exams and I wish it had come out when I was still in coursework - it would've been the perfect thing to take notes on. I wouldn't want smaller than the regular iPad to take notes with though, and I also like it for reading articles and books. The mini is more portable, but I have an iPhone 6 and I feel like that's a great size for any quick reading I need to do. I definitely second Evernote - best app for note-taking. But you can also use Microsoft Office on the iPad now. I only have a 32 GB iPad, because I store everything in the cloud and don't keep my music on there. My phone, however, is 128 GB, but I have a 40 GB music library that lives on there too. Another option is the Macbook Air 11", but I would honestly go for the iPad before that because it's more versatile - tablet, or attach a keyboard. I wouldn't get the 3G/cellular version. Most university campuses these days have WiFi, and if you have a smartphone you can use tethering. But most of the time you'll probably be on WiFi anyway. It's an extra expense you don't need.
  4. New York Comic-Con is every year in October, and so that's nice! Big dorky event in New York. I didn't really go to a lot of non-academic festivals, especially ones that required travel, during graduate school. But New York has a lot of summertime festivals and concerts that I'd go to.
  5. Hmm, good question. I applied to 4 MPH programs and 1 PhD program. GRE: I think it was $140 when I took it, plus around $20 for a prep book. SOPHAS costs $120 for the first schol + $45 for each additional school, so $120 + $90 = $210 + rougly $80 for the PhD app (which was not SOPHAS) = ~$300 for application fees $3 for each transcript requested = $12. I didn't have to travel for interviews and when I did travel after I got admitted, I had a scholarship that covered most of my costs and I stayed with people in town. So I probably didn't invest much more than around $500 for the entire shebang. These days I would say PhD program applications are probably around $80-100 a piece, so a person applying to ~7 programs would probably spend $560-700 on application fees alone. The cost to send transcripts depends on how many colleges you attended and how much they charge you to send each one. You should get reimbursed for interviews.
  6. My advice? Don't overthink it. I know that it's sort of nerve-wracking to move across the country to a climate you're unused to, but the human body is capable of adjusting to a wide range of climates. There are people living in Iqaluit, in Nunavut, where the temperature routinely got to -30F this winter and where it's currently 36F. (I'm a little bit obsessed with weather, so I was following them on my weather app). You'll adapt, too - the first winter will really suck and then after that you'll be good. With some good winter boots and a winter coat, you'll be absolutely fine. The rest of the tips and tricks you'll learn along the way - the windshield wiper thing I learned when I moved to central PA and saw everyone else doing it. I wasn't even sure why, but I started doing it too and googled it later. Layering is definitely a good idea because puffer coats ARE really hot. A thermal, a sweater and a lightweight winter jacket is probably the better bet unless it's truly freezing outside. I do agree with knp, though, that it's best to wait until November to get the really cold stuff. It all goes on sale then, but it doesn't start getting really cold in the Northeast at least until mid-December at the earliest (and really, late December/early January to me). If there's a Burlington Coat Factory in your new city, I would check that out - they sell good discounted winter coats. I always get my coats there really cheap.
  7. ^I agree with the above. My friend rented a two-bedroom in Central Harlem - a nice, developing part of Central Harlem - in a brownstone that had been newly converted to apartments and they paid a bit over $2000 a month for it (so around $1000/per person, although they split it unevenly because one of the rooms was bigger). I also know a couple of people who are splitting 2- and 3-bedrooms in Harlem for like $700-800 a piece. So unless this apartment is huge and brand new, $1000 per person for a four-bedroom apartment seems steep.
  8. I came in with 6 people in one of my cohorts and 12 in the other, and 12 was considered huge for this program. A small cohort size isn't necessarily indicative of financial problems. Some programs (including some MA programs) only like to onboard small groups every year to give them personal attention. In both of my cohorts the relatively small size was nice - I knew everyone in my cohort, we grew close, and our class discussions were rich. After coursework was over we supported each other.
  9. Because one person from Ghana who just joined and has no posts comes on to ask about (in part) a very particular program at a specific school. Then another person, who is also brand-new and coincidentally also a doctor from Ghana, comes in to sing the praises of one of those very particular programs. They include information about the London School's rankings in USNWR (a common marketing tool for colleges) but instead of linking directly to USNWR's list, they link to the blog at the LSHTM. Also a lot of the very positive things that sumsun had to say kind of ping with the common marketing spiel that a lot of recruiters at schools tend to use (great speakers at lecture series, consult with the experts who write the text books, opportunities...) I mean, it could all just be a grand coincidence.
  10. 1) Like fuzzy already said, the higher your name is on the list the better. Pretty much any position helps for an undergrad, unless the paper has like 20 authors and you are below like 7-10 on the list. 2) Field-dependent. In my field, sole-authored papers are very uncommon and are usually comprehensive reviews or thought pieces done by big names in the field. A sole-authored paper by an undergrad is unlikely to be the kind of paper that any journal in my field would want, and I think it would be difficult to get it published anywhere. Moreover, it would take more time than doing a co-authored paper. It also wouldn't help an undergrad any more than a co-authored paper would unless it was simply brilliant - the work of a prodigy. So I don't think it's worth it. 3) There's no quantitative answer for this. Most undergrads don't publish anything, but publishing something is common enough that one or even two won't make you a super-researcher. In my field, I would say more than 3-4 publications with significant authorship (third or higher) would be impressive for an undergrad. However, I would also be semi-skeptical at that number, and would ask the undergrad a number of questions to ensure that their PI didn't just put their name on the paper to be nice. And I would probably be more impressed with one well-written, first-authored paper in a decent journal than I would be with three third-authored papers.
  11. If you are going into psychology generally, then I would say that most professors expect at least 2 years of research experience to be competitive - so started in early junior year, maybe late sophomore, by the time of application. If you are specifically interested in clinical psychology, many programs are now expecting applicants to have 1-2 years in undergrad + an additional 1-3 years (most commonly 2) as a lab manager or research assistant post college. Social psychology is also more competitive. That's not to say that there aren't students with 1 year of research experience who are admitted. But professors like to know that you 1) know what you're getting yourself into, and won't suddenly discover that you really don't like research and quit; and 2) that you will be useful to them in the lab. Furthermore, there's the concern that you can hit the ground running and keep up with your cohort mates, and be prepared to write papers early in the program and plan out a master's paper and a dissertation. In my own psychology PhD program I doubt someone would be seriously considered if they hadn't begun doing research by at the latest their junior year of college, unless they had done a lot in a very short amount of time. Sure, it's more about quality than quantity, but quantity is also important.
  12. My PhD in in public health. 1. In my experience, not too personal. There's a research study conducted by two psychology professors that investigated the so-called "kisses of death" in clinical psychology PhD program admissions, in the words of graduate professors who participate in admissions. Three of the four most damaging things they found about personal statements were discussions of personal mental health (“when students highlight how they were drawn to graduate study because of significant personal problems or trauma. Graduate school is an academic/career path, not a personal treatment or intervention for problems.”), "excessive altruism" (“Everybody wants to help people. That’s assumed. Don’t say the reason you want to go into clinical psychology is to help people.” ), and excessive self-disclosure ("The applicant mentions in the personal statement that he/ she decided to pursue a career in clinical psychology due to personal family experience with psychopathology. This isn’t always a kiss of death, but a sensitive area such as this should be communicated carefully. If the applicant is “spilling” overly personal information in a written statement, I often view this as a “worry sign” or an indication of poor interpersonal boundaries.") Of course this is a different field, but social work and clinical psych are related enough to believe that these apply somewhat to social work programs, too. I think it's okay to reveal that your motivations are an interest in improving the lives and clinical outcomes of adolescent oncology patients, but express an academic and professional interest in it instead of a personally motivated one. 2. If you did it only for yourself, probably not. If you volunteered to do these things for other people, yes. It's the same reason why planning your own wedding isn't event planning and paying your own bills isn't accounting. It seems like you did volunteer to do some of these things for others, so I would count that, but not the stuff you did for yourself. 3. No, you'll need to submit at least one academic reference, and preferably two. And your professional reference needs to be social work or public health-related in some way. Graduate programs are interested not only in how successful a professional you are; they are interested in how well you will perform as a student. You can reach out to professors you had in undergrad and send them a letter jogging their memory and a copy of a recent CV plus a draft of your personal statement, and some of them will write for you. 4. Usually, yes, if you are admitted only to one school and not the other, you can just apply the program you were admitted to. You can also get admitted to one program and during your first year apply to the joint program on the other side - and at some schools, it's easier to get into joint programs that way. 5. There's no hard and fast number. It depends on how competitive an applicant you believe you are. I applied to 4 MPH programs and 1 PhD, because I knew that I was competitive for MPH programs (the PhD program was on a whim, because it was perfect). I think between 4 and 10 is probably a good number for master's programs.
  13. I hadn't heard of UC-Irvine's 5+2 program and I went to look it up. I love the idea: it's 5 years of PhD work plus a semi-optional 2 years as an assistant adjunct professor. PhD students in a 5+2 would spend the first year on fellowship taking courses, then years 2-4 on a teaching assistantship. Year 2 is courses, Year 3 is exams and dissertation prospectus, and year 4 is dissertation work while teaching. In year 5 you go back to fellowship, and have a year to write. The +2 part is time spent as an assistant adjunct professor, where you have a course load that's 2/3 of a normal professor's course load and 2/3 the pay of assistant professor, and the idea is to get independent teaching experience while taking the 2 years to publish work from your dissertation and other projects you may have begun. I love it. Already, though, there's an interesting backlash from graduate students and faculty alike. The English department is not on board because they feel like students will be "rushing" to finish their dissertations, especially if they need to acquire language skills. One graduate student in comparative literature said that "becoming the kind of rigorous and reflective researcher with an interesting project who would be hired for a tenure-track position at a major institution takes time and financial support, not speed." And in the comments lots of people were lamenting the loss of critical thorough work necessary. I must say I'm quite baffled. I guess my opinion is colored by being in a field where finishing in 5-6 years is the norm, and 6 is usually the upper bound, and very few people finish in more than that. And perhaps the problem is that the bar is already set too high. Back in the 1990s and before, a new t-t scholar was expected to come up with a book in press for tenure; now it seems like in book fields you need a book by graduation just to get a job, and another one by third-year review or something. And in article fields like mine, whereas before it was not the norm to publish before graduation, now students are finishing with 5-10+ publications. The serious candidates who were brought on campus to interview for our junior positions when I was at Columbia had 10-25 publications. They were mostly graduate students and postdocs. That is, frankly, insane. If students didn't feel like they needed to write the most perfect dissertation to easily turn into a book or a series of publications to get jobs, then perhaps we COULD reduce time to degree. In other words, if search committees had more realistic expectations about what kind of (and volume of) work a newly minted PhD should have completed in order to be competitive for jobs, I bet we could cut back time to degree. But - much like in the adjunct situation - there's always someone out there willing to do it, whether "it" is staying in graduate school for 3 extra years to get the book in press or working around the clock to produce 15 publications before graduation.
  14. Interesting discussion! @RollRight, I think it's not that people are willing to "bar the doors." The fact is, higher education is currently in a crisis moment. It is, indeed, partially because of a neoliberal/conservative approach - where certain players want to defund and lower public support for education. The problem is, though, that we're dealing with reality. Graduate schools already only accept the best and brightest; the whole point is bringing in people with the most aptitude to do science at a level high enough to lead to new discoveries and improvement of life. And resources are scarce; they are by default limited. There's just not unlimited money, unlimited time, unlimited mentors and classes and all the other resources that are required to bring someone from college graduate to tenure-track professor. Frankly, we are never going to get to a system where we don't have to worry about limited resources. I am in the limited graduate student camp, and not because I want more resources to myself (I'm planning to leave academia anyway). In fact, it's driven by care and frustration for others: I don't think a system in which the vast majority of PhDs spend years floundering is a good one. It's a waste of the top minds of our era. My thoughts were along the same lines as those who suggested two things: 1) making postdocs more of an expense (and the corollary is adding more career steps in STEM fields, particularly), and 2) reducing the amount of contingent labor and adding more non-tenure-track teaching/lecturer positions. I'm in an NIH-funded social science field, and I think that the NIH postdoctoral stipend minimums are far too low. TakeruK is also right in that they don't mandate benefits; most postdocs cover health insurance, but there's no requirement to cover benefits like parental leave, sick time, retirement savings, etc. Furthermore, in discussions with PIs on other message boards (*cough*Chronicle*cough*), it's clear that a lot of PIs view their postdocs as the workhorses of their lab - one PI expressed disdain at the idea that a postdoc would ask for protected time to work on publishing their dissertation material, saying that a postdoc's job is to generate findings for the lab grant. But they want to have their cake and eat it too, as postdocs are paid as "trainees" and ostensibly have a training plan to follow. I think the solution here is 1) make postdocs more work to get, and more expensive, and 2) add other positions in the traditional science lab that do the work a postdoc would do. Postdoctoral positions should be training, but also a step along the career ladder - treated more like junior faculty. They should require extensive, detailed training plans that funding agencies actually check up on, and I think that the starting salary should be at least $60K with full benefits and they should be longer than 2 years so postdocs don't have to hop around like a transient (maybe 3-5 years, depending on the field. In my field 2-3 years of postdoc'ing is plenty, but I know in other STEM fields more time is expected). The corollary is that you increase lab support otherwise. Hire BA- and MA-level research associates to do lower-level tasks that you don't need a PhD to do, like cleaning data or prepping literature reviews. The upside is that this gives those professionals either a chance to increase their own credentials for graduate school and/or an alternative career path to getting a PhD and striking out as a PI. For those tasks that really do require a PhD, hire a research scientist! A staff scientist who's job it actually is to help you churn out papers and projects, and who you are not expected to spend significant amounts of time training. And pay them well. I think a lot of these articles avoid talking about the adjunct problem because few tenure-track or tenured faculty really want to talk about the exploitation of adjuncts, let alone discuss how they are complicit in and/or benefit from that exploitation. Most of the articles/thought pieces coming from that angle are coming from those with less power in academia (adjuncts themselves, graduate students, people who have exited the field). But yes, I agree that the demand side is also the problem. I think accreditation bodies should put hard limits on the percentage of faculty that can be contingent labor, lest a school lose their accreditation. And I agree that collective bargaining could help the situation. More of those positions do need to be turned into professor of the practice/contracted NTT teaching positions (with contracts being longer term - say 3 years to start out, then 5 years, then longer if both parties wish and quality is reached. Or they can be hired like most employees are - at will, but with the understanding that the job is meant to be long-term). And those positions need to pay a decent wage and have full benefits, too. (And yeah, some of them could be done by folks with an MA, particularly ones who are teaching - say, composition or introductory psychology classes.) A side effect might be that graduate students have to do less teaching when they are in PhD programs, which may mean faster times to degree. But yeah, all of these changes will have the effect of reducing the number of PhDs "needed." Yes, some PhDs will always go into industry. Professors need to stop it with the fantasy that all of their students will go onto R1 positions and anything else is failure. I'm not saying that they should become well-versed in helping their students get non-academic jobs - that's what career services is for - but students shouldn't afraid to tell their PIs that they don't want to be a professor lest their PI stop giving them time and resources. It's completely ridiculous and makes the profession look out of touch with reality. But let's be real - I think a majority of people who go into PhD programs start with the notion that they want to be college professors, and professors are treating these programs like training for those kinds of jobs (with the exception of STEM and business fields where there is some industry draw). I'm not saying that there needs to be 1 tenure-track job waiting for every PhD graduate. It shouldn't be a guarantee. But I think right now professors are admitting more graduate students for their own purposes - heightened prestige, more assistants in the lab, more teachers in the classroom - and those are also symptoms of a university structure that's devaluing the work they do and pushing it off to low-paid contingent workers who are unwittingly putting their own selves out of a job.
  15. Inspired by a lot of articles I've been reading lately. Since 2009, there have been a spate of articles recounting the horrors of the job market. Several of them have been linked here. Basically, the message is that - especially in the humanities and social sciences, but in the natural and physical sciences as well - the academic job market has crashed. There aren't enough tenure-track academic jobs for all of the PhD students who are graduating every year, and thus new PhD graduates finish in a landscape in which they have been prepared for jobs that no longer exist for them. Several solutions have been proposed to remedy this, but one that I've seen come up frequently is admitting fewer students to doctoral programs overall. The suggestion has been as mild as every doctoral program should simply slash how many they admit, to as extreme as the field should eliminate a significant number of existing doctoral programs and greatly reduce the number of students admitted to the ones left. The argument is that - particularly in the humanities and social sciences - the only ones getting good tenure-track jobs are coming out of a small handful of programs anyway. The "other" side argues against this. Doctoral programs are important for the prestige and reputation of a university, they say, and smaller numbers of graduate students means that professors will offer fewer graduate courses and seminars, leaving doctoral students with less flexibility and customization of their degrees. Less science will get done in programs that use graduate students to support research. Furthermore, they say, tenure-track academic jobs aren't the only useful way to to use a PhD - and those graduates who choose not to go into academia might use their PhDs in creative, exciting other ways. Lastly, I often see the argument that a PhD isn't job training anyway. It's an opportunity for young scholars to immerse themselves in research/scholarship for 4-10 years and adopt a new way of thinking; whether or not they get an academic job at the end is irrelevant. What do you all think?
  16. There is no typical - every situation is different. Not even just at the program level, but at the lab level, too. Social psychology is one of my fields, and in my case I could've easily taken a 2-3 week trip in the summers. My research work is mostly community-based, not requiring experiments in the lab, and I can do most of it from anywhere as long as I have a computer with statistical software and a word processor. My PI was also very flexible and amenable to time off and trips taken, so getting 2-3 weeks to go do whatever would've been very easy. Different PIs are different though; some might balk at you being gone for 2-3 weeks straight; some might have summer tasks in the lab for you to do. (If you're using the subject pool, experiments are unlikely because the undergrads are gone). However, I think that most grad students would have no problem getting at least 2 weeks off during the summer to go traveling, and most of my friends did something like this pretty often as long as you have the money. It's one of the perks of academia.
  17. Don't do the unranked master's. At the very least, if you do have to pay for a master's, make it an affordable, reputable program at a local public university. But in the sciences funded master's are much more common, so I'd listen to these folks above and look for a funded (at least partially) master's program instead.
  18. I have a hard time understanding your question and the exact parameters of your decision, but I'm going to say no. If you want a PhD in psychology with the end goal of being a professor of psychology at a college or university, then you'll need to go one of two paths. If you already majored in psychology in undergrad and had a decent (3.3-3.5+) GPA, and some research experience, then you'd be better off applying directly to funded PhD programs that provide a stipend and cover tuition. If you have the psych major but no experience, you'd be better off working as a research assistant or lab manager for 2-3 years to get that experience and then apply directly to a psychology PhD program. If you have a low GPA (< 3.0-3.2), or didn't major in psychology in undergrad, then an MA might be a good move. However, you still don't want to go to the Penn program - not because it's not good, but because in order to get the letters of rec and the research experience that will make you competitive for a PhD program, you really need to go to a brick-and-mortar program with at least some face-to-face coursework so you can forge relationships. (I'd also like to take this time to note that you'd need a PhD to teach at a liberal arts college, too.) If you'd like to go into some other field - like working at a think tank, government research, NGOs, or nonprofits - you can probably do that with the MAPP, but I don't necessarily think that the MAPP would land you there, if that makes sense. Honestly, the better degree for those things would probably be a master's in public policy or public administration, perhaps international relations if that's your interest, or even a social science research degree if you wanted to work as a research associate (but even that could be accomplished with an MPP or an MPA). Those degree are more marketable and the career services provided are more set up to find you a post-program job. From reading around the MAPP webpage, the emphasis really seems to be on people who are already working and intend to stay in their current jobs but just want to enhance them with some knowledge of positive psychology for whatever reason. All of their featured alumni stories reflect that. They are all people who are not using the MAPP to do anything in particular - their jobs are all jobs that they could do without it, or were already doing anyway, and absolutely do not require or recommend a master's in psychology. They just chose to get it for whatever reason and use the tenets in their work. And now that I am re-reading your post, I think I understand your second paragraph - you were asking if it makes sense to do the MAPP at the same time that you are doing a PhD program in psychology. Do not do that. It makes very little sense, and you won't have enough time to really focus on a PhD program and do well in a separate master's either. If you want to study positive psychology, you could always seek out professors who have that interest or doing a visiting scholar stint at Penn or something in your PhD program. (Also, I would expect a PhD in psychology to take 5-6 years, not 4.)
  19. This thread makes me suspicious, but on the off chance that it's real: Maybe I'm biased because I am in public health, but the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine is a pretty well-known program and is well-reputed within the world of health and medicine. But the thing is, if you already have a full scholarship to Harvard (which you say is well-known in medicine, whcih it is) and you have concerns about the reputation of LSHTM and Birmingham...then why not go to Harvard? It seems that you have a clear choice here, so I'm not sure what's holding you back. Personally, I'd choose Harvard.
  20. I'm taking a step back and to me, it looks like you aren't ready to make the commitment to graduate school. You seem a little unsure of your interests and afraid that they may change; you also don't seem like you're totally on board with attending the program(s) to which you've been admitted. I understand the impetus to want to keep your options open, and that's okay, but I think if you do that then you can't really defer admissions to any program. Just let it go and apply next year or the year after when you are more ready. You say that you understand that deferment is not a holding pattern that allows you extended time to decide on a school, but in your latest posts you don't really seem to understand the implications of that. That means that if you defer this school you are telling them that you plan to begin the program in fall of 2016, barring unforeseen circumstances. Unforeseen circumstances are things like military service or your health declining - not "I wasn't really sure in summer 2015 that I was going to attend anyway..." I'm a big fan of being able to change your mind and doing what's best for you, but it's one thing to be dedicated to graduate school in June of 2015 and then suddenly decide in February of 2016 that you don't want to go to grad school anymore. It's a totally different thing to be indecisive about the whole endeavor from jump and hold a position away from someone else while you decide. The program's "keeping their options open" isn't really equivalent to you trying to keep your options open. They don't want to dedicate funding to someone who isn't sure that they are going to attend. And their funding guarantee in fall of 2015 was contingent upon the funding that they had this year and the applicant pool they have now. Things can change significantly in an academic year, which is why they can't guarantee - the line they may have had for you may dry up, or things may shift considerably. To me, it sounds like you need to decline the offer and go on about your life. If you decide that you want to attend graduate school next year, then you can apply again. But right now it doesn't really sound like you want to commit - which isn't a judgment thing. I think it's perfectly fine! Just make peace with it, though.
  21. It depends on the department. Some make it easier than others. However, you can certainly do research with a DrPH. In my SPH, DrPH students were virtually indistinguishable from PhD students - they did much the same research as PhD students, and most intended to go into research careers. A close friend of mine did her DrPH in the same department I did my PhD and she had more publications than me when she finished, and is about to take a position as a research scientist at a top university.
  22. I think that you are otherwise competitive, but when you apply you'll have only just started doing research, and that will put you at a disadvantage.
  23. LGBT research is my area! Here are some suggestions: Perry Halkitis in Applied Psychology at NYU Steinhardt Christian Grov at Brooklyn College/the CUNY Graduate Center Patrick Wilson at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health (they have a joint program in public health and psychology) Eric Scrimshaw, also at Columbia Mailman Mark Hatzenbuehler, also at Columbia Mailman Seth Kalichman, Diane M. Quinn, and Blair T. Johnson at the University of Connecticut Vicki Mays at UCLA, although I think she primarily does racial/ethnic minority stuff now Jose Bauermeister and Gary Harper at University of Michigan (he's in health behavior and health education, but you could probably work with him from the psych department) Lisa Bowleg at George Washington Brian Mustanski at Northwestern University John Pachankis at Yale (in the school of public health; they have a fabulous Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS there) Don Operario at Brown School of Public Health David Huebner at the University of Utah Jane M. Simoni at the University of Washington Matthew Mimiaga at Harvard School of Public Health (he advises students in psychiatric epidemiology) Ilan Meyer at UCLA's Williams Institute, although I do not think he advises graduate students
  24. I think it depends on what you want to do with the interim. If your reasons for taking time off are because you want to do something unrelated before the PhD - travel, teach abroad, work for a few years, save money, etc. - then I think you should take the time. If your reasons are about improving your record so you can be more competitive to programs - doing IRTA or working as a lab manager - then I think whether or not you should wait depends on how competitive you are and what kinds of programs you're aiming for. If you're already competitive for top programs, then go ahead and apply and see what happens! If you are borderline for top programs, a good fit for some mid-ranked programs, but you really want to go to a top program - consider applying to a few long-shot, perfect-fit programs while planning to take a year or two off to do a post-bacc. Professors are always going to give you conflicting advice; they all have strong opinions based upon their own experiences and knowledge. But there's no one right answer.
  25. You have two choices: you can move out and try to find another affordable place, or you can stay. If you stay, you can change some things probably, but you will still have to put up with him. If you do stay, there are ways to deal with the roommate issue, but how effective they are really depends on your deployment of them and how annoying they are: 1. When he tries to plan/control/dictate what you are going to do the next day, tell him clearly and directly that you don't want to talk about the next day, you just want to enjoy what's going on right now. 2. Minimize the number of times you go out with him. Beg off or say that you have other plans or studying to do. 3. If he closes down and gets rigid because you won't hang out with him constantly, ignore him. Continue about your life as if you don't notice. He gets that way because he wants you to notice and feel awkward so that you break down and hang out with him again. Don't give him the satisfaction. You also sound like you have a little bit of "bitch eating crackers." By that, I mean that this guy is already on your bad side, so every thing he does is going to irritate you, even the way he eats his crackers. I think you're going to have to step back and try to take a more neutral approach if you don't want to move - remind yourself that he's irritating and that colors the way that you see him, and then try to view him from a more objective standpoint.
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