juilletmercredi

^I agree with the above post that an online MSW may not confer the 'pedigree' that you'd assume came with a Columbia program, and a local MSW in PA may be a better choice. That said, though, I think that your decision to live with your parents should be a personal one. Living with one's parents in one's early 30s is less stigmatized amongst our generation (millennials, as it were); most in our generation knows that the cost of living has risen faster than inflation. These days it's pretty common for young adults to live with their parents while attending graduate school (or saving up for a house). I went to Columbia for grad school and I knew a couple of grad students who lived with their parents in the New York area, and it was...just a living situation. *shrug*

I will warn you that my answer is partially colored by my three years in non-academic research in industry, where not responding to emails within 24 hours is enough to make people concerned that you didn't receive the email or maybe you are sick or dead. Personally, I think more than a week without even replying (sure, I got your email, I am reading it over, expect to be done by X date) is too long, but a lot of academics don't confirm receipt - they only send you mail back when they have something to send you. Even in that case, though, a month is a reasonable period of time to expect someone to review a paper in or at least give you an update on where they are. It's definitely enough time for him to at least respond to you and let you know where he is in the process (even if the response is to say "sorry I haven't responded, I got your chapter, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.") Is this a paper for publication, or a paper you need his sign-off on (like a thesis or MA essay or something)? Or both? I'm not advocating that you do this, but one of the tactics I took for an advisor who wasn't super responsive to requests to review is that by my second or third follow-up (and after ample time - usually about 3-4 weeks) I let him know that if I didn't hear from him I was going to ahead and submit the paper. IF you need sign-off - does your advisor have an office? Does he have an office phone number? If he's not replying to your emails, I'd stop by his office and/or call him on the phone to politely inquire if he has seen your emails.

It's a little bit of both. You should have a general area identified when you're applying, but many (most?) graduate students continue to refine and evolve their interests during graduate school - and beyond. You kind of have to, as the resources and opportunities at your disposal only become more clear after you've begun and have met your PI, seen what ongoing projects are happening in your area, learn more about the scientific conversation in your field, etc.

Are you talking about the conference travel matching fund? https://gsas.columbia.edu/student-guide/professional-development/gsas-conference-matching-travel-fund In my experience (I went to Columbia for my PhD), travel funding is not difficult to get. Many departments essentially allow every student to get some funding at least once a year to travel to a conference, and the "application" is more or less a formality. I've never been rejected for travel funding; I had travel funding that supported pretty much every presentation I made from 2008 to 2014 (and in some years, I traveled twice). I will say your department is probably more fruitful than this matching fund, though. My department was willing to provide up to $500 per student, per year. And often, your advisor can also give you funds from their grants to travel to present work, particularly if the work was done in support of a research agenda they have grant funding for.

Yes, if you want to use the chunks of time you have productively, you have to prepare. You can use the shorter chunks you have to prepare for the longer chunks. One thing I had to convince myself of was to just write. Sentences are just a collection of words; paragraphs are made up of sentences. Even if you have a 30 minute span of time, how much can you write? Even if you can only write one paragraph, that's one less paragraph you have to go to your goal. Persisting in writing even small amounts is so important - set aside some time to write almost every day, even if it's only a short period. Set yourself realistic goals. I used Scrivener to write my dissertation in pieces, and Scrivener does easy word counts at the bottom of each section. Give yourself a couple of diagnostic sections to see how much you can realistically write in X period of time (realizing that there's a difference between theoretical writing, like a literature review, and things like methods). Then assign yourself goals at the beginning of each session. So maybe your goal for a 30 minute session is about 100 words. Believe it or not...that's about one-third to a bit less than one-half a double-spaced page (Times New Roman, 12 pt-font, depends on the length of the words). I outlined my entire dissertation from the beginning...and broke the entire thing up into 2-3 page chunks. Once I did that, the task seemed FAR more surmountable. (I also picked that tip up from a book.) I worked backwards from when I wanted to be finished and assigned myself specific sections to be working on on specific weeks/days, with deadlines. I communicated this timeline to my advisor for some external accountability (he didn't give a fig when I finished, lol, but it felt more accountable to me). Of course, this timeline and outline shifted and changed over time, but it at least gave me a roadmap and an overarching goal. I also realized that some of the writing rituals I committed myself to were actually, in truth, procrastination techniques. Figure out what you absolutely have to do to get started writing - I mean, the bare minimum that you can go with. Try writing exercises in different areas, without ideal conditions. How do you do? See, you didn't die. Since you have to change workspaces often, one thing you may want to do is pack a bag with the bare essentials you need to write. Try to purchase or download books/articles electronically and enter them into a reference manager, so you can be as mobile as possible. I wrote a significant chunk of my dissertation at a coffee shop around the corner from my apartment, just for variety. (I wrote probably like less than 5% of it in the graduate student workspace.) One of the most valuable things I learned was from the book Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day, by Joan Bolker. (The title is not meant to be taken literally.) She talks about "parking on the downhill slope" - which means when you stop, make it easy for yourself to get going again. Set aside 5-10 minutes at the end of each writing session to write yourself some messy notes about what you're thinking right then, where you were planning to go with a thought, what article you need to read or reference, or whatever else is helpful to help yourself get going. That way, next time you sit down to write, you don't have to waste 20 minutes trying to remember what the hell you were writing about last time. When it comes to data analysis and processing - document, document, document! Comment all through those syntax files! Literally, every time you run an analysis, write a short comment about what you were doing with that line of code. If you use a GUI system (like SPSS) just start a notes file in a program like Evernote or OneNote and comment what you're doing. That's the way to "park on the downhill slope" with data analysis. That way, next time you start up you can just glance at your notes/comments and remember where you where and what you were doing. I also took the time (~5 min at the end of each analysis section) to write to myself about what I was planning to try/do next, so that when future me sat down I didn't waste time trying to figure out what the hell I was doing and what this code was for! Another tip I used a lot is to save editing/revising for dedicated editing/revising days/sessions. If you're a procrastinator or a perfectionist, the temptation might be strong to edit/revise as you write, or to start editing/revising at the beginning of your session. If you do that, you'll look up 2 hours later and realize you've not written anything new. I put a banner above my workspace that say "JUST WRITE" to remind me to stop constantly editing and to just write. Even if I felt like I was vomiting out nonsense, a lot of the time I was able to take that "trash" and edit/revise it to something better later, when I had dedicated editing time. (Honestly, I wrote a significant portion of my dissertation with a glass of wine nearby. The buzz from the wine helped inhibit my natural perfectionistic tendencies and I was able to write more. Now, I often had to do revisions in the mornings but at least I had some words on the paper!) Recommended books: How to Write a Lot by Paul Silva (someone else recommended it; it's awesome) Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day, by Joan Bolker (again, not meant to be taken literally, but there are lots of practical tips) Complete Your Dissertation or Thesis in Two Semesters or Less (their timelines are, IMO, unrealistic. But the tips and skills are useful) Destination Dissertation: A Traveler's Guide to a Done Dissertation, by Sonja K. Foss and William Waters (They have this recommended activity that involves slips of papers. I thought the method was stupid, but I basically did the activity electronically and that was decently helpful.) The Craft of Research, by Booth, Colomb, Williams, Bizup, & Fitzgerald. Now in its 4th edition. Excellent resource!

I have a PhD from Columbia. It's not a "golden ticket." It can, indeed, open some doors for you, but that's less because of "the name" in and itself. Don't get me wrong - people are, occasionally, quite impressed by "the name" - but that alone is usually not enough to nab you a job (although it might get you an extra look or called in for an interview, fairly or unfairly). It's more because of the incredible resources that these very wealthy universities have. Columbia has excellent career services for graduate students, for example; you have to be proactive enough to take advantage of them, but they are there for you to use. Columbia has several career fairs every year; the big companies come recruiting here; it's easier to get a non-academic industry job, at say, a large investment bank or a top consulting firm from a university like this than it is from other places. The professors are often very well-connected both within academia and with researchers and policymakers in the public sector. For example, the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is stacked with Columbia graduates, so people very often got internships there out of our school of public health. Lots of grads go onto work for national labs to do research afterwards, so there are alumni networks to draw on. Still, you have to work to take advantage of these connections - the initial spark may be your Columbia student/alumni status, but you have to foster and cultivate the connection. Of course, I have little to compare it to, because I haven't done the counterfactual (gone to a non-Ivy for graduate school). There are other elite universities that are not Ivies where people have similar career connections - Stanford and MIT being other private examples; Michigan and Berkeley being other public ones. So you don't have to go to an Ivy to have that kind of network.

Uh, this isn't true. The umbrella term for R1s, R2s, and R3s is "doctoral universities." In order to be considered an R2 (or an R3), a university must have granted at least 20 research/scholarship doctoral degrees in the year the analysis is conducted. Not 20 different PhD programs, but just 20 PhDs. Still, since most doctoral cohorts are pretty small, a program with 20 degrees awarded in the last year probably has at least 2 and probably more like 3-5 doctoral programs at least. http://carnegieclassifications.iu.edu/classification_descriptions/basic.php R2s include the College of William and Mary, Florida A&M University, Howard University, Lehigh University, Mississippi State University, Nova Southeastern University, Villanova University and several other universities that offer several doctoral programs. R3s include universities like Clark University, Georgia Southern, Idaho State, and Kennesaw State, all of which have several doctoral programs. However, I do agree that competitive/top PhD programs at R2s is less common; however, I think the reason is resources. Universities are grouped into R1, R2, and R3 based on the research expenditures that the university made in the last year; science and engineering research staff, and doctoral conferrals in each field - in other words, the amount of resources they have invested in research in general in the last update period. Necessarily, then, on average R1s are going to be more robust environments for research; since doctoral degrees are focused on research, and most rankings of doctoral programs focus on things that overlap a lot with the way the Carnegie Classification folks group their programs...it makes sense that highly-ranked doctoral programs would be mostly at R1s. That said, there's of course probably overlap in the margins.

I took Japanese in college. I didn't find speaking and listening incredibly difficult. However, a huge caveat is that I've been watching Japanese-language programming and listening to Japanese music since I was a teenager. I did find Japanese reading and writing to be pretty difficult, especially once we got to kanji (and I didn't stay in that long afterwards, for various reasons). Japanese is a critical language, so there are several scholarships that you could get to support your language learning. The Boren Fellowships support overseas study to increase proficiency in certain critical languages (Japanese included; https://www.borenawards.org/fellowships/boren-fellowship-basics.). You could also apply for a Fulbright grant in Japan and add a language component to it (https://us.fulbrightonline.org/countries/selectedprogram/37). Adding some intensive study in an immersive environment can make it easier to pick up the language.

I was interested in mental health and substance abuse research. I also absolutely did not want to get a PhD in clinical psychology. I decided to get one in social psychology and public health instead. Like you, I primarily wanted to contribute to research. There are lots of clinical psychologists that do that, though; there are even PhD programs that are specifically for clinical science (i.e., preparing researchers and academics primarily). But I also had a strong desire not to do any clinical work. I didn't want to even do practical hours. I definitely did not want to do mental health therapy or practice. I knew I wouldn't enjoy it; it would've made me unhappy. Some well-meaning people also told me that it was better to have more options after the PhD. I considered that. But quality of options is important (and IMO, more important than quantity). I did not want a career in private practice or any kind of clinical work, so to me it made no sense to give myself those options if they weren't options I'd be willing to take. There are lots of other things you can do with a PhD in another non-clinical subfield of psychology. I conducted research in mental health and substance abuse in my program. My school had clinicians - MDs and DOs, DDSs, and a few clinical psychology PhDs - and people with PhDs in non-clinical social and behavioral sciences. I never observed or experienced any differently in how 'seriously' I or any of the non-clinical faculty was taken by the clinicians at the clinics from which we sourced our research participants. (I'm not sure that they were even 100% aware of what our PhDs(-in-progress) were in.) Nor did I perceive any difference in how my non-clinical professors collaborated or researched with other professors. There is one exception: there are some kinds of studies in which the IRB will recommend or require that a clinician be involved (an MD in some cases; a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist in others). So sometimes, I suppose clinicians can come on as consultants on grants and perhaps get a lower authorship on certain papers through those kinds of selections. The catch, though, is that you're usually asked that because of your clinical skills and would be called on to offer expertise in that area...and if you dislike clinical work, then maybe you wouldn't want that.

I agree that your rumination over the last couple of months points to a potential mental health issue. It's possible that not the specific decision you made - but, rather, the transition to graduate school - is what's driving your depressive symptoms and unhealthy behaviors. Or whatever the reason is that your location near B changed - that could also be contributing here. To understand that, consider the whole picture - and I agree that you should talk to a doctor or mental health professional. With that said: The YOLO approach is not a bad one, if you are pretty confident that you will be very unhappy at Program B. You are right that not starting there is probably better than starting knowing that the program isn't a good fit - not only for the program, but for you. However, I think the best you could hope for, should you choose this option, is applying again for A this fall to begin in Fall 2019. Usually, when you decline a program, they move down their list of candidates to fill your slot. At this point in the year, they may not have funding or a slot for you. I suppose it couldn't hurt to ask, but I think you should expect to be told to reapply for Fall 2019. (As for jobs, though - if you are pursuing academic jobs, nobody is going to care about an extra gap year before the PhD.) I don't advocate for the Honest approach. This is basically the YOLO approach, but with the addition of telling Program B that you're meh about the program. What would that gain you? At B, you run the risk of alienating the entire department before you even begin. Total and complete honesty isn't a moral imperative. It's OK to hold back information that won't help anyone. The third approach is not evil by any stretch. It's pragmatic, and it is actually what I think you should do. It is totally fine to begin a program having some trepidation about it - a lot of people get nervous jitters in the summer before graduate school. I mean, if you knew 100% it was not the right program for you - you shouldn't start it. But this sounds more like uncertainty than a solid knowledge. So it's not bad to to begin it, try it, and see if it could work for you. Dropping out of a PhD program isn't a bad thing IF you can make it clear that you left because the program wasn't a good fit for you. Usually, you can do that by writing a great statement of purpose and having your former advisor or another professor at your former PhD program write you a recommendation, vouching for you.

What Sigaba said. Also, I think it depends on how far along you are. You said you're in the middle. If you're like in year 3-4 or above - like, if you've finished your coursework and are preparing for qualifying exams - I'd definitely stay put. Pretty much any other PhD program would require you to redo most of your coursework. I'd focus more on finding ways to boost your prestige post-graduate school, like doing a postdoc at a well-known place under a well-known advisor.

Hey there! I did my PhD in psychology at Columbia. Oof, you've probably already made your decision and are off to start! But for posterity, I would recommend the post-bacc program at GSAS, rather than the MA in clinical psychology. Both offer good options. I'm pretty familiar with the post-bacc program, and those students tend to be very successful in getting into PhD programs after they complete the post-bacc. The post-bacc program is also associated with Columbia's well-reputed GSAS department of psychology (the one at TC is completely separate). The MA students in clinical psychology that I know of who got into PhD programs almost always went to TC's PhD in clinical psychology. Also, if you are in GSAS, you can easily take any classes that interest you at TC. I'm not sure how easy it is to do that in reverse.

Yes, on-campus involvement isn't really a primary goal of a new PhD student. Learning the ropes of your department, getting close to your advisor, getting some projects off the ground and figuring out how to accomplish some of the professional activities you need to compete (presentations and publications) are higher priority. In my experience, most of the most active graduate students were master's students; the doctoral students who were more active on campus tended to be more advanced students. I wouldn't be looking to join too many orgs until you were further in (maybe at least done with a semester, if not a full year) and then, even if you do join some, I'd limit it to 1-2 that don't have a big commitment from you. (I was active in my school's Black and Latino Student Caucus, but for me "active" meant attending most of their events and socializing with members occasionally.) I don't think it's common for grad students to join mostly undergrad student clubs. The school year has just begun; don't fret about not meeting anyone yet. Friendships beyond undergrad are very different from college friendships. They often start more slowly and take more time and work to cultivate. Give yourself some time to ease into your new work load and life, and put out feelers. Don't rely fully on your cohort for that - you may find some close friends there, but if you are in a larger city or town, you might also consider going to events for young professionals and/or joining some Meetup groups or something. Graduate student socials and mixers are also a good way to meet grad students in other departments.

Are you currently in a master's program in the same department, or are you coming out of undergrad (or a master's program) from a different university? Or otherwise entering this university for the first time Fall 2018? My answers would be different for someone who's further along. If you were third year or above, I'd advise staying put and continuing to work with your advisor, getting a second co-advisor to mentor you along. But as a first-year student, I think that you should probably do #3. Personally, I wouldn't even spend two years there - most psychology programs are not going to allow you to skip two years of coursework even if you did it elsewhere, so those two years could be a waste of time. How well do you know this mentor? Is this someone you were working with prior to applying to the program, or do you only know them through the application process?

The best way to get paid lab work is to work as a lab manager/research coordinator post-college. It is very common for larger university labs at big R1/R2 universities to have a lab manager or research coordinator. Usually this person is a recent graduate with a BA in psychology who aspires to a PhD in the field. They complete administrative tasks to help get research done in the lab, and often participate in that research, get publications, present posters, etc. Many, many clinical psychology PhD hopefuls (and those in other fields) do this for 1-3 years before entering graduate school. You can certainly ask your current lab about the potential for a paid research assistant position after college. However, if the lab doesn't already have a history of paying RAs and they only or primarily use unpaid undergraduate RA support, then I'd say your chances of getting one are pretty low in that particular lab. I'd just be direct with your professors once you've established a relationship with them - "I'm graduating in December 2018. I would like to go onto a PhD program in clinical psychology or a related field after, but I would really love to do some research work for a few years yet to learn more about research and help prepare my applications. Do you have/is there a possibility for any paid research positions for recent graduates in your lab?" If they say no, then your next step would be talking to them and/or other advisors and asking them to pass along any lab manager/research coordinator positions they come across. These tend to start being published in February or March and continue through April and May and sometimes even a bit later - as the previous lab coordinators are getting accepted to doctoral programs and giving their notice. Given your interests, you should look outside of psychology, too. Some psychiatry, public health, or social work labs may also do similar research (although I'd try to work with someone who has training in psychiatry or psychology, if you can). You may also find paid research associate/assistant positions at nonprofit organizations, think tanks, and non-government organizations.

Yeah, I wouldn't do this, not if you are planning to apply to doctoral programs in the fall. They aren't paying you, and as was already mentioned, that time could be spent writing statements and other things to prepare you for doctoral applications. If you really, really wanted to do this, I'd say go for it. But it sounds like you're only considering it if it'll add something to your resume, and I don't think it will.

It's possible to maintain a social life while doing a PhD, and it's possible to find a workplace in industry with your important components (including the personality expression) with a PhD too. Just because you don't find much in common socially with the other people in your department doesn't mean you have to drop out - it just means you need to get in there to do what you need to do, then clear out. I did this in my PhD program for similar reasons - I liked and respected my colleagues, but I didn't want to be friends with them. I found friends outside the department, or with master's students, or with people who weren't grad students at all. I definitely went out a few times a week, indulged in hobbies, and developed other aspects of myself (I learned to bake while writing my dissertation; I ran every morning; I started yoga; etc.) It's just that you have to make the conscious decision to do that and put in the work to develop your relationships and your personality outside of the confines of your program. On the other hand, there are lots of interesting jobs you can get in industry with a BS or MS in which you wouldn't be a paper pusher. Now that you have a little more experience and education, especially, you might find your way into an interesting role where you can solve engineering problems. It sounds like the job you were in was a bad fit for you, and not necessarily that you needed a PhD to do more interesting work. Unless you're committed to doing research - and, specifically - to leading a research team in conducting cutting-edge research somewhere - then I don't really think you need a PhD. Your real task is to find a company and team culture that fits what you want (collaboration, interesting problems, work/life balance). Academic work is by its nature kind of isolating. If you're looking for collaboration and sharing, you will not find that in a PhD program...not really. I was in a department in which people were friendly and wonderful and even occasionally published together, but on the whole the feel was not "collaborative." It was often people working in parallel, or at the very most would take different parts of a project and split it up in such a way that they weren't even really working together much. If you read many blogs and comments by academics, you'll see that's just the case across the field. Science is a bit more collaborative than other areas, and some people have good paired working experiences, but the work is not really designed to be completed in teams of PhDs - your job as a professor is to build a lab in which you'll conduct most of your work. So I don't think your answer is so clear; it kind of depends on the kind of work you want to do. I think you can be happy in your PhD program, but you have to stop relying on your cohortmates to be friends and branch out to make other relationships outside the department. You could also probably be happy if you left with an MS and went into research in industry, but I don't know whether you would find the competition too steep or hit a wall - I'm not in the same field.

I wouldn't say that a master's degree is a "weird limbo degree" in the American job market. I currently work in industry. PhDs aren't expected for the vast majority of jobs, so in industry (not academia) a master's is the commonly accepted degree to demonstrate extra proficiency/expertise in a specific area. A master's can qualify you for a lot beyond what a BA qualifies you for - in many fields, a master's is required to do the work (but not a doctoral degree). And in industry, a master's is sufficient for conducting research at most companies and organizations. I definitely don't think a master's is a waste of time, especially in those fields. But there are other reasons why going to a PhD program with the intent of getting a master's only isn't a good idea. PhD programs are designed for people who want the PhD. So all the career development and mentoring is geared towards people who are going to be in the department 4-5+ years. Master's students who are going to want to intern after their first year and apply for jobs in their second year aren't going to find good support for that. A lot of internships that take PhD students try to take them further along, like at least in year 3-4, because they want people who are closer to graduation and at least thinking about careers. Your advisor isn't going to be super supportive of you interning after your first year; they'll probably want you to stick around and do some research. Most career development geared towards doctoral students is for academic careers. That's hard enough for doctoral students who don't want academic careers; it'll be even harder for someone who won't even be qualified for them (because they are stopping at the master's). Maybe most importantly, sometimes a master's in a doctoral program takes longer than 2 years. Mine took 3, because I (and my advisor) were more concerned with turning my thesis into a publishable paper than getting the MA. But sometimes the coursework requirements are structured in such a way that it's difficult to finish before the end of the second year. If you have to take quals first to get your master's, those are very often done in the third year. It's also not really the same degree. A non-terminal MA is going to be focused on theoretical, academic preparation and is a research degree. At my school of public health, for example, the non-terminal MA was very different from the professional MPH the school offered as a terminal degree.

I am a former GRF. I have also served as a reviewer for fellowship applications. I wouldn't do this. To me, the only upside to doing this would be practice for the 'real thing' next year. But I don't think you're going to get any good, meaningful practice by writing it on such a compressed schedule. It seems unnecessarily stressful. This is especially true because you don't even have a research proposal topic selected and are unsure of where to begin. I don't think that's uncommon at this point in the year, but I think it does drastically reduce your chances of success if you are unwilling to work on this over your vacation. It's also the case that it's essential for a good, successful NSF to go through revisions and reviewing with a trusted professor(s). Ones who have had students who got an NSF before are the most useful, but any professor who actively does research can be a good advisor for this. It's really not fair, or realistic, to expect your professors to turn around your reviews quickly enough for you to be able to write the entire thing in 3 weeks - especially if you are not currently in school. If you don't have a professor that you think could do this with you, and who would be helpful on a short schedule, then you will be at a significant disadvantage. Another good reason to wait until your first year of grad school (or maybe the beginning of your second) is that you'll be working with professors who have a vested interest in you getting this, and so are more likely to agree to review and edit. Many of the universities on your list will also have dozens of successful NSF GRFs from years past that can serve as resources for you. Many universities like this have examples of successful applications they can share; usually there are already a couple of successful GRFs in the department who may be willing to share essays and do some reviewing for you. This happened to me - I was successful as a second-year graduate student, and I had a lot of support from current GRFs in my department, in addition to professors who had advised GRFs, and had access to a binder full of successful GRF applications from Columbia graduates from years back. We also had a fellowships coordinator at the university whose literal job was to help students get these prestigious fellowships. That is who you will be competing with. I know you have a vacation planned. Could you set aside a little time each week of your vacation to write your NSF proposal? I know that a vacation is supposed to be about vacation, but this affects funding that could significantly influence your graduate school career and experience, so I think you should invest some real time into it. Maximize the number of chances you have. You could write the Personal, Relevant Background and Future Goals statement while you are on vacation so you can devote your entire 3 weeks to just writing and refining the research proposal. The personal statement is a little easier to write. But if you did do it, here are some tips. 1) Research proposal topics are best selected the same way you'd propose any actual research project: by examining the literature and seeing where the gaps are, combined with reflecting upon your own interests and building on that. The strongest proposals are those that discuss the theoretical framework for their research and what gaps in the literature their research will fill, which necessitates a relatively current understanding of the state of the literature in a field. The strongest ones are also ones in which applicants express their enthusiasm for research in that particular area, as it indicates a likelihood of continuing to contribute to science. Start a lit review where you last left off! I think your greatest likelihood of success is if you dip into areas with which you are already familiar. That could be either your academic research or whatever you have been working on for the last couple years. (Also, two years isn't that long ). Is there something connected to your work as an engineer that you could spin into a research project? 2) You don't have much room for the proposal; the Graduate Research Plan is only 2 pages. So you don't need to go into excruciating detail; successful proposals vary a lot in the level of detail. You need to convey that you understand the scientific 'conversation' in your field/subfield and that you know how to design and analyze a research project. You also need to be able to convey this to an audience who is familiar with your general field but not necessarily familiar with the area in which you do research. This takes some refining. SO my suggestion is that even if you don't start the actual writing until the day you return from vacation, you should put some thought and planning into your research area before you begin writing, so you can hit the ground running. ALSO: It is far better to write a well-written, cohesive proposal for research that maybe sounds a little more 'ordinary' than it is to try to go big with something that's super cutting-edge and come out with a disorganized proposal. Lots of successful GRFs do write some truly amazing research proposals; just as many write proposals for research that probably won't be published in Science or Cell but also contributes meaningfully to their field. Science is often done in baby steps, and all scientific work builds upon other (usually less high-profile) work. So don't worry about making your research project sound AMAZING. It's far more important to demonstrate that you, the budding scientist, are capable of doing strong scientific work in the future by virtue of your research design.

I had this happen to me twice. The first time, I was absolutely certain they had given me too much money, and it was a very large amount (thousands of dollars). I didn't say anything but I kept the money in a separate bank account and didn't touch it. They did eventually come back and ask for it months later. Luckily I hadn't touched it so I gave it back to them in a lump sum. The second time, it was a smaller amount (one month's salary) and more ambiguous; I wasn't sure if maybe I should've been paid for that month. I was also on fellowship in my last year of grad school, but my fellowship had ended and I was transitioning to a postdoc. Because of circumstances the exact date of my fellowship end was kind of fuzzy. I got paid for one more month than I thought I should have, but I wasn't sure. Again, I didn't say anything, but this time it was more due to uncertainty; I held onto the money for several weeks, but when no one mentioned anything I assumed that I had been paid legitimately and eventually dipped into it. A few weeks/months later, the fellowship director did come back and told me that they had accidentally overpaid me and asked would I be so kind as to repay the money. I set up a repayment plan with them over the course of four months to give it back. So given my past experiences I would ask about it. It's not stupid to ask. If they were supposed to pay you, then they'll just say that. But if they were not supposed to pay you, they could come back at any time and demand it back, and you don't want to be caught out or put in a financially risky situation because of it.

It's possible and people sometimes do it, if they have to. But it's not ideal - I'd go so far as to say it's not really advisable. It sounds privileged to say this, but a dissertation really requires a lot of sustained time to think. It's not just about the actual process of banging out pages; sometimes, I would only produce 2-3 pages a day, but I'd muddled through some difficult theoretical problem. Once, I spent an entire weekend making a graph...but that's because the graph was a representation of a statistical model that I was essentially building myself. When you're working full-time (particularly as a teacher!) that sustained time devoted to careful thought and research just isn't as possible. And that's not even considering the fact that if you're working full-time, you will basically be able to work, work on your dissertation and not much else. You won't have much if any time to spend doing the professionalization necessary to secure a job in academia, should that be your goal. If you're a teacher, will you be able to take time off to go to conferences and present? What about when you're on the market and you have to go to conferences/on campus to interview? I think substituting or a paraprofessional/part-time job in schools would be more manageable.

This thread is old but there may be others interested in this, and plus I had already started a response ;D I would not ask your parents to make a list of pros and cons or sit down with them for a session to "inform them" of your decision. Both of those options imply that 1) this is a Big Deal and 2) that they somehow have some kind of say or input, or that this is up for discussion. The next time your parents ask you about what OT schools you're planning to apply to, you can respond "Oh, none! I've actually decided that I don't want to be an occupational therapist anymore. I'm planning on getting my PhD in psychology and becoming a research psychologist." If they respond "What are you going to do with that?" or "Are there even any jobs in that field," calmly respond "There are actually lots of opportunities for psychologists in research - I could work at a university, a government agency, a think tank, in consulting work, or at lots of different companies who hire user experience or market researchers. I've put a lot of thought into this and have gotten some experience with research at my school." If they respond "The world doesn't need more psychologists," you can respond "The field of psychology is actually growing faster than average. I think that you may believe that because of some outmoded ideas about what exactly psychologists do. Although we'll always need more mental health counselors and therapists, not all psychologists do that kind of work - I'm planning to be a researcher." Actually, some psychologists work with OTs to help people mentally/psychologically cope with their potential disabilities/health conditions. Don't feel pressured to have worked out all of the details right at this moment. A lot of parents that I've interacted with - who have seniors in HS or college students - seem to be under this illusion that their young adult children need to have every step of their future career planned out, when they never would've held themselves to that same standard at the same age (and their career paths probably didn't follow that standard, either). I wouldn't feel pressured to create a plan and explain it to your parents, or present them with resources to help them understand the field. It's their responsibility to work through their anxiety about letting their child be an adult. If you have plans you can apprise your parents of them if you choose; if you have resources you think will be helpful, you can send those too. But you don't have to - you don't have to "convince" your parents of your career plans unless you're planning on asking them to support you financially during your graduate school years. Even if you are making impulsive decisions, that's fine too - it's your adult life with which to make impulsive decisions. My parents also had some questions about my career path (I am a research psychologist myself) when I was in college and grad school - particularly my dad, who every break would try to convince me to drop out of my doctoral program and go into some other field he'd heard made a lot of money last week. I indulged them to a certain extent by offering answers to the ones similar to those above, but after they crossed a certain threshold, I firmly but gently ended the conversation with some version of "I know you're concerned, but this is my decision. I've put a lot of thought into this and this is what I want to do." Eventually they learned to stop asking and trust that they raised me to be an adult who makes well-considered decisions, even if they were different from the choices they'd make.

You won't be "losing" a year. That year of your life will still be lived, even if you're just doing something else. And there are worse things to do than work for 1-2 years in the AI field, make some money that you can use as an emergency fund in grad school, and maybe get some experience that will aid you in getting a job after your PhD. If you have mediocre grades from undergrad and maybe not a lot of research, then yes, an MS + papers + good recs + a good thesis can significantly improve your chances of admission.

Yay! I'm a UX researcher, although I studied psychology and not HCI in grad school. I incessantly tried to find an answer to this question when I was a senior undergraduate and got conflicting information from a variety of sources. My conclusion is that generally, it kind of doesn't matter in terms of admissions (GENERALLY - not including individual circumstances like lower GPAs or the wrong prerequisite classes). It may significantly matter, though, in terms of your own preparedness for graduate school and your career choices. I think it depends on you. You sound pretty competitive for a doctoral program in HCI right now. I think your mediocre undergraduate performance is kind of irrelevant given your paper, your excellent MS performance, and the internship. Do you want to take a year off? Do you have a desire to work for a year or so and maybe make some money, explore some career options, etc.? Or do you want to plunge right in? If you want to go to graduate school now, go ahead and apply! If you don't get in anywhere you can always just reapply next year. I think you should only choose not to apply if you are pretty sure you don't want to wait another year. It sounds like the only thing holding you back is uncertainty about whether you're competitive or not, but I think you are AND the only way to find out for sure is to apply.

You've gotten good general advice already about preparing for graduate school to increase your chances of admission, but I want to address specifically the idea of being a professor of sociology. Academia is an extremely competitive career field to get into. The majority of PhDs these days don't get tenure-track positions in academia. That's for a variety of different reasons. Generally, search committees for academic positions in the social sciences are looking for these kinds of things: Publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals. These are king. It's hard to put a number on it and it varies a lot from department to department and by the type of college you're looking for. At research-intensive schools (your R1s & R2s), not only is the number of publications important but also where you published them - top-tier journals with high impact factors are key. If you don't know what all that means yet, don't worry about it; but these are things you can learn under good mentorship from a professor in late undergrad/early graduate school. Elite liberal arts schools increasingly want teacher-scholars with robust publishing and scientific programs in addition to being good teachers. As a junior undergrad, working as an RA with a professor is the best way to start on this road. If you're already working with a professor - or once you get a couple months under your belt - I'd explicitly ask about publication opportunities. Those take a long time to prepare. There are undergraduate student journals that you can publish in to at least get some experience with the process, but working with your professor to get a second- or third-authored publication in a professional scientific journal is the gold standard and a nice cherry on top for your application. As an early-stage graduate student, it's good to start thinking of publication opportunities very early. If you present at a conference, how can you turn that into a paper? If you are writing a paper for a class, is there a possibility of publishing it somewhere? Do I have skills to offer that allow me to hop on as a consultant & author of an article with a professor? (e.g., I did some stats consulting in grad school, and that allowed me to get on some papers as an author by virtue of doing the statistical analysis and writing the methods and results sections. I hate writing the other sections anyway, so that was a score!) As a graduate student, particularly in the late stages, I'd recommend perusing the departmental websites of the types of schools at which you think you might like to teach and then reading through the CVs of their recently-hired professors (like within the last 5 years or so) to get a feel for what these places are looking for and who is competitive. That will give you an idea of the number and type of publications to try to target. Reading articles pretty regularly (or at least reading the abstract and scanning the rest, which in reality is what everyone does) isn't a bad idea, as it helps you get a feel for what kinds of journals accept what kind of work and can guide you in your preparation of articles for publication. I'd say that's optional/a nice-to-have for you right now, but becomes more required once you start grad school. What can you teach/do research in? At teaching-heavy schools, search committees are generally looking for people to plug gaps: to teach specific courses or in a specific area of inquiry that isn't covered or is only lightly covered. These are usually outlined in the job ad. At research schools, SCs may be looking for scholars to research in specific subject areas - either ones that are complementary to existing faculty or ones that they have gaps in at the moment. Every field also has trends, which are 'hot' areas that everyone wants scholars in because undergraduate and grad students come expecting to learn those things. For example, right now many of the social sciences want people who explore diversity and culture in their work. In the psychological sciences, health psychology and advanced statistical methods had/are having a moment. I don't think anyone should pick their primary interest area based on what's "hot" - as that changes - but as you are developing your research throughout late undergrad and graduate school, you may want to think about how you could incorporate aspects of desirable methods, approaches, areas, and techniques into your work to make yourself marketable. As an undergrad, you can talk to your professors about current trends in the field. As you do research with professors, begin to think about what really interests you and where you would like to set your agenda for research? I'd think about it kind of like this: Where do you want to do your life's work? What do you want to be defined by? Unlike in industry, in academia changing areas gets harder the longer you're in it, and you usually have to do it kind of gradually; most career academics have 1-2 specific (but broad) area(s) of inquiry in which they do the vast majority of their work. You'll be expected to have at least a vague idea of that when you're applying to graduate school, so it's good to think about it now. It's normal for that to evolve and change over the time that you're in grad school, but you'll be better off if you don't change too drastically earlier in your career. It's easier to create momentum in publications and grants, especially, if you work within the same general area early in your career. So think relatively carefully. That also doesn't mean you can't work on one-off or occasional projects in other areas (see the consulting work done above), but your own major substantial area should be relatively well-defined. Can you bring in funding? This is tightly tied to the first two. Grants are incredibly difficult to get and also the bread and butter for research-oriented academics. At R1s and R2s (and elite liberal arts colleges), you will be expected to support your research through grant funding and your candidacy will be evaluated on the basis of your potential to bring in funding. Part of that is the area that you're doing research in (some areas are better-funded than others, and your SC members will know what those are); some of that is related to your publication history and productivity (productive scholars are more likely to get funding, because they can point to results). So in graduate school, each doctoral student in grant-funded areas - including the social sciences - should at the very least learn and understand about different granting mechanisms that they are eligible for. Really, I think each doctoral student should get some practice writing a grant, either jointly with your advisor or as the PI of a dissertation grant or something. These require careful planning, so I'd encourage you to browse potential funding mechanisms as a late stage undergraduate and then bring it up with your advisor in your first two years of graduate school. (I'm not kidding. Given grant deadlines and how long it takes to successfully write and plan one, someone who wants an R36 dissertation grant from the NIH should probably begin writing it no later than their third year if they want to have it in enough time to actually use it for dissertation writing). Having big national fellowships - like the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship - also can help, so I'd investigate those now and consider submitting as a senior if you're ready for it, and at the very latest in your first or second year of graduate school - because that's when you can last apply. Funding begets funding, for better or worse. Visit the Bank here on TGC! Prestige of your school/department/advisor. OK, this is kind of a touchy subject, but although we can argue about the relative importance of this piece, I don't think anyone would outright deny that this is important. Academia is a field where your department, advisor, and to some extent your university do matter. The better the reputation of your department and the more prolific your advisor, the better your chances are of academic employment. That's for both direct reasons (e.g., the search committee may simply prefer people with big-name departments and advisors on their CV) and indirect reasons (top departments have more resources for graduate students; may get them involved in writing papers and grants more often; have more students on elite fellowships and dissertation grants; have more prolific professors who can serve as advisors and mentors for students; etc.) That doesn't mean that prestige or the exact ranking of your program should be THE primary concern when applying - there's probably not much meaningful difference between the #4 program and the #5 program - but it does mean you should keep reputation and advisor in mind when applying. And of course, this varies. If your goal is to work at a R1 (research-intensive school) or an elite liberal arts college, going to a top department is going to be really important. If you're more interested in smaller teaching colleges, state directional colleges, etc., then reputation becomes less important. As an undergrad, in your junior year you may want to start casually perusing the departmental websites of programs you're interested in. The National Research Council publishes rankings of programs in sociology and other fields, and while again I wouldn't put much stock in exact rankings, I'd think about what those numbers mean in terms of reputation and prestige. Also, this is where visiting the websites of the kinds of places you'd like to teach and looking at the more junior professors' CVs comes into play. Where did they get their PhDs? Do the same names pop up all the time, or is there more diversity? (For an example, I did this as an experiment in MIT's department of CS and EE, and nearly all of the professors graduated from one of just four PhD programs. Including MIT.) As you begin to sharpen your research agenda and focus, you can also think critically about top departments and which ones offer professors and resources that will allow you to do research in your field. This is where reading (or scanning) recent articles comes into play, because eventually you'll start to see the same names pop up and you'll get a feel for who's prolific in your subfield. Then you can look up who they are, where they work, and what kind of work they do broadly. By the summer before your senior year, you should begin compiling a list of viable programs that you could apply to that are an acceptable level of prestige for you (whatever that means for you personally) Once you select a program, there are things you can do to offset the reputation and prestige of your program if a mid-ranked or lower-ranked program turned out to be best for you. Work with a great advisor. Go to professional conferences and network with professors and scholars at other universities. Explore the possibility of a visiting student program at another, more prestigious department for a semester (yes, these exist, both formal programs and less formal ones). Explore collaborations with researchers at other universities, especially if you attend grad school in a city with lots of universities. I know grad students who have written papers and grants with professors at other, sometimes more prestigious departments outside of their own university. And there's also always doing a postdoc. Quality and experience teaching: So I'm going to be real and say that R1s don't really care about this that much. Some R2s care; it kind of depends on how far down the ladder they are. If your goal is to be a professor at a top research university, I'd advise you to limit your teaching to the bare minimum required and focus the vast majority of your attention on research and churning those publications out. But all teaching schools (including the elite liberal arts colleges) are going to be interested in how well you can teach. So if you have an interest in those schools (and let's face it, the vast majority of doctoral students will end up at one of these places), it behooves you to get different kinds of teaching experience when you are in graduate school. Most doctoral programs are going to require you to be a TA anyway, but that's just a starting point. As an undergrad, you may be able to be a TA in your department for the intro classes. Even if no formal program for undergrad TAs exists, if you are at a large university, I'd ask about the opportunity. You'd be surprised what you can accomplish if you just ask. At small colleges, there may be no immediate needs for TAs, but you may be able to work with a professor to get other kinds of experience. For example, my statistics professor (who was also my advisor) brought me on as an official class tutor for her intro statistics class, so I helped students who needed/wanted extra help. There may also be opportunities for you to teach high school students, like SAT prep classes or something. Those don't really factor into academic decisions, but they may help you figure out early on what works and what doesn't for you as a teacher. As a grad student, use your TAships to help you figure out how you feel about teaching. Many people learn early on that they don't like it much and want to aim for R1s. That's fine, but even the best-funded R1 professors usually have to teach at least one or two classes a year, so it helps (both you and your students) if you can identify some techniques early on to make you a more effective and efficient teacher. Efficiency is key here, because as a research professor you want to minimize your time teaching so you can focus on research. I've had professors who found interesting ways to use their classes as a way to do more research (including one history professor who essentially used us to help him write his book, which was amusing but also made the class interesting. He was clearly more invested since he was getting something out of it). If you do like teaching and want to aim for teaching schools, then you can use TAships to build to more concentrated teaching activities. As a TA, take on more responsibility - maybe becoming a head TA later on in your graduate career for a class. In statistics classes, there's often the option to teach sections of lab, which is more independent than regular TA-ships. Many universities/departments offer opportunities for you to co-teach a class with an instructor (and if you prove yourself a good teacher, a professor may approach you independently to design one - that's what happened to me). Many universities also employ grad students as summer instructors, either for summer classes or special summer programs for undergraduates. When you get to your upper years of grad school - usually once you're ABD - you can adjunct teach classes at nearby community colleges or liberal arts colleges (and sometimes, at your own university). Some universities have opportunities or even fellowships for advanced doctoral students to teach and work with undergraduates. For example, Columbia has a program whereby qualified ABD doctoral students can teach in the undergraduate Core curriculum. All of their English PhD students eventually teach a section of University Writing, and many teach Literature Humanities; many social sciences doctoral students teach Contemporary Civilization. There were also fellowships that involved teaching and mentoring the honors students. There are also summer programs at other places that allow you to develop your own classes, like Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth and Duke's Talent Identification Program. Also, if you have the opportunity to write an undergraduate thesis, I highly recommend it. That kind of sustained long-term project is good preparation for graduate work.