juilletmercredi

It depends on what you mean by "best areas." Shortest commute? Most amenities? Cheapest price? If you are looking for shorter commutes, NYU is located in lower Manhattan so commuting from Brooklyn would be shorter than anywhere else. I could list the closest neighborhoods to Manhattan but they are all expensive, so I would look for cheaper stuff in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, Prospect Heights, Flatbush, Fort Greene, Bushwick, Sunset Park, Clinton Hill, maybe some outskirts of Bed-Stuy. For Columbia, Queens is closer. The best combination of price, amenities, and commute seems to be Astoria, which is actually the neighborhood in cleans closest to Manhattan. Other options might be Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, Long Island City, Sunnyside, Woodside (LIRR takes about 10 minutes to get to 34th, and from there it's about 30 minutes to Columbia). There's also the Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale, which is about 40 minutes away. Columbia actually has housing in Riverdale. It also just really depends on how far you want to live. I know undergrads that commute here from Long Island and Westchester because their families live there. I have grad student friends who commute from Brooklyn because they'd rather travel 1.5 hours to get here every day than pay Manhattan prices, and they love their neighborhoods. My advisor commutes in from Williamsburg because he and his partner were able to afford a beautiful two-story apartment in Williamsburg, something they probably couldn't get here. One of my professors commutes in from Long Island because she lives there with her husband. I know a professor who lives in upstate New York and another one who commutes in from north Jersey. There are several options, it just depends on how far you want to be. Of course the farther you get out from the city the cheaper it is (although that does not hold true for Westchester or Long Island). I also agree with the advice of scoping out NJ, but when comparing prices do factor in the costs of owning and maintaining a car. You likely won't need one to commute into the city, but you may need one to get around the city in which you live (grocery shopping and the like). Also consider the fact that you may miss out on some graduate student gatherings depending on the type of students you have. In one of my programs, no one lives closer than 20 minutes to campus, so we usually get together at someone's apartment when we want to hang out. In the other one, everyone lived within a 5 minute walk to campus so gatherings were often held on the main campus; I lived 20 minutes away and often didn't feel like crawling back on the subway to go hang out. So I was closer to one of my cohorts than the other.

There have been studies out for years that have shown the opportunity cost of college, even with high paying jobs is usually not worth it- you will make more over your lifetime getting a solid blue collar job straight out of highschool and saving for 4 years than going into debt for college- a gap you can almost never make up. This is not true. College graduates make almost a $1 million more, on average, over a working lifetime than high school graduates. And the average indebtedness is less than $30K, so there's actually a gap of about $970K in a college graduate's favor. Loan forgiveness after 20 years is only for those in certain public jobs. No it's not; it's for everyone. Public service loan forgivenness is after 10 years for people in certain jobs. Do some calculators. The point is, after 20 years of paying off loans, most people won't have much - if anything - to forgive. Let's look at three scenarios: most people end up paying somewhere around 10% of the amount of the loan they originally took out. Since it's a federal loan, and so is funded with taxpayer money, that leaves the other 90% being paid for by the rest of the taxpayers. This doesn't even make mathematical sense. It depends on the amount of the original loan and the income of the person. A person making $30K with $30K in loans is paying about 100% of the original loan plus about $10,000 in interest (which is a little less than half the interest). Even if they borrowed $60,000 and only make $30K, they are paying about 30% of the loan + interest - about 67% of the original loan and 20% of the interest. If we take average indebtedness of ~$27K per adult, average family size of 4 and average household income of $68K for college grads, that's a $220/month loan payment on $54,000 of loans. $220 a month over 20 years is $52,800. The total loan + interest for $54K over 20 years at 6.8% is $98,929. Given that, the average college-educated household is paying about 53% of their loans back - about 97% of the original amount of the loan.

One thing I want to point out: Zuccotti Park is NOT a public park. It's a privately owned park that is publicly accessible. That's why the NYPD cannot remove them and that's why the OWS protesters can camp out there - unlike other public parks that close at dusk, Zuccotti Park closes whenever the owners want it to, and the owners of the park have not kicked the protesters out. So before you start arguing either way about whether they have the right to occupy a publicly owned park (which I don't believe) or start arguing that they are disrupting life in the city and shouldn't be able to take over the park from other users (which I also don't believe, and as I live here, I can say that 99% of the city is going on business as usual)...look up the facts.

(Note: What you're about to read is not representative of the grad school experience. Just ask any of my fellow students) Not sure I entirely agree with this. There are a few studies on graduate students in my field (psychology) and they show that most doctoral students have experienced symptoms of depression at some point in their program. And just anecdotally, everyone in my cohort - including me - exhibited symptoms of depression, anxiety, or both and started utilizing the counseling services on campus at some point during their career. It's quite common for even students with no history of mental health problems to experience depression during their doctoral careers, and for students who already have a history of mental health issues, it can be even worse. But to answer your question, yes, it is possible to take time off. You can take a leave of absence for up to a year at most schools, and you can also take a mediccal leave.

Avoiding coursework is missing the point, though. I also complained about my coursework when I was in it, especially since I had to take about twice as much as the average doctoral student at my university (20 3-credit classes or the equivalent, which evened out to 4 graduate classes a semester for 2.5 years. Yes, it was hell.) Now that I have finished one set of comprehensive exams and am about to take my oral exams - not to mention have joined the conversation of my field being regarded more of a junior scholar - I see the point. When you enter the field of your choice as an academic, you are expected to have breadth. You are expected to KNOW things. And when you do research, you are expected to build upon the theoretical framework of your researchers before you - even in the lab sciences. Science is a cumulative work; it's scholars improving upon the work of past scholars, who were simply improving upon the work of past scholars. Even "new" discoveries are based heavily on the work past scientists have done. Much of the experimental lab sciences you will be doing will be based on techniques and knowledge that other scientists did before you. How do you know what they are? You read. And you discuss it with your classmates, and you write about it. That's all coursework is. It's not like undergrad with endless assignments. It's reading, it's having intellectual discussions with likeminded people, it's learning to quickly digest a shit-ton of information in a particular field in a very short amount of time. It's learning to process and synthesize that information like a scientist. It is an essential part of your education as a scientist. Value it. If you think you will never use the coursework again, you aren't paying attention in class. You can't just "learn it as you go along." You have to learn some things before you can even start. As for the second part - well. You have two choices. You can leave and try to make your fortune with the degree(s) you already have, or you can stay and hold out hope for a job in the field you want. Clearly if you spent the time and expense applying to doctoral programs, interviewed, and selected one you have to see the utility of the degree in some way. Nobody's going to make you stay if you don't want to, so - and I mean this with no sarcasm or snark - decide whether you're willing to sacrifice 5-7 years (or more in some fields) of earned income, more or less stable working hours, decent mental health, financial security and peace of mind to be criticized and evaluated by a bunch of eggheads (I say this affectionately) for the prospect of potentially getting a research job. If that doesn't appeal to you, get out now!

Sort of, not really. First, I wouldn't contrast "Ivy" with "not-so-good." This is simply a question of prestige, not quality. Graduate admissions committees care far more about what you do at your undergrad than where you went. Sometimes, what you do is affected by where you went. Students at prestigious large research universities may have more opportunities to work in scholarship and research than students who went to small regional public schools or small liberal arts colleges where professors don't do much research. So in that sense, where you went might affect your admissions in that it will improve your overall profile when compared to your average student from a smaller school. Are graduate admissions committees wholly unaffected by the prestige of Ivy League and other top schools? No, they're human beings. But I'd say the process is subjective enough that it's going to be based on a program's individual assessment of a program. If the department has accepted two past students from Harvard and they were both duds, they may have a wary eye on the department at Harvard and thus the students who come from there. If the department has accepted three past students from Kansas State and they all did spectacularly, Kansas State may now have a high position in these professors' eyes wrt students coming from that department. Given no prior experience, professors are going to rely on peer evaluations of the programs, which are influenced by prestige. But - for example, in my field, the departments at Michigan and Wisconsin may be more highly valued than the ones at Princeton and Brown. Long story short - probably it will affect you a little bit, but not enough to make any substantial difference in the likelihood of your admission. If the rest of your portfolio is mediocre, the prestige of your undergrad school won't save you.

Um, as much as I would love to never pay a single penny on my student loan debt, I don't see this as tenable, nor do I see this as saving money. In the case of Direct Loans, that money is loaned to us from the government with the expectation that it will get paid back. If they suddenly have no guarantee back on millions, potentially billions of dollars in federal loan monies - who do you think is going to cover those costs? The taxpayers, meaning us. If they exchanged this for a raised corporate tax or something then I suppose that would offset the difference, but I don't see that happening. I don't see how forgiving the student loan debt of Americans is fiscally responsible, either, since it's essentially teaching people that they can borrow money and then simply not pay it by kicking up enough fuss...I mean, what about the next generation of borrowers? I definitely agree with some form of student loan debt *relief* - lowering interest rates, income-based repayment, forgiveness programs for those with sustained hardships, public service forgiveness (which should be expanded!)...but outright forgiveness of ALL student loans borrowed?

I have to agree with Behavioral: "Ask New Yorkers (especially grad students) -- if you don't have a large sum of money to begin with, you're going to be struggling just to survive -- unless you live pretty far out of the city." I moved from Atlanta to New York to attend Columbia, and I'm in my fourth year. I love Columbia, but I am so over living in New York. Aside from being too expensive to fully enjoy on a graduate student stipend (college and grad students get so excited about moving here without realizing that we can't afford anything in the city!), it's just stressful. I can't articulate it but there is something about living in New York that is mentally exhausting. You will live in a box - even if you have a lot of money, you will still live in a box, it will just be slightly larger and nicer - you will get caught up in the throngs on the street, you will shop in grocery stores whose aisles are not big enough for two people. *shrug* I was really excited to come back to New York - I was born here, and lived upstate for my childhood - and now, as an adult, I am over it. I've chatted with other graduate students about it too and in my simple anecdotal experience, I'd say a small majority of people share my feelings. Even the grad students who I know are from New York want to move away. They don't see a future here for themselves vis-a-vis buying property and starting a family because it's so expensive, and they share feelings of being mentally exhausted by the city. I actually would like to move back down South. Now, don't get me wrong - living in New York is fun a lot of the time, especially once you find some things you can consistently do on your meager salary. And there are lots of free things, especially in the summer. But I can't imagine that it would be many times more fun than Boston. The thing about a new city is that it's never fun until you figure out what you can do, and a month and a half isn't enough time! Stick it out for at least a semester. And honestly, I'd advise trudging through the 2 years. Two years flies by and unless you are absolutely miserable, I'd say a little restlessness at a $25K discount for a top school is better than going into massive debt on a school you're not even sure will be much better. If you dream of living in New York, just move here after you graduate.

Yes, that was me. I didn't even get Honorable Mention my first year - I almost didn't want to bother my second time around. Not exactly. The $30K is a living stipend. They used to have an international travel award of $1,000 for each fellow, but they have since changed it to the Nordic Research Opportunity. You can now get the $1,000 if you apply for scholarship/research/study in Norway, Finland, Sweden, or Denmark. But it's not for general international travel anymore. And the stipend is to support the student. If you need incentives for participants, you'll have to apply for a separate grant to some granting organization; the NSF GRF doesn't provide that support. I don't know how to view old reviews; I kinda wanted to review my old ones too, but I can't find them anymore. I feel like I saved them somewhere, though.

I got my fellowship in April of 2010. I started receiving the money in September 2010; the award amount for September to December 2010 was $10,000. On that plus a $3,000 TAship stipend I received (which was also untaxed), I paid federal taxes of about $1200 and state and city taxes of about $1440. I live, attend school in and file taxes in the State of New York. The total of about $2,700 was about 20.7% of the total $13,000. I've calculated, and been advised, to withhold about 20% of the fellowship for my own taxes - ~5% for state + city taxes taxes and 15% for federal taxes. (I have no idea why my state taxes were so large last year, but I've done a little bit of investigating and this doesn't seem to be the norm.) Given my experience with the amount that they taxed me last year, I'd wager this is about correct. Because I owed nearly $2,700 for the tax year 2010 I was told to make expected tax payments. Quite frankly, I haven't bothered. It's far easier for me to save the entire 20% (about $6,000) over the course of a full year and make the payment in full in April 2012. Yes, they will charge me penalties, but I'd rather pay the relatively small amount they will charge me than keep track of the paperwork and receipts on a quarterly basis. I can barely keep track of my own schedule! I'm good at saving and not touching the money so that's not a problem for me. Just as an extra note - there is virtually NO advice out there on this anywhere, and few people were willing to help me. There's no one at the university who was able to help advise fellowship students of tax requirements. Everyone had a different answer to questions I asked. There were people who seemed to be of the notion that because I was a student, I didn't have to pay taxes (wrong). There were others who believed I should receive a tax refund (also wrong), even though they couldn't articulate why. In the course of my discussions with students I apparently brought several students to the realization that they had to file and pay taxes on their own fellowships - they had fallen prey to the wacky and misinformed belief that they did not have to pay taxes on their fellowship income. (It's not true, and don't let anyone tell you that.) H&R Block was worthless - they charged me nearly $300 for the privilege of doing what I could've done with their free tax software at home. There's a limited amount of information from current and former GRFs online, but a great deal of it is expressing the same frustration and confusion that I experienced.

This is a really field-dependent question, too. In my field (psychology), U. Toronto and McGill are both highly respected schools. There's a postdoc in my lab at Columbia who did her PhD at McGill.

I think you are looking for a PhD program like Science, Technology, and Society. Harvard allows their doctoral students to have a secondary field in STS, including science students. Here's a link: http://www.gsas.harvard.edu/programs_of_study/science_technology_and_society.php Penn State offers this as a graduate minor that can be added to any PhD field of study: http://www.sts.psu.edu/graduates/minor MIT has a PhD program in History and Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS). They have applicants from science and engineering backgrounds as well as social science backgrounds: http://web.mit.edu/hasts/admissions/index.html Rensselaer Polytechic Institute offers an MS/PhD program in Science and Technology Studies: http://www.sts.rpi.edu/pl/graduate-programs-sts Georgia Tech has a PhD in the History and Sociology of Technology and Science: http://www.hts.gatech.edu/graduate/ And Penn has a PhD program in the History and Sociology of Science: http://hss.sas.upenn.edu/hssc Most of these programs look as if they accept students from both science and social science backgrounds, as you will eventually need to foster familiarity with both fields in order to master the program.

Actually, I disagree with kel. There is nothing that you have said so far that I would want to explain to any professor, especially not my advisor. I'm not saying that wanting to be closer to one's fiance and feeling close to your cohort and other graduate students are not good reasons to want to transfer PhD programs. However, they are going to be perceived as somewhat unprofessional reasons to an advisor. He is going to want to hear that your interests have changed and that you feel like you would be a better fit there, because of the research going on at the other school. Or that they have specific resources there that you need or want to use in your research. In all honesty, examine yourself first. You've only been apart for 1.5 months. Long-distance relationships are ALWAYS difficult in the beginning; it's not that they get any more fun, but they do get easier to deal with. It will be very difficult to get your advisor's support so early into the game, when you haven't even given the PhD program a game year to get adjusted and decide. The other thing is that you have to really take the time to decide whether you are willing to take the potential career hit you will take by transferring to a lower-ranked program that may not be as tight a fit for you. I think every graduate student has to be willing to decide what they are willing to sacrifice and what they are not, and I don't judge any grad student for those decisions - as a person who has been in an LDR for much of my own relationship, I'm planning in tandem with my own fiance so that we are not living apart again. But, I think it takes careful planning and serious thought - stuff you may not be able to do in the first two months of your program when emotions are still high. So my advice would be to stick it out for a year and see if you still feel the same way. Get settled into your department (my cohort didn't seem very friendly at first either, until I got to know them), into your new city, into a rhythm of work. Your feelings may change and you may come to adore it. If you are already decided on leaving - or once you do - here's my advice. 1) When you approach past professors, frame your decision in terms of career choices, not so much personal choices. You will get a better response and stronger support from your advisors if you do. 2) You will need support from at least one person in your current department. You may not have an advisor yet, but perhaps you should adopt an informal mentor or at least get to know one of the professors who teaches your classes. The department to which you are trying to apply is going to want to know how you are doing in your current department; they're going to want to be assured that you're not attempting to transfer because you are sinking in your current department. And for that, they're going to need at least one letter of recommendation from a current professor or advisor. 3) You will definitely need the support of your MS advisor. It will look suspicious to the new department if you don't have that, number one; and number two, going behind his back and getting three other recommendations may burn some bridges for you that you want to keep open. Academia is a small world and people know people. The professors you ask may assume that your old MS advisor already knows you are transferring and bring it up; if he doesn't know, he'll be embarrassed. So don't sidestep that one; come up with a really good and professional (not personal) explanation as to why you need to transfer, and then ask for his support. I will say that there is the VERY real possibility that your advisor will not understand your decision, especially in terms of leaving a program he obviously thought was a good career fit for you to be closer to your partner just two months into it. He may perceive you as not committed enough to the pursuit of academia. That's why I insist that you come up with a professional, research-related reason that you want to transfer.

Not necessarily. The admission committee may not even know when you submitted your application because the departmental secretary usually gets it. If it's a deadline school, the adcom may not even get it until after the deadline anyway. If it's a rolling admissions school, they probably get them in batches.

In no particular order: 1. The only clearinghouse that ranks public health programs is USNWR, which is a bit sketchy. I think you should pay attention to the overall reputation of the SPH within the field, but not the rank. Like, don't choose Columbia over Emory just because they're ranked one place higher, if Emory is the better fit for you. 2. Money. MPH graduates don't get paid that much. If you can get a scholarship, an assistantship or anything like that - all other things being equal, follow the money. Also, check if your local public university has a decent school of public health. CUNY Hunter College has an MPH program and for NYS residents, it's a steal. California, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, Texas, Alabama, Illinois, Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, Minnesota, Michigan, and Washington all have top-25 ranked MPH programs at public universities and those are great deals for residents of those states. (Actually, most MPH programs in general are at public schools.) Some of these states also have decent out of state tuition rates, too. Think about what your starting salary will be in the field of your choice and compare that to how much you plan to borrow for an MPH. 3. Research/professional interests. An MPH, despite being a professional degree, has a strong research component. You will learn how to do certain skills but those skills will be related to research, so look at what the faculty are doing in that department. For example, my university (Columbia) is known for sexuality research; we even have a whole track called Sexuality and Health. Michigan has quite a few people doing racial health disparities. Harvard is where it's at for broader social determinants of health and social epi, what with Krieger and Kawachi there. Johns Hopkins has a health communications concentration. Decide what your research and professional interests are, and look for that at these schools. That includes flipping through the course catalog online and seeing what courses are offered on a regular basis. Prestige can only take you so far, and it's a locality dependent thing too. I mean, virtually anywhere will know about a Harvard degree, but in the Midwest a Michigan degree might take you almost as far - if not farther because of more extensive alumni networks (and Michigan alums are like glitter - they're everywhere!). The same may be true for Washington grads in the Pacific Northwest. I mean, if you want to work in New York a Columbia degree might be ideal, but a degree from Hunter College might work just as well. If you want to work in the South, an Emory degree is going to be where it's at because that school is the holy grail of public health down there. And so forth.

I think these things are all in good humor, and do not necessarily involve ridiculing the individual students so much as marveling that someone could write something like that. And if you peruse the funny test answer page, these generally aren't students who are really trying hard and just got something wrong. If you look at the responses, these are students who were either fooling around or simply not paying attention and made something up. I really enjoyed the good natured grader in Funny Test Answer 5 on this page: http://www.dailycognition.com/index.php/2008/08/06/funny-exam-answers-by-students.html. The student doodled a birthday party at the bottom of the page because the question asked them to create a table about something that had to do with a birthday party (not an engineer, so I don't understand the question). The teacher wrote "Nice party, until you fold on Line A." On the back of the paper, at the fold, s/he drew a dinosaur attacking the party. LOL!

I don't attempt to break my undergrads from technology - I embrace it, instead. In addition to TAing I also supervise resident assistants in the res halls. They all have my cell phone number and they call me or text me when they need to. They have not abused the privilege - they really only text me or call me when they need to. For my course, we put the class survey up on Google Docs, we use our electronic stuff (Courseworks et al.) to the fullest possible, communicate primarily by email if not in person. I'm not that much older than my undergrads myself, and I grew up in the generation that's sort of constantly tethered to their electronic devices. IMO there's a lot of cool stuff you can do with the technology - although I do have to tell them to get off Facebook in my class, lol.

Even if you do qualitative research, you still need a solid background in quantitative statistical analysis to conduct the results properly. Uh, this is not true at all. I'm a mixed methodologist myself and I know lots of anthro and soc friends who do ethnographies, interviews and participant observations using zero statistical methods. Why would you need to know statistical analysis to analyze an interview or a focus group or an ethnography? Unless you were planning to quantify the results somehow, which isn't always the best method and which mostly qual folks don't do. I consider myself more of a quant person myself, but I sometimes do complement my quantitative survey methods studies with interviews.

I can't say that I am more interested in one or the other - I like both. I love my research; I love being engaged in research and being a scientist. But I also like teaching; I like working with undergraduates especially, and ideally my job would involve conveying a love of science and research to undergrads - regardless of their career field, but especially to encourage them to go into the (social) sciences. My ideal goal would be to work at a small liberal arts college or a regional public university, primarily with undergrads. The dream would be to get a small pot of start-up funding that I could do research with, write some smaller grants, and train some undergraduate RAs and give them the love of doing research bug too, but also teach intro/stats/research methods and convey that those are important skills to have regardless of whether one plans a career as an academic or in another field. Anyway, what have I done? I'm pretty vocal about my goals. My advisors know I do not wish to teach at an R1. They are fine with it. I'm TAing a lot of classes, but poising myself in other ways - like publishing enough to attract a job's attention. And no, teaching schools are not always "tier 3" and down. There are top liberal arts colleges like Swarthmore, Amherst, Williams, Smith, Wellesley, etc., where the focus is mostly on teaching undergraduates and those are reputable and prestigious institutions (although in academic parlance, not as "desirable" as the king goal of teaching/researching at the R1 - Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, etc. Personally, I think "desirable" is subjective). There are also regional public universities that are certainly not poor schools by any means, they simply aren't the flagship, and the focus there is also teaching. I have a friend who teaches at UNC-Greensboro, for example. Georgia Southern University and University of West Georgia are two other regional publics that have good reputations, but the professors focus mostly on teaching. And private universities that might be examples are Carlow in PA and Oglethorpe in GA.

Of course they'll understand They're all in the department; presumably they've either had graduate students in the past, have them now, or have at least seen the way the system works. And professors do not get their feelings hurt about the things that grad students believe they get their feelings hurt about. I doubt any of them will be losing sleep over the fact that you picked Professor Y over them to be your advisor if that's the right fit for you. But the time spent is not for nothing. You will still be a student in their program; they will still be your professors. You may or may not collaborate with them on research, but you may take classes with them and you will definitely participate in your departmental culture. There are some professors in my departments that do the furthest thing from what I can even comprehend (especially since my program has cognitive neuroscience and I'm a hippie-dippie social health psychologist) but we're still friendly and I know them and their students, and they know me. The ones who are close to what I do, I meet with informally and chat with. They may eventually end up on your doctoral committee.

Since my work can be done from any place where there is a computer - including at home - there's definitely a danger of working 24/7. When I was a new graduate student I thought I had to be working almost every hour I wasn't sleeping in order to be productive, mostly fueled by a toxic more advanced colleague who seems to believe that productivity can best be measured by how many appointments you have on your calendar (she's one of those people who takes a lot of pride in being "busy" and virtually unavailable unless you schedule with her a week+ in advance). Yeah, that burned me out really quick. I actually discovered that when I gave myself more downtime, my love for my research was amplified and I was more likely to do good work. I'm also lucky enough to go to a university where the environment is not 24-hour work. My advisor actually tells me to take my birthday off and professors here are notorious for not coming in on Fridays; there are virtually no classes scheduled on Fridays here. Some of them work from home. It's also a ghost town around here on the weekends, even in the research groups that do lab work, at least in my two departments. People are generally gone by 6 or 7 pm. I wish we could get away from this notion that the only way to be a successful scientist and professor is to work all the time or virtually all the time. I think it especially disadvantages women in science who still have the primary responsibility of caring for their families. I'd like to have a family myself, and I am deliberately aiming towards lower-tier universities and LACs partly because I don't want the time demands of an R1 (and I go to a top R1, so I would have the opportunity to compete for those positions if I chose to).

I found it weird and slightly inappropriate (no, you're not erring on the side of caution, you're just trying to be different, and you're trying too hard!) It's not inappropriate. I'm from the South and I was raised to call anyone older than me by a formal title - even if they introduced themselves as Jane, I would call them "Miss Jane" or "Dr. Jane" unless they asked me not to. At my Southern college, even the friendliest professors were and are still Dr. Smith or Dr. Jones. It took some time to get used to calling my advisors here by their first names. I'm getting more used it as I live in the Northeast now, and that's considered weird up here. And as a graduate student who supervises and teaches undergraduates in a variety of settings, I would not even hang out in the same bar as my undergrad students, much less go grab drinks with them. When I'm with a group of hall directors and we see our RAs in a bar, we go look for another one. It's not refusing to forge a personal relationship; there are many many ways I can form a relationship with an undergrad without drinking with them at a bar.

I had a 3.4 undergraduate GPA, and I have an NSF. Granted I applied in my second year of graduate school when it didn't matter so much, but even in my first year they didn't comment on it. They will learn of your GPA, though, because you have to submit your transcripts from undergrad.

I personally would only (and did only) visit local schools pre-application. A flight and hotel accommodations cost far more money than an application fee. Then I'd narrow it down to a top 3-5 and visit those places after I was admitted. To me, there's no sense falling in love with a school only to not get admitted, and visiting beforehand does not ensure that you will get admitted especially in fields in which it is not customary to visit before getting invited (like mine). Also, all of jaxzwolf's counterpoints assume that you would be visiting on a non-recruitment day/weekend before you are admitted and a recruitment weekend after you are admitted. However, you can always visit on a non-recruitment weekend day after you've been admitted, which is what I did. It was a normal day, I got a lot of personalized attention from the people who would be my advisors, and I got to walk around the campuses myself and get a feel for what it would be like to be a student there. It was very nice. However, I also visited a local school before I was admitted. It was an open-house day, and I didn't even get to meet a faculty member - it wasn't built into the schedule. It was mostly current students talking about how awesome the school was and how they all got internships and we should definitely come. I will say that open houses tend to be informative, but I would recommend visiting any school you visit pre-application on a regular day or only going to the open house in the morning and in the evening breaking off for your own activities.

Bimmerman: So you did do research. You simply didn't do *academic* research, but that's not the only kind of research out there. I only point this out because I think it would be close to impossible to get an NSF if you haven't had any research experience, regardless of where you did it. In any case, the NSF isn't solely focused on funding future professors; they want to fund scientists who will contribute to the science and technology workforce. As for this year's prompts...they are exactly the same every year. There's a personal statement in which you talk about your personal motivations for going into science; a previous research statement in which you discuss your previous research and how it relates to the work you plan to complete in graduate school; and a research proposal/statement in which you propose a project that you intend to carry out as a graduate student ("intend" being loosely defined). One thing I noticed, as an NSF applicant in psychology, is that it was very difficult to find sample essays in my field or any fields that weren't hardcore STEM fields (engineering, chemistry, math, neuroscience, biology, physics, astronomy, etc.) The only one I had to go on was a previous NSF awardee's in my own department, who let me see her essays and use them as examples. I would do the same for any applicant within my own department/university, so find out if there are any NSF awardees in your department and ask them for advice. Also, find out if your university has a clearinghouse/website/binder/some kind of place where they host previous years' successful essays. My university is beginning such a website and I've agreed to put my essays up there. I know that they've had this before, it's just never been a website - it was a binder (or series of binders) where they kept examples in hard copy. I was unsuccessful my first year of graduate school and was awarded the NSF my second year, and I can comment on some of the things I did that I think changed my application: 1. I had a graduate school track record, which I think helped because my cumulative GPA from undergrad was a little low (it was a 3.4). My graduate LOR writers were also more familiar with me and my work; they had actually known me for a full year instead of just like 3 months. 2. In my previous research statement - instead of just listing and briefly describing my past work, I linked it to the work I was doing now. My first project was completely unconnected to anything I'm doing now, but I discussed how it helped me learn how to synthesize information, as well as exactly what research was and how the research process worked. You have to start somewhere, right? My other projects were sort-of related but I made connections where appropriate: for example, I worked on a project analyzing how women coped with discrimination, and I linked it to how I'm now looking at substance use as a deleterious coping method for men that causes risky sexual behavior. In that sense I made my research history look like a stream of consciously connected projects instead of what it actually was (me doing whatever seemed interesting at the time, lol). 3. I'm an African American woman in science, so I kind of touched on that in my personal statement. However, in my original statement I think I wrote about it too much and not about how it actually impacted my role in science. In my second essay, I think I spent about three sentences on it. The experiences I spoke about were -Growing up in a very socially inequal place (New York) and realizing that I wanted to study the root causes of that social inequality from a scientific perspective, so that science could change it -The importance of mentorship and role models for all young scientists, but particularly those from groups underrepresented in science. -What I did about increasing diversity in the science pipeline. I tutored students on the SAT and GRE, volunteered at a predominantly black honors elementary school and gave presentations on going to college and why it's important. I also wrote about how one of my research experiences was in community-based research and how that made me want to do community-based research work that would have a direct impact on communities. -I also wrote a paragraph on the end about how the NSF could help me reach my goals of doing important research and being a mentor to students interested in science careers. I wrote about how I wanted to teach stats and research methods so that people wouldn't be intimidated by them. I think those are all topics even someone from not from an underrepresented could write about, since the emphasis was promoting science to the broader community and not just to little black kids. It was more about what I was going to do to impact science, and not just how being a person of color has impacted me. 4. Research proposal was based on a project I had actually been developing with my advisor. I actually inserted a paragraph about how one of my previous research projects was related to this project. That was not in the original one. Major improvements: -Most of the space was spent connecting the research to previous work in the field and setting up the theoretical framework. That satisfied the intellectual merit criterion. I spent three paragraphs setting this up. I was advised by a professor that this was very important when she read my previous year's proposal and realized I had not sufficiently connected my work to a theoretical framework. I think this was just good overall advice for grants in general. -I spent a paragraph on why my project was important - the "broader impact" of the work. What was it going to do for society and for the state of the science? I spent a few sentences commenting on why my relatively innovative methods would contribute to the field. -I only spent one paragraph discussing the method itself. The year before I think I spent an inordinate amount of time discussing the exact methods when that's not even the most important part. Yes, they want to see that you can set up a realistic project, but they also want to see that you have find a niche in science for yourself and that you know how to find an appropriate topic. -I spent two short paragraphs discussing why my university and my two advisors were perfect fits for me to execute my work. I aso did not do this in the prior year, and I think this was a big factor, as my evaluators commented on the fit. They want to see that you have support from your university and your PI(s) to do this work. -I was able to fit all of this and 6 APA-style references into the 2 page limit, with a little room to spare. It can be done! Actually if you know what you're going to say, 2 pages is more than enough. I struggled with the limit in my first year, whereas in my second year I breezed into it.