neuropsychosocial

If the Graduate Admissions Office doesn't know how to use mail merge, is it really a school that I want to attend?

It certainly seems to make time pass more quickly for me - I sit down to read gradcafe and boom, it's two hours later!

We used "professor" at my undergraduate university for everyone. At my master's institution, the only person who requested to be called "Prof Smith" was someone who held a terminal master's and was a clinical instructor in the Exercise Science department. But "professor" isn't unheard of. I feel quite strongly that Ph.D.s should not use "Dr." socially - that's reserved for M.D.s. My SO's family, however, insists upon addressing mail to us as "Dr. and Mrs. Useless Subject." Um, he's Mr. Useless Subject, and I'm Ms. Neuro-Psycho Social. ARGH!

Better: "unable to accept you at this time" or "unable to offer you admission at this time." Phrase it as a negation of a positive, not a negative! Bad: "You are not worthy."

Thank you so much! I really enjoyed it. You brought a genuine smile to my face.

You're going to be okay either way! I honestly believe that there's no "wrong" answer - if you don't go, you have a great offer that you're excited about and free time (from both preparing and from going to the interview), and if you go, you have a great offer that you're excited about and can see another place; perhaps the situation will be different on the ground than it sounds. (BTW, did you hear about funding from School A?) My advice would be to flip a coin. If you're disappointed in the outcome of the coin toss, then you know that you should do the opposite. (This sounds slightly absurd, but I've found that it's a good "gut check" exercise.)

I believe - although I'm not quite sure about all the details - that MIT "demoted" their men's varsity hockey team to club status a few years ago, which means that the club team is probably very competitive. In the U.S., "club teams" often travel frequently to play other schools. "Recreational sports" or "intramural" sports are the "let's put ten people on a basketball court, run around for 20 minutes without a ref, and whoever scores 30 points first wins" teams. It sounds more like you're looking for intramural than club hockey. MIT definitely has men's IM hockey, both in winter semester and in IAP, the short term between fall and winter. They also have "open rec hockey" two or three days a week at the MIT rink, which is a great facility IMHO (at least for a school of MIT's academic caliber that doesn't emphasize sports), and public skating every day. If none of those fit your desired level of hockey, the greater Boston area is covered in ice rinks, many of which have adult recreational leagues that range in competitiveness from "we played D1 hockey this decade but didn't make the NHL" to "we drink lots of beer while slowly cruising around a rink occasionally flipping a puck at each other" - and plenty of levels in between! The phone number for the IM office is 617-253-7947 and they would be able to tell you the details about IM hockey. I forced myself to apply to graduate schools without considering the quality or quantity of local ice rinks, but it definitely factored into my final decision.

Wow! First of all, I hope that you and yours (as my grandmother used to say, meaning your family and your loved ones) are safe. Secondly, congratulations! I am in awe of the courage and resourcefulness of the individuals fighting for freedom in the Middle East right now. I wish that I could do more than sit in the U.S. and send good thoughts across the globe. Thirdly, let us know if there's anything that any of us can do for you - if you let your programs know your situation, I'm sure that they would be willing to email you, but if not, and you want to use a U.S. mailing address and have one of us type or scan your letters and email them to you, let us know. If there's other stuff that we can do, there's a grad cafe at every major university in the U.S., and I suspect many of us would be willing to do what we can. Best of luck to you!

Sometimes they sent carrier pigeon; sometimes snail mail; sometimes email; sometimes owl (thanks gradgirlwannabe!); sometimes they don't notify you at all, in which there is probably a camera trained on you as part of some research study. More seriously, it seems like most online systems send an email when something updates, but occasionally, they're not quite synched. So your online app might be updated at 2PM and the email goes out at 5PM. I tried checking online systems obsessively, but it was too hard, so I switched to logging in only at night, after the office had closed for the day. Pure awesome!

1 - As LJK mentioned, it's usually six years, although some professors will get credit for years at a previous institution, and some schools allow professors to "stop the clock" for maternity/paternity leave, so the professor might go up in their seventh or eighth year. 2 - This varies widely by school. I've been a third year review, then tenure review at sixth year. I've seen a second year, fourth year, and then tenure review at sixth year. I've seen just a fourth year review before a tenure review. The depth of these reviews varies, as well. Some schools have only internal reviews, no outside letters about scholarship; some look only at research or only at teaching at a given pre-tenure review. Some are designed solely to give advice (right now, your teaching and research are on track, but we're concerned about your service), while other schools actively fire people at the pre-tenure review. If you ask about the tenure clock at the institution in question, I think that will look really good. You could even phrase it generally, in the third person, without saying "you." ("At X university, what does the tenure process look like?") 3 - Double-edged question: I think that it might be a sensitive area, but I think that it would also demonstrate that you understand academia and that you're doing due-diligence, which I think would make you look very good. If you bring it up in a very polite way, framed in terms of your own timeframe for graduating, I think that you would not offend a professor, who knows perfectly well that she/he is not tenured. Check the graduate handbook of your potential program and see if it allows Ph.D. committees to be chaired by assistant professors. (Many schools allow master's committee to be chaired by assistant profs, but not doctoral committees.) Ask if your POI expects to have a tenure decision before you'll move to Ph.D. candidacy. Ask if the POI anticipates either junior sabatical (some places give it, some don't) or a post-tenure sabbatical during your time at the school. Most professors go on their first full, senior sabbatical in their seventh year, which would mean the year after tenure for most people. (If they don't get tenure, generally their sabbatical is canceled and they have to teach during that year.) You could also ask the DGS or department chair directly, if your POI leaves, will someone else step up to chair your work or are you out of luck. The problem with that is that someone might be willing to chair, but also demand crazy revisions, which is one reason to consider the double-mentoring. The department chair or DGS might also be willing to answer a question about how often assistant professors receive tenure in Y department. 4 - I understand your concerns. They are very legitimate. I really think that if you're polite and sensitive, you won't offer the POI. This is *your life* that you're thinking about, and taking the risk of offending someone with some reasonable questions to make sure that you will have the chance to finish your degree is probably worthwhile. Just don't email and say, "You're not good enough to be tenured at X University. What happens to me after that?"

I've never been embarrassed by someone asking me to address him/her by a less formal title, but I would be mortified if it went the other way. I think it's okay to ask a professor - after significant correspondence or after acceptance - how she/her would like to be addressed, especially as a grad student. Many professors will ask how we want to be addressed, too. ("Do you go by neuro, or is it neuropsychosocial?") It's hard to go wrong with the more formal address, though, especially at the beginning. It looks respectful and professional, and being corrected "down" is so much better than "up," IMHO.

Clearly, it's a bureaucratic process designed by an admincrittter who HATES students and likes to torture them, slowly and painfully. Roccoriel, that stinks. If it were me, I would be a straight-up basket case until the letter arrived. I hope that you're able to cope with uncertainty better than I am! And I hope that the reason why they couldn't display your decision online is that they need to present your financial offer on paper, since most of the online systems don't seem to have a place for that. Good luck!

Does the admissions office know that you attended school in an English-speaking country? Usually, translations of credentials aren't required from CAN/UK/IRE/AUS, etc. It might be worth double-checking with a high-ranking human in admissions, and perhaps seeing if your department had advice, too.

"This is the true story of fifteen strangers picked to live in a dorm, apply to graduate school together, and have their lives taped to find out what happens when people stop being polite and start being real."

For me, it was about balancing my personal goals with my relationship: I had sacrificed enormously for SO's career, to the point where I was compromising myself, not just my career goals. I couldn't live like that - and SO didn't want me to. Have the two of you talked about how things would be if you moved away for school? How often would he visit you, you visit him, costs of two households, trust, future, time with your family versus his family versus alone vacation, etc. (When you're considering schools, think about how long it would take one of you to get to the other: there's a huge difference between being a short direct flight apart and being a 10 hour two-stop odyssey.) When you're accounting for finances, include the costs of maintaining a second household, trips back and forth, and a value for your happiness (which might tip towards staying with your SO or might tip towards graduating with less debt). I think communication and setting expectations in advance is a key to a successful long-distance relationship.

A weather report claims that there are 18 inches of snow on the ground in Minneapolis. Anyone else reconsidering their decision to attend Minnesota instead of Arizona? (just kidding... sort of.) I'll be on the Minneapolis campus, east bank. I'm getting nervous about finding housing, so I appreciate bhikhaari's suggestion to wait another few months. I think that I'm more than ready to move on from my current situation and that's contributing to my obsession with craigslist apartment. I'd be willing to consider renting a place with a larger group, but my spouse will be in Minneapolis about 25% of the time, so I don't quite know how that would work with roommates. I have the option to move in July or August and I'm not sure how to decide. Ennue, we're going to have a fantastic experience, except for all of that snow. I've never had the chance to visit the Netherlands, although I want to. It looks beautiful and friends who have lived there/visited report very positive experiences.

If you want more than 2-4 semesters of teaching experience at School A, you'll be able to get them - but you won't have to teach if you don't want to or don't have time. Do you have a sense of what kind of position you want in the long-term? SLACs will want more than two semesters of teaching experience, but it sounds like School A is offering you more funding with more available time to complete the requirements of your degree. Teaching experience is great, but not at the expense of finishing your degree because teaching takes too much time. If you decide that you want a career at a LAC, you can ask to teach more or become involved in smaller, less formal capacities just by asking faculty. If you want teaching opportunities at School A, my guess is that you can get them. If you want more free time to concentrate on your degree requirements at School B, you may have a harder time finding free time than more teaching. Of course, there are other factors involved as well, such as which school is the best fit for you, personally and professionally.

Just to double-check that I understand, it sounds like you're saying that it's not a great neighborhood in the sense that there are better neighborhood to live, rather than as a euphemism for "crime-riddled." Or does Como have a reputation for being unsafe? I appreciate your input - it's so hard to figure out neighborhoods from so far away, without a great sense of what my life will end up being like.

To me, this sounds like you won't be able to get the kind of training that you want at School B. Right now, we're all so focused on getting in that it's easy to forget that the main goal is getting out with the skills and record to land the sort of job that we have in mind. Going to a school that doesn't support - or value - your subfield is a recipe for disaster, IMHO. I think your reaction is totally understandable. If I were me, I think attending the interview makes sense, because you'll be able to get a better picture of the department, who you would be working with, and how students with cognitive interests are treated. Don't be afraid, though, to turn them down if they can't provide you the training that you need to get a job. This process isn't about an acceptance letter and it's not even about a Ph.D: it's about professional training and the career that comes after the Ph.D.

I think it can be used as an interesting hook for the start of your SoP, as long as it's brief and you very quickly tie it into your current interests. One sentence about the textbook, second sentence that it inspired you to study genetics in college, where you met a wonderful immuno professor who inspired an interest in immunogenetics, third sentence about your research experience in autoimmune disorders and future goals. If it's snappy, catchy, and leads directly into your current interests, I think it can really engage a reader and demonstrate your writing ability, which is an important consideration in grad admissions. I did something similar, against much advice that I read on the internet, to quickly explain something in my application that needed to be addressed, without making a big deal out of it.

I think that it would be okay to ask him in advance what he would like from you. He may not be able to imagine quite what his reaction will be, but he might be able to give you some broad guidelines about how he reacts to bad news and what would be helpful to him. My spouse and I have opposite reactions to bad news (wanting to be left alone versus really wanting comfort) and it was very hurtful to me when he would leave just when I wanted his comfort the most. It's really helped to know what the other one wants, even if we still don't quite understand the other person's preferences.

I appreciate your assumption that I've managed to keep from going crazy... unfortunately, I'm not sure it's true! I love to make stuff (more crafts than art), and I wish that I were putting time into that rather than browsing internet sites, stalking the results board and craigslist. I figured it would get better once I had received acceptances, but I've just switched my focus on what I research on the internet. I'd love an online Grad Students Arts and Crafts board - it would be great to see others' projects and might motivate me to work on them.

It depends on the field. In my discipline, subfields makes their own decisions, but they still need to be voted on by the entire department, but it's mostly a formality. However, people from one subfield heard one week, people from another subfield heard another week - and several of the subfields haven't popped up on the results board yet. In disciplines where there are deep lines between subfields without much crossover, I think it's quite likely that various programs make their decisions at different times. At a number of schools, applicants who were nominated for university-level fellowships have already been notified, because most graduate schools have deadlines for those programs in February, but applicants who are not nominated but still under consideration for admission haven't been. If only one or two people for a given program have appeared, with most people receiving no word at all, my guess is that those were nominees for fellowships.

I agree with everyone else - there's very little chance that the Graduate School would override the department, unless your credentials were quite questionable. A GPA below 3.0 is one of the things that might trigger a red flag for the Graduate School, but the department surely knows how the Grad School will react and believes that you'll be fine. I understand holding your breath - I did too - but I think you'll be fine. Nic: My departmental letter had a minimum offer of funding (that was quite generous) and said that final details would come from the Graduate School. The Graduate School letter said that details on funding would come from my department. I'm amused!

It depends on whether they want an entering cohort of 10 or whether they only want 7 and accept 10 anticipating a 70% yield. It's possible that you still have a chance, but the professor would be the best person to ask. If it's your first-choice, follow up by asking what the chances are that they'll go to the waitlist, do they go in order, and do people on the waitlist have the possibility of funding if they end up being accepted. Good luck!