Behavioral

Seems like you just pushed me over the edge. Downloading Zotero for round 2.

I'll defer to a paper that just came out recently from my department: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/04/05/0956797611404899.short?rss=1&ssource=mfr

I'm also thinking about switching to Zotero (from Mendeley) now that they do support Chrome. The only gripe I have is I finally updated a lot of the older papers in my archives that were missing doi/citation information, so I might have to do that all over again if I import to Zotero.

Whether you believe the rankings are valid or not, there still exists the marked correlation that arguably the best and most productive researchers are at these "top" schools and that top post-doc/faculty placements are usually cornered by these institutions, too. Also, these "top" schools tend to have the best resources, the most federal funding, and when it comes to hiring, require the least amount of "justification" to consider you for employment. It's important to choose a program based on fit, but at the same time, this is an investment towards the rest of your 40-50+ year career, and the academic field isn't as fluid a meritocracy as many would like it to be, so these first steps/choices make a huge impact over the trajectory of where you end up later in your career. Your true calling may be from 'Podunk State U', but if Stanford or Mich admit you to Social Psych, for example, you'd be making (in my, and in most professors' opinion) a huge mistake by doing so.

The way I construed it was that the saying meant ~ "a high GRE won't get you in, but a low GRE will keep you out." That's why I tell people not to spend too much time and energy worrying about the GRE/GMAT if their scores are within a certain range of a school's admit average. At Kellogg, for example, the differential impact between getting a 780 and a 730 on admissions is negligible--if you had to spend a considerable amount of extra time to raise your score by that marginal amount, then that was time wasted. However, if you're scoring below the 700s for example, then spend more time raising your score.

They're cornering the market on 'comfort chiq' look.

Cosigning the above. I would, however, advise against a fixie if it's your only bike. I own a fixie, but I also own a roadie (TT/Tri) bike. Fixies are great if you're getting exercise in (you can't coast), don't have many hills (you can't drop down your gear), and the braking system is a bit scary (unless you install handbrakes). Besides that, just make sure you maintain your bike well. There are plenty of online resources on proper maintenance, or just take it into your local bike shop once a season or so.

Yes. Phone or Skype. I just know he didn't flyout for an interview.

Micro.

Friend just got accepted to Stanford today.

For the lazy: http://projectimplicit.net/nosek/papers/citations/appendices.htm

Anything like this: http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Your-Journal-Twelve-Weeks/dp/141295701X/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_c Academia in STEM fields puts some (if not the most) of the most pressure on its students to publish to do well. We get some of that pressure, too, in business, but it's a lot more diffuse and there is a lot more room for 'mediocrity' while still having a high chance at getting a TT job afterward. Reading will only get you so far. Get your practical skills up to level and just get focused on research.

A friend of mine just got an interview invite at Kellogg for MORS.

For Marketing, all-day interviews were not golden tickets to admission. One of the programs that invited me out accepted 2/10 interviewees; another 2/7; and another 1/5. These also doubled as recruitment weekends in that they were the only times applicants got to visit the schools on the departments' dimes. I had two formal recruitment weekends (post-acceptance), which were scheduled around faculty 1:1s, grad student lunches/drinks, etc., which were really nice.

Yeah--I did my undergrad honors thesis for my math/econ degree on empirical game theory modeling. I was also roommates with the owner/admin of http://gametheory101.com/, Billy Spaniel, and we're actually going to be writing a more comprehensive extension to his Game Theory 101 e-book to incorporate some behavioral game theory/economics later this summer!

I think I get more people telling me I'm OCD than I do compliments. Thanks! haha

I should be doing a lit review right now, but I just finished off a good amount of scotch watching the Knicks beat the Lakers.

You guys have it easy--most professors are forgiving of those looking to enter academia since they understand the importance. I had to hide the fact that I was flying out to these interviews from my boss since EDs don't care for academics. I took a lot of random personal days in February and March a few weeks before quitting.

Do you mean stuff like pure empiricism, pure skepticism, relativism, falsificationism, etc.? It might not be relevant to you since you're not in marketing, but here's an address by the former Association for Consumer Research president, Alice Tybout, about theory development and implementation in marketing and consumer behavior: http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/display.asp?id=7659 Here's a forthcoming article about the criticisms of a hypothetico-deductive approach to theory testing by Joe Alba: http://www.jstor.org/stable/info/10.1086/661230 Both cite many relevant non-discipline-specific sources, so be sure to look at the reference sections.

Are you talking about physical or digital files? Digital files (PDFs) are no biggie. Mendeley, EndNote, Zotero, etc. all do this pretty straightforward and you can do it in as much detail as you want. Physical, I don't do it at all. I have a digital copy (or at least digital citation) of my physical articles at all times.

Like you've alluded to, it depends on what types of job you can feasibly get with just a Bachelors. I only took a break between undergrad and my PhD because I was getting a few consulting job offers that paid really well; had it not been for that (like, if my only options were discipline-relevant [low-paying research assistant work] or non-relevant and not high-paying), then I would have gone straight to grad school.

Half for fun, half because it's still related to my field: "Mindless Eating", by Brian Wansink.

I usually cook a whole bunch of meat on the weekend and save them in individual containers for repurposing later on (like cooking a Costco bag of boneless skinless chicken breasts by grilling or poaching them in broth). Costco rotisserie chickens are cheap ($4 for a 3lb bird) and after you're done picking off the meat, you can dumb the carcass into a pot of boiling water and mirepoix and make a broth as flavored as you want. If I'm under a lot of time constraints, my go-to dish is Pasta a la Carbonara. It's just a pasta with an egg yolk/parmesan coat, with pancetta and pepper (lots of it). I just default to Chef John's (http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2010/06/spaghetti-alla-carbonara-for-real.html) recipe, but it's hard to really make it wrong. Besides that, I eat really well out in the city of Chicago. I'm lucky to be in a well-funded program with a fellowship, and I don't have to live off ramen like I though I would when I first started considering grad school 3-4 years ago.

Basically for e-mail or any other things you may have to do: (from http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/productivity-made-simple-the-key-to-gtd-your-daily-graph-of-activity.html)

I have a desktop at home and a laptop+dock+monitor at school, so that's taken care of. I also have an office, so I keep most of my books, articles, notes, etc. there, too. I carry with me: -Phone (my #1 item since I rely on my smartphone too much now) -Wallet -Keys -iPad + Bluetooth Keyboard -A prepared meal or two -Water bottle -Gum / mints -Chapstick -One notebook with articles / notes that I'll be working on that day