Usmivka

Just print a test swatch first. Some fabrics are coarser, some finer, and they all print differently. The plastic fabrics actually crease quite badly when folded. They can be mostly ironed out with care though, and print more crisply than natural fiber fabrics, which can blur and don't hold bright colors as well. I print paper posters at Kinkos, comes out better than the in house print shop at similar price (~$100). The Copytech services at the other campus are a lot cheaper, but use cheap paper and ink and it shows. For fabric, I've used our in house group, but I heard something about an online fabric printer where you send them the design and they print by the yard--it is meant for dresses and such, but I've seen a number of really beautiful posters made by them, and the cost is apparently low (~$30). I don't have the name on me though--the "Spoonflower" source T linked above looks really similar. The big downside of fabric is the lead time--a few days at least if you outsource it. ps at the conferences I go to ~20% of posters are fabric. Mostly by the people who were clearly better at time management and could get it looking nice and ready with plenty of time to spare. It has really caught on in the last few years.

Don't bother. If an admissions committee is concerned about your writing ability, they have your personal statement. I think I got a 3.5, and it never came up (MIT, entirely different department so not entirely relevant). Letters of rec, research experience, and your personal statement are all an order of magnitude more important than your GRE, and I'm pretty sure an adcom will only look at your Q score anyway. The GRE is one of those threshold things--once you are higher than some arbitrary value they won't care, and I doubt most science or engineering departments have ever cared about the W score. It is just too arbitrary to take seriously. ps I think I heard a radio interview with a reader once talking about how he just looked for sufficient "complex" words and length--nothing about content or readability (though I can't find it online now so I may have this mixed up with some other common test). I wouldn't feel bad about it.

I think your GPA is lower than than the average for admitted students in at least some of those schools, and will have to be offset by stellar letters of rec since you don't have within discipline research experience. Physical oceanography as a discipline is less picky about having any oceanography or earth sciences background though, so I think your course experience is fine (good even with a GFD course). You might focus your efforts on directing your letter writers in such a way that each letter is complimentary and speaks to slightly different strengths that are relevant to a program outside your current experience--your science and math aptitude, ability to conduct research, motivation and drive. The MOOCs aren't really useful to show you know the material, but they do demonstrate that you have a lot of interest in the subject matter and are taking advantage of available resources. It might be good to highlight that in your personal statement. I don't know if UW still posts the stats of incoming students (I couldn't find it on their website), but a few years ago it was ~3.8 and had been rising steadily for a number of years. WHOI is in the 3.9 ballpark currently, and I assume Scripps is similar to the other two. Note that these averages reflect all departments--physical oceanography is generally at the higher end of the range, so a school wide average of 3.8 could easily translate into a physical oceanography department average of ~3.9 or higher. OSU used to be a little lower average GPA and incoming GRE, and they admitted most folks as masters students with an option to continue into the PhD if you have strong performance. I don't know if that is still the case. I've heard second hand that Florida State may be similar, but I really don't know. I don't know much about TAMU beyond its strong reputation, but it seems promising that the prof suggested you reference him. Fair warning--some profs encourage lots of applicants knowing they will only take one student, just to give themselves maximum options during admissions season and when fellowship results are announced. It is always a good idea to talk to multiple profs--the one you spoke with may even be able to recommend others that you might contact in advance in case funding doesn't pan with him. You could emphasize that you think he is a great fit for you, but realize that he might ultimately not be able to take you--therefore, does he think there is anyone else int he department you should be talking to as backup options? Some of these programs strongly suggest (require?) and subject specific GRE in physics. A good showing on this is nearly mandatory for international students. The extracurriculars aren't relevant to your application (really, I don't think you should put sports into a grad school application!), but you could maybe spin the sports journalism if you intend to make science outreach and communication a major theme of your graduate work and scientific career.

The best thing to do is find a statistician for help. A text targeting earth science, environmental science, or geography specific statistics, such as Modeling methods for the marine sciences (Glover, Jenkins, and Doney--an earth science focus) might also be useful. If you want to stake a stab without further consultation, I have a few ideas below. __ The basic test for if two populations are the same (or two methods are both representative of the same population set of answers) is a student's t-test. Tukey's honestly significant difference test might be a good alternative. If the methods don't agree that it is the same population of experimental results, you have a problem, and you'll need to decide if one or more methods is doing a particularly poor job and why. Do all the methods have similar variable dependence? If not, you could use principle component analysis (on a single method at a time) to check where the methods are diverging and why. For example one may weight a given component more heavily than another, with predictable divergence. If you are interested in the error analysis and whether the methods are telling you the same thing within errors, then bootstrapping becomes useful, as mentioned above. Or a Monte Carlo analysis could allow you to fit a "best" answer to a given method based on the uncertainties and assuming a random distribution of error, including during your measurements--this is not always the same as the exact answer you calculate from a method, and these answers might lead to a tighter correlation. Finally, sometimes the best you can do is say that the methods you believe give a certain range, mean, and mode, and the true answer lies somewhere near there. This is the unsatisfactory answer that earth scientists sometimes arrive at for parameterizations of biological, chemical, or physical rates based on some known forcing mechanism. If you believe that several of the numerical methods are valid, you could combine them in a system of linear equations to constrain a solution space and optimize the "true" experimental result.

Could you give an example of a geoarchaeology program and the questions such research addresses? eg how is this different from archaeology, is there a distinct timeframe that requires the "geo" prefix? Or is this more a question of techniques and tools as in marine archaeology, which uses the same toolbox as marine geology?

Good idea, but I no longer use satellite derived data, so this is out for me. I used QuickSCAT, but it lost its antenna, and the other missions are or not (yet) generating useable data in my particular setting. I've also heard that the ESSF is pretty much exclusively leveraged with existing NASA grants. i.e. if your PI has a grant or you are building off an existing NASA project, you have a shot, but if your lab group/research family isn't already in the system, it isn't really worth applying. Do you think this is incorrect? I'd be willing to rethink a thesis chapter to mesh better with the ESSF if I thought there was any chance of getting accepted!

Thanks for the quick reply. I'll recheck the Foster fellowship, it may very well allow for dissertation ready students. Good call!

Hi all, my advisor is leaving somewhere I can't follow, and thus my funding is in jeaopardy while I wrap up my sample and data analysis and finish writing. I do biogeochemistry research in marine systems, with a heavy helping of physical and analytical chemistry. I'm entering my fourth year, which restricts the available external fellowships (no GRFP, NASA GSRP, EPA STAR, etc). Applicable fellowships I've found that aren't restricted to students in their first three years are: Switzer environmental fellowship, site specific grants like the NERRS GRF, and regional grants through seagrant and space grant offices. Am I missing anything obvious (or sneaky)? I'm hoping for something like the NSF DDIG, but as far as I can tell such dissertation grants are limited to social sciences and biology.

This point. You are a temporary filler for someone who has not publically indicated anything other than the desire to return to her job, and delaying grad school based on heresay doesn't seem like a wise move. It is not clear that you would be offered the full time postion if this women declined to return, so you certainly need to ask your boss what is up. I'm guessing you won't have the answer you want before you pay your first tuition check. Also, most here have assumed that your degree makes you more qualified for such a position, but I think your experience nicely illustrates that knowing the right people at the right time can have a lot more to do with getting the job you want than your credentials (temporary or not).

Read, "pre-internet profs." I don't think I've met more than a handful fo academics under 50 that say these sorts of things with any conviction. It makes sense to physically travel to somewhere with different people and ideas in a world without rapid transportation and communication, but at a time when we can have committee members half-way around the world by virtue of teleconferencing the rationale breaks down. That said, a lot of admissions committees are made up of senior faculty that haven't necessarily acculturated to this shift.

It isn't authorship that I'd be worried about with a young prof. It is mentoring ability, expectations, overwork on the way to tenure, uncertain job and funding future. He's coming out a part of his life where all he had to do was science, and entering a part where he has to be a manager of people and budgets. That isn't something you get trained for in grad school or as a postdoc, so he is untested and there could be complications. Search the forums for one of the many "old vs young" professor threads to get an idea of the pros and cons. Chemistry had a couple good ones last year.

If you are right about the birth year, he is, in fact, super young. 35. A couple post-docs or an intro-position away from having been in grad school--was his last position a post-doc or otherwise sans-independent lab? Anyway, close enough to being in my peer group that if he was at WHRC recently I've probably been to parties with this guy. So I'd think of him as a young prof, with all the extra caveats and warnings that entails.

I'm from a part of the country where "passive-aggressive" is the default, or rather the default mannerisms are similar enough that outsiders can't tell the difference. I don't generally notice this behavior or see it as a problem unless someone else points out specific examples and explains why that causes them problems. So it not implausible that you could be making a tempest in a teacup over situations like this. The "offender" may be behaving normally from his/her perspective, and the passive-aggresiveness is only in the eye of the beholder. And even if this person is directing such behavior at you intentionally, isn't that better than the alternatives? Personally, I prefer folks that act in the way I was acculturated to expect (which I view as a way of being polite and professional even when you dislike or don't respect a coworker), as opposed to, say, a more Northeastern approach where folks are very direct about their hostility. There will be people that don't like you in your life but have to work with you anyway. Passive-aggressive behavior is easy to ignore and live with (for me), but outright hostility is something I prefer not to deal with and view as boorish--and this is the alternative I see.

An approach that has worked well for minimizng regrades (but perhaps not so well as a tool for teaching) is to say that I will happily regrade anything a student wants to give me. But I make clear that I'll go over the assignment with a fine-toothed comb, and they can both earn or lose additional points. I am far more likely to dock credit for unstated assumptions, minor errors, and the like if a student insists that I previously made some error and a regrade is truly the best use of my time. Students quickly realize that most of my "errors" led to higher grades for them, and it is not in their interest to have me going over their assignments twice. By the time I've done 2-3 regrades, word spreads and they stop coming in.

I think this is too bad, as the originally posted question seems to have been more or less wrapped up to everyone's satisfaction (yes, your officemates are being dicks, no you shouldn't feel bad, here are some suggestions...). But this ancillary discussion is clearly interesting to many of the posters and is exactly the sort of thing I enjoy learning about in the forum. This side discussion has certainly given me a fuller understanding in what the expectations and norms in various graduate fields are, and underlined something of a philosophical debate about the value of our work as students and what the payout is and should be for all involved parties. I'd also suggest that as "senior" posters you have a lot of agency where the rest of us don't. The power dynamic is such that by saying that any other discussion not directly addressing the opening question is "derailing" things, you can shut down conversation on this topic for those of us who may not feel the same way. Maybe the conversation is dead anyway (though I've seen other "derailed" threads go a lot further), but I think it is something we could all be mindful of.

Something you aren't very good at expressing in these posts. It is hard in text, which is why I don't even try. Gnome is offering a good primer though. Can someone upvote him for me? I'm out of plusses for the day.

She is a spokeswoman for the Holistic Moms Network, which advocates taking a pass on most of the medical advances of the last two centuries. It certainly isn't a pro-science position. It's great that she speaks about a passion that brought her to science, but her views are dissonant with the best scientific consensus and the extensive body of work conducted by researchers stretching back to Edward Jenner and his vaccine for smallpox in 1798. Without ever having seen this show, I find it problematic as an academic becuase it gives Bialik increased prominence for ascientific (fair alternative to anti-science?) nonsense that endangers lives, as I outlined above. Yes indeed. People answered the question you asked, and you immediately started poking holes in their feelings and perceptions. I too was raised on the maxim that "you can't argue with how someone else feels," and I think your response to m-ttl was awfully dismissive. I perceive that as saying that while you expect everyone else to read your posts in detail, you can't be bothered to try and understand the arguments of someone directly responding to the question you posed.

Bialik has a neuroscience PhD, but is not a practicing scientist. She also holds pretty anti-science views--she's vocally anti-vaccine. Having a PhD doesn't mean that she is an ideal celebrity ambassador for science, and in fact her degree may do more damage than good as it gives perceived weight to an anti-science argument outside her area of expertise. Her arguments on public platforms undercut scientific experts who argue differently but are not in the popular spotlight, and makes people think that some scientists or fields are less legitimate or rigorous than others. Further, the views she advocates have seriously negative public health consequences--consider, eg, the rapid rise of measles in the US over the last decade largely driven by the anti-vaccine movement. From the CDC: "Ninety percent of all measles cases in the United States were in people who were not vaccinated or whose vaccination status was unknown....Clusters of people with like-minded beliefs (against vaccinations) can be susceptible to outbreaks when the disease is imported, and it's one of the most contagious diseases." (http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/t0529-measeles.html) Moral of the story: if you don't like vaccines, don't go abroad. Also, you are effing up herd immunity and endangering others who can't take a particular vaccine for valid medical reasons (eg infancy, pregnancy, otherwise immunocompromised--here is a handy infographic: http://www.vaccines.gov/basics/protection/). PS I've never watched the show, but someone else complained to me that it is ridiculous that a character would be working as a waitress to pay for graduate work in microbiology--no one is admitted to such a program without external or departmental funding. I'm not sure that qualifies as pissing anyone off, but it is a complaint by an academic about the show.

Yes. And in some cases, they do, though existing funding mechanisms in the US are not always ideal (scholarships and work study). Although I think there is a strong case to be made that everyone ought to be supported to some level, not just the "best and brightest," since socioeconomic factors tilt the playing field and make it hard to evaluate who can succeed coming straight out of high school. Some foreign goverments more heavily subsidize education costs (eg the UK) so that the excpeted financial burden is lower and thus the opportunity costs a little more evenly distributed. Anyway, I also work somewhere where all research output is owned by the institution (I can't benefit form patents or discoveries). It isn't even research I'm particularly attached to, and I won't continue in the sub-field, so I have a hard time swallowing that it has concrete benefits for my career other than the premium of the diploma itself. And the least expensive technical staff that could be hired is almost five times more expensive than me on an annual basis once the overhead costs are taken into account (I think at most places this would be more like 2-3x, but we are entirely soft money with a very weird financial scheme). There are no undergrads here either, so grad students are the single source of cheap labor--research would be choked without us. I can't speak to the cost of hiring an adjunct, since my institution does not have such positions (what's the point with no undergrads?). But adjunct at our affiliated university make at least twice as much as teaching assistants in take home. TakeruK, like me, is coming from the perspective of a grad student in the physical and natural sciences. I make less now than I did as a full-time research assistant following undergrad, and that seems to be a common experience for folks in my field. And students in my program make a lot more than the average in our field. I can look for a job with fewer hours and greater pay (eg go from 70hrs/week at $30k/yr to 40 hrs/wk at $50k)--these jobs do exist in my field with relatively little searching, so this really is an opportunity cost. Although I joke about it, getting a grad school position is harder, not easier than getting a job for me and others with a similar educational background. So I have clearly placed some value on the "training" I receive as a scientist--in this case about $20k a year and 1500 hours a year of otherwise free time. I don't think it is unreasonable for folks in such a position to expect compensation for the work we do that is at least a sizable fraction of what a full time employee fresh out of undergrad makes in our fields, so in that sense I agree with the answer to "how much should a grad student make" put forward by TakeruK.

I often don't enjoy music. At least in the context of everyday listening, which is how I interpret the thread. And for me, it is in large part because of how I perceive those who do to excess. I find people who need a soundtrack to every moment of their lives not only difficult to relate to, but sometimes downright annoying in my everyday life--folks who broadcast what they listen to by cranking the volume up, at home or in transit. I have coworkers that I can never get the attention of without theatrics and physical contact because they keep earbuds in all day. Music from the lab next door can distract me when I'm working through more mentally strenous tasks. Not everyone does this, obviously, and few enough feel inconvenienced in any way regardless. But enough do that it actually makes me feel generally negative about hearing music from electronic gizmos (radio, mp3, whatever). There aren't many "recreational users" (of whatever) that feel as unselfconscious about potentially instrusive behavior, or use their habit in an actively beligerrent manner, as music listeners (eg a neighbor asks for the music to be turned down at 3am--what do you think the likely response is?). Probably simply because there are many, many more music listeners in the world than those attached to other habits. And before anyone tears me a new one for suggesting that music listening is inconsiderate, consdier that specific context--I have learned to associate some negative experiences with a particular subset of people who really enjoy music, thus music is less enjoyable to me by association. Anyway, I bet most folks would find it hard to relate to me in this particular characteristic. There is no universal context on which everyone relates at all times, so it shouldn't be surpirisng that not everyone feels the same way about music, or even understands where a passionate music lover is coming from. PS I find teens and adults are equal opportunity offenders, both in terms of annoyances and in terms of defining themselves by their musical tastes. I think it is more like a certain percentage of the population, of whatever age, has this proclivity than an age specific thing. Those teenagers grow up and keep going to (eg) Rolling Stones concerts, and I get to relive the highlights with them at work the following day.

I have pets in JP. I'm not sure housing without pet restrictions is any more common, but the neighborhood has generally lower rent than similar units in Cambridge or Somerville. There is a Harvard shuttle from Longwood to the main campus--Longwood is a 5 min T ride from the E terminus of the green line in northern JP. Alternately the 39 bus runs through most of JP and will take you there. This could cut down your total trip time to <30 min to Harvard and back depending on where in JP you are.

The Ocean Sciences Meeting is next week. There is no way to expect faculty to get back to administration in a timely manner at this time of year. Our open house is the second week of March, and I know we haven't sent out formal invites, for the same reason. Just the way the timing worked this year. I understand it is frustrating not to hear back on the expected deadline, but even if everything was going smoothly timewise I think it is unrealistic to expect instant turnaround between the individual department adcoms and the dean's office. They'll be buying your ticket, so other than short notice that you need to take a three day weekend, does it really make a difference how much notice they give you--are there competing interview weekends?

This is the same article that folks bring up every year. eg We ought to permalink this at some point.

Maybe you find out more about the specifics of what your time in a program would be like (eg the project/advisor you wanted isn't available). Maybe your partner says "there's no way I'm moving to Dodge City," or you realize you aren't so keen on the location either. Maybe a family member gets sick and you decide that you need to go to school somewhere where the flights are a little less expensive to get home. Lots of things can change about your personal or academic life in the third of a year between starting applications and starting to hear from schools.

If people are paying significant money for that, I think I just found myself a side job with our discarded lab glassware.