[scope of seo]

Spamming is not welcome.

[Research Experience.. What exactly are they looking for?]

What they said ^ "working in a lab (either volunteering, for credit, or possibly for pay) and assisting with projects". Try and see if you can do more than data entry.

[are new TAs given a list of do's and do not's?]

Absolutely nothing here. I guess you're expected to know what to do from being an undergrad.

[To Curve or Not to Curve?]

I could never get the whole curving thing. If a set of students works hard enough to get good grades, then why do you feel the need to artificially make their grades lower? As long as the material itself is what they need to know (based on external criteria, not the grades themselves) then fine.

[What u guys do with "undecipherable" writing?]

I usually manage to decipher these. Probably because I know what to expect. Once I asked the prof. to read it. Writing "-20% for bad writing" also works.

[What size laptop do you use?]

Humans can and do adjust. I've had someone using an 11" screen for writing papers tell me that it's fine. That doesn't make it optimal. I strongly suggest going with at least a 14" (and make sure it's a real computer, not a weak netbook) if it's going to be the screen you'll be staring at when writing. If an external monitor is an option, then i guess even a 12" netbook would do.

[Self-doubt: Am I too hard on myself?]

Summary: You're doing great. Stop letting people's bad attitudes get to you.

Note: Some people have no manners and/or are cooky. Being in the academia is weakly negatively correlated with former and moderately positively correlated with the latter.

[Do PhD grades matter?]

Grades don't matter as long as they keep you above the required thresholds. Oh and maybe for scholarships.

[Does childrens of alumni REALLY get any advantage?]

a company can hire whomever they wish (as long as they don't discriminate against whatever its protected by law in their jurisdiction) and a school can do the same with the students they admit.

I know this isn't where you were going with this, but it sounds funny because that means that whoever isn't explicitly protected by law is fine to discriminate against. This is a bit like preferential admission to members of some groups. The part that is usually omitted is that it's always at the expense of members of other, "non-protected" groups.

[Programs for Non-majors?]

In general, there are plenty of people who didn't major in Psych in undergrad and were admitted to a grad program. However, i thinkthis isn't so common for clinical.

[Anyone else think Counseling is horrible?]

Wait, so you have 2 issues with the internships. 1. Salaries. 2. Population. I have no comments about 1, but how can someone who wanted to do counseling say that the don't want to work with "difficult" populations? For the record, I'd find such work difficult myself, but I'm not in counseling psych.

[Why is this so difficult?]

The PhD programs may have little interest attracting students who are primarily interested in practice, but that doesn't mean that there aren't PhD students who have goals similar to yours, and many of these programs are accredited which is important for finding internships later on. Guess what, these accreditations and internships have little to do with academic research. I don't know if I should continue publicly; feel free to PM me for straight talk.

[Too many Ph.D.s, too few jobs ...]

One of the many reasons why I dropped from my PhD program and defended my MS and ran... for now. It's a good read I assure you. Check it out!

http://www.cs.unc.ed...uma/hitch4.html

I'm just curious, what about this that made it one of the reasons you ran?

[Humanities PhDs working outside academia?]

Yes, some do. I don't know if it's common. There's a book you could read: So What Are You Going to Do With That?: A Guide for M.A.'s and Ph.D's Seeking Careers Outside the Academy. The title doesn't give it away so much, other than the "M.A." part, but I found it to be heavily gearded toward the humanities (I was actually hoping for something more general).

[What qualifies as teaching experience?]

I do not believe being a TA would count as teching experience for these purposes. This is not based on anything solid, though.

[Could a MSc turn into a bad idea?]

So it's a choice between either doing a master's in Israel, or not doing anything at all. This is assuming you're waiting for the next admission round because you haven't been admitted in the first one. Doing a master's may make you a stronger applicant, not doing anything (barring improving GREs, which are not that important beyond a certain threshhold) will not. The potential benefits of that other degree outweigh the chance that it might make you less competetive in the eyes of some potential advisors.

Any other existential issues I may help you solve today? ברצינות.

[I love grad school!]

I, too, love (most aspects of) my program. Research is interesting and there are not too many classes. I have a good relationship with my supervisor and the relative freedom is great too. I certainly allow myself to take a day off from time to time. One thing that stands out here is how important the social aspect is. We have nothing similar to the cohesiveness described by a few here. Most everyone is polite and all, but it ends there. Oh well.

[Grad School Barbie]

Thank you for the laugh. I find it hilarious, but maybe that's because it seems quite removed from what it's like in here.

[Is a Master's degree worth anything?]

I second the sentiments about not going further with this after the Master's. Even if this degree is not fully funded, finish it as it will be beneficial. I think there's a bit of academic influence type of thing where anything below a Ph.D is worthless. Things don't work like that in the industry.

[How to respond to a christmas gift from a supervisor?]

Question in title, what is proper etiquette?

Thanks in advance