TakeruK

Just to add to the above---many schools use a common application system across all of their departments. The common application system will often have "additional information" slots like this for flexibility. So, if a particular program wants to ask for a specific extra thing, they don't have to reprogram the entire application. Especially if the program wants to try it out for a year or two and then stop asking for it (e.g. I saw some programs ask for a 1 minute video of themselves describing their research interests). In my field, we never submit writing samples, but in a lot of my common applications, there is a page specifically for "writing sample" (in addition to "additional information"). Some schools clearly instructs us to leave the "Writing Sample" page blank while others expected us to infer that since there was no request for a writing sample, we should leave the page blank when we come across it. Therefore, unless you are asked to put something there (or you have a reason to add extra info as fuzzy suggested), you should just leave it blank.

I am personally surprised that the PI would go on such a rant about you missing that day (the PI is definitely right to be upset and I think it is a good thing that the PI makes expectations clear to the rest of the group, but 20 minutes is quite a long time!). But it is clear now that the PI is upset at you for doing this. Usually I would say that your email apology is enough and it's time to move on. However, given that it is very clear how upset your PI is, I think you should make an effort to apologize in person. I think sending that email right away was absolutely the right thing to do, and I think a personal conversation might also be good. I think a good time to do this would be to stay behind after the next lab meeting and apologize in person. Don't wait for the PI to confront you. I'd second everything else the others have said! Especially about thinking about what you need out of a PI relationship.

To clarify, as I now realise we might be talking about different things when we say "OPT issues". For anyone else reading this, this is what I mean (highly summarized because I don't really understand all the finer details as I am not an immigration lawyer, but I hope this serves as a useful introduction to the issue): OPT is "optional practical training" and it allows for students on F-1 status to stay in the US and work in the field of their study after graduation (OPT is also possible while in school for e.g. undergrads interning during the summer etc.). But for most graduate students, this is post-graduation work, e.g. a postdoc or industry job in the field. Normally OPT is limited to 12 months after graduation. After this time, you will have to get sponsored on another visa status to remain working in the US. However, in 2008, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) made a temporary rule amendment to change temporarily extend OPT by 17 months for STEM (science, tech, engineering, math) majors. This means that those in STEM fields can have up to 29 months total of OPT time. This 2008 amendment is set to expire in February 2016, after which the default action is to revert back to the 12 month time period. Currently, DHS is undergoing a process that will update the OPT extension. The proposed rule update will change the STEM OPT extension from 17 months to 24 months. If the change is accepted as currently proposed, then the F-1 OPT period will be a total of 36 months for STEM majors. If it completely fails and no other proposed rule change is made, then the OPT period will revert back to 12 months. I think it's still possible, after DHS solicits public comments and undergoes the necessary procedures, that they can amend their update to make it an extension of any number of months. But I do think there is a lot of support for the 24 month extension option. You can read DHS' published proposed rule change here: https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/10/19/2015-26395/improving-and-expanding-training-opportunities-for-f-1-nonimmigrant-students-with-stem-degrees-and (It was published today, Oct 19, 2015).

Hard questions! OPT issues: I think this is something we should not speculate on because it's hard to guess at high level policies and I don't think we should make big life decisions based on guesses of this nature. For high level policies like this, I just act based on the best knowledge at the time. Who knows what the laws will be by the time you are ready for OPT? Canadian immigration: I forgot to mention this as a difference above. Canadian PhD students can apply for permanent residence ("green card") in Canada after 2 years of their PhD program. This is a lot different than the US, where none of your time as a student can count towards an immigration status. If you are interested in citizenship or at least permanent residence, then Canada has a pathway designed to keep smart people with PhDs in Canada. But again, policies change over time and it's hard to predict what the future will hold. Economy: I am not an expert on this. Sure, the economy is not great in both Canada and the US right now, but it's also pretty terrible worldwide. Again, I don't think this should be a factor in where to choose graduate schools. And even though the US funding for NASA is not very good right now---each year results in cuts or flat funding (which is effectively a cut due to inflation and the lack of ability to fund new science even though the amount of scientists is growing), the NASA budget is much larger than Canada's space agency's budget. So, again, I think it's important to view things like OPT and economy with the lens of how it will affect you specifically in graduate school, not whether the policies are objectively good/bad. The Canadian economy only took a small hit during the 2009 Recession. There are a lot of laws in Canada that prevented banks from doing the things that led to the recession in the United States. However, our economy is linked to the US so when the US economy went down, so did a lot of Canadian exports etc. We trade a lot with China as well. In 2010, when the US was still recovering, the Canadian dollar was worth slightly more than the US dollar. But now, the Canadian dollar is around 80 cents US, which is more like the long term average. Finally, I chose to go to a US graduate school because the field of planetary science is (was) very small in Canada back in 2010. There were only a handful of people working on it and even fewer in the specific things I was interested in. I worked with many of them during my undergrad and masters programs so in order to go further, I needed to go outside of Canada. My goal is to bring this new knowledge back to Canada and work there in the future, but I understand the job market is also very hard! So, when I applied to US schools, I only applied to the top schools that could give me a better education and opportunity than the best Canadian schools.

I feel like you have said two different, but similar things. Maybe not intentionally? But the first post sounded like: 1. It is not the TA's place to correct email etiquette and therefore it is wrong for a TA to do so. And the second post sounds like: 2. It is not the TA's responsibility to correct email etiquette and therefore, a TA should not feel obligated to do so. I do not agree with the first statement. As I wrote in my post above, the scope of things a TA could correct goes beyond the class material. I believe the TA could also help students develop better email etiquette or just generally improve communication skills in their field. However, I do agree with the second statement that no TA should feel like they must correct email etiquette. I think there are a very large number of things a TA could do and almost every TA will not have the time to do all of them. TAs have to prioritize what is important to them and what they want their students to get out of the class. If there are other more pressing concerns (or if the TA is simply overworked---assigned too few hours for the class size), then it is very reasonable that a TA may choose not to address this. TAs should not be required to correct email etiquette unless it is specifically part of their contract / job description.

From what you wrote here, it sounds like the professor does not want something as detailed as a research proposal for a specific project. Instead, it sounds more like a statement of purpose, i.e. something you would already have to submit as part of your application anyways. I think you should be able to write one within a week. If so, you can just send it to her within a week and not have to request extra time. You can say that you are working on one and it will be ready next week if you need to respond right away. You can also clarify whether she is seeking a short (1-2 paragraphs) statement of what research you're interested in, or whether she is referring to something like a statement of purpose as in the application package. If it's not the same thing as a statement of purpose, I would say you should write 1-2 paragraphs (maybe 0.5-0.75 pages single spaced) that summarizes what kind of research you are interested in. A good way to approach this is to use the "inverted pyramid" method that you learned in high school (probably?) and start with the general topic you are interested in, then narrow down eventually to a specific research question. That is, although we often do learn more sophisticated and interesting ways to introduce an idea after high school, for something like this, I'd recommend going with a very simple style and just get your point across. Content over style in this context. It would be a good idea, in my opinion, when you get to the specific research question, to be sure to introduce it as an example direction, not as something you must do in graduate school. You should tailor this statement to fit the school you are applying to, not just the specific professor that requests it. You want it to sound like you will fit well into the department (unless this Masters program has people admitting you by professor only), instead of only that professor. Also, if you make it sound eerily similar to the professor's CV, it will sound a bit awkward and maybe not sincere. Finally, there's always a question of whether or not to have references. I think for this context, I'd lean towards citing some previous work to demonstrate your knowledge of the literature. But if you do cite some work, make sure these are "high level" broad overviews. For example, in my field, it would make sense to cite the first paper that found the very first "hot Jupiter" type exoplanet, or a recent review paper that summarizes our current knowledge of "hot Jupiters". But I would not cite a very specific paper about, say, the atmosphere of one particular hot Jupiter.

I think the place you prefer should be the place that you feel like you fit into the most. What kind of research and experiments will help you achieve your career goals the best. I think this is more important than rank and it should not just be tier 1 Canadian schools vs tier 1 US schools. You should also factor in the "fit" when comparing tier 2 US schools vs. tier 1 US schools as well. There are some differences between a Canadian graduate program and a US one and here are some pros and cons. However, since a "pro" for one person may be a "con" for another, I'll just list differences and let you decide: 1. Canadian graduate program is split into two independent programs. Usually a 2 year masters followed by a 3-4 year PhD program (usually 3 years if you stay at the same school, 4 years if you don't). You need a Masters to get into most PhD programs. You have to go through the entire application process even if you are staying at the same school and you will be considered a new student again. 2. Canadian programs do not front-load the coursework requirements like US programs. People will usually take courses up to the last or second-last year. You take fewer courses at a time compared to US schools. 3. Canadian programs jump into research a lot faster. You start right away. After all, you finish a Masters dissertation at the end of the 2 year Masters program. My Masters coursework consists of only four 12-week courses. To get my US Masters (non-terminal, "along the way" Masters), the equivalent is about twelve 10-week courses. 4. A Canadian Masters program is fully funded and is really more like the first 2 years of a US graduate program. It is very much unlike US terminal Masters programs where you have to pay your own way. Overall, I think Canadian and US programs have roughly the same attrition rates (something like 50% of PhD students will not finish). However, due to the natural break between the Masters and PhD program in Canada, you will find a lot of students stopping at a Masters. I would say that only roughly half to two-thirds of Masters students at Canadian schools will enter PhD programs. But I think this is fine---much better to find out/decide at this point and leave with a useful Masters than quit with nothing (or after an additional year or two of time invested) in the US system.

Are you talking about a research supervisor or an academic supervisor? It's hard to tell what's going on with so few details, but it's normal for a research supervisor to be asking you questions.

Yes, the same thing happens with GREs, however, they won't even look at your score. If you checked off (or forgot to uncheck, don't remember which) a box in your GRE signup, you will get a bunch of mail from schools asking you to apply to them. These schools are just random schools that want students and will come from all fields. All of my solicitations this way came from MBA programs, or other business schools (my field is planetary science). It's basically just spam/ad/junk mail and after doing it wrong the first time, I made sure to never do that again in future test signups! The schools you actually send your scores to will not look at your GRE scores until you apply and they link them with your application.

Ah, interesting, I didn't know linguistics was also a field that has blind reviews! Our referees are blind to us (however, many of them will reveal their identity after the fact) but the referees always know who the authors are.

The norms may vary from field to field. Also, I think this really depends on the context of your writing. In my field, it would be highly unusual for a peer-reviewed journal article to cite another person (or their own) thesis work. This is because theses are not peer reviewed and they are quite hard to access sometimes. In addition, since theses in my field are often collections of already published peer-reviewed works, it makes more sense to just directly cite the original work. However, in some special cases, such as the PhD graduate leaving the field and never publishing the work from their thesis so that their thesis is the only place an idea was ever mentioned. So, some journals may allow a citation to a non peer-reviewed work if the paper's main argument does not depend on the thesis work being correct. That said, for less formal contexts, theses are often cited in my field. For example, at conference talks or posters, or just on seminar presentations.

Although it does vary based on field, in the ones I'm used to / part of, yes you are right that in Canada, it's often the case that a graduate student admittance is more like a job hire. Schools/departments may have a committee that screens all the applicants to ensure they meet the department minimum standard. Then, after that, all the applications are forwarded to all professors looking for students and each professor will then decide if they want to interview, email, call, Skype, etc. and eventually they decide whether or not they want to admit the student. However, the professor will still consider the entire application package, including your marks. This is a little bit of a simplification because it's not true that the professor has 100% decision power. Students are still partially funded by the department too, especially if they are international students (as international students need a higher tuition reimbursement, which typically comes from a departmental pool). So, each professor would make their preferences known to the department and then the department will make decisions based on balance and funding etc. For example, if the department has funds to pay for 5 international students and 6 professors want international students, they will have to negotiate and come to some compromise. On the other hand, the standard US admissions model is that a committee reviews your application and then makes an admission decision at the department level---your potential advisor does not really play a part at all (and you may not even have a potential advisor at this stage). However, I think the things that the committee looks for in the United States would be the same as what a Canadian professor would look for. And as I described above, the committee would also look for balance (e.g. you don't want all your admits to be from the same subfield) and funding considerations (international vs. domestic etc.) So, overall, yes, you are mostly right about Canadian programs having professors "hire" students while US programs have committees that admit students. But I do not think it is accurate to say that US committees value extracurriculars and GPA more and that Canadian professors do not look at the whole package. I think that both systems will value the entire package and that both systems will probably weight research more than GPA. And both systems will very rarely care about extracurriculars---those are not really relevant to graduate admissions in either country.

"harder to get admitted" is not a well defined quantity so it's hard to answer it directly. There are a lot of factors involved, such as: - way fewer schools in Canada = fewer students are admitted - Canada's top schools would still be a tier below US top schools - Canadian programs are smaller = fewer spots - structure of tuition in Canada vs. US is different --- an international student in the US could cost 3-4 times as much as an American but in Canada, often only 2x as much - private schools in US charge the same tuition for international and domestic students, so no financial disadvantage there, however, there are no such private schools in Canada So, I don't really know how I can answer your question. But if you have a more well-defined question then maybe I can find an answer

I'm just curious, is there some reason why you are suggesting that people do not say food allergies if it's an autoimmune system? Just in case tone is hard to convey in text, I'm not trying to disagree with you, but instead, my current knowledge is that there should not be anything wrong with calling non-allergy things "allergies" but I hope to learn why I'm wrong. (The reason why I would suggest saying allergies is that my friends with autoimmune issues call them allergies for simplification. After all, if my friend eats one of these foods, they will get sick and require hospitalization and it could be fatal. So the risks are similar to food allergies.)

I moved the thread to the Research forum for you

I don't think either method is appropriate for reporting a GPA to a United States (or Canadian) graduate program. There are two possible appropriate ways, from my application cycle (my school in Canada also awards grades out of 100 but it's never relative to another student, always an absolute scale, so it's possible for everyone to score 100%). The most common way when I asked the US grad schools is to not convert your grade into a GPA. Instead, you just provide your transcripts. Your transcripts should include a description of how grades are awarded (mine has it on the back or the last page) and if not, I would recommend providing a copy of this information from your school's official source. The graduate school will choose their own way to interpret your international grades based on their own internal systems as well as past experience with students from your country/school. The other way is to look up some resources that explain the conversion and try to apply that. However, I would only do this is you are explicitly required to do so. This means you should only do this if the application says something like "If you are an international student, please convert your grade to a 4.0 GPA scale". Do not do this if the application simply provides a box for you to enter your GPA. If it just asks for a GPA (but does not ask you to convert), what you should do is contact the school and ask them for instructions. In almost every case, they will either tell you to enter your GPA in your own school's system (so I often entered x/100) or to just leave the field blank and they will compute their own GPA for you.

You probably won't have to make drastic changes. But if I understood your situation, you wrote the CGS-M proposal a year ago, before you were a graduate student and while you may have been doing completely different research. I wrote my CGS-M proposal based on 10 or so hours of background reading and research work. I feel like even a week as a graduate student and getting a start on your project is enough to give some new insight and perspective! Depending on your field, maybe some methods, numbers, references, etc. can be updated. I don't think it would be a huge problem if it was exactly the same (after all, you're right, it worked before) but it's also very likely the same people that judged your CGS-M will be judging your OGS application (since both awards are judged at the University level only). Maybe they won't remember reading the same thing, but maybe they will! The OGS is a $15,000 award, so it's worth a few hours to see if it can use a tune-up, in my opinion!

I think rising_star has the best advice. Since it sounds like you can focus on Dept B for the academic needs, I'd stay a part of both communities for social needs, seminars, collegiality, etc. You can pick and choose the best parts each Dept has to offer.

Why would you submit the same proposal, word-for-word? It's a year later now and some things must have changed and improved. Submitting the exact same proposal means throwing away an opportunity to improve it and make yourself more competitive.

I think most HR departments separate requirements into two categories of "basic" and "preferred". Out of the "basic" category, it's up to the hiring committee to decide if any of these basic qualifications are going to be used to screen candidates (i.e. if you don't meet it you will be auto-rejected and the committee won't even see it). So it's possible for a job posting to expect the candidate to have a PhD but the committee can still choose to review your application if they don't want to make it one of the screening criteria. Without a PhD, it would make you a lot less competitive and I would not interpret the head's response as anything more than you won't be auto-rejected if you apply. I would imagine that the safest answer you can give to a candidate is "Apply and we'll see". Finally, "assistant professor" (or "professor" of any kind) is not a protected title. A school can bestow this title on anyone they want. In Canada, I know that 2-year colleges hire people with Masters to teach and for many schools, the job title is Professor.

I don't think appearance could be the main basis behind what your professors are saying. Your professors know that the admissions committee will not actually see what you look like. Also, you said before (and in another thread, I think) that your professors are saying you are intellectually mature but lacking in social/life skills. So I think you already have your answer of why they think you need more time before graduate school. Of course, people have opinions all the time and it doesn't mean they are right. It's not going to be possible for us here to say whether or not your professors are right. So, it's a matter of how much do you trust the opinion of these two professors, who both said the same thing to you. The question we can answer is what we would think if we saw the LOR with that caveat and we're on the admissions committee, it would certainly be a red flag. But as rising_star and fuzzy said, whether or not this will lead to a rejection would depend on the rest of your application. If it's just one sentence in the letter is the only thing that indicates you may not be ready, then I don't think the caveat will affect your final decision strongly. However, if there are other things that support the idea that you may not be socially mature enough for graduate school, then it would likely lead to a rejection. Most schools have way more applicants than positions so why take the risk on you? I don't think we can decide for you whether or not to apply. I feel that you have talked to many people who know you and you've already received their advice and thoughts. It's now up to you to process all of that and make a decision on what to do. As others pointed out, you could apply to schools alongside the other paths and then see what options are available and then pick one. I do want to stress that it is very important to be "ready" for graduate school in all ways, and intellectual maturity is not enough for success in graduate school.

Good questions! You can always check with your letter writers if you are not sure, however, I do not think you need to give a heads up that the LOR email is about to arrive. As you said, since you can usually control when these emails arrive, what I did instead was talk to my advisors on the general timeline of when they wanted to receive the email. Typically, advisors will want to receive the LOR request several weeks in advance and receive them in chunks. I applied to 8 schools and instead of sending 8 LOR requests one by one, I sent them in three chunks (deadlines Dec 1-15, deadlines Dec 15-31 and deadlines after Jan 1). I think I only encountered one school where I had to actually submit my own application before the recommender could even access the system for them to submit a letter. For that school, I made sure to complete everything on my end at least 2 weeks ahead of time. For most schools though, you can skip ahead to the recommender request page without finishing the rest of your application. I would say that you should give at least 2-3 weeks notice for LOR request, then send a reminder in the week of the deadline (you know them best, I chose to send it 2 days before the deadline but you might prefer 3-5 days instead etc.). Most academics have to prioritize their time and this usually means not doing stuff until they absolutely have to, so I would not panic until the deadline actually passes (i.e. many of my letters were submitted on the day before it was due, or the day of). After the deadline passes, you can just remind your letter writers once again---in most cases, the letter arriving late will make no difference.

lol I don't even remember this being part of the signup process (but that was awhile ago!) Was it a security question generated by the forum or a third party captcha thing? Also, because planetary science is my field, I come across this question a lot (when to use Earth vs. earth). The quick answer, in my opinion, is that use "Earth" when it's a proper noun (i.e. you are referring to the name of the planet we live on) but use "earth" when you are not using it as proper noun / specifying our planet by name, even if you are referring to our planet as a "place". For example: Ex. 1 Correct: What on earth is going on here? Incorrect: What on Earth is going on here? Ex. 2 Correct: Mt. Everest is the highest peak on earth. Incorrect: Mt. Everest is the highest peak on Earth. (However, I would write: Mt. Everest is the highest peak on Earth while Olympus Mons is the highest peak on Mars.) So in your signup answer, "Earth" should have been correct And if you really want procrastinate more, I think it's also important to point out this is one of the many cases where grammar rules from English and from the scientific community do not agree. For example, grammarist.com would disagree with my example 2. However, proofreader.cc gives different standards for scientific contexts. I'm in the school of thought that language should be descriptive, not prescriptive, so I think it's appropriate to use the words the way our community uses them, with context to the audience you're writing for, instead of following some list of rules and protocols

First of all, I think it's a misconception that all graduate students must always be in love with their topic of study all the time. I love astronomy, space, and planets but when the new Cosmos (with Neil deGrasse Tyson) came out, I could not bring myself to watch it because I already got my fill of awesome astronomy things 40 hours per week doing research! I have other passions too, and would rather spend my free time pursuing those. And, there will always be parts of your research that you will hate doing even if you are super passionate about your topic. Some parts of my field are just super boring to me too. I love studying hot Jupiters and how these planets have their orbits modified by other stars and planets. But I find discussions of studies on whether these hot Jupiters have clouds made of X or Y pretty boring. I still read the papers to understand important things, like for example, what the clouds are made of could maybe teach us something about how close to the star the planet was created, but I have no passion at all for the methods used to determine cloud content. I also find it a little hard to disambiguate "passion" and "ego". Primarily because you need to have passion for the field in order to derive some "ego" based pleasure from being an expert on it. I admit I am a little excited and get a ego boost when I go to a conference and see someone cite my work! But honestly, if I had no passion for hot Jupiters, why would I be excited about that? Compared to the world at large, PhD work and academia is really about studying the highly specific details of a topic very intensely. It's about finding out some knowledge that very few people in the world would even care about. But the fact that you derive pleasure from doing such a thing means you must have some passion for the field. Why else would you care about knowing some things that few others even want to know? And finally, I don't think measuring your level of excitement/boredom while reading papers is a good way to determine whether or not you actually like/have passion for your field. Each person has their own set of things that excite them and drives their passions. I personally do not enjoy reading or writing papers at all. It's the worst part of my job (but an absolutely important/required part). That's okay though. I think every job, no matter how awesome, will have parts that just suck. My strategy is to know what excites me and make sure I have lots of that in addition to all the mandatory boring parts. For example, although I hate reading papers, I really enjoy discussing them with other people and I learn a lot more that way. So, I started a little weekly papers discussion group in my department. Another thing that really excites me is going to conferences and meeting lots of other people working on really cool things. I find myself extremely motivated when I return from such a trip and I get a lot of work done in the few weeks following that motivation. I am also a type of person that gets more excited about big picture questions, which might explain why papers are so boring to me. Papers are usually focussed works that treat one tiny part of a big picture question at a time. So, I balance out my reading by making sure I step back and look at the big picture. Sometimes it's helpful to find a big review paper that goes over the whole idea and re-read parts of it to remind yourself why the tiny details matter. Or, I like to meet up with a friend from a different subfield and talk about our research's big picture questions to each other. Forcing myself / reminding myself of the "why" is a big motivator for me and doing this helps. PhD level research is supposed to uncover new knowledge that no one has ever known before. You definitely will come up against roadblocks and struggles that make you wonder why you even care about the topic at all. I think this is a pretty common occurrence and can happen as often as once per week or several times per month for me. Sometimes I just can't read another paragraph of this dreadful paper and I just need a short walk or a break. Once in a while, I need to take some time off completely---take a vacation or an extra day off for a long weekend and not think about it at all. You probably have heard people say grad school is a marathon before. You have to pace yourself and manage your energy levels. This is true for things like how many hours you work as well as your motivation level. It's helpful to be aware of what things decrease your motivation and which things increase it and plan your work schedule so that you maintain a good level of motivation. You can't expect raw passion to fuel you through the whole PhD, just like you can't finish a marathon on pure determination.

Typically, when you want to do this, you will certainly have to reapply to Department B and compete with all the new applicants for funding. Most departments do not just have random extra money, space, resources, etc. to take on an unexpected student. And even if they do have some (i.e. maybe the current class is smaller than usual), it's not fair for them to just allocate it to you---you would have to compete with students applying for Fall 2016. It sounds like your school does have a lot of "cross contamination" (I'd say it is "cross disciplinary" or "collaborative") between departments, which is pretty typical in my fields actually. Because of this, it does not sound like there is any advantage at all for you to officially switch to Dept B. Have you considered formally being a student in Dept A but doing all of your research and courses (as much as you can) in Dept B? You can hang out with people in Dept B, network with superstars in Dept B, etc. At my school, this is totally possible---the only difference between you and a student in Dept B is that you would follow the course requirements, quals exam, candidacy exams and thesis defense formats of Dept A and your final degree will be from Dept A, not Dept B. However, we have students formally enrolled in the Chemistry program work with people in the Planetary Science dept to study chemistry of planetary systems. These students are basically only Chemistry students "on paper"---they work in the Planetary Science building with the rest of us, take elective classes with us, TA our courses, present at our student seminar series etc. It's only the formalities (exams etc.) that separate them from us.