TakeruK

I don't think it helps at all to put the GPA there, even if it is a perfect score. But it also wouldn't hurt. It's one of those things where I don't think it matters at all

Most likely. The official response from ETS is that it will take 10-15 days (not clear if they mean business days or calendar days---I think it's calendar days).

I think this was a good post to write and although like Eigen, I was also confused at first that there wasn't a question (I'm just so used to everything being a question), but then reading it a second time, my interpretation was that you are just encouraging students to be assertive and raise questions if we think something is "off" instead of assuming the professors are always right. I think this is a good point to bring up because it's not just students of your "vintage". I do some work with international student orientation and one of the big ideas is the academic culture in North America is different from other countries. So we also notice that some students from outside of North America are also very hesitant to raise questions when something is wrong. And finally, I do know of a situation where due to a committee mixup like this, the "extra" committee member that wasn't supposed to be there dominated the discussion and it lead to a bad result for the student. Now, I don't know if the result would have been any different if the "extra" person was not there, but no one likes surprises on an exam date! I think it's important for students to advocate for themselves and remember that professors can and do make mistakes and not be afraid to ask questions (in an appropriately polite/respectful way) when something seems off. You mention that you thought there might have been some politics happening and while I do think grad students should not get themselves involved in department politics, it's still okay to ask questions about it or discuss why the person is added to your committee when they should not have been etc. (I just wouldn't go and be part of the politics myself!)

To karlbaria: I think the best thing to do is to just ask. Sometimes the official score report goes to the University and it's harder for the department to link up your application with the score. To karlbaria and Gvh: I know I wrote about blanking about the unnecessary info on the ETS Unofficial reports before. I think another thing you could do is instead of uploading the screenshot from the ETS website, you just type out a letter where you state that you do not want to supply the ETS Unofficial report as it contains your personal information you don't want to share and instead, your reported scores will be as follows .... This way, the department can still get your intended reported scores without having to wait for the University/Graduate School to link up your application and your ETS record. If you're not sure if the school wants the Unofficial Report because it has all the attempts, you can just ask them if you can just send an unofficial copy of your scores in a letter (don't mention that you have taken more than one test of course). However, if the school is explicitly asking for all attempts, then fuzzy is right---you don't really have a choice but to provide them with this information if you want to apply. I think schools that do this are trying to circumvent the system and are acting in bad faith, but if you choose to apply to them, then that's what you would have to do!

Moderator's note: Please avoid making multiple threads of GRE essays. The two essays are now in this single thread. I added titles to each essay to make it clear which one is which!

15-18 programs is a little bit more than the numbers I see (at least for my field) but it's not an overwhelmingly large amount. Maybe it is too much for other reasons (i.e. are you really finding 15-18 programs that are good fits?) but not for letter writing annoyance reasons. I'll just focus on how to work with your letter writers when you have 15-18 requests! The amount of work to submit 18 letters is only a little bit more than 1 letter. When their graduate students apply for jobs, some people apply for dozens and dozens of jobs and that means they write dozens and dozens of letters. However, I think they would be annoyed if they didn't know to expect 15-18 letter invitations. I would highly recommend talking to each of your letter writers in person and letting them know the following information that you are applying to this many schools. Personally, I worked closely with my letter writers (who were also my mentors) in selecting the schools to apply to and we iterated through the list a few times. I would supply the letter writers with a neat and organized table that summarizes the key points they need to know for each letter. Because it is likely that your letter writers will write one generic letter and then cut/paste out the names of schools and programs, you should provide them with all of this info in the table. So, for each school, I supplied the deadline, the school name, the exact department name, the exact PhD program name, and the names of 2-4 professors at that school I would work with. The list was sorted by deadline. I also had a short summary of various numbers like GPA, GRE scores and a 2 sentence description of my research goals at the top of the page. Then, during the talk with each of the letter writers, we also talked about how they would like to be reminded of these deadlines. Different people will have different preferences. Most of my letter writers wanted me to group these requests in two week chunks, so I sent all the letter requests that are due Dec 1 - Dec 15 on Nov 15, and then the ones due Dec 15 to Dec 31 on Dec 1 etc. That way, they won't get 18 single requests! Also, we agreed that I would send them a reminder for any outstanding letters 2 days before the due date using the application's built-in reminder system instead of just an email since the automated reminder contains links to the right form! So, I think the key idea when you have this many letters is to communicate with your writers to find out what they want. Make their lives as easy as possible! A piece of paper or other note/reminder of what you talked about (like I said above) is also a good idea---don't rely on them remembering what was discussed.

In addition to the advice above, a few more thoughts: 1. Ideally, there would be tons of universities that do the research you want to do! If there was only one, that means the field is so niche that you will have a hard time finding people willing to hire you for your work! 2. Looking at journals and conferences can also tell you about the quality of the work produced by the professors' graduate students. Take a look at the kind of work that their students are presenting and writing. Is it what you want to be doing? Are students leading projects or are they just cogs in a machine? Are students publishing more/less than the norm in your field? Are their students getting the opportunities to travel and present? 3. As fuzzy also alluded to, try to find their students that graduated in the last 5-10 years and find out where they are now. If the professor's website or CV does not list former students, you can probably figure out who are the old grad students by looking at the author lists of conferences and journal articles from 5-10 years ago. See where these people are now!

There are probably a lot of details that you (rightfully so!) aren't providing here so it's hard to tell. But, although I understand that timesheets out of the blue is surprising and not the norm for your department, I don't think this is the important part to focus on. If you ask the question "Should an RA supervisor know how many hours their student is spending on their project, even if the RA supervisor is not paying the student?", the answer is Yes. So, I wouldn't interpret this request as a sign of a bad/unsupportive advisor. Of course, it sounds like you have other reasons to think this, and you certainly don't have to justify them or anything. Just wanted to say that asking for timesheets may be abnormal in your department but it is still within the realm of a healthy advisor-student relationship! Good luck

I don't see why it would not be legal. I think it is a little strange that a professor is asking for timesheets for an RAship after the fact. I've worked in RAships (and TAships) where the expectation of keeping timesheets was communicated at the very beginning (these are cases where I was paid hourly rather than salary). However, I don't think the professor is really doing anything unethical or wrong here. I think this level of communication is the best way to resolve the issue of the professor thinking you are not working enough hours for them. You should also quickly check any policies/handbooks to see if there is already an underlying requirement for all RAships in the department (regardless of source) to keep track of their hours. Depending on how you feel about your professor, I think there are different routes I'd recommend: 1. If you have a good relationship with your professor and you trust them, I would turn over the personal timesheets while pointing out that since there were no metrics/guidelines in the past, these timesheets just reflect your judgement of how you should split your time and that you are open to further discussion about setting metric/goals for the future. 2. If you aren't confident in the professor's intentions, you could tell them that since there were no metrics/goals/guidelines in the past, you did not keep detailed timesheets for this project. Instead, just give them approximate hours per week or per month and let them know you are open to further discussion about future goals as well as future timesheet keeping. 3. If you are suspicious of your professor's intentions (perhaps you think they want to use this information against you to fire you or something), then I would reveal as little information as possible. If you aren't required to keep timesheets (via other policies) then tell them you didn't keep track since you were not asked to (or you can reveal whatever vague numbers you want to show that you are indeed doing work). But be sure to communicate that you are willing to start keeping track now and that you would like to clarify what they would want tracked and that you would like to set some goals. Overall, I don't think it should make a difference whether or not you are on fellowship. I think it's an appropriate thing for all advisors to ask for timesheets from the people that work for them if this request is made clearly in advance. In my field, there are a lot of grants/fellowships that professors apply for and when they apply for funding to pay a grad student, they need to specify a number of person-hours and if they get audited, then these timesheets may be necessary. That said, despite which of the three "trust levels" you pick above, I would take this request for timesheet and the concern about not working enough hours seriously and work hard to improve communication between you and the professor so that everyone is meeting expectations. If I was a professor that was concerned about a student's productivity, this would be the first step I would take so that in the future, the amount of work this student completes is documented and we have actual numbers and information to work from and determine if any changes are necessary. If a professor wants to release the RA from the appointment, I think documentation is important and this would be one of the first items I'd document. I don't mean to say this to scare you or imply that you are bad worker though! If I was a professor, I would request this at the first sign that there is a difference in my work expectations and student performance, even if I fully believe that the problem will be resolved and I think most of the time, all of these problems will be resolved by simply improving communication. However, I would always request and keep documentation, just in case, because you never know which cases will end up being the one or two cases that require stronger action.

I don't know what a reasonable timeline is---I suspect this varies so much for each person! Usually, whenever I have a draft ready for my advisor, they let me know when to expect the comments. Unless there is something really hectic going on that week, I usually get feedback within 3-5 days. Edit to add: My advisor and I meet for 30 minutes every week to update each other on what we have been doing (well, mostly it's me giving updates but occasionally I am waiting for a next step from them or their collaborators). So, if it's a paper draft or an abstract draft etc. we know about the deadlines well ahead of time and in the weekly meeting leading up to it, we set a schedule of when I should have a first draft, when I will get advisor's comments, when I will send revised version to the rest of the coauthors, how long do I give coauthors to comment, etc. This means I can expect a fast turnaround time for paper comments because my advisor knew the draft would be coming and scheduled time to read my draft. Personally, I like the way we communicate and schedule our work because it shows mutual respect for each other's time.

I'm going to answer from the point of view of my field: If you mean the actual address of the letter because it is going to be snail-mailed, then they should address the envelope following the instructions on the application website. It would be a good idea for you to get this address for your LOR writers and maybe even prepare empty envelopes with correct addressing for your writers. If you mean the formal salutation/opening line of the LOR, then it doesn't matter. It's just a formality. I would think most people write "Dear Admissions Committee". If you mean what is the intended audience of the LOR (i.e. affects the tone of the letter) then I believe a LOR should be written for any faculty member in the department because any one of them could be on the admissions committee. However, I think your professors would already know the norms of your field and would be able to write it based on their own knowledge. If your letter writer is from a different part of the world where the norms are different, then it might also be helpful to research these differences and provide your letter writers with a summary of your findings

I think this is a common feeling among many academics (but also non-academics can understand this). I just want to point out that the amount that this applies could depend on the person. Also, maybe a different perspective may help here: When I came to pick my topic, I didn't really choose it based on my interest in the inherent nature of the things I'm studying. I presented my thesis plan to my committee earlier this year. A year ago today, I knew what kind of planetary object I would study but not the big question I wanted to answer. And when I was applying to grad school (and even when I chose my current school), I did not even know that I would be studying "hot Jupiters". Personally, my interests are more of a process-driven rather than content/topic driven. So, I agree with you that having some passion/interest towards my work have helped me get through the tough times in grad school, but I didn't need to be deeply interested in "hot Jupiters" in order to pick this topic. I am much more interested in the methods used to study these objects and my main goal in my PhD is develop a certain skillset that will help me study whatever planetary topics I want later on. And honestly, I feel that during the course of a PhD, the day-to-day life becomes less and less about the actual topic of study and instead more and more about the small individual processes and methods you do to make tiny incremental discoveries. I feel like I could be just as happy using the same telescopes and performing the same studies whether I'm looking at "hot Jupiters" or any other planetary science object. I'm not sure if one can just "choose" to be interested in the process. But, for me, I found that it is very convenient that my passion is in the "how" science gets done and not the "what" that is studied. This allows me to develop useful skills and switch projects/subfields when I need to. I didn't always think like this--I used to think that I was interested in one particular thing only--asteroids and their orbits. It was what I worked on for my undergrad thesis. I was applying for grad school for this topic and writing research interest essays etc. My undergrad advisor read them and said that it's great that I loved my undergrad work with him so much, but how do I really know that asteroids is really the thing that makes me tick and want to get up in the morning? What if it was just one of many possible things? So, I thought more deeply about what made me love research and what motivated me to go to grad school and then also tried doing research on other planetary objects. That's when I learned what my true passions were! So, if you are feeling like you might not be interested in a different subfield but want to open up more opportunities, maybe thinking about what about your specific project that makes you happy and see if you can find similar things in other subfields. It might also help to consider the process itself a passion---most people, including me, seem to overlook the process and only focus on the end product / the big picture story. But the reality is that grad school is all about the tedious tiny details from the process and if you hate the process/techniques/methodologies, then sometimes, having a super interesting topic might not be enough either!

This is a kind of vague question and I actually do not know of any program in my field that formally accepts students for Summer term. Most programs only admit in Fall term but a few will consider winter or spring admission. It's also a little strange to have Summer admission because summer is so close to fall and not a lot of academic things happen in the summer so there's almost no difference (and see below). However, most programs in my field are also very flexible in the sense that you can defer start dates or start early. For example, although my program only admit students for Fall term, we have had students start as early as June or as late as January. In my program (and most other programs in my field), new Fall students are usually given the option of starting early in the summer. This option almost always comes with funding and insurance and all of the benefits of being a student. The main limitation on whether or not this option exists is whether or not there is a professor willing to pay you as an RA in the summer prior to school starting (since few programs have TAships in the summer). I would say about 40% to 50% of new students in my program start at least 1 month before the official start date of my program (usually starting by mid July is common). The students that choose this tend to (but not always) be students who are not directly out of undergrad and have been working since graduation. Usually students directly out of undergrad (wisely) choose to take some time off! So, why is it that you are looking for a summer admission specifically? Do you just want to get an early start / are you already graduated and anxious to start grad school? If so, then you don't have to look for programs that explicitly and specifically admit for Summer term. Instead, when you apply to programs with Fall term start dates, ask them if you can start early if accepted. In my field, this would generally be yes but I don't know what kind of programs you're applying to!

This may depend on the field. I think it matters but not to as much of an extent as some people think it does. When I talked to my undergrad thesis advisor about picking grad school research topics, the advice I got was to make sure it's something that will still be interesting to the field in 5 ish years when I graduate. You don't want to do a project that only you and a handful of other people care about for your graduate work. The trouble is that it's hard to predict what will be "hot" in a few years. At least in my field, things move quickly! For example, the current popular model for planet formation (where almost all the work is happening) became so in 2012, just 3 years ago. However, some things in my field also move very slowly. For example, there are no currently confirmed mission plans to send probes or anything to Uranus or Neptune. These missions take decades to plan, get funded, build, launch, arrive, and then finally send data back. So, I don't think the subfield of studying these planets with data is going to grow at all for the next few decades, unfortunately. Also, Cassini, the current mission at Saturn is going to end shortly (but there will still be data to work on for a long time afterwards). On the other hand, there are multiple Mars missions in the works and Juno, a mission to Jupiter, is arriving next July. There will lots of interest and data from these topics to work on for the next few years! You should also remember that (at least in my field), your PhD topic is not going to be your lifelong speciality. It's literally just the first step of your career! Most faculty members I know start their postdoc with work related to the field and then slowly branch out to other subfields and topics. Usually, in my field, by the time you are tenured, you will have strong research programs in more than just your PhD thesis topic! Overall, I think the take-away message is that you should think certainly about your future and the future of your field when deciding on your dissertation topic. However, you should definitely remember that trends will change, your own interests will change, and that it's possible to do other work after your PhD! Also, I would think this advice best applies when you are already partway through grad school and finally picking a dissertation topic, rather than at the application stage. Of course, where you apply affects what work you can do, but at this stage, as long as you are applying to places with multiple professors you would work with and multiple potential dissertation topics, you are not going to pigeonhole yourself yet

When I read PhD theses in my field (usually the ones from former students), I notice tons of typos or other English language errors. They are also very common in published peer-reviewed papers! So, I wouldn't sweat it.

In general, these residency requirements represent the minimum allowed time in residence and they very rarely reflect typical or even possible residence times. That is, when reading policies, keep in mind that just because something is technically allowed does not always mean it is practical or feasible! I have known some students (in the social sciences/humanities as well as STEM fields) who spent the majority of their degree not in residence though, however, they all stayed in residence for much longer than the minimum allowed time (usually at least until candidacy). As telkanuru points out, the biggest practical limitation is TAship or whatever your funding source requires. Sometimes you can get around this if you find external funding, but often these external funding sources will also require residency at your chosen place for the award. I think the best thing to do is to talk to the program Y and tell them about your scenario and see what happens. This could potentially hurt your application chances at Y if they think this means you are not "committed enough". However, I think this is a legitimate consideration and if they are going to hold it against you then perhaps being at Y isn't that good for you anyways. And, if you are only going to attend Y if this scenario is possible, then you have nothing to lose if you ask and they say no. The only instance where I would caution against asking program Y directly is if you want to attend Y but you are not yet certain how much you need to be at X. In that case, perhaps you can ask using an anonymous email address or through a phone call without identifying yourself. I also know about a lot of students (in both STEM and arts/humanities) that spend part of the year away from their enrolled university. Depending on the nature of the work, many students (and professors too) will spend the summer months away from the school and only be present during the school year when there is TAing to do and seminars to attend etc.

What is your thesis advisor's position now? Is he still a postdoc elsewhere, or is he now a tenure-track professor? -- If Person 0 (thesis advisor) is now a tenure-tracked professor, then I think you should get the following three letters as your main LORs, in order of how important they would be: 0. Thesis Advisor 2. Assistant Professor with one class 1. Industry Manager You might also want to consider submitting Prof #4 (full prof) as a 4th LOR so that you have a senior professor there and it sounds like he will be able to write a decent letter. -- If Person 0 (thesis advisor) is still a postdoc or in academia but in a term position rather than a permanent position, then I would definitely submit all 4 letters. In places where I could not submit 4 letters, I would replace Prof #2 with Prof #4. -- If Person 0 is not in academia anymore, I would submit all 4 letters if possible. If not possible, this would be tough because you would really want two letters to be from academia, which means Prof 2 and Prof 4 and now you have to decide between Thesis Advisor or industry manager. I would probably pick thesis advisor in this case as industry manager does not have a PhD. Finally, it sounds like you are concerned Prof #2 asked you to feed her a lot of information. I don't think this is a problem at all and it is actually quite normal for a LOR. The information you provide her will allow her to generate examples in her letter!

In general, NSERC fellowship applications are judged based on the amount of experience you are expected to have at this stage of application. For example, since you are eligible for a VF for up to 5 years after a PhD, I would think that the committee would expect more from someone who is graduated 4 years ago vs. someone who is still finishing a PhD. I can't say how competitive you would be for a VF because I am not at that stage yet and I don't know how competitive biology is, in general. How many years of graduate school have you completed? I know that some European graduate programs are shorter than North American programs and I imagine most of your competitors would be from North America. In North America, it's normal to have 5 to 7 years of graduate school. If you have less than this, you might be at a disadvantage because you would have had less time to publish papers. However, if you were really productive, then this is probably not going to be an issue. In my past experience with the graduate level fellowships from NSERC, they have been very precise with their notification dates, generally within 1 week of the approximate date given. However, when I read the NSERC VF page, it does not say that you will know for sure within 3 months. Instead, it sounds like the VF is a "rolling deadline application" and if you are not selected, then your name remains on the list for a certain amount of time for future consideration? And also, the page says that it is the government department that will select the candidates for award (after approval from NSERC) so I think it's a really good sign that they already want you. Good luck!

Indeed, all of these things can happen after you are admitted and not necessary for applications. My personal choice is to not give away numbers that compromise my security just for the convenience of the system! I'm not saying this is the only correct choice but I think it's up to each person to decide if the convenience of matching up different name records is worth revealing your SSN at the application stage. I just want people to know that most of the time, a request for SSN at the application stage (for anything, not just schools) can be ignored and that there are other ways of matching up different name records than SSN (but yes, these ways might be more complicated).

Usually, more weight is given to someone who is in a permanent position at the department and generally considered a "member" of the faculty, whatever that means. If someone is only hired to be there to teach courses and nothing else then it might not be as good. But I know a lot of schools hire permanent staff that are part-time scientist and part-time lecturer. I think a tenure-tracked position is the "expected" position for the letter writer, but I think any permanent position could be a good letter, depending on the content of the LOR. That is, I would go for an assistant/associate/full professor LOR unless there was a really compelling reason to ask another permanent staff member. And I would need to have a very very good reason to ask someone who is not a permanent member of the department for a letter (e.g. a postdoc, a sessional lecturer etc.)

What kind of course is the Berkeley extension course? Is it equivalent to a course that would be part of a BA curriculum? If so, I'd definitely go with this LOR. If not, then it would depend on a lot more things. You say this LOR would be stellar---what makes it stellar and different than the "I was in the class and received an A" letter from your own school?

I agree with fuzzy--you should leave it up to the writers to choose what to discuss. I think it is okay to remind your writers of your achievements and involvement in other activities by providing them with a CV and a SOP (or SOP draft). The SOP will let them know your approach to describing yourself as an academic and they can take cues from that to have their letter complement yours. The CV will remind them of what you have done and they can skim the CV to pick out some highlights as examples of whatever qualities they wish to write about you. Also, it's unlikely any one professor will know all of your life so the CV is a good place for them to learn some things about your for the first time too. Think of the CV as a "cheat sheet" of your accomplishments and activities. You can consider sending your writers a different CV than the one you actually submit in your applications. You can edit the CV for your writers to be shorter perhaps (maybe some details can be omitted since they are from the same school) or rearranged to highlight the things you want to highlight more. I also included my GPA and my GRE scores to my letter writers and a 2-3 sentence paragraph of my research and academic goals for PhD program. I included this on a sheet of paper with all of the school LOR deadlines but this is also something that can be added to a CV sent to your letter writers (but I wouldn't put it on an actual CV for an application!)

Hmmm, this is an interesting concept. If I was a reviewer, my main concern would be that I would not be certain that my effort and time spent reviewing this paper would be useful/effective. If I am reviewing for a journal then I know that the editor will be able to judge my review and then require the author to actually take action on it. However, it sounds like if I do this for POS, it's not necessarily true that my comments will directly affect the manuscript. After all, the journal might then require further peer review and then it's likely the authors would prioritize these required edits rather than my suggestions. In my field, we get the same effect as POS by sending our manuscript to people we know in the field to read and give us their feedback. We try to send it to people who would actually be interested in the paper and our results and they will sometimes give feedback (if it's relevant). Another thing our field does is to just upload the submitted version of the manuscript to a pre-print server and then get community feedback at the same time as we are waiting for the journal's peer-review process. In these cases, I think it's a little different than POS because the authors directly solicit reviews, not a third party and the reviewers comments go directly to the author, not any other third party. In this way, there is far less pressure to do an in-depth review if you don't have time and also less pressure to do a review if you don't want to. Also, ideally, in the cases I describe, the "volunteer reviewers" are people that will read the article when it does get published anyways!

Yes, you should use that professor's rec letter.

I think the authors are important because it is not that obvious who worked on which presentations. That would require a person to flip back and forth and infer which projects listed under "experience" matched up with which projects under your presentation title. However, I would strongly suggest listing the presentations in the standard format that your field uses for bibliographies instead of inventing a new format. In my opinion, your format takes up more space and also highlights unnecessary things (the title and date aren't especially more important than any other part).