TakeruK

My school accepted a letter saying all requirements were complete in lieu of a transcript at the start of the term. I started my program in Fall 2012 and they gave me until December 2012 to provide all transcripts indicating my previous degrees have been granted.

Also, consider things like Github if you want to simply share your data analysis tools. In astronomy, Github is quickly growing to be the best method to share code (especially code that is evolving, since it does version control and your users can automatically get code updates as you fix bugs etc.) As for supercomputer time, in my field, grants do cover this. You wouldn't apply for a grant that is just for computer time, you would generally apply for a grant that covers your research and one of the budget line items could be super computer time.

It will be no problem. Few undergraduate students have more than 1 research experience anyways and it's very common for a grad school applicant to have all their research experience from one place.

@Marst: You are right. What I meant was to award points for effort when results aren't there. Let's use an example of grading an undergraduate lab report. If the student didn't perform the experiment exactly correctly so their final measurement is a bit wrong, this would be a B in terms of "results". However, I would likely award them an A if they showed in their lab report that they tried a lot of things to fix it, or took the effort to go beyond normal expectations to explain and understand where they went wrong. But if they just got the poor result and didn't do much else, then they would likely get a B. I I don't "punish" students with good results when less effort is put in though. If a student got the right experimental result and did a satisfactory job of writing up the lab report, they would still get an A (of course, if they don't meet the lab report criteria then that would be a different story). @telkanuru (and @Marst's first comment): Most Canadian schools consider your grade to be a mark of competence and never publish things like class rank. So I would say that to me, grades are a measure of absolute achievement. To me, this is more useful--physics departments across Canada have very similar curricula and similar grading schemes. It's almost always the case that 90% = A+, 85% = A, 80% = A-, 76 = B+ etc. So, if you encounter a student with a A average, you know that this means they scored between 85% and 89% on most of their physics courses and that they have a strong grasp of the coursework. In my opinion, to properly interpret grades awarded on a relative scale, you need to know both the grading criteria and the distribution in the class (e.g. how many As are awarded etc.). But in the absolute scale, you just need to know the grading criteria. The advantage of the former is that if you see A+ grades, you know that the student both knows the material well and that they are in the top tier of their class. But this might mean you miss seeing other very competent people (i.e. meets A+ criteria) who got A or A- grades because their class had too many similarly good people.

While I agree with the overall statement that result should be the main factor in grade, not effort, I can think of some scenarios where this would be not ideal. For example, I noticed that many US schools grade on a curve, while my experience with Canadian schools is that grades are awarded on a "this level of achievement = this grade" scheme. I think if you are grading on a curve, then judging purely on results is not fair. A person's work should not be devalued just because someone else did better. If grading is done on a curve, I believe that effort should play a bigger part in determining grade. I also think it makes more sense to grade graduate students based on results rather than effort. I would relax this criteria for undergraduate students. I would prefer to see undergraduate courses be graded in a "here's a checklist of what you have to do, tick them off and you will get X grade". In undergraduate courses, we are not looking for the best of the best, we are just trying to establish basic competency. I think, in undergraduate courses, someone who meets all expectations should get the same grade as someone who decided to meet all the expectations and then go above and beyond. This is why I do not simply consider end-result when I grade undergraduate students.

Just to clarify, I am not saying that right now, academia is only for the upper middle class. I am sorry for confusion--when I said "Academia is just for the working class", I don't mean it literally, I mean the attitude that might prevail if we do not raise minimum stipends. My background is a working class immigrant family (I am a first generation Canadian). I am the first person in my family to go to college and grad school. I've been in graduate school for awhile now and met many years of cohorts of graduate students (both before and after me). Few of us are from working class families. I would say that about 50% to 60% of the graduate students I meet have parents with at least a college degree, if not graduate degrees themselves. What I notice is not that there aren't any working class family students, but that we seem to be disproportionately under-represented. Okay. So is this academia's fault? No, I don't think it is completely. My family's reaction to my decision to go to graduate school was "What? More school? Isn't a bachelors enough to get a job?" and a lot of concerns about my future. Although I don't need my family's approval, having that support is very important. My parents would support me in the end, no matter what, but being in a field that pays a livable stipend makes a big difference. I don't think I would have been able to attend graduate school if I was a graduate student in Toronto earning $15,000 per year. From talking to my friends from better off families, the decision is often framed as "Do I want to sacrifice some income now (opportunity cost for a gain later and/or to pursue my passion instead of working in financial (for example)?". For people not in these positions, the question really becomes "Can I have a financially stable future if I go to grad school?" Regarding the opportunities and programs that exist out there--I've looked into them when proposing support for students in need. It's great that the programs exist. But they really only exist for those who really need it and they only get you so far (i.e. just barely surviving). When you are at that state for most of your life and you have the option of either continuing it as a grad student with $15k/year or working minimum wage (or some other entry level job) for $22k/year, it is going to be really hard to choose the former. Some people do--they are here on these forums. But how many more do not? If I was not in a field that paid more than minimum wage, I would not be here. People here have said that academia is like other prestigious careers and certain socioeconomic groups will be advantaged. I reject this fatalism. I don't want academia to be this way. Unlike a lot of other careers, academia relies on and thrives on the diversity of ideas. It is literally engrained in the way we operate: "Don't go to the same place for BSc and PhD!", the peer review process, the reason we share ideas, publish papers, go to international conferences, etc. I think it's really strange that for a group of people that cultivates such diversity of ideas, we seem to be hesitant to cultivate a diversity of people studying these ideas.

In addition to what Jay's Brain said, Canadian Masters programs don't usually require that much supervisor interaction in the first few months. In fact, it's far better for him to be on sabbatical this fall than it would be if it was during your second year! I think you really just need to have two important conversations with him this summer, maybe around August. First, you need to talk to him in depth about the projects and learn more so you can start doing reading and pick your topic. Second, you should talk to him about course planning. Because he will be away for your first semester, maybe you want to overload on courses a little bit at first, and then do less courses and more research later. Note: In most Canadian MSc programs, while you start tinkering with research and doing a lot of background reading in your first year, I find that you actually don't start your research in earnest until the first summer. The first two semesters (Sept-April) is mostly spent on courses, adjusting to graduate school, learning to manage your time as a TA, and getting a start on research by trying a few things / reading a lot. For me, when I started research full time in the first summer, I found that I made way more progress in May (the first month) than I did all year, and that I had to redo most of the things I did earlier. But that's okay--you don't learn if you don't screw up.

When I read that Tenure, She Wrote blogpost, I thought of this thread too!

I understand where this is coming from and do agree a little bit that it makes sense for the government to set priorities and allocate funding accordingly**. I am actually not advocating for exact equal pay, I am advocating for removing inequalities. For example, if all graduate students made at least the minimum for a decent lifestyle, and then those in fields with more funding made more on top of that, then that is fine. But currently, we have some fields being paid well below the minimum for a decent lifestyle and this means that certain people with certain needs are going to be removed from academia. (**A different topic is that I wish the government and the public would place higher priority on things that don't have direct medical or economical impact. Part of this is selfish, since astronomy research has little practical uses, other than expanding human knowledge, like the example you gave. However, I am lucky that astronomy is very accessible and captures a lot of people's imagination). I think the current funding structure does drive people from working class families away from academia. I think if we keep things up, it might be just for the upper middle class. I don't agree that academia should be for those whose career is a major priority, at least not in the sense that you seem to define "major priority". Of course, as in many careers, you have to care about and prioritize your job in order to succeed, but the current culture is that academics are expected to prioritize their career above all else, and that's not what I want to see academia become. Our career should be one of our priorities, but arguments like "if you have children, then your career is obviously not enough of a priority" is harmful to academia. By "major priority", I would mean things like not just doing the minimum, taking care to do good work, and being able to be flexible and plan personal stuff around work stuff when you have to. For example, an important part of my research is to use telescopes to gather data, and these nights are assigned by an allocation committee. Because my career is a "major priority", I plan my life around these important nights, even if they happen on weekends or during time where I'd rather be on vacation or with my family (birthdays, anniversaries, etc.). I also plan my availability around major conferences and other deadlines. If I have to choose between taking a vacation when I want it vs. a major academic deadline, I prioritize my career. I think this is the level of commitment we should expect from academics, not things like reproductive choices.

Just wanted to throw in my support for CiCi1111's statement about making the system accommodate you instead of changing your identity to make others happy. Your list of experiences and suggestions is impressive, thank you for the resource! This is not the same situation, but I have a last name that is difficult to pronounce because it is a sound with no English equivalent. Usually I am okay with people saying another English sound that is very similar but I always introduce myself by pronouncing my own last name the proper way. Usually it requires spelling out if I am giving my name to someone on the phone. Sometimes people ask me why I don't just tell people my name is the easier-to-pronounce-English-sound instead of my actual name or to just spell it out instead of going through the whole process of me saying it, they asking me to repeat it, me saying it again and spelling it. My first reaction (in my head) is "Don't tell me how to say my name!!" but usually my outward reaction is either ignoring them (if I don't know them) or explaining why I found that to be an offensive suggestion (if they are someone I feel like explaining myself to, e.g. a friend). I see this sometimes happening with international students at my school too. Sometimes people suggest that these students choose an "English" name, or that they change the order of their name. Some cultures have a first and last name, but they go by "LastName FirstName". Luckily, our school's International Students Office have stopped giving this advice (they did many years ago) and now encourages everyone to use the name they want to be referred to. So, I always call my colleagues by the name they want to be called, in the order they want it said. I think it is really important for everyone to be able to express themselves the way they want and be able to choose/be comfortable with the identity they express. It is not our place to tell people they must conform to any other standard. For what it's worth though, most journals in my field allow authors to write their name the way they want, even using Chinese characters for example.

I wrote a thank you card and I got my LOR writers a small gift like a nice box of chocolates, a tea sampler set, etc. depending on what I knew about them.

I see that you are in the Earth Sciences, which is similar to my field. In this field, the only fellowship open to international students is the NASA Earth and Space Sciences Fellowship (NESSF). Here's one page about it: http://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/grant-stats/nasa-earth-and-space-science-fellowship-nessf-selections/ Applications open each November and are due in February. Awards announced in May. This fall, your department should inform you of the application (you must apply with your advisor and your school's Office of Sponsored Research). This is the only one I know of from an American funding agency.

I don't think the professor is hesitant because they don't think you are a good student (or they would not said yes in the first place). I think your professor is actually trying to help you because she does not think that her letter will be very helpful (and maybe not worth their time as well). This meeting is a chance for the two of you to discuss this and hopefully at the end, both of you will be on the same page! As the above poster said, be prepared to explain why you think she is the best choice for your LOR.

Alternate means that you are on a backup list. If someone who is awarded declines the OGS, then they will make offers to those on the alternate list. It's up to each individual school to manage the selection process so whether you are ranked would really depend on the school. Schools might have quotas for OGS awards to each department etc. too, so the ranking might be complicated.

Sorry to hear about this situation It sounds very stressful! Here is some information that might be able to help you. But I held an OGS in 2011-2012, so maybe the rules have changed. First, some bad news: Your TA hours count as work hours too, and you will need to stay under the hours limit. Also, 10 hours per week really means 520 hours per year. You can work more than 10 hours in some weeks if you work less in others. So this is good news, if you only need a summer job! From your post, it sounds like you just need a summer job, but I'm not 100% certain. If this is the case, you might have a solution right here--subtract the number of hours on your TA contract (from the 2014-2015 year) from 520 and then work that number of hours this summer. If none of that helps, then while I can't advocate for breaking the OGS rules, I guess you have to do what you have to do. I think breaking the rules would definitely disqualify you from other awards and you may also have to repay your award. Do you qualify for student loans through OSAP?

I'd like to echo this too. Even for courses in my field (which I'm passionate about!) can be presented very differently from professors because of different perspectives. There is one course in astronomy that I've taken three times now (one at each of the schools I've been to) and they have all been completely different, despite the title and syllabus being basically the same.

(emphasis added). Here's the way I see it. We are part of academia and when we see something wrong with our system, we should take action to fix it. For example, the "leaky pipeline" (one random example: http://www.socialsciencespace.com/2015/02/fixing-the-leaky-pipeline-of-women-in-science-and-math/)is one problem that many science fields are facing. We observe that certain groups (e.g. women who choose to have children) are marginalized and under-represented. I chose to say "women" here explicitly because this is the under-represented group (male graduate students are far more likely to be parents and they usually have spouses that stay at home to take care of the family). This is from data form a survey at my school (90% of student parents identified as male). So, we see there is a problem and one group is being disadvantaged. To me, it is a no-brainer that if we want this group to be better represented in our field, we should do something to help them. They should be supported more. Whether this means childcare grants, stopping the quals/candidacy/defense/tenure clock, increased stipend, availability in childcare centers (our school's waitlist is 2-3 years long), something else etc. we should do something. In the interest of equity and to improve the community for all of us, we should not treat everyone equally. We should support people so that the outcome is equitable for all. (emphasis added). I agree with you that it is a choice but that does not mean we should do nothing for those who make the choice to have a family. Again, I believe policies in academia should reflect the values we want to see in our community. If we want academia to be a place where you can be successful whether or not you have kids, then we should do something about it. Of course, many people have the opinion that we shouldn't do anything about it because they don't think it's important to make academia accessible and I suppose that is their right to think that way, but I obviously disagree with that. A person with a family is capable of working 40-50 hours per week and attending conferences and all of the other things academics must do to succeed in their career. If we set up the system so that you have to survive on poverty level incomes, and you have to work 80-90 hours per week, and you have to never take time off, then you are going to marginalize a lot of people--not just parents but people with less savings and financial stability. If you are going to this route, then you might as well say what you're really doing (consciously or not) and proclaim that academia is only for the upper middle class who value career over other priorities. This is why there are proposed changes to evaluate people differently based on their background so that we reach an equitable playing field. Some ideas are: 1. Make part of the stipend needs-based 2. For job/promotion decisions, "stop" the clock for people who take leaves of absences for family, health, etc. 3. Evaluate GPAs differently based on how much time the person was able to put into their studies (e.g. I would say that a student with a 3.8 GPA and did not have to work during college is not the same as a student with a 3.8 GPA but also worked 20 hours/week to support themselves through college) 4. Evaluate research records differently based on where they went to school and what opportunities were available to them (e.g. a physics student from a small liberal arts college winning a summer research placement is more impressive than a physics student from MIT doing the same) These are just ideas. Exactly how to implement them (and to what extent) so that we actually reach an equitable solution is hard. But I don't think we're even there yet. Right now, at most places, the conversation is mostly on "should we do something?". I am sure that the answer should be yes. But the next question "how do we do it?", is something I think we need to work on. (By "we", I mean the community of my field as a whole)

At my current school, the cost of attendance cap includes tuition. The number is something like actual cost of tuition plus $25,000 for living expenses. So an undergraduate or an unfunded graduate student (there are a few terminal Masters programs here) would be able to get a loan that covers tuition and living expenses. This number is also important to international students like myself because US Immigration uses this number as the baseline for how much support we need in order to qualify for the international student status. It sounds really weird and crappy that your cap is so low that once you pay tuition, there won't be enough to live on.

Both of these points (emphasis added) highlight the reason why I believe in arguing for needs-based funding adjustments or other support (increased stipend is just one example--I don't want to focus on the exact form of the solution, just the fact that the problem exists and worth thinking about). Currently, at the graduate programs that pay well (I consider mine among them), it is not really a huge problem for those who do not have families or those who have stable financial backgrounds. But the way our system is set up, we are keeping out those that don't fit these categories, either by directly discouraging them, or setting up extra obstacles. For example, the whole reimbursement culture of academia. Someone who has a history of debt or not a lot of savings might not be able to charge travel to conferences to their credit card months before the conference. They may encounter interest fees and other charges until they get reimbursed after the travel. Many of us might take "oh we'll get that reimbursed later" for granted. There are simple solutions to this (e.g. give students travel advances, like my MSc school, or have the advisor/department pay for it ahead of time with a P-card and thus charging to a grant directly, like my current PhD school). For students with dependents, a way to support them would be to have an extra grant to pay for childcare during travel to conferences. In my field, most conferences have onsite childcare now--the grant can pay for the child's ticket to the conference location and the daily cost of childcare onsite. Or, they can pay for a caretaker (spouse, family member) to travel with the student in order to care for the child. These programs currently exist for faculty members, but not for students in my program. My field's national society also has grants that students can apply for. These are just two quick examples of ways of using additional money wisely to help students who need it the most. By doing this, we make advances in diversifying academia and making sure we remove/reduce uneven and unfair obstacles.

For example, in Canada, the major graduate level fellowships are administered by three agencies SSHRC (Social Sciences/Humanities), NSERC (Natural Sciences/Engineering) and CIHR (Health Research). These three agencies perform the equivalent role to the NSF in the United States. They also fund graduate students at about the same level as the NSF GRFP awards. I looked into how many fellowship dollars are spent in SSHRC vs. NSERC. You might expect "NSERC fields have more economic impact, so they are probably awarding more dollars", but you would be wrong. In fact, SSHRC awards three times more money to graduate students than NSERC. There are also about three times as many applicants to SSHRC funds as NSERC funds, so the ratio of graduate students who are funded by a major national fellowship is the same on the SSHRC side as NSERC side. To me, this is an example of telkanuru's point. Governments can choose to prioritize research and direct funding the way they want to. Sure, what they "want" to do is correlated with market forces, but as in this example, it doesn't have to be this way. Therefore, I think there is still ground to gain by arguing for decreased pay gap through political action, not just economic actions. (Caveat: I don't know the split of SSHRC funds within SSHRC. It might be possible that the "social science" side of SSHRC gets way more funding than the "humanities" side, or vice-versa.)

At my MSc school, natural science and social science and humanities students sat down and talked about our funding structures to determine why the pay gap exists. We compared many cases, but the simplest/clearest case is the one where there are no external fellowships. Physics PhD Student Funding Structure (annual): $10,000 for 250 hours of TA work $10,000 for 500 hours of RA work (on our theses; but no one track RA hours) $5,000 from the department directly (labeled as internal fellowships) Total: $25,000/year English PhD Student Funding Structure (annual): $20,000 for 500 hours of TA work Total: $20,000/year (At this school, the campus-wide minimum stipend was around $18,000 per year. And all TA money is paid for by the department.) So, at the department level, yes, the main reason there is a difference in stipend is that natural science students are paid for research work (by our advisor) while the social sciences and humanities students tend to get paid only for teaching work. This means they have to work almost twice as many hours on non-dissertation work than natural science students, which means they take longer to finish, which means they are more financially disadvantaged. In addition, for the few that do get RA work, they are often working for other professors doing non-dissertation research, which leads to the same problem as above. At this school, all pay rates were the same for all students, whether it's payment for teaching (as a TA or as an adjunct) or for research. The difference is only how many hours your advisor or your department is able to pay you. Because social science and humanities professors don't usually get grants for their research work, they are not able to pay their students so students must teach more or find their own funding. (Note: This happens in some fields of physics too--often the highly theoretical fields have very little grant money). At a higher level though, there is certainly more to the story. Due to funding priorities from government and other agencies, there are fewer grants available to social science and humanities researchers, which causes the advisors to not have money to pay their own students. And the natural sciences departments might get more money allocated from the University due to that University's priorities. However, the fact that PIs have grants in natural sciences definitely affect the department budget as well. For example, my last department voted for all professors to contribute some % of their grant money towards a common department fund that will help offset the cost of international students. Therefore, I think the simplification "natural sciences stipends are higher because funding goes through a PI rather than department" is accurate.

Hi there! We generally do not allow double/cross postings. For anyone looking to weigh in on this, please go to this thread:

I am not in your field. But if you said the same thing about my field (i.e. replace "literature" with "astronomy" in your post), then I would recommend that you do not go to graduate school just for the sake of learning more literature/astronomy at an advanced level. An MA program would be expensive but I guess if you have the money to pay for it, then who am I to judge how you spend it! I think your idea to find a way to learn this without a degree program is the best path though. Here are some ideas I have about learning literature at an advanced level: 1. Online open courses, such as Coursera. 2. Build a relationship with a university near you and maybe you can sit in on their literature courses or attend seminars? Maybe you can offer some services to the department/school first to establish a good relationship. For example, maybe you can offer to run some free writing workshop/seminars for students (maybe do this through the department, the school's Writing Center, or via the English student society). 3. Find other people with similar interests in your community (maybe going through a university might help you find people) and start your own group to read about, analyze and discuss literature. (Note: These ideas were generated by thinking what I would advise you if you said "astronomy" instead of "literature" and then I tried to transfer the information. Sorry if there are "problems in translation" in doing this!)

I think it would be okay to follow up next week (it's not the end of May yet). No need to ask about a meeting, but maybe you can ask for a followup/update on finding a space/buying a scanner. I think this is a fair question to ask since you would probably want to make alternate plans for this summer if finding space/scanner doesn't work out (alternate plans could include him taking you for a different project or you doing something else etc.)

Can you ask other people in your department if they have experience with this journal? In my field, we all publish in the same 3-4 journals so it's common for us to share experiences and help each other figure out guidelines etc. for each one. Can you ask other students, postdocs, advisors, other professors, etc.? If not, you could try to find contact information for the journal and ask one of the journal staff/editors. And if all of that fails, you could consider just submitting it one way or another and then the journal will contact you to fix things if something is wrong.