TakeruK

(emphasis added) For both major moves we made, we called all the ads we could find online first in order to set up appointments for the first day. Then, in between appointments on each day, we made appointments for later that day / future days to maximize the # of places we could look at. We also just drove around neighbourhoods (renting a car is a really good idea) and called up numbers on signs. In both cases, the place that was perfect for us was something we didn't find online at all. In both cases, we just saw the building when driving around, called the number, asked the manager about openings and got the place. For one of them, the apartment wasn't even listed anywhere yet, so we just got lucky. Later, when we did an in-town move, we ran into this situation several times (we bookmarked some favourite buildings and called them every once in awhile to see if they have an opening). Here, it turns out there is usually a lag of a 3-7 days between the manager knowing about a vacancy and they properly advertising it. So, like job hunting, sometimes you need to seek out openings before they get put up on the general market!

Great to hear! I think if the professor is saying "If you are interested, I will have funding next year for a GRA and I would like to hire you" then that's promising. It certainly means that if the opening exists next year, you should have priority over the new admits. However, how much you are willing to rely on this opening depends on how the professor is wording their offer. If they say "if an opening exists", then you should be prepared for the chance that there won't be an opening. Also, if they don't say that they will definitely choose you, then there might still be a competition for that spot (i.e. what if someone else wants it too?) At this point, I would proceed as if I do not have a GRA with your top choice professor set up. You can hope it all works out but you should be prepared for working with the other GRA for your degree and research if you attend this school.

PS I don't consider this a "solution" to the two-body problem. But it's a good enough approximation for the two of us.

My spouse and I have a similar plan too. Ultimately, before I started my PhD, we set a "time limit" on academia. We both agreed that 10 years is a reasonable time for us to try to launch me into an academic career in a place we both want to live. 10 years is based on a 5 year PhD + 3-5 years of postdoc. We also decided that starting with the PhD program, I would only take offers that both 1) have the best chance of me reaching the academic career "pipe dream" goal and 2) are located in a place we actually want to live in. We decided that an academic career is too iffy for it to be worth being miserable for 10 years without a guaranteed payoff. So, I only applied to the top programs. I'm going to apply to postdocs in about a year and I will be fairly selective. I think I will mainly target prize postdocs and positions at prestigious places with access to resources that allow me to live up to my full potential as a researcher. I do not plan on accepting a postdoc position simply to stay in academia. If I'm not competitive enough to get one of my dream postdoc positions at this point, I know I will not be competitive enough to be worth any more investment of my and my spouse's time into chasing this career. If I do get prestigious postdocs, there will be a ~5 year limit on postdocing (~2 positions at most) before securing a permanent job. No plans on continuing the academic career path beyond two postdocs / 5 years (whatever comes first). So, overall there are a lot of "exit points" in our 10 year plan: Year 0: Not getting into a top PhD program Year 1: Not passing qualifying exams Year 5 or 6: Not graduating and getting a good postdoc Year 8: Not getting a good second postdoc Year 10: Not getting a good permanent position (not necessarily TT professor) in a place we both like After 10 years or at any exit point, our plan is to settle down near our hometown (and our parents). This means that unless we fall in love with some other city, we are promising ourselves a permanent place to be when we're 35. This doesn't take away the "location jumping" aspect of academia but I think it really helped us feel better about the uncertainty of academia because of three things: 1. We are limiting the number of times we move. 2. We are only moving to places we actually like being in. 3. We know that the "nomad" phase of our life is only temporary and we know where our permanent location will likely be. This makes the nomad part more enjoyable/adventure like and reduces (but doesn't fully eliminate) the stress that comes from uncertainty. I don't know where my postdoc will be, and it is unlikely I will know where I will be in Fall 2017 until sometime in Spring 2017, but I do know that it will be a place we actually like (whether it's a postdoc in a good location or we're taking the exit to go home).

I know some people where it went the other way. They chose to drop out because they decided that they wanted to spend their time with their family instead of pursuing academia as a career. They made this decision because they felt this would make them more happy than staying in academia. Of course, I realise that since I'm not actually them, I don't know for sure that this was 100% their choice and not some other pressure (from their spouse? from society? from academia?) that made them choose to leave. But in the absence of other information, I take them at their word. The people I'm thinking of include both men and women. Also, I recognize that academia does apply pressure in some cases where it will appear that a student "chooses" to leave but it's not really their choice. For example, most Canadian grad schools allow parents to take up to a year off for leave for their child's first year (same as any other job in Canada), but the department, supervisor and the publish/perish mentality of academia can often make taking a year off not practical for your career. This could lead to students making the "choice" to leave academia but they do so because there is no viable alternative. So, I do agree that even if the student made a "choice" and is happier leaving the program than staying in it, this doesn't mean that everything is okay or ideal. For some situations, perhaps we could fix the system so that the choice to leave isn't the "lesser of two evils" and actually allow the student to choose between two happy outcomes.

Do you mean cases where people drop out of terminal MA programs in Canada (i.e. did not receive their MA) or do you mean cases where people get their terminal MA and then do not pursue a PhD. If it's the latter, then I think this is perfectly fine and normal. I think the Canadian terminal MA/MSc program as a pre-req for a PhD is an excellent way to structure graduate school. Many people I know realise that grad school/academia is not what they want after 1 year into their MA/MSc program, so then they spend their second year finishing up and looking for work. Those who want to continue will spend their second year either fulfilling requirements to be advanced to PhD standing (skipping the MA/MSc defense; but this is not recommended since you won't get a Masters), or applying to PhD programs (whether it's at their current school or elsewhere). In Canada, a Masters degree is often quite useful at improving your chances of employment. Attrition** rates in Canada and the US are about the same, but from my experience, all of the "attrition" in Canada seem to happen right after the terminal MA/MSc, but in the US, this can happen anywhere (and the person leaving do not necessarily leave with a useful degree). The terminal MA/MSc creates a natural stopping point that forces everyone to reconsider and re-evaluate. **I also think of attrition in the military context which has negative connotations, but I guess the other definition given makes more sense why we use this word

It's definitely bad if departments are purposely manipulating attrition rates to get rid of a certain % of students each year, or using them as some kind of weeding-out process. I've heard of departments that do this because they want a lot of first year grad students to TA and then only keep a fraction of them to continue on the rest of the program. Fortunately, all of my experience with schools was that the faculty set you up for success. They basically do as much as they can to not directly be the cause of attrition, so the result is that most of the attrition is due to positive reasons (actually, looking up the definition of attrition, it is something like "reducing the strength through sustained attacks" so maybe, technically "attrition" would require some force to be actively working against grad students, but anyways...). But I did consider the environment of each program carefully to avoid "toxic departments" that do actually want some fraction of their students to fail.

At my current school, all Resident Associates (for undergrad and grad dorms) are graduate students. They get free rent plus a board plan, so it's a pretty good deal. There are certainly high time demands but the school recognizes that all Resident Associates' prime responsibility is their research and their own schooling, so these obligations generally take priority over their resident associate work. That is, they do travel for work and conference purposes, but I guess they would be expected to spend more of their personal time on their resident associate work (e.g. planning an event for their students on some nights instead of socializing with their friends).

No, I was trying to say that you should only do a PhD in any field if you need that PhD to reach the career goals you've set for yourself--whether these career goals are academic or not. Surely you need a PhD in the humanities in order to become a professor, and a PhD can improve your chances of getting a primarily teaching position right? I'm assuming this because to teach science at community college, the stated requirement is a Masters, but often you won't be competitive without a PhD, so this counts as "needing" a PhD to reach your goals. Also, for many other non-academic career paths, wouldn't having a PhD be a useful qualification? In my "Do not go" paragraph, I did say "Do not go because you want to a professor", but I should have written "Do not go if you think a PhD will only pay off if you become a professor". But other than that, I did not intend it to sound like "Only get a PhD if it's required for your non-academic career goals" -- I was including academic career goals in my "main reason" to go. I do agree with you that my "reasons to go" are not meant to be prescriptive for everyone. I was mostly writing it as a response to circlewave's post, but it does reflect my actual opinion about why people should / shouldn't go to grad school. I'm not trying to say that I know exactly why people should and shouldn't go. I'm just presenting my opinion, without any justification, so it's up to any reader to decide if they want to listen to (and how much weight to assign) to what I say!

Between my undergrad thesis work wrapping up and my graduate program, I took two months off completely. The first month was a 3-week long road trip across Canada to move to my graduate school. It would have taken about 4-5 days to drive if we just went directly, but we made lots of stops and turned it into a long vacation. It was a great way for us to see Canada and decompress/unwind after all the thesis and coursework. No more having to worry about computer simulations...only had to decide what to eat each day and what sights we wanted to see The second month was already in the new grad school city. On arrival, I checked in at the school, got a desk and a computer etc. but then didn't come back to work until September. We spent that first month just getting our apartment together, making day trips to nearby attractions and relaxing / getting set up in a routine before starting work. Between my Masters and PhD programs though, there was very little time. I had about a week of vacation, which we spent with our family, and then it was diving right into the PhD work!

Other reasons in addition to what rising_star said: Getting a job and no longer needing a PhD. Choosing to move with spouse/partner instead of finishing school. Choosing not to take qualifying/comprehensive exams. Research reaches a dead end and choosing not to start over (e.g. getting completely scooped, turns out the advisor's idea was fundamentally flawed, research facilities destroyed in a fire/earthquake, spacecraft on which your research is based blows up on the launchpad, etc.). In this case, it's often possible to still cobble something together and finish but it won't have the same impact as the original project. But some people would rather do something else non-PhD related than go through another few years to get a PhD that might not get them the job they want. Advisor moves institution and student chooses neither to move with advisor (or not able to) nor to stay. Choosing to go into a different field that require different certifications. Mental or physical health issues changing their priorities in life. In Canada, the Masters and PhD programs are separate (you get the Masters then reapply to PhD programs), so most of the attrition happens here. The Masters is basically a 2 year trial period for both the graduate student and the advisor and sometimes one or the other decides that further grad school is not a good fit. --- As rising_star said, some of this is unavoidable, but at the same time, not all of it is bad. If the student is making the choice to leave (and if it's really a choice) then it is probably a good thing for them in the long run. The way you phrase the question ("how not to become a statistic") seems to imply that leaving the PhD program partway is generally a bad thing. However, for all the people I know that left the PhD-track, almost every single one of them was happy to do so and they made the choice for themselves. In all of these cases, I do believe that they are better off now than if they had continued. I think it's important to not frame a decision to leave the PhD track as a "failure" or "quitting". Even though some people do leave through failing an exam (or courses) and even though some choices to leave really are the same as quitting a job, I think these words have too strong of a negative connotation. And I think the negative connotations prevent people from thinking about what really is the best choice/path for them. I'm not saying people should just leave PhD programs at the first sign of difficulty, but I think it's a disservice to everyone (and especially for the student) if the student feels that they will be viewed negatively if they chose to leave. It's important that schools and programs are supportive and help students make the best decision for the student, even if that means leaving the program.

To me, this should be a requirement in order to make grad school a good decision. The one thing that makes grad school a good idea is because you need that PhD for the jobs you want to have. Do not go to grad school because you love the material, or that you want to be a professor, or because you want to learn more and study the topic. Do not go to grad school because you are passionate about the topic. Do not go to grad school because you don't know what to do next. All of these reasons are "nice" things to have but none of them should be enough to convince anyone to go to grad school. They should also not be the main reason to go. I think of grad school as vocational training for a very particular skillset. If your career goals do not require this skillset, then don't do grad school.

Let's say another team, Smith et al. 2010 analyzed a publicly available dataset and came to the conclusion that 80% of cows in Canada are green. My project also analyzes the same dataset (or even a different but similar dataset, perhaps an updated one), but we did it completely independently--we didn't use their analysis in any way. We find that 82% of cows in Canada are green. I think that at some point in my discussion, I need to mention the Smith et al. 2010 result. It doesn't matter whether or not we used any details/analysis from Smith et al. 2010 to reach our conclusion. A big part of scholarship is to show the reader where your work fits in relative to other researchers and previously completed work. When I do this, I usually also compare my result/conclusion with other previous work, and state whether they are the same/consistent, or if they are not consistent, try to figure out why. If Smith et al. 2010 actually studied a lot of things about cows in Canada and my study also have additional overlapping attributes, I would certainly cite Smith et al. 2010 over and over again as I systematically discuss each of my Canadian cow findings one by one. A literature review is a little different than e.g. an experiment, but I think the main idea here is the same. You definitely went through all the work to compile and analyze the papers on your own. But you did this to address a question in your field, right? And other people have also gone through the literature in the past and came to their own conclusions to address this question. It's important that you cite them to acknowledge what was found in the past, distinguish what you found in your updated review, and to reconcile these differences/compare your results.

You can also make the title itself be the takeaway message, if your message is short enough. Regarding business cards, so far, my field has a small number of them. In my field, they basically function exactly the same as a poster handout that you scribble your email address on, but they are more professionally designed, durable, and useable for more than one project. I am going to make business cards for myself since I'm now a PhD "candidate" and by the time my next conference rolls around (August), I'll be one year away from applying to jobs! I anticipate handing out 5-10 cards total--I think in my field, the "norm" is that you either leave them near your poster for people to take (like handouts) or you only give them out when you are exchanging info or someone asks you for one. Business cards don't work in my field the same way they work in the "business" world (i.e. where people seem to just be handing them out to others all the time).

I agree with fuzzy. I've only written reviews as the introduction section of papers, not an entire review paper so I'm not that experienced. But when I wrote my review, my advisor made sure I did what fuzzy suggests--clearly delimit your own work from previous work. Any time you say something that has been said before by someone else, cite them. There are a few key papers in my field that get cited multiple times in my introduction section. Later, when I write about my results and conclusions, I always cite previous results of the same measurement (whether they agree with me or not) and compare them to mine. The way we think about it is that it costs you at most, 3-4 words to add a citation (e.g. Smith et al. 2010), but there could be a lot of upset emails and accusations if someone feels that you slighted them or tried to pass off their work as your own. So, if it's possible that you should cite someone, just do it. (Of course, don't take this to the other extreme either--this advice is given with a "common sense" disclaimer and based on the fact that there is academic merit to putting the citation there and you're just not sure if you need to or not).

As you know, since you also use Mendeley, you don't need to download the source in order to store it in Mendeley. Just add an entry manually and, like Zotero and EndNote suggested above, you can create reference list in any style you want. There is definitely a "website" type entry for Mendeley--I've used it myself a few times! I also do this for books since I don't usually have the PDF of the book in question.

Here is an example of a poster critique with the take home message at the top (not the top left though): http://betterposters.blogspot.com/2015/04/critiques-icy-bodies.htmlThe blog post did have a few suggestions on how to improve the readability of the "takeaway point" though.

I use LaTeX and BibTeX with the natbib package. natbib uses BibTeX files, which basically just contain the data for each citation (author, year, publisher, etc.) and then BibTeX plus the natbib package takes this information and formats it into whatever footnote/endnote/bibliography style I need. I haven't written a citation by hand for ~8 years. I can tell natbib to use Chicago, or any other style that I want. To get the BibTeX information, I use Mendeley to store my papers and it usually can either read the data right off the PDF, or do a DOI lookup to get it. In the cases where both of these methods fail (usually older papers or books), I manually fill out a form on Mendeley to give it the information.

If you want to see a lot of examples and even critiques of posters, read this blog: http://betterposters.blogspot.com/. People often submit their posters and the authors discuss what's good/bad and make suggestions. Lots you can learn! I go with really minimal text on my posters. Not counting references, I think the smallest font size I use is about 36. A helpful guide that someone taught me is that 72 point font is usually 1 inch tall. My style of poster is that I just use my poster as a visual aid while I talk. Sometimes posters in my conferences are judged and I lose the most points in "content" (either for the text part or because the judge looked at the poster outside of the poster session so I wasn't there). I don't really mind losing points here because I make my poster to help me communicate my science, not to win poster awards The other advice I want to add is whether you have an oral or poster presentation, decide ahead of time what is the one single key point you want your audience to go away with. Just focus on that. Most MA level projects are deep and cover a lot of things and you might even feel the need to justify/prove your methodology. Don't do that for a conference presentation--it's not the same as a paper! (At least in my field). In my conference presentations, I only focus on the "what", not the "how". I tell them what the question we want answered, I tell them what we did, and I tell them what our results are. It's definitely important to say why the audience should care, but you don't have to say why you chose the method you did, or why that method worked, or what 1000 other methods/techniques you tried before you got to this result. Also, if you find multiple results, just pick one to present (and be ready to talk about all the other cool stuff if you get someone who is really interested). Edited to add: Maybe there's one more thing! Use your titles in useful ways. For example, I don't usually have "Introduction", I just have a sentence fragment that gives introductory material. For example, one recent poster, my "introduction" section is titled "Hot Jupiters are on very small orbits". Similarly, don't have a section titled "Results", I just write a phrase that summarizes our main result: "50% of hot Jupiters have companion stars", for example. Since section titles stand out and are big, someone standing a few feet away should be able to get a mini summary of your poster by just reading the headlines.

I can't speak for all Canadian schools, but I know my undergrad school (UBC) does this and I just did a check for two other big Canadian schools, Toronto and McGill. Toronto also does not allow repeat for courses with credit granted; however some exceptions apply (but the repeated course does not count towards your GPA). McGill does allow repeats but both attempts are included in the GPA calculation. Here are the links to these school's policies UBC: http://science.ubc.ca/students/degree Toronto: http://www.artsandscience.utoronto.ca/ofr/calendar/Rules_&_Regulations.html McGill: https://www.mcgill.ca/study/2010-2011/university-regulations-and-information/gi_grading_and_grade_point_averages Note: It does seem that these are not always campus-wide policies. In doing this research, I learned that UBC students in the Faculty of Science are not allowed to repeat passed courses but students in the Faculty of Arts are allowed to do it once. Anyways, if you are wondering about a particular school/program, probably best to look up their policies.

My worst grades are in the courses that are most directly relevant to my field of research. Grad admissions committees are looking for applicants that show the most potential to do great work and succeed in their PhD program. Although having strong grades (especially in your field of research) shows that you have a strong foundation, having a strong foundation is only one way you can demonstrate potential for success. Admissions is a holistic process, so remain focused on presenting the best overall picture of yourself and try not to get too stuck on small detail like a single grade.

Don't say "due to unexpected circumstances" or anything that implies some issue/problem came up. They might misinterpret that as a problem they can fix and ask for details, offer a deferment etc. Then you will have to explain to them and it will get awkward. Just be polite, honest and brief: "I was very excited for the opportunity to study at X. However, I recently received an offer from Y and I think Y would be a better fit for me at this time. So, I am writing to let you know I will retract my earlier decision to attend X because I will be attending Y instead. Please let me know if there is anything else I should do or anyone else I should notify. Thank you"

NSERC publishes its distribution of "factors they care about". For us, at the doctoral award levels, it is 50% research experience/potential, 30% academic success and 20% community/service/leadership. Maybe SSHRC publishes their criteria somewhere too, or perhaps they use something similar? Note: For Masters level awards, it is 50% academic, 30% research, 20% service. So, for those who have a lower GPA and was not successful at the Masters, you might have a better chance at the Doctoral level awards!

Thanks for the additional clarifications I think my single class in undergrad on moral philosophy have left me with a lot of misconceptions and I'm glad everyone here was able to clearly (and nicely!) explain why! If you would indulge me, I am still a little confused about the difference between moral relativism and moral anti-realism. I like to think with concrete examples because unfortunately, without the right background, I don't know what you mean when you say "Anti-realism covers a broader range of views" or what you mean by "moral subjectivism". I was thinking it would help if someone could compare how a moral realist and an anti-realist would answer these two questions: Do you think murder is immoral? Why do you think that way? (Or, is this a completely naive/silly way to think about this completely?? If so, sorry!) PS As other moderators might have said before on GradCafe, please treat all posts made by a user with the "Staff" badge as any other user. Unless we state otherwise, or unless we are taking moderating actions (e.g. warning a user for misconduct, closing a thread, or merging threads), we are not acting in our role as a moderator. And moderators at GradCafe do not "moderate" the discussion in the sense that users should not interpret our opinions or questions as the way the "administration" wants the discussion to go. Feel free to address or not address our posts as you would any other user.

In addition to what you will already do, you can also be proactive and seek to include Prof A in scientific correspondence in the future as well. Maybe it will be a lot easier to get both professors involved once you are actually there.