TakeruK

Sorry that you have to go through this! Most leaves of absences of this kind do not come with funding, unfortunately, so unless you have a special offer or contract that says otherwise, if you miss a semester where you are supposed to be TAing and your funding is tied to your TAship, you may not be able to get the funding that comes from TAing. The leave of absence grants you permission to not do the work (and not get punished for it via things like not getting a position when you come back) but unless you are very lucky, these leaves are not paid. However, if your funding is more RA-based, then your supervisor may choose to continue to pay you while you are away. One solution that might work for you is if you are partly paid through a TAship as well as an RAship, you might be able to arrange it so that if you have to go through chemo, those months would be on a RAship and you would do a TAship another semester.

This is not a healthy relationship! I just want to say that I am sorry to hear this situation and I think you have a good plan to switch. Before you go further though, I would recommend talking to your potential new advisor about this and see what they have to say. It's good that you have talked to the dept chair but you also need the new advisor to be 100% on board!! Also, switching advisors is not a rare thing in grad school (at least not in my field!). My school's graduate office helps facilitate these transitions, maybe yours can do the same? Our Dean will get personally involved (but we're a really small school where everyone knows everyone so it's easy to navigate these relationships). My Graduate Office tells us that they help with a large number of transitions like this and it's not a big deal or even a bad thing (i.e. it's not like you are doomed to fail if you can't make the first relationship work). Finally, my only concern about the new professor is that you say he is 5-6 years on the tenure track. In my field, this means he would be up for tenure review like, next year. I think you should talk to him about this and find out whether tenure is basically a sure-thing at your school (it is at mine) or if there's a chance he won't get it. Or, sometimes professors end up leaving the school for other reasons--it's important to talk to the new prof now and see if switching is a viable plan.

You definitely need to get that fixed. I also make D-M-Y and M-D-Y mixup all the time too!! (funny thing though--my advisor has to sign a form for the Canadian government for a fellowship I have and we use D-M-Y for official forms in Canada so they often make the same mistake!) My DS-2019 (J-1 equivalent of I-20) form had my middle name spelled wrong. I just asked them to fix it and they mailed another one right away. You will probably have to do the same thing. However, unless you need to start your visa application right away, I would not pay to get it rushed again!!

Do you have another professor in the department who you can talk to / trust? The situation sounds bad but without being there, I can't give really specific and useful advice. Just keep in mind that graduate and undergraduate students don't always know the full details of the situation, but I'd still trust your gut that something is not right here. landshark is right that you should document everything, but you don't have to "report it" if you don't want to get into a fight with this PI. It might work out best if you just thank the PI for the training and say that your interests are elsewhere and join a different lab for your final year. Unfortunately, in most cases like this, the PI has all the power and the student has none so you have to also think about not putting yourself in a bad situation if you try to "fight" the PI. Ultimately, you are going to need a faculty member on your side, which is why if you have a mentor or someone you can trust, you should seek their guidance.

I think that would be a bad idea. You should not tell a school you will attend if you are also accepting another offer. You will also likely run into problems with your student visa processing if they know that you have accepted two offers. I think you should pick the school you want to go to more and accept that offer and do the student visa paperwork for that country. Student visas are a standard thing and unless you have some history, if you have a legitimate offer, then you should be able to get the visa. If for some reason, the visa does not get accepted, you should contact the other school and see if their offer is still available. But don't accept both at once.

Yes, if you tell him you are interested in this project, then he will expect you to want to work on it. Basically, your POI is asking if you want to work on this funded project. If you say yes, then you get the security of knowing your project has the funding necessary to succeed. As you said, there are other projects in mind but they are not yet funded--you can ask him to tell you about these projects and decide if it's worth the risk. It's common for students to have one research interest when applying to schools and then get offers to work on projects that are not the same. It's up to you if you want to change your research interest or go to another school/POI that matches your interest better. You can also talk to your POI saying that you would prefer working on water treatment and if there are any opportunities in that as well? Or you can decide to switch to computational biology.

I don't agree with TexasGuy's opinion about the GRE and writing your own LORs. Many programs do not publish their statistics because it is misleading. Usually, individual pieces like your GRE or GPA do not matter a whole lot -- you can be in the top 5% of applicants in any particular part of your application but still get rejected. Or, you can have the worst GRE score and still be accepted. Admissions is a holistic thing and since not every part of the decision can be quantified, reporting only the quantitative parts can be very misleading, and even more so when it's small numbers, so most schools avoid it and I would recommend that most applicants don't pay that much attention to it.

I think moving to an academic institution will help but not absolutely necessary. If you are planning for Fall 2017 start date, you will have 3.5 years of experience by the time you apply to schools. I agree that academic research experience is generally valued over industry research experience (especially if the latter does not result in many publications) but the quality of research matters too! It's better, I think, to do great industry research than mediocre academic research. I think a high number (i.e. 15) is a good idea if you are applying to a wide variety of fields (as you seem to be doing). Remember, even if you think the chance of getting in is about 20%, then you need to apply to 4-5 of the same "type" of program! Your probabilities don't get to add up if you are applying to different types of programs (i.e. you'd have a higher chance of getting in if you apply to 6 chemistry programs vs. 3 chemistry programs and 3 physics programs). And finally, it might help to know that having more experience is viewed in two ways. This applies whether you do a Masters or work in industry for a few years. More experience is good because it shows that you have the skills and expertise to get things done. However, it also demonstrates what you are capable of. In more concrete terms, pretend you can rate everyone's research ability on a scale of 1-10 (a "research score") and consider two applicants: Applicant A is a recent graduate and their past experience and profile indicates that their "research score" will fall in the 6.0-9.0 out of 10 range. Applicant B has 3-4 years of post-BSc work experience and the work from the past 3 years indicates a solid 7.0/10.0 research score. Some programs are going to value Applicant A over Applicant B, despite the increased experience. Graduate programs are not always in the business to accept the currently most qualified people, but they would rather take people they can train into the most qualified people! Of course, not all programs will behave this way, some will have the view that your "research score" can still change over time and that Applicant B will be able to improve it to a 8.0/10.0 while in their PhD program. Either way, I think it's important to keep in mind that more experience is not going to be necessarily viewed as absolutely good by all programs. The quality of your experience matters and mediocre experience might be worse than no experience. You can get a sense of how departments/programs feel about experience by looking into the backgrounds of current graduate students--do they tend to be fresh-out-of-undergrad or are they coming from experience in industry or other careers.

Private schools tend to be more generous to international students. I would NOT look at the acceptance rate, instead, look at the "% of admitted students who are international". Acceptance rates for international students are low because 1) schools accept fewer international students and 2) more international students apply! You don't want to confound the two--you just want to avoid schools that do (1), but it doesn't matter for you if (2) is true. For example, at my current school (a private school), about 40%-50% of each incoming graduate class is international. This is a huge difference compared to public California schools (they quote fractions around 10%). In my field, these programs take 5-6 students per year, so you'd have to be like the best international student in TWO years to get in! Some big state schools (e.g. Wisconsin) will boast about how much of their class is international (12%). According to their international student office, it's one of the highest in the country and I think that's true (only private schools, which there are few of, would have higher numbers). My advice for you would be to apply to more private schools. Your list only has 4 right now, you might want to increase it! I got into high ranked private schools but rejected from lower rank public schools because (I think) of international student status!

I think the best way for you to determine if a school is a good choice for Geology is to open Google Maps, go to the campus and hit the Pac Man button. It will be a good simulation of grad student life there and if you can survive, then it might be a good fit

You may or may not get a SSN depending on how your funding is structured / your student status / whether or not you are "employed". Like fuzzy said, if you don't get one, then you will just get a ITIN for tax purposes. I had to set a lot of things up prior to getting my SSN. My phone company (TMobile) accepted my DS-2019 (or I-20) in lieu of a SSN. My utilities company will not accept my SSN because it's for "employment purposes only" so I had to put a $300 deposit down to get my electricity connected. They used the last 4 digits of my passport instead, for ID purposes. Many places ask for a SSN but they don't actually need one. As said above, usually this means you just have to tell them why you don't have one, and they will tell you to use another number, or have you fill out a special form that indicates you don't have a SSN.

Please don't repost the same question in multiple places. To continue this discussion, please go here:

Here's what I think you should do to increase your chances for next year, in the order of most efficient (i.e. most gain for least cost of time+money): 1. Apply to more schools next year and target the schools well. Your first year had 11 schools which is a good number, but what was your spread? I would say that the very best students would have a 10%-20% to get into any specific top 10 program, so even for the best student hoping to get into a top 10 program, I would recommend applying to 5-10 top programs (maybe around 7 or 8 is a good number). As someone said above, it's a numbers game. I will be honest here, hope I won't offend: Unfortunately, I do not think your profile (especially your 3.26 GPA) makes you very competitive for the top programs. Given the results of the last 2 years, I don't think you should spread your schools out so much this time. Over the summer, I think you should think about what path you want to take forward (post PhD) and what kind of program you need to get there. Then I think you need to make one of two decisions: 1A) Go for the long shot and commit to top programs only. Apply to the 10-15 top programs in your field and hope that 2 years of R&D experience is enough (it might be--by the time you apply for Fall 2016, you would have twice as much experience as you did this application cycle). There's no point applying to only 1 or 2 top programs in your 3rd cycle--if you're aiming for the top, go all the way. The risk you take here is that you are basically saying "I only want to do grad school if I get into a top program". Do this only if you feel that your goals can only be achieved with "brand name" PhD. 1B) Apply to lower tier schools only. Again, it's a numbers game so you want to apply to the most # of schools that you feel you have the most chance to get in -- maybe 8-10 schools. If you have the extra time and money, and you don't want to wonder "what if", go ahead and apply to one or two "long shot" top programs but only as extra on top of the 8-10 "lower tier" schools. Overall, what I am trying to say is that you should apply to ~10 programs that are at your "goal" level. Admission probability is low so you want to maximize #schools to increase your chances and if you spread 10 schools over a large range then you are not being efficient. Note that I would phrase this advice slightly differently if this was your first application cycle but since this is your third, you probably have a better idea of where you can and cannot get in! 2. It might also be a good idea to reconsider your LOR writers. I don't know though--I'll mention some potential issues and you can decide if they apply to you (since I don't know your LOR writers and the relationship you have with them). 2A) Your past research advisor -- Do they have a PhD? It sounds like this person is a prof and it's great that you have at least one person that is in academia writing your letter. How did your research project go with them? Do you think they wrote you a strong personal letter? Maybe it's worth asking them to sit down with you for a coffee to talk about your graduate school goals and plans (hopefully you had a good relationship and they would be willing to mentor you). 2B) Your current supervisor -- Do they have a PhD? Were they ever in academia? It might be okay to have one letter out of 3 be written by a non-PhD holder and/or someone not in academia. 2C) Your CSO -- they might be very famous and well known, but how much do they know you personally? A vague/lukewarm letter from a famous person doesn't go very far! After reviewing your LOR writers, you might want to consider replacing one of them if possible (maybe not, since undergrad is a couple of years away now though). I highly recommend talking to your past research advisor for advice if possible!! 3. The next thing you can do is work on your SOP. I don't think it means anything that your SOP was vetted by your LOR writers -- two of them are not even in academia right now so they might not know what to look for. Even if they were though, SOPs are so subjectively judged that the same SOP could be loved by one prof but hated by another. So one professor's opinion might not mean very much. Your description of your SOP sounds like it does the right thing but it's hard to tell! 4. You might want to consider taking a subject GRE (not sure which one would best fit your field, but it sounds like you identified Chemistry). This could demonstrate that you have the foundational knowledge and offset your GPA (which you can't do anything about now). However, I do not think you need to retake the General GRE (sure you can do better, but I don't think that will help very much). Finally, since you asked about "red flags", this is what I think might be concerning to an admissions committee (in order of concern), however, there is not much you can do about these issues specifically (but perhaps keeping them in mind might help you frame the other parts of your application): 1. This is your 3rd year applying to schools. 2. Your GPA is low (for top programs, but it's decent for most other programs). 3. Your LOR writers might not have PhDs and/or do not work in academia. Hope that was helpful! Good luck

The most recent experience is probably going to be the biggest factor in where you go next. So, yes, after your postdoc, the location of your postdoc will matter more than your PhD when you apply to jobs beyond the postdoc! However, when you are applying to postdoc positions, the location of your PhD will matter! So I would always aim for the best fit/resources/rank (they are usually highly correlated) at every single stage. I suppose there is some way to optimize PhD and postdoc selection and perhaps, in theory, you don't want to go to the "best" school for your PhD because you want your postdoc to be from the "best" school. However, in practice, it is not a good idea to purposely go to a bad place for your PhD in order to "save" it for your postdoc. I would say it would be a very bad idea to assume that you can get into the "best" school later as a postdoc or otherwise!!

I've met professors who care about grad students only because it benefits them (i.e. they see graduate students as research machines so they care about us just enough to keep the machines going). But the majority of my experience has been professors that care about graduate students because they see themselves not just as a researcher but also as a mentor and they consider graduate student training to be just as important to their job as winning grants, writing papers etc.

Carthage32: Last year, I called the CRA to make sure. In my Canadian taxes, I only report my NSERC fellowship income. I do not report my tuition waiver nor do I report the top-up that my school pays for the difference between my NSERC income and my actual stipend. Maybe you should call the CRA hotline yourself in case there are differences, but the CRA representative told me that I do not have to report any non-employment based income that is provided to support graduate studies. In my tax return, I include the T4A that NSERC issues me but my line number for total taxable income is $0 (since NSERC income is not taxable and neither is the US income). To be completely clear, my income sources are: $21,000 from NSERC $9,000 from my school $42,000 tuition+fees waiver. To the CRA, I have $0 taxable income but I do include my T4A showing my NSERC (non-taxable) income. I also file a TL11A that my school fills out and claim $42,000 in education credits (plus the X dollars per month for being a full time student). To the IRS, I do not have to claim my non-US income, so it's just $9,000. Tuition is also not taxable income in the US so I can ignore that too. Yes, US schools seem to be fine filling out the TL11A. In the past 2 years, tuition was billed to my student account but a credit is applied immediately and the TL11A had no problems. However, since 2014, they changed it so that the tuition is billed differently so the first version of the TL11A I asked for did not include tuition. I had to ask them to check their records and confirm that tuition is being paid from some source--they did so and sent me a corrected TL11A with all of the tuition. So, you should be able to claim the tuition on the TL11A even if you don't get it billed directly. Finally, you have up to 7 years to file a correction on Canadian taxes. I also did not realise the tuition deduction in my first year so I filed a correction some 8 months later and it was properly accounted for. It's well worth your time, at about 15% tax credit rate, $30,000 in educational credits is worth almost $5000 in saved taxes in the future (but note the "double tax" thing above). The easiest way to file a correction is to log into the CRA's "MyAccount" (if you have this set up) and you can file a correction online--they will just ask you which line numbers you want to change. These numbers require proof though, so after you submit it, they will follow up with a request to mail in your TL11A.

Indeed--I reread my post and found that my last paragraph (where I mentioned you by name) sounded like I was criticizing you personally for the way your lab operates. I want to clarify that this was not intentional--I originally had "above post" but then realise that might be ambiguous. I also seem to have confused your last sentence "Basically, the opportunities exist, but must be worked for and earned and are not just handed out for meeting expectations regarding assigned tasks." as your perception/opinion of how it should work, instead of simply a description of how the reality is in your lab. Sorry for any offense.

I think "research assistant" is such a general term that it can mean a lot of different types of positions and thus different opportunities. It's also confusing because graduate students are often paid as research assistants to complete their program too, and this type of RA is very different than a staff scientist/lab tech type of research assistant. However, this might depend on field because the research assistants (e.g. people with Bacehlor's or Masters degrees) in labs/groups I've worked in (medical physics, astronomy, planetary science) do generally get included in publications just for meeting expectations regarding assigned tasks. That is, if they collect the data, and then that data gets published, then they are a coauthor. But the norms in my field is to always include the data collector as well as the data "analyzer" in papers. They don't generally present at conferences though, because their contribution is technical and conferences generally focus on the scientific aspect. However, they tend to be experts in specific procedures and techniques and they do travel for occasional workshops or training that further their technical expertise. Again, maybe this is a difference in field, but I'm not sure why CleverUsername15 makes a distinction between "paid work" and "work to be included in publications". I don't think they are mutually exclusive. In fact, as a graduate student, all of my work is paid and I expect everything I do to lead to a publication. I would never work for free because while publications are nice, they don't pay the bills! The PIs I worked for would never expect anyone (undergrad, grad student, or research staff) to work for free (many profs I know will refuse volunteers) in order to be considered for authorship. That would be basically the same as exploiting interns!

Probably best to ask your department and graduate division for clarification. It's possible that the 2nd year, while the graduate division would still cover the costs, would still require TAing/RAing. For example, it might mean the Graduate Division is paying for your TA/RAship instead of your department. However, this is all speculation--the best thing to do is to ask for clarification!

Oh also, you might want to check with the Graduate School or Graduate Division, or whatever it's called. At my school, if both you and the professor wants you to arrive early, but the professor does not have the funding to pay you, the Graduate School might be able to come up with the money for summer funding, as well as enroll you onto the health insurance plan early etc.

If you can get funding for the summer months, then do it! I did not do this because I worked at my undergrad school for a few months after graduation to finish up a project, then took a couple of months off before grad school. Between Masters and PhD, I was not able to do this because I defended my MSc thesis just a week before I moved to my PhD school! People in my current program that started in the summer (where there is nothing else to worry about except research) seem to have accomplished a lot. One student started in June and had a paper submitted by the end of the fall. Other students used this time to get a start on their first year projects. However, almost all the students that started early (that I know about) did not come straight from undergrad -- they had a year off in between. I know that for me, I would not be that productive in my first summer straight out of undergrad because I needed that time to decompress and get settled into a new routine. But whether or not you can be productive if you start right after you graduate is up to you!

Hi everyone, I am posting a link to this survey because I believe the topic is an important one. I think that the expectation that some costs are not going to be reimbursed negatively affects academia's ability to attract workers from all socioeconomic classes. Please see the text from the Survey itself below to determine your eligibility (emphasis is mine): (SURVEY LINK: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1jYyZ7MYv7bgQmsoS5UhmvgIrRdehBqLfNPAO6Ne8Eyw/viewform?c=0&w=1) Note: Just to be absolutely clear, in this survey, "scientist" means "natural scientist" as well as "social scientist". Their goals are to find trends between disciplines as well as stage of career. Some background (from one of the researchers on this project) to what got this question going is here:http://www.southernfriedscience.com/?p=18240

I don't think there is anyone wrong with a polite but direct question about funding. If they send you a link to the web page, then it means they have not yet decided.

It might depend on the field though--in Astronomy, it's pretty common for programs to have a page that list their alumni by name, year, thesis title and usually, their current position. For example: Harvard: http://astronomy.fas.harvard.edu/astronomy-alumni Maryland: https://www.astro.umd.edu/people/allphds_pub.html Caltech: http://www.astro.caltech.edu/people/grad_alumni.html Ohio State: https://astronomy.osu.edu/grad/phd-alumni But it is a little tricky -- some schools only report alumni that tell them where they are now, and those that don't go on into academia generally don't keep in touch. So, if your departments of interest do this, it is important to look at the number of current graduate students to get an estimate of how many incoming graduate students there are per year and then you can estimate what fraction of alumni actually appear on this page!

Don't leave programs that you know you won't attend hanging. So, if out of the 3 current acceptances, you know for sure you want to go to one of them if you don't hear back from the other 2, then politely decline the offer from the other two schools that accepted you now. Now, out of the other two schools you're still waiting to hear from, I agree that it's a good time to contact them and ask for an update. Also, if you know that you will not choose one of these two schools over your current favourite acceptance, you can withdraw your application from that school now. Then, you will just have two schools "outstanding", your favourite accepted offer and the other school you're holding out for. I think it's acceptable to just hold on to those two offers until April 15. But make sure you contact the non-responsive school one more time just before April 15 so that you don't end up accepting one school on April 15 only to get an offer on April 17!