TakeruK

I don't know if you listed these in any particular order, but I would make sure the list of schools and your "points to include in the letter" are at the top of the list. This sounds like a lot of material to give to your professors and they might not see the "points to include in letter", which I think is fairly important! I would probably also move CV up there and keep the personal statement, writing sample, and transcript at the back because although they provide useful info, I feel that they are more like "supplementary info" that provide supporting evidence for the things you put in the "points to include in the letter" page. Also, I would add an extra column to the list of schools: Show them the school name, deadline, and the names of a few professors you particularly want to work with. Finally, I would also add some summary information about you in the "points to include in letter" page. For example, I put my GPA, my GRE scores, and a 2 sentence summary of my research goals in grad school. That way, they should have a summary of everything they need in the first two pieces of paper!

A lot of the people above gave good advice. I especially want to echo juilletmercredi's note about giving it more time and GeoDUDE!'s point about talking to your advisor. I was in the same situation with my Masters program, but in Canada, it's perfectly normal and required to do a Masters before a PhD (it's basically expected that the 2 year Masters will determine whether or not the student wants to pursue a 3-4 year PhD in the same field/school, and a large fraction of students choose to go elsewhere for a PhD). Here are some additional thoughts: 1. Have an "exit plan" for your current program. That is, think of the best plan you can for leaving this school on good terms. Sometimes just having a plan helps me feel better and helps me tough some bad times out until they get better. 2. It sounds like a good "exit plan" for your case might be a Masters degree. In my school/field, these usually take two years, so my exit plan would be to tough out the first year and re-evaluate how I feel next fall. If I still want to leave, I would apply to new schools in late 2015 to start a new program in Fall 2016 (with a Masters from current school). You might want to consider this plan or some variant because: a. it gives you more time to see how you feel about this city a year later (and you don't have to say anything to your current program -- no burnt bridges -- if you do change your mind about leaving later) b. you need a good letter from your current advisor for new schools -- and at this point, they barely know you c. waiting another year means your time at current school will help you in the next application cycle; if you reapply this year, your application will not benefit from your time in current school 3. Maybe not right now, since you're still relatively new, but in the Spring, when you get to know some of the professors better, you might want to follow GeoDUDE!'s advice and start talking to professors you trust about how you feel. Maybe they will have good advice for you. Academics move around a lot and I'm sure many of them have been in the same situation (or maybe are currently in the same situation). Also, talk to other students. Sometimes sharing experiences with others can help me cope, but be careful of spiraling into a feedback loop of negativity (I know I have to watch out for that, or it can get worse for me). 4. I just want to reiterate that I really do think personal happiness is extremely important to grad school success. The way I see it, I am in grad school because the work I do makes me happy -- why would I sacrifice personal happiness in the pursuit of happiness? But to paraphrase juilletmercredi again, sticking with this city for another 2 years might mean more opportunities for better happiness later. Sometimes thinking of it this way also helps me get through the tough times in grad school. So, unless your program does not have a Masters exit option or you are so unhappy that staying for 2 years is not worth future happiness, I would strongly encourage students who are unhappy in their first year to apply in their second year and leave with a Masters, instead of trying to apply to new schools only a few months into their first year (for all the reasons above). 5. When you do apply to new schools, whether it's this year or next, you will be asked why you are leaving your current grad program. In my opinion and experience, citing geographical reasons is perfectly fine (at least in my field). At an interview for a school, they asked me what was the number one reason I applied to their school and I was honest: the number one reason was that it was the closest school to my hometown other than my undergrad university. I also gave a number two reason which was research related but I told them that I made my application decisions with equal weight to personal happiness and research. The two professors that were interviewing me seemed to react very positively to this and agreed with me that personal life happiness is crucial to success. They might have just said that for the sake of saying that, but I was accepted in the end, so it's not like that statement put me on an auto-reject list! At another school, I told them a similar thing and asked if my spouse could visit with me for prospective students weekend since we will both be making the final decision (it was within driving distance so they would not have to pay for an extra plane ticket). The school also responded very positively and was very welcoming to my spouse during the visit (provided information about the city, included my spouse in social events, provided my spouse with a space to work while I interviewed with professors, etc.). The way I see it, if a school doesn't want you because you care about personal happiness in your location, then you probably don't want to be there either!

Interesting. This is the text from the ETS website (I added the bold): However, when you follow that link, as you said, there is a box that says "Most Recent:" One potential resolution to this apparent conflict is that "Most Recent" only shows the most recent out of the ScoreSelect-ed tests. Another resolution of course is that there is a mistake on the website! I'd bet on the former, but it's easier for me to say this after all my GRE testing days are over

Glad it worked out. I think most professors are busy enough that small things like this might cause us days of stress and agony but to them, it's over in the time it took the prof to write that first reply.

Please direct all future replies to:

No they cannot. I think the applications that ask for "most recent" is leftover wording from pre-Score-Select times (July 2012).

A screenshot is okay for unofficial. However, here are some alternatives that might look a little bit better: 1. Print your transcript from the screen you are viewing it, but choose to save it as a PDF instead of sending it to a printer. This is easy on Google Chrome (not sure how to do this on other browsers). 2. If it's not too expensive, order your own copy of an official transcript, then scan it and you'll have a PDF!

It depends. If the application asks for research experience AND employment history, then I would put REUs and similar positions under research experience and put non-research related employment under employment history. I would do this because there is no point repeating yourself and if they differentiate between research experience and "employment history", then I would infer that they are looking for non-research employment under "employment history". But you're free to do your own interpretation of course. If they only ask for employment history, then I would put all research related experience here, even if it was unpaid/volunteer work.

I think I will ignore the posts that are ignorant of privilege here (can easily spiral into a completely different discussion that might not help the OP) and just address the OP's question. At my current school, I am part of a group of students that work with the University and Graduate School to address issues like diversity and the environment for minority students at our school. I've learned a lot about the complicated details behind policies. First, people who identify as a LGTBQ person are definitely a minority in academia. We are working to build a community of allies to better support our colleagues. If you walk around the offices in my school, you will notice that some doors have "Safe Zone" stickers, indicating that some members of the office have undergone the ally training for LGBTQ people. The fact that this exists indicates that LGTBQ people are a minority. Second, it is important to realise that there is a difference in the United States' legal definition of an "under-represented minority" (URM) and the practical reality of which communities are a minority in academia (I'll just call this latter group a "minority" group). The definition of a URM is very strict and usually only means something like: "African Americans, Mexican-Americans, Native Americans (American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians), Pacific Islanders, and mainland Puerto Ricans" (taken from a google search of URM definition). Also, notice that you have to be American to qualify. That is, a Mexican-American would be a URM, but an international student from Mexico would not be a URM. On the other hand, the broader sense of diversity would include all types of minorities in academia, not just URMs. So, for STEM in general, this generally includes women, LGBTQ people, some socio-economical groups, and many visible minorities. Being a minority does not have to related to your field of work at all. That is, your minority status should be relevant whether or not being a minority affects the subject of your study. Whether or not a certain program will consider either URM or general minority status in applications can vary a lot from place to place and it is an understandably tricky issue on how to act as fairly as possible. I think schools that demonstrate an interest in your diversity background (e.g. asking for personal history statements etc.) would generally care more about recruiting a diverse class and will factor in additional hardships faced by trying establish yourself in a community where you are a minority. But exactly what is the fairest way to do this, I do not know. I do know that generally applying a +X points advantage for someone who identify as some sort of minority is probably a bad idea, and so is setting quotas for diversity. So, that is why I would not want to ask someone a question like "What advantage do I have for identifying as a gay person?" because that is not how we will gain both fairness and diversity. My solution would be for people in privileged positions to realise what life is like for those without privilege (i.e. minorities) and consider that in their evaluations. Again, exactly how to do this fairly is hard and I don't know. Finally, for those who identify as a minority group, it is helpful to know that many schools will have a lot of resources to try to show already accepted minority students that they are welcome and encourage them to accept the school's offer. Because while it is tough to make an argument for accepting someone based on minority status, everyone would agree it is a bad thing if we accept 8 non-minorities and 4 minorities but the incoming class is only 8 non-minorities. So, one thing we are doing is to work with our campus' diversity center to do things like a coffee hour meet and greet for all visiting prospective minority students where they can meet the diversity center staff, meet current students who are also minorities etc. and have a frank discussion of what life is like as a minority student at my school.

Yes, I think it's worth it to ask. It might differ from field to field. I asked and got a ton of useful information. For example, one prof was doing pretty much exactly what I wanted to do. But when I emailed to ask about him taking students, he said yes, but he has no funding for this work so I would have to TA 20hrs/week every semester. That was not something I wanted to do. Despite the good research match, the funding problem would be a dealbreaker. Also, websites can be out dated.

Sure, there are some obvious definitively bad advisor traits: harassment, discrimination, unethical behaviours etc. Also, the professor can meet all of my criteria above but is a completely incompetent scientist that somehow managed to get a professorship position -- but this is not really something I would worry about. Or, the professor might have some severe personal problem that is now preventing them from actually doing a good job of managing a lab / advising students / etc. But again, this is something out of your control. I would trust the instincts and advice of others you meet in the field though (especially grad students who worked for them or professors who have collaborated with them). But for things like "scientific training", again it really depends on each student and their individual goals. For example, some advisors are going to be really good at training students to become the next superstar in the field. I think if you really do want to be the next superstar, then you probably want someone who will push you to work your very best. But again, different workers thrive under different situations, so I don't know how to describe an advisor who can take a any good student and make them reach their full potential. Also, not everyone wants this -- for example, I have no intention of becoming the very best in my field so I would find grad school miserable if I was working for someone who thought they had my best interest in mind while they try to push me to be a superstar. I can think of a few almost universally good traits though. One is good mentorship / being on your side. They would be there to help you figure out the job market in your field, and help you take on projects that best prepare you for your future goals (whether it's industry, academia, teaching, whatever) instead of assigning you projects that simply further their own goals. They might also talk you up to their colleagues, introduce you to other people that might hire you at conferences and all that stuff. Another universally good trait is flexibility for emergencies/personal situations. A lot of schools have policies that allow for personal leave or other benefits that are important to keeping us sane. However, a lot of these benefits require supervisor approval. Even if you are someone that want a tough demanding supervisor, there are some limits and it's important to know that your supervisor isn't going to be against you when you really need their signature for something. Some of these universally good traits are not absolutely necessary in order to have a good supervisor. For example, some people prefer the mentorship stuff come from another professor in the department who is not their advisor (or perhaps a co-advisor).

I think you already answered your own question. "I have a bad advisor!" generally is a shorthand for "I don't like my relationship with my advisor" or "My advisor and I are not a good fit for each other". In some cases, some profs have reputations for being "bad advisors" because their personality and expectations are such that only a small number of students can actually have a good relationship with them, so most of their students feel like they have a bad relationship. My advice for these cases is to be very careful -- everyone thinks "well, I'm different, I'll find a way to work with Prof. X!" but the stats and reputation are often there for a reason. So, what constitutes a "bad advisor" is completely personal although there are some similar themes that people would look for. For example, I would consider these things when choosing an advisor. Note: Things where I share what I prefer are not meant to be judgements! That is, if the advisor is not what I "prefer", that just means the prof may be a bad fit for me, but not necessarily a "bad advisor" for everyone. Also, when making your own preferences, keep in mind that it will be impossible to find a perfect advisor that fits you in every single way--you should also determine which ones of these you prioritize. 1. Availability: how often can you see them if you need help? I prefer advisors where I can just walk into their office if they aren't currently meeting with others. But some profs require appointments. 2. Approachability: do I feel comfortable talking to the advisor? I prefer advisors where I can ask questions without feeling dumb, and advisors who have the patience for me to ask the same thing multiple times before I understand it. I also prefer advisors whose personality is welcoming / have a good sense of humour so that I can feel comfortable talking about not-science topics with them as well. 3. Expectations: are their expectations in line with yours? I will not work for an advisor that expects more than 40 hours of work per week or expects work on evenings or weekends. Most grad students do work more than 40 hours and also work on holidays and some weekends, but I will only work for an advisor that sees these extra hours the way I do: as extra, not as expected/normal. 4. Training/teaching/mentoring style: Is their style a good match for you? As you mentioned, some profs like to grill/embarrass their students. Some people learn well under this kind of pressure. Personally, when I was in air cadets (a youth group trained by Canadian military), I thrived under the high expectations environment. It only pushed me to perform my very best. However, I don't want my career (including grad school) to be like this. Now that I am an adult with a ton of other stresses/responsibilities (family, paying bills, etc.), there's no need to add more stress to my life. So, I would not want to work for an advisor that treats every group meeting (or even individual meeting) as a chance to grill us and make sure we know everything. 5. Hands-on / hands-off: How much or little do they micromanage? I prefer a balance: I would not want to have to report to my advisor every decision I make, but I do want an advisor that is personally invested in the project and will occasionally make important decisions on what to do next in the analysis. I don't work well with a completely hands-off advisor (i.e. the type of advisor that only thinks about my project when I am talking to them, then stops as soon as I leave the office). 6. Resources available: How much funding does the advisor have for your project? At the most basic level, it's "Can they pay you as an RA or will you be teaching 20 hours per week every year in order to get your stipend?". At other levels, it's also "Can they send me to the conferences I want to go to for career development?", "Can I buy the materials I need for my work?", etc. 7. Group size: Is their group size a good match for you? The relative sizes can vary a lot in different fields, but basically, the important thing is whether or not you feel that your prof will have enough time for you. In my field, the average group size is 2 or 3 students and I think the ideal size for me is around 3 or 4 students. But I know that my friends in chemistry have much larger groups. 8. Personality fit: Would you get along with this person? For me, I don't need to be friends with my advisors but I think that would be nice. When interviewing for schools (or just visiting during the prospective student weekends), I try to ask them some questions about themselves too. One red flag I received was when I asked about their hobbies, they said "Astronomy is my only passion in life". Again, I am not looking for a BFF (or even friendship), but I want to be working for someone that I get to know beyond just a "boss" and that I can talk to them about non-science things. I guess at the most basic level, I want to work for someone that have other priorities in their life that is not science, which usually indicates they are understanding of the fact that science is just one of the many priorities in my own life, and that I will not always choose to prioritize science/academics/career over all else. This is not a complete list but it's what I can come up with right now. Hope my personal examples were what you were looking for. For the most part, I have picked great advisors. In my program, we do something kind of similar to "rotations" where we work with multiple advisors on multiple projects. For one advisor, I did not feel we were a good fit. It's hard to pinpoint exactly why, but I always felt like crap interacting with the advisor. I don't think there is anything bad or wrong with that particular professor -- if given the chance to change them, I don't even know what I would do to make it different. A few others felt the same way about the prof, but plenty of other students also enjoy working with that prof. Although there are some traits that are commonly liked or disliked by the majority of students, in the end, what makes a good advisor all boils down to a "good fit", which is very personal and will vary a lot from person to person. The prospective student visits and/or interviews (and/or rotations) are also your chance to evaluate all potential advisors for a good fit with you!

It is unlikely that this information will be used in determining your admission decision (in some cases this is not sent to the admission committee but isntead, sent to the graduate school for statistical purposes). I would answer these questions honestly (although you don't have to be super thorough if you haven't decided on your schools yet--sometimes they only give you enough room to type in like 2 or 3 schools). The reasons they may collect this information: 1. Stats -- the school as a whole wants to know what other programs they are competing with 2. Helps the department determine the total number of offers to make. Like airlines, school often make offers to more students than they can actually take because a large number of offers are declined. So, knowing what other schools you applied to can help them gauge the probability that you will take their offer and they can adjust the total number of offers made. 3. It's also possible that your particular department does not care at all, and this is just required information that the University wants to collect. This is actually potentially true for other aspects of your application, too. Finally, if you get an offer and decline it, they will usually follow up with an exit survey. This info is generally collected by the school and they ask questions like "What school did you end up going to?" and "What is their financial offer?" and "What are the reasons for choosing the other school?". This is all part of their information collection process in order to self-evaluate their programs and make changes. So, from a long term point of view, I encourage you to answer these questions (both in application and exit surveys) honestly because this is how you get grad programs to improve themselves. For example, if a program is underpaying their students, this is one of the ways they can learn about this and improve grad life at that school.

I ended my SOP with a few sentences that addressed the question "What do you want to do after your PhD?" (whether this was an explicit prompt or not). So, my last sentence was something like "I am excited for the opportunity to develop the skills necessary to be an independent researcher in X at University Y."

I don't think a website can really answer the questions you are considering. I determined the answers to my own similar questions through talking with professors, graduate students, other undergrad students considering similar things etc. In my opinion, each person has their specific case and you need to get advice from someone who knows you, not a generic website!

To the OP: I can sympathize with how you feel. At my old school, my supervisor and I were the only French cook. The majority of the department were Chinese cooks and I might see one or two French cooking seminars/visitors but that was it. There were no classes in French cooking, only Chinese cooking. Now, I am in a department that works in "European Cooking". I'm one of a few French cooks and the department has Spanish cooks, Italian cooks, Swiss cooks, etc. I have one or two courses in French Cooking, but most of my coursework and seminars I attend are in Spanish, Italian, Swiss, etc. cooking. I am much happier here! Although French cooking is my main research interest, in a PhD, you don't want to be so focussed that you are only exposed to French cooking. I think it's a misconception that a PhD is a specialist in the sense that they will only be a French cook. PhDs need to have foundation and expertise in breadth as well as depth. I would expect a French cook PhD to have strong working knowledge of related cuisines like Italian cooking -- that is, a French cook PhD should be able to sit in an Italian cooking seminar and understand it. Like Crucial, Eigen, and others said, you want to be able to market yourself in multiple skills once you have your PhD. So, for your situation, I think it's helpful to re-evaluate your department. Is it really true that you are a French cook and everyone else is a Chinese cook? Or are you a French cook surrounded by other types of European cooks? Sometimes it's hard to tell. I would warn you to be careful about getting into a negative loop with other French cooks. However, I also point out the fact that there exists other French cooks would tell me that it's not so lonesome as you originally made it sound. To symmetry: I think this is a fairly different problem! From this post and your other posts on this topic elsewhere, it really doesn't sound like you are happy in your program. I hope you got good advice in your other thread and have an idea of what to do next!

To avoid confusion with duplicate threads, I'm going to lock this one and direct readers to the post over in Government Affairs:

Congrats! In addition to what others said above, find out what your field's norms are for pre-prints. Probably the best person to talk to about this is your advisor. For example, in Astronomy, people often put pre-prints of their accepted papers on www.arxiv.org (sometimes they are posted as soon as they are submitted!). In my field, this is the way we normally hear about new papers and start incorporating their results into our own, which cuts down on the extra delays between acceptance and actual online publication.

Hi there! Our policy at GradCafe is not to have duplicate posts since it's both confusing, creates disjointed discussions and might even decrease the number of replies. Since you've reposted this in the GRE forum, I'll close this one and redirect readers to this thread:

In my opinion, I would submit both sets!

You are eligible. I applied to NSERC CGS but SSHRC CGS and NSERC CGS-D are the same in this regard. The 17 month cutoff is specifically designed so that you are eligible to apply in the fall semester of both your first and second year of your PhD since almost all Canadian programs start in September, almost all applicants will have completed 0, 4, or 16 months of their program. There might be an exception if you are in a fast track/combined MA/PhD program or if you already received funding from SSHRC or NSERC or CIHR in the past. I believe that we all have a lifetime limit of 4 years of funding in total from these 3 agencies.

Do you have any connections at all with professors at a Canadian school? I'm not sure if I said it clearly in my original post way up in this thread, but the professors that helped me with the research statement were not professors at my current school. Instead, I reached out to professors at schools I wanted to apply to and asked for their help. It's a win-win situation since you'll get guidance and if you win and decide to work for this prof, the CGS will reduce how much they need to pay for you. Otherwise, I would say to make sure you write it in general terms and define all jargon. Include references to other work. In particular, you should clearly outline the problem (give references), give motivation for why it should be solved (give references), describe your method (refer to previous studies that show this method's success) and discuss what your project will accomplish. You only have one page so you have to strike a fine balance between providing enough details to convince the reader what you do will work vs. fitting everything in just one page. In my experience, my first drafts (where I write everything I can think of) are generally about 2 pages long, and then I think of ways to write more concisely or decide what to remove to bring it back to 1 page.

ginagirl is right -- chunks is better than "all" at once, and it was what I really meant! I had deadlines that are around Dec 1, Dec 15 and Jan 1, so I submitted the requests in these 3 chunks.

For STEM fields, this is normal. Yes, the referees will get a ton of emails from different places and have to find each email to click on the special link and upload the letter. Many students help reduce the work for professors by doing these things: 1. Send your profs a list of all the schools you're applying to, the profs you want to work with, and the deadline. 2. Send all of these emails at the same time. The email is not sent until you type in their email address. What I would do is start all my applications and get them all to the point where it asks for LORs (usually you can skip right to this step). Then send the requests for the first school, then log out, log into the next school, etc and repeat. This helps your LOR writers because all the emails relating to your application will be in the same area of their inbox. 3. Finally, these applications usually allows you to send reminder emails. What I did was offered to resend such an email upon request since my prof would say "Okay, I have time tomorrow to write your LOR, please resend the reminder so that the link appears near the top of my inbox". For other fields, there are central repositories like Interfolio. But that only works if your schools accept letters from these repositories too.

Good point -- I should say that my advice comes from my field's perspective where the author order for a student-led project is usually: Student, then Supervisor(s), then Collaborators in order of their contribution to the work (usually; sometimes in ABC order if the list is really long). In addition, the first author / student is listed as the corresponding author, does all of the direct communication with referees etc and is ultimately responsible for implementing (or not implementing) their coauthors' suggestions. However, in reality, the student should seek approval of their supervisor for all content. When I say "responsible for", I mean that it would not be acceptable for a student who is first author to say something like "I don't know" or "I don't agree with the reasoning" when questioned about the content of the paper. This is slightly tempered by the fact that people know that academics don't agree 100% on everything and they would know the student's writing would be strongly influenced by their supervisor. So, please frame my above advice with that description of how my field operates. And also here is further advice, based on the extra information (i.e. this is a resubmit and it's already very clear you and him do not agree on the wording of this statement): First, I think you should make sure you know where you stand scientifically on this statement. You must absolutely be certain that you are right. If you are 100% certain, then you now really have two choices: 1. You can accept your advisor's wording and accept his statement as something that is true and acceptable to you. In the end, paper writing and data interpreting is subjective and sometimes there are more than one way to word something so that it's not wrong. It might not be the interpretation you agree with, but sometimes you will be "outranked" on this, and I think the student should yield to the PI in cases like this. 2. Or, if you find this statement so reprehensible that you cannot bear to put your name on this paper, then you should exercise your right to remove yourself from this paper. The professional thing to do would be to let the prof know that you don't want to be on this paper any more and give him permission to publish your work without your name on it. However, this second option is basically almost as extreme as going behind their back and would probably hurt you in the future. It's a terrible thing to do but technically your right if you feel that strongly against putting your name on this. And if this is a case where you feel the statement is academic dishonesty that will get you into more trouble later on then this might be a viable option. This second option is still less extreme than going behind your PI's back because at least in this case, it's a disagreement between you and him, instead of including the journal editors/staff. I would reserve this option for use only if you are somehow certain that keeping your name on this paper is a bad thing. In your case, it just sounds like you and your PI have different interpretations of the meaning of the data and you both want to express your interpretation. Collaborating is a compromise and it sounds like he does consider your thoughts and implemented some changes. It also sounds like, from Eigen's post, that your field is one where the last author is expected to be the "voice" behind the manuscript so that you might not have to be expected to agree with every statement. In my opinion, I think this is one case where you have to recognize that there are more than one way to present things and sometimes you have to compromise and accept what your coauthor/PI prefers.