TakeruK

Sorry, I am not knowledgeable enough in your field to know how to categorize these magazines. To be honest, I don't even understand many of the words on the front page of these sites!

Usually, one lists peer-reviewed articles under "Publications" in their CV and if they list non peer-reviewed publications, then they are usually indicated as such. For example, it's pretty common to see subsections for peer-reviewed publications and things like conference proceedings/presentations in grad student CVs. For senior grad students and beyond, it's not that rare for people to list additional types of publications. For example, some professors write books (textbooks as well as popular science books). Many people also write outreach type articles or make other publications that are not peer reviewed academic journal articles, but are relevant to their field in some way. In addition, more and more academics are writing academic blogs and other online publications and I think this is a good thing to include as well. I don't see things changing so drastically that a peer reviewed journal article would stop being the "currency" of scientific output, but any type of academic writing is something worth including. So, in my opinion, you should definitely include these 6-7 relevant articles. I would separate these from your peer reviewed publications (or do whatever is the norm in your field). I don't know what subheading you might use, because it depends on the nature of these articles! If you want something super general, you can call it "non peer reviewed publications" or "Other publications" but if you can write a more informative subheading that would be better!

I see--unfortunately I think there will be people everywhere that will think things like "diversity hire = unqualified" but I'd say we should not let these people get us down! I have been working with my current school to improve diversity at my current school and I have to say that it is nice to see real university administrators actually caring about diversity and not just doing it as lip service! From this point of view, the preview weekends for under-represented students are usually planned and executed in order to attract and encourage qualified diverse applicants to apply. Especially if the school might have a reputation for being less diverse--the idea of these preview visits is to show that it's pretty good here, that there will be a support system for under-represented students etc. At the same time, no matter how good any school is, there will be some people that think diversity is bad (for some reason, I don't know) and I understand your concern that they might take the opportunity to confirm their bias by being extra tough on all of the preview visitors. I agree that you should be as knowledgeable as you can about your field when you visit! But not for the jerks that want to prove their bias that diversity=unqualified, but for yourself, because you will be meeting plenty of people that do want you to come to their school and you would want to make the most of this extra opportunity to show that you are a strong candidate. That is, I think you can view this is as a bonus opportunity to show off your ability, not as an extra test meant to block your entry.

If it's a confirmed thing and it's related to what you are applying for and you know the dates won't conflict with the school you are applying to, then sure, you should mention it! I would put it on my CV as a future item and briefly discuss your excitement of starting this internship in your SOP.

This is a good thing! What do you mean by "worried that it may be solely because of an underprivileged initiative program"? If you mean that you are worried that it might not mean anything about your admission decision, then you are right. However, this is because there's no point in any of us trying to guess/infer at "hidden meanings" behind professor actions until you get an actual admission letter! Since this is happening prior to an admission decision, you can definitely count on your interactions with the school being part of their decision. However, I know that many schools, including my own (which is one of your listed schools in your signature) is definitely making a conscious effort to do a better job of recruiting from underprivileged populations and encouraging these students to apply! So, you can probably expect a combination of them evaluating you and them showing off their stuff to encourage your application. No need to overthink this! Increasing diversity is something all schools should want to strive for--either because they truly believe in achieving a diverse population or because they want the benefits of claiming to strive for diversity. Either way, no school is going to accept an under-qualified student just to meet diversity goal--that would surely do more harm than good! Whether or not this is an underprivileged initiative program or not, you got this invitation because you made a good impression on the professor and that means you are a qualified candidate for their program. This doesn't provide much information about the final admission decision because for most grad programs, they cannot accept all qualified candidates! However, you have this opportunity to preview the program and talk to two of your potential mentors. So, make the most of it!

"Doctoral student" is not a protected title; that is, anyone can call themselves that if they want to. But it's a good idea to follow whatever the field/community you want to work in does. In my field / sciences related to physics in general, we usually call ourselves "PhD student", "Doctoral student" or "Graduate student" at any point in a PhD program, from admission to graduation. Some people prefer to switch to the title "PhD Candidate" when they have reached candidacy, but some people prefer to keep using one of the above "student" title. I only ever met one person who insisted I refer to him as a "PhD candidate" rather than a "grad student" -- obviously I respected his wishes but most people do not really distinguish between the two.

Don't worry about it -- everyone makes mistakes. I really doubt any academic would use this event will cause you to go from the "accept" pile to the "reject" pile, unless they are some unreasonable person that do not want a student who can make mistakes.

I don't think this should go in your SOP. If you have 3 strong letters anyways, then you don't even need to mention it! But if you really feel the need to discuss this, I would put it in a separate section from anything else. Almost all applications I entered had a final page where you can enter any additional notes or special circumstances. You can just simply state that you did not ask for a LOR from this professor due to an employment dispute that was resolved in your favour. Provide only as much details as necessary and you don't have to defend yourself or spin it in a good way. The fact that you won the dispute meant that you were in the right. In addition, this was an employment related dispute, not an academic one, so it should not have a negative effect on your application. (Although there are often differences between what "should" happen and what actually happens in practice!)

Hi, Things can vary a lot from school to school and program to program, but you will find that Canadian graduate schools work a bit differently from US graduate schools. For example, as you noticed, it's not very common for Canadian science programs to request a "SOP" or some kind of letter/essay stating your reasons for wanting to go to grad school. Instead, many programs ask you the same questions as part of your application form instead. For example, when I applied to UBC Physics for my MSc, the application form had a page of 5 questions with those little text boxes that ask you things like "What do you want to study?" and "Why are you interested in ____?". This is where you should provide this information! There are some Canadian schools that try to follow the US model though. For example, U of Toronto structures its graduation and graduate program like the US schools (in Astronomy, you enter directly into the PhD track, not a MSc first). However, the majority of Canadian MSc programs, from my experience applying to Astronomy MSc programs, do not generally request applicants to submit written work as separate files.

About half of my schools used the same application software (Embark or something?) so once I created an Embark account, all other applications using that same software automatically filled in some basic stuff like my name, contact info, address etc. Unfortunately, if you ever tried convincing even a small group of professors/academics in your home department to do something all the same way, you might notice that it is really hard to do so! Now imagine trying to standardize application materials across the whole country with 100s of profs!! It would be nice but every program (or even professor) will be convinced their way is the best and would want all other schools to do the same! Frankly, I think it is pretty good that we got most programs agreeing to the April 15th resolution! Definitely good advice to start applications early though. I started them right away and started making a checklist of all items that I needed to submit for each school. Also, a lot of them required random obscure things like the mailing address of your university, which you might not have memorized! So, I found it much easier to just devote 1 hour on one day to fill this information in for every single school at once.

Also, in academia, I hear professors use the phrase "Gee, I hope no one steals/poaches him/her" as an equivalent to "Wow, Person X is a real superstar, we're sure glad they are with us!" rather than expressing a serious immediate concern. It's kind of a self-deprecating comment, i.e. "our school is probably not good enough for a great person like him/her". That is, I hear this comment far more often than I see professors actually moving. Of course, there is some truth: people recognize the job market is a competitive one and it's not that rare for a professor to move around (although it's more common when the professor is untenured). I do think direct questions are important for healthy advisor-advisee relationships. However, from the details currently provided, I don't think there is enough information to warrant enough concern to have a direct conversation. That is, in your shoes, I would not be worried at all about my advisor leaving. Of course, it's much easier for me to say that to you than to actually be in your shoes! But that's the reason why I don't think it's necessary to initiate a direct conversation. You are the best judge of your situation though. Perhaps there is other information that you haven't mentioned yet that makes you feel that you should have a direct conversation. If so, go with your gut/instinct and do it. One potential downside of being direct here, in my opinion, is that it might sound like you are just reacting to rumours/gossip about them. In addition, you might put them in a very uncomfortable spot. If a professor is actually leaving, it's pretty unlikely they would tell anyone, not even their own students, until the decision is final. Moving jobs is a delicate situation and the prof needs to be in control of who knows what at all times, until the final decision is made. So, if you are asking before the final decision is made, you might force them to lie to you, or potentially cause them to reveal some information that might not be finalized, which might cause more harm/worry than necessary. These downsides are not that significant though, so if you do feel that something is wrong and you need a direct conversation, you should definitely do so. Finally just to clarify, by direct questions I meant direct questions about the rumors you heard about him leaving only. You should still ask direct questions like "Would you be available to advise me on my dissertation in the coming years?" if it makes sense to do so. I did this in my first few months of my PhD program because in our first year, we do 2 research projects and then decide a PhD advisor after passing quals at the end of year one. I didn't want to do a research project with someone who would have no funding or time to advise me beyond year one so I asked this to both of my first year project advisors before starting their projects. If there is some similar format (assuming there is, since it doesn't sound like you have locked this person down as your PhD advisor yet), then you should be able to ask a direct question like this without problem. Just phrase it as a discussion of your own future academic plans, rather than rumours about his. I think it's a good idea to let this prof know that you definitely know for sure you want to work with him on your dissertation. In the chance that he is actually leaving, this will let him know that you will want to work with him and make plans accordingly (or inform you as soon as he can).

Whenever I read something like this, I think back to the email address created by my 13-year-old self and cringe

I applied to schools with a SO. My SO is not a student though, but we wanted to find a place that would be a good fit for both of us (for her career, for my research, and a good living environment for both of us). The way we approached it was to find places that were maximally good for both of us. So, a school that would be good for me but in a location that isn't good for her would no longer look so great to me, and vice versa. Basically, I only applied to schools that we were both at least a little interested in, and when it was time to make a final decision, we only would accept a place that we both felt excited about. I recognize that it's different when you are both applying to grad schools though, since in some places, there are far fewer grad student positions available than job openings! I would second Vene's advice -- everyone I know who have made the "two body problem" work did so by applying to a ton of places**, especially targeting areas where there are a lot of schools close together. Remember, you don't have to be both in the same program/school, as long as you are close enough (what "close enough" means can be up to you). In major cities, there are generally many big schools in the same city. In other areas, there may be schools that are ~1 to 2 hours apart and you might choose to have one of you commute or live in between and have both of you commute etc. (** by a "ton of places", I mean my colleagues applied to something like 15-20 schools each instead of the more usual 8-10 schools). Also, while it would be great if you both had the same dream school and were both accepted there, I think it's helpful to know what you would do if this was not possible. That is, what if one of you has to compromise? How much would each of you be willing to do so? I think it's important to have that discussion now, during application season, instead of later, during decision time. For my SO and I, we decided on a backup plan (one that doesn't involve grad school) if it turns out that there was no school/location that made both of us excited. The time between applications and waiting to hear the school's decision can be a really stressful time, not only for each of you, but also on your relationship. We found that knowing that we had a backup plan that we were also excited about made us feel a lot better during the few months of "limbo" where we didn't know what the schools would decide! If you haven't already had that discussion, here are some plans/important things to consider if you don't get offers close to each other (based on what my friends have talked about): 1) Would one of you consider moving with the other and working then reapplying the next year for grad schools in the city? 2) Would you consider long distance? 3) Would one of you consider attending a less-desired school for the other? 4) Would one of you consider not attending grad school to be together? There is definitely no "right" or "wrong" answers to the above questions! These are tough discussions to have, but I think that they are important things to consider when balancing personal and academic lives! Good luck!!

I don't think it matters. I used my gmail address in case they automatically use your application email address as your main contact email address in future years. My academic email address would expire soon after I start the PhD program so I didn't want to use that. Also, the school I was attending at the time of application had a ton of email related problems (email server going down, not forwarding mails, etc.) and I did not feel that was a reliable email address to use.

I agree with fuzzy. Also, I think if this prof is as amazing and great as he sounds, he would probably look out for you and make arrangements for you. Not saying that you should count on this of course, but just saying. But fuzzy is right that you can't really read too much into what you know so far, and that even if you asked right now, the prof might not even know his future (i.e. he might still be negotiating and doesn't know what way he'll decide yet). Or, he might be negotiating just so he can use the other job offer to negotiate a better salary at your current school. It might also be nice to know that in my field (also not usually a heavy lab sciences field), professors that move schools generally negotiate a big enough startup package so that they can relocate you (if you wish) and provide for you. This is jumping the gun a bit, since we don't know if your advisor is moving but if it would help ease your mind, I've known a few grad students who had an advisor move and the choices they get tend to be: 1) move with the advisor and completely change programs (so that they would get their degree from the new school) -- this is rare and requires the other school to agree to grant you a degree from their program, which usually only happens if you are either willing to redo courses (or just started so switching is easy) 2) move with the advisor but stay affiliated with your original program (you would get your degree from your current school); this might mean a lot of travel back and forth depending on how many more semesters of classes/TAing (or your advisor might buy out your teaching requirements) and being present at the old school for milestones like quals, candidacy and your defense. 3) stay at old school and work with advisor remotely, perhaps spending some time at your advisor's new school when timing works out 4) switch to a different advisor in the old program. Either way, I think you don't have to actively worry about anything right now. Fuzzy's suggestions on how to get more information is good. The only thing you can ever really "prepare" for in this case is Case #4 above, i.e. develop relationships with other professors that you might be able to work for instead. However, I would argue that every grad student should develop relationships with professors other than their advisors for things like 1) side projects in case your main project gets scooped or otherwise doesn't work, 2) making more connections/network/collaborations, 3) sometimes other profs can be better mentors and 4) for unexpected/unavoidable cases where you need a new advisor.

Here are some pros/cons of submitting early, assuming it's not rolling admissions. Hope it helps you decide when you want to submit! Pros to submitting early: 1. One less thing to think about -- helpful if you think/perform better when loose ends are "closed" 2. You pay the application fee when you submit so submitting some earlier will spread out your costs (although you can also choose to pay early and not submit right away) Cons to submitting early: 1. You might change your mind about the school at the last minute (I decided to not apply to a school within a week of the deadline--had my application all ready and then decided "nope!") 2. You might have something to change about your application in the next month (although you would know if this is about to be true, for example, if you have a paper under review right now, then don't submit yet!) 3. Waiting too long (i.e. the day of) might mean that Murphy's Law will strike and servers will crash as you try to submit!! (Or something else will go wrong). Personally, the balance that worked for me was to submit about 2 days before the actual deadline. There definitely isn't a right/wrong answer though, do what you feel most comfortable with!

The reputation of your letter writer does matter a bit. There is a small difference between a letter from an assistant prof and a full prof. For example, a letter saying "This student is the best out of all students I ever advised" means a lot more from a full professor who has advised 50 students compared to a new professor who might have only advised 5. However, I would say that the content of your letter is more important than reputation of letter writer. That is, a weak letter from a famous prof is not better than a very personal and glowing letter from a less well known professor. So, my advice is to pick professors that know you well. In research based fields, pick people who supervised your research work, not people who just taught you classes. Unless you are very accomplished and/or very lucky, it is rare for a student to have more than 3 people who know them very well and have done great research with all of them.

Until now, I've kept extra money in GICs (Canadian version of CDs). When I started, the interest rate was like 4% to 5% per year, but now it's hard to find them at anything more than 1.5%. When I go home next month, the plan is to start moving some of that into mutual funds -- they might be more risky but I would feel comfortable with something like a 50/50 split between GICs/CDs and mutual funds. Also, at <2% interest, I'm still losing money on GICs due to inflation! I'm doing this through my Canadian "Tax Free Savings Account" (TFSA), which is a nice setup where any money you make by investing out of the TFSA is completely tax free. I have not yet invested in retirement savings plans yet because you get a nice tax break when you do invest, so it's only worth it to do so when you have enough income to be taxed. So the eventual plan for the money I currently have in GICs (and eventually mutual funds) would be to put it in a RRSP (Canadian version of IRAs I think).

Americans do have to pay taxes on their stipend too and if they don't opt to have it withheld at the source, they just have a giant tax bill every April (plus potential penalties if their tax owing is high enough that they were supposed to pay quarterly taxes and/or opt to withhold taxes at source). The difference I meant was non-residents can only claim the personal exemption (don't pay tax on the first $4000 or so of income) while Americans can claim both the personal exemption and the standard deduction (total of about $10000 or so of tax-free income). Also, married Americans can file taxes jointly and increase their tax exempt income while married non-residents must file as "married, filing separately", which does not allow us to combine our tax exemptions and thus means we will reach the higher brackets faster. But this is very complex since there are other issues (e.g. tax treaties) and other personal circumstances. For example, for last year I ended up paying $0 in taxes (received a refund on all withheld taxes) because the majority of my stipend was paid by the Canadian government, and the rest that came from American sources was small enough to avoid taxes according to a US-Canada tax treaty. Finally, music is right--I forgot about expenses like flights home (and/or trips to get a new visa if necessary)! But how much that costs really depends on each person's personal cirumstances!

Things might differ by field, but in my field, international student, despite costing the school more, end up with almost the same take-home pay as an American student, so there are not many extra costs other than start-up costs (deposits etc. as mentioned above). This usually results in the school taking on fewer international students rather than covering for fewer expenses. There are a few things that might cost more for an international student. For example, if you have a spouse who is unable to secure work authorization, then your family might have a lot more out of pocket expenses than an American student. Or, you might end up paying a little bit more in taxes because non-residents have fewer ways to claim tax credits than Americans. However, this might not even be true, depending on the tax treaty between the US and your home country and your source of funding.

This is a really tricky topic. The prof should not be asking you to do this. The journal asked the prof to review the article because they want the opinion of the professor, not the graduate student! However, in reality, although it does not seem to happen very often in my field, I know it does happen in others. I've heard grad students talk about it and I've heard new professors talk about doing this when they were grad students just a few years ago. I think having to do one every single week (or even 3-4 per week) is pretty bad. You are not benefiting from this (no pay, no recognition, and no real training really, after the first few). If it were only one or two papers in total, so that you can learn / be mentored in the review process, then it would be a different story. In my opinion, this is one example of a professor exploiting his/her grad students because it does not sound like the professor has any intention of training/mentoring here--just getting free work out of you. In your shoes, I would talk to someone else I trust in the department about this.

Yes, title/position is either Assistant Prof, Associate Prof, or Professor. You can put fancy titles like the Jane A. Smith Professor of Physics, but not really necessary. Address is either the University (or research institution) address or the department address. I usually just go for the University/institution address.

To be clear, I am not profiting from multiple grants -- I'm just saying that it is possible in the sciences in Canada (and probably the US but I don't have first hand experience with US fellowships since I am not eligible for them). But since I am a Canadian attending a US school, I am only eligible for one grant. Also, in my field, the point of some graduate grants that "fund the person" is exactly to give the researcher a higher salary. Some schools offer "signing bonuses" for students who have external fellowships in order to attract fellowship holders to the school / encourage students to apply for fellowships. And even without these bonuses, many schools in Canada have a tiered funding system where you will be paid at one of three levels based on how many external fellowship dollars you bring in. I would say that my interpretation of a grant funding "the person" to mean that the agency wants to provide monetary incentive for good researchers to do good work. In some cases, it might even provide them with some earned advantage (e.g. a good researcher wants to work for Prof X, who would be a great match but does not have funding to support more students; but with the grant, this would allow them to take on an extra student). That is, I am saying I see a difference between grants that are awarded for a specific purpose (i.e. you have to draw up a budget and monies are awarded according to said budget) and grants/fellowships that are just award money granted to you because the funding agency wants to fund you. For the former, I think it's unethical to deviate from what you said you would use the money for. For the latter, it's your money to spend however you want--if you want to blow it all on a giant party then drop out of grad school, it's your prerogative. [Edit: Assuming that you didn't apply for the money with this intention all along, which would be fraud. But if you applied in good faith and then decided grad school was not for you then that's still ethical.] I'm using an extreme example here and I'm not saying that this is recommended or professional behaviour, but it would still be ethical in my books because you did not promise to use that money for any specific purpose. That is, I would still think poorly of a person who wastes money like this, but I wouldn't call it unethical.

I agree with the main sentiment, but I think there are a lot of situations where this won't be so black and white. I picked my above examples to be a simple case, but some grants are rather complex. Here is a counterexample. That is, I think the following scenario would count as "sketchy" to you, but would be completely ethical, to me. (Note: I use my personal example because I know the details well, but this could apply to a number of students, and I won't take it personally if you disagree with my evaluation that this is ethical; my opinion is that ethics is subjective but I'd be interested to hear what you think): I have currently have a Canadian fellowship that supports me as a student, not for any particular work. I wrote a research proposal in order to win this money but then went on to do a completely different project (in the same field). The only requirement was that I inform the granting agency about my change in project and as long as it fits within "Physics and Astronomy", it's all good. This is an example of a fellowship/grant where the funding agency believes in my ability as a student/researcher and is funding me, not for any particular research. In addition, this funding agency has no restrictions on outside sources of funding, as long as I don't work more than 520 hours per year to earn that funding. (The research proposal component of the application is so that the funding agency can evaluate my ability to form a coherent and useful research argument, not because they actually want to fund that specific project). So, it would be possible (if I were still in Canada, where I'd be eligible for other awards) for me to win other fellowships that also fund me as a person, and not for any particular project. Should I turn down these other awards because I already have one? I don't think so--again, these fellowships/grants are awarded to support me as a person--in theory the additional money would relieve me of financial stress, perhaps "buy me out" of teaching duties, and basically contribute to my research productivity. Since the money is for me to use as I see fit (rather than a specific research budget), I would not consider it unethical to use multiple fellowships to increase my stipend. In case the numbers matter, here they are: If I were in school in Canada, the first fellowship would pay about $35k, and there are additional grants in the range of $5k to $10k that I could apply for and "stack" to increase my stipend. I won't get anywhere near the $90k that you posted in an earlier example, but very strong students in Canada can reach stipends of $50k-$60k in the sciences. This is higher than average stipends of $25k to $30k, but not ridiculous: in fact, there is a national granting agency that grants $50k fellowships to a small number of students each year. (**Note: Canadian stipends do not include tuition waivers, so we would still have to pay tuition out of this money--average cost is $4000 to $7000 per year). I like analogies so here is another way I see this: When it comes to fellowships/grants that funds a general thing like "work towards dissertation" instead of specific grants for things like travel, fieldwork, etc., I view the different stipend levels (due to combining grants or winning a really big one) as a similar to different employees getting hired at different salary rates based on their ability, prior experience, etc. Or even just supply/demand of certain skills. My previous thoughts about the difficulty of determining "merit" still applies. Also, this is how academia currently operates. There are many "soft money" positions in my field, where researchers (i.e. full PhDs working in the field for many years, not just students) are expected to pay for their own research and salary entirely out of grants. So their annual salary depends on how many grants they can get that will fund their salary. In this case, it is definitely not unethical for someone to work to get as many grants as possible to earn $X instead of declining some grants and earning way less just so that someone else can earn something too. Finally, granting agencies are choosing to not "spread the wealth" in some cases. For example, the Canadian fellowship that pays $50k/year I mentioned above. They could have chosen to fund twice as many students at $25k/year but they do not because this fellowship is used to attract the best talent to Canada (or keep them in Canada). In my opinion, a good system has some balance of lower paying, more accessible awards, but also a small number of high paying exclusive awards. In summary--I think it's a bad thing when people "double-dip" and receive money for the exact same expense from multiple granting agencies. But a lot of grants are funding students directly, not for any particular expense, and I think it's okay to try to stack up as much of those as possible.

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