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TakeruK

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Everything posted by TakeruK

  1. For the SOP specific to PhD applications, my first deadline was December 1 and I started writing in earnest around November 1. However, I didn't start from scratch because I had written a similar thing for a fellowship application due in mid October. It might be more helpful to discuss the number of hours spent on the SOP and I would say I spent about 6 hours writing/revising the 500 or so words that make up them main template and then an additional 30-60 minutes or so to write the remaining ~250 words that make up the part where I discuss each school specifically. I showed my SOP to one or two other people, but since I was the only one applying to US schools for PhD programs**, I didn't really do the whole SOP trade thing. In honesty, even if it were possible, I would not want to spend more time than what I already spent on my SOP since I don't think it is a very important aspect of my application. 6 hours + 0.5 hours per school was enough for my SOP to not sound bad, and I was happy with that. (** I was in year 2 of a Canadian MSc, and so I was not in sync with most Canadian students who apply to US PhD programs).
  2. This is something that varies depending on the person you are talking with. It sounds like you already know what your professor prefers, so go with that! For most of my professors, I used email to set up a meeting where I said I would be asking for grad school advice and then I ask them for a LOR during the meeting.
  3. I disagree. The school said they will "review" your application and a check of the GPA and GRE and rejecting based on that counts as a review, in my opinion. You do not need to review the entire application in order to get a sense of whether or not it's in the top tier and needs further review. I am an international student (even though I'm "only" from Canada, applying to PhD schools in the US was the first time I ever had to write an admissions essay) and one of the schools rejected me saying sorry, we only had spots for 6 out of 150 applicants. I would highly doubt they thoroughly reviewed every single one of the 150 applications. In general, when you have a large pool of applications, while it might be hard to say whether Applicant X is ranked 17th or 18th specifically, it is not that hard to determine whether or not an applicant is in the top 1/3, middle 1/3, or bottom 1/3 (or halves). If there are only something like 6 spots out of 150 applicants, it's probably only worth the admission committee's time to thoroughly review the top 1/3 (or even fewer). The rest of the applications would only be "reviewed" to the extent that they are triaged to the bottom 2/3rds and saved only if they need more spots filled. Indeed, some professors have written that they do not even open about half of the LORs they get (because they only review the top candidates): http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2014/01/30/the-gristmill-of-praise/?cid=gs&utm_source=gs&utm_medium=en In addition, this "triage" step happens at all stages of academia. It happens for grant proposal review boards. It happens on hiring committees: (blog post from perspective of a newly hired prof: http://tenureshewrote.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/the-hiring-process-from-the-perspective-of-a-new-hire-part-i/ (part 2 is linked from there). In all of these cases, not every candidate will get equal time spent reviewing their application. That's just how our world works. There are limits on the time we can spend discussing each candidate's application and everyone prefers to spend the time carefully separating the applications that are near the "accept/reject" border, and so some applications will be rejected with very little (but still non-zero) review. I agree that schools should always be transparent about their admission standards, but it is not unethical for them to not spell it all out for applicants. Sometimes the criteria changes year-to-year and it would cause more harm to have wrong, outdated information than to have no information at all. For example, maybe in this particular year, the program has hired a couple of new professors in subfield X, so perhaps they are going to rank applicants for subfield X higher because those professors need students. I rarely see this level of information on application websites, and I don't think it's unethical at all for the school to not constantly disclose/update their research goals/direction.
  4. Let's go back to the basic argument. You say that if all the spots are frequently filled in phase 1, then the school should do what.....? 1) the school should not actually accept any applications from outside the US? -- This results in a worse outcome than the current one since everyone loses. The school doesn't get exceptional international students and exceptional international students don't get a chance to attend. 2) refund application fees from applications outside the US if phase 1 fills all the spots? -- By this logic, the school should refund all fees from any students from any demographic that rarely get accepted (including low GPAs etc.) Again, the fee is collected for the privilege of applying to the school, not for anything else. 3) tell students about this procedure when they apply to the school? -- Yes, I agree that schools should be as transparent as possible and provide this information on the program website. But it's not unethical to not do so.
  5. In my opinion, LORs are one of the most important parts of your application. In my field, the #1 desired attribute in new grad students is their current ability to perform research and their potential for future research production. This is gauged best in two ways: actual research experience (in the form of your CV and your publications) and testimony about your research work from your advisors (in the form of LORs).
  6. In addition, there is some advantage for a school to take international student. I was a grad student rep at my MSc department meeting with a university administrator. He visited our department and told the professors that the department should take more international students when possible to increase the school's reputation. The profs asked if the University would provide more funds for the department to afford more international students and the administrator hesitated and said...no Most schools do want to have some fraction of international students and what this fraction is could really depend on how much money they have in any given year. A lot of departments have budgets that change each year and they do not necessarily know how much they have during the application season. So, they might only find out that they don't have additional funds for international students this year well after the application deadline and if there aren't enough funds, they have to reject all international applicants. Or, they will only make an exception for someone with perfect grades and GREs. So, when they solicit applications, they need to encourage all students to apply since they don't know if they will fill all the spots with domestic students or not. Also, they want to see if there are any super exceptional international students. So, they collect applications despite a very low admission rate (based on history or whatever) and wait and see what happens. Frequently, because of the funding or whatever, they only take domestic students. Nothing wrong with that. It would be nice if the school published that e.g. 10% of students are international and they take 8 students total per year or something so that students know the chances are low, but that's not necessary.
  7. Technically, almost all of academia has no problem** with the prospect of any applicant spending many hours on an application and paying $100 and having an almost zero probability of acceptance if they do not meet the criteria for acceptance. It's up to the applicant to make the right decision to apply to schools that are a good fit for them (whether it's research fit or fit for things like the chances of someone with their background [nationality, undergrad degree, GPA, GRE, etc.] getting in the program). (** "no problem" as in, this is not unethical. However, ideally an applicant would have some people to turn to for advice so that they don't waste their money and time on schools that are not a good fit for them)
  8. My school very clearly indicate that students are to take 2 weeks of vacation time per year (i.e. 10 work days) in addition to the 11 or 12 university closure dates, for a total of approximately 20-22 days (i.e. ~4 weeks) of total vacation time. However, this is all subject to advisor approval. This is a university wide policy that some departments try to circumvent/deny to students based on the "advisor approval" clause, but our grad studies office fight hard against departments that abuse it. The idea of the advisor approval clause is so that a student does not take all 4 weeks of vacation at once if it would negatively impact the lab/research, not to limit total vacation to less than 4 weeks. Definitely agree with Eigen that students should realise that university closure time is not the same as the time in between semesters!! And I also prefer to spread out my vacation time. For example, I spend the equivalent of 1 vacation day per year because I come in late sometimes due to doctor or dentist appointments. I appreciate my work being flexible but that doesn't mean I abuse it--if I take time off work for an appointment, I either work late that evening or count it towards my total vacation time. I usually only take off entire blocks of vacation time when I have people visiting that I want to entertain, or when I am actually on a personal vacation trip (i.e. earlier this month, took a week off to explore the London after a UK conference). Overall, this averages to 1.5 to 2.0 weeks in "blocked off time" and about 10 days off in sporadic days off. I am lucky that the only time where I absolutely must work are: 1) when I need to complete TA work (although for short trips this can be worked around fairly easily) and 2) when I scheduled to use a telescope--at an average operating cost of $1/second, I definitely have to plan my life around work in that instance.
  9. Consider this email: Or, Or, My argument is that all of these cases are ethical, standard practice and equivalent with the email you receive. Even if the program did not publish the 3.6 cutoff, or the preference for Biology degrees, or the fact that applicants prior to the deadline get priority (although they should indicate what the deadline is). There is nothing in this email that indicates any sort of wrongdoing. As for application fees in general, I think the main concern about collecting them in order to dissuade students from applying to 50+ schools is the bias against students with financial difficulties. However, almost every school allows and grants application fee waivers to students in this case, and I think this is a great solution to that problem.
  10. I applied to UC Berkeley and they told me to not include the 4.0 GPA if I was not on a 4.0 scale. This was the case for pretty much all US schools I applied to. For schools that did want my "GPA", they allowed me to give it on any scale I could provide. My undergrad GPA was on a 100 point scale and my MSc GPA was on a 4.3 scale.
  11. I would wait a while longer and then check with the registrar's office (not your advisor). It might depend on the type of job, but many employers are used to hiring fresh graduates that have completed all degree requirements but do not officially have the degree conferred until later. For example, I started my PhD program in October but my degree was not conferred until November of that year. In addition, my current school only confer degrees once a year, in June, so if you just defended now and start a job in October, you would not actually have the degree in hand until June 2015. Most schools will confirm that the student has indeed completed all requirements if they are asked, I believe.
  12. Yes, the only free schools are the 4 schools you select on the test day. If you wait until after the test day (so that you can choose which scores to send) then you will have to pay for each school.
  13. Unfortunately the main driver of most entry level graduate fellowships, in Canada and elsewhere, is GPA. After getting into grad school, this is pretty much the only reason to try to maintain a high GPA. However, the NSERC PGS/CGS-D does indeed weigh research performance over GPA. The weight breakdown is 50% research achievement and potential, 30% academics and 20% community involvement. You can find this breakdown on the NSERC instructions page. I would not let a 3.0-3.3 GPA stop me from applying to NSERC and OGS awards. I would say the competitive GPA (for NSERC CGS-D) is around a 3.6 and above, but you do have strong research experience, so this may balance out. I think if you can get your letter writers to address this in your LORs then it might help a lot. That is, if you get your letter writer to really emphasize your research skill and potential, it will make you a good candidate. So, I think it's still totally worth your time to apply to OGS and NSERC. I'll be realistic -- you are not going to be able to compete with people who have the same research experience and a 3.6+ GPA but you are still competitive enough overall to merit the effort in applying!! Good luck
  14. You can create a new account. I was curious and just created a dummy account. When I did so and clicked on "View my scores", there was obviously no scores attached to this account, so it asks you for the registration # of your test. In fact, here is what it asks: * One of the following: Select one of three options: 16-digit Computer-based Test Confirmation/Appointment Number 8-digit Paper-based Test Confirmation Number 7-digit Registration Number Enter full number, including zeros Enter full number, including zeros * Test Date: Select Month January February March April May June July August September October November December day of test - Select Year - 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 Not required when using the 16-digit Computer-based Test Confirmation/Appointment Number * One of the following: Select one of three options: Email Address: Undergrad Institution Code (See Code List) Paper Based Test Center Code (See Code List) Enter email address or code So, if you create the account and enter this information, it will be able to find your scores. To be safe, I would use a different email address than what you were trying before.
  15. In my opinion, it is ethical for a grad school to accept a $100 application fee, if at the time of the application solicitation, they had every intention of reviewing each candidate for admission. Similarly, it is ethical for a graduate student to accept a school's offer to fly them out, buy them dinner, show them around the campus and city if at the time of the offer, they still have intention to consider that school for their final decision. However, things change between solicitation and final decision. For example, a program might decide that they have no money to support any students in Subfield X and thus reject every student applying to Subfield X within their program without much more review than glancing at it to determine it is a "Subfield X" applicant. Or, the department might have a limit on the number of international students it can support (either financially or because of policy), and it turns out that one of the international students needs another year so they can't accept international students any more. So, they might only review these applicants by determining that yes they are international and then reject (or put aside in case things change again). Similarly, a student might first get an offer from School B, their last choice school, and School B might ask them to visit and the student would agree because at that time, they do have every intention to consider School B. However, let's say just before student is about to leave to visit School B, they get an offer from School A which they are sure to accept over School B. I would say it's still ethical for the student to carry on with the visit to School B (at school B's expense) even though there is almost no chance of the student attending B, because at the time of the offer, the student did plan to consider School B. I think in the very rare case where a department decides that it cannot make any offers at all, to anyone, then the applicants are entitled to a refund (as they are applying for positions that don't exist). Otherwise, if you are going to complain that a school prioritizes students in the US over students from overseas, then you are saying that every applicant who does not get their file reviewed because it's automatically trashed due to a low GPA/GRE/whatever deserves their money back too. Again, the money is for processing the application (i.e. creating that application software, paying for people to update it, paying for staff to compile application package and/or doing some filtering etc.).
  16. Unfortunately, this year will be my first year applying to NESSF so I don't know much about any "unwritten rules". It is true that all proposed research must directly relate to NASA's Science Mission Directorate in some way, so using data from NASA missions is important. I don't know your research--but perhaps you can make an argument that the analysis you are doing can either help inform/shape research goals for upcoming NASA missions and/or you are prototyping an analysis method that would be useful for future NASA mission data? I haven't heard of or noticed better success rates for PIs with existing NASA grants. However, I have very few data points and I don't know every PI's grant history! The department here strongly encourages all eligible grad students to apply, but I don't know how many students here are funded by NASA grants. It might be a high number though, since NASA JPL is nearby so there is a lot of potential collaboration. Sorry I can't be more helpful! Maybe your advisor would know if it's worth applying for?
  17. You can hit the "MultiQuote" button just to the left of the "Quote" button and a little pop up will appear at the bottom left corner. Hit "MultiQuote" for all the posts you want to quote and then hit the bottom left pop up when you are done. This will create a reply box with all of the quoted posts you selected! I don't know the exact numbers, but I would think that there are actual significant advantage for libraries to pay subscription prices instead of buying each title individually. It is hard for libraries to know exactly which articles/journals/books academics would want to use, so instead of buying one of everything, it could be more effective to buy the right for its users to access anything created by a certain publisher. This seems okay to me--schools/organizations that are able to pay more can help subsidize the costs of schools that cannot pay as much so that access to information is equal as much as possible. Of course, I agree that it's possible that publishers use this excuse to overcharge! I agree that most of the cost is overhead, not actual printing. In my field, many journals are going to switch to electronic-only formats because there is no demand for print copies. Also, it's super annoying that we have to create 2 versions of every figure--one in colour and one in black and white. If we want colour figures to be printed in the print version, it's $500/figure or so. And, if we don't provide a grayscale version, they will just "grayscale" the colour version which could look really ugly. Also, every caption has to say "For a colour version of this figure, please see the electronic journal edition." or something like that. Even though very few are likely to be reading the print version. However, I was thinking of money savings for the library, not for subscription costs. I think by moving towards collecting more electronic versions and fewer print versions, libraries can take up less space. So, a library can significantly grow its collection without growing in size. As print versions become less and less used, they can store them in robotic retrieval systems (i.e. user looks up a title on the computer, requests it, the robot finds it in a 3-storey room full of shelves and picks it, and the user picks up the book at the collections desk). This is a much more compact and cost effective way of storing books because there is no need to accommodate human limitations (shelf heights, space between shelves, logical book ordering). UBC did this in the early 2000s and now a lot of its "main branch" library has been converted to more useful space like group study spaces, and other student spaces.
  18. I usually take the days between Dec 25th and Jan 1st off (i.e. when the school is officially closed for break anyways). Technically these are institute holidays and graduate students also get these days off, on paper. Sometimes, for sake of research progress, I do work on these days but it might be only a few hours (i.e. to start a long set of computations to run over the week) or from home. I normally work right up to the 25th and the term begins shortly after Jan 1 at my school. But this is quite flexible. For example, if I have people visiting in the days before Christmas, then I might take those days off to entertain guests and then work a few days between 25th and 1st to make up for it. However, I know that it's not uncommon for grad students in my program to take a long visit home during December. Classes end in the first week and exams are all take-home, so some students choose to go home for about 3-4 weeks during this time. Most of them will do some work while they are at home visiting family or whatever though (or they might consider this earned vacation time from working extra during other times in the year and/or consider it part of the 2 weeks vacation that we get).
  19. Cool At my last school, we switched to formal lab report guideline sheet for the first year physics labs but kept the bound lab notebook (i.e. same thing as a "real" scientist would use) for 2nd years and above. It's much much easier to mark lab report worksheets (since it's all the same style and the students simply fill in the boxes with the numbers they have to measure/calculate) and marking speed is important for large first year physics classes (thousands of students). However, at the 2nd year and above level (tens of students), it makes more sense to start training them in how to keep a proper lab notebook!
  20. Congrats!! It sounds like you are doing a great job so far. My wife and I fostered cats for the shelter for about 8 months (including a pregnant cat that give birth!) before we moved to my new PhD program and every cat we fostered was very different in terms of shyness and energy. One cat hid behind the curtains for the first day until she felt comfortable with us and other cats immediately explored everything and claimed ownership of everything right away! So, it sounds perfectly normal that your cat didn't need the "adjustment" period. I would not worry about the noise unless someone actually complains. We were concerned too but it turns out that even old apartments have pretty decent insulation. And, humans make a fair amount of noise anyways, so unless your cat is knocking over pots and pans, I don't think the noises will be louder than ambient nighttime noises. The meowing will get better as your cat adjusts and you're definitely doing the right thing by ignoring it. From everything else you say, it sounds like you have a great cat that is actually a lot less work than it could be! And it also sounds like you know what you are doing so everything will be fine! Cat care while traveling is a valid concern though. I think it would not be too tough for you to give your key to a friend you trust to come by once or twice a day to scoop the litter box, refill food/water. And they can do other things like empty your mailbox etc too. Maybe you can find someone that you can trade with--you help water their plants/check mail/feed animals etc. when they travel and they return the favour when you travel.
  21. You're right. The way I see it is that you can't really know what the future will hold, so whether you go for the flexible skillset or the specific one thing, you're taking a risk! So, I don't think there is an easy way to know what choice to make, and it would really depend on each person. However, I do think it's important to make that choice early on in your PhD so that you don't end up somewhere in between (i.e. not quite flexible skillset but your specific skill is also not deep enough for expertise). I agree that social sciences grad students may have different problems but my main interactions with grad students outside of STEM mostly comes from my 2 years in my MSc program (and mostly only in the last year when I volunteered with campus-wide organizations and got to know them). Unfortunately, in my current school, there are no social sciences or humanities programs at all. Well, there is one single all-encompassing program called "Humanities and Social Sciences" that does have a graduate program. However, most of the grad students I've met in this program do economics (and when I asked further, it turns out they basically do applied mathematics). I do wish we have more balance here, but that's the way it is I guess.
  22. When I TA'ed a science lab, I didn't really do many class-wide activities. In some sessions, I might give a short 5 minute introduction to some important things they might need to know for the lab (how to use a piece of equipment or safety warnings etc.). Otherwise, I chose to interact on small groups by going around to each lab station and seeing what each group is up to. Sometimes when I come up, they already have questions for me and I try to get them to figure out the answer by asking them questions starting with things I think they might already know and usually they can reason out what to do. I always try to avoid just saying what to do--sometimes they might narrow it down to two possible options and if it's safe/practical, I just tell them to try both and see what works better. Other times, they might not have questions for me so I ask them what they are doing so that I can make sure they understand the material and that they are able to explain their reasons for their actions. I should note that in this particular lab, there were 8 experiments going on at once and about 24 or so students in 12 groups of 2 (they rotate throughout the semester). So, there really was not a lot in common between the entire class at once which was why we didn't really do class-wide activities and stuck with small groups instead.
  23. Just to clarify, I don't really mean that all libraries should stop physical book collections completely I was just saying that I don't think the "cost" argument against e-books is justified because I think e-books really would cost less than physical books even with all the additional fees. I agree with juillet as well about the subscription fees. I think it does make sense for publishers to charge libraries based on the expected usage of ebooks, if, in exchange, there are no actual limits on the number of simultaneous checkouts. Currently, most ebooks my library carries has something like a limit of 10 simultaneous checkouts (which simulates having 10 physical copies of the book) and you are user #11, you get a message saying that you have to wait until one of the other 10 users closes the file before you can access it. But, I can see a different model where libraries pay a set annual subscription to all books from a publisher that is tied to how many users actually access the books. This could be good if the limit on # of user per title is also removed. As e-book usage increases, physical copies usage might decrease so the cost savings there might be able to offset increasing e-book fees.
  24. Well that was the point of my post exactly. If the PhD could help the OP get the job he/she wants in the future, then go for the PhD. However, if a PhD is not needed for the type of jobs he/she wants in the future (after all, the current job offer on the table doesn't seem to need a PhD) then just go for the job. There is no point getting a PhD just for the sake of getting a PhD.
  25. Do you qualify for the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowships? http://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/grant-stats/nasa-earth-and-space-science-fellowship-nessf-selections/ Applications are due Feb 2015 for awards starting on Sept 2015. I know about this award since it's the only one that non-Americans in my field are eligible for. I am not sure exactly what qualifies as the "Earth Science" category but I know a ton of people in my Earth Science department apply for these awards! I'll be applying for the astrophysics category next Winter! Also, this award is meant for senior students! You need a well formed project and from reading past awards, it seems like many students get it in their last 2 years or so (award can be renewed for up to 3 years). So, this might be a great fit for you if you are eligible!
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