TakeruK

Just for reference, since someone mentioned it, in Canada, policies vary between schools and it's common for some schools to consider multiple GPAs in your application: UBC's policy: McGill will look at your total degree GPA and your GPA on the science course pre-reqs. They say the average successful GPA is 3.8 for overall GPA as well as the specific science pre-req requirements. Toronto will use all of your undergraduate courses but will remove 1 course's grade for each year of full time studies completed (so I guess in this case, the F will probably be removed). Queen's University will consider both your cumulative GPA and the GPA from the last 2 years of full time studies (which they define to be 3 courses/semester).

I agree that I would never force someone to give me back their exam/paper to regrade because of my own error and that if I screw up and gave extra point, then lucky student! This means, to me, that if I made a mistake with X's paper, then lucky X gets to keep the extra point but that doesn't mean everyone else gets an extra point too. I guess I wasn't super clear in my older post--what I mean is that if two students (X and Y) come up to me and Y says "X over here only lost 2 points" then I would say "well if X would like to give it to me, I can fix that mistake I made" (in a joking way) and basically state that my policy is to correct any mistakes not to give everyone bonus points when I make a mistake. Needless to say, I have never actually deducted points in this manner but I find that this statement is an effective way for students to understand that I will not give Y additional points because of this. And as for completely regrading an assignment, I choose to do this because I feel that if I am trying to regrade on the spot with the student looking at me expectantly, it puts a lot of unwanted pressure and could potentially cause me to grade unfairly in one way or another. So, unless it's something silly like I just didn't see the final answer on the back of the page or I added up the points incorrectly, I will ask to take it back and regrade it completely. I also choose to do this because it prevents some of the more aggressive/argumentative students from thinking that they can always get a couple more points if they argue and fight for them. Again, to clarify, I don't ever force anyone to hand back their assignment--once I grade it, enter it into the spreadsheet and give it back to the student, I consider the grade final unless the student chooses for me to grade it again (and it's within course policy for a regrade).

I agree that this is something you should definitely discuss with your advisor and take their advice seriously. They might prefer for you to take the class at a certain semester/quarter that is less busy etc. Whether or not you have to pay depends on the school/program/your funding situation! For what it's worth, at my school, like fuzzy, we are not at all discouraged from taking some extra classes for "fun". Obviously the first thing we are expected to consider before signing up for a class is "will this impact my research time?" but other than that, the school offers a ton of "fun" classes such as pottery, guitar, silkscreening, theatre, foreign languages as well as serious academic classes on non-research topics such as science journalism, philosophy of science, ethics, economics, etc. Note that my school is pretty much a science only institute and these are graduate level classes so by definition, every grad student taking these classes is taking them as an "extra" class. So that they don't interfere with research, the majority of these classes are scheduled during lunch time or in the evenings/night. We are also encouraged by our advisors to register for any courses that are relevant to our research interests. There are 5 elective courses we have to take so usually people find that these are enough to cover all interesting courses outside of the department, but usually our advisor might recommend that we take a class on Pass/Fail standing instead of letter grade if we are taking an academic class that might take a lot of time.

I agree that you should definitely not list fellowships that are awarded by the school only to its students that enroll there! I didn't know how to phrase that but others here did it very well. I also agree with fuzzy that small awards shouldn't really be listed unless it is a very relevant award but for some reason just has a small grant value. For example, I would say one should list an award for something like "Best PhD Student Talk at <my field's national society's conference>" even though these awards tend to be in the $100-$1000 range only (i.e. "small"). I would list this because it represents a significant accomplishment. However, I would probably not list a fellowship that is worth less than $10,000/year during grad school. (This cutoff is just arbitrary for the types of awards a student in my field might get and should not be treated as a strict cutoff!) "Alterante" or "Honorable mentions" should depend on the award too. I mentioned it for the NSF because their website said they had 14,000 applicants, 2000 awards and 2000 honorable mentions. So I think top 4,000/14,000 is quite good, considering that not every graduate student applies for the NSF (and that this 4000/14000 number is for all fields, not just your own). However, if you were to win another prestigious graduate award later on (e.g. the NSF in your second year or another award of equivalent prestige) then I would say to remove the honorable mention!

The official requirement to qualify for F-1 visa and status is funding for just the first year. But both status (which you receive upon entry) and the visa is at the discretion of the officer processing your paperwork. I am on J-1 (and did not require a visa because I am Canadian) so I can't tell you how likely you are going to be asked about the 2nd year of funding. But even if I could, there's no way to know exactly what the officer processing your paperwork will think about the 2nd year of funding on your letter! For a J-1 visa/status, we have to show proof of funding for the entire duration of program. My funding also has the "funding will be continued pending available funds and good progress" requirement. However, my DS-2019 shows the funding as if I was going to get all of the money. Maybe you can ask your school's international office about potentially needing to show funding for 2 years? I can't really think of anything you can really do if for some reason, you have to show 2 years of funding and you don't have the funding. If they deny you for this reason, would you be able to come back with more proof of funding?

If you were unsuccessful in receiving an award then I would not mention it. NSF releases a list of "honorable mentions" and I have seen people put this on their CV and I think that's fine. But if it was you are asking about when you decline an awarded that was granted, then I would say it depends on the award/situation. If I applied to several awards and could only accept one (for example, in Canada, if you were successful for both NSERC and OGS awards) then I would not put both because having a declined lower award when you have a better one listed is not useful. Or, if you were awarded multiple OGS and CGS-Ms from several schools and only took one (declining the rest) then I would not put that you declined the same award at a bunch of different places. But, if you had received a prestigious award and then decided to not accept it (e.g. you received an award that is only tenable if you did research in a NSERC field but ended up going to a program for research in a medical field (and thus not eligible for NSERC) then I would say you should say you declined that award for that reason. Or if you got e.g. a Fulbright to go to the US but instead went to school outside of the US then it makes sense to say you declined the award too.

I don't believe I cited it out of context, but in the interest of petty debates, here is the full definition: "an act or instance of using or closely imitating the language and thoughts of another author without authorization and the representation of that author's work as one's own, as by not crediting the original author" I had simply omitted the middle part since I did not feel it was relevant to my argument. As I explain more fully in the second half of my post, I am arguing that an incorrect citation is as harmful to the original author as no citation at all. That is, an incorrect citation is indeed "not crediting the original author". If the correct citation is "Mars has characteristic Y (Jones et al. 2008)" and I write "Mars has characteristic Y" or "Mars has characteristic Y (Martins et al. 2007) or "Mars has characteristic Y (hdsldjljdsfs)", all of three of the latter examples would be plagiarism and cause the same harm. In addition, with second to last example, I am not only not-citing the original author, I am wrongly attributing it to a different source (e.g. what the OP did) and making it sound like I did do a proper literature review. Finally, I don't agree that words should only have the meaning of what the dictionary says. As in the example from beyondaboundary, in academia, "plagiarism" has a different meaning and usually encompasses most of academic dishonesty instead of just literally copying and pretending it's your own.

I don't think anyone is saying that 100% of the time, always X is good and Y is bad. I totally agree that it depends on each specific scenario. But since we can't just discuss every single specific scenario, it's perfectly fine to speak in generalities, and it's my opinion that in general, going to a higher ranking school** is better for your education, so it does follow that if you are going to stay at the same school, it's better to do this at a high ranking school. **By "high ranking" school, I mean high ranking and well regarded in your discipline, which is not necessarily the "famous" schools that the general public know about. The reason why a school like Harvard is better, in general, than nowhere school is not because the scholars at Harvard are inherently better or that you will even get a better education for sure. I think being at a well funded school like Harvard means you have a ton more resources at your disposal. The profs bring in more money (because of brand name recognition) and can hire more researchers, pay for you to travel to more conferences, buy you more equipment, pay for visitors to come and give interesting seminars and so on. I think if there are two people with identical skills but one is at a place where there is plenty of resources to buy them whatever they need to succeed and one is at a place where there just isn't enough resources, then the one with the greater amount of resources will, in general, have a much greater chance of being successful in the long run. So I am not saying that people should go to higher ranked schools because these places are magically better or that people should automatically pick people with these places on their CVs. But, I think that one way to increase your ability to do good research is to find a place that can provide the resources for you to reach your potential. And in general, a higher ranked, richer school will have more resources to throw at you than nowhere school.

I also want to say that I don't think you are being selfish at all (if you are, then he is as well for being unwilling to move). I think if the best thing for you is to go elsewhere for grad school and the best thing for him is to stay and you have both decided that these things are more important than your relationship, then it sounds like you are making the right decision (not that you need me to agree with you of course ). But I just want to say that you don't have to feel selfish!! Sure, some people are judgmental and will consider you selfish for not prioritizing a relationship but our lives don't have to be defined by whether or not we are in a relationship if we don't want it to be! Glad that was helpful! I reread your first post and want to say that my wife (but we weren't married at that time) and I were also 22ish and had been together for 5 years ish when we made the first move for me to do a MSc. It was in the same country but a really long distance away (we're much closer to home now even though we live in the US!) and it was scary. I think it really helped her to go on the visit with me and see what these places are like. She wasn't against moving though, so it's not the same situation. For your situation, I think it is a little bit naive for someone to say their home town is the only place they want to live especially if that is the only place they have lived in as an adult. To me, complete unwillingness to compromise sounds immature. But maybe there is something else going on that I don't know about so I will refrain from judging further! What I can say is that maybe Fall 2015 feels so far away so it is hard for him to think about what life might be like in a different place in Fall 2015. You probably won't have to start working on applications until Fall this year. My advice would be to spend the next few months seriously talking about the fact that you want to go to grad school and that this will require moving out of the state. Hopefully he will warm up to the idea and realise how important this is to you and maybe he will be more open to considering other places. If you are able to, maybe you can even make a trip out to one of these places as a mini vacation. Eventually, maybe not until Spring 2015, but eventually, it might come down to a serious conversation about what is important to each of you and then I think it's best to decide on what will make you most happiest and not worry about what others might think.

Festivus, I agree that this is not pure literal plagiarism as in stealing someone else's work and claiming it as your own. But the dictionary link you provided says "using .. the language and thoughts of another author ... [and] not crediting the original author". An incorrect citation is indeed not crediting the original author. In addition, this type of academic dishonesty is generally called "plagiarism" in academia. I agree that academics tend to use the word more loosely than the dictionary meaning, but I think of it as part of the jargon that academics use. But I recall that the OP was not directly accused of plagiarism but will just lose points for making up page numbers. Anyways, semantics aside, the reason why this is a very serious offense, in my opinion, is that academia survives on proper accreditation. When writing a paper for publication, one of the most important things you do is make sure you do a proper literature review and cite everyone who has contributed ideas related to and important to your own idea. This is important because the main way people can find out about your work is to read a citation of your work in another work and if you don't cite properly, then you are breaking the system (and the referees will probably ask you to cite more papers). Although in this case, it might not be as serious (in my field, we don't include page numbers in our citations), it is not a good habit to develop. In addition, the attitude that using proper references is an annoyance instead of part of our job/duty is the wrong attitude for academics to have! And then there is the arrogance that came with asking people to help them get away with something they know they did wrong!

I agree with everyone else who said laser. When I bought my inkjet printer, I was deterred by the high price tag of laser but inkjet runs out so fast and it is probably costing me more in the long run. I do use my scanner a lot though--much more than the print function even. I rarely use the copy function because I will just scan things and keep them on my hard drive until a physical copy is actually needed. But I scan pretty much everything important I send away so that I have my own copy just in case!

I'm Canadian but we have similar programs. I chose to put my savings towards other more fluid forms of long term savings instead. There is a "tax free savings account" where you can put up to something like $5000 per year into it and all income derived from these accounts are non taxable. So I do this with my savings. If I was smarter, I could invest the money using this account and not pay capital gain taxes. However, a percentage of employment earned income (in Canada, this is TA and RA income but not fellowships) goes towards our Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) contribution per year, and any money put into this account that is under this cap gives you a tax break. Unused cap amounts are carried forward so I am purposely saving this cap until I make more money to end up in a higher tax bracket and then I will move money from my other savings into my retirement savings account in order to take advantage of the tax break I'll get for contributing to my retirement. So, to answer your question, yes, I was able to save money and invest it during my MSc program. My PhD program has complications of my spouse not being able to work in the US so we haven't saved much money here (yet). However, I did not put it towards IRA-like programs because it makes more sense to put the money in a tax-free savings account first and then move them to Retirement savings programs later to take advantage of tax breaks.

I just want to say I know and have a lot of respect for someone I used to work with and this person did their undergrad, masters, PhD, and postdoc all at the same place. He is now a staff scientist still at the same school and is happy with it. Honestly, if someone told me I could have this exact path when I finished undergrad, I would have taken it for sure! I am just bringing this up because "academic job" is not synonymous with "tenured professor". I am mostly speaking from a Canadian experience, but academic inbreeding is becoming less and less of a thing, particularly in Canada where there are only a small number of top schools. The top schools in my field are separated by a lot of distance, so it makes a lot of sense for someone to stay at their top undergrad school if they don't want to move across the country. My current PhD school has accepted its own undergrads into PhD programs too. Sometimes if your true best research fit is the same school because your field is small, then it makes sense to stay. The bottom line is that in the modern view of academia, more and more schools and professors are no longer expecting academics to put research ahead of everything and be willing to move anywhere in order to maximally expand their horizons. They recognize that by doing this, academia is making it a lot harder for people without this mobility (e.g. have kids, have debts, need to be near family for cultural/personal/health reasons, etc.) Therefore I agree that it is old-fashioned to think that someone is less of a researcher if they choose to stay at the same school for their PhD. In addition, I think funding vs. no funding is a totally legitimate factor in your program choice decision. I would say that e.g. $32k / year vs $30k/year is not a good reason but full funding vs. no funding is a very different scenario.

In response to the bolded question (bold added by me), my answer is "not if you made the choice for yourself to consider this person's input". I would say that as an independent person, everyone should have the freedom to make their choices based on what they care about. So I would say to try to not to worry about what others think about whose inputs you consider as long as you know that considering these inputs are what make you happy! For me, I would say that my wife and I had equal say in where I went for a PhD. I only applied to places that both I was interested in and my wife was also interested in the location. After visiting (some visits were done with my wife too) we made the final decision together. I informed all of the schools that this was a decision made by both of us and many schools made efforts to provide useful information for my wife as well!

Oops sorry about that! Maybe someone else will find it helpful then!

That was a great post, except you did miss one of the commands I use the most: less! :P (Unless that was the point of this line and I'm just dense!) It's also one of my favourite commands because I learned that while cat will display the entire file at once, more will let you see one "page"/"screen" at a time with a prompt to show "more" at the bottom (hence the name, but less is an advanced version of more where you can scroll one line at a time and also backwards! The reason for the name? Because less is more!

Sometimes you don't get everything you submitted reimbursed because of weird rules of the school/funding source. For example, one school I went to did not reimburse alcohol or gratuities. However, this sounds like a much worse case where they said they will fully reimburse your flight and then changed their mind later. It's good that you asked for clarification. It might be possible that they did say they would fully reimburse your flight up to some limit ($450) but you didn't see that clause or they forgot to mention it? In your shoes, if they don't have a proper explanation for why you only got $450 back, I would follow up with copies of all the written stuff you got saying you would be getting your full fight back. Make sure they pay you what they said they would!

This is how my GRE was structured, but I took it in June 2011, before the change to the Revised GRE. So I think your book is just old. Everything everyone else said here is correct for the new Revised GRE (in comparison with the experiences of people I know in real life). Fun fact: When I took the June 2011 old GRE, I had an unidentified experimental section AND an identified research question. I had 2 Verbal sections so one of them was the unidentified experimental section. My identified research question was an essay question that appeared at the very end. They said it was not graded and optional. However, if I chose to complete it, I would be entered in a draw to win $250. So I did it (didn't win though, too bad).

There is a difference between visa and status. A visa looks like your passport ID page and is usually attached to one of the pages in your passport. A visa grants the holder permission to enter the United States for a specified purpose. A visa has an expiry date and a limited number of entries (but this limit might be unlimited). Status grants the holder permission to stay/remain in the United States for a specified purpose. The I-20 confirms that you have F-1 status (and thus gives you permission to apply for a F-1 visa if needed). Status only has an expiry date. Usually, the length of your visa depends on the treaty the United States has with your home country. Most countries that the US is friendly with will have 5 year visas with unlimited (or a lot of) entries allowed. Other countries might only have 1 year visas. It is completely normal and fine for your visa to expire before your status does. You do not need to leave the US when your visa expires (and in fact, for people with single entry visas, their visa is expired immediately upon entry). Remember, visa is only "permission to enter"--once you are in the US, only your status matters. However, if you leave the US after your visa is expired (e.g. conference) then you must apply for a new visa before you can re-enter. You cannot "renew" a visa--you have to go through the entire process again (although it might be easier if you are already in their system). I think people recommend that you get a new visa in your home country, but it is possible to do Third-Country visas too. Hope that makes sense! And for your current scenario, maybe you can ask to see if the reason you got 5 years was because you accidentally said you would be finished in 5 years or if the standard procedure is to grant your country's citizens a 5 year visa anyways. You might be able to get it corrected if it's the former, otherwise you will just have to apply for a new visa in 2019 if you ever plan to be outside the US after your F-1 visa expires but before your program is finished!

This is me right now. I always give a long answer to this question, I say something like "I did my undergrad at UBC and then a Masters in at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada and now I am in a PhD program at X." I mention the location of Queen's U because there are a ton of schools with very similar names. Also, in the past, I learned that when I said I have a Masters, people assumed that I was in a PhD program and left early or flunked out (one person said "Oh well, sorry to hear that, not everyone needs a PhD!" and I had to awkwardly correct them). So I am hoping mentioning Canada will key them in that the Canadian system is different. I usually explain how it works and what my majors/thesis was if they seem more interested but I only offer the (long) sentence above in case they are just asking as a way to say hi and actually wanted to talk about something else! In general, I identify with my undergrad school more because that's where I grew up and I identify with Vancouver, BC. Also, in undergrad, I got tons of shirts (most free) but that doesn't happen much in grad school so right now I have only 1 shirt from Queen's and 0 anything related to my current PhD school. If I had a UBC alumni sticker on my car, I wouldn't remove it. I see ton of undergrad affiliation stickers all over campus (on clothes, cars, backpacks etc.)

In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with leaving a school a few weeks into the program if you don't like it. This also "costs" another student a spot but I don't think this is an ethical problem at all. So I don't think we should worry about whether or not we cost someone else a spot when it comes to what is ethical. (see note below). To me, the key thing to stay ethical is to never lie and stay true to your word. For example, I think the OP's situation and jenste's hypothetical is unethical because it is not ethical to accept more than one offer at a time, because you are committing to more than one school at a time. When you accept an offer, you are saying "I plan to devote my full time studies to your school" (sometimes this should be implied, sometimes this is explicit in what you sign when you accept). Similarly, a deferral request is the same thing, unless otherwise stated. A deferral means "I have accepted the offer but I will start later on at the agreed upon date". So, if you do this to more than one school, then there is no way you are honestly able to commit to multiple program, and this is why I think it is unethical. Instead, as I said above, in the OP's situation and in jenste's situation, the student should only accept more than one offer (deferral=acceptance) if they disclose all conflicts of commitments. They should tell both schools what they are doing. If the schools allow this, with full knowledge of the conflict of commitment, then it's ethical and it's no longer the student's fault if they cause another student to lose a spot. The school has, for some reason, decided it was worth the risk so the responsibility is on them, not the student. (Therefore, I think if one is ethical and practices full disclosure, the ethical problem of costing another student their spot will not come up). However, I don't think many schools will allow this at all and it will force the student to be responsible and actually make a real decision when it's time to make a decision.

I agree with a couple of days. My suggestion is to actually read a little bit about UNIX systems. For me, understanding the logic behind UNIX made everything a lot more intuitive, instead of just a list of random commands. I bought this book as a reference/tutorial when I started using Linux and I think it is the best reference ever! http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0131478230/qid=1112742397/sr=1-8/ref=sr_1_8?v=glance&s=books The first chapter or so really make Linux/UNIX make a ton more sense. The remaining parts are great for tutorials into advanced topics or just a quick reference (although nowadays, the web has a lot more resources!) Fun story: This book taught me how to write on my friends' terminal screens while logged into the same computer, which was a fun trick I have used for much amusement

I agree with St Andrews Lynx. I always make a grading matrix beforehand. If they argue, I pull out the matrix and show them. If they argue with interpretation, I make it clear that my interpretation is the only one that counts.** If they ever pull the "But Student X here made the same mistake and only lost 2 points, why did I lose 3?" and if the matrix says "-3 for that thing", then I would usually ask to see Student X and regrade their assignment. Generally, my rule about regrading is that I will take the entire assignment and regrade the entire thing. (**Note: For things like this, it really really helps to have clear communication with the prof for the course. At the beginning, the prof and I always decide ahead of time who is responsible for what so that the students can't go to the other when one doesn't give them what they want. For example, generally, we decide that the prof is the only one who is allowed to give extensions while the TA has absolute authority on grading homework. If a student asks the prof to regrade something, the prof will just turn it over to me.)

Yes, this is both bad practice (ethically) and bad for you because the schools will find out and the reputation you lose from it will be damaging. In addition, when you defer a school's offer, it usually needs to be justified and granted for a purpose. You might have to agree that you will not take another graduate school position! If you really want to do this, the only ethical way that I can see is to tell the school you plan to defer that you are interested in them, but want to spend at least one year at this other school and see if you like the other school better. If they still agree to hold your spot for a year, then you should be fine. At this point, any damage that happens to the school's program due to you not attending later is their own responsibility!

I want to add also that the Columbia Bridge program (http://academicplanning.columbia.edu/bridge-phd-program-natural-sciences) is a special program that specifically targets underrepresented minorities in the natural sciences, so I think their statement that they "encourage minorities and women to apply" is maybe a little bit more genuine than the default statement that every other program is required to state! I don't know very much about these types of programs, but I think the user juilletmercredi does. I remember seeing a thread in which she wrote a post about her experience in a similar type of program. I found it using the search here for you: Maybe if you contact juilletmercredi, she can help you answer this question?