TakeruK

I understand and agree with the point of your post but I don't agree with a "vendetta" against anyone, unless they are actually actively harming people. I am a "prototypical college do-gooder" in the sense that I went to an okay high school, got into a good university, got good grades, went to more school etc. I might have a little more life experience outside of academia than someone who perhaps grew up in a better-off family, with parents who are in academia etc. (the extent of my life experience is working "blue collar" [for lack of a better term] jobs to pay for school in the first few years since my family has nothing saved up). So I am glad that people with more life experiences are advocating a different perspective on this forum. I draw from my own experiences and provide what I think is helpful advice. People with more academia experience (perhaps grew up in a household of academics) can also provide a different point of view. And people with viewpoints that go against what most people would do should also post their perspective here. However, these viewpoints are not going to agree all the time, and it's the differences that help people make the best decision for them. I don't personally attack Loric when he posts his viewpoints. I do attack the opinions when I don't think they are helpful or correct and provide my own justification, expecting others to attack them when I'm wrong. What I'm trying to say is that why should there even be vendettas at all? I don't think, objectively, that my academic experience is any better than e.g. JoeyBoy's life experience. But in some cases, it might be helpful to know something from the academic experience, such as how LORs might work. Alternatively, someone with only academic experience might say that you can never ever get into grad school without a 3.9 GPA. But someone with more life experience to augment a lower GPA might be able to explain why that's a narrow point of view. Everyone has different things to contribute to the discussion but everyone should realise that because we have all this freedom to say what we want, it means that there will be disagreements and your opinions may be challenged and picked apart. Even if you don't get along in real life with people from other groups, you can still accept their experience and opinions as correct if they are. It's a fact that in research oriented PhD programs, a letter from your research supervisor will be far superior than a letter from someone who taught you a class. It doesn't matter who said it, whether or not they come from the "clique" that you identify with, or the "clique" that is the one that annoys you and you hate their values. Instead of attacking an opinion because of who originated it, why can't we discuss the merits of each opinion only. Also, in the theme of "why can't we all get along?", why can't we all get along, despite identifying with and belonging to different groups? e.g. At my undergrad school [and probably many other places], there is a rivalry between Science majors and Arts majors with one group thinking the other is soulless or brainless. That's stupid. Just because someone is different from you, or has different values from you, or even do things differently from you does not automatically mean they are wrong or bad. The world and this GradCafe community would be so boring if we all agreed with one another. So, yes, not everyone will agree with everything everyone else says. Big deal indeed. But let's not have vendettas. Let's disagree in a mutually respectful and constructive way!

I agree (as evident by my earlier post). I would just caution against applying "if you get rejected because of X, then so be it because you wouldn't want to be there anyways if you can't X". I know Loric is not meaning that X can be anything here, though, but I'm just saying! For example, it's probably sound to apply the above if X is a tasteful joke (as above), or X is the fact that you are married and/or have children. But even though expression of self is important, sometimes we just need to remember that some situations are not the appropriate place to express every part of oneself. For example, I would not encourage someone to include X in their SOP if X is the fact that they like to brew alcohol, or if X is the fact that they are a vegetarian (nothing wrong with any of these things of course, just not appropriate for a SOP). Even if these X's are important parts of the applicant's personality, sometimes you do need to "censor" yourself a little bit. I put "censor" in quotes because I don't really think it is censoring/disguising your personality, but rather applying boundaries on certain types of interactions!

There may be a chance for you (and your PI?) to appeal the decision maybe? For major decisions like this, I usually see a policy for an appeals process at the places I've been to (but no guarantee that your school/department would have one). But like you said, it's not clear if your PI has already tried this. I think emailing your PI was the right thing and you might have to wait until you get a response. Meanwhile, I'd check if there was an appeals process and initiate ASAP just in case (especially if there is a time limit for things like this). I think it's pretty crappy that they just sent you an email instead of an actual face-to-face meeting to discuss the matter. Maybe you can ask for one? One tricky part will be balancing doing these things without your PI (because I think without his/her support, you probably won't be able to stay) but also starting the process so that waiting until your PI comes back won't mean that any timelines are past!

I agree that if you don't have access to a free professional proofreader, this is what should happen! Grad programs work best when we all support one another Just to clarify that my first comment above was really referring to professional, for-fee copyediting services. Getting friends to do it won't be as professional but like I said above, it's not really necessary! In my opinion, if it is critical that something be done exactly the way you need it specified, I would never ever hire/pay someone I care about to do the work. I need the professional distance in order to hold the person I'm hiring accountable for their work--I wouldn't be able to do it to a family member or a friend. But I don't think a thesis necessarily warrants this level of perfection.

I would also categorize the things you mention as red flags! If the visit made you no longer interested in this prof and there is no one else and/or you are no longer interested in the school, then you can withdraw your online application. There is usually a button somewhere to cancel it. You can also just leave it incomplete. If you didn't provide payment information, then they won't charge you. When I applied, I did not provide them with my credit card/payment information until the day I was actually submitting the application, which was usually the day of or a few days before the deadline. This gives you the flexibility to change your mind! If you actually cancel or withdraw your application, you should not get any automated reminders or anything. I changed my mind about one school too. Since I did talk to a prof from that school in person (at a conference), I did send a courtesy email just before the application deadline. It was just a simple email, saying something like: "Thank you for talking to me about your program earlier this term. I have been thinking about grad school applications a lot over the past few weeks and in the end, I've decided to not to apply to University of X. I really appreciate your time discussing [Research Topic Y] with me. [some closing statement]." Definitely do not criticize or explain why you did not like your visit. I think this advice goes for anyone who eventually has to decline some offers to accept others. Always be professional and courteous in your official email/letter declining the offer. Don't even say where you are going instead, unless you know the person well or if they ask. Just say that you decided to accept somewhere else and thank them for whatever they did for you, even if you think it was horrible. Save all the reasons why and comments for the exit-survey that the Graduate School will no doubt email to you shortly after they receive your email/letter declining the offer.

One concern I would have is that the Jan 15 school may make their decision before you are able to get your updated score to them! But like you said, it's probably worth a shot if you have no other 4th school in mind and you are okay with taking the calculated risk on your application fee. (Or, you might want to ask the Jan 15 school about this, but sometimes it's easier to ask forgiveness for a late score than permission!)

You're right--upon re-reading the post, I realise now that Quantum was speaking specifically about the two women that visited the lab, not every science grad student when they said "It broke my heart to see talented Scientists being forced to change their career just in order to survive." I guess I was too quick to react to any statement that might mean a non-academic post-PhD career is a failure! Oops. Thanks for pointing this out

Usually each school will be very clear whether or not you need to send an ETS report ahead of time. If they are not clear, then definitely ask, I think. Schools understand that applications cost a lot. However, while most of my schools accepted unofficial transcripts, almost all of them want official GRE scores.

I agree with the above--I write my CV with one "entry" per project, not place of employment.

An hour is a reasonable time to spend on a LOR. You don't know that the other prof spent much more time on their letter either--they could have looked at your materials, wrote something up in about an hour, asked you that question, incorporated their answer and let it sit and then submitted it! You could think about it in a different way too. If you add up salary, benefits, opportunity cost of the research they could be doing/supervising, and cost of computer equipment, office space, electricity etc. a professor costs about several hundred thousand dollars a year. If they work 50 hours per week for 50 weeks a year, this is 2500 hours per year. 200,000/yr (lowball estimate) divided by 2500 hours is $80/hr. Profs have to write a ton of letters too--for their current students, former students, current postdocs, former postdocs, and colleagues (for awards, tenure promotion at other universities etc.). Money isn't always the best way to think about the value of things, but sometimes it helps to put a number on it (or at least provide an interesting alternative perspective).

Here is another interesting piece (just read the executive summary unless you have a ton of time). It is a survey of postdocs in Canada and part of it addresses the same issue--postdocs are getting longer and the instability of the job is driving people away! http://www.mitacs.ca/sites/default/files/caps-mitacs_postdoc_report-full_oct22013-final.pdf I don't think it's fair to say that "they chose to leave academia/research so don't feel bad for them". I think the system is set up so that many talented people don't really have a choice. In some cases, the opportunities are not there / too much competition. Or, there may be other personal/health constraints, such as geographic ones. Sure, you can argue that these are one's "choice" and that if you were "dedicated" you would be willing to work in middle of nowhere to continue doing science. I don't agree though and I think it is sad that instead of getting the best people getting jobs in academia, it becomes more of a matter of who is willing to work more hours or put up with crappy postdoc conditions etc. It seems to me that I might have to choose between a non-academic career where I can have a stable income to support a new family near my parents, or an academic career without the right economic and social support to start a family the way I want. So, I feel that for many people who want other things in their life besides research work, we/they may have no choice but to leave academia. On the other hand, I don't think it's fair to feel sorry for those who leave either. Even if they didn't want to leave, they may be happier in their new careers. Also, that attitude implies that if you are PhD not working in research in your field, you are automatically a failure. I do think that one main goal of the PhD is to train a person to do independent, original research, but that training can also impart a lot of other useful skills that you can use in other careers too. I believe that PhD programs should encourage and support their students who might want to pursue other careers after graduation. Departments that truly believe all of their PhD graduates will get tenure tracked positions are either deluded or buying into the "Ponzi scheme". It is a reality that the tenure track position "market" can't support all the PhD generated each year, so I think graduate programs should try to help their students succeed in whatever career path they choose after graduation!

My wife thinks I'm crazy but grocery shopping is one of my favourite times of the week!! I do all of our cooking and it's really fun for me to see what looks good / is cheap and figure out what I can make that week. So I guess I should have disclosed my love of groceries above because it is probably hugely biasing me against Amazon (for groceries) haha.

We did look into this when we first moved to the US and didn't have a car. I notice that you can "subscribe and save" and have it come every 1-6 months, for example, instead of just every month. This would make it more feasible for the two of us to not have way too much food! Whether or not it's worth it can really depend on the product though. Here are some examples I looked up and compared to my grocery store trips: http://www.amazon.com/Quaker-Instant-Oatmeal-Raisin-10-Count/dp/B001M09BOS/ref=sr_1_46?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1387410328&sr=1-46 Quaker's oatmeal. Amazon price $10 for 4 boxes = $2.50 per box. At my grocery store, the regular price is $5/box, but I just wait until they go on sale and then buy 2 boxes for $5. http://www.amazon.com/Arm-Hammer-Clumping-Unscented-40-Pound/dp/B004U8Z7DI/ref=sr_1_10?s=pet-supplies&ie=UTF8&qid=1387410229&sr=1-10 Cat litter--when we used to have cats, this would be a decent (but not the best price) for the 40 pound box. However, without a car, carrying a 40lb box home is super difficult! I was going to write more but I realised I would say the same thing about every item. So, I will stop boring you with my grocery list now, actually Overall, our impression of Amazon's Subscribe & Save is that it does not always beat the best prices we can find in a traditional grocery store. There are a few cases where it would win (e.g. Campbell's soup) but we would not be able to rely on groceries from Amazon solely. Thus, we would have to go to the grocery store anyways (and I'd prefer to pick out my own produce!) and with careful planning, we can snatch up good deals when they appear. In the end, we decided that committing to regular deliveries of items was not worth the 5-15% discount, especially since they come in pretty large quantities. We decided that we would prefer to keep an eye out for deals and just get those instead. This allows us to adjust our shopping to account for changing tastes (we don't really like a routine in our meals--we might do oatmeal one week but might not go back to it again for a few weeks). So the freedom to adjust our meals is worth the 5% lost in savings, we think!

I'd second this! I factored in the ability to have children in my PhD when I selected my school, and from talking to the students, they told me that grad students may also qualify for low income benefits from the state (which you guys may not be eligible for though). My current school has benefits for dependent health care ($1200/year) and up to $4000/year for childcare if both parents are working (or if you're a single parent student). So, make sure you check out what resources your school can provide! I don't think anyone here said that the OP raising a baby with his girlfriend at this stage of life will be "easy". You were saying that it's irresponsible and horrible and bad, and we were disagreeing with you, but not all of us were actually saying that it's exactly the opposite. Like any life event, this has some great aspects for the OP (congrats!) and some less exciting aspects (e.g. the stress of a big life change). I wouldn't necessarily rush to call something "good" or "bad"--not everything needs a judgement either way. This is just life. Also, there is no blanket "good" or "bad" that applies to everyone. Which is why it makes total sense for your engineer and clinical psych friends to not want to have babies right now, even though another couple in the exact same stage of their career may want to have children. And, for the record, I don't really have a problem with you wanting to be 22 and soon married with children. That's a perfectly fine goal to have and also a good idea to be in grad school so that you can develop your career plans while looking to start a family. But if I remember from that other thread, the main disagreement (and my main disagreement with your thinking) is when you apply your own values onto the lives of other and criticize their life choices (e.g. your aunt) when they don't match yours, like you are doing here. Sure, the "1950s lifestyle" you want is a bit outdated, but I think if that's what you want, then you go ahead and get it! If one of my friends wanted this, I would support him/her all the way assuming that they find a spouse that want the same thing (and isn't forcing it on the other person). But since I would not judge this person for making different lifestyle choices, I would not want this person to judge everyone else for making different lifestyle choices. In my opinion, most of the "crap" you got is not because of what you want, but how you reacted to other people who appeared to want different things than you.

I did something similar, but it wasn't interviews (it was prospective student visits). I flew from Home to School A to School B to Home (Schools A and B are close to each other but both far from home). I think you should let both schools know what you're doing (you don't have to explain the reason why you don't want to interview on Jan 24 though). Schools know that a lot of people have multiple interviews so things like this might happen. But you should also let them know so that they can figure out the expenses. For me, what happened was that School A paid for my trip from Home to nearest Home Airport to School A and all the expenses in School A city, plus half of the cost of the trip from School A to School B. School B paid for everything else. You should talk to the schools because each school may have rules on what is allowed to be covered by each school. For example, even though the cost for each school was pretty much 50% each, I couldn't just add up all the expenses and divide by two because of the way they have to account for things. Also, School A needed itemized receipts for everything but School B didn't care. Luckily, the people in admin at these schools are experts and they surely have dealt with more complicated stuff than this. I think in my case, the people at School A and School B contacted each other and figured things out too. I wouldn't necessarily send an email to both of them at once, but when I contacted each person at each school, I did let them know my plans and that I was currently corresponding with X at the other school.

Just to further show that there are tons of academics who may have restrictions like this, here is a recent survey of Postdoctoral fellows in Canada. Postdocs are further along the career path than we are, but they were all graduate students at one point!: http://www.mitacs.ca/sites/default/files/caps-mitacs_postdoc_report-full_oct22013-final.pdfhttp://www.mitacs.ca/sites/default/files/caps-mitacs_postdoc_report-full_oct22013-final.pdf It's long but I really just want to point out this paragraph from the executive summary: So, I think that it's not the "rare" case that an academic has to make decision based on other factors than academic/career ones! However, many professors (and current young people too) still think the "old way". At one grad orientation event, one of the presenters gave the advice of "Focus on your career now, wait to 'play house' later!" which I found really obnoxious and out of touch! But I think for every person like that, there will be someone else somewhere else that will support you.

I don't think it will hurt but it probably won't really help either. I would say be true to yourself in the SOP--if you try to force anything: a joke, a story, etc. it will sound really awkward. Show your genuine self and enthusiasm and if this includes jokes, then go do it (to a reasonable extent). Just remember that this is still a professional document, but scientists put jokes in professional things all the time such as conference talks, department colloquium talks etc. Jokes are definitely not found in peer reviewed research journals, but I feel that in most science fields, the SOP is not the level of formality as a journal paper. I would place the SOP at the level of if you met someone at a conference (or if they were visiting your school) and you sat down to have a talk and they asked you about yourself.

I think your current plan is the best way forward that ensures you still get a Hons BA in case you don't end up continuing with Biology. It keeps the most options open. The only way I can think of that you can do this faster is to stop taking courses towards your BA in history and attempt to change to a science stream as much as possible. But you will then have to worry about changing into a BSc program (which might be competitive) and also worry about maxing out on the number of credits. Or you can maybe drop the "Hons." designation and just do the bare minimum for your current BA major and take all electives in Science (including the high school level science courses). But I think this is risky! I like your current plan because it allows you to finish the Hons. BA completely first and sets you up to start a BSc elsewhere if that's what you want to do in 2 years time!

I agree that tests like the GRE are really more about knowing how to take the test than necessarily knowing the material. But the method to best "crack" the test is probably very person-dependent, so I wouldn't advocate for any particular method. However, I do enjoy reading other methods. I like your method of going through all of the questions and rating them based on difficulty. One alternative to what you did would be to start with the easiest questions. In each individual section, all of the questions are worth the same amount of points, so why not work your way from the easiest up? Getting 5 easy questions right will do the same to your score as getting 5 hard questions right, provided that all of the questions were in the same section. I also agree that leaving the reading comp. questions until the end is the best idea, because they take the longest! I wish that I was able to skip these questions and go back to them when I was taking the old GRE test. When I took the old GRE test, we were much more restricted so I don't think any of the time management strategies from pre-August-2012 would really apply to the Revised GRE test!

I had this happen at one school--they didn't receive my General GRE score report from ETS for some reason. Their solution was to get me to scan my unofficial examinee's report and they would use the scores on that to make their decision. It didn't seem to cause a problem since I got an offer shortly afterwards. They said that if I did choose to accept their offer, they will try again to find my score report and if they didn't, I might have to pay for another report from ETS so that they have it for their record before they could officially admit me. In the end, I didn't go there so I don't know if they would have been able to find it or not!

Okay, then it's probably fine to just include the grades on your CV that you're sending to your LOR writer for the purposes of informing them about your history. But if he didn't want to see your transcript, then he probably won't be impressed by your grades either. The CV that you send to your LOR writer for this purpose doesn't have to be the same document as what you actually submit and I wouldn't put GPA or grades info in CV for grad school applications.

Sorry if I was unclear--in my above post I was trying to say that I am not sure if these visits were meant for already-accepted students or candidates still awaiting the school's decision, because I think that makes a difference in the school's willingness to work around your schedule.

For my BSc and MSc theses, I did not get any professional proofreading help. In both cases, my supervisor did read drafts of chapters as they came in and while they mostly focused on scientific issues, they did give a few comments on grammar and spelling as needed. Although I am not yet even near the stage of writing my PhD thesis, I know that my school offers a proof-reading service by professionals. It's free (the school pays for it, I mean) and although I think it's optional, it is strongly encouraged by the school so I plan on doing this. The only "cost" is that you need to submit your thesis to them a few weeks earlier than normal so they have time to read it. I don't think there will be any issues with a "stranger"/non-expert proof-reading my work. You don't have to understand the science to spot grammar or spelling mistakes. Of course, there would be some issues where scientists have "invented" a word or use a phrase in a jargony way that might not be understandable to an editing professional. But, this can be remedied if you find a professional in scientific editing, or if changes are marked so that you can review all of the edits. I believe that the editing professionals at my school will be used to reading scientific writing (it's a tech school so every thesis will be a scientific one). However, I don't really think it's worth paying out of your own pocket to do so. In my field, I am pretty sure no one else will ever read my thesis other than my committee (and even they might not read all of it that carefully). Also, a lot of theses in my field are composed of a collection of first authored peer-reviewed papers by the student during their time as a graduate student, with some filler text in between to connect and introduce the papers. So, the majority of the content would have been read/reviewed by many other eyes (editors, referees, collaborators, supervisors) many times before it reaches the thesis. So, since my school offers the service for free, I'll do it but otherwise, I don't think it is worth the money to do so because since very few people will read the completed thesis, it doesn't really matter if there are some mistakes in the writing!

I don't think it is generally true that the student population in Canada and the US are this different. Although I have not gotten any rude emails from any of my students, Canadian or American, I've seen the emails that my Canadian and American TA colleagues get and I do not see any significant difference! Your experience obviously has been different, but let's not generalize too much here

This was the case for my spouse and I, although we had a little bit more choices. What we did was I first made a shortlist of schools I would be interested in, academically. Then my spouse had absolute veto power over any place where she did not want to live and/or would have very little work prospects. Then we also together cut off a few more schools after discussion based on my non-academic preferences as well. We narrowed it down to three schools after making some visits and then compared our rankings. It worked out that we agreed exactly so the final decision was easy When I applied and interviewed for schools, it was clear to everyone that location was very important to us. When applying for PhD programs in the US, I wrote in my SOP that my reasoning for attending a MSc school in Canada was location/personal/two-body-problem based. At one interview they asked me what were my main factors in considering a school, and I told them that since moving to another country for grad school was a big investment for both of us, we were having equal say in the decision so that I would be making my decision 50% based on academic fit and 50% based on personal/lifestyle fit. My interviewers thought this was a good decision/answer. I got an offer from their school shortly afterwards (this was a school in/near Seattle by the way but it would be a completely different department)! At another school, I asked if my spouse could visit the school with me (she would look around the town while I talked with professors) and they were happy to have her and even included her in events when possible (we would not have asked the school to pay for her travel but the school was in driving distance so it was easy). I think most people nowadays realise that the two-body problem is a real thing (and many of them probably faced it themselves). I don't think they "look down" on it because I don't think this fact about my application prevented me from getting into places. I was accepted into most of my top choice programs and while it's possible that my rejections were all because of the "two-body problem", I would think it's much more likely that I did not get acceptances from some places because top programs are very competitive! Also, I was looking specifically for programs that would be supportive of students who have dependents, so I don't think I would have been too sad if I found out I got rejected because of these preferences. After all, I probably would not want to be there anyways!