TakeruK

This is true and I agree that I was being a bit idealistic to say that ideas should be considered without any thought to who presented the idea. Even if we wished to proceed this way, I think we all have inherent biases that would be tough to overcome (e.g. a radical idea from an established professor will probably gain more attention than the same from an unknown grad student). But maybe I was not as clear as I wanted to be about grad students and tenured faculty on the same level. What I meant was that ideas should be treated with the amount of respect warranted given the past experience an academic may have had with that presenter's work. That is, it's reasonable to be more initially interested in the ideas coming from the superstar in the field than an unknown new person. But, it's also important to recognize when ideas are correct and interesting and if so, then it should not matter who came up with the idea. If the idea is wrong or flawed, it would eventually be demonstrated to be so with further investigation -- this is how research works, I think. Maybe an example is better. Let's say my department has a tenured prof giving a departmental talk about their latest research. But a graduate student in the room realises there is potentially a flaw in the prof's described methods/theories because of what the student has tried in the past, or read about etc. In the ideal case, the student should be able to discuss this with the professor and they shouldn't feel like "oh well, the prof must know what he/she is talking about because they're a prof and I'm just a graduate student". So, depending on the talk style, the student should be feel comfortable interrupting the talk to ask a question (if that's the style of the talk) or bring it up in the question period after the talk. But, if there is a strong hierarchy and a pattern of always calling professors by Dr., Prof., Sir/Ma'am etc. (respectable titles!) while profs just call students by their first name, this, in my opinion, would reinforce the "Professors are always smarter and better than I am. I am wrong. They are right. I should be quiet." mentality. It's true that professors are going to be right more often than students -- like you said, they have all this training, experience, and wisdom from making it this far. In the above example though, if the student does not feel comfortable speaking up, it's a lose-lose situation for everyone. If the student was right, then there is a missed opportunity to move the research in the right direction. If the student was wrong, then this is a missed opportunity for the student to learn why he/she was wrong. Also, in either case, it's a missed opportunity for someone else in the audience who may have thought the same thing, or if the resulting discussion might have sparked a different idea. In my opinion, research thrives when there is intellectual discussion where everyone is made to feel as comfortable contributing as possible. It's my opinion that a hierarchy hinders this process and eliminating the honorifics/titles is an easy step towards reaching this state. But I do agree that it is unrealistic to completely eliminate it. And I don't think it's completely necessary to 100% eliminate this because it's true that the professors have worked and earned their benefits and qualifications. Finally, for the undergraduates, I think it's okay for them to call instructors by their first name. From my very first college lecture, every single one of my professors have introduced themselves as "My name is Prof. FirstName LastName, but you should call me FirstName" or some variant of that. If a prof requests that I address them by Prof X, I would obviously respect their wishes, but my opinion is that academia a first-name basis promotes the sharing of ideas. But I would be interested to hear other opinions! That is a good point too -- I am interpreting your point as since in academia, "correct/interesting ideas" is the currency we use, then titles are meaningless and it shouldn't matter if we address our profs as "Professor" (correct me if I'm wrong!). So I agree that if we all felt that we would all be equally respected as long as we have good ideas, then it doesn't matter what we call one another (within reason). However, as I explained above, I don't feel that this is actually the case. To expand on this point further, when I talk to students from different cultures, sometimes they tell me that in their country/culture, the professor is indeed their "master" and they would be hugely in the wrong if they ever contradicted their professor on academic matters, even in private. I don't think this is ideal for academia. In North America, our culture is clearly very different and I don't really think that moving away from a first name basis is going to lead us in that situation. However, to me, using a title that reminds the student that the person you are talking to is smarter/better/valued more than you (even if it's true) can hinder productive conversation. I know that this is not the case for everyone -- some (most?) people are not fazed by calling their professors by a title. But, I think especially for those who may have grown up in a culture where titles are extremely important, using a title can add additional hesitation for these students to share their ideas. This may cause students to be quieter and then they do not get as much attention, and then when they do have good ideas, people might not pay as much attention. One could argue that "well that's the way academia works and students should adapt or else" but I think that given that academia is a very international community, we should strive to make our community as welcoming as possible to everyone, including those who may not have "grown up" in a western culture. It might be easier for students who came from a culture of not questioning your professors to adapt to one where they can feel comfortable speaking up with their ideas and thriving in the Western research world. From a personal perspective, I did grow up in North America but also in a family where one would never question one's elders and I think my experience in college (being on a first name basis with my profs) helped me develop the confidence to speak up about my ideas and take the initiative to try things on my own instead of waiting for further instructions from supervisors all the time.

I would argue that using Dr. Last Name or Professor Last Name does not create an environment that is mutually respectful and professional. I feel that academia relies on independent thought and value of ideas, not position or rank. That is, if the idea is correct or interesting, it shouldn't matter if it came from the department head, a newly hired professor, a graduate student, or even an undergraduate student. However, there is already a very steep inherent hierarchy between professors and graduate students and I feel that the practice of calling profs by "Prof X" or "Dr X" while students are addressed by first names would reinforce the hierarchy and hinder intellectual discussions. Unless you are proposing that you would prefer it if everyone was addressed by their last name (i.e. Prof X, or Ms. X or Mr. X etc") then I would suppose that is equal enough. But I would argue that this is equivalent to calling everyone by their first names -- it's just a different "culture".

Also, it's not like they spent an incredible amount of time on these two letters specifically. They probably wrote a general letter to send to all schools and then customized each school's letter a little (extent of customization may be just changing the school's name), so they probably won't feel that upset. This is all "probably" though but I would be confident enough in that to suggest that you inform them ASAP.

I think you should discuss the general topic of what you want to do research in. But citing a paper is going to deep, in my opinion. However, there are lots of different ways people want to approach SOPs so there is no single right answer. But to explain my opinion, I could use an example from my field. In Astronomy/Planetary Science, one possible topic of research is the contents of atmospheres on exoplanets. However, the profs on the admissions committees will be profs in the Astronomy/Physics/Planetary Science departments. That is, probably very few of them will know the details about research in exoplanet atmospheres! So, I think it would be too "deep" for a SOP to cite the latest results in exoplanet atmospheres. What I think the student should do is to mention their interest and perhaps explain the general concepts in language that another person from the same field (but not studying exoplanets at all) can still understand. I also don't think citing papers is useful since it's unlikely that the profs will actually look up and read these papers. I guess it is possible that citing a paper can demonstrate to the few profs that are studying what you study that you are up to date with the literature, but I think if you do a good job of explaining what you want to do in general terms, it would show that you really know what you are talking about too. But again, different people have different methods!

It's also possible that with electronic LOR submission, letterheads may not even be used. The LOR writer may just be asked to copy and paste into a text box without formatting. In this case, I think I would ask the boss what he/she would prefer to do.

As lots of others here have said, it really depends on the field and even the program. Most of the programs that accepted me did not interview. The one interview I did get was not really an interview, they only asked me very basic questions. They actually spent most of the time talking about their own research, their department's research, outlining the graduate program and answering my own questions about their program. So, like PsychGirl said, interviews sometimes might just be sanity checks. But I think it's important to prepare for every interview as if you were on the dividing line between acceptance and rejection and this interview was your only chance to push yourself over to "accept"!

In my field, we don't normally cite papers in our SOPs. If we cited specific papers, then we are getting way too far into the detail of a project in the SOP. An obvious exception is when a prompt tells us to be this specific. Other than that, if you have to cite a paper, then I think it might be going too deep. To answer your questions. 1. Own papers -- I detailed my research experiences and at the end of each paragraph, I just wrote "We published the results of this work in [Journal Name]." I did not provide the full citation since I put the full citation in my CV. 2. For papers in prep, I did the same thing as above, but wrote it as "My collaborators and I are currently preparing a manuscript on this work for submission to [Journal Name]." There is no full citation for this so I did not include it anywhere else. But, I did include papers that has been accepted for publication but just not published yet in my CV. 3. I think you should just mention class projects. The purpose of a citation is to enable a reader to find the source, and it's unlikely that they will be able to do this. I don't think you need to mention that you can make the paper available, since I think they will ask if they are interested. But if you do, perhaps you can add that as a footnote, or put the paper on your website and provide the link to the webpage as a footnote. 4. It will definitely not look bad to cite papers from other places. Collaborating and learning from others is the whole point of academia! However, see my comment at the beginning of the post about citing work. If you choose to cite the work, I would be careful about is to make sure there isn't a controversy about the work you're mentioning. Also, make sure that the work isn't published by a rival lab/group to the group you are trying to apply to.

I agree -- it is a fact that the employer needs outweigh any individual's preferences, since they are paying us. But it is a choice to not do anything and let the employer get their way all the time, or to speak up and make sure your own needs are also taken care of!

Yes, you can get in trouble. Most applications require you to report every school you have attended past high school and when you digitally sign the online forms, you usually have to agree that you have provided all the information requested etc. etc. I've found that most schools did not require me to agree to a "background check" (I'm in a more traditional academic research field). I can see how a background check may be necessary/included for some professional programs or if the background check is relevant to your field of study. I think I would trust most schools to do the ethical thing and not run background checks without your consent/knowledge (but you have to make sure to read all the things you are agreeing to carefully, as Sigaba suggests!) In your case, I would recommend checking what your Law School transcript says (order a copy for yourself and open it) about your suspension. I would make sure that I report everything that is required by the application and that what you say is consistent with what will appear on transcripts or other documents the school will receive. Also, I'm not sure if you have looked at your applications yet, but if not, you might not even have to report past legal history. None of my programs did (and I just went through some old applications to check, out of curiosity). Of course, this requirement may vary based on the nature of the graduate program!

Yes, I second St Andrews Lynx's suggestion, especially if you want to visit more than one prof's lab (usually this is true). It would be a nightmare to contact all the profs you're interested at once, ask them for time, and schedule things. Profs might not reply quickly and you might schedule something that becomes a conflict later -- e.g. Prof A replies first and say "I'm free from 10 to 2pm" and you schedule a meeting for 11am. Then Prof B may reply late and say I'm only free from 11 to noon!" !! Now you have to go back to reschedule Prof A's meeting etc. etc. And you're also an outsider, they might not prioritize your email, and you definitely can't be demanding (e.g. ask the profs to tell them every single free time slot and then make your own schedule and force the profs to comply!) Best to leave it to the professionals! The admin staff know how to best organize this, and they might even have the profs' schedules for things like faculty meetings, classes etc. The admin staff knows the profs well and they know how to get answers from them. They can also find student volunteers to show you around, take you to lunch, or just have a chat with etc.

I don't think this is true for tests that you actually wrote yourself. My link to the PowerPrep software above does something similar -- i.e. it gives you questions similar to the GRE and helps you determine areas you can work on. I have never seen any option for a test taker to see their actual test. You may be able to ask ETS to rescore/regrade your test by written request but even this information is not clearly available on their webpage. I think the cost is also something like $55 so it should only be done when you feel absolutely certain something is wrong. ETS can never release actual questions and answers that are still being used in ETS tests or it will compromise the test's integrity. Since everyone's GRE questions are pulled from a very large pool of questions, they can't tell you the right answer to any of these questions, or even if a person got a question right or wrong without compromising the test. It is probably not likely that ETS will "retire" and publish any actual GRE questions from the exam you took in the near future!

I wrote the computer test before the August 2012 revision. I am pretty sure that we do not get to see the score before deciding whether or not to cancel them. At the end of the test, there was a screen that asks you whether or not you want to cancel the score and an explanation of what happens in each case (and that you will not be able to cancel the score after seeing them). There was no time limit on this page. This may have changed in the new "Revised GRE" but the ETS website still seem to indicate you cannot cancel scores after seeing them (some added emphasis): This is in line with the policies on their Subject GREs, which are paper-based and if you want to cancel your score, you do so by filling in certain bubbles on your test form (during your exam, before the test is scored!) The only schools that will automatically see the score for this test (if you choose not to cancel) are the ones you selected as your four free schools. With additional schools, you would use ScoreSelect to pick the best ones. So, I would recommend choosing your four free schools to be the ones where the scores do not matter as much (e.g. those without minimums as danieleWrites suggests, or the less competitive programs). One thing I would recommend is to maybe set a goal score before coming into the test. When I took the test, I had no idea what the scaled score for my percentile goal would be so when I got that number in the end, I had no idea if it was "good" or not until I got home. And since I had to travel 3 ish hours to the testing site, it was a very long bus ride home before I knew if I should be worried about my score! Edit: I found a place that says this much more clearly: Both of the above quotes come from the FAQ page: http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/faq/

Agree with VioletAyame -- check the regulations for each school specifically. In my experience, most schools will waive the TOEFL requirement if your undergrad was instructed in English.

I think the best person to answer your question would be someone from the Chemical Biology PhD program admin staff at Harvard. Send an email to the admin person responsible for admissions to your program! Even if there are current students from that program there, requirements may change over the years so the best answer you can get is from the program itself!

Maybe this: http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/prepare/powerprep2

I would also agree with fuzzy and daniele and make the request. After all, it's a request, not a demand. I think it's important sometimes to not be afraid to stand up for yourself n order to make sure you don't get stuck with a crappy situation. For example, getting stuck with both the very first class and the very last class of the day is what I would call a crappy situation. Also, if you have a long commute, it's reasonable to request to not have the first or last class of the day. Or, if you have children to drop off / pick up at childcare. I do agree with Sigaba's belief that since we are employed as teaching assistants, the department has the authority and power to determine when we meet our job obligations. And that ultimately, the department needs to meet its own needs before meeting every TA's preferences. However, there's no reason why the department can't both fulfill its own needs as well as TA needs! As employees (well actually, many schools don't even recognize our employee status so I think that weakens our work-related obligations but that's another topic) we are allowed to make reasonable requests about our working conditions. And in many cases, I would think that the department want to make sure its TAs are happy and doing the best work, and they can't solve problems if they don't know the problems exist. For example, if your computer/desk chair was causing you back problems, would you not ask to see if there was a way to replace it (find another unused chair, or check if there is budget to purchase a new one etc.). Or if the lighting in your office is too dim and causing you a headache -- maybe they just don't know the bulb needs to be changed. Obviously, there is a right way to make these requests and a wrong way but I'm assuming that we would go about this the right way. The department may very well be willing to do what it can to improve our working conditions, but they can't fix things they don't know about. I don't think there is any major harm in making requests if you do it the right way and be prepared for them to say no. Ultimately, if we are unhappy about something, we should seek to get it changed. In my opinion, it's reasonable for grad students in a department to try to improve their current conditions. Perhaps, collectively all of the grad students could even make a goal of trying to put enough pressure on the department to make one small change at a time. In your department, perhaps one small change that a lot of students might appreciate is the ability to put in TA assignment preferences!

I understand that it must not feel great to get this refusal and particularly all of the details. Perhaps the prof just intended to do you a favour, as Sigaba suggested, by providing their full reasoning, which is more than you might normally get in a refusal. I think that although I would be hurt/disappointed that the prof didn't remember me as well as I had thought, I would still appreciate that the prof spent the time to go through the history and give you all of the details and reasons for refusing. I think I would have been even more hurt if the prof has just said "No, I don't want to write you a recommendation letter." Also, I think this is probably one of the best outcomes possible from this situation. It's far better that the prof said no than to agree and then write a very generic/plain letter. And as I said above, I would personally prefer to know all the reasons the prof said no instead of just "no". Look at it this way -- if the prof confused you with another, sleepy, student, then how well did they really know you? How could they have written you a strong LOR? In general, if you are trying to get a "secondary" letter (i.e. from a prof that doesn't know you that well because your only interaction was during one or two classes), then you really needed to have made an extremely positive impression on the prof to actually get a useful letter. So, it might be a good thing that this prof, whom you did not turn out to have made an extremely positive impression on, did not write you a letter since the letter would not have been that great! I'm not trying to discount your feelings after this rejection. It's fine to vent and feel sad after a disappointment like this. Grad school and life will have many disappointments, so I think it's healthy to cope with the emotions in the way that you like (e.g. venting here is one good way) and then move on to the next step / alternate plan to achieve your goal. Do you have another prof in mind to write you another letter?

I don't think it's "abrupt" to do what TakeMyCoffeeBlack says, and I would even recommend it. These people are reading a lot of SOPs so getting right to the point would probably be appreciated!

I don't think a professor would normally have a motive to actively try to sabotage someone's career. I think if a prof is not interested in writing a letter, they would just refuse to do so and then it's much less work than agreeing to write one and then actively behave in a way to prevent you from getting into grad school. Another way to put it is that while we might over-analyse and worry and think about every single interaction we have with our profs, but I am almost certain they don't think that way about us. I also don't like not being in control but I think I am able to manage this need for control so that it does not adversely affect my health and productivity. I think this is essential for life, not just grad school, because there will always be situations out of our control! So, instead of letting it stress me out, I try to find positive spins to it -- like "Oh well, I've done all I can to set my LORs up, I won't have to think about it until the deadline!", for example.

I think that would be unorthodox. Usually, SOPs are more formal than that. I would recommend starting a SOP with an expression of your research interests and goals, then discuss your background and how they relate to achieving your goals at the school you're applying to. However, in some fields, although having something like a limerick would be strange/different, it's not necessarily bad. I don't think it's going to magically win you any bonus points though and there are no real obvious benefits. I know people who have included things like photographs in their SOPs and they are in top ranking programs. Ultimately, my opinion is that I don't see a benefit of forcing a limerick into your SOP just to have it. But if you feel this is how you want to express yourself, then it probably won't hurt you. That is, if you are a strong candidate, having a limerick isn't going to give you an automatic rejection, in my opinion.

I think it's neither inappropriate nor necessary to include in your CV. This might depend on your field though, but I think in mine, if the reader is not interested, they would just skip it, no harm done. I don't think it's particularly useful for grad school applications though. I would think the reason to include this section would be to demonstrate your ability to communicate about your research with the public, which is a useful skill for jobs that post-docs might apply to (e.g. outside of academia) and also useful for profs to demonstrate (science communication is important to get funding for example). But, at the start of grad school, this experience is not particularly relevant. So, my opinion is that including it won't really help you that much. However, I don't think it will hurt you either, unless this section is overly long and dominates space on your CV. So, if it's important to you, then put it there but if you want to cut text or minimize content, then get rid of it!

I think you might be unfamiliar with how LORs for graduate schools work. Firstly, profs are super busy and they will tend to complete things near actual deadlines, not artificial deadlines you set (unless you had a good reason to motivate such an early deadline). I was honest with my profs and told them the real date it was due so they can plan their time the way they want. Secondly, you should expect profs to spend about 1 hour on the letters, because they will write one letter template and then modify it very slightly for each school (probably change the name of the school you're applying to). Or they might just write the same letter to all 5 schools. This is standard and we do pretty much the same thing with our SOPs. Just because you gave them 3 months to write the letter doesn't mean they will think about how they will write it for the 3 months! Finally, the application deadlines are mostly for us to get our stuff submitted. LORs, test scores, etc. can trickle in afterwards and no one will really mind. I am saying this because if Dec 1 rolls around and you still don't have the letters submitted, please don't panic at all! Just send an email to the programs you're applying to and say something like "Unfortunately, I don't think all of my recommendations are in yet" etc. and give them a heads up. I think you did the right thing to use the grad school application system to remind them / resend the links. This is the best way to remind the profs, even better than a personal email because they need this link to submit your letter! For me, my general strategy was to use the online system to resend links 2 days before the deadline and then the day after the deadline if it was not submitted on time. I understand how you are feeling. After all, by this time, we would have spent tons and tons of hours working on our applications and it's frustrating to have to wait for someone else. But it is important to try to remain relaxed and not worry about the LORs coming in. Profs have a ton of LORs to write too, and the profs receiving your applications probably have their own LORs to write so having LORs come in late is generally a common and accepted thing in academia. I wouldn't worry yet, not unless your letter doesn't show up a week after the deadline!

It really depends on each school's system. Some of them had great online status checker things. Some of them do not have this available at all. And some of them have an online status checker thing that provides wrong information (i.e. because the spelling of my middle name was slightly different on my transcript vs. my application, the online system couldn't match it up so while the department had my transcript, the online system never updated). Usually, after you submit the application, you'll get log-in information to see this info (in some cases, the status checker is the same software as the application system but not always). In your case, to check that one particular score, I would email the department admin staff member in charge of admissions and ask to confirm that they received your score!

Just want to say that I have talked to profs about these questions and their answer would also indicate this is the case! They also mention that if they get a really good candidate but the person has listed Top Ranking Schools amongst their competitors, then they know that it's less likely the person will accept and that helps them plan how many offers to make -- that is if they want an incoming class of e.g. 5, they might want to make 15-20 offers to people who are likely to get into better schools as well, or maybe only 8-10 offers to people who are likely to get into equally ranked schools, or some combination in between. I don't see a good reason for a school to reject an applicant that would normally get in just because they have interests in other programs. Unless of course, all these answers I got from the Powers That Be are all part of their secret conspiracy to freak out applicants as much as possible!!

(I added the emphasis above). You're right -- now that I think about it further, the fellowship/award came after acceptance. But I would feel like a department would have a reasonable guess at whether a candidate would receive a fellowship like this, based on past award history (but no guarantee of course). I also think that it is a charter issue to use race (or any one of the other statuses protected from employment discrimination by law) as a basis for admission (or not-admission) to a graduate program (which constitutes employment in Canada). However, I don't think graduate programs would say like, "okay we have 10 spots and we want 3 successful candidates to be a visible minority". I think that would definitely be discrimination and against our Charter. I am not sure if this is what "Affirmative Action" means, so if it does, then as far as I know, Canada does not practice "Affirmative Action". However, what I think does go on, (and in my opinion, should go on) is to consider each candidate's background while evaluating their previous achievements and also acknowledging our own potential biases. For one example, let's use gender. There have been studies that show that in a blind survey, both male and female scientists would rate fake CVs/applications from male applicants higher than those from female applicants. These CVs were identical except for the name, which was a gender-specific name. I think it's not discriminatory, under our Charter, to then use this information to help us make better / more equitable hiring decisions. That is, we should recognize that it is harder for minorities to make progress in fields dominated by majorities so perhaps we should keep these facts in mind when evaluating achievements. This is what I mean by the "spirit of Affirmative Action", but I might have completely misunderstood "Affirmative Action"! Here is a paragraph from the Human Rights Act (http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/H-6/FullText.html) that might be relevant (but also, I'm no legal/admission expert!) I would interpret this as not being discriminatory if a department realises that its population is very homogeneous and wishes to increase their diversity by creating a Graduate Assistantship that would pay for all expenses of a graduate student but then make that assistantship only available to X, where X is a minority/disadvantaged group. Finally, this is just my opinion based on my experience when our department might have had conversations revolving around the extra difficulties faced by minorities (of any kind) in academia in Canada. I don't really know if the people I talked to are actually representative of all Canadian schools in all fields etc. etc.