TakeruK

These posters make important points. If the OP did not need permission to publish the article, then they can definitely go ahead and submit it themselves. However, the following statement by the OP leads me to believe that this won't be as easy (emphasis mine): In most science fields, including my own, this usually means the PI technically owns the data and the intellectual property, even though the student has performed all of the work, and thus must be included as a co-author. In cases where the PI isn't abusing their power, this process is important because it's often the case that the PI will spend the majority of their time writing grants in order to fund the work going on in their lab. In order to get these grants, they need to show that their lab have actually been producing research/publications, especially to show that previous grant money has actually been converted into research products. So, in many scientific fields, co-authorship could be a result of intellectual/labor contribution (supervising, mentoring, data analysis, performing experiments, building equipment, writing programming code) as well as contribution in ways such as providing funding, lab space, setting up a group, paying the electricity bills etc. So, to dfindley, I don't think it's always true that the OP can publish without needing permission and it's not always obvious what the answer is. Also, not all fields have double-blind review processes. In my field, the referees are not "blind", that is, they know who is submitting the article. However, the referees are anonymous -- authors do not know who reviewed their paper, unless the referee chooses to reveal their identity in the referee report (happens pretty often). To the OP: I'm sorry to hear about your crappy situation. I understand that academia in other parts of the world may function differently, but the situation you describe can happen anywhere, even in the "normal" world as you call it. Usually, if you are not sure that your advisor/supervisor is being fair to you, and talking to your supervisor does not resolve things, the next step is to talk to someone else in the department -- another prof you know, the director of graduate studies, or the department head. Maybe they can help you get this work published -- sometimes it just takes other profs to help you stand up to a prof that's abusing their powers to get things to work out. I think that you should have the right to be included on any results that your lab produces from your work. But as fuzzy said, if you are not able to get permission from everyone who has a claim to coauthorship to write it up, then it may be better to cut your losses and move on. I think you would be in the right if you did fight it, but being right doesn't always mean you'll win and it may not be worth the time and energy you would need to do it.

I agree that 1 in 5 sounds bigger than 20%. But, I think profs are used to seeing percentiles from GRE scores already, or discussing things in the top X%. So, I think it should be equally effective to say 98th percentile or the top 2%. Personally, I would prefer to say "top 2%". I would also prefer to say something much simpler, such as: "I scored in the top 2% in the Nationwide Selection Examination, an exam similar to the GRE, and won a full scholarship." [scholarship to what though?] or "I achieved my goal by scoring in the top 2%....etc" But I agree that if your previous sentences were about your goals, then this sentence should have some kind of connector to them, unless the connection was obvious. For example, if you stated that your goal was to do well in the exam or to win the scholarship, then I don't think you need to mention it again here. Personally, I would write something like "I was able to achieve..." if I wanted to convey a sense that something was very difficult but I was able to overcome the obstacles and achieve my goal in the end. I would write "I achieved ..." if the reason for the sentence is to just state what I had achieved. That is, I feel the former puts more emphasis on the fact that you did something difficult while the latter puts emphasis on what it was that you actually achieved. So, the "right" choice depends on what you want to say!

I got all of my professors a small gift at the end of the summer, just before I left for grad school. I think if you are wondering about whether or not holiday gifts for LOR writers are appropriate, the question to ask yourself is -- if these people were not writing my LORs, would I still give them a present? If your relationship is such that you would, then go ahead. If not, then I wouldn't want to convey a message that even vaguely implies "here is a present because you are writing my LORs". This is the way I would think about it -- hope that helps you decide what you'd like to do!

If you list both an institution and a department, my sense is that they "both" will get it. I don't think it will actually go to two different places, I think the scores will still go to the school and the department code will be attached to help the department find your score report (and to help the school admin staff sort your scores). So, if your school wants the score sent to the institution as a whole (many do), then just fill in the institution code, and leave the department code blank -- I think the computer might replace your blank with their code for "no department listed"

"Affirmative Action" is a vague term anyways -- what does it really mean? Also, it's an American term. So, while Canadian organizations will not use the term "Affirmative Action", it does not mean that Canadian organizations do not follow the spirit of the intentions of "Affirmative Action". That is, what I am trying to say is that I believe admission committees will consider your background if you choose to provide it and factor that into getting a diverse incoming graduate class. There's no concrete way to quantify how much it will help you get in because there's no concrete way to quantify how any of the grad school admission process works! One example of "Affirmative Action"-like behaviour at my MSc school was that I ended up entering with a fellowship for new graduate students who are visible minorities. This made absolutely no difference in my stipend because it was an "internal award" but this means a chunk of my stipend was covered by the University instead of my department. Presumably, these awards are intended to help departments recruit students from a wider background by reducing the cost to the department.

In my opinion, you were right to not include the publication until it has actually been accepted for publication. I do not update my CV until a paper is actually accepted, but maybe I would mention in the SOP or the "Research Experience" section of my CV that for a particular project, I am preparing a manuscript. My reason for this is that the standard notation in my field "e.g TakeruK et al. (in prep.)" can mean "submission is days away" or "we've just started working on the project". Also, in my field, if something comes up or a co-author asks for additional analysis, a manuscript can easily go from "days before submission" to "months before submission" in a matter of a single email! I personally would feel quite sheepish if I submitted a CV with a paper in prep. in November then have to admit that it's still not ready for submission during an interview in February or March! But this is just me -- I don't think it's an unacceptable thing to mention work in progress either, I just prefer to wait until acceptance. In your case, I think you should talk to the department admissions officer (usually one of the admin staff members, not a professor) about wanting to update your CV and the reason for doing so. If they allow it, you should send them a completely updated CV, don't just say "add this line to this section". Or, you could send an extra PDF with a short note saying that one of your work has been accepted for publication. Basically, I would recommend sending an electronic file that the person in charge of putting together your application package for your department can add to your package. I don't agree with Loric in that I don't think you have to get in touch with the Graduate School's admission office because people at the Graduate School level aren't going to care about publication record in terms of admission. These people mostly care that you have satisfied minimum institutional requirements, such as actually having an undergraduate degree, meeting TOEFL or GRE minimums, etc. Your goal here is to make sure the admissions committee in your department know about this change, and contacting people in the department is the best way to go about this. At the same time, you should definitely mention this to your POI. In case it doesn't get updated in your package, your POI can bring this up at the admission committee meeting(s). Also, if you are in extensive/regular contact with this prof, it's good to mention what you have been up to and tell them about the paper too!

This is a good point. By the time we apply for post-docs or other post-PhD jobs, we will probably be sending in job applications to well over 18 places. Many of my friends at this stage sent in on order of 50-100 applications. I have heard of people sending in triple digits but I don't know any of these stories first hand so they might be exaggerated. I think if you have a good relationship with your prof, I think they really won't mind putting in the work to help you succeed, as long as they think their time is being used wisely. Most of us won't want to be spending time on something that has no clear benefit. So, there's a difference between asking your prof to write you 18 letters to 18 schools that were randomly chosen vs. asking your prof to write you 18 letters to 18 schools that all would be great fits for you. I think if you have a discussion with your prof about which schools to apply to, it might help you find something you might not have considered before, but also help them feel like they are actually writing letters that will be useful to you!

Ah okay, that's good to know! Thanks, PsychGiril1!

When you register for the GRE, there is a box you can click on to get offers like this from schools. If the offer came from a source like this, then it's probably not an indicator of your ability to be accepted. Like others above said, it could just be a form of advertising, or a school that doesn't normally get the high end of applicants trying to attract applications from top students. I also got these invitations to programs that were not even in my field!! However, like Loric said, if you get a personal invitation to apply, from a professor that knows you personally in the department, and that prof worked it out with the University somehow to waive your application fee, then it might be a good sign that you're going to be accepted. At least, it's a sign that this prof would want you to apply and thinks you could make a good fit in their department. But in my experience, I've heard many profs make promises or guesses that turn out to not work out at all -- one prof rarely has the power to sway an entire committee so if the prof is wrong about how much the department will like you, then it might not work out! (But if the school does not do admission by committee then it is an even better sign).

I am an international student and I agree that we have to apply to more schools in order to increase the chances of getting in. But I still think 18 schools is a lot. I applied to 8 schools (7 in the US, 1 in my home country, Canada). My opinion is that unless you are desperate to be in a US school (i.e. you live far from the US now and want to work in the US eventually), it's only worth it to apply to US schools on the higher end of your list, because there's no point going to a US school that is the same level as a school in your own country. Even for 8 schools, I thought it was a lot so I did what St Andrews Lynx suggested above. I also checked with my letter writers (who were all former supervisors and most of them were current mentors) to make sure they agreed with all of my choices and more importantly, the number of choices.

Oh I'm still on my first year of Amazon Prime at the student rate and haven't seen anything about being limited to 4 years yet! I'd still pay $80/year for Prime though

As rising_star said the "Results Survey" or database or whatever you want to call it already exists for this purpose: http://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/

I love this! It's only free for 6 months but it's totally worth the $40/year afterwards ($80/year for non-students). Also, once you pay for Amazon Prime (at the student rate) you also get all of the video benefits etc too!! And Amazon's customer service is top-notch! Online shopping in the US is way way better than in Canada

I agree that "How are you going to pay for this?" is not a valid question to ask for admission. But, the purpose of listing the award amount is to demonstrate the prestige of the fellowship won. It's not perfect, but it's a good way to tell the committee that "Award X from Country Y" is an award approximately equal to a NSF award etc. Schools aren't just looking for candidates who won't cost them money. Most schools will even say that they will not accept self-funded students (i.e. people who can just pay their own way). A student costs more than the money to pay their tuition and stipend. Students also cost the profs' time and space in classrooms, which might be better spent on a good student that the department may have to pay.

I think there are threads for people to write/vent/cry/complain/worry about their rejections. They pop up as individual threads, not as an entire forum dedicated to this though!

Some of my schools even said that screenshots of your "grades" page in your online student account is fine. I really wouldn't worry about rotated scanned transcripts vs. electronic transcripts. You can even black out parts of a scanned transcript and it should still be fine (e.g. if you want to remove some personal information that you don't need to submit). But if you have already done to the work to get the scanned transcripts and you feel happier that way, then that's much better. I think keeping sane during the process is the most important!!

I wouldn't say that School X is so much better than School Y etc. because 1) it's unprofessional to "attack" other schools and 2) the people reading your SOP may have friends at School Y, or may have graduated from School Y etc. I think Loric's example is a good way to address it. I would just go into more detail. More rigor does not mean a better education. It's great to mention specific examples of graduation requirements that are in line with the other goals in your SOP. For example, I know some schools that require grad students to give an outreach talk of their research. If e.g. science communication is important to you, then you can cite this requirement as something that you and the program both value.

This is a good point, but my meaning was not that small fluctuations in prize money due to fundraising/donations will make a difference. To use some examples, admission committees would want to know if an award was something like $2000 (i.e. small change to the school), or was it like $20,000 (about the value of a TA/RA package or tuition), or $40,000-$60,000 (about the value of tuition + RA/TA funding). So small changes due to fundraising might make some awards go from $1000 to $800 or $22,000 to $21,300 etc. But these variations are not important to the Graduate School. In my experience, awards with year-to-year variations like this are small in prestige and in scope (prestigious and large scope awards would just grant fewer awards in years where funding is tighter). I've seen awards for several hundred dollars for the top student in a particular course, or for about a thousand dollars for the top student in a particular year at a particular department. For these, it does not make as much sense to write the award value, since the point you want to demonstrate is that you were the top student, not that your skills were able to bring in $X. (However, I would debate the value of even including a "Top Student in Course X" type award at all). So, I might even agree with a rule like you shouldn't list the monetary amount unless it's over $10,000 (or some other arbitrary cut-off at around this point). Just list these awards by their title that demonstrates what you have achieved. If you are trying to save space or be concise, I wouldn't even list awards valued at less than $10,000. In my experience, these awards are small in scope, in the sense that they might be for "Top X-Year undergraduate student in Department Y", instead of something more prestigious, like "Top X% of all applicants in field Y".

I have external funding from my home country's government -- our equivalent (but not as well funded) to the US NSF. I think the single fellowship I am eligible to apply for is the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship, which is kind enough to have non-Americans who attend American schools be eligible. So, don't give up, make sure you keep checking every fellowship you hear about and you might be eligible! For entry-level fellowships, you may also be eligible for the Fulbright awards but they are very competitive (you would apply through your home country).

I was also worried about not giving consistent answers, so I actually prepared a document where I copied and pasted my answers to the common "short answer" questions, so I could see everything at once. Also, this was only more time consuming for the first few applications -- afterwards, I can just copy and paste my stock responses from that list into other applications.

Depends on how the word limit is phrased. If it is a strict limit, then I would not go over by more than 1% (i.e. 5 words in this case). But if it is as you said, "approximately" 500 words, I would read that as "up to 10% variation". I doubt that your words will be literally counted when the limit is "approximate" because anything that is grossly long would be noticeable by people who have read tons of 500 word essays in a row. So, in your shoes, I would maybe pare it down a little, to be closer to 550 words. Note that this is just my personal opinion/interpretation of the word limit -- if you are truly worried then it's probably best to contact the department directly.

I think the only real place it will matter is the fellowships where your transcripts will be required. Otherwise, it probably won't matter unless your GPA gets low enough to be a concern for any advancement in your program (candidacy etc.)

I think it's still worth it to email him. If he sees it and meets with you during the conference, then that's great. If it's an "email flood" in his inbox, and your email isn't read, then no harm done either!

I agree that these are great questions to ask on a follow-up email, once you have established some kind of communication with the prof and he/she has indicated they would be interested in learning more about your experience (or it is implied). But I think unsolicited emails containing a ton of application materials (CVs etc.) could be a nuisance and it will be hard for profs to find the time to review everyone's material closely enough to give a meaningful yes/no (that is what the admission committee is for!). But if you just introduce yourself and summarise your experience/interests in the first email, it gives the prof a chance to decide whether or not further contact is worth their time. I think that attaching a CV at "first contact" might seem too pushy and might lead to a higher chance of being ignored, especially if they see it at a time where they are too busy to be reading CVs.

Don't push a prof to write letters for you that they don't want to write -- it won't go well!! It's okay to have a general letter -- it doesn't need to be personalised for each school. I can also understand a prof not wanting to submit letters to 16 different places -- even if they are all the same, it can take ~10 minutes per school (find the link, figure out how to log into the system, type in the identifying info, upload letter, etc.), so 16 schools is almost 3 hours of time!! If you really want this letter, it's probably best to figure out how many letters the prof is willing to send (X), and then pick which X schools to ask this prof to submit to. At the same time, ask another prof to write the remaining letters. If you pick the X schools that have the earliest deadlines for the first prof to write, then that might give you an extra few weeks for your new prof to write their letters. I don't know about your field and your situation but 16 schools does seem a bit excessive!