TakeruK

The AdComm would not be the same group of people for two separate programs, unless the two programs are close enough that a large fraction of the profs in one program are adjuncts in another etc. But it's perfectly normal for profs to submit the exact same LOR over and over again. Most profs will "personalise" it by changing the school name but that's kind of a meaningless change. It would be best if the prof could write specifically about why you would be great for each program, but that only works when the prof intimately knows how that program works. Most profs won't be familiar with all the programs out there. So I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Wow, this is really crappy! Can you get some people on your side? It's hard when it's you vs. two departments who probably rarely communicate. If you want to fight it harder, I would talk to as many professors as I can and see who is going to be on your side. I would also talk to third parties, like your student council or the graduate school. These groups usually have an ombudsperson type position that can help you. It doesn't sound like the departments are willing to help you unless you make a big stink about it. Whether or not you want to do this, or even if it will be worth it to do this is up to you, but it doesn't sound like you can rely on the departments to figure this out without you putting a lot of pressure on them.

I applied for external funding at the same time as my grad school application (for both my MSc and PhD programs). In my case, most grad school decisions are made in Feb-Apr, while most fellowship decisions aren't made until early April! However, some programs have a "first cut" that is made sometime in the early Winter, so you can mention that when applying to schools. The materials sent to the fellowship and grad schools are pretty similar, so I think grad school admission committees can have a good guess of whether or not you're likely to get funded. To answer your other question, the majority of the awards I've looked at in Canada and the US do not require you to be a current student to apply for it, but it does require you to be a student when you take up the award. So, for example, many awards have a range of possible start dates (e.g. May 2014 to December 2014), and in order to actually receive the award, you need to start a PhD program within that date range. If you end up not taking the award because you didn't get into a program, then that award might go to someone else, or just disappear, depending on how each award works.

This is very dependent on your program! But if you want to hear comparisons, 1 credit = 1 expected hour of work per week at my school. Most of my courses at 9 credits, so this means 9 hours of work per week. 3 hours is lecture, I probably spend 5-6 hours on homework. This means I usually skip most of my reading except for whatever is required to do the homework. Some weeks there are no homework, or an easier homework, so that leaves extra time to study for finals or work on a class project. We usually take 3 courses per term in the first year, so that's 27 hours for classwork. We also had to do 2 projects in the first year, so I spent about 20-25 hours per week on research. I try to operate on the principle that classwork should only be completed to "good enough" but that is a LOT harder said than done. In fact, even though the math works out here, I am pretty sure I actually spent more time on classes some weeks! Also, our profs here told us that if we got all As, then we were working too hard on classes, but a B+ average might mean that we need to spend more time. Unlike other schools, our current program will grant credit for any passing grade, I think. So, I think most students here aim for an A- or A, to get an average in between, so an occasional B+ is okay. But this is all calibrated to my school, my program. It's not going to be directly helpful to you at your program, other than a perspective on how it might work at other places!

You should definitely bring this up with the administration in both programs. They probably did not do this on purpose to "trick" students but it's pretty irresponsible of them to advertise a dual degree program yet fail to avoid situations like this. Are you the only student in your specific dual degree program? I think you should try to convince one of the two departments to let you replace one required course for another in order to avoid this situation. But you definitely need to talk to both groups and ideally get a meeting between you and someone from both departments.

Sometimes the online application form is a general one that all applicants get so you can probably disregard that page, but it's best to ask to check!

I don't think 1 or 2 years between undergrad and grad school is a significant enough gap that would "look badly". It would be a good idea to keep in touch with those you intend to ask for LORs though! Maybe even give them advance notice now (they might even prefer to write the LOR while the memory is fresher and then just touch it up when you do apply).

The OP isn't saying that they want to go to grad school solely to meet a future spouse, right? To me, the post reads as someone who is concerned about meeting a future spouse while in grad school. More generally, worrying about how grad school may affect the non-academic parts of our lives is a legitimate graduate student concern! I don't think there is anything wrong with choosing to go to grad school for other reasons in addition to academic ones. I think it's even okay to have non-academic reasons to have similar priority to academic reasons. For example, my wife and I have thought about starting a family while I'm in grad school. So, when we were deciding where I should go, we picked the program on lots of non-academic reasons (close to family, good stipend, good health insurance, childcare benefits, safe environment, multicultural city, nice weather, etc. etc.). Most people would agree that these are all important factors to consider when picking a school. And, I don't really see a huge difference between any of the factors I picked and something like "potential to find a spouse" (e.g. picking a big city). Graduate students should not be expected to, nor should they need to put their personal lives on hold while they get their graduate training. I'm not saying it's a bad thing when people choose to focus solely on school/work while in a graduate program. However, if you don't want to do this, you should not have to, and I don't think it's fair for people to say things that imply one does not belong in graduate school/academia if one has non-academic priorities. The only factor that matters is whether or not the applicant wants to go to grad school / believes it's the best course of action for them. To answer the OP's other question about experiences with dating in grad school. I started grad school with a significant other and for most couples I meet with one (or both) partners in grad school, they usually had begun their relationship before grad school. But I also know plenty of couples that begin relationships while both partners were in grad school, or one person in grad school and the other not. Grad school is definitely time-consuming, but it's not time-consuming to the point where the only thing you can spend time on is school. Granted, I don't know the workload of a MSW program, and it might be way more intense because it's a shorter program than a PhD. I think that with good time management skills, grad students can definitely find time to date, to spend time with their spouses, to raise a family, to play on a competitive sports team, to volunteer in the community, etc. (obviously not all of these at once!). Grad school can easily take up all of your time if you let it, or if you want it to. You have to make time for your own activities if you want to have time to do other things.It's not necessary to always put school as your priority. There will be times where you will have no choice but to buckle down and get the work/studying done, but it's important for me to have balance and other interests/priorities as well.

Yes, I think you will have to get help from ETS directly, not the testing center for this issue.

I am surprised that it would take a page to describe your research to someone. I think you should aim to do it in maybe 3-5 sentences at the maximum. Imagine making an "elevator pitch" to someone -- let's say you are at a big conference in your field and you end up talking to a prof in your field (but you have no idea if they are an expert in your subfield) for 30 seconds. They ask you what did you do with Prof X. and you have to tell them. What do you say? In my SOP, I had 4 research projects to discuss and for each one, I summarised the problem we were trying to solve in 1 sentence. I discussed the methods used and skills learned (2-3 sentences). I then described our results and why it was important (1 sentence). Finally, I also discussed any impact our work ended up having in the field. One thing you should keep in mind is that the profs who read your SOP may come from a wide background. So, I wrote sentences that could be read at different levels of detail. For example, "I used the SWIFT numerical integrator to...." People who know what SWIFT is will immediately know exactly what kind of skills/experience I have. But people who don't know SWIFT will still know what type of method I used and what kinds of skills are generally required for that method. Ultimately, I want to tell the people in my subfield my specific skills, so those who need to know will know what I mean. This level of detail is not necessary for those not in my subfield, so I don't need to waste several paragraphs describing the SWIFT numerical integrator.

I haven't heard of this "not being allowed to talk to applicants" rule before, but if you are worried about bad timing, why don't you express an interest in meeting with the POI and ask them when they would prefer to meet with you.

I discussed my training/experience with useful research skills when I discussed my previous research. For example something like "I worked with Prof X on Study A. I analysed the data using Method B and we ended up with result C." Or something like that.

Glad we were helpful But I just want to point out that networking is important both inside and outside academia, so business cards could be helpful for all graduate students that are interested in having them!

Your LOR writers will know whether or not you have waived the right, which means they might not feel as comfortable writing an honest evaluation of you. The admissions committee will also know this and they may question whether or not the LOR writer was comfortable enough to actually write an honest evaluation of you. You should always waive your right -- it's not really an option, consider it like yet another EULA you click "yes I agree" to in order to install/use any software! If you want to know what you need to improve on, it's probably much much better to just sit down and have an honest talk with your profs. Give them some advance notice so you don't catch them off guard. I think if you are trusting these people to write the LORs for you, then hopefully your relationship is good enough so that you can have an honest talk like this (although you might want to wait until you're about to leave if that makes everyone more comfortable).

That's how I feel too, as long as it's enough salary to not have to worry about my future or making ends meet My main career goal is to work in a job where I can use my knowledge and skills to solve problems (whether it's research or for a corporation or whatever), instead of just using (mindless) labour. So, academia is one path that would satisfy my goal, but it's not the only way! But I guess if I have to choose between mindless labour or not being able to give my family the life we want, then I'd choose mindless labour.

I understand how you feel. I think the current system is really broken when you compare how much graduate students are paid with their skill and experience level. Many US schools don't even treat graduate students as employees -- at least in Canada, we are considered workers and have the same rights and can contribute to retirement savings plans etc. Unfortunately (in my opinion), the prevailing attitude amongst both the current profs and many current students, is that if we want to devote our lives to research, we have to be willing to suffer through these crappy conditions. As much as I can, I work to get better conditions for myself and my fellow students. Many students (who then become faculty) feel like grad school is super awesome because you're basically getting paid to go to school (a nice change from undergrad where you have to pay a lot of tuition!) plus you get great experience. However, I always try to remind people that there is a huge opportunity cost for us and that is my main justification for why I think we should have better working conditions (higher stipends and more benefits) to make up for this fact. For me personally, my main concern about money is whether I have enough to live the lifestyle I want (i.e. not just the bare minimum to survive, but to be able to be comfortable and have financial security for the future), without worrying about money (either now or for the future). So, this factored into my grad school decision -- I definitely rejected some offers solely because the stipend offer was extremely low. Even at my current school, where the stipend is decent for grad school standards, I would not consider myself having financial security if my spouse was not providing a second income. In my ideal world, graduate students should earn about 40k to 50k per year. For the future, while I plan to stay in academia where possible, I am only going to apply to and accept post-doc positions that will pay me a salary that will allow me to have the life I want. I am estimating that I would need somewhere around 60k/year at that stage of my life. There aren't very many postdoc positions like this outside of fellowship positions, so it will be pretty hard. If I can't get this, the promise I've made to myself and my family is that I'll find a job elsewhere, in our hometown, that will provide the financial security. Having a PhD can help achieve this and I'm planning on doing things that will give me the experience to be employable outside of academia. So, I think I feel better about investing many years and money into a PhD because I think I have "a way out" if academia doesn't go well. I am happy because I feel secure that the PhD will improve my future job satisfaction and financial security.

This is pretty common in Physics. Many people have asked this at a different forum, geared towards Physics students (physicsgre.com), and professors have responded to confirm that they do not share applications with other schools. It would be a breach of ethics! Listing schools will not hurt you and as others said, the profs have responded to say that they use it to figure out both who their main competition is as well as determining the likelihood that you will accept their offer. If you're a superstar student applying to a middle ranked school, then they can know that you're applying there as a backup. They won't reject any student for being "too good" (they would love it if you ended up there!) but that helps them determine how many offers to send out. Most schools have a good idea of their return rate (I think my school makes something like 30-40 offers and hope for 18-20 acceptances), so having this extra info helps them determine how many offers to send out! Also, in an interview, some schools will just ask you outright how they rank on your list of preferred schools, knowing that not everyone automatically prefers the highest ranking program.

In my opinion, LORs are the most important part of your application that could benefit from any extra preparation this far in advance. Powerful LORs come from people who have known you as an academic for many many years, and this is hard to do when you start looking for LOR relationships the year of your application. Also, getting LORs = getting research experience, which is also super valuable, at least in my field.

I'm planning to get business cards printed once I reach candidacy (because then the info on the card will probably not change until I graduate). I am going to probably use this service: http://www.911printers.com/store/product-view.html/31 which will do them quite cheaply and you can design the entire card yourself. I think an order of something like 200 double-sided colour cards will cost less than $30? The requirements to reach Candidacy varies for each program, but no one is probably going to check! In my program, you apply for candidacy and are accepted if you demonstrate that you finished your coursework and have a solid research plan in place to finish your thesis/degree. In other programs, you need to pass an exam to get candidacy. In academia, I think the general understanding of what a "candidate" means is someone who has completed the majority of their degree requirements, and is now mostly completing their research and dissertation. My "business" card will be used in academia, so I will put something like Name PhD Candidate Department, School But if I will be planning to use my business cards for things outside of academia, I would probably list my title/job as something more descriptive of my useful skills and experiences.

Sorry for going off-topic, I was responding to the others here that said things that seemed to imply you should go elsewhere for your PhD! I don't know the answer to your actual question, sorry

Astrobiology is a very young/new field that combines expertise in a huge variety of backgrounds, e.g. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrobiology I would summarise it as "studying life in the Universe", which is very general. One "problem" with astrobiology is that data outside of the Earth is very scarce. I would only know this from the physics/planetary science point of view. My own program does astrobiology research only superficially. For example, we have some people studying the atmospheres of exoplanets as well as bodies in our Solar System. Some people study the atmospheres in order to find signs of life or signs of compositions and conditions (temperatures, pressures) that can support life as we know it. We also have some people studying, e.g. Mars, for signs of past life (studying surface processes, mineralogy for signs of previous water, for example). And, we can also study other objects from the Solar System when they make it to Earth -- for example, many meteorites are strongly believed to have come from Mars. Other more comprehensive astrobiology programs could also include the study of extremophiles living on Earth and extrapolating what could survive in other environments outside of the Earth. But also, remember that Earth is a part of the Universe, so studying life on Earth is still studying "life on a planet" -- we just happen to have the advantage of living right on the same planet. Which is why I think zoology would be a good background. Multidisciplinary fields, in my opinion, flourish when people from all different backgrounds and expertise get together and approach the common problems with the tools and experience they've developed in their toolset. Perhaps the OP can expand more on how one would tackle astrobiology problems from a zoology/biology point of view -- I've only really discussed the point of view of a planetary scientist!

Most people I talked to would consider diversity to be "different schools for undergrad and PhD". In the US, many people don't do a separate MA first since most US schools admit BA graduates to their PhD programs, so if you end up doing 3 degrees, I don't think it's necessary to do 3 schools.

Note that you might get more than one human reader scoring your test. From the ETS website: So, your scores might be 4.0, 4.0, 4.0, 4.5; or 4.5 4.5 4.5 4.0, leading to a final AW score of 4.0 or 4.5, respectively. This is why they say "round to nearest half-increment" instead of just "round up".

I would also suggest scheduling an appointment with a counselor or something similar sooner rather than later, but mostly because figuring out the way ahead is not just something that happens over a couple of sessions. It takes some time! I would not worry as much about giving the department time to find a new TA. Sure, the more advance notice you are able to give, the better, but working out your own path forward is way more important. So, there's no need to tell your department you want to leave until you are certain about the path you are going to take (I'm not trying to talk you out of leaving, but maybe telling people you want to leave right now is not the best path?). Even if it means telling them a few weeks before your TAship starts -- it's a crappy situation but that's the way it is! At my old school, we sign a contract a week before each term starts, so we have no obligation to actually be the TA until the contract is signed! Does your school have a union for TAs? If so, reading your Collective Agreement will provide details on what will happen. You can also talk to your union staff too, because it's their job to know the Collective Agreement and they can help you interpret the legalese. If there's no union, then it might be tricky because most departments are quite unclear on protocol (which is one reason why Collective Agreements helps makes the rules clear to everyone and it no longer seems like the school can just make up the rules as they go along).

I think the one component of an application that takes the longest time is getting a good relationship with professors so that you can get a very strong LOR. If you are in a Masters program, I would assume that you might have at least one person from undergrad, maybe you did a honours/senior thesis with them? You probably have an advisor for your Masters program too, so that makes 2 LORs. So, in your shoes, I would try to get a third LOR lined up starting at this point. In my field, the best LORs are those from research supervisors, so I would maybe think about doing a side-project to get a third completed research project. But, if you already have 3 research related LORs, or if research LORs aren't important in your field, then I guess you should find other ways to strengthen LORs by forming stronger relationships with people you have in mind for LORs. Alternatively, you could also prepare for and take the GRE early to get it out of the way! And, if you are able to travel to conferences in the next 2 years, you can start making a list of people you are interested in working with and then chat them up at the next conference. And you can also use the conferences to hear talks from lots of people in order to find someone you'd like to work with!