TakeruK

How do you know your letter writers? I would only send 4-5 letters if all 4-5 letter writers can write very strong letters about my research work with them. It's pretty rare for someone to have this many research LORs but if you have it, then that's great! However, if you only have a few research LORs, I would recommend only sending the 3 strongest letters -- and research LORs are much stronger than "this student did great in my class" type letters. Grad school LORs are not like job employment LORs -- more is not better, especially if they all say similar things about classroom performance. If you have one or two really strong letters, then sending in 4-5 letters will just dilute the stronger ones.

You should never ever ask them to see your LORs. Not a year from now, not 10 years from now. However, in the ideal case, you should pretty much know exactly what is going to be in each letter because you and the prof should have a had a strong enough relationship that you would not worry that the prof would write overwhelming negative things about you. In fact, I would say that if you are not 100% certain that the prof will write positive things about you, then you should not ask that prof for the letter. Note that even if you didn't waive your right to see the letter, you can only view the letter due to the fact that they will become a part of your student record. However, you only will have a student record if you actually get admitted to and attend that school. So, even if you don't waive your rights, you won't be able to see the letters from schools you didn't get into, and it would be not very useful to see the LORs after you are already in a PhD program. So, always waive your rights, it's the norm! As for timing of letters, as others said, they don't usually get written until just before or just after the actual deadline. You're in good shape now -- you have found at least 3 people willing to write you letters. More letters is not better -- if you have more than 3 and you feel that one is going to be less strong, then drop that letter and don't use it. It's better to just have 3 strong letters than 3 strong letters plus 1 average letter. I would recommend sending the official LOR request using your online application about 4 weeks before the deadline, so that the profs know it's coming. I would then send a reminder at 2 weeks before the deadline, 2 days before the deadline, and the day after the deadline if necessary. I would send ALL reminders through the application system, because then they will have a link directly to the place where the professor will upload their letter, and it will be much easier for them to have that link come with every reminder than for them to have to find the original email with the link from a month ago.

Being on sabbatical doesn't mean that you are 100% cut off from any contact with your current school. While it's true that these profs will be very unlikely to serve on admissions committees, that does not mean they will not be accepting students for the following year. If you are interested in working with these profs, you can still go ahead and email them and they will respond if they are interested. Also, in many US schools, students are admitted to the program directly, not to a specific prof or research lab, so you might not even need to worry getting a lab set up before you arrive. In some programs, this happens sometime during the first year but in others, it might not happen until the second year. This is program/school dependent though. In short, it would be silly if going on sabbatical meant that you don't accept students for the next 1-2 years. In my field, many profs that go on sabbatical will actually keep in regular contact with their current students and if they are visiting another school, would probably fly back to their actual school once in a while. So, if you are interested in working with these profs, even if you don't need to "sign up" with a prof before being accepted, it is worth the time to send them an email to ask about their interests once they return and whether or not they will accept students from your application year. They might take a bit longer to respond though!

I'm not 100% sure about this, but I feel like prompts asking for how you "contribute to diversity" would want to know things that make you different from a "traditional graduate student" (i.e. middle class white male entering right out of undergrad, with potentially family members in academia). I personally think it's important for an incoming class to have diversity but I also am cynical and suspect that many schools include this in their prompt so they can point to it and say "affirmative action!" but not actually consider it in their admission decision. Of course, I don't know what school you are writing for so there's no way I can say this is actually true or not, but I have heard some professors say that they don't really care about it (I think it is important because some unrepresented groups have a big disadvantage getting into academia). However, I think it's worth it to include, but don't stress too much about it. For your current SOP, I would say that having the extra responsibilities at home and your experience in industry would count towards this part of the prompt. I think you could try to also work in your theatre interests if you weave it in as demonstrating skills/attributes you picked up from your time in theatre as being helpful in your undergraduate or future graduate career, somehow. But you can also just include it in your CV under "other activities" and the committee might see it too. I think it's a good thing to add a bit of personal details to your application to help set you apart (and another purpose of the "contribute to diversity" is so that the incoming class can have an interesting and good mix of different people with different personalities). Here are some ideas that you might want to include as well if they apply to you: 1. Are you part of an underrepresented minority in your field (based on gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, religion, etc.)? 2. Are you a first generation college student? A first generation graduate student? 3. Did you work part time / full time during college? *Note: My undergrad school was a large public "state" school where most of the students did come from a large variety of ethic backgrounds, working class parents, etc. so I didn't really think that this made me a "minority". However, after some experience at the graduate level and seeing that the experts / established field leaders are actually pretty homogeneous, I then realised that things like having parents in academia or being of a certain gender/ethnicity gives one some inherent advantages. So, you don't have to actually feel like a minority to be one, and I soon realised that the diversity of my undergraduate graduating class is not actually duplicated when you, for example, look at a department's faculty list, or a conference's list of invited speakers (or even lists of contributed speakers). 4. Did you work with or volunteer with any groups in your school / community (e.g. student government, outreach groups, community service etc.) Just some ideas. I wouldn't make this a big chunk of your SOP but a short paragraph that describes you as a person rather than as a set of academic skills and achievements would be useful for this prompt. I've found that most of the prompts I had to answer did not actually include this part in the SOP and actually wanted all of this information in a separate essay, sometimes called "Personal History Statement".

Here are some of my thoughts: 1. I think you should change your introduction. The prompt does not actually ask "how did you become interested in the field". Also, although I am sorry to hear about your sister, I think it is pretty cliche to have a story like that to motivate you into the field. Other similar things I would say to avoid are stories that have the theme of "I was interested in X when, as a child, my [family member] introduced me to X, etc." This is just my opinion though, please feel free to disregard Instead, I would begin directly with your research goals, because I think that is the most important part about why you want to attend graduate school. Just briefly describe the topic and then later on, after you describe your undergraduate work, you can describe your future research goals in further detail if you'd like. I think you should keep some elements of your first two paragraphs, particularly the challenge of balancing your commitments at home and at school (that's the only part that is relevant to the prompt). I would put this information in the middle of the SOP, probably right after describing your undergraduate training, instead of opening with this. Basically, I think the opening should focus on the main reason for the SOP, which is to answer "what do you want to do in graduate school", not "why are you interested in neuroscience". 2. For your description of your past experience and research, you should include some information about the effect of your work on the scientific community (even if it is small). For example, what happened to your extensive literature review. Was it published anywhere? Did you present it anywhere? Is it being used by your supervisor for introducing their class or research students into the field/topic? Even if it ended up just sitting on a shelf somewhere, which is common for undergraduate work, you could still describe in more detail why your work was interesting. i.e. where does your work fit in the big picture of the knowledge in your field. I do get a slight sense of this in your paragraphs but I think you can develop it further and be more explicit. Similarly, I think you can describe your work in industry further. It sounds like you might not have gotten the chance to work on interesting problems in depth (which is why you want to go to graduate school) but you were very vague in what you did. I think the skills you developed in industry might be really helpful and you should explicitly describe what studies you helped with, what were your actual duties and how these skills can transfer to graduate school. 3. I think you can also develop your connection from your past to the future more. I think part of the reason why I feel something is missing here is because as you said, you haven't described "why school X will help you reach your goals" paragraph(s) yet. But when you do write it, be sure to connect your past experience (and especially skills learned from both your undergrad research and your industry job) with your future goals and with the resources available to you at school X. I actually think this is the most important part of the SOP. But right now, your SOP only lists your future research goals, without any connection to how your experience gives you the foundation to achieve these goals (and without how school X is the right place to get you there). 4. Finally, it might help to beef up your long term career goals statement. I think it's hard for any of us to know for sure what we want to be when we "grow up" (i.e. graduate) but I feel like you have not given a strong enough statement that explains your motivations for going to graduate school. Right now, you say that you want to keep learning "in your career" but do not really say what your "career" is going to be. Lifelong learning is an admirable goal, but it should not be the sole reason for wanting to complete a PhD, which I feel is a specific set of qualifications for certain careers. I think many graduate schools will want to hear that you want to be a part of academia somehow, such as working towards a tenured position or maybe some other kind of non-tenured researcher (e.g. staff scientist etc). But maybe it's not necessary to have such specific goals! However, you can still be less vague about "your career" by making statements such as "During my PhD, I want to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to carry out independent research", or "to lead a research team/lab" etc. That is, I think you should move beyond simply "I want to learn in my PhD". You should somehow justify the need for the PhD training in order to achieve the career that you want. You may not have to identify a specific career but you should at least identify what you hope to get out of your PhD and these things should be connected to your research goals and the resources at School X. Hope that was helpful! Remember, this is just my opinion and may not necessarily be the best ideas! Please make sure you consult other people, especially those in your field, those who know you and those who know the programs you want to apply to Good luck!!

However, if you are American, you would be able to switch to California residency after a year in California and then you will be the same as any other student (in terms of tuition cost). Some schools have a special fellowship to help offset this difference for the first year which the departments can take advantage of in order to "hire" out-of-state grad students and then you won't be at any disadvantage at all, financial or otherwise, for being an East Coaster.

I think it would be fine to just politely and directly say that this is not an acceptable question to ask. Then I would make sure the entire class knows this and modify the syllabus, course webpages etc. as necessary to make it clear. I don't teach the same courses as you, but my students had to hand in long formal reports / writeups of their projects and I never grade anything unless they are actually handing in the final product. I direct any questions about how marks are awarded to the marking rubric that I provide at the beginning. If a student finds something unclear and would like me to clarify, I try to answer the question without example from the student's own work (i.e. instead of saying "well your paragraph here does / does not....." I just make up a hypothetical sentence/paragraph to illustrate my point). If I think it's something I've failed to make clear, I would clarify it with the entire class so that everyone is on the same page. Also, don't feel like you have to answer a student's questions right then and there in your office hours. If there is a tough question, sometimes I tell the student that I would need some time to think about it and then email the answer to everyone.

My spouse and I made geographic preference a big deal in our PhD search (we didn't in the MSc search) even though we knew that jobs in specific geographic locations are rare! However, I think a tenure track position is even harder to get so like fuzzy, we decided that why suffer through a PhD in a horrible location without any real guarantee that there will be a tenure-track position at the end, regardless of location! In the end, we decided that location is more important than anything else so starting with the PhD, we're only going to move to places we both want to live. I'd rather leave academia than live somewhere I hate, since we both feel confident in our abilities to get decent work in our geographic location of choice. Although it is hard to say how we will feel in a few years when it's actually time to job hunt, during the PhD search, I weighted location/quality of life/personal motivations on equal footing with academic fit / quality of research and other academic reasons. Before applying, I made a list of all the schools that interested me academically and personally and showed that to my spouse. She then removed all of the places she did not want to live (considering both personal preferences and the potential for her to find work) and then I applied to all of the remaining programs. After the results came in and it was time to visit, I told all of the schools my 50-50 personal/academic weighting and my spouse even visited a few programs with me. We then both independently made our final list and showed them to each other. Fortunately, the top 3 rankings were exactly the same on both our lists so it was an easy choice! But if they were not, I would like to think that we would have been able to sit down, discuss the options and figure something out (one alternative would be to not do a PhD at all). When it is time to apply for jobs and postdocs, I think we will be following the same strategy.

I don't think you can actually "transfer" graduate programs. Every school wants to be sure that its graduates (who carry around the name of the school) completed exactly the program they prescribed. So, I think it's pretty rare to be able to "transfer", by which I mean being able to keep credits earned in your previous PhD program etc. However, you can still reapply to a new graduate program in the US. Usually, PhD programs in Canada require you to have a MS or MSc first -- is this the case? Some US PhD programs will reduce some requirements if you come into a PhD program with a Masters degree, but many will not. So, reapplying and getting into a US PhD program will mean starting over, which is another 5-6 years. I know that in Canada, PhD programs where you have a Masters first (maybe from the same school, maybe not) tend to take 3-4 years. I also think it would also be harder to get into a new PhD program after you've already started one than directly from a MS or BS degree. So you should definitely explain in your application why this new PhD opportunity will be different from your current program. As you said, you shouldn't give details about you and your supervisor (but you can mention something like "bad fit" etc.). Montreal is a big Canadian city that is not too different from other US cities on the east coast (other than the French) so if you apply to these schools, you might want to make sure you explain why this new place will be better for you. I guess you should also consider a new supervisor at the same school, but it sounds like the personal reasons are driving your desire to move more than your supervisor "fit". You should definitely not lie about your status as a PhD student in your current program -- so you will have to provide transcripts etc. But you don't have to consider the last year as a waste -- it's a year as a research assistant in a PhD program, which is generally a good experience to have, so you can also put this on your CV or write about the work you did in your SOP etc. Good luck!!

I sometimes call them time machines too We actually have to account for this in some of the work I do! The light from the Sun takes about 8 minutes to reach the Earth. i.e. if the Sun were to just switch off, we would still see light for 8 more minutes. But, this means light coming from objects like Pluto can take hours before they actually arrive on Earth! So, if you need to measure positions accurately, astronomers have to take this time delay in account

Yes, I did that and everything was fine.

I think you would be okay with 2 strong research supervisor LORs and one "did well in class" LOR. I don't think it really matters who write your "did well in class" letter, unless, as fuzzy suggested, the name of the professor will be known to your admission committee (in a positive way). So, it's probably better to go with the EE prof or the MechE prof instead of your writing professor. With all else being equal, I would go with EE since it's more relevant to your field of research. However, if you are applying to a program where the MechE prof might have some ties (e.g. collaborators, alma mater) or if the MechE prof is generally well known enough for their work that people in EE might have heard of them, then go with the MechE prof. But, as fuzzy also said, since this is a "did well in class" LOR, it is probably not worth too much worry deciding between these two. Also, your original two choices (the above LORs) are much better than the other ideas, but it's good that you have been brainstorming all possible pathways! Although the other two ideas (STEM coordinator, Education prof) would be great recommenders for jobs outside of academia, they are not the right type of LOR you want for applying to grad school. The STEM coordinator is not in academia and since you're coming from a "traditional path" (i.e. no prolonged absences between undergrad and grad school to do work in your field etc.), I think you would be expected to provide references from academia. And although grading is a part of grad student life, I don't think your ability to work as a TA is really a huge factor in admission. Letters that describe good work ethic, good character, etc are not very useful for grad school applications, in my opinion. This is because I think your other two research related LORs would already do this and your good work ethic would be demonstrated in both these letters and your transcript. In summary, I think it's important to remember/realise that LORs for grad school are very different than LORs for jobs we might have applied to in the past. The main thing that the committee is interested in is: "Will the applicant succeed in our Masters/PhD program?" The main definition of success is producing great research and the best way they can answer this question is to hear what your previous research supervisors have to say about your research work.

Sounds like you have a good plan. It may not be your place to be critical of your PI as a professor/researcher in the department, but you don't need to make statements like "Prof X. is unfit for this department" or "Prof X. is unfit for research" !! However, it is totally your place to be critical about your fit/desire to work with Prof. X and make statements like "Prof X. is an unfit mentor for me" or "Prof. X and I do not work well together" etc. I think it is incorrect to equate a good professor/researcher with a good PhD advisor for everyone. It's perfectly possible that a professor might really be the best person in the whole field but would be a terrible match as a mentor/advisor for most people! Consequently, you don't have to criticise your professor in order to justify your desire to leave the lab!

Although I did write longer essays in my high school, we never covered any sort of citation style at all. We were not expected/taught to do in-line citation, but we were taught how to write a bibliography. But the way that we were taught implied that there is only ever one way to do a bibliography! I think this was the norm in the area of Canada I grew up in since every single BA and BSc student at my university had to take a freshman English class that taught the mechanics of academic writing. That was the first time I even heard "MLA" or "APA" etc. and the first time that we learned to do in-line citations, and all of the complex rules. I found that the best way for me to learn all of these cases was to learn citations/mechanics separately from learning how to write and express ideas. We had simple exercises where the sole goal is to learn how to write several different types of MLA citations. Then, we moved onto a slightly more complex task -- writing a simple argument paper with supporting facts from 6 different sources, where the different sources have to be from a book, a journal article, an online article etc. just so that we learn how to properly cite things. The course also covered things like structure of essays, rhetroical devices and how to critique the writing of published works as well as our peers etc. So, although we did write actual content, the goal of the course is to learn style and we were mostly graded on style, not the content of our writing. The second mandatory English class for all BA and BSc students was a literature class where content / quality of our arguments were graded more strongly than style. I am glad that my university and my instructor remembered that while correct writing style and citations come second nature to them, us students come from a huge variety of backgrounds and that they took the time to teach us how to write. That first English class is probably one of the most useful classes in my entire undergrad career because proper writing is so important. But I think I would have not learned nearly as much if I had to learn to write academically (i.e. style) while also learning how to analyse literature at the university level (i.e. content). I think it's important to teach these two aspects separately at first.

Sorry to hear that -- I would have expected that while a DGS might give his/her advice to stay/not-stay, they should ultimately help the student achieve their own goals, not the what the DGS thinks is best. That is, as long as you find someone willing to take you into their lab, the DGS should do what they can to help make the transition smoother. I also think that if you tell the DGS right now that you are 100% sure you want to move labs, then the DGS should be helping you find a new lab / advise you on how to approach the topic instead of leaving you on your own.

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about my time at Queen's! In short, while I do like my own department, there were many aspects of the University's overall administration that I did not find compatible with me! If you'd like, we can discuss this further via a private message though.

Hi, I am a J-1 student and my spouse is employed as a J-2. We are both Canadian. I wrote about this topic in response to another member's question this previous summer, you can find the full details of the whole employment authorization process here: In summary though, it took about 3 months for the whole approval process to be completed (we applied in Oct 2012, she received it in January 2013). It then took a few more months to actually find a job (but this totally depends on what job you're seeking and where you live!). The application process costs about $380. Your school's International Student/Scholar Program office should help you with the whole process.

You should also prepare for them to ask you "Do you have any questions for us?". In some of these chats, the prof just gave an overview of their program and research going on (in their own lab or their colleagues') and then asked "So, what do you think? Any questions?". So, be prepared for both the "traditional interview" case (where they just ask you a bunch of open-ended questions about yourself) as well as a "conversation about their grad program case" where you might be expected to lead the conversation with your questions! I made the mistake once where I went into a chat like this expecting that they would be leading the conversation, but when they wanted me to talk, I couldn't think of anything and felt really silly! It worked out in the end though, but I have learned to not get into that situation again!

I think in general, it's actually okay to leave a lot of questions blank, especially if you do not think answering will help you. For example, for one school that did not require the Physics GRE, even though I did take the test, I did not answer that question. Or, some schools will have questions like "Where else did you apply?" or if you are an international student, questions about your finances (you will eventually need to provide this information in order to get your visa and/or foreign student status). Even though this financial information is not actually needed until after you are accepted, some schools ask for it right away to streamline the process. When I applied, most applications had 6 or 7 screens/pages of questions but only 2-3 were usually actually required. **Note: However, sometimes schools have their financial aid questions along with the application so you would want to answer them to apply for any extra financial support! Make sure you read each section carefully For this particular question, like daniele said, there really isn't any advantage to leaving it blank. Like any other job interview question, if you don't have great response, make sure you present whatever you say in the most positive light possible. It's actually not that abnormal for someone to take one or two years between undergrad and grad school, so something like "looking for jobs, preparing for grad school" is probably fine -- you don't need to have written papers, or started charitable foundations etc. in the meantime!!

If there is a faculty member who is the "Director of Graduate Studies" (DGS) or some similar position, that would be the first faculty member I would go to for advice. But I'd only do this once I was sure about my intention to leave and if I know who I would want to work with instead. Also, there may be other students in your department who did this in the past! Depending on your comfort level with various profs, you could also approach people you are interested in and say something like "I don't think Prof. X and I are a good fit and I'm thinking of going in a different direction with my thesis. I am interested in [stuff about their lab]. Would you have an opening?" etc. If you are not comfortable approaching these profs directly, having the DGS on your side at this point could help make it less awkward. If you'd like, the DGS might even be able to approach the other profs on your behalf, without revealing your identity at first but I'm not sure if every DGS would do something like that. Once you start all this, although you might be able to not have your current prof find out right away, you should expect them to know sooner or later (probably sooner). So, it would also be a good idea to tell your own prof as soon as you feel ready. Again, the DGS can help at this stage. Overall, when you are sure you want to swtich, I strongly recommend discussing this with the DGS because they know how the department works in terms of funding schedules etc and they can help you navigate tricky situations like this! Good luck!

When I was an undergraduate and funding was very limited (i.e. whatever student support organizations we could apply for funding from), I think I was able to make a 4-day conference cost only $500 -- $300 for the flight, $150 for conference registration which includes shared accommodations, and $50 for incidentals like whatever meals we couldn't find free food for, public transport between airport and downtown (2 hours!). Since then, I've been lucky enough to be in pretty well funded places (or at least, have well funded supervisors), so while I always try to reduce costs as much as possible (after all, $100 saved today is $100 for us to spend on equipment, publication costs, travel, etc. in the future). But, I will at least splurge on something like SuperShuttle for trips to the airport instead of public transit. I plan trips well in advance and look out for seat sales. I will eat actual food instead of ramen or fast food though. However, I usually do not go to conference banquets ($90 for a meal? no thanks!) -- there's always enough post-docs or students to gather up and have our own semi-fancy dinner at a nice restaurant. If I go out and have a lots of drinks with people then I don't charge it as a conference expense. And I always share a hotel room with one or two others -- both to save money and to have people to hang out with! In my opinion, the above is being reasonable with grant money. After all, we're at the conference for work purposes and it's unreasonable, in my opinion, for our employer to expect us to only eat fast food or ramen. If it's our own expenses and not grant money, then I feel that it's unreasonable if the norm was that students would have to do this in order to get the exposure needed for our future. So, for me, I probably wouldn't do it! But that's just me. Even with these cost saving measures, here is the budget for the last conference (5-days) I went to: Flight: $300 Transport to/from home airport: $60 Transport to/from destination airport: $50 (saved some money by getting a ride part of the way from a friend in town) Registration fee: $400 (no special rate for students) Accommodations: $400 (was not able to find someone to share with) Food: $150 ($30/day) Total: $1400-ish Here's my budget for my upcoming trip (5 days): Flight: $300 Transport to/from home airport: $30 (getting a free ride one way) Transport to/from destination airport: $45 Registration fee: $160 (early student rate) Accommodations: $500 (sharing a room at the conference rate -- supervisor wanted us to stay in the conference hotel) Food: estimate $150 (the per diem is $66/day but I usually only spend $30) Total: $1100-ish The cheapest conference I was able to complete was a 4-day conference in a town only a few hours away (so I could take the train instead of flying) and I think that total cost was just under $500. In these budgets, the only room to save money, I think, is to reduce the cost of accommodations -- we could split it more ways or find places further away from the conference center (which was/is downtown for both of these meetings, so everything within a mile is more expensive than the conference rate). I would probably do this if I was expected to pay for myself, but this could only bring down the cost by a few hundred -- it would still be well over $500 out of pocket. So, I would only make this personal investment of money and time if I was able to find some source of outside funding to make my own out of pocket cost much lower. This is entirely possible though -- when I had to do this, I was usually able to raise something like $300-$500 from student organizations, schools and conference organizers.

I think this is pretty abnormal in my field -- both the fact that a grad student could stand in for an invited prof's talk and also the fact that your supervisor would expect you to pay the costs of attending the conference yourself. However, with the government shutdown, many researchers are not able to make trips anymore so some conferences have been more lenient on having a proxy present your work. Also, many conferences in my field (at least the ones I've volunteered at) will waive registration fees for invited speakers. If it is normal for supervisors to pay for student travel expenses in your field, then I don't think you should necessarily assume that you should pay the fee yourself unless your supervisors directly says so. Has he sent you on other conferences before? In your shoes, I would tell him that yes, you don't mind presenting but ask what are his plans for paying the fee. At my department, we usually have to pay the fees in advance and only get reimbursed after the trip. If we don't want to carry around a large balance on our cards, every prof has someone in the admin office who has access to the credit cards corresponding to various grants and when I need an expense paid, I get the prof's permission to use their card and then ask the admin staff to make the purchase (e.g. plane tickets, etc.). If you get confirmation that you have to pay the fee yourself, then as Eigen said, you should decide whether or not it's worth the investment. Unless the conference is local, keep in mind that there would be a lot of other costs too -- travel, accommodations, food, etc. On average, I think going to a conference in North America costs about $700-$1500 (depending on location), which, for me, is far too high a cost to bear myself. But, some big conferences also have student travel grants that you might be able to apply for. There may also be nationwide organizations for your field that offer travel support for cases like this (great opportunity for the student but no other funding). Finally, your own school/graduate program might have a few hundred dollars of support for this too. If the conference is local then maybe you can also volunteer as pears suggested to get your costs waived, if possible.

I definitely agree that you should never try to convert your scores. Many applications I had actually told you to NOT convert it and just leave that field blank if your school did not grade on the same GPA system and/or if you were an international applicant. Sometimes it's not clear if you need to leave it blank, so I asked them about converting scores and they told me that they will inspect the transcript and convert it their way. Also, for those applying to Canadian schools (someone mentioned UBC), it might be helpful to know that Canadian schools have very similar cutoffs across the board, in both sciences and the arts/humanities. The cutoffs are almost always: 90%+ = A+, 86%-89%=A, 80%-85%=A-, going down in about 4% intervals after that. While these percentages are fixed, GPAs are very different though -- UBC doesn't do GPAs, some schools have a 7 point GPA, some 10 point GPA, some 4.3, some 4.0. I've noticed that this is fairly different from some US schools (e.g. my current school), where there are no fixed percentage-to-letter-grade conversion, and profs tend to set the grade cutoffs after all of the final scores are tabulated to achieve whatever distribution they (or the school/department) want.

I agree with fuzzy -- I don't think large author lists are necessarily wrong! Things are different in each field but fortunately, if you are someone who is in a position to judge publication lists of others in your field, then you are probably well experienced in the idiosyncrasies of your field! Many journals in my field are starting to require authors to make statements stating which author contributed what. I think this is a good thing if the intention of this disclosure is simply disclosure and not to allow the journal editors to decide who is or isn't allowed to be listed as a coauthor. The disclosure helps someone outside of the field understand how authorship works in that field. It's especially useful in very general scientific publications, such as Science or Nature, which are read by people in all fields. However, with the growing number of people in cross-disciplinary research, I think it would be great if all major journals in a field would adopt policies like this.

I think it's pretty well explained on this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_undergraduate_degree_classification You can read the article to get the context, but you can scroll down to the table under "International comparisons" to compare 2:1, 2:2 etc with American GPAs. In summary: 1st class = 3.68/4.0 GPA = A- (in Canada anyways, I'm assuming this is also A- in the US in the 4.0 system) 2.1 = 3.33/4.0 = B+ 2.2 = 3.0/4.0 = B (Of course, conversions are not actually straight forward like this, since all schools have their own procedures, but this could be a rough guide. Also, grades seem to mean different things at different schools/countries as well!)