TakeruK

It's definitely not impossible to get into UC schools as a Canadian, of course. I think this would also depend on size of the incoming class! In astronomy, UC Berkeley takes about 6 people per year, so 10% of that isn't very much! Programs that take in cohorts of like 30-50 students would be able to admit more international students! I just remember talking to a lot of Canadians at my BSc and MSc schools and that some of them didn't feel qualified enough to apply to the private schools, which might be higher ranked in some fields than the UC schools. So, I always try to remind international students to not be afraid of private schools because they might actually be easier to get into. Good to hear that you already heard that And good luck!!

Your instinct to not mention these grades is probably the right one. I don't think there is anything you can say that would make a difference anyways -- it's clear from the rest of your transcript that you normally do well in courses. If you really feel the need to explain that you didn't hand in the final paper in that second course, I would probably just say you were not able to complete the final paper due to personal reasons but not go further than that. It sounds like you are at a Canadian school too. If you are Canadian, then it might be helpful to know that international students like us will, in general, have a harder time getting into the University of California schools. Public schools like the UCs have to pay a lot more for international students (unless you have American citizenship, your tuition will always be super high) so the acceptance rate across the campus for international students is about 10% at the UC schools. Maybe your field has a higher number of international students though. However, at private schools, the tuition tend to be the same for all students, so it's not disadvantageous for a department to admit international students. So, I would encourage you to make sure your 7 California schools include places like Stanford and Caltech -- you might actually have a higher chance of getting into a private school than a public school because of funding! Since you said "top ranked" schools, you probably included private schools as well anyways. But just FYI

That's a good point -- I guess this is one of the cases where although we are both in the physical sciences, things do work differently for the lab-based groups/fields!

I found that the ETS Search Service was really just a way to sign up to get spam. Unless things have changed in the last few years, I don't think the solicitations are actually personalised at all. So, I wouldn't think anything of a solicitation from ETS Search Service. If a prof contacted you directly (because they saw your paper/pre-print/poster/presentation etc) then that would be a much stronger indicator that you would be a good candidate!

The way you describe it is not normal. In the physical sciences (at least in my field), the first author is the one who did most of the writing and the one who corresponds with the journal etc. snowshoes already discussed all the reasons to avoid this situation! However, it is normal for a PI to heavily edit the writing of the student's drafts, especially earlier in the student's career. It's not uncommon for a student's final submission to actually contain less than half of the student's original writing. But, all of these suggested changes from the supervisor should be presented as suggestions for the student to consider and then discuss and/or implement them. This would be a good way for a student to learn how to write papers by the time they graduate! In my field, it's also normal for multiple people to write up different parts of a paper -- i.e. if different sections describe different analysis by different people, the lead author might ask these other people to write up their own sections and then the lead author puts everything together. Because of these factors, it might be common that a paper that you are first author on might not end up having the "tone" of your natural writing style. I think this is okay! But it sounds like this PI wants to skip the "internal discussion" phase of writing, which is the most helpful to the student!

I'm in a field where the readings for classes are often supplemental (i.e. optional), not central to the lectures/discussions. When we do get specifically assigned to read certain papers or chapters from a book for a discussion, it's something that is actually manageable (i.e. less than 1 hour of reading). My learning style is also not from reading but from someone verbally and visually explaining concepts to me. So, I usually only skim my assigned readings unless I am expected to discuss it. When I skim, I make notes of some questions I want to ask or highlight some key points that I might bring up in a class discussion. I don't think our profs expect every single one of us to be experts on everything we read -- the whole point of the discussion is for those who understand it more to help others understand the material and also provide interaction/added depth to our surface-level reading. In my courses, most of the work is in problem sets so I would also read select sections of text that provide the information I need to solve the problems. I should define what I mean by "skim". When I "skim", I "read" every word (i.e. my brain registers each sentence) but I don't try to critically evaluate it and I might not take time to go back to connect ideas. When I "read" an assigned piece, I would actually read it several times, try to rewrite the main arguments and supporting ideas and connect ideas presented in the work with other ideas in the work or previous work. It is very hard for me to read things and remember ideas without writing them down so if I seriously read a piece, I am usually taking notes. For me, "skimming" doesn't mean skipping over words/paragraph, but it just means a cursory first pass, considering one section of text at a time and just jotting down whatever pops into my head as I read it. I'm not sure what kind of program the OP is in. I think classes in graduate school are very different than classes in undergrad. At the grad school level, it's up to you to decide what you want to get out of each class. In many programs, you will have to take classes that are either uninteresting or not useful to your degree. It's perfectly okay to do the minimum in these cases and spend your time on more important classes or other priorities such as research (if you're in a research based program). In other words, in grad school, we realise that we don't have enough time/energy to do everything well. We have to prioritize what we want to get accomplished and budget our time/efforts accordingly. This might mean not participating as fully in every discussion and/or doing the bare minimum in some situations.

I also think it's not weird that some profs might prioritize their students in this order: PhD, senior undergrads, terminal masters. For some of these profs, they might feel that their job is train future academics, i.e future versions of themselves. Whether or not this is what they should do is a different discussion, but it's definitely true that a portion of profs will feel this way*. So, a PhD student is someone who might be them in the future. In addition, they will carry the "Harvard PhD" label forever and the prof would want to keep the reputation of their program high. An undergrad student is someone who might be a PhD student in the future -- maybe not at Harvard but they would want Harvard BA graduates to keep up the strong reputation of the undergrad program, helping undergrads get into good PhD programs and become future profs. Also, the above poster makes good points about the school's "identity". A terminal masters student is the least likely of these three groups to end up like the prof. The prof might feel that if this student was going to be a PhD in the future, they would have already been in a PhD program, not a terminal masters program. *Note: I talked to a prof about how PhDs from that prof's school fare outside of academia, in terms of job prospects. The prof responded that he had one student leave academia to use his physics knowledge to program for a video game company. Then, the prof immediately followed that up by expressing how he felt that he [the prof] wasted 5 years of his life to mentor/train this student only to have the student leave academia. I'm not trying to defend this attitude but I think there are reasons why some profs would prioritize their time with undergrad over terminal masters students. I think some profs actually believe that either 1) all of their PhD students will end up in academia because there's enough work for all of us, or that 2) only failures will not end up with an academic job. I think these attitudes are misguided and I would personally try to avoid these people as my mentors/supervisors!

Fortunately, I think that the majority of advisors out there are not out to screw over their students! Unfortunately, cases like this aren't rare either Like you, my first experiences with mentors were good ones. But as I met more students at different places, I started seeing cases of not-so-great advisors. Some of them aren't actually out to get their student, but not every supervisor is going to be a good mentor and not every supervisor wants to be a good mentor! Sometimes it's best to find two separate people to fulfill the work-supervisor and career-mentor roles. Also unfortunately, in most of these cases of being scooped, the power is all on the prof's side. First of all, it's usually not illegal or against official regulations for an advisor to do something like this. There's no law to prevent people from doing some "jerk-y" things! So, while going to the university, graduate dean, director of grad studies, your student society, the university ombudsperson, etc. might still be a good idea and you might get some support, it ultimately isn't going to reverse what happened. But it's a good idea to do this if you feel that your working relationship with your advisor is now irreparable and you want to go in a different direction. Secondly, if a supervisor does this, it's likely that the supervisor has way more clout in the field than you. Like many workplaces, academia is one of those crappy places where people might tolerate actions from distinguished profs that would not be tolerated in other aspects of life or from an undistinguished person! The most you can do is to warn incoming students or prospective students about this advisor but unless you know these students well, they don't really have a good reason to accept your advice without skepticism. Thirdly, in academia, it's really bad practice to badmouth someone else, even if that other person deserves it! This is not really something unique to academia though -- we all learn that in job interviews, we should never badmouth our previous employers etc. etc. If a student goes around to all conferences telling everyone they meet about how horrible their advisor is, they might also inadvertently give themselves a bad reputation as well. And even if people believe all of the student's legitimate complaints, in the end, they will see Prof X as a person who has accomplished a lot, but has flaws A, B, C while they would see Student Y as having complaints D, E, F but not positives to balance it out (because of course, the advisor has made it very difficult for the student to achieve much). Fortunately, this has not happened to me. If it did, I would probably be really frustrated and want to speak out but I don't know if I would given the above points and potential to hurt my career more than the tenured prof's career. I don't really know how to fix this complete imbalance of power in academia. I am thinking that with modern technology, everyone in every field is much more in communication with each other now than decades ago. So, I am optimistic that students/junior faculty would be able to share info like this more discreetly and effectively and that in turn, would help shift the balance of power away from senior faculty.

For tests and other important things, I sometimes set a deadline for questions, and this deadline is usually the last scheduled class/lab meeting before the exam. I want to make sure all of the students come into the exam with the same information, so I make the class aware that I won't answer questions like "Is Topic X on the exam?" or "How many questions?" or "Is it multiple choice?" etc. after the last class meeting, which is the last time I have to convey info to the whole class.

When I TA'ed courses, I let my students know that I'm available for questions during office hours and while they could email me short/easy stuff, I'm not going to spend a ton of time responding to each person's email because, well, that would just take forever. I log my work hours as a TA and I literally only get about 1 hour per week to interact with students outside of class/lab. If I spend 15 minutes writing a detailed answer, I can only answer 4 students' questions. Instead, I usually limit my email contact to students to setting up appointments outside of office hours if necessary. I also let them know that they should not expect instant reply via email -- that it would take probably one business day for me to get back to them (usually I do it faster than this, but it discourages them to email me a ton of questions the night before something is due). In fact, I usually try to schedule my office hours a day or two before the due date so that there are no last minute panicky questions. I also try to not have office hours in the first week and use that extra time to have an extra office hour near exams. For your exact situation, I would second St Andrews Lynx's suggestion and email the entire class reminding them that 1) if they want help, they should seek you out earlier than the night before, 2) that most of the material is in the book/lecture notes, and 3) that if they still need help finding the answer, they should go to your office hours or make an appointment with plenty of notice.

I worked in 3 different groups/research projects during undergrad but not at the same time. I worked on each of the first two projects about 40 hrs / week for 8 months and then my final project was an honours thesis, about 10hrs/week (I arranged my courses so that I would have a lighter load in my final year). I was able to do full time research/lab work for 8 months on each project because I was in my school's co-op program -- so I took 3 years of courses, then 1 school year and 2 summers off to do research, then my last year of school. I'm not in Psychology but the Psychology program also had the co-op option too. I honestly think this is the best thing that I could have done to help me get into grad school, win fellowships etc. Also, working full time in each lab allowed me to get publication-quality work accomplished! PS: Other perks of doing co-op if it's available: paid research work (I earned enough to pay off my tuition) and it's a nice break from having a ton of courses to going to a job where you didn't have any homework -- when you're done for the day, you're free to do what you want!

Many programs in Canada also require a willing supervisor in order to secure admission. I would also suggest that you try to follow up with people who didn't reply at all -- they might have just missed the email, so try again a few times before giving up! And I think it's worth trying to contact different profs that you might be interested in but didn't contact in your initial set of emails!

I just wanted to say that if I remember anything from the "Career and Personal Planning" classes we had in high school, the most important thing in career development is to be flexible to change and thus develop transferable skills. In addition, throughout college, the attitude of my department was not that "oh you are getting a physics degree, let's prepare you for physics grad school." Instead, they emphasized all the skills you develop as a physics major and how you can use these skills to have careers outside of physics/astronomy. For example, alumni from my undergraduate program have gone on to work for companies like Amazon or Plenty of fish. I don't mean to directly contradict you, but I really do not think it's realistic to expect to be able to choose a career path in our 20s and then stick with it for the rest of their lives. My own teachers did not do this (one was a banker until her 40s then switched to become a teacher), my parents didn't do this, my in-laws didn't do this either. I think it's important to be a bit more open-minded, and instead of thinking "this degree in X will get me a job in X", I would think "this degree in X will train me in skills A, B, C, for use in the future". Similarly, I would think "this job/career I'm having now is giving me skills and experience in D, E, F and I can use this for the future". This is why I said above that the PhD is not terribly useful unless you cannot be happy without a job that requires it. You develop a few useful skills in the PhD, but they are not very transferable -- everything in the PhD is pretty much designed for one career path -- academia. I think working in a research position for 5 years might net you more employable/transferable skills than a PhD (except in academia). However, if you truly feel strongly that you absolutely must work in your own field, then obviously you will be happier doing so and it sounds like you want to choose the PhD. I agree with juilletmercredi that there it isn't a good idea to do a "PhD just in case". It's a huge commitment and cost, as you have stated in your original post, but ultimately, I think being happy about your life is more important. I would just advise you to make sure whatever choice you make is actually what you and your family want. I would lean towards the research job because that's how I'd get the most happiness out of the situation, but maybe that's not necessarily true for you! We have similar career goals here. Many of the jobs I want to have require a PhD, or having a PhD would make me more competitive. But it's important to remember that a PhD does not mean a guaranteed job that you'd like. I think my field is pretty small too, and there are many many more PhDs graduated each year than there are professorships open. Even during my PhD, I am doing (and plan to do more) extra side things that will hopefully give me some employable skills in case I don't make it in academia. I'm sorry to have misunderstood your post. The wording was slightly different in the original and I misunderstood it to read that you hated the research work you were doing, not just the culture of the job / the job itself. As academics, we all value academic freedom and independence but the truth is, I think very few people actually get to choose their own research projects and truly call all the shots. You probably have seen this: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1436 It's a satire, and professors do get a ton more freedom than a research scientist; however, it's really only professors or researchers at soft money institutes that get this limited freedom. Again, this is only a small subset of all the possibilities that can happen after you get your PhD (during which, you won't really have much freedom either, but probably more than your current job). I stopped here to re-read what I wrote and I feel that my post sounds more and more like I'm trying to tell you to not do the PhD. So I just want to say that this is not the case! I was trying to point out my opinions on the advantages of not doing a PhD when you have another opportunity, but I guess they came out more strongly than I intended. I am in a PhD program and I'm pretty happy with it in fact! However, I hope you will still consider what I said above about being more open-minded about a career path, instead of picking one and sticking to it. You don't have to agree with me, I just hope you don't dismiss my post as someone who is trying to convince you not to do a PhD. Whatever you choose, it should be whatever you and your family think is the best path forward for yourselves!

$1000 is a lot right now, especially when we probably aren't actually making real income yet. But it's a worthwhile investment -- if you get in, then $1000 spread over the 5 years in grad school is pretty small. If you don't, then for me anyways, that $1000 would have been well spent to let me know that I wasn't cut out for the PhD route after all. I didn't use Interfolio at all -- I don't think the sciences do this! As others have discussed on this forum, the big disadvantage with Interfolio is that your LORs will not be custom-made for each application. However, at the same time, our LOR writers probably personalise these things as much as we do our SOPs (i.e. change a few words/names here and there). So probably it's not such a big deal! I applied to 8 schools. I had 3 LORs for each school, and the deadlines were spread out between Dec 1 and mid-January. I asked for LORs around this time in 2011, then gave 4-week, 2-week, and 2-day reminders to my writers. When I gave my 4-week notice, I also attached a 1-page summary file with my GPA, GRE scores at the top, a 2-3 sentence description of what I want in my PhD, and a list of all the schools I applied to, their address, the method of LOR submission (if it was not electronic), the deadlines, and the names of the profs I wanted to work with. Some profs wanted to see a copy of my SOP or other materials so I sent those to them too! I sent the reminders using the University's Application System (by clicking a button in the application system) because this provides them with a direct link to upload the letter, instead of having to search through their inbox. I know that many of my profs use their inbox as a to-do list, so if my mail isn't at the top, they won't remember to do it! It turns out that for most schools, submitting an LOR late isn't a big deal -- when this happened, I just let the school know that the letter has been delayed and I reminded my prof again. I wouldn't bank on this happening, but I would try to not have a panic attack if one of your profs is late either! In every case this happened, the secretary wrote back to say that it's no problem -- the committee doesn't meet until weeks after the deadline anyways etc. Again, don't count on this, just try to stay calm when deadlines are missed, because they probably will be!

Yes. Not only that, ETS publishes a complete list of every single possible prompt you can receive. It's on their test info page, there is a link midway down the page: http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/prepare/analytical_writing The list of topics is super long and it's probably not a good idea to memorize a response for every possible prompt. But it's helpful to look through the list to get an idea of what to expect and also they are good for practice!

For me, about half of my schools were happy with unofficial transcripts or a scanned version of an opened official transcript at time of application (they would only require a certified hardcopy when I registered for the school). The other half of the schools wanted my previous schools to mail certified hardcopies, which cost $$ unfortunately Sometimes if you are applying to multiple programs at one school, you only have to submit transcripts, test scores, etc. once. Find out how long it takes to send transcripts and I wouldn't do it more than a few weeks in advance of the application deadline. I changed my mind about schools more than once during the application season. Also, some schools will want the transcripts sent directly from your school to the new school and they will NOT accept a transcript from you (even if you didn't open it). I would say it's not abnormal for students to spend over $1000 to apply to schools (including application fees, transcript fees, GRE registration and score reports), especially if you're applying to a lot of schools. I viewed it as an investment in the future! At least I didn't have to fly myself out to interview at schools like my med school friends!

I think this would be a terrible idea for graduate applications. Graduate admissions are very different from undergraduate admissions and while family connections may matter for the latter, trying to use them to get into a program will only hurt you for the former. Think of it this way: a graduate student costs a ton of money -- especially at an expensive Ivy League school. If you were a professor, would you really use "grandchild of a former graduate" as one of the criteria for deciding which one of the applicants to invest several hundred thousand dollars of your research budget on?

I see Lisa and sunpenguin's point of views and I agree, in some circumstances (i.e. depending on the student and their family), going the PhD might be the better route. Also, I forgot to mention that I have a Masters degree from Canada before starting a US PhD program. In Canada, the Masters degree is basically the first 2 years of a Canadian PhD program (if I had stayed in the same place for my PhD, I would probably finish in another 3-4 years instead of starting over in the US). A MSc in Canada opens up a ton more opportunities than a BSc -- you can be a prof. at non-research universities, you can be, for example, the science manager for a museum, you can be a lab manager for a research lab (one of my undergrad research project was managed by a brilliant MSc), or a research technician, staff scientist, etc. Having a PhD might make you more competitive for some of these positions, but it's only high level independent research positions that would really be excluded without a PhD. Even my lab manager was able to do research independently and also supervise undergrads. Also, although my reply time was way after the OP's first post (I started writing then had to leave), I was reading the original version of the post where the research position sounded much more permanent (i.e. not a 2 year renewable contract or something and also it sounded like it was an actual research related position, which the current wording doesn't imply anymore). Anyways, so please take the above points into account when I said that I would personally go for the job over the PhD. Just to respond to a few valid points made by Lisa and sunpenguin: 1. Both of my parents had jobs they hated when I was growing up. They had to flee their home countries at a young age and did not even finish high school. I found that this really motivated me to work hard to end up in a job that at least utilizes my skill instead of just my labour. I think it's important to be a bit more realistic when saying that we "hate" a job. I think it's unrealistic to expect that every one of us will have a job we love. My goal is to just avoid a job that I would hate (the only ones I hate are the ones that make use of my labour only) and be content even if I did not end up with a job that makes me happy. I would content to do any kind of research job -- research independence is ideal for happiness, but not having it would not make me hate the job. 2. Career happiness and family happiness are not mutually exclusive, of course. But for me, since I have such high constraints on family happiness, if I am able to have a job that meets all of the family happiness criteria now (e.g. like the job the OP has) then I would be willing to give up career happiness to secure family happiness. My wife has also been incredibly supportive on "our" PhD journey and we picked the current program together -- the PhD program decision was made with equal weight to academic fit and personal fit. 3. Personally, I think the expression "Education is with you for life", when applied to "formal education" only makes sense for high school and college/university level work (one can certainly continue educating themselves in their interests outside of a formal degree program throughout one's life though!). As I said above, I do not believe that the PhD degree is NOT a life enrichment program. To me, it is purely the training/certification necessary in order to carry out independent and innovative research. I would not advise anyone to do a PhD unless that was their goal -- a PhD program is not the place to go if you just want to learn more about your interest and pursue your passions. This is why I was confused by the OP's seemingly contradictory desire of wanting to attain a PhD yet also absolutely hating a research job (I've see the wording has changed now, but it originally implied that the job was research related). Maybe I was wrong about the research nature of the job, which would change a lot of things I've said above. 4. It's true that one might feel regret about not completing a PhD in the future. But the reverse is also true. A PhD is no guarantee for career satisfaction or happiness. In terms of career advancement/progress, after the PhD and/or postdocs, the OP might be far behind where the OP could have been if they started their career now and then regret having gone the PhD route. Or not. The point is that we don't know the future and every point I might write towards going for the job can be refuted by another point for the PhD and vice versa. This is a tough decision and I don't envy the fact that you have to make it. However, at the same time, you are in a very fortunate position to have a choice in your future -- some people are currently facing neither of your choices! Good luck

I don't know if this is a difference in field, or I just did my SOP incorrectly, but I did spend a lot of time in my SOP discussing my past experience to motivate my future plans. I wrote 4-5 sentences about each of my past projects (4 of them) and why I chose to get a BSc and then a MSc afterwards. All this took just over 1 page and then I spent the remaining 0.5 pages discussing the future. I don't know if I did it right but my goal was to demonstrate that I am a suitable candidate for their department by showing examples from my past that fit. So, instead of e.g. saying that I am a hard worker, I showed them examples of what I had worked on and the positive results. Instead of saying that I have a lot of experience in "theory X", I showed them all the ways I had worked on this before. Instead of saying that I am responsible and thoughtful about future plans, I showed them my train of thought as I decided to move from one project to another, sometimes in very different fields, but always advancing me towards my goal. In the last 0.5-0.7 pages, I made an argument about why the school I'm applying to would be a great match for my experience and my goals, with the intention that the history of my past experiences would support these statements. I only talked very very briefly about future plans and only in general terms. I did not discuss any potential research problems or projects at all. One of my main interests in my PhD is to gain experience using telescopes, so most of my "future plans" and "good fit" statements involve discussing how University X's facilities would help me do this. I also gave a list of 3-5 names of people that interest me. I ended the SOP with a few sentences summarising what I wanted to get out of a PhD (observational skills, experience to become an independent researcher). Again, I don't know if what I did (i.e. the opposite ratio of what fuzzy stated) is more common for physical sciences, or if I just did it all wrong and somehow still made it into the schools I wanted. Or, maybe this shows that the SOP style/format does not matter that much at all? However, I still feel pretty certain that one shouldn't discuss future research plans (in the style of a research/grant/funding proposal) in a SOP though. You shouldn't get so technical that you need to cite previous studies as a background and discuss a specific problem to solve. I also think that if you discuss a specific research question, then you might limit yourself too much. But if you try to bring up 3-5 research questions then you either won't have time to develop them all, will write for too long, or will sound unfocused.

I think this is very much a personal decision -- only you can decide what you want / what's best for you! I am surprised that they let you go ahead with both job and PhD this long -- most fellowships will prevent you from committing to a full time (or even part time) job elsewhere! If I was in your exact shoes right now (permanent, full time, well-paying job offer, spouse has good job that she loves, living in a city we love, having great support system for our new family), I would definitely take the job. This is because a PhD is no guarantee that you will end up with a job that you would like more! My current plan is to get a PhD in hopes of getting at least a permanent research staff position in a location where we could live the lifestyle we want and also be close to a support system for our future children (i.e. close to our family). Sure, I would be happier with more independence/control on my research as a professor instead of a research scientist but that difference would be marginal for me. To me, I would definitely trade career happiness/satisfaction for family happiness! Of course, in the ideal world I would want to have both but if that happens, I would feel like I've won the lottery. In practical terms, I'd gladly suffer through 40-50 hours/week of a job I hate and spend ~120 hours a week living a life I love with my family. Also, I would consider why I want a PhD in the first place. Maybe your field/career goals are different but to me, if I felt that a research scientist position is hell, then I probably would not want any career that required a PhD either (since anything in my field that required a research degree like the PhD would probably require doing research). I would not do a PhD just because I want to extend my education -- I think of my PhD as required training to get certified to work in a career that I want in academia. Ultimately, I might end up outside of academia which is also fine, because I think the PhD is also a qualification I need for the jobs I want. In terms of finances, to me, $85k/year is a great starting salary. If I stay in academia, that's about the starting salary for an assistant prof at my dream job school. But I would only be able to get there after 5 years of grad school ($30k/year and 4-6 years of post-doc ($40 to $50k/year). Going through the academia route is basically an opportunity cost of about $40k/year for 10 years...$400k and 10 years just to end up where you would be right now (in terms of salary and career advancement), assuming everything goes well and you actually get a tenure-track position in a location you actually like. Also, if you stay in your job for 10 years, you will probably be further advanced and probably at a higher salary grade too. And, even if you changed your mind about being unhappy in your job, I think 10 years as a research scientist is probably more useful experience than a PhD and 2 postdocs (unless you are going to try to get into academia). The bottom line for me is that personally, there is a list of things that would make my life happy and complete. The items include things like location, salary, spouse happy at their career, support system for new family, job satisfaction etc. In order to achieve all of them, my ideal job would be a position at a university near my hometown (I'm not certain if I want to be in a position that is mostly research or mostly teaching). But for me, it's pretty unlikely to get all of this! Thus, I'd gladly trade one aspect (i.e. job/career happiness/satisfaction) to be sure that I'll achieve everything else on that list (and also get it 10 years faster than my current career plan). That's just my point of view though, I'm not saying this would necessarily work for you but I hope explaining my opinion would help you form yours! Good luck

Yeah you might have to wait until April 1 but you might have to wait that long anyways (one of my schools last year with non-rolling deadlines had a deadline of Dec 1 and gave me their decision on like March 25). Also, most schools might give you the April 15th deadline thingy so you can probably hold onto other offers until you hear back from this one.

In my opinion, there is no real advantage to applying after January 15? Compared to many other programs, Jan 15 is pretty late so it's not like waiting until April 1 would likely improve your application, so I would feel like it's in my best interests to apply at the beginning. I would guess that rolling admissions would work like Canadian graduate programs (including my Masters institution), where applications are forwarded to faculty members as they come in. So, if a strong applicant submits something, it's a good chance that a prof would offer them admission sooner rather than later. Intermediate applications might be held onto until the deadline approaches and the prof doesn't think they will get someone better (or if someone better declined the offer and open up room).

I am interested by the structure of this SOP. I didn't write mine in this way though, but I honestly do not think there is only "one correct way" to format a SOP. In fact, I really think that in many science programs, especially in the physical sciences, the format and style does not directly matter. Admissions committees read the SOP for content, not writing style and it's not likely that a committee will say "This student wrote entirely in the passive voice, we're not going to accept him/her", for example. I know people with a wide variety of SOP styles that are all in top tier graduate programs in my field. I should qualify my above statement though and say that SOP style can indirectly affect your admission prospects because the style can affect how effective your SOP message will be conveyed. So, if you have tons of typos and poor sentence structure, it might make it hard for the committee to understand your message! But if you have clear and concise writing that addresses all the issues important to the admissions committee, then you should be fine. Your SOP structure intrigues me because it is kind of the way research grants are laid out and I like that. I guess the main difference in your structure and something I wrote is the order that the material is presented and thus a slight shift in emphasis. In my SOP, I wrote in chronological order, starting from my research experience as an undergrad and explaining my contributions to each project and what I got out of it and explaining the shift from one project to another and why I chose the field. Basically, I treated my SOP as if I was in an interview with a prof and they asked me "So, why are you interested in our department?". In analogy to your SOP, I began with sections 2 and 3. I didn't really specify what I wanted to do in graduate school at the level of a research proposal or research statement though. I felt that grad school is supposed to be the place to figure it out and from talking to profs before applying, they seemed to also indicate that they just wanted to accept strong candidates with interests that are aligned with the department, but not actually accepting people to work on specific projects. However, I think that outlining your research ideas/interests might be a good way of demonstrating that your interests are well aligned, as long as you don't indicate too much close-mindedness I think. Overall, I'd say that my SOP was more like 80% of what I've already done and 20% briefly outlining what I would like to do in graduate school. I just touch on the "big question" (e.g. "How do planets form?") or general terms describing methodology (e.g. "observe [with a telescope]", or "numerical simulations" etc.). I wouldn't go as specific as something like "Use [specific telescope X] to look for signs of planet formation around stars like [category Y]". In contrast, I think your SOP would be more research oriented, more like a funding proposal instead of a SOP, in my opinion. But like I said, the style doesn't matter too much, as long as you convey the same type of info, it should be fine!

I just looked up my unofficial examinee score report -- it's verbal, then quant. then analytical. I'd assume the on-screen score that appears right after your test would be in the same order too!

Glad to be helpful. Just curious though -- there aren't many PhD programs in (bio)Physics that do not offer full funding, so it's strange to hear that you "keep finding" them. I also just noticed that your location says "Edmonton". If you are looking at programs in the US, make sure you are looking at PhD programs, not terminal Masters program. Unlike Canada, American schools admit students directly from undergrad into 5-6 year PhD programs instead of doing a Masters first. These PhD programs are fully funded and you get a Masters "along the way" usually. Many big name schools won't even have Masters-only program and almost all Masters-only programs are unfunded. However, without formal training in undergraduate Physics, it might be pretty hard to find a physics PhD program that will accept you. I'm not sure if the US engineering programs are different though but I think the general case is that terminal Masters programs are not generally funded in the US.