TakeruK

rising_star already answered the first part of your question -- i.e. department committee gets your application first, the graduate school/university level committee only sees those vetted by the department. At this stage, admission is all but a formality except in cases where the school might have a hard cut-off in GPA, or TOEFL score, or GRE score etc. But as others said, sometimes the department can convince the University to bend the rules for you (one of the best pieces of advice I got about academia is that almost all rules can be bent). As for your other questions, I think it's unlikely that any application will be automatically tossed out. Whether or not having an advisor that wants to take you will really depend on how that department works. At one place I attended, the formal departmental admissions committee doesn't do much work other than forward relevant applications to each prof. It's completely up to each prof to accept you to work with them, so it's more like a job hunting process. This is more common in Canada and I know one school where you can only get an offer if at least one professor says "Yes I will fund this student for the length of their degree". When you get your offer letter, it will tell you which profs have offered to fund you and you would have to select which one to work with if you accept their offer. In these cases, the admissions committee will serve also as a secondary check to provide a bit of oversight on who "hires" whom. However, in many other schools, especially at US programs like mine, there is a departmental admissions committee that simply selects the top X candidates to admit to the school and we worry about who we want to work with later. To ensure that there is funding in place though, the department provides the funding for the first year to all students, and one prof in the department has to be willing to commit to funding our second year. This is the minimum time we have to spend at this school though, since if we don't pass our qualifying exam sometime in year 2, then we will leave at the end of year 2 with a Masters degree. Here, the advisors all have plenty of funding so if an advisor is unwilling to fund us past year 2, it's probably because our work is not satisfactory and it will be unlikely for us to pass the qualifying exam! So overall, yes I think you should continue speaking to your potential advisors. In some cases it could help, but in others, it might not if your potential advisor isn't involved with the admissions process. In my opinion, the main limiting factor in admitting graduate students is the amount of resources available (money and time of advisors) to train the graduate student. So, this is why I think getting into grad school really means convincing someone or some entity (i.e. a department) that you are worth the investment of time and money. You can do this with GPA, but they will look at the whole package -- reputation, LORs, proven research record, etc. My advice would be to not get too fixated on any one aspect like your GPA or GRE, and apply anyways with the "invest in me!" mindset!! Good luck

Although I am a scientist, I hope you will hear me out. I do sympathise with your frustration and I think it's common in most PhD programs (in all fields) where the student will end up learning things that don't seem to be very useful to what their interests were. In the past year, there was a lot of qualitative things I had to learn when I am used to thinking about things quantitatively. For example, in most of my learning, the major ideas were a result of other laws and facts -- the reason planets orbit the Sun is a consequence of the law of gravity. But in my first year, in a geological science course, one key component was to just straight up memorize a whole bunch of terms and concepts. We had to memorise the geological timescale (e.g. "paleozoic", "mesozoic" etc.) and mineral types. The course was meant for non-geologists like me who might communicate with and work with others who do geology work. I found it very difficult to adjust my learning style to think of relationships between ideas in this manner, without equations or numbers. However, the prof explained there was a good reason for all this. Although most of the students in the course were planetary scientists, and may never deal with these ideas again, there's also a good chance that we might end up working with geologists to study e.g. another planet. Then, it would be helpful to understand the basic concepts and language that is used by geologists (when they describe the Earth). The prof also explained that we were in a Earth & planetary science department, so we should be expected to know enough fundamental ideas to communicate with another person in our department that does completely different research. So while I don't know your situation exactly, I would encourage you to make the most of your opportunity to learn a different way of approaching problems in political science. You say that stats doesn't have anything to do with political science in general, but if that is the case, then why is it part of your program? Think of it as a crash course in learning just enough stats to communicate with a quantitative political science colleague (or understand a talk presented by one of them). Your own research interests may never stray so far as to actually collaborating with the empirical methods, but that does not mean you don't need to know them or that it is a good idea to stay closed off in your own subfield. You also say that you have just started your first year. Will you get a chance to take the courses more directly related to political theory later on? There were some quarters in my past years of graduate school where the courses were just not useful to my research at all. But then at other times, I was super happy that my courses were complementing each other as well as my work. That's just the way things are and I think it's very important to have a broad education (at the graduate level I would say "broad" would mean "outside of your specific subfield/research area"). I am definitely glad the majority of my coursework is over though, but I am also happy that I have finished it. Grad school is a long time and you might have heard "it's a marathon, not a sprint". You will get to explore your own original idea in due time -- it makes sense to me to get the fundamental coursework out of the way first though. Finally, I don't understand your statement that you're "a thinker, not a scientist". I'm not sure what you think of scientists, but I definitely spend the majority of my time as a scientists doing "thinking". I think putting up divisions between you and your colleagues (i.e. it sounds like the majority of your department) isn't a great idea. I'm a big proponent of having a broad education and multidisciplinary work. It makes sense to me that as a PhD student in an Earth AND planetary science department, I should know things about the Earth AND the planets even though I mostly work on data from stars and asteroids ("minor planets"). For you, I think since you are a political science PhD student, it makes sense for you to be expected to have working knowledge of all the methods and ideas used by all types of political scientists, including statistics. I think academia is a better place when academics from all fields recognize value in each other's work and strive to learn from one another instead of being stubborn in their own ways and solely sticking to their own interests.

This isn't how it works, especially in the physics field. Most physics schools, especially not the Caltechs and MITs of the world, are not going to actively recruit students in this manner (that is, personally inviting you to apply) because, well, they don't need to. One common way that prospective students do get advertisements from graduate programs is through ETS. When you register for the GRE, you can check a box that makes it sound like you will get information about graduate programs that might be of interest to you. However, what really happens is that you get on a mailing list for a mostly spam. All of the "graduate school info" I got turned out to be spam advertising programs completely out of my field (e.g. MBA programs when I wrote the Physics GRE and indicated that I was interested in Physics programs). Many publications aimed at students might also have information on graduate programs. I used to volunteer with a student publication that was mostly funded by Physics department paying us to take out a small ad in our issues and once a year, we compile a listing of Canadian physics programs, with stats like # of students, # of faculty, average funding, any minimum GPA listed etc. Basically, something similar to gradschoolshopper but only for Physics and only for Canadian schools (not a large amount so we did our own research). Another way you can get info about schools are "Graduate School Fairs", which are like career fairs but each graduate program has a booth instead of a company. Unlike career fairs though, prospective students don't come with application materials (e.g. CVs etc.) -- it's not a place for the schools to get info about the students (that's what the application process is for), it's just a place for students to directly talk to a representative from a school they might be interested in. I am not sure if this happens in the US -- in Canada, it happens at our annual national undergraduate student-run physics conference. Sometimes you might personally get invited to apply to a graduate program if someone at that program saw your work and was impressed. This might be a collaborator you worked with, or maybe your research supervisor introduced you to someone they know and said good things. Or, you might impress someone at a conference (or similar event) with a great presentation and research. In summary, it sounds like you are asking about an online resource where a student can put up their info and admissions people at schools can look through them and contact the ones that interest them. I am pretty sure that this doesn't exist -- the schools are busy enough dealing with the applications that they get and won't have time to actively look for more students. However, if you just want more info about schools that offer programs interesting to you, you should: 1. Do your own research. Talk to your advisors/mentors, look up school websites and read their faculty lists/research interests, read papers in your field and see where the interesting work comes from (arxiv.org is a great place to find pre-prints, especially in physics), etc. 2. http://www.gradschoolshopper.com/ could be a good starting point as well, if you aren't familiar with school names and want to quickly see (very basic) stats about each program. 3. Find out about any "grad school fairs" in your area and/or go to conferences in your field (this might be expensive without an advisor to support you though but maybe you can find a conference where you can present your work and convince/ask your advisor to send you). 4. Do your own research. I put this here again because the way the system is set up, the student really has to do all of the legwork in figuring out which schools are good fits for them. Not only that there are far more applicants than positions, but it's also in your own best interest to do this because only you will know what is a good fit for you!

I think it's strange that a University might have restrictions about job-seeking while on a fellowship or other form of funding. I don't doubt that this could happen somewhere, but most conflict of commitment / conflict of interest policies prevent students from actually taking the job, but applying or job hunting is normally okay. Some funding sources do have stipulations that if you don't finish your graduate degree voluntarily (i.e. drop out) then you must repay the award money! So, this is something to look out for (although terms like this would probably be highlighted in the offer letter!) I think Person A can trust the potential employer to not break privacy policies by contacting former employers/supervisors without Person A's permission. However, if Person A is really concerned about it, they might explicitly ask the employer not to contact their supervisor. Otherwise, this might be done accidentally -- academia (even if this is a non-academic job, it's still at a university) is a small world. It's possible that someone at the potential employer's department might know Person A's supervisor (or someone in Person A's department) and mention that "oh, someone from your department is applying here". It would be unlikely and I don't think a potential employer will be as unethical as to seek out anyone who might have known the applicant if the applicant did not give them permission. In many job applications I've seen, when they ask for former employment/experience, they ask you to list the supervisor and ask if they may contact this person. Personally, I would list the supervisor, omit any contact information and explicitly answer "no" to their question about contacting the supervisor. However, with all that said, there is no way to be certain that Person A's supervisor will not find out about the job search and I think Person A should have a plan in place in case this happens. No graduate student is "bound" to stay in their PhD program and while it's probably better and smoother if no one else found out about Person A's job search, Person A should not feel ashamed or guilty -- everyone has a right to choose to leave the graduate program if they find something else they rather pursue. I also think Person A shouldn't expect to be able to keep the whole thing a secret forever. Rumours spread quickly and Person A should be prepared for the possibility that someone will find out if the job hunting process takes awhile. Finally, as for legal consequences for the potential employer if Person A's supervisor finds out -- I don't think it's reasonable to assume that Person A will have legal recourse against the employer if the information is leaked. I'm not a lawyer though! One potential resource in getting some advice in these complicated matters would be Person A's university career center. They might know what students in similar cases have done in the past. For legal advice in matters like potentially suing the other university if they contact Person A's supervisor, Person A should probably consult a lawyer.

In 2010 I bought a 2TB external hard drive from Seagate for about $120. I used it to back up my and my wife's Windows laptops as well as extra storage -- I partitioned the hard drive to have separate storage and backup drives. We both got Macbook Pros in 2012 and while the hard drive does work for both Mac and Windows, it did require me to reformat the hard drive. Now I use it as my time machine backup as well as storage. I have not had any problems with it in the last 3 years and it seems robust to work with several computers / operating systems over time. So, I'm pretty happy with it! I'm not sure if this is exactly the same one, but it's definitely cheaper now than it was 3 years ago: http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Expansion-Desktop-External-STBV2000100/dp/B00834SJS0 I probably only need 1TB if it was just my own stuff. But it's just something like $10 to $15 more for 2TB. Also, the hard drive I mentioned is "small" in the sense that it sits nicely on a desk, out of the way. But it's not "small" like a phone or a wallet. I think Seagate also sells slimmer models that are meant for travel, but I rarely move my external hard drive, opting to just use it as a at-home backup. I keep files I need/regularly use on my Macbook Pro.

Interesting -- it seems like the Masters level NSERC has gone under a big overhaul. Not only is the PGS-M level ended, the decision on who receives which award is now made by each individual university (like how the OGS now works) instead of NSERC. I think NSERC still provides the money though. Thus, the new condition is also: "Awards must be held at the university where the offer of award originates" The negatives that come to mind for this change are: 1) Like you said, now Canadian students cannot get funding for US programs 2) Canadian students can't use the NSERC CGS-M as a "bargaining chip" for admission to Canadian schools in the same way as before. But I think there are positives too: 1) The NSERC graduate awards are intended for students to pursue a research based PhD program in the end -- the Masters award is basically separate because the Masters programs in Canada are separate from US. Most of the unfunded Masters programs in the US are either professional programs or they are mostly course-based terminal Masters that don't lead to PhD admission. In Canada, although you don't have to go to a PhD program after your Masters, that's the usual path. 2) Since you can still apply for the CGS-M at multiple schools, a student can still get multiple CGS-M offers from all the schools they applied to and can still decide to attend a school with a CGS-M offer over a school without a CGS-M offer. Overall, it's too bad that it went this way. I think the first change (getting rid of the PGS-M award) isn't a big deal. If you look at the stats, less than 5% of -M awarded are PGS level, most of them are CGS level. The second change is more crippling I think. Instead of having the money awarded to you form NSERC which you can choose to take anywhere, the school can now decide whether or not to give you a CGS-M at the same time they decide admission. Fortunately, the -D awards are still the same!

There's two bonus space things for students on Dropbox, but my info here might be out of date. When I first opened my dropbox account (years ago), student email addresses (.edu or Canadian university email address) would get an extra 500 MB and double the bonus for each referral. Maybe now that Dropbox is more established, everyone starts with the extra space? Or maybe you already had a Canadian university email address so you already had this benefit. The other bonus space thing is the "Great Space Race" (https://www.dropbox.com/spacerace) It looks like that promotion is now over -- but basically it was a race where Dropbox counted the number of accounts from a certain school if you get enough people in your school to have accounts, then the entire school gets a (temporary) bonus in space. Because of this, I have about 12GB of space now, but I guess now that it's over, that space might go away sometime in the future!

Most schools will have a way for you to check if things like transcripts, LORs, and scores have arrived. Sometimes when you enter you GRE test registration number, the system immediately shows your score and the fact thta they have it on file if you had already submitted the score. So, if you try this on, say Dec 1, and don't see the score there, you might want to let the relevant admin person know that your scores are on their way! In most cases, the application asks you to self-report your score anyways and they don't worry too much about official scores until it's decision time.

I'm glad to hear in this thread that there are other people that log their TA hours and keep track of how much time they spend on it! My Masters institution (in Canada) just signed their first bargaining agreement when I had started and I volunteered as one of the union stewards. I found that many of my colleagues really disliked the idea of logging hours. They either didn't want the extra hassle, didn't want to change their ways, or found the idea of being an "hourly worker" distasteful. I can understand reluctance to change, but I think keeping track of your hours is a responsible thing to do in order to properly manage your time without overworking yourself. Also, as we move forward in academia or even in professional settings, we will have busier and busier schedules and we will have to prioritize and manage our time. As for the "hourly worker" idea, I think in academia, we are often pressured (from ourselves or from our bosses) to work above and beyond the minimum requirements. But TAing is a job, and I think it's incorrect to say working more hours = more dedication / passion for teaching. I don't log my hours in a spreadsheet, but at my Masters school, the union encouraged all TAs to sit down with their supervisors at the beginning of the term and fill out a "hourly budget", which we would normally divide into very rough sections, like X hours for tutorials, Y hours for marking, Z hours for office hours, and perhaps some hours set aside for major marking events like projects or exams. I have a notebook I keep for TAing (I jot down reminders to tell the class next time, names of my students and maybe something about them so that I can remember who they are, etc.) and I set aside one page per category above and then I just write down stuff like "Week of Sept 9: 3 hours" etc. At my PhD school, in the US, there aren't any unions here and I think that's pretty common at US schools. The TA handbook here even explicitly states that while we might be assigned a TAship of X hours, that number is meaningless and it's up to you and your TA supervisor to determine how much hours you actually work. We also don't get formally paid for TAing, either! Since it doesn't make a lot of sense for me to try to "rock the boat" here, as the system works pretty well simply because I think there is an existing mutual respect between professors and students so that (for now anyways), that we are not taken advantage of as "free labour". Although it does make me uncomfortable that there aren't contracts protecting my right as an employee (actually we're not even considered employees, which also sucks!). But I digress -- I only brought this up because a lot of what surefire and I said about logging hours might not actually apply to many US schools. Finally, multiple TAs for one course can make things difficult in terms of logistics! In addition to meetings like surefire suggested, another way to standardise marking is to split up the assignments so only one TA marks any one assignment. You would have to work extra hours in your weeks where you mark, but hopefully fewer in weeks where you don't so that it still averages out. One of my lab courses had two TAs and we had to mark lab notebooks every week. The class was split up into small groups that rotated through different experiments each week, so instead of each of us having to know all 8 experiments, we just split them down the middle and we just had to really know 4 experiments very well. We didn't try too hard to standardise our marking styles (other than making a common rubric together and comparing our averages) because we felt that over the course of the semester, each student would be marked by each of us an equal amount of time, so it should average out. Sometimes people decide to split the class up into two marking groups, but if you do this, make sure that the marker assigned to each group changes over time so that certain groups of students are not positively/negatively affected by different marking styles!

If you do go with your boss as a reference, it might be worth it to spend a few minutes with him to ensure he understands the difference between an academic LOR for grad school and a typical letter of reference for professional settings.

Okay then I think this sounds like a typical Canadian school then (because only people with research based Masters are accepted for PhD programs and even traditional undergrad degree graduates must go through the Masters program first). You are definitely right that most Canadian schools want applicants who have done a thesis for PhD programs. Basically, your supervisor is on the hook for funding you during these years and why would they risk someone who have no demonstrated CS research experience over someone with a thesis-based MSc. A professional masters is not part of the path towards a PhD. You would make a great TA but in most graduate programs, you would still TA as a masters students. Again, research-based Masters programs are basically just the first step of a PhD program. If you went to a US grad school, you would be in the same position as you are now -- starting as a fresh new PhD student is the same as a first year Masters student in Canada. Also, being a good TA is rarely a thing that graduate programs care about. TAing is unfortunately usually seen as a way to reduce your financial burden (the department pays you this money in exchange for some of your time, so your supervisor's burden is less). In some cases, if the supervisor has the funding and feels you need to spend more time on research, they can "buy out" your TA requirement and have the X dollars that would normally be paid by the department for your TA work to come out of their own grants instead. Unfortunately, it sounds like there isn't really much you can do except ask to be considered for the PhD program and see what they say. I know that in some Canadian departments, students are only accepted for a PhD program if there is a prof that is willing to agree to fund you for the entire degree (the shorter Masters don't always have this commitment). All of your accomplishments are great things -- but they are not the things that graduate programs (in both Canada and the US) look for. The extra CS and stats classes would be good for making the case that might offset your "non-traditional" background, but it might not be enough to propel you to the "direct PhD" program. Like I said above, personally, I think it's a far better idea to do a research Masters first, then a PhD later. This gives you the flexibility to change things if you don't like your project, supervisor, school, academia etc. I definitely would not have been ready to commit to a 5 year program right out of undergrad, despite doing some research in undergrad. Again, as I said above, what's the difference between the Masters program at the school you're applying to and starting a 5-6 year direct entry PhD program? The Canadian MSc+PhD program isn't any slower than a direct entry PhD or US PhD program. You can't really expect your professional Masters to count for a lot towards a PhD though. That sounded like a put-down to professional programs, but I just mean to say that the professional program track is a different thing than the academic/PhD track. Also, graduate programs in North America rarely accept accreditation from other schools. At best, you might be exempted from retaking a specific course requirement if you have demonstrated prior coursework, but they'll just replace that course requirement with something else (e.g. a more advanced version of the course).

You can send subject scores without general scores, even with the four free schools if I recall correctly. With "ScoreSelect" you should be able to choose for sure.

If possible, you should definitely do a thesis-based Masters program, NOT a course-based with research on the side. A one-year program won't be very helpful because by the time you need to apply to PhD programs, you would have just started your Masters and you won't get strong LORs or connections or research experience from your masters yet. So, you won't have any advantage in doing a Masters! I would go for a 2-year masters program. Whether or not you are able to work with profs from other schools depend on the Masters program. In Canada, this isn't very common in science programs -- your supervisor is paying you all year so you're expected to work with them all year. But, I know that the French masters programs involve 2 research "internships" which often take place in US and Canadian schools (at all schools I've been to, we've had many visiting grad students from the Ecole Normale Superior). The biggest downside and restriction, I think, of a Masters program is that most of them are unfunded so it will cost a bunch of money. Canadian masters programs are usually funded though, because in Canada, we usually do a Masters first then a PhD (so the Masters is really the first two years of a US PhD). However, this also makes application to masters programs much more competitive than unfunded programs in the US! On the plus side though, there are far fewer people in Canada than the US so the competition pool is probably smaller.

That's a good point! For my weekly marking, it usually only took 2-3 hours to finish so I don't think that was long enough to severely affect the last assignments graded. Like fuzzy said, I try to keep track of the time per student and try to keep it equal. I generally have 20-30 students, so it's about 6 mins per student! When I graded their final lab or project reports, which took several times longer, I did space them out. To compensate for potentially different moods affecting score, I tried to make sure my time/student was still the same and I made a more detailed/strict rubric for myself to follow. Also, at the end, I also did random checks to make sure the points deducted/awarded were consistent across marking periods.

So I posted my last post after seeing your first post but before seeing your second post! In light of the new info (that you have a Masters in a very specific sub-field/application of the field but not enough general knowledge), I would say that this is not that abnormal, but there is probably no common practice. Also, it depends on the circumstances of your Masters -- is it equivalent to a Canadian Masters? (Like I said above, the Canadian Masters program is a bit different than a US MS). Depending on what your undergrad and Masters degree are (are they the same type of degree that you would be getting in this department?) another school might accept you for a PhD program. I am not surprised though, if they won't want to accept you into a PhD program because you only know your specific application/sub-field instead of general knowledge. In Physics in Canada, I've noticed that many departments have the mindset of "you're a physicist first, and then [your subfield, whether it's astronomy, medical physics, quantum, condensed matter, etc.] second". The requirements for graduate degrees in any subfield of Physics would generally be heavy on the "core" courses of Physics, even if they have nothing in common with your actual research. i.e. you'll be hard-pressed to find an astronomer who got their PhD in Canada but did not take Quantum Field Theory! I'm not commenting on whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it exists and that might explain why you would be asked to do a Masters there first. I like the Masters first then PhD because it provides you with an actually useful degree if you decide that you don't want to stay in academia (or your supervisor decides that you didn't live up to expectations). However, I would consider the cases where a student is forced to leave after a Masters as a failure of the school and supervisor, in most cases!

In the US, you earn a Masters on the way to a PhD. In Canada, you earn a Masters and then a PhD. I'll tell you about how most Canadian schools work, even though your school sounds like it's a bit different. But this might be useful context because I would guess that your school probably started this way and then moved towards the more US-like system (I know the big schools, such as U Toronto, are doing this, even getting .edu domain addresses as an alias for the more usual .ca) Usually, the student will stay with the same school and same supervisor (but probably different project) for the Masters and PhD, but it's normal and perfectly fine to switch topics, supervisors, or even schools. Either way, the student is usually (but not always, as you said) expected to apply to the PhD program all over again (including getting transcripts, LORs, writing SOPs etc.), even if you are applying to the same school. Thus, in Canada, a Masters program is not a "remedial" one, it's basically the first two years of a US PhD program, except you have to complete and defend a MSc thesis to get your degree. In many US schools, you just get the MS when you finish the course requirements and pass quals. In addition, when a BSc graduate applies to Masters programs, he or she will usually have a discussion with the proposed supervisor(s) ahead of time and make sure everyone is on the same page. For example, does the student intend to stay for a PhD? Does the supervisor plan on being available and supporting them all the way through a PhD? In some cases, a prof is going to retire in 3-4 years so they will make it clear that they will only promise funding/availability for the MSc. One year into the program, the student and supervisor should revisit this discussion and often programs will give the student a chance to "accelerate" or "advance" directly into the PhD program if the supervisor and department and student all agree and they meet some standard. With all that said, you're saying that your school generally puts people directly into PhD programs. Actually, you said the person said that non-traditional applicants are ONLY accepted for Masters studies, but that does mean that ALL masters students are non-traditional applicants? The above (standard Canadian school) case might still be true -- but in exceptional circumstances, a BSc graduate can directly enter the PhD program. However, like I said above, usually you must have a Masters before you can start the PhD program. Finally, some useful timescales if you don't know them about Canada: Usually, a student will spend 4-5 years (5 years is getting more and more common now) in a BSc program and then.... 1) 2 years in a Masters followed by 3-4 years in a PhD program at the same school 2) 2 years in a Masters followed by 4 years in a PhD program at a different school 3) 1 year in a Masters, get accelerated to a PhD program, and finish in another ~4 years 4) 5-6 years in a direct entry PhD program Staying at the same school might save you time if you stay on the same project (less background to learn) and also because you can count your MSc courses towards your PhD requirements. (Routes 3 and 4 do NOT result in a Masters degree -- you would "only" get a PhD out of it).

I think this would really depend on the school and how many applications they get. It's definitely possible to submit additional materials after the deadline and ask for them to consider them in your package. You can't expect them to do it though, but some of them will be willing to consider updated materials if you send them early enough in the process (e.g. before the first admissions committee meeting). Also, you don't have to worry about your application becoming "complete" prematurely if you don't actually submit the application until just before the deadline. For most application systems, profs can upload their LORs before you actually submit and pay the application fee. For most of the schools I applied to, the LOR writers can upload as soon as I enter their info on that last page but I can continue to edit and upload/replace my own SOP etc until I finally hit that final submit button. You can also ask the school admin people if you can submit your GRE scores later if everything else is on time. I wrote the Physics Subject GRE in Nov 2012 and my scores weren't available until mid-December 2012. For the schools with deadlines in early December, I just told them that my scores will be a week or two late and asked if that was okay. They all said it would be fine since their admissions committees don't actually meet until late January.

I grade pretty much the same way as fuzzy indicates. I'm only usually assigned something like 3 or 4 hours of grading per week, so it's definitely something I can do in one afternoon. Also, the courses I was grading for usually only had 1 to 2 questions per week (but they take a pretty long time for the students to do and for me to grade), or they were things like lab reports or lab notebooks. I try to make a full detailed marking rubric for each type of work I'm marking (e.g. problem sets, lab reports, lab notebooks) and hand this out to all students at the beginning. I explain it the best I can so they know what's expected of them. Then, I make an abbreviated (1/4 page) rubric with just the keywords/criteria (and their point value) and when I grade the work, I just circle whatever the mistake was, or tick whatever they did right. I write their final score on the rubric (it also shows the points breakdown) and staple it to their work. This saves me a lot of writing the same stuff over and over again on multiple assignments! (e.g. I can just circle "sig figs" or "show units" or "label plot axes" etc.). And it makes sure that I always take the same number of points off for the same type of error! I also make sure to keep time at the end for doing "admin" things, such as entering grades into spreadsheets and writing up an email to the prof with a summary of the average, the distribution, and common mistakes. As for scheduling marking time, if I was able to set all of my due dates etc. I would choose to have homework due at noon on Wednesday, allow students to hand in late homework with a X% (usually between 30% and 50%) late penalty until noon on Friday, and then do my marking on Friday afternoon and/or the weekend.

Getting a ton of commentary/revisions is a normal part of graduate school, I think. In addition to seeing it as a list of ways to make your next draft better, I also find that it helps to know that if someone did not care about your work at all, they would not have spent the time reading carefully and pointing out all the issues. Because I know that when I get comments it means that someone has taken the time to think about what I wrote, I always make sure to consider everything they said and address it in some way (i.e. implement the change or make a note of why I did something else instead etc.)

I have similar views to both rising_star and Sigaba. During my MSc, I was involved with my school's TA union and even represented students/the union in several disputes with the department (always in a professionally and with mutual respect). I have strong beliefs in the benefits of forming unions in academia and I know that in the physical sciences, this is a fairly unpopular opinion. I decided to include my union work in the same category as other non-research activities such as outreach, tutoring etc. in my application. I took rising_star's viewpoint that I would probably not want to work in a place that would not admit me based on this fact. I didn't further expand on these points in my SoP, but I did in other essays where the prompt was regarding non-research activities (e.g. Personal History Statements). For you, since your field is more closely related with these organizations, it might even be more pertinent to include them in some instances. I also relate to Sigaba's statement -- you would not be able to use University resources (e.g. dept. mailing lists) to promote personal causes (i.e. activism). But I don't think you will have to suppress all of your "activism" / beliefs in grad school. For example, there are usually many clubs on campus for many different causes and it would be fine to participate in that way. Also, if you decide to be involved in union-related activities on campus (if they exists), then the law should hopefully protect you from any negative action from the University.

You should check the application policy. For some of the places I applied to, they only wanted transcripts from schools where you earned a degree. So you might not have to! But if you do, I think the consequence of being caught lying on your application is far worse than a single semester where you had to withdraw.

Sigaba brings up good points. We're not all-knowing administrators. We also do not know for certain whether the profs on the admissions committee will care about this incident or not. But I think it's reasonable to put trust in privacy policies at our educational institutions. For example, I think it is reasonable to believe that your own school will not officially disclose this incident to anyone else without your permission. So if you don't bring it up, it will likely not ever be known. It's possible (but I think not probable) that a serious background check might turn up the information. Maybe someone on the admissions committee knows someone who works at your school and just mentions your name, and for some reason that person remembers this incident and tells them in an non-official manner. In my opinion, this would be a serious breach of ethics on the part of the admissions committee member (either asking for the info or using that info/sharing it with others), and (also in my opinion) much more serious than your own actions. So, in your shoes, I would just never speak of the incident ever again unless asked directly. I believe that the chances of someone finding out without you telling them is extremely low and I would not worry about it. I also believe that chance that someone asking you directly about non-academic misdemeanors on an application or admissions interview is pretty low. Finally, you should check with your school about what happens to the record after you graduate. At my previous school, they were very careful to separate employment (as a TA/RA) and academic records/files. So, if you were e.g. consistently late for your TA sessions, that would be an employment disciplinary action that goes on your employment record, not your academic record. If I did such a thing, that information would not be forwarded to any graduate schools I applied to afterwards. Also, the policy that the school was to destroy all employment records 12 months after the last time the student was employed. There may be a similar expiry date on your records too, so it might be worth an inquiry!

I don't think that's really relevant to your application. I agree with your sentiments but I don't think discussing your advocacy for community colleges makes sense in a SOP about why you want to do get a PhD in English. I think you should just keep it a concise couple of sentences that summarizes the most relevant parts of your CC experience (i.e. how did it shape you, if that's relevant to why you want to do grad school / why you would succeed in grad school).

Sounds like you have a good plan Good luck!!

In many cases, the limiting factor on how many new students a program can accept is because they only have a limited amount of money and time to fund and supervise students. So this sounds like a polite way to say, "Sorry, there were more qualified applicants than you this year so we accepted them instead." Many programs will also give you further feedback on your application if you ask, so that might be a good idea to judge whether or not you should apply again. As for generic masters vs. specialized program maybe some historians here can better answer that!