TakeruK

I agree that there are lots of legitimate uses for full solution sets. For example, in my undergraduate Quantum Mechanics courses, we used a very popular and good textbook. The publishers sells "full" solutions (most of the steps are shown and there are explanations but they are pretty terse) that is only meant to go to instructors, but any student can find a free PDF of it if they know where to look online. To keep things fair for everyone, our prof basically told the whole class that this book exists somewhere online and that since they cannot enforce students not using the answer key, they can only strongly encourage us to try the problems ourselves first since we're really just cheating ourselves if we copy the answers (we won't learn as much and we will probably do poorly on the exam). The profs also kept the weight of homework grades low (so we're basically expected to get full marks for this portion) and made sure to choose midterm/final exam questions that are not part of the textbook question bank. I think this is the best way to run a course where you know your students can access a solution guide and if I ever teach a course like this, I would pretty much do everything but give the students a direct link to the solution guide (so that everyone is on the same level) and put in the effort to make up unique questions. If they tried to hide the fact that the solution guide exists and/or used final exam questions from the textbook, then it would give an unfair advantage over those who knew about it. In some schools, they try to enforce some kind of "honour system", and while it might work in some places, I don't think it's a good thing to do at the undergraduate level (where grades are much more important and the risk of getting caught is low). So I guess the main thing about Chegg that rubs me the wrong way is that it is a resource that enables students to gain an advantage over another through monetary means. I thought about this statement a bit, since I originally thought it might be a bit hypocritical since I used to do a lot of private tutoring. In this case, my students were getting an advantage in learning the material by paying me. But, I think this is different because when I tutor, my policy was that students were not allowed to ask me for help on their homework questions (or anything that was worth grades). I mostly tutored in my own school/department so I could look up the syllabus and find out what is assigned. I only worked on non-homework questions, or similar questions but with some number changes, or already graded exams/homework with the student. In my opinion, this is different from what Chegg is offering, but I do realise that I might be just trying to justify two conflicting viewpoints inside of me! Anyways, I am not saying what you are doing is wrong, and I also agree that learning to approach problems is the important part. I definitely looked up solutions to non-homework questions in my textbooks in order to help me learn in cases like what you described here. I am not saying that students are not responsible for cheating if companies like Chegg (or e.g. tutors) provide them with answers to their homework. But I am also saying that companies like Chegg, and tutors that provide full answers, cannot just claim non-responsibility if their clients use their products to cheat.

Wow, that Calculus textbook is on its 7th edition now? I would be concerned that looking up online answers to questions in your textbook might violate some academic integrity policy for your school and/or course (I know some courses explicitly prohibit this, while others are more lenient/do not care). I mention this because although for many textbooks, you can probably google the solution guide or even say, find a friend who took the course before, this case is a bit different since you have to pay to register for Chegg. Although technically either action (googling answers online or paying for a Chegg registration) would violate academic integrity policies if the policy prohibits this sort of action, I would personally feel it's worse to do the latter because you are basically buying answers / paying someone else to do the work for you. To me, using Chegg to get answers to your homework would be the same as buying someone else's old homework, or paying a personal tutor to help you with the homework questions. That said, I am not saying that Chegg is only for cheaters, since not every course prohibits looking up answers and sometimes the answer key is a very helpful study guide (after all, it's unlikely that the homework set would include every single question in the book, so sometimes you need an answer key to check your answers to the other questions you might attempt in your studying). But, a service like Chegg would make me suspicious that it is making money by enabling students to be academically dishonest. Of course, one could make an argument that Chegg is just simply providing a service and it's up to the student to decide whether or not to use the service for academically dishonest purposes. But, from my point of view, it seems like the main selling point of Chegg is the answers and if Chegg is truly a legitimate company that wants to help students instead of exploit our desperation, they should put more effort into making sure they are not enabling cheaters. For example, they can work with schools/courses so that the student can only access the book for the course if the student is registered in the course and the professor gives the students the access code for that specific course. Then, the professor can select which questions they want to assign as homework and have Chegg block access to those questions from the students. Or something along those lines! Renting textbooks in electronic form is a good idea though. I've seen other services do it and sometimes the school's bookstore offers the service too. At the graduate level, the textbooks are always in the library (and on reserve) so I never have to buy a textbook unless I want to own a copy of it. In my field (and probably many others), the textbooks used in graduate courses are the classic/fundamental references for the topic, so whenever I take a class relevant to my research, I usually already have the book, or plan on buying it anyways. Also, my old school's library had an agreement with Springer so that all Springer books available in e-book format were free to access with our school library subscription. The e-book service is not exclusive to Chegg and it might even be free through other sources!

When I started my MSc (in Canada), my advisor got me a iMac (22'') and also a 2TB external hard drive. Like wildviolet said, it's actually the norm, I think (at least in the sciences) for all of a student's computer needs to be supplied by the advisor. Of course, when I say "my advisor got me", I don't really mean transferred into my possession -- it doesn't actually belong to me! After I graduated and left, the materials stayed with my advisor for his use and/or use of his future group members. There are some cases where students prefer to work on their own laptop, but this has been uncommon in my experience. It's tough to write a lot of sentences or code on a tiny laptop so most people work on desktops provided by advisors. I also feel that it is nice to have a different machine to help separate "work" and "play".

Some applications explicitly state that they will not be looking at anything outside of the application package (whether or not this is true is unknown of course). One application I had explicitly instructed us NOT to include any URLs at all in documents like the SOP. In fact, the only URLs allowed were the URLs to any papers we might have had published. (For this school, we were not allowed to upload a CV, instead we had to upload ~5 separate documents that would convey the equivalent information in the CV). I can see why this is a rule -- they don't want someone circumventing page limits etc. by linking their SOP to a much longer online document! But even if you aren't able to include your URL directly in your package, it's possible that some profs might try to google you. They probably wouldn't do this for every single applicant, but probably for the ones that caught their interest in the original stack. But I agree with Arcanen's point that you shouldn't worry so much about having a website for application reasons -- i.e. not having one isn't going to greatly hurt your application chances. As far as I know, everyone in my cohort got accepted without a website and most of us put together academic websites for the first time during our first year of grad school. I definitely think that every graduate student should have one though, so if you have time to do it before grad school, that's great -- it will save you work later. In my opinion, the websites should be content that you completely own so that it's just a matter of uploading files to your school's web server -- this allows you to take your website from one school to another and also allows you to have a much more official web address like dept.school.edu/~name instead of like a wordpress or blogspot etc. address. Another option is to pay some money to have your own web domain! I think finding a clean CSS template (there are tons of people online offering free templates) and either editing HTML directly, or use a free or cheap WYSIWYG editor like Kompozer or RapidWeaver (or the 30 day free trial for Dreamweaver).

Credit card companies generally don't distinguish between college (undergrad) and graduate students when it comes to eligibility for the "Student" credit cards. They would want some kind of proof that you are enrolled in a school, such as a letter from the registrar (which you can usually get online by logging into the system and printing out now).

I think you should let them know about your intentions to go to grad school in the future, but don't ask for the LORs yet. Usually, a good LOR will come from someone who knows you well enough that you can sit down with them at this time and talk about plans for the future. At this point, you can them know! Maybe your field is different, but for most fields, you can't "save" the LORs ahead of time because the profs have to submit them to the graduate school directly. When you do apply to a school, part of the form will ask you for contact info for your references. The school will then (automatically) email the prof with a link or a username/password combo to log into the application and submit their LOR. Some fields accept online portfolios where profs can write and upload their letters just once and then you can just use those files over and over again, which is convenient. But in many other fields, profs will mostly use the same letter for each school, but they might want to personalize each one for each school. One advantage of letting them know now about the future plans is that maybe the prof will decide to write your LOR (or notes) now while the memory is fresh and then use it when it's actually time to submit letters!

No, you should answer as many right as possible because doing poorly on the first part can limit your maximum score, basically. They don't publish the equations used to compute the scores but it's probably far better to get e.g. 80% of the hard questions right than 100% of the easy questions right. In either case, overthinking here is bad -- as with any test, always try to get as many correct as possible. I only brought up the adaptive testing component because it is faulty logic to think that getting e.g. 75% of the questions right in part 1 and 95% of the questions in part 2 is equal to 95% correct in part 1 and 75% correct in part 2. It probably depends a lot on each person. I found it most effective when I study for about 1 hr per day for 2-3 days per week. I did this for 2 months prior to the test. In the last 2 weeks, I increased the number of study sessions to maybe 4 or 5 per week. For each study session, I also tried to spend time both reviewing material and doing practice timed tests. In the beginning, I did more review than practice tests, but by the last week, I was pretty much only doing practice tests. I wrote my GRE when I was in a Masters program, so my schedule was quite flexible, but I still had a lot of other work so I didn't want to spend more than a few hours a week on this. I also had a family (but no kids) so most of my weekends and evenings are busy with other things.

As others said, I think you really prepared for the test the wrong way, and also approached the test the wrong way. I think standardised testing is not a good way of measuring intelligence at all -- instead, it measures how well you are able to take a test like the GRE. As many others have said similar things, I'll only mention a few things that I didn't see above: The GRE Q is NOT a test of how well you know any type of math that is useful to a STEM field. Like you said, it's basically only high school math. Many people taking the test are not in STEM fields, so this is the only math they have learned. This is why I am confused that you think your schools will only care about the GRE Q scores. In fact, I would say that STEM schools don't care at all about GRE Q scores (unless they are really low) because the actual math you need to use in STEM research is not GRE Q math. It is solving differential equations, integration -- i.e calculus! Just like the GRE V doesn't actually assess your command of the English language, the GRE Q doesn't really assess your knowledge of mathematics. Instead, I would argue that both the GRE Q and GRE V actually assess your ability to problem solve. That is, given a set of tools (for the Q, some basic mathematical knowledge and equations; for the V, your knowledge of grammar, sentence structure, and how to form an argument, etc.), the test is asking, can the applicant figure out this complex problem? In addition, I think the time limit actually hurts those who know more math because we will tend to overthink and overanalyse. For the problems like the example you gave, the strategy is to quickly identify the edge cases and consider them -- you don't need to do a full analysis. To do well in the test, you have to figure out what the tools that ETS expects you to use, and learn to use them -- you don't have to follow the guidebooks, which has some rules that are meant to teach someone without STEM backgrounds. If you don't like those rules, you can teach yourself strategies at solving GRE questions by practicing old questions with a time limit. Then, you can develop your own little book of rules and tools. I think you also did not realise how the adaptive computer testing on the GRE works. Did you know that the questions change in difficulty based on how well you are doing? So, the first section of questions is very important -- it narrows down the range of scores you can achieve from all possible scores to a smaller (unknown size) range. If you did really well in the first part, then the second set of questions will be much tougher. If you didn't do as well, then the second set will be much easier. That is, your actual score is a combination of the number of questions you got right AND the difficulty of the questions assigned by the adaptive test algorithm. So, missing 1/4 of the questions in the first part and doing well in the second part does not mean you will do well overall. Trying to get the maximum score is not a good way to spend your energy/effort in getting into grad school but you do want to meet whatever published/unpublished cutoffs exists (that is, as wildviolet said, great scores won't help but bad scores will definitely hurt). So, you should definitely take the test again with all of the above tips in mind. Most STEM students score much higher than 64th percentile. Under the old scoring system, and the maximum score was 800, which was something like 94th percentile -- this means about 6% of the test takers get the maximum score on the GRE Q! I think the new system is better at distinguishing between the highest levels though. Also, unless you are sure that only the GRE Q scores matter, I would make sure you do well on the GRE V too. I personally would find it really strange that a STEM grad school would only care about the GRE Q.

There is a box when signing up for the GRE that if you don't check (or uncheck, not sure), then you will get these offers from all these schools! If you contact ETS, they can remove you from the mailing lists.

One reward (or travel) mile per dollar spent is pretty good, but like biostatdude said, you don't get to fly 1 mile for each travel mile you have. For example, for Aeroplan miles (Air Canada), it costs about 26,000 reward points to get a free flight within North America (which is probably valued at $600-ish, if you fly from one end to another). For these types of rewards programs, you usually earn one mile per mile flown, and if you don't fly often, then this is probably the fastest way to ramp up miles. For cards for fees, what I usually do is try to work out how much reward miles/points I could earn with this special card vs. a free card that also gives me points. I'll probably only sign up for a card with fees if the difference in benefits is worth at least twice the cost of the card. For international students that might fly internationally a lot, the travel points might be worth more to them, since the long flights can be really expensive, or perhaps you can redeem a smaller number of miles/points to upgrade from economy to business class. I've heard of some people doing "Mileage Runs", where they fly around in a loop over the span of e.g. 24 hours for no reason other than gaining miles to be used later. This works best when they take advantage of cheap flights, and there are online communities devoted to this, e.g. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/mileage-run-deals-372/ In addition, some credit cards also offer a large number of bonus miles for signing up and gives you stuff like free checked bags. So if you do this often, that could be a better deal than the free credit cards that also grant points. From considering a bunch of different free cards in Canada and the USA, I think, on average, if you trade in your reward miles or points for cash rewards (e.g. gift cards), you can get about $1 back per $100 you spend on the card. Many banks give you the option of getting "cash back", which ranges from 0.5% to 2% depending on the circumstances instead of earning reward points, so I think this is about equivalent.

I'm not in CS but I graduated from UBC Physics too (in 2010). I don't think your main target list is unreasonable, especially given that it's probably not worth going to the US for a school that is not as good as the Canadian ones (e.g. Toronto, McGill). But maybe add UBC to your "backups" too and if you would rather go to a grad school than nothing at all, then pick another Canadian backup school (don't know what is good in CS).

I think it is a good thing that you are reflecting on your past experience in research to help you decide what to do next! Here, I will reflect on my own experience and try to put your experiences in context with what I think grad school is generally like. Obviously, this is just from my subjective viewpoint! 1. "Projects not working" -- I think this is actually a pretty common occurrence, especially for undergraduate projects. From our point of view (i.e. the student's), we have very limited experience and the project(s) we are working on is basically our main concern. However, in science, I think that many projects don't always work out. From the PI's point of view, they are in control of a large number of projects (currently and throughout their career), so having a string of failed projects isn't the end of the world, although it might make it harder to get more grants. But, I think the point of research is try out a lot of different ideas and see what ends up working. This means that in some cases, we will end up being the ones chasing an idea that won't work. But if we knew which ideas will work ahead of time, then we wouldn't need research. What you are describing sounds like a "null result" project. This was the case for my BSc and MSc theses. They are not as exciting or glamorous but they are important to science. Science research is about ruling things out. There will be a few people who, through a combination of skill and luck, get great results and push our knowledge forward. However, the majority of us will be slowly and steadily crossing out ideas that won't work, so that the science community can close in on the truth. There's also the expression that "a theorist needs to only be right 5% of the time" -- for every great idea that most PIs have, there are tons of bad ones that didn't work out, but might have been necessary to end up at the right idea. So, I think you might be looking at your results/experiments the wrong way. It might not be a good idea to think of your project as "let's try to prove Hypothesis X". Instead, science is usually, "let's test Hypothesis X with this series of experiments". If, after 50 (or 100 or 1000) experiments, and you don't see any evidence of Hypothesis X being true, then this is not a failed experiment! You have actually learned a lot more than just programming skills -- there is actual science here! Sometimes scientists are subjectively partial to one idea (after all, we're just humans, not logical devices) so we might be less willing to give up on a hypothesis and we might want to invest many more months / many more experiments before we stop trying. When a "null result" happens, the useful science is the constraints you can place on Hypothesis X. Reporting that "Hypothesis X is not true in cases where ....." is valid and useful science. I wouldn't think of these experiments as wasted time, necessarily. The more experiments you do that don't work, the stronger your constraints / null result is. The more experiments that you do, the more likely it is that you might stumble upon something cool about Hypothesis X (or maybe something completely unrelated!). 2. "Giving a talk on your project" -- you shouldn't cancel this talk!! This will be an excellent experience for you to convey your ideas to others (not sure if by pubic you mean the general public, or researchers outside of your lab). Either way, you don't need to have a proven result to present a talk. You should take this opportunity to tell others about the problem at hand and how it fits in the grand scheme of things. You want to tell them about your lab's methods of approaching the problem and what you have tried and what doesn't work. Personally, even for my null results, I feel the most inspired to continue working right after I present my work and I see that people are also interested in the problem and that it is a validly tough problem! 3. "Lifestyle/time" -- I'm not sure how much time you are spending and how this compares to how much time you would like to spend on your research, but I think you are learning something that most of us don't find out until we begin our PhDs. That is, grad school/research will take as much of your time as you will let it. It sounds like because you are stuck on these problems, most of your time is consumed thinking about it. Personally, and I know many other students who do this too, I prefer to decide how much time I'm willing to spend on research -- maybe it's 40 hours a week. Maybe it's less or more, depending on your own preferences and your other commitments (e.g. classes? significant others?). During my MSc, I decided that I would spend 40 ish hours a week -- basically 8 hours a day, 5 days a week on my work. In the evenings, or on weekends, I just try to put the problem out of my mind and focus on other things that are important to me (e.g. my spouse, Skyping friends/family, cooking, video games, sleeping). It's easier said than done, but it is a very important skill in grad school. Grad school / PhD is a large commitment of time and effort. But, it does not have to be all consuming. The flexible work schedule of a researcher can work against you because you will feel the urge/pressure to work all the time. Unless you have a very special type of advisor, there won't be anyone following you around telling you when to start and stop working. You have to decide for yourself and figure out how to balance your work and the other parts of your life in the way that you can achieve what you want in life (i.e. that list of general goals). Your list is pretty similar to mine and I think I can get all that and do my PhD, which is why I'm still in it. 4. Your "general goals": these are obviously subjective -- financial/other freedom can mean a lot of different things! And personal projects can vary a lot in time commitment. For me, since I try to set a time limit on how much time I spend working, this gives me freedom to work on other things that I care about. But, obviously not every type of personal project is compatible with the grad school workload. However, since most other jobs will require at least 40 hours a week anyways, I don't think there are many personal projects that you can do with a non-grad-school job compared to the grad-school job. #2 on your list is also something I like about my PhD program too -- we have enough time to eat lunch together most days, take breaks during the day to talk to each other, and do things together in the evenings/weekends once in a while. Finally, for #3 especially, you should keep in mind that getting a PhD doesn't mean you are only useful in academia / doing abstract research work. I am not certain what field you are in actually. But I know many physics/astronomy PhD graduates who are definitely working on very concrete problems in their new careers. One person I know works with a firm that analyzes satellite data for their clients and make maps of areas of interest -- for example, mapping the actual ground elevation in a forested area where the trees might block the view. Or, I know that physics/astronomy PhDs are hired to program and perform statistics or other calculations for companies like Amazon, or dating websites, etc. But if you are in a field where a Masters is often what's needed to do this kind of work, then maybe that's a better option. Personally, one of the reasons I'm doing a PhD is that I feel it would open up more career paths than just academia, otherwise the work of a PhD is probably not worth the small chance to be successful in academia.

All of the below assume that you have seen your interview in video/in print and make sure that they have portrayed you the way you want to be portrayed. If so, then..... I think it depends on what the CV is for, and how many other similar experiences you have. If you are applying for work where you want/need to do science communication to non-experts, such as a teaching position then I would include these things on "other relevant activities" or something like that on my CV. If you only have just the one interview, it might look silly and not say very much. But, if you have a whole slew of interviews then the combined experience could be helpful. You should definitely put it on your research website somewhere, though!

I would guess that the graduate school will consider every grade reported on the transcript that you provide them. But whether the more recent grades would be weighted higher etc. would probably depend on each program/department/school. Some of the schools I applied to explicitly instructs applicants to wait until the Fall semester grades appear on the transcript before submitting the application (sometimes, there are two different deadlines: one earlier date for the application itself and a later date for supporting documents such as transcripts, LORs, etc.).

I also don't hate grad school. If I honestly hated what I was doing then I would not be doing it. Like fuzzy, I do enjoying complaining about my life and struggles because it is a way to deal with crappy stuff. It does make me feel better when I sit around with some beer, friends, and vent about the downs of the job. We generally feel better afterwards and struggle through the hard parts. But I also enjoy rushing into my friends' offices to drag them back to my computer to show them something cool I made. And I enjoy it when my friends share their ups with me too! While in undergrad, I worked in a completely non-academic job for a couple of summers. The pay was great (unionized and lots of benefits), the employers treated us well, and the work was pretty easy (neither extremely mentally or physically taxing). They employ students as summer temps to replace the regular workers who are taking vacation. The students generally love the work -- we were able to earn tuition for our entire degree (Canadian tuition is lower) in just 1 or 2 summers. However, the regular workers had tons to complain about. We loved the opportunities to work overtime, they hated the extra work. We enjoyed it when our duties shifted around (as different people go off for vacation), the regular workers didn't like the change, etc. Basically, compared to most jobs that are currently available, that job is one of the best. Yet people still complained. No experience is perfect/ideal, and it's human nature to find the things we don't like about our experience and complain about it. That said, over complaining / having a negative attitude could have a bad effect on your experience too. I'm slightly annoyed that almost all of these type of articles either proclaim "Grad school is the best time of your life, ever!!" or "Grad school is horrible and you should only go if you are willing to suffer for 5-10 years and then suffer more afterwards!!". Why does it have to be one extreme or another. I don't think grad school is intrinsically any more or less sucky than other career choices. I think the main source of these types of articles is the illogical connection that if you are pursuing your dream/passion, then everything is perfect. Or, that the ideal way to live your life is to pursue your dreams/passions and those who are lucky enough to do it should be grateful. I don't think this is true at all. This is a very simplistic and childish view of the world. Having passion doesn't magically make everything perfect. Like fuzzy said, grad school/academia has positives and negatives, just like any other life path you could choose. Finally, the article's dentist metaphor shares my experience, but the author came to a different conclusion than me. When I was young, I thoroughly enjoyed any type of medical visit. I enjoyed the car ride to a less usual place. I enjoyed the attention from the doctors/dentists. I enjoyed knowing that I was doing things to ensure the health of my body and saw the dentists' instructions/nagging as challenges to overcome! As I got older, I learned that people are "expected" to hate dentist visits etc. Sure, there was a phase in my teenage years when I decided that I should hate everything in order to fit in, but that phase came and went and I don't think it's the "you're expected to hate dentists" worldview that makes such visits no longer fun for me. Instead, the real reason that I dread going to the dentist is the time it takes out of our busy schedules to fit in an appointment within their appointment schedules. I don't look forward to paying the bills. I don't look forward to feeling guilty and being told what to do by the dentists/doctors, even though I know it's for my own good. I think it's perfectly normal and fine for our worldviews to change as we continue to grow older, and get more experience. It's fine to shift our worldview about grad school from "perfect setting to do real interesting work" to "wow the grass really isn't greener on the other side" as you experience more of grad school. It would be childish to hang onto the former worldview despite actual experiences, just like it would be childish to hang onto all of the fond memories of doctors/dentists and willfully shut out the unhappiness caused by doctors/dentists today. My current worldview of grad school is that it is not an ideal place (but what is, really?) and while many things are not good, it's still worth it in the end for me. When this is no longer true, I'll be happy to wave goodbye to academia and go do something else. But for now, I'm legitimately happy and I think it's also important to keep in mind that grad school does have some great things going for it and to take advantage of it now (e.g. flexible schedule, not having to be constantly writing grants). And that life in academia doesn't magically get better beyond grad school. The good/bad parts might shift a bit, but it would be naive to think that "oh when I am ....[postdoc/tenure-track/tenured/emeritus/not-in-academia], things will magically become perfect"

Unfortunately, grad students don't get paid very much in North America. In expensive cities, rent is the largest expense and many people manage this by sharing a multiple bedroom apartment with others. I live near LA now, and if you share, your part of the rent and utilities would come to about $800 per month, on average. If you have a partner (i.e. two incomes) then you can probably afford to have a 1 bedroom apartment to yourself. Most of my grad student friends in expensive cities (Vancouver, Toronto, etc.) do this too. Overall, I still think grad students should be paid more for the work that we do, but in most cases, at least in the sciences, the stipend is enough to support the basic necessities for one person. Getting a car here usually takes a year or two of saving up and it's unlikely that you will leave grad school with any savings built up. In my opinion, I think our stipends should be enough to allow us to live comfortably and save up for the future, instead of having to just worry about paying the current bills!

It might not even be a "scandal", it could be as mundane as the school wanting to rebrand itself, or perhaps whatever body (school Senate? Board of Governors?) that named it Whitehead in the first place put a time limit on how long it would honour the name and the time limit is simply up. Or, perhaps they are hoping to line up a new donor so they are removing the old name so that a new donor can envision his/her name there in place. Probably not a big deal!

This is a good point too. The more people know that you do this work or that you came up with the idea, the more likely that the referee or journal editor will see the "scooping work" and realise that you presented it first and suggest that the "scoopers" cite your previous work. There are probably pre-print servers for many fields (e.g. arXiv for physical sciences and math) and if you can at least get a conference proceedings, then at least it's something "tangible" to cite. At least this way, you will still get some credit/recognition for the idea.

I have not yet reviewed an article so I can't confirm this with my own experience, but from talking to everyone else who has, the peer review process is not a double-blind process. This might be a field-dependent thing. I've talked to people who said, "Oh yeah, I'm currently reviewing an article on that by Prof. So-and-So -- but sorry I can't tell you more at this time." Another person told me once that he was put in an awkward position where he had to review a paper by the competing group that was citing his own paper and saying it was wrong. I asked about it being a conflict of interest and the person said that he did tell the journal editors that but they wanted him to review it anyways, as he was an expert in the pretty small field. I get the sense that this happens a lot in my small field (i.e. the few competing groups are the only ones qualified to peer review one another's work) and people are expected to act professionally and report conflicts of interest so that journal editors can act accordingly. For most journals, it is one-way blind though, so if I submit an article, I don't know who will be reviewing it. However, many times, the referee will reveal themselves, usually by signing the referee report with their real name. I haven't heard of any journals in my field that enforce anonymity. Also, some journals will also ask the submitting authors to name a couple of people that they would like to suggest as referees, or alternatively name some people they don't want to referee the paper. I don't think the journal promise that the choices will be honoured, but it's something the editors will keep in mind when selecting referees. The same process happens for grant review panels too. I've talked to people who have recently served on the panels, and while it's a bit more formal (since the stakes are a bit higher), they are not usually double-blind processes either. The panel is not known to the people proposing for grants, but the panel reviewers usually know the names on the proposals (so that they can excuse themselves if there is a conflict of interest). The added formality is just the definition of "conflict of interest", usually it means if you have worked with them in the last X years or have coauthored a paper in the last Y years etc. Again this might be a field dependent thing. Maybe some fields are just too small that there's no point doing a double blind study since you can usually guess who/where the authors are from the dataset they use, or even just the research problem!

I agree that research should not be limited to those in academia only. However, I was mostly pointing out the fact that the editors of journals are those in academia. The referees are those in academia. Basically, academic journals are written mostly by those in academia for others in academia. So, I was pointing out that you might face some extra challenges. I think that valid research by independent scholars should be welcomed and accepted by the academic community. However, since the intended primary audience of the academic journals is, in my opinion, the world of academia, then the article should be written with the purpose to be useful to those in academia. I still think that if you do intend to apply to PhD programs in the future, you would improve your chances the best by doing work within the academic world. After all, getting a PhD means you want to work with those in academia (maybe not necessarily afterwords, but definitely while in a PhD program) and it doesn't make sense to be trying to avoid academia at the current time. I am a little confused by the tone of your post, which seems to imply that you might have a bit of disdain for academia, yet you hope to get into a PhD program, and basically (temporarily) join academia. But you are right that academia could be a little closed-minded and that it would be great to have fresh ideas from outside of academia. Unfortunately, from my (admittedly limited) experience, most people outside of academia come up with crazy ideas which makes it even harder for independent scholars to be taken seriously. I hope you will be successful in providing interesting new ideas and insight to your field!

Any authorship is good for PhD applications. First author publications are worth more and I don't think sole author vs. first author is a big difference. I'm not even sure that a first author publication in a "second tier" journal is better than a co-authorship in a "top tier" journal. Agreeing with ANDS!, sole-author publications are rare, but again, that might depend on field. I do not usually see a sole author paper from someone who doesn't already have a PhD. There are plenty of very important sole-author papers though, but mostly from established scientists -- here's an example I recently read: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/307/5709/546.full.html

I'm not sure if this means the current system is broken, but there really isn't much opportunities for freelance researchers, especially those without PhDs, in academia. That said, if you have performed research that is suitable for publication, you should contact the journal editor that you want to submit to and ask them how to fill in the affiliation box. The affiliation information is more than just where you currently are -- it is an actual affiliation related to the work (i.e. a company that employs you for R&D, a school that has hired you to work as a researcher, etc.). So, you shouldn't just put your current employer unless they are affiliated with your work. But the way you phrase your first question is confusing. I'm not sure if this is because you are not sure what you mean, or if you just didn't explain your intention clearly. But, it sounds like you have decided that you want to write an article but have no idea what to write about (except for the field?). Usually, articles are written after some substantial original research is completed. People do research first, decide whether their results merit a publication, and then write it up. The first two parts is tough and it is what a PhD is meant to train you for (that is, doing independent research), which is why I said earlier that it's strange to have "freelance" researchers without a PhD. Your work might also be treated less seriously if you are not a student, and do not have a PhD, and are not working with any advisors with PhDs. It may be unfair to be biased against this type of work, but I still think that in the exceptional case that legitimate science is performed in this case, it would be recognized by the editors. Maybe I'm just idealistic though. Also, it sounds like your primary concern is what to fill in for the affiliation box. That is not really a concern -- simply asking the editors would solve that problem. In your shoes, I would be more concerned with completing publishable work on my own (if that's not already done), and/or ensuring that I have the right guidance in performing the analysis and writing it up. If you already have a finished work and you think it's a good idea, I would recommend that you contact a professor at a nearby school and "pitch" them your idea, show them what you've done and see what they say. If you've done good work, they might agree to take you on as a research assistant to finish the work, or provide guidance to help you publish the paper. They would probably also appear on the paper and you would probably use their affiliation, since you might be informally/formally (loosely) included in their group at this point. However, this could be quite challenging, since many people might not be willing to listen to a random person's ideas (some profs get a lot of crazy ideas from random people). Another option would be to register to present your work at a local conference in order for people to find out about your work. Let people know that you are looking for guidance/collaborators to help you polish up the work. Maybe you can get someone to agree to add you to their group as a volunteer or even part time research assistant. However, all this can really only happen if you already have a well-formed idea and work completed. If you are not there yet but want the opportunity to do research, then it would probably be better to try to get hired (or volunteer with) an established research group at a local university instead of trying to do this all by yourself. You have a MSc, so that is pretty decent qualifications -- definitely enough to be hired as a research assistant in a lab in North America. Maybe you can start with a part-time / volunteer position at first and then shift to more full time work. Finally, my last question is why do you want to write research articles? They are only useful to have in the world of academia, so if you are interested in going into / going back to academia, then why not consider PhD programs? If you don't want to do a PhD, then why do you want to write research articles? If you want to get more research experience / articles in order to apply for PhD programs, then trying to get research experience at a school is probably your best bet.

I'm in my third year of grad school but this is what has been my experience so far, in regards to your questions: 1. Signing something like that is common and sometimes even individual collaborations (especially those spanning multiple institutions) have their own agreements and contracts. Sometimes these agreements are university-wide and written in very general terms to accomodate all the differences in field. For example, I know that in the humanities, it is much more common for supervisors to not be included on the papers. I know some people in the humanities who only meet their supervisor something like once or twice a year, and the supervisor just provides very general guidance in the PhD program while the student is solely responsible for coming up with their own research topic and writing their own papers. In my field, in the sciences, the supervisor and student work together a lot more. Often, the student talks with several professors about their research interests and maybe the two of them come up with an idea together, or the student works on a project that was originally the idea of the professor. In this case, it is clear from the agreement/contract that the supervisor should be a coauthor on the paper, since they have at least contributed to the "idea". Often, in the sciences, we would meet with our advisors regularly and brainstorm ideas together -- either one on one, or in a group meeting. The advisor might tell us to perform the analysis a certain way, or provide code from previous work etc. This obviously makes it even more clear that the advisor should be on the authorship list. Finally, there is a lot of edits and rewriting during the paper writing stage, and especially for new researchers, the advisor might actually rewrite a large chunk of the paper. Overall, what I'm saying is that it's perfectly fine for supervisors to appear on all of their students papers and still keep academic integrity / keep that agreement valid. Supervisors provide more than just funding! They might not be in the lab performing the experiments or the analysis, but chances are, the research problem was their idea, or the technique was theirs, or they trained a post-doc / senior student who is now supervising you more directly. Basically, if the project would not have been possible without the ideas or work of the supervisor, then the supervisor should appear on the authorship list. Thus I wouldn't say it's your "duty" to "give" papers to your supervisor. Instead, I would say it's your job (i.e. you were hired) to work in your supervisor's lab, on your supervisor's projects. If you wanted, you could argue that graduate students are simply a tool to carry out the supervisor's plans. This is true, and some supervisors will treat their students as simply machinery to get work done. That's why it's important to find a good match in supervisor/program so that you get something you want out of your work. To answer the last part -- usually the requirement for counting the paper towards your PhD (i.e. to include it as part of the thesis) is that the student be the first author (or primary contributor), for the work to be done at the school as part of the PhD program, and for the work to be published in a peer-reviewed journal. 2. First authorship is usually seen as the most important position. Coauthorship is not bad, it shows that you have done work, but at the PhD level and beyond, the real "currency" is first authorship. This could depend on the field/journal, but I think pretty much no one reads a paper with 4 authors and expect that all 4 authors contributed equally. The difference between first/second/third/etc author's contribution varies a lot and it's not always clear. Some journals now require authors to write a paragraph at the end stating who actually did what. In one collaboration I was part of, the contract was that the main PI for that analysis (usually a post-doc) would be first author and then the rest of the collaboration would be listed in alphabetical order. So, in this case, only the first position has meaning. When you read the academic webpages of people looking for jobs, they usually write things like "X papers, Y first authored". So, I would say that being first author is valued a lot more than another authorship position, but it's NOT the case that you should solely do things that get your first authorship. 3. Doing things purely for science/research and not for authorship is, in my opinion, a little idealistic and naive. It's also more common for people who are in established positions (e.g. tenured professors) to have more idealistic views on their field. However, your supervisor makes a good point because the opposite is also not a good idea. You don't want to be so publication driven that you publish for the sake of publishing/producing and generate bad papers. Publications follow you around forever, so you don't want your name attached to work you aren't proud of. Your supervisor is right in the sense that you should strive to do good science and good work. Papers will come naturally out of the process. You should do your due diligence by selecting projects/science to work on that you think people will be interested in. You should plan for the future by picking a PhD topic that you think would get you hired in the position you want in the future. I think it's a mistake to simply follow your passions and try to find a PhD thesis that fulfills all of your research desires. Instead, you should pick one that other people (i.e. those who will hire you) are interested in. You don't have to be in love with your PhD topic and after working for years on a topic, most topics, no matter how interesting to start with, will probably become very tedious! Your measure of your worth after graduation is going to be a combination of your papers, your advisors' letters of recommendation, and any impact/influence you've made (e.g. at conferences and seminars -- many senior students will try to attend as many conferences as possible and use their connections to give seminar talks at schools they're interested in so that they market themselves and their skills). I don't think a prospective employer will be reading your PhD thesis. Instead, the hiring process at most North American schools involves first making a shortlist out of all the applicants (never seen this part but not sure how it's done), and then the short-listed candidates are invited to be interviewed by a large number of professors and students (usually the students "interview" is a group discussion) at the school. They will also give some talks about their research as well. Through this process, the department can hire the person that is the best fit (in terms of research interest as well as interpersonal relationships).

In some grad programs, if the grad classes are small (<10 people), sometimes the grad class might just be rescheduled in order to make sure everyone's schedule works out. In many of my previous classes, we might meet on the first week and basically decide our own class time, putting priority on avoiding conflicts with TA duties, then avoiding conflicts with group meetings, and finally avoiding personal conflicts.

Did you talk to the International Office at your host (US) university, or did you only talk to the professors you would be working with? The International Office staff are experts trained to work with foreign scholars to get the right paperwork, while professors are not.