TakeruK

Good point, I was responding to my earlier example (of students in STEM programs).

Check with ETS to be sure but I don't think they would be. With ScoreSelect, you pick which test date(s) you want to report, so you can just pick the most recent (or whatever date you want to send). Also, why would the school even care how many times you've rescheduled the GRE?

If you had not applied to any fellowships and the field is a required field for the application form, then just write "Not applicable" or "I did not apply this year." No one can really say whether they will hold it against you, but probably not. However, it's pretty common for current grad students to be required to apply to fellowships each year. But that's something to worry about next year!

You can ask the department you are applying to in order to figure out what they want. I would guess you should write 4 years. But you could also put 4 years, put the dates corresponding to the actual time in program in the right place but then also add a note to say that you finished early (most applications allow you to add notes).

Like the others said, do it if it's free but otherwise, think more carefully about it. Many schools in Canada and the US will also run very similar programs for its students through its Centre for Teaching and Learning or some similar named office. My PhD school had a program offered at two commitment levels. Things you could do included a 1-hour per week reading course for 1 semester, with a final project at the end (total ~30 to 40 hour commitment), various workshops offered during the year (along with writing reflection statements) and creating a teaching portfolio. They also have services like sending staff to observe your TA or teaching sessions to give you feedback. Both commitment levels gives you a notation on your transcript and diploma and you can slowly complete the requirements on your own time over the years (instead of having to do it all at once).

My current institution's standard signature format also includes our snail mail address and a bunch of not really necessary stuff. I only use it for internal communications. I work for a national-lab-like place with institutions all over the country, so I suppose the snail mail address is helpful when contacting centralized services (e.g. HR is run out of headquarters, which is somewhere else) so that the reader kinds of know which one of the many campuses I am at.

Indeed, the advisor would have to make this part of their package. Whether it's a "fight" or not depends on the situation. Just pointing it out since it's not always the case that the "new" school is going to resist the advisor's old students. Often, when hiring an established prof, the "new" school probably really wants this person so they are generally willing to do what it takes to get the person they want (e.g. in my field, many untenured profs recruited in this way are granted tenure upon hire at the new school). Established profs already have funding in place for their students so as far as I understand, taking on new students isn't a major financial burden for the new school.

I think this is incorrect and the way you brought it up did sound like you were trying to undermine history. Combined with what you write here later, although you may not intend it to be so, it does come across as you thinking the sciences are superior and that it's harder to have an intelligent conversation in science than it is in history. But this is really not true. Maybe *you* think it's hard to discuss the most simple topics of Physics or Chemistry because of "expert blindness". Since you already know so much about these fields, it's hard to think about it from an non-expert's point of view. I also think you are inconsistent in what you define as "simple" aspects of each field. Your history example is just rote memorization. You say you cannot think of an equivalent in chemistry or physics, but you're stating things learned in high school history class, and there are plenty of equivalents in high school science classes. I would say the equivalent to your description of your discussion of the civil war would be a discussion about the phases of matter. The people that know about the civil war at the level you describe would also know that the basic phases are solid, liquid and gas and that water comes in all three forms. I'm just saying that someone stating these three phases of matter is about the same in-depth of a discussion that you describe as one with the historian. That is to say, it's certainly possible to bring up simple physics and chemistry facts so I don't think it's fair to say that everyone knows the basics of history but no one knows the basics of chemistry. Sure, a non-major would not be able to discuss all of the details of a phase transition, or they might not know all the thermodynamical equations or how to read a phase diagram and you might not feel that this isn't a deep discussion or that your conversation partner doesn't have a true understanding of the material. But the historian in your example may feel the same way as you and your discussion on the civil war.

If you need to know your status in order to make another decision, then you can and should ask about it. Let's say you have an offer from your 2nd choice school but haven't heard anything from your first choice. Most schools will require you to make a decision by April 15, so if the deadline is nearing and you haven't heard from the top choice, you might want to inquire before committing to the other school. In addition, if you suspect that the first choice schools have already made decisions and you already know you will take your 2nd choice school if you don't get into the first choice, and it's later in the season (subjective, but probably like after...March 15?) then you can probably ask at this time since there's no point waiting until April 15 to accept the other offer. In many cases, schools already made rejection decisions but don't always send them out until much later. Sometimes it's in case they need to change their mind but also usually because they spend their time doing all the work of arranging the visits for accepted students, etc first and de-prioritize rejection notification. So if you need to confirm a rejection, asking about your status could do that and allow you to move on with your process. In the GradCafe's results survey, you might see these pop up ("asked and received rejection"). It's not that the process of asking resulted in an instant rejection, but that they just didn't release the decisions yet.

1) Names of these events don't matter. You will have schools using all sorts of names for basically the same thing: you spend 1-2 days at the school meeting faculty and students (sometimes postdocs too) and there are likely some number of social events as well as lab tours, campus tours, etc. You'll receive information about the research that is going on, how grad student life works, the academic program/requirements and basically everything you might want to know. You'll have one on one or small group meetings, you may attend some lectures/classes/talks, and some of the info may be given to the whole group in a "presentation" type setting. In addition, even though many places still use the "weekend" name, most of my visits weren't even on a weekend. These events do influence the school's decision. They are usually called "Recruitment Weekends" because they want to recruit you but that doesn't mean that what you do will affect your chances of admission. The other names generally used are: Recruitment/Open House/Visiting/Interview/Prospective Student etc. Don't be fooled by the name though, even if it's not called an "interview" weekend, treat every interaction as an interview. I would say that this is true even when you are already accepted. In the academic (and the professional) world, you should always put your best foot forward in every single interaction. Even if you have been admitted to the school, people you meet will eventually be evaluating you on other things, such as quals, candidacy, TA assignments, fellowships, your instructors. In the long term, they may be your reviewers etc. This goes for interactions with everyone, not just faculty. Interactions with current students, admin staff (especially admin staff) and other prospective students. When I watch our prospective students come, I sometimes see them treat everyone with respect but not so much their fellow prospective students. But they forget that the other students they are visiting with could be their classmates and labmates next year! And in the long term, for those in academia, these will be your future colleagues---the people that peer review your papers, conference submissions etc. 2) I agree with your PI. The most common dress for male scientist is something like a polo or button up top, and nice jeans or khakis. So yeah, something you said is very common. So common that for one small visit, the only other man visiting was wearing exactly what I was wearing (blue polo, khaki shorts). Wear what will make you comfortable too, since these are long days. Most people seem to get the memo on this but sometimes they have a really old/ratty backpack to go with their smart casual look. Try to get a "smart" backpack or a messenger bag or something. 3) Yes, but they probably already know. It's still a good thing to email them and they might even have specific suggestions for you (no need to ask though but emailing about the visit is a good way to allow them a way to bring it up if they want). To prepare, definitely be ready to describe your past research, current work and future interests. I remember that you have a few projects already completed, so rehearse ahead of time what you want to say so that you can describe an entire project's worth of work in a concise and interesting manner. I have heard many prospective students give long-winded or confusing or meandering answers (e.g. interrupt themselves in the middle of an explanation because they forgot to say something critical earlier, or starting at a level that is way too general or way too specific). Don't forget to think about the big picture: people are much more able to engage with you if you are speaking at a level that interests them and when they engage with you they are much more likely to think your work/ideas are interesting. Also come up with intelligent questions to ask about their research and their school. Have at least one question to ask so that you don't seem disinterested. I find it helpful to have one prepared because the days are long and tiring and you might not have one at the ready during an interview even if you are interested. There may be some information you might really want to know as well so I find that writing it down before hand helps. A tip that works for me: I would describe myself as an introvert more than an extrovert in the sense that interactions with people tire me out and while I have lots of energy for chatting with people and while I do enjoy talking to other people, these "weekends" really tire me out. So I plan for down time before and after the trip (not like taking days off, but planning for quiet evenings). I still do the same for conferences and other work visits/trips. Finally a few random do's/dont's: Do: - Keep some snacks/energy bars on you. You should be well fed but sometimes the long days drain you and a quick boost of energy in the middle of the afternoon. I personally like Clif bars for this because they come in tasty flavours, but more importantly, they don't break into crumbs everywhere, they are soft, and it's easy to just eat half or 1/3 of a bar if you just need a small boost. - Sometimes you get a schedule where you are constantly in one meeting after another, back to back. If you aren't getting any time between meetings at all because people are escorting you from one meeting place to the next, if you know for sure where the next office is, just say you thanks for the offer but that you need to use the bathroom first. This gives you a chance to take 30 seconds for yourself between meetings. - Do bring a notepad and pen to the meetings to jot down important notes (e.g. the prof says you should read a paper, then jot down the citation). You can also refer to it for brief notes and to ask your question. But don't be constantly looking at it. (i.e. don't just read your Qs off it and don't take notes on everything they say like you might do in a classroom). It's okay to have it out but not use it at all. - Do let the visit organizers know about any needs you may have. For example, dietary restrictions. They will probably ask you first though. Also, at some point they will tell you about the plans for accomodations. Usually it's either hotel rooms or you're staying with a grad student. If it's a hotel, you may be sharing rooms. If you have any special needs for rooming arrangements, bring them up in an appropriate way. - Be nice and friendly to everyone. Just worth saying again. Don'ts: - Don't be arrogant or try to one-up the other visiting students (especially if this is a pre-admission visit). Resist the urge to feel and treat the other visiting applicants as your competitors. In group settings (your meals and social events will likely be in this format), treat everyone with mutual respect! - Don't talk about how much you want to go to some other school instead of this one (seems obvious but every year there is always one person that does this!). When you're visiting a program, focus on that program! Of course, you will likely be asked where else you are applying and you should answer honestly. The best response is something like answering their question about where you have applied and/or visited and then either just stop there (i.e. don't gush about the other schools) or bring it back to their school to say something that interests you about this place. - Don't be distractedly looking at your phone/computer/etc during these events. Your main focus/priority should be on the events, barring any emergencies that may come up!

Here are the types of rejection notifications I've received: 1. Generic email automatically generated by the application software telling me that a decision has been made and I should log onto the portal. When I get there, it says my application was not accepted/rejected. No personal contact at all. 2. An email directly from the chair of the admissions committee of the department I was applying to. They are generally generic and say something like, "your application was very interesting/good/whatever" and that "we had a great number [sometimes including the number] of qualified applicants but we can only accept a few [sometimes includes this number too]" and then something about wishing me best of luck. Sometimes they are a little more personalized. Usually the email is at least addressed to me (probably procedurally generated) but not always. Sometimes a person I was directly in contact with during the application process also emailed me (after the official notice) to "debrief". 3. A snail-mail letter on fancy paper with the official letterhead from the Graduate Program informing me that I was not successful. In some cases, you get more than one rejection (yay!). I think the one school that sent #3 also did #1. I also know some people who hear nothing (I heard something for every grad school app but many postdoc jobs never responded). Or they might get an automatically generated rejection in July/August when the system officially closes out the previous year.

I tried to find similar data from Canada. Apparently we have not done a Survey of Earned Doctorates since the mid-2000s! In one report, it turns out that just over 70% of earned doctorates are in Science and Engineering. The report compares the fraction from the US's survey at the same time period and it was 68% or so. One caveat was that this survey had approximately a 50% response rate but still, I guess either the demographics have really changed in the 10+ years since the last survey, or that using grant applications isn't a good method after all (suggesting that many NSERC-eligible applicants aren't applying?).

Almost all cases I know of when students move with their advisor, the student is still officially a student at their first school (so they return for quals, candidacy and defense). I know one student whose advisor moved during their first year, so they chose to just apply to the new school. They got in and started over again from year one.

Seconding what fuzzy said. Introductions and conclusion sections are where people generally relate their work to the bigger picture so that's a good place to read in a paper. I'd also be sure to read their research website to see how they explain their interests. If they have written review articles, those might be good to skim. Or, if your field has some database of federal grants, you can look up their grants and read the public summary parts (usually ~1 page) and see how they motivate their research questions.

What is the purpose of this section? It sounds like a generic request that appears on all applications, but I think how you respond would depend on what else they are asking and what kind of school you are applying to. If this is a US school and you are applying to PhD programs, and they didn't already ask for research experience elsewhere, I think it is safe to go ahead and only list relevant experience (so maybe not just Chemistry but everything academic related) if that's what you want to list. However, you might choose to include your customer service or other jobs if you would like. If you write in your application that you were working while studying etc. then you might want to ensure you include that. But if this is a school that treats its students more like any other job (especially if it's not a US school), then they might actually want a full employment record. Or, if you are applying to a program where you will need to have a background check (maybe it is a grad program joint with a national lab or something?) then that's another case where you might need a full employment background. If you are not sure and you don't want to list your non-academic work, then you should ask the school. If you don't care about listing your non-academic work, then it's not going to be a big deal if you include them and they just ignore it.

It will not. I know a few people in my field that took time off for Peace Corps. Many others also took time off for various other things, including completely different career paths. You are not expected to devote all of your life to the field!

Yeah, the differences are going to be much greater due to personalities and individual circumstances than just rank. The only exception is when the school happens to have some rules about who can do advise and who cannot. Generally, assistant professors are tenure-track faculty that do not have tenure. Associate professor are faculty who have earned tenure. Professor is a more senior person, the rules for promotion vary from place to place. But some places do not have Associate professors at all (i.e. get promoted from assistant professor to Professor after tenure). Also, it used to be that assistant profs are new hires and may not know the department culture as well while the other ranks are more locally established people. However, at least in my field, it's more and more common for faculty to move, usually post-tenure so a Professor may have only arrived a few years ago. Sometimes schools will offer tenure as part of the recruitment package (i.e. hire an untenured prof at School A as a tenured prof at School B). So, in my opinion, the rank really doesn't matter very much and I would treat each person as an individual!

Because the screenshot will arrive to them much faster than waiting for grad admissions to send the official report. At many universities, these are very different offices that don't always communicate super well with each other. Grad admissions has to process 1000s of applications for ALL of their programs and may not be able to take the time to search for your specific report at this time. The department may want to finish up all application profiles for their faculty members before the break and grad admissions may not get back to them until later in January.

I just want to say that I fully support you charging and I think you should get paid for your work. I second what fuzzy said above. To expand on it, I believe that if I am not being paid by my employer to go and do this, then it's perfectly reasonable to charge and get paid for your work. I do a lot of outreach work, speaking about science to non-scientists. I usually do this as part of my salaried job thru my university/institution. In those cases, I do not expect to get paid because I am still drawing a salary from my work and I take work time off to do this outreach**. It's part of my job description. But sometimes, I speak with groups outside of my employed role, as an individual person. When I do this on my own time, I do accept payment for my work, but see note below on charging based on who is asking. (**Note: As pointed out above, there are plenty of cases in academia where colloquia and invited seminar speakers get honoraria on top of their expenses. The amounts I know about are around a couple of hundred dollars per day. Maybe $300 for just a single day. I think this is a very fair way to compensate the extra work it takes for an academic to take time off to benefit another institution. There would be lots of cost out of pocket otherwise if academics had to arrange childcare, pet care, etc. due to the disruption in their normal routine to travel for an invited speaker role). Through my work with my school's student government, I've organized events where we invite outside speakers. They seem to charge a wide range, depending on how busy they are. I've received quotes from as low as $0 (only travel expenses) to $5000 plus expenses. Obviously we had no way to afford the thousands of dollars range, but we've paid $500 ish for speakers before. As fuzzy said, you have people offering to pay you and it makes sense for you to charge. You asked how much? I don't think a number based on your hourly rate makes sense because this is very different work than your "day job". For this type of skilled work, I would say a rate around $50 to $100 per hour of time you actually need to prepare and deliver the talk, plus travel and meal expenses. You can charge more for larger groups too. Here's a strategy to talk about the price though. First, I don't think it's a good idea to advertise your rate on your website or any public place. This allows you to set whatever rate is appropriate. You should have a rate in mind for a standard talk/speech that is the "maximum" you'd charge (i.e. going the full capitalistic approach, what is the max you can get someone to pay). Maybe it's like $500 or something (for sake of an example). Then, consider what factors would cause you to decrease it (maybe for schools or non-profits, you'd charge less). When someone asks you to speak, determine where they fit into your hierarchy of fees. Pick a higher number if you're unsure because I very typically see something like, "I normally ask for X dollars per speaking engagement, but I am willing to discuss a different rate if this is not possible for your organization". This way, as long as X is high enough, you don't end up getting less money than you could have. At the same time, if X was really high for the group (and you really do want to help them), this allows you to be flexible and find something that works. During the discussion you can learn more about their event. Are they charging admission? Are they making money or are they just barely covering costs with admission fees? Are they providing a service? Are the organizers being paid or are they volunteering etc. All of this can change whether you charge your full rate, a reduced rate or nothing at all. The tough part is finding out where to start. Luckily if you are getting many offers per month, you can start experimenting. If people seem to be scared off by an initial ask that is too high, try something lower. If people are happily paying your asking rate, try raising it. Of course, if you can find others doing similar things, it would be better to talk to them, but trial and error is probably okay given that you're well established and have lots of opportunities to test things out.

Check the policies at the other school and/or talk to whomever you were in contact with over there. I know there are some programs in my field that actually keep your admission valid for 1 year, even if you declined them and even if you chose to go somewhere else. As long as you contact them within the first year and say that you want to attend in the following cycle, you will have a spot. The funding package may be different though. Also, I think if you have a good reason to want to switch, being accepted in one year means you are likely to be accepted again, however, maybe not at the same place. So if you are truly unhappy where you are and would rather be anywhere else (including not in grad school) then it makes sense to apply again for Fall 2019. But apply to several places, since nothing is for sure.

Ah okay. In your first post you had said you didn't want to meet with anyone else. But if you are still open-minded about meeting with other profs, then fuzzy wrote the advice a lot better.

I wasn't offended. But you did ask for input, both good and bad, and I didn't think it would be helpful to lie to you and say that your idea was a good one when I think there are significant problems with your approach. I think you have definitely identified an actual problem students have and I think it's great that you are looking for a solution. But I think you need to realise that you have only experienced one "side" of the problem (the applicant's side) and others here provided input from the perspective of faculty members, others who have advised students and current grad students. I think your approach treats applications in the wrong way and your solution focusses on the wrong thing. I get what you are saying about personality matching and I completely agree that a good match between advisor and student is very important. But it sounds like your tool is to be used at the "deciding on where to apply" stage and personality matching is not important here. No one is going to get accepted to a school based on a great personality match. I always recommend applicants seek out places to apply based on research match and major personal needs match (e.g. geographic location, rural/urban, etc.) first. Everything else comes later when you are visiting places you have been accepted to. From both advisor and applicant perspectives, there is little use to learn that you're a good personality match with each other if there's actually no chance for you to work together. But after the admission decisions are made, there number of choices are small enough that it's easy for both advisor and student to figure out if they are a match. Also remember that some schools don't require students to have advisors until the end of the first (or sometimes second) year, so these people have months or years to figure out if they're a match. In addition, something you may not realise: many faculty members already have the maximally efficient method (for them, but not for students). They do nothing before applications (i.e. ignore or just give canned responses to all applicant emails) and they still get good students every year. On the other hand, I think the most daunting challenge for applicants is first coming up with a long list of names that might be good advisors. I started with almost 100 names and narrowed it down to about 25 (and applied to the 8 schools where they worked). You see tons of threads on these forums asking for tips on how to get to this long list of names. I was lucky and had great advisors/mentors that helped me find names I wouldn't have thought of. I also came up with a lot of names by reading papers and bibliographies. I think this is where a data driven tool could be really helpful. It was very tedious to track everything and there are way better metadata now than 8 years ago when I was applying for the first time. This is why I suggested what I had suggested. In addition, this tool would be of interest to people at many stages of their career!

I agree with @fuzzylogician that this will only work if both parties put information on their profiles (like Match.com). However, at least in my field, it is fairly easy to identify the professors but much harder to make meaningful contact because of how busy the faculty member are. For these busy faculty members, they aren't going to spend time updating their profile if they already do not update their own webpages. I think if your service was more to help identify similar research interests rather than a true match-up, it might be more helpful for an applicant. For someone new to the field, there are hundreds or thousands or researchers. One real way that applicants find potential PhD advisors is to search up papers or conference abstracts. From the perspective of a former grad student, I would say that if your service was able to mine the meta-data of journals and conferences in order to suggest papers (or even people) that might be interesting to the student's profile, that could be a great starting point for an applicant to build a list of potential advisors. One "dream tool" I envision from an applicant perspective would be a service where I can upload (or link to) a set of journal papers. Your service reads the meta-data and generates a list of all the articles cited in the paper and also articles cited BY the paper. Then, it searches through all of the names and affiliations in every one of these papers and presents a user with a list of person and affiliation. To be useful, the service must be able to filter them in some way. Perhaps the user can select which references to include (since not all references in a key paper will be relevant) or limit institution by country, etc. Note that the first part (finding the articles cited in and cited by) already exists from many other article databases so you could just use that output and apply the filters. This "dream tool" would be helpful to me now (as a postdoc) and also helpful to me when I was a graduate student, so it's more than just for applications! Although I am not a faculty member, one faculty member perspective I could think of is what would motivate a faculty member to sign up for your service and spend the time curating yet another online profile. In general, applicants are much more interested in finding a faculty member than the other way around. Especially when you get to the top tier schools, these researchers often already have plenty of good people applying, so how will this service provide value to professors who already have plenty of connections?

Physics also has their own website and related fields often go there. I think Math does too. However, at least in Canada, there are way more social science and humanities grad students than there are natural sciences and engineering students. The main funding agencies for Canadian grad students publish the number of applicants and grants awarded each year. The two relevant ones to this discuss are SSHRC: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and NSERC: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. For the most recent competition cycle: NSERC: 1500 applications (Source) SSHRC: 4100 applications (Source) In previous years, I noticed that the ratio of SSHRC to NSERC in Canada is around 3:1 and this is in keeping with that. If we imagine North America to be just "Canada, scaled up", then I would expect to see a lot more social sciences and humanities students than natural science/engineering students. Of course, these numbers come with caveats, such as maybe NSERC-eligible people don't apply as often. But most schools in Canada require applicants to apply to external awards in order to be eligible for internal awards.

It depends on the fellowships and the school. For external fellowships (not awarded by the school), you will have to apply to them directly, of course. But you were probably asking about internal (school) fellowships. Usually, you should follow the instructions on the website for the department. The most common case is that everyone who is eligible is automatically considered. However, you should double check in case there are some where you need to indicate your interest in some other way. Note two important things: 1. Some fellowships are just sums of money that the school/department has and will award to their students on whatever basis they want. So it's not necessarily even a competition. It might be that they will just call all the department-funded money for all students the "X fellowship" or something. Or, they might just award them to the top X students who are admitted. 2. Some fellowships have strict eligibility criteria and/or require a nomination from the department first. You will find out if you have to submit further materials after a nomination when the department contacts you.