TakeruK

I'm a Canadian. When I applied to Canadian grad schools, no one ever asked about criminal records. It's not even relevant to the grad school application! The only "misdemeanors" that the school might know about is anything that is recorded on your school transcripts. In terms of employment (as a TA or RA), Canadian law requires employers to not consider a candidate's criminal record when considering who to employ (i.e. it's a form of discrimination). So, it also shouldn't matter for both academic and employment roles that a grad student would have. I am fairly certain that a DUI would not prevent a student from getting accepted into a Canadian school. As for crossing the border, I have no experience with that except to say that: a ) I didn't need to submit a criminal record check to study in the US, and b ) I do know that my non-Canadian PhD friends who are applying for Permanent Resident (i.e. "green card") status in Canada through the PhD stream do have to submit criminal record checks though (from the FBI for those who have lived in the US). Hope it helps!

Once you have sent scores to a school, they will have access to them forever. If you really want to select the score to be sent to each school, then you must NOT take advantage of the four free schools (score reports) and pay the ~$25 for each school individually. Note that prior to July 2012 (i.e. everyone who applied to grad school before the Fall 2013 cohort), ScoreSelect isn't an option. So, every school saw every single test score we took. To me, this means that it is no big deal if you got, e.g. 70% percentile and retook it and then got 90% percentile. I got the impression from the application process that the schools will take your best score, especially if there is a big increase. I guess it would be worrisome if you repeatedly scored "low" and the school saw that in all 4 tries, you kept getting a "low" score, but otherwise, I don't think it's a big deal to send all your scores. Especially in this application season, with the first use of ScoreSelect, adcomms will still be used to seeing multiple test scores from applicants, so I don't think it will hurt you too much to send more than one score. If you ask me, this new option is bad for students as it now puts pressure for us to spend more money to send scores and to take the test multiple times to get a higher score (In the past, if you have scored e.g. 80% but thought you were capable of 90%, you might not want to retake it since it's risky and they will see both scores anyways. Now, students will feel more pressure to retake and see if they can get 90%, if not they can always just send the 80% score only. This means more money spent on taking tests and sending score reports!!) As for cost, macro_math, your Subject and General test scores can be sent in one score report (but maybe not if you use ScoreSelect). In the past, when you order a score report, you tick off boxes if you want to send General scores or Subject scores (you can tick off both). I think you can still do this now if you pick the "ALL" option in ScoreSelect. Either way, applying to 10 schools is a reasonable number and it does cost a lot of money

I agree with the above posters. In the last two years, I have had a car, so I can also do what Eigen suggested -- look at the flyers and pick the cheap things from each store. In general, each grocery store will have a few items on sale and everything else at a slightly higher price than "market value", so that overall, they still make a good profit (the cheap things entice people to come in and shop). So, if you pay attention to what are the "real" prices for things you commonly buy, stock up when it's cheap and try to stick to buying just the things on sale at each store (within reason), then you can maximize the amount of time you are buying things below "market value". For me, the major stores make a nice loop so it doesn't cost too much gas to stop at several different stores (the cheapest store is furthest away so I have to travel that far anyways). I look through the flyers and make a list of things that are well priced and we could stock up on. Then I make a plan for meals that week and add to the list the items required to make these meals, and I add them to whatever store I know from past experience has the best prices (e.g. canned stuff is cheap at Walmart, cheese is cheap at Costco, etc.). I also have a default store where I buy whatever we need but isn't on sale -- it's not a discount grocery store because we also don't like to scrimp on food quality! (I always buy produce from my favourite store). Overall, my wife and I spend about $600-$700 a month on groceries, supplies (e.g. toothpaste, toilet paper), and eating out.

I don't think you need to remove anything from the extracurriculars -- just beef up on the academic details. If you must remove something for space, then the weakest/least useful part is the sentences about tutoring -- you can just put that in the CV I think.

I think, in general, most people think of Profs as a higher rank than Dr.; but your example perfectly fits what I was trying to say about "professor" being an unprotected title, so schools can give that title to anyone, and colloquially, it's often used for any instructor at the college level.

Hi, I've completed all of my schooling so far in the Canadian system and I did apply to Canadian Masters programs in 2010. Although I'm not in the same field, here are some comments which you might find helpful: 1. I would remove descriptive adjectives, especially in your first paragraph (e.g. "high performing"). Although this is an essay, it's also an (applied) science field, and scientists, I think, prefer more explicit descriptions. For example, in your 2nd paragraph, you say you are in the top 5% of your class, which is great. That's much more useful to say than to saying you are a "high performing graduate". That is, in a SOP, you want to "show", not "tell" -- don't just say you are a high achiever, show the committee what you have done that demonstrates your achievements. 2. In your first paragraph, you say you want to "stay away from Pakistan". This could be a bad way of wording it. I understand that you are trying to say that your field is a global one, so you want to take your education international in order to get more global experience. That's probably a good thing to say, but I would reword it so it doesn't sound so negative towards your home country. 3. You have two pages to write about yourself, but this seems pretty short. Sometimes short and sweet is good, but I think you can expand your 2nd paragraph (about your academic work) a little bit more. I'm not saying to just add filler stuff, since that's definitely not good, but you can describe your research project further. What skills, precisely, did you learn? In my field, I would mention what software I used, what programming languages/computing skills were needed, and especially what kind of communication skills did you learn? For example, working collaboratively in a group is hard but important in research. Did you work with collaborators outside of your school? Did you do any other research projects? Did you publish any papers or write any patents? Did you hand in anything written for your project, like a mini thesis or paper, or was it just an oral defense? All of these things are useful skills for an incoming graduate student. 4. Related to point #3, it seems like your academic experience is smaller than your extracurriculars. While both are important, I think you should definitely emphasize your academic work more. So if you do expand upon your academic/research experience as in point #3, maybe you want to split it into two paragraphs. 5. I like the way you ended the SOP, but you didn't really answer the prompt about future career goals. Where do you see yourself after a Masters degree? Will you be looking for work after, or will this masters degree prepare you for a PhD? I think you can improve your SOP by answering these questions and then explicitly showing how the Masters will help you towards these goals. Hope that's helpful!

It seems like people in heterosexual relationships will commonly refer to their partners by gender (e.g. boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife), while people in same-sex relationships will tend more neutral terms like "partner". So while it's not logically true to infer "partner" = "same-sex partner", I think people will now think if you are not revealing the other person's gender, then you are potentially in a same sex relationship. However, this is not always the case -- I know sometimes it feels weird to say "boyfriend" or "girlfriend", especially if it's a long term relationship (or if you are like in your 30s). Also, to me, those words don't always have the connotation of a committed long term relationship. I also know that many people in heterosexual relationships (including me sometimes) will use terms like "partner" just to reduce the connotation of same sex relationship with that word. Although it's interesting to note that some gender-neutral terms, such as "spouse" or "significant other" do not have same-sex partnership connotations. I find it a bit strange that words such as "partner", which also seems to imply a lesser degree of commitment than "spouse", are the ones that are connected to same-sex relationships. As for your actual question, I think this is definitely a case where you need to determine what the department is looking for in terms of "fit". So this might be something you vary for each school as you find out how the department feel towards people who identify as queer. I'm not sure what's a good way to do this though -- maybe you can make up a fake persona and fake email address and just randomly email a bunch of grad students asking what they think. I guess the danger here is that if they respond in a way that makes you feel comfortable about mentioning it in your SOP, and you are the only applicant who identifies as queer, then it will be obvious that you were the random emailer. In an ideal world, this would be like a person with Chinese ancestry applying to programs that study Chinese History or something. Ideally, Chinese History scholars should be people from all backgrounds, including but not limited to people with Chinese ancestry. So, ideally, no one would discriminate against you for identifying as queer, but similarly, you would not gain any advantages than someone who doesn't identify as queer either. So I personally would not mention it unless I was sure there was an advantage.

My parents were involved in our move across the country for my MSc program and they will be involved in the next move (happening in 2 weeks!!) too! My wife and I decided to drive across the country for the first move, and my parents thought that was such a good idea that they wanted to do the same as well. They left around the time we arrived in the new place so they showed up about a week later. It was very helpful because they had a big vehicle and we were able to make an IKEA run in Toronto (our town is actually ~3 hours away). I'm from an Asian family as well so family is very important and we do a ton of things together. So, it's not strange at all to me, that a parent would want to be involved in the move, even though I'm married and definitely old enough to take care of things myself. Like others said, I understand it's important to them and I let them help without inconveniencing them too much. My wife has a different cultural background so sometimes things that are normal to me feel like foreign to her (and vice-versa), but we always figure out some compromise. I think the funniest thing from the last move is that my parents showed up with a huge case of raman noodles for me! They didn't even know about the grad student diet stereotype, they were just worried about my cooking abilities. I think they got the message though, when they later asked about what I've been cooking and especially when I told them I had to eventually throw out most of that case because the noodles expired before I could use them all up! I think my mom was happy though that I learned more from helping her in the kitchen than she thought As for Costco, my wife and I used to and still do dates there for their super cheap food. I was amazed that their hotdog+pop combo went from $2 to $1.50 sometime last year, but maybe I should be a little worried about how cheap it is! And our apartment was basically an IKEA catalogue -- it took us almost a week to build everything!

If you are looking for reassurance that you are picking the right option, I can say that I also think that your motivations for picking the thesis option are sound! I think it's definitely the way to go if you want to gain research experience and especially for future grad work. Like you and Dal PhDer, I feel that a single exam session is not enough time for me to show what I know. I much rather have several weeks/months/etc to put my work and skills into a project that showcases my knowledge rather than have everything ride on a 2-3 hour exam (written or oral!). In fact, I think many of my grad student peers would agree -- we always petition our profs to allow us to replace a final exam with a mini project + paper + presentation instead of an in-class test! Some schools don't have exams for graduate courses at all. Thesis defenses can be stressful too (I just defended this week, yay!) but by the time I was putting together my presentation, I already knew my project inside and out. The questioning part afterwards was scary but I really would rather do that again than sit through a 3 hour exam, or even a comprehensive exam. I was definitely much less stressed about the defense than exams during undergrad. And you won't even have to do this! (In other schools, sometimes a Masters thesis does not need to be formally defended -- as long as you have presented it somewhere, e.g. a conference, then that would suffice). Overall, I get a sense that there are two ways to approach a masters degree. The course-based masters is usually treated like an extension of undergrad and the goal is to provide training at even higher levels. The outcome is a student who is more qualified/knowledgeable than an BA/BSc graduate. The thesis/research based masters is more like preparation for further work in academia and research. Unlike undergrad, courses are not as important -- just minimum requirements to ensure a well rounded student. The outcome is a student who has some background knowledge and basic tools to start performing independent research.

I think the content of the LOR is more important than the reputation of the LOR writer (although this is somewhat important too). It's much much better to get a glowing LOR from an "average" reputation prof that supervised your work directly than a mediocre letter from a "famous" prof who, due to their fame, has a ton of students and doesn't know you that well. I think that LORs from someone in your subfield will be helpful since it shows you have made an impact on researchers in your own field, but you probably don't NEED to have more than one in your subfield. As for tenured or not, I think it's more important to consider the experience of the professor. A LOR that states you are the top 5% of hundreds of students encountered in their career is more valuable than a top 1% rating from a prof who have worked with only a handful of students!

When I was visiting grad school, this stat was usually discussed. Often, it was the director/head of the program/department that told us average incoming class size, averaging graduating class size, and attrition rate, etc. However, almost all the schools quoted a "finishing rate" of something like 90-95%, which was suspiciously high. Upon further questioning, we then realised that they really meant "90-95% of the people who WANTED to finish their PhDs actually did" -- so basically only 5-10% of people actually fail their orals/quals/comps the max. number of times (usually twice) and were forced to leave. They admitted that a larger number (although didn't give stats) of people decided to not try the exam again a second time and left with either nothing or a masters! So, if you hear numbers from a school, make sure you know what is actually being counted! My current school is in Canada and we all enroll in masters programs (2 years) specifically then apply for PhD programs (3-4 more years) at the end of our masters. Out of my cohort, ~40% of them have already left graduate studies, ~40% have concrete plans to continue onto a PhD, and the remaining ~20% are not yet sure what to do after a masters. In Canada, it's not unusual at all for people to decide that a masters is good enough -- a MSc opens a lot of job opportunities not available to BSc grads, but a PhD doesn't really open up more jobs than a MSc (except for tenure-tracked positions of course). It is unusual for someone to leave without getting a masters though. Overall, these numbers seem to also agree with Eigen's estimate of ~50% attrition.

When my wife and I moved into town, our car broke down (but we arrived a few days before our lease began). My advisor helped us by doing some driving around for us on the first day (we did the moving, but he drove us to our broken down car and let us load it up with our boxes, and drove us to our new place. He hasn't asked for any real favours but I probably would do them if it wasn't a big inconvenience -- grad students do favours for each other all the time, so if it's something I would do for a friend, I would likely do for him too. I did invite my advisor (and former advisors) to my wedding -- the ones that were in town did attend! I know other people who have helped their advisor paint e.g. the garage. I probably wouldn't house-sit for my advisor though. Personally, I would feel it would be too much responsibility to watch over a house for 2 whole weeks! Also, in your case, your own cat would have to be not only displaced, but also share with 2 other cats!! When I had to be away with a cat, I just asked a friend to come by and check in every other day or so. Just checking in once a day is one thing but completely moving in for two weeks is another! I think you have good enough reasons (no car, your own cat, further commute) that you can politely turn down the offer without offending any reasonable person. You could offer to drop by once a day to check on his cats, instead, if that's not too inconvenient.

In general, I could not see myself dating an undergrad (my wife would kill me anyways, lol) but not all undergrads are "traditional students". For example, although it didn't happen, in an alternate universe where we made some different choices about education, my wife and I could be attending the same university right now, with her as a 3rd year undergrad and me as a PhD student (we're only 1 year apart in age). But that's a personal decision either way -- some people might prefer a older/younger partner. The usual argument against undergrad/graduate student relationship is maturity, but everyone has different maturity levels anyways. Whether or not to date an undergrad is just personal preference. PhD students collectively do hold a position of influence in a department -- sometimes hiring decisions, course changes, etc. consider graduate student input, usually from the Student Council or some related body. However, a single PhD student usually has little effect on the life of an undergraduate student, unless that PhD student is a TA or research supervisor of said undergrad. If you name a random undergrad in the same department (even in the same sub-field), I do not see how my peers and I (in Canada, pretty much all PhD students are MSc students in their first 1-2 years) can directly influence the (academic) life of that undergrad if we were not their TA or research supervisor. We could potentially have indirect influence, if for example, I am a bad person and my friend, who is also a bad person, is the TA of Undergrad X, I could get my friend to grade Undergrad X unfairly. Or maybe the professor of Undergrad X is also a bad person and I can get the professor to grade Undergrad X unfairly. But these scenarios all involve another unscrupulous individual. And this can all happen without a relationship between Undergrad X and me -- maybe we are on the same recreational club, maybe X frequents the same coffee shop as me and is a big jerk so I don't like X, etc. It would be unreasonable to require PhD students to investigate every possible avenue of conflict of interest of every undergrad student in the department. Similarly, it would be unreasonable to require PhD students to avoid any contact with undergrad students (although many of us will do this anyways ). Due diligence by the PhD student usually means reporting direct conflict of interest situations. For example, if I was dating one of the students in the class I am TAing, or if I am being paid to privately tutor one of my students in the same subject of the class I am TAing. Otherwise, sure there are other minor conflicts of interests. I might be good friends with one of my students due to a hobby outside of school. They could be a cousin, or a younger sibling of a good friend, a family friend, etc. (I would probably inform my TA supervisor about any relatives in my class but I wouldn't bring it up as a conflict of interest requiring me to transfer). However, as professionals, we are expected to handle these situations accordingly. In academia, we will be constantly put in minor conflict of interest situations. Senior graduate students sometimes TA graduate classes and have to mark our peers. A senior graduate student might be employed as a Teaching Fellow/Adjunct and be in charge of other graduate students (as their TAs). We might be asked to peer review a journal article by a rival group. And so on.

In my opinion, Prof. X is preferable because, in my opinion: 1. Prof. is a harder title to get than Dr. -- the latter "only" requires a PhD. In general, all professors have PhDs but not all PhDs are professors. (Although Prof. is not a protected title so technically, any school can grant that title to anyone it wants). 2. Most professors don't like being called Doctor and reserve that title for people with MDs. However, I know in some countries, such as Germany, the "Dr" title is very respected! For SOP purposes, I think it would be wise to use some sort of title. But I don't think any application will be decided on whether you used "Dr." or "Prof."

Just to add my experience. I try to keep my work in the office and not take it home unless I really have to. It helps me to physically separate my work and my "play" and I do notice that I am much more productive in the office than at home. I spend about 50 hours a week at school, including time for classes, and when I have assignments, I probably do about 10 more hours a week on homework at home. For some reason, I'm just as efficient on assignments/problem sets at home as at school. A lot of what you said about your undergrad is very familiar to me. Overall, I think undergrad was a LOT harder than graduate school. I felt constantly drained as an undergrad and I don't think I really had a full day off during the school year. I am pretty sure I put in more than 60 hours a week too. I would describe the undergrad workload as full of ups and downs -- each course would mean about 1 problem set per week, but sometimes there are extra spikes due to midterms, quizzes, term papers or projects, and final exams. This means the middle 2-3 weeks and the last 2-3 weeks of each term are high stress/work, while the rest of the time was medium stress/work. In between terms, I would have entire weeks with not much to do! On the other hand, graduate work is much more consistent. The majority of my term would be at some level of stress/work that is slightly below the undergrad "medium". Once in a while, there will be extra work due to an upcoming conference, or when I was writing my thesis, but otherwise, you are at the same "level" the whole time. There's no real breaks though, so overall I think I achieve more work as a graduate student. The high stress/work times can be higher than undergrad though -- there were a couple of 16-18 work days when I was writing my (MSc) thesis last month. I think Eigen describes the workload of an average science graduate student well. I work for 50-60 hours per day and try to stay focused at work so I can come home around 5-6pm each night. I have plenty to do outside of work -- spending time with my wife, cooking, cleaning, hobbies/sports, going to the pub/bar with friends, and occasionally taking care of a cat (we're fostering but are planning to adopt a cat of our own after we move). There are some people I know who genuinely work 80+ hours a week, but I found out that a lot of other people might spend more time at school/office but they prefer to be less focused and combine their work and play time. So, in the end, I think the majority of graduate students do spend about 50-60 hours a week working and it's a matter of personal preference whether you want to keep your socializing/facebook/internet surfing time etc. to just at home or to mix it in with your work! For the record, I try to average about the typical "off-task" time that a full time job would have, which is about 90 minutes per day (when I worked full time, we got 1 hour lunch plus 2 15-minute coffee breaks). I like socializing with my fellow grad students, so I usually spend my lunch/break times with my friends!

For Canadian federal taxes, here is some useful info: http://www.cra-arc.g...tionalstudents/ Basically, a full time grad student will spend more than 183 days in Canada, and thus you are liable for Canadian taxes, but you are also eligible for tax credits. In Canada, a "resident for tax purposes" has about $10,000 of tax-free income (personal exemption) and you also get educational tax credits. The educational tax credits is about equal to (your tuition) + ($400 per month as a full time student for "living expenses") + ($60 per month as a full time student for textbooks) + any monthly or annual bus passes you pay for. The numbers might have changed since I last checked, but it's about the same. In addition, any money won through an award, fellowship, bursary, or scholarship is NOT TAXABLE. So, in your case, it seems like only your TA and RA income is taxable. For most of us, this comes no where near the ~$10k personal exemption + tuition part of our credits. For provincial taxes, Quebec is notoriously different from the other provinces, so I don't know for sure. But usually the provincial tax system is a parallel structure to the federal tax system, so in the end, you will probably pay very little to zero taxes at the provincial level either. Most Canadian students do not pay any taxes at all. In fact, our educational tax credits will accumulate and reduce the amount of taxes we have to pay after graduation when we get taxable income jobs! So it's most likely true that the only taxes you have to worry about, if any, are taxes owed to the US. Hope that's helpful!

Most funding packages in Canada do not include a tuition waiver*, but instead, the stipend is calculated with the fact that you must pay tuition in mind. International students will have to pay a higher tuition rate (usually twice as much as domestic students in graduate school), and also have additional fees (since you are not covered by our provincial health care programs). However, in almost all cases, this difference is offset by an extra award given to international graduate students only (but sometimes the offset award doesn't actually cover all of the extra costs). This extra offset award is usually the "very competitive"/"limited" part. In my current school (in the same category as Ottawa, Dalhousie, etc.), each department has a quota of "International Student Tuition Awards" where the money comes from the Graduate School/University. Say there are X awards available. So, at any given time, the department can have up to X international students and it won't cost them any more than a domestic student. However, the department is able to support more than X international students if, for example, the supervisor agrees to pay the difference themselves. So, international student positions can be competitive, since you have to compete for one of X spots, or impress the supervisor enough for them to agree to pay the extra amount. Different departments/fields may handle things slightly differently. Our department also has its own funding set aside to pay a portion of each student's stipend as well as increase the number of international student positions available. In a recent department meeting, the profs discussed the fact that the department is currently at quota for international students and they voted to all increase their share of each student's stipend (domestic and international) to relieve the burden on the department's graduate funding source, to basically make room for more international students that are really impressive but a supervisor is currently out of funding. So this could be another reason why international funding is stated as being competitive (and perhaps this is more applicable in the social sciences where profs don't always directly fund their students, so I've been told). In most cases, your letter of offer will state the funding you are going to receive. In departments that normally fully fund their domestic students, generally international students will only be accepted if they are going to be funded too. This could make it harder to get in as an international student but the idea is that once you are in, your net funding is the same as the domestic students. * Note: At least not the way the US handles it -- there may be an award given with a value close to the cost of tuition, you will receive it as award money then have to pay it back to the University in a separate transaction.

This thread reminds me of a 30 Rock scene where the character Tracy mistakes the term "googling yourself" to mean something else! Anyways, Facebook allows you view your profile as anyone else on your friends' list or as a member of the general public. I regularly check my own Facebook as a "general public" viewer to see what someone would see if they Googled me and found my profile page. I just make sure only general things show up -- schools attended, jobs held, where I live currently. I don't show a display picture. When I'm trying to Google someone else (especially with a generic name), I might write something like "John Smith UCLA" or "John Smith UCLA astronomy" etc. to make sure I find the right person. So, it's a good idea to create your own webpage at your current institutions, if possible. If you log onto a machine to use pine for email, then it's very likely that when you first log in, you are in your home directory. Then, if you put .html files in your public_html directory (make one if it doesn't exist), it will appear online with the URL: http://[your dept address here e.g. www.astro.schoolx.edu]/~[your username here] Assuming that all default settings are used! Many departments turn this off though. In general, manipulating Google search results is harder than just seeing what comes up and changing the content of the pages that appear (e.g. public Facebook profile etc.). I think the general idea of manipulating Google results is to create other pages that contain the keywords people would use to look for you and have those pages link to the pages you want to show up on Google. But the only places where I put my slightly more personal things on the Web are Facebook (which I can control somewhat) and my blog, which I never update (but I don't mention my name anyways). I find it funny that there is an established scientist with the same name as me, even the same first middle initial, and has adjunct status at my new PhD school! I found this out a long time ago but just recently remembered it! Maybe it's another sign that I am making the right choice? haha

I think the letter was written so that frustration was properly vented but without being seriously offensive (it's not like she made threats or insulted the whole pro sports world in general). In context, it's a fair response to what basically looks like a form letter from the Padres that is intended to look like the manager decided that the author would be a good fit for the "job fair" but really looks like names were just copied and pasted! I guess there could be a danger that her email would be forwarded out of context to other teams/organizations. But on the flip side, forwarded emails can be edited -- no one receiving a forward could be sure that the words they see were actually written by the original author. Overall, I think the letter was written so that all bridges with the Padres are definitely burned. But for other teams, some may be offended, but she only needs a couple of organizations to realise what the letter really is in order to get a job. And being (in)famous on the internet will probably be helpful! Here's another way to respond to a rejection letter (although I think this is pretty old): http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/humor/reject.html

Well said, pinkrobot! I agree that the right thing to do for each person (whether or not to contact profs ahead of time) really depends on each case and how they go about doing it. It seems like everyone has a different opinion (students and faculty alike) so it's likely that this also depends on who is sitting on the admissions committee, which could change from year to year so it makes the whole thing a crapshoot I guess! Definitely the best advice is to seek guidance from those you trust (e.g. a mentor or advisor) and do what feels comfortable to you. If it feels super awkward to talk to a prof, there's a good chance that the conversation could go badly anyways It's good to see different viewpoints about contacting profs from different experiences! At least I think we all agree on the answer to OP's first question -- yes, naming profs is a good idea!

I think in general, science students are also accepted into full departments as well, not by individual profs. But I guess the difference may be then that in the sciences, although you're not committed to any particular advisor upon admittance, it's something the department keeps in mind when selecting candidates. So, if you express a strong desire to work with Prof X, and Prof. X is known to the department as someone who is going to be leaving soon, then it could hurt your chances to showing that you will "fit" in well. In addition, sometimes research websites are out of date -- I try to email POIs to ensure that they really are still interested in what the websites say. For example, if I am interested in Prof. Y because Prof. Y is that institution's lead scientist on Project Z, and I mention that I want to be involved in Project Z in the SOP but it turns out that Prof. Y is leaving Project Z then that could also be a bad thing! In essence, in the sciences, I think it's important to make sure you maximize your ability to demonstrate how well you fit in their department by making sure the names you mention actually do fit what you are describing in your SOP. I thought that part would be applicable to other fields too since it didn't seem like a science-only thing. And, the "kisses of death" article (written by psychology faculty) about the SOP mentioned the same thing, basically. But, it's true that in the sciences, it's a debate whether or not to contact profs beforehand. About 1/3 of my contacted POIs decided to ignore my emails (or was too busy to respond), and 1/3 of them just gave polite but short replies (e.g. Thank you for contacting me. Yes, I will be taking students, please do submit an application and we can discuss it after the decisions are made.). But the last 1/3 gave detailed responses and we were able to have a good conversation that helped me during the application process!

Going to your advisor is definitely the right thing to do here. You will probably have to discuss this with the other co-authors (if any) as well. Papers do sometimes get retracted but this is a very serious thing and it is usually done if something very bad has happened -- e.g. plagiarism, falsified data, etc. It doesn't sound like everything in the original paper was wrong. I don't think you did anything "wrong" because all of you honestly gave your best effort -- you were not trying to knowingly present false information. I think papers often have mistakes in them -- that's what happens when you do research. At least in astronomy, what I often see is the mistake being uncovered by someone else and a "response"/criticism is published. Sometimes if the mistake is found later by the same group, they write a follow-up paper explaining why the original stuff was wrong and presenting the new results. I guess it also depends on what the journal's policy on errata is as well. I guess ideally, you'd be able to make a change to the paper but if the mistake is major enough, (e.g. the problem turned out to be much more complex and requiring much more computation/analysis) then you might need to write it up as a completely separate manuscript. This may be field dependent, but I think it's not too rare to come across papers that mention that their previous work is wrong (although they usually phrase/spin it to make it sound like they had used an incorrect assumption, or "outdated" data/techniques/whatever), or that someone else's work is wrong. Obviously it's not a desirable thing to happen and it sucks when you find mistakes in published work (I've been there before), but I think science/research is all about putting forward your best idea/claim/results, then having it peer-reviewed by the journal, then having it actually peer-reviewed by the entire community and whatever stands becomes the addition to the community's knowledge. So, sometimes mistakes get past the first two stages, it's inevitable!

I think if you do not need any more information from this prof before applying, then you should do as the above person said and just send a response back once you have submitted an application. Sometimes profs will give a more personal response but it's probably not a good idea to force a phone conversation onto a prof. If they wanted to speak with you, they would have asked to. I don't think further communication with this prof before your application is going to be helpful. It was a good thing you sent out the original email though, so you should mention that you are interested in working with this prof on your SOP. I think it's important to talk to any prof you plan to mention in your SOP before submitting an application!

I would second the suggestion of using your two REU supervisors as 2 of your LORs. If you are planning to do any more research in this coming year, then that supervisor should be your 3rd LOR. Otherwise, it's okay to get a letter from a prof that didn't supervise research for a 3rd LOR -- it sounds like your abstract algebra or abstract math. I also think you have a really strong application and should not worry about aiming too high. Like the others said, find the schools that match both your research interests and where you want to live and apply there! Good luck!

I ordered the categories in what I thought was the order of relevance for graduate school applications. So I think it would really depend on field. For me, if I had professional experience that was basically a research position (e.g. a R&D position in industry), then I would just include it with "Research Experience" (and maybe re-label the category to "Research and Professional Experience"). If the work resulted in patents or something similar, I would probably include those in my "Publications" as a sub-category and re-label things accordingly. Otherwise, if it was a non-research related professional position, I would probably put it either after Research Experience or after Publications, because I don't think industry experience is particularly helpful for research in my field. But if you are in a field where professional experience before a graduate degree is valued, then it would probably go before or after research experience, depending on what you think is more important for admissions committees to see. But it could also be a good idea to maybe rename "Research Experience" into a title that covers both research and industry positions, especially since if you are going to list things chronologically within each category, then maybe the professional positions will be separated from research positions anyways!