TakeruK

The short answer is that there should be no problems and you should disclose the relationship whenever a conflict of interest could arise -- for example, if the post-doc was also teaching a grad class that you were taking, or if you were assigned to be a TA for this post-doc's course. I think this is all you NEED to do. The longer answer is that you should check to see if there are any written guidelines in the department regulations/policies. Also there are "unwritten" rules and you should think about how people important to you will view this. For example, what do you think your supervisor will think? Especially if you are both working in the same research group or something. Other people that you will have to interact with regularly, e.g. the department head, graduate coordinator, etc. should be considered too. I'm not saying that you have to always please these other people, but in my opinion, it's worth considering what they think and then doing a cost-benefit analysis. For me, I'd consider this a personal aspect of my life and their opinion won't matter much if I felt strongly about this relationship. And whenever there is an intra-department relationship, rumours will go around and people will be talking about you. Again, this might not be a big deal either, but another thing to consider when starting a "work: relationship. In the departments that I've been a part of, this would not be a big deal, and while people will probably gossip about the two of you a lot, no one I know would think it's scandalous, illicit or bad in any way. Unless of course, the relationship impacts their work in some way.

As for title of people in emails, most people won't even care. You can probably tell from previous interactions with them. I usually start my very first email with someone new as "Dear Prof. X" or "Hello Prof. X," -- Dr. is too stuffy a title in my opinion and most people don't like being called that since they would also reserve that title for someone with a MD. (especially physics people) Usually once they sign their email with just their first name, then I will call them by the first name from then on. Usually this happens by the second email. If I still don't know them in person, and a few months pass, and I email them again, I might go back to a more formal greeting. In my experience, the huge majority of professors prefer to be addressed by their first name. Once I meet someone that I regularly work with in person (e.g. people in the same department), the standard is to use first names.

If I was grading some papers on a "general" topic for e.g. a first year intro course (where I wouldn't expect students to write on such similar topics that they would have exactly the same sources), and I came across two papers that had identical bibliographies, it would raise a flag of potential plagiarism, but 100% identical sources in itself isn't plagiarism. I would then (re)read the actual paper and decide. On the other hand, if I was grading a lab report (I know this isn't the OP's case but giving another perspective), then I would almost expect the sources (for standard values of certain quantities) to be exactly the same.

I am actually from Queen's too! It depends on department. Before I started my first year, I was told I was nominated for an internal school-wide fellowship (for visual minority students). In August, I found out I won the fellowship, $10k -- pretty good! But it made no difference to me, because they reduced other sources of Queens-funding by $10k too so my end result is the same. What I said in the post you quoted me was for people who don't get the NSERC/SSHRC or OGS. Internal fellowships are only considered after you don't get one of the big ones. However, it IS the normal for external fellowships to REPLACE rather than supplement internal funding. In some cases, the department can still supplement it a bit. In my department (Physics), for Masters students, here are the funding levels: 1) No scholarship -- $24k/year 2) OGS-like scholarship -- $29k/year 3) NSERC-like scholarhsip -- $32k/year So, although the OGS is $15k (and NSERC is $17.5k) , we don't get it ALL supplemented if we win one. Fortunately, we do get a little boost though. On the other hand, at my new PhD institution, winning an NSERC does nothing -- they have a policy of paying everyone the same stipend, no matter what external money you bring in. Note: It's still a good thing for YOU and your supervisor if you win a OGS or NSERC/SSHRC. It's good on your CV, helps you win more awards later, and money from external sources means you cost less to your department (can help you gain favour) and more importantly, cost less to your supervisor. This can give you more freedom in research activities, and more money for your supervisor to spend on you in other ways (e.g. conferences). EDIT: By the way, the above numbers are given in the letter of acceptance so while we always know how much funding we will get upfront, it just means they aren't committed to saying where the money will come from -- if you win more awards, the money just comes from that instead of Queen's.

In my experience, the person writing the actual paper is almost always first author. However, authorship is usually discussed right away, before we even start. In one collaboration (a large one, ~30 people), upon joining the collaboration, we all signed a contract the stipulated authorship terms (the person in charge of each analysis/data set was the first author, then everyone else in ABC order). In another team, I had worked on something and wrote a draft where I was the first author. I included the author list in the very first draft and we discussed that almost right away. Eventually, my work term ended and went back to full time classes but the stuff I did wasn't really publishable yet. We decided that another person would take over and polish it off and I would move down to second author (they gave me the choice of coming into the lab between classes/after hours to finish this up and keep first authorship but I decided I should spend time in my honours thesis instead). Due to all the conversations about paper writing (and that one contract) from my research experiences, I get the feeling that authorship is something that has to be determined right from the start, or misunderstandings like this case commonly happen. I think the first warning sign in your case would have been when your supervisor edited the draft him/herself and then sent the draft to others for comments. If you were still in charge of the paper, then your supervisor would have just sent his notes to you and then suggest that you forward the draft onto the others -- i.e. you would be the primary contact for everything related to this. I'm not trying to criticize, or say it's your fault etc. because hindsight is 20/20 and it really did sound like you had every reason to think you would be first author -- especially since the supervisor said this was something to help you gain recognition as a scholar. Just pointing out something for the future. I don't have experience in your exact situation (i.e. author list changing after the fact) but I would definitely encourage you to talk about this with him to clear up any misunderstandings. Especially since you plan to write more papers with him -- this could also be a good time to confirm authorship of that review paper with him too! For future work with future scholars, I would also recommend that authorship is one of the first things discussed, along with dividing up the work e.g. who is going to be responsible for what. Sometimes an opportunity to do that is missed, or never comes up, so what I like to do is include the author list in the very very first draft and if your supervisor doesn't comment on it, make sure to bring it up at the meeting -- something like "oh by the way, I wasn't sure what the author list should look like so I put my best guess, what do you think?"

Even if you won't get much research done by the time applications are due, it's better to say that you've started something. It shows that you will have the experience by the time you arrive and that you actively were looking for a spot. If you don't do anything, it might come off as being disinterested in research! Usually, the best time to randomly email profs for research position is around Jan-March asking about summer positions. But the type of email you suggested (just contacting profs you're interested in) worked for me really well!

Exactly what fuzzy said! The things on their list you can find out by asking their graduate students / other students in the department. You can also look up both potential advisors' former students, see what kind of work they produce etc. For example, in addition to the quality of research, check the quality of writing in their paper and see if they have been supporting their students (you have to be careful that you don't find a student who was already really good at writing and the advisor did not add much). You can ask profs (at your current school) that you trust and have a good relationship with about your new potential advisors too. They might have another insight about that prof's work or their students (from conferences or other connections). For some things like funding you can ask the advisors directly. At this point, it sounds like you are already accepted so I think it's fine to ask those kinds of questions. I would also ask things like how often do they think students should attend conferences etc. You should really really listen to the current graduate students (I know I said it twice). If you end up choosing someone who doesn't match your research interest the most, it doesn't matter -- you can still work with / collaborate with this person outside of your main work. Also, your eventual thesis project does not have to be the thing that matches your interests the most. You just need a project that you don't hate, preferably something you at least like. I think the main priority in choosing a project, like choosing an advisor, is to find something that will set you up for the next stage / goals (whether it's post-doc, teaching, not-academia, whatever). For a job in academia, this usually means making sure your project is interesting to other people, especially those that could hire you in the future.

I also think it would be a good thing to cite past articles from the same journal -- this is a good thing for their stats. There are even some journals with the shady editorial practice of requiring submitted articles to cite X number of former articles in past issues of their journal. I say it's shady because I think the intention that authors demonstrate their work fits with the journal's field is a valid one, there are other ways to show this and forcing authors to cite certain papers is just wrong, in my opinion! By the way, in my field, we sometimes cite papers that are appearing in the SAME issue of the same journal (we usually see preprints before they are published, or one or more of the coauthors could be involved in both papers etc.).

This sounds like something that varies from field to field too -- I haven't heard of anything being rejected from a physical science conference (although not everyone will get an oral presentation slot, but everyone seems to get a poster presentation at least). Not counting student-run conferences, I'm 2/2 for oral presentations and 2/2 for poster presentations. Also science conferences tend to have very short talk slots -- they can be as short as 7 mins + 3 mins questions but many are about 12 mins + 3 mins questions. And with lots of parallel sessions, there are enough time slots for many people to go!

I took the old GRE test and I had some similar problems as you -- that is, before I practiced more, I would pick choices that grammatically make sense but don't have quite the best meaning because I didn't understand the full/precise meaning of all the words. I checked the new/revised GRE instructions on http://www.ets.org/g...erbal_reasoning and found this as the instruction (scroll to the bottom): I think you know this but just mentioning it for others who may not be familiar with the new test format (like me). So to answer your question, I think it's a case of imprecise definitions. benign does not mean the same thing as inconsequential. Benign actually has a mildly positive meaning (http://www.thefreedi...nary.com/benign ), or at least it means "not bad". Inconsequential means "not important"(http://www.thefreedi...inconsequential ) So and [c] do not have the same meaning! The way I studied for the verbal is to really learn the precise definitions of words. I have forgotten them all now probably. Just from looking at this question type, I can think of two strategies that might help if you don't know the best synonym right away. First, I would look for pairs of words that are as close synonyms as possible. Maybe group into positive/negative connotations if you are having problems. Then, I would compare for "degree" / "strength". For example, and [f] are both "positive meaning" but [f] is a much stronger word than . Similarly, [d] is also negative but it's much stronger than [a] and [e]. So that leaves [a] and [e] as the answer. And in fact [e] means "harmful", precisely: http://dictionary.re...wse/deleterious Not all questions will have words that are "positive" or "negative" to divide up but I think the general idea is sound: try to find words that mean the same and then compare the "strength" of the word. Sometimes it's tricky because there are words that are spelled the same way but have different meanings (based on whether it's a noun or verb usually) and you have to use the rest of the sentence to make sure you have the right meaning. I am no expert on this, especially since I'm from the sciences where we aren't known for our prized vocabulary But I recognized your problem as something I had to overcome last year and I hope this helps! Edit: edgirl -- wow we posted at pretty much the same time

That's a good point about STEM bias! In addition to what you said, it might also have to do with the number of people applying. A prof I know used to work in the US said that the majority of their applications came from Internationals (>75%), so even if 30-50% of a cohort is International, they might have also had to compete with many more people to get in. But that might also be an issue specific to STEM as well! I guess it's hard to say anything for sure since the process is pretty opaque. I've heard from others in my field that for a International student with a US Undergrad, the only issue is the increased cost for the department to pay for tuition and overhead so it's definitely a different story! At my undergrad and my current MSc school, I am in a Physics & Astronomy department but both thesis topics were in planetary sciences. It's a really small field in Canada since it was basically invented by Americans and NASA. At my PhD program this fall, I will be in a Geological and Planetary Sciences division -- so I think Earth science people are connected with the division as well!

I'm not sure if I had a strong start to my SOP at all. The more I think about it, the more I doubt it was good but when it was application time, I was just so sick of working on these things so I set a time limit and submitted whatever I had by that deadline (I'm still in a MSc program so it's a lot of work already!). But I guess it did work out after all, so I can't complain I started with mentioning that as a child (I know, cheesy), I really enjoyed doing puzzles and reading mystery books. I then talked about why I chose my undergrad school, major and why I chose the 5-year degree with co-op option instead of just a 4-year degree. Then I talked about my research experiences, in order, and what I learned from each one. I related them back to my opening thoughts by describing the experiences that convinced me that I truly wanted to do research. I admitted that I wasn't sure about what research was really all about at first. After all, it's really intimidating to a inexperienced undergrad -- how can we be expected to contribute to people working on the Universe's mysteries? But after my first work term, I realized that research really was puzzle solving lots of tiny problems (e.g. debugging code, writing a program, engineering a part to fit/do something) in order to get more clues about the bigger mysteries. And that I loved it. I kept that theme in the rest of my SOP too, especially near the end when discussing what I want to do next. I don't think it sounded as forced as it did here when I try to describe it. It's also not that original, but I thought it's better than saying like "as a child, I was always interested in topic X" which wasn't true for me -- I had no idea what astronomy research was all about until University. Although what I did was similar anyways, I hope it was at least not boring/annoying to read! As for my other research experience stuff, I included lots of non-technical points as well. For example, I always explained why I chose each project -- one of them was not in my field at all and I explained why I made that choice (it was my last chance to do research in something different before starting grad school in my field). I think this is important because I wanted my SOP to show how I think, what kind of person I am, and what are my approaches to learning and research. But I tried to do this by staying on the topic of my research experience. I agree that you must show an inherent interest in research to be a good fit for the PhD programs, especially in engineering. But what I meant was that you should really spend some time discussing why a PhD is a good fit for you as well. What do you want to do with the PhD? How will it enhance your career? What are your career goals? etc. I don't think it's a good idea to do a PhD only because you want to further your education (i.e. the next logical step). PhD students are expensive -- the department will invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into you. They want to know that you will be able to take the PhD and do great things with it to make it worth their investment.

I don't think it's a logical leap to go from "we observe international people getting into good grad programs and getting TT jobs" to "it must be just as easy for internationals to do this as domestic students" There is a "observation bias" -- it's a lot easier to hear about / see international students that are successful than the ones that weren't! And as I said above, public schools in some places (e.g. California) are less likely to take international students due to the increased costs. So, it might be easier for international students to get into private schools, which often have the reputation of "good grad programs". I know the University of California schools have only a 10% international graduate student population in my fields (and some of them accept less than 10 people a year, so that's < 1 international per year!!). We also cost more overhead too, I think, and we aren't eligible for many grants that could offset these costs for the department/school. In addition, international students face additional challenges when it comes to immigration. If we have dependents, it is pretty hard to provide for them on just a graduate student stipend and most dependents are grad students would not be able to work. Of course, no one is forcing us to go to another country for school, and most of these issues are completely out of the University's control. But if Universities want to attract international students, these extra challenges should be considered. And finally, there are disadvantages because we are foreign. For example, a domestic student may attend an undergrad institution that's well known in the US for having very tough grading, so this could be taken into account when considering the GPA. But people in the US may not know much about schools in other countries, so foreign students may not have this benefit. There are also extra logistical issues for both student and admissions committees to convert a foreign grading system to the US system. Logistics issues also mean that it's rare that a school will fly an international student out to visit, which is a very important part of the decision making process, I think. I'm not saying that International students have it harder than every other "group" of applicants. I just wanted to say that there is definitely "observation bias" since it's much easier to hear about successful international applicants. And that there are some issues (e.g. the above) that a domestic student in the same conditions would not have to deal with.

In the sciences and engineering, the SOP is like a cover letter for your application. It should definitely highlight your R&D experience and any other relevant things. Unlike a CV or resume though, the SOP allows you to give a personal spin to it. So you could/should go into some detail about what your actual duties at each position was and how that helped you decide to go on the career path you have now. You can also use it to explain any differences between your experience and what the school expects. For example, being from Canada, I had a short paragraph explaining why I chose to do a MSc in Canada before going to a US grad school (since I pretty much have to start all over again). I was careful to make it clear that a MSc in Canada is really like a mini PhD, not what most Masters programs in the US are like. At a conference I recently attended in the US, when I said I was a MSc student from Canada when introducing myself, people either asked why I wasn't interested in a PhD or made comments like "well not everyone has to do a PhD". So it might be worth finding out any potential differences between your school system and the US system and addressing them if necessary. I think you should be much more detailed/careful when writing about why you want to do a PhD. I'm sure you have other reasons, but the way you put it (i.e. a PhD is the next logical step) is not a good reason! It sounds like you want to go to their school because you can't think of anything else to do (school-wise). You should make sure you write about what your eventual goals are and why a PhD is necessary for these goals. A strong SOP would also include why you pick their school -- do they have a really good lab in your subfield? etc.

For most questions like "Do I have enough time for X", I think there are two main answers. First, what fuzzylogician said: Being flexible on "when" -- I don't actually have TV with cable service, I watch streamed videos of my favourite shows when I have time. Secondly, you do have free time as a PhD student, it's just a question of what else you want to do as well. I would say most graduate students I know spend about 50 to 60 hours a week "working" (reading, coursework, research, TA, all that) but of course it depends on your specific program/work group/phase of your degree/time of year! This leaves a modest of time to do whatever you like -- I'm not sure what else you like to do / how much time it takes, but if you are worried about having time to have fun / do work, then personally I like to budget the amount of hours in a week I spend on each thing. Many grad students are hardworkers so it's easy for us to spend way more time working and not enough time on ourselves. Grad school will take as many hours from you as you let it, so decide how much time you want to put into grad school and log your hours so that you stick to it. If you are worried that you are spending too much time watching TV then log those hours too!

I'm not in sociology but some things are applicable to other fields too. I haven't visited schools before applying though, only after they accepted/made an offer and invited students out for a visit. Here are some questions that I try to ask the profs about their program/school when I am visiting. I've done two rounds of visits, in 2010 (in Canada) for MSc programs and in 2012 (in USA) for PhD programs. Maybe you might want to give a different spin on these questions since you are still at the application stage: [Questions about department, maybe you could ask to the department head if you end up meeting him/her] 1. Approximately how large is your incoming class of students? 2. What's the approximate student-to-faculty ratio? 3. What percentage of students make it pass orals/comps? What percentage graduate? 4. How many students graduate per year? 5. What's the average/median time to degree? 6. -- ask questions about financial support package if not clear on the website, especially if it just says something like "TA", you could ask what kind of courses you'd TA, how many hours, etc. 7. Is the department planning to grow? Are you going to be hiring / planning to hire more faculty? 8. Ask questions about the research focus/goals of the department -- are they looking to specialize in a certain subfield? Or are they trying to broaden their interests and start a new subfield research group? This question goes well with #7. 9. Do you keep stats on where your students end up after their PhD? How many get post-docs/tenure-track/research positions/teaching positions/etc. 10. Are there teaching awards / conference travel grants etc. offered by the school/department to its students? When talking to individual professors, you could try asking some of the above questions again, especially if they are the head of a research group. They might have different viewpoints/opinons. When talking to people you might want to work with if you go to the school, you can ask questions about them too. We usually begin these meetings talking about actual research that we could do together but after that's all done, I tend to also ask: 11. Are you planning to take students from the [Fall 2013] cohort? 12. What kind of research opportunities do your students have? (in my field, I'd like to know if their students will be able to visit telescopes where their data is coming from, if they have funding to send us to conferences, etc. Usually I don't directly ask about money related issues, but with the prompt given here, the prof usually says something like "Well I believe students have to present their work at conferences so I try to send everyone to at least one meeting per year" or whatever) 13. I ask them questions about what they do for fun / their interests (usually I do this only after they ask the same about me) -- one person told me they were only interested in research, nothing else, so that was a good thing to know 14. I ask them about their plans for research in the future -- are they going to continue doing whatever they're doing now? planning to branch out? etc. I think a big part of visiting is to make sure the school is a good match for you. Of course, since you are visiting before you apply (and are accepted), you will want to make a good impression too. So you should keep that in mind, and some of the questions above might not be fitting for a pre-application visit. But some things are still worth knowing -- if you get answers that doesn't satisfy you, then you can cross that school off your list and save yourself time and money on applications! But once you are accepted, the roles are reversed -- the school is now trying to sell itself to you. Make sure that you end up picking the school that is the best match for you! However, remember that even though they want you, there are a ton of other qualified candidates too -- sometimes accepted students will come off as arrogant to the departments' faculty (or even current graduate students) and that's not a good way to make a first impression. Oh also, don't forget to talk to the current students as well! You definitely should talk to them if you want to know what Prof. X is really like as a supervisor, instructor, etc. And impressing the current students (positively or negatively) could be as important as impressing the profs -- there's lots of communication going on inside a department.

I did see that OP is in the social sciences / writing intensive field. I was just replying to radiowires' post about writing in science! Sorry for any confusion!

Last fall, I was applying for graduate school and I was attending a conference in October that was one of the annual meetings for Planetary Science. So, I emailed a couple of people that I was interested in for graduate school, introduced myself, explained that I am interested in graduate school for Fall 2012 and was wondering if they would be interested in taking students from the Fall 2012 cohort. I also mentioned that I was attending the conference in October and wondered if they would be there too. Everyone responded positively, one person said he was attending and he actually found me before I could find him. Another prof wasn't attending but told me to talk to his post-doc and current student, who were going to be there, if I wanted to learn more about the school and his work. That was actually really helpful! But you probably don't even have to email everyone else beforehand -- conferences, especially coffee breaks, are meant for meeting people. I would definitely agree that you shouldn't make it sound like you want them to help you get in. Instead, you should just mention that you are planning to apply to their school and you are interested in their work because of X, Y, and Z. You will hopefully have a good discussion about this topic and you can ask if they are taking more students. Timing these things can be quite tricky though, because they might be trying to find someone else to talk to, and there are probably other people trying to talk to them. So try to be aware of the situation so that you don't monopolize their time! If possible, having a mutual contact introduce you is ideal. Generally, your supervisor will introduce you to his colleagues so that's a good start. As you get to know other students, they might be able to help you out by introducing you to their supervisors, collaborators, or other faculty at their school. On a related note -- conferences are a good way to make contacts and let professors know you, but make sure you make good contacts with your peers (i.e. other students) too. In the future, knowing these people will help when you/they are looking for collaborators, etc. Finally, as for asking questions at the end of the talk, it's risky since it's pretty obvious when a student asks a question just for the sake of asking a question/talking. In conferences that I'm used to, talks tend to run over their time, so the question period is very tight!

I agree -- I feel like our (science) education program doesn't really formally teach us how to write -- we are just expected to pick it up / absorb it. I guess that is how it's done at most schools and it seems to work, but for some of us, especially if English isn't our first language, or if we don't come from an academic background, it's a lot of trial and error! In the sciences, a writing sample is rarely requested. In fact, a beginning graduate student isn't expected to have learned how to write at the level of journal articles yet, that's something that is developed during graduate school. A beginning graduate student in the sciences usually would have written short term papers at the end of their 4th year courses, perhaps an undergrad thesis, and maybe a few abstracts for conferences. But the first two categories are academic styles which is different than a journal article, in my opinion.

We're going to look for a place to live in our new town at the end of the month. I will be defending my MSc thesis in August so I won't leave until near the end of August. We are probably going to visit our family in our hometown first, then arrive in the new town around Sept 1. Orientation is Sept 23 and the first day of class is Oct. 1. So that gives us a couple of weeks to get settled in, etc.

Ah, okay, it's interesting to know that talk circuits are used in the social sciences. Obviously jobs in the physical sciences are strongly correlated to your research experience and publications (teaching seems to be less important -- as long as you have experience, it seems to be okay!) but talk circuits is one way for us to get people to notice our work, especially to get the attention of people outside of our subfield (there's little chance someone working with lasers would notice a student/post-doc's work on galaxy formation, for example). In my opinion, if I asked the department about the job opening, I would feel like I am outing my friends for spilling the beans, so to speak, since the job posting is not announced yet. If your friends are in academia, then maybe it would be even better if your friends vouched for you when talking to the faculty members -- they can say something like "hey I know a person who would be a great fit for your department, I'm going to encourage [ebuckner] to apply for the position". Of course it depends on how close your friends are to you whether or not you'd feel comfortable about asking them. I use the information made available to me in the thread ("X") to write a response ("Y") based on this information, i.e. my posts are "if X then Y". By limiting X to this thread only, anyone else who reads the thread knows exactly where I got X from. The OP, or anyone else in a similar situation can evaluate if "X" is true for them and then decide whether or not "Y" makes sense to them. I think this is a reasonable approach to writing on gradcafe. You may or may not agree, but if you don't, I'm not sure why you can't write the way you would like to and allow others to write the way they would like to. As far as I know, my posts are not in violation of any Gradcafe rules.

That's a fair statement. You're right, I would definitely weigh the advice I received based on the person giving the advice, obviously favouring people such as my mentors, who know a lot about me and the field. But in my opinion, the original poster made the explicit choice to not disclose this information (for example, by saying "my (very narrow) field" instead of specifying). Since there are many good reasons for someone to want to remain anonymous on the Internet, I assume that all posters know about Internet privacy issues and are taking whatever they consider due diligence in protecting themselves however they want. Thus, I assume that the OP provides whatever details they want their audience to see when asking a question and that they know that the advice they receive is based on whatever details they provide (and may be limited by what they chose to omit). If omissions are accidental, the OP can always post a followup in the same thread. From the original post, I recognized a familiar situation and provided what I believe to be good advice based only on that post. I don't even usually provide the disclaimers for sciences/field because it's clear that as someone who is in the Physical Sciences (it says so in my profile information on the left of my post and in the signature below), my experiences are limited to that field. I assume the OP has a good reason to not disclose their field, so as people from different fields post their responses, the OP should give higher weights to those who might know more about their field. I'm not trying to convince OP to take any particular action -- I'm simply providing my opinion/a suggestion based on second-hand experience (which I clearly disclose). I would expect the OP to read my opinion, process it, decide whether it's relevant to their situation and act accordingly. I guess it's clear that we don't use these message boards the same way! But as I said before, as long as we all abide by the forum rules and don't negatively affect other users' enjoyment of the message boards, I don't see how different methods of consuming/using/enjoying the boards can't coexist. If you believe my post contains inaccurate information, I'd be happy to change them. But otherwise I don't think I have done anything wrong, despite my post here "defending" my actions. Note: I'm not really objecting the fact that you've pointed out I did not read through all of the OP's other posts before commenting -- it's a fair thing to say. But I think the way I write my posts (described above) is a reasonable approach to writing advice to semi-anonymous people on the Internet. In other words, as with everything else one might read on the Internet, "reader beware". I give everyone the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their ability to critically think about semi-anonymous advice based on limited information.

If you have the time and the funds, I would strongly recommend coming out 1 month early -- California has a 30 day notice to vacate law (unless the lease says otherwise), so places should open up about 4-5 weeks before you want to move in (we called a landlord and checked this). We are moving from Eastern Canada to California, so it's a similar distance, but we don't have a US credit history, nor a US bank account! We are flying to our new town at the end of the month to find a place for Sept 1. We did the same thing when we moved also ~3000 miles from Western Canada to Eastern Canada for my MSc program. The cost of the trip is about 1 months rent, which is a significant amount. However, since many leases are for 1 year, I think it's totally worth it to make sure you aren't paying 12x the trip cost for a place you hate. Sometimes people try to arrive just a few weeks early to find a place but my friends who did this ended up having to choose between really expensive and way nicer than necessary or really crappy and cheap. Over a year, the extra $200-$300 in rent quickly adds up! Moving does have a lot of startup costs and our stipends probably don't come until much later. Some schools may offer a financial assistance program to help with these costs. Just yesterday, my new school emailed me to say that we could get a $2500 interest-free, no fees loan payable in Sept if we would like (our first paycheck is the end of October) and we would pay the amount back in monthly installments after we start getting stipend money.

This post was in the "Jobs" forum, which doesn't specify a field. This is the post I read, where I don't see any field specified. Of course, the info on the left says this person has 12 posts so it's possible that ebuckner has specified their field in these other posts but I didn't read them -- I generally view each thread as an independent entity, unless I start seeing names often enough to recognize them

I don't have experience in this so I can't really give a qualified opinion on whether it's too pushy or not. But I feel like it would be. But I wanted to write a reply because I would suggest that you contact the seminar/colloquium coordinator (or get your supervisor to help you make the connection) and offer to give a talk at their school about your work. At my school, the advice all students get is to make sure you get yourself well known in your last 1 to 1.5 years of graduate school. Attend national conferences, go on "talk tours" -- if you combine several schools at once it will save expenses (in the some fields, this will be paid for by your own grant/supervisor/or visiting school's money, or it could be paid for by your own money I guess). Don't mention the job at all -- they will remember you when you apply. This advice also applies to Post-doc fellowships too -- if it's funded by a school or an agency, offer to visit and give a talk. Maybe this information is field-specific though. It is definitely the norm in the physical sciences. You didn't specify your field though, so it's something you can consider