TakeruK

Agree -- I wrote the previous post under the assumption switching wasn't an option for you, which was a bad assumption I realise now!

A MSc degree is generally a full time thing -- I probably spend 50-60 hours per week doing "work" (reading, classes, TA, seminars, homework, research). When you do a co-op program with the local college, wouldn't that be a full time job too (all my previous co-op work experience were pretty much 9-5 monday to friday). In addition, as a graduate student, you would want to take advantage of doing things like meeting visitors to the department in your field, go to conferences, etc. If you're not around, or have other commitments (e.g. 2nd program) then this would be hard to do. Sure, they are not necessary for your degree, but these are good opportunities for you and trying to do 2 programs at once might mean you don't get as much out of either program as you might like. Finally, for a lot of schools, you must be registered on full-time status and for some schools, in order to count as full time status, you must not be attending any other schools. So you should also check with both programs if you are really interested in doing this. However, why not do your MSc first and then do the diploma program afterwards? You would get formal training with your MSc and then supplement that with work experience afterwards!

A 3.5 GPA is definitely not "unacceptable"! But it won't put you at the top of the competition either. I guess the good thing is that you still have 1 more semester to change it (since you wil be submitting applications in ~6 months I guess). It sounds like you will have 2 research-based LORs -- work in your sophomore year and your honours thesis prof. It shouldn't matter that the sophomore year work isn't exactly related to your intended grad school field since research experience is valuable research experience. I disagree with the person who said to not get a LOR from your honours prof -- missing one from a research advisor, especially on a project directly related to what you're applying to, is a big flag in applications, I think. Maybe it would help if you asked the prof for advice on what he thinks you're missing (maybe it's more than GPA in his opinion) to be an "acceptable" graduate student and then try to show him you have these traits by application time. He might be wrong about you but it might be worth it to get his support because that would really help your application. As for your last LOR, I guess you are out of research time (you are working on your thesis this summer and all of senior year too?) so it might be too late to find another research advisor. But you still have one more semester to make an impact on a prof -- maybe try to get a LOR from a prof that teaches several of the senior classes in your field, if possible. Good luck!! You certainly can get into grad programs with a 3.5 GPA, so don't let the comment discourage you (easier said than done, I know!)

I'm also a Mendeley user! My supervisor is old fashioned enough (I am programming in a standard that's 10 years older than me) that he does not use any of these fancy new software so I guess I can use whatever I want If we are discussing a paper, he would pull out his file cabinet and somehow find exactly which folder it's in and hand me a copy! It's impressive but I prefer my more-green approach and only print out the more important stuff haha. I like Mendeley because of its dropbox-like feature. I have it installed on my work computer, my work laptop, and my home/personal PC, so I never have to worry about sending myself PDFs, or managing files on a USB key etc. I also never have to worry about creating a logical/easy to find folder structure to store all the PDFs (and not to mention naming every file some standard way), because like iTunes does for my music, Mendeley does for my papers! It also allows me to create a search/sort of database and sort my papers by year, author, journal, tags that I create myself, keywords, etc. I also like its BibTeX export feature -- now I also don't have to worry about formatting bibliography entries too much either. I use the ability to annotate/highlight and organize PDFs for both papers as well as online/electronic course notes. And finally, it's all free! I'm not sure if Mendeley is the best software out there, but I remember hearing about Papers before grad school but didn't have reason to buy it. When I started, someone mentioned that Mendeley is basically a free version of Papers, so I went for it! I'm happy to switch to another software as long as I can still do all of the above, if my PhD research group uses something else! So while Mendeley is great and fits my needs, I don't think there's anything so amazing about it that I wouldn't want to leave.

Does his 9-month study visa (to the UK I guess) allow for dependents? I will be entering the US from Canada on a visa ("J-1") this fall and my wife will be joining me as a dependent on my visa ("J-2"), and she would be allowed to stay for as long as my visa is valid. If she didn't get the dependent visa then she would be limited to whatever the maximum time the US allows Canadians to visit for (6 months sounds about right). However, when I do a quick google search for UK Study Visas, I find this page about bringing family along the general "Tier 4" student visa: http://www.ukba.home...tudents/family/ -- it seems like you can only do this if your course is 12 months or longer, or if it's a new government approved course of 6 months or longer. I think that "course" in the UK means degree program, if I remember correctly! It's too bad that courses that go between 6 and 12 months are not included in this! You said the program is 1 year long -- could your friend talk to the school to arrange to get a 12 month visa instead? Alternatively, would his wife be able to apply for her own visa to stay in the UK longer than the normal 6 months max? Edit: I was curious about this so I looked into what kind of visitor visas are available, and found this page: http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/visas-immigration/visiting/family/extend/ -- it seems like while the normal visitor visas are 6 months, if you are visiting an academic family member, you can apply for an extension up to 12 months! Not sure if your friends will qualify for this, but worth checking out I think!

I do what Eigen does (see above). I don't use templates because my philosophy is that I would only include the relevant information in each email signature -- if I was writing an email as a member of Student Organization to other students, I don't need to include things like my past degrees, "MSc Student", my position in Volunteer Organization, etc. Also, for all "internal" emails, e.g. to anyone in the department, I would just sign my first name, even for official Student Organization business, unless it was really really official (e.g. the actual message comes as an attached PDF with letterhead!) and/or involved people from outside of the department. Even for collaborators, I just sign my name, since (a) they probably know me and ( we send enough emails to each other that it would be really annoying for them to see it everytime. If they forgot what school I was at, and wanted to know for some reason, they only need to look at the domain of my email address! When there is a good reason to include alternate forms of contact, then I add it in manually but these circumstances are rare. Generally, if the only people I'd want to contact me outside of email (e.g. come to my office, call my phone, skype, use my personal email address) are people that would know this information already!

Everyone has given good advice here, especially this paragraph above about what a MSc really is. I felt a similar way last fall -- 1 year into my MSc and not too much research/results (we were still trying to get our code to work) and I was actually still doing stuff from my undergrad thesis and that was moving along MUCH better than my MSc. So it was discouraging! But then I realised that a MSc isn't a complete scientific study, it's just as DalPhDer described above. I'm writing my thesis now, on track for finishing this August, and my main result is a null result. I was dreading having to write it up since it was just going to say like "we tried all these models and parameters in our simulations and nothing worked" which isn't exciting at all!! But as I'm writing it, I'm realising that I really did learn a lot about the subject and developed a lot of good skills in the past 2 years. And although what we tried to do didn't actually work out, we worked on some stuff that could lead to other projects in the future! My supervisor is also talking about getting a paper out of our null result after the thesis, and I'm not too sure that would work out, but of course I will try and see what happens. So don't give up hope on not getting much results yet -- it seems like most of my current department didn't really start their "real work" until at least 1 year into their MSc. However, Prof.Susan also brings up a good point about your advisor. A friend of mine just quit their program after 1.75 years into their MSc with no well defined project because of a lack of supervision, despite many attempts to get other department members to intervene. By the time it was clear that it wasn't going to work out, it was too late to switch to a course-based MSc (since the course requirement is double and there was only 1 semester left). Even if you're not doing a PhD, a thesis based MSc will definitely give you different options in the working world. Maybe see how the summer goes -- without classes and TAing, the first summer is often when most MSc students actually feel like they've start to begin their research. In addition to deciding what you want to do afterwards (i.e. what kind of MSc will you need?) it might be worth talking to your advisor and/or getting a committee set up to ensure that you make good progress. If you think the advisor is the main problem, then maybe you can consider switching to a different advisor if you still want a thesis. I can only recommend that you start sooner rather than later, no matter what path (thesis or course-based) you choose! (i.e. by September). I am not saying to give up on your thesis because it is still pretty early and you can still get a lot done, and a null result is still a result. However, last fall, my friend thought "sucking it up" was the right choice but no matter what they did, it couldn't make up for the lack of advising from their advisor! Just wanted to give you some more similar stories, hope it helps you decide what's best for you!

I'm not exactly sure how Columbia defines "needs-based" funding for graduate students, especially since it seems like you are applying to an unfunded program, so it might work like undergrad scholarships (i.e. how you and nicolemc defined it). However, when I come across "needs-based" funding for graduate students, it's either a yes or no, not a measure of "how much need". But this is for funded programs where there is a guaranteed minimum amount. For example, my current school has a general needs-based "Graduate Award" which is given to anyone whose TA and RA package is below the minimum funding level (i.e. there was a need) and the award fills in the gap. There is no consideration given to how much you've saved up, unlike Canada Student Loans, or other undergrad awards, for example. Also, this is a truly "need-based" award because the only criteria that determines whether you get money is need -- there is no "all else being equal" since there is no other criteria (I think the assumption is that if you are accepted to the school, then you meet their minimum criteria for awards). In addition, if you end up with another award before you start (e.g. an internal merit based scholarship), then your need is less so they reduce an amount equal to your merit based award from your needs-based award. Just giving another example of how it might work!

I'm not sure mentioning it would help -- but maybe someone has argument why it would! Here's why I think it won't help. Since you say this is a "less competitive school", it could mean that many strong students will consider it as a "safety school". So either you are one of the strong students but actually want to go to the school, or you're not. If the first case, then mentioning it won't help you at all. They are not going to reject students who have a good application but don't say necessarily say that this school is their top choice. Of course, there is good reason to reject strong students who show no interest in the department/program, so, like all applications, you must show your interest in the school and rationale why the school would be a good match. If it's the second case, then mentioning it could help show them that you think the school is a good match for you. But, like I said above, it's much better to say why you are so interested in their school and show that the department's goals matches your own. Many people will advise you to "show, don't tell" when writing SOPs and similar essays. Just simply saying "Your school is my number one choice" is just "telling", in my opinion, so it doesn't add very much. Also, again, they are looking for people who match the department well -- they want people who are interested in the department, doesn't have to be #1 choice (i.e they won't pick you over another candidate just because you want to go there more). So my main point is that saying that a school is your #1 choice in the SOP won't really help you as much as saying why you want to go there so much. From your post, you mention the program has unique features -- definitely point them out and SHOW why these features are interesting to you and would greatly develop you as a researcher. I also think there are some downsides to saying why the school is the #1 choice. Of course, you could say things like "School X is the best match for me because...." but like saying the school is your #1 choice, it also runs the risk of them thinking "well I bet you say this to all the schools". You're expected to be reusing most of your SOP (especially stuff about why you like your field, what research have you done etc.) for most schools but I really try to personalize the paragraph(s) about why that particular school is a good match for me. Another downside, but I think this no longer applies, is that if they know you really want to go there, you might not get as good a "deal". Schools sometimes offer fellowships or "signing bonuses" to their strongest students because they know these students are probably considering offers elsewhere and they want to entice them to go to their school. Fellowships or "signing bonuses" may mean extra money but usually it just means you have research independence/freedom to not be tied to a prof for funding. This only works for fellowships awarded at the department's discretion (sometimes just making up a fellowship to attract a potential student), not fellowships with established awarding conventions, which will probably be offered to the students that meets the criteria regardless of school preference. But I say this probably no longer applies because with budgets being tightened everywhere, it's not likely the departments have tons of cash lying around to spend on recruiting students they really want. Note: I am NOT saying that strong students should expect departments to go out of their way to attract them, give them lots of fancy fellowships and so on. You wouldn't want to make a decision based on just that, especially if you are really interested in their program. I'm just saying that recruiting grad students is somewhat like a bargaining transaction and revealing more information than necessary could put you at a disadvantage. Generally, the school has much more information than the student -- the only thing we really have going for us is that we might have an offer from another school. But that said, it probably won't really hurt you nor help you to say that school X is your top choice. However, once you have all of your offers / rejections / waitlist notifications, then it would be a really good time to let that school know they are your top choice, if you don't immediately accept their offer. It's helpful for schools and the other students applying to know your preferences so that they know how many far down the waitlist they'd expect to go, etc. Also, the sooner you provide the information, the sooner other students can hear and less stress around April 15 benefits everyone!

disillusioned and psychgurl described what I did too -- I sent everyone a 1-pager with some relevant stats at the top: GPA, GRE scores, 2 sentences about my research goals. Then I had a table with due date, school+department name, and 2-3 faculty members I'm interested in. Like the others said, I also attached a CV but I didn't end up sending them my SOP because I wrote those a few days before the applications were due but I sent this information to the letter writers ~2 weeks before the letters were due. In addition, I also registered my online LORs for several schools at the same time -- this way, they will get emails from Schools A, B, C, and D all at once, so when they sit down to submit the letters, all the emails are grouped together instead of having to search through their inbox. My due dates were spread between Dec 1 and Jan 9, so I sent the letter requests in 2 waves. I then followed up with a reminder email 2 days before each letter was due, and asked something like "would you like me to have the system resend the LOR request form so it's at the top of your inbox?". If their letter didn't arrive on time, I didn't worry too much because I know as long as the main application package is in by the deadline, the letters just have to come before the adcomm actually sits down to read the applications, which could be at least a week from the deadline. But I did have the system send a reminder request though! I guess it depends on your relationship with the profs when it comes to how much reminding you can/should do so that they don't forget but you don't appear pushy/annoying. This was my third time around asking for letters from most of these people so this was what I found worked best for them! I do think profs appreciate it when you have a summary sheet, a CV, and send reminders, though!

I think coming from a big league school will give you an advantage but not so big that a no-name school student cannot overcome it. For example, someone mentioned weighing your GPA versus the difficulty of your school (as perceived by the admissions committee) -- if you are from a high power school known for tough grades, then your GPA would look much more impressive. If you're from a lesser known school, the admissions committee might not be familiar with average grades in your program so even if your GPA was equal to someone from a known tough undergrad, yours might be weighed less. That is, I don't think there is explicit undervaluing of "no-name" school GPAs, just that the admissions committees don't know the difficulty so you might miss out on potential "boosting" than a student from a known tough program would get. In addition, letters with depth are much better than generic letters, no matter who writes them. However, again, coming from a "no-name" school means that you miss out on getting the best of both worlds, that is a letter with depth from a super famous prof! But I wouldn't worry too much because these letters are very hard to get (super famous profs are super famous because they are super busy doing stuff and have less time to get to know their students -- generalizing here, of course). Sure, there will be a handful of people who will have the best everything in their application package, and they will get in everywhere, but remember, they can only accept one offer, and when they do, all the other schools will have another spot open! So, to be realistic, yes, you do have a small disadvantage coming from a no-name school because you won't be able to compete with the top students (less opportunity for big name supervisors etc.) but this is only a tiny effect. A strong enough application will be able to compete with other good students at any other school, big or small.

When I was looking at the courseloads at schools I applied to, most of them had about 2-3 courses per quarter for 3 quarters each year. The majority of the courses are usually taken in the first year though, and usually courses are finished by the end of year 2.

Hi there! It's tough to get back into "school mode" after some time away so it's good to see you have a well thought out plan and you sound enthusiastic! My major was not in communications (or even the Arts) but my wife was doing something similar (getting an Associates and transferring to a University) to you (in Psychology) and I remember the pain of cross referencing all the transfer credit guides etc.! Not to mention the worry that the tables are outdated, or the rules would change, etc. and the courses won't transfer anymore! My wife and I went to school in Canada though, but I think what I'm going to say will still apply / be helpful! 1. Course load: This really depends on you. My wife took 5 courses (15-18 hours of lectures and labwork) and worked 2 part-time jobs (~16 hours per week) during her Associate's degree. She had to do it to pay for school, but it's something she would not want to do again since after ~40 hours/week of classes + work, it doesn't leave much time for homework. No free time either! This is the typical workload of a graduate student (but maybe fewer hours in class and more hours TAing or researching) though! 2. Online vs. on-campus. Again, this depends on how you study / learn. My wife found that taking 2/5 classes online helped her plan her work schedule better. In my undergrad, I took 1 or 2 online classes as well. Both of us found that online classes are really easy to brush off though, so on-campus classes helped us discipline ourselves in keeping up with our work. One advantage of on-campus classes though is the ability to meet with other students and work together on assignments. More importantly, to get into grad school you will need to get reference letters from professors, and you would need to actually meet people face-to-face to do this! However, you would want your letters to come from research supervisors if possible, and this might not be a possibility until you transfer. So, maybe taking an all-online courseload is not a good thing now, because you probably want to be able to spend a lot of time on-campus when you transfer. But taking a few online courses could help you schedule your life better! 3. For class distribution, I would generally recommend taking the mandatory classes first when possible. So, if you need to repeat one of your 3rd semester classes, you might be able to do so in the 4th semester. But if you had left it until the 4th semester, then you will probably have to go back for an extra year, which might not be something you want! But maybe this isn't a big deal for you. Or even leaving too many mandatory courses until your last semester means you have very little choice in your schedule, which may affect other things such as work, family, personal time, etc. General education courses are more flexible since there are probably more offerings that will meet your requirements so it's more likely you can fit them around your own life better. Also, if transferring is a competitive process, you will probably have to apply for a transfer before your last semester is complete, and it might look better on you if you already have most of your requirements done. 4. In British Columbia, when you transfer a course, it will usually fulfill the same requirement as if you had taken the course at the school you're transferring to. That is, if a student at CSU can take Sociology 101 as both a psychology requirement AND a lifelong learning requirement, then your transfer course would probably fulfill the same thing. (In this case, it's not clear whether or not the course will "double count"). So, I would assume that the general principle is the same in California too. Note that sometimes a college will require you to take something like Sociology 201 at your CC in order to transfer to the college but then it will only accept the transfer credit as an "general education" credit and require you to take their version of Sociology 201. Basically, everyone I know who has done this transfer ended up having to retake at least one of their CC courses at their new college. Because of this, even though the standard AA is 2 years followed by 2 years to finish off the BA, students tend to end up needing 3 years at the college to actually finish up. This might not be a bad thing if you want to do graduate studies, since that is an extra year to get to know profs for letters, and most importantly, an extra year to get research experience and strengthen your application. Good luck!!

It sounds like you are almost finished your 3 year program, so it would make sense, to me, for you to complete it and apply to both post-docs and other PhD programs at the same time. I'm assuming that 2012-2013 is the third and final year of your program so this winter would be the time to be applying to both PhDs and post-docs! Even if you leave your program now, you probably won't be able to start a new PhD until 2013 anyways, so why not keep as many doors open as possible? Leaving a PhD program will raise flags in your application but going for a second PhD will also be unusual. A second PhD is probably less damaging than quitting a previous graduate program though! I wonder why your supervisor cares whether or not you want to return to your home country? As for feeling like the degree won't get you anywhere -- I think that's a pretty common feeling across all graduate students. Not to trivialize your situation, since I don't know anything about your school, country, or field, but just to let you know that you are probably not alone in feeling this way. But since you are almost completed your degree and probably can be applying to post-docs/other PhDs this winter, why not go ahead and do that and see what happens!

Echoing what Spore said above, most of my friends who graduated from PhD and applied to post-docs did not have submit any transcripts. But, they did have to submit them for fellowships or other similar awards. Even so, the grades aren't likely to have very much weight -- NSERC (Canada's version of NSF) base their Masters levels awards on 50% grades, 30% research, 20% community involvement/leadership but at the Doctoral level, it's 50% research, 30% grades, 20% community involvement, so I would extrapolate that trend to post-doc levels (which NSERC also funds) and then further extrapolate this general trend to other national funding agencies! So I think they might make a difference if you end up competing with someone of a similar research record for a fellowship, but if you have to choose between improving research or grades, I'd say do just enough to get the passing grade (i.e. a and then work on your research. I've also heard this advice from other PhD students at many different schools. In fact, at some places, the courses are actually really bad and everyone (profs and students) just do them because they have to, so you don't really learn much anyways. I also always thought that grades in grad school were strange. It's in the school/department/prof's best interests to inflate our grades. Failing students make the department look bad and also means a wasted investment. Higher grades means their students are more competitive at external awards and reduce costs for the department (of course, this is probably why grades aren't that important in fellowships!). There is less pressure for schools to produce "meaningful" grades because so few people care about PhD grades, as compared to undergrad programs (i.e. a school wouldn't want to send an undergrad with a 95% average to grad school only for the other school to find out the grades were so inflated and thus develop a bad reputation for the school). By the way, this information came to me by talking to profs teaching graduate courses at two different institutions. Of course, all departments won't hesitate to fail a student that deserves it (i.e. didn't do the work, didn't learn the material) but I find that "pity passes" appear often -- i.e. if the whole class does well enough to meet the prof/department's standards but the grades are low because the exams were too tough or something, it's likely that everyone's grades will be shifted upwards so that everyone passes. I've seen lots of grade distributions for graduate classes where there are conveniently no borderline failures and lots of people in the lowest passing bin. Not saying that people can/should coast by in their classes, but grad school requires making priorities and sometimes the extra hours put into a course may not warrant the small increase in grade. It would be a good idea to find out from the older students what the department/each prof's grading policies are. If the school publishes it, a grade distribution for old classes is also useful!

I always thought tailored clothes were overrated until I got a tux/pants/dress-shirt tailored for my wedding -- wow it sure makes a big difference! It's not something I would (or could afford to) do on a regular basis but I thought that was a special enough occasion For the rest of my clothes, I find that buying new things when old things don't fit is usually more economical than getting them tailored to fit me again (I found that it costs ~$10 for each thing they do; i.e. hemming, taking sides in/out etc.) . But maybe I'm just buying cheap clothes!

Like jeffster said, this is something to address in your application essays. Some schools actually ask you for two essays -- a statement of purpose (usually used to discuss why you are interested in their program, what you want out of it, and why you would be a good fit) and a personal history statement. I would say to avoid this topic in the statement of purpose, if possible (i.e. if you have two essays, write about this in the personal history statement). If you only have one essay but you are allowed a box to write about any special considerations, then I would recommend briefly mentioning it in your statement of purpose and then giving the details in the extra box. I think this is the way to go because I really think space/words in the statement of purpose are at a premium and it should be focused on the future -- i.e. why you would be a good match, what your previous experiences can bring to their program. I didn't mention my grades at all in the SOP (it's on the transcript). If you do mention it briefly, do as jeffster says and focus on what good came out of it. You should leave the emotional appeal to the personal history statement or the special considerations attachment/box/whatever-the-school-has-set-up. Just my opinion though, I don't really have any facts to back that up. I think 1 bad semester out of 6 won't be so bad, especially if you have a strong final year (but they will likely only see the first half of your 3rd year, unfortunately). Schools are supposed to be understanding of medical conditions, and they should take that into account when considering your transcript. They should also not base their admission decision on your medical condition (i.e. they shouldn't think "well this student might get sick again and not complete his/her degree with us") but my cynical side thinks this will play a role for some faculty members. Depending on how you feel about it, it might not be a good idea to discuss this issue outside of your application package (i.e. when contacting profs before applying or during visit days/interviews etc. unless you are directly asked about it or your GPA). I'm not saying you have to hide it, just that you should not feel like you must disclose your personal health information to anyone, especially if you think the information will put you at a disadvantage.

A PI can also mean Principal Investigator -- as in the lead researcher for a project, where POI is usually something like "Person of Interest", i.e. someone that you are interested in working with for grad school.

I think your plan sounds good! Good luck!

As many will tell you on this forums, you should only use a professional reference as a last resort, or if they have been working in the field for awhile instead of applying out of undergrad. Academia works differently than the "real" job world -- and they are looking for different skills and attributes in academic LORs than job LORs. For example, if you were applying for a job, you'd want your former manager to say things like you are always punctual, had a good work ethic, performed really well (in $ sold, or whatever metric), were reliable, showed leadership, etc. Those are all very nice traits but graduate admission committees are looking to see whether or not you will perform well in their academic program, and most importantly, what are your current research ability and what kind of potential you have. Class performance isn't a bad letter but it's not a good LOR either -- a letter that says "Student X consistently scored at the top of his/her class" is okay, but doesn't tell much more than your transcript. Whenever possible, you should also go for someone who can say something about your research ability/potential instead of just coursework. In addition, it's useful to know that they are looking for comparative statements -- they don't want to know that Prof. X thinks you are good at research. Your prof will probably say something like "this student is in the top 5% of all undergrads I've met in terms of research potential". Sometimes the letters have a free-form part as well as a "survey" part, where the prof ranks some attributes in terms of "best student ever", "top 1%", "top 5%", and so on. Other important attributes are things like "ability to work independently", "ability to succeed in academics", "ability to communicate well", and so on. I think the things in the previous paragraph are most important in selecting a LOR writer. A secondary thing to choose is the "connections" that your LOR writer has with the field and the school you're applying to. If you know he/she can compare you favourably to one of their former students who is currently at the program you're applying to, that could be helpful. Also, if they know the people in the department personally (alma mater, former colleagues, whatever), their opinion might be worth more than another unknown prof. Of course, if they are famous in the field, that's a plus -- being rated top 1% by a field leader will mean much more than a top 1% rating from another prof. But it's not clear if a mediocre LOR from a field leader is better than a personally written and strong endorsement from someone less well known. Famous people tend to know a lot of people and they might not end up knowing you as well as they could have so their letter may be more generic! How do you find out these connections? Don't be afraid to just ask your potential LOR writers. Many profs will be willing to help undergrads with grad school decisions -- not all of them but since you know them well, you can probably figure out who would help you. They will also give you good advice on what programs are a fit for you but don't be afraid to apply to places outside of their list (or even places they told you to avoid) since they might not know all the details behind your choices. At this point, they might already be saying things like "I can write you a strong LOR for school X". Since most schools only require 3 LORs, I only sent my 4th LOR (which I felt was weaker than the others) to places where I thought that person could make a difference. I emailed them my list of schools and proposed supervisors and they told me where they thought a letter from them might help. I recommend choosing your LORs wisely because even though some schools allow up to 6 LORs in total, they will usually treat them all with equal weight. So a less strong LOR will "pull down the average", so to speak. So maybe you will use a different set of 3-4 profs for different applications! Related to the above, LORs from a community college won't be as strong as one from your current college. Not to diminish your achievements, but a 4.0 / top student at a community college isn't as impressive as the same achievement at a bigger/more competitive school. You got the same GPA at the new school though, so it's pretty clear that you are a strong student. Everything you said about your achievements at the community college could appear in other parts of your applications (put publication and awards and honours program in the CV; your transcript will show the 4.0). But I don't know all the details, maybe the people at your community college knows you better and can write something more sincere and less generic. It's not a bad thing to have a LOR from community college at all, but in your case, it sounds like you have equally good letters from your current program. I don't know all your details though. Finally, it really doesn't sound like a letter from any of your past employers would help at all. I don't mean to say that working these jobs is bad -- I have done the same too, but it's just not the kind of thing that graduate committees are looking for. That is, the skills you learned at these jobs probably don't apply to a PhD in linguistics very much!!

I think that every generation/cohort thinks that the previous generation are doing something wrong, that things were better in the old days. And every generation thinks that the older generation is irrelevant and stuck in the old ways! This semester, a bunch of us who were TAing were mentioning how much undergrads these days want their TAs to just tell them the answer, and they get mad when we ask them questions in response to their questions. But if we're complaining about our undergrads now, I wonder what our TAs said about us ~4-5 years ago! Easier said than done, but it seems ideal for the new generation to do as Sigaba says, and remember that the older generation gained a ton of experience getting to where they are now. At the same time, the new generation could be bringing in fresh ideas and it might not be a good idea to dismiss these thoughts simply because we don't have the experience. I am thinking more of the generation gap between current students and junior faculty members, but it could also apply to the gap between PhDs-about-to-graduate/postdocs and incoming grad students. Now, to "defend"/"explain" "my" cohort despite what I said above 1. I don't agree that Internet BBs are ONLY meant to be repositories of knowledge where someone with a question should try to find every single thread on the topic and read everything. Sure, this is exactly what we do for a literature review for our work, but discussing graduate school, while related to work, isn't work. I think this was the original intention now, but with more and more people growing up in an Internet dominated world, Internet technologies are changing fast. Here's why it makes sense for a new user to post a new question instead of digging up old ones: a ) Internet rule of not reviving dead posts. On most BBs, it's poor etiquette to post in a thread that has been inactive for some period of time b ) The user wants to interact with current, active members, not just passively read something -- maybe they already read some of the stuff and now want interaction c ) Related to ( a ) and ( b ), posting in an old (dead) thread is not effective at getting the attention of current active members. If there is an existing thread 5 pages long, most people will not read the previous 5 pages and write responses taking into account all of the past posts in mind. Most people will either see that it's 5 pages long and not bother, or just write a response based on the new post and not consider the previous posts. In the former case, the OP doesn't get the interaction. In the latter case, there was no advantage to continuing a year-old thread since few people make use of the past -- it's more organized to start a new thread. d ) It's more satisfying to ask your own question, in your own thread, where you can define the parameters of your question instead of a thread where a mood/tone might have already been developed. This point is more "frivolous" but still plays a factor I think. My solution? I'm a new member of this community but I've been on other BBs for many years and see the same stuff get asked all the time. It might be more useful to link to a specific post that we think is helpful or just copy and paste something we've written before for the OP, if we think we are repeating ourself. I think nowadays, a BB is more of a place for a person to announce something (e.g. I have a problem!) and then whoever is around and interested can gather and have a discussion. Although it has the capability to function like a library of knowledge, and there are many who do use it that way, I would say that the majority are drawn to BBs because of the ability to talk to active members, not read through past posts. But it's a good thing that BBs can function in both ways and allows users to choose how to use the BB. 2. Regarding the "sense of entitlement" of "our" cohort. I think this is partially due to the fact that the people entering graduate studies today are VERY different than the people running graduate studies (i.e. profs). It's clear that nowadays, more and more people are going to University and getting degrees -- it's the norm to go to college and I think this is spreading into grad school too. So, the demographics are different. I'm not sure if it's true but it sure feels like many programs expect graduate students to devote themselves to academia. I'm not saying this is the case for any particular person, but I feel that someone from a family who has had people in grad school before (so they understand us) and/or aren't from a "working poor" class would have a much easier time adjusting to graduate student life and doing well than others. Someone who wants to start a family, or needs to send money home to their parents, or wants to do other things than just academia will face more challenges in grad school. One can argue that grad school isn't for those in the above categories and aren't able to / willing to face the challenges, though -- but I don't think this is the right way to do things. I don't know for sure what the job prospects were for our profs though. Maybe it was just as bad for them but they just toughed it out. I don't think it's a bad idea for our cohort to come with certain expectations and fight/push for changes for things that we want. We should have the ability to voice our opinions and shape the way our graduate program is run. Maybe when all of the new people entering college in the past decade reach faculty positions, graduate programs will be drastically different. Or maybe it won't, if the system ends up doing a good job of self-selecting like-minded people. But fighting for better working conditions or improving student life shouldn't be considered a sense of "entitlement". That is, graduate school shouldn't be a place of "conform or perish" -- the norms of the department should be set by all of its members, including students. If the issues are important enough, the students' voice could be strong enough to cause change. I guess when it comes down to it, I feel this way because I believe that educational programs (at all levels, i.e. BSc, MSc, PhD) exist to serve the students and it should meet our needs. The faculty members with experience would know what kind of skills are important for academic success so they would build the degree program on this. But it's easy for people to think that "I suffered through this to get to where I am so the students have to as well". And the needs of students back in the day may not be the same as the needs now. So it's important for department to seek feedback from students and incorporate what we would like to get out of our degrees into our degree programs. Maybe this is the "sense of entitlement" that Sigaba is referring to, but I don't think it's unreasonable to want to have some say in our degree programs if we are going to spend 5-6 years of our life and potentially opportunity costs during our PhDs.

I think you can get some useful objective (i.e. statistical data) from Wikipedia, but with some caveats! I like how almost every city's entry in Wikipedia has a very useful table of average, high, and low temperatures for each month. I found that the numbers tend to contradict my preconceptions about what the weather is like in certain cities. Students at places I visited gave my numbers that agreed with Wikipedia data so I guess that's good enough for me! Other useful things are population size and a breakdown of demographics, but I guess you would have to be careful about their sources. However, if you are going to be spending 90%+ of your time with people from your school, there is a high chance that most of them aren't from that city so the numbers won't apply! But if you are moving with someone who will be looking for work, then other useful things like the largest employers etc. could be of interest as well. But I agree that while the rest of the article may be true, depending on who has been editing it, it may not really represent a balanced enough view that you can infer what the city is like, in my opinion. Also, as a graduate student, we will probably have a different experience than someone who is there permanently!

Academic LORs (from research supervisors) are extremely important. But I do wonder for people who graduated a decade ago, is an academic LOR written today about the person they remembered 10 years ago really that much better than a generic letter "this student got an A in my class"? I guess if it's a research-based LOR, it would be a good idea to try to get that LOR. It does sound like the best thing is to try to get back in touch with academia (i.e. volunteer/work for a prof doing independent research) because not only will that get you a relevant academic LOR, I think it would really show the graduate committees that you are serious about giving up your current job/career to get into research.

Dal PhDer already gave a lot of good advice. I would add that you might get a better response if you already have some of the work done before you approach another person. It might depend on field, but in the sciences, most of the time a prof (or sometimes grad students too) get "cold-called" (or emailed) to co-write a paper, it's someone with a pet theory that will revolutionize physics or someone desperate to get their name on something. So profs are sometimes wary of random people asking them to put their name onto a paper that they didn't really work on. I don't think you are just trying to get a faculty name on a paper (since you say you want to learn from their advice as well!) but I think it's worth making sure you don't sound that way when you approach someone! Ideally, you could have a paper fleshed out with your ideas on the rule of law and shape the outline to include whatever the other person's area of expertise is, it would show that you know what you want help on, instead of just a general call for assistance. But I guess you don't want to push your own ideas too strongly that the other person feels railroaded into signing onto a paper. Also, if it's someone you have talked to before (in person or email), it's probably better, especially if they know you a little bit. Cold-calling for coauthors is not conventional so who knows you might give you the initial benefit of the doubt you need to start a conversation. (Or like Dal PhDer says, if you know someone, e.g. an academic point of contact, who knows someone...)

I'm a guy and I feel the same way about a nice outfit too One of the reasons I like to dress nice when giving a presentation is that I need the extra confidence boost from knowing that my outfit isn't going to make a bad first impression -- I don't want to take that opportunity away from my title slide.