TakeruK

When I start a new class, I always let the students know that I have to understand what they are writing in order to grade it. I explain that it has to be legible but if they are solving equations or something, there has to be a logical flow. A bunch of symbols and numbers scratched onto a page isn't helpful. When it is the case, I explain that I am not just grading for the right answer, but I expect students to show understanding of the concepts/problems as well. If I can't read it, I won't mark it. Sometimes it helps to explain that I am only assigned a limited number of hours to mark their assignments -- most of them either are working or have had jobs at some point and will understand that it's no fun to have your time wasted! But I am usually lenient on the first poorly written assignment -- I will try to mark it as best I can but give it back to the student and tell them in person (if possible, or write a note on the page otherwise) that I won't be spending that much effort into reading something that messy again! Edit: For something like lab notebooks, where students under a time crunch may be really messy in a place where neat and legible notes are very important, I actually put "notebook neatness" worth about 10% of the mark or something.

I don't want to give too much advice without knowing all the details. Sometimes I find it easier if I ask the department graduate coordinator the questions, and whatever they can't answer, they forward onto the Graduate Office and it seems like the grad offices tend to respond to internal emails faster than emails from students. But your department seems to clearly say that they can't help you any further at this point, which is too bad. I guess a phone call can't really hurt you, but it might not be that helpful either. How long have you been waiting since the 2nd email?

Usually the second email is a good sign because in most schools, the department/committee can only recommend students for admission while the graduate school will review your documentation and make the official offer. However, this is usually a formality -- unless there was a mistake on your application form, everything should be fine, just slow -- sometimes this doesn't happen until June. However, usually the second email does have more information, such as a contact person to talk to, an offer to visit the school (but maybe not in this case because of the rolling admissions and/or international status), funding information, TA/RA workload and other information provided to incoming graduate students.

Hank's link to the other topic has great responses. I just want to address a specific concern of yours that you bring up here. It sounds like you aren't 100% sure about doing a PhD ("don't mind research in general" and you are worried about the stresses of writing a thesis). I definitely know what you mean about thesis writing stress -- I'm writing my MSc thesis right now! So, you can take the thesis MSc route and find out whether you really like research and get the experience of writing a thesis. Then it would help you figure out if you'd want to do a PhD or not! In undergrad, I originally took a non-honours stream because I was afraid of doing a 4th year thesis. But after 2nd year, I learned that you basically need an honours undergrad to get into many grad schools (or at least take the thesis course as a non-honours student) so I switched. I found that my thesis experience in undergrad was nothing like I feared and it was all very doable! So maybe a MSc thesis seems daunting now, but you may feel differently at the end of your ~2 years!

I did read/interpret Sigaba's post differently -- I had a situation in mind where it was one (but perhaps influential) person who had their own beliefs that were not in line with the official policy. So I was suggesting that there is probably always going to be one person that are going to be upset at you for something or other, so as long as you can live with it (i.e. don't have to deal with it every day) then maybe it's no big deal. But, after reading Eigen's interpretation, then yes, I definitely have seen that there is a set of written rules and then a set of unwritten expectations. So far, I've found that a good resource for these unwritten expectations are senior graduate students and faculty members you trust. Definitely agree that before making a decision that could affect an unwritten (or written!) rule/expectation, one should consider all of the consequences, even if the unwritten rule/expectation is unfair. After the consequences are acceptable, which would vary from person to person, then one should go ahead with it! When things are not the way they should be, you can either live with it / change your own expectations, or do something to change it. Sometimes, it's worth trying to change, sometimes it's not. I know Sigaba weren't talking about what happens after the evaluation of the consequences, and just merely that one should carefully consider everything. But your (Sigaba) tone did give an impression, intentional or not, that these consequences are generally negative and not worth it. Because of my nature, if there exists written policies (which may have been hard fought for by previous students/faculty members) that are undermined by unwritten expectations, I will feel a strong urge to challenge them, through appropriate means. After all, unwritten policies sometimes are unwritten for a reason. There is always a lot of risk, because as Sigaba points out, the profs are the gatekeepers to our future, and there is a huge power imbalance. So, it takes a little bit of courage for a student in this situation to speak out/go against an unwritten policy. But I am also well aware that there is a fine line between bravery and foolishness! (Thus it's important to follow Sigaba's suggestions to consider every consequence/outcome carefully).

It's true that there is that risk that someone in a position of power could disapprove of what you're doing despite your staying within protocol. But this is true for almost anything you could possibly do. Maybe someone sees you arriving at 1pm and staying until 10pm and frowns upon that. Maybe someone believes someone of your gender or ethnicity can never succeed in the field. Or the fact that you are in any relationship at all means that you are "distracted" or your priorities are not in academia. You will never please everyone so I think you should just accept that and be yourself, within reason. In addition, you also mention that some "old school" ways are changing. The hypothetical departmental meeting would be filled with educated people, young and old, and they probably already have their own views on whatever your situation is. If they don't feel like you did anything wrong, then the hypothetical disapproving prof's opinion wouldn't be considered. If they do think you're in the wrong, then the prof would just be telling them something that they would likely find out eventually anyways. It may be better to prioritize your worries to people who you regularly interact with. It would be unwise to doing something you know your supervisor would not approve of (even if it's within protocol) without considering the consequences. You might end up doing it anyways, but it's worth a second evaluation. As for everyone else, I guess you can decide whether it's worth it or not, but I wouldn't worry too much about how every single person who has power over me (which is pretty much everyone) would think. This may be a bit naive, but if the fact that you are in a relationship with someone who was your former student, or if you are a man/woman, or if you are left/right wing, or if you have a certain ethnicity is the factor that prevents you from getting a job at University X down the line, then I'd say you probably don't want to be there anyways. Optimistically, even if someone at your former department mentions bad things about you because of these things, a sensible hiring committee would know that those things don't matter.

That's good that there won't be any conflict for your outside job 10 hours a week of TAing + classes + research is pretty daunting for me -- so personally, 10 hours of tutoring + classes + research would really be my limit. I would probably be more comfortable with around 4-6 hours of tutoring a week. Tutoring is a great source of side income though, but I would prefer to do private tutoring over a "tutoring job" since the tutoring agency is really just a middleman that will take a cut, increasing costs for your student and decreasing your income. However, if they pay you to work at a "help desk" and not many people show up, then I guess that could be okay. Also, if you are having problems finding your own students, they are a great way to make these contacts -- word of mouth is really good for getting tutoring clients. I did work at a tutoring "company" during my undergrad, but it was a student organization that provides tutoring services for free and pays the tutors a small salary, so I thought that was a good thing to do. They did have a policy that while we could tutor on the side, we couldn't use our affiliation with this organization to get clients (i.e. no advertising while "on duty" and you can't say things like "approved by Tutoring Organization X" or whatever. Some of my friends wrote something like "worked for Organization X for Y years" and they were asked to removed it -- although I don't think that is really fair, it was easier for everyone to just comply. At our current department, the department helps their grad students find private tutoring clients by maintaining a tutor list of interested grad students on the department webpage along with a list of courses that we can tutor. At my undergrad, working at Organization X also gives you an entry in the Organization X's Private Tutor database. With adverts like that and word of mouth, I quickly reached the maximum number of hours I could feasibly tutor! It's also good money -- I charged $25/hr as an undergrad and $30/hr now as a graduate student. Others in the department have been successful charging a rate equal to our TA hourly rate ($38/hr) but I would feel a little guilty charging that much. I found that even the best tutoring companies only pay around $15-20/hr (and charge the students the same as we would charge or more!).

I think it is hard to find a great advisor, either young or old. Sure, young profs may have the problems you mention but in Eigen's case, there are good examples of great young advisors too. Older profs with tons of experience could be good because they have little pressure but they may be pretty far removed from the field, and may not keep up to date on the latest work anymore. They may also not care as much -- maybe they are starting to drift into retirement and you may not see them so often. On the other hand, they represent a wealth of experience, knowledge, "clout"/reputation, and since they probably are happy with their achievements, they may let their students take more control of their projects, write papers and be lead author etc. Middle aged profs (i.e. recently tenured) could be good since they aren't so far removed from their grad school days, and aren't trying to secure a whole bunch of grants and/or tenure anymore. But they are still trying to build their career so you may have less independence with them. Of course, what kind of advisor is the best is very subjective and depends on the student! I also chose my undergrad and MSc (sorry I am not a PhD student yet but I'm going to chime in anyways) advisors from the "vibe" and how well we got along when we first met. One was middle-aged and the other is near retirement. I am lucky to have both advisors who, I think, really have their students' best interests in mind and ensure that we are well trained as researchers in addition to advising us on our projects. They have been my mentors in applying to grad school (I have no one in my family who has done it before so they are my "academic parents" so to speak), ensured I have opportunities to meet other researchers at conferences (my field is small in Canada -- usually only 1 or 2 faculty members per school in the field), and they help get their students' names known to others. I was careful to also ask questions about themselves and their lives outside of research when I was visiting schools in order to find someone that would have a good rapport with me!

At my current school, grad students can be employed as "Teaching Fellows" and are paid a standard rate to teach a course (~$7800 per 12-week course) instead of an hourly rate like TAs. TFs are responsible for planning and delivering a course to undergraduates, but they may be supervised/guided by a faculty member. For example, there may be a faculty member in charge of Course 101 and 3 graduate students employed as TFs to teach 3 sections. TFs may also be assigned other graduate students as TAs for the course. TFs would definitely count as strong "teaching experience" because you work almost like a sessional lecturer (i.e. preparing your own lectures and syllabus). However, TFs are much more common in the humanities and social sciences here -- my department (physics) has no TFs. I think TA experience would be helpful, but it's not going to be as good as something like the above, and with only TA experience, you will probably not be as competitive amongst other applicants who did not go to grad school and went for a career in teaching instead. But, TA experience isn't worthless, you should be sure to describe your roles clearly and let them decide if they will count it as teaching experience or not. However, if you are serious about a career in teaching, consider volunteering in your free time (ha) to get more experience. In my home province, in order to get into the B. Education program, applicants need to have 2 solid cases of working with youths in a teaching capacity (e.g. Scout leader, teach Sunday school, etc.) If you are competing with people who are/were in the Education stream, they would have lots of experience like this and you should try to get some too!

Sorry, I should rephrase my original statement to say that my second paragraph (i.e. funding is a sign of confidence that the student will succeed) should only apply to programs where full funding is the norm, such as STEM programs, but MS level programs aren't usually funded in the US. I guess I didn't really make the appropriate connecting phrases between my first and second paragraphs!

Yes, both of my topics were all from those lists and the wording on the website makes it 100% clear that that pool of topics is indeed inclusive. That is, if you manage to write all 50+ essays from each list really well, and memorize them, then you can just recall it from memory on the test! If you can do that though, you probably deserve that 6. But realistically, as others suggested, going through that list and writing a few practice essays here or there would be a good way to prepare. In addition, if you can think of one or two ideas for each topic as you scan through the list, then it could save you a little bit of brainstorming time on the GRE itself.

I think this is a really good point -- dating isn't the only way you can be put in a conflict of interest position. You wouldn't want to become best friends / enemies with your students either, for this reason! Sometimes undergrads invite their TAs to their parties, which I always politely decline. I try to be friendly, but I'm not friends with them while they are in my course. Usually the students who are interested in forming friendships with others in the field will end up working in the department as a undergrad researcher in the summer, which is when I can get to know them better on a personal/social level. For the person who said it's okay if you are only providing office hours -- it still could be a problem if the TA has access to (or is perceived to have access to) any sort of exam information or assignment solutions. It could also be complicated if, for example, your student has an ex-partner in the same class and the "ex" complains about you not helping them as much because of your relationship with the first student. Or, other students may just complain in general about you helping a certain student more than others. I can see this happening if you have a ton of students waiting for your office hours and you don't have time to talk to everyone (what, it could happen!)

I would second ktel's post about expecting funding if you are doing a research-based (i.e. thesis-based instead of course-based) degree in STEM in North America, unless you are doing only a masters in the US. (which unfortunately does not normally provide funding). I would consider an offer without funding to say that "we aren't sure about your ability to succeed in our program, but we need/want your tuition money so come to our school anyways". Funding is good in itself because we don't want to go into debt, but I also consider it as a statement of their faith in my ability to do well in their program, because they are willing to invest that money in me. In addition, I would feel more like a valued member of the department instead of a paying "customer".

Nothing wrong professionally with it if you don't interact with the student in any sort of "official" capacity (e.g. TA or class instructor), especially if the undergrad is in a different field! Sure, the age/experience/maturity difference may be a factor depending on the two people, but it may not, especially since not everyone starts school at the same age anymore! It would be a big problem if you are dating a student you are currently TA-ing or teaching. Most schools actually have some policy on this, official or not. They usually tell us that if you really think you want to date, then wait until the term is over and all the marks are submitted so that the student is not longer your student. If they end up in your class again, then you should definitely notify the instructor/department so that you either get assigned to a different session/course or ensure that you don't grade their work (although it would still be an issue since you may have "insider information"). I think if you follow these guidelines, then it will be professional. However, everyone else in the department are human and us humans like to gossip so your relationship will probably be talked about. You may be considered unprofessional even if you keep everything strictly kosher. But if knowing that, if the hypothetical couple think that the relationship is worth it, then to hell with others say Eventually, most people will stop talking about it and move on.

I love TA-ing. Teaching is one of the reasons why I want to be in academia. I agree that it keeps me engaged with the material. I also enjoy the ability to talk to the undergrads and help them figure out things like finding summer research positions, scholarship applications, grad school applications, GRE study groups etc. I also do a bit of private tutoring (for courses I don't TA). I find that it's also very satisfying to be able to help someone answer a question or do something right as a TA after days on end of being frustrated with my code not working or other research problem. But no matter how much I like it, it's still a job and I'm not going to do it without fair pay. I really don't think student labour in terms of TA-ing is what drives graduate committees -- I've seen a ton of departments where there is a shortage of TAs so all of them are overworked. Clearly, if they wanted to hire students to be TAs, they would have gotten more students and then just weed them out at orals or something (although I've heard of one or two places that do this). However, I really do think graduate committees are looking for "research labour" when selecting students. In the sciences, it's usually the grad student that actually does the research work -- the more established profs will be the ones providing the guidance, expertise, funding, and all that in order to enable the grad students to do work, but like "Prof. Smith" of PhD comics, the prof doesn't actually do science/research anymore. Thus, the grad committees want to select students with strong research potential in order to run the labs and get science done (under the name of their school of course).

Asking is the best. But it might be helpful to know that for many schools, you register your recommenders through an online system as part of your application form. The system will automatically contact your references via email and usually provide them with a link to a place where they can login and enter their letter of recommendation. If this is the case, then yes, you will have to start your application before you can do this. However, many schools will open their application system over the summer, if you are anxious to start. But I would really recommend waiting so you can have more things to add, and also so you ask your recommenders for all the letters at the same time, it will be more convenient.

You mean you want to withdraw from your program at RPI and start a new one at Cornell? Or do you want to do both at the same time? The first one is risky because you might not get in for sure at Cornell, and you might offend some people at RPI by changing your mind so late. You probably won't be able to transfer many (if any!) credits earned towards an RPI degree to Cornell though. The second option would have to depend on the policies at both schools -- most schools will only allow full time students and sometimes one criteria of full-time is not being enrolled anywhere else. Or, do you mean that you want to continue your degree at RPI originally but have a supervisor at Cornell? I think your post might mean this but the word "switch" made me think of the first two options. I think the best way to do this would be to start your PhD at RPI and get a RPI advisor that wants to collaborate with someone at Cornell and set something up so that you are co-supervised. Or maybe you can just work with Cornell profs as a side project instead of your thesis. If you really want to do this, you could start talking to RPI faculty now about projects you can work on and find out if any of them collaborates with people in other places. But you should probably be careful how you word it so that it doesn't sound like you just want to use them to get to Cornell. Thus, I would probably advise to get established at RPI first, start your courses, get to know who is doing what, establish good connections with faculty at RPI and then talk to them about your plans to work with someone at Cornell too and maybe you can start a collaboration between you, your supervisor at RPI and someone at Cornell! But you should know that it might not work out and not something to count on -- if you truly want to be at Cornell instead of RPI, then the right thing to do is to withdraw and apply to Cornell. If you just want to use RPI as a way of getting in with Cornell researchers, then it probably won't work and it probably would hurt your reputation in the field too.

Yeah, I definitely agree there, especially with #3. For job applications and grad school applications, i think the "brand name" and "legacy student" aspects are implied. Also, I don't think these types of applications need to fully spell out how they select students -- a company can hire whomever they wish (as long as they don't discriminate against whatever its protected by law in their jurisdiction) and a school can do the same with the students they admit. But when it comes to scholarships or other awards, I think if an award wants to portray itself as truly picking the best candidate, it should fully disclose its definition of the best candidate, including all advantages for alumni, if any. Of course, they don't HAVE to, but that's what I meant by being shady -- now I'm not as confident in their ability to pick the best candidate. Not that it really matters -- just wanted to clarify a bit more. I'm not saying networking itself is shady! Just wish that some awards would be more transparent in their decision making process. But that might be just me

Yeah you do lose the four freebies if you don't choose them either before or right after writing the test. So it could be worth it to at least look up 4 schools (other than your undergrad) you know you will want to apply to (you get scores sent to your undergrad school for free too). It's a no-lose thing, since if you change your mind, it won't hurt you. It's something like $23 US per school afterwards (but at least it will send all of your scores, subject + general if you want it to, so it's not $23 per test per school!). However, ETS new service ("ScoreSelect") is even more greedy! Basically you will soon have the choice of these free options for the four free schools (chosen on or before the test day). 1. Send all the scores from all test dates (currently the way it works now) 2. Send the scores from the MOST RECENT test only. After the test day, you can still pay the $23 or whatever to send more score reports, but now you have an additional option: 3. Send the scores from ANY ONE test date of your choosing! So, it allows you to show only your best score, but to get this advantage, you will have to pay. It's not clear whether you have to pay extra for Option #3 either! More info here: http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/about/scoreselect

I would agree with this statement too -- but mostly because I see U Waterloo as a very strong engineering school, and BASc are very useful in the workforce. U of T is good for doing BA and BSc, which are not very useful in the workforce, at least not in their major fields. But that's not to say that every student/program from Waterloo or Toronto will fall into these bins, just the general feeling that other Canadian academics may share too. The original poster said that they wanted to get a good paying job right out of undergrad -- I'm sure it's possible but I don't think that is something you can guarantee at either school. Usually academia/research isn't going to pay well -- in the end, a starting prof can make as much as 80,000/year and eventually make a bit over 100,000 when they are fully tenured. But this is at age 40 or so -- there are much better ways to make money if that is your goal (you might start at lower than 80,000 but you will be working instead of spending 5 years in grad school, 4-6 years as a postdoc and then 5 years trying to get tenure, and that's not even considering the fact that jobs are hard to come by!) Then again, I'm not sure what a BA or BSc in psychology can really get you, job-wise, after graduation (maybe someone in the field can comment?). My wife was originally considering a BA in psychology -- her original plan was to either go to grad school or go get a BEd afterwards and teach elementary or high school. Actually, out of all the people I kept in contact with from high school that went to University, the vast majority of them who got real jobs right after undergrad were in a business program. Everyone else is either in grad school or professional programs like teacher's college, law school, med school, etc.

From what you've written, it doesn't sound like they are inviting you to visit at all (but of course you can probably still arrange to visit them on your own time and money). In my field, a standard acceptance letter contains funding information -- i.e. how much money, for how long, what are the TA/RA requirements and whether or not this money comes in part from an award or fellowship. Sometimes the letter will say that X dollars is the minimum guaranteed stipend but the student is being considered for additional funds. If I got a letter like the above, I would interpet this as "accepted without guaranteed funding". I think everyone accepted would have relived the same letter (unless they already have funding). I think the phrase "you are being considered for financial support..." could mean anywhere between 0% and 100% chance of actually getting the funding. So, the letter means, yay you got in (congrats!) but you will have to wait and see to find out about funding information.

When I wrote the GRE in June 2011, I had indicated which schools to send the scores to, even though I hadn't started the application forms until late November/early December. I believe ETS sends a batch of scores to all the schools every so often (2 weeks? 1 month? more? not sure) and the scores just accumulate. When you submit your application, you are asked to indicate your testing reference number, and the date(s) you took the test. They then go and look up this information and match your application to the database they already have. The only school where I ran into trouble was when I had used ETS' school lookup tool to find the institution code for one of my schools, but it turns out there was a glitch and there were two codes listed -- I picked the wrong one. But in the end, they were happy with my unofficial ETS report (or maybe they eventually found the right score).

Many profs have assured me that it costs a LOT more than our stipends to pay for a graduate student. LIke Usmivka said, there is overhead as well -- I think the actual cost of an international graduate student is somewhere around 100,000 or more per year. The school takes students because it is an investment in us -- one day, some of us will do great work and people will see that we graduated from School X. Or, we might even do good work while a student and we will be presenting at conferences and publishing under the School X banner, increasing that school's ranking and impact factor or whatever metric is used, etc. In addition, even the best profs can only do so much work before they run out of time/energy! So, graduate students like us will be doing a lot of the grunt work. Sure, they could just keep hiring more profs, but we are a lot cheaper than profs! If, with overhead, our total cost is about the salary of a tenured prof, imagine how much it costs in total to have a prof on staff!! And also, they subsidize the costs of their investment in grad students from other income sources such as undergrads or other programs.

I just recently found out that some schools have grad student vacation "policies". I put it in quotes because some schools have it as an official policy while others say that being a grad student in itself doesn't make you an employee (but being a TA or RA etc. does) so we don't technically get the right to vacation days unless we are employed as a TA or RA etc. Nevertheless, the policy in your actual lab will likely override any policy by the School or Faculty of Graduate Studies anyways. That said, almost all schools I looked at had a similar policy of something like 10 working days off on top of any other days that the school is regularly closed (e.g. holidays, school closures for Christmas break and so on). But the policy, whether official or not, always say that students must arrange the days with their supervisors beforehand and they should be taken in a way to not disrupt the research work. So, common sense basically! But it's sometimes helpful to know what your School/Faculty of Graduate Studies policy is so that you get the sense of what is an appropriate amount of time off when discussing this with your supervisor.

Your profile says you live in Toronto and I think in Canada, there is definitely a two-tiered system in reputation of schools (I think there is basically UBC, U of Toronto, and McGill, then there is everyone else). Reputation is not everything, but it will be important for getting co-op placements -- many schools have co-op programs and employers will be looking at the school name. For grad schools, if you are looking at going to the US, it might help to have a more well-known school. But I think the school name will be important in getting co-op placements. In addition, the location of the school will matter as well -- it's MUCH easier to get a co-op placement in a big city since you can actually go to the in-person interviews and so on. So if University #1 is in a smaller town, it might not be as good! I think co-op is one of the best things you can do during undergrad -- I did it with a BSc from UBC and the research experience I got out of my placements were super helpful in applying for fellowships and grad school. Are you sure there isn't a co-op program for the BSc in psychology program too? At UBC, getting into the science co-op program was a LOT easier than the arts co-op program because the arts program was a lot more competitive. The science co-op program basically took everything who met the requirements that applied but my friends in the arts had to go through rounds of interviews before getting accepted into the program (about half of them got in). There is nothing "bad" about a BA. In Canada, I think it's about as useful as a BSc -- basically a bachelor's degree in anything is not going to let you do specialized work in your major. BA's and BSc's are hired for the skills they learned along the way -- critical thinking, analysis, writing, quantitative skills etc. and I think it's rare that someone with a bachelor's degree (except in fields such as engineering, computing or business) will be working in the same field as their major. But in general, arts programs have more students and aren't as well funded as the sciences -- you just have to look at grad school funding packages to see that! Maybe science programs are sometimes seen as stronger because it's harder to get into a BSc program than a BA program at some places (and fewer high school course requirements for BAs too) but if you are a good student, you will end up with a strong skill set with either degree. Then again, I think a BA in Psych is a very common degree while BSc in Psych is more rare (my wife was a psych major and she saw the difference in class sizes of the BA and BSc streams!). So maybe in your case, a BSc can help you stand out better. Finally, another thing to consider is the opportunities you will have at either school (I don't know exactly what A and B are). If you know that you are for sure interested in research and grad school, I would strongly recommend choosing the school with the better research track record. I've heard some arguments against going to a big research institution because of large classes, profs that don't care about teaching because they rather do research, higher competition for grades etc. but if you are a good student and will work hard in classes, then you will benefit a LOT more from the exposure to research opportunities than well-taught classes. But this is only applicable if you know for sure you want to do research and grad school, and that's hard to know right now!