TakeruK

Yeah, tons of current and prospective grad students are worried! There's currently a discussion here: https://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/98389-tax-change-impact-tuition-waivers-taxed/?page=3&tab=comments#comment-1058526098

I think you should check with your department to see what they say. There could be several different reasons why they ask this: 1. It could be a standard form that they ask everyone and it's meant for you to list any other external support you may have. In this case, it would be a good idea to list "Department TAship or RAship" in addition to any external funding sources you may have already been awarded or have applied to. If you have applied to awards then indicate whatever status you are at (shortlists etc.), if known, otherwise just put "applied". 2. It could be a form meant for international students in order to prepare the paperwork to issue the I-20 or DS-2019. Per US immigration requirements, all foreign students must demonstrate on their entry paperwork that they have funding to pay for the program and living expenses for themselves and any dependents on their visa. Again, for fully funded programs, this would mostly just be whatever the school/department provides. However, if your specific program doesn't provide enough funding to meet US immigration standards, or if you are also bringing dependents, then you might need to add "personal funds" or something like that to meet the requirement. Again, it's worth asking the department so that you can clarify. Note that if you are foreign student and this is why they are requesting this information, what you put here isn't final. Usually after you accept their offer, the international office will reach out again to confirm the information necessary for the paperwork.

I was going to write something similar. Also, it really doesn't matter if you are a class-based Masters or a research-based Masters student when it comes to "Student" vs. "Candidate". In my field, in Canada, most Masters students (whether class or thesis based) will introduce themselves as "I'm a 1st/2nd/3rd year MSc student" (or they might omit the year altogether). Usually they say the year though because there's a pretty big difference between a first year MSc student (who would have just started months ago) and a 2nd year MSc student (who is likely applying to PhD programs right now). But if they were being formal on a signature, I think MSc Candidate is more common than MSc student (although as I first wrote years ago above, signatures aren't very common anyways). It doesn't really matter if you are thesis or class-based Masters student, you are still a Candidate for a Masters degree, so MSc Candidate is equally valid for both degree programs. In almost all PhD programs in my field in Canada, there is some candidacy-like exam partway through, and that's where you can distinguish between "student" and "candidate". However, that said, most students don't write these super formal emails prior to reaching candidacy, so you see a lot more "PhD Candidate" than "PhD Student" in emails. Furthermore, I think most people in my field will use the title that's relevant to the email. So, when I was a student and I was writing in my role as a TA, I would put that as my title (although not to my students, since they would know I'm their TA....but perhaps to the university's Teaching Centre or something). If I was writing to another researcher in my role as an RA, I might write "Graduate Research Assistant" as my title. Now, as a postdoc at a non-University institution, I make my signature more academic sounding when writing to scientists (e.g. my title is XYZ Postdoctoral Fellow) and I use my official job category/title ("Research Associate") when writing to Human Resources or other corporate/business departments in my organization.

It all depends on the application system. Each school may work differently. At this point, most school application systems are open (some are due in a couple of days!) so you can go ahead and start an application to see what it will allow you to do.

@harriyu: It's definitely not unethical to highlight your good points. In fact, what I wrote in 6b and the link there basically says that your letter should only say positive things and ignore negative things. Every statement in the letter should be a positive one. But this is the not the same as lying about the bad points. When I read the word "mask", it has negative connotations misrepresenting your grades or something. When you said "assist with drafting the letter", it sounded like you were going to write the first draft of the letter. However, what you said here about providing notes on what your letter writer might like to say is definitely normal. Nothing wrong with that either. So perhaps just a misunderstanding on my part of these phrases.

That's a fair point. I didn't really mean it the way you said it. I agree completely that concerns about job security in academia and non-ideal academic jobs are very good reasons to not want to stay in academia. My advisor strongly encouraged all of us to consider personal reasons (e.g. location, etc.) when applying to jobs and that it's perfectly fine for us to not to apply to prestigious jobs because of their location. I did have a lot of location constraints for my first postdoc (I only applied to a few geographical areas) and these constraints will be even larger for future positions. What I meant to say in my above comment was that I don't think it's a good idea to come to your advisor or committee and simply say that you don't want to stay in academia because you don't think you have a good future in academia. In the preceding paragraph, I said that you will get more help if you have some sort of idea of what you actually want to do instead. Otherwise, it sounds like you don't know what you actually want and you want your committee to help you decide on a career path. So, I should have been more clear and said that I think students wanting to leave could tell the committee their concerns about job security or that the available jobs are not ideal if they want, but they should also follow up with what they want to do instead.

Wow, that's really strict and different! I just wanted to provide context for my answers since they might not apply if your school is so strict. I think my school is more typical of North American schools (where the other advice was also coming from, I think). Although many schools will have a single outside examiner (i.e. not from the same school), my school also did not require that. What you're doing sounds right and smart based on your requirements! Good luck

Yeah, definitely agree that no one should count on schools changing for us and that it's definitely best if the exemption remains in the final tax bill (or honestly, I wish that the tax bills fails completely, I'm not a fan of it at all but I'm not a voter nor a US taxpayer after this tax year so I guess it doesn't really matter what I think lol).

Just saying: it does depend on each school's requirements. I've seen many people at my old program defend with 2 articles accepted and published and one still under review (three papers is the norm for a thesis by publications here). Usually between thesis defense and final submission, the last article is accepted. I am sure in these cases, the committee will question the advisor during the deliberation period to ensure that the last paper is going to be accepted. In my field though, papers are accepted at a 85%+ rate, so being rejected is not common (i.e. if there are problems with the work, the committee would surely see it). Also, many students publish way more papers than necessary to put into a thesis, so having the last (couple of) chapters be unpublished is probably going to be okay.

That's fair! I know all of my examiners very well since I've worked with them for the past five years so I knew what was good and what wasn't. I also knew that my advisor fully supports me so that if one person wanted to be a jerk about something I wrote in my acknowledgements or dedication then my advisor would have shut them down. However, I forgot to also mention: the version of the dissertation I submitted to my committee did not contain my acknowledgements! Partly because they were not written yet and partly because I wanted to say very nice things about them but didn't want to include it and have them see it before they made their final decision. It is my university's policies that the committee does not need to see the final version (unless they request it). Since no one requested to read my dissertation after the exam, the acknowledgements were entered without anyone else ever reading it. Some of my colleagues added a whole chapter after their defense because they got more work done (you have a month after your defense date to submit your final thesis). I imagine in these cases their supervisor at least read that new chapter.

Although I didn't get the email myself, my friends who are still in my PhD school said that my old school told everyone they would be okay due to some scholarship thing that their lawyers looked into. Nevertheless, I was happy to hear that my friends are still organizing and participating in the walkout tomorrow because 1) nothing is certain about our future and 2) doing it in solidarity for students who will be affected. You don't have to argue that every grad student deserves "equal" merit. You just need to show that "scholarship XYZ has these requirements" and that every single student meets these very minimal requirements. Then, you can easily award a scholarship to every single student. My old school is raising money to put every single grad student on a fellowship (internally funded). So if that plan goes through, it will be similar to a scholarship for everyone. In addition, my old program already treated every student equally. Every student was paid the same no matter how they ranked on the admissions criteria. Students have tried to negotiate and try to get my program to match offers elsewhere and failed. The department has always been very firm that every student is paid the same. The only exception is when you have an external fellowship that pays more than the offered stipend but right now, the only such fellowship is the GRFP and that only pays a tiny bit more than the standard in my department. Regarding requirement to TA/RA, here's what my old program did. There is a school-wide requirement to be enrolled in full time credits in order to maintain full time status and funding eligibility. Everyone is pretty much paid on a fellowship so RA was actually credited "coursework". At least in my program, there was very little enforcement needed to do your RA work. No one tracks your hours and ultimately, the profs here have a lot going on that if you screw up and don't do your work, it's not like they were depending on you to complete it. The only person you hurt by not doing work is yourself, so everyone does the work they need to do. There are checkpoints though---you won't pass quals and you won't "pass" your annual committee meetings if your progress isn't satisfactory. I think that's good enough to "enforce" RA work! For TA work, they just asked us to do it and people signed up for the slots they wanted. We were explicitly told that we were not paid for TAships and that they were part of our education. They are not formally written into program requirements but I think if it ever became a problem that people didn't do TA work, then it probably would be. However in the decades that they have been doing this, it seems to have never come up as a problem. In addition, if you do poorly in one section of quals, you are often asked to TA that course in order to beef up your understanding. In our department there was way more students than there are TA slots. So typically, first years are not asked to TA. TA slots are filled by asking 2nd, 3rd and 4th years first. If there are any 5th years that want to TA and there are still slots left over, they can TA. Most people choose to focus on their dissertation in their 5th year. The typical TA load is 10 hours per week for 10 weeks per year. So it's not very much. However, some courses have field trips that are a week long or weekend long. Most classes have fewer than 10 students and they are mostly all grad classes, but there are a few giant undergrad classes. The field trips and big undergrad classes are more work but there always seems to be enough people that want to do that work so people who want to do a lot of TA work get to do that and people who don't can avoid it. Most TAships can be very minimal work if you just grade, but if you want to do more (as I did), you can ask to teach lectures etc. Ultimately, I have mixed feelings about this system. On one hand, it works amazingly well and fits with the culture of our department very well. Practically, it's reassuring that you don't have to "compete" for a TA spot in order to get your funding. You get the full funding no matter what. In addition, since this is not employment at all, it's not taxable in the eyes of the Canada Revenue Agency, which made my taxes much better. On the other hand, being from Canada where most students are unionized, it seemed very weird to be doing work for free. Also this arrangements makes it very hard to unionize later. And if you happen to be a naive grad student that says yes to everything, you can get screwed over by over-committing and not getting anything out of it. Ideally, your advisor is supposed to protect you though. All this is not to say that every school should work this way. I'm just pointing out that you don't need funding held hostage by TA or RA assignments in order to get the work done. There are other good systems too.

(emphasis added) I want to second this very good advice you have received. I have had a similar experience: a prof that is very tough but I thought I would learn a lot and be challenged by them. Initially, they were one of my advisors (for one of two first year projects). Eventually working directly with this person on a daily/weekly basis was way too stressful for me, our styles just did not mesh. I kept them on my committee though because I appreciated their challenges. But it was then a lot easier when I only had direct interactions with them once per year. I felt in that set-up, I was able to get the benefits I wanted from their expertise/toughness without adding a ton of stress onto my daily life. I have to admit though that having this person on my thesis defense committee made the defense go on a very different direction than expected. I survived though. If I were to do it again, I am honestly not 100% sure if I would have kept them on my committee (not sure if I would have excluded them either, it's hard to say).

This is definitely okay! Usually the "dedication" is something short and either whimsical or serious/formal (i.e. just one or two lines like fuzzy's example) and the "acknowledgments" are longer. Most schools do not place any requirements on the acknowledgements you want, and it's one of the few places where you have almost absolute freedom to write whatever you want. Even the most formal scholar would likely write something personal here, I think. In my acknowledgements, I dedicated one paragraph for my advisors, current and past, one for my friends and two for family. I always find the acknowledgments the most fun part of the thesis to read. And, as you might have seen quoted (but never backed up with stats), the acknowledgement is often the first and only thing that people read. Anecdotally, I know that I have purposefully looked up dissertations only to read their acknowledgments. Personally, I feel that in the sciences, we do too much "depersonalization" of science and I think there is no need to overly distance ourselves from our work. So, I purposely seek out dissertation acknowledgments to get a peek at someone's personal / more human side. If you check your dissertation requirements, you might find even more opportunities to personalize your dissertation, if that's what you want to do. For example, although the thesis template provided by the school didn't have a placeholder for a front matter quotation, I found that in the policies, this is an optional section that's allowed. So I added a quote that has inspired me most of my adult life and really kept me going through grad school (I just have a page with the quote there, with no explanation of it). One of my committee members had a picture of his cat on his dedication page (the thesis was also dedicated to his cat). Finally, while not recommended for everyone, many people I know have snuck little inside jokes or references into the actual text of their dissertation. Sometimes they are subtle but sometimes they are not! I've read one where after a long paragraph on math, the text reads something like, "If you're one of my committee members and you are still reading along, let me know and I'll buy you a drink." (the person later told me that only one of their committee members said they saw that line). I think this is pretty funny and it's great that people feel like doing this. Personally, I enjoy seeing this type of humour but I don't enjoy producing it myself, so I kept the main body strictly scientific. But that's just me. Given your other posts here with your worries about the text, you probably don't want to do something like that yourself, but just letting you know what I've seen out there.

People don't expect you to have "loyalty" to one department, because in many cases, departmental divisions are human-decided arbitrary lines, however, nature/knowledge/etc. does not exist only within nicely drawn boxes that academics have decided. What matters more is how you describe yourself/your fit. If your field of research is such that it naturally fits well into two departments, then this is likely not a problem and people will understand why you have two applications to two departments. But if you are not clear about why these two departments are good fits, then they will have the same questions that @fuzzylogician brought up. In my area of research, a common example is the study of exoplanets. This field often lies between two common departmental divisions: physics/astro vs. earth/geo sciences. At MIT in particular, someone who is interested in studying atmospheres of planets and looking for signs of life might be interested in both EAPS and Physics. But this doesn't mean that all exoplanet study can fall between these two departments, for example, if you want to study the orbital dynamics of planetary orbits, you will find a much better fit in the Physics dept. At many places, not sure about MIT specifically, if you accidentally apply to the wrong dept, you might get your application forwarded/referred to a different dept. Some students at my PhD school (not MIT) had applied to one dept but got accepted into another. This isn't something you should aim for on purpose, since different dept timelines might mean one dept might already finish decisions before they get referrals from another. And, it might reflect poorly on you that you didn't know the dept well enough to apply to the right one (again, not a "loyalty" issue but a "did the applicant do their homework" question).

Unless there was some critical question or thing you need to discuss before submitting an application, if their website says this, I would take it as a sign to not contact them until admission decisions are determined. Note that even if you have some critical question, the prof might not see it that way and might not reply either.

Usually no. Especially for international students, most US and Canadian schools will require every single transcript. Read the application instructions carefully. If it says you must list all educational programs and provide transcripts, then you should do that. If you absolutely cannot get the transcripts, then it will be much easier and more correct for you to write a description of why you cannot get the transcript than to lie and try to hide it. But if you go this route, make sure you talk to each program you are applying to and ask what you should do given that you cannot obtain the old transcript. Maybe they will accept something like a photography of the diploma, for example, or a screenshot of your grades etc. In addition to the moral obligations, here is a practical perspective: for programs that require all transcripts, the "benefits" of lying or telling them you cannot get the transcript will be pretty much the same (i.e. it won't make much of a difference). However, the consequences of getting caught lying will be very bad! You could get expelled from the program if they find out after you start or you might get rejected once they discover your lie. On the other hand, there are no real negatives to writing up a description of why you cannot get the transcript (other than the short amount of time it takes to write a paragraph).

1. If the Dean doesn't want to write you a letter for programs outside of Economics, then don't ask him for a letter to any non-Economics programs. If you happen to also apply to a few Economics programs, then ask him for those letters. 2. Yes, it's your choice on what programs you apply to but the Dean might not feel comfortable writing to support your application to Organisational Behaviour if they only know about your abilities in Economics. I think if you ask the Dean for letters to non-Economics programs, they might eventually agree and just discuss your Economics coursework, but this won't help you much. Letter prompts sometimes ask things to the effect of "how will this student succeed in our program" and for someone outside of the field, it is tough for them to give a good answer. 3. So, given your current exchange with the Dean, I think your instinct to give up on this letter is right. You're not going to get a good letter from them. 4. I don't know for sure what HoD is (Head of Department, I'm guessing??) but they sound like a better letter writer than your Dean. I think you should ask your HoD to emphasize your research in the letter, since they were on your thesis panel. If you have Bs in the classes, then the best thing to do is for your letter writer to not even mention your classes at all. Letters often only discuss the strengths so a good letter writer would just not discuss classes if your coursework wasn't in the top few. 5. I am also guessing that your programs need more than one LOR and this LOR isn't your main letter right? For example, you should have a very good one from your research mentor. If this LOR is your 3rd letter and you have two other research-based letter, then you don't really have to worry so much about a third letter being a little weaker. Few people have three super strong letters. 6. Finally, I think there may be some cultural differences with the education system at your undergrad school and US schools. a ) For instance, it's very uncommon for US schools to have the students participate in writing the letter. LORs are expected to be confidential and written by the prof only. I'm not going to go and tell your faculty members what to do, but keep this in mind. In combination with phrases like "how can I mask my grade", it sounds very much like you are trying to do something unethical and "trick" the admissions committee. I don't think you are and I'm happy to give you the benefit of the doubt and say this was just a poor choice of words. But be careful. b ) Also, like I said above, the LOR in the United States isn't a neutral and objective evaluation of the candidate. In some other countries, especially European ones, the letter is often impersonal and restrained. But in North America, the letter is expected to be an enthusiastic endorsement. Sometimes, letters coming from European or other schools sound a lot less positive compared to the US letters. Most admissions committees know to expect these cultural differences and try to adjust for them. But it's hard to calibrate. So, I think it would be a good idea to talk about this with your letter writer if they are not from North America. For a good guide, read this and other guides: https://theprofessorisin.com/2016/09/07/how-to-write-a-recommendation-letter/

Congratulations @Eigen!!!!

I have heard from many professors (in my field though, so there may be differences) that they are often supportive of students who want to leave academia and pursue non-academic careers. However, they never even mention it or bring it up until the student does it first. Their reason is that they are afraid of discouraging the students from academia if they are the ones to bring up the topic. They say that in the past, when they have brought it up first, the student interprets this as a message that the student isn't "good enough" for academia. I think this is not a great excuse/reason but it is what it is. I discussed non-academic options with my advisor but not my committee. My advisor offered to set me up with connections from their grad school colleagues who have left academia. So I was glad to find a lot of support from my advisor. I ended up only applying to academic jobs and found one but my next job cycle will likely include both academic and non-academic jobs (I will be much more picky on where I live so it's not sensible to limit myself to academic jobs). However, I brought up the topic first, not my advisor. Perhaps many profs wait for their students to open up that box. It felt like my department in general was very very supportive of non-academic career paths, which I was a little surprised about, given the intense focus on research of my school. It seems like at least 20% (maybe even 30%) of our students leave academia (sometimes after graduating but some choose to leave the program for a better job). Our dept head always said that they thought the goal of a PhD program is to train skilled researchers, not necessarily groom us for academia. One postdoc in the department actually had a tenure-tracked job all lined up out east but then they decided they didn't want to do academia anymore and left the field for a very good job. That said, there is a dark side. Years ago, during my grad school visits, I asked one professor about their past students. I asked about the ones that are in academia and also the non-academic careers of their students. I got a surprising answer that showed me this prof was very bitter that one of their students left the field (felt like all of the prof's mentoring and training was "wasted"). That interaction made me keep all of my non-academic career thoughts very silent for the first couple of years of grad school, since I never know how profs feel about non-academic options. I started asking around more after I established myself in my dept and saw other signs (see above) that the faculty are "friendly" to these thoughts. They told me that my bad experience was probably the exception rather than the norm. But you never know. I think it's really important to first identify someone on your committee that you think will be supportive and talk to them first. You can talk to other students perhaps to find out if they might be an ally or not. I was always happy to talk about the profs I knew about to new students in the dept since I know it's scary to ask first (but it seems like the profs expect us to ask first). Also, I think it will go better if you have a solid idea of what you are looking for outside of academia / why you want to leave / what support you need from your committee to graduate and develop the skills you need for non-academic jobs. I don't think you necessarily have to tell your whole committee unless you think the committee as a whole can help you. For example, many students in my field that have plans to leave often talk to their committees about it during their 3rd year review and then make plans to do things like take extra computational courses or even internships to set themselves up for a non-academic job. Your committee might wonder why you are doing these things if you don't tell them your non-academic career plans. In a 4th year committee meeting, if they know your plans, it might help you set the "scope" you want for your dissertation. For example, perhaps they would be more willing to accept your proposal to do analysis X and Y as your dissertation instead of suggesting also doing bonus analysis Z because they think it will help you. In any case, when you talk to people about it, whether it is an individual meeting or your committee, be sure to think about why you are telling them and what you want to do. I think it might reflect poorly if you come off as sounding like you just want to leave academia because either 1) you can't find a job or 2) you think anything is better than staying.

Every program does things differently so there is no single "normal" application process. What you describe is definitely one of the possible processes that happen. I am not quite sure what you mean by asking if it's normal, though. If you are asking if you should be concerned or if the professor is doing something abnormal, then my answer is "no". If you are asking if this process happens with every applicant, the answer is also probably "no", for the same reason above: there are multiple ways that professors and departments handle applications. You mention something about not paying the application fees yet---that doesn't matter. The faculty have no idea whether you have paid your fee or not. That's a completely different system. If you ask what does this mean, I would say that it sounds like this prof saw your email/CV and was interested in working with you, so they started some communication. It seems like these informal interviews went well so they are interested in having you come to work with them. So that's a good sign. But unless they have said otherwise, you cannot assume that their support of your application has any real weight in the admission decision. In addition, until you have a written offer, you can't assume that you will get one. That is, you should continue pursuing all the other schools, do interviews etc. until you have an offer and made a decision.

I think it's harder to get completely "scooped" on a PhD dissertation in this manner than it sounds. PhD dissertation topics are often very very specific and although I don't know what your thinking about, I would generally think that things that are talked about in the media are going to not be specific enough to be a dissertation. Or, to put it another way, you almost always approach the problem in a different way in order to have a unique dissertation. Note also that PhD dissertations take awhile to complete, so what's hot in the media right now may not be on people's minds by the time you're done. And during that time period, there's lots of time to refine the topic. It is fairly common for PhD students to get some results partially scooped during their PhD though. It happened to me and many other people I know. It's inevitable when you are trying to work at the frontiers of human knowledge! There's going to be some things that the are "obvious" or the easiest things to do ("low hanging fruit" is often the expression). Going after these things is risky but could have good rewards. Often, PhD students don't always go for it because other, more experienced researchers can do it first. At the same time, sometimes you can still spin it to be a significant result even if it's not first and still make it into your dissertation. In any case, if you have an interesting idea it's definitely a good thing to discuss with your future PhD advisor. They will know if there's a way to spin it so that you don't get scooped. And even if it turns out not to be a feasible PhD topic, it might lead to another topic that's perfect! If I were to give advice to a new PhD student, I would say that your PhD topic should have some element to it that makes it only possible for you to complete. In my field, this is often because you are doing a specific type of analysis on a specific planet. Other people might do very similar things with different planet data, but your PhD thesis is on this other specific one. This lowers the chance that someone will do exactly what you are doing. However, if you are picking a very popular planet, then that might be an issue. In my field, your PhD advisor would know who else is doing what (all telescope proposals are generally publicly known). And if your data requires very very specific telescope resources that are very valuable (e.g. space telescopes), the committees that determine who gets time will rarely award telescope time to another group if the telescope already took similar data. Usually, if you win a telescope data competition, then you alone have access to the data for some short period and then it becomes publicly available. However, people are expected to not just jump into the archives and use other people's data without at least talking to the original proposers first. And it's a extra crappy move to do this to a PhD student. The above is an example from my field, but I figure that most fields have some sort of system to ensure everyone can do interesting work without too much fear/paranoia (which often leads to people publishing low quality science quickly in the hopes of being first even though it might be wrong and hurt everyone in the subfield). In any case, discussions with your PhD advisor will help, it's their job to guide you through these challenges.

To avoid a large number of duplicate threads, I removed the other ones. Since you list fields that go beyond engineering, I thought this one in "Physical Sciences" is the better fit. To answer your question: I am interested in exoplanets---planets found around other stars. Since the first exoplanets discovered around 25 years ago, we now know of 3500+ exoplanets! Most of these planetary systems look very different from how our solar system (where we have small planets close in and gas giants further out). I use telescopes from around the world to study some of these systems in more detail in order to find hints about how these planets might have formed. Understanding the formation processes and history of planets all over the Galaxy will allow us to put our own system in context with our neighbours.

Probably yes. In my first year of my MSc, I was applying for OGS for 2nd year of MSc studies at the same school. I still needed to submit a transcript despite being enrolled. Similarly, when I applied to MSc studies at my BSc school while still enrolled, I had to submit my BSc transcript too. This was all in Canada. Even in the USA, when I was applying for internal awards at my PhD school, I still needed to submit transcripts. Unless you have instructions that say otherwise (or contact them to ask), it's generally true that you must submit transcripts for different things since there isn't much communication between departments/evaluation committees etc.

For me, it was working at a car parts warehouse (car dealers order parts to fix customer cars, we put the orders into boxes and ship them) and working at a youth summer camp. There was also some private tutoring and working for the on-campus tutoring service (run by the student government, tutors paid by student government, free for students). I included it in my regular CV for grad school apps but no longer have it on my CV post-PhD. I think you make a good point and I was going to come back to expand to say something like, if someone has a gap between undergrad and grad school and they worked in a non-academic setting but something that made use of their degree, then I would probably include it. But if it was something like my experience above then I wouldn't include it.

I did not include non-academic work experience in my CCV. However, the first time I did a CCV was for post-doctoral applications (my previous grad school tri-council applications were before the time of CCVs). I don't think non-academic employment is particularly relevant for tri-council funding at the grad level or beyond. My understanding is that the CCV is like other academic CVs we might create and it's not meant to be a complete accounting of every month/year of our life, only the academic ones. But I guess it really does depend on where the gaps are and what the rest of your history looks like. If I remember correctly, there are separate categories/headers for academic and non-academic employment, so even if you put in the non-academic stuff, the academic history will still have gaps. I think it's fine though.