TakeruK

Yes, Mendeley does everything you describe Many paper databases in my field has a "add to mendeley" button but Mendeley also has a Bookmarklet, basically I click a button on my browser and it adds the article I'm looking at into my Mendeley Library, so it works even when the website I'm using doesn't have a Mendeley button. However, my own favourite way of adding papers is to download the PDF into a special folder I've set up. Mendeley knows when a new PDF is added to this folder and automatically adds it to my Library. Usually, the bibliographic information is correct (90% of the time). In the cases where it isn't correct (or not complete), 99% of the time, Mendeley got the DOI right. I then just press a button next to the DOI in Mendeley and it searches the web for this DOI and automatically corrects all the metadata. The caveat is that I know a Word plugin exists but I have not used it myself. I use Mendeley to generate .bib files (for BibTeX) and then I generate bibliographies using BibTeX. This is because my field generally uses LaTeX instead of Word for our articles etc. Ultimately, the effect is the same---I never type out bibliographical entries by hand and I can generate bibliographies in whatever style I need.

Additional time will also diminish the impact of your uGPA. When you are fresh out of undergrad, your GPA is one of the few ways schools can measure your aptitude for grad school etc. However, now that you are beyond that stage, you have lots of different ways to show them that you are going to be successful in a PhD program. Especially since you are doing research in a chemistry lab right now! Here's my advice, if I were in your shoes. It sounds like a research career is really important to you and your career goals doesn't necessarily require going to a top tier school. But the higher you can get, the better! So, if your current research job in the chem lab is somewhat stable (i.e. it's not just for this month or something), my advice is to just apply to UChicago and UCIC this year. If you get in, great. If not, keep working in the lab, build up your research experience and try again in the future. At the same time, maybe apply to a few Masters programs that can provide funding. Again, if you get ones that pay enough, and if it will provide more experience than your current lab position, then take it.

If you are applying to graduate programs, then no, it is not a good idea to ask another graduate student to write a letter of recommendation for you. Reference letters for graduate school applications should come from people with experience supervising graduate students (e.g. professors)

First, it's not weird at all for a prof to write a letter of recommendation to the school he/she already works at. This happens all the time in Canada, because our MSc and PhD programs are separate (MSc is 2 years, PhD is the following 3-4 years). If you stay at the same school for the PhD, then you have to re-apply to it, including getting transcripts and LORs etc. So, this happens all the time! Remember, it's not just your prof that will read your application, the others in the department will too and you will be competing with other external and internal applicants for the PhD spots. Having a letter from the prof would be very good. Second, what do you mean by "joint letters"? It's only a joint letter if both authors sign it. In my field, while a PhD student and a Prof might write a letter together for an undergrad/Masters student that worked primarily with the PhD student, the letter is only signed by the Prof, not both. So, it is no different than a letter that the Prof wrote by themselves. So, my opinion is to ask for a letter from both profs, or just get the letter from your own advisor. You can also talk to the two of them about this.

There's no absolute rule on whether you have to name a professor or not. There will be people who get in without naming any and there will be some cases where the fit wasn't clear and if only they had named someone it could have made a difference! I think context is also important. Some departments want to accept students without necessarily fitting them with a professor. My department is really small (~8 faculty) and it's pretty clear where you would fit just based on interest (like in @unræd's case). The department also provides full fellowships for the 1st year for every student, so it's not like you need a professor to pay you in the first year either. It's less important to mention professors in this case because you can join the department and spend the first year trying different projects to see what you like (in fact you have to do 2 different projects, kind of like rotations). However, mentioning a professor can still help because 1) it makes it clear that you've done your homework on what they study and 2) since our department is so small, the entire faculty reads every single application, so if you wanted to work on X, the Prof that works on X might read your SOP and think "well, why didn't they mention me?"

Yes, this should be fine. Just because they become an administrator doesn't mean they lose their "past life"

Assuming that you can afford $70, I think the money is a good investment for more opportunities. The time spent altering your SOP could be more costly. Does it mean you have less time to optimize your other applications? If you do have the time to do this SOP change and give everything else full effort, I'd say go for it. If it will remove time from other applications, then you have to decide at some point whether the risk is worth the reward. I would lean more towards applying though because I think it's more likely that one underestimates themselves than overestimates. However, I don't know your actual scores and GPA. Maybe you can get better advice from someone who knows you personally (e.g. your letter writers).

I'm from Canada where we must do a Masters before a PhD (2 year MSc, 3-4 year PhD). But even if it was not required as part of the degree path, I like doing a Masters first because I don't want to commit to 5 years in research without a way to get out in 1 or 2 years in case I didn't like it. Also, if I was in a place where I had to choose between low rank PhD or Masters->Apply for higher rank PhD, I would choose the Masters first. If I couldn't afford the Masters then I would try to find work or do something non-academic and re-evaluate when I was in a position to apply for grad school again. This depends on your career goals though. But given the toughness of the academic job market, I would rather pick a non-academic career path than enter a PhD program that isn't in the top tier. (Not that graduating from a top tier guarantees anything, but my personal view is that prospects for job satisfaction are too low without a top tier PhD).

I think this does depend a lot on your field and your school as you say. I think it's a good idea to contact or to try to contact a professor before mentioning that you want to work with them. But I don't think it's an absolute rule that you should not mention a professor unless you have contacted them. There's also (at least) two ways to mention professors in a SOP, like I wrote above. If you say that you are interested in Prof X's work, that's not the same as saying you want Prof. X as your advisor, and I think if you are just pointing out connections between your interests and someone's work, you don't need to reach out to them beforehand. That said, if you don't, you take a small risk that the person you mention isn't present any more or isn't working on that anymore. It's a small risk though, and it's probably not going to be an auto-reject if you are wrong about this.

This wording you suggest is really awkward. As someone said, I wouldn't phrase it that way. Here's a sample of something one could write in a SOP. Let's assume that in earlier paragraphs, you already established your interest in the study of apple pie making: I am excited for the opportunity to study Apple Pieology at University of Pielandia. I would be interested in working with Prof. Cool to study Crust Layering. I also anticipate collaborations with Prof. Great on the sugar-to-apple ratio. The research facilities at the University of Pielandia, particularly the Pie Recipe Library and the Automatic Filling Injector, would also be helpful. --- Basically, I think you should mention professors in a way to achieve two goals: 1) you want to show that you have done some homework on the department and know who studies what and 2) you want to give the committee an easy way to "classify" you and basically suggest an answer to the question they are all thinking "Where would this applicant fit into our department?". In the above example, I show a way to distinguish between who you want your advisor to be and who you will just collaborate with. But, you don't have to always distinguish this, you could just say that you are interested in Prof. Cool's Crust Layering work and Prof. Great's sugar-to-apple ratio work, without specifying that you want to work with one or the other. Maybe your field is different, but I wouldn't think there would exist a professor so renowned and prestigious that it would be a faux pas to even email them. They are still human, and remember, their fame is only within their field. To people in the field, they might be the most famous person, but they don't normally think that of themselves. e.g. when they go to the bank, their teller is going to treat them like any other person. They are still humans! However, if they are super famous, then it might be hard to get a reply from them because they probably get a lot of emails. No harm in trying though. Try to send relevant application materials.

Yes, generally, the application will only be reviewed once all the components are submitted so if you want your application considered early, your LORs should be in early too. Although it's Nov 2 today, so the difference between Nov 2 and Dec 1 isn't that much!

I agree with everything fuzzylogician said and recommended. Just wanted to also emphasize that your graduate transcripts will not be very important in the long run. I am applying to postdoc positions right now (just submitted three today!) and out of the ~14 positions I plan to apply to (for this fall), only one of them even want to see transcripts. So, while one failing grade might mean academic probation or some extra measures within your department in the short term, in a year or two it will be pretty much meaningless. And everyone will leave with the same degree, no matter their GPA! The only thing that will differentiate you (and the only thing that really matters) is your research record.

I'll start with a standard disclaimer that different fields may have different norms. My advice is to not mention this at all, unless this previous experience has direct effect on what you did for the previous year**. Otherwise, they know that they didn't accept you last time so there's no need to remind them (and give them more reason to not accept you again). Instead, just focus on what you actually did. Write the application as if you are applying for the very first time, don't mention your previous application and don't be afraid to repeat some things from last time. You don't know that every person reading the application this year is the same as the people from last year. And even if there is overlap, you can't assume they remember anything about you. As Triangular said, academia is full of denials, so you want to show that you are able to have unsuccessful experiences and move on. You do this by showing, not telling. Writing a strong application with new stuff from your last year is how you show that you have moved on and will persevere. Spending time and space discussing the past attempt is just telling. Also, since many other people will have denials and try again, telling a story of how you didn't get in the first time but will try again this year isn't an original story and would be kind of cliché. Just show that you are moving past this by focussing on your strengths. The personal statement is meant to be an essay on why you are a good fit for this school, on why you want to attend this graduate program, and why this department will help you meet your career goals. So, writing about how you didn't get into this program last year does not further these goals. ** Note: An example of this would be if you applied last year and did not make it into their graduate program, however, a professor at the school recommended you do X first and reapply. X might be something like attending a 1 year Masters program, joining a specific research project, or maybe working part-time or volunteering in their lab, or maybe they help connect you with something to work on etc. In cases like this, I think it is a good idea to discuss your past application cycle!

Most professors will not tell you outright to call them by their first name. So, I wouldn't use that criteria to use their first name, because you will end up awkwardly using their formal titles much longer than both of you would want. If they sign with their title and last name, then definitely keep using that. If they sign with their first name, it's a good sign but not a sure thing (many email software automatically append names at the end, so they might not have even known they signed it with their first name). My advice is to use your knowledge of the field and the tone of the conversation. I always start with Prof. X or Dr. X if I am emailing a professor that I have not spoken to before for the very first time. Then, based on the email exchange, judge the formality of your conversation based on how conversations in your field goes. If you think there is enough familiarity, then go for the first name address. If you are wrong, the worst that could happen is that they gently correct you and you move on. If you aren't sure still, then use their title again for the 2nd or 3rd email. By that time, you should have a clear picture of how to address them. I would use the "preponderance of evidence" criteria for choosing first names. That is, you don't have to be sure beyond all doubt, just that you're more likely to be right than wrong. And don't stress out if you get it wrong. You will learn from making mistakes, and it will help you calibrate what kind of conversations are going to lead to first name use and which aren't. Like you said, every grad student in your field uses first names, so that's a good sign. In my field, we often use first names even in undergrad. It's easier to list things/situations where you should not use first names: 1. If it's your very first interaction with the professor. 2. If they address you by your title in your reply. 3. If this is a formal email, e.g. you are submitting an application, you are referring to a professor in your SOP or other application materials, you are submitting a paper or request for collaboration etc. 4. If the professor is at a University with different academic cultures (e.g. if you're at a US school and emailing a European school), then you may want to play it a bit safer and stick to formality longer. 5. If you are emailing someone in a different field than yours, you may not know their academic culture as well, so you may also want to play it safe. If you absolutely want to play it safe, you can call everyone by their title and last name forever (or until they ask you to use their first names). My own approach/advice is to take a little bit more risk. I think overly formal communication makes it harder for you to form good professional relationships with these faculty members, especially in North America, so I personally think you have a lot more to gain by taking a risk with first names than you potentially have to lose (even if they didn't want to be called by their first name, it's not such a huge faux pas that you can never recover from).

Get advice from people in your field, but this is definitely something you should not add to your CV if you were in my field. For me, I would say the minimum status to list on a CV for an application would be only after you have submitted the paper for peer-review. Preferably, I'd wait until the paper is at least accepted. I think it would be very obviously CV padding to list this as a publication. I understand that you want to make sure the efforts of the past year are still recognized though. The CV's publications section is just not the right place to do this. Discuss it in your SOP, that's a good idea. Also, be sure to get a LOR from this former professor and ask him/her/them to write about your efforts in their letter (they should already know to do this though). Having this effort discussed in the LOR is the best way for the committee to learn about your work in the last year.

I don't think there is any reason to mention it. Even if you were applying to the same schools, there's no need to mention it in your SOP. It's not the right place for it. Sometimes schools will ask in other parts of the application about previous attempts, and I'd be honest there. That's the better place to show that you won't be deterred by failures. Focus your narrative on your successes and what you actually did, not what you tried to do but couldn't. When you write about what you did after undergrad, just dive right into whatever you ended up doing. That is, I would not write something like: "I tried to get into grad school and was not successful, so I did X, Y, Z instead" But instead, just write something like: "After finishing my BA/BS/etc. in XYZ, I spent some time doing ABC" then followed by what you wrote here about wanting to go back into academia.

Very good advice. I would suggest everyone review this standing policy that we have on these forums: An additional option: If you find that you already chosen a username** that reveals too much information about you, there is a way to change the way your name is displayed in the forums. You can click on your name in top right corner and choose "Account Settings" from the drop down menu. Then, click "Display Name" on the left menu bar. You should see an option to change your name. This will retroactively change your display name in all of your old posts too. However, in past versions of the message board, it is possible for any user to view your previously used display names by going to your profile. I do not currently recall any active users that have changed their names so I cannot check if this functionality still exists. Also, my personal rule is that once something is on the internet, it's there permanently. Anything that archives webpages can still connect your old name with your old posts. And if someone quoted your old posts, your old name will still appear. (This name change can also be used in more positive ways of course, for example, a user who is called "AstronomyGradApplicant" this year may wish to rename themselves to "AstronomyGradStudent" next year!) **Note: This is currently called a "Display Name" in the current version of the forum software.

Definitely good things to think about. I've attended several recruiting events by consulting firms and financial firms on campus now. And to be honest, I personally find many of these positions to also be situations where the stress is not worth the reward. I think my school has a reputation for students who work a lot of hours and want to work a lot of hours, so perhaps this was their target audience. For example, I was really interested in a consulting firm called Exponent. I went to their recruiting event and the description of the work was really cool. Basically doing physics/engineering problems to solve puzzles/answer questions about how products fail. But weirdly, the recruiters (including alumni from my school) were spinning things like "Travel almost every week" and "work 60 hours per week on really cool projects" as positive things. I love the opportunity to travel in academia but I would find being away from my home an average of 2-4 days per week even more stressful than the workload I have now! Sure, the starting pay is great, at about $100k/year, it's 50% more than the best postdoctoral fellowships, but if I'm going to leave academia, I'm looking for ways to reduce stress, not increase it. I feel like the only difference between a job like that and a prize fellowship postdoc is the $35k/year in exchange for being away from home almost 40% of the time. Not worth it for me, but I know there are others that would love this. I'm applying to postdocs this year but I'm open to non-academic positions in the future. I don't think every firm is going to be like Exponent---I'll be looking for something that is more like a 9-5 and travel every 2 month at most. I know there are others on this forum that have gone to non-academic careers so maybe they will pop in. To be honest, I have not yet seriously looked into non-academic careers because I think I have a good shot at academic positions I'm interested in. But we'll see how my job search goes in a few months

This is certainly a problem in many fields of academia. Generally, people might prefer to socialize with others who share common experiences with them. I think this is an understandable human instinct, but it leads to inequity. I think @knp gave good practical advice. My school has a Women Mentoring Women group that sets up mentor/mentree relationships between women on campus and something like this (if it exists) could help. It doesn't address the issue that you are not getting the networking/mentoring benefits from the faculty in your own department, but it does help establish more resources. My friends who are part of this group (both as mentors and mentees---most grad students are mentors to an undergrad and have a postdoc or faculty mentor) have really positive experiences from it. Everyone is a mixture of a lot of different identities, and while some parts of my identity makes me an outsider to my field, I certainly benefit from having more identities that help me fit in. So I can't think of any additional advice and just wanted to affirm that this is a real thing and it's not just you and it's not just your field!

This could be field dependent, but my answer would be no. I personally would not go as far as to directly quote from any sources because that may be too much detail for a SOP. My advice (for someone in my field) would be that if you need to mention a new technique in a recent paper (e.g. saying something like "I want to fit planet light curves using the Smith et al. (2014) models which account for X, Y, and Z") then I still advise against providing a full bibliographical entry. Instead, I would advise the student to phrase it like this example so that a reader unfamiliar with Smith et al. (2014) can understand why you would use it from context. The reasoning is that either the reader will immediately understand what model you mean, or they won't and they will not take the time to look it up. But I would use statements like this sparingly in a SOP.

I interpreted two potential questions in your post: 1. If you are asking whether you have a chance with the other POI in a future application even though you declined the other school's offer once before, then the answer is yes. I don't think future applications will be affected at all. Everyone understands that you need to make the choices that are best for you. Assuming you were professional, they are not going to hold a grudge against you for picking another school for your MS. 2. If you are asking whether or not you can transfer to the other school now (or next year) and continue in their PhD program, then the answer is probably not. Some schools will keep their admission offer valid for a year or so, but it sounds like the best path forward for you is to complete your 2 year MS and then start a PhD program afterwards. (I think you are asking about #1 but just wanted to make sure)

I agree with this, especially with the fee being a barrier against "just for the hell of it" applications. My concern would be that I wouldn't want someone qualified to be denied a chance to even apply because of the fee. I think many schools can do a much better job of advertising fee waivers (but it's tricky because if you advertise it too widely then it backfires). In the ideal world, I would have the application fee go towards paying for whatever third-party company charges to maintain the application system and then have the remaining amount fund fee waivers for other applicants.

Oh, and as for what kind of offer, in many cases, you do a summer internship first before you get a permanent job. One student I know defended early because they wanted to pursue this career path and spent the summer after their defense on the internship. Others might do something like take a leave of absence from school for a summer to do an internship. Some people do get full/permanent jobs directly after graduation too though, so you don't always have to intern first. Most people will finish their PhD first though, especially since having a PhD is what makes the company interested in you in the first place. You have to keep in mind that the "real world" job cycle moves a lot faster than academia---once you finalize a contract, they often want you to start in a couple of weeks! My friends who went this route often pull together a very last minute thesis and defense so that time period is quite stressful. However, the contract negotiation stage can take several months for you to work out things like salary, benefits, etc. (depending on what kind of position it is) so that's about the same time to really push yourself to get to a stage where you can defend on a few weeks notice.

I don't know enough to give a number like "X percent of students get such an offer". But, it's certainly not rare. Financial companies definitely like to recruit from Physics PhDs. However, from my limited anecdotal information, usually the student has to do something first to initiate, like go to a career fair, attend a recruiting event on campus, respond to a call for interest etc. I'm not in a Physics department right now, but both in my past Physics departments and in my current earth science department, we will sometimes see an email come from our department admins sending out a ad/recruitment call for companies that want to recruit science PhDs. I know many PhDs in my department that go this route, and it helps a lot to let people know that you are interested.

As you said, a friendly response doesn't necessarily mean anything when it comes to the actual decision making time. If you want to put more effort in a few applications, choose the ones where the program excites you the most, rather based on their friendliness. It's not all meaningless though. I would take the friendly replies at face value---these are always nice emails to get when you are stressed/frustrated/tired from applications.