TakeruK

I agree that intellectual discourse should not be whomever speaks the loudest. But, I have the opinion that freedom of speech and expression trumps intellectual discourse. That is, I believe freedom of speech is a right, while the ability to have intellectual discourse is a privilege and a "higher order need" that should not happen at the expense of other needs (like freedom of speech). I admit I am not 100% sure what you mean by "protest in such a way that the speaker isn't even allowed to speak", because this can have a lot of different meanings. So, I'll use a few concrete examples. Overall, I think that as long as the protests are legal (within reason) and non-violent then the protests should happen. Some examples of what I think are acceptable ways of preventing a speaker from speaking: - Lobbying your school officials to cancel the event - Staging a legal protest in such a way that your protest is loud, distracting or disruptive enough to prevent the speaker from being heard or to reduce the effectiveness of their speech. I think this is fine because 1) the speaker isn't the only person with the right to speak in a particular space and 2) if you have enough people that are unhappy, maybe there's a good reason for it. (Technically this doesn't prevent the speaker from actually speaking, it only interferes with the message) - Lining up outside of the speaking venue and handing out flyers or other information you want people to know about the speaker, with the goal of persuading people to leave the venue. - Talking with the providers of equipment necessary for the event to happen and convincing them to cancel their agreements (e.g. if the AV equipment is outsourced, convince that company to not rent to the speaker's event, convince the caterers to cancel their contract, convince the school to refuse to rent the space to the outside group etc.) Things that should not happen in order to prevent someone from speaking: - Making threats or take violent actions at the speaker - Making threats or take violent actions at people who may want to attend the event - Illegally blockading roads, sidewalks or other passageways to the event - Vandalism or other crimes I agree with you that this is a tricky matter and sometimes I have mixed feelings too. Generally though, I think when a student group writes up a list of demands in an open letter type format, these demands are not really exactly what the group wants. It is basically bargaining---the group doesn't expect the University to just simply say "okay, your demands are reasonable, let's implement them right away". So, the open/pubic list of demands are generally always beyond what they would be happy with so that eventually, through compromise, there is a middle ground solution. The list of demands should, in my opinion, be considered as "long term goals" and/or a position statement rather than actual feasible actions that can be implemented right away. They are a starting point for further negotiations. Sometimes though, these list of demands are more "over the top" but that's a subjective matter and I do think that it's not always clear whether the best strategy is to start with big huge demands or just big demands and work to a solution. In addition, sometimes a list of demands is actually not meant to effect any real change, sometimes the main goal is to simply send a message with the list of demands.

I agree mostly with the opinion from telkanuru's post. Maybe I am wrong in some way, but every person I've talked to who is against "safe spaces" seems to make it sound like if there is one single "safe space" on campus, then the entire idea that college is a place to challenge students is completely destroyed! I think this is ridiculous. Looking at the Yale example specifically, I fully support the idea that student houses should be "safe spaces", not "educational spaces". The Master of the House was completely in the wrong, in my opinion, to have written those statements. The role of the Master is not to provide education or to challenge students. Their role is to ensure that their house runs smoothly and most important, to act as a safety net so that students are able to come to them when they are in trouble. I also don't understand why students should not be allowed to protest speakers with unappealing views on campus. This is pretty common at my undergraduate school (outside of the US). If a speaker is being brought onto campus and there is a group of students that don't want the speaker there, the group of students should have a way to display their displeasure. And, if there is another group of students that want the speaker, there can be a counter-protest. The University doesn't have to agree to the students' request, but the University of Chicago's over-the-top letter that categorically says they will always refuse to listen to these protests is foolish. I think the U Chicago letter is actually more stifling of academic thought that anything else! I also think that private US schools seem to be extremely paternalistic towards their students. In this letter, U Chicago is basically saying "We know what's best for you and your education, so don't get any ideas about protesting or demanding safe spaces.". At my current school, undergrads are pretty much forced to live on campus in special in a Harry Potter esque system (there's a way out but it's not evident). Ultimately, I do think higher education should be more "consumer based". I don't mean this in the bad way that people seem to use this word, i.e. students demanding their money back if they aren't happy with classes etc. However, from my experience with "elite" private US schools, I think the balance is currently too far in the area of "Hey, we're an elite and old institution so obviously we know what's best. This is the way we want to do things, so if you don't like it, then go somewhere else". And I don't think this is a healthy mindset for higher education institutions. It leads to the reluctance to change and an illogical stubborn desire to hold onto outdated ideals and traditions.

The sucky part about academics trying to strike is that we will rarely have public support. I think most of the public do not understand what it means for students to choose to strike, and instead, people are mostly view it as an annoyance (i.e. we don't care about teaching, we don't care about undergrads, undergrads are suffering because they pay tuition but they don't get the services etc.). I agree with you that the school fought very well and competently. I also agree with you that many students don't know how to play the game / don't have experience. When I was part of the union at my MSc school (prior to what happened in Toronto), one of the complaints about the union from my colleagues was that why are we paying union dues to the national union, why do we have pay for a negotiator, etc. etc. The reason is that we are teaching assistants, not labour experts so we need to outsource this work, not try to do it ourselves. I think Toronto example can be used now as an argument about why we should not try to keep it "in house" so to speak. I'm not 100% sure that there's "nothing to show". I think the deal they got in the end wasn't very good, but maybe it will open the way to future changes. Or maybe the University knows that it can force the students to end the strike without a very good deal at all. Finally, when I said it worked better, I was comparing how the unions I was used to work vs. the horror stories I heard about at other US schools (e.g. union leadership ignoring actual membership desires etc.) I think it works a lot better when there is more than one union on campus. One of the big concerns about students unionizing is that faculty will think we're being petty or just whiny when we raise an issue. Or that we're trying to "band against them". However, if the faculty are also unionized themselves, then they will generally have better understanding of the process. I don't think 100% of our income will necessarily become FICA and SS taxable. In my mind, the shift would be a split in how we are paid to mirror our roles. In Canada, money earned from fellowships or other student statuses are considered student income (not taxable in Canada, no payroll taxes in United States). Money earned from research assistantships and teaching assistantships were fully taxed. I do think tax and union status can be different. For example, at my MSc school, only the TAs were unionized (no RA union) but we still paid taxes as employees on both RA and TA income. So, if simply being treated as employees means we pay FICA or SS taxes, then this should happen whether or not unionization actually happens. But my reading of the ruling is that graduate students are a type of worker that qualifies for union status, not necessarily that we have to be employees (but maybe I read it wrong?) But I think this is also a difference in fields (see below). At my MSc school, most of my income came from departmental fellowship rather than employment work (as it is for many STEM students). So, the amount taxable income we had was very low, generally below any exemptions so we paid no taxes at all. In other fields, all of the income was from employment work so those students had to pay more taxes. Yes, the union at my MSc school was driven by those outside of STEM fields because their conditions was a lot worse. The executive board was all from the Humanities and 1/3 of them were from the English department (where things were the worst apparently). There was a lot of distrust of the executive from the STEM students, thinking that unionization can only hurt the STEM fields. And it's true that the first contract didn't really give anything significant to STEM fields, but it did raise all the other departments to the same level (except for the fact that STEM students are less dependent on TA income, but that's a different scope). However, I think the effect was still net positive in the long term for STEM students. It means more paperwork and bureaucracy right now, but things like sick leave and a proper protocol for awarding TAships were now in writing instead of being granted at the pleasure of the department. When things are going well and you don't need these things, it's hard to place value in these aspects. I think of unionization for STEM students as an "insurance policy" of sorts.

There was mention of this in another thread and a suggestion to make one but no one got around to it! I am also happy (and nervous). I feel like the idea of unionization is great and for the most part it gets executed well. But when I hear about unionized students at other US schools, I feel there is so many ways that unionization can screw up. In Canada, I feel like unionized students works really well and most schools have unionized students, postdocs, faculty, staff, administrators (all separately). There is typically 5+ unions on campus and the University knows how to work with unions. I feel that because unionization laws are different in the US, and because unionized academics are "newer" in the US, there is a chance that everything will blow up because it's not done correctly, and then this will be an example of why "unions fail" and then unionization will lose favour and no one will want it. That's what I'm nervous about! Also, usually the first few years of a new union (I was on the leadership for one such union) is very rocky because the first collective agreement is often more about establishing the current good stuff in writing permanently instead of making huge gains. But the contract often means a lot more paperwork and confusion. So, the first few years is usually very frustrating for the students because there's all these new hurdles and challenges but rarely any huge positive impact, unless you were severely mistreated. Since grad student timescales are short, unfortunately, this means that almost all current students will only see the growing pains of unionization, but not reap much of the benefits.

The short answer is that it shouldn't really matter. The longer answer is that I'd personally use "Professor" instead of "Dr" as a title unless "Prof" is not the correct title. And for the longest answer... In my experience, I have never encountered a place in North America that uses a different title of address for tenured vs. untenured professors or for different professor ranks. If the person is a faculty member, use of "Professor" is okay. "Dr" is for postdocs and researchers who have a doctorate but are not a professor. Note that it's possible to be a "Professor" without having a PhD. To me, "Professor" is more like a job title and it would be correct in some places to refer to someone teaching at a college by the title of "Professor" even if they do not have a doctorate (e.g. some colleges/junior colleges hire people with Masters degree to teach, or you might have a guest that is outside of academia teaching a course that they have expertise in). But these cases are likely not going to apply to the specific case you mention here.

I think this is a question that students in your own program can help you with a lot better. They will know the expectations that your faculty has for your research progress and the standards for the qualifying exam. I agree with fuzzy that you cannot completely stop coursework or research. Our jobs is not designed that way, we don't get to choose one or the other as we please. However, you mention "priority" in the first post and I think this is how you want to approach the problem. It does make sense, to me, especially for a "new" grad student (i.e. before passing qualifying exam) that you prioritize either research or coursework at certain points in your degree. But the best way to do this depends on the expectations of your program. I can give you an example. In my program, after the first year (i.e. 12 months), students must have completed two small research projects and all of the required classes (6 classes spread over 3 quarters) and they are expected to have 1 or 2 electives completed as well. The qualifying exam is all oral and mostly on the research, however, the question period will also cover material from the required classes. This means that a student definitely must be able to do research and coursework in the first year to succeed. However, students generally prioritize coursework during the school year (only 29 out of the 52 weeks) and research during the winter break, spring break and summer months (minus 2 weeks for vacation, however, most first years choose to take vacation after the exam). The summer is an especially good time to prioritize research. But, in the last 4 weeks or so prior to the exam, students generally stop research completely (basically what is complete at this point is what will be presented in the exam) and spend the last ~month reviewing background material. This involves some review of the coursework but also taking the time to step back from the project and really understand the big picture. After spending a whole year on the minute details of your project, it's necessary to remember why this science is being done in the first place. You can talk to the older students for suggestions on how to plan this upcoming year. Setting priorities means deciding at what "level" do you want to devote your time to one or another. Everyone has a different working style so maybe you really do not want to be switching your brain from coursework to research all of the time. One strategy you might employ is to dedicate certain days of the week for coursework and other days for research. For example, I might choose to only do homework and reading on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and then spend all of my work time on research on Thursday and Friday. One complication is that you might have classes on Thursday or Friday, so just attend those classes, take notes, but don't do the assignments until your assigned coursework day. I find this strategy helpful for later stages of the PhD, where you may have more than 1 project but no longer have classes. Some people are great at working on two projects in parallel but I prefer to spend a few days at a time on a project, then switch. Setting priorities also means setting how much time you will work on a particular thing. If you dedicate X days to coursework, then you must only spend that much time on coursework. This will often mean that you have to stop working on an assignment before you are 100% happy with it. But sometimes that's okay. There are diminishing returns after a certain amount of effort has been put in (both for learning and for getting points/meeting requirements). One problem many new grad students have is the desire for perfection. Sometimes, it is important to just do what you need to get a satisfactory score (for degree advancement purposes) and then move on to working on something else that you need). Again, this is an area where talking to older students and maybe faculty on the program's expectations is important.

I saw that news story pretty much right after I wrote the above!

I have two opinions. One is an idealistic one, where I would say to just send your availability from 8am to 5pm. I don't think TAs should be assigned to sections past 5pm or on weekends unless we are being paid overtime or we agree to be assigned to those times. However, this is coming from an approach where TAs are unionized employees and we have contracts that protect us. It is very difficult to make a similar request without this protection or without contracts that stipulate what times are appropriate TA assignment hours. (My TA position prior to this one had a contract that said regular TA hours are 8am to 5pm and anything outside of this requires special permission and/or extra pay). The more realistic one is what fuzzy said. We are limited by the actual viable options at hand. Some other ways to approach this would be: - You can indicate your preference without making it a "demand" is to send schedules with times that say "available", "not available" and "could be available if necessary" - You can just say you are "not available" for those times. Like you said, maybe some other students will prefer those times and if there are 15 sections and 15 TAs, then you just need 3 other TAs to prefer those times. If it turns out that no one else wants to do those times, then I am sure the prof has a system in place for filling those spots. (e.g. they might ask again, indicating their need for these spots, and then you can volunteer yourself if you so choose) - If it's really just once per week (I'm not sure if you have to do 1 section per week or more than 1 section per week), then maybe a 15 minute drive home isn't that bad? I live about 15 minutes by car from school (in traffic, 10 mins without) and I feel like this is a very short distance. But I know everyone is different---my undergrad commute was 60-90 minutes each way! If I forget something at home during my workday, I just drive home and grab it, probably only lose around 25-30 minutes, which I can stay a little bit later for etc. So, if I was in your position, I would probably leave campus at 2pm and return at 6pm. A 30 minute roundtrip is annoying for something like just an hour off, but when it's several hours like this, I'd say it's worth it. You can interact with your cat, make dinner, take a break etc. (i.e. I'd just do whatever I normally do from 6pm to 10pm but since I have to TA in that time, I'd do it from 2pm to 6pm instead!) - You can also consider moving your class to a later time, if you're in a program where this is possible. (Many grad classes I've taken either don't pick a class time until the first day of class or the first day of class is used to choose a better class time for everyone, but my classes are generally smaller, only 5-7 people). - You can consider switching sections with another TA, especially if you are assigned more than 1 evening section. Or, depending on the section format/structure, maybe you can alternate with another TA so that everyone only spends a couple of weeks with the evening section instead of all semester. (But this only works for some types of classes, not going to work if it's like lab classes that everyone must attend etc.)

As far as I know, you cannot solve this. Non-resident aliens will be unable to get the tax credit. Note that there are two levels of premium reduction for ACA plans (at least in California). There is an "instant" premium reduction based on family size and income. If you are eligible for this (the income level has to be really really low though), you'll be offered plans at the reduced/subsidized rates. I think you must choose a Silver plan or higher to get this subsidy. Another thing to note is that the ACA law is changing each year and it seems like every year, there is a new interpretation or a new part of the law added. Maybe there will be a way for Non-Resident Aliens to get a tax credit for ACA plans in the future.

I remember that CV length is a tricky thing when at the applying to grad school stage. I think for most prospective grad students, 2-3 pages is a good length. But at this stage, there are usually some items where it's not clear if including it would be a good idea. So, don't worry about length, but do think about whether or not the item is actually helpful to have on the CV (e.g. maybe don't include that high school job) because you want the reader to quickly notice your highlights! As fuzzy said, CV length will be proportional with time in academia! I'm in the final year of my PhD and my full CV is 6 pages now. But for a couple of recent applications, I submitted a 4 page version (some things weren't relevant).

I would recommend filing your taxes every year because it's not as hard as it sounds and it will eventually make your life a lot easier when you do need to file them! It's not necessary but it's a lot easier if you just pay for tax software. All you have to do is answer questions and fill in forms on the computer exactly from the tax forms that you get from your employer(s). They usually cost about $30-$50, depending if you are filing federal tax only or federal + state tax. You probably don't need the fancy tax software that you have to install on your computer, you can just do it online and pay the fee. The software will remember your basic information so you don't have to re-enter it every year. And, software also helps you find additional tax deductions. e.g. You can even claim the money used to pay for tax software as a deduction on the following year's tax return.

The website says the names must exactly match excluding spacing, so you should be fine (since the only error is the lack of space). Also, you called them and they said it's okay. For grad schools, you should let them know with a note in your application that your GRE reg name is XXXXYYYY ZZZZ instead of XXXX YYYY ZZZZ. You can usually add a comment either when you provide your GRE info or at the end, in a box for "special considerations". This is usually okay---for some schools this might mean some automated systems won't work but they will still figure it out. I had a similar problem, my first name is AAAA, middle name BBBB CCCC and last name DDDD. But for one transcript, my middle name got truncated so my full name was AAAA BBBB DDDD and it didn't match my application name, so the online system kept saying "transcript not received". However, when I emailed them to inquire, they said that the computer didn't automatically match the transcript, so the online status will forever say "not received", however, a human did notice that there was no match and they found the score report and manually made the correct match.

I can't speak to the statistics field directly, but your GPA is not bad. In the sciences, I always encourage all students with GPAs above 3.5 to not feel limited about where they can apply to. Yes, a 3.5 GPA is not as good as a 3.9, but I feel that at the high end of GPAs (3.8 and above), there really isn't a distinction between GPAs (the admission decision will be made based on other factors, most likely). I think your GPA is fine to apply to all schools, especially since you are on your 3rd research project. Definitely reach out to all professors you are interested in. No need to discuss GPA or anything like that at this point. For now, the conversation should only be on potential research opportunities. Leave the details to the actual application process.

fuzzy's advice is excellent and I think most of it is general to most fields! Especially Steps 1 and 2. The main field-dependent thing in fuzzy's advice seems to be that in my field, major conferences have very short abstracts compared to other fields. We only write a single paragraph and although the submission software limit is 2250 characters, strong abstracts probably only use 1250-1500 characters. So, find out the norms in your field and don't assume that if the limit is X that you must use up all of X. The other advice I would add is to remember that there are three potential audiences for your abstract. 1. The first audience is the reviewers who will decide whether or not to accept your abstract (and in some fields, decide between acceptance as an oral presentation vs. poster presentation). For some conferences, the scientific organizing committee will put out specific instructions in what they are looking for in conference talks. Be sure to follow them. If a scientific organizing committee (or equivalent) is listed, you can guess that some of these people will be the abstract reviewers. Tailor your writing to your audience. 2. The second audience is the conference attendees. Depending on the meeting, attendees may have to choose between talks happening in parallel sessions. Often, I pick which talks to go to while reviewing the abstracts on a plane, in my hotel room the night before the meeting, or during a meal or coffee break. Generally, it's a time where I'm easily distracted, in a noisy environment, tired and preoccupied. Keep this reader in mind too. 3. The last audience is readers who may read the archived abstract online. Not all conferences have this. But for the ones that archive your abstract forever, be careful what you write. If the work is less mature, don't provide too many details lest someone uses the abstract to scoop you. At the same time, think about how this abstract will look a year or two from now. Will it be painfully evident that you promised things that you never followed through on? For this audience, the goal is to either remind people of your presentation (if they saw it and now are using your abstract to refresh their memory) and/or to let people know what types of questions and topics you're thinking about (if they didn't see your talk but found this abstract when looking you up). It's hard to balance all three and sometimes it's more important to favour the first audience over the rest. For small meetings in my field, there are no parallel sessions, so I don't really read abstracts before each talk since I'll be attending them all. So, the only point of an abstract is to get yourself a talk and you can write directly to the reviewer audience. Also, sometimes conferences will allow you to submit a longer, more detailed proceedings paper (usually 1-2 pages in my field instead of 1 paragraph) for online publishing.

It could happen, but it's unlikely at my school. The whole reason of having a student start in the summer is that the prof would pay them as a summer RA and it would be a way to get some work done with the student prior to classes starting. Starting in the winter doesn't give the same advantages. So, it's less likely that someone would be willing to spend money in this way. ---- But all that said, I agree with fuzzy: I think you are getting too far ahead now. At this point, without an admission offer, there is not much more you can plan ahead. Every school (and also every prof at each school) may present different options. You do have a difficult decision ahead, and I think there are merits to both taking the 2 year job vs. risking a certain job for a grad program that will set you up for the future. It's your personal decision on how much risk you are willing to take. My only advice I can give is that I remember from your other posts that you had to leave a graduate program early this year. I think it will be difficult to enter a new graduate program right away (that is, schools may be less likely to accept you). Usually, when you leave a program and start another, there needs to be some change evident (i.e. new experiences like a job, switching fields to something that is a better fit etc.). Starting a 2 year contract right now might not be such a bad thing. You could work for a year, gain experience, apply in 2017 for a program that will begin September 2018, 2 years from now when your contract is up. But it's your decision.

Disclaimer: Being a non-American, I have not applied for the NSF GRFP myself but I have worked with many who have, and I've won equivalent fellowships from my home country (Canada) and also other national US fellowships that are open to non-citizens. No, I don't think this is a good idea. In my opinion, when grad fellowships write about leadership, they aren't looking for general leadership properties, they are specifically looking for leadership in the context of science research and outreach. So, you aren't looking to demonstrate that you can be "in charge" of things in general. When I think of leadership in academia, and especially when it's an undergrad applying, I think of evaluating for leadership potential. That is, do you do demonstrate the potential to become a leader in your research? Here are some things related to leadership in the sciences that would be relevant, in my opinion: - Does the student take responsibility for their experiment? Do they know what needs to be done next, or do they just await instructions? - Does the student take initiative to learn about their work? Do they think critically about what they are doing and ask relevant questions? Or, do they just follow instructions and don't learn why they are doing what they are doing? - When the student encounters a problem, how do they react? Do they attempt to solve it on their own first (within reason)? Do they apply knowledge learned from previous mistakes or from solutions to known/previous problems? - Does the student work well independently? Are they self-motivated? Can they work without supervision? - How does the student take constructive criticism? How do they adjust their work to address this feedback? - In my field, students are usually the first author of work they do. For students who have completed enough work to write a paper, how much of a leadership role are they taking? How do they interact wth coauthors and collaborators? Overall, in my opinion, for those at the beginning of their careers (senior undergrads, new grad students), "leadership" is really more about good followership instead of just "being in charge". My view of leadership is that every good leader begins as a good follower. A good follower meets the criteria above, i.e. not just a mindless drone! Hopefully, your PI can say these good things about you! Finally, remember that "broader impacts" is also a big part of this application. Leadership in teaching and outreach will also be helpful. So, if you need a different person for your 3rd letter, think about what you have done to meet the broader impacts requirements and maybe have a letter writer be from this part of your work instead, if you don't have more research related letter writers.

I also want to add that when I was researching schools, I had a "ranking" in my mind of which programs I would like, but then when I visited the schools, these rankings did change too. Schools are pretty different in person than they are on paper. So I wouldn't get too fixated on a "perfect" fit yet, and I wouldn't put too much emphasis on how I feel about a school until I visit it.

I agree that the balance of how over-arching/structured is a tricky thing to implement. In my ideal world, we would have standardized "benefits" across all grad students instead of PI-specific contracts. That is, you work for the school, not for your PI. This could look like one standard pay scale and benefits package for all students, or there could be e.g. "Graduate Research Assistant I", "GRA II", "GRA III", each with different pay rates and vacation time etc. Things like working remotely is still ambiguous in this case though. I guess that's the nature of academic work though. Ultimately, we are evaluated on our output though, so if it's possible to make the same output remotely, then it shouldn't be a problem. Also, as unionized employees, we would receive annual performance reviews that go into our employee files, so being out of contact for weeks could reflect poorly and result in not getting a promotion to GRA II or even dismissal etc. The other important thing about proper structure is documentation! Decisions regarding a student/employee's leave/benefits/pay/etc. should all be documented and audited to ensure that people are being treated fairly. Overall, when things are going well, this creates a lot of extra red tape** that hurts the collegial feel and also makes it feel more "corporate". However, I think that the current system benefits some but hurts many others. We don't necessarily have to move to a traditional labour union approach, but maybe some other balance is a good thing. (** example of annoying red tape but creates good documentation: at my last school, TAs were unionized and every year, prior to TA assignments, we had to submit resumes and officially "apply" to be a TA. The union contracts stipulates a very specific protocol for hiring TAs, e.g. everyone in guaranteed years of funding and are qualified for TA positions must be offered positions before others etc.) I know these rules can still be circumvented but at least there is a non-zero level of accountability. And, the union can take action against/penalize departments who break the rules). In my experience, grad students get way less vacation time than others. At my school, entry level staff accrue vacation days at a rate of 1.25 paid vacation days per month (3 weeks per year) and it eventually rises to 1.75 days per month (4.5 weeks per year). I'm not sure how faculty vacation days are allocated though but our school treats postdocs, staff and faculty the same way so maybe it's something similar. Yeah, in the above post about unions, I was only responding to pterosaur's shared desire to have things written down formally, not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing that 2 weeks is the right amount of time.

Weclome, and good luck!!

Exactly. In Canada, where graduate students are employees and we are almost always in unions, I had to keep saying this statement over and over again. Usually the non-bench science students are treated fairly well and they are usually skeptical of the use of a union and sometimes even actively fight it. But I keep saying, just because it's good now doesn't mean that it's going to be good forever. Unions or other types of employment contracts mean that the nice things we get right now (e.g. vacation time) cannot be taken away from us without a fight. The privileges are not just granted because the school wants to, but because the school is required to! Also, a contract ensures the same benefits to everyone---it's not fair that a more pushy/confident/assertive student is able to get more vacation time etc. because they don't back down when initially told no. Good luck

Depending on your other letters, this may be okay (i.e. you won't get automatically rejected because of it). It won't be as strong of a letter as another choice. However, in this case, there is a potential other option. You could ask the (former) grad student to write the letter and have your former professor sign and submit it. It's pretty common in the sciences for undergraduates to work in a professor's group/lab but actually spend most of their time interacting with a PhD student, postdoc or staff scientist. These people would know your work best but the letter would have more impact coming from the professor. So, in your case, I would recommend emailing both your professor and the former PhD student and let them know that you are applying for this program and that you would like to get a reference letter for your work in Professor X's lab with PhD Student Y. The two of them will probably figure out what they want to do. Some options are for the student to write the whole thing and the professor just signs off on it. Or, perhaps after you finished with the lab, the student actually wrote a whole report on you to submit to the professor. The professor may just use this report as the basis for your letter. Last summer, I supervised an undergraduate student and I did this because I knew that a letter from the prof would benefit the student much more than anything I can write. Personally, I find it a little awkward to just ask outright for the prof to sign off on a letter that the (former) student writes, so I would choose to start with an email to both of them asking for a letter for your work and seeing what happens next. Things will likely just fall into place, but if the prof just wants the former student to write and sign the letter, then I guess there really isn't that much you can do (since demanding that the prof sign the letter may not be the best idea).

This is a really good sign, but it's not 100% certain that you will be admitted. Although it can vary a lot between fields, in the Canadian system, grad positions are more like hiring for a job than admitting students. To compare with the US system, generally, American admissions committees tries to pick the best X students that meets the overall department needs. In the Canadian system, generally, the admission committee is there only to verify that the student will be able to meet the requirements of the program and that they will succeed, however, it's up to each professor to offer funded positions and many PhD programs will require a professor willing to fund you for admission (because the source of most of your funding will be from the professor, not the department). This doesn't mean that you must have contacted a professor ahead of time (although it's a good idea in my field) because what generally happens is that the committee will review all of the applications, determine the ones that make the cut (and maybe trim them down if there is a lot) and then forward them to all professors and they can "hire" out of that pool. In addition, professors can advocate for certain applicants to be accepted if they want to hire that specific applicant, even if the admissions committee didn't select them originally. So, in your situation, having an offer like this from a professor is a good sign that you will be successful in that department. But, it's hard to know for sure if the professor you want to work with will say this for everyone who he is interested in working with, or if he is saving this "offer" only for the students he really wants to work with. In my experience, I've found that it's hard to "calibrate" what a professor means until I get to know them better. For now though, I would be optimistic Good luck!

Caltech's program is very heavily quantitative. Note also that Caltech has a very small humanities and social sciences program. There are only two PhD programs offered in these fields, one called "Social Sciences" and another called "Behaviorial and Social Neuroscience". For more information on their program and coursework, you can go here: https://www.hss.caltech.edu/content/social-sciences-phd-program or http://www.hss.caltech.edu/content/bsn-academics. And for admission requirements / course pre-requisites, see http://www.hss.caltech.edu/content/graduate-admissions

I would say that unless something major changes in your applications, I would not apply more than 2 or 3 times when applying to the same school/same program. Schools won't really tell you to stop applying because I don't think that's really an appropriate thing for a school to say. They will still evaluate your application. Most schools do not make a ton of money on application fees---that money isn't even collected by the department, so they have nothing to gain by encouraging you to apply. For a given program, based on existing needs and resources (i.e. money and time), the type of applicant admitted will change from year to year. And, the pool of applicants (i.e. the competition) may also change a bit from year to year. So, depending on what the program needs at the time, a student that is accepted this year may have been rejected had they applied in a different year, and vice-versa. But, it doesn't change *that* much, so if you are rejected 2 or 3 times in a row, I would say it's unlikely that applying one more time will magically result in a different outcome. If this is the case, I would say it would be a good idea to wait until something changes before reapplying. Perhaps you can do additional classes, find a research position, do a Masters, etc. Sometimes you might get lucky/unlucky and change is due to reasons outside of your control (e.g. department made a new hire and they need more students, a prof has left the program, national funding level increases/decreases). There was one year in my program that is smaller than normal because it was an uncertain year for planetary science funding from the government. I would tell the people who weren't accepted in that year to try again!

Glad to hear it Thanks for updating and good luck!