confusedgradadmit

Thank you for your advice. Maybe I wasn't very clear, but the first course is already finished and the project handed in. My grades on the assignments in that course were really variable -- I got high 80's on some, and 50's and 60's on others. Overall, I'm sitting at about 75%, with just the project left to be marked (worth 30%). I think the project was decent, but I'd be surprised if its more than a B-level, because I just couldn't get good results (because of lack of sample data). However, I did propose what (imo) is a novel statistical test for judging the quality of the model I was trying to learn, so hopefully that will give me points. For the other course (the brutal one), I spoke with the prof and he said he wouldn't have things marked until mid-May (semester ends Apr. 25th, classes ended Apr. 11th). There's only about 15 students in the class, so frankly that's just unacceptable, and to the point where he's simply not doing his job, but that's neither here nor there. I asked if he could give me a general impression of how I've been doing, but declined as he hadn't evaluated my submissions yet. Believe me, I mentioned it to my group members plenty of times over the semester, but it never did any good. They just kept giving lame excuses like having crappy internet at home and whatnot (as if that's my problem -- if you can't meet your obligations, you need to move out of your parents' place). I didn't go to the professor as (at the time) I was looking to join his lab, and I didn't want it to reflect poorly on me. In hindsight, that was a bad move, but oh well. The only thing I can do now is work on the project for the brutal course, and hopefully I'll be able to get some results.

Okay, so in my first semester I got an A (4.0) and a B+ (3.3). However, this semester things just haven't been going very well. Both of my course projects just aren't panning out, no matter how hard I try. One of them was a group project, and as per usual, both of my fellow group members have done absolutely nothing all term, leaving me to do the work of three people. My other course is one that has a reputation for being brutal, and though the subject matter is really pretty simple (heuristic graph search), it is a LOT of work. On top of that, the professor hasn't given any feedback whatsoever, all term. Even though we have 3 assignments, a test, a presentation, and a project, I still have no idea what grade I'll get, but I don't think it'll be good, because my project is pretty much a disaster (the problem is that the field is so mature, there really wasn't that much novel work you could do, so I opted for an application-oriented project). However, the latter course has almost nothing to do with my research area. I only took it because there wasn't much choice, with the recent budget cuts and all. I'm just hoping the curve will save me in at least one of the courses. In the first course, they unintentionally made one of the assignments a lot harder than they thought, and I heard that only 8/22 people even handed it in, but I gave it my all and ended up getting an 86 on it. The thing is, I have no idea how I'm doing compared to the rest of the class, so I could be failing for all I know... Talking to other students in the program (including one who is a TA/lecturer for the first course I mentioned), grades apparently don't matter very much. The TA guy mentioned that he did horribly in his own advisor's course (the same one he's now lecturing) just because he didn't have time to do all the work, yet he's now the most senior Ph.D. student in his lab. However, my advisor agreed to take me on (it isn't formalized until two semesters in), but he mentioned that grades are important to him. The thing is, he's already agreed (and filled out the paperwork) to take me on (though he's only seen last semester's grades), and I have full funding from NSERC/AITF for the remainder of my masters anyway ($31k/yr) (note: masters programs are terminal in Canada), so its not like I'm costing him anything. I'm one of only ten NSERC recipients in our department, so I would think there would be some political pressure on my side, at least. Plus I have three conference papers and a journal article in a relevant topic from before I even started my masters... I haven't done any research in my first two terms of masters, but our program requires that you finish your courses first, so that's expected. I'm confident that my grades have nothing to do with my research ability, so is it really that big of an issue, even if he did mention it? My biggest fear is that he could somehow change his mind about taking me on if my grades don't turn out well, but I'll have been working with him for almost a month by the time I even know my grades (plus he's already formally accepted me), so I think that would be a very shitty thing to do, considering that I'm essentially free labour from his perspective...

Well, yes, but I didn't want to sound like an undergrad lol. I think he'd have a hard time justifying it on appeal, anyway, if he gave someone a failing grade when they learned over 80% of the material.

Hello all, We've received all of our grades except for the final report (worth 40%). I thought I was doing pretty well, but even though I have an 82.5% raw score, the class average is 88%... Is it possible that I could fail even with a mark that should be in the A-range? I'm at the University of Alberta, and our minimum pass for grad students is a C+, but we also need to keep a B- overall GPA (I have no scholarships that require a higher GPA than that, at least not yet). The professor has stated that grading will be done as follows: He will sort the class by raw score, and identify clusters of similar scores, assigning a grade to each cluster (so as not to give someone with a 92.5% score an A, while giving someone with a 93% score an A+). Unfortunately, that gives me no way to predict how my grade will turn out, but since I'm below the (unusually high) class average, it doesn't look good... Plus, if the average is so high, the spread of the score is probably also pretty low, which makes it even worse...

I don't know about Turkey, but here in Canada (at least for NSERC, our equivalent of the NSF) you have to be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident for any of their grants. I would assume that any Turkish government funding would be similar, but always check with the relevant authorities. You may want to look at more of a private-sector basis for your funding, as they may not care what your citizenship is. Edit: Wait, I misunderstood your question completely. Sorry. I'll leave it up there for others, though. Anyway, again about my experience with NSERC, it is (I think) possible to study at an approved foreign institution as long as you remain a citizen of Canada, but you would need approval from NSERC.

Seconded. The best is a nice big bratwurst. Also, I've noticed Italian sausage meat is starting to be sold in the same type of packaging as hamburger (as in, just the ground up meat instead of in a casing). That would make it easier if you plan on adding it to recipes. I don't think I'd really use them unless I had a barbeque, though. Also, always make sure you overcook them just a bit and always check them, because they can get you very sick if not cooked thoroughly. Its not like steak where it can be almost raw and still be relatively safe as long as its a quality product.

Just a cautionary note: always check the bottoms or labels of glassware, dishes, and whatever else for disclaimers like "For novelty use only. Not for use with food." (i.e. "this product contains massive amounts of lead but we're betting you won't read this"). I've seen this before, both online and in person. That said, I too get whatever I can at the dollar store, but mostly because I live downtown, and the dollarama is the only place to get household stuff in less than a 30 minute bus ride. All the big box stores are out in the suburbs As for my own situation, I've just moved to a part of Canada where the cost of living has almost doubled. For example, a loaf of plain old wonder bread costs almost $5 (its normally around $2 or less). Of course, the flipside of that is that the average call centre pays $20/hr plus benefits (there's a minimum wage here, but it doesn't matter because nobody pays that low), so that means my $30k stipend is essentially minimum wage. That said, I don't worry TOO much about saving money on food. My bills are basically just rent and food, so after my rent ($950) and tuition ($5k per year) is paid, I've got about $1200 for food and living. My spending will be unusually high this month, cause I just moved across the country and had to buy mostly all new stuff ( and don't get paid till September), but next month I'm expecting to fall around the $400-500 range for food, which is actually pretty good for me since I was spending about $250-300 back home in Ontario, where things were half the price. I find that not having my car here helps (its not needed, since I live downtown), because I'm inherently very lazy, so without an easy way to get around, I'm more than happy eating fried bologna sandwiches and papa johns (when its on special). Oh, and I just discovered Sbarro, a fast-food chain that serves reasonably fresh Italian food, like stuffed pizza, stromboli, and lasagna, with a side salad and breadsticks Granted, in a place where even McD's will cost you $10, I won't be eating out too much, but its still nice once or twice a week.

If you're encountering the same problem no matter where you go, perhaps you should consider that the problem lies with you, not with others. I am of course referring to your tone in this thread. Now, moving along, where exactly are these schools where caucasians are anywhere near a majority? I don't mean to be inflammatory, I'm just genuinely interested, because both at my undergrad and current grad schools (Ontario and Alberta, respectively), just based on my own observations I would say that caucasians make up less than 20% of the graduate population. Further, this week is orientation week for all incoming grad students, and the whole week is mandatory TA training seminars, so presumably almost everyone in my cohort (across all departments) is in attendance, and again I'd say (though I didn't stop to count) that maybe 20-30% were white, 40% or so were Asian (say what you want, but statistically they do tend to achieve more academically than other races, usually due to cultural factors. For intance, it is common in Japanese high schools for kids to be ostracized for doing poorly in classes (speaking only from experience, I should mention), rather than the other way around), 20% black, 10% arab, and the rest miscellaneous. It must have something to do with geographical location. Or maybe my school has enough international draw that it attracts more international students. I would have thought that maybe its because some schools are located in predominantly white states, but at the graduate level location isn't really as much of an issue as it is for undergrad (it is much more common, almost expected even, to move away for grad school, since the top schools are not likely to be local to you). One thing I have confirmed through my own casual readings is that international students are starting to favour Canada over the US, because the US's strict visa rules make it almost impossible to get a work visa after their student visa runs out (for instance, the 2012 US quota for non-sponsored work visas ran out in just 2 hours!), whereas Canada will give you a visa as long as you meet the requirements to be useful to society in some occupation that is in demand. This may contribute to a lack of diversity in US universities, but its also true that the US population is already very diverse without the aid of further immigration.

My MSc classes don't actually start until Sept. 5th, but I've been going to a week-long TA training session this week (which I gather is a bit of a rarity among grad schools these days, its pretty intense, going from 9am to 4pm every day). I also met and had lunch with my advisor last week, before he went on a last-minute vacation haha, and I also attended the weekly group meetings for each of the various research groups he has going on. I've got some interesting projects in the works, so I'm currently trying to decide between them. In the meantime, I'm helping to resurrect a certain server system from back in 2009 that had languished without a student to maintain it (its a web interface for professionals in the health sciences and biology to perform certain queries relating to proteins), and that's keeping me plenty busy enough. You can't imagine how frustrating it is to try to, for example, upgrade from a database system circa 2005 to the current version, and then repeat that for the 20 or so other programs it relies on. I should note that, in Canada, our education stream is a bit different than the US. The typical path is a max of 2 years for masters level, then a max of 4 years for your Ph.D. There are typically only courses in the first two terms of masters, and none at the Ph.D. level. Some exceptional students can go straight to Ph.D., but its apprently pretty rare (I was offered the chance by one of the other schools I applied to, but I didn't want the pressure and risk of getting in over my head, and didn't really like the school as much anyway). One thing I noticed, and this may just be particular to my advisor, was that a significant proportion of the people in the labs are actually staff members, rather than students. Now, he is the PI of what is essentially the province's flagship AI initiative (that's about all I can say, I think), so maybe he gets enough funding to justify it. Or maybe he can only feasibly advise so many students, but he just needs more hands on deck than that? It just seems odd that almost half (it seems) of the people in the lab are actually full-time staff, with educations ranging from undergrad to post-doc.

The best advice I can give you is to go see an accountant. I normally just get my taxes done by my parents' accountant, since it just takes her a few minutes to do it and she's a full-time employee of my parents' business anyway. But even if you just go see one, it'd be like $50 or so and that way you know you're getting all the money back you can. Besides, who has time for extra paperwork? That's why we have a division of labour in our society. It's definitely worth it. I got like $3000 back on a $30,000 income (though I'm in Canada), which was pretty much everything I paid into it. Who knows what I would have missed by doing it myself.

Hello all, I've been using Google Drive for all my cloud storage needs, but unfortunately all of the major citation managers (RefWorks and such) don't have any kind of integration. If there any product out there that is able to work with Google Drive? I'd really hate to have to store all my papers locally, as I have a desktop, laptop, and smartphone that I'd like to be able to access them on.