Confused with my prospective advisor

[Mohammed88]

Dear all,

 

Please I need your help and advices

 

I contacted a professor for a PhD program in electrical engineering. First, he asked me to send him some documents (CV, transcripts,...etc). Then, he told me to apply for the university. Unfortunately, my application has been rejected after long time of waiting! I contacted him and I told him that my application has been rejected! He gave me some justifications like the scholarships given by the university needs high GPA (my MS GPA is 3.7/4)!

 

Later, he told me that we should to apply for Mitacs and NSERC to get fellowships and I must have published papers to apply for that fellowships.  I asked him to wait until I got acceptance for my submitted papers. I got acceptance from one conference. In addition, I submitted two papers to ISI journals and another conference paper, but not yet accepted.

 

After seven months from the first contact and after more than 30 emails between me and him, I told him to apply for Mitacs or NSERC, we have to write a proposal, so if you already had a project, please let's apply by the proposal of this project. He told me I have a project in place and he sent me the proposal of this project. What is made me confused is in his last email he send me "Yes I have project in place, I am only asking you to see your interest and required documents. Let me know". I sent him a reply that the project is very interesting and I am very happy to work on it, but I didn't get any response from him (today is the six day).

My questions are:

1. What do you think he means by "to see your interests and required documents after long contact with him?
2. Is my reply is so enough?
3. Does that mean he doesn't like me?

I appreciate your help and suggestion in advance.

 

Thanks,

[TakeruK]

Because of Mitacs and NSERC, it sounds like a Canadian graduate program. Usually, it is normal for a student to directly contact a professor before applying, send them their application materials and the professor will often encourage the student to apply if the applicant's profile is strong enough that they would consider accepting. They can't make promises though, since they will have to wait until all the applications come in and then they might get much stronger applicants.

 

I am a bit confused about your situation. It sounds like you did not get into this University?? I am not sure why you are applying for these graduate fellowships at this time, then? Unless you mean that you are getting ready to apply for PhD funding for the Fall 2015 start? NSERC PGS-D applications were due in Fall 2014 and decisions were announced over a month ago! 

 

To answer your questions:

 

1. This sounds like he already has a project in mind that he is looking for a student. He is asking if you are interested in this project and he wants to see your documents to make sure that you would have a chance to win the fellowship and to make sure if you are qualified that he would want to hire you.

 

2. It sounds like your reply is the appropriate thing to say. Did you send him an updated version of your documents? Also, did you fill out the application forms yet--if not, you should definitely complete everything in the application except for the research proposal and send them to him too (since he asked). 

 

3. It would not make sense for him to spend this much time corresponding with you if he didn't like you and didn't want you to apply to his research group. It does sound like he might only be able to take you as a student if you are able to win the fellowship though. 

 

I don't know much about Mitacs but I know that the NSERC PGS-D fellowship is pretty competitive. To be honest, it would be surprising if a student won a PGS-D but got rejected from a PhD program. However, maybe winning this fellowship for 2015-2016 will help you get admission for the future too?

 

If you clarify which fellowships you are applying for, and why you are doing the applications now, I might be able to answer your questions better!

[Mohammed88]

Because of Mitacs and NSERC, it sounds like a Canadian graduate program. Usually, it is normal for a student to directly contact a professor before applying, send them their application materials and the professor will often encourage the student to apply if the applicant's profile is strong enough that they would consider accepting. They can't make promises though, since they will have to wait until all the applications come in and then they might get much stronger applicants.

 

I am a bit confused about your situation. It sounds like you did not get into this University?? I am not sure why you are applying for these graduate fellowships at this time, then? Unless you mean that you are getting ready to apply for PhD funding for the Fall 2015 start? NSERC PGS-D applications were due in Fall 2014 and decisions were announced over a month ago! 

 

To answer your questions:

 

1. This sounds like he already has a project in mind that he is looking for a student. He is asking if you are interested in this project and he wants to see your documents to make sure that you would have a chance to win the fellowship and to make sure if you are qualified that he would want to hire you.

 

2. It sounds like your reply is the appropriate thing to say. Did you send him an updated version of your documents? Also, did you fill out the application forms yet--if not, you should definitely complete everything in the application except for the research proposal and send them to him too (since he asked). 

 

3. It would not make sense for him to spend this much time corresponding with you if he didn't like you and didn't want you to apply to his research group. It does sound like he might only be able to take you as a student if you are able to win the fellowship though. 

 

I don't know much about Mitacs but I know that the NSERC PGS-D fellowship is pretty competitive. To be honest, it would be surprising if a student won a PGS-D but got rejected from a PhD program. However, maybe winning this fellowship for 2015-2016 will help you get admission for the future too?

 

If you clarify which fellowships you are applying for, and why you are doing the applications now, I might be able to answer your questions better!

 

Thank you so much TakeruK for your response,

 

Actually when applied to the university I thought the professor has a funded projects or may be has ability to provide me with scholarship, but what was happened, I got rejected.

 

The fellowship that he want us to target is from Mitacs "Accelerate PhD Fellowships".

 

We are doing the application right now because he asked me after I got rejected to apply for Mitacs.

 

Thank again for your help.

[Mohammed88]

I just got a reply from this professor and he offer me TA+RA with $20000 per year. He ask me to write research plan ASAP.

 

- What is the duties of TA in Canadian universities?

- Is that amount of money enough to study in Canada (tuition and fees about $18000 in that univ.)?

- I will send him a message that I accept this offer and I will try to write research plan based on the proposal that you gave me. Actually, I feel nervous because I just know the main objectives of that project and I don't know the methodology that will work on! It is difficult for me to write the research plan in short time without his help. Could you please give me the typical structure of research plan? 

 

Thanks,

[TakeruK]

Do you mean $20000 per year of support in addition to full tuition coverage? Or only $20,000 per year of support total (leaving you with only $2000 leftover).

 

In Canada, in the physical sciences, you don't generally get tuition waivers like in the US and instead, the quoted stipend levels are often something like $30k/year but you have to pay $5k in tuition out of that, so your net income will be around $25k (just example numbers). For international students, since tuition is higher, this means your gross stipend level may appear much higher. However, since $2000/year is impossible to live on, I am hoping that this means you will have $20,000/year leftover after you pay tuition (this is on the lower end of typical amounts for science PhD students in Canada without any fellowships at all).

 

But whether it's enough to live on is really dependent on what University you are talking about. If you are in Vancouver or Toronto, then this is going to be hard to live on but not impossible. If you are in Montreal, I've heard cost of living there is a lot lower. Other places in Canada can have very different cost of living (some small towns are very cheap but others are still quite expensive). 

 

Typically, a TA at a Canadian school will be hired to do specifically one of three main roles:

1. Prepare for and lead tutorial sessions for a class. In other places these sessions may be called "recitation" or "discussion groups". In some places, this position also includes grading the homework but in other places, you only grade the assignments that students do during your tutorial session. You may also grade midterms and final exams.

2. Lead and supervise students in lab courses. Usually this involves grading the lab notebooks and/or final reports too.

3. Grading TA. You would spend all of your time grading and/or proctoring exams as well as weekly homework/problem sets for the course. Sometimes grad students don't do this at all and they will pay senior undergrads to do this because undergrads are cheaper. 

 

Usually, if you are a grading-only TA, it might be considered only a half-role and you will be grading for two courses or only have half the hours. TAs in Canada are pretty much unionized in every major school so you get paid hourly based on your TA contracts. The pay rate ranges from $30 to $40 per hour, give or take, and usually "one unit" of TAing is between 5 to 12 hours per week, depending on how your school defines a unit. (Usually places where a unit is 5 hours means that a full TA load is 2 units per semester while a place with a 12 hour unit would have a full load being 1 unit per semester). On average, at least in my field (Physics), you will TA for about 10-15 hours per week every semester, unless you have a fellowship that reduces your TA load (or your supervisor pays you more on RA instead). 

 

One big difference I've noticed between TAs in the US and TAs in Canada is because TAs are expensive ($30-$40/hr), TAs generally do not attend the lectures. I had a fellowship in grad school in Canada, so my TA loads were 4.5 hours per week. When I was a lab TA, I already spent 3 hours per week in the lab, so that leaves only 1.5 hours per week of work left, which I mostly spent on marking. It would not have been cost effective for the school to pay me another 3 hours per week to attend the lectures as well!

 

To answer your last question, a standard research plan for fellowship applications in Canada is a one page written document with a few references. The format I used (and seems to work) is to first introduce the problem and most importantly, give the motivation. Tell the reviewers why your work is worth doing. Remember that the evaluation committees will be people in your field, but probably do not know your specific subtopic (e.g. for me, I wrote my plan for someone with a Physics PhD to understand, but I assumed no knowledge of my actual topic, in Astronomy). Next, I give a very brief review of the most recent work completed (sometimes it can be your advisor's group's previous work) and then explain what I plan to do in my topic. It's important to show how your work will be different from previous work and thus represent a useful increase in knowledge. However, it's good to relate it to previous work to show that your method is sound as well. Finally, I end with an explanation of what results my proposed work can produce and relate them to the problem raised in the first paragraph. 

 

Note: This last part is for research plans for fellowship applications, such as NSERC-like or OGS-like awards. If you are asking about something else, then this may not apply.

Edited May 13, 2014 by TakeruK