Reason for leaving the previous grad position

[virtua]

Hello forum,

So I have been a PhD student for 2 academic terms and then my adviser terminated my position. The reason? The last thing my adviser told me was "I don`t feel your interest in the project". Anyway, some time later I asked my adviser to provide me with an official letter as a proof of termination of my position. I needed that letter to get released from my apartment leasing contract. And you know what she wrote in that letter? She wrote that the position was terminated due to insufficient funding! Surely, I`m happy that she did not blame it on me in that letter, but! Now, I`m going to apply to several universities and I am thinking what I should say when I`m asked why my adviser stopped working with me. Should I say exactly the same thing that was written in that official letter (I have scan of it so far but I`m trying to get the letter itself asap) or I should say that I was not interested in the project? Or maybe even something different?

I really need as many opinions on this as it is possible, since I don`t want my chances to get admitted to be affected by this story. I appreciate any thoughts.

[fuzzylogician]

Assuming that you will ask your advisor for a letter of recommendation, the only opinion that matters is your advisor's, not anyone's here. You need to ask her 1) if she will be willing to support your future applications to graduate school, and if so 2) what she will say in her letter of recommendation was the cause for termination. If she says it's finances and she supports your application, that's the best case scenario.* If she will write a letter and say the cause for your leaving is something else, you'll probably have to say some version of the same thing yourself; if you use your SOP to pick a fight with your advisor over the causes for your termination, that will raise a giant glaring red flag. If she won't support your application, that is bad news all around. In that case, having written documentation that the cause was lack of funding sounds good to me; alternatives like bad performance or lack of interest reflect poorly on you but funding leaves you potentially unharmed. You don't want to say something entirely inconsistent with what she says, because even if she doesn't write you a letter, someone might still contact her to ask about you. 

*BTW, despite the fact that you seem to think that these two reasons ('lack of interest' and 'lack of funding') are completely unrelated, I don't think they are. Imagine she lost funding and had to choose which of her students to let go. Reason would have it that she would choose a student who she thinks doesn't fit in her lab and/or isn't doing a good job. Sounds like that's the opinion she had of you, and in that case 'lack of interest' is much better than 'not doing a good job'.

[virtua]

But I do not want to ask her to write a recommendation letter, since I`m not sure what she will write, what if she blames me in that letter?

From what you say, I feel like it is a closed circle for me. Like whichever option I choose, I will have poor chances, so what should I do then? Not to apply anywhere at all?  Since there is no professor in the world which would hire a person, who himself is not sure about his performance

[fuzzylogician]

You need to have an actual conversation with your former advisor and *ask* her directly if she would be willing to write you a strong letter, instead of assuming things you don't know. If she won't write a letter or it'll be a weak one, then yes, that will be a red flag and will cause you trouble. It can perhaps be overcome if you have letters from other professors at your former institution who can explain what happened (and you should stop thinking of it as "blame", that won't do you any good). If not, it will indeed be very difficult for you to apply again, and the thing to do might be to get a job in a related industry and get some experience. Once you put some distance between this experience and a future application, it will matter less, assuming you can get strong letters from your employers and maybe an undergrad professor. But yes, it's an uphill battle given this setback. You can still try, but there are no guarantees.

[virtua]

Well, last time when I talked to my adviser, she said she will write a recom. letter and will explain that I was not interested in the project, that I need a different project, but as you see she wrote different thing in the letter and the letter was addressed not specifically to apartments management since it starts with "To whom it may concern...". And I do not want to ask her about this again in an email since I feel she would not want to talk about it or she is not going to be honest about it.

[marycaryne]

In my view, there are two very different things going on: the need for a letter to get out of an apartment contract and the desire to continue your education elsewhere. Whereas a potential school may ask about why you stopped working with an advisor, the apartments are not really going to care. They simply want proof of termination. They do not care if you loved blue but your advisor hated it. They do not care if your professor was offended by the amount of sour cream you put on your nachos. Similarly they do not care if you were not interested in a project. All they care about is the leasing contract and the fact they need proof of termination for you to get out of that. Employers typically provide very generic letters in cases where such proof needs to be provided. Whether her reasoning of "insufficient funds" was part of her real reason for letting you go (as fuzzylogician said, it may not necessarily be unrelated to a lack of interest on your part), the bottom line is that she was just writing what essentially equates to a typical letter with relatively vague reasons just so it is sufficient as proof of termination.

Your advisor already told you that she would be honest with other schools. I would expect that if asked, she would do exactly what she said she would do. School admission is very different than needing a letter to get out of an apartment contract and I wouldn't compare a letter she gave you for that to a potential answer she may give to an actual school. Personally, I always advise being honest but putting a positive spin on it. For example, if you were genuinely not interested in a project, then be honest about that but share your passion for a potential future project and your desire to continue your education. Of course there is always the potential that it could still hurt you. Fuzzylogician made some great suggestions to try build a case in your favor, such as gaining work experience in a related industry and getting strong letters from employers. It can show that you really are interested in a future in that industry, even if not for the specific project you were working on.

Bottom line though is that as pointed out, our opinions really don't matter much. You may not want to bring this up to the advisor again, but if you really want these questions answered, you don't have much of a choice.