How can a new PhD Student objectively evaluate how well they are doing? I'm a relatively new PhD student, and I'm faced with a new (for me) situation. Before, I always had grades and the likes to tell me how good or bad I was doing: if I was at or near the top/bottom of my class, if I passed my exams or not... were all more-or-less objective indicators to tell me how I was doing.

But now that I've started to do research, I have none of that anymore, and it's quite discouraging. It's not that I need constant validation to boost my self-esteem, but rather I'm afraid that I'm not working hard enough, not learning enough... and that it's all going to crash down on me at the end ("welp, your funding has run out and you've produced nothing good enough, no PhD for you"). I sometimes find results, but they always feel rather insignificant. And the fact that I used to be good as a student whose only job was to learn about well-established topics from good professors doesn't mean I'm good enough at research, either.

I've read several Q&A's here (How should I deal with discouragement as a graduate student?, “I've somehow convinced everyone that I'm actually good at this” - how to effectively deal with Imposter Syndrome) and they've been helpful, but simply telling myself that maybe it's just the impostor syndrome talking isn't helpful – maybe I'm really an impostor, too...

Of couse I can ask my advisor from time to time, but if I start asking every month I don't think he's going to appreciate it, and if I ask that bluntly he may not want to hurt my feelings and tell me the truth. So how do I, a PhD student, can evaluate how well I'm doing?

The reality is that it’s impossible to evaluate how you’re doing in an entirely objective manner once you progress beyond the stage of doing problem sheets with well-defined answers. Once there’s no objective right and wrong, it becomes a question of what is valued and who assesses it. For example, people try to assess PhD students in terms of all kinds of things:

How many papers they’ve published.
Where their papers are published.
How many people have cited their papers.
How much impact they’ve had on their field.
How often they’re invited to give talks.
Where they’ve worked.
How successful their collaborations have been.
If they teach, how successful their own students are.

The reality is that all of these things measure something, to some extent. Different people will value different things, and assess them in different ways.

If you want to go into academia ultimately, and you’re asking because you want to know what the people who will assess you for academic jobs will value, a good place to look is at academic job specifications - they’re often very detailed and make it quite clear what they’re looking for. You can also ask your supervisor, who will probably be able to give you a good idea of what’s involved.

If you want to go into industry, they may be looking for very different things - again, you can find out by looking at the job specifications, and the skills of the people who work at the relevant places.

Ultimately, this is a good point in your life to realise that now you’ve moved beyond standard taught courses, you’ll never again have the same kind of “objective” outside feedback that you once did. Thus far, you’ve been optimising towards someone else’s objective function; from now on, you have to find your own. Other people can tell you what they value, or even what they think you should value, but no one can decide what you value but you.


Data analysis internship not going well because of lack of programming background I started my internship with a biological data analysis institute yesterday (i.e. have spent two full working days there), and I am very concerned that I am expected to have programming skills that I really don't have.
My own background: I have just finished a theoretical physics degree and next year will be persuing a Masters in Mathematics. I have done some programming in my course (an intro to MATLAB, C++ and python in my 3 years respectively), but everything has been very geared towards physics applications. e.g. simulate many body collisions, plot a graph of the transmitted intensity for some funky aperature etc). What's worse, I now realise that we only really looked at very basic features of these programming languages, and basic packages. We never learned the fundamentals of 'how a computer thinks', which is why I am having difficulties now.

I did OK in our programming tasks, and this gave me a really skewed perspective of what it means to know a programming language. I put 'python, MATLAB, basic C++' on the 'skills' section of my CV, not really realising that my knowledge of python really is 'basic' at best. That's the paradox I guess. It feels like with computing, you only know how little you know after you reach a certain level of proficiency. I did not mean to deceive anyone with writing the skills I thought I had.

In any case, I have been struggling over the last couple of days. I realised that at the institute, everyone is basically a programming pro, and the interns are generally computer science students or statisticians. While my degree is numerical, I really have done pathetically little in the way of real data analysis and computing.

I didn't know about Anaconda for instance. I have only ever used simple python libraries like scipy and numpy, matplotlib. I was introduced to it today. But the thing I am struggling with most are things like: what folders does the (programming language? interface? Environment? I don't even know the right word to use here :() have access to? When I want to read/call a file, which folder does it have to be in? How can I check my path without exiting my working environment? etc. Today I wasted 2 hours simply because I called a file name by the name of a python module that I was later calling. I wish I could say t was 'by mistake'. In reality, I didn't think this would be a problem. The text file has an extension anyway?

As you can see these are small things that really require PROGRAMMING EXPERIENCE to be ok with. I don't think that cramming a python book will help.

I can tell that the other members of the team are getting annoyed. I don't ask too may questions (nor too little I think). But if I ask a question, it's often too basic. And if I don't I waste time.

The person who gave me a (long) skype interview- the head on my group- is returning tomorrow and we are meeting for the first time. I am quite embarrased, especially as I know they were considering other candidtaes.

Any advice on the best way to proceed, or how to learn what might be useful quickly, would be much appreciated.

Your problem doesn't seem to be programming per se, but rather how a programming language interacts with specific interfaces, environments, and libraries.

These are things you learn when you need them to. Trust me, you could be a computer science student and still not know any of this unless you had specifically worked with it before.

The good news is that it doesn't take that long to learn. You don't know how to use Python to interact with folders on a Windows 10 laptop? Google it, you'll figure it out in 1 minute. You don't know how to see the working directory? Google it, figure it out in a minute. And then just keep repeating that. Think up of questions that you think might be relevant to your current tasks, and find the answers.

Start now, and do it for some hours. You'll find that you'll get your head around it quickly. It really isn't that complicated, and you don't have to learn "how a computer thinks" (especially not in Python): you just have to memorize a few lines of code.

It's slightly different with a language like C++ which is more low-level: here, it can be helpful to know exactly what happens, but even still, if you can't understand it immediately, it's fine as long as you at least can memorize the code needed to accomplish the task.

Oh, and your co-workers being annoyed with an intern after 2 days: They're twats.


Is it wise to change my supervisor in the late stages of my PhD? I have been doing my PhD for 3 years, and my supervisor has been a real pain. This has made my life like a hell. His behavious includes yelling, bullying, and demeaning me. He has no regards for me and he does not keep the privacy about my work. Since, other people in our group are all from his country, I am the only one with whom he speaks/yells in English, so almost everybody at school is aware of the situation. His bad manners are not limited to this, it is much worse, but I don't want to write about him, rather I want to write about my problem.

I wanted to change my supervisor in earlier stages of my PhD, but the school suggested only one option whose research area was quite different from mine (We work on similar problems but completely different approaches). Also, because my stipend was sponsored by his grant, I had to apply for another scholarship. In the end, I decided to keep working with the same person (ignoring this bad behaviour) and avoid a new unknown situation.

Later in my PhD, I came to know other supervisors at school and started working with them. Though, I kept working with other professors, and I kept my main supervisor notified about what I am doing. He was also happy, because he could see that I am much more productive. However, his behaviour remained the same. Every time that I talk to him, he kills my motivation and self-confidence.

Now that I have finished 3 years, the scholarship has ran out and the supervisor failed to provide me with any financial support. Unlike him, other professors has been really supportive and provided me with some financial support. I still have a thesis to write and I really cannot tolerate his behaviour. I was wondering if changing my supervisor at this stage is a wise decision. What are the drawbacks of this decision?

There is no harm to change supervisor if he is not supportive nor encouraging nor friendly. Because in most of the cases, he is the only person whose recommendation you need to get your next position. So first of all, think how much of your present work can be added to your final thesis if you change a supervisor. If you can add more than 50-60% of your present work, then it would be a great decision to work with another good supervisor who is really supportive and interested to work with you. It is not a good idea to change a supervisor, if you plan to do everything from scratch again as it is already passed 3 years.


Finish incomplete degree before returning to school? I left a Masters' program (philosophy) nearly a decade ago, after completing all coursework (and doing well in it), but without having completed a thesis, partly because I wasn't in line with my department's approach, and partly because of a life change (having children).

Lately I've been considering pursuing an advanced degree in philosophy again.  Am I correct to assume I would need to start by finishing up my long delayed thesis?  It isn't the easiest thing to do outside of an academic program, but my old department has indicated they wouldn't be entirely closed to the possibility of me completing it, even at this late date.  Conversely, would it be possible for me to just start fresh, even with the incomplete degree on my record? (I'm still not much in line with my former department's approach.)

Note: There are some similar questions here, but I don't think they address the advisability of finishing the old degree first.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything that would stopping you from starting over fresh in this case - you can retake every course, restart your thesis, etc. if you so desire. (That being said - I'm not an administrator.)

That being said, it's also probably worth your time to get a copy of your old transcript (if possible) and talk to any prospective universities about transferring old credits. It may or may not be possible for every course, but I'd be surprised if absolutely zero of them transferred.

The advantages to this approach are numerous, to say the least:

It's most likely cheaper.
You'll almost certainly complete your degree faster.
You can skip ahead to the parts of the program that most interest you without having to worry about prereqs.

As always, however, you'll have to check with your institution of interest as to what their specific rules/procedures are. Beyond that, I imagine it's hard to say with any certainty what to expect.

That goes for returning to your old university too -- they'll know best what your first steps will be.


Is it wrong to leave Ph.D program after MS? I have applied to multiple graduate schools and have been offered two GTA positions. Both included full tuition waivers and similar work loads.

The primary difference is one is for a MS program and the other is for a Ph.D program. I applied to the Ph.D programs because the school's Master's program didn't come with a GTA opportunity.

I am not currently committed to the idea of pursuing a Ph.D. The way the program is set up, the course requirements for a MS and PhD are very similar with the primary difference being the depth of the research project. My plan was to evaluate my job prospects and the prospects of a PhD around the time I obtained my MS. I feel like I would have a better idea then about whether or not to pursue the PhD. I don't want to be dishonest but I don't want a career in academics and I suspect that a masters will be sufficient to get me where I want to go. Is it considered unethical to leave a PhD program after my masters under these circumstances?

If it makes a difference, I stated in my SOP that my goals were to obtain a job in an industry.

It is often frowned upon to leave a PhD program after you receive an MS, if this is your intention from the start, because the program would have admitted someone else who wanted a PhD had they known. However, if you don't tell anyone that this is your intention, there is no way for the program to know; PhD students drop out all the time after getting a masters (it is usually assumed that this was not their original intention). But ...

You are lucky enough to have been accepted to a fully funded masters program! If you think it is a good program, you should go there. Fully funded masters programs are quite rare in most fields. Do the right thing and allow the person who really wants a PhD to enter the PhD program. The PhD program, most likely, has offered you funding assuming you actually want a PhD.

Now if you had not been accepted to this fully funded masters program you would have had a tougher ethical question. For people not accepted to such a program the options are to (1) doing something that is morally questionable (at best) and going to the PhD program, (2) getting a job and waiting a few years until that employer funds a masters degree or (3) paying the money for a masters degree and potentially going into debt. That is a much harder question to answer, my inclination on that one is to go for option (2) if at all possible. But the fact that you were accepted to this funded masters program makes doing the right thing a much easier decision than for most people in similar situations. Take advantage of it!

Response to edits made to the question: Note that you can still evaluate whether you want to go on to a PhD from your separate fully funded MS program. After your MS, you might even get into a better PhD program and have a better idea about what PhD program/advisor would be best for your research interests. The fact that you "may" want a PhD in the future is actually a good reason to take the fully funded MS program. The opportunity costs of delaying the PhD by 1-2 years, by doing a fully funded masters is much less than the opportunity cost in delaying an industry job. .


Keeping in contact with professors after graduation? I just completed a CS undergraduate at University A (top 50 rank for CS), and am taking a gap year after graduating.  This past summer, I did an REU/summer research at University B (~top 15 rank for CS).  I hope to get recommendations from professors within both universities, and I have been thinking of asking if there are any opportunities to gain extra research experience within the 1.5 years of gap year that I will have, hopefully to gain another recommendation that can speak with regards to my research ability.

Has anyone kept in touch with professors you've known since graduating, and how do people generally do so?  I was thinking of asking one of the professors how I can best spend the gap year time that I have, but I was wondering if people maintain academic contacts like this after completing their undergraduate.

Yes, many people do this, and many professors appreciate it. Professors will often be interested in your successes, whether in academia or otherwise. Most will want to help you in your future, but if they have been reminded along the way then it is easier for them to comment and write letters. If you keep in contact with them they can also have better advice for you in questions such as you have.

It is especially useful to keep contact with anyone you considered a mentor and anyone you think is worth emulating in your own career. And a wide circle of contacts is useful for anyone, but especially for academics. Past professors can also put you in touch with people within their circle.

If you have been away for a while, unlike this particular case, it is useful to make a campus visit and look up professors who you think served you well. Thank them for what they did for you. Afterwards it is then easier to keep a conversation going.

But some very busy people and some others with whom you had very little contact might not respond. Don't take it personally.


Is it bad to ask the editor about the status of a submission on seeing that referees' reports were submitted a week ago? This question is about inquiring regarding paper status.

I had submitted a paper, and recently I just discovered that the manuscript tracking system shows that the editorial committee has received the referee's report. But, this status has remained for over a week and I still have not heard from the editor handling my paper.

Should I then email the editor as a reminder? Would this act instead be taken as urging?

Once reviewers reports have been returned, the editor has to assess the reviews in light of the paper and provide the author with indications on how to proceed. Exactly how this come through will differ between fields and editors. The main point, however, is that a certain amount of work is usually needed to process the reviews before passing the manuscript with comments back to the author. Since editors also handle, sometimes, quite large volumes of papers in parallel, your manuscript will be placed in a queue and the editor will likely take each manuscript in order. In addition, many, if not most, editors do their editing in parallel to ordinary faculty jobs which may at times further limit their available time. It is thus reasonable that this process may take several weeks. In "my" journal we as editors have three weeks for this process before being reminded by the electronic submission system that the manuscript is "due". We often make this deadline, but not always depending n workload.

So, one week is definitely too short a time to expect a response. Three weeks seems to be reasonable in my field but I would maybe allow even additional time to pass. It is probably good to talk to your peers who may have experience with the particular journal and also your field to get feedback on what is considered reasonable.

Added to clarify a comment: it is never "bad" to contact anyone, but it is only fair to allow a a "reasonable" (in the sense of the field and specific journal) amount of time to pass since the early contact will not likely yield anything productive. What, on the other hand, is bad is rather the attitude with which some contacts are made. Insights into appropriate time frames will help to keep communications as fruitful as possible.


I'm not comfortable with paying for a practicum that involves doing work for a company, that also pays the school. How to handle this? My department has the undergraduates and the graduate students do a practicum. The department tries to get a corporate "sponsor," who pays the department to solve a problem, like an Operations Research problem. If the department doesn't find a sponsor, they usually do a math competition or work some other problems.

We, the students, have to pay about $1,200 in tuition to take this course and do the work for the company.

I don't like the idea of paying my school to do work for a company that the company also pays the school for.

I'd be fine with this if I didn't have to pay tuition or if the class was an elective.

I doubt you will have much luck convincing the faculty to change their curriculum, which is subject to institutional vetting on dimensions that even graduate students may never hear about. However, they might be sympathetic enough to your concerns (expressed politely) to grant you the chance to work on a non-corporate problem. If not, expect to grin and bear it -- and do good enough work to put the experience on your resume/CV.


US grad school rankings based on graduate students' satisfaction Is there any US grad school ranking based on graduate students' satisfaction? (satisfaction while in grad school of after graduation)

If department-specific I am mostly interested in computer science departments.

You are likely to find there is no such ranking, and if it existed you should probably throw it away without looking at the results - for a rather simple reason! There exists no standard assessment of graduate student satisfaction that is widely applied (I think not even in relatively small regional areas, counties, states, etc), and there is a good chance it could vary wildly according to what time of year you applied it to students. Also, existing published results are not actual research and are biased advertising pretending to be serious academic inquiry.

Published Satisfaction Results Are Extremely Biased

Whenever you see analysis of satisfaction results and such, note how they are remarkably positive slanted? That's because this isn't so much research as it is advertising. I'm going to get a little soap-boxy now, because this bothers me. Take for example the MIT survey and it's results. Note the questions like this:

  Overall, how would you rate the quality of...

  Your academic experience at MIT?
  Poor, Fair, Good, Very Good,
  Excellent

Do you notice something funny with that scale? Of 5 choices, 3 are positive, one is neutral (fair), and one is negative. That perks my ears up, because a normal bi-polar Likert-style scale like this is "Very Poor, Poor, Neutral [Average/Undecided/etc], Good, Very Good". Why would they choose an unbalanced, biased scale like this which would be utterly unacceptable in any legitimate field of psychological assessment and research? The item, as posed, is designed to elicit positive responses.

Further, the vast majority of items are asked positively as in "how satisfied" compared to "how dissatisfied" - in general serious psychological assessments  should ask in both positive and negative ways to attempt to remove a positive-selection suggestion for the measure as a whole. That is, if the measure is designed to get at how people really think and feel, rather than being an exercise in "tell us how great we are so we can tell people how great you said we are".

If this were peer-reviewed research to be published in a reputable journal, it should be rejected. I suspect all institutions run similar games, so
I don't mean to pick on any one institution in particular - but I hope this helps to illustrate how little stock you should put in such reports. It's not science, it's not even good polling - you are reading an advertisement from the institution designed to make you want to buy the product they are selling.

Interpreting People Is Hard

As a matter of psychological assessment, how the question is worded and it's context and framing within the measure itself can strictly dominate how the question is answered, thus the need to compare tests that have been proven comparable. Due to advances in our understanding of people's ability to judge their own satisfaction or happiness, we now know also that how such a question is asked will change how a person evaluates the question. Asking someone "Overall, how satisfied are you with..." will tend to elicit answers from the autobiographical "remembering self", which is based upon a reliably biased self-conscious memory system. On the other hand asking "Lately (or over the last few months), how satisfied are you with..." - or even just generally asking about feelings, emotions, or 'happiness' - will actually elicit answers from the "experiencing self", and will instead be biased based upon things like emotional state and very recent experiences and sensations.

If the questions are worded to call upon the remembering self, with questions like "overall...", based upon the literature I would expect institutions with economically affluent student bodies to show much higher satisfaction ratings than institutions with a less wealthy student base - even if the less wealthy institution were actually a much better place  or at least no worse. Wealthy is positively correlated with this kind of satisfaction, and there is no limit - the more wealth, the greater the satisfaction overall. So a measure of graduate student satisfaction would actually be a proxy test for "where the rich kids go".

On the other hand if the question calls upon the experiencing self, I would expect wealth to have a much smaller correlation generally with the largest effect being seen by students living below the poverty line. So campuses who ensure - through admissions or financial aid - that students don't live below the poverty line would do better than others, regardless of academic quality generally.

Daniel Kahneman gave a nice TED talk about this subject, if you are interested in a nice overview of the topic.

The MIT results are a good example of this - the MIT results show that 88% of students were at least somewhat satisfied with the graduate school, while 81% were at least satisfied with life outside the institution. In other words, people rarely say "gee my life sure does suck in general, but MIT is great!" The two questions are likely to be so strongly correlated that they are actually asking the same ultimate question and respondents may be literally incapable of attributing their general satisfaction to any specific source. "When you're smiling, the whole world smiles with you."

What's worse, this problem would extend to both currently enrolled students and follow ups after graduate school. A useful study of such rating would have to get more than just the answer to satisfaction, and would have to also collect other student information and attempt to control for other known factors (marriage, having children and what age those children are, health, etc) before we could even usefully interpret what a statement like "88% of students say they are satisfied with us" means - is that good, or terrible, or meaningless? We just don't know.

MIT's results alone help to point out how odd the responses are, when you think about them - at least, they are odd if you think that people's answer to such questions would be overtly sensible and comparable. 78% said their academics were "very good or excellent" (not the same scale as satisfaction, note), 56% said the same of student life, yet 88% claimed to be satisfied with MIT - so 1 in 5 say "academics are blah", and nearly half say "student life is ehhh", but 88% say "yeah MIT is great". Well, that just seems odd. And 81% say they they are satisfied with their personal life, yet 35% were not satisfied with their ability to combine the needs of academic and family life - life inside and outside the institution is asked to be a reflection of the institution, but combining both is requesting the respondent to criticize themselves. That's an interesting reflection on the measure itself, and makes the results even harder to interpret.

Some Interesting Actual Research

Graduate student satisfaction is not without some serious research, however. The largest attempt at seriously talking with graduate students and getting their opinions and feelings seems to be the PhD Survey. It managed to get responses from other 4000 students from some 27+ institutions, with a rather high response rate (over 40% at least) on a 20 page survey. It probably has the capacity to be used to make some comparisons between institutions, potentially, but the N of such comparisons will drop remarkably and would require access to the underlying data - and appears to not be published.

The study is so interesting though that I think just trying to rank institutions would be a sad use of such interesting insights, and even at least making comparisons between institutions would still be hard for the previously mentioned readings.

That caveat aside, I highly recommend the reports from the linked site - they make a fascinating read for anyone considering - or enrolled in - a PhD program.

Bottom line (TLDR;)

Even if people were honestly reporting unbiased findings - and they generally aren't - and people's responses could be interpreted in a clear and sensible fashion - and they can't - you wouldn't be able to interpret the results in a useful way or be able to compare different institutions.

A 3rd party poll with peer-reviewed published results using an appropriate measure would be potentially really interesting - but sadly I don't think that exists today. But if it did I would love to read it!

Some interesting research does exist about graduate student satisfaction and program effectiveness, but I have not found any that attempts to rank institutions, and I would propose it might very well be because we don't know what to rank them on! As shown in the PhD Survey, graduate programs tend to be focused on preparing participants for jobs they are unlikely to hold and not preparing them for jobs they will have - yet the unemployment rate is low and other studies show clearly that average income is still well above bachelor degree holders generally.

The studies that are done also highlight the fact that each department - or at least major degree field - has some very different experiences. While one field might have 17% of graduates working in tenure track jobs, for instance, another has nearly half of graduates in such jobs; in some fields a minority (30-something percent) of participants are interested in tenure-track faculty jobs, while in others more than 80% are so interested.

As such it would be potentially possible to compare individual departments or degree fields across institutions, but making such comparisons among institutions would likely result in highly deceiving results that one should not attempt to interpret naively.


I keep forgetting what I've learned. Should I even consider pursuing advanced degree in math? This is my first time posting here, and I'm not very sure whether I should post this in Academia or Math stackexchange.

Currently I am a Mathematics/Economics major. I have been taking a lot of math courses and I really liked them. But usually after I was done with the final, I would forget most of the details. For example, I took two courses on mathematical analysis and I got A on both of them. But right now if someone asks me to do one of the homework problems, it's very likely that I would get stuck.

Right now I am taking differential geometry and there are lots of analysis and linear algebra things going on. Sometimes I try to prove a theorem, but then because I forgot some important theorems from linear algebra, I just couldn't prove that theorem of geometry.

My question is, if I'm about to pursue an advanced degree in mathematics, am I expected to know all the theorems and their detailed proofs? If so then probably I should really spend more time reviewing all the things that I've learnt. Or is it like I am expected to be good at one certain subject (like analysis)? Thank you very much.

Your question reminds me of this question on quora, which is about physics, but is pretty relevant to math as well. To summarize the many good answers there, no, you're not supposed to remember every single detail of everything you learned in college (ok, I guess there are people with eidetic memories, but not every person with an eidetic memory is in research, and not every successful person in research has an eidetic memory). If you learned something well, as in understood it and didn't just memorize it, it will come back to you when you need it (and it will take less time to understand it the next time).

In fact, preparing for the math subject GRE, which you should take if you are planning on graduate school in mathematics in the US, was really helpful for me to recall a lot of the information I had managed to forget as an undergraduate. It also made a lot of connections between fields clear to me. (Of course I have now forgotten it all again!)

Mostly, you should aim to remember the major theorems, and a general idea of how they are proved and how it fits into the 'big picture'. It is okay to not remember every single detail of every proof.

Usually one spends the first year of a PhD program in mathematics taking courses in a number of areas (algebra, analysis, and topology where I went to grad school), and then one is expected to pass qualifying exams based on those first-year courses -- the advanced students who already know the material for these courses coming in will likely get the opportunity to take the quals early. In some sense the idea here is that regardless of what your thesis eventually turns out to be, every math PhD student should know about, say, the fundamental group, or Grobner bases. After passing quals, one tends to become more and more specialized, usually this means we forget a lot of what the first-year courses covered, but again, since we learned it well enough to pass quals once, this means that in research you get a sneaking suspicion like 'this smells like covering spaces', and then you go back and remind yourself of all the stuff about covering spaces you had learned back in the day.

Anyway, the point is that at least at the beginning of a graduate program you are expected to learn a number of things in a number of areas, and most likely demonstrate this by passing qualifying exams of some form. Then as you get more specialized, many things get forgotten, but you usually remember enough to know where to look things up when needed.


What is the proper email etiquette when contacting potential supervisors on short notice? I am currently an MSc student in the UK and am hoping to apply for PhD at the same institution. I have found some potential supervisors but was wondering what is the correct way of wording my email given that I have only about 3 weeks till the application deadline and it's currently the holiday season (end of term). Some things to note: 1) my current field of study is immunology and I'm hoping to apply for a PhD in Medical Sciences, 2) it won't be possible to meet the supervisors in person since I'm back in the States for the holidays.

The first few tips is be cordial and be brief and to the point.

Make sure you use the correct title and spell the name correctly, in fact make sure the entire mail is spell checked and grammatically correct, anything else sends a bad signal.

Begin by stating your purpose for the mail and provide a short but detailed reason for why you approach the person in question. In your case you should also explain the "short notice" and excuse yourself very concisely for the inconvenience this could bring on.

Follow up by providing a brief statement of why you are interested in the subject but also the school and/or research group. Continue by describing your background and how you see your background being an asset in working in the PhD field.

All this should not be more than 2-3 paragraphs of maybe 5-10 sentences. A short e-mail which manages to say the essentials will be more likely to succeed than a long and very long-winded detailed account (that no-one would take the time to read).

The tone of the mail should be respectful but do not excuse yourself or play "underdog", be confident, brief and to the point. that will impress more.

Finally attach a CV and provide any MS thesis papers you may have.


How is it best to put an unfinished PhD if you want to continue in academia? I left a PhD position that I did for a year and then changed to a different area in psychology, the subject I do my PhD in. I am just wondering how to put that unfinished PhD on my CV. After my current PhD, I would like to continue on academia and apply for postdoc positions, maybe even in the same university in which I dropped out but on a different department. So I don't know how could I put that antecedent on my CV so that does not really affect me later on. Or would you think that with my achievements during my PhD the previous academic history remains irrelevant? I was thinking I could just leave it as one year of research internship, but I am not sure about this.

What about something like this?

Education

2016-present, PhD student, psychology

2015-2016, PhD student, underwater basket weaving

2012-2014, BSc, underwater basket weaving


Is it more common to refer to subplots as a "frame" or a "panel"? In scientific publications, when referring to a figure with multiple plots, often labeled using (a), (b), etc., is it more common to refer to each subplot as a "frame" or a "panel"?  Are both correct terms? Is one more correct or commonly used than the other?

I can't recall having seen the word frame or panel used to refer to a subplot. More commonly:

In the text, e.g.,

  Figure 1(a) shows [...]; figure 1(b), instead, shows [...].

In the caption, e.g.,

  Figure 1. Comparison among blah blah: (a) function f [...]; (b) function g [...]


Negotiating after receiving a lectureship offer in the UK In Germany and in the US, usually people apply for multiple positions then start to negotiate with the universities that give them offers. For example, if you're offered a position from A and B, you can tell A that you have another offer from B, and to choose A you'd need x and y and z because this would help you do the research you wish to do.

Is it the same in the in the UK? I've come across this post: How to negotiate the salary for a UK faculty position?
in which one of the responses suggests that it might be insulting to negotiate the salary. But I wonder if it is the same for lab space, travel funding, etc..

So how are things done in the UK after the person has been offered multiple lectureships? I am talking about entry level lectureship (i.e., not senior lecturer, not reader, but rather "lecturer").

This varies a lot by university. Basically, the more famous ones know they have to compete with the USA. But traditionally, if you didn't accept a position once offered you had to pay them back for the travel for your interview! And you were expected to decide on the day of the interview, after the offer! So there is not much culture around offers at most universities.

One thing I'd strongly advise if you come in with a lot of experience is that asking for higher rank is more important than asking for more money. You will get shunted up the pay scale regardless (there are annual "point increases" to some ceiling) and if anything if you argue your way up early you may get penalised later with fewer "discretionary points." Though getting a more advanced rank than was advertised for may well be impossible these days too, there is a lot of anti-corruption legislation in place that blocks creative hiring.

If you are applying for a chair, ignore the above. Ask for absolutely everything you can think of. You are in your one true time and position of power. Parking places, studentships, accommodation, whatever you can imagine. Often the department wants you to get great stuff and will help you with this. In fact, in general (with or without a chair) once you have an offer your Head of Department is your ally; they really want you to come and they are helping you get resource off of the centre. So talk to them and maybe a couple other senior faculty in your new department. Foreign faculty might be particularly useful, especially from the system with which you are familiar, since they can translate better.


What should I do to prepare to apply to a math PhD program? A little background information first. I am about a year out of my undergraduate program where I double majored in Computer Science and Mathematics. My main focus was computer science and the math major was mostly for fun. Since I wasn't considering grad school during undergrad I never partook in any REU programs as I was planning on working in the computer science field long term. However after about a year working as a software engineer I miss studying Mathematics and am not loving my work as much as I thought I would. So now I am looking into applying for a PhD program not just because I am not loving my job but because of my love of Math. My love of Math is what led me to study Computer Science in the first place. The earliest would be starting in Fall 2020 but I think Fall 2021 might be more reasonable given the timeline.

This is where the bulk of my question comes in. Since I double majored, I didn't get to take as many math courses and so I have holes in my education such as Differential Equations and Analysis. I do have textbooks on these subjects that I have begun studying with but how can I show programs I apply to that I have the knowledge in these areas? Will not taking these classes affect my chances to get accepted? I should mention that I did take courses in Stats, Abstract Algebra, Number Theory, Combinatorics and Linear Algebra. My overall GPA was a 3.5 and I did well in most of my classes except for Abstract Algebra and Number Theory where I struggled more in, but I do have a reason for that as I was taking three Upper Level Computer Science classes at the same time as Abstract Algebra and then that led to struggling in Number Theory due to lack of understanding of some of the basics. Are there any other tips that you could give me to help improve my attractiveness to a program?

(US-specific) The REUs don't matter much for admission. The problem with not having analysis at all on your transcript is that most programs use it as a litmus test for whether you are able to write proofs and handle graduate coursework. The fact that your weaker courses were number theory and abstract algebra is also going to raise red flags in that regard.

There might be programs that would be willing to take you as an MS so that you could remediate, but probably the best course of action is to just register for a year as a post-bac or nonmatric somewhere that offers upper-div math courses.


When is it appropriate to ask for spousal hire? I got a tenure-track academic offer in the US.
However, I recently found out that in the US there is this concept of spousal hire, that I can use. I saw several questions related to this but no one is addressing what it is and how it is appropriate to negotiate a spousal hire. The spouse would work in a non-academic job.
Based on the current covid situation and economic crisis, are universities in need of people from the IT management and programming sector? How does a non-academic hire and a non-academic job in the IT field at a university in the US look like in the Tier 2 group?

When is it appropriate to ask?  In negotiation, you can ask for anything that's legal at any time.  Spousal hires are, as far as I know, always legal in the US.  In some countries it is not legal, oddly.
It used to be that an accomplished academic could demand a spousal hire as a condition of employment.  Don't try that now.  US universities laid of 650,000 people this year.  Most universities don't have the ability to meet any demands at all.  Under current conditions, your negotiation leverage is extremely limited, so I suggest you ask for something you are more likely to get, like a small pay increase.
Do universities need IT managers?  They probably do.  Many universities will pay their managers less than the private sector, resulting in a shortage of managers.  Since, as an IT manager, your spouse can work remotely, it might be smarter to look for work outside the university.


About career break in CV I am going to apply for a postdoc position and there is an item about career break.
Having finished my Master degree, I got a position titles Director of Research in a College for about 6 years. In the meanwhile, I was visiting lecturer for some courses for different academic levels such as sub-bachelor, Bachelor students. After that experience I was involved in a research project as an assistant professor, then after 6 months  I commenced my Ph.D studies. I do not know whether the years before stating Ph.D ( 6 years as lecturer and director of research) is career break or not?

I suspect that the intent of the question is to have you explain things that you did completely unrelated to your career and to your field. As such, the things you describe don't seem to qualify. I don't think they are necessarily asking about breaks in your academic progress (time between degrees), but they might be interested in that.

But the sorts of things you did prior to the doctorate would seem, to me, to be supportive of your case for the position and so should be mentioned somehow in your CV whether in this "section" or just in a narrative.

Some people need to take a career break to care for an ailing parent or child, for example, or because they are in jail (oops). In such breaks it may be impossible to do much professionally. Those need to be explained if they last more than a few months.


How can I begin to gain credibility within the scientific community without a degree? I'm working on a fairly extensive multidisciplinary research project - something a bit outside the purview of what would even be difficult for a respected field researcher to publish.

That being said, I am quite aware of my own biases, and I am double and triple checking my objectivity on a regular basis.

However - without a degree, I've found it extremely difficult to get anybody to simply review the work. The immediate response is to totally shut down.

What are some good steps to take? Even if it takes some time, I'm fine with that.

I just need to gain enough credibility to simply get a few reviews.

I suggest that you read some papers related to what you are working on to see how your work compares. Try to develop a writing style that somewhat matches what you read.

Then, if you think your work is ready, submit it to a journal, such as the ones you've been reading. You will get some feedback. If the work clearly doesn't measure up, the feedback will be quick. But if it is more or less appropriate, you will get, after a while, some detailed comments on the work, and perhaps how you might improve it.

But the path to credibility runs through publications. The degree itself is less important other than to help an editor make a quick judgement.


How can I export my Google Scholar Library as a BibTeX format? In the My Library of Google Scholar, is there a way to export all of the citations, whether to BibTex or something similar?

As of August 31, 2016, this functionality has been added! See this blog post: https://googlescholar.blogspot.com/2016/08/organizing-your-scholar-library.html


Cite only by DOI in rebuttal I have to write a rebuttal for a machine learning conference in which I included a lot of new references (to prove broad interest). The rebuttal has a page limit of one, and my reference list is too long for that. Is it ok to cite the paper by only using the DOI in the rebuttal, if I cite the works in full in the actual submission in the final version?

Make it easy for your reviewers to get what you are saying. Just a DOI is really hard for a reviewer because they have to walk to the computer, look up the DOI, and all that.

If you don't want to provide the full reference, just say "see Schneider et al., cited in the paper". That way, there is an easy place to go to to find the full title and reference.


"Be a small fish in a sea, or a big one in a pond" I graduated (BSc and MSc) from the top university in my country and I'm currently a PhD candidate on another strong university. I expect to defend my thesis in a few months. After that, I plan to stay in academia pursuing a tenure track, and at both mentioned universities I can get a decent position (I've managed to include a number of my undergrad professors in my grad studies or at least collaborate with them at some point, mostly because of my supervisor). However, my hometown is also an university town, and I could certainly apply for a position there, but the uni there lacks the prestige and esteem of the former two.
Through my qualifications, I'm confident that I would advance faster through the academic ranks, contribute to the society in my hometown and introduce some changes to the faculty there. Another obvious big advantage is that I would be residing at my hometown.
On the other hand, the staff and research are much better in the former ones.

My supervisor suggests that it would probably be better for me to be at home, since I think about it in the first place, given that, by keeping and broadening my connections I would experience no significant penalty, at the same time the local academic society would benefit through my ideas.

So should I apply for a position in my home town, where I would be a big fish in a pond, or should I apply at the other universities, where I might be more like a small fish in the sea?

Apply for, and fully investigate, all such possibilities. But I would go even farther: 3 places is not nearly enough to apply to, especially if you are interested primarily in tenured track positions.

Deciding which job you want to take before you've actually been offered one is perfectly natural, and is a perfectly terrible practice! It so often leads to disappointment, missed opportunities, and general dissatisfaction.

Now would be the time to expand your horizons! Find new institutions you might like and apply to them; put the word out about your availability through advisors, fellow researchers, friends of friends in academia, etc.

The chance of getting any one position is terribly unflattering, regardless of your background or standing. If you can find a dozen places that you'd be happy to go to work - relative preferences for one over the other not withstanding - then your chance of getting something you want improves remarkably. Don't put yourself in the position of being disappointed because you had to "settle for your last choice", instead of "winning one of your top 3 picks" just because you didn't look into more possibilities. (This is advice I have to give myself over, and over, and over again.)


How to get specific guidance from busy advisor? I need to graduate this semester, my master's project is far behind schedule, and I'm not getting the guidance I want from my advisor. How can I work with him to handle this productively?

I have to defend my thesis in two months because my funding will be gone after this semester. I have zero data because my project is computer-based and involves an initial stage of bringing a simulation into equilibrium, after which we can get usable results. I've been working on this preliminary phase since June and it's still far from our "usable" threshold. In the meantime, I've been working on everything I can do without final data (practicing trial analyses, writing a literature review and methods section).

I'm getting only vague guidance from my advisor, who is admittedly very busy. He has a large research group, administrative responsibilities and outside collaborations, so I certainly understand that my project can't be his first priority. He told me that I have to graduate this semester. I've kept him updated about the project status and my current steps, and he says that is all "fine" and I'm doing the right things, but that it's impossible to predict when the simulation might work, and "that's just how research is." I've expressed my concerns more than once, and he's typically responded by telling me not to "over-think things" and not to "freak out." At our most recent meeting, I said that I doubt the simulation will be working in the next few weeks and asked what I should do in that case--he said "you still have two months, we'll just have to see what happens."

My advisor is well-established and respected in his field. He has a strong track record of graduating students, and he's certainly more experienced and knows much more about research than I do. I should trust him when he says everything is fine, but it doesn't seem fine to me. I can't realistically expect everything to start working in the next few weeks when I've made insufficient progress for eight months so far. I have no backup plan for what to do without the data.

How can I express my concerns so that my advisor will listen? How can I do better at getting specific guidance?

Edit to update:
I did reach out to other students and postdocs for help on the technical issues, and I've been doing that since June as well.

Edit for how it all turned out:
I talked again with some other students, and came up with a new strategy. My advisor was a little skeptical but agreed we could try it. Luckily the new approach turned out much better. He is still too busy to give the project much attention, but as long as I can finish the entire project and write up everything in a month (no stress, right??) I should be fine!

Your advisor will not solve your problem - at least it is very unlikely! Digging very deep in the specifics of such a simulation is something a person in such a position just don't have the time to - and sometimes even not the detailed knowledge, e.g. regarding frameworks used, implementation details etc.!

One question you should adress is: Will (s)he accept negative results? If you can describe all steps you did, explain why things did not work as planned, do you still have a chance for a good grade? If "yes", then really everything is fine, you "just" have to work hard and document all your attempts.

If "no", you should try to get help from a graduate student or post-doc working in a similar field. But still keep your advisor updated about everything you do.


Worth to fight examination office for English transcript of records? I am finishing up my B. Sc. degree and thought it would be nice to have a fully English transcript of records (ToR). Although my university already offers an English version, the translations are picked from what lectureres have entered into the database. Consequently, some terms are missing. For example it shows:

  Minor subject: Mathematics

  Functional Analysis
  Klausur: Funktionalanalysis(*)
  Übungsleistung: Funktionalanalysis(*)

  (*) denotes that English translations are missing

You see that it is even inconsistently translated. The overall second bullet point is in English while the "sub bullet points" for the exam ("Klausur") and the tutorials ("Übungsleistung") are in German.

How important is it to have a fully translated ToR for B.Sc. for applying internationally?

The question "Sending non-fully translated academic transcripts for US PhD admissions" is related, although currently my ToR is not yet printed. The exam regulations are in my favor. They state that I have the right to request an English copy. However, I have been told that people responsible for fulfilling them are not fond of translations.

Is it important enough to make the examination office not like me anymore?

Especially, if I stay for my M. Sc. at the same university.

How important is it to have a fully translated ToR for B.Sc. for applying internationally?

For most English-speaking universities, it is essential to have translations to English.

  Is it important enough to make the examination office not like me anymore?

In my opinion, it is fine to ask them to follow university regulations, even if they do not like it.  So, yes.


How to get letter of recommendation from current advisor if transferring PhD to another university for family reasons? I've been in engineering PhD for 6 months and now considering transferring to another university. The reason is not academic, but family -- I'm in a long distance relationship with my boyfriend. We're both serious about this relationship and plan to get married. However if I keep doing my PhD in my current university, we'll be separated for many years

I am considering transferring my PhD to university closer to him. My questions are:

Should I contact the potential future advisor first before telling my boss I'm leaving?
When should I talk to current advisor and how (focus on my family reason?)
Is it possible to get his letter of recommendation, or I'll screw up this relationship entirely?
will it possible to transfer to an university better than my current one? (honestly getting to a higher place is not my purpose, believe or not, but around my BF's place are almost all very good universities (1 tier higher than my current one), which actually refused me when I applied them last time. So I'm very concerned if I could be able to enter them now)

One thing that comfort me is that because I work hard, my current advisor seems have good impression on me. But I don't know whether this will help. If anyone have any ideas, would you share your suggestion?

If your advisor is generally an emotionally sane person, he should be able to understand your position. If your advisor is not, you're better off finding out as early as possible, and then to run.

That said, the right time to talk to your supervisor is right now, for two primary reasons:

As you're working in a lab, it is quite likely that your supervisor would want to hire a replacement for you, which takes time.
Your supervisor may have contacts to the relevant universities, and be able to help you moving.

When it comes to what to talk about, there are two important aspects besides your wish to be closer to your family:

You'll want to reassure him that you are not leaving unfinished things around. Wrap up your experiments as far as possible before you leave, and be available to work on manuscripts after you're gone, too.
Do you plan to take your thesis topic with you? If so, you probably should discuss intellectual ownership with your advisor. Even if you feel it was your idea, he may disagree.

Finally, is there any risk that your current lab has some "secret techniques" that you'd "hand over" to the competition? If so, try to address potential concerns.


How do I explain my failed career decision to a potential postdoctoral/academic manager/employer, when I'm almost seven years past my PhD? First a bit of chronological background:
PhD in pure math (2 publications, 1 preprint), 1 year of postdoc in pure math (unproductive) 2 years of postdoc in computational medical imaging (1 publication each, and one of these postdocs were in application of differential geometry and machine learning for medical imaging), 1 year of postdoc in computer vision (unproductive, as I was partially spending my time to move to industry - I accept the blame here, mostly as a data scientist or machine learning researcher), 2 years of failed industry experience (4 jobs, all permanent, all let go within the first 4-5 months in the respective trial periods). So in essence, 4 years of postdoc, partially productive and 2 years of failed industry experience after PhD.
What's going on now:
I've a strong realization that the traditional industrial positions are not from me, and I'm planning to go back to academia, as well as on my way to obtain my freelance status, so I'd be able to consult on the side. But since I worked 2 years in industry immediate prior, I feel I need to get a long (at least a year and a half) project to get back to the full research mode, find a line of projects and use that to get a permanent position. These projects wouldn't be in pure math, but rather in theoretical machine learning, statistics or applications of differential geometry/topology to solve data analysis problem.
Immediate next - a potential answer to a question I might be facing during my next hiring:
I'll be having a few interviews, and I'm sure some postdoctoral advisors would ask me why I'm not looking for a permanent position, since I'm already 6 years past my PhD. My honest answer would be: "Initially I thought that the academia wasn't for me, that the stakes of getting a permanent position are pretty low, and even then, I thought it wasn't rewarding enough, me being based in Europe and not planning to move. So I wanted to move to industry but in R&D and I thought I'd be doing almost fundamental research; but I was wrong - the industry mindset and environment I found to be very different than the academic one, and hence I'm realizing my mistake only now, and trace my way back into academia."
My question(s):
But if I do give that honest answer as I wrote above, will it hurt my chance to get into postdoc positions that I'd want to get into? I don't want to paint a wrong image of myself to my future academic employers, but I fear that if I tell them that I moved into industry as I thought I wasn't good enough for academia and it was not rewarding enough, then my potential academic employers might think that I'm coming back to academia as a second choice and not out of passion. But the thing is that I had to go through a two year period of self-realization, and yes I did make a career mistake, which I'm planning to rectify. So how do I convey this truth in a manner that doesn't make me look like I wanted to run away from fundamental research (in fact I didn't, I planned to do it, but outside the scope of academia, which did fail and seemed almost non-existent) and work against me in an academic hiring process?
If you want more details about the reasons for being let go:
They're mentioned as comments to the answer by @jerlich.

I think the answer you have now isn't so bad. But you could be painting yourself in better light. Rather than saying jobs in academia in the pay range and stability you aspired to were too competitive, say you preferred the higher pay and stability you could access in industry. It's the same sentiment but doesn't point to you somehow failing. Many good people get bad luck and don't make it to tenure, and we all know industry offers a wider range of people a better material life in many aspects.
So for example I would tweak this to:
"Initially I wanted to move into industry for (better reasons to reference: higher pay and a more stable lifestyle, choosing where you get to live, etc). So I moved to industry. In R&D and I thought I'd be doing almost fundamental research; but I was wrong - the industry mindset and environment I found to be very different than the academic one, and hence I'm realizing my mistake only now, and trace my way back into academia."
And then maybe say that you've realized it's important to you to be doing fundamental research, so important that the pros of getting back on the academic track now outweigh the cons for you.
Caveat: I'm not in mathematics but in my field your publication record doesn't justify looking for a permanent position, and that would be immediately known to people interviewing you for a postdoc. They may instead phrase this question more like "what have you been up to?" Or maybe even directly ask, "why did you leave industry?"


Is it good to compare universities in motivation letter for student visa? I'm a computer science student from Iran. I'm applying for student visa to study master in Germany. Germany's embassy requires students to write a motivation letter in visa process.

  For the summer semester 2016 I have received admission from TU
  Darmstadt, TU Stuttgart and university of Freiburg. Also I have been
  rejected from TU Dresden. For the reason of course contents, I have
  chosen to study in TU Darmstadt.

I have written above paragraph in my motivation letter. Is this considered negative to write such things (compare universities or list my admission results)?

If I were you, I would just write why I want to study at TU Darmstadt. Have a look at their web pages, name a few courses you find interesting and a few professors you'd like to study with. I think that may be sufficient.


What are my obligations towards my adviser after the defense, revisions, and all forms signing is done? Just few days ago, I completed all requirements for the degree, all is set and done. I am organizing a workshop with my adviser to be held in few months. Right now, we are reviewing the submissions. My adviser insists that I am not qualified to review the papers because he designated me as a student organizer and my degree completion does not change that. But he expects me to write the reviews that were assigned to him! On top of that, he cannot cover my travel expenses for the workshop, because of the University policy not to pay expenses for the former students. So, I'm on my own to find the travel funding - I will need to ask my employer for funding.

What bothers me is that when convenient, I'm treated as a student (to write the reviews), but when not convenient, I am treated as a former student (funding the travel expenses). What should I do? I talked to him twice now, and I still getting emails asking when the reviews will done.

Is this a common practice? Am I out of the line to question it? And what does this say for our future relationship working independently in the same field.

I should say that I have a job and funding lined up (funding starts after the workshop). So, I don't need a letter of recommendation from my adviser, but staying on good terms would be beneficial. On the other hand, my adviser was hoping that I could fund some of his students over the next year with the funding I received.

Thank you!

Other cultures may have different approaches to the ethics of this, but I think it's pretty out of line for the US.

I would recommend standing by your commitment to help organize the workshop, but I would not do your former advisor's reviewing for him. You've graduated, you're a fully-fledged member of the doctoral community.

Pete's comment is pretty spot on. Be as nice and cordial as possible, but be firm in your refusal to do his work for him.


Serving sweets at an oral qualifying exam What are your opinions on serving sweets at an oral exam. The only people attending would be the exam committee members.

For my master's degree I was at a school where it was customary for everyone to bring cookies and coffee at oral exams or presentations. However, now I'm at a school where generally nothing is served at seminars unless the speaker is visiting from another university.

My lab-mates mostly only brought some bottled water to the exam for the committee members. One, also made a pot of coffee and brought it to the exam.

My exam will be later in the afternoon and I know that two of my committee members will have been in another exam prior to the start of mine. I feel like it would be nice if I brought a box of candy or something along with water and maybe coffee for refreshment. I'm a little worried about them getting impatient or in a bad mood as the exam draws on. One of my lab-mates however thinks that I would be taking it too far and I may offend the committee members.

What are your thoughts?

EDIT: this was marked as a possible duplicate. I believe it is different because the other question was referring to a defense where anyone could attend. Providing refreshments in such a case could be seen as an attempt to get more people to attend. In my case no one was allowed to attend and I was afraid that a committee member could see this as me giving "gifts" in hopes of swaying them.

Over here in the UK, we do not provide anything as a candidate, if necessary the research group's secretary knows what to do. Anyhow, I would agree with your friend, I would provide only water, and then if applicable I would ask a senior lecturer (such as your supervisor or head of group) in the research group to invite the examiner(s) for tea/coffee/beer and/or lunch.


What is the role of a University Archivist I am wanting to know roughly what it is a university archivist does,
and what sorts of documents are in the collections they manage.

An acceptable answer would be "It varies wildly from institution to institution",
if indeed that is the case.
On the other hand, perhaps it is a very consistent position, with well understood tasks and duties.

In general, an archivist is someone who preserves records and artifacts of the university's historical record. The part that probably varies from institution to institution is which objects are retained.

For instance, some might keep minutes of board of trustee meetings, letters to the president or chancellor, and other records, while others may choose not do so.

As a further example, the Yale University archivist has the following responsibilities:

Works with the schools, departments, and offices of the university to appraise the records that they create in the course of their activities and to select those that need to be preserved for future use;
Works with students, alumni, faculty, and friends of the university to collect papers, graphic materials, audio recordings, and objects that document Yale life and history;
Promotes, supports, and sponsors programs and activities that contribute to accessible information, interpretations, and research on Yale history.


How do I select a graduate program? I've applied to several graduate (MSc) programs overseas, and I've received several acceptance letters. Now I have the problem to select one of those programs. How should I do it? What should I look into each program?

No program offers funding, and some programs are elegible for a local scholarship.
I can fund some programs with my own money.

May I ask why you chose an MSc instead of a PhD? What is your career goal? I don't mean to imply one is better than the other. If you are going to spend a lot of money and time, it should be well-spent.

In some places, like the UK, not much more time is needed to get a PhD beyond an MSc. In the U.S., PhD's in the sciences are usually completely funded.  Per badp this seems not to be the case in Italy.

For either an MSc or PHD I suggest looking at the career paths of former graduates of that lab. This is something I wish someone had told me when I entered my lab. The charisma of the lab boss or excellence of the equipment are meaningless if, after 2-3 years, you can't move on as you hoped. Trace the career path of the last few graduates - from MSc all the way to how many wanted to and got faculty positions and how long it took them. In my experience what you do is much less important that who you know, which comes from getting into the right environment.


Who to ask about the update after a campus interview. I was in contract with the search committee after a campus interview. A week or two after the campus interview, the search committee chair told me that if I don't have a higher salary expectation, there is a good chance that I will be offered the position given the university is a state university. She also told me that good news coming soon.

Four weeks have gone, nothing heard from them. I texted the Chair. In reply, she told me that she wrote a strong recommendation letter to Dean pushing me the first place. Now she is waiting on deans decision.

Six week later, she told me that they did not heard anything from the Dean. They are waiting on University's action.

It's now seven week? Can anyone infer what is going on there? Is there anyone encounter the same situation? Thanks.

Most academic departments can't actually make hires for their university without higher university approval. This is because faculty hires are a long-term obligation for the university. Typically, it is a commitment of several years, at least until you get a third-year or tenure review.

Therefore, the process is that the university allocates the department a "line" which means they have permission to search for a candidate. Then the department interviews and chooses candidates. The final step is for the university to formally offer the position. However, if the university's priorities or budget changes during the hiring process, the department can lose its "line." This happened to some U.S. state universities recently because state legislatures cut budgets and made hiring "freezes" necessary.

What seems to be happening in your case is that the department has chosen you but the university is dragging its feet on making the decision final. This is likely because they are not sure of their budget or some other aspect that is out of your control. It is possible that the chair can continue to push for your candidacy a bit harder (making the case that even if some departments lose their line, her department should not), but there is little that you can do about this situation. I would continue to look for other positions.

In terms of who to ask, stay in contact with the chair as best you can, stressing your continued interest in the position.


What does "ad indicem" mean in a citation? I've seen this latin term in footnotes several times and still don't know the meaning of it. It is usually used like this:

[34] About this, see John Smith 2003, ad indicem.

or like this:

[65] Jane Smith 2006, 98-101, and ad indicem.

What does it mean? Does it mean "there are too many pages in this book related to this topic. I don't want to list them all. Just go check the index yourself"?

To be short, yes.

According to the post in English.SE, it means 'see the index'. It basically tells you to refer the index section and look for the topic that is discussed in the context where it is cited.

Note: This question was asked in both Academia.SE and English.SE to benefit both communities as there isn't a single standard dictionary that could be found online to define this term. Credits go to the original answer in English.SE for answering my post.


Expectations for Undergraduate Research This summer I have arranged to do research under the advisement of one of the professors at my university in the field of Computer Science. I am still and undergraduate, looking to go into graduate school (eventually to PhD) and would like to test out if research is for me.

My overall question is "What are the expectations of undergraduate research?" What constitutes a success? I realize that I'm most probably not going to make some insane breakthrough and become famous. The problem that he has said that we are going to be working on is a very important problem, with many applications. Finding an efficient algorithm for this problem would be very huge for the field. Since many people have been working on it over the years, it's obviously not an easy problem, otherwise someone would have solved it already.

What should I expect? If (when) I don't find this "magical" algorithm what kind of things could I pull out of this to make it a "successful" research endeavor?

Having been, worked with, and supervised a number of undergraduate researchers in my time, a few thoughts:

If people have been working on a problem for years, it means there are pieces of that problem to work on. There is often a perception, I find, with new researchers, that the process of doing research is an on/off switch...that there is nothing...nothing...nothing...BAM! Breakthrough.

For most research, this isn't the case. Particularly good undergraduate projects are pieces of a larger whole, and generally are accomplishable over the course of a summer. Testing a particular hypothesis. Working on the implementation of the algorithm on a new platform/language, etc. Applying existing tools to new data or areas as a proof of concept. Testing the sensitivity of the results of a tool to some of the parameters used for it.

Undergraduate research, to be "successful", should produce a project the undergraduate can take ownership of (i.e. not just "Write the code one of my postdocs can't be bothered to) and helps move the lab's research agenda forward, but it's not necessarily supposed to produce flashy standalone results or major breakthroughs.


Is this a case of data manipulation? What should I do if this is the case? I come across this recent paper  "Discriminating Traces with Time", which proposed a program analysis technique based on machine learning, with application to security (side-channel attack). Some information:

This paper was published in TACAS 2017, which is a very good conference in program analysis, but most (if not all) people have no idea about security or machine learning.
The second and third authors are professors with strong publication records in program analysis, but I couldn't find a single paper of theirs related to machine learning before this one. So I guess this is all the work of the first author, who is a PhD student.

There are 3 reasons I think this is research misconduct:

1) In page 14, "Threats to Validity.", it was written as the following:

  Clearly,  the  most  significant  threat  to  validity  is  whether
  these programs  are  representative  of  other  applications.  To
  mitigate,  we  considered programs not created by us nor known to us
  prior to this study.

This is a lie.

In the same page, immediately previous this paragraph is the discussion about the case study TextCrunchr. The authors provides 4 types of text inputs, and one of the four, reversed-shuffled arrays of characters, is the one that lead to worst-case behavior that the tool needs to detect. They even admitted that:

  Although the input provided to Discriminer for analyzing TextCrunchr
  include carefully crafted inputs

How did they craft the input if they hadn't known the program prior to that study? By their own words, this is the most significant threat to validity. So the conclusion is this is not a valid method?

2) The experiments are inadequate.

The TextCrunchr case study above was said to be taken from a DARPA program. Searching with keywords "DARPA" and "TextCrunchr" leads me to another paper which demonstrated on exactly the same case study.

Symbolic Complexity Analysis Using Context-Preserving Histories. ICST 2017.

However, that paper used some sophisticated analysis to derive the inputs with reversed-shuffled arrays of characters instead of assuming they are given.

Another case study from DARPA discussed in the paper is SnapBuddy. The authors claimed that they discovered a vulnerability with their tool at the beginning of page 14.

  ...What leaks is thus the number of 1s in the private key.

I was surprised. This case study is about modular exponentiation (modpow). It is well-known for decades that several implementations of modpow have timing channel that leaks all the private key. While in this case study, knowing the number of 1s is practically useless. So again I searched for DARPA and SnapBuddy, and managed to find the source code of this case study in the appendix of another paper.

This confirmed my guess, there is a vulnerability in the method  standardMultiply, which can leak all the private key. The authors of the machine learning paper had fail to recognize.

So the tool is useless even with crafted inputs.

3) This point may be controversial. I don't think this approach will ever work in practice. For example, the TextCrunchr takes text as input. So assuming all the text are ASCII, and only has 11 characters, enough to store "HelloWorld!". The state space is 2^88. How do sampling work in this input space? The encryption in SnapBuddy is more than 1500 bytes, i.e. more than 2^1500 in the input space.

Amazingly, the authors managed to discovered the vulnerability by sampling a couple of thousands. How can I believe their results?

With the facts I gave above, is this the case of data manipulation? What should I do?

To be honest, I'm very upset that a paper with this quality could get into TACAS.

To address one of your points:

  How did they craft the input if they hadn't known the program prior to that study? By their own words, this is the most significant threat to validity. So the conclusion is this is not a valid method?

They said "Prior to the Study" - meaning before this research began. Essentially, that they weren't using a set of fixed tools that they had on hand (and thus could presumably design something to be specifically robust to). That meant they went out and found something new - and then used it. Using it can include things like crafting the input.

Your other objections are in the realm of "Do I think this is a good paper or not?" not research misconduct or data manipulation.


E-mailing a paper under review to a prospective PhD advisor; a co-author wants all co-authors to be CC-ed. Is this OK? So I am stuck in a very weird situation. I am a prospective PhD student, and I emailed a supervisor that works in a field of research very close to mine, and is very successful.
He replied stating that he is interested to have me in his team, and requested my papers. One of my papers is under review.
I asked my co-author which is my advisor for a permission, and she said it is okay to send the papers as long as I cc all co-authors in the email.
I feel like this is not a nice way of emailing a distinguished professor, especially that I do not understand the point of ccing the co-authors. I might offend the professor, which I do not want to happen.
I appreciate the advice.

I asked my co-author which is my advisor for a permission

Here a better move would have been that of asking all your coauthors for permission.
I'd now:

Inform all your coauthors, cc'ing your advisor, asking if they are OK with that.
Inform your advisor that you would not feel comfortable in cc'ing the coauthors in the discussion with the prospective supervisor.
Write to the prospective supervisor without further copying your coauthors. At most, if your current advisor insists with that, use a blind cc.


Mature PhD Project Application - How are these received? I guess this is a question to group leaders and those who have some influence on what PhD students join their group. Essentially - I want to know your thoughts if someone like me applied to your PhD project.

At 20 I graduated with a 2:1 BSc in Human Biology from a top 50 Uni, then achieved a Merit MRes in Functional Genomics from a top 10 Uni. I pretty much went straight into industry working on lentiviral vectors for gene therapy treatments; however, after three months I was running low on money, having a pretty hard time at home and this all affected my work so left the company after 3 months.

In the economic downturn I had more trouble getting jobs and money so went did waitering and sports coaching to get by. For the last 3 years I've been in international IT sales and have picked up lots of skills - sales, communicating, negotiating, presenting, strategy, training, motivating and leading teams. I've also earned a fair amount of money and I'm in a pretty safe position financially to the point where I could not earn anything for 1-2 years before I hit zero.

At this stage in my life (27) I'm looking back at research and really want to give it a go, but have no idea whether I'd get accepted onto a PhD course. At my old University there is a project based on baculovirus vectors that's right up my street.

I'm definitely applying for it but wanted to understand how an application from a 27 year old with this history might be received. Essentially - what positives and negatives can you see from a mature application?

I feel like I have a good chance. I've got (old) experience in a related field; I'm more mature than a freshly graduated student; I have a lot of skill useful for promoting the groups work and teaching classes; and I'm used to working long hours in a results driven environment, dealing with rejection but making things happen - especially racking through large amounts of work based on personal plans and goals. This is all in a legitimate way rather than a lip-service way.

I'm hoping I can address any negatives people come up with and enhance the positives!

Cheers!

I can't speak for any PhD program other than my own, but can I just say that I have a really hard time thinking of 27 as 'mature'?  FWIW, I didn't even get a BS until my mid-30s, and spent enough years in industry to become financially independent before pursuing a PhD.  Had no problems whatsoever* getting into the program.

(*But I should probably note that this is at the state university branch near where I live: getting into e.g. Stanford or CalTech might be a different story.)

While I'm not a lawyer by any stretch of the imagination, I think it likely that (in the US, anyway) it would actually be illegal to ask a candidate's age.  WRT to the particular project, I'd suggest getting to know people on the project.  Convincing the project director that you have something to contribute certainly can't hurt your chances of admission.  And if you're asked why the gap period, just state that you went into industry in order to make some money, rather than racking up more student loan debt.


Using initials to promote gender neutrality when publishing as a female? As I work my way through my academic career (second-year PhD student), I am confronted with many stats and instances of gender bias in the publishing process (see references below). Of course for double-blind peer reviews, this is not an issue, but for others it may be. I’ve also seen stats that indicate that female first-authored papers receive fewer citations, even after taking into account the historical gender lag of fewer female publications.

So the question I’ve been pondering is: Should I use my initials (first and middle) when submitting papers as an attempt to introduce gender neutrality into my work? I am lucky that I have a relatively unique last name (nothing like Smith) so I’m not very worried about identity.

Is this a good idea? Are there any further pros and cons I may not have considered?

References

Michał Krawczyk and Magdalena Smyk – Author׳s gender affects rating of academic articles: Evidence from an incentivized, deception-free laboratory experiment
Erin Hengel – Publishing while Female. Are women held to higher standards? Evidence from peer review
Rachael Pells – Understanding the Extent of Gender Gap in Citations

If you feel at risk in your profession for such things, then, certainly, establish a professional persona for yourself that will help assure fairness. Whether it is necessary or not, or backed up by statistics, is irrelevant. If you feel at risk, do what you think is best.

I would also suggest that you get some advice from a female mentor or professor about this. What have their experiences been? I'd guess their advice would be pretty good.

But I'll add, that you should think about making that a permanent persona that won't change in the future. You want your complete history to be traceable through a single name, even as your life changes. You can be A professionally, and B personally, as long as no fraud is intended.

I once should have changed my name, but didn't. Things would have been better for me had I done so at the time. The issue was completely different, but it had consequences.


Is it realistic to prefer a non-tenure-track research position? I am a PhD student in a biomedical field in the United States. After seeing professors' Google calendars and figures like this (link) about how limited the time tenure-track faculty get to spend on their research is and how many other demands on them there are, I am reconsidering whether or not that is something that I want to do.

The idea of being a "research professor" who is free from those other demands and has research as a primary focus appeals to me - but I am not sure whether this is a realistic option as a career choice. I have heard some people say soft money can be relatively stable as long as you are collaborative and don't put all your eggs in one basket, but I have also seen a lot of other people who think these positions are unstable and highly stressful and something you should only do for a few years while trying to get a tenure-track position.

So my questions are:

Is it realistic to hope to spend my career as a research professor, or is this usually something people only do short-term?
Can I have reasonable job stability doing this by working collaboratively?
Do research professors tend to be more or less stressed than tenure-track professors?
If you have experience with this career path (or know people who are in this career path) is it something that you would recommend to others? Why or why not?

Background: Answering this as a biomedical researcher currently in a tenure-track position who definitely looked at some non-tenure, 100% soft money positions. One thing to note, there are also effectively 100% soft money tenure-track positions out there in the world. What a tenured, all-soft money position actually means is left as an exercise to the reader.

  Is it realistic to hope to spend my career as a research professor, or
  is this usually something people only do short-term?

There are people I know who spend their careers like this, and some of them are happy. But there are also a lot of people who either leave for tenure-track positions, or switch over to tenure-track in time. But it is a career path - indeed, one of my former departments has an entire structured program for these people to make a career out of it, including wrestling with how do you evaluate them for promotion, etc. Of the people who have left, there were two major complaints in my experience:

Instability, in terms of having yearly contracts, no salary support, etc.
Many departments restrict non-tenure track faculty in some ways - most commonly, deciding on tenure, but also potentially on hiring committees, advising, etc. Some people resented feeling like 2nd class faculty.

  Can I have reasonable job stability doing this by working
  collaboratively?

Ironically, the most stable people I know in these positions are essentially "super-postdocs", and not actually on lots of grants, but well supported by a single, large center-type grant.

I will say that, as someone who works very collaboratively, and is also in a position where one of the most common tracks forward is building up a somewhat piecemeal funding portfolio instead of a single "one-and-done R01", I don't find it particularly stable, or at all less stressful.

  Do research professors tend to be more or less stressed than
  tenure-track professors?

Depends on the position. The ones I knew who were funded as part of a center, core, etc. where whether or not the application failed wasn't particularly on their shoulders? Less stressed.

The ones trying to scramble to keep 10x 10% effort projects alive and going at the same time, while worrying if they'd get their contract renewed? Very stressed, because you can never get off the treadmill.

  If you have experience with this career path (or know people who are
  in this career path) is it something that you would recommend to
  others? Why or why not?

I ended up taking a tenure-track job, and choosing one with a fairly generous amount of hard money, and don't regret this at all.

If you can find someone who is willing to put you on a large, stable grant that can support a substantial % of your salary, even if it is technically hard money, that's a decent path I've seen some people enjoy immensely. But if you're expected to find and bring in all your own money? You're going to spend as much time, if not more, scrambling for funding, without the carrot of tenure at the end.

It also depends on why the position is not tenure-track. In some places, that's just the way things are - for example, in one institution, PhDs basically couldn't get tenure, so their positions were non-tenure track, but their contracts were for long periods. In that case? Not a red flag in my mind. In another, it felt very much like those faculty members were very-low commitment bets on the university's behalf, and if they didn't work out, they were disposable. That's not a position I'd want to be in.


Do US universities publish an official definition of gender in the context of scholarships or admissions? Let's say that a person assigned male at birth identifies as a woman. At which stage of their transition process would they be allowed to claim themselves as a woman in the context of college applications or scholarships? Is merely identifying as a woman sufficient? Or maybe legally changing your gender is required?

Or if we look at it the other way around: At which point would a person assigned female at birth be required to identify themselves as a man in college applications?

Note that this question is of practical value as there are presumably hundreds of thousands of people in the US who identify with a different gender.

Virtually all universities will follow the policies regarding gender identity that are promulgated by the U.S. Department of Education.  To do otherwise would mean putting their access to federal funds at risk, since Title IX of the Civil Rights Act bans discrimination on the basis of sex by any institution that receives federal government assistance.  Many institutions have an official statement somewhere (on their Web site, in the course bulletin, etc.) stating that the abide by these federal guidelines.

The Department of Education enunciates their interpretations of the law through what are known as "Dear Colleague Letters."  The ones covering the question of how gender identity is defined may be found here, on the agency's Web page.  In light of the current political situation, the Department of Education's rules cannot be seen as stable, at present, but the current state of guidance can be found there.


Why transcripts instead of degree certificates? I've been offered a few adjunct teaching positions recently, and the colleges have said that degree certificates don't count in verifying my credentials and that only academic transcripts are acceptable.

Given that I finished my degrees 20+ years ago, what is the reason for this?

I eventually managed to get my transcripts, but no one has ever asked for them before, my degree certificates were perfectly acceptable (including tenure-track positions in Australia).

Most applicants for positions at US universities will have been educated in the US, so US hiring practices are based around the sorts of records that US universities provide.  And US universities don't really have such a thing as "degree certificates".   The paper diploma from a US university is considered purely ceremonial and not used for any official purpose; it often doesn't even have complete information about the degree (major, honors, etc).  For most US universities, the only official academic record they produce is the transcript.  Hence, that is what a US university expects when hiring.

Note that in some cases, a hiring decision may be based on more specific details about your education than the simple fact that you have a degree.  There may be formal requirements, coming from university regulations or accrediting agencies, that you have a certain amount of coursework in certain areas, and the transcript is the only way to verify that.