GRE Score Advice: Should I retake? I took the GRE in April and recently received my score. I placed in the 88th percentile, which is respectable but far from impressive. I am hoping to get into a top 25 math grad school for a PhD in pure math. I don't think my score is representative of my mastery of the undergraduate curriculum as I barely prepared for the exam.

I didn't prepare as much as I should have and now am worried about whether I should study over the summer and take it again next year. I have an REU this summer which will eat up eight weeks and would like to get a start on my senior thesis afterwards. As such, my question is:

As far as graduate school admissions are concerned, is it worth it to take the time out of more interesting pursuits to prepare for retaking the GRE next year?

Different admissions committees may handle things somewhat differently, as might different members of the same committee.  However, I wouldn't worry about an 88th percentile score.  As you say, it's respectable but not impressive, but that's OK.  At top five universities, no score is high enough to be genuinely impressive by itself, and I don't think anyone gets that worked up about modest differences.  (It's understood that some people are quick enough to score in the 99th percentile without breaking a sweat, while someone else might only reach the 90th percentile, and this difference is at best mild evidence for who has greater research potential.)  At lower-ranked universities, there might be a little more scope for standing out via a high score, but it's certainly not necessary.  I'm not aware of any university that would rule someone out for being in the 88th percentile (although of course I'm not familiar with every university's policies).  By contrast, there are universities at which a 50th percentile score would cause consternation.

Of course, you'll have to have an impressive application in other ways, particularly letters of recommendation.  However, you'd need that anyway: the extra margin of safety you would get in your application from having a higher GRE score would be small.

If you feel worried, it couldn't hurt to try taking the exam again.  However, doing well in your REU and writing a great senior thesis are far more crucial than improving your GRE score, so you should definitely not compromise on those.


Should we transition to making our conference online or postpone? Last year we started organizing a conference in one of the European countries in September 2020. Everything was fixed and we had a number of registered people. As you all may know, due to the pandemic outbreak, many conferences in Europe were canceled. Since our conference was scheduled for September, we didn't declare it canceled and decided to wait a bit to see how the situation will be as we get close to the summer.

Now, recently we thought about having an online conference instead of a real one. But we don't want it to be a failure as we have no experience with it and we are not aware of the public opinion about an online conference.

Is it a good idea to change the conference to an online one or it is better to postpone the real conference until the end of this pandemic crisis?

Great question; however, I don't think there is any consensus opinion as to how good online conferences are.

You might, however, read this blog post by Daniel Litt. He was an organizer of the Western Algebraic Geometry Online conference, held via Zoom this April. It was quite large, with around a thousand participants, and in my opinion very successful.

In his blog post he discusses what went well, what went less well, and what the organizers tried to achieve. In summary, the organizers weren't able to replicate everything good about an in-person conference, but overall they succeeded in creating a very valuable experience for the participants.


Should you thank helpful referees in the acknowledgements section of a paper? I submitted a paper to a [science] journal and received some particularly constructive feedback from the referees. I am inclined to add something to the effect of

We are grateful to the referees for their constructive input.

to the acknowledgements, as I have seen in other papers before. But is this considered appropriate?

On the one hand, it seems polite. But on the other, it's part of the job of a referee to make suggestions. Moreover, since they are anonymous and I am not going to specify their contributions, the only information provided in this remark is that 'someone suggested something' which seems a bit pointless.

I usually try to add a line to the acknowledgements to thank anonymous referees and I try to make it honest and clear. Reviewers' time and effort invariably improves my papers and I think it's only polite to thank anybody who contributed for their time, effort, and engagement to making a manuscript better.

Will anybody care if it's missing? Will anybody even notice if it's missing? Probably not. That said, although it may be the "job" of the reviewers to give suggestions, refereeing is something that academics do as volunteers. Reviewing papers is perhaps the most thankless part of an academic job. Acknowledgement of the positive impact that referees have seems like the least an author can do.


What sections should I include in the Project Description section of my NSF grant proposal? I am a Ph.D. student, and I am writing my first proposal to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) for a research grant in the field of chemistry.

One thing that I have found very confusing is the format of my written proposal.  Specifically, what sections should I include?

The U.S. NSF distributes a very detailed (76 pages) set of guidelines (The National Science Foundation Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide: Part I - Grant Proposal Guide, available in PDF here).  Section IIC2 is about "Sections of the Proposal," but this section only enumerates the following sections that I should include:

a. Cover Sheet
b. Project Summary
c. Table of Contents
d. Project Description
e. References Cited
f. Biographical Sketches
g. Budget
h. Current and Pending Support
i. Facilities, Equipment, and Other Resources
j. Special Information and Supplementary Documentation
k. Appendices

It seems that the Project Description -- at least from the intellectual merit and broader impacts perspective -- will contain the "meat" of my proposal; the Project Description has a 15 page limit.  It is here, I think, that I will discuss my plan of work, the scientific rationale, and the methods that I will apply.  I should also discuss the related work in the literature in this section.  Finally, I should discuss broader impacts of the proposed work.

But, beyond this, the NSF Guidelines do not seem to be all that specific about sections or section headings within the Project Description section.  Am I free to make my own sections/section headings within the Project Description section?  For example, could I make a section "Previous experimental work," followed by a section "Previous theoretical work," followed by a section "Proposed model description," and so on and so on?  These section headings would be quite specific to my proposed work and the chemical system that I propose to investigate.  Thanks for your time.

The NSF doesn't specify any rules on what goes into the project description, but each community has its norms and expectations. If you wish to get a good review, it's probably a good idea to understand the norms and standards of your community.

In general, what you should do is find peers in the area that have written proposals for this program and look at what are standard templates (and isn't your advisor involved in this ? In my corner of the NSF, students can't be lead PIs on proposals).

From the sound of it, you haven't seen too many examples of proposals (successful or otherwise), and I'd strongly recommend that being your first step. If that's not possible, talk to faculty within your department (again, where's your advisor ?) to get help.


Do I have to prove all the theorems I mention in my paper? I am writing a paper on a big theorem in Algebra. But in order to supply as many proofs as I find interesting, I have to mention the theorems used to prove this Big Theorem. Do I have to include all the proofs of all the theorems I mentioned as well as relevant lemmas, even if they take me away from my topic for some time?

Generally speaking, every statement in a published mathematics paper needs to have a proof somewhere that the reader can find it. (If this paper is for a class assignment rather than for publication, ask your instructor. The rules are also a little different for "expository" papers which are mainly intended to discuss previous work, rather than to present new results.)

If you use a result that is well known, you can mention it by name. It is not necessary to include a formal statement or proof,  nor a reference. This would apply to results that are found in most standard textbooks in your area, and that most people reading the paper would be familiar with.
If you use a result previously proved by someone else, give a reference to the paper containing their proof. It is often also helpful to give a formal statement of their theorem. You do not need to include the proof in your paper unless you think it will be specifically helpful to the reader (for instance, if you are planning to extend the same ideas yourself).
For an original theorem, not previously proved by anyone else,  give a complete and careful proof.


Is it fine to cancel class on days before national holidays, due to low attendance? So, thanksgiving break is coming up. On my campus, a large portion of the students leave early Wednesday to get back home. The break doesn't officially start until Thursday, but since that is the holiday the students (understandably) leave earlier.

I teach on Wednesdays (among other days). I had forgotten about this poor attendance when I planned my syllabus and am currently planning to teach new material next Wednesday.

Now, I anticipate about 75% of the class (50 total students) will be absent. They knew I would be teaching new material that day, since it was on the syllabus.

Do I cancel class so that the majority of students don't miss a lecture? Do I hold class but post my lecture notes so that the students who missed could (theoretically, at least) make up the work they missed on their own?

If I cancel class, I could shift around material so that nothing is lost (by moving a review day). However, something feels "wrong" about cancelling a class that the university has scheduled to occur because the students decided they wanted to start their vacation early.

Is it fine to cancel a class because you don't expect many students to attend?

I have known a number of professors who took a third approach: on an expected low-attendance class day such as the day before Thanksgiving, they held a lecture, but did not make it part of the "standard" curriculum.  Instead, they would schedule some sort of fun and exciting "bonus material," like a notable guest speaker or a cool demonstration.  That way, those students who showed up got something out of coming, but the ones whose plans prevented them from being there didn't have any missed "core" material to make up.


How to select a journal for publishing when my priority is to publish soon? I am a PhD candidate in a small country. I have two Master degrees, one from an American university. I am also an experienced professional and an expert in the subject of my PhD studies (in my country, clearly). I need to publish a paper in an international journal as a condition to obtain my PhD. How do I choose a journal? I cannot afford years of waiting for the paper to be published, submit it and be rejected many times. I am looking through the journals, and there is simply no way to know which one is suitable for me. Any help? I understand about looking for journals which had previously published similar articles, but how to know that it is a journal which is likely to accept my article?

Thank you!

First, you need a list of the journals that are relevant to your field. Here are some ways to create that list. I recommend that you do all of these, not just one or two.

Ask your supervisor.
Ask your librarian.
As you read articles, take note of the journals that the articles are published in, especially if the article is interesting or relevant to you.

Now that you have a list of relevant journals, it's time to select the one that's right for your article. Here are some things that will help. Again, I recommend that you do all of these.

Ask your supervisor.
Search the literature for articles that are similar in some way to yours. See where those articles are published.
Visit the home page of journals that you're interested in. Read their "aims and scope". Be warned that you have to read a lot of different "aims and scope" writeups before you catch on to the lingo. Is your article covered in their list of topics? Do they only publish major breakthroughs in the field, or do they publish more modest articles?
Look at some articles that are published in journals that you're interested in. Are they roughly similar in focus? Are they similar in quality? (Don't underrate your own work. Beware the imposter syndrome!)
Since you've written an article, you must have done a fair amount of research. So ask yourself: "Where would I go (i.e., what journals) to find an article like this?"

A few miscellaneous tips:

If you're not sure if an article is appropriate for a particular journal, you don't have to submit it and wait 6-12 months for an answer. Write up a 1-2 page summary of your article (called an "extended abstract"), and send it to the editor asking if it's appropriate. They'll probably answer within a week or two.
Check Beall's list to make sure you're not dealing with a predatory publisher.
Check the copyright/license terms. (E.g., will they let you self-archive?)
Check if there are any publication charges that you will have to pay. I would only pay a fee if my article will be open access (free for others to download), and only if the amount is reasonable. The fee may be lower if you're in a developing country.


Sharing a proof on ResearchGate? Inappropriate? Is it inappropriate to share a proof of a manuscript online, such as ResearchGate? The manuscript is part of a large special session in a journal that currently has no publication date yet..

Take a look at your copyright agreement - many will differentiate between the preprint, postprint, and the final published version.

Default language in copyright agreement tends to be most restrictive with the final published version and least restrictive with the preprint.

You can always contact the publisher and specifically ask for permission. I've done this in the past and even gotten special permission to post the final published version (they asked I prominently add the publication and DOI to the 1st page).


Chose name for first publication (special characters and compound names) I am submitting my first paper ever in a couple of months and I was wondering about my family name. The paper is in English and the conference is an international conference.

Assume my name is {Alan} {võn Neumann} {Chúrch}, so {first name} {family name father} and {family name mother} where {family name father has two words}. Note also the special characters (õ and ú) I added there on purpose (as I do have them in my real name).

If I had the choice, I would go with  {Alan} {võn Neumann} {Chúrch}, but I don't want to be cited as Chúrch or Võn. A proper citation would be võn Neumann Chúrch, but võn Neumann would be fine as well.

How can I ensure that I would be properly cited?
Also, should I keep the special characters? I really would rather keep them.

Best,
Not Alan von Neumann Church ;)

+1 for thinking about this before your first publication. Have you read through the other questions tagged personal-name? They may be helpful.

In your case, I’d go with Alan võn Neumann, or võn Neumann, Alan if your target journal uses this format.

If you include Chúrch, then I’ll guarantee that you will start being referenced as “Chúrch (2015)” - maybe not on this publication, but later. (You do plan on using a consistent name throughout your sciencific career, right?) Bibliographic databases may be smart enough to pick this up, but they will need to rely on journal editors including your correct name in their journal databases, and this is where noise will creep in.

Conversely, I wouldn’t worry too much about the diacritical characters, as long as their mapping to basic characters is straightforward. Search engines understand this, so it won’t make a difference whether your name is listed as võn Neumann or von Neumann. One exception would be German ß, where it is not obvious that this should be transcribed ss. IIRC, people have legally changed their names over this.


will I get money back if I drop out of college? Alright, hear me out.
it’s the second day of college, and I want to drop out. I never should have accepted enrollment at this college, I knew deep down for months that I didn’t want to go, but I felt pressured by my family. Is there any way that I can get my money back since I’ve only had one day of classes so far? (not to mention the first day of classes uses zero material, just purely introductions). My college is a state college (CSU). I know what path I want to take in life, and I’m already very sure that this is not the way to go. I can see how much time I’m wasting already. Please don’t answer just to tell me to stay in college, I simply want an answer.

It is common that universities will refund a almost all of the tuition you have paid if you withdraw from the university within the first week. It is often gradated after that, with a smaller percentage of tuition and fees being returned the later you wait to withdraw.

If you attend Colorado State University (CSU?), then it looks like you can still get 75% of your money back. They give you until September 2 to withdraw and get 75% back. The first day of school was the deadline to get 100% tuition back. You would need to talk with the registrar's office directly about all of this though.

https://registrar.colostate.edu/faculty-staff/important-dates/


How to find free data sets from the internet for independent research? I am conducting an independent research on a tourism-related topic. However, data sets on the internet require premium registration.

I was wondering: what are the best websites that offer data sets for free? Can experienced researchers give any good leads?

First - looking for already published research projects that contain and/or utilize datasets similar to what your project requires might be a good start.
There are some researchers and research groups that wouldn't have any issues sharing their dataset with you if you provide them with a good enough reason as to why you need it and what you're going to use it for.

That being said, because of privacy and data protection laws; it greatly depends on how they acquired the data in the first place and whether or not there is personally identifiable information within the dataset. If you don't do this right, you can get into quite a lot of trouble.

There are also a number of sites that supply anything from large national and international gov datasets to the more modest limited access sites.

Most U.S. government agencies provide open access to a large portion of their data.

The FBI's web services
Data.gov
The CDC
The US Census Bureau
... the list goes on.

Kaggle is often talked about
BuzzFeed, surprisingly, provides a vast array of open information
data.world
... to name a few.

You may also wish to contact universities and college departments. The often work with massive datasets and are quite liberal when it comes to sharing.

Good luck :)


Changing Interests After Getting Accepted for PhD I have brought some trouble onto myself I know, but what can be done by someone in my situation.

I applied and got accepted for a PhD program in Computer Science.  I automatically assumed that I wanted to continue the work I did on my Master's thesis and I identified a professor who would be willing to work with me on that subject.  When I got there, I reviewed the literature (there had been a few years of gap since defending my thesis) and decided I really did not like the direction the field was going in.  I had been developing a new interest anyway, so I changed sub-disciplines.  Now, no one will commit to be my advisor, at best maybe co-advisor with some outside expert.  Part of the reason is because my school lacks experts in that area.  I personally (on a friend basis) know some Computer Science professors, but none are experts in my field.  What can I do?  No advisor = No PhD, I know that much anyway.

Changing a subject during the PHD course is legitimate, and not very rare. However, finding an advisor is a must. I think in that case you'll have no choice but trying to convince professors to be your advisors.

A possible way is to find an expert from a different university, that will be your co-advisor. That way you'll just need to find another faculty in your university that is not-too-far from your interests. You might find someone that will tentativly be your advisor, and once you show some progress will agree to take you under..

But maybe the big question is,
why not moving to the place where the "experts" are?


In terms of academic careers, does the department type matter between Computer Science, Engineering, or Information? One of the oddities of working in an interdisciplinary field is that PhD programs - and ultimately departments where you would like to work in the future - are often offered under different departments. For my personal example, my field is Human Computer Interaction (HCI), and I have the option to join a PhD program in (that is, have received admission offers from) departments that are housed within colleges of Computer Science, Engineering, or Information. "Rankings", to the extent that anyone cares about them, exist separately for each classification, and so they are all "top 5" within their own classification and have a good reputation in the field.

My question is: in considering a plan to seek future academic jobs after earning a PhD (especially as a professor at an R1), is the name of the home department/college that hosts their program something that one should weigh in their decision making? How might the type of department that one gets their PhD from effect one's future career?

Bonus: If department type impacts availability of internships (especially those valuable to an eventual faculty application), or just having the alternative to go into another area of industry/consulting, that could be important for a person to know and consider. "Plan A" is primarily positions in academia, so an answer need not address this to be a good or accepted one.

Note: The  focus of research, topic, equipment, and even coursework will be largely comparable, faculty working in every program have degrees in widely differing topics (including some in Psychology, Art/Design, and Business/Management), and current faculty even often publish in the same conferences.

For example, if you've been involved with a hiring committee in Computer Science, have they evaluated applicants differently if their degree was not specifically in "Computer Science" and instead in Information or Engineering? Or similarly, do Engineering hiring committees have a preference for people with degrees from other Engineering departments? Issues at the administrative culture level? Have you found that informal cliches or hierarchies form between groups?

Ultimately I'd like to know if this a distinction I need to seriously consider in picking a program, or if I can instead focus on the dozen-other factors one should consider to compare options instead.

My short answer is that if you're staying in academia, it probably doesn't matter much at all. If you're considering leaving, then CS > "Engineering" > IS (for many tech companies, at least), to a mild-to-moderate extent.

My longer answer is that it depends how you sell yourself. The material you learn will likely be very similar, but different communities will focus on different aspects of HCI. This will probably be most evident in the research coming out of each group. To that extent, I recommend taking a good look at the research coming out of each program. The focus of the researchers will give you a good idea about the differences between the programs.


Correcting a paper that just came back from review, what should I do? After this one paper came back with minor revisions requested, I'm revisiting my data and making sure to check that everything stated in the paper is factual.

Finally, I found a few errors that were not pointed out by the reviewers and need correction.

The first error is that one of the charts had inaccurate error bars, which are much smaller now after the correction and actually support further my conclusions.

The second thing that I want to improve, which is not an error per se, is to get a new set of data for one of the graphs to substitute the current one which has an outlier point.

None of these corrections would alter the final conclusions of the study.

Since these corrections were not requested by the reviewers, I'm afraid the reviewers and the editor might think that this is inappropriate and will end up requesting another round of revisions or, even worse, rejecting the paper...

How do you think that the editor would take these unsolicited changes?

If you can justify the changes, there's no problem with making them. The first error for example should be clearly acceptable, if you said you performed error analysis in this way and it turned out there's a bug in your code.

The second is more dicey. Superficially, it might seem like you're altering your data because you have an outlier point (ergo, it's confirmation bias). You will need a convincing explanation why the new data set is better than the old one, why the outlier should not matter, etc.

In any case, if you make these kind of unsolicited changes, do be clear about them in your response to reviewers / cover letter. Otherwise, reviewers would have to read the entire paper again.


Is it beneficial to prefer keywords complementary to words in the title? This was some advice given by an editor in a writing course:

  If there is a limit to the number of keywords, don’t use terms already used in the title. Rather, use terms that are complementary, synonymous, or equivalent (even “non-standard” terms) to those in the title. This will allow your paper to appear in more searches in Google Scholar and similar search engines.

Is this correct?

Key-words are crucial for indexing, whereas the words chosen for the title and the abstract are impactful for free text searches.

For instance, you may search PubMed with key-words (using the [mh] tag), with title words (using the [ti] tag), with title or abstract words (using the [tiab] tag), and so forth.

In case you use in the title and abstract words which correspond to indexing terms, then you may find reasonable to use alternative words as key-words. However, the most important thing is to use, in at least one of the venues (key-words, title, or abstract), the accepted indexing terms.


Where is your line with students on social media? I will be giving lectures for the first time this semester starting in 2 weeks (online due to covid), some students already started to add me and follow me on social media (LinkedIn mainly for now). I rarely use LinkedIn, and really %99 of the people there are people I know in real, collaborated with, from college etc. It is already a messy jungle. I see sometimes an overly passionate kid who made a request and I don't mind accepting their request, but I also want to be fair to all so I don't. I recently began to enjoy Twitter and although most of my followers are professionals I sneak in personal likes, comments, tweets and I enjoy it that way, but with students following I don't know if I will be able to 'act human' (which I wouldn't mind if I were already an experienced, confident, accomplished professor (those are the best of the people) but at this time I am not comfortable with it). Do you change your name to not be found easily (I want colleagues to find me though)? Do I go private? I post during workshops/conferences (which makes most of my new connects) and often like/comment on others as well.  Do you accept their requests? Where is your line with social media?

My line:
On the first day of classes I tell the students that I don't want to be contacted by social media or by any means other than the school e-mail. The school also gives students a nice way to provide anonymized feedback, which no one has ever used so far.
If students send me friend requests on Facebook et al (which I don't really use), I delete the requests (it's happened a few times).
If students send me friend requests on LinkedIn anyway, I accept the requests after the end of the semester. (I can imagine a scenario where I might want to delete the request, but it hasn't happened yet.)
On at least 4 occasions I remember, former students messaged me via LinkedIn about recommendation letters for graduate school, advice regarding internships, etc. I don't know, maybe they don't have access to school e-mail anymore. I'm a little ambivalent, but so far nothing bad has happened.
I have no doubt that some students create class-related social media discussion groups. I also trust that if something happens that needs my attention (e.g. many people not understanding the material), they will contact me by school e-mail or make an appointment for office hours.


What do you say to a professor/potential advisor when you accept the offer from their school? Is it common to contact professors you've been in communication with to let them know that you're accepting their school's offer? Do you usually contact the professors that met with you on a campus visit?

Is it usually just a brief FYI type email or a longer/introductory letter? I've already visited campus and spoken to my potential supervisors/advisors.

How does this sound?

  Dear Professor L,

  I hope all is well. I'm writing to let you know I've accepted School's
  offer for the PhD program. I am grateful for this opportunity and I
  look forward to working with you and the rest of the faculty in X
  Subfield!

  Best regards,

  Pomegranateseed15

Anything I should add?

Your suggestion is good. I don't think it needs more. One option, though, would be an additional sentence asking if there are any papers or sources that you can or should examine in the short term.

But thanks is all you really need.


Distinguish starting journals from predatory ones As you know, there are journals -predatory journals- which are just publishing scams, without actual peer review, etc. but look like genuine ones, and it is a problem for the honest researcher to avoid them.

Until recently there was a free blacklist, Jerry Beall's (which had flaws), and now there is Cabell's list, which apart from being behind a paywall, may not distinguish predatory journals from new ones (see this review).

As the number of publications seems ever-increasing, I feel new, legitimate journals will play an important role in next years. I would be willing to publish in one of them sometime, but I don't know how to identify them. For the moment being, each time I receive an email promoting a starting journal (as some may in good faith do), I just dismiss it as being a predatory one.

So the question is: Are there good ways of knowing that a new journal is legitimate? Perhaps is there some kind of white list?

Look at the editorial board. If it contains respectable, well-known researchers in the field, then it's likely to be a serious journal.


Publishing previous results from a previous lab I just looked over this article from Retraction Watch.

To make a long story short, a student used previous data from their former lab and then published it without the PI's permission or knowledge.

While the above is a rather extreme example of poor ethics, I'm curious where the line gets drawn regarding the ownership of research. I can understand if the data was produced in one environment and then get published in another. What about reagents (clones come to mind) that were produced in a previous lab and then were transported to a new lab? What about ideas that were developed in one lab and then taken to another?

I think that so long as the principal investigator is actively involved in the planning, performance, or analysis of the research being funded, it is the duty of any researcher working in that group to determine the PI's status as a co-author. However, only if there is no active intellectual activity taking place—in other words, it's an entirely self-driven initiative, then it might be possible to say that the PI doesn't merit co-author status. (Even then, though, the provision of financial support should be clearly recognized.)


Does graduate school reputation have any effect on your academic career? I am an Australian citizen and studying at University of Newcastle (Australia). Does your graduate school reputation has any effect in your academic career? So if I decide to do my PhD at a US university (like Harvard or Stanford) instead of doing it at an Australian university (say University of Melbourne or Australian National University), would that make me more successful in my academic career? Does that make me more employable? Say that after doing my PhD, I apply for an academic position at a Canadian university, which of them would help here more?

The short answer is yes, of course.

The long answer is, it depends. Ultimately, your future career will depend on your publications and other output, their quality and their impact. If you can produce a number of high quality publications from a lower-ranked university, this will be better than producing nothing of interest from a higher-ranked university. However, the chances of "succeeding" are higher at higher-ranked universities, because they have "better" people to help you along the way. They also have higher standards and more pressure. So there will be a bit of a trade-off.

That said, the University of Melbourne and ANU are good places.


Is it counterproductive to read very long text books during an MSc program? One of the professors for my MSc in Computer Science told me that students should not read textbooks that have more than (around) 250 pages during the 4-month semesters of coursework. The reason is, according to him, that a 4-month semester is a limited time to study and successfully pass all the courses. Trying to read big/heavy textbooks is nothing but a waste of time, and it reduces the chance of getting good grades.
Have you ever heard about this theory before? Is this theory very popular at your university?

I haven't heard of such a thing, but can understand where it comes from. But my advice would be that doing teaches you much more than reading. In CS we often build things to reinforce learning. Textbooks can provide useful exercises. And one learns, primarily, through repetition (reinforcement) and feedback. Only a few people have a "photographic memory" and even then, being able to recall some text doesn't mean that you have gained insight from it.
Seek insight. Reinforcement and feedback. Hopefully the professor provides feedback, but programs (when they fail) can also do that.
I don't think the professor means to ignore textbooks, however. Use them "just enough" to gain insight.


Writing PhD thesis as part of consortium project I am a PhD student currently writing up my thesis which was performing data analysis as part of a consortium project.

For a number of reasons the project has stalled due to poor planning, lack of expertise, personality clashes etc. This means that the paper describing the dataset has not yet been published, and in it's current state I can't see how it ever will be.  My research is  based upon the analysis of this dataset. There were 4 people working on the analysis for the project, and whilst we were all involved in the design, people took ownership of particular parts, and the end product is a bit of a disjointed mess - a classic case of “too many cooks spoil the broth”.

In my thesis, I have to include two pieces of analysis that were  “led” by some of the other consortium members as they lay the foundations, and it would not be a coherent story without these sections. In the preliminary unpublished paper, these two pieces constitute two figures and are brief, incomplete, and in my opinion not methodologically robust.  In my thesis, I have performed my own much more substantial versions of these analysis, and with what I consider a better approach which better fits my own work and story.

My analysis represents my own view of the data which has been expanded greatly however, it still  addresses the same question and several of the same general conclusions are found. My questions regards how to properly navigate the authorship of these pieces and place the appropriate amount of credit with the people who did these preliminary analysis. I do not want to sign over credit for work where it is not due.  Does anyone have any experience with this type of issue regarding authorship of works on consortium projects, particularly within PhD projects, or any general advice?

A thesis is not an academic paper - you are supposed to be a little bit more self-centred than usual to show that you have applied the right kind of thinking to the problem, and the right methods.
Since you have re-done a lot of the analysis yourself because the collaborators did a poor/uninterested job, I would acknowledge the collaborators in the acknowledgements section at the beginning of the thesis, but then stick as much as you can to the work you did and the story that follows from there.

The alternative is that you don't talk about the work you did (bad idea), and might even give the reader the impression that you didn't know better having signed off on a sub-standard analysis (also bad idea).

Also, as someone in a similar situation, can you raise the issue with someone at the consortia? They need to know that PhDs are having a hard time forming a traditional "thesis" of work when they are being dropped into a service role rather than a traditional open-ended PhD, and that funding in the future must go to the labs that have thought about this problem in advance.


Can I apply for a graduate degree in Cambridge (MPhil/PhD) after I have earned a Bachelor's from Oxford, or vice versa? I know that we can't apply to both simultaneously for undergraduate admissions. What about to each the other once we have completed our first degree in one? Thank you in advance.

There are no restrictions on doing as you suggest, and indeed, I know a number of people who have applied for (and completed) graduate courses at the University of Cambridge after an undergraduate course at the University of Oxford.


Students and postdocs not asking questions During and after the talks and seminars in our dept. (~80 people, ~10 groups, ~40 postdocs+PhD+Master students), it is extremely rare to see postdocs or students asking questions. 90-95% of the questions are asked by senior people (mainly PIs or experienced permanent researchers).

This probably reflects an old culture of distance between the young and the senior, I believe it is a national (if not European) issue which is much less seen in the Anglo Saxon culture. Breaking this distance will surely increase the quality of our work globally.

The ambiance is generally relaxed in the entire lab, and nobody is blamed for stupid questions. Still, their silence is striking. And worse, it brings down the few (mainly international) students who sometime do ask questions: after a while they feel this "negative peer pressure" and stop asking.

We want to find a way out of it. One possibility under discussion is to force, right at the end of the talk, the first couple of questions from them. But it's not accepted yet. Do you think this could be a good idea?

Do you have suggestions about other strategies, both for the short (getting them to ask more questions) and long term (how can we remove this cultural barrier?)

During and after the talks and seminars in our dept. (~80 people, ~10 groups, ~40 postdocs+PhD+Master students), it is extremely rare to see postdocs or students asking questions. 90-95% of the questions are asked by senior people (mainly PIs or experienced permanent researchers).

My first thought is that this a large group -- maybe too large.  In my department (mathematics, at a big US research university) if you count tenure track faculty plus postdocs plus graduate students you get about 100.  For this group of 100 people we don't have one research seminar, we have 8-10 different seminars.  (We do have a departmental colloquium, but not so often -- in part, I think, because the people who want to go to see talks already have plenty of talks to go to.)  I am a number theorist, and I feel a very high degree of "mineness" about our number theory seminar: I spoke in it today, as I do once a semester.  I gave a ridiculously long talk (90 minutes -- hey, that's what we're scheduled for) and most of the core audience stayed until the end.  When I miss a single week of the seminar, people ask after my whereabouts and well-being.  There are several other seminars in my department of interest to me, and I attend when I can -- but they're not mine in the same way.  And by the way, I am a tenured, full professor who has spent 20 years cultivating a broad, shallow knowledge of many different areas of mathematics, but for almost half of my department's seminars I would be too lost to want to attend regularly and too lost to ask good questions.  Math is indeed hard, but so are other academic fields: I am really skeptical that all 80 people are equally invested in any one talk.

I would suggest scheduling more and smaller seminars, both dividing by research area and also by seniority.  Can a talk really be pitched equally at senior faculty and students?  This seems very unlikely.  In the talk I gave today, I decided to pitch part of it at the students much more honestly than I often do.  So perhaps the first 15 minutes (of 90) were truly aimed at them.  The rest was aimed at faculty (including postdocs) and indeed the largest number of questions came from the most senior person in the room.  More or less we are expecting that to happen by collecting that audience.  Students are still there and still getting things out of the talks -- for instance, one of my PhD students attends the number theory seminar as faithfully as I do.  Only very rarely does she ask questions on the spot -- but we often discuss the talks afterwards.  She is also active in organizing the Graduate Student Seminar in my department, in which faculty are allowed but not encouraged to attend and usually do not.  In fact, I had a period of about one year where I often attended the Graduate Student Seminar, but I stopped going when I realized the extent to which my presence there was warping the proceedings in a negative way.

In fact, here is a parable from when I was a graduate student.  One of our seminars, the Basic Notions Seminar, had once upon a time been the "Graduate Student Seminar."  But it was the kind of graduate student seminar where the faculty would give talks -- nice talks, which other faculty members would attend.  After a while the students realized they needed their own "Graduate Student Seminar."  They gave it a name -- the Trivial Notions Seminar -- which made it clear and obvious that faculty were not wanted as speakers or audience members.  Both seminars have coexisted for many years.

  We want to find a way out of it. One possibility under discussion is to force, right at the end of the talk, the first couple of questions from them. But it's not accepted yet. Do you think this could be a good idea?

It could be a good idea, but I don't recommend it.  There are probably many reasons why young people are not asking questions.  As you made clear, young people who do have questions do not feel fully comfortable asking them.  If you want to address the issue, then actually address the issue by creating an environment that makes them more comfortable.  Forcing them to ask questions seems willfully dismissive of the reality that they are uncomfortable, which they probably actually are. As I said above, one of my students faithfully attends my seminar and rarely asks questions.  If it were my choice, I suppose I would rather she ask more questions.  But it obviously is not my choice: she is a thoroughly intelligent, competent, professional adult person, and one whom I know well enough to understand and respect why she behaves as she does.

Rather, I think that if you want students to ask questions, you need to actually create a seminar environment in which this is what they'll naturally do.  I gave some suggestions for this above in terms of who is in the room.  There are many other things you can do, if it is important to you.  One big one is to get speakers for whom interacting with the young audience is something they want to do.  When I teach graduate courses I get lots of interaction from the students, even though some are not so comfortable asking questions.  How do I do this?  By saturating the lecture itself with questions and interactions with the students. I will literally ask for students to complete my sentences.  If I need to make a definition, I will say "Someone must know this" and ask a student to supply it.  If the student gives the definition in exactly the form I want, I write it down quickly and we go on.  Any discrepancy gets incorporated into the lecture on the spot (and is not necessarily bad or problematic: there are many different ways of saying the same thing, and what could be a better use of class time than showing a student that the thing they have in mind is actually the same as the thing I have in mind, or should be the same except for one technical point they have missed...) When I give a seminar talk, I still try a bit of this kind of didactic Q&A...but it depends on what the audience wants.  Sometimes every single question will get snapped up by the people who know everything.  Sometimes people will say nothing and not look me in the eye, trying to pretend they know the answer.  Sometimes they will say nothing and look me in the eye, trying to get me to get on with things.  In my home seminar, the senior people will play along with me if they clearly understand the game we're playing...but in part because they know I'm mostly pitching things at them.

One final idea: you can keep the seminars entirely as they are now -- again, please understand that the senior people are probably largely happy with them -- and add an additional component afterwards which is just for the junior people.  Or talk to your junior colleagues, find out what they want and what environment would make them more interactive, and see if you can create that environment.  But don't force the issue, and don't assume that everyone will feel the same way about it that you do.


How is auditing a course viewed by professors teaching the course? I'm a first year math Phd student. I'm undecided between focusing on mathematical computer science (MCS) and pure maths, so I'm taking courses in both. To keep my workload light enough to avoid stress, I've opted to audit one of the courses in MCS. The course is not in my research interests, so I'm taking it primarily to prepare for an exam required by my program later. My hope is to just drop into classes and be exposed to material, without taking the time to do all homeworks/prepare for exams, etc.
However, I'm interested in the professor as a potential advisor later, so it has the double benefit of helping me see if that would be a good fit down the line. My question is: could my auditing, rather than taking the course for credit, be perceived as lack of interest, laziness, etc? How is auditing a course perceived in general? Do I have the right attitude towards auditing?
Note: The course is not in the professor's research area either, so not being interested in the class doesn't contradict my interest in the professor.

It is fine.  If it makes you feel better though you could clarify that the reason you're not taking it isn't just worry about the class.  I have used the line in an email before "I have an amateur interest in learning the material" which I think deflects any concern about why you're not committing to doing the course 'properly'. When I said it, it was true, and even if you think it might be a field you wish to participate in later, technically you're currently just dipping your toe in the water right?  So perhaps the same line would work for you.


Should I attend Seminars/Conferences that give Certificates upon achieving some number of attendance? The question is self-explanatory actually.

Should I attend Seminars/Conferences that give Certificates upon achieving some number of attendance? And do they have any worth if I/ to put them in my CV?

I'm an undergraduate student currently in Electrical-Electronical Engineering program and every week there are seminars carried out by University/Department and varius events carried out by various clubs. Some of them give certificate upon attandance and some of them require attending the seminar for some number of sessions for certification but I'm not sure if those certificate have any value at all and I want to know if it's worth ditching relaxing after week of lectures for some certificate that can be obtained by literally every single human being that walks in to the hall.

Thanks in advance.

There is some value in attending these Seminars/Conferences that you may want to consider:

It shows that you are "doing more" than the minimum requirements
You may end up adding or emphasizing important keywords in your CV
The Seminars/Conferences you mentioned are from University/Departments and clubs.  If the Seminars/Conferences have any "Name Brand" involvement, such as corporations or other institutions, you get the name of the institution on your CV.


How do I approach a professor from another university? I am doing my undergrad in engineering at a small liberal arts school. Due to lack of research opportunities at my current school, I am looking at getting a research position at a state university nearby. My question is, how typical is it for professors to let students from other universities join their labs? I want to send an email to a professor that I am interested to do research with, but I am not sure how to approach him in my email.

I'm playing professor psychology here; may serve as another approach for you to think about.

If it's an experienced professor and the school is large, your cold calling e-mail may not stand out (unless you have some stellar skill sets or experiences.) If it's a relatively new professor, hiring someone outside his/her school may be a deterrence.

My suggestion is this: talk to your school to set up a cross-registration arrangement and take a course at the state university. Preferably, take a course that is taught by the professor with whom you would like to work.

This gives you a few edges: you'd get to see if commuting to two campuses work for you, you'd get to check out all the resources and feel the campus culture there, and you will get to know the professor better, and be able to make a personal contact with him/her. Get a good grade, and use the semester to build a relationship with the faculty there.

Once the professor got to know you and understand your aspiration and capability, it'd be a lot easier for the professor to engage and make a decision.


What are the benefits for universities/professors to record online courses? What are the benefits for the universities and particular professors  in recording online courses (MOOC)? Do they get paid by Coursera and similar sites? Do they pursue publicity?

I know that they are providing a useful service by spreading education to everybody in the world, but what do they get in exchange? Do they hope to get more students enrolled, or more public exposure for the university? Or do they do it out of the kindness of their hearts, or for some other reasons?

I record my lectures (when possible) for the following reasons:

Easier access for students who can't attend class.  While I generally want students to come to class, there are valid reasons for being absent (e.g., I'm currently teaching classes to military members who often have duty that preempts class attendance).  I can also point students to a video to review if they ask me questions explicitly covered in class (and also for general review).
Open access.  I think it's pretty cool to live in a world where it is possible to get free access to videos that enhance knowledge.  I feel like I'm playing my little part by putting my lectures online.
Introspective review.  It can be extremely beneficial to review your own teaching methods, although I don't have time to do this for all of my classes.  I have gone back to particular sections to review, and I almost always find something I could improve upon.
(minor) The America's Funniest Videos factor.  I've had clips that have been unintentionally hilarious, either because of something I've said, or because of something students have said. :)

Universities have their own reasons for putting classes online, and you've already listed a number of them.  I'd like to believe that most of the reasons are altruistic, with sites such as MIT's OpenCourseWare and Stanford's Online Courses providing no-strings-attached courses for free.  I would also hope that someone is doing research on these types of course offerings, to see if they are really having benefits to the people that watch them.  I don't believe the bottom line at extremely selective schools will ever be hurt by offering free course material, but if they do start feeling the pinch I imagine they will change their models.

Sites like Courseara are for profit and starting to make money by offering to verify certificates of completion for a cost.

  Why, then, some [Universities] charge enormous fees for attending courses?

The question of college expense is a can of worms that has as many differing answers as there are people asking about it.  Selective colleges charge what they do because (1) it is expensive to run a brick-and-mortar college, and (2) the applications keep rising and kids can still get loans, grants, and other aid.  Obviously it is much more subtle than that, and it would take more than a few free economics courses to get to the bottom of it.


When is the appropriate time to email professors as a prospective PhD student? I think my research interests and experience are perfectly aligned with a professor. And I plan on applying to the department when the admissions open.

But when is the right time to email the professor as a prospective PhD student? I don't want to shoot off an email and get ignored by being either too early or too late.

In this university (in the US) the admissions are granted by committees and not individual professors. Also I speak as an international student.

The worst time to contact faculty is when they are deliberating the current round of applications and while they are recruiting the accepted students. In the USA, this would be December through April.

Conversely, best time would be May through October.


Grading system: Why A-F and not E? Why do we use F for failing on an otherwise arbitrary alphabetic grading scale? Isn't E just as meaningful for failing as A is for excellent?

I'm more interested in a response on the history of how the current scale came to be.

(Edit: prompted from the comments below, I am asking about this situation within the context of the American grading system.)

I think, and this is really only conjecture since I don't know the history, is the potential conflict with the ESNU system where E stands for excellent. The ESNU was (and potentially still is) used in US based elementary education.


Should postdoc be listed under Employment and or Education on CV? From what I have seen, most people list postdocs under Employment/Experience on their CV. But recently I saw one that listed a postdoc under Employment and Education.

Is this typical/appropriate?

NOTE: According to comments on this relevant question and its answers, postdocs are kind of regarded as students, in some cases.

A postdoctoral associate/fellow/whatever is usually an employee. While the purpose of the postdoc is educational, it is not "education". A postdoc is (usually) not taking classes, following a curriculum, and completing other activities toward the earning of an academic degree/certificate/whatever. Postdocs should have a contract, do not pay tuition (or have tuition paid for them), have a definite end date to their employment (although that can be renewed), etc. Since a postdoc is an employee, it should go under employment.

However, in some fields and countries, it may be custom to place the postdoc under education because the postdoc is the journeyman stage of your academic career. Ethically, it should not be listed in both places.


Endnote: inserting page number at the end of the citation What is the proper way to insert an in-text citation using Endnote X8, where you first cite the author, year, following with the quote, and then with the page number in a source? (see an image attached for the example of the formatting). citation example

You asked a slightly different question earlier (here) but this one differentiates your goal to separate the citation and page number.

I prefer to do as @Mark mentions in the comments, I add an endnote formatted citation for the author and year, then manually type in the page number. You can type field codes for the citation to list the author in-text by putting {jackson, 2017@@author-year}. Depending on the reference style you are using it might be appropriate to put the author, year, and page number before the quote, which you can do with the field code {jackson, 2017 @1@author-year}. Lastly, you can put a citation with just a page number by excluding the author and year from the reference (right-click or go to the "Edit & Manage Citation(s)" menu) yet entering the page number in the citation. If you know the record number the field code will simply be {#616@3}.

Here's a summary:

{Jackson, 2017 #615@1} turns to

  (Jackson, 2017, p. 1)

{Jackson, 2017 #615@1@author-year} turns to

  Jackson (2017, p. 1)

{Jackson, 2017 #615} said “quotations are important” {,  #615@1} turns to

  Jackson (2017) said “quotations are important” (p. 1).

Whether you insert the citation multiple times from Endnote, as long as you are referencing the same record you'll only see 1 reference in the document or in the manage citations menu. For example, I have a document with the all three combinations and it has 4 citations but only 1 reference.

The main reason why I manually enter the page numbers is the difference in citation formatting for page numbers. If I end up submitting to a different venue, thus changing the citation style in Endnote, I've had page numbers disappear. So I prefer to have a little more manual control over that aspect.


Should writers give credit to reference librarians? The reference librarians at my school are often very helpful. If I tell them my topic, they will help me find many resources which I might not have otherwise found and generally tend to save me a lot of time. Is it common practice to credit them in someway, especially when publishing a paper? If so, what is the common format?

Yes, the acknowledgements section of your paper is an appropriate place to thank anyone who provided valuable assistance.  Depending on the circumstances, you could phrase it pretty generally ("I thank the reference librarians at University X for their assistance in conducting a literature search"), you could thank specific people, or you could even identify particular contributions ("I am grateful to Y for bringing the literature on Z to my attention").


Is it evident whether I am a masters student or a PhD student just by looking at my transcript? After I finished the first year in a PhD program, considering that I took the same courses that masters students in the same school take, is there a way other institutions can tell if I am a masters student or a PhD student just by looking at my official transcript?

Typically, the name of the degree program that the student is enrolled in is listed on the transcripts. So generally speaking, yes, it is evident whether you are a masters student or a PhD student.


When do recommenders get asked for references? How do they get asked? I have decided to apply to a few faculty jobs, and all of my faculty references have agreed some time ago to support me (my masters and PhD advisors who I talked to a year ago).

I have submitted 5 applications so far and plan on submitting another 5 this season. But I am not sure when I should contact and ask my references to submit their reference letter.

Does the application system request their reference letter as soon as I apply? I have no idea if they've been notified of my applications. Is it okay to just apply first and then ask them for specific letters once the application gets reviewed (I'm sure that not all my applications will make it past the review stage)?

Does every application requires a reference letter, or do my references only get asked by the system if the application seems promising? Or should I email each of my references directly after I apply to request their recommendation letter, and if so, where do I tell them to send it?

You should contact your potential references now.  You need their permission to list them as references before you submit any applications.

  Does the application system request their reference letter as soon as I apply?

Every department is different.  Some do, some don't.

  Does every application requires a reference letter, or do my references only get asked by the system if the application seems promising?

Every department is different.  Some ask for letters for every candidate; some only request letters for candidates that satisfy minimal qualifications (like having a PhD); some only request letters for candidates that pass a more rigorous initial screening; some may even wait until after interviews.  My department automatically asks for letters for all minimally-qualified untenured candidates, but we only request letters for tenured applicants when we decide we want to interview them.

  Or should I email each of my references directly after I apply to request their recommendation letter, and if so, where do I tell them to send it?

Every department is different.  Some will tell you to ask your references to send letters when you apply.  Most departments will ask for contact information and request letters directly from your references.

In any case, each department will provide their own instructions.  Follow them.

I've recommended the following protocol to my students for several years.  When you decide to apply, you create a shared spreadsheet (on Google Docs, for example) with one row for each application target, and columns listing the university, department, a link to the ad, instructions for submitting letters (as supplied by the department), submission deadlines, and each of your references.  Ask each of your references to indicate in their column of the  spreadsheet (1) when anyone asks them for a letter, and (2) when they have actually submitted a letter.  That way, you can keep track of the status of your applications and letters, your references have a unified record of where and when they need to send letters, and your references can be properly (but not too publicly) embarrassed if miss a deadline.


How does a prospective applicant fail to qualify for RAship, but fit the bill for TAship? I wish to know how the Graduate Admissions Committees for top Universities in the USA decide about awarding Teaching Assistantship to a prospective student. If one had preferred both 'RAship' and 'TAship' in his/her application, does that mean he/she must first be eliminated from the RAship race and then awarded TAship as a consolation?

Also, if being a Research Assistant requires a stellar undergraduate research record, publications and so on, what are the factors which would have been considered for awarding the Teaching Assistantship?

To be very specific, if the student is from a country like India or China, would his English-speaking skills and academic competence be re-reviewed?

If so, please help me understand how these two factors transform from mere selection criteria to those for awarding Financial Assistance.

The Universities, I received assistant-ship from are among the best in my field of interest in Computer Science. Also, their CS departments are known to be well-funded and generously award their students with assistant-ships and scholarships every year.

In the US, TAships and RAships are generally assigned by the department. There may be a rule about first year students (ours was that 1st year students could not be assigned TAships). You should also not assume that the division is made by a committee. RAships can be grant-related, or funded by generic department funds. The PI would usually make the decision if a student is considered especially appropriate for the project (unless the PI has a lousy department that doesn't give him/her much autonomy). Depending on the level of democratic sentiment, either the chair decides on the allocation, an admissions / funding committee does, or the whole department faculty does. TAships are also subject to university rules, if any, or department policy, about language competence, so it may be impossible to grant an incoming student a TAship if their English isn't certified for oral proficiency.

Generally speaking, an RAship is better than a TAship from the student's perspective, but the department might either have a particular need for a TA (prehaps in a specific area) in that year, or it might be advantageous to have a year's teaching out of the way so that in your second year you can do something else. I would say that you should not over-interpret either outcome, if you checked the "both" box. "Prefer" means prefer.


How to get three recommendation letters while I only worked with my supervisor? I am a Ph.D. student who will get a Ph.D. degree in less than 8 months in biophysics. While I am looking for postdoc positions many of them require three recommendation letters. One of these letters will be provided by my supervisor, however, what can I do about the other two?

I collaborated with other researchers on my projects, however, the collaboration was kind of at a distance while the collaborators were in another country.

Is it possible to ask these collaborators for a recommendation letter? How could they evaluate me while they never worked with me directly or in person? They usually provided samples or commented on the draft I wrote, however, I did not interact with them the way I discussed the project with my supervisor.

These collaborators are exactly the persons who can evaluate your work, your person and so on really good and in the eyes of a hiring institute, are more objective, because they haven't been your supervisors. So, definitely write and ask them. Probably, they don't know about your future career and current projects, but, I guess, they want to talk to you again about this (via phone or skype) and then you can explain much better what do you want, what's your motivation is and so on.  I would also guess that one of them needs some help in formulating the LoR and then you assist with some bullet points (there are quite a few questions and answer here, for instance this  or that question with answers/comments).  So, go for it and good luck with it!


Is it ethical for a part-time professor to use his position for other interests? There is a professor who works part-time at a university as a moderator of one of their student groups. He does not teach any actual classes but spends a hugely considerable amount of time with the members of the group outside of class hours.

Is it ethical that he uses his position to scout between those members for a company in which he is either a founder or a senior-level position (currently cannot recall which). He does not offer them jobs but instead constantly pushes and offers them to become "interns" with no pay, bad hours, and extremely heavy workload.

I'm not very well versed in business ethics but this sounds very wrong to me, and something of a conflict of interest.

Would the university have grounds to officially respond to this such as sanctioning him? I know that this professor was previously warned to stop doing so but nothing official/major was ever done despite him continuing to do so behind the administration's back.

As you remark, it is probably not okay, although it is always a fine line to draw: it's ethical (and highly encouraged) for a professor to help students procure good jobs and/or rewarding experiences outside the university (where “rewarding” covers not only monetary gains, but also experience learnt, etc.). He can do that through his network, and first and foremost in that network is the company he knows best. However, it is not ethical for him to abuse his position at the university and the student–professor interactions to the good of his own company.

Now, how active are universities in taking action against such behavior? It probably depends on the field, the country, the local situation and power of the professor, but in most cases I would say they will be willing to close their eyes, and it would really take a lot of evidence and someöne pushing them very strongly before they take disciplinary measures.

If you want to do something about it, discuss it very openly, and very calmly, with the director of your program, the students' representatives, the dean or departmental chair, etc. And document everything in detail.


What do you do to keep your mind sharp? When I started at university I could perform with a fresh mind all of the time -- doing a problem set all weekend without reduced performance.
A couple of other students and myself seemed to be several times faster and have larger working memories than others. I made quick work of my studies.

Now that I have gotten to the ripe old age of 22, I seem to be in perpetual brain fog, and even coffee does not bring me back to my original abilities.
 This disturbs me because I want to go to graduate school.

What do you professors do (especially those who do mostly research) to keep your brain able to function near peak for 40+ hours a week? Are you simply stupider than you were at 18 but abuse coffee and persist in your research anyway?

A very important thing that took me most of graduate school to understand is that my self-perception of "getting dumber" was not caused by actually degrading abilities, but by a qualitative change in the type of work that I was trying to do.  I discovered this through a passage of despair, when I felt so brain-fogged and useless that I decided that I was going to simply ignore my thesis for a few days and work on a meaningless side project instead---which I blazed right through at the rate I remembered from undergraduate days, because it was all much simpler and more well-defined than doing research.

In undergraduate education, one may be working very hard indeed, but the type of work is also extremely specialized in an unusual way.  In particular, almost all of the work that you are called on to do in your courses (undergraduate or graduate) is:

Designed to be accomplishable within a fixed number of hours
Tightly dependent on the most recent things that you have learned

This puts a huge (and hidden) amount of constraint on the search space for answers: in essence, if you have learned good "student meta-skills," you are likely to be very good at picking the right place to go searching for your answers.  When you stop taking undergraduate classes, this skill becomes largely irrelevant, and you can start feeling like you are much "dumber" simply because you're thinking that progress on poorly defined and unbounded problems should come at the same rate as progress on pre-digested course work.

I would thus say that the first and most important thing to do is to come to this understanding, that the types of skills you now need are qualitatively different than the ones you most exercised as an undergraduate.  Digesting that may cure your concern right there.

Beyond that, my basic recommendations are simple:

Do things that you are interested in.
Let yourself read, but also make sure you write and do technical work.
Keep a record of all of your accomplishments, so that you can look at external evidence of non-failure when you're having an imposter syndrome day.


Do some universities employ full-time TA in North America? In my university, which is in Canada, TAs are part-time positions for graduate students as far as I know. So do full-time TAs exist like other faculty members?

I'm aware of at least one R1 University in the US that allows some graduate students to be full time (100% equivalent appointment as a TA) during the summer, if they have no classes or other position, and if teaching needs require it. But in any case this was considered quite rare. My understanding was that the typical case was when the student was to be an instructor of record for a course, particularly one they designed or won a grant to develop, and usually they were also part of a teaching-preparation/certificate program. Even then the person would generally only hold such an appointment for one summer only.

At least in the US, part of the reason why this isn't more common is employment rules - a full-time teaching assistant would be a de facto employee of the University, and entitled to full rights and compensation for that time period, unlike the odd "not exactly just a student, not exactly an employee" category that graduate students possess in the US.

As GEdgar noted in comments, there are full-time people who are not full faculty in the US, but they are not called a TA (which is a title reserved for graduate students doing work part-time while also being a student); these people hold titles such as Instructor, Adjunct, etc.


About detemining the time of interview I have been asked for a faculty position interview. Regarding the time, in their email they have only asked me about my availability for two days without a specific time. I want to know that in my confirmation reply, should I provide a specific time for interview or I just determine the day?

If it's a job you want, either clear your calendar for the two days they are proposing, or propose two days when you are free all day.  It's not clear from your question if they are proposing the days or asking you to propose them.


PhD application denial - Is it usual to ask reasons/recommendations? I got a denial to a PhD application I sent. The mail basically stated that they had picked another candidate and wished me luck.

I am doing my master in a German university and I applied to another department in the same university

Is it usual to ask the reasons of denial?. Would it even make sense?. If it is something like e.g. low GPA, there is pretty much nothing I can do to change that. If however it is something like "your motivation letter was too long" or something like that I guess it is salvageable.

You can certainly try asking, but I expect you won't get a useful answer.  In the cases I'm familiar with (mathematics departments in the U.S.), you aren't likely to get any official answer beyond "no comment".  This isn't because the department is being unhelpful or deliberately withholding information they could reasonably share.  Instead, it's because offering useful feedback is really hard.

Rejected applicants sometimes imagine that the rejection may have been due to some identifiable flaw they could fix, but in my experience this is rarely the case.  Most rejections are based on an overall evaluation, rather than isolated flaws.  Even if a single problem derailed the application, there might have been other issues that were never identified because discussion stopped when the application died.  Nobody wastes times on hypotheticals like "Would the candidate have been admitted if it weren't for this problem?", since the committee is eager to move on to the more contentious cases.  So even if the committee can point to a specific problem, they generally can't predict that fixing it would lead to admission.  It's not particularly useful or encouraging to be told "Here's a serious problem with your application, but don't assume you'll get in if you fix it.  We haven't even considered that question, so who knows?"  (Plus there are legal issues: you don't want to be sued by someone who is told their application was rejected for a specific reason and then discovers that you admitted another applicant with the same issue.  You might have had an excellent reason - perhaps the rest of the other application was magnificent - but it could still look like a pretext for discrimination.  It's safest not to offer any explanation that oversimplifies the full decision making process.)

These cases with isolated flaws are really not typical.  Instead, most feedback would fall into two categories: "Your application just wasn't good enough overall for us to even consider you" or "Your application was good and you made the short list, but you were outcompeted by people with even stronger applications".  The first sort of feedback adds insult to injury, and it's wise to avoid making enemies among the applicants you reject.  The second sort of feedback is also not constructive, since there's usually no good way to convey to the applicant how the final comparison was made.  The evaluation process consisted of multiple readers, perhaps with differing opinions, followed by a committee discussion that compared the application with the competition.  Confidential letters of recommendation played a major role, and in any case the process was lengthy and involved enough that it's difficult to summarize it usefully.

For comparison, U.S. National Science Foundation review panels provide applicants with copies of the written reviews and ratings of their proposals, together with a brief summary of the panel discussion.  This is about as much transparency as one could reasonably hope for, but it rarely leaves rejected applicants with a clear idea of how to improve their future proposals.  In many cases they don't even have a good understanding of why they didn't make it (beyond "some other proposals were even more compelling").


What are some career options for Math PhDs who want to work in non-Western countries (e.g. Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Africa)? I am about to enter a PhD program, and I am very interested in learning about opportunities that allow me to go abroad after I finish. During my undergraduate career, I studied in China for a year, and I really enjoyed the environment of learning new languages and living in a different culture.

Specifically, I want to know about some of the challenges that one might have in looking for university or research positions in non-Western countries, and subsequently, how one might transition back to the United States after having spent a considerable amount of time abroad (5+ years). I have felt that math is a universal topic, and many universities abroad (especially in Asian and central Asian countries) would have faculty positions for English speaking PhDs to move there. However, I don't have any information to justify these beliefs.

I'm not as concerned about salary or ending up at a prestigious research university. I really enjoy teaching and working with students, and I enjoy math enough that any position that would allow me to continue working in mathematics and with students would be acceptable. Am I entirely off base in hoping to find positions abroad? What are some challenges that I might not have considered?

EDIT: I should have clarified. I am an American student beginning a program in the United States. In that context, then, what are things that an American PhD should be aware of when looking for opportunities in non-Western countries, such as those in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Africa, etc.?

This answer is mostly for Asia.
Yes, there are programs in at least Japan and Korea (that I am aware of) for American Ph.D to find a job, including professorship.

I think the largest difference/challenge you will face is that many times, being a student and working in Asian countries such as China, Japan, Korea, is very different.  In general, the faculty, students, local businesses, etc. are happy to accommodate students spending some time in their region, learning their language, and living.  Systems are in place for this and the universities most often actively encourage it.

Meetings

As a professor it can be (but not always) different.  Unless you learn the language fluently before you go, think about your new colleagues and how they will feel, being required to speak to you in a language other than their own.  Not necessarily about the weather, but more importantly (what I noticed) is in faculty meetings, budget decisions, etc.  In this case, you can easily be the only person not able to understand, which leaves two options: you are left out of the meetings or everyone else is forced to speak your language (if they can).

You mention not caring about prestige, but I would caution you that many 'bad' universities have a lower chance of faculty being comfortable in English.

Administration

Beyond faculty, which may or may not speak English, you still will have administration to deal with.  Do you assume your contract will be in English? While some online university systems are in English, I have seen many parts that are not, such as the email system in English, but the login systems or vacation registration is not.

Culture

Of course, you need to think about culture.  The idea of Asian culture may allure you, but remember it is not always what it seems (just as people going to America find out).  In at least Japan and Korea, Impact Factor is the largest measure of performance, and you must follow it.  Be ready to change your work style if it does not fit into the way you are evaluated.

Resources

You can check https://www.higheredjobs.com/international/  for international job postings.


Review your own paper in Mathematics I sent a paper to a good journal with other coauthors. Some days ago, one of my coauthors was sent an invitation to review this paper. Is this logical? I mean, has anybody of you ever received an invitation to review your own paper?

Some months ago, the same occurred with another paper in another good journal. I declined the invitation explaining that I was an author and I suggested other reviewers.

But, as I got a similar invitation now, I ask whether this is a usual practice...

It's absolutely not usual practice and a clear case of the editor in charge being asleep at the wheel. This should not be happening: An editor's job is to find impartial reviewers and asking an author (or even someone close to the author) is definitely failing at this job.

Just the same, it is unethical for you to accept such invitations. Politely point out that you are an author of the paper and that, therefore, it would clearly be a conflict of interest for you to review the paper.


How do you deal with your Rate My Professor ratings? I recently saw my ratings on RateMyProfessor.com and it's very disheartening to see all the negative reviews from a course for which I worked so hard. Comments like "sh***y professor" are very difficult to accept. How do you all deal with it? Also, how much does it impact one's career? It's taking a toll on my mental health for sure.

I am not a professor. Perhaps it would be useful to you to understand this from a student's perspective. I am a PhD candidate and did my undergrad at the same school I'm in the PhD program for. This has given me some unique insight into the difference between what is put on a review, and the actual person (one of whom I work with closely) in reality.
RateMyProfessor encourages extremely harsh reviews. From a professor's perspective this is simply noise in the channel.
As a student RateMyProfessor became virtually worthless after I got through the middle of my undergraduate courses. Early undergraduate courses tended to be a grab-bag of instructors and professors. Some of them not even in the same field they are teaching. You will find that as course numbers increase and topic becomes specific (implying higher difficulty) the ratings skew heavily to the negative. The conclusion here, I think, is obvious. Student's want easy grades. But the explanation for that is not simply "students are lazy". As a student I didn't really get time to enjoy my classes. In order to graduate in 4 years I had to stay focused entirely on two goals: (1) minimize time spent studying (because I had several classes to worry about as well as a part time job) and (2) maximize my grade. I got out of my CS program with a 3.7 GPA which given that I took several hard classes really amounted to a mixture of actual work ethic, careful selection of professor, and time management.
You might say "well that's quite contrary to what I'd expect of a PhD-worthy undergraduate!" given that I am a PhD candidate. But truth be told, it wasn't until my last semester of undergrad when my course load was low that I really got to enjoy my classes for what they were. Until then, it was simply a game. Optimize the parameters of the equation whose solution is your graduation. The crushing weight of both expectation (get a good job) and retaking classes costing significantly more money made this equation my single greatest concern. Though you didn't say you were in the US I am speaking from a US standpoint. This is absolutely a consequence of extremely high prices for classes (where failure isn't a financial option), the unspoken requirement of a college degree for a good job, and the time crunch to get into industry to make some actual money.
Knowing this, take these things with a grain of salt. Know that especially if you are teaching undergraduate courses your students are adversarial. You could be a bad teacher, that is certainly a possibility, but more likely you have screwed up their solution to the equation required to graduate. Keep this in mind and seriously evaulate whether you are a measurably bad professor or you are teaching a hard subject and students who misinterpreted your presentation (as in you, personally) are upset you screwed up the game they are playing.


Feeling frustrated by colleagues' behavior, considering leaving the university I'm aware, that this question is going to appear too emotional and exaggerated, but I'll try my best to describe the whole situation as it is, unbiased.

The point is, I'm major degree student who changed his field of study from Informatics and Computer Science (I've got B.S. from it) to Computational Mathematics. I was not very happy with lecturers' behavior in B.S. degree (HERE is my question about Bachelor's thesis, where my supervisor effectively refused to cooperate), but now it's much worse than everything I've ever imagined.

Most of my colleagues in this new field look down at me, like I was some pauper who went there to steal something to eat. The most terrifying thing is, that even some professors obviously share this attitude, that Informatics and CS student are not worthy of being accepted by mathematicians. The first incident happened approximately 2 weeks ago and I asked about it HERE.

Today, the second incident happened, or better, climaxed. Since the first week of this term I was trying to contact one of professors, who was responsible for my acclimatization plan (one subject, where are the most important things from B.S., so you could catch up with your colleagues in your new field). He was supposed to send me some studying materials and tell me, which topics I should learn. Also he should tell me about terms of my exams and the topic of the project he wants me to do. He did none of these things, so I was contacting him again and again.

He usually responded to my e-mail with some vague info about "consulting it next week on Skype". Yesterday I insisted on consultation, but he told me, that he only wants to do it through Skype. Then he send me some messages late in the evening and in the morning today with the text similar to this: "Do you have the time to consult it right now?" I had no chance to even read it exactly in the time the message was delivered. Today I accepted the whole "Skype thing" and send him an e-mail in the afternoon again. He told me that he'll be online today at 8 p.m. But, even after three my messages, he wasn't. I got only short e-mail about him being ready in 5 minutes (so he was near his computer), but he wasn't. I gave up waiting in 9:30 p.m. After 10 p.m. I got e-mail from him with text "OK, tomorrow I'll be here from 10 to 11 a.m.".

I consider this last message to be a pure mockery, he probably wants me to wait for him again and again, even in weekends.

The problem is, I don't know, what should I do now. My greatest dream was becoming a successful scientist. After B.S. I was offered a part-time job in our research center and I got about 6 offers to the industry positions (even a programming job for company which produces airplanes). Even if those positions were much more lucrative, I accepted the position in research. Because of this research center is our university ranked top in my country.

I've sacrificed everything I could to this dream. My friends (who are away or in the CS field), hobbies (bodybuilding, martial arts and even fishing were too time-consuming activities) and my health too. I've started loosing hair, weight, my hands are trembling permanently and I had to undergo lesser back surgery because of long-term sitting, so now I have the typical "drug-addict look". It didn't matter too much to me, I was working and studying about 14 hours every day.

But now I'm incredibly frustrated, sad and shocked because of my new lecturers' and colleagues' attitude. I feel like I cannot continue my degree here, but I don't want to leave either, because I would've left my job in research.

Ok, so here are my questions:

What do you think I can do about professors' attitude? I don't think an official complaint is the best idea because of their positions.
Is it possible to suspend my career in the academy, take the job in the industry and try to get into another research center next year? Or will it damage my career as a researcher deeply?

I'm sorry for a very long description of my problem.

My adviser told me in my first meeting with him: "I warn you that we'll agree on meetings, and I will just forget to come." This isn't ideal, but I took it as a cute forgetful scientist comment, not an insulting admission. And yes, it turned out to happen a lot.

Professors deal not just with research and supervising students, but they might be involved with industry, probably have a family, and certainly spend much time fighting administration; and the more accomplished they are, the more time is spent dealing with issues they'd rather not instead of focusing on what most like (such as doing research, and supervising). I fully understand that your experiences are frustrating, but they don't strike me necessarily as that unusual. If you find yourself with an adviser who is always extremely reliable, you are lucky. You are not lucky, but this is still to say that all I think you need is patience.

There is more to it though. If your adviser is the busy type, and offers a meeting right after sending you information, he obviously doesn't expect you to have it digested already. You should have taken him up on the offer, and refrain from fatalistic attitudes such as calling re-scheduling attempts a "mockery." Marcus Aurelius wrote (from memory) "We cannot change what happens to us, but we can change how we feel about it." While this isn't so easy, it's good advice as attaching negative feelings to events in the course of work or study doesn't help. From your questions here, you appear to do that commonly. I think your mind and body would benefit if you wouldn't. To learn this, maybe talking to a counsellor might help, if only to verbalize your frustration with them, and maybe so get it out of your system.

I can't help but feel that the world around you isn't quite as dark as it appears to you. Try to learn how to perceive it that way.


Grant funding for independent researcher with no past track record I am an independent researcher working outside of academia with no past track record so far. Is it still possible to apply for research grants anyway, and how should I go about doing so?

I do have a very good research plan, but the catch is, I need some funding before I can carry them out. How can I convince grant agencies to give me a chance?

Ok, this is going to sting a bit, but, practically, this is not going to happen, no matter how brilliant your research idea and plan is. In practice, the scientific credentials of the proposal author / proposed principal investigator are very important to project / grant acceptance. Having no affiliation with a well-reputed research institution is already a strike against you, but not having a track record is a knockout criterion for each funding agency I am aware of. To give you one concrete example, the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) will, according to their published rules, not even scientifically review a proposal with an insufficiently experienced principal investigator. From what I have heard, other agencies have similar formal rules. In short: you will need a co-proposer with sufficient standing in your field, otherwise you are essentially wasting your time preparing the proposal.

Maybe this seems unfair to you, but try to see it from the point of view of the funding agency. While you may have strong confidence in you and your project, you are a huge risk factor to the agency. You have no demonstrated experience in leading a project, maybe not even in participating in one, you are not embedded into on of the traditional research environments, you do not necessarily have the resources to even conduct the research project, and, from a legal point of view, if you just take the provided grants and run away, there is no organisation that the funding agency can sue to get their money back.


How to avoid theft of potentially patentable IP when trying to obtain a Ph.D? When I was fresh out of college, I worked with someone who had their Ph.D who I'll call X.  They told me that they had lunch with a person from Facebook who had told them about a Novel Algorithm Facebook had created.  X decided to do a patent search on this algorithm, and it did not exist. Therefore, X decided to patent it himself as a System and Method.

My researched solution to a problem could potentially be worth millions of dollars.  I don't mean to sound braggadocious or grandiose, but I have experience in the industry, and I'm aware of how potentially valuable it could be.  I was thinking about doing a Ph.D on it. How do I prevent professors such as X from patenting my solution, or presenting it as their own idea in a publication? Since my solution could potentially be worth so much money, should I just patent it myself? The only caveat is that it is super expensive to do that.  Should I apply for a grant on grant.gov?  Should I write a manuscript in arXiv.org?  Should I try to write a business plan and try to get funding?

Let me describe fairly typical practice at reputable US universities. When someone has a patentable idea, the university itself will take over the patent process, paying lawyers and fees. The university will probably be the patent holder of record, but will make arrangements with the actual creator(s) to share any income that results from exploiting the patent.

This can be good or bad, I suppose, but the good part is that the university covers the cost and also provides backup if anyone challenges the patent at any point. This can be very difficult for an individual to do on their own. The bad part is that the patent is probably in the university's name, though that may vary.  Another point is that the university may take it upon itself to find ways to monetize the patent if it is awarded. Again, this can be a large expense for an individual.

But one protection for you, a student with an idea, is that if the university is, indeed, reputable, it won't try to steal your idea or let a faculty member steal it.

But faculty at the (reputable) institutions that do a lot of patentable research normally require this (or a similar) process as part of the contract with the faculty member. Such agreements might also be necessary for a student to participate in such work. And there is usually an office, full of lawyers, dedicated to shepherding such work. So a further expectation is that the university is not only reputable, but also large enough to support that office.

And the sharing arrangement may be standardized or, possibly, negotiated, so long as costs can be expected to be covered.

The situation and the rules will also probably vary by a lot in other countries.

For completeness, I'll note that large companies doing important research also tend to have (and require) some similar arrangements with their own researchers.