At what stage in academia are you most likely to suffer a mental breakdown? Let's see, just in this week alone I got the news that I have failed four of my midterms (out of five courses in total, the last course doesn't have a midterm), achieving around 40% in each, quite consistent effort across the board. By the way I have around a 3.8 GPA over 4 years of engineering school and I received a letter from the faculty telling me to pull my grade up or consult mental health professional.

I think all this is happening I am in the final stage of wrapping up a year long project that has truly went awry. Two of the members contributed nothing and did not even participate in completing the final system. So I was there to build the entire system myself. This was easy until it was time to deliver our final report. Guess who wrote the 80 pg long final report.

During all this I had one huge McDonald per day at around 1:00 AM, drank a dozen of energy drinks which I know cannot be too good for me. Missed nearly every single lecture. Wrote a 1000 word email to my supervisor detailing how much I suffered through this project and later wrote a 20 word email apologizing for the rambling. Fell sleep in the middle of a lab exercise (thankfully I am able to make up for the lab tomorrow morning). Also rejected from two schools, not my dream school, but hurt nonetheless.

This is the part when I think I would be finally schizophrenic. Like John Nash or that girl in Proof, I go full blown insane. Wear a clown hat on my way to school while swearing at bus drivers, sitting in the middle of a floor in a 7-eleven crying or writing indecipherable symbols on the blackboard. I am not dealing with this stress at all. I have not talked to my professors about the midterms, no plans to make up anything. I have not bothered to pick up the midterms either to check what is wrong.

Surprisingly, none of this has happened. I wonder if I am in a phase that is beyond five stages of grief, or if I have truly given up in my subconscious. Has anyone experienced something similar? Like a setback that is so big that you would think you would run into emotional troubles but nothing wind up happening. At what stage in academia would one most likely to suffer from a break down of some sort?

You have given more than enough evidence to show that you need to seek professional help and/or counseling.  The impulse of telling people that you're in trouble is a good one.  Posting anonymously on a site for academic advice is not the way to go: because you clearly need help by those with professional counseling training and very few academics have such training, most people on this site will (and should) decline to give you specific advice.  Please seek help in real life.  You can begin with student counseling services at your university.  If you don't know where to go, google "student counseling [your university]".

Note: I am leaving this as an answer rather than a comment because I feel strongly that this is "the real answer" for the OP.  The manner in which probability of mental breakdown varies with the stage of one's academic career is not relevant to the OP.  Mental breakdown can happen at all stages of an academic (and nonacademic) career, and rather than looking at age or seniority statistically one should look behaviorally, cognitively and emotionally on a case-by-case basis.


After posting in arxiv the author finds that proof technique in the paper has some similarity with some discussions in a math forum Suppose in mathematics, someone writes a paper, uploads it to arxiv and afterwards he learns that the proof technique used in the paper has some similarity with some discussions in a math forum (e.g. math exchange / stack exchange). It was not published in any journal or in arxiv. He did not see this discussion while working on the paper. What should the author do? In general, in mathematics the priority goes to the one who publishes the article first in arxiv.

It's just an independent discovery.  That it was on the web versus a journal is just a detail (could have even be neither, like from a verbal talk).  Although the informal nature of the other work does make it a little more understandable that you missed it when you did a background search (even so, obscure archived articles can be missed also).

I wouldn't feel some need to update the arxive paper.  These things happen all the time.

If you do an update of the arxive (which I see more as a preprint server, but this is a different debate), into an archived real journal, I would cite the other work at that time.  I personally think it is possible to gently note that the other work was noticed after your discovery.  (Buffy disagrees--too personal.  But I think you can adroitly manage it.)


Poor academic performance - should/can I apply to a PhD program? I was always a distracted kid growing up. I found it difficult to pay attention to anything for more than fifteen minutes. Growing up in Asia, teachers at the school and college levels always put it down to me being a “bad student” and made sure I knew that I would never amount to much.

After moving to the US for my master’s degree in computer science over ten years ago, my distractions and poor academic performance started haunting me again. I was put on academic probation and faced expulsion if I did not bring my GPA up (from 2.5x to 3+). During one of my lectures, the professor noticed my fidgeting and asked me to meet her after class. She told me I exhibited the classic symptoms of ADHD (which I had never heard of before) and asked me to meet the university counselor. The counselor confirmed the diagnosis and referred me to a psychiatrist for medication.

This was probably the biggest turning point in my life as it was only then that I realized that there was something that caused me to behave the way I did. Knowing and understanding what the cause of my distractions made me able to address it and focus my energy and concentration properly. I transferred to a different university (lesser ranked than the first one, but well known for its notoriously rigorous curriculum) and was able to maintain a 3.5+ GPA throughout, in addition to being invited to PhD level research groups and being admitted to highly selective research internships in Europe. I enrolled in classes that were restricted to PhD students after I petitioned the school dean, and ended up topping 2 out of the 3 courses.

In my mid-30’s now, I currently work as a scientist in a reputed firm. I’ve been granted a patent in machine learning and one of my papers has been shortlisted for publication in a top tier conference (I won’t know for sure till next month). I came across a PhD program that pretty much aligns perfectly with my grad school research and social cause and I’m extremely interested in applying for it. The application process involves the regular requirements of GRE/recommendations/statements of purpose and transcripts from ALL universities attended.

My grad advisors and I have maintained good relationships over the years and they have encouraged me on several occasions to apply to a PhD program. However, I’m worried that my academic performance at the first university I attended for my master’s will come back to bite me. While I can just apply and hope for the best, I don’t want to have to ask my professors to invest the time and effort to write recommendation letters for me, only for my application to be thrown into the trash.

On a scale of 1 to 3 stars, (3 requiring the most effort), here are the requirements for the application:

Personal Statement (**)
Transcripts from all institutions attended (*** - insanely difficult and time consuming to get bachelor degree transcripts from university)
3 letters of recommendation (** - easy enough, but I feel bad about getting my professors to do this for me if there’s no change of getting it)
GRE (**)

The PhD program is in a field I'm very passionate about and has world class researchers on the faculty. At a recent graduate open house, I met the director of the program who said they had an 11 percent admit rate over te past few years.

All this said, would it make sense to apply to the program anyway or will the fact that I was nearly expelled due to my academic performance make the risk not worth the effort?

EDIT: I wanted to thank everyone for their thoughtful and supportive responses. I've decided to apply for the PhD but for next year's intake. As an update, the paper that was shortlisted to the conference I mentioned ended up being accepted, so that's sure to build up my profile a little more.

You are now in your mid-thirties. You don't give a precise timeline, but based on your description I'll assume that the poor performance from the first university you attended for your master's happened about 10 years ago. In the meantime, you completed a degree elsewhere with much more distinction, and developed a career and a track record of successful achievements.

The logical conclusion is that any sensible admissions committee will look to your recent record as a much better indicator of your potential to succeed in the graduate program than your more ancient school history. The grades from your old school will very likely be seen as largely irrelevant. So, in my opinion this should not be a major concern.

And as @astronat said in a comment, you'll never know what would happen if you don't try. Good luck!


My student's family won't let her study what she wants Yesterday I had a tearful encounter in office hours with the most avid participant in the math class I teach, in which she related the following situation.

She is an international student whose parents are well off by local standards but have made significant financial sacrifices for her to study abroad at the university where I work. Part of the plan was that she should have a scholarship, but it has recently been denied on the grounds her grades are not strong enough, and as a result she will have to switch to a nearby university in the fall. Part of why her grades aren't strong is because she is a very specifically focused student: professional mathematics is all she really wants to do with her life. She already knows. When she is able to do what she wants, she just studies math. She works extremely hard, but at end of the day she couldn't care less about her other courses and views the struggle to get good grades as a distraction from what's important to her.

Her parents disagree that there is any future in math for her. They tell her it's not worth it and that she's bad at it. They're medical doctors in a country where teachers are treated poorly, viewed as people lacking the talent to do anything better, and are worried that a career in math would be both unremunerative and undignified—which might be the case in her home country, but my student also doesn't hope to return home. Nevertheless, for because her parents are footing the bill and because she's not willing to openly defy them, my student will finish a pure CS major when she enrolls in her new university, and won't be allowed to enroll in any future math courses during undergrad.

I watched her just crumble as she told me this, weeping and apologizing for it, unable to make eye contact. She's about to embark, without any choice in the matter, on a course that's going to make her miserable for years, if not longer, and moreover, from what I know of her, she is just the kind of person who should be in math.

I've told her there's nothing anyone can do to stop her from learning on her own, and that absolutely no instructor would refuse to let her sit in on whatever math course she wants, so that at most this will be a hiccup resulting in her getting a sort of bachelor's degree she doesn't really want at the expense of what she'd rather do, and that at the time she's financially independent, she can really study what she wants, but one could tell she's not completely buying this. She's devastated, and I can hardly blame her.

What can I (or anyone) do to help in this situation?

Some thoughts:

Suggest counseling.  They are much more likely to be able to help support her in expressing her goals to her parents, understanding their position, and perhaps in negotiating some sort of compromise with them.  Family relationship issues are likely to be a pretty common concern for college students, and a university counseling service will have had lots of experience with them.
Suggest talking to the financial aid office. They may be able to explore other options for funding if she decides to go on without her parents' financial support, though admittedly there may not be a lot of options for international students.
Talk to your contacts at the other university. See if you can connect her with someone who may be sympathetic to her situation, and who might be able to help her with some of the other things mentioned here.
Help her explore degree and course options. Is there some other degree offered by the institution that might represent a compromise between what she wants and what her parents are willing to pay for?  Are there ways for her to take more classes that she's interested in?
She needs to be able to succeed at things even when they don't interest her.  You write "She couldn't care less about her other courses and her grades".  Regardless of the degree she pursues, this is a recipe for disaster in US academia, where breadth is considered essential and degree requirements are designed accordingly, and overall GPA is widely used as a metric of success,  e.g. for graduate schools and jobs.

(I am guessing from your terminology that you are in the US.  If not, please correct me.)

She doesn't have to like all her courses, but she does have to be able to push through and do her best work even in those she dislikes.  That's a necessary academic and life skill, and as a faculty member you may be able to help her develop that skill.  Counseling services may also help with this, if she has some emotional resistance to get past.
She might find these courses more interesting if she gives them a chance. Even pure mathematicians can benefit greatly from knowledge about other fields, and you or other faculty members might be able to help her see connections with things that interest her more.


Evidence of Reviewing Scams in Major AI/ML Conferences? I have recently heard a few independent rumors about massive collusion amongst reviewers in major AI/ML conferences. The way this works is that a large group of program committee (PC) members start a chat group (on WhatsApp/Telegram etc.) and share their assigned papers; other members of the group flag papers that are theirs and get the "insiders" to score them higher.

To make things concrete, Alice and Bob start a chat where both share their assigned papers. Alice sees that Bob's batch contains one of her papers, and asks Bob to write a glowing review of that paper.

Are these rumors substantiated? Has anyone else heard of this going on? If it is as widespread as I was led to believe, what does this mean for the review process in these conferences and what countermeasures can we take?

The top AI/ML conferences like NIPS have something like 2500 reviewers. There will probably be some bad apples in there who engage in the sort of behavior you describe. However, I would be shocked if this is happening at a large scale. The conference organizers would take action if they were aware of any such activities.

It sounds like you have no evidence of this. Frankly, it sounds like a typical conspiracy theory. Perhaps someone wishes to explain why their papers never get in but those from X, Y and Z always do, and decides that X, Y, and Z must be colluding. The true explanation will be a lot more mundane -- it's probably just that certain groups and people have more experience and have learned the "tricks of the trade" needed to publish papers.


It may not be in my best interest to ask a professor I have done research with for recommendation letters. Can this seem suspicious in my application? I am not from the US and my field is in the social sciences. A while back, I started collaborating with a foreign professor on a research project which is now under review and another one which is halfway through. however, I did not find these topics very fulfilling and I want to move to another area closer to my original interests (I already have two other published papers relevant to this new area). The complicating issue is that the professor has told me several times he would be very interested in having me as a PhD student. So, I guess, he may not appreciate the fact that I have decided to pursue another area with another supervisor. Therefore, it may not be very fair or wise to ask him for letters of recommendation. What worries me, however, is that if I list these papers in my CV (which I eventually have to when they get published), it may raise questions/suspicions about why I have not asked him to recommend me. I cannot preemptively tell my prospective supervisor or the admissions committee the real reason for my reluctance to ask this professor. So, I am concerned that if such questions arise in their minds, it may lead them to mistakenly assume that I have something to hide, motivating me to exclude this professor as a potential recommender.
Is this a legitimate concern?

the professor has told me several times he would be very interested in having me as a PhD student. So, I guess, he may not appreciate the fact that I have decided to pursue another area with another supervisor

Could be, if this person is vindictive and unethical. But if they are a decent human being they would write a gushing letter about how they would love to have you as a student, and other professors would take this as a good sign.
Unless you have a stronger reason to think this person falls into that bad category, I think they are probably one of your best potential letter writers. Someone who wants you as a PhD student is someone who has confidence in your research potential - that's exactly what you want from your letter writers.


What was graduate admissions like before the electronic age? On the applicant side, did admissions require the same documents as today? Also, since gathering the required documents presumably took longer (especially for an applicant who had already graduated), how soon did the applicant have to apply before intake? For example today's graduate programs commonly have a January application deadline for August intake - what was it like in the past? Since today's students regularly email prospective supervisors before applying, did students in the past also regularly visit campuses before applying? Finally, how much were application fees then compared to now?

On the admissions committee side, did committees rely less on personal contacts and more on the submitted documents? E.g. suppose an applicant submitted a recommendation letter by Einstein, who a member of the committee knew firsthand. Today, I presume the committee would email Einstein to discuss the applicant. Would committees of the past do the same (but with telephone / post)? If not, was there a greater risk of forgery?

Since just before the transition to the use of the Internet for admissions—in the 1980's and 1990's—the kinds of documents submitted haven't fundamentally changed. What was more difficult back then is that everything had to be printed out and mailed, and application forms had to be individually written or typed out. Deadlines were basically the same as they are now, if not a little later—all of my deadlines were in January or February, whereas now they may be in December. It's not easy, as one might imagine, to visit lots of schools in the US, and in engineering, students normally visited after being admitted, not before. As far as fees go, they haven't changed that much, I don't think—I remember the fees when I applied being about $50 to $75 per school.

As you can imagine, credential fraud was much easier to commit because there was no easy way to teleconference via means like Skype or Google Hangouts, so you couldn't really tell who you were speaking to on the phone. This was most obviously a problem in terms of evaluating the English skills of foreign applicants. I know of at least one department that completely blacklisted all applicants from China for a number of years because multiple applicants would have a colleague with stronger English skills "stand in" for them in the telephone interview, and then the accepted candidate showed up with far worse English skills than the person interviewed. Nowadays, with the possibility of teleconferencing, and with ID's included in the test documents for TOEFL and IELTS, it's much easier to know who you are interviewing, making such fraud much more difficult to achieve.

With respect to contacts, that of course applies—if you know someone who's written a letter of recommendation, and there's any questions, of course you'd want to contact the person by phone or email.


Who's the Principal investigator if you are doing your degree project abroad? Some necessary information:
I study at European university A, but did my degree project at European university B.
I will not get a degree from B but from A.
I was supervised by a professor and one of his assistance at B.
My supervisor at A only received regular updates, but wasn't involved in any other way.
Officially the professor at A is grading my work (in reality he probably will just call and ask the professor at university B for the grade, but nonetheless).
Question:
I'm currently making the last thing for my thesis: The titlepage. How do I refer to the two professors and the assistant on the titlepage? Who is the supervisor, who the PI? I don't want to step on anybody's toes. I definitely need to mention all three of them.
Furthermore I ask myself whether it is acceptable to put the logo of both universities on the title. I feel like it is weird because I only get a degree from A, but also feel like the professor at B will be offended if I don't.
I know this is a silly question, but maybe you can help me resolve this.

Send a joint email to both professors involved, and ask them what you write here. Showing that you care to do the right thing is unlikely to upset anyone.


Can someone get his previous credits counted in a new Master's programme in the EU? Suppose, someone studied in a 120ECTS MSc program in CS in a country 'X' in the EU. He obtained 60 ECTS there, but he also has some failed courses. He then abandons the program.
Now, he moves to a country 'Y' in the EU and gets admission to program CS in the country 'Y' after 5 years.
Can he get his 60 ECTS credits counted by the school offering CS?

They will decide what credits / courses they will be prepared to accept.
All you can do is show what you have covered so far, even including syllabi may help make a case but, remember they get to decide what is accepted.


Can a paper be presented by two presenters in a conference I am a beginner in research papers and doesn't know much about registration and presenting.

Can two authors register for the same conference and present the paper (together)?

Registration and presentation of a paper are two somewhat separate issues. Normally, presenters at a conference must register, but there is no rule that says only one author of a paper can register for a given conference.

In general, however, papers normally have only one presenter, as the logistics of a conference normally work against having multiple speakers for a single presentation. (The presentation time is not that long, transferring a microphone between speakers, ensuring proper "flow" of the talk across the change in presenters, and so on, all tend to work against the idea of multiple presenters for a given paper.)


In the absence of strong references, on which things should I focus so that I can gain access to a PhD program? The idea of working toward a PhD came to me very late in my Master's program. As such, my primary professors and adviser didn't necessarily coach me into PhD preparation and may have even seen me as somewhat of a black sheep in the academic community. I don't doubt that they would believe in my ability to research, but rather that it'd be somewhat of a surprise that this was an area of interest for me.

Having said all of that, while I believe that they could give me a good reference, I don't believe it would be the "great" reference that would be characteristic of this internationally-recognized expert in their field. With this in mind, are there things that I can do to make myself a more appealing candidate to a PhD program?

PhD programs are looking for strong evidence of research potential.  We'll look for that evidence in your recommendation letters (preferably from people who know the field and know what potential stars look like), in your research statement, and in your academic record.

Get the best references you can.  You write "I don't doubt that they would believe in my ability to research", which is excellent.  They may also write about their surprise in your late interest, which will raise some eyebrows, but it's the truth, so you're stuck with it.

In your research statement, be sure to explain why you're interested in a PhD, and in particular, what changed in the late stages of your MS program to spark your interest.  You need to actively pre-empt the perception that you just want to stay in school because you want to learn More Cool Stuff, or that you tried Real Work and you didn't like it.

You also need to include credible technical detail about your research experience and your specific research interests.  (Yes, that means you need to have research experience and specific research interests.)  Otherwise, readers will wonder if you know what research actually is.  That naïveté might be excusable for someone with only a BS, but for an applicant with an master's degree, it's a serious red flag.

Good luck!


Is pregnancy a valid explanation of a weak academic performance? I am a foreign student and currently applying to several PhD programs in the US. My GPA in the 6th semester was a lot disappointing, and pulled down my overall GPA and ranking significantly. The reason is that I got pregnant, by accident. I want to explain this situation in my statement of purpose or address an email to the admission committee, so I want to know how Americans, especially professors, will normally react to this explanation? Will they regard it as understandable mistake or unforgivable sin?

I'm going to side-step this question by simply saying: in PhD admissions, grades are not nearly as important as one might think.  Far more important are 1. your letters of recommendation and 2. tangible evidence that you are capable of being creative and productive in a research environment (e.g., class projects, publications if you have them, etc.).  One semester of bad grades is not going to kill your application, especially if the rest of your grades are strong.

Some even broader advice is: draw attention to the good rather than the bad.  Compare the two statements:

(A) "Despite my poor performance in area X, I believe that I am still a strong candidate for the program in (your field of study)."
(B) "My strong performance in area Y demonstrates that I am well prepared for a research career in (your field of study)."

Both statements communicate the same idea ("I am qualified"), but (B) draws attention to the good, whereas (A) draws attention to the bad.  Don't draw attention to the bad.  If people think something is bad, they'll think it's bad no matter what you say about it.  Get them focused on the good stuff instead.


Can I add dropbox links to my resume for graduate school applications? I am applying for Masters in ECE, since setting up a personal website at short notice is impossible,I wanted to provide dropbox links in my CV. For example:

Worst Outgoing Student Award         [Certificate]
Bachelors in Bunking Classes         [Relevant Coursework]
Book Report on Taming of the Shrew   [Report]

All the [**] fields are basically dropbox links, accessible to all. I wanted to know if this is recommended or not.

Your CV should stand on its own.  Admissions committees are likely to have stacks of material through which to look, and will almost certainly make a decision based on what you send them.  It is most unlikely that they'll be willing to hunt around to find things you should have told them directly, and even less likely if they have to download documents from Dropbox instead of just displaying them.

Spend your time making your CV as good as you can instead of spending time trying to take shortcuts, because that's what those Dropbox links will look like to the committee.


How early should one request a letter of recommendation for graduate school? I will be applying to start graduate school in the U.S. next year during the Fall. Currently I am an undergraduate senior student and most programs require three letters of recommendation with the application. I know professors are busy people and many programs have different requirements for the format of the recommendation. Hence, it might take some time for a professor to do the different recommendations. How early should I send the initial email requesting for a letter?

Contact the professors now! There's no reason to wait. You can just tell them you are interested in having them write letters for you, if they are willing; they can at least start thinking about what to write. Then as soon as you have decided which schools to apply to, send them the details on  how to submit the letters and the deadlines. I would say this should be a bare minimum of 2 weeks before the deadline, preferably much sooner.

After that, don't hesitate to remind them periodically of the deadline, until they tell you the letters have been submitted.


University providing CGPA but not grading on a curve I am studying at a university that provides with a CGPA (as mentioned on mark sheets) but they are not a curve.

The thing is, although my cgpa is 7, I am fourth in the class from a total of 40 students. I am worried that it might be taken negatively when I apply for Graduate Studies. How can share this information across the admissions committee?

I am studying in a not so top university from India. I am studying computer sciences and will be applying for the same.

If you believe the CGPA data your university provides does not make your performance clearin your application package, it is your responsibility to clarify in your personal statement or try to achieve this through reference letters.

"My academic performance places me in the top 10% of my class."


Is it better to have a strong thesis, or to follow personal interests during PhD? I'm a second year US PhD student in applied math. For the last year I've been working on one project with my advisor and another one of her students. We have also started a collaboration with a professor from another university on an unrelated topic. Both of these project are progressing at a fairly expected rate.

Recently, I have made headway on a "personal" project, which I expect to publish as a single author paper. As a result of this, I've been in contact with some people I met at a conference, and am planning to work on the follow up analysis with them and my advisor. I think this paper and the subsequent analysis will be significant enough that it could serve as the bulk of my thesis. However, I'm not that interested in this topic, and definitely don't want to spend my career on this problem.

I also just reached out to a new professor in our department about some projects which could be much more aligned with my personal interests.

At this point my main goal is to get a good postdoc and then a good tenure track position. I'm fine with grinding through any work for the next few years if it will help me get there, so my question is whether it will be more beneficial to continue with the personal project on which I've made the most progress, and end up with a very focused and "citeable" thesis, or to pursue problems I find interesting, and end up with a broader but perhaps less impactful thesis.

In either case I expect to work fairly closely with my advisor and one early career academic from outside my university, but if I pursue my personal interests, I'd probably end up working closely with at least one additional person.

The papers are more important.   They have way more impact than thesis.  Especially on technical fields.

Your thesis will be pass fail usually.  May be written up just because advisor says you are ready to go.  This us different in humanities.

Depending on your results you may even have to be creative and mash a snowball together from scattered work.  Assigning a theme even if there isn't quite one.   Not ideal.  But happens.

It can also happen if you are strongly productive to just pick one part of your work time be the thesis.  It is also not uncommon to see students do a couple areas and eventually abandon one usually the first.  Often because it has more results.  This can even happen quite late in grad school.

The dirty secret is that the thesis is just a school drill.  But papers for the literature?  That is playing with the big boys.

A different question to ask is if you will produce more by sticking to one area or moving around.  Really you need to make your own guess on efficiency and how target rich the areas are.  In all cases you need to consider what to invest time on. But I don't think of it as thesis versus papers.  It's always papers.  Just on what topics.  Thesis is just a glorified term paper.


How do I get into a masters course in pure mathematics? My question is as stated in the title and to elaborate more:

I would like to know if there are any standardized international exams to enter a masters course in pure mathematics (besides GRE Math) and available for a scholarship simultaneously? (I'm a graduate in Automotive engineering, 23 years old and don't have a math degree yet).

I have completed 5 courses related to engineering mathematics during my tenure as a engineer.

I've been prepping only on math (topology, differential geometry, advanced calculus, real analysis, etc.) for the past 6 months and am almost ready for an entrance exam.

Can anyone offer me alternate options or solutions on how to go about this?

There are no standardized international exams for mathematics. Strategies for applying for a masters in Maths is no different from any other program. The best, and possibly easiest, way to enhance your chances for acceptance is to find a means to self fund. Specifics on how to tailor an application are very country and program dependent.


Student registration fee at conferences for ex-students for work done as a student I did some work as part of my final year undergraduate project and wrote a paper which has now been accepted at a conference. Though I am now working in the industry, I have listed my affiliation as my University because that is where I did my work as a student. So, for registering in the conference, do I have to pay the full registration fee (because I am currently not a student) or can I pay the student fee (because I did the work during my undergraduate days)?

You're not a student now

The fees are based on the status of the participants, not the status of the papers. Often, organizers will require some evidence of student status (such as a current student ID) in order to be eligible for the reduced price.

It may be reasonable to get the student fee if you're a student at the time of registration but graduate before the actual conference - as the process often takes multiple months, but if it's something earlier, then you're out of luck.


Is this an example of common knowledge? When I cite examples of competitors, say like I mention that the competitors of company X are: A, B & C. Do I have to support my claim with a reference? It's just out of my personal observation that I know these are/could be the competitors of company X.

This is not a common knowledge and should be best supported by some reference. Example reference for this could be market analysis papers, industry analysis reports or, at the very least, interviews with people from company X identifying A, B and C as competitors. The reason these claims should be supported is that you, personally, may not know some details about how A functions (making it target other audience than X) or miss a competitor D who is snapping at X's heels.

Now, how strict the requirement to support the claims is varying, depending on what kind of report you are writing. If it is a business plan for company X, apparently, you don't just use your personal observation, but should base your claims on something. If you are writing a general overview of some product that X, A, B and C produce, you might get away with using your personal observations, but it's still better to back up your claims with sources.


Can I slack off and get a PhD? I am not a genius but I am a good test taker and a very practical person. I went through undergraduate school without studying much (skipping classes, doing homework, reading the books and doing some exercises the day before the test) with a 3.6 GPA in Computer Engineering from a decent school (CWRU).

I know I might get angry answers from people saying that it simply cannot be done. I am interested to hear from the people in the other side of the spectrum. Can it be done? Have you done it?

I want to become a college professor so a PhD is a requirement I need to fulfil.

slack off = not put much effort and work in, like when you didn't bother to google that word!

Can I slack and get a PhD?

Yes, definitely. I have known PhD students that graduated, which I can only describe as lazy.

Now the more important question is Why the heck do you want to? If your goal is to stay in research, slacking off during your PhD time is career suicide. If you do not want to stay in research, and you are not particularly interested in the research contents, then a PhD degree will not be much more than a piece of paper to put on your office wall. A piece of paper for which you have accepted 3+ years of lousy pay.

Edit:

  I want to become a college professor so a PhD is a requirement I need to fulfill.

I correct my point from above: "If your goal is to stay in academia, slacking off during your PhD time is career suicide". Let me put it this way - faculty positions, including those at liberal arts colleges, are typically competitive to get into. Having a PhD that shows that you are less than enthusiastic about your field will likely not land you such a job. If this is your career goal, you need to ask yourself not "What is the minimum amount of work I need to put in to get a PhD?" but rather "What is the minimum amount of work I need to put in to have a real shot at scoring a position afterwards?" (where the second effort is substantially larger than the first effort).


Writing a master thesis in a totally new field? One year ago I started an interdisciplinary master programme. It is now time to choose my master thesis topic and the one I have in mind is totally unrelated to my bachelor and quite distant from my current expertise.

I know, that if I were to choose this topic and write a good thesis I would have to acquire substantially new knowledge & skills.

Although I have 9 months to write my thesis, I am considering taking a year off to get caught up on the said topics, and then starting next year.

Is this advisable?

Would you take up the challenge to get acquainted while writing the thesis or only start researching after you've familiarised yourself with the basics?

It might be different from country to country, but where I did my Masters project (Denmark) your judged on what is expected to be learned (with of course a basic-level start knowledge) within the allocated time for the project. Hence, I would not advise to take a year out to get acquainted.

However, it should also be noted that in Denmark you get money to study and so a year of would mean you would need another income. Opposite to other places (like US) where it cost you money to study.


I have career gap after bachelors degree and irrelevant work experience. How do I write SOP for MS admission in US? I pursued a Bachelor of Technology in Electronics and Communication Engineering stream and I completed the course in 2010. I was jobless for more than a year so I did a 3 months course in Java. Im Sun certified. I still wasn't able to find a job. I got a job in a Business Process Outsourcing company as a customer support associate. I had to take the job, as I didn't have any choice. I worked from Aug 2012 to Nov 2013. Now I'm interested in doing an MS. I'm afraid I don't get admitted. I'm especially interested in University of Texas at Austin. I don't know how to project my negative points in the SOP. I don't know what points to include and what to not. I have no clue. Please help me.

Unlike employers in industry, I believe that graduate admissions committees don't care if there are gaps, irrelevant work experience, or changes of direction in your employment.  Their sole concern are your credentials and capabilities to do academic work.  You should focus all your attention on communicating your skills and capabilities to do Masters-level Computer Science work.  This includes your course grades as an undergrad, your GRE scores, your computer experience in industry, your recommendation letters, and your engagement with professional and academic communities.

(Business schools are probably an exception to this.  Work history is probably important to getting accepted in an MBA program.)


After publishing my manuscript, can I withdraw the manuscript and publish it at a different journal? I published one of my manuscripts in June 2015 in a relatively new journal (6 volumes so far). The journal makes it clear in the website that it is available online and in print with ISSN. The key idea was getting a printed copy of the issue/journal for promotion requirements in my University. I contacted them many times to send the hard copy but till today I did not get it and I believe that they will not. I contacted them to remove the paper from their website to re-submit the paper in another journal for publication.

The question is: is this possible? and what is consequences for submitting the same manuscript to another journal?

The question is: is this possible?

If you have signed over the copyright of your paper to this journal, or given them an irrevocable license to distribute, then they don't have to take down the paper just because you have asked them. In fact, if they are a reputable journal and the paper has already been published, they shouldn't just take down the paper without a very good reason, because that would distort the scientific record.

  and what is consequences for submitting the same manuscript to another journal?

Submitting a manuscript to a journal that is already published in another journal is called "duplicate publication", and it is considered a kind of research misconduct. Consequences can include retraction of the duplicate publication, being banned from submitting papers to that journal for some period of time, or being banned from submitting papers to that publisher's journals for some period of time.


How to build research paper based on a unpublished paper? A few days ago, I read an article that I found through Google. I analyzed it and find that article is correct, and then I prepared a paper of my own built on the basis of that article.
But when I tried to complete the references section, I realized that the source article had not been published.

Now I do not know what to do. On the one hand, the article is correct, but on the other hand, it has not been formally published.

How to send my article based on another paper that has not been published?

Actually, the paper in question has been published, otherwise you sure couldn't read it :)

I admit that may sound stupid and unhelpful, but I think there is more to it that you recognize. The paper you built upon has been published, but not through conventional means. It doesn't mean you can't use it, but a few specific “rules of thumb” have to be observed:

Refer to the paper by its URL and, if identifiable, the owner/editor/publisher of the website. Example:

  “Link between al dente cooking time and a change of slope in the pasta fractal length”, A. N. Onym, http://bigpasta.com/paper42.pdf (publisher: Pasta Inc.)

Because this content may have a shorter lifetime than academic publications, you should quote directly all necessary claims made into this work in your paper, rather than merely using the reference on a vague claim. Your paper should be standalone, and fully understandable even if the other one disappears.
You may also contact the original paper author, if possible, to ask how they would like to be cited. Perhaps they have another related work which you missed, that was published in a more conventional way?


Is it unethical to enroll in a low-ranked institution with the intention of switching to a better one if possible? I am an international student who has been admitted at a low ranked institute in the US. I also have an offer from an institute in my own country to do a Masters'. I ultimately want to get admitted at a prestigious program in the US.

I was recently advised to join the low ranked US institute, do my course work well, establish contacts with professors at more prestigious schools, and then switch to a better school for a PhD. It sounds immoral to me. But I was told it is not immoral in practice as the institute receives thousands of offers to fill up the seat you will be vacating.

Is doing the above seriously unethical?

This is far from immoral or unethical. Theres nothing wrong with attending a program and transferring to another one that might be a better fit.  Making the transfer to another program would really be up to you, your work and the networking contacts you make while in your masters program.


Department member forwarded complaint about professor to that professor I am an undergraduate at a US college. I wanted to take a course in a specific area of my major so that I could do better research during the summer. I do not have the prerequisite courses but I have extensive industry experience in this area so they are much less relevant. The course instructor (A) was ok with allowing me. I tried to respectfully ask permission from the department undergraduate advisor (B) but he refused permission right away and wasn't interested in what I had to say.

In a last-ditch attempt to be able to take the course, I emailed a higher-ranking professor (C) in the department explaining the issue and asking if she could help. This professor (C) forwarded my email to the original advisor B, who immediately sent me a nasty email saying that I don't dare ask someone else after I asked him.

While I can understand why the advisor reacted this way, why would a department member forward an email explaining a problem between a professor and student to the professor? I cannot wrap my head around it. Is this normal behavior for academic faculty?

While I can understand why the advisor reacted this way, why would a department member forward an email explaining a problem between a professor and student to the professor?

Is it the senior professor's formal task to handle complaints about or escalations from the advisor?

If yes, the senior professor indeed acted fairly unprofessionally, although it is a reality that in most cases the person that you complained about will learn about who complained about them as a matter of practicality (see some other answers for why this is).

If no, then, well, I am not sure what you thought would happen. Then you sent a random (presumably busy) senior person a mail about an issue that is in no way relevant to their tasks, and they did the only thing that makes sense from their perspective: glance the mail and forward to the person who is actually in charge for the request.

Look, I get that the first instinct when you get an unsatisfying decision is that you "would like to talk to the manager", but this is not how academia (or, really, any business) works. Department administrators delegate specific types of decisions to individual faculty members so that they don't have to deal with them one-by-one anymore. This is arguably not helped by the fact that faculty in academia tend to be very wary to step onto each other's toes. Hence, you will need to work with the undergrad advisor on these issues, even if you don't care for him much.


Is it possible to change the application area of research while looking for a postdoc position after PhD? My PhD is in materials science in the field of environmental remediation (water decontamination) using different advanced materials as adsorbents. I also have expertise in computational chemistry and currently, I am doing some DFT calculations on electrocatalytic water splitting using some transition metal selenide hybrid materials. And this work has been published in a good ACS journal.

I am interested in seeking a postdoc and expanding my horizon in the field of energy production (water splitting, lithium ion batteries, hydrogen production and storage, etc.) using materials as catalysts (both experimentally and computationally).

How should I back my research profile while seeking a position in this field with no prior experience? The postdoc openings demands a desirable candidate with extensive record and experience in batteries and handling elecrodes, etc. which I clearly do not have.

For whatever it’s worth, I changed my field between PhD and postdocs as well.
In my case, my main goal was to find a thriving field (where I could make some use of my skills and that would match my general interests).
My general rationale was this:
Most fields produce enough qualified and willing PhD graduates to fill their postdoc needs, against which I wouldn’t stand a chance.
The only exception to this is a strongly expanding field.
Hence I just applied to interesting positions and concluded that if I would get a position the respective field would be sufficiently thriving.
(And indeed many other people in my current field came from other fields.)

As you appear to have a specific target field in mind, it may also help to get insights from professors in that field as to how saturated the postdoc job market is.
If you are up against an army of competitors with more experience, seeking jobs here may be a waste of time.
If on the other hand, your main goal is to leave your current field, you can hedge your bets by being open about potential target fields.

Now, there are some exceptions, alternatives, and caveats to consider:

Sometimes, a postdoc is hired with the explicit goal of transferring or applying knowledge from another field.
However, in this case, the job ad will state corresponding requirements.
Whether saturated or not, postdoc job markets are only feature a small number of candidates and positions, and thus they are strong subject to statistical fluctuations.
It may thus easily happen that a professor cannot fill a postdoc position even in a stagnating field, and settles for somebody less qualified than they hope for.
(On the other hand, you are still in a stagnating field then.)
It is possible that a vacancy remains unfilled due to the professor being known to be scientifically or socially incompetent in the field.
So, watch out for red flags.

So, I would suggest to just apply to positions that interest you (if only to get application routine).
I would be upfront about the fact that you are changing fields, and focus on your enthusiasm for the target field and general scientific skills, in particular anything that demonstrates that you can adapt to a new topic and are good at scientific work in general – which after all is at least half of what a good PhD should be about.
Getting a job while lacking a required experience is a disaster waiting to happen.


Job Market paper: what are the criteria? I am going to apply for a Post-Doc position, in Business Economics. One of the required application documents is a "job market paper". I have searched about what a job market paper is and specially there is a good post here Clarification needed: Job Market Paper.

However, I could not find any answer or hint to resolve my current problem. Concisely, I have written 3 papers for my PhD thesis, and these papers are closely-related to each other, such that the second one is based on the first, and the third is based on the first and second. Now, I don't know how to choose one among them.
While the first paper is for broader audience than the second one, the latter has higher quality and more significant contribution to the field, in my opinion. However, this second paper, which has higher quality, is very difficult to be understood for broad audience. On the other hand, the first paper is a good showcase -show off indeed!- of my quantitative skills and interdisciplinary knowledge of economics and machine-learning.

May someone please help me to choose between these two? Shall I consider the broader audience and less contribution, or high contribution on a very niche sub-field?

P.S: None of the papers has been published yet.

I agree with @AlexanderWoo--ask people in the field that you know.  However, this also seems like a situation in which it might be useful to construct a new paper that combines material from the first and second paper.  Don't make it too long, though, and get people in your field to give you feedback before sending it, if possible.

You also might want to use different papers for different applications.  Think of this as a an addendum to the answer you referenced.  If you're applying for a postdoc, is it a postdoc with someone who is working on similarly technical material, with a lot in common with your research?  Or are they hiring a postdoc because they lack expertise in your area and need someone in that area as a collaborator?  If you think that the people likely to evaluate your application are capable of understanding paper 2 on its own, then maybe you should send it.  If not, maybe it would be better to send paper 1, or the hybrid paper I suggested.


Letter of recommendation from Professor who I have not done research with I had a meeting with a well respected professor to discuss issues in the research field (biomedical engineering) I am interested in. I am not seeking to do a PhD with him as I intend to go overseas for my PhD studies. During the meeting I asked him in depth questions about why things are the way in the field, and received good answers. He also suggested potential PhD advisors in the research field who are doing good work. I felt the meeting was productive and he may have a little impressed with me (knowledge of the field).

At the end of the meeting he suggested that he could write a letter of recommendation for me, because he knew all these professors.

However I had not done any research with him. That meeting was the first time I met him and my only interaction with him.

I mentioned this to him and he said, that's ok, he can still write a letter of recommendation based on my resume and transcript.

My question is will this letter of recommendation be helpful? Is it a good idea to submit this as a 4th letter of recommendation? Is the worst case scenario that at most the letter just counts as nothing?

Some additional information:

I have funding for my PhD studies
I am tangentially related to this professor, he was the boss of my supervisor, but he has sinced moved away and that was the first time I met him.
I may only have 2 good letters, from people I did research with. The third letter is from my programme tutor

Whether it helps or not depends quite a bit on where you are applying and what admissions system is used. But I don't think it will hurt. The personal touch is welcomed when appropriate but it is probably more of a letter of introduction than real recommendation. But that, alone, is good.

  Here is a student I've recently met that you should take a look at. They have some pretty good ideas for research that seems to mesh with ours. They want to study in ...

In a lot of places this wouldn't do as a formal LOR, but as a message, out of band, to a professor would be useful to you for when you arrive at a new place. It gives you a basis for a first conversation.

But, in terms of admission to a program, you are probably better served by letters from people who know you better and can attest directly to your background and your likelihood of success in the future. I don't think I'd recommend replacing a letter from this person for one that is more relevant.

But, in a place in which a professor's role is to hire researchers directly and has a heavy influence on admissions, such a letter would be much more relevant. They get a letter from someone they trust who puts their own reputation directly on the line by writing it. I think it will be strongly considered.


Producing a bibliography by chapter – have one reference in two chapters I am organising my bibliography by chapter to make for easier reading.

However, I have one source that I use in two chapters. Do I just include the reference in the bibliography for this in the first chapter it appears in?

I can't give you an authoritative source at the moment, but I can't recall ever having had to look up a reference in a chapter different from the one in which it has been cited. It would also be very impractical: How would the reader know in which chapter the reference has been cited first?


Do I include non-academic works on my ORCID? A children's book I wrote is about to be published soon. Should I include it in my ORCID account?

ORCID is very clearly concerned with academic works. However, it would be nice if someone who wasn't sure if the author the children's book and the math papers were the same person could check on ORCID and get an answer.

I would include a children's book on my ORCID account.

The vision of ORCID is a world where all who participate in research, scholarship, and innovation are uniquely identified and connected to their contributions across disciplines, borders, and time.

Including math paper and children's books would span disciplines and borders.


Can I cross-reference thesis chapters in my thesis literature review? I am currently editing and updating my thesis literature review before submitting my thesis next year.

In reviewing the relevant literature, I find that two of my results chapters published as journal articles are within the scope of the literature review and I would normally cite them in a review article on the same topic.

Is it appropriate to cross-reference these two chapters in the thesis literature review and mention the results that are presented later on in the thesis? In other words, is it more important that the review is up-to date and includes all published data (including my own), or should it rather reflect the knowledge in the field prior to my thesis?

The literature review of your thesis should set the scene that your own research will be taking place in, and should contribute towards motivating the work you do. However, it sounds like you're considering your literature review to be just that, a review of the literature. You really want the reader to reach the end of your literature review feeling that there's a gap waiting to be filled, which you then do.

There may be a small minority of cases where for some reason it makes sense to cite a paper containing thesis work in the literature review, but generally speaking it should describe the literature without the contribution of your thesis.* If you discuss your work in the literature review, then the reader may not feel there is a gap in the literature to fill (or at least, if there is you won't be filling it in the remainder of the thesis).

It's the later discussion/conclusion sections and chapters where you want to fit your work into the existing literature.

* I worded this carefully because the option you describe, reflecting knowledge in the field prior to your thesis, isn't necessarily correct either. There may be relevant work which follows your own work in time, but not necessarily in substance, which you may also want to describe.


Is it possible for a high school student to conduct research into computer science? I am currently half way through year 10 and I am interested in conducting research into computer science. I am from a public high school in a small town in Australia. I want to go to Massachusetts Institute of technology but sadly my high school doesn't offer a lot of opportunities when it comes to technology but I have taught myself C, Python and currently learning C++. I am nearly through the basics of C++ and I will be learning networking in C++ soon, probably by the next to month or two. I am really really really really interested in conducting research in computer science and can't wait to get started. But i just don't know where to start......How can I get involved in research???

To answer the first part of your question, it is definitely possible for high school students to perform research in computer science.

But let's look at the broader picture here first. Computer science spans a lot of sub-areas, which have very different flavors and require different sets of knowledge in order for you to be able to perform research in it. Being able to program is good, as this is needed in some of these areas, while there are some in which programming knowledge is normally not needed.

Research means to push forwards the frontier of mankind's knowledge. In CS, little effort is spent of replication experiments (i.e., when a finding by one group of researchers is tried to be replicated in their experimental setup). Rather, research is typically performed by trying out new ideas to solve problems that are considered to be interesting enough for research.

Now this is where the difficulty kicks in: in order to come up with a new approach for some problem of relevance, one needs to have a good overview of one area of research, which means to invest years in getting a good overview of the work performed in that area so far. Research students (e.g., PhD students) are expected to work on getting this overview themselves, while at the same time they also have an advisor at their disposal to guide them. Without an advisor that is already established in your sub-field of interest, there is a high probability that your research  efforts are spent in vain (e.g., because what you would be trying to do would not be novel enough).

Thus, it may make sense for you to find an advisor that can guide you in your research work. There are definitely sub-areas in computer science for which - with the proper guidance - high school students can make non-trivial contributions, while possibly also using programming knowledge.

So as a proposed course of action, look into which sub-areas there are in computer science, which one interest you, and read up a bit on the major results. Afterwards, you can check if you can make contact with possible advisors. As a high school student, you may want to aim a bit lower than at the professor level. E.g. a postdoc at the university closest to your home town working in your area of interest may be a good first point of contact.

Allow me to also add that learning to program in various languages is related to research only to a small extend. The scientific part of computing has a different flavor than most people outside CS would expect. It you haven't done so already, consider looking into the Wikipedia article on complexity theory, which gives you insight into a sub-area of computer science whose results are used in most other are sub-areas of CS as well.


What is the importance of TOEFL and GRE? I am bachelor in technology student from India. I would like to pursue higher education subject to my selection based on merit, i.e scholarship. I know there are many criteria, among which getting good grades in proficiency exams like TOEFL and GRE are most sought after. I came across a article on optional requirement of such exam in some of the US universities. So my questions are

Are these exams universal, i.e. followed in every country?
Does this depend on what Higher education you want to take?
If it is mandatory, when is the peak time to start for this type proficiency exams(P.S. I am currently in 5th sem)?

My experience is with US admissions in Computer Science at a productive albeit mid-tier graduate program. Both tests were required (TOEFL only for English as a second language speakers) and both tests are used for reasons to disqualify someone rather than admit them to the program.

My grad department would get about 500 applications for about 15 slots per year. About half of those were from totally unknown schools in China or India and were rejected out of hand, just because we had no idea about the quality of those students. Of the 250 remaining, about half of those had substantially deficient transcripts- things like missing or woeful TOEFL and GRE scores. The remaining roughly 120 applications were looked at by the graduate admissions committee, and then they picked about 30 high quality candidates and circulated those applications among faculty who were known to be looking for new students.

You'll notice there are two distinct types of decisions there. The first two phases were looking for reasons to disqualify people. The third phase was looking for good reasons to pass people along to final consideration. My guess is that virtually all departments would only use TOEFL and GRE scores in this way.

In other words, a bad GRE score can hurt your chances, but there's little difference between an acceptable GRE score and a great GRE score.

TOEFL might be a little different- our experience is that even people with good TOEFL scores might be atrocious language speakers, so our department always arranged in-person interviews via Skype or similar as a way to assess language proficiency. A great TOEFL score definitely didn't mean anything other than an acceptable score, because the in-person interview was the actual test of proficiency. I will note that we had much more stringent language expectations of Asian students than those from Europe.

Another thing to consider- I was told flat out by the University graduate admissions department that I would not be accepted with my GRE score, which was 20 or 30 points below their guidelines. The actual department I applied to didn't care. They were far more impressed by my independent study and selection of a challenging senior project than they were concerned about GRE scores.


Is academic collaboration overrated? Should one seek it or avoid it? In our country, the first author gets most of the credit and the other authors practically fall much behind. While, the first author should really get more point as he does maximum work, I find the others contributions are not as minuscule as indicated by the weightage rule. To be clear it is 70 percent of the first author and rest gets 30 percent divided by the number of other authors of the paper.

In many fields collaboration is not only advisable but necessary because the expertise of a single individual is not enough to complete the work necessary. The days when one scientist can do everything themselves is long gone. People have specific areas of expertise and the work required to become a competent expert in every domain needed for a particular effort is too great.

For instance, I do modeling in a number of materials applications. There is literally no way I could do the experiments necessary to support all of the work in my research, so I need to rely on collaborators who have the necessary experience who can perform and guide the complementary experiments, as well as provide the experimental equipment!


Does having an MSc in a UK university increase chances of being accepted for PhD programme at the same university? I had a conversation with a professor who told me that getting into a PhD programme at some university (in the UK) is very difficult without also having an MSc from that same university. Is this true?

If it's relevant, we were specifically taking about Economics PHDs.

It depends?

I don't think there really is a straightforward answer to this - as there can be some institutional difference.
Though I would in general be a little bit surprised if it were required.

For people who have obtained a UK BSc (it may need to be an honours degree), it is possible to directly progress to a PhD, provided you get a First (maybe also a 2.1) in the BSc. (No idea about a BA - and all related types of Bachelor's degrees.)
This definitely applies to at least 3 universities in the engineering field.

Now: If I am not mistaken, I believe that the majority of people who were "doing a PhD" with a non-UK-education background had a Masters Degree before starting a PhD. (During my time at a UK university.)
However, this wasn't neccessary a Master's Degree from the institution at which these people were working towards a PhD. (Though one person was on some integrated course which was a 1 years Masters followed by a PhD.)

In this context, it may be interesting to note, that the "Student Loans Company" (i.e. the state) will loan the funds for a Bachelor's degree, but not a Masters. A PhD is typically funded (unless one goes for the self funded option).
This means, that unless you have wealthy parents or an employer paying for it, a Masters Degree in the UK makes little sense if you plan to follow up with a PhD and going Bachelors -> PhD makes more sense.

If we now look at the rest of Europe, it is pretty commonplace to obtain a Masters Degree before commencing a PhD. (Though some countries may have some different routes, such as the old German "Diplom" and the French Engineers that may lead to a PhD/Doctorate.)

And if you want a definite answer, the only method is to check the requirements on the university's website, as only they will be able to give you a definite answer.


How to respond to a reviewer's comment when he is asking for experimental data but your paper is based on theoretical calculations? We submitted a research paper in physics.
In this paper, we take structural parameters from the experimental work and then perform simulations using density functional theory and present our results. No one has performed similar calculations or experiments before through which I could validate my results. One of the reviewer’s comments is:

Main problem of this work is a lack of the experimental data that could validate relevant calculations and which would be very important especially in actual case, at least from my point of view. Why?

My question is how should I respond to this comment?

Essentially, the reviewer is saying, you cannot/should not propose a new theory in a vacuum. One of two approaches apply:

Do you have a new theoretical approach that will explain observations that existing theoretical approaches cannot yet explain? Demonstrate this categorically by taking the experimental results modeled with the existing theories to model with your new theory. It seems that you argue that this is not the case for your theory. So ...

Do you have a new theoretical approach that points to new insights not yet measured by any existing experiments? State concisely what experimental measurements will be needed to validate your theory. You infer that this is your case.

Being somewhat aware of DFT and its applications as well as being experimentally inclined, I must say tangentially that I cannot trust that absolutely no experimental results (e.g. from spectroscopy) exist anywhere that can in some way validate your new theory, even in part. Alternatively, I cannot trust that your theory has absolutely no relevance to direct new experimental approaches in order to validate it (e.g. again spectroscopy).
In summary ... Einstein's Nobel prize was for a new theory that explained oddities in experimental observations (the photoelectric effect). Einstein's theories otherwise were put forward with proposals for experiments that might test their validity. You are being asked to do one or the other as well.


Should I change my PhD advisor when I find I got not enough advising? UPDATE: My program is Computer Science and Engineering.

I chose the current advisor for mainly three reasons:

I'm interested in a general research area, and he's in a group doing the stuffs.
He has good publications in top conferences and journals in recent years.
Applying for other graduate schools is exhaustive, and I didn't search for other programs.

Here are some reasons which make me consider changing an advisor:

I have no regular individual meeting with him. In the first semester, I had no idea about what I should do to find a research topic. Then in the second semester, I only talked with the post-doc in our lab, who graduated with a thesis in another area very different from the general topic in our lab.
In group meeting, we present our works to him and he gives some advice (for me, you don't understand the paper you need to redo it; for others, this paper was not published in a good conference/journal...). I think he doesn't try to understand some meeting contents, because he's even not focusing on the it, doing something else. Once he left early because he thought the presentation was not interesting.
I wrote weekly report, and he forwards it to the post-doc for how I'm doing.
We are not doing the research that attracts me. And no one in our group knows how to do it.

But I still have considerations to change advisor:

I have few options in choosing a new advisor in a related research area.
I don't have a target group I want to move to.

Could you give some suggestions on how I could handle this situation?

There are some students who don't need a lot of direction and can find and analyze their own research problems. There are others (many others) who need more direction and even suggestions about problems. Likewise there are advisors who want to give a lot of direction, sometimes too much. And their others who don't, or who prefer to work only with their most advanced students. It can be a problem if there is a mismatch.

The two ways of curing the mismatch are begging for help and hoping that the advisor responds positively, and finding a different advisor who is more helpful at the point at which you currently are.

Perhaps your advisor depends a lot on those senior students and postdocs to give direction to the newer members of the "team". If you can find and exploit that help there, you can probably be successful. Otherwise you should consider your options for another advisor.

Don't spend a lot of time hoping it will get better. If you, or someone, takes some action that seems to be moving in a positive direction then you may be able to see what happens. But if nothing does, protect your options and your future.


Is it possible to pursue PhD in different area than master's thesis? I am doing masters in physics. I recently did internship in high energy physics for 2 months. But my institute allows me to do 6 months project only in condensed matter physics. I want to pursue PhD in high energy physics only. So, is it possible to pursue PhD in different area than master's thesis?

Yes, definitely

Of course you can! The specific subfield is mostly limited by (a) your interests; (b) availability of a suitable supervisor who knows that field, and possibly (c) availability of funding/equipment/etc for that research direction.  It may be that a particular university/department doesn't accept your chosen direction (e.g. they don't have the researchers or funding for in-depth high energy physics research) and you need to look for other universities to do the PhD, but your master thesis topic is not restricting in any way.

It can be slightly useful to do a PhD that aligns with your master thesis, as it gives you some head start and possibly some publishable research already, but it's not a race and you definitely can do it in a different direction, many people do.

Researchers work in multiple areas

To expand on this - there are few general restrictions. It may be that a particular organization (or funding source) or person at some particular time nudges you do do something specific; but in general, there are no universal restrictions and people can:

Pursue PhD in a different subfield than Master's thesis (your example)
Get PhD in a different subfield and topic than what you submitted at the start of your PhD
Pursue PhD in a different field than Masters (e.g. physics PhD after mathematics masters, computer science PhD after economics masters, etc)
Do research in a completely different area than your PhD (e.g. linguistics PhD publishing CompSci papers)
Do publishable research without being connected to a PhD process in any way.


Suggestions for official PhD/department visit (not interview)? I realize this question may not have an explicit answer - if so I will remove promptly as per guidelines.

I have an upcoming visit to my top-choice program where I will be meeting potential committee members and the grad program director. I am very nervous.

Details about the visit itself:

morning breakfast with committee member
lunch with other grad students
several meetings with different professors/grad program director
last meeting is with primary supervisor

Suggestions can be more structured around the following considerations:

how can I stop freaking out
do i need to sell myself 100% of the time, or try to be more amicable

This isn't an official interview (app isn't due for a couple months) but I've been talking with several profs in the department for a while.

First, you are probably new at this so freaking out is pretty natural. If you'd done it ten or so times, it would feel pretty natural. Actually, a bit of physical exercise can help you calm your mind. Coffee, not so much.

But, more seriously, I think you need to be pretty natural. You will be a colleague and people will want to be able to work with you and so, to be comfortable with you. It needn't be all technical either. "Anyone here play handball?"

But you also need to demonstrate that you are suited for the environment. People will look to you for ideas, of course, so you need to be able to answer questions both about yourself and about the field/research that is going on.

But, it is also wise not to come on too strong in the beginning. People have their ways of doing things. If you are "too helpful" you may be hurting yourself as in "Who is this guy?". So save any suggestions you might have for "improvement" in the lab for a later time.

I once made the mistake of giving too much advice in a new employment situation and it was resented, as I learned later. Whether it was the right advice or not wasn't important.

Probably the best thing you can do is express a lot of interest in what is going on. But each meeting will be a bit different. If "selling" is needed it will be more likely useful with the supervisor. Be positive in all things. "How do you see yourself fitting in with these people?"

You might also be prepared for surprises. Can you give an impromptu talk on your prior research?


My supervisor plagiarised my bachelor thesis: what can I do about it? In July 2012 I submitted a bachelor's thesis on a machine learning topic. I designed an algorithm that I developed in Java.

Now I have found a publication (September 2012) by my supervisor with all the results of my thesis, including images, with only a thanks at the end for the "Java implementations", but all of the results and the designed algorithm were taken from my thesis. The supervisor has not added anything to what I had already written in my thesis.

For me she had to add my name as a co-author of publications. Of course the supervisor helped me in the writing of the thesis but having only revived my job in publishing, then I was expecting my name as a co-author because she has not added anything new.

What recourse do I have?

Edit1:
One problem is that my thesis, about 140 page,  was written in Italian and the pubblication was in English. For this reason I suppose it's hard to write to the Journal to show him my thesis.  In addition, my thesis is not published online on any official channel.

The project and the thesis was made by me and one other student with the constant help of her (supervisor). But on the publication the name is of Supervisor, Co-supervisor and one more people (i suppose this people have translated 140 italian page in 5-6 english page) but why not me?

In add now I'm in other city, in other university and now i have no bridge between my supervisor.

If i have no more contact (only an email) with supervisor is there any way to write to the person who published that? and how can I prove that content is that of my thesis?

Unfortunately, your story does not seem implausible to me at all. Here in central Europe, some computer science departments seem to have a very lax mentality when it comes to acknowledging research contributions coming from undergrads or non-research master students. In some places, this thinking seems to be so ingrained that even otherwise honest and fair researchers do not even consider putting the name of undergrads on papers despite their work making up a significant part of the paper's research contribution (something that the same faculty would never do and, in fact, consider highly unethical, if the student was a PhD or a master student on a research track). I guess part of the problem is that around here, the majority of students heading for an industry career (which is almost everybody at many large universities) does not care one way or another, so nobody really complains about this practice (which, of course, does not make it ok).

(the following is written under the assumption that what you wrote is actually correct - clearly, my advise is terrible if you vastly overstated your contributions)

  If i have no more contact (only an email) with supervisor is there any way to write to the person who published that? and how can I prove that content is that of my thesis?

You should definitely get in touch with your supervisor. Keep the mail friendly, but do make clear that you are not ok with how this has went down. If (s)he is one of those that simply did not consider whether you should actually also be a co-author of this paper, there is a good chance that (s)he is in fact pretty embarrassed by the incident. Presumably, the first thing that the faculty will explain that this "is just the way it works around here". Don't accept this excuse (even though it might be factually true). Be aware that you are in the right here, and that you raising your valid concerns to the conference organisers will at least be really embarrassing for the faculty (and, as stated on this website once, reputation is the currency of science), so you do have some leverage.

Essentially, I think the onus is on the faculty to come up with a solution here. It is not like you need to think of a way how this can be resolved sufficiently. Maybe your supervisor will think of a solution for your issue that is acceptable for you.  As a last resort, you can contact the organisers of the conference, as stated by just-learning, and give them the information that you also gave us above (now deleted). Be aware that you will likely gain little by this move, though - presumably, either nothing will happen or the paper will be removed from the proceedings. In any case, the reputation of the authors will likely be tarnished quite a bit by this incident, and, as stated in another answer, you will have certainly burned all bridges with this group of people.


How important is it to cite the earliest report of something? As a general rule I try to put in some due diligence to cite the authors who first provided strong evidence of something that I'm referencing, even if I wasn't aware of their work before I started writing. However, with the biblical flood of COVID-19 literature in the past 9 months, it's a hard to pinpoint some of the firsts. You can sort by date on a lot of databases, but a journal's publication date often doesn't reflect when a report was first made available to the public, especially in the era of pre-prints. I've got citations that I know I read in March or April showing up with publication dates of July or August.
Anyways, I'm referencing evidence of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2 virus) shedding in stool. At this point there are dozens, if not hundreds of case reports, cohort studies, meta-analyses, and reviews covering this. Does it really matter if I find the first reported case?
TBH, I might be a little bummed if some random review paper were cited for a thing I first proved, but it's also not like this took years (or even weeks) of work to confirm.

For your readers, not important. Very often, later reports or review articles are better than the first report in terms of clarity and completeness. If you did not even need to read that first report when doing your research, then probably your readers do not need it either.
For the academic career game, mildly important. Depending on the field of research, citations may play a role in careers, and citing that first report may provide a (small) boost to its authors.
A pragmatic approach is to not waste too much time chasing citations, and wait for others to recommend citations that you may have omitted. Not everyone has to know the whole literature. And many people are not shy about asking colleagues to cite them (or others). To some extent, you can count on the readers of your article in draft/preprint/submitted form for pointing omissions.


Should I complete a master's thesis if I intend to move to a different graduate school? I'm currently a first year graduate student in mathematics in the United States. After having completed my requirements for a master's degree, I'm considering moving to a different program, based on reasons I outlined in a previous question.

My question should one necessarily work on a master's report/thesis to boost one's application to enter a different PhD program?

I can probably get a master's degree without having to write a report/thesis as I have already passed some of the qualifying exams at my school.

So, to what extent would having completed a master's thesis help me in switching programs? My interests are a bit broad, and interdisciplinary, so I'm, as of yet, broadly interested in a couple of areas, and not a single, specific area of research. So, I would like to apply to schools that have research groups in at least 1-2 fields of my interest.

Any suggestions on how graduate committees in math or STEM fields view the issue of masters thesis or reports.

Since the doctorate is about research, having some solid evidence of doing that successfully is a plus. You can change your main focus to another subfield after writing a master's thesis, so don't worry that it will limit you.

But my main question back to you is what you will be doing in the meanwhile if you don't do the thesis. Will it be at least as positive an influence on admissions committees and potential advisors? It seems doubtful, but possible, depending on your situation.

An MS isn't really required for admission to the PhD in the US, but a positive record that predicts success certainly is. Do whatever you can to build that record.


Are course evaluation forms REALLY confidential? Someone I know has recently submitted a course evaluation form in which he complained about how poorly the unit was organized and that the lecturer didn't seem to be well prepared for the class. Following the day this course evaluation form was submitted, the lecturer decided to revise the mark he has received for his final project and marked him down. Is this an odd coincidence or are course evaluations not really confidential?

Whether evaluations are anonymous (see StrongBad's answer for the difference with confidential, which evaluations are rarely) depends on your institution. On my university, they are. However, especially in small classes you can often get a pretty good idea of who wrote something depending on writing style and typical spelling mistakes.

But as Elizabeth Henning says in the comments, it's unlikely that this is the case here. It takes time before the evaluation is sent to the teacher. On my university, this happens only after all grades have been sent to the administration, after which it is possible to change them, but all those changes are logged - it may even be disallowed to mark someone down in that phase. In any case, the instructor won't care enough about the grade to change it and risk all kinds of trouble.


Should those more interested in research choose a postdoc or teaching position? For PhD graduates who are more interested in research and little teaching, which is better, a postdoc with a focus on research, or a (non-tenure-track) teaching position (lecturer, instructor, etc.)? I assume that both positions would be helpful when moving to a research position. The point with a postdoc is that even at top schools, the pay is low and they don't guarantee a good job afterward, while a teaching position, with 3-4 courses would be distraction from doing research.

If you want a research position, you should go for the postdoc: a heavy load teaching-centric position will make it hard to publish, which will make getting a research position much harder.


How to look past the fact that I probably have chosen the wrong research area? I am a computational materials science researcher. I model additive manufacturing process using continuum modeling methods. Almost everyone who works in my field are part experimentalists and partly into computational modeling. Though with an experimental master's background, my PhD research was completely computational and not theoretically intensive (it was very straightforward if one knows the computational modeling tools and a bit of coding beforehand, more like clicking the right button and developing scripts to do some analysis).
I feel that I would have gotten better job prospects if I had an experimentalist and computational profile. Almost at the end of my PhD (about to defend), I have a postdoc offer with my current PhD advisor, which I will take because I don't want to move to a different place with covid-19 in other locations. But I dread job prospects in my limited experience and expertise. How to address the fact that I might have chosen wrong research area?

Don't think of yourself as stuck in a research area. You are starting to gain some independence and can also start to morph your research into any area you choose. Over your career you might do this multiple times, actually.
Use the post doc to start to explore the areas you'd rather work in as much as you can.
Staying with your doctoral advisor might not be your best move, though with coronavirus it may be necessary in the short term as you note.
Your PI for the post doc might be able to give you some freedom here. But even if not, increasing your reputation in one area can lead to more freedom to move and change your direction.
Your career needn't be an arrow.


A term similar to "ABD" for PhD student who's completed all coursework but neither comprehensive exams nor dissertation? Is there a term similar to "ABD" (All But Dissertation) that denotes a PhD student who has completed all coursework, but who hasn't taken comprehensive exams and of course hasn't done the dissertation?

I left my PhD program unfinished, just before taking the comps. Hoping there's something similar to "ABD" that I can put on my CV/resume.

Thanks!

In the US, you'd have completed the coursework master's portion of a typical PhD program. There's no shorthand for this. Some people take a master's degree at this point and go on to something else. It's reasonably common to do so. I don't know if typical corporate recruiters know about all of this, but academic-ish labs, government labs, and similar organizations that employ a lot of folks with advanced degrees will understand what happened. So much so that you probably want to have a good stock answer for what happened to your PhD aspirations that isn't a complaint of some sort.


How do universities verify your native language? Many universities require that your native language be English or you will have to submit proof of language proficiency.

Usually if you lie and say English is your native language while all other evidence shows otherwise (e.g. country of birth, country of citizenship, university degree language, etc.), universities will likely suspect that you are lying.

However, suppose my native language is not English but I can read, write, listen, speak as fluently as a native speaker.  If I satisfy one or more conditions below, do universities have any reason to suspect that English is not my native language?

I am a citizen of a country where English is the official language (though I may not be born / living there)
I graduated from a university where English is the official language

Actually, there are no universal requirements for waiving testing. For instance, at MIT, you establish eligibility for a language waiver by attending primary and secondary schools that have English as the language of instruction or by attending an American university for your undergraduate education. At Yale, you must have attended an English-language university for at least three years to establish eligibility. Ohio State only grants exemptions for students graduating from universities in Australia, Belize, the British Caribbean and British West Indies, Canada (except Québec), England, Guyana, Ireland, Liberia, New Zealand, Scotland, the United States and Wales.

So this unfortunately becomes an example of "every school is different, and you need to check the rules for each school."


What is the best way to add the results of the Master thesis in the Latex report I am writing my Master thesis report. My thesis was research and development of a test data generator for a particular domain in an organization. The developed application will generate test data in XML and JSON format according to user requirements and design. These data can be very large.
For the demonstration of my results in Thesis report, I have designed a simple model and generating the test data for that design but still, the test data generated is pretty large so I have included them in the Appendix chapter of the result. It's taking around 20-30 pages, I have modelled the simplest design so there is no way for me to reduce the generated test data by simplifying the model further.
My professor has told me that this is not a good way of displaying the results. So I wanted to know what are the better ways of showing/visualizing your results/test data in the Master thesis report?
As I am writing the report in LaTeX format I have included them as listings in the Appendix section. Please provide me with some solution.

The full data is the main outcome for the organization, but it's not an important part for your report. Of course you can show examples/samples, but what matters in your report is to explain clearly:

The motivations: why is this data generator needed? What can be done with it that couldn't be done before? This probably requires explainining the context of the work: what this organization does, what is this domain, why does it matter, etc.
The state of the art: which existing methods are used for this kind of problems in general? What are their advantages and disadvantages?
The method/process: how does it work? Provide all the details necessary the system. If you made particular implementation choices, explain why this choices and not another option. Is it related to existing methods? If yes compare to these methods.
The outcome: analyze the results in detail with statistics, graphs or whatever means helps the reader understand the characteristics of the data. It should be a synthetic overview, not a dump of the full dataset. Prove that the obtained data satisfies the requirements, for instance by comparing to other datasets. If relevant show the impact of your implementation choices through some examples.

The point of the report is to explain your work to somebody who is not an expert in this particular problem. Presenting the reasoning that you followed is much more important and interesting than the data itself.


Advisor drops incoming student four weeks before Master's program starts This is not my directly personal situation, but that of a family member who is to start a Master's program (natural science), in Canada. You are, as a rule of thumb, admitted with your advisors specified on the offer of admission.

Their primary advisor (with whom I happen to have professional ties) has abruptly resigned from the university to take an administrative position elsewhere. For them, it is a great career move. However, this advisor is contractually unable to start new projects in January, so they have dropped the family member as a student. The secondary advisor appears to have done the same because they lack expertise in half of the project area. The primary advisor further says that the project is cancelled; the project was in collaboration with a government body which would have provided funding.

From what I've gathered so far, it might be possible to get the collaboration going if another prof would be supervising but it looks like a Hail Mary option. The department that Master's was to be done in is very small and the profs have fairly different areas of expertise. Going with a different advisor and project would mean (a) finding funding in three weeks (b) a radical shift in research area and (c) finding a prof who can take on an extra student.

This opportunity arose slightly in part from my ties to the original primary advisor. I would be able to advise my family member during the Master's based on my expertise in the field (this is the field of expertise that the original secondary adviser lacks, whereas I have a Ph.D. in the broad topic) but a formal supervision, aside from my not having any formal link to the university, is completely out of the question! So, if a prof could be found that would be comfortable with such an arrangement where I informally assist my family member with the parts that the adviser (original secondary or otherwise) is shaky on, that could be an option. And precisely for this reason everything seems like a Hail Mary!

As it stands so right now, my family member is being completely screwed over by the original primary advisor out of the money and an education. I have in addition advised my family member to go see the university's ombudsman to see what they think or advise. Otherwise, I myself am out of ideas, because the options I can think of so far are long-shot Hail Marys.

What else can be done here?

Thats too bad but not absolutely surprising given the instability of academia. I would say to advise him to take a temp job for a year and then reapply--for next year he should not have trouble. Can he work as an intern somewhere, etc.? This wasn't his fault so the situation shouldn't hinder his employment opportunities elsewhere.