R1 vs R2 programs in mathematics I have been looking into several different PhD programs in mathematics, and I am trying to keep my options open. After finishing a doctorate, I am open to working either in academia or industry, although I would prefer a teaching job or similar at a liberal arts college. Additionally, I am currently in the US on a student visa in an undergraduate program.
I would say I have a pretty strong resume, and my GPA is quite good (at around 3.7 on the 4.0 scale). I have research experience in combinatorics and data science, as well as independent reading courses, workshop participation and experience at a summer program for prospective PhD students. I have also given several presentations at student conferences.
I have looked at plenty of different schools in the United States. I am from a small state school, and I believe that applying to Ivy Leagues etc, I would probably not stand a chance. Even some top 50 programs I am quite sure I won't get into, although no risk no reward, so I will definitely try.
After talking to my student advisor, she told me that I should definitely have a few safety schools on my list, and that I will do. I started looking into it, and I noticed there are a few R2 universities with mathematics PhD programs that seemed to have professors interested in similar research as I am.
There was just one main concern: if I want to get a postdoc or similar after finishing PhD studies, would going to a R2 university completely kill my chances of doing this? I have been heavily advised against it by some of my peers.
If it matters at all, I am currently mainly interested in research in discrete mathematics and algebraic topology.

First of all, I don't give individual advice for prospective math PhD students without saying that the job market for permanent positions (including teaching positions) is terrible and likely to stay that way.  There are significantly fewer jobs than highly qualified candidates.
With that out of the way... You can get pretty much as good an education at a program ranked around 60 as at a program ranked around 20.  It's true that, at the lower ranked program, you will likely have to study some more advanced topics independently with your advisor that you might have been able to take a 2nd or 3rd year graduate course for at a higher ranked program.  But, given the job market, the qualifications of the professors are going to be pretty much the same.  You'll be able to get pretty much just as good an advisor who, if you're capable, will help you work on just as good a project, and the advisor will have pretty much just as good a network to help you promote your work and find a postdoc.
Another difference is the expectations of the culture.  At a program around 60, a student who gets a research postdoc is exceptional.  The professors will not generally push you to do that level of coursework and research until you demonstrate that kind of capability, and your peers will not be expected to do that level of research.  Some people are more likely to make an effort beyond what their peers do; others are not.  I don't know you.
However, you should also realize that, if you are capable of earning a PhD with research that will get you a research postdoc, then every program ranked around 20 will be happy to admit you.  Of course it's somewhat hard to judge the potential of an undergraduate student, but if the higher ranked programs all turn you down and you do get a postdoc after your PhD, then those programs have all made a mistake.  Sometimes that mistake is systemic and out of their control; perhaps all your letters of recommendation underestimated your potential.  This means, though, that failing to get admission to a top 25 program is an indication that admissions committees don't think you're likely to succeed to that extent.


Correct abbreviation for current PhD student Several questions address the PhD. student/candidate issue. However, I stumbled upon the question of the correct abbreviation for a PhD. student. Indeed, one of my co-authors (technically an MSc., she is in the 1st year of her PhD.) asks to be listed as "PhD. student" on my paper. So is there an accepted way of doing that, or should I state "student" in full?

Other ideas would be "PhD. Stud.", "PhD. Stdt.", or something of that sort...

If this is common in your field, then you should imitate how you see it handled most often in other people's papers.  I don't know of any standard abbreviation for "student" in this context, so I'd imagine you should write it out, but again you should imitate what other people do unless you see a good reason to do otherwise.

If it's not common in your field (and you therefore don't have many examples at hand to compare with), then I'd recommend not including this information.  As MJeffryes points out in a comment, in much of academia papers don't list titles or positions at all.  If that's the case in your field, then identifying the authors by title could look eccentric (or, depending on the title, pompous).


Trimming my CV; or, what is appropriate to have in a CV at a given career stage I've been more or less adding material to my CV since I started it while in grad school.  As I am now a much more senior person, I am starting to feel it is a bit cluttered and perhaps larded up with inane facts about my (academic) life.  For instance does it really make sense to continue to include a prize I won as an undergraduate fifteen years ago?  Did it ever?

I'm curious what people think is an appropriate amount of information to include at each career stage: PhD student, Post-doc, Tenure-track, Tenured or if it doesn't make a difference.

I'm in math if people think the subject area matters.

As has been suggested above, keep one version of your CV which is complete with everything you've ever done, and then trim it down as needed for a particular purpose.  I keep my CV up-to-date with lists of publications, conference presentations, grants, courses taught, graduate students supervised, committees served on, etc.  It's a very long document, but its easy to cut/paste what I need in various situations.


Are translations valuable to Phd admission committees? I am really interested in translating academic material to my mother tongue. However the other day, I was talking with a professor and he advised me cease translating and start writing research papers if I want to continue my studies and start a PhD, he pointed out translation is of no value to English academicians!

I know it is very important to show your research capabilities by actually doing so but I feel shocked and a bit disappointed if this is true about the attitude towards translating academic material.

Would you tell me what you think on this and whether you think by translating I am spending my time in a wrong area?

I need to add that I am going to start my PhD outside my home country and probably in an English-speaking country.

Unless you're in the humanities, where the ability to translate source materials may be a critical need, what you're doing would be considered an example of a "service activity." You can certainly list such an activity on your CV and applications, but its impact on an admissions committee decision will be minuscule. You're much better off, as your advisors suggested, producing original research results.

Moreover, if you're planning to study in an English-speaking country, you will want to spend time improving your written and oral communication skills, rather than translating materials into your native tongue.


What is the right approach to research when goal is not to publish in top conferences? I am theoretical computer scientist. I am currently working in a local university in south  asian country. I have tried my best in the past to publish the research in good venue but have been failed. Now I am okay or fine with publishing in low tier conferences.
I have one doubt about my approach. I read top conference papers like STOC,FOCS,SODA and understand them if they seems interesting to me. Then I try to rephrase a research mentioned in the paper. After working on that question results in a paper.
The problem with approach is it takes quite a time to read and understand papers from top conferences as they are lengthy and nontrivial. This some time takes 4-5 months and total time for one paper is around 6-7 months. Many times it seems after reading these papers that there is no scope of improvement. In that case to me it appears that I should have read a paper of a conference which is not top tier. Lets say paper X is published in tier 2 conference then in most of the cases the reason it has been published in tier 2 is incomplete solution (partial solution to a problem).
Now the question is How to research if my goal is to publish and not to bother about ranking of the conference in efficient manner (time and energy)

I am guessing, but I think you haven't sufficiently specialized.
Most theoretical computer scientists are not specializing in something as broad as graph algorithms.  They are specializing in something extremely narrow, say specifically in list coloring algorithms, or specifically in adaptations of Lenstra's integer programming algorithm.  Your aim should be to specialize in something so narrow that you are the world expert in that very narrow area.
Don't try to understand anyone else's work completely; you only need to understand it well enough to see how it contributes to your work.  Because you have focused on your area well enough, you should be able to read (the relevant parts of) papers much faster.
The danger in doing this is that you end up producing work that no one else is interested in, but, as long as it remains legitimate research, it should be publishable in lower-tier conferences.


Should an abstract make an argument about why an experiment is important? I am submitting my first academic paper (in computer science). It is a short paper for a conference. In my abstract, I state what my empirical research uncovers. Is it appropriate to then explain why that empirical result is important? Or does that argument belong in a different part of the paper?

Yes it is generally better when the abstract indicates why the experiment is important, since it's key to hook the readers (otherwise why bother reading the paper if it brings no "important" results?), but succinctly as anything else in the abstract. There are typically 2 parts in the abstract where you can explain why the experiment is important:

when explaining why the problem it addresses is important (somewhere in the first half of the abstract)
when summarizing the implication of your results (at the end of the abstract).

I love the following abstract for a paper on how to write an abstract written by Steve Easterbrook; I italicized the two parts I mentioned above:

  The first sentence of an abstract should clearly introduce the topic
  of the paper so that readers can relate it to other work they are
  familiar with. However, an analysis of abstracts across a range of
  fields show that few follow this advice, nor do they take the
  opportunity to summarize previous work in their second sentence. A
  central issue is the lack of structure in standard advice on abstract
  writing, so most authors don’t realize the third sentence should point
  out the deficiencies of this existing research. To solve this problem,
  we describe a technique that structures the entire abstract around a
  set of six sentences, each of which has a specific role, so that by
  the end of the first four sentences you have introduced the idea
  fully. This structure then allows you to use the fifth sentence to
  elaborate a little on the research, explain how it works, and talk
  about the various ways that you have applied it, for example to teach
  generations of new graduate students how to write clearly. This
  technique is helpful because it clarifies your thinking and leads to a
  final sentence that summarizes why your research matters.

That said, to make sure your in the same tone as the conference, reading abstracts of papers published in the same conference in the last years is the ultimate reference.


Lose my nerve while doing research I'm a starting graduate student in math. Without a doubt I'm not a genius or even that smart, and that creates a serious problem: I often lose my nerve while doing research or studying other people's paper. I feel that some of those people (if not most) are just too good and I crack under the pressure to produce works of similar quality. I know the right thing to do is to be "brave" and power through and see where I end up. But this issue of "cowardice" has severely hurt my productivity. Do successful researchers have same problem or are they just totally engrossed with their work and do not care about anything else? How can I somehow be more disciplined with my emotions?

I think that you may experience what can be characterized as Frustration.

  frustration is a common emotional response to opposition, related to
  anger, annoyance and disappointment.

As you're reading scientific papers, you're on higher level of scientific work than is expected from graduate student - I did not read too much papers during my MSc.
And it depends also what is expected of you by your colleagues, so compare whether your frustration is not combined with Imposter syndrome mentioned in comments.

E.g. Authors usually spent several months or years to produce some results and to write a paper. So understanding the paper may take also some time to readers. Other problem is that some papers are so brief thus it's rather a problem of the authors if they can't explain their scientific problem or solution to somebody outside their domain niche.

I have been experiencing frustration personally many times during my MSc, PhD and my current postdocs projects. When it happened I gave myself a time limit. So during that time limit it's good to consult the problem with somebody else. If I don't make any progress and frustration continues after the time limit, I give up and move to somewhere else.

The limit and tolerance to frustration is very subjective. Nobody should expect you to grasp all problems and in short time. My oppinion is that mental health is more important than scientific achievements.


Is it possible to make leaving a PhD look good on a CV / Resume? I am in the process of leaving my PhD programme in life sciences at a top university in the UK. A PhD is simply not for me and I find the work/life balance to be intolerable; in addition, my PhD so far has included an industrial placement at a Fortune 500 company that was very eye opening and enjoyable. I am looking to leave academia permanently and apply for graduate schemes.

My question is whether it is better to leave the fact that I quit a PhD off my CV, or to have the failed PhD / MPhil on there, or to mask it as '18 months of lab experience' or something similar. Is it possible to make the fact I left a PhD sound good?

In my discipline (computer science), almost all of the people I know who declined to finish the Ph.D kept it listed on their professional profiles with a "not complete" note under it.

They did list their experience though under "work experience", as "Research assistant" or similar and continue to keep their accomplishments listed.

Overall, I think keeping it there, even if unfinished, is better than having a long gap of 2-3 years, because big gaps of nothing are going to look worse than employment in that period that you decided (for varying reasons) to not complete. You can explain away "I decided not to do a Ph.D" in a phone screen but it's harder to tell someone "Well, I actually tried to get a Ph.D but didn't finish, sorry I didn't list it on my resume".


What are the chances of an abstract being accepted if it is a day late for a conference Will an abstract sent a day late or few hours late be considered for a competitive conference?

It depends on the conference. Some conferences use online systems that stop allowing submissions after the deadline. For these conferences you might be able to eventually get in touch with a program chair or administrator and get your abstract considered, but you may also run into everyone telling you that you missed the deadline. Other conferences you email the abstract to the program chair or administrator. Again, you may be told you missed the deadline or they may allow it to be considered.

It is worth noting that many conferences move the deadline, so maybe you are not actually late. Only way to know what is up is to either wait until you hear something or find someone to email/call.


Should I abandon an open math problem, if it hasn't been actively studied since the mid-1980s? There is an open math problem that I am interested in. There was a lot of progress in fully working out the problem in low-dimensions and progress towards sub-problems of the main question up until the 1980s, but it seems that the research activity has mostly stopped since then.  Newer papers just essentially reiterate previous results.

A pretty well-known professor in my department also published a few papers on this problem in the mid-80s, so I reached out to him and told him that my thesis adviser and I are currently studying this problem.  He confirms that his work on the problem is very old, so I'm guessing he hasn't done anything newer with the problem since his last papers.

The problem itself is known to be quickly intractable for higher dimensions, say, for n>5.

I'm taking his words as an indication that there is not much interest in this problem, and that I should probably abandon it and find another problem to work on, for my master's thesis.

Am I making the correct interpretation of this professor's remark?

Should I still stick with the problem, even though it might be true that it is not currently being actively studied?

Based on your brief description, I'd say a more likely explanation for the lack of work on this problem is that people are stuck. Not that there's no interest in it.

Still, I wouldn't recommend this problem for a masters' thesis (or a PhD thesis). At least at the start, you should work on something manageable. If you hit a manageable problem or two out of the park, then you can start trying things professional researchers have attempted and failed.


Is it acceptable to write that you are getting a "Ph.D. in [area]" (rather than name of department) on social media? I am starting a PhD in computer science, and have noticed that a number of classmates will write on LinkedIn or their academic websites that they are getting a "PhD in Machine Learning" or "PhD in Artificial Intelligence" and so on. Is this common/acceptable to write "PhD in [Area of Interest/Expertise]" instead of your home department?

I believe it makes sense.
The PhD education is a very narrow education which will give you very specific knowledge regarding a specific aspect of a research area.
Therefore, it makes completely sense to be a bit more specific rather than general. PhD in computer science sounds very broad and not much descriptive.


Host Institution - Marie-Curie individual fellowship I am planning to apply for a Marie-Curie individual fellowship. Should I be already a Postdoctoral Fellow at a particular University, which will also be the host Institution? In other words, could I assign a host Institution and in case that I receive the fellowship, I can then start working on it?

thank you

For Marie Curie fellowships you shouldn't already be employed by the host institution. These fellowships are meant to encourage mobility so you must apply to go to some other place.

  could I assign a host Institution and in case that I receive the fellowship, I can then start working on it?

Yes that's exactly the principle. However be careful: you don't just pick a host institution, the key factor in these fellowships is to have a strong research plan prepared in collaboration with the host institution.


Is there such a thing as a "1.5 PhD degree"? A famous person in my hometown claimed that she was awarded a "1.5 Ph.D. degree" by her thesis committee in a famous law school in London in the early 1980s (which was noted on her diploma, according to her memoir) -- is there really such a thing in academia?

No. It is difficult to prove a negative, but the idea of a "1.5 PhD" seems far-fetched on its face. Negative search results on the internet coupled with the lack of answers here over the past six months further indicate that the answer is no.
Where did this crazy idea get started? Apparently, from some claims made by the President of Taiwan. As stated in this report by a faculty member at the University of North Carolina:

[President Tsai Ing-Wen] also claimed that the committee decided not just to award her a PhD in law in 1984, but also to add the remark “she has extraordinarily strong academic background in international trade” to her PhD diploma. She went on to say that the thesis committee lionized her work as “worthy of 1.5 PhD degrees.”

There was some controversy in 2019 about whether Dr. Tsai had earned a PhD at all (in fact, the linked report concludes in the negative). However, the London School of Economics confirmed that she was "correctly awarded a PhD in Law in 1984." The LSE did not mention anything about an "extra half PhD," nor is there any proof that the faculty added any remarks to her diploma (indeed, adding remarks to a diploma is not a typical practice).
I suspect that what happened is that her advisor made the remarks when introducing her at the defense, and she simply paraphrased and/or embellished those comments. Indeed, some commenters suggest that the introductions at public defenses tend to have "gushing praise," to the point where suggesting she deserves "merely" an extra half-PhD could be considered rather faint praise. I suspect this varies culturally; no one made such remarks at my defense or at others I attended (maybe we are just slackers...).


How do undergraduate theses affect master's application? I am an undergraduate student and have a plan to apply to a master's program.

I am about to start to work on my graduation thesis for graduation at my university.

Question: How does my graduation thesis will affect applying to master's program?

It has, typically, no harmful effect.

In most cases, you will declare the title of the thesis within your CV, or upon request of either potential supervisor or admission committee. Furthermore, as your current advisor would, supposedly, be among your referenvces, she might talk about it within addressing your applied effort onto the thesis progression, probablely.

As you notice, required pointers to the thesis will be taken into account, even without its completion, within your application.

Good luck


Equivalent of french CAPES or agrégation exam without having to teach I am a mathematics student in a French university.
But I have studied many other subjects on my own with university books.
So I would like to have a diploma or an exam that proves that I have a certain level in these subjects.
I had thought about the CAPES or the agrégation exam but I don't want to have to teach after I have obtained them.
Note. I am moving towards an academic career.

Note that if you pass the "agrégation" (i.e. successfully pass the exams) but don't teach after, then you cannot call yourself "agrégé de mathématiques" (as it's reserved for people who then teach) but you are allowed to say on your CV that you successfully passed the exams (I think it's "reçu au concours de l'agrégation", but not 100% certain). I shall not comment on the morality of potentially taking up a place in a competitive exam with limited number of places (the Mathematics one always has more places that admissible candidates, but still...). However it sounds like a lot of effort just to get a diploma.
The more traditional route is to get a "Licence" in another subject by taking online classes -- so there aren't any mandatory classes -- for the year of L3 at a nearby University (provided you can get an equivalency for the first two years of L1-L2), and taking the exam. It's not uncommon for students in Physics, Mathematics, or Computer Science for instance to get one or more degrees in related topics this way. If the secondary discipline is less closely related to Mathematics (say Philosophy or Ancient Languages), then it may be trickier to get the equivalency, although it's always easier to go from Mathematics to anything else than the reverse.


Will going to an university in UK be profitable for me in the future? I'm currently thinking in which country to spend my undergraduate period, UK or US. I'm going to apply for PhD program of Molecular Biology in US university after graduating from undergrad school. So, it seems better to stay in US during undergrad period to prepare for PhD program admission. But I prefer undergrad programs of UK, because of its specialized and accelerated curriculum. Is it a rational choice to go to UK just because of my preference of its curriculum?

Personally, I think it is to early to think about graduate school if you haven't even started undergraduate. I would go with where you want to live, and where you think you will have the most research opportunities, and where you think you will get the best grades. Most of all, I would go where you think you will be happiest in life, and not academics. It is infinitely harder to do good work, no matter what field, when you are not happy.


How can I find papers of a specific journal? I want to find papers of a specific journal. For example, I want to search papers about the smart grid security only in the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid journal. Is there appropriate configuration criteria for the particular search in the Google Scholar or Scopus;

Thanks in advance

Go to the IEEE website and use the search they provide:


How to reduce the load of professors writing recommendation letters for graduate school application? If a student can't decide which school to apply at one time, and different schools have different' deadlines, how could the student do to reduce the load of professors writing recommendation letters for graduate school application?

One possible solution. I heard of interfolio (http://www.interfolio.com/). Does anyone know if it might help? My concerns are that each school has its own only application system, and it might not be good for recommendation letter to not have specific school name in it. What do you think?

You can reduce the amount of work the professor needs to do by following this excellent advice from Prof. David E. Keyes.  Here are some of the most relevant bits:

To ensure that such a writer is well primed to execute your reference efficiently, you should create a self-contained packet containing all the information the author will need to dispatch the reference in one sitting: (1) contact information for the recipient of the letter, (2) a description of the position and application closing date, (3) your own application essays and cover letter, (4) a resume, (5) relevant transcripts and scores, and (6) an explanation of the niche of the writer! It is very useful, as a reference writer, to receive a reminder along the following lines: "Professor Keyes, your letter will be the one that comments most authoritatively about my analytical ability, my promptness in completing projects, and my reasons for wanting to pursue X next fall. Remember that you gave me an A– in partial differential equations two years ago and it was your suggestion that led to my summer at Los Alamos with Y." You should provide this packet in both hard and soft copy. Writers of lots of references maintain files that may be hard or soft, or both, and you should make it easy for those writers to locate your files quickly for subsequent updating and future requests.
Some faculty write many dozens of letters of reference during peak months, and they may even ask candidates for sample text to be incorporated into letters, to ensure that they capture their niches. You should not be flustered at such a request, and should not be modest in complying. You should be aware, though, that your words will not pass directly into the delivered product; they will be used simply to get the author's juices flowing following the formulaic paragraphs of the letter.
To help maximize the time a writer has available for each candidate, you should complete the reference process as far as legally possible yourself. For hardcopy applications, this means printing out and filling in as many fields as possible, both about you and about the writer (title, affiliation, contact data). For reference letters collected online (the vast majority for positions filled by junior candidates), you can usually fill in each writer's basic contact information. Such streamlining is always appreciated and leads to fewer errors and faster completion.

I don't think something like Interfolio would help, because the last thing you should do is force the professor to learn to use a new tool just so he/she can write a letter for you.


Why mention town and country of equipment manufacturer? For reproducibility I see the use of mentioning the equipment type, version number and manufacturer. But in the internet age it seems unnecessary to me to mention the town and country of an equipment manufacturer in the methods section of an academic paper.

In my opinion it was probably useful when you needed a phone book to look up the company details. Nowadays, I think these details make the papers less readable because they break the flow of the text.

However, my PI and some coworkers always want me to add this information without giving a reason why. (If they give reasons they are: "the journal wants it" [not true], or "everybody does it this way" [bad reason])

Is there any good reason to add the town/country that I did not think of?

I think this is especially common in the medical literature. The objective, as you said, is to make sure readers can find the exact same product you used to get the full picture and for the purpose of evaluating or reproducing your work.

Even in the "Internet age", there are many reasons why one might need the physical location of a manufacturer in order to access their products. Here are a few that come to my mind:

Many companies are not easy to locate with a google search and I know several that don't have a public website or any sort of web presence at all. It might feel silly to write "we used Gmail (Google, Mountain View, California)" but there are many businesses that are not as publicly known. If you're looking in an online phone book you still need to know where to look for.
Companies might have many subsidiaries and divisions that could be developing products and prototypes without the other ones necessarily knowing about it, especially prototypes. Contacting the wrong one might lead to a dead end.
Due to different regulations (and that is especially true for drugs and medical equipment) it can be that the same company is selling different products depending on the location. The exact composition of a drug or the firmware might differ depending on where the products were sold.
It actually sometimes happens that two completely unrelated companies providing the same type of services or goods that are active in separate countries have the exact same name. Confusing, I know.
Companies disappear, get bought, change name, etc. Knowing the location at time t might help locate the new entity that could deliver the product.

This being said "the journal wants it" is a valid argument, if it's effectively the case and "everybody does it this way" is not that bad of a reason when it comes to article structure and writing practices. Be creative on the content, not on the form. I personally don't feel brackets with (Nvidia Corporation) "break the flow" less than (Nvidia Corporation, Santa Clara, California).

Plus it brings back good memories of time spent in California.


How to utilise university resources when doing an independent research masters? I'm planning on undertaking a research masters in Earth Science or Geography within the UK.

During my undergraduate, there were many lectures, exams, courseworks/reports and workshops. I utilised my lecturers to ask questions about all of these things. Yet, my dissertation was very independent with minimal guidance or advice from lecturers (they mostly just nodded along).

My research masters will only have a single thesis/dissertation to hand in (no exams, lectures or reports). How should I use my university to help me in this? The obvious answer is lab equipment, but my thesis is most likely to be a desktop based study. Another answer is guidance from supervisors, but as I am required to come up with a thesis proposal before applying I will probably already have figured out much of what I need to do.

Summary

If you're applying for a research masters in which there is only one piece of assessed work (your independent thesis), there is unlikely to be lab work (no need for uni equipment) and I must pre-decide a thesis proposal before applying (staff not available for guidance), how do I utilise the university to best help me?

Your thesis advisor should be your principal channel of support. You say you'll already have your topic worked out, but that is far from having produced a finished thesis. The advisor's suggestions and references are intended to support you in producing graduate-level work; that person will know all about the relevant resources that might be available. Without the guidance of a professor you would be flying blind.


Is it rude to ask via email to a professor if there are any internship opportunities? I've worked for an university for one year after my master's degree. Now I'm searching another job. For the moment I've tried to ask to several professors via email if there is any internship opportunities but only a couple of them answered me. I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong or this is not the praxis or the formal manner for this type of requests. This is a general template I use:

Dear Professor Surname,
I'm a young chemist for the conservation of Cultural Heritage.  In my career I've studied mainly non-invasive techniques for art diagnostics and authentication, such as reflectography and Raman spectroscopy. I've also learned, on my own, to use GIS software for organizing data for Cultural Heritage management. I've seen that one of name of a Project I'm interested tasks is the maintenance of cultural heritage. Therefore, I would like to ask you if there are any internship opportunities in which my expertise could be useful to your current research? Thank you for your time.
Best regards,

How can I propose myself for an internship? Which is the most accepted praxis?

I don't think this practice is rude, but if these are not people with whom you have any connection, and who have not advertised a position, then I don't think you should be especially surprised that you aren't getting many responses.  In all likelihood, the answer is "no" and they don't feel like anything will be achieved by telling you that.

A few things which might be hurting you:

The email above really reads like a mass form email.  You aren't making any argument about how your expertise is relevant to their specific work, and you're putting the burden on them to think about how your skills might fit with what they're doing rather than thinking about it yourself.
Maybe this is different in other fields, but it's not clear to me what "internship" is supposed to mean here.  A paid position?  Unpaid?  You may be being deliberately vague, but if you're not responding to an ad for a specific position, you have have some clarity about what you're looking for.
I think that the slightly awkward English doesn't really help.  "Chemist for the conservation of Cultural Heritage" sounds very strange to me.  I think "Chemist specializing in/interested in/working on the conservation of Cultural Heritage" is much better.


What does "DeWitt W. Buchanan, Jr." in a professor's title mean? I've got to cite the author of a text and her full title is

  Jeanne Brett, DeWitt W. Buchanan, Jr., Distinguished Professor of
  Dispute Resolution and Organizations; Director of the Dispute
  Resolution Research Center

I'm at a loss, her name is Jeanne Brett so why is this person's name in her title? When I google  "dewitt w. buchanan" all I get is entries for DeWitt W. Buchanan or this professor. What does it mean in academia terms, is this a prize, the name of an institute, an honorific title, is it important to cite it when talking about the professor?

I could have posted it to ELU, but it seems something very idiomatic to academia. So...help ?

You would list the "DeWitt W. Buchanan, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Dispute Resolution and Organizations" if you were, for instance, issuing a press release about Prof. Brett's accomplishments, or writing very formal correspondence. You might also mention it if you were introducing Prof. Brett in a seminar.

Under most normal circumstances, however, such information is not needed, and could come across as being almost pretentious.

As for what the "Dewitt W. Buchanan, Jr., Distinguished Professor" represents, it's what's known as an endowed chair or named chair. Mr. Buchanan was the person honored by the chair—either because he gave the money to establish the chair himself, or others gave the money on his behalf or in his honor.


Creative commons for academic library I am building an online library, where professors will be submitting academic work (text and multimedia).

I want to find the right CC license. The work provided by the library can be shared and anybody can build upon it for commercial or non-commercial purposes, as long as they give credit to the professor. But the original work must remain un-edited. So, CC-BY-ND fits this description, but there is a part that worries me. If anybody can "remix or transform" the material, what is stopping them from changing the article and re-share it as their own, or claim that is the original?

Is there any way that CC-BY-ND protects me from this danger, or should I use another copyright licence?

Thanks

Attribution Required

  You are free to ... Under the following terms: Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

The Creative Commons license blatantly specifies right in the license that attribution is required for a CC-BY-ND.

There are some things that you can do to help communicate this, like linking to the license, making the license more prominent, copy-pasting the terms of the license, or even appealing to emotional sensibilities.

What's On The Internet...

However, no matter what you do, what is on the internet is prone to being copied, used, and modified in any manner of ways, including stripping attributions. This is the risk that all content-creators take. Whether or not it is worth the risk is up to you.

DMCA Take Down Requests

If you decide to release your content to the internet and you find that your content license is being infringed, you may be eligible for a DMCA Take Down Request on the hosting website. If the website company will not, you can then go to search companies like Google and go through their process to remove the listings (greatly reducing its visibility).


When to use the word "Prof." in an SOP? When should I call a professor in my SOP as Prof. X, or just leaving their name as X? All I want is not to be disrespectful, but also not to make unnecessary repetition.

I think the natural way to call them is based on the context: when I mention them as an author of a paper, then X is fine, but when mentioning them as my future advisor, then I should call them Prof. X. However, I'm worried that will make inconsistent in calling their name. Also, can I only mention their title at the first time and just writing the name for the rest?

Moreover, in my situation, X has retired and recommend Y who is from outside the school I apply. Y agrees to co-advise me with Z who is an official faculty* of the school. I want to mention this in my SOP, but wonder if I should write their titles in. They are all professors, however Y doesn't mention the titles in the emails, so I don't think there is a need to mention them.

*Btw, what is the good name for this term?

100% opinion-based and anecdotal.

I (and I am intentionally not saying "People" here though I do not think that would be an overstatement) will feel very weird if a student refers to a teacher with whom he/she has a professional relationship using only last name. So, I agree with Jonas's comment that you should use "Prof." all the way through.

In general social settings, I have only seen last name-based communication in sport teams (my coach called us by last name, and more than usual we teammates referred to each other with last name), and when someone particularly requested me to do so (e.g. "Nice to meet you, I'm Bruce Wayne; I go by Wayne.")

In academia, referring to someone with last name usually implies you do not personally know that person, not even by the 2nd degree. If I were to refer to a teacher in my school whom I do not know, I'd still say something like, "Hi, this is my friend John, he studies with Prof. Buddy" even I don't know the professor personally. One of the exceptions would be when a possessive is involved, like "Buddy's laboratory" or "The Dumbledore's Army."

When I refer to someone more remote, the last name method is usually used, e.g. "Have you read that paper by Kardashian? Sick stuff." Or, the full name method: "John Tukey introduces box plot in his book Exploratory Data Analysis." I wouldn't call them Prof. Kardashian or Dr. John Tukey. And yet, if I get to speak to a former student of John Tukey's, I would perhaps ask "So, how was it like studying with Dr. Tukey?"

As for worrying about repetition, out of all possible grammatically annoying repetitions, this is nothing worth concerning. In fact, it's more annoying to read a letter from a student who sometimes refers to the same person as "Prof. Y" and then flips to "Y." That sounds mildly psychotic.

I'd conclude that, yes, it is a big mess. English itself comes with plenty of odd rules and exceptions. Compounded with cultural practices and manners it can be confusing. It's not my primary language and the only way to get around it would be to listen and read more. And if you need to pick one in a pinch, err on the more polite and formal expression.


How do I choose the right papers to write a review paper? I'm writing a review paper. I'm in the field of computer science.

There are many related papers in my research area. Some are good, some are not.

I'm planning to include only Q1-papers based on Journal Citation Reports

But, does this enough for the paper?

Should I include other papers in Q1, Q3, Q4 and conference papers too.?

If I include all, it will make my review paper really long especially when I create a table to summarize all related papers.

If there was an easy algorithm to determine, which papers are important for a topic and which are not, we would not need review articles. A list of Q1 articles with short descriptions can be automatically generated from a citation database and the paper's abstracts. There would be no need to put it into a separate publication. Your primary job as author of a review article is that of curation. You should consider all (or at least as many as possible) papers on a topic, select the important ones and put them into a coherent thread based on their content alone.

It will likely be skewed towards the highly cited, because they are highly cited for a reason. But the point is, if a paper is good and advances the topic, I want a review article to tell me about it even if it only ever appeared as a preprint and hasn't really been cited by anyone. Equally, if it appeared in the best journal, is cited by hundreds, but is only tangentially related and doesn't really offer any new insight into the topic, I don't want to waste my time looking it up just because it was mentioned indiscriminately with the others.


Finishing my BSc while working - asking help to professors and future academic chances I started my BSc (major Engineering of automatic systems, in a world top-30 college) in 2010 and, one 1.5 years in and around 25% done, I left to cope with growing family problems (multiple severe health issues amongst close relatives). It was not a light decisions, I was part of a great student research team and really loved the people around me, but being left unable to concentrate by all the struggles at home I had no other option.

During the time not in college I founded, along with a friend, a startup company out of personal research in the field of HMIs of systems for beta testing and got acquired  by a much larger company and my product is now in worldwide usage within the parent group.
The deal was/is satisfactory from an economical point of view and getting a technical vision that i truly believed in to grow was a fantastic experience but I started to find myself really disliking the corporate job very when, due to company reorganization, I was moved from product development to a more white collar job.

This experience made me realize that what I love is critical thinking around technical problems, so, around 3 years ago, I re-enrolled in college while holding on to my position in the company; at age 26 a strong economical independence is fundamental to me, especially because it allows me a great independence from the problematic family environment and to make one of my childhood dream -flying gliders- come true.

It has been 3 years of exhausting studying 9pm - 1 am 5 days a week and, slowly, I managed to reach around 80% completion of my degree, even if with a low GPA (22/30) and hopefully I`ll graduate within 1.5 years.

Questions time:

My current objective is to pursue a higher level of education, I`d like to know how does such a twisty academical career affects my chances of getting accepted in a good Master program around 2 years from now.

Moreover, I`d also like to know what is a legitimate level of "help" that I could ask for to a professor of a mandatory course that I am finding extremely difficult (e.g. recommending area of focus and exercises to pay special attention to) , since being unable to attend lessons makes it way harder to know what to focus on while preparing for tests.

Thankyou for your help

I`d like to know how does such a twisty academical career affects my chances of getting accepted in a good Master program around 2 years from now.

Overall, the point of the admissions process is finding candidates who will succeed in higher study.  Your ability to overcome obstacles to get a degree, as well as your success in industry, both provide evidence that you will also be able to tackle a master's program.  Overall, your story is a positive one.  Taking a long time to complete a degree won't matter at all under the circumstances.

If there are some slight negatives to your story, they are:

Low GPA this does matter, but how much is dependent on the institution.  Also, your success in non-academic activities may offset this somewhat.
Will you continue to struggle to have time for your studies in the master's program?  This is something admissions committees may worry about.  If the circumstances that caused difficulty are going to change (for example, you will stop full-time employment in order to get a master's degree, or the family issues have now been resolved), then you should be sure to amke that clear.

  what is a legitimate level of "help" that I could ask for to a
  professor of a mandatory course that I am finding extremely difficult

There is no harm in asking the questions that you suggest.  Your professor can always say no if they don't want to provide the information.  Also consider simply going to your professor and saying "I'm finding this class extremely difficult, are there any resources I could take advantage of for extra help?"


How to persuade my advisor to keep working with me even if my grades are poor? I am an international grad student in ECE in USA, in the field of Wireless Communications, and I am on my second semester of my Master's program.

Last week I learned by advisor was unhappy about the grades I got last semester. More specifically, I took two courses and took B+ and A-. On the first course I thought I had scored A or more but I got a bad score on the final; something I wasn't expecting. On the second one, I had a panic attack during the final and I couldn't think calmly, so I got a score of 60, when having 90+ on midterms. I told this to my advisor, and also said that being away from home also made it harder for me psychologically, the reply was that many people have problems on the first semester, but also that if I don't correct my grades this semester it may mean that I am not suitable for doing research in this field, and that I would need to search for another research group, or leave with a master's and work at industry.

Note that my grades are over the department minimum for PhD entry. So it's my advisor's idea, not a department requirement.

So what should I do? Of course I will try my best to be improve this semester but I think I need to have a plan B in case my grades don't improve too much. What should I do to persuade my advisor?

scaaahu has given the most pragmatic answer in a comment:

  Study harder or leave.

If it is very important to your advisor that your grades are better, those seem to me pretty much the options.

That being said, I think most people don't really care so much about grades that they would kick out a perfectly fine grad student for grade's sake alone, even if he is well above the formal requirements. Honestly, I would assume that this is not, or at least not only, about grades.

How is your research going along? Are you progressing at least as well as the majority of the other students in the lab? Is your advisor still enthusiastic about your topic? It is not entirely unlikely that your supervisor is not super-happy with some other part of your work, and just using your suboptimal grades as a simpler, more objectively validatable reason to put pressure on you.


Supervisor appears to have a different scientific attitude I'm a first year PhD student in the life sciences. So far, my PhD has been going well. I meet my supervisor regularly and he is interested in the project and generally supportive.

A couple of months ago my supervisor encouraged me to start writing a draft for a paper, incorporating the results I have so far. We regularly meet to discuss parts of the draft, mainly figures and main statements.

The problem I noticed once we started working on the draft is that my supervisor has a different attitude towards the project. Very often I try to emphasize that I am uncertain about a statement, a method or whatever but I feel unheard and ignored. I feel as if my doubts are not taken into account when we work on the draft at all. It appears as if my supervisor has this grand idea already fleshed out in his head and appears unwilling to hear that some statements might have to be toned down a bit. I feel uncomfortable and depressed as of late, as it is me who is ultimately responsible for producing a piece of scientific work that adheres to the standards of scientific rigor that I think are correct. I feel pushed into doing something that is wrong.

Could it be that I overthink this? Are there different shades of scientific rigor? 'Selling your story' is part of the modern scientific world, right? Do young PhD students tend to be overly defensive and critical of their own work? Is this just 'how the game works'? Should I just trust my supervisor?

I think you may be attempting perfection (though you may
 not define it as such), but the reality of research is that it is constantly evolving, and may never mature into perfection.

Conflict, rejection and skepticism are all indeed 'part of the game'. If not your guide, then an editor, a reviewer or a fellow-researcher will (almost certainly) at some point refute your ideas. Many times they will not (and may not need to) justify themselves, which will add to the discomfort.

If an idea is wrong, it will be pointed out at some stage, maybe before submission, or during review (and sometimes after publication). Even if this happens, it will not blot your career as a researcher (unless the mistake is very fundamental, targets other researchers wrongly or involves some kind of trickery). So you should do your due diligence and rest assured after. By due diligence, I mean being thorough, verifying and re-verifying until you are satisfied that your work is technically and logically sound, in all aspects.

Also, never forget that the work is a partnership between you and your guide. Any responsibility for mistakes is held jointly between both. The more junior you are, the greater is the guide's responsibility.


Can I cite an accepted, pre-publication paper without DOI and the citations gets counted correctly? My situation: I got two papers underway and the second one was accepted only days after the first one. The second one cites the first one and, naturally, I want the citation to be attributed correctly. Currently, both publications are "accepted" and probably on the editor's desk or something.

How should I provide the bibliography information for an accepted paper? Can my citation still be accurately attributed to my first paper if I do not have a DOI for it (e.g. in Scopus)? Is there anything I can tell the editors of either journal to guarantee everything is going smoothly?

The field is solid matter physics/materials science.

It might be worth checking that neither journal assigns DOIs in advance - this is now supported by CrossRef, though not yet very common, and it's quite possible that they are able to tell you what the DOI will be now even if they don't normally inform you until later in the publication process. (For one thing, many journals issue DOIs based on an internal MS tracking number...)

Regardless of this, however, cite each paper as comprehensively as you can - accurate title, journal name, and clearly marked as "in press" or similar. This will make it easier for someone to know that there is probably a completed version out there somewhere, and give them the information they need to find it.

As I understand it, Scopus and Web of Science have a human involved in checking citations, not just an automated matching script, so hopefully they will be able to do the link manually when they see this. Both of them tend to lag a bit behind publication dates for citation records, meaning the chances are good that by the time the citation links are put into their database, the target will be online and citable.


How should one select his or her citations when writing a thesis in STEM? I have looked over the master and PhD thesis of several past colleagues, and it seems that their thesis section are all very organized and does not deviate too much from the standard literature. In fact, I was not at all surprised by their selection and could recognize most of them (if their work was similar to mine). One of my colleague's citation mostly contained widely cited papers from well known conferences.

However, I work in the very multidiscipinary field of "theoretical mathematical biology for engineering applications in computer science related fields". So I need results from a wide range of topics.

I have found that I need to cite obscure math references in order to prove my result. On Google, some of these papers have no or 1 citation. This sharply contrasts with the selection of citation from my previous colleague, which makes me a little nervous. I'm sure these mathematicians are famous in their field, but should I keep on digging until I find the (similar) result in a well known textbook?

Further, the text in this area is extremely abundant but no single source contain all the results. This means I have to continuously cite textbooks despite already citing prominent ones such as Winfree's "Geometry of Biological time".

All in all I will probably have over 80 citations. Is this too much?

There seems to be no guideline or rule to selecting citations. Can people working in engineering, physics, and math provide some insights on how to select/filter the list of citations for a master or PhD thesis?

The general answer to all your questions is to ask your thesis advisor. (S)he will definitely be able to tell you what the customs for theses in your field, and in your university, are.

That being said, I had the impression that you may have some misconceptions about why, and how, we use citations in academic texts. Specifically, you claim that:

  There seems to be no guideline or rule to selecting citations.

I would argue that this is because one does not "select" citations as such. Rather, the literature that your thesis cites should emerge from the text you are writing. You build a scientific argument and then, at the appropriate points in the text, refer back the original text whenever you use a pre-existing piece of knowledge. Sometimes this pre-existing knowledge may be standard enough that a textbook is a good source, but it is not uncommon that you will need to refer to original research papers.

If those papers have been cited often or rarely so far is not the right question to ask. Instead, if your argument requires that X is true, you find the original paper that proves X. You don't cite a different paper that also somehow uses X because it is more often cited. If you are not aware of any research that actually showed X, you have a different problem - why can you reliably assume X to be the case in your thesis anyway? Your current approach of writing down results and then worrying about what to cite for them seems a little backwards to me.

  All in all I will probably have over 80 citations. Is this too much?

"How many references should I have?" is really the wrong question to ask. You use as many as you need. That being said, if you have very few citations of previous work in a thesis it is usually a bit worrying, as a lack of citations often indicates that a student is not aware of the scientific state of the art or, even worse, of good citation practices. Conversely, citing many previous works is not usually a problem for theses. Of course some upper bounds exist in practice, but 80 citations seems nowhere close to excessive even for a master's thesis. Note that mathematical texts tend to have fewer citations than other STEM fields, so this may have biased your expectations when looking through the literature.


How do I tell my professor that I am volunteering with another project? Should I? I am working on a project as an undergraduate researcher in Prof A's lab.

At the end of the semester, one of my class professors, Prof B, proposed an idea for a project, so I and a few other students volunteered to research with him. Since this is all over the summer (meaning no classes), the topic was interesting, and I have nothing to do due to the pandemic, I thought it was okay (time management isn't an issue). The work with Prof B isn't part of a dedicated lab either, and I expect it to last just a few months in the summer.

However I came across this question (https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/47981), and now I am concerned that I am lying by omission. How do I let Prof A know about Prof B, or should I even worry about this? Was it wrong of me to volunteer with Prof B this summer? My question is different because I have no other obligations.

The last thing I want is to worry Prof A or make him unnecessarily think that the lab is boring, or for him to get a bad impression of me. Time management isn't a problem, and I've been attending & contributing in all meetings and deadlines, etc.

If you can handle both projects without compromising either, then there should be no issue. There, actually, shouldn't be a reason not to tell the other professor and they should support you as long as you haven't made a commitment to full time work on either project.

Taking on an additional project shouldn't give the impression that the earlier one is boring, just that  you want some additional experience.

On the other hand, if you are working satisfactorily with A, there is no real need to complicate things and talk about the other.

Think about the personalities of the two professors and choose. I don't see any ethical constraints either way, as long as you can do the required tasks.


How much of my teaching evaluations to bring to an interview? I'm interviewing for a lecturership (purely teaching, maybe 10% research).  I've taught one course before and I have received a thorough (positive) evaluation from my students.  However, my institution feels that more information is better, so my evaluation is 28 pages long.  Do I bring the whole thing, one copy per interview committee member, or would just the summary section (where the main numerical results are) be enough?

Teaching evals are super important to lecturer search committees.  But nobody wants paper.  Email it to the search committee or upload it to their application site.


Should a thesis of the author be listed as "related work"? Suppose I write a paper that contains mostly results that I previously published in my M.Sc. or Ph.D. thesis. The paper contains another author that is not related to the thesis (not the supervisor), who contributed some other results. How should I relate to the thesis when writing the paper?

Should I ignore it altogether since the thesis is not formally considered a publication?
Should I cite this as a "previous work"? It is not exactly previous work - it is the current work.
Maybe I am not allowed at all to include these results, since it is considered re-publication of something that already appeared?

(domain: theoretical computer science).
EDIT: I am interested in two cases:

Case 1: the submission is not anonyomous, so I can mention explicitly that it is my thesis.
Case 2: the submission is anonymous, so I am not allowed to mention that is my thesis..

Write something along the lines of:

A preliminary version of this paper appeared in Segal-Halevi's thesis [1], new results include X, Y, and Z.

That could appear as a footnote on the opening page, in your related work section (perhaps at the end), or maybe even in the acknowledgements. (Placement in the acknowledgements seems like a corner case that isn't relevant to the OP.)
For anonymous submission, replace Segal-Halevi's thesis [1] with one of the author's thesis, optionally adding, (citation omitted for anonymity).


Where can I find examples of research misconduct reports? I am writing a report documenting evidence for research misconduct. The report is to be submitted to the ethics board of a university. Are there publicly available examples of such reports? Not the formal investigation results but the actual report that triggered the investigation. I want to get an idea on how these are usually written.

Retraction Watch has a separate section for these:

misconduct investigations


Experiences with Scientific Research Publishing (SCIRP) journals Recently I've been receiving an increasing number of invitations to submit papers to several new Open-Access journals published by Scientific Research Publishing (SCIRP).

Has anybody here had any direct interactions with any of their journals? If so, what is your opinion?

I googled around a bit and they do not seem to be an exceedingly serious outfit. Although I have no intention of publishing there, I think this discussion may be useful for others receiving the same, or similar, invitations.

This recent Nature news item would seem to suggest rather strongly that SCIRP is not a serious outfit. Given the ethical improprieties mentioned in that article, staying away from such journals with a ten-foot pole (or longer) seems advisable.


what is RARE organisation in the context of hypertext systems? I am digging "dead bodies" meaning that i analyse alternatives to the web system which were popular in early 90s and seems to be found the relevant report.

The problem is author is constantly refers to some unknown organisation called RARE which i found no information about. It existed 20 years ago and was mentioned in numerous examples such as the following with other famous institutuons:

"It is noted that the rapid growth of WWW may in the future lead to problems through the implementation of multiple , uncoordinated and mutually incompatible add-on features. To guard against this trend , it may be appropriate for RARE, in cooedination with CERN and other interested parties such as NCSA, to encourage the formation of a consortium to coordinate WWW technical development. "

So who are these RARE was it institution? I was around 3 when berners lee and all these fellas developed the web so i am out of the context.

Link: www.apps.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1614.html

Appologise for typos: posting from phone.

A little detective work reveals the following. From Chris Adie's Resume it seems that RARE is now called TERENA, which is "The Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association". Looking at the history of TERENA, reveals that RARE stands for "Réseaux Associés pour la Recherche Européenne", which is a little strange, as it is a Dutch organisation.

Incidentally, one of my old pals used to work for TERENA.


Feasibility and procedure for getting graduate admission in CS with non-CS-related engineering background? It is often said that branch change is possible while going for MS/ PhD in USA. But almost all examples (as seen on university sites and various blogs) are of someone completing undergraduate studies (ie BE, BTech) from ‘Circuit’ branches of engineering i.e. Electrical, Electronics, Telecom, Instrumentation etc and joining MS/PhD in CS.

How difficult it is to go for MS or PhD in CS, having studied in ‘Non Circuit’ branches like Mechanical, Civil, Chemical and Aeronautics Engineering?
Are there people out there?
What one should do if one has a strong drive, skills and suitable projects, seminars, publications to support the same?

(My query refers mainly to top ranking colleges, say top 20)

Yes, it is possible to get an admission for MS or PhD in a US university having studied Bachelor degree in 'Non Circuit" field. This is more true if you have strong drive, skills and suitable projects, seminars, publications to support the same. However, to get into the top 20s would be a special case though not impossible.

Try approaching professors from top universities in CS showing them your credentials. If you are able to convince a professor, the battle is more or less won.

One of my friend did his Bachelor in Civil Engg. from a reasonably good non-US university but got admission in Electrical Engg. in a US university of medium rank.


I've finished my master's program. How can I improve my credentials so I can do a PhD? I have read a few posts here about the matter, but I don't think other posts fully address the situation I'm in. I apologize if this thread is redundant.

I would like to do research in the future, I think getting a Ph.D might be a reasonable step to take (if I were to be capable of doing research, at some point). Fields of interest: Neuroscience, neuropsychology. University I would like to apply: Yet unknown but somewhere in France would be ideal (current location: Argentina); would rather not pursuing higher education here if possible. Some background will be useful to give a proper assesment of my situation

(1) I'm fairly old at 28, and likely will not apply until 30. I believe this might be a problem when applying to some universities, since they receive brilliant people still in their early 20s.

(2) As you might have guessed, my undergrad grades are very much below average. I have three undergrad degrees and two masters in which I did good enough (not GREAT unfortunately).

(3) My grades report gives a full account of my activity, which is very unfortunate considering how bad I did stuyding mathematics: even if I passed the last courses with the highest possible grade, it will always how many courses and exams I failed before the last three semesters before graduating (and it goes up to 10). I don't think our grades here work like in the US. It's not possible to make your "GPA" go up after you failed. Taking extra-curricular courses and getting a good grade will make the final grade higher, but it will still show how many I've failed. I also graduated late when an undergrad.

(4) I am certainly not aiming at a top university, not even top 200 due to the fact of being a failure. But the fact that I am quite old and with a broken academic record makes me question if even the lower tier would take me in.

I'm very much in need of advice. If I were to apply when two years from now, there are several things I should do and it would take much time and effort, and it is unlikely I will go through those matters if the chances of going into research are way to slim to bother. Is there something I can do to make a future application "decent"? What should I consider when sending an application to a university?

Would it be better if I apply for a master X university before applying for a PhD in the same university?

What general advice could you give me? I would consider dropping the PhD plans if it is too unlikely.

I had a student who was, if not exactly in your shoes, certainly "disadvantaged" in being able to make it into grad school. Normally, I would just not respond and file away a cold call like that, but reading his email, which was asking for a chance to do research (not even paid—just work doing something related to research), and had a strong vision of what he wanted to do in the future, that it resonated with me. It also just happened that around the same time, I had some ideas I wanted to try out, and a small bit of funding available. So I offered him an internship that would be able to pay his living expenses, and gave him a shot. Today, he's thriving as a  PhD student in an aerospace engineering program in Europe.

So there's always a chance. The best thing to do is to get research experience. Once you can get some people who can comment "don't worry so much about user92705's grades, because user92705 has done really well working in my lab, and I know will become a good researcher," it will go a long way in getting you into a graduate program.


Can I be an assistant professor to just "try it out"? Currently I'm in a situation where I was originally working with an university to develop a course while being in industry, but I left the industry job. I'm not sure how to approach the conversation with the university. On one hand I would like to develop the course and teach it, but the university is a teaching oriented one (while I'm interested in research). Would it be better to work out a deal with them that I'll be an adjunct on the class and see how I get compensated for also developing a course? Or should I go in as an assistant professor and see how it goes (even though I think I wouldn't stay there for more than 2-3 years, and I would also pursue research with outside academia)?

Adjunct compensation (in the US) is very low. Don't do it for the money unless you are desperate. The comment of sessej about competition can't be ignored, but you aren't locked in to a lifetime if you "try it out".

However, you will, in a regular position, take on responsibilities to the students and your colleagues that you must honor as long as you hold the position. It would be unethical to withdraw or simply not do the job if you find after a few weeks or months that you made a mistake. But once the term of the contract is over, you should be free to choose differently than you did earlier.

In some situations, a department might even prefer a candidate who would only stay for a while. If enrollments are expected to drop in a few years, for example or if they think they can find a better credentialed or experienced candidate. But most would likely prefer someone really committed to the profession. It would be difficult, however, for you to learn that in advance without prejudicing a decision about hiring you.

Note that the overall responsibilities of adjuncts and regular faculty are normally quite different.  While you are expected, as an adjunct, to give your own students good advice, you probably won't be asked to be a formal advisor of anyone. Likewise it would be unlikely that you would be chosen as a thesis advisor as an adjunct. The other side of the coin is that you won't have committee meetings to deal with, though that means you have little voice in academic governance.

Your inclusion in research, however, would more likely depend on finding someone to work with and developing a relationship. Likely your existing skills will help with that, depending on the field.


Higher GRE Quantitative score? Lately, I have scored 165 in Quantitative Reasoning part of the GRE. The schools I consider applying requires scores that fall above the 90th percentile. with 165 Quant score, I am just at the 90th percentile. (just for a background, very good GPA (almost in %1 of my cohort), good academic references, a related job experience etc.)

There is no time to retake it, as the funding deadlines for graduate schools are approaching and I need to use this score to be evaluated for scholarships.
If I have another GRE test immediately, the results will only be helpful for being assessed without scholarships as the funding deadline will be already passed at that time.

However, I wonder what is the difference between a 165 Quant score or 167-68 band? The graduate schools need it from different nationalities than they are, especially to compare candidates. However, do you think higher GPA, good recommendation letters are as crucial as GRE?

I would be quite sad if I am not admitted to the schools I want just because of this low Quant score. Is it really to low?

Btw: department: Economics.

If you do a bit of a search you will learn that the GRE has little predictive value for success in graduate study. Given that, I doubt that a difference of five points has any significance at all.

But how a GRE is interpreted by a specific admissions system is completely up to them, so, again, no prediction can be made here.

Focus your application on other things. In general, a lot of things are likely to be considered. They will be looking for predictors of success. Give them that.

Search: predictive value of GRE


How many points should a journal paper have? Suppose I have done a work that has many features or aspects A, B, C, D,... when I want to present it as a journal or conference paper, should I cover all of them? or just to focus on one or two aspect? because I feel some of these features are irrelevant and not close to the topic or aim of the paper.
It seems, to explain each of them I need distinct introduction, review and experiments and mixing all of them could make the reader confused...

Is it better for my paper be focused on one or two arguments? Can we say journal papers are usually about one point?

I'm going to take a fairly strong opinion here and say that every paper, no matter how large or how small, should have precisely one core point.

That one core point may have as many or as few lines of evidence in support of it as are needed given the research context: that will be very dependent on the particulars of the paper and the community to which it is addressed.  Everything, however, should support the one core point, whatever that may be.  If you organize a paper otherwise, then in my experience both as writer, reviewer, and editor, it will tend to result in a paper that is poorly focused and scientifically weak.

So if you find yourself wanting to make multiple points with a paper, I would recommend considering the following two questions:

Are these different points really different aspects of the same core point?
Should this really be more than one paper, with different papers focusing on different core points that require different lines of evidence?

In the case of a new language, for example, there must be some key motivator for building the language, which is what you want to highlight.  At the same time, a new language will be much less mature and well-developed than many existing languages, and so there are certain to be aspects of comparison where it will show up poorly---but which may not matter.  The question then is this: what is the important thing to be learned, relative to existing pieces of work, and how do you provide evidence supporting the notion that you've done this better than existing languages and yet not introduced fatal flaws in other aspects.


How to resolve: Reviewer #1 says remove section X vs. Reviewer #2 says expand section X I am experiencing conflicting reviews with my manuscript that recently received its reviews. The reviewer #1 wants me to delete the analysis X for the clarity and focus of my MS, while reviewer #2 wants me to further discuss the results of analysis X, as it appears to be interesting for him/her. Both comments have important points. Reviewer #1 will make the MS short and clear, while reviewer #2 will make the MS longer and open more discussions.

What this means to me is that Section X needs to be revised.

Reviewer #1 is pointing out that section X is not well-motivated as it stands -- because they can't figure out it's relation

Reviewer #2 is pointing out that section X is not good enough as it stands -- because it doesn't address relevant issues about X.

Thus, the two are not necessarily opposite. Reviewer #1 is telling you that you need to better explain why X is as state if you want to include it. Reviewer #2 is saying you need to better address what is at stake in X but recognizes X is significant.

When I get this sort of review, I rewrite that section to make very clear why discussing X matters to the paper (thus addressing Reviewer #1) and try to improve and focus my arguments so that it really answers the objections raised related to X (thus addressing Reviewer #2).

I'm in philosophy, so maybe this advice doesn't apply to your field.


Is Academia.edu useful? I received a mail today from Academia.edu (a site I wasn't previously aware of), asking me to confirm that I co-authored a paper with a colleague.

Having looked into it a little it sounds like it might be a useful site - the idea of a "social network for scientists" is one I've seen the need for in the past. However, partly due to bad experiences with the seemingly similar ResearchGate, I'm also skeptical.* Without signing up for an academia.edu account the site doesn't offer much information, so I would like the following information:

What specific features does academia.edu offer to its users?
Is it genuinely useful for any of the following purposes (each of which seems genuinely needed)

as a platform for networking with academics
for discovering relevant research
as an effective system for post-publication peer review
for organising references among a small team of people working on a project

Will it send out mails to my colleagues without my express and explicit permission? (I.e. are the mails I received today the result of a deliberate action by my colleague, who is aware that I will be emailed and wishes me to join the site; or are they essentially spam from a social networking site aggressively trying to expand its user base?)
It's clear from its Wikipedia page that it's a private, venture-capital funded company. What is its business model?

In short, is this a site that has some genuine utility for academics, or should I just ignore it?

*I've never signed up for ResearchGate but I regularly receive spam from it purporting to be from my colleagues, who aren't aware that it's being sent on their behalf. I would be mortified if my senior colleagues received such mails claiming to be from me, so I won't touch it with a barge pole.

I distrust it for an entirely different reason. I once wanted to download a paper, and could only do it if I signed up. I signed up by logging on with my facebook account... Well, academia.edu took my profile information, and, without me knowing it, created an academia profile. With my picture, publications it could find via search engines, and a list of interests that were half right and half ridiculous. I'm a neuroscientist; it listed me as being interested in marketing, among other things. I only discovered this profile about a month later.

Apart from it being entirely unprofessional, I simply do not trust information that is on there, as I have first-hand experience that information on me was wrong.


Is it appropriate to include dollar amounts for awards granted when applying to a math PHD? This question includes REU (research experience for undegraduates) grant, travel grants, or prizes awarded. I've seen a friend's CV and he seemed to do this. I was wondering if this is to be expected or if one should refrain from posting the amount awarded.

Perhaps it is worth mentioning that participation in an REU (and the support received) does not really belong in a "grants, honors, and awards" section, or at least that is my impression.

There is a similar question on this website, but I'm asking specifically about  applying for graduate school and what is culturally accepted among the mathematics community in the United States

It is entirely your choice -- doesn't hurt, but not necessary either.

Readers of grad school applications generally have a decent idea of how much REU or travel grants (a couple of thousand dollars) and how much departmental awards are worth (a few hundred dollars, typically). So not stating a number is not a big deal. Stating a number also doesn't hurt: if it's within the range a reader would expect, then there is no harm done, space is cheap; if the dollar amount is surprisingly large -- say, a $5,000 award for your work, then that's useful knowledge and should have been on your CV indeed.


What are the pros and cons of being a Mathematical Reviews' reviewer? I received a letter from Mathematical Reviews inviting me to be a reviewer. Before I make my decision, may I ask what are the possible advantages and/or disadvantages of being a reviewer?

For background, MathReviews are reviews written by mathematicians of published mathematical papers and typically describe the content of the paper. Such reviews are available on the online database MathSciNet.

Here are some reasons to do it

Writing reviews forces you to read some papers that are not in the focal point of your interests. Since there is no decision to take, I find it less time-consuming and stress-generating than refereeing a paper.
A good review is a service to the mathematical community: it allows mathematicians to find relevant papers and decide wether a paper is worth searching for and/or reading.
You get paid $8 for each review that you can use to buy books from the American Mathematical Society.
Your name might appear in MathSciNet as a reviewer next to some nice authors and nice papers ;-)

Here are some reasons not do it:

Reading a paper and writing a review takes time.
You are not anonymous. If you are not careful enough in writing your review, you might upset some authors.

Here are some tips to have a good experience:

You can set up a limit of the number of papers that you accept to have at once. Set it a reasonable level for your workload.
Choose carefully the AMS classifications that you are interested in. A poor choice can lead you in reviewing papers that do not interest you. (Afterwards, if you receive many uninteresting paper, you should consider mentioning that you are not interested in their AMS classification.)
Reviewing a book takes much time. Think carefully about it when asked.


How do members of a grad school admission committee make sure they are reading all the applicants' essays with the same level of mental freshness? I am currently in the process of applying for graduate studies in electrical engineering. A big part of my statement of objectives is dedicated to give a feeling of how I became interested in a specific area of research. I am worried that that part of my essay is going to make my essay be looked at as just another emotionally overdone statement, while I have been told by people who reviewed it that it is quite inspiring. How do members of a graduate school admission committee make sure that they have not built some kind of tolerance to personal stories as they go through a few hundred applications?

A big part of my statement of objectives is dedicated to give a feeling of how I became interested in a specific area of research. I am worried that that part of my essay is going to make my essay be looked at as just another emotionally overdone statement, while I have been told my people who reviewed it that it is quite inspiring.

Your statement of purpose should be a professional statement and overview of the research you want to do in graduate school. It should be forward looking.

It should not be emotional or inspiring. And for most applications, not be done in narrative form ("when I was in sixth grade, I knew I wanted to be an engineer when my mom fixed the carburetor in our '58 Chevy."). Every paragraph you spend on the past is a paragraph you could be using to strengthen the articulation of work you wish to do in the future at this graduate school.

Leave the narrative history and inspirational material in your personal history or diversity portion of the application.

Finally, at my department we ensure all applications are read by multiple faculty. This helps protect against individual variability.

Caveat: I'm a social scientist but I imagine the physical sciences are even less likely to respond to appeals of emotionality.


Does a professor respond to my request to work with me? I would like to write an article and present it to a professor abroad. Does he accept my request to read my article and submit it in the name of both of us as a co-authors (if he agrees with my article)?
In fact, I'm looking for a way to both publish my paper and use a partnership with a professor at  the other university. Is such a collaboration common and does the professor respond to my request?

A decent professor will not submit your article under their name if they only read it.
You could ask.them if they want to work together with you on something (but you shoupd probably not contact them out of the blue, especially if they are higher ranked as you).


Will your undergrad GPA affect your graduate GPA in US? Will your undergrad GPA affect your graduate GPA in US?


Submitting under review paper in the admission process, Is it ok? The university I am applying to has an option in which I can upload my under review/accepted papers. Is it okay to do it considering the fact that the paper is not published yet?
My under review paper has the same topic as one of the research topics in a lab in that university.

If the university says it is fine, then it is fine. Label them correctly, of course. But even if they don't specifically ask for them then a person can submit them as "under review" and it will be properly understood. One might even list work that is well along, but not yet submitted as "work in progress".
Just be honest in labelling. And for those under review, say which journals/conferences are currently reviewing them.


Do you have to find out/ prove something to get a PhD? I went on a trip to Oxford with my school, and I asked a lady whether or not you have to go and discover something in a PhD? She said no, and it's more research. But I read up somewhere that you do have to discover something to get a PhD.

I just want to know precisely how a PhD works.

Will some subjects- like Maths or Computer Science- require you to go out and prove something, and are others- like English- just require the student to do extensive research?

Note: by getting a PhD, I don'y just mean anyone getting it, I do mean someone who's actually studying for one.

Getting a PhD almost always requires one to have some original contribution to your field. That result doesn't always have to be an earth shattering proof of something completely original. Your work can build upon existing work, or draw connections between a variety of different topics that no one has noticed yet, or even just suggest that there is a problem that nobody has considered yet. The point is that there has to be something unique, and original that counts as your contribution to the body of knowledge. That isn't easy to do certainly, but it isn't impossible for normal people to accomplish through lots of time and hard work either.


How many graduate-level courses should one take to maximize chances of getting into graduate school? (PhD) This is somewhat similar in broad topic to an earlier question I've asked, but not the same. I intend on applying to interdisciplinary mathematical/computational science/engineering programs like this: https://icme.stanford.edu/ . As a result of the interdisciplinary nature, there are a lot of junior-and-senior-level courses that are relevant, and I want to take as many of these as possible so I have a good grounding for whatever more specific path I follow, within the field of computational science. However, I also know that graduate classes are looked upon favorably by many admission committees; so, should I drop some of the undergrad courses (that may be more relevant in subject matter) and take some grad ones? Because of scheduling and prerequisite issues, I would otherwise not take any graduate-level courses (or take at most one) until my senior year, by when it may not even matter in terms of admissions because some graduate programs don't look at your senior grades)

[As a follow up to this, would it be considered a bad thing to take a undergraduate course that may be considered important or even "crucial" in the final semester of senior year - when admissions decisions are already coming out - because of taking graduate classes earlier on instead?]

Graduate-level courses are helpful, but there isn't any magic formula that "X courses with a grade of A or A- will guarantee admission." Every case is different, and good grades are by no means sufficient for admission, if your letters of recommendation are weak.

If you're applying for a terminal master's program that is primarily coursework, then the rules are different, but for anything relying on research, your research experience and letters of recommendation will carry significant more weight than your classwork and test scores. What doing well in the graduate courses does is signify that you will be able to handle the coursework in your program, but it does not shed light on the rest of your abilities.

So my recommendation is to take graduate classes because you're interested in the subject and want to learn more about it, rather than just to impress an admissions committee.


Should I include Abstracts (short descriptions) of research papers/thesis in my CV? I am writing my CV for a postdoctoral position. I have just obtained my PhD. I have a decent number of published papers. Should I write a very small (2-3 line) description of what I have done in that paper? Maybe also with a smaller font and written in italic so that it is easily skipped if not interested. Same for the PhD/Masters thesis.

The counterargument is that short abstract would be considered negatively, either as padding or just making the CV harder to read.

Thanks!

This was initially a comment but I think I can be expanded as an answer.

People, in general, want to see in your CV a brief summary of your academic achievements. Towards this, it is enough to compile a list of publications. The amount and the quality of the journal/conferences are enough to indicate your research profile in a preliminary screening. If they are more interested in your actual research, that's why you are asked to supply a research statement which sometimes can be as long as 4-5 pages, usually 2-3. There, you can briefly discuss your research and they can get a feeling also about compatibility (if that was not apparent from the list f publications). If they are interested in more depth they can request preprints of your works.

So, having an abstract for every publication in your CV does not add any information and does not help in any meaningful way except that your CV might look more "beefy" (but I am not sure it's an advantage).


What is the difference between cumulative dissertation and regular dissertation? The university is asking me whether or not my PhD thesis is a “cumulative dissertation”. I’m wondering what the difference would be for the university. By cumulative, do they mean stacking the published/submitted papers?

Cumulative dissertation is probably a literal translation of the German Kumulative Dissertation, which denotes a thesis by publication, compilation thesis or article thesis, i.e., a thesis which typically consists of some peer-reviewed publications, an introduction, and a conclusion.
The alternative to this is a monograph thesis, which is written separately as a coherent monolithic work and whose individual chapters are not intended for being read on their own.

The requirements on such a cumulative dissertation differ between universities and even faculties, so you have to look into their rules for those.


Medical doctor who tried science now wants to quit Phd and science altogether. How to explain to supervisor? I am a medical doctor, but decided to go into a graduate program because I wanted to contribute to progress of humanity with new knowledge ( I know, very romantic).  I got accepted into a graduate program in Germany (I am not German).

Now that I am in science, I have realized it is not what I expected. Getting a job in academia is very VERY hard ( particularly in Germany I think), the life of a professor is not what better suits the lifestyle I want to lead in the future,  and a job in the industry is not really what I want, particularly having the possibility of doing a medical residency and having my own practice one day.

I have already finished my masters and thought I could do my PhD and use the 3 years to learn the medical german language and later apply for a medical residency here.  But as time goes by I am forgetting everything I learned in med school and I cannot focus on learning German while doing a PhD because of all the work that comes with it, of course.

Don´t get me wrong, I like my PhD project, the lab and doing research per se. It is just that I feel these would be years dedicated to something that I do not want to do for a living.

So...

I have not share any of these thought with my PI, so, how do I tell him that now all of a sudden and without previous notice, I don´t want to do the PhD AT ALL, especially after having shown enthusiasm for the PhD in the past ( just a couple of weeks ago!)?  That is, without looking like I was faking enthusiasm/ was just „using“ them.

Additionally, I am in the 4th month of a one year contract. I would actually like to work the remaining 8 months to get all of my work in order to hand it over. However, is it possible by law that he "fires" me and does not allow me to finish the one year contract?

There is no problem here. Just inform the PI that you intend to leave the program at the earliest opportunity. You haven't signed a contract with the devil for your soul. People change, people grow, people learn. Others understand that.

It would be good, however, for  you to do what you can to leave things tidy when you go, not leaving others (PI, other students) in the lurch. To do this effectively you may need to spend some time cleaning up the current work and either finalizing it or passing it on to another. That is courtesy, but useful to you for the future if you decide later to re-evaluate yet again.

Take care of yourself; your future is yours and yours alone.