Getting a W on your transcript for grad school applications I am a Computer Engineering major at a top 15 engineering school. My goal is to get into grad school for Machine Learning. I have set very lofty goals and am aiming for places like MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, CMU etc. I will be applying for safeties too but these top tier colleges remain the goal.

I have got a 3.8 in college till now. The issue is that I am messing up a lot in my electrical circuits analysis course. I am in the C to D range in the course. The professor is extremely harsh while grading and covers grad school material in an intro course. I am thinking of withdrawing from the course. I am confident that I can perform well next semester when I take it under different circumstances. Seeing as circuits aren't related to machine learning or computer science, I was wondering how bad would a W for this course look in my transcript, while having an otherwise great record.

I am also involved in research involving machine learning and will be doing so till the end of undergrad. It's this one thing which is worrying.

It is, of course, impossible to say how someone will look at it, but I doubt that very many people would think it odd or unusual. It is pretty easy for students to get in too deep with studies and the other things during undergraduate years. If you drop now and do well later few would think less of you, I predict.

But if you make a habit of it, then things might be different.

Since it is difficult to predict the time requirements for research, you have a ready-made explanation for getting in over your head for a term.

However, a poor grade, such as a D in a major course would be cause for concern. Not necessarily disqualifying but it needs explanation.


What suffix should you use when you are a PhD Scholar filling out membership form for IEEE Xplore? I was filling IEEE Xplore membership form. In the form, there was a field "Suffix", the values for this field are I, II, III, IV, Jr., M.D., P. Eng, PE, PhD, Sr., V.

Which one does best describe me? Currently I am a Research/PhD scholar in a department of information technology.

Names are complicated, and some people are very touchy about getting theirs exactly as they want it. In English-based naming, this can often include prefixes (e.g., "Sir" in "Sir Walter Scott") and suffixes (e.g., "Jr." as in "Martin Luther King, Jr.").

This form is making things more complicated and confusing by combining two orthogonal categories of suffix:

Generational suffixes:  I, II, III, IV, Jr., Sr., V.
Academic suffixes:  M.D., P. Eng, PE, PhD

And what should you do? Just leave this field blank.
If your name had a generational suffix, you wouldn't be asking this question.
From your comment, you don't have an academic suffix yet.

Even if you did have an academic suffix, you might not want to add it anyway. In many parts of American scientific or professional society, for example, people do not bother to use their academic titles (it's always a little weird to me to be addressed as "Dr. Beal", and I would never ask somebody to call me "Jacob Beal, Ph.D.").  In many parts of Europe, on the other hand, such titles are used much more commonly and comfortably.


Unsure of Convention for In-Text Citations I'm writing a longer paper for a course as part of a final project. The paper is on a topic we didn't cover in class and is obviously intended as a way to let me teach myself something we didn't have time for. As such, I'm using other people's ideas for my paper nearly every single sentence. I'm unsure of the convention for determining exactly what bits I need to cite and how often I should cite it, but I'm pretty sure it's not that I need to cite something every sentence. Is there some sort of convention for this sort of thing?

Generally, you cite a paper in the first occurrence of its matter and in occurrences where the matter is significant.

For instance, suppose you are explaining about a method that is proposed in a paper. You cite it when you first state the method. After which it is understood that whenever you use the term, it refers to the one cited initially. If you are discussing two are more methods, explain each one separately by citing them and you also ought to cite at a tabulation during result comparison. Same goes for citing concepts; cite only when the concept is first introduced.

Other than that, citing for every sentence would be only be redundant and doesn't make the manuscript look neat either. If you do feel that you are in a position to have to cite nearly every sentence, then your content is probably largely of matter covered in your reference and not of your own. You ought to make appropriate edits in that case.


What are the main factors that mean Humanities PhDs get published as books? In both this comment and this answer it is conveyed that it is often the case in the humanities, that PhD thesis are viewed as a first draft of a book and are often published. There are probably a number of factors that have led to this view.

I'm interested in a number of issues. First of all, is there hard data that shows how many PhDs by discipline get published as a book?

I have no knowledge of the publishing process but it would be interesting to know in this case where the driving factors are. Does the student themselves seek to publish or does their supervisor/committee/department inform the student that they think their material could be a book. Do the publishing companies actively seek material to publish or expect the author to approach them. Are there other factors unique to the Humanities that mean the book is a preferred publishing route?

So to round up, what are the main factors that mean Humanities PhDs appear to often get published as book?

Are there other factors unique to the Humanities that mean the book is a preferred publishing route?

The boundary between Humanities and Social Sciences is fuzzy in many places, and indeed the phenomenon of theses commonly being parlayed into books happens in some social sciences as well: e.g. history.  But there are some factors common to these disciplines as opposed to non-STEM ones, yes.

The length of the thesis.

Average (in any of several senses) thesis lengths vary widely by discipline: see here for a nice treatment.  Theses in history (the longest) are almost three times as long as those in mathematics and bio-engineering (the two shortest).  (Note that history is followed by anthropology and political science: all social sciences.  English comes in at sixth longest in the list of 50 disciplines.)  In order to have math theses average about 100 pages, they must be counting pages with respect to the spacing one uses in the officially submitted copies.  So when math theses are single-spaced -- as they would be in any published form -- the average is more like 50 pages.  See here if you don't believe that a math PhD thesis could be much shorter than that.

Anyway, the moral is clear: in some disciplines a perfectly good PhD thesis has length closer to (or equal to) that of a journal article than a book.

The independence of the chapters of the thesis.

It is my understanding that in many STEM disciplines, a perfectly good PhD thesis is several independently written articles stapled together.  (This is less true in math but not unheard of.)  But in the humanities a thesis is usually one long, sustained argument such that it would detract from it to publish it in parts.

The prior publication status of the work of the thesis.

It is my understanding that in many (most?) STEM disciplines outside of mathematics, the sense is that a PhD thesis should contain some already published work!  Whether the work got published in a reasonable place becomes part of the committee's evaluation.  Clearly this works against publishing as a book.

The amount of time that one spends doing the work and writing of the thesis measured as a portion of one's academic career.

In the humanities and many social sciences, postdocs are no longer unheard of but are still quite rare.  A lot of STEM PhDs are awarded to people in their mid to late 20's at the point where they have demonstrated that they can do one novel, sufficiently substantial piece of research.  They then go on to 2-5 years of temporary faculty positions where the real work is done.  In the humanities (and...), getting a PhD much below the age of 30 is pretty rare, and most tenure-track jobs -- even very strong and research-intensive ones -- hire straight out of PhD programs.  One might say that a PhD in the humanities is more like a European Habilitation in the sciences: it's just a more mature, substantial piece of work.

The feeling that someone outside of academia might just possibly be interested in buying a copy.

I have actually occasionally read and even bought books that I presume originated as a humanities / social sciences PhD theses.  Though I am having trouble thinking of a truly gripping read, some of these books certainly make more of a concession to the general reader than STEM theses do.  I have never bought a book describing five experiments the author did in someone else's lab...


How do I properly reference? I’m writing an essay, and have been asked to use Harvard Referencing.
From what I know this type of referencing uses citations similar to (my brain, 2016).

And then contains a bibliography like:

Bibliography  — or — References

My Brain (18 Dec. 2016) - “Title of article, or something” available from my skull

...

I've seen referencing done with [number's] instead of (author / publisher, date) in a few papers and - probably most famously -  wikipedia.

Is this not classed as Harvard referencing?
I find it so much neater and easier to follow, especially if I'm going to refer to multiple peices of work by the same author/publisher.

Also, I've noticed some papers placing mini bibliographies at the end of every page, containing all the references for that page.

Is this not harvard referencing?

I'd like to do this as it removes the pain of having to go all the way to the bibliography to check a citation.

The Harvard citation system does not use reference numbers.  It uses, as you describe, the author's last name and publication year.  (This is similar to the APA citation style.)

The reference lists should be at the end of the document, not listed as footnotes.  So your understanding of the Harvard style seems to be basically correct.  Some more details about the Harvard citation style are given here: http://www.citethisforme.com/harvard-referencing

Personally, I too prefer referencing by number rather than author, but if you are supposed to use the Harvard style, then you just have to use it.


Received offer to work for free, how to negotiate for a salary? I was an international student and graduated 3 years ago. Now I want to continue my research career instead of working in the industry. I worked for free for a professor for one month last year. It was a good experience and we had a good impression to each other. I approach her again and asked to get back to her lab, she said that she could consider to work together on a project for 1 year, but she has no money. On one side, I was always excited about to be back to a lab to do more researches, and expecting to extend it to a PhD study; on the other side, I couldn't be glad and work well without enough money. I am going to meet this professor soon, I was wondering:

Why did she asked me to work for free?
How to negotiate or should I just give it up?

The question you have to answer is:

  Can you go for one year without eating and living under a bridge?

As I assume the answer is no, you simply tell her you cannot work without getting paid. She shouldn't be offended by this.

Even if she has no money, she may know other labs that have, and can recommend you My master's advisor came one day with a friend of his and said "this is Prof. Smith, and he is looking for a PhD student in a project I think will interest you".

Lastly, depending on the country, working for free may be illegal. In Spain it is common to do PhDs unfunded, in Sweden it is considered slavery.


When did citation counts emerge as indicators of academic impact? As we know, today, citations of an academic get lots of attentions about whether his research is impfactful. I am just wondering what is the history of citation numbers becoming this important? When were they first calculated and whose idea was this?

Science Citations Index (SCI) was the first reference source that provided a way to find the publications in which a scientific paper was cited. SCI began in 1964. SCI existed only in paper form until it went online as the Web of Science in 1997. Statistics like citation counts and the H-index really weren't practical until the turn of the 21st century


Plagiarism in acknowledgements? Subsequent publications rely on the exact same set of funding agencies.  In total, that is an alphabet soup containing no less than 35 acronyms.

I'm using the exact same paragraph in the acknowledgements.

Would that be (self-)plagiarism?

It does seem to fit the definition, but... it seems silly to rewrite or to add a citation...

If it is truly an ordered list of funders and grant numbers, then there is no original idea that you are plagiarising. It is like reusing a list of affiliations in the author list. If you are describing how each person/funder/agency contributed, then there might be some originality in the statements and the exact contribution potentially changed between studies.


What do these article submission dates really mean? I want to submit a paper to a conference in the field of Computer Science, but I am a little bit doubtful of what information to submit. The dates are the following:

Abstract Submission Deadline: February 6, 2015
All Acceptance Communications: March 16, 2015
Preliminary Paper Submission Deadline: April 27, 2015
Peer Review Final Acceptance Communication: June 1, 2015
Final Camera-Ready Paper Submission & Copyright Deadline and Author Registration Deadline: July 10, 2015
Early Registration & Hotel Deadline: September 22, 2015

I am in the process of finishing the paper, but I think that I will not make it for the first deadline to complete it throughly. For what I know the Abstract Submission Deadline is only for submitting the abstract, am I right? I believe that is for the chair to have an overview of how many papers will they have.

The question that I have is: what does All Acceptance Communications means? Is it the submission of the full paper? Why just don't they call it Full paper submission instead of that other cryptic name?

This set of deadlines sounds like the conferences is doing two rounds of review for submissions.

First, you send in an abstract in February, and they decide if it's worth reviewing a full paper by mid-March.
If they invite a full paper, you send it in by late April, and they send a final accept/reject by the beginning of June.
Final versions of accepted papers have to be submitted by mid-July.

Their names could be a bit better, but it seems fairly clear to me that this is their intention.  If you're concerned it may be otherwise, it's always OK to write to the conference contact email to check your understanding.


Reviewer questioned credibility of paper and results after first revision, which led to us finding a major error. Should we revise or withdraw? I and my team members worked on a machine learning paper to predict pass and fail on a standard academic test. The paper was submitted to a reputable journal. The first review came-back with a lot of encouragement but with few suggestions which made us change the methodology of our work especially with respect to the data - preprocessing. The changes were made the revised manuscript was submitted again. However, one thing which should have been debated before submitting was the accuracy of the results which was 100% for multiple evaluation metrics on each of the stratified folds. While the concern was raised within our team we did eventually submit it without rigorously making sure if everything was right or not.
Now the reviewer comments have come back and he has challenged the credibility of our work specifically pointing out that 100% accuracy looks too good to be true. We re-ran the models to evaluate how it behaves and found the results are quite different and not close to 100% percent. We have reviewed all the code and the steps we took to achieve the results but can-not find any flaw or mistake that may have resulted in 100% accuracy.
The current results which hover between 65 to 80% between folds look far more credible. However, I am not sure how to respond to the reviewer especially when we are not able to find our mistake that resulted in the 100% accuracy. We want to be absolutely honest and want to acknowledge that we committed a mistake in submitting the 100% accuracy and we should have been more critical of our work.
While as a group we want to be absolutely transparent with all the data files and results that we have obtained and share it with the reviewer. But I am a little concerned about how would the reviewer perceive such a big difference in results which change the conclusion or at least the interpretation.
Should we submit our responses and revise the manuscript or withdraw the paper?
Any help would be appreciated.

I suggest that you should withdraw your submission until you can figure out what's going on. Good science should be reproducible, and this is not. You did not appropriately critique your own results, and put forth a result that seemed to "look good". You've now changed some part of your modeling methodology, and gotten another set of results that "look good", even though you cannot articulate any theoretical or practical reason why this set of results is any more sound than the last. The first result did not pass the "smell test" of reasonable performance, and you kind of shot yourself in the foot by failing to investigate. Now you have a result that does pass the "smell test", but the reviewer is aware that your diligence in self-criticism is somewhat lacking.
You're essentially telling the reviewer that "the last result was an error, but this one is not, although we are unable to explain any difference between the two." It's a really big ask for the reviewer to have confidence in your updated methodology, if you yourself cannot explain why it is any more correct than what you did the first time around.


Avoiding the appearance of name dropping in fellowship applications When describing my research experience in fellowship applications, I will write something to the extent of "I began pursuing 'item X' under 'Professor Y'." Of course, I follow up with why I found the experience meaningful, and what my role was.

However, I have received feedback from at least two different sources saying that this name dropping is frowned upon, and that if I have a panelist who hates this, that it will torpedo my application.

In my mind, the person I am working with may be relevant if a panelist knows of their work. However, at the same time, a fellowship is about me. Is there a good reason to include the names of the PI's, and if so how can that be written? Or is it truly safer to just remove the names of PI's, especially if they are someone famous (e.g. an NAE/NAS member)?

The term "name dropping" represents an excessive use of auxiliary authoritative figures, with no justification or substantive basis, to promote one's image.

This means that if you say that you worked closely with Figure X, and you haven't, you are name dropping. But if you did work closely with Figure X, it is not name dropping to mention him/her. That is, a name dropper is an imposter, while someone who lists relevant names with sufficient justification is not a name dropper.

Hence, the advice you got from your colleagues regarding "a panel that hates name dropping will kill your application" is probably misguided and false.


Selecting a Thesis - Are there lists of interesting or open questions? Is there an aggregated pool of potential thesis topics that are available for exploration across universities for different concentrations? Perhaps there would be some that have been pre-vetted by professors.

I'm curious if there's an easier and/or quicker way to discover and select topics when there is not a compelling subject/topic available.

You have two questions here. Addressing the broader one, of how to pick a thesis topic when none is jumping out, Umberto Eco's How to Write a Thesis is a surprisingly practical book. It takes as the premise that you have only six months left to write a thesis (Italian roughly masters-level thesis), with limited scholarly resources at your disposal. It's fairly short and encourages you to work with whatever you have. It does not assume you have much oversight available.

The answers to another question on finding (masters) thesis topics point to conversations with faculty.

The existence of a dissertation database has been addressed in previous questions (e.g. Worldwide Dissertation Database? or French, German, Italian ones?). That thread doesn't list Proquest, which indexes dissertations from many universities. (It's interesting to see the most-accessed Proquest dissertations.)


Should applicants send an email to check the status of their faculty application? After sending a faculty application online, should the applicant send an email to check if all documents were received and whether the application is complete or not? Some suggest to send an email, while others suggest not to, since sending unnecessary email to the committee could raise a flag.

Assuming that you submitted your application to the human resources office of the university, then it would be appropriate to check with them to make sure that the application was received and was considered to be complete.  I would not send a query to faculty members of the search committee (if you could even figure out which faculty were on the search committee.)


GRE subject test- Biology or Cell/Biochemistry? I am majoring in computer engineering and having a minor in computational biology. I'm planning to apply for a PhD in computational biology too, though I didn't take an impressive amount of biology/chemistry/biochemistry modules. Therefore, I am taking the GRE subject test to compensate for the imbalances between my EECS and bio-related portions in my transcript.

Which GRE subject test will benefit me the most in this case? Biology or Cell and Biochemistry? The main purpose for me is to prove that I have good background in the fields.

Thanks

This is a question best answered by the admissions officers at the programs to which you want to apply. They will generally have recommendations as to which test they would prefer you to take. If there's a consensus that one of the tests is preferable to the other, that's the one that you should take.

(My particular sense on this is that Cell/Biochemistry is probably closer to what is expected for people in Computational Biology than the more general Biology exam. However, I am not a bio person, so I'm not speaking from a position of authority here.)


BSc and further career in Academia on different subject Currently pursuing a Bachelor if Finance, but I have a huge interest on Statistics. I was wondering whether BSc in a non technical subject (With technical I mean Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science etc.) affects a potential academic career in Statistics.

Can MSc and PhD in Statistics or Applied Mathematics enable an academic career in these fields?

You might check in advance the application requirements for the MSc and/or PhD in Statistics or Applied Mathematics. By doing so, you will have a better overview on the technical competences you have to show to receive admission to the program.

In addition, you can show your interest by taking part or leading extracurricular activities with strong technical components (e.g., programming clubs, competitive programming, and so on.). Admission boards not only take into account your degree but the sum of your experience and potential.


A quote that one has to be rich to engage in science? I remember reading an article (in popular magazine I think) that attributed to de Tocqueville a quote along the lines of:

  To engage in science, one has to own a farm.

meaning that a person has to be financially secure in order to undertake (independent) successful scientific endeavours in a free time – and science itself doesn’t really pay very well. Unfortunately, I can’t find original article nor google the quote with conjunction to de Tocqueville.

Can anyone help in identifying the original phrasing and source of the quote? It’s also completely possible that my memory does not serve me well and it might have been coined by some other person (or maybe you know similar quotes?).

Also please note that I am looking only for a quote and do not want to discuss the financial aspects of academia.

I am not sure the quote actually exists. In Democracy in America, de Tocqueville posits a scenario where the absence of the wealthy would stifle science:

  It is possible to conceive a people not subdivided into any castes or scale of ranks, among whom the law, recognizing no privileges, should divide inherited property into equal shares, but which at the same time should be without knowledge and without freedom. Nor is this an empty hypothesis: a despot may find that it is his interest to render his subjects equal and to leave them ignorant, in order more easily to keep them slaves. Not only would a democratic people of this kind show neither aptitude nor taste for science, literature, or art, but it would probably never arrive at the possession of them. The law of descent would of itself provide for the destruction of large fortunes at each succeeding generation, and no new fortunes would be acquired. The poor man, without either knowledge or freedom, would not so much as conceive the idea of raising himself to wealth; and the rich man would allow himself to be degraded to poverty, without a notion of self-defense. Between these two members of the community complete and invincible equality would soon be established. No one would then have time or taste to devote himself to the pursuits or pleasures of the intellect, but all men would remain paralyzed in a state of common ignorance and equal servitude.

(Source: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/DETOC/ch1_09.htm)

However, he immediately goes on to dismiss this argument. There might be some more concrete examples regarding farms/farmers in the book, so you can try to take a look, but it does not seem too likely (or, as often happens, the popular magazine took the quote out of context).


Is it a good practice to indicate the desired handling editor when submitting a paper? In submission forms of academic journals, I often see the possibility to give names of desired / non-desired reviewers for the submitted papers. But very rarely I see fields for choosing an editor who handles the submission from the journal's editorial board.

When the submission form does not offer the choice of a handling editor, should one indicate a desired editor in the cover letter? Do some researchers (e.g. specific fields) commonly do so?

I would only do so if you have a very good reason to want a particular editor (or to avoid another one): while there can exist valid such reasons, it could also be a warning sign for editors. For example, if you ask that the editor not be the “usual” editor for your particular subfield, it may be regarded as you trying to avoid careful scrutiny. So, if you are not asked about it, and you don't really care (or trust them to make the right call) (which should be the majority of cases), just don't do it.

Regarding usage: most of the chemistry journals I know allow you to pick your handling editor directly from a list (although availability and workload management might lead to changes after submission), and some journals allow you to pick both preferred and non-preferred editors.


Taking a pseudonym for publication I will soon get my first paper submitted. Because my name is very common I think it will be hard to look for my papers in databases in the long term. If I want to decide on a pseudonym (author name different than my real name) it must be now before my first paper. I wonder about choosing a pseudonym that is a small variation from my own name so that it is unique in databases. Like changing my first name spelling (John -> Jon) or adding middle name or changing my last name (Smith -> Smyth). Is it a good idea or am I overthinking it? Will it be a problem later?

It can be a very real problem later on, when you will be looking for a job and potential academic employer, or just colleagues, will want to check on your academic record. Changing your name to make it unique might also bring you a lot of trouble later, as your employing institution will not easily access your publications (knowing you by a different name than the one appearing on you publications).

However, it could very well be that, given the practice of your field of research, you could avoid changing the spelling your name. Usually, journals will take your second (and possibly third) name into consideration, and use it for all indexing purpose. At that point, your abbreviated name could simply be unique, no matter how common your first and last names!

For instance, John Andrew James Smith would be abbreviated and indexed as JAJ Smith, for which even PubMed does not even returns a hit! (PubMed covers most of life and material sciences)


Would getting a faster MSc instead of just BSc affect admission chances for PhD? I will try to describe my situation briefly.
The university I'm currently studying at offers a 4-year Bachelor program in mathematics.

I am currently in my 3rd year and the program for the 4th year consists only of optional courses (which I choose). As I have taken a rather high amount of optional courses so far, I can satisfy my ECTS requirements for the whole program in 3 years. The university, in this situation, would allow me to graduate at the end of my third year. Then, I could pursue an MSc. degree at the same university for a year and graduate with an MSc at the end of my 4th year of study in the university.

I would like to note that this has been done before by other students here and I'm not fantasizing.

My intention is to apply for a PhD at a university in the USA after the 4th year. (I am not a US citizen and I haven't studied there).

My question is: would getting an earlier BSc and MSc degree affect (negatively or positively) my chances for admission in a top university in the USA?
Should I just graduate with a BSc. in math?
I know that sometimes having a MSc. from the same university can be a negative sign. Should I be worried about that?

Some other background:
My current university is not really "elite" of any sort; it barely enters the top 600 in the world. I have a few published articles and I have participated in conferences. I am also currently pursuing an internship in a research institute in the country.

Thank you.

(I'm on the admissions committee of a top-10 US computer science department; my advice may be way off base for mathematics PhD programs.)

All else being equal, getting a master's degree in one year would probably count against you.  You're far better off taking some graduate-level courses, and possibly getting some research experience, while staying in the BSc progam.

At least in my department, PhD applicants who already have master's degrees are held to a significantly higher standard than applicants who only have bachelor's degrees.  While having formal research experience is an advantage for undergraduate applicants, it's a de facto requirement for applicants with an master's degree.  One year is not a lot of time to get some real (meaning publishable) research experience, especially since most one-year master's programs have heavy coursework requirements.  And you'll be competing with other MS applicants who've already spent two years in graduate school.

My department steers PhD-oriented undergraduates away from our 5-year BS/MS program for this precise reason.


Responding to a reviewer who misunderstood key concepts of a paper How do you respond to a reviewer who is very critical about your paper but from whose comments you can easily see that he/she has misunderstood the key concepts of the paper?

In my case, the first reviewer had no issues with the paper and suggested only a minor revision. But the second reviewer seems to have not spent too much time on understanding the paper. This reviewer's misunderstanding made the editor suggest a major revision of the paper.

In my response to the reviewer (not sent yet), I used the sentence "This comment completely misrepresent the methodology described in the paper." Is this too much?

UPDATE: I am glad to inform you all that after the second round of reviews, the paper was accepted with minor revisions. I followed the general advice given in the accepted answer for this post. Instead of being too defensive, I agreed in my response to the reviewer that the misunderstanding may be due to wording of certain sentences and changed them. Specifically, I used the following sentence:

  "There seems to be a misunderstanding about the methodology, which we
  hope to clear through our responses below and by revising the text in
  the manuscript. Contrary to what the reviewer states, ..."

Hope this update helps someone in future.

This comment completely misrepresent the methodology described in the paper.

While it may be technically correct, it is unnecessarily undiplomatic (at least all by itself), as it implicitly places blame on the reviewer for not correctly understanding your paper. Again, if the respective points were made unmistakably clear in the paper (which is something that you can easily overestimate), this blame may be justified, but still you risk unnecessarily disgruntling the reviewer.

I would suggest to assume in good faith that the reviewer did not fail to understand your paper due to incompetence or laziness, but because you failed to clarify a certain aspects. Try to improve your paper regarding the explanation of everything that the reviewer misunderstood and reply with something along the lines of:

  This comment seems to be based on the assumption that we were proposing a method to transmogrify apples. However, the goal of our method is the transmogrification of bananas – an aspect, which we have failed to make sufficiently clear. We have amended our manuscript accordingly and now write: […]

Do not worry, if the respective revision turns out to be only minor.

To be prepared if the reviewer insists on his or her misunderstandings, I suggest to explicitly state in your response letter that something different is the case. This way you hopefully have some good argument for the editor in this case.

I once had a similar experience with a reviewer who criticised that we made several claims which were not supported by our studies. However, we never made any of these claims. In a first revision we reformulated a few sentences that the reviewer had presumably misunderstood and explicitly stated in the response letter that we did not make those claims. The reviewer criticised again that some of the same claims were unsupported. We responded again that we never made those claims and reformulated a handful of sentences. Then either the reviewer finally understood or the editor was fed up with this and the paper was accepted. In both cases, major revisions were requested.


Asked for PhD grade in application but no grades awarded in my country I'm applying for a fellowship in continental Europe (Spain) and have been asked what grade I received. I think in many countries it's normal to receive grades over the course of a PhD, as well as an overall grade (of the form "with distinction", "cum laude" etc.) but this isn't common in the UK, where I received my PhD.
How should I answer the question? "N/A" seems most obvious, but should I explain in a footnote why I received no grade?

In all questions like this the appropriate course of action is to contact the people who run the application process and ask.
They will be able to give you the appropriate instructions taking into account all the details we don't know. E.g. can you even leave it blank, is there an automated system, does it even matter for the ones that do have a grade etc.?


Creative way to kick off a talk? I have to do my defense seminar in couple days. I personally hate to kick off the talk with "hello and thank you for attending my talk". I am wondering if you know better ways/phrases to start a talk. You attended many conferences so I bet you saw some good starts.

Start it with a compelling question that add some context to your talk. A recent talk at a conference I attended started like this:

  What is the largest sumfree subset of the numbers 1 to n?

This is a well-known problem first posed by Erdos, and if someone can say that their research leads to a nice way to solve it, a lot of people will be interested (or at least more interested than if the speaker starts by saying "I'm going to talk about containers for hypergraphs").

Otherwise, start by presenting a situation (or amusing anecdote) where your results would be applicable:

  Suppose 11 of your spouse's charming relatives are visiting for two weeks. How do you seat everyone around the round table you had to drag out of the garage so that everyone has everyone else on each side of them at least once during the two weeks? What if you want to avoid their annoying cousin but would love to sit next to their mother-in-law more times?

Both of these were very interesting beginnings, and as the speakers continued through their talk, they kept connecting back to the original problem, explaining how their result provided easier or more convenient solutions to the basic problem. There is really no need to start with "thank you for attending". Wait with that until after, and save the title and collaborators until you've explained why everyone should care what you and some other people they don't know wrote a paper about. You have already been introduced by the organiser, so you can just dive right into the motivation.


What sort of professional boundary should I set with other students when I am a grader for a class I will be taking? Next semester, I am going to take a course in which I have some background knowledge. Given the relevance of the course in my research, the lack of available students with sufficient knowledge in the course (it is one that is rarely taught at this school, and most of my supervisor's students either graduated last semester, or have just started with him this semester), and my general need to find some courses to TA for, the professor (my supervisor) had offered me the grader position for the course. The professor would be grading my own assignment, and I would then be marking other people's assignments based on those. It appears this situation has occured and been asked about before on this stack exchange, but not from the point of view of the TA.
I initially expressed my discomfort with this situation, but, upon being told (by my professor) that this had been done before, decided to accept, to maintain a good relationship with my supervisor.

I however have a number of issues which, as the beginning of next semester, are bothering me more and more:

I know a number of the other students in the class, and we often used to organise study groups and work on the assignments together. Would it be ethical of me to still participate in these study groups ? On one hand, I will not have access to the solutions until we submit our assignment, on the other, I will definitely be able to see if someone makes an obvious mistake in their proof that I, as a TA, would deduct points on.

I was initially thinking that the best course of action for me would be to cut off all relations related to the class (that is, remain friends with the students I know, but not bring up the class with them), but at the same time, I would thus be depriving them of help that I would have given to them as TA had I not been in such a situation. I'm finding it extremely difficult to set the line between "We are fellow students together and helping each other out" and "I am your TA and you are a student, and the help I am providing here is so you can properly learn the class".

Updates in responses to questions:

I have asked the professor for clarification; he says this is not the first time he has done this
I could certainly ask for "blind" grading
I am taking the course as a student, but have some background in the course

Actually, I think the best course of action would be for you to decline this offer. You have different personal relationships with different people in the class and it will be difficult to put aside all of your unconscious feelings and grade in a completely unbiased manner. It also opens the possibility of your friends putting pressure on you, which you can resist, but which could become uncomfortable.

An exception would be for grading that is purely objective, not requiring any analysis or judgement of the quality of the answers, such as mechanically recording the answers in multiple choice questions.

However, if blind grading could be arranged so that you grade paper not knowing who wrote them, then my reservations would probably disappear.

Blind grading would leave you free to interact normally with study groups and would lessen or remove any pressure that could be applied against you.

At a minimum bring up such concerns with the professor and point out the uncomfortable position it puts you in.

Perhaps there is a possibility that you help out the prof by grading a different class and suggesting you grade this one in a future offering.


Can PhD students turn down teaching assistantships? This question deals with PhD programs which guarantee their students funding via teaching assistantships in the US.

In order to have more time for themselves (e.g., for PhD research, or for working a higher-paying part-time job), are PhD students normally allowed to decline teaching assistantships, as long as they're willing to forgo the department's stipend?

In addition to losing the stipend, are there other disadvantages to declining a TA position? (E.g., would tuition no longer be free?, could the department be frustrated?, etc.)

Turning down a teaching assistant position in your position is probably a very poor idea.

The renumeration for working as a TA normally covers both the a stipend and your graduate tuition.  If you do not have some other form of support (research assistantship or fellowship), you will have to pay your own way entirely.  This is normally financially prohibitive, although there are sometimes exceptions.

Moreover, some doctoral programs (such as my own) actually require that students spend a certain time working as TAs.  The teaching is considered a part of their professional training.  So even students who might have other ways of funding their entire graduate education may have to spend a certain amount of time teaching.


Submit my R-package to CRAN or Bioconductor? I have a new academics R-package for bioinformatics and I would like to submit my package online.

Where I should submit? If I submit to Bioconductor, they have a 6 months release cycle. What about CRAN? Will they release my package once it's reviewed?
I don't think the users care where they get the package from; CRAN or Bioconductor. What's the advantage of submitting to Bioconductor? Why not just to CRAN? Why all the bioinformatics packages get submitted to Bioconductor? I don't see they actively promote the packages. Why not to CRAN?
Can I submit to CRAN, then later change to Bioconductor?
I have a very detailed user guide in DOC/PDF format. However, the Bioconductor requires a running vignette. I think they mean a markup document that all the examples can be run automatically by the build process. What should I do? Should I convert the 100 pages guide into the markup format? Should I just submit to CRAN because I don't think (but I'm not 100% sure) they require a vignette.
Does a static DOC/PDF document sufficient as a vignette?

There's a lot of questions here and I'll try to address them. Full disclosure: I'm experienced with CRAN but not with developing on Bioconductor.

Where you should submit depends on a variety of factors. Since it's a bioinformatics package, it would fit well in Bioconductor, but also in CRAN. A CRAN maintainer will review the contents of your package for compatibility with CRAN's standards and let you know about any issues. If there are no issues, the package can be published on CRAN within a few hours of submitting. Though sometimes it takes longer. I've never had to wait more than 24 hours.
I'm not in bioinformatics, but my best guess is that Bioconductor exists to help make finding relevant (i.e. bioinformatics) packages easier. According to the website Bioconductor provides tools for the analysis and comprehension of high-throughput genomic data. Thus it may be advantageous to put your package there because it is more likely to be found. CRAN currently has 8907 packages available while Bioconductor only has 1213 software packages. While this is still likely too many to sift through, it may be easier for users to find your package than amongst all the non-bioinformatics packages also on CRAN.
According to Bioconductor's package guidelines page: Authors are strongly discouraged from placing their package into both CRAN and Bioconductor. This avoids burdening the author with extra work and confusing the user. If you plan on submitting to Bioconductor, I'd suggest going straight there and avoiding CRAN altogether. It's frustrating to the end-user to write lots of code using one package to find that the package is changed and your code is no longer compatible and needs to be manually fixed everywhere you used it.
CRAN does not require vignettes. Changing a Word document to a Markdown language may be faster than you expect and worth the effort if your functions require explanation for most users.
Static documents won't fly on CRAN as a vignette. Here's some good info from Hadley Wickham: http://r-pkgs.had.co.nz/vignettes.html#vignette-cran

My suggestion is to submit to Bioconductor. Your audience is more likely to find it there. If you're concerned about the wait to publish, you can make a public repository on GitHub where your peers can find your package.


Does copyright restrict how I can adapt papers when compiling them into a thesis? I am starting to put together my PhD thesis. The bulk of the thesis will be reprints of papers I have published during my PhD. I am wondering about presentation style.

My personal preference would be to reformat all of my papers into a single LaTeX document so as to have consistent style throughout. It's a bit of extra work, but I would prefer this approach. In several cases my papers have supplementary info which would not fit in the constraints of the main manuscript in the published version, but which could (and probably should) be coherently woven into the main text.

Are these acceptable options? Assuming I get reprint permission from the publishers, is it acceptable to change or partially reorganize the text for the sake of a coherent narrative within the context of the larger thesis? Or do copyright laws require that my reprints be exact reproductions of both content and style as compared to published versions?

I disagree with part of the other answer, in that the copyright holder of a work is not always the creators/authors. For some journals when you publish with them and sign the licensing agreement, you transfer the copyright of your work to the publisher. Then it is up to the publisher to decide how you can reuse your paper. I would advice reviewing the copyright/licensing agreement you signed with your publisher for limitations for reuse, and if still in doubt, contact the publisher.


What is the process for getting a non-EU PhD "validated" in Germany so I can continue working as university associated faculty? I am a medical doctor in Bosnia and Herzegovina (which is not in the EU). I also hold a PhD title and am an associated professor on the medical faculty. I am moving to Germany (Oberbayern). I have already done all the necessary additional work so that I can continue practicing medicine in Germany.
I also want to continue my career in research and possibly work at a German university. I have several publications. For this, I assume my PhD will have to be "recognized" by some German institution. How does this work? Who do I contact?

PhD is often less problematic than MSc. It helps if your country is in the EU, but expect some bureaucracy. Contact the Bavarian ministry of education.


Another instructor is pushing me out of the classroom right after my class ends I am a graduate student in math in my final year, and for several years have been teaching at my department as a lecturer. This semester, in the same lecture hall there is another lecture that starts 20 minutes after my class ends. It's taught by another instructor from my department. I usually have many students coming to office hours and there are also students asking questions immediately after lecture. Due to other activities, I cannot have office hours right after the lecture this semester and can only stay for about 15 minutes to answer questions.

Many times in the past I had a similar situation and never had any issues with it. This semester the instructor who is teaching right after often arrives 20-15 minutes before her class starts and tells me immediately that I have to go with my students somewhere else.

I make sure to leave the blackboard clean and take all my stuff away from the instructor's desk before she arrives, but I do believe that I have a right to stay in the classroom after my lecture for at least 5-10 minutes. There is no vacant classroom around, and I don't have time to go with students to my office, which is in a different building.

Last time the instructor told me in front of my students that I don't understand "simple things" and that I am "playing games". When I was talking to one of my students, she stood very close to us and clearly demonstrated that she wanted us out. I tried to explain her that I couldn't go anywhere else due to my time constraints, but she didn't want to listen to me. I really don't understand what "simple" things she meant and what "games" I am playing.

We leave the board clean. She doesn't need to set up a projector. She can still talk to her students before her class starts, if she wants to (even though it seems like her students don't ask her any questions before their class). So, I don't see how I cause any disruption.

I had met this woman many times before this semester, but we never talked. I didn't see her talking to other instructors/students much, and she seems to be quite reserved and a bit neurotic. She doesn't want to have any conversation with me regarding the issue.

I felt really offended after last class when she said those things to me in front of my students. What would you do in my case?

Added later: There are no official rules regarding classroom occupancy between classes. Instructors are supposed to use common sense and be reasonable. For me using 50% of the break time seems reasonable to answer questions after lecture seems reasonable. I agree that for some people it may not.

I don't block the entrance to the classroom. A few students from the next class who come earlier always go ahead and take their seats as soon as my students start leaving the room. I also had one of the students from the next class listening to my explanation to one of those after-class questions and asking me further questions before their class (which is the same class as I am teaching, just a different section). Maybe the instructor got jealous, I don't know.

The entrance to the classroom is from its front (not back), so I do stay in the front. But it is a big lecture hall, and there is a plenty of space in front of the room (the board itself consists of 8 huge panels).

Also, during my career as a grad.student who is also teaching for the department, I have had several observations from experienced professors who are considered to be great teachers at the department and are in charge of undergraduate teaching policy. In my evaluations the fact that there are always several students approaching me with questions after class considered as very positive, meaning that students find me approachable.

Thank you everyone for answers.

You should first find out what is the standard convention for when you have to vacate the room.  Since the other instructor is in your department, you can take this up at the department level: talk to your advisor and/or a trusted faculty mentor about it.

In my experience though this is often left a little fungible and people need to be reasonable about it.  In my opinion it is reasonable to expect to have access to the room five minutes before your class begins.  Ideally the previous instructor will have vacated the room at that point; if not, s/he should be occupying the room in a way which doesn't interfere with your own use of it.  (For instance, a lot of times students will not enter a room if an instructor is still writing on the blackboard.  It can be annoying to come to your class a few minutes before you want to start and find everyone waiting out in the hall.)

In the absence of a clear directive about how to split the time, it seems reasonable for the departing instructor to take half of the time, as long as they leave at least five minutes for the other instructor.  In your case 20 minutes is a very nice cushion (in my university it's 15 minutes), to the extent that I find it a little strange that the other instructor is arriving 15-20 minutes early.  What is she doing with that time?  Do more than a few students arrive that early?  If you are using the time to talk to your students and she's using the time for nothing, then I think you are morally in the right and should push back on it a bit.  You should be able to stay for the first half of the 20 minute break.

How should you do that?  As above, I would find out what other people do.  If the standard convention is that you can take those 10 minutes, then talk to the department head (or other departmental authority figure; e.g. whoever schedules the teaching) about it and get their support.  (You don't need to phrase it as a grievance or even identify the other instructor by name.)  Assuming you get backed, then you should pay a visit to the instructor in her office and explain that you looked into the matter, that you have a clear instructional purpose for how to use the time, and that the head (or whoever) has confirmed that this is a standard practice.  Definitely do this outside of the classroom so that you two can have the conversation you need to have not in front of the students and so that there is not a direct confrontation to be resolved.

In my opinion it is probably not worth trying to seek redress for your poor treatment by this instructor.  We are not obligated to be nice to each other; it's just better if we are.  If you respond to the treatment in a professional way and show that you are neither going to get pushed around nor retaliate in any personal or emotional way, then you're basically just rising above.  What some random person who you're only going to see for one more semester thinks of you isn't really so important, is it?  Especially if you're confident that you're in the right?


Letter of recommendation from employer I have worked as a mobile dev in a small creative software company for a year, and I'm preparing to apply for CS masters in US as an international student (for AI-related field).

Question: Do you think it's good idea to use a letter from my employer?

I only have one strong letter from my senior project supervisor and I can't find another strong (and personal) one from my undergrad university since I've never really been close with the rest of faculties.

I think having one letter that talks about me personally (like work ethics) would be great. With this I'd have 2 letters from professors (1 strong, 1 generic), and 1 letter from my employer.

However, I've heard that it's not recommended to use a letter from someone not in academia, especially someone who's not in the field I'm applying to (more like in business). My current job title is also not related to AI at all, as I'm doing mobile app development.

I'm thinking that since I graduated last year, and didn't have nice projects to show in my portfolio, the letter from employer will at least demonstrate the work, or fill the gap of what I've done in the past year.

Thanks for reading! Any suggestion is welcomed.

Yes, get the letter from your employer. In general, people reading letters want to see assessments of your skills, work ethic, etc., and these can certainly be provided by someone not in academia. Certainly if all aspects of content were equal, it would probably be more useful to get a letter from an academic, since it would likely map more directly onto likely success in Ph.D. research, but a strong and meaningful letter from your employer beats a weak and generic letter from a professor.


How should I address a PI at the holiday party tonight? Our lab is having its holiday party tonight at a somewhat fancy hotel restaurant.  How do I address a PI (Principal Investigator) of our lab?  I’ve never met her this semester – she spends time at another research institute and communicates with us via group emails.

Given that a party will be a casual meeting, how should I address her?  By her first name, say, "hi Karen", or is it better to address her more formally, such as "hi, Dr. Samsonite"?  Our lab consists of about twenty members.

Update

So I met her just a short while ago in her hotel room where she is staying through the weekend, and I decided to adress her as I normally would, thanks Aeismail for the useful tip.  She seemed just fine with it, so a big thanks to all for the answers and comments.  Party time!

Address her as "Dr." unless she invites you to call her by her first name.


In letters of recommendation, how are the different percentiles of ability perceived by the admissions committee? On my letters of recommendation, I was asked to rate if a student was

Top 1-2%
Top 5%
Top 10%
Top 25%
Top 50%, or
Not in the top 50%

The student got an A in my class, and scored in the top 25% of students, class-rank-wise.  But I am afraid that if I rate them as "top 25%," and they are applying to a top program, it will make them look like a bad student.

Does the admissions committee discard or look negatively upon all recommendations that aren't top 1-2% or top 5%?

(If it matters, I teach at a top 10 university, so someone who is top 25% here will probably be top 1-2% at a more middling university.)

Great question. It is one of the most ridiculous of all the forms we have to fill out when recommending people. Despite the illusion of being a quantitative measure, in reality it is qualitative and subjective. I imagine most people (certainly in my case) do not do what you have done and actually calculated where the student fell in terms of actual percentage. So if you do the honest thing, and say 25%, you may indeed be putting your student at a disadvantage. I have heard some professors say "oh, anything not top 5% or 10% is code for mediocre student." I'm not defending that view, but it definitely exists and is another symptom of how ridiculous the form is. As the comment by Bryan Krause states, people tend to rate higher, so your student will gain little from your honesty. Top 25% might even be perceived as a red flag. I also agree that admissions committees look at other measures (including the text of the letter) for a better indication of the student's promise.


Is it true that students from European countries have had many more advanced courses in mathematics when they arrive to Grad school in the US? This question is inspired by what Steven Krantz wrote in his book "A mathematicians survival guide."

  If you are an American student, educated in the USA, then you may
  find that the international students in your graduate program appear to be
  way ahead of you. First of all, students in Italy, France, and other European
  countries often specialize much earlier than we do in the United States. They
  have had many more advanced math courses than you will have had. [I was
  once told that a typical Italian math student graduating from college will
  have taken 22 year-long math courses. I have not had 22 year-long math
  courses in my entire life.]

If this is not true, then in your experience, from which countries/universities do you get the most advanced graduate student?

First and foremost, it is a important to note that there is a vast amount of variation between institutions and individuals, so generalizations are not terribly helpful here.

That said, historically there have indeed been differences in the philosophy and organization of European and American approaches to education. European education has tended to put more emphasis on knowledge, where American education has tended to put more emphasis on creativity and communication.  As a result, many European students are already specializing in high school, while many American students are required to remain generalists until university and may in fact still be taking classes outside their "focus" all the way through the end of their undergraduate studies.

This does not, however, provide any clear advantage to one group or the other when it comes to doing a Ph.D.  At the doctoral level, one needs both knowledge and also creativity and the ability to communicate well with colleagues. Thus, while students educated in one tradition are more likely to enter graduate school being able to prove Urysohn's Lemma, students educated in the other tradition are more likely to be able to effectively communicate why that proof is interesting.

In short: the word "appear" is in the original quote for a reason.


What to do when completing a full-time masters by research, and a part-time job interferes with grades and progress? I'm currently in first year of MS by Research in computer science. The first year includes coursework and second year is research thesis.
I've been working part time 20 hours a week in a software company. I have 4 subjects. So far I have managed to complete assignments but haven't really studied well.
Now as the semester is close to end, I have projects, assignments and exams. I'm struggling to decide if I should continue working here. Sometimes I think it's doable but it's a little risky. I may not get proper marks to progress to next semester. What would you do in such situation?

It is most certainly possible to get a research degree while working part-time --- or even full-time.  I know a number of people who have done it.  As you are finding, it is quite rigorous, however.  In many cases, it may be better to take the coursework part time, so that you have enough space to really absorb the material, rather than just trying to hit passing marks.


Statistics PhD - Sending the math GRE score mGRE is only recommended when applying for a Ph.D in statistics.
But obviously sometimes it's better not to send a score than to report a bad score.
Stanford, which is the only place that actually requires mGRE, post that their average is the 82% quantile. But this also includes graduate students in probability, with much higher level in mathematics.

How would you cut the threshold between send/not send/indifferent?

It really depends. Obviously if the score is required you need to send it. If you are applying to top programs, a 68% at anything is not going to help your case so I would not send it if it wasn't required. At lower ranked schools, a 68% might be okay, but again it is probably not going to impress anyone. I would probably draw the line at the 90th percentile for providing something that is not required.


Maiden name/Legal name I prefer to be called by my maiden name by colleagues and friends. Is it unprofessional or illegal to use my maiden name at school and even after graduation?

I know a variety of women who have retained their maiden names for publications (some because they started publishing before getting married and changing their legal name). If they had been publishing before getting married, one concern is making it easy to link all their publications under one author name, making it easier to see their whole record. (But, even that is not required, having seen publication lists where it rapidly becomes clear that there was a name change - I hope things like Web of Science figure it out, but I'm not sure.)

I also know a number that never changed their name legally to begin with. That is not uncommon, at least in the US.

Likely you know such people as well, or looking around your university would find some fairly quickly.

So, bottom line, do what you and your partner are comfortable with, the academic world has seen it before and is just fine with it.


Should I contact the university? I will be in the area? I am wondering if It is appropriate to contact the university and let them know that I will be in the area if by chance I am under consideration.  We are moving back to our home state and my husband will be taking a tuck load there.  I can join him or not.  They stated that they would begin looking at applications on June 16th.  Thanks.

I take, you have applied to a position at said university? I would not propose that you contact them. They are making a decision on the applications, not bechause you are in the vicinity. It could sound a bit to clingy for them and result in a rejection.


Messed up my PhD. Hope for academia lost. Not attractive for industry. Hoping for some advice My civil engineering PhD got extended to 5 years due to my lack of commitment during the early years and lack of interest in my research area on part of my advisor.

I feel that I made a mistake by joining under the advisor in spite of having good profile in masters degree. Though I was initially interested in the research topic, I lost interest in it as it became a solo journey right from the start. My advisor's interest area do not align with my PhD thesis. I believe he had to work in the field because he was part of a grant. My lab colleagues work in different research area in alignment with my advisor's expertise.

Now, I am stuck with a PhD degree that couldn't get any rigorous due to personal limitation. I obviously can't conceive, execute complex research ideas absolutely independently. Also, my advisor did not push all my manuscripts for publication till date. I have only published 2 papers in the 5 years of PhD.

Now I am applying for postdoc positions, and I am receiving no suggestions from my advisor. He has no contact on my research area. I am getting no response from my applications. My defense is due in December. And I am panicking about not having anywhere to go from here.

I am overqualified for most of the industrial positions and those positions where they need a PhD, my research appears underwhelming.

I really messed up, I don't know what should I do. Academia seems closed. Industry a far fetched dream. I am in the US and I am an international student. Sorry for the rant. I really can use an advise. Is it possible to come back from such a disastrous profile?

First, you didn't really "mess up your PhD" if you get your diploma at the end, something which seems very likely in your case. The main goal of doing a PhD is to get a PhD diploma, so you should evaluate success by this criterion even if it's not everything you had initially hoped for.

What you're going through is a period of low self-esteem/regrets/depression, a very common symptom of finishing a PhD (see for instance here). It's normal but be aware that currently you are not completely rational in your self-evaluation, and don't hesitate to seek professional help if you feel like you need it.

  I really messed up, I don't know what should I do. Academia seems closed. Industry a far fetched dream. I am in the US and I am an international student. Sorry for the rant. I really can use an advise. Is it possible to come back from such a disastrous profile?

These interpretations are the result of your low self-esteem at the moment. For example you will know if academia is closed to you only if you apply for academic jobs. Sure you might not get a position in a prestigious institution, but there's a lot of postdoc opportunities everywhere and if that's what you really want you should definitely apply. A year or two of postdoc in a different place, on a different topic and with different people could completely change your perspective and your academic profile.


Do students and faculty comprise any State University in the US? Oxford University as a corporation grants membership to the matriculated students who are currently pursuing a degree. However, in the US there seems to be a tendency for University legal business to be handled by a corporation of University Trustees which is a legal entity separate from the University as such.

Sometimes the Trustees are said by statute to be "included" in the "body corporate" of a University, which seems to make two different bodies corporate, one being the Trustees acting in their special name, and the second being the University. However, it isn't made clear who else might be included in the University besides Trustees or for that matter whether  the term "University" can also refer to the buildings or district under jurisdiction of the Trustees.

I would be interested to know if there is any State University which makes its students or faculty members of the University. Please cite the relevant laws.

No, there's nothing like Oxford's or Cambridge's legal structure in the United States, where students and faculty are members of the University.

For historical interest, the first university -- University of Bologna - 1088 -- was a universitas scholarium, i.e. a "university of scholars (students)".  It was a collective that had bargaining rights with the city and hired and paid their professors -- paying them after each lecture. (!)


MA thesis without a research question I am currently trying to defend my second MA degree. I got my first one from the university of Warsaw (Poland), where I graduated summa cum laude, so I always thought, I had some idea of how to write a thesis. At this new university however (it's in Kazakhstan, but it follows a curriculum that's leaning towards that of what's considered to be a typical US university), I've been told that my thesis is no good, as it's in the wrong format, has not research question and is generally bad.
Now, I'm aware that this thesis is certainly not a masterpiece, it was written during a lockdown when I had little access to literature, so the literature review part of the thesis is merely 20 pages long.
However the most confusing part for me was that of this "research question" matter. I've been told that there isn't one, to which I replied "that's because I didn't ask any question".
My thesis is describing the lack of certain aspects of ESL education in Kazakhstan, including a survey in which teachers and students were asked whether those missing aspects should be included in the curriculum or whether they find them irrelevant.
I've written my first thesis in the exact same way, and I was told it was fine.
My question is, is there any way that I can get this though a defense without completely rewriting it?

Disclaimer: I'm in STEM, not the humanities, and I'm in the UK. But the idea of "research questions" (or, alternatively, research aims) comes up in all our student theses.
I usually define a project as having three parts:

Find a problem (or ask a question)
Propose (or find) a solution (or find an answer)
Evaluate your solution (how "correct" is the answer?)

But there is another way a thesis can be structured:

Find a solution
Propose a potential problem
Evaluate the extent of the problem and propose/highlight new research directions to solve it.

My thesis is describing the lack of certain aspects of ESL education in Kazakhstan, including a survey in which teachers and students were asked whether those missing aspects should be included in the curriculum or whether they find them irrelevant.

This is good. It sounds like you've found a solution and have identified a potential problem with it. And it sounds like you've evaluated that problem, too. So, your research question might be something like "Is the lack of certain aspects of ESL education in Kazakhstan problematic for users of the educational services?". Or, if you want to avoid a closed question: "How problematic to service users is the lack of certain aspects of ESL education in Kazakhstan?". Defining it as a question makes your research suitably cautious. Maybe there isn't a problem at all, and your research saves someone else from proposing a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Maybe the problem is massive and obvious and everyone knows about it but no one has written it down.
You have your research question at the start of your thesis, then at the end, you reflect on it. What is the answer to your research question? How well have you answered it? Everything in your thesis should be driven towards answering your research question (or questions), and that will help to avoid going off topic.
----- Edit -----
Just editing to add: it already sounds like you have a research question (even if you didn't know it), and it sounds like your thesis is written on topic to support your research question. A huge re-write is possibly not necessary, but at least top and tail the whole thing and each individual chapter with sections on what this means for your research question. At the start, say why this chapter relates to your question, at the end say how this partially answers your question. It'll give the document more focus and it'll keep the reader on track, too.


How can a demoralized research student restore the passion for research? To the point, I do love conducting research, however, I have put myself in a very difficult point of research that made me switch to another Ph.D. program for the sake of more technical support. However, I found the other group doesn't have the required set-up devices as they have mentioned earlier before arrival, moreover, they don't have any idea how to solve this complicated point which they are interested in already. Finally, I felt I am in the same blank loop.

To be honest, I began to lose motivation and passion and sometimes I feel lost. I don't know what to do, I see crappy research published and seems everything to me to be fake, I am asking myself: Why this happens to me?.

My dream is to be like Carl Segan, Neil Degrasse Tyson, and present interesting science TV show one day, but I don't know how to reach this goal and present what I am really interested in.

Honestly, I don't know how should be the exact question, but I feel miserable, I don't know whether I have to look for another different point of research and easy to be solved. This would obligate me to look for another different research lab.

Maybe I am not smart enough, but, I began to feel academic field is so dull and boring. I would like to hear what I should do in that complex situation as I cannot dare to speak with anyone in my current research lab about my situation.

If you lack motivation in your research because you feel like you lack the resources/knowledge to tackle the problem, then you should probably discuss this with your advisor. It is important that the advisor offers you projects that can be 'broken down' into small, manageable pieces, rather than some monolithic task.

A PhD is often an isolating and depressing experience. You should find a support system of some sort to help you through the process. This can be family, friends, or fellow students. You can consider taking up a hobby (preferably something social, like sports) to give you an outlet that's not research.

I can't comment on what exactly makes some people great thinkers, but I can say that in successful research takes a lot of hard work, vision, and a hearty willingness to fail 90% of the time.

Finally, and I am sorry to say this, but you need to be mentally prepared for the fact that academia is not the right place for you. If it truly depresses you to the point where you don't feel like it's worth it, you should seriously reevaluate your prospects.


How to answer question about publication plans in a grant proposal? How do you answer a question in your application for research grant, where it asks you 'Plans for publication'?

I plan to publish the results of my research in one of three optional scientific journals, and maybe present the results on a conference at the end of the year. But how should I answer this, without sounding too unspecific or 'casual' in the application?

This question is quite common and "dissemination" is usually a part of a grant proposal. It depends greatly on your "position" and the planned work and also the field on how to write it exactly.

Sometimes we write quite blank statements like

  Results will be published in highly ranked, peer-reviewed international scientific journals.

for some projects this might not be true, since you know right away that it won't find a place in the top journals so you can write publishing it in specialized journals and give examples:

  Results will be published in peer-reviewed journals important in the field of this work/XY (e.g. examples).

You can definitely write how many publications you expect, if it's more than one!

Depending on the grant you might want to include a statement about open access (if they pay for this then you definitely should).

As for conference attendance: you can definitely include this too. If you already know a suited conference you should definitely mentioned it.


Is there common policy in universities about departments or faculty/staff intervening in the case of misconduct related to Title IX? My understanding of Title IX is that it is a federal law that requires, among other organizations, universities, to ensure that women are not denied equal opportunities.

In order to ensure compliance with this law, universities create their own policies that they believe tackle relevant misconduct like sexual harassment, stalking, and other related behaviors. However the Title IX office of a university does not attempt to tackle behaviors that fall outside of ensuring compliance with the federal law.

Usually, faculty and staff are required to report or consult with the Title IX office if they become aware of misconduct. I have encountered the belief that once this occurs, faculty/staff are prohibited from engaging on the matter further. I have asked a question on Law Stack Exchange about the legal basis of this belief, but here I want to ask about university policy.

Are there common (or if not, at least notable examples of) policies that prohibit a department, or faculty/staff, from acting on information about misconduct relevant to Title IX further? For example, can a department chair enact sanctions on a perpetrator? Can faculty confront the perpetrator and demand their behavior cease? Can it even be discussed?

Note that again I am not concerned here with the law, but only with university policies.

I have encountered the belief that once this occurs, faculty/staff are prohibited from engaging on the matter further.

I am a former department chair at a large US university. I don’t know what you mean exactly by engaging further, but this belief sounds mostly false to me, or at best a distorted or misunderstood version of something that’s true but doesn’t quite mean what you think it means.

At my university, the department chair will typically remain involved and play an active role in coordinating the university’s response to the incident, usually in consultation with the Title IX officer or similar campus officials. The chair may be advised to not act independently of the title IX office or prior to consulting with them (and even more so to not act without keeping them informed), but it sounds inaccurate to describe this as a “prohibition”. And it’s not the case that the chair hands over the matter to some outside department and then steps away completely from the situation, as the belief you describe seems to be suggesting. (On the other hand, it’s possible that that is in fact the way things work at some US universities.)

  For example, can a department chair enact sanctions on a perpetrator?

Department chairs have a fair amount of independence to do things at the departmental level. So generally speaking, I’d say that yes, the chair can do such a thing, but whether it would be a good idea or recommended practice would depend on the specific details of the situation, and in the absence of more information I’d assume it wouldn’t be either of those things.

  Can faculty confront the perpetrator and demand their behavior cease?

Yes, similarly to the above: people can do all sorts of things, but if the matter is being handled by the Title IX office, most sensible people would recognize that letting the professionals (with the appropriate training, legal and psychological background etc) handle it is the best course of action.

  Can it even be discussed?

Not sure what you mean by this exactly. Information about sexual misconduct accusations would generally be regarded as confidential, but department chairs and certain other administrators would have a legitimate need to know and discuss such things, so yes, obviously they can discuss them. On the other hand, they would need to exercise discretion and not share details with random people who don’t have an official reason to be involved.


Is there a publication or citation based indicator of the pace of change in a field? Impact factors exist to quantify the "impact of a paper."

Does a similar metric exist for quantifying the pace of change (obviously determined by quantity of high-impact factor papers) in a particular field (physics, in particular)?

Although far from perfect,
Citation half life is one citation-based indicator often used to quantify how quickly a field or journal is moving. It basically looks at how long a paper takes to get half of all its citations. So for example, a fast moving field might have a citation half-life of 4 years, whereas a slower moving field might have a citation half-life of over 10 years.

In the Journal Citation Reports you can see these values for each journal.

Of course, there is the question of what exactly this means. For example, I believe fields like statistics and mathematics have much longer citation half lives, perhaps because seminal articles remain important.

Understanding citation half-life is also important when you want to compare impact factors for journals across fields, or compare citation counts and h-indexes across scholars.


My PhD advisor has unrealistic expectations on my capabilities to research independently I worked as an undergraduate volunteer researcher, and then worked in an industry laboratory before returning to school. And my program did not have have rotations.  I am starting to wonder what I got myself into because it seems like I was thrown into the deep end on my first day of swim lessons.  I thought there would be training and community work to get us to the point where we could be independent by the end of our graduate career, not at the beginning.  I basically feel like my boss wanted a postdoc and expected a graduate student to know what to do.

Originally, I thought it was me, but based on the following list of evidences maybe it is not.

My advisor told me that she only talked with her advisor a couple of times a year during her PHD.
I am the first graduate student she has had and she constantly refers to how underprepared American grad students are.
Our program has since offered rotations, some of the students rotated through our laboratory and they had skills far below me when I started.  They all said they did not want to work for her because she expected too much and provided no direction.  Some of them did not know how to run gels or do transformations for instance.
Even undergraduate students have a short lifespan in her laboratory. Many claiming it stressed them out.
My project has nothing to do with anything else in the lab, and to answer the questions in my project, I have to do techniques that no one in the lab knows. Each one takes months to get working right and has resulted in slow progress. I asked if I could be involved in her main project, which she has NIH funding for, and she said that I will just be seen as a helper unless I have my own idea that is completely separate from hers.  She says that my troubleshooting needs to improve if I cant do these techniques quickly.

I really thought I was just not good enough, but I’m starting to think not.  I have participated in journal clubs with other graduate students at the university, and I can tell they are way less knowledgable about the experiments and the purpose of each step in the paper.

Can someone give me some guidance on what to do?  I have started running out of motivation, to be honest.  I honestly want to see if she will let me leave with a master’s, so I can just leave science all together.  My passion is gone she has ruined my love of science and the community. If I ask to leave with a master’s, she may just fire me, though.  I really need a master’s to get a specific job, I want after this, but I don’t know what to do.  The only thing I still like is bioinformatics, because there are a lot of self-teaching tools for that, and she can’t hold me back from exploring questions in programs.

Can I switch to another advisor for a year and leave with a master’s?

In short, it is normal that you feel like you were thrown in the deep end it is not normal for your adviser to act like she expected a post-doc.

You feel overwhelmed, which is to be expected when first appearing on any new job (in my experience, it is easier to consider yourself as employed, rather than a student – puts things into a different perspective). Doubly so for rather unstructured working environments, like a research lab. There are many novelties you have to get accustomed to, even before the primary one: doing research and publishing papers.

My advice for you is to think in small steps. Think about achieving the next small goal, rather than: “at this pace, I will never publish anything, let alone write a dissertation that will be approved and I can graduate”. Dwelling on that distant future and perceiving the present through that lens is overwhelming and discouraging. You are there to learn. And that includes all ropes of academia, not just research and papers, but to fully immerse yourself in the environment. Paper deadlines, multitasking, helping other students and post-docs, teaching, presenting, being independent (i.e. your adviser is not expected to hold your hand) are all part of the experience and by graduating you are expected to have a feel for life in academia.

Take your time to achieve something, working twenty hours a day will rarely bring you closer to your goal, it will sooner lead to burnout, even more stress, and perhaps even health issues. Being pressured (by the adviser, other colleagues, or even the competing environment) is also part of the experience and the correct response is not to yield to the pressure at any cost, but to learn how to manage it. If something takes five days to complete, the argument that you could get it done in two, if you don’t sleep, is moot. What I also found is that people pressure you as a test, if you yield, great, you'll get something done sooner, with no cost to them (it's you who won't get sleep), and if not,  they'll probably be really really sad/upset, but in the end, they just let it go. In the end, imposter syndrome is prevalent on all steps of the academic ladder – you'll often get the feeling that your work is not up to standards, but so will all of your colleagues including your adviser.

As for your adviser, again, don't perceive her as your teacher. Her purpose is not to be familiar with every aspect of your work. She also doesn't know the solution to every problem you might come with, figuring that out is an essential part of research. The adviser provides guidelines and nudges you in the right direction not due to absolute certainty, but with the best reasonable course of action provided through her experience. You shouldn't expect to have meetings every day, or every week in some cases. You should focus on doing work independently – again, think of yourself as an employee. Your Point 5 greatly illustrates that.

As to whether or not you can switch advisers, sure you can, you can even leave the whole program if you feel so inclined. My point is that based on your description, I see nothing really atypical with your experience or adviser. In other words, I see nothing that you could expect to dramatically change, if you switched institutions or advisers.


How useful is the GRE Exam? How useful is the GRE for the academic career/research/daily academic tasks?

It's not required in my country but I'm wondering about the intrinsic value of its study material.

The GRE's effectively only good for one thing - getting admitted to graduate school. You will need it if the program requires it as part of your application package. Most US graduate programs do require it. If you study elsewhere then there's a good chance you don't need the GRE.

About whether it's useful study material, note that the GRE is an exam, not study material. You can use the GRE as a benchmark to see whether you're mastering the study material, but not as the study material itself. As for whether it's useful, knowing more things is usually never worse than knowing fewer things. However, will knowing more about undergraduate-level e.g. physics or mathematics help you in your career/research/daily tasks? If you teach physics or mathematics, then presumably so (although at that point you probably don't need the GRE because you are already intimately familiar with the material), or maybe if you work in science communication, provide private tutoring, etc. In most careers though, it will be irrelevant, and you can ignore the GRE.


How to motivate myself to do more than the bare minimum that is required of me? First, I should assure you this is a question about life in academia.

I am currently studying for a Master's degree in mathematics at a top university. I also have a Master's degree in Artificial Intelligence from another top university.

I get a lot of pleasure when I study and understand new ideas. I won't say studying mathematics is easy but in general I do not encounter significant difficulties to understand theorems and proofs when I sit down and go through them. I have also done a fair amount of research. I am preparing for publication my previous Master's dissertation and my current supervisor wants to take me on for a PhD.

I know I can handle research and I know I can understand thoroughly a subject.  However, I feel extremely superficial. I almost always do the bare minimum. For example, the way I study for an exam involves reading all of the lecture notes to get a feel for the general ideas. Then I understand how these ideas fit together. I go through some of the details and I ensure that in principle I could understand them.

At this point I get in a conflicting state. I feel complacent because I have determined that in principle it is just a matter of time to work out the details and this just feels tedious. When I do try to work out the details I feel extreme repugnance. Forcing myself to do it leads to breakdowns but I've learned to manage that. This struggle continues with the result that I usually get an A or a B or the bare minimum to satisfy my supervisor if I'm working on a research project.

I cannot overcome this dreadful feeling and this issue often stands in the way when I try to develop my own ideas. The first glimpse of understanding the principles of a concept leads to inability to invest any more effort in developing my ideas. Then, I find myself reading some easily digestible article on the internet.

I want to continue doing research and stay in academia. But I often feel helpless. I have tried a lot of schemes to motivate myself, including trying to talk myself into persisting, reading self-help books, and devising an axiomatic system to explain to myself what it means to be interested in something.

There is of course incremental improvement but far from efficiency. I cannot imagine myself doing anything else but research. However, I feel that once I get into pure research and there is no more explicit structure I would get completely lost.

How can I motivate myself to persist in such a situation? How can I overcome such complacency?

Wow.

While I was reading your question, I was thinking "did I just wrote that myself and erased it from my memory"? I just started my PhD in Mathematics, having obtained my Master's Degree last semester..

You pointed several problems we face as students of Mathematics who are trying to become researchers. One of them, which has drawn most of my attention, is this 'repugnance' from the details of something you already been through. I usually deal with this situation as follows: some of those details (in a proof, in a exercise, etc) are either too boring or too hard. If they're too boring, I usually make sure myself that I can remember them should I need them (in a exam, for example). If they're too hard, I usually try to convince myself that it won't be in the exam of the subject I'm studying for (this does not mean that I study only for exams!).

Whenever I am done with some subject, I choose another one to keep studying. As a PhD student I usually feel that there are a lot os subjects I should have mastered and a lot other which I should have some knowledge of. I usually use those 'confliting states' to switch to another subject which I have chosen by myself (not related to the lectures I'm attending). For example, I'm now having Several Variables Holomorphic Functions and Riemannian Geometry courses, but also reading a textbook of Theory of Foliations since I'm sure I'll need it next semester. It's not my priority though.

Now, keep in mind that you're not striving for the minimum at all times. Reaching a PhD course after obtaining your Master's degree is a really big deal. Are you really sure that A's and B's are the minimum that keeps your advisor satisfied? My advisor complimented me on my grades from Master's Degree Courses once, and it was full of B's, two A's and one ugly C!


Questions about the process of collaboration in Mathematics How does the process of collaboration in math work ? Do mathematicians like to share their problems ? Can I do this by e-mail ? How to ask mathematicians if they want to collaborate in a math project ? I'm still learning more advanced math but these are questions I had in mind and didn't know where to ask.

Do mathematicians like to share their problems ?

Usually yes. Published papers will often have open questions or conjectures to which authors worked on / or think worthwhile but does not have a solution. These conjectures sometimes even have corollaries provided by the authors.
Mathematicians also sometimes just "hand out" open problems that arise in their research, write them on their webpage or public chat rooms.


Measure of review bias I was reading the other day this blog post, about "how to peer review", and one passage struck me:

Don't review like a grad student
Reviews written by graduate students are among the most negative.
Grad students are often on the receiving end of negative reviews, because they are just learning how to write papers.

So, even though I'm no longer a grad student, I sometimes have the feeling that I tend to be a more negative reviewer than others, but it's actually hard to measure (maybe I'm just reviewing mostly bad papers?!), since I don't always have access to the other reviews of the papers I'm reviewing (due to the fact that I've been more often acting as an external reviewer than as a PC member).
I believe that the quality of my writing has improved with the feedback I've received from the reviewers of my paper, but because I don't have any feedback on my reviews, it's hard to know if and how I can improve them. So my question is: is there a way to measure my own reviewing bias?
The first thing that would come to my mind would be a set of papers reviewed by many other reviewers, and a result like: "you're in the x% more negative reviewers". Of course, I'm not implying that I would be automatically less severe when reviewing, but sometimes, in case of doubt, it's good to know one's own bias.

There aren’t many ways for your to evaluate how your reviews stand against others, but there is at least one. You can keep a tab of the papers you have reviewed, and look for them a year or so after the review. See if your reviews correlate with the publication (or lack thereof) of the papers in the respective journals… if papers you have suggested to reject are frequently accepted by the editor, then you give typically more negative reviews than other reviewers of your community.

Of course, this is a very black-and-white picture (rejection/publication). But, I don't think you can actually do much better, because “negativity” can hardly be measured quantitatively.

PS: I wouldn't call it a reviewing bias. A review is the editor asking you your frankly assessment of a publication. Toning it up or down because you fell that you do not conform to the “mean” of your field would probably diminish your value as a reviewer. If the editor does not think your reviews are helpful to him, he’ll just stop sending you paper to review!

I'll finish with an anecdote: there's a journal for which I have recently given a series of quite negative reviews (well documented, and justified in my eye), and I have actually received some positive feedback about my reviews from the editor.


Printing a poster near a conference location at a cheap price For travel convenience, I prefer to print posters near the conference location. How can I efficiently look for the best poster printing price near a conference location?

(In my experience, conference organizers sometime point to a printing business, but they typically tend to be not price optimized, far from it)

First off, avoid the print shop at any conference location, which is quite likely to be both overbooked and expensive.

Second, make sure to send your poster far enough ahead of time to avoid a potential last-minute rush (particularly at large conferences).

Finally, you can use Internet map sites (Google Maps, Apple Maps, etc.) to search for copy shops near the conference location, and call to find out their rates.