Interviewing for a PhD with intent to reject the offer if admitted elsewhere I made several applications to Universities in the US, Canada, and Europe. One of the universities in Europe asked me for an interview which I attended several weeks ago. I felt like they dedicated resources to interview me as there was 5 professor present. They interview was completely technical in nature.

A week ago I received an email where a professor wrote a feedback about my interview, and told me that they are considering me for a position. They will have to arrange an interview with their industrial liaison before I get the offer. (In Europe, a PhD is a job).

I didn't receive any decisions yet from other places which are preferable choices to me. In case I get an admission offer elsewhere, I intend to accept it. Otherwise, I will accept the offer in Europe.

I feel like what I am doing is not completely ethical since it seemed to me that they university in Europe, or more precisely the professor I am in contact with, is dedicating lots of resources just to interview me and they are trying to get someone on the project quickly. They have never asked me about my plans or whether I applied elsewhere

My question: Should I say something in the next interview? Is what I am doing right (Keeping this place as a plan B) while applying elsewhere?

Having spent many years on the other side, I can assure you that what you are doing is completely ethical. Interviewing at multiple locations is simply part of the process. As a department, we spend considerable resources, both time and money, trying to recruit the best students that we can to our graduate program. We are fully aware that most if not all will receive other offers at top universities. And we know from experience that about half of the students we bring in will ultimately turn us down. It's a calculated risk that we are happy to take in order to recruit a top-notch cohort of students.


Should I mention my blog in my SOP? I did a bunch of code projects like implement a algorithm or use the code from a paper on a different dataset. These may not be unique (they may be, but I am not sure). I wouldn't say that these projects have the best efficiency/accuracy for a particular problem. But these are stuff that I was just messing around with and got some interesting outputs. I maintain a blog about all these activities that I do. These projects are related to machine learning, a subject in which I am interested in pursuing a MS degree.

Should I mention these blog posts in my SOP?

My SOP is a research statement, and these are not entirely research projects, but they do reflect my interest in machine learning. Would mentioning these projects benefit me in any way?

If you do recommend that I mention them, how should go about that?

Yes.  You could mention it in your SOP and/or in your CV.

I have received some applications from students in which they mentioned a technical blog, and so far it has always left a positive impression.  In my opinion, keeping such a blog demonstrates:

Maturity in writing and communicating (especially if your blog communicates something technical in an informal way that is not sloppy).
Organization of thought and effort.
Initiative.
Love for learning ideas relevant to your discipline.


Is there an IRB/ethics career path? Suppose I was back at the beginning of my undergraduate career, and I decided that while I was willing to do human-subjects research, my real career goal was to sit on an IRB and guide lost souls who can't be trusted to figure out right from wrong.

Is there a typical or expected career path for IRB members? More specifically,

Would I be expected to first "make a name for myself" as a researcher in a field involving human subjects and then get additional ethics training (e.g. Advanced Introduction to Intermediate Best Practices in IRB Ethics for Geneticists)?
Would I be expected to concentrate my efforts on gaining a broad and deep education in ethics (majoring in philosophy, etc.), and then top that off with subject matter-specific training (e.g. Introduction to Genetics for Ethicists)?

There are administration jobs involved in the ethics processes.  My university employs several "Ethics Officers" which facilitate the various ethics reviews.  Most of them do not have PhDs.  While these employees may not directly decide ethical issues, they do provide advice to researchers before the application is made which ensures the application is successful.  Knowledge of local laws is at least as important as knowledge of ethics; researchers usually need more help with the legal aspects than the ethical aspects of their ethics application.

If this sort of job appeals to you, then yes it exists, no you do not need to be a researcher to hold it, and I doubt you need to study philosophy.


How can I make my master's thesis more widely accessible online? I published a master's thesis through some online system through my university. They said they would post it online, but I'm not able to find it online.

For a few months, it was hosted on my personal page on the university domain, so it was downloadable in Google Scholar, but that's no longer the case.

How can I make my paper more accessible to people searching for the topic? Is this a common thing to do?

arXiv is the de facto way of publishing papers online. Considering that arXiv allows publishing theses as well (see Is it advisable to upload theses to the arXiv?), I would consider arXiv a good option for long-term public storage of your thesis.

However, you have to be aware of certain things.

Firstly, things posted to arXiv are public forever. This means you cannot remove your thesis from there once it is published. I would consider this to be the case for all information posted to the Internet (it is theoretically possible someone has a copy), but it may be the case that nobody is interested enough in your thesis to have a copy.

Secondly, your must be aware of your university policy. Some universities may not allow posting your thesis online. However, I wouldn't choose to attend such a university if I had a choice.

Thirdly, arXiv requires you to post the full LaTeX source code if your thesis is made in LaTeX. This means all of your university's LaTeX style files that may be copyrighted by your university need to be posted too.

Fourthly, arXiv covers only some fields. I was lucky to have my thesis in the field that arXiv covers. If your thesis isn't within arXiv's scope, you have to find a suitable repository from elsewhere.

I'm not sure if the LaTeX source requirement is valid anymore, but it was valid when I posted my thesis in 2014. I actually just was lazy and didn't check with the university if posting the university's .sty files is permitted. I don't expect to be sued because of this. With some amount of work, you could eliminate the use of your university's .sty files, but then the thesis wouldn't look like a thesis made in your university.


Grade conversion for PhD application: Masters in France -> Phd in the US (Math) I am Masters student in France and I am considering pursuing PhD in the US.
 Grading in France seems to be less uniform then in other countries, which results (from my experience) in that getting 90% of max grade is hard. US universities have GPA requirements, some pretty harsh such as 3.5/4.0 GPA.

A broad question is: what should I do, except from trying to get as high grades as possible,  to be admitted to a high rank institution in the US despite being on the verge of a GPA cut-off? A more specific one is: how are GPAs handled when the direct conversion of grades is difficult.

I am looking for answers from people who have first-hand experience. There are a lot of answers in the internet, related to grade conversion for undergraduate school applications (that is, about conversion of high school grades), and there are conversion tables posted by some US universities. However, these answers does not answer my question well: I am interested in how thing are done in math/cs departments on the graduate level.

I do not tick any of the boxes in your requirements, but as no one seems to, I will try and help. I am a graduate student in the US in a different field than yours, but have had a similar question regarding conversion.

Admission committees acknowledge that different countries have different grading schemes, some schools are stringent and some have grade inflation. First of all, do not try to 'game' your GPA to reflect what you think would be the comparison. That would come back and bite you in the... back. Often the schools will ask for the original grades in your native scheme, and sometimes to translate it to a GPA using their own calculator - which you should use. I wouldn't write an explanation about it for two main reasons - (a) it doesn't look good, and mainly (b) you are not a source of authority and they have no reason to trust you on this. Even if they did it does not mean that you can give a proper conversion.

OK. What should you do? The best possible thing will be to get your class rank from your department and mention that in your CV/Resume. Unless your grades are abnormally low, it is my understanding that the CV will be looked at - especially if you have a decent GRE, recommenders that are semi-known, or decent experience. Rank beats GPA.
If that is not available, just assume that foreign students are given somewhat more leeway in the GPA department and your profile will gain a fleeting look if it is not all borderline.

Good luck!


Is it appropriate to call a professor for a recommendation on the weekend? I emailed my professor about two weeks ago, but there was no response to my first email. I sent a follow up, and got a reply saying they'd be happy to write one for me on the following weekend. I waited, the weekend passed, and nothing happened. I followed up  again, and again no response to my email.

Now I am thinking to call as a reminder. My professor has written many recommendations on my behalf, and my guess is that it didn't get done  due to  laziness or  forgetfulness. Now we have a long holiday coming for the next ten days and I want a recommendation as soon as possible. Is it appropriate to call  on the weekend given the fact that it was said that it could be written one a previous weekend?

No -- it's totally inappropriate.

Seriously. Think about it. Unless you're at a school where profs phone grad students at their home on weekends to inquire about a late paper, it's totally inappropriate.

Note: Many grant agencies / admissions committees know that we (the faculty) are thorough flakes and couldn't be trusted to tie our own shoelaces in the morning. They usually give a few days of extra time for faculty references to come in after the deadline.  Others, however, are very strict on deadlines and thus faculty need to be properly shepherded into getting their materials in time.


Would I need to cite explanation of linux command lines? I am a bit confused about how I go about this, as the questions require me to search some commands and explain what they do, or in some cases the differences between the commands.

I've been trying to do that, but then I find that none of the actually knowledge ends up being mine. I'm just copying what others have said this command does, and what the differences between these two commands are, and possibly following it up with my own example.

I ended up with really just a reference after each one of my paragraphs.

Isn't there any way these commands and what they do could be considered common knowledge? In the end, many people are using them everyday and there are many websites explaining what they are for and how they differ from other commands. How would citation apply in this case?

Common Linux commands can typically be listed without introduction, when you're writing for Linux users.1 More advanced commands require introduction. As you've hinted, providing your own introduction is rather tiresome, because numerous introductions already exist. Hence,

I suggest that you simply quote what others have said and provide a citation to the original.

Ideally, I'd recommend quoting man pages, since they are reputable, but you might have to rely on other sources when man pages provide insufficient detail.

1 What constitutes a common Linux command is rather vague. I'd certainly include cat, cd, and cp. I'd also include less and more. Thereafter I'd be a little hesitant, should grep, ps, ... be considered common?


Can I be a lecturer without doing research? This is probably a question quite opposite to the general vibe of people in academia, but oh well.

I am a UK-based PhD student and as I progress through my programme I notice more and more that my tutoring duties bring me a lot more enjoyment and fulfilment than research. Thus I started to wonder if there are ways of becoming a university lecturer without actually pursuing research.

I am observing many researchers who are, honestly, quite appalling lecturers and are quite vocal about not enjoying working with students anyway. At the same time, however, it seems that UK universities don't hire people who don't do research - at least I was unable to find any.

Most jobs I looked at involved research and, obviously, usually PhD-level jobs assume at least some level of research duties in them. At the same time I wouldn't want to be a teacher at a level lower than university, since I enjoy talking to students who chose the course more than to people who were forced to take it by the general curriculum. I was also a little bit afraid that in the academic world the job of a full-time tutor may be in the long run frowned upon, as  "They is doing everything you are and ALSO doing research!"

So I guess the tl;dr version of my question would be:
Is it possible to have a career as a full-time university lecturer in the UK without research activities?

My institution has policies that talk about 'teaching and scholarship' positions. These presumably require more teaching than the 'teaching and research' positions. So I believe the answer is yes. I don't know what the availability of such positions is though. It is conceivable that nowhere actually hires on that basis now.


Admission to Master's degree in Data Science without a STEM Background? I became really interested in data during my 2nd year of college (I’m currently in my third year) and I recently began to think that undergoing a masters degree in data science can greatly help me study the field more professionally.

However I am not majoring in any STEM degree in my university right now (I’m an Economics major) And I’m very likely to graduate without any changes.

I’ve heard that people from very different backgrounds who have nothing to do with STEM are often successfully admitted to data science graduate programs, but how do people from a non-STEM background get admitted when all the requirements I’ve been reading in various university websites state that if you are from a non-STEM undergraduate background you need to prove in a different way somehow that you are ready (in terms of mathematics, statistics, etc) to undertake the program?

In other words, my question is this: How do people who have non-STEM bachelor’s degrees get accepted into these programs? Is there a really a certain way to prove your analysis capabilities besides your degree for non-STEM undergraduate students that can convince the admissions committees? If you know anything about this I would sincerely appreciate it if you could share your knowledge/experience and offer helpful advice.

I’m not thinking of phD (not planning to stay in academia for that long, I simply wish to study this field a bit deeper to the point where I can apply it professionally) so hope you can consider this as well when replying :)

You said that you were studying Economics, wouldn't that be considered a STEM area (or at the very least, certain segments of Economics). I know that for instance, financial economics have been considered a STEM subject by certain institutions (e.g. Columbia)

Having that said, it really depends on the program that you are applying to. I've seen people from a broad spectrum of backgrounds enter into what would traditionally been known as quantitative sciences. I've seen psychologist and linguists working at an engineering departments for instance. What I would do is to consult the person in charge of the program that you are interested in, and ask about the specific requirements. From your own perspective, it would certainly help to take on additional courses that deal with data science so you have some experience with it, even if your primary degree isn't in a "STEM" field.


What career can a master student take? So I normally see master graduate student apply for a position as a lecturer.

Is there any other career that is available for a master (science) student asides from lecturer? Which is for computer science students

For a career in academia you basically need a doctorate. There are jobs for secondary school teachers and low level jobs at university. The secondary school positions are actually better than the low-level university positions, in most cases, however. Many places require additional certification for high school jobs, of course.

Most people who earn an MS/MA either go on for more learning or head to industry/government where there are positions available. If you want to do research but without a doctorate, the best place is in some industry lab or (for CS) a software development company. The research will be pretty applied, however.


Can a PhD student publish a paper outside PhD topic without supervisor approval only by its own? I am a theoretical PhD student. Is it possible to submit and to publish papers in journals without supervisor approval? I am asking also from legal point of view, as well. I have talked to many people in my university and some of them don't have  a good opinion regarding single author papers since such a single author paper might have sufficient errors in it. However, the subject is not studied by anyone in the university.

There is no general reason why this should not be possible/allowed.

You will have to check the regulations of your department/university for PhD students: They may require you to seek approval of your advisor prior to submission of papers. Potentially a journal could have a similar rule in place, but I have never encountered this.

That said, I do not believe this to be advisable: If your relationship with your PhD advisor is so bad that do you not feel you can ask them about your intention to submit this paper, you should probably seek a new advisor. If you are so close to graduating that your prefer sitting it out, then rocking the boat is probably a bad idea.


PhD salary and teaching assistantships in German-speaking countries I am currently searching for a master and then a PhD in Finance/Quantitative Finance. Since I have a certificate in German Language, I could choose German-speaking countries (Switzerland, Germany, and Austria) since their master programms have low fees and PhD students get paied in contrast with other countries as UK,etc.

My question is about pursuing a PhD and whether I could enhance my income by providing teaching assistance in the University. In these countries, are classes based explicitly on German or English?
Moreover, do these countries offer a salary for a PhD student, or is the cost of living prohibitive?

I can only speak for Germany:
Teaching is done by professors. Sometimes they delegate certain courses to assistants (not TAs, usually PhD candidates or post-docs), but this is still counted as "teaching" by the professor (there are legal issues involved which I don't want to adress here, but this is the common practice). As a consequence, the assistant gains teaching experience (which is good and might help in further career steps!), but there is no additional financial compensation.
Usually, PhD candidates are hired for certain research projects or they are assigned to graduate schools, in both cases there is a salary / scholarship financing your work. In my discipline (computer science), this is less then a job in industry, but it's not bad (you might want to look up TVL-13 here). It depends on the culture of your discipline if you are getting a full salary or just 50% (in biology I heard there are people getting even only 25%).
In addition, universities might hire external visiting lecturers who are recieving up to 55€/hour, but at my university we were forced to lower the rate to 35€/hour (teaching hour = 45 min.). But usually those people have to be external, you can not be employed by the university and get this salary on top.
But in short: If you are getting a position in a funded project, funding your costs of living is not an issue.
BTW: Teaching can be done in German or English, depending on your University and course level.


Can I publish a paper from a work group that I happened to work on it alone? A few months ago, I was assigned a task by my lecturer to create a Decision Support System program in a group of three. The task itself was intended as the final assignment of the course. My group discussed for some minutes and in conclusion my idea was accepted because it's new as far as we know and could really help those who need it.

Unfortunately due to conflicting schedules throughout the last half of the semester I was forced to do it alone. One was on internship and the other guy seemed to be quite difficult to contact.

Well, I don't care how important they see this assignment, but looking at the deadline I thought I'd rather do it alone than abandoning the assignment. I know it was wrong and foolish, but I needed the grades. I could always teach my group members how to make programs like this one. I thought as long as I ensure they too experience something like what I did in this work, I guess I can let it slide for that single time (of course with a stern warning as a minimum bonus).

OK, so I made the program by myself back then. I asked my other friend about the matter. He was a graduate student and excel at this field to teach me whether my program was effective enough or not. He was surprised that I made the program alone and told me that he thought this work I've done might be eligible to submit as a scientific paper. I've pondered over it and I think he could be right.

As a side note this other friend I'm talking about is actually the one whose master's thesis inspired me to make this DSS.

Then here comes the problem. I want to publish this as my first scientific paper but if I included my groupmates' names it would be a problem. A big problem as they didn't do the work themselves. But at the same time I think it would be weird if I suddenly publish it under my name only.

As they too have their names written on the student's report (and I can't really change that), do I need to make some kind of an agreement letter that state they grant all the research materials to me?

PS:

Please notice that I'm asking about authorship. I've learned that it was foolish of me to write their names on the report.
I certainly need to ask my lecturer's opinion about the material, but my predicament above (or perhaps my guilty conscience) barred me from directly asking the lecturer.
I want to limit my question to authorship matter. Thank you. :)

I suggest that you be extremely careful about this. One of the most distasteful tasks of an Editor is to sort out claims of authorship in articles that have been published. You need to resolve this completely, otherwise it may be disastrous.

In resolving authorship, you must try to contact all your group mates and receive from them some acknowledgement that they wish to proceed as you suggest. If they do not agree, then I suggest that you think twice about continuing. You do not want this issue to spill over into the public arena.

You have to consider, too, the implications of your actions. What does this publication mean for the original assignment? Could the publication of this work retroactively impact on the grades of you and your colleagues? Let me be blunt -- could their grades for this assignment be reduced to zero, adversely affecting their marks, because the publication resulted in a review of your assignment? Now you could potentially be in double trouble!

Finally, say they did agree to allowing you to proceed, you might acknowledge them in your paper just the same.


Is it ethical to use previous data from work in academic research? I worked in the Geospatial industry for 12 years+ with 4 companies and am currently in an academic field. One of the companies was forest plantations and no longer exists.

I have a lot of geospatial data (satellite imageries, radar, UAV aerial photos, field records etc.) which I think is a waste if not used for good. This especially when coupled with latest data—for example, to investigate temporal analysis of land use/cover, forest and plantation—would result in impressive outputs.

Please give your opinions. Thank you.

In your current academic organization, there should be an Ethical Approval Committee and they can help with legal obligations on using any data. In my opinion, the first step will be talking to the committee.


My undergraduate thesis project is a failure and I don't know what to do So I'm writing my undergraduate thesis and I have written around 80% of it. My project was to develop a device to use in the lab, but my first prototype doesn't work at all and I don't know if I should just write that it didn't work. I don't have time to make another one. I have to finish this as soon as possible because I'm starting grad school at a really good university :(. I haven't told about it to my supervisor. My question is how bad is it to present a failed attempt at something like the development of a device.
I hope someone can help me.

"It didn't work" is not a thesis.
However, "this is what I made, this is how I tested it, these are the results of those tests, this is how I attempted to fix/would attempt to fix in the future", etc, can be just fine, even if the ultimate conclusion is that your device isn't currently functional.
Undergraduate theses are typically fairly short-term projects, so you may not be able to follow up with all the avenues you would have for a longer project.
Most importantly, though, talk to your supervisor. Their role as a supervisor is for exactly the situation you're in: applying their experience and expertise as a researcher to help guide you in what to do. If everything worked out perfectly without any kinks or setbacks a supervisor would hardly be necessary.
Also most importantly (I'm running out of superlatives here), as a student, the success/failure of the endeavor should be primarily judged on what you as the student have learned along the way rather than the overall outcome (the proverbial "it's the journey not the destination"). Your device may not be working, but if you've learned something along the way I would not say the project is a "failure".


6-months internship has nothing to do with what was promised Since sept 2013, I have been doing a Masters in mathematical finance. Our course requires us to do an off-cycle internship of 5 months minimum (typically, from April to September).
During this internship, I'm supposed to do something that is at least remotely related to mathematics/finance, and at the end of the internship, I have to give a report of what I have done. The content of that report is supposed to contain actual mathematical researchs / developments / ideas, and is necessary for the obtention of my diploma.

Unfortunately, since my internship started I have been given absolutely no work fitting the requirements.
What I've actually been tasked to do is repetitive work consisting in using a software to process tons of record from a database, generating new records as output, and making sure the generated data is consistent.  Whenever of these jobs fail I have to debug the software and propose a fix to make the job work. There is roughly ~50 millions records to be processed and the end goal is that all of them were processed correctly. As far as I can tell there is no way this will be done by the end of my internship, which is in 2 months.
What's worse is that the team I'm in is facing increasing pressure to have all these records processed soon, while the higher-ups are heavily implying that it is taking so long because we are slacking off. This is pretty annoying because I want to make a good impression and I'm working as good as possible, but at the same time I don't feel like it is worth the effort to work extra-hard on this, given how little recognition I get and given that I will leave before the positive consequences of my work can affect me.

What can I do in my situation ? I haven't started my internship report yet (I don't even know what subject I could do it on), and I know I will to do it on my own time. At the same time the repetitive nature of my work makes me pretty burned out and whenever I never feel like working on maths for several hours.

TLDR: my 6 months internship that is supposed to be about mathematical finance is actually about doing extremely tedious work, and I have to complete a report by the end about all the mathematical research I'm supposed to have done.

What would you do in that situation ?

There are two people who can help you

Your immediate manager
Your advisor (or tutor if you don't have one)

Talk to your manager first about the requirements stated by your university, and how to translate your work into a working paper or report worthy of submission in an academic institute. I am sure he will be of help.

Then try talking to your advisor/tutor on whatever was discussed with your manager. He/She can advise you on planning your report.

I had been into such a situation, and my advisor suggested a way to tweak my working to do some additional tests/work. That extra work made my work eligible for an academic report.


How to number figures inside footnotes I cannot think of an instance where I saw a figure inside a footnote in any published work, but in my specific case it seems appropriate to put one there.
However, since this is a rather uncommon thing to do, I am not sure how to label the figure's caption.
As @Alan Munn also pointed out in a comment to this answer, it seems odd to include it in the normal figure numbering, since - at least in the field of linguistics - numbering for examples etc. is separated from the main text.
As shown in the screenshot below, the figures in the main text are counted within chapters (Figure chapter.figure:), and examples in footnotes are numbered with the common lowercase roman numerals.
I will only add one or two lines to this note and its contents are a typical case for footnote examples, which is why I do not want to include it in the main text. Really the only odd thing is the additional figure showing the pitch of said example.

Are there any typographic/academic/editorial standards for this?

I am not sure how to label [a figure that appears in a footnote]

Presumably the figure is relevant only to the footnote, otherwise it wouldn't appear in the footnote: Include the figure without numbering and without a caption, explain the figure in the footnote.


Using Industry experience to recover from bad undergrad record I graduated 2 years ago from a (frankly shitty) US state school with a 2.9 GPA and a Bachelor's of Arts in Computer science and no research experience.

I am well aware that this is a very poor undergraduate record. My mental health has has improved markedly since I left undergraduate and I have continued educating myself (self study/undergraduate courses).

I have the opportunity to move to a group within my company that does machine learning and statistics. Provided I take this position, will this experience be a positive mark on an application to a Master's program in a related field (comp. sci, statistics)? If so, how can I maximize the utility of this work experience in terms of admission?

More generally, what can I do to prevent myself from being permanently locked out of acceptance into graduate studies?

Getting experience on a work project using statistics & machine learning is a great first step towards remedying a poor undergrad GPA.

Your next steps should be:

mastering your work project (reading books, picking your colleague's brain),
finding CS programs & faculty that specialize in machine learning,
reading their popular/latest articles (list your questions),
discussing these articles and questions with coworkers,
attending the weekly colloquium/seminar of a CS department, and
talking to the speaker and other interested faculty afterwards.

Once you're comfortable enough to talk faculty about their research, make friends and say, "I am considering applying to grad school, is there a place for me in your group? Would you consider putting a good word for me with the admissions committee?"


Do physics grad school look for an undergrad math degree? I am currently a second year. I'm thinking about going to condensed matter physics grad school, but I don't know what degree combination would be the best. Does physics + chemistry sound like a good choice? I saw that many people going to physics grad school have a math degree. But I already run out of class slots to be a math + physics double major. I'm also afraid that physics grad school would not appreciate a chemistry degree.

I do have an interest in math. But I somehow feel that the math for physicists/chemists(specifically physical chemists) is a little different from that for mathematicians. Does it mean that physicists/chemists just pick up math along the way in their own fields? Which means I don't need to major in math in order to do physics research in grad school?

This depends entirely on the type of physics you would like to pursue. If you would like to be a theorist, especially in general relativity or quantum field theory, you should learn lots of math, and you will find advanced classes in abstract algebra, topology, and differential geometry quite helpful.

However, you say that you are interested in condensed matter. Certainly you will need lots of math, but it is mostly applied math, and you will be taught what you need to know in your graduate physics program. The admissions committee will look favorably upon any double major, but your statement of purpose in you application should speak to how your elective major has influenced how you think about physics, and helped you choose an area of specialty. You should also describe any cross disciplinary research you have done, as this will show that you know how to integrate ideas across fields and bring a new perspective to the department. You can do this with either math or chemistry as a double major, but it seems that chemistry is more closely related to your interests as a physicist, and a solid knowledge there will be beneficial in both graduate school and your career.


Differences between review Perspective and conclusion Sorry if this is a simple question, but I am new to scientific writing. I noticed that some review papers uses a "Perspective" section as the final part of review (with no conclusion section) while others have a conclusion.

Since I understand what both means, my question is whether I can cite from the "Perspective" section? Does it matter whether it is not a traditional conclusion?
Thanks.

I think that a perspective section of  a review at best offers material to reference to at best in the introduction of your work. The things likes "currently there is renewed interest in ..... and bla bla". Yes, cite it. Anyway you will cite the review, not a part of it.  As far the reference corroborates your claims (actual text claims, not results), you can cite what best serves the purpose.


How well is "I want to do research at a big company" received during a PhD application? Is it somehow "taboo" to mention planning on leaving Academia™ after having finished one's PhD program?-- I've been at a couple of interviews for PhD positions at which the following question was asked (or a variant thereof):

  What do you want to do after getting your PhD?

My answer was:

  I want to either find a dedicated research position at a company big enough to offer such (e.g. Google) and/or work as an independent consultant for different companies.

The follow-up question was always:

  Why do you want to work in industry instead of at university?

In both cases, my answer was:

  Getting a job at uni would be great, but planning my future on getting a tenure-track position is not a good idea and I don't want to spend ten years moving from city to city for temporary/adjunct positions.

Since I'm still looking for a PhD position, my interview skills are not the best; Is this the wrong approach to a question like this?

There is no taboo, but your answer was not very good.

Here are some specific problems:

Your answer implies an unwillingness to bear hardship.  You don't want the life of an adjunct professor.  But you are starting a PhD, and PhD students arguably have a similar sort of life.  Are you willing to deal with five years of low or no pay and very hard work?  Do you have a realistic idea of what that will take?  They might not be convinced that you do, based on this response.
The answer might be taken as denigrating the life choices of the person you are talking to.  The person interviewing probably had a career path similar to what you just described and you are essentially saying that would be a bad choice to make.  This might not come across so well.
Your answer focused on the kind of position rather than the content of the work you want to do.  There is some anti-industry bias in academia, but neither "I want to work as a consultant" nor "I want to be a professor" is a very good answer, honestly.  At this stage they want to know that you are passionate about the research.  Therefore you should focus on what you want to do rather than where.
Your answer may undermine your story about leaving industry.  You had a period of soul-searching that led you to leave industry for PhD study, but then you want to go right back to industry and aren't even interested in academic opportunities?  This will make it harder to convince them that you really are committed to this new direction.

My advice is be honest while trying to emphasize the most positive aspect of your honest opinion.

I would focus on what kind of research you really want to do with your PhD degree, and give an answer based on that.  The location of the work should be based on the opportunity to do the type of work you want.

If your honest answer is "I want to cure cancer and save lives, and I'm willing to work in industry or academia to make that happen" then great.  If your answer is "I want to work on self-driving cars, and industry is the place to be for that", then that is a fine answer.

If you don't have a defined idea of what you want to study and just want a generic sort of career in "research" I would rethink whether you are really ready to start a PhD.


Is it OK to turn down a postdoc offer (contract not signed yet) after getting a better postdoc offer I have received a postdoc offer from a world famous university (ranking ~ 60 worldwide) early June and accepted the offer via email. The university helped me applied for the visa an I have obtained the visa. The hardcopy of the contract, however, has not been signed. in early Aug. I received another interview from a top university (top 3 by some ranking) and got another offer. I have emailed the supervisor in the latter university and explained my situation and his idea is that it is OK to change to his offer since the work has not started. Is it OK to tell the first supervisor about my condition and ask whether he could permit my turning down on his offer?

While it may be legally OK, if your field is a small one, there may be damage to reputation as word of you withdrawing from an informal acceptance propagates.


Writing a research statement in mathematics without having any research experience It's pretty common that European universities ask for a Research Statement when applying to a PhD program. The problem is that at my current university where I did my undergraduate and where I'm currently in a masters degree program, I haven't had any research experience at all. My adviser told me that I should wait until enrolled in a PhD program to start worrying about doing research. (My B.Sc. is in physics and I want to work in mathematics - hence the M.S. in math - so he told me I should work on having a solid basis in maths first.)

I'm pretty sure I know in which area I want to focus my future work, but I haven't worked substantially in that area (it's quite advanced) and I'm far from being able to contribute academically to this area.

How should I formulate my Research Statement on my PhD application?

Your research statement should set out the background to the problems that interest you, what you think you could contribute to their analysis/solution, and an overview of the approach(es) that you anticipate that you might have to take. People want to be reassured that you understand the nature of research (ie. how it differs to an undergraduate programme of work), that you have a substantial and interesting problem in mind, and that you are potentially equipped to make an original and nontrivial contribution to knowledge.


Is it okay to ask a professor from another university for class lecture notes of a course that he offered on that university? I find two very interesting courses that were offered in the Spring 2019 semester at ETH Zürich. Unfortunately, their class lecture notes are not shared publically. I wonder if it is appropriate to email the professors and ask them for class notes.

You can always ask as long as you are polite.  There are many reasons that an instructor wouldn't want to release their notes, though.  Among them (there are others):

Their notes are copyrighted and don't belong to them, either because THEY are using another person's notes or because their notes are part of a textbook that they wrote and signed copyright over to.
Their notes include important assignment information for assignments that are given every year, so they don't want them in the wild
They want to protect their copyright and just straight up don't want to give you the notes

I, personally, would have no issue giving my notes out to anyone who asks, but I'd give the big caveat that you can probably find better resources.  Other instructors may just ignore you.  However, a polite query is fine.


Extension of international internship in France I am an undergraduate student from India and I was offered a year long research internship in France for my undergraduate thesis. However, since the French government does not allow for internships greater than 6 months my hosts proposed they'll get me another internship for the following 6 months in any of their partner organizations and I could continue my research on the same topic.

But recently I came across this blog where they mention (the fourth point) that "students cannot complete more than 6 months of internships for each year they are enrolled in school".

Can someone who has been in similar situation or is aware of the french government's internship policies please confirm if this is actually the case and if so does this apply to all students or only students of French universities. And if it is indeed true for all students is there any workaround for this?

You need to talk to your advisor and, perhaps the supervisor, also any department that deals with internships.

Believing a blog, written by someone who is not in actual charge of the internships for your institution, is not likely to have the correct information.

Also, if you have had 3 years of a course then that may well mean 3 * 6 months of internships may be possible... But that is detail to discuss with those who know for your position.


Author has published a graph but won't share their results table I am trying to reproduce some of the results in a paper from 2018 where the results were included in a graph but no exact values were given. There is no results table to go with the graph. I can't exactly compare what I produce with my guesses as to what the values in the graph are. They also did not specify one of the parameters used to produce the results.
I have emailed the authors multiple times and they keep ignoring my question about sharing these values with me and apparently do not have the parameter values as they don't have the logs any longer. I am unsure how to proceed with this. It's a paper published in a high-impact well respected journal.
Any help or guidance would be appreciated. I am not being rude or brash about the way I've asked for these results. I just explained I want to compare to them and can't use the graph because I need some level of accuracy.

There is no results table to go with the graph.

Use Datathief: https://datathief.org/
Despite the name, in most countries using Datathief is explicity allowed by copyright law.  Data cannot be copyrighted.

They also did not specify one of the parameters used to produce the results.

Two possibilities: it does not actually matter or peer review has failed.  When it is your turn to peer review, check for this type of mistake.  Sorry I cannot not help in this situation.
Paper authors can choose not to answer their email if they wish.


What's the real difference between a postdoc and a research fellow? (Which one is considered a 'better' experience?' As the title suggests, it's not clear to me the actual difference between a postdoc and research fellow, especially when looking at the typical academia road. I understand that (maybe?) there is a difference between how the two are funded, but which one that (naturally) shows more qualities that can be appreciated when looking for a job as a lecturer? Qualities like 'Independent researcher that can design and lead high quality research programs'.
Edit:
If it helps, I am talking specifically about the UK system.

Q: It's not clear to me the actual difference between a postdoc and research fellow, especially when looking at the typical academia road.
Correct. Often times there is not a difference.
Titles are institution specific (e.g., universities, national labs, funding agencies) and often sub-division within institutions (e.g., departments, even specific PIs based upon how they hire people with their institution's hiring mechanism).
Sometimes a title including post-doc or similar title (e.g., post-doctoral fellow) requires the person be within X-years of their terminal degree.
Conversely, as noted by others, research fellows or similar title can be permanent positions, be programs or even titles for experienced scientists, or be visiting programs for distinguished faculty and researchers from other places.
For example The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has a Fellowship Program for people (ranging from recent grads to tenured faculty) to gain experience applying science to policy.
You ask about demonstrating Qualities like 'Independent researcher that can design and lead high quality research programs'.
Rather than looking at title, demonstrate these qualities through outcomes.
For example, your CV might include (order the text based upon your CV's target such as a research or teaching school):

Position title, Place Name, supervised by Dr. Smith (2019 -2020)
Developed new widgets theory resulting X publications (depending upon your CV format, perhaps cross-ref here, e.g., Jones et al. 2019, Smith et al. 2020). Wrote grants for $XX,000 and managed the widget research project. Mentored Y peons. Presented results at XYZ. Developed and taught new course, Widget-ology. List other relevant outcomes to the position you're applying for.

Of course, list your grants, presentations, and publications in their own, respective sections of your CV.
Depending upon your subfield, the Place Name and the PI you worked under can be given a lot of weight or little weight compared to your outcomes (e.g., pubs, grants, technical skills).
Sometimes Position Title can carry weight, but these are usual for hard to obtain fellowships that are also captured in other parts of your CV (e.g., a US NSF Postdoc Fellowship that you obtains as the PI would also be listed under Grants on your CV).
Compared to a position's nouns (e.g., titles, places, PIs), actions usually carry more weight.
For example, publishing a first authored paper in Science or Nature would outweigh where you had your post-doc fellowship.


Reviewing demo papers, poster papers or extended abstracts I have a fairly straightforward approach to reviewing papers: I start by figuring out the main claims the paper makes, and figure out how those claims are proved. From there I start "zooming in to the details". But the primary question is always: does the paper make a claim, and if so, is it proved?

However, some tracks of conferences do not require a full paper. Instead, they require short form papers or extended abstracts describing what the authors will do at the conference. For instance, describing a poster or a demo they will present.

What are some general criteria/strategies for reviewing such papers? How can I come to a well-reasoned decision to reject, if there are no "mortal sins" (like a flawed evaluation) for such papers?

IMO, the following guidelines might help:

Extent of novelty
Quality of the figures and tables
Dedication

Although the third point may seem a little fuzzy, it can be easily observed on sight, especially in the case of poster presentations.


How to write better teaching evaluations? As an undergraduate student in the United States, it's evaluation season. While I understand that evaluations are supposed to help the course staff improve for future semesters; poorly worded questions can sometimes get in the way of understanding what they are looking for. I'm looking to get a better idea of what sorts of feedback are the most useful.

What are some things you look for in a good evaluation?

I love that you're asking this, because we talk a lot here about how to respond to evaluations, and sometimes about how to get more useful responses, but not much about what students can do.  I'm going to assume that your goal is to help the professor improve future versions of the course.

The most useful things you can do when giving feedback about a course are to be concrete and to avoid subjective judgements about pedagogy.

Concrete is probably obvious.  General complaints (or compliments, for that matter) just don't give any information about how to proceed; things like "this professor is terrible" or "the lectures are unclear" are going to be ignored, even if the professor really wants to improve.  It's a lot more useful to pick one specific thing and focus on that.  Even if lots of improvements are needed, the professor is only likely to be able to make one improvement at a time anyway.  "It would have been easier to follow lectures if the professor had given an outline at the beginning" or "There was so much material each class that by the middle of it, I was having trouble remembering what happened at the start" are a lot narrower than "the lectures are unclear".

By subjective judgements, I mean things like "there's too much homework" or "topic X is too difficult for this course".  Most professors won't take complaints like those very seriously because we don't expect to agree with our students about what's too much or too difficult.  Instead, you want to present more objective evidence a professor might agree with: "I was spending 20 hours or more a week on homework, and most of my friends were, too", or "when we hit topic X, I was studying twice as hard as usual, and still struggled with it".

Even if you want to mostly give positive comments, it's still a lot more helpful to point out specific things that helped you, because it makes it more likely the professor will continue doing them (or maybe even do them more or expand on them).


Career change at 37: Should I start an Electronic Engineering MSc? I have a BS in Electrical Engineering (2010) and a MSc in Computer Science. I completed the MSc with distinction at a British university in 2011 and have worked here in various IT roles since.
Now, at the age of 36, I would like to change careers and would like to work as an electronic engineer. I'm confident I can excel in the new career. Would a good 1 year MSc in Electronic Engineering here at a good UK university help me find a job? If I start the master's it would have to be in Autumn 2021 and by then, I will already be 37.

Disclaimer: I don't know the UK job market, I'm from Germany.
I'd just apply for jobs that seem interesting to you, using your current degrees.
You got a solid background in EE from your BS, and your MSc shows that you have a broader knowledge and a somewhat interdisciplinary, scientific thinking, documented by the ability to switch from EE to CS. That should count as an asset.
What you don't have, is experience in electronics engineering, at least as far as we can tell from your question. But a year at university also doesn't give you that. So, you should find a way to convince the companies that you're capable of doing electronics designs at professional level.
My impression from the German job market is that companies desperately seek employees for hardware development, so they'll happily give people a try who are willing to do it.
Spending a year (or more) at university might be a fun time for you, but I don't think that necessary for applying to an engineering job. It might even be considered a weird decision by potential employers.
P.S. I myself have an EE diploma and a PhD in engineering and have always been working in IT, often in projects where EE knowledge was very welcome. A similar thing might work for you, just the other way round.


What Happens When Schools Cannot Provide A Placement Exam? I am attempting to pass a class by exam this term, due to the fact that this is an option provided by the school and I need to in order to stay on track. I did this the previous term, but due to a variety of logistical issues, it is always delayed.

Unlike the previous time, I have not heard any word back from the faculty regarding if they are able to provide a credit for prior learning exam (i.e., a placement exam) for me.

What if they are not able to do so in time? Do I (or other students who attempt this) have a right to ask that the course be waived or some other accommodation be provided?

Schools and even individual departments probably differ greatly on how they handle such issues, so your best bet is to talk to your academic advisor as soon as possible to figure out what your options are. At many schools the "director of studies" (undergrad or graduate) for a program has some latitude to waive requirements and allow students to make substitutions—I know that was certainly the case for me when I was an undergraduate student because I had come into the major with a relatively unusual background that meant I needed to replace some classes that could not be taken (I had taken similar courses in a different "track").


How to stop a researcher cutting corners in research? Some avenues of research require time-intensive research and experimentation (e.g.m sciences). For example, in my case, each experiment took 3-12 hours and I had to perform over 30 of them.

Often, this type of research is performed as part of a group, where group cohesion and harmony are an important factor.  If you caught a member taking "short cuts" in their research: for example, doing one trial of an experiment instead of several or, as an extreme case, slightly altering the results to better fit their model.

It is always good to speak to the person in question discreetly, but what if the behavior continues? Also speaking to them can cause disunity.

How would this behavior be remedied, while maintaining group harmony?

(Please note, I am not after opinions, but practical solutions, particularly if people have confronted this issue before, and I have heard of this happening before, but was not privy to the details.)

I find this question very interesting but difficult to tackle. It will be difficult to provide specific answers to a general hypothetical situation since one is left with too many unknowns. First, one could wonder what the policies at the university are like? Do they have a panel for scientific fraud, misconduct etc.? Are there guidelines in place?  Then, we deal with persons and each situation is unique. People cheat for a variety of reasons from fear and feelings of inferiority and inadequacy, through stress and peer pressure to the narcissistic or psychopathic. Thirdly, the severeity of the problem is on a continuous scale and the response depends where you are on that scale. This also holds for the reverse problem, what works in one place may not work in another for these reasons.

In your question you state you wish to keep harmony but in essence the fact that "you" are uneasy with someones less than adequate research methods is already disharmony. So regardless if you do or do not do anything, there will be disharmony, either you will feel bad or someone else will. So there is no painless way out.

As for the case. I can see that you describe a sliding scale for what I would call poor science (overinterpreting results) to actual falsification of results. In the latter case, it is clear, one "must" pursue the problem. How this is done will vary but I am sure there are guidelines in place either at the university level or at a national level (on my home turf the national science foundation provides such services).

In the case of someone producing poor science by either, for example, being too lazy to do the work or by jumping to conclusions, there can be only one way forward: to try to confront the person and have open discussions around the science (or lack thereof) to bring out the problem in the open. It may be possible to start a discussion group where you read and discuss each others manuscripts. Such discussions are useful under any circumstances to help improve the manuscript and spot problems before submitting to a journal. Under such circumstances the problems can be discussed (if they become solved is a different matter). My sense is that a person who is aware of their shortcomings is not generally fond of talking about them so you may end up having these discussions with everyone but the one you want to target.


Potential PhD supervisor expressed interest, then didn't follow up about meeting. Should I continue with admissions process or move on? After a Skype conversation and several correspondences with an Irish professor, the professor wrote that he will take me as PhD student.

Although we had agreed on which project to work on and we planned to discuss about research questions, we have yet to discuss about research questions and proposal. As I feel that he was really busy, I wrote him research questions to ask for his comment without having any prior discussion and mentioned that I need to make a decision if I am going to his University end of this month. Following that, he mentioned that I can put in Online application, will direct HR to advise me on Visa application, and maybe we would have another Skype conversation last Friday. In the email, he also sent me two papers and mentioned one research area of particular interest to be included as research questions.

However, the research area is really very new to me and so I told him in the last correspondence and ask him about time to have Skype conversation last Friday. I didn't hear from him since.

I really interested to go to his university. Now, Should I put in online application first or I should forget about this opportunity and move on?

Don't panic.  The fact that you haven't heard back from him shouldn't be interpreted as a sign that he has lost interest in working with you.  It's summer, and academics often take vacations or travel to conferences in the summer.  It often happens that they take much longer to reply to emails.

Go ahead with anything that you already know you have to do, such as submitting the online application.  It doesn't sound like any urgent action is needed from the professor - you just want to chat with him about research when he has time - so just wait for him to respond.  If you don't hear anything within another week, send another email.


Negative marks for mistakes I just got the grade for a problem sheet that we had to hand in. The grading of the TA seems really ... odd, to put it nicely (for example, 1 exercise consisted of 3 basic computations - I got the correct values on 2 of them, but on the third even though I plugged the good numbers in I just typed a wrong number for the final result for some reason and this "mistake" got me only half the marks for that entire exercise).

However, the following thing really baffled me, I have never encountered anything like this in my education so far: one of the problems had a maximum grade of 0 points (which I got). Furthermore, for making a mistake you would have ended up with negative marks. To me, this seems very unfair (basically taking points away from other questions which were solved correctly) and highly not pedagogical as I don't believe that students should be punished for making mistakes.

I was planning on bringing this up to the professor tomorrow, but I thought it would be good to get some opinions on this matter. Is this kind of behavior common? The field is Astronomy/Physics and the country is Netherlands.

I've seen such grading used for true-false and multiple-choice questions in an exam, where a right answer gained you points and a wrong answer cost you points, but I've never heard of a problem worth "nothing" that cost you points if you got it wrong.

Personally, I dislike such systems—I'd rather give credit than subtract for mistakes—but instructors often have broad latitude in the design and scoring of exams. Some schools do have rules with regards to specific situations (if I remember, there were some weird regulations regarding all multiple-choice exams at my old institution), but in the absence of those, professors are free to set grading criteria as they choose, so long as they are applied consistently.


Will this be a case of self plagiarism or will it annoy the referee? About 2 months ago, I uploaded a fairly long paper (P1) to arXiv and it is currently under review.

Now, I am writing a second paper (P2) on a somewhat different topic. But quite unexpectedly, it seems that to justify a single small step in one section of (P2), I will need a result that I proved in (P1). Unfortunately, this result in (P1) needs several lemmas before it can be proved and the proof of it takes up about 5 pages in (P1).

I have two choices:

1) Do the small step in (P2) by merely citing the statement of the result from my recently uploaded arXiv paper (P1) : But as I mentioned before, the step for which I need this result is a rather small one. Would it really annoy the referee (eventually when I submit this paper) if he/she is referred to 5 pages in a long paper on arXiv merely to justify a small step?

Ideally, I would have liked to keep the papers disjoint, but it does not seem like I can get rid of this one small step in paper (P2).

2) Copy down the entire proof of the required result from (P1), probably in slightly abridged format. But even then, this is likely to add at least 3 pages to the current paper and so it feels unethical (like self plagiarism / salami slicing or something like that).

So what should I do? Are my worries about option 1 (annoying the referee) unfounded? If you were a referee, would you be irritated if I referred you to several pages in a long paper to justify one small step?

Thanks

I have two choices:

  1) Do the small step in (P2) by merely citing the statement of the result from my recently uploaded arXiv paper (P1).

Yes, do that.

  But as I mentioned before, the step for which I need this result is a rather small one.

I'm not sure exactly what "small" means here.  If you mean that it would be easy to get around this step by doing something else, then sure: definitely consider doing that.  But given that you're contemplating attaching three pages of text, it seems that can't be right.  If you mean that this part of your argument takes only a small amount of space in your latter paper: so what?  If you mean that this step only contributes a small part to the result, then perhaps you might want to state the weaker result which does not use this step and then follow with a remark that using your other work the result can be improved.

  Would it really annoy the referee (eventually when I submit this paper) if he/she is referred to 5 pages in a long paper on arXiv merely to justify a small step?

I don't see why that would be annoying at all.  Virtually all significant contemporary mathematical work builds critically on past work.  Referring to the arxiv is ideal in one sense because everyone can access it: it is so much better than referring to your unpublished PhD thesis for the proof of a "technical lemma" (which happens frequently, by the way).  It would be easier for the referee if the other paper had already been published, but so what: things can move quickly, and most people do not wait for their past papers to be published in order to use those
results.  Because so many other people -- including leading people, whose work receives a lot of attention and is probably going to be essentially correct most of the time -- engage in this practice, by not doing so you would be slowing yourself down in a big way.

A conscientious referee would want to indicate whether or not she has read and vouches for the extra five pages or vouches for the result conditionally on the other paper.  What to do depends a lot on the situation: if in those five pages you claim to prove the Riemann Hypothesis then she will really want to take a look.  But reading five pages more is just business as usual for a referee.

  2) Copy down the entire proof of the required result from (P1), probably in slightly abridged format. But even then, this is likely to add at least 3 pages to the current paper and so it feels unethical (like self plagiarism / salami slicing or something like that).

Although I don't recommend the practice, I don't think it's unethical in the slightest, so long as you refer to the other paper.  Having your work be self-contained is a good thing.  Having everything you want the referee to read placed under one roof is also a good thing.  In this case I don't think that duplicating the material really saves anyone any time so I recommend against it, but you're not trying to gain any unfair advantage by doing it, so I have no ethical qualms about it.

  Ideally, I would have liked to keep the papers disjoint,

Why?

Anyway, are you by any chance a student or junior researcher with a supervisor?  This is a good question to talk to your supervisor about: there may be norms within your community or subfield that should inform your choice.


Is it okay to publish less and teach more during your PhD? (CS USA) Background: I read this Quora post where someone mentioned they TA'ed pretty much their entire PhD tenure and took up extra TA spots as well for the same because they really liked teaching. The person only ended up publishing 2 papers (very good ones) during their tenure because maximum amount of their time went in teaching (The person won multiple TA awards and Head TA positions).
Question: Is this something which is frowned upon?
Personally, I really love to teach and would love to devote some of my research time to teaching.

There are lots of good teaching-focused jobs in academia, for example faculty positions at small liberal-arts colleges, and lecturer-type positions in larger departments.  It sounds like this kind of job would appeal to you more than a job whose primary focus was research.  That’s great!  Go and learn about those jobs, find people who have taken that career track and talk to them, and start doing what you need to make yourself an appealing candidate for those positions.  Part of that last point is teaching, but it’s not really about teaching more, it’s about doing things that make your CV appealing to SLACs.  You need to do some teaching, but it’s going to look better if you advise an REU student or run a directed reading program than if you just teach one more section of a class you already teach.  See if you can find teaching assignments that add to your CV, eg if you have the opportunity to be instructor-of-record instead of just a TA, do that.  Finally, even if you have teaching-centered career goals, you still need to graduate!  So don’t overstretch yourself teaching at the expense of getting a solid thesis done.  Research expectations are different at SLACs, but they definitely want you to be able to supervise undergraduate projects and they want you to have a PhD, so you can’t neglect that aspect of your program


Does the name of the signing officer on the official transcript must match with the one on the envelope seal? I am helping in screening the admission materials. Some of the official transcripts were signed by the same guy who sealed the envelope, while others are not. Nobody seems to care about this issue, and I wonder if it is a common practice.

Generally, the transcript itself will be signed by someone with a title like Registrar, at least in the United States.  The signature on the envelope will be that of the university employee who mailed the transcript.  Sometimes, maybe even often, the signatures will not match, and that is likely OK.

If you are concerned about a particular case, contact the university that sent the transcript.  They can tell you who is allowed to sign the envelope, and may even provide a facsimile signature via email.


Can I use the sealed TOEFL score report I receive from ETS as an official score report ETS sends a score report to me after each TOEFL exam in a sealed envelope. And since I already have online access to my scores, I would like to know if I can use the sealed score report as an official score report, would it be considered official by universities? Or only test scores sent by ETS directly to the university are considered official.

Some schools will accept a copy of your test score report as an unofficial report of test scores. However, if this is the case, this will usually be explicitly stated in the admissions documentation from the university. If they do not specify that this is allowed, then normally only the report submitted directly by ETS is acceptable.


How can a freelance writer supply recommendation letters? Suppose, a BSc in Computer Science student has been doing online freelancing for the last 10 years. The teachers who knew him in his undergrad school are either retired, or dead, or doesn't have any contact with him.
Where can he collect recommendation letters if he wants to get enrolled in a graduate school?

Freelance workers can get reference letters from clients who are repeat customers over many years.  Business partners could also write letters.  If you are participant in any industry organizations, colleagues in those organizations could write letters.
If you do not have any of those relationships, you probably cannot get a letter without forming new relationships.


Can I take two consecutive classes simultaneously? For example, I would like to take Intermediate Spanish I AND Intermediate Spanish II at the same time.
Can colleges, in general, allow that? If my advisor says to me that they think it cannot be done, how can I insist and persuade them (without any illegal activity obviously)? Where do I see these policies?
This question is about US Colleges in general. Not about my specific college.

The policy will be in the prerequisite requirements for a class, in your case, Intermediate Spanish II.  In the U.S., you will find prerequisite requirements in the official catalog of the institution, and probably elsewhere. Somewhere in the official catalog there may be a policy about whether prerequisites can be overridden, and if so how.


How to avoid exceeding normal page limits after revision? I wrote a manuscript that was the maximum length (without any page charges) and sent it to the IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics. Now the revisions have come. I am in the process of revising it, but I see that after revision there may be an addition of 1 or 2 pages more. Now for these 1 or pages I have to pay approximately $250 which I don't have. How do I avoid this over-length after incorporating all the revisions?

How do I avoid this over-length after incorporating all the revisions?

There are a few tricks that authors typically use to reduce a manuscript's length (especially for conference papers with hard page limitations), but none would be sufficient to shorten a paper by 1-2 pages, and some of them might be nulled by the copy-editor. Moreover, the changes would be so substantial that the reviewers might require a second round of major revision.

Therefore, if you really can't afford those fees because, e.g., you don't have departmental funds, my suggestion is to ask the publisher if they can waive your overlength fees.


What is the workflow of an editor in this case? I am rather new to the academic so I am bit insecure about the whole process. I have a small question regarding the publication process.

Context:
Recently I submitted a paper to a physics journal. Two referees were consulted by the editor and recently we received their comments. While one referee recommended publication after a small remark was answered the other referee recommended against the publication. He did not criticize the validity of our work and only said that our manuscript did not add any new physics to the literature. In our rebuttal letter we showed that in fact our approach is very different from the literature (one of the motivation to do the study) and we come to different and new conclusions compared to the present literature.

Question:
Recently we resubmitted our manuscript together with our rebuttal to the comments. I saw that our manuscript was sent to one referee. So my question is: what is the workflow of the editor in such a case? Did he sent the manuscript back to the referee who was against the publication or did he consult a new third referee? How is such a case handled by the editor?

Thank you very much

A concerned newbie to the field.

Cheers

You can't know. Having been an editor for the past decade, I'm pretty sure I've done all of the following three options:

I disagreed with the reviewer who said that there is nothing new in the paper and ignored that person in the second round of reviews.
I agreed with the reviewer who said that there is nothing new in the paper, felt that the comments by the other reviewer had been addressed, and didn't send the paper to that other reviewer again because it would just be a waste of their time.
I couldn't figure out who is right and sent it to a third reviewer to get a tie breaker and a second (actually third) opinion.

Point being: There's no way you can know. Have patience with the process and see what happens.


Should I list talks on my CV given by co-authors? On my CV, I have a few talks listed where I was not the presenting author (though I am a co-author on the work).

I have left them on my CV because as a graduate student, my CV is pretty slim. However the work in question was recently published in a journal, which now appears on my CV.

Should I delete all the talks where I was not presenting author? I'm not sure adding length to my CV is really appropriate since the information is fairly redundant (all the same line of research and similar talk titles, just different conferences).

The simple answer is no. You should not list items that you have not performed. In this case it would be listed under "talks" (equivalent) and that would be wrong. On th eother hand it represents work that you have done and as such it can be listed but probably under a different heading. The important thing is that it represents what has actually happened. I can see a heading called, for example, "Other work presented at conferences" and then list the talk and state that you was part of the work but that it was presented by someone else. Again, the importance lies in formatting it so that the actual conditions are very clear.

When the CV is short, I think such additions may make sense, later in a career these posts will lose their importance relative to other headings.


Does taking an academic job in Asia or Africa make it difficult to get a job in the US or Europe later? Many in this community know of the struggle of finding a job in tertiary education after completing a PhD.
However, there are many options available for people who are willing to work overseas in exotic locations in Asia, Africa, and the other developing areas of the world.

I am wondering if working overseas would be detrimental to someone's career. Is it hard to get back into the States/Europe after spending a few years teaching and writing in the developing world? How do search committees view someone who has been away in order to find employment? Let's say the person asking has a PhD in education.

It's not a career killer, but it can make things more difficult.  If you are looking for research-oriented jobs, and are doing high-quality research, it should not make a difference (except in cases where your area is only popular in other countries).  What the other answers fail to mention, is that it can be a significant disadvantage applying to smaller/more teaching-oriented schools (e.g., most liberal arts colleges) from overseas.  Here are a few reasons:

Flying you in for interviews is more expensive.
Being able to teach well in the US system is important, and overseas applications tend to provide less evidence for this.
Many schools want to find candidates who specifically want to be at that institution, or at least are not likely to leave.  International applicants need to convince committees not just they want to move to the US, but would be happy at that specific school.
At least in my field, we are over-saturated with good domestic candidates, so search committees can afford to throw out applications for small concerns, like ones I mentioned above.

This is not to say it's impossible, it's just a somewhat harder.  In my field, where postdocs are common, my general advice to people who want permanent jobs in the US is to try to do their last postdoc in the US (or at least apply to US postdocs as a backup when applying for tenure-track positions).


Can I publish a technical paper on more than one publishing sites? Can I publish my technical paper on more than one publishing sites? The paper content is the same while only the formats differ. I am the author of the paper.

Short answer : No.

Long answer: Only under certain circumstances where you have explicit permission to do so. Be aware that even if you have permission to do so, there are many folks who take an extremely dim view of multiple publishing.


How can I explain my grades? I am studying Masters in one of the top IIT in India and looking forward to apply for Phd, and here I got a problem.

My institute follows relative grading. Faculties are allowed to assign grade themselves. Normally the student with the highest score in the class will be given (S-10 points). The students who score next 3-4 high scores will be given (A –9 points). It followed grade B (8 – points) for next 5-6 students who scores. The next 5-6 students having higher score will be given C (7 points) and followed by D (6 points) grade. All the remaining students will be given E grade (5 points). For elective courses, The situation is even worse. For some elective courses I studied, there were less than 15 students and so it is possible only for 3-4 students in total to get S and A grade. While applying for Phd, how should I have to deal with this? My Head of department agreed to provide me my position in her course.

How can I explain my grades?

Clearly, and with references: You have done a reasonable job in this post of giving us a basic run-down of how the grading system at your university works.  If you are trying to explain it to a university where you are an applicant, it would be useful to set out a document giving a brief but clear description of this system, and showing what rules correspond to the courses you did.  Explain this as clearly and simply as you can, and try not to make it too long.  Try to think like you are the person receiving this information, and ask what you would want to know to make it as clear as possible.

Also, remember that the university will not accept your word for this, so you should make proper references to the policies of the university where the grades were awarded.  Your university in India should have policy or grading documents that set out this information, so the relevant sections of those document should be included as an annexure, and you should make reference to them whenever you make an assertion about the grading rules in your courses.  Try to make it as easy as possible for the person reviewing your application.


Grad applications: mediocre grades from an ivy league (top 10) and outstanding grades from a smaller school; what should I do? I began my undergrad at an ivy league university but decided to transfer after one year.  It wasn't that the classes were too hard; I went through a bit of a mental health crisis w/ depression, which contributed to a mediocre average (81, if I recall correctly). It doesn't help that I also slept through one exam, earning me a 60 in a course in which I would have otherwise received a high-80.  I began to see a psychiatrist and a psychotherapist; the former prescribed me antidepressants and the latter recommended I switch universities.  The city in which I was studying did not suit my temperament whatever, and my therapist (rightly) thought that my condition would be ameliorated should I switch schools.

I took their advice, and now, two years down the road, after extensive CBT and adjustments to my medications, I am in excellent mental condition.  My grades have improved dramatically (CGPA: 92, and the CGPA of accepted students at the Grad programs I am applying to range from 83-87).   Additionally, I have been doing extensive research, I have been published in some undergrad journals (and am waiting to hear back from a more prestigious open access journal), have attended a few professional conferences, and am currently working on a thesis project with a professor, part of which includes (a) designing a course to be offered next term, and (b) assisting with lectures and workshops in that course (basically I'll be splitting the teaching workload with a full time prof for a second year course).

Soon, I will be applying to grad school.  I am worried that my application will be thrown out because it looks like I failed at a hard school and so I decided to go to an 'easier one.'  I only received 4.0(/20) credits from the first school, but still, I worry this will be a disqualifying factor.  So what should I do?  On the one hand, I would like to somehow indicate that my mental health was a significant contributor to my lacklustre grades and my choice to switch universities.  On the other hand, I do not want to give the impression that I am trying to cover up my own blunders with some sob story.  (Somewhat sadistically, part of me welcomes the possibility of not being accepted because of my earlier mediocre grades; part of me feels as if the fact that I'm the kind of person that CAN be so detrimentally impacted by depression is enough to prove that I'm not cut out for grad school).  Ideally, I would love for the application departments to only consider my current transcript.  That way I don't have to mention mental health nor do I have to worry about my application being thrown out for the reasons above cited.  Is this a possibility? More importantly, is this ethical??  I have my reservations.  Anyway I know mental health services at the undergrad level have dramatically improved in the last few years to the point that if you have a documented mental illness, some poor grades may be stricken from your record.  Is there a similar process for grad applications?

Thanks for reading this.  I haven't yet spoken to anyone about this particular worry, though it's been on my mind for the past few months.  I am happy to have written it down, even if there is no satisfactory solution.  I should mention this: even though grad school is a fundamental goal of mine (often I'll daydream about working on difficult problems at the graduate level), I am OK with the possibility that I just wont get into any grad program whatever.  It's a strange thing to think about, but where I am now, I like my life.  I did not like my life two years ago. Frankly, if I were offered a choice between (a) attending grad school but doing four years at my past university and (b) not attending grad school but getting to be where I am today, I'm pretty sure I'd choose (b).  At any rate, the choice would at least be very, very difficult.

Just apply and see what happens.  You can't change the past.

Typically a graduate application will explicitly say that you must submit transcripts from all universities you have attended (or "earned credits from").  So it is not appropriate to simply pretend that it never happened.

Grad school decisions would, in any case, be based mainly on your more recent work, so the first year of your studies will not carry much weight regardless.  I'd ask the question: considering students at your current institution whose records in their later years are similar to yours, are they successful at getting into grad school?  If yes, then I think you are in good shape.

There is no systematic procedure in graduate admissions for discarding grades that were affected by medical issues.  You can, if you wish, discuss the issue in your statement of purpose (or other similar essay), and it would be up to the admission committee to decide how to take that into account in considering your application.  However, my feeling is that you don't need to say much more than "I started at University X, it wasn't a good fit, I transferred to Y.  Now here are all the fantastic things I've been doing at Y..."

As you get ready to apply to grad school, you will want to have serious conversations with your faculty mentors. This is definitely something you should discuss with them (though you don't necessarily need to go into as much detail as you did in this post), but I suspect they will agree that it isn't a big deal.


Is it appropriate to add a co-author at the stage revise & resubmit? Context
I've submitted a paper - it was sort of a side-product of my main project - to a high ranked journal from an adjacent field. Recently I got a revise & resubmit that was close to a reject, but the editor sounded really interested in the paper being multidisciplinary. I'm suggested to contextualize my research stronger within the journal's field. I feel like getting one of my experienced in that particular field colleagues involved in the revision in order to get the paper accepted.

The question
If a person helps you a lot during the revision, are you allowed to include him as co-author?

Absolutely you can add a coauthor in revision, if there is good reason for doing so: in fact, I have recently done so myself on a paper where revision involved some new experiments with the aid of a colleague not previously involved.

Most journals that I know consider authorship changes routine and even explicitly support such changes by asking you to review and, if necessary, modify author lists as part of submitting a revision through their system.


How much modification in a manuscript is recommended after a major revision? I've got three months to revise my manuscript I submitted to a journal a few months ago. I received two highly detailed reviews, from which it seems that the manuscript does not show the desired big picture of my work. Both reviewers pointed out similar deficiencies, and I must say, both of them are right.

According to the questions, remarks and advices, I rethought the entire paper and started to rewrite it (being attentive to the reviews), however, I am not sure if it is acceptable to completely modify the whole manuscript. Obviously, the background, the results, the theories and everything concerning the main content would remain the same with slight modifications, but I think the restructuring of the content and even a completely rewritten introduction would be necessary.

So my question is:

How much modification is acceptable after a moderate/major revision and after the decision of rejected with the chance of resubmission?

As corey979 mentioned in the comments, major may really not be major at all, and it depends on the journal. Either way, when I received review with major revisions I did not entirely rewrite the article, but addressed the concerns that the referees made. A poor rule of thumb I originally was told was to make one change per comment and resubmit.

The take away is that you should now evaluate your work having received feedback. If the edits are indeed minor (spelling, word order, grammatical) fix those and move on. If the major reviews are needed because of missing information that you have or can easily obtain you can add it as supplemental in order to preserve the original article.

If the general problem isn't framed well then maybe rewrite just a paragraph or two of the Introduction and the Conclusions. Often you can make the big picture more transparent with just a few changes to these sections.

It is acceptable to change figure order and sections, but I would caution from departing too far from the original. If it was sent back for revisions then revise, if it was rejected then you may consider rewriting. Remember that you are telling a story, and the ideas need to flow as such.


What are some good books to read in order to improve my academic writing? So I am going to write my master thesis in psychology. It is expected to be of roughly publishable quality since I am a research master student. I always struggled with writing and am often overwhelmed with the vagueness of theories and concepts in this field. I often get lost and thrown of path without a good structure.
What books can you recommend me that are for "dummies".

The things I would like to improve and know more about are:

The right attitude for academic writing
Academic writing pitfalls (e.g. when does something become too speculative?)
Smart ways to structure the process
Ways to make my writing more readable and make it flow better

Are there recommendable books that address such issues that are considered standard in any way?

Different books work well for different people, depending on your natural writing style, how you think, and your writing process (long writing sessions or short bursts, frequent iterative revision to 'perfect' each sentence as you go, or drafting the whole thing and revising from start to end later, etc.).

I recommend first googling "thesis writing tips" and reading reviews of the books that pop up in the results (on Amazon, etc.)

Also you might find some ready-made lists of resources helpful, such as this one from UIUC:
http://www.library.illinois.edu/learn/research/writing_tips.html

In addition, there are some fundamental classics on general writing strategies that can dramatically improve your academic writing. One such classic is Zinsser's "On Writing Well" (http://amzn.com/0060891548).

You might also appreciate some one-off resources that offer advice about specific sections of a thesis, such as the literature review, methodology, analysis, results, and conclusions. Google "tips for writing [fill in section here]" and see what comes up.

For instance, doing this for "literature review" brings up resources such as this handout, from the University of Toronto:
https://ctl.utsc.utoronto.ca/twc/sites/default/files/LitReview.pdf

or this presentation from faculty at UCSD:
http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/student/student_grad/docs/How_to_Write_an_Effective_Literature_Review.pdf

or this page from the UNC Writing Center:
http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/literature-reviews/

In general, university writing centers exist for the very purpose of assisting students with writing needs. I highly recommend spending an hour at your university's center perusing their resources and learning about the types of support they provide. Try a consulting session with one or two of their writing assistants and see if it helps. Often a 1-hr consultation can help to correct some persistent trouble spots. They can provide actionable advice on everything from the right 'attitude' (ways to motivate yourself to write and to structure your time accordingly) to thesis organization, to grammar and style issues.

With regard to technical aspects, a helpful resource would be the APA Publication Manual, now in its sixth edition. Proper formatting seems a trivial after-thought, but appearances do matter in the academe. How you cite authors in a citation, or what part of the citation you italicize, can jump out at your reviewers (professors or journal peer reviewers, should you choose to submit the thesis for publication - which I recommend) and either enhance or hurt the overall impression about the quality of your written work. Good luck!