Writing Sample for Graduate School When submitting a writing sample for a graduate school application, what exactly are review boards looking at?

I ask, because when looking at my own writing I find it is difficult to judge beyond the grade I was given and when I can judge, there are different strengths and weaknesses.

For example, writing wise (clarity, concision, etc.), my strongest writing sample is on a topic that was written for a course in my field (Art History) but is still relatively tangential to the field itself (about visuality rather than Art History per se). That being said, topic wise, I have a paper that was written on the same topic as my fourth years honours thesis (still a work in progress) that speaks to the areas that I want to continue studying. It is still a good piece of work that received an A grade, but I personally feel that the writing and organization is weaker.

Which is better to send as a writing sample? The more on topic, but weaker piece, or the stronger tangentially-related piece.

I am only familiar with the humanities through my wife. When she reads writing samples for admissions she seems to talk about the quality of the research, organisation, and clarity. She doesn't seem to care about topic so much. It seems many Art Historians change their topic area early on during the PhD process in the US.


Is it okay to contact a professor for collaboration and say the goal is to publish? Say I'm in sitting in a research-type course and I like one of the ideas the lecturer talks about. I also have an idea for a nice research topic/application that I believe we can work on together.

Is it polite to just send him an email and say that I have this or that idea, and ask directly what he thinks about being able to publish it (is it a good enough idea)?

I'm a graduate student with some published papers, and overall I think that given the correct idea I could write a paper and get it published. But it still seems to me a little pretentious to just contact someone and ask directly if some idea I have is 'publishable'... on the other hand, I don't really want to work on some project that is not good enough for publication, so I would want his honest opinion regarding the prospects.

Of course, I would accept an answer such as 'maybe, I don't have enough information', but my main question here is if it's not too rude to ask about publication directly.

Thanks

(This answer builds on @Alexandros's comment.)  As I understand it, one of the principal merits of having "physical" courses and lectures -- I mean, both the lecturer and the attendees are affiliated with the same university in the same geographic location, and they all show up in a certain room at a certain agreed upon time -- in our technologically advanced age is to facilitate "analog" interactions of all kinds between the lecturer and the attendees.  Sending a proposal via email seems to squander the advantage of your physical proximity to the lecturer.

I would suggest simply asking to talk to the lecturer in person about the project you propose.  You can ask either in person or by email, whatever seems best or quickest.  In my opinion, the fact that you are "sitting in" on the course rather than (presumably) formally enrolled in it just means that you should be understanding that the students enrolled in the course should have priority in any scheduled office hours.  Assuming you're affiliated with the university in some way, I don't see why you should feel hesitant to contact the lecturer (as I said above).  By the way, most academics are very interested to talk further about topics related to their research-level courses: more often than not, they are more interested in that than all other kinds of student interaction.

In terms of the publication issue: YMMV, but I personally would not lead with that.  My motivations for collaborating with others are: (i) learning more about a subject of interest, (ii) answering interesting questions, (iii) writing up what we learned / did in a way that will be helpful to others, and so forth.  This is nicely aligned with wanting to publish papers, but that's not what I said and that is not my precise motivation.  To me, having a student mention "publication" in the first meeting would turn me off a bit as being overly mercenary and insufficiently intellectually curious.  But that is my personal perspective and also my perspective as a pure mathematician.  Still, I think that most academics need to be grabbed by the intellectual / academic aspects of your proposal in order to proceed with it, so I would expect most of the first meeting to concentrate on those.  If you don't interest the faculty member, there might not be a second meeting.

Conversely, if you meet several times with the faculty member to work on something, then he is interested enough to spend time on it, which is highly correlated with it being publishable.  In any event, I think there are no guarantees for this kind of thing: you never know whether something will be publishable until you do it and try to publish it, of course.


Does taking courses of various subjects matter in PhD admission? I'm going to apply for PhD programs of biology or biomedical science. I understand that I need certain semesters of biology, chemistry, biochemistry, and mathematics. Because I'm going to graduate in four years while double-majoring in math and biology, I can't afford to take courses of various subjects, as I can take, except for subjects belonging to math and science, only one semester of social study and humanities, two semesters of foreign language, and four semesters of PE. Since my college has quasi-open curriculum, there's no problem with the credit requirement of my school.

But should I take courses of various subjects for my PhD admission? Does variety of courses taken in undergrad matter in PhD admission?

If you are attending universities outside of the US, you normally wouldn't have much in the way of diversity—almost all of your courses are directed toward the general area of your major. So it's not that big a deal not to have too many outside courses.

In general, though, I also think that admissions committees do not place as much weight on courses outside the major as courses in the major. If you are a physics major, for instance, a C in a US History course is not going to be as problematic as a C in electricity and magnetism.


Why do you need to do a postdoc after getting your PhD? I never quite understood why you need to do a postdoc after completing your PhD. Is it like getting an unofficial second PhD?

No, it's not like a second PhD, because there's little to no documented requirements, no thesis, no defense, no coursework, etc.

In the 'old days' (prior to the squeeze on academic funding and exponential increase in PhD candidates), one took a post doc primarily to:

Learn a new skill, technique, or method
Dedicate a few years time conducting research to strengthen one's CV without the added stress of teaching and other tenure-track requirements.

Ideally, the post doc came out a very desirable candidate armed with a great research program and toolbox.

Today, a post doc is quickly becoming mandatory for academic-track scientists, as the pool of jobs shrink and the pool of candidates expand. It is not uncommon to find people doing multiple post docs, or people finding themselves in a permanent post doc (or research scientist) position.

While this is somewhat discouraging, the simple fact that funding is scarce and science can be expensive suggests that the ideal candidate has a proven track record and is likely to secure additional grants. Post docs provide one the time and resources to prove that tangibly.


My PI is irresponsible and I worry about my career as a postdoc I am a postdoc in life sciences in the US and have started my postdoc around 6 months ago.
I am at a great (top-10) university. I like the university, lots of smart people and friendly environment.
I love my work and plan to stay in academia. I am from europe and have left home just for the postdoc.

I am, however, very worried because my PI does not seem to bother too much about our career prospects.
Some points:

He is often away from the lab due to family-related problems. He spends a lot of time with his family (has 2 kids). Although that is great, he does not spend much time in the lab, forgets meetings, is not up to date with current research and often does not have time for supervision (this was the case even before the pandemic). He always comes up with some excuse but after a while it has become clear that his priority is just very much somewhere else than research.

Currently, the lab is supposed to write a grant. He has left that to us, he says that he is too depressed because of the current situation with COVID-19 to be able to focus on work.
This is very worrisome, because our future is dependent on the grant, yet at the same time
he wants us postdocs to go back to the lab as soon as possible (presumably to keep face and show the university our lab is active, while at the same time he does not seem to care about what happens to us postdocs).

In addition, we have currently submitted a paper (~2 years of work from the lab) which gets rejected from all top-tier journals.

He has a lot of good properties, he listens to our opinions, accepts criticism, leaves us a lot of freedom. As mentioned the university is great too. I am highly motivated and love research, but
worry extremly that I am just wasting my time. I have my own money for now but can't change labs easily and would prefer to stay at the uni.

What should I do?

Edit I do understand that as a postdoc it is important to be independent. I am. I have learned several relevant skills, have my own ideas, I am generally quite pro-active. But typically as a postdoc you can also join an environment which allows us to find your own goals within the work of the lab. My PI is just so out of touch with everything, that his ideas are completely outdated. He just does not take research seriously (even though he still wants me to publish asap again under the current circumstances). Hence he can't also give me any guidance (he suggests experiments which have been done many years ago already) and, worse, does not even bother to change that.

Edit2 The PI just fired the other postdoc in my lab. I am under a complete shock. Basically a mix of blaming the other postdoc for not advancing with the grant proposal (PI promised many times to finally get it together and work on the proposal) which was never really officially discussed as being our task to begin with. Yet he has the audacity to whine during the "crisis" meeting with me about how sad his family life is (his kids can't go to school which they don't like yada yada) and then to interrupt the meeting to go and play basketball with his kids. I have told him now that I want to have a co-supervisor and he has promised to reach out to people. He is so reckless, selfish, if he does not get it together I will change labs even if I lose my fellowship.

Of all you say, the only indication I see of irresponsibility is his desire, you say, to send you back to the lab before it is safe. The rest is understandable.

We live in perilous times. He may be entirely correct in focusing on his parental duties and may have no other option with child care essentially non existent in many places. Many people are depressed now, but it isn't a sign of lack of responsibility. "Forcing" you to write a grant can be a boost to your career and he might have wanted to do that in the best of times.

Not getting accepted into the top journals can be pretty common and may not be his fault, or at least not entirely.

And yet you say he has many good qualities.

As to what you should do, I recommend that you maintain social distancing for your own safety. But beyond that, just carry on as best you can and hope that the horrors of the current situation don't increase or become cyclic. Make sure that you don't burn bridges with your professor, as that will make your next career steps (after the pandemic) much harder.

Encourage the professor to deal effectively with depression if you can, and deal with your own if you feel those twinges.

You are in a bad situation. A worldwide pandemic tends to cause that. It is no consolation, but in other times and places it was much worse.

Another consideration you might make as to the level of his responsibility is how helpful he is at getting postdocs their next position. If he gives good support and they wind up in good positions, then you can put up with some things that wouldn't make sense otherwise.


Can a non-committee-member ask questions while watching a friend's PhD defense? I'm going to a PhD defense tomorrow and his topic and methods are sort of close to what I have in mind for pursuing myself, and I'd like to be an active participant during the talk; what is the typical etiquette to follow?  Do only the committee members ask questions during the defense?

This depends on your country, university, and department. In some places, questions by non-faculty are rare. In other places, the discussion can get out of hand.

As it sounds like you are only starting your research and that this is your first PhD defense, you may want to consider sitting quietly and watching and learning what happens. After the defense, you can contact the student, and any committee members, and strike up a conversation.


Has there ever been a strike of peer reviewers? I know peer reviewing is done freely and voluntarily, at least I think for the most part, so I am not sure strike is the best way of calling it, but it gives the idea. With all the recent discussion about open access and overworked researchers that relate to the publishing cycle, I was wondering if there has been any protest, or strike, or talks for a strike by peer reviewers.

Researchers have refused to review for Elsevier, as part of the Cost of Knowledge boycott, which

Objects to exorbitantly high prices; and
Objects to measures that restrict free information.

The initial success of the boycott was summarised in 2014 by Sir Timothy Gowers (Fields Medal recipient):

  A little over two years ago, the Cost of Knowledge boycott of Elsevier
  journals began. Initially, it seemed to be highly successful, with the
  number of signatories rapidly reaching 10,000 and including some very
  high-profile researchers, and Elsevier making a number of concessions,
  such as dropping support for the Research Works Act and making papers
  over four years old from several mathematics journals freely available
  online. It has also contributed to an increased awareness of the
  issues related to high journal prices and the locking up of articles
  behind paywalls.


First authorship in different fields In most fields I'm familiar with, first authorship is for the lead author. But I've heard that it wasn't the case in some fields. Is that true?

In different fields, the order in which authors are listed may be interpreted differently, that is true. In some (math, CS) authors are generally listed alphabetically, so you can't conclude anything from the order. In some fields the final author listed is the head of the lab in which the work was done. This person may be responsible for a lot or a little of the actual contributions.

In some fields the first author listed is understood to be the one that did the majority of the work, but in some of those fields the first author listed is also just assumed to be riding on the coattails of the last (supervisor) author.

It is very complicated. In some fields people fight over the ordering very bitterly and many questions come here for "resolution", which we can't provide.

In some fields, sole authorship of work derived from doctoral studies is the norm and others who help get acknowledged, but are not co-authors.

There have been a few papers, in the sciences, in which the list of authors is longer than the paper itself. I think there was one case where there were so many authors that it ran afoul of the journal's page limit. Imagine how many people contribute to major work at CERN, for example.


How to fend off someone putting their Name on my work? I'm a postdoc and a guy who used to be a part of our group dropped by today and said repeatedly that he wanted to collaborate with me and that he's too busy with other commitments to do any work. I suggested a project where he could write up some of his recent experiences in the area (I know of a publication that did something similar to this that we could use as a framework and am working with another man in our group on this), and he had no interest in that saying instead he was more interested in the data analysis I'm doing.

The message I got was "I don't have time to do anything, but I want to be a co-author".
He was "generous" enough to say he "doesn't need to be the first or second author".

How would you handle that?

During my PhD I had one of my supervisor's former students do this to me. He got 3 publications out of me, which he didn't understand well enough to present at a conference (he insisted that I create slides for him and write a word-for-word script for him to deliver - the conference was in his area of the world).  I eventually put my foot down and refused to have him as a co-author again (my supervisor was pushing to put his name on a 4th publication, I think she wanted to help him get tenure and / or was repaying some debt to him with my work).

I don't want to spend time trying to defend my work from people who didn't contribute putting their names on it, but I'm not sure the best way to get rid of him. My PI thinks quite highly of him.

I'm going out with my PI casually for dinner tomorrow and am planning to bring this up and ask him to be explicit about his authorship policy (my PI reserves the right to determine authorship of work from our lab).  I don't want to seem whiny, but also don't want to spend time / energy worrying about this.

Am I overly anxious about this?  Maybe it doesn't really matter as long as I'm the first author?  If that's the case, I'm tempted to just put everyone I know on it (I don't want to reward this guy for being obnoxious).

Your situation sounds messy. I think most will agree that the basic prerequisite for co-authorship is intellectual contribution to the manuscript . To add authors for thanks is common but really not a practice to endorse. If someone comes to me and asks to be a co-author, the obvious response would be: "What will be your contribution?" If there is no clear contribution other than, say, "Read the manuscript and provide input" then the answer should be "No, thanks". In your case, it sounds as if there is no major point in even having a discussion.

In fact, your case reminds me of a colleague of mine who ends up in all sorts of strange situations. His problem is that he is too nice and does not know the word "no". I realize it may be hard to set up strict rules for these things if your immediate surroundings do not subscribe to them, but I think you should know that you have solid grounds for being more strict about adding unnecessary co-authors or letting people into a project without a clear picture of why.

If you are first author on a paper, it seems to me you will also be the person deciding how the work should materialize. I think you need to make your own mind up where you want to draw the line. you will benefit of making a decision on how you want things run. If you want to deviate from this later on, then it is still your decision and no-one else's. I think this is what you (and most of us) really want - to be in the driver's seat. So follow your instincts, they seem sound to me.


Having the knowledge of a graduate student but not having the degree requirements for graduate school? Let's say that you're a 27 year old autodidact who has gained enough knowledge in a particular field of the formal sciences - like mathematics, for instance - to be able to take the highest course number from the selection of graduate courses for math.

Now this autodidact wants to enter university for the first time. However, from his perspective, he thinks that it would be a waste of time to restudy what he already knows.

I'm personally wondering if there is a way to demonstrate that he is capable of taking graduate courses so that he could apply for a graduate degree without having to study all the courses at the undergraduate level again.

Also, I'd like to add that this question is really hypothetical. It's just something I pondered on my way to school today.

If you're asking about graduate school in the US, probably the single most significant thing you can do is to take the GRE subject test for math (not the math section of the general test!), and score well on it. This test covers a broad spectrum of material that is taught in a typical undergraduate math curriculum, and so if you get a good score, it strongly supports your claim that you have the level of mathematics knowledge required to enter grad school. Without that key piece of evidence (i.e. a good GRE subject score), graduate admissions committees are likely to look at your statement that you have the knowledge to take graduate courses, contrast it with your lack of an undergraduate degree, and conclude that you're full of hot air, so to speak.

Now, of course there is more that has to be done to actually get yourself admitted. In my own field of theoretical physics, even a 990 (the top score) on the GRE isn't enough to get you into a good grad school by itself. I would imagine the same is true for the top schools in math, though perhaps at a less competitive school, it might be. But I think to be safe, you should assume that you'll have to present some other sort of evidence of accomplishment that could be viewed as equivalent to an undergraduate transcript. You'll also need recommendation letters and various sorts of essays and forms. But a lot of that can vary from school to school, and is more likely to be negotiable if you talk to someone in the department. The GRE subject score is the one thing you really need to get your foot in the door, so to speak.


Applying for a postdoctoral fellowship in the UK, how can I find a host institution It's been hard to find postdoc and I found a postdoctoral fellowship (in the UK) that I want to apply to. Since I do not live in the UK, it is required to find a host intuition within the UK that should agree by sending a formal approval.
Research Fellowships must be held at a UK higher education institution/university in a  department that can show it is capable of fully supporting the research project and researcher. It is the responsibility of the applicant to contact the host institution and gain the formal approval from the relevant head of department or school before submitting an application.
I am not sure where to go from here, should I reach out to professors (as potential PIs)? or I should email the HR of universities and get more information?
If I get the fellowship, will I be the PI of the project or I will have supervisor?

In general, you should reach out to the person you'd like to collaborate with and go from there. Email professors you're interested in - they can help deal with the bureaucracy of their institution (approval to host etc). Bear in mind that some universities set stringent internal deadlines on applying to certain fellowship schemes.
Whether you'll be PI depends on the individual grant scheme. You'll have a line manager (most likely the professor you apply with) but not necessarily a supervisor-supervisee relationship.


Accused of cheating on a class that I passed a year ago. Can my "pass" be revoked? Could this missing prerequisite affect other classes I have passed? I’ve been accused of cheating in a class that I passed a year ago, and since then I have proceeded to pass the next class in line after that class. This class was a first year class, I’m now in my second year and I’m unsure on what this means. Are universities allowed to revoke a class that I have passed and other that I have passed. I don’t understand why that would be going back through an assignment from a year ago. What happens to the classes that I have passed since then that relied on the class that I am accused of academic misconduct.

Universities have revoked degrees and titles on the basis of fraud, years or even decades after granting them. This is certainly allowed. The bar for revoking a class should be expected to be lower so this seems perfectly fine. Of course only your university can tell you the finer details of their policies.


When to take questions during a thesis defense? I am going do do my thesis defense next week.
I am not nervous.
On the contrary, I am so over-relaxed that my instincts tell me this will cause a problem during my defense.

I am not sure when to take questions, though:

Should I accept the questions during the presentation or should I say that I will answer the questions at the end?
I am thinking of going with the second option, answers at the end. However, what if a jury member asks me a question during the presentation?

Edit: My thesis is on computer science. I'm going to defend it in English.

The following is written from my perspective and it reflects my biases.

If someone feels the need to ask a question during your presentation, chances are it is because you failed to explain something properly and they don't want to get lost. I, for one, hate it when a speaker just barrels through difficult material and I have to struggle to keep up (one time, the speaker pulled up a slide full of long lines of lambda calculi and went "as we can clearly see here..."; avoid that). Go through your talk plan carefully, identify the tricky issues, and make sure that you don't have hidden assumptions lurking anywhere. If in doubt, assume that the audience won't be able to follow you unless you explain things carefully. This much should ensure that all the questions come at the end and, more importantly, that they are substantial (i.e., none of this "I didn't quite catch your definition of blah, can you repeat it please?").

As for thanking your advisors, it's appropriate if you keep it short (like 20-seconds-tops short). You already have the acknowledgements of your dissertation to wax poetic all you want.


Is it possible to make minor (making a space between two words) proof corrections after already submitting a proof reading to a journal? After submitting back an online proof reading corrections of an accepted paper, I found a very trivial mistake; just making space between two words. The words take vague meaning if left not spaced. Is that possible to make one more proof read to correct this typo error?

Email the production editor as soon as possible that you've found this extra correction. If it's still not inconvenient for them, they'll probably fix it. However, because it's such a minor error, you should be ready for them to say "it's too late" as well. This probably won't lead to an errata or corrigendum - it's just too minor.

If your previous reading had contained lots and lots of corrections, it's possible they're already planning to send you a set of second proofs.


Is it okay to send a thank-you-for-teaching to a professor who taught a course a few semesters ago? In my first semester of Ph.D., I took a course about machine learning (ML), because I find it very fancy and interesting (however, my field of research is theoretical physics, far away from ML).
The professor who taught ML was an old and super cool guy. He made this course a real fun to learn. Now after one year, as a side project, I wrote a "deepfake" ML algorithm (of course, it had already been done, and I took a lot of help from GitHub), but still, the content that I learned in my ML course was very helpful in all this process.
I was about to write an email to the professor who taught the ML course. I wonder if it is okay to send something like, "Professor, I am really very thankful to you for putting all the effort into making the ML course easy and fun. Here is what I have achieved from the content that you taught me [attachments]"?

Yes, it is entirely appropriate and will be appreciated. Let the person know a bit about your current activities - especially successes.
Even better, if it weren't for the pandemic, would be to pay them an in-person visit during office hours. Too few people get a chance to thank their important mentors, I'm afraid.


Valuing one field more than another As my field, Computer Science (CS), has many sub-areas and specializations. I found myself having a not-so-good impression about different areas within CS. For example, I see working on Software Engineering as a waste of time while working on Artificial Intelligence (AI) is much more worthing an investigation.

This is not a field-specific question, I wish hearing whether this exists on other fields as well. Is it common in academia for individuals to find some subfields of a more broader research area more interesting and relevant than others? Relatedly, how does one avoid thinking that way?

Just like the grass is always greener on the other side, it is somewhat usual for people to think that their particular area of expertise is somewhat more valuable than others. I have seen it in all fields I have heard of…

And it's not restricted to academic life: I'm sure the cardiac surgeon feels that his work is so much more important than that of the family physician, while the later thinks that he's the one tasked with stopping epidemics and diagnosing the important stuff to save lives.

But I'm sure you already knew that… so, what is your question exactly?

Edit: how does one avoid thinking that way?

The most difficult part, for me, in thinking objectively about other fields is to be able to correctly identifying the challenges they face. I find that it is altogether too easy to think “hey, that's a trivial optimization problem” or “know that they know the compound formula, I wonder why it takes them so long to synthesize it”. Better overall understanding of other fields helps a lot avoid this way of thinking. It takes a lot of effort to acquire such a broad general knowledge: reading, listening to conferences outside your area of expertise, chatting with colleagues, …


What do you call a paper that summarizes a set of mathematical formulas? A set of formulae have been collated with brief explanation for each pertaining to a statistical method called Test of Hypothesis from a very few set of sources. I would like to publish this work on ResearchGate. But what will I call it? It is neither research paper of novel method nor a standard survey paper. I don't suppose this is a technical report either. Yet I do believe this material would be helpful to many. What may I publish this as?

My comment turned into answer: you could call it an "expository paper", especially if it contains some more descriptive details on how/where to use/apply these formulas.

At least in my field (mathematics) such papers are not unheard of. These are often published in journals more aimed towards such papers with a broader audience, for example the American Mathematical Monthly or Expositiones Mathematicae. These papers can be of great value as a clear and easy reference to results in a particular field; on the other hand, they may not quite be considered research papers.


Suspicion that fellow PhD student lets someone else do his job I have the definite suspicion, that a fellow PhD student in my department hired someone else on a freelance cloud working platform to do his work. I saw him/her using the website of this platform several times and even found a very specific job posting. Despite the limited details in that posting, I'm 99 % sure that it is from him/her.

How should I behave? Should I confront him/her first, or should I directly go to his/her advisor? How to substantiate my suspicion and be 100 % sure? Should I fake-apply to that posting to get more details?

As asked in the comments: The suspicious job posting is about developing new research and is not related to editing or proof-reading etc. The posting offers several tens of thousands of dollars.

EDIT: I would like to thank you for the very good answers. You've all really helped me deal with this case. All the answers are somehow correct, but I accepted the answer that suggested to me, what I finally did. Our university has confidants/obmbudspersons for unethical academic practices to whom I have reported the suspicion.

First of all, I'd like to express my opinion that none of us here have the moral authority to tell you what to do, and you should be suspicious of anyone telling you that you definitely should or should not do this or that. This situation is very serious and you are the one who will be living with the consequences of your actions, not us anonymous (or not) internet strangers.

Instead of telling you what to do, I thought it may be helpful to list the choices you have and each one's pros and cons. Here they are as I see them:

1. Continue to investigate by sending a fake application to the job posting.

Pros: through such an investigation you will be helping (if your suspicions  prove correct) to expose a very serious ethical breach (bordering on a criminal offense of conspiring to commit fraud) by the student in question, and helping to rid your department, university, and the academic world of someone who clearly has no business being there.

Cons:

You will likely incur the wrath and hatred of the student you will be investigating (and possibly his family members, friends, and even other grad students in the program) later on when he finds out you were the one who sent the fake application that helped expose him.
You may very possibly be suspected of sending in a real application, which would implicate you in unethical behavior yourself and cause you to get in serious trouble. Make sure to document your activities in a way that clearly establishes your honorable intentions. Even then, you could end up being accused in some unexpected way of causing harm or even doing something illegal by your meddling.
By choosing such a high level of involvement in what sounds like a very messy affair, you may cause yourself a lot of wasted time and emotional entanglement later on (e.g., being debriefed or interviewed by university officials and administrative investigation committee, even having to testify in court some day).

The bottom line is that this course of action carries a significant amount of risk and potential for trouble for you.

2. Continue to investigate by asking the student about his activities as one of the answers suggests.

Pros: can't think of any. Someone so immoral would almost certainly just lie and you will gain no information.

Cons: by asking him what he's doing you will alert him to the fact that his current deception scheme is too easily detectable, making it likely that he will come up with a better, less transparent scheme, and ultimately helping him to defraud the university.

3. Do nothing, just ignore what the student is doing and mind your own business.

Pros: no work for you, no wasted time and emotional entanglement in a messy scandal, no colleagues who hate you for getting them expelled from school, etc.

Cons: you will have to live with the knowledge and potential guilt and shame associated with having known about the student's possible unethical and maybe illegal behavior and done nothing. The student will go on to fraudulently receive his PhD and your university'a reputation may suffer as a result. Your own degree may be worth a little less as a result. In a small but real way, all of society will suffer.

4. Report your suspicions to the chair of your department and/or the student's advisor and/or other appropriate university officials.

Pros: you don't become involved in the affair in a messy, major way, but will likely lead to the student being exposed if he is in fact guilty. You will also know that you did the morally right thing by reporting the student and won't have to live with the guilt and shame of having done nothing.

Cons:

you may still eventually become known as the person who helped expose the student (you can try an anonymous complaint if you want to keep yourself completely out of the story, but I think that will be less effective and would make it harder to prove the student's guilt), with the possible animosity and other negative consequences I described above. However, the level of animosity would likely be less great than in the scenario where you submit a fake application.
you won't get the satisfaction, excitement, and superhero feeling that you might get by becoming actively involved in the investigation and playing private detective as in the suggestion to submit a fake application.

To summarize, you probably want a recommendation about which action to choose, but as I said, I don't think it's right to offer one. You will have to make your own decision, but hopefully the analysis above may still be helpful. Good luck!


Do I need a conference paper to vouch for a tool I built in my undergrad when applying for a PhD? So basically, as an undergrad it's quite expensive to attend conferences. My paper got accepted to a more specialized IEEE conference. I had previously built simulation tools from scratch for computational EM (a more graduate-oriented topic), however I hadn't quite discovered anything new. I am also quite confused if having a conference paper to vouch for these tools will provide any additional benefit when applying for PhD as opposed to just showing that they indeed do work. If yes, then is it worth spending the money to present my work?

Having published a paper does have a positive impact on PhD applications. (But you don't "need" one in the strict sense - it is quite possible to get into grad school without having published.) But the reason is not because it "vouches for" your tool working. In most cases, the reviewers never get to try to execute your code, so it can hardly speak to that.

It does, however, indicate your ability to produce something novel, of interest, and to describe it in a manner that receives the approval of other scientists in the area - in other words, your ability to do research. Which is exactly what the PhD admissions committee will be looking for.

Whether you think that is worth the conference costs is a matter of personal judgement - but you should first look for other avenues of funding, such as your advisor or a travel grant from your university or the conference or a third party promoting undergraduate research etc.


In a CV, where to display conference articles that became journal articles Some conferences select articles for publication in a journal. In my CV, I have a section "Peer-reviewed journal" and another section "Conference". Where should I put such articles?

Only in "Peer-reviewed journal": why not, but then the conference contribution will be missing
In both sections: it is factually true, but in way, artificially, increases the list.

A similar question has been asked [1] but I understand there is a difference here: only the best conference submissions are selected for publication in a journal. It is not an automatic.

[1]  Should a conference paper in a journal be considered a journal article?

Edit Requested clarifications:

Field is mechanical engineering, where journals are more important than conference (generally).
The conferences have their own proceedings, plus a few papers are selected for an independent publication in a journal (that has somehow partnered with the conference).

Tl;dr: Put (published) conferences papers that are subsequently published as journal articles in both sections of your CV.
A journal article is a publication, as is a conference paper, regardless of whether the article was derived from the paper. Each publication is a contribution to science, so list both on your CV, they're both accomplishments. You can sort manuscripts by prestige of publication type, e.g., book, book chapter, journal article, conference paper, unpublished peer-reviewed manuscript, other works, work in progress, etc., optionally omitting some categories and providing incomplete listings for others (e.g., you might want to list only key works in progress). You can also cross-reference to avoid artificially inflating your accomplishments. For instance,

Journal articles
[1] anderstood (2020) A, Journal, 1(2), pp1-10.
[2] anderstood (2019) B with C, Journal, 5(7), pp59-76. Preliminary results appeared in [3].
Conference papers
[3] anderstood (2018) B, Conference, Published, pp20-27.

Note: I presume that journal articles derived from conference papers must add new material. This mightn't be the case for unpublished conference papers. In such cases, you could list both manuscripts and cross-reference, but it depends whether the unpublished work carries prestige, i.e., whether it is considered a (sufficiently large) accomplishment, which is field dependent.


Is it okay for a lecturer to set an assignment about the products of a company he works for? I just found out that the lecturer of an undergraduate course I'm tutoring in has given the students an assignment to evaluate a product from the company he works for.  To evaluate it, they need to read articles written by people in his company and write up a report.  They don't have alternative assessment options.  Is this okay?  It feels weird to me, but I suppose there's nothing wrong with it?  I just wish I'd known before because I would have mentioned conflict of interest to them, but we presented the papers as straight research papers (when they were actually written by the same people who sell the product).

It would be ethically questionable if the person who assigns the question gets to benefit from the assignment, directly or indirectly. For example, if students had to buy a product and the lecturer gets a cut of the revenue from his employer. Or if the company later uses student reports to improve the product or its marketing, and the instructor benefits from this.

On the other hand, if it's just an exercise in evaluating articles and writing reports, then what the topic really is doesn't matter all that much. After all, we give homework on all sorts of completely made up and contrived topics; why not use a real-world testcase, in particular if the instructor is familiar with it and can give actual and informed feedback? You might learn more from this example than you might if the instructor made up the documents you have to evaluate, or if you had to evaluate things the instructor is only marginally familiar with.


About sending email for postdocs after finding a potential mentor Two weeks ago one of my emails was replied by a professor who expressed his interests in my work and consider me as a potential postdoc. He told me that he is going to apply for funding then will inform me.
At this moment, I do not know whether I keep sending emails to other professors for postdoc position or wait for email from potential mentor?

I recommend that you keep all your options open up until you have something firm. There are too many things that could go wrong for you to make assumptions that you "have" a position. Interest was expressed. Action was promised. A contract was not offered.

Don't mislead people, of course, but don't drop your other efforts.


Is it a common practice to do all the work for PhD supervisor? My PhD supervisor claims being first author of all the work I do. I also write research proposals for his grants and the rest of our group, he just redirects their emails to me and pretends that he's writing it.

He refuses to start my PhD programme - no idea for a possible subject.

I'm depressed, because I do not get ANY training or advice from him, just "write something fast with a big impact". I haven't even got a specific subject to work on. We basically meet each other during conferences or holidays. He does not correct any mistakes and barely knows what I'm actually doing. I'm about to quit my PhD completely... or leave academia just afterwards.

For obvious reasons I can't compare this situation with other universities, so that I'd be grateful for your opinion.

Assuming all that you state of your supervisor is true, i.e.,

Claiming primary authorship of all of your work
Making you write grants and claiming it as his own
Refusing to start your PhD programme

Then you met up with one of the classic cases of an abusive supervisor. If that is the case, then continue no further as his student. Spare no time in moving away as you won't make much progress (at all) with such an advisor.

I feel sorry for the situation that has caused you to despise the PhD degree itself. My honest advice would be to change your advisor, not your path. If the current advisor claims primary authorship over your writings and grant proposals, then it is only a proof that you are really a worthy candidate for a PhD! Quit your supervisor, not your PhD!

Think deep and make your decision wisely, as it is yours to make.


How to establish collaborations with academics who you do not know where you contribute to their research projects? Lately it feels like I haven't been doing enough both personally and professionally. I am very productive at both my place of employment and my graduate studies (i.e. PhD in Soil and Water Science) however I want to be more active. I am perfectly content with crunching numbers, developing models, researching the literature, writing up results, etc...I know I am kinda...well nerdy and weird that way.

Recently I have begun reaching out to scientists in my field asking if they would like to collaborate in an effort to gain more experience with different kinds of data and ecosystems, make more connections, etc. When I offer to collaborate most don't respond...which I completely understand being an overworked scientists in the publish or perish game who needs another person to slow you down? Meanwhile some respond with a "sure love too" then when I follow up with questions or brainstorming ideas no one responds.

Is it proper to email say a professor with an email indicating that I am interested in their work and would like to collaborate on any projects? If they respond with a "Yes, love to work with you" type email with subsequent emails falling on deaf ears, is it them nicely trying to say bugger off?

Collaborations almost never start with a cold email in my experience. All of my collaborations have involved people from my former lab, people I met at conference, or an obvious opportunity where I had the data and they had the analysis tool. Anecdote aside, I think you have to have something the other side will obviously want: a dataset, a method, a tool; access to a site or species or specimen; something besides an idea. Lots of people have ideas. Lots of people even have the same idea. But in order to start a research relationship with someone you don't know, you've probably got to have something they want and vice-versa.


How serious it is not to disclose full academic history in your grad school application? Here is my story.

I was accepted to top-30 world university to MS in Electrical Engineering(EE) progaram. In total I already have 3 degrees: MS in EE (GPA:4.0/4.0), BS in EE(GPA:3.9/4.0), and Bachelor in Economics(GPA:3.8/4.0).

In my application I misunderstood instructions, which wanted me to list "all universities attended". As far as all my degrees were from one single university I though that I was not obliged to enter all of them, because formally I did list "all universities" by mentioning at least one of those degrees. That is why I decided not to enter "irrelevant" Bachelor in Economics degree and entered only BS in EE and MS in EE degrees.

After few months I was successfully accepted to the degree program I had applied to.
But after talking to some other applicants I understood that in application form they wanted me to enter not "all universities" but rather all degree programs attended. So I believe that I should have listed that economics degree as well.

Apparently, concealing this degree didn't give me any benefits during admission, but most likely even might have "downgraded" my application to some extent. So I unintentionally presented myself to be worse that I am in reality.

What do you think I need to do? If I contact admission office I can end up being rejected and I cannot risk that much.

On the other hand, If I enroll and then they disclose this fact what they most likely will do?

I'd leave it alone, or disclose to your department, not the admissions office.

First, You got all your degrees at one university.  Presumably, the school you applied to was sent an official transcript, and that transcript would show all the degrees conferred by that school.  They have the info.

Second, the odd part about your application package is the MS in EE, given that you're applying for a second MS in EE.  Your new department knows this.  They wouldn't even bat an eye at the second BS.  Dual BS's are fairly common, and it wouldn't be a negative in your package.

Lastly, you gave them what they asked for, which was all universities you attended. You followed their instructions to the letter.


Interviewing for tenure track jobs: When will the committee contact your references? The title says it all.

Does the committee typically contact your references (or request that reference letters be sent) a) before you phone interview b) after the phone interview but before the on-campus interview or c) after the on-campus interview? Can anything be interpreted from the timing (e.g. after the on-campus interview) of the committee's initiation of contact with your references (or their request that letters be sent)?

Can anything be interpreted from the timing (e.g. after the on-campus interview) of the committee's initiation of contact with your references (or their request that letters be sent)?

As the comments on your question suggest, the culture on this issue are highly field/department/institution dependent. Below are some reasons why different time tables may be considered (or not considered) for requesting letters from your references. However, if letters are not requested with the application, then a request for letters at a later time means that your application has made it past one or more rounds of winnowing.

As far as contacting references, it is probably safe to assume that such contacts can occur at all stages of the hiring process at most institutions/departments depending on the candidate. If such a contact occurs, it is probably a good thing. If the hiring committee was not interested, why would they bother to contact your references?

  With the initial application.

This is an equitable way to handle letters of reference if you are not expecting a huge candidate pool or if your department wants to use letters of reference to help eliminate candidates that might not fit with mission and culture. For example, if no letters that accompany an application to a primarily undergraduate institution address the candidate's teaching style and/or efficacy, that may be a flag. A research institution may be on the lookout for individuals who too closely duplicate the niche specialty of existing faculty (ultrahigh vacuum single molecules spectroscopy).

  After the initial application, but before any phone interviews.

This is probably the way to go if you expect a large number of applications (or a large number of applications from candidates who are below the minimum qualifications). In this case, you can apply a first-pass filter to select only the candidates meeting the qualifications (e.g. a Ph.D. in Biochemistry or Molecular Biology preferably with a focus on proteomics) and remove the inappropriate candidates (M.S. in Electrical Engineering).

  After the phone interviews, but before potential onsite interviews.

As mentioned, given the cost of onsite interviews, this is another logical time to check references. Likely, however, letters have already been requested, and at this stage the hiring committee may be contacting the references for further clarification. For example, "Candidate X is ABD with a proposed defense date of July 17, 20XX. We want candidate X to start on August 10. Will Candidate X be ready to defend in that time frame?"

  After the onsite interviews.

There seems to be no good reason to wait this long before asking for letters. Hosting onsite interviews is expensive (the institution or department usually pays for these, perhaps in contrast to industry). Again, references may be contacted to clear up questions. For example, "Candidate Y is completing a postdoc with you on synthetic fuels from biomass. However, Candidate Y's research presentation was on supramolecular tensors. What is Candidate Y's experience in this area?"


likelihood of Master's application being rejected due to obsolete GRE and IELTS scores For those who submit obsolete GRE and IELTS scores (good scores), how likely is it for the admissions committee to reject/throw away the applications due to this? Will they instead review applications holistically?

GRE/IELTS scores are far from the most important part of your application. The faculty reviewing your application are likely to overlook this if the rest of your application is strong.
However, the problem is that the applications may be filtered by computers or administrators before they reach the faculty (e.g., to remove incomplete applications) and they tend to be less forgiving.

A particular concern for you is that your scores will need to be verified at some point before you can register as a student. This requires you to get ETS to send the scores directly to the university. However, as far as I know, ETS will not send expired scores. Thus you will not be able to verify the expired scores and you will not be able register.

As annoying as these tests are, I suggest you re-take them to avoid the possibility of missing out on grad school for a silly reason like this. If you really cannot re-take the tests, you should try your luck, but I suggest that you make it clear on your application that the scores are expired. The worst thing would be for the university to think you have misled them.


Can I hyper link large source data in manuscript? I have prepared a manuscripts in which there is very large set of equations almost covering 3 pages on manuscript. Although these actions are major source of analysis in my manuscript but their beast size concerns me. To save space I am thinking of hyperlinking these equations to my personal webpage so that reviewer can access these equations from my personal page. Is this a good idea ?

You should definitely not supply them as a link to your personal page.  One reason is that it looks suspicious, since you could try to identify anonymous reviewers based on server logs.  Another is that if these equations are important enough to supply to the reviewers, then they need to be made permanently available to all readers.  If you feel they are too long for the main text, you could include them as an appendix.  If you feel they are too long for an appendix, you could include them in a separate file of supplementary material (submitted together with the main text of your paper, and permanently archived by the publisher).  Either way is much better than a personal web page that will not be permanently maintained.


What's the exact criterion of dual submission? Does submitting two (substantially different) versions of a same paper count as dual submission?
To be specific, let me take this as an example:

Say I've done a research and a paper A was written about the research. However, later I found that I can make some improvements on the method of A, and after making these improvements I've got B, a second version of A. A and B are same in their abstracts, introductions and related works, but largely different in their methods and experiments.
I've submitted B to conference X which will inform its final decision to authors in late June and I'm going to submit A to another conference Y whose submission deadline is in late April.

Question is, will this be considered as a dual submission? If the answer is positive, then which part(s) of the content of A should I modify to avoid such a problem? Thanks.

Note that my field is Computer Science, and most conferences in this field consider their proceedings as publications.

It is up to the editor/conference committee/reviewers to decide if two papers have too much overlap.  Show them about both versions of the paper, and let them decide.

Since there is no objective way to decide if two papers are adequately different, the criterion is the opinion of the editor.

If the editor is unaware of the situation, then you are at risk of committing misconduct.  If the editor knows and approves, you are likely to be behaving appropriately.


Answer "Justification for travel support" in conference registration form In a conference registration form I found a slot to be filled having the header "Justification for travel support". I don't quite understand what they are asking precisely. What is the appropriate way to fill this in?

I remark that they ask for resume and research statement in different sections of the registration form for the purpose of attributing funding.

Do you need assistance from the conference organizers to pay for your travel to the conference and/or accommodation? If so, give your reasons here. If not, ignore the box.


How to respond to "what you can bring to our department" in reply of a sabbatical request? I am a faculty member at a university in a developing country. I love my field of research very much and want to improve my knowledge and level of expertise. I did worked always by myself and without being in touch with any other researcher in my field. Nearly a week ago, I sent a letter to one of the leading researchers (top 10) in my field to accept me for a sabbatical program and attached to the email one of my papers which is 15 months under review in a prestigious journal. The main reason for asking for sabbatical is that I really don't know what direction to go from here, in my journey in research.

Fortunately, their secretary answered me that we are full and don't have the space to host you, but we will look if we can find a solution and meanwhile send a cv.
A day after I sent my cv, she mailed me to make a proposal for the project you want to do here, with whom you want to collaborate and what you will bring to the team here, and why you need to come in order to do the project.

These are perfect questions for a researcher to answer, but given that I don't have a sense of research direction, the importance of problems, and don't know what are important problems right now. I really want them to help me with the project. Even I prefer them to set a direction of research for me.

Given that I want to escape out of my bubble I'm in and connect with leading researchers, what they want me to tell for the question of what you could bring to here?

This all sounds like they are interested in you for a reason you don't state and may not know. Laboring alone is difficult, but in some cases it has proved especially beneficial. The case of Srinivasa Ramanujan is instructive. Perhaps you have shown them something in your CV that they haven't considered and might find valuable. A sole researcher will occasionally develop new patterns of thought that are unknown to others.

But, I think you need to do a bit of research on that department if you haven't already. Who there would you want to work with and why. You need some familiarity with their work.

You want to extend your range and so do they. If your past results are interesting (to them, primarily) you could offer to conduct a seminar focused on insights for faculty and advanced students. This would be thought valuable. And you could also participate in seminars of other, targeted, faculty.

But you need to first understand what they do and how what you have done can enhance that in some way. Then, they might be able to overcome the lack of a slot for a visitor.


How can one carry out a "Russian style" seminar? A "Russian style" seminar, as in the Israel Gelfand form, breaks from the traditional format of talk followed by Q&A and just opens the floor to questions at any time. I've seen a few professors who follow this format, so I definitely see its value.

What is the best way to start something like this, and how do you get the most out of the seminar?

I use a version of this in the weekly research seminar that I run.
This format typically works best when

the speaker knows ahead of time that he/she is likely to get questions during the talk and
at least a few of the audience members feel comfortable asking such questions.

If the speaker is a regular attendee of the seminar, then (1) works itself out naturally; otherwise, I recommend that the organizer mention this ahead of time to the speaker.  Generally, more experienced speakers are more comfortable with this model.  As I'm asking questions during the talk, I watch the speaker's responses.  If the speaker starts to get flustered or is unable to answer well a few questions in a row, then I often will stop asking questions.  Actually, I usually talk a little with the speaker ahead of time about what I'm hoping for from the talk, who the typical audience is, how long the talks usually go, etc.  I find that a few minutes beforehand can save you from the awkward experience of having a talk that is at too low or too high a level.

For (2), I am usually quite comfortable asking questions, and I generally find that at least one other faculty member in the audience is.  As Jeromy mentioned, typically this model works best when the questions are asked by well-informed audience members (since they can more easily discern which questions will and will not be helpful to the rest of the audience).  If you find that no one else in the audience is asking questions, I suggest that you talk with a few of the regular attendees and ask if they would be willing to start asking questions.  (This conversation probably will work better outside of the actual seminar.)


Conflicts with colleagues as a postdoc - reason enough to start looking for the next job? I have recently started as a postdoc at a well-regarded foreign university. I like the place and I have no particular problems with my professor (even though his style isn't exactly to my taste, but I could live with that and take the difference as a learning opportunity).

However, I have a major problem with my fellow postdocs and other junior colleagues. I get the feeling they're just too full of themselves -- but whatever the reason, the situation is that I simply want nothing to do with them. Given that our research group is the only group at the department whose research I could plausibly participate in at the moment, this leaves me with practically no opportunities for fruitful daily scientific interaction.

I'd like to return to my home country after a couple of years of postdoc positions abroad, so I'm feeling some pressure to get the most of my time. I have often heard that the most valuable thing you get out of postdoc positions is the contacts you make. If this is the case, I'm probably wasting my time at my current job. On the other hand, my current institution has much more resources, scientific activities and opportunities to meet distinguished visiting researchers than pretty much any place else I might get to.

So the question is: what should I prioritize when deciding whether to continue at my current job? Is it worth tolerating intolerable colleagues for the opportunity of working at a prestigious and well-endowed university?

I'm sure a recommendation from my current professor would weigh a lot when looking for the next job, but I'm also quite sure I haven't been able to prove myself to him yet.

(Copied from an answer posted below by the original poster:)

I was deliberately vague about the nature of my issues with my colleagues, but I do understand it's relevant.

Of course, it might be just culture shock, as someone suggested. On the other hand, I do feel there's a very unpleasant group dynamic in my research group.

We're conducting research on the beetles of Borneo. I used to be in a group that studies the beetles of New Guinea, and we often have guests who study the beetles of Java or even some other island. But the general atmosphere among my colleagues is that only Borneoan beetles are worth studying. My earlier work is considered definitely useless and irrelevant - and this was also told me explicitly, right after I had presented my work.

The professor seems to share the attitude in some respects, but he's old and experienced enough to understand that even though he might himself care only about the beetles of Borneo, others might still care more about beetles elsewhere. My junior colleagues just think that if it isn't Borneo, it's bullshit.

If I isolate myself, I will have problems learning about Borneo. If I try to learn about Borneo from my colleagues, I'll have to endure constant putdowns of my own interests and earlier work.

(To anyone who actually studies beetles: I'm sorry for using you as an example.)

I have often heard that the most valuable thing you get out of postdoc positions is the contacts you make.

I always thought the most valuable thing you get out of postdoc positions is the research experience and the research papers. The contacts/connections would be the by-products after you conduct quality research.

You said "I'm also quite sure I haven't been able to prove myself to him yet.". If you leave now, you wasted all the efforts you spent to apply for your current postdoc job and the time you spent on the job so far only because you don't like your colleagues?

I understand you are at a well-regarded foreign university. My guess is that many of your colleagues came from different cultures/locations than yours. That's probably why you feel that they are intolerable.

My advice: concentrate on your research (which is your job). Work with your professor and those colleagues if needed. Do your best.

Edit after the OP put in some more details:

Your example sounds like you are in the wrong group in the sense of research direction. I don't quite understand why you went there in the first place. But, you are there now. I would try to stay there for a while if I were you. I would collaborate with my colleagues. I would learn beetles of Borneo from them. I would show them why beetles of New Guinea are also worth studying. I'll do my best. If it still doesn't work out after a while, then I'll quit and find another postdoc job, the right one this time.


Are universities strongly associated with ethnic minority groups a thing outside the USA? This question asks about the history of why Howard University in Washington, DC, USA has remained a school whose student and faculty bodies are predominantly African-American.

Do "historically [minority ethnic group]" universities exist in a meaningful sense outside the USA? For example, are there universities in Spain which are historically known for targeting or serving the ethnic Basque community? Are there "Historically Italian" universities in Argentina? Do the Ainu of Japan tend to predominate at a specific Japanese university?

This question is not about whether specialized minority-serving academic institutions should exist, or what their social, political, or economic ramifications are, if any.

This question involves something other than a request to churn and process statistical data - it is a question about social realities and social perceptions in academia. For example, if a census of a particular university in the UK happens to reveal that 65% of the faculty and students are Scottish Highlanders, but there is no significant social perception of the school as a "Highlander School" and no particular adherence to Highlander culture, then it would not count under this question. If, however, there is a UK university whose charter specifically says that it was established "for the education of Highlanders", or which inspires mentions of "oh, that Highlander school!" when mentioned casually in pubs, it counts, even if the actual number of Highlanders on campus as of 2018 is 15%.

As universities in England were originally based on training religious folk for the priesthood, they did not accept other religions or non-religious persons, so alternative learning places evolved, which are now full universities, but the female/male divide was strong in learning establishments until recently. Imperial College, London was specifically created to allow Empire students of a non-UK-religious background get a university education in UK. They might be non-Christian, Non-Believers or even 'pagans' or even "Scots Protestants" but Imperial College was open to them while the older English religious founded establishments were not.


How to determine which textbook problems are the most useful when studying? If I have to study for an exam, like organic chemistry, I know that I should be studying my notes and, most importantly, practice problems.

However, when you have to review for final that is cumulative, you have to go through potentially hundreds of problems assigned. I understand the best case scenario is that you budget your time throughout the weeks to do them all, but some problems are just repeats of a very simple concept (sometimes with a nuanced variation).

My question is: how do you determine out of all the problems assigned which ones would be the most effective to study for the final/an exam?

Some books list problems that increase in difficulty, so do the first one, the last one and one or two from the middle...


How do editors assess urgency of submissions? How do editors assess urgency of submissions? Speaking about the same journal.

Urgency's context is 'your paper is not of sufficient urgency for our journal'.

Do they have specific (confidential) guidelines which they distribute among themselves?

There are some journals which try to guarantee expedite review and publication processes -- typically less than one month, even 1-2 weeks, for the review process -- for short papers which can have a significant impact on rapidly developing fields.

In physics, examples of such journals are Physical Review Letters (PRL) and Applied Physics Letters (APL). The word letters in the titles aptly recalls the above qualities.

From the About section of PRL, we can read (emphasis mine):

  Authors gain high visibility, rapid publication, and broad dissemination of their work.

and

  If presenting a new technique, or methodology, it should play a pivotal role in future physics research, and make apparent its immediate consequences for physicists.

From the Criteria For Publication section of APL we can read:

  Timeliness: One of the questions on the reviewer's checklist is: "Is the paper especially important, interesting, and timely enough to warrant rapid publication in Applied Physics Letters?" A fraction of papers, which report new results but in a mature field, do not fulfill the condition of timeliness required by APL, and should be submitted for consideration as a Communication elsewhere.

Thus, for instance, one might not have much chance in publishing on PRL a work about classical mechanics, which is a well established and no longer rapidly developing field, but might have a much better chance in publishing an innovative work on, say, quantum point contacts.

If your submission was sent to such kind of journal, the editor, on the basis of their knowledge of the field, might have decided that your work would have not had an immediate impact on the field, and it would probably fit better in a journal with standard reviewing and publishing times.


I am an assistant professor, looking for the right PhD candidate: is it ok to contact a professor who is not listed in the references? I have Skype interviewed the best 3 applicants for a PhD position, offered with my startup package as assistant professor in a USA university (ranked between 30 and 70 nationally). The candidates are all pretty much there. I am slightly leaning toward a candidate, just because he is doing an internship in the lab of a professor whom I know and who carries on research in a field very close to mine. The internship lasts 6 month, and he only did 3 months there. The candidate  already provided the 3 requested letters of recommendation, but none of those is from the above-mentioned professor, probably because he has only been there for a short time. Note that I do not personally know this professor, do you think it is ok if I contact him by email to provide me an honest impression he got of the candidate?

I don't know about HR standards for PhD candidates versus faculty positions. However, I have chaired faculty search committees and the general practice for equal opportunity hiring is that you treat all of the candidates the same. So, going above and beyond for one candidate over the others could be viewed as unfair.

If that is not really an issue for you in this case, I agree with The Fire Guy's comment that the student has a reason for not including this professor as a reference. Since you do not know this professor personally, there could be a number of issues at the workplace that could lead to an unfair assessment of the candidate. Although it could be that the candidate hasn't worked with that professor long, like you suspect, it could also be that there are personality differences between the two or the professor may be an unreasonable supervisor. Also, the candidate might feel that their applying to work with you may cause problems at their current position, if this professor knows about it. If you feel that the professor's feedback is important, you could ask the candidate if he or she is okay with you contacting the professor before hand.

When I have applied for jobs, I would have been put off if I learned that the employer was contacting people who were not on my reference list. How would the candidate know that this professor is the only one you contacted?


How much more does a recommendation letter from alumni help in PhD admissions? Imagine a case where I wish to apply for MIT. I happened to work with a young assistant professor who finished her PhD in MIT. How much will her good words weigh in recommending me to MIT PhD program?

I am asking this because I am facing a choice in asking for recommendations:

A recommendation letter from a more experienced full professor OR
One from a young assistant professor who just came back from MIT?

I understand that what matters most is whether the professor knows me well or not. But for them two, I think they understand me roughly the same.

I disagree with Damien's answer for the specific case of your question. A graduate of the department, who knows you very well and can write a good letter of recommendation, is worth just as much as the "big name," because she is familiar with the department as it is currently operating, and would be able to place your work in context of people also known in the department. So, for the specific case of applying to a school that is someone else's alma mater, I would say go for it, with a caveat.

That caveat is that if a person is not able of writing a good letter of recommendation, then you shouldn't use it. A bad letter will not help you at all. If you have a career services office or academic counselor who can help you sort through which letters are most suitable for graduate school applications, that will help you make the decision.


Publish more research papers or advise dissertations? A faculty should advise students working on dissertations and to publish also. However, publications can come from students working on dissertations, from working alone or from collaborating with others like postdocs. So should faculty advise more students working on their dissertations or work with other researchers? It is clear that faculty should do both of them, but should anyone be given a higher priority?

Your question is largely a false dichotomy. For instance, there's no reason a paper written by one of your students can't involve collaborators at your institution or from other institutions as well.

So long as your students are publishing, and you're establishing a network, I wouldn't worry about trying to prioritize one over the other, unless your institution's promotion and tenure regulations have something specific to say in the matter.


Asking for a letter of recommendation from a professor who's witnessed my breakdown I'm currently applying for an intensive language program, and I've taken courses with a professor whose letter of recommendation would likely carry a lot of weight– he speaks the language fluently, and has spent years studying the country. His course is also the only one I've taken that is directly relevant to the language program I'm applying to.

However, I'm not sure if it would be appropriate to ask him for a letter of recommendation. In the first course I took with him, I did relatively well; I got all As on my assignments, but I rarely spoke with him, and never really stood out.

The second course I took with him (the one that's relevant to my language program) is what worries me. During that semester, I had a family emergency/mental health problems, and, after multiple meetings with this professor, I ended up receiving a G grade in the course (meaning that I have to submit the coursework I missed by the end of this year). He's seen my outlines for the essays I owe him, and he's admitted that they're pretty much perfect– but I haven't submitted any actual essays. However, we've spoken at length about my family emergency/mental health issues, and we've grown somewhat close (he also has had some experience with mental health issues). I feel like he understands why my work ethic suffered, and doesn't seem to hold my delayed coursework against me.

So, my question is: should I ask him for a letter of recommendation? I feel like his recommendation would go a long way on the application, but only if his recommendation is actually a strong one. Despite his understanding of my personal circumstances, I'm not sure if my coursework has been good enough for him to feel comfortable giving me a glowing recommendation. I also don't want him to feel pressured (out of, I don't know, pity for my situation) to give me a recommendation letter. Any advice?

I've had students ask me for letters with some wording along the lines of "if you feel you can write me a strong letter."  From what you've said, it makes sense asking him for a letter, but you might consider this approach:

First let him know that you're interested in this program and see what he thinks about it.  If he's very supportive of the idea, then you should have nothing to worry about asking for a letter.  If he's not, you could ask for other suggestions.  (And even if he thinks it's a good idea, he may suggest some other other opportunities as well.)


What is the most effective way of starting a presentation for students? I am a student who has to do public speaking in front of other students at my university.

What would be the most effective way to start the presentation so that my audience doesn't get bored within the first few seconds?

Starting with "Hi, I am Bob. I study Chemistry and I will talk about squirrels today" sounds extremely boring.

Is there any general structure that should be used, so it can be used in any presentation topic?

Is there even any need to introduce yourself? As I've been heard the audience doesn't care about what your name is or what your job is, just what you will be talking about.

It depends on where you're presenting and who you're presenting to. If this seminar/conference/class has a moderator who introduces you, then you don't need to introduce yourself. Typically, this will be the case, instead of them just sending you on stage without an introduction.

Either way, begin your presentation with a motivating example, which might also explain why you're qualified to talk about the subject to your audience. "You might not think chemistry has a lot to do with squirrels, but it was recently discovered that squirrels' pineal glands secrete a unique chemical that..."

Since you're speaking to other students, be sure to keep the talk at a level that they can understand without a particular background in your field. And once you've started well, do the rest of the presentation well too.


Should I write a conference proceeding of my master's thesis work so far? I'll be attending to a conference and do a poster presentation of my master's thesis work so far. What I'm concerned of is that my tutor wants me to also wirte a short report to be submitted as a conference proceeding.

What I've done so far is nothing new. I've just applied already existing theory and numerical codes to specific cases... which should be easy to do for people that already understands the topic and has technical expertise with the numerical code I'm using (I know there is people that do have it).

Should I just write the report or talk it with my tutor?

Generally speaking, when you submit a poster to a conference you have an auxiliary, small (typically 4 pages), paper that puts what is said in the poster in a more formal and verbal way. This is due to the majority of conferences does not compile the posters in proceedings, but only papers.

So, when writing a short paper you mostly have to focus on your positional view: giving a summary of what you did until now, what you expect to do, and what will be the outcomes of your research.


Indian CGPA to US GPA system I study in India and in here we have 10 pointer system. I wanted to convert my CGPA to american based GPA system of 4. I googled and got this website.

So does that mean I need only >8.5 to get a 4.

This may be a stupid question to some but please consider that I know nothing of american CGPA system.

A US GPA is computed as an average of grades, mapped as follows:

A = 4
B = 3
C = 2
D = 1
F = 0

In some universities, there are interpolations between these:

A- = 3.67
B+ = 3.33

and so on for B-, C+ and so on.

I've heard of an A+ being awarded a 4.33, but that's not the case in my university where A is the maximum grade.

At least in my recollection, this maps non-linearly to the Indian CGPA system which is

A = 10
B = 8
C = 6
D = 4

Because of the non-linearity, you can't just for e.g divide your score by 2.5. Moreover, there are statistical normalizations that complicate the process. Personally, if possible, I'd just list the CGPA as is. Your transcripts will reveal the grade specifics, and that's more useful than just the summary number. I wouldn't trust the link you provided since they don't appear to provide any rationale for the mapping.

Separately I'd have a hard time seeing an Indian CGPA of 8.6 and considering it a 4.0. Even with grade inflation, that would be over optimistic.


How do I ask the author of a book in English if I can translate it into my native language? I want to translate an English book, but before translating it, I want to be sure if the author will permit me to do so.

I am not doing this for financial gain. Since it is a book about a new subject, my professor asked me to translate it, so that students in my country become better familiar with the topic.

Would you please provide me a good text to email it to the author?

In most cases books are published through a publisher and certain copyright laws apply that may be shared between the publisher and the author. Exactly where the right to decide on translations lie may vary. You therefore need to contact both the author and the publisher to look into what might apply and to what extent they are interested in such translation.  My suspicion is that it will not be as easy as just getting permission to translate. When a book (or any publication) is translated, there will be a need to get a translation that properly represents the original content. A publisher may not be content with "anybody" translating the work, they may request some form of review etc. So, the bottom line is that you need to contact publisher and author to see what is possible and under what conditions. It is possible they accept translation into a different language for different reasons but they will most likely want to retain some form of copyright.


Does membership of academic honour societies carry any professional weight / recognition? I understand honour societies have been around for years and it is a tradition more prevalent in the western world to recognise outstanding academic talent.

The largest honour society is perhaps the Golden Key which operates worldwide and has over 2 million members. It provides a range of services to members, including leadership training, networking and the opportunity to do good. Membership is by invitation only and only those who are in the top 15% of their class or high performing graduate students are eligible. The eligibility is based solely on academic performance.

I presume being invited to join a honour society is an 'honour' in itself, as the mere mention of this affiliation on the CV would indicate that you are a top achiever.

Question 1: Does membership of honour society carry any professional weight?

(i.e. does it give any additional advantages?)

Note: Honour society is not the same as professional society. The latter, as I understand it, is open to all persons in a particular field (irrespective of their academic achievement but as long as certain criteria are met, e.g. successful registration as a teacher to join a teacher's union).

Question 2: Are there other honour societies in addition to the Golden Key (which seems to be the most dominant one)?

PS: I am unsure of the tag, so putting CV. Please update!

Disclaimer: I am not associated with Golden Key.

Does membership of honour society carry any professional weight?

No, not in general.  At a very early stage in your career, for example when applying to graduate school, it may be useful as a quick indication that you have received high grades.  However, the grades themselves are more meaningful than the honor society membership, and in any case grades only matter so much.  It's worth mentioning the honor society on your CV, but it won't make a big difference.

Once you are more than a few years past undergraduate studies, neither grades nor honor societies matter.


It is possible to get Arxiv article metadata from its article ID? Is there a file that gives an article's title, author, etc by article id? For instance, given archive id 1411.7990 I would like to be able to find the title "Irreducible Representations..." via a search through a document. In other words, can one search the arxiv remotely?

The python script on this page seems to work. You can modify it easily to output the information you need instead of a bibtex entry.


Wrong font used for statement of purpose and résumé I used wrong font for my statement of purpose, rather than the one prescribed under the department’s specifications. Will this hamper my chances of admission into that university?

As far as I can tell, the reasons behind font prescriptions are usually:

To avoid silly or unreadable fonts such as Comic Sans or blackletter fonts.
To avoid biases.
To be able to quickly assess the character count of a document.
To prevent the circumvention of page limits or similar by using a narrow font or similar.

(Whether one should care about character counts or page limits to the extent that the last two points matter at all is another discussion.)

Now, the if rules were only made with these purposes in mind, they would be something like:

  The statement of purpose must be set in a traditional sans-serif font such as …

or if the restriction is due points 3. or 4.:

  The statement of purpose must be set in Arial, Helvetica, Liberation Sans, … or any metrically similar font (in 11 pt with double line spacing …)

Unfortunately, the people making these rules usually do not know sufficiently much about typography or are even aware of that not everybody has Arial and Times New Roman pre-installed on their computers. Similarly, some applicants may be confused by such instructions. Therefore you end up with prescriptions that just require a Arial or Times New Roman, though probably nobody really thinks that you must use those very fonts.

Thus to evaluate the impact of your font choice, you first have to find out for which reason the font prescription was made. To this purpose, ask yourself questions such as the following:

Are other aspects such as font size, linespacing and borders prescribed as well? If yes, the prescription is likely due to point 3 or 4.
Is there any prescription on the length by other means as the word or character count? If yes, it’s almost certainly point 4.
Is a wide variety of fonts offered? If yes, the description is probably due to point 1, perhaps 2.

Finally, you need to consider, how much your actual font choice sabotages this purpose. Some examples:

If Times New Roman was prescribed due to reason 1 and you chose another traditional serif font such as Georgia or Baskerville, it will likely be without consequences. Even, if you used a traditional sans-serif font, you might fare well, as whoever is reading your submission may not even be aware of the prescriptions in this case.
If Times New Roman was prescribed due to reason 4 and you used Liberation Serif, which was designed to be metrically equivalent (i.e., each character takes up the same space), this will likely be without consequences. You need to have a trained eye to even spot the differences between the two, if you are not specifically looking for them:

If you used Comic Sans and it was not the prescribed font, this will likely have disadvantages, no matter what the reasons behind the prescription are and even if there was no font prescription to begin with.

However, at the end of the day, you can only guess the intentions behind the prescriptions and your document may get into the hands of some pedantic who radically enforces for these rules for their own sake (especially, if submissions were to be made in a format that allows to easily control the used font). Thus, if you want to be sure, only time (or asking the university) can tell.


Is it fine to submit a paper with acknowledgements in it? My friend who is a senior lecturer says it is wrong to submit a paper with acknowledgements and you should add them once the paper is accepted, not to interfere with the review process. Is this correct?

Is it fine to submit a paper with acknowledgements in it?

There are two possibilities:

If the review is double-blind, then no -- you should remove the acknowledgements section prior to submission. This is because usually, this section would reveal something about the author's identities. See here for why it is OK to not acknowledge grants/funding at this stage.
If the review is not double-blind, then it doesn't really matter. However, personally I would wait until after review to add acknowledgements, because one of the people I would always thank is the reviewers. It would be strange to submit the paper to review with

  we thank the reviewers for their helpful comments

when they have not actually written those comments yet! If worried about space limitations (as in the thread here), then you can write the acknowledgements, but comment them out prior to submission.

  My friend who is a senior lecturer says it is wrong to submit a paper with acknowledgements and you should add them once the paper is accepted, not to interfere with the review process. Is this correct?

Overall, I agree this is correct. But it is not a serious matter, and different people may have different ideas about this.


Does building a Python library fall in the category of research? If a Python library is built can it be turned into a research paper? Will it be accepted?

The point of research is the production of knowledge. If, after you take away all the code you’ve written and the datasets you’ve collected, there’s nothing left, then you’re not doing research, you’re doing development.

So, if you want to do artefact-oriented research like this, the question you have to ask yourself is this: what is the new knowledge you’re producing? Are you testing a new, better algorithm? Are you applying an existing algorithm in a new context and determining if it works there? Are you investigating how a complex system functions, or how it interacts with humans and/or the environment? What is the research question that you’re answering?

If you do determine that you’re doing research rather than development, however, there are a number of artefact-oriented research methodologies, such as the Design Science Research Methodology. You should be able to find more information on it with Google Scholar, if you’re a member of an institution that gives you access to their research journal subscriptions.


Math degree to CS Masters chances I am switching fields from math to CS. I want to get a Masters in CS focused on coursework to go into industry later. I am aiming for a good school but not the very top.

I have some CS courses and a bit of programming experience but my background is mainly in math. My GPA for my math Masters is 3.1-3.2 but my undergrad GPA is much higher. My math subject GRE score is pretty good.

I think I will be quite capable of handling the CS Masters coursework but I want a sense for how high/low I am aiming and how CS depts consider applicants. Also, do I have any chance if I have minimal CS background and low Masters GPA?

Thanks.

My BS was in Math, and I'm almost finished with my Master's in CS. At the time of my application, I had finished all the lower division CS courses, but no upper division.

You will find that Math is excellent prep for CS, and that CS departments recognize this. To do well in upper division math, you need to be able to think logically and abstractly, which are both valuable in CS. In many ways, math and programming are the same -- you have a starting condition, you have a set of rules you can use, and you have a desired end point. You would like to get there in an elegant manner, without too many missteps, and in a manner that others can understand.

In the US at least, most schools that I looked at assume that their MS students will be lacking one or more required upper division CS classes, and have provisions for those students to take those classes. The year I entered, out of 80 students only one had all the required upper division classes. I don't think you'll find this is a problem. However, the more you have, the better you will look compared to others.

Your best bet is to call up the graduate coordinator for CS at the schools you are considering, and discuss things with them. They won't make any guarantees, but the can give you a good sense of whether you are wasting your time applying at that school, and often will give you hints on things you can do to make yourself a stronger applicant.


Publishing a Bibliography on a Blog I plan to start a blog on using free technology in the classroom, but I want to have a strong scholarly element to my posts. I would like to keep a site-wide bibliography on the blog that summarizes the articles that I am referencing. For each article, I plan on having a full summary of its methods and conclusions in the bibliography. Is it alright to do this (legally-speaking) as long as I properly cite each source?

Bibliographies are mainly public (e.g., looking for Bibtex of an article). So, here are my suggestion for how to use citations in a blog:

Citations: You could use either a repository solution and put all the citations on a third party website/server(s), or just use a Json or XML to sort the citations and add the citations, as a URL, at the end of your blog posts.


Letters of Recommendation - Duration Etiquette I finished my undergraduate degree in mathematics about two years ago, and started a master's program last year. Now that I am about half way through the MS program, I am convinced that I want to get into a doctoral program. I was admitted to the master's program based upon very strong recommendations from respected scientists at the university where my undergraduate degree was obtained.

The MS program I am attending is at a small, noncompetitive institution. I am thinking that recommendation letters from this school would not be as meaningful. Also, based upon the limited scope of the research being conducted here, and my limited capacity to participate, I fear that letters from these professors might not be as strongly worded.

It is my intention to apply to several programs starting in December of this year. My question is this: Is it unreasonable to ask for my old references to "re-send" their letters of recommendation, almost 3 years after my association with them has concluded? Would it seem peculiar to the admissions board if all of my recommendation letters came from a school other than the one where I (will) have completed my MS?

It would be normal to have some letters of recommendation from professors at your undergraduate institution.  In my experience, faculty often write such letters for students a few years after they've graduated and will typically keep old letters of recommendation on file as a starting point for an updated letter.

However, it is also important to have positive letters of recommendation from your current advisor and possibly others at your current institution.  If you don't get such recommendation letters, then this could be taken as a sign that you've done badly at your current institution.