Which academic options are possible for a tenured faculty that do not involve students' mentoring? I am a tenured associate professor at a top 20 US research university. I am publishing and getting grants. My teaching evaluations are decent.

I am realizing that I am not interested in mentoring (grad or undergrad) students (— over the last 10 years, I mentored two grad students and they changed advisor before graduating). When I teach, I am not curious about students and their backgrounds.

My relations with other faculties in the department (size < 15) have deteriorated and are, now, cold at best.

I enjoy the research portion of the work. I am in a STEM field and have had several consulting opportunities. I am currently on leave to decide whether to pursue an academic career (~ 20 years) or to resign completely.

I am wondering whether tenured professors have found academic options with limited (or without) students' mentoring and teaching?

While, as Jon Custer says in a comment, we aren't qualified to direct you, I'll give a bit of advice to help you think about it.

It is hardly worth spending your life doing anything that you don't enjoy. Your life isn't a "first run".

Since this is the US, though I don't know which field, I'll note that almost all academic positions involve teaching and mentoring. It is what we do to prepare the next wave of practitioners of the art. You need to be "special" in some way to avoid it. But most of the specials do it anyway. What do I mean by special? If your research is so important and you are the only one qualified to do it, then, yes, you can probably convince the administration that you should be excused from all other university participation to do it. If you were months away from curing the common cold, or cancer, sure. But the people who do that, also realize that not only their results, but their methods and ways of thought are important to pass on to the next generation, and so do, usually, mentor students.

But if you are good enough to fund yourself completely through grants, so that the University doesn't need to pay you, then you can most likely set your own working conditions. Of course, you may not need the university association at all in such a situation. Darwin, for example, funded himself pretty well, though that is harder now. But constantly writing the next grant can also take quite a lot out of you.

Alternatively, if you are so bad as a teacher that students drop you like a poison toad, then the administration will be reluctant to assign you to courses. But will also be unlikely to provide many rewards, and may even try to rid themselves of an unproductive member. Yes, unproductive, even if your research is "pretty good" (but see the superstar exception above).

But before you decide, find something that you do like and find a way to do that. Presumably you like research. If you can find a good research position you should probably explore that before you make any final decisions.

It is also possible to improve as a teacher/mentor. Doing so may actually make it more enjoyable. Whether this comes "at the expense" of your research or not depends on a lot of things. But your mind won't stop working just because you have to also prepare classes.

You will find, however, that there are trade-offs. Every job has good and bad parts. If the good parts outweigh the bad, it may be worth continuing. It isn't likely ever to be ideal. So, look very carefully at the options.

If you decide to stay, and still want to avoid student contact, you can, over time, probably work to minimize it by (a) working toward superstar status, and/or (b) taking whatever opportunities arise as they arise. This can be sabbaticals, of course, but also unpaid leaves that are funded by some grant or outside organization. If you do enough consulting, perhaps you can use the current university association to work toward the day that you can, like Darwin, self fund yourself and your research.

And if you do decide to go, try to do it gracefully, without burning bridges. Your goals in the future may change and you may want to keep open the option of returning to academia.

But be aware the the US university has a complex mission that involves teaching students. It tends to disfavor those who don't really want to participate in that mission.


Is it frowned upon to have a figure in the introduction of a Masters thesis? Is it common practise/frowned upon to have a figure in the introduction chapter of a thesis?

The figure is not a 'picture', but a relatively small tree diagram that in my opinion shows the structure I am talking about more effectively than describing it in words.

I ask this question because I do not think it is common practise but also can't think of a good reason not to do it.

If a graphic clearly gets across the message then why not use it? Just check what the regulations specify though,

To elaborate a bit more you need to think about what the introduction is for. If it is  intended as an executive summary then a diagram that summarises the work could be very effective. If however it is setting the context of the work then I find it difficult to see how a diagram would help.


Are there any researcher digital identification services or directories, similar to ORCID and ResearcherID? Are there any general (not field-specific) researcher digital identification services or directories, similar to ORCID and ResearcherID?

Some of the obvious ones:

The ISNI initiative wants to assign unique identifiers to all "creators". (They take authors in the broad sense of individuals generating copyrightable content or something like that, since they include musicians and others.) That is about as "general" as you can want.
If you want to restrict to Academia, the arXiv author identifier is not specifically field-specific, though it is limited to fields which have an arXiv presence.
Since you didn't specify what is required of a "researcher digital identification service", social networks such as Academia.edu and ResearchGate which you mentioned in your other question can also serve the purpose of disambiguation of publishing records.
Certain countries maintain their own databases of researchers residing there. The most comprehensive and successful seems to be that of Netherlands.
The American Mathematical Society has recently starting maintaining author profiles as part of their MathSciNet service (I know that the question asked for "not field-specific"; I'll weasel and say that the AMS profiles include also those working in related sciences to mathematics, such as physicists and computer scientists, and some engineers.)

For a list of some of the other services, the International Repositories Infrastructure Wiki has a slightly out-dated list of such services. Note however some of the items listed there have stalled and shutdown since the last edit.


Few Months Left to Prepare for Pure Math PhD Application I'm hoping that I can get some general advice on strengthening a graduate application in the last few months through introducing myself to some faculty in my current program.

I have recently landed on the decision that I want to apply to a pure Mathematics PhD program this round (Winter 2018/2019) and I'm becoming more and more aware that I am not going to be very competitive. I have average Math subject GRE scores, and no rec letters to speak of.

The reason I haven't cultivated any rec letters is that I am currently a graduate student in an Applied Math department, working toward a PhD, and until recently had never expected I would be re-applying. I have been working in an area that has -- over the past couple years -- become less and less interesting to me, to the point where I cannot see myself happily working in this field. In particular, the program is not mathematically rigorous, and the work is more engineering without even requiring us students to grasp the fundamentals of advanced math (the whole point of studying math, for me).

I have decent grades in my courses so far, and have obtained the requirements for a Masters in Applied Math. I have a pre-print of a paper in the pipe for publication, with two well-established co-authors. The lack of recommendations scares me, though.

A friend suggested that I try to "throw myself into the math" by basically approaching several different faculty members, across various departments (physics, math, etc.), and becoming known to them through office hours, auditing courses, small projects, etc. In the end (by Dec), I should hope to get some nice letters.

I am hesitant to do this because I don't have a solid foundation in the advanced topics (analysis, algebra), as I haven't had to take these courses. I am currently and have audited several intro-level pure math courses, and couldn't be more eager to learn, but I don't feel prepared to approach professors, much less ask them to spend their precious time on me.

Another friend suggested I create a blog where I do periodical write-ups of some interesting math topics. I might just do this, even if only for fun. I'm not sure how this would even end up factoring into an application, however.

Given my circumstance, can you offer any advice on how to make the most of the remaining few months before applications are due? Is forcing my way into professors' lives for a few months a reasonable way, at this point, to try for recommendation letters? Or would I be better of trying to pursue some small projects with my current advisor that I can neatly write up and post online?

Thanks much for any advice!

It is hard to do much in a few months and have anything to show for it but effort. But having said that, showing effort may help you a bit. If you have a research opportunity available that will, among other things, let you work closely with a professor or two, it can solve a few of your issues. If you make a strong effort you will not only learn something about research, but have a better chance for good recommendations.

You don't have to finish the project you start for this to have an effect, but it would be good if it is a project that you are invested in enough that you would want to finish it. It might give you some research direction for the future.

Beyond that, and even as part of it, ask a lot of questions. Funny thing, but you actually show some intelligence by asking good questions. More so than you would by not asking any and seeming passive around professors.

I don't think blogs and such will help you much. What you need is effort that will give you some feedback from those who might help you later.


Dissertation formatting: should foreign words and Latin abbreviations be italicized? In English language non-fiction books, it used to be common that foreign words were italicized, including abbreviated Latin words and phrases: op. cit., et al., ceteris paribus, ex post, and so on.  In books published in the last 20 years, I notice that this convention is less common and, instead, most books use plain text for foreign words.

Question: Should foreign words be italicized in a dissertation (field: Computational Social Science)?  Can you think of a good reason for not doing it?

In my opinion, using italics for these is both helpful to readers and appropriate for a dissertation.  I'm inclined to adopt this convention.  Since I'm using LaTeX, it is easy for me to do, so there is no issue of extra work or inconsistency.

Our university formatting requirements for dissertations are silent on this and many other detailed issues.  My adviser has no opinion, other than that he wants 100% consistency.

Context: I am already going above and beyond the minimal dissertation formatting requirements.  All my cross-references are active hyperlinks.  I have a full glossary. I have customized URL formatting so that the are visually nice and don't distract from surrounding text (e.g., in bibliography).  In this context, italicizing foreign words is a very small matter.  I'm posting a question here because I'm genuinely curious about what other people do and their opinion of whether this formatting convention adds value to any reader, not just my committee.

In general, unless your particular institution's style guide has something to say on the matter, this is entirely up to the author to decide. The primary reason not to do so, I think, would be that there are so many foreign words that it becomes impractical to italicize them all (in other words, the italicization becomes too prominent).

Additionally, one can make the argument that over time foreign words appear enough in a foreign language that they end up "borrowed" by the other language. For instance, if I were writing in the humanities, I'd be inclined to italicize Weltanschauung but not schadenfreude or angst.


Is it appropriate to include a List/Summary of Theorems in a paper? I am 16 years old at the time of writing (so I have no supervisors to seek advice from), and I'm working on a Mathematics paper at the moment, which I plan on submitting to a journal for publication. In the paper I have about 9 lemmas and theorems in total; they are all just formulaic (by formulaic, I mean that they are all just formulae rather than an idea or property about something, eg for argument's sake the quadratic or cubic formula).
Is it a good idea for me to include a list/summary of lemmas and theorems in the paper after my introduction, or should I simply include a couple of the main results in the introduction and not bother with a list of formulae I establish?
It just seems to me that to see all of the results without a summary near the beginning would be quite hard; you'd have to scroll down many pages.
Thank you for your advice.

If the lemmas and theorems are unrelated (unlikely) then a list might be fine. But if the purpose of the paper is to prove the main theorem(s) then giving that purpose and naming just those in the introduction is probably more standard and easier for a reader to get a sense of purpose.
So, my guess is that your second suggestion works better. If there is one main theorem then focus, primarily, on that. But if one or two of the others has some independent use then you could expand a bit.
Mathematicians are used to following a train of proof through a fairly long argument, but knowing the goal ahead of time can be helpful.


What is the criterion to include an institution as “affiliation” in an author list? While looking at this Science paper, I noticed that a few of the authors have a lot of affiliations: the first author has five affiliations, including four different departments or programs at Harvard University, and the last author has seven, all of them at Harvard University:

I consider it immoderate, as I cannot imagine that each author has such strong links to so many workplaces (imagine what their typical week looks like, changing desk every two hours!). However, it was published in a highly-respected (and highly-watched) journal, meaning it probably is an accepted practice.

So, what is the criterion for affiliations? How can one end up with 7 different departments at the same university?

The general criterion is that you must list your primary affiliation or any institution that is providing essential funding/resources, and you may list any institution that has given you a relevant appointment (which could be called many things if it's not a real job: affiliate faculty, courtesy appointment, visiting position, consulting faculty, etc.).

In practice, the way it works is that some people collect enormous numbers of affiliations through great popularity: every department wants these people to come and interact, so they all offer appointments.  (When this happens, it's hard for the popular people to turn down the invitations, out of fear of causing offense, so they end up with a lot of affiliations.)  Other people deliberately try to accumulate as many appointments as possible, to show off how popular or interdisciplinary they are, and they achieve this by going around asking for appointments.  (And they often get them, since even if you aren't excited about someone, it's easier to give them a meaningless affiliation than to turn down their request.)

The net result is that there's no way of knowing what it means in any given case, without more information.


How to establish a collaboration with other researcher? As a Ph.D. student, I am curious about how collaborations among researchers are established. To me, it seems like it is a very informal process: someone proposes an idea(while in a lunch discussion, for example) and the other person tries to give some advice. Eventually, the first person will return with some results and the process will continue till they get both involved in the topic. Is this standard in academia? Is there any other way of establishing collaboration?

It is generally good to be explicit about your expectations. You don't want to end up in a situation where one person thinks it is her/his project and the other person has a well deserved place in the "thank you section", while the other person thinks she/he deserves to be a co-author. Such a conflict is really bad for everybody involved.

So when I propose a collaboration or someone comes to me with a proposal, I will discuss co-authorship from the beginning. This makes the discussion less informal than you suggest in the question.

It may still happen (and it has happened to me) that someone comes for advise, and I give that advise under the assumption that I am not a co-author, and the original author is so happy with the advise that I end up being "upgraded" as author.

Similarly, but more tricky, it may happen that I am "downgraded" when my contribution is not significant enough to warrant authorship. Maybe because I did not invest enough time in it, or the sub-problem I am supposed to tackle turned out to be less relevant to the entire project than originally expected. The tricky part is that ideally the downgraded person has to agree otherwise we are in a conflict of the type we were trying to avoid.


Does it make sense to get a PhD if I have a Candidate of Sciences degree from a post-soviet country Candidate of Sciences degree is awarded in some post-soviet countries for completing a 3-5 year research program, which has similar scientific requirements as a PhD. Here is a wikipedia article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidate_of_Sciences

Does it make sense to go after a PhD in a European or American university after obtaining a Candidate of Sciences degree? Would a university consider enrolling a Candidate of Sciences in a PhD program? Would it be possible to apply for scholarship for it? Would an age make any difference?

Also, if I am switching fields and do not intend to work in the field, in which I did my Candidate of Sciences thesis, would it make sense to get a PhD in the field I plan to work in?

I spent some time trying to find an opportunity to get a PhD on top of my Candidate of Sciences degree, but had no success and gave up. I have plenty of job opportunities as a Candidate of Sciences, but I wonder if I will have more and better jobs available to me if I get a PhD from a western university as well.

I am leaning towards a conclusion that having good publications is much more important than getting a shinier degree. If this is the case, then doing a PhD would only make sense if it resulted in some good research results. But then isn't it better to look for post-doc positions that are solely focused on producing good research results and publications?

Edit: Some specific information about my situation.

My Candidate of Sciences thesis and publications are in agricultural economics. The field in which I would like to apply for either PhD or post-doc is behavioral economics. Behavioral economics has a fair share of psychology and decision sciences in it and its research methods differ so I still have quite a bit of books to read.

I do not have publications in highly ranked journals. I have two publications in agricultural economics: one in AGRIS on-line Papers in Economics and Informatics and the other one in Studies in Agricultural Economics. I also have a forthcoming publication in behavioral economics in The International Journal of Economic Behavior. These journals are not high ranked at all, but they do appear in some rankings.

I am the only author in all of my publications in ranked journals.

My English is good.

I'm about to hit 30.

Does it make sense to go after a PhD...

To whom?

For someone who has published a couple of papers in Science or Nature as the first author during their aspirantura period, the answer is no — they should apply directly for a permanent post or a prestigious named Fellowship, and develop their research.
For someone who has published several papers in top international journals, and at least one without their supervisor, the answer is probably no again — they should go for a postdoc or research fellow route.
For someone who did not publish much (or did not publish in international journals), who may struggle with English a bit, and/or not quite on top of the methods and hot topics in their research area, the answer may be yes. Having a PhD from a well-known university definitely improves the position on a competitive academic job market. More importantly, it can provide you with a set of soft skills (networking, presentations, etc) which many post-Soviet institutions are not very strong at sometimes.


Does one always have to present new results when publishing a paper? I am an undergraduate student who had already worked in two undergrad "research" projects, but both of those projects were basically applications of methods that were already discovered. Furthermore, the results were actually estimations, and not something exact or close. By the end of each one, I had to write a final report for my university, and discussed all the method and results in a poster during a scientific conference of undergrad research in my university.

I had never thought about a possible publication surging from these two projects, but nowadays (it's been two years since the first project) I thought about the fact that I could have published these projects in a formal scientific journal, even though they just confirm an already known method with a certain level of accuracy.

Considering this scenario, my question is that whether it would be possible to publish such kind of research project in form of a formal paper or not, also, would it affect in a positive way my scientific "career", since I would be able to say that I started publishing studies early than the usual (I mean, my knowledge tells me that publish stuff during undergrad means "early")? Moreover, would it be a positive fact to have papers publicized, even if they don't have new results or anything unpublished?

Does one always have to present new results when publishing a paper?

Not really. But author or contributors to the publication should present new and valuable scientific things to the future readers of their paper. I can classify these new things in a list bellow:

An old method applied to solve a new problem;
A new method applied to solve an old and a solved problem;
A comparison of different old or new methods to solve a problem and discuss their accuracy or efficiency in solving problems by comparing their results;
A review on different methods to solve problems.

As you can see, there is no need to always have new results in the papers, but papers should have something new for their readers. Of course if your reader wants to read about those two existing methods, he can simply find and read the original papers instead of your publications.

An author may find a newer method to solve a solved old problem but in a more efficient way. Or he may find a very hard solution which may not be that much accurate, but it is a unique and new approach to solve the problem.

In your researches of applying those old methods, probably you did some programming and soft computing or applied some computational methods which may be unique and of value to be published in form of a research paper.

In your case, the only thing that comes to my mind is that you may consult the professor whom you worked with to discuss whether your results are publishable or not. You have some choices of course:

Write a comparing paper on the methods you applied and discuss their accuracies by comparing their results. You may also present the computer programming you did during your research. Also, you can discuss the amount of time each method consumes for reaching same results accessed by applying either of methods. You may also do some statistical calculations on the data you have as a result of those existing methods, which may also be something of value to the readers in your field.
Work some more in the field of the researches you did during your undergraduate years and find some more results and data or find a newer method and publish your whole research in form of a paper.

  [M]y question is that whether it would be possible to publish such
  kind of research project in form of a formal paper or not[?]

If your manuscript is well processed and contains valuable information to be published, it has some chances to be published in a journal or presented in a conference.

But please note that not every paper is valuable for every journal. Some journals are very high reputable and have high levels of impact factors. So, please evaluate your paper and submit it to a journal that publishes the same level of papers as your own paper. A very low quality paper may not always have the chance to be published in a well known and high reputable journal.

Of course anyone may submit his manuscript to a journal or conference, but submitting a paper does not really mean that their editors and reviewers will accept it for publication.

  [W]ould it affect in a positive way my scientific "career", since I
  would be able to say that I started publishing studies early than the
  usual (I mean, my knowledge tells me that publish stuff during
  undergrad means "early")?

Having publications based on your research activities in the undergraduate years is a valuable point in a person's scientific CV, but please note that for applying to some scientific careers, you should have higher levels of research. As an instance, for one applying to a post-doc position, having a good PhD level dissertation and probably one or two publications (depending on the applicant's field) is of course of more value than his early undergraduate level research.

If you are seeking a scientific career after obtaining your undergraduate degree; your research activities may be of value, but it hugely depends on the taste of your employer and their expectations.

As a general answer to this part of your question, having some researches during your undergraduate years is a good point in your CV and will not hurt your academic background. But this is not all for a potential applicant to a scientific career; as you may have some skills, good letters of recommendations, good grades, etc. These are important too.

  Moreover, would it be a positive fact to have papers publicized, even
  if they don't have new results or anything unpublished?

I think that it would be positive to have a publication out of your undergraduate researches, as it may show that you are a potential and enthusiastic researcher and you are so encouraged in doing research.

But answering to whether it is positive or not to publish such results, hugely depends on your manuscript. If you simply copy and paste existing results without any new activities, seems not a positive activity to me. I prefer to read the original papers not a copy of them in a newer paper. If you do something new, even a very small thing is valuable and of course sounds so positive.

(Just joking but I call a person who just published existing results without anything new to read in his paper a professional copy-paster, not a researcher!)


Study design for best teaching methods - how to avoid overly specific results? I would like to do a study with a class in which the students are split into two groups, A and B.  They will each receive a tutorial on the same topic, but group A will get a different tutorial than group B.  I will then give a post-assessment and a week after post-assessment, to explore retention rates among other things.  The goal is to compare the methods for tutorial delivery.  Specifically, group A will get a tutorial that is modeled on the traditional "expert solving problems at the board" while group B will get a tutorial that requires the students to do self-directed problem solving, with scaffolding.

My concern is that I won't be able to distinguish between expert solved problems vs. student solved problems. Rather, I will be able to distinguish between "when an expert solves THESE problems in THIS topic" compared to when students do so.

In short, I'm worried that my study results will only be valid for a very specific set of circumstances, not generally applicable even to other institutions that teach a similar but not identical course.  What are some strategies, if any, I can use to avoid overly specific results?

No study in only a single class will be able to definitively answer such a question. The answer can only come from either a very large study or an accumulation of results over several small similar studies.

If it is an attempt to get at the truth it will tell you very little. If it is an attempt to learn/teach something about experimentation it can have value.

In the US, you would need to run this by your IRB. I don't know if Canada has similar regulations. But you are treating two parts of a class (human beings) differently and need to assure that neither group is disadvantaged in any way. It is unethical to do certain things when you strongly suspect that they are not effective, though I don't think that is a particular issue given your description.

On the other hand, there is already a lot of research on learning that addresses just this question. If you haven't already explored it, you really should.


When writing a synopsis "review", may I contact the authors with questions? Please read the following background paragraph carefully to understand the meaning of "review" in this question - it may not be what you think.  In particular, this is not a duplicate of Is it acceptable as referee to contact an author on a paper you review?, and the peer-review and review-articles tags are not really applicable here.

In mathematics, we have two well-known "review databases": MathSciNet / Mathematical Reviews and Zentralblatt MATH (aka zbMATH).  These services aim to create a comprehensive database of papers that have already been published in peer-reviewed journals.  For each recently published paper, they invite an independent expert in the subject (not one of the authors) to write what is (perhaps confusingly) called a "review", which is really just a synopsis of the paper's content - a sort of third-party extended abstract, perhaps 1-4 paragraphs long.  The review is generally not expected to make a judgment of the paper's quality or novelty, though it may cite other papers for context.  When the review is finished, it is posted in the database along with bibliographic information for the paper, including the reviewer's name (so these reviews are not anonymous).  The databases are available by subscription, and are the field's primary tool for literature searches.

I have been invited to review a paper for zbMATH.  In reading the paper, I got confused by some notation that seems to be unclear; it could be an error or omission in the original paper, or maybe just something I have overlooked.   I would like to contact the authors to ask for clarification.  Is it appropriate for me to contact them directly?  If so, should I identify myself as a zbMATH reviewer, or just a reader with a question?

I can't think of any concrete reason not to do so.  My review will eventually be printed with my name, so I don't have anonymity to protect, and it won't say anything controversial.  But I do have some vague sense that my review is supposed to be "independent", so I am hesitating.

I suppose I can ask the zbMATH editors / administrators, but I would also be interested in opinions from the community.

(Note that the database editors are not generally in contact with the authors of the paper - they just grab the published papers and send them out to reviewers.  So it isn't as though I would use the editors as an intermediary.)

For reference, the invitation from zbMATH reads as follows:

  [W]e would like you to contribute a review of the attached item for
  zbMATH. We hope that you will find the publication to be of interest to
  you. We would appreciate if your review would give an independent
  description. If you cite parts of the original text please label
  extensive verbatim quotations as such.

More information about what is expected in a review can be found at https://zbmath.org/reviewer-service/, but the issue at hand is not addressed.

I contacted the zbMATH editors with this question, and received the following reply from staff member David Biesenack:

  It is totally okay, if
  you contact the author for clarification.


Is it beneficial for a student to publish their research code and data? There are at least four benefits of releasing the code and data produced during a thesis or research project (citing textually this laboratory):

Allows to reproduce figures in the revisions of a paper
Other people who want to do research in the field can start from the current state of the art, instead of spending months trying to figure out what was exactly done in a certain paper
Makes easier to compare the method to existing ones
Increases the impact of the research

This is really cool for someone trying to develop its own study as he/she can have access to world-quality material for free. However, I have observed that this is a practice followed by well-known universities, with federal financial support, and that usually host international students. Is this practice also recommended for universities with little or no federal financial support and no grants for students?

I am curious if a student from a university like the latter would improve his/her chances to work in academia by releasing his/her material in this reproducible research modality.

The core of scientific research is that we are open on how we came to a certain conclusion. That way we can move beyond "I am wearing a white lab-coat, so you must believe me", to "this is how I got my results, you can replicate them and see if they are robust, or you can try different approaches and we can discuss and learn how that affected the outcome". So making sure others can understand in detail how you got to your results is central to doing good research. Releasing code is an important step in that, regardless of the university you belong to.

So don't think of this as a service to others (it is nice if that also happens, but that is not the goal). It is about doing good research by documenting how you got to your results, and making that documentation available.


Is GRE really required to get into a good university for MS in CS I am a software engineer with 2 years of experience. I am very passionate about software and technology. I code the whole day, creating applications that my friends and I can use.

Now I have left my job because I was not finding it challenging enough (intellectually) and wanted to do something of my own. I feel that I need to study and gain more knowledge in a more systematic way. Thus only option which I feel has the maximum return to investment ratio for me are the MS programs in USA.

So this year I am taking the GRE General Test in May (2013). The problem is that I am not good at words plus I am not very passionate about learning them also. I also feel that they should not really matter considering I want to do research work in the field of Computers.

My question is -
Can I still get into a university?
If yes then what should be the right approach?
I am really scared about what I should be doing right now as the dates for my exams are getting closer. Please Help.

Update:
I saw this video on TED trying to explain why being good in english is not required (Im being even more liberal by saying what is the point of learning so many words?)

There are a number of different exams that comprise the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE).  There is also the TOEFL exam, which may be required if English is not your first language.

Each university has its own set of requirements, and you will have to look on the websites for individual programs to find  out this information.  Here are the exams you may have to take:

The GRE General Test, comprised of three sections:

Verbal Reasoning (i.e., English reading and analysis skills)
Quantitative Reasoning (i.e., math skills)
Analytical Writing (i.e., English writing skills)

The GRE Subject Test, which (in your case) would be the Computer Science, but it looks like the computer science exam is being discontinued as of this month.

The bigger question is not necessarily which exams you have to take, but which exams will make a difference.  In computer science, your verbal and analytic writing score will count for much less than the quantitative score (which in some case is a shame, because analytical writing skills are very important for reading and writing papers...).

  What should be the right approach?

Study for the exams.  There are many online study guides and practice exams, and books to purchase.
Take it as many times as you can before applications are due.  This can get expensive.

  The problem is that I am not good at words

You'll need to work on that, and it is very possible to improve your skills and ability with hard work.

  ...plus I am not very passionate about learning them also.

You'll have to change this attitude if you want to be successful.

  I also feel that they should not really matter considering I want to do research work in the field of Computers.

As I said above, the quantitative exam will matter the most (and the CS exam will matter more if you take it).  The verbal and writing exams will matter, but you can afford to do worse on them than on the other exams.  Unfortunately, your personal feelings on the matter won't get you accepted, and you have to work within the system and do the best you can.


Correct form to tell and write the degrees I hold If I have a bachelor degree in Physics, how should I write it in a CV?
What is the correct form between the two:

Bachelor of Physics
or
Bachelor in Physics?

The same thing goes for the master degree, right now I have written master of science in physics of materials, is this correct or should be better to just write master in  physics of materials?

If this is for formal use then state it exactly as it appears from your university and give any translation that is logically correct. But BS in Physics or BSc (Physics) or Bachelor of Science (Physics) or similar would all be universally recognized in the English speaking world.

For informal usage (i.e. no legal implications whatever) then either of your suggestions would be fine or something such as I wrote above.

For extremely formal situations, use what the university uses and let the reader translate it. Probably name the university, as well.


Should listed citations in a historical overview be ordered numerically or chronologically? I'm writing an article and in one portion I give a brief historical overview of previous work on the problem I am studying.
(In case this matters, it's a pure math article,
specifically topology.)
I include references to the articles where the prior work I describe first appeared. But I am trying to be brief, so in many instances I cite several articles in a list. For example: blah blah blah [A, B, C], except that my bibliography is numerical (as is conventional for where I'm submitting it).

Now, I could order my citations so that this [A, B, C] becomes [1, 2, 3], but I like the idea of preserving the chronology of the development in the citation. For example, let's say my bibliography is like this.

[1] Mike, 1980.

[2] Sally, 1968.

[3] Tamara, 1985.

And let's say I write "A sequence of articles developed the concept...," and I want put in the citation for the articles I'm referring to. I like the idea of indicating the order of the development, but am not sure if it looks too weird. So is it better to put

"A sequence of articles [2, 1, 3] developed the concept..."

or

"A sequence of articles [1, 2, 3] developed the concept...?"

If you adopt an official citation style, then this will dictate the rules for ordering in-text citations and end of document references.

In-text citation ordering rules

When  multiple authors appear in one citation block, then there are various rules depending on the citation style: (a) alphabetically by first author surname, (b) arbitrary when using a numbered reference style, except are typically consecutive (e.g., 1-3, or 1,3,4), although based on @Jessica's answer ordering may not be required by all style guides.

End of document reference ordering rules

Two common rules are (a) alphabetically by surname and then by year for papers by the same author (e.g., APA style), (b) in order of appearance in the manuscript (i.e., when using superscript numbers).

General points about showing historical development of ideas

If you want to show the development of ideas include something in the text that indicates this development.  For example ,

  Jones (2000) was the first to propose the idea. Several researchers further developed the idea including Smith (2005),  Brown (2007), and then Cooper (2009).

or euivalently:

  Jones (1) was the first to propose the idea. Several researchers further developed the idea including Smith (2),  Brown (3), and then Cooper (4).


How to learn the format of a scientific paper, to emulate it? I'm a high school student, and I'm planning on doing a few simple chemistry experiments in my spare time (not as a part of any class). I thought it might be fun to write up a faux-paper on one or more of them. Unfortunately, I don't know anything about the format of real scientific papers - are there any guides I could read? How standardized is paper format?

Different fields tend to have their own standards regarding format of papers. So a good start is to Google something like "standard format of a [field name] paper". For example, for "standard format of a chemistry paper" I found:

Southwestern University: Guide for Writing in Chemistry
Oregon State University: Writing Guide for Chemistry
American Chemical Society: Preparing a Research Report

You can also read some research papers in your field - even if you don't understand the contents, you can pay attention to the format: what sections are included, what's in each section, etc.

Finally, you can look up some journals in your field and look for their "Instructions for authors". There, they describe the formatting rules specific to that journal, that authors follow when submitting a manuscript. They are likely to have paper templates you can use, either in MS Word or LaTeX format depending on the field and the journal. See e.g. the instructions for authors of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, and their template.


Co-authorship for a revised but relatively new article? I am a fresh PhD. In search of postdocs and permanent positions in last 4 months, I learned about two things which evaluating/hiring committee look in their potential employees:

1) How much the candidate has grown post their PhD? If a candidate keeps publishing article with previous supervisors even after his/her PhD it may mean that they have a good working relationship, but it also means that candidate has failed to collaborate with new partners. As the present research world is considered to be highly collaborative. Also it means that even after the PhD, the candidate still needs supervision from his/her former supervisor.

2) The greater the number of coauthors are for your paper, the less weightage you get during the evaluation process.

Now main problem: One of my articles of my PhD thesis was submitted in Phys Rev Lett, and it had received one very good feedback and one very bad. That article basically consisted of an interplay of formulas and some mathematical tricks to derive a desired equation. The idea was mine and I had written the whole article by myself.

My main supervisor contribution's was that he asked me to reverse the order of two paragraphs of the final submitted version of article.  Also during most of my PhD my main-supervisor always helped and polished my work.

My co-supervisor's had initially given some ideas but I proved them to be mathematically and physically incorrect. Also during most of my PhD my co-supervisor hardly contributed anything.

Update: Now I am planning to rewrite the article and submit to the same or some another journal, but this time I will have computational fluid dynamics simulation included in the article which will prove my derivation to be correct. I assume the new article will have 50% overlap with the previous version and new 50% material will be added to it.

Question: Should I include my supervisors as co-authors, or may be just one, or may be none? I do not think I will get any input from them in this particular article.

Background: 1) Academic world acts in 3 ways I guess:

a) Do buttering of seniors, collaborate with many and cite one another, and get timely promotions by feeding on the opportunities of others. I have seen a unqualified person getting promoted from Assistant Professor to Professor in just 8 years.

b) Do not do buttering, but then suffer. I have seen a well qualified person has remained as an Assistant Professor for last 23 years.

c) Make your credentials/ profile gigantic so none could affect you significantly.

So, If I rewrite the article as a single author, it will be a great boost for my long term career.

2) But I cannot deny that a recent postdoc offer I got has some contributions from my main-supervisor since he has highly recommended me to the professor at the new institute, since both are friends. Although the professor knew my work  from before, he had attended a presentation of mine earlier, I cannot ignore the recommendation of my main supervisor. I guess that is how academia works, also it seems difficult to draw a line between buttering and seeking help. I guess when I will be looking for a permanent position after 2 years, I might need the help of my main supervisor once again?

So, how to deal with this problem?

In this particular case, I would not change the authorship for the revised version (unless there are better reasons than what you have communicated).

You must not forget to keep your personal relations oiled. If you re-submit this article as a single-author paper, i.e. remove your supervisor, your relation to them would certainly not be helped. In the future, it may be important/useful to have that relation intact and well working for ongoing/future collaborations.

Moreover, by having them as co-author they are somewhat in your debt (which cannot be a bad thing) and may return the favor by adding you to one of their papers, even if you contributed as little as they did to yours.


Colleague stole my work and is publishing it as his own; my PhD supervisor supports him; I got the paper to review. How to proceed? By chance, I am reviewing now the paper which I recognised as a paper of my colleague. We are from the same institution and I am surprised that I got this paper to review, but, on the other hand, I am lucky to see it before it's published.  My colleague mentions in this paper the methodology like it was his idea but actually, I am the one that developed it, made it work and applied it,  together with the help of my supervisor. In short, he wants to be the author of the idea and the methodology. This is, in fact, what comes out from the paper.

I am now preparing my own paper about this methodology and my work, and I don’t have any publication on it, so far, just a poster from when I participated at a conference six months ago.

I talked to him about it but he doesn’t feel that it is wrong or ethically incorrect.

On top of that, we have the same supervisor. I talked with him as well, and he was threatening me, in a political correct way. He claims that it is okay, and in my paper, I will have just to cite their work in the introduction. He also stated that my work has a different approach in a small detail, so I will criticise their method and put mine as the better one. However, it isn’t true, because my approach is based on the methodology mentioned in the paper which I am reviewing now.

I really don’t know what to do. I was thinking to not review the paper, but it doesn’t solve the problem. If I reject it, I will have to write the reason why I am doing that, and it may turn my supervisor against me.

I would like to act in the most appropriate and ethically correct way. Just don’t know how. I would be grateful for all insights.

You shouldn't even think about it, do not review that paper, it's a clear conflict of interest, even more because the author is your direct colleague. And the only solution is to sit all together and explain to them that your contribution to said article is significant and you would like to be a co-author. If they have problems with you being a co-author and you have done substantial work then I would seriously consider if you want to be in this research group.


Can I serve as a reference for someone applying to fill my position? I work as an administrator at a university and will soon be resigning from my position (the job has already been posted). A student who I formerly supervised is applying for my position and has asked if I would serve as a reference. Is there a conflict of interest in doing so? I am not part of the hiring committee and, while I don't think this student has enough experience to be called in for an interview, I would gladly speak to my experience as her former employer if she was offered the job.

There's no conflict in my mind, and given how hard hiring can be, I would value your input if I were on the hiring committee.


Distance learning: taken seriously? I'm currently in the first year of a six year bachelor's degree aiming for astrophysics. The course is a home/distance learning setup run by the Open University. While I am enjoying it thoroughly, I am aware of the academic politics that can dog professional science. So my question is thus: Upon soldiering on with the degree, then masters, and then PhD, will I be taken seriously within a professional setting given my inability to reference a leading university for my education? Will the format for my studying be "pitied"?

Edit: I suppose a bit more info may help. I'm 27,wife, 2 children, and I currently work as a full time chef, and self employed part time IT technician. I flunked my GCSEs, with no further education. The past 3 years have been a revelation for me, and I have discovered a before unexperienced love for academia; specifically, physics and astronomy. Last year I completed a 1 year OU maths brush up course, which at the time I really struggled with. This year I had a bout of madness and took the plunge for a BSc degree in astronomy. I am now loving the math within the physics so far (yet to hit calculus though!)

PhD, and even masters, is a long way off.  Also, since this original post I've improved my understanding of what a PhD actually entails. So I realise that if I get there, it may well not have anything to do with the OU!

It occurs to me that a lot of my initial queries could have been avoided with a better understanding of the educational and qualification system itself. I now have a greater appreciation as to what a PhD actually is, realising that its a long way off and not necessarily needed for a fulfilling career in research.

I think trying to repair my broken education and fight my way into a worthwhile (and productive!) career is enough of challenge at the moment. There will be plenty of time later for worries concerning doctorates.

It is good to hear that there is at least an open mind towards distance educated professionals.

As has been said, if you've got it, you've got it - you just have to be ready to prove it.

My own experience of having an open university degree (computer science) is that "it depends on who you talk to".  Some people value the degree highly, others put it at the bottom of the pile.  I've found that the longer I've held it (ten years now!) the more value it seems to have accrued.  This could be to the fact it becomes less and less relevant where your studied the more experience you build or the fact that it's become a more accepted route of study since I gained it.

Disclaimer: I work in academia, but am not an academic.  I currently work for a big academic institution and they perfectly happy with my degree.


Employment in academia for doctorates w/o same field undergrad I'm an undergraduate in Mechanical Engineering interested in a career in academia, especially Physics. A middle aged person in India (from where I am) I recently met told me he couldn't find employment in academia in India or abroad after completing his doctorate in a Physics field, because he did an undergrad in Mechanical Engineering. Is this situation where there is difficulty finding employment when doctorate and previous education do not match generally true in academia, Physics or otherwise, or probably a very specific problem?

Don't base life decisions on anecdotes. I'm sure such cases exist, and, other cases in almost any combination. But your future as an academic, or even in industry, will depend far more on your later work and far more than that on the potential for success that you can demonstrate to anyone in a position to hire you.

But it would be a mistake to stay in Mechanical Engineering for life just for such a reason. It might be a reason to switch earlier, rather than later, but only so that your path into a physics doctoral program might be eased a bit.

But, a single case is always a poor indicator as there are always, potentially, other, unstated, reasons for the outcome.

Create your own life. But work hard at it.


review paper and authorship of ex supervisor I am now in another lab now, different from my PhD studies, as a post doc.

We had a review paper in which we included a figure from my thesis, without analyzed or even concentrate the paper to this figure, since it is very common. This figure was included in one of the 10+ topics discussed in this review. Should the authors include the supervisor of my ex-laboratory, as author or could just declare the laboratory and the name of my ex- supervisor to the acknowledgments, where they could thank him personally, as well as his laboratory? (my ex supervisor has not contributed in writing of the review).

I would say that only citing him would be enough. My field is cognitive neuroscience, yours might have different rules. I was in the opposite situation, a figure from one of my papers was included in a review where my supervisor was one of the authors. When they described the figure they cited my paper. A citation is quite a nice thing to have, especially in a review.


Is it a problem if I forget to add IEEE copyright clearance code? My paper has been accepted at an IEEE conference. The author instructions state clearly that I should add the "copyright clearance code" myself. I forgot to do so in the final version of the manuscript that should be going into print. Will this be a problem or even grounds for rejection?

The editor should sort this out, you could always let them know.


Do grad students in the USA typically have more or less student debt than undergrads? A student advocate at my institution recently claimed that grad students have more debt than undergrads. This surprised me, because I would expect that typical grad students are the kind of student that would be able to gather more financial aid (scholarships, awards, fellowships, etc.) during their time as an undergrad than typical undergrads. Furthermore, most PhD students (and many masters students) have their tuition waived while working as a TA/RA, so they accrue little/no additional debt. Of course, this likely varies with field, too: students in STEM are more likely to have institutional funding while law or medical students often have to pay their own way.

While I don't know if the statistic I quoted was comparing undergrads who haven't yet accrued their full measure of debt to grads who have all of their undergrad debt, it begs an interesting question:

Do undergraduate students typically have more student debt than graduate students have, and (broadly) how does this vary with field of study?

The comparison ought to be made after each group graduates from their respective program, since comparing a 1st year undergraduate's debt to a 1st year PhD student's debt clearly would not be helpful.

I think you are underestimating the number of graduate students who do not get any form of financial support. Like you said, most students in STEM or engineering PhD programs full receive full support. PhD students in humanities/social sciences departments are less funded compared to STEM students, but at least are given tuition remissions.

On the other hand, majority of MA students in any discipline generally receives no support. Then there is MBA students, law students, doctoral residents etc. They are the ones who make up a big portion of all graduate students and most of them have to get student loan to complete their graduate programs.

For example, a typical law school graduate would end up with 60k-100k+ loans at the time they pass the bar and get a job.


Receiving a "Major Revision" After undergoing a "Minor Revision" I submitted my article earlier this year in January. After 5 months i received a "Major revision", there was 3  different reviewers, and they made very relevant comments, that i found very useful. I answered all the reviewers and resubmitted the article.
Months later i received a "Minor Revision", one of the 3 reviewers asked to add futur research direction section. The other asked to correct the number of a certain section. The corrections where easy and i resubmitted the article.
Surprisingly, today i received a "Major Revision", which is absolutely unlikely. The email contained comments from the editor and #reviewer10 (a new one). The associate editor email was the following:

Editor comments :
The comments from the reviewer are quite negative.
The editor questions about the quality of the paper. The paper is not well written. The equations are
not well edited. Some figures are given in quite low quality.
The authors should carefully revise the paper.
This maybe the final chance for the revision.

Reviewer #10: This paper focuses on electric energy forecasting based on artificial intelligence.
Energy forecasting is one critical point in energy systems, and there are many research studies on
artificial intelligence-based energy forecasting. However, the innovation of this paper is not enough.
There are many research studies on artificial intelligence-based energy forecasting. For example, the
neural networks, support vector regression, gradient boosting mentioned in this paper are common
methods. It seems that the reviewer cannot find anything new. In addition, feature selection in load
forecasting is also a common method. In general, the paper uses the common methods to solve a
traditional problem. The reviewer suggests that the paper should not be accepted by this journal.

The comments from the associate editor are surprising, if there was some issues with the English in the paper or some figures, this would surely have been dealt with during the 1st revision or the 2nd revision although in the previous emails, the same associate editor didn't mention any issue or comments. But now suddenly there is an issue.
The comments from the reviewers demonstrates that the reviewer have not taken the time to read carefully or have not understood the content of the paper. There was 3 reviewers which made positive comments (accepted) the content.
It is written "reviewer10", i would assume that the paper was reviewed by at least 6 reviewers a none of them made a negative comment. So how am i getting "rejected" because of one bad review off of 10.
Even if it is a major revision, the due date is 24 November, which is 13 days ahead, quite bizarre for a "major revision".
My question is : Is there anything i could do? should i raise my concerns to the editor or refuse the revision.

There are a lot of things you can do, but if you want the paper to be published by this journal, it is almost certainly necessary for you to undertake the major revision.
Refusing to  revise will almost certainly result in an immediate rejection, based on the editor comments.
You can withdraw the paper and submit it elsewhere as always.
I'll note that "reviewer10" might not mean the tenth actual review of your paper, but a nominal identifier. There may have been some reviewers invited, but who did not submit reviews, for example. I'll also note that it may be "reviewer10" with the most knowledge of the area, though that isn't necessarily so. In that case, the other reviews were too superficial. And the opposite may also be true, of course, with that reviewer having too little experience.
But the editor's comments are not to be ignored. You can do your own analysis about whether the comments of the reviewer have validity or not. If they say it is standard work with little innovation, then that should be possible to check. You could, of course, ask for evidence of those statements if it hasn't been included.


I have a proof of a result in number theory, shorter than the existing proofs. Can such results be published and how? Actually I'm proving that ∀n∃p∈P|n<p<en. Which is a result similar to Bertrand's Postulate, but with a shorter proof. Should I publish my result? If so, as I'm not affiliated with any Research Institute how do I do that?

Edit

Since yesterday I've improved my proof: ∀n∃p∈P|n<p<2n. This means I'm proving Bertrand's Postulate with a simpler and shorter proof. So, which is the most appropriate
Journal to publish this result?

As @Nat says, do post in on arXiv.  Many journals have a "Notes" section for short results like yours, which people would find interesting, especially if they were teaching similar results.  The MAA Monthly does this, e.g.  After you have the proof up on arXiv, submit it to the "Notes" section of an appropriate journal, following the specific directions for that section.  At least one professional mathematician will look at it, so you'll get some vetting.  Have a look at the Missouri Journal of Mathematical Sciences.


Looking for advices to stay motivated working with my master degree advisor As English is not my native language I apologize for any mistakes in my following post.

I did my Bachelor Degree in Mathematics in University "A" with advisor "a". The strees level of this University was hard, the admission tests for master degrees also are so hard , and it was so competitive. But I really enjoyed working with my thesis advisor there, it was also hard but I really learned a lot working with him, as he was a great teacher . Also he was such a supportive person.

Nowdays Im in my second semester studying a master degree in mathematics in University "B" with advisor "b" in other city. So far, I´ve enjoyed the academic system of the school (subjects, less level of stress than university a, most of teachers so far, the city, etc). The problem is that I dont feel motivated working with my advisor, he is the person who is more closed to the topics I like at university "B". Im wanted to do a topic in lets say "Categories" and he agrees as he is even  an organizer in the  categories congress here at UNiversity B.

So far, my impression so far is he doesnt really knows the subject of categories as he is more specialized in other topics in Algebra so I asked for some theses topics in the subjects he knows more but he answered weird. He sometimes talks bad  without any good arguments about the academics I worked at University A including my undergraduate advisor.

He proposed to work with me and another student in some article but I dont really feel in as sometimes he is not clearly explaining something or also answers weird or angry.

I expose him my advances in my master thesis once or twice at week and most times he is O.K, but sometimes he was weird like always correcting me how I talk every few minutes. Making jokes about the topics I expose to him which for me only show me his ignorance and lack of professionalism. There was an error in the book I study for my thesis but he responded saying that the authors are not really knowers of its field but the authors were really experienced mathematicians which again show me his bad mood and ignorance. A few minutes checking the error by my own I deduced the entire proof and I think the error was typographical.

Im doing all the research in my master theses by my own as it results he dont really knows the topic, I stay motivated by the sake of learning a topic I like.But he realy not valuates what I am doing or at least I dont feel valuated by him.

My idea is to do my PHD in another university or maybe returning to University A with my first thesis advisor. Any advices will be aprecciated in order to deal with this lack of motivation working with advisor b. Thanks

I did my bachelors and master degree in Mathematics in one of the country's top institute, but due to some reason, I am currently doing my Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering department in another country and the university is also top in the country.

After joining Ph.D., I realize that as a Mathematics student, I do not like the research problems given to me by my supervisor. But there is one problem in which a lot of probability theory (very advanced level) is needed. I have started on my own to tackle this problem and after a year or so I have on my own progressed and published and also found a few other workable problems completely from a probability theory perspective. If I progress on these problems and publish then I am sure within the next 2–3 years I can start writing a thesis.

I must tell you since my supervisor is not a probabilist there is zero input from his side. I hope you can do on your own too. I feel sometimes the same way as you. But I really like the area I am in now. So at the end of the day, you have to find a problem and solve it, there will be rarely you and your supervisor both thinking and solving the problem together in my opinion.


How should I email dissertation to committee? I have to send my doctoral dissertation to the members of my committee and I wonder how I should write the email. It is not a question of inviting them to be on the committee (they have already agreed with my advisor), but on how to tactfully send them the dissertation.

Besides, is there anything else I should send besides the dissertation and my CV?

If you are obliged to send them the two documents, simply do so. Keep the cover letter as simple as possible. Just remember to address each of them separately, it looks better.

  Dear Prof. Smith,

  I'm sending you, as you are a member of my PhD committee, the PDF version of my thesis together with my CV. In case you had any questions, feel free to contact me at any time.

  I'm looking forward to meeting you.

  Best Regards,

  capadocia

As Bill Barth points out, make sure the people know when the defence is. In most places, university staff sends the official invitation, but if you know the dates, you can include them:

  I'm looking forward to meeting you on October 15 at the defence.


How can I politely reply and educate students with unreasonable requests? I am a professor at uni, and I have been experiencing a number of unreasonable requests from students on these days, some of them arguing that they need a special treatment due to the current Covid-19 situation, such as students asking for:

additional exam papers with full solutions (there are already three past exam papers with solutions available).
a list of the exact topics that will be examined in each of the exam exercises (this is, if the exam contains five questions, then I should provide the corresponding five topics).
providing the exact structure of the exam, such as one question about definitions, two questions about chapter 1 of the lecture notes, one question about chapter 2, ...
labeling slides and clearly specifying if they cover a topic that will appear in the exam or not (not just if it contains examinable material, but if the exam contains a question about the topic in the corresponding slide).

I want to reply to these requests indicating that they are just asking for too much (I may as well send them the exam with full solutions), and to teach them that the point of the exam is not to regurgitate memorized solutions (i.e., life does not work like that).

What is some advice on potential ways of replying and covering both aims: being polite, but also educating them about how unreasonable/entitled those requests are?

Let's assume your teaching practices are the best possible.  Students want you to change your teaching practices.  You should respond by explaining to students why your practices are effective (do this even if they don't ask).

Examples:

  additional exam papers with full solutions (there are already three
  past exam papers with solutions available).

Studying the three past exams will help you learn what you need to learn from this class.  Additional past exams will not provide additional help.  If you have extra time, I suggest you ...

  a list of the exact topics that will be examined in each of the exam
  exercises (this is, if the exam contains 5 questions, then I should
  provide the corresponding 5 topics).

All the topics listed on the course syllabus are important things for you to know.  Therefore, any of them might be on the exam and you should study all of them.  If it was not important enough to be on the exam, then I did not teach it.

If these types of responses are not true, then I suggest changing your teaching until they are true.


When asked to clarify a point to the reviewer, should I do so in the paper itself or the response to reviewer? Today I got letter from the editor of a journal saying that the reviewer found my work interesting but there are some points which he wants me to clarify. Now, one of the points he made is that he doesn't understand how I got from equation x to equation y and he wants to clarify how. Does that mean that I need to explain this in the paper itself or in the document that is send along the revised version, which explains my respond to the reviewer and what I have changed in the revised version?

It doesn't matter what the reviewer wants - you need to do what's best for your paper.

... which is to clarify things in the paper itself.

Think about it: a reader of your paper - one who was trying hard to understand it -was not able to understand your paper, or at least was unsure enough about it that it was worth mentioning. Since they are a reviewer you have a chance to explain things privately to them, but that's not going to be the case for most of your other readers. Some of them are going to hit the same roadblock, but instead of contacting you, they're just going to toss your paper aside. At best you lose a possible citation, worse, they could come away with a low opinion of your rigor and of you as a researcher.

Remember that the paper will need to speak for itself, without the additional comments to reviewers. If one person found the paper confusing, then others are likely to as well.


Applying for Applied Math PhD as a non-math major (Letters of Recommendation, etc.) This is my first post, so I'm not be fully familiar with the etiquette of posting on this forum, but I'll do my best.
I graduated Summa Cum Laude in May from a reputable university with a major in finance. During my final semester, I took Linear Algebra and I noticed that I might have an affinity for mathematics. So, I took Calculus II at a community college over the summer, and I self-studied some Abstract Algebra. I also noticed that from the financial courses that I have taken, ones that dealt mostly with data and probability theory were my favorite. I then decided to pursue a PhD in Applied Math and have been preparing my application, so it'll be ready by December.
So far, I took the GRE and got scores above the 90th percentile in both sections. I was supposed to take the GRE Math test, but last week ETS cancelled it for this year. I'm also planning on taking Calc III and Mathematical Proofs in the Fall, then Real Analysis in the Spring. As I was narrowing down the list of professors to reach out for recommendation letters, I got into some issues that I was hoping this forum would help me with.
At this point, a well-established professor of mine has agreed to write me a good recommendation letter after getting the highest grade in his class (which is considered to be really hard finance course in my school). I did an independent study with a history professor; when I thought of requesting a letter from him, I wondered whether he would be helpful considering I only did a qualitative research with him. I also was the TA for a Management and Organizations class, so I considered a recommendation letter from my professor. Lastly, I was considering asking for a letter from a professor whom I wrote an economics research paper for.
About the professors mentioned above, do you think any of their LOCs would be helpful for my application? I ask particularly because I am applying from a non-traditional background.
I apologize for this lengthy post. The application process is starting to stress me out particularly because most educational institutions have stopped major research until further notice. So I'm stuck with the experiences that I have done.
Thank you!
P.S. My undergrad degree is from the US, and I plan on applying for a PhD in the US as well.

Having some research experience is better than no experience.  I don't see an issue with having a history professor write a letter for you, especially since you got research experience under their guidance.  Same goes for the economics professor, since Applied Mathematics and Economics are two very connected fields (and also since you wrote a research paper with them).  I think you should be good on letters of recommendation, especially since you mentioned that two of your potential writers are from past research experiences, which is what PhD programs want since it's focused on research after all.  As far as the professors you choose, it's most important to choose the ones who think most highly of you in a research setting, as opposed to "got an A in my class," since PhD programs are about research output and less about A's earned in coursework.
The finance major shouldn't be too much of an issue.  Applied mathematics, as far as I'm aware, overlaps with many disciplines, ranging from quantitative finance to computational science to biostatistics.  Many of the professors in my department come from a wide variety of backgrounds, such as chemistry, physics, and pure mathematics.  So long as you have the mathematical basics to succeed you should have no issue here.
Finally, as far as other issues go, generally this is either for your SOP (Statement of Purpose, for talking about your research fit/interests) or something you should contact your programs of interest with regards to (including for the issue with the Math GRE given the circumstances we are in).  If you want to keep doing research, I know some professors (at least at my institution), have shifted to virtual format for the time being, you could try and see if there are profs doing virtual research in your school.
Hope my answer helped, especially for the LOR's part since that was your main point in the question, and best of luck with applications.


Interested in research, not in coursework I am in the last semester of my undergraduate degree in computer science. I plan to apply for masters and PhD positions thereafter. I did not have a good classroom experience in my bachelor's programme – I did not find my professors to be great (in terms of knowledge, research or teaching). As a result, I soon lost interest in my courses [1]. To be fair, many of my peers enjoyed the very same courses and excelled in them due to their interest.

Due to these experiences, I am not interested in doing courses further – I also realised that I learn much better on my own and while doing research. On my own, I don't have to stick to a curriculum decided by someone else and can move in and out of material, as required by my research, which would otherwise span a wide variety of courses. Thus, I am partial to programmes offering full-time research opportunities with little to no coursework.

A large part of my research has involved reading papers on new techniques and figuring out how these techniques worked, how they were implemented, reimplementing them myself, etc. This required a fair bit of figuring things out by myself, which I found to be very different from coursework – where you had a professor, TAs, tutors, office hours, etc which provided an extensive support system.

My question is, how closely are research and coursework linked in academia? Would it raise eyebrows if I were to say to someone in academia "I like doing research, but dislike doing coursework"?

Now as I understand, through my SOP I have an opportunity to convince the admissions committee about why I am a good fit for this programme and vice versa. In such a scenario, I am very tempted to include the following points in my argument, because they are absolutely true and form the crux of why I am interested in such programmes (primarily applying in the US):

I dislike doing coursework.
I have quite a bit of research experience where I have performed well without doing coursework.
I learn better on my own and while doing research, as my research experience shows.
This programme will allow me to pursue research uninhibited by distracting courses, which is exactly what I want.

But this is where I am confused. Will this unabashed honesty work in my favour? This is primarily because the vast majority of researchers I have interacted with happen to be professors – and as such have been very involved in teaching courses. Moreover, since they do spend a fair amount of their time teaching, they also invite students who do well in their courses to join their research. Now I understand there are also independent research organisations who are not directly involved in teaching, but the ones which I have had the experience of working with have invariably been associated with a partner university and involved in sharing of researchers, professors and students.

[1] Due to the vast number of questions on this site regarding grades, I wish to categorically state that this question is not about addressing bad grades. Indeed, I don't wish to address this issue at all because although I was not very excited with my coursework, I made average grades and directly dived into various research endeavours. This allowed me to accumulate substantial research experience and include impressive research positions on my resume, including a prestigious scholarship. This, I believe, already compensates my not-so-good grades (as I have received offers from reputed research institutes based on this profile). My question is only about the aspect of 'not liking coursework'.

You would certainly be an exceptional case. Some would interpret that as a difficult case. When you don't fit the expected mold it is harder to evaluate you. That doesn't mean that you are at a disadvantage, necessarily, but you would be at some places that aren't very flexible.

I think that a research focus at the MS level is more typical in Europe than in the US, however, so you might consider location as you look for a position. In some fields in the US research is also dominant, of course.

But even in the US, if you can make contact with a professor or two at the graduate level who might be willing to give you a close look, you might be fine. However, many programs have fairly strict rules about things. You might, be able to do independent study to cover many of them, but that can be intensive for the faculty, so don't expect too many concessions unless you are exceptional in the positive sense as well.

Your real problem, however, is that if you don't follow the "accepted" course of study you are liable to miss some things that it is valuable to know. The advantage of coursework is that someone has seen the bigger picture and has selected topics that are useful and given thought to how you can develop skill in those areas. Missing that can be a long term disadvantage, so tread carefully and seek advice on your personal academic journey.


How to follow up with a professor who had received my transcripts but did not reply? I inquired a professor at a reputable university regarding the per-requisite for his research group and if a certain knowledge is required, with a CV of mine. He asked for my transcripts. I mailed him my transcripts but have not got any reply yet. It has been 4 days.

How should I approach the matter?

Keep waiting.  4 days is not very long.  If you have not heard anything in 3-4 weeks, send another email asking politely if he has had a chance to think about your request.


Can research papers be mentioned as projects in a cv? While working as a research associate at an institute, I contributed to a research project through it's development and experimentation phases. From my contributions on this project I was listed as a second author on some research papers.

How should I list these papers on my CV, independently or in relation to this research project?

It cannot be a research paper without a project. Research papers are for describing the results of the projects. Even review articles represent projects to collect the information about the current status in the particular branch of the science.

Once you are a co-author, you have been involved into that project. Co-authorship always assumes significant enough involvement. Hope this answers your question.


What power do student councils typically hold? And what role do they have? So, awhile back I wrote this answer suggesting that the student council would be ideal to handle the issue, but got told that student councils have no influence/role in such matters. In general I am used to the idea that a student council and student representatives do anything where students have to be represented at a higher level (from specific studies, to the faculty level, to the university level, up to even international politics). This does not only mean being a part of the rule making process, but also making sure students aren't disadvantaged because of professors not following those rules. Now, today I came across this question and a comment (+22) on the highest voted answer warns the OP against escalation, because of retaliations against him as a student. For me that's exactly the kind of thing where I would expect the student representative to step in, he would first approach the professor in his role as student representative (not revealing the names of individual students). If the professor doesn't resolve the issue at once the student representative would know - unlike a typical students - exactly who best to approach within the institution and is best aware of all the rules and systems that are in place (and importantly if a dean for example were to ignore student complains too many times a student council is able to escalate this easily to upper university levels).

Now, it's becoming clear to me that that's not how it works in a lot of institutions as a lot of answers which I would expect to be "go to your student representative" are instead complex diplomatic answers or just "live with it" answers, so what I am trying to understand is where this model does apply (is it typical of just some western countries? Europe in general? Only our institution?). And how a student councils activities and responsibilities broadly look in different systems.

Austria is in a rather interesting situation regarding this. Traditionally, Austrian universities were mandated to maintain what was called (roughly translated) "university democracy", meaning that all members of the university (students, non-faculty scientific employees, non-scientific employees, faculty) need to be able strongly influence all decisions that directly impact them. In practice, this led to (for instance) student representatives with quite real powers, such as vetoing certain decisions.

After 2002, a new legisation was put in place to "americanize" the system, which (interestingly) was also understood to mean that decision power should be centralized more or less purely in the faculty (in Austria that's basically only full professors). Since then, the role of student representatives has shrunk perpetually. They are still in most meetings, but if they disagree, the only consequence is a note in the meeting protocol. This has certainly led to some developments that were quite frankly not in the student's best interests.

That being said, in Austria, student representatives are still your best bet when you have some "systemic" problem with a lecture or a professor. Not necessarily because they have any power to change things, but at least they are on first-name basis with the people that do (the dean of studies, the responsible department head, etc.) due to sitting on many meetings with them. Even if they can't force anything, they should know who to talk to, who might be able to remedy the situation.


A better way to train future Theoretical Computer Science researchers My questions:

  Are there universites offering a B.Sc. in computer science aimed solely at giving the best training to future theoretical computer science researchers?
  (in the universities I checked, the programs are a combination of training people for research and training people to be programmers in the industry).
  As it seems not to be the case in most universities, is there a reason not to offer such programs? (financial maybe)

The motivation for the questions:

I am a mathematics M.Sc. student.
I had several conversations with researchers (full/associate professors) in theoretical computer science when I was looking for a thesis advisor. Three of them mentioned to me that they wish they would have learnt more mathematics in their basic training (two of them had a B.Sc. in mathematics and computer science and said they wished they did an M.Sc. in mathematics as well and one of them studied computer science only for a B.Sc.).
Their comments referred to funtional analysis (by a researcher in metric embeddings), to group theoretic constructions of expander graphs, etc.

This led me to check the program in computer science and here is what I found:

If a student really tries to get as much cs-theory and mathmematics in his B.Sc, he can study: 38% theoretical computer science, 40% mathematics with mathematics students, 6% mathematics with cs-students only, 16% technical courses. This amounts to 16% waste of time (for a future theoertical cs researchers) and 6% non-optimal use of time (as these math courses with cs-students feel a bit like high-school math).

I included the basic programming courses under theoretical cs because I believe they are essential in order to "know what you're talking about" when studying algorithms, computability, etc.
The situation is even a little worse from the perspective of this student because I included all the graduate courses in theoretical cs offered to undergrads, so he will have less theoretical cs courses to take during the M.Sc.

It seems like a much better choice for a future cs theory researcher is to study mathematics and take the cs theory courses (together with the most basic programming courses) as the "free choice" courses. I feel lucky to have done that as it seems that I would not have received such an excellent training if I had gone for the university's fixed cs+math program.

I think that the cs world could benefit alot if universities offered both B.Sc. and M.Sc. programs in "mathematics and theoretical computer science". This can be good both in giving a better training and in encouraging future colloboration.

So here's another question:

  Do you agree that such programs ("mathematics and theoretical computer science") are a better alternative to cs-only programs or math+cs program which include many technical courses, as far as future theoretical cs researchers are concerned?

One downside is the "all eggs in one basket" problem. If you're sure you want to go into theoryCS, then this is great. But if you want to hedge your bets, then some more programming and general CS courses at the undergrad level would be helpful. Also, even within theoryCS, a solid understanding of computer science at large helps with asking new questions about other models of computation, or evaluating the value of theoretical questions motivated by some practical applications.


Will papers published in other sub-disciplines matter for graduate admission? I am currently a second year physics student from an Eastern European uni, that is thinking about doing a PhD in the US. I've done some research on the matter, but there are still a few aspects that I don't yet fully understand (graduate  system is rather different from Europe):
I saw that they value research experience of the applicants. I have co-authored a paper with a professor that has been accepted for publication in a national journal, one with another professor that will probably get published as well in a national journal and I may have found something that will maybe result in a paper in a more known, international journal. The thing is that this is not really "hot shot" research, i.e. not the kind of research that you would normally do for a PhD,  as I can't even tackle very advanced matters so I did something in areas that I can have a good grasp on (classical mechanics, finite time thermodynamics).
My question is how will the admission board regard these papers? I mean it can't be bad, but will it give me an advantage over other applicants?
Also, will it seem odd if I have research experience in a few unrelated areas? (as an undergrad I think I should explore as many subjects as possible)

Undergraduates are not generally expected to have already figured out exactly what they want to do in research, so it's unlikely that there will be any concern about the fact that you've worked in multiple areas.  The fact that you've been involved in research and published papers at all is a very good sign, even if it's not in exactly the field you are applying to be in: it means you're motivated and inclined toward research and have been able to accomplish significant things already.  In short: don't worry about it, but celebrate that you've got such a strong background!


How to gauge how professional/formal to dress for a tenure track interview Departments vary a lot by discipline when it comes to what is acceptable attire for men and women both on a day to day basis and at interviews.  Some demand a suit, while this would be ostentatious at others.  Whereas some wouldn't bat an eye at seeing a backpack at an interview, while others would sneer at anything that isn't a leather satchel.  For instance, I've been eyeing this convertible messenger/backpack like this for a job interview (in environmental sciences), but my colleague in the MedSci department says leather or nothing.  Are there any rules of thumb to determine what is and is not appropriate when interviewing at an institution whose office culture you're not familiar with?

I have been on the hiring side of several dozen academic job interviews.  As such, I am somewhere between amused and alarmed that you think your bag will figure into the job selection process.  If your research concerns the bag or if you were giving your talk from inside the bag maybe -- otherwise, how does this even come up?

Preparing for job interviews is a good thing, but I advise you to concentrate your preparations on the things that could matter.  Perhaps you can further work on your slides or on some other aspect of your job talk.  Perhaps you could do further research into the faculty of the department and plan specific things to say to each of them.  And so forth.  These sorts of preparations are still unlikely to make a difference in the outcome...but more so than ruminating on your choice of bag.

Good luck.


Which format(s) for citation files should I offer for my references? As I want to make my publications easily available for citation, at my website I am offering, together with my references, a citation file. For the moment I am offering a .bib BibTeX file with every citation.

The question is, if it is recommendable to use further citation formats. I have seen that Google Scholar offers 4 possible formats: BibTeX EndNote RefMan RefWorks. Is it recommendable to offer such a variety or it is enough to use BibTeX?

Thanks.

My take on how to promote and make accessible your works for citation is as follows:

For your global library:

Pick a format. You won't get it always right. Mathematicians and physics will prefer bibtex, biologist and health-related researchers probably will rather have something that works directly on their word (EndNote). In any case, I feel that getting all the citations of an author from his/hers webpage is not that common. People will just pick those articles that are really relevant for them.

If you want to, at least, provide those two and you feel comfortable adding javascript to your personal page, you could use something like enw-to-bib to automate the translation upon user's request.

For each individual article:

If you don't want to complicate yourself, just add the DOI. Most journals have citation tools to download in multiple different citation formats. If you want to get creative, this same citation tools will provide the links for quite a lot of formats (I guess some journals will offer more options than others).

This option should be that much easier and allow for a more flexible way for your visitor's to actually pick whatever they are really interested in.


How is a PhD student staying in their institution as a postdoc perceived by future employers? I am finishing my Ph.D. very soon, with the only thing remaining is the thesis defence, which hopefully should go smoothly. My goal is to go into academia, so I started looking for postdoc opportunities. What I am looking for in this position is to have more publications so that I could eventually find a tenure-track position.
I recently got an offer from a university in a nearby city, and I was about to accept it. However, my advisor heard about this, and he suddenly wants to keep me as a postdoc himself after I finish. While I see some positives and negatives in both offers, I feel that there is a higher chance for me to produce publications if I stay with my current advisor. So I am considering staying.
I am just wondering that if I stay, will I be viewed in a negative light by future faculty selection committees, seeing that I stayed in the same place as a postdoc where I did my Ph.D. with the same advisor?

As someone hiring post-docs and staff members, I am leery of someone doing a long (defined as ~ >6 month) postdoc where they were a PhD student, particularly with their same advisor. Why? To me, the purpose of a post-doc is to have a clear demonstration that the new PhD can move into an at least slightly different area and rapidly come up to speed and be productive on something new. Staying where you are just means finishing up loose ends, whether correct or not. If in the 6+ month range, you've got some explaining to do to me in the interview.
I'm not upset by a few-month "postdoc" with their PhD advisor, finishing up things, as they are looking for the next position to come open. But a post-doc has to be something new - it is the time to show off your new-found abilities to learn and make progress. Why? Because that is what you are going to have to do for the rest of you career. You aren't going to keep doing your PhD project for the next 30+ years.
For my postdocs, what does showing off look like? We hand them a project, and expect that within ~3 months there should be progress sufficient for starting to submit abstracts to conferences. And then they get another new project to get going, with abstracts going out on it 3 months or so later. The point is that in the first year there should be conference presentations and papers heading out the door on the new work at my institution. They should have an interview talk based on that work. That is what a postdoc should look like, and what I look for out of their postdoc when hiring new staff members. And that does not seem to happen for a postdoc staying at their PhD institution under their PhD advisor - it is just too easy to wrap things up, not start new, well defined projects that are different.
I would like to add that for the next 2-5 years (or more based on what happens) I will be much more flexible with this. Clearly the pandemic is not going to help anybody's career trajectory, and the constraints on jobs, moving, and everything else will make life for grad students and postdocs far more complicated than usual (and everyone else, too). Still, choose wisely - what will make you better at what you want to do?


Is applying to 20 graduate schools too much? I am applying to math graduate programs, have a list of schools of different range, but I am so worried about being accepted to a grad school, that am considering to apply to 20 schools.

My undergraduate institution is one of the top schools in math, #1 or #2 in several math fields.

My worry is that I messed up grades of some important classes, also totally messed up my gre sub, since I didn't prepare for it at all. But I do have lots of research experience in fields related to applied math (I want to do applied math, now I am pure math major).

Should I apply to 20 or there is no point in applying to so many, maybe just 15? I also don't want to disturb my rec letter writers so much.
I am not thinking about the money I have to spend on the application process

Thank you :)

Just my opinion: Do you really need to apply to 20 schools? I think it is very hard to be focused when applying to many schools. You also have to spend lots of money, and more importantly, you have to find referees willing to write 20 recommendation letters!

I have read many articles and most of them suggest 6-8 school: 3 reach schools, 2 match schools, and 2 safe schools and that seems reasonable.

20 seems to be too much and a waste of your time and money.