How should I proceed when a (famous) professor says I'm not good enough for research?

I am sorry that it happened to you. This is not a pleasant experience, and frankly it's a shame that toxic professors and supervisors are still common in academia.
Academic research is broad and multi-dimensional. Some people excel in writing proofs, others design and set up wonderful experiments, collect useful data and find beautiful dependencies within. Some people propose fantastic theorems, which take hundred years to prove, others prove or disprove them after hundred years. As a community, we do research in a variety of exciting ways, which mutually support each other.
No single researcher is equally excellent in doing all these things. We have our strong areas and our blind spots. But saying that someone is not fit for research based on a couple of shortcomings in their proof is completely unfair, unjustified, ridiculous and unkind. This is opposite what a University professor should do, in my opinion. A good supervisor would encourage a student to try different things to identify where their strength and passion are. A toxic person would identify a single error and draw far-reaching conclusions from it to undermine student's confidence and make them feel bad about themselves. This is an extremely short-sighted and unprofessional behaviour.
Please try to disregard this person's opinion. Find someone else to collaborate with. Academia is large and although toxic and self-important people are still common, there is also a plenty of kind and supportive and truly generous colleagues around. Don't hesitate to share your experience with others to prevent someone else from having the same negative experience as you just had.


Admission to graduate school for physics

I cannot tell you what to do, but it might be worth observing that your written documents at most give an initial impression of "who you are", and that the graduate program will be able to reflect on that initial impression if they are so fortunate as to meet you in person.  Presumably you will have reflected on what information you believe is most relevant to the admissions committee.  To some extent, this might include your perspective on physics (or science more generally), mathematics, the position or role of academia in society, and/or what sort of behavior or personal growth you believe you could sustain over the course of your graduate career, and as much evidence (or more typically a 'clue' to where evidence can be found) is needed to support your claims.  If you are familiar with the basic rules of bridge, it might help to think of your academic goals or dreams as the bid, the admissions committee as your partner, and the limits of your permanent record, ease or effectiveness of respectful collaboration, and/or extempore knowledge (that you might also have an opportunity to share, gracefully, during a visit or interview) as your "opponent".  If you want the strongest possible cross section with the interest of teleologically relevant programs, try to pack as much teleologically relevant and easily verifiable information about yourself as possible.


A reference that is old, has no bibtex entry, and probably not well-known throughout the readership. How to cite this?

For cases like this, unless you want to give a historical reference, there's usually no need to cite the primary source, you can just cite your favourite circuit theory book.

Anyway, if you really wish, you can certainly cite the original paper too, which can be found, e.g., here.

For what concerns the added question on where to draw the line, you can have a look at the following question, and the answers therein: How generous should I be with citations?


How can I appropriately bring up topics of agenda to my professor in a meeting?

Send him/her an email reminder that you will be meeting and there are three things you want to discuss:

The week I will be taking off before the semester starts, what is expected before, during, and after?
When funding will be paid for _____.
The ______ project.

Have the email open and mention these "tag lines" if it gets off topic. Professors are usually busy, so I wouldn't beat around the bush with this. Just be direct and to the point, but cordial and understanding.

Whenever I do this before going into a meeting, even if we get off topic, we always tend to at least hit the email points before ending. It also makes it easier to talk about funding since it's much easier to do it via email, and now the email will force it to be a topic of conversation.


What's a "methodological approach" for research (Master's thesis)?

You can't really choose your topic definitively until you have "mastered" the related material, but you can give a strong, well-informed description of what your topic might be.

A methodological approach is the approach you will take to exploring your topic. For example: "I will perform neural network simulations of the PFC and BG of a decision making agent while recording neuronal activity and behavior. I will supplement this computational approach with validation of behavioral results in humans." The approach should be carefully thought out (as the above example was not) and worded to make it sound nontrivial yet feasible within the scope of your program.


Thesis or a practicum at Masters Level - Computer Science

Thesis.  Thesis, thesis, thesis.

(But I do agree with Suresh.  The fact that you've published is more important.)


Professor refuses to write a recommendation letter to students who haven't written a research paper with him

I wanted to ask whether his refusal for recommendation letters is reasonable

My personal opinion is that if you worked in his lab for a year (satisfactorily), it is unreasonable to refuse a letter. All the more so if you had other good interactions (TAing, etc.) with him.

  and also ask for some advice on how to handle this situation!

Unfortunately, my opinion counts for absolutely nothing. You cannot force this professor to write you a letter, and would be unwise to try. All you can do is find someone else. Preferably someone who can comment on your research, or at least someone who can confirm that your advisor almost never writes letters for undergrads (i.e., vouching that the lack of a letter from your advisor should not reflect poorly on you).


Tips on choosing a research topic with little relative background?

There is no sure path to research. And it is never too early  to think about it.

A colleague on another side of SE claims:

  Spending two days in a lab can easily save you up to one hour reading
  literature

You are lucky enough to be in the right place. Start asking people, be gently curious. Some won't answer, some will. Some may begin to give you more and more interesting tasks. And on the side, read. Some books won't tell you anything. Some will.

There is no sure path to research. But doing nothing is unlikely to help.


Is it true that PhD students need to work 10-12 hours a day every day to be productive?

The answer is no.

There are a lot of factors in play. With my work, a lot of it is creative so it is hard to say when I am working or not.

Do people expect students to work that many hours? Maybe, but it isn't healthy (and maybe not legal).

Do people really work the entire time they are at work? Probably not. Your productivity certainly goes down the longer you work. Whether people goof around or not isn't specific to Academia and can happen anywhere (I don't find goofing around to be a negative thing).

I too have read several studies about the limited number of hours that people have for mentally demanding tasks. In fact, I read a study about programmers that said they were lucky to get 1-2 hours of solid work done in a day. This info can help you organize your day so that you work on difficult tasks in the morning and then mechanical tasks in the afternoon. Also, studies have shown that taking breaks and going on walks can help improve your productivity.

There isn't a cookie cutter answer for everyone. It depends on yourself, the type of work, your advisor, and your coworkers.


It's not entirely accurate to state that Windows 'dominates' in the commercial world. While this is generally accurate in Desktop and Laptop computers, keep in mind that the vast majority of web (and other) servers are Linux-based. Keep in mind that 100% of the TOP500, a list of the 500 most powerful computer systems in the world, are on Linux. Keep in mind that Linux, especially if you include Android, is almost definitely the most prevalent operating system (kernel) in the world in terms of number of devices.

A lot of academic institutions, especially in more computing-related fields, are big supports of open-source/FLOSS communities, and Linux is obviously a very big underlying part of such communities.

And, most key in my experience, for academic/scientific environments, Mac and Linux have enormous computational advantages over Windows - the underlying Unix architecture model and the inherent support of very useful shells like bash, very useful device handles (eg. /dev/random, or device IO handles), etc. These things make the development of custom code, especially for scientific, computational, or instrument-interactive purposes, a lot easier than on Windows.

Even if you're not using custom code, I'd venture to guess that absolutely any computing cluster worth its salt is being run on some kind of Linux. If you want to just use that cluster, it's far less hassle to SSH in with a Mac or Linux computer with SSH built-in, than having to use something like Putty and fiddle around on Windows.

In all, science is very heavily dependent on computing. And high-level computing is very dependent on Linux. In my view this is the biggest reason that very compatible Unix-like systems like Mac and Linux are far more prevalent.


Do arxiv papers matter at all while applying for a doctoral program in Physics?

Yes, they might be a benefit, but, since they aren't refereed, it might be limited unless it they are remarkable in some way. If they are also submitted to a journal as well, then it would be worth more.
It would, however, require people examining your application to take a look at the papers and make some judgement. They might be willing to do this, or not. They might be impressed, or not, depending on what you have there.
But, as you suggest, self-study, and especially research have value for doctoral applications.


Full length articles or multiple letters to publish in Journal?

My advice would be to go through with the submission as is. If you were to withdraw the manuscript you would then have to write the two new papers and go through review for each of them. These steps take a lot of time and effort, both of which you could spend on original research (e.g. use this new method to solve various other problems).

The only case where the resubmittal might be interesting is if your results are so novel and significant that you are almost sure you can publish them in a high-profile journal (more prestigious than the current one). Then again, if they had this kind of potential I guess your advisor would have spotted it...

Generally speaking, having two papers (one of them as a letter in a prestigious journal) is of course more gratifying than one long publication and looks better on the CV. There are however two points to consider:

The results need to be important enough to warrant publication as a letter. In particular, the (uncertain) benefit of having it published must compensate the investment in time and effort (see above).
The "long paper" should contain enough new material to stand on its own. "Salami slicing", also known as the search for the "minimum publishable unit", is frowned upon. Although this behavior is not apparent from the publication list, it can be detected by careful examination (e.g. by the candidate's referee on a hiring committee).

See also this thread for more details.


How do professors view a student who has good grades but always asks stupid questions?

Students often have a highly distorted perception of themselves with respect to the feelings of their professors.  The differential in both power and experience between student and professor is just so large that it's quite common for a student to confuse the very distinct attributes of professorial attitude, personal affection, and intellectual respect.

As such, I would suggest that you really don't know what your professors think of you until you ask them.  Maybe you are reading them correctly, but maybe not: many professors are quite pleased to have a student who carefully advocates to improve their understanding of material, even if they might wish to be getting on with the lecture in the moment.

My recommendation is to tell the professor you're thinking of applying to Ph.D. programs and ask them something like:

  Do you think that you would be able to write a strong letter of recommendation for me?

The "strong" is important here, because that's what will get you the honest opinion of whether the professor thinks well of you or not, and you don't want letters that are not strong.


You need to focus your CV on the specific department and specialty you are interested in.

First, look at some programs of study.  Look at the research interests.  Look at some of the published papers.  Think about which of your many areas within IT you would like to delve into more deeply; think about which areas interest you the most for working in when you are done with this next degree.

Once you've identified some programs that YOU are excited about, pick and choose which items in your full CV you'd like to emphasize in your application.

Try to get some feedback from a couple people whose opinion you trust, about your draft CV and application.

You absolutely need at least one strong letter of recommendation -- so figuring out who could write this is going to be important.

I apologize, I don't know the specific differences between the European context and the U.S., but hopefully this answer, written by someone who knows the U.S. system best, will still by helpful.


Should I report cheating to my professor? If so, how?

The professor is free to decide to reuse questions from previous exams. It's a bit sloppy, but it's her business. She can't forbid students from learning the answers by heart, she would have no ways of enforcing this rule.

It would be unethical only if the previous tests were obtained by stealing them or any other dishonest way. If it's previous students making them available, it's just students investing efforts in a dubious way.

My answer is that you should suck up your furor, try to make the best learning out of the content (why not use these previous exams as an exercise?), and ace the exam your way. You will be much happier with yourself on the longer haul than those who will just have the quick thrill with the (false) impression of "gaming the system".

Also, don't take any more of her courses, and maybe mention in the teacher evaluation that you think the exam is not efficiently testing for understanding.

As a side note, people who succeed by learning answers by heart are only tricking themselves. They invest time and money in an education but don't take advantage of the learning. I think it's idiotic.


Going to study PhD abroad with weak economic backing?

Many (most?) doctoral students in the US work as Teaching or Research assistants. The stipend, while small by the standards of regular employment is enough to live on nearly everywhere. There isn't money for extras but a couple can get by. When I studied, the stipend was about 1/3 to 1/4 of the starting faculty salary. I think that it is similar now. Explore this with any US doctoral institution.

There may be visa restrictions for some students and in some situations US citizenship may be required. But I think the visa problem would be especially severe for anyone from Iran now, due to geopolitical considerations. Hopefully these will ease but probably not for a few years, at least.


What is the nature of the "assistant professor" position in India?

Indian universities are not very homogeneous, but it may be helpful to divide them into two categories:

(1) National institutes/universities:The top-tier universities with highly competitive admissions and recruitment processes. A commonly stated figure is that 1% of applicants make it to these institutes, though I think it may now be closer to 10%, with more institutes opening in recent years. In this category, an Assistant Professor must hold a PhD and have 3 years post-doctoral experience.

(2) Other universities: One requires a Master degree and must qualify a national-level entrance exam to become Assistant Professor. Yes, one may continue in this post without a doctorate, though in practice this is rare. Full professors (and perhaps associate professors too- not sure on this) require PhD.

The second category might appear strange from a US perspective. It may help to recognize that these universities tend to place pedagogy over research. This is an outcome of having a large population and limited employment prospects without a college degree.


How to request transcript copies from universities in the Netherlands?

The best thing to do is probably to contact the student administration of your university. They can make certified copies of your diploma (and presumably also grade transcripts, etc.). You can also contact the Dienst Uitvoering Onderwijs at http://www.duo.nl/, which are also authorised to make certified copies.

However, it may be that "ordinary" photocopies suffice, if you tell them that you can show the originals later if necessary. You would have to check with the admissions office though, I do not know about the situation in the US.


Should I do an MBBS before/after taking a doctoral program in neuroscience?

The distinction between an MD and MBBS is the US versus the British system of medical training. Both allow you to practice medicine in countries that support each system. Confusingly, it appears the MD degree in the UK is also a post-MBBS research degree most similar to the US PhD, though you must have already obtained an MBBS to train for an MD (source: Wikipedia).

A quick google scholar search for MBBS reveals many published clinical trial studies where authors have MBBS degrees. For example,

Article 1 - Article 2 - Article 3 (in Lancet)

So the answer to your first question is yes. Perhaps the only thing to consider is where you ultimately want to practice. Ideally, you'll want to do your training in the same country. There are lots of crappy things about training in one country then moving to another--mainly, many places will make you retake the country-specific licensing boards.

I'm a little skeptical of your proposed number of years of training. In the UK (where MBBS originates), training is 5 to 6 years in length, generally two years pre-clinical followed by 3-4 practicing in the hospital. As for the PhD, Europe and the US have different expectations. I encourage you to check out this concise comparison from a different post. Essentially.. time to get a PhD is often fixed in Europe, while more open ended here in the US. But, as is emphasized above, training should be about learning the key skills necessary to succeed in academia, which is your stated objective.

In regard to which to obtain first.. I would argue for a PhD followed by medical training. Clinical skills are easily forgotten. I recommend once you've done medical training, it's best to start your clinical/research practice. This is especially important in any country with regular maintenance of licensure exams. This would be much harder if you primarily did your PhD rather than practice medicine in the intervening years.

The truly best order though is probably what is done in MD/PhD programs in the US. It is widely considered optimal to observe the following order (US medical system): 2 years didactic training (medical school), entire PhD (3-5 years), second two years of clinical training (medical school).

The reasoning behind this order is that the first two years of medical school are essentially pathology and basic science classes that will give you a broad introduction to how a body works at a gross and microscopic level. This will give you a biomedical background that no PhD student gets. You also won't use 99% of what you learn in the lab... but in principle, you might draw connections outside your own field that others would have no background to make.

PhD training is much more focused on a particular field, with the emphasis being depth rather than breadth. In your PhD years, you will master a remote niche of science, hopefully while learning how to be a good scientist, how to write, and how to obtain funding for your ideas.

Empowered by this, you then return to the clinic, where you realize most everything we do in medicine is empirical! Ideally going through the clinic you think about all the biomedical questions for which we have no answer. After graduating, you continue on in residency training. In the US, there are research-oriented residency programs that cut out a year or two of training in place of pseudo-postdoctoral research fellowships.

The length at most US MD/PhD programs is 8 to 9 years, which is definitely faster than obtaining an MD and PhD separately in the United States. The main reason is that the cross-training allows some MD courses to count towards the PhD, and because lab rotations are done in the summers before the first MD year, and between the first and second, when normal MD students are free to do what they like.


How to invite potential collaborators for personal visit?

With apologies, and a firm understanding that lack of funding may be a dealbreaker.

It would certainly help if you can cover part of the expenses: "If you are ever in [Country X], I hope you will also visit [my institution] and we would be happy to pay for your hotel [or else do you have a couch?] and pay for around [small number] towards your travel expenses. You are of course very welcome to make a special trip but I regret that funding is tight and we would be unable to pay your international travel expenses."

... or something like that.


My Anatomy and Physiology professor is charging for the outline

My view is that this would be unethical if the professor profited from sales of the notes to the students, but not otherwise. I've done this sort of thing myself, writing an extensive set of notes for an important course and having the university sell it at the cost of duplication.

The reason that it was important to do it this way was that I needed to quickly refer to the notes by page (and line) number for certain discussions. It also made it possible for students to use the printed notes as a means of keeping their own notes, by annotating the printed version. But I never "earned" anything from the sale.

While it wasn't "required" in the sense that you were forbidden to take the course if you didn't have a copy, it was essential enough and referred to often enough that the students got their money's worth.

My opinion also, is that if a professor requires a book that s/he wrote in a course, then the professor should refund to the students any net revenue that they receive from the sale. Usually a $90 textbook would yield around $5 or so to the author(s). But, if no revenue to the prof occurs, then this case doesn't apply.


What can I do to prevent ethnic conflicts in research groups?

One of the advantages of being the head of a research group is that your position should give you a great opportunity to set the tone of the working environment for the group.

The first key to establishing a healthy research group is setting a good example. Try to be open about your views and encourage good interactions, and be careful not to implicitly support bad behavior by appearing to condone poor treatment or opposition to ideas based on who they come from rather than their merits. Your group will take cues from your behavior, which to some degree will implicitly define what is and isn't acceptable in your group.

Try to be proactive about including everyone.

Make sure your students and researchers are aware that one of the minimum requirements for participation in the group is that people treat each other with courtesy and respect. Unless it's a political science research group, politics and conflicts between ethnic groups should be tabled. It's understandable for people to have differences, but you should try to make it clear that your group is not the place to hash out wider conflicts.


Justifying a two year gap after Master's degree in Statement of Purpose

You can mention all three.  The trick is to make these parts of your CV look like "features," not "bugs." It sounds like you have an idea of what to do there. I don't think it would hurt to mention that this slight detour, while being slightly off the path to graduate school, has only convinced you that graduate school was the right place for you.

Of course, no one ever got into a good program by saying "I really want to be there!" I was in a similar situation when applying to PhD programs -- I was teaching high school, which was good, but my background was not directly inline with what some PhD programs were looking for. I emailed some faculty about what to do to bolster my application, and one suggestion was to go ahead and do some academic writing on my own and use that as part of my application.  I'm not sure if that's possible for you, but it's something to consider. If that work is high quality, shows that you are up-to-date on the state of your field, and actively thinking about workable research topics, that will surely impress admissions committees.


Differences in student load at liberal arts colleges vs. research universities

As with other commenters, I think the premise here is flawed.

I teach at a public liberal arts college which is typical of many. (Certainly our curriculum and requirements are in line with other schools in the COPLAC Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges.)

Our students are required to complete 120 credits to graduate, which over four years averages to 15 credits a semester, or five 3-credit courses. I don't believe there is any serious difference in student course load when compared to large research universities (but maybe someone will prove me wrong).

The main distinction about teaching at a liberal arts college is that the overall curriculum is broader, and students do not focus on specialization as much as integration of diverse subject areas. Instead of taking 70 or 80 credits of (say) computer science, our students take only 40-45, with the other two-thirds of their degree consisting of courses in other areas. In this way, students build a broad, integrated perspective which incorporates their major into a study of the world at large. The focus at liberal arts colleges is to help students become better critical thinkers, decision makers, and problem solvers, rather than becoming subject matter experts in a narrow discipline.


What is the correct protocol for including peer reviews that I have done in a CV?

I believe you may get some tips from the answers to a question of mine on this very site: “Do you list journals you have reviewed for on your CV?”

As for myself, I list the peer-reviews I have done in a “Administrative and collective duties” or “Community involvement”. Or, in a short CV which doesn't have such divisions, I put it with the broader “Other skills and activities” section (i.e. not teaching, not research projects).

What I include is:

list of journals for which I act as reviewer (“Regular reviewer for many chemistry journals, including …”)
funding bodies (NSF, private trusts, etc.) for which I act as expert (including, e.g., NSF division, but not the exact programs)
evaluation committees on which I sit

It feels obvious, but it's always worth repeating: do not include any confidential information, such as titles or author lists for reviewer papers or projects. I think it's safe to list the number of reviews performed for each outlet if you want (but I don't do it).


How to write summaries for literature survey?

He has asked you to write a summary of the works. I expect he wants to assess how you write, as well as your understanding of the papers themselves.

Copying the abstracts verbatim not only obstructs this goal, but is also plagiarism. The ideas and words are not your own and you should not try to pass them off as such.

Read the papers carefully and summarise them in your own words.


Registering for a math conference with no publication record in this field

I’ll assume the open problem you solved is in pure mathematics. What you should know is that in most areas of pure mathematics, conferences do not have a formal paper submission mechanism, nor do they publish a proceedings volume as they typically do in other areas. One does not go to a conference to “present a paper” but rather one will get invited to “give a talk”, whose contents may be somewhat correlated with the contents of one’s most recent paper, but could also be about a less recent paper or about a still unfinished work, or some combination of such things; that’s entirely up to the speaker.

My suggestion is that you try to find a conference in an area of math related to the open problem.  Once you find one, you’ll have the option to register to attend (not to give a talk, which is by invitation only). Except for very large events, there is usually no registration fee, and although they may ask about your affiliation, it’s likely that most conferences will not use that as a basis for deciding whether to let you register, so don’t worry too much if you don’t work at a university.

Now, as I said in order to give a talk you’ll need to be invited to speak by the organizers. They usually select speakers with a proven record of publishing interesting results in the field of the conference. But one thing you could do is email them in parallel with registering, tell them about your paper with the solution of the open problem and ask if you could give a talk about it. I don’t think your chances are too high, but it’s worth a try. Your chances will be higher if your paper is available to download online from a place like arXiv, and if it’s written in a professional way that makes it clear it comes from a mathematician with a good level of experience and formal training. If you don’t want to make your paper publicly available just yet, you can send it to the organizers directly, but it will likely be viewed with suspicion and lower your chances of being invited to speak. (And if you don’t make the paper viewable at all, no one will take you seriously and the chances are essentially zero.)

Even if you are not invited to give a talk at the conference you found, it may still be a good idea to attend it, since there you will have a chance to talk to experts informally, tell them about your solution and get some valuable feedback about your approach.

Good luck!


How to make sure that something hasn't been done in the literature and can be studied by me

Ideally, your advisor would know well beforehand if something is novel or not. In practice, this is not always the case.

The best thing to do if you want to develop new stuff if to build upon new stuff as well. If anyone could have done what you are doing 20 years ago, then you'd need to check 20 years of literature to be sure, but if you are extending the results of a known paper which was innovative in itself and published on a respected journal 3 years ago, then you can basically just check the references quoting it.

Also, try to have some preliminary work published on an international conference rather than a journal. This will give you the opportunity to present your work to an audience of both students and established researchers in your field, see their works and to talk to these people over coffee breaks and social events. Someone is likely to point to you if you are missing something important and known in the literature. They'll likely give you new terms and names which you should look for, I've seen a few topics which don't really have consistent nomenclature throughout publications.

Then again, if some result which is relevant to you actually appeared in some obscure publication (which maybe is not even in english), that nobody knows or quoted, then for the purpose of your question, why does it matter?


What does the typesetting process for a math/science journal using LaTeX look like?

This may differ quite a bit from journal to journal. In the best of worlds (from the author's point of view), the LaTeX source is used in some robust automated process to generate the final product, e.g. using latex or pdflatex, possibly with a slightly different documentclass and different fonts.

However, often the paper is typeset using a completely different "professional" typesetting system, for which there may be an automatic conversion from LaTeX. It may well be the case that many equations have to be corrected or completely typeset by humans. In this case, the person in charge will most likely have no training in mathematics, but they just manipulate symbols in what is to them effectively a foreign language. However, they should be able to understand LaTeX.

If the proofs are hopelessly messed up, then don't even try to correct them, but send them back demanding that the paper be properly typeset according to your LaTeX source. Point out roughly what the errors are and how many. It is the responsibility of the typesetter to set your paper properly and according to the LaTeX source.


The essence of plagiarism, self or otherwise, is an intention to mislead by passing something off as your original work when it is not. You can never be guilty of self-plagiarism if you say/write something along the lines "As I [and my colleagues] showed/claimed in ...".  If you repeat as an original comment something that is not original, it is irrelevant that you wrote its true original form with the collaboration of others.

That said, I am beginning to question the premise of this question. What kind of 'job talk' is that demands wholly new material never before published? That means material never before subjected to peer review - surely of lesser quality than peer-reviewed published stuff? And, anyhow, it is surely a practical impossibility to cite full references in a talk: your audience would either sleep or find something of more interest on their phones.


I'm pretty sure that this depends less on the ECTS system, and much more on your specific university. That is to say, I assume there is no general answer to your question. You will need to get in touch with the university.

That being said, it sounds like you want to transfer to a university in the US ("it's possible to be switching jobs at the end of the year with one in the US"). In that case the much larger problem will be transferring your european credits to the US institution, even if they are not expired.


Should I reward points for an incorrect answer if it is the result of misinformation presented in a TA's office hours?

I agree that in principle, the student is responsible for critically evaluating information from all sources and rejecting any that's incorrect.  I wouldn't simply award the student points for the incorrect solution, but on the other hand it seems unhelpful to just mark it wrong and leave it there (and despite your explanation, the student will likely perceive this as unfair).  In similar situations, I've done one of two things:

Allow the student to revise the answer, and regrade the problem; or
Discard the problem for that student, and recompute the score for the assignment based only on the remaining problems.


Should the first letter of the axis label be uppercase?

From a general survey of style books, yes, at least the first alphabet should be capitalized:

American Medical Association Manual of Style: Title format (e.g. Average Consumption Index, %)
Chicago Manual of Style: Sentence format (e.g. Average consumption index, %)
Scientific Style and Format (Cambridge): Sentence format

An easy way to see this: axis labels are akin to the row and column titles in a table. If those titles are generally capitalized (which is the norm), then the axis title should also follow. So, I'd recommend at least follow the sentence style capitalization rule. This is not to say lower case titles are absolutely wrong, but I am sure they will raise more eyebrows in a bad way.


When siblings contribute to a research paper, do they need to declare their relationship in the competing interest form?

There is already an assumption that authors working together have some level of positive relationship - whether colleagues, advisor/advisee, or relatives. These things need not be declared, because they don't influence the content of the work besides all the authors standing by it (which is a minimum requirement for even submitting the paper).
If a sibling has a stake in a company selling widgets and the paper is about how widgets are superior to doodads, then this likely should be reported because the paper could be influenced by a sibling's desire to help their relative's business.


CV for PhD application: personal interests and non-academic skills

Focus on your academic skills. Stress the suitability of your background and your likelihood of success in any program. That is how you will be judged. For undergraduate admissions it can be a bit different (in the US, anyway), but not for doctoral study. Stick to business.

The other things may save you when you are in the process, but that is a personal thing you can draw on. Your SoP should be strongly oriented toward your expectations for the future and your willingness to work hard to get there.

But in some fields teamwork may be very essential. But don't just say you are a valuable team member. List team projects you were on that were successful.

Many of the other things are assumed. If you weren't curious, for example, you wouldn't be applying in the first place.


What to Do About Inaccurate Dates on Letters of Recommendation?

There are a lot of reasons for such inaccuracies. Copy and paste is one. Inattention is another. But none of them that I can think of are your fault, and none seem to be attempts at sabotage.

As such, I would ignore the issue, especially in written documents in which you have more important and positive things to write. If you are asked about them, your reply can be just that the writer likely made a mistake and if it needs correction, you can probably handle it then.

Use your motivation letter for precisely that. Don't use it to apologize for the errors of others.


How should 'van'-names be ordered in a bibliography?

This depends on the specific style or country. In the Netherlands, surnames are sorted by the "main" part, so van Beukering would come before Campbell. On the other hand, in Belgium it is sorted by the first letter of the surname. There capitalization is also dependent on how the name is registered in the passport. In the Netherlands, one would write "Van Beukering" if the first name is omitted, and "J. van Beukering" if the initials or first name is there.

In short, it may be difficult to tell if you are not a native speaker. It is probably best to just pick one of the alternatives and stick with that.


How to search for a Career Counselor / Specialist for Life Sciences?

You're focusing on finding a career counselor. Most career counselors I've known are general purpose, trying to help people with the basics of cover letter and resume construction, the typical flow of the hiring process, etc. Never heard of one specializing in the life sciences or, for that matter, any sciences, but I suppose that might have changed over the years.
A recruiter is not a career counselor. A recruiter is a matchmaker. There are lots of recruiters for the IT fields, but don't imagine for a moment they play the role of career counselors for computer science grads. If a recruiter is telling you to leave off the PhD aspect of your training, he or she is doing it for practical reasons. Crappy and  unfair and humbling? Yep.
Nearly everyone I know professionally, at the higher levels outside of academia, got his or her job because of his or her network and knew how to present him or herself appropriately at interviews. It's a thing you learn.
Cattle calls through web sites?  They're not always what they seem. But you're playing the numbers.
One thing you don't speak of is what other career avenues you've explored outside of the life sciences. Widen the playing field,  develop your network. We write our own life stories, but sometimes need ideas on how to start. Rather than a career counselor, step back to assess the situation. A cognitive therapist can help there.


How important is it to show students an application of the topics seen in an undergraduate course?

I can't point to any specific research, but it is a common observation that (i) students have difficulty putting individual topics learned in class into a context that would allow them to see where they are used, (ii) students who don't understand why a topic is relevant tend to forget it rather quickly. This is as true in mathematics as in many other areas, and I think it is widely thought that this limits the ability of students to apply what they learned to new situations.

Consequently, at least to me, it is of great importance to provide students with the context in which each topic I cover in my classes lives. Why do we care about a particular statement? What implications does a particular theorem have on areas they are already familiar? I know that this approach is not universally shared in mathematics (or at least others may define the context and the applications to be rather narrowly as "related areas of mathematics"), but at least in my view, it is important to show students what the material they learn can be used for. Otherwise, mathematics is no more than an idle game of moving symbols from one side of an equation to another.


Is it appropriate for employers recruiting students to ask professors for syllabi of their classes?

I don't see why it would be an issue.

I've been in a similar position in the past - recruiting at the university that I graduated from. On every trip, I made it a point to visit the department office to catch up with the department chair (who was a professor when I was there), the academic advisers, and the professors. I never asked for a syllabus for courses, but I did make it a point to talk about changes to course content. I felt that doing this would help me stay closer to the department and college, but also would make me better at recruiting and interviewing since I would have a better understanding of what the students were learning in the classroom.

I would encourage you to, somehow, stay in touch with changes to the classes that are core in the departments that you recruit from so you can be a better interviewer. I would also encourage you to share this information with HR and hiring managers so they know the capabilities. If there are new courses or new content, it could make the hiring process for interns or new graduates easier.


I would be fine to ask. Thank them for their interest. Ask about the current status. Ask whether there is anything they still need from you.

Three weeks is about right. If there is a problem then it is time for you to know.


The use of second authorship paper for graduate admission

No-one would expect an undergraduate to publish papers so the fact that you have been involved in publishable research is a merit. One of the goals of a Phd education is to learn to write good research papers so, again, no-one would expect that from your from the start. I would suggest that you try to describe your contribution to the paper so that your authorship can be valued from the perspective of that contribution. Being able to understand the skills and experience of a student, provided it is good, is of value in a selection process.


How much information is too much for a statement of purpose?

I doubt these sorts of statements matter very much.  They are basically fluff and would presumably occupy just a few sentences in your statement of purpose.  However, I'd be inclined to omit both of them, to avoid potentially giving the wrong impression:

  At my core, I think I want a PhD more than anything because I want to deeply challenge myself. Obviously, I have a passion for my field as well, but if someone asked me why I was doing it I'd say it's because of the need to push myself. Is this something to say in a personal statement, or am I better off leaving that out?

The difficulty is that there are many ways to challenge yourself.  You might run a marathon, master a foreign language, or raise lots of money for your favorite charity.  Because of the many ways to satisfy a desire for challenge, this motivation doesn't necessarily lead to stability over time.  Once you have completed your Ph.D., your academic ambitions may be satisfied and you may feel more attracted to a different challenge.  From your advisor's perspective, that would be a suboptimal outcome.  The purpose of a Ph.D. is preparation for a scholarly career, not checking off "get Ph.D." from a list of unrelated challenges.

Wanting to push yourself certainly isn't a bad thing.  If you didn't enjoy a challenge, then getting a Ph.D. would be a bad idea.  However, a desire for challenge is not in itself a very compelling reason to go to grad school, so I'd instead highlight the reasons you chose this particular challenge.

  One school I'm applying is a top 10 school, and it's a bit of a reach for me. Is it a bad idea to say that I've always wanted to get into that school specifically? Will that imply that I'm applying for the wrong reasons? This school is right next to where I grew up, and I've always wanted to study/research there.

This won't help you get admitted: fulfilling your childhood dreams is not one of the admissions committee's goals, nor is it relevant to whether you'd make a good grad student.  It could come across as off putting (for example, if you seem too interested in the university's overall fame), so it would be best omitted.


Documentation control to prevent plagarism

You could host the paper in a git repository and get a transactional log of who contributed what at what time. Google docs also stores a revision history, and allows concurrent collaboration.


Emailing potential PhD advisors (recent change in research interest)

Some of the other students in my lab came from different fields. They always showed an interest in what we were working on even if they didn't have the technical knowledge just yet. I think if you let your potential advisor know that you are interested in their area of research, that you have some skills that they are looking for or can be just as useful in the new area, then you should be fine. Just let them know your desire to work in the field and the skills that you can bring to the lab. I don't think its necessary to specifically talk about why you are not interested in field X, but it is important to show that you can contribute to field Y. Do your homework on the lab and talk about specific projects that they have worked on. You don't need to be an expert, but if you ask intelligent questions about their projects, they tend to take that as a sign of interest. Also be ready to relate what you have done in field X to what they are doing in field Y. Often, students coming in from other fields provide a different prospective that ultimately makes the lab better and the research being produced stronger. Good luck.


Citing supplementary material as a reference?

Usually (with journals that make supplementary material available via the article web page), I'd say "see supplement[ary material]" or refer to figures as "Fig. S23" or the like.
As you comment that the journal will not make the supplementary material available, I'd suggest to publish in a repository like arXiv or Zenodo and then refer to that location. Still making clear that this is supplementary material to your paper, e.g. "see supplementary material [24]".
Or state at the beginning of the paper that supplementary material is available externally, give the location there (as opposed to in the references) and then refer to it as supplementary material like you'd do for "normal" supplements.


Cite something I overheard as personal communation

The problem with citing an off-the-cuff comment of this type is that there is no way to know whether you are even remembering the statement correctly, let alone whether the statement is truly reliable.

I recently had the experience of discovering that a "factual" belief that I had held for a long time was actually based on an incorrect interpretation of the trusted source that I had learned the "fact" from.  Nobody was intending to deceive, but they had misremembered their own original source, and therefore passed on subtly incorrect information.  Other times, a person may simply misspeak, particularly in a conference situation: for example, I said an incorrect fact during a Q&A of a large talk last year, and did not realize that I had said the wrong thing until later, when somebody asked me a question about what I had said.

I thus strongly advise against citing as "personal communication" anything that wasn't the result of a careful discussion.  Instead, you can get in touch with the original source (or somebody else likely to have the information) and ask them if there is a better citation you can use, or even just your memory as the inspiration for some Google Scholar sleuthing of your own.  After all, if people were using the instrument in area X a few years ago and it was useful, there will almost certainly be some sort of documentation of the fact by now, even if only in technical reports rather than published journals---and if not, you have to wonder how useful it really was.


Where to put my professional (academic) personal page after my PhD

Buy your own domain name and host your own website. You can design your own website, download a free template, or commission your own website.


I have a figure showing that on different datasets, method 1 is x times faster than method 2. What is a good x axis label?

There are several possibilities. The one you suggested is OKish, but I'd prefer a shorter form like

Running time ratio A/B

Another possibility is to denote by t(A) and t(B) the running times of the two data processing methods and label the axis as

t(A)/t(B)

Finally let me point out that the unit symbol for second is "s" not "sec" [SI Brochure], and that a ratio is just 6, 3.6 etc. without appending any multiplication symbol.


As a lab assistant, how many hours per week am I expected to be helping out?

In graduate school, this would be dictated by your GRA (graduate research assistant) contract, which would specify a minimum number of hours you would be expected to work on research each week.

As an undergraduate research assistant, if you're getting paid OR if you're receiving credit for your work, I would expect this to be dictated by your contract or a syllabus (respectively). If neither of those conditions are true, then this is a matter to take up with the professor you work for. Consider telling them that you would like to cut back on your responsibilities to pursue other interests, but know that they might counter with telling you that you're no longer needed. Negotiate carefully and respectfully.

For the record, 14 hours doesn't seem too extreme, even for an undergraduate research assistant. And if you're being paid, whether or not you can be asked to grade depends largely on the terms of your contract, though it doesn't seem unreasonable. In any event: negotiate respectfully with your boss, just as you would do in any other job.


I submitted my paper in a hijacked journal

If I understand correctly from your link, the journal exists and is legitimate, but you submitted your manuscript to a fake website falsely claiming to be the journal's website.

In this case, the proper things to do in my view are:

E-mail the editor in chief. Do not simply resubmit with a cover letter explaining what happened: you don't know if and when they are going to read it. You want them to know immediately, and take action quickly.
if you have the opportunity, publish a preprint. You should consider your manuscript as leaked and no longer private, and it is very likely that it is being sold or submitted somewhere else by the hackers. If the journal normally wouldn't allow a preprint, discuss it with the editor and see if they are willing to make an exception.
If you paid something for the submission, go through the usual procedure for getting your money back: block the credit card payment and inquire with your bank, and contact the authorities to report theft.


Is there any efficient non-linear note-taking software?

Mind maps might be what you're looking for.  From the Wikipedia page:

  A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea... Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid to studying and organizing information, solving problems, making decisions, and writing.

There are lots of mind mapping tools out there.  I've used XMind before.

One drawback is that it's hard to put longer thoughts into a mindmap.


How to convert german undergrad grade to US GPA

You can always call the school to find out.  I'm sure you won't be the first foreign student to have applied.  That said, it looks like Wikipedia has a pretty good page on how to convert, and your score should be somewhere in the 3.75 range or so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_grading_in_Germany

You'll have to go course by course to find the right number.  Good luck!


Decline fellowship offer after writing proposal together

Life is too short to throw away several years of your career doing something you don’t want to do in order to protect someone from mild disappointment. It is nice of you to worry about the professor, but she is responsible for her decisions, and knew that the work she was putting into the fellowship application might not yield any return, either due to you not getting the fellowship or for other reasons. So in my opinion your moral obligation in this situation is no different from your legal obligation. By the way, the legal obligation would also be pretty minimal even if you had signed acceptance of the fellowship, considering that having a postdoc is not the same as being an indentured servant, and it is quite common for postdocs to decide on a change of career direction.

Good luck!


Dissertation proposal before admission: Is it possible?

I once had to write a thesis proposal for admission to a UK university. It was explained to me that this is more of an entrance exam than an actual proposal. It is also used to gauge whether your interests lie somewhere in the vicinity of what is generally done at the department.

I don't know how other countries or universities work, but I can't imagine that anybody would hold you strictly to a proposal you wrote before becoming a graduate student. It's normal to expect that your research should be adapted along the way based on your findings, even for an experienced researcher.

The proposal I wrote (which was successful) had to be short, so I went with the following format:

Theory so and so implies that A is true
But this other theory suggests that the converse, B, would be true
These could be pitted against each other in an experiment involving so-and-so (details details details)

The time you need entirely depends on your knowledge of the field. It is good to invest quite some time in these things though, as they can really improve a lot the more you think about them. I'd say that it's best to try to finish it a good month before the deadline, and then take a look at it at biweekly intervals to make improvements.


How to search for graduate schools that have Masters in Complexity Science/Complex Systems?

Try looking at speakers from conferences dealing with complex systems, e.g.:

European Conference on Complex Systems
NetSci

You can also search for other conferences (e.g. at http://www.conference-service.com) and then check the speakers. Furthermore, looking at affiliations from recent (say - last few years) papers you like my lead to some good trails.

When it comes to webpages being hubs from complex systems, try looking at:

http://www.complexssociety.eu
http://www.network-science.org

Some positions (including doctoral programs) and other resources are at http://www.barabasilab.com.

Also, some group websites are in my collections of links (Delicious: complexity and networks or search at my Pinboard).


I am able to self-fund a PhD, how can I use this when applying?

I may have an unusual perspective on this, since many mathematics Ph.D. programs in the U.S. fund all their students (at least through teaching).  In this context, I'd recommend against even mentioning the possibility of self-funding:

It sounds unconfident, like you don't expect to receive funding, and this is not a positive impression to convey.  You don't want to give the impression that you feel your own application is subpar, and that you're bargaining to try to turn a rejection into an unfunded acceptance.  This might be a reasonable approach at the end of the process, if you're stuck on a waiting list, but it's a problematic way to begin.
Letting Ph.D. students go into debt feels exploitative, especially in a program in which most or all of the other students are funded, and letting wealthy people buy their way into graduate school is also troubling.
There will be worries about how sustainable your self-funding is.  In a year or two, your money or willingness to go into debt may run out, and the department would have to choose whether to come up with money for you or kick you out.  That's an unpleasant choice, and the admissions committee may even worry that you are deliberately aiming for this situation (in the hope that they won't be willing to kick you out once you've joined the department).

In the sort of programs I'm familiar with, announcing in advance that you would be willing to self-fund a Ph.D. won't increase your chances of admission.  I've only seen this come up very rarely, and the admissions committee has simply ignored the offer of self-funding and made a decision of acceptance with funding or rejection.  I can easily imagine that it could decrease the chances of admission a little, although I haven't seen a clear-cut case of that.

By contrast, if you are awarded a prestigious fellowship with guaranteed funding for a certain number of years, you should certainly make sure admissions committees know about it.  That doesn't have any of these disadvantages.  However, it's not in your best interests to offer to pay your own way unless that's a common and respected approach in your field.


What to do immediately after informing the journal's managing editor that you are withdrawing your paper submission in their journal?

Waiting for them seems like a lost cause. Unless you have signed some release or given them copyright, the paper is yours. You can submit it as you like.

But submitting it minutes after notifying them of a withdrawal might be hasty. A few days wait is suggested. But they don't seem to have a very good record of corresponding with authors.


What are useful tips and tricks for collaborating remotely?

A good Revision Control!! I use Git coupled with github being an efficient way (and free) to share and complete a collaboration, especially for code and latex files.

Else, google docs is also free,  allows to multiple persons to edit the same file at the same time, and you see who is doing what. You can do most "Microsoft Word" formats and things. You have also have as service free video-conference and chat.

I highly discourage Dropbox to share files edited per more than one person.


Should I list memberships that have expired on my resume

When you did some work for the organization (e.g., organize a local conference or chapter meeting), you can put exactly that (e.g. 'co-organized annual XYZ regional meeting in 2014').

When you have built up a network relevant for the employer through the organization, you might also list your membership.

Otherwise, leave it out.


What field of study allows a hobbyist to make a potential contribution

With programming you can make a contribution to virtually any industry.

There's always a need for better, faster, smarter software that allows industry workers to get ahead of competitors and make the work day more efficient.

There's also always a need for open domain software which, if created well, almost always gets a huge community such as GIMP.

As a developer myself I can say that most worth while contributions will take more than just yourself and you may want to connect with other developers that want to help.

Astronomy software can show constellations, star formations, and even have algorithms that predict where a planet or solar system may be and the probability that human or extraterrestrial life could be sustained on said planet.


Should I mention not completing a Phd in a cover letter?

Yes. They are going to see it in your CV anyway and if you say nothing, it just looks like you are trying to hide something and they are going to assume the worst. I would tell them the reasons why I quit (e.g. what to do something applied, ...).


I want to ask - why is this actually a problem? Shouldn't salary be based on merit and qualifications, not how long you've sat at a particular desk?

Yes, it should.  But consider what happens if I've been sitting at a desk for ten years, doing hard work and feeling good about it, and one day you arrive, take the next desk, and have a higher salary than I do.  It is hard for me not to feel:

1) That my employer is less than grateful for my ten years of desk sitting, given that I (apparently; as you point out this does not logically follow) am being paid less than if I hadn't done any of it whatsoever.

2) That maybe I have been sitting at the same desk for too long.  It gives me the idea to follow your lead and earn more money by starting fresh at a new desk.

Thus: although one can say that the market is the market and its invisible hand is totally amoral, in reality this amoral practice is bad for morale.  And if you as an employer do happen to value the person who has been sitting there for ten years as much as the new guy you would hire -- or even if replacing the 10 year veteran would be disruptive to the workforce -- then you may have some interest in pushing back against this market force.  The desk-sitters certainly will, and depending on their mobility, you may want to take their feelings into account.  (In a sufficiently bad economy, maybe you can persuade them that they're looking at it wrong, and that instead they should be very happy about having ten years of steady employment.)


Standard for figure description in main text and its placement in a report/paper

The following applies:

Figures should appear at the first possible place after they are referenced in the text and thus also in the order they are referenceed in the text. (the physical placement of the figure follows typographical rules).
A figure may be placed before its reference if they are on the same page. Figures are normally place at the top of pages.
Figures must be ordered according to the order in which they are first referenced.
The same system also applies for tables. It is however, not necessary for figures and tables to be placed in the order they appear relative to each other, they are two independent series of inclusions and placement depends on typographiccal rules.

The logic is that the order figures are needed in the text also determines their location. Having such a rule makes the location predictable. Thse rules are followed by all journals typeset by professionals.

The case of the figures is dealt with as follows. If a figure has two panes, they would count as one figures but be labelled (a) and (b). thus one can reference figure Xa in one place and figure Xb in another. Combining panes into larger figures is a way to save space but most importantly to group plots that relate to each other in one place. ths is one way in which the order of figures according to the list above can be circumvented.

The important aspect is that figures should make sense and provide the reader with as much information as possible. Placement is done according to a logical and predicatable rule so that we all know what to expect.


How should I choose which graduate programs to apply to for the PhD?

Yes, the rankings (roughly) reflect the selectivity of the program, as far as I know.  Your choice to focus on mid-tier programs makes sense.  (I think defining mid-tier as starting in the 40s is plausible, though I suspect you'll get conflicting answers from different people.) However

Don't confuse the quality of the program overall with the quality of their specialty that you hope to study.  Their specialty program could be much better or worse than the program overall.  In math departments (as opposed to, say, some computer science departments), students are typically admitted to the department, rather than to a professor's research group or a specialty area.  Taking advantage of this could get you into a specialty program that's rated higher than you "deserve".
Don't exclude a school just because it's too highly rated.  It's good to apply to a wide range of schools, some "reach" schools that you think it unlikely you'll be admitted to, and some "safety" schools that you would be quite surprised not to be admitted to.  All sorts of factors influence how likely it is you'll be admitted to a given school in a given year, many of them completely unknowable to you.  For example, maybe a new faculty member will be coming and looking for students (or maybe one will be leaving).  Maybe the program has all their TA positions tied up with current students who haven't finished yet, or maybe not.  Maybe a dean wants to grow the program, etc.  Many of these things you just can't know.  Most likely, you won't get into MIT, Harvard, Princeton, or Stanford.  But once you get into the 20s, 30s and below, the outlook is less clear.
Focus on fit, rather than solely on ranking.  Think about where the school is located.  If you plan to live there for 5 or 6 years, you don't want to hate the place.  This can include proximity to your family or friends, climate, scenery, nightlife, etc.  If you know what specialty you want to study, the school should have at least 1, but hopefully 2 or 3 folks that you would potentially like as an adviser.
Focus on aspects of your application that you can still change.  With a transcript no stronger than yours, I got into a top-25 school.  The cool part is that for the specialty I chose, they were top-10.  At this point, most of your transcript (and much of your application in total) is fixed.  But you didn't mention your GRE scores.  (The surprising thing about the GRE is that you can do pretty well if you're just really good at Calculus (through multivariable), Dif. Eq., and Linear Algebra.)  I think my subject test was something like 65th percentile.  That's not terribly good, but I think it was enough to convince the admissions committee that even though I was coming from a small LAC that no one had heard of, I did know something.  The other thing I did, which I highly recommend you try, is get a letter of recommendation from a faculty member at that school (where I was admitted).  I wrote code for him for 3 or 4 weeks (about 30 hours/week, I think) during Christmas break of my senior year.  In exchange, he wrote a recommendation for me.  I'm sure it didn't say that I was a math wunderkind, but whatever it said added just enough to my application to get me in.


Suggestions for official PhD/department visit (not interview)?

First, you are probably new at this so freaking out is pretty natural. If you'd done it ten or so times, it would feel pretty natural. Actually, a bit of physical exercise can help you calm your mind. Coffee, not so much.

But, more seriously, I think you need to be pretty natural. You will be a colleague and people will want to be able to work with you and so, to be comfortable with you. It needn't be all technical either. "Anyone here play handball?"

But you also need to demonstrate that you are suited for the environment. People will look to you for ideas, of course, so you need to be able to answer questions both about yourself and about the field/research that is going on.

But, it is also wise not to come on too strong in the beginning. People have their ways of doing things. If you are "too helpful" you may be hurting yourself as in "Who is this guy?". So save any suggestions you might have for "improvement" in the lab for a later time.

I once made the mistake of giving too much advice in a new employment situation and it was resented, as I learned later. Whether it was the right advice or not wasn't important.

Probably the best thing you can do is express a lot of interest in what is going on. But each meeting will be a bit different. If "selling" is needed it will be more likely useful with the supervisor. Be positive in all things. "How do you see yourself fitting in with these people?"

You might also be prepared for surprises. Can you give an impromptu talk on your prior research?


Is it common to include foreign terms in the title of a thesis?

In anthropology, it's pretty common to use local terms in both the title and subtitle. Almost everyone romanizes the terms rather than using the native script. And they leave explanations and glosses to the body of the dissertation itself.

That being said, when it comes time to submit to a book publisher, they're more hesitant about local terms in titles. The issue is that they are legible only to people who already know the local language or culture, so you've automatically limited the appeal of your book. But there have been some notable exceptions:

Travesti : Sex, Gender, and Culture Among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes

Toms and Dees: Transgender Identity and Female Same-Sex Relationships in Thailand

The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s Media Success Story

In the examples above, the exceptions prove the rule by either being obvious to English speakers ("travesti" =? transvestite?), close to English ("Tom" is obvious, "Dee" adds an element of curiousity), or already a loan word in English ("anime").


What matters most : published papers or GPA? (for scholarship and future career)

The whole package is important.  An admissions committee will be very interested in your ability to pass their coursework. It doesn't make a difference how productive you are, or how deep a thinker you are if you flunk out on grades, which would just be wasting their resources.

You would need them to believe that your MSc grades would be indicative of future performance.

By all means, apply, and do the best to make your package look right.  Lot's of students can have mediocre undergrad grades, but figure things out as they mature.  The MSc with good grades was step 1.  Good GRE's would be important, as would letters from the profs of your most difficult coursework confirming that you breezed through it without trouble.

You might also pay attention to those programs with a big die-off at qualifiers.  If a department PLANS that 1/3 of their students will not successfully reach candidacy stage, then their grad program is built in a certain way that can deal with this efficiently.  For example, programs like this do not tend to offer much in the way of financial support until you're paired up with a mentor, and then you're in the budget of that person for support.  In a way, those programs are willing to gamble on you so long as you're willing to gamble on you.


For the benefit of anyone who might want to do something similar in the future, I took a stab at making a script to fetch recent crosslisted submissions. I based it on the example Python API parsing script. It's not perfect, but it will get the cross-lists which were posted within the 24 hours ending the previous day at 8pm (roughly corresponding to the /new/ page, except without the weekend aggregation). It also filters out the update submissions (as opposed to new submissions, which is what I'm primarily interested in).

Currently it prints out an HTML format, which is suitable for a web-page or e-mail. I set it up to run as a chron job and output to a local file, which I refresh on my browser; you could also set it up to email it to yourself every day, and I've included some commented code that would do that.

"""
Adapted from
http://arxiv.org/help/api/examples/python_arXiv_parsing_example.txt

with modifications by Alex Breitweiser

This is free software.  Feel free to do what you want
with it, but please play nice with the arXiv API!
"""

base_cat = "quant-ph"
cross_cats = {"cond-mat.str-el", "cond-mat.mes-hall"}

import urllib.request, urllib.parse, urllib.error
import feedparser
from datetime import date, timedelta
import smtplib
from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.mime.text import MIMEText

# Base api query url
base_url = 'http://export.arxiv.org/api/query?';

# Search parameters
yesterday = date.today() - timedelta(1)
dby = yesterday - timedelta(1)
start_date = dby.strftime("%Y%m%d")+"2000"
end_date = yesterday.strftime("%Y%m%d") + "2000"
search_query = 'cat:%s+AND+lastUpdatedDate:[%s+TO+%s]' % (base_cat,
                              start_date,
                              end_date)
start = 0                     # retreive the first 5 results
max_results = 50

query = 'search_query=%s&start=%i&max_results=%i' % (search_query,
                                                     start,
                                                     max_results)

# Opensearch metadata such as totalResults, startIndex,
# and itemsPerPage live in the opensearch namespase.
# Some entry metadata lives in the arXiv namespace.
# This is a hack to expose both of these namespaces in
# feedparser v4.1
feedparser._FeedParserMixin.namespaces['http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/'] = 'opensearch'
feedparser._FeedParserMixin.namespaces['http://arxiv.org/schemas/atom'] = 'arxiv'

# perform a GET request using the base_url and query
response = urllib.request.urlopen(base_url+query).read()

# parse the response using feedparser
feed = feedparser.parse(response)

title = "New %s submissions cross listed on %s" % (base_cat, ", ".join(cross_cats))

body = "
%s
" % (title)

body += 'Feed last updated: %s' % feed.feed.updated

# Run through each entry, and print out information
for entry in feed.entries:
    all_categories = [t['term'] for t in entry.tags]
    if not any(cat in cross_cats for cat in all_categories):
        continue
    arxiv_id = entry.id.split('/abs/')[-1]
    if arxiv_id[-2:] != 'v1':
        continue
    pdf_link = ''
    for link in entry.links:
        if link.rel == 'alternate':
            continue
        elif link.title == 'pdf':
            pdf_link = link.href
    body += '
%s
' % (pdf_link, entry.title)

    # feedparser v5.0.1 correctly handles multiple authors, print them all
    try:
        body += 'Authors:  %s
' % ', '.join(author.name for author in entry.authors)
    except AttributeError:
        pass

    try:
        comment = entry.arxiv_comment
    except AttributeError:
        comment = 'No comment found'
    body += 'Comments: %s
' % comment

    # Since the <arxiv:primary_category> element has no data, only
    # attributes, feedparser does not store anything inside
    # entry.arxiv_primary_category
    # This is a dirty hack to get the primary_category, just take the
    # first element in entry.tags.  If anyone knows a better way to do
    # this, please email the list!
    body += 'Primary Category: %s
' % entry.tags[0]['term']

    # Lets get all the categories
    all_categories = [t['term'] for t in entry.tags]
    body += 'All Categories: %s
' % (', ').join(all_categories)

    # The abstract is in the  element
    body += '
%s
' %  entry.summary
    body += '
'
print(body)

'''
email = "foo@bar.com"
password = "f00bar!"
msg = MIMEMultipart()
msg['Subject'] = title
msg['From'] = email
msg['To'] = email
msg.attach(MIMEText(body, 'html'))
smtp_host = 'smtp.gmail.com'
smtp_port = 587
server = smtplib.SMTP()
server.connect(smtp_host,smtp_port)
server.ehlo()
server.starttls()
server.login(email,password)
server.sendmail(user,tolist,msg.as_string())
'''


Can I contact graduate office regarding decision timeline (to know my application status)?

You will likely find out within the next few weeks. But asking them the date by which they'll let applicants know their decision status is a perfectly reasonable question. After all, you might have other offers that may require a time-sensitive answer.

I don't know if I'd ask directly about your application status, but asking for their review timeline is perfectly reasonable and appropriate.


Need help distinguishing between a primary and secondary source

Primary source material is "direct evidence." This can include published reports of original research, but also journals, diaries, direct interviews, government records, and other types of "produced" work. (It need not be a research or scholarly work to be a direct source; thus the claim that it's primary because it's published in a peer-reviewed journal carries no weight in this argument.)

On the other hand, a secondary source is a source which reports on the work of others, whether it is published or not. Citing a secondary work does not make it a primary work; it's the relationship of the cited work to the original subject that determines if it's primary or secondary.

In this case, a "Perspective" column that summarizes ongoing work in the field is a secondary source, as it is analyzing the original work of others.


how to ask help from an area expert and getting feedback?

Start with a summary. Write a couple of sentences to explain the reason for your email and a rough statement of what it is you'd like help with. If your message is long and takes a while to get to the point then the expert is likely to get bored and lose interest.
Explain how you know of their work, and how it relates to yours. As @user3624251 suggests in their comment, a bit of massaging their ego will not go amiss, as long as it is not excessively fawning.
Be polite, but to the point. If you are too apologetic then you'll just come across as underconfident and unimportant.
State your problem as succinctly as possible. As you would on SE, try to make it as self-contained and well-defined as you can.
If you can't describe the problem in a couple of paragraphs or less, and/or the reply would require more than a few paragraphs, then it might not be well suited to an email enquiry and you might be better off trying to arrange a meeting. You could try finding out if there are any conferences coming up that you could meet up at. Or, if you can sell your problem as being really interesting, maybe the expert would be interested in collaboration.
Accept that, as you have already discovered, you will not have 100% success rate. However well you write the message, you may not even receive a reply, and that is not necessarily a poor reflection on you. But there is very little harm in trying, and some people turn out to be very generous with their time and advice.
Always follow up with an appreciative email if they reply in any way whatsoever!


I do not suggest this. You should probably be tailoring the presentation to be aimed at 1st, or maybe 2nd, year students/classes and you should attempt to make the lecture be understandable to non-majors. You should be pretending that the audience of the class is a general elective audience. While in actual practice a lecture in a class does not need to be self contained, a teaching demo should be.

Getting back to the question, almost anything that would be considered research related would be too advanced for a general elective audience. Now this does not mean to go completely away from your area of research. If you are electrical engineer whose research is biomedical
in nature and are interviewing at a joint EE/CS department, it probably doesn't make sense to give a CS lecture on compiler design or even EE lecture onpower enginnering. You would be better served by giving a biomedical lecture. Of course, if the job advertisement asks for someone who can teach compiler design, well then, there is your lecture topic. Similarly, if the search chair suggests a topic, follow that advice.

The biggest thing to remember is teaching schools are not inferior to research institutions, they are simply different. They want to make sure you care about teaching and not your research. They generally tend to look at research as a way to get students to learn. Focusing on your research will probably send the wrong message.


Can phd students submit their paper on their own?

Absolutely no, not legit.
You need explicit consent from all the author listed to (attempt to) publish (=submitting for peer-review).
With no answer form your co-authors you may safely assume "you have not read the paper" and that's all you can assume from them.
But, you can submit on your own, as single author, no one is preventing doing that, you may be able "to bring people on board" during the review (there must be sound reasons to do that, but it is doable, if they are ok and they can strongly contribute plus you agree on having them on-board only for the second stage).
------- ADDITIONAL FROM COMMENTS -----------
Yes, I agree that removing an author means said author's contribution must be as well removed from the paper. That may lead to being unable to contribute the paper (how can you remove a co-author contribution if the co-author was the one showing and helping using an experimental machine?) or to big conflicts ("why did you not inculde me?"). If the paper still stands on its own, it is a big if.
Most likely, you can ask help to someone else in the faculty, or write the aggressive mail "if I don't hear from you in 2 or 3 weeks, I am gonna assume that you do not think your contribution is relevant and I am gonna submit it myself" and brace for the consequences (think and discuss an exit strategy, there is a world beyond and without your advisor).


Want a recommendation letter, but the professor passed away

Your best letters will come from professors who know more about you than that you did well in their courses. I hope you have some of those.
You could say in a cover letter that your exams in this persons courses were tops in each, based on anonymized department reports. I doubt that you'd be required to provide evidence for that.


One of my students has a Master's degree but was offered admission to another Master's programme. What could be reason?

Master's programs often charge tuition and they are often profitable.  It is quite possible finances were a factor.
Some universities are greatly reducing PhD admissions owing to lack of money or delays to the graduation of current students because work was disrupted by the pandemic.


A published paper stole my unpublished results from a science fair

The other answers don't seem to be taking into account that the OP is a 13-year-old junior high school student whose work was presented in a school science fair.  I think that treating the OP as a "very junior researcher" is a bit unrealistic and also may place too large a burden on him.  Every week on this site we see adult researchers placed in great distress and turmoil by issues of plagiarism and academic priority.  These are not easy matters to resolve, and they place a high level of burden on the individual academics because academia is essentially self-policing.  A junior high school student is not a professional academic, almost certainly has none of the procedural training and academic contacts that a professional academic would, and therefore does not have an ethical obligation to respond as a professional academic would.

The first thing I want to say is that I don't think the OP is obligated in any way to respond to this incident, as other answers seem to imply that he is.  He can do so if he wants to, but if so I would recommend getting help from someone else.

Another important issue here is that the OP doesn't even understand the mechanism by which his work was made public.  To me this seems to suggest that if he wants to pursue it, he should begin at the level of his own school.  Presumably there is some teacher / faculty advisor involved in the science fair.  I would contact them or have a parent contact them.  This really is (or could be) an issue in itself: a school should not be releasing a student's work
on the internet without the student's permission or awareness.

If the OP doesn't have a clear understanding of how his work got made public in the first place, then unfortunately it seems to me that he is in an unusually poor position to press a case of academic priority.  He could contact the editors of the journal, submit all the evidence of his work along with the chronology, and the authors could respond simply by saying "We don't know anything about this.  Actually our work was done [at some earlier date].  As far as we can tell, some kid stole our work for a junior high school science fair.  What should we do about this?" and I don't see what the editors of the journal could plausibly do to resolve the situation.

This sounds bad, but let me make a few more comments:

In my experience, outright theft of work by serious academic mathematicians is extremely rare.  One of the reasons for this is that the worldwide mathematical research community is relatively close-knit.  If you're working in area X, then you probably trained at a certain set of universities and have affiliation, direct or indirect, with very serious senior reputable workers in area X.  Having a senior worker in area X think you've stolen someone else's work is a penalty far beyond the reward of publishing the work, in most cases (contrary to what popular culture may lead one to believe, the vast majority of contemporary mathematicians build their reputation on a steadily accumulating body of work, not one miraculous theorem).  Most areas of modern mathematics are so technically intensive that there are very few to no real outsiders contributing.  However, a real outsider -- e.g. someone who has had no face-to-face interaction with any university faculty member -- who does do significant mathematical work is unfortunately in a much worse position.
As a consequence of the above, when a brilliant 13-year-old's work gets stolen, it's very likely that it gets stolen by people who are not serious academic mathematicians, and it gets published in a journal which is not really serious and reputable.  If this is the case, then the stakes may be too low to justify the time and effort of trying to resolve the situation.  I am a professional mathematician, and if someone republished my work as their own (this has never happened to me) I would probably be upset and try something to fix it, but there are some journals where I would give up rather quickly.

So as a summary answer to the first question:

  Firstly, what can I do about this,

Take it slow, starting in your own home and at your school.  See if you can get some help with pursuing your claim.  If the claim turns out to be more trouble than it's worth to press: you can choose not to press it.  Try to gain a clear understanding of how this happened, so that it will not happen again.

As to your second question:

  secondly, it had never occurred to me that my work may be of the quality to publish, so once I do get this situation sorted out, could I possibly think of publishing my results myself?

As I said in a comment, I would advise almost any junior high school student not to think about publishing their mathematical work.  Note that I did not say to stop or slow down in the learning and doing of mathematics in any way.  In fact, the point is that the publication process is something that is done by professionals largely for reasons of professional exigency and not because it is pleasant or educational in its own right.  When I work with PhD students to try to get their first paper published, there comes a point where they realize that the amount of effort to do so (even after all the theorems are proven) is something like 2-10 times as much as they expected.  It used to be that math PhD students could mostly just concentrate on the math and not worry about publishing anything until after they got their PhD, but unfortunately those days are largely gone.  (In my department, one of the required features of the postdoctoral application is the publication list.  An empty list is surmountable, but it certainly does not augur well.)  Moreover, undergraduates who do summer math research are now being much more pressured to write up their results -- even when they are not really significant, and even when they were largely put up to the results by their faculty mentors -- and this is very worrisome.  The OP is 13 years old.  It is widely recognized that children of this age should not be working: the Fair Labor Standards Act says that in the US one must be 14 to legally work at all.  This does not apply to mathematical research, and it is certainly legal for the OP to pursue publication, but it is almost as worryingly too-soon for the OP to try to pursue this as if he had a serious, difficult job.

Let me say finally that I looked at the OP's internet profile, and it is clear that he is remarkably talented and precocious.  I highly encourage him to continue his study of mathematics, so long as his motivations for doing so are his own.  Based on what I've seen of the OP, I do not discount the possibility that he has already done work that could get published in a reputable journal (although that is highly unusual for someone of his age).  What I would say to him instead is: keep doing what you're doing.  Think about where you are now compared to where you were a few years ago and try to imagine where you'll be a few years in the future (while still in high school!).  If you're still doing math 3,5,10 years from now, what would your future self advise your 13-year-old self to do?  Is the work that you're doing now going to be a shadow of your later work?

Look e.g. at Terence Tao, who is arguably the world's leading mathematical-prodigy-grown up.  According to wikipedia, he published "his first assistant paper" at the age of 15.  But I don't know what that means, and I can't find the paper.  His first that is catalogued in the standard places was published in 1996, the same year he got his PhD, at the "advanced age" of 21.

Note also that you should not hesitate to interact with the mathematical community, as you have been.  I see that you have a blog.  This gives you a great place to post your work, talk about it there, and get feedback from others.

The very last thing I'll say on the matter is that you said the project in question is on elliptic curves over finite fields.  In fact elliptic curves are
my leading research interest at the moment.  So I would be happy to see your work and give you some feedback on it.  Of course you should not send the work to me if (i) you are not ready or (ii) have any concerns about it being stolen by me!  For the latter, I might recommend putting it on your blog first and then sending me a link to the blog.  But I am aware of some contemporary research on this topic and would be happy to steer you in a good direction if I can.


In the US there is first a federal (country-wide) rule: there are high-school diplomas, roughly equivalent almost-like-a-high-school-diplomas called a GED or a variety of other names, and then there are accredited higher education institutions providing certificates, 2-year degrees (called an associate's degree), 4-year degrees (called a bachelor's degree), 5-7 yearish degrees (master's degree), and of course the PhD...in addition to a slew of other special professional degrees for high ed.

Where it gets particularly hard to generalize is we have 50 states that determine all the details of the rest, especially the high-schools. I'll try to provide a broad overview. While this is true across states for the most part, the exact mix, nature of funding, and multi-track availability varies tremendously across the country.

Traditional high schools are the most common, which simply teach a variety of subjects and offer some sports, music, and arts programs (where possible), and don't especially differentiate between students who are planning to go to college from students who don't. Some special programming exists tailored to certain professions or college prep, but this is usually minimal. Graduation gives you a plain high school diploma.

Magnet schools exist at the elementary through high school level, and are focused on a specific area of excellence that permeates their whole school design; some schools specialize in science and technology, math, media/broadcasting, dance and/or fine arts, etc. This isn't necessarily about college or professional prep, but there is often a particular bent to some schools and they generally encourage higher education. Graduation gives you a plain high school diploma.

Vocational schools are high schools that are much like magnet schools, only their focus is on certain professional preparation. There are schools that offer  programs in all sorts of vocations from culinary arts, electrician, building/construction jobs, auto repair, and many others. Graduation gives you a plain high school diploma.

College preparatory schools (prep schools for short) are, at least in theory, designed with college seeking students in mind. Everything is geared towards being ready for college and getting into a good college. Graduation gives you a plain high school diploma.

There are also some "alternative" institutions that seek to provide a high school education to people who didn't fit in well with other institutions for various reasons (ranging from disability, family situation, pregnancy, legal problems, different learning style, etc), as well as religious institutions. All offer plain high school diplomas, generally.

Now, anyone with a high school diploma and usually even a GED (basically a special program or test that allows one to get a diploma - or something like it - without having to go back to high school or through high school at all) can apply to any higher education institution they like.

Most higher ed sets it's own standards for admittance, though, which is usually based upon grades while in high school (GPA), ACT/SAT test scores, essay, etc. Some places have preferences or relationships with certain high schools (the high schools often being referred to as "feeder schools"), but that's about it.

Now, higher ed is yet another ball of wax, and varies tremendously by state - even more than high schools!

Most states have community, technical, or junior colleges, which generally offer the 2 and 4 year degrees. As these places are often smaller in size, they offer limited and differing selections of degree programs (some may have no fine arts programs, others might have no engineering...etc). Florida calls these smaller places junior colleges, Wisconsin has state technical colleges, Arizona has community colleges...etc. They are similar, but funding and "prestige" varies heavily.

The terms differ, but the general rule is the same: smaller, less degree programs, often focused on certificates and 2-year degrees and very limited 4-year offerings (if any at all). It is not uncommon for the smaller schools to focus on providing a lower-cost, student-centered program with the expectation of transferring to another institution to complete their bachelor's degree.

Then there are the bigger universities, which are sometimes called "4-year institutions", and focus on a larger campus, more degree programs, and are centered on the bachelor's degree. Some offer limited master's programs, and even fewer have select PhD options in specific areas.

We also have "polytechnic" colleges, which vary in size but are often focused on certain aspects of the sciences such as engineering. It is not uncommon for other institutions to omit engineering and related programs entirely, and thus specialized colleges fill in the gaps.

Then there are just big "universities", which offer a wide selection of everything, really. Most states have at least one, and sometimes 2 or more, of these. They often cost more, have more options, are located in big cities, and are just massive.

However, no matter what institution, the same rule generally applies: some are "selective", which means you take tests, and some have open access and anyone who can pay the fee can enroll. The tests are most commonly the ACT/SAT if you are coming from high school, but some schools - especially junior/technical/community colleges - will instead offer their own "placement test" mainly in math and reading to determine if you need to take any remedial classes first.

Selective schools limit enrollment, and usually use a multiple factor process: personal essay, maybe reference letters from educators, transcript of grades from wherever you went to high school, ACT/SAT scores, etc. Each school sets their own rules, and this ranges from your MIT schools who are proud of their tiny admittance rates, to most schools who just don't want to admit students they think will not thrive in their programs.

Students who can't get into selective schools but want to are often encouraged to attend the junior/technical/community colleges for a year or two, and then re-apply. When applying then the high school grades and tests are at times ignored completely or at least heavily discounted, and strong preference is given to those with good grades at whatever college they have been attending. This process is very common with mid-to-large state-funded schools.

So, in summary: high school diploma is just a diploma in the US, higher education institutions set their own individual admittance standards (ranging from strict to none, varying by place and state), most selective institutions require ACT/SAT scores and high school transcripts at a minimum regardless of where you went to high school or what you did there.

I hope this provides you with more than you actually wanted to know!