Does mentoring a summer student during a postdoc help get tenure-track position?

If this is all you've got that go ahead and put it in your applications.  However, you'll still look very inexperienced in teaching in comparison with applicants who've actually taught classes.

The question is about teaching experience and positions in the US at institutions that are somewhere between liberal arts colleges and R1 universities.  The question doesn't mention the discipline, and this could be important.

I've chaired several tenure track search committees in mathematics over the last few years at such an institution (my institution is a "School of Mines".)  We get hundreds of applications for every tenure track position and everyone we've hired recently has had significant teaching experience, typically including working as a TA during graduate school and then doing additional teaching of classes as part of postdoc or visiting assistant professor positions for one or more years.

In my experience, new tenure-track hires in other science and engineering disciplines tend to have somewhat less teaching experience than in mathematics.  However, I'd say that most new hires at my institution have at least one or more semesters of experience teaching classes.


Why is method so important for a thesis?

Computer science, huh?

I think that the issue many forget with the name "computer science" (and that's why "informatics" as a word exists at all) is that it's not about computers. Well, that was harsh. It's not totally about those small silicon dies and such. It's about information processing. And it's about ideas.

Basically, "we wrote a program, hurdur" does not cut it. Even "we wrote a program, here is the github" does not cut it. "We got this cool result" is cool. But what most people would be interested in – on a large scale, in 10-20-100 years, – is not that you used an i7 chip. It's not that you wrote it in Python. It's the idea. The essence. The thing you write in methodology. Your very future readers would not care about your source code (even if it's available). They would be trying to implement your method in SuperCoolFunctionalNeuronQuantumSnake++#XXL that would be popular in 40 years. And what they'd read, is methodology.

tl;dr: Methods would persist, programming languages and even results would not.


Source code plagiarism detection tool that checks against online content

We use the MOSS (Measure of Software Similarity) system provided by Stanford, at here.


At some point, if you are to have an academic career, and maybe any career, you are going to have to separate yourself from this advisor. I question his ethics, actually, in keeping you so close to something from which he benefits outside academia.

If you state correctly that he is only letting you work on less consequential aspects, I doubt that he will offer you great support in the future. This seems like a double dead end.

But quitting seems like it would be too extreme a step, also cutting off your future career.

My suggestion would be to explore, quietly, with other faculty, whether you can work with them on a dissertation, perhaps cutting ties with your current advisor or perhaps working jointly on another project that is unrelated, or at least less related, to the current advisor's company.

It is important to keep your search a bit quiet, if possible, though you can explain your reasoning to other professors, I think. I would first look within your current institution, and if nothing is available, start an external search for an advisor. It may be possible to enter another program as an advanced student, skipping some/many of the requirements that you have already fulfilled.

There isn't much in doctoral study than having an incompatible or somehow unhelpful advisor. You can, I hope, solve that problem without quitting your studies altogether.


Can I pursue a PhD while working as an Instructor/Lecturer?

Most universities are fine with having PhD students working as instructors/lecturer/teaching assistant at the same time, and it's actually quite common. I have personally been teaching at undergrads level while doing my PhD, and most of my friend who did a PhD were in the same situation.

However, it depends on the amount of hours you are spending a week with teaching: if it's taking all of your time, you might not be able to do research in good conditions, and it might be hard to find a professor that would agree to supervise you if you're not available to work on your PhD. Basically, if you combine a part-time teaching/part-time PhD, that should be fine, but if you combine a full-time teaching with a part-time PhD, that might not reasonable.

Concerning where you should apply for the PhD, in general, you can do it in a different university than the one where you're teaching. However, in some cases, it might be more interesting to do it at the same place because you might not have to pay the tuition fees.


How can I effectively switch fields from physics to math post-undergrad?

Sure; apply to a graduate program in math.  Most such applicants have no publications so far, so that will not hold you back.  Take the GRE.  Mention your Putnam score.  If you are in the US and are applying to a US school, you have a good chance of admission... not Harvard or Berkeley, perhaps, but at many good schools.  You may be asked to take some make-up undergraduate course work at the start; but with your Putnam score I am thinking this will easy for you.  And many math programs will let you do that after admitting you as a graduate student.  Write what you wrote here in your application.

Another thought.  Maybe try your own university.  You have met some of the faculty already.  Email the math department, see if there is a recruitment committee for new graduate students; talk to one of them and see what they say.


Is it ethical for a journal editor to use a generic rejection response when desk rejecting a manuscript?

Yes.

It is ethical—and moreover, common and accepted practice—for a journal editor to provide the response that you quote to many authors.

You've received what is commonly known as a desk rejection, where the editor uses their own judgement to determine whether the paper is suitable for and likely to be accepted for publication in the journal.  If the editor's professional judgment is that your paper is out of scope, or that there is no realistic chance of acceptance, then this response is not only ethical but the best response you can hope for, because the near-certain alternative is several months waiting for referee reports followed by rejection.


What are positive and negative outcomes of requiring Ph.D. students to take a pedagogy course?

The main negative outcomes would probably be the opportunity cost - what else the PhD students could have been spending their time on - and the risk of developing a bias against such courses and the material contained therein if they are poorly designed or executed.

On the other hand, without critical reflection and exposure to alternatives, we tend to teach in the way we were taught, which may or may not be the most effective approach. Moreover, we may be unaware of common misconceptions and difficulties with our material, having either overcome these hurdles long ago or having sidestepped them. A good course can help with this, especially if it has a subject-specific component as opposed to being completely general.

Since you refer to a mathematics department, you might be specifically interested in Alcock & Simpson's Ideas from Mathematics Education: An Introduction for Mathematicians.


Good idea to name the keynote speaker of a local conference at which my paper was accepted to be presented?

If the conference is well-known enough, then it isn't necessary to name the keynote speaker, because the conference will be recognized regardless. If the conference isn't well-known in the field, name-dropping is going to come across crass and not very helpful.

So in either case, I don't see any advantage to name-dropping.


1) is it appropriate;

I'd consider this the second best. Postdoctoral and faculty are mostly valued by how well and efficiently they can write and publish academic papers so having some published work to show is the best, and if there isn't any, then having an excerpt from the dissertation would also help.

However, do not just "extract" without making any change. Introduction in thesis may not be the nicest thing to keep readers' attention. Instead, use this chance to draft a paper, and write it out like a synopsis or executive summary. This way, you can showcase what you did in your previous study and also give the committee a writing example.

  2) are there any reasons to prefer literature review to introduction
  or vice versa;

The ultimate goals are to show your mastery of English and expressions of concepts and arguments. I personally do not think an introduction without any review is convincing enough, nor a literature review without any big picture is descriptive enough. Thinking as a committee member, I want to see a self-contained story rather than parts that are abruptly chopped off from bigger chunk of works.

  3) is there a benefit of doing so, even when a writing sample is not
  required?

There are two approaches, both I'd consider acceptable.

Acknowledge that you currently are working on publishing your works (so no publication yet,) then proceed to present a writing example for their reference.
Include it in the appendix, or in the letter explain that writing examples are available upon request.

The way I evaluate it is: does the whole application look tailored to what the committee asks for? You need to show that you have put together a package according to their ad, and not merely changing the school, department, and the chair's name in a mass production.

  I certainly plan to convert my dissertation into several papers
  and/or, perhaps, a book chapter, but it will take quite some time to
  do that.

Do it now. Really. Everything about writing will "take some time" and it's the famous last word for many researchers. Make the time and get them done. Once you're in the new position all those thoughts and details will be forgotten very quickly; the interest to publish them will fade and guilt will grow. Use this application time as a motivation. Postdocs or new faculty members with publication history does distinct themselves from the rest of the pool; please use this chance to make a start.


Missing out on a position due to false HR advice. What should I do?

This, and your earlier question, seem to be very localized. I think that you need to handle it locally. Go back to HR with your new evidence and seek new advice. Challenge it if necessary. Go to whomever is responsible for the new position with whatever advice you get from HR along with your new evidence and ask for advice there. If it is at all unfavorable, ask for an exception.

It is possible that there is nothing more than a lack of communication or a misinterpretation of rules. But you won't get out of your trap without bringing it to everyone's attention.

Perhaps you will just learn how the other cases are not the same as yours. But perhaps you can get the gears unstuck with a bit of jiggling.


Is there a viable path to a top Math PhD program through a non-flagship state school

It's too early to stress about grad schools in your situation. But let me share a few observations I have made being a student at a top 10 Math PhD program in the U.S

In every incoming class of last 3 years, there were a number of American students that came from a no-name schools such as a tiny liberal arts college nobody heard or a low ranked stated university. This means that if you are the best student in your university and make good friends with your professors, there is a decent chance to go to a much better school. I specified American students because international students pretty much all come from premier institutions.
Do an REU in your sophomore or junior summer. The point of REU is not to prove something new, but to expose you to the research world. Ideally, impress your REU supervisor well enough to ask for a recommendation letter from him/her.
Do not underestimate the Math GRE. Take your time to practice and get 800 minimum - 760 at the very least.


As a PhD student, should I list a conference travel grant in CV?

I would suggest listing the participation, but not the grant. At the point you are, starting the doctoral studies, it will have little to no effect in any case and by the time the CV becomes more important you should have more substantial things to list.

Alternatively, if you list the participation and simply note (funded) after the reference, it would be fine, I think. But don't try to make it sound like more than it is.


If you WANT to volunteer in the lab as a learning opportunity, it can be a great practice.

If you don't want to, decline the offer and either look elsewhere or come back when his budget can handle bringing someone else in... and hope that he hasn't already found someone who was pleased to work as a volunteer and delighted to be paid.

The world is what it is, not what we wish it should be.


Does a Statement of Purpose really matter for Graduate Admissions in 2021?

The Statement of Purpose possibly carries weight toward admission to a graduate program.
Meeting the minimum requirements for acceptance may get you past an initial screening, but many departments have more applicants than they have space in their program. (I hesitate to say "most" or cite percentages since that could change from year to year, but you can often find this information on a program's website.) In these and other programs, the whole application packet - including the Statement of Purpose - may be considered by individual reviewers and/or a committee of reviewers before initial offers of admission are decided. Given two similarly-qualified candidates, it is conceivable that they would admit the one with a more compelling Statement of Purpose.
It's not easy from the outside to guess at an institution's internal processes, the number of applicants that year, or what they'll weight more heavily in your packet. While you may know anecdotally of people who are admitted with terrible Statements of Purpose, you don't know others who were rejected. You also don't know whether this year will be different. Given that, while you could gamble on a subpar Statement of Purpose and meeting the minimum requirements, prudence suggests putting some effort in so that you might stand out compared to your peers.


Recommendation letters for assistant professor position (computer science and statistics)

Well, given that you are applying for a professorship position it makes much more sense the second third option. The recruiters do look for external recommendations, but external recommendations in the same area are more valuable as they give more interesting information on the candidate for that role.
However, if i may, i would suggest you to have the first recommendation for your ability to get grants, the second one for your ability to teach and the third one for your ability to research. In this way, the recommendations will be covering all the aspects of the job, without overlapping each other and without overwhelming the recruiters.
I hope my suggestions will help you.


Is it better to lecture with a board or a document camera?

The issue of how technology effects communication and learning is definitely of interest, from a linguistics perspective or from an educational perspective.  Most importantly, at the chalkboard it is easy to point.  A document camera allows pointing, but it is awkward.  Tablets make pointing very hard (I learned this the hard way).

This is not at all my area, and I have not vetted the following papers.  They look interesting, and perhaps give you a start in accessing the literature.  Mostly I found studies of tablets, but did find one discussing the advantages of a document camera for some students with disabilities.

Maclaren, Peter, David Wilson, and Sergiy Klymchuk. "I see what you are doing: Student views on lecturer use of Tablet PCs in the engineering mathematics classroom." Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 33.2 (2017).
Maclaren, Peter, David I. Wilson, and Sergiy Klymchuk. "Making the point: the place of gesture and annotation in teaching STEM subjects using pen-enabled Tablet PCs." Teaching Mathematics and its Applications: An International Journal of the IMA 37.1 (2017): 17-36.
Williams, Jocasta, and M. F. Fardon. "Lecture recordings: extending access for students with disabilities." ALT-C. 2007.


How to determine the number of citations an author had on a given date using Google Scholar?

Assuming they have a public scholar profile, I imagine the closest thing you can get is  the number of citations the person has at the end of a given year. You can float over a given year to determine citations per year and then subtract the required years from  "all citations". This will provide a cumulative total for a given year.
For instance, the person below had 1215 - 248 = 967 at the end of 2019. And 1215 - 248 - 245 = 722 at the end of 2018.

You could probably also interpolate specific dates to get an estimate. Note however, that there is a difference between a 2019 citation and a citation received in 2019. For instance, a journal article that is first published online in 2019, but then gets a canonical publication year of 2020, will probably count as a 2020 citation. Google scholar can also vary in how long it takes to index a reference. For instance, by my guess, academics get about 20% of their citations for a given year in the year that follows (i.e., 20% of 2019 citations are added to Google Scholar in 2020).
As far as I can tell, Internet Archive doesn't index Google Scholar pages.


First thing you may want to do now is to read and understand the policies of your university related to how academic misconduct cases are processed. You may receive support from Student Support or similarly called unit in your university.

Typically the process goes like this: professors suspect a group of students of academic misconduct and file forms to the relevant person (responsible for academic misconduct).  They quickly go through and decide which cases to dismiss instantly, and which to pass on to the misconduct committee panel.

If your case goes to the panel, you will be asked to come and respond to the evidence. Normally, it is sufficient to provide a brief explanation like the one you provided in you question here.  A sensible panel will then dismiss the case without a penalty.


Admission to Master's degree in Data Science without a STEM Background?

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

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


Should applicants send an email to check the status of their faculty application?

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


My h-index is very low and I want to increase it

Write papers that people will want to cite. In particular:

When you come up with a new concept/technique, write a good explanatory section, so that people will refer to your paper for in depth explanation.
Make something useful, like a piece of software or a benchmark that people working in your field can use. Write a paper that people using your work can cite. For example, the introductory page of PonyGE2 contains a "how to cite PonyGE2" text.
When you make something people can cite, make it easy to cite it. Include snippets for BibTex and other citation systems that people can easily copy-paste. (BibTex in particular is unpleasant to do entirely by hand; so take that work off your readers' hands.)
Use good titles for your paper, good abstracts and pay attention to the keywords. These things matter a lot for whether people will find and decide to read your paper, and that's necessary to get them to cite it.
Collaborate with a lot of different people in your field. If you write something good with X, chances are X and X's colleagues are going to be citing that paper later on. Also, people looking at X's papers also get to see your paper.
Collaborate with famous people in your field. They probably got famous by being good at it (so learn from the best!), and they get published in the more prestigious journals. That's good for increasing your citation odds.
Write about interesting things that other people will want to follow up on.
Supervise good students, teach them well, and co-author their publications sometimes the student exceeds the master, but the master also gets a boost from the student's success.


Etiquette for contacting potential advisors after submitting application

So, questions about their current papers etc are not the same as asking about your admission progress.

Yes, ask the about the papers and projects but not about your admission status.

You should address questions about your admission status to the admissions department and, they may have already published a link, or email, for such contact.

As for mentioning other offers, if you are border-line case for them and they know you have other offers that may help their decision...


How I can add former official address in manuscript?

The address is  primarily a matter of knowing where you may reside. From this perspective the former address is of less value. However, since universities use publications for their evaluation of performance adding the former address can eb a way to "thank" your old institute. This is particularly true if you did the work there. So, the suggestion would be to list the addresses with your current first. You could consider doing it the other way around if all the work has been done at the former instittute and they deserve the credit more than your new. Your new address should nevertheless be present for reasons of contact.


Ethics: Having students use my referral link for a product used in the classroom?

There is a saying, "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion," which I believe applies well to an ethical dilemma of this sort.  Despite the somewhat nasty origins of the quote, what it has come to mean is that in some circumstances one must not only act ethically but also act to ensure a very clear appearance of ethical behavior.

In this case, the question is this: could a reasonable person question whether you might have chosen to recommend this service in part because of the benefits that redound to you yourself?

In this case, since there are a number of other ways that you might have gone about obtaining similar capabilities for the class, it would be reasonable for a student or other person to wonder if you were influenced to recommend that particular site due to the benefits that you would obtain through the referrals.  Given your position of authority, then, I believe that does create a genuine ethical concern regarding the referral program.

I see two basic approaches to resolving this:

Recommend the service, but do not make use of the referral program.
Recommend both this service and several of the other competing services.  Note that this is the one that you personally use, and for this service provide both a non-referral and referral link (being transparent about the benefit to you).

Personally, I would prefer the first option, since it's completely unambiguous, but would not find the second particularly problematic.


Do universities typically provide every PhD student with a computer?

Based on my work experience and from talking to people, I support Bryan's answer. Universities in Europe (not including the UK) virtually universally provide personal IT equipment (typically at least a laptop and a desktop display, plus some peripherals) to every student, while universities outside of Europe, at least often, do not. I do not really know about the UK, but my suspicion is that they may not.

To add to Bryan's answer, I will speculate a bit on the why part of your question.
I think there are is one fundamental underlying reason.

PhD students in Europe are salaried employees of the university first and foremost. This is well documented in many questions here, for example this answer. Every reputable company will provide their employees work equipment rather than expecting employees to bring their own, so it is not surprising that universities do the same for their research assistants / PhD students. Contrary, master's students (who are usually not employees in Europe) basically never get a laptop to work on their master's theses, and are instead asked to use their private equipment or the public computer rooms of the university.

Along with this long-standing tradition to see PhD students as employees also comes a different mindset. Universities in Europe typically assume that all resources required to conduct the PhD project should be provided by the university. After all, we don't expect students to pay for trips to conferences, open access charges, or time on expensive experimental hardware out of their own pocket, so why would we assume that they pay for their basic work equipment?

Finally, it's also a question of basic economy. In Sweden where I currently teach, a PhD student costs me more than 350k USD over 5 years (the normal PhD duration in my department) in salary, social security, benefits, and overheads. Spending another 3k to provide the student with good hardware to work with really does not make a whole lot of difference in the overall project budget, while contributing quite positively to the overall PhD experience and likelihood of success for the project (or at least we think it does).


How to quote passage with literal error that changes the meaning?

If the purpose of quoting the text is to discuss the error, then quote the error. However, in this case, it seems that your purpose is to discuss the real situation. Quoting the error just makes things confusing.  Instead, I suggest something like:

  Wallace et al. [1, p.497] say that polynomial approaches, such as dispatching, "do not work well."1

  1 [1, p.497] erroneously described dispatching as nonpolynomial; compare [1,p.495].

The footnote explains that the literal quote from the source is incorrect but attempts to downplay this. The point of the footnote is only to stop the reader being confused if they look up the quote, not to criticize the authors for the mistake. You might be able to phrase the footnote better than I have, to make this point more effectively.

But be sure that it really is an error. The phrasing "Nonpolynomial approaches, like dispatching, may not work well" is ambiguous and could mean any of the following things:

"Nonpolynomial approaches, such as dispatching, may not work well."  (That is, nonpolynomial approaches may not work well; dispatching is an example of a nonpolynomial approach. This is the interpretation that you've used.)
"Nonpolynomial approaches that resemble dispatching may not work well" (That is, among the nonpolynomial approaches, those that resemble dispatching may not work well; other nonpoly approaches might be fine.)
"Nonpolynomial approaches, which resemble dispatching, may not work well." (That is, nonpoly approaches resemble dispatching; nonpoly approaches may not work well.)
"Like dispatching, nonpolynomial approaches may not work well." (That is, dispatching may not work well. Nonpoly approaches have the following commonality with dispatching: they also may not work well."

Also, as dan1111 points out in his answer, you need to be sure that your correction (changing "nonpolynomial" to "polynomial") fixes the error.


Are Prior Publications allowed in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory?

There is no confusion, you can present the paper in the conference and submit it for publication.

But you have to tell the editors in a letter with the paper which conference it was presented at.

This is so that they know at the time and don’t find out “by accident” or, you never know, they could be at the conference...


Can I still claim the novelty of my PhD contribution in later publications?

I think it depends on the venue (if any) in which your dissertation has been disseminated.

However, it is likely you can appropriately claim the subsequent manuscript aimed for a peer reviewed journal is indeed the first report of your claims in the peer reviewed scholarly literature.

However, do disclose any prior dissemination to avoid accuses of self-plagiarism.


Affiliated institution wants to remove name from already published paper?

It sounds like you and your co-authors committed an error in publishing this paper against requirements imposed by your institution.  The institution would probably be within its rights to insist that you withdraw the paper altogether, so asking you to remove the affiliation markings from the paper is probably not too bad a compromise (it's hard to know for certain without knowing the regulations and situation in detail).

As such, I would recommend getting in touch with the journal and requesting a correction to remove the affiliations, explaining the situation.  The journal may or may not be willing to make the correction.  If they are not, then you likely just need to leave the two institutions to battle it out and hope that you have a paper left when they are finished.


How common is use of word "PhDs" to describe PhD holders in formal documents?

Extremely common, in both general usage and in my exposure to professors/academics. Unless you have some reason to believe there would be objections to it, I think you're anticipating a problem where none exists.

(On the other hand, "saving characters" is an awful reason for doing anything, especially these days when memory is cheap and printing is easy. If you use this form, use it simply because that's how people talk.)


Should article submissions be formatted in draft format, or in the format of a particular journal?

Depends from journal to journal.
There are journals like Decision Support System that require from author to use specific format for initial submission, which btw differs a lot from format of their online publications. It seems to me that format specified in their Guides for Author is designed to ease review process i.e. making side notes and underlining by hand on printed copy.

There are ones like Information Processing and Management, that clearly state they are following "Your Paper Your Way" policy, which in essence: allows you to use any citation style and format for initial submission.

And there are journals, like International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems, that make no such statement, but if you read carefully instructions for authors - they say: that you'll have to apply their template / style / format after being informed on acceptance of your manuscript.

So, unfortunately, there is no easy answer. It would make a lot of sense if all journals follow "Your Paper Your Way" policy, but it is not the case. Many times, you are left in uncertainty due lack of explicit instruction on this.


Can an editor make substantial edits and publish them without the author's permission?

No.

Editorial review is an iterative process in which an editor, reviews and the author(s) have open (although usually blind) exchanges about the details of a manuscript. The process relies wholly on a full exchange of information between all parties.

A helpful and detailed account of a standard editorial process may be found at the National Institutes for Health website.


How common is it for women to drop out of graduate school because they have children?

My wife and I both started graduate school, in STEM fields, in Ph.D. programs, a bit later than most.

Due to this, we decided to have children during graduate school.  Note that I am in the USA at the one of the top programs in my field at an RU/VH university.

A few negative points are

As a graduate student, you are expected to work full time, but you are not paid enough to afford daycare costs for young children.
For the first year of the child's life your research output will be severely limited.  Some PIs may not like this.
After children, you have to be very focused and disciplined to continue, time scarcity increases a great deal, and time is already scarce even if you are a single graduate student with no life.
My wife had severe morning sickness, which decreased her research output. Pregnancy complications can affect your work.
After you have children, being poor really starts to become a burden.  After all, we want to give our children a good life.
Your time in graduate school will be extended.

A few positive points are

Due do the nature of research and graduate school, hours are very flexible compared with a typical job.  This allows for juggling of schedules when needed, etc. which is very helpful to us.
The Ph.D. is less crucial than a post-doc or a tenure track position, so I would posit that there is less risk to have children during graduate school as opposed to other crucial academic career milestones.  However, the caveat is that graduate students receive the least money.
Many PIs don't care what you do, as long as you make research progress. This makes it easy to work around a young child's needs.

The way that we have dealt with this situation is by

Having understanding PIs who also have children, and are flexible.
Acquiring some debt (that we wouldn't otherwise incur) and I've done some lucrative consulting on the side.  The consulting has however, increased the time to graduate in my program.
Being very disciplined in our schedules and having our children in daycare/preschool so that we can work.  This is very expensive.
Not having a social life (but graduate students aren't supposed have those anyway right?).

To answer your question, for us it is working.  However, I do know a few other couples who are doing this, one other couple is like us with both parents in graduate school, but nearly all of the others have only one parent in graduate school.

From my perspective, it appears that women leaving academia due to children is becoming less of a problem, but is still large, and unsolved.

Note : our university does not provide daycare to graduate students.  They do provide a $1000 annual subsidy, but our daycare costs are $10,500 per year.  These costs decrease for preschool, but are very expensive for the first three years.

Second Note : My graduation time will likely be right around the 6.5-7 year mark, I had my mother die during my time in graduate school, and we have had two children, so the actual time increase wasn't obscene, but I already had an MS in Mathematics coming in and was expecting to finish in 3-4 years.  My wife entered her program straight from BS and will probably finish in 5.5-6 years.

I would also like to say that the needs of the child and the lack of sleep disproportionately affect women in this situation, and this is a biological necessity in the first 2 years of the child's life.  For this reason, equality for women in academia does not mean equal treatment, it means providing for the ability for women to have children if they so please, without it impacting their career! This necessitates providing more support for women and families to have careers and children.


Why do some US universities ban first-year graduate student from working outside TA/RA?

It seems obvious that they want students to focus on their studies for the first year.

I don't know why they feel this way, but as a state funded education that is putting public resources into a student's education, they don't want those resources "wasted" or used ineffectively.

If a student proves him/herself the prohibition ends. I would hope that the last part is reinforcing this. TA fine. Research fine. Because we can have some control over how much effort is spent there.

I would object to such policies if they excluded financially needy students. I don't know how they manage that issue.

But even institutions that run graduate schools but are not publicly funded still subsidize student education to some extent. As high as tuition can be at some places it is often matched by other sources. I'm assuming the institutions are non-profit. Not all are, and that has its own problems, but those are very unlikely to have such rules.


Big ideas

Think about breaking your big ideas down into manuscript ideas--what would be the focus of each paper you could potentially write? This helps to break big-picture research topics down into both manageable and focused sub-topics, and will help you plan the even smaller research steps needed to achieve the bigger goals.

So for example, if my big grand research question is "Why are all my houseplants dying and how do I save them?" I could foresee breaking that into manuscripts:

Review of common houseplants with compiled statistics on hardiness, common stresses, etc. and development of new quantitative metric for normalized houseplant stress level
Experimental results of houseplant responses to induced stresses
Application of a new methodology for protecting houseplants from common stresses.

Similarly, break your smaller sub-projects down by what results you'd like to attain (e.g., figure comparing x and y as a function of z, calibrated equation describing x(z), etc.), then plan your work around reaching these goals.
Keep your notebooks organized according to these big ideas (e.g., Plants Notebook).
The front page of each of my notebooks is a running to-do list of things that are relevant right now, which I try to review and update at least once a week.

Smaller ideas

Make sure your smaller ideas fit in under your larger research goals/plans above, and record your ideas in the appropriate subject notebooks
Keep a "parking lot" notebook for your random thoughts and ideas that might not be tractable/relevant right now but might someday be useful.

General

I like to use a digital notebook app instead of a paper notebook to keep things organized since you can move text around as needed... my old paper notebooks are full of notes on different topics all mixed randomly so it's hard to find them again, and relevant notes are often in very different places. You can keep different notebooks for different topics, but I've found it's still hard to keep things organized and the topics themselves often evolve over time.
Go back occasionally and re-read/reorganize/rewrite your old notes. This is especially facilitated by using digital notebooks because it allows your notes to be more of an actively updated list of relevant things you're working on right now (for the most part), rather than a bunch of disjointed things you randomly wrote down way back.
In addition to (digital) notebooks for each subject I'm researching, I also keep notebooks for seminars/conferences/meetings/workshops (since they're often on random topics unrelated to my research), administrative/proposals, outreach, teaching, classes, and papers (notes on papers I've read). Any info in one of these that's also relevant to a research project, I'll copy over to that subject notebook (this is a little clunky and would be easier if I could find a notes app that lets you cross-reference or alias pages to multiple notebooks...).


From a lesser known uni, but very prestigious in my country - do I tell my referee to make this clear in my LOR for USA applications?

First of all, it is a tough position to be in as a student to have to give faculty advice on how to write your graduate school letter of recommendation.  To give them too much guidance may not be appropriate, and as someone who has not yet completed a PhD program or read or written any such letters, you almost certainly don't have the expertise do properly advise them either.  Thus I would urge you rather to seek out writers who have previous experience writing letters to North American universities.  One of the most important qualities of a top world university is that they regularly place their students at other top world universities, so (as @Tobias Kildetoft has pointed out in comment) I would expect there to be many faculty members in your department who have experience writing such letters.  I think it is much less awkward to try to choose letter writers based on this expertise than to try to give your letter writers letter writing advice.

But assuming the premise of the proposal: it is not clear to me exactly what information you are hoping to provide.  The world's top hundred universities are largely well known to each other, and moreover it is the responsibility of those who are evaluating your application to know or learn enough about your university in order to perform that evaluation.  When I do graduate admissions and get an application from an institution that I am not familiar with, I do spend time familiarizing myself with it.

In terms of rankings: Times Higher Education [a London based magazine] places twelve UK universities within the world's top hundred: Oxford (1), Cambridge (4), Imperial (8), University College London (15), London School of Economics (25), Edinburgh (27), King's College (36), Manchester (55), Bristol (71), Warwick (82), Glasgow (88), Durham (96).  It is reasonable to expect a reputable North American PhD program to have heard of all of these institutions.    Individual faculty members will also have their own opinions on the relative merits: for instance, in terms of the kind of mathematics that I do, I view Bristol as being very strong, perhaps at about the same level as Imperial.

If the faculty who process graduate admission do not agree that your institution is one of the world's most prestigious, simply pointing out that it is one of the top ones in the UK according to some metric may not change their mind.  They should instead offer concrete evidence of the excellence of their program, e.g. by talking about world-leading faculty members and former students who have been placed in other top institutions.


Job Market: should one hide their (young) age?

If you have well regarded publications and some demonstration of teaching experience at the collegiate level, your age may not be of significant concern to hiring committees. If I was a 45 year old on the hiring committee, is there really that much of a difference to me between a 23 year old and a 27 year old? (Okay, yes, there could be a difference. But how much? Some of that difference would amount to life experiences like graduating college, experiences you already will have attained, just at an earlier date).

Long story short, hiring committees are used to hiring new colleagues that are "young" and fresh. Being 23, 24 years old is likely not a point of concern.

I will add this: Anecdotally, many of the people I have run into in academia that are very young for their academic age (e.g. 19 year olds getting a PhD) have not gained the soft skills necessary for actually being a college professor. You can have a PhD and still have no clue how to deal with the guy who's 5 years your senior being a discipline issue in class. I know that when I was a graduate student in my early 20s and teaching classes, some students took advantage of my being very young. This is not to say this is your case. As long as you can demonstrate that you can be a mature instructor of a college class (letters of recommend and teaching ratings can speak to that), you will be fine. (And frankly, at 23, 24 years of age, you should be fine). Being a mature teacher is something that every hiring committee will look for anyway.


How to cite a multi-part blog post with separate URLs for each part?

You have two options that are IMHO equally good. Either cite them as one item with three links:

  [1] J. Doe: Foo bar (I., II., and III.), 2015, http://example.net/blog/1 , http://example.net/blog/2 , http://example.net/blog/3 [2015-04-17].

Or cite them as three items:

  [1] J. Doe: Foo bar, part I., 2015, http://example.net/blog/1 [2015-04-17].
  [2] J. Doe: Foo bar, part II., 2015, http://example.net/blog/2 [2015-04-17].
  [3] J. Doe: Foo bar, part III., 2015, http://example.net/blog/3 [2015-04-17].

If they were three articles in an article series, they would be cited as three items for sure. But for blog posts, no canonical citation style is established (or maybe some style mention it, but it's not a universally accepted thing); this means that any style that contains the relevant information is OK.

As for me personally, I would probably stick to the second variant, unless you commonly cite multiple items with one number (some chemists and engineers do this).


Why would an academic write a textbook for free?

As the author of this particular free textbook, I can say that the previous answers have covered things pretty well.  "Introduction to programming using Java" started in 1996 as a set of class notes written in HTML with embedded Java applets -- which all seemed pretty exciting in the heady early days of the Internet.  I had published an earlier textbook in the usual way, and made not much money from it, which is true of the large majority of published textbooks.  I had recently been promoted to full professor, possibly the most secure job in the world where the only further promotion available to me would move me into (shudder) administration, so it would make little difference to my career if I self-published a book instead of submitting it to a regular publisher.

I lost creative control over my regularly published textbook.  The copyright was assigned to the publisher until it goes out of print, which it will probably never do in these days of print-on-demand.  There has never been a second edition.  My Java textbook, on the other hand, has gone through seven versions and has been updated fairly regularly.  I get the ego boost of hearing from people all over the world who have read it (something I can never seem to get most of my own students to do).  The web site still gets hundreds of visits every day.  It has certainly had more impact on the world than if I were selling it.  And if someone doesn't like it, I can politely point out that they can write their own textbook, or even make a modified version of mine.

So, my main motivation was to write a textbook that I could use in my own courses.  Selling it would make me very little profit.  And since I use free software all the time, it's also a way that I could give back something to the open source / creative commons community.


How to get cited and how to boost the impact of one's work?

I can see a few reasons why your paper was not cited as much as you hoped it to be:

Networking indeed does go a long way towards being cited. In my experience this is especially true for areas where many competing approaches are being published (which, by the sound of it, is true in your case). Even if your paper is published in a good venue, this alone does not guarantee that you will find a critical mass of readers to kickstart the process. Citations are in my experience somewhat viral. Google Scholar, which for better or for worse, is used by many researchers for searching for literature, returns results ordered more or less by citation count. Hence, papers with a few citations on them are much easier to find on Google Scholar than those with 0 citations. Hence, you need to "bootstrap" a bit before citations start coming in more or less by themselves. The best (ethical) way to do this is to network - tell other researchers that might be interested in your paper about it
You should not per se exclude the possibility that you overestimate the value of your contribution. Maybe the things your approach was good at are not valued as highly by the other researchers. Maybe you underestimate the qualities of some papers that are cited over yours.
Even if your paper was really good, maybe this was to hard to see at first glance. In an ideal world, every researcher would strive to fully grok each related paper. However, in the real world (especially in busy fields), you have to assume that a reader will at first only casually browse over your paper (and only really read it if it seems very strong to him at first glance). If your paper does not seem strong at first glance, people will not cite it.
Maybe you are overestimating the value of the venue you published in. In many busy fields, papers published in a "good" venue (as opposed to "the best there is") already have a hard time getting cited. Further, check whether your paper is available with the standard subscriptions that most universities have (e.g., for CS that would be IEEE, Springer, ACM, ... depending on your field of course). There are some non-predatory publishers out there that are simply not available in the subscriptions of many libraries.


Serving sweets at an oral qualifying exam

Over here in the UK, we do not provide anything as a candidate, if necessary the research group's secretary knows what to do. Anyhow, I would agree with your friend, I would provide only water, and then if applicable I would ask a senior lecturer (such as your supervisor or head of group) in the research group to invite the examiner(s) for tea/coffee/beer and/or lunch.


About approval of grant of potential mentor

Definitely follow her and her team on the various digital networks that they may be on. Most teams have Twitter and university groups.

Figure out when the grant rounds are decided and published. Most national grants will have public websites etc. Private grant institutions may also have ways to follow them.

But what is more important for you is to know when your usual post doc dates and times are. Her grant may be after that time which may limit your choices. Keeping all the factors in mind is an important strategy.


Does anyone still care about the name and address of a publisher?

It's always important to know the venue for a scientific publication, not just in case you have to track it down, but also in order to understand what sort of review or other vetting process (if any) the publication will have gone through.

For a conference or a journal article, that's the name of the conference or the journal.  Thus, I wouldn't typically bother including the publisher---although many such effectively include the publisher in their title (e.g., IEEE Signal Processing, ACS Nano, Nature Methods).

For a book, however, the publisher is the venue, as they decide what merits publication and how to try to ensure validity. Knowing that a book is published by the Oxford University Press means something, just like knowing that a conference is sponsored by the IEEE.  It's not a guarantee of correctness any more than journal peer review, but it does imply some basic degree of quality control.

As for address: while it might theoretically be useful for disambiguation, these days most large publishing organizations have multiple sites and are really anchored by their online location rather than their physical location. Thus, I find address completely useless in a citation of recent work and will omit it unless forced by a publisher.

Finally, note that all of this does change if you're talking about works that are not accessible electronically (e.g., much of the literature before the 1970s or so), for which as many hints as possible are useful if one must track it down.


Give it more time to be published, the system sometimes may not do things strictly on time.


The best wording to politely nudge the editor?

First, always be polite to the editor. Often academic editors are volunteers. Even if they are not, being polite is always more helpful than being not polite.

Second, journals often have trouble getting enough reviewers. I have emailed journals and asked if they need more reviewer suggestions. This nudges the journal to think about your submission. And, can sometime help them address the delay in review.


There are two main models of organizing doctoral programs:

The American system: graduate students proceed through a combined master's and doctoral program, usually starting with coursework, then taking some sort of "qualifying exam" to become doctoral candidates within the department. Admissions are handled at the department level.
The "German" system: doctoral candidates are employees rather than students. Candidates for a position must apply directly to the group of the professor who is sponsoring the project. There is no coursework phase, as applicants are expected to have already completed their master's degree. (However, they can "audit" courses if needed.)

I would suspect that these represent the "poles" of the spectrum; most other systems I'm aware of fall somewhere in between. [Note that even the German system is adopting some features of the American system, and is thus starting to become a hybrid.]


Naming a library or program partially after a school

Berkeley and Stanford are places, not - institutes. So I guess no permission is needed (unless from the respective mayors). (However, my guess might be wildly wrong for the US law.)

See also https://perso.uclouvain.be/vincent.blondel/research/louvain.html:

  is now known as the "Louvain method" because [...] the method was devised when they all were at the Université catholique de Louvain.

When one wants to use an institute's name (e.g. "MIT", as in one of your examples) - at least an informal consent may be needed. (But in some places rules may be much stricter - and it is impossible to make a general answer.)


Will I be accepted into another PhD program if I leave my current group in Europe in which I don't fit in?

Context: I have had candidates in similar situations apply to positions I offered in the past.

It's certainly possible - you are not a slave to your current group, and there is no law that says that we cannot hire people who have already started (and quit) a PhD elsewhere.

However, in practice, applicants in your situation raise an interesting question for the hiring person. On the one hand, you already have some experience in research, potentially decreasing the amount of training required before you will become effective. On the other hand, people will be wondering what went wrong the first time, and whether the same is likely to happen in your next PhD position.

In truth, most such candidates end up not being accepted. There is normally at least one other highly qualified candidate who is perceived as lower-risk. However, oftentimes this is also because the candidates don't do a particularly good job explaining their situation, and transparency (and plausibility of the story) are key. The instinct of many candidates seems to be to try to keep the topic out of conversation as much as possible, and only provide highly generic answers when probed. This is not a good strategy, as it keeps people wondering - and wondering people make up their own explanations (or they simply decide that the risk is too high).

I feel that before you go back onto the PhD student job market, you may want to head over to the Workplace.SE and carefully study the (many) questions there related to how to, and how not to, talk negatively about previous employment. Your challenge will be to convince your next advisor that you are quitting your previous position for good reasons which are unlikely to repeat in the position you are applying to, without thrash-talking your previous research group. It's certainly a capricious edge to walk.


What is considered a good GPA in a master's program?

If you do not plan on pursuing a PhD then a "good GPA" is one where you can complete your courses and graduate with your Masters. When you go into industry from academia, no hiring manager will care about your GPA - your experience matters more and your master's degree will be icing on the cake. Many graduate programs require at least a 3.0 GPA (B average) to maintain a good status and not be put on probation. So that might be your goal.


Am I qualified enough to apply for a graduate scholarship?

The only valid answer you will get is from some institution with scholarship money to offer. The only way to get that answer is to actually apply. My opinion, not very useful, is that you have a chance and that you shouldn't worry too much about your GPA. Institutions look beyond that for indicators of success.

But two problems you will have are (a) some scholarships are reserved for citizens of the various countries, and (b) there is a lot of competition for admission and especially for scholarship money.

So, most of the details you present here are not relevant for an answer here but will be important to include in any application.

If you have a dream, follow it. Don't give it up based on random advice from the internet. But also, keep your options open so that you have something interesting to do if you find difficulties along the way. At this stage, however, it isn't a case of academia or industry.


Why do departments fund PhD students instead of postdocs?

"I'm dismissing the altruistic reason"

Therein lies one of the biggest problems with your question. I work for a land-grant state university in the U.S. Our mission includes education. It's not an altruistic reason, it's literally why we exist.

The other flaw in your question is assuming that the money to hire these two groups is fungible - it isn't always. For example, there are grant programs where education of graduate students is a major component of what one is supposed to be doing - "we're going to hire a postdoc" is simply a non-alloweable use of funding.

There are some other nice features of graduate students to consider as well:

They're cheaper. While a postdoc is probably more value for complex activities, there are sometimes things that require some expertise, but not a full-blown PhDs worth. Masters and early-stage PhD students are excellent people to conduct literature reviews, field collection, etc.
You can identify promising researchers early. Lets say you see someone in undergraduate courses whose impressed you. If you only recruited postdocs, you're essentially saying "Look me up in 6 to 8 years, I'd love to work with you." If you recruit graduate students, you can usher them into their research career.
You get them for longer. Postdocs are (by and large) transient positions, and much of their time may be taken up by looking (rightly) for another position. In many labs, especially those without long-term technicians, graduate students may actually have more institutional knowledge.


Does anyone actually publish "structured proofs"?

While most people use more traditional proof styles, the more exhaustive structured proof style that Lamport proposes seems to be adopted, at least in spirit, by machine-assisted proving systems like Coq and Lamport's own TLA+.  By bringing a very non-intuitive player into the loop (the machine), these systems force the mathematician to be much more explicit about every step and assumption, and encourage hierarchical structure by their use of programming-language style syntax.

These proving systems are typically quite expensive to use, and you generally wouldn't want to put their lengthy proofs into the middle of a paper---attaching as supplementary information is more the way to go.  They are, however, proving to be quite valuable in critical applications where dealing with every possible edge case is important, such as in the design of microprocessors or cryptographic protocols.


Can the supervisor ask a student to add them in an acknowledgment without any useful feedback

Giving a mere acknowledgement to supervisors is a pretty low bar, and it would be a pretty extreme reaction to deny this.  Even if they did not succeed in assisting you with this paper, presumably they must have made some attempt to assist you in their supervisory role, and they have taken time out of their own schedule to try to assist you as a student.  That in itself warrants an acknowledgement and thanks, even if you are of the view that they did not contribute anything of value.  It is usual to add someone as a co-author only when they have made a substantial contribution to a paper, but the bar for an acknowledgement is much lower.

I note from your further comments that you are of the view that your academic supervisors do not understand your topic, and the Dean of the Faculty is "with their side".  I also note your comment that they have asked you to withdraw from the university, or at least take a long vacation.  Under such circumstances, you should try to engage in some self-reflection and see if you are acting reasonably, or if you might be contributing to the problem.  Refusing any acknowledgement of assistance (or at least attempted assistance) by a supervisor suggests that you are not acting in a manner conducive to good relations with your supervisory panel.

It is not entirely impossible that a supervisor could be incompetent to assist a student, or that a Dean could incorrectly side with the supervisor in this case.  However, it would be very unusual if multiple professional scholars do not understand the topic of a student they are supervising, and are not able to provide a student with any assistance.  Application of Occam's Razor would lead an outside observer to conclude that the more likely explanation is that it is the student might not properly appreciate the efforts made by their supervisors.  The refusal even to acknowledge and thank them in a paper contributes to this perception.


Is it possible to pursue masters degree in the US university without getting financial back-up from family?

In general in the US, masters degrees which are not on a PhD track are not funded. That is there are not really opportunities to work as an RA or TA. As master's programs tend to be more professionally oriented, the expectation is that the student will take out student loans. In contrast, in PhD programs, the student does work for their professor, and therefore receives funding.

My understanding (and this may be more true of the sciences than other fields) is that PhD students are strongly preferred for TA and RA positions. Both TA and RA positions build useful experience for PhD students by giving the PhD student experience with teaching and academic research.

As to the more general question of funding for masters programs, I would guess that you will probably have the most luck looking for opportunities specific to your situation (e.g. field of study), however in general masters students are expected to pay their own way.


How did graduate schools come into existence?

Bachelor, master, doctor degrees are medieval European in origin. Wiki has a reasonable page on medieval universities. The primary need for these levels was the certification of who was allowed to teach and what they were allowed to teach in the university. The Catholic Church in the Middle Ages being what it was was concerned with proper teaching to avoid passing along heresies (which universities got accused of from almost the beginning of their existence) which meant you needed a license to teach and to preach in those days.


What is the point in publishing a paper in a workshop rather than in a conference?

In my research area (software engineering), points why people submit to workshops include the following:

Lower barrier for acceptance: Some works are inherently hard to get accepted at top-notch venues, for example, because they are hard to evaluate properly. A paper that was rejected multiple times at higher-level venues might eventually end up at a workshop, so that the authors can still make a (albeit less valuable) publication out of it.

Publication strategies: Some researchers actively try to build a prolific track record of many small (including workshop-level) publications, rather than a few big ones. While it's debatable whether such strategy is best for advancing science, and even for convincing a selection committee, there are certainly some associated benefits, for example, plenty of opportunity for self-citation. Strategic publications may also be used to show an association between two authors (to convince a grant committee that they can work together well enough to write a paper), or to establish an association between the authors and the topic (to show a grant committee that they have some early work in the field).

Getting feedback: Sometimes, people have a nice idea, but are stuck in an early stage of implementing this idea. Workshops are a perfect opportunity for gathering feedback, since they (i) are designed to enable a focused discussion (small audience, specific focus), (ii) usually have a faster review cycle than conferences, and (iii) sometimes allow for short discussion or problem statement papers.

Opportunity to visit the host conference: Workshops are usually embedded into the ecosystem of a larger host conference or conference series. When a researcher wants to visit the host conference, but didn't get a paper accepted there, a workshop paper can be their entry ticket. (It's usually easier to get a conference trip funded if you have a paper at the conference or one of its workshops.)

Warm-up publishing: When joining a new field, a group of authors might want to get accustomed to the associated community to understand their culture, values and standards. Workshops are particularly suitable for this purpose due to high acceptance rates, interactive formats and the opportunity to visit the host conference.


I never had to do an interview for my PhD position in the US, but it seems like asking process questions is reasonable. Going straight from a BS to a PhD program in the US is pretty common, but you generally do most of a Master's degree on the way by taking lots of graduate-level courses. I understand that this is less common in other country's systems.You should read as much as you can about the requirements for a PhD in your target university so that you know as much as you can about the process, and then ask, as knowlgeably as you can, questions like the one you've asked here. If you've done your homework, your question will sound informed, and they can fill the gaps in your knowledge without thinking you to be too ignorant about what's allowed and what's expected of you before you join the PhD program.

I wouldn't be too effusive about the program or professor when you are asked about your interest in the program. It might sound like you are trying to flatter your way into it which might be off putting to some interviewers. You should be fine saying that you are interested in topics like what Prof. X is working on, etc., but I wouldn't say that they're the best thing since sliced bread. Be honest without over selling it.


How should I answer a question about my "personal goals" when being considered for a graduate position?

I agree that the question could be interpreted as inappropriate. But, while it's impossible to know the professor's intention (were they trying to screen out applicants who want to start families, etc.?), I think it's safe to answer the question ASSUMING that they are interested in your academic goals that may not be directly career related.

For example you might answer the first question with a straightforward goal for your career path (I want to be a tenured faculty, I want to work in research, I want to get a sales job with a technical company, I want to start my own company, etc. etc.).

The second question then would be more open ended discussion of what you personally want to get out of your graduate degree (I want to learn to become more independent, I want to learn how to teach myself anything, I want to satisfy my curiosity about how ants communicate [or whatever]). These are personal goals that are related to your graduate training, but aren't necessarily about your future career per se.

It's personal preference, but I would probably steer clear of goals or ambitions clearly unrelated to your relationship to the professor (I want to earn a blackbelt, I want to be an Olympic ping-pong player, etc.). I suggest this because it's unlikely that the professor cares about these goals, and the wrong answer has a possibility to seriously hurt your chances of being selected.

For example, it's hard to imagine a professor thinking to themselves: 'well their theoretical biophysics training is a bit weak, but we need a good ping pong player for the departmental retreats...'; it's easy to imagine a professor - EVEN INADVERTENTLY - thinking 'wow that olympic training is really going to cut into their hours in the lab...'


Pursuing a PhD in applied math with a large amount of student debt

First, taking on a large amount of debt at this point could be a big problem. However, several candidates for president are currently discussing forgiving student debt, a good thing to do in my view. It will be seriously discussed over the next 15 months, at least. It may be that your debt problem will get erased. Whoopie.

Second, spending your life doing something you aren't happy with is a terrible existence, but you say you are relatively happy now. There is no guarantee that you will land something better, but having already gone to ivy league places that seems like less of a problem.

Third, ignore any issues about age. You will (hopefully) reach 45 with or without your degree in any case. Graduating after 50 is an accomplishment, just as is graduating at 30.

My suggestion, worth about two cents, of course, is to continue on applying and see what happens. For a degree program in applied math you probably don't need to make an unbreakable commitment and can keep flexible as you see what happens, both in the general political/educational scene and in your life personally.

Of course your future spouse has a say in how she wants to live her life, so don't forget to factor that in as well.

But none of your impediments seem to be actual blocks. Be your best.


Most mores in academia are idiosyncratic. I wouldn't put references in my personal statement - it's seen as over-doing it (in my department - Psychology, at least). If you want to include literature in your statement, you should try to discuss the literature more generally and only cite specific authors if those research studies actually contribute significantly to your statement.

If you were to include a specific citation, I wouldn't advise that you include a reference list. Keep in mind that committees read through hundreds of applications every year and likely won't look favorably on you adding more paper content to their already large stack of applications.

Many schools also have page limits for their applications, and they may see your reference page as additional material and disqualify your application.


Is there a branch of sociology that deals with nutrition and active lifestyles?

There is a branch of sociology, which would be the sociology of health. Research into 'active' lifestyles and nutrition would fall under sociology of health.

Unlike public health which will take a much more straight forward approach in addressing issues based on biological/essentialist research, sociology of health will look into the social constructs of health, how that's implemented in society and the issues surrounding it (i.e. fat discrimination, issues of class/race/gender in the 'health' rhetoric' and so on.

Many universities with sociology programs might offer an undergraduate course in the sociology of health. I took one and loved it. It's not my main focus in sociology but I do find the social construct of health and medicine highly fascinating, especially in the way in seems to be used to justify our discriminations.


What is a committee looking for in a dissertation proposal?

JeffE is correct; talk to your chair and get feedback. That being said, you'll want to include the following in your talk:

An overview of your research topic
A discussion of relevant literature (to demonstrate that you've researched the topic)
A discussion of your specific problem
Another literature discussion, much more focused on your specific problem
Any preliminary results of experiments you may have run, if any
What you plan on doing for the next few years
(Possibly most important) Any specific issues/problems that your advisors have raised about your research. You should specifically address these to show that you're paying attention to what they say and that you listen to their comments.

The best way to prepare is to talk with everyone in advance and find out what their objections/comments/issues/questions will be as much as possible, and then do your best to prepare for that and any related issues. If that sounds like a lot of work, it's because it is a lot of work.

Dan's comments are also spot on; you may have some very difficult committee members who will ask all sorts of questions, and you should make sure your advisor is on your side from the get-go.


Two papers rejected from conference. One of them was judged based on the other

I think you should mail the chair. It may be to no avail, but the chair will at least be informed of the practice.

Like you, I believe each paper should be judged on its own merits. Don't reject Paper B because you didn't like something in Paper A. That's truly ridiculous. But it could be a new rater who's unfamiliar with the process.


Getting grants at a teaching department while officially being considered an R2 institution

A few thoughts -

One is that extramural funding is more about gaining prestige from your institution than actually resulting in a net revenue gain to your University.  See this article from the American Association of University Professors website for an explication of the ways in which the focus on extramural funding harms universities.

That said, if your tenure and promotion system is based on securing external funding and/or having time to do research, then you probably still have to play that game even if you know that it's harmful to the university in the long run.  One thing I'm thinking is psychological research about locus of control; if you believe that you are in control of your own success or failure it's been shown that you put more effort into and consequently have better performance than if you believe that others control what happens to you and that what you do doesn't matter.  It does sound like the system is rigged against folks in your situation, but nonetheless, you can still do your best to put together a competitive application - have folks read over your applications, look at other people's successful applications, etc.  Perhaps there's an office or staffperson on campus that helps with applications for external funding that could be a resource?

Finally, it sounds like there are some more systemic issues about courseloads and advising loads being too high.  These seem like great things to raise during faculty union meetings or to bring up to your Academic Senate representatives - you're probably not the only one feeling this way, and if you can open up a conversation with other faculty maybe there are some changes that can be made in the way things work.  Here's a case study about how faculty unions dealt with this in Ohio that might offer some inspiration for taking collective action.


Awaiting editorial office processing for more than 22 days, Is it appropriate to contact?

Yes, you should. 22 days before the paper is passed on to an editor is out of the ordinary. It's true that it's summer and people might be on holiday, but this is the publisher we're talking about - even if some of them are on holiday, they should have people to cover. Journals don't close shop when the staff are on holiday.

I would contact the publisher. If you know the desk editor's email address that would be the best person to write to; if not, you can use Taylor & Francis's author services contact form.


Review article in an area already published few years ago

Let's look at your predicament from this perspective: A fundamental and absolute requirement for a doctoral thesis is that the work be original. One of the most important purposes of a doctoral thesis literature review is to prove that you are well aware of the work related to your topic and that you can clearly demonstrate that the work you are doing is truly original. So, if, as you say, you find a review article published on the same exact narrow area of research that your doctoral thesis aims to focus on, then you are basically saying that, in fact, your thesis topic is not original, and so fails the most basic requirement of a doctoral thesis.

From this initial consideration, I consider that there are two practical possibilities:

Possibility A: On closer examination, in fact, the older review does not cover exactly the same thing that you are trying to address in your doctoral thesis. (I guess this is probably the case. In my field of business research, it is extremely rare that two people have absolutely exactly the same idea, but it might be different for your area of research.) If that is the case, then you are free to do a thesis that is properly focused on your own narrow topic, and you should take great care to demonstrate and strongly prove that indeed your literature review is not quite the same thing as the superficially similar one from two years ago. You would mainly do this by including importatnt literature from areas that are related to your specific focus but outside the scope of the older review.
Possibility B: On close examination, sure enough, you are trying to treat a topic, however narrow, that has already been studied. In that case, you need to change your specific topic so that it is not an exact duplicate of what has already been done. You don't need to throw away what you've done so far; rather, carefully study the older review and all related work and then find a narrow focus that interests you (and for which you have feasible access to data--extremely important for choosing a doctoral thesis topic!) and then make that your unique, original focus. And because you've taken the time to develop a truly original topic, then study new literature that focuses on your new topic that was outside the scope of the older review and include that in your literature review.

In either case, be sure to include the literature from the older review that is still relevant for your own topic. Because the primary reason of a doctoral thesis literature review is to show your mastery of the topic, you must repeat your own reading and interpretation of the literature (in your own original words, of course), even if it seems to duplicate past work. If you were to publish your literature review chapter as a standalone article, you would probably have to greatly cut down that duplicate work, but from the standpoint of your own doctoral learning, it is not a duplicate, so you should fully include it to demonstrate your personal mastery of the literature.


How much do my career prospects suffer if I start a mathematics/CS PhD. at the age of 27?

Not at all. 27 is not considered "old" by any stretch of the imagination.

Also see this answer on MathOverflow and this question here on Academia about a PhD student who is actually unusually old.


Academic progression in Germany, what happens after a postdoc? What is the next step?

I was told that there isn't really a step up from postdoc (like an assistant professor) until you get a professorship (for which you have to do habilitation among other things).

In Germany, there is generally a greater variety in career paths than, say, in the US, where the vast majority of new full profs have been assistant profs at some point. It's indeed common to go from post-doc to professor (W2 or W3) directly. Other options include a junior professorship (W1), and a "research group leader" position, based on grants like the Emmy Noether and the Heisenberg stipend.

Habilitation is still mandatory in some fields; others will accept "Habilitation-equivalent achievements", like a strong track record in research and teaching.

  If I understand things correctly you can be a postdoc for 12 years (?!) in Germany, and if you're successful (and lucky) you can get a professorship.

The 12 years probably refer to the Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz (WissZeitVG). According to WissZeitVG, you cannot be employed more than 12 years as a scientific assistant, which includes both the pre-doc and post-doc phase, without a specific reason. However, there are various exceptions, including field-specific ones (in Medicine it's 15 years), personal circumstances (you get an extension for each child), and the case that the research institution is willing to hire you permanently (which almost never happens).

  What are the differing qualifications of a junior prof (W1) and a senior postdoc (either E13 or E14)?

A junior professorship is similar to an assistant professorship in the US. The main practical difference is that most junior professorships (90% or so) are not equipped with a tenure track, which makes them considerably less attractive. However, there is now a trend to change this situation towards more tenure-track junior professorships.

In comparison to a post-doc, a junior prof will usually have more teaching duties. The benefits of a junior professorship are the higher prestige, the usually higher salary and the longer time span, typically 6 years (with an intermediate evaluation after 3 years).

Junior profs may also be offered more freedom to build their own research profile. But this really depends on the interpretation of the associated department and research chair, and should be brought up as a topic in the hiring process. I've seen both "glorified post-doc" junior profs that were hired to bring special knowledge to some larger research group, and post-docs who were given the opportunity to build their own small research group.


Applying for Applied Math PhD as a non-math major (Letters of Recommendation, etc.)

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


Should I reply to Editor of a journal after acceptance?

Is it common to thank the Editor after acceptance email?

It is uncommon, but this review was also an uncommon one.  From your description, it sounds like the Editor would have done a substantial amount of work considering the competing merits of conflicting reviews and your own rebuttal to a reviewer.  That is work in excess of what would normally occur in a review process, and so it would not be out of place to email and thank the Editor for his/her work.  It is nice to get thank-yous for doing your job well, so I would recommend you go with your instinct and send a thank-you email.


I see that the question is old, and hopefully, you have already started in your position. However, I will try to answer anyway for the benefit of others.

I was previously employed at a Norwegian university as a PhD student. The slowness you describe is sadly very familiar.

When I received offers for PhD positions (~5 years ago), I did get formal letters like you describe, but in some cases more informal contact forms were used to speed up the process. The deadline for me to respond to these formal offers was two weeks. As have been mentioned in the comments there may be some administrative overhead in between the candidates. I do not know for sure, but having observed how slow administrative units can move at Norwegian universities, I wouldn't be surprised if the overhead is substantial.

The best way to speed the process up is to find someone at the university that is interested in someone -- you -- starting in the position as soon as possible. Typically, this will be the professor you will be working for. This professor can then push the administration to work faster and contact the people ahead of you on the ranking list to kindly ask them to withdraw their applications, seeing as they already have accepted another position anyway. As there is no need to send formal offers to people who have withdrawn their applications, this last part can speed up the process tremendously. If you can't get a professor involved in your case, trying someone in the university administration can also be effective (but it is my impression that it is harder to get the administration involved).


Plagiarism / citation standards in non-/less-scientific works

You cannot include citations in speeches; no-one in the audience would stay awake if you tried to do so. And footnotes would be impossible.

The essence of plagiarism is passing off someone else's work as your own. You avoid that in an academic paper by giving full citations. In a speech it is enough to make clear that you are not claiming originality. "As Smith has shown...". "Numerous studies support the view that..." and so forth.


How do I convince my school to allow me to double major?

You can convince your university to allow you to double major by showing then a plan for the courses that you will be taking in the next semesters, so they can see that you have already thought about the future, and that you're not one more lost and undecided person. Also, as you said that you love Math, I would like to ask if you had good grades on those Math courses that you took. If yes, try to get help from professors, as they can make the path for the double major approval easier for you since they usually have more influence than a second semester student.

Since you said that your university sees itself as a box (the student comes from high school, enters the box and four years later leaves with the degree), you must try to find a way to show them reasonably that your plans are feasible. More than that, your logical arguments and plans for the future must be well designed and articulated. Furthermore, as I said before, try to get help from professors that know you and your joy for learning Mathematics.

As a double major student that recently gave up to other people's dreams and now is following his dream of studying Math and Physics, I wish you all the luck with your plans!


Is it too late for me to be pursuing a degree in medicine?

While I don't have experience within the specifics of your question I can give general advice based on other fields I studied and work in:

1). It's never too late to go back to school. When people say "is it too late" they generally mean "will people be willing to hire me?". So I'll answer it that way. Age doesn't matter, skill set does. If you can prove that you have potential and the skills needed to do a job then employers won't see age as a big factor. If you're worried that your age to experience will be off then stop worrying. When you're fresh out of school you'll be on the same playing field as others fresh out of school. Make your resume look better than theirs as someone who employs people with degrees I never factor age into my decisions because it's a bias that doesn't effect much until the person is 50-60 (depending on the field).

2). This is not my field so I won't answer this one, sorry but I'd like to convey information I'd stand behind.

3). When it comes to schools and programs that's a very broad question. Look into medicine programs in certain countries so you can see how countries compare to each other and how people in that country use their degree. Once you have a country in mind you'll need to locate all schools with medicine degrees (to rule out areas without any). Keep researching and narrowing until you have 2-4 schools in mind. Each school operates differently and different countries run their education systems very differently so until you have a country in mind you shouldn't look into specific programs because then you may end up needing to look at the education system of X amount of countries, the funded programs if any, etc.


Should retracted articles also be listed on the academic CV?

In a poll on Retraction Watch asking "Should retracted papers show up on a CV?," the majority of respondents said "They should be listed as retracted":

However, there is a significant minority support for the option of not listing them at all. DrugMonkey offers the following rationale for this position:

  In a very large number of situations in which an academic CV is used, there is no obligation for it to constitute an exhaustive list of everything the scientist has ever done that might be considered pertinent to various sections.

If you choose to include it, a simple note that the paper is retracted, and possibly the list of authors signing on to the retraction, is probably the classiest way to do it. The retraction notice should give the rest of the details, should anyone wish to follow up. See for example Donald Green's CV (online). Assigning blame for the problem in a CV seems wildly inappropriate to me.


How important is the orthographic/typographic rigor?

Orthography and typographical correctness are much less important than scientific (methodological and theoretical) rigour. Yet all scientific publications should of course also be well-written, and in general there's nothing wrong with casually pointing out a typo, wrong glyph, or similar glitch.

However, if you're writing a review, grade a student paper or discuss a presentation, this better not be your only comment!


Would it be okay to reapply to a Ph.D. program after getting a Master's Degree elsewhere?

I think you should ask the three schools in the U.S. that offered you a spot.  But don't tell them the reason you shared with us for why you want to go to Oxford for a master's.  Just say it's an exciting opportunity.

Ask whether you can defer your admission for a year or whether you should reapply.  If they say you should reapply, then do so.


Splitting a relatively long paper into two shorter papers

Well, in my opinion, the following fragment of your question outweighs everything else:

  (2) My paper consists of two parts and each part addresses a different subject. Therefore, the set of reviewers who have expertise in both subjects and are willing to read and review my paper is very small.

I appreciate that you are able to imagine the problem that will be faced by the journal editors. So, splitting into two is certainly not a bad idea in this case.

I can mention some instances where this has been done in the past. In each of these cases, the problem wasn't as acute as yours (i.e. both could actually be reviewed by the same expert), but perhaps the authors chose to do this because of length considerations (or some other reason that I can't imagine). Also, in these cases, it wasn't a case of two different journals A and B - it was two sequential papers in the same journal. So, that creates an additional option for you, if you find it appropriate. (The context here is Physics, but I'm sure this can be generalized to Maths, if I'm right!)

Example 1: R. P. Feynman was a charismatic Nobel Laureate (Nobel, 1965), as you probably know. Here are his two significant contributions to QED, appearing back to back in Physical Review:

Paper1, Paper2 (both are free pdfs officially, given their landmark status.)

In particular, he began Paper 1 by writing:

  This is the first of a set of papers dealing with the solution of problems in quantum electrodynamics.

and started Paper 2 with the sentence:

  This paper should be considered as a direct continuation of the preceding one ...

He had developed the formalism in the former and applied it to the problem in the latter. That makes a candidate for splitting into two.

Example 2 Here are two papers by Sidney Coleman which form the backbone of phenomenological effective Lagrangian method in low-energy Nuclear Physics. (These aren't free and I'm not sure you will be able to get past the paywall here!)

Paper 1, paper 2.

Notice again, that they are consecutive papers in the same journal. The second paper also has an extra author, and that could be one reason for splitting into two. But once again, from the point of view of content, the general method was devised in paper 1 and applied to some context in paper 2. But here, the authors spent a section of paper 2 in explaining what they developed in Paper 1.

Thus, long story cut short - it should be possible to go ahead and split into two parts. If they are consecutive, you can carry over everything directly, if not, spend a few sentences explaining your notation etc.

PS - Congratulations for doing this sort of work which could put the editors into this type of a fix. That smells like a significant contribution to Maths, having applications elsewhere (other branches?), which is probably why you insist that it would be rare to find a referee who can ably judge both!


When may a PhD student start publishing?

There's absolutely no single timeline for publishing papers. I've had students publish papers as first author in the first year of their PhD, and I myself didn't publish a paper until I was a fourth-year grad student, because I was working in a relatively new field and had to work out all the kinks and issues before I could start writing things up.

Research projects are unique, and have their own respectively timelines. Publish when you have something worth publishing, rather than waiting for some arbitrary clock to go off.


Spending on AI vs theoretical physics in academia

History is generally on the side of pure government subsidized research.  There are some ideas or projects so far removed from possible commercialisation or such risky for private enterprise that it only makes sense for governments to fund these.

The most obvious example is electricity.

  “Why, sir, there is every probability that you will soon be able to
  tax it.”

The quote is attributed to Michael Faraday in reply to William Gladstone, then British Chancellor of the Exchequer (minister of finance), when asked of the practical value of electricity in 1850.  The quote is disputed but still relevant to illustrate the general point that some of the most fruitful ideas originated in research of no apparent utility.

Another example would be X-rays and a more recent example would be the laser, "a solution in search of a problem" according to its inventor T. Maiman (who at the time was working for a private firm).

On a more abstract level, Robert Wilson, appearing in front of a panel to lobby in favour of a new accelerator at Fermilab, declared

  In that sense, this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending.

Overall, the investments in basic sciences have funded generations of graduate students who have gone on to be productive (and tax paying) members of society.  Giving a bit of $$ to pure research keeps researchers (often time university faculty) busy outside of class times, enriches courses and trains or exposes future professionals to cutting edge technology and concepts.  Even with an extremely low probability of success (intolerable to private enterprise), a single breakthrough will pay for itself many many times over.


I would suggest a slight variation to how you can present such work: Research Projects section in your CV. Give a short (1-sentence like) info about each research project and your contribution right inside the CV and include a link to your website, where these unpublished papers/reports are available.

Reasons:

you want to show the research experience that you had
this research is not published formally through a peer-reviewed process and you are unsure if that publication record (even if it is mere arXiV one) will serve you any good after being admitted to a Ph.D. program
you want to provide an opportunity for a potential advisor to take a closer look at the details of your previous research


Publish a significant but brief improvement of a Mathematics paper

Mathematics is about solving problems, not extensive writing!

The briefer the better, the significance is even better.

There are lots of publications of novel proofs of the same theorem, just of the sake of development!


Can a student be a provider of letter of recommendation for research based MS - USA

There's nothing to stop you from submitting a LOR written by your former student but it's very difficult to see how such a letter could help you (in either business or academia).  If you can't get someone who has supervised your work to write your letter, you should at least try to find a peer who could do it.