What is an endowed chair exactly? How does it compare to a “normal” position?

Chaired positions are generally endowed, in that the money provided for the salary, and some other benefits (e.g., a dedicated assistant) or increased research funds comes from the interest on principal donated by the person or people the chair is named after, which is part of the school's overall endowment (UC San Diego has a more broad definition, as does Wikipedia). Being named to a chair is a prestigious award, and in many cases it is a lifetime (or at least, until retirement) position. Some chaired positions are given on a rotating basis (e.g., for five years), but nonetheless it is prestigious to be named to an endowed chair.

While it is not strictly true that professors in chaired positions are paid more (because in most cases pay is negotiable), because universities use a combination of pay and incentives such as an endowed chair to lure highly sought-after candidates, the pay is probably on average higher than the average non-chaired full professor would have at the same institution and department.

Finally, some schools use chairs at the university level (versus the departmental or school level) that they dole out throughout the university. The positions can therefore be used as an enabler for some departments with less money to attract particularly important faculty members that they might not have had an opportunity to attract otherwise.

For a specific example of the policy for endowed chairs at one university (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), see here.


Is Academia really just a huge competition?

You've asked a question that is both very important and very difficult, as well as one that is likely to draw different answers from different people depending on their own experiences in academia.

This is because there are both competitive and cooperative aspects to academia.  Different people take different strategies with respect to the balance between these two, and that affects their communities as well, so that the mixture of competition and cooperation that you encounter will also radically differ between different academic communities.

Some of the key factors for inducing cooperation are:

Science is hard.
Working together, people can accomplish things that they cannot possibly accomplish alone.
Cooperation in a team gives you an advantage when competing with other teams.
Many people enjoy working together in teams, and this is just as true for science as it is for any other human endeavor.
Scientific discovery feels awesome and it can be really fun to share that feeling with other people.

Some of the key factors for inducing competition are:

Inherent conflict of ideas: when theories compete, people often become polarized and begin competing based on the "team" they support intellectually.
Limited resources: you've got a good idea, but a lot of other people have good ideas too, and there is not enough funding to support all of them fully: some people will not get what they want.  Likewise, the Hubble space telescope can only point at one thing at a time, and there are a lot more things people want to point at than time to point at them.
Explicit competition set up by external agencies. For example, DARPA will sometimes make scientists in the same program compete with one another, and the loser gets their funding cut off.
Many people are just plain competitive, and want to "win" over other people in various different ways, and this is just as true for science as it is for any other human endeavor.

Bottom line: just like everything else, academia can be a competition, and everyone faces some aspects of a competition.  But it's not just a competition, and I feel sad for anyone who experiences it in that manner.


I feel I may have misspoken about Donald Trump in our Dept. Should I risk drawing attention to the issue by apologizing for it?

They say three topics are banned from polite after-dinner conversation: religion, politics and sport. There are good reasons for that.

It can be said that the same holds for workplace. Academia is, in this sense, a slightly different animal in that at times it is a place where people vigorously express their opinion, and proudly so. This does not prevent occasional ganging-ups of opinion groups against people which are not seen to conform to the currently prevalent sentiment or simple are considered an out group.

Unless you must fear that the latter is the case (and with highly professional people, such as senior academic staff, I would start from the assumption that the threshold is relatively high for that), consider what's done is done. Let it go.

Remember Churchill's dictum: a fanatic is someone who won't change his opinion and can't change the topic.


I don't think that giving a takehome where one asks for no internet is at all unreasonable. At the same time, such an exam should have some precautions against internet use. When I've given takehomes I've generally made sure that the problems didn't turn up with 5-10 minutes of Googling. That said, if this is enough of a problem that students are discussing this, the best thing to do maybe to drop the professor a note and let them know what other students are doig.


How to list an academic award received multiple times on CV

The name of this award is directly misleading. That's on the university. I would simply state "Recipient of full-ride academic scholarship 2015, 2016, 2017. Awarded for maintaining at least a 3.85 GPA over the previous two semesters of each school year."

This is the most likely way to convey the meaning you want. It is clearer to just state what the award actually entailed. This will always translate across regions and schools.

I remember seeing an application of one student that stated she was the "Donald M. Knudsun Honor recipient." This turned out to be a $100 gift certificate to Knudsun's, a local steak house. (I knew Don Knudsun owned a steak house, so it sounded like a weird award to begin with, hence my inquiring into the details). It had essentially nothing to do with her academics. You won the award for answering trivia while eating bratwurst.


I can no longer trust my PI after his handling of authorship. What are my options?

Your Situation

The restrictions placed by your lab are part of the working conditions under which you operate.  This includes the personality and working culture of your colleagues and superiors.  This is difficult and slow to change, and will impact you regardless of your own actions.  Trying to avoid conflict with this culture will let you get on with your own work, until such a time that you see a better option to follow.  If you can't tolerate this, then consider one of the following options:

Your Options

Call another meeting with your PI.  State the matter of record, that he
already called you to offer you first authorship.  Request that your PI honour this offer.  He then has the opportunity to agree with you and give you recognition, or to contradict both your wishes and his agreement.  If his actions result in a negative outcome for you, then you can record this for possible further use such as a complaint.  Ensure that your actions at all times reflect your professional integrity.  This option may help to establish the boundaries around which you are prepared to operate within the lab.
Conduct an appeal for help with an agency outside of your lab.  Is there an ethical or professional support group that you can contact?  Provide the details of your case, and request assistance in investigation and documentation of the issue.  This is an avenue which could lead to cultural change within your lab, but potentially at a personal and professional cost to you.  It could possibly lead to you needing to leave the university.
Begin discussions with other experts at your university to identify
opportunities for your career within the same university.  Ensure that there is no further escalation of conflict with your PI.  Try to smooth over the differences within your lab.  its important that this issue does not have a negative impact on your transition to a new group.

General Advice

I suggest that you consider taking professional advice from a senior researcher who is prepared to act as a mentor for you.  This would allow you to discuss issues, and to increase awareness of your career opportunities and research strategies that you will need throughout your career.


Writing a large part of a grant as a postdoc

Appointments to more permanent positions (like tenure-track or research faculty) are typically made by the university, not by receiving a grant. In other words, I cannot pay myself more simply because I received a grant with available funds. Depending on the university rules, postdocs may not be eligible to be a project PI, which may limit your ability to submit those ideas as your own grant proposal.
In some fields, it is common for postdocs and even PhD students to write grant proposals for their PI as training for their later career. That could even be part of the job expectations for a postdoc. Although you may not have much leverage to receive more funding from this grant, having written a successful grant proposal is a good experience that should help you succeed as a tenure-track faculty and possibly in the job market as well.


Personal reaction: It matters -- it's a chance to develop and demonstrate leadership skills -- but it's a low-level effect. Election is something of a crapshoot anyway; not all good candidates get elected. It's more important as worthwhile experience than anything else. If you can't or don't, that's OK; if you can it may be good for you.


How do I cite a screenshot I've taken of a software program?

You don't need a citation if it's your own creation like the rest of the thesis.

However, per your comment, it sounds like you included an image but then never referred to it in the text (no e.g. "As shown in Figure 1,"), and the reviewer might want you to fix that.  The image must be relevant to some part of the text. Otherwise, you either have an irrelevant image or the text is missing something important.

You might also want to be sure you describe what the image is, what the name of the software shown in that screenshot is (and if appropriate, any citation to the software).

Did you use the figure in a publication (e.g. conference paper)?  If so, you do need to include a citation to that paper.

If none of those things are what the reviewer is referring to, it may be the reviewer thinks you're using somebody else's image and you can just respond to say it's a screenshot you took.  This might prompt an alternative explanation of what they're looking for.


Is it okay to give students advice on managing academic work?

It's totally appropriate especially for first year students. Learning college level study skills is one of the crucial tasks of the first year.  Additionally, many students whose parents did not attend college (and even some who do have such parents) are totally unaware that they can do things such as attend office hours or email the professor if they need an extension or have a problem.  In fact the way you have structured this, you could even in the future think of developing such knowledge as a learning outcome.


Is there a (text)book on how academia works?

The study of the higher education and academia is a huge area of research, and I must admit, I am no expert in it. While some publications are opinion-based, as Massimo Ortolano notes in his comment, there is a growing number of research-based works on academia developed within different disciplinary frameworks, which includes those developed within the framework of academic sociology, as you mention in your question.

Among the trailblazing works in the sociology of academia were the publications by R. K. Merton, and also
R. Whitley, The Intellectual and Social Organization of the Sciences (1984), and P.  Bourdieu, Homo Academicus (1984), focusing on French academia.

Among the recent notable books in this field, I can cite M. Lamont, How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment (2010), based on a study of US grant peer review panels, and
J. R. Posselt, Inside Graduate Admissions: Merit, Diversity, and Faculty Gatekeeping (2016), based on participant observations about a number of graduate admission committees at US universities. Tracing the differences between the branches (varieties) of academia and explaining them is a major theme in both these books. But there are many more.


Citing 'several' studies in one statement... cite all of them or use 'for example'?

If you doubt that a study should be included in the bibliography, then probably you don't consider it worth citing. Make a selection and then include every one of them in the bibliography. In the body you could say something like, "An exhaustive body of empirical studies exists on this topic [see: Study 1, Study 2,... Study N]. In particular, [Study X, Study Y] are most relevant to our work...".

Not including cited work in bibliography will be considered at best a sign of laziness and at worst an indication of unethical behaviour.


Should I keep my achievements to myself?

Everybody needs at least a few good personal allies to celebrate with---your advisor is hopefully one of those, and some of your close personal friends are likely to be as well.

Your peers in a graduate program, however, are likely to be in a more complex place emotionally. It's also easy to cross the line between sharing and bragging, and easy to come across as condescending (especially regarding "routine" tasks like preparing a manuscript or responding to reviewers).

Don't feel guilty about success, and don't hide your achievements.  But I would also recommend holding back and waiting for your peers to ask you before sharing your news or offering to help.


What category in my C.V. should I put papers where I've contributed but was not listed as an author, nor in acknowledgments?

I don't think there's any good way to include these papers on your CV.

It's not conventional to list anyone else's papers on your CV, so by default everyone will assume you are one of the authors of each paper you list.  If you aren't exceptionally clear, so clear that nobody could possibly misunderstand even if they are just skimming and not reading carefully, then you could easily upset people and give the impression that you are misleadingly inflating your publication record.

I think you could probably write it clearly enough (e.g., a section called "Papers in which I am acknowledged but not an author" or something equally explicit, in a substantially different location in the CV from your own papers).  However, drawing too much attention to this unconventional choice would itself be a problem.  You want the most attention-getting part of your CV to be your own accomplishments.  If readers get distracted by something strange, then it will work against the primary purpose of the CV.

These papers would count for almost nothing on your CV anyway, so I see no purpose to including them.  In fact, including something like this could look bad, by suggested a desperation to list as much as possible, regardless of how meaningful or important it was.  The one case I can think of in which it might be a good idea is a student applying to grad school, with no publications yet but with acknowledgments in a paper or two.  Then highlighting these contributions would at least be better than saying nothing.  (But it's not worth it if you are an author on other papers.)

As I was finishing this answer, I noticed the comment that no mention is made of this contribution in the acknowledgments.  In this case, the CV is absolutely the wrong place to deal with this issue, since it doesn't give an opportunity to clarify.  Intentionally omitting someone who carried out experiments from the acknowledgments is unethical, and doing is accidentally is a serious oversight, but your CV is not a good place to accuse someone of poor ethics or sloppiness.  (Without an explanation, nobody would have any idea what to make of this section of your CV.)


Can I still publish a paper in an IEEE transaction journal after uploading it to the arXiv?

Yes you can. If/when they accept the paper you need to perform the actions as described in:
From https://www.ieee.org/content/dam/ieee-org/ieee/web/org/pubs/author_version_faq.pdf

Can an author post his manuscript on a preprint server such as ArXiv?
Yes. The IEEE recognizes that many authors share their unpublished
manuscripts on public sites. Once manuscripts have been accepted for
publication by IEEE, an author is required to post an IEEE copyright
notice on his preprint. Upon publication, the author must replace the
preprint with either 1) the full citation to the IEEE work with
Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) or a link to the paper’s abstract in
IEEE Xplore, or 2) the accepted version only (not the IEEEpublished
version), including the IEEE copyright notice and full citation, with
a link to the final, published paper in IEEE Xplore

On the author center of IEEE it's restated here, that prior to publication one can share it on ArXiv
http://ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/publish-with-ieee/author-education-resources/guidelines-and-policies/policy-posting-your-article/

Prior to Submission to an IEEE Publication
Authors may post their article anywhere at any time, including on preprint servers such as arXiv.org.

Authors seem to get a lot of leeway from IEEE, including reuse of their previously submitted work in new works. Only thing is that your preprint must match the accepted version by IEEE. Not any rough draft or anything.


Do physics grad school look for an undergrad math degree?

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

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


Why are review articles cited more frequently than original research articles?

I don't recall ever being told, by journal guidelines or by an editor, that I should always cite the original paper instead of a review. The review would usually contain citations of the original publications.
A review can be cited as a single source for lots of facts,  especially in the "introduction" or "background" sections of a paper. So it's likely to be more useful for the reader. A good review is also likely to be easier for many readers to understand than the original paper. And the review might be where I originally learned the information I need.  Finally, a review is likely to use uniform notation that I can adopt, whereas the original papers are more likely to have diverging notation, which may make it difficult for readers to compare them with my paper and with each other.
I've often written things like "see [review] and the references there"; no one has yet complained.


Is it acceptable for professors to send letter of recommendation via a personal email?

I would not worry about this

Professors using personal email is not uncommon.  I have encountered this multiple times in the past.  In academia, there are fewer standards of professionalism and is a lot more freedom for people to do what they want (compared to the business world, for example, where using personal email would typically be frowned upon).  A professor using personal email for work communication just isn't that unusual.

The sender's email address is not a good way to verify identity, anyway.  Nobody should be relying on this as a way to verify that something really came from a sender, because your professor's work email could easily be spoofed, with no completely reliable way to detect it.  Here is one discussion of that on Security Stack Exchange.  Of course, even if it is not reliable someone still might do it.  But these days, practically everyone has experience of spam that appeared to come from someone they know.  Hopefully people are not using the "from" field on the email to verify anything important.

If anyone did suspect fraud, the logical response would be to check.  In this case, that would mean getting in touch with the professor and discovering the letter really was from him.  It's exceedingly unlikely that they would discard your application based on the mere suspicion of fraud, without any real evidence (and doing so would be extreme incompetence on their part).


How long does it take the German KMK to evaluate a degree and what are the criteria?

I can't comment on the wait times, but the goal of the evaluation is to ensure that your degree is comparable to the equivalent degrees offered by German universities. They will be looking at things like the number of credits in your major, and if you have training in the field sufficient to be equal to the German counterparts. The grades will also be considered.

The odds of "failing" are impossible to judge, but if you're short on credits or have a low grade-point average, you are likely to run into trouble.


How do I prove math background for Stats PhD?

You can take the math subject GRE and do well and send them the results, assuming they accept them.  There’s nothing like a good score on that exam to convince the committee you know the math.

In my view, one of the best uses of the subject GRE is to make up for shortcomings elsewhere in your application.


How to force a journal to address an associate editor's scientific misconduct?

I don't know the details, but from what you've written, I think your case is somewhat weaker than you think it is:

You can't be sure the first reviewer is your competitor. You can conjecture, but you can't prove it.
Even if we assume the second review is bogus, it doesn't mean the editor made a decision based on it. It's possible the editor is making the decision based on the strength of the first review, and simply included the second review because it's available.
You say that the associate editor published two papers at the same time you submitted your manuscript. I don't know what typical review times in your field are, but this implies the associate editor submitted his papers long before you submitted yours. In other words, he has precedence.
You imply that the associate editor wrote papers and gave talks that say X ("Snow is white") but rejected your manuscript because of ~X ("Snow is not white"). This sounds ridiculous and my feeling is that you're missing something subtle. For example, maybe the associate editor is saying "green snow is not white" which isn't contradictory with "snow is white".
It sounds like you are charging both the associate editor and the original handling editor with academic misconduct. This is clearly a more serious accusation than normal, because it implies both of them colluded. You're further accusing both editors of collusion with the reviewers. My gut feeling says at this point you're stretching belief. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it absolutely sounds unlikely and the burden of proof is heavily upon you.
Further to the above, you don't actually have strong proof. You only have suspicions (which is actually a good thing: it means the reviewer anonymity shield is working). What you've written is somewhat contradictory as well. You say that this journal is one of the oldest and most respectable in your field, and yet the associate editor has published two papers in even more prestigious journals.

If you're convinced your position is correct, I'd escalate the dispute, first to the EiC (which you've already done), and then to whatever is above (e.g. the publisher, the society that manages the journal, etc). Keep in mind however that these people cannot break reviewer anonymity, because that mechanism is in place precisely to prevent authors taking revenge on reviewers for rejecting their manuscript. In fact part of the reason the dispute is where it is is because the associate editor (naively? bravely? you decide) signed his name on the decision.

If nothing happens, my conclusion is: the more formerly-uninvolved people come to the same conclusion, the less likely it is they're all colluding against you, and I'd just submit elsewhere.


Research experience not backed up by recommendation letter

One of the duties of a researcher who takes on a mentor role is to write letters of recommendation for his students. Your advisor will understand this responsibility. You may want to read the answers to this question regarding writing your own recommendation letter, as this may be relevant to your situation, but you should always be willing to ask for a letter.


How is publishing under a random pseudonym authorized?

Editor ultimately decides whether your pseudonym is acceptable or whether any pseudonym is acceptable for the journal. But you have to be practical about the decision to use pseudonym. If some professor, even respectable and famous one, writes you a letter saying

  "this person published a paper titled so-and-so under a pen name
  called ""."

would this really be convincing to everyone? Would this letter be written in ink on paper? What would you do with the paper letter in the XXI century? Scan and send .jpg's? Or attach it to a CV .pdf, which probably has 2-3 page limit? If it was in a digital form it must come from the professor's academic e-mail to have any credibility. Would he be willing to do that every time you need to prove it is you who wrote the paper? 10, 20, 30 years from now?


Should co-first authors be listed in alphabetical order?

I don't see any way to view this other than as a misunderstanding or miscommunication.  (Not necessarily an innocuous misunderstanding: perhaps someone is trying to pull a fast one of some sort.)

I am a mathematician, so maybe I am especially sensitive to logical issues, but I can't think of a situation in which someone tells me something that sounds like a logical contradiction in which I wouldn't just say, "I'm sorry: I must be confused because that sounds contradictory.  Could you please explain it again?"

My only guess at the resolution of the contradiction is that someone is in fact trying to change their mind about the ordering of the authors.  I know little about the conventions and nuances of author ordering (because in pure mathematics the order is almost always strictly alphabetical), but I do think I understand the meanings of all the terms involved, so I can only imagine that if you submit a paper to a journal saying "by Bravo, Alpha, Charlie....Please note that Bravo and Alpha are co-first authors" then the editors will respond by calling attention to the contradiction.  What else?


Given what you describe, I think you better not include your supervisor. Her recommendation will be the most dominant because she knows you the best. Given that in the best case you will get a mediocre recommendation, and in the worst case even a bad one, it is not worth it to include her.

Do not include her, but be prepared to explain why you do not include her. This explanation should be convincing, but not too damaging for you. For example, if you just say that you had conflicts with her all the time, your potential employee might conclude that you are a conflicting person.


Visiting professor opportunities for PhD candidates

https://www.aeaweb.org/joe/listings.php

has a big centralized list of econ jobs (at all ranks) in the US. If you're not in the US you could try looking for such information at the website of the large professional organizations in your country.


What is the meaning of signs and numbers appearing in scoring system of AAAI?

I dug up my AAAI reviews from two years ago, and it looks like they've been tinkering with their scoring system, so I can't tell you a precise answer.  I can give the general principle, however:
EasyChair allows the chairs of a conference to configure a set of "attributes" for scoring.  Each attribute gets both a numerical value and a descriptor.  Some examples from AAAI two years ago:
Individual attributes:

5: (ground-breaking (top 15%), a sufficient basis for accepting the paper)
4: (positive, a factor in accepting the paper)
2: (problematic, a factor in rejecting the paper)

Overall ratings:

2: (Strong acceptance.  A 5 or 6 in some category, no 1 in any category.)
-2: (Strong rejection.  A 1 in some category, no 5 or 6 in any category.)

So as you can see, then they were using a 1-6 scale and a -2 to 2 scale.
From the sample you gave, my guess is that they're currently using a 1-10 scale, with 5 being neutral.  Thus

8 (+++)

Would translate approximately to "8 out of 10 (a very good score, three positive steps above neutral)."


Presenting an expository paper that has already been accepted by a magazine

Since you will inform everyone about the situation, there are no further ethical concerns. You need to cite the earlier work in the later one as usual, of course. And the submission to the conference may be accepted there or not, depending on the judgements of others. You are making it possible for that to be an informed judgement, so all is well.
The citation avoids any possible charge of self plagiarism.
I would also give the same answer if it were a research journal and a professional conference. If you give the impression (vocal and written) at the conference that you are presenting prior work, rather than new, it would be fine. Expository talks on existing research should raise no issues. There are ways to step over the lines of propriety, but this isn't one of them.


Accepting offer from one place while waiting for answer from another place

I'll comment from the point of view of a former department chair.

A job search is quite an administratively arduous task to undertake when you think about it. You need to seek and gain approval to initiate the hiring process, deputise a search chair, convene a search committee, advertise an opening, screen applicants, interview them, check references, and negotiate a deal that includes a start date. All this needs to take place so that the work of the department -- teaching, research and engagement -- continues without a hitch.

When a department makes an offer to an applicant, it is in good faith. It is expected that the other party acts in good faith, too. The worst that can happen is that an offer is accepted with an ulterior motive in mind. This is because operations might be severely affected. For example, say you're hired to undertake a typical load of teaching and research at the assistant professor level. In particular, say you're assigned to lead one subject in the spring semester and supervise three master's students. The department was up front about this responsibility, it was part of the negotiation, and you signed a contract of employment. If you were to give notice a few weeks into your employment that you would be leaving to take up a post in another university, then the teaching and supervision responsibilities would be reassigned and may cause disruption.

As chair of the department, I would seek to handle this in two ways. First, I would activate that clause in your contract that states that we can ask you to see out the remainder of the semester. This is a standard clause in most academic contracts, but may be different in your specific case. Second, I would activate another round of hiring to fill in your position in time for the summer session or autumn semester.

Depending on your performance in this situation, I may or may not have a word to the academics in your new department about the issues you put us through. (Shock horror! We do talk to each other.)

What would I advise in this situation?

That you have applied for a position in another university is material information that I would like to know. While I don't think you have any legal obligation to disclose this (and I'm not a lawyer), it remains material to the decisions I, as department chair, need to make. You don't need to draw attention to it, but it is important to our considerations, nonetheless.

It's not as difficult as you might think. We expect that you've sent your application to a number of places and we have a sense of our department's standing in relation to other departments in other academic institutions. Thus, you're simply confirming what we already suspect, and it's likely that we've factored it into our assessments.

I would prefer to know during the negotiation stage. The statement you make should be brief and to the point. It's not likely we're going to dwell on it anyway. For example, "I'm considering positions in other institutions. I wanted to put that on the table." My standard response is, "Thank you. If you accept our offer, we expect you to meet your obligations under your contract."

Good luck to you.


Student put my name in the acknowledgement section despite the fact I have never talked to him

Move on. There is little you can do about it: People can claim whatever they like on the internet and if they say that you worked with them, that's a nuisance but there is little you can do about it (in most jurisdictions) as long as they do so on websites that do not have strong ethics. academia.edu is not one of those websites with strong ethics.
Continue to do good work and build a reputation for yourself through your own publications. That's what you should focus on. The likelihood that anyone will find the pyramids publication is pretty small, and in the worst case if someone asks you about it, you can always explain the story (or just say that that must be someone else with the same name as you).


How to interpret a postdoc rejection letter?

There isn’t anything to interpret. The only conclusion you can draw is that there was another candidate whom the professor thought would be a better fit for the position, for an unspecified reason.

Our minds have a psychological tendency to want to fill in a lack of information with speculation and beliefs. The added information you have in this case is literally zero, so you must resist the urge to “interpret”; it is futile and serves no useful purpose.

Good luck with the job search!


If a paper is rejected by many journals before finally being published, will that cause conflict with the reviewers who rejected the manuscript?

Your referees at specialist journals said, basically, "These methods aren't good enough to answer these questions, because X." But the generalist high-impact journal may have looked more at the results than the methods.

If X is "we just don't think this is very sophisticated, and the tools are out of fashion," I suspect nothing will happen.

If X is "there are uncontrolled errors larger than your effect," and you haven't explained in your paper why that isn't true, someone might write a comment on your paper. This comment will look a lot like your earlier referee reports. The field will then decide who is right. (See, e.g. the "arsenic life" experiment for a recent high-profile example.)

Beyond this, if I saw the second case from a paper I refereed, and there was no attempt from the authors to address the points I raised, I would not be happy with the authors, and might be less likely to extend them the benefit of the doubt in future referee reports.


How to prevent having prospective students use me for free help, and then ghost me to go to another university

A student contacts you and expresses an interest to work with you on your research. The student has funding contingent on your letter of acceptance and your approval of their research statement.

Ask the student to prepare a research statement. Tell him/her that you will provide all the necessary resources but that you will not write the statement for them or pre-grade it before it is to be submitted. Point them to the resources about your research, including Web pages, journal articles, and presentation abstracts. Provide them with a template research statement for a research project entirely unrelated to your field yet fully complete to be accepted in the other field. For example, when you are in a biology department doing research on gene expression, have a colleague in the physics department draft a statement on quantum dot fluorescence that he/she would accept as a suitable application. Alternatively, prepare a well-written application to a ballet theater group that expresses an interest to be Juliet in the upcoming production of Romeo and Juliet.

After that, let it be.

After all, do you really want/need to employ PhD students or postdocs who cannot initiate efforts on their own to prepare a coherent statement of their interest in your research?


Following literature - What is a good configurable publication notifier?

Your institution (for example its Harman Science Library) and many others have the database product Web of Knowledge. Precisely the alert criteria that you described, and more, are available through that product.

The selection of journals covered in its flagship collection, Web of Science, is curated with the goal to cover all of, and more than, the core literature of all scholarly fields, naturally without attempting to cover all journals in existence. Alerts in Web of Knowledge can also simultaneously search up to a dozen other collections including Medline, depending on your institution's subscription. You can see the collections in the subscription that is available to you by choosing the "Select a Database" tab. You can browse and search the journal lists for the various collections.


What to write in email to potential PhD advisor?

If you have a specific potential advisor at a university, start by sending a brief (and polite, of course) email. Ask whether she would be willing to take a new student and say a few words about your background (what you did in your bachelor/master, where and with whom). Thus you can show that your background is compatible with the advisor's research. If you manage to add a few words about how you liked something specific about the advisor's recent work, that will certainly be a big plus. End by thanking the supervisor for her time and say that you are ready to provide more info if necessary. The advisor can then help you get through the formalities if she sees a potential in you.


Did I screw myself out of graduate school?

If you intend to pursue a professional career and not a career in research sector, I would say "apply with no hesitation". Do not let your doubts and cognitive biases prevent you from accomplishing all you deserve.

For someone in your age, grades do not matter anymore. Even for someone straight out of college, I would say that grades do not really matter. It's more about your experience, characteristics, and capabilities. Based on your post, I think you could easily prove those criteria to your future employers.

Regarding a career in research sector, grades might matter. Grades represents your academic discipline and how you methodologically attack problem statements. So, you need to do very well in the course of your graduate studies.


I did something I am not proud of, and was rightly accused of cheating by the instructor. What is next for me?

What you are doing is called catastrophizing. This incident, unpleasant and mildly serious though it is, is simply not the life-destroying event you imagine it to be, and you are not the evil person you imagine yourself to be for having committed this act of dishonesty.

In fact, I think the worst aspect of the situation is the negative thoughts you are having about it, which sound like they have a much greater potential to derail your studies, mental health, and (if left unchecked) your future career, than the facts of the actual situation you described.

I can’t comment authoritatively about your specific hypothetical scenarios of losing your clearance, becoming a failure professionally etc, but they simply sound highly implausible based on my years of experience in academia in the US. My advice is, take a deep breath, and seek counseling and advice from knowledgeable people in your institution who can give you:

useful practical information about the possible effects of the cheating on your career (which frankly my guess is will be essentially zero if it’s a one-off incident, although there may be a temporary punishment that could set you back a bit);
separately from that, mental health advice to help you keep yourself from becoming overwhelmed with anxiety.

Good luck!


Question regarding how to slow down and enjoy academic life

It may not be necessary to wait until you've reached the end stages of your career to have time to explore your research.

If you are able to get fellowships to fund your graduate career—or to find a suitably understanding advisor—then it may be possible to "slow down" your graduate career. In such a case, you'd be able to handle things at your own pace (within reason). That's how I managed to take my time doing my Ph.D., and it allowed me to work on problems I was interested in, rather than other problems.

Similar funding does exist at the professional level, such as "named" fellowships at the US Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories, and through grants like the MacArthur Fellowship (also known as the "genius grant"). It is certainly not easy and straightforward to do, but it could be a way to get the freedom to work without additional responsibilities.

Outside of academia, I don't think the situation improves much. For instance, at the DOE laboratories, you're only able to pursue your own research if you're able to secure your own funding to do so (or have moved so far up the chain that you are a laboratory "fellow," and can do what you want). Similarly, in industrial research institutes, I suspect similar issues apply (you might not have to worry about writing grants the same way you do in academia, but you'll still be expected to "justify your existence" on a fairly regular basis.


What does undergraduate tuition fund, and how does this differ between public universities and private universities in the U.S.?

(This is very much a US centric answer; other countries structure their university systems differently.)

This is a difficult question to answer because money is fungible, so in some sense it doesn't matter what the nominal answer is---if the money isn't going to fund those things, it's filling in other expenses so that other sources of revenue pay for those things.  But in practice, most universities put undergraduate tuition directly in their "General Fund"---a big pot of money, which is then divvied up to support the general operation of the university, which includes all the things you mention.  (Note that many sources of funding for the university are dedicated for particular things, and don't go into the General Fund, but undergraduate tuition usually isn't one of them.)

The University of Michigan has a nice online presentation about this, and as far as I know, that's typical: undergraduate tuition pays into the general fund, which pays for most of the university's core activities.


Which level of sloppiness is forgivable at PhD thesis completion

As you describe it, I'd say that it isn't "forgivable" at all.

But, it may be that you sneak through the process and get the degree.

Doctoral research is about extending knowledge, just as is all research. The difference in doctoral research is that you get a certain kind of help and guidance in it and a certain kind of evaluation of your results. Your results don't need to be earth-shattering, but they need to be correct and to extend knowledge in some way.

But in mathematics, if you can't prove the main result, you really don't have anything. I chemistry, if your technique is so sloppy that your results aren't valid, you don't have anything. In biology, if you make certain kinds of sloppy errors but your results are believed, you can kill people.

I question your example, in fact. If your experiments were inaccurate and they show "the observed effect" how do you know it isn't just experimental noise? Every experiment results in something, of course.

But experiments can fail in a lot of ways, just as can mathematical proofs. Sometimes, it is possible that one learns something unexpected from carrying out an experiment and the result gives knowledge that points in some new and valuable direction. The same is true of a failed proof in math. It may give insight into some other ideas that are valuable on their own. But that is very unlikely to result from sloppiness, as the sloppiness itself makes analysis very difficult.

I would guess that trying to finesse it with a committee is likely to fail. Someone will probably object if you just "promise to do better in the future". There is no evidence of that in your past. Passing you would reflect badly on them and on the university. Only luck and the carelessness of the committee will save you in such a situation.

But I'm pretty sure it happens. Rarely, I hope.


How could one best go about research in Pure Mathematics, whilst holding a full/part-time job?

I have published a little work in number theory while working full time. There is no big secret, just read about the problems that are at a level you can solve, solve the problems and publish the results.

Publishing in a journal as an unaffiliated researcher is harder than for professional academics but not impossible. Learning TeX will help because many journals want LaTex submissions. Most background information is available online if you search for it. You can join polymath projects, use mathoverflow etc

There are some advantages of working outside the system. You dont have to go around pleasing the people who might offer positions and you can work on what you want rather than what a math department or funding agency wants. So enjoy it as a hobby while earning a proper salary.

Update: I will add a little more specific advice. If you were doing a doctorate in a university you would have a wise old supervisor who would make sure you are heading in the right direction. If you want to work outside academia there is a danger of getting on a track that has no hope of success. Do not fall into the trap of thinking you can tackle a well known unsolved problem directly. This is a mistake very frequently made by outsiders.

It is better to start on simpler problems that you can handle and use them to build up expertise even if they are not of much interest to others. One way to find such problems is to start from a well-known one but then generalise it in some novel way to a bigger class of problems. Then look for special cases that can be solved and then generalise your solutions to solve a wider class of cases.

Finally, use your skills as a programmer to find solutions of interesting problems and then look for patterns. When you find patterns, make conjectures from them that you may then be able to prove. Try solving the problems at https://projecteuler.net/ to perfect your algorithm skills


Would adding anecdotes in statement of purpose be necessary?

In writing, there is a general principle of "show and don't tell" which applies.
It's not the question of to anecdote or not per se, but whether the illustration provides some insight into how you are unique.  If a (short) anecdote can illustrate something important about your creativity, initiative, or problem-solving skills, then it will help you stand out and can be useful to include.

For example, compare these two statements:

I founded a student group that teaches underprivileged high-schoolers to program.
When I was growing up, an important turning point in my education was when a friend's older brother taught me programming.  I wanted other people to have the same experience, so I organized some friends and reached out to local teachers.  Together, we founded a student group that teaches underprivileged high-schoolers to program.

The second is longer, but it tells a lot more about why what the writer did was significant and shows how they expressed initiative and motivation.


Postdoc application: Should I mention who I'd like to work with?

I'd suggest that you don't name anyone unless you somehow name them all. Not only do you avoid seeming inflexible, you actually maintain some flexibility until you can judge better who would be best if you need to single out anyone.
Indicate that you are familiar with their work somehow, I think, by naming papers you are familiar with. (Familiar with, not just saw somewhere).
Truly collaborative groups probably think of themselves as a unit in some ways.
On the other hand, mentioning specific topics that most interest you would seem like a better option. That might imply one or the other of the members, of course, without stating it.


My publications listed on other author (highly similar name) publication list

I suggest you create an ORCID, as it is meant exactly to solve homonymy.


My PhD advisor thinks my progress is poor. How should I proceed?

It is normal this issue makes you upset as it will have a huge impact on your future. Everybody has doubts, and it is good to explore them and not to rush into things wihtout thinking.

First, about your advisor : he seems to be a respectable person (as you say it yourself) so what he is saying needs to be heard.
Maybe you are not meant to do a PhD and it will be better to do a master. You need to ask yourself why a PhD is important for you?, is it mandatory for the professional goals you want to achieve? Are you willing to sacrifice (hobbies for examples) and work more for it?

If you think your advisor doesn't spend enought time with you, you should say it to him and ask him to provide help : by himself or to appoint to you a more senior student.

Final question you should ask yourself and maybe the most important one: besides your advisor, the puplications and other things, do you enjoy studying/working on the content of the PhD?


Suspected a person had an affair with the professor

As you suspect, you should just let it go. I think it is indeed reasonable for the situation to prey on your mind, but it is beyond your power to really do anything positive or negative, and, as you say, any attempt to do so would probably just create unpleasantness without being effective.

The potential "victims" of the situation (apart from the student, we may argue... even if it is not clear in the moment) are other students, if any of them get worse grades due to the situation, or if they come to suspect that there's some hanky-panky going on, which would be suspected to influence grades. At the very least, the principle that anything distracting from the immediate goals of a class is undesirable... means that an affair between a student and teacher is bad in that sense.

But, for you, just let it go, just as for most purposes we must just "let go" our disquiet with bad news on television. Yes, _if_possible_, we should not fail to act to improve things. But our plausible scope of action is not global, and maybe not even too much about every "local" thing.


If I got 1.0 for Master thesis in Germany, can it be summa cum laude in my CV?

I would think that would be a dangerous move. List what you have the way it was formally granted. If you think it necessary provide a reference to an official definition so that those who don't understand its significance can learn to do so.

But it isn't really the same thing. Summa Cum Laude is usually (often at least) in the US based on grades for coursework.

If you are suspected of trying to mislead, it will be bad for you. Tell it like it is.


What to do after I was named as co-author on a paper, without my consent?

Given that the publisher shut the journal down five years ago, there's not much more you can do at this point to have it removed or retracted at the source.

Instead, I would disown/disavow the paper by not including it in your CV and by making sure it is de-listed from your Google Scholar, Web of Sciences, SCOPUS, and other author citation index listing services.

This is easy in Google Scholar by deleting the article from your page in your author-view. For SCOPUS you have to send a correction request:

http://help.scopus.com/Content/h_authorfeedback.htm

The same for Web of Science

http://ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/techsupport/datachange/

For both Scopus and WoS, I would list the correction that you are not the same person as the author listed as the author of the paper. It would help communications with both services if you know your author identifier (Scopus Author Identifier, etc.). Something like the following should work:

  Dear SCOPUS -

  My author identifier is _________. One of the articles listed in my
  author record (____________ in the journal ________; DOI _________)
  was not written by me. Please delist it from my author record.

  John Doe (Author identifier ________).

p.s. This is actually not an uncommon problem. Adding Famous Authors® to subpar articles is a form of authorial pagerank-jacking.


How to work effectively with an unpredictable advisor?

She is a new professor, new to the job. Sometimes it may help to give her a indication what you would need from her, very diplomatic, very polite, but clear. If she does not follow up on that, consider switching supervisors. It is fine to back out from a supervisor that doesn't do their job well and do not promise to improve. It is your right to know what to expect from a supervision.


Is that a good idea to send an errata list to a professor whose class I'm currently enrolled in?

Unless the professor is a total jerk, I don't see any way this could hurt.  My experience has been that academics in general are quite happy to hear from people who are interested enough in their work to offer corrections.  (This has been the case even with authors who, for whatever reason, don't post errata.)

I wouldn't worry about being seen as kissing up.  But if you are concerned you could always wait to send it until after the end of the term.

Before sending it, you may want to casually mention: "I've been reading your book which I really like.  I did notice a few typos though.  Is there an errata list posted somewhere?  If not, I could make a list of the ones I found and send them to you."

If there is any chance that a given typo is not really an error, but something you have misunderstood, you can be more delicate by phrasing it as a question.  Instead of "On page 34 you forgot to require that X is compact" you could say "Are you sure the argument on page 34 works without assuming that X is compact?  Isn't the punctured plane a counterexample?"


Student-Professor Etiquette: I think I'm a bad listener

If the professor had concerns about your defensive behaviour, he would not have offered to sponsor your doctorate. He may feel that the behaviour will disappear once you've gained more confidence, or simply doesn't care. Changing your behaviour is only something you can do, if it truly bothers you.


The distinction between a conference one attends and a conference one is invited to speak at is relevant at all levels of one's career in math.

If you don't give a talk, the distinction between a conference you attend simply by registering and a conference you attend by invitation only or only if accepted (like workshops at AIM, Banff, or Oberwolfach)  usually isn't particularly important.

However, for an undergraduate to have been specifically invited to a invitation-only conference is rather unusual, and might indicate that you have a good reputation among senior mathematicians in the field, certainly a plus if applying to graduate school. If so, by far the most important way to communicate this in your file is by getting a letter of recommendation from those senior mathematicians. But it can't hurt to indicate it in your CV as well; in your "Conferences attended" section, just add a parenthetical "(invitation-only)" to the relevant entries.

But let me reiterate that what you put on your CV is 100 times less important than getting a strong recommendation letter from senior mathematicians who know you well and think highly of your potential for research.


Interview for postdoc position in mathematics

Why should you be worried? This is a pretty standard postdoc position interview question and you should be prepared to answer it.

I echo P.Windridge's comment:- your specific answer may be less important than a clear indication that you've considered how your research fits in, extends, challenges, tests the current state of the art in your field.

You've set the problem of answering this question in the context of "real life", whatever that is. For your specific case, I would have thought the "real life" applications of PDEs is easily referenced.


How to get a research professor position?

The first thing to realize is that within the same department a tenure track/tenured position is usually more desirable than a soft money position (what you are calling a research professor). Soft money positions tend to have less responsibilities (e.g., teaching and service) but at many research oriented universities TT staff can use grant money to buy out of teaching and service. In fact those on soft money positions often pick up the residual work thereby making their grant money go further.

Also realize that most departments do not want lots of soft money staff. There are often physical space constraints. Soft money staff can potentially push a department in a direction it is not interested in which can lead to social and political issues. There is also the issue of graduate students. Most people on soft money positions want to have access to graduate students but this can syphon off students and funds from TT staff and provide less security for the students (e.g., when the soft money runs out).

Finally, realize that most departments actually care about their staff. When soft money positions have a gap in funding, the members of a department often try and cover the shortfall. The ability to attract the best soft money candidates depends on the past history of how soft money staff have been treated.

Now to answer you question, at the highest I would contact the Department Chair. No Department Chair wants to hear from the Dean that they should consider someone. No Dean has the time to read CVs of candidates that are not good enough for a TT position. Even better is to contact a TT staff member in the department that you would like to work with. the best soft money positions are ones in which the individual is not isolated from the rest of the department.


I do not ask the opinion-based question of how an instructor should curve his or her course. Rather, I ask the fact-based, or at any rate experience-based, question of how a normal, responsible, experienced instructor does curve his or her course.

I think the following would be a typical story of the process. Jane is hired to a tenure-track faculty position in physics, and she is going to teach freshman mechanics her first semester. To find out what is considered the normal academic level of the course at this school, she looks at available information such as the text being used, the lab manual, the problem sets assigned by previous instructors, and, if possible, exams set by previous instructors. She looks at myedu.com to see histograms of grades given by other teachers at this school in this course.

Based on this information, she tries to set standards that will seem somewhat easier than average at this school. She wants to make sure that her grading isn't seen as too harsh, which could result in poor teaching evaluations and endanger her hopes of tenure. She can't afford to be as stringent a grader as some of the senior faculty, because she's not insulated by tenure as they are. She can use an infinite variety of factors to adjust the level of difficulty, but she is constrained by this need to appear a little more lenient than average.

In most cases, people end up teaching at schools that are less selective than the ones at which they got their own degrees. This is the case for Jane, so after the first midterm she finds that her best attempts to be perceived as a lenient grader are failing rather badly. Many of her students are very upset. Jane is alarmed. She has recently acquired a mortgage, and a terrier that everyone says looks like President Trump.  If she doesn't get tenure, she and the dog will be out on the street. She makes further downward adjustments in her standards. Within a few semesters, she arrives at a set of standards that become the ones she considers normal for the rest of her career as a "normal, responsible, experienced instructor."

Jane gets tenure, and as time goes on, more tenure-track faculty members are hired in her department. These new folks go through the same process described above, arriving at standards that are in turn incrementally lower than the ones Jane uses. This trend continues over the years. By the time she retires, Jane owns a bulldog that everyone says looks like President Bannon, and she has become legendary as an extremely harsh grader compared to her younger colleagues.

For more on this topic, see:

Arum and Roksa, Academically Adrift, 2011

Valen Johnson, Grade Inflation: A Crisis in College Education, 2003


Requesting a professor I barely know a recommendation letter for postdoc

Recommendation letters for students one knows well are relatively easy to write.

Recommendation letters for students one doesn't know well are very difficult to write and potentially take twice as long as the ones for students one knows well. Asking someone who doesn't know you to write one was a stretch, and though it would have been more polite of that person to kindly tell you "no", this was very likely a silent "no".

Think of it this way: recommendations are sort of a covenant we have with the students we teach, postdocs we supervise, or colleagues we work closely with. It is part of the reward that comes with doing well in your studies or research, you don't just get your marks or your degree, you get the recommendation too. If you haven't earned that with someone, it's just a time suck for them to try to come up with something to say about you based on the CV you give them.

I doubt you have messed anything up permanently; they may not even remember this happened. I don't think ill of anyone that I've opted not to write a recommendation for. I'd just be hesitant to ask anything more of that person until you've earned it via collaboration.


Should one include irrelevant background on CV after career change?

The context for what the CV is going to be used for is key. I have a single CV that includes "everything" since I started grad school and selected things from before then including seemingly unimportant part time jobs. Having a long CV makes it easier for me to create short CVs because it means I need to delete things instead of remember things.

For your intended context, I would not include the work experience, but might include the degree in politics. Including that degree will likely lead people looking at your CV to think you are older (which might be a pro or a con). If you are worried about age discrimination, I would drop it completely.


Is grad school typically time-intensive?

Graduate school is an experience and like any other experience, it differs for different people.

You may or may not let your work overwhelm you. That is entirely your choice unless you have to catch up with your cohort. Time management is one of the most important skills to learn in graduate school and as I understand, it carries over to real life significantly later on.

Therefore, specifically in response to your question, your current experience is typical for certain graduate students but not all graduate students.


NSF graduate research fellowship eligibility,

If you have had 12 months of graduate study, then no, you are not eligible, regardless of your undergraduate degree.

Note: there are some exceptions to this (I think they have some language in there for exceptions), but I wouldn't bet on it.


Requesting All Student's Grades From Professor

Is it unreasonable for the student to request a list of all other students grades from the prof to verify that they were actually in the bottom 15%?

Yes, it's unreasonable.  It's perfectly fine to ask something like "My reading of the grading policy is that only the bottom 15% of the class receives a D or below.  Is that correct, and is my grade of 78 really in the bottom 15%?  I felt I was doing better than that, so I'd like to check that the D is correct."  Requesting the other grades themselves offers no more assurance that it's right (the only situation where it really helps you is if the professor just isn't capable of computing 15% correctly), it's more work for the professor, and most importantly it leaks information about how other people are doing.  For example, one of the top students in the class could use this data to make a good guess as to whether their rival had outperformed them or not.  The particular risks here might not be a big deal, but at least in the U.S. grades are considered private and should not be revealed.


Effect of work experience in gaining PHD acceptance

It depends on your experience. While the academical and research-based works through your consulting profession would be interesting, the typical works are not positive in the academical settings.

If you can explain your earlier experiences through research and development elements and illustrate your ambition to solve the profession challenges as the main cause for entering the PhD course, then it would be a strong positive impact on the acceptance in the interview of the PhD.


With due deference to Wikipedia, colloquially, the two terms are used interchangeably.


Can I invite my phd student to be a guest editor of a special Issue of a Journal I am guest editor as well?

As someone who served as guest editor already:
I don't see a problem in principle by inviting/recommending an additional person (including students) for this job. I guess I would ask the editorial team, as @Buffy suggested already.
I would not invite a student for other reasons though:
Usually this is a lot of work, which blocks students from working on their thesis or related studies. This depends of course if the student wants to do it as an investment in a later career.
Moreover, I think it would be good to have a few years of experience in publishing, which helps you to select reasonable reviewers. This will be different for other fields, but from my experience, there were almost never any perfect fits to reviewers. It was rather hard to identify, who may have expertise in some exotic areas to review a certain paper. Here a few years in the business definitely help. I assume this would be much harder for students - or it would all come back to you rather than taking work away from you.
Keep in mind, even if you give them just 2 or 3 papers, this can result in some serious work, if reviewers don't react or you don't have any good matches from the start, ...
Finally, the statement to "find two other guest editors" somewhat sounds like you would be working with a predatory journal. Without knowing the actual journal, this is how I would interpret this situation.


Teaching subjects as an instructor which I scored average grades in

First, you are doing well to focus on exercises. Student activities are the most important part of any course preparation. In general, it is much more important what the students do in a course (exercises) than what the instructor does (lectures).

If you can recommend a textbook to the students it will have exercises from which you can choose. Or, you can tailor some of them specifically to the material you will be teaching if the book is a bit too general.

Alternatively you can adapt exercises from a variety of textbooks. An interesting way to do this is to give exercises from various books but cite them explicitly so that the students have an opportunity to go to those books (in the library, perhaps) and read some context to help them.

Finally, let me note that for your own learning, teaching a course in a subject is likely to deepen your own understanding of it. This is partly due to the reinforcement you get from preparing lectures, but also from responding to student questions and having to actually find ways to explain things in a way they can grasp.

As for the software, some exercises that depend on its use to solve some simple problems is good, but I suspect you know that already.

A trick for connecting to your students is to admit that the material is hard and that you also found it so as a student. This will put them on notice that they need to apply themselves, but will also make you more human and accessible in their eyes. This may be desirable or not. It is considered a good thing in the US, but perhaps not universally.


How does the pricing system of degrees in England work?

Most UK Masters degrees are a single year.  Even if for some reason you get an extension (e.g. to finish your dissertation), you will only be charged tuition for the taught year, maybe a small fee for remaining registered.  But the International fee will just be it (unless you are from the EU, in which case the home fee is it), and normally includes any bench fees.

Note the fixed tuition costs matters less for Masters students, but is a huge win over US degrees for PhDs – you normally only pay 3 years tuition even if you take 4 or even 5 years to finish.

A part time degree will probably take about twice as long and you will have to pay the fee for double the number of years.  If you are legally allowed to work in the UK, or you can telecommute to a part-time job in your home country, this can be a win.  Though keep in mind that the cost of living is very high in the UK and will probably exceed your tuition even if you are full time.

Anyway, UK universities are very keen to get Masters students, if you just email the contact for a university they will give you full numbers.


Awarding additional points to prevent too many students from failing course

I would say, in nearly all cases*, it's unethical. Specifically, if a student's submitted work does not fulfill the requirements for a passing grade, then they do not deserve a passing grade. Arbitrarily adding points that do not reflect the quality of submitted work makes the grade partially or completely useless as an indicator of performance in the class, and if it's not good for that, what's the point?

However, unethical does not necessarily mean unacceptable. Don't get me wrong, I think it should, but I'm not going to impose my moral standards on your grading scheme. Ultimately nobody on this site can tell you whether it's acceptable to do this. Your superiors at your educational institution might be able to, since they'll at least know whether it would violate any of the institution's rules.

In any case, as a few people have mentioned in the comments, arbitrarily adding points to keep students from failing is a band-aid effect. The fact that too many students are failing indicates that there is some deeper problem. Perhaps your teaching is inadequate. Perhaps your grading standards are too harsh. Perhaps the students are not properly prepared for the class. Perhaps your idea of what constitutes "too many students failing" should be revised. And so on.

*Speaking of harsh grading standards, this is (the?) one case in which I think it is ethical to add points: to compensate for an overly difficult exam or assignment. This is a little tricky to get right, though. You have to have a preexisting standard to measure whether the exam is at an appropriate difficulty level. For example, in classes I've TA'd for, there has been a longstanding policy that any time the average grade on a test (across ~1000 students) is less than 70%, it will be taken as an indicator that the exam was too hard, and therefore enough points will be added to everyone's exam grade to bump the average up to 70%. Given the large class size, I think this is reasonable.

For smaller classes, you have to consider the possibility that you just have an underachieving group of students one particular year. In another (small) class that I took, each year the instructor would compute the distribution of all grades in the class over the previous ten years, compare that to a desired target distribution, and make the course material for the next year harder or easier as needed. From what he told me, it gave pretty consistent results. I think this is a good way to do it.

The key is that you have to have a preexisting criterion for when points will be added. If you look at the grades after the fact and decide, hey, too many students are failing, let me add some points so we all look better - then you're doing it wrong (IMO).


Due to last name, I am never first author

In some fields, alphabetical listing is strongly preferred. Doing it differently would be seen as odd. Because of my actual family name I'm often "first". But I also frequently publish with more prominent people and no one ever thinks that I dominate the research in any way.

But the work in such fields tends to be highly collaborative (as I suspect it is in yours) where it is difficult to say who contributed "more".

But if a paper results from your doctoral research, it should say something about that in a note, perhaps the ack section. People will assume that you (and perhaps your advisor) did the driving.

I find the fighting over authorship position on some posts here to be very saddening. I understand that in some fields (lab science, say) that there are lots of things going on in a give lab with one person primarily responsible for some part of the research and should therefore get more "credit" for the papers even though others in the lab contributed something. But the fights make it seem like, to them, research is a zero-sum game.

Be happy that you work in a field that values collaboration and joint success. But if Mike doesn't ack you and suggest you as a co-speaker (or as the actual speaker) then there is a problem (his) that you can address with him. Be nice, of course, but be firm. "We built this together." Get your advisor on board. "Help me out here Z, I can use the exposure and experience." He knows that, of course. Don't let him forget.


What address to put in bibliography for Springer (and others)?

It's better to put what is on the copyright page of the book in question. If you don't have it, then you may have to punt, but wherever you can use the full reference, you should.

Edited to add: The goal in a citation is to allow your reader to find the exact work that you used, so you need to be as precise as you can. If there are different editions, etc, they may have different publication locations, so make sure you described the physical volume you have precisely. If you don't have the physical version, then be sure to give your reader 50 years from now the ability, as best you can, to track it down.


When do you stop reading books cover to cover?

You stop reading books cover to cover when you don't need all the information between the covers of the books.

If you take a textbook on topology and flip to the middle, it will probably be largely uninterpretable because you don't know the terminology, previously proved theorems, and so on.  You can still glance through the chapter on the material that you really need to know to get an idea of what you're completely missing.  If you can select a subset of earlier chapters that let you understand the later one, great!  If not, read the whole thing.  If that's still not enough, get another textbook or talk to someone who knows the subject well.

You'll have to make the call regarding when it's better to proceed in this way and when it's more efficient to simply start at the beginning and go through it all.  If you need to know something well, this is often the approach to take not because the other wouldn't work as well in principle, but because in practice the temptation to be less thorough than one really needs to be is often too great.


Can I have multiple research jobs totalling > 1.0 FTE in the United Kingdom?

Generally in UK academic institutions, you are paid based on your "grade" on the pay scale (for posts up to but not including professor). If you were asking if you would receive more than 1.0 FTE in pay, I believe the answer is no, as you would no longer be on the regular scale. Your pay is based on your post, and the research funding would contribute to the University's costs and overheads, as well as your pay. The HR office would not let you be paid more than you should receive according to their calculations.

If you mean holding more than one Research Associate post, while still receiving the same pay, this depends on your institution. I have many colleagues working on multiple projects simultaneously. They're putting in more than 1.0 FTE of effort. As to their official FTE, I believe thy are officially 1.0 FTE, and they are a Research Associate "for" a given member of staff. Their time is then "unofficially" (for want of a better term) split between multiple projects.

I am sure this will vary between funding sources and institutions, as to what is tolerated/the norm. In this case I reference, however, this is not a case of holding multiple RA posts; rather holding a single post, which works on multiple projects. Since their post is not tied strictly to a single project, the FTE is perhaps not the best metric to gauge them by.


How is it best to put an unfinished PhD if you want to continue in academia?

What about something like this?

Education

2016-present, PhD student, psychology

2015-2016, PhD student, underwater basket weaving

2012-2014, BSc, underwater basket weaving


What are the factors one needs to take into account in order to choose an appropriate mathematical journal?

There is no easy solution to this problem.

I recently went through a situation where a paper was rejected from a journal without review; the same paper, with only minor edits to the abstract and the introduction, was accepted "as is" for publication in another journal of similar quality and impact factor.

The main issue for getting your work accepted may not be that it isn't of sufficient interest—it may be that the way you have presented it does not convince the editors and referees that the work is suitable. Have you hit on the "hot-button areas" that tend to come up again and again in the journal? Have you made it clear from your abstract and your leadoff paragraphs why this article will be of interest to the target audience of the journal?

Small differences—these changes don't require much work—can make a huge difference in the acceptance of a paper.


Realistic to stay in the industry and study neuroscience at the same time?

Speaking only for the US, there are graduate programs that have courses primarily in the evenings to accommodate working people. But most people may not want to take a full course load of, say, four courses with the associated work. These programs are probably concentrated in large cities, I guess.

And it is doctoral programs that are more likely to be research focused than another MS. And evening only doctoral programs are more rare, I would suppose.

But, do you really want two full-time jobs? Both your work and schooling will require a heavy commitment. Does 80 or so hours a week work for you. Do you have other commitments on time and focus (family, etc).

Whether your current MS program in CS is more or less intense than studying neuroscience, I can't say. But go in with full knowledge.

So, possible, yes. But a very hard road for a couple of years at least.

An alternative might be a program (probably rare in the US) that is entirely research based and doesn't require much coursework. If you have a project that doesn't require your physical presence during the day it might work out. But still, 80 or so hours.


Unless it is specifically requested, do not do it. Some school even urge you not to do it. It is highly probable, that they know your scale and understand what level means you are smart and hard working. Be sure to include thing like cum laude, merit scholarships, ranking within the cohort, ... These things are easier for them to understand and help them to compare you to the other students.

Miscalculating your GPA may result in unintentional deception or undermining your actual achievements. Be careful.


Can I predict the fate of my manuscript (from information other than a decision letter)?

Summary
There is no way of deducing the fate of your manuscript with reasonable certainty except a decision letter that says so. In particular, if your manuscript is certain to be rejected, there is no reason for the journal to spend further time on it instead of immediately telling you.
Main Argument
In the vast majority of cases, you can apply the following line of thought:
The point of almost the entire editorial process is to find out whether your manuscript shall be accepted by the journal (or whether it has the potential to be accepted after modifications).
If at any time the editors decide that your manuscript is or is not suitable, the process is over.
At this point, there is no reason to delay informing you about this decision.
In particular, after rejection has been decided, it would be a waste to spend any further resources on this manuscript, such as further reviews or editorial assessment¹.
Therefore if your manuscript has been accepted or rejected, you will get to know this immediately.
From another perspective, you can always ask yourself: If the fate of my manuscript were already certain, would the journal act as it does?
Revisions
Similar thoughts apply to requests for revision.
If the editors think a revision is impossible, they will not invite you to submit a revised version, as this revision would have to be assessed and thus waste resources if it already is clear that the manuscript cannot be accepted.
In fact, journals rather tend to phrase rejections overly strongly to avoid authors engaging in futile rebuttals, resubmissions, etc.
Journals have nothing to gain from hiding a negative assessment between the lines.
For example, if the editors think that acceptance of your manuscript is possible but requires a specific change, it would be foolish not to tell you this, lest you waste journal resources with a submission that does not make this specific change.
On the other hand, if the editors decided that they probably want your manuscript, it would be foolish to scare you away – though the editors may put a strong emphasis on changes they think are possible and necessary.
Exceptions and Similar
You have to judge yourself whether they apply to your case or the information benefits you:

The one thing that needs to happen between the decision and letting you know is the preparation of the decision letter, which particularly includes phrasing the rationale for a rejection or the conditions of a potential acceptance.
In many cases, this is a matter of minutes as it only requires the editor to combine a few canned sentences or the reviews already do a good job at explaining the problems of the manuscript or the changes needed.
But even if the editor spends effort on writing the decision letter, the best time to do this is right after the decision, as they are already focused on your manuscript.
For these reasons, the preparation of the decision letter is a very short stage, and moreover, most editorial systems do not inform you about it anyway.
Still, if you see this stage without any previous peer review, you can be rather certain that you are facing a desk reject.
However, it could also be that the editor wants you to perform certain changes to the manuscript before peer review.
Either way, once your manuscript entered this stage, you will get to know its fate very soon.

Certain events allow you a better estimate of your manuscript’s chances, but never a definite answer (for the aforementioned main argument):
For example, for some journals, making it to peer review is a major hurdle, and if your manuscript passed it, the chances of your manuscript considerably increase.
Similarly, if a manuscript goes from peer review to editorial decision and then back to peer review, this suggests that the reviewers have conflicting opinions about your manuscript, which may be good or bad news, depending on your a priori expectation of acceptance.
Also, there can be other reasons for a return to peer review, such as one of the reviews containing no valuable information at all, or all reviewers stating that they cannot evaluate a crucial part of the manuscript.

The editors or reviewers intentionally delay your manuscript, e.g., because of a grudge against you.
This is hopefully very rare, but even if this happens, you will usually only get to suspect this a posteriori, if at all.
If you suspected this a priori, you probably should not have submitted to that journal in the first place (or vetoed that editor).

¹ If those reviews have a potential of swaying the decision, it was not a decision in the sense of this answer.


I'm aware of three general approaches that seem to be currently effective for seeding such discussion.  Listed in order from most direct to least direct:

Comments hosted by the journal itself: a number of journals that are embracing open science principles are embracing commentary directly.  With this, you don't need to take your article anywhere else for people to comment on it: they can do so right there at the article.  Examples of this approach include PLOS ONE and the Frontiers series.
Some sites, most notably PubPeer, are explicitly intended to support discussion of articles.
If you've got a blog or other social media site, you can also host discussion there.  For some people, this can be very effective, but you generally must already have a significant audience in order for this to be an effective strategy.

In all case, however, it still tends to be difficult to get meaningful discussion going of most articles, since academics don't seem very interested in comments sections unless there's a fight going on...


No. The publisher does not and cannot guarantee the correctness of the papers. Also the peer-review system is not perfect.

That being said, even though a single paper might have some chance of being wrong, as studies are replicated, and follow up studies verify and extend the conclusions, the scientific community can build up stronger claims.


Colloquial term for relationship between postdoc and phd with same advisor

I don't think there is any specific word for this.

In my experience, the "family" analogy (sibling, grandparent, uncle, etc) is only ever used for relationships defined in terms of the PhD advisor/student relationship.  I've never heard anything similar used for advisor/postdoc or any other type of academic relationship.

I think you just have to spell it out.  "He and I both worked with X; I was X's student and he was her postdoc."


How to professionally deal with sexual harassment in academia

While you seem confident that the individual's behavior is unprofessional, other people in your situation might not be as confident. If you have any doubt about if someones behavior is unprofessional, find a trusted colleague and ask them in confidence.

Once you are confident that the behavior is unprofessional, the next time he emails you, send him an email that clearly states that his behavior is unprofessional and that you feel sexually harassed. Then tell him that while you have endured it in the past, that it must stop and if necessary you will report the behavior to your supervisor, his supervisor, and any other relevant offices at your and his institutions. Finally, close with saying that you hope the behavior will stop and that this can all just be water under the bridge and that you can continue to have a professional collaboration. If you have any doubts, show the email (you can write it now), to a trusted colleague and get feedback.

If, after sending the email, the behavior does not stop (or he argues), you tell your supervisor. You can either work with the supervisor to bring the fury that is the university HR department when faced with issues of sexual harassment or a gentler back channel process. The choice is yours and anyone that would hold that choice against you is not someone you need to form collaborations with.

You want to start documenting things. This means saving the harassing emails. You also want to email him so you have a copy of what was said. Do not tell him in person (both because he doesn't deserve that type of interaction and because it gives you a record of what was said). If/when you talk to colleagues for advice or to your supervisor, do that in person or on the phone. You don't want them to feel like they are being watched. If your supervisor does not react as you hope, then follow up in writing.


How an A+ is treated varies from school to school. In the traditional American grading system, an "A" contributes a 4.0 to one's GPA, an "A-" contributes a 3.7, a "B+" contributes a 3.3, a "B" contributes 3.0, etc. In many universities, 4.0 represents the maximum possible GPA, and so an A+, although it may appear on the transcript next to a course, also only contributes 4.0 to one's GPA. At other universities (such as e.g. Columbia), an A+ contributes 4.3 to one's GPA.

None of this matters very much of course.


Is citation required when answering/giving own opinion on case study questions?

Cite anything that comes from another source. Whether or not it is "opinion" doesn't matter.

Examples of another source:

Anything created by someone else (whether published or not).
Something created by you, that you have previously published.

Content created by you, which hasn't been made public before, does not need to be cited.  Attribution is via your authorship of the current document.

Update: attribution of your opinion.

If you thought up the opinion yourself you don't need to cite it.
It your opinion was formed based on specific sources, I would say you have an obligation to cite those sources.
If your opinion was informed by others, but you don't know of a specific source, you should make a good effort to find a source and cite it.  The problem here is that there may be a specific source where this opinion originates (even if you aren't aware of it).  Failure to cite would look like plagiarism in that case.  Even if that is not true, providing a citation would always strengthen the document.


How is the Dutch degree/diploma title structure for VMBO-HAVO-VWO?

If I understood correctly, you are asking how one would put the title of ones Dutch secondary education on, for example, a CV.
A little introduction for those not familiar with the Dutch education system. The Dutch secondary education is split into three levels, depending on how smart the child is: vmbo, havo and vwo. Children start secondary education when they are about 11 or 12. Vmbo (nominally) takes four years, havo takes five years and vwo takes six years.
Vmbo
Vmbo is further split into four levels: vmob-b, vmbo-k, vmbo-gl and vmbo-t, also called mavo. Students can choose a specialisation. In Dutch these are called 'profielen', literally 'profiles', but a better translation might be 'subject clusters'. It is important to note that these specialisations are not a single course, but are a combination of courses that are followed in addition to some mandatory base courses (such as Dutch). Vmbo-b, -k and -gl have 10 of these profiles, vmbo-t has 4.
On a CV, you would write the title as the sublevel, e.g. 'Vmbo-t'. In brackets, or underneath it, you could write 'Profile Economy', but this is not part of your diploma title.
Havo
Havo has no sublevels and has 4 profiles. The diploma title would just be 'Havo', for the profile see above.
Vwo
Vwo has the same 4 profiles as havo. Vwo is split in two levels: atheneum and gymnasium. Gymnasium students take ancient Greek and/or Latin courses, atheneum students don't.
As a title you can either use just 'Vwo', or use the sublevel, i.e. 'Atheneum' or 'Gymnasium'. Especially gymnasium students often opt to do this, since it is seen as the higher level. For the profiles, again, see above.
PS
Al the abbreviations of the school levels are written in lowercase, except when at the beginning of a sentence.


Readers will tend to reference measures like this from the publication date, since that is typically the only information they have.  So if you write today, in 2017, that "five years ago, X happened" (i.e. in 2012), but then the article is not published until 2019 (which would be normal in some fields), then, as you say, the reader will mistakenly guess that X happened in 2014.

As such, I would avoid talking about specific numbers of years.  If the precise year is important, give the year ("in 2012, X happened").  If the year is not important, you can use less specific terms like "recently".

If you are writing for a conference, or another situation where you know for sure when the paper would be published, then such expressions would be more reasonable.  But it still means that a future reader may have to flip back to the article's title page to check the publication date, which can be a little distracting.


Is it allowed to write a paper using another's framework?

Of course, as long as you say clearly it's his and don't suggest it is your own. As a tip, make also clear what your part of the framework/model is, and how it differs from the original.


Is there a certain time of year that Canadian Universities make graduate admissions offers?

It's not uniform, and the lack of uniformity basically makes it a race: it is not uncommon for offers to have a very short window to accept, in the hope of recruiting (some would say trapping) good candidates early on.

It is not impolite to ask for updates or timelines.

It is often the case that faculty must commit some grant monies for student support, and Canadian grants are usually smaller than in the US.  As a result, unless you have a generous scholarship, the system is more dependent on individual "matchmaking", i.e. finding a suitable supervisor willing to poney up the funds, rather than acceptance on pure academic record, although the wealthier and/or larger programs will accept students "at large" without firm supervisory commitments.

If you require funding but none of prospective supervisors has funds left, nobody will be in a hurry to make you an offer. If you have an offer, the better option is to contact these prospective supervisors directly, explain that you have an offer, and hope someone can give you a quick answer.


How to build my CV if I have two MS degrees in the same field (and quit a PhD)?

If there is any difference whatsoever in what you were working on during the two programs, I would do something like this depending on the job you are applying to and how the focus of you program matches with the job:

Master of Science in Probabilistic Models (discontinued PhD in Statistics), University of Second-place, 2017
Master of Science in Randomized Algorithms (Statistics), University of First-place, 2013

In short, you want to put honest information that doesn't making it look like you are hiding something or leave unexplained gaps, but at the same time you want to put things in the most positive light and prevent people from assuming something negative. If you just put two "MS in Statistics", one line after the other, that will indeed make most interviewers likely think, "huh, what's this about?" I fully expect they will ask about why you are leaving the PhD program and/or why you have two masters in a closely related field, so just have a good explanation for this that fits the job, or answer it proactively in a cover letter.

You could also list one as just a generic MS in Statistics and be more specific on the other one, etc - so long as you provide accurate information, you are free to add more specific and useful information.

This also serves the purpose of making it clear that you didn't learn exactly the same thing in both degree programs. Employers care about the skills you've developed and how you can use your knowledge to benefit them, so make that easier on them (they are rarely ever going to spend half an hour trying to decipher academic transcripts to see what courses you took).


Difficulties with advisor inattention during MSc

don't say "they don't believe in my ability as a researcher", it's self loathe and may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. As a supervisor of msc and phds myself, I think research skills can be learned. Are they pointing you towards resources at the university, like training on research methods? Do you think you lack those?

I add that weekly meetings are a luxury at my university, so maybe your supervision is working fine, and you may have just a bit of envy of the extra attention your peers receive? Or do you think your research is really suffering and struggling to progress?

I saw you've been thinking about possible reasons above, but I believe there are more explanations like (4), maybe the subject area of the other students is closer to what the supervisor does, so they have more to talk; (5) your area is more advanced than what they do so they don't know the methods and don't have much to contribute. I believe that you can talk to the main adviser openly about your concerns. You can directly ask them what they think about your research and where it's going. You can also ask about the frequency of the meetings. It will be a delicate conversation but it's better said and resolved than let accumulate. But the main question is, do you believe it's a good project? Is it interesting and innovative? Are you on top of the literature?

And grab the opportunity of writing that a publication, obviously it's very good for your phd application but also can increase the interest and frequency of communications with the current advisers.