Should I ask my professor to change my project group?

I can give you some advice based on similar group dynamics I had.

While working in one of my thesis courses in industrial engineering/quality, I was paired up with a group that was fairly cohesive from the beginning. All, except one member, really made the effort to try on this project.

The one member, a gal, was not culturally and academically on the same page as us. I had her in a previous class and was known to cheat and probe for answers. It also showed she happened to be a bit crazy.

About a fourth of the way of our semester-long project, she went rouge and stopped showing up to our meetings, which in turn led to a lack of quality work, then a lack of work all-together. Come time for one of our presentations, we had clipped her powerpoint chart which had no meaning to our project and presented in front of the class. She immediately started presenting slides that weren't hers unannounced, obviously looking as if we were unprepared. We got an email, CC'ing the professor stating how we were "(explicit) this and (explicit) that for deleting her slide prior to the presentation."

Rather than confronting the issue, we built a case, with screenshots, email threads, and evidence proving she was not contributing any work. Solution? Present the evidence to the professor and have them facilitate the discussion. Chances are they'll ask you to stick it out but may be lenient on grading you.

With the professor there, we were able to have the tough discussion and bring it up to them because chances are your group member's poor character has also rubbed off on the professor. You'd be surprised to find out what your professor is thinking.

tl;dr version, come to your professor with concrete evidence on why this is happening, and see what options there are. The point of group projects in college are not to work with your friends, but rather be able to make difficult decisions with individuals you may not see eye to eye with.

I"m positive after this experience, you'll be able to cope working with people you don't necessarily agree with, morally or otherwise. My recommendation, finish off the project with poise and build a case against your bad apples so they'll be barred from ruining another perfectly functional group project.

Best of luck.


Each NIH grant comes with extensive guidance. For the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Individual Predoctoral Fellowship to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research the guidance says

  Note that scores for standardized exams (e.g., MCAT, GRE) as well as a listing of the applicant’s courses and grades must be included in the Fellowship Applicant Biographical Sketch, and NOT in this attachment.

The guidance also says

  Follow the instructions in the SF424 (R&R) Individual Fellowship Application Guide to ensure you complete all appropriate “optional” forms.

SF424 (R&R) refers you back to PA-14-148.

In general, it is advisable to talk to the Program Officer at the NIH whenever you are considering applying for a grant/fellowship. They are more than happy to help navigate you through the submission process and generally can provide you with invaluable insight about how to improve your application. Each institute at the NIH and each funding mechanism has a different Program Officer, but they are generally pretty easy to find online.


I usually say that my rule for regrades is like the NFL's rule for replay challenges: there must be "indisputable visual evidence" that the original grade was incorrect.  For instance, scores were added incorrectly, or a correct answer was marked wrong.

If the score was a "judgment call" (for example, I deducted two points for some error and the student thinks it only deserved one point deducted), I won't change the grade, unless I did something really egregious.

I've seen the policy "We regrade the entire assignment and your grade could go up or down" but it makes me a little uncomfortable.  It suggests an element of randomness or caprice in the grading, which I don't want to promote, especially for younger or weaker students who may already feel like their grade is random.  I don't think students should feel like they have to roll the dice to get a genuine error corrected.


Publishing policies for conference papers

Normally, it's fine, as long as you submit a pre-print and not the camera ready of the conf proceedings. You can also check these questions: Does publishing a paper on arXiv prevent me from submitting it to a non-open access journal? and Submitting a subset of my work to ArXiv.


For benchmarking purposes, How do I find out who shares the same qualification combination as me in my current location?

This type of information is not generally systematically tracked, at least not by most current governments or academic organizations.  At a coarse-grained level, you may be able to find out some information from censuses (e.g., these US census tables), but not to a degree of detail necessary for the type of analysis of the competitive landscape that you seem to be looking for.


What do I do when a co-author takes too long to give feedback during the peer review process?

It seems you are following your boss' (good) advice. Dealing with co-authors is not always easy as you have experienced. I think I have experienced a similar co-author, not responding but complaining whenever something happens. In my case, the co-author was definitely over-committed and the actions were basically a symptom of frustration about not being able to perform. Now, I think you have done the right thing to a point. The only thing that would have improved things would have been to provide the co-author with the information but with a strict deadline but not more than a week or two. Doing so at all stages, is the only way to deal with such cases. It is not very nice, or comfortable, but it is necessary to make a stand and convey the seriousness. In your case you have clearly had a lot of extra work due to the (lack of) actions from your co-author. I assume he has not apologized?

So what to do? Well, I would write and state that you are sorry the co-author feels left out (or however the co-author has phrased it). You can then state that the lack of response earlier made you assume the co-author was not prioritizing the work and that based on suggestions from your boss you have now taken the actions you have to get the material published. Be brief and courteous but do not add many excuses.


Referring to author order on paper when arXiv and published copy are different

As Aaron Montgomery's answer states, if you use the full author list in the text, it should match the author list in the bibliography. However, with four authors, you're usually in a position where you can just say

  A et al.

in the text rather than

  A, B, C, and D

or

  A, D, B, C


What is the "power" a PhD advisor has over their advisees?

In many programs, the advisor signs off on the PhD student's thesis. If the advisor doesn't approve the thesis, it is difficult to impossible for the student to graduate and earn the PhD.
In many programs, the advisor is responsible for securing funding for their PhD students. If the advisor withdraws funding that the student was expecting, the student might not have another source of financial support.
Advisors are responsible for training and mentoring their PhD students, which is a major part of the PhD. If an advisor withholds that training, their PhD student might not become a successful researcher without it.
In general, advisors interact closely with their PhD students. If these interactions are unpleasant or abusive, the workplace becomes very, very uncomfortable.
Faculty tend to have a lot more influence in an academic department than their PhD students do. An advisor can potentially make things difficult for their PhD student with other faculty in the department.
In many cases, on applying for jobs after a PhD, a student is expected to have a recommendation from their PhD advisor. Without it, it can be much more difficult to find a job. Also see: How to handle not having my PhD advisor as a reference? and What to do when a thesis adviser refuses to recommend me?


Stating that my research hold less value compared to another topic. A good idea?

Your research doesn't have less value simply because you uncovered problems broader than (or different from) what you chose to focus on. An equal way of stating the outcome is to say that your work has opened a door to at least one promising additional line of research! We as researchers are facing the unknown; we necessarily do not know what the results are going to look like ahead of time. Scientifically speaking, as long as the study is well-supported and well-designed, an unexpected outcome is precisely as valuable as a result that looks as expected and/or upholds a hypothesis.

Your presentation will be better if it is self-assured. Confidently and straightforwardly, lay out what you did and how you went about it and what you have discovered, and put in a few slides at the end conveying some excitement about the potential inherent in the interesting things that your work is pointing the way towards. Every study has limitations, and good scientific practice is to acknowledge these transparently but not apologetically. No study can do everything. Knowledge is a collaborative effort, and we can build on each other's findings if we have a good sense of what has been done how.

My MA thesis, in retrospect, had a lot of things in it that I now know to have been oversimplifications. I didn't have a full sense of what was going on; there was so much more to it than that! But I couldn't have gotten here from there. A master's thesis is often a stepping-stone; I'd say that's both natural and usually inevitable. If you feel as if there are signs of you needing to look beyond the scope of a master's paper - I spotted some in mine as well! - that's what I'd call a sign that you're ready for a Ph.D. (if that is your aim).


What are the impacts on learning of allowing students to eat in class?

Most of the answers here suggest limiting or prohibiting eating in the classroom, but I have to disagree.

First, students generally do not control their own schedules.  Personally, I often had five or six hours of class back-to-back as an undergrad, and I was not unusual in that regard.  Yes, there are breaks between classes, but students need that time to get to the next classroom.  In addition, many professors let their class go overtime, reducing the length of the break.  If you prohibit eating, hungry students will simply choose to arrive late after getting a snack, which defeats the idea of minimizing disruptions by prohibiting eating.

Second, you don't know what medical issues a particular student has: they may be diabetic or need to eat at regular intervals for other reasons.  While a student can tell you about this at the start of the term, I don't like the idea of forcing students to discuss their medical issues with every professor, every term.  After all, students who get special classroon accommodations due to a disability are not obliged to tell their professors what the specific disability is.

For these reasons, if the university does not have a specific policy, I would tend to be lenient at first.  Most students are reasonable people who won't show up to class with a five course dinner.  If a specific concern arises during the term, such as very noisy food or garbage being left behind, you can address it either with the individual student or the class as a whole, as appropriate.


How to balance previous works and current idea in a research plan?

This is a lot of questions wrapped into one, but let's give this a try. LOL!

First, is this part of an application for a faculty position? If so, 5 pages is very long. The faculty search committee will have statements from many candidates and cumbersome application materials may not get full attention (I've been on a number of search committees and have been chair of search committees). So, try to get it down to 2 pages and stick to the basics. If you are using this statement for something else and have a 5 page limit, disregard this suggestion.

My advice is to try and find a unifying theme that all of your three sub-themes fit under. Then, introduce the larger theme and go into sub-themes A, B, C. Rather than dedicate a specific percentage of space for each (you indicate 50%, 50%), I would spend more time describing how your previous work resulted in specific skills, accomplishments, accolades, awards, grants (etc.) and then discuss briefly what your future plans are. I say this because your future research plans may change based on new opportunities and challenges.

The purpose of most research statements is to (a) describe your area and its importance, (b) demonstrate that you can be successful at research, and (c) can articulate a reasonable plan for securing funding and independently conducting studies in the future. Also, writing too much detail about your future research plans may work against you if a reviewer disagrees with some aspects of your plan. Consider that as well.

I would include citations, where appropriate, in the research statement, but only in-text. I would assume that the reviewers can cross-reference your CV, if it is also given to them.

Good luck!


Extensive introduction in an incremental paper?

The answer fundamentally depends on who the audience for the result is.

If you are addressing people familiar with the conjecture, then your introduction makes sense, because it consisely conveys the information they would be looking for. In the rare case that a novice reader comes across your paper, they may be a bit put off, but can still follow your reference to read the introduction there.

If there is a reason why people not familiar with the conjecture should care about your paper, then you should give those people more. In particular, you'll need to tell them why exactly they should care.


How to overcome discouragement on finding major error in work just before paper submission?

I think that the best way to overcome your situation is to realize that nothing out of ordinary happened - to err is human. In my opinion, research is about discovering truth and enriching knowledge (including the one of the researchers'). And making mistakes is a natural part of the process. I would just discuss my work with advisor openly and do my best to learn from that.

I don't think that you have wasted anybody's time. I (along with many other people) believe that negative results are also valuable (for example, see this paper, this journal and this workshop). The same applies to other results, such as similar to existing results, not impressive results, etc.

As for strategies for not making mistakes, I don't think there are any to prevent them completely, as I said, but you can reduce their probability by not advancing too fast in your research (i.e., rushing to obtain results or to publish) as well as asking feedback on your work from other people beyond your advisor or other people closely involved in the research (perhaps, even, from other disciplines, in order to obtain opinions, based on different perspectives).


Can I work alone on an extension of a paper that had multiple authors?

There is nothing illegal about this, nor is this publicly frowned upon.  After all, it's very possible for some of the original co-authors to simply not be interested in the extension.

However, your co-authors might see this as impolite, to say the least.  If you offer to include them in working on the extension and they decline, then everything is fine.  If you don't make such an offer to them, they might not want to work with you ever again.


Every university should have a documented process for choosing trustees, regents, etc. Ours are appointed by the Governor. See the link for what Princeton does. There are students on the Princeton board because a) there was a grad student among the 13 elected alumni trustees (2011 grad), and b) because there is always a graduating senior elected. Both of these kinds of alumni trustees serve for 4-year terms.


How do I go about negotiating an academic job offer?

To answer your question, according to some, the best time to negotiate is after an offer has been given by the potential employer. For one thing, they have already ruled out other candidates and they have now essentially decided on giving the position to you. The hiring process is arduous from their perspective as well and the last thing they want to do is to decline someone they have already decided upon because that person negotiated their salary with a reasonable increase.

You would need to know as much as possible about the expected salary before you could negotiate. The key to negotiation is always having sufficient knowledge. If you know that the offer that they gave you is not on par with other similar positions at that university/field, then you have something to point to. You can find salary information from sites like Glassdoor but more importantly, sometimes these are published by the universities themselves. For a lot of public universities, you can easily get his information by simply contacting the central finance department to get averages. In some cases, the universities themselves publish this information on their websites. A good tip to find salary figures is to search Google for:

site:theuniversity'swebsite "salary" "write the position here"
This will give you hits for all of the pages that mention a salary figure along with the position that you are interested in. Here is an example of that using Heriot Watt
site:hw.ac.uk "salary" "professor"

That query gives a couple of results with actual salary figures.

You also need to state why you should be given a higher salary. Chances are that they have already budgeted to be able to increase the salary for negotiation purposes. You still need to provide a good argument for why you deserve a higher salary. Does your publication level/quality warrant a higher salary? Do you have documents showing that you've received accolades for your research or teaching? Will your involvement increase the profile of the department due to your research networks? etc


What rules guide whether to put qualifications on an academic business card?

The accepted conventions also depend strongly on country. As a general rule, though, I'd avoid anything "cute" unless you happen to be your own boss.

For instance, in the US, I'd expect to see doctoral-level degrees listed. I'd also expect to see high-level professional qualifications, such as "PE" for "Professional Engineers." Similarly, if a master's degree carries sufficient professional weight in one's discipline, I'd list that, too. You are also correct in assuming that Prof. "overwrites" Dr.

In Germany, by contrast, one is expected to list all degrees of equivalent standing, including honorary degrees. This can lead to rather unwieldy titles such as

  Univ.-Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Dr.-Ing. h.c. Dr. rer. nat. E.h. Johannes Schmidt

(Note: I've seen substantially longer, too!)

However, two additional points are worth mentioning.

First, any degree at the master's or diploma level is considered significant enough to list as part of one's title:

  Dipl.-Ing. Michael Mustermann

would be expected for someone with a "Diplom" in engineering.

Secondly, until recently, non-German degrees were not considered the equivalent of German degrees. An American doctorate holder was

  Joanna Doe, Ph.D.

and was legally not allowed to call herself

  Dr. Joanna Doe

However, this has been somewhat relaxed recently, although only for degree holders from certain countries.


Can studying in a good place hurt your application?

As others have pointed out, anything can happen.  Of course if you are at the weaker M.S.  school, emphasize your class rank, etc.  But my Bayesian estimate is that you (one) are better off at the STRONGER school.  It will challenge you more, move you more etc.

Don't try to be a big fish in a small pond. Go out in the ocean and compete with the Great Whites.  Consider Arnold Schwarzenegger.  He didn't stay in the cowtowns of the Steiermark.  He went to Muscle Beach in California.  "New York, New York...if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere."  Be a playah.

Note:  if there are other reasons, family, weather, economics, pedagogy, etc. that you (one) prefers the easier school, fine.  Of course what matters most is the student, not the school.  If you have the goods, you can prevail anywhere.  But all else equal...go to the harder school.

Just a point of view, but hopefully explaining what is behind the pick.


what is the best way to take missing courses before applying to MS?

I'm not sure that this applies to Russian Universities as my experience stems from the situation in Germany, but I'd recommend talking to the key people at your target University - academic counseling for CS, student representative, dean of students. See what you can find out about the admission process and whether they can give you any pointers.

I myself have a Bachelor in Applied Math and a Master in CS. Before applying for the MS, I visited the University I wanted to get into and met with the faculty member who was responsible for the academic counseling for CS students. I talked him through my undergrad courses and other experience from internships and he encouraged me to apply right away although I technically did not have enough undergrad CS courses according to the admission guidelines. He also gave me a few pointers on how to write the application in such a way that the admission committee would recognize my practical experience.

His advice: He gave me the list of mandatory undergrad courses and told me that I should match each course with something from my previous studies or my practical experience, to show that even if I had no formal education in some areas, I at least knew the gist of the subject.

I was admitted conditionally and had to complete the two undergrad CS courses in which my prior experience was lacking the most within the first year on top of my regular studies.

In my second year I became the student representative to the admission committee and had a few applicants approach me on the same subject. I gave the same advice, because I noticed early on that the committee would often just hold the list of requirements up to the applicants undergrad transcripts and tick of the boxes.
Even such stupid things as differently named courses could throw the committee off, so I made it my job to go through all the applications and check the matching with the requirements.

In one particular case, a student was very enthusiastic and even ran his own IT-startup business, but the gap between his undergrad studies in a different subject and a CS undergrad was just too big. We had to refuse him the first time he applied. For legal reasons, we couldn't do more than send the standard letter, but luckily he did the smart thing and approached us and between everybody in the admission committee and academic counseling we figured out a way to have him do undergrad courses for a semester and then delay the decision about his follow-up application until the exam results were out and we could make a case for him to be admitted on conditions, like I was.

Your second question, which classes to take, will only be answered when you know what classes they look for in an applicant from another subject.

The people in the application committee at my university really looked for theoretical background. Do we think this applicant knows what P vs NP is? Do we think he can analyze the runtime of an algorithm? Do we think he knows the difference between a proof and an experiment/example? Percieved knowledge gaps in other subjects like electrical engineering or computer networks or operation systems where often seen as less of a problem if the applicants motivation letter stated that he wanted to specialize in an area where he likely wouldn't need that knowledge.
When in doubt, the committee would often say that the funding depended in part on how successful the students were (i.e. it was better not to admit one than to admit him and have him fail) so they would discuss: Do we think that this applicant will complete his studies in a successful and timely manner?

So one more point of advice, which worked well during my time on the committee: Show in your cover letter that you have a clear idea of what you want to do in your masters, why you want to do it, and why you think you have the necessary background and motivation to be successful at it.


A staff member was rude to me in an email and made me look bad in front of other members of the staff. How should I handle this?

It sounds as if your co-worker was extremely rude, and owes you an apology, but pointing those things out in so many words is rarely productive. Instead, I would use something like the following template with a reply-all:

  Hi John, there seems to have been some misunderstanding. From your
  email of January 28th (copy attached below), I understood that I was
  no longer required to feed the departmental axolotls - if I misunderstood this, could you please clarify what was intended?
  Anyway, thanks for fielding it on this occasion.

At that point, if your co-worker is a sensible person who was just having an off day, they will offer an apology without further prompting. If not, well, your other colleagues can form their own judgement based on the relevant facts.

edit:

re. whether it's better to respond to the CC list, or just in private: you certainly have a right of reply in the same venue, but whether it's advisable to exercise that right depends very much on circumstances.

If the alleged omission is sufficiently trivial ("you didn't wash up the teapot yesterday!") then "John" has already made themself look silly just by making a big deal about it, and it's not likely to harm your reputation, so I'd just let it go. The annoyance value to others from prolonging the thread outweighs any need for reputation control; cf. the old adage about wrestling with a pig.

At the other end of things, if leaving the allegation unanswered could harm your professional reputation ("you didn't label the poisons cabinet/feed the research animals/complete the grants proposal due next week"), and if "John"'s allegation might seem plausible to the recipients, then it becomes important to rebut it in the forum where it was made. You don't want a dozen co-workers believing that you're a menace to their health or their work.

Leaving aside your own reputation, it might be important to reply for other people's sake. People take their cues on acceptable behaviour from those around them, and bullies often bully more than one person; for either of those reasons, it can be beneficial to see bullying behaviour promptly challenged.

Because workplace culture varies so much, it might be wise to seek input from colleagues at your institution - they can probably tell you better than us whether people take your co-worker seriously.


How are textbooks meant to be referenced?

I strongly disagree with Dirk. You should not "always strive to keep the number of such references in a textbook as small as possible."

Also, I would say that this: "Also keep the number of different books to which you refer as small as possible." is very poor advice.  It is a disservice to your readers, and wholly unnecessary.

Instead, you should have extensive references in a textbook whenever you draw on other materials. This is a matter of intellectual honesty and to provide your readers (and their teachers/advisers) links to source material. If your content or results come from other sources, including from textbooks, you should make explicit references to them.

Exercises are only in "the public domain" if they are from sources whose copyrights have expired or are from authors who have explicitly made them public domain, or variant thereof.

It may be advisable to have a section of your textbook that minimizes references -- mainly to improve readability.  If so, then you'd be advised to have a parallel section titled "Sources and Further Reading" where you recapitulate the content in the main section and include all references.

Dirk says that textbooks are to be "as self-contained as possible. Hence, there are few references." This is poor advice since it confuses readability with completeness and usability.  To omit references when you have copied or otherwise drawn material from other sources is both incomplete and disreputable.  It harms usability because some students and many teachers will want access to the original books and papers.


Relation between a recommender and a PhD applicant

You may consider two roles for the students in previous institute; one as a PhD student looking for topic and the other is a short-term research collaborator. As the recommender was not engaged in your PhD job, he cannot be PhD advisor.

However, since the recommender was primary investigator (or head) of the project student worked in, the relationship is research collaborator or more focused, primary investigator in a collaborative research. Your output of the collaborative research with him as technical report, conference paper, or journal article would prove the relationship.

But I think student needs to convince the new graduate school that why did he fail/dismiss previous PhD.


Putting verbal offer of PHD position on resume

I would not include such an offer on a CV. Saying you were offered a position is fine to include in a cover letter or statement of purpose or other such document, but a CV should be a listing of demonstrable accomplishments. Including something like this is potentially awkward—and declining a job offer is not normally what you want to "show off" on a CV anyways.


How to apply for a faculty position elsewhere without revealing the conflict with current dept chair?

Good search committee members are aware that many applicants do not want their current department to know that they are applying for a job. Search committee members should only be contacting your listed references. That said there are plenty of bad search committee members and plenty of search committees that accidentally let information leak out.

It is perfectly reasonable to not list your current chair, or anyone from your current department, as a reference. You should, however, list your current position on your CV. Not listing your chair as a reference does not mean your chair will not get an informal phone call, but there is nothing you can do about that. You should also know that when a department chair gives a reference, they often highlight the good aspects, and ignore the bad aspects, of people they want to get rid of and focus on the bad aspects of people they want to keep.


What should be taken note of in collaborating with professors/ researchers?

If this is your first real experience of research, please use this as a way of getting your feet wet, and learning how to do research.  I would advise against advocating for co-authorship with the professor in the early stage.  It could be seen as counting your chickens before they're hatched, or as a way of asking the professor to count his/her chickens before they're hatched.

Edit: I suppose you could let him know that you actually have a third objective which you forgot to mention -- to get a co-authorship.  But try to come across as ambitious and eager, rather than arrogant.  You said a primary goal is to get a strong reference for grad school.


Submitting to conference without intention to present

In many conferences, the work has to be presented in order to be included in the conference proceedings and considered published otherwise a submission, even if accepted, will be removed.

If you really want to have the paper in a conference you can submit it to one that a friend or colleague is attending and he can present your work for you. It is not an optimal situation and might be frowned upon by those attending the presentation, as realistically you cannot expect a decent Q&A session afterwards, but many of the conference organisers tolerate it and it quite a common practice in an environment with budget cuts or less travel money available.


How does the experience of working at a "top" university differ from working at an average one?

(Since I've only been faculty in one department, my answer involves a bit of extrapolation...)

Quality of students — It is much easier for top departments to attract the strongest students to their PhD programs, so the average quality of students tends to be higher.  Faculty at top schools can spend less time bringing their PhD students up to speed and more time interacting with them as mature colleagues.  This has a big impact on the productivity, research quality, and enjoyment of the faculty.  (Of course, the strongest students are not all concentrated in the top few departments.)
Quality of faculty — Similarly, it is much easier for top departments to attract the top faculty in their respective subfields, so the average quality of faculty tends to be higher.  Again, this has a big impact on productivity, research quality, and quality of life.  (Again, the strongest researchers are not all concentrated in the top few departments.)
Rock star culture — See my previous answer about the benefits of being a PhD student in a top department.  The same comments apply to faculty in top departments. Of course everyone publishes in the top conferences and journals.  Of course every assistant professor gets a CAREER award.  Of course everyone has a few best paper awards.  Of course everyone sends their PhD students to academic positions in top departments.  Of course the faculty got another umpty-dozen-million dollars in grant money this year.  That's not exceptional at top places; that's just normal business.  That assumption of excellence is both incredibly powerful and incredibly stressful, just as it is for students.  Impostor Syndrome is rampant.
Center of the world — Top departments are more likely to attract the best researchers to visit, either as informal collaborators or as formally invited speakers.  This opens up many more avenues for collaboration.
Administrative support — Because top departments are well-funded, they tend to have more administrative resources.  For example, my business office (paid entirely by "indirect costs" from grants) takes care of all the financial and administrative details in my grant proposals, letting me concentrate entirely on the 15-page narrative.


How to make a full article out of one straightforward, but interesting point?

If you have made an interesting point and placed it in context,  you're done! There's no need to pad out the paper. Articles are allowed to be short and sweet. You may want to send it to a journal that specialises in shorter papers, or that has a section for "brief communications" or the like. Note that these are not necessarily any less prestigious than longer formats.


NSF postdoc as graduate student: Should I list highest degree as Ph.D. or Masters in application form

Your highest degree is a masters. You don't have a PhD until it is awarded. And that is only after you pass all requirements, which has not yet happened.
Of course, you can also say (if the opportunity exists) that you expect to be awarded a doctorate in 2021, but it isn't certain, and that will be understood.


Can a professor not pay a student who will be working on a funded research grant project?

That would be illegal in the US. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but here, all people who work are entitled by federal law to be paid, at least, minimum wage. If he refuses to pay you, you can either quit, refuse to do the work, or call your state's department of labor (or whatever it's called) or the US Departmen of Labor. I don't think Florida has such a state-level department.

If all the money that came from the grant to your school was swallowed by the department, then they should pay you instead. In the US, awards by the NSF are made directly to the university with the requirement that the funding listed in the budget for the workers must go to the named PI and the other named people or (often) unnamed student who will do the work. There are other line items that go to the university (indirect costs, etc.), but I'm not considering those here. The university, essentially, must send the salary money down. I don't know where you are or what terms the granting body puts in its terms, but some similar model seems likely.


Are possibly outdated and damaging studies being taught in universities, and should I be worried?

Some parts of the field of Psychology move very quickly. The pace of the field makes keeping course up to date difficult. For example, in 2013, there was a major update to the DSM. Some classes were ignoring DSM-IV and teaching based on what eventually made it into DSM-5, others kept teaching based on DSM-IV. Some of these classes are still being taught on DSM-IV, despite the new guidelines since it takes time to get new text books and revamp lectures. The same thing happens with courses that look at pharmaceutical treatments and drug addiction. The fields move too quickly to keep up, and many teach based on a snapshot of the world.

As for cutting edge research, Psychology, like many fields has lots of great research and lots of questionable research. Not all Psychology programs get so far as to expose students to cutting edge research. Those that do, tend to try and teach students to read critically.

In summary, the point of a degree is to become a critical thinker. The fact that there are alternative theories is not something to worry about, but rather something to embrace.


How to ensure that the acceptance letter received is real and not a mistake?

The best way to know that you are not in a mix-up is to email a real person. As an international student you really need to speak to someone and you can ask for it. I recommend you to set up an skype interview, even before they accept you. I am sure you have tons of questions besides if you are accepted or not, and you should worry more about finding an education that is a good match for you. Still, I wouldn't assume the worst, that mix-up was an isolated case and not the norm.


How do some Ws on transcripts affect PhD admissions in mathematics?

Your situation doesn't sound so bad to me at all.

First of all, though perhaps I shouldn't, I will admit that many graduate admissions personnel do not thoroughly scour the transcripts.  They look at the GPA and they look at the courses taken.  Often this information is given separately on the application, so a look at the actual transcript may only be required if there is something missing there.  So there's a tip for you: if you are asked for separate information about courses taken, definitely be sure to list it.  (If on the other hand you are asked to list the courses taken together with the grades you got, it seems to me that you are ethically obligated to list the W's.)

More than this though, W's occupy a sort of nether region in academic grading.  In my university we have WP (withdrew passing) and WF (withdrew failing).  Only the latter affects your grade, and my understanding is that WP is not meant to be a stigmatic mark at all.  (In fact undergraduate students are limited to 4 WP's over the course of their careers.)  Unless the registrar puts an asterisk next to your 3.85 GPA and says warning: there were some W's! then in at least one very official sense the W's are not being counted.

More good news: all of the W's are in your first year.  That is exactly the sort of localized difficulty followed by dramatic improvement that admissions committees are looking for.

I think it would be a good idea to use your personal statement to briefly address the W's.  I'm thinking of one or two sentences which acknowledge that they exist, say a few vague words of excuse (e.g. "time to adjust to a new academic environment", "personal difficulties long since resolved"; nothing too specific or gory), and especially: point out how nicely you've moved on.  If you feel like you can use the W's as part of a larger depiction of a crescendo of academic accomplishment, you might try that, but that's a more "advanced technique", so to speak.

I think it is quite likely that the average effect this will have on your application is little or none.  Honestly, to me you sound significantly more guilty / apprehensive about a minor issue long since resolved than you need to be.  I forgive you!  Please don't hesitate to apply to all the PhD programs you're interested in. (If you like algebra/number theory/geometry/topology, please consider UGA.)


Despite excellent grades, does having no rapport with any member of the faculty preclude my getting LoRs?

Yes, you can ask for recommendations from people you don't know well; send an email with one to three of your best papers attached, as well as an unofficial transcript; in the body of the email, remind the professor which course(s) you've taken with that person.  Include a sentence or a paragraph about what draws you to the idea of grad school, that is, show your spark.
Yes, you can apply for grad school with mediocre letters; you may or may not get in.  (I do not know whether the letters you would harvest at this point would be mediocre or not.)  You are right that this might not be the optimal way of proceeding.
Now I'll address what you asked in a comment.

"What does being more involved look like?"  In other words, as a student with Asperger's, who is not naturally outgoing or extroverted, how can I get to know my professors better, with the goal of garnering more effective letters of recommendation?

I'm glad you asked this well in advance of application season, because this gives you time to get to know potential letter writers before you really need the letters.

Ask questions and contribute to class discussions.
(You've done this -- check!)

Visit office hours to start to build an academic relationship.
You don't have to need help with a project in order to visit office hours.  If you are not sure how to structure a conversation in office hours, you could send an email requesting an appointment (so that the professor isn't thrown off thinking you're just coming in for five minutes to, for example, request clarification of an assignment); if I were in your shoes I would say, quite clearly,

"I would like to go to grad school and am hoping to get to know you better, so that I can comfortably ask you to write a letter of recommendation.  However, I have Asperger's and am not accustomed to visiting office hours, but I would like to try; I may need some help getting started with having a productive conversation." (You can use this as is or modify it to make it your own.)

You can also start a conversation through email.  Some individuals are more comfortable with email than in-person visits.  If you're not sure which would work better for you, you might want to try both approaches.
In office hours and in email correspondence, in order to break the ice sometimes it is helpful to share a list of universities you are thinking about applying to, and ask for help in narrowing down the list, or adding to it (depending on the length of your list!).  In other words, you can ostensibly be asking one thing, as a way of getting the ball rolling.

Note that you can ask your university's office of students with disabilities for assistance if you want to.  There is no guarantee that they will help, but they might, and as long as you don't put all your hope in that external assistance, there's no harm in trying.  (Some of these offices are great, some less so.)

You might find it helpful to have a grad-application buddy.  Sort of a partner in crime.  Someone who's going through the same process as you, and you support each other through the process.  In fact, your application buddy might go with you to the first couple of office hours visits for moral support.


Why physics (science) articles and journals differ pedagogically with books?

The textbooks that students use are written for novices. Scientific papers reporting research results are written for experts. And not just any experts but domain experts, or even sub-sub-sub-domain experts. So the current situation is probably about as good as it can be. Why?

Not everyone needs to be an expert in a field, but many people need some knowledge of it. So, in schools, students study the basics of things without any attempt to teach them everything. Students get a working knowledge of a lot of things which lets them be successful either in putting those ideas together to solve problems (application) or to go deeper and use further study to become experts (theory).

But you note that the step from novice to expert is a big one.

Think about closing the gap. Should we make school much much harder? Should we make scientists try to explain everything to novices whenever they write? Both of those would be steps backward, I think. The first would mean more failures, the second would slow down the march of science and make scientific papers repetitive so that the beauty of new results gets lost in the chaff.

There are papers (and books) at the intersection, however. Some people prefer to write survey papers in a given field, attempting to bring the general understanding of a sub field more accessible to a general audience. Carl Sagan was good at that sort of thing in astronomy, for example.

However, surveys of a field are only written fairly late, after the discoveries of a field have had time to settle in the minds of the experts, proving their worth. The most important discoveries can take quite a long time to become integrated into the general thinking of experts. Only then do the survey papers make much sense.

But if a novice wants to become an expert it can be a long and hard journey. University education, especially graduate education, is supposed to put a student on a path to expertise. Working on research with an expert advisor is the most common way. But the first few (hundred) scientific papers will be difficult. It becomes easier with practice. But so does riding a bicycle.

Note: Even graduate level textbooks are written for novices, but in a sub-field rather than the overall field. My first look as measure theory was in grad school and, while I had a lot of mathematics experience, I was a novice in that particular subject.


Are student records accessible by university officials?

The answer provided by earthling is excellent. I would like to tackle this question from another angle.

I don't believe any school will purposedly leak or illegally obtain student information. You are in the US. You are protected under FERPA.

However, accidents always happen. For example, what if one of the professors in the school you previously attended just transferred to the school you are applying. He would know you were in another school and the program you were in. Or your current advisor met with your former advisor in a conference. Academia is a small world.

I would not worry about the SSN issue if I were you. Just focus on your application and your study. Put aside your past. Pursue the future.


How does one proceed when publishing a research paper to refute the conclusions of another (someone else's) research paper?

Showing that something in the literature is shaky or incomplete or mistaken is part of how science advances.
If you can replace a published claim with something better rather than just showing that it's wrong, all the better.
When you find an instance of that you write it up carefully, professionally and kindly and submit it to an appropriate journal - perhaps the one that published the original work.


Student Travel Grant = Volunteering; is it worth it?

Based on my own experience, I would definitely recommend applying for the travel grant!

The pros you have mentioned are fairly substantial. Regarding the con: I have never found any conference volunteer job to be at all onerous*, and usually they have been fun and/or valuable.

For example, here are some volunteer jobs I have had:

Volunteering at the registration desk

If I have this job, I get to meet all the attendees as they come in. Usually, when I first sit down at the registration table, I flip through the badges to see who is registered, and make a plan for who I want to meet. Then, if those people come in while I am "on duty" and they are not in a rush, I can strike up a conversation.

By doing this, I've been able to have some really "spontaneous" talks with important people in my field who I wouldn't have had much of an opening to meet otherwise.

I've never been asked to do this job for more than a couple of hours at any given conference, so I didn't feel like I was missing out. If this is my volunteer job, I can usually arrange with the other volunteers so I am "on duty" during a time when there are no sessions I'm interested in anyways.

Taking minutes in meetings

Another time, I was a student volunteer at a conference that also hosts its sponsoring SIG's annual business meeting, and my job was to take minutes in this meeting. I got to listen in while all the big shots in the SIG talked about what they really think of the state of the subfield, the quality of the conference, the direction they'd like to see things go in, etc.

Also, the meeting was in the evening and there were no conference sessions going on, so I didn't miss anything while doing this (except maybe a nap).

Mic shuttler, running the 1-minute madness session

Some volunteer jobs take place inside the conference sessions themselves, so you don't miss out on anything while doing these jobs.

For example, I've been assigned to be the person that carries the mic around to people who have questions during the Q&A after each talk.

I've also been part of keeping the 1-minute madness session (where poster/demo presenters get up one after another and speak for one minute about their poster) on time. The student volunteer coordinator described this job as follows:

  1 person in charge of lining up presenters in the correct order, 1 person in charge of advancing the presentations, and about 5 are responsible for throwing the presenter with crumpled paper balls at the 56th second to get her/him off the stage.

(I didn't have to throw any paper balls.)

* YMMV. At a large, well-organized conference there will be lots of volunteers, you can choose which task you prefer, and no one student has to do too much work. At a smaller conference, things may be different.


How to deal with two students who potentially colluded when one is unavailable?

Not letting this student move forward at this point would be punishment. If there is a chance that you will find the student innocent of any wrongdoing, it seems like the injustice of punishing them for something they did not do is  worse than letting them get away with something they did.

Make it clear to the student that they will pass the class given the lack of evidence against them but that you will continue to evaluate the situation. Make sure they know that if you conclude later that they have colluded, you will update their grade to a failing one and force them to retake the class.

The only real negative consequence of this is that the student might be able to take classes that require this class as a prerequisite before they are forced to go back and take the original class again. That's not ideal, but it doesn't really seem so bad.


How to represent and cite a patent using BibTeX?

Firstly, BibTeX is more or less a data structure. You can populate its fields however you want, as long as it captures the essential information.

Now, there is an @patent{...} type which, while not standard, is supported by many styles. Check the documentation for the citation style you are using for details. As you would be using either the @misc or @patent types, you should try to populate your fields or configure your styles in a way that the compiled output from BibTeX matches the expected style of the document that you are trying to prepare.

For example, IEEEtran's BibTeX package supports that @patent type and you can read their documentation on what fields should be populated and how. In particular, they support the number field which you should populate with 4741207 and the nationality field which you should populate with United States, instead of the Google output which put those information in the note field. The publisher field is actually ignored in the IEEEtrans style, so you don't need to do anything about it, and the url you can just drop, since given the United States patent number it is relatively easy to find it on the USPTO website.

If your publication follows the Chicago manuals, here's how they prefer it to look. Note in particular it does not show any "publisher" or "url" information.

If you use biblatex, this TeX.SE q/a gives a pretty good sample of acceptable use.

In short, like most questions about "how to cite blah", the answer is:

  The point of a citation is to give an unambiguous reference to previously published material. Many publishers and societies have established conventions and styles and the practical suggestion is to follow their guidance in how to style your bibliographic information. Absent that, use your own best judgment about how much information is sufficient to identify the reference.


Is it looked down upon to apply to PhD programs in the US if I’m currently enrolled in one somewhere else?

No: You've found a bad fit with your current programme, so switching is a rationale decision, just like you'd switch ill-suited jobs.


What should I do, as my submitted paper is still under review after 1 year?

I'm in a different field, but had a similar situation. I got a paper published in a journal in a matter of 6 months (submission to publication), then followed with another paper a month later. That paper was in review without notice for 6 months. After two unanswered emails, I politely asked for a decision on publication such that I might submit elsewhere if publication wasn't likely. This prompted them to respond that they were having trouble locating reviewers and asked for a list of potential reviewers. I received my reviews for the paper about 2 months later. It seems that if you suggest you might pull the paper and submit elsewhere, it may open a more honest conversation!


Should I (as a reviewer) ask an author to cite my work where I proposed a core hypothesis, when they have already referenced other points?

Think about what would be appropriate if you weren't the author? I think the fact that you are both reviewer and author of the original idea is in some sense a distraction from the main issue. I.e., that whether the author should cite a specific work or not should not be affected by who is reviewing the work. Of course, in reality, authors are intimately familiar with their own work and also have incentives to obtain credit and more citations. Some reviewers are also concerned about the conflict of interest and the power imbalance, or even in maintaining blind review. But ultimately, if you can answer the question of whether the citation was needed had you not been the author, then you probably have the answer to your question.

So, does an author need to cite a reference where a hypothesis was proposed where the author's study pursues that hypothesis?

In general, this would depend on the circumstances.

Novelty of the hypothesis. If you were the first person to propose the idea, then this suggests a greater degree of novelty. Alternatively, if many papers touch on the idea, then there's less need to cite.
Intellectual insight to identify the hypothesis. If the hypothesis required a degree of insight, then it is more appropriate to cite. For example, suggesting that X may be related to Y or that more longitudinal research is needed are generally ideas that don't need a citation.
Were the authors actually influenced by the idea. If the idea is a fairly natural extension of the literature, then the authors may have independently come up with the idea. this also speaks to the point that the idea may have required less insight and novelty.
Degree of alignment between idea and their implementation. In most cases, research involves many choices. The expression of an idea can also involve a degree of creativity. Thus, the more the idea is aligned with how you expressed it, the more it is worthy of a citation.
Do the authors claim that no one has proposed the hypothesis before? If so, then this is clearly wrong, and needs to be changed by either removing such a bold claim or adding a citation.

Overall, whether a previously proposed hypothesis needs a citation depends on the details of your case and your field.

Speaking from a behavioural sciences perspective, I tend to think that many hypotheses do not need specific citations to references where a similar hypothesis was put forward. Discussion sections often are typically not the core contribution of a paper. The empirical study and their results is typically the main component. Discussion sections often include proposals for future research that put forward various ideas that could be tested in the future. Many ideas are relatively trivial to put down on paper (e.g., mediating and moderating variables; suggesting particular studies using particular methodologies). In many cases, the contribution of a study is less in proposing the hypothesis, and more in the collection of data to examine a research question, and the rigorous assessment of what that data means.


Seeking to pursue research project independently (outside of academia)

There are only a few issues. First, yes, you can do such research as long as you haven't signed a contract that gives all of your IP to your employer. This sort of yielding of output is common in industry for employees, but rare, I hope, in academia.

Second, if your research involves human subjects in any way, you probably have to get vetting on your research proposal from an ethics body. In the US, that would be a university's IRB, or some equivalent. Most reputable journals won't accept a paper involving human subjects without an external ethics review.

But if there are no impediments, just do your research and submit it in the normal way. If you don't want your university's name attached to it in any way, your affiliation can just be "independent researcher".


Is it more respectful to address a professor who is an MD as "Dr." or "Professor" in email?

The answer strongly depends on local culture. For example, for Germany there has been a similar question some time ago (Do german professors like to be called "Herr X"?). To make things worse, the culture might vary even between institutions.

I learned that in Mexico the "professor" is just the job description, while "Dr." is the valuable academic degree.

In the US, some professors in my field (medical computer science) are very relaxed regarding titles, others are not (but this is an outsiders view).

The easiest way is to ask a professor you can trust in your institution. Most will happily explain the common habbits and I assume you'll her some interesting anecdotes ;-).

In general, the most respectful way to adress a professor is "Prof. Dr. XXX".


How to obtain a degree equivalency certificate in UK?

In the UK, NARIC is the government designated agency for comparing foreign qualifications to their UK equivalents.


Consequences of not attending a conference

I suggest that you go and make the best use of the time, both at the conference and otherwise. You have a long plane ride in both directions. You have evenings if you forgo socializing. You have time between sessions to review course material if you have some notes on index cards or otherwise that are easy to carry.

You might even be successful in begging to put off the exam(s) for a day or so.

And, as others have said, if you have had a paper accepted then you have an obligation to present it. Making your advisor happy is worth something also.

And remember that in the last analysis, for moving on to grad school, more than your grades will be considered. Most especially letters from your advisor.


Declining a paper review after accepting it and seeing the manuscript

The best course is to just inform the editor that you are unable to perform/complete the review as it is outside your area of expertise. The title led you to think otherwise. You are sorry, but others are better qualified to judge and give advice.

I don't see that as anything strange at all, and no one is likely to think less of you.

What would be wrong is to give a review of something you don't comprehend completely. No one benefits from that.

Just be honest with the editor. No one knows everything.


We should start with the Wikipedia definition:

  A diploma mill (also known as a degree mill) is an unaccredited higher education institution that offers bogus academic degrees and diplomas for a fee. These degrees may claim to give credit for relevant life experience, but should not be confused with legitimate prior learning assessment programs.

If a student doesn't have to do any academic work for a degree, or the student is given credit based on "life experience," it qualifies as a diploma mill.  Another key indicator is whether there are actually any teachers that work for the business.  While it is probably not illegal in most cases to claim a degree from such a company (and I deliberately do not use the term "institution"), there have been many cases of employees being disciplined or fired for using the degree to either get a job or to obtain a higher salary based on claiming a degree from a diploma mill (esp. teachers whose salaries are based on the level of a degree).

As the Wikipedia article notes, there are legitimate schools that have a system for awarding credit based on other formal education, such as military education obtained while on active duty or in the reserves (see, for instance, this guide to transferring credit).  This type of credit transfer is rare for graduate work, although certain rigorous post-baccalaureate programs in the military, such as the U.S. Navy's Nuclear Power School, may qualify for some post-B.S. programs.  This type of credit should not be confused with work obtained at the military's post-graduate schools, such as the Naval Postgraduate School or the Air Force Institute of Technology.

Diploma mills should also not be confused with for-profit education, such as the infamous University of Phoenix.  Arguments over the merits of for-profit education are not really within the scope of academia.stackexchange, but for what it's worth, degree-granting institutions of this type do require students to follow a curriculum, take actual classes (many times online), and give grades based on assessed performance (and charge a good bit of money per credit-hour).

Bottom line: if you have to pay a nominal fee for a "degree" that requires no official classes or research, you got your degree from a diploma mill.


Should my master's thesis be related to my future PhD research?

Can you ask your prospective PhD advisor? Surely it is not impossible to change areas between masters and PhD, but for some topics some earlier experience may be very helpful. So it depends.
As a supervisor, I'd not normally expect a PhD student to have worked in the same area before, although I had two PhD students who had done this, and it was actually a good thing; and in one case I wish a student would have learnt more about the area of their topic before the actual start, but you can do that even if your thesis is in a different field. Most students who "switched" had successful projects as well, so I wouldn't expect this to be a big problem, but there is still a possibility that a supervisor prefers a student with more experience in the same area, if available.


Is an unexpected reference letter inherently a black mark?

I doubt that it would be treated as a negative thing, but just a failure of communication. I think that in some places, however, unsolicited letters commenting on a person have legal issues.
You may be asked to explain it, of course, and you might want to talk to that letter writer as well so that you understand what happened. Perhaps they misunderstood something, perhaps something you said.
A negative, but unsolicited, letter might be a serious issue some places and I think that some countries in EU make a point of regulating such things. Maybe elsewhere as well.
However, if they ask for three letters and get four, they might be required to discard one of them and you might not know which. But, in this case, you already told them who would be writing, so it is more likely that the unsolicited letter would be dropped. There doesn't seem to be any interpretation that suggests you were dishonest in any way.


Who should I ask to write a letter or recommendation

The two key criteria here are

Familiarity with your work (research, teaching, service). You want them to provide details for how promising your research is, how you would work with colleagues, how you'd teach and mentor students, and so on.
Familiarity with academic work (tenure-track or tenured professors > other kinds of recommendations). From the perspective of credibility, someone who is familiar with the positions you apply for will be more readily believed when they recommend you. Also, they'll be more likely to mention details that speak directly to the position you'll serve in.

Based on these items, person B would be best suited to provide a recommendation for you. They are familiar with your work from some time ago, and hopefully you've kept in contact enough that they'd like to provide a recommendation. (Writing them a precis or summary of your recent work will undoubtedly help, as they could also write at least a little about how you've performed since your Master.)

Person A's helpfulness would really depend on the position you apply to. A's letter is riskier because some hiring committees may question the applicability of the letter on the grounds you mention - it may make it look like you're more interested in industry work. Person C is right out - a generic recommendation letter does you fewer favors, as the impression might be, "Wow, that person really didn't like the applicant."

For other readers or for future planning: if you haven't had anyone observe your teaching, try inviting a letter writer to do that. Teaching may or may not be a central focus of the positions you apply to, but having someone able to speak more about your teaching may provide you with that third recommender if you only have two faculty members who have close knowledge of your research.


Authorship dispute after author was removed without their knowledge

You have described a situation very similar to the one described here—unfortunately, you and your colleagues have mishandled the situation and are at fault through lack of communication, even though it was an oversight.

Since you did not communicate with co-author C that you were going to remove him as an author, he is entirely within his rights to raise a complaint against you. If he can provide sufficient evidence that the editors at the journal or the administrators at the university decide that you did not treat him fairly, you can be subject to sanctions. The paper certainly could be retracted, and you could be subjected to administrative punishment from the university as a result.


I can request to have my PhD certificate name a more specific research area than "PhD in Computer Science". What should I have it say?

Many employers and recruitment agencies use either automated searches or low skill human readers to select resumes that meet specific requirements. Only those resumes will be viewed by a human with knowledge of the job etc.

If you pick an unusual subject designation for your PhD you risk your resume not being selected for jobs that require a PhD in computer science. It may never be seen by anyone who understands that "Applied Machine Learning" is just as appropriate for that job as "Computer Science".

If your resume passes the filter it will be read by someone who can evaluate your specialization from the text and the publication list.


The academic grades in Ireland vary somewhat from one university to another. Something like the following is fairly typical:

  Professor (aka Full Professor)

  Associate Professor

  Senior Lecturer or Statutory Lecturer

  Lecturer (above the bar)

  Lecturer (below the bar)

The last two, which you ask about, may also go by somewhat different names such as as 'college lecturer' and 'lecturer' with no parenthetic qualification.

Most new academic staff are appointed as lecturers (below the bar). After a certain number of years' service, a lecturer below the bar is eligible to apply to progress 'above the bar'. An application form may have to be completed and these days perhaps even another interview may be required, but it is a largely straightforward process to progress in this way. (The next stage, becoming a senior lecturer or statutory lecturer, is far from straightforward and is generally competitive, so you may very well have mathematicians, Latin scholars, botanists and chemical engineers competing for a handful of posts.)

Note that the question of permanency (tenure) is a separate issue: an applicant may well be appointed as a Lecturer (below the bar) in a permanent capacity.

In summary:

  Lecturer (below the bar) and lecturer (above the bar) are generally the two most junior academic positions in an Irish university.

While this doesn't answer your question regarding other naming schemes, I hope this clarifies where these grades lie.


Applying for PhD programs abroad while doing one in your home country

It's usually a bad idea to do two PhDs at the same time because:

A PhD is a full-time job, with some very intensive periods. One has to deal with enough stress already when doing one PhD.
It would unavoidably generate conflicts: sometimes your advisor no 1 will ask you to do something which will keep you busy the full week or month. What do you tell your advisor number 2, that you're on holiday? If your two advisors don't agree on the direction of your research, what do you do? What if one insists to have their name on a paper you did with the other?
Either you do your best on both, but then it will take you more time than doing only one, probably double. Or you do one seriously and you botch the other, but then what's the point of doing it?
Assuming you survive the two PhDs, at the end you can apply for a postdoc or industry job... Exactly the same as with one PhD, no benefit.


How should I cite a screenshot in APA style for my student paper?

Generic APA format for websites and the like is:

  Author, A. (date). Title of document [Format description]. Retrieved from http://URL

In your case, Author, A. would be (IMHO) the author of the screenshot, Title of document would be something descriptive of the image (probably depends on what you want to highlight / why you're "citing" the image), Format description would be something in the lines of "Image, screen capture".


Why do some research centres and university department publish a multi-year future strategic plan?

Another reason may be funding at a large scale. Governments sometimes have plans to strengthen the research in a certain area (ex. biosciences). By making an institution-wide plan, you can make a very strong case for the funding agency and possibly secure a large amount of money. The time scale is also important. If you have money guaranteed for seven years, you can buy expensive equipment and hire experts knowing that you will not have to let them go after a year, for example.

In the particular case of Stanford I imagine their main target is private investment. The aim of the plan is then showing off a strong commitment to their objectives.


How can I complete the prerequisites for MS in Computer Science? 2019 application

Specifically, I need to have completed courses in Data Structures,
  Algorithms, Operating Systems, Theory of Computation, Compilers and
  Computer Networks.

These are the courses you'll need to complete then, and you'll need to complete them at an accredited school of some sort.

Professional certifications like CompTIA a+ / Network+ etc. won't cover those topics at all, and simply wouldn't address these requirements. Some of those computer science topics are available on edX and Coursera, but most of them aren't accredited, or proctored, so the school you are applying to may not accept them. Edx does offer an online MS in Computer Science in collaboration the Georgia Institute of Technology, but you'd have apply for admission to that program, and they too will want evidence of having taken undergraduate courses in algorithms, operating systems etc. Also, when taken for official credit, the Edx courses are not cheap!

That leaves you with option (1). I assume by PG you mean post-graduate. You should communicate with the school offering the MS, and see if they can offer suggestions for how this could be done.

There is a remote chance that you could learn these topics by self-study and demonstrate your mastery of them to the school offering the M.S., but this is something you'd have to negotiate with the department you are applying to. The department would probably be highly resistant to this because many who claim to be self-taught really don't understand the depth of preparation required, and it ends up being a lot of work for the department for very disappointing results. Many people can teach themselves JavaScript, many fewer people can teach themselves the theory of algorithm design.


Cyclic trend through generations of excellence, Top researchers -> Their PhD students -> Top researchers ->

This is commonly known and observed.  See the discussion of academic "family trees".

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

But I do think what you did is a little more interesting to actually pull the thesis of each person and skim it.  Not just note the big name. Very cool.  Kudos.

I think the trend occurs because more famous individuals tend to have lots of graduate students (perhaps also being pulled to fancier institutions and having access to stronger grad students).

FYI, if you trace back almost all current "name" inorganic chemists in the US, you will find that they are "progeny" of Linus Pauling (multiple generations).  Similar trends in physical chemistry or organic chemistry or nuclear physics.

I would imagine there would be some (but less) of the same effect in mathematics or literature or the like.  This is because big names will still have a bit more funding and just attract the stronger individuals.  But those are fields where there is less need for expensive equipment, large groups of students, etc.  (IOW, more random individual geniuses.)


How to deal with violence in the classroom (UK)?

In the US, a college student's risks of being robbed, assaulted, or raped on campus are each roughly 3x10-3 per year. This is higher than we'd like it to be -- well, we'd like the rate to be zero. One's chances of being victimized can probably be reduced by taking commonsense precautions such as calling Campus Safety to ask for an officer to walk along if one has to cross a college campus in the dark. I don't know how much of this violent crime is alcohol-related, but certainly alcohol is involved in many off-campus incidents.

As a teacher, there are some common-sense things you can do if there is a violent incident, such as a shoving match or scuffle. Identify yourself as a teacher to the student who has been violent. If the person is your student, tell him/her to leave class until the next meeting. Call 911 and report the incident to Campus Safety.

  Most schools in the UK do not have a lockdown / violence procedure as it is very rare.

The reason we do have lockdown procedures and lockdown drills here in the US is not because school shootings are common in the US. In the US, a college student's annual risk of dying in a school shooting is something like 3x10-6 per year. Since the risk of being raped is roughly 1000 times higher than the risk of being a victim of a school shooting, this idea of a lockdown drill is clearly disproportionate. It's based on cultural and
emotional responses, not a realistic assessment of risks. Although
events like the Kennedy assassination, 9/11, and the Newtown shooting
are culturally powerful, they should not be allowed to take over our
lives or evoke a dysfunctional response.

There is no intellectually rigorous evidence for any particular lockdown procedure, drill, training, etc. For example, my school wanted us to show our students a video advocating a "run, hide or fight" strategy, but there is no clear evidence to support this strategy.

Furthermore, drills detract from instruction and may violate students' rights by locking them up in a classroom and telling them that they can't leave.


Writing a draft of your own recommendation letter: how to compare yourself to other students?

Write the letter the way you want it written.  Send it to your recommender along with a note that says something like

  I've been offered advice to the effect that the best letters offer a
  direct comparison to a peer group.  Toward this end, I've provided
  some recommended language comparing me to the group I feel is most
  relevant for this letter in paragraph X.  Obviously, I'm not perfectly
  comfortable doing this, and I suggest that you read that paragraph
  carefully and adjust it for accuracy.


Is unfinalized information in graduate application considered "misleading content"?

It is pretty unlikely that anyone would consider it improper. Things change. If your information is accurate when you submit it that is all you can do. It is what it is.

But you might get questions on why you dropped the course(s). Be sure you have an honest and accurate answer for that.

And if things change while you have an open application, just update the institution when you know the new situation.


what are my options if the degree i want is not available on my country?

From your question, it seems like there is a misunderstanding about the process of studying abroad:

If you want to study abroad, you first apply for admission (and possibly scholarships). Only if you are accepted (and you accept the offer), you start your preparations to move to the place of study. There is no need to move before having been accepted.

You also don't need an exchange program between countries in order to do that. You just apply to a university that you are interested in, using the documentation of your previous studies that you have (e.g., high school degree). Applications from abroad are quite normal in many institutions.

On a related note: for most countries in the world, in order to study there, you need a proper visa. You will only be able to get a visa that allows you to study there after you have been accepted for a program.

As to finding out where you should apply to: this is the more difficult question, as this is quite subjective. There are university rankings that give you an idea of what very good universities are out there. Note that these rankings have their own problems, but they are often a start. Then, you can search for research papers in some sub-area of software engineering that you find interesting. If you find very strong research groups in that area, you may want to find out about the courses of study being offered at their institution.


May I reuse my own figure without coauthor's permission?

You -- and your co-author -- have, most likely, assigned your copyright in the paper to the publisher.

Without knowing all the details of your copyright agreement, your copyright agreement seems to allow you, and your co-author, the right to re-use the work, and that right applies to each of you separately. The right to re-use the work requires you to reference the original paper and all its authors.

I see no reason why you shouldn't use the figure, even without the permission of your co-author, as your copyright agreement with the original journal appears to allow this. I see no ethical argument against re-using the figure, either.

P.S. I have a qualification in intellectual property law, but I am not a lawyer.


MHRA: citing texts from foreign language - original in footnotes?

Here a few solutions, all of which should be fine unless your professor explicitly rejects one of them.  Since the MHRA (from what I can tell glancing over it) doesn't include explicit recommendations, as long as you indicate the source of your translated text and the original, I can't imagine them being so unreasonable to count off.

Option 1: Find a translation
This might not be possible, but if you can, just cite it instead.  Life made easy for everyone, unless it's a terrible translation.
Option 2: If short, include both
I would only do this if the handful of foreign words are pertinent to the discussion (perhaps due to ambiguity or double entendre), or are relatively famous.  You would probably want to quote Julius Caesar as …"Veni, vidi, vici" (p. 38), which is to say "I came, I saw, I conquered"….  For such short translations, if you did them yourself or they are well known, there's no real need to indicate the source of the translation.
Option 3: Original/translation in text, translation/original in footnote/endnote.
This prevents your main text from being too cluttered but could quickly turn into an abuse of footnotes/endnotes, especially if you have a lot of relatively short quotes.  If you just have two or three long block quotes, this might be best, though.
Option 4: Translate to English and clarify.
This is my preferred approach.  Just cite in English, but in your citation, add a little extra saying "translation mine" not unlike the common "emphasis mine" to indicate italicization not present in the original.  From what I can tell, in MHRA you actually put "emphasis added" in parentheses inside the quotation marks, so you may just put at the beginning or end "(translated from the French)" or similar.  Or, since MHRA appears to use footnotes for first citations, just include the text after the reference entry "I have translated all citations from this source to English" (or similar), and never worry about it again.


Can a professor fix a mistake in grading after the semester has ended?

Yes, the professor is responsible for mistakes she made. Not noticing a mistake doesn't excuse it. But the current situation is no longer under the control of the professor as you state the question. It is up to the administration to correct the error.

Of course, the professor should make an appeal, along with the student, for an exception to any rule.

So, in giving an evaluation to the professor you can validly complain about the mistake, but not about the rules made by others. For that, you need to complain elsewhere.

In general, people are responsible for their own actions and omissions, but not those of others. But they should also work to correct past mistakes however they can.

The lead question has been edited, so let me add:

While the professor should try to help the student fix any errors that were made, the rules might not allow it. However, I would consider systems with inflexible rules, not permitting errors to be repaired, as unethical. It saves someone a bit of work to forbid such changes, but the accuracy of the record and the fairness to students are values that far outweigh such considerations.


Is promotion from staff scientist to professor possible? (Considering job offer in US)

Probably you will not be considered for promotion to professor.  But you could still apply for position of professor, either there or at other institutions.  (It may be considered bad form to start applying for other positions right away; wait a few years.  And by then your "famous professor" may be willing to write a letter of recommendation for you.)


How do I write about suggested reading by my professor

Don't obsess over the wording. "Thanks for the suggestion...interesting... following up". Your summary might be valuable if the professor hasn't actually read the paper and asked for a summary.

But, don't get to deeply caught following "interesting" ideas that aren't related to your own research. If he is asking you to expand or redirect your research, then you need to have a discussion with him. That can be a serious matter.

But a certain amount of this is normal. Your professor wants you to learn, but he also wants to speed up his own learning. That can be good or bad for the student, depending on how much it helps build a relationship as well as an education.

You write better by practicing. To paraphrase another idea: Good writing comes from experience. Experience comes from bad writing.


Unsolicited CVs from grad school applicants - ignore or try to help?

I think we all get these emails and being famous and more senior probably means getting more of them. I am not famous or senior so I get one/two of these a day. I reply to them all. I am not sending man to mars and and can spend 30 seconds to reply to someone who sent an irrelevant one or spend a bit of time helping someone who was genuine and/or had a high calibre and went and studied my work. Naturally the quality of my reply depends on the quality of the email I have received. Thats the least that I can do. I must confess at times it has been a one liner saying "at least do a bit of research and see what I do instead if this generic meaningless email and have attached my boilerplate text explaining why this is not helpful and what they should do" but also sending a three pager, correcting mistakes I have seen in CV, cover letter and/or proposal and calling people I know to help somebody out.

Why do I do this? Yes it takes time and we are all busy but I enjoy the fact that I am in a position to guide someone and help them out in bettering themselves. Many have done this for me before and believe it or not those guys who replied were really helpful. I do the same in hope that it might inspire someone, help him/her succeed and give them the sense that people do care about you and want to have your back. Same way many people are in this community who give their time and help strangers they don't know.

Now answer to the question:
Write a boilerplate text for the ones who send you random stuff. This is not the last time you will get something like this. Explain why this is not going to help and what is the correct way. You only have to do this once and whether they take your advice or not is their choice...

In future if you become an academic please do try to help people and don't see their efforts as SPAM if you feel they are genuine and have tried. Also give the benefit of the doubt to the ones who send random emails. They might just be desperate and need some help. Preparing some text to explain the above might actually help someone. It might be that he/she has got bad advice about how to go about finding positions etc.


How to sort all the papers referenced by a given paper by citation count?

Microsoft Academic provides an option to sort references of a paper by citation count. I am not aware how complete or accurate it is, but you could try it out. They also seem to provide an API for automated access.
Screenshot of an example for reference:

Note: I am not affiliated with this service.


Is it reasonable to get the university's legal team to advise on an open source licensing issue that affects software developed for research

Your work is important for your supervisors grant.
Your supervisor is employed at said university and thus his grant is important to the university.
The universities legal team deals with legal issues that are important for the university.

Sounds rather clear to me. Furthermore, asking your supervisor or even sending a short "can you help me with such an issue" mail to the legal team takes only a few minutes of their time.
Of course you should clarify who to ask first and not start off with 10 pages of legal "bla" in your first email.

PS: On the other hand, you might get yourself and the legal team in a lot of trouble if you publish something, under the universities name and with your supervisor employed there, without taking care of such issues first.


How to describe affiliation in between college and grad school?

Despite the differences in circumstances, I believe that the top answer in the linked question can be adapted  to your case as well.  Now, during the fellowship, and during graduate school, you will be registered with some university.

The fellowship period is a little odd, but they had you register with a university for a reason, and it seems that you will be affiliated at least tangentially---unless people with your fellowship list themselves as an affiliate of the institution giving the fellowship, which happens in some cases as well.  Check and see what other people with your fellowship have done, and it should be clear.

During the gaps, use your last affiliation on publications, since you will almost certainly have done at least some of the work there.  As for describing your current situation during the gap, you don't have to say "unaffiliated", you can just be clear, e.g., "I finished at X in June, and am starting at Y in September."


A large part of my master's thesis (~25%) is essentially a summary of one book. How to cite correctly and in a tastefull manner?

Overriding answer: ask your advisor.

In expository work like this, what I've usually seen done is that you start the section with a note saying something like "The material in this section is primarily drawn from  Handbook of Reticulated Splines by P. Smith [47]."  After that, you don't bother to decorate every sentence with "[47]" or "as  Smith states", except where you feel it is particularly important for clarity or the reader's convenience (e.g. you want to quote Smith's exact words, or point the reader to something on a specific page of the book, or you want to discuss Smith's approach in contrast to someone else's).

But again, ask your advisor in case they have some other ideas as to how you should handle it.


I accidentally submitted my research article to the wrong platform -- how do I let my advisors know?

If your advisors know of the problem, they can help fix it. For example, perhaps they might suggest submitting the article to a different conference. Even if the problem is not fixable, they can still help mitigate it, e.g. by mentioning in any reference letters that you have written a marvelous piece of work that wasn't published because of some confusion with the conference submission platform.
You gain nothing by hiding the information, so do not hide it.
One more thing: it is quite possible that you might not have a problem in the first place. After all, if the organizers really had two submission links, one of which they did not check but still sent out submission numbers & receipt notifications, then it's not surprising that some papers are going to be misfiled. They could very well be kicking themselves over the error and would do their best to make up for it. Don't panic before you get a response from them.


Is it academically dishonest to submit the same project to two different classes in the same semester?

Whether it is or not, the professors in the courses will have the last say. If either of them considers it dishonest or otherwise improper, for any reason, you will wind up in a bad place.

But there is an easy way out. Just ask both of them for permission to do this. They might say yes, or no, but then you have a clear answer. They might also give permission provided that you go a bit beyond the bare essentials to demonstrate sufficient work (and seriousness) to cover both.

But doing it without notice or permission seems dangerous, no matter the ethics.

And, you can even come off looking good on this if you actually make an offer to do more than the minimum and submit the result to both. It might mean a bit less work for you overall, and might also teach you some things you wouldn't otherwise have learned. Even for a previously submitted project, offering to extend the old work can be a plus.

FWIW, I would probably be inclined to permit it, with the proviso of some added requirements.

And, I actually did this in secondary school because I changed schools. I asked an instructor at the new place if I could submit a report that I'd previously worked on, but wasn't actually graded for (since I left). I was given permission and it saved me a bit of work.


Can I transition from 3 years out of school to a master's in computer science?

Sure it's possible and some small fraction of people have industry experience (or teaching experience or military service or what have you).  Has always been this way.  It's a minority but normal.  (Actually in good MBA programs its the expectation.  And in law and medicine its very normal, not as rare.  In research it's rare but just because of the population not going that way, not because of schools discouraging it.)

In terms of math prep, I donno.  Guess you should look at different programs and talk to them (good chance to talk about other things in general also).  Maybe there are programs where it matters more/less your math background. Maybe you can get some individual calibration on your specifics, which this forum sometimes discourages.

Finally, your title and then question text itself are a little confusing.  Are you asking about math requirements for CS MS (which would be an issue regardless of your interregnum) or for how the interregnum is looked at.


Suspecting an undiagnosed learning disability in a student

I might meet with the student and ask about class performance without pushing any particular hypothesis. Going with the sandwich (good thing/bad thing/good thing) approach: "StudentName, I appreciate your active participation in class -- it's incredibly heartening -- but I'm noticing that your performance on assignments and exams doesn't show the same level of understanding that I hear from you in class. I really want you to do well here. What's going on? Can I help?"

And then listen. Have several referrals ready beforehand -- disability office, yes, but also the writing center, tutoring center, any helpful affinity groups the student might be appropriate for, and so on -- so that you can make the most useful, least overwhelming suggestions.


How should I write the last sentence in my email to a professor?

As user11192 says, the closing sentence does not matter much.  I'd advise you to focus on proofreading your entire letter.  Not to be unkind, but there are typographical mistakes in two of your three closings:

  I hope this helps. If you need further information, Please feel free
  to contact me at: My email

The first letter in "Please" should not be capitalized.

  I hope this helps you evaluate my eligibility for financial aid better.

This is fine, except, as aeismail points out, financial aid is need-based, while you are applying for a job, which is presumably merit-based.

  I hope this helps, please let me know if you need more information.

This is a comma splice.

In a closing, I would also thank the professor for his/her time:

  Please let me know if any further information would be helpful.  Thank you for your time.


What is the average waiting time for a paper deposited to an open archive such as HAL?

As commented by Davide Giraudo, the waiting time is typically one or two open days. I think submissions are manually checked by a team in France, so if you submit on Saturday Australian time, you'll have to wait at least until Tuesday. If the team is very  busy, it can take a few more days.

Not asked but maybe worth mentioning: to check whether you are allowed to upload your article to an open archive such as HAL, type your journal name on RoMEO to get something like:


What are the main differences between Graduate school in the UK vs US?

I don't think your measure of 'easiness' is really correct. Finding a supervisor isn't a measure of how strong a student you are, it's a measure of how the course works and so in what circumstances a supervisor will take you on.

You haven't said what you mean by 'graduate school' in North America. Usually you would compare doctoral programmes, and there you'll find the UK 'harder' on average, because a US programme begins with taught courses that don't form part of the UK programme (as much).

A taught MSc in the UK is only just above undergraduate. You essentially do a typical undergraduate year of taught courses (which may be very very similar to ones taken by undergraduates) and then spend the summer doing a 3 month research project. You therefore don't need to start with a supervisor, as you have 8 months to find one, and you will always be allocated someone. Just below this are a selection of 'undergraduate masters' courses, where undergraduates study for a fourth year, beyond the normal degree programme. They basically do the same as the MSc except for missing the final project (or doing one instead of one of the taught modules).

If you looked at an MSc by research, I doubt you could get on to that without a supervisor. That is closer to doctoral study. Slightly up from that is an MPhil, which is roughly the first part of a PhD, and actually is in some subjects.


Applying to graduate school at my undergraduate institution

Policies vary widely by program, but many top programs tend to encourage—and some require—that their students apply and attend other graduate schools. In part this is to encourage diversity in training experiences, so that students are not working in a single group for an extended period of time. I have heard of programs where they will admit their own students only if they haven't gotten in elsewhere (but students at such programs usually can get in somewhere if they are sufficiently qualified!).

As for the last question, again, this really does depend on the program. However, in most cases, I think the fact that you attended the same university but in a different department means you won't be viewed as one of "their" students, unless you were closely affiliated with that program somehow—for instance, if you did undergraduate research with a faculty member in that program.