Does better learning affect teaching evaluations? If so, how?

The answer, from new research approaches dating from 2010, seems to be that increased learning tends to cause lower scores on students' evaluations of teaching (SET), but this is a complicated issue that has historically been a bone of contention.

There is a huge literature on this topic. The people who study this kind of thing the most intensely are psychometricians. There are many things on which they seem to agree universally, and many of these areas simply represent the consensus view of professional psychometricians on their field in general:

The surveys used for students' evaluations of teaching (SET) should be designed by professionals, and are basically useless if created by people who lack professional expertise in psychometrics. Certain common practices, such as treating evaluation scores as if they were linear (and can therefore meaningfully be averaged), show a lack of competence in measurement.
It's a terrible idea to use SETs as the sole measure of a teacher's effectiveness. Multiple measures are always better than a single measure. But, as is often the case, administrators tend to prefer a single measure that is cheap to administer and superficially appears impartial and scientific.
SETs are increasingly being given online rather than being administered in class on paper. This is a disaster, because the response rates for the online evaluations are extremely low (usually 20-40%), so the resulting data are basically worthless.
The difficulty of a course or the workload, as measured by SET scores, has nearly zero correlation with achievement.
SET scores are multidimensional measures of multidimensional traits, but they seem to break down into two main dimensions, professional and personal, which are weighted about the same. The personal dimension is subject to biases based on sex, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation (Calkins).

Getting down to the main question: does better learning affect teaching evaluations?

Before 2010, the best studies on this topic were ones in which students were randomly assigned to different sections of the same course, and then given an identical test at the end to measure achievement. These studies tended to show that SET ratings had correlations with achievement of about +0.30 to +0.44. But Cohen says, "There is one study finding of a strong negative relationship between ratings and the highest rated instructors had the lowest performing students. There is also one study finding showing the opposite, a near perfect positive relationship between ratings and achievement." This lack of consistency is not surprising, because we're talking about different fields of education and different SET forms. A typical positive correlation of +0.4 would indicate that 16% of the variance in students' performance could be attributed to differences between teachers that could be measured by SETs. Although 16% isn't very high, the sign of the correlation in most of the studies is positive and statistically significant.

But starting in 2010, new evidence arrived that turned this whole picture upside-down (Carrell, Braga). In these newer studies, students were randomly assigned to different sections of a class such as calculus, but they were then followed later in their career as they took required follow-up classes such as aeronautical engineering. The Carrell study was done at the US Air Force Academy, and due to the academy's structure, there was low attrition, and students could be forced to take the follow-up courses.

Carrell constructed a measure of added value for each teacher based on their students' performance on a test given at the end of the class (contemporaneous value-added), and a different measure (follow-on course value-added) based on performance in the later, required follow-on courses.

  Academic rank, teaching experience, and terminal degree status of professors are negatively correlated with contemporaneous value-added but positively correlated with follow-on course value-added.

  We find that less experienced and less qualified professors produce students who perform significantly better in the contemporaneous course being taught, whereas more experienced and highly qualified professors produce students who perform better in the follow-on related curriculum.

Braga's study at Bocconi University in Italy produces similar findings:

  [We] find that our measure of teacher effectiveness is negatively correlated with the students' evaluations: in other words, teachers who are associated with better subsequent performance receive worst evaluations from their students. We rationalize these results with a simple model where teachers can either engage in real teaching or in teaching-to-the-test, the former requiring higher students' effort than the latter.

References

Abrami, d'Apollonia, and Rosenfield, "The dimensionality of student ratings of instruction: what we know and what we do not," in The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: An Evidence-Based Perspective, eds. Perry and Smart, Springer 2007 - link

Braga, Paccagnella, and Pellizzari, "Evaluating Students' Evaluations of Professors," IZA Discussion Paper No. 5620, April 2011 - link

Calkins and Micari, "Less-Than-Perfect Judges: Evaluating Student Evaluations," Thought & Action, fall 2010, p. 7 - link

Carrell and West, "Does Professor Quality Matter? Evidence from
Random Assignment of Students to Professors," J Political Economy 118 (2010) 409 - link

Marsh and Roche, "Making Students' Evaluations of Teaching Effectiveness Effective: The Critical Issues of Validity, Bias, and Utility," American Psycologist, November 1997, p. 1187 - link

Stark and Freishtat, "An Evaluation of Course Evaluations," ScienceOpen https://www.scienceopen.com/document/vid/42e6aae5-‐246b-‐4900-‐8015-‐
dc99b467b6e4?0  - link


Where to find grad school acceptance rates?

This may not directly answers you question but I found it useful when applied to grad schools in the past. GradCafe results shows different applications results for institutes. Applicants usually put their GRE scores and GPA along with the decision.

Most importantly, some applicants communicate with their school and write something really useful as a note (like # of application received/accepted/rejected).


What should I include in my first email to a potential PhD advisor?

First of all, do not write a generic email to 50 faculty members. You need to focus on a few that you think are a good fit. For example, many faculty members won’t take you because they don’t have funding.

Next, try to make a personal connection: read their papers before, see how you could contribute, and tell them.

If you have a connection to them (you took a class/worked with a colleague of theirs, mentioning them will be a massive bonus (in terms of likelihood of receiving a reply).

Good luck!


I'll take a year to apply. Should I search for new logic projects or round up what I have?

Given that a doctorate is about depth in a small area, your option 2 sounds better to me as long as you have sufficient breadth of knowledge in your field already.

Note that many (most?) US students move to a doctoral program directly from their undergraduate program, so the "breadth" required is only about that required in a baccalaureate. So, I think, that except for the time factor you mention, you are likely well prepared now. But getting a bit of research going certainly won't hurt you, even if you have only minor results. You probably won't be working with a guide, after all. The area in which you do the research, however, might matter. It is better if it is closer to the sub-field that you actually want to work in.


Published papers with incorrect solutions of famous problems: how to raise concerns with editors?

It is a strange case.  You say that the author of the two papers is deceased.  Given that and the other facts you have presented -- in particular both papers were published almost ten years ago, their flaws would be immediately suspected by any mathematician and are documented in the MathSciNet reviews -- it seems to me that the principal culprit and the principal victim are both the International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology (IJMEST).

  The journal in question is apparently reputable (otherwise I would not bother)

Is it reputable, though?  I hadn't heard of it before.  Taking a look now, it is hard for me to tell.

  and is published by a major commercial academic publisher,

Come now: we all know that being published by a major commercial academic publisher is no certificate of quality.  Elsevier was caught publishing a several journals that were essentially reprinted advertisements for medical and pharmaceutical companies.  That's memorably egregious, but other big companies have skullduggeries of their own.  Conversely, big companies which do some really shady things also put out some really good journals, Elsevier being a good example.  Taylor and Francis is a less good example: of the 46 journals they publish in mathematics and statistics, I only myself recognize three as being good...but three is enough.  So major publishing companies publish good journals and bad journals: I don't think one can deduce much from this.

Back to the journal.  I looked into IJMEST, and I find it a bit strange.  The journal's aims and scope center it on (a kind of) mathematics and science education:

  Contributions will be welcomed from lecturers, teachers and users of mathematics at all levels on the contents of syllabuses and methods of presentation. Increasing use of technology is being made in the teaching, learning, assessment and presentation of mathematics today; original and interesting contributions in this rapidly developing area will be especially welcome. Mathematical models arising from real situations, the use of computers, new teaching aids and techniques also form an important feature. Discussion will be encouraged on methods of widening applications throughout science and technology. The need for communication between teacher and user will be emphasized and reports of relevant conferences and meetings will be included.

I wanted to remark that I have a colleague who is (to say the least) active in the mathematics education field, so I know that the above description is not really that of a modern research journal in mathematics / science education.  It is more along the lines of creating a shared community for mathematical teachers (which is also a worthy goal, and one that my colleague is interested in).

But the above description does not seem to be a good match for the papers in which IJMEST has published in recent years.  These papers seem to be almost entirely in the field of mathematics itself: most papers state theorems and give proofs.  Sometimes they knowingly give proofs of old theorems and their angle is to give new proofs, often accompanied by the claim that they will be easier for the student to understand (although in my experience as a mathematician it is common for new proofs to be accompanied by such claims).  But many, perhaps a majority, of the articles, seem to be entirely devoted to mathematics, usually of the kind that is broadly understandable: e.g. lots of Fibonacci numbers.  So the published work of the journal looks to be a lot closer to what is published by the Mathematical Association of America (MAA)...but without nearly as much attention to the quality of the exposition as given by articles published in MAA journals.

So something has gone terribly wrong for this journal to publish proofs of major open problems like Collatz or Goldbach: such papers should be out of scope of the journal.  As @Corvus points out, submitting a paper claiming a proof of something like Goldbach to a journal like this just doesn't make any sense: such a paper should be published not only in a math journal but in one of the very top math journals, first because a correct proof of Goldbach merits publication there (such a proof would rank among the great mathematical achievements of all time!) and second because a top journal can get the top experts in the field to the vet the paper, which is needed in order for the community to accept the result.

When the editorial board of a journal like IJMEST receives a paper claiming a proof of a major conjecture, they should (I think) do one of the following things:

(i) Bounce the paper back immediately as being out of scope for the journal, or

(ii) Engage in a preliminary refereeing job to see if the paper looks serious.  If so, they should reach out to the editorial board at an appropriate journal -- i.e., a top mathematics journal -- and try to do a handover of some kind.

I've thought it over for a while now (slow internet connection...), and although in general I believe strongly that any interested party can contact editors and try to get published results corrected, in this case I just don't see why that would be a helpful thing to do.  I realize that I now believe that publishing short, fallacious proofs of two major conjectures in the same year is enough to irreparably damage the reputability of a mathematics education  journal in my eyes.  Either they are so far outside of the mathematical community that they don't understand the significance of problems like Goldbach to the mathematical community and how they have to be handled or they know and don't care: in particular, they don't really care whether the mathematics they publish is correct.  I don't see how to fix either of those problems.


I'm kind of in the same boat - I'm getting an M.S. Analytics but I'm in my first semester instead of my last and I am just so... undecided. Second masters? (edit: multiple advanced degrees is not as uncommon as you'd think) Ph.D? Statistics or Computer Science? On the bright side you shouldn't have any trouble getting good recommendation letters if you want to go the formal route.

I'm eyeballing UT Austin's upcoming online Computer Science M.S. via EdX (estimated 10k tuition total but hasn't launched yet). There's also the pricey but IMO high quality earn-your-way in Harvard Extension School where I'm eyeballing the Software Engineering Masters. A lot of our alumns and even PhD's I know really like coursera.

One strategy I use because I'm poor is scope out the textbooks in use at the programs I want to be in and just read them. It's almost 2019 no one can stop you from learning :)


It is becoming harder even for top schools graduates but you should check the status of your application, either by checking it online or directly contacting the professors who you plan to work with. Most rejections will come late in April or May. Try to check with the positions that are directly related to your research and continue to apply for new openings.


How important are the grades compared to the cover letter when applying for a Ph.D?

When I look at an application there are four aspects that count:

grades
cover letter
earlier written work (BS/MS thesis)
Recommendation letters

Out of these, I focus most of my attention on the latter two: if the thesis is well-written, has received a good grade, and the letters of recommendation support the candidate in terms of ability to do research (from reading up on the field to writing everything up) and independence (how much (or little) support the candidate needed.

The cover letter would not make the application, but could break it if it is unfocussed and does not show any skills in expressing the interest in a structured way while avoiding irrelevant information. The grades would, in most cases, be the least interesting since they primarily show one's ability to read and understand, not necessarily reasoning and deduction. The exception is the grade for the thesis.

So, to answer the question, I am not sure which might be more important but anything that supports your ability to do research is of prime interest to anyone evaluating an application.

EDIT: To follow up on Gerrit's suggestion, my personal ranking list would be (in falling order):

Earlier written work
Recommendation letters
Cover letter
Grades (although the grade on the written work is included in 1)

But, all parts are useful and in the end some mix of all will be used. I would also add that 1 and 2 will "make" the application while 3 and 4 will mainly help to "break" the application.


Benefits to serving on an IEEE Standards Association?

Jon Custer's comment is spot-on. You will meet (hopefully) smart people across many disciplines and have forced exposure to different areas of expertise. You will also get hands-on experience in negotiation and compromise, which is always handy.

Your question didn't ask about downsides, though, which probably should be mentioned.

Writing standards is a very tedious and often frustratingly political endeavor.
This can take valuable time from the doing actual research.
There is no guarantee that the standards you create will actually be followed in The Real World, which can be kind of depressing.


“Reject & resubmit” when all reviewers accepted manuscript

Depending on the editorial system, it could very well be that reject & resubmit comprises all cases where the paper was neither accepted as it is nor finally rejected. So, in your case, it could just mean that the paper was rejected in its present form (because you need to make the minor revisions requested by the reviewers).

Of course, if the editorial system offers finer-grained status messages, it can also mean that the editor sees more need for revision than the individual reviewers do or estimates the revisions requested by the reviewers to be more substantial than the reviewers did. The editor’s letter may give you more information on this.

Either way, I would not worry too much about it, improve the manuscript as much as you can, and resubmit it. This way has almost certainly the lowest expected waiting time to a final publication.

  With a new submission, is it possible that the editor does not send the manuscript to the reviewers but decides by him/herself?

Yes. If you replied to the reviewer’s comments in a satisfactory manner and did not insert a lot of new material, it may very well be that the editor expects that a new round of review will not yield any further input and accept the paper. Of course, the editor could also reject your paper without further review if they think that you did not even attempt to address the reviewer’s comment or similar.


Recommending venues and organizations in a paper

As far as the journal is concerned, this would be a thing to ask your editorial contact at the journal.

As far as the readers are concerned, I'd ask myself: what's most useful to the reader? I'd have thought that pointing to an online resource elsewhere, is more useful than a list within the article itself. In an article, the list is frozen in time, and quickly outdated, with no option of maintenance. As a linked external online resource, then there would be the option of updates and maintenance - and even if you don't expect to have the resource yourself to maintain it, someone else might take over the upkeep.

Now, you would need to be careful in how you present that online resource, so that it didn't look like spamming (it will help considerably if the resource is not seen as promoting a particular business or university). Precedent is your friend: have a look through recent articles in your target journal, and discuss with your editorial contact at the journal, to find a presentation that will be acceptable to all.


Contact the editor on the acceptance chances of my article

I doubt that you will be able to get any answer about the likelihood of acceptance from a good editor until all of the reviews are in.  As a editor, there are just too many ways that the last review might majorly change the view of a paper (e.g., negatively by pointing out that it is a cleverly disguised piece of plagiarism; positively by pointing out a value that all of the other reviewers have missed).  An editor who is acting professionally will thus never pre-judge the result before it is in hand.

You can always feel free to reach out and ask how long it's likely to be before you get an answer, but that's not something that can readily be relied upon either, given the frequent vagaries of reviewers.


Academic Curriculum Vitae Template (possibly in LaTeX)

There are several packages/classes in LaTeX available and you can find a list of many on CTAN (Comprehensive TeX Archive Network). There is no preferred package since CVs can be constructed in many ways, some of which may be specific to fields or academic cultures. The moderncv class is quite popular and may be a good starting point but you need to figure out if any one format suits your particular needs best.


Am I allowed to provide the Camera Ready Copy (CRC) / Preprint of my paper published in Springer Workshop Proceedings online on my homepage?

Yes, I do not see any reason you cannot. If you like, you put a header or footer that the paper was presented in ABC conference and the official version can be downloaded from the Springer website to save yourself from copyright issues. But I think, even without that header you should be fine. (Still, having that line in header/footer is better).
Putting it on Arxiv is more wise and professional by the way. It can give your work credibility and readability as well.


Getting a degree quickly while already having years of experience

I think that an associates degree isn't going to get you terrifically far in the employment market. In the US the first couple of undergraduate years (i.e. an associates) is pretty general, rather than focused on employable skills. The advanced courses normally come later.

However, it is a start. As with most applications you want to show not just general qualifications, but how you are especially suited to the position and highly likely to be a success at it. In your current situation it may be your employment history that is your most important asset.

But specialty courses that are available online through some reputable outlet can add to your CV. That would be true even without a degree.

There are some US universities that can give you credit for "life experiences" in some cases. If you are in a place with a lot of educational opportunities (NYC,...) you might explore what your real requirements might be and how you could get a degree part time and at night, week-ends, ...


Who writes the recommendation letters for returning student PhD applicants after a big hiatus?

I am not aware of a specific rule requiring academic references. It may be more a matter of common sense. If an applicant has recently completed a lower degree, the committee may expect to hear from professors who saw the applicant's work.

I was admitted to a PhD program over 25 years after my master's degree was awarded. What I had done in the last quarter of a century was far more relevant than my last academic experience.

I got references from my manager, my prior manager, and a chief technology officer. The last person was less familiar with the details of my work, but had a PhD and connections to the department where I was applying.


Attending a conference where my ex-supervisor and his collaborator are present, should I attend?

First of all, I’m sorry to hear that you’re going through this.

I would ignore them in the conference. I don’t know if this motivates you, but going to a conference, doing an amazing job and still shining in my field despite their sabotage attempts would be really satisfying to me.

On a professional level, if your job requires conference attendance and you categorically refuse for whatever reason, it will not help your career. Don’t let them sabotage you further!


Decision time on a postdoc offer while applying for other positions

Most likely, you won't be able to "make" them wait at all.  If they give you an offer, they will also give you a deadline to decide whether to accept it.  You can ask for an extension of this deadline, but there are no guarantees that they will agree to extend it.  The power here is mostly on their side, not yours, unless you are really a superstar, or are the one and only qualified candidate.

For a position like a postdoc, the employer typically has a fixed number of positions available (often just one).  Commonly (especially for a field with an academic-year hiring cycle) they interview a number of people and then make offers made serially.  Every day that they wait for you to make a decision is a day in which the next person on their list might take another job, reducing their options if you turn them down.  So it's not in their interest to give you an indefinite amount of time to decide, since that could result in them hiring someone not as good, or not being able to fill the position at all.  They don't want to rush you into declining, but they also can't wait forever.

It's hard to predict what kind of deadline they might give you.  Some employers will give a candidate a very short deadline (a few days) if the candidate is a "reach" - the employer doubts that the candidate will accept, but wants to at least try to get them.  This way, in the likely case that the candidate says no, not much time has been lost.  More commonly, the deadline would be on the order of a week or two.  Having as much time as a month seems unlikely, but there are a lot of factors that could affect it, and if they are not tied to the academic year there may be more flexibility.

What "makes sense" to you from a personal perspective (pondering an overseas move, exploring options, etc) is not really the employer's concern.  Even before receiving the offer, it would be a good idea to carefully consider all the pros and cons, and come to a tentative decision about whether you would take the job if offered (including scenarios about other offers received or not received).  Between the interview and your own research into the institution, you should have almost all the information you're going to get; the only extra information in the offer itself would be the salary (and other benefits).  So ideally, as soon as you get the offer, you should know how you intend to decide, or what other offers you need to wait for.

It's entirely possible that you may have to make a decision on this position before hearing about the others.  That's just how it goes.


What unforeseen dangers might exist when choosing an open access textbook for a new subject?

It's important to check the license used by the author to make sure that it's compatible with your use of the open access textbook.

Issues to check include:

Does the license allows you to redistribute the book to your students (e.g. by putting it on your course web site) or whether students have to get it from the author's web site.  I would not be willing to use any material that I couldn't distribute to my students, because the author might pull it from the web at any time.
Does the license allow you to modify the work (e.g. fix typos or more broadly edit the work)?  How are you required to describe any modifications?
If there are any restrictions on "commercial use", does your course constitute commercial use?  Some people have argued that for-profit higher educational institutions can't use Creative Commons NC (CC-NC) licensed materials in courses.

Many open access educational resources are licensed under the Creative Commons license with varying options (CC-BY, CC-NC, CC-ND, etc.)  The Creative Commons web site has clear explanations of how those licenses work.  Many other resources have been put up on the web with no specified license.  If there's no license specified you should contact the author and ask for permission to use the material.


How much do grades matter for a future academia position?

In the US, at least, and in most fields, no one will look at your grades or care much about them. If they were good enough for your institution to give you a doctorate, they will be good enough for everyone.

I'm not sure this is universal, and would love to hear of exceptions. Such exceptions might occur in situations that have rigid regulations. Of course, if you are specifically hired to do X and you got terrible grades in X as a student, people might have some problems that need answers.


Etiquette regarding multiple letters of recommendation

Yes, ask her.  Advisors know that they will be asked multiple times.

Yes, she can modify her previous letter.  That's the beauty of word processors and a hierarchical file system!


Can a 3 years PhD make an independent researcher ? Or how many post-docs after PhD to be an independent researcher?

As a PhD student, I think you are doing an original research, so should be developing a new method, model, formulation, etc so that you can solve many other problems or cases by means of your own formulation. Even, by your model, you should be doing some verifications and find results others found in their publications. So, during your PhD you are being prepared to do independent research.

I think becoming independent in every phase of life should be assessed based on the person's abilities and the outcome of his activities.

If the person can find/understand the things he has to do without help of others, consult his problems with others, does what he has to do to reach his goals and finally finish his jobs/projects and has an income; then he can be considered an independent person.

In academic world, the case does not change so much. If the student can review literature, read books and papers and understand them, find a new problem to solve, start to work on the problem and consult his problems with another person; and finally submit and publish his paper in a journal; then he should be considered an independent researcher.

Despite the thing in your question that you mentioned how many post-docs is needed to become independent researcher?; I don't believe a person need many post-docs. Even, some researchers do not have any PhDs and they do perfect researches. The important part of doing independent research is the art of problem solving. And this may be gained by no PhDs or by hundreds of post-docs! So, I encourage you to successfully finish your PhD, and try to learn how to solve your academic problems and how to get them published. After you graduate, you will be able to do research by your own too.


Should former group member be included as a co-author in a follow-up to his work?

There are three distinct levels of credit that the former postdoc might be given, depending on their level of contribution to each particular new publication.  In order of increasing significance, these are:

Citation.  The postdoc has done significant prior work for these papers, and so clearly this prior work must be cited.
Acknowledgement.  If the postdoc contributed materially to the new paper, but not enough to merit authorship, then acknowledgement is the typical compromise "middle ground."
Authorship (though not in one of the "privileged positions" such as first author or last author, if they are held significant in the particular subfield).

The boundary between citation and acknowledgement is usually pretty straightforward: did the individual make any contribution that significantly aided the new work beyond providing nice, clear explanations of the content of their publications?  If not, then merely citing should be sufficient.

The boundary between acknowledgement and authorship is extremely field dependent, and moreover often affected strongly by the subfield.  With ethical and trusted colleagues, the best way to navigate this question is often simply to have an open discussion together about where and how to draw this boundary.


How long does it take for a recruiting process to finish?

First off, timings are very different in different countries. I have experience applying in Germany, UK, US and Sweden, with radically different time scales. The US runs on a very steady clock, where there tends to be a season for applications, for interviews, for notifications, and relatively few events happen outside this rhythm, while elsewhere is much more anarchic with respect to timing.

Shortest time periods I have had in the UK where a polite refusal has shown up as quickly as within about 2 weeks after the deadline.

In the US, you would usually apply during September-January, interview January-March, and be offered a job February-May or so. Slightly different timings are in effect for postdoctoral positions versus professorships, and there tends to be a second round of applications when schools scramble to cover teaching needs for the fall.

My experience with the US also indicates that you should not expect full information from everyone. Finding out you were not considered by simply not hearing anything from the school for several years is not an unusual situation.

UK schools have been diligent about letting me know one way or another.

German schools have sometimes delayed up towards 2-3 years before letting me know.

And the Swedish system is a beast almost entirely unto its own. For one thing, the process is utterly transparent: the list of applicants, as well as external reviews of the candidates and the minutes of all the committee meetings are all a matter of public record, and is usually distributed to all candidates directly as a matter of courtesy. The process is one of the lengthiest I have ever seen — it is in no way seen as unreasonable that well over 1 year passes from application deadline to notification.


Is getting certificate at PCEP important?

This is really a matter of opinion, but coding certificates are not widely respected. The problem is that they are generally multiple choice questions and easily crammed for. That is, you can study for a couple of weeks and pass the exams without writing very much code at all. Frankly I've been a Python programmer for well over a decade now and I'd never heard of PCEP. I would much rather see a GitHub repository or contributions to open source projects.

Save your money and spend your time writing more code.


Being a post-doc for most of your career and get a faculty job later; how likely is it?

What does "most" mean? Literally more than half? In usual circumstances it's highly unlikely. Let's say you start working on your PhD at the age of 25 and retire at 65, just to have nice round numbers. That's a 40-years long academic career. Now half of it would be 20 years of postdoc.

Out of all the people I've met in my academic field, math, I do not know one single person who has spent this long in postdocs. Off the top of my head the highest must be around 10 years, and the people in question had almost given up any dream of landing a permanent position by the end of it. Take it as you will.

I guess it can technically be "possible" for it to happen, in the sense that there is not some kind of physical or legal impossibility. But is it going to happen? I doubt it. Postdocs are hired for their promise of working well while they're at the institution, and justified or not, someone who's spent 10+ years in postdocs will be considered an underachiever in the eyes of many.


Is it legal to provide a copy of published IEEE paper on my personal website?

Yes, you can.

From https://www.ieee.org/documents/top10faq.pdf:

  Can an author post his IEEE copyrighted paper on his personal or
  institutions’ servers?  Yes. An author is permitted to post his IEEE
  copyrighted paper on his personal site and his  institution’s server,
  but only the accepted version of his paper, not the published version
  as  might be downloaded from IEEE Xplore.

Directly from their more recently updated paper policy (http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/paperversionpolicy.html):

  The policy reaffirms the principle that authors are free to post the
  accepted version of their article on their personal Web sites or those
  of their employers. Posting of the final, published PDF continues to
  be prohibited, except for open access articles, whose authors may
  freely post the final version.


Are the Hardy-Littlewood “rules” unethical?

I've always interpreted such remarks as meaning that the individual papers were just progress reports on their larger enterprise, to which both made irreplaceable contributions, and that they had no interest in keeping track of moment-by-moment relative contributions.

In particular, "on average", there was no misattribution or false credit.

(Further, the "not contributed the least" may easily be hyperbole, just to make the point.)

For that matter, if one is in regular correspondence with another, how to attribute ideas that develop gradually? I think their solution was entirely reasonable.


There is no guarantee that you succeed, but you can still try.

Address the legal side of the issue.
Read the terms of your agreement carefully. If it is possible to abide by the terms of contract and have you name dropped, act accordingly. If not, seek for legal advice. After all, the contract might be not 100% clean according to your country's law or international laws, and you could hypothetically declare the contract for void in this case. If the contract has not been written on paper but is a handshake deal, check for the legislation of your country again about handling such cases.
Address the academic side of the issue. For that, read the terms of the venue(s) the paper(s) went to. Check whether these terms request that each author has to contribute in a substantial way. If such a phrase is not there, you have less chances. If such a phrase is there in some form, you have more chances. In each case, write to the editor(s) and supply a corresponding justification for why your name is to be dropped from the author list.


Is it allowed to include graphs in a thesis without explicit permission?

Depends on your university policies, but probably yes. There is probably a "thesis FAQ" at your graduate division that will clarify this!

I had to request permission for many separate aspects of my thesis, including sections of my own papers that were re-used, and (I think) figures from other peoples' papers.

Usually you can do this through the journal's "Request permissions" link, which takes you through Rightslink or something similar, and the cost was always zero for me. Other journals (PLOS) have explicit copyright policies which you can reference.

The risk here is that when you file your thesis, someone in the graduate division will say, "wait, this isn't from your work, do you have rights to do this?" and slow your graduation down! The only people who can tell you whether this will happen are at your university. For instance, this is a policy page for copyright at Michigan Tech: http://www.mtu.edu/gradschool/administration/academics/thesis-dissertation/copyright/use/


Are Swedish programs deadlines have a typical norm and are on fixed dates such as U.S. (Nov, Jan, Feb) or they're based on the advertising dates and are somehow unique?

The most common way to announce PhD positions is on a case-by-case basis with unique deadlines for each position. There are no fixed dates that universities have to adhere to. You will see an increase in the number of available positions during the first quarter of each year since big funding bodies like the Swedish Research Council decide on grants in the fall.

(I'm a PhD student at Karolinska Institutet).


How to write mail to super senior renowned mathematicians?

"Respected Sir" seems off and pretentious, at least in an international setting. It's not commonly used.

Use "Dear" to be on the save side, and by the way, there's no need to gesture "greater respect" in your greeting. Your appreciation of the researchers previous work and career should be prevalent in the content of your message, in which you demonstrate knowledge of their achievements and capabilities. Attempts at scoring cheap points with cheesy greetings are not the way.


Have trouble retaining material I learn in grad school. Is this common?

If you're putting the time in, successfully doing the homework, and passing the exams, then you're doing fine. The first year of grad school in mathematics should be thought of as a horrible bootcamp to get through rather than a deep learning opportunity. How comfortable someone is during their first year is mostly a function of what their undergrad experience was like. So it might be true that your undergrad program was less strenuous than that of some of your fellow students, but if you're keeping up, you're getting the job done.

Depending on your learning preferences, you might find that things percolate better if you work with others. I would also suggest that you keep good, searchable records for what you want to get back to at a later date. This will be especially helpful when it comes to prepping for written exams.


For what reasons is a class expunged instead of dropped?

It depends on the institution. I had a class dropped as an undergraduate (my advisor told me that if I registered as extracurricular, I wouldn't have to take the final exam, I would just get a pass/fail based on my homeworks. I found out he was wrong about that 2 weeks before the final when they sent out the exam schedule and I was registered for the final exam in that class (turns out the changed the rules for extracurricular classes the year before). Fortunately, I had the conversation with my advisor over email, so it was declared clerical error and the class was expunged from my record. Another student in my class was hit by a car a few days after the last day to drop classes and hurt badly enough that he needed a semester off. All of the classes he was registered for were expunged from his record, and his transcript reads that semester as free for health reasons.

Most universities will expunge a class from your records if you have a good reason: typically clerical error or health (including mental health) reasons. Some universities will instead let you "withdraw without penalty" if it is for health reasons. The only way to know how your university does it is to check the regulations or ask your advisor.


Is there any age criteria in selecting new faculty in STEM universities in the USA?

Officially, age discrimination is illegal in hiring in the USA after the age of 40, but it still happens. Still, you won't find hard cutoffs in grant language or tenure tracks that have to do with your date of birth, but many impose timelines that initialize the year you finish your PhD, or the date you got hired, etc.
1
Another thing to consider is how comfortable you want your life to be, and how many years people spend in your PhD program and in postdocs. The pay in grad school is very low, so it's hard to get any meaningful savings or a sizeable retirement fund. Postdocs in the US pay decently in some fields, but depending on your lifestyle it can still be tough. Postdocs with families in my field, for example, do seem to be squeezed.
Another factor is geography. Jobs in academia can be competitive, and you don't have a lot of control over where you live (again, depending on the field). So think about how late in life you want to be settled in one place. If you have a partner or anticipate having one, you may have to separate for long periods of time if the geography of your jobs is incompatible. There are many long distance marriages in my field.
These problems are difficult for everyone, but they are a little easier to deal with early in life. You still have time to save up for retirement after you get a tenure track job, you have cushioning if your PhD takes an extra year or two, you're less likely to have children and other high expenses, and you may find starting over in a new place exciting rather than exhausting. These are just generalizations, and there are plenty of counterexamples, but they are factors to consider in your own life before going down this road 10 years later than most people get started. If you get unlucky you could be looking at being well into your 40s before you have a stable job in a place you plan to settle.
But this all really depends on your field and your program.


latex and word template for conference submission

Both LaTeX and Word support similar font packages (e.g., Times New Roman). So you could simply ask all authors to use the same font family (or set up the templates to do so).

What happens afterward depends on who's the publisher. If it's published in-house, both versions may just be published "as is." However, if an external publisher is used, both versions will likely be transferred to the publisher's "house style."


Can I contact the referee if I know their identity after a double-blind reviewing process?

If the review is unclear, you should contact the editor for clarification, and not the referee.  This would be true even if the peer review was not blinded.  The editor is in charge of peer review.


Is it the denomination of the PhD course very important?

No, the name of your degree is not important in most cases. You will be judged based on the quality and area of your work and research and your publication record. If you publish with a comparative approach and want to do a post-doc in a comparative department, you won't be impeded simply because your degree says you have a PhD in English.

It is more important that you have an advisor (and perhaps other mentors as well) around you that can assist you in the approach you wish to take. If no one in this Department of English has any expertise in a comparative approach (I think it would be highly unlikely that no one would, but perhaps no one you were interested in working with), that's a bigger issue than the name of the degree, and something you should actually consider.


Is taking a year or so off between master's and PhD to self-study or do independent research a common practice in Europe?

While your background (education, skills, experience) should fit for a PhD vacancy, it is generally not necessary to write your own PhD proposal.

Many (most) universities in Europe have a section on their website that lists open PhD vacancies (either on the top level of the university website, or at the individual institutes).
It is best to find a vacancy that fits with your interests and background, and simply apply for it (by sending an application letter + CV).

There are some websites that list open PhD vacancies for multiple universities, e.g.

for the Netherlands: https://www.academictransfer.com/?language=en
internationally: http://www.careeredu.eu/

You can have a look there whether you find any position that suits you.


Do I not have the personality for a PhD?

It seems to me that many of these points could hit on very superficial differences — e.g., use of different words to describe essentially the same thing, or emphasis of one type of feeling over another, although most people have both.  On the other hand, taken together these could be signs that you are not interested in a long term (i.e., post-PhD) academic career.  Or not: that's up to you to figure out.  Let me quickly address your points:

  1) People expect me to have a specific research area I'm very interested in. I would be fine working in any area and I'm not particularly passionate about any specific field."

The negative way to spin that is that you're not passionate about anything.  The positive way is that you're interested in everything and willing to be versatile.  I am a tenured academic, and construing the above sentences in the positive way as I did applies pretty well to me.  Why are modular forms or Shimura varieties more interesting than Galois cohomology or geometry of numbers?  Answer: they're not, and I think it's slightly weird that most of my colleagues work exclusively in just one or two of these areas.

  They also expected me to know who I wanted to work with before I applied to the school (or even choose the school based on the advisor), and I only started thinking about that during visit weekend, when professors pitched their research to the students.

You didn't mention your academic field.  In mine (mathematics), most American PhD students don't give any serious thought to their research area until their second year.  So… clearly not a fundamental tenet of "PhD personalities".

  2) I chose which schools to apply to based on the US News rankings...

So?  I see no issue here whatsoever.

  3) People expect me to go to talks and read papers for fun. I don't understand how most people could possibly find talks fun. Honestly I would rather watch a movie or play tennis.

This seems like a conflation of what "fun" means.  There is professional fun and leisure fun.  You watch movies in the evenings and on weekends, and (except for weekend conferences, which I freely admit are not necessarily the events that I look forward to with bated breath) you attend talks during normal business hours.  On the other hand if you never read papers except when specifically asked / required to do so, that could be a problem.

  I also find papers boring and difficult to read, unless they are in very soft subjects with no math.

You didn't say what field you are in.  (If it's math, this is concerning!)  It is also worth pointing out that reading papers is really hard for most graduate students for the first 1–5 years or so.

  4) When people come to my school to give talks, people invite us to meet with the speaker one on one. I have no idea what students would talk to the speaker about or why they would want to sign up to talk to a stranger.

I felt exactly the same way as a graduate student.  Why would a famous mathematician want to meet a 24 year-old who is not yet fully fluent in the language the mathematician has been speaking for the last 20–40 years?  I found it very strange that some of my classmates saw no awkwardness there.  Now as a thesis advisor I wish my students interacted more with visiting mathematicians…

Somewhere between being a grad student and advising them I began to view myself as a professional. I now know that most academic jobs are offered based on some prior knowledge of or interaction with the candidate, so having visiting luminaries be able to connect a name to a face and view you as someone who is actively participating in the profession is very valuable. Getting students to understand, believe in and take part in their own professional development is one of my major goals these days (I've just accepted the job of departmental graduate coordinator)

  5) I have seen professors leave my university and expect their students to go with them. I think if my advisor left my university, I wouldn't want to leave, because I have good friends here and I am dating someone.

Here I think you are probably suffering from "small sample size" issues.  The majority of graduate students do not leave when their advisor leaves.  It's nice for the advisor to offer the option, but it is not practical in many cases… for the reasons you say.  On the other hand, if the idea of being uprooted seems sufficiently bad to you, then the academic lifestyle may prove unappealing, because the "uprooting" is probably going to happen several times before (if!) you land a tenure-track job.

  6) I follow my advisor's instructions on things and once in a while he says that I need to be more independent. But if I did that I would be going against what my advisor tells me to do, and I think it's weird that my advisor tells me to do things and then tells me not to do what he tells me to do.

I think you are not properly understanding what your advisor wants.  You make it sound like he wants you to sometimes stand up and refuse to do what he asks.  That's insubordination / contrariness.  Independence means that you do what your advisor asks and you do other things on top of it that you thought of yourself.

In summary: I see nothing definitive here.  I could try to read the tea leaves but… it doesn't matter what you or I think right now.  Unless you are miserable and/or failing out of the program, you should continue on in the PhD program, both doing your best work and doing your best to be happy about it.  As you proceed, keep an eye out for both things.  As you near graduation, you will have a better idea of where to proceed from there.  You don't need to "figure out your personality" as a second year student, and I don't see much of anything positive coming from it.  Definitely resist the idea that you must have a similar personality and/or similar practices to those around you in order to be successful.  Even — especially — in academia, there is more than one way to skin a cat.


Why is it that when I tell people outside my university that I'm a PhD student, I am sometimes told that I'm arrogant/privileged/ignorant?

This did not occur before I started my PhD. It does not occur when I simply say I’m a graduate student. I only say this when people ask what I do as a living (I do not namedrop this).

As others have commented already, it may just be that one meets nasty people every once in a while. However, it could also be a sign that people perceive you as giving yourself airs - e.g. because you [even unconsciously] put an emphasis on the PhD student rather than on your profession.

Side note: Personally, when people ask me what I do for my living, I say "I'm a chemist" (not PhD, nor postdoc - nor did I answer "PhD student"). People around me answer either by "I'm a PhD student at university/institute/in field" or by "profession" or by "profession and currently working on my PhD thesis", and what they answer is quite context dependent: meeting people outside academia, it tends to be "profession".

Assume you meet a carpenter who is journeyman (= holds a qualification to work in that profession).
Consider them answering "I'm journeyman" vs. "I'm carpenter" or even "I'm pursuing my master [craftsman]". At least to me the journeyman answer would sound decidedly weird, and while "I'm working at my master's" sounds less weird in English than in my mother tongue (because we have different words for the crafts master and the academic master) the expected answer would certainly be "carpenter" unless you are in a context where most people are carpenters. You could also say that the expected type of answer is the one that carries most information.

I think the appropriate answer is quite culture-dependent (and culture being even within vs. outside academia).

  This tends to occur when I vocalize a strong opinion or disagree with another person’s viewpoint. They might say "not everyone has a PhD like you".

Others have commented already that this may be an ad hominem attack (who you are rather than what your argument is worth) which tells more about the other than about you.
OTOH, it could also be that the others perceive you as trying to gain [unfairly] by putting weight on your being a PhD student and respond to this. (That would be the equivalent error from your side: again who you are rather than what arguments are worth).


Is the editor-in-chief's advice sincere?

I would not interpret the message as a statement about quality. If the editor felt your article was below par for the journal you will most likely get such a message.

That journals reject papers because they are not suitable is not uncommon. In this case, as you say, the alternatives are also good quality publications and so it seems like good advice. The fact that the editor recommends these journals could actually mean that your paper is seen as suitable for publication in them and thus can be taken as a positive evaluation, however, not a guarantee for success.

I will finish by saying your editor does the job well. The alternative of accepting a paper for review although it may not be suitable for the journal could lead to a drawn out process leading to rejection and loss of much time.


What is exactly meant by "research experience" in grad application?

I would say all of those count as "research experience".  Which ones will be most valued depends on the nature of the program you're applying to, and the exact nature of the work you did.  In general, though, the more independent your work was, the better, and the more generic it was, the worse.  So if you were a research assistant but all you did was photocopy documents, that will not earn you many points.  If you were a research assistant who, e.g., conducted experiments, did fieldwork, participated in lab meetings, whatever, those will be worth more.  If you actually contributed to the writing of papers or presentation at conferences, even better.

As a rule of thumb, the more that what you did was something other people could not have done (i.e., it required your special expertise, not just "more hands'), the "better" it is.


Is it appropriate and useful to inquire if an open position has an internal candidate?

I assume that there are often-if-not-always internal candidates for open positions, in academia and outside. There are always students looking for Ph.D. slots, Ph.D. students looking for postdoc positions, assistant and associate professors looking to move up to the next level. (Same for non-faculty positions, but that seems OT.) Sometimes the people responsible for the position may not even know yet about such internal candidates, because they may not yet have sent in their application.

So the question probably rather is whether these internal candidates are already frontrunners. The professor may want his extremely productive Ph.D. student to continue in the postdoc slot but may need to advertise externally for some procedural reason. The department may want to continue a certain research specialization and plan on promoting the retiring professor's assistant prof. In such a situation, external candidates will need to be very convincing to win.

But: how often will the external candidate be told this? If the external advertisement is legally required, the hiring people may even open themselves up to litigation if they openly tell an applicant that they are only soliciting outside applications as a fig leaf.

On the other hand, the department may explicitly be searching for "new blood", so internal candidates may actually have worse chances than external ones. Which, again, nobody will tell you (or the internal candidate).

Of course, it makes sense to tap your network and see whether the grapevine can tell you more than official channels. However, this kind of information can be unreliable. So if you hear from multiple sources that a given position will be filled internally, it may make sense to not make the effort.

Thus: there will likely be internal candidates, but you will probably not know how good their chances are. If you are a good match for the position, go and apply. Don't worry about internal candidates. This is one part of the hiring situation you can't control, just like the mood of your interviewers. Giving up on an application because there is an internal candidate will be counterproductive in the long run.


Interviewing a family member is not permitted. Yes, you should raise a complaint. Do it politely, of course. But in the end, you have to ask yourself whether or not a work group that would even try to get away with this is one you want to get involved with.


Will quitting a PhD to try an industry job severely reduce my chances of being accepted to another PhD program later?

Congratulations!

Thinking of quitting or moving elsewhere is one of the important milestones in graduate studies.

We can't answer your question, as it depends on lots of personal and local particularities that we can't possibly know about. But one thing I can tell you: Don't take the decision lightly. Studies, particularly graduate studies, tend to stress you out, decisions taken under stress are very often regretted later. Wait until you have had some time to really relax (i.e., near ending term break, after taking holidays). Treat it as you would any other project evaluation (you had a class on that somewhere, right?): Set up your evaluation criteria, how to measure them (be it estimated time to graduation in years or personal satisfaction in a scale from 1 to 5), and define some weight for each. Then write down your value for each, and compare.

Never underestimate discussing this with your significant other, family, friends (on and off school), or even your advisor or other faculty.


Should I write "we" or "I" in my research statement?

A research statement is a mix of past and future.

When you are talking about the past, you should be honest about the fact that you are not working in isolation---in fact, that is a good thing.  Use "we" or "my collaborators and I" or whatever most accurately describes what actually happened.

The other key part of a research statement, however, is your views about the future: what you think is important, what your ambitions are for the future, etc.  Those are unambiguously your own opinions, and should be "I" statements.


Well-regarded institutions offering distance education (PG) in applied Math

There are a number of schools that have distance-learning programs, including for applied mathematics. For instance, the University of Washington offers an online master's of science program in Applied Mathematics.


Can I apply for a graduate degree in Cambridge (MPhil/PhD) after I have earned a Bachelor's from Oxford, or vice versa?

There are no restrictions on doing as you suggest, and indeed, I know a number of people who have applied for (and completed) graduate courses at the University of Cambridge after an undergraduate course at the University of Oxford.


Is it bad not to answer the "Tell me how you behaved in a situation of conflict with your previous supervisor" question in a PhD interview?

I think it would be worse to make up a story. I'm not particularly a fan of this sort of "trap" interview question (alongside other common ones like "what's your biggest weakness?") but presumably the interviewer is asking because they are hoping to elucidate something about how you handle conflict. If you brush the question off, well, that tells them something about how you handle conflict, doesn't it? Maybe they won't mind, maybe they will care deeply, but especially because they gave you extra time they are signaling that, to them, this was an important question, and yet you weren't able to answer a question that was important to them. That said, it's impossible to measure the effect this will have on the decision. It seems unlikely that the answer to this question would be literally the only thing between you and another candidate that was interviewed, but ultimately if it is a choice between you and someone else then anything could matter as the proverbial "last straw".
Instead, in the future I would consider interpreting a question like this much more broadly. A "conflict" doesn't have to mean you came to fisticuffs, it could be any level of disagreement. If you truly have never had a disagreement with a supervisor that may not be a good thing, either, it suggests you aren't bringing anything to the table of sufficient substance to disagree about or lack the confidence to support your own ideas when a supervisor suggests a different direction.


At conferences, why are there usually a few days delay between decisions and notifications?

EDIT: @a3nm's comment prompted me to review the post-mortem of the last conference we helped organise.
The scientific panel met to consider about 1,500 submissions. It took them 2.5 months to reach a decision. The decisions were entered into a database by the secretariat. This took two days because the members of the panel wanted hard copies. The spreadsheet was double checked by the chair of the panel. It took eleven days for him to get back to us. During this time, we were busy with timetabling, which we actually completed in four days. The letters were sent out two days after we received the chair's confirmation. Contrary to my response below (which I wanted to preserve to demonstrate my own error and bias), the main delay we experienced wasn't to do with timetabling.

Imagine this:

1,474 submissions for presentations

355 accepted: 120 oral, 235 posters

1,119 submission rejected

These were the results for the last conference I helped organise. Now imagine having to send the correct letter to all 1,500 people. For the 355 people accepted, the letter needs to contain details such as the date, time and place of their presentations or poster displays.
We needed a team of 9 professional staff to assist us, including three wholly focused on timetabling and venue management.
I'm impressed that they managed to inform you in four days.


Do IEEE transactions allow for any "co-first authors"?

Yes, it is allowed. Google scholar is your friend in such cases.

I employed this query, which looks for publications with "IEEE Transactions" in them, the text "contributed equally to", and one in (text | paper | work | article).

The results show several papers published in IEEE Transactions, which specify multiple equal co-authorship. The way this is specified seems to be non standardized.

For example, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TNB.2006.875054 specifies that "The ﬁrst two authors contributed equally to this work." in the space reserved for details such as when the manuscript was received and revised.

In http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TED.2009.2034804, the equal contribution is specified in the ACKNOWLEDGEMENT section of the paper.

Both ways look good to me. The first case is likely achieved by communicating the authors' contribution in the cover letter / space for staff communication. The second case is achieved by simply writing the contribution in the text body.


"I am looking for a job" on a student website, a good thing or a desperate sentence?

Your professional website is a summary of who you are and how you are currently presenting yourself publicly.  If you are openly on the job market, then it is entirely appropriate to be frank about that fact on your website: just present it as a piece of neutral information, rather than making a big deal of it.


How to find ways to proofread English in papers

Yes, Elsevier publishing group provides professional language services, like editing. You can find about it here

I also found this website which looks good, and it's cheaper and quicker, I think.


Are postdocs in your own institution frowned upon?

The extent to which it is frowned upon differs greatly by discipline and country. At least having been in different departments/universities is usually beneficial for young scholars. Departments differ quite a bit, so having been in different departments/universities/countries broadens the range of experiences. This is usually taken into account by hiring committees, but again, the extent to which that is the case differs substantially.


Is my lack of interest a red flag for pursuing a PhD?

Yes, I think so.  PhD programs are for people who are so passionate about an academic subject that they are willing to endure the certainty of a long, hard period of apprenticeship and training for the possibility of a secure, moderately well-paid lifelong career in that subject.

In some academic fields, there is a good shot at parlaying a PhD into a lucrative career in business or industry.  (In others, this is really not the case.)  However, in the current job market there are few if any fields in which a PhD is a guaranteed paycheck.  A student who knows that she wants to take her mathematical skills, for instance, to business/industry, would probably have an easier, more pleasant life by starting work with a bachelor's or a master's degree and building her career sooner rather than later.  There are exceptions, but they would be better planned in advance: e.g., if you have a specific job in mind for which you specifically know having a PhD would be necessary or beneficial.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with liking a subject and being good at it but not being passionate about it.  You should then find what it is that you are passionate about.  It need not be career-oriented: many, many people work to live rather than live to work.  Just because you have a master's degree in mathematics does not mean that you need to pursue a career in which you use mathematics in any way!  I hope you find your passion...whatever it is.

Finally: one option that you haven't mentioned is to teach mathematics at the pre-university level.  In the US, a master's degree in your subject area makes you competitive for very strong high school teaching jobs, e.g. at amazing public high schools in desirable cities or elite private institutions.  The difference that an excellent school teacher can make has got to be at least as much as most academics, business people or industrialists.  In the unlikely event that Europe has a glut of excellent high school teachers, please consider coming to the United States, as I assure you that we do not.


How to address graduate school recommendation letter?

According to Wikipedia

Dear Sir or Madam or 'Sir/Madam' (If the gender of the reader is unknown).
To Whom It May Concern (If the writer wishes to exclude the gender of the reader from the salutation and/or to convey that the reader should forward the copy to one more suited to receive or respond appropriately).

As @Davidmh has mentioned it is least concerned. I personally have chosen to use "To Whom It May Concern" when I applied to grad school as in some grad schools the recommendation letters might get forwarded from the admissions staff to various professors.

Edit : The first is British English and the second is American English as mentioned by @Davidmh


Will doing Masters degree help me get into another masters degree?

Presumably a higher relevant qualification ---or an equivalent qualification that is more recent and with better performance--- will be more valuable than an older qualification with poorer performance.  Additionally, having a Masters degree in statistics (hopefully with good performance) would be of relevant value to entry into sociology or political science.  As to whether it is necessary, who can say.  Perhaps the best option is to apply to both ---i.e., apply to the top schools for immediate entry, and also apply to the MSc in Statistics as a fall-back.  If you are not accepted for the former, you can still do the latter and then re-apply more strongly later.


The editor of a jounal asked me to withdraw the ArXiv version of a paper and only upload it after acceptance. Is it possible to do that?

I totally agree with the comments of @anyon and @david-ketcheson. I'd suggest that you

point the editor to the guidelines regarding self-archiving of the journal and/or Elsevier in general and, if this fails,
contact your library, because there are people dealing with this kind of situations very often and they usually have (other) contact persons/options at the publisher.


Did my professor properly accommodate my disability?

I'm sorry you were ill.  "Extra time" usually means that one has additional time to complete an exam.  For example a student with accommodation might have to take a final exam on the same day as her colleagues, but might have three hours instead of two to complete the exam.

At the two institutions where I've taught, there's a very formal process for notifying professors of accommodations, in which the professor actually signs for having received a copy of the accommodation letter.  I can't tell whether that was at work in your case.

The disability coordinator at your school is the one person who should know exactly what accommodations you were offered.  Your next step should be to see the disability coordinator, explain what happened, and ask whether you were treated according to the agreed accommodation.  If you were not, then either the disability coordinator will work through this or you can use the disability coordinator's statement in your grade appeal.

If you were granted the accommodations the school prescribed, probably you should file that grade appeal anyway, but do not be too hopeful.

I wish you the best of luck in your academic career and in your health.  I haven't read "How to pass organic chemistry" yet, but I will.


My work was submitted by collaborators without my name, and the university supports them. What are my options?

You might want to consider this discussion of authorship by ICMJE, the statement of interest being that

  The criteria are not intended for use as a means to disqualify
  colleagues from authorship who otherwise meet authorship criteria by
  denying them the opportunity to meet criterion #s 2 or 3. Therefore,
  all individuals who meet the first criterion should have the
  opportunity to participate in the review, drafting, and final approval
  of the manuscript.

So if you made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work, then you should have been given the opportunity to meet the third criterion. If indeed your colleagues just hijacked the work, there is a clear argument to be made that this is a violation of an ethical principle (depending on whether there are other material details that we don't know of).


What type of education should I select in this form?

I am assuming that this application form is a generic "job application"-form, rather than one designed specifically for positions as PhD students. To my knowledge, PhD positions in Austria are categorized as jobs anyway.

Then, translating back to German, I suppose the cases are:

Abitur/Matura
Universitaetsabschluss (= university degree)
Ausbildung

Thus, chose "study".


Is web-presence important for researchers?

The short answer, at least in theoretical computer science, is yes.  Especially pre-tenure.
The Coin of the Realm in academia is fame.  Hiring and promotion decisions are based primarily on the perceptions of your impact by leaders in the research community.  Those intellectual leaders must know who you are, they must know what you do, and they must think that what you do is excellent.  This is precisely why it's so important to network, network, network — go to conferences, visit other departments, talk to visitors, ask questions, answer questions, go to lunch, drink beer, play pool/golf/frisbee/Settlers of Catan, race go-karts, exchange business cards, all that stuff.  Having a visible online presence is just another form of networking.
Similarly, if you want to attract good students, they have to know who you are, they have to know what you do, and they have to think what you do is interesting.
Similarly, if your work is not freely and easily accessible on the web, it is much less likely to be cited than freely accessible work of comparable quality.
To give some personal examples, I have good reason to believe that these web pages were a significant factor in my academic job search and even my tenure case, and this stuff definitely helped me get promoted.  I expect that these pages similarly helped Suresh, and these pages similarly helped David.


Should a formal academic grievance list what an action the student hopes will occur?

The reason that the grievance process sounds like "a legal process for solving problems" is that it is indeed a pseudo-legal process for solving problems. In particular, it is used when the instructor has done something that violates university policy - unfair grading is a frequent complaint.

These grievances typically follow a detailed policy to try to ensure that student complaints are treated fairly. The first step is often to formally notify the instructor in writing, and that seems to be the purpose of the letter.

In the letter, you should lay out the facts as you see them, and you should include the resolution you would like to see. Try to write the letter in a businesslike way - you want to advocate for yourself, but keep to the facts and try not to say things that you cannot justify later.

If the instructor and department chair cannot or do not resolve the issue, it will move up to the next level, which is typically review by a dean. If the dean cannot resolve it, it goes to the next level, which may involve a hearing of some sort.  In my experience many complaints are resolved by the department chair or dean, particularly when the situation is clear cut (e.g. a professor didn't follow the grading policy from the course syllabus).

I cannot say what remedies will be available at your school - this will vary by school. There are certainly colleges where the higher-level administration could allow you to take the course again, or drop the first course from your transcript. The instructor will not be able to do those things, but you have to work through the process one layer at a time in any case.


Best PhD application strategy for infrequent PhD vacancies

I would guess in coutries where PhD positions are usually handled in similar way to jobs would be, it it would generally be unusual for a supervisor to have a funded position available that wasn't advertised, but that said, it can't hurt to contact people you are particularly intersted in working with. If you do, make sure that you include in your email exactly why you want to work with that person - make them believe you are not just sending them a standard email.

I doubt that students in the area will be able to help you greatly.

And of course, if you are targeting a country where PhD positions are usually advertised, then yes, of course you should apply to advertised positions!


Submitting an official transcript vs unofficial transcript for postgraduate studies; why the difference?

The primary issue is expediency. It can take time to issue official transcripts. The sooner a candidate has a complete application on file, the sooner it can be evaluated. In addition, most schools that may allow unofficial transcripts generally require an official transcript before matriculation. If it is found that the unofficial transcript doesn't match the official transcript, then that would be grounds to cancel the offer of admission.


Based on the updates, there are a few things I can offer in terms of advice. The first is that given it's a short amount of time remaining on your term, stick it out. Especially if this is going to impact your college credits/marks/etc. Sure, it's a crappy situation but try to make the best out of it as not to impact your marks or the progress of your degree.

Once completed, don't return to the research group. Take the opportunity now to find research groups within your institution that are nicer and more willing to host a student because it sounds like the current group sees students as a hindrance rather than as a collaborator or colleague.

There are avenues you can take to make complaints about bullying in the workplace, such as speaking to professors (not unless they're the one involved in bullying) or going to a human resources division. However, this may not be in your best interests to do anything 'formal' at this stage of your career given you aren't committed to this lab group on a fixed term contract as an official job. I would be talking to the student mentor you mentioned in the comment about your experience.


Supervisor continues to boss me around long after I left the university

To be frank about it, your main problem is that it is not long enough after you've left the university -- i.e., you've submitted your thesis but haven't defended it yet.

Taking a job in between your thesis submission and successful defense sounds inherently awkward to me: what happens if your defense isn't successful?  But I gather that having a such a long gap between submission and defense (in my neck of the woods, we are happy if students send us their thesis three weeks before they defend it) is standard in your part of the academic world.

Did you discuss how you would be spending the time between submission and defense with your advisor before you took the job?  If not, now would be a good time to have that discussion.  I agree with a comment above saying you should try to set boundaries.  I think "Because of my full-time job..." is a promising start to an explanation of why you can't do everything she wants.  You wrote

  This has led me to ask for leave from company just so I could demonstrate lab techniques to her new students.

That seems like a more drastic step than talking to your advisor about this. If you are willing to go on leave from your full-time job, then where are you going to draw the line?

However, I have to counsel you to have this conversation with your advisor carefully: assuming that getting the PhD is important to you for the rest of your career and life (a fair assumption given your situation, I hope!), the truth is that your advisor has as much power over you now as she has ever had.  If you have a terrible falling out with her, that could make her look over your thesis in a different light and -- while personal disagreements with your student should not turn an acceptable thesis into an unacceptable one -- there is some risk of that happening, I'm afraid.

Coming back to the first sentence: you're in an awkward, but temporary situation.  I would suggest working overtime (literally?!?) in the short run to make sure that you both get your PhD and keep the job you want.  Hang in there until you get everything you want.  Good luck.


Can I submit my application before fall semester grades are released?

You certainly can do so—many students must, given that the deadline at many schools is before the fall semester is complete.

However, note that any school that accepts you will want to see your finished transcript before allowing you to enroll. Significant plummets in grade (going from an A average to a C average in your final year, for instance) will raise eyebrows, and potentially cause some schools to withdraw offers.


Where can I find information about the demographics of Finance PhD applicants to US schools?

Other than surveying separate programs and students in these programs, you might find the PowerStats (National Center for Education Statistics) product helpful. NCES collects data on undergraduate majors, graduate majors, etc. It'll take some exploration to see if the data is there -- and you will likely have to merge different datasets.

http://nces.ed.gov/datalab/powerstats/default.aspx


Minimizing cheating in online final exam?

I think online protocring is a terrible idea. It is invasive, discrimatory, and doesn't work. It reveals things about a students living conditions they might reasonably want to remain hidden. It relies on having access to a device with a functioning web cam, and good enought internet for it to work properly. As the end of all that, a webcam can't capture you typing on your phone on your lap anyway. Or having someone stood behind your screen helping you.

In fact, I don't really like the idea of synchronous remote exams. It is really not fair to ask some students to sit an important, stressful, multi-hour exam in the middle of the night. Not does it really work for students who might share a laptop with another hosuehold member who needs it for their job, or has unreliable internet.

I think the simple fact of the matter is that it is not possible to prevent cheating while assessment has to be online, other than through the use of one-to-one oral exams and many of the things people are despirately trying just make life harder and less fair for everyone without actaully preventing cheating.

If your questions are theory based, then surely you can tell if a student is cheating, becuase in order to paraphrase another student sufficiently for you to not pick it up, they would have to understand what they were paraphrasing?


Is it ethical for a graduate student to provide juniors with paid graduate school application guidance?

I think you have largely hit the nail on the head in your own post. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with charging for valuable experiential information. In fact, this really could be an extension to charging for 'edits' or tutoring. Really if they are providing non-sensitive information regarding the procedures and what the admissions panel look for - then I don't see any major ethical quandaries.

However, you highlight a key point. They could be leaking information explicitly obtained from the panel (that I assume they would have delivered in confidence). If this is the case, then I imagine it should be intuitive what the schools reaction would be. The reason this is unethical (from my POV) is that they are no longer sharing experiential information, but providing them with explicitly 'leaked' outcomes that would give a disproportionate advantage.

By analogy with the edit example. It would be fine for a tutor to edit and provide feedback on a students work. To the majority of people, I think they are aware this occurs and there are no ethical problems. In fact, a tutor might go so far as to show them example assignments. In fact, my department actively encourages students and postgrads to seek and help out students, respectively. However, if the tutor provided the marking key (obtained from another postgrad running the unit) and gave this to the student - that is blatantly unethical.


How can I get access to the computer science journals from top publishers through a single subscription in Europe?

Two questions here: can you have a multi-publisher subscription, and can you have a "subject-specific" subscription?

For the first, I suspect the most likely answer is "you can't". I'm not aware of any service (either for institutions or individuals) that offers a subscription with an arbitrarily selected set of journals from across multiple publishers. Generally speaking, you'd have to set this up with each publisher.

For an institution, you can get close to a single subscription model by using a subscription agent, who will handle the details of your subscriptions for you and send you one invoice, but even then it's still potentially quite a lot of work to actually get each one working, and - as we saw with Swets last year - no guarantee it'll be a stable solution long term. I don't know if similar services are available for individuals; I've certainly never noticed them advertised.

On the second question - more or less, yes. The publishers usually offer three approaches  to subscribing - a manually selected list of journals ("I want A, and B, and C..."); thematic packages (Elsevier, for example, has relatively broad "subject collections"), or an everything-included deal, which isn't much use for you. The first option is usually more expensive if you want a large range of titles.

Using the thematic packages, you probably could just get computer science journals - but this might be quite loosely defined. (Elsevier's set includes, for example, the Journal of Rail Transport Planning & Management!)


What is the Measure of an "Incomplete" Undergraduate Thesis?

Honestly, my expectations for undergraduate theses are very limited.  Any well-written discussion that demonstrates significant understanding of the research area is probably satisfactory.  A doctoral dissertation is supposed to demonstrate significant research skill and the ability to perform cutting-edge research.  A master's thesis is supposed to demonstrate the ability to perform some useful research in the subject area.  An undergraduate thesis is supposed to demonstrate that a student knows something worth knowing about a topic, and original results are not generally a requirement.

In a way, it is good that you are unhappy with your undergraduate honors thesis.  That demonstrates that you know what you have actually accomplished and also clearly understand the weaknesses of your work.  It may be unfortunate that you have not had enough time to complete all the work you would have liked to complete, but if you continue along an academic career path, you will get ample opportunities to pursue more complete research projects.

(As a personal note, I should add that as I am writing this comment, I really ought to be providing comments on the thesis draft that I received the other day from my own honors college student.  This is a really good student, and he has already appeared as an author on a paper in a top journal, based on his work over the past year.  On the other hand, his written thesis is lacking in both contextualization and descriptive detail.  To bring his work up to the level where I would like it to be would be a significant undertaking, and it is probably not going to get to that level in the limited time we have.  To some extent, that leaves me disappointed, but I do not want to lose track of the fact that this is a really first-rate student, and what he has produced---imperfect as it is---is quite remarkable for an twenty-one-year-old undergraduate.)


What Is A Typical Computer Science Ph.D. Interview Like?

There really is no "typical" interview protocol for CS PhD positions. The kinds of questions asked will mostly depend on the qualities and skills that the PI deems relevant for the position. If the work requires specialized technical knowledge, it's possible that the PI will try to test this knowledge, and programming tasks are a valid way of doing that.
In your case, one could argue that the PI slightly miscommunicated the contents of the interview, since a programming task is arguably not a programming question.


Is a 3 year Ph.D. too short for MA/MSc graduate?

The thing about a PhD is that you should end up in roughly the same place. The length is therefore determined by where you come in. US PhDs tend to be longer than UK ones primarily because in the UK we specialise much earlier, so there is less left to do to reach PhD standard in your field.

In deciding what is best for you, the key factor will be you. How much do you still need to learn to complete your apprenticeship as an academic? That covers many aspects: knowledge for your research, research skills, how to write papers and give talks, personal management, career management, teaching, student supervision, probably some I've forgotten. If you have suitable funding, your PhD is a good time to learn these things while you have relatively little in the way of responsibilities. Also, at least in maths, your research record is generally considered relative to when you finish your PhD, not when you start.

My understanding is that the extra time in a US PhD is taken up completing taught modules/passing exams, not extra time on research. I would investigate whether having already done a masters would mean you could skip some/all of that and so shorten the total time.

Of course there are other factors to consider, finances and family often being the biggest ones. Also consider where you will be happy living, and who you want to work with. I was advised that the right supervisor is the most important thing in choosing a PhD. Personally I like to add that choice of supervisor should include preferred working patterns and personality, not just research topic, because you need to work closely with that person for a sustained period of time.


Are there rules for 'conversion'/transfer from from J2 to J1 or B to J1? Does either require travelling back to, and applying from the home country?

There are no particular rules. When you apply for J1, you need to go out of the US, not necessary India, e.g. Canada.

Advantages of J2 over B1/B2:

You can work. However, in order to do so, you need to obtain a work permit (EAD) first, and this process often takes 3 months.
Staying time in the US is longer. You are dependent of your spouse, you can stay in the US as long as him/her (indicated in your DS-2019), even after your J2 visa is expired.

On the other hand, you have to leave the US before the day your B1/B2 is expired.

This may be a disadvantage for you on a J2 visa: it is required by the law that J2 dependent needs to be covered by a health insurance that satisfies some requirements (please google yourself since I do not remember all the details). If you buy it independently, it can cost thousand(s) per month. While you can have cheaper health insurance from your university after you start your post-doc.

Your spouse's university may also have health insurance for partner, but it may require you to buy the whole year as your spouse, etc.

B1/B2 doesn't need a heath insurance. However, if you are unlucky to get sick/injured in the US, it is not uncommon at all that one day in the hospital (in particular in the emergency room) can cost you more than 10 thousands or more.


Going to JMM (Joint Mathematics Meetings) for Jobs without interview invitations?

Unfortunately, you really will not know until January 2 whether you have any interview requests.  In my past experience, only about half of the JMM interview lists have been determined by Christmas, and some are not determined until right before the meeting.

Some departments are willing to do Skype preliminary interviews instead of Joint Meetings preliminary interviews, but Skype interviews can be hard to schedule, and a department that has already talked to a number of excellent candidates at the Joint Meetings has little motivation to schedule such interviews.

You should be aware that, for many jobs, a JMM preliminary interview isn't worth much.  I have heard of departments interviewing as many as 80 people for 1 position at JMM, though 20-30 is probably the usual number, and a few departments prefer longer interviews with only 10 or so candidates.

Finally, essentially zero research universities interview at JMM, though some of the top liberal arts colleges do.  If you are not interested in positions where teaching plays at least as important a role as research (and for most of the positions interviewing a much more important role than research), don't bother.


What are the different committees for in a conference?

The organizing committee (OC) represents all organizational departments of the conference, such as local arrangements, publications, publicity, satellite events, etc. Typically, for each of these departments, the OC includes one or two chairpersons. The OC is usually coordinated by a General Chair, who is the main responsible "manager" of the conference. Members of the OC usually change between different editions of the conference.

The program committee (PC) selects which papers to accept and to reject. The main task of PC members is to review papers and, afterwards, to take part in discussions of the reviewed papers. The PC is usually coordinated by one or two Program Chairs, who are actually part of the OC. Usually, the PC is more stable across different editions of the same conference than the OC; PC members often stay for 2-5 editions.

The steering committee (SC) steers the direction of the conference, for example, by selecting the location and General Chair of the next edition, and by deciding the direction of future editions (e.g., which topics to include in the Call for Papers). Compared to the OC and the PC, the SC is particularly stable across different editions of the conference. It is often comprised of former General and Program Chairs of the conference.

These considerations assume a typical medium-sized to large conference. There can be variations, especially in small and very large conferences: Small conferences may have a scaled-down OC and no SC. Very large conferences may have several main tracks with distinct PCs, or an additional committee on top of the PC (such as a "Shadow PC" or a "Program Board").


If you make a substantial contribution should you be given the opportunity to satisfy the other requirements for authorship?

Further down the ICMJE remarks:

  The criteria are not intended for use as a means to disqualify colleagues from authorship who otherwise meet authorship criteria by denying them the opportunity to meet criterion #s 2 or 3. Therefore, all individuals who meet the first criterion should have the opportunity to participate in the review, drafting, and final approval of the manuscript.

The guidelines do include such a criterion.


I know one relatively simple way.
Zotero + a Google Scholar Zotero plugin for you browser (typically, Firefox or Chrome).
Bibliographic manager. The program helps you to download bibliographic meta-data together with the PDFs (if they are open).
So, you may "save" all the needed papers to "My library" in GS (if you have several collections, you may assign a special "label" to each collection). Then, when you have all the papers in one list, just export them all to Zotero. Whenever possible, Zotero will download a PDF.


What should the chemist who synthesized a drug expect regarding coauthorship of papers on clinical trials?

The ICMJE guidelines says that authors must meet four requirements:

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
Final approval of the version to be published; AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Without knowing your field, it sounds like you think you satisfy the first requirement. It doesn't sound like you meet the final three. While I disagree with the guidelines and think hat everyone who meets the first requirement should be given the option to meet the other three, the guidelines do not require that.
This sounds like a situation where you should talk to the lead investigator. Ideally the conversation should have happened early on, but now is better than never.


What grading policy applies to undergraduates taking graduate courses?

In my experience, it's not that the grade range shrinks because the graduate students are graded differently, but instead because of the following three factors:

Graduate classes typically focus more on illumination than on certification in their grading policies (see this answer for more on the distinction)
Graduate admissions mostly filters down to a population of people who would have been getting pretty much only As and Bs in their undergraduate classes too.
Graduate students often have less classes or more closely related classes, enabling them to focus their energy more effectively.

Thus, the undergraduates are likely to be graded against exactly the same standards as the graduate students.  If they're well-prepared, interested in the material and willing to put the work in, they'll probably earn the same A and B grades as well, and also will deserve them.

Why then, is a "failing" grade for a graduate student a "good" grade for an undergraduate?  It's just that the expectations of graduate student performance are much higher, as also indicated by the previous point on filtering at admissions.