Official Ph.D question/advice thread

[zoltan]

What is that a departmental stipend or some extracurricular EPA STAR-type fellowship?

[KoreanBuffet]

Lol so sad that I look at 33k and think immediately of how to best burgle you.

[reno expat]

there are a fistful of departments in my field that pay ~30 as their standard stipend. i'll probably wind up close to 40 this year once they tack on my RA pay.

[Cueballmania]

#notsohumblebrags

[poincaraux]

Upon rereading, mine comes across like I'm a jerk. Sorry about that. Better version: apply to lots of places so you have some leverage.

[solsek]

Any good resources/tips/advice for NSF funding? My program is forcing all 1st year students to write up an application even though we haven't even gone through our first rotation yet (lol been in class for 4 days and our rough draft is due in 1 week). They basically expect us to right one after reading 3 papers from a faculty member we requested. It's probably not that hard to do, but it's probably hard to do it well, especially on a subject that you've spent 2 weeks reading about.

[Cueballmania]

Originally Posted by solsek

Any good resources/tips/advice for NSF funding? My program is forcing all 1st year students to write up an application even though we haven't even gone through our first rotation yet (lol been in class for 4 days and our rough draft is due in 1 week). They basically expect us to write one after reading 3 papers from a faculty member we requested. It's probably not that hard to do, but it's probably hard to do it well, especially on a subject that you've spent 2 weeks reading about.

I'd probably use good grammer. I was awarded one. I'll come up with some "notes" that I think are general and useful. They aren't due until January anyways.

[zoltan]

Originally Posted by solsek

Any good resources/tips/advice for NSF funding? My program is forcing all 1st year students to write up an application even though we haven't even gone through our first rotation yet (lol been in class for 4 days and our rough draft is due in 1 week). They basically expect us to right one after reading 3 papers from a faculty member we requested. It's probably not that hard to do, but it's probably hard to do it well, especially on a subject that you've spent 2 weeks reading about.

Edit. Get advisor feedback. Re-edit. Get more advisor feedback. Brutally re-edit.

The whole point is to make your "project" sound both interesting/relevant and do-able. Review panels understand that it's silly for a 1st year grad student to know exactly what they want to do and how they're going to do it. But you SHOULD be able to articulate a problem and describe an approach for finding the answer.

[solsek]

Thanks!

It's not due until January? For some reason they are making us finish by November 19th because of some deadline...apparently it's not the NSF one though. Gratz on getting the funding Cueball, that would be great if I could see your notes. Advice from this part of 2p2 has gotten me this far, I'm sure you guys know what you are doing even better than some faculty at my school

[poincaraux]

Are you expected to actually apply? We had to do that as part of comps, the idea being that you should get good at such things early in your career rather than later.

[solsek]

Yes, if you are eligible to apply, it is expected that you will submit your application. I definitely agree that we should get good at it early in our career, I just hope they don't have super high expectations from this (such as expecting some of us to get funded). I spoke with the rest of my cohort and most people are completely lost on what to do lol.

[zoltan]

Pro tip: If you don't EXPECT to get funded (i.e., believe in the righteous holiness of your research program), it will likely show in your proposal, and self-fulfilling prophecies become self-fulfilling.

[imjosh]

Originally Posted by Cueballmania

I'd probably use good grammer. I was awarded one. I'll come up with some "notes" that I think are general and useful. They aren't due until January anyways.

Originally Posted by solsek

Thanks!

It's not due until January? For some reason they are making us finish by November 19th because of some deadline...apparently it's not the NSF one though. Gratz on getting the funding Cueball, that would be great if I could see your notes. Advice from this part of 2p2 has gotten me this far, I'm sure you guys know what you are doing even better than some faculty at my school

The NSF GRFP is due in mid November AFAIK.

+1,000,000,000 to the editing. My 3 papers each went through 10 revisions (read through, read through out-loud, read backwards, mom read, fiancee read, engineering professor read, lit. professor read, CTRL+F3 read removing all "unnecessary fluff" words such as "very" that adds nothing to the precious space that is the 2 pages you are limited to.... ETC)

[zoltan]

You get TWO PAGES now???? We had ONE. Citation styles were, shall we say, creative to fit into the space allotted. 4 point font? Sure, why not?

Here is a site I stumbled onto that some might find interesting. Haven't looked at much of it, so I don't vouch for the quality.
http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

And
http://www.slate.com/articles/health...e_effort_.html

[solsek]

When did you apply?