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How to deal with a colleague who always puts you down?
I am just starting out my PhD which will take 5 years to complete and I am dealing with a person in my own research group who cannot stop putting me down every chance she gets.
In our research department in neuroscience engineering I guess she would be considered a very ambitious person. She has good grades and has some papers published despite only being in the university for about three years. But she has a very bad personality and constantly attempts to put me down by comparing me to some of the other researchers in the department.

For example, she will come up and say I know so and so who is in the
same year as you are and he already has papers published, you don't.
Or I know this other person who did really well in a class and even got
the professors recommendation while you are only an average student.
She will non-stop ask me for my GPA as an undergrad, and how I am
doing in my courses. I thought she cared about me at the beginning but I am realizing that she is only exploiting my weaknesses.
She will also ask me about my research focus and tell me whatever I
am trying to do has no value or too small scale. She will openly laugh about my research plans in front of other people and say that it has no value.
Even when we first met she asked me about my background which I said
was in industrial engineering and she just kind of laughed because she
was in some sort of advanced research program which is in her
opinion more prestigious
Finally, she has no moral qualms doing all the above in front of other people. In fact she only does this to me when other people are around.

Worst of all is that she is making an assumption in almost everything. I have a few research papers published, just not at the current university so it is not listed. My GPA was dragged down during first years of undergrad but it picked up and at the end I had a 4.0. Plus she is not doing too well either, only with a few minor publications on very specific applications, and she is only known for certain speciaties and not much of a generalist and knows very little about the fields immediately outside of her research. But do you think I ever tell her this? Call her out about her lack of creativity? Or ask her about her GPA and the courses that she does bad in just so I can tell her that "Mr X is doing much better than you in that course"? Of course not because I am a decent person.
We are in the same research team. We should be working together and learning from each other, yet she behaves this way to me. I was so relieved during first few months when I started out my research because I have heard so much about these kind of people you encounter during graduate school yet I have not even encountered one and everyone is so helpful, but there she is. Since we cannot move forward in an amicable relationship, what is the best alternative for me? Am I being too sensitive?

I would say just bite your tongue and remind yourself that after she graduates, wherever she ends up, interdepartmental politics will make a person like her unhappy. If you aren't satisfied with this answer, it probably wouldn't hurt to bring up your issues with her to your advisor. If it affecting. The performance of your research group, it is an issue they should be aware of.

Industrial engineering is often the brunt of undergrad jokes (we called it "imaginary engineering"), because several difficult "core" classes aren't requirements.  However, as a PhD student, you probably weren't in the business of avoiding tough and interesting classes, so you should be prepared to mention what elective you had time for because you weren't taking EM theory.  Graduate level courses will help in this regard even more.  May not rescue the situation with this habitual offender, but knowing to mention that you studied constrained non-linear optimization methods may (continued...)

help to win you the respect of someone who assumes that coming from an IE program left you with fewer capabilities and tasks you accordingly, even while being completely polite about it.  Of course you should substitute whatever high-level skills you've been developing and express them in a way that clearly says "my math is just as good, I simply solve different and equally challenging problems".

@BenVoigt The OP should not appear to try to gain the other person's (let's call her Alice) respect. She does not owe her anything, and does not need to prove herself in front of Alice. She needs to convince her advisers in the regular way, by good work. But it would be counterproductive for her to appear to have to prove herself to Alice. She needs to signal by attitude and behaviour (even more than by words) that she isn't going to join the game table, not now, not later.

@CaptainEmacs: Like I said, it won't do any good for the repeat offender.  But said offender may be diminishing OP in the eyes of others, so knowing how to counter that may at times be useful.

@BenVoigt I understand your idea and I would agree if the criticism were factual. However, clearly here criticism is a political tool of "Alice" and in this case, any self-justification sounds apologetic. There is a reason why politicians do not like to self-justify and pretend they were right even if they know very well they weren't. In a politically hostile constellation, radiating confidence and an element of "I know what I want, and your opinion doesn't matter" is more effective than the attempt to give a rational response. Unfortunately and quite diametral to a scientist's instinct.

Someone waved Dorothy Parker through a door saying, "Age before beauty."  She replied, "Pearls before swine."  That may be apocryphal, and I don't really recommend doing it, but it won't hurt to think, "pearls before swine" now and again.

If you don't mind a bit of sarcasm, tell her only a fool would value her time and genius so little so as to spend it every single day an utter failure like you.

http://www.math.ucsd.edu/~fan/teach/add.htm This post on how to deal with math bullies may be relevant

I can imagine the situation you are in; And it is perfect to play some mind games! Whatever she asks ask back, but in better tone! Ask her out for a coffe, tea or whatever to see her reaction and just play along. The moment you either rage or stop talking to her she "won" but there is no prize to claim.

Weak people need to put others down to feel strong, just as small dogs bark towards big ones to get them scared, because they know they stand no chance. Keep this in mind and everything is ok.

This sounds a lot like a boat programming question. People like your colleague exist everywhere, not only in academia, and I see nothing academia-specific in how to deal with them.

Could it be that she's from a country where this behavior is acceptable? Maybe is just an intercultural thing. Otherwise, I wonder how a chair of a department let's her get away with this.

Always keep in mind that the person's whole behaviour is just a sign of deep insecurities. A person who feels secure in themselves and happy with her own achievements has no need to behave like that. If you try to defend yourself, remember that there is nothing wrong with you, what's wrong is her behaviour.

@BobBrown: Correct answer to "Pearls before swine"would be "you're right, I'm going first. ".

Nothing to do with the question asked, but I never understood the US system re "I have a few research papers published, just not at the current university so it is not listed.". Can someone explain this to me - I am only aware of recognizing papers that were published in a public venue. How does what Female Tank mentions work?

Regarding doing it in front of others: people will soon notice and ignore it. I know a person who is always pointing out how he can do it better, and how his way was always better. Every time he raises his hand, everybody else rolls their eyes.

@G.Bach probably, Female Tank needs a certain number of publications to get her PhD. The work she did before doesn't count, and therefore, it doesn't appear on her publication list for the degree.

It's sad you have to deal with garbage like this.  Deal enough of it at work and it just sucks.

Don't let on that it bothers you and just smile sweetly.  I love to respond with things like, "Wow, why don't you tell me how you really feel?"  And then laugh like the other person has said something hilarious.  Tends to stop that behavior pretty quickly.  Also I agree it may be cultural.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

annoying coworkers are not unique to academia, and there are a lot of  strategies for how to deal with them.

I favor the Confusingly Positive/Neutral Response in these situations.

"So-and-so did Awesome Thing and you --" "Wow, that's great! When will it be published? I'd like to read it."
"What was your undergrad GPA?" "Uh, I don't even remember. It got me in here, though, and I love it here!"
"Bah, what you're doing is garbage." "I'm finding it a lot of fun, and learning a lot!"

When she pulls these stunts in front of others, you will look infinitely classier than she for refusing to play the game.

"What's your GPA?" - "Quite nice, and of my studies I particularly enjoyed the hypertensorial Labradov elliptic metahomolgy calculus - I really recommend to learn about it if you haven't done it" (of course, you should know what the hypertensorial Labradov elliptic metahomolgy calculus is ;-)

Let me add one that I've always had to use when a relative of mine asks me about my grades, in order to tell others how much better or worse I am than them. Relative: "What grades did you get?" Me: "My grades were okay, but I don't consider them important." And I really don't, because I consider life >> grades.

That has to be the best answer. Taking the high road and not letting yourself get dragged into a discussion where you can't win is almost always the way to go for such issues.

I swear I saw an article posting basically this (Disarm negative people with obnoxiously positive responses)... I can't find it though. Love the reasoning behind it.

Honestly the best way to "get to" and stop people who do this sort of thing is to just 100% ignore it. The lack of validation of the "oooh, gotcha!! haha I'm awesome" statements they make as jabs quickly makes them feel stupid, and they can't even do anything to avoid that other than stopping.

+1 The strategy here reminds me of this webcomic. More seriously, never losing sight of your integrity is an important lesson here, and will help you throughout life.

To be a real bastard follow up by publicly offering her a muffin. It completely throws horrible people off balance.

I think you need a naturally friendly demeanor to be able to pull this off naturally. Another option is to act like you're well aware they're trying to bring you down and you find it amusing that they're wasting their time so. A broad grin and an "is that so?"

user21820s response may be honest, but denying a persons way of keeping "score" will likely piss them off even more. I agree with Murphy. I think some kind of muffin intervention tactic would do the trick. Either that or a positive "Wow, that's cool. I'm happy for you!" should disarm or at least content them.

I agree with @Aurast – not everyone can pull this off. Overly kind responses must jive with your natural demeanor; otherwise, you'll come off as phony. That said, if you happen to be someone who can use this approach, it can be a lot of fun.

I think people who can't pull this off naturally are probably more inclined to @enderland's commented approach - ignoring her. Though there is a third group who can't accomplish either of those and would end up punching her in the face. (If you're one of those, save yourself some time, don't allow yourself to build up to an "explosion", and tell her to mind her own business to begin with)

The previous answers are quite good, and I'd like to add another possible line of defence.
If possible, minimise interaction with her. You will not learn anything from her (except how not to behave), and she is very unlikely to improve (miracles happen, but very rarely).
If you do not feel in the mood to give cheery/positive answers, another strategy is to respond blandly, such as with a politely interested "Really?"/"That sounds interesting"/"how lovely" or the like. Blandness and being boring (to her, not to others) takes the fun out of trying to upset you.
Most importantly, make clear to yourself that she has no role in your scientific life. She is not your boss or your adviser. You decide what you need. Don't watch how others in your department are doing. The only people you may need to watch are competitors in your research field at other institutions. The progress of some random colleague at your institution doesn't tell you anything about how well you are doing or should be doing. They may rush ahead, and fall back again with respect to you, you never know; fields are not comparable.
Your colleague clearly does not have the ability to judge with confidence where she is placed herself, and she is so worried about others that she tries to transfer this worry to you. Don't let that happen, you are not her emotional recycling bin. At this stage, however, which you describe I do not see a necessity yet to involve any third person.

To add a legal perspective (as a department chair, I received training regarding such matters), some of the behaviors you described will in my opinion very probably qualify as a form of workplace harassment in the United States, assuming that you can be considered an employee (which is not certain and would depend on the particulars of your status in the graduate program). The occurrence of such harassment could be argued to constitute a hostile work environment. If you complain to your advisor/PI/department chair, it will be their legal responsibility to take action to prevent the harassment. As the Wikipedia article I linked to above explains:

An employer can be held liable for failing to prevent these workplace
  conditions, unless it can prove that it attempted to prevent the
  harassment and that the employee failed to take advantage of existing
  harassment counter-measures or tools provided by the employer.

Even if you are not considered an employee, there may be other laws that apply to the situation, and regardless, common sense would dictate that your advisor and department are in a good position, and have good incentives, to address the problem should you choose to complain to them.
To conclude, I'm not saying that you necessarily should complain, but this is one option you should be aware of. Disclaimer: as I said I received some training on workplace harassment, but I am not a lawyer and would recommend that you seek more authoritative information on any legal-related issues before making any sensitive decisions.

I personally have the impression that the bully in this case is merely an insecure person. A lightweight, simpler strategy could well work in the present case. Unfortunately, today even comparatively minor incidents are quickly escalated to heavy-duty semi-legal handling due to increased readiness to "semi-litigate". This is harmful for the trust in the department and should be considered only after all other actions have failed and with thorough collection of evidence.

This is a good example what I refer to as "dropping the hammer" in my answer; triggering legal ramifications would certainly be a last resort (but one should be aware of it for the worst cases).

@Captain a "merely" insecure person could still cause much harm. And yes, a lightweight strategy could work and may be worth trying, not least since dealing with this on her own would provide OP with useful experience in human problem-solving. As for "simpler", actually I'd argue you won't find a simpler approach than complaining to the people whose job it is to deal with precisely such problems, freeing OP to do her work and not have to agonize about what to do. I'm not suggesting suing the university, just getting help from the system in dealing with what is clearly a difficult situation.

Also if you do go this route, you sure better have tried to diffuse the situation yourself and then document violations in enough detail to actually be useable.

@enderland you are correct that documentation would be extremely helpful, but from a legal (or ethical, IMO) perspective, OP has no responsibility to try to defuse the situation herself before complaining. It's fine if she wants to try, but strictly not required.

Keeping a discrete personal recorder (a cell phone always recording (compressed/mp3) audio, a tiny video (or only audio) recorder, etc) on the OP at all times when dealing with this "bad" colleague would be a good idea, "just in case." Provided, having your cell phone always recording isn't against some other laws or school rules. (ps. I cringe a little when wikipedia is a legal source ;-)

@DanRomik No doubt much harm can be done. However, I am a fan of a graded response and skeptical of the legalistic attitude that starts pervading much of public entities in Europe (after the US model). Formally, you are right that the OP has no responsibility in defusing the situation. However, this means that, basically, the response to any problem becomes a formal complaint. This creates a corporate atmosphere where no-one will fully trust no-one else (who can say whether the complaint was appropriate? It cuts both ways), and every transaction will be monitored and on record.

By "simpler", I meant a more "lightweight" strategy which the individual can carry out on their own (as the one in my answer).

@CaptainEmacs honestly I don't see anything ungraded or overly legalistic about an employee at a workplace complaining to their supervisor about harassing behavior on the part of a coworker. The legal part comes in mostly as a way of explaining why the supervisor is legally obliged to act to prevent the harassment, which should be reassuring to the person making the complaint. I do agree there are somewhat gentler approaches that may be worth trying first, but overall this does not strike me as an especially radical or aggressive solution, nor as a symptom of the over-legalism of our society.

A woman in my entering class of grad school sounds just like what you're describing -- callous put-downs, insensitive and uber-competitive remarks about grades and research status, etc. Several of us started off trying really hard to make her a happier human being (she also constantly complained about how lonely she was -- go figure), but it pretty quickly became clear that she was an emotional black hole, sucking in positive energy and emitting none back.
Research requires collaboration, and NO ONE wants to collaborate with someone like that. While still in grad school, she started a promising summer fellowship that she'd been bragging to everyone about having obtained and they fired her shortly after she began because she was so difficult to work with. Now, several years after both of us earned our Ph.D.s and moved on, almost no one currently or previously affiliated with our department even knows what she's doing.
She clearly failed to make the mark on the field she seemed to think she was destined to, and I suspect the person you're describing will either change her act or wind up the same way.
My advice: Do everything you can to avoid and ignore her, and when that's not possible, call her on her bad behavior.

Good advice, although black holes emits energy !!!

Dark Energy? :-)

I am a bit dismayed that the majority of answers here seem to take as a given that the OP is in some contest of wills with her fellow grad student and give advice for "winning the battle," "putting the other student in her place," "effecting her demise" and so forth.  (Not all: there are some excellent answers and indeed some which are very close to what I am about to say: just too few of them in the total chorus.)  This is fundamentally wrong-headed: graduate school is not a battle of wills with other graduate students.  It does (unfortunately) have a competitive aspect, but the competition is not for top spots in the social/professional hierarchy of graduate students: it is for academic excellence and the opportunity to continue one's academic career.
How are these true goals of graduate school furthered by this verbal jousting with a fellow grad student? The answer is clear: they're not.  Being the victor in a verbal joust feels better than being the loser, but the victory is completely pyrrhic.  The only real victory is to stop playing this game.
The OP can do that as follows: she should think carefully about the range of interactions she has with her fellow student and make a clear, mental divide between activities which are necessary (they may have to work together, after all) and potentially productive and activities which are part of the no-winners game described above.  Then, in all future interactions with this other student, she should simply refuse to engage with all overtures that she knows or strongly suspects will be unproductive.  She should respond positively to interactions that are clearly productive/professional, and she should firmly move borderline interactions towards the productive/professional direction.  All these things she should do completely openly and unsubtly.  That there are other people around is a good thing for this strategy: the OP is saying "come to me with professional things and professional things only."  To refuse to do that when other people are around makes the other person clearly in the wrong.
Sample response:

"I'm sorry, I've answered questions like that from you before, so I know it won't lead anywhere productive. Do you have anything constructive / relevant / about project X to ask me?"

The lack of subtlety of this strategy should make it straightforward to implement as long as the OP is committed to it. The worst possible outcome I see is that the OP is already so bent out of shape / her fellow student is evil enough that interactions that look innocent to other observers will be handled coldly and professionally by the OP.  But that is an acceptable outcome.  Professionals are allowed to be cold as long as they make it clear that this coldness is in the service of doing their job.  Moreover after a few awkward exchanges like this, all but the most evil/deranged people will learn to stop pushing the button that is not getting the desired response.

Pete, I know this answer is well-intentioned, but I wonder if you would be making the same suggestions if the OP were complaining of harassment of a sexual nature (but still only in verbal form) from a male coworker. This kind of "just refuse to engage, stick to work-related issues and you'll be fine" type of advice assumes the premise that the OP is capable of "just" refusing to engage. I think you are seriously underestimating the perniciousness of this type of bullying (especially by saying your strategy is "virtually foolproof", which I find a bit patronizing), ...

... and your advice comes dangerously close to "blaming the victim". After all, in the context of (purely verbal) sexual harassment I think you'll agree it would be completely unacceptable to tell someone that it is their "engaging" with the harasser that is reinforcing his behavior, and that the solution to the harassment is to just "refuse to engage". So I wonder how you see this situation as being any different.

@Dan: I deleted "virtually foolproof."  However I am a bit puzzled by your comparison of one student saying mean professionally-related things to another with sexual harassment.  In fact I wonder how you see these situations as being similar...but that seems beyond the scope of this comment.  I am not trying to underplay the unpleasantness of the situation, but I also do not find it an uncommon one -- peers and/or coworkers can behave very obnoxiously, and I would rather give the OP a strategy to try for handling it on her own.  If it doesn't work, she can try something else.

Let me also say that I do not feel like I am anywhere near "blaming the victim."  If someone in your workplace puts you down...don't you first try to deal with it in some way?  What's the difference?  Is there something wrong with the idea that an adult professional can seek to work out their workplace troubles on their own?  Finally, note that I did not at all say that the OP is reinforcing her coworker's behavior.  What I said is that some of the other answers suggest adopting similar behavior, and that this behavior is bad no matter who does it.

My point was that this case is not identical to sexual harassment, but is about another, potentially quite severe, form of harassment, which may be equal or greater in its harmfulness to some cases of sexual harassment. So I think it's reasonable to wonder whether in a case of sexual harassment you would also be just as inclined to offer the OP "a strategy to try for handling it on her own" and tell her to "simply refuse to engage". Perhaps you would, but it's interesting to make the comparison and make sure we are treating this case consistently and with the seriousness it deserves.

And I agree with your last point - the suggestions to stoop to the level of the harasser are a bad idea. And I agree there's nothing wrong with trying to work out things between adults if that is a realistic suggestion in the current situation, which I fear it may not be.

I do not see why sexual harassment is brought into the game here. The latter has another, additional, quality, and there is good reason why special procedures are in place there. For non-sexual harassment, however, escalating immediately to the boss will harm the OP's standing no less than the harasser. The OP will be - implicitly - be regarded as immature, unable to stand up for their own, no matter that it's formally the boss' and admin's job to sort that out. I agree completely with @PeteL.Clark's strategy. It will not work well, though, if the OP ends up on a joint project with the bully.

...your answer sounds a lot like the answer I give to people regarding our political system. With the way our system is constructed, voting is either an act of theft via a political proxy or a defensive mechanism to have those political proxies devote their devious natures elsewhere. Either way, the only act that truly wins is to abstain from the system, but those within the State demand that All must submit to their will.

Pete, I would generally agree with the main thrust of your answer here (and feel that it's the same as the main point of my answer). But the thing I would quibble with in the proposed response is the "I know it won't lead anywhere productive" clause, because that is an opening to a point of more debate with the bully (as I'll call her here). My thinking would be even more curt "I'm not answering that", without any explanation at all -- justifying your reasoning is just more ammo for the bully to use against you.

@Daniel: Remember that these conversations take place when others are around. By saying this, the OP is explaining to the others why she is acting in a way which may seem to be gratuitously curt.  After having said that, the OP can certainly refuse to "meta-explain herself": debating whether a conversation will be directly academically on-topic is pretty clearly not directly academically on-topic.

If feasible, this is the right approach, and applies to any such workplace situation. It boils down to whether you engage in, or disengage from a fight with a co-worker. If noticed, disengaging from a volatile situation will reflect well on OP by peer and superiors. Also, not only, as @CaptainEmacs pointed out, going to your boss might make you appear less mature than you ideally are or wish to be perceived, a PI (say) has enough issues to deal with, and going should only be a last resort to not allow the trouble-maker to have you appear as the problem student. Stay out of the mud.

Maybe just block her and cut all communications possible

Welcome to Academia.SE: this answer, as is, is of low quality and it is at risk of being highly downvoted and deleted: I suggest you to expand it, by clarifying better your ideas.

I actually think this one line answer is better than many of the answers given here.  It could indeed be expanded upon / clarified, but: the correct basic idea, for sure.

'Workplace Bullying In Academia' probably best fits your situation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_bullying_in_academia
It's a more specific form of:
'Workplace bullying', here's an excellent website for strategies to stop it.
http://www.workplacebullying.org/individuals/problem/being-bullied/
'Psychological Abuse' describes the phenomena you describe as well though it's not focused just on the workplace.
'Gaslighting' is yet another term used to describe the phenomena of sabotaging someone's confidence in themselves.
I would have posted more links but wasn't allowed to because I'm new, a form of 'website bullying in academia' I suppose.
There's always one jerk in every workplace, classroom, or other venue where people congregate and they always attack the nicest people in an effort to salve their own insecurities.  They attack the nicest people because they're cowardly and know that the meanest people will stomp their butt.  It's not your fault and can be neutralized with appropriate strategies.  You should try and address it before it blows up though because once it does, superiors, like parents, sometimes punish both 'kids', regardless of which one started it and the innocent kid usually gets punished the worst.

Nitpick: this isn't what "gaslighting" usually refers to; typically it refers to shattering someone's confidence in their knowledge of objective facts, so as to cause self-doubt about one's own sanity/memory/cognitive abilities. It comes from the name of a play.

This person is, roughly speaking, a sociopath. The first step is to identify such a person. Realize that about 1% of the overall population fits that diagnosis, but there is a larger proportion, like 3-4%, for higher-powered positions such as business and government (Wikipedia). So you will tend to run into these people from time to time; possibly expect 1 per class of 30 students in higher education.
And unfortunately, there's also a trend for high-powered women in particular to bully lower-powered women in the workplace; this has been called "queen bee syndrome" among psychologists (Wall Street Journal). So while stressful, be aware that you're certainly not alone in going through this situation.

In 2010, the Workplace Bullying Institute, a national education and
  advocacy group, reported that female bullies directed their
  hostilities toward other women 80% of the time—up 9% since 2007. Male
  bullies, by contrast, were generally equal-opportunity tormentors.
A 2011 survey of 1,000 working women by the American Management
  Association found that 95% of them believed they were undermined by
  another woman at some point in their careers. According to a 2008
  University of Toronto study of nearly 1,800 U.S. employees, women
  working under female supervisors reported more symptoms of physical
  and psychological stress than did those working under male
  supervisors.

In my experience, the most important thing once a sociopath is identified is to cut off the flow of information as much as possible. Don't engage or give out any more data than needed; every tidbit of personal information is just more ammunition or another attack-vector for the sociopath. (For example, I totally disagree with other respondents who suggest getting to know the person better, or responding to particular jabs with sarcasm or like responses; the sociopath does not respond like a normal person in this regard.) "Don't feed the troll" is a more concise way of saying this.
(The only other thing that's worked for me, a little bit, is to possibly use the strategy of "dropping the hammer" as it's called in poker (Urban Dictionary). That is to say, let the little needly putdowns generally go without response, but at a later date when you have some justification for real heavy-duty consequences/punishment, apply it swiftly, completely, and mercilessly. For example: A sociopathic student might have rules on absences enforced with complete strictness; an abusive committee member might be called out on behavior against the rules of the organization to the chair; or saboteur employees may simply need to be fired [see Wall Street Journal link above for the latter]. This is certainly a bridge-burning move, and would of course be undesirable in all but the most extreme circumstances; the one or two times in my life that I've applied this the person became uncontrollably irate, but they didn't bother me after that.)
In your case it's likely best to just avoid and wait out the bully's tenure at your institution, which should be two years or less, and know that "it does get better".

I'm not a psychologist, but I don't think the bully meets the definition of a psychopath. She is a bully, and almost certainly would be characterized as having a personality disorder of some sort, not sure which, but not psychopathy (in my humble and mostly wikipedia-informed opinion).

Advising academics to "expect 1 student in a class of 30 to be a sociopath" seems to be a pretty glib, tending towards irresponsible, statement for someone to make without specific evidence to back it up.  I feel similarly about calling someone you have never met "roughly speaking, a sociopath": you are using technical language as though you have technical expertise, but someone with that expertise would almost certainly be more careful.  I suggest that you remove this from your answer, which would remain useful (indeed, be more so) without it.

Dear @PeteL.Clark he is right, although his post is highly politically incorrect it is brutally honest. I am sure Daniel have experience with students more than we do. I would like to see research on this topic

@SSimon: I looked into the matter.  The leading researcher on psychopathy (Hare, founder of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist) has given the estimate that 1% of the population would meet his diagnostic criteria.  Note that this is for psychopathy, not sociopathy, though the difference is subtle.  He speculates that the rate is higher in the upper echelons of business and industry: there is no test for this.  The idea that being a college student is like being a leading business executive and raises the prevalence of psychopathy by a factor of 4 seems to be entirely his own.

There is no political incorrectness or brutal honesty here; it's an issue of drawing conclusions from an academic study, which seems to me to be done rather rashly.  I don't see what is gained by the bold assertion that there is (on average) a sociopath in every classroom.  The rest of the answer -- which is very good -- proceeds independently of this.

@PeteL.Clark: I'd argue that what is to be gained is a form of mental self-defense; that one is prepared for it when it happens, and also cognizant that the overwhelming majority of students and coworkers are definitely not in this category. Say 1-per-class (3%) serves as an upper bound for the expectation. Perhaps 1-per-semester for full-time faculty (1-per-3 classes, 1%) could serve as a lower bound? In either case, the mental self-defense posture should be about the same.

Whether the real number is 1 in 30 or 1 in 90, it's true that running into these people in a professional setting is an unfortunate fact of life. I think this answer gives some good advice on how to handle it.

I don't see anything in the OP which suggests that this individual meets more than a small fraction of the criteria for being a sociopath.

"The only way out is to go No Contact." -- http://themindsjournal.com/5-things-sociopaths-and-narcissists-say-to-make-you-feel-crazy/

I will first start off by a quote by Mark Twain:
"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
- Mark Twain
Hence, the first step I would say is to "keep away" from her. Also, keep in mind that she is definitely considered a "small person". She may have some knowledge, but certainly no wisdom.
Given the extent of her bad behavior as described, you may be dealing with a sociopath here, which can be hard to deal with. No point trying to reason or negotiate with her as sociopaths do not have empathy. One approach you might take is to stick with a few close friends, to have strength in numbers. It is harder for her to criticize you openly when you have friends defending you.
"Pride comes before a fall." I believe this saying has some truth. If you have a religion, you can take comfort in that God does not like such prideful people, though they may be outwardly successful. If you and your friends detect any criminal behavior in her, e.g. faking research results, report her immediately as necessary.
All the best!

I'm a fan of answering people who are obviously trying to deliver a putdown with a backhanded compliment that borders on offensive but is worded in a nice way. This is done a LOT in the South, where I grew up. Southern women can cut each other dead with verbiage that to an outsider sounds quite nice.
Delivered in a "I'm not really interested but I'm being polite" tone, as though talking to a child:
"Well, aren't you precious?"
"Oh sweetie, I bet you feel better for telling me that."
"That's adorable, you're trying to 'neg' me aren't you? It won't work, I'm not going to date you."
"Is that right, dear? Fancy you knowing something like that."
Nothing stings a bully more than being dismissed as a non-entity. That's why they bully in the first place.
Oh, and if a woman from the South says that someone is "perfectly nice", it means she thinks that person is anything but. As in "Well, I don't have much to do with her, but she's perfectly nice." When someone is well liked she is described as "lovely".

This is brilliant, however, very few people can do that convincingly over a long period if it's not in their blood (unless they are Southern-trained). For brilliant put-downs, see also Winston Churchill, or Oscar Wilde. Unfortunately, it's difficult to imitate in real life, plus it requires some refinement on the end of the receiver and bystanders.

Trotting out these obnoxious, patronizing lines is terrible advice and I can't think of any circumstances in which it's reasonbale to address a colleague as "dear" or "sweetie". Don't be surprised if you end up on the wrong end of the harassment accusation if you use these.

@DavidRicherby It's true, some bullying actually works exactly this way, by masterfully using patronising language with an element of plausible deniability. Unfortunately, dealing with bullies is obnoxious business, and the right route to choose is unlikely to leave you clean. I have seen every outcome, from the bully successfully displacing a well-liked person, to proposing a job extension to its victim (possibly to retain control), or to successfully being put in place by an "nuclear-level" reaction of the victim after long-term low-level patronisation. There is no single right response.

I second the answers who recommend "downgrading" the questions' importance and not letting yourself be goaded in this manner.
I do want to add one kind of reply that is not, I admit, quite in that line:

For example, she will come up and say I know so and so who is in the same year as you are and he already has papers published, you don't.

The response that came to mind immediately was "I have a cousin who is your age.  She's really nice."
Now that's probably a bit subtle.  Whether or not you want to actually play that card, the point is that your colleague apparently cannot help applying some metric that she built her self-esteem with obsessive-compulsively to you.  It's a metric she clings to and advertises since she does not trust other metrics to make her look favorable, and apparently she does not trust this particular metric all that much either or she would not need to boost it that much.  Don't play her game.  Unfortunately, I don't see that you have much chance to make her stop hers since she does not seem to think she has a lot to fall back on otherwise.

I generally try to be honest and upfront with this kind of person initially to see how they respond. For example, I would say something like: "What you just said hurt my feelings and is untrue, I would appreciate it if you would stop doing that."
If that does not work, I move on to confronting them with more drastic measures: "I'm sorry that your lack of self-esteem causes you to put down other people to make you feel better about yourself. Unfortunately all it does is make you look bad to everyone around you when you do it."
After that I would take it up with whomever it would be appropriate to do so, outline their actions and what you have done to attempt to mitigate it. This shows that you have made an effort and stood up for yourself in a respectful and calm manner.
Either way, good luck with this situation, I know they're difficult, I worked with someone I absolutely couldn't stand for two years so I totally understand.

Would you mind sharing whether the two statements you use actually worked, and under which circumstances?

She does it for one of three reasons:
1) She feels bad about herself. By assuming certain facts and commenting on her assumptions in a place where others can hear, she tries to assert a form of dominance over other people to make herself feel superior - thereby stopping from feeling inferior for a brief moment.
2) She wants to make you an enemy. She may feel most driven and perform her very best work when she feels like she is competing with someone. Though this is clearly not the healthiest way to go about it. In a way, this possibly seems like "working together" to her - trying to outdo one another or, maybe even hoping to get together to outdo that other person she is talking about.
3) She may worry about your progress and actually be attempting to help. Like #2, she probably would come off as a very competitive person - and if someone told her the things she didn't do as well as that other person, well, she'd try harder and catch up! Too bad she doesn't have much experience with other personalities and is wrongly assuming a lot of things about your accomplishments.

So, how should you handle her? Well, the response is going to depend on how you prefer to handle these situations, but this is what I would do:

Ask her why this information is important. Why you should care. Why she bothers to tell you this. This will provide more insight into why she does it, while possibly allowing for opportunities to correct assumptions (even if you don't tell her the correct information, you can state which assumptions are false and tell her the concern isn't necessary).
Relay the appropriate message of how you expect to be treated. Points correspond to the numbered reasons above - but regardless of your suspected reason, express your desire that you wish you could work together since you are on the same research team, but that the way she is acting is unacceptable to you.

or
You don't put up with bullying. Either she needs to stay away, or she needs to stop bringing up these (untrue, btw) points, you don't really care how she or someone else is doing - because you are doing fine.
Thanks for the concern, but you are doing fine - possibly now you two can go on to have a decent working relationship.

From here, your working relationship may get better, even if slightly, and become more tolerable, or it may not. Possible follow-ups which other answers go into more detail (in no particular order) may include:

You have to deal with her, make it fun for yourself and watch her squirm
Avoid her
Contact someone with more authority

Note: I'm not proposing this as the surefire 100% guaranteed to work solution, but if you think this might work with her then it's definitely worth a try.
Invite her out for a bite to eat (or find some situation in which you two can talk alone and it does not seem awkward), and discuss the matter with her in private. In talking to her be careful not to upset her as you are dealing with a graduate student with the emotional intelligence of a high school student. In order to prevent this from happening, I would talk to her keeping the following 2 things in mind:
(1) Make sure to give her all the validation she appears to be attempting to give herself by disparaging you. Give her credit where it is due, and do it in the most genuine way possible.
(2) Talk in terms of her interests when asking her to stop. DO NOT make the conversation about you and your needs, only about her. For example, I'm not entirely sure how much you contribute, but if you are viewed as an indispensable member of the team make sure to say something along the lines of how it effects her paper having someone not able to work at full capacity since you are doing group work (or if this is not completely relevant find some other way to relate it to her).
Now if she remains unreasonable even after an attempt to work things out with her one on one, talk to your advisor as mentioned previously in the comments.

Feeding the troll only makes it grow bigger. I would really disadvise doing point 1 at all.

@gaborous The issue isn't the size of the troll, it's the fact that the troll will not stop being rude to her. On average people find it more difficult to be rude to someone who is polite and kind to them, rather than someone who feeds the fire by making obviously disingenuous remarks to interrupt their attempts at bolstering their own self esteem.

ElChapo, while I agree with your comment, I disagree with feeding the ego of an egotistical person. Give such people whatever due respect and credit, but never more than that, otherwise they will usually think that they are right to behave the way they do.

This is a nice answer. I was thinking of suggesting a friendly approach like that myself. I know this won't be the most popular idea, but I think it's worth at least a try. I'd give it +1 if you didn't annoy me rather a lot by using the image and name of a notorious criminal as your SE user handle. I understand it's meant to be humorous but I think it's in very poor taste and suggest that you change it if you want to help your reputation here and for your answers (which seem to be of good quality) to be taken more seriously.

As you do not know how the "troll" will behave, this is a dangerous route. If you absolutely want to play nice, you could try the blandness strategy that I proposed  and then - very carefully - probe the ground several weeks later when the attacks have subsided. The distance creates a good starting point to which you can retreat if it does not work out. The reason why I propose that is that a good likelihood exists that if the OP does it right away, troll will try to turn her into a "minion" and it will be even harder to get shot of her then. I strongly recommend creating distance first.

Feeding the troll works quite well as she is not in a position of power. You can control the troll with her favorite food, just like some animal.

Why are people downvoting this as if I didn't add a disclaimer at the beginning? I specifically mentioned "if you think this might work with her." Of course there are situations where feeding someone's ego is not beneficial, but it could possibly work in this situation, and mentioning this option is far better than mentioning nothing at all.

Disclaimer: I didn't downvote you. However, I believe that the problem with that approach is that you cannot easily reverse it. That's why I added a comment to that effect that you should get distance first, before you try something like that. With such people, you do not get many shots to try things before you become irreversibly entangled, so better make it from a position which leaves you a retreat.

Feeding the troll makes it bigger. I have seen inconsequential trolls rise to power by feeding, leaving a path of devastation behind. I agree with "don't feed the troll".

Well to those of you who downvoted, please note that the downvote arrow should be used for things that are factually incorrect/ completely wrong information. Just because you disagree with something does not make it incorrect. The method I suggested may not the perfect solution (which I specifically mentioned in the beginning), but it has a chance of working, and is better than saying nothing at all.

I think people are assuming a certain type of person by referring to her as a "troll". This solution is not targeted at a "troll", but rather at a little girl who feels like no matter what she does, she does not measure up to those around her. I personally see where this answer could be handy, though I think a change of wording could help others - "feed her ego" is basically "giving her credit where credit is due" - not "worshiping her" as others seem to think. (which is why "in the most genuine way possible")

I didn't down vote you, but I can see why people did, as I am now even more strongly disagreeing than before. I know several instances personally where your strategy was expressly wrong and harmful. It may be right, but if it is not, it's not reversible and it is damaging. You state it without disclaimer of the danger (it's not just about trying) - getting it wrong has a potentially serious cost, it's not just "worth a try"; it should only be tried after becoming aware of the possible consequences. I think a disclaimer to that effect would be necessary to make your answer viable.

@DoubleDouble that is exactly what I was referring to. I will edit the answer to reflect you clarification.

As far as I have understood, your main problem is that she is someone who you must work with. I have been in similar situations, and I feel you very well.
I have developed several defense mechanisms.
1. Talk to her!
In the simplest possible way, tell her that her behaviors cause you to have hard feelings. Maybe she is not bad at all and will sympathize with you. Maybe something that you have done has caused her to behave like this. Maybe she envies your work. Just drink a couple of coffees with her and tell her your feelings. Try to be friends. It is harder to hurt a friend than hurting a colleague.
She understands you
She hears what you say and tries not to put you down. That way, problem is solved.
She acts like she has understood you
She listens to you, acts like she understands you, but continues her behavior. In this case, you should remind her that you two talked, and these behaviors put you down. Ask her not to repeat that again.
If she repeats again, decrease your interaction with her. Show that you dislike her behavior by your mimics and your own behavior. By showing, I don't mean just sour and wait for her to understand. Say a sharp word like "mind your own business" or "I don't care what you think".
She ignores
She listens to you, but does not care. Then, you should talk to your advisor. Tell him/her the situation and ask him/her to find a solution for this problem. Before doing this, you should tell your colleague that you will talk to the boss and explain everything.
Her being ignorant about one of her colleague's feelings means she is indeed a bad person and deserves to be told on.
2. Ignore her; don't feed the troll!
Remember that there are a lot of people out there that feeds from others' sadenesses. She might be one of them. Then you being sad about this situation only makes her happier. There is nothing wrong making a person happy, but that would not cost your own happiness. Whenever she says something bad, just smile and nod. Even though it causes you to have hard feelings, pretend that you don't.
3. Tell the situation to an authority
If you are 100% sure that you can't cope up with her behaving bad, just go and explain the situation to your advisor (or who is responsible from the research team). Try not to be so aggressive while explaining, and try to somehow notice her that you will take precautions about this situation.
4. Show her!
That does not mean "snap at her", but rather, "show her that she is wrong". Concentrate on your part of the research and maybe more. Remember that what she said is imperceptible compared to what you actually have done.
What I think is; both you and her having problems about self-reliance. Looking from your point of view, you think having low GPA or less to none publications are something to be ashamed of. She is aware of that as well. Do not let her understand this fact. Even though you know that you could have done a lot better, remember:

"Anger, resentment and jealousy doesn't change the heart of others--
  it only changes yours."
Shannon L. Alder

I've had strikingly good results by calling them out on their game.  But that's me, maybe you can't.  I'm a nice guy too, but when someone ticks me off, I start thinking hard.
Plus she is not doing too well either, only with a few minor publications...
Her put-downs come from her insecurities.  A very typical pattern, as you've already found.  She's probably doing a lot worse than you even know.  So as to not feel so bad about herself, she puts you down.  And probably others?  She's probably suffering from depression; this is a very common mental illness and she has it bad.  Her thoughts are irrational and you can capitalize on that.
Often the insults will mirror her own problems.  If she's getting a B-, she has to make you get a D+ or worse, and the worse the better, in her mind.  This is difficult for her if you're actually getting an A-, so she'll use exaggeration or outright lies, as you've seen.  Or, she'll change the venue: talk about undergraduate grades or something.  Don't play along and answer matter-of-factly; instead, make similar insults toward her, and call her on what's really going on - her insecurities.  For instance:
she: I know George who is in the same year as you are and he already has papers published, you don't.
you think: she's putting down my number-of-papers cuz her number-of-papers is low, or somehow embarrassing to her.  It might not seem embarrassing to you; don't be fooled because what matters is her fears and perceptions, not yours.
you say: How many papers have you published?  [adjust this to fit what you know about her]  I've got more papers published than you have, don't I?  In fact, doesn't everybody in this department have more papers published than you?  [you can exaggerate a little if she's already exaggerating - especially as a question.]
she: reacts angrily...
you don't answer her questions, just continue on: So did you bring up George's papers because you haven't published any?  You have to put me down because you don't have any papers, right?
Again, adjust this to the realities, and what you know about her. Stop trying to be 'accurate'.  You want to say, out loud, what her own fears about herself are saying.  Maybe everybody else who hears it, thinks her paper count is OK, but that's irrelevant.
Watch how she works, especially as she cuts other people down - you don't have to talk so you can listen more carefully and think of what insecurity she's trying to cover for.  You can use the same weapons against her - practice!  Try it out on friends - that's what friends are for.
I remember dealing with a woman who would lash out at people with insults, and when the victim would attack back, she would act really hurt and appear to cry.  Out loud, I described this game to everybody in the room.  It was like the wicked witch of the west: she exploded with insults and crying, it was astounding really.  Nobody else talked to her again.  She shut up and went away.  Problem solved.
she: So what's your GPA this semester?
you think: I don't have to answer that - in fact, if I don't answer her question, that itself is a put-down.  She's paranoid about her own GPA.  Probably not too good.  I'm glad I looked up her GPA already or I talked to my coworkers to get an idea of her GPA.  So now I can hit back and exaggerate just like she does to me.
you say: Well, what's your GPA this semester?  [whether or not it's true:] It's down, isn't it?  What will you do if you flunk out?  [You're asking a question that suggests she'll flunk out - you are not lying by saying she'll flunk out.  It's a question, but it'll piss her off cuz that's what she's fearing in her head, rationally or not.]
These comebacks will really anger her.  That's the idea.  She's a bully, and just like a playground bully, you don't have to win the fight, you just have to make sure that she hurts.  Currently, you have been receiving her punches like a playground wimp, and not punching back.
Make sure that often, when she talks to you like this, she gets punished by some cutting comeback - it'll take practice, but the skill will serve you well as you run into more creeps like her in your career.  The most cutting comebacks are often the ones that are tragically true.  So study up on her: google her, look her up in your university or department, check out her Facebook page or wherever.  And use her insults to figure out what's scaring her in the moment - whatever she cuts you down about, chances are it's a problem for her, and you can turn the blade around 180 degrees.
Yes she will get angry at you - she was angry at you before, so nothing's lost.  Eventually she'll stop bullying you and trash someone else instead.  People won't hate you because you're being mean to her - in fact, people will consider you a hero cuz you're finally fighting back.  So don't be afraid to be mean.

-1 Terrible advice, in my opinion. Reacting this way raises the stakes, risks a very ugly confrontation, and makes you look petty and mean as well.

It's not necessarily a bad strategy, very unfortunately; it can work well with nasties. The problem is: it requires massive skill and self-confidence, and one needs to find fun in beating the bully in the same way movie heroes do. Of course, @corvus ' scenario can come true and the thing escalating out of control. But the bigger problem is that most of us academics are here to do our job, not to show off our society saving skills (or we would have done some other thing with our life). So, while we typically want to be left alone, this strategy requires us to be engaged with the process.

You won't have to do it much.  If it hurts every time she punches you (verbally), she'll stop.  Just like a schoolyard bully.  Make sure that any other people in the room have experience with her, otherwise, yeah, you look as petty as her.  Good chance you're not the only one being put down.

Part of the idea behind pissing her off is to intensify her immature behavior and show everybody what's going on.    Try to time it so that when other people are around, you fight back less, and in private, that's when you insult her more.  So when she blows up at you, it'll look to everybody else like it just came out of nowhere.

Am I being too sensitive?
Yes.
What should I do?

You listen and answer to your adviser and no one else.

Of course the administration and some relevant others need to be taken care of without the help of your adviser, but when it comes to your academic progress evaluation and the amount of publications during your PhD, IMO its better not to listen to others. Let her do her thing, all you need to care is your work in hand. You are not responsible for what she thinks (problems of the world in a broader sense).
You are the part of an institution and your adviser is the team leader. If you find someone deliberately trying to put you down, which in turn is interfering with your work, go talk with your adviser and let him/her take care of it.

"You listen [...] to your adviser and no one else." That seems rather limiting to one's prospects.

You listen and answer to your adviser and no one else. -- This is perhaps the single worst piece of advice I've ever read here. Students are neither slaves nor cogs in a machine. Your advisor doesn't own you. Most students need multiple mentors and are evaluated by multiple faculty (for example, the thesis committee). The entire point of a PhD is becoming an independent researcher. Serious workplace issues should be brought to the attention of the department chair, especially if the advisor doesn't (or can't) act.

@JeffEPlease read paragraph following the main block if you haven't done already. Workplace issues if interfering with your work is to be brought to the adviser first. The advise is specif to the mentioned question. The advise along with the explanation can be rephrased like When it comes to evaluation of your work, adviser is the one who you listen to.

"When it comes to evaluation of your work, adviser is the one who you listen to." No. You must not limit yourself to listening to just one person. Ultimately, as @JeffE says, you need to convince people other than your advisor of the value of your work. All sincere and informed opinions about your work are valuable and you cannot afford to live in a little bubble where you listen to nobody but your advisor. Don't listen to the bully -- but because they're not sincere, not because they're not your advisor.

@DavidRicherby I hate to disagree with you. Our research culture tells me to pass every relevant information regarding my work to my adviser, whoever told me when I am under a contract with him/her. This may be criticism, appraisal or a valuable feedback regarding our progress.  As a student I would submit these to my adviser and continue making changes iff he/she tells me to do.
I say relevant as there may be a lot of junk which can be thrown away without a second thought. The bully in this question is making such statements.

Of course you should pass relevant information to your advisor and, indeed, to everyone you're collaborating with in research. But what does that have to do with your claim that a research student should listen and answer only to their advisor?

@DavidRicherby As I mentioned in the second previous comment, the answer is specific to the question in hand. The scenario in which a bully deliberately trying to put you down; you needn't listen to her, but to your adviser and no one else in this specific context. I too feel the answer may inconsistent in general applications. Its better to let your adviser know that some one is intentionally messing up with your mind. It may be equivalent to not responding to the bully, but passing the criticism to your adviser. Again, it only matters if the words are affecting your research.

@Sathyam I read the entire answer, and I stand by my comment. Students should not discuss workplace issues (or anything else) only with their advisor.  Sure, bring it to the advisor's attention first, but suggesting that it's inappropriate to talk with anyone else is simply toxic.

@JeffE I agree with your point, but once again the answer is  specific to this particular workplace issue among all others. Building on, it is indeed toxic if applied to all the workplace issues, but I suppose that is not the point. IMO inappropriate is inappropriate in itself since the answered specified the context of applicability of the advise in the text following the main block.

@Sathyam No.  Even for this particular workplace issue, I think your advice is dangerously wrong.

The colleague you're talking about is most likely a psychopath.
No, that doesn't mean "serial killer". But it does mean someone who was born with a genetic and hereditary personality disorder. Her brain's structure is different from ours, and that makes her physically incapable of feeling guilt or remorse.
She's making you feel bad because she enjoys it! That's how different they are from you and me. They actually enjoy hurting people, it's like a sport for them.
This bitch sounds like she's not even stealthy about it. Some of them do it for decades without the victim noticing.
Anyhow. This is one of those cases where the only winning move is not to play. Don't associate with her anymore, and your problem will be solved.
Don't try to reason with her, or get her to see the error of her ways - she doesn't see it that way. She simply doesn't give a rat's ass about anyone except herself, and she sees nothing wrong with the way she is or what she's doing. She simply could not care less.
She may act otherwise, but though they can be extremely convincing - they kind of have to, to pass off as human - you can rest assured that she's just faking it to be able to abuse you some more.
Obviously I'm speaking from personal experience here. Otherwise I wouldn't know so much about these freaks.. Feel free to do some research into "psychopathy", "sociopathy", "narcissism", "borderline personality disorder", "ASPD" etc, they're all essentially the same thing, but with different labels to distract us.

Downvoting me doesn't change reality, you know.

I didn't downvote you, because it's an interesting answer, but: you do not know the reality. It may be as you say, it may be insecurity or something entirely else. You present your stance as if it was close to being a fact - which it isn't. BTW, I agree with your action advice, but I am not sure your analysis is correct (which does not really matter for your advice to be followed).

@Kikka saying that downvoting you doesn't change reality doesn't change reality, either. Your post contains multiple inaccuracies. This site welcomes interesting answers, and opinion-based content is fine, but posting inaccurate or misleading information is a sure way to get your answer downvoted.

@DanRomik, > "Your post contains multiple inaccuracies."  <-- No it doesn't..  You don't like me making "unsubstantiated claims", but then you go ahead and do the exact same thing, as if it's fine for you, but not me.

@KikkaKutonen thank you for your opinions. To clarify my position, I would say it's fine for both of us to make any kinds of claims that we want here, as long as they do not violate reasonable norms of civility, and as long as we accept that other people may disagree with us, and possibly downvote what we wrote if it is posted as an answer.

Obviously, if you're being honest, you'll realize that even claims you personally find outlandish may actually be true. That means, for example, that they're not refuted simply by stating that they're false.

You can just let her win the silly game she is playing.
"For example, she will come up and say I know so and so who is in the same year as you are and he already has papers published, you don't."
Your answer: "It's even worse, I had two papers rejected and as a result I need to start over with some core elements of the research that went into it."
"Or I know this other person who did really well in a class and even got the professors recommendation while you are only an average student."
Your answer: "I wish! Unfortunately, I'm doing a lot worse than the average grad student here."
"She will non-stop ask me for my GPA as an undergrad, and how I am doing in my courses. I thought she cared about me at the beginning but I am realizing that she is only exploiting my weaknesses."
You should tell lies about how bad your GPA scores were.
"She will also ask me about my research focus and tell me whatever I am trying to do has no value or too small scale. She will openly laugh about my research plans in front of other people and say that it has no value."
Just tell her with a straight face that her judgment is correct, its quite worthless what you are doing, but due to circumstances you have little choice to pursue what you are doing. You can tell her that given how bad you were as an undergraduate, you are just glad that you have the opportunity to do any research at all, however insignificant.

Terrible advice. Spreading rumours of your own incompetence cannot possibly be a good idea.

@CountIblis Why would that be a good idea?

Spreading rumors about incompetence is not going to cause problems, as you are always evaluated in an objective way. You are not going to get a Referee Report saying that your paper has been rejected because of such rumors. All that will happen is that the troll will start to talk about you with others, but this will conflict with other more reliable information about you, which will lead to the troll losing credibility. The troll is the one who is abusing information, you can then manipulate the troll using false information, leading the troll to her demise.

"always evaluated in an objective way" - that is more than optimistic to believe . Depends on the talent of the troll for intrigue (in this case, may be limited, but we do not really know), that can backfire badly. A manipulative troll can use this self-deprecation to great effect. Unless the OP is better at manipulation than the troll (the OP seems a nice person and this is probably not the case, as intrigue requires practice), one keep completely away from such a strategy. Strongly discouraged.

More directly: lying in any professional context is bad.  Lying to make yourself look bad is ridiculously bad.  Initiating a purely negative, dishonest interaction with the goal of someone else's "demise" is wholly unprofessional.  An acceptable professional response is simply to refuse to engage in negative interactions.  The OP can say: "I'm sorry, I've answered questions like that from you before, so I know it won't lead anywhere productive.  Do you have anything constructive / relevant / about project X to ask me?"  No need to be creative/clever/playful: just don't engage.

@PeteL.Clark Your very latest comment, starting from "An acceptable professional response..." is worth an answer. Very good, very professional. One of the best answers so far.

@PeteL.Clark  It's not unprofessional to tell lies to someone who is just playing games. As long as the truth is verifiable, it's not going to cause problems for you, only for the person who has been deceived into believing in it by her own bad behavior. When people find out that she has told things to them about you that are false, and you also deny that you told her that, she is going to suffer, not you. Also you get the person to shut up and get back  to work a lot faster if the person gets to hear what she wants to hear, i.e. that you are an utter failure.

It's actually not a lie to give false information to someone who is soliciting for such false information. Only if the expectation was to receive factually correct information and you instead give false information, then you have deceived the person in question, but that doesn't apply here.

" It's not unprofessional to tell lies to someone who is just playing games." Certainly it is, and doing so around others -- as the OP mentioned that all the interactions are -- risks giving misinformation to those who are not aware of the nuances of the situation.  Moreover, saying things which you know are false is lying in any situation: that's what the word means.  There are situations in which lying is acceptable (e.g. in actual games like poker), but on the job with other people around is not one of them.  I would not want a colleague who responded to stressful situations by lying.

I got from the OP's question the picture of someone who is intent on misrepresenting the OP, making it look like the OP is an incompetent fool. Such a person is just going to invent stories about the OP based on half truths. This is why I think derailing what she is doing by telling lies (privately, of course) to make sure the half truths aren't there either, should be considered. If she starts rumors about rejected papers when in fact everyone who you work with knows that there are no such papers, she won't be taken serious when she talks about you in the future.

@CountIblis Lying games are going to bite the OP back. There are some people who get away with it, but these do not need advice from Academia.SE. I follow your sentiment to get back at the bully, but I agree with Pete, this could lead to a disastrous outcome. Have you tried this yourself and has it worked? No, I do not really want to know; if you haven't tried it and know that it works, you shouldn't suggest it (and if you have, you probably shouldn't tell us). You intend it in good faith, but it may end up isolating both the OP together with the bully; i.e. a partial success for the bully.


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Should I disclose my full academic history to graduate school after acceptance
I have been applying to various graduate school programs during my gap year since graduating with my undergraduate degree in 2023. Starting Jan-2024 I enrolled in a PhD program in my home country as a backup plan, and kept applying to various graduate schools.
In one such program, I failed to notify in the application form that I was currently enrolled in another program. I filled in the details before my enrollment in December 2023, and submitted my application around January 24, 2024, after an informal chat with a potential PI sometime around January 22, I had filled in all the necessary and standard details before meeting my potential PI to speed up the process as the deadline was approaching soon and I was not very careful in reviewing my application at the time of submission, this was also my first application post my spring-24 enrollment, so I filled the details in a bit of "auto-pilot" mode, after having filled a lot of applications where I was not enrolled in any other program. At the time of applying, though, my enrollment was very recent, there were no transcripts or much academic progress in the program, so this omission does not significantly alter my application at the time of submission.
Now I have received an offer letter from that graduate school, which I accepted. I noticed this issue when I had to upload some further documents post-acceptance for verification in the same application portal. Therefore, technically I did omit my enrollment from my application at the time of applying. I have now initiated the withdrawal process from my current enrollment, and I will soon officially terminate my current program.
I feel like I should notify the admissions office for the sake of complete transparency and to avoid future problems, but I am also worried my offer might get revoked. What should I do and how should I go about it?

Will the first enrolment be terminated before the second one starts?

Yes, it will be terminated

SHORT ANSWER
You will be fine as long as you end your first enrollment before the second one starts. You do not even need to mention your first enrollment, unless you absolutely wants to.
LONGER ANSWER
I do not know of any rule requesting to mention previous enrollments. Especially in the international context, application calendars are totally out of synchronization and enrolling into various programs is almost unavoidable. Transparency about such situation is (most often, not always) appreciated, but I think it would be frown upon if it was required, and it would be more important for the program which you leave (allowing them to reassign the resources assigned to you) than for the program which you join.
Good luck with your new program!

Thanks for the answer! I am only worried because the application explicitly wanted to know if I was enrolled in another graduate program. I entered "No" which was true at the time of entry but not at the time of submission, I should've been careful, but here I am now. I feel like this is important enough for me to report, although it had only been 2-3 weeks into my enrollment at the time of submission.

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How to be productive as an independent student without any libraries, friends and classroom?
I've started to track my everyday in paper to keep myself more productive. The reason is I'm staying from home in a country without any public libraries. I'm out from college so I've no friends at all now. Most of them are doing jobs or applying for Germany, USA etc. So, I need it. I tried discord study rooms but they weren't very useful as nobody saw what you were doing under the laptop. This is what I track currently:

Morning checklist:
a) Drink water (eg: If I drank water after waking up, I put a tick mark.)
b) Long toilet (eg: If I went to toilet to clear myself up, I put a tick mark.)
c) Make bed
d) Tea
e) Listen to favorite podcast
f) Did you wake up before 7 AM? (If I woke up before 7 AM, I put a tick mark.)

Then

Did you took a break after using laptop consistently for 2 hrs, write how many breaks you took
ie I use laptop for 2 hrs for studying, then ask myself to take a break from laptop. Break for studies is implicit. I take breaks after every 45 minutes. It is made to make myself stop drowning in google search and youtube black hole.

Did you finish majority of tasks by 7 PM?

was your social media under control? eg: I use twitter for around 1 hr on all my browsers.

Was your facebook under control? eg: I use facebook for 10 mins per day.

Did you stayed 15 mins under the sunlight?

Did you switched between subjects, topics every 2 hrs? How many times?
This is done to keep myself efficient. Because I keep getting stuck in 1 topic day and night. And no productivity happens.

Keep track of days to go for final exam date. (i.e if there's 20 days remaining to the final exam, I put 20 in it.)

It's working decently for me. But here're some problems-:
a) It's not helping me for revision. I'm failing to track myself revise regularly. I want to implement a tracking where I can check myself if I revised that day. It'd be even better if it became integrated within the current tracker.
b) Seeing "days to go" getting so close in last days of exam is heartbreaking as I still would have lots of topics to study as our exam time schedule is made in such a way.
c) In the beginning seeing "so many days to go" makes me kinda chill and less effective.
So, I want solution for it as well. How do I solve this problem? I definitely need to track my days to exam, but I don't want to feel like, "today I've infinite time" and "one day I've just 3 days".
d) I don't switch subjects and switch time between using laptops AT ALL in many days.
I am not sure how do I make this process very streamlined that it becomes easier for me to switch off from laptop. I study everything from laptop. I don't even follow any one or two standard textbook that I can just buy them and study from it. I follow on demand content. i.e if I have to learn about "x", I start searching books for "x" and start reading it. I've to weed out the bad books and study from the most relevant book. So, it's not possible to study something for the first time totally without internet.
My question is How do I solve problems a, b, c, and d?
Can you suggest any techniques?

What field, generally or specifically, are you trying to study?

So, a technical, STEM, subject, yes?

I found useful using Org Mode under Emacs for my morning list (which allows me, among other things, 1) to keep track of how much time I spend on each task, 2) to schedule tasks with various periods, 3) to keeps tasks in various files and compile a unique agenda from them, in the spirit of David Allen's Get Things Done methodology). I used to have reminders for "hydrate" as you did, but removed them once the habit was ingrained, to keep the agenda cleaner. Once you adopt a good scheduling tool (orgmode or other), it will help you to solve your four issues:

helping me for revision Schedule a task (on Mondays for me) where you review your whole system.

Seeing "days to go" Have deadlines appear a long time in advance (the default in orgmode is one month, I sometime put a -2m or -3m to extend it).

seeing "so many days to go" makes me kinda chill and less effective:  break up large tasks in smaller ones, with deadlines reasonably earlier for each.

switch subjects and switch time between using laptops AT ALL in many days. I am not sure if I understood this problem, but

to switch subject, choose one main subject for a specific day (or half day); and
to avoid getting stuck on the laptop for large periods of time leaving me exhausted, I am using an application called Workrave to prompt me to take a short pause every 25 mns and a larger one every 2h (in the spirit of the Pomodoro Technique. The computer is LOCKED for 5mns, forcing me to look for other things to do in the house, such as drinking or making tea, putting food to cook in the solar oven or checking on it, taking a walk in the garden, etc.

Here is a (slightly edited) extract of my agenda on a typical day, automatically generated by the function OrgMode-Agenda from emacs:
5:59...... REMEMBER: =Remove yourself from people and places where you don’t feel valued and respected.=
6:00-6:30  REVIEW, RESCHEDULE and INDEX Daily agenda
6:01...... LOG (at least) 3 things I am glad of in last 24h
6:02...... LOG Energy Level in morning (1-5 5=excellent)
6:03...... LOG mental clarity  (1-5 5=excellent)
6:04...... LOG Health (1-5 5=excellent), health problems and temperature
6:05...... LOG Dominating Thought or Emotion
6:15-6:20  DOWNLOAD Student's drafts (to review while exercising)
6:20-6:30  CHECKOUT Messages on Discord
6:30-6:45  CHECKOUT DAILY Firefox tab of bookmarks
7:00-8:00  EXERCISE in the morning
8:00-9:00  REVIEW PDFs in [[file:~/ToReview/]]
9:00-9:15  PROCESS Some Night and Running Notes (if any)
9:15-9:30  REVIEW electronic mail

I hope it helps!

Perhaps it is just the way you wrote this, but I'm worried that you may be spending too much of your focus on the "time in the saddle" rather than on what you actually do while studying. You can spend a lot of time very ineffectively. You say you've failed this course previously, so something is likely wrong with how you are approaching learning beyond the time you spend at it.
For many STEM fields, such as math and CS, the best study is active study in which you work to solve problems. Reading and watching recorded lectures is passive by comparison. Memorizing won't get you through most exams.
Find materials, such as books, that have a lot of problems/exercises in them and try to solve as many as you can. Books with solution guides are a mixed blessing as it is too tempting to use the solutions and think you understand how to solve the problem. There is a big difference between reading a solution and producing one. In many books, including some of mine, the problems are more important than the text. If you can solve all of the problems in the book, some quite hard, you will be a success with that subject. Much more so than if you memorize the text.
But you also need some way to verify that your solutions are correct.
One issue you have in studying alone, however, is that it is hard to get feedback on your attempts at problem solution. Repetition and reinforcement are good things, as long as you don't reinforce the wrong things by making mistakes that are never corrected.

I just want to clarify that my issue isn't that I find this subject hard or have any mental or any barriers to study it which appears like that looking at your answer.

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HealthCare policies for (short) medical leaves of absence
Which mechanisms can/should a university set-up in order to implement short medical leaves of absence of their faculty members? Has the situation in academia become worse or has it always been like this?
It seems to me that when a faculty member gets a "medical leave" for a short period (i.e. from half a day to one week),

the workload corresponding to such period is merely postponed (classes to teach, exams to mark, research articles to write, thesis of students from other professor to evaluate, peer-review duties), not removed; and
the expectations in term of "academic productivity" (e.g. number of publications per year, number of students guided, number of thesis reviewed, etc.) are in no way reduced.

ADDED FOR CLARITY
It seems to me that a factory worker is not expected to "work double" to compensate for their absence during their medical leave when they come back to the assembly line, while faculty members are partially expected to do so. Faculty members benefit from many advantages which compensate for such difference, but the application of  industrial managerial techniques  to academia (e.g. in Chile) is progressively reducing such advantages.
This is an issue, as if n days of medical leave of absence (e.g. for mental health issue) are followed by n days of double workload, there is a strong incentive to continue to work during one medical leave of absence (which is illegal, as the salary is paid by the insurance company rather than the institution, resulting in free work for the institution!).
More generally, medical leaves of absence do not affect external factors such as deadlines to submit to conference or for guided students to submit their final manuscript, resulting in additional pressures (from the faculty members themselves, but sometimes from their colleague or even from their hierarchy!) to work while on medical leave: in a previous academic employment, the post-graduate coordinator asked me to finish reviewing a Master's thesis while I was under perfusion at the hospital (and on medical leave).
My impression is that

When there was less pressure on faculty members to be "productive", work was just not done when a faculty member was on short medical leave, and the academic system "absorbed" the loss, taking care only of longer medical leaves (e.g. one month, one semester or longer);
Formal medical leaves of absence were invented in the context of workers producing physical goods, where one factory worker is easily replaced by another, and a reduction of the workforce by a small factor only yields a reduction of the productivity by the same factor (as opposed to a break in the production line), and are ill-adapted to "creative" jobs, where the production is no so easy to measure, and where workers are not so easy to replace on short notice (e.g. it's not like any professor can teach any course), such as (among other) in Academia.

I doubt that the hypothesis beyond those "impressions" can be demonstrated formally, and even if they could, I doubt that the administration would take them into account and "lower" the productivity expectations on faculty members. I wonder if I am imagining a worsening trend, and if I am not about which mechanisms can or could be implemented in order to better implement medical leaves of absences of faculty members in academia.

This issue is not solely found in academia. What I have seen is everyone else steps up and covers what needs to be done during the leave of absence, and is not just pushed off until later. But that is merely my observations in my workplace.

How much research really does not get done because of a half day to one week leave of absence? If your yearly target is 3 papers, you can't very well reduce this to 2.9 papers because you were off sick for one week. Realistically, some reasonable expectations of such medical issues should already be baked into any expectations of yearly paper output. Of course, as you write, longer medical issues need to be treated differently.

Country? At least in the US, short-term illnesses (less than a week, are often unpaid unless you have paid sick time, which is built into your salary. Short-term disability insurance sometimes doesn't start until after a week or more absence. While paid by the state or country, where do you think that money comes from? Mine is funded via a deduction from my salary and from payments from my company (and others).

@mkennedy I am working in Chile, for a private university, and there is no real tenure (the interval at which you are evaluated increases as you climbs the hierarchy, but the continuation of your contract depends of such evaluation). But I am curious about general solutions, not just for private universities in Chile!

As far as "academic productivity", the scenario that would seem to matter most in systems I am familiar with would be someone on the "tenure clock", with an evaluation after a fixed period that determines whether tenure is granted or not. There may be other promotion clocks but tenure is the important one. In a different system my response may not be applicable.
If a medical leave is sufficiently short, I don't think it's sufficiently influential to do anything. For a week, say, on the scale of a typical tenure clock, it's just not going to be a primary influencing factor over that time scale. I would feel comfortable asserting that many nagging chronic issues that do not cause any official "missed time" would be far more influential, even something like the chronic stress of an ill parent is going to add up to much more than a missed week even without any actual caretaking role.
For longer absences, I think the simplest tool for departments is to move the clock. Delaying a tenure evaluation (or, equivalently, "suspending" the tenure clock) by, say, 6 months is a straightforward way to account for 6 months of missed time. Here's an example of what such a policy might look like:

...adjustment of the probationary period can be made in the following conditions, “when those circumstances significantly impede the faculty member’s progress toward achieving tenure”:

“responsibilities with respect to childbirth or adoption”

“significant responsibilities with respect to elder or dependent care obligations”

“disability or chronic illness,” or

“circumstances beyond the control of the faculty member.”

For teaching workload, I would expect that to be handled separately. In my experience, again, short absences are relatively easy to deal with. There may be specific policies or it may be mostly up to the faculty member. I'm familiar with cases where a class or week of classes is simply cancelled, with the instructor doing their best to impact the course as little as possible though acknowledging that it's likely that something will be missing. Other alternatives are to have someone fill-in, either keeping the same class objectives and material or having someone act as a "guest speaker" to lecture/present on a topic close to their own expertise.
For longer absences, it may be necessary to designate an official substitute. Most often I would expect this to be from an existing employee rather than a new hire, but case of a longer absence it may be necessary to hire a temporary employee or change someone's responsibilities. I would expect these longer absences to mostly be handled at the department level and for them to rely a lot on the soft power of the chair, if it's not possible for the instructor to make their own arrangements.

Beyond tenure evaluation issues, my point is that postponing tasks (e.g. marking exams, reviewing a PhD thesis for a committee, etc.) to after the return from a medical leave is not reducing the total workload (in the month,semester,year), it is just reducing the amount of time available to accomplish such tasks, and thus increasing pressure.
It seems to me that a factory worker is not expected to "work double" to compensate for their absence during their medical leave when they come back to the assembly line, while faculty members are.
I will try to clarify my point in the question.

@J..yB..y This is true of every salary-type position, nothing special to academia.

I might be true for some other administrative jobs (albeit I would argue that people are easier to replace than faculty members), but how is it true of a factory worker on the assembly line, of the receptionist of a building, a sales-person in a shop, a cashier at the super market, and many other salary-type positions?

@J..yB..y Those are all hourly rather than salary jobs in my experience (in this US; this distinction may be very different elsewhere), where an hourly job is something where you are paid for the time working and work exactly for that time on whatever work there is to do, whereas a salary job is paying for your overall intellectual input over a period of time (like a year). For a professor, in particular, a big chunk of the job is also deciding what exactly to work on during their working hours, rather than being assigned explicit tasks to perform.


text:
Advice for having children during graduate school
My wife and I just found out that we're having our first child.  While this is a wonderful thing, it also concerns us a bit.  Particularly because we're on limited funds (TA & RA combined salary) and we're still 1.5-2 years away from graduating together.  Also, since our academic careers are so demanding, we're also concerned about balancing time taking care of our newborn.
I read the responses in this post, but I'd like to ask for more specific advice for new parents in graduate school.  What strategies have you used to enable you to handle having a newborn while both parents are finishing their PhD?  Both in terms of time management and making ends meet, financially.
Any personal anecdotes, experience, advice, and tips are welcome! :)

Also related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/9589/2700

Should this be CW since it will involve no single right answer ?

Step 1: After you tell your family and friends, tell your advisors.

Congratulations to you both! I had a graduate student who had two kids and saw his wife go through med school while finishing his PhD. The key was (for both) to be highly organized and maintain a strict work schedule helping each other out. He finished with flying colours; she is a medical doctor.

@Suresh I don't think community wiki is suitable for that… either it fits the scope of the site, and it's fine, or it doesn't, and it should be closed

Advice? look for a daycare (do not forget to register in your university's daycare waiting list ASAP)

Congratulations! First of all, you are in for a wonderful and life-changing experience.
However, your life is going to change quite drastically - so try to be prepared.
Some things that come to mind in no specific order (some of these are not specific to academia):

On the personal side, you must first realize that you will have much less time to work. Get used to the idea. The way to deal with this is to organize your time and stick to your schedules. No more random web browsing during work hours - use your time with your child as time for brain rest. As a scientist you may know that it is not always easy to be creative/focused on cue, but you will learn to get used to it with practice.
As JeffE commented, if your advisors don't know yet, notify them. A supportive advisor can make a huge difference in terms of flexible-work time, working from home, and even moral support. I would also try to gently ask if they increase your salary or offer some other kind of financial benefits. Also, your graduation will most likely get delayed, hopefully not too much - try to see that your supervisors are ok with that.
If possible, have your family help as much as possible.
The first year with a child is a huge change and can be quite difficult, especially in your situation. Help each other and be understanding towards each other.
Your school's HR can give you information about benefits you could get for children (healthcare, day care).
You can find tons of used baby/child stuff (toys, clothes) for free or very cheap, because they are often useful only for a short time.

The first 3 (or even 6) months, it's your fun time. There is not much to worry about.
If there is something I want to recommend is to find a spot for your infant at your university day care ASAP. Most of them give students/faculty members priority. Unfortunately they are always full and have +years of waiting list (specially for infants <2 years old). Register your infant ASAP. Of course, after making sure its a good place to put your child in. Then, you will enjoy visiting the baby during the day hours (12-1pm is a nice time to get your lunch nearby your kid). I went through a nightmare when my kid was at day care far away from my university. This becomes worse in Winter because of the weather conditions.

I think you need to clarify your first sentence.  Do you mean the first 3 months of pregnancy, or the first 3 months after birth?

@JoelReyesNoche after birth.

In my experience, the first 3 (or 6) months after birth are the most worrisome, especially if this is your first child.

@JoelReyesNoche - I think what seteropere meant was that having an official maternity or paternity leave can be very helpful.

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Does the graduate admission committee automatically consider you for a Master's program if they don't accept you for their Ph.D program?
I am applying for Math Ph.D programs, some of the schools say in their websites that they'll consider one for their MS program if one is not accepted to their PhD program.
I was wondering if all schools are like that, or it depends?
Thanks

Related: Consideration for MS if PhD rejected

Every department is different.

Some departments might have no master's program at all.

Some do, others don't. I have heard the term 'cash cows' many times when it comes master's student in graduate schools (Because PhD is almost always full funded in a way or another). Some schools might offer you an unfunded master's admission if you don't get into their PhD program, and many applicants think of this as a polite rejection.

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