text:
Is it okay to expect advisors to offer a word of condolence?
I'm a third-year Ph.D. student. A few months ago, I lost my maternal grandfather and grandmother in quick succession. More recently, I lost my close friend in a bus accident and my paternal grandmother was wheeled into the emergency room. These incidents have affected me personally and I haven't been able to focus on my work as much. I emailed my advisors everytime an incident happened (to take a 2-3 days off) but both of them didn't bother to reply. Even after I met them face to face, they did not ask me how I'm doing or if I need any help?
This has led me to feel that my emotions are not valued and I'm being used just as a tool to get experiments done. Am I wrong to expect a word of condolence from my advisors or do they think that they might cross personal boundaries?

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This could be because they feel that this is "awkward" to bring up in this context, or they feel it's better not to talk about it because they'd rather not remind you these bad experiences.

It's very important for advisors reading this to understand that the correctness of expecting condolences from advisors and the correctness of advisors giving condolences are not proportional.  (Just like you shouldn't expect/demand strangers to smile at you, but it can be a very friendly thing to smile at strangers.)

Some advisors simply don't care or don't have time to think about their staff's personal problems, their mind is full with other thoughts... I learned to have very low expectations regarding personal matters with advisors/supervisors in academia.

The normal time to offer condolences would be when replying to your email. "My condolences, you can take some time off". The fact they didn't respond to your emails at all is what's interesting to me. No response has a very different meaning than a simple "ok" without condolences. One possible explanation I can see is that if their first opportunity to reply to your email about your days off was after you left (e.g. if your email was along the lines of "I had bad news, I'm leaving NOW and coming back next Monday"), they may have opted to leave you some time alone rather than reply.

I'm very sorry for your losses.

Is there a reason why you sent an email and did not call them? During my PhD and now in my job, such short term notices as "I am not coming to my office today/tomorrow" are required to be reported by phone and are then afterwards confirmed via email by the supervisor/superiour. Emails can be easily missed, and on the phone you get an immediate confirmation that you are free stay to at home and they have to react to you (and at least my supervisor/boss were always very sympathetic).

@Iris: where I am (Germany) email is OK, and not responding to such an email is not OK (i.e. no response would indicate the email got lost).

As a human being, you obviously deserve condolences for significant losses. If you want to judge them as people for not offering condolences, then that's fair enough I say. However, you should not judge them as PhD advisors, because you are essentially right that you are a tool. That doesn't stop you being a human with feelings, though.

@cbeleites, I am in Germany, too, and I agree. Mahkar, are you sure that they did read your emails?

My condolences.

@Iris - That’s an excellent point; sometimes my inbox overflows with so much trivial mail that it’s easy to miss something important among the fluff.

How good are your advisors with email in other cases? If they are bad with email or just get a lot, it is easy to miss. Or stuff just doesn't get through. Or it gets through but classified as junk. Or .... If they respond promptly in other cases, that's different from if they are generally bad at responding or have problems with email or if it is all rather random. Some of this is problematic, of course, but it is not problematic in the same way as receiving, reading and just ignoring the emails.

At the age of the average student, losing grand parents isn't unusual.

Expressions of emotional concern are a tricky balance for supervisors to find sometimes, and can also have a strong cultural or religious component to it. For example, some faiths have suggested that mourning should be confined to a very particular interval and not extend past that. (I’m aware of this in certain Muslim and Jewish denominations, for instance).
Also, the response of an individual to reminders of grief can be intense and unexpected, and advisors may not want to put you under any additional pressure or stress or cause an episode while you’re meeting that they can’t or don’t feel comfortable handling.
So it just might be that they don’t want to cross any boundaries that feel inappropriate.
All of that said, there does remain a finite possibility that they may view their advisees as labor input rather than complex human beings. Such advisors sadly do exist and are not particularly enjoyable to work for.
If it’s an important enough issue that you feel that it’s making you less interested in your work or the relationship with your advisors, you may want to consider having a discussion with them at the end of a meeting to discuss it.

Yeah, I know a person that complains every time anybody mentions death that her day is ruined. I guess they just don't know whether it is appropriate to tell you anything or not. Not replying to original emails though is rather strange. Maybe they are just non-emphatic types.

I don't see what Judaism or Islam has to do with that, yes Judaism have the week of mourning, and the 30 days mark, but after that you're expected to start building your routine again, not completely ignore the death. There is not a single Jewish person I can come up with that wouldn't ask "How are you doing" (in the "how are you handling things nowadays") even a few weeks after death of a close friend/relative. At least to some person in their lives. If anything else, this is a cultural thing, or a distance issue of advisor-advisee.

Originally posted as a comment but probably works as an answer as well:
Assuming they haven't had any issue with you taking several days off and are treating you as professionally as usual now that you are back, I would take that as a sign of their support. They are keeping the matter professional and have not pressed for details or 'evidence' to back up your unexpected leave. Obviously your milage may vary but I quite like the 'no questions asked' approach to personal matters. If I want to discuss it as friends or personally, I'll bring it up myself.
So I would say you shouldn't 'expect' condolences depending on the culture of your workplace - they are making an effort not to invade your privacy and are allowing you to take the days off you require without prying into your personal affairs.

It's not just "no questions asked" when OP needed some time off, it's "no response given". He emailed them to let them know he would be gone for a few days but didn't even get a response. This has a much different meaning than something along the lines of "ok, take the time you need".

@AlexandreAubrey I see your point but I personally disagree. If the OP stated he would be taking time off (rather than asking) then the lack of response suggests consent. I would agree that a response would be much more 'human' but in this situation it isn't strictly necessary.

"Professional" is a much abused word that can mean anything or nothing at all. Not even bothering to respond strikes me as exceptionally rude.

Advisors are people who you have a association with. It is absolutely okay to expect any human in your life to wish you well, and when you've had as bad a year as you clearly have then that goes double.
Caring for your advisees (which is after all the job of an adviser, at least in a professional sense) while keep a professional distance is not difficult. Saying "I'm sorry for your loss" is not going to make someone suddenly think you are their best friend.
Honestly, the idea that we can't expect basic human decency from people in academia either because its "not professional" or because "academia is full of people that have trouble with people" just enables and excuses poor behavior. Sure some people find social interaction difficult, and inappropriate behavior can be somewhat forgiven if an individual is clearly trying but getting some subtleties wrong. But saying "academics are bad at people" just gives an excuse to not even try.

I'm interested because at a glance it seems like your answer is the polar opposite of mine but it brings up my initial question of 'what do you mean by Expect?'. You are basically saying Yes you do have the right to expect your advisors to offer condolences; so then do you propose the OP brings up the issue with their advisors and demands to have their expectations met?

No. I don't think that bringing it up would help. Someone offering their condolences after you've told them too is hardly going to sound sincere. I just don't think its wrong to feel bad about it.  So what practical affects might we have. 1) the biggest is make a note of this, and if you are ever in the position of these advisers, remember and make sure you don't act this way. 2) This is going to color your advice to others on whether they should do a PhD with these advisers. 3) It might be a piece evidence in a complaint about a larger pattern of neglect/instrumentation/abuse in the future.

One additional thing a student can do: leave. If this is a part of a larger pattern of neglect/poor communication, It's reasonable to leave the bad advisers. One incident like this reflects on them poorly but isn't a huge deal. If things like this are a constant issue, you may be happier working with someone else or doing something else entirely. That's a last resort, but it's there. The prevalence of poor communication in academia is no reason to put up with it. They aren't forced to be kind, but you don't have to continue to work with them either.

I guess my point was that if you want to work with someone else, but at the same institution, you'll need to make a case for that.

Interesting. I think that giving condolences is normally avoided, except the matter (death not condolences) is brought up by the affected person. Otherwise I would not want to open healing wounds. Not everyone wants to get condolences, because of different reasons. And thats why I would avoid giving them generally. Except if I know the person well. But then I again the words are meaningless to my mind. It is much more relevant that you are there for the person, just saying "I'm sorry" is quite the worst in my opinion. But everyone is different.

What the advisors did strikes me as extremely rude. If someone tells me about their recent loss, it's a basic norm of politeness to offer condolences in reply, irrespective of whether we are close to each other or complete strangers.
After that's done, whether to ever bring it up again, or whether to bring it up at all if you learned from elsewhere, may indeed depend on you relationships. Also, offering condolences in personal conversation may be an awkward task for some, but this excuse does not apply as the conversation took place over e-mail. Writing a standard sentence shouldn't be difficult for anyone. Even more so since professionally, as a rule you do answer a request for days off.
So, based on your description, I would judge that not only they don't care for you personally, they don't care enough to even make their behaviour look respectful and professional.
All of this has little to do with academia, of course.

"All of this has little to do with academia, of course." Personally I'd say that it isn't academia-specific. Human feelings do enter into academia, after all.

@FaheemMitha: Well, that's exactly what Kostya said!

I received such words of condolences when my father, and later when my grandmother, died. That said, this depends on the people - one would hope that the advisor(s) would be understanding and polite, but this might not always be the case. There is little to do but find someone to talk to elsewhere.

(The poster asks, essentially, whether he should expect his advisers to offer condolences for his bereavements.)
It depends on what kind of people your advisers are. But you should have some idea of that already. My very limited experience of academia is that it isn't particularly full of caring and empathic human beings, but I am sure there are some even there. To answer your questions - yes, I think it's entirely reasonable for your advisers to at least write a few sentences in reply to your emails to say they are sorry for your losses, and ignoring you entirely isn't very nice. But unfortunately people (including academics) are often not very nice; it's just something you need to make allowances for. I also think it would be reasonable for them to express some sympathy in person. I'm not sure if it is reasonable to expect them to ask if you needed help - that would depend more on the kind of relationship you had with them.
Disclaimer: this answer reflects my personal biases, because I really dislike being ignored, particularly by email. Unfortunately this is common in a busy and crowded world, where things are increasingly about the bottom line.
You might want to expand your answer to explicitly tell us what reaction they had to you wanting to take a few days off. And did this require any adjustments in your academic schedule? E.g. did you miss any scheduled meetings? And if so, what reactions did you get from your advisers, if any?

I suspect that local culture has a large effect on this. I'm answering from Germany.

First some context: Here, the unionized employment contracts (TVL for academia) specifies that on the death of spouse/legal partner, child or parent your employer has to give you 2 extra days off (they can of course give more).
In any case, you have to ask for the time off. And time off to attend a funeral is a fairly common thing, even in academia - so something that I'd expect to be handled professionally.
If it is not so close a loss (say, a more distant relative), the procedure would be like "I need a day off to attend a funeral next Weekday" "I'm sorry. Of course."
Ask for time off (for any reason) is something that always requires an answer, either confirming or denying the request. Not answering is so unprofessional that I'd consider it an indication the email was not received.
I'd say the cultural norm is to have at the very least a brief sentence of condolences in the reply email. If a supervisor does not feel up to typing a personal sentence, they could always use generic fall-back formulations (say, "my condolences" instead of "best regards"). But not including even such a short generic phrase would be considered extremely rude.
I've never heard of a case where the request for a time off in order to attend a funeral was refused. To give an example, the defense of my Diplom (master) thesis was shifted about 2 days because one of the committee had to attend a funeral. (I was asked and agreed to do the defense 2 days earlier)
Usually the time off will be subtracted from the amount of holidays you have.

All points up to here I'd consider the minimum standard.

On the other hand, I consider it a sad fact of life that some people will behave inappropriately - and in times where you do not have the emotional resources to glance over such incidents that will hurt more.
So while I describe here what I consider the cultural norm, nevertheless you better prepare yourself for the case that those norms are not met.

The next points would be not as clear cut and more depending on circumstances

E.g. depending on how close the loss was, finding a substitute for scheduled appointments (such as teaching duties) would be either on the supervisor for close losses or on you (for more distant losses).
As to behaviour when next meeting in person: that would be more varied.

People are awkward about death, and may not know what to say or do and thus refrain from saying anything.  Consider also that you do not know what recent losses your supervisor may have had, even if they would usually be able to handle the situation more gracefully, they may not be just now.
Etiquette here is that a supervisor will not tell the group of your loss unless you ask them to. So you colleagues will not automatically know. (Ideally, of course, the supervisor could ask you in their reply to your request for time off whether you wish them to inform the colleagues.)
The context of that next meeting also plays into what to expect/from the "ideal" supervisor's point of view what to say/do. E.g. if that meeting is on the hallway or in a room with colleagues who may not know of your loss they may want to be very careful not to trigger emotions that you may not want to display in public.

Asking whether you need help would be considered a sincere offer to help, not a polite glance-by expression. It is outside what can be expected (depending somewhat on how close the relationship is - but it doesn't seem so close in your case).
I'd say briefly asking "Better now?" when next meeting in person would indicate they acknowledge your loss without wanting to go in details.
"How are you doing?" (like "Do you need help/can I somehow help you?") would be asking for a longish explanation of how you are (and in the context of close losses the one who asks should be prepared to meet emotions). Again, outside the expected for a work relationship.

Am I wrong to expect a word of condolence from my advisors

Sort of depends what you mean by 'expect'. You're obviously not wrong for hoping that anyone and everyone in your life will be compassionate for your loss. But if you mean 'expect' as in, 'this is an expectation I have and I will complain and/or refuse to work if I don't get it', then probably yes. You mention feeling like your advisors don't care about your emotions and that you're just a tool. What kind of relationship do you expect or currently have with your advisors? You're their student, they're your supervisors. You are in each other's lives because you believe you can help each other's careers. Why would emotions come into it? How much do you care about theirs?
You needed them to know that you would be unavailable to work for a few days. They didn't reply so you can assume they weren't going to object to this. That's all the information that either party needs. Your emotional needs should be met elsewhere.
Edited to clarify: I'm not saying your advisors were right in ignoring your emails or in not offering a brief condolence. Actually I think frankly it was slightly jerk-ish of them both. However, my point is that when you use the word 'expect', you set up the question differently from 'wouldn't it be nice if they did?'. Essentially, your response to this should be to vent to your friends and family, both about your losses and about your advisors, if you feel the need to. But I don't think you have much of a case if you intend to approach your advisors about their lack of interpersonal communication.

I understood it as “culturally expected”. And in Western Europe it definitely would be expected so OP wouldn’t be wrong.

I argue the exact opposite: my research work, especially on a new topic, requires deep concentration (while I can easily 'crunch through' writing and running experiments), which I am not able to achieve if emotionally too distressed. My supervisors know that - I don't go into an emotional breakdown often, but if I do, I am not able to do research work and I expect them to take that into account. I chose small, tight-knit research groups precisely because they are so supportive. If I got no understanding for my emotional loss such as death, separation, whatever else, I would quit if possible.

Basically, I believe that, in research especially, ones emotional and mental state effect the outcomes greatly. And, while the nature of student-supervisor is most surely primarily professional, the student is not a worker packing crates for a wage, and his boss needs to take the nature of his work into account, especially if he wants to get the most benefits for himself and the student out of the whole thing.

Strange question in some ways.  Are you really asking if it is OK for you to expect something or if the other person should do something.  Or if it is OK for you to not get the work done.
I'm sorry about your folks.  That is real life.  All that said, your advisor is not your family or even your boss at work (and in the workplace people will differ also).  At the end of the day, there is no requirement for your advisor to show you concern.  You need to be self sourcing on the emotional front and on the getting work done for your Ph.D.

Perhaps it's just me, but the phrasing "That is real life." sounds very harsh.  It comes across as "It happens to everyone, get over it."  It probably wasn't meant like that (although the whole answer is rather on the brusque side), and may be worth rephrasing or removing.

I don't think you read the question very well, it is their grandparents who have recently passed/been hospitalized, not his parents. This isn't a very good answer. If you aren't sure what the question is, then don't answer.

A PhD isn't like a normal job. It's a mentor and mentee. It's a master and apprentice. It's an advisor and a student. It's a very close relationship and totally reasonable to expect compassion for a big life event. Everyone involved is human. There is no requirement for most things in life but that's not how social norms work.

@spacetyper A lot of STEM types are barely human.  Discussing emotions can be a very uncomfortable and foreign thing for some people and those personality types will often avoid it at all costs.  That isn't to say that they can't, or don't, feel compassion, but it can very well be the case that they are simply very uncomfortable expressing it outwardly.

I am not sure whether you directly answered the question.

@spacetyper At a normal job, the boss would offer condolences.  You don't need to appeal to some special higher plane of existence of PhDs to require what would be considered normal behavior for a boss managing mechanics, cashiers, software engineers, or accountants.  It's probably the strange thing about the ivory tower that you will run into way more people out of touch with basic humanity than outside.  That is, after all, how the term "ivory tower" arose.

@J...: "A lot of STEM types are barely human" I can barely believe what I just read.

-1: Even if there exist cultures where this answer describes the norm/expectations, it should state where this applies. It is very clearly not a universal norm.

@J... "A lot of STEM types are barely human": this is (in my opinion) very true! And, in my opinion, it also holds for many Stack Exchange sites.


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Is it a red flag for a PhD program if their graduating students cannot find postdoc?
I got accepted to one of my top choice schools for a math Ph.D.
However the graduate students there said in the past few years, the Ph.D.s before them (both pure and applied math) had quite a bit of trouble finding postdoc positions after graduating. But they are able to find nice jobs in industries.
Would this be a red flag? I know that finding a postdoc or a tenure track position in math is especially hard in the recent years, so this might not be a complete measure about their Ph.D. program.
I have also gotten accepted into another public university and the graduate students there said they didn't have much trouble finding postdocs. This one is not as prestige as the one above in term of general ranking.
I have professors that I would like to study with in both universities, and I am  leaning toward the second one.
Could you give me some advice?

Well, someone needs to say it: finding postdoctoral positions in mathematics is difficult, full stop.  This difficulty may perhaps be a red flag to those who are considering graduate school, full stop.  But you would want to look very carefully and quantitatively in order to hold this against a particular department that otherwise seems reputable.

As one data point: when I was on the job market in 2003 I had a tough time getting a postdoc.  By the time I heard positively from one of the places I had originally applied to, it was mid-March and I had verbally accepted an offer my advisor had scared up for me.  But the department I went to is regarded by most everyone as one of the very best in the world.  I think it is too, and I don't hold these professional difficulties as a sign against that.  Nor do I think I was a poor PhD student.  Times are tough!

In addition to being a possible red flag, it should also be an indication that you should plan to be employable in jobs beyond just postdocs.  If you go to math graduate school, in addition to research, you should also either be an excellent teacher or you should learn to code.

@PeteLClark I was pretty tempted to write "If the students claim they're having no trouble finding postdocs, they're lying" but that's probably unfair.  There always are examples of people who seem to find good postdocs with little trouble, and a few such may have been foremost in their mind.

I'd recommend trying to gather some objective data on outcomes.  For example, in the mathematics genealogy project you can search by "name of school" and "year of degree" to find a list of people who graduated in 2014 or 2015.  It's not guaranteed to be complete, and it sometimes mixes together people who were in different departments at the same university, but it's usually pretty good (and sometimes easier than finding this information on math department websites).
Then you can start googling people, with "math" appended if necessary, to see what you can find.  If you can't find any indication that someone is working in academia, then they probably aren't.  If they are, then you can gauge how pleased you would be with such a job.
This should give more reliable data than self-reported difficulty of finding postdocs, because it avoid filtering through the departmental culture.  Some cohorts of grad students are optimistic and enthusiastic, while others are more apprehensive, and it's not clear to me that this correlates particularly well with actual success on the job market.
It's also worth keeping in mind that the relevant issue is job opportunities, not actual outcomes.  If one person complains about the difficulty of finding a job and another doesn't, you can't conclude anything without knowing where they were applying.  (Sometimes students at more prestigious universities apply mainly to fancier postdocs, because they wouldn't be happy with less prestigious jobs.)  Unfortunately, this is more difficult to gather objective data on, but I think it's a second-order effect.

This sounds like pretty thin evidence on which to base an important life decision.  You don't think the graduate students at the second institution might have been a little selective in their memory? They aren't exactly unbiased observers.  Let's just recap:

you're considering a general impression, not based on data (and thus, easily biased)
of presumably a few graduate students out of many in the program
about a 2 or 3 year period (so even for a pretty large school, maybe 50 graduates, and at many schools more like 20)
about a wildly variable phenomenon (since the strength of graduating classes, the number of jobs available in different fields, which advisors students worked with can all vary wildly from year to year).

Of course, all the data you have about graduate programs is low quality (since you don't know how it will apply to you, and sample sizes are so small), but if we reason Bayesian-ly, that means we shouldn't be eager to discard our priors over one data point.  If the other things you know point you to first school, I don't think this is a good reason to change your mind.

I dont know Ben, you make a strong argument, but I feel I could take the same data and reason that as there is so much pressure for existing students not to say anything bad about their current institute - if even 1 bit of signal has broken through the wall of silence/noise, chances are that's a pretty big red flag for what lies on the other side of that wall once you sign that contract.

@J.J I think you're thinking of the psychology wrong here.  Students aren't intensionally lying in most cases, but I suspect most engage in a little wishful thinking (they wish to believe it will be easy for them to find a job), but more importantly, they will base their answer on a couple of vivid examples of people they knew well or who had surprising outcomes, good or bad.

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How reasonable is it to ask my referees to send their recommendation letters to me?
I am applying for a junior faculty position (i.e. tenure track assistant professor level) at a research-intensive US university this fall. As a part of the application process, the university asked for CV, cover letter, employment application letter, a list of referees at the initial phase. Now they have contacted me again and asked to submit three reference letters, a teaching statement, and a research plan via email in order to complete my application.  Most interestingly for the reference letters, I have been given the options of having my references email them directly or I can forward them their letters. I can do whichever is more convenient to me. My concern is with the second option. If I ask my referees to send their letters to me, I can see what they are writing about me. Will they feel secured in such a way? Please advise how I should proceed in this regard.

Based on everyone's comments it is clear that  having the referees send the letter directly to the hiring committee would be better. I agree. However, one more drawback with this option is that the administrative officer (always the case) will receive the emails from four people (me as well as three referees) for my application. Hope he/she will put these things together with great care.

That's pretty common.  Another possibility is that your current department administrative staff is willing to collect LORs for you and send them out together.  You might ask it's something they regularly do.  One of my departments did this (though this was before electronic applications became the norm, and I don't know if things have changed).

You should ask your references to send the letters directly to the hiring committee.  Your references will be more candid in letters that you have not seen and this will increase the credibility of the letters in the eyes of committee members.

In my experience, you must ask your references to send their letters to the hiring committee.

Before electronic applications, it was not uncommon to give reference letters to the applicant in a sealed envelope with a signature on the back across the seal. The idea is if you do not trust the person you are writing a letter for, you probably should not be writing the letter. The sealed letter lets  the hiring/admissions committee know it is confidential. There were/are also reference forwarding services.
That said, it is best if the letter writer forwards the letter directly. For the few old timers, they can print the letter and stick in an envelope. I have not been given, or given, a stamped and addressed envelope for a reference letter in a long time.
The one advantage of collecting the letters yourself, is you know they are submitted. This can be overcome by following up with the letter writers to make sure they have submitted the letter.

I know different places have different customs, and especially when people leave a position, they will often get reference letters to take with them so their former boss does not need to continue writing references ( rather lazy... in some cases I know people were even asked to write the letter themselves...)
If the University asks for you to choose one or the other... I'd go with having the referees send them directly. A direct reference is more reliable (because it can be more candid and you'll never know) but I suspect they probably allow the indirect one because some people will just have the letters and don't want to or cannot ask another favour of the referee.
Meaning: I'd regard the "you can send it yourself" option as a fallback only, for cases where the other one does not work.

Based on everyone's comments it is clear that  having the referees send the letter directly to the hiring committee would be better. I agree. However, one more drawback with this option is that the administrative officer (always the case) will receive the emails from four people (me as well as three referees) for my application. Hope he/she will put these things together with great care.

I'm certain they're used to doing that. Usually they'll mail out to the referees and expect their letter in response. If you have any doubt, you can always ask your referees nicely to tell you when they've sent it (depending on your standing with them). That said: If a reference is late, the HR people will probably tell you, so you can ask the referee. None of that will your chances of getting the post because the action is always on someone else (as opposed to when the letters go through you)

The best way is you send your latest updates to the referees and request them to look into the updates before sensding the recommendation letters. Though sometimes many applications ask for open recommendation letters where the referee send/gives the recommendation letter to the applicant and the applicant finally attached them to the application, but your case is different to it. So have faith in your referees that they have given good recommendations for you.

Reference letters are frequently preferred to be confidential by the hiring panel, but stating outright that they are confidential is or can be pretty misleading. Obviously, wherever OP is applying isn't too worried about the confidentiality since they allow or request that OP send the letters in on their own. Though it is frowned upon by some, many letter writers ask the candidate for draft text for the letter to help them get started (or remind them of the context). In such a case, confidentiality is more or less out the window.

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What to do if referees take a long time to upload their recommendation letters?
I have(am) applied(ying) for a junior faculty position (i.e. tenure track assistant professor level) at a research-intensive US university from this fall. I am planning to apply to at least 30 universities for getting a position. However, most of the opening announcements I came across are asking  to put the email addresses of my referees for letters of recommendation in addition to submitting standard documents, e.g. CV, cover letter, research and teaching statements. My concern is if I apply for all of these openings within a week or so,  my referees' email inbox will be full of reference requests. In order to avoid such problem, I am applying for one particular opening and then waiting until I see that all the referees have uploaded their letters. Then I am applying to the next. However, it turns out not to be the best way of handling this circumstance since most of the referees are taking at least a week or so to upload their letters (sometimes after my second reminder). If it goes on this way, I will be approaching the submission deadlines of some of the openings. In this case, should I upload the standard documents from my side at least? Will the department I am applying to not consider my application if they see that the reference letters are not uploaded on time?

Very many, if not all, of U.S. academic math jobs are brokered through mathjobs.org, so reference-letter writers need only write one letter...

From my experience of uploading letters --- it is easier to upload them in big batches rather one-at-a-time. Your reference writers might have similar preferences.

My experience comes with asking for recommendation letters with my PhD application, most of the times it was necessary to remind the referees about the deadline for submission; they're so busy that they easily forget about it.
Another option would be with resending notifications through the recommendation system; many of such systems allow for sending automated reminders to the referees thus eliminating the need for direct intervention with the busy professors!


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Letter of recommendation from online classes
I am living overseas for work for the next two years and finished my masters 15 years ago.
Now I am taking graduate courses at Oregon State U online to prepare for applying to a Phd program.
I will have to get LORs from these professors but am unsure of the best strategy.
The country I am living in is not English speaking so I cannot take classes locally.

Re your last sentence: many countries have "international universities," where courses are taught in English.  Have you checked about this?

unsure of the best strategy — Ask them directly, as if they were human.

Assuming these are proper online courses, with proper work you turn in or at least exams, you should just email a couple of professors a month or 2 before you need the letters.  Explain the situation, briefly remind them who you are, and ask for recommendations.
They will be able to say in their letters what was covered in the course and evaluate your performance, so choose professors who you think will be most familiar with your work.
This shouldn't be that different from a letter a professor for a class you physically attended, but who you never had much personal interaction with.  Note you probably get at least one reference from your undergraduate days, at least assuming that was reasonably recent.

When you ask, be sure you give the professors enough information.  Here is what I tell my own students: http://bbrown.kennesaw.edu/recommendations/index.html

Excellent advice. Glad to have found this forum


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Why is it required for Test Administrators and Proctors to constantly walk around the room during testing?
I ask this because from my experience, a TA and/or a Proctor moving around the testing room looking over my shoulder is distracting and breaks my concentration. I have been in both positions, TA and Proctor and I try to only move when a student needs something,  such as a pencil or paper. My administrator seemed to get angry today because I was standing in one place too long. I also noticed that I have a better view of testers when I can see them all from a fixed point not turning my back on part of them throughout the test. Does anyone else see moving around  the room as distracting to testers?

I also find it incredibly distracting, especially in a small class where rotations around the room are done in quick succession. Your point about visibility is also accurate, in my opinion. That said, it really doesn't make sense to me why they're walking around so much. Then again, I've only been in the position if one being tested, so I may be missing something.

Mostly speculation. If you stay in one place, you're only getting one angle of the students. Presumably, there are cheating methods that rely on limited line-of-sight from the proctor. Staying still for extended periods of time makes it easier for students to determine and exploit your blind spots.

@Roger: I almost feel that anyone who gets all Ocean's Eleven about cheating on an exam may deserve to get some rewards for their good planning and hard work.  Only almost.  But the "cheater savant" is a rare bird indeed in my part of the world.  If I have ever had one in front of me, then I was fooled by the thoroughness of their camouflage: they make sure not to do well enough on the exam for me to notice.

Cheaters NEVER "deserve" to get rewarded for their work. Ever.

Are you sure that your administrator did get angry? Is it possible that they didn't care about you moving or not? I would say that if you have been specifically told to move around, you can ask the person who told you the reason why. If not, don't assume that it is a 'requirement'.

Wait, that's required?  Oops. // On a different note, I once had a professor who walked around the room, looked at my work and just said "Hmmmm...."  That was quite unnerving.

It is not globally required: e.g. I do not move around the room unprompted when proctoring an exam.  So it is probably a matter of local academic culture and/or preference of the (head) course instructor.
In these kinds of fine points, academic culture differs so strongly from place to place as to make it clear that there are not always deep, well-thought out reasons for doing things one way or another: many institutions do things in a certain way because they "always" have done so.  The academic culture shock that I experienced in moving from the US to Montreal was considerable.
For instance, I believe that I first learned the word "invigilator" when someone introduced himself to me as an invigilator for my course.  If you had told me before I arrived in Montreal that final exams there have professional invigilators, I might not have believed you.  In the US, if you are teaching a course without a "common final" (I imagine that common finals occur only in a small minority of all courses taught, but I don't know for sure) then you, the instructor, are very likely the sole inviligator/proctor/administrator/TA in the room when an exam is taking place.  (Not that having professional invigilators is a bad idea: if you have the infrastructure in place, why not?  But I assume that they get paid at least a little bit, and this would never fly in the state university at which I currently reside.)
So understand that when I say that I do not move around the room when giving a final exam, I mean no one does.  It is not really clear to me what cheating I might be missing out on by only looking at the students from the front of the room.  I should say that I am used to a classroom environment with stadium seating and small flip-up desks so I can see a lot from the front of the room.  I also teach a subject -- math -- such that coming in with a cheat-sheet or something like that would not make things that much easier.  Even consulting the internet on your cell phone while in the bathroom would not help that much -- one does need to show one's work, after all -- unless the student was unusually insightful and well-prepared about how to cheat in this way.  In my local academic culture, cheaters are not insightful or well-prepared...

invigilators are typically grad students and drawn from the TA ranks. If they are paid it is at the same sort of rates they are paid to TA

@Kate Gregory: At McGill, invigilators are not only paid but also unionized: http://www.mcgill.ca/students/exams/invigilation.  Apparently about 90% of them are students (which I didn't know until just now; the small number of invigilators I worked with were much older than I was).

Moving around is probably not required (to do so would be micromanaging on the institution's part), but as others have pointed out, it depends on the "local academic culture" and most importantly on the instructor or whoever is in charge of proctoring the exam.
As a TA of various roles, when I've given or proctored an exam, I tend to move a lot. Here's why:

Depending on the test and how much time is left for the students to finish, there can be a lot of questions, which makes me move a lot.
I've found that moving around encourages students to ask a question. (Most of my questions are from people as I pass by them.) I think they'd rather not raise their hand if I'm in the front of the room or not paying attention because it would slow them down. If I'm near them, they can ask their question quickly and move on. This is my primary reason for moving around when not asking questions.
Moving around tells my students that I'm eager to help them with their questions. It shows I'm interested and mindful of them. It's an accurate impression, but I want them to see it.
I've caught a ton of wandering eyes by moving around. It's easier for me because I can't see the eyes of the students in the back rows well enough from the front of the classroom (15-25 m away). Surprisingly, watching students from behind can be useful because they are sometimes more careless, or don't see me watching their heads turn towards their neighbor's work.
Moving around gives my students the impression that I'm watching them more closely, and I hope that this (if nothing else!) discourages them from cheating.

If the exam has been going on for a long time or your even have to proctor two or more sequential exams, moving around keeps your attention high.

I second #2.  I also like to go around periodically to check on how far the students have gotten part-way through.  This helps me gauge my test-writing acumen.

When I have proctored exams, I tended to move around the room for two reasons:

Answering questions: in a good-sized class, there's a lot of motion just from answering questions.
When not answering questions, I would sometimes move around the class just because I was feeling rather bored and restless.

Looking for cheaters didn't actually enter into it.

This testing situation is a state test where teachers and students are not allowed to discuss the test at all. Sure during the beginning of test when everyone is getting settled, then as students complete the test, we go to them and retrieve the tests and other materials. My issue is why am I required to meander around the room during the test to look over students' shoulders when I can see everyone from one fixed point.

@ArtGalaxy If the students aren't allowed to ask anything, then the only thing I can think of is that they really want you to look for cheaters... or at least to make the students think you are looking.  And I suppose you'll at least be uniform in your impact if you're moving around.

@Roger-I could understand the point of moving according to angle or vantage point; however, in this room, the desks and students were in individual desks with large tops and the students hands, legs, bodies, and feet are visible from a single vantage point. Also, no bags, purses, cell phones, etc.are allowed in the testing room. Constant or near constant walking just seems an unnecessary distraction for the students testing.

@jakebeal- I think you're probably correct in your reasoning. I have a bit of a stubborn streak that won't allow my mind to rationalize disturbing students who are testing in order to fulfill a requirement that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I took an entrance exam once where the proctor kept rattling the coins in his pocket.  After half an hour of that, I was ready to strangle him.  - - -  Could you ask the administrator your question, without alienating him/her?

I am sure that the administrator was angry because of the way he handled a situation in the testing room where I was a proctor. He angrily unlocked the door of the room where I was proctoring a test and rudely gestured to me with his hands to move around.


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Fear of missing out: how to maintain a good attitude towards research in academia in the age of rapid commercial success coming from industry?
I am currently studying information transmission in biological neural networks at a (fairly prestigious) university, specifically, the interaction between neurons and their surrounding glial cells. Most of my research is about modeling and simulation of these cells as dynamical equations. It is hoped through a better theoretical understanding of the brain, one day this line research will allow us to build biocomputers that far outperforms any software models existing today. There are far more things that the brain can do but machines cannot, e.g., consciousness, selective memory, imagination.
However, in recent years I find that I am becoming more and more disillusioned with my purpose of doing graduate research, and my disillusionment is shared by several of my colleagues.
This disillusionment is specifically driven by the rapid commercial success enjoyed by industries due to the advent of exponentially increased computing power and data (along with many other factors). For example, wearable computing, AR for gaming, speech and image recognition and personal robots, etc.  There are four "trends" that continuously distract me from being fully committed to my research.

It seems that most of the groundbreaking research is performed at research labs at large tech companies such as Google, Baidu, Facebook or major hospitals, instead of universities. These companies have the money, the resources, the public relation, the infrastructure as well as the aggregation of brains to produce truly innovative products, and their products tend to have greater and more immediate impacts on people's lives. It doesn't help that historically academic journals are publishing these success stories on a regular basis.
People in the industry are slowly but surely enjoying greater and more immediate name recognition as compared to people in academia. In fact, it seems that industry researchers are seen as more "successful" as compared to their strictly academic counterparts (especially those without the prestigious title of "Company-X's Professor"). Many companies proudly display their list of researchers (on  well-maintained websites no less!).
Sure, fame should not be one's motivation for producing good science. But we all wish that our research results could be more widely recognized.
The ladder from academia to industry is too high and is becoming even higher. Many industry jobs (even in simulation work) require years of industrial experience, primarily in coding and writing software. These skills are not emphasized in much of the research departments outside of computer science. Knowing how to perform parallel computing in C++ is not an essential skill in creating clear and well-reasoned simulations or supporting graphics, nor advance the state of research and ultimately, human knowledge. Therefore even one graduate with a PhD, he or she will be put at a significant disadvantage as someone who started out doing and this trend is not abating. In sum, the transferable skills obtainable due to industry experience far outnumber the ones that can be acquired in academia.
Money (- coupled with interesting research opportunities). For example, according to some self-reported salaries, machine learning jobs are paying 100k - 200k and even 600k at the high-ends. While money has never been a strong motivator for me, it seems that with this type of funding, any type of research could be greatly accelerated without the stress of applying for grants and seeking scholarships that pay 1/4-th of what you can obtain with holding a job in a company that potentially does its own interesting research.

Note that this is not an argument as to why one should quit research and join industry on the basis of their success, but rather aligning one's skill set or research towards industry/commercial purposes instead of performing the type of research without industrial demand. Simulating biological systems and analyzing related dynamical models is not as strongly in demand as knowing software engineering or machine learning, I am not sure if this trend will ever change.

I have heard many counter-arguments to these points. For example, research in the industry tends to be product driven and ultimately contributes nothing to advancing knowledge.
Or much of the commercial success enjoyed recently are the result of engineering without the science behind them.
Or that we are at the peak of a hype-cycle, and things will eventually die down, as for every success story there are hundreds of failures.
Or what my supervisor believes: good research is independent from where it is produced.
But I find it difficult to recognize the increasingly unfair trends and I cannot help but feel that academicians are devalued. Will the research that we perform at universities will ever be recognized (in our lifetime)? Or have an impact comparable to what industries do on a regular basis? Can my talents be put towards better use and am I wasting my time? Should I change my research directly to pursuit skills that are more valuable in industry? Should I quit graduate school and work in industry full-time?
These questions distract me from focusing on my research, especially the more theoretical aspects, and I find that I am constantly making choices that deviate from my research goals such as by partaking in classes that form the basis of these commercial products. My copy of Winfree's "the geometry of biological time" is slowly gathering dust, while the copy "How to Program in Python" sitting by my bed side. How can I maintain a good attitude towards doing research while seeing all these rapid success enjoyed by large and well-funded companies?

This is so relatable and resonate with heart. Theoretical researchers are really underappreciated by the society/world. Most people out there focus on business side. But in my opinion, your research is cool, and there are great research institutions who hire research scientists doing your research field, even the theoretical part (if i'm not mistaken). And your simulation skill is certainly useful imho.

An addendum on the 5th anniversary of this question would be greatly appreciated.  I cannot speak for others, but I would be very interested in learning how your views on academia versus industry evolved over the past 5 years

It seems to me that the broad question is about taste, personality, and personal definition of success. So please allow me to answer only to your specific bullets:
1) Impact "These companies have the money, the resources, the public relation, the infrastructure as well as the aggregation of brains to produce truly innovative products" Same can be said of most prestigious academic institutions. Only you have to switch the word "products" with "research", the latter having a more fluid meaning. "...and their products tend to have greater and more immediate impacts on people's lives." as an academic researcher, you tend to focus on change in the long term. As an industry researcher, change in the short term. There is no better or worse - it's just about what suits your personality.
2) Recognition I disagree with most points here. "People in the industry are slowly but surely enjoying greater and more immediate name recognition as compared to people in academia." this is not true. Everybody knows the successful CEO (Jobs, Musk). Only if you actually care about a field, then you'll know about the successful researchers and engineers. Ask your mother about Wozniak or LeCun and see whether she blinks. She probably on the other hand heard about Peter Higgs and some of the CERN people who contributed to the 2013 physics Nobel prize. "Sure, fame should not be one's motivation for producing good science"...let's be honest. We all go into academia because we want to do great things and leave a mark, possibly with our name visibly printed on it. There is nothing wrong with that too.
3) Transferrable skills the only reason why having so much more PhDs than academic jobs is not completely immoral, is because industry highly values academic experience (well at least in quantitative fields). Having a bio-something quantitative PhD at a well-known academic institution is a perfect passport to industry machine-learning jobs. Sure you learn more practical skills in industry. But your PhD stands for grit in facing complex challenges toward ill-defined goals. That's gold.
4) Monetary reward data science/machine learning entry-level salaries are comparable to junior professor salaries in US. Sure you will not advance your salary that quickly in academia, but you will make up there with job security and flexibility.
And more:

"But I find it difficult to recognize the increasingly unfair trends
and I cannot help but feel that academicians are devalued. Will the
research that we perform at universities will ever be recognized (in
our lifetime)?" Value is something that is partly self-promoted and
partly recognized by others. Academia produces long term value that
is hard to quantify. There is nothing unfair in its nature.
"Or have an impact comparable to what industries do on a regular
basis?" Same answer as above. Academic impact is typically much
larger, in a very small number of circumstances, over much longer
time scales.
"Can my talents be put towards better use and am I wasting my time? Should I change my research directly to pursuit skills that are more valuable in industry?  Should I quit graduate school and work in industry full-time?" As said above, this is completely personal. Just look for what you value, not for the fear of missing out - you will most likely FOMO the career you are not pursuing, regardless! :)

Good luck

Thank you for your answer! "FOMO" well captures the sentiment and my colleagues and I share.

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Does a "research proposal" actually make sense in today's world?
When applying for faculty jobs or research positions, you need to write a research proposal.
But the idea of a research proposal is quite silly when you think about it:

Research, by definition, is about discovery, often spontaneous discovery arising from taking a shower, going out for a walk, a good night of sleep, talking to someone over coffee or tea. A research proposal is a myopic way of thinking about doing research. That's the same as saying: "where do you see yourself in the next 5 years." How can you plan to do a certain research, when that very research might depends on a collaborator that you might meet in the future but haven't met yet?

Practically speaking, everyone is doing research not in their proposal, and nobody I know even have a concrete research agenda nowadays. The only exception are people who have siloed themselves in a single research topic/theme and these people are rarer and rarer by the day. For example, I work in the AI/ML space. People are working on ideas that never even existed just a few months ago. For most researchers, I can only imagine their pages and pages of research proposals were tossed out when things like large-language model was suddenly released.

Finally, this research proposal has not been the historical trajectory of research. I cannot imagine von Neumann or Shannon ever writing a "proposal of research". They just did whatever that came to mind, and they did everything, so do many researchers today. Certainly researchers often had a specialization, but nobody is fully defined by that specialization. The Nobel prize awardees from just past week showed that you can be a researcher at developing game AI, but your skill can also be used for computational chemistry. Or you can by a computer scientist working on memory, but your research might ultimately prove beneficial for physics. How do you ever account for the spontaneous, interdisciplinary nature of research in a proposal?

I can't see any way of writing a research proposal that is not at a very abstract and high-level, e.g., "for the betterment of humanity" or "discover the nature of intelligence" or some trite like that. If you were to write it like that, then everything naturally falls under your research proposal, but it is also meaningless. Furthermore, if I actually knew what research I wanted to do, then I might not even do them because I already know how to do them. I do the research that I do not know how to do.
Given all this, does the idea of a research proposal actually make sense in today's world?

This feels like a rant disguised as a question. I mean, does it really matter what any of us think? You’ll still need to write those damn research proposals…

Give me money so I can take a shower, have a good night sleep, and maybe I will have a good idea. Strange that that pitch does not work so well....

I don't understand. You say "does the idea of a research proposal actually make sense in today's world?" Are you implying that it made sense in yesterday's world? The world of von Neumann and Shannon?

Nobel-prize winning research has been funded by research proposals, so the distinctions you make do not seem to align with reality. Also even in AI/ML, people do have research agendas, you are massively confusing different concepts.

I think your confusion about the value of research proposals is best resolved in quotes along the lines of "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/18/planning/ Simply put, by not having a plan you ensure failure. That's true for war as well as leading a research group as a professor.

Is it the case you’re just starting out on a research career, a student? You don’t need a research proposal, but keep in mind you’ll be competing against others who do have one.

If you do any sort of null hypothesis significance testing then you absolutely need a research proposal and detailed plan before you get started for your work to have any validity; if anything, academics probably put too little effort towards those sorts of proposals.

Here's a proposal by Shannon, Minsky, Rochester, and McCarthy: http://jmc.stanford.edu/articles/dartmouth/dartmouth.pdf I do wish proposals of that length would still be successful.

On the one hand, I agree that research proposals in job applications are not particularly useful for explaining a candidate's research trajectory, as the committee can easily discern this from their previous work and publications.
However, it's misleading to suggest that research occurs without a clear, preconceived direction—simply based on whatever the researcher happens to be thinking at the time. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Most independent researchers have a vision or a clear sense of where their work is heading. Those without such direction are not truly independent researchers.
The primary purpose of a research proposal, along with many other requirements in the application process, is to demonstrate that the candidate possesses the dedication, patience, determination, and persistence to complete these tasks. A candidate unwilling to put effort into writing a thoughtful proposal may signal a lack of motivation and reliability, casting doubt on their long-term effectiveness as an employee.

There is an aspect of different scales of planning to consider:

On the grand scale, it's useful for a researcher to know what they are planning to develop long-term: a vision for the general direction that will be taken for at least a couple of years worth of time.

There's the coarse scale, where this long-term vision is chopped into work that might get distributed into individual Ph.D. projects. This is something that can still be planned for.

And there's the fine scale, where research gets divided into individual publications, individual month-to-month or even day-to-day ideas.

It seems that you're mostly concerned about the finest scale - the month-to-month or day-to-day ideas, the shower thoughts, and momentary insights, which indeed you cannot plan for. But by having the grand scale and the coarse scale in place, you prime your mind to figure out the fine scale as you go.
A research proposal should be at just the right scale, which I would say spans between grand to coarse, and maybe just gently touches on an aspect of fine but just to show that you already have a specific detail in mind that can kickstart your work. A proposal should still grant the researcher enough flexibility to respond to the fine-scale ideas and findings and to position them somewhere in the grand and coarse plans.
Professor Howard Stone talks about this in this podcast episode:
42 | Howard Stone on how to tilt your head for discovery

This might depend on what country you're in, but I suspect in many cases what they're really looking for with a research proposal is "are you able to write a good grant application?"
In an ideal world, all researchers would have enough government funding to explore research directions, take chances, be spontaneous, etc.
But we don't live in that world. First off, the university is taking a financial risk hiring you. They want to tell the difference between someone who will lead to published results, which helps their reputation, and someone who is just going to take a salary and do nothing. Having a plan shows that you've at least thought about what research to do.
But more importantly, most universities don't have funding to hire a lot of grad students. So they need professors to apply for grants. And you apply for grants by writing research proposals.
So any candidates who aren't able to "play the game" of talking about their research aren't likely to bring much grant money into the university.
Is it fair? Probably not. But on the other hand, what's the use of research if you don't communicate your findings? Communication is part of research, and institutions want to hire people who can communicate.

The NIH budget, all dedicated to medical-related research, is 5 times the NSF budget, which covers all of the rest of science and engineering, plus mathematics and some social sciences.  Private funding (in the US) is similarly skewed.
This means that practices that work for medicine end up being the practices that are used across all subjects, because if you're going to have one way of doing things, then it makes sense for it to be the way that makes sense for most of the money.  In part, this is because, due to the money (and the administrative skills biologists have to learn to manage all the money), a disproportionate number of Deans are biologists.
In health-related research, most of the labor goes not into generating ideas but rather into collecting data, lots and lots of data that takes a large amount of time and expense to collect.  Data collection can indeed be planned, and, indeed, has to be planned.  If you don't plan your data collection well, you get a bunch of useless data (because the data ends up being too disorganized to do statistics with).  All the idea generation is already done by the time the grant proposal is written; all that is left to do is the execution of the data collection and analysis.  (Ideally, the analysis is planned before the data gathering, because allowing plans for analysis to be affected by the data can lead to statistical biases.)
Now, the biology paradigm works less well for fields where less (or none) of the research work is data collection that can (and should be) planned in advance.  But we are stuck with it, because universities and governments don't want to create a different format for a small percentage of the budget.  Every NSF Program Officer in Mathematics knows that the standard format grant proposal makes no sense in Mathematics; they just allow - in fact encourage - more appropriately written proposals which don't follow the standard format (but still follow all the formatting requirements) with a wink and a nod.

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How to work with teammates who shoot down ideas in order to avoid work?
I am working with two fellow graduate students on implementing some algorithm for data extraction. We are in the mid-phase of our project and we still have roughly a month (20 days to be precise) to go before it is due.
However, recently I have been confronted with a pattern of negative, and frankly quite arrogant behavior.
Whenever I suggest something that can help out with the project, they will quickly shoot down the idea. It has became more and more apparent that they do this in order to avoid having to work on, or research the idea.
For example, our algorithm is very slow on a standard CPU, I told them that the algorithm may run hundreds of time faster on a GPU. Obviously we do not have a GPU, so the team will need to contact people to find an efficient GPU, which is something that is available in our school, and also figure out how to run the algorithm on it.
The idea was immediately shot down, at first they told me it was impossible to get speed up (this was at the very early stage of the project and they were not familiar with how a GPU works). Eventually, they realized not only you can get speedup, but also a significant amount. When I made the request again, they told me that it is probably not going to worth it. How can they know if we have not tried?
This came up again just today. I told them that the data extraction model is not very efficiently stored, that is, the data structure storing the model does not have a very desirable insertion and retrieval time. The way of resolving this issue in my opinion is by finding a new data structure. They immediately shot down the idea and said to me that no such thing existed. I looked online and found a blog that, in a very detailed manner, lists more than 5 ways of improving on our method of storing the model. Fine, then I asked them how would they solve the issue. They told me just to deal with it until the end of the project - out of sight, out of mind. I am afraid that when we run our algorithm on the real data set (which is 100x larger than the experimental one we are currently working with), we will again run into this storage issue and we would be out of time then, at which time they will probably say something like, "who knew, too bad!".
At this stage I am beginning to wonder if we can efficiently work together. I get the feeling that they are basically telling me:
go at it alone, if you succeed, then we will free-load on the overall success of the project without having wasted our precious time, and if you fail, then you should have listened to us.
Where should I go from here?

You go up.
But tread carefully.
It is presumed that you have a group leader, or supervisor, or faculty member, principal investigator, that leads the research project.
The next time you meet, you state, objectively, what the current problems and the solutions that you've proposed. You also state that after some deliberation, person X and Y believe that the solution would not work for reasons A, B and C. However, you remain unconvinced and would like to pursue this path for X amount of time and energy given your research: case 1, case 2, etc.
You differ to the supervisor as to what will ultimately be done.
(Unless this is a group project for a class of course).
Then the decision is whether or not you have an option to seperate and work on your own. If you don't believe that you can form a positive working relationship, then staying would only make things worse. If you have no other options, then simple restate what I suggested, but as a pitch to person X and Y. At the end of the day, if this is for a grade, then time wasted is not lost, it just means you don't do that and it can still be part of your methodology discussion (we tried X, but it failed because of A, B and C, this is why we chose Z)


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Citing articles in a Language I don't understand
I'm writing the thesis for my master degree, some of the very very old articles I have to cite are in a foreign language I don't understand (usually German and French). Most of them have been translated in my native language and/or English, but in some cases I didn't find a translation.
Even if I'm asking it for the thesis I think it does apply in more serious cases of research too.
An example would be for example if I write that the Friedman Lemaitre Robertson Walker metric in general relativity was first derived by Lemaitre in 1922. If I cite his original article in French at this point, would I be doing something wrong since I don't understand French and I can't understand what's written there? This is just an example, I'm pretty sure an English version of Lemaitre article exists, I just didn't check.
I mean I assume that when someone cites an article he' read and understood it.
My opinion is that I shouldn't cite the original article at all but cite someone else who cites it, knowing what was written in the original article.
Am I overthinking it and I should just simply cite these articles or is there a better procedure?
I don't know if it can be relevant but these articles appears mainly in the very beginning of the work, which is just an introduction to the topic of the work

@Anyon Thank you, sorry I missed it, very poor search on my side.

For most things, Google Translate will let you know enough of the idea of the paper to know if it should be cited or not. That can be harder in math and some other fields that rely on specialized notation, of course.


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Is it reasonable to mention that you would certainly attend a school if accepted in statement of purpose?
When discussing graduate school and PhD programs, I had a professor mention to me that some schools will not accept a student because they do not anticipate that student accepting the offer. This stems from the fact they have limited spots and want students to accept instead of having to go through the process of reaching out to students on the waitlist, etc.  Basically, schools give offers to students who they anticipate (or hope) will accept their offer.
That being said, would it make sense to make it apparent in my SOP that I would accept an offer from the school if it was presented? And I do not mean in a tacky way which would read like I wrote it on the SOP for every school. I mean make a compelling case for why this school is the best place for me and then add a sentence like, "I believe [your University] is the place I would be most successful/happy/focused and given the opportunity to attend I would accept" or something along those lines.
Additionally, is it fair to mention a reason like that if it is not expressly academic (in addition to the academic reasons, of course)? For example, location is very important to me and would strongly impact my decision about where to attend.

Of course, nothing prevents you from telling every school that you would be sure to go there if you were admitted. This makes such a statement pretty meaningless.

Did you read the post? I specifically mentioned not doing this.

I think it would not be difficult to make it apparent that I did not write it on every application by mentioning specific things relating to one school.

The question in the title is pretty clear to me. So is the first sentence in the second paragraph. Yes, I did read the post. Since one university does not see the applications to another, they cannot tell how tacky such a statement is.

Let's say you apply 2 schools, one of them is top 3 (let's say, for testing water purpose), the other is top 100. You didn't expect you will get admission to the top 3. You tell the top 100 you will attend their school if admitted because of their location. Now, you get offer from the top 3 unexpectedly. What are you going to do ?

Unlike some other applicants, applying to a top 3 (or even a top 10) school has never been on my mind. I would not write on my application that I intend to attend a school unless I meant it.

As long as you know what you're doing, I think you can do it.

Yes, it is both reasonable and a good strategy.
Among the many metrics departments use to measure their success at recruiting good graduate students, there is  yield and retention.
Yield is the number of students who accept an admissions office out of the total number of students who are offered admission. High numbers denote a program that the first choice for students. Low numbers are indicative of a "safety school."
Retention and the related graduation rate are respectively, the proportion of students who return every semester, and the proportion of students who finish the program. Students who have a particular school as their first or preferred choice have a lower rate of dropping out or transferring to other programs.
By indicating that a program is your first choice, you are indicating that you will help with both metrics, and this will look good in the eyes of the admissions committee. As you suspect, the reasons you give must be believable, of course, to convince the committee that you are not just saying the same thing on every application. That you prefer the location is a reasonable thing to add.
However, expect diminishing returns as you go up the ladder of top programs, those programs that already have the highest yield rate among their peer institutions. Since everybody already accepts their admissions offers, you are not distinguishing yourself by stating the obvious.
For example, if you have a record that would get you admitted to MIT, but are applying to an unranked local college, it's a good idea to write on your application that if admitted, you'd take the offer because you want your children to stay at their current school. The opposite might not work, that of telling MIT that you'd accept their offer because you want to live in a city: plenty of schools around cities, and MIT already has a high yield, so this will likely give the impression that you are grasping at straws.

Thanks, this is along the lines of what I was thinking! And that last paragraph is a good point and is in line with what I am thinking about the reasons needing to be believable and valid.


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Paper rejected because it did not fit the scope of a journal
I recently finished my paper and I submitted it to a journal. A few days later, I got a response from the editor saying that my manuscript had been rejected because it did not fit the scope of the journal, even if I believe it fitted (same references, similar articles). I submitted the paper again to another journal with similar aims and scope and the editor's decision was again rejection.
However, he suggested four journals suitable to transfer my article to and asked me to choose one of them. I agreed and resubmitted my article to one of the journals the editor suggested. It was rejected again yesterday as it did not fit the scope of the journal the editor suggested as suitable. Once again the new editor suggested journals suitable to transfer my article to and asked me to choose one of them, and so on.
What could be going on? I began to believe there are no proper reviewers and not proper scope.

Do you have experience writing papers? Do you have a coauthor who has experience writing papers? It's possible your paper is just very very bad or crank-y and "out of scope" is the editors' attempts to be polite.

@BryanKrause Certainly a possibility, but if they suggested it go to other journals, that seems less likely?

I agree with BryanKrause, as Editors referred that my manuscript was well written and provides valuable insights is , but was
considered to be out of scope for their  journal. I have experience writing papers. I' m also a reviewer.

It is likely your general topic is "in scope", but your actual findings do not rise to the level of impact of those papers to which yours is similar. I'll use an example from my line of work in materials science. There are lots of articles published regularly in the journal Advanced Materials (IF = 29) on battery materials. There are also lots of articles published on battery materials in MDPI and Hindawi journals (much much lower IF and reputation). Just because you are in the "topical scope" of the journal, it doesn't mean the findings themselves are within the "impact scope".

Thank you R1NaNo. The scope of impact of a journal is not always clear, that's why  I first check the aims and scope.
The point is that, as I mentioned above, that I submitted the article to journals with similar publications and bibliography, i.e.relevant to a similar audience, so it will have a similar impact. So I wonder if it is a matter of lack of appropriate reviewers for the subject of my article, which is about construction of a research tool.

Also, the paradox of the case that makes me wonder is that my article was rejected because it didi not fit to a journal that another journal transferred it to this as more relevant.

@Daniel Hatton. I have already submitted to three journals, and I still can't yet find out what they mean by saying that my article is well-written and interesting but out of their scope. I believe that editors should state the exact reason that an article is rejected without review and not have the authors look for it or imagine it.

We can definitely exclude a lack of appropriate reviewers because you wrote this in your description:

I recently finished my paper and I submitted it to a journal. A few days later, I got a response from the editor saying that my manuscript had been rejected because it did not fit the scope of the journal ...

No editor is going to give up on finding reviewers within a few days. In fact, it's very common that eventually-published papers still have no reviewers after this time.
You're encountering consistent desk rejections across all journals, including those that are supposedly within scope. That's a sign something is very wrong with your paper. It's not a problem with the journals, the editors, the reviewers, etc. It's a problem with your paper.*
Note "out of scope" or "not appropriate for journal" can be the editor's response for very very bad papers (see examples from John Mandblaur's angular-momentum-is-not-conserved papers, which fall within the realm of crankery). If you can't tell what's wrong, then you should get help from a published academic whom you trust to help diagnose what's wrong.

*It's also possible that it's a problem with you, if you've e.g. done things that got you blacklisted by most journals.

@AllureThank you for the comments. However, my article was neither poorly written nor outside the scope of the journals. As well, I have never caused any problems with any journal, as you wrongly assumed. My article was already recommended three times by the editors to be published in other journals with the same scope. If it was badly written, why did no editor mention it until now? Do you finally mean that it is so difficult for some editors to tell the truth to the authors about the reason for rejection, and they respond to everybody in the same "out of scope" manner?

@AllureAlso, as I mentioned in my initial post, the paradox is that my article was rejected as "out of scope" by a journal that another journal transferred it to as more relevant...

It is also understandable that if the paper falls into the realm of crankery, or badly written, Mr @Nik should have received such feedback from those editors. My idea is that, the problem was indeed the paper itself, however, it wasn't due to being not well written or being crank-y. I believe those journals have target readerships and the paper probably is too hard to comprehend for the reader, aka prioritize accessibility

@Nik Without having seen the paper, I cannot comment. Can you share the paper?

@DuyVăn I think most academics/editors feel that engaging with the authors of crank papers is not worth it, which is why they just brush off the paper without calling it crankery (see the link in answer).

@Allure. Thank you for the suggestion to see the paper but I don't have the approval of all the co-authors to send it to you. But I promise that when it is published, I will send it to you so that you can verify that it was both well-written and useful to the scientific community.

@DuyVăn. I agree that If a research or a paper is of good quality, then it may be suitable to be transferred to another journal, more relevant.  The paradox is that my article was rejected as "out of scope" by a journal that another journal transferred it to as more relevant...

@Niki Transferring to another journal is not a guarantee of on-topicness. But yes, it sounds frustrating.


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Are non-Western University PhD's really frowned upon?
I am completing my master's by thesis this year at a small university in the West. I would really like to pursue my PhD (Maths/Stats) in Hong Kong, but I've been told by my supervisor and others that  a PhD from a non-Western country is looked down upon by employers. Especially in my desired industry (finance).
This doesn't really make sense to me because Hong Kong is obviously a very developed city, the language of instruction is English, and it's a big financial center. The universities I'd want to enter (University of Hong kong and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) are also ranked in top 100.
Is my supervisor wrong here, or is this something I should seriously be considering?
I am particularly concerned about Hong Kong or Singapore employers, but also of ones based in Europe and Australasia.

Hong Kong is 'western' enough.  Those two universities you mentioned are very reputable, and have excellent standing!  Perhaps your advisers are not referring to HK but .....?

@Prof.SantaClaus These universities are very reputable in academia, but I would indeed not bet my career on this is also being true in the finance world ...

I can certainly see that as a valid point  @xLeitix, but for me personally I'd like to work in Hong Kong or Singapore (not 100% sure I will though). Presumably getting a PhD in one of these cities would be preferable to that end, though my supervisor didn't think so. As far as connection building, immigration, etc it seems to be a good choice for me?

What do the publications records look like for some professors in the departments you're looking at?

Opinions of potential non-academic employers are arguably off-topic here.  This might be a better question for workplace.SE.

Asian financial institutions hire a large number of people from America (and EU, too, I assume), partly because of the prestige of those programs.

@Patrick You may want to add to your question that you are specifically asking about HKG or Singapore employers.

In Business-related disciplines, it's widely recognized that familiarity with the relevant culture's important.  Having done a Ph.D. in Asia would be a major liability for getting a job in the West, but since you're specifically interested in getting a job in Asia, it could be a different story.  You might want to ask people who have experience at the types of firms that you'd like to find employment at for their opinion.

All degrees have value somewhere. What you need to think about is where you want to work when you complete your studies. Obviously if your goal is to work in Asia or particularly in Hong Kong there should be no problems with a Hong Kong degree.
Another concern to consider is whether you will work in academia or industry. Sometimes academia needs to hire people whose degrees are recognized by the local government. Sometimes for political reasons one country will not recognize another country's degrees unless the university is transcendently elite. This forces the university to look elsewhere for talent.
In industry, they usually do not need to hire people with degrees from government recognized countries.


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Asked to be a reveiwer after submitting to a conference
I recently submitted a paper to a conference. Within days all of my co-authors and I received an email asking us all to select (bid for) papers in the same submission stream from the conference to review. The conference has purposely invited some authors to be reviewers. Our paper has not been reviewed yet.
Is this normal behavior?  Will it look strange to have an accepted paper and be a reviewer for the same conference?

Cold this just be a variation of "peer review" they take all the reviews - ignoring self-reviews and the 2 or 3 papers with the most reviews get through...?

I don't really enough for a full answer, but I've been invited to review after submitting for a conference.

In my field (CS) it is common to have accepted papers and act as reviewer (otherwise all well known authors would not be able to publish at such conferences), but it is uncommon to decide after submission who will be reviewers.
Sometimes it is necessary to recruit additional reviewers because you are not having enough experts for certain sub-disciplines or reviews are cancelled / not in time.

+1. But the person should inform the committee that they have a submission also and therefore a potential conflict of interest. The invitation may have just been an oversight. Of course, if the papers are in different tracks, or similar, there may be no conflict, but the committee should make that decision.

The conference literally just took us as authors and added us as reviewers. Thus the committee are aware of the conflict.

In many subfields of CS, like mine, having a submission a conference is not considered a conflict of interest for reviewing for the same conference (because if it were, finding expert reviewers would be impossible). In practice I’ve found it more common for reviewers with similar submissions to review positively—“Please accept more papers like mine”—than negatively—“Please reject this paper so that mine has a better chance”. In any case, program committees are well aware of this dynamic.

In my personal experience in engineering related conferences, this is quite common. I would even say that high-quality conferences might do this more often.
This may emerge from the following reasons: Initially, some people submit high-quality papers, perhaps over several years, thus, they get known to be specialists in their field.
As the conference grows or loses some of its reviewers, a need for new reviewers is created. So, who do you ask? Some random guy you do not know well, or a specialist that has published for years on this conference?
So the specialist becomes a reviewer but, of course, will not stop researching and is still allowed to submit papers.
Thereby, reviewers often have own submissions to a conference. There might be a little conflict of interest as always, if you review work of potential competitors, but: There are several reviewers, so an unqualified "strong reject, I do not like this paper" will hopefully not succeed. Furthermore, rejecting a few out of dozens up to hundreds of submitted papers will not increase your chances significantly. You could even hurt yourself: If you reject all papers in your field of research, the conference might not be able to assign your paper to an adequate session and it might be regarded as off-topic.
I would not see the request for review after submission as something bad, it is quite the opposite: The organizers have really thought about who can review those papers with the necessary background knowledge. Personally, I hate it if someone without a basic understanding of my research tries to review my paper - and I also hate it if I am assigned papers that are clearly out of my field of research.
Thus, YES it looks ok, but be careful as always.

I'm just a student. I submitted my paper to a conference and received an email from them which stated "We have started the review process. We need your support to review two or more papers. This will help us in communicating the Decision Notification in or before time. Certificate will be provided to the Reviewers.". Is such a certificate really worth anything in terms of a professional or academic career? I'd basically be doing work for free, which doesn't seem right. Or is scientific reviewing done for free deliberately to keep it free of bias? Same logic for not paying royalties to authors?


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Should I put in a job application email that I am interested in doing a PhD?
I will be finishing my master's degree soon and am sending out emails to companies in my field. I have been recommended by many of my peers (co-workers, supervisors and academic acquaintances) to (at least eventually) also apply for a PhD, because I apparently strike them as someone, whom a PhD would suit. I do enjoy the relative autonomy of research and I am curious and interested in expanding the knowledge of my field. My field is highly technical (geomatics) and from what understand almost all PhDs are done in tight cooperation with a company. So yes, I would like to do a PhD, but it does not necessarily need to happen immediately.
So I am wondering if I should put in my job application emails that I am interested in doing a PhD. On the one hand, I want to show my interest in performing research and producing publications on behalf of the company, but on the other, I am worried that they may not be so interested in the academic merit of their work and may interpret it as a desire to jump ship entirely to pursue a PhD.
Either way, I do need to either find work or get registered in a PhD program because I am a foreign student who has to find something to do within 18 months of graduation.
I am interested in hearing other people's experiences in working while simultaneously pursuing a PhD, since I do not know much about it yet. is there a better way to approach potential employers with this intent?
I am currently living in Germany, if that matters.

Yes, I do want to do a PhD, but I am not necessarily in any immediate rush to do so.

Perhaps this is better suited to the workplace.se

Research each company and tailor your applications to each. See what their websites say about training opportunities, and/or reach out on LinkedIn or similar to see if you can informally ask a few questions of friends-of-friends who have worked there.
Situations where it's valuable to mention your eventual Ph.D. goals:

"almost all PhDs are done in tight cooperation with a company" -- talk to PhDs or look at dissertations, and you see that this company has helped with PhDs in this way.
They rely heavily on people with Ph.D.s and it would be hard for you to move up in the company without a Ph.D.

E.g. my old employer mostly recruited undergrads & PhDs, assuming the undergrads would stay 2-5 years before moving on. They were glad they could fit into a trajectory that helps people into grad school (and some return to the company later with that advanced degree).

Other companies might help fund your doctoral study if you prove to be a worthwhile employee, especially if you can pursue it part time. Or they might give you a loan which they forgive if you go back to work with them afterward. (This is unlikely to happen for you unless the company has a track record of doing this. And if they do, they'll probably mention it proudly.)

Situations where it may be counterproductive to mention your Ph.D. goals:

Few people at the company have a Ph.D. in this field, and most of your coworkers (and bosses) have a Masters degree.
They expect people to stay for a "career", and many people at the company have been there for 10 or 20 years.
It's a fairly small company, so they're unlikely to be able to support your PhD trajectory in the same way a larger company might.

In general, when you apply you want to maximize the ways that you will fit with the company and not make them worry that there is a mismatch. A company that expects you to choose a different company may be less likely to offer you a job in the first place. But you want to have as many options as possible and make a choice between them.

True enough, but you also likely want to limit yourself mostly to companies in the first category. Of course the research you suggest is also vital for doing so. If the relationship with the company is synergistic, everyone can win.