text:
Is it normal to keep contact with profs after a phd rejection?
I applied for a PhD position and got rejected. But the profs suggested I stay in touch (in the sense of regular meetings)—apparently I was not a terrible applicant.

Are such offers normal?
Are these offers initial signs of interest in mentorship?
How should I behave professionally?

After several experiences of being dismissed, ghosted, or treated unprofessionally following an application, I realized the academic norms are beyond my intuition scope. So here I am, asking :)
UPDATE: I participated in the meeting, and now I have my answer. At the moment, I'm involved in a project that overlaps with the profs' expertise. They were kind enough to offer me help with my current project, at least until their newly accepted candidate arrives. Thus, we talked about the status of the project and exchanged thoughts. They also told me to update them on my next stage if they can be of help.
A NOTE ON THE ACCEPTED ANSWER: I think not all of my questions can be answered. Specifically, the last one is highly case- and discipline-dependent. Nonetheless, I'm satisfied with the comments and the only answer I received in this post, which, apart from answering my first two questions, also highlights good points.

Is there any additional info? What exactly do they want to talk about during these "regular meetings"? What part of the world are you in?

@cag51 I don't know. In fact, the topic of the meeting was my follow-up question if such meetings happen to be a norm, which seems not.

Are you sure they meant to have regular meetings and weren't just saying to keep in touch in a vague/polite way? I myself have used that phrase with little intention/expectation of actually keeping in touch (possibly it's a British English thing).

@astronat  well, that was my first impression until we set an appointment for the meeting. So, I guess yes.

Actually, I find it rather unusual. It could possibly be explained by a mixed vote in an admissions committee where some members favored your acceptance and someone in favor remains interested.
I don't see any reason not to follow up. There doesn't seem to be any downside and might be an upside. Perhaps the person(s) could help you find a suitable position somewhere. Or maybe they have something else in mind and want to see how you respond before revealing it.
It is worth some effort, I think.
As user Snijderfrey notes in a comment, don't get exploited. You need to get as much as you give.

"There doesn't seem to be any downside" I hope you are right, but have seen research group cultures which required months to years of underpaid work before being officially accepted as a PhD student. Therefore, without further info from OP, I would tend to be more reserved.

@Snijderfrey, good catch. I've made an edit.

@Buffy I totally agree that there's no downside. Yet, I still don't know how to see this offer. A favor by them or an academic/professional interest.

@Snijderfrey, I'm pretty sure it won't be the case for me. Nevertheless, thanks for pointing this out. I will keep it in mind for the future.


text:
Will it affect my academic career if I leave my PhD programme in the middle?
I am currently doing my masters. I have done my bachelors and masters from the same university in a remote part of Asia. My experience in my university as an undergrad and grad student is not good. My department environment was not conducive to learning or research. As undergrads, we were encouraged to memorize rather then understanding, developing intuitions or solving problems. Whatever I have learnt, I learnt from the resources available on the internet e.g. OCW, YouTube etc. Only a couple of professors are involved in research. They are not at all helpful or encouraging. They always need to boost their ego, never ready to discuss anything, never ready to accept their mistakes if they made one. The teacher-student relationship is more like, dare I say, a master and slave type of relationship. I actually didn't work with any of them. The main reason I want leave my university and do PhD somewhere else is because of the toxic environment here. Now as I am thinking of applying for PhD abroad, I have this fear that I may not feel at home with the university/ department/ professor/ colleagues that I get into. If I then leave the programme, would that decrease my chances of getting into another university? I know that I might need LOR from the faculty members but since I don't have much experience in academia, I would really appreciate if someone can explain how the situation would become. Thank you.

Such things depend more on why you leave rather than just the fact that you do. If you establish a poor record then it is harder to get in to another program.
But it also depends on where you want to study and the nature of the program that you enter. Some programs give you some room and time to catch up with missed knowledge and some programs provide an especially supportive environment for students.
However, at some level, nearly every student is in your situation at some point. Starting research on a narrow but deep problem can leave you a bit lost for a while until you get all of the very specific background needed to go deeper.
But if the alternative for you is to not try, then that alone will negatively affect your career also. And even taking a gap to "catch up" can be good or bad, depending on what you do with the time and how you can verify that you've made necessary progress.
The advice for nearly every student is to just do it and do your best.

Nice answer from @Buffy. I also point the OP to this answer. I think it's good to go the distance and complete things. My PhD is part-time and I was feeling pretty lost for the first three years. It's only in the fourth year that things have started to feel more concrete.

Hi @Buffy, Thank you very much for such an elaborate answer. Really appreciate it. I completely understand and agree with you on how starting a career in research can be challenging and how things can vary from one institute/discipline to another. I will be applying on programmes where I basically can extend my MS thesis work. So, I won't be completely new to the field. One thing I forgot to mention is that the main reason I want leave my university and do PhD somewhere else is because of the toxic environment here. My biggest fear is what if I find myself in a toxic environment again.

Hi @C26, Thanks for the suggestion. Ehsan had some really good encouraging words for PhD aspirants. Thanks!

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text:
How would you, as a teacher, decide if a particular topic/ concept should be tested as multiple-choice questions or as free-response questions?
This is probably a very broad question. It might be difficult to find one answer across all disciplines. If anyone could share their personal experiences on how they have designed tests and the thought process behind it, I would really appreciate it.

Does the theme of testing you're asking about include formative assessment (i.e. in-process tests to help students identify their own strengths) or only summative assessment (tests to rank the students against each other or a fixed standard)?

Hi @origimbo, formative assessments are what I am trying to know about.

I had an epiphany while I was in college, which was that topics for a particular subject should be categorized one of three ways: either the topic is something you need to Know, it's something you need to Understand, or it's something you need to Be Familiar With. Who knows how those determinations are made, but the point is that each topic needs to be treated according to which category it fits into. As an extension, each topic's treatment in an exam setting needs to be tested accordingly.

I think you mostly decide by looking at your time budget for the corrections.

In the absence of other factors, in my opinion, at least in mathematics, a free response is always the more valuable type of question. The educational value of getting shown, where precisely your argument went wrong is much higher than just being told if the final result was right or not. It also allows for a much finer grading, as I can both give partial points for an almost correct reasoning leading to a wrong answer as well as deduct points for incorrect reasoning leading to the correct answer.
That being said, a test question never happens in a vacuum and the problem usually is lack of time. This can occur in two forms, lack of working time to correct the test and lack of time during the test.
Personally, I believe the former is a bad excuse. Unless you have a 200+ people class without any TAs (in which case, clearly something else is wrong), it is always possible to correct a full-text exam in a reasonable amount of time.
This leaves the latter point. Any exam has a limited duration and it might not be possible to cover all topics in this time. My personal response would be to leave out some of the less important ones at random. As long as the topic selection is not announced to the students beforehand, they still have to study all of them and the results will be similar. But this is a point where a good argument can be made for turning part of the test into multiple-choice. In this case, the most important topics should still all be free-responses, but you could add a small multiple-choice section covering the rest. However as these are not the important part of the test and they are there to save time, I would keep them simple. (E.g. picking the right definition or "does A imply B?") After all, if marking the right answer is not substantially quicker than writing it out, then you are not saving time.
In any case I would always invert the original question. Don't take a concept and decide of it should be multiple choice, but instead decide how many multiple choice questions you have to make and then pick the questions that work best.

at least in mathematics, a free response is always the more valuable type of question. - I often ask several true/false questions in calculus for a quick conceptual check that I think evaluates different things than my free response exercises (e.g. here's one a surprising number of people get wrong: T/F int_0^1 f(t)dt = int_0^1 f(x)dx).  So depending on what you want to evaluate, I think both questions have their place.

@Kimball Yes, that is a reasonable objection. Though to save myself, I would almost see it as an example of my last point. There are free response questions that would evaluate the same concept (e.g. for your example, I am certain there are some useful identities where one needs to rename the variable during the proof), but such a question would take way too much time. Still I assume that your T/F questions only make up a small part of the final grade?

A perfect example of why true/false-style questions are terrible, @Kimball! There is no way that can be answered without knowing what you have arbitrarily defined as f(t) and f(x). Their integral might be the same; they might not. What understanding does this question check? Mind-reading? Memorization of notation used in your course notes? Tendency to overthink questions?

@CodyGray If you're objecting to not properly defining notation (i.e., that I have not presented a logical statement), rest assured f is qualified to be something like a continous function on [0,1] on the exam.  Accordingly the answer is clear if you actually understand what a definite integral means.

@CodyGray I really do not understand your objection to that question. Unless I'm missing something silly, how could those integrals possibly not be the same (i.e. either both defined with the same value or both undefined)? That being said, this isn't really the place to resolve that, so consider this a rhetorical question unless you actually want to jump into a chat room or something and discuss it.

@CodyGray Those are integrals of the same function, $f$, over the same interval. You have made precisely the error that this question is intended to detect.

There is a problem with multiple choice questions in general: They are very hard to design well. The time you "save" in grading isn't free. You need to spend a lot of time and thought on question design and you really need to find a way to verify the questions so that you don't get negative correlations between the answers and the knowledge of students. The latter has a statistical test, whose name I've forgotten after all these years. Sorry. Maybe someone can supply it. Some auto graders will supply that item analysis for you, actually.
In a free response question, the grader can apply judgement based on subtleties. In a MCQ, that all has to be designed into the question and the provided answers. And it isn't always easy. In a free response question, a small mistake in the question itself can sometimes be worked around if the student says something "sensible". There is no such chance in a MCQ.
Ideally, there is one correct answer, usually one clearly incorrect answer. But what of the others? Ideally, again, they should be designed to capture common student misconceptions so that feedback can be given to the student on why they chose the wrong answer and what they need to do to correct their thinking. Just an "incorrect" doesn't give any insight, especially if the incorrect answer are just chosen without deep thought.
If you aren't willing to spend an hour or more designing each question and if you aren't able to validate the test, then MCQs are very dangerous. The national level standardized tests do that sort of prior analysis and post validation. They also likely have a few surprises with new questions.

The statistical test I'm thinking of measures an individuals answer for each question compared to their overall score over all the questions and aggregates it over all the test takers. If the people answering question 1, say, do worse overall on that question than their overall score on the exam, then the question itself or its answers are likely misleading. Getting this feedback as the test creator can be quite humbling. Something is wrong, either in the teaching or the testing.
If you need to give MCQs for reasons of scale or otherwise, then expect problems. Try to build in some flexibility in the usage so that it doesn't punish people who actually understand things. This is very hard if good students "waste" time in considering weird questions when they should be doing something more productive. Students aren't always very good about picking the low hanging fruit first and then going back for the harder ones. Online testing might make that more difficult, actually as going back over skipped answers might not be well supported.

I assume it is still true, but at one time education degrees in the US required a course in test design. Given that, there must be text books devoted to it.

@Ian, not the name I remember. I think it was named for a person, but it was almost 50 years ago that I last saw it.

And, reading wikipedia, I don't think it is quite the same, missing the aggregation step. That would seem more to be a measure for comparing the result of one question to the overall score of an individual.

Fair enough. Good luck figuring it out.

Hi @Buffy, Thank you very much for the write up. I just looked at a study conducted on test analysis to identify quality MCQs. I had no idea about such statistical analysis, thank you once again :)

A great use of multiple choice questions is in formative assessments: you can test and quickly see which of your students have common misunderstandings. These questions don't work so well to assign grades, as then the student isn't interested in what they misunderstood, but are great for use in quizzes during teaching or between session to allow explanation of the errors.
As an example from a course I taught on the programming language R:

After running the following code, what will R return (answer without
running)?

b<-2
a<-10
b<-20
function2<-function(){
    a<-1
    c(a,b)
}
c(function2(),a,b)

10,20,10,20

1,2,10,20

R will produce an error - Error: object ‘b’ not found

1,20,10,20

Each of the answers has its own reason for being chosen: 1 shows a misunderstanding of using local scope, 2 shows a misunderstanding of reassignment, 3 shows a misunderstanding of scoping going to global, and 4 is correct.
This kind of multiple choice question is obviously more work, but is much superior to a free response. I would do these with a show of hands and ask students to argue their point - much more difficult to do without the red herring answers.

But isn't the main reason for these so you can ask a non-graded question and students can anonymously use their A/B/C/D clicker and you get a feeling if they're following along? This is a not-so-bad MCQ, but on a graded test how is it better than free?

What's the answer? Never used R and can't figure out how the recursion would work!

There's nothing wrong with a healthy mix!
Though your question is very broad and the answer changes depending on the age group of students and their abilities, there is nothing wrong with a good mix (suited specifically to both of the possibilities above,) though in my answer I've included some facts and provided the most conclusive answer that I could.
While an open-ended question allows for the teacher to see exactly where the student went wrong and how to correct it, and also prevents a bad habit of guessing that often happens on multiple-choice, multiple-choice often has it's advantages as well.
For one, it makes for a much less tedious and painful, frustrating test. Sometimes students with special learning needs or learning disabilities may not be open to such a long test in this way, and if you are working with younger elementary-aged students, they do not have the attention span and it is often noticed that the quality of work goes down the more questions that are being asked.
However, know the abilities of your students. For High School/College level, more open-ended responses may be the way to get the test that gives you valuable information as a teacher. If you are teaching elementary students with a low attention span, maybe use one or two open ended questions with the rest being multiple choice.
Again, it really depends on the overall ability of the students.
The starting ratio (for upper elementary students)  should be about 50/50 (ex. 5 open-ended, 5 multiple choices) for a test with ten questions, but this ratio can be adjusted for the individual needs of your students or depending on the age.

Thanks! One example I can think of is the AP exams where there is a good balance of MCQs and FRQs. My secondary school exams were also a mix of the two.

True or False?
Since there's a lot of intersubjectivity here, and I agree that multiple choice is not optimal for assessment, I notice that one aspect of multiple choice has been left out, so I'll play Devil's advocate: true/false questions.
While it does depend on your content area, adding a few well-written T/F questions to make up a part of an evaluation can be useful.  It can save students time of writing out full answers better devoted to FRQs while still showing that they retained certain facts. It is up to the author of the test (that's you) to decide what merits a free response in a given subject matter. For example, in teaching world language courses, it can be a simple way to evaluate if a student has retained key cultural, geographical, or historical topics. Keep the statements simple and to the point (even drawing attention to negative statements).  Even then, it can be better to ask a short free response question to eliminate guessing or cheating. Take things like really big dates or facts that students either know or don't (i.e. What year was the Battle of Hastings?), which do not benefit from a multiple choice question.  Asking it as T/F doesn't ward off guessing and statistically encourages it.  One deterrent for this is to use a free response or short answer question to spot check a random T/F question; this also encourages differentiated learning and critical thinking. Unless you are trying to get a computer to grade the entirety of an exam (don't; people take the tests and people can grade them), there's no more work for you to read "1066" than to see true or false circled.  It is a better example of the student's work and retention.  I would go with the short answer question there.
Think way back to your earliest spelling tests and which was the better assessment: did you show what you were thinking and how you were learning when you wrote out the word your teacher said or when you saw four words with three spelled close but wrong?
Overall, free response is the best insight and evaluation of your students; it leaves more room for the individual and less for testing errors.  Of course, some disciplines and depths can fit in multiple choice better than others, but reading FRQs is not as tedious as writing multiple choice and a gives a better demonstration of nuances.  I suggest sprinkling in just a handful of T/F for differentiation and time management.

Memorization-style questions about "big dates or facts that students either know or don't" don't generally deserve being asked on exams at all. Who cares that the Battle of Hastings was in the year 1066? What matters is the significance of the Battle of Hastings. Maybe you can think of a good way to assess understanding of that in a T/F question. I can't, and never have been able to, which is why I never wrote exams with T/F questions. (Having the student write out "1066" doesn't help, either. It just optimizes for the worst kind of rote learning.)

I've always considered T/F Q's as a version of MCQ. "King Edward died during the Battle of Hastings[T/F]". or "The Battle of Hastings was caused by: A) death of Kind Edward, B) ...". I've starting writing a few MCQ's and realized T/F is about the same but quicker and takes less space. You don't want to mix T/F and MCQ -- it confuses and distracts students.

The UK Maths GCSE papers do this quite well - they are largely composed of free-answer questions with a handful of multiple-choice questions (mostly to get the students relaxed at the start), but also tend to include a few true/false questions that have the form "Is this right? [true/false boxes]. State your reason [free response section]. You get a lot of the quick marking benefits, which gives a nice middle-ground.

I like multiple choice for Q's where you'd otherwise have to explain the sort of answer you want too much or you think they might misunderstand:
"What operation has the highest precedence? +, ^, *, /". I'm looking for a binary operator, not () or unary minus. Limiting the answers is the easiest way to specify that. "What is the formal name for a folder? Directory, file-bucket, Organizer, ...". Students can spin out on a term like "formal" and "the formal term that would be in the manual" is long and not all that much better. "Why did Virginia object to the 1st constitution? A, B ... ". There were lots of reasons. Writing "the best reason" tends not to help much. Choosing from a list with one clearly best answer is safer.
Of course, it depends on what you want to ask and how much detail. We could just as easily have them show the order of operators in an equation; or ask "briefly list 3 reasons Virginia...".

Thanks a lot @OwenReynolds. It does make sense. I have seen particularly among high school teachers a distrust towards MCQs, saying "some students always cheat". If you don't mind me asking, is your answer presented in terms of evaluating a college level history class or math class?

Hmmm...like they cheat by flashing hand-signs for A, B ... D? No, not history or math, but yes college. I remembered the trick, but not any specific Q's. In fact, my greatest use of MCQ's was half of a Friday afternoon final for 400 students w/grades due Monday.

I'm hella confused by  your formatting

@OwenReynolds, Yes hand-signs. Also it's very easy to cheat for MCQs

"Choosing from a list with one clearly best answer is safer." For the lazy or ill-informed educator. The rest don't need to constrain the students' choices arbitrarily. They can just assess the quality of the student's actual answer: is what they wrote a valid reason why Virginia objected to the Constitution? It doesn't need to match up with the wording given in a textbook or course packet.

@CodyGray Suppose I have other Q's about slave states' objections and British loyalists. Now I want to see if they remember the one extra reason Virginia had. An MCQ is a nice way of saying "the answer I'm looking for isn't X, Y or Z".

MCQ cheating is pretty trivially easy to avoid - just randomise the answer orders on their papers.

@Sam Talk about cheating seems like a weird swerve. "pedagogy of MCQ vs. free" to "oh, wait, I heard you shouldn't use them at all b/c of cheating". It's like asking how to cook pork then in comments whether meat is murder.

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Is it a good idea to go for multiple bachelor's or master's degree?
I have a bachelor's degree in Physics. I am currently doing my master's in Physics with a focus on machine learning. I want two thing for future:

I want to gain coursework experience from different country - I am fascinated how coursework, be it undergraduate or graduate level, is done in different countries and I want to experience that.
I want to be a veterinary professional. (I wanted to teach at one point and do research. Therefore, had a plan for PhD but I no longer want to be in academia). That could be a veterinary nurse or a doctor.

I didn't share this with anyone as I was afraid of being judged as immature or naive. I would really appreciate any advice on what I can do to achieve my goals. Are my goals justified?

Why 1? It seems to just get in the way of 2, for which you need some specific training other than physics Why machine learning? Vet Med need some pretty specific training as well as some bio and animal science? It seems an odd set of goals that don't fit together very well.

I think that your final vet med training should be in the country that you want to practice in. Some things are hard  to transfer across borders. Medicine is like that. Maybe vet med too.

If you want a foreign adventure before you start your vet training, another degree might be a good way to go. But really your question does not have much to do with academia and may be closed.

@Buffy, Thanks for your comment. There is no specific reason for 1. It is just an experience I want to gain (I am probably sounding stupid!). Machine learning was not something I chose. I didn't had an option as there were no other labs available at that time. I know my goals are odd and I have doubts about it. But is it impossible? Have you seen anyone who had taken such odd career-paths.

@dodd, There is no connection =D

@EthanBolker, I can understand. Thanks for your feedback :)

Well if you have the talent, luck, financial resources, and energy to pursue diverse interests, have at it and best of luck to you! You might, beforehand, give some thought to what you find attractive about each, and why.

You need to identify what specific courses are needed to enter into the fields you are interested in. Then determine what you are missing and what your options are for completion.  For example, for many health professions in the US there are post-baccalaureate programs specifically for career changers to finish their prerequisites.

Thank you very much for the answer.

First: Don't care what people think about you or your decisions, as we often fail to make dreams come true for fear of what others will think of us.
Second: there is no problem with doing several degrees, but one thing is certain if you are not a well-defined person in your goals there will come a time when all this excitement will end and you will look back and think "I arrived here and the did I do for a living? Think about it!

"there is no problem with doing several degrees"  Lost income is a huge expense.  Most degrees cost money.

This too, that's why the importance of defining

I'm a skeptic about this plan, actually. It is good to learn a lot of stuff, actually. A bachelors in the US is intended to teach you lots of stuff and also get started on a specialty.
You may have unlimited money to support your student "habit", and you may think you have unlimited time. But the latter isn't really true. If you have no real goals and can support that habit without a career then fine. And the ride will be fun, I suppose, until at 50 (or 70) you are the oldest person in some elementary course and you don't really share interests with anyone anymore.
But an alternative plan, even with a multiplicity of goals, is to first choose the main goal (say vet med) and work to get that under your belt, rather than delaying it, possibly for years. Then, if you still want to you can use that base to do other things.
The one downside of an unfocused plan, several degrees in different areas, is that people might get to the idea that you aren't really serious about anything in particular and just refuse to work with you as it wouldn't seem to lead anywhere or matter much. They might, well, decide to work with someone who has real dedication to the current program.
However, Zonker Harris in Doonesbury has had a lot of fun with an unfocused life and a very long run as a student.

Thank you so much! I understand what you are saying.


text:
Do Universities in the US usually accept requests to defer an admission offer from international PhD students?
An international student has got a conditional admission offer to a PhD program in the US that s/he has to complete his/her on going masters program first. Suppose, he/she were to start their PhD program in fall semester but their final exams of the masters program is yet to be held. In such situations, how do the universities usually respond to admission deferment requests?
It's understandable that this is something that could vary from institute to institute but does making such requests make a bad impression about the student.

This might be field dependent. Some fields need to fill a lab. It might also depend on funding.

Universities I have been at usually admit students to start any time within 12 months of the first date. This has been a matter of policy. Just ask what their policy is.

If you don't have any choice, then you don't have any choice.
Ask. It is unlikely to reflect badly on you whether it is possible or not. People have lives. Not all things are predictable.
But you can also ask, first, whether there are any possible consequences of a deferment. Before you act you want as much information as possible.
I think that the (pandemic) times work in your favor in this and people may be willing to be more flexible in some things at the moment.
But I can't predict "usually" and the only ones that matter anyway are the ones you might have to ask.


text:
What could be the outcome of writing negative things about previous university in an application to another university?
I am applying for a PhD program abroad. In my application form there is a section saying "we understand that individual, family or community circumstances may have affected your previous academic record or educational experience, and that the materials you submit with your application may not be a full reflection of your potential for success in graduate school. If your education has been affected by such circumstances and you wish to provide a more detailed explanation about them, please respond below and use the space to share more about your experiences".
My previous department environment was not conducive to learning or research. As undergrads, we were encouraged to memorize rather than understanding, developing intuitions or solving problems. Whatever I have learnt, I learnt from the resources available on the internet e.g. OCW, YouTube etc. Only a couple of professors are involved in research. They are not at all helpful or encouraging. They always need to boost their ego, never ready to discuss anything, never ready to accept their mistakes if they made one. The teacher-student relationship is more like, dare I say, a master and slave type of relationship. These events have affected my academics and more importantly, affected me physically and psychologically. I had been suffering from chronic depression, started to fall sick very frequently and even had suicidal thoughts.
If I express my thoughts regarding these things would it affect my application? I can understand that if I bad mouth my department then the LORs that I got from the department become less valuable. I would really appreciate some advice.

I worked in industry before becoming an academic.  One of my hiring rules was, "Never hire anyone who badmouths a former employer."  A Ph.D. program is effectively hiring you, or someone.

If you are still experiencing depression, get treatment from a professional.

Hi @BobBrown, I understand what you are saying. I think I got the idea. I should focus on what I did to deal with hardships instead of focusing on who/what created those hardships. Thanks for your inputs! I really appreciate it.

Hey @AnonymousPhysicist, I will take clinical treatment once I get things in order. I understand the importance of mental health but the culture and the surroundings was brought up take these issues lightly and think of these as 'making an excuse' or a sign 'weakness'. Anyways, Thanks!!!

If you must comment on how your previous academic experiences were "difficult", then try to couch them in language that is not assigning blame.  An approach to try is to document what skills and lessons you did learn, and how those hardships (?) informed your growth, as a person and a prospective academic.  These attributes are not reflected in grades, and this is the section to explain what you will be able to contribute to this new institution.
The main reason to not speak ill of your previous supervisors is because people at different institutions talk to each other.  If you express how your previous supervisors were a bad fit for you, chances are those on the selection committee will contact the previous institution to get "their side".  Since the word of a colleague carries more weight than a student, that would not be in your best interests.
Lastly -- and most importantly -- if you are having suicidal thoughts, please please please reach out.  I am sorry that I don't know how to frame my advice in a compelling way, but I do know where your head is at.  Academia can be very unkind.  Just remember that support is always available.

I am deeply touched by your kind words. Thank you so very much! I will definitely keep you advice in mind while writing. I wish you a happy life. Do keep me in your prays.

@incrediblesulk : Just want to check in with you, and see how you are doing. I hope that things are going well for you, now.

Hi @Rrr, Many thanks for your message. I am applying for fall 2021 now. Just got a decision letter couple of days ago (rejected!) :-)

Applications are places to write positive things, not negative ones.
Negative circumstances can paint you in a good light if you can describe how you have overcome those obstacles. Stated as you have here, the descriptions of your previous environment sounds more like blame, especially this part:

They are not at all helpful or encouraging. They always need to boost their ego, never ready to discuss anything, never ready to accept their mistakes if they made one. The teacher-student relationship is more like, dare I say, a master and slave type of relationship.

Maybe the blame is valid, however, when you talk negatively about someone else, people will reflexively wonder whether your complaints are justified, and they may worry you will describe them the same way. If you say your institution only drove you to memorization, how does this demonstrate you've developed skills related to research?
That said, mental health is very important, not for PhD applications but for you. I strongly suggest you seek professional assistance with those concerns - this is much more important than any PhD application.

I completely agree. Negative comments often reflect badly on those who make them.

Thank you Bryan for your suggestions. I really appreciate it


text:
Papers in progress, but am leaving academia
What should I do with my papers in progress? I have several with a few co-authors.  It's been known that things in my department have deteriorated considerably, and that many of the newer faculty are looking to leave.
Do my papers in progress get abandoned?

Do you have time and do you want to complete them? Do your coauthors want them completed? Can they complete them on their own?

I don't understand what you're asking. If somebody puts an effort into them, they will potentially get submitted and published. If not, then not. No magic.

I don't understand the restriction that your leaving has with finishing (or even beginning) a paper. Is there something subject-specific that prevents work being done by email (or postal mail, for that matter)? The fact that you're leaving academia also seems irrelevant, unless your new job has insane hours (like 80+ hours a week), leaving you no time in early mornings or late evenings (depending on your sleep hours) and weekends to work on the papers.

@daveLrenfro It's mostly an employee morale issue, I suppose.  Finishing those papers would seem to benefit the department more so than me, and we've not been treated well during the pandemic. There are also experiments involved but they're mostly done.  It's the manuscripts that are in progress.  Just looking for a voice of reason.  Maybe I'll hate industry and seek to return to academia?

Hmmm. Finishing paper benefits the authors, not the department. Don't quit as a spiteful move that harms yourself more than anyone else.

Personally, I would try to finish them because you never know what the future holds, and this isn't something you're likely going to be able to do several years from now (or at least, not as easily). Of course, it also depends on how much work you've invested so far and how significant the results are -- hardly any work by you and easily forgotten and probably no one cares results would merit maybe not worrying about. Maybe prioritize away (i.e. stop work) on those like I just described, since there are several papers. But as Buffy just said, the papers benefit you a lot more than the dept.

You can complete the papers and should if your co-authors would be disadvantaged by your quitting, assuming that it is possible.
But, a fair amount of work gets abandoned, or put on the back shelf for various reasons. If you really don't have the time to continue work on the paper(s) come to an agreement with your co-authors that permits them to continue without you. The agreement should include something about authorship, but definitely should include your permission to publish.
If you all agree to abandon the work, put it in a notebook that you might want to return to later after things settle down. You can't predict the future and should keep flexible and ready for changes.
Your statements in comments seem to imply that you are angry with the department. That is natural, but don't take actions that primarily disadvantage yourself or the colleagues you work with. "Don't cut off your nose to spite your face" is an old adage.

They're still your papers (unless your institution has very unusual and draconian IP policies), and they will "get abandoned" if, and only if, you choose to abandon them.  You'll have to decide for yourself what to do about those projects, based on what is of value to you and to people you care about.  If you want to keep working on them on your own time (or as part of your new job), you can certainly do so.
Things you could consider:

Is the project intellectually interesting to you?

Will you still have the resources (equipment, funding, etc) that you would need to work on it?

Would your new employer let you work on it as part of your job?

Do you have coauthors and/or students for whom it is important (for career reasons or otherwise)?

Might it be valuable to your future career path, or help you keep open an option to return to academia?

But you can leave your current department out of the analysis.  The "benefits" that a published paper provides to a department are pretty minimal to begin with, and drop to near zero if the author is no longer at the institution.  (For instance, they can't really point to it as "great work our faculty are doing" if you're no longer on the faculty.)  So they really won't be impacted by your decision one way or the other.

And will you have enough time in your free time? is also a question one should consider.


text:
If I am willing to repeat major courses, that I passed with a D grade, will they look bad on my transcript while applying for graduate school?
I am a student majoring in civil engineering and I am in my  3rd year.I had a harsh beginning: I took 2 intensive courses during my first year of college after a gap semester. I didn’t perform well during my first and second year of college. I have repeated one failed major course( got a D- the second time)  and one physics course passed with a D( I got a C the next time). I have withdrawn from a surveying class during summer and retook it the next year. Recently, during the last semester of my second year I decided to work hard in order to raise my GPA and I achieved a score of 84.64 on my semester average.
However, I am regretting and overthinking what happened during the first 2 years so much that I think that the only solution to relieve myself of the pain of thinking and blaming would be to repeat the courses that I passed with a D( 5 courses: one of them is a social elective, one an environmental chemistry core course but important for my graduate field of interest, and the three others are major courses: geology, mechanics of material and mechanics of fluid).
Which is better, to move on or to repeat these courses? Or to audit them? ( I am asking in term of graduate admissions).
My GPA is 2.92 over 4 which means 77/100.
In my university, 80 is 3.2 over 4.
I don’t follow the lettering system

Do you actually enjoy this study? What explains all the bad grades? Would a different field make you happier?

No, actually I love the subjects..But I didn’t have the right attitude for studying for the exams. I used to procrastinate and neglect. Now, almost halfway in my curriculum( 71 units out of 143) I feel much more serious about my courses.

Please explain the letters and GPa in detail. Not everyone in the world is in your countr,

Check my post again I edited it

Note that some places replace a grade on a course that you retake with no evidence of the early grade. Others show both the old and new grades.

Actually they remain on the transcript.however, only the higher score counts  in the GPA

That policy varies from university to university.  At my university, both grades count toward the GPA by default, but students can petition for a limited number of grade replacements (and even with grade replacement, both grades appear on the transcript).  But the fine details don't really matter, because applications include complete transcripts; nothing prevents the universities you're applying to from recalculating your GPA using whatever protocol they like.

I still don't understand the GPA numbers.

Yes, they will look bad unless the university replaces the old grade with the new one as some do. And if you continue to get poor grades in important courses it will look worse. But there are a number of other factors that people might consider, provided you can get them to look at an application.
First, starting out on the wrong foot isn't uncommon. Nor is it a sure indicator of future failure. But, you need to turn it around.
Next, people evaluating your record are more likely to put emphasis on what you've done recently than on what you did earlier. So, re-taking the courses, not for the grades but for the knowledge can help. And not having the knowledge will be a sure block to your future. Audits are less valuable, of course, as there is no record of your performance.
Those evaluating applications for further study or for a job are looking for indicators of success. If you can show that, then you have a chance. A record of doing better recently will help, but it will also be important to have letters of recommendation from people who can honestly say that the past is past and you have a high likelihood of success in the graduate program and beyond.
On the other hand, you will be faced with stiff competition from people who haven't had a once-deficient background. It is easier for evaluators to pick people who have always seemed to be a success than someone who has struggled. The decision has less risk when you choose an all "top marks" student. But, people know, also, that such "top" students don't always succeed and some people with special motivation will, especially if they have learned to overcome a weak background.
So, the bottom line is that it isn't impossible, but it will be hard. If you can turn it around and convince your current professors that you truly have put yourself on a better path, then you have a chance.
I'd also suggest that you don't "make excuses" for the past, but face it honestly. But get on the path to success and convince others that you have.

Of course the poor grades will look bad, especially in core courses.  As Buffy says, it's always easier, however short-sighted, to admit students who have been consistently successful than students whose records are more variable.
But retaking the same (or equivalent) courses and doing well would be strong evidence that you've gotten past whatever was holding you back before especially if you also have strong recommendation letters, good research results, and/or other evidence that reinforces that message.  Many admissions committee members will see that improvement positively.  Definitely not all, probably not even most, but perhaps enough.
Everybody goes through rough patches. Everybody. People who serve on admissions committees know that, because we've been through those rough patches ourselves.  Beating yourself up over your past failures is pointless and self-destructive.  Take responsibility, yes, but forgive yourself.  Do the best you can from where you are.
(My undergrad GPA was lower than yours.)

And you made it to a pretty demanding place.

It will generally look better if you retake a class than if you had just left on the original grades for sure. But the main issue is that you seem to have failed quite a few (at my university, C- or lower was considered failing for major requirements, generally meaning we would need to retake the class), and it doesn't help that on some of the repeats you had grades in the C-range). Its more or less understandable if you fail one or two, especially if you have a rough start to undergraduate studies. Beyond that, you'll have a trickier problem to the point you'll need to find a way to address it, either through SOP or recommenders when applying to graduate programs, especially since you noted you have a GPA of less than 3.
Also to add on, a course you failed may be considered to be worth retaking if the course is extremely important/relevant for what you want to study in grad school.  But if you have taken a course and not done so well in that course but did well in a successor course that had the "failed" course as a prerequisite, then generally not so much of a need to repeat the course you failed because it shows somewhat of an upward trend (i.e. I got a C in an introductory linear algebra class, but got B or better for all future applied mathematics classes).  I'm saying this because retaking courses takes time that you could spend on other pursuits.  It's up to you to figure out the classes most worth retaking if needed and prioritize accordingly.  As others have said, gaining research experience is also important for graduate admission so you don't want to neglect that entirely, even with repeating courses.


text:
Нow to start an academic career if you got your PhD five years ago and didn't do science for these five years?
I think that it's too late for postdoc. Also, I think that my PhD thesis is weak and not many people would be interested. What is the way to start academic or near-academic career, if not teaching? Thesis is on CS and applied mathematics. I live in Ukraine and could move if it's needed. Volunteering or studying for some period is also acceptable.

For the last five years I've worked as a math tutor for university students. But my attempt to work as a teacher in university was  unsuccessful.
R&D industry job is good option, maybe it would be even enough for me, if there would be interesting problems. But I don't have any idea about R&D industry, is it hard to join it if you have knowledge in some math and CS, but your programming skills are not on professional level?

Doesn't  being data scientist always means doing programming?

TBH I don't think it is too late for a post-doc.  If you have been working as a math tutor at the college level, it wouldn't be crazy to start reaching out to professors who have taught those courses or whose research you have interest in.  Don't ask for funding or a job, just ask to "discuss their research"  as well as ask them how to get into academia.  They may be willing to give you a post-doc or know someone who is looking for one. You can also try to find an part-time (1 class) adjunct position for your re-entry into academia.

@TudPims I'm out of the loop, my research experience as PhD student was poor, so I don't have the exact subjects which interest me. And don't have enough knowledge to completely understand the most of papers. So I can use just general impression to determine if joining someone's research would be inspiring. By "discuss their research" do you mean actual discussing, or just become acquainted, meet and chat with professor instead of asking for funding? Do you mean meeting professors in my country (Ukraine), or emailing foreign professors too?

@JuljaMuvv Foreign or domestic is up to you, if long term you want to stay in Ukraine then network in Ukraine, if not, then network in the foreign country you want to be in.   "Discuss your research" is both read a few papers of the prof, bring questions about things you didn't understand & ask about new things they have coming through the pipeline. Show interest in their work! I think in general it is hard to start a career in academia if you have no idea what you want to do. Especially, having a PhD, I would think profs would expect you to know your interests.

@JuljaMuvv to follow-up with the last comment.  I would suggest you start to familiarize yourself with some areas you may have interest. If papers are too much, then start with textbooks and online classes. I have often found textbooks to be GREAT ways to learn new material. You can jump into something you think you MAY like and if you find it doesn't interest you go to the next thing. What you're interested in will drive who you network with and may influence your decision on if you want to stay in Urkraine or not.

I don't know what might be available in or near Ukraine, but can offer two possibilities that might be open to you.
The first is a long-term plan that assumes you have sufficient resources (job, money, time) to start some research. To do this efficiently, you might need to be in a place that has one or more local universities where you could make some contacts and start some collaborative activities. But a professor (maybe one you know) might be interested in working with you on some projects of mutual interest. If you can establish yourself as an effective researcher, you might find a way back in to a university. Your old thesis advisor might be able to offer some possibilities for collaboration. But you wouldn't/needn't be either an employee or student to do this. Your status as an "independent researcher" is enough.
The second idea would work in the US and possibly elsewhere, but requires the ability/desire to teach. Here we have a large number of Colleges that are not focused primarily on research but, rather, on undergraduate education. People are expected to do some research, but are expected to excel at teaching. Moving around might raise language issues, of course, for this type of position. If you were teaching at such a college and it were located in a place with other, more research focused, universities, you might be able to establish some collaborations as suggested above. And, the life of a teaching professor can be pretty nice in the right place in any case.
In the internet/covid age, however, things are a bit weird. The internet provides a way to do remote collaboration, but the pandemic makes it harder to make contacts. Attendance at conferences is often a good way to do that.

Thank you. I can't do it the second way, because, as I've mentioned, I can't work as a teacher (for some personal reasons).
In the first option I didn't really understand, why you mentioned collaborative activities with professor and returning to university as two different steps? You mean collaborative activities as volunteer, not as university worker?

Yes, as an "independent researcher", not as an employee or student.

You don't say why you "can't" teach, and I won't ask, but you may be making an assumption that isn't warranted.

@MorganRodgers, yes, true enough. It might depend on what you can bring to the position that might be desirable even if not traditional. But expect completion everywhere. Everyone has to make their case as best they can.

Maybe I should try and practice teaching in some my city and if I have a success in it, then go to the second option.

But doesn't it still seem very unlikely to get such position, even for person with teaching experience? (But without research).

Depending on the teaching, it might give you some contacts to get started on some research. Harder with the pandemic of course.

So it's not too uncommon and doesn't look weird to offer the professor your help as an independent researcher?
In what case the professor would be interested in collaboration? Should my phd thesis  be close somehow to professor's research interests? Because I think my thesis has local results in combinatorics and doesn't have any extension that can be called the field of interests.

It is hard to say until you talk to someone. But after five years, I doubt that being close to your thesis work is essential. Finding something interesting is good. Learn something about the people you talk to first, perhaps.


text:
Do I need to disclose my academic misconduct on this grad school application?
I have one incident of academic misconduct on my record from my sophomore year (I was guilty), and I received a grade sanction and disciplinary probation. This does not appear on my transcript and I am no longer on disciplinary probation.
I am now applying for PhD programs and some applications ask about conduct. On one application, I'm not sure whether I have to disclose my academic misconduct because of the wording of the question.
It asks if I have ever been "disciplined for academic performance" and gives examples like "academic probation, dismissal, suspension, disqualification, etc." For the same question, it also says: "Academic Infraction: Indicate whether you have ever been disciplined or placed on academic probation while attending an academic institution."
At least at my university, academic probation is something you receive for poor grades (like having a dangerously low GPA), whereas disciplinary probation is something you receive for misconduct (anything from underage drinking to academic misconduct). So I'm thinking I can answer "no" to this question, since I was disciplined for misconduct not academic performance, and it was disciplinary probation, not academic probation. It seems that "academic infraction" would be discipline for poor grades. But that "etc." makes me nervous and I wanted others' opinions.
I don't want to answer "yes" and put myself at a disadvantage when I don't have to, but I also don't want to mistakenly answer "no" and then be caught and have my application disqualified (or worse, get accepted, have someone find out about my academic misconduct halfway through my PhD, and be dismissed). I want to make sure I'm being truthful, but only as truthful as I have to be. For obvious reasons, I don't want to disclose this unless directly asked/required. Do you think I should answer "yes" or "no" to this question?
Edit: To be clear, I am not intending to deceive by being so particular about the word choice. I have disclosed my misconduct on other applications where it was clear that my answer should be "yes". I think it's understandable that I want to be absolutely certain that I am required to disclose it before I do. I am trying to be honest and accurate.

Tough call. I won't even venture an opinion. Is there a faculty mentor (perhaps one of the people writing a letter of recommendation for you) you are close enough to so that you could ask?

I think it is really clear that you need to. Trying to weasel around the words isn’t a good look. Will it ‘disadvantage’ you? Perhaps, but you were cheating in order to ‘advantage’ yourself. Own it and be prepared to explain it.

If in doubt you can always contact the program coordinator to confirm one way or another! If they agree with your assessment that they are not asking for your kind of probation then it's unlikely they will make your communication about administrative details part of your application that will be evaluated by the committee.

Thanks, I was thinking I should double check with someone who knows better. Would it be appropriate to contact my academic advisor about this, or someone on the academic integrity board at my university? I am hesitant to talk about this with people in my field (besides my academic advisor), because I am volunteering the information and people are free to talk. @user2705196

Moderator’s notice: Any answers that do not address the asker’s question about what is formally correct and instead are about what is ethically or strategically best will be deleted without warning.

It seems that "academic infraction" would be discipline for poor grades.

That is wrong.  Misconduct is a type of infraction.  You were disciplined for an infraction.  Disclose it.

Since the OP is confused about the meaning of words, it might help to give a definition of infraction, which means violation (of law, rules, agreement, ...).  E.g., https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/infraction

I received a grade sanction and disciplinary probation.

Receiving an adverse penalty or outcome for your conduct means that you have been "disciplined" for that conduct, so this falls within the scope of those questions.  Attempting to split hairs using a distinction between "academic performance" versus misconduct seems willfuly evasive to me.  The correct answer for both questions is yes.

Rather than try to parse the words and not disclose, I would actually directly address the whole episode in the letter or statement included in the application. Write openly what happened, why it happened, and how you think about it now. I believe that such openness—especially if it shows that you learned from your past—would turn a possible negative into a positive part of your application.

While it may or may not be the right thing to do, in my experience, disclosing a negative thing you are not obliged to disclose does turn a positive application usually into a negative application.

@user111388 I agree in general with what you said, but the whole point of the question is that the OP is indeed obliged to disclose what happened.


text:
Approaching Another Lab With A Project Proposal Based On My Thesis Chapter
During my PhD I was stuck on a metabolic engineering problem which I figured out while writing up. I found plenty of evidence for the cause of the problem and devised a complementary system to allow for the desired pathway to function as intended.
I have had a turbulent but often functional working relationship with my primary supervisor, however, I am quite unpopular with the wider group. After my viva, I had a chat with my supervisor and he wanted to know exactly how the plan worked and how long would it take. Then he suggested I return in a month to explain the idea to a colleague of his who could assess its merit. Now he wont return my emails as I am trying to finalise the meeting.
Is there an ethics/legal problem with taking the idea to another professor to see if they are interested in having another student complete the work, or does the original university own the rights to the data that the idea was based on?
I suspect some foul play on the part of my advisor, who may want to complete the project without me as an expression of resentment stemming from previous fall outs. I feel like he is trying to plagiarise my work, either that or deliberately trying to prevent it from getting finished out of spite after teasing me with the possibility. Is what I am trying to do plagiarism of his work? Some of the project is based on my second supervisors idea but he got this idea from a paper and just transferred it into another platform. My second supervisor wont accept that my fix is viable, I did first suggest it in my 2nd year of research, but I lacked the evidence. Now I have plenty of evidence to support my idea, it seems watertight and I want to finish it.

Is there an ethics/legal problem with taking the idea to another professor to see if they are interested in having another student complete the work...?

Your current collaborator/PhD supervisor is not returning your emails. This is a signal that work will not proceed. For confirmation, you can outright ask them whether they want to proceed, and inform them that you'll proceed alone if you do not receive a response within a certain window, e.g., two weeks. Assuming you still don't receive a response, you can work with who you want to complete the work. (I'm unsure why another student is being sought. You'll surely need to contribute for any collaboration to be viable.)

...or does the original university own the rights to the data that the idea was based on?

With regards rights, you haven't given enough information to answer. If the prior work appears in your thesis, then anyone can continue the work. If the prior work is whatever you conceived whilst employed by the university, then rights will be defined in your contract. If the prior work includes a dataset owned by the university, then permission to use that dataset will be required.


text:
Professor gave full credit for incompleteness
My professor gives full credit for every single assignment I have turned in for the past 9 weeks (except for a paper we had for which he gave me individual feedback on my writing). I did everything I was supposed to do and fully completed each assignment until the most recent one.
I recently turned in an assignment on time last night, but I didn’t have it fully completed (1 question incomplete). Sure enough he gave me 100% of the points, but I’m not sure I deserve it, or if he even looks at some of the assignments.
Should I do or say anything? I don’t know if he thinks I deserve the grade he gave me or not, or if he just somehow didn’t notice one of the questions incomplete.
Added Clarification: All the grades (except for the 3 papers) seem to all be copy/pasted as they’re not specific to my writing (this is in an American Literature class). The comment for my incomplete assignment is along the lines of so and so made a change in American Literature, they shifted the focus towards nature. I can give the exact words of the comment, but I don’t think it’s necessary, the point is: the comment isn’t specific to my answers, leading me to suspect he may not actually read it (I can’t be 100% though).
-I should also add that I wrote way more than the minimum word count for some of the questions, but I still don’t necessarily feel like I deserve the grade. I was literally up at 11:59pm and turned it in last second

Is the way he gives grades transparent?

It seems an odd policy and, as a colleague, I'd be interested to know why he does this. But I wouldn't condemn it without more information.
However, if it is clear that he actually reads your work and comments on it when necessary to avoid having you develop misconceptions, then it might be fine. It is even possible that what you do provide makes it clear to him that you understand what needs to be understood. But it is hard to say.
If you got full marks by not trying at all, of course, then the standards are too low, but it seems to be a "carrot but no stick" approach.
But the fact that you are asking here seems to imply that you are conscientious, at least and if you get feedback when needed you will probably be fine. But, I think that asking about the teaching philosophy behind it is also fine.
It is also possible, I suppose, that he has a reading difficulty, the same as some students do, or is so occupied with things like research (or family) that he fails to notice things. That wouldn't be so fine.
But, as I've stressed in other answers here, the essence of learning is reinforcement and feedback. If you are getting that, then all should be well. Some people don't need to be graders in order to be good teachers. I wish there were more, to be honest.


text:
How to proceed after being threatened and treated poorly by university faculty after reporting physical assault?
I’m an Indian PhD student at a mathematics department in the US. A few months back, I was deliberately shoulder-bumped for a few seconds by another PhD student. This student had previously chased me across the department (literally), invaded my personal space, and stared me down. I asked to change offices, which is usually a routine affair, but a faculty member stepped in to prevent this. I had to remain in close proximity with this guy, who continued to act in passive-aggressive ways.
After the shoulder bumping, I threatened to go to campus police. The aforementioned faculty member responded (in writing) saying: “There is no proof of this ever happening; I can’t prevent you from going to the campus police, but be warned that both of you can get expelled."
Also prior to this, I had reported several racist incidents from another student. A few example quotes are:

"you fucking Indians" in a very threatening tone,
"don’t tell me you fucking Indians count so fast,"
"You Indians and Chinese are taking over,"
or in a mocking tone: "It’s funny there is racism in your country."

When I showed this faculty member documentation of these events, he wrote to me in an email: "I don’t agree with your assessment that there is anything racist in these incidents." He also said the racist PhD student was "special" (though there is no written evidence of him saying this).
Another teaching faculty member had been similarly racist. He said things like:

"I was scared to come here initially because I thought I would have to learn Hebrew",
"I'm so white I'll never be mistaken for an Italian who gets mistaken for a terrorist when doing Math on a plane"
Telling a room full of Chinese students and a couple of Indian students: "If you speak in Mandarin or Hindi in the corridors you will get into serious trouble, like some Chinese students and postdocs from the past who were speaking Chinese in the corridors and it created a lot of mistrust and there were very serious complaints" (no-one else has ever heard of these incidents).

Further, he physically intimidated me and barged into my office at one point. The faculty member said he had not done anything inappropriate (again no written evidence of this specifically). In fact he said, it is commendable and shows the teaching faculty member is very socially aware and aware of his white privilege.
I would not have necessarily made an issue out of this again, but I recently received a threatening letter from the dean and this faculty member. This letter warned that I could be "withdrawn" and stated that I wouldn't be allowed to defend a thesis right away. I replied saying "Are you sure you want to take such a tone after the murder of George Floyd?" Their reply was: "If you keep speaking like this, we will 'withdraw' you."
How should I proceed after these incidents? I'm particularly interested in legal recourse (though the incidents mentioned may be hard to prove in a court of law, although I have these written emails from our faculty member).

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What sort of university is it? Is it public or private? Can you give the state?

Have you reported all this to the nearest Indian consulate and asked if they could help?

@Acccumulation: this is a private university; in Massachusetts.

@MichaelHardy: I did speak with the nearest Indian Consulate a few months back, when I had not received this threatening letter. They basically said they can't do anything about alleged incidents. I'm not sure their reply would be any different after getting this threatening letter.

@ZeroTheHero: There is no faculty Dean in our university, and the threats were already coming from the Dean of the so called Graduate school.

If you have irrefutable evidence of this harassment, you might want to go to the press. The university newspaper and/or local or even national newspapers. Your life will be turned upside down, but maybe it will protect future students of color from this harassment.

are the emails mentioned above from this faculty member irrefutable evidence of illegal behavior?

Unfortunately, there is well-known evidence of much worse harassment against people like OP by professors at many US universities, and nobody cares. People joke about it. In the US system, there simply is no recourse for people like him.

wow, that's really sad to hear. do you have any specific instances in mind?

@laputalanglang Of course, but the policy that deleted your question yesterday would also delete my comment. So here's a better framing that would avoid deletion: try asking the folks suggesting solutions if they've ever seen such solutions actually work for international students like yourself. They will universally say something like, no, but I just assumed that was how the system was supposed to work.

A particularly sad example is the newest answer proposing you secretly record the incidents and present the recordings as proof. What would actually happen is that such evidence would be thrown out, and then the legal system would promptly come down on you, because such recording is illegal. That's the system working.

yes I would not make such a recording. yes, it's true, except for one situation in Duke a couple of years back where there was email evidence of faculty saying things like Chinese students should not speak in the hallways in Chinese. Even then that was objectively less serious than what I'm describing here.

The admissibility of recorded conversations varies widely by jurisdiction and situation.  You would have to check the relevant laws for your specific state.  That said, this route seems like it would be detrimental to finishing your degree.  At the least you should try to finish before you do this.

Going to the press is fun for the press, and for all the other people who support general action, but it may completely ruin OP's career. Not good advice without tempering it with getting lawyer's advice and probably professional media advice, too, also to make OP's steps more effective.

@CaptainEmacs I did say that it would turn the OP's life upside down.

@laputalanglang this doesn't need to be illegal for it to be a scandal/disaster for the university. I'm not a lawyer, so I can't speak to the legality of the faculty's behavior. There probably is a faculty guide that described the code of conduct. This almost certainly violates that code of conduct. Also, in cases like this, there are probably other people of color in the department who have been mistreated. If one person comes forward, others might find the courage to do so as well.

@knzhou "the system is working" is a cynical, inappropriate response on the ban of secret recording. The ban of secret recording is perfectly justified: its purpose is simply the protection of individual's and possibly company rights, otherwise no-one is safe to have a confidential conversation and you will get an overall paranoid society. The law has its justification, and given that the US already has very lax data protection laws (compared to Europe and especially Germany) it is a perfectly sensible law. Or remove all citizen's rights, habeascorpus etc. because they also help criminals?

@CaptainEmacs, I believe the intent of the cynical comment about "the system is working" is to point out that whistle-blowers often face (illegal) retribution for exposing abuses. That retribution is often framed as punishment for some other infraction (in this case illegal recording). Sometimes that infraction is used as an excuse to ignore the whistle-blower's report.

@KyleA I believe I quite understood the comment. Every component of the jurisdicial system can be used as a weapon. It is naive to believe that a legal measure introduced for a legitimate reason cannot be abused. It can and it will be abused. It does not make the measure per se illegitimate; it is populistic to insinuate this measure enables abuse. In particular, it is an entirely separate issue from complots of abusive people who will exploit all means to their disposal. Exposing them is hard and OP needs professional legal and possibly media advice, as I said above.

If you would go for this I would recommend you to find others with the same Problem. One voice might not be enough and it will be your word against the dean...you will probably only loose here. Nevertheless if it is an option you might want to read up on the silence breakers (one of them Celeste Kidd) at the University of Rochester. Its not totally related but the sad outcome was that that Professor is still teaching. So be aware, even such measures might not have the impact you are hoping.

There's a lot to parse here, particularly in the lengthy comments section.  The way I see it is you've got two options:

Go outside of the department for help
Avoid these conflicts and finish

It seems apparent that the department is not going to help you through this, since you mention both the Dean and the department chair being involved negatively.  If you opt for number one, you should look for school-wide resources, similar to Title IX coordinators for gender issues.  I'm not aware of this being standardized, so you should look through your university's resources.
I think whether you go with option 1 probably depends on how close you are to finishing.  If you're close, and you've been able to work successfully with your advisor, is it possible to minimize, or even cut, all contact with the rest of the department, and just get your degree?  It's hard to swallow injustice, but from a utilitarian point of view, there may not be much to gain by fighting with the people in charge of the department you're in.  Letting bullying by fellow PhD students go unanswered by simply avoiding them galls me, even, and I'm the one giving the advice!  But you should at least weigh the option when considering what's best for you; fighting racism in your department, or escaping with your PhD.
Of course if you're not close to finishing, option two becomes far less viable.  I'm sorry you're in such a toxic environment, and I hope you can finish your degree successfully despite it.  Perhaps some combination of 1 and 2 is possible - it seems sensible to immediately begin avoiding the sources of conflict in your department, even if you do opt to challenge their behavior at a higher level.

I meant the former departmental chair. the current departmental chair is above these things.

It is the department chair's job to deal with situations like this.  They don't get to be "above such things".

The behavior you describe sounds like a clear violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act (the same federal law whose Title IX forbids discrimination of the basis of sex).  I recommend discretely approaching the Title IX office for advice.

I meant to say the current departmental chair is a respectable mathematician, who would never personally stoop low like a couple of these other people.

@TheoreticalMinimum: No I have not had the opportunity to speak with him about this. The thuggery is now emanating from the Dean of the Graduate school.

Well, I'm pretty sure he knows of the situation now, although he didn't a month back, I think. If he couldn't do anything about it yet, it probably means it's beyond his control now.

Well, he barely replies to emails about talking about Mathematics these days. He has health issues himself and doesn't come to the university. The letter that I got is so diabolically worded that no faculty member here seems willing to take any kind of stance on it.

@laputalanglang: Please email the department chair and the Title IX office.

I did talk with the Title IX office, and they emphasized that I had once said I don't want to pursue a case against the grad student who said the racist things; I mentioned a lot of other alleged comments from other people within our department, and they said it's all OK.

I also don't mention harassment by another teaching faculty member, who doesn't say explicitly offensive things on the fly, but tombs have been written about how lowly she treats international students when it comes to simple teaching responsibilities.

@laputalanglang: Just to clarify, will the title IX office do anything about it? I think the chair of the department should be informed of your situation.

There is this Office of equal opportunity manned by one individual. I don't know what she is upto. I think these are all a bunch of clowns. In the end, I remarked to this individual that one serious problem is that I'm a high caste individual, and look at white people in my university as an abominable low caste, and that automatically creates a lot of problems.

the departmental chair knows the situation well by now, i think, and knows the Dean of Graduate School has taken charge.

How did the department chair respond? Have you brought this up with him/her?

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

@dusa, please see my reply in the chat. Caste had been recently added as a protected class by the university.

@laputalanglang And you think that making caste a protected class gives you the right to practice discrimination against people you view as lower caste? That's some mental gymnastics.

It was in very poor taste, even as a troll comment. But I was used to often having a poor taste in my mouth while interacting with certain people in this university.

I hope in the discussion, I could make it clear that I don't actually view white people in my university as a lower caste, or want to look down on lower castes in India. If you need references of Indians who I riled up with my stated support of caste based reservation, or some of my closest friends in college from a non privileged caste, maybe there is a way to get those references.

Are you trying to say you made these comments sarcastically? If you wrote them the way you did here I would certainly not take them that way, and in that case you are not being treated poorly by HR but rather exactly how you should be treated based on your comments. Sarcasm is very very difficult to convey properly in text.

After checking his chat text, Apparently he made them sarcastically for the most part, but I say he is looking for trouble with an email like that either way.

After the murder of George Floyd, there was a questionable document shared to help increase diversity and eviscerate racism; I had commented: "talk about the serious challenge of reverse racism as well", and "cherish and preserve the existing diversity in intellectual and ethical standards", and another Indian PhD student had made a huge post detailing some of his experiences, which if true, were very disturbing as well.

Was "talk about the serious challenge of reverse racism as well" also meant to be sarcastic, or is it your opinion that reverse racism is a challenge that needs to be addressed? I truly cannot detect when your sarcasm is sarcasm, if it was.

It was meant to be sardonic. You're not the first person to tell me that I'm a bit inscrutable in this regard.

@laputalanglang Sardonic speech, sarcasm, etc, does not come off in text. It really only ever works with people who know you very well and already know how you think about things. You should never ever ever use this type of language when communicating a serious offense to a responsible individual or group. If you've done so, you have completely undermined your own credibility.

I also called the teaching faculty member mentioned here a "tenth rate dimwit"; there's like a 30% documentation of his antics here; the ones mentioned here are also shorn of context, so it might come across as very very condescending.

@laputalanglang I would not take very seriously the comments and complaints of someone who called a teaching faculty a "tenth rate dimwit". Even if the complaints are very serious, that sort of behavior suggests the problem is with the person using that description.

It could have been seen as a backhanded compliment, if you think about it; in the quality of being a dimwit he is deemed as being tenth rate; so he's doing fine, I guess.

@laputalanglang No, there is no way to interpret it as anything but an insult. There is no lack of clarity on that point, no matter how much you want to argue it's a joke.

@laputalanglang I don't know anything about your department besides what you've said here, so I would never agree to that. If you think it's garbage, you should leave.

@Jeff In cases where the bullying behavior involves gaslighting, or any significant power asymmetry, there is often very little one can do except avoid the bully.

Can you get a lawyer? I know the universities give legal advice, but in this case they won't. Can you reach out to Indian communities? Perhaps a lawyer can offer you free services?  1) please go to the International Student Services for guidance. If all fails, 2) please go to HR and talk to them, but remember HR is not your friend, they will most likely try to keep it within the institution. If they cooperate, they will hire external reviewers to get their legal opinion on the case, but it can turn into you against the faculty member/dean and HR might take their side.
This might be stressful for you, but I think you are already living a stressful grad life, if anything at least you can make it right for others. I am sorry you are going through this, no one should! I did my PhD in USA and my university was really a safe place for international students, with a high international student population. International students bring in the most revenue/do most of the research, so if your university has any senses at all, they will try to resolve this. If you are just beginning PhD, I would consider other options as well: other labs, other departments, other universities.

I spoke with HR a couple of years back , outlining a lot of events happening inside the department, when they told me nothing is wrong. At that time there wasn't even a so called Office of Equal opportunity inside the department. I went and disparaged the people in HR after they refused to do anything, and in fact after they began to threaten me. Afterwards the HR has also played its' part in this.

Usually I don't think a lawyer is appropriate in cases of student misconduct, but in this case if the dean knows the facts and is threatening retaliation, a lawyer is called for.

It's not just student misconduct, but also (teaching) faculty misconduct; unless of course you are implying the misconduct is on my part.

@laputalanglang "I went and disparaged the people in HR after they refused to do anything" - what do you mean by "disparaged"?

@CJRD Can you elaborate on why it is likely there is no ground to stand on? I'm not too familiar with US law but in the EU for example, it would be immediately obvious that the conduct was in breach of all sorts of equality laws.

If there is no proof, and there is no witness, it is a he said she said case, meaning it is one guy's word over other's. Not enough to charge a person guilty. There is the email but it is written between 3rd parties and is not enough to "prove" the bully's acts. If the university had senses, they would open a case and talk to all people involved. Also, are you sure that in EU this would be easier to address? Might depend on the location, but my experience is that EU is light-years behind in racism at workplace and mobbing in general.

@CaptainEmacs: Last year, when the folks in HR themselves began to say to me that apparently I must be looking for a lawyer, and they are well prepared for it, I went and said let me take the liberty to speak with you in the same disrespectful tone as some of us are spoken to for years on end in the department. And so whatever interaction we were having, I spoke in a disrespectful tone.

Look, noone should go through what you are going through, but may I suggest you try being less reactive? How can talking disrespectfully to HR people make the situation better? This could be used against you.

The situation was so beyond the pale already that I didn't think twice about being reactive at that stage. This post or the chat doesn't mention the frothing at the mouth behavior of certain other graduate students, almost treating you like a leper. I had been in a different university in the US prior to here, and the experience was vastly different. In fact, at one point I told them they should try to strive to improve their overall clown show and become like certain other universities.

This interaction with the HR was prior to the shoulder bumping, the emails from this faculty member, or the abusive disruptive behavior of my former so called advisor which was defended to the hilt by our department.

@laputalanglang Ok, what you should have done instead is to explain how how you have been talked to, instead of falling in the trap of giving them the rope to hang you by. It's done. Frankly, even if only half of what you say were true, this place is rotten to the core. You won't be anybody's hero by staying and fighting. There is no glory to be gained here. Get out! And go to a place that deserves your company.

Of course, I started out by being polite, and my first couple of interactions were very polite with HR. I mentioned a lot of the incidents involving our teaching faculty member, but I forget if I mentioned some or all of the incidents I mention here. They replied in email saying there is nothing wrong.  It's after that, that I took a less polite tone, when they began to say you must be looking for a lawyer, etc. and when I began to disparage them.

It's not just that there were all these issues within our department, the first guy I was working with , who turned into my advisor, was from another university, and I talk about his behavior in the chat.

@laputalanglang You are quite right to be angry, even very angry. But when HR said you must look for a lawyer, they were probably giving you the correct advice even if, who knows, in a twisted way. In any case, in my experience, they are amongst the worst party to alienate and to turn from neutral to antagonist. Anyway, the options I see, depending on what you want to do, is getting a lawyer, possibly a media adviser, and leave. This is Mordor, you do not want to stay, no matter what.

@CaptainEmacs See LPLL's additional detail here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/155185/how-to-proceed-after-being-threatened-and-treated-poorly-by-university-faculty-a#comment415958_155158

@YemonChoi Oops. That does not go down well, not even as joke, irony or sarcasm. That's a CLM. In chess, such a move would have been annotated with "??".

@CaptainEmacs Back in my days of playing club chess, that's a move that would be punctuated by going to the bar to curse in private. But I digress

This was exactly what I had written in the very last email to the Title IX office: "Actually a lot of these problems stem from the fact that I'm a high caste individual, and look around in this university and see a dimwitted peasant class that is a natural anathema for me. Do you think that can enable you to take some kind of action?" I did not say 'white people in the university were an abominable lower caste'. The idea was to bark back.

The context was that this university made headlines by adding caste as a protected class, and thus showed off it's progressive cred.I should mention that in the prior emails, the documentation that I had was huge, and this thread or the chat probably covers at most 30% of everything documented there.

@dusa: The impression you got from my reply on the chat is that I support the caste system?

'I mean, caste should be a protected class' (present tense), 'I have openly advocated for caste based reservation in India and why it is important for it to continue for at least a few generations, and have faced the wrath of some of my friends for saying this' (past tense), then your opinions changed because you have low caste friends and you are cool with them now, but doesn't state your opinion on whether it should be abolished. I am just reading what you wrote.

One generic advise: When you know you are right, do not ever play in other person's hand by acting wrong. Practice staying calm in situations. Graduate school comes and goes, this advice is for lifetime

Edit: For anyone reading, OP was trolling them giving them their own medicine, which oh boy, will get him in so much trouble one day.

Caste should be a protected class, to protect from casteist behavior and casteist slurs; I'm not saying that I support casteism. It's like saying having anti-racism laws perpetuate racism. I view caste based reservation as important to end inequality and casteism in India, and given the social structure of the country in the present and the past, it's important to have it as opposed to reservation based on economic status.

I was just pointing out the conflict of what you wrote. I am not sure where "openly advocating to preserve it in India" stands with "I have friends from other castes now". If you say you are against it, okay fine, I don't read a strong message e.g. it should be a protected class in US but not in India? What am I supposed to get? I have black friends does not equal to I am anti-racism, for example. Anyway, I edited my comment, my emphasis was on the trolling, and my advice stays.

I am opposed to the caste system, if it makes it clear now. I believe temporary caste based reservation (as things stand, for at least another couple of generations) is only helping to tackle caste based inequality in India.

Yes, more clear, definitely. I am not knowledgeable about the temporary preservation part, I don't see why it is necessary, and why the change shouldn't come overnight but I won't pretend to know. It is awkward though, like suggesting a transition of generations instead of giving people equal rights? Anyway derailing the topic.

In a healthy economic system, taxes work, and there is upward mobility btw.

To me your description sounds like a fully grown mobbing/bullying situation. The conclusion is that I'm afraid your best bet is to get away from there, the sooner the better.
This is not a single misbehaving (harrassing, racist,...) individual or incident who may be made to behave themselves, but a whole group who ganged up, including some of your superiors and repeatedly harrass.
In addition to getting away from there for the sake of your own health and academic performance, you should not honor such a department with your work.

Do you already have a professional network?
Are there professors from other places whom you trust and who know your work?

=> contact them about openings

Are there fellow students whom you can trust?
International student networks?

=> contact them to find out whether the prospective new place is likely better.

Be extremely professional and reticent in describing why you leave. However, make clear that the reason is not lack of academic achievement - you may say that you count on being even more productive in the new environment, though.
Where I am students can take their own thesis work with them when they happen to change university (with some caveats related to employment and employers having rights to work results). I.e., you may be able to use e.g. papers you already published for your thesis at the new university. Ask about this.

Is there someone to whom you can unburden yourself? Relations, friends, psychological counseling, a religious or spiritual advisor?

A few points about mobbing/bullying I picked from W. Taglieber: Berliner Anti-Mobbing-Fibel (in German) [Berlin Anti-Mobbing leaflet - it is mainly about bullying in school, but many of the points fit with what you describe]

The victim has basically no possibility to liberate themselves on their own [while staying at there]

Attacks are wilfully intentional and arbitrary

Mobbing/bullying is abuse of power

It will not end on its own

Sequence of events:

the potential bully looks for weaknesses/sensitivities of the potential victim
Outward characteristics are picked afterwards (ethnicity, hair color, dialect, ... literally whatever) to use as pretended "reason"

IMHO it is important to realize: the chosen victim has no whatsoever chance to avoid the bullying attacks by changing the picked characteristic since that follows after the fact - and can and will be changed arbitrarily. (This goes in particular @Mandrill)
(Even a characteristic that is not the case with the victim can serve. Say, bullying OP as "Russian" when they're Indian - which signals that the victim is not even worth bothering to label them correctly)

The victim is in a physiologically stressful situation. This is both a threat to their health and it is likely to hinder their academic performance.
This is one of the reasons why you need to get away from there!

Whithin the situation there is nothing that the victim can do to reliably stop the situation: normally [in a non-bullying situation] adequate, polite requests to the bully to behave themselves are not sufficient. Strong actions that to gets results are counted as the victim overreacting, i.e. against the victim.
See OP's description for an example.

Also as said above, the attacks are arbitrary and wilful, i.e. the only pattern they reliably follow is that they will happen when a bully (or one of their so-called helpers/followers) thinks the attack will be safe (see OP describing lots of situations where they do not have witnesses who'd stand up) and have impact.

There is a strong structural component to bullying: organizational structures that allow this to happen.
Here: those authorities whose duty it would be to prevent or at least stop such bullying have joined the mob.

Last but not least: of course this may be genuine racism, i.e. race is the systematic and predictable trigger for the aggression rather than a picked "well-working" characteristic of a chosen victim. IMHO that distinction is rather academic, though: I think the practical possibilities and limitations are the same whether the underlying behaviour is mainly racist or mainly bullying. And for me, both rank as equally bad.

The letter that I got; if I were to make the contents public, might be disturbing to read.

Could you maybe contact the American Civil Liberties Union and ask them for advice?
https://www.aclu.org/faqs#1_5
I'm not American and have no experience at American universities but these guys are always in the news with cases similar to yours. Maybe someone who knows more about the US system can expand this answer.

Do you have smartphone? Just install app called IP Webcam(I am not sponsoring this, I don't even know the meaning of sponsoring), now follow all procedure set it all up, it works even if your smartphone is locked. It can simply record videos and audios of them. If you can successfully record the incidents and then present them as proof, you are done with your part, let them handle the legal stuff now. Of course as mentioned by one of the answerer, if you are close to finishing your degree, better come home safe and quick! I wish I could help you real quick.

Not sure, but this could be illegal.

Oh so if you are being killed you won't try to video them and present it as proof that they were trying to kill you???

Recording people without their consent is illegal in many states.  I would not recommend this unless you are sure (because you've consulted a lawyer) that you're not breaking the law.  (This is not a criminal case, and they can use any illegality as an excuse to kick you out.)

Why do you use CCTV cameras then??? Tell me?

Do you have witnesses?

Well, I don't know if eye witnesses would be willing to come forwward. I don't think anyone faced crap to the extent I did;  but there have been serious situations in the department in the past involving other international students.

Veering off-topic, but CCTV cameras are typically used in public places where there is no expectation of privacy (e.g., stores). Recording closed-door conversations and phone calls is a different ball of wax legally (in the US, such rules even vary state by state).

If you want to record, consult a lawyer. The laws regarding video recording and audio recording vary from state to state in the US. Also, video and audio may have different rules (so CCTV might be allowed in a public hallway, but secretly recording audio of a conversation in that same hallway may be illegal).