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Can you have a career in academia without having to write grant applications?
I really like doing research, but I've heard that all the fights for funding can be a major headache. So I am wondering, how can I enjoy my work without worrying about grant applications? Are there specific fields or positions that don't require this?

Research ≠ academia. Many people in industry do research, at least in some fields.

how can I enjoy my work without worrying about grant applications? — The same way you can enjoy your work without worrying about journal/conference submissions.  Stop worrying and just do the work to the best of your ability.

The need for grant funding depends a lot on the type of research that you do.  The more that your research requires laboratory facilities and equipment, graduate student research assistants to run the equipment, or travel for field work than the more that you're going to need grant funding.  In the other direction, grant funding is less important if you do more theoretical research by yourself or with collaborators at other institutions.
No matter what type of research you do, you're going to need time to work on the research and some money to travel to conferences and present your research.
One of the few ways in which this can be done is to hold a faculty position at an undergraduate liberal arts college.  Some of these positions have reasonably light teaching loads (although typically higher than at research universities) and funds to send faculty to conferences.

It is definitely possible, because I know people who do. Now it may definitely limit your career options, but there are a number of careers within my corner of academia that don't require writing grant applications. Do however note that nearly all of them involve someone writing grant applications:

Lab managers - usually Master's or PhD level folks who aren't interested in running their own lab, but who are good at keeping things going, managing students, etc.
Programmers or technicians - specialists who aren't students or faculty, but rather employees.
"Staff scientists" - these positions exist in some institutions, often as part of centers or other large grant funded groups, and don't necessarily require you to bring in your own grants.

None of these positions necessarily involve writing grants, though they can involve helping with grants, and if the grant goes away, so does your employment. But these folks also often have their own research agendas as part of either a larger project, or as unfunded side projects.
There's also research positions within industry or the government that may not involve competing for funding, though all of these have other aspects that may be equally as annoying.

At a research university in the United States, the extent to which you need to write grants depends on what your field is. As a general rule of thumb, if you are in an engineering school, you will be expected to bring in funding. You will need this both because this is how you will pay your graduate students (and yourself during summer months), and because it is used as an evaluation criterion -- at tenure review, your promotion committee will care that you have shown that you can bring in grants. This is also true for physical sciences that have lab expenses.
However, in other fields, like Math and Economics, graduate students are typically funded by the department (sometimes via teaching assignments) rather than faculty grants. In these areas, bringing in grants is much less important, and since expenses are less, there is less need (or expectation) for you to bring in large grants.
Finally, grant writing isn't all bad! It is time consuming (and so annoying when a grant is rejected), but it is useful to be forced, every several years, to think about your research agenda and put your plans down on paper. The act of doing this often clarifies your thinking about where your work should be going.

How about theoretical computer science?

Yep -- theoretical computer scientists typically sit inside of computer science departments, for which grants are important -- that's how we pay our graduate students. (There are a few theoretical computer scientists who sit in math departments, in which things are different)

I think this is a very important point- research expectations often vary between parts of a university (e.g. college of engineering vs. arts and sciences vs. business) as well as between departments.  Some fields (like theoretical computer science or applied mathematics) can live within different colleges at different universities.  An applied mathematician in the engineering school of a large university might face much more pressure to get external funding then his colleague next door in the college of arts and sciences mathematics department.

@qed My answer does cover several people I know who are theoretical CS types.

The key point is that the money for your job needs to come from somewhere and as such grant finding is a massive deal for the majority of academics.
In my experience in the UK and understanding of the general nature of academia you will struggle to be defined as an 'academic' without partaking in the perpetual search for funding. Academics are not simply employees of a university or other institute, finding funding to do their research is an absolutely key part of the job. Even as an undergraduate researcher I had applied for funding for various summer projects, its quickly something that becomes relevant but it sounds like you haven't yet experienced it?
Finding funding is also fundamental in supervisory positions where you employ other academics, it would be your job as a PI/group leader to build the group and apply for funding to do that. Are you just interested in research and not in the wider nature of academia such as supervising other research scientists, coming up with new ideas for research and presenting at conferences? If you are just interested in the practical research aspect you could work in industry or as an employee at a university/institute (via teaching positions, research assistant etc) but you are unlikely to have the same freedom of research ideas or same long term career prospects as a typical academic, for example you would not reach group leader/PI without writing grants but you could reach a lead scientist role in an industry job.
It is also worth considering that the time you would have spent applying for grants would likely be exchanged for time required for teaching or other tasks that earn you the paycheck.

I do not think that this is accurate across all fields, nor across all countries. You should thus state precisely the scope of your answer.


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Seemingly minor revision under review for two weeks. Is this common?
This is a follow-up question on "Why call it a "major" revision if the suggested changes are seemingly minor?"
I have submitted the revision two weeks ago and it's still showing as "under review." The paper has been under review for 1 year and 9 months. In general, if such scenario happens when should one expect a decision?

I am sympathetic to your situation, but look -- you're not going to get an answer to this kind of question by asking us.  Moreover, two weeks after you submitted a revised version is not a good time to ask how much longer it will take.  (You could ask, but it is likely that you will not get a very definitive answer.)  More than likely you'll have to be a bit patient.

@Roland: Thanks. I just wanted to know how does in general it takes a minor revision to respond.

2 weeks of review time is really not very long, even for a minor revision (which, strictly speaking, yours apparently isn't, at least not to the editor). There is no way for us to know how long it will still take, but the unfortunate truth is that I see little reason to believe it's gonna be much faster than any previous (major) revision.
In reality, reviewing time often depends little on the actual amount of change. Instead, reviewers often get allotted a fixed amount of time (e.g. 4 to 6 weeks in computer science), and will get around to actually doing the review when this time is almost over. That your paper has been under review for long already is not something that reviewers will be aware of, or care very much about.

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Politely ask a professor about my application status
I have applied to PhD programs in engineering in the US. I have contacted a professor prior to applying and based on my resume he encouraged me to apply to his university. Now I want to politely ask him about the status of my application and also politely but implicitly ask him to review my application file and also maintain my contact with the professor.
The other thing is that I think that if I do not send this email, it may convey the massage that I have given up. I also want to mention that I have currently taken two other relevant courses to be more prepared before starting my program. Below I have prepared a sample email message.
I would be thankful for any help and suggestions.

Dear Professor ****,
First I want to thank you so much for your past encouragement regarding the next step in my academic development. I am very excited about having the opportunity to apply to the university of **** and having this honor to mention your name in my application form. I would be more than grateful if you could please let me know when I might hope to hear any response from **** regarding my application. I would also like to mention that I am taking the two **** and *** courses to be more prepared before starting my program.
Again, thank you very much for all your kind consideration.

Can you check the status of your application on the application website? If it says "in review" (or something similar), then there's a good chance it's already in his hands, or the hands of the admission's committee. He likely won't be able to tell you anything else.

You can also try to contact the Grad secretary!

Your letter looks like grovelling to me. If you just want to check the status of your application, do that, but in the first case, ask the administrator in charge of graduate admissions, not the specific professor you're hoping to work with.

I think that's too formal, you want to use a more informal communications channel such as email and just say "just wanted to ask if you know the status of my application" period.   That gives him the option of gracefully declining to answer.  You do not know what internal politics are going on in the program and what they are going to do with your application and there's really no way of forcing them to do anything.  All you really need to do is confirm that they got it.  Hopefully you are also aware that you should be looking at other programs and not setting your heart on just this one.
The other benefit of using an informal approach is that you can repeat it without appearing to be obnoxious.  Send him an email now, then keep doing it every couple weeks.  Sending a big old formal letter is kind of demanding a formal decision and response and puts them on the spot, and if you keep sending such letters then you come across as rigid and demanding.  Whereas an informal one-liner email isn't going to be perceived as demanding (it might be perceived as begging, but that's OK)

I would exercise a bit of caution here: some advisors might want to see their potential advisees showing a bit more formality at this stage than a one-liner email may portray.

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Colloquial language in research papers
I recently read an article suggesting that you should write in the same way that you would talk. I agree with the ideas but I wonder how much it applies to formal venues like journal publications where you would very rarely find colloquial language (I'm not talking about using humour as in this question: How much informal writing should there be in a research article?)
When writing research papers I try to stick to the science and keep it as simple to read/understand as possible. I often use simple sentences in my writing. However, I often come across papers that are overly verbose and use complex compounded sentences that, for me, are difficult to follow. I've come to associate complex sentence structure with "correct" scientific reporting, and anything less complex as too informal/colloquial
I'm beginning to wonder whether I'm just a bad writer and if its just something I need to spend time working on.
How do you figure out the correct balance? Is there room for "writing like you talk" in journal publications?
My worry is that colloquial language would come across as unprofessional, leading either to a rejection (or at least a much lengthier review process), and/or a dent in my reputation as a researcher
I'm in the field of (cognitive) psychology if that makes a difference

Related question: Why do researchers sometimes use extremely complicated English sentences to convey their meaning?

I think we would need a sample to be able to give meaningful feedback.

If you don't end every sentence with a punctuation mark, your writing needs to be a bit more formal!

I've come to associate complex sentence structure with "correct" scientific reporting, and anything less complex as too informal/colloquial

For science to be correct it has to pass the review process. The reviewers are usually experienced and native to the narrow field that is covered in the paper, so however complex the language, they can handle it and gauge the science behind (unless we are talking about extremely obfuscated writing, of course). From that standpoint, the language complexity doesn't matter.
The degree of colloquialism that is found in papers usually depends on the field. As an example, when computer science began to shift towards personal narrative ("we did...", "our research..." vs. "if x is done...", "one can deduce...") a number of years (or decades) back, the new papers gradually became more colloquial. Compare that to a typical mathematical or physical paper.
You should also consider that there are a lot of non-native English speakers out there, who struggle to express their thought in a foreign language.
Finally, inexperienced scientists and students tend to "overdo" the writing, using complex structures to convey maturity and confidence. Judging importance of information and expressing it eloquently are skills that are acquired well beyond grad school.

Is there room for "writing like you talk" in journal publications?

Sure there is, as long as it is professional, i.e. avoid jargon, jokes, etc.

How do you figure out the correct balance?

That comes with experience, every subsequent paper you write will be an improvement. It is important for you to strive to become better. Experience in writing is not the only thing that will benefit you, but experience while reading as well. The more papers you read, the more patterns of good and bad style you will encounter. Reflecting that on your own style will improve it.


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Why would a paper uploaded to Academia.edu have words whited out?
A paper I looked up on Academia.edu today turned out to be a scan of pages in which many words have been whited-out with typists' correction fluid. This is a typical sentence:

Unfortunately, the Dirac-Baez Determinant is ill-conditioned for assessing the isomorphism structure of Pauling's high-order valence-bond bundles. [WHITE-OUT] Mac Lane's 2-categorification of taxogellation coefficients on the [WHITE-OUT] [WHITE-OUT] hints at such an outcome ([WHITE-OUT] 1972b; also 1973), while Gordon Pask's electro-neural–swarm dimensionality compression (Pask 1961), as well as Stafford Beer's POSIWID analysis of [WHITE-OUT] (Beer 1972), and Ron Atkin's multidimensional [WHITE-OUT] (Atkins 1972), confirm it for non-dense επι–recodings.

(I have altered words so that I don't identify the person who uploaded the paper.)
The paper is a chapter of a recently published book, and I haven't found any open-access copies. Is this a case of what WBT describes in an answer to Citing paywalled articles accessed via illegal web sharing? WBT says that "Sometimes, the differences [between official paywalled copies of papers and unofficial free ones] are honeypots intentionally inserted by publishers designed to get the message out that only official sites can be relied upon for accurate information."
To clarify following a comment: knzhou suggests this is likely to be a scanning or rendering error. I was going to post a screenshot, but don't have enough reputation. It's immediately obvious to anyone who has used these correction fluids — which I have when cartooning — that that's what they are. Give-aways include the colour, thickness diminishing towards the long edges, brush streaks on the surface, and the way the marks follow the words. I'm not worried about this, though it's annoying to lose the information in the publication, but I am curious. I've never seen this before.

It's more likely to be a PDF rendering error or scanning error, especially if it's from a bootleg site like Academic.edu. I've never seen a real example of what WBT is talking about -- and if there were such examples, it wouldn't be this obvious.

We are Academia SE, not Academia.edu.

scaaahu — but Academia SE has other questions about Academia.edu . Are you saying I shouldn't have posted this one?

So why not ask on Academia.edu?

White out immediately makes me think of originally classified, then redacted and released documents. But that seems an unlikely explanation for a chapter of a recent book.

Someone used a highlighter in the original book, then used whiteout?

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What determines how many master/PhD students a given professor can take (STEM)?
It never really crossed my mind if there was an upper limit as to the number of students a given professor can take on. This is because some professor have dozens of students, while other have only a handful. I know a professor who has 2 PhD students and that's it. This seems to be a department dependent variable.
However, a rumor got out that one of the professor in my department (not my own) was attempting to take on a student but since the student did not have external scholarship, therefore the professor was not able to take him on.
It is unusual because students do not need external funding to get into the graduate program at my school. I hypothesized that the professor's funding cap was all used up by his current students, therefore he could not take on anymore students without additional funding. However, I am not sure how this funding cap mechanism work.
Is there an upper limit to the number of students a professor can take on? If so, what determines it? An insider's perspective on this would be greatly appreciated.
(My question is mainly with respect to engineering and STEM major within North American context)

afaik, each department has its own rules

At American universities, each department is allowed to accept a certain number of PhD students each year.  This number is determined annually by a dean or provost's office, primarily based on funding and student retention.  It could also be limited by the supervisory capacity of the faculty, but funding is usually more important.  Each department has its own procedure for matching students with supervisors.  Often the procedure is for students to go and ask faculty to supervise them.  In principal, there is nothing stopping a single faculty member from taking all the graduate students.  This probably happens from time to time in small departments.
In the case of the rumour you mention, we can guess that this professor does not have access to additional TA/RA funding at this time, and is currently only taking students with external funding.  Typically TA funding is linked to the department, while RA funding is linked to a particular faculty member's grant.


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How can I switch from an MBA to a Masters program in a different subject?
I am an international student currently enrolled in a MBA program. This is my first semester here and I want to transfer to a different program in a different college. I have a 3-year BSC (Honors) in computing but my grades weren't great. I want to transfer to a MS in Computer Science. However, it seems that most programs require me to have taken certain classes like data structures and statistics, which were not offered in my bachelors program. My plan is to transfer from my MBA program to a bachelors program, take those classes, and then take the GRE and apply for MS. Is that possible? What other options do I have?

Contact the school and department you're interested in, send them your transcript, and ask which and how many of the credits you've already taken would be accepted if you applied as a transfer student.  Don't expect to keep too many of them.


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Why is the variability in faculty salaries between STEM fields so high?
Checking the data from some public universities, I noticed that the variability in faculty salaries between STEM fields can be extremely large, even within the same university and for the same position.
For example, at the University of Michigan assistant professors in mechanical engineering generally make around $95k a year, while for Math the same position pays around $55k.
Why is this range so large?

You're going to have to provide some more details here, maybe with some examples, for us to understand what you're asking. Which public universities? Whose salaries (employees, graduates)? Etc.

@BillBarth faculty salaries, I checked different public schools from http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/top-public

Are you asking about variation between universities (e.g. math assistant prof at UVA vs. math assistant prof at UNC) or variation between STEM subjects (e.g. math assistant prof at UVA vs. engineering assistant prof at UVA)?

The second, math assistant prof at UVA vs. engineering assistant prof at UVA

There is a huge difference in grant capture between engineering and math.

I pulled one of the charts from the article the OP cited into the question. There's no legend for the chart so I'm not sure what the deep blue and light blue mean. Rather than the chart, it might be better to use the actual faculty data (I looked at that but it seemed that I could only get access to raw data [i.e., individual faculty w/ names] and not aggregate departmental data).

@RoboKaren I am pretty sure the chart is meaningless. I looked at the raw data for EN-Biomed Engr Dept and compared that to the Biomedical bar. There is no one who makes over 161k a year and there is well over 250k a year total so the light blue bar neither corresponds to total, average, median, or maximum. There is also no obvious meaning of the dark blue bar.

Yeah, I think we'll have to ask the OP to clarify.

Yes, UV doesn't show salaries by department. However, UT does  http://salaries.texastribune.org/university-of-texas-at-austin/

@RoboKaren Regardless of how fitting or not the example given is, it's not exactly a contentious claim that professors in related fields are paid on very different scales (e.g. math vs. finance professors). I think the question is very answerable despite the poor example.

"STEM" is not a single discipline.  Salaries vary significantly even within engineering, based on what the market will bear in each field.

Every job position is it's own little economy, and to understand it fully we basically need a wide-ranging understanding of economics. But we can at least hit the most obvious and easily understandable points, so long as we are clear that each position is distinct and unique in it's own right.
Let's say you need to hire a Professor of Basket-Weave Engineering. How much do you pay them? Well, I say we offer to pay them a $1. Ah, but that would be below minimum wage requirements generally, so that'd be illegal...ok, let's pay them $20,000 a year then.
Why pay them any more? Well, in short, we have a number of problems:
1) Quality of candidates - the best in the field just aren't willing to work for so little, they likely won't even apply even if they were rich because such a low salary indicates a lack of respect and seriousness of the position. So you likely won't get your desired quality of candidate.
2) Quantity of candidates - with such little pay you probably just won't get enough qualified candidates to seriously interview.
3) Actual acceptance - even if you get enough good candidates and make an offer, there is a good chance they won't accept at all because they have better offers.
4) Perception - national rankings and general public perception can be involved. Do you want to become known as the institution with McProfessors who are paid in beans?
5) Turn over - even if you get good people to join, they will likely leave when they get a drastically better offer. Even the most die-hard of loyalists will have trouble turning down an offer that's 4-10 times the salary they get now.
But why are similar positions paid so differently?
Each of the simple 5 conditions I outlined above vary by individual position. A Computer Engineering professor is just not the same as a Chemical Engineer - they are both engineers, but they have very different market factors involved.
Let's say they start off the same though, and you are able to hire and retain both at the same rate of $50,000 a year.
Now let's say IBM wants to put someone in charge of a next-generation computing research lab - will they want a Computer Engineer or a Chemical Engineer? I think it's pretty clear that they may very well have a preference for one particular type of engineer. The research produced could earn them billions, so they'd be happy to pay easily $500,000 a year for the right candidate. Not to be outdone, Intel, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and a dozen other big-name computer companies also want the same kind of candidate, and all are willing to pay the same.
Now you have a problem. If you want to hire a Chemical Engineer, nothing has changed - $50k seems to get people just fine. But if you want to hire a Computer Engineer, you are now effectively competing with dozens of companies willing to pay 10 times what you pay.
One method of dealing with this is to ignore it. Sure, you'll lose the most money-motivated or even the best candidates to companies, but you'll still be able to get what you want. But what if more and more companies want computer engineers? What if it gets to be that there's a shortage of above-average candidates, and so industry will throw stupid amounts of money at any computer engineer who seems even vaguely above-average? You'll be left with only below-average engineers or ones who are outright hostile towards industry. If you expect to get grant money and support from industry partners, you are going to be in trouble either way.
So it might turn out that it easily makes sense to pay $200,000 a year to get a Computer Engineer (because, frankly, you have no real other choice anymore), but why would you pay any more for a Chemical Engineer? Their market hasn't changed any, so why waste money?
Complements and Substitutes
But now we also realize something interesting. While the tech companies prefer computer engineers, they realize that IT engineers have similar knowledge and work almost just as well. They might still prefer computer engineers, but with less demand or less pay they will make use of them too (even if they were still working slightly outside their field!).
Now you will find, thanks to the concept of substitutes, that other fields are being effected by the tech bidding wars. Pretty soon you'll be paying $150,000 for IT engineers. But what if tech companies realize that, sure they prefer the specialized knowledge of computing and IT people, but research is research - why not identity suitably brilliant Chemical Engineering PhDs and hire them? Sure it might take them a little longer to get up to speed in the field, but whatever - they may still prefer other fields, but they'll take what they can get.
Next thing you know within a few years you went from paying everyone $50k to having to pay no less than $200k for a Computer Engineer, $150k for an IT Engineer, and $100k for a Chemical Engineer - minimum! Any less and all the really desirable candidates pass your institution over with ease as the other offers they get are just too high. Meanwhile professors whose primary role is teaching CS101 still command little more than that $50k, because industry just isn't super excited about people who can teach entry-level courses.
And what if other institutions start competing for top candidates, just like the industry has been doing? As Artelius points out, Baumol's Cost Disease is a hypothesis that seeks to explain increases in salaries when productivity of the job itself hasn't changed, if you are interested in further reading.
This little fictional story isn't far off exactly what has happened not only in Engineering fields, but all fields. My own adviser once pointed out to me that even people who do the same job, in the same field, get paid differently based upon what program they earned their final degree in - Psychology faculty just get paid less than Business or Engineering folks, even if they both work in the same exact applied research field.
People Are Different, Want Different Things, and Value Things Differently
Ultimately this is the bottom-line - people with similar titles are not paid the same because our system is based upon relative values of individuals, groups, and the economy as a whole. People are different, want different things, and don't assign the same universal value to all things. One agent might not be willing to buy something for more than $10, while another agent considers it a steal to get that thing for less than ten times the price!
Even more importantly, no one really wants to pay more than they have to to get something they want. It is almost universally true that if someone pays X for something, it's because they didn't think they could get an equivalent thing for much less.
And we got to this wide variance in salaries even while ignoring concepts like price-based value perceptions (national rankings that weight faculty pay as part of their rankings, for instance), vanity/political capital (deans or department heads who believe larger pay and budgets means more esteem and rank), paying a premium up-front to reduce turn over due to cost considerations (don't want someone in charge of a big funded research lab to leave every few years, so you make sure they are considered extra-well-paid so they don't jump ship), or even differential income value of a position! Not all positions bring in the same amount of community support or grant money, nor do all departments get the same support from higher-level administration (MIT just might not care that much about their history department but considers their robotics department mission-critical, for instance).
But even if we ignore all these factors, the simple 5 factors at the beginning of this answer are more than sufficient to explain a difference in faculty pay, to say nothing of differential industry valuations/competition. The true reason faculty salaries differ so much is due to a combination of all these factors and more.

This is a truly excellent answer, which I think very well demonstrates the variability of the economy and the differences in respective job markets. +1!

The effect you are describing is known as Baumol's cost disease http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease

@Artelius Thanks for the reminder of that, in my head I thought it was only strictly about when productivity/value of a job hasn't itself changed - but on re-reading on it there is clearly applicability here! I've edited in the name and link.

Your answer is an excellent coverage of a complex situation, and my previous comment was a bit simplistic; I didn't intend to suggest that your entire answer was all about Baumol's cost disease. I should clarify the main sense in which I see cost disease applying here: as industry pays more and more to (say) computer science experts, the salaries of computer science professors will rise simply because otherwise, many computer science professors would leave academia for the better pay in industry.

Because universities in the U.S. Operate independently of each other, there is no nationwide schedule of salaries and each college or university (or multi campus university system) can have its own policies on salaries.  At some institutions the faculty are unionized and have a union contract with the institution that typically sets policies that determine the salary of individual faculty members.  Most universities are not unionized and thus individual factor members try to negotiate the best deal that they can.  Under this system there is typically a lot of variation between departments (e.g. Computer science professors can get a lot more salary then mathematicians or English professors.)  There can also be significant variation within an individual department, even for faculty at the same rank.

This explains why it is possible to have variation in salaries, but it doesn't explain where that variation actually comes from.

This can be more understandable for different universities, but for a single university, relevant fields should have relevant salaries. The situation now, is that related colleges within one university act like different companies in terms of their salaries.

@ThomasLee Hopefully another answer will go into this in more detail, but when you say "related colleges within one university act like different companies in terms of their salaries," that because university departments actually are structured as if they were different and somewhat independent companies, each with their own leadership, hiring commitees and standards, and revenue sources.

The graph that was added to the original question appears to show average salaries for faculty and staff in various departments ( including departments that provide non academic support to the college) of the engineering school  at UVA.  Since the majority of  support staff are typically paid less than faculty and the relative proportions of faculty and support staff can vary widely between departments, there's no way to use this graph to conclude anything about faculty salaries.

Variation in faculty salaries comes from market conditions (you have to offer the going rate or you won't be able to hire any well qualified faculty) and administrative choice (the administration may like computer scientist more than mathematicians and thus pay them more then the market rate.)

One reason is that titles can be ambiguous. The "assistant professors" in the Michigan math department making ~$50k are all in fact postdocs with temporary appointments. The tenure-track assistant professors, per the table you linked to, are all making in the 80s or higher.

While a good point (tenure-track versus postdoc), the 80s and higher are not the actual paid salaries.  They are the annualized salaries based on the FTR.  In actuality, they are getting 75% of that, so an example on that chart of a tenure-track assistant math prof making FTR 94,090 is actually about 70,568.

You know, I've spent a long time looking at those Michigan math salaries wondering why they have so many APs making so little money. This explains a lot. The question itself probably still holds though, I know that finance APs easily make double that of most fields.

@Chan-HoSuh: Are you sure? You could of course be right, but in most cases that I know of (including my own) where math profesor salaries are posted publicly online, it is the 9-month academic year salary and any summer salary is not included.


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Receiving a "Major Revision" After undergoing a "Minor Revision"
I submitted my article earlier this year in January. After 5 months I received a "Major revision". There were 3 different reviewers and they made very relevant comments that I found very useful. I answered all the reviewers and resubmitted the article.
Months later I received a "Minor Revision". One of the 3 reviewers asked to add a future research direction section. The other asked to correct the number of a certain section. The corrections were easy and I resubmitted the article.
Surprisingly, today I received a "Major Revision", which is quite unlikely. The email contained comments from the editor and #reviewer10 (a new one). The associate editor's email was the following:

Editor comments:
The comments from the reviewer are quite negative. The editor questions about the quality of the paper. The paper is not well written. The equations are not well edited. Some figures are given in quite low quality. The authors should carefully revise the paper. This maybe the final chance for the revision.

Reviewer #10: This paper focuses on electric energy forecasting based on artificial intelligence. Energy forecasting is one critical point in energy systems, and there are many research studies on artificial intelligence-based energy forecasting. However, the innovation of this paper is not enough. There are many research studies on artificial intelligence-based energy forecasting. For example, the neural networks, support vector regression, gradient boosting mentioned in this paper are common methods. It seems that the reviewer cannot find anything new. In addition, feature selection in load forecasting is also a common method. In general, the paper uses the common methods to solve a traditional problem. The reviewer suggests that the paper should not be accepted by this journal.

The comments from the associate editor are surprising. If there werr some issues with the English in the paper or some figures, this would surely have been dealt with during the 1st revision or the 2nd revision. In the previous emails, the same associate editor didn't mention any issue or comments. But now suddenly there is an issue.
The comments from the reviewers demonstrates that the reviewer have not taken the time to read carefully or have not understood the content of the paper. There was 3 reviewers which made positive comments (accepted) the content.
Because "reviewer10" is written, I would assume that the paper was reviewed by at least 6 reviewers. None of them made a negative comment. So how am I getting "rejected" because of one bad review out of 10? Even if it is a major revision, the due date is 24 November, which is 13 days ahead, quite bizarre for a "major revision".
My question is: Is there anything I could do? Should I raise my concerns to the editor or refuse the revision?

It's not true that there were 6 other reviewers who were ok with the paper. There were likely 6 others reviewers who were invited, but who either did not respond at all or who declined to review. You can't draw inferences about how they would have judged the paper.

Thank you for your answer, maybe i should not assume about how many reviewers actually reviewed the paper, but, that does not respond to my question. Do you think that this situation is normale ?

Does not apply here, but I've had papers for review where I asked for a clarification (minor revision) and the clarification revealed major problems. So, yes, major revision after minor revision happens, and in a perfectly legitimate manner.

Are you sure that this journal is high-quality? The editor does not seem to be.

@lighthousekeeper it's a high impact factor elsevier journal.

Overall, even if nothing change, the editor did not act very well.

@NadjibBendaoud It happens all the time that an editor asks many people to review and most of them decline. I'm pretty sure I've had to ask ten people at times to get three to agree.

I was the reviewer of a paper that brought up a host of problems with a paper, even after three other reviewers accepted!  It was for a top journal, and I declined the first invitation but accepted the invitation in the second round.   It was obvious the other three reviewers did not read the paper carefully or are 'friends' of the authors or that their level is too low.  The editor recommended major revision, and I've yet to see the revised paper.

There are a lot of things you can do, but if you want the paper to be published by this journal, it is almost certainly necessary for you to undertake the major revision.
Refusing to  revise will almost certainly result in an immediate rejection, based on the editor comments.
You can withdraw the paper and submit it elsewhere as always.
I'll note that "reviewer10" might not mean the tenth actual review of your paper, but a nominal identifier. There may have been some reviewers invited, but who did not submit reviews, for example. I'll also note that it may be "reviewer10" with the most knowledge of the area, though that isn't necessarily so. In that case, the other reviews were too superficial. And the opposite may also be true, of course, with that reviewer having too little experience.
But the editor's comments are not to be ignored. You can do your own analysis about whether the comments of the reviewer have validity or not. If they say it is standard work with little innovation, then that should be possible to check. You could, of course, ask for evidence of those statements if it hasn't been included.

Thank you for your answer. As for the reviewer's comments, it doesn't include any evidence, and based on his arguments, he is saying that only traditional were used, which is incorrect, because i introduced a new method. With the proposed method, the feature selection task is not needed, and this is why i assume that the reviewer didn't read/understand the paper. On the contrary, the three previous reviewers understood the method and proposed some improvement related to the proposed method.

I think you can ask for that evidence. Perhaps you will get a list of papers with prior work.

@NadjibBendaoud If someone doesn't understand your work, then I recommend that you consider this your problem and not theirs. Maybe it's because they were lazy, but even still it might suggest that you rewrite your introduction to make it clearer where the innovation lies.

@academic you are right i don't put all the blame on the reviewer, I'm always open for ways to improve my work. Although, the situation is very weird, knowing that the 3 previous reviewers understood the proposed method and made their criticism based on a good understanding of the method.

I wonder if they were aware of prior art. If they were naive about this it would lead to an outcome like you are seeing.

The comments from the associate editor are surprising. If there werr some issues with the English in the paper or some figures, this would surely have been dealt with during the 1st revision or the 2nd revision. In the previous emails, the same associate editor didn't mention any issue or comments. But now suddenly there is an issue.

I agree. Are you sure it's the same editor? It is also possible the role changed between revisions. Or maybe you made a mistake and submitted your manuscript as a new submission rather than a revision?

The comments from the reviewers demonstrates that the reviewer have not taken the time to read carefully or have not understood the content of the paper. There was 3 reviewers which made positive comments (accepted) the content.

This is not the right mindset, in my view. The reviewer is always right. If they did not understand the content of the paper, then it means your paper is not written well enough; its key points are not clear from the abstract / conclusions, for instance. If the paper gets published, your next readers will have even less time to look at it, so you'd better fix it and make sure that your contribution is spelled out clearly. Do not put the blame onto the reviewer; try to correct the mis-communication on your end. If the reviewer did not catch the novelty of your approach, you should have highlighted it more. A reviewer is just a random sample of your future readers.

Because "reviewer10" is written, I would assume that the paper was reviewed by at least 6 reviewers.

This is not correct, as pointed out by other people here.

None of them made a negative comment. So how am I getting "rejected" because of one bad review out of 10?

You are being rejected because of one bad review and the editor's judgment based on their own reading. One of the editor's responsibilities is precisely taking a decision in the case the reviews are mixed.

Even if it is a major revision, the due date is 24 November, which is 13 days ahead, quite bizarre for a "major revision".

That does indeed sound bizarre (even if journal timescales are very field-dependent). Maybe this was a mistake. You can surely write to the editor to ask for more time.

My question is: Is there anything I could do? Should I raise my concerns to the editor or refuse the revision?

It is unlikely that the editor will change their mind, if everything is as you state. You are not offering any more data; they already have made a decision based on what they can see, and arguing will not change this. I agree with you that the editor did not do a stellar job, noticing major issues only after the first revision when a new reviewer pointed them out. But ultimately they are the gatekeeper and the person you have to convince. And you need to convince them with your paper.

refuse the revision

Sure you can; you could withdraw the paper and submit somewhere else. If you think the quality of the editorial board is low, you can abandon this journal and search for a better one, for this submission and in future. I would suggest not blaming it on the editor, though, to avoid souring the relationship. This is a case when you have little to gain. The fact that the time for revision is so little offers you a diplomatic way out.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Do professors need to pay to send letters of recommendation via postal mail?
I'm an international student currently studying in a community college in the United States. I'm applying to a Japanese university and they require me to send them two recommendation letters from my professors directly via postal mail to Japan.
Do the professors have to pay to mail the letters?

The time a professor spends writing a letter of recommendations is a couple of orders of magnitude more valuable than the price of posting a letter. So, you might as well ask about the price of the printer ink they use up printing the letter, the envelope used for posting it, the price of the electricity to power up the computer and printer, the price of food consumed during the writing, …

Do professors worry about paying for mailing letters? I don't. I wouldn't, even if the cost of mailing a letter were to grow by a factor of ten.

As writing letters of recommendation forms part of the job, I would assume the department pays for it (and handles the shipping including tracking if needed). I'm in the UK, but any odd bit of paperwork I had to mail out was always handled by the university.

Correspondence (especially with other departments) is part of a professor's job.  So the department will normally pay for the costs associated with it.

Back when letters were normally sent by paper mail, the student usually provided a stamped, addressed envelope to the professor.  Since letters are rarely sent now, I strongly suggest you do that too; your professors may have forgotten how it works.  They might even have stamps that are no longer valid.

And even in the olden times, I would guess that the main reason to provide the stamped envelope was not to spare the professor the postage costs, but the effort required to prepare the envelope, write the address, double-check that everything is correct, etc.

In addition to approving Wrzlprmft’s comment, I’m really surprised to see that they’d have to use stamps (as in postage stamps) at all. In our university (in Germany), we put the faculty stamp on the letter, all mail is then sorted by the internal university postal service and accordingly forwarded to the Deutsche Post (which delivers most mail in Germany). No postage stamps involved.

Back when letters were normally sent by mail, in many universities the letters would have been stamped by the Department administration, not by the professor.

It also helps if you give the addressed envelope then you can make sure the address is correct and addressed to the correct person (which might be a secretary/administrator rather than the person your writing the reference to)

@Philipp Not all universities are organized equal, though it certainly makes sense this way. (Sure the university doesn't have a stamping machine of some kind - not one applying physical stamps, of course.)

Offering to pay the professor for the postage would likely make them uncomfortable. Accepting cash in return for writing a letter of recommendation would feel weird, like accepting a bribe, even if it only reimbursed them for a cost they would be incurring.
But providing them with a stamped, addressed envelope feels different. That is preventing them from incurring a cost on your behalf in the first place.
I realize this is essentially the same answer as Anonymous Physicist, but I wanted to emphasize that you shouldn't offer to give them any money, but just to give them the stamped addressed envelope.
One benefit of providing that yourself is that it takes the anxiety off the professor about it not getting there.

I agree that it would be a little weird to offer them crumpled-up fiver, but I'm not sure it'd be interpreted as a bribe--it's just adding even more friction to an already odd process (do they need to bring you the change? Keep the receipt? What if the dept pays?)--and for basically nothing. The stamped envelope doesn't introduce extra friction--and in fact, removes it.
(Also, if you were overnighting something across the planet, offering to pay might actually be appreciated).

It's not the postage that would raise concerns for me -- it's the work flow.
I could, in theory, drop it in my departmental mail bag with the right bar code attached to it, and it would probably work.  "Probably" isn't good enough for me, though, when somebody's career is involved.  I would make a call or two to make sure it would work, and hopefully I'd get a valid answer.
In practice, with such a request, I would probably just walk the letters into a Post Office, and pay for it myself, just to make sure it would be handled appropriately.  Assuming it's under $20US or so, it's a cost I would gladly absorb for peace of mind -- so long as the situation doesn't come up too often!

First class international mail from US to Japan is $1.20 (up to an ounce). Priority mail is very pricey, though.

@Buffy: Per my comment on the question, I would eat tenfold that cost ($12.00) without blinking. Who wouldn't? Unless you really dislike the student, why complain about that?

@MPW, I was emphasizing that it can be an inconsequential cost. IIRC priority mail to Japan can be around $70, however.

@Buffy If international priority is required for some reason, the professor would go to the department secretary and the department would pay for it without blinking. Personal anecdote: I got a letter with something close to overnight shipping from the US to Europe after I told the department they misspelled my name for some visa stuff.

@MPW I mean, if you like more than one student, that can add up esp if you're not tenured.

Most professors would be willing to do this, or their department would, but you can also offer to provide them postage for this. You could even take the sealed and addressed letters and post them yourself as an alternative.
But it would seem odd if anyone objected to paying for the postage.

you can also offer to provide them postage for this. As I was saying, the time a professor spends writing a letter is worth a lot more to them than the cost of a postage stamp, and yet it’s obviously unacceptable for a student to offer to pay for it. Can you comment on why you think it would be okay for the student to pay for the postage?

@AnonymousM sorry, I have no idea what tradition or historical factoid you’re referring to… I guess it really is pretty obscure.

@DanRomik, "provide them postage" isn't the same as "provide money for postage". Providing a stamp lets them, among other things, use a department envelope which may be printed with a university return address. But, I agree that there should be no need for it.

@DanRomik My impression of the social rules, at least in America, is that you do not offer to pay if you're asking someone for a favor. In this case, you are not and cannot hire the professor to write the letter for you, so you do not offer to pay them. But it is acceptable and often accepted to pay auxiliary costs, like gas (for something they have to travel for), food (for something that takes an extended amount of time) or postage (if the favor involves mailing something).

Here is another perspective from a european university. At my place it would be most strange, if official mail, concerning someone from the institute in even the remotest possible way, would not simply be covered by the institute of the professor. There is also the option to send the mail personally (to make sure everything is done correctly) and then reimburse the cost from the institute (though you would have to be working for the institute).

This is what I would have assumed. Writing recommendation letters is part of the job. Expenses incurred to furfill the job are the problem of the employer. I would assume the faculty would have postage paid envelopes, or would reimburse. Now it might not be worth the effort of reimbursing, but in that case it's also not worth the student worrying about

Another possibility: send the professor an International Reply Coupon. These are available from your local post office, and can be used by the recipient to send a letter first-class airmail.  This works regardless of where your correspondent is.  No currency exchange required.

mostly unrelated, but the purported scheme (cover story) invented by Charles Ponzi to attract "investors" was to arbitrage the International Reply Coupon!


text:
How to translate German "Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz"?
I'm drafting a job offering for a paid PhD position at a German university. It's a temporary position, so it's offered under the terms of the Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz, a German law that limits the number of years that people can be employed with temporary contracts by German universities and similar institutions.
As I wish to invite applications also from people whose first language is not German, I need an appropriate translation of Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz. Is there an official English translation of the title? If not, is "Law on Temporary Employment of Scholars and Researchers" an appropriate translation?

As I wish to invite applications also from people whose first language is not English Do you mean German?

I wouldn’t translate the law’s name as I do not see how it helps potential applicants. Just put yourself in their position and think about what benefit it grants you:

Any reasonable resource elaborating the content of the law in detail will mention the German name, even if written in English.
The translation itself will only give the applicant a very rough idea what it is about. The more important aspect what relevant consequences the law has.
To be actually affected by the law, the applicant has to have a history of employment in German academia and thus not be scared by long German words anymore.

If I would have to write about this in a job ad, I would write something like:

Applicants who were previously employed in a similar position in Germany may not be eligible due to the restrictions imposed by German law (Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz).

Note that I have rarely ever seen this law mentioned on job ads to which it applies and never on a PhD position – which makes sense because the law would only matter if the candidate already has been employed on a PhD position in Germany for more than three years.
Finally, if you can, I would let your HR department worry about this. They should have some legal boilerplate available.

Or recycle the text from the last offer from the chair in question. . . .

When I did my research for the job offering (it's the first time that I'm in a position to offer a job to others), I also noticed that the WissZeitVG is indeed rarely mentioned ever. I think I'll go for a wording similar to what you suggest, and I'll also leave the rest for those whose job it is to know about the Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz.

I would ad that if it's online, using the word as anchor text to a link to a description would be nice.

I would keep the name of the law in German. If potential candidates are unfamiliar with that law and want to find out more then they will have a hard time finding the law if you only give them your English translation. Those who are familiar with the law may become uncertain if you mean that law. Ther German name is unambiguous (but ugly). Alternatively, you could use the German term and your translation in parentheses.

Thanks for your comment. I agree with all your points, but as they are in a way a subset of Wrzlprmft's, I think I'll accept his answer.


text:
How to balance what the accepted wisdom demands vs. what the conscience demands in advising young trainees?
This post is focused on the life sciences. Encouraging students to pursue a career in biomedical research is taken as indisputably the right thing to do. For example see, this page from the U.S. National Institute of General Medical Sciences.
Yet, a more sober evaluation shows that such career path is fraught with some serious shortcomings that are usually minimized or even ignored. For example see this article, not to mention ridiculous funding “success” rates.
The question is: with the rosy picture of biomedical research career path typically painted - should one go with the conventional wisdom and encourage young people along that path, or should one go with what the conscience demands and warn these same young people to beware? Or perhaps there’s a third alternative.

How is it any different from career advice in pretty much every profession?

@JonCuster I would think there’s a lot of overlap. However I opted to focus on the science area I’m experienced in. (Math field seems to be significantly different).

Different aims for different groups. The NIH wants to ensure a large crop of budding researchers to compete, best of the best sort of thing. Educators have a different aim: To train those selecting that path, ideally making them aware of the funnel—and options—ahead.

Every career path is fraught with some serious shortcomings that are usually minimized or even ignored. Do you have something better to recommend to them?

@MisterMiyagi True. Except that the discrepancy between the myth and the reality of the biomedical research field is particularly pronounced.

@JonCuster Careers in most professions are not characterized by extreme funnel of academia, where you either keep progressing up the ladder or have to switch careers. In most career paths you can simply stall out and stay at your current level.

@TimRias Nicely articulated.

I wouldn't accept the premise that these shortcomings are "minimized or even ignored." In my circles, there's lots of discussion about science as a career path. Just look at academic Bluesky, or even posts here. I linked up your bare links, but let me suggest your second-to-last sentence is a bit tortured.

@AzorAhai-him- Thank you for linking up. Respectfully, I have a very different view than yours. It's not that shortcomings are never discussed. They are. But on balance, such shortcoming are indisputably minimized compared to their actual magnitude. And it's not about discussions in circles. It's about giving an accurate view in public of the field to young people possibly contemplating such journey. In any case, the question was unfortunately tagged w. the interesting "opinion-based" designation! Hopefully someone more experienced with this site can edit the question so that it's compliant.

@AH Well, "But on balance, such shortcoming are indisputably minimized compared to their actual magnitude" is your opinion, which is part of the reason I VTC'd.

@AzorAhai-him- I'm new to this platform but it seems that your decision to VTC was opinion too :-).

I don't deny it, but that is the role of community moderation.

@AH I mean, don't forget that almost everyone mentoring in an academic context is there because they chose an academic path; they're not the most qualified people to advise on other careers because they likely never have had one. They're also heavily filtered by survivorship bias, so their advice even for an academic path is almost as bad as listening to successful entrepreneurs lecture on entrepreneurship.

@BryanKrause Agreed. The real challenge IMO is the lack of recognition of the seriousness of this issue. Take the VTCs to close this topic. As well intentioned as they may be, they're just further (indirect/tangential) evidence of this unfortunate lack of recognition of this important issue.

@AH Eh, I don't know. I think it's taken pretty seriously. Just aren't a lot of good solutions. I wouldn't take question closure as indicating it's not taken seriously, it's closed because this isn't a discussion forum

@BryanKrause: '... their advice even for an academic path is almost as bad as listening to successful entrepreneurs lecture on entrepreneurship.' I'd vote to keep this question around simply to preserve this perfect comment. Nicely done!

40 years ago as a new grad student it was clear to me that I didn’t want to be a professor. Instead I’ve had a pleasant career at a national lab. There are lots of biomedical jobs outside of academia. Only talking about faculty jobs is bad, highlighting the breadth of jobs that graduates have taken is a good step.

I don't agree with your statement "Encouraging students to pursue a career in biomedical research is taken as indisputably the right thing to do". Note, that your link doesn't really support that statement. I totally agree that an academic career with the aim to become a tenured professor is not a rosy one at all. But I disagree that pointing this out  goes against conventional wisdom at all. There are many questions here that discuss exactly this. There are many articles written about this... Yes, maybe this should be discussed even more. No, accepted wisdom does not demand to remain quiet.

Sometimes, I'm conflicted when advising. This can happen for multiple reasons (for example, when I have a personal interest in the matter, etc. )
What always has worked for me is that I don't offer advice. Instead:

I offer facts. Like you did in your question.
Then I point out where the person can get other facts (publications, your network, etc.)
Stop
If asked (frequently), I offer opinions, not advice.
Then, I indicate that my opinion should be taken with a grain of salt.
Finally, point out other people (your network) so they give their thoughts.


text:
Discussing religion in diversity statements for graduate school
A sample prompt for a US graduate school diversity statement is:

Describe how your character and experiences have formed you into someone who will contribute positively and effectively to not only the [department/school] but also to the field of physics as a whole. Highlight what is unique about you in a professional context and how you will advance a diverse, inclusive, and equitable environment within the department and the institution. Examples include explaining a meaningful teaching or mentorship experience you’ve had and what you learned from that experience or describing a social, educational, cultural, or economic obstacle you have overcome in your journey to get to where you are today.

From what I understand, the general premise is to talk about one's specific circumstances, even those derived from the circumstances of their birth (e.g., gender inequality in academia). In a similar vein, I was wondering if mentioning a religious identity is appropriate.
A student has turned to me for advice, but being unfamiliar with what role a diversity statement actually plays in admissions, I am quite ill qualified to offer any guidance.
They are legally categorised as an Indian Muslim. They have been actively inspired by the lack of representation that their specific community faces within academia (both at the national level and even somewhat at an international level) and the prevailing stereotypes/discrimination in their own country has played a role in their decision to seek a graduate school experience abroad.
As one might guess, the issue is that this specific religious identity is not seen in a good light everywhere. The student does not want to risk anything that might upset or cause issue with an admissions committee - but at the same time, diversity statements are mandatory in a lot of schools.

What is the point in mentioning "legally categorised"? Do they not identify with that religion, but are legally considered to be Muslim?

"From what I understand, the general premise is to talk about one's specific circumstances" - Eh, I would read some other Q&A here about these sorts of prompts and what they intend to evoke (though as with anything assessed by humans, the specific people reading the statement, who you do not know, will influence what is wanted).

@Dawn Yeah, the Statement of Purpose is separate (more focused on their achievements and their plans, research interests). This particular one is the diversity statement - its not required everywhere, but some of the schools they are targetting do require it.

@AzorAhai-him- Well, I am only sharing information I am absolutely sure of. I don't know what their personal beliefs are except that their legal religious identity is a Muslim (and they identify with it - at least culturally if not religiously; otherwise this question wouldn't arise).

Wow, I would really not want to be in a position of having to answer this kind of question.

In general, these types of statements can do three things:

explain challenges you have overcome that might be reflected as somewhat less desirable parts of your record.
to try to convince the committee that your background (or overcoming that background) has provided you with desirable personal characteristics like grit, curiosity, open-mindedness, good communication, etc.
to demonstrate to the committee that you  “get” diversity concerns and will be able to work well with people whose background is not like yours. For instance, you will be a good TA and not favor one group over another if placed in that role.

It seems to me that Indian Muslims are often somewhat of outsiders in their country and would provide an example that is useful. When you say it is perceived badly, I don’t think that would be the case in the US, unless the person said their background meant they would not work with opposite gender students or something really extreme. That would be a tricky one.

So, the idea is to show that they understand the concept of representation based on their lived experiences. I think, based on everything else, I would ask the student to highlight the fact that they understand the idea of diversity without focusing a lot on the exact details of their background. That seems to be a good balance to me.

I think a few details are a good thing. Describe an obstacle, being in a minority religion would be a good example. Explain what that has taught you.

Everybody can claim to understand something (and often believe that to be true), but that does not mean it is true. You often need to add details to support your argument that you understand.


text:
What should a student do immedately after he or she is accepted into a graduate program
Can someone provide advise as to what a student should do immediately after being accepted into a graduate program and has identified with a professor?
Usually students are accepted in the middle of their final year of undergrad. A window of time opens between now and when the first semester begins.
I wonder what should a student optimally do during this time to smoothly transit into the designated graduate program.
Some thoughts:

Build up relationships with other graduate students, professors
Start reading papers on the topic of focus
Start preparing course work for first year of graduate school
Start identifying specific research area and pin point thesis topic and open questions
Get to know the locale

But ultimately this question is directed at people who have went through this process. What can a student do now in the little time that he or she has to smoothly enter the graduate program?

Go out for a very nice dinner with your friends and family members to celebrate.

okay maybe not that immediate ;)

What country is this?  In the US, I would say 1,3,4 are done after graduate school starts.  4, much after.  Maybe 1 is a good idea, but if you do not already live near there, that can wait until school starts also.

@GEdgar, I think you mean to say that in the US 1,3 and 4 CAN be done after graduate school starts, but there is no reason not to start ahead of time. 1 and 3 can be started easily(even if you don't live close by, it wouldn't be a bad idea to E-mail a few people in your future department) 4, you should be careful about doing too early... If you do pick a specific research area, don't let it be set into stone, be flexible with it, as it may change COMPLETELY once you start school.

Some professors allow you to start during the summer, which can achieve all of the points on your list.

Find a place to live. Make packing/moving lists. If you're switching countries, get a visa arranged.

You should consider whether other programs you have submitted applications to will make you a better offer.

I hold a master's degree, two post-master's degrees and a doctorate. Trust me illegal, I ain't no rocket scientist. I would suggest you congratulate yourself earning a bachelor's degree and take pride in your acceptance into graduate school. Perhaps I am immune to the seriousness of graduate school, but many people I know, myself included, actually found graduate school in some ways EASIER than undergraduate. Perhaps taking the attitude that the "work" simply has to be done, it gets done. Just do it. I worked throughout both my undergraduate and graduate studies, sometimes part-time,.........

..............sometimes full-time. My grades took a hit but I personally did not care. I was not working towards academic excellence, rather my goal was career/professional. If your goal is the same, I'd concern myself with planning for what to do AFTER graduate school. Many employers look not just at grades but on work experience as well. So find yourself a job, keep up with your studies and enjoy. what should you do before starting graduate school? In my opinion, remember you have to first graduate college. Work during summer, take a trip, hang out with buddies, have fun. And most of all....

.....become legal immigrant and HAVE FUN!!! Good luck to you.

I think some of the suggestions I got about publishing are relevant: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5711/things-to-do-before-submitting-a-manuscript

I have three utterly contradictory pieces of advice:

The first year of graduate school will be a much more intense version of the coursework that you took as an undergraduate. In particular, the basic core courses often sink many first year students. For example, in some disciplines you may be asked to read over 1000 pages a week during that first semester, while in others you might be asked to do significantly more complex problem sets or labs than you've ever encountered previously.  If you can, I'd obtain copies of the syllabi for the required first year classes and start reading as much of the material as you can. The more breathing space you can give yourself that first semester the better. Build up your scholarly reserve.
Graduate school is a very long haul. Burnout is a very real possibility. Because you don't have a gap year, you should use your summer to expand your mind a bit. Go for a month or so of walkabout in Europe or Australia. Take what will be your last extended vacation for a little while. Build up your emotional/psychological reserves.
Unless you're in a well-funded program, you may well be destitute -- especially before you pick up a TA/RA position. Even with funding, you may only make $15-25,000 a year, which can be very hard to live on. You might want to build up your savings heading into grad school so that you don't have to take out too many loans or spend too many cold nights eating ramen noodles. Build up your financial reserves.

So sell fake watches on the street of Paris while breath in "astrobiology for the graduate student" :)

This! I took an industry job to do #3 of RoboKaren's advice and also studied a bit off and on to pass a preliminary exam before I walked in.
Focus on not burning out. I know it's a exciting time, but it's important to remember it's not just about a head start.

Perhaps you should clarify what field(s) this applies to - because, for instance, in my field (mathematics), neither #1 nor #3 are quite applicable.  (No "history of discipline", 1000 pages of mathematics per week would be absurd, and TA/RA funding is pretty much universal for PhD students.)  #2 is, though.

@NateEldredge - what do maths students study in their first year and is it possible to do pre-studying over the summer?  It must also be nice to be able to fully fund everyone. I guess this is an artifact of having required math courses for the undergraduates that require boatloads of TAs. Even then, I can't imagine your grad students make more than $25,000 a year, which is poverty level.

@RoboKaren: You can probably get a good sense by flipping open your own institution's graduate catalog to the "Mathematics" section :-) programs are pretty standardized.  Usually real/complex analysis, abstract algebra, and 1-2 other courses.  One certainly can pre-study and it's a good idea, though often it's even more productive to thoroughly review undergraduate-level material.  History of Mathematics is, for better or for worse, often considered a niche subfield of math,  and it's rare for it to be required at the graduate level (if offered at all).

My point is the spirit rather than the letter of the answer. #1 - try to pre-study. #2 try to relax. and #3 even if you are fully funded, it won't be enough. Build up some cash.

I agree with the spirit of your suggestions and just wanted to mention that the specifics can vary.  One of the things I like best about this site is learning that aspects of academia I had always considered universal can actually vary widely between disciplines/countries/etc. To continue on my theme, in case anyone is interested: A moderately dense page of mathematics can easily take an hour or more to read and fully digest, so 1000 pages per week is out of the question; I'd say 40-50 is a more plausible average.  Much more time is spent solving exercises.

Amended as suggested. :-)

It is nice to support everyone and lower-level service courses are a huge part of that.  $25,000 (9 months) is about right for wealthy private institutions, publics more like $20,000 or less.  For students who are single and live simply it tends to be sufficient.

It might also be good to mention that the salaries of PhD students are not nearly this bad everywhere. My impressions is that those places where being a PhD student is actually a job (as in, you are employed), the salaries are decent enough to live on (though still not anywhere near competitive with industry).

Because the OP is an undergraduate and going straight into a graduate program, we can safely assume she is not in Tobias' hypothetical situation.

I am not sure how you rule it out based on that. Yes, the most likely case is that the student is American, but it is also possible to go straight from undergraduate to PhD other places (e.g. Aarhus in Denmark).

I agree with @TobiasKildetoft. This is a very good answer, but quite US centric. I suggest indicating it explicitly.

Talk to a lot of graduate students, especially in the lab(s) you are interested in.  If necessary, cold-email them and ask about their experiences in the PhD program.  There will be time to talk to graduate students during visit weekend, but you won't get enough time to have a lot of in-depth conversations, and in general the department will put on its best face for you.  (It will mostly be the happy students who bother to show up at visit weekend.)
You don't want to accept an offer only to realize it was not quite what you'd expected.  There are usually things that seem like no big deal during visit weekend, but are actually a huge pain in the ass, and you want to be warned of that early.

As a PhD student in engineering, I can say that the most important initial task is to build relationships with your peers and especially your supervisor. The stronger your academic relationships, the better your foundation of support will be. This will especially come in handy when you need help, either academically or personally.
Also.... read.... a lot.... My trick is to setup a Google Scholar alerts system that forwards relevant articles to a special Gmail tag, for me to read at my own convenience.


text:
What do universities usually do with a student's graded final exams?
Personally I do not recall ever having seen any of my final exams I have taken during my undergrad (except in my nightmares). Midterms, quizzes and homeworks are usually returned to the students before the final exam, but I am really curious as to what happens to the final exams after they have been graded.
Are the exams hauled off to a secret storage facility for keepsake? Are they photocopied and kept as a student's permanent confidential academic record (unbeknownst to the student)? Are the exams hastily moved to a recycling facility and turned into fodder for new exams?
If I were to request a copy of my final exam from undergrad (say after one year), what are the chances that the school will still have a copy?
Can someone (administrator/professors) shed a light on the secret life of a final exam?

I imagine something like Willy Wonka's factory, lots of Oompa Loompa's (sometimes called TA's) dancing and using the exams to create ..something.

(1) hold onto them (2) wait until one of your students becomes a celebrity (3) hold EBay auction for said celebrity's exam text (4) ??? (5) profit!

We have a long-standing soft spot for really funny jokes, so leaving Olorun's comment and a few others. However, please do not put answers in the comment section. This question already has 15 real answers, so any additional  answers in the comments will be deleted without warning (unless they are particularly hilarious).

Speaking as a professor, I typically hold on to them for a year or so just in case any student wishes to see them. That said, I can remember this happening only once in about 5000 students taught.
When I was in college, we had the option of providing self-addressed stamped envelopes in which our final exams could be returned to us. Over half of the students availed themselves of this option.
I do not believe that my university has any formal policy, though they could have one that I am unaware of. It would seem foolish for a professor to get rid of the exams before the students have had an opportunity to see their grades and respond if something seems out of line.

You should check your policies, and applicable laws.

didn't even know it is possible to request a copy back then

If you have a formal grade appeals process, you probably have a policy.

I wonder if there's an archive rule.

At our university, the lecturer has to store your exams (along with the original test and answer key) for at least 2 years. This is so that a committee has the possibility of looking at them during an audit, to determine whether the exam was of sufficient level and graded properly. Usually such an audit does not take place and the exams are simply discarded once the lecturer runs out of shelf space.
There is a 30 day period in which students can request a copy of their exams. After these 30 days, even though the exams are stored, they are no longer entitled to this - the storage is purely for the eventuality of an audit.

What happens with oral exams? Are they simply not allowed? Or should they be digitally recorded/transcribed in order to be accepted?

At one university, I recall the rule was to keep final exams for 5 years.  I wasn't even there for 5 years.

@Bakuriu Oral exams are somewhat uncommon. No records are kept, but (formally) oral exams are open to the public so anyone is welcome to come and verify things are done fairly.

At my university, it was all student work for at least 2 semesters/terms. You can imagine what that looked like with daily quizzes for over 100 students...

An out-of-the-way corner of my office contains stacks of final exams from the last few courses I've taught. Students are welcome to stop by my office and retrieve their exams; very few do so, but more than the one in 5000 mentioned by Corvus.  We're not supposed to discard the exams until some time (maybe a year, maybe 3, I don't remember offhand) has passed, presumably because students might open a grade appeal process.  I generally keep exams longer, but not forever; when that out-of-the-way corner gets too full (and when I notice it) I weed out the oldest exams.

As you can see from the other answers, practice varies considerably from institution to institution. Generally speaking, in every jurisdiction there is a period during which a student can challenge their marks. I have never seen or heard of a situation where this was not based on the grade of the final examination. The final examination papers are therefore treated as legal documents which must be kept in a place where they are easily accessible. Once the statute of limitations runs out on these documents --- again varying from place to place --- the papers are disposed of. At my department they are usually shredded, but nobody has ever told me that they cannot be disposed of in some other manner. (Of course if you are a packrat, you can store them in your office until you retire.)

The shredding is probably because of privacy laws (FERPA, probably).  All it takes is one person looking through the trash to find these exams and you could have a big problem on your hands.

At my UK institution, exam scripts are stored centrally by the university up to the deadline for formal appeals (I think one year post graduation). Any student should be able to request to see their exam script under data-protection rules, and a number do. As a lecturer I usually won't see the scripts after I've submitted the marks – the administrators take them away as soon as possible so they're organized for the external examiners.

At my Alma Mater, and for over 5 years now, all final exams are scanned after grading, and the paper is shredded (not necessarily immediately but pretty quickly I think). Then they all live in infamy on some web server...
Each student can access the scan of their graded exams, of course.

At my institution in the US, materials used for grading are to be kept until after the appeal / change deadline, which one has to look up in the rules, but has been after two quarters. Students can asks for them, because they are "records" which they have a right to. After that, they are to be destroyed (because, by policy, failure to pick it up means they have abandoned their "record"). About two students gave me envelopes to mail the exam to me, a bunch would pop in after grades were posted to get the exam, and maybe a dozen asked for them some time around the start of the next quarter. Because exams have to be kept secret, retaining them indefinitely poses a substantial risk for the institution, so they tend to favor short periods of retention. However, there can be specific state-mandated retention policies which force longer retention; so I suspect there is much variation in how long exams are retained in the US.

After an exam was taken, the secretariat of our institution copies them and sends them to the lecturer in charge of it (some major exams require a second reviser). After grading them, the lecturers have to return the exams to the secretariat which announces the results to the students who failed (passes are only told on request). The graded exam papers (with the lecturer's signature) will be stored in the secretariat for one year after announcing the result as the law gives every student the right to dispute a grade within that time frame.
Theoretically we could dispose of them after that time. In fact, however, it is too much work to regularly scan the students' files for such "expired" exams as there are several smaller and major exams throughout the year. So what's done is normally, that they dispose of all them (but finals, which must be stored a lifetime) one year after the graduation of a student.

LIfetime storage?  I sure hope they've gone digital on that.  Otherwise that's a very untenable fire hazard.

@zibadawatimmy No, nothing digital. Digital images can be manipulated. And there's not really much of a fire hazard. The archive is all steel and concrete and there's (beside the lamp and the dehumidifier) nothing there that could cause sparks or the like.

If you think a digital image can be manipulated, then wait until you see what I can do to those papers with any of the following: pen, pencil, eraser.  Encryption will protect digital versions of the files at least as well as a guarded storage facility.  And the untenable part is that if the university exists for long enough then they will always run out of storage.  And storage costs money, both in construction, maintenance, and opportunity costs.  And if they cease to exist, what do they then do with their stored finals?

@zibadawatimmy You say these things like they are a bad thing.  Fire is good because it reduces university storage liability.  Document manipulation is good because I can retroactively pass/fail anyone I choose without having to hire computer nerds.  Construction can't happen without kickbacks.  And your comment about what if the university ceases to exist? I guess the government just has to keep funding them in perpetuity.  Don't smash the iron rice bowl.

This has been mostly answered with a variety of practices, but I'll note that the return policy (as opposed to whether it's kept at all) does depend somewhat on discipline and (in particular) the type of exam.  I hope this is considered relevant, as I feel like it has been discussed quite a bit in other answers.  Here is what I've noticed.

@Maroon is right about math exams - typically "In mathematics sequences taught by the same instructor, we simply received the final exam papers in class in the succeeding term" is a reasonable policy.  I've gone so far as to hunt students down because then I don't have to find a place to hang on to them, or because I know they'll be happy to see it (especially if the final is a longer take-home exam or a portfolio); we're small, so this is doable.  But then again, it's often not so hard for me to change the questions for succeeding offerings of the same course.
In many humanities courses, you would not be able to keep the exam because there are only so many good questions for essays and the like (or at least because they think this is the case).  Naturally this is for an essay exam, not a final paper.
In some social or hard science courses (and elsewhere, e.g. humanities survey courses), you may have a multiple-choice exam that is graded by "Scantron" or computer or some other way.  In such events I also wouldn't expect to be able to keep the exam itself, but perhaps the scored sheet could be given to the student (since they could just change the order of the questions in a succeeding term).

Finally, there is a new trend toward what is called "embedded assessment", or the idea that one can track how well a course is doing at its objectives by examining some subset of questions that are not changed from term to term.  In that event I would expect that exams definitely wouldn't be handed back, though again one might be able to look at them.

At my university there was no centralised repository for exam scripts, and it was the responsibility of individual academic staff to store the exam scripts for their own classes for two years, at which time they could be disposed of.  (In the event of a staff-member leaving the university, they would give their exam scripts to the colleagues taking over their courses.)  Each semester we would get an email from our wonderful school administrator reminding us all that we were now allowed to dispose of exam scripts from Semester X, Year Y.  There would be disposal bins provided, which were the kind that are bolted shut, so that once you dispose of them you can't get them out.
As to what happens with the exam scripts after they are put into the disposal bins, I have no first-hand knowledge.  However, I conjecture that all the exam scripts from all the universities in the country are taken out into the middle of the desert and burned in a mighty bonfire, with exorcists from all the world's major religions present to banish the evil spirits of introductory-calculus errors back to the netherworld.

It depends on the university, as others have said. There may be specific policies regarding grade availability, audits, etc.
In U.S. public universities, graded material that isn't returned to students may also subject to public records laws. These laws are not very consistently followed or enforced for individual faculty records, and details vary from state to state, but my memory of the relevant training session is that Texas law requires them to be kept for 5 years then properly destroyed, with a record destruction report filed.

This community wiki answer was created from answers in the comments.
At community colleges in California, accrediting bodies have dictated that we have to have things called SLOs, which are a useless and statistically meaningless way of measuring what students learned in a supposedly standardized way. One of the most common ways of doing an SLO is to use a particular problem from the final exam. For this reason, we generally have to hold onto the finals at least until we're done with that particular round of the SLO.
In some other universities, exams are archived in a central facility in preparation for accrediting body auditing. The accrediting body verifies that we had an impressive amount of paper stored in an organized manner and little else.


text:
How can a master thesis in STEM approach the level of a doctoral thesis?
Can someone shed some light on the subtle difference between a master thesis and a doctoral thesis so that a master student can arrange his or her research strategy geared to produce work at near the level doctoral thesis assuming that time is not a factor.
Note: I come from an engineering background so research encompasses both theoretical work (derivation of equations, modeling) and experiments (software analysis, characterization of physical devices)
Please also feel free to comment on the feasibility of actually producing PhD level dissertation at the master level

In some fields the main difference is simply the requirement of original research. Could you specify your field?

Sorry, I don't quite get it: "so that a master student can arrange his or her research strategy geared to produce work at near the level doctoral thesis assuming that time is not a factor." You want to produce research which is at the level of a PhD thesis and which takes more time than an ordinary master's thesis.  So....don't you want to be a PhD student?  What am I missing?

Requirements vary widely from program to program and from institution to institution.
Some programs require a doctoral candidate to publish in a peer-reviewed journal (probably most programs would take issue if you didn't publish or present anything). Most programs (or committees) wouldn't let you graduate with a PhD unless you published at least once, and would expect at least twice.
My general hunch is that a doctoral dissertation (rarely called a "doctoral thesis") is generally several times longer. While a masters thesis might be 20-50 pages, dissertations are routinely 80-150 pages...and sometimes way more (this varies widely by discipline, by the academic culture of your institution, and by your committee). Some programs allow the doctoral candidate to use three publications, combined into a single manuscript, as his or her dissertation.
Lastly, the doctoral degree is intended to show that the recipient can perform original research. Masters degrees have a wide variety of understandings or intents, from "the recipient passed our comprehensive exams", to "the recipient performed an original research project and published it".
Whatever you've done for your masters thesis, focus on research for your PhD. Learn what interesting questions are in your field and choose one to focus on. Read the background literature to learn how others have approached the problem. Work with your advisor and committee to figure out how you can contribute something new and useful to the field, and then do it. Publish your findings in a journal; present your results and network with peers at conferences. Finally, write it all up in your dissertation, defend it, and graduate. That sums up getting a PhD. The rest are details.
You may find this page useful.

There's another few steps to getting your PhD: either you, your advisor, or somebody at a conference will bring you to the breaking point sometime during your time as a grad student. At these times, commiserate with your fellow grads, encourage each other, drink beer (if that's your thing) or start a new hobby on the side to maintain your sanity. Rinse and repeat.

Just a nitpick, but I somehow feel that in "this varies widely by discipline", it should be emphasized that "this" refers to both indicated number ranges. In any case (concerning that you commented on your own answer), you should always be able to edit your answers to add additional information later on.

"probably all would take serious issue if you didn't" A not-insignificant number of students are funded by grants from industry, with the requirement that their thesis is "sealed" for a number of years before being made publicly. There would obviously be no expectation that they should publish if they are working on something confidential.

rarely called a "doctoral thesis" — I hear "thesis" and "dissertation" used interchangeably all the time.

80 pages sounds more like masters thesis to me :-)

@MJeffryes: As far as I know, things are less binary than what your comment sounds like. The thesis as a whole may well have to be sealed, but the reasons for that might vary - e.g., some companies require secrecy especially or only if any of their data or processes are mentioned, which may be the case in the thesis, but does not necessarily apply to every single publication on a single aspect of the research. Also, some universities aim for upholding the scientific spirit of publishing one's results in a way that they flat-out refuse to sign any blanket agreements for sealing whatever is ...

... created during a PhD, and insist on deciding on a per-case basis, which again can mean that at least some papers are published as a basis for the thesis.

@O.R.Mapper My point is just that there are plenty of cases where students do not publish, and this is not a problem for their PhD, not that no students with a sealed thesis publish. At least in the UK, there is generally no requirement to publish in order to graduate, the thesis is judged purely on its own merits.

"Some programs require a doctoral candidate to publish in a peer-reviewed journal (probably all would take serious issue if you didn't)." This is wildly false at the level of all STEM disciplines. Please scope your statement accordingly and include information about why or how you believe this to be the case.

@PeteL.Clark: You mentioned that some countries (e.g. India) do impose hard limits in your comment here: http://tinyurl.com/m5shkc6. See the discussion here (http://tinyurl.com/kfnbtpj), here (http://tinyurl.com/mwt383d) or here (http://tinyurl.com/mpnbq2y) for some further discussion.

Right.  To be more clear, what is wildly false is "probably all would take serious issue if you didn't".  Also "Most programs (or committees) wouldn't let you graduate with a PhD unless you published at least once, and would expect at least twice." depends what you mean by "most" and what programs you are ranging over.  If by this you mean more than 50% of all STEM PhD programs in the world, I don't know whether it's true and I would be interested to know.

@PeteL.Clark: Gotcha. I would also really be interested to see this tabulated out!