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Limits on one student using all of one's office hours?
I generally don't have a lot of business in my dedicated office hours, but then sometimes I get a needy student who wants to use all of them -- every minute, of every day, in which I hold them. It gets physically tiring for me, and emotionally draining that they apparently have no capacity or confidence to follow along in class, read the book, or make connections on their own.
Granted that we have, say, 3 hours of office time per week (required at my institution), is it acceptable to set per-student limits on usage of that time, such as: 20 minutes per student per day?
Additionally, is it advisable to be forthright and tell the student that their behavior is unusual/a bad sign/an abuse of the office hours; that is, that they should be mostly responsible for the material on their own? (Often this same type of student will praise themselves aloud for being so proactive/smart with the office hours when others aren't using them.)
This is in the U.S., and I'm at a large urban community college. Assume that most of the time no other students are showing up to the office hour.
(This was mentioned in this question and comments therein; I'd like to see a canonical answer on just this aspect of the situation.)

I'm guessing this is that other thread you're mentioning, though my "related" sidebar suggests several others that might be relevant.

@zibadawatimmy: That's the thread; added to my question, thank you.

@zibadawatimmy I really like the comments you wrote for that answer. I think you should rewrite it to answer this question. To the OP, I have the same opinion that you are supposed to teach the whole class, not just that student. However, I think you should not impose the time limit. Off-topic-ness (like we do here) may be a better way. For example, if the student becomes abusive, just tell him/her that it is off-topic or out of bound and then tell the student to stop. (I do hope that you do have the authority to do so.)

Is it truly a need of the student? I had some classmates at University that just feigned interest to had a free pass in some classes.

Are you obliged to have dedicated office hours? I run (not in the US) office hours by appointment, and this is very helpful to avoid cases like the one you describe.

What are you actually doing with the student during that time?  If it's tiring for you, it also might not be the most helpful sort of activity for the student.  (E.g. if you're explaining things and doing all the talking, maybe the student is not actually comprehending or having a chance to think about it for themselves.)  You could start telling them "I think it would be most helpful for you to go now and read this / work that problem / etc.  Come back in half an hour and we can discuss it some more."

@massimoortolano generally (or at least everywhere I've been) in the US, we're required to have 2-4 hours scheduled each week (required number may vary)

@MassimoOrtolano: Yes, we are required by the institution to have 3 hours of office time per week for students. I edited the question to make that explicit.

@scaaahu: Thanks for the idea, I did write up my own answer as suggested!

@NateEldredge: The most common situation is a back-and-forth Q&A session. Sometimes every question leads to another, more basic one. Sometimes the questions are mangled in their terminology so that I need to correct that first, before addressing the actual questions.

So perhaps at some point your answer can be "This is something you studied in Previous Course X; how about if you go and read about it in the textbook, and then come back."  That might have a similar rate-limiting effect to setting an explicit time limit.  But it might come across more as "I am helping you to find resources to learn this" instead of "You are wasting my time and need to go away".

Note that the premise here is that the student in question seems unable to do any self-study. Some of our students are not functionally literate. Almost none have textbooks from previous courses (because they didn't keep them and/or no books were required or used in prior courses).

I will argue that setting limits for a particular student is acceptable and in some cases necessary. It really is an abuse of office hours if one student is taking up all of them, every day. Let's say that proper usage is around 10-15 min for a particular question or issue. For a particularly weak student like this I may assert, "Let's say we have 20 minutes for this." Require that she ask about a particular homework exercise that she can show prior work for. Do not just regurgitate the lecture wholesale.
By default, students should be able to master the material via lectures, study, and homework, without constant additional hand-holding by the instructor. Part of the unfairness here arises from the fact that the student is effectively getting double face-time with the instructor, relative to other students; so the one student's success does not really represent the same level of proficiency as shown by other students. Some other students may possibly take note of this, and either avoid office-hours interactions (which would be more fruitful) because of the always-present student, or silently resent the double-attention.
If the instructor (like me) is becoming physically and emotionally drained by these constant interactions, then we should learn to be sensitive to that, and take that as a signal that some change or boundary needs to get set, lest we become burned out. There is, in addition, a possibility that the student thinks they are socially flattering or flirting with the professor for a better grade. It's probably a good idea to document these interactions, in case the needy student (or anyone else) is prone to complain later about their grade or some other matter.
Under the "honesty is the best policy" principle, it's probably good in theory to have a frank discussion of expectations for the course with the student around the second or third time this happens. (But: I don't think I've successfully executed that to date.)
The real tough case for me is a student who officially meets all the prerequisites to the course and points to the first day's lecture notes and says something like, "I have no idea what any of these words mean." Perhaps they got through all their prior courses in a state of acclimation to exactly this level of double-hand-holding.
(This answer largely restates my answer and comments on that issue from this question. Thanks to the commentators there for refining my thinking on the issue, and thanks to @scaaahu for suggesting I write them up as an answer here.)

I'm loathe to pick my own as the accepted answer, but it's a year later and it has the highest upvote, so here we go.

The issue here is not what proportion of the published office hours are being used by one individual, it's that "they apparently have no capacity or confidence to follow along in class, read the book, or make connections on their own."
You are this student's teacher.  That gives you a special responsibility, not only to help the student master the material in your course, but also to assist in, and insist on, an improvement of his or her study skills.  You are not obligated, however, to be his or her personal homework tutor.
Do not hesitate to make your expectations for independent work clear; of course, you should also be realistic, and start wherever the student currently is, in terms of study skills and ability to work independently.
Example:

Mr./Ms. X, I'm going to circle three things from the notes I made during our study session today, that I want you to follow up on, on your own.  Let's review those now to make sure they're clear to you.  Explain the three things to me now.  (E.g. look up Topic A in the index, take notes on what the text has to say on that topic; go over the section of the textbook that was assigned in class this morning, and write an outline of that material, and highlight the parts that you were already familiar with, if any; in advance of our next class section, write down three things you want to get out of the lecture, and then highlight any parts of your class notes that address any of those three things.  I just made this up, your assignment could be completely different, of course.)

You may at this point politely and cheerfully show your student the door, even if it's only been a five-minute conversation.  Example:

Okay, that should get you unstuck.  I look forward to seeing your progress with this assignment!  I am going down the hall to do some xeroxing.  May I give you a hand with your bookbag?

It is your job to make sure that you are bringing your student up, and that your student is not bringing you down.
Additional note: find out what homework help labs exist and make sure your student knows about them.

Granted that we have, say, 3 hours of office time per week (required at my institution), is it acceptable to set per-student limits on usage of that time, such as: 20 minutes per student per day?

In order to evaluate this situation, I think it is worth starting with the "Devil's advocate" argument for why it might be okay for one student to take up all the time.  One could reasonably make the argument that, so long as there are no other students waiting, the allocated consultation hours might as well be available to the one student who wants to use them.  (Obviously if other students are being crowded out then an equity issue arises, and in this case it is reasonable to limit student time so that everyone gets some consultation time.)  If the university requires a given number of hours to be made available for consultation then it is an institutional requirement for these to be available to students.  While this may be tiring for the lecturer, if that is a job requirement, it is arguably a situation where the tiredness of the lecturer is irrelevant.  Refusing to allow consultation in those hours to the only student who wants to be there is arguably a breach of the university's requirements for consultation time.  Finally, the argument that there is an "equity" issue involved when only one student seeks to make use of an offered resource is weak --- if no-one else wants to use that resource then there is no inequity in him using the whole thing.
I think the above is roughly what would be a good argument in favour of the student here.  But notice that even under this view, this does not mean that the student should have carte blanche to have the lecturer give them anything they want within the consultation hours.  Consultation hours certainly should not be used to redeliver lectures and tutorials for a student who has not absorbed those sessions.  It is reasonable to impose some structure on the consultation sessions and some requirements on student effort in order to ensure that those sessions actually advance the goal of student learning (as opposed to creating a perverse incentive for lack of effort in lectures and tutorials).  The suggestion to confine consultation to help with problems on which the student can show a preliminary attempt/effort is perfectly reasonable, and it ensures that there is some focus to the session.  It is also reasonable if the lecturer responds to these cases by giving further hints or suggestions for the student to go away and re-attempt the problem, rather than giving a long and detailed solution.  (The latter may be required after several attempts, but it need not be a first response.)  For more general inquiries about concepts, etc., one could again require preliminary student effort by having the student gread the relevant material and give their own explanation of the concept in order to get your feedback; you can then point out flaws in their reasoning and have them re-read the relevant material and come back to get more feedback later.
Even if one accepts the above argument that a student may legitimately use all the consultation hours, one can easily turn this stamina-competition around on the student --- this merely requires that the structure of the consultation assistance requires preliminary student work and the feedback on the work is quicker than the preliminary work required to gain that feedback.  For example, if each preliminary attempt at a homework problem takes 10 minutes, and the lecturer feedback giving hints/suggestions on the problem then takes 2 minutes, then the student will need to spend five times as much time working as the lecturer.  In this case the student will be the one who has to spend large amounts of time working and getting physically tired, and this is likely to yield a natural limitation to the monopolisation of consultation time.

Additionally, is it advisable to be forthright and tell the student that their behavior is unusual/a bad sign/an abuse of the office hours; that is, that they should be mostly responsible for the material on their own?

Monopolisation of consultation time is arguably not an abuse at all, so I wouldn't suggest taking this line.  Similarly, telling the student they are mostly responsible for learning on their own ---when you are actually supposed to be offering consulation in this time--- is arguably contradicatory to the university's consultation requirements.  However, use of excessive consultation time is often a warning sign of failure to learn the material properly in lectures and tutorials, and it is perfectly reasonable to be forthright about this.
If the student has no capacity to follow along in class, read the book, or make connections on their own (as you describe) then this is the core issue.  If this is the case then it is reasonable to give the student feedback pointing out these deficiencies.  In some cases it might be that a student lacks sufficient preliminary knowledge/skills for the course, in which case you could direct them to bridging courses and resources (e.g., study-skills center at the university, etc.).  Alternatively, if they are close enough that the problem is fixable in the present session, then it might be worth "stepping back" to look at the meta-problem --- if they are not able to follow along without one-on-one consultation then perhaps the best use of consultation time is to try to assist them to develop this capacity, rather than spoon-feeding them with help on particular course problems.


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What is the most effective way to take notes in class?
I'm a freshman in college, so I'm pretty new to the lecture style of classes where you do most of the work outside of class, and the professor discusses it and gives more information in class. Well, to start the year I took notes basically word for word, concept for concept what my professor in any given class was talking about. However, I found later throughout the year that I didn't remember concepts that the professor was conveying because I was so busy writing. What should I do in the future? What has worked well for you all?

There is no one answer.  Different people take notes best in different ways.  So, if you get a list of suggestions here, try them and see which ones work best for you.

Do a site search on note-taking. There are several other Q&As that you might find useful.

There is a gadget, a special pen, you can buy that transcribes the lecture.  I haven't tried it.  Might be worth trying!  //  It would be helpful to know what sorts of classes you're taking.

I think that this question has the potential to be a very valuable addition to the site; perhaps it can be edited to be a better fit.

Voting to reopen --- the purported reason for closure does not appear to be a real rule (and it is not mentioned in the linked page).  This question is clearly about study habits that are relevant to academia.

I'm a PhD candidate from Caltech and here are my tips:

If it's a Math/Stat class, you should always bring a notebook and a pen to drop down the derivations and you have to review the notes immediately after the class; You should always make sure you are not lost in the middle of this type of classes.
If it's a Bio/Chem or any class focusing on stories and concepts, you should always print out the powerpoints in advance and bring a laptop. So that you can highlight on the hardcopy and type fast on the text editor. The text editor on your laptop is very efficient when the lecturer refuses to hand out the notes. I'm still using my small netbook to take notes during seminars.
If it's a CS class focusing on the codes/syntax, you should bring your laptop and have all the tools installed before the class. You should always type in the commands as the lecturer does and save all the commands together with comments which include your own notes. Those are very precious materials to your own benefit.
Learn to use the short forms of words when typing:
with as w/
without as w/o
experiment as exp.
statistically significant as stat. sig.
Practice the ability to type without looking at the keyboard.
Always have a good sleep.

Hope these help you

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What are some concerns professors at a research institutions might have when graduate students begin to form a union?
I'm curious to ways professors might support or resist efforts by gradate students to unionize. The only reason I can think of, is the concern that grant money could hire less students if they were paid more. Is this a valid concern?
What if the reasons for unionization aren't about pay? Are there any other reasons professors might not want a union forming? Are there any reasons why professors might prefer to work with a unionized student body?

Are you looking for concerns other than that they won't be able to exploit their graduate students as effectively?

Not an answer, but most US professors aren’t particularly involved in labor policy issues at their university. Even when I was a department chair I had very little knowledge of the terms under which our graduate students were employed (such matters are handled by my university’s Graduate Studies unit). So, to a first order approximation I’d guess the answer to your question is “none”.

related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20531/what-are-the-benefits-detriments-to-graduate-students-joining-unions/20538#20538

@Tashus [Citation Needed]

A lot depends on what the concerns of the grad students are, at least initially. If they think they will magically double their pay or something, well, that seems unlikely to happen even in STEM areas that have grant money. Unionizing to have some recognized say in university decisions is quite different, although the desire and motivation to do so likely will fluctuate dramatically over time. When I was a grad student I would not have voted to certify, and I certainly would not have gone on strike - I was well compensated and not exploited in the least.

There is a study on the effects of graduate unions on faculty-student relationships:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001979391306600208
As they state in their abstract, "Unionization does not have the presumed negative effect on student outcomes, and in some cases has a positive effect....These findings suggest that potential harm to faculty-student relationships and academic freedom should not continue to serve as bases for the denial of collective bargaining rights to graduate student employees."
One explanation for how a graduate union can improve faculty-grad student relations is because a union allows graduate students to offload certain bureaucratic issues that may typically be dumped on their advisor.  Suppose, for instance, a graduate student has a labor-related issue of some kind (e.g. being assigned an unreasonably high number of students).  In the case where the department or undergrad chair is unsympathetic, the grad student would typically ask their advisor to fight the issue on their behalf.  In an ideal world, this isn't the sort of thing that advisors should have to deal with, but often advisors become a sort of catch-all advocate for their students in various respects.  Were there a dedicated body such as a union for dealing with labor-related issues, the advisor's relationship with their graduate students becomes more solely academically focused.

I don't really have an opinion about this one way or another, but would like to point out the following:
As a professor with external funding, I run a small business. I bring in money from a customer (for example the Federal government) and spend it on salary for myself, postdocs, and graduate students. I get in trouble if I have contracts for which I have no employees ready to do the work. And I get in trouble if I have employees but don't bring in enough money.
If this was a regular business, it would be my choice to set and negotiate salaries. I would also have flexibility in hiring and laying off employees. I would budget as much money as I think it takes to complete the work.
But this is not how it works in academia: graduate student salaries, for example, are set by the university and not me as the employer. And at least in some disciplines, graduate students are hired by the department and only leave when they graduate. As the one who pays their salaries, I have little flexibility to set the terms.
This is occasionally an awkward position to be in. Unions would complicate this because it means that issues such as labor relations, salaries, etc. become even less predictable to me. I already have no real input into their salaries and terms, but at least I know that they are predictable because they are set by the university or department, and I can anticipate what they will be 2 years from now. I might not be able to do that any more to the same degree if there were unions. That matters because I may have a contract that runs 3 or 5 years, with a fixed amount of money and work to be done.

All of this is independent of the moral question of whether employees should be represented by a union. Having grown up in Europe, my take on that is that unions are good.

"I already have no real input into their salaries and terms, but at least I know that they are predictable because they are set by the university or department, and I can anticipate what they will be 2 years from now. I might not be able to do that any more to the same degree if there were unions."  Isn't the precise opposite of that the case?  Surely you can more easily anticipate what salaries will be if graduate students had a contract, no?

@MarcusM the institution effectively enforces a contract on the students- once the university policy is set and a grant proposal has been approved a PI can be sure of what a graduate student will cost.   This would also be true once a union had negotiated a long-term contract, but there could be a substantial disruption in the period when the union is first negotiating a contract.

Actually, and this is just opinion, I think you should support the students in their effort, though perhaps not actively, as you choose. Professors should support their students in all things IMO.
Making it about "more research for less money" is predatory and I advise against that. It isn't even necessarily true. Happier grad students may actually perform better.
One reason for preferring a unionized student body is that some arguments that arise in academia might better be handled if the rules were more formalized as might happen under a contract. More important, you might wind up, in a conflict situation avoiding arguments directly with the students but with a union rep instead. This might make for better relationships.
I'm not a big fan of academic unions actually, as I've never seen the need in my life. But I'm willing to admit that there are situations in which they are needed and the people involved should have a say in whether they feel that a supportive organization is needed. Given the poor support given by State governments to most state universities, it may well be needed, not as a check against the university, but against abuse from higher powers.

On the other hand, there are also situations where arguments are better handled if the rules are less formalized, because the rules have to be designed to cover a broad range of situations and hence won't apply quite as well to any specific situation.

Saying that professors should "support their students in all things" is kind of a blank check for mayhem.

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Resources/methods to teach how to perform research logically
Can you point me to resources (e.g. book, articles, etc.) or methods on teaching students how to think more logically/systematically about doing research?
I've seen a number of intelligent graduate students who do great in performing experiments, but struggle to make logical arguments about their research and conclusions. For instance I see students making statements without providing evidence/arguments for such statements (e.g. "increasing the temperature will cause the experiment to proceed better" but no evidence/reasoning is provided). I see writing from students that is an organized mess with no clear path or direction. I often see short confusing descriptions in written drafts when thorough explanations should be given. I see students put together graphs that are incomprehensible. On and on...
It seems that many students don't "get" how to think scientifically or research-oriented. I know this comes with time and experience, but perhaps there is a way to teach students the underlying principles and approach to doing research?

Of course there's a way to teach them: have them enroll in a research oriented PhD program and practice for five years! An effective approach to research is a skill that takes a long time to develop and will have prerequisites that also take a long time to develop (e.g. how to read scientifically, how to formulate scientific questions, how to verbally express a scientific thought clearly).
That being said, engineering degrees are largely aimed at formalizing the skills that would take a decade or more to acquire through practice. If you can describe a procedure formally in enough detail, maybe, students can just follow the procedure exactly and get acceptable results. I don't know whether this would work or be a good idea for research (BS in Research Engineering anyone?) but it's moot because science programs tend to emphasize content rather than process.

Yes, time, experience, and practice certainly can teach these skills, but I was hoping there might be a way to speed up the process. There are for instance a plethora of books on writing.

From what you described it seems like your students are having trouble with writing clearly and persuasively. If it is possible, you could ask your students to take some classes in humanities or social sciences. Although these classes do not help with the technical skills of your students, they do often require writing skills and critical and close analysis of texts.
As an alternative, you could find some well-written paper in your field, and go over them with your students. Ask the students to pay close attention to the phrasing, structure, and logical flow of the paper. Ask them questions such as "Why did the author review literature on XXX instead of YYY in this paragraph?" or "What potential confound can you think of in this study, and how did the author deal with them and explain their methods?" or "In what order did the author describe their findings?" With enough close reading, your students should get a feel of how good scientific writing is done.
Finally, you can always recommend books on critical thinking and scientific methods to your students. Do a search on Amazon with keywords such as "introductory logic", "critical thinking", "scientific methods", etc. should give you plenty of choices.

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Is it okay to use students as a reference when applying for a teaching position?
On one hand, this seems like the obvious thing to do:  no one is going to be able to better testify to your teaching ability than a previous student.  On the other hand, I've never heard of anybody ever doing this, and for some reason, it seems a bit silly.
So what does the academic community large think about this?  Is it okay to list previous students as references when applying for a teaching position in academia?

I would guess two most important things about a reference letter would be a) what relevant information about your quality can the reference provide and b) how credible is the reference. While ex-students really are a perfect match for a) if looking for a teaching position, they might not satisfy the b) criterion (just by being an ex-student). However, I'm just a PhD student, and this is just what seems logical to me -- I do not think I am a credible reference in this case, so I'm just posting this as a comment :)

We have course evaluations at my university (online forms), and attaching such evaluations sounds to me like a good idea, since these are done anonymously. But, I have never applied for a teaching job, so...

“ex-students really are a perfect match for ‘what relevant information about your quality can the reference provide’”: I would even dispute that. Students are not expert in teaching (see my fuller answer below).

I don't see why you couldn't do this, as long as you made it clear what you were doing, but I think it would probably be a mistake unless it is in addition to the usual documentation (teaching evaluations, teaching letter from a faculty member).
At the very least, you would have to choose an unusually thoughtful and articulate student, someone who could discuss what's distinctive and valuable about your teaching.  Even if you did that, there would be some concern that the student is not someone with a letter writing reputation they have an incentive to protect, or that you may have chosen a student because you couldn't find faculty willing to vouch for your teaching.  However, I think there's a more fundamental difficulty.
Any half-decent teacher can find at least one student every few years who really thinks highly of their teaching.  Maybe it's because the teaching style is a perfect match for the student; maybe it's because the student deeply loves the class material and is somewhat awestruck by the professor.  However, there's always someone, so getting a great recommendation from a student or two tells little about how the other students felt.
If you have broader evidence too, such as strong teaching evaluations from your students overall and a positive letter from a faculty member, then this would not be a difficulty.  (However, if you have these things then the student letter would probably not be needed.)

I concur, as I commented also on another answer, student opinions would be at best considered "anecdotal", in contrast to systematic statistics of student responses. Further, if only because "it's not done", using a letter from a (former) student as a "reference" very possibly would be construed as your failure to understand how things work. So: no. Quote student remarks in your teaching-philosophy statement, but get teaching references from (senior?!) faculty who're acquainted with your teaching. Everything else misses the mark.

At my university, every tenure and promotion case requires a peer evaluation of the candidate's teaching, written by a member of the department's promotion-and-tenure committee.  Promotion committees are prohibited from including narrative feedback from students in these evaluations, for precisely the reasons AnonMath and Paul raise here.

I wouldn't recommend doing it, for a simple reason: you want your reference letters to be from indubitable experts, who can vouch for the quality of your work. However, students are not experts in pedagogy. True, they can tell the difference between a teacher who care and one who doesn't, someöne who invests time and those who don't, but that's it. A reference from a student would most likely comment on the
Yet, it's hard to find a good reference that speaks for the quality of your teaching. You could consider:

asking the head of a specific program in which you have developed course material (or department dean)
asking a colleague with whom you have taught a lot
not a reference letter, but close: quoting from a professional evaluation of your teaching (if such exist in your educational system), done by an expert (professor in pedagogy)

In research, you would definitely consider having a reference from your supervisor. So, do the same for the teaching part!

Many academic jobs (and certainly ones with a focus on teaching) require a teaching portfolio and statement to be submitted with application materials. It is definitely appropriate to include any correspondence from students with this information. The teaching portfolio will also include student evaluations and any other material and thoughts relevant to experiences in the classroom.
I do not think it would generally be a good idea to use a student as an actual reference, however.

I hire for teaching positions and was about to post this very thing.  Instead I will upvote and second.

The look of horror by my PhD advisor said it all when I suggested I could be a referee for him.
This was in a casual conversation as he was applying to get to the next level and we were talking about our career pathways.
I hold a senior executive position in the industry so this was not far fetched in my mind.
Tell me about professional regrets!

Wow, what a mix of incentives and disincentives :)

One of the best references written for me was produced by an A+ student of mine. It featured a great level of detail about my teaching style, and clear explanations as to why he thought I was a good teacher. (This guy went on to work on a Ph.D. in the top US school in his field, computer science; no wonder his analytic skills were top-notch.) He wrote this letter half a year or so after having completed my class, and he mentioned some off-class interactions we've had afterwards when I helped him solve his CS problem, so it was clear that we had an effective work relation. Faculty who came to sit in my class to oblige with the required "peer review of StasK's teaching" would write some crap in their evaluation letters, frankly, as their reviews would be way more superficial.
When I was applying for the faculty positions, I would ask the search chairs whether they wanted the teaching letter from my former student, from my mentor on the tenure track, or from the director of a teaching training program I went to in my University (yes, I did have all three handy, and I cared enough about teaching to enroll in such a program). About three quarters said they wanted the student letter.


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What could be an electronic way to verify that someone is from a specific university department or university?
How could I verify that a person is a student/faculty/researcher at a specific department of any university in world?  I could ask the user to verify the official email address provided by that university to him but not all universities in world provide a email address to their people. A considerably large percentage of universities do not provide.
What could be other ways to collect only verified people in some group for a university department ?

For what purpose do you need to do this verification?

Actually on a website, I need to allow only people access only to their  actual university department.

You mean you have a website which has a section for each of certain departments, and you need to make sure only faculty of a given department can access the given section?

Yes I want to allow anyone(student or a faculty) verified  from a university department to access that restricted section for that department.

BTW, could you give an example of a university that does not provide an email? I have never heard of that (a bigger problem is that often people will be allowed to keep their email long after they are no longer affiliated with the university).

In India, there are many such. Good to know that it's not a worry case (..for US, right?)

But I would have a global audience, so I need to take care of those universities who don't provide email to their students/faculty.

"but not all universities in world provide a email address to their people" - and others do provide e-mail addresses also to people who are not, in the strict sense, "their people" (and not only in the case alluded to by @TobiasKildetoft).

@TobiasKildetoft: Some exemplary arrangements that I've seen: People located at a university (given an office there), but actually financed based on a starbust programme, so they are not formally employees of the university. They are, for all intents and purposes, part of the department, and yet, they don't get a university e-mail address because their arrangement circumvents uni administration and thus systems administration will not provide an e-mail address. Same for people who formally belong to two departments (though only one officially). Likewise, guest researchers who stay for a year.

@Buffy You are cleaning up lots of (very) old postings with minor edits. It's nice to have everything nice, but the edits put the questions on the active question queue; I wonder if there's a way to avoid that.

@EthanBolker, My edits are just tag maintenance. There are some recent Meta questions on this with discussion. See: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5087/75368, and https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5066/75368. In particular [tag:students] is now deprecated and old questions are being updated bit by bit.

There is no good fully automated way of doing this, because there is no central clearing-house are too many ways the humans maintain imprecise machine-readable records.
If you are willing to have a human process, you can deal with a lot of the problem cases with a combination of Google and phone calls.  That still won't ensure that an institution that you personally aren't familiar with is real, given all of the diploma mills in the world, but it will at least reduce the likelihood of giving access to a legitimate institution to the wrong person.

A phone call can verify that John Smith is a student at Foobar University -- but it can't verify that the person trying to register on your site is actually John Smith.  Also, this doesn't seem likely to work on a large scale - after the 50th phone call to the Foobar Registrar Office, I expect they're going to quit taking your calls.


text:
How are Ph.D. applications evaluated in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students? Am I likely to get into school X?
This is a special community wiki 'canonical' question that aggregates advice on a frequently-asked question. See this meta discussion. Please feel free to edit this question to improve it.
When applying to a PhD program in the US, how will applications be evaluated? If an applicant is weak in a particular area, is it possible to offset that by being strong in a different area? How can an applicant estimate the probability that they will get into a PhD program at School X?
This question and its answers assume some basic familiarity with how the graduate admissions process works in the US; for information about this,  please see this canonical answer.

Book on this topic https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/06/new-book-reveals-how-elite-phd-admissions-committees-review-candidates

Q: I asked a very specific question about my profile; why was my post closed as a duplicate of this vague question? A: Sorry, we cannot accurately predict your odds of admission from your "statistics" (see the first part of the below answer for an explanation) and providing individualized advice is not our role in any case. Rather, we have consolidated our advice to this one page. If you can "boil down" your question to something of more general interest (e.g., "how does X affect my odds"), consider editing your question to ask this boiled down version instead.

Please feel free to edit the answer to improve it.
Can I get into school X with my {grades, test scores, research profile, personal story, etc.}?
There is no formula by which we can turn your "statistics" into a probability of admission. Things vary from (sub)field to (sub)field, school to school, year to year, and person to person. If you posted a question asking us to evaluate your profile and your question was closed as a duplicate of this post, this is why. We appreciate that even a "rough," buyer-beware formula would be very useful to applicants, but we are simply unable to provide one. Nonetheless, we hope the information contained in this answer will be useful to you.
How do programs decide who to accept?
Generally, PhD programs in the US have many more applicants than they can accept. The number of positions is limited by finances (a department can only afford a limited number of RAs and TAs), space and resources (students often need offices and access to equipment), and the ability to supervise the students (there is a limit to the number of PhD students a faculty member can effectively supervise). The admissions committee must decide which of the qualified applicants are most likely to be successful researchers while taking departmental needs into consideration. These needs include things like the start-up package for Professor X including a funded PhD student and a particular resource being already at capacity.
The admissions committee bases its decision on a number of pieces of information including GPA (Grade Point Average), GRE (Graduate Record Examinations) scores, statement of purpose, references,  interviews, and, for international students, TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) scores. Again, there is no formula (e.g., 6×GPA + 1×GRE + 2×references + publications) by which applicants are ranked, but some universities and/or departments set minimum requirements (e.g., GPA over 3.0 or a TOEFL over 85). The admissions committee looks at the entire application to make an informed judgment. This means that being strong in one area can, and does, offset being weak in another area.
How are GPAs evaluated? Can I get in if I have low grades? Do I have a chance if I didn't major in the subject I want to pursue?
When admissions committees consider the GPA, they are considering a number of factors including the grades: the strength of the school and major, the types of classes, and trends. An applicant who did poorly in first-year general electives will be looked at very differently from a student who did poorly in advanced specialized classes. The major is not nearly as important as the relevant classes. For example, an engineering department might look more favourably on a math major who took and did well on, engineering and applied-math electives than an engineering major who took humanities electives. As with everything in the admissions process, the admissions committee is trying to judge the potential for research success.
A low GPA can be offset by a strong research record highlighted in the SOP and letters of reference. The SOP and letters of reference can also be used to make the admissions committee aware of any extenuating circumstances that may have lead to the low GPA. Similarly, the SOP and letters of reference can be used to address how your major and background prepare you for research in the field that you are applying to. Strong GRE scores can also help offset a low GPA, and a strong GRE subject test can compensate for mismatches between majors. The best way to offset a low GPA or a mismatch in the area of specialization is to consider enrolling in a terminal master’s degree and getting a good GPA in difficult classes.
An excellent way of improving a low GPA is by taking a senior thesis course, which is almost always available. Not only is this a proven way of building close ties with one or more faculty members (who will supervise you in your thesis) and getting those strong, personalized recommendations, but it could lead to a publication, or at the very least, a technical report published by the department. In terms of grades, getting a good grade on the senior thesis course is usually not difficult (especially since you’re not evaluated on an exam performance), assuming you put in the effort.
It is also important to think honestly about why certain grades are low, and what you would do differently in graduate school. Learning from failure is a crucial skill (see, e.g., Dweck’s research on growth mindset, as well as  her widely-read book). In fact, almost all academics have been rejected by some of the programs, fellowships, grants, and journals that they have applied for or submitted to, and many have even failed classes. Finding constructive ways to deal with negative feedback, rejection, and failure is crucial in academia.
Examine why you struggled or what went wrong and how you can address a problem like that in the future. How have you developed the knowledge and skills that would have helped you then? Depending on the kinds of problems you faced and the extent of their impact on your record, they may not be appropriate to mention in your SOP and through your recommenders’ letters, but the steps you take to address them might tell their own story. (For example, perhaps you failed a class but then did research with a professor of the same subject, or perhaps you had a rocky college record because you were immature or bad at planning, but you have now worked for five years in a responsible position at a lab.)
How are GRE scores evaluated? How bad is it if I did poorly on the GREs? Can a good GRE score save an otherwise weak application?
First, we should distinguish two things.

The general GRE is like the SAT you took in high school: it contains a math section (very easy; these are literally middle school math problems), a verbal section (much harder), and a writing section.
Some subjects (math, physics, etc.) offer, and some schools require, a subject GRE exam. These are short undergraduate-level questions. Note that the math subject GRE includes abstract math (e.g., abstract algebra, number theory, real analysis) and is therefore unlikely to be appropriate for non-math majors, even those with a strong background in "computational" math.

There are a number of limitations to both GREs in terms of predicting research success, but this is the only standardized metric admissions committees have access to. The weight given to the different sections of the GRE and the subject tests can vary substantially among departments. For example, in STEM subjects, near-perfect math scores on the general GRE are not at all unusual, while near-perfect verbal scores are very unusual. That said, it is unlikely that a super-high score on the general GRE will have much impact, though a strong score on the subject GRE may have some impact (if your field has a subject GRE).
A low GRE score can be offset by a strong research record highlighted in the SOP and letters of reference. The SOP and letters of reference can also be used to make the admissions committee aware of any extenuating circumstances that may have led to the low GRE scores. A strong GPA can also help offset low GRE scores.
A particularly effective way to offset a low GRE is to retake the GRE. In many regions of the world, the GRE General Test is offered year-round via computerized administration at a testing center, and your scores are given to you immediately upon completion.  Upon receiving a lower-than-expected GRE score, you can, and should, immediately register for another GRE exam and begin preparing. Because of the short turn-around time, any preparation you did for the previous GRE should allow you to prepare much more quickly this time.
You are technically permitted to take the GRE General Test once every three weeks, or five times a year. However, repeat testings are detrimental to your schedule, morale, and finances, so it might be best to keep taking the test only until you receive a satisfactory score that you feel will represent your target school's applicant criteria, not until you receive the best score you believe is possible for you. In particular, improving your GRE scores is a time-consuming and tedious endeavor, so you should carefully consider whether there are other areas that may be a better use of your energies.
Once you have received the score you are satisfied with, the ETS offers a service to allow you to selectively determine which scores you provide to schools you are applying to, called ScoreSelect. This way, you can present your best cumulative score to the applications committee without being concerned about an older test, or one where extenuating circumstances made you perform worse than expected.

After test day, you can send additional score reports for a fee, and select from these options for each report you'd like to send:

Most Recent option — Send your scores from your most recent test administration

All option — Send your scores from all test administrations in the last five years

Any option — Send your scores from one OR as many test administrations as you like from the last five years

You will select by specific test dates, so your scores are all from the same testing session.

This applies to both general and subject GREs:

The ScoreSelect option is available for both the GRE® revised General Test and GRE® Subject Tests, and can be used by anyone with reportable scores from the last five years.

Again, the GRE (particularly the General GRE) is a ‘filter’, nothing more. In many cases, even applicants with low GREs will be considered and not automatically discarded. Most top admissions panels do not accept one candidate over another simply based on GRE. Some grad schools don’t even require candidates to submit GREs.
In some fields, the Subject GRE is given significantly more weight than the General GRE, and so a low Subject Test score can be more harmful to a borderline application.  Since the Subject Test is usually offered twice in the fall (September and October), it can be to your advantage to register for both sittings.  This way, you can mitigate a poor showing on the September sitting by a stronger showing on the October sitting;  and if the September sitting yields a satisfactory score, you can simply cancel your registration for the October sitting.  This tactic can also be used for the General GRE in those regions of the world where computerized testing is not available.
How are Statements of Purpose evaluated? What should I say (and avoid saying) in my statement of purpose?
Make sure you understand the conventions and expectations around statements of purpose in your field.  Talk to professors in the field you trust -- and consider searching our archives, we have lots of historical questions about statements of purpose that maybe useful.
Note that your SOP is a professional document that should explain your goals in pursuing a PhD.  The SOP is not the document where you should get too personal. Don’t waste too many words discussing your childhood, or random thoughts you've had, or your theory of life. It's fine to state interests and hobbies and unrelated accomplishments, but make every word as objective (and verifiable) as you can. This is generally true, but especially so for STEM programs. Academics are impressed by crisp, concise writing.
The SOP is also your chance to explain negative experiences, such as poor grades, letters, or lack of research experience. This is a tricky balance. It is important to candidly and directly address your weaknesses: it looks very out of touch if you write an aggressive SOP but never mention your awful grades, for example. At the same time, the SOP is not the place to do a lengthy post-mortem on your failures. You should tell a very simple, clear narrative: "I had personal and medical problems during my junior year, but my performance during the  other three years was very strong." If you want to give a concise reason ("my father died"), you may, but don't overdo it.
The SOP is also your chance to show that your application to this program is well-motivated. If you have already spoken to a professor and there is mutual interest in working together, you should definitely mention it here. If you are deeply familiar with a professor's work -- or have deep experience in the same niche area as a particular professor -- this is a great time to mention it.
If you are not a native English speaker, you should consider hiring a professional editor to help you with your essay. If you have poor writing skills generally, this will be a major problem even beyond your GRE, so you should consider ways to build these skills.
How are Letters of Reference evaluated? What does a good one look like? What should I do if I can't procure strong letters?
You’ll want at least one very strong reference for a top-ten program and in many cases two strong letters (three is actually quite a stretch). As noted above, doing a senior thesis is a great way to secure a letter of recommendation. Try also to aim for at least one research internship during your undergrad. This could lead to a second strong letter from a researcher in your area. Letters from industry don’t usually have the same appeal for academics, though if you have a strong background in industry, a letter from a senior research scientist at your company may be appropriate.
Ideally, a strong letter will describe your accomplishments, complement the rest of your application, and state high confidence in your ability to complete a strong PhD and have a successful career.
Most applications require three letters of reference, so you absolutely must secure these letters; there is no way to proceed without three. In the worst case, these letters could simply say "Student took my class and got a B"; this is a very weak letter that will not help your application at all, but it will at least allow you to complete your application. Alternatively, you could pursue additional research or coursework experiences so that you can get a PhD.
Will I have to do an interview? How are interviews evaluated?
Most STEM positions (physics, math) do not require an interview.
Limited content here - please help Academia.SE by filling in your expert knowledge!
If required, how are TOEFL scores evaluated? How much does it hurt if I have a poor score on the TOEFL?
TOEFLs are extremely important. Generally, schools have minimum TOEFL scores, and these minimums can be rather high. If your score is low, you should improve your English and retake the test; there are unlikely to be many options otherwise; taking a student whose English isn’t good enough can be a huge headache. Some schools in the US will do phone/Skype interviews with prospective international students to get a sense of their English (regardless of their TOEFL score).
Meeting the minimum requirements
Every university/department handles the stated minimum requirements differently. Sometimes a hard threshold is used such that if an application fails to meet all the minimum requirements, it will not be considered at all. Other times, the threshold is soft, and applications that do not meet all (or some) of the minimum requirements will still be considered. If you do not meet the minimum, only the department you are applying to can tell you if you are eligible to apply.
How does it affect things if I have a master's degree? If I don't have a strong application now, will a master's degree help?
If you have a poor undergraduate record, getting a master's degree might make sense. Good performance during a master's might make up for poor performance during undergraduate. On the other hand, master's degrees rarely provide funding and often require the student to pay tuition. Further, some doctoral programs prefer or require that students join right out of undergraduate. So, you will need to determine whether pursuing a master's makes sense given your goals. The other option is to take another year of undergraduate to retake coursework/exams and pursue research opportunities.
If you do decide to pursue a master's degree, some tips are to: pursue a research-based masters (not coursework-based), find an advisor who will be able to write you a strong letter of recommendation, and carefully address your experience during your own statement of purpose.
How does it affect things if I started (but didn't finish) a Ph.D. somewhere else?
Sometimes, everything goes right and it is still necessary to transfer graduate schools. Programs understand this and will give your application the corresponding consideration. In this case, a letter of recommendation from your advisor will be very helpful -- and in some cases, your advisor can even proactively help to secure your position through networking.
If you have a poor record during graduate school, it can be very difficult to transfer graduate schools. As reported here, you must report your experience at the other graduate school; concealing your attendance could end your career. Beyond that, most of the advice above applies; however, it is even more important to craft a clear narrative that explains what went wrong and why things will be better at the new institution. You should definitely consider schools that are (generally speaking) less competitive than the school you are leaving.

The following advice is a bit dangerous: The best way to offset a low GPA...is to consider enrolling in a terminal Master's degree... In my experience, terminal degrees are terminal; they do not even pretend to prepare students for a research graduate program.  In particular, at many universities, classes taken by terminal master's students are easier than the corresponding classes taken by undergraduates.

@WetLabStudent Applications do not have control over their reference letters.  They only have control over who writes them.

I think you missed a big point, explicit research experience for STEM fields. If an undergraduate has their name on a journal article, especially if they are first author, it can compensate heavily for deficits in other areas.

@JeffE It's possible that some enterprising department has tried to make money by developing a true terminal masters in math, but it's hard for me to imagine a math department bothering to create classes for masters students which are easier than the undergraduate classes.  You couldn't justify the teaching expenditure.  Anywhere there's a Ph.D. program, they would just take the same classes as the Ph.D. students.

@BenWebster You couldn't justify the teaching expenditure. — The most practical argument for having a terminal CS masters program is that it runs a significant profit. In fact, I think it's fair to say most professional master's programs in CS would not exist if they did not bring in significantly more money from tuition than whatever they pay their instructors and TAs.

@JeffE Somehow when I was writing that comment, my brain was thinking the question was math-specific (which of course it isn't).  Like many points here, I think this depends on your field, and it depends on the masters.  There are a number of disciplines where going to an MA program if you can't get into a good Ph.D. program is a reasonable strategy, but you're certainly right that it has to be one where Ph.D. preparation is at least one of the tracks.

Not every department is the same. Thirty-five years ago, the large department where I was accepted appeared to use the most favorable of the applicants' recommendations, GRE, and undergraduate grades, not a weighted composite. A first-year exam was used as a weeder, and many students failed out. This probably changed as the number of students accepted shrank.

The GRE related section is not correct for my old field (at least how it used to be a little while back). The GRE General served to filter down the applications to a more manageable level in a first round. If an applicant was below x%, the application would be discarded. Those scoring at least x were handed on to the next round. This first round was done by non-academic staff with absolutely no way of having other factors compensating.

This is amazing! I don't know why these things aren't more publicized and transparent.

Is there such a comprehensive answer for a Master's degree application?

Note that, in many of the top STEM PhD programs (I speak from a Computer Science perspective), research experience trumps everything else. So even if you have an average/slightly-below-average GPA, you can always try and compensate by (1) being extremely active in research in your last one-two years of undergrad, and hopefully getting a publication or two out (2) doing extra work (this could overlap with (1)) so that you have excellent recommendations. Finally, it is often the case that a lot of 'brilliant' students have no idea who they want to work with or what their research focus is. This is a major weakness in applications. You can always gain a competitive edge by identifying potential advisers early and initiating contact. Read the papers that come out of the group you would be interested in joining. This will enable you to objectively validate your interest in your statement when you submit the application. No adviser would trade an enthusiastic, energetic, focused candidate for someone clueless (and often arrogant, on account of merely having superior grades).

I think there is a lot of useful stuff in this answer. Would you consider adding some of it to the template answer. The idea behind a community wiki answer is at we all work together to make it better.

Sure. I've supplemented the template answer above; hope it's useful! And good luck to everyone applying to a program this year.

Short answer: Admissions is similar but not quite the same at each graduate institution and thus you should follow the guidelines as outlined by each school and department you are applying to. Dates and requirements may vary, but not by much. Yes, you are correct - the general practice in U.S. schools is that if a certain aspect of your application is weak, the strong components have the capacity to "offset" the weak areas. However, this is highly contingent upon whether the graduate school requires a minimum GPA and/or GRE score, as well as what parts of the application matter most to the program you are applying for.
Elaborating on the short answer:
Most U.S. undergraduate and graduate programs take on at least somewhat of a holistic approach, i.e. a focus on the overall prospective candidate, whereby one's application is considered for its overall content. For example, if your statement of purpose is very strong, it could offset a less-than-stellar GRE score. Within the U.S., it is often the case that your admissions application (as well as conditions for timely progress in your program after being admitted) have two different sets of requirements that must be followed: that of the graduate school and that of your prospective department. Therefore, when applying to schools, it is important to read up on both the graduate school and the department. The general graduate admissions application requirements might differ from your department's requirements in minute ways. For example, your application might not ask for a writing sample, but the department website states an expectation for a writing sample to be sent to the graduate coordinator's email.
Keeping in mind that each school (and program within the school) might consider applications differently because it is typically based on admission/approval from both the graduate school and the department you are applying for, many institutions not only state the application components but moreover will tell you the extent to which certain factors are weighted. Some graduate schools emphasize that they would prefer students with a GRE score of x or higher, typically with an asterisk that states that the GRE is one factor of many and students are still encouraged to apply even if they do not meet the desired score. This information is generally listed in the admissions FAQ section of the graduate school and/or department website(s). If the information is not provided, you can contact the department's graduate coordinator and/or prospective adviser on the matter.
Within the social sciences, the statement of purpose and letters of recommendation are arguably the most important components. If the program is writing intensive, it is likely that the verbal reasoning and analytical writing portions of the GRE might matter significantly more than the quantitative reasoning section. (I have also been told that some programs do not require GRE scores, but it seems this is mostly the case for Master's programs rather than Ph.D.'s.)
Again, the extent to which each component of your application matters will vary greatly amongst schools and programs, but the general rule to follow is that if your undergraduate grades/transcripts are not very good, you should excel in the other parts of your application and communicate relevant strengths to your recommenders so that they know to highlight these more positive aspects within their letters of recommendation.
On another note, thankfully many Ph.D. applications in the U.S. now reserve a section for you to explain any "blemish" on your record; this could be anything from explaining a bad grade to elaborating on a particular skill that the application did not allow you to do. Think carefully about how you would like to word the weaker parts of your application, but this section is indeed reviewed and considered. If your application does not have a place to state this, I have found that emailing the graduate coordinator works just the same, for they might be able to add a note to your file for you (just make sure to ask nicely!). Lastly, communication with prospective advisers (if applicable) is key; not only can they (potentially) vouch for your strength as a prospective candidate in ways that an application cannot, but getting to know you ahead of time could also assist them if they are from an institution whereby advisers can nominate their incoming students for awards, funding, etc.

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text:
How do I respond to a professor’s email refusing my recommendation request?
My professor has refused to provide a recommendation that I requested from him and directed me to approach the head of the department.
How do I close this communication with him?
Would a thank you email be necessary?

Why would you have to say anything?

Say "thank you" for his timely response.

You don't need to reply to him at this point, what you should do is to follow his advice and contact the head of department.
You could, if you really want to, reply to him saying thank you for the advice - but this may or may not be received as you expect - far simpler to leave it and move on.

I would send an e-mail with the reply

Thank you very much for your time.  I will follow your suggestion.

Professors get ridiculous amounts of emails, and neither expect nor want a thank you merely for replying to their email. It's just even more email for them.

@MichaelHoffman so they expect students to be impolite? Aren't some of them way too rude already?

@AndreaLazzarotto I would consider it impolite to add to this professor’s workload.

Although I agree with @Michael Hoffman's sentiments, in this particular case I think the suggested email reply is excellent. Surely a situation such as this (declining to write a recommendation) is sufficiently rare and involves such a sufficiently onus task as to be fairly memorable? I've written recommendations for marginal students, but in nearly every case it was for a university/program appropriate for him/her. And in the two or three cases where I was not able to write anything very helpful, I discussed this with the student in person --- their plans and who else they could use.

@AndreaLazzarotto there's nothing impolite about avoiding an extra unnecessary email. You asked a question, got an answer - if there's nothing more to discuss, it's perfectly polite to consider the conversation completed at this point.

@Peteris, every time I asked something to my professors and later on to my customers or to my suppliers, I've thanked them. It's a basic matter of courtesy. I understand some cultures have different manners, but in the EU we are taught to say "please" and "thank you".

@Tim: Professors are just as human as Non-Professors, and as such, I feel entitled to add to a professor's workload every time it makes sense to me (questions on a course or her/his thesis, e.g., or when something is wrong), or when politeness indicates this. A small "thank you" will cost the Professor maybe 10 seconds, if she/he does not know the keyboard shortcut to archive a mail ('e' in gmail, e.g.). If the prof is overworked, it's her/his obligation to improve his processes [but not at the cost of local rites of politeness, and if so, he's not to expect politeness from me, either].

@MichaelHoffman Is the ~5-10 seconds required to read and dismiss an email saying "Thanks" really detrimental.  Confirmation that the advice was received and appreciated does have merit to some; and for those it doesn't, it seems like an extremely minor inconvenience.  It's not like a 4 paragraph email that has nothing for you in it.  It's a single line.  If I'm at the computer I could read the whole email in the outlook popup.

@JMac I think this is just something that will vary by individual preference. But for me, I was once in charge of 300 students. I received thank you emails for various things from at least 20% of them multiple times a week. 5-10 seconds adds up not to mention the amount of push notifications to my phone and the effort it takes to filter and delete unwanted email since I'm limited to 100 MB (really!) at my work. It might seem like a violation of common courtesy but really it's a matter of practicality.

@syntonicC If you're in a situation like that, I would just tell my students "Please do not send me thank you emails."  I don't see how it would be bad by default to show common courtesy though.  Acknowledgement of receipt can be beneficial and thanking someone for their time isn't a taboo practice in general.  I don't think it's fair for OP to have to guess if it's a reasonable courtesy or not, and if the professor really had such a problem with it, it should be up to them to let students know.

As a lecturer in management communication, I teach that common courtesy is far too uncommon - and one should err on the side of kindness and politeness.  A quick "thank you" email, reasonably carefully composed, should almost always be welcome and appreciated.

It seems the community consensus is thank you emails are appropriate: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/103467/52451

@syntonicC: 300 Students * 20% Mail * 10 Seconds/Mail = 10 Minutes/Day.  Holy Sun!  But more seriously: Why do you not auto-archive/filter those "spammy" students into a folder which you check just once per day, so you're not annoyed by push notifications? And why haven't you configured a shortcut to answer "You're welcome" and/or are not using a shortcut to archive the mail? Furthermore: Why don't you scan these mails roughly first, mark each one requiring no action, and then archive all mails? Sorry, but in the time you check a single mail, I've left behind the first 10-30 of mails already.

You're over-thinking this.
Professors are people. Communicate with them however you would communicate with other people in a more senior position than you. There are no special rules.

I'd like to see some hard scientific evidence to support this conjecture.

There are plenty of special rules implicit in communicating with "people in a more senior position than [yourself]." You have clearly forgotten (or perhaps you are really unaware?) of how naive and ignorant of such things undergraduates can be.

@WillR You're reading one sentence in isolation and ignoring its context: specifically the sentence before it.

The fact that professors are people (or that the OP is over-thinking the situation) does not seem to change the fact that there are implicit special rules in communicating with professors as a student.

Honestly, "OK, thanks -- I'll do that" is a perfectly fine response to just about anybody who's told you they won't do something for you and told you to ask somebody else.

I agree with all of your answer except specifically the final sentence.

Or, to be more specific, I agree with the longest sentence and think the final sentence is in contradiction with it.

@WillR Given the context of the previous sentence, "special" means "specific to professors, as distinct from other people in senior positions."

@DavidRicherby: Right, but the question is being asked by an undergraduate. As an undergraduate myself, I can assure you that some, perhaps most undergraduates have no idea what the rules are concerning communicating with anyone by email. We've simply never had to do it before. When I say "you've forgotten how naive/ignorant undergraduates can be", I mean that your answer comes across as follows: you're sufficiently experienced with such situations that you don't even notice when you apply the rules, rules which certainly exist and which you were not born with knowledge of.

@Strawberry The conjecture is in line with established facts, the burden of evidence needs to be on the side claiming otherwise. Provide please for review an example of a professor that is not a person =P

I would send a request to the Head of department, and cc the professor.

Dear Prof Head, At the recommendation of Prof Nothead, I am writing to ask if you would be willing to...
...
Thank you for considering my request.
user86986
cc: Prof Nothead

This closes the loop: "I acted on the recommendation". It implicitly thanks Prof Nothead; And if Prof Head doesn't like it, he can reply-all.

Another alternative could be to actually contact the HoD, and after you got the letter from him, tell your original prof something like "Thank you, that was helpful, I could get the letter from him".


text:
Whose Email(s) Should be Listed on Research Poster Presentations?
If I make a conference poster as a graduate student, whose email address(es) should be included in the subtitle of the poster? Traditionally, I have always thought it should just be the PI's email, since they're the corresponding author, but I've seen a few posters where either the graduate student's email is either the only one listed or both the student and PIs' emails are listed (both the student and PI are listed as authors in both cases). As this is my first time preparing a professional research poster, I am wondering what the generally accepted etiquette for this is.

If a random viewer of the poster will be able to contact you by just knowing your name and affiliation (for example by a university website), you don't need to put any email address at all on the poster itself.

I think it depends on standards within the field. In math or theoretical subfields, often all authors are considered equal and are corresponding authors (unless they don't want to be).
Personally though, so long as no one else in your group has a problem with it, I would include your email as well since it can be helpful for your professional development. I've definitely reached out to people who presented posters before via email.

If you want that people can contact you (and you should: you are the author of the poster, after all!), you will need to include your email address!


text:
Recommendation letters choices : is diversity an advantage?
I am currently in the process of asking people for recommendation letters for a Ph.D. program application. I need specifically 3 letters. I am lucky enough to have multiple people that I think could provide me good recommendations. My dilemma is therefore how to choose between these persons. One thing that complicates my choice is the fact that I am switching from one scientific field to another, let's say from physics to neuroscience. I also did my undergrad at university A and my masters at B.
I know that I will almost surely send recommendation letters from :

Masters supervisor in physics at B
Previous internship supervisor in neuroscience now a professor at C

Now for the third letter, I have to choose from :

Physics professor for whom I was a TA at B
Physics professor that I was on a committee with at A
Philosophy professor at A (he would probably write a very good letter)
Previous employer in a relevant industry (work with them for a year between masters and Ph.D.)

I am asking about advice for my particular choice, but also more generally: for this kind of application, is it better to prioritize recommendation letters from different universities, different sorts of work within academia (teaching, administrative, etc.), different fields or to consider people outside academia?

I am currently applying for a PhD and had the same dilemma as you, so maybe I can tell you what reasoning I followed as it might help you as well.

What field are you applying in? If it is a very academic field with few industrial applications, surely recommendations letters from professors or research supervisors rather than previous employers are more adequate.
You should choose recommenders that know different parts of your knowledge or skillset - e.g. if they all say how good you are at one specific software or problem type it will just be repetitive.
In my opinion, recommenders that have worked with you more recently come across more convincingly than older professors or supervisors, as your skill and your interests have developed since they last worked with you.
If you are changing fields, a recommender from that same new field who thinks you are capable of achieving success in the PhD is a big advantage (your 2nd recommender in this case).

If I were you, I would probably go for the "Previous employer in a relevant industry (work with them for a year between masters and Ph.D.)" or "Physics professor for whom I was a TA at B", depending on how academia- or industry-focused you want your application to be. All in all, it has to suit your profile and statement of purpose.
Hope my answer was helpful. Good luck!

Thank you for your answer! I'm actually really going from physics to neuroscience, much more fundamental than applied. However, my work experience is in the software/data science industry which I guess is relevant for any kind of natural science research.


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My first day as a teacher, how should I proceed?
Quick background; I study Computer Science and have been asked to take the role as a paid student teacher for college students.
I am extremely nervous about it, although it's a fairly familiar role as I'll be teaching what I learned only three years previous.
I'm far from the extrovert type and as such, find it really difficult to hold a room.  How do I keep the attention and respect of students that are almost my age?

I think your main problem would be how to discipline students.  They know that you are young, inexperienced, and that you will not do anything that could cost you your job.  They will "test the waters" by misbehaving.  See the answers to this question.

This question appears to be off-topic - it's an undergraduate asking about teaching pre-degree education

Agreed. This is not really the site for this question. See our [help] page for more information. There is not a currently operating Stack Exchange network site for educators, but one has been proposed. Go support http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/50826/education

@EnergyNumbers Since when is undergrad teaching off-topic here?

@earthling the OP is teaching 16-18 year olds. It's teaching by an undergraduate, not of undergraduates.

@EnergyNumbers I interpret "for college students" to mean that the students are in college. In the US, college means university.

In the Philippines, right now, the ages of undergraduate freshmen range from 16 to 18 years old.  (Although this will change soon; we've currently added two years to high school, so in the future the ages of our university students will start at around 18 years old.)

I'd suggest watching this video. And remember, you just need to know 1% more than they do.

Calm down! easier said than done. Remember you know more than they do but do not put on a suit that does not fit. If you get questions you cannot answer, do not get nervous, simply say: it is a good question and you will check up the answer. Don't start putting out excuses that you are inexperienced, haven't done this before, or whatever. Let what you do speak for itself, I am sure it is more than fine.
Now that the emergency is over, what can you do? Be prepared. Check out the material ahead of time and if you are in a lab or have to help out in exercises, run through them yourself to figure out where problems may arise. This takes a little time but will help you run things smoothly. In the case of a lecture situation, you also need to be prepared, read up on the material, make a good series of slides. Show what you plan to do to someone more experienced to perhaps get feedback and pointers on improvements. A typical rookie mistake is to overwork things, put too much stuff into a lecture and set the level too high. Assessing the right level is something you learn but if you have a chance to look at others' lectures or perhaps go back to what you experienced, you may be able to find your level quicker.
If yo want a quick check on what you have done you can do a quick feedback at the end. Give each person a small piece of paper (e.g. index card) and have them write one or a couple of things they found good on one side and something they think could be improved on the other. Do not use the word "bad" on that side, you want to know what you did well and what might improve. Collect the feedback and check it immediately. It may help you get a sense of how you came across. You can do this on a regular basis if time permits.
In the end, it is tough to get started, we have all been there with different amounts of self-confidence, experience etc. Expect some things to go less well, it is bound to happen, we all have off days. If something is less well, use it to improve. Use your colleagues as support if you find it rough, everyone has some experience of that sort.
I wish you luck. It can be really fun to teach. Look for pointers on teaching on the web and check out journals for higher ed. teaching to get ideas. There is no reason to approach teaching less seriously than what one would do, say research. The butterflies you will inevitably feel when you start will disappear and your confidence will grow with experience. Just keep calm and on top of matters.

Thanks you so much for such a detailed reply, I really like the idea of a practical feedback sheet at the end of lessons, as far as I'm aware it's not something that is used in this institution but I think it could be really beneficial.

@Bara'thorn You could perhaps ask this as a new question since the comments are not intended for a discussion format. There is also the chat for such discussions. Also note that questions on undergraduate issues and not relating to academia are likely to be set "on hold". Your question is fine for all new teachers so you could perhaps phrase them more generally.

To the "down-voter": From the help "voting down a post signals [...] that the post contains wrong information, is poorly researched, or fails to communicate information. In order for me to understand how my answer fits one or several of these criteria, a comment would be much appreciated.

A few tips:

Practice. Get some friends, go to an empty room, and practice. Practice in front of the mirror. Practice in the street, in the subway, in line at starbucks, and at the bar(well you're <21 so that might not work). You want people to look at you. To stare at you. To ask, "who the hell is that and what the heck is he talking about?"
Prepare. Obviously, come prepared.
Get over yourself. Chances are that your first lecture will be awkward. Possibly very awkward. But then it'll get better and you'll eventually know what you're doing.
Identify with the students. They're roughly your age so it'll be easier to identify with them. As a student, you know how you wanted to be taught and what you wanted to hear. Follow that.
Responsive. Be responsive to the class. Don't shy away. There's no benefit for anyone.

Have fun!


text:
Are numeric references disliked by grant reviewers?
I am asking in regards to the European Union ERC grants but this could apply to any grant application with no set guidelines for references formatting.
The ERC guideline states:
"Please use a reference style that is commonly used in your discipline such as American Chemical Society (ACS) style, American Medical Association (AMA) style, Modern Language Association (MLA) style, etc. and that allows the evaluators to easily retrieve each reference"
Two of these are numeric the third is the author name (Smith et al. 2020). Personally I don't think the numeric citation style allows for "easily retrieve" because it requires to go back and forth between text and references. In my discipline there is no commonly used style, but I have seen often the numeric style used to save space in grant applications.
Do grant reviewers prefer name style citations? Will they get annoyed by the numeric style or should I assume that everybody uses them so there will be no penalty for using it?

As the question correctly says, the answer depends on the discipline.  It also depends on personal preferences.  "Classic" is not a citation style.

Citation style may also be determined by the application's software limitations.  Some might only allow plain text, so you have to do the citations manually.

@AnonymousPhysicist I have removed "classic", you understood what I meant, no? In any case as I have mentioned there's no preferred citation style in my discipline.

I have reviewed for ERC (and for other funding bodies).
Your choice of referencing style is very unlikely to make any difference to the evaluation of your proposal, considered on its own. But although this is a minor style point, it may be correlated with other presentational factors that reviewers will notice -

Style which is not conventional for your discipline may give the impression that you are not conversant with the field.
Unclear presentation will make it harder for readers to understand what you are proposing.

The material supplied to ERC reviewers gives quite close guidance about what reviews can say, as well as specific prompts that are vital to the success of the application (e.g. "does the proposed research address important challenges?"). Citation style, or style in general, is not asked about.
But I would say it does have an effect on the state of mind of a reviewer - imagine especially somebody who is short of time and trying to finish their work before the deadline. If it is easy for them to read and digest the proposal, then they will be more able to identify positive features within it and write a good summary. If they have to do more work to figure out what your idea is all about, then you may find that reviews miss (what you considered to be) the point, and come out less favorable in the end. So it is a good idea to give reviewers something in the format they expect, and where the writing is as clear as possible.
If your area really has no firm preference, then I would say to use your best judgement, don't overthink it, and use the rest of your thinking time on polishing the proposal content itself.

I am pretty sure that virtually no grant reviewer bases her/his assessment on the citation style you use as long as it is consistent throughout the document, includes all necessary information and is common enough in your field. A numbered citation style makes it easy enough to find the sources. This is more a question of personal preferences.
You might rather consider to include something like titles or DOIs into the references which can be used directly in a web search if you want to optimize the accessability aspect.

Note that grants are typically reviewed by subject experts just as journal papers are. The reviewers aren't likely employees of the funding agency, but outside experts.
So, the "easily review" statement means that the likely reviewers should find the references to be just as those otherwise used in that particular field. What you think of as easy and what a reviewer will be familiar and comfortable with might not be well aligned.
It isn't a prejudice for one over the other by the agency, but an attempt to ease the work of reviewers who may "expect" things to be familiar. Follow the advice.


text:
What are the long-term advantages of a US PhD compared to Europe/Oceania?
I have applied to PhD programs in ecology in Europe (Germany, Denmark, UK) and Oceania (Australia/New Zealand). Now the deadlines for US programs are coming up and I am debating whether I should apply there as well. Aside from the exorbitant costs when applying to US programs I am interested in comparing the pros and cons as far as career opportunities go.
I have already a MS from a major US university and I will turn 31 soon. My career goals are to pursue a teaching/research position. I am assuming that the potential advisors satisfy my requirements (good publishing track, personable, successful students, international connections) and that there will be funding. I will consider "rest of the world" and USA.
Rest of the World (at least for the programs I am considering):

can be completed in three years, in this case I will have gained two years for a possible Post Doc, and also make use of my Masters.
I will be able to just focus on research without being a teaching assistant, from what I understand publications would count more than teaching assistant experience even for a 50%/50% research/teaching position
it might be harder in case I want to find a job in the US, especially since I will not be located within the country
there are no obligations to complete courses
pay rate is generally decent compared to cost of living

USA:

I am under the impression that a PhD from a top US institution is well-regarded internationally and it would be easier to find a job in Europe or Australia.
the teaching experience could be useful to me as I would like to also be involved in education alongside with research.
there is more time to explore and think about research questions and goals, as opposed to Europe where you join to develop a certain project.
the stipend in the US is very low compared to the living costs, especially on the West Coast. It would mean five years of financial sacrifice.
more chances to perhaps be involved in other projects, it seems there is more of an open research community within departments.
it might be productive to take some classes that are taught by top profile professors.

Is the extra time spent and the financial sacrifice for a US PhD worthwhile for my career goals and my preparation as a successful educator/researcher? Will my international mobility be limited based on where I graduate?

I think PhD programs differ in three main aspects: duration, teaching, and coursework. I would prefer not to try and generalize how these aspects vary amongst different countries. That said I think a PhD program with limited coursework and teaching are beneficial, especially if you already have an MS. Some teaching might be useful if your personality is such that at job interviews there would be questions about your ability to engage students. Picking up teaching experience is relatively easy and I would not consider the ability to gain teaching experience as positive in deciding on a PhD program. Similarly for coursework; the ability to take courses is not a positive.
Duration on the other hand is a big factor. The longer the duration the better. As hard as it is to be a PhD student, it only gets harder. Putting off becoming a postdoc, and then again the tenure track, for as long as possible is a good thing for your research output and will help you eventually get tenure.

You made some good points, however I don't agree with the lenght. It depends what you are doing within that time. If you are teaching you are not investing enough time in research for example. And PhD stipends really stink the more I think about it, the less time I want to be a student.

@user4050 I was trying to be clear that a long PhD with lots of teaching and course work is not as valuable as a long research only PhD. I was also trying to highlight that most people who get to the tenure application stage would have loved an extra couple of pre-tenure years even if they came at the cost of a stinky PhD stipend.

@user4050: "the more I think about it, the less time I want to be a student" - Whether you will be considered/feel yourself as a student (in the sense that you were a student before your Bachelor's and possibly Master's degree) while being a PhD candidate depends a lot on the country where you're doing your PhD and the way academia and PhDs are structured there.

I can talk from experience there, because 3 years ago I had the same conundrum.
I also did my PhD outside the US, in Japan, where it also lasts for 3 years (usually).
AS long as you do your PhD on some University "with a name" outside its country is ok for your  future if you wish to move away from said country.
Example, here in Japan everybody knows what Keio and Waseda Universities are, and for sure you'll get a nice paid job in the japanese industry if you finish on either one of them, but if you wish to go out of Japan, outside of Tokyo Univ, Kyoto, and maybe Osaka, nobody knows of other universities.
If you wish to pursue a career in US, it helps more to do your PhD over there than overseas, but if you do good work overseas, you have a very good chance to pursue  an Academic career as well.

"outside of Tokyo Univ, Kyoto, and maybe Osaka, nobody knows of other universities" - I am not entirely convinced of the reasoning behind this. Truly spoken, if I imagine being asked: "Do you know Kyoto University?", my instinctive reaction would be "Yes, I do! ... Because ... well, I know the toponym Kyoto, hence ... Kyoto University is obviously the university found in Kyoto, duh." However, if I modify the question and imagine being asked: "Is there a university in Kyoto?", it gets trickier. I probably couldn't tell, or only guess that such a big city probably has a university. ...

... I am not sure how wide-spread that technique of "knowing" universities is, but if it is, 'some University "with a name" outside its country' might be supplemented with "some university that happens to be named after its place, when the place is known outside its country".

Are you in Academia? People wouldn't say Tokyo University and think, oh yeah is a University placed in Tokyo, people know about Tokyo University because is a top 20 world University.

I am, but incidentally, I'm in a place where there is not much of a hype around university rankings. Consequently, they are not commonly known or widely talked about. I am aware of the particular prestigious (and/or productive) departments in the subfields related to my work, but those do not usually coincide with global rankings across all fields. I think I know Tokyo University, but whether that is because they are in the top 20 in some list, or because they have an active marketing department and thereby made it into the (non-academic, general purpose) news from time to time, I can't tell.

The reason I asked you, is because I actually have asked the same question. I did my PhD in Tokyo University, and a prof from U of Hawaii came once and told me to better switch Universities to even U of Hawaii, because people just didn't know about Tokyo U and I wanted a job in the US. I was worried, but then I talked with many people in the US (Stanford, USC, Yale, UCLA) and in Europe (Oxford, Cambridge) and they all told me he was quite wrong, most people would prefer a degree from U of Tokyo than a degree from U of Hawaii any day. (Of course is area dependent, but in general).

That is only ratified by the numerous recognition rankings (not based on research, but on how well known the University is ), where U of Tokyo is consistently a top 10 University. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2012/03/14/the-worlds-most-reputable-universities/2/

Interestingly, your little survey seems to be limited to anglo-saxon countries, where university rankings such as THE seem to be traditionally quite well-known. On the other hand, I do not see your example as a strong counterexample. Both Tokyo and Hawaii are globally known places; and true or not, at least in parts of Europe, Tokyo commonly has the reputation of being a huge, highly-developed high-tech city, whereas Hawaii is usually associated with images from a primitive holiday island paradise. With that in mind, people who know neither of the two Us would likely prefer Tokyo U.

@O.R.Mapper I don't know where do you work, but most people in academia actually read books, papers, goes to conferences and if see many well received research from a university, generally recognize that place. Most researchers who work outside of the field of hula dancing and ukulele manufacturing have seen much more high quality research from UTokyo than UHawaii. So you argument is rather misguided.

@Greg: "most people in academia actually read books, papers, goes to conferences and if see many well received research from a university, generally recognize that place" - absolutely. And with thousands of universities around the world, and thousands of different research topics and endeavours, most of which place different importance on different previous work depending on their topic, some researchers are more likely to come across research from UTokyo and/or UHawaii, and others are not.

It depends on your subject, interests, and future career goals, IMO. The US presents the best educational services all around the world, especially in graduate levels (almost all agreed on this); on the other hand, the student life in the US is relatively hard, mainly due to low rates of stipend and scholarships and high rates of life cost. Unlikely, PhD students in the Europe are usually enrolled as if they are employed by the university. A high value of salary and no additional works, such as teaching and etc.
However, keep in mind that future job opportunities in the US are definitely higher than that in the Europe and Oceania. Studying in the US is similar to mountain climbing; when you conquered the crest, the remaining of the way is downhill, hopefully :).

almost all agreed on this [citation needed]