text:
How to research about professors wisely?
The application season is coming, and I'm going to spam the mailbox of every professors.
OK, just kidding, but not completely untrue. Of course I will do my homework. As Anonymous said, it is fine to contact a professor if you are:

asking detailed questions about the professor's research, or questions about the research group beyond what you can discover on the Internet

Does that mean that I need to spend time to dig into their papers (actually beyond the internet), or just reading the descriptions in their website is enough? I mean, sure, just like asking questions in SE, the more detail you give, the more likely you get the answer. But I cannot only concentrate on some particular professors, I need to increase the chance of being accepted by, erm, spamming other ones. One PhD student says that he had to contact 17 professors in order to find the best for him (good fund, good research, etc). I think contacting 17 professors, with all emails are careful prepared and worth to reply, will drain my energy soon.
Not to mentioned that in the email setting, you don't have to be obligated. If the email require you to spend a lot of energy to answer it, and if you are super busy, you will likely to ignore it. This will waste my effort.
Q: So, how likely is a professor to ignore an email even when the sender does their homework? How many professors should I contact in order to find the best one? And how much effort should I spend for a professor?
Also, there is a probability that after I read some papers of the professor,

the paper is easily to follow, that I don't have any question. How should I email in this case?
the paper is hard to follow, and I meet my limit of knowledge. Is this the gold chance for me to ask, or should I self-teach me this? This could be a trivial question, and asking it may bother them, increasing the chance to be ignored. Especially that I want to switch my field (a little bit).

Anonymous' comment on  Is it unwise to contact the professor directly before getting admitted to a program in US?
Related: How to contact professors for PhD vacancies?

How many professors should I contact in order to find the best one? — There is no "best" one.

the paper is easily to follow, that I don't have any question. — Regardless of whether the paper is easy to follow, if it doesn't suggest any further questions, either it's a mediocre paper, or you aren't thinking hard enough.

I guess this is about PhD program applications, of the type where one applies for positions in a certain lab, rather than just to a department, yes?  But this is not explicitly stated.  Please clarify.

@Kimball oh, they are different? I mean, of course they are different, but how different are they in the process?

I am saying that the question (beginning with Q) doesn't make it clear why you would be emailing the professor in the first place, or that you are applying for PhD programs.  But for general applications to departments, there is no need to contact individual professors, and sometimes it is discouraged (before offers are made).

@Kimball Isn't it wise to contact the professor directly before getting admitted to a program in US?

I guess it really depends on the department, but I was thinking of departments such as typical US math departments where you spend your first year or two doing general work before choosing a specific professor/group to work with.  See this post or this one.  I do remember seeing posts where people say sometimes departments discourage discussions with professors before PhD admissions (I have not personally seen this), but I can't find any right now.

@Kimball I remember reading it too. My logic is: to get admitted in good lab, I need to contact the profs first. If a particular department discourage that, I won't do, or at least do it silently.

Does that mean that I need to spend time to dig into their papers (actually beyond the internet), or just reading the descriptions in their website is enough?

I strongly suggest you at least look over 2 to 3 recent, important papers of this professor. Not only will this allow you to write a mail that has a higher chance of being taken seriously, it will also inform you whether this kind of research is actually what you want to be doing for the next few years. This will indeed take time, but frankly, you should be willing to spend one or two hours to look over the work of a professor that you consider working with for your PhD. You don't need to read their papers end to end. Just figure out what research problems they work on, what methods they use, and so on.

I cannot only concentrate on some particular professors, I need to increase the chance of being accepted by, erm, spamming other ones.

Here's the thing: for me, if your mail even remotely looks like you have been spamming professors with applications, your mail moves directly to my "Will never be answered" mailbox. Seriously. I have a keyboard shortcut for that. I assume similar things are also true for most other people in PI-y positions. Avoid spamming people at all costs.
Edit:
I will answer Ooker's follow-up questions here as they seem related enough to me.

"How likely is a professor to ignore an email even when the sender does their homework?"

Very likely. Cold mailing somebody about a position is always a long shot. The difference between doing your homework and spamming, from personal experience, is that the former has a small chance of success while the second seems completely pointless to me.

"How many professors should I contact in order to find the best one?"

I am not sure I understand. Given that your success rate with cold mails will be very small anyway, you (a) need to have a fallback plan anyway (this can't be your primary strategy to get into grad school, right?), and (b) it seems rather unlikely that you will have multiple offers that you then need to choose from.

I like the keyboard shortcut part. In my case, I'm using a single key, which has the symbol "←" printed on it.

@silvado I am pathologically averse to permanently deleting email. However, realistically, if your mail is in the "not to be answered" mailbox, it's as good as deleted.

if the lab's website is well written about the researches, is it fine to read just the website instead of actually read the papers? (I don't know if it is up-to-dated or not, but it seems to be)

do important papers = most cited papers?

As usual, you are trying to optimize the form of your application rather than the content.
First you should have well-developed research interests.  Those research interests will naturally suggest papers for you to read.  Those papers will naturally suggest further research problems for you to think about.  You will naturally have several ideas about how to pursue those future research problems. Most of those ideas will be bad, but you'll quickly discard the obviously bad ones.  Despite your best efforts, you'll get stuck on others.
At this point, it would be natural for you to contact the authors of those papers (or of similar papers), briefly discuss your ideas, and ask for further suggestions.  And, oh right, by the way, you are also applying to their PhD program; do they think they might have any openings?  But the important thing is to contact them as a potential research colleague, not just someone looking for admission or funding.
If you don't have a specific research question, don't bother to write.  If your email to me contains only the titles of three of my recent papers and a few other buzzwords, I'll just delete it.  But if you've thought seriously about and can write cogently about the kinds of problems I work on, I'm much more likely to take notice and respond.
Unless you have both extremely broad research interests, no other time commitments, and no need to sleep, you will not find 17 professors who share your specific research interests.  Maybe three or four at most.

Consider  a student(interested on a particular problem)who  has advanced a little on that problem  in a non conventional way and likes to move forward in that direction  'through'  PhD. If he writes to a prominent academic for admission sending him his effort , how  will that mail be assessed ?

@Jim That depends on the individual professor and on their judgement of the quality/promise of the student's work.  Obviously.


text:
Should I take a tutor job or a research job in a company before going to grad school?
I have about one free year before I go to grad school and I would like to go to work. I live with my family (I'm Asian by the way) and so gaining experience is my priority, not salary. What job will help me maximize the skills that I would need during my grad school? I have two options below, but I'm open for any advise.
Tutoring
You know, in Sinosphere countries, there is a pressure to get to university, so high school students need to study at night in "academies" beside the daytime they study at schools. I will help the teachers there help them solving homeworks. This center is founded by a famous mathematician in my country and seems to operate pretty well (but I suspect no foreigner know since he has switched to teaching a long time ago). I confident in my ability of explaining. Here are the advantages to choose this job:

know how being a TA is like.
have to spend only 6 to 10 hours a week so that I can have time to search for professors.
I have an idea about running a science channel in YouTube, like Vsauce or Veritasium. This is because our country is lack of good material for study. Small part of this motive is for building my reputation. With teaching, I can prepare for some materials and have first audience to get their feedback. It may be unlikely to help me to get admission, but if I succeed, I can have some reputation in media. May I will need it in the future?

Data researcher
The second one is being a data researcher in a technology company. I'm not sure about the working time but I think it will like any other company. I have sent them an email explaining that my major is not data (I study physics) and I'm not a PhD either, but then they reply that I need to send them my CV first (I haven't because I'm in a middle of medical treatment, but it will be over soon). Does this indicate that I'm suitable for them? Here are the advantages to choose this job:

working in an English environment, in one of the world leading companies in its niche. Very good for my CV.
Have a chance to expertise a programming language (Python). I'm not sure if Python is the second language beside English in academia or not, but I have seen a lot of science programs written in Python. I need to code in grad school anyway.
Know what the outside world looks like.

I know that this question is lengthy, and I appreciate for your reading. Thank you in advance.

Don't read too much into the company asking for a CV, it's a pretty standard response to job queries. They are asking for your CV first to determine if you are even a suitable candidate to follow up with.

Personally I would choose the company position:

Prior experience in the private sector (outside of teaching) is a big advantage if you decide to look for a non-academic job later.
Python is a popular programming tool to use. Might as well learn now.
Data analysis is a big part of doing a physics PhD.
You will form better contacts (probably). Never underestimate the value of good connections.
You will get plenty of opportunity to do teaching later if you wish; and I do not really see what it adds to your position now. However, I never really saw the appeal of teaching, so perhaps my view is coloured.

A CV is just a way to get yourself an interview. It doesn't get you a job. Definitely send your CV in.

1) Did you already get an admission to grad school? I get confused when you say "search for professors".

If no, use your time to focus on getting admission first, e.g. improve GRE score, read papers etc etc. Getting an admission may not be as easy as you think.
If yes, 30 hours per week to search for a professor is too much.

2) Since you haven't been accepted to the second job. It is too early to ask about which job to choose. I don't want to be rude, but if you are rejected, then you will not need to ask this question.
3) Running a Youtube channel and helping (lazy) students doing their homework are unlikely to help in getting an admission, or improving your chance to get a job.

Yes and no. I have about 5 schools and 10 profs in target, scattering from top to average. I haven't contacted them, but I have spent a lot of time to shortlist, read papers and write SOP. I thought GRE score is not really important? 2) I know that I can be rejected, but I have some familiar companies backup. 3) I know that it won't help me to getting an admission, but as I said, it can help me some reputation in media (if I succeed). Maybe I need it some time?

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Pure Mathematics PhD without any publication
This question is hypothetical. I have completed my MS in mathematics and started thinking about applying to a PhD in Mathematics in the USA as an international student in pure mathematics. I'm wondering: what if I can not produce original research within 5/6 years? What should a student do if they can't discover anything new or interesting at the end of their PhD?
In pure mathematics, discovering a new thing is extremely difficult and nothing is ever for sure. I personally know a few people who have not published anything during their PhD. Will someone be kicked out if they cannot create anything new?

May I ask what gives you the impression that "[i]n pure mathematics, discovering a new thing is extremely difficult"? Regarding "nothing is ever for sure": That's true, but so is it for any other field. If things were already known, it wouldn't be called 'research'. ;-)

I know  many people who have gone to some top schools for phd and connot publish anything and they work in industry. But all of them wanted to become mathematician and some of them are extremely brilliant ( imo silver medalist). These examples make me nervous.

Hmm, I cannot comment on "top schools", since where I live and work there is no such distinction between "top" and other institutions. Anyway, please note that publishing some papers during a PhD does by no means imply that one will get a position at a university or college later on (simply because there are far more PhD students than faculty positions). From my point of view it doesn't make much sense to start a PhD with the plan to become an academic - you can't know whether you really like mathematical research and are really good at it until you have tried it for a while. [...]

[...] I would consider a PhD as a journey on which you discover what mathematical research really means. On this journey you can find out whether it seems to be the right thing for you in the long run. If yes, good. If no, also good - because you can still have a lot of fun during your PhD and will learn many skills that can be useful to you afterwards in an industry job.

FWIW, after controlling for other factors, doing well in math contests seems to have zero or even a weakly negative correlation with going on to have a successful research career. They're not the same talent.

@JochenGlueck - you come from a culture where skills learned in a PhD are generally viewed as useful in an industry job.  This is not universal - in part because most of US industry doesn't care about the quality of a product, only the marketing.  (Sure Elizabeth Holmes is in jail, but all the Theranos "engineers" made out pretty well.)  Many companies in the US are reluctant to hire PhDs, because someone who wants to spend several years doing a PhD is likely to want to do things well, whereas the market prioritizes cheap and fast.

@ElizabethHenning - to be sure, maybe there is zero or negative correlation among people who go to grad school, but amongst the population as a whole there is a huge positive correlation.  The people who scrape by in a math major without ever really learning to write a proof and still has trouble distinguishing "Not all swans are white" and "All swans are not white" after 2 years of working on the difference - which is the aptitude level of most people - are much less likely to be successful at math research than someone who does moderately well in math contests.

All actual research is at some level unpredictable. That said, clearly it is predictable enough that people can make careers out of it without constantly worrying about "what if I cannot produce original research in the next X years", and that predictability manifests itself at the Ph.D. level too. Ph.D. studies are not a crapshoot where some people just randomly fail to "produce original research". If you spend enough energy working in a reasonable direction (which it's the advisor's role to provide), then you will either discover something new or find out that research is not for you.

@AlexanderWoo: (your first comment) I think that's an unnecessarily negative view of what "industry" is like. Theranos is the exception, not the rule. It is harder to get in through HR, but the line tends to react positively to having a Ph.D. from a decent school - at least in places like consulting and banking where some jobs are reserved for Ph.D.s. The most common problem, as I see it, is to convince the line that you won't be bored with more mundane tasks, and with possibly starting only a little ahead of people coming in with a B.SC. only. That you're humble and not arrogant.

as a general point, Stack Exchange is best suited for solving specific problem you have, not hypotheticals.

@AlexanderWoo: Yes, cultural differences probably play a role. Just to avoid giving a wrong impression to the OP, I should probably add the following: Of course companies in Germany are not like "Oh, you know how to apply ultrapower techniques to spectral theory? You're precisely the one we've been looking for!" But some people in middle management appreciate it to have a few team members with good theoretical skills and a thorough mathematical background. Apart from that, the German fetish for academic titles might sometimes be helpful for applicants with a PhD. [...]

[...] One more thing (which, I assume, applies to the US just as well as to Germany and to many other countries): no matter whether you do a PhD in pure math or in any other theoretical field: having non-trivial coding experience in at least one programming language certainly helps when looking for a job in industry.

Discovering a new interesting result in pure math is quite difficult. Discovering a new uninteresting result isn't too bad, though.

I have known a few people that have not published anything on their PhDs and are now going on to postdocs in the US.  The dissertation is the important thing.

In the US, in most doctoral programs, the goal is to produce a dissertation, not publications. This was, I'd guess, more true in the past, but remains largely true. A dissertation is usually a relatively long work on a small, tightly focused, area of math. The dissertation might result in one or more publications after finishing the degree but getting involved in the publication process, along with the waits and revisions, isn't usually part of the process prior to graduation.
If you don't produce a dissertation, you don't finish. But most people finish successfully, though some take longer than others.
But, if you don't produce a dissertation it is likely because you didn't listen to anyone while you were a student. Students have advisors and advisors have a responsibility to get their students through the program. They suggest problems or, at least, small areas of math where exploration is likely to prove fruitful. They also give you feedback on what you do and suggest modifications if needed.
If you ignore your advisor's advice it is harder to advance. You aren't locked in a box, all alone, for a few years expected to emerge with some new mathematical field. Results in dissertations can be quite small or more broad. But they are very focused. Advanced graduate study pushes and guides you to that focus.
However, some problems that students attack prove too hard to find a solution in the time available even with the advisor's help. Some students have to "salvage" a dissertation out of failed attempts. But more students, I suspect, are advised to drop a problem if it seems, early on, to not be fruitful. And note that in math, proving negatives can be as valuable as proving positives.
There is a Three Bears issue in math (too hard, too easy, just right). In my own studies I experienced this directly. The first problem I worked on proved too easy and I could produce theorem after theorem daily. There was no substance. The second problem was too hard. After a few weeks it still seemed like a perfect titanium sphere with no possible cracks for entry. Nada. The final problem was "just right" and with work and developing insight a nice dissertation (later published) emerged.
With your advisor's help, choose a tractable problem. Work hard. Succeed. Or, at least, learn that this isn't what you really want.

Note that working mathematicians seldom work in isolation and collaborate widely, sharing ideas. Colleagues substitute for advisors in a sense. Ideas fly around. Some of them result in nice papers. Some are discarded.

+1 Great answer (as usual). It might be worthwhile to add the following corollary of your third paragraph: It's very important to find a good advisor (who, for instance, doesn't let you waste years on an intractable problem without intervening).

my biggest lesson during PhD was: Ignore most of the stuff others tell you and separate the useful input/people from the others. I had two post-docs mentoring me on a subject they used for their PhD and it was such a waste of time. Another post-doc, who took me under his hood then, was a major help and he hasn't done anything on this topic. Without him everything would have gone south..

@ben "separate the useful input/people from the others", this is a mayor skill many PhD students learn in grad school.

I didn't. I was never supervised by multiple post-docs and also the topics within the study were not that specific only a few people know. However, during the PhD I had a working contract so why on earth would you think your supervisors, who got their PhDs on the topic, have no clue? Not obvious at all.

There is no reason to sugarcoat the answer: you are correct, if you do not produce original research (in the form of a written dissertation, not necessarily a publication) then you will not graduate. This happens to a fair number of people.
HOWEVER:  the way in which it happens, and the reasons why it happens, are typically not the ones you’re imagining. What usually happens is that people discover that they don’t have the passion for research that they thought they did before they really understood what research is. They come to realize that research is not a good match for their interests and abilities. Then they leave the program, typically after around 2-3 years and with a Master’s degree instead of a PhD, having learned a lot of interesting mathematics, and having learned useful things about themselves.
I would say that it is pretty rare that someone stays for 5-6 years and then fails to graduate. If they lasted that long, they must have advanced to candidacy, found an advisor, and must already have been making decent progress with a research project. The system is set up to monitor people’s progress and not allow them to reach a point where they fail catastrophically right at the end after investing a large sunk cost. Which is not to say this never happens — all sorts of things happen, including various life events, physical and mental health issues etc — but rather that this is a worst case scenario that almost always has much more complex causes than “I didn’t discover anything new”.

The situation can be different for international students who need to stay in the US for one reason or another - despite it being clear to them that they won't finish, they stay in order to maintain their immigration status until they run out of funding, making enough progress to not be kicked out but not enough to finish without a miracle (which does not occur) at the end.

Discovering you don't have the passion for research is usually correlated with not getting results.  These are not independent and have some complex causal relationship with each other.

@AlexanderWoo yes, good points, everything you say is true (and consistent with what I wrote). It would be hard to enumerate all the complicated issues that cause people to leave a grad program, either early or at a later stage. But the main point is that the simplistic scenario OP is describing is not a typical one.

Great answer. When I was a graduate student, I watched many students who survived the qualifying exams filter leave the program; their reasons were incredibly varied, but none of them endured the situation implied by the OP (earnestly trying to complete results and being unable to do so).

Not in maths, but I know at least of one case where someone was given a problem with an incorrect assumption by an advisor, then spend two years (phd is 3 years here) researching it before getting to the level where they could realize the problem with the assumption, and basically (from a publication pov) wasted 2 years. He did end up publishing some 'salvaged' article out of this, but given the experience he quit soon after, as he felt he would be working 80 hours per week for the last year to finish his PhD. Compared to literally his brother who (cont.)

'lucked into' a great publication after less than a year and little effort (half that year he wasn't working on his PhD at all, but just enjoying life)... it doesn't feel unfair to say there is a lottery aspect to PhDs. Point is: No doubt there are people who would say he just 'didn't have the passion', but I don't think that's fair... Now I don't know how common these things are, but I have seen enough PhD 'students' who worked <10 hours per week and succeeded whilst others worked more than full time and quit.

@DavidMulder is there a career track where luck does not play a role in determining who becomes successful? Life is one big lottery I think, but how talented and hardworking you are can dramatically affect the odds of winning. I don’t see why math PhD programs should be any different in that respect from any other type of activity.

@DanRomik Big difference is that PhDs are more 'all or nothing' (like a lottery). In the majority of countries it's not even treated as a job, but instead you're still a 'student'. If you drop out of a PhD it's not treated as "two years of active work experience", whilst two years in a normal average job totally is (often enough to stop being a junior).

@DavidMulder you remind me of what James Cameron had to say about taking risks in life at the end of his TED talk (start at the 15:35 mark, or better yet watch the whole thing). It’s one of the most inspiring things I’ve heard on this topic. Funnily enough, I’ve always viewed getting a math PhD as one of the most risk-averse life choices I’ve made — thanks for making it sound so risky and adventurous. ;-)

It depends on what your goal is.
Yes, a PhD requires writing a dissertation that contains original research, but the bar for this is actually very low.  I have seen many dissertations which are less substantial than my undergraduate honors thesis.  (Admittedly, my undergraduate thesis was substantial enough to be publishable in a decent journal.)  I have seen other situations where all of the non-trivial ideas in the dissertation came from the advisor.  You should always be able to find an advisor who will let you graduate with very little (but not zero) in the way of original work, and the original work could be of a very routine nature.  The resulting dissertation might not be publishable, or might be publishable only in a very low ranked write-only journal, or it might be obvious in some way that it is really the advisor's work (because the advisor doesn't mention your contribution in their letters and you can't talk about your work intelligently in interviews).
If your home country has a shortage of PhDs and any PhD is sufficient to get you hired, then this is all okay (and you have genuinely participated in research, which is helpful to your future students).  If you're looking to continue a research career in the US or Europe, such a dissertation will leave you with almost no opportunities.  No one will hire you for a postdoc.  (Well less than half of pure mathematics PhDs in the US get an offer of a postdoc.)  Increasingly, you also need some research success to be hired into a permanent position at a teaching-oriented university.

but the bar for this is actually very low: that probably depends on the university. For example, I have never seen a dissertation of the “it might be obvious in some way that it is really the advisor’s work” category, and I wouldn’t advise OP to factor something like that as an option, even if it’s an option of last resort, when making a decision to start a PhD.

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text:
I believe my advisor doesn't think I am smart. How should I deal with this?
My advisor is a brilliant new professor and my efforts don't seem to impress him.
When I show him something in person, we always have a very careful intensive discussion for hours. But he does make comments which seem to indicate that he doesn't think much of my abilities. Or he says that I am being very slow and that this stuff shouldn't have been taking months.
I think I work as hard as I can.
What can I do about this situation?

Would you give a little more details about my efforts don't seem to impress him? The current question is too vague to answer.

@scaaahu What kind of details do you want?

For example, after you told him some research results you obtained recently, what did he say? Did he give you constructive critisms? Or just say this is no good, go back and redo it. That kind of thing.

@scaaahu No, he is never off-handed like that. When I show him something in person, we always have a very careful intensive discussion for hours.

@scaaahu But he does make comments which seem to indicate that he doesn't think much of my abilities. Or he says that I am being very slow and that this stuff shouldn't have been taking months.

I'd recommend changing the title btw. You're jumping to what I think is an unfounded conclusion (based on what you've told us). A more accurate title would be "How do deal with the fear that my advisor thinks I'm not smart"

How new is your "brilliant new prof"? If you're one of his first grad students he might not have learned yet what is reasonable to expect from a student. Brilliance in an academic field doesn't necessarily make him a brilliant manager.

You're being emotional, that's not a good tack, you're in this for the long haul, just stay focused and thick-skinned, your "brilliant" guy is most likely average with no social skills.

Voting to reopen. While this question is short on details, I think the titular question is clear, and I think it is a question that is likely to be of interest to future readers.

Looks like you have a very nice supervisor!  Especially, if he/she is willing to spend hours discussing your research.  That means he/she sees something in you.   Yes, supervisors are impatient because we forget how long it took us to learn basic concept X, Y, ... also, as we also tend to learn things fast or for some reason has natural intuition about field X, when we encounter a newbie, we get slightly to very annoyed.  Good news is, that's our problem not yours.

are terms like 'smart' or 'IQ' really scientific though? see NNT aka Nero, Dweck and salman khan

It sounds like you are interpreting your advisor's comments about how your work is going as an indication that your advisor doesn't think you're smart or capable.
However, that's not necessarily what it means at all. It's only human for an advisor to express some occasional disappointment about how the work is going. (Every advisor thinks the work should be going faster!!! It's practically in the advisor rulebook.)
And some people (unfortunately) express criticism more often than they express praise. This could just be your advisor's style.
It's not necessarily an indication of what your advisor thinks about you as a student and researcher.
So in answer to your question of "How to deal with this?":
Instead of inferring what your advisor thinks of your abilities from his comments about your work, ask him directly what he thinks of your abilities!
Ask your advisor: "How am I doing, in general? What areas do I need to improve in? What strengths do I have that I can play up?"
This is your chance to find out what your advisor sees in you, get some constructive criticism about your research skills in general (not about your current project). It's also a chance for you to tell your advisor how you think you're doing, and correct any misperceptions he may have about how hard you are working or how long the work should take.

+1. This is excellent advice in any situation where you're working with a supervisor.

You said:

brilliant new prof

A new professor is under pressure to produce results quickly. It's entirely possible that some of what you're sensing is a consequence of this.
But you also say:

he does make comments which seem to indicate that he doesn't think much of my abilities.

Without more specifics, it's hard to know whether (as @ff524 says) you're interpreting criticism of work as criticism of you.
And finally, you say:

he says that I am being very slow and that this stuff shouldn't have been taking months

Should it ? We have no idea what kind of work you're doing, and how long it should take. Maybe your advisor is right. Maybe he's completely wrong because he doesn't understand how much effort it actually takes.
At any rate, your first step has to be to talk to your advisor to understand what he wants from you. It sounds like he's willing to spend time talking to you, so make use of it.
Any advisor-advisee relationship has an adjustment period where both individuals get used to the other's habits, rhythms and style of operation, and a level of trust starts to build. It sounds like you're in that phase, so keep lines of communication open and try not to interpret comments as personal criticism without clarification.

I wrote him an email explicitly asking for advice/feedback/suggestions. I wonder if these reactions from him are an effect of the fact that I tried having a discussion with him on some subjects which excite me but doesn't seem to excite him and he thought that I was being overambitious. His tone sounded like, "when even this takes you so much time why do you even think of that". I couldn't explain to him that since many of my close friends work on "that", I naturally discuss and get excited.

"subjects that excite me and don't excite him" is how it is expected to be. "he thought I was being overambitious" - he might very well be right. "many of my close friends work on.." - that's not a terrible reason to find something interesting, but it's not a great one either.

@user6818  "when even this takes you so much time why do you even think of that" - it sounds to me like he doesn't want you to be distracted by going off in new directions instead of making progress on your current work.

A new professor is under pressure to produce results quickly. — Also, many new profs, especially "brilliant new profs", have a hard time realising that they were not typical students.  The high standards that they set for themselves now may be unrealistic for most students.  In short: Even if he does think that you aren't very smart (which is not at all clear), your advisor may simply be wrong.

I believe the further you get, the less in touch you are with how long something should take. My advisor complained often about how long some things took for me to do, but when I had everything done and it was time for job market, he exclaimed that I had done a ton of work during my PhD. Don't project him not thinking you're smart, as after this I think I ended up with the respect of my advisor. It might just be some advisor tricks which help flesh out better speed and results. My advisor has put some pressure on me somewhat artificially at times and I had some better results to show for it!

I also suggest talking to your professor face-to-face instead of just e-mailing him. When you e-mail him, he only has one chance to respond to everything you said, and it's more difficult for you to say what you think about his responses. When you're talking to him face-to-face, if he answers any of your questions in a way that doesn't make sense or that you disagree with, you can continue the conversation immediately.

I'm going to suggest something harder than anyone else has suggested, but which will pay off bigger dividends for the rest of your life.  Start working now on disconnecting your opinion of yourself from (your perception of) others' opinions of you.
Right now, you have someone you really respect, who, you think, doesn't have a great deal of respect for you.  The best reaction you could have, which is in no way easy, is to completely objectify that observation.  Pretend you are someone else, observing the two of you.  The prof might be a brilliant jerk.  You might actually not be nearly as smart as the prof.  People are different, after all.  This could just be a fact.  But when you are looking at it emotionally it brings up fear of inadequacy, etc, etc, etc.  If you objectify it, however--pretend you are a Vulcan for a minute--you can see practical paths forward.
What are the practical things you can do?  It sounds like you are already working as hard as you know how to.  There might be ways you can work smarter.  If you were someone else looking in, you might suggest to yourself that you ask your prof "I interpreted this comment you made--'when this takes you so long, why would you even think of that'--to mean that you don't think I'm making rapid enough progress.  Is that interpretation correct?  I think I'm working as hard as I can.  Do you think there might be strategies I could use that would improve my productivity?"  Just one example.  The idea is to extract yourself from the emotional tangle and just say "well, if this is the case, how can I use the prof as a resource to improve the situation?".
Your life is going to be full of people who you will perceive to either respect or not respect you.  Spending effort on figuring out who does or doesn't respect you, and trying to do things specifically to make people respect you, is a huge, frustrating, waste of time.  I know, I know, I know, that it is very hard to stop doing.  But when you find yourself in this situation, maybe you can think "this is an opportunity to work on caring less about peoples' impression of me, and just focusing on doing the best work I can."
The payoff for this is immense.  Personal relationships will improve.  You interactions with other people will be more genuine.  Ironically, in the end, people will respect you a lot more.
The body of work you do while working under this advisor is going to be your work.  If you're doing good work, there will be someone at some point that recognizes that and you will get the practical results out of that which you need to further your career, even if your advisor never thinks you were that good.  Therefore, the more you are able to focus on making your work the best it can be, the better it will be for your career.
Try as hard as you can to not care about his opinion of you, and focus on making your work the best that it can be.  In the end, after all, that's the best way to make his opinion improve--but that is not guaranteed.  Your prof, as I suggested earlier, may be a brilliant jerk.  You may possibly just not be as smart as him, period.  He might never even be impressed that you worked hard even though you were not as naturally talented [btw--this is a very viable path to tremendous success.  Hard work with a little talent will very, very often beat little work with a lot of talent.].
There is some sense in which his opinion of you is completely out of your control.  Try to get yourself in the mindset that it is completely out of your control, and that you need to focus on doing your work the best you possibly can.
When you are sure you are doing that, your prof will make his decision--maybe a fair one, maybe not--about whether to respect you or not.  But the important thing is that you will respect yourself. And if you have learned to work as hard as you can and not worry about what other people think of you, you will have learned something of inestimable value.  It's a hard thing to learn, but you've got a great opportunity to do so, right in front of you.  So get to work :).

+1 Although I liked this answer very much (and upvoted it) the Vulcan reference gives a nerdy tone, which is unfair to the the answer's quality.

Separation of self from work is good advice. An anecdote from a completely unrelated field comes from Tom Kite, the American professional golfer, who said he got great advice from his teacher:"Golf is what you do, not who you are."

+1 Upvoted specifically for having a reference to Vulcans. Archetypes are useful.

+1 and @Alexandros: the reference does not undermine the post's quality, and was not heavily insisted upon. One would have to really specifically hate nerdy references for it to (subjectively) impair one's ability to judge the rest of the post's content.

We need more context, but perhaps your adviser actually thinks highly of your abilities.

he says that I am being very slow and that this stuff shouldn't have
  been taking months.

If I think your IQ is 150, and you are showing 130 level on a given problem, I would show disappointment in your performance: "Are you trying hard enough? This is taking too long". However, if I thought your IQ level was 100, I would be praising you: "You are doing great!".
The above might not be the case of course, but I it is something to keep in mind.

My eye rolled for just a second when I saw IQ points, but this is actually a very useful, insightful answer.  In academia, the amount of criticism you get depends on others' perceptions of your abilities in a very complicated way.  Many people reserve their sharpest criticism for students whom they believe to be very talented but not living up to their potential (or not as much as previously, even).  Criticizing very weak students often just seems cruel.  On the other hand, dropping a student sends a different message.

@Pete L. Clark Thanks, yeah I know the IQ point might've been too simplistic, as IQ does not correlate with research that much. E.g Richard Feynman had an estimated IQ of 125 and had no problems with his research.

are terms like 'smart' or 'IQ' really scientific though? see NNT aka Nero, Dweck and salman khan

Your advisor is probably smarter than 95% of grad students in your department, so it's normal for him to think you are stupid.  He's probably comparing your performance to how he would perform on similar tasks, so if he could do something in a week, he expects you to be able to do it in a week.  Eventually he will supervise more students and lower his expectations, but since he is new it is natural for him to have higher standards.
If you're already working as hard as you can, the best you can do is keep doing what you're doing, and be glad that you've found a professor who's so smart.

First I would try and push more communication. If you're not telling him what you're actually doing everyday then maybe he's just underestimating you. If you are communicating exactly what you're doing: (experiment X got messed up because of this, or I can't figure out why experiment B is showing this result, it took me 3 months to clarify this so that I could move forward...etc) then it's both really hard for you and your professor to gauge whether you're actually spending too much time on these topics.
Some Suggestions:

Maybe he can follow you in the lab for a day and see what you're doing?
He could potentially offer advice on how to speed up your work day.
Provide weekly updates of what you've achieved that week. This can be helpful not only for him, but also for you. It helps to keep a kind of diary.

However, if more communication does not help to strengthen your relationship with your PI and you've been there for less than a year, I'd consider jumping boat. Try looking for another professor that you connect better with. This can be a very tricky situation.
Lastly, since you sound kind of new and like you may not have a lot of other graduate friends, I'd consider suggesting buying a book on getting your PhD and the process of getting it. There are some good books out there on the topic...

I agree with "get a book," strongly disagree with the specific book you suggest. I recommend  http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0335237029

I agree.... I couldn't think of a better one off hand. Yours is by far better!

With so little information there is no way to know what does (s)he mean and what is the problem or solution, e.g. maybe the point is that you could use some help to work faster, maybe from an undergrad student.
You have to divide the task that is taking months into smaller tasks to clearly see:

where your supervisor and you don't agree on the times that it takes.
where you could use some help or the task could be divided into different tasks, with more specialized people.
where you could use a different approach.
what is the cause of the disagreement in the time that is required for that thing.

You may be even working on something that you should not, investing too much time in something that is not important enough to invest that time. Maybe that time should be invested in a different set of activities if it is going to take so long. You want to produce results and impact, and your supervisor probably wants that as well, it should be easy to agree.
Without more details about the kind of work that you are doing I don't think a better answer is possible.
I'd suggest something different to what everybody is suggesting. Try to be as fast and efficient as you can, try to get feedback from your supervisor about how to achieve that and what is exactly the problem, that will probably be the best for your career.
If your supervisor cannot be specific on the problems that (s)he vaguely points out and cannot advise on how to overcome them, then your supervisor is not competent at supervising/advising and you will have a good reason to try to switch to a different supervisor or finish asap or whatever is your best chance to get rid of your (incompetent) supervisor.
Remember, don't assume your supervisor doesn't like you and don't assume any incompetence on either side. Try to find the cause of the problem and discrepancy in time estimations and try to find a solution. I can't think of a more constructive approach.

I once apologized to my advisor. He replied, "Don't apologize to me - I don't care whether you do what you say you will do. Apologize to yourself. It's your own goals you aren't achieving, not mine. I am only here to help you achieve them."
I start with this because I don't believe you should be trying to impress your advisor. You should be trying to impress yourself. Find a problem you want to solve, something that is difficult, but you are wildly interested in, and prove to yourself that you are one of the best in the world in your field. Strive for truth. Seek the hidden solution. Uncover mysteries. And in doing so, build up the skills relevant to your field.
It is an old wisdom that someone will start to respect you on the day when you have proven to yourself that you no longer require their respect. Your advisor can be a great asset, but they are not a crutch for you to feel good about yourself... true self-worth comes from within, not externally.
At the same time, I agree that it certainly brightens our day to be told a "great job" every now and then by the certain people in your life. I found a new level of scrutiny at MIT, where best is normal, excellence is mediocre, and good is frowned upon. A compliment can be hard to come by. "Oh, you've just invented a new algorithm to solve an unsolved problem in Massive Open Online Courses? Nice. But did you hear about so-and-so right down the hall who just invented a robotic microchip that resides in your blood stream and is the next big thing in curing cancer?"
When you hear stuff like this, or when you feel like you aren't smart enough, or you feel like your advisor doesn't believe in you... you know what? Who cares!? You do you, but don't cheat yourself. If you know you can do better, be better. If you know you the problem is deeper, think harder.
Learn to heed your advisor's advice. Glean everything you can from him/her. Watch how they work, and how they manipulate their environment to their advantage. Emulate them, iteratively improve on their methods, and then create a better version for yourself.
If however, your advisor is actively affecting your career, by giving bad recommendations or not supporting you in collaborations or future jobs, you need to have a discussion with them. Your advisor should help promote your future, and if your relationship is parasitism or commensalism, you are both losing.
Hopefully, that's not the case and assuming it is not, full steam ahead regardless of what your advisor thinks. Remind yourself that you chose to do this; and although you have to meet some criteria for achievement, grad school is very much for you. So use this time for yourself. Become the researcher you've dreamed of becoming. Don't lose the big picture of the leader you want to become. And above all, "earn the right to be proud of yourself, first for yourself, then the world will follow" - a quote from my advisor, Isaac L. Chuang.

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text:
Can I publish a paper that doesn't have a specific question to answer?
I have created a new data structure, and I intend to submit a paper about it to an ACM conference later this year. However, in writing the paper, I realize there is no specific "question" the research answers. I was simply curious if such a structure could be created. Can I simply write the paper, describe the structure and how it works, and then give a pseudocode example and perhaps comparisons to other data structures? The structure has some rather interesting properties, and I can see specific applications for it in statistical analysis. But beyond that, as far as I can tell, it's just a neat structure with some weird properties.

Make a scenario shows when your structure is good/or better.

Doesn't your paper therefore answer the question "Can structure X actually be created/work?"

The answers at a somewhat similar question ( http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28809/are-there-any-good-strategies-for-conveying-the-true-significance-of-the-results ) could be of some help.

I would suggest that you investigate those interesting properties further and then have a paper along the lines of "this structure has this useful property, more-so (or less-so) than these other structures." That is justify why someone would actually use this structure.
Think about it from the editors' point of view. Why should this paper be published? If you can't provide an answer with a straight face then maybe you should wait until there is a purpose for it.

I think "theoretical" papers are welcome! Just make sure to clearly present your contributions to the field, even if they are incremental. Ex: place a table with other related structures and show that your data structure improves on some operation, (retrieval, insertion, or whatever operations you have) operation on which other structures have a higher O().
State your advantages clear in the discussions section but mention them in abstract, introduction and conclusions.
Please make sure that your mathematical argument on why you get the specific O() is sound!
It also could be helpful to collect some experimental data with your proposed structures and current "state of the art". The experiments doesn't need to work on some real problem. It is enough if you can generate some data having a distribution similar to what you might encounter in the real world.
Submit it and remember, reviewers are always right :(
Don't give up if you get rejected, try a conference, or another journal instead.
Hope it helps!

If you can see some useful applications then I think you have your question: What is the best data structure in _____ (situation).
If it is not the best data structure in any situation then perhaps it is better to improve it so that it does something important better than anything else that is out there.


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In Computer Science, does a presentation of findings at a conference constitute a "publication"?
Most of the research I have done so far is in Computational Chemistry, where the major emphasis is on publishing in journals. But I also research aspects of Computer Science,and I have read here that in Computer Science the standard for publishing is different. I have recently created a data structure, and will be presenting my findings at a regional Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) conference later this year. Is this considered a publication in Computer Science? While I do not mind presenting my findings--I've done similarly with posters in my Chemistry research--I would prefer to have my research published in a printed journal.  Does the conference lead to a journal publication?

There are two types of publications in Computer Science:

Publications in peer-reviewed conferences with published proceedings
Publications in journals

If you present your results at a conference or workshop but don't publish them in the conference proceedings — it's not a publication.
In general, publications in top tier conferences are much more important than journal publications for computer science researchers. Usually you can first publish your paper in conference proceedings and then submit it to a journal but not the other way around (though, of course, that depends on conference and journal policies).

Just to add to concise and to the point answer by Yury:

there are also books, and if you publish a chapter in an edited book, it normally does not influence your publication record much (a paper in the proceedings or an article in a journal would value much more).
however, if you publish a book all alone or with couple of co-authors (monograph, handbook or textbook) then it is valued even more than a journal article or a proceedings paper
if you publish an edited book (a collection of chapters collected by a group of people - editors, and possibly peer reviewed) it is also valued, but normally less than a monograph


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Is there any chance for a person with BSc in mathematics to get into good graduate level theoretical physics program?
I am a mathematics major without any undergraduate level courses in physics. I am lately interested in physics. Is there any chance for me to go into good theoretical physics graduate program without any background in physics?
I am not sure if this kind of question is acceptable here, though.
ADDED My concern is do Universities even accept students with math majors into physics department without physics courses?

Hi user1709828; this is indeed not what this site is for. Though it occurs to me that it might fit on [academia.SE]. I'll ask the community there, and if it's okay with them, I'll migrate it over.

It is just one of this darn stupid automatic downvotes that go along with a question getting closed. They are implemented into the whole SE network and can unfortunately not be turned off here on Physics SE. At least hwlau could give you a nice answer before the question got closed, you were lucky ;-)

There are students with math major (and other major) go to physics graduate school, but I think all of them have taken physics courses. The first question you should ask yourself is that why you are interested in theoretical physics. If you were the admission committee and see an applicant said that they are interested in physics but taken no physics courses, what do you think? You must explain it in somewhere in your personal statement.
The first thing you should do is to take physics courses and get good grade on all of them. Also, you should try taking few graduate courses. There are no need to take courses on all topics, you should only have strong interest in few topics such as QM, EM, SM, QFT and string theory. Some of them are very mathematical (that good for you). Doing so can demonstrate your interest in physics.
Second, you might try to apply for master program in physics. It is easier to get in and after 1 or 2 years you can apply for PhD in physics to continue your study.
One more options is to apply for math department, in particular, you should look for applied math. There are usually few professors studying mathematical physics. It is particular true for some countries that the theoretical physicists stay in the math department and experimental physicists stay in physics department. Assuming you have good background in mathematics, it should be the easiest option for you to get in those school and start studying theoretical physics.

@user1709828 Yes. Which area are you interested in?

Is there such course in your university? You might try to talk to those professors teaching these course as they might give you good suggestion, and even a recommendation letters.

It is a bit hard. But if you can accept the basics in QM as axiom and have a good mathematical background in say, complex analysis, Greens function, spectal analysis, calculus, differential equation. I would say you could get a good grade in introduction of QFT. Notice that some courses might focus more on physics and some on mathematics, you can only know that by talking with course instructor.

@user1709828 i have also migrated from maths to physics (actually QM). some knowledge in functional analysis and operator algebra helped me a lot. one reason for developing these subjects was to understand QM and quant stat mech. all the best for your journey.

@rsg Yes, functional analysis helps to understand Lagrangian and energy functional, and operator algebra are used everywhere in QM for canonical quantization and commutation relation

If you are on a graduate admissions committee for a physics department, applications such as yours will bring some questions to mind. (i) How do they know they want to do physics if they don't know anything about it? (ii) How do I know they have any talent for physics? I don't see how you can address these questions without taking any physics courses. There are a number of mathematics departments with physicists in them, and you have a much better chance of getting in if you apply to one of these places. (But make sure they aren't just doing physics, but the right kind of physics.)

Machine learning is getting big in many fields of science and might be a great way in, since those skills are highly sought after. I know of physics professors who was working on this who specifically hired people with machine learning backgrounds. I do believe these students did also have a decent physics background having at least taken many courses in it. (This approach probably works better in systems where professors specifically higher students for specific research programs as is more common in Europe than the US.)


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What are some implications of taking a break before a PhD in the US or Europe?
I am a final year physics Master's student. I want to do a PhD after completing my masters. But instead of applying directly after completing masters, I wish to take a break from academics for a year and do a good research project with some professor unofficially, since doing good research is a big factor for PhD applications.
I have also got some comments that a PhD applicant with a break is given less importance, unless he has a high impact research done in the break.
Now I can't take a risk regarding high impact research. Hence I am confused regarding my future plans. What are the suggestions. How should I carry forward?

Since you have some responses below that seem to answer your question, please consider marking one of them as ‘Accepted’ by clicking on the tickmark below their vote count. This shows which answer helped you most, and it assigns reputation points to the author of the answer (and to you!).

This is, of course, ultimately up to you, people can only advise you; I will provide a list of some things to think about; hopefully this will help :)

You say that you want to "do a good research project". Isn't that what the master's project is for? I don't know anything about unofficial projects but it could work.
Yes, taking a break from academia would be a slight disadvantage, but if you're doing an unofficial project, then this won't be a problem at all, will it?
"High impact research", in my opinion, is a very ambitious/risky thing to set your mind on, in terms of a master's-level project. Don't forget that as a master's student, you are still expected to be learning; a PhD supervisor is unlikely to expect something like this, although they would like it!
Can you do a project over summer? In the UK at least, there are loads of paid internships and summer projects available, both with universities and industry.

Thank You for your kind reply. :) The thing is in master's along with courses its difficult to do a good project, hence I wanted to do extend my project. Can you give me links for summer projects in UK?

You're welcome. Again, it's hard to know what you mean by 'good'. Any comment I gave to that would just be repeating what I said above. My advice would be to make the best of what you have. Try google.com for the internships.

17670, taking a year off is or is not a common practice in Europe? I was thinking it has to be done for some kind of proposal. Is taking a year or so off between master's and PhD to do independent research a common practice in Europe?

My perspective is primarily European, since I did my Master's in Sweden and my PhD in Germany. That said, I did take a break before starting on my PhD. It wasn't entirely voluntarily -- I did not get any PhD studentships when I wanted them, and had to wait for the next round of applications.
During my break, I moved from Sweden to Germany, and took a job doing industrial software design for a consultancy firm. It gave me good experiences, the knowledge that I could make a career in industry, and also a very strong drive to make it in academia. Furthermore, the PhD position I eventually was admitted to, I got in part because I had, at that point, both Open Source and industry experience with packaging, shipping and distributing software -- something my advisor wanted to learn more about.
For me, this all worked out well. I left my industry job after 10 months to start a PhD, I graduated with a decent enough thesis, and now -- several years later -- I am about to start the first research project with my name on the grant application.
One fundamentally important thing to note with my anecdote is that there is a huge difference in how PhDs are admitted in large parts of Europe vs. in the US. For my PhD, I applied for a job with a particular professor, which happened to include “opportunity to study for a PhD” as part of the job description. This is how it mostly is done in Germany, and also in Sweden. In this setting, it is important that you come to the PhD with a set of credentials that will be valuable to your advisor, specifically. I managed to do just this with my break -- but that was luck as much as anything else.
In the US, there seems to be a LOT more politics involved in the process, and the applying to a school aspect of the US process biases the experience more towards grooming your CV for academia in general.
Your mileage will vary.

Mikael Vejdemo-Johansson, taking a year off is or is not a common practice in Europe? I was thinking it has to be done for some kind of proposal. Is taking a year or so off between master's and PhD to do independent research a common practice in Europe?

I am used to breaks like that being a rather uncommon feature. It, of course, varies between fields and between countries.


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Is there any academic advantage of being the submitting author of a paper?
It is well known that in most fields the order of the authors in a paper indicates the authorship, being the first one the best.
Independently of the order in a paper, does being the person that submitted the paper (not the corresponding author) gives any advantage, intellectual property, or academic reputation? If it does, is this field dependent, or academic culture dependent?

Do you distinguish between submitting author and corresponding author or is it one and the same?

@FuzzyLeapfrog Yes I do. Maybe often the submitting author is the corresponding author, but its not always the case. The corresponding author is the person who all correspondence about the paper should be directed to, but its no necessary that that is the person who send the paper for reviewing.

In that case, being the submitting author has only one advantage I can think of: Younger scientist and beginners are often curious about how the publication process works. If they have the opportunity to submit a paper they contributed to, this is often a useful experience.

In my field, authors are listed alphabetically; there is no special status for being the first author, last author, corresponsing author, submitting author, or author with the tallest hat, except at the Tallest Hat Contest.

The corresponding author and its affiliation is relevant for the payment, see e.g. http://dx.doi.org/10.17617/1.3 where they say: "For the time being, the dominant model is that the corresponding author is responsible for picking up and settling the invoice." Additionally, the corresponding author is listed with its contact information on the paper and will be contacted by readers first (thus, the email adress should be as long-lasting as possible).

This question makes no sense to me. In which journal does the reader see who handled the correspondence with the editor?

Possible duplicate of Does "corresponding author" carry an implied meaning?

@Wrzlprmft I have explicitly stated that I do not mean the corresponding author.

@Karl I asked because I have heard this being mentioned. I do not mean, of course, to the reader, but maybe there is some other advantage, perhaps inside the university, of being the author that submits the paper. This is not a random question but something I have heard people mention and confused me.

@AnderBiguri: Are there any journals where the submitting author is not the corresponding author?

It is an administrative role, if you want to explicitly distinguish it. No one even know who is that person, it can be a secretary..

Yes, @Wrzlprmft, the submitting author must not be the corresponding author. Seen this several times.

Nobody, except the authors and the editor, knows who did the actual correspondence. This question is completely random, it depends on your personal relationship with your boss and colleagues.

@Wrzlprmft yes, this happens quite commonly around  me. Supervisors/senior colleagues submit the papers, but the first author is commonly the corresponding author in the final published version.

@Karl The question is not random, you just have answered it. The answer did not needed to be "yes".

@FuzzyLeapfrog: Interesting; so much that I asked a follow-up or rather clarify-the-premise-first question. (Also, you almost certainly wanted to write need not instead of must not.)

No, there is no academic advantage of being the submitting author of a paper.

+1 for writing a simple and correct one word answer without feeling the need to ramble on pointlessly for several paragraphs afterwards, as people sometimes do around here.

It could definitely be improved be citing some source or referencing personal experience though. Otherwise it just reads like an opinion and I'm not sure how much weight-age that deserves..

There could be one potential advantage which is becoming part of their network (although it is possible that this also extends to the co-authors)
When I submitted a paper on editorial manager, I received a barrage of review invitations (at least four), but in another case, as a first author and not a submitting author, albeit in another journal and management system; manuscript central, I have not received any such correspondence.
Well this is all very speculative.
but what I can say definitively, is that when you are the submitting author, you manage everything that deals with the editor and journal. You manage the cover letters, you can also see little things here and there that are missing. Such as your ORCID affiliation for example. More importantly, if you are first author, you might be interested in making sure that things are done correctly! Keywords, disclosures, agreements about whether you want coloured figures or black and white figures. These are all little things that might not be communicated properly. Some might see these things as trivial and might not even ask for your input.
It also helps to become familiar with these systems. They are not a five minute job, especially when you consider the templates and other requirements that will be stated in the journal page and also restated in the online management system. If you are always co-authoring and you also happen to never submit yourself, then you miss out on some of these administrative subtleties.


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Why is an academic CV not the place to sell?
In a comment, ff524 said this (and got confirmed by scaahu, Nate Eldredge below (not to mention the number of votes)):

Actually, academic CVs are typically not as sales-pitch-y as non-academic CVs. They are usually a very formulaic listing of all the academic things the candidate has done, with no editorializing or embellishment [...]. The "sell" is reserved for other parts of the application.

Why? I know that there are some differences in academia than other environments, but I can't think of a reason why a CV shouldn't be a sale pitch. Sure, we have other metrics to evaluate that, like h-index, but what is so wrong that putting other things (like about me, objectives, other courses, English certification, class standing, etc)? I am asking this question in general, but I also ask it from the new young student standing point in specifically. I know that if you are a novice, LOR are very important. You can say that a CV should be concise and into the point, but a half-page long CV may show that beside that point, you have nothing.
I just wonder what is the harm of making the CV like a sales pitch?

I guess it depends what you call a "sales pitch". "Top publications: X, Y, Z" is definitely "allowed". However, I puke in my mouth a little bit everytime I get a CV that reads something like: "Life Objective: to reach pinnacle in the field with sheer determination, dedication and hard work." (yes, this is, unfortunately, a real-life example that I found more or less randomly with 3 minutes looking through my Applications mail folder).

A half-page long CV might show that you have nothing, but a half-page long CV with a page and a half of fluff shows that you both have nothing and are unfamiliar with academic customs.

“Life objective: tenure”

@RogerFan has the key point: in some sense the reason is tautological. There may not be anything inherently wrong with including such verbiage, but people are not expecting to see it there, and including it makes it look like you do not understand standard academic expectations.  It would be something like attending a job interview dressed as a vampire.  It makes the reader wonder whether there are other standard academic expectations that you don't understand (such as, to give an extreme example, "don't sexually harrass your students").

Because CVs are typically accompanied by a cover letter, where a sales pitch is natural and expected.

where a sales pitch is natural and expected ...and, in my experience, largely ignored.

The inference that those who oversell have less to sell is well supported by experience.

@xLeitix how about this objective: "study achieve a PhD in biophysics"?

Largely, it is cultural.  So far as I understand it, the idea is that "your record should speak for itself."  Of course, you are selling yourself to a degree, by how you choose to put which pieces forward, whether to choose a "selected" versus a "completist" format, etc.  The range of acceptable variation, however, is much narrower than for a job resume, and the format is built around showing credibility (in the form of accomplishments) rather than enthusiasm and fit with business goals (which is the goal of a resume).

But aren't other courses, English certification and class standing show your credibility?

In academia, the traditional CV format is exactly what people care about, i.e. it already is the sell. Other academics care about stuff like your papers, presentations, and teaching experiences. In general, very little weight is given to the other topics that you mentioned, so including them is a waste of space. The few places that they do have weight (primarily graduate admissions), the relevant parts are better suited to other areas of the application (e.g. official transcripts, TOEFL and GRE score reports) where they are more likely to be seen when needed.
Note that graduate admissions are slightly different from the rest of academia. CVs that are submitted here are often more of a hybrid between traditional resumes and academic CVs, in large part because prospective graduate students don't have the academic experiences and achievements to fill up the latter (somewhat field-dependent). But many of the same cultural norms apply. By and large, academics are not interested or swayed by unverifiable "fluff," so you should limit what you include to specific, concrete, verifiable achievements.

More than being a "waste of space" (space is not such a concern in a academic CV, especially early in career), the problem is that it decreases the signal to noise ratio (where the "signal" is the information of interest to the reader.)


text:
Names in my language used in publications are inconsistant. Should I worry about it?
In my language, name structure are different to Western names, and they have a lot of diacritics. To make it less confusing and easier to use for international work, we usually "transliterate" it to a non-diacritics version and reorder the position of components. The problem is, for different people, they will choose different way to change. For example, in my language, the name Nguyễn Ví Dụ will have these kinds of transliterate (I'm not going to list all "combinations"):

Du Nguyen
Nguyen VD
NV Du
Du NV
or keep using Nguyễn Ví Dụ

Since the complexity of how a name is formed in the language is large, I can't really say which kind of "transliteration" is better than the others (it may even depend on the policy of the journals). And honestly, I don't think this is a problem to the authors if they decide to use a particular "transliteration". I know that I should keep those names as they are when citing the authors because that's how they get the credits.
Question: However, when I list some authors (say in my CV), one will easily notice the differences between how the names represented. If the reader doesn't really care about that, that's fine, but if they do, I don't know if they will have bad impression? For worse, three professors who wrote LORs for me referred my name in three different ways, same as how they write their names. And I myself have decided to just write my name as it is, which will make my application has four representations of my name. Should I worry about this?

'we usually "transliterate" (...) and reorder' - and so, the problem begins.

you can always mention this in your cover letter, in a subtle way (perhaps when you mention your international background). Alternatively if you are sending your CV via email, it could be mentioned there.

Nguyễn is your family name, correct? How did NV Du or Du NV ever end up being used? Are they used in any of your publications, or only your reference letters?

@curiousdannii it is the family name (but not mine :) ). People only expose Du because in our culture, the only name you use to refer to a person is the name at the last (not the last name), regardless how formal the situation is. Some people can easily accept to be called by their surname (last name), some people just feel to be strange. I'm just a neophyte, so I don't have much publications, so far the name trouble is only in my reference letters, but I suspect that it will come in my publications soon.

Among those names you listed, the only place for concern about confusion is that the second representation (Nguyen VD) is not obviously the same as the the third and fourth (NV Du or Du NV).  Now in your question you seem to have a couple of concerns.
1) You're worried about authors' names on your CV (I guess in your list of publications).  Here the only likely concern should be for it to be clear which author you are.  If you're in a field like math, where author order doesn't matter, you don't even need to list your name, just say "(with ...)" to list your coauthors.  Otherwise, it's normal to list names as they appear on the paper.  If you want, you can take some liberties by expanding to full names or adding diacritics as long as it is easy to identify the author list on the published paper with that on your CV.  If for some reason it is still not clear which author you are (e.g., if other authors have some abbreviated name which might be yours), you can highlight your name on each paper (e.g., with an asterisk or use a different color).
2) For your LORs, it's common that different professors refer to people in different ways.  Since these will be LORs for you, there should be no confusion of who they're referring to, as long as it's reasonably related to your name on your application.  Also, if you list them as references, enter their names in their preferred format is reasonable, at least if you are writing in free form (e.g., you're not given certain spaces for family name versus given name).  The committee will then see that the way you entered their names matches with the way they wrote their own names on their letters.

for the references, it is what I'm talking about. I just afraid that the committee will find something weird in the names be inconsistent.

@Ooker That list of references does not look at all strange to me.  Most people in academia are exposed to researchers in many different countries, who may write their names in different ways.  Personally, I also like consistency when possible, but different people do things differently, and you have to accomodate that.

that's what I'm looking for. Thank you so much.

It's only part of the solution, but you could look at ORCID, which gives you a unique ID to link together all of your publications etc. regardless of the exact form of your name you use. Use isn't widespread yet, but more and more publishers are starting to adopt it, as are increasing numbers of research institutions (at least in the UK).

Related to that, there is also a Researcher ID, and as Scopus ID, that can be linked with the ORCID. That way, you can claim authorship of your articles, and you can even provide links as reference.

which one should I use? Is using those sites depend on which field I am in?

Use any or all of them — they're not mutually exclusive and there's no clear indication yet which one will become standard.

Use ORCID.  It's open, not for profit and being adopted by most universities and funders.  It will link to the other two if necessary.

I don't think this will make a bad impression with anyone. If this were to make a bad impression on someone, then you'd probably not want to work for that person.
In particular in the U.S. (but mostly in all Western countries at least), nowadays, it doesn't matter which name you choose. What matters is that you decide on one name, and stick to it. If you don't, you create unnecessary confusion and, at least until you'd be well-established, a never-ending need to clarify simple things.
If it's not too late, I would consider discussing this with your letter writers, and ask them to kindly all use whichever name you decide on. If it is too late to ask them, but you haven't sent anything out yet, do as the comment suggests and add a few explanatory words to your cover letter. And if you've already sent your application out, I wouldn't worry too much about the name issue.

On re-reading your entire question, I noticed that my formulations are throughout addressing what I took as your main concern - the 4 different names across an application. If you already have publications under different (apparent) names, the second paragraph still applies: don't worry about this for the past, but don't do it in the future.

Thanks for your answer. I want to know if the inconsistance of the professors' names in my CV is the big deal?

I'm not sure I understand. Do your professors' names appear in your CV as part of a publication list as co-authors, and you worry that others don't recognize them because in your CV, their name is spelled differently from in the publication? Or what is the issue with spelling professors' names in your CV?

something like this. They are not consistent in the way they present in my CV.

@Ooker: I see. I think the accepted answer by Kimball addresses this nicely though, so there isn't really much to add (and it's again no reason for worry, but you need to decide now how to avoid this from happening again in the future).

It's not entirely clear to me what your worry or question is.
In your first question, you mention that "when I list some authors (say in my CV), one will easily notice the differences between how the names represented." But why would you as a Vietnamese person order the names of other Vietnamese people in multiple different ways in your own CV?
In your second question, you say that "three professors who wrote LORs for me refered me in three different names". But the only reason they did that must be that you failed to inform them how you wanted your name to be rendered (in English, I presume?).
My suggestion to you is to mention at the top of your CV (and on your website) that in the East Asian tradition, your name (using the same example name as you did) is rendered as Nguyễn Ví Dụ (family name - middle name - given name), but in the Western tradition, it is rendered as Dụ Ví Nguyễn (given name - middle name - family name). Once you just mention that Nguyễn is the family name, no one should have any difficulties figuring out how to refer to you.

No I don't. They order their names themselves. 2) Yes. I didn't aware of that until I read the LORs they send. I haven't had website (yet), but I have thought about it. And in CV, how should I mention this? By having a Disclaimer section?