text:
How to deal with a cynical class?
I am dealing with this class that somehow became very cynical. We have constant complaints about the pace of the class, people asking literally the same questions over and over, blatant plagiarism, students pretty much insulting the lecturer and staff or laughing (sometimes at others asking questions) and being noisy during lectures etc.
This is especially weird since this is a professional education class. We are talking about people in their 30s on average paying $10k at a top 10 university and just for this one course. So it is not like this is some filler core requirement people are forced to attend against their will. These people were interested in this class before start and something messed up the morale.
We had the same staff --instructor and TAs-- for other cohorts and never had such issues. I am thinking it has to do with the composition of this cohort - one or two know-it-all types had a negative attitude from the beginning and some others somewhat struggling a bit started taking on their attitude. Before we realized this all snowballed into the cohort turning into a classroom of 30+ yr old high schoolers.
We have another 3 months to go and it is getting very exhausting for the staff and for the students still trying. People blatantly slowing down the class is not helping either. The instructor has been trying to talk to the whole class as well as the individual troublemakers along the lines of maintaining professionalism but that is simply having no effect. So the question is, how do we address this to salvage as much as we can and make it to the end of the class without it devolving further?

Do you want to address the problem as someone above the instructors or do you want the instructors to address the problem?

@Roland Majority are paying themselves.

@MassimoOrtolano I want to see what the instructors can do.

What is your own position here? Student, TA, ... What?

@Buffy I am a TA

So basically the instructor has failed to set limits from the start and the students are taking advantage of it (bullying you guys). How to solve it? Set limits firmly from now on. Any reasonable university should back up their staff  in situations like this. I personally would kick out permanently one or two of the main trouble makers to make an example out of them (if plagiarism is so prominent you shouldn't have a hard time doing this). After that the group should become more manageable. If it doesn't, repeat.

What area is the class in?  (I know you said it's a "professional education" class, but I'm not sure if you mean that it's a class about Education or if it's a continuing-education course for people in some unnamed profession.)

@Nat It is a data science 'bootcamp'. 6 month-long, class meets ~10 hr/week

Ah, do you have a diverse classroom?  I mean, data science is one of those fields a lot of folks are interested in, so I've seen courses fill up with business-types who don't know the first thing about math or programming along side PhD STEM'ers, creating an environment where no one's on the same page.  Is that the case here?

@Nat That's basically the case. No one academically that advanced afaik but we have bigwig corporate managers that can barely use computers alongside software engineers wanting to learn about data science and everything in between

Gotcha - your situation makes a ton of sense, then.  You might want to edit that info into the question, as it should help provide important context.

This is especially weird since this is a professional education class. — Sadly, no, it’s not weird at all. The fact that this is a professional education class makes this behavior much more likely, in my experience.

@Nat Great catch above there. The worst behavioral problems I've ever had are with classes with a huge disparity of incoming skill sets. Someone is always upset about the pacing/level of content (and maybe inter-student arguments break out as a result).

I wouldn't call this kind of class cynical but hostile and antagonistic.

"We are talking about people in their 30s on average paying $10k at a top 10 university and just for this one course." Do they pay or do their employers pay for it? The latter would give you some leverage, by vaguely stating: "Some of your employers have asked for feedback on conduct; you probably know if you are affected ..."

"professional education class ... people asking literally the same questions over and over, blatant plagiarism, disruption during lectures etc." When you say "blatant plagiarism" it sounds like the only grading is take-home homeworks. Can you not have random (unannounced) quizzes/tests, both to test understanding and eliminate disruptions? At least a midterm and final? Does lecturer actually have the ability to kick people out for low grades or disruption? If no to any of these, then you're just running a corporate diploma/certificate mill for $$$$ where every attendee gets a certificate.

Also, sounds like attendees aren't being challenged, can you also assign them a project - everyone picks a different topic, will reduce plagiarism and increase engagement and the quality of questions? It helps if you tell us the subject area. Many "professional-education" courses that give every attendee certificate, regardless of clue, are a total yawn.  Can you challenge them?

If students have time for funny jokes, then pretty obvious that they have not been loaded properly. Change their workload: more tasks, writing essays, solving problems for grades. If they get their current grades, then they start doing tasks, also this will greatly help you, keep your institution posted about current status of every student. @VictorS

If they want to act as high schoolers, you'll need to treat them like high schoolers.
I've taught in high school for a little time and while your semester already started, it is not too late to get a handle back on your class. The first few minutes after the class start is the most important moment to make it clear messing around will not be tolerated.
I would try at least once, at the beginning of a class, to say something like this:

You guys are being hard to manage and I'm sure you're aware of it. You are being disrespectful towards me, the rest of the teaching staff and other students who are trying to work. I'd like to know what is wrong, is there anything you think might make your experience better?

This way, you make it clear you want to work with them to find a solution and that it is bothering many people. Give them a chance to work it out with you before going the "full authority" route. You might give some troublemakers to turn into "positive leaders".
Even if this works, you need to start making it clear who has authority in your class. When you start your class, state your rules and don't move away from them. You'll probably need to set an example a couple of times before your students understand. You need to systematically apply the rules you gave your students or else they'll start exploiting you.

Regarding what you said in your post:

People asking literally the same questions over and over

Offer the student to come see you after class if they asked a question that was already asked, this way you do not slow down the pace of your class and if it's an attempt at "trolling" the student simply won't come to see you.

Blatant plagiarism

Your school clearly has a policy against plagiarism, start using it without exception. These students lost their right to second chances. If you catch plagiarism, report it to the correct instance at your school and let the comity in place decide.

Students pretty much insulting the lecturer and staff or laughing (sometimes at others asking questions)

Respect is the most important thing in a class. If a kid in high school (where, at this age, education is a right not a service) can get kicked out of a class for being not being respectful, so can an adult. If I paid 10k$ for a class, you can be damn sure I'd stop this after being kicked out once. If you want to make sure you won't have repercussions, go see the head of your department to make sure they have your back if something happens.

Being noisy during lectures

To be fair, this can happen. If this is repeated, refer to the point above.

You said in a comment

"That is a straightforward solution but the lead instructor in this case does not want to take authoritarian measures. So that's another challenge here"

This is sad but University teachers aren't often good at managing this kind of class (because they don't have much experience with them). You should try talking to him/her about it, stating that it really messes up the flow of the class, the confidence of all the teaching staff and the overall credibility of the class.
As a last resort, when your class gets out of control, stop talking. More often than not, the students will deal with themselves and silence should come back to the class. If it doesn't well it is their loss.
To make this work, the best case scenario would be for the whole teaching staff to be on the same line and to make sure your boss has your back, but University students are customers of a service under certain conditions. If some students mess up with your class, they interfere with the students who are respecting the rules and this is not acceptable.
Edit
I've seen an OP's comment stating:

"That's basically the case. No one academically that advanced afaik but we have bigwig corporate managers that can barely use computers alongside software engineers wanting to learn about data science and everything in between"

This is a very complex problem to address, because it is hard to pace your class for the large diversity of backgrounds, which means either some students won't understand or some will find the class too slow and since you're alone, it's hard to find a middle ground. What I might propose is to:

Either match students of different backgrounds together so that they can help each other (by whispering, of course) regarding their different expertise.
Show examples that can "talk to" your different kind of students. You have, maybe among others, managers and software engineering students, so try to give specific situations/examples where each of these students can bring their expertise. It is likely, I think, that your problematic students are the kind of people that like to hear themselves talk. By getting them to participate, I'm pretty sure you'll be able to have a better handle on your class.

In the case of a professional education class, I think it's important to let the students talk/participate in class. These are not people who are used to sitting hours in a class to listen to someone talk like University students are used to. By giving more opportunities to participate, you'll probably have a better experience.

This situation seems strange to me. If we did that to any of the professors I have had, things would get difficult real fast. The laboratory courses would become 14 hour marathons, the assignments would become super hard, there would be pop quizzes and I would presume the exams would be excruciating. The grades would plummet, and the number of people having to attend the "summer exams" would increase... I would be very careful about offending someone that holds in their hands the keys to my future.

When dealing with unruly students, it is important, though, to keep the composure. I was in a class where two students were being noisy. The professor yelled to keep silence, once and no more. On the other hand, one of my high school lectures lost it once, exploded screaming a bunch of colourful language, and the general reaction was more to contain laughter than to feel you should shut up.

This happens to almost everyone who teaches in academia. We all eventually get "that class". Let me lay out some options for you:
Look for experts on your campus outside the department
First of all, if you have a college of education at your school, head over there and find a professor who was a former K-12 teacher. Further, if your school has a teacher prep program, you are in even better luck. There will likely be a few teaching veterans who have plenty of experience getting unruly classes (kids to adults) back under control. Some of those education professors who were former teachers have classroom management down to an art form. It can be really interesting to watch how effortlessly they do it as well. I recommend reaching out to the department head there and asking if there is a professor (or even graduate student) who might be able to give you some advice.
Look for advice in your department
Ask others in your department if they have had a similar situation. Reach out to the department head. First of all, it might be best to fill your department head in on whats going on anyway. I have not known too many department heads who like surprises. Especially surprise calls from administration asking what they know about students complaining being kicked out of a class they paid $10,000 for.
Self Fix it
Grab a book on classroom management and see what you can do on your own. Its tough getting a class back in line mid semester, but there is plenty of help advice in books and from blogs. The usual remedy is to implement increased structure in the class. Get the class into doing routines.
Remember, kicking out a student from class is not what you want to do. Banning a student from class is the nuclear option. Once you go down that route, things get out of your control. You might end up with an administrative problem. This gets even worse if you end up kicking the wrong person out. How are you going to even determine who is the ring leader in the first place?

Classroom management is an excellent skill to have - I'd like to learn it myself. I have been very impressed by some of the teacher's at my sons' elementary school. You can tell the ones who have had formal training versus the ones who are just up there trying to teach. It's night and day.

This doesn't really answer the question. "Ask someone else" and "read a book" are non-answers you can say about literally any question. The whole point of stackexchange is to "ask someone else," but there's no answers right here.

@DanielR.Collins: Such incoherence is typical of deconstructionism. If you haven't heard of it, don't waste your time and energy looking it up.

@ManuelRodriguez You seem to be looking at that a bit backwards, at least in regards to your "role playing game" point.  It doesn't seem at all to me like this answer interpreting the problem as a RPG.  The issue seems to be that you're interpreting the act of doing actions to achieve a goal as if it is some property specific to RPGs.  I believe it is quite the opposite; that RPGs are based on real life cause and effect, where certain actions absolutely do modify the "plot". In this case the plot is what happens in real life.

@user21820: I have a philosophy degree, studied deconstructionism, and never seen anything as incoherent as the (now deleted) prior comment.

I'm afraid that, as a TA there is probably very little you can do. The instructor might be able to do something and there are some suggestions in the other answers here that can help, but you need a certain amount of recognized authority to make it work.
I have had to deal (once) with an equally difficult, though different situation. I was able to handle it with a "shock therapy" trick, but only because I was a senior professor at the institution. A junior faculty member probably wouldn't be able to make this work.
In my case, the students weren't disruptive, just disengaged. They didn't take notes, didn't seem to study, didn't ask questions. Completely passive. I asked one student before class why he didn't take notes and he just pointed to his head as if he learned everything immediately without effort. Of course it doesn't work that way.
My solution was to announce at the beginning of a class that I was willing to just fail everyone in the class and we could all stop pretending. I would stop pretending to teach, they would stop pretending to learn, and we wouldn't even have to waste the time coming to class.
Shock and dismay.
The real problem is that most of them had had an easy time up to then with their education and no one had challenged them very deeply. It wasn't that they were lazy but just that they didn't really know how to learn. So I spent a couple of classroom hours teaching them how to learn. This was in a second year Computer Science course, by the way.
The problem the OP states is different, but, with sufficient authority, recognized by the university, if not by the particular students, a shock therapy might work. Walk out of the classroom at the first sign of disrespect. Ask a disruptive student to immediately carry a note to the department head and wait for a reply. The note would mention the disrespect. Announce a snap quiz. Make it hard.
Very risky.
In my case, the story went around the department and added to my mythical powers. The students improved. The time and effort wasn't wasted.
But, if you try this, you'd better be certain that you will be allowed to follow through and that the department will back you. A junior member of the faculty would be advised to try it only with permission of the head and, in the current situation, concurrence of the staff of the course (all TAs).

@GeorgeM, I suggested a variation. Shock therapy is the lesson, not the specific details.

Identify the troublemakers and eject them from class as soon as they step out of line. As you say, this kind of situation often snowballs out of a few bad elements. These students are not there for entertainment and this isn't a high school. Someone who doesn't want to learn isn't worth wasting any time. Removing the bad elements might help restoring a professional environment, keeping only people who are actually intent on learning the content of the class.
Usually these students end up getting the hint. If they don't, ban them outright from the class after a few times. The other students deserve a quality course from you and the other teachers, and these troublemakers are preventing it. It is highly unlikely that the whole class is really "cynical", and you will be left with actual students, not people who want to pass the time. In the rare event that literally all of the registered people don't care about the class, congratulate yourself on getting paid time off and watch movies or read a book during scheduled class time.
Now, since you used a dollar sign, wrote "top 10" and mentioned students "paying $10k", I'm pretty confident that you are in the US, so take my advice with a grain of salt. I am not from the US and it is my understanding that the motto "customer is king" permeates even non-mercantile aspects of society such as higher education. If these troublemakers try to get a refund which in turn provokes the administration into pushing back on your decision to eject/ban students, try to make the argument that movie theaters are well within their rights to kick out noisy spectators and not refund them anything. But in the end, it's up to you to decide whether the fight is worth it and whether you have the political clout to pull this kind of stunt.

This is what I'd do too. I daresay that the instructors waited even too much before expelling the troublemakers.

It's always hard to grab back a class attention but there's three months left. The alternative is continue working in a terrible environment. I've done it and it's soul crushing. Now I don't tolerate idiots. These people pay thousands to jerk around in class. They're idiots.

That is a straightforward solution but the lead instructor in this case does not want to take authoritarian measures. So that's another challenge here.

Perhaps the instructor could give out candies when students listen for more than 5 minutes straight. "I do not want to take authoritarian measures" is dogma, dogma should be challenged.

@Kurotakest I'd find it very patronizing to be rewarded for mere basic decency.

@Kurotakest Because one pays out of pocket in the US, the education dynamic changes.  In higher education, school is not a public good, but a service to a customer.  That doesn't excuse this behavior, in practice It is usually still a student teacher relationship, but it definitely is a different point of view from countries with cheaper or mostly publicly funded institutions.

@VictorS : "...does not want to take authoritarian measures" -- then the lead instructor is either an idiot or a mamby-pamby coward. It is the instructor's responsibility -- duty, even -- to ensure the quality of the class for all of the other students as well, and he is sacrificing this rather than asserting his authority to do this.

"That is a straightforward solution but the lead instructor in this case does not want to take authoritarian measures." So the guy is constantly getting bullied and mocked at, but feels like kicking people out is being "autoritarian"?

@opa not a public good, but a service to a customer — Yes, and by interrupting the instructor and plagiarizing, you are making the service you’ve paid for (practice and feedback) impossible to deliver, not just to you but to everyone in the class. That’s like going to a restaurant, talking over the waiter when they try to take your order, and stealing the breadsticks from the next table.

@DavidRicherby You'd also not behave like that. (I assume.)

@sgf Presumably the whole class gets candy for being quiet. It would be even more ridiculous to reward only the troublemakers.

@Kurotakest Sarcasm from complete strangers is hard to detect in text and the fact that my comment got three upvotes says that I wasn't the only one who didn't spot it.

This answer should be higher. The institution's job is to provide a course, including lectures, in which students can learn. It is not the job of the students collectively to fix their classmates, but for the institution to fix it. The unwritten contract is that if you attend, you do so in order to learn, not to show off and spoil other people's courses. If the institution fails to regain control, there may be grounds for unhappy students to demand compensation.

If it were 100% of the class acting this way, I'd say you have some time to experiment and find the best way to fix things. But, if there has been a single student that has acted properly and done their due diligence throughout the semester, I think that makes a big difference.
If I were a student in this class who was not participating in counterproductive behavior, I would rely on the instructors acting quickly to ensure I was still getting the quality of education I deserved. I would (personally) not want to experience a few months of professors experimenting with different disciplinary methods. If the situation above is accurate, this would be the point at which I'd already be reaching out to administration for a refund or class reassignment  and I'd specifically say "the professors can't control the class" even though the class itself is intentionally out of control.
If 80% of the class can't conduct themselves in class properly, I would expect them to be asked to leave. If you can construe this as an absence, then they have a finite number of removals before they automatically fail. If it's for disrespecting staff or other students, I can't imagine there being much pushback if you can get the person who was disrespected to sign a paper saying it happened.
Instituting class conduct rules, with definite consequences for breaking them, is also a quantifiable way to show your expectations and their lack of respect for them. The bottom line is that if you have to take disciplinary action at this level of academia, prepare for it to be challenged, so back it up with quantifiable evidence (not anecdotal).
Also, given the course"s topic, as a student I would respect the logic of saying "Some of you can't figure out how to conduct yourselves professionally amongst your peers, which is also the topic of this course. Classroom performance counts for 51% of your grade." I feel like that's a no-brainer, like you said, it's not just some core requirement they'll have to repeat, they are purchasing their own F a la carte. Remind them of that.
Not wanting to use authoritarian methods is admirable, but the longer you wait the more legitimate complaints you may get from the few students who want to be there and are making the proper effort. I think the burden is on you to show (starting very soon) you have enacted policies to combat, if not solve, the problem. If not, you (or the profs) could be held responsible for legitimate students asking for a refund, which is worse than disciplinary cases asking for one.

Also, just to mention it, apologies for having to deal with this group of people at all. They are acting shamefully and wasting a lot of money/time. It is regrettable the burden of fixing the situation rests on the people who arent at fault.

Well, I think the crucial information here is in the comments to the post, which reveal that the root cause of the problem is big difference in the skill levels between the attendees, the lower skill level guys happen to be managers who are accustomed to be outspoken and steer the conversation out of it's professional realm.
In this case, the reasonable solution will be dividing the classroom and providing for each skill group appropriate information, so that for all groups the pace will be manageable.
It will likely require time investment in creating two parallel curriculums. Also assignment levels may vary according to the skill set.
The managers are also likely interested in different aspects of the data science from the programmer guys, so it's reasonable if they will show their discontent about spending time on the material which has less value for them.
Additionally, an approach for smart kids at school may work, if the managers' ego will permit it - make time for workshops, and when working on assignments, make the people who catch the material faster, help the guys who struggle. If done well, it may prove a valuable experience for all the participants.

Dividing the classroom isn't realistic in a classroom setting. While you provide information for one group, you'll lose the other one and soon enough you'll completely lose both.

Sure, it will involve making two separate classrooms.

Well I don't see how that can be an option in a University setting.

It depends on the OP's situation. I just brought the option to the table, maybe it will lead the OP to some idea that is suitable to their situation.


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In grading, professor takes into account submission time, performance compared to other students, and visibility of posters. Is it fair?
I am an undergrad in the US taking an upper-level biology course with ~30 students. My  professor has been grading some assignments in what I, and other students in the class, realize is quite unfair. For example, we had to post to a discussion online and respond to our classmates' posts. When it was graded, I received a 17 out of 20 total points. Upon looking at the rubric, there was a section for "initiative" - if you were one of the first 10 students to submit the assignment, you received the full points. I submitted my assignment pretty close to the due date, but it was turned in completely on time! I know professors reserve the right to grade how they see is best, but come on... If the assignment is turned in on time, how can the professor be allowed to take points off for not doing it early? This was not stated in the syllabus, and the rubric was provided only after grading was done.
Does this seem like a fair and legitimate way to grade students? Should I look into reporting this to someone higher up at the university? (Who?) I did already provide a course evaluation that raised these concerns.
Some other examples that I believe are not fair to students:

She often says that she grades off the "best" student's work. Like for written assignments, she would say that she had to look at all of them, decide whoever's assignment was best, and then grade everyone based on that student's work. This makes everything a huge competition which is very frustrating.
We had a poster project where other students and some professors were invited to come in and see them. She had observers put stickers on their "favorite" poster and those who received the most stickers  received extra credit. However, many just put their stickers on the ones closest to the door.

From the language used, it sounds like the instructor is using Blackboard with Rubric Scoring. Before complaining, you'd best make sure that the rubric was in fact not visible before the submission. That's possible, but is the bottom-most option in the menu the instructor picks to make it at all visible. The top-most (default?) option is to make it visible, via a button, within the assignment before submission.

Why not ask your professor what she is trying to achieve with this grading before escalating? There is a clear discrepancy between how you expect to be graded (by common standards) and how your professor is actually doing that.
I understand your frustration, but I would like to add some nuances:

She is rewarding early submissions. She may be doing this to try to teach all of you better time management. It is debatable whether this is the best way of doing that. Given such a system I'd be a bit worried that a not-very-early submission could cause a failing grade.
She is grading off a standard as set by excellent students. In the US, it's very common to grade on a curve which inherently contains a comparison with fellow students. However, the details are typically different.
She is rewarding visibility/popularity. In industry and science, these are also commonly rewarded. One could even go so far as to say that securing a poster position close to the door is part of increasing visibility, although I think that's overly harsh.

All in all, I think your professor has some good ideas but her implementation leaves something to be desired. Also, all of this should be clearly stated in the syllabus. I'd have a conversation with her about this, possibly argue for a higher grade for yourself, but I'd very much consider how much time and effort you want to put into this after that.

I agree with this answer by Designerpot. I would first talk to the professor about it before escalating it. The idea that 2 marks are awarded for being the first ten - which are not bonus marks, strikes me as a bit unfair, where even if you did the assignment "perfectly" but were number 11, you could never get a perfect or near perfect score. Students also have varying commitments, and if its not handing in late then I dont think this is a fair way to grade. But you need to lay this out in a rational and respectful way.
The second part seems to be common practice - I've used this method before, where you grade off the best few papers. Essentially its actually kind of like a bell curve. Think of it as - with the instructions of the assignment, the course material and the student level of learning, this was one of the best outcomes in terms of product. I may have been expecting more, but if these are examples of the best assignment that helps situate how hard you should be marking. When I have a test I do the same thing - if the highest grade in the class is 56/60, then I grade them all out of 56 - I also remove questions if a majority do not answer correctly - the intent isn't to trick students, but to test their knowledge. If my test is too hard for at least one student to get perfect, then I dont think all the questions were fair.

"If my test is too hard for at least one student to get perfect" --- For the most part I agree with what you've said, although I'd be careful with omitting questions that many people missed, because some students may have spent a lot of time on those at the expense of other questions. However, "at least one student to get perfect" seems like an extremely high bar unless this is an introductory class and the test is on straightforward material with straightforward questions. In my case as a student, it was nearly unheard of for anyone to get perfect on an upper/graduate level physics test.

"Fair" and "wise" are two different things.
First, I don't think this is wise.  It serves little purpose.  It doesn't even teach time management.  Students should be given a deadline, and they should be penalized if they don't meet that deadline.  If you're trying to teach time management, you might break a project into chunks and create interim deadlines.
Is it "fair"?  In a sense, since all students are under the same rules, it is fair.  In another sense, because students have no control over when other students turn in an assignment, part of the grade is out of one's personal control, and that could be considered unfair.
If the prof would like to teach "initiative", I'd recommend two due times, with the early submission time earning the initiative points.  If everybody makes that due time, they all get the points.  I still think it's silly, but more fair.
Making sure the best performing students in the class get the best grades is a fairly common practice.  My preference is to make expected levels of mastery known, and grade to those.  The top levels should be very challenging, and the students with the most aptitude and those willing to work hardest should be able to achieve A's.  Same outcome, but it doesn't create a competition between students.  If everyone works very hard and they all get A's, that's fine.  If the metrics and rubrics are laid out right, it usually doesn't happen (you need to be careful to avoid grade inflation).

"Making sure the best students get the best grades" feels to me like unfairly loading the dice. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy that may have little basis in reality and certainly disadvantages some students.

@Buffy I agree.  Confirmational bias is very important to avoid.  I changed the language somewhat to try to better reflect what I was trying to convey.

Actually, I wasn't objecting to your post in any way. It is, indeed, common. Too common, perhaps.

part of the grade is out of one's personal control — As opposed to what?!

@JeffE As opposed to a situation where they can choose to work hard to master material better.

@ScottSeidman Huh? No grading system, no matter how unfair, can prevent anyone from working harder to master material better.

In a sense, since all students are under the same rules, it is fair. That is a necessary but not sufficient condition for fairness. For example, a rule according to which every student gets a completely random grade satisfies the condition, but is obviously unfair. (Of course, it is equally unfair to all students. I guess that counts for something...)

@JEffE, Scott Seidman, I think it makes more sense to say "part of the grade is under the other students' control". And this is indeed unfair, because it should be under the control of the student who's work is being graded, and of the instructor who does the grading.

Of the practices you described, the one that stood out to me as being very clearly unfair is the marking off of points for not submitting work early enough when the submission was still done ahead of an officially-announced deadline, and where no indication was communicated to you of any expectation that you should submit even earlier than that official deadline to qualify for full points. This is 100% unfair and illegitimate, pure and simple, and you would be completely reasonable to complain about it.
As for the other things you mentioned:

Using the best submission as a reference for grading purposes sounds like a reasonable and accepted practice. While it is also reasonable for you to want to be judged based on your own abilities according to some objective set of expectations, the fact is that teachers do not always know what is reasonable or realistic to expect of students, so when we are grading work, we may calibrate our expectations by first of all looking at some fraction of the assignments (or even all of them, if it’s a small enough number), and then deciding that the best work is what we consider appropriate for the highest grade. Knowing what the best assignment looks like can be a reasonable heuristic to guide one’s attitudes in grading the work of the other students. Of course, a sensible instructor will not get too carried away with this approach, and also be mindful of the possibility that they have some exceptionally brilliant or precocious student in their class and be careful not to have that negatively affect their view of the other students’ work. And perhaps your professor isn’t a sensible person and doesn’t implement this methodology in an optimal way, I can’t say for sure. But generally speaking, this particular practice doesn’t sound outrageous to me.
The issue with the posters sounds unfortunate to me. Probably the professor’s idea of using popularity as a factor in grading the posters wasn’t as well thought out as it should have been. Perhaps if she realized that posters that were close to the entrance of the room enjoyed an unfair advantage she would find a way to make the grading more fair, so it would be a good idea to bring the matter to her attention. So yes, I see this is as somewhat unfair, but it looks like an unintentional sort of unfairness that I would get less outraged about (as opposed to holding students accountable for imaginary submission timelines that aren’t communicated, which is really quite egregiously wrong as I discussed above).
Generally speaking, turning things into a competition between students may be frustrating for you, but it’s an accepted practice, and considered reasonable, among other reasons for the reason I mentioned above that professors often need to know how their students are performing as a group to calibrate their expectations of any individual students. (Again, experienced instructors know how to avoid taking this to an unhealthy extreme, and perhaps your professor hasn’t learned that lesson yet.) Also, note that this methodology can actually work in your favor rather than against you - for example, if I always graded students “objectively” purely based on my own internal expectations and without taking into account how the class is performing as a whole, I’m sure there would be times when I might get things horribly wrong and give way too many students a failing or very low grade. So grading on a curve does have some practical benefits also from the students’ point of view.

Reading your answer, I adjusted my attitude toward grading on a curve.

@henning good to know!

Life isn't fair.
That is the first lesson here. You will have to learn to cope with blatant discrimination, outright lies, and clearly biased situations. This professor, intentionally or not, is helping to teach that here. You even found evidence of that in the rubric, which is clearly unfair and biased towards the students able to post more quickly.
Absolutely, that is not fair. But the question of fairness is itself not the right question. Is it wrong?
No. It's in the rubric. Possibly. It depends on how it is applied. This is where ethical code of conduct may apply. If it does, be exceptionally careful and detailed in documenting the problems before reporting them.
It is not the student's job to correct the teacher, admonish the teacher, or dictate to the teacher. The student is there to learn the lessons of the teacher. Disclaimer: This generalization doesn't take extreme situations into account.
Accept that even if the professor is deliberately unfair and biased, you are still accountable for your own actions and responsible for yourself. This empowers you to take the action necessary to succeed here.
If you completely disagree with the professor, lack understanding of what is being done, or cant explain the actions in any reasonable manner then you should approach your professor outside of class with enough time to discuss your grievances.
In your comments you mention how there seems to be contradictory information provided, such as being told that X action will benefit you when the reality is not doing X is penalizing you. This is something I would ask the professor about directly. There may be something you're missing or it may be a communication problem.
Your understanding of the problem is incomplete.
Here you've focused on the professor, what is fair, and how you can compel them to change. The class isn't about the professor, it is about you. Take advantage of your situation and what you know here.
The professor has a syllabus and given rubrics out for clearly defining how the work is going to be graded. This means the rubric defines what is a good assignment, not your perception of what is good.
If the rubric requires you to write the best novel in the world but will take off a point for every instance of the letter "e" in the novel, then you wont find many competitors to "Gadsby" out there.
Study the syllabus. Study the rubric. Use them. They work both ways. Ask for the rubric with the assignments if it isn't provided. You seem like someone that excels within defined boundaries. Ask for those boundaries. If there are none, arbitrarily make some up for yourself and adjust from there.
If your goal is the compel the professor to change, then use the rubric and syllabus to your advantage. Exploiting the rubric is an effective way to force the professor to take action. A heavy warning here, this puts you into an adversarial relationship with your professor and usually unexpected negative consequences appear in other ways. I don't recommend this at all, even as a last resort.
You're far better off learning from "Its not what you know, it is who you know" and just befriend the best students in that class. Your grade will likely go up just by interacting with them more as you will see what the curve leans towards.
Edit: Changes to the question fundamentally altered the answer's direction.

I did edit my question for clarification - the rubric wasn't one that was given to us when the assignment was assigned. I simply came across it on the online program that is used to report grades (it showed the rubric used for grading). In addition, grading based of initiative was also never mentioned in the syllabus. The lack of communication is simply what bothers me.

@Rayne This may be super specific to ask here: Even with digging and without communication, was the rubric information that you found possible to find or available prior to the due date of the assignment?

No. We were given instructions for the assignment, but no rubric, and the instructions did not mention anything about what grading would be based off of. It only included what information we should include in the assignment. I remember her briefly mentioning in class after we were assigned the assignment, and after a student or two had already posted, that she would reward students for getting it done early. However, to me that sounds like they would get extra points for being ahead of the game, not that points would be deducted for not doing it early.

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How to publish independently in top journals?
I am a second year PhD student. I also worked on topics outside my thesis. The results are good and I want to submit it to top journals. However, I am surprised by the attitude of most of the editors of top journals (ex: macromolecules, ACS Omega, ACS Nano). They accept articles (and are lenient) to manuscripts that are from a lab whose PI has good relations with them.
How can a a new researcher push through in this environment? What are tips and tricks from experienced researchers? Should I try to network with other researchers by sending them emails praising their works? What can we do?

Maybe if a journal only publishes work from labs friendly with the editor it's not actually a good journal anymore.

Its everywhere. Editor wont send it for review. I can guarantee that a lot of phd students have also observed this.

Why ask a question if you already believe that the system is rigged against you, and nothing can convince you otherwise? That is just a waste of your time.

What does your advisor think of the paper you're sending out?

Second year PhD students are likely not ready at all for publishing pretty much anywhere without significant interaction with their advisor. Start there.

The system is not fully rigged. Its complex. There is an initial barrier to cross. You have to make yourself known. I was asking whats the best way to do that?

The advisor seems happy with the work.

They accept articles (and are lenient) to manuscripts that are from a lab whose PI has good relations with them.

How would you know? Do you have insider information as to how the journal makes decisions? Given you're a PhD student (and not an editorial board member or journal staff) I highly doubt you know how the journal is making decisions.
You write that your papers aren't even getting sent to peer review, and you think it's because you don't have good relations with the editors of the journal. If you truly think that, you are almost assuredly wrong. Good relations with the editors of a journal can positively bias them into accepting your papers, but poor relations will not bias them into rejection (and I say this based on years of experience in publishing).
Check out this question for another person theorizing about why their papers are getting desk rejected. Note the top-voted answer says nationality of the authors does not play a role in desk rejection, and it would be highly unethical if it did. The same also goes for identity.
As for how you can "push through" these desk rejections, also check out the question above, in particular xLeitx's answer. I quote:

Nationality of the authors does not directly play a role in either of these decisions. However, I would be lying if I did not say that desk rejects are significantly more common for middle or far eastern countries, such as Iran, Pakistan, or China. This is mostly because more authors in these countries submit papers that are blatantly outside of the scope of the journal, very poorly written, very poorly formatted (e.g., figures that are entirely unreadable), which do not follow at all the reporting conventions of the journal, or where there appears to be very close to no novelty in the work.

The bar to not getting desk rejected is usually fairly low (the best-of-the-best journals might have a higher bar). If you are not clearing it, odds are your presentation needs serious improvement, or the work is patently bad. Since you're a PhD student, you can attack both of these problems by asking your advisor. You can do this even if the work is unrelated to your thesis. Your advisor is there to help; it's up to you to approach them.

I know because editors of similar rank journals are my advisor and aome other professors with whom I have good relation. They themselves say this. Secondly; I havent said that my articles are desk rejected. I meant desk rejection is very common if editors dont know who the authors are.

@Robin if they weren't joking, then they'd be the people you should ask. If your advisor is an editor of a similarly-ranked journal, he/she'd be even better a person to ask. And no, desk rejections are not common if editors don't know who the authors are.

Hey, I know that some articles make it to peer review only based on who the authors are. Yes, the publishing system is really broken.

@Daniel yes, hence I mentioned positive bias in the answer.

I'm not sure your question is entirely fair. You seem sure that only papers from "friendly" PIs and labs are even considered. I don't doubt that there is some bias at the top, but why are you so sure that you paper would be outright dismissed? Given the number of papers published in those journals, I have a hard time believing that there is no way to break into them without connections.
Anyway, that isn't really an answer. I would say you have two options. The first is to find one of those labs/PIs that you have identified as "connected" and set up some sort of collaboration. Then you, by association, could become connected and your work might get in.
You could also just not submit to those journals - the comment from @Bryan Krause says it well - why bother with those journals if the editors are just publishing their buddies work?
Add-on: When you say publish independently, do you mean without your advisors support? If you've been having trouble with this, it could be that you need a more experienced set of eyes on your manuscripts.

Thank you for your comments. In some field its a closed community. They accept mostly their buddies papers and cite them. They create a huge barrier for someone to penetrate. However; the journals have prestige. I just want to know how to even the playing field.

That's unfortunate. I think my advice still holds though. If you want in to the club you have to find someone already accepted and ride their coattails for a bit - or you can choose not to play the game and publish elsewhere. Or, the more realistic answer for a 2nd year student, you should focus on improving your work and producing papers that really have a shot at high impact journals.

The short answer is to do the kind of work that these top tier journals respect and publish. There's no easy formula, there's no recipe other than to publish that kind of work.
If you want to publish in Journal of Econometrics for example, your work needs to be in the top 1% of econometric theory and practice. It must be innovative, the proofs have to be correct, so on and so forth. There's no such thing is a tip or trick here, it's usually (usually) a skill issue. These top journals, they have a high reject rate for a reason.
In fact, American Economic Review explicitly tells grad students (us) NOT to send stuff there that isn't ready- the top tiers aren't places where you send your work to get good feedback, they're places where you send your work because it's currently at the top of the line work in your field, and that isn't just for my field, that's any of the top 5 in any field we pick.

This is and remains a complex issue. As said by others, writing and positioning a paper is a skill which takes a lot of practice to develop and where an extra set of eyes can help a lot. Even after over a hundred coauthored papers I often need feedback from others to ensure my implied ideas are clear for readers (and editors) not involved in the work (that is everyone). So perhaps independent publishing may be a bit overambitious in this stage of your career. Also fitting with journal scope is a complex game to play, which does involve some subjective decisions from handling editors. Also here experience in how to position a paper to pass the bar of specific journals takes time to grow (and even after 20 years I sometimes get desk rejects for failing to get it right). In summary, getting work published is a skill on many levels where collaboration and experience matter. I would advice you to build up that experience over a number of years and not be too disappointed or frustrated if a highly aimed manuscript gets rejected.

Although I acknowledge that a second-year Ph.D. student may not be prepared to publish independently, the underlying question is still valid. Contemporary scientific publishing has significant problems, as evidenced by examples where accomplished scientists published faked data and flawed research in high-profile journals. Furthermore, a "buddy system" between editors and scientists, coupled with evident biases against junior scientists and those hailing from non-U.S., non-China, and non-EU countries, do exist. To overcome these obsticles, a prevalent strategy involves seeking collaboration with established scientists, often resulting in co-authorships without significant contribution. This practice allows certain established scientists to accumulate a significant number of publications and bolster their h-index without substantial scholarly contributions.
Drawing from my decade-long career, a personal experience exemplifies these issues. During a period of a couple of years I didn’t have funding and had some health-related challenges. Consequently, my productivity suffered. It didn’t help that I had changed my research field. Upon resuming my research activities and submitting manuscripts as the corresponding author, I faced successive rejections from editors, justified by seemingly arbitrary reasons. Subsequently, when the same manuscripts underwent peer review, reviewers endorsed them without suggesting any substantive changes. Adding an insult to an injury, an editor who initially rejected my manuscript on the grounds of misalignment with the journal's scope later solicited my review for a manuscript from a different research group on a nearly identical topic. After several such experiences I started enlisting one of my more established coauthors to submit as the corresponding author, which appeared to solve the problem.

Wow. This exactly mirrors my experience. Particularly the part about rejecting papers for arbitrary reasons. I had a paper that reviewers recommended for publication but the editor rejected because he said that their might be another explanation for my results than what I wrote in my conclusion. When I asked him to list a single possible other explanation he couldn't, yet he stood his ground and rejected.

I asked this question to one wise scholar. Here is his answer:
One thought. I suggest that before you submit a paper to any journal, look at other papers already published in that journal. Maybe that suggests some minor changes you might make to your paper so it better fits that particular journal.
Next remember the title of the paper and the Abstract. These will greatly influence the referee and editor. So work very hard to make the title “snappy” and the Abstract as attractive as it can be.  The abstract must be written for the nonexpert.  No very technical words!!
Think about the References in the paper. While many may be old, a few should be in the last 5 years - papers or books.
Now don’t put any result in the paper unless it is a good one. Don’t fill the paper up with everything you know - the best papers may or may not be long, but it should be very very clear to the reader what is the main result. If it isn’t, rewrite the paper so it is.
Also realise that when you submit a paper to any journal, but particularly a good journal, that it may be rejected. Don’t let it worry you, it happens to almost every mathematician. See if the rejection letter gives any useful advice - sometimes they do. Never argue with an editor about rejection even if the reasons are stupid. Just set about deciding where to submit it to next.
Wise Scholar
P.S. I used this advice of the wise scholar and got published in good journals. I can add from myself one thing: Your reputation as a scholar is as important as your publications. Take care and good luck!

Thank you so so much.

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How to physically organize academic papers
I'm looking for an efficient way to organize academic papers on my bookshelf. I'm a CS PhD student and continue to amass a large number of papers that I periodically need to refer to. The PDFs of these are very easy to deal with, but the physical prints end up in small piles throughout my office (each project/article/paper gets a pile). This is getting out of hand and not very efficient in many ways.
I really like reading hardcopies instead of PDFs as there's only so long I can stare at a screen. This must be a common problem among PhD students, right?
My plan is to place papers into labeled manilla file folders, then horizontally stack these folders on my bookshelf. Is this the way to go? Has some academic found a clever way to handle this better?

Filing cabinets.

I use your system as well.. one pile = one project.  However, every year, I do clean out the oldest pile(s).

I put all my paper documents in the circular file.

@DanRomik Back when I did my doctorate, the usual office allocation for a (lab-based) postgrad was a desk (with lockable drawers), 2 drawers of a filing cabinet, and some shelf space. These days, the filing cabinets have gone so as to make more room to cram people into, buildings are going open plan so no wallspace for shelves, and the "desks" are just tables with a wheelie-cabinet below to make hot-desking easier.  "But everything's digital these days." :(

As suggested in comments, use a filing cabinet, ideally with hanging file folders that require no punch holes. But don't mix physical location and semantic organisation. This would be highly inflexible.

Do this instead: Note down a running number or date on each hardcopy. This is the call number of your hardcopy.* Now write down a range of numbers or dates on each folder, and file the hardcopies accordingly. For example, hardcopy number 143 goes into file 130-150.
To find and retrieve your hardcopies, use a catalogue, either on paper (unwieldy) or digital (better). The latter can be in the form of some database, BibTeX file or reference manager like Zotero. If necessary, just repurpose one of the lesser-used fields to store the call number (e.g. "note" or part of the "abstract" field).
In your catalogue, you can assign multiple tags and projects to each hardcopy, no matter where it's physically stored. This removes the need for duplicate hardcopies.
In case you want to temporarily reshelve some papers, say, for a project or because you take them to a conference, just assign a secondary "call-number" that describes the current location, like "widget conference binder" or "brief case". This isn't strictly necessary if, every few weeks, you put straying hardcopies back to where they belong, which is easy enough, since they now have an address written on them.
* You could also use more elaborate call-numbers based on some classification, but I prefer to keep things simple. A running number or date also maintains the only advantage of the pile "system": Quick retrieval according to "It must be here somewhere, I've only used it a week ago".

That's right, I should be more specific.

I used to use a piling system - it works great until you have to move office, and the piles are all in new places. Also, putting things on top of each other makes it awkward to pull out those further down the heap. Filing cabinets were invented for a reason, and work really well ... again, until you have to move. Which may be quite often if you are still a postgrad.
It depends a bit on how many papers you have.
I'm not a great fan of arch files/binders as they are awkward to handle when reading and - especially ring binders - are very inefficient in terms of shelf space taken up compared to how much paper they have inside. But, for 20-30cm worth of A4 I'd stick to binders and stand them on the shelf.
For more than that, you could look at either "archive boxes"/"box files" (which can stand) or the traditional cardboard "document wallets". Both can be labelled on the side, so you can read the label even while they're in the pile.
Of course, it also helps if your reference management system can record which folder a particular article is in (and also write this on the paper itself, so you can easily put it back in the right place).

I've found it useful to use large ringed binders for papers.  One binder per project/subject is usually sufficient, though you might sometimes have to use two.  This works well if you can separate your papers into groups based on subject area or project, but you might need to double-up papers in some cases (i.e., have more than one printed copy of a paper).  Within each binder I separate the papers using coloured tabbed separators, with papers included in chronological order (i.e., reading earliest to latest).  I add a first page in the folder that lists the full citations of all the papers in chronological order.  Reading papers in this order is nice to give you an overview of the development of the literature over time.
This type of organisation is nice if you are working on a project or trying to refresh your knowledge of the literature pertaining to an old project.  You can easily grab a single binder and take it down to the cafe to read it while you have lunch/coffeee.  I am like you --- I much prefer to read the printed copy than stare at a screen all day.  There is a bit of initial time required to organise the binders and cover-sheets, or update new cover-sheets occasionally, but I find it is generally worthwhile.
In practice I actually use a hybrid system that consists partly of these binders and partly of the "piling system" you described.  I have quite a few left-over papers that are in piles, which didn't fit into particular projects or which were printed out of curiosity about a subject, without attendant literature.  Ideally I would take the time to be a bit more systematic, but business sometimes gets the best of us!

(I've since been reminded of another option which I don't think will work particularly well in this case, hence this separate answer, but ultimately it's for the OP to decide such, especially if they don't have as many paper papers as us oldies.)
In the past I've had good results from making up mini-compendia of related articles using semi-permanent binding techniques such as wire or comb binding: a wire-bound A4 booklet of papers is much more pleasant to browse and read than stuff in a ring binder with heavy rigid covers flapping about. The down side is that it's more effort to put together, and of course you need access to the specialised punch/binding press.
While I generally feel that wire-binding makes for a nicer volume, in the present context I'd note that combs have spines that can be labelled, and also with some care it's possible use the machine to partially unbind a comb-bound volume so as to add newer papers.


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Transfer to different CDT within same University
I am based in the UK (England, more precisely).
I am part of a Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) - between University A and B. Since I am an international student, I didn't receive EPSRC funding for the CDT. I am enrolled in University A for MRes, for my PhD I am moving to University B (engineering department) and have applied for funding for 3 years of PhD, as part of Universities B's funding for international PhD students (not part of EPSRC).
However, the professor (X) I wish to do a PhD under does not fall under the CDT I'm in and is also in a different department (Physics). He is part of a different CDT.
So my question is, once I shift to Universty B and receive funding can I switch to the physics department to work with professor X? University B gives me admission only because I'm part of the first CDT and professor X is associated with another CDT. How can I work with professor X?

CDT = Centers for Doctoral Training?? Or something else?

yes, Centre for Doctoral Training!

Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.

@ThenmozhiE have you tried asking either professor X or anyone else at university B? They should know if and how this arrangement could work.

The short answer is this will be highly dependent on the university and their admissions policies (as well as those of the CDTs involved). When you are admitted to the university, it is by a specific department for a specific degree program, and each department will have their own requirements for admission (although they may be similar due to university policies). CDTs especially are more restricted in their admissions because they tend to have fewer places available (I've usually seen each year's cohort with a max of 15 members for the standard sized CDT, and some CDTs can be smaller).
The first thing you should do is contact Professor X and introduce yourself to them and start talking about your interest in their research. It is important to make sure they are still working in the area you want and are taking students to supervise. It is also useful to have their support when talking with the CDTs/departments involved.
The simplest thing to do would be to see if you can find a primary supervisor in engineering who is associated with your current CDT who you could work with, and then have Professor X as a secondary supervisor. That would preserve your current CDT admission. Professor X could maybe suggest a previous collaborator or someone to talk to if you go this direction.
If doing the primary/secondary supervisor isn't possible, then I think we can't provide answers here, and you instead need to be talking with Professor X and the CDTs/departments involved to see if is a way to transfer between departments. I think it would be crucial to have the support of Professor X when you do this though.


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Reaching out to Prospective Advisor
I am admitted to a UK university for my PhD and I am supposed to submit a proposal for the PhD topic. I reached out to a professor and he responded saying that he is interested in discussing it further and asked if I had funding. Since I am already a student there, I replied saying I am funded, however he hasnt replied to me in 2 weeks. I am getting anxious as the deadline is nearing for the submission of the proposal. I sent a follow up email (in-case my previous mail was lost).
Should I consider this as a rejection, or wait for him to respond (considering he is one of the top scientists in his field and he might be busy) or move on to another professor?
I dont want to be rude by showing up in his office or calling him.

It is always advised to reach out to multiple prospects that you've selected early on when you started preparing. Now that one of those haven't replied has to do with a lot of factors including the one you mentioned. You should also move ahead with your mailing process to your next prospect. You'll have options to choose from if you happen to get positive replies from multiple professors. A side note: Even a rejection means a lot in the process. Its a part of the whole process.

I am puzzled how can you be admitted to a PhD position without an advisor? If you have funding regardless of the subject, this is a big thing. Contact multiple professors or administrative staff for guidance. Are you on site? If yes, visiting and asking questions in person might help. Usually, professors are glad to receive a Phd student who already has funding.

"Since I am already a student there, I replied saying I am funded." - That is not how it works in the UK.

I'm part of a CDT (centre for doctoral training, and in my MRes year. And yes, i'm a student and dont have an advisor yet

There is nothing rude about showing up at his office for a conversation. If he has posted office hours, do it then.
Also, a follow up email, pointing out the deadline and asking for  as status update isn't rude after a couple of weeks with the deadline approaching.
It would be unwise to make assumptions about rejection or acceptance, however.

Thanks for your reply! I did email him again, but there has been no response. I have to travel to a different city to meet him. He is a well renowned scientist, so obviously he will be busy. But Imo, after 3 reminders over 3 weeks if he doesnt reply, then it is a reject, (after mailing, he is interested in proceeding),  so i need to move on to next prof

He might be on  a long research trip. You might show up to no one. My PhD supervisor went from Texas to California one summer for a long workshop and some serious collaborations. My advice would be to contact someone in the department administrative office and ask if the professor is out for an extended period.


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Applying for a PhD position(Specific to Theoretical Physics/Physics field)
I am currently at the end of my Master's program in Theoretical Physics. I am now looking for PhD positions. My problem is as follows.
I have mostly chosen courses on the high energy physics (Cosmology, particle physics String etc.) and when applying for PhD, although most of the research groups focus on few problems, this is still a lot of literature (past 50-60 years worth of work), only a part of which is humanly possible to cover in a program that lasts 2 years. However, I have done my project/thesis in Beyond Standard Model Physics and this narrows it down a bit. So even when I see research positions where the groups are working in this particular field and look up their research/publications, it is still a lot of literature to cover. So when it comes to understanding what to work on during my PhD, I am still not sure if I have some original ideas as of yet in this field/sub-field. So I am not sure what exactly should I tell my future employers in my application. Is it necessary to mention what exactly I want to work on? I would like some perspective here. There are some PhD positions where it is already laid out what I will be working on.
Also, my question would be how would one go through a plethora of literature before starting to work on something by themselves. My usual approach is to read the publications/research by the concerned professors and then contemplate on whether I can extend their work in some way.
TIA.

You don't need to come up with your own research project for a PhD application. Just saying what subfield you're interested in, and what research you've done previously, should be specific enough.

@knzhou How does the employer then choose the candidate, wouldn't the candidates who know what they want to start working on standout among the long list of candidates applying for the position? tnx.

The extent to which Ph.D. applicants are expected to have their own original ideas about research projects varies enormously by academic field, country, and individual supervisor.

some fields (such as mathematics, and presumably theoretical physics as well) require a lot more background before a student is even capable of identifying a sensible research project. In contrast, in ecology, an above-average finishing undergraduate student might have participated in original research projects and be prepared to propose ideas for new work.
the funding mechanisms in some countries & fields are much more geared to fitting students into a professor's existing research framework (these might for example be grants to support a student working on a specific project). This happens more in fields where research is expensive, where resource allocation decisions have to be made at a higher level. In this case you wouldn't have an opportunity to define your own research project anyway. (Even though theoretical physics research isn't typically expensive, this constraint might still apply.)
Defining one's first research project takes a lot of time, partly for background research and partly for trial and error. PhD programs that expect rapid completion (e.g. UK 3-year programs) don't necessarily afford students the time it takes to develop a research project from scratch.

Reading selected recent publications of potential supervisors is a great idea; if you can say something coherent about a particular thread of their research that you're interested in and why, that's great. (I get a lot of "I've read your marvelous work on XXX and found it fascinating", but I'm sure that most of these applicants actually have no idea - be specific and concrete!) If you can propose even general ideas about future directions you would be interested in participating in, that would be a bonus.

Thank you for your elaborate answer, this gives me a lot to work with.


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Is it unethical to work on "open" ideas of other people without giving them credit?
At many universities, there are dedicated websites where supervisors can publish information on current research projects looking for students.
These research projects often have some "vague" descriptions regarding the purposes of the projects, methodology/method, expected outcomes and desirable requirements for students.
It raises a question. Is it unethical if someone else from a random university just "snatches" these ideas (after seeing them) and produces research papers themself without contacting or giving credit to the original supervisors?

Please edit the title if you find it not suitable. I can't think of a better one.

Labs do not exist in a vacuum. The lab or the people in the lab have an history of publication to be cited if their work is relevant (i.e. being the solid base for a project tackling an open question)

Somewhat related: A question in the future research section - is it considered appropriate to write a paper on it?

The short answer is yes. Laboratories and universities often have webpages explaining their current research interests, sometimes related to open positions for which they are currently hiring. As you said yourself, these descriptions are often rather brief, in order not to drown the job offer into technical details. In any case, way too brief to allow anyone to scoop you.
Let's assume that lab A publishes a brief description of a current research project, and that lab B gets some inspiration for its next project. Per se, there is nothing unethical here, as getting ideas from previous researchers' ideas is the basis of science (if not, nobody would attend, and let alone participate in, conferences): we are "dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants".
But at some point, lab B would need to describe the state of the art, and acknowledge lab A's current work and past contribution. Not doing so would be unethical.

@DanielHatton if lab A proposed the project, it means that lab A has an history on the project's topic, at the very bare minimum the Lab's head has at least one publication on the topic of the project to refer to.
So lab B must refer to that publication, at the very minimum.
If lab A has no previous history on the topic of the project ... it is quite likely that lab A is also piggy-backing on a project of a lab C, with or without giving credit. A dwarf on the shoulder of a dwarf on the shoulder of a giant ... it does not sound very stable :D

@DanielHatton You are discussing a different topic. Did you submit the proposal as lab head? or as a lab member? No wonder you did not win the grant: your proposals probably scored low in the "previous experience related to the topic" evaluation box  (or in the evaluator assessment).
Nonetheless, you are discussing someone taking idea from your proposal. Proposals usually are confidential. Still, people are reading them and getting inspiration, but ... different question than the one posed by OP.


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PhD student paid from NSF grant also working side job as independent contractor
I am a PhD student in the US that is currently paid as a grad research asst. from my advisor's NSF grant full time (100% FTE) during the summer and 1/2 time (50% FTE) during the school year, with the other 50% of my time presumed to be spent on classes. I recently accepted a position as an independent contractor for a consultant working roughly 16-20 hrs a week.
My question is, are there any rules from the NSF regarding this type of arrangement? I need to certify that I spend 40hrs/week on the NSF project (which I do), but I want to make sure myself/my advisor don't get into trouble here. I can't seem to find this addressed anywhere.

You asked about NSF rules, but your university may also have its own rules about such outside work.

Yes they do. I am currently navigating their process for my situation, but I wasn't sure if the NSF had any specific rules themselves.

There are multiple laws and policies in play.  Your institution should be liable for certifying your effort on any federal project, as required by Uniform Guidance.  Your effort should be defined at your institution; most likely as all pay received at that institution regardless of the department or school.  I believe student positions are supposed to be 20hrs/week per the Dept of Labor.  The Dept of Labor and IRS also have restrictions over the classifications of independent contractors, which may flow down to specific state regulations.  In order to receive pay as an IC from an institution, you may have to pass a 3-part test.
Further, you are not allowed to have effort on a grant and also be paid as a consultant on the same project.  You are also not allowed to be an employee and a consultant at the same institution.  Some positions prohibit the amount of time you can devote to outside consulting work; this is most likely true for faculty positions.  Your institution should be able to tell you if this true for students.
As long as you are complying with federal and state labor laws as well as any effort reporting or outside appointment guidance of your institution, you should be fine.  This type of regulation would not be specifically addressed by NSF as much as by these other federal and state agencies that regulate labor, employment, and taxes.


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What is a good way to phrase "in my experience" in a journal paper?
I want to say, "In our experience/as far as we know/etc., A only requires a few iterations to converge," without citing any relevant literature, particularly because I could not find any relevant literature on this topic.
What is an appropriate way to say that without being too "subjective"?

Avoid using it! No way to use that!

"Empirically" is often a fitting term.

"we found" or "in practice, XYZ avoided WVU"? Or even "we chose". Your paper describes the observations from your research. If you can defend not having qualified sources for some choices, surely you can state the choices.

In what field are you publishing?

I have used such phrase in multiple papers. For instance, the value H=5 is chosen based on prior modeling experience.

"We have observed that in our experiments algorithm A required < N iterations to converge".... Also make sure that you have the data to back up this claim in case someone asks (and even if no one asks!)

FerventHippo has a decent question worth answering. What field is it? The answer will depend on what the field is. Most science stuff, leave your experience out of it unless your confident its relevant (in which case there are good example rephrasings). For something like, say, the phenomenology of experience, experience might be really important however. The humanities of course aren't always doing the scientific method and have other approaches, so field does really matter here.

"Per standard practice" might work for some situations.

I would challenge your framing and ask why, exactly, you are caveating "your experience". I have no problem with "in our experience" as an expression. But what is it about your experience that you suspect might not replicate if others try it?
Try to locate what you have and haven't tested and be explicit about it. This sentence is reasonable:

In our experience, sharks do not interrupt underwater basket weavers.

but this is much better:

Over the past ten years we have often been approached by sharks while weaving baskets underwater with no adverse incidents. However, the local shark population is mostly composed of docile nurse sharks and sand sharks. As such, we would welcome further research into the safety of underwater basket weaving while in the vicinity of great white sharks, loan sharks, land sharks, or baby sharks (doo doo doo doo doo doo).

The first one is much better if you don't want to go into detail and if an excessively long explanation would be distracting

@toby544 - In my experience, mountain lions never interrupt dinner at home. But then, I've never seen a mountain lion at dinner, at home or in the woods. The second one has perhaps necessary detail on underwater basketweaving shark safety precautions.

or baby sharks (doo doo doo doo doo doo) - I audibly laughed at this. I applaud the lengthy serious answer leading up to this joke. Well done.

@JonCuster OK. If several lines of details are necessary, then they are necessary, and if they are not, then they are not.

@3dbrows: I hope you didn't miss that final joke was immediately preceded by two more jokes, with both loan sharks and (depending on which of the related synonyms with different meanings you pick) land sharks belonging to the less waterborne types of shark ;)

Land sharks are particularly dangerous when one learns underwater basket weaving. (Although I wonder if these references give away my age ...)

as far as we know

Suggestion: "To the best of our knowledge, [...]".

In our experience

Suggestion: "Based on our experiments, [...]".
Note that "experience" is much broader than "experiments". Therefore, in some contexts, "experience" can't be replaced with "experiments".

I wouldn't use "Based on our experiments", unless I have experiments in this paper that show this.

@terdon depends on the context. OP decides. I am just giving suggestions. "experience" is much broader than "experiments" indeed.

@J.Doe Page limits may have chopped those extra experiments.

In the following samples, let "IT" be "A only requires a few iterations to converge".
If IT is common knowledge:

"As is well known, IT ..."

If IT is intuitive to a subject matter expert:

"As is obvious, IT ..."

If IT was experimentally determined by you as part of your research and the experiment would be obvious to any expert in the field:

"As we determined by simple experiment, IT ..."

If IT is an assumption based on your experience, but it may not be obvious to other experts in the field:

"We assert that IT ..."

If you as an expert have a suspicion, but aren't strictly certain:

"We believe it true that IT ..."

If you don't know:

"We assume that IT ..."

Importantly, choose words that accurately reflect your knowledge about it. Don't try to bolster your argument by choosing words that connote stronger evidence than you actually have. That you're even asking the question suggests to me that you're on the right track!
You may also be interested in Writing@CSU Writing Guide: Using the Toulmin Method. This approachable guide provides a systematic approach to examining and critiquing arguments based on evidence. I find it helpful after writing an article to "see it from the other side", breaking out of my author tunnel vision.

In general, I would recommend never saying something is obvious

“If Church said it’s obvious, then everybody saw it a half hour ago. If Weyl says it’s obvious, von Neumann can prove it. If Lefschetz says it’s obvious, it’s false.” - J. Barkley Rosser

I despise the words "obvious", "clearly", "trivial" and their ilk in mathematical writing.  I feel similarly about things like "it is well known...".  These are rhetorical crutches which don't actually add anything to the exposition, and have to potential to insult the reader.  If something is obvious, you don't have to tell the reader that it is obvious.  They'll know.  Compare "It is well-known that $2+2=4$, hence..." vs "Since $2+2=4$, ...".  Fewer words, and you aren't insulting your reader if they aren't up on the same literature as you.

@XanderHenderson Regarding your last example, I think the opposite way. IMO (unless you're referring to a fact established earlier in the paper) "Since [fact],... " is no better than "Obviously [fact], so... "; both versions suggest, either explicitly or implicitly, that the reader should be able to see why the fact is true. "It is well known that [fact], so..." reassures the reader that it is not "obvious".

I have no problems with "in my experience". Particularly, I don't see why it improves anything regarding objectivity to use words that "sound more objective" to say the same thing. Either you have convincing reasons or evidence that could be explained (then explain them in detail), or it's just your experience, and then I don't see any reason not to be honest about it.


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Is it wise to ask about funding other than program director? There is a story
I started my PhD degree for applied math at the US, in fall 2023 without funding. When I started, the program director said that if I do a good job on course work in the semester, I might get a TA position for funding. So I worked hard, and I earned a 4.0/4.0 in fall 2023.
When winter break started, I asked the director via email whether I can get a TA position. She said she wanted to see my CV and to write a brief statement of interest for why I should be considered for TA support. I have a lot of experience in teaching, I was a private academy teacher for 3 years in Korea, etc, so I think I am attractive for the TA position.
Just an hour after I sent the email, she said I can't be a TA since there is no budget and "we will not be able to award TA appointments to any of our ongoing students this spring 2024."
I think what she is saying is a lie since the department can award TA positions. It is ridiculous. So I am really upset, I think I was fooled. I know that I might not get a TA for funding, and I am willing to spend my money for Spring 2024, but I think she is trying to fool me... It seems like she already assigned the whole budget, and just pretended to give me a TA by making me send my CV.
So I want to ask other people like the dean, to what is going on. Is it a wise idea?

Is this at an English-speaking university?

I would not recommend taking any PhD position in the US without funding for any duration of time; I think you should not have accepted this situation from the start, and now your options are not great.
We can't say whether your director is lying or not, but the word "might" refers to a possibility not a guarantee. At winter break, it's possible that there was a miscommunication and the director assumed you would be applying for a TA position for the next fall rather than spring; presumably, TA positions for spring would already be filled by that time.
I think you should consider it unlikely that you'll get a funded position at any point until you have a specific offer given, and proceed knowing that. Unfortunately you've already gone past the typical application deadlines for the next year. You could see whether you can be considered for a fall 2024 TA now even if spring 2024 is not available to you. I don't think there is likely to be much value in escalating anything; you are not owed or guaranteed a TA position. If other people have those spots already, they aren't going to take them away to give it to you.

As noted, accepting a position with no avenue for basic funding was not a good choice.
However, you should understand how funding typically works before throwing accusations or going beyond the chain of leadership.
Your program director/department chair has no reason to lie to you. In fact they would likely love to have everyone funded. There is no benefit to not having funded TA lines. These are given out by the College and represent a specific funding stream. Most chairs are constantly trying to up their number of TA lines to grow their department. More TA lines can mean higher enrollment which creates more revenue. Also department chairs cannot sit on unused TA lines as that means their number gets cut in the budget next cycle. So if they have them, they use them, or they lose them.
The most likely scenario is that your chair asked for your CV and justification, quickly contacted the college to try and advocate for another TA line for you based on what you provided, and were basically told there are no additional lines.
So what will you achieve by going above your chair? Probably just annoying people because the college creates the TA line and the chair and graduate program coordinator administer them. So if there are no lines, then there are no lines.
What you need to do is try to find research fellowships that will pay your stipend. Those can come from various offices in the University. The office of research may be a start... but they are highly competitive, and often more limited for international students.

It is a bad idea to do a PhD candidature without funding to begin with.  Regardless of whether there is any dishonesty here on the part of your Director, it is not great that they have dangled the possibility of a TA position in front of you and then taken it away after you had met the stipulated requirements.  Under such circumstances, I recommend you apply elsewhere for funded positions.


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As a PhD student, is it wasteful to do the extra bit on Coursework assignments?
I'm a Ph.D student who needs to take coursework each semester and also (obviously) do research. I find some of the coursework assignments particularly interesting and I end up spending a lot more time than necessary, sometimes doing extra bits that are not really required to get a full grade. The assignment problems do have this small statement at the end that says something to the effect of -"you are encouraged to provide additional observations", giving a small open-ended dimension to each problem.
I tend to go the extra-mile route often as I am a bit inquisitive by nature and provide extra observations/validations to claims.
My concern is if this practice is healthy or harmful. One school of thought goes along the line of - "Just do bare minimum on coursework and focus more on your research", which I agree makes sense, since the amount of research work in itself is a massive chunk. I do feel that my assignment has taken up a lot of my time which I could have otherwise devoted for research.
The counter reasoning from my side has has been - grad school/Ph.D programs are what provide the setting to think and do beyond what is asked, and thus I should do the extra-bits if I am compelled to.
May be I am too idealistic, I am not sure. Some perspective and advice on this inner conflict would be helpful.

Every person is different and so the balance will vary with each person. If you have the time for it, I think going beyond the minimum in the courses would be a long term plus if you intend to stay in academia.
An academic needs a broad view of their field and possibly related fields as well as deep and specific knowledge of their main research area. The coursework provides the former and the research the latter.
But it would be a bit of a problem (more than a bit, actually) if you get too distracted and end up with poor research results, or too slow progress toward finishing.
In the US, the major coursework comes prior to starting dissertation research, and prior to qualifying exams in most fields, so the question doesn't arise so much.
Do what you must. Do what you can.

Thank you very much. Your response provides some needed perspective.
Side note: I am studying in a public US university. In my University, pretty much all Ph.D students start their program with coursework and research in parallel.

I think you should try to consciously "evaluate" your learning from your "going the extra mile". By this I mean, you should ask yourself what kind of benefit the experience of doing these extra things may give you, apart from just having fun the moment you do them. In many cases I believe that this is very valuable. You train you problem solving skills and some of this may give you some information or skill that will be useful later, even if only in a rather general "having a better overview of problems/more experience in a field" way. You may later encounter problems that are similar and your experience gathered in this way may be of use. Obviously this is a bit speculative, and cannot be taken for granted. In some cases it may be rather pointless, and you may even have a sense that it is, if you consciously ask yourself. You can also ask a supervisor for their opinion about this. In any case it will depend on what exactly are you doing and how this is related to your future plans (maybe long term like staying in academia and coming up with your own research ideas).
I have done such things often and would say it has generally served me well, although I could have been a bit more selective.

This is a question of nuance, which general guidelines such as "do the bare minimum" rarely provide. At the end of the day, you can do more if:

You feel you are learning a lot from going the extra mile, particularly if what you learn is also relevant to your research or your development as a researcher - or you simply enjoy doing it a lot, and see it as a hobby of sorts
And you are not spending so much time on it that your research suffers (spending an hour more than necessary on the ocassional assignment is unproblematic, spending a full week on something that could have also been done in a morning is a different story).

At the end of the day, I suggest to not overthink it. You can of course spend more than the absolute minimum time on course work, as long as it's not getting out of hand and you are not just doing it because that's what you have always done during your undergrad. Nobody manages their time down to the hour and minute, and everybody does some things during a work day that are not directly contributing to their research - for you it might be extra work in course work, for me it's writing this Stack Overflow answer.

Your second bullet point pretty much summed up my issue. Appreciate the perspective provided.

@NebUer Well, if you actually spend days or full weeks on something that should be done in a few hours, then yes - this is wasteful and should be avoided. But that's not doing "a bit" extra, as you say in your title ;)

@NebUer I think the comparison to answering SO questions is pretty good - nobody gets upset if workers (or students) spend 20 minutes while drinking coffee answering a SO question, but if I were to spend a full week researching a topic to write a perfect answer that would be a different story.


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Does plagiarism count if 2 recommenders use the very silmilar style of writing?
I am applying to a PhD program in US, and I have two referees for recommendation letters. Referee #1 is my faculty advisor, and referee #2 is a thesis advisor.
If referee #2 uses similar writing style (and content) as referee #1 (they have each other's consent) but writes only about his advising experience with my thesis, will this be classified as plagiarism?
For example, both of them started each paragraph as "I am impressed by ____'s ...." and "I believe her curiosity and background in statistics...". They also used this sentence but worded similarly: "I notice that many biostatisticians and data scientists have excellent problem solving and leadership skills. However, the combination of teamwork skills, adaptability, and critical thinking skills are crucial to the success of research projects (and its concepts), but they are often lacking in them.".
How bad will it look in front of the committee? This is for a PhD program in the same university where I am currently completing my Master's (in the U.S.).

It's obviously not "plagiarism" in any sense that matters, but if either they copy each other's letters, or you write the same letter for them to sign, then what the heck are you three doing?

You are not supposed to see the letter man

@Part-timeEngineer That depends on the country. OP's originating country may not have that tradition.

It is not plagiarism, but a lack of diversity. For me, they are also too general.
It is also not a good practice to mention something you already showed/mentioned in other parts of the application in the recomendation letters, so it is even worse if the two recommendation letters mention the same thing.
Moreover, in my opinion, it is not a good idea to mention your professors' comments on other biostatisticians in the field that way. For some people I know, it is a minus.
Probably, it is better to mention how good you are among good statistics practitioners rather than how good you are compared to "not-so-good" statistics practitioners.

Thank you for your response

Plagiarism really isn't the issue.  If two such letters landed on my desk, I would probably think that the student had provided some sort of draft letter to both professors, who modified it to suit their needs.
The impact those letters would have is hard to tell, without the content of the rest of the student's application portfolio -- but I probably wouldn't think of those recommenders as being "highly enthusiastic" about the student.


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Using Grammarly in Article writing
I'm sure you have heard about or seen Grammarly app's ads. Do you recommend using it to proof read your articles before sending them for review?

This sounds like an advertisement for Grammarly.

I’m voting to close this question because it is an advertisement for a specific product.

Doesn't sound like an advertisement to me, unless you think that everyone is going to say Grammarly is good! It sounds like a reasonable question from a person who is unsure of the quality of their written English.

I don't see any difference between using Grammerly and using a spelling checker.

@DmitrySavostyanov I don't think our site is large enough for Grammarly to give a damn about us tbh

VTC as opinion-based. Personally, I have stopped using it for privacy concerns, but having suggestions is actually terrific. Now I am trying to refer to Elements of Style every now and then, but it takes lots of time, and my writing is still beyond poor, which is highly regrettable :( Does not help that English writing is so dependent on one's active vocabulary...

My experience of Grammarly is that it provides very good help for native and non-native speakers alike. Moreover, despite fears that it might obliterate one's own style and make everyone sound the same, that turns out not to be true. Even after Grammarly has run it's electronic "eye" over my writing, it still sounds like my writing as opposed to sounding like that of a co-author who wrote a different section of our joint paper.


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How do I cite a technical report in End Note?
I'm using End Note as a references manager for my thesis. I'm wondering how do I reference a technical report since End Note gives no option for it. It has books, articles, patents, etc. but no technical reports.

Choose the option that is closest to what you want, e.g. report, article, document.