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How serious it is not to disclose full academic history in your grad school application?
Here is my story.
I was accepted to top-30 world university to MS in Electrical Engineering(EE) progaram. In total I already have 3 degrees: MS in EE (GPA:4.0/4.0), BS in EE(GPA:3.9/4.0), and Bachelor in Economics(GPA:3.8/4.0).
In my application I misunderstood instructions, which wanted me to list "all universities attended". As far as all my degrees were from one single university I though that I was not obliged to enter all of them, because formally I did list "all universities" by mentioning at least one of those degrees. That is why I decided not to enter "irrelevant" Bachelor in Economics degree and entered only BS in EE and MS in EE degrees.
After few months I was successfully accepted to the degree program I had applied to.
But after talking to some other applicants I understood that in application form they wanted me to enter not "all universities" but rather all degree programs attended. So I believe that I should have listed that economics degree as well.
Apparently, concealing this degree didn't give me any benefits during admission, but most likely even might have "downgraded" my application to some extent. So I unintentionally presented myself to be worse that I am in reality.
What do you think I need to do? If I contact admission office I can end up being rejected and I cannot risk that much.
On the other hand, If I enroll and then they disclose this fact what they most likely will do?

See http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/14983/1010.  Yes, if you disclose it now, there is a slight risk that they might change your admission decision.  That might set back your plans for grad school.  If you conceal it, you're taking a much greater risk: you could in principle be kicked out of the program, or even have your degree revoked years later.  That would wreck your academic career.

One thing is when you falsify information to get benefits(conceal that you were dismissed, etc.) But what about case when it doen't give any benefits? I got Honors Degree in Economics, ranked 1-st in my class. Do you think they can still punish me?

Why are you so sure the other applicants are right? You did what was asked in the application form and now you think that is wrong because some people who don't know more about the application forms than you do think it was meant differently?

I am not certain of course, but I just came to the conclusion that universities usually require full education history and now I believe that it may be quite true. Just trying to predict possible problems in future.
Thanks for supporting me.

They asked about "all universities" and you told them about all universities.  If they meant "all degrees" or "all programs" then they should have said so.  I don't think they can punish you for not guessing that they meant something other than what they said.

@Mallus: Often there would be a question as to whether or not the missing information was "material", i.e. whether it could potentially have changed the decision.  It sounds like in this case it probably isn't, but neither you nor I would be the ones determining that.  If the university determined that it was material, they certainly could impose punishments as I mentioned.

@Nate: Yeah, I realize this. The case is definitely complicated.
One strategy is to report problem to the department but nobody can guarantee positive outcome. Another strategy is to keep silence. In this case if they "uncover" me, I can put forward argument that I listed "all universities" as they wanted. Admission is paper-based and it is written on paper. It is probably the heaviest argument that I can throw at them, a "loophole" in the application. But this strategy is also not reliable. I will think it over carefully and will try to decide what to do. Thanks to everyone for helping me.

@Nate:Want to add some comment related to your post on the link provided. My university does not have "directory information". Instead, it can confirm degree validity based on the its Serial Number(S/N) and name. One who needs to check degree provide its S/N and person's name. University responds whether the degree has been awarded to this person or not. I became so paranoid about it, that I even can imagine how admission officers are brute-forcing all the day 10-digits S/N on the web-site, having suspected me in holding additional degree =)

I'd leave it alone, or disclose to your department, not the admissions office.
First, You got all your degrees at one university.  Presumably, the school you applied to was sent an official transcript, and that transcript would show all the degrees conferred by that school.  They have the info.
Second, the odd part about your application package is the MS in EE, given that you're applying for a second MS in EE.  Your new department knows this.  They wouldn't even bat an eye at the second BS.  Dual BS's are fairly common, and it wouldn't be a negative in your package.
Lastly, you gave them what they asked for, which was all universities you attended. You followed their instructions to the letter.

First if all I would like to mention that I am international applicant, and my home university is located in different country than my target university.
Transcripts(or as we call it here, in Europe, "diploma supplements" are attached to particular degree programs and list only subjects of this  program.
What's more is that there are no biographic gaps in my education history, because I did my economics degree as a part-time in parallel with my "main" EE degrees. So, there are no any evidences that I posses this degree at all. Do you think, I am quite safe?

I'm pretty sure you're safe.  I would recommend disclosing to your new department, maybe to the head of the graduate program, that you received an additional degree in Economics as an undergrad, simultaneously with your other BS,  you were unaware of a requirement to disclose that at the time of application, and that you thought it was irrelevant to your application package.

thank you for you advice. It seems to be a good solution. I will try to implement it after thinking all it over once again and after I gain enough courage to contact my hopefully new department)

thank you for the advise again. Would like to inform you that situation was resolved in a positive way  - I was asked to send missing documents and that is all.  However, they pointed out, they accept additional documents in my case only because the degree is a completed one. If it was failed program that I didn't disclose, they would probably revoke admission.

If still relevant: call the hotline or support at the university you want to go and ask the exact meaning of the question without giving your name.
This way, you will find out how they react without risking anything.
You can then decide on this information.

It's something that you should disclose, and is potentially quite serious. In undergraduate admissions, at least, most colleges try to ascertain not just whether or not the applicant is qualified, but also whether they would be benefit from attending the program. Thus you may actually have received a benefit by failing to disclose your full educational history.
I can't give any advice as to what to do, it is entirely possible that this may jeopardize your admittance status regardless of what you do, however my guess is that it will be judged more harshly if it is discovered rather than disclosed.

The point where I can completely agree with you is that no matter where I go and which way choose  - I will  jeopardize admittance. It is a stalemate situation. And I am afraid that it is me who painted myself into a corner by being not very attentive in the beginning. I carry full responsibility for this.


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How common is it for a faculty search to be canceled during interviews?
I am interviewing for a faculty position at R1 university. I get to the process of scheduling on-site visit but all of the sudden, the department told me they canceled the position I am interviewing for. How common is this (canceling a faculty position during an interview)? Or is it just a "polite" way for turning me down instead of saying that they decided not to interview me?

Given Covid and budgets, it does not surprise me that positions can be cancelled. Happens all the time in industry - hiring for a job, the project changes/is cancelled, and the search is abandoned.

Back in Spring 1988 I applied to many community colleges and high schools throughout a 3-state region in the southeast U.S., and drove 100 miles to an on-campus interview that had been scheduled at this school, and when I arrived I was told someone had "dropped the ball", forgot I was coming for an interview, and they had already hired someone a couple of days before. Interestingly enough, 10 years later the person they hired wound up being my colleague at another school over 800 miles away. (continued)

They were extremely apologetic, and as I had nothing better to do (I had planned to drive to my parent's house later anyway, about 35 miles further from where I was then living), they graciously showed me around -- I sat in on some math classes, got a free lunch, and got some useful insights about teaching at this type of school.

Quite a few searches are cancelled or fail, but it's a bit odd for it to happen in the middle of interviews, as that's a small window of time.

Be sure to ask for reimbursement for any expenses already incurred (gas mileage, hotel, plane ticket). Universities are generally quite willing to compensate people for interview expenses, especially in a situation such as this.

This happened to me in 2008: The housing market had just crashed and a large state University froze its hiring budget a week before I was supposed to fly out to interview there. They very nicely offered to still host me and keep the interview on file so that I could restart the process quickly when funds opened up. That seemed very reasonable to me (although I wound up accepting a job somewhere else anyway). It might be worth trying something like this.

Or is it just a "polite" way for turning me down instead of saying that they decided not to interview me?

Assume that people say what they mean, and that they mean what they say.  You were told that the position no longer exists and that they are canceling the interviews.  There is no reason to assume that the interview was canceled for any other reason—assume good faith, and move on.

How common is this (canceling a faculty position during an interview)?

That is a very hard question to answer, and I cannot (in 10 minutes of Googling) find any scholarly work on the subject (but I'm a mathematician, not an economist or sociologist or whoever studies these kinds of things, so my Google-fu is weak).  However, there are a lot of reasons why a position might be canceled anywhere along the way:

The funding might vanish (e.g. the position is funded through an outside grant which dries up; the budget might have been tanked by COVID; and so on).
The position might change (e.g. a department might start off looking for a "faculty of instruction", then determine that they really need to be hiring research faculty; the requirements of the funding grant might change).
The position might be filled (e.g. it sometimes happens that a position will be advertised internally first, then advertised more broadly; an internal candidate might rise to the top after the search for an outside candidate gets going).
The bureaucracy might fail (e.g. the hiring department is gung-ho, but the relevant division or college fails to sign-off on the position, but paperwork gets lost in the shuffle).
Not enough candidates agree to an interview (e.g. an institution might schedule interview for three candidates, then have two of those candidates decline—in this case, the hiring committee might choose to cancel the search).
And so on...

A faculty search is a long and complicated process.  There are a lot of places where things can go "wrong", and a search might fail at any step in the process for any one of a huge number of reasons.  I don't know how common an occurrence this is, but it definitely happens.
Again, your best bet is to assume good faith, operate with the understanding that the search was canceled for some reason having nothing to do with you, and move on.

The most polite thing to do when an open position is no longer open is to inform any candidates for that position immediately, such that they no longer exert effort towards it. Sounds like that's what happened to you.
I can't say how common this sort of thing is, but it could be caused by all sorts of factors outside of your influence and outside the influence of the hiring committee: it could be that funds for the position no longer exist, it could be that the position was created as part of a venture that is no longer happening (such as a new course/set of courses; a new research program; a specific industry collaboration), it could be part of a broader freeze on hiring not associated with the specific position, it could be that steps to open the position were not correctly followed according to some internal procedures.
Overall, it's likely better for everyone that this happened no later than it did.

In some other comment I've made on this site, I noted a grad school colleague who interviewed and was hired into a research group, pending finishing their thesis. Well, as he was finishing up the company altered their strategy and dissolved the research group, cancelling his (accepted) job abruptly. He got a compensation check, went back out to interview again, got a different job, finished the thesis and all was well. Had he just moved there and bought a house...

In my (limited) experience, nobody I know would feel the need to be dishonest about why a faculty search is ended. If the search is cancelled then they'd tell the candidates that. If the search is ended because the position is filled, then they'd tell the candidates that. If you have a burning desire to know, you can always ask why the search was ended.
Everybody in the process understands how messy the academic matchmaking process is. Everyone on the market has their own hidden motivations and preferences, and every search is run by a committee of people who have their own hidden motivations and preferences. Then you throw in time pressures, "gettability," and the normal unpredictability of life. That's just the system we have. The result of any search is at best only a partial reflection on the candidates- just as important is just being in the right place at the right time.
Being dishonest about a search would be a fool's errand anyway. Academic hiring decisions are inherently public knowledge, because if you end up hiring someone then they're pretty quickly going to show up on the school's faculty list. Being caught in a lie would look worse for the department than whatever they'd hope to gain by being misleading.

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What strategies are there for finding literature for a literature survey when the terminology used is diverse?
I want to write a literature survey on a topic, let's say it's risk of crime due to a new technology, let's say due to the Gutenberg press. However, when I search for the overall theme (crime and "Gutenberg press"), it returns few results. Yet, I know of some papers that fit into the topic that are appropriate, it's just that they each use different terminology (e.g., mass-produced slander or text that undermines the Church's authority). These relevant papers don't link their results to the overall theme, namely crime.
The problem is that to perform an exhaustive and methodological survey is difficult, since it depends on me knowing links between papers I have read and the theme I want to investigate. I was wondering what methodologies I can use to address this problem?
For example, in comparison often a literature survey's methodology section will have something like "we are interested in everything to do with X within topic Y" and base search terms on those two aspects and summarise the results from each database. Then, following sections cover the area based on those results. I would like to achieve something similar, but the ability to search the literature in my case is limited.

Where are you searching? Many scholarly databases have controlled vocabulary to help smooth out the different keywords chosen by individual researchers. Look for something like "Thesaurus" or "Subjects" somewhere on your database page (it's not always self-evident; in PubMed it's "MeSH"). Also, yes, absolutely seek out a librarian at your institution's library. They may be listed as research librarians or subject librarians—either way, they will be happy to help you, and will likely save you a lot of time and aggravation.

Thanks, I had a look. I'm using Scopus, Web of Science, Social Science Research Network (SSRN), and Philpapers. They don't appear to have a thesaurus. The main issue is that I know some relevant papers in my research area, but it's not just that they use different terms, but that these terms are not explicitly linked to the overall theme I am investigating without me putting some thought into it (e.g., a paper may show how the gutenberg press can be used for "mass-produced slander", which we know fits into the theme of "crime", but is not necessarily synonymous with crime).

Thanks for all of the answers, I've taken up all of the suggestions. I selected Tripartio's response for the cited papers, which provide a methodology.

First of all, I echo the comments that recommend consulting a research librarian. They are professionals who are experts in finding information like this.
As far as what you can do yourself, I recommend combining two fundamental literature search strategies: synonym searching, and then forward and backward citation searching. Warning ahead: both phases involve a lot of work, since your scenario is non-trivial.
Phase 1: Synonym searching: The idea here is to search for as many synonyms as possible of your two key concepts. Here is the general procedure:

List all the synonyms you can for each of the two concepts. In your case, that means to list all the synonyms you can for crime, and all the synonyms you can for Gutenberg press. Using a standard thesaurus (e.g. thesaurus.com) could help here.
Search in each database for every possible combination of every synonym. Yes, that means that if you have d databases, and c synonyms for crime and g synonyms for "Gutenberg press", you will do dcg keyword searches. Yes, that's a lot, but it's not over yet.
In each article that you uncover that you consider valid, examine the paragraph that defines the concepts (crime and Gutenberg press in your case) and see if these descriptions offer more valid synonyms that you didn't think of initially.
Repeat the searches with all possible combinations of any new synonyms that you uncover.
After doing all this, if your keyword searches did not uncover any of your initial personal list of articles that you know to be relevant, then carefully try to understand the shortcomings of your keyword searches.
Based on your new understanding, revise or extend your keyword list, and repeat the searches.
Keep on doing this until you come up with nothing more new.
Prune the list to remove duplicate articles.

Phase 2: Forward and backward citation searching: The idea here is to find all the articles that either cite (forward) or have been cited by (backward) all the articles that you have thus far identified. Here is the general procedure:

You begin by combining two lists (if you haven't already done so): your initial list of articles that you know to be relevant, and the list of relevant articles you identified from the synonym searching in Phase 1.
Backward citation search: Examine the reference list of every article known to be relevant. Ideally, you should look up the abstract of each article; practically, you might only look up articles with suggestive titles, since looking up every single abstract would be very time-consuming. Whenever you find any relevant article, add it to your list of articles to be processed.
Repeat this backward citation search for every new article that you identify to be relevant.
Continue going backwards in time until you feel that any new article uncovered would be too old to be relevant.
Forward citation search: Look up in Google Scholar every article known to be relevant (including the ones added from the backward citation search). Examine every article listed to cite each article. Ideally, you should look up the abstract of each article; practically, you might only look up articles with suggestive titles, since looking up every single abstract might be very time-consuming.
Whenever you find a new relevant article, then go back and do a full recursive backward citation search on it, and also do a full recursive forward citation search on it.
Continue recursively iterating until no new articles are found.

So that's the crazy, insane way that you could thoroughly do this. Practically speaking, you might run out of steam and simplify some steps, but then your search would not be exhaustive, so that is your scholarly decision to make.
Here are two articles that go into further detail on each of these steps:

The View from Giants’ Shoulders: Developing Theory with Theory-Mining Systematic Literature Reviews (this is my own article): Section "4. Search for the Elements of Theory" details the how and why of searching for synonyms.
Levy, Yair, and Timothy J. Ellis. "A systems approach to conduct an effective literature review in support of information systems research." Informing Science 9 (2006). This has a section with details on backward and forward citation searching.

Finally, if there is a researcher mailing list that you know whose subscribers study related topics, it might be helpful posting a request there as well.

I find searches based on keywords to be quite limited. You can play around with various keywords and see how far you get, but this only helps to get a first cut.
To deepen your search, use a snowball and reverse snowball procedure. This should get you around the problem that authors use different terminology. Be aware, however, that this may introduce some selection bias that you need to hedge against.
One way to reduce the bias and to broaden (rather than deepen) the search in addition to starting with diverse keywords is to ask around. You can just asks your colleagues but you can also get as formal as you want and conduct expert interviews or even surveys.

Perhaps the best thing to do is seek out a research librarian. They have the skills and background to perform better then Google in situations like this (and access to research databases).

Thank you for your answer, I am interested in the idea of talking to experts and librarians. To elaborate on the situation a bit more, my overall topic X may not have an expert, but in each sub-topic Y there are experts. The tricky part is finding out which Ys are sub-topics of X, which is where the biases are introduced. For example, if I talk to an expert on sub-topic Y, then my choice of expert seems highly dependent on my narrow knowledge and my ability to link sub-topic Y to overall topic X. Is there a way to manage the biases in this situation?

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Estimating the effort for applying architectural research projects to calls for entries by public organisations
In this year I will become occupied with finding and applying for government grants like open calls by the European Commission (so called "Drittmittelbeschaffung" in Austria). I am working for a department at a university in Austria that focuses on architectural design and urban design. Thus, I will focus on grants supporting work concentrating on culture, society, and architectural and urban design. One of the projects I am looking for grants emerged from my master's thesis, which I completed last year. The other projects are by Ph.D. candidates. Also, I will be looking for ideas for new research proposals based on existing or upcoming calls that match the general orientation of the department.
The details haven't been set yet, but I guess that I will prepare the project that emerged from my master's thesis on my own, while I am only going to support the other Ph.D. candidates with their application.
The department will employ me for this work and as a teaching fellow. However, I have no experience with fund-raising. I would like to know how many hours of work per week I have to expect for finding and applying for funds, so I can figure out if the contract is fair. Are there any rules of thumb or is there a guideline how to estimate this effort? Secondly, what factors impact the amount of needed time most? What is the ratio between the effort required for preparing a project for an application and just supporting others in their application?
Updated on 2018-11-08 to answer the questions raised by @MassimoOrtolano.

Could you please clarify what you mean by 3rd-party funds and effort? At present, the question is very unclear.

With 3rd-party funds ("Drittmittelbeschaffung"), I meant applying for existing calls for entries by public organisations like the European Union. I will focus on grants supporting work concentrating on culture, art, design, and society. With effort, I meant how many work hours there is to expect from such a work. This is in particular important to me because I have to figure out how many hours per week this will occupy from my time. I hope the question became clearer.

Hi @AlexanderGogl -  the response that you gave to Massimo would be useful in the original question - could you please edit the question appropriately?

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What to do with gaps in mathematical papers?
Assume the following is given in a published paper:

There is an important result.
The important result might contain a gap, as possibly some people agree.
The authors never respond to questions on that and so maybe they do not want to make it public that there is a gap, which can not be filled.
It is not likely to give a direct counterexample to the important result, but only to point out possible gaps.

What to do then? The problem is obviously that some people might quote and use the result in new papers. How about the idea that such gaps could be marked in the published version of the paper as a motivation for future research? Of course a recent editor of the journal should choose a new referee to decide whether to mark such a paper.
Also I think this should not have bad consequences for the authors as there might be reasons one is not aware of.

Related, if not duplicate Can I challenge a paper already published in a peer reviewed conference/journal?

Do you have a source for the North Korean example? Or did you just make it?

I have heard of it, but since I have no official secure source I removed that part.

OP: What is your motivation for restricting this question to mathematics? As far as I can tell, your gap-finding algorithm can apply to many other fields, especially those in STEM-related disciplines.

@MadJack: One possible motivation would be the different culture of mathematics.  My understanding is that in most other academic disciplines, it is somewhere between feasible and common to write a paper(/comment/letter/note/response...) pointing out a perceived error in someone else's published paper.  In mathematics, this almost never happens.

I'd suggest talking with some experts in the relevant research area, to see whether they agree that there is a gap and whether they have convinced themselves that, perhaps despite a gap, the result is valid.

If the paper has not been published yet and the gap is brought to the attention of the editor and/or referee, they should inform the authors of the problem and ask for it to be corrected. If the authors don't correct the gap then the paper should be rejected.
If the paper has already been published, anyone else who finds the gap, brought it to the attention of the authors and didn't receive a satisfactory reply has two main formal options that I can think of:

Write to the journal which published the paper. The journal can decide what to do, with an obvious step being to retract the paper. For an important result that was published in a serious journal, I expect the journal to take the matter quite seriously and solicit opinions from experts (which is essentially the same as the "gap referee" idea in your question) about whether such a drastic measure should be taken. In the event of a decision to retract, the journal will issue a statement that it no longer endorses the correctness of the paper, and probably add an explanation of the reasoning behind the decision.
Alternatively, the discoverer of the gap can write and publish a paper pointing out the gap.

In both of these approaches, the existence of the gap has entered the official scientific record and most other researchers in the field will become aware of it, so the risk of people erroneously relying on an unsubstantiated result is reduced, though not completely eliminated. The risk can be further reduced by publicizing the gap through other informal channels such as blogs, seminar and conference talks, emails to groups of colleagues, posts on MathOverflow, etc.

Do you know an example where 1. has happened in a bigger journal? I think it might be better to somehow mark the paper than to remove it since also wrong papers can have some good impact.

@Mare I don't know of an example, sorry (the only one that comes to mind is Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem where famously a gap was found and then corrected some time later), and am myself curious to know if/where this has happened. In any case a retraction doesn't mean the paper is removed - it will still exist in printed copies of the journal (and possibly online but with a prominent retraction notice being displayed like you suggest).

I guess the thing with Wiles was that Wiles responded to that gap, while the situation might be more complicated when authors never reply to possible problems with gaps.

How about the following idea: For every article the journal could have a small forum where people can discuss the results. If enough people veto that there might be a gap, then the journal can mark that at some point.

@Mare discussion forums for math papers have been tried before with various arxiv-style clones (and could be a useful thing for many reasons and not just to address gaps), but none were successful so far AFAIK. Sounds like a cool startup idea, go for it.

It is much more natural when its directly related to the journal and linked close to the article in the journal. I dont really feel comfortable doing 1. or 2. when finding a possible gap, when I just can say that I dont see the reason of a lemma or something without spotting a real mistake. Concrete example is http://mathoverflow.net/questions/261906/tachikawa-conjecture-for-commutative-algebras-proven .

There is a list of examples at http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/139503/in-the-history-of-mathematics-has-there-ever-been-a-mistake

@Mare - Why don't you feel comfortable doing 1 or 2?

See https://arxiv.org/abs/0709.1291, which prompted two retractions, acknowledged by the author.


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Finding math articles of small length in a given journal
For some reason, I sometimes enjoy reading very short articles in math.

Question: Is there a way to filter the articles of a journal (such as Journal of algebra) by their length (from smallest to largest)?

Maybe this is somehow possible using for example mathscinet when it is not directly possible at the journal.

I don't think that the length of articles is usually tracked directly. However if you are able to somehow obtain the citation data for every article in a journal in a machine-readable format, you could calculate and sort it yourself, as those normally include numbers of both first and last page.

If you have access to Web of Science (and perhaps other databases), this is (kind of) straightforward.
Search for Journal of Algebra in Publication Name, limiting the date range at least initially to something reasonable. As of mid-September 2020, searching on year-to-date yielded 410 entries.
The search results can then be dumped into Excel, choosing to get the full record.
That record includes the start and end page number of each article. Add a column that is the difference of those numbers, and sort the sheet on that column. You may then need to go through and throw away things like editorials and whatnot.
Done.


text:
Is it tough to apply for a CS PHD degree after several years in industry?
Advantage:
Family support. My parents believed I should and are willing to offer some financial support. Actually they urged me.
I am currently in a big company doing relevant work and I did great.
I want to.
Disadvantage:
GPA is not good for me, 2.6 is pretty low for applying to a PhD. From what I know about my friends, those who applied for a PhD program right after undergraduate often had a much higher GPA(3.7+) than what I have.
Financial support from family may not be that much due to many reason.
I only have one published result in an irrelevant domain as third writer.
Details of my background:
I lived in China and want to apply for a PhD abroad.
Academic years
I was graduated from one of the best university in my country with a bachelor degree at 2015. I spent my academic years in my teacher's lab and competition.
I have ACM/ICPC regional bronze,  Meritorious Winner of ICM(Interdisciplinary Contest In Modeling) and National 2rd prize of MCM(Mathematical Contest In Modeling).
I cooperated with my teacher and senior, finished a paper about A* algorithm as third writer.
I would say putting efforts in competitions had some side effects to my GPA but I know excuse is pale and useless.
Industry Career
After 2017 I worked in a big company as a NLP engineer, later in 2018 I took lead of NLP team. My job allows me to follow most new discovery of academia. During the process of applying those state-of-the-art result to real world I earned much experience with huge dataset in many ways.
Goal:
I want to apply for CS PhD in NLP related domain.
In short:
I want to have apply for PhD and I'm worrying about my weak background.
Any advice/experience is appreciated

I would not imagine any respectable PhD program will accept you with no publications and a low GPA, even with some industry experience and willingness to self-fund.
From the university's perspective, admitting a wildcard to PhD studies is generally not a great idea.

Even if you're willing to pay for your school, your tuition is, in some sense, a minor issue for the university: you still may damage the university's reputation by doing a bad job teaching (essentially 'wasting' a teaching slot that could've been taken up by a more competent student), not publish enough (hurting the departmental metrics), or not find an advisor to work with. Reputation and publications are much more valued than tuition.
They don't have to compromise (at least in CS): there are so many amazing applicants coming in from undergraduate with a top-tier first-author publication (or more!). Why risk someone with a very different set of skills than the tried-and-true?

If your heart is set on a PhD, there are two ways I can imagine you can move forward.
One way is completing an MSc degree in a relevant discipline. If you're willing to pay your way, the bar is usually lower on masters' programs. You will need to show you've completely turned around - ace your classes, start a research project with some advisor and write a crazy good thesis. This will pave the way towards a PhD. It's not entirely wasted years - if you continue to a PhD in the same university, you may be able to get some courses you took for your masters count towards your PhD (so less workload in the first two years, more time to focus on research!): this is the case in my university, but YMMV.
The second option is to score an internship with a professor, and then (by doing an amazing job) convincing them to push for you to enter the PhD program. As a fair warning, mass emailing professors asking for internships will not work. They get several of these a day and they usually go unread. I would suggest targeting a few professors and reaching out to them in personal emails. This would take a longer time, but would probably yield better results.
Good luck!

It sounds like you have many industry experiences that would look really good on a PhD application. To be blunt though, your GPA is pretty bad. If I was reviewing your application, I would worry that you are one of those students who is very capable, yet also not very focused. Experience has taught me that students who show immense promise (publications, awards, test scores), yet have really poor GPAs, rarely amount to much as graduate students in the modern system.
While this may or may not describe you, students with low GPAs tend to also be the students who struggle to get to their teaching assistant duties on time and who cause administrative nightmares for the graduate committee. (E.g. failing all classes, but arguing that they should still be retained as a graduate student because they think they have a great dissertation). I'll admit that I personally only recommend PhD applicants below a 3.0 GPA for further review by the graduate admissions committee under very rare circumstances. (E.g. they overcame cancer or something). When I am reviewing applicants, low GPA is one of the easiest metrics to immediately discard an application.
What to do:
Your industry experience should be emphasised as an indicator that your GPA is not reflective of what type of PhD student you will be. Your letters of recommendation need to speak to your work ethic and dedication specifically. These are the very best things you can do. I would be much more willing to overlook a poor GPA if everything else was very promising for the applicant (GRE, publications, letters of recommendation, industry experience, in person interviews).
If you have external funding, some programs are much more willing to take you on. (If you are willing to pay the tuition, why would they turn you down? It's low risk for them).
I would also consider applying for master programs as a means of "proving" yourself to PhD programs down the road.


text:
Friend looking to return to study without transferring any credits
A 28 year old friend wants to go back to school for an undergrad degree to become a social worker. She dropped out of school 10 years ago within the first year.  She'd like to start fresh and not transfer any credits.
Does she have to transfer from her previous school in another state, or can she apply directly and simply leave out she previously attended another university?  She does not want to transfer any credits.
She didn't do well 10 years ago, and is concerned and considering not going if she has to transfer her bad grades.  The universities website does not say you have to transfer grades, just that you can, and doesn't say how GPA is calculated based on that.
Can she simply apply and leave out her old college, or will this torpedo her chances of being accepted?  She's applying to a middle-of-the-road state school. If this is not possible/wise, how should she approach admissions given she doesn't want to transfer credits?
Edit - she will call admissions on Monday
She's going to call admissions Monday.  My guess is the credits won't transfer due to age.  I'd be surprised if the credits didn't transfer but the GPA does.
EDIT
Admissions said she should apply and disclose she previously attended a university.  They said they would have found out when she filled out FAFSA assuming she filled it out at the previous university.
The credits won't count because they are too old, but she'll probably have to provide an official transcript to show she doesn't owe money to the previous university.
Her GPA will be based only on credits earned at the current university.  They said that was a pretty standard policy nationwide.

Is this in the US?

@Sursula-they- yes

And did she study the same thing before?

@Sursula-they- I don't think so

In the US, it is nearly a universal policy that institutions compute GPA based only on courses taken at the specific institution.  Grades from courses taken at a previous institution are not included in the GPA computation.
Based on grades in courses taken at a previous institution, a student might be awarded transfer credit.  This is often limited based on the specific course (e.g. a specific course might or not be acceptable for transfer) and the grade (e.g. only grades of C or better might transfer.)  If your friend has any transferrable credits, then it is probably in their best interest to take advantage of the credits.
Your friend's past record might influence an admissions decision at an institution with selective admissions but probably wouldn't have any negative impact at the vast majority of institutions that have open or relatively open admissions.
Not supplying required transcripts could (if discovered) lead to expulsion from the new institution.

Expulsion would only occur if the student hid their previous enrollment.  If previous enrollment were disclosed but the transcript was not provided, the application might be rejected but there would not be expulsion.  Some universities might not bother looking at the transcript.

"not supplying required transcripts" is basically equivalent to "hid their previous enrollment" modulo the case where a student admitted to having taken courses at the other institution but refused to provide (or couldn't provide) transcripts.  In that case, the application would probably be considered incomplete until the transcripts were provided or some exception was made (e.g. if the other institution's records were destroyed in a fire the requirement might be waived.)

Almost everywhere (in the US) requires that you submit academic records of all previous education. It would be a sort of fraud if you don't do that. But for something ten years out of date it is unlikely that poor early performance will be much of a negative factor in admissions. People change and other people recognize the possibility.
Prior credits may not "transfer" in any case, both because the grades might be low and the age of the transcript.
So, it is better to be honest. If necessary, explain somewhere why the past has been overcome as needed. Most such things can be accommodated, whereas discovered dishonesty is harder to deal with.

A major concern is how the GPA will transfer.  The university website has 0 info, and she doesn’t want to apply if it’ll follow her.

That is up to the university, of course, She can talk to an admissions counsellor at most such universities to see if there will be any consequences. I'd guess, however, that the effect would be small if any. But every U has its own rules and standards. Have her call the admissions office.

In the vast majority of cases in the US, transfer credits are not counted in GPA calculations- only credits taken at a particular institution are included in the GPA computation for that institution.

"That is up to the university,"  I do not believe there is a single university that will include transferred grades in a GPA.  Do you have an example?

Also, there are often articulation agreements, which the university may or may not have voluntarily agreed to.

@AnonymousPhysicist While I think most if not all universities do not include transfer grades in the GPA on their own transcripts (other than specific agreements), admissions to some graduate schools or some professional programs (e.g. almost all reputable U.S. law schools) may still count all grades from previous institutions. Of course, explanation/addendums are almost always possible and there may be little negative effects once explained and seen in context. But in any case, the previous grades are done deeds and shouldn't affect much the decision now to attend another institution.


text:
Impact of parameters in experimental results of paper
I am writing a paper in computer science literature. I have a method that has two main parameters. It turns out that one of these parameters does not have a significant impact on the quality of the results, but it has a big impact on the efficiency of the method. I have a question:

How should I explain this in my experimental results section? Should I draw some plots and show that for different variation of this parameter the result is the same (this seems numb to draw some plots that all overlap) or I should write a paragraph and explain this phenomenon?

This is, afaik, known as sensitivity analysis. Surely, other papers before have had to deal with the issue of how to present the fact that the model isn't sensitive to a specific parameter?

Actually, I had a programming part in my masters thesis in which I wanted to show that some parameters do not have significant impact on the results. This is what I did which seems to be a combination of your methods:
I drew a plot with all the parameter remaining the same except one parameter that I want to study on. Even if the variation of the parameter does not show any significant change in the results, it does worth to show the results in a plot. It is not important that all the lines overlap. At least the reader sees that the results are the same. But, in a paragraph or at least one sentence following the graph I would talk about this. You may write that all the plots overlap, because of this and because of that; and talk about why such results happen. Also, in the caption of the plot, write something that directly says something about such insignificance.

I absolutely agree.  I love seeing plots with a whole bunch of overlapping flat lines that essentially say "We hit our method with all sorts of hammers, and it didn't budge!"


text:
Supervisor's behaviour changed after I decided to move to industry
As any other late-stage PhD student, I am applying for jobs. But I noticed that my supervisor's behaviour changed a bit after she heard that I want to go to industry, although she has been a great admirer of my work and encouraging me to pursue my academic work. I was wondering if I should be concerned about this or just let it go?
The story: I applied for a few academic positions and my applications were not successful. So, I decided to apply for some non-academic jobs in the industry. Fortunately, my applications received good attention in the industry and I was invited to a few interviews. Particularly, one of the companies responded very quickly. They have even called my references immediately after interviews. I felt that my supervisor's behaviour has changed ever since I told her about this. She saw me on the campus and coldly told me: "I just answered a phone call for you.".
Meanwhile, I received two interview invitations in academic positions, and the interviews went quite well. But the areas are not much relevant to my previous research, so, I am a bit hesitant about them (although they are really excellent positions). Besides, the industry offer is much more generous from the financial aspect.
I was wondering if I should be concerned about my supervisor's behaviour or it is a normal thing? Have I done something wrong?

If you're as good as you describe,  she might have hoped to keep you as a postdoc or to kerp a door open for future collaboration?

@ThunderDownUnder I guess you are right. We have a paper in progress that she expects to be finished before I go to industry, knowing that I already got the job offer.
Given that my supervisor is aware of my active search for opportunities, I'm pretty sure that I am not considered for an existing position. But, she mentioned that if my search took long, she can talk to the school to open something up. It is risky to count on that though, as the school may load a huge burden of teaching on me.

Careful as your supervisor might give bad references about you because of petty conflicts of interests.

@Scientist I don't think she has done that, as the company called me with the offer and said that the references were very good.

It seems you consider yourself to be the one in fault, and consequently induced most answerers to think similarly. I do not share that view. The most likely explanation is that this outcome (you getting offers from industry) goes against her expectations and is conflicting with her interests.
Reasons why her interests might conflict with your interest in industry jobs:

your supervisor value in academia depends (also) on the academic
success of the people she mentors. If you leave academia, it might be
the greatest thing for you, but still be perceived as insuccess by
her, or her own evaluators.
As a researcher, she might need you for completing existing
projects, and might have been counting on your collaboration
on future projects once you settled in your next academic
position. Those papers and collaborations just vanished.
She might even have started to explore funding sources to keep you working
with her for a bit longer. She might have perceived that you did not value her effort by chasing other opportunities - although you knew nothing about her effort.

As you can see, none of those explanations imply you have done something wrong. What is most likely happening is that your best-interest (securing a job offer where you feel your skills are properly valued) conflicts with her best-interest (of increasing her penetration and reach in the field through new disciples and collaborators).

Most people would not consider you to have done anything wrong in applying to industry - but your supervisor might, because some academics consider non-academic careers to be "second-best".
However, are you sure that the change in attitude is because of this? Could it simply be that you put your supervisor down as a referee without telling them about it? That might be considered rude, leading to surprise at getting a phone call about you.

I definitely did ask her about it, before putting her name. I also notified her that she might receive a call soon, after the interview.

Your reasoning in the first paragraph is correct, as she asked me if I'm sure if I want to go to industry, and criticised it. It might be due to the fact that she has moved to academia from industry.

The simple answer might be, as Flyto said, that she didn't expect the call. Mind you, a part of your supervisor's job description is to provide reference (granted that it's deserved), so she shouldn't be too baffled. Still, it's a good practice to ask upfront about such things, not only out of politeness, but also to describe the company/position so that the reference can be tailored to that.
Academia, however, is a very nuanced environment. There could be a number of things you might have omitted in your explanation that would basically turn the situation upside down. For instance, how much your advisor assisted you with the application process. Because of this, communication with stakeholders is key: you should openly talk to your advisor and ask what the matter is. Always better to err on the side of caution, unless you want to burn bridges.
Also: industry will always pay better. If that's not your main criterion, then you should always aim to go where your skills will be appreciated the most and you feel fulfilled. Only you can decide that, and i'm quite sure that your advisor will understand if you talk to her openly.

You supervisor should understand that you have a responsibilty to put a roof over your head and food on the plate.
I have a friend who was on a temporary teaching contract with a promise of a full-time contract. The Dean procrastinated for 9 months about sorting it out. Finally my friend gave the Dean notice that there was 14 days to make a decision else my friend would make one.
On the 15th day, my friend accepted the job at a large company with good benefits. The Dean was surprised my friend had not waited -“but we need you...” etc etc How long are you expected to wait while they drift in academic limbo???
So, moral is DO what is best for you...

Unfortunately, you are right that the academia is extremely slow in processing. It takes ages to get a position since you apply for it. The academic positions that I mentioned received my application 3 months ago, while the company had two interviews, contacted the references and sent me the contract in only two weeks. This has put me in a bad situation as well, making it hard to decide.

An academic may not have realized that in industry it's normal to call references instead of email them (which is the norm in academia).  Relatedly she might be bemusedly annoyed with the people who called (rolling your eyes at business-y behavior is common in academia, and vice-versa), rather than actually unhappy with you.

Yes, that is why I gave them her email address, rather than her phone number. I am sure that they have emailed first.

You did nothing wrong in looking about for suitable employment wherever it might be found. However, if, as Flyto guesses you gave out your advisor's name without permission, then you have some apologizing to do and should get to work on that.
However, the larger question is your relationship with your advisor and you need to take steps to repair that. If necessary, tell her that you are sorry and that your inexperience in these thengs led you to poor actions. Whether her unhappiness is justified or not, you should work to find ways to reduce that. But staying away from her is almost certainly not the answer. A face to face apology is always best if needed.
Of course, you should keep her more informed about your plans and ask her for advice on building a career. She will be your most important advocate for a while.

Your points are valid, but I did mention this orally and verbally to her.


text:
What Kind of Research Method is this?
This is something I've been confused ever since I started my undergraduate research.
My research related to User Interfaces. Based on some of the previous years undergraduate research or from some research in the same year as me, as far as I see, have these steps:

Suppose we wants to design new interface for a system-X
We do the survey about the interface of system-like-X (but not X) to the users
From the survey, we get the data: what the users don't like from the present system interface, which part should be improved, etc
Then, we propose the new design based on that data
We then, again, test that new design with users

And now, my steps, according to my advisor

You design the new interface
Test it

I'm so confused, because, based on what would I design the interface? What standard or principle I should used? Also, in my case, I have to implement or develop the testing tools myself, which means that I got more work to do compared to my friend's workload. Could that be why step 1-3 skipped? But this is academic, I can't say the reason I choose that design is because "well, because that feels good/looks nice!". But my advisor never told me by what should I based my design on, she just "Yes, you design it first". But that's not my question here.
My questions are:
In this case, where if I do not base  my research on data, by what should I based it on? Should I use a principle to back it on or what? Is there a research method like this? What is the name of this research method?
In case I ask in wrong place or there's lack of information, please tell me.

I think you will find more experts in UX.SE. Anyway, my guess is that you have limited time, and the full process for a more complex UI would run out of time.

@Davidmh Thank you very much for your suggestion Sir, I'll try that for the UX-related question. I put all the detail because honestly I had a hard time on conveying my question, so I thought better to tell what I've experienced. Also, your guess is true, but don't worry about that.

How did your advisor answer this question?

Goodness, I forgot to ask in our last meeting. I've touched about this before, but that time the answer wasn't clear. But maybe also because I have difficulty in talking, especially in telling a story and give long explanation (always messed up), so maybe she didn't really get what I meant, and I'm afraid talk about it longer will make she's tired of me or even it becomes more abstract.

If nothing else works, you can use a modified version of steps 1 to 3 in which, instead of doing a genuine survey, you sample the opinions of one person, namely yourself.  In other words, think about your own experience with systems-like-X, consider what was good and what was bad, and use those opinions as the basis for your design.  (For a better survey, average your opinions with those of 2 or 3 friends.)

You can base it on the data collected by other people already. There are many facts about user behaviors available in various research papers. This list has a seemingly good compilation of conferences.
So you base your design on facts and observations and user preferences that someone has published. Then your contribution can be using those principles to create a user interface for a domain, device, or a situation that no one else has explored yet.
I am not a usability person, but since the question was on research method, I thought I would provide my opinion.

In addition to bkd.online's answer, from your limited description I would call the extra steps in the first list pilot testing the user-design. Pilot tests are typically constructed to have a low time and cost data collection to get immediate feedback to improve the design.
In terms of research, the pilot study is typically not considered research in and of itself, but basically the same strategy can be used later on down the line to conduct actual research. For instance, you may have a question about the location of a widget in your design, and whether the location impacts users behavior. You can then set up a proper experiment where you randomly expose different uses to the different widget locations and then measure users behavior under these different conditions.


text:
Should I include proof of my extenuating circumstances when applying for a PhD?
My performance in my bachelor's degree was adversely affected by some medical extenuating circumstances (related to physical injuries). I am currently in a master's program and my performance is much better. Should I mention these extenuating circumstances in my PhD applications and should I include the relevant documents (doctors' statement, diagnostic report, etc)?

Related: How can I document depression for later reference in grad school applications?

You might mention extenuating circumstances if:

They significantly decreased your past performance.
You explain why your performance will not be reduced in the future for the same reason.

Do not include any evidence unless it is requested, or perhaps if the circumstances were something very unlikely.  Having been imprisoned for a crime and later exonerated might be an example where evidence would be a good idea.

+1 “do not include any evidence unless it is requested.” I would add that the best place to include this information is in the statement of purpose.

My experience -- albeit a little later down the road -- has been that most committees are quite forgiving of situations like these. A simple "Please note, I was hospitalised following a road traffic accident and unable to return to full time work between  and , which adversely affected " is sufficient, and likely to have the intended effect. I have literally never been asked for proof of my spinal injury in academia, despite offering to produce it!

I think whether to include evidence or not depends on how the application process works. If they ask for a specific list of documents and you'd have to go out of your way to include the evidence, probably don't. But if it's an open-ended thing where you send a huge file containing all past transcripts, certificates of registration to universities, etc., I'm not completely sure that including evidence would be a bad idea. The idea being that committees can always ignore it, and there's some value in making it readily available in case they want to know more about that part of your application.

@a3nm I have to oppose this. We shouldn't be normalizing sending medical information around unless it is truly necessary. A car accident is one thing, but we don't want people to feel pressured to send medical documentation for something like mental illness (e.g. suicidal ideation that might feel very private, or schizophrenia, which is highly stigmatized). If the office truly feels proof is needed, it can be handled on a case-by-case basis. However, I have not heard of anyone trying to cheat committees by pretending they had an injury when they did not, so your suggestion is somewhat a

solution without a problem.

@AzorAhai--hehim: Yes, I agree with you it shouldn't be needed. But unpleasant as it may sound, given that proof will always make things look more definite to a committee, it may still be the optimal move for an applicant. :/ (There's an is-ought problem here, my message is the "is" part and yours is the "ought".)

@a3nm Do you feel adcoms don't trust applicants when they say they had a health problem?

I think it depends. Maybe the main point of including evidence isn't about trust, but about having a place where to give details about the exact problem and its impact on your studies. Often these are complex stories, and you wouldn't get into the details of them in a statement of purpose, but giving as many factual details as you can elsewhere could help. But yeah, there's also the fact that details given by someone who isn't the applicant will be perceived as more factual. (Other idea: if a teacher knows you well, ask them to tell about the situation in their letter of recommendation?)

@Landak With a little extension your comment would make a good answer on its own.

Since you are now in an MS program now and are doing better at it, I think it would be a mistake, actually, to dwell too much on the reasons for poor performance earlier. At most, a single phrase in an application letter that you suffered physical injuries as an undergrad that impacted your performance at the time. No more than that.
Applications will put heavier weight on later work over earlier in any case and people improve their work for many reasons. If it were the later work that was impacted, you might need more explanation. But in this case, just a hint that someone can follow up on if they think it necessary, is plenty.

I agree with this and would also add that there's almost no reason to address it yourself.  If one of your references thinks it's worth mentioning, they will say in their letter.

Your notes during your Bachelor's does add some weight to your application but in trying to negate a possible negative weight of these notes by supplying this information, you might add negative weight to the expectations for your future performance. Just keep in mind that what matters most to a potential supervisor is your future performance and they would always have second thoughts about a student that might potentially disappear from the lab for an extended period of time. One more thing that might be important here is whether the potential supervisor is doing a tenure-track or is already tenured. The former group are very stressed out and performance focused.


text:
As candidates for postdoc position, what are good examples of questions to ask interviewers during an interview?
After seeing

What questions should I ask as a candidate during an interview for a tenure-track assistant professor position?,

What should I ask deans during my interview?
(focusing on tenure-track position),

and
What are the important questions to ask during an interview for an adjunct lecturer position?

I wonder what some good examples of questions are to ask interviewers during an interview for a postdoc or visiting assistant professor position?
I am not sure questions like "how much travel funds do you give to a postdoc every year", "what kind of classes I am expected to teach" (for math postdocs teaching is usually inevitable), "do I have any chances to teach graduate level classes", "what are the expectations for my research?" (for pure math there is a lot of uncertainties since it is hard to publish papers), etc. are considered as good questions. What are your suggestions for questions?
Basically, candidates always want to make interviewers happy and increase their chance of being hired through questions. I have heard that asking no questions is considered bad (people say if you don't ask us questions then you are probably not very interested in us. But sometimes no-questions means no doubts --- namely they completely trust their potential employers, though), but I am not sure. I am from math community but feel free to talk about other areas.

My background for the anecdotes here are that I'm in computational math, had a few postdoc offers in the 2020 cycle and have a TT job now.

Questions about what courses and levels of courses you'll be teaching are totally reasonable if asked politely. If you do something in demand, you can offer to design a course in your specialty (if you're willing).

You could ask about whether you'll have access to the university's career services when you're looking for your subsequent jobs

Will you have access to grant writing support services as a postdoc?

What are the interviewers' favorite part of living in their area?

(if you do any computation whatsoever) access to supercomputing

To be frank, you've got little leverage coming in as a postdoc. People care about your capacity to do research and not totally bungle lectures. If you're invited to ask questions at some point, you're looking to ask things that give an opportunity for the interviewers to say positive things. Harder questions can come later if you have an offer in hand.

Thanks! Do you consider not asking any questions at all as a good approach?

@NoOne That would be very weird and asocial.

For postdoc position, involvement in research, mentoring opportunities, research independence, grant writing, travel to conferences, training and skill building opportunities, future job prospects, network of advisor are important. You can ask what are their expectations regarding research, teaching, and extension.
Postdoc responsibilities largely depends upon your supervisor’s expectations. And hiring decision is—most of the time—solely based on faculty's interest. Based on my experience, networking, your skills, and ability to do job have higher influence on hiring decisions compared to your performance during interviews.
Still try to show that you are interested in the position and ask questions that shows you will become an asset to them by framing questions in the way that convey message that you are useful to them. In other words, instead of asking questions such as how would you train me to be a faculty, you should ask how can I help you in research/teaching/extensions so you will benefit from me. That shows you are good candidate for them. At postdoc level, it’s more about selling you to hiring faculty rather than they selling the position to you.


text:
What's the proper order for multiple educational degrees/certificates?
Assuming someone has a PhD, MD, CISSP, CPA, CFA, MS, etc. etc. What's the proper way to order them after their name and is the comma needed after the last name? (i.e. Jane Smith, PhD, MD, etc. or John Smith MD, PhD, etc.)

Why the down vote?

Comma following depends on what comes next.

"John Smith" or maybe "John Smith, badass"

What context are you writing out their name?

Questions over titling are almost always a matter of local convention and personal preference. You can read more than you wanted to know over at Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-nominal_letters
A few rules of thumb:

If you're naming someone in a friendly context then your biggest concern is usually etiquette rather than technical correctness. If someone insists on being called "Jane Doe, PhD, MD" rather than "Jane Doe, MD, PhD" then it would be incredibly rude to object to them. Most people would not care, but if in doubt you should ask.
If you're establishing the credibility of someone, such as in a piece of journalism, then you list only relevant degrees starting with the highest degree. Even if multiple degrees are relevant it's likely that one degree will be most relevant.
If you follow the cite note for US degrees in the Wikipedia link above, you'll eventually get to this page, in which a protocol expert says that this is the appropriate order, with ties within each category being broken alphabetically:
1) Religious orders
2) Theological degrees
3) Academic degrees
4) Honorary degrees, honors, decorations
5) Professional licenses, certifications & affiliations

Don't list degrees that have been superseded by another degree. That is, don't say "John Doe, PhD, MS, BS" because the MS and BS degrees have been eclipsed by the PhD.

That all said, "MD, PhD" is the typical order; and not all master's or bachelor's degrees are superseded by the next degree. I know a physician who goes with "MD, MS" although I have no idea what the MS is in.

Don't list degrees that have been superseded by another degree. That is, don't say "John Doe, PhD, MS, BS" because the MS and BS degrees have been eclipsed by the PhD.

This suggestion by David may be a reasonable one in many contexts, particularly where you want to give a succinct summary of the expertise of the person.  However, there are some contexts where it is appropriate to list all the tertiary qualifications of a person, even if some are undergraduate degrees that are eclipsed by higher degrees in the same field.  For example, some staff pages for academics list all the degrees held by those academics, even though the undergraduate degrees are usually eclipsed by a PhD.  This is often useful because it allows the reader to see the educational progression of that person, how they started their tertiary education, and where it led.

The question seems to be specifically about listing titles immediately after a name, not about listing degrees on a CV or a webpage.

I don't think there's a clear consensus on this (the best guide I can find on the subject is the AMA Manual of Style, though they suggest personal choice determines the primary order) but it's usually something like
Firstname Lastname, MD, PhD, ABC, XYZ
where ABC and XYZ may be professional affiliations or specialized degrees like MPH.
See also the Chicago Manual of Style, though they don't really specify one consistent order.

My understanding is that two degrees may be listed if they are in different disciplines, even though in one discipline a degree may be lower in status.   e.g.   PhD, MPH  where the PhD is in psychology and the MPH is in public health.
How else would one establish credentials in both fields.


text:
How feasible is it to pursue PhD in mathematics for a computer science undergrad?
As a Computer Science undergrad, I've taken Calculus I, II, III, Linear algebra and Differential equations. This exposure to higher mathematics encouraged me to pursue a PhD in mathematics. How feasible will this change be? How will the transition be from computer science to mathematics?

Some branches of computer science are very closely related to mathematics, whereas others are not. What branch of mathematics are you considering? And what branches of computer science have you studied?

This exposure to higher mathematics ...  -- While the courses you have taken might be considered higher mathematics to you, there are other topics you should get exposed to before considering to seriously pursue graduate studies in math. At the very least, you would want to take a real analysis course, and then branch out from there, depending on whether you have pure or applied interests.

How far into undergrad are you?  Do you have enough time to pick up Math as a minor or double major?

Just a general FYI, the listed math courses are standard for Engineering and Physics majors in the US, so I'd characterize them as a good background for math-heavy fields, though perhaps not quite enough for someone who specializes in Math specifically.

@Nat I'm a senior, with Math as a minor.

@ZihanI. I'd have difficulty seeing you being competitive for a Math grad program with the stated background alone, primarily just because there's more coursework you'd probably want to do before starting the grad-level classes.  That said, I think that some of the formal mathematical proof stuff is similar to what theoretical computer scientists do, so I dunno if you might have some exposure there, which might be a point in your favor.

@ZihanI. Oddly enough I commented on doing Math in grad school just a few days ago in this answer.  The tl;dr would be that you can focus on mathematical stuff in other departments, too; 'course, that might not help if you really wanted to do Math specifically.  Separately, I'd note that Computer Science seems like a more exciting field than Math, though I suppose that that's a matter of opinion.

You might consider a master's degree in mathematics before starting your PhD.

What kind of mathematics are you interested in?

Any mathematics PhD program will require math coursework in abstract mathematics, which you likely have none of.
You will need enough real analysis to cover all of baby rudin, and a full year-long course in algebra. That's the bare basics for surviving first year graduate level courses for the first year exams.
It is completely feasible if you take another year or two and get a mathematics degree. You might want to consider getting courses in real analysis/algebra/complex analysis/logic and maybe a course in probability and then applying to masters programs for mathematics. There you could take graduate courses, do a math thesis, and then assuming your grades/prestige aren't already tanked, there's nothing in your current history that will prevent you from getting a good Mathematics PhD.

"You will need enough real analysis to cover all of baby rudin, and a full year-long course in algebra. " Is this for PhD courses or for Masters? Is this for a top school, or just average?

In the U.S. one takes Ph.D. exams within roughly the first two years of beginning graduate school, and those exams are based on certain courses that students are expected to take during this time. (A few will have taken one or more of these courses as an undergraduate.) Antecedent is saying that you need baby Rudin and a year of abstract algebra to have the background to BEGIN those courses the Ph.D. exams are based on. For what it's worth, when I was in school typical texts for the exams were Royden for real analysis and Hungerford for algebra.

@Ovi: the OP hasn't seen enough mathematics to know whether he really wants to or is able to pursue a PhD in mathematics. Any school that takes him on as a PhD student is taking an enormous risk. But he has enough background to enroll in a Masters program at some schools (including some good schools).


text:
I've received interview for faculty position at one school but am interested in another school
I've just sent out job applications last week and only a few days later received a phone call for a phone interview at one school. I am interested in another school that the chair of that school is on my doctoral dissertation committee.
I've expressed my interest in a faculty position to him after he asked me if I would be interested. Since then, I haven't heard from him and my communication with him has been only about my dissertation. He provided me with a lot of compliments on my work and said directly that he is impressed by the amount and speed of work that I get done. However, I still didn't hear from him a call for interview or further discussion about the faculty position. Now that I am called for interviews, what shall I do?
Should I let him know that I have interviews. if I do he probably going to ask me which schools?.

Can you clarify the length of time between when he asked you if you would be interested in a position, when you told him yes, and now? If it was just a few weeks ago, for instance, I'd suggest a very different strategy than if he asked you months ago.

The first time he talked to me about it was 7 months ago. Then he invited me for a meeting to discuss a possible position at their department. He was more specific and asked me questions about when will I graduate exactly and whether I am interested in a tenure or not. In the same conversation he also offered me number of grant funded projects that he thinks I can fit into as a faculty while I am developing my in research agenda. This conversation was in February this year. What do you mean by different strategy?

An update: Today I`ve received a follow up email, two days after the voice message that they left in my voice mail, from the search committee reminding me that they would like to set up a time for a phone interview and asking if I am still interested.

He is probably trying to be professional and separate you as a student and you as an applicant. I wouldn't bring it up to him. You clearly already have a leg up since he told you about the position in the first place. He also probably already knows that you are applying to other places (since people generally apply for jobs before graduation).

Thanks a lot. I think that what you say is likely but for how long to wait?.

Perhaps when you get an offer from another school, then tell him that you are considering another offer, but really want to stay here.

I actually put him as one of my recommenders since he is on my committee. What if the school I apply to wants to contact him for a reference?

I agree that he is probably separating OP as a student from OP as an applicant, but one duty does not relieve him from the other.  Yes, definitely let him know that you have an interview, but remember that he may not be able to promise or reveal much about your application status.

How much information would it be ok to share with him about the invitation for interviews. Should I tell him the name of the school I am interviewing for, or should I keep this information from him for now, and tell him only if and when I am asked for references?

I agree. Thanks. This way it will keep the door open for me to ask him to recommend me for other schools, if he doesnt take any further steps in the negotiation process.

The application process for faculty positions often takes a long time. You may be one of many candidates invited to interview (also, you don't mention if this is a phone or campus interview, which would better help with understanding the timeframe you have). For instance, if you are the first of five candidates being interviewed, even if you are made an offer it could be a month or more away. That's a long time for your choice school to invite you for an interview.
My suggestion is to go on interviews and if they progress. If it looks like another school may make you an offer, then I would contact your professor and ask what their timeline is for interviewing. You might not want to jeopardize an offer in-hand for another job you might not be offered.
Also note that faculty searches are a group effort and the chair may not have the final say of whom gets interviewed or hired. Therefore, the person on your dissertation committee may even be advocating for you to be interviewed, while the faculty and/or Dean may view your research area as not being a priority. So, don't make decisions about other schools on the desired position unless you have an offer from that department in writing. Until then, it's not your job.
Good luck! Congrats on getting interviews!

As it is stated in my message (the first line) that it is a phone interview. As for the job that I am interested in, the faculty who I talked to is the chair of the school and he is the one who makes the decision to hire faculty members at the school of medicine. I didnt mention earlier that he already discussed with me grant funded projects at the school that I can be involved with. It was in a following conversation after he suggested that I consider working for their department.

Ok. Sorry I missed about the phone interview. Well, it is more positive a circumstance that he makes the decisions. However, I stand with my position that you do not have a job there until you have an offer in-hand. I wouldn't follow-up with him unless you have a reason to pressure him, like you are invited for a campus visit. If he can make decisions about hiring and wants you, he will turn around an invite or offer very quickly.


text:
3 3-hour exams in a row with no time in between. What can I do?
I am currently studying computer science in a University in Canada.
I have just received my Schedule for the semester, and I have noticed that, during the finals week, 3 of my 6 courses put their final exams in the same day.
Specifically, I have an exam from 12:30 to 15:20, another one from 15:30 to 18:20 and the last one is from 18:30 to 21:20. All three of those exams are Worth 35% or more of my grade, therefore are very likely to be decisive in my success or failure this semester.
This really seems unreasonable to me. I do not expect, no matter how much sleep I get and how much coffee I drink, to be able to perform at my best for 9 hours straight, without even a chance to eat dinner.
So I have two questions:
First, is this standard practice? I'm only starting my second semester, so maybe I just got Lucky the first time that all my exams were the only one of the day.
And Second, if this is not standard but rather a very unlucky setup, do I have any recourse? Is it rude to ask some of the professors or higher-ups in the school to change the Schedule a little?
It is also important to know that I am taking the classes in the standard path (? I am not a native English speaker, but I am referring to the grid thing telling me the recommended courses to take every semester in order to complete the program in the fewest number of semesters) for my program. I am not taking any special classes that are not expected to be taken at the same time. This means that a lot of people probably have this exact Schedule for this semester, and it's not just me because I made weird choices.
EDIT: Thank you all for your input. I will accept one of the answers now, but to be honest, they were all pretty enlightening. I had already sent an email to all concerned professors AND the faculty 5 days prior to asking this question, and I still haven't received an answer. I will probably forward the same email (it is as polite as possible, asking about what are my options in the context, etc) to some more administration adresses in the hopes that someone can give me the exact policy, or at least tell me who can.
I am very glad that everyone seems to agree that they can usually do something about it, this makes me less stressed. In the worst case, nothing changes, and as one answer mentioned, if lots of students have a worse grade because of this setup, then the playing field is even.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

Sounds like ryerson, I assure you by the end of the second exam you will have trouble reading and understanding a sentence. I pray for you that your last exam is all multiple choice so that you can guess all your answers and hope for the best.

By the way, I think the English word you couldn't think of is progression. Or at least that's the one I've usually heard. E.g. the "standard progression of courses for history majors" refers to the classes that all history majors are expected to take, at the typical times for them to do so.

@Ryan please only use the comments to ask for more information or to suggest improvements. If you had posted an answer, I could downvote it and explain my strong disagreement in a comment; but it's a comment, and if I reply and start an "extended discussion in comments" the mods will remove the comments and kick us out to chat - and rightly so.

It might be a good idea to talk to your classmates and verify that there are a bunch of folks in the same situation, to eliminate need for speculation in forums like this or conversations with appropriate folks at the university.

Whether this is a standard practice or not highly depends on your university. However, the attribution of these exam period is an automated process and some situations like yours are bound to happen.
If I were you, I would consult the specific rules of your University. I know at that my previous Canadian University in Montreal (École Polytechnique), there was a rule that limited the amount of exam hours you could have in a 24 hours period, ( I believe it was 6 maximum per day). If such a thing occurred, you could ask for the exam to be moved as this was judged to be unfair.
You can also consult with your student committee (of your department or your faculty) and your department since you say that you are following a standard path. In that case, there will be many students in the same situation and they should prove to be understanding. The student committee can usually present a uniform front and defend the entire class as a whole concerning this issue. There is absolutely nothing impolite about this if you proceed politely and you act as soon as the semester begins. The sooner you handle this issue, the easier it will be to solve.
I believe you are right in saying that this will not allow you to perform to your full potential, and you are right to ask for a more humane schedule.

I would add that in all likelihood your instructors are your allies in this situation, and probably your most powerful allies. I cannot imagine that they are happy with this situation, and they are probably in the best position to change this. So when approaching them, approach them as potential allies rather than potential enemies.

Also bringing this up (with the instructors or faculty) at the start of the semester is much more likely to yield good results than waiting until a couple days before the exams!

Any reasonable software would have a list of what exams each student had to take and be able to insure minimal rest times between exams, and max hr in exam on any given day etc.   Therefore blaming it on a "automated process" is not valid, it MUST be that the university does not care, otherwise they would have brought the software to stop the problem happening.

@aslum Some schools do not assign the exact time slot of the exams until the end of the semester.

@Ian Scheduling with constraints is computattionally hard in a theoretical sense. A given set of constraints may not even admit a valid schedule, or finding such a schedule may take more time than is available to compute it. It's quite probable the school generates the best schedule it can, with as few problems as possible, leaving it to students and their professors to deal with those as necessary or needed.

@Ian "it MUST be that the university does not care, otherwise they would have brought the software to stop the problem happening."  More likely, the university does care, and has decided that the option with the best cost-benefit is to resolve these manually.  At my university, if you had more than two exams in a day, you'd contact the appropriate people, and would have the extras rescheduled.  That's hardly "not caring".

@chepner,  see http://www.scientia.com/en-GB/Products/Exam-Scheduler  it is not that hard and has been on the market since 1996!   The timetable office should be talking to the students with exam comfits etc before the time table is even published.

@Ian it is not that hard and has been on the market since 1996 — Yes, but is it compatible with our existing scheduling software?  And, since we're in a budget crunch, is it free?

@Ian exam scheduling in the UK is generally an easier problem than in the US. The number of electives students take is smaller and large classes are often split across many rooms.

@Ian "Reasonable software." Ha ha. A great, great, great deal of software is unreasonable. Either because the developers didn't care or because they made a mistake. There could well be a bug in the system. This kind of thing is why good software would give you the means of overriding its decisions. It's possible that the university is simply unaware this happened, and even if they are aware, they may have decided to wait and see if it actually happened in practice (i.e., to wait for complaints) before going to the trouble of resolving it. It certainly doesn't imply they don't care.

They are a university. presumably they have their own software department? Who could develop a bespoke solution? (if they cared)

@Mawg That's expensive, and it may be more expensive than their current strategy of resolving problems manually.  Keep in mind, the challenges of scheduling university exams existed long before computers were widespread; the manual approach is not that foreign.

Expisive? To do it in house? Don't they have students who could be given it as an assignment?

It's impossible to avoid conflicts in any decently sized university. The best you can do is minimize the number of conflicts and number of students affected. Which is why virtually every school has a policy for dealing with conflicts. It has nothing to do with the program you use to schedule.

@FirstLastname, It is EASY to avoid conflicts in exam timetables provided a separate exam is given for each instance of a course.   The problem is when the professors wish to use the same exam for more then one instance of a course.

@Ian Schools only have so much time to administer exams (usually around a week). They can't add more days. If you have a dozen exam periods and 2 dozen courses, you can't avoid a conflict; some exams will have to be held at the same time. You can only minimize the problems this can cause (e.g. it's probably safe for an English exam to be held the same time as a Physics one). This is why it's important to figure these dates out early, so that conflicts can be discovered and conflict exams can be prepared.

I do not have experience in Canada, but I cannot imagine a university anywhere doing this intentionally. It's very easy to see how it could have happened unintentionally.
I would reach out to the professors as soon as possible after receiving the syllabus. The reason I say after is that one or more of the professors may already be planning to hold their exam outside of the regular schedule. Explain the situation to the professors, as well as the fact that you believe a large number of students are affected.
The professors have just as much interest as you do in the exams being an accurate test of your ability, and I cannot imagine they are happy with the situation. They're the ones who either 1) have the clout to get the administration to reschedule, or more likely 2) have the ability to schedule an alternate time.
Finally, an anecdote: This happened to one of my courses back in undergrad. The administration was unable to reschedule the whole exam because it would have given some people two exams at once- the professor was apoplectic. He eventually scheduled a second sitting of the exam- one open to those who had a conflict.

I'm a faculty member myself.  If my course ran into a conflict like this, I would be grateful if I was made aware of the conflict as early as possible in the semester.

Faculty has all sorts of options to deal with conflicts.  I had an exam conflict and in one of the courses, I did so well, I got a take home exam.  It was an introductory programming course and I've been working as a programmer for 5 years already... of course work experience doesn't translate to  course credit... so I had to take introductory programming classes.

You might want to bring this up with one or two of your professors - show them the curriculums and the times you have tests scheduled, and see if you can work something out with them so that the times don't run into one another.
It's entirely possible that the professors don't expect students to take these courses all in a row, so you might just be unlucky - but it's also possible that students aren't supposed to be taking all these courses at once (perhaps a mistake in setting up your curriculum), and a professor could spot that right away.
At the very worst, you'll find inflexible professors who refuse to help you - and it'll be no worse off than if you hadn't tried.

"What's the worst that could happen?" In this case, no change, so why not try it?

Note that the OP said that they are taking a standard set of courses in a degree program, and that they are not taking any special courses that aren't supposed to be taken at the same time.  (Of course, they could be mistaken, but contacting the professor would probably clear this up as well.)

@MichaelSeifert Exactly what I was thinking - while they might believe that their course selection is standard, they might be mistaken, and a professor in that curriculum would be able to spot it if that's the case.

"one or two of your professors" I see no reason not to just send a single e-mail to all 3 of them at once.

@jpmc26 Personability.  The three different professors may have different responses.

I had this happen to me when I was in college, I would suggest first talk to the professors and see if any of them are willing to make a special exception for you. If all 3 say no then check with the university to see if there is anything they can do to avoid it. Worst case scenario is you have to take the exams or consider dropping one of the courses. Keep in mind you also lose the benefit of last minute cramming on the last or even second final on the same day.
I remember when I was in your situation my brain was completely dead by the third exam and I did not do well in that course (I received a B on the midterm, thought I can get by on the final). Luckily my university had a policy where we can retake the course one more time if you received a failing grade and it will replace the failed grade in GPA but the failed course still shows on the record, easily received an A when I retook it the next year.

What everyone else has said is great, I would suggest that that you follow their advice before mine as i feel mine should be last resort.
I have known a situation that was a lot less extreme than this (I think it was 2 exams back to back) but due to the exams being set by an external body there was nothing they could do about rearranging them. The solution they came up with was that the person taking the exam would have a break between them, staying in exam conditions but would not actually be taking an exam. Admittedly this meant longer in "exams" but they had some time to recompose their thoughts, have a drink and quiet food they brought into the exam.
I would like to emphasize this is a last resort and you should try the other things suggested here first, but if none of that works, what I have suggested is better than leaving it as it is (in my opinion)
Good luck

Well if I were me, I'd get off the web and start studying ASAP.
No, in all seriousness there's often nothing you can do to change the schedule. If there are special circumstances such as bereavement or illness many Universities do allow you to submit for "Special Consideration". The best thing to do is do the best you can and they will scale your results accordingly (based on your assignment grades) if the situation has impacted on your exam performance.
Bear in mind a lot of other students in your institution will be tackling similar workloads and issues (exams early in the examination period or on the same day): you're competing for them for placement in higher degrees and scholarships so it's an even playing field. If one exam has particularly poor grad averages (do to poor schedule or an unusually tough exam) the class scores will be scaled up.
This is why it's advisable to study throughout the semester rather than cramming for exams. Generally, in my exams it was only a recap and practice questions if I had the time. The bonus is that you ought not to have many exams in the days leading up to it so try to eat well and get plenty of rest so your brain performs as well as it can.

Wow this wasn't well received, huh? Our University (not in North America) tried to schedule larger courses commonly taken together apart. However, to those of us taking an interdisciplinary course this kind of thing happened a lot. I empathise with the situation but honestly it's most practical to assume the worst and be prepared.

Studying hard doesn't really change their situation - the three tests, all of which are major parts of their grade, are still stacked one after another in a timeframe that is unrealistic for them to complete.  It is worth at least asking if anything can be done to avoid this scenario, especially since they have months of time to prepare.

Sure, I'm unfamiliar with North American systems but we do this by filing for "Special consideration" with the University, not the professors themselves. In our case, the exams are set but the University administration (with only a couple of weeks notice), not your professor so there's not much they can do about it. While it was considered for consecutive exams, it requires (an unlikely) unanimous agreement from the class to reschedule an exam here. Asking for assistance has been addressed in other answers also. Plus, the OP may have reasons for asking here instead of them directly.

In my Canada  university there were specific policies in place for this situation.  If you had more than 2 exams in a day they would have to accommodate that.  Usually they would reschedule an entire exam if possible.  If not the people with conflicts would take it at another time.  It would have been insane to try and take 3 engineering exams in a day.  Most Canadian universities have similar policies to make sure it doesn't happen.

@TomKelly What was the max number of exam hours in a day you heard of anyone taking, in your system, incl. interdisciplinary?

@smci: The "Fundamentals of Engineering" and "Principles and Practice of Engineering" exams are each a single day with 8 hours of exams (with 60 or 90 minutes break in the middle).  So while 9 hours of engineering exams in a day is something the university would like to avoid subjecting students to, it isn't overburdensome.  Being contiguous with no break is cruel though.