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Can I hide my bachelor and master degrees in CV when I apply for a PhD position?
I have 1 Bachelors degree and 2 Masters degrees. They are in different subjects, not closely related. I am now planning to apply for a PhD program.
Question: Do you think that I can only mention the most recent Masters degree and hide others? My last degree is closely related with this PhD program. Also, my grades were good in this recent Masters program, unlike the others.
To be honest, I am not happy with my other degrees. My performance was not good and they are not related with the PhD that I intend to pursue. For these reasons, I prefer to not to talk about them. Can I leave them off my CV? If, in an interview, they ask my education before my last degree, my plan is to talk about them briefly.  Do you think this is acceptable?

You have 2 Bachelors degrees and 2 Masters degrees! Despite some weak points you mention in your question, I can not really understand why someone should hide his academic background. At least, you spent some time attending classes, studied for your exams, did some academic activities. In my opinion, it is not a good idea to hide your degrees.

a degree is a degree. it's worth the same amount regardless of your performance when earning it. if you have more than one, list them on your cv! you don't need to talk about them any further than simply saying you have them.

If you omit those degrees, someone will ask what you were doing with those six(?) years of your life.  If you would honestly answer that question with "I don't want to talk about it", then by all means exclude them from your CV.  I expect that such an answer should sound crazy, however, and the choice of what to do should therefore be clear.

@sgroves "worth the same amount regardless of your performance" I would argue that "summa cum laude" is worth more than no "cum laude" whatsoever.

related: Can I omit my undergraduate school from my CV?

"a degree is a degree. it's worth the same amount regardless of your performance when earning it." That's not even remotely true.

As other have already said, you should not let your past degrees out of your CV.
I am just a bit surprised that they didn't emphasise the fact that it can be actually very beneficial for you.
You might not want to give right away your grades on the CV[1] but I think you should definitely mention them.
Doing a PhD takes time, motivation and perseverance but it also means asking yourself a lot of questions: those questions are related to the subject you are researching but also on yourself which can be pretty challenging.
Whatever you can hear, if you have a PhD program with a high rate of dropout or that take a long time to be achieved, it is not good.
Showing that you already have faced turning points in your life and managed to go forward (and have managed better) can be reassuring for the recruiters that you will do well in the PhD program:

That means you probably know yourself better. You are not keeping with a pre-establish path just because it is easy. (I suppose that you change field after due reflexion)
You change fields: This mean that at some point you have make a decision. Taking decision (particularly life-changing ones) is not always easy. Particularly, when this means starting 'again'.
You are motivated: doing a Master is not a piece of cake and you knew it but still you were foolish motivated enough to go through it another
time.
On a side note, it also proves that you are not taken aback by
what you might see as a failure and you actually try again.
Even if your grades weren't good in your previous track, they did improve while the later Master. Basically, you showed that you improved and developed through time. Which is a very good point for a PhD. It also means that you were right to change.
It also means that you have a broader view. Okay, you might not had good grades in your previous Bachelor and Master, but you do have them i.e. a committee of experts in the field considered that you know enough to have these degrees! Apart if you are considering a very technical PhD (and even though) doing a PhD (well really any research in general) is doing something that nobody else has done before. Granted you start from something, but then you are on your own. Believe me, having a broader view can be very helpful on the creative side.

And to finish, apart that lying or omitting key information can be seen as a huge breach of trust, I would like to ask:

Do you really see yourself rejecting your past?
Don't you want to do your PhD in a place where you know that you have been accepted as yourself as a whole?

Doing a PhD is not an easy process - not because the applications are though - because it is though. IMO, applications are just the quickest way and the least worse (and not actually the best) for recruiters to identify who are the people who would manage to finish it.
[1] Keep this for the interview, if they ask.

Disclaimer: I am French who has done a Bachelor and a Master in Organic Chemistry before doing a Master degree in Bioinformatics and actually doing a PhD in Bioinformatics in Cambridge,UK.

No. You should not hide anything that you have done -- in academic programs or in work experience.  It doesn't matter whether you think that it is or is not related to the PhD application.
If you made mistakes, then address them directly in your application essay.  What were the mistakes? What did you learn from these past mistakes?  Who are you now, given your experience in these mistakes?
In my opinion, if you aren't able or willing to talk about these "mistakes", then you aren't ready to enter a PhD program.
EDIT
My suggestion reflects a particular moral and ethical code, and it also reflects a certain culture (US Science, Engineering, and Social Science programs). It may not be appropriate in other cultures, and it may not suit your morals and ethics.
To the folks who recommend "only focus on the positives", my reply is "good luck with that".  In my experience, admission committees (and hiring managers) are keen to find any weaknesses and problems.  If none are apparent, they will ferret them out.
If OP leaves these off his/her CV, then there will be holes.  If s/he doesn't address the holes in the application essay, then you are leaving it up to the admissions committee to fill in the holes with their imagination.  I presume they will assume the worst.  (In my experience, this can happen even with evidence of accomplishment.)
If these are included in the CV, then official transcripts will have to be submitted (this is standard in the US), and thereby the committee will see the full record, not just GPA for each degree program.  And if s/he doesn't say anything about them in the application essay, the committee will probably draw very negative conclusions from them.
Finally, my suggestion to address the problems and learning in the application essay doesn't mean that it needs to be long or detailed. It could be a couple of sentences: "These degree programs were not as successful as I would have liked, and but thankfully I'm much the wiser now.  I learned what I'm good at and what I'm not good at, and I learned what I really want to do in my career."

Although I agree you about including all degrees and I also like your attitude about addressing mistakes, I am not sure it is in practice possible to mention them in application essay. Committees generally ask for a max 2 page statement and the applicant has to use this precious space to provide some background, express their motivations, possible contributions and more. It is rather difficult to include something extras and keep the cover letter short and to the point. Let alone the case of committee members who are very hasty in reading these letters.

I also generally agree with the answer (degrees shouldn't be hidden), but don't think that the cover letter (or CV) is the right place to explain/discuss potential mistakes at all. The point of the cover letter and CV is to highlight your strengths (naturally while still being accurate), not to focus on the potential weak points. If the multiple degrees are brought up during an interview you should be prepared to discuss them though.

To add just a little to the conversation, not only is it important to address the mistakes you've made in the past, but it is required by almost every program to submit transcripts from every academic institution you've attended since High School.

@fileunderwater, I'm not sure what you mean by "the cover letter".  In the fields I am familiar with, there is no "cover letter" involved in the application to a PhD program.  PhD admissions are not the same as applying to a job.  I'm not sure where you got the idea that this answer was suggesting mentioning mistakes in the cover letter -- this answer doesn't mention anything about a cover letter at all!  (It only talks about the application essay, not a cover letter.

@D.W. To me, it doesn't matter if it's in the CV, application essay, cover letter or other similar texts (what to include in the application differs between countries/fields) - I don't think going into the potential weaknesses of a previous degree had a place in the formal application either way.

Although I agree completely that you should not leave off degrees, I disagree that an academic CV include all unrelated non-academic work experience. It's also not required that a CV include GPA although if you include it for one degree, people will wonder why it's missing for others. Finally, I've seen BAs listed without majors before and I don't think that's unethical.

@MrMeritology It's not a question of "only focus on the positives", it's about writing a good application that is concise, readable and not overtly long. I don't think this is an issue of ethics. As long as the CV is accurate (ie not omitting degrees), it should highlight the applicants strengths. Finding weaknessess is the job of the evaluating committee, and it would also be strange to write about the extra degrees as problems when the evaluating committee doesn't necessarily view them this way. [cnd:...]

[cnd:...] To me, including e.g. bad GPAs from a rather irrelevant Bachelors degree in the CV is redundant, even if the evaluating committee could dig them out from the official transcripts.

Removed -1 based on edit.

I really appreciate the information from you all! The discussion can be completed.

Your CV should be an honest reflection of your background and all academic degrees should therefore be included. The people that will evaluate your application will probably also spot holes in your CV if you remove some degrees (e.g. wondering what you were doing during periods of time that are not covered by education or employment).  However, you do not need to emphasize all parts of your education in the same way, and degrees less relevant for the current application can be downplayed (e.g. by not including poor grades directly in the CV).
That said, I also don't think that you should discuss the potential perceived ''problems'' with your extra degrees in your application (e.g. cover letter and CV), simply because the application should highlight your strengths and not focus on your potential weak points. Those are something for the evaluating commitee to consider and assess, and I don't think you will have much to gain from trying to be preventive.
Also, you definitely need to be prepared to talk about the other degrees during the interview process.

+1 for this: "I also don't think that you should discuss the potential perceived ''problems'' with your extra degrees in your application ... simply because the application should highlight your strengths and not focus on your potential weak points".  Having seen this situation before, I completely disagree with MrMeritology's suggestion to discuss the previous degrees in detail.  Focus on what's important for the application, the other degrees will be just two lines on the CV.  Be prepared to talk about it if asked, but don't discuss it unnecessarily.

@D.W. Well, it probably differs between fields and countries then. All phd admissions I've heard of (in Sweden) definitely included an interview, after a screening of the applications. Granted, PhD studies in Sweden are often paid positions and in that sense similar to a job.

@Szabolcs - To clarify, I didn't suggest that the previous degrees be discussed in detail. He could choose to write nothing, or he could choose to address them in a single sentence, e.g. "These degree programs were not as successful as I would have liked, and but thankfully I'm much the wiser now."

@fileunderwater In the US, it's very rare that PhD applicants get an in-person formal interview.  Some programs even discourage any personal contact.  Thus, all the weight falls on the written application, CV, transcripts, and recommendation letters.

@MrMeritology In regard to an interview for PhD studies, I can only refer to the original question, which mentions an interview, as well as my personal experience.

@MrMeritology This must be highly field-specific. In my field, Ph.D program candidates go through an on-campus interview process, at the school's expense.

I would suggest to do not hide your educational background, simply because any degree you got does reflect a showcase of your commitment to a goal; regardless of your marks. And, more than anything, during your Ph.D. your commitment is essential.

I think you should include all your degrees in your CV. In order to get a job (including a PhD position) you usually have to pass two filters: the CV and the interview, and in this order.
If your CV is convincing enough and appropriate for the position, you may get an interview. However, if you leave your Bachelor and first Masters degree out it won't probably seem very convincing. The evaluators expect to find information on your Bachelors degree and blank periods of time, when they don't know what you were doing (your other Masters degree) won't help.
Just try to put yourself in the position of the evaluator. What does an incomplete CV mean? That you want to hide anything from them? What and why? That you are sloppy and you sent the application without properly checking that you included all the information? Not a good sign, in any case.
Now, just imagine at the end of the process the evaluator has one candidate (you) with a good Masters degree and no information on your Bachelor and ten others with different Bachelor and Master degrees and performances. The evaluator won't loose any time trying to figure out what your Bachelor degree and performance was and will decide to interview someone else. So, if you don't tell about your other degrees in the CV, you most probably won't have the opportunity to tell about it in the interview.
Remember also that not only your CV needs to be convincing, but it has to be better than the others. Having two Masters degrees is a competitive advantage, a point in your favour. So, do use it. Since you are not happy with those other degrees, I would also suggest you to try to find the good side of having made them. What did you learn, which skills and abilities did you acquire doing them that you can apply to the position you are applying to? Did it help you to know what you really wanted to do? And be prepared to answer (positively) to questions such as "why did you do a masters degree in such thing and then another one in such other thing?"
I hope you good luck.
PS: I have a BSc in Biology, a Masters and a PhD in Civil Engineering, and a MA in Specialised Translation. And it hasn't been a problem to find a good postdoc position.

That is some multidisciplinary background!

The question is not asking about getting a job; the PhD admissions process is different from the admissions process.  As far as "the interview", in the fields I am used to, the PhD admissions process often does not include any interview.

@D.W. I think is more country than field dependent. In most of Europe there is interview for the shortlisted candidates.

A particularly compelling reason to include all of your degrees is that the admissions process frequently has a minimum GPA requirement that includes your undergraduate degree and all graduate work. That means you are obliged to submit a complete record, and if you are found to have suppressed information, you can be expelled (I am aware of a case). Admissions committees usually have the sense to recognize that e.g. an MA in Film isn't relevant to a PhD in Physics, so discussion can be omitted.

As others have said, lying or failing to give an honest complete picture of (the relevant parts of) your background at any point in the application process is a bad idea. Here are a few reasons that I don't think have been mentioned yet.

You are going to spend years of your life around the people in your Ph.D. program. If you are trying to somehow hide a particular experience from your life, you are going to have to keep up the lie for much longer than the admissions process.
Some graduate programs give different offer letters to students with masters degrees than they give to students whose highest degree is a bachelor's. In particular, the requirements (in terms of timelines to complete certain degree milestones) for students entering with a masters degree may be different than those with a bachelor's. If anyone even felt like you tried to hide a certain degree and this affected your funding, they would not be happy with you!

(I realize you are only talking about leaving off one of two masters degrees, but item 2 may still apply to you if they view your "hidden" masters as applicable to the Ph.D. program and thus would factor it into a funding decision.)

By all means, put them in.  You were not happy with the degrees and the topics.  Which is great since it explains what you have been doing with your years (rather than just dangling your cojones from a balcony), and it is great since it highlights that you can stick with things that don't work all that well to some reasonable completion, and it is even greater since it shows that your current career path is a better fit.
If those other degrees and attempts would have excellent grades while your current grades were so-so, that would be much worse since it would make it likely that you won't persist with your current endeavors and might fall back to what you did earlier.

You can't omit them entirely, but you can de-emphasize them. I was in a similar position when applying for my Ph.D. program, as my B.S. was from a not particularly stellar school. The applications for a Ph.D. program will likely require you to be very thorough, so you will probably have to include them somewhere within the application packet. A case could perhaps be made for omitting the previous degrees from the CV on the basis that the school will definitely require you to submit all college transcripts, so they will know anyway, but as others have mentioned, you might be doing this at your own risk. Also, if it's just the GPA you're worried about, there is a simple solution -- just don't put the GPA on the CV, let them look at the transcripts if they want to know.
That said, once you get admitted, and especially once you have the Ph.D., you can start omitting the lower degrees from most things, like many fellowship and grant applications, and your CV for future job applications. People honestly don't care at that point, it becomes about papers, grants, and awards, not degrees or GPA. The only degree that will matter at that point is the Ph.D., and more the fact that you have one than exactly what field it's in or school it's from (unless it's Ivy or something, and even then it's not that big a help).
For the people trying to paint this as a clear, black-and-white moral issue, I would advise you to think a little bit more broadly. A CV is not your life's story, it is you making the case that you are a good candidate. Especially once you amass lots of prior jobs, papers, and awards, you have to start cutting things purely because of space, and it is naturally smart to keep the best-looking items. Obviously it would be wrong and very dangerous to fabricate items, but omitting items is a different matter.

A CV is not your life's story, it is you making the case that you are a good candidate. – CV almost literally means life’s story, and there are at least some cultures/countries where informing about it is its prime purpose. In such a country, omitting something like a degree (and the related studies) from it would be a very bad idea as it is regarded almost equivalently to lying.

Fair point. I was talking from the US perspective, and it is good to know that it is different elsewhere. I do not think that etymology is very useful in determining contemporary usage of a term, though.

When it comes to a CV, if you can make enough relevant content that fills a both sides of an A4 sheet of paper then leave them off. If asked about your full education at say an interview you shouldn't deliberately leave them out but trust me, no employer wants your whole education they just care that you have the right experiences to do they job they have in mind.

I disagree. The poster is applying to a PhD program, not an outside job. In this case, listing all previous degrees is expected and a transcript from each would be required at every institution I have been involved with.

@Corvus: Right, academia differs from industry here.  In industry, a resume or CV is limited to 1-2 pages and only contains information the applicant thinks is relevant.  In academia, a CV is as long as it needs to be to contain a complete history of your academic career; senior people often have CVs that are 10-15 pages long or more.

If the interviewers are more knowledgeable than you are, you can include all your degrees.
If they are less knowledgeable, you will loose by  mentioning these degrees in your CV. You should mention them only if there is a law or regulation which forces you to mention them in your CV.
You should discuss this with a lawyer. You know what you want to do; the only thing you have to do is find whether the law supports you. I cannot give you legal advice myself.
(As a lighter answer, since a few people who answered here are telling you to include these degrees in your CV, you can join their institution! In that case, you can include everything in your CV.)

This is horrible advice. Most schools view lying on an application as sufficient grounds for revocation of admission, regardless of when the fraud is discovered.

Is omitting information actually lying, @aeismail?

If you are told to include all transcripts and you omit one or more, then yes, you are lying.


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Find PI's main publications
Nowadays, people in biology make huge collaborations, so of course they're all having loads of publications.
Therefore, I was wondering if there is a way, on Google Scholar or on other sites, to filter for a PI's publications as last author. That would be really helpful!
Thanks in advance

Copy-and-paste into Excel and sort (possibly after some reformatting)

@Monkia That seems to be a website. I'm not sure how that is helpful for what I'm trying to do.

I don't think there is any universal tool as different cultures & people make use of different scientific CV platforms. For example, not too many Chinese scientists can be tracked using Google scholar nor ResearchGate or even ORCID. Plus, the meaning of authorship position as "PI" is also not universal.

I don't think that it is possible to search author order in Web of Science, Scopus or GS, directly from their web sites. However, if you get access to a database built on e.g. raw WoS data it is possible (author order is preserved there).
In your case the easiest solution is probably to export all publications where your PI is a co-author from e.g. WoS or Scopus and process the data in excel/R/whatever, to extract the last author name in the author string.
In Excel you can e.g. use this on the author field (AU) from a WoS export to get the last author:
=TRIM(RIGHT(SUBSTITUTE(A2,";",REPT(" ",LEN(A2))),LEN(A2)))

This can then be used to filter out the publications with PI as last author, maybe after some more cleaning for e.g. first initial.
Long author strings (which is partially what your question is dealing with, i.e. long author lists) may cause character number overflow though (excel cells can only hold a certain number of characters), so you might want to run e.g. =RIGHT(A1;100) on the AU field first to decrease its size, before running the other function to get the last name.

There is no "AU" field for my WoS export. Only an "Authors" field. And I've tried to apply your formula to it, and it's giving me an error message.

Exactly what type of file are you exporting? The AU field is found in the tab-delimited export options (the "fullest" export you can get). Select "Save to other file formats" and select a tab delimited format. Then import this file into excel. Depending on your language/region settings Excel might also use a different demiliter in formulas between arguments (mine use ";" instead of ",").

@Mandel The AU field should contain author names with initials separated by semicolons

It does, indeed, yet still I am getting an error message when I'm using your formula.

Weird, I just tried it. Are you using a non-English version. Function names are sometimes translated.

@Mandel Try the formula now - I missed changing one semicolon (used in my excel) to a comma.

Great! See additional comment at the end of the answer as well to catch a possible error

Note that being last author is not a full proof way of identifying a PIs "main papers". Really what you need to look for is whether they are corresponding author,

If you have access to Scopus, and know a little bit of python, you can use pybliometrics
Getting all last-authored publications of someone is as easy as this:
from pybliometrics.scopus import ScopusSearch
author = "7103407674"
query = "AU-ID({})".format(author)  # The same you'd use on scopus.com
s = ScopusSearch(query)
last = [p for p in s.results if p.author_ids.endswith(author)]

Object last contains a list of 30 namedtuples. You can easily turn them into a pandas DataFrame and do whatever you'd like to do.

You could view their profile on ResearchGate? If they have a profile, all of their publications will be grouped there.

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Can phd students submit their paper on their own?
Can phd students submit their paper on their own? I have finished writing and polishing my manuscript (with my advisor listed as the corresponding author) and then sent it to my phd advisor almost a year ago but still has gotten no response from him. I am wondering if I can say sth like 'if I don't hear from you in 2 or 3 weeks, I am gonna assume that you have no problem and I am gonna submit it myself". Is this legit? Will I get expelled? I have hearded many different answers and need some HELP here! Thanks!

If your advisor is an author then his positive permission is required to publish. You can make assumptions. The journal editors will insist. No one can publish the work of another without permission. Expulsion is a local question, however.

You didn't ask the real question. You should have asked what to do about a supervisor who leaves such a thing too long, and how to handle such things at the front end. For example, you should have made very clear that you expected him to review it and ask for an approximate date by which he would do it.

Have you sent any gentle reminders? A year is a very long time to let something sit in the "to-do" pile. It would not be out of place in the contexts in which I've worked to send a reminder after, say, a month or two if you haven't heard back. So that's the first step. If you've sent periodic reminders and haven't heard back, you should certainly NOT assume that he has no problem and you should certainly NOT send an email of the sort you suggest. In short, the best you can do is send gentle reminders, or else move on and develop independent papers on which you are genuinely the sole author.

If the name of someone is on your paper, he must agree with the content of the paper BEFORE it is submitted. The only way an author can agree with the submission is if he tells you that he agrees. Some journal will even require that all authors sign a document before submiting that clearly state that they agree (e.g. some Elsevier journals) or send an e-mail to all co-authors to ask them to verify that they agree (eg. some Springer/Elsevier journals).

If someone contributed to your paper (enough to be an author), you cannot remove his name from it without removing his contribution to the paper or getting his approval to use his contribution but without his name.

If you remove the name of your supervisor and submit a paper without his approval, it may cause you some problems (it depends on the context at your university/department or your relationship with the supervisor), so the best to avoid any problem is to talk with your supervisor about this situation. Try to meet him and explain the situation and ask him if he could do it faster or agree on some date, or if he would agree that you could submit it by yourself.  Or maybe he will not agree and tell you that he thinks the manuscript is not ready... But discussing with your supervisor is what you should do, and perhaps in person is better than by e-mail.

Absolutely no, not legit.
You need explicit consent from all the author listed to (attempt to) publish (=submitting for peer-review).
With no answer form your co-authors you may safely assume "you have not read the paper" and that's all you can assume from them.
But, you can submit on your own, as single author, no one is preventing doing that, you may be able "to bring people on board" during the review (there must be sound reasons to do that, but it is doable, if they are ok and they can strongly contribute plus you agree on having them on-board only for the second stage).
------- ADDITIONAL FROM COMMENTS -----------
Yes, I agree that removing an author means said author's contribution must be as well removed from the paper. That may lead to being unable to contribute the paper (how can you remove a co-author contribution if the co-author was the one showing and helping using an experimental machine?) or to big conflicts ("why did you not inculde me?"). If the paper still stands on its own, it is a big if.
Most likely, you can ask help to someone else in the faculty, or write the aggressive mail "if I don't hear from you in 2 or 3 weeks, I am gonna assume that you do not think your contribution is relevant and I am gonna submit it myself" and brace for the consequences (think and discuss an exit strategy, there is a world beyond and without your advisor).

"But, you can submit on your own, as single author" - important to clarify this is only true if you are the only deserving author. If someone else should be an author, you cannot publish as a single author without including them as an author and having their permission.

The sentense is 'If I did not hear back from you in 2 weeks, I am going to assume that you have no issues with my manuscript and I will submit it on my own with you as the corresponding author'. If the advisor does not reply to negate this sentence, this means that no response from advisor in 2 weeks equals permission for submission. I don't see how this is equal to ' have not read the paper'.

The thing is, it is written with two names on it. Unilaterally taking the other person's name off might be a huge bad problem. The first paragraph of this answer is all that should be there. Taking the other person's name off, even in this case, could be Big Bad Trouble if the supervisor wanted to push it. And since a year delay in reviewing this work seems abusive, he might well be that type of person.

@sbd You can also write "If I do not hear back from you in 2 weeks, I am going to assume you are dead" but that does not change the fact that it is non-sense to write such a sentence, because you need explicit consent to publish, not implicit consent because you wrote something that in no way can be considered explicit.
Now, writing something like that will not lead to expulsion, but trying to publish without EXPLICIT consent most likely will do.
Have you tried to stalk him via telephone/skype/ringing his doorbell?

Once we accept that an advisors contribution to a paper warrants authorship, we have to accept that is unlikely it is possible to disentangle their contributions, which are likely to be purely intellectual and come in the form of advising/steering the student. We could argue that doesn't warrant authorship in the first place, but that's a different debate. What contribution they do have is almost certainly inseparable from the students contribution.

I'll also add that publishing a paper without an author that did contribute is far more likely to get you in trouble than publishing a paper without someones permission - this happens all the time (even if it sholdn't). Although it is much worse given they are corresponding.

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How to manage a colleague in your research group taking your idea?
I have been a newly appointed lecturer (18 months). Within my first 6 months I have advertised a PhD subject in order to recruit a good student. The specific project was advertised a year ago. I completed the recruitment of a very promising PhD student that started about two months ago.
In the meantime one of my colleagues that belongs to the same research group, has an already established collaboration with a company. After a brief discussion, my colleague informed me that the company is open to new ideas and that we could collaborate on a similar idea, which was not specified at that point. After a month, my colleague sent an email saying that they are going to submit a project for funding but again, no specifics were given.
I have asked to check the application (as I was included, but my colleague was the lead) and see the objectives/deliverables/commitments etc. I highlighted the fact that we will need to avoid any potential conflict of interest, but received no reply. After checking with my organization's research team I found that the project idea was based on the subject of my PhD student. However, I do not have a copy of the application to understand the extent of overlap, just the summary of it.
The whole process was dodgy and I have lost trust in my colleague.
I found out later that my colleague is known for such tactics but at the same time has the support of a senior member of the group that has the power to block me from pursuing my research plans. I am not sure how to manage the situation and would appreciate any advice on the matter or if you could share similar experiences and how you handled them.

I’m voting to close this question because it is a complaint and not a question.

Probably a rephrasing of the question is required.   If there are no answers, I would like to see what strategies readers have if they are placed in a similar situation.  I'm sure we have all experienced colleagues who steal ideas.  Personally, I keep the most interesting ideas to myself and make public other ideas; if any of these other ideas catch on, great... I've got plenty more ...  Also, I work on problems that are deep and require in-depth and specialize knowledge.  So even if colleagues know what I am working on, they have little chance to follow what I do.

This is a question about what to do when scooped by a colleague (or so I read it). I don't see how it’s a rant, and so far couldn’t pull up a duplicate (older questions about scooping seem to be mostly about “when under review at journal,” “when too slow,” and such). So this should stay open, in my eyes. Having a next-door colleague act like this is a delicate situation.

Let’s start with one simple fact. On paper, your colleague didn’t do anything unethical. Perhaps they were thinking about something similar and you happened to as well, it’s not unheard of. So I don’t think that there’s much you can do apart from noting a colleague who’s not a very good collaborator.
If this is a pattern, then perhaps a discussion with a more senior person is warranted. I’d suggest you focus on getting more than one person to attest to this behavior and perhaps back it up with evidence e.g. email correspondence or the like.

"On paper". Yes, things like that are hard to prove, but for a young researcher, this can be quite frustrating. OP should better protect their ideas in the future, e.g. by keeping them to themselves.

I don’t know if this is good long term advice. Unless their department is a cesspool of misconduct, hindering collaboration due to one bad apple will hurt them academically.

If someone with lots of threads of research, loses one thread to a scooper it's not a major issue, if annoying. However, if one has few, crucial lines of research (which is more likely for young academics) and the scooper indulges in a systemic appropriation of other people's ideas, then I quite disagree with you. In the worst scenario, the scooper could actually accuse OP of plagiarising them, trying to lock OP out of their own field. This is not a theoretical situation. I am the first to acknowledge parallel discoveries, but this case here smells bad ("known for such tactics").

Perhaps I should partially agree with Spark and should make my statement more precise by not saying not to share at all, but to be careful who to share with and to keep good ideas to only select few trusted people. The department structures seem to sail precariously close to possible misconduct ("has the support of a senior member of the group [with] the power to block me"). This is not enough evidence for systemic violations, but the scooper seems to have got away with a history of such tactics. Care is advised.


text:
US graduate school: expected proficiency and competency in the area of specialization at the beginning of the program
I am interested in applying to graduate schools in the US in a certain sub-area of computer sciences. However, most of my educational background is in engineering (BS+MS in systems engineering from a good university in Europe). While I have some research experience in the specific research sub-area that I am interested in pursuing, I feel that I may lack some of the more general knowledge that would normally be expected from a computer science graduate.
AFAIK, in the US, any Ph.D. student is expected to read courses for the first 1-2 years. This structure seems ideal for me, as it will allow me to convert my slightly inconsistent self-gained knowledge into something coherent. However, I have two questions:

Is it socially acceptable to be spending a significant amount of time during the first 1-2 years of the Ph.D. doing courses and, generally, exploring the subject widely (e.g. in Europe the perception is usually very negative: not dedicating all of one's time to research is often seen as a waste of resources and can result in negative consequences for one's career)?. If I am to also act as a TA + doing graduate courses, I doubt that I will be able to dedicate a significant amount of time to research.
Should I make it reasonably apparent in my applications (in the personal statement) that "I am interested in studying such and such subjects in-depth and I am pleased that the department XYZ provides a unique opportunity to do so". The reasoning behind it is that I do not wish to be perceived more competent than I am in the broad area of computer science. Thus, if I get accepted, I should not be expected to become a publication-production-device from day 1 of the program (not to say that I do not intend to publish, and I have published before).

If it is relevant, I am not aiming very high from the perspective of the rankings, while having a very good GPA in BS/MS, a very good quant GRE, some research experience, some semi-relevant work experience and at least one reasonably relevant first-author publication (possibly and hopefully two). Nonetheless, I was not very successful professionally, as I could never leave the "obscure start-up environment" with periods of unemployment.

I know that there is quite a number of similar questions on the website, but I could not find any questions identical to the ones that I am asking. Please do note that the question is not about the admission chances and hardly about the admission process. I am interested in what are the general expectations from the Ph.D. students with regard to the ratio of the time spent doing coursework/teaching/research during the first 1-2 years of a Ph.D. program in the US.

This will vary widely from program to program (so much so that this question is borderline "off topic" in this forum), so your best bet would be to discuss this with members of the department where you are thinking of applying (even/especially students). Still, some thoughts...

I feel that I may lack some of the more general knowledge that would normally be expected from a computer science graduate

My biggest concern is your skills in analytical math (i.e., writing proofs). If you are starting from zero and expected to take difficult classes in theoretical computer science, this could be difficult. If your gaps are elsewhere (or such courses are not required by your program), it may be easier to fill these gaps through self-study.

Is it socially acceptable to be spending a significant amount of time during the first 1-2 years of the Ph.D. doing courses and, generally, exploring the subject widely?

In my experience, these classes are very difficult, so it is socially acceptable to spend every waking moment trying desperately to pass. Research is for later years. Of course, this will vary school to school.

Should I make it reasonably apparent in my applications (in the personal statement) that "I am interested in studying such and such subjects in-depth and I am pleased that the department XYZ provides a unique opportunity to do so".

Well, your application to a CS PhD program makes it reasonably apparent that you want to study the subjects in detail, and your application to department XYZ makes it clear that you approve of XYZ's program. So, I'm not sure what this sentence buys you. It's also unclear what you find to be "unique" (i.e., one-of-a-kind) about this particular program; offering courses in CS does not make a CS department unique.

The reasoning behind it is that I do not wish to be perceived more competent than I am in the broad area of computer science.

I didn't get this at all from your quote. If this is what you want to communicate, I would phrase it as: "I do not wish to be perceived more competent than I am in the broad area of computer science."
Snarking about the language aside, I would suggest that you omit this from your application. Attempting to give a balanced picture of your strengths and weaknesses is perhaps a good idea, but recall that your goal during the application is to sell the program on you. If you yourself have doubts about your ability to be successful in the program, it is better to resolve these outside of the application process (i.e., either before applying, or after being admitted).

I am interested in what are the general expectations from the Ph.D. students with regard to the ratio of the time spent doing coursework/teaching/research

Again, this will vary from program to program, but as a general guideline, I would say 80% courses, 20% teaching, 0% research for the first year, leading to 100% research by the end.

Thank you. I find your answer to be reasonably objective and would upvote if I had enough reputation. My primary concern was whether you are expected to know the graduate courses by heart before you start, i.e. whether the social perception is that they exist to allow you to prove what you already know, and you would be looked down upon as an incompetent fool if you ever open lecture notes for a graduate course in the Ph.D. office and start revising :). In any case, I have seen lecture notes/syllabi for typical graduate CS courses, so I have a good idea about the typical content covered.

My general read of your situation is that you're in fine shape. I'm a PhD student at a US institution who also switched fields between undergrad and grad school. I went from a physics BS to electrical engineering PhD and felt like the learning curve of jumping into a new field was very manageable, though of course the steepness of that curve depends on your background. Though I bet you have some decent familiarity with CS if you're pursuing a PhD in it.
To answer your questions:

It depends on what you mean by 'explore widely'. Depending on the program, you'll most likely be expected to start on research in some form your first year, but most of your time will still be dedicated to classes. In this sense, you will be able to explore the field without being preoccupied by research. However, all of your classes will be at the graduate level, so you won't be able to take an intro/mid level course (which is what I'd consider widely exploring the field) and have it count towards your degree. You can chose to audit other courses at any level, but this wouldn't count towards your degree and, due to time constraints, is probably not practical until you've finished your required courses. Dedicating ~50% of your time to classes instead of research will not be abnormal and will not hurt your career as long as you communicate with your research advisor and meet his/her expectations.

I don't think you need to say so. It would be unusual for your advisor to expect a publication your first year. If you want to take a lot of classes so you can build more breadth in your CS background, you could look for programs that have higher course requirements (some tend to be done within a year or two, others can be closer to three years of class work).

And the specifics of the time split between coursework, teaching, and research depends heavily on the program you're in, your advisor, and the class you're a teaching assistant for. But to answer your question, I think during your first and second years classes will get about 60% of your time.
Lastly, I don't think you need to write anything in your application to the effect of "I want to take courses to patch any holes in my background". For one thing, everyone feels that way to an extent. And any unresolved concerns you have about timing or research requirements would be excellent questions for grad students in the program you're applying to or your potential research advisor. You can also ask how people with different backgrounds tend to do in your program (I was surprised to learn that about a third of the people in my program don't have EE backgrounds, so you'll most likely have company).

This is helpful, although I would say that moving from physics to EE is a lateral move at the most, whereas moving from an engineering discipline to computer science is a lateral move at the least. 50% of the time is something I could probably live with. My primary concern was outlined explicitly in the comment to cag51's answer: it was about whether or not you are expected to 'know it all' before you start.


text:
What is the difference between a concentration and a track within the major?
We want to improve our undergraduate curriculum in my department by offering new concentration. Looking at many different programs in the US, the following questions came to mind:

If there is a difference between a concentration and a track within a certain major (I am talking about science major such as major in physics or maths or chemistry or computer science)? Or is there no difference?
If there is a difference between the word track and concentration, then is it possible to have both track and concentration offered within a certain major or it is uncommon?
If a department offers tracks/and or concentrations, is it possible for a student to graduate just with the major without any tracks or concentration?

If there is a difference between a concentration and a track — Yes; one of them uses more letters.  More seriously: Every university defines these terms differently.

I feel like track implies a specific path of courses, while concentration refers to a subset of courses that one focuses on. For example, in medical school, there is a 1st-year and 2nd-year track that every person takes, but additional concentration courses that they may opt into.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone,
  'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so
  many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's
  all.'
-Through the Looking Glass

"We don't have majors, you see..."
First, some institutions don't have "majors", they have "concentrations". This doesn't seem to be what you are interested in specifically, but I include it to avoid confusion. And it's also a good example of just how much definitions of these terms can vary between places.
Track
A "track" usually means there are two (or more) relatively independent paths of study within a single program (major), especially when the goal is to be ready for a certain end-goal (such as for a certain profession or field of research). These usually have suggested courses to take in a certain order, and while they may have a common core at the beginning, by later years people on different tracks will likely have completely different courses to satisfy their graduation requirements.
A very common use of track is to cater to those who are planning to go on to graduate school vs those who want to go directly into industry, or even to cater to different professional requirements. This is perhaps heavily influenced by many high schools in the US having "college track" and "job track" offerings/programs.
Focus
Similar to a track but with less differentiation between tracks, many institutions will offer a "focus". This usually means that all focus areas have most of the same basic courses and electives, but that just a few select higher-level courses and electives are in a certain direction and have maybe additional lower-level requirements. A Computer Information Systems program might offer a focus for software development vs networking/infrastructure, for instance. Focus options might only differ by 3-4 classes, and often have all other classes in common.
Concentration
A concentration (when it isn't a synonym for a major) is often just a more extensive and directed version of a focus. A concentration at an undergraduate level will usually have 4+ courses to satisfy a specific concentration, and often have additional special requirements. A psychology program might offer a general psychology major and a human services concentration for those who have a particular interest in being a clinician, for instance. Using my example programs, a concentration might have preset options for core classes (a choice to take a class in personality vs abnormal psychology is made for you if you want to concentrate in human services), electives are replaced with required classes or must be chosen from a restricted list, and some have special requirements for a final course or internship/residence experience.
So just at my one present institution the words concentration, track, and focus are all used and they all mean different (yet relatively consistent) things. Other colleges in the US often use similar definitions, but the range on this is pretty wide; as I pointed out above, some colleges use completely different meanings for these terms.
Minor Details
I've heard some programs even replace the idea of a "focus" or "concentration" with having a minor program to be chosen, for instance. As a small taste of diversity even within a mid-size institution, over in our History department they offer a minor in Peace Studies, yet its requirements are not very different than a "concentration" offered in our Psychology department.
Typical Physicists
This is to say nothing of our Physics department, which offers no less than five versions of a bachelor's degree - plus a pre-engineering two-year option and a tight relationship to Astronomy - and they don't call them a track, concentration, focus, or minor: it's an "emphasis"!
YMMV
My list here highlights meanings and differences within just a single mid-sized institution, and I've pointed out at least one place where the words mean something completely different, and shown a small taste of variation between programs.
For any specific case of actually deciding what your department would offer, I'd suggest looking up a few hand-fulls of 'competing' departments from a variety of US institutions and comparing how they handle the officially listed tracks and meanings - I suspect they will be all over the place, but I think this general idea will be a common theme. It might also be wise to compare your department to others within your specific institution, under the assumption that there will be more interaction within campus than between far-flung US campuses (though your recruitment/admissions office might not agree with that).
If nothing else it will 'feel' more scientific and professional than handing out darts at a faculty meeting (and perhaps less dangerous).

I don't think it's really beneficial to go into such detail about the differences between the terms, because (as you suggest at the end) the terms have no inherent meaning and are used differently by every department.

@BrenBarn I wondered about that as well, but I tend to think there is some commonality about uses of the terms. It suggests at something less random than I initially expected, yet at the same time there is certainly not a consensus across the country. There may also be some sense of consistency within an institution or system, but with some sizable error bars - which indicates someone should be aware of how other departments within their own institution handle the matter as well, if the goal is clarity of communication at least.

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text:
Uneven skill set and customer service attitudes of University Support Services
I was wondering if anyone had any guidance on how to handle/manage the uneven skill sets and lack of customer service attitudes on the part of administrative units.  I'm talking about concrete issues, such as a person in the grants office who can't figure out research budgets and grants.gov and IT staff who can't keep email up and running.  Keep in mind, these are folks who are not directly under the supervision of my department, but who we are compelled to use.

Sometimes it can help to go over their head and let someone above them know that there is a problem.  At my institution we were having some issues with our bookstore.  A colleague ran into the university's CFO at a university reception and happened to mention the issue, and miraculously the bookstore became much more responsive.

This question seems like it might lead to a discussion, an interesting discussion, but discussion none the less. Further, I am not sure it really has anything to do with academics.

I think it's relevant to this board because the HR and power structure in a university is quite distinct from is  found in a typical large business.

@strongbad: I think it is an appropriate question, and that answers could propose concrete approaches for dealing with such problems. I think it would help to edit to focus less on your complaints (which after all are specific to you, and tend toward the "ranting" tone that tends to annoy people) and more on your search for solutions. I agree that they may well be academia-specific.

You might also shy away from the word "incompetence" (both in this post and your own efforts) - it's pretty harsh, whether or not it's warranted.

I will watch this closely as I, too, face such a problem.  Smart Boards don't work; door locks won't lock, and when they do, they won't unlock, etc.

What, exactly, is your question? Do you want to understand why this happens (the question RoboKaren answers)? Learn how to fix these people or get them fired? Learn how to bypass them so you can get stuff done without them? Also see "Here's my situation, any suggestions?" is not an answerable question

On the one hand, hiring and management for staff can sometimes be dysfunctional, leading to pockets of genuine incompetence that are difficult to dealt with.  On the other hand, faculty can also hold staff to an unreasonably high standard.  Faculty positions at universities are often filled with people who not only have unusual talent, but also ambition, drive, and passion for their work.  It would be lovely if we could fill every position with someone who had these four traits, but that's not realistic, especially for positions that are not exciting, well paid, or particularly respected.

I edited the question to use softer language per Nate's comment.

There are many excellent, competent, and dedicated staff and administrative people at universities, but there are also a visible percentage who are not. Universities face several hiring challenges:
1) Salaries are low and opportunities for advancement are rare. Talented people could make more in industry. Those that remain are sometimes there because they don't have mobility (because of a faculty-spouse ties them to that location, etc.).
2) many people are hired for reasons not related to their skill sets: second-body problems, hiring recently graduated students to reduce the appearance of post-graduate unemployment, etc.
There is no easy solution to this problem. However, even second-body hires are not resistant to getting fired (or worse, transferred to the dining unit). Like all bureaucrats they are afraid of complaints and the additional paperwork this would cause.  Anonymous complaints can usually be made via the university ombudsman (if you have one).

While I agree with your comments I am not sure this actually answers the question that was asked. Is your answer along the lines of "the problem is never going away so just get used to it?"

In order to solve something, you have to know the root cause of it. The root cause of variations in staff competency is that not all of them are hired, retained, and promoted according to market forces. Thus there is no easy solution -- so yes, get used to it. :-)  However, that being said, even second-body hires are not invulnerable and pressure from above can be useful per Nate Eldredge's comment.

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text:
Reference a web page by author and year: which date to use in citation; publication date or revision date?
I came to a web page where it says beneath:

Updated 3 September 2011 (first published August 2002)

When I cite this should the year be 2002 or 2011?

I searched for your question and found these content which may help you. I found that, in citation of web pages or online resources, it is better (not a must) to cite with the updated date and the date when the reader has accessed the online content.
In this web pages about APA, Chigago and CSE styles, under the update date it is written:

This date is when the page was last changed. The last update date of a
  web page is usually given at the bottom or top of a page.  A posting
  date may also be given on the page one level higher (such as a page
  that is an index of articles).

Also, as a recommendation I read the following content on this webpage:

Date of publication or date of last revision

The date a Web document was created or last updated is frequently listed at the bottom.
If a document includes both a date of creation and a date it was last updated, use only the latter.

It seems that as there is no general rule about the date included in online resources, the writer preferred the revised date.
However, I also checked the following book
The Chicago Manual of Style, sixteenth edition; essential guide for writers, editors and publishers; ebook, The University of Chicago press,
2010.
and in this section on the 1700th page of the PDF file,
14: DOCUMENTATIONI: NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY Chapter Contents >>
    Source Citations: An Overview >>  Considerations for Electronic Sources

the following guide is presented; as we see in the index of the document, this guide applies to websites and web pages:

14.8 "LAST MODIFIED" AND OTHER REVISION DATES
Some electronic documents will include a date on each page or screen indicating the last time the document was modified or revised. There are no accepted standards for this practice, and for formally published material the date of publication is generally more important. A revision date should be included, however, if it is presented as the de facto date of publication or is otherwise the only available date. Such dates may be particularly useful for citing wikis and other continuously updated works.

On the contrary it seems that in the APA style, the preferred date is the update date rather than the publication date in the previous quoted text. In the apastyle website under a blog content about The Generic Reference: When? we read:

Online Documents
Online material can be tricky to date properly. If the date is not
  apparent at the beginning of the document you’re citing, look at the
  end (e.g., APA Guidelines for Providers of Psychological Services to Ethnic, Linguistic, and Culturally Diverse Populations was finalized
  in 1990, so that’s the date to use).
But look out for a footer that says, “This page was last modified on
  [date].” This is not the date to use! It could be the date that the
  document was published, but it’s more likely to be the date it was put
  online or the date when the webmaster added code for a dancing Freud
  to the page.
Some sites place a copyright date for the website at the bottom of
  every page. Check a few pages on the site; if the identical statement
  appears on every page, it’s a site-wide footer, so that’s not the date
  you’re looking for either. (See "Zip, Zero, Zilch," below, for the
  best solution.)

As a conclusion; I found that if you want to cite an online content, pay attention into two dates; the date when you visited the online content and the date the content is created. If you have the date when the content is edited and updated, use this newer date. However, I recommend you to read the instructions of the style which you are using, they may have specific recommendations and guides on this issue. Also, be aware, it happens sometimes that the online content is written on an older date when the website update date is globally mentioned in the footer of the website's pages, you should use the date the page you are referring to is created or edited, not the date all the website is updated.

In the sensible future where updating and correcting on-line documents is not surprising, much as editions and re-printings of books has been understood for a long time, surely one should give all this information, much as what you quote. I think that the fact that many "standard" citation formats do not incorporate this is insufficient reason to ignore the reality.
Conceivably one could hope that the original version as well as all revisions are archived, but this currently seems not quite the case, although Google and other engines do a certain sort of archiving. If the archiving were "perfect", perhaps all versions of a document would have their own "doi" or other universal identifier, but at the moment this is simply not the case.
In particular, for an essential reference, one should probably create a local mirror, with due acknowledgements and disclaimers. I seriously think this is the new/future reality of "reference".
Edit: in response to the question "so which year, 2002 or 2011?", my point is both, with explanation. If there is a format constraint, try "2002/2011" or "2002/11". If the format constraints insist on four decimal digits, then you are in a minor circle of heck, and have other difficulties as well, ... :) ... On one hand, I'd suggest not allowing oneself to be constrained by such dysfunctional stylistic requirements, but I understand that one may have already chosen some software system that is shortsighted.
In the worst-case scenario, give the year of the version you used/saw. Pity if that cannot reflect the real story, simply for random formatting reasons. Reminiscent of the "y2k crisis", entirely that the Cobol programmers c. 1970 did not imagine that they'd be writing code that would still be in use by 2000.

So, which year should I use? 2002 or 2011?

What about 2002/2011?

I strongly disagree. We don't (and I believe we shouldn't) cite the year the first edition of a book was published if we used a later edition. We only want to cite what we looked at since we have no idea what the previous versions said.

@DanielE.Shub Sure, I'd agree that one should be forthright about what one literally looked at/used. At the same time, it adds information to note that the source might have existed (in an earlier form) for much longer than the most recent edition. I myself am especially interested in the scenario that someone's collected works, published very recently, are cited, while the original paper appeared perhaps hundreds of years ago. Even with standard monographs, the date of appearance of the first version is of interest, adds perspective. More information is better, up to a point?

... that is, acknowledging the existence of a source is useful, even if one hasn't seen it oneself. E.g., this can help explain the chronology, and sometimes causality.

Many citation styles will tell you what to do. For APA 5 the format was:

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Date of publication). Title of
  document. Retrieved month day, year, from http://Web address

In APA 6 the format changed slightly to be

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Date of publication). Title of
  document. Retrieved from http://Web address

with a clause that you should include the retrieval date if the source material may change over time. The page you are describe clearly falls into the may change over time category so you would essentially use the APA 5 style.
For your particular example the date of publication is 3 September 2011 and the date of retrieval is whatever date you visited the website. The August 2002 date is irrelevant. Think of it like citing a book with a 1st edition published in 2002 and a 2nd edition published in 2011. If you use the 2nd edition, you cite the 2nd edition.


text:
Do non-English academic journals pay for a translated paper?
I am currently a PhD student in mathematics with a very strong interest in foreign languages (native language English), and I would be interested in translating math articles in foreign languages into English on the side.
Is this something that academic journals are generally willing to pay for? How would one go about finding work in this area?

I don't see why a journal would need this, unless it's intended as a direct translation (such as JETP) of a journal in another language to English. If it is, then of course they might be interested, but you'd have to ask the individual journals about this.

@aeismail Maybe it's not the journals themselves who are interested. It seems like there is a lot of interest in having Russian scientific journals translated into English, but then I'm not sure where to ask about finding that kind of freelance work

This question appears to be off-topic because it is about a translator looking for work.

I think you'd have a better chance of getting more reliable information if you go to popular online forums for translators like ProZ and TranslatorsCafé, where you can talk to professional translators and browse job ads. A very quick search already gave me one recent (but already closed) ad that seems to be looking for a translator for an academic journal:
http://www.translatorscafe.com/cafe/job146043.htm

I am currently in search of French to English Translator with a mathematics & engineering background to translate an academic journal.

Also, AMS seems to have a list of translated journals here:
http://www.ams.org/msnhtml/trnjor.pdf
Anyway, there seems to be a demand for that kind of job, so you might be able to find a job if you know where to look. So, maybe the question is more about how to become a professional translator (and find jobs) than about academia.


text:
How can one compare a postdoc position in Europe and USA?
I am an EU citizen, and 27 years old. I completed my Bachelor's and Master's in Electrical Engineering in the UK, now finishing up my PhD (in EE as well) in the USA.
I am currently applying for postdoc positions everywhere (EU and USA). I have, for the most part, adapted to life in the USA over the four years that I've been here. However, I am motivated by the idea of doing a postdoc in Europe, partly because I believe the overall culture there suits my personality more, and partly because all of my family is there too. I also want to experience the European way of conducting research (since a Master's in the UK didn't really involve all that much research).
My question is: now that I am still in the USA, and can get a work permit for 2 or so years easily, I am thinking that it would be a good chance to stay a bit longer and experience a postdoc here instead.
In general, I am quite adaptable and I don't have too many set expectations. I just want to conduct interesting research and have a somewhat decent social life to keep some sort of a balance. Money is not really an issue. Also, although I do not like to plan too much into the future (because you never really know what happens), I guess being considerate of the opportunities/prospects a position can offer in the future is healthy.
Given this information, what do you are the pros and cons of Europe vs. USA for a postdoc? Answers to this question probably require some over-generalizing, so I apologize in advance for that.

One person told me that he thought it was better to do your postdoc in the USA because americans write more positively worded letters of recommendation.  I would be curious to hear if people think this is true.

I would also be curious about people's experience with switching between USA and Europe and then trying to switch back again.

What is your ultimate career goal?

Right now I am considering the possibility of being a professor in the future, but that might change depending on my postdoc experience. But I definitely want to do research, whether that's in a university/research institute/lab.

One aspect is that doing a postdoc in Europe offers the chance to live and work (for a limited time) in a non-English speaking country.

While this does not directly answer your question,  I think that you should aim for the very best university where you can get a postdoc, be it in Europe or US, and go for there if you get it -- this  is likely to benefit your career (and, in the short run, your CV) most.

"How can one compare a postdoc position in Europe and USA?" <- Favorably!

@AnonymousPhysicist: The quality of letters of recommendation is a poor criterion for choosing where to do post-doctoral research.

Let me list a few pros of doing postdoc in the US:

In many EU countries a postdoc in the US is considered to be more prestigious than a postdoc in Europe (assuming that the places you do the postdoc in the US and Europe are at roughly the same level), so a postdoc in the US is in general not likely to harm your academic career should you eventually decide to return to Europe
If you give staying in the US a really serious thought, the postdoc in the US allows you to initiate the application for green card; getting the latter will give you unrestricted access to the job market in the US (academic or otherwise), in addition to the EU one, which comes in handy on many occasions.
Given that you have your Ph.D. (and hence the largest part of your academic network) in the US, you have somewhat better odds at succeeding in securing a postdoc in the US (e.g. because the US people you will apply to are in general more likely to know your advisor than people in Europe, and the people in the US will be less hesitant to, say, give a phone call to the authors of your recommendation letters to find out additional details if need be).

It would be interesting to read more on the first point. Can you provide sources or additional reading?

I disagree that "a postdoc in the US is considered to be more prestigious than a postdoc in Europe" in many EU countries. Maybe in some.

I would also like to add some aspects of choosing between US and EU groups as a postdoc. I have obtained two postdoc offers (in experimental physics) from both a European institute and a US university. They are both well-known in our field. When I was making the decision, I considered the following aspects:
Research style:
In Europe, the research projects seem to be more task-driven while there might be more freedom on studying unexpected phenomena in the US. Moreover, US researchers' style might be more "hands-on" than EU. Especially in experimental physics, you may have to fix a broken equipment or solder a circuit by yourself in the US. However, in EU, a team of technicians will take care of all the maintenance and refinement of the equipments. You do not have to know how to build a measurement setup as long as you know how to take data. As such, you may publish faster in EU. However, if your future goal is to be a faculty that you will ultimately set up your own lab, the "all by yourself" experience in the US may be a plus.
Funding:
Research funding situation in EU may be better than the US, at least it is stably increasing but it strongly depends on fields and supervisors.
Group Culture:
The European groups are usually huge that you might be just one among 30+ researchers/PhD students. It may require much more effort to take more responsibility in such a huge group and get noticed by the famous PI and even a good recommendation letter from the PI. In the US, the group sizes vary a lot. In most cases, you will be one out of zero to three postdocs. You are expected to have more responsibility like mentoring students, writing grant proposals and thinking new research plans, etc.

It was a huge group in Netherlands. I don't have working experience in EU so it was just my impression mostly gained from my visit and two of my friends who are working in that group. I might be wrong for some other part of Europe. Sorry...

@ming56 For what it's worth, my impression as a theorist in physics is that technicians handle some experimental setups in the US too. It seems to come down to different research groups with different cultures, or the scale of the experiment.

@Anyon I agree with your point. My numbers of samples of US and EU groups may not be enough to conclude these.

@ming56 There are certainly some differences though. I know people who ended up taking ~10 years to graduate with a PhD because they had to build an experimental setup, get it to work, get data, and publish something. Even if you discount 2 years for the Masters degree, that time frame just would not fly in Europe, which is probably for the better.


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Keys to a successful postdoc in mathematics
I just finished a PhD in mathematics and am about to start a postdoc in the fall. My question is pretty straightforward (although the answer might not be), namely:

What should one do to have a successful mathematics postdoc (apart from perhaps doing as much math as humanly possible, or more)?

I expect this will be different depending on one's goals post-postdoc, such as staying in academia vs leaving, research vs teaching focused jobs, etc.

Some possibly related questions:
What is expected of a postdoc?
Transitioning: PhD to Postdoc and Productivity

I expect this will be different depending on one's goals post-postdoc, such as staying in academia vs leaving. Doing a postdoc with the aim of leaving academia? (I've never heard of such motivation.) In any case, please write one question, so it could be answered with one answers (rather than 2x2xn).

@piotrmigdal I agree, usually doing a postdoc indicates that one wants to stay in academia (the only reason I didn't include this in the question was to minimize the number of parenthetical inserts - a bad habit of mine as you can see). But anyway, people might change their mind during a postdoc. I also expect that students from relatively fancy places might get postdocs without much effort/thought-as students sometime drift into graduate school if they assume that it's the norm, I expect this happens to some people for postdocs too.

It would be hard to answer for _all_outcomes, but now I see what you mean - you ask about general factors that will make a postdoc successful in one way or another. Just a note - things for staying in academia would be most likely orthogonal to things good for leaving (like involvement in work outside of academia, focusing on learning practical topics, etc).
(As a side note, parentheses are great (they should be used more often)!)

What is your definition of successful? And what are you looking for specifically that has not been considered in the links you give?

Aru,
Your question is phrased in rather general terms.  There are different kinds of postdoctoral positions in mathematics, and two mathematical postdocs hired side-by-side in the same department may have different career goals.  So advice which is guaranteed to be applicable must be rather general.  Here goes:

What is the point of a postdoc in mathematics?  I think it is this: the position of "tenure-track assistant professor" at a US math department is really much different from what it used to be.  It used to be an extended apprenticeship combined with an audition for a permanent job.  Now the job market is so competitive that institutions at all levels tenure the vast majority of the assistant professors they hire: I could easily name hundreds of people who have gotten tenure over the last ten years; I'm not sure I could name ten who were denied tenure.  The "apprenticeship" that used to take place at the beginning of these positions is now somewhere between immensely abbreviated and completely absent: in my own department (UGA) we have "graduate faculty" status, which must be conferred separately, but every tenure-track hire in last eight years has been given that status immediately upon arrival.  In my department you cannot tell the assistant professors from the associate professors (and from some of the full professors) without your scorecard: the job is really identical, including supervision of PhD students.

Even most brilliantly talented and competent PhDs need time to perform the laundering process from student to faculty.  In particular, 99% of the time it just doesn't work for your PhD advisor to have just gotten her own PhD a couple of years ago.  This laundering process is what the postdoc is for.

How does a postdoc work towards the goal of tenure-track readiness and marketability? In what follows I will assume that the desired tenure track job has substantial research expectations (keeping in mind that "substantial research expectations" is still a continuum).

To attain your goal of a tenure-track position, you need to concentrate on two things:
2a) Research.

Put out product -- accepted papers.  Both quality and quantity matters.

Many people get a PhD in mathematics before having a single accepted paper (I did), and if they have an eminent advisor who goes to bat for them, having no papers need not be much of a strike against them in the postdoctoral market.  Things change tremendously when you apply for tenure-track jobs: you need to show conversion of your research promise into research success.  With multiplicity.  Publication standards vary significantly among mathematical disciplines (topologists and algebraic geometers publish fewer papers; combinatorialists and applied mathematicians publish more) but I think that at least one publication per year is a reasonable lower bound for almost everyone.
Most math postdocs have not published all the work that appears in their thesis before graduation (my understanding is that this is almost the complete reverse of what happens in most other STEM fields).  There are good reasons for this: mathematics is such a technical, specialized field that you spend 90% of your time as a PhD student attaining mastery of one specific subfield, and the PhD is awarded within a very short time period of that attained mastery (in some cases, it is awarded when the advisor feels confident that such mastery lies in the student's near future).  So many if not most math postdocs spend the majority of their research time in their first year working on the papers that come from their PhD research.  Why does it take so long given that the thesis has already been written?  One reason is that they are usually not just transcribing the work but also significantly improving it: again, this goes in hand with the observation that as soon as you know what you're doing you're out the door with a PhD.  If you compare a PhD thesis and the paper that it results in, you often see stronger results, simpler and better proofs, and so forth.
Spending time in your postdoc working on publishing your thesis can be tricky: you are in a new environment with new distractions, and after you give a talk or two about your thesis work, many of your research conversations will be about the research interests of those around you, who will probably at least want to involve you in seminars and may in fact want to collaborate with you on further projects.  And it's good to do that...but not at the expense of getting your thesis work done.  There is even a bit of a trap here, since as a PhD student you get so much care and attention on every aspect of your work, including someone whose job it is at times to tell you to slow down and be more careful: that you haven't yet fully nailed down what you thought you had.  Most postdoctoral advisors don't work as closely with their postdocs as thesis advisors do with their students, and when they do it is probably not on the topic of their thesis (they may not even have enough expertise on that to work as closely as the thesis advisor did).  So the first priority of any postdoc is to make sure that they actually write up for publication all the work that was "promised" in their thesis, and the second priority is to figure out how to continue this thesis work in a meaningful way.

Acquire a research program -- distinct from your thesis advisor's program.

I think this is really the hardest part.  It is a well-known fact that the most common number of MathSciNet publications for any given author is one.  In some cases this just means that some bright young person passed through mathematics on the way to something else -- e.g. this one-hit wonder turned out fine -- but it is distressingly common to see one strong, cutting-edge publication followed by dead silence.  What this means is that the work was -- in some suitably high-level sense, at least -- really that of the advisor rather than the student.  A lot of postdocs follow the previous bullet point -- i.e., they get their thesis written up -- and then they just can't see their way to a continuing research program.  In some cases this means that they still publish some papers, but they have just switched from being one person's apprentice to a different person's apprentice.  This is still not good enough for a research-intensive academic job nor, increasingly, a job at a nationally reputable liberal arts college.
It is here that I must disagree with another answer to this question, which says:

In my opinion, you are best looking for a postdoc in an area that is as far removed from your PhD areas as you are willing to tolerate.

That really doesn't sound right to me.  It is a relatively easy path to give up on what you've already done and start fresh on something unrelated, for which you can get local supervision.  As above, this is not good enough.  You want your research program to be considerably deeper at the end of your postdoc than it was when you got your PhD.  Sometimes that involves a significant course correction, yes: in my case I spent less than 1/3 of my time as a postdoc working on the subject of my PhD thesis, but the other material that I worked on was material that I had already been interested in and even started writing up for publication as a student.  Moreover the two areas were related because I was interested in both of them, and that allowed me to work towards closer relations.  Finally, by the time I gave job talks I was able to talk about Hasse principle violations for Shimura curves (my thesis was on Shimura curves) alongside Hasse principle violations for torsors under abelian varieties (which is what I spent most of my postdoc working on).  Moving to something "as far removed from your PhD areas as you are willing to tolerate" would have moved me several orders of magnitude farther away, just as I was experiencing a rapid improvement in my understanding of the part of arithmetic geometry in which I did my thesis work.  (Eleven years after my thesis, I am now also exploring parts of mathematics that are considerably farther away but I still do some work on things closely related to my thesis.)
A research program has some breadth to it as well as depth.  But the ideal way to develop breadth is to expand outwards from your current position, not give up and move to a new position chosen for its substantial distance from your current one.

It is good to have done more than one thing, or at least to know more than one trick.

I want to reaffirm that after establishing depth, the next thing hirers look for in a research program is indeed breadth.  If you're working on what looks to all outsiders like exactly the same thing now as you were three years ago, that's less than exciting, and it creates concerns about your future trajectory: mathematics does move on, and long-term colleagues grow together in their research interests and expertise.  However, if you're working in a hot, technical area and doing well with it, then you probably don't want to diversify out of that area as a postdoc, but you do want to take steps to show that the potential for diversity is there.  Often digging deeper in exactly the same spot requires learning new tools, even basic things that early career graduate students in other fields learn.  I think it's important to continue that kind of learning as a postdoc (and beyond) and show that you're doing it: for instance, in any job talk you should showcase the variety of knowledge and techniques that go into your results, especially if the results themselves look narrow and specialized.
2b) Teaching Teaching is challenging for a postdoc because for a certain range of intended careers it is less important than research...but it is still important, and in fact increasingly so.  You have to crank up a different kind of professional vibe to be a successful teacher as a postdoc: whereas for research you are trying to burn the midnight oil to make the transition from excellent to outstanding, what a disaster it would be for you to vow to be the best calculus teacher ever and devote all your time and energy to that.  (Part of the disaster is that vowing to be the best calculus teacher ever and putting three times as much time in as your office-mate will not necessarily result in teaching evaluations that are any better than hers: unfortunately they might even be worse.)  Rather you need to set a more temperate teaching mark and learn to hit it while leaving plenty of time for your research.
Your specific teaching goals will depend upon what kind of tenure-track job you have.  On the other hand, you may be hoping for a job at an elite research institution but may have to settle for a job with higher teaching requirements.  A good all-around plan is to showcase at least competent teaching across a fairly broad range of levels, including: calculus courses / service courses for non-majors; courses for undergraduate math majors; and graduate-level courses.  If you can cover those bases by teaching fewer courses, that is probably better.  In three years of postdoctoral work I taught five semester courses: this was close to ideal, but if I magically had control of my own teaching load, I would have cut it down to four.  Because your overall teaching responsibilities are relatively limited, it is good to start thinking about where your teaching letter(s) will come from right away.  If you feel that a course is going especially well, by all means invite some faculty in to watch you teach it.  That together with good evaluations is sufficient for a strong teaching letter in many cases.

You've written a lot, but actually everything you've said is fully consistent with "doing as much math [including math teaching] as humanly possible".  So I still suspect that doing a tremendous amount of work -- of the right kind -- in a relatively short period is the key to a successful math postdoc.  Am I mistaken??

No, you're quite right.  Being a math postdoc should not stop you from having a satisfying personal life, but professionally speaking it is one of the most intense, work-intensive points of a mathematical career.  There's no secret remedy for that.
One could give a lot more advice for math postdocs, and this has been done.  The Young Mathematicians Network has lots of information on this.  Google searching reveals that several mathematicians have math-specific postdoctoral advice on their webpages, including Sara Billey and Terry Tao.  I tend to think that it is better to talk to people -- lots of people -- and get advice rather than just read about very generalized advice (including this answer, of course).  A lot of times you don't even need to explicitly ask for advice: look for young, successful mathematicians (that includes most people who have recently gotten tenure-track jobs nowadays) and talk to them about their experiences.  By comparing the backgrounds of multiple role-models you can get a sense of what the "market wants".

Well said. And I'd reiterate the point that, in mathematics, the idea of doing something wildly different from one's apprenticeship mostly puts one in a position of gross incompetence, which is not a good thing. Apparently in some other fields, some people believe that "expertise" is something that can be acquired in a coupla months. Amazing, if true. In most parts of modern mathematics this is not so. A more relevant riff/quip, if one has been induced to write a good thesis at a top place, is that one spends one's post-doc trying to understand one's own thesis... to great benefit.

This is a very thorough response! The only thing I'd add is to emphasize networking as a crucial part of a successful postdoc. Attending seminars and conferences and growing a network of collaborators is really important at that stage.

Just to let you know, your link to the Young Mathematicians Network have changed to a sexual product advertisement webpage. New link is here : https://www.youngmath.net/

@Jingeon: My goodness, that was....unfortunate.  I have just corrected the link.  If by any chance this happens in the future, please feel free to go ahead and change the link yourself.

I'm not sure that your parenthetical comment ("doing as much math as humanly possible") is necessarily correct.  In my opinion, you are best looking for a postdoc in an area that is as far removed from your PhD areas as you are willing to tolerate.  Unless you are an unassailed leader in the field (in which case, skip the postdoc and just get an academic position directly), your postdoc is a good time to:

diversify your interests
set up connections between disparate fields
and, in the words of the great Arnold Ross, "think deeply of simple things"

Believe it or not, after your postdoc it will be a long time before you can actually devote a similar amount of uninterrupted thought to academic interests (possibly not until retirement).

"It will be a long time before you can actually devote a similar amount of uninterrupted thought to academic interests" I don't follow.

When you have an academic career ... you have preciously little time for thinking.  A significant part of your time is dedicated to teaching, managing graduate students, writing grants, administravia, and the like.

The OP will be teaching (her department lists one course in the fall and one course in the spring).  Not all academic careers in mathematics involve managing graduate students or writing grants: in fact, probably less than half of all academic mathematicians in the US spend much (or any) time doing either one. I agree that non-research responsibilities do tend to accumulate in a tenure-track position, but gradually and depending upon one's own interest in them.

In my experience, the challenge of a mathematical postdoc is similar to that of the kind of tenure track job in mathematics which has substantial research expectations: one must learn to develop and pursue interrupted thoughts and maintain research activity and goals in the face of multiple other professional responsibilities.


text:
Should I ask for permission to write an expository post about someone else's research?
I am a math PhD student in North America about to enter my second year. Last week I attended a conference and was interested in a research presentation by a professor at another school. The presentation was about some of his current (unpublished) methods and results to attack a problem in combinatorics. I am thinking of writing an expository post about his talk in my personal blog.
Question: Should I contact the professor to ask for permission to write about his research? My concern is that he hasn't published the results and so might not want to put them in public yet. I have seen people writing expository posts about talks or papers that they read or hear about (for example here), but I'm not sure if they need permission from the original author(s) to do so.

Consider not thinking of yourself as a "PhD student". You're not studying a PhD, nor are you just studying "for a PhD" in the sense that (undergrad) students do. You're a junior researcher and a PhD candidate; and a student only in a limited sense.

@einpoklum May I ask why this is relevant to OP's question?

@AgnishomChattopadhyay: 1. OP seems to exhibit an overly self-deprecating attitude; that might be related to a self-perception as a "lowly student" vs a "Professor", as opposed to a less-experienced vs more-experienced researcher. But my main point is in my answer. 2. It is relevant to how OP describes/perceives an aspect of academia; I want to de-incluldate this perception in other readers.

Just to state the obvious: if you do write up something, be very clear in attributing it to their original presentation.

I don't think you strictly need permission, but I would recommend asking the speaker anyway, out of simple courtesy.  People are aware when they give a talk that they are making the information public, and that the audience members may share what they have learned, but putting it on the Internet may speed up that process more than the speaker is expecting.  Posting about the talk without the author's consent, or at least notifying them, isn't unethical, but it is sort of "bad manners".
If the speaker asks you to wait, I would suggest you honor that request: partly out of  general professional courtesy, and partly because it isn't good politics as a PhD student to get on the bad side of senior people, especially if you work in this area.  You may be applying for a postdoc with this person someday.  I would guess that at most, they might say something like "We plan to post a preprint in a few weeks; could you hold off until then?"
As a possible side benefit, when you contact the speaker to ask if it's okay with them, they might also volunteer some other information for you to use in your  writeup: copies of their slides, further details, a preprint, etc.
If they say it's okay, then as a further courtesy, you may want to send them a copy of your writeup before you post it, to see if they have any comments or notice any errors.  Or at least send them a link when you post it, and be ready to respond to any feedback they may have.

Apart from manners, there is a second issue at hand here: You need to check that what you are divulging is actually likely true. Otherwise, the following can easily happen: The author finds a mistake and drops the project; people keep learning about it from your blog and asking the author why it isn't published; the author points at you as being the source of the misinformation and the embarrassment. Journalists are rightfully getting criticized for fishing for rash statements; make sure not to look like their scientific equivalent.

@darijgrinberg I think that's significant enough to merit an answer rather than a comment. :)

@darijgrinberg but is it common practice to give talks about results which you do not consider to be likely true? In OP's situation, a talk has already been given. Besides, if a person A publishes a wrong theorem and a person B publishes how to correctly deduce another theorem from A's theorem, are people going to criticize B? I don't think I would criticize B (a situation like this where B was V. Arnold did happen, but I think Arnold did not actually publish the result, he noticed it while rereading his preprint).

@sis: No one deliberately presents wrong results, but many errors only manifest when writing down the proof, which often happens long after the talk. Talks don't really count as publication; you cannot cite them in your paper.

@darijgrinberg I agree with you. I mean that if a person wrote an expository blog article about a result that was claimed by someone in a talk, and that result turns out to be wrong, in my opinion it would be incorrect to criticize the person who wrote the blog (as long as proper attributions were given). The person who gave a talk by giving a talk implied that (s)he was reasonably confident about the result so the blame rests with him/her, in my opinion.

tl;dr: No, it's fine (but send him a link).

My concern is that he hasn't published the results

But he has published his approach - by giving a presentation about it. And you can only write about what he talked about in that presentation.

Question: Should I contact the professor to ask for permission to write about his research?

As long as you don't misrepresent what he said in his presentation - there's really no need.
As a courtesy, however, I'd email him a note about your blog post with a link to it. If anything bothers him, he can write you.