text:
Too many co-authors on google scholar
Google scholar keeps a listing of my co-authors.
Today, a new co-author was suggested by email.
When I clicked "Add co-author", the reaction of google scholar was "Too many co-authors".
Is this is serious? Or is it a known bug?

I think this a question for Google, especially since their back-end system is constantly changing.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about transient errors in a web application.

Note that some papers have a lot of co-authors (example).

How many do you currently have? // You could ask at Web Applications SE or you could use a different type of cloud storage software, e.g. dropbox.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it belongs on Web Applications SE.


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Citing non existence of a novel idea
Can someone please help me out here?
I have a research proposal to present. I had a novel idea to present.
First things first, I googled the idea and could not find it anywhere. So far so good. So I wrote down in my research proposal that 'No system had implemented (insert my idea here)...'.
However, when I peer reviewed this writing to a friend, he strongly suggested me to cite the above sentence 'No system..'
My doubt is how do I cite it? I did not find the idea anywhere.
Is my choice of using this sentence 'No system..' wrong?

Most people say that "To the best of my knowledge, no system...."

Also you are going to want to do more than a google search. Check additional academic databases and mix up your keywords, etc.

It is also nice to cite related work in the field investigating the same question and say why what you are doing is novel in relation to it.

@Dawn : Thanks for the quick reply. Can we write 'To the best of my knowledge' in a research proposal? I am a newbie. so apologies if this is a sill question.

@ravipandhi you can write it in a paper, I don't see why you shouldn't be able to write it in a proposal.

From what you say,  "I googled the idea and could not find it anywhere", your research of previous work doesn't seem very thourough, I suggest you to dig more in the literature before claiming to have a novel idea.

It is perfectly fine to write "to the best of our knowledge" -- assuming you really made a thorough search. It is especially important that you look up all research papers that try to solve similar problems and confirm that they do not use the idea you propose (maybe in disguise). If you find something broadly similar, cite it, and discuss what makes your idea different to the one you found.

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Are dissertations always submitted to the school library?
I am trying to confirm if an individual actually graduated with a PhD from a university at around 2010. At my university, the PhD theses are archived in the university library. In some cases, the Masters theses are archived in the library, too. (Yes, I found my own thesis from my university library's search.)
This individual claimed to hold a PhD from a US university. I could not find this person's thesis from the university library.
From LinkedIn, I found the names of other individuals who claimed to hold PhD from the same university. This university library's online search returned those thesis.
If the PhD theses are not always archived at the university's library, I could use my benefit of the doubt.

It's certainly extremely common, but US higher education is so decentralized that there's really no way to answer a question like "always".  Almost every common practice has an oddball exception somewhere.

There are of course other possibilities: the person attended under a different name, their thesis was originally in the library but was lost, the thesis is in the library but due to some error it is not properly indexed by the catalog.

Another place to search is the ProQuest database, which indexes the vast majority of theses in the US.  (Again, it's hard to authoritatively say it indexes all of them.)

I recall that some dissertations in the US during World War II were classified "secret" by the military, and therefore could not be published.  I don't know whether that could still happen today.

@GEdgar The top-voted answer to Can a PhD thesis be confidential? suggests it can still happen, or at least did so fairly recently.

@GEdgar some DoD funding still restricts the publication of theses and dissertations. My MS work for funded by DoD and my thesis was published, but some other grad students in my department were not able to publish their dissertations and thesis. That as ca 2010, but would still be true today.

@GEdgar Great point! Thank you for pointing out the question. The individual claimed that he's an expert in cybersecurity. I found the entry of the thesis on ProQuest but not at the university's library.

Your question does not match your title. In fact, your "question" does not contain a question at all. Would you consider rewording so that your post matches your title? Also, it seems you want to verify a dissertation exists, not ask about all libraries (which would be off-topic b/c it is university specific).

I would guess that most, not all, universities have most, not all, dissertations available at the library. But your intent seems to be to verify that a degree was earned. Having the dissertation at a library is, at best, an incomplete indication.
In the US, at least, the National Student Clearinghouse can provide that information for most, not all, colleges and universities.
But the US system isn't unified for almost all questions, and, worldwide it is a much more difficult issue.

Yes, of course I can submit a request to the university's registrar or National Student Clearinghouse. Having the dissertation in the library is an incomplete indication but is an indication without consent of the individual.

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Potential PhD supervisor not responding after showing interests
I contacted a professor to see if he would be interested to be my supervisor. He very quickly replied and indicated he was interested. He was very sincere in a way he even included a guideline to help me put together a research proposal so he could consider further. He also suggested where to find funding and mentioned I could let him know if I needed support.
Some time later I sent him my research proposal. It’s been around two weeks he hasn’t responded to me. So I very politely reached out again to see if he would still be interested with an amended proposal enclosed.
I know that now  I will only wait. And I will not write further because I don’t want to harass him. If he doesn’t reply does that mean a rejection? It seems quite strange - his initial response was sincere and positive, so I thought if he eventually finds the project unfit he would also notify me.

Since you have waited two weeks it is fine to send a short email now, saying something like "I just wanted to check that you received my proposal". After that, if you don't hear from them, you must assume it is a rejection. It wouldn't be a polite rejection on their part, but not everyone is polite.

Seems like thats the only thing I can do!

"He was very sincere in a way he even included a guideline to help me
put together a research proposal so he could consider further.

did you consider the fact he had a pre-ready email with these guidelines and he minimally adapted to you?
Whit this I mean it was still a constructive and positive answer from him, it would even fit with the rather presumptuous "I have no time to answer, so no explicit answer means no".
There would be no harm in trying to reach him by phone to ask him a feedback, since he asked to share with him your ideas, it would be the minimum of decency from him to give you a feedback.
The worse it can happen is that he considers you annoying him ... and you do not want to work with such kind of person, so even the worse is a good outcome for you.

Thx! I agree with you - I did consider that part was 'copy-and-paste' contents. because there are two fonts type in one email. but either ways, if he did not feel interested he would not even bother to reply, and provide detailed guidelines (tho copied and pasted).
But you are right I might as well just skip to another professor.

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Open University Physics Department and Master's Degree in EU
I would like to ask if anyone here has finished the UK Open University's degree in Physics and has successfully applied for a master's degree.
With this question, I want to make sure that by applying for this degree will allow me to further advance my studies. Ideally in a Swiss university.
Additionally, is this Open University degree suitable for a job in academia?

No undergraduate degree is enough for a faculty position. That would depend, usually, on obtaining a doctorate.

I am always skeptical with "is it possible?" questions, because the answer is almost always "Yes, at least if you are exceptional," and that's usually not a very useful answer.  Please try to indicate what kind of likelihood/ordinariness you're looking for.

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

I'm currently 60 credits from completing my OU maths degree which I've thoroughly enjoyed. I have also done computational research prior to starting with the OU.
There are several OU students who have been accepted onto masters degrees at top Universities. I know a student who is now completing her masters at Oxford University in computer science having completed an OU BSc in maths and computer science with first class. I know other folks who have gone onto PhDs at brick and mortar universities following OU degrees.
I'm planning to undertake a masters after my OU degree at a brick university just for more exposure and variety.
The physics degree at the OU shares a number of modules in common with the maths degree (mathematical methods, fluid mechanics and PDEs, quantum mechanics, etc).
In summary, an OU degree is just as respected as any other degree. If you want more inspiration and are on facebook, do join the Open University facebook groups.
I'm not sure whether Swiss universities are familiar with OU degrees-worth checking this. I don't see any reason why OU degrees won't be suitable for securing jobs in academia. However, academic jobs are very competitive and research experience with PhD is usually necessary.
Best wishes with your studies.

I have a similar understanding of the quality of programs at OU, and have worked with some of their faculty and administrators in the past. It was in CS, however.


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How to answer rhetorical questions
Often in lectures, my professors will ask rhetorical questions. Sometimes, their body language makes it look like they're waiting for a response, and they'll even look intensely at a specific student when asking as if they want that specific student to respond.
I don't want to stare at the professor with a blank stare (especially if they are looking at me), but I'm not sure what the professor wants us to do. Should we just nod/shake our heads, say verbally "yes" or "no", or do something else to show that we're engaged?

What makes you think the questions are rhetorical, rather than genuine tests of knowledge?

@BryanKrause Usually, the professors ask, ", right?" or other questions which very clearly seem to be rhetorical. If no one says anything for a few moments, they'll move on with the lecture as if nothing happened. If it was a test of knowledge, I'd expect them to wait for someone to answer or to re-ask the question rather than continuing the lecture.

On top of the comment by @BryanKrause , this is hugely dependent on the local culture.

@MaartenBuis. Emphasizing. In some cultures a "thumbs up" is a good response. In others it is deeply insulting.

It could be that  is not right at all, and the professor is challenging the students to find the "error", after which they will continue to explain why the statement appears to be true, but actually may be false in edge cases or because of something that has not yet been explained.

A rhetorical question is, by definition, one you are not expected to answer. So if you know it is a rhetorical question then that resolves the issue: don't answer, there is no need (and the professor would likely be caught off-guard if you did answer). The professor is probably looking at you when they speak because they want non-verbal feedback, your facial expression can reveal whether you are comfortable or confused with what they just said; perhaps they chose you in particular because you are subconsciously giving that feedback already.

It just struck me: The title of this question could be a rhetorical question.

It is worth considering the body language of the students in the class and the effect that may have on the speaker.  If the students are giving no feedback that they have understood the material (e.g. nodding, looking attentively or asking questions), it is human nature to try and prompt some interaction/feedback.  Ironically this is rather easier when giving lectures online because you don't see the students, so do not expect to see feedback and a lack of it is not perturbing, but also a lot of student seem happier asking questions via chat than in person.

When giving a lecture in person I try to avoid "right" or "O.K." as much as possible, but it can be very difficult when student interaction is limited and I can't judge if the lack if interaction is fear or boredom and the remedies for those problems are very different! ;o)

Usually, the professors ask, ", right?" or other questions which very clearly seem to be rhetorical. If no one says anything for a few moments, they'll move on with the lecture as if nothing happened.

It's hard to judge without being there, but this sounds to me like the instructor is giving a pause to see if there are any questions on what they've just discussed before they move on.
From a US perspective, if they look right at you and you feel like you're following and understanding things well, feel free to nod, give a thumbs up, whatever feels to you like a comfortable response to affirm that you understand. This isn't to test or evaluate your knowledge, it's a self-evaluation to the instructor to gauge whether they're being clear, whether they're moving too fast, whether they need to restate or rephrase something they've said. As pointed out in the comments, the appropriate gesture can be culturally dependent; I think a head nod is pretty safe, but I can't say for certain. If you have a question, though, it would be a good time to ask it/indicate you have a question to ask by raising your hand or whatever signal is typical in your classroom.
If the professor looks at a specific individual (for example, you), I don't think they are necessarily intending to pick on that person specifically, but they may be looking for a representative response or maybe they noticed that person looked a bit puzzled earlier and they're just checking in. It's part of interacting with an audience that some people are more natural at than others.

Same thought at the same time. Sounds like my interpretation wasn't too far off then.

@henning Indeed, if the instructor wants to convey something different than what we've proposed, they probably should try a different approach. :)

"Thumbs up" works fine in US. In Iraq and some other places, not so much (not at all).

@Buffy: And sometimes things that were OK only a few years ago should probably be avoided now.

I don't thing the presence of "..., right?" confirms a rhetorical question; just images the phrase ".... So all problems are solved, right?" That may be just a check whether you followed the arguments (actually waiting for some protest).

For what it's worth, nodding is culturally dependent, too; in some parts of the Balkans, it means "no", and shaking your head signals agreement or approval.

This is just me, but I would interpret the "rhetorical" question as an expression of the professor being unsure whether the students understood whatever the professor was explaining. The professor is looking for cues -- more or less consciously -- if the students are following. You could nod, simply ignore the question, or take it as a chance to ask for clarification. As a student, I would find this slightly irritating, and it's probably not the most methodical way to ascertain the level of comprehension. In any case, it's mostly a personal quirk to get used to.

"As a student, I would find this slightly irritating" engaging with the lecture/lecturer is part of the student's job - I'd be keen to hear a less irritating way to encourage them to engage.

@DikranMarsupial you should post that as a question if it hasn't already been posted. In a lecture, there are fewer tools to actively engage the audience compared to a seminar, but there are several [1]. I'm not against questions as rhetorical device, but the students seems to be confused as to whether the question are rhetorical or not. So my first advice would be to ask actual questions that can't be answered by "yes" or "no" and to take time for responses. For "yes/no" or multiple choice questions, I would use a polling tool.

[1] https://faculty.medicine.iu.edu/let-us-help/teaching-resources/new-curriculum-resources/interactive-lectures/#:~:text=Interactive%20lectures%20are%20didactic%20learning,but%20ideally%20more%20than%20once.

Thanks for the link.  Thanks to COVID I now have my old lecture material pre-recorded, so the live lectures are now more seminar-like (I spend a lot of time programming in lectures now).  Different cohorts of students can be very different, and some years one thing "works" and another year something else (so options helpful!).  I think in this case it is not really a question, more that the lecturer is uncomfortable with the lack of student interaction.  I think part of the problem is that the students don't necessarily know they need to bring something to the lecture for it to work well.

If a professor wants a particular type of response to particular types of phrasings or non-verbal cues, that professor needs to communicate their expectations clearly.
In other words: it's not your job to figure out what the professor wants, it's their job to tell you what they want. So if you're not sure, choose any response that seems reasonable to you.
(I say this as a professor myself, by the way.)

Questions in lectures may also mean "Could you follow me?" or "Please ask if you hadn't this in other lectures so I can repeat the basics". Professors also need to know if they are going too slow or too fast fast, which isn't always obvious.
And depending on the lecture style, you may do the professor a favor by actually answering the question, because maybe he planned to get a short answer and then build up on that. Personally I always wonder why lecturers do ask questions when often nobody will answer, but most lecturers who do this seem not to have a problem continuing after they got silence instead of an answer.

It could also be the case that the professor reads from their own several year old lecture notes in which their younger self omitted the actual argument because they found it trivial at that time. Now they are insecure. So "<insert statement here>, right?" could also be some mixture of

asking for help in the hope that someone (could be you) in the room sees the argument and explains it to everyone,

gaining some time to think this over for themselves, and

luring you into nodding so that they are relieved from the duty to provide the proof.

All camouflaged as a witty didactical trick. (This is not necessarily not too bad, because it has the chance to activate the audience.)
Not to mention that distinct frowning (effectively returning the ball to them) may be an as  legitimate answer as nodding.
Really, professors are not always as well prepared as you might think. For many professors teaching makes up only a comparatatively small piece of their duties.

If the body language of a professor suggests that they are waiting for a response, and if they are staring intensely at a specific student, that would suggest that perhaps the question is not intended as exclusively rhetorical, so perhaps you are misdiagnosing the nature of the question.  A simple response would be to answer the question.

I'd agree, but if the student doesn't respond, the professor will usually move on. That seems to imply that they weren't waiting for an answer but only asking the question rhetorically.

Be a respectful adult. The next time you aren't sure how to respond, clearly ask "Is that a question? Is that directed at me?" Use your hands to gain control of the conversation, create a brief exchange to establish explicitly the expectation. In a lighthearted manner with a coyish smile, nod enthusiastically at whatever his response is.
The prof probably is on some level of autopilot and doesn't realize he's spreading anxiety, he's likely just looking for some acknowledgement you aren't sleeping with your eyes open and will almost certainly correct this behavior, which again he's likely unaware of... Turning the tables on him by putting him on the spot unexpectedly will wake him up quick and you can be sure he will be more careful and explicitly direct in the future.
Caution, you'll be creating more conversation in that room forever moving forward, but that's a good thing in theory.

If the professor is truly asking a rhetorical question, the only reasonable answer would be: "Yes! Isn't hat what you wanted to hear?"
But maybe the professor is just asking politely: "Are you still awake (with me)?"

It is awkward for both parties if the professor is waiting for an answer and you are hesitating. It may be relieving for you both if you simply respond, perhaps with a counter-question: "Is that a question? No, I don't think so," ideally with a brief rationale for why that's your answer.
If they meant to ask, you have responded appropriately and defused the situation; if they didn't, they will probably stop doing that maneuver once they understand that some students find it confusing.
Among the professors I've had, the vast majority would prefer a student who spoke up and interacted with them over a silent one every time.

Usually, rhetorical questions don't have to be answered. Even my family told me that. When professors ask a rhetorical question - the best that you can do is just nod or smirk (friendly ofc), or agree or disagree. When you're trying to answer on rhetorical question - most often the reaction is rather negative or sarcastic.


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Delaying TT position to finish postdoc?
I am trying to decide if negotiating to delay the start of a TT position in order to complete the 2nd year (out of 2) of my current postdoc is a good idea. I am mostly interested to hear your thoughts on the benefits/disadvantages to do this in regards to obtaining tenure. I'd like to specify that this postdoc involves teaching (two courses), and (it is very likely that) I would have to teach the same amount of classes for the TT position in my first year. I have a good number of publications set to appear next year so I assume that would be good for tenure.

About how much of a delay are we talking? A few months can be reasonable, more probably not.

What are your reasons for delaying?

As noted by @Roland, the job of a postdoc is to get a job. Job done, move on, finish the papers at your new position. (I will allow others to comment on the papers bit, since in the day the tenure committees were mostly interested in work you did at their institution, not before arrival).

Does this answer your question? What's the benefit of delaying a tenure-track position for doing a postdoc (when you already have a tenure-track offer)?

At many universities this would not be a reasonable request.

The main benefit would be to have more time to focus on research (I have +5 conferences planned) without worrying about teaching. The negative side would be publications coming out which do not count for tenure. But I get your point!

Sorry that I missed this earlier, and hope an answer is still relevant.
The purpose of a postdoc, actually, is to enable you to get a permanent (eventually) tenured position. They help you build a research portfolio that gets you recognized as a potentially valuable member of a permanent faculty. But, otherwise, it has limited value for a career as an academic. There was a time when such positions weren't common and it was easier to move directly from degree completion to a regular job.
As such, delaying seems to be a mistake, especially if it puts your eventual position in doubt in any way. Things change in universities. Offers can potentially be withdrawn if economic factors affect the university.
In most fields, continuing research started as a postdoc is possible so that may not be a problem (some lab sciences might be an exception, as would some confidential work).
My advice would be to take the TT position without delay, provided that you can leave the postdoc on good terms.


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apply US professor/faculty position without PhD advisor's reference letter
I got my PhD degree from the one of the most excellent universities in Asia and am currently postdoc in US. However, I had the worst nightmare PhD advisor who thought his own students as potential competitors and tried to disturb their future career. He usually did not write reference letters for his own students and I saw most of my seniors leaving the lab without reference letters. Fortunately I got a good postdoc position in US and escaped from the previous lab.
After postdoc, I would like to continue research work in US, because I am so exhausted with my PhD advisor and never want to see. Is it difficult to get a position if I do not list my former PhD advisor in the reference list? I can get recommendation letters from postoc supervisor and other professors. In fact, I usually have nice relationships with other people. Also, my PhD advisor has different research interest field from mine.
This situation is causing me such difficulty. Please give me any good advice to overcome this situation.
My current aim is working in the tenure-track academic position or national lab than industry. However, if this problem is distracting me too much, I am considering of working in the industrial field.

the only problem with not having a rec letter from your PhD advisor is that the reviewing committee will be wondering why? So you need to get to the stage where you can explain what happened with your advisor.

Personally, I have never seen a faculty position advertisement, which specifies that one of referees should be your Ph.D. advisor.

Potential duplicate of http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/635/12391 and http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/8023/12391.

Thank you about comments and web addresses for previous questions. Particularly, your comment about faculty position advertisement gave me real hope. In my situation, there is no way to get recommendation letter from PhD advisor as this is not based on my fault and thus certain advice such as "recovering the relationship" would not be helpful. However, I do have a strong passion in research and thus trying to find a way to overcome this hard situation. When I become a professor or faculty, I would never do similar actions like my PhD advisor as I know how it is so hard for students.

I have never seen a faculty position advertisement, which specifies that one of referees should be your Ph.D. advisor. —Most cultural norms are not advertised.

So do you think PhD advisor should be generally included in the reference list? I know that PhD advisor can be supportive if he is my side. However, since mine is acting evil and becoming disaster for me, I have no choice but to listen to other people's advice and encouragement to overcome this suffering situation. If you know any good wisdom or direct/indirect experiences, please tell me.

I do not understand what your question is. It seems like it is something like how bad/medicore does my PhD advisor's reference letter need to be before it is better to not include it.

My question is, if I do not include my PhD advisor in the reference list due to his evil spirit, how can I overcome the negative impression caused from absence of PhD advisor's recommendation letter during faculty apply. As JeffE said, many people think it is kind of cultural norm to include PhD advisor in the reference list during faculty apply. Is it really fine to simply exclude my PhD advisor and do not care and just show people other recommendation letters from other professors?

I know of a case where someone got a tenure-track position of the sort you want without a recommendation from the advisor. In his case the problems were (1) the advisor was very controversial (2) every letter the advisor writes is so positive that they provide no content. This would have been known to most reviewers. If any of your other letter writers are familiar with your advisor and his actions, you might ask them to comment on it. That said, if you have other strong letters and a strong record as a postdoc, my guess is that this won't be a serious problem.

Dear Zach H, Thanks for giving me hope. In this dark situation, this kind of story gives me hope. Thanks again. I will try to focus and contribute on the science development instead of suffering from that evil greedy villain. Sometimes, I cannot sleep because of terrible memories from PhD advisor.

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text:
Best position title for International/USA context
I am writing a resume for a doctoral application. In my current job, I am an Assistant Professor (tenured). However, besides being young, I don't have a doctorate or postdoctoral degree. I am also not a genius or a prodigy. In my country, the way you manage to be a university professor is different from other countries. If you want to work at a federal public university, for example, you take a test with several stages, and in some cases, people with only a master's degree and young people can get the job. I am still starting my career as a professor and researcher; I have no papers published in high impact journals. I don't want to look like something I'm not, but it also shows that I have some merit in having this position. I would like to know my title in an international context, specifically in the USA. My first option was a Full-time Lecturer (permanent appointment).

The part about you being not a genius or a prodigy is irrelevant, since the same is true of 99% of professors anywhere. I am getting a whiff of impostor syndrome here. It’s admirable that you don’t want to misrepresent your abilities by overstating them, but you won’t be doing anyone any favors by understating them either.

@DanRomik thanks for your comment. The part of impostor syndrome give me an alert, you're a third person that mention that. But see I wrote "I have some merit in having this position"...anyway I understand your point of view.

List your job title as specified in your employment contract.  Anything else is a lie.  You can translate it into English or give it in both languages.
Since this situation may be unfamiliar to doctoral programs in the USA, give a brief description of your duties for the job, such as "Teaching introductory environmental science."
There is nothing wrong with seeking a PhD when you are already an assistant professor.  I get emails from people in your situation from time to time seeking positions.  The problem these people have with their applications is that they do not explain why they want a new position.  If you can give a good reason, your current title will be an advantage.

Job titles have no international context.  They have only a local context.  (They don't even have a national context.  American academics can all easily figure out that Professors at SUNY Adirondack, SUNY Geneseo, and SUNY Stony Brook - all universities in the same state system - are vastly different jobs with vastly different qualifications.)
Just give your official title (in the local language if not English - this emphasizes that it's not translatable).
In the rest of your application materials, you can explain what your job duties are and what qualifications you have, and people will figure it out.

Uhhh what's the difference between professors at those SUNies?

@AzorAhai-him: as a first indicator, I believe customary teaching expectations in mathematics are 5/5 at Adirondack, 3/3 at Geneseo, and 2/1 at Stony Brook.

How would any academic know the teaching assignments in math in a random university system?

@AzorAhai-him-: Assuming familiarity with the different types of universities in the US, spending 2 minutes on Wikipedia looking up the type of university (and how prestigious/wealthy) the particular university is will give a pretty good guess.  If one wants more specific information, one can look at course schedules (which are usually public) to actually see how many courses are being taught by a particular professor.

I suppose "can all easily figure out" makes more sense.


text:
Professor wants to include a specific (maybe unnecessary) issue and focus less on other necessary ones in LoR. Please share your perspective
I asked a professor  I know (we are outside the US) to write a strong letter of recommendation for me and he said he would be glad. However, the possible content of the letter (we have only talked about it together) gave rise to two questions for me:
Firstly, he wants to include a line to the effect that he plans to work with me in different ways in future research. At first glance, it feels like a very positive note but I am not sure if the admissions committee may see something implied here that may become problematic (e.g., the student may be too distracted or he may be too busy to focus on his PhD). What do you think?
Secondly, when I asked for some other issues he seemed a bit reluctant. For example, I asked him whether it is possible for him to write more than one page but he insists on one page being enough. Or, when I brought up the issue of illustrating praise with specific examples (as a question) so as to make it credible, he agreed but kept saying that a minimal approach will be more successful. Again, this could be true but I just don't want to rely on my own judgement in this regard. So, I appreciate your take on this issue.

Why do you think the hiring committee would prefer spending more time reading a long LOR in the hope that somewhere in all the verbiage it actually says something they want to know? If your LOR is a lot longer than any of the others, guess which one they will read last - and by that time they might already have a shortlist of candidates to interview, so  yours had better be not "strong" but "stellar" to knock somebody else off that list.

"For example, I asked him to write more than one page if possible but he insists on one page being enough." https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DflDauAU0AE04-b.jpg

@alephzero When I asked for a longer letter, I didn't mean one filled with platitudes. I was asking for more specific examples of my skills and personality. It was based on reading in various places that a good letter should be between 1 and 2 pages. But, you have a point here. That kind of a letter must be stellar.

@DIanon I don't think you understand how letters of recommendation work. Normally you ask the professor for one, he writes it and sends it without even showing it to you. It's supposed to be a honest assessment of you by the professor, not an advertisement (even if it often works as one). Why should you be entitled to decide what's in it? Just trust the professor to do a good job (otherwise they would likely have refused to write it).

@Denis Nardin Good points. However, I disagree with the word "entitlement". I will edit my question. Maybe that's why this crops up. If a student politely brings up an issue/section he has read somewhere as a possible thing to be included, the professor should not go crazy, I think, unless s/he is absolutely sure s/he is the best letter writer in the world. And, as I said below, I am not even his student but his co-researcher and colleague.

@DIanon Nothing of what I wrote is in any way different from recommendation letters for phD programs or for recommendation letters for tenure track positions. I think the answers you're getting show that this behaviour is not perceived as "bringing up some points politely", more like "trying to influence the letter writing process", which is a big no no, at least in my experience.

@DIanon I think the presupposition is that you have no control on the letters that are written, only in the choice of the writer, and people think your assumption you have more control than that as entitled and off-putting. But I don't think it makes sense to discuss it any further.

I think you should defer to the advisor on both counts. I don't see any negative implication in the first point. It is actually pretty high praise.
And on the second, I'll have to guess that his judgment is based on more experience than you have.
Moreover, if he doesn't feel constrained by your "instructions", then he will probably write in a more natural way and that, alone, could make a difference when the letter is read.
I think that trying to micromanage this would hurt, not help.

Your best bet is to be happy with the letter he writes. Pushing him to do more can only hurt your letter, honestly.

Having read your question and the comments you have left, what strikes me is what I perceive as an incredible air of entitlement. You are asking this individual for a favor, and you are honestly thinking about badgering them to make a recommendation letter more than one page long (who wants to read that, anyway?) and include loads of specific examples? This is a presumably busy person who is willing to take time out of their busy schedule to altruistically help you out, and here you are complaining that they aren't doing enough.
I can understand that this is your future, so you are very invested in it, but that doesn't excuse taking the kindness of others for granted. It's bad enough that you are given access to the letter, now you want to edit it? Usually, or at least very often, such letters are sent directly to the target institution and the student has no idea what is in them.
Now, setting aside the presumptuous nature of asking for more than one page and many specific examples, I also feel it will be counterproductive. Nobody wants to read a multi-page essay on how wonderful a candidate is. First because that will be very boring and second because it will come across as fake. It will feel as though someone asked a personal friend to write the letter and then was breathing down their neck pushing them to add more and more. So even if you do convince this poor professor to write something long enough to please you, that is very unlikely to come across in a positive light for the admission committee.
If I were you, I would go back to this professor, thank them very, very much, apologize for being pushy and hope that you haven't damaged your relationship with them beyond repair. If it were me, I would be seriously reconsidering whether I would ever want to work with a student who turned out to be so ungrateful.

Thank you for your insights. But, I should mention that the things I have written here all happened in my head. I had to ask someone whether I am right or not. It was a friendly chat and no one was pushy. Also, I am not his student. We have been working together as colleagues and I have been appreciative and will be appreciative. Overall, I believe it is a good thing to get the opinion of the person your are writing the letter for, especially if you believe they have something to add and to not be so certain that you think even a polite suggestion is a transgression worthy of punishment.

This answer is unnecessarily critical of the asker.  If the asker is "entitled," that is not relevant to the question and does not belong in your answer.

@DIanon I find the idea of the person who asked for a recommendation letter pushing the author to make it "better" fundamentally rude. It has nothing to do with whether you are a professional or not; if anything, that would make it worse since you would be expected to know how these things work as a professional. If I got a recommendation letter that i) was shown to me for some reason and ii) I did not consider good enough, I would simply not send it, I wouldn't presume to ask for better praise. I just feel you may be seriously misreading the situation and how your request may come across.

@AnonymousPhysicist I felt that it was important to let the OP know that they may be coming across this way. What is described in the question feels so out of line to me, it seemed the best way I could help is to point that out.

@terdon The point is that I did not know whether the letter is good or not. So, I had to ask others' opinions. However, when one agrees to write a strong letter and then the content he proposes does not conform to the published guidelines, you should either tell him, as you propose, to not bother with the letter anymore (which is itself very rude and not possible) or at least be safe in asking whether it is possible to or even preferable to add something. They can always refuse.

@DIanon as you wish. But note that there is no such thing as "published guidelines" for this sort of thing.

@terdon Nevertheless, I will take your collective advice and will trust his judgement. Also, I genuinely wanted to express my opinion. I hope I have not been rude.

@DIanon not to us! :) And I really do understand the nervousness and pressure you will be feeling, don't worry. That's why I felt I needed to write this as an outside observer.

Please desist from calling people rude for actions they did not take.

@AnonymousPhysicist I did not call anybody anything. I described how certain actions can be perceived, how the situation described in the OP appears to me in the hopes that this outside perspective may be helpful. I understand that you disagree, as you have every right to do, but I didn't characterize any person here. The simple truth is that the behavior described in the OP is shocking to me.

You described the behavior.  The asker did not.

Abort!
If a professor takes the time to write a letter of recommendation for you, and you come back to them saying that it is not good enough, this is highly offensive (and I do not believe I am easily offended).
There are three possible reasons why you may think the letter is too short or not detailed enough:

The professor doesn't really think that highly of you. In this case, it is common to write a concise letter which says more by not saying too much. By your description, this does not appear to be the case here.
The professor has taken the time to write a good letter, but not done a very good job.
You have unrealistic expectations on how fulsome a letter of recommendation should be. In my judgment, this is the case in this situation.

If #1 is true, nothing you can do or say will improve your letter. If #2 is true, you are calling the professor incompetent. If #3 is the case, you should of course not say anything.
In short, by continuing down this path you are far more likely to lose the support of your professor (and thus the letter, and much more, entirely), than you are to get the letter changed.

This is not an appropriate answer because it assumes the asker did something (criticized the letter) that was not mentioned in the question.


text:
University made the decision that they wany to keep my PhD application for the next round. What to make of it? What to do?
I applied to a university, but it was a late application. They seemed interested in my case and I was even interviewed by my potential supervisor who told me he would recommend me. After the results were released, however, they communicated to me that they wanted to keep it for the next round. Of course, they explicitly mentioned that this is not a negative result, but I was wondering whether this is a common decision made by the universities?
Also, in the decision period, I emailed my potential supervisor a couple of times, giving him updates on what measures I am taking regarding my research topic, for instance. He responded once. Should I contact him again? Or should I just wait?
A related question I have is whether it is acceptable to apply to other universities, in the meantime, with the same research proposal?
Thanks.

Yes, you should definitely apply elsewhere.

it was a late application.

It means it went into the bin "if we really need to fill the position, and we have no other candidates, let's consider this applicant, too"

they communicated to me that they did not have time to review my case

They did not review your case.

and they wanted to keep it for the next round.

They keep it just in case they don't fill the future position with the future applications, and with the future late application. Plus there may be some strange data protection law, where they have to log through long processes to manually delete your application, so it is easier for them to keep it open in their records until automatic deletion incurs.

explicitly mentioned that this is not a negative result

In fact it is not any result, they said "we did not review your case".
So, going to your question(s):

Should I contact him again as the results will be released several months from now?

Not useful to contact him about the results, very useful to contact him proactively to write a proposal to fund your research with him/her indipendent of the PhD selection process.

Or should I just wait?

For that specific PhD application? Yes. Wait next year application round and go through that.

is it acceptable to apply to other universities, in the meantime, with the same research proposal?

Yes. But be smart: try to align your proposal with the state-of-art of the focus of the department research [1]. Do it without taking your proposal as a founding stone, but as a raft with which you sail through the topic. You may have some pleasant but uncomfortable surprise, after feeling drowned in the subject (this department is completely wrong?!) you will realize you can swim in the topic of your choice.
[1] example: if you are interested in research on water cycle and water movement, you may be interested in seeing how rainwater infiltrates the soil and ends up in agricultural fields. However, it would be not wise to propose this topic in the context of "rainfall in the Tibetan plateau" to a geophysics department that is switching from "climate research" to "industrial applications" ...

My application is still lodged in their system with a 2022 date and it is "pending". They updated it themselves. So if they wanted it to be deleted, why update it? Also, when you say "wait next year application round and go through that", what do you mean exactly? Apart from applying to other places, is there anything else I can do for this university?

You did apply for them, you did not sign with blood an exclusivity contract. You are just applying for acceptance to a PhD plus fundings. It may not seem obvious, but, if your CV allows you to be accepted, it does not mean you will get fundings. On the other hand, if you manage to get external fundings, your CV will almost surely be considered good enough to be accepted in the PhD program and to speed up or find exceptions to whatever application process you are going through.
So, with respect to that application you cannot do anything else, but you are free to do everything else.


text:
writing a brief description of yourself
I have just started my first job in a company as an engineer, I was asked to write a brief description of myself which will be sent to all the staffs.
Could you please provide some template? how we can write an interesting autobiography?
edited: Having said that some humor or random facts can be included in this bio.

Is that a challenge get "interesting" and "engineer" in the same sentence?

I would recommend asking whoever is asking you to do this for a past example. Different institutions have vastly different styles -- e.g. some places might be OK with including some humor or random facts in your bio, whereas other places are all business.
That said, you can always get some generic examples by googling "bio examples".
(Also, since this is a workplace question, it's probably more appropriate for https://workplace.stackexchange.com.)

I would recommand to make it short with only a few sentences. You should mention relevant academic steps and/or relevant experiences. You can also add achievements, random facts, humor and hobbies. The style should reflect your personality or how you want to be percieved by the other staffs.
A good example should be provided by the top executives of your company and the information should be available on the website of the company and could be used as a template.
I agree with ekl that considering the culture of the workplace/company is important for the style/format of the description.

some humor or random facts can be included in this bio.


text:
Could a student with plagiarism in assignment get a high grade in a class?
This semester I took a course and the prof is very restrict with the assignments, I had special circumstances (due to my research and my displacement), which required me to commute between cities to attend the classes. I was 3-1 hours late in submitting my assignments and he was considering big penalties for that. (What I mean is a delay in submission, and it was not more than a day.)
I think penalties are good if the prof is going to give us feedback and assignment grades during the semester, before finals. But this prof announced the assignment grade a week after our final exam, and he still considers those big penalties.
I am in my graduate studies, I rarely have seen such penalties for a grad student, for being late for a day as we all are busy with our research and thises. These things are for undergrads.
I noticed that a classmate who was caught by the same prof for one plagiarized assignment got a high grade. That guy copied all of his assignments from another guy in the class and got caught only once. I was really shocked when I noticed that guy got A+ even though he did plagiarize. (plagiarism happened in the current course, and the current assignment, his ultimate grade came high, he plagiarized in the assignments and got caught in only one) {The classmates who got caught told me that they got caught and also showed prof's email regarding their plagiarized assignment }
I did not plagiarize and my circumstances were unique in the class, he considered penalties for my late submissions, and he is a hard grader. I also asked my advisor to communicate my circumstances but the instructor never considered any exception for me. I am in my last semester and now I have the lowest mark from him in my A+ GPA.
Is this fair to give hight grade to a person that did plagiarism and put such penalties for late submission?
By late submission, I mean that you submit your assignment a day late. Max a day late.
Edited: Late announcement of assignments grade is a harmful and stupid thing because the assignments are supposed to be graded on time, a week, or 2 weeks after submission. The prof did not grade and give us feedback during the semester and he graded them after our final exam. Assignments are for improvements and we only can improve ourselves if we get feedback at the right time, NOT AT THE END OF SEMESTER. End of semester is a bit late for getting grades for assignments.

this prof announced the assignment grade a week after our final exam Which is hilarious: Why is that?

What does "3-1 hours late" mean?

The way you write here will not make you friends (or upvotes). Why do you care about what grades other people get? Why is this "hilarious"? And why shouldn't it be fair? The prof probably has leeway (for good or bad reasons) to punish different crimes differently, or does he violate university rules?

What you describe seems fair to me except for the "nonsense reasons" in the penultimate paragraph. Could you describe them instead? Were they really nonsense (like grading you not for academic reasons, but for other reasons?)?

I think the writing of the question can be improved. However, OP is not wrong in observing that the prof is clearly negligent to check for plagiarism on their side while marking down for negligence on the student side. In other words, not applying the same principles to their own duty as they apply to the student. If the plagiarism happened in some other work, then this is irrelevant, of course, but it is not clear here whether it was previous plagiarism that OP complains about or plagiarism in the current assignment.

We had assignments and plagiarism happened in the current assignment, in the current course.

Could you explain how many hours you were lated, if the prof knew about the plagiarism (except for this one ocasation) and what the "nonsense reasons" refernto? And maybe, if you have time, also answer the other questions from my comment?

To confirm: the other student got an A+, despite committing plagiarism on the very assignment he got an A+ for? Well, that's clearly the prof's checks not working correctly. On the other hand, checking for delayed submission is far easier. Do you have proof that the other student has plagiarised? If yes, you could raise a complaint to the examinations office (or whoever is responsible for fair grading at your place) that the assessment does not provide an equitable opportunity for the participants.

This is little more than a rant. The body contains no answerable question.

It is hilarious because the assignments are supposed to be graded on time, a week, or 2 weeks after submission. Is it a week? Or two weeks? Is this your opinion or formal policy? Assignments are for improvements and we only can improve ourselves if we get feedback at the right time Is this your opinion or formal policy? The end of semester is a bit late for getting grades for assignments. Why?

I guess we have different definitions, but I think it's a bit childish for a graduate student to be unable to find a way to get their assignments in on time regularly. A one-off special circumstance is one thing, whereas your post here comes off as extremely entitled. It's not typical for a grad student to be penalized so much for lateness because it's not typical for them to be so late. Yet you expect assignments to be returned to you graded on a schedule you prefer when you won't do the assignments on one?

@BryanKrause: While this answer really come off as entitled and childish, I think the answerer has a problem with the penality because the lecturer is late with returning them. (And to be fair, this is bad -- the students most likely have no way to penalize the professor for being late.)

As a graduate student, you should be learning how to take facts, distill them, and write a coherent summary. Maybe apply those skills to this question?

@ Kathy, thank you for the advice, I am a non-English speaker.  I think my question is clear.

@ user111388 , he is a hard grader. please read the edited version.

@user111388 I agree it's bad pedagogy to delay returning assignments, but that has to be a complaint from other students in the class who are capable of meeting their own deadlines, not from the one who can't. Justifying your own bad behavior with someone else's is an irresponsible path.

@BryanKrause: I disagree here. i think it's appropriate by students who are never late and also by those students who are late and get penalized for that.

@Bryan Krause, students, all are paying tuition. it's appropriate for all students attending class.

Welcome to Academia.SE. Sadly, I must agree with the others that I don't see an answerable question here. Moreover, litigating your professor's actions ("is it fair that...?) here will not be constructive.

I noticed that a classmate who was caught...for one plagiarized assignment got a high grade

They plagiarized in the past, there's no reason they cannot reform and get a high grade.

[The prof] applied penalties for my late submissions and took marks for nonsense reasons.

Marks were removed for lateness, not nonsense reasons.

Is this fair?

Yes: It is reasonable that student got a high grade, whilst you were penalised for lateness.
It would be unfair if students were able to submit assignments late to get extra time.

EDIT: The revised question claims the student with a high grade plagiarised to get the grade. It remains unclear if this is speculation or fact. Regardless, it remains fair that the OP was punished for lateness.

How do you mean, by "past"? The plagiarism happened on the same course and the same prof caught it.

@programmer Past meaning: Not the assignment they got a high grade on.


text:
How to negociate your grade wih prof who is discriminating?
I am a grad level student and took my last course this semester. We had several assiged him better since he is advising that student.
What would you do a prof grade you less than what you expected? How should I talk to him?

"I shared my solution with one of my classmates, he...copied my solution" <-- I would approach this very carefully...

@cag51, how do you mean exactly?

Sharing our solution is possibly a violation. You may be lucky to have lost only a few points rather than being accused of misconduct.  Raising the issue may lead to uncomfortable questions.

@ cag51 did not give him the chance to copy me, just told him how to solve. The copying didnot actually happened.

Showing you how to solve it could be cheating.

"I guided him to solve" - the supervisor? Probably you mean your friend?

This question is one reason why it is always a good idea to mark anonymously.

Scruffy poorly laid out work that is correct can score less than slightly incorrect work that is neat...

Sorry, but the last edit makes the question rather unclear and not suitable for a possible reopening.

The rules in your university may differ, but in places where I worked, students typically are expected to trust the professionalism and academic judgement of their lecturers/professors and can not appeal or "negotiate" their mark only because they feel that they deserve a better one. But they can appeal if they believe the assessment procedure was compromised.
If you really want to appeal your results, I'd suggest to submit your appeal following your university procedures. But before you do, check that you understand the meaning of the words that you are using, and how to spell them.
For example, discrimination is the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex. Assigning random marks is not a discrimination. Favouritism is not a discrimination. Giving other student two marks more is not a discrimination.
Engaging yourself and other students in collusion/plagiarism is likely a violation of the academic conduct / honour code of your university. It appears that you either do not fully understand the rules by which academia and your university live, or do not feel that they apply to you. This is a very poor ground to start throwing accusations against your professor.

From the post, I understand the prof discriminates against people he does not advise (similar to Prof. Snape from Harry Potter)

@user111388 Since prof probably chooses the people they advise, this is more accurately described as favouritism, not discrimination. Discrimination is unjust treatment  of different categories, not any groups.


text:
how to deal with this prof when he gives you his lowest grade?
Now our marks came out and the average is 94 and he gave me 2 marks less than the average of the class. (This means that I have got the lowest grade in the class)
I am overthinking these days and getting a headache.
I really want to figure out what is his intention and why is he playing with my future?
I always study hard to get everything done in high quality; I always compare my work with other classmates to correct myself; I do not know why he gave me his lowest grades?
Should Ph.D. students get higher than master students? is there any range?
or
I am getting this just because I am a girl...

What country is this? What language is the course offered in?

Maybe you got the grade you did because your work warranted it? You saw some of the other students' work, but not all of it; you don't know exactly what the grading criteria were or how they were applied to your work or anyone else's; it's hard for you to know whether your complete body of work was really better than anyone else's.

nikki, maybe your work warranted a lower grade and maybe it was discrimination. How do you know it is the latter case? Please clarify your question by explaining.

@Thomas, I did my presentations and I did my project, part of my project was dependent on data that was coming from another student. I did all that I could do.

the average is 94 and he gave me 2 marks less than the average of the class It sounds like you still got a pretty good grade. I don't see how you can jump to the conclusion that it was discrimination.

You should assume the grading is fair unless there is a reason to believe otherwise, which you don't seem to have.

"I really want to figure out what is his intention and why is he playing with my future?" Sounds to me that you are overthinking this. I also agree with Thomas above, 94 sounds high if out of 100. Also, @ff524 is trying to offer you thoughts but you are criticizing their comments with your response... You sound biased to your own thoughts without trying to look at this as a whole.

You're mixing together multiple issues here.  TA positions going to PhD students before masters students?  No surprise whatsoever.  Supervisors spending more time with his PhD advisees and hounding them until they learn the material, because they have to use it in their future research?  No surprise there.  Funding going to what the PhD students need first?  No surprise.

And I'm not sure how getting a laptop would help if your work needs a strong GPU... what would really benefit you is a remote login to a workstation with GPU horsepower levels that could never exist in a laptop (power and cooling requirements)

I'm a bit confused in how big of a difference 2 marks is, and what grading system you are working under - if you mean you got a 92 when a 94 was the average, I'd consider that a meaningless difference and not even worth thinking about, as in the US that pretty much means you got an A or an A- and is fine either way. But if you mean you got a C when everyone else got an A, that of course suggests the professor really thinks you did not do well at all, and would be worth requesting to meet with them and ask if they can help you understand why your grade was so low. Could you clarify the grade?

@BrianH: A grading system that makes a 92 a C and a 96 an A is absurd. Besides, wouldn’t most schools have a policy that grades in the 90s should be A’s?

@aeismail What I'm unsure about is where the "92" comes from - the 94 is from the OP, and then they say "two marks", but they never specify what they mean by that term. Is marks percentage points, or is it "letter grades"? In different countries I've heard points, marks, and grades all used in such an odd variety of ways that I'm never sure how they might map to my US-specific understanding of the terms, and I'm not even sure the where the OP is uses a letter grade scale at all. But I've heard people referring to a C as "two marks below an A", so I want to make sure we aren't misunderstanding

Did you ask the professor to explain the grade? I'm sure he's better able to than we are.

You should assume the grading is fair, unless there is a reason to believe otherwise. Based on your question and comments, I don't see any reason to believe that discrimination is involved.
You state that you did everything that was required, just like the other students. That doesn't mean you should get exactly the same grade as them. Perhaps your presentation was not as clear as the others or your project had some minor flaws. It is very hard for you to judge that yourself -- you are neither an expert like the professor is nor objective in self-evaluation.
You received a 92, which is below the class average of 94. To me, that still sounds like a good grade and you shouldn't be concerned. Trying to argue for every last point is not productive -- it's called grade grubbing.

If you feel you're being discriminated against, approach the support services of your university. If you don't know what they are, try approaching the head of department, or if you feel the discrimination is coming based on your gender & the HoD is male, approach a female faculty member. Before you do this, make sure the things you're complaining about aren't normal procedure at your institution - for example, most people would not find it surprising that PhD students are offered teaching assistantships preferentially over Masters students.
I should say that in this kind of dispute, evidence will be paramount. It doesn't sound like the evidence you have is strong; certainly what you've written wasn't enough to convince the people who've left a comment. You probably will want something more tangible before escalating the dispute: some kind of paper trail that shows the professor is not being fair.

More accurately: If you have evidence that you are being discriminated against....


text:
Limitations of method and evaluation
A (master) thesis about the development and assessment of an algorithm has some limitations. The method chapter is organized as follows:

Algorithm Description
Simulated Scenarios
Evaluation method

The algorithm itself is not optimal and potential flaws exist in some modules.
The simulated scenarios were selected in order to create a representative assessment, but are not covering the entire range of possible conditions.
The evaluation method is based on a number of simplifications which might lead to faulty final results.
To make sure it doesn't seem like I'm hiding something, I would like to describe all of these limitations. Where would this fit best? In the individual sections of the Method chapter? Could I title the chapter after methods "Results and Discussion" and mention it there? Or in the conclusion?

Since the limitations you describe are related to the coverage of the scenarios, I would describe them in the "simulated scenarios" section. If you really have a lot of content about these limitations, then it deserves its own section in the method chapter.
Then in the discussion part you can mention them again if relevant, e.g. "it's possible that results would differ if..." with a ref to the method chapter.
Traditionally the conclusion is a summary of your findings and a description of further work. If relevant you could mention "cover more scenarios" in the latter, but that's not where the explanations about the limitations should be.

"Could I title the chapter after methods "Results and Discussion" and mention it there?"

Yes, I would discuss the limitations within Results and Discussion.  It only makes sense in that context.  You might restate this in Conclusions as well.
I think you need to have a Results and Discussion section regardless.  This is a normal section of a technical report.  Even if there were no limitations.  Usually Methods discusses what your experimental plan was.  Results and Discussion (sometimes separate, sometimes together, I prefer together) describes the outcome of the experiments and the implications of the data.  It sounds a bit like you were going to be having results within Methods and no Results/Discussion sections (strange).

Some basic advice:  Clarity in Technical Reporting  (See pages 8-13.)


text:
Is it OK to mention dreams and future plans for a specific company in my SOP when applying for master's degree?
I am about to apply for Master's degree at a University in US that specializes in game development. I have been playing and I am a huge fan of Blizzard games for almost 15 years and the reason I pursue a higher education is to broaden my knowledge and sharpen my skills so that I can land on my dream job.
I wanted to mention this (in a politically correct manner) because I think it shows determination. Is this a good idea or would it hurt my statement?

this comment might be late, but why do you want to be a game maker, not a professional gamer? The answer will go to your SOP.

@Ooker that is what happened and I'm just about to finish my first semester after I deliver my game engine project in 48h :)

good luck to you :). I'm always a zealot of StarCraft :D

Unlike the other existing answer, I would advise you to tread carefully.

Maybe this is different for a Master's in game development, but generally speaking, "I like to play computer games" qualifies as the #1 worst reason we get to hear about why students are interested in computer science. One of the reasons why this is such a bad motivation is because it shows a certain level of misunderstanding about what computer science is, and I would argue that this is even true for a master in game development.
Even great computer game developers are, to the best of my knowledge, not only interested in gaming, but also in AI, computer graphics and animation, HCI, physical simulation, distributed systems, optimization, etc. Not all of them at the same time, but being "just" interested in building cool games seems rather weak, to be honest. I think it can be pretty much implied that you are interested in games if you apply for game development. Show and discuss your interests in other related areas that sets you apart from all the other applying gamers.
Also, having working at Blizzard as your dream job does not show determination. Many people have this as their dream job, and still do not follow through. Determination is doing something to make your dream a reality despite problematic circumstances, not having a dream in the first place. You should explain what you did, not what you hope to achieve.

It's a good idea. The statement of purpose should explain why you specifically should get the opportunity to do a Masters, and having a good plan for what you want to do with it is definitely a plus there.
I would however caution you that pretty much everyone who applies to such a Maters degree probably has similar plans and a similar background with a lot of playing games. Therefore, you should try to be a bit more specific than what you have here. What sets you apart from everyone else who has played a lot of games and wants to work for Blizzard?

Thanks for the answer and the caution. I think I got that part covered (hopefully) by mentioning my academic studies, projects and my mentality while studying undergrad. Too bad I failed to mention that I am applying for a master's degree :) Does your argument of it being a good idea still hold?


text:
How can I get a PhD position to work on solving a particular mathematics problem that I have formulated independently?
I have a pure mathematics problem which I formulated after years of research in signal processing of audio signals and years going into formulating a problem on precise mathematical terms, which is a provable/disprovable mathematical statement. (I avoid using the term conjecture as I am not qualified enough)
My belief is that it has very important applications in real world signal processing. I want to solve this math problem, and I need funding, research environment, collaborators, and access to mathematicians for discussions. All this I believe is provided by a PhD position in a University that is serious about path breaking research. My goal is to solve this particular problem and not any other problem.
How can I go about achieving this goal?
Edit : summary of problem
In effect i have proposed a new formula for inverse fourier transform with no assumption on its jumps except that they are finite and absent beyond a certain point. This new formula ensures not only pointwise convergence but also convegence of variation. Classical Fourier formula does not have convegence of variation in the presence of jumps.

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Unfortunately, I expect it will be difficult to find a supervisor who will take you on under these circumstances.  It's not impossible, but it will require finding exactly the right match, and that will require a lot of luck.
Here are some of the issues that will worry potential advisors:

What if the problem is too easy, and turns out not to be substantial enough for a Ph.D. thesis?  Will you drop out from graduate school in disgust?  Will you angrily insist that you signed up to write your dissertation on this topic and now they have to let you graduate?
What if the problem is too hard, and you spend several years in graduate school with no hint of progress or even the potential for future progress?  When your advisor suggests changing course, will you listen?  Or will you keep banging your head against this problem until they kick you out for lack of progress?
What if the problem doesn't end up being nearly as interesting or important as you hope?  Will you accept this outcome, or will you turn into a crackpot who insists that the rest of the research community is just wrong?
Are you too emotionally invested in this problem to judge whether you are making progress or how interesting it is?  How painful or awkward would it be to work with you on this topic?
Are you interested in learning how to do anything else besides work on this specific problem?  The purpose of a Ph.D. program is to train researchers with some breadth, not just to solve one specific problem, so you need to maintain some perspective and longer-term goals than any single problem.

It's possible that none of these issues is an actual problem, but few people will agree to supervise this thesis unless they have enough knowledge of both you and your problem to feel reassured.  Unfortunately, the bar for "enough knowledge" is probably pretty high.  I wouldn't do it unless I knew you relatively well and had spent some time thinking seriously about the problem.  This is not going to happen during the ordinary graduate admissions process.
Instead, I think you're probably best off not worrying too much about graduate admissions, and instead just focusing on convincing people that this is an important problem.  If you can make a real intellectual connection with a professor based on this problem, then you can explore whether it might be a suitable topic for a Ph.D. thesis.  Otherwise, applying to graduate school for the sole purpose of working on this problem is likely to be fruitless.
(To be clear, I might be wrong about this, but it's my impression based on the limited information in your question.)

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@AnonymousMathematician : "What if the problem is too easy", The advisor would have selected me, not that the problem is definitely difficult, but it is of very important to math research. So in case it is solved easily, that should still get me a PhD. Reference : Thesis of John Nash on  Nash Equilibria, its a simple proof but of great value! and has won him both PhD and Nobel!

@RajeshDachiraju: You're right that solving your problem might still be enough for a Ph.D., even if it turns out to be more doable than expected, but you shouldn't count on this.  (In particular, Nash's thesis is an exceptional case.)  It's unlikely that a potential advisor will guarantee you a Ph.D. for solving this problem, no matter how it plays out.  Instead, a more likely scenario is that they'll give you a chance but wait and see what happens with the actual dissertation.

@RajeshDachiraju Are you perhaps from an engineering/computer science background and are interested in shifting to maths?

It sounds like you have a singular focus on achieving the following two goals:

Getting into a fully funded, high quality pure math PhD program.
Using your position as a funded PhD student to solve a particular math problem you have formulated, and nothing else.

Let's start by thinking how you can achieve the first of these two goals. The thing to keep in mind is that PhD programs decide whom to admit based on the applicant's potential to successfully complete a PhD. So, the extent to which your plan formulated in item 2 above will help you get into the PhD program depends precisely on what it says about your potential to complete the PhD.
Unfortunately, by stating that you are uninterested in working on any other math problem, I think you are likely to hinder your application, and make it less likely that you are admitted, by showing that you have less potential to successfully complete a PhD than other students with more normal plans. The reason for this is that you are taking an approach to math research that any experienced mathematician knows is a bad one, which is to "put all your eggs in one basket". The fact is, most research problems that mathematicians work on end up leading nowhere, and for this reason experienced mathematicians know that in research one must be open minded and try to work on many problems to have a good chance of success, and that even when working on a specific problem one must be flexible and willing to change one's goal as one acquires a more nuanced understanding of the problem.
Likewise, if you dedicate yourself to solving your problem and doing nothing else, it is overwhelmingly more likely that one of the following things will happen rather than your dream scenario of solving it and getting a PhD based on that solution:

The problem will end up being too difficult and you will not succeed in solving it.
You will discover that the problem is known and is solved in some obscure paper from the 1950s, or is an easy corollary of a well-known result.
You will discover that the problem is easy and has a trivial solution, and moreover the application you had in mind will turn out to be not as useful as you thought, making the result unpublishable.
The problem will end up being at a good difficulty level. You will solve it after a year or two of work, only to discover that for subtle reasons you did not appreciate beforehand, the application you had in mind is not as useful as you thought, making the result publishable but not very interesting, and not enough to get a PhD for or to make you feel that the whole endeavor was worth the effort you put into it.

To summarize, your attitude as it currently stands positions you as a difficult person with unrealistic goals and expectations about what it means to be in a PhD program -- not a good image for someone trying to get into such a program. If you really want to achieve goal number 1, let alone goal number 2, you need to think about how you can present yourself as a more attractive candidate. As Anonymous Mathematician explained, that means being more open minded and expressing curiosity about getting a broad exposure to many areas of math and many research problems, and not just showing a singular desire to perform one feat you have set your mind on and which no one else is yet convinced is either worth doing or feasible to perform.
You also need to get rid of the mindset (as expressed in your comment "You know how difficult it is to come up with a provable mathematics statement thats not trivial and absent in the literature?") that by formulating a new math problem you have done something amazing that shows some special level of talent. You may have done something amazing, and you may be really talented, and the fact that you came up with a reasonable-sounding open problem does say something mildly nice about you, but frankly, open problems are a dime a dozen (one can easily find hundreds of them on MathOverflow). You can mention the problem in your Statement of Purpose, and perhaps some people on admissions committees will be impressed by it, but your unhealthy focus on the problem at the moment is much more likely to hurt your application than it is to help it.

Can I start with an internship and probably take on, based on how things go?

@Rajesh I don't understand exactly what you're asking. If you want to do a PhD, you need to get into a PhD program. If you are unsure and want to try something smaller first, yes there are various internship-like research programs you can apply for - in the US they're called Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU). As the name implies, they are typically geared towards undergraduates, so if you're not a student you might have to look for other options. You can also contact professors about doing an informal summer project, but you'll have to convince them it's worth their time. Good luck.

I mean if the advisor has doubts, then he can probably put me on an intership and later convert it to full time phd?

@RajeshDachiraju no that's really not how it works. You need to read up on PhD programs and how they work. This is not the place to discuss it, but after you do some studying on the subject, feel free to post a new question on academia.se if you still need advice.

You want to work on a particular problem. You do not yet seem to have all the tools needed to do independent research, such as literature searches, paper writing and notation skills, and a mathematics academic network. If you had all those skills your mathematics question would not have needed so many edits and would have been accompanied by a survey paper showing the current and historical state of the most closely related research that exists. A PhD would indeed be a very good way of building those skills, but you are trying to jump straight to research on your problem, skipping the tools-building step.
Instead, you should use the a PhD program for what PhD programs are designed to do, to aid you in becoming a fully competent researcher in your area. For that purpose, the choice of problems is much less important than what you learn working on them. You can learn, for example, to write publishable papers by writing papers about something in the general area, in close collaboration with published researchers.
Late in or immediately after the PhD you should revisit your problem, trying to step back from it emotionally and evaluate it as you should have learned to evaluate problems during your studies. Do you think it is important? Interesting to any community with journals etc. in which you could publish? Unsolved? Solvable with reasonable effort? If the answer it all those questions is "yes", either look for a post doc that will let you do independent research or look for a reasonably easy industry job that will leave you enough time and energy to work on your problem, and go for it.

FYI. The OP mentioned "I currently work in a company and it has potential usefulness to it" in one of his comments (now moved to chat).

@scaaahu I know, but I am encouraging the OP to think again about that, and all aspects of the OP's question, after practicing considering other research questions, and having stepped back from it a bit.

I disagree with the previous answers. A student who has a serious proposal for a research project is highly motivated and probably gifted and well educated. So when it comes to hiring this would be a big bonus. As long as the proposal is slightly related to my own interests, I can give useful advice. Different from experimental fields, in mathematics a Ph.D. student does not help her advisor, if you are really interested in something, you do it yourself. In fact, it is important to be not too interested in their problems, because otherwise you would constantly have to pretend that you are not ahead of the student.
However, looking at your webpage I have great doubts that this proposal is well suited for a Ph.D. It deals with a problem in a rather old-fashioned area, so it might have been answered 80 years ago without many people today knowing so. The convergence questions you raise should be doable within a few weeks. The problem of approximating functions without increasing the variation is also not new, in fact this is one of the big advantages of splines.

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Successful research professors are those that can get grant money for a specific research project. They then spend this money on doctoral candidates and post docs who will work on their project.  It's very unlikely that a faculty member is going to devote much of his time and money to someone else's research project and generally it would not be ethical for him to do so.
Your best hope, and it's a slim one, is to apply for a research grant yourself.

Can I persuade a Professor to write proposal for grant on my problem and then recruit me for it as a PhD student. Is this a good form of collaboration?

Can I persuade a Professor to write proposal for grant on my problem and then recruit me for it as a PhD student. -- Realistically? No. You can't.

Programme grants for large numbers of PhD students at a time do have a bit more leeway, leaving the details of individual projects to the discretion of the programme leaders. (And if you have spotted something very wrong with that concept, well done, you are entirely correct.)

For the reasons mentioned by the others, I would recommend that you search for an appropriate open science portal, and start working on the problem yourself. (It's better you don't join a PhD program just to tackle this problem).
Be sure to try and explain why you think it is important, and possible applications for it, and so on. The better you communicate, the more chances of people actually getting on board, and providing you with their expertise (which you will need).
It needs to gather steam in the community, which might take some time (assuming it doesn't get shot down immediately). Once you have had a few people go over it and give you their take on it, you'll be in a better position to know what to do next.

Could you please give a few open science portals?

You can try looking at https://osf.io/ Also, do a general google search for more portals.To be honest, it looks like open collaboration is just getting started, and there are plenty of challenges for someone looking to jump into the deep end right away, but it might be worth the effort, depending on your level of motivation and whether you have the time for it. Good luck!

You want to work on a particular mathematics problem.  You think you have nailed down the scope of the problem, and you think it is applicable to a real world problem.  You are highly motivated.  You feel that to make meaningful progress with this problem, you need to receive funding so you can devote yourself full time to this project, and easy access to collaborators.  Although I don't think you said this, I got the impression you also feel you would benefit from some targeted coursework.
You have the idea that a PhD would be the way to go about things.

Did I get that about right?  If so:
How about you try to put together a self-study program?  Figure out what you need to learn; find a mentor; take some classes; attend seminars.  To resolve the funding issue: don't quit your day job.
It may be that as you are going along this path, you will find yourself gravitating towards a PhD program for broader reasons than you currently have.  And then that would be a natural next step.
For now, though, it sounds like you have the drive and interest to keep you going without a department providing a particular structure for your endeavor.  (As others have pointed out, a department's structure doesn't align perfectly with your goals.)
Best wishes for your studies and for your project!

This will work if the OP has no knowledge blind spots - things the OP needs to learn but is not aware of the need to know them.

In your shoes, I would apply to a "bunch" of PhD programs, and write about your desire to take a PhD program for the purpose of solving this problem in your Statement of Purpose. I wouldn't go much further than this, and ask for funding and research grants until I got admitted. The single-minded focus on the one problem will give people a clue about your level of interest.
You may be asked to work on a few "other things," but hopefully, your posture will land you in a program that will allow you to spend most of your time (80% or more) pursuing your field of interest.
In giving you this advice, I'm assuming that you want a PhD for this one purpose only, and have no other reason for seeking a degree. If there are "other" reasons, I would make solving this problem only "part" of my Statement of Purpose.

The OP does not want to screen for "people who are highly interested in the same topic" - the OP wants people who will allow him to work on this problem, and nothing else. This is so extremely unusual that unless he explicitly says in his SOP "I am not interested in working on any other problem", those reading his application will assume that he is also interested in related problems, and not only the specific problem he described.

I don't think that fixes the problem with this answer: the problem is that the OP only wants to be admitted to a program that will allow him to work on this one problem and nothing else, and following the suggestion in this answer will not do that. You should at least point out that if he is admitted to a program following this answer, he should not expect to be allowed to work on "his" problem and nothing else.

@ff524: The OP will need to engage in "give and take" with the program of his choice. The idea is that he searches for the most compatible program for his needs, and after he finds interest on the other side, he negotiates to get as much of what he wants as possible, and give as little as possible of things he doesn't want to do.

I suggest editing the answer to say that! Seems like an important detail ;)

@ff524: See my latest edit.

In giving you this advice, I'm assuming that you want a PhD for this one purpose only, and have no other reason for seeking a degree. You don't need to assume it, it's stated very clearly in the question. But answering OP's literal question in a way that humors his very misguided premise that wanting such a thing is a reasonable or productive thing to want, makes this a not very good answer. If he were to ask how to write a grant application for building a homemade rocket to fly to the moon, would you advise him on what font to write it in?

@DanRomik: That's the "hook" to get him into a PhD program. Maybe he'll change his mind after he "arrives." I'd rather have a candidate, even a "misguided" one, than no candidate at all.

@TomAu There is "misguided", and there is "missing the point".

I completely disagree with the sentiment behind That's the "hook" to get him into a PhD program. Maybe he'll change his mind after he "arrives." I'd rather have a candidate, even a "misguided" one, than no candidate at all. There is absolutely no benefit to "tricking" somebody into a PhD program that isn't what he wants or needs. A "misguided" prospective PhD student who doesn't understand what he's getting into is not in a better position than someone who makes an informed decision not to pursue a PhD.


text:
My adviser threatens to kick me out if I am not to be a full time student
Background: I have been in the Phd Program since fall 2010, I have made great academic progress (two papers published in journals). From the 4th semester (spring, 2012), I have started working in a company and still a part time student in school. Till now, I am still keeping doing research and publish another paper and one conference paper. As I have finished all coursework requirement (72 semester hours, I transfer some credits from MS), I plan to work in the company and be a part time student to finish the degree.
From last month, my adviser kept asked what's my plan. I told him I will make my decision in mid-July as I can know my H1b working visa is approved or not. He send me another email ( I post here for information). My impression is he is threatening me...
Any suggestion? Again, it's difficult to look for a job for international students in such economics. I hope I can work and study as a part time student to finish the degree.

Your advisor's e-mail sounds troubling, but without more information it's not clear what can be done.  (Some departments have policies against part-time Ph.D. study, or allow advisors to set their own policies, in which case there is probably nothing you can do.  So the first question is what the relevant department and university policies are.)  Overall, this question is formulated in a way that's quite specific to your situation, and it would be a better fit for this site if it were more written to emphasize the parts likely to apply more broadly.

Don't walk.  Run.

@JeffE I think that should be an answer. It is the best advice I can think of.

@JefE: I agree. make it an answer. There seem to be bigger problems here.

It is completely inappropriate for an advisor to send an email like that. The email makes it clear that this is an advisor that you should steer clear of. At a minimum a change in advisor is required. I would also approach the department head about the email. Faculty need to know that they need to behave better.

Don't walk.  Run.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

First of all, I think OP's situation is not that specific. Many international students in US are facing the same. Just that his is very extreme - his advisor wants to kick him out. In that regard, I agree with JeffE's comment. OP's advisor is not friendly at all, he probably needs to run.

Now, to answer the question. It all depends on how much you want to be an academic.
To continue what you're doing right now, I think you hurt your current and future academic career. Your industry job is demanding, particularly since you need your employer to sponsor your H1B visa. You have to work very hard. You can't devote yourself to your research unless your job is directly related to your dissertation. You are still publishing papers. I believe you can even publish more and better papers if you do research full time.
If you quit your current job, the H1B will be gone. But, you can concentrate on your research. You might become a great academic.
On the other hand, if you continue your industry job, you will get H1B visa and everything to make your American dream come true. But, how about your dream to be a great academic? Didn't you want to be a scholar when you went to US to study?
It's June now. Too late to change school. I would talk to the advisor if I were you. Explain to him your situation. Maybe it's just misunderstanding between you and him. He may not know what you really want and need. If it doesn't work, change the advisor. If you can't do that either, you'll have to make a tough choice.

This is a fairly common experience at my university given the large volumes of EE and CS PhD students who take a "leave of absence" and slack off on their PhD research to do trivial things like starting Google and Yahoo. Here is what I've learned from their experiences:

Your University may offer you some protection while your H1B visa gets worked out. Typically, students can take a 1 year deferment, stay on status as a student, work for their company, and wait for their visa status to change.
Take the leave of absence. The "part-time" status is a lose-lose scenario for you, your advisor, and your company. You're wasting your time by being inefficient, your advisor is probably still paying for all of you despite your "part-time" status, and your company isn't getting your full mental investment.
For EE and CS PhD students, their goal was to get a US-based job and with it, legal status. For the majority of them, the PhD wouldn't add much since they would essentially be doing the exact same work. However, if you're in an industry where that isn't the case, maybe I would be a bit more concerned about giving up the PhD.
That being said, you have a job and it sounds like the company wants to keep you if they are talking about the H1B process with you.
Finally, you're a 2nd year grad student. You have a long long way to go if you want that PhD and it just so happens that you have an advisor in the way.