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Is it possible for an international masters student to get into teaching role in US Universities on completion
I am from india. I have a strong desire to pursue Masters in Computer Science in USA. I enjoy academia. However, I am sure that I do not want to pursue a Phd and also not attracted towards an IT Career.
I understand that teaching positions are mostly reserved for full-time Phd holders and is getting increasingly tough. So how difficult it will be, post MS, for an international applicant to secure a full time instructor job? I do not want an adjunct position as I can't survive travelling from university to university. What other degrees/certificates can help tip the scales in my favour?
I have seen certain Master students get a faculty position in the university itself where they completed the course.

I understand that teaching positions are mostly reserved for Full time Phd Holders and is getting increasingly tough. So how difficult it will be, post MS, for an international applicant to secure a full time instructor job.

In the US, community colleges (i.e., two-year colleges) sometimes hire faculty with master's degrees.  At four-year colleges and universities, it's basically impossible to get a regular faculty position without a Ph.D.  (It might theoretically be possible, but only under extraordinary circumstances, for example a pioneering industrial researcher who never completed a Ph.D.)
So that means you would have to target community colleges.  How difficult that would be depends on the circumstances, and it's important not to assume it's easy to get such a job just because the institution is less prestigious.  I don't think you'll be able to get a full-time instructor position without some prior teaching experience, since you'll need to demonstrate your teaching abilities.
Being an international applicant shouldn't be a big deal overall (assuming you have authorization to work in the U.S.; see Paul Garrett's comment below), but it may come up in several ways, such as English proficiency.  The most annoying may be that teaching experience is other countries is sometimes not taken as seriously.  It can be difficult for evaluate for people unfamiliar with the system it took place in, and it may involve students who are very different from typical U.S. college students.

I have seen certain Master students get a faculty position in the uni itself where they completed the course.

I've never seen that happen for a regular faculty position in the U.S.  Occasionally, a master's student may be kept around for a while as an adjunct to teach low-level courses nobody else wants to teach, but this is generally not a well-paid or respected position.  Someone with truly exceptional teaching skills might be retained long-term in a position with a title like "senior lecturer with security of employment" (not a regular faculty member but reasonably paid and without fear of abruptly being fired), but there are not many such positions and they are not easy to get.

What other degrees/certificates can help tip the scales in my favour?

I don't think any other degree or certificate will play an important role.  If you find an opening for which the hiring committee genuinely doesn't care about having a Ph.D., then teaching effectiveness will be the primary criterion.  Any evidence of excellent teaching will be helpful, but other degrees or certificates are not generally a compelling form of evidence.

There is the issue of the appropriate visa, also. The bureacratic process is not trivial, is not cheap, and universities (in contrast what I gather is typical for community colleges) usually take care of it for postdocs and faculty from abroad.

I dint get your point completely. Are you saying that the community college/universities might not sponsor a visa for an international faculty(Post MS).

@paulgarrett What you wrote is usually, but not always correct. I know someone whose first job after his Ph.D. was at a large, respected, research university, which messed up his visa process so badly that he had to leave the U.S. for some months. He then got a job at a community college, which arranged for his visa without any problems.

srkmish, based on observation (but with disclaimer in line with @AndreasBlass' comment), "research universities" are more accustomed to the visa process, since international scholars are usual. In contrast (at least in the past), community colleges mostly hired "local" people, so visas were rarely an issue. Either way, there needs to be sufficient incentive for the institution to take the trouble and expense (which are not zero...)

You're in luck! International students do it all the time!
First, I recommend ignoring community colleges. You won't be able to successfully pursue your masters there.
Second, how good is your English? It's potentially the largest contributing factor to landing a teaching position. If you haven't already, practice speaking with people outside of India to get a gauge of your proficiency.
Third, find a few large four-year universities that grant master level degrees. Apply, and enqire about employment. What you're looking for is a Graduate Teaching Assistantship (GTA) position. Now, it isn't great pay - it'll cover rent and groceries... typically with a little left over each month. The great deal though is that they usually come with waived tuition in exchange for your working.
So you get paid, reduced (if not free) tuition - and you get to complete a masters!
Source:  I'm a masters student that teachers introductory computer science. I'm not Indian - but I work with quite a few!

It sounds like the OP is asking about permanent jobs after finishing the masters degree.  A GTA position is only for students still in grad school.

Ahh your are correct, I missed the post MS part.


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Should PhD student always co-author its advisor
Is it a must for a PhD student to co-author its advisor? What about if the student writes a paper by itself? What about collaborating with friends?

Your advising relationship has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not you must cite someone else's work.

@JeffE, I meant to give them a co-authorship. Sorry

"What about if the student writes a paper by itself?": if a student is capable of writing a (decent) paper all by themselves, well, that's good and let's celebrate the publication! What else?

Your advising relationship has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not someone should be a coauthor.

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How to improve scientific writing skills?
What do you do to write better proposals, grants, and papers?
Do you think reading books about how to write scientific content is a good way to improve it?

Read relevant, well-written material (and lots of it) to improve your vocabulary and the recognition of “good” structure.

For a bit of help with common phrases have a look at http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/. It is not much, but sometimes it can help you to build a nicer sentence.

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better." — Samuel Beckett

@SolarMike: But how would OP know what's well-written, as opposed to merely being passably-written?

The way to learn to write is, simply, to write.
But then get feedback on your writing and re-write in light of the feedback.
The Software Patterns community has a process called Writer's Workshops that are quite detailed. When you submit a paper to a patterns conference you are assigned a Shepherd who is an experienced pattern writer, usually with knowledge of your field. The shepherd works with you (the "sheep") to improve the paper over three or four iterations of feedback-rewrite.
After shepherding your paper may be accepted to the conference, though not for presentation in the traditional sense. The conference consists of a set of writer's workshops in which a few (8-10) authors each have their papers discussed by the other participants while they listen and take notes. The author has a very small part in the workshop other than to think about what others suggest about how the paper can be improved.
After the workshop the author can ask questions, but never gets to "defend" the work. The idea is that if others misunderstand you then it is your job, not theirs, to fix it.
The paper is then revised one more time and it is this version that makes it in to the proceedings. The whole idea is to improve the print version, not present a version prepared without help.
The patterns community is pretty close knit because of this working together to improve one-another's work.
This process was brought to the software development community by Richard P Gabriel who is both a geek (Lisp et al.) and a poet. The same process is used by poets, in fact and is quite old. RPG has written a book on the process: Writers' Workshops & the Work of Making Things
If you don't have the patterns community behind you, or if you aren't writing patterns, it is relatively easy to set up a local writers workshop and follow the process. You can do this for any sort of writing as long as you have some people with domain knowledge and some writing experience.

There are many ways that one can improve their scientific writing skills. Because humans learn in diverse ways, I do not know if there is one be-all-end-all solution for how to improve one's writing skills.
Two main methods that I have used (and still use) are (1) attending grant writing workshops, and (2) reading other published papers in my field and emulating their overall style. I am someone who learns by seeing and copying.
Some items to note:

Quality scientific writing is rarely achieved by complexity of word choice and sentence structure. In fact, sometimes the best scientific writing is achieved by relative simplicity and clarity. You are not trying to wow people with your prose and poetic presentation.
Quality scientific writing often has just as much to do with how you present something as it does with what you say. Observing required formats for the venue you are trying to publish in is rather critical. I once worked with a collaborator who routinely ignored our target journals' "Instructions for Authors." This made it very hard to produce quality writing with him because I was repeatedly having to parse down what he was saying into actual defined sections. Much of his writing was well done from a pure "English" standpoint; he just had no concept of venue specific format.
Quality scientific writing is an art that is never completely learned.

Regarding the "instruction to authors" of journals. Usually you write the paper without knowing which journal it's really going to. Isn't it right?

I would add: apart from basics such as grammar and good writing practices, see Chicago Manual of Style, one needs clarity.  The best writers in my opinion have the ability to simplify complex concept into something simple or at the very least, break it down into manageable chunks.  They tend to distil tonnes of info into a few key ideas/concepts.   So the problem is not really about writing, but how to think.

@0x90 Yes and no. I usually had a specific journal in mind, then adapted as necessary. You don't write a 39 page paper when targeting a journal that usually publishes short papers. And most papers will have a general outline of Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusion.

When emulating the style of published papers, you should take care only to emulate the good ones.  There's a lot of bad writing in academic journals.  One of my least favorite parts of my job is deprogramming postdocs who spent their graduate schooling soaking up bad habits from poorly written journal articles.

@0x90 - I always knew which journal the paper was going to be submitted to, and why I chose that one. And I worked very hard to write it very clearly (word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, then back and do it again). And I never had a paper rejected.

A very specific answer:
There's an (originally) online course from Stanford called "Writing in the Sciences" that became very popular. While you might not agree with everything she teaches/suggests, I think it is a very good course.
It's now all on YouTube.

Two ideas for you:
A writing skills course
Many, if not most, universities offer scientific writing courses for graduate students. If you're a graduate student - take such a course. If you're a post-doc or even a tenure-tracker - don't be ashamed; go attend one (not for credit).
Language editing
Ask your advisor, if you're a grad student, or a colleague you're close to and whose writing skills you appreciate, to help you by performing a language-editing pass on what you're writing. If it's too much to ask or if you haven't someone to ask - try finding someone to do this for pay; it is not uncommon.

Aren't there courses like that online?

@0x90: Perhaps, but most univesities do not have these online.

Providing writing feedback to others isn't just a quid pro quo -- in reading other people's work critically you improve your own writing.  This is particularly helpful as a postdoc looking over PhD students' work

By watching this magnificent lecture by Larry McEnerney from University of Chicago!
It is eye opening! He shows how the value of our research and the reader are essential for a writer. He argues that we already have all of the skills needed for writing, but we don't know how to do it because we've been writing only inside school system and academia. We've been writing pieces for the teachers that were paid to read it and care about us, and that is not how the world, and science, works.
This lecture changed my thinking for sure.

and btw, the handout that he uses in the lecture is available here

Yes to books. I recommend Writing Science in Plain English by Anne E. Greene, which includes helpful exercises. Other books from the University of Chicago include The Chicago Guide to Communicating Science and The Chicago Guide to Writing about Numbers.

Reading books is for sure one way to go. I have read many of them, and my favorites are "Writing science" by Joshua Schimel and "Writing Science in Plain English" by Anne E. Greene.
However, reading books remains a passive way of learning. In my research group, I have therefore decided to create a writing group. In a writing group, we learn together, comment on what we learned and feedback on each other manuscripts. We meet every two to three weeks for two hours.
This writing group has transformed our perception of writing. Group members will discuss openly writing methods or specific writing problems as if it was a statistical or a programming problem. We did not become writing experts, but we improved, and we keep on improving every day (as opposed to taking a lesson or reading a book).
On the Scisnack website you can find some information on writing group including scientific publications. There is also a lot of learning content, including videos, expert advice or book reviews. Also, I have created a small Prezi presentation about writing groups to motivate the new Ph.D. students to join us.

Scientific writing skills are mostly the same as general writing skills. Read good works of fiction, non-fiction, journalism, etc. These are easier to find, and more enjoyable, than good pieces of scientific writing.
Nature recently published a career column titled "Novelist Cormac McCarthy’s tips on how to write a great science paper".

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Is it possible for someone with a PhD from a top-200 university to find a faculty position at a top-20 university?
I have talked with a friend that was the best in class PhD student at a top-200 university in USA, but she couldn't find any position as assistant professor position or fellowship in a top-20 university.

Is it even possible to do this transition?
What is taken under consideration when one makes such application?

Top 200 university does not mean much.

Wait... She was looking for an associate professor position immediately after her PhD? No way, not even with a nationally awarded PhD thesis from the top department in her field.

According to Systematic inequality and hierarchy in faculty hiring networks it is very rare to  get a job at a higher ranked institution than one you graduated from (at the PhD level), and even rarer to place way up, but it can happen. I'm not aware of any study that focused on those up-moving outliers, but they both exist (it's theoretically possible) and they are rather rare (so it won't happen for the majority of people).

And I imagine you meant "assistant professor" position - associate professor is the senior position, which a recent PhD graduate would not qualify for: Assistant professor vs Associate professor

See University rank/stature - How much does it affect one's career post-Ph.D?

Question seems perfectly clear to me; voting to reopen.

Possible? Yes. Likely? No. Unfortunately, being "best in class PhD student at a top-200 university" does not mean very much at this level. (I'm also skeptical of ranking PhD students.) The best PhD graduate at a top-20 school is very far from being guaranteed to get a faculty position at a top-20 school.

It would surprise me if any STEM-related PhD program in the U.S. attempted to determine "best in class", considering how mutually incomparable students' work would be. Are you sure that this was literally the case?

@paulgarrett one of the bests of her year. Everything is ranked also the universities.

Perhaps someone creates rankings of everything, but postdoc and/or tenure-track hiring committees, in my experience, do not look at "best in year" things, and only look at rankings of universities in a very broad sense.

thanks @paulgarrett, it would be nice if you can add your answer as well.

@BrianHall That's not entirely accurate. There are some (rare) cases of recent PhD graduates getting an associate professorship. Usually they are a non-traditional pipeline though (e.g., BS, MS -> industry -> PhD -> associate professor).

@anonymous Interesting, I had never heard of such a case - would be interesting to look into such cases to see how they arranged that. I would think there would only be a few such cases country-wide, across all fields, but of course Universities have such a wide latitude for how they handle such things that I supposed they can do whatever they want given sufficiently unique incentive.

@brainhall They are quite rare, but the case I'm thinking of the person had a handful of publications from industry and were in CS. I think it might boil down to what defines an associate professor and where you start the experience clock towards it.

I'll assume you are talking about tenure-track positions, due to the reference to an assistant professorship.  If you are talking about postdocs, then it really depends on how your field works (e.g., how many such positions there are and how they are distributed among different types of universities).
It's certainly possible to get a job in a much higher-ranked department than the one you graduated from, but a little arithmetic shows that it's very unlikely, assuming departments in your field aren't growing dramatically.
Let's assume a steady state, in which departments are neither growing nor shrinking, and let's make the simplifying assumption that they are all the same size.  Of course these assumptions aren't quite right, but they can generally serve as a first approximation.
What does it take to get a job at a comparable department to the one you graduated from?  In a steady state, each professor will eventually be replaced by one new hire, but they will typically train multiple Ph.D. students.  This means that there's just enough room to hire each professor's best student ever, over their whole career.  Of course the hiring won't actually work out that way, since the top students are not uniformly distributed among professors (and there will also be competition from students who attended higher or lower-ranked schools).  However, this sets a lower bound: if you aren't at least as good as the career-best student of a typical professor from a top X department, then you can't realistically expect to get a job at a top X department yourself.
Going up in the rankings is even harder.  The number of people who are their advisor's career-best student at a top 200 department is ten times the total number of positions at top 20 departments.  This means that 90% of them will fail to get such a job, since there just aren't enough positions to accommodate them.  In practice, it's even worse than these numbers indicate (generally much worse), but the point is that simple arithmetic guarantees at least a 90% failure rate even for these highly successful students.
So you shouldn't be surprised that your friend failed to go up in the rankings by a factor of 10: that requires either exceptional luck or exceptional accomplishments.

What is taken under consideration when one makes such application?

It's really no different from any other application, with no special requirements or considerations.  You need to make the case that you are a better choice than any other available candidate.  Applicants from low-ranked department often face some initial skepticism, but hardly anyone would be silly enough to obsess over rankings while disregarding visibly superior accomplishments.

Graduating a PhD program is completely different from previous levels.  Potential employers in academia are looking for someone who would add prestige to their university.  If this is a research university, this means someone with lots of highly ranked publications and a history of bringing in grant money.  After that, you need a good professional reputation (and the strong recommendation letters that come with it), and an affable personality.
GPA or individual ranking within the PhD program does not matter. At all.
This is based on my experience on a hiring committee for an Ivy League institution in the USA.  I would add that at this particular institution, they would only entertain applicants who had earned PhDs from the top 10 or so universities in the field.  Overall university rankings were not important; only within the same field.

What was your role on that hiring committee?

You served on a faculty hiring committee as a graduate student?

At this particular institution, they have a representative from the Master's program and the PhD program on all hires.  I was the Master's student rep.  We read all the applications and participate in the discussion of the hiring committee.  We do not make any formal decisions, only recommendations.

Yes, that was my guess. Sometimes institutions ask the candidates to meet with the graduate students. That does not make you privy to all the intricacies of a hiring committee though, as that component is a small part of the holistic evaluations of the applicant. I certainly doubt that the department would tell master's students that they only consider applicants from the top 10 universities.

This was not an official directive, but the kinds of things that are said unofficially.

@Sana I was indeed a rep on the hiring committee, with full access to all official discussions of the committee, as well as the hundreds of applications for multiple positions.  All students are invited to sit with the candidates once they come for interview, which is at a later stage.  I do not know how other institutions do it, but this was my truthful experience.

My husband also had this role as an Engineering PhD student. Similar ex-officio capacity, but he looked at all apps and went to all the committee meetings and the faculty meeting where they voted to give his opinion.

Sorry for my ignorance, English isn't my mother tongue, so I don't quite understand what you mean by "they would only entertain applicants". What do you exactly mean by entertain applicants?

What is taken into consideration: the PhD thesis.
Unless the thesis is a "top 30" caliber work (a little leeway), you probably won't get a "top 20" appointment.  Many of the PhD graduates from "top 20" departments will also end up a lower ranked places.  Those top departments produce far more PhDs than they hire!
Rank 200 to rank 20?  It has happened.  But rarely.

What about publication?

What field are you in? In my field, nobody is going to read your thesis.

@ff524 what about math, physics, and computer science?

Echoing some points from other answers, and from my comment to the original question:
In my experience, in mathematics at an R1 place in the U.S., people on postdoc or hiring committees do not think in terms of "rankings", either of departments or of students within their graduating class. Nor grade-point average.
Rather, to some degree, they do look at the substance of a candidate's work, although probably stopping short of reading the thesis or papers. Rather, most often, they/we look at the letter writers' appraisals. These are most persuasive if the letter writers are personally known to the committee, or are well-known in the mathematics research milieu, and are expert in the subject at hand.
However, in any case, there are far more PhD's being produced by "the top 200" programs than there are positions available in the "top 20". As already observed, for similar raw numerical reasons, most graduates of the "top 20" do not get "top 20" jobs.
In the past (e.g., pre-internet), there was also a common disadvantage that the level of awareness at "top 200" places might have been very different from that at "top 20", affecting the nature of the projects attempted or completed. It appears that this effect is diminishing, also due to the eflux of new PhD's from the most active research centers to nearly every branch university branch campus in the U.S.

You need to at least have a postdoc from a University of the same rank.  I'm not sure where the ranking of top 200 came from, are there even 200 PhD granting institutions?

"Are there even 200 PhD granting institutions [in the United States]?" Yes, of course: see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_research_universities_in_the_United_States#Universities_classified_as_.22R1:Doctoral_Universities.E2.80.93_Highest_Research_Activity.22.

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Is it possible to retrieve easily all the Nature papers featured the cover since 1950?
Is there a way to read efficiently old papers? For example, to read all the Science and Nature cover papers since 1950?
How do you read old/fundamental literature?

Are you just asking about "access" to the papers or something more? Still unclear what you need.

@Buffy, if there is a way to access the covers efficiently or to their summaries

Do you mean those old papers without abstracts? Or something else?

@scaaahu I am looking for advice how to efficiently see all these papers.

https://www.jstor.org/ ???

Try sci-hub. Otherwise for really old stuff you might find some repositories online or torrents in the web lingering around.

Im not sure what you mean by efficiently but you clarified you wish to see/get all papers.
If you have an university ID you can probably enter the database of the Uni's library online. Or depending on your national library options you might even be able to register there and get access online.
Taking out the option of physical libraries (because internet exists and you might be in another country with no access to big university libraries or such) , you can try to look in sci-hub , or  you may be able to find some repositories online (if you find 1 paper try modifying the URL to get to an upper level of the portal), or find torrents in the web lingering around (be safe and use a VPN, then remember to seed). You may have more luck searching in other languages and then translate (spanish and russian are good options as they are excellent in alternative forms to get stuff, problem with russian is the Cyrillic).
Other than that, to get specific papers you can try to ask directly the researchers for them (research gate) or if you cant find them then try their associates. However this might not work or it might take too much time.
Another resource would be to try the cheapest subscription that grands you access and then see/download everything.
It depends what you really need. Do you need all the papers or just the list of what articles each number has? the list is easy to find online, but to get the papers you can try options like the mentioned above.
EDIT-HOW TO GET IMAGES FROM COVERS
OP clarified the he/she wants to merely get the covers from the magazines as automatically as possible. This would depend on what material there is to work with in the first place. But it all comes down to knowing where are the images or which type of documents you have to work with.
1- If you have a page that shows all covers as images and you want to download them, you can use jdownloader or similar to download all the images of a site automatically. (and you cna paste the url of other sites/pages)
2- If you have all the papers in pdf and just want to get the first or second page you can batch edit them, I remember A-PDF Page Cut served for such but there are other softwares to do it too.
3-You can write a script with a function to get images from the web. Getimage()  is the general one but the specifics depends on the programming language you use.
Ultimate, the specifics of all this might be better asked in other stack sites regarding software and programming.
For a list of all articles published by nature, here it is for 1950 but you cans et the filter to 'all' and get everything, however that gives many results, so you can write a script to download the names based on the links: https://www.nature.com/nature/articles?type=article&year=1950
You can also check by volumes, this other list goes up to 1869 : https://www.nature.com/nature/volumes

I mean how to pull all the cover papers in nature between two time points without doing it manually one by one.

@0x90  Thats is a different question altogether. Check this please, it will help you difine the question better https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask  . Also how to do that depends on what you have to work it. Let me edit the answer to add a couple options on how to extract images.

sorry for the miscommunications. I merely wants the papers from 1950-2019 that were featured on the cover.

@0x90 Im still not sure what you are asking. Do you need to download the articles, get  a list of their titles, etc? Nature in its cover generally has a main article and then mentions others. Do you need all or just the main one? Doesn't any of the advice given serves you in any way?

a list of all the main article titles will help then I can scrap the web to get the actual papers.

@0x90 There is a list. Let me add it in the answer. If it satisfies your question you can accept the answer.

If you are researching a specific area (doing a lit search) then your university library and an academic librarian is a good place to start. Libraries normally have access to such things and can get copies of papers. The librarians know how to go about it and can even help you manage a broader search.
All you really need is some specific idea of what you are after. A citation in a recent paper is an excellent start. Even if your own university doesn't have direct access, they likely have associations that they can work through to obtain what you want.
There was a time, pre internet, when this was the primary way of doing academic research.
I hope I've interpreted your need correctly.

Kind of. I didn't think about go to the library. I was basically looking to pull out all the Nature cover papers in the past 50 years.

Fully agree that a research librarian is the right person to ask. (Of course, they may just point you to the bound journals in the stacks, but that is an efficient way of doing what is asked).

Going to the library is tricky. OP may not have access to a big library that pays for a subscription to those sites. If he has an university ID he may be able to access his university library online out  of campus. But assuming the library is not an option, which is the norm nowadays in the era of information, he can browse for the papers he wants and then try to contact the researchers directly to ask for the papers (research gate), go to sci-hub to see if they are there, of try and contact associate researchers.

Actually, I live in a small town. My local library will do this sort of thing for me since the librarian there has contacts with university libraries and can find obscure things for me. Libraries in general are more valuable than you may think.

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Google Scholar: how to exclude some countries from the search?
I use the google scholar alert system which sends me new studies made on a specific saved search. I'm looking for a way to exclude research conducted in some countries (or to only include some countries).

Based upon which criterion? If at least one author is affiliated with an institution in one of your blacklisted countries? Or all of them? ...?

This is a very vague question, I would even say off-topic here, as it is more related to a search engine configuration than academia. Further, note that my advice is based on the Google search engine, not Google Scholar in particular. Nonetheless, the best suggestion I can come up with is to use "-" in your query. Google tries to exclude keywords which are preceded by "-" from the results. I can't know if that would suit your criteria of filtering (it is rather shaky, as @O.R.Mapper rightly noted), but you can try something like "fourier transform -france -spain" and see if that helps you.

@O.R.Mapper Are you talking about moral criterion or ethic one or technical one? Because if your talking about technical one, all the necessary info are written on my question. The technical criterion of the filter is  "country", what else did I forget?

Try combining the - operator with the site: operator with the domain suffix for the country or countries in question. So e.g.

basketweaving -site:.fr -site:.uk

searches for basketweaving, but not in France or the UK. If site: works in Google Scholar, this should be more effective than trying the (English!) name of the country.

I presume this will filter based on the website where the paper is posted, which may not have anything to do with where the research was conducted.


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Lack of take home examinations in mathematics classes?
Why are so few grades in undergraduate formal math classes in most US colleges based on take home examinations or papers, barring one or two research/self study class?
The formal math classes I am referring to are topology, analysis, number theory, and calculus etc.
The writing class in my college is based on a take home paper, but I do not see similar grading schemes in math courses in other US colleges.

Saying that no math course in the country does this is most likely incorrect.

@anorton - 9 out of 10 college that i searched had most math course except one or two based on math test instead of paper .

Because (the faculty believe that) too many students would cheat.

And, if you head over to http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/homework?sort=active&pageSize=15 , you'll see that there is a good reason to fear so.

The American system often favors testing over project-based demonstrations of learning in mathematics and other quantitative subjects. The reason for this, at least at my university, is that you cannot be expected to do original work until you have a significant foundation in the field, and this original work is often extremely time- and resource- intensive. Thus, you will often find that for the first several semesters, the vast majority of courses in science and engineering are assessment-based. However, once you have gotten a solid baseline of knowledge, you can do original work in your upper-level classes (some people might even say this is a signature of a good program). This is in contrast to many humanities classes, where most of the papers you will write are inherently original, even without a well-rounded background.

You don't need to do "original" work.  I have taught several math classes (regression, graph theory cryptography, coding theory) with a final project instead of a final exam.  For some topics/courses, one is more appropriate than the other.  Typically more applied or programming-oriented math courses are suitable for projects, even at the introductory level.

Agreed. To clarify, original work in my original post was meant to mean work cannot be found elsewhere. Clearly, proving something that has already been proved cannot be original, but a programming project, building a robot, etc. are all original in some sense. Some courses of study lend themselves to original work sooner than others.


text:
Changing tactics when natural ability is reached?
Question
What habits and attitudes need to change when one hits the upper bounds of natural ability? This is the situation where you can no longer increase your rate of advancement. In effect your effort is "bounded from above". I am thinking primarily about research and learning from a student's perspective but I am sure this problem is common to everyone eventually. There must be some limit at which even the greatest stop accelerating. Given that this barrier has existed for a long time and affects every human that ever lived, there must be structual approaches to overcoming exhaustion of the lowhanging fruit. What are proven methods to continue improvement, or, failing that, hug the limit of natural ability as tightly as possible? Similarly to compound interest, if you underperform by 3% every year, then in 24 years you will be half the man you could have been.
The answer from Ben succiently explains this idea in the work equation:
work = (work rate)*(hours worked)
Assume that for whatever reason the goal is to maximize the work. If one can no longer increase the hours worked, what are strategies to increase the work rate?
 What are new ways of thinking that can keep one at maximum possible performance? Are there ways of structuring your time that you have found that just work. What really helped you in staring down your own limitations?
My Motivation:

 I have been fighting this ceiling for several months now, and I am getting   >! to a hard physcial limit. I am at a barely ranked school and still have the  dream of significant contributions to my field. Realistically this dream requires me to perform on the level of students at top universities. My first strategy was to just put in more time than the students who do better than me. It worked to beat the undergraduates here who spend 40% of their time on extra curriculars and social lives. However the graduate students are much more disciplined and working harder than their 80-100 hrs/wk is of much greater difficulty. To further compound the problem, we are nowhere near the quality of the top schools, so I fear beating the best grad student in my department would be equivalent to a freshman at T1 school.

 I only started to work systematically when I started university, and have now developed a strong work ethic. I am at the point where I have eliminated everything else in my life except classwork and research projects. There is no longer any significant reservoir of time I can tap to make progress. I likely can obtain about 10 more hours a week if I mange to crack down on the instances where I am actually unproductive. This is my budget for improvement. Others may have more time available which is why I am not asking about quick hacks (although quick hacks would help me more).

Note:I am just beginging my academic career, but I am really concerned about not being able accomplish my goals. If you understand what I am getting at please feel free to edit to make the key idea more clear. There has to be a way using logical frameworks to minimize the inherent limitations of whatever body you are stuck with. I am not looking for a "self-help", "positve thinking" style answer. I am looking for methods that you, SE.Academia, as men of science and reason, find that work.
edit
I have put the motivation in spoilers because it is not important for answering the question I want to ask (should I just remove it?). Some answers are addressing my specific situation which I think is not the purpose of this site. We are supposed to ask general questions that can apply to others, not just advice threads.

A reasonable question is what field you are currently in. Also, trying to outwork other people in order to succeed sounds like an eventual recipe for physical collapse,. nervous breakdown or other unpleasant things. That's not the way to go. Do you enjoy what you are doing? And do you enjoy it enough to commit to spending as much time as you are doing now in the foreseeable future?

80-100 hours a week?? There is no way that 100 hours a week is sustainable long-term for most humans. I find that, during crunch time, I can ramp up to maybe 60-75 a week during crunch times, but I burn out after three weeks of that.

Also, there are very knowledgeable women of science on this site as well...

@FaheemMitha The way I see, outworking others the the only possible way if they are in fact better than me. My work product is the only thing I can control. I cannot just get smarter and set up every experiment correctly the first time and write the entire paper in one email to a journal. Every mistake costs time, so if you have a higher error rate you must spend proportionally more time to have the same output. Am I wrong in this assement?

@undergrad1123571317 The real issue is how to get the best use of all your abilities. It is not at all clear that outworking others is the way to do it. Suppose someone smarter than you is spending all their time working, with no R&R. You can probably outperform them, with less risk of burnout and fewer mistakes, by choosing a more balanced lifestyle.

@chipbuster Forgive me if I offended you, I use it in the colloquial sense. Feel free to edit.

@undergrad1123571317, you can get smarter! Do you not learn anything at all as you conduct experiments, or do other work? Experience will help.

@BenTrettel Experience is not intelligence. Note in my question I mentioned the rate of learning, not some knowledge cap. Greater intelligence will see a connection faster. I may have to try three more variations of the experiment before I "get it". My problem is the rate of knowledge absorbtion. If you are integrating a line with a shallower slope you need a greater interval to obtain the same area. Hence putting in more work.

I'm not answering the question, but I don't think one should put so much emphasis on the rankings of a school. Once you visit these places and interact with the people, you'll find that they are normal hard-working people that also make mistakes and have their strengths and weaknesses. Just do good work, and nobody will care where you come from or what your affiliation is.

@mrm I'm going to politely diagree with you. There was one answer on this site that explained it pretty well. "the question in their department is 'what are you submitting to X', and not 'are you submitting'. For T1 students the answer nothing is not part of their vocabulary" They are better, thats why they got in and others did not. Culture, funding, and people quality make a world of difference in whether you address cutting edge problems or confirm minor variations on a subset of a solution from 20 years ago.

@undergrad1123571317 "They are better, that's why they got in ..." -- but doing well in tests or course work does not automatically mean you are a good researcher. (But I think this whole discussion is off-topic to begin with).

You can improve, almost certainly. It's hard to know how much a priori, and that's true of most everything. You shouldn't be pessimistic.
First, do not mistake working long hours with making progress. As others have indicated, this often is counterproductive. Matt Might gives the following equation for work output:
output = (work rate) * (hours worked)
Hours worked is only part of the equation. And your work rate, the amount of output you produce per hour, is also a function of hours worked. Work too much and you'll burn out (mathematically, this means your work rate will approach zero). As you've suggested, you need to work smarter, not necessarily more.
Second, you definitely have a fixed mindset. If you believe things are hopeless, well, even if they aren't, you probably won't improve. You need a growth mindset to improve. This is where you believe you can improve. Work on this.
Most likely, success is determined by both talent and focusing effort towards the right things. In my experience, effort is more important if you show any reasonable amount of ability. I can think of many people who I consider smarter than myself, who accomplish less. Some of these people even put a lot of effort in, but unfortunately they put the effort in the wrong way. Some of them are just "unlucky" (though luck can be influenced too, it seems).
So what can you do to improve? No one is magically good at first. You need the right strategy to figure out how to get better. A strategy research has found to be common is deliberate practice. There are a lot of books on this subject. One I've read is Talent is Overrated. The basics of the strategy should not surprise anyone, but you'd be surprised by how few people actually implement it. Deliberate practice is about focusing on what's actually valuable, not what just feels productive. In studies of musicians, for example, researchers looked at how accomplished people became and what their practice strategies were. The most accomplished musicians focused on the parts they had difficulty with, while the less accomplished ones spent most of their time playing music they were already comfortable with. The lesson here should be clear: you need to challenge yourself to improve. See what you need to learn to accomplish what you want. This might be learning certain theory, or learning how to do experiments, or learning to do research better, or whatnot.
Target the gaps in your knowledge, and fill them in as you go along (Anonymous Mathematician suggests this). This is an essential habit in my view. It can be hard to implement, and I am not perfect at it, but over the past year I have started writing down things which I need to learn or understand poorly and started filling in the gaps roughly in order of importance or usefulness. Some of these things are trivial (for example, learning Roman numerals) but others are research-level questions.
I find solving problems to be particularly helpful in highlighting gaps that I did not know I had. Textbooks have a lot of these, but I tend to find problems posted on internet websites (say, StackExchange sites) to be more diverse and ultimately more helpful for me.
I'm a graduate student right now, and I dedicate about 1.5 hours a day towards learning. In the past, I was inconsistent about this, and I had ineffective learning strategies (e.g., just reading a book is not likely to make a strong impression). Being consistent, using good learning strategies, and focusing on what's important has made me much more effective.
Some other books I would recommend to students interested in overcoming plateaus are The Complete Problem Solver and Your Memory. The latter book in particular caused me to change a large number of my habits, and I think I am a much more effective student and teacher now. The book details a lot about how to learn and remember more effectively. I'd also recommend the software Anki to reduce the amount you forget.

This answer actually adresses the question I was asking! The work rate equation is exactly what I am talking about. When you can not increase the hours anymore the only other way to make gains is to improve work rate. Increasing the work rate is what I am interested in.

"I am at the point where I have eliminated everything else in my life except classwork and research projects."
That is likely to be counter-productive. You need to leave room in your life for inspiration to strike, not just perspiration. Go for a walk. Take up a hobby that does not require total concentration. You may be limiting yourself by not allowing enough time for rest and relaxation.
I know I am much more likely to get a creative idea for solving a problem doing something else, rather than staring at it, once I have the background firmly in my mind.

Actually, I think a hobby that does require total concentration while you're doing it can be good, as it forces you to forget about academics during that period.  (This doesn't mean an intellectually demanding hobby, which is maybe what you meant?)

This reminds me much of a Dragonball Z episode (one finds inspiration in the darndest places), instead of training an extra earth day in the hyperbolic time chamber to get stronger, Goku took his son on a day off to enjoy the beauty of earth and let him know where he was fighting for. Take some time off to remember what you are 'fighting for'

@Kimball For me,what worked best were things I could drop if my mind wandered to my technical problems, and then pick up again. Different things work for different people - the real point is that the OP should try something other than work, work, work.

I am sorry to say but your way of thinking in the long run will be counter-productive for you. You must always set small, visible, measurable goals instead of vague infeasible plans that may be out of your reach. E.g., It is one thing to say "I enjoy playing the guitar so I will practice to be the best guitar player I can be" and another to say "I am going to be the greatest guitar player that ever stepped on this earth" or "I am going to be the greatest rock star ever".
In this sense, your thought "I still have the dream of significant contributions to my field" is toxic and it will probably lead you to frustration (unless you are Terence Tao) or burn out, because the success of this dream is determined by outside factors that you cannot control or influence. Also this goal is egoistical. I am positive, that most people who made significant impact on their field did not started for such a self - centered goal but instead it was their desire to do research and their skills to do so that lead them to success. World recognition or fame is mostly a motive for those who will do everything from hacking results, stealing papers and falsifying research to get ahead from the pack.
So you must strive for smaller feasible milestones that bring you closer to your remote goal but are within your reach. Such milestones might be: "Get good grades so I can go to a better university for a PHD than my current school", "Write my first paper", "Get accepted for a PHD", "Get a PHD" and so-on. Setting goals should not be a static process but must be flexible enough to adapt to external feedback. And take the hints from external feedback to adjust accordingly. E.g., It will be unreasonable to expect to make significant impact to a scientific field if you cannot write even your first paper. Therefore dreams and ambition are nice but as you already figured out we all have some external and internal limits that we cannot overcome.
Also success is not linear and it is a combination of many factors. Some of them are: Drive, hard work, ability and luck. You obviously have the drive and you want to invest the hard work but you also need luck and the necessary skills. You also need other people's help. You must seek for people who will believe in you, will see your hard work and are willing to help. Supervisors who will do their best to mentor you. A spouse who will support you on the inevitable rejections of research. You just cannot do everything alone. You need other people for that. And abandoning the social component of life entirely to compensate for what? So that you will once be a famous researcher? It really makes no sense. In other words, if research is what you want to do, then research should be fun for you (you do not do it for the money anyway). And right now, even before starting doing actual research you do not seem happy.

I am not asking about how to be a famous researcher. I am asking about what one can do to perform as close to their personal limit as is humanly possible. Perhaps I gave too much background and you are adressing that. I will edit the question. The fact stands that I have reached a limit in the gains I can make by working longer, and require for whatever reason some other way to make either improvements, or failing that, I desire to keep as close as possible to the maximum level.

@undergrad1123571317  I gave you a solution. Focus on smaller feasible goals for you. E.g. Write your first paper. Do not care what others do. There will be someone be more capable, smarter than you. Focus on improving yourself (even if it makes you do the same experiment 3 times) instead on wondering if someone else would do it faster. So, what? Why do you view other people as your competitors? Life is about improving yourself not catching up with others.

When you go to school, as a young child, most of what you are learning are fundamentally well characterised skills that require practice. In this context, the more time and effort applied, the better you get (directly).
The further through the education system you go, the more success is measured in terms of insight and understanding. The relationship between the amount of work done, and the insight and understanding gained is extremely loose - as a simple example, which is more useful, to do double the amount of work that is 10% easier, or half the amount of work that is 10% harder? I suspect often the latter.
At undergraduate level and beyond, the sheer volume of work completed becomes a relatively minor component of success, and those who try and optimise their life in this way tend to hit a fairly solid limit of achievement that they cannot breach. Ultimately, no matter how much you optimise your life, you will only gain a handful of percentage points of productivity gain - and somehow other people will achieve multiples more than you. They are not doing so by working harder, or longer, or even doing "more work".
There are a number of things to consider.
Ideas are interconnected
Learning a large and complicated area is well described as building a mosaic of understanding, piece by piece. What matters is that you strategically place the pieces and put your effort into comprehending how they relate to each other to form the larger picture. The amount of effort put into making each piece perfect is of much more minor concern.
There is a certain amount of expertise that is required to (for instance) pass exam questions in specific areas. You will find that as you gain more of an overview of a field, the specific expertise will become easier to pick up (rather than the other way around).
You will gain a lot from always examining:
i) I have leant an idea. What is the edge of applicability of this idea. Do I know where my knowledge runs out? Can I make an informed judgement about areas of learning that might be opened up by this, before we get to them?
ii) Can I apply what I have learnt in other areas than the one it was taught in? Is there anything else that I have learnt that makes more sense now?
iii) Is there anything that we haven't been taught that would be useful for me to understand here, either to extend my understanding or support it?
Communication is key
In an intellectual, or learning context, the ability to communicate ideas well is the measure of comprehension. Don't leave it until examinations to rely on this.
At the very least, talk to your peers about what you have learnt. Discuss, as above, the limits of what you know, and equally what you don't know. Fill in each others gaps.
If you have the opportunity, do some teaching. Even if this is of people who are much more junior than you, you will find that your understanding of your field will grow substantially. Especially if you ask your students to ask questions - magically these questions will illuminate areas that you didn't appreciate what you knew (or find gaps in your perspective).
People are important
Your best ideas will come from talking to other people. Especially people not doing exactly what you are doing. At the simplest level, it will encourage you to think about the same things in a different way. It may also pique your interest to look at something you hadn't thought of.
In our department, tea time is considered the most important time of day. Once in the morning, and once in the afternoon, everyone sits around over a cup of tea or coffee and talks. Sometimes about the weather, sometimes about what their kids are doing at school, sometimes about how students they are teaching are doing, and sometimes about research.
It sounds silly, but this is often where ideas come from. If someone is struggling to turn up regularly they will end up being dragged along. This social element is critical. In the first 6-months of my first postdoc, a conversation over tea had more of an impact on the direction and success of my research than my efforts during my PhD. Because we came up with a good idea. I wasn't expecting that when I poured my coffee.
Think about what you are looking at
If you are focussing on volume of work, you are almost by definition not focussing your attention on choosing what you look at.
Find things that are hard. That pique your curiosity. That are a bit outside of what you have to do. Your intellectual future will depend on finding what you are really interested in - and it helps if this is not exactly the same as everyone else. And you certainly can't be told what to be interested in.
Don't stress about failures
There will be times you don't understand things. That you get things wrong. That you get stuck. Don't worry.
Put something you are struggling with aside. Do something else for a while. Preferably something really different. Go back to it later. Ponder things. Ask someone else.
Everyone gets stuck sometimes.
Overcoming being really stuck involves (and causes) gains of insight. This is what you are aiming for - but it is not readily achieved by just working more.
Exercise, eat and sleep
For your mind to work well, your body needs to as well. Get some exercise. Make sure you socialise. Finally, for your memory to work well, you need to eat well and get enough sleep.
Don't skimp on these.
On any individual day you can get more done by working longer, and harder. But it comes at terrible long term cost of decrease of average productivity, loss of insight, and worst of all, exhaustion and loss of curiosity.
Most of all be curious
When you find something interesting, you will learn. Do the things you find interesting (and hard). Feed your curiosity.

Nice answer. And welcome to Academia SE.

Have you talked with your advisor or another mentor about your concerns?  Getting another person's advice and insights can be crucial, particularly from someone who knows you well but has a broader perspective.  Think of it in athletic terms: even the most talented athletes can't reach their full potential without skilled coaching.  Generic advice and strategies can help, but they can't replace continuous guidance that is tailored to your specific needs.
It sounds like you've done a great job of working hard, but that's only part of the picture, and you may even have gone beyond diminishing returns to reach the point of burning yourself out.
So if it's not just a matter of hard work, what else can you do?  This is a difficult question, since of course nobody on this site knows enough about your talents and accomplishments to say anything specific, but here are a few possibilities:

How well calibrated is your ambition?  Some people devote a lot of time to research topics that are beneath their talents and will never lead anywhere exciting; they need to take on greater challenges.  Others are so determined to accomplish something amazing that they waste time struggling fruitlessly with the deepest challenges while ignoring other exciting and more approachable topics.
Are you juggling an appropriate number of projects?  Focusing exclusively on one project can be less productive, since you can't switch modes when you feel stuck or frustrated.  On the other hand, switching too frequently is a good way to get nothing done.
How much time are you spending on activities in your field outside of your current, direct research interests?  For example, attending talks, chatting with other researchers, reading famous papers, filling in gaps in your background knowledge, etc.  If you neglect these things, you won't grow as much as a researcher, but if you spend too much time on them, they will distract you from actually doing research.

Notice that each of these topics is a balancing act, in which going too far in either direction is problematic.  That's what makes them difficult, and it's why feedback from a mentor can be so valuable.


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Experience needed to transition from undergrad to graduate school of two completely different majors
I just graduated in May 2018 with an undergraduate bachelor degree in Computer Science from a pretty good university. During my time at the university, I always had aspirations of attending graduate school for a Masters (as a terminal degree). I had considered studying Computer Science, but during my final semester, I enjoyed the 400-level "Statistics and Probability I" course immensely that I had to take, making me re-think my decision of area of study in graduate school.
I focused mainly on my undergraduate courses along with becoming a course assistant (i.e. like a TA) for a Computer Architecture course for three semesters. I did not do any research or work closely with a professor in a related field while obtaining my degree, something I strongly wish I had done. Although, I have done two computer science-related internships in my final two summers as an undergraduate.
On top of this, my cumulative GPA feels incredibly mediocre at just a 3.34.
I am left with thinking of what the best possible path from here is, in the hopes of obtaining a Masters in Statistics. I have a few options I am looking at:
1.) Graduate schools across the board require letters of recommendations. Yes, I do have the professor I was a course assistant under, another professor that has gotten to know me well through course work, and internship mentors that have seen my industry intership work. However, I have been in talks with a professor on a PhD candidate board that notes that letters of recs for graduate school should come from professors you have worked closely with (i.e. through research) (he notes no distinction from masters vs. PhD).
Should I look for a research assistant position at a university institution before applying for graduate school (i.e. spend about a year doing research - spring and fall) in hopes of gaining experience and having a professor get to know me in an academia sense?
2.) Should I apply to a Post-Baccalaureate program in statistics to demonstrate a better GPA and to find a prospecting professor to do research with? I have the mathematics foundation (e.g. Calc 1, 2, & 3 and linear algebra), however, I obviously do not have a lot of statistics under me (e.g. one course as noted above).
I am leaning towards #1, however, I see the benefits of #2 too.
If anyone has any other recommendations, please send them my way. I am a bit nervous about wasting any time any one area, unless it is the right move. I would greatly appreciate feedback!

There is a big difference between a Masters program and a PhD program, and there is also a difference between a Masters program by coursework, and a Masters program by research.  Suitability of programs like these, and their entry requirements, generally depend on the specifics of the program and the entry standards of the university.  Having said this, I will try to give some general guidance on this matter.
Master of Statistics (coursework-based): For a student such as yourself, who has an undergraduate degree in a quantitative area outside of statistics (but with a small amount of statistics in that program), a Masters degree by coursework would be an obvious place to start.  A coursework-based Master of Statistics program is generally a good fit for someone coming over from another quantitative degree.  Indeed, these programs are usually designed for students who did not do an undergraduate degree in statistics, but have enough background in mathematics to be able to learn the subject more rapidly than would occur in an undergraduate degree.  (Student who already have an undergraduate degree in statistics may be able to jump this hurdle and go straight into a PhD program.)
Although it varies by university, entry into a coursework-based Master of Statistics program would not usually require an undergraduate degree in the same field, or any research experience.  It would usually be sufficient to have an undergraduate degree in a quantitative subject where you have done the core maths requirements (calculus, linear algebra, etc.) that would allow you to understand graduate-level statistics courses.  If this is a program of interest to you, my advice would be to make inquiries with the universities that are suitable to you, and find out the entry requirements for their programs.
Master of Statistics (research-based): Research-based programs generally have higher entry expectations than coursework-based programs, so for these programs it might be hard to get in (or to do the work) if you do not have a solid undergraduate education in statistics.  For a student like yourself, the more usual path would be to start in a coursework-based masters program first, and then progress to research once you have done enough courses to give you a good grounding in the subject.  In some masters programs there is a combination of coursework and then research.  The coursework comes first and then the research occurs when you have a solid grounding in the field.
Putting the cart before the horse: I am a bit surprised at your suggestion that you would pursue a research assistant position as a means of trying to get entry to a masters program.  You already have some experience as a research assistant, so what you are lacking is not this experience, but rather, coursework in statistics.  In your situation I would think that you could apply directly for course-work based programs in statistics, and this would then be a lead-in to later research programs.

I think you have a steep climb and wonder if there are many places that would accept you directly into an MS in statistics. Your second option would give you the background you need for it. But if you are still at or near U/C then I suggest you go to the Statistics department there (or failing that the Math department) and ask them for advice on how to transition. If you have moved away you might look for a relatively close major university (where they are likely to have a dedicated Stats department) and ask the question there.
It may even be that some department could suggest an optimal path to getting the knowledge and skills that you need to be successful.
I'll also note that an RA position is probably only available to an already admitted student, so your first path may not even be an option. Not at most places in any case.


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Adding a short (and interesting) observation to a submitted paper
About six months ago, I submitted a paper for publication. The paper is somewhat long and technical, and I believe that only a small number of researchers will bother reading it (nevertheless, I do believe that my results are nice). I still haven't heard from the referee, but I tend to believe that the paper will be accepted for publication.
A few days ago, I observed that the main results from my paper provide a completely new proof of an old classical result in my field (actually, they provide a new and significant extension of that old result). The proof of this observation is only one paragraph long.
My question: How should I publish this new observation?
I can add it to my old paper and resubmit it, but even if it's not too late to do so, I'm afraid that my result won't get noticed (as the long paper will only attract a small number of specialists). On the other hand, uploading a one page long paper to arxiv might make me look funny, and I don't know if any reasonable journal will consider publishing that ridiculously short note.
Relevant biographical information: I'm currently a postdoc. I want to get a decent TT job, so (sadly) it's kind of important for me to impress people in my field.

I've certainly seen many half- to one-page papers, although I don't know which journals might now be receptive to such papers, even if they have previously published such papers, such as Proc. AMS --- Very short notes not to exceed 1 printed page of an unusual nature.

It should be possible to publish it as separate note if it something of relevance. It won't be 1 paragraph long as you will have to reintroduced it. You can add a bit of decoration and point on an adequate title.

I can add it to my old paper and resubmit it, but even if it's not too late to do so, I'm afraid that my result won't get noticed (as the long paper will only attract a small number of specialists)

It is certainly not too late to do so -- you haven't even received a first referee report yet.  I suggest that you add the extension of the old, classical result to the present paper.  There are two aspects here:
Rewriting the paper:
If you just tack the new result / proof on at the end of a long paper, indeed it might not get noticed.  So don't do that.  Rewrite the abstract and introduction of the paper so that your new result / proof gets much more prominence: if the deduction is only a paragraph, you could even do that in the introduction.  This is a great way of selling the results of a long, technical paper!
Resubmitting the paper:
You could either send a new version of the paper to the editor and ask them to send it to the referee or you could wait for a referee report.  In my opinion, either one should probably work here: the changes are not going to bother the referee, and if the paper gets accepted, neither the editor nor the referee is going to be bothered by a new version with the same technical guts but with superficial rewriting so as to permit a nice new application.  What I would say is: since you know how to improve your paper and it hasn't been accepted yet, the smartest move seems to be giving the referee access to the improved version before they make up their mind...if the editor is on board with that.
So: I would suggest writing a new version, sending it to the editor, and seeing what they think.

I agree with this if the OP wants to add the result to the current paper (+1), but I'm not convinced that's better than making a separate, short publication.  I think, depending on the situation, writing a new paper could be better (and then one can revise the old paper after the referee report to mention this application).


text:
Can I be a lecturer without doing research?
This is probably a question quite opposite to the general vibe of people in academia, but oh well.
I am a UK-based PhD student and as I progress through my programme I notice more and more that my tutoring duties bring me a lot more enjoyment and fulfilment than research. Thus I started to wonder if there are ways of becoming a university lecturer without actually pursuing research.
I am observing many researchers who are, honestly, quite appalling lecturers and are quite vocal about not enjoying working with students anyway. At the same time, however, it seems that UK universities don't hire people who don't do research - at least I was unable to find any.
Most jobs I looked at involved research and, obviously, usually PhD-level jobs assume at least some level of research duties in them. At the same time I wouldn't want to be a teacher at a level lower than university, since I enjoy talking to students who chose the course more than to people who were forced to take it by the general curriculum. I was also a little bit afraid that in the academic world the job of a full-time tutor may be in the long run frowned upon, as  "They is doing everything you are and ALSO doing research!"
So I guess the tl;dr version of my question would be:
Is it possible to have a career as a full-time university lecturer in the UK without research activities?

Strongly related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/40119/what-are-some-effective-ways-for-someone-without-a-graduate-degree-to-increase-t

a side comment: when you are teaching somewhat advanced subjects, i think being an active researcher makes a huge difference, for the best, in the quality of the course (generally speaking, of course).

I am aware of this. A lot depends on the course in question, however. I am a student of pure mathematics and, let's be honest, it's unlikely the base of the curriculum of pure mathematics is going to be fundamentally altered by a ground breaking discovery anytime soon. It is in stark contrast to teaching, say, an engineering course where every new discovery may alter the course greatly.

@GuestLecturer so I am, and even though what you said is true, as a student I do feel like it is an important point. research gives you a sort of insight that you will hardly get otherwise. anyway, don't get me wrong: i am actually in a position pretty similar to yours (so I kind of have to play the devil's advocate ;)

The relevance of even very basic "pure" mathematical things (to mathematics itself...) changes considerably, if not enormously, with time. Priorities, significance change. Being disconnected from good (as opposed to random) research sheds light on this. Probably bad/random research sheds darkness. And, of course, bad communicators will find many dubious rationalizations to make a virtue of their failing, etc. But, altogether, it's better to think actively about mathematics than treat it as a fixed canon. The specific details of job negotiations in the UK are not terribly familiar to me...

@paulgarrett "sheds darkness" is an interesting word choice.  It seems to me it could mean either the same as "sheds light on" or the opposite.  Was this intended?

@Kimball, :) no, not consciously intended to be (completely) ambiguous, but merely opposite to "sheds light on". Meant to be in contrast to "illuminate"... "de-luminate"?

Yes, it is possible to find universities in the UK that hire professor/lecturers who are only doing teaching. This is not very common, but do exist. These professors have no research responsibility, and so they usually teach twice than their research peers.

Example of such permanent teaching lectureship positions from the University of Manchester:
http://www.academiccareer.manchester.ac.uk/about/do/jobsandroles/

Could I focus on teaching-only posts?
Although teaching is part of the role of most academics, there are a
  number of teaching-only roles. The majority of these are associated
  with fixed-term positions, often part-time. However, some institutions
  have developed parallel career routes, allowing academics (in
  permanent roles) to remain focused on teaching and still progress
  through grades similar to the conventional 'Lecturer to Professor'
  route. This has traditionally been the case in the post-92
  universities, but more recently has also been recognised within some
  Russell Group universities.
Job titles may differ to reflect the teaching focus of the job, with
  the term Teaching Fellow sometimes used to reflect a permanent
  teaching-focused academic role (as opposed to those Teaching Fellow
  posts which are fixed-term, teaching posts aimed at those aspiring to
  an academic career - check the job descriptions carefully).
As a teaching-focused academic, in addition to your discipline
  knowledge, you may be expected to conduct research and publish, but in
  the fields of teaching and education, either generally or specifically
  within your discipline. At senior levels, you would generally also be
  expected to take a lead in the development of educational methods
  and/or technologies based on relevant educational research.

Probably much more than twice, from what I gather from my friends in the UK...  and maybe don't have job security... maybe no office space... In other words, not "yes", but "no".

Sorry Paul, but you are wrong on this. I have a first hand knowledge of these kinds of jobs in the UK. They exist, they have twice the teaching, and not much more, and they have permanent positions. (By the way, I like your lecture notes!)

well, in many regards I hope you're right. I admit that I've not made a careful quantitative study of the situation, but the occasional anecdotal stuff I've heard since 2008 has been awful... Maybe it was dramatized for entertainment value... (Thx! I do hope my notes are useful to people...)

To add some more detail to @sevensevens answer, here is some detail from my UK institution (hidden inside our intranet, so I can't link):
The academic jobs have four areas where staff "contribute", one of which is education (the others are research, enterprise [consultancy or bringing in cash], and leadership and management [admin++]). All staff are expected to contribute to at least two at some level; an example they give for "education led" staff would be 70% education and 30% leadership.
As an example, to get to level 6 (senior lecturer / associate prof equivalent) on the education led path, the member of staff may (in addition to their standard teaching duties)

Develop and sustain major pedagogical and practitioner activity of high reputation in the UK and internationally, including through original research work.
Play a leading role in the debate nationally about teaching and learning policy, methods and practices through publications, conference activity and other appropriate media.
Act as coach and role model for teaching excellence locally through excellent practice and mentoring other less experienced teachers.
May disseminate and explain pedagogic research findings through leading peer reviewed national and international publications, conferences and exhibitions.
Develop links with external contacts such as other educational bodies, employers and professional bodies to foster collaboration.

and are

Able to develop and lead key communications strategies,
Able to represent the unit/faculty/university at national/international conference sessions or senior management meetings as a lead expert.
Able to develop significant new concepts and original ideas within their field in response to intractable issues of importance to the research or teaching area.

Those are a small selection of direct quotes (it's less than 20% of the set of points listed), which highlight the key point: if you want a career, with progression up the ladder and continued responsibility, then it is possible, but will require more than just being a good teacher/tutor to the students.
I would finally note: there is a strong belief (backed up with significant evidence) that the teaching led route is not valued at anything like the same level as research led or balanced routes: promotion is slower, and teaching led staff are more likely to get the tedious admin jobs. There's been a push from the top to address this, but as yet it's not clear if that's (a) been successful, or (b) much more than PR.

My institution has policies that talk about 'teaching and scholarship' positions. These presumably require more teaching than the 'teaching and research' positions. So I believe the answer is yes. I don't know what the availability of such positions is though. It is conceivable that nowhere actually hires on that basis now.

It is completely possible to be hired as a full-time lecturer without a Ph.D.  You can also become a prof at a teaching university, which may be more what you want.
If you go the full-time lecturer route, most universities hire lectures on a contract bases, but a few will be promoted to full-time lecturing positions.  You will likely not have as much choice in the classes you teach as profs in your department.
Your other option is to do research in teaching your subject.  You get your Ph.D. by researching how best to teach the subject you are interested in, and once you've received it, you can apply to teaching universities that will pay you to teach without doing research.  Teaching universities award tenure based on excellence in teaching, which encourages all faculty to have good lectures.
NOTE: I believe the UK does NOT have tenure, but its still worth thinking about as both America and several other european countries have some form of it.

You are conflating UK and US, and thus use the term "lecturer" to mean something else than it is in the UK (i.e., a research-assistant professor). Also, it is impossible in the UK to be hired as a full time lecturer without a PhD, except rare occasions.

Absolutely. Such positions are called teaching fellowships. I don't know how common such positions are in general but we had two in the department where I did my PhD. There are certainly quite a number on jobs.ac.uk.

None of those jobs are in mathematics.  UK teaching fellowships in (pure) math do exist but are rare and usually temporary positions. (also, despite the name, they sometimes have a research requirement)


text:
How can I know the journal still covered by Scopus (include 2018 year)
How can I know the journal still covered by Scopus, for example when I check it on Scopus site " Scopus coverage years: from 2008 to 2018 " what its mean?

I don't understand your question. Can't you just search Scopus for the journal? As for "Scopus coverage years: from 2008 to 2018", where is it in Scopus's website? Can you link?

https://www.scopus.com/sourceid/11900154360

Scopus offers a list of discontinued sources (under "Content Coverage", at the very bottom).


text:
During college I was in an accident, changed majors & took a tough schedule, my GPA is low & no recs from a prof, is grad school still an option?
I was in an accident during college, and I graduated with a low GPA (just under 3.0 or so). I switched majors to Math and while I did well in some classes, in general I was a B/C student or so. I think if I went at a normal pace, I could have done much better. Since graduating I've worked as a statistician and a computer programmer. I don't have ANY profs to ask for a letter, but I think I have an employer reference.
Can stellar GREs help me get into a Math PhD?

Stellar GREs can help, but recommendations are very important and in most programs, grades matter quite a bit. In a case like yours, a masters degree can often offer a way to reset your record and give you the portfolio you need to get into a good PhD program.

@Corvus - write your comment as an answer n

Done! I'm still learning what deserves to be an answer versus what should be left as a comment.

@Corvus I think you're doing good, so is IainDunning. Both answers deserve upvotes.

Comments are meant to be short-lived questions for clarification or discussion. They can be deleted at any time. Answers are archival.

Stellar GREs can help but they won't get you into a top tier program on their own.  Recommendations from faculty who know you are very important, academic research experience is desired, and in most programs grades matter quite a bit. That's the bad news.
The good news is that there's a fairly straightforward way to address the situation. In a case like yours, a masters degree can often offer a way to reset your record and give you the portfolio you need to get into a good PhD program. You'll get a chance to show your ability in the classroom, you'll presumably get some research experience, and you'll have the opportunity to get to know a number of faculty well enough that they can write strong letters on your behalf.

A related option would be to start taking courses as a part time graduate student before applying to enter a program as a full time student.  At many institutions it's relatively easy to get admitted as a part time student on some kind of provisional basis.

I am not a mathematician, but I think a "stellar" score on the GRE Mathematics Subject Test would be essential, especially in the absence of recommendations or undergraduate grades.
To elaborate, admissions to a doctoral program are made on the basis that the student has a good chance of succeeding in the doctoral program and developing into a quality researcher in the field. This can be hard to determine for someone coming out of undergraduate (or industry), so proxies are used like grades/GRE, recommendations, undergraduate research projects. With only one of the pieces of this puzzle, it'd be a risky pick for an admissions committee. A masters degree would fill this gap, and the bar for admissions could be a lot lower.


text:
Question of under review -situation
I  would be happy to have a short comment by somebody on following simple situation: I submitted my paper in beginning of January. In the end or January the status changed from the administration (Editor) to "under review". After that, this has not changed, it is still "under review". Is this normal. My field is history.
The journal doesn't indicate the review-times in the pages, but from the same publishing house's pages I have seen other journals of the same field and noted that the time may vary from 3-4 months up to one year.
I have decided that I will patiently wait, but I am starting to feel insecure about if they have forgotten to push the status-button. So, it would be nice just to know, does this sounds normal? Another article a couple of years ago in another journal didn't take that long.

The time frame you mention is within what can be encountered. The time frames also differ wide between disciplines but also from journal to journal so one way to check how reasonable it is will be to check the journal for how long it has taken other papers to go through to acceptance. Many journals state this for each article and hopefully your journal does so as well. If no such information is stated you can try and ask a senior colleague who may have a perspective on the journals and their turn-over times.

Thank you very much. This particular journal doesnt state the acceptance time of papers, but the same publisher has equivalent journals where times are mentioned, so I will rely on information on those. I will continue to wait, thank you once again.

Since the time-frames for review in other journals under the same publisher vary anywhere between 3-4 months to a year, I think you can consider the time-frame normal in your case. However, I think it should be fine to write a polite email to the journal editor asking him/her to update you about the current status of your paper.

Depending upon your field, it may be acceptable to write a short note to the journal requesting an update on the status of the article.  So long as you are respectful in asking, there will not be any harm in doing so.


text:
Are reviewers chosen from among the editorial board of a journal?
If, in a certain international journal where I have submitted, the journal webpage lists the editorial board, should I expect that the possible reviewers of my paper are selected from among the members of this board?
Or is it possible that the Editor in Chief may choose an "outsider" to review my submission?
I didn't indicate any preferred reviewers in submission.

Generally, when a paper is submitted to a journal it is first assigned an editor. The editor then identifies a qualified outside reviewer for that particular manuscript, and invites him/her to review the paper.
So the answer is: No, you should not expect that the possible reviewers of a paper are selected from among the members of the editorial board.

Thank you, this was useful to know, as my submission has been 6 months "under review" and I was wondering if it has stuck on the table of some of the members...thank you once again.

After six months (in most fields) you could already send an email and ask what is the situation with the manuscript. In many fields even much earlier.

Thank you, I have not dared to ask, as I am afraid it might influence negatively to the editors. My field is history, so I thought that it might normally take as long as about 8-12 months, but soon I will have to ask what has happened.

The purpose of peer review is to obtain constructive evaluation of the submitted manuscript from peers who are experts in the field free from conflicts of interest relative to the manuscript and author(s). Hence it is essentially irrelevant if the reviewer is one of the editors. That said, it is very unlikely that an editor ends up reviewing a paper for two reasons. If the editor is an expert, it is far more likely he will be the editor for the manuscript. An editor, with, probably, much work to to do with other manuscripts, is also less inclined to take n review work unless the manuscript is of particular interest. So chances are quite small.
In the journal I edit, I know editors have accepted reviewing the topic. In these cases, the topic has been such that it has been given to another editor who have identified the other editor as a potentially valuable reviewer. Commenting on your comment: I would expect editors to be more punctual with reviews than "normal" reviewers but there is no rule without the occasional exception.
A final comment. I do of course not know how the journal you have submitted to works. But, a normal case is for a Chief Editor to pass on the task of assigning and evaluating reviews to an Editorial Board or Associate Editors (as is the name for them in "my" journal). I think the case of a Chief Editor doing all that work is very unlikely because of all the work involved so it seems far more likely that it is one of the editorial board who is handling the review process. The Chief Editor may be involved in screening submissions and putting a final stamp of approval to the final manuscript as well as handling all the work visavi the publisher.

Thank you Peter, this was good to know as I dont exactly know the working policies of the editor in chief / board members. The publication is relatively prestigious in my field, so the relatively long status as "under review" may indicate that or a) the manuscript is not accepted and they have "forgotten" to inform me b) there has been conflicting opinions c) they have a lot of other manuscripts that are waiting for publishing and they have so far ignored the manuscript. Thank you for enlightening the issue.


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How to propose a peer for recommendation when you are applying for a new job?
I obtained my Ph.D. degree last year and I work in the same department for several years. I like this workplace but I also think about applying for a postdoc position somewhere else. I don't intend to keep it a secret for too long at my current place but I also don't want to reveal it before I see my chances at the other university.
With my application, I need to provide contacts of peers who can recommend me, but I have only worked together with my current colleagues so far. Therefore proposing any of them would be an obvious sign of applying for a new job. I absolutely want to be fair, but I think I have the right to make attempts without any indication. What could be an appropriate solution for this problem?

What’s wrong with just talking to them about your plans, and asking them to be discreet about this until you make them public?
If they can’t respect that I doubt they will provide good peer references.