text:
Would it be a good idea to show my research statement to multiple people?
I showed my research statement for applying to postdocs to my advisor, but that's it. Also the recommendation letter writers looked at it (they requested it, anyway) but have provided no feedback/suggestions. How can I tell if my research statement is too long or too short, if the research proposal is significant, if experts think it's too hard, etc.?
Is there a checklist of criteria (i.e. a rubric) for a good research statement? It appears to me that researchers know what makes a good research statement but want to keep it secret. Would it be a good idea to ask researchers for their research statements so I have an idea of what it should look like?
In general, I have the impression that successful researchers help "groom" some early career researchers, but only some. Those graduate students/postdocs get all the help and everyone else is left out. The ones who get the help are the ones who get the jobs. I don't want to be left out. That's why I am asking here.

Why would you want to keep it secret?

@Buffy I meant that I am guessing what to put in my research statement, and researchers who write good research statements don't say what makes a good research statement, but I want to know so that I can write a good research statement.

Why do researchers not tell people what makes a good research statement? I don't know. There's probably no incentive for them to tell early career people.

Yes, I think you can ask for advice on your research statement from anyone who is A) qualified to give such advice (qualifications would include being someone who reads these statements to make hiring decisions, or at least someone who has successfully gotten a position that required them to write such a statement), and B) invested in your success and willing to gift you the time necessary. I would not send your research statement to people you do not know well and are not invested in you personally, unless it's part of an application for an open position.
Your advisor should certainly be covered in both of these categories, though it's possible few other people fit also into category (B).
People writing you rec letters might be good people to consider as well, but it doesn't seem like you've asked them for feedback. They have asked for your statement so that they can write you an appropriate recommendation letter; it would be destructive to your chances if they wrote about how you were an excellent candidate for a position in underwater basket weaving while you wrote a research statement about how you plan to do work in cheese making. If you want feedback, you'll need to ask for feedback.
The same goes for your advisor, too; if you have specific questions about your research statement, ask them about those specifics rather than just handing them the statement. Otherwise, it may not be clear whether you are looking for rigorous feedback or simple praise and encouragement.
Your question and comments reveal what seems to me to be a bit of a paranoid attitude towards these things. I understand that it can be very difficult to do an assignment when there is no "rubric" to know how you are graded, but hopefully by the end of your PhD you would have lost some of these notions that I think come primarily from earlier schooling where many assignments are graded on rigid criteria. In the "real world", even the "real world" aspects of academia, including graduate admissions as well as job applications for post doc and professor positions, there is no rubric. Your research statement is going to be read by the specific person/committee doing the job of hiring you. A good research statement is one that they like: specifically, one that is part of the overall total application that they like better than any other that they receive. There is no magic length, no special words, nothing cheap or easy that you can add to your statement to make it a guaranteed success. Different people and different committees will come to different conclusions when presented with exactly the same materials.

I personally would amplify that "being someone who reads these statements to make hiring decisions" is the best possible qualification for giving the desired advice.  Partly because, as you say, different people have different opinions about what a good research statement looks like, and someone who's been involved in hiring decisions should have some sense not only of their own views on this, but also their colleagues' views.

When I e-mailed them the research statement, I wrote something like "Any feedback would be appreciated." But maybe I should have been more "in their face" and directly ask them: "Could you please provide feedback on my statement? I would really appreciate it. Thanks again for your time."

@cgb5436 Yes you should definitely be more direct than that. Even more direct than your second draft. "I am concerned about (X,Y,Z; specific things you want feedback on) in my research statement and I am looking for your advice." Better to have this as a conversation in-person, if at all possible.

@BryanKrause OK, I'll do that next time. My experience was, I asked if they can write me a letter. They agreed and asked for a research statement. I sent it to them and said that any feedback would be appreciated. Then a couple days letter they told me that they sent their letter and wished me luck. There was no substantial back and forth dialogue whatsoever.

@cgb5436 Busy people are rarely going to spend their time doing extra things that you haven't asked for. You asked for a letter, they asked you for additional info they needed to complete it, they wrote the letter. They also may not have the time to review your statement for you, of course, but you have to ask them first.

@BryanKrause: At first I thought "Any feedback would be appreciated" would be sufficient, but I won't do that next time.

It's not true that it's a secret. There are various advice freely available, such as this article from science as well as public articles from various graduate schools, such as this one from purdue or this one from cornell. There are also some more specific advice such as this answer from academia.se or this one.
It seems normal to me that your letter writers don't give any specific feedback, as that's not really their job. Just your advisor seems reasonable. Presumably you are entering the stage of your career where you are expected to be more autonomous anyway.
I'll also offer some other thoughts on what I think would make a good research statement for an ABD student.

By default in engineering, I would aim for 3-4 pages (11 pt readable font).
Use section headings for organization, and underlining to assist skim readers. Include a list of 4-6 bullet points which summarize your past/current research and describe your future research plans.

A standard organization would be something like this

A brief introduction which introduces your work and also directly responds to the language in the job posting.
Explaining all the results of your current research, which should show that your research is interesting, relevant, technically rigorous, and academically significant.
Future plans section, which should explain in detail a realistic and impactful research agenda for the next 3-5 years
Brief conclusion which can again appeal to the job posting, and explain funding opportunities.

For example, how do I know if my future plans section is a "realistic and impactful research agenda for the next 3-5 years," without asking people? I tend to think that my advisor is too biased because we had been working together for several years.

@cgb5436 Haven't you been doing research for the past 3-5 years? What do you think you can accomplish with another 3-5? Certainly it's good to get some other feedback here, but also you should be able to have some idea yourself, and that's one of the things you're being hired for.

@BryanKrause No, because I was trying to branch out in different directions. I didn't even have any specific questions. I wrote things like, "Person X did this. It would be interesting to explore connections between [what I did] and [what person X did]." But I had no idea how realistic it was. It was a guess. Looking back maybe I should have asked person X beforehand.

@cgb5436 Which parts demonstrate to the person reading it that they should definitely hire you?

Yes, if there is someone else you can ask and you think they will give good advice. And yes, you could ask one or two people for their research statements that have been successful in the past.
I don't think it is true that researchers don't tell people what makes a good research statement. If you want advice, ask for it. As long as you are not asking too many people, or asking for them to spend a lot of time, there is a good chance they will help you.


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Is it common for the academic hiring process to be rigged?
Here's what one faculty member told me about how hiring works at their department.
There are maybe 10-12 people on the hiring committee and they rate applicants on a scale. There are a bunch of different fields, but two different fields are sometimes lumped together, say field A consists of fields A1 and A2. What happens is that the faculty in field A1 will rate anyone in field A2 with the lowest possible rating, in effect rigging the system so that only faculty who work in field A1 actually get hired. And in fact, when you look at who gets hired in the department, it's always people who work in field A1, never A2.
How common is this?

What country is this? How is the committee selected?

R1 university in the U.S. Not sure how the committee is selected.

Surely it's legitimate for the department to decide, collectively, to prefer to hire in field A1 instead of A2.  If they reach that decision through broken internal politics, well, that's their problem.

I imagine it's nontrivial if the job posting is for a position in A1 (vs an open field request).

@NateEldredge It's one thing if the A1 group uses department politics to ensure that the position description and advertisement are written to promote a hire in their subfield.  It's a different issue if the A1 group plays this game in ways that aren't consistent with the advertisement.  A dean might well have something to say about this if (for example) the advertisement was written to favor applicants in area A2 and the A1 members of the committee ignored the advertisement.

Also, it's quite possible that a dean will decide the department has enough A1's and tell it to hire an A2.

not sure how a committee member preferring someone in their field means the process is rigged: there are so many variables that go in a ranking.  One of them of course is that one or more committee member might just be idiots, but again this does not make the process rigged.

We really should stop thinking that there is such a thing as "objective merit" which can be totally ordered, along with the corollary assumption that if X has more "objective merit" than Y, then it perpetrates an injustice if Y gets something that X doesn't. This is a juvenile and ludicrously simplistic way to conceptualize fairness.

@ElizabethHenning: I was just thinking about this. I think the only way there could be a "true meritocracy" is if everyone was born with the same gender, had the same family upbringing, had the same family income, went to the same schools, etc. It's impossible to control for all of these things.

It’s common for academic hiring to arouse strong feelings and opinions, and for faculty members to express those opinions in a variety of ways, and to exert their influence within the department, also in a variety of ways, in order to achieve an outcome they view as preferable.
Some of the ways in which people exert their influence may strike certain other people — especially people who were hoping for a different outcome — as aggressive or distasteful. Does that mean the process is “rigged”? I don’t think so; not necessarily, anyhow. If you are a member of a search committee and think it would be better for your department to hire someone working in field A1 than A2, it seems only natural that you will vote and rank candidates accordingly. If this leads your department to always hire in A1 and never A2, that simply reflects the balance of opinions of the department’s faculty. This is how institutions run themselves. For all we know, preferring A1 to A2 may actually be a sensible thing in this situation and in the best interests of the department. Even if it isn’t, it’s valid to have that as a preference, and it seems valid (if perhaps less than maximally collegial) to express that preference in the way you described when you are a search committee member, unless the practice is somehow violating some rule or policy.

Everyone in A1 agrees to give everyone in A2 the lowest possible rating, regardless of how qualified the applicants in A2 are, so that it's impossible for anyone in A2 to get hired. That does appear to me to be rigged.

@cgb5436 "Qualified" is not enough in academic hiring. Most "qualified" people do not get jobs. If everyone in the department thinks people in A1 are better for the future of the department than people in A2, they should rank people in A2 low. That prevents hiring someone from A2 that may be qualified but not good for the future of the department. Yes, this sucks if you're in A2.

I don't think the people in A1 care about what's good for the future of the department; they just want everyone they hire to be in A1.

@cgb5436 this situation suggests a certain level of conflict or even dysfunction within the department, with factions that don’t get along sufficiently well to resolve their differences through discussion, so they resort to expressing their disagreements through a more overt power struggle. I’m not saying it’s a healthy situation - quite likely it isn’t. Nonetheless, I’m not seeing this sort of behavior as evidence that the people ranking candidates are corrupt or are abusing their power. So again, calling the search rigged seems misleading to me.

@cgb5436 by the way, in politics it’s common to see politicians making decisions that are bad for the country. Sometimes it’s because they are corrupt of course, but a lot of the times it’s just because they have bad ideas, and they genuinely believe their decisions are good for the country. The current situation can easily belong to this latter category.

For any hiring, admissions, promotion, grants, or awards process where the decisions are made by humans using subjective criteria, there will be bias.  The particular bias will vary.
What any one individual tells you about the bias behind a particular process is not reliable.  It seems to me that such rumors are only a small step above conspiracy theories.
Looking at the list of people who have been hired an their prior records will tell you the truth.

I can't say how "common" it is, having too little experience and no research. But I do know of places with large faculties where there was a definite balkanization. The factions really despised one another and students were wise to avoid the bickering and not to get involved.
And, factions can form for "reasons" other than research field.
It is, in a certain sense, unproductive, though the faculty was large enough that each faction was able to function independently. I don't actually know how if affected hiring, but I can see that it might have done.
Students just need to deal with it as it is, however. But, if it is not helpful overall, then the faculty, collectively, has means to deal with it. Some faculty, however, would rather just do the work and not get involved in faculty politics. To make a change you often have to "be that change".

And, if you were an A2 candidate that didn't get selected, you may be lucky overall.

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Do applications for postdocs get rejected if they don't have a minimum number of publications?
If you don't have a certain minimum number of published papers, will that be used to reject applicants in the first round? Is that common?

No real rules about the number of papers, it is really up to the PI

It depends on how many applications a position gets and the publication tradition of the discipline. When a position attracts hundreds of applications, then there are often quick and dirty rules applied to bring that number down to something manageable. This could include the number of publications. Though I suspect that it won't be a hard rule in the sense that not having x publications means you are in the discard pile. Instead you would end up lower on priority pile. In such a highly competitive environment the end effect will often be the same though.
However there are many positions that are not that competitive, and I would not expect that publications would be the main criterium at such an early stage of the career. Publishing takes time, so early in the career a person hasn't had the time.

A criterium is a bicycle race. The singular of criteria is criterion.

There is no general rule for this. The hiring decision for post-docs is essentially up to the PI. They will be looking for the best candidate for the project, however they define that. Factors which could be important include:

Research experience
Experience with a particular piece of equipment/software/technique relevant to the project
Good reference letters/recommendations from researchers the PI knows/respects
Quality/quantity of publications
PI's familiarity with the potential post-doc
etc

Different PIs will weigh these factors differently. For me personally, number of publications is pretty low on the list of important criteria. Ultimately they can only choose from whomever applies, so always apply if you're interested.

Note that not all postdocs answer to a PI. It is field dependent and the notion of a PI is foreign to some. It might be a departmental decision, not an individual one. But, yes, a variety of criteria is more likely than a single one.

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How do I know what the important problems to work on are?
Basically, I think research groups form "inner circles" where people generate important problems. But I am not in any of these "inner circles," so I don't know where the potentially important problems that will lead to papers in top, prestigious journals are. The people who publish in top journals know what the important problems are. However, I do not and I will never publish papers in top journals at this rate. How do I access this information without asking someone what the important questions are?
One way I can think of is to go to seminars. But I also want to know how to make an advance in the difficult problems and for that I need to discuss with the leading experts in the problem.

I think research groups form "inner circles" where people generate important problems -- why do you think this? Sure, people chat with their friends like anywhere else, but you seem to be alleging a conspiracy between the inner circles of top research groups and the journals, wherein some problems are artificially deemed "important." It may help to clarify what you mean.

What's wrong with "asking someone what the important questions are"?

Are you asking about mathematics primarily?

I wrote this as part of an answer on another question:

One of the things many mathematicians have trouble developing
is what might be called "good taste" - a sense of what mathematics is
genuinely interesting and can lead to further interesting
developments. Some have so little taste that they declare that there
is no such thing, and then claim the popularity of various research
areas is driven purely by the entirely arbitrary decisions of famous
mathematicians.

Don't fall into this trap.  Problems are interesting or not for genuine mathematical reasons.
You should think that there are a small number of 'obviously interesting' problems - to pick a few that most algebraically inclined pure mathematicians have heard of - calculating the homotopy groups of spheres, understanding the moduli space of complex algebraic curves (with marked points), the Riemann Hypothesis, the Continuum Hypothesis (although in some sense this is solved), irrationality of zeta(5).  Most fields of mathematics also have less famous problems that are important in part because they have been worked on but remain unsolved for a long time.  Of course it's probably a bad idea to work directly on these problems.
However, because these problems are so important, any work that provides a potentially useful approach to these problems is important.  That's where taste comes in.  Great mathematicians have the ability to spot approaches to problems that are potentially useful, and these approaches require solving more problems, and these are the practical important problems whose solutions get published in top journals.
Anyone with the vision to find such approaches can get published in top journals.  It is true that mathematicians who are close to great mathematicians can sometimes benefit by having the great mathematician point out an approach and direct them to the problems that need to be solved, but, actually, the great mathematicians generally reserve most of these problems for themselves, because it's important and they don't trust someone else to do the work.
So - the answer is - develop good taste for yourself rather than trying to rely on the good taste of others - or, like 95% or more of mathematicians, give up on being great.

It is difficult for anyone working strictly alone to come up with good ideas and just as hard, perhaps, to turn them into interesting results. Even Einstein worked with a circle of collaborators in the development of Special Relativity.
My advice would be to talk to a lot of people and form a circle of collaborators. Find ways to meet with them, at conferences, say, or by inviting them to your institution for talks. This is easier now with the internet than it was in the past, but it has always been a tool for researchers. It is one of the main reasons that universities were formed, of course.
Share ideas and work toward a productive group, probably sharing authorship of things that develop.
Talk to people outside your field, also: "What sort of problems do you see that need a solution?" After supper sherry hour at the Cambridge colleges are especially good at this, since the members are interdisciplinary.
You can read a lot of stuff for ideas, of course, but a group can read a lot more than an individual can. Some ideas are just serendipity, but a group can make serendipity work for you if you spend some time "thinking out loud".

Attend seminars, post on online forums, work more with students - it is not like these "inner circles" are some secret cabal designed to hide the information from underprivileged, they are just more intensive and, ergo, efficient, than an average seminar or a random hallway talk could be. It is people that make research groups "top", not the other way around - although is your situation is particularly bad, you could be very noticeably less productive than you could have been otherwise. Researchers flock to prestigious universities to find interesting people and ideas there; clicking with them would be a whole lot more productive than joining a leading research group where you will be a fifth wheel. Setting your sights on a handful of people and trying to squeeze into their group which already works well is setting your scope too narrow (not to mention piggybacking on others' success is a dubious tactic).
There are a few other things that I would also like to point out. First and foremost, every measure which becomes a target becomes a bad measure: publishing in top journals is a terrible goal. Because of that, "I will never publish papers in top journals at this rate" is dangerous as a shortcut for "I am concerned I will never do great research".
Next, as Hamming has elucidated (this is an amazing read overall!):

It's not the consequence that makes a problem important, it is that you have a reasonable attack. That is what makes a problem important.

Great scientists made breakthroughs in known problems, but those who are the first to convince others something is worth studying truly cement their place in history. Please refer to this important observation also (IMHO, this applies to all sciences, not just mathematics). "How do I make progress" is a million-dollar question, sometimes literally. There is no general advice on how to know if something is important and could lead to interesting results - as in, which ideas are worth pursuing. The answer is 42, essentially. Short of going through more ideas and training your own heuristics and intuition, there is not much to be said on this topic.
Then come the strategies. Sometimes, it is obvious that the field is "hot" and is making rapid progress, but in small steps: if you are not a member of a strong research group or do not have a good attack on the problem otherwise, it is indeed more likely that you end up producing something valuable, but not all that significant. It does not mean one should always give up or never even try, but if public recognition for some reason or another is important for you, it has to be a consideration. As stated above, maybe you could make more substantial progress by joining a group you get along with well rather than chasing the hottest trends in your area. This has its own drawbacks, of course, and there are looming risks of irrelevance.

This reminds me - one of the factors you should consider when deciding whether or not to work on a problem is comparative advantage.  You should ask why you are better equipped to solve this problem than anyone else.  In the worst cases, the answers are that you are interested in the problem and no one else is, or that you have lots of time to devote to producing a long, clumsy solution.


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Is it OK to show my research and teaching statements with other faculty before applying?
I keep thinking there might be something wrong with my research and/or teaching statements because my applications are unsuccessful. If faculty can give critical feedback before I apply, that can help me feel less of a sense that I fell into a hidden trap that is causing my application to not win the application game.
For more clarification, I have started to think of academia as being a giant mine. There are hidden traps and bombs all over the place. Some people are told by experienced people where the bombs are. They get a leg up and are playing on easy mode. Some are playing the game (the end game of which is to get tenure) on the hardest difficulty level, where they are given no hints.
Thus, I got an email about a panel where grad students can learn the "secrets" to a successful job application. The secrets are to know how to avoid the hidden traps.

Of course you can, why not show it to your PhD/postdoc advisor?

Well I did. But he is more familiar with me. I want feedback from someone who is unfamiliar with my work, because that will be most people on the committee.

@AnonymousM - no, I was thinking about faculty I know. Like, the people writing recommendation letters for me

The truth is that there are significantly more total applicants than total jobs.  A significant fraction of people on the job market will never get a job simply by the Pigeonhole Principle.  Many of the people who do not get a job are not doing anything wrong.

@AlexanderWoo Well, I need all the help I can get.

I am saying this to point out your situation is entirely normal, not to discourage you: as far as I can tell, in the entire history of the math PhD program at my university (which is older than me), no one earning a PhD in pure math has ever gone on to a research-oriented postdoctoral position (though a small number have gotten offers they had to turn down for personal reasons).  It's very rare for people who don't get admitted to higher-ranking programs to have the necessary talent, and being in a department where high-powered research by other graduate students is nonexistent doesn't help.

Do by all means get feedback on your statements, but by far the most likely answer is that there is nothing wrong with them that you can fix (and I have reviewed a fair number of statements).

@AlexanderWoo: I think that's sort of what the PhD program I was at used to be (and still kind of is) but now they've made changes to really try to improve the situation.

Just in case you are have different expectations: a fairly successful research group I'm happy to be a part of gets probably about 15-20% of their grant applications supported. A more typical number would be some 10%, I believe, and that is for relatively strong applications involving people with established track record. There are often small programs aimed to give that much-needed boost to those at the start of their careers, and often it is much like "working for exposure": not enough funding to reasonably cover expenses, but your next application would be stronger.

It is common practice to ask people for feed-back on these types of documents. There are even institutions where any official letter is supposed to be proof-read by another person just to avoid grammar and spelling mistakes. So much more reason to subject something as difficult to write as teaching and research statements to helpful criticism.
The institutions to which you apply cannot give you this feedback. Interacting with a rejected applicant will open them up to potential legal problems or invite discussions that are pointless because hiring decisions cannot be revisited. The same goes for people working there as there answering could be construed as acting in an official capacity.
The more familiar people are with the processes of academia, the more their feedback is useful. The more familiar they are with you, the more their feedback is useful, because you might be unconsciously misrepresenting yourself.


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How do I learn the "hidden curriculum" for academic career success?
I have the impression that there are a lot of hidden secrets, unstated norms and rules that make or break potential researchers in academia. How do I acquire this secret knowledge?
Additional context: None of my parents even went to college; I am a first-generation college student. I grew up in a poor family. I got a PhD a few years ago but am struggling to get a postdoc and advance. There are lots of things I would like to know, like:

how to write more papers quickly
how to write a compelling research statement
how to network like a professional
how to decide which topics to work on
how to work with academics in different career stages (junior faculty, postdoc, emeritus)
how to start collaborations
how to read academic papers efficiently
how to organize all the learning materials, including journal articles and my personal notes, efficiently.
how to tell if a talk I give is good or not, when nobody wants to give direct, honest feedback
how to find out about useful conferences
how to get on e-mailing lists where academics post about useful conferences
how to get asked to referee a paper
how to write a referee report
how to [do everything else that academics are expected to do]

Another related question is: How can I compensate for not having parents who are academics? A lot of academics have relatives who are also academics -- maybe a brother, or parents, or grandparents. I don't have any of that. I know that this will disadvantage me, but I want to minimize this disadvantage.

My advice is to find an experienced researcher/teacher to teach you the rope.  There is no hidden curriculum.  However, there are basic skills you do have to master.   The competent/experienced researcher does each part of the research process very well, from problem selection, write-up to publicizing outputs.

What stage in your career you? Are we talking "just starting your PhD" or you've just landed your tenure track position?

What if my advisor didn't? Then what?

The interesting thing about the list in the update it that some of these things just don't have an answer (or not one i've ever found) - like how to write a paper quickly - or how to choose a problem to work on. These are not really "hidden curriculum". Others very definitely are - like how to write a referee report. But know which of these things have answers and which don't  is it self part of the hidden curriculum.

Please state your area and subject. It is very different to have a PhD in Engineering in the Netherlands with respect to a PhD in Foreign Policy in the US (if you are in the second bin: welcome to statistical reality, you can be 99% sure a PhD will not improve your social status&median income)

Researchers from families where graduate diplomas are the norm rather than the exception are certainly at an advantage in many ways, but this advantage does not consist in having "hidden", "secret" answers to the questions that you are asking. Fixating on this idea is almost certain to lead down the wrong path. Anecdotally: I wasn't at any point imparted any "hidden secrets" on how to write a referee report, or start collaborations, or network. And are you seriously claiming that "getting on e-mailing lists where academics post about useful conferences" requires some kind of secret technique?

Both my parents were academics (though my mother became one only after raising 5 children), but I never learned any of these things from them.  I did learn a lot of other academically useful things (like eagerness to learn more), but your non-academic family may not be as big a disadvantage as you think.

There is quite a lot of scholarship about this topic. See for example: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/6wjxc, who find that academics are 25 times more likely to have parents with PhDs, rising to 50 times at prestigious institutions.  The hidden curriculum is a well recognised concepts in the sociology of academia. See books by Elliot (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-41497-9), Gable (https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190761/the-hidden-curriculum) for example.

There is no secret WAC (World Academic Council) full of old white cigar smoking males that guard the CRR (Compendium of Rules and Regulations).
However, cultural capital is a real issue. The problem is that it mostly works on a subconscious level. Universities are bureaucracies, and there is a way to behave inside bureaucracies that is more likely to lead to success. The problem is that those "rules" are not explicit. For people inside the organization they are so self-evident that they wouldn't be able to list them. If you break those rules, then that isn't even observed as "breaking of rules", but as the breaker being rude or dumb or lazy, i.e. being rude or dumb or lazy is a property the gatekeeper assigns to the individual, whereas breaking of rules is a property the gatekeeper assigns to an action. Yes, one of the rules in academia is that ad hominem arguments are not allowed, but whoever said that subconscious rules have to be internally consistent?
People who are not raised in a middle class background have real trouble navigating universities. Since this is all subconscious, there is no curriculum. Many people with a lower class background who did make it had a "cultural guide", someone who explained the rules when they became relevant, or explained what happened when (s)he broke the rules and received nasty responses, and/or mediated when such a conflict arose. This is in line with the comments by @Roland and @VitaminE .
The concept of cultural capital or cultural knowledge is a huge subject in sociology. A nice accessible introduction is here (though it very focused on the qualitative side and largely ignores the quantitative side of this field):
Lareau, A. (2015). Cultural Knowledge and Social Inequality. American Sociological Review, 80(1), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122414565814

Sometimes these things are more explicit. E.g. understanding that in biology, the person who did the experiment goes first on the author list, and the supervisor goes last. Or the ins and outs of how funding bodies, or government assessment systems work, amd how that affects how universities run themselves.

Ah, but you knew that that was something you could look at, and that there are circumstances where that knowledge could help you...

Yeah, because my dad was an academic, and my supervisors were good at including me in discussions of these things, and I hang around on the correct parts of twitter too much! But these are very much part of the hidden curriculum.

I suspect we could break your list into three categories.

Things everyone struggles with. Writing more (and better) papers faster is the name of the game in publishing. How to read and organizing documents efficiently is a very common question here; some of us have systems we like, others are okay with having no system, and others are constantly pursuing the elusive perfect system. Some people are good at networking, and others are not -- and there are classes/books about how to do it better. Starting collaborations is notoriously difficult, particularly at an early stage where you don't have so much to contribute.
Things you should have learned in grad school. Your advisor should have given you enough criticism on your talks and manuscripts that you know what is required. You should know the major conferences in your (sub)field because your advisor should have been sending you there, and your should recognize the names from the literature. You should have enough existing research that you can recognize opportunities to dive deeper or broader.
Cultural factors that others take for granted. Networking and interpreting feedback may be more difficult -- I'm reminded of the joke about Brits and Americans, where the Brit says "I have some concerns," the Americans thinks "oh good, we're close to agreeing," but the British person actually meant "I couldn't disagree more." Similarly, values like being reliable, obedient, and respectful tend to be strong positives in certain socio-economic groups but are neutral or even negative in some academic groups.

For now, my answer is to recognize that there are three different issues here, and to take some confidence in the fact that most of the bullets on your list are actually in category #1 (issues that all academics struggle with); there is no indication here that you are "hard-wired" to be unsuccessful due to your cultural background. In particular, remember that the road to a tenured position is very narrow; people across all grad schools and all backgrounds are having many of the same struggles that you are.
On the other hand, several of your bullets are in category #2, which is a little concerning. I recognize that this invites an obvious follow-up question: how do I learn the things I should have learned in grad school? I invite you to search our archives for any past questions along these lines, and if there are not any, to consider posting that question separately.

How can I compensate for not having parents who are academics, or for having a less than stellar advisor? A lot of academics have relatives who are also academics -- maybe a brother, or parents, or grandparents. I don't have any of that. I know that this will disadvantage me, but I want to minimize this disadvantage.

@cgb5436 hang out with academics. Go to conferences, don't miss the watercooler chat, ask and observe your colleagues, build up your network/peer group.

@cgb5436 - you keep asking questions along the same lines (both in the comments here, and in your past posts) but you don't seem to be devoting much thought to the answers. Frankly, it seems like you want to hear that success in academia is impossible for people from your background, so it's not your fault if your career doesn't work out. I would urge you to instead get back to work, do some interesting, enjoyable research, and also consider the full range of future career paths -- you may find that your interests and skills are actually a better match to something else, and that's totally ok.

@cgb5436 To reiterate cag51's comment in slightly different words, you have correctly identified a range of skills that are important to develop in order to succeed in academia. The only thing that remains to be done is to let go of the idea that (most) other people had these skills fall into their laps instead of having to work for them in the same way that you do. This idea seems to be re-directing your attention from working on these skills to expecting someone to inject "hidden secrets" directly into your brain, Matrix-style.

I think it is important to note that even comparatively small differences in opportunity can compound to large effects over 20-25 years of learning and education. When I write proposals now, I draw on things I learned when I was 14 and we spent a term in English class discussing and practicing persuasive writing and rhetoric. We had time to do that because everyone in the class already had solid reading and writing skills at the age of 11. And so on, back through childhood, all because we happened to be born in a modestly affluent area in a first-world country.

@avid As the saying goes, "The rich get richer."

The best answer to those things that you should or could know (and to be able to recognise which those things are) is to find your self a trusted mentor. Doesn't have to be someone senior (although that often helps), but could just be someone of your own generation how seems to be clued up about these things. Have coffee with them frequently and just chat about whats going on in your life and theirs. This will be easier if/when you get a postdoc. Perhaps its even worth focusing your search on advisors who have a reputation as good mentors rather than good practitioners of your field.
Recognising that that might not be possible, you might try looking for online communities that can help. This community is one such place, although the advice here is, but design, focused on a pretty narrow set of questions. Another place is twitter. Follow #AcademicChatter for example, or pick some profs/well known postdocs in your field that spend their time live tweeting conferences, or talking about academic culture, or just complaining about academia rather than just promoting their latest papers. Try @ProfessorIsIn or @jenheemstra.  There is a slack group for new (mostly biology) faculty (NewPI_UK) that I have found invaluable starting out as tenure track academic in the UK - its just a bunch of us in the same position trying to work things out together. Perhaps you can find (or start) something similar.
There are also podcasts. Try "The effort report" (https://effortreport.libsyn.com/), which sees its mission as specifically talking about the hidden curriculum, although again, i think mostly aimed at new faculty in the sciences. .
Finally, and this is probably not quite appropriate for you yet, but there are paid courses in the non-academic side of being an academic, but these are mostly aimed at tenure track people. Examples include EMBO's Lab Leadership course and CSHL's Leadership in Biosciences. Some career coaches also specialise in academia.

There are many, many barriers faced by first-generation college students in academia. The pushback to your question makes sense, as the vast majority of academics don't learn the answers to your questions through their relatives in academia; in fact, I would disagree, and say that most academics don't have relatives in academia at all (personally, none readily come to mind). Most academics learn the answers to these questions through their advisors and mentors, either during their undergraduate and graduate educations. Of course, access to such advisors and mentors is the part that's blocked off from many low-income students. The most dedicated and well-known advisors are mainly at prestigious universities, where students from underprivileged backgrounds are grossly underrepresented; further, even at a prestigious university, a low-income student may have a more difficult time doing the networking necessary to get access to a good advisor, and may arrive with less preparation to be able to stand out from the first year.
I sympathize with your plight, though I completely disagree with the premise that academics learn this "secret curriculum" from family members in academia, as I doubt this is rarely, if ever, the case. It's simply a fact that academics from wealthier backgrounds have access to better educational opportunities which teach them these lessons.

OK. Because many academics are not modest in expressing that they come from well-off families whose parents or grandparents were academics. You never hear academics go, "Hey, neither of my parents were able to guide me through college. They didn't even finish high school! I did it and so can you. I made so many mistakes and there are so many things I could say that could be helpful for early career people who are in my shoes."

Well, FWIW, I learned a lot about some of the aspects of academia from my parents. But this only helped me to understand power dynamics better and not struggle with wordings as much early on. Struggling pretty much the same with the actual research as first-generation academics I know. Also, @cgb5436, it's almost too late for you, but the main helpful thing is to find a good mentor (either your advisor or just someone experienced you can confide to). Some of the things you ask about are easier resolved with some show-and-tell. Networking is also absolutely key.

There is no secret knowledge that comprises rules or recipes for success. Academic success relies on your own work, your own ability, your communicative qualities, your enthusiasm for the work you do, the opportunities you see for the application of your work elsewhere, the way you support your students, the way you work with your supervisors, the care you take to write and publish what you do, the interest you take in others’ work, the opportunities you seize for collaboration. I also recognise the role of luck, but that is beyond control. Each of these themes could be expanded into an essay.
It is damaging to your own development to think that there  are secret rules. That is the way to paranoia, where you think the world is somehow arranged to keep you out. It is not: it is waiting for your contribution.

I agree. Then again, perhaps OP refers to the various "soft skills" that you mention by "secret curriculum". Many of them are not taught explicitly in graduate education. There's a lot of implicit knowledge that academics learn by osmosis (and which is therefore very hard to spell out in an answer here).


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Do successful researchers have some "trick" in common that leads to their success?
Is there some sort of secret trait or skill I can develop to become a more successful researcher?

How do you define success?

No. Unless you consider having good ideas, strong work ethics, and the luck to be at the right place at the right time to be secret traits or skills.

Why should there be one? And if there was one, how would it remain secret?

I have voted to close this question, because it's too broad (there is obviously no single "trick", so answers are going to offer all kinds of general advice), and opinion-based (answers are going to be very subjective).

Mate I have no idea how I am getting where I am getting. Just keep going.

I don't know of any trick. But, I started to get better at my research, by trying to understand and replicate what people far more successful than me were doing.
The number one thing is to start collaborating with the successful people. But, that's not easy since most want to collaborate with them. As a student or postdoc you can try to apply to vacant positions in their groups. As a senior researcher, your best bet are successful people who are young and will be likely influent in their communities in a few years.
Once you get working with these successful people, you need to keep up, or you'll fall behind. So you have to be prepared to put in the hours and the work that's needed.
Then you start paying attention to how your successful collaborators actually work: some organize themselves very well, some know how to get most out of the strengths of their group's members, some are good at politics, at grant writing, and some are good when it comes to choosing and solving research problems. You need to see what others do better then you and understand why.
But, as someone who has asked many successful colleagues this exact question, don't expect a recipe type of answer. Each of us has their own recipe for success and very few of us know how we developed it. You need to look at others and select only what works for you.
A second thought about success is that people who choose hard and important problems to solve and come at them with everything they've got (including collaborators), become successful, but only after they learn to be more realistic about what can be actually solved within their means. Setting out to solve an important problem and having a degree of success is the surefire way to start collaborating with successful researchers.

It depends on what you mean by success.
If you seem to have trouble converting ideas into publications and gaining visibility - and given that you want to achieve just that - become more "product-oriented". To do more research, you would need more resources; that ultimately boils down to securing funding and having enough time for work. To get said funding, you presumably would need prestigious publications, so in this mindset, producing actually great research matters less than producing lots of things in agreeable quality. As soon as your work passes a certain threshold, promote it heavily, make others fill the gaps, salami publish... All these practices are not particularly popular and ethically dubious, but if you want to run your research as a business, they are a way to go.
If you are aiming for something more balanced and harmonious instead, still consider that you need to communicate your results, and have mid- and long-term goals reasonably clear to you. Make sure to stay well-connected: this is probably the only inhibitor preventing you from ending up being considered one of the top experts in your field if you just work long and hard enough.
Good work ethic, good networking, clear goals. The rest is just talent and luck.


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If I don't get a postdoc, how do I know what I did wrong?
For example, did I make the research statement too technical, etc.?
Also, is it true that a lot of applications don't even get looked at?

My guess? Your application was too short and lacked detail.

You are assuming you did something wrong, which is not necessarily the case, there are not enough postdoctoral positions for every PhD graduate.

Does this answer your question? What are the main reasons postdoc applicants get rejected?

Nobody wants to hire me @Dr.Snoopy. I want to know why.

The search committee isn't going to give you any detailed feedback. If you worry about your research statement being too technical, you need to show it to a trusted senior colleague and ask for feedback.

If a position is advertised, then applicants will be looked at, until a suitable candidate is found. The final sentence in the comment of @AdamPřenosil is the proper way to proceed.

Your other questions indicate you are in math.    If you look at recent survey data from the AMS, you will see that only about 50% of new PhDs get an academic position (about 10% are unemployed; some but not all of the remaining 40% wanted an academic position but didn't find one).  Of those getting an academic position, some of the other data suggest about 50% are postdocs, 20% are (almost always teaching-oriented) tenure-track positions, and 30% are teaching-oriented non-tenure track (temporary or permanent) positions.  Moral: what Dr.Snoopy said.

@AlexanderWoo: yeah... but I was wondering how I can know how my application was perceived by the hiring committees.

If it's something you could've done, then most likely someone will get a word in with your advisor at some point.  Most of the time it's completely out of your control.

Postdocs are expensive. Most people don't have enough spare money laying around to hire one, even if an amazing postdoc candidate comes to their desk.
The other issue is integrating postdocs with a new research group. PIs don't want to just hire a bunch of independent people, they should have a clear vision for how their team works together. In other words, there are a lot of factors outside of your control (what type of person/expertise is each PI needing right now? It might not match your background. Or in other words, it's not that you were necessarily bad, you just weren't the right researcher for the job).

While postdocs are more expensive than a graduate student, they are less expensive than a professor or staff member. But there are fewer postdoc positions than graduate student positions.

In math most postdocs are not funded by grants.

True @Moishe I'm speaking from my experience, which is in engineering in the US

Yes, engineering is quite different, but OP appears to be in math.

"Postdocs are expensive" This depends on the situation. Compared to a graduate student on a RAship, they're often equal: the rise in salary is about the same as the cost of graduate student tuition and fees. In some private schools with high fees and fields where postdoctoral pay is low, you actually save money. The postdoc tends to be more productive, without a lengthy class/exam period, so the work per dollar is better. Finally, there is funding specifically for postdocs, so it doesn't come out of the same pot of money.


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What happens if I don't get a postdoc the first time?
I applied for postdocs this past year but didn't get any offers. Unfortunately it's not possible for me to get any feedback on what went wrong. One of my letter writers said that I am not doing anything "wrong," but the competition for any academic position is "extremely brutal." He also said that academia isn't really a meritocracy and that there's a lot of randomness in the hiring process. He also said that there's an element of "social engineering" in academic hiring that's intensified in the past five years and that I shouldn't take it as a sign of my mathematical ability.
I think he was trying to make me feel better but I still feel like a loser. I wish I knew what was different about the candidates who did get hired. What made them different from the candidates who did not get hired?
Is that the end of my academic career? What should I do in the meantime before trying again? How many times can I try?

Don't give up. I also struggled to get a postdoctorate position (tough competition and a difficult economic period) for almost one year at the end of my PhD, and got two offers when I was about to give up.

To add on to @DanielHatton's comment, in the US there isn't a strict cycle either. If any, there's a weak alignment to the academic year, and we still are 3 months from summer, and 6 months from the beginning of the school year, plenty of time to find a position that would become available on these dates.

The statement that postdocs are available all year round is quite field-dependent. In my corner of physics it's pretty rare to see many positions advertised between April and September (in any country).

The truth is that there are more applicants than positions. Not everyone can get a postdoc position, even though they all want to. That doesn't mean that you can't, but the statistics just aren't on your side. Not everyone can date Claudia Schiffer. Not even everyone with the good looks of Matt Damon.
So there is probably a point to be made about having a Plan B. In the short run, you'll have to look for a job to keep paying the bills before the next application cycle comes around. Then try again, and maybe this time you have better luck. In any case, it is probably worth your while to think about what careers you could be happy in, that are fulfilling, and sufficient rewarding. Lots of people end up in jobs that they consider fulfilling even though that may not have been their plan A.

What do you think is different about the applicants who get the offers?

Could be anything. Maybe their thesis topic was more precisely aligned with topic the person reviewing the application was interested in. Maybe the reviewer just had a nice meal before reviewing that application, and was thus in a good mood. Maybe ....

Look at it from the point of view of the person hiring: You get a big pile of applications. Some can easily be discarded. But that still leaves a somewhat less big pile of applications who all have their pros and cons. It is rare that just one clearly stands out. Most of the time there are a number of applications that are all suitable without clear ranking. However, you can still choose only one. That is why there is so much randomness in academic hiring.

All of the above, or they already hired someone in your specific field a year ago and want to go with a different area this time. Or they hadn't, but the university reduced the department's budget and they can't hire this year. Or there was a superstar from Harvard available in your specific area. Or your application really wasn't that good. Or your application was good but your thesis wasn't. We really can't know, and in truth you really can't know either.


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UK Uni: modify FTE after offer?
This might be a silly question, apologies in advance.
I've received an informal offer for a fixed-term, part-time (0.3FTE) teaching position at a UK university. Now, because of Brexit, as a EU national I need a visa to work in the UK -- however, the Skilled Worker visa requires a certain minimum salary, which this position doesn't reach.
Obviously this is something both myself and the employer should have caught earlier, but we didn't.
Moving up within the pay grade isn't nearly enough. One way to fix it would be to adjust the post to something like 0.6FTE. Is this something I can reasonably suggest? Or would it involve redoing the whole recruitment process.
(I considered other visa options, but none seem to apply to such a fixed-term, entry-level, teaching-only position)
EDIT: comments below are correct: NO, it doesn't hurt to ask. And YES, it's out of budget.
Lesson learned: when applying for a part-time position, make sure you read the visa fine print.

Not a silly question, but off topic as it relates the laws of UK and employment generally, not specific to academia.  See: https://academia.stackexchange.com/help

I don't think it would require redoing the recruitment process, but I can't imagine a university advertising a 0.3FTE position if they had the money for a 0.6FTE position...

Is this something I can reasonably suggest? What other alternative do you have? It sounds like you cannot legally reside in the UK with the position you were offered. Whether the request to change it is reasonable or not seems beside the point.

Is the university even aware of the problem? If not, you should certainly tell them.  In that connection, you can suggest your solution but also ask whether they see another solution.

@AndreasBlass yes, they're aware. We have been discussing (and running out of) possible options since they made the offer.

@Buffy not completely. It's about what a department is able to do, which might be less flexible than other employers in this situation.

What's your ONS occupation code? The minimum salary depends on this, so presumably you (or someone in the department) already knows. If not, you can look it up at https://onsdigital.github.io/dp-classification-tools/standard-occupational-classification/ONS_SOC_occupation_coding_tool.html

A part time fixed term job is normally a bad deal for the employee.

Not a silly question, and not something to feel awful about missing given that the Brexit rollout hasn't exactly been...smooth.
Definitely ask your department if they have an extra 0.3FTE worth of work you can do. Staffing needs can change unexpectedly, so even if they didn't need 0.6FTE when you applied they might now. For example, if you can't accept the job because of visa issues, they'll suddenly have a new opening!
If they can't hire you to do more of the same job, you might consider looking into whether other parts of the university (say, another department in a related field) would hire you. If the university is your sponsor it may not matter if you're doing work in multiple departments. (note: I'm not a lawyer, I have no idea if the university is the sponsor or if you're required to work in only one department).
Also, you presumably already know this, but just in case it hasn't come up, you may qualify for a lower salary threshold if you meet one of the following criteria:

your job is in a shortage occupation
you’re under 26, studying or a recent graduate, or in professional training
you have a science, technology, engineering or maths (STEM) PhD level qualification that’s relevant to your job (if you have a relevant PhD level qualification in any other subject your salary must be at least £23,040)
you have a postdoctoral position in science or higher education


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MS or PhD with publication records?
I have an above-average undergraduate GPA (7.5/10.0, top 20% of my class), but it is not exceptional. I have top scores in all my labs, but my written test scores are all over the place. However, I do have ~2 years of research experience and three good publications, two being in the top-5 conferences of my area (CVPR second co-author and ECCV second author, for Computer Vision) and a paper in a top-tier conference workshop (ICLR workshop, first co-author).
I know for sure that I want to pursue a Ph.D. My question is, with a mediocre UGPA, would it be better to first apply for MS to boost my grades, or directly apply to top Ph.D. programs (Berkeley, CMU etc.) with professors working in my sub-area within Vision?

If you are the lead author of a paper in CVPR, I'm sure many academics will accept you.  Good luck!     You probably want to mention where you want to pursue a PhD to get a more specific answer.

Thank you for the response. I'm a second co-author of the CVPR paper and the second author of the ECCV paper. Updated the question.

First, make a broader search. Your narrow choice of top schools works strongly against you. Also, note that getting an MS isn't guaranteed to improve your grades. Note that admissions in US is broad based, not focused on GPA more than other things. But if you apply to only Berkeley and CMU (and very similar schools) you will almost certainly be disappointed as the competition is broad and deep.

@Buffy thank you for your response. I will be applying to other schools as well.

Your research background is definitely suitable for a PhD, even with your GPA (and being top 20% of your class is still a good thing), especially since you have publications.  Assuming you plan to apply to schools in the US, I'm not sure what a 7.5/10 would equate to.  This may be something worth asking prospective advisors at the schools that you apply to.  In some cases, PhD programs may have an option to defer to the MS program if you are not accepted, so that may be something you could look into as well.  (One thing that you should note is at many, if not most, schools, an MS degree would be a terminal degree, so you would be better off applying directly to the PhD program anyway)
While it doesn't hurt in your case to apply to PhD programs, beware that programs like Berkeley and CMU are the top-most programs that everyone wants to apply to.  Many of these applicants will have similar research credentials (if not more) as you, in addition to having strong GPA's so it becomes that much harder to stand out among the applicants there.  I'm not saying you can't apply, especially with your credentials it's worth a shot but I'd also remind you to not count out lower ranked programs as well.  Keep in mind, the advisor you work with is the most important aspect of your PhD, so make sure you are looking into advisors at multiple schools.

Thank you for the detailed answer!


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Is there a path to publishing if you're outside of academia, specifically with a master's?
I'm graduating in a few months with an M.S. in Economics. My program required a thesis, which took a bit longer to write than I hoped for, but I've done it, passed the defense, manuscript approved. My committee is talking about me making some revisions and trying to get it published in a peer-reviewed journal, which would be an absolute dream come true for me. Not sure if it'll happen, but we're going to try.
Although I started my program as a full-time student, because the paper took a while, I've been working in private industry (corporate job) for the past few years. I am in data analytics in a field that is related to my research interests (suppose I wrote my thesis on the economics of retail, and I work for a private equity firm that buys/restructures department stores - not a real example, but you get the idea). It pays well, provides good retirement, good health insurance, etc. so I have no plans at this time to leave and go back for a Ph.D.
However, I really want to continue to research, write, and hopefully publish papers. Is there a way for me to continue to do this outside of academia? If you've done this, or know someone who has, what did this look like for them?

Plenty of scientists, engineers, researchers, etc., in industry publish regularly. Have at it and best of luck and success to you!

Probably a duplicate of this: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/160972/75368. "Conferences" isn't essential in the question/answers there. Anyone can publish if the papers are good. There is no requirement for being in academia. Lots of folks at IBM, Google, etc. publish regularly.

Probably worth adding to the conversation that  much will depend upon your employer's policies for publication. Some encourage it, some don't, some treat whatever you do as potentially their own intellectual property. Your manager and HR will be good places to start.

@A rural reader Thank you for suggesting my manager and HR; I hadn't thought to go in that direction. We do "professional development plans" (less a plan than a conversation) every November. I think that would probably be a good time to bring this up. Our company does have a segment that contributes to industry research, though more in a "press release" than "journal article" kind of way, so that might be a good place to start.

There's nothing special about it. You find an interesting idea, do the work, and write it up.
The real difficulty is time. Research is difficult and tiring, and if you are working a full-time job then you'll only be able to spare a few hours a day on research. Even then you could easily be working 50+ hours a week. Productivity drops with time spent working; your progress is likely to be slow.
But it can be done (I did it once). You'll likely want to liaise with a more experienced researcher, since it sounds like you have little formal research experience. If they can't mentor you directly, you might still be able to show them a draft of the results when you get them.
Maybe the best way is to switch to part-time work and part-time research, but you'll almost surely earn less that way too.

What would be a good way to find a more experienced researcher - reach out to someone in the field? Unfortunately part time work isn't really an option for my role; they can and probably would just find someone willing to work full time.

@HopefulEconomist apologies for late reply. Yes, you reach out to someone in the field. I would start by asking your teachers from your Masters or Bachelors though; they already know you and are more likely to respond.


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A collaborator has not contacted me besides our initial conversation, is it alright to find another?
I am a non-thesis graduate student working on an independent research project. I contacted a professor at another university for help with using COMSOL, a modeling software. He asked if I was interested in an academic collaboration and I said yes. Since then, I presented a poster on the research I had already completed. I sent an email following up, especially since I wanted to add a future work section to the poster. I have not received a reply. At the conferect I had a lot of people interested in my work. Since it has been a couple of months since our conversation, with no follow up on the professor's end, is it alright to move on to a different collaborator? Should I follow up again?

Did you add his name to the poster as a token of collaboration? If yes, then you should follow up. If not, then that explains why you are being ghosted.

I think it would be a mistake to make assumptions here. Collaborating with such a professor is a real opportunity and you shouldn't leave hard feelings. Professors are busy, but it would be good to contact them again asking if they are still interested and asking them for their suggestion on next steps from both of you. If you have deadlines (as professors don't) say what they are.


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How can I overcome bad/low GPA to graduate adimissions?
First: I want to do grad school, and I'm a undergraduate student.
Now, I have a really bad GPA. My probable final GPA value will be 2.0, and I'm an international student. Still, I have two papers published (more yet to come before I finish the undergraduate school), three scientific projects (two of them with goverment founding), participations on events and many minor things related with what I want to do in my research area.
I will need to enroll in another undergrad school to overcome my bad GPA. Therefore, I designed the following:

I enroll in a Msc program here in my country, and meanwhile I start a second undergrad school to boost my GPA.
I use the CV of this online grad school together with my MSc CV to persue the PhD abroad.
In the end, I will have many things AND a nice GPA.

Therefore, at the time I send the documents for PhD application, I will send a nice undergrad GPA CV of the second graduation, the prior things that I did on the first undergraduation (BUT NOT THE CV per se) and a nice CV of master degree. In practice, I will "mask" my grades from the first undergraduate school.
This plan sounds nice, but, I would like to ask:
It will sound strange for the PhD application comission?

Most schools will request transcripts from all institutions attended. Are you planning to not send these and deny ever having attended the first school? If so, won't you be "given away" by the affiliation on your papers?

@cag51 yes, but technically, I can send any CV that I have and I choose the nicest one. The papers will be there, and no one can claim that I didn't published them, so they will count something I think. I mean, I've never read a school asking for "all transcripts ever attended"

@BasicMathGuy I am not sure that you can omit info on previous studies everywhere. At least in Germany, you are required to list ALL previous studies.

somewhat related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38237/how-are-ph-d-applications-evaluated-in-the-us-particularly-for-weak-or-borderl

@Sursula-they- so really, how can I erase my bad GPA history?

@BasicMathGuy You can't. But you can make up for it with better grades as planned.

@Sursula-they- still, they really do a background check? I mean, how?

@Sursula-they- and...I can't make up for it, since I'll finish my undergrad school soon. I can make up for it in the future, but the GPA from undergrad school will be there. How can I overcome this situation to be equal to other student that didn't have these sorts of problems?

@BasicMathGuy Maybe they do, maybe they don't - but if it somehow comes to light afterwards there will be substantial problems for you (even of the legal kind)

Does this answer your question? How are Ph.D. applications evaluated in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students? Am I likely to get into school X?

What you are trying to do (erasing academic history) is a violation of academic integrity that may result in expulsion once it is disclosed.
To answer your question "Can they check it?". It is usually not possible to check the full education history of a foreign citizen. It is already a hard thing to do at Embassy-level, and even harder at the University-level. You may hide something, and they will never know.
However, by erasing a substantial part of your education history, it will make your application look really suspicious, especially when the gap is 4 years.

What was the institution that you were affiliated when you were working on the scientific projects. (not affiliated & no previous qualification?)

Why did you enroll into an (online?) undergraduate program and a graduate one at the same time without previous education? It is simply not possible for many reasons (not necessarily time)

What did you do in that 4-year period?

People are not stupid. They will know immediately that something fishy going on here.
They may also contact the institution where you obtained your master's degree to inquire about the qualification you used in order to apply for the program.

Ok, so the next question:
The bad GPA of the first undergraduate course will be a problem if I send two CVs? One nice and the other one bad. Both of them are on exact sciences.

I cannot answer it, but I will tell you that it is possible to make up for a bad GPA, and it will be a lengthy process. You cannot expect to immediately end up at a top institution with your GPA and research outputs. So in my opinion, getting a postgraduate degree is definitely worth it, and you need a significant improvement (e.g. a very high GPA) to make up for that bad GPA. What you are doing now are more important than what you did many years ago.

What if I transfer from my undergrad  course to another in a different university? (because I didn't finish my undergrad yet, and the curriculum will not show the bad grades)

Agree with others – do NOT hide your previous degree. Yes, graduate schools require you to submit all transcripts, and falsifying your background is the surest way to end your academic career.
Instead, try to explain the negatives honestly and accentuate the positives. Specifically:

Were there extenuating circumstances for your low GPA? Were you dealing with personal problems, e.g., health, financial? Did you improve over time especially by the last year? That helps to show your future grades are likely to be better.
Were your grades better in core courses? That helps to show you have the potential to succeed in grad school.
Talk about your research projects. How did you get the funding? Was it a competitive process? What were your contributions to the project? Don't exaggerate because every serious project involves a team, but do describe your specific role. That helps to show your research potential and ability to lead or work in a team.
Most important: Papers are the best way to prove your research productivity. Conference proceedings are good too, as few undergrads have journal papers. Provide citations showing the full author list. Use arXiv or ResearchGate etc. to share a copy if it is not yet published or not easily accessed publicly. Note that a vague mention of something "submitted" or "in preparation" is meaningless.

Finally, consider your career options. You mention the MSc as a stepping stone, so I'm guessing you aspire to the PhD. Are you quite sure that is the right path for you? Yes, some people have succeeded in spite of bad grades, but it's a very uphill battle. Perhaps the MSc is all you need to get a good job? Talk to your local academic advisors to make sure you fully understand the reasons behind getting a PhD, and whether that is the right path for you. Good luck.

But, I don't know how the grades of the undergrad school will impact my career in the next 10 years for example. I do know that they are bad for admission process. Also, I do want scientific career, because I want to do research, and be a academic.
I have some anxiety behaviour. But I've never went to a doctor or something. I think I can't explain my grades and the over than 20 academic subject failures.

What if I transfer from my undergrad  course to another in a different university? (because I didn't finish my undergrad yet, and the curriculum will not show the bad grades)

@BasicMathGuy If you don't have any better explanation, you have to be prepared for admissions committees to assume that the reason for your bad grades is that you're just not very capable in the subject. That is of course very likely to prevent you from being accepted to a Ph.D. program.

@KevinArlin but I do have publications, and better grades on the same subject. But the overall GPA is very low.

@BasicMathGuy It's hard to say more than that without knowing more about your field and your publications. If you're in math as your username suggests, then undergraduate grades are extremely important to graduate admissions and the typical admittee to a competitive Ph.D. program will generally have essentially a 4.0 in math courses, without having had to try particularly hard for most of those A's (the latter being why many failures really has to have a good explanation.) So unless you've proven an impressive theorem independently, it's going to be a tall mountain to climb.

Like the advice of Pikachu 피카츄 and Sursula -they-,  I also suggest that you can't ethically hide your early performance and shouldn't try. Having a later degree revoked for fraud is one consequence.
But you ask how it can be overcome and there is a way for that. A poor GPA can be made irrelevant, even when known, by showing through various things like publications and collaborations is that you have overcome whatever deficit you might have had. You actually already show some of this activity and success, though it isn't clear from what you write that it is in the same field that you want to pursue.
I'll admit the possibility that a student can get bad grades and still learn. I think it is pretty rare and it is also pretty hard to convince people of it, but you might be able to bring it off. Doing badly in class if there are language issues can certainly happen, as can some learning disabilities that can be documented.
I've read reports, not all consistent, that Einstein wasn't a stellar student. But that might have been a result of the stifling education system he was stuck in.
Don't think in terms of two CVs. Think of a single one that shows all, including the warts as needed. But also show that you have the required knowledge and (importantly) insight to embark on research.

It is in same field of research.


text:
Is it appropriate to ask prospective supervisors about how they handled the pandemic?
The question says it all but for a bit of context: Something I disliked about my former lab is how they handled the pandemic. It is important to me to work in a lab that cares about the safety of employees/students. For me, this means any lab that didn't take COVID seriously (require masks, allow home office wherever possible, institute flexible hours so there are not too many people in the lab at once) is not a lab I would want to be a part of. So is it appropriate to ask during an interview how they handled the pandemic in 2020? If it isn't, is there a way to ask about it without being too obvious?
I am applying mostly to positions in Europe but would assume this question could be relevant to other areas of the world as well
EDIT: For anyone coming across this in the future and wondering the same thing: the advice below was great! I brought it up in several PhD interviews and no one seemed to have an issue with the question, even got several offers!

It is appropriate, of course. However, be prepared to have to narrow down your list of potential labs and follow through on "is not a lab I would want to be a part of". Many places (universities and companies) are pushing for the return to on-site work and may lose interest in you (and you in them, I guess) if they think that you are not going to be willing to work on site.

I don't see any problem with asking about safety features of a lab in general, so I don't see any problem with asking about the specific approach to handling the pandemic.  Obviously, there is an important distinction between questions about how a person handled the pandemic in their private life (which may be invasive) versus questions about how the institution handled the pandemic in terms of the safety protocols instituted.  The latter is certainly fair game, and I see no reason why you would need to avoid making these questions "obvious".
In terms on advice for how to go about this, the most important thing is to be clear that you are asking about protocols at the lab, or about staff behaviour while at work, and you are not seeking information on personal medical decisions made by the supervisor or other staff members in their own private lives.  (I think some sentences in your question are a bit ambiguous on that, so I recommend getting your questions formulated clearly before your interview.)  If you focus on asking about decisions on safety protocols at the lab, the reasoning behind those decisions, and the behaviour of staff while in the lab, it is unlikely you will overstep the mark.
Of course, you should bear in mind that any type of questioning of the merits of institutional policies by a prospective student at an interview might rub some people the wrong way.  If you pre-empt your questions by stating your own concerns about safety in the pandemic, you can probably soften this line of questioning a bit.

Another important question is how people choose to behave in the workplace, assuming they stay within the rules. That is their individual choice, but it is an infectious disease and so each person's choice greatly affects other people too.

Thank you! I will make sure that my wording makes it clear I am not asking about their personal choices.

@L_G: Yes, I agree --- questions about how people behave at work are also fine.  For what to avoid, I have in mind more invasive questions about personal behaviour outside the workplace (e.g., vaccination status, etc.).

It is appropriate, of course. But there is a huge caveat already pointed out: lots of things about the pandemic handling hanged on the personal choices. In here, pretty much every organization had mandated masks and social distancing, and the stay home policy during stricter lockdowns. However, outside of it things varied wildly.
I work in several groups and at pretty much all of the offices we still have a few people who have personal concerns and are wearing masks - and, of course, no one is pushing them towards not doing so - but the rest do not. Almost everyone is fully vaccinated by now though, but people largely ignored safety concerns long before that, and it was fully a personal choice. Anecdotally, earlier in the pandemic it was probably the most common to not wear a mask while working in your own lab (provided it was not huge) and wear it on meetings with (potential) collaborators and in public places. So, a small circle of friends and coworkers and reduced amount of social life outside of work.
Personally, I wouldn't work for a group who won't consider my wishes for working remote whenever at all possible and who would be pushy about office hours while not observing safety regulations, and this is not pandemic-specific. Rigid hours without any wiggle room for personal circumstances seem nonsensical to me in academia, sometimes you do need for everyone to be there to actually perform the experiment or bounce your ideas around but in most cases, it's possible to make it comfortably work for everyone at no extra cost. If anything, people happen to have teaching duties and these often don't overlap so one has to schedule in-person work around those anyway...

(+1), but I'm not sure that academia has ever had rigid hours without any wiggle-room for personal circumstances.  If anything, it seems to be an industry in which office hours are the most flexible (even prioer to remote work).


text:
I'm late in identifying my interest within the major I'm taking. Are there any tips for me?
So I'm an undergraduate student in mechanical-aerospace engineering. I'm taking this major because after joined a competition that involves space and astronomy, I wanted to know more about space, but not through astronomy major. Then I felt like, I could learn it through learning space-shuttles. At that time, I didn't think thoroughly about my decision. All I want is I want to jump into the world of space learning not through astronomy major, but through astronautical (which is included in my mechanical-aerospace lecture).
After a long time, I remembered that I don't actually like machines. I always have a problem with operating and setting things up.
I like operating with Excel and Word. I also have an interest in programming, but as I was heavily influenced by my old thought, I think programming should be my side-job or just as a hobby. But now, I think learning space (and space shuttles) should be just a hobby. As for assembling electrical things, I don't quite like assembling PC. I just like to use it.
I also realized that for science, I like to observe and investigate more than creating or assembling something. I feel like office work is better for me than working in a workshop.
So, as I can't just let go of my major, is there data analysis-related jobs in engineering, especially aerospace? Is taking courses outside my major worth it? For my situation now, I'm still at my first year and still haven't got any advance engineering lectures.

Freshman year isn't late to discover that you are not on quite the path you thought you wanted. It's a little early to worry about the kinds of jobs available for people with the degree you think you have to get.
Talk to an advisor at the school. There may be another related major that you can switch to. If not, do augment your major with more theoretical courses: data analysis and programming, and more science: physics and mathematics so you can make sense of the data you are interested in.


text:
Consequences of taking classes for someone else
I am a low-income undergraduate student at a US university. Last semester, another student approached me and offered to pay me a lot of money if I take one class for him. Because of my family’s financial situation, I accepted this deal. Long story short, I have completely taken one class for him in Fall and one this Spring. I have also helped him with his exams and homework in his other classes.
It makes me incredibly angry that you can just buy your degree like this when you are rich. I would like to know what would happen to me if I report it to the university after I graduate or if there is anything else I can do about this situation without ruining my future.

Hm, you think he bought a degree because he bought a class?

In many European countries you both would be breaking the law and could face prison time.

Just one data point to add: this is a criminal matter that is explicitly illegal in Canada. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/concordia-student-charged-for-cheating-1.3815520

So the person who is paying you to submit essays and pass exams is the one at fault? You're not a victim, you allowed the lure of easy money to seduce you, someone who helps another to cheat is just as guilty and reprehensible.

Just to be clear, are you really considering reporting it out of vengeance and not repentance?

I would like to know what would happen to me if I report it to the university after I graduate or if there is anything else I can do about this situation without ruining my future.

Both your own actions and the actions of this other student would certainly amount to serious academic misconduct.  It may also amount to some species of criminal fraud, such that it could also be a criminal offence.  If you would like to get reliable information on this, I suggest you go and see a lawyer in your jurisdiction.
In terms of what would happen to you if this became known, I would think that you would be found to have committed academic misconduct, and some substantial penalty would be imposed.  It is impossible to say what penalty would be imposed, but it could entail rescinding your degree.  On the other hand, your adverse financial circumstances might count as a mitigating factor, and so it is possible that a lesser penalty would be applied.  It would generally also be a mitigating factor if you report your own infraction in circumstances where it would not otherwise have been detected, particularly if you are then willing to give information to assist the university in bringing misconduct proceedings against the other student as well.  These mitigating factors might lead to a substantial reduction in penalty but it is really impossible to say.  The penalty applied would depend heavily on the particular views of the relevant committee assessing the matter.
Whether this would "ruin your future" depends largely on your ability to change your future behaviour and bounce back from adversity.  I don't believe that a finding of academic misconduct ---or even a criminal conviction or loss of a degree--- is necessarily ruinous to one's future, but others may have a different view.

It makes me incredibly angry that you can just buy your degree like this when you are rich.

There is no valid cause for your anger.  You have facilitated precisely this behaviour.  Without the actions of people like you, it would not be possible for the rich to buy a degree.  We can be angry about it, but for the time being, you have lost the right to be so.
Perhaps when your own conduct is more remote, and you have had some years to reconsider this episode and lament your own participation in it, you will once again have standing to feel anger over the short-cuts taken by the rich.  For now, perhaps you should reserve some of that anger for people like yourself who defraud our educational institutions for money.

If you are a student, you could and probably would be expelled and the lasting record might follow you.
But even if you are not a student, you have committed  a fraud against the university which could be a legal matter. I don't know if it would be a criminal matter, however, but at least a civil lawsuit would be an option by the university.
So, the consequences are bad. Maybe nothing will happen, but the more often you do this, the more likely it is that you will be caught and the past might be revealed.
You are right to be angry that this can happen, but the means of preventing it absolutely are pretty grim also (biometric surveillance..).
Reporting it to the university will possibly blow back on you. It would probably be denied by your "patron". But the advantage to the one that paid you is probably limited. They haven't learned something that might be essential to their future and their propensity to cut corners may well catch up with them eventually. Not necessarily, of course. There is a lot of injustice in the world as you probably realize.
Maybe your best course of action is just to stop and hope for the best.

Thank you for the answer. But what if I report it after I graduate? Would my degree be revoked?

I can't predict what could happen. But fraud is treated as a serious matter at US universities, especially at the moment, after the scandals of people paying for entrance to top universities. Some parents went to jail over it, so that, at least, was treated as a criminal matter. It would be risky.