r/GradSchool

I’ve been reading some research papers from Google Scholar lately and started wondering if it’s odd to track them the same way I track books. Do any of you keep a list of papers you’ve read, are reading or want to read?

I’m mostly keen on knowning whether folks treat papers as “reading” in the same way they treat books or whether that feels like a totally different workflow.

I knew academia can be brutal but i didn’t know how completely it would shatter me till this cycle. I applied to 7 places for history. Got 3 interviews. 6 rejections. And one interview is coming up so I don’t know the outcome yet. It is thoroughly devastating and has left me completely broken as i never had any other plans since i was 15. My grades are fine, great even in undergrad as I received gold medal. Upper second(69%) in masters. I’ve never recieved anything but appreciation and sincere critical feedback from my profs, who were all convinced of my potential for phd, some even took it for granted. I have never had great self esteem but it convinced me that at least some uni will take me. Apparently not! I am unemployed, without any skills other than intellectual if that even counts and I’m stuck in a conservative family which constantly reminds me everyday about my lack of worth and curses me for taking humanities. At this point, i believe they’re right to do so. My mental health is in pieces. It’s the worst I’ve ever been and i have completely isolated myself with no support. I moved away from here to study and after five years elsewhere i really don’t know anyone in my family place to even talk to. U don’t know what to do. I genuinely don’t.

I'm trying to keep up with the youngsters and modernizing my lab's processes. For those who use these and feel you have a great process, care to share how it works? Which software do you use, how do you use it? Much appreciated

I'm a recent undergrad who has been doing research with a professor at another university for about 2 months.

The relationship has grown a lot since we started. I cold emailed her in March and she assigned me papers immediately, and invited me into a private Slack channel just for this project. She liked my previous research experiences and thought i would be a good candidate for this new project that she had in mind.

Since then we've been meeting twice a week on Zoom — just the three of us, her, one of her PhD student, and me. I've moved well past literature review and am now implementing papers and testing on different tasks. She's also setting up HPC compute access at her school for me.

What makes me think she sees me as more than a temporary helper: in our very first meeting, we agreed that my ultimate goal is a first-author publication. And at the end of today's meeting, she asked me to recap our focus papers.

Some context on her: started Fall 2025 at this current school, already well recognized — Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship, MIT EECS Rising Star 2024, HRI Pioneer 2024, best paper awards at top robotics conferences. Her lab has around 11 members less than a year in, and one of her students just got a paper accepted at ICML.

I have personal circumstances that make continuing this path important, and I'm genuinely considering applying to her PhD program — not as a backup plan, but because this is where I actually want to be.

We have another meeting this Friday. My questions:

1. How do I bring this up naturally without making it weird?
2. End of a regular meeting, or ask for a separate conversation?
3. Am I reading the situation right — is it appropriate for me to bring this up?

Would really appreciate advice from anyone who's been on either side of this conversation.

I want major in one subject and minor in another. But, I heard from some people you are unable to go to grad or law school without an Honours Bachelor’s Degree.

Is this true? I assumed that since it’s all the same 4 year degree it wouldn’t be a problem. But apparently not!

Please let me know!

I know a balanced perspective is important, but it seems like every time I see something positive about a PhD, it's immediately followed by a "but" and a list of ten negatives - making the perspective overwhelmingly negative.

Today I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed and discouraged with the application preparation, so I’d really appreciate hearing the good (and only the good) about a PhD. I'm looking for a positive thread to bookmark for when things feel tough.

If you’re currently doing a PhD or have already finished one - especially in STEM/biology - can you share ONLY the good parts?

*What made the process meaningful, exciting, fulfilling, or worth it?*

and

*What changed in your life after graduating?* Thank you

Disclaimer: I’m pasting this from r/jobs, so I apologize for the formatting.

Hey there! I just graduated college last week, and I’ve officially begun my job search. I’m a biology major, with about ~1500 hrs of internship. I know how bad pay is, but I wasn’t expected to be low-balled at every opportunity. The companies I’m looking to work for are paying $23.50 hourly (I live in a state where the price of living is VERY high). Meanwhile, the other job completely unrelated to my major (custodial / Janitor) is paying $29.50.
I’ve talked to my parents and they absolutely insist that I take the job related to my field. I’m going to graduate school (medical field of sorts), and while my major is kinda related, I’ll never use the skills I’ll learn at my job. In their words “I need to show the [graduate school] interviews I was able to get a job in my major.” They want me to get a letter of recommendation from my would-be employers, but I don’t imagine they would write me a letter after promising to be a career employee then leaving after 1 year. Funny thing is, I can get a letter of recommendation by shadowing someone in the graduate school field and I’m willing to not get paid! I’ll be funding my graduate school journey out of pocket, and want to prioritize money so I don’t suffer from massive amounts of student loan debt.
People of Reddit, I need your wisdom. Do I prioritize chasing the bag, or using my degree for its intended purpose? Thank you for reading.

I posted here previously about whether I should take a step back from my one year masters program – my newborn was in the NICU for a few weeks, and it made reading, studying, and trying to take midterms nearly impossible. I let all my professors know of my circumstances, and I spoke with the dean of my graduate program twice. Hhe and his assistant met with me twice through video chat, and he told me that he was very understanding of my circumstances, would work to withdraw me from my spring classes, waive the tuition for this semester, and help me enroll in the fall semester classes (I had/ still have a hold on my account where I can't register because my tuition for the spring courses is still due and accumulating penalties).

He told me to email him and his assistant all the classes that I was withdrawing from, as well as the classes that I wanted to take for the fall.

It's been nearly a month and a half now, and while I've tried to contact him and his assistant several times, I have not received any reply whatsoever. The spring semester just ended, and I had professors and the dean of academic affairs emailing me asking me why I was still on the roster, and in a couple of instances, why I hadn't shown up to take the final. I'm guessing that by the end of the month if this isn't cleared up, I'm going to have a lot of Fs...

Add to this that I am still not only enrolled in these classes, but student accounting has been emailing me every week telling me to pay my tuition. The school also kept my name on the graduation ceremony pamphlet and called my name, even though I didn't attend…

I'm a little bit at a loss of what to do here.

Hello all! I am just looking for a bit of advice. I’m a senior Atmospheric Science Major (minor in Applied Math.) and am looking to go for a masters.
I’ve always wanted to work for NASA, it’s been a huge goal for me. I just don’t know where to go / what to do for graduate study.
I want to get a masters to help my chances of becoming a NASA Scientist one day (remote sensing/space exploration research planetary climate/ etc etc) I love the weather and planetary studies :,) but not sure what masters program would aid me.
I already currently have 2 years of research experience (1 NASA funded and the another with the NWS) under my belt and have presented at 2 national conferences as well as 4 local conferences.

I’ve taken calc I-III, Uni physics I-II, atmospheric thermodynamics I, Atmospheric Dynamics I-II, Diff Eq, linear alg., discrete math, numerical methods, remote sensing, statistical modeling, etc

A lot of people have told me Data Science, but I’ve always wanted to be an engineer like EE, Aerospace or MechE.

What do you all think? (I graduate in Dec)

The end of spring quarter nears, and I have a few mentors that have really amazed me this year. Not just in their support to me, but how hard they're working as teachers, committee members, and researchers. One in particular is really grinding it out, and they support SO many students, grad & undergrad -- I just want to let them know I think they're badass with a small gift or treat. But I am self conscious about what is appropriate! I grow lots of flowers, for example, but I feel awkward giving flowers to grown men with whom I have a professional relationship, and my garden isn't giving me any tomatoes yet x). Baked goods feel insufficient. What kind of small offerings of gratitude have y'all shared in the past? Even personalized examples (it might spur my imagination) are welcome. TIA!

I am hoping to apply to US universities for a PhD in English Literature this year. I wanted to ask about the qualifying exam. They dont have it in my country. For people who experienced that, how does it go? Do people fail Literature quals? What is the expectation?

Thank you.

Is there a graduate school that allows this?

I don’t see what I wanted offered in the programs I’ve checked out and don’t want a repeat of my masters program as some programs would have me do.

I am a first year student in a humanities PhD program. This week I received an A- grade for a class I was very interested in. I know the A- is not a big deal, but in my program, an A is usually a good sign that you are doing well. An A- means that you should’ve talked to the professor to see where you could’ve done better. When I asked the professor why the A-, they stated that they didn’t really see any academic progress through my 3 essays (1st: A-, 2nd:A, 3rd and final term paper: A-), and that they didn’t think that my class presentation or seminar participation was an A. They also stated I should’ve gone to office hours to learn more about how to improve throughout the semester instead of just asking at the end of term.

Here’s my dilemma. I participated the most (with comments and questions alike) in that class out of all my classmates and engaged with all the readings assigned (even the suggested ones). Many times my classmates responded more to what I said than what the professor said. My presentation went great. The professor even quoted the topics and readings I brought in at later seminars. I went to office hours after each assignment asking how I should improve! I can’t really get the professor to change my grade to an A, so I’m just left with frustration instead of a concrete action plan.

Here’s my actual question: what are the expectations for a seminar- a discussion based class? I am still learning to write 20 page papers as a final essay in like a week including adding your own research, how do you do it? I feel like my problem is I’m trying too hard in areas that might not count that much, and ignoring areas I should focus on. What has been some things that you do that assure you that you‘ll get a good grade at the end?

I have been conditionally accepted to the IMS but have been struggling to find a supervisor. I have been talking to one supervisor who I get along with well and I like the research of. They however say that the only projects they have available are historically only able to get fruitful results in 3 years (4 students have done this in the past, most took 33 months).

This has me questioning if I should take this opportunity that seems pretty good in most other measures, or not and try my luck elsewhere. Is a 3 year MSc common, or is it a red flag?

as the title suggests, im looking for ideas for an independent project that will solidify skills for a potential graduate program in ecology next year. currently, i am an NPS biological science technician whose work mainly centers around invasive plant management and restoration/conservation.

i am unfortunately micromanaged and not given much office time. there are GIS layers with invasive plant data that havent been updated in years, but again i am not sure i would be able to talk to my boss and receive office time to update them.

should i collect my own field data and somehow find a way to interpret it in GIS or R?? i am at a loss because i genuinely feel like a laborer (which is a perfectly respectable career) but i did not join the NPS to be just that; i want to work with hard scientific data and be able to put GIS/R work on my resume like a real ecologist. we do standardized butterfly surveys which is the only task that we are given which involves actually writing temperature, species, quantity, etc data down.

is the only solution to talk to my boss and try to make them see that it is a beneficial solution for both parties, me and the National Park, to receive designated office time working with field data? i have done independent capstone projects in my Intro to GIS and Conservation Biology classes, but that is the extent of my experience. although previously, i would create polygons on GIS that correlated with each day’s herbicide treatment data at a state park. i want to do grad school in the future and i want to be accepted without applying to 30+ schools, so now is the time to make sure i am gaining skills.

any insight is appreciated!

I’m not sure if this is the right place for this question, but I’m graduating graduate school this week and I’m going to start looking for jobs. I wanted to know if I send out an email to professors asking them if I can keep them a reference for jobs, or do I directly ask for a letter of recommendation right away.

What do you do as a PhD or masters student. How does your day to day look? What are you researching? How does research work?

I’m interested in doing graduate school for physics after my engineering bachelors and I was wondering how exactly is it.

This is stressing me out so Bad

Submitted a Research Paper last week and my professor said it came back with a high similarity score on the school's system. I wrote every single word myself, I just used a lot of the same sources everyone in the class was using

I went back and read my paper again and yeah some of the phrasing near my citations probably looks similar but I cited everything properly

Does running it through a separate plagiarism checker help at all? Like if I can show her a different report would that matter? OR is there a way to see exactly which parts are triggering it so I can explain myself

I am about to graduate from a masters program in Data Science. I had a 3.75 gpa before my last semester and it dropped to a 3.444.

The reason for this drop was because I was focusing on my research project and we were trying to go through the rounds, focusing on ICML rebuttal, and NeurIPS submission however we withdrew from both to polish the paper more unfortunately that led to a drop in course grades.

I am able to continue research with my professor after graduating, but I need to work at best buy part time to maintain the bills. I am wondering if I should consider retaking these courses: Intro to Big Data (B) and Python and Mathematics for ML (B+). I got a C in Data Structures and Algorithms but that was an elective. During my masters program I received an A in Machine Learning, Reinforcement Learning, and Deep Learning. However, at the time I did not do as much research as I do now.

I am planning to apply for Phd this Fall and try to submit my paper to ICLR. Do you think I should try to retake these courses, how much of a red flag will this drop in grades look like for top 20 ML Phd programs?