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Category Archives: Graduate school
What to do about a low GRE verbal score
How can you fix a low GRE verbal score when it is dependent on a lifetime of reading, listening to complex language, and writing? Little children have no control over the richness of language they hear. They don’t get to … Continue reading
Journal club extended to research planning for students at the Gulbenkian in Portugal
Did you drift from one project to another during your first year in graduate school? Did your program have you do rotations? Did you continue something you began as an undergrad? Or did you simply join one lab, get on … Continue reading
Posted in Graduate school
Tagged Education, Graduate school, Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, journal club, Research, rotations
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Top ten reasons you did not get funding for your NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (DDIG)
1. You did not explain the main question clearly. 2. You did not tie your work to what had already been done. 3. You did not explain how your experiments would address the question. 4. There was a flaw in … Continue reading
Posted in Graduate school, Grant proposals
Tagged broader impacts, DDIG, Experiment, framework, graduate student, grant, grant proposal, hypothesis, NSF, PhD
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How to write an effective Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (DDIG)
A Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (DDIG) is a wonderful way to support some of your Ph.D. research if you are in evolution, ecology, or behavior. This funding comes from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and funds part, not all, of your … Continue reading
How to interview prospective graduate students
Graduate school is a very special place. In graduate school you should discover research areas so fascinating that probing them will sustain you for your life. What works for you will be a complex mix of intellectual area, techniques of … Continue reading
Posted in Graduate school
Tagged grad students, Graduate school, Interview, interviews, Research, Student, Undergraduate education
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Prospective graduate students, don’t make this mistake!
Just now I spent several hours reading through the application files of prospective Ecology, Evolution, and Population Biology graduate students. Soon we will begin meeting to decide on an interview list. My first reaction when I read files like this … Continue reading
Posted in Graduate school
Tagged ecology, evolution, faculty, Graduate school, professors, web pages
3 Comments
Impressing us on your graduate school interview
You got an interview! You are so close to leaving behind the incessant tests and classes of undergraduate years and moving on to focussed research, accompanied by deep reading in the areas you love. Your undergraduate debts will wait as … Continue reading
Choosing a Ph.D. program – what’s important and what’s not
I view courses as a great way to get the tools you want, or the breadth in another area you couldn’t easily pick up on your own. … Make sure when you matriculate that you print out the requirements for the degree down to the details of exams and be sure this will be honored even if the department changes the requirements later. Continue reading
Posted in Graduate school, Managing an academic career
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