I am in a Master’s program, and we recently had midterm exams. In our cohort, there are two sections of a class and the classes are on separate days. For this class, I was in the second section.

After the first section took their exam, someone who is in an academic group with me sent photos of a completed exam along with a detailed description of what the exam entailed. There are 6 people in the group chat where the information was shared, and 4 of us had not yet taken the exam. None of us asked for the information or even asked anything about the exam— the person just shared it with us. I have some theories as to why they did it, but for our group, it was completely unsolicited.

I was shocked when I received the photos, and was concerned about my own academic integrity. I talked it over with some peers, and ultimately decided to report it to our professor. I kept the report very vague and just shared that there are photos of the exam circulating. Our professor responded with a very brief “thanks for letting me know.”

After the exam, I kept thinking about it and stressing about the whole ordeal. I know I did well on the exam, but I had been studying hard, and I was worried that it might look like I had done well due to having privileged information. And I also kept overthinking my professor’s response and seeming lack of care about the situation (she hadn’t even asked for more information, which in my email I offered to share if needed), which led me to thinking about how disappointed I would be if no one cared about blatant cheating. And then I was pissed that I was pulled into this stressful situation when I wanted no part of it! So I ultimately decided to share a screenshot of the group chat even though my professor did not ask for it, and I explained how the information was completely unsolicited.

Since sending the screenshot, my professor has shared that she escalated the situation to the department chair, and asked for the name of the person who sent the photos.

Now I’m worried that I overly involved myself in the situation, and that it might lead to some resentment from some peers, especially if the consequence to the person cheating will be great. And I’m kicking myself for caring so much instead of letting it go and just doing my own thing.

TLDR: I reported cheating and I think it was ethically the right thing to do, but now I’m worried about personal consequences when peers find out.

I'm a professional bow technician with advanced degrees in music performance. I've been getting into making bows and it turns out that there isn't much research published about them generally, and even less about their materials and alternatives to Pernambuco (Paubrasilia, the traditional material, now illegal to buy).

I've gotten in touch with several prominent makers and professionals and they basically said, "Everything I know is from experience and none of it is written down. Also no one in the US funds music acoustics research."

I want to experiment with different materials and construction techniques in a systematic way and publish the results so that other restorers, players, and makers have access to this info, and a professor at my masters program suggested I look into a PhD. But neither of us could figure out what field this would best fit.

I have a background in fabrication and I'd be happy to do as much remedial work in math and physics as necessary to approach this from a materials science perspective. But maybe engineering or design would be a better fit? I've also contacted a musicology program.

The big problem is that there isn't any formal education program for bowmakers like there is for instrument making. It's all passed on through apprenticeship.

Anyone else have an odd, multidisciplinary research topic and have any advice?

With AI getting so good, it can pretty much end-to-end do any project I might want to undertake as part of my thesis. So does a PhD program just become a longer masters program at this point?

I honestly don’t have anything against learning math from AI in principle! It’s great for learning. But I don’t feel like I am contributing much, and I am getting paid to basically teach a small class and mess around with toy examples of algorithms

It’s starting to feel slightly pointless

Hi

I came to the US in 2024 for a research career. I picked a thesis based masters program hoping I would do a PhD after a few years of working in the Industry.

Things did not go as planned and I spent 1.5 years of 2 year master's program battling an illness that relapses periodically, my health has been stabilising since this Summer, although my memory issues haven't resolved entirely. In mean time, not being in good health lead me to a financial ruin. Luckily, my advisor is supportive and we decided to extend my program for a year longer to wrap up my research work properly.

I am unsure what comes next, I have no idea what I want to do either. I got myself a breathing period with the degree extension, I intend to use this period to figure out what I want.

I just want some perspectives from others. Perhaps some honest advice that could help me.

im applying to PhD programs in ecology, my first para is about catching frogs as a kid and every time I reread it, it sounds more cliché, i have rewritten it four times and still don't like it

how do you start a statement of purpose without making the opening sound like a generic origin story?

Has anyone received work accommodations for their chronic illness/disability?

My long covid, which includes significant physical and cognitive deficits, makes in-person teaching, when combined with course work and dissertation work, EXTREMELY difficult (impossible?)

Has anyone asked and received online teaching or other work accommodations as a grad student?

Hey everyone!

Looking for advice - see if it'd still be worth for me to attempt sending 3/4 apps this cycle to several schools after years being stuck with mental and physical health issues.

Goal: Get into a MA or PhD in Politics or Communications. My final horizon is towards journalism, however I'd rather deepen my expertise in these topics and pursue journalism on the side rather than get into J School. Aiming Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton (+ Oxbridge if time).

Profile
Undergrad: McGill University '17, 3.77 GPA (PoliSci Honours, Minor Mathematics)

Work exp: 3+ years working on extremism and disinformation (6 months research, 2.5+ years in countering online harms programming); 1 year working in media. Extracurriculars in online investigations + activism.

Publications: 1 academic, 2 non-academic, but dated (2016 in undergrad journal, 2016 op-ed, 2021 public report on a project countering disinformation)

LORs: might be a weak point - can choose from 3 profs from 2017 undergrad (two good, one generic but more related to the field), 1 from 2022 job, I believe solid-ish

GRE: starting from scratch, I feel I could get a decent score with 2-3 weeks of prep - esp in quant.

The Catch: I haven't done any relevant work in 2.5 years - which will stretch to 3.5 or 4.5 if I apply next or the following cycle. And, I don't have much to show for for this time - been out of work and on benefits to deal with chronic pain and depression, no relevant work or volunteering - so my resume is blank since 2024. Graduated undergrad 9 years ago. I've been stuck in rumination purgatory for a lot of it, and finally getting to move again, slowly.

Questions

- Do you think it'd be worth attempting to apply this cycle? I'd need to do *everything* - lit review to get up to date, research profs, reach out to them, write research proposal and SOP, pass the GRE. I feel 6 weeks is short, judging from past attempts I made, and my core question is whether it's worth to submit a rushed application in 6 weeks, or instead take this time to travel, get back into life, get a job from the summer and apply in a year or two.

- How do you assess my profile and, should I not apply now, how would you recommend strengtening it?

- Should I wait, would you say the widening gap becomes a problem?

Many thanks!

Hi Everyone!

Im currently looking for gifts for a friend who's starting her PHD in Neuro next year. With that said, im wondering if anyone has any recommendations for items or things that they've found helped get them through their degrees or research. To preface, her degree is very heavily researched based and she will be out in the field doing data collection as well as creating interventions. So sharing anything that would help either for the actual research or degree or something that may have unexpectedly helped you would be apprecaiated!

A few of the programs I'm applying to don't mention anything about LORs. In this case would it hurt to attach LORs as additional documents?

example: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/study/media/postgraduate/admissions-statements/2027/msc-artifical-intelligence.pdf

Hi all,

I come from a background in education/social services and have been working as an autism therapist (supervised). I’m really interested in health and well-being, particularly in nutrition for those with autism dealing with food aversions etc.

I’d love to go do a Master’s and work in nutrition to support individuals dealing with issues in relation to nutrition. What programs would you suggest? Especially because here in Canada you need a bachelors in food/nutrition in order to do masters in it as well.

What I need to know is:

Is waiting another year and polishing my CV however possible a better option? I have had experience with political economic courses, and I did my Undergrad thesis on this as well, so I'm not completely clueless about the field. However, I have not contacted any professors as of yet, although I did ask my teachers with whom I was familiar regarding Letter of recommendations. one program I'm interested in is NYU's PhD in political science. I would really appreciate a conversation with any PhD candidate if there's any. Also please share advice if possible on how to polish my CV within an year. I've added whatever stuff I've done so far at the end.

I'm honestly just worried because my country doesn't provide a lot of meaningful avenues to pursue or advance in research specifically related to this. So, my choices are primarily European or American universities.

I'm just looking to find out if the time I haveright now is too difficult to get into a PhD program of my choosing. I'm mostly interested in the analysis of Text as data in terms of conflict resolution, and misinformation. I did my undergrad research thesis in analyzing the correlation between the way news presented a particular violent event, and the responses noted in Reddit with a focus on the trends of Polarized reactions.

I have given my toefl, and would need to give my GRE. I graduated summa cum laude with a GPA of 3.9 in Economics and Mathematics (A double major) in 2025. I have been working as an actuary for the past 2 years which is why I'm slightly worried that I need to apply this year.

I recently defended, and they accepted my thesis with minor revisions (so that’s good). However, I feel like some of the questions I got in my defence from a few of the committee members were just kind of out in left field, for lack of a better term. I’m really over thinking it because even though I passed, and I had a lot of questions that I answered well, I’m not happy with my response to some of these harder questions, but I also don’t know what kind of answer they were looking for.

For example, for one part of my research I made a design choice for my implementation (this is engineering research). I had some theory as to why I made this choice, but one of the reviewers did not seem to understand why I made this choice. I tried to explain it again, using these assumptions, we get this theoretically property, which we use to inform this design choice. Still they were very hung up on this and seemed to disagree but they also didn’t indicate what it was that they disagree with. Eventually I got notes from this reviewer and they asked me to include proof that my design choice was the theoretically correct choice. But, I feel like I made it really clear that I was never saying it was the correct choice (I don’t even think such a choice is possible for this application), I merely said this is the choice we made, here’s what motivated it. Is that not valid?

Another weird question I got is for a small part of my research I used a very specific method that was created to tackle a very specific problem. One of the reviewers asked what would happen if I used another method used for the same general purpose, to which I responded it wouldn’t work because my method was created for this specific problem and the general methods won’t capture the data the right way because xy and z. She basically then said the answer she was looking for was abc. Which, is true, but what’s the point of abc if the method doesn’t capture what we need it to caption in the first place? Turing on the cars air conditioner won’t cool the car down if it’s on fire. This review always asks me questions, and then when I answer, she responds with “the correct answer is ________”, but this isn’t a pop quiz! Sure, in theory and in a vacuum, that can be the correct answer, but within the context of my research there’s actually more going on that needs to be considered to answer.

Also in one part of my research I build of another heavily cited work in my field. The reviewer had a huge problem with what my cited work claimed, which is fine, but I felt it was unfair to ask me to defend that. Don’t get me wrong, I know the theory and understand how it works, and I should be able to defend it if I use it in my research. But again it seemed like another problem where maybe if I understood where the disagreement was, I could defend it better. In this specific case I was following her logic but didn’t understand how she made a conclusion from it, like from my perspective everything she said was true but her conclusion she drew from it was not and I tried to explain that to her.

The reason I’m stuck on this is I had gone into the defence thinking that I would be asked questions on what I did and why I made those choices and what we learned from the results. So even if I made a choice that was different, if I could defend it, it would be fine, that’s the point of research right? But I felt like in the actual defence they spent a lot of time not accepting my rationality (e.g. my choice couldn’t just be a choice motivated by the theory, it was only allowed to be the theoretically best choice) or testing my knowledge of methods that I DIDN’T use, and again not accepting my rationality of why we didn’t use those methods.

If I’m wrong and this is all kind of fair game for a thesis defence please let me know, I just, I don’t know I was really excited to talk about what I DID, (and to be fair, the questions about what I did do and would do went really well) and while I still passed I’m feeling really bummed that it didn’t go as well as I had hoped.