I am a Ph.D student from mathematics background and about to submit my thesis in a month or two. I am thinking to apply for postdoc position. Shall I send my normal cv or the one bearing my photo? Thanks for the help and suggestions.
123642
I think I have only seen one CV where a photograph of the CV owner was included. I personally wouldn't want to put my photograph in my CV, but I was wondering, in what situations would including a photo if oneself within the CV be appropriate?
31833
I'm applying for graduate school (PhD in computer science), and I'm considering writing to faculty whose research areas match with what I intend to pursue, to understand:   Whether they'd be looking for new students at all in the coming year? If they did, would they be potentially interested in my profile (I know no-one would guarantee an acceptance without me going through the process of application), but it would help to know if they would not be interested at all in me - which would leave me  free apply to other schools in which I get a neutral/positive response.   Keeping the above in mind, what would be the best way to introduce myself in the first mail?   What should be the salutation - I know "Respected Sir" sounds archaic, but was wondering if "Dear Professor X" sounded too informal or not! Do I state my credentials (details of where I did my undergrads/masters) first, or do I state my purpose in writing to him/her? How to mention my background concisely, without giving too much details, while at the same time not "underselling" myself as a potential grad student? I want to give a link to my resume/profile hosted on my website - should I embed the hyperlink, or is it better to write the link in plain text? How do I end such a letter - the obvious ones (such as "see you soon" or "till we meet again") being not quite suitable in this case)?   I'm basically afraid of saying too much (causing vexation) or too little (resulting in no response to my missive). I understand that the faculty are accustomed to seeing their inbox flooded with such mails each year, few of which ever get a positive response - which may not always be due to lack of an interesting profile, but the manner in which the mail is worded (Many professors have explicitly mentioned on their websites that they would not respond to generic "Do you have funding" type of queries no matter what the credentials of the student are!).   Though my interest is specific to CS, I believe it would apply to other fields as well. Also, I would be interested in the opinions of both present faculty members (who have to sort through such mails), and past applicants to grad-school (who have the experience of successfully writing to their advisers before applying)...
78758
I am trying to decide between some math postdoc offers, and I can't decide what is important for a postdoc position. I have talked to several senior mathematicians including my advisor, but they all seem to have different opinions. I just want to hear some more opinions on the following:   How important is prestige? Suppose that I have an offer from school X, which is fairly prestigious (something like top 10, which isn't a well-defined notion). Also suppose that I have an offer from school Y, which is not as prestigious but a better match research-wise. Suppose that the ranking of school Y is approximately n (again, not a well-defined notion). For which values of n should I choose school X over school Y? My goal is to become a tenure-track professor in a PhD-granting institution. What makes a good postdoc supervisor? I can think of the following criteria: compatible research interests, being well-known in one's field, compatible personalities, generous with time, etc. Am I missing anything else?
31120
This is not in any way relevant to me, I'm just interested. What would happen if you chose a PhD thesis to work on, and halfway through someone somewhere in the world who was also doing a PhD in the same field published their thesis, which just happened to be the same research that you were doing. Would your research still be considered since it was done independently? Does this happen often? Are there safeguards to prevent this from happening, like would you normally search the academic field to see if anyone else is working on the same topic? Surely that would be almost impossible to do?
78412
How essential is having my advisor's letter for post doc application?   I had a pretty bad relationship with my advisor for more than 4 years since I joined his lab and sometimes the relationship feels like slow inflammation that can easily flare up. We had very different opinion on how I want to approach my thesis and we argue very often on the experimental approach and the angle of attack. After that, he turned passive aggressive and completely hands-off. I noticed that he started slow to response to my email and given me very small amount time for meeting in comparison to other people in the lab. However, I proved to him that my approach was right and wrote the full paper myself and got published.   Recently, I got contact by a post doc employer who interested in my own work and request letter of recommendation. I asked my advisor for letter and he told me that I should write my own from which he can modify. I feel this is quite strange as he had wrote for all the other people in the lab, including a departing post doc who is currently interviewing for job. He told me he had done the same for other people but obviously he lied to me.   I further asked if he can provide me a copy of a completed version of the recommendation but he refused.   My question is should I still trust him to write my letter and is it essential? This post doc position is a great opportunity for me and either way I do is a big gamble.  Update: I decided to let my advisor wrote a letter for me and I think I may have made a big mistake. Since he wrote my letter, I asked the post doc lab head if my letter is completed and I no longer be able to hear back from him. Before that, he was quick to response to my email and showed great enthusiasm. As an insurance, I use one opportunity I have less desire to as bait to test the water and I still have one more shot at another position I really want.  Now, I'm thinking requesting open letter from advisor from now on for any future position or use letter service to check the letter.   Any suggestion? Thanks.  update: Great news! Got interviewed and offered at top ones! Thanks everyone!
21858
I will be a second year math under-grad in September, and currently doing an internship at applied math research institute. However, my interest after my bachelors is to do PhD in pure math at a top math school. My question is:  How important would the recommendation letters from my current supervisors be while I apply to grad school? (Note: My supervisors are very active in their field of research, but are not quite famous.)
48519
I am in the process of leaving my PhD programme in life sciences at a top university in the UK. A PhD is simply not for me and I find the work/life balance to be intolerable; in addition, my PhD so far has included an industrial placement at a Fortune 500 company that was very eye opening and enjoyable. I am looking to leave academia permanently and apply for graduate schemes.  My question is whether it is better to leave the fact that I quit a PhD off my CV, or to have the failed PhD / MPhil on there, or to mask it as '18 months of lab experience' or something similar. Is it possible to make the fact I left a PhD sound good?
109236
There are a number of questions here about .  Those are mostly about , , or whether a move from X to Y is feasible (example , , ).  At any rate, it does happen — I have come across people with background in particle physics, astrophysics, or space science, who were all in postdocs in atmospheric science.  A frequent motivation may be to resolve the .  And some fields have a higher ratio of jobs to PhD graduates than others.  But if someone with a PhD in particle physics, astrophysics, or space science, applies for a post-doc in atmospheric science, how do they overcome the competition with candidates who do have PhDs specialising in (the right subfield of) atmospheric science?  Wouldn't a potential host quickly dismiss candidates who show neither experience nor interest in the relevant field, , when other applicants are pre-trained "locals"?
112894
When applying for jobs after my PhD, should my CV include an incomplete degree I read towards years ago? It's a field completely unrelated to what I'm doing now. However, before my final year when I started getting sups and failures by the dozen (my reason for quitting) things actually went swimmingly. I worked with a renowned professor as an undergrad research assistant for a spell and even published a paper (on my own) during that phase of my academic journey. I didn't get a certificate out of it, but I nevertheless feel I honed some valuabe skills then (and of course I have a transcript listing the passes and failures).  I have since moved onto a completely unrelated humanities field. Should I mention the incomplete degree on my CV? If I ignore it, prospective employers might wonder what I did for three years of my life, surely? Should I list my science publication on my CV when it is irrelevant to what I'm doing now? Does quitting and switching tracks make me look flighty?
29930
Assume that a given postdoctoral position does not require teaching/laboratory.     Are there postdoc positions for someone who wishes to stay in his/her country and just be in touch with the post-doc advisor by e-mail or/and Skype?   Perhaps communicating only by e-mail may be slightly annoying for some people, so I also suggested Skype.  In my opinion (but correct me if I am wrong), there should be no difference between live meetings and Skype meetings.   Remark: Truly, I am asking about a post-doc position in mathematics, but I guess that my question is also relevant for other fields.  Edit: I wish to thank all the people answering (or commenting on) my question.
83020
Is it appropriate to include interviews (published online or in print magazines) in an academic CV?   What about articles/news published about your works? I mean brief (one paragraph) news that professional magazines publish about significant research articles.  If yes, how do you do this to avoid exaggeration?
112175
I am a PhD student, working on Applied Math while my wife is a software engineer. I plan on going to academia after PhD and will start to job hunt soon.  A few weeks ago, I thought of an idea that hadn't been done before. I wrote a crude C++ code to implement the idea and it worked well. I believed that with my theoretical understanding of the problem and an expert coder, we could make something really impactful and incidentally, my wife knew how to. So, we spent some evenings together writing the code (she didn't know math, but I abstracted each step so she could help implement). The resulting code is fairly sophisticated and does an excellent job. I was wondering, now that I write a paper about it, would it look weird if my wife was listed as a co-author? Her contributions were definitely sufficient to warrant co-authorship by any definition.  Let's step aside the legalese of it (my advisor doesn't care and her company might but let's leave that aside). I am asking more from the standpoint of how it looks on one's CV, job application and possibly, tenure.
84650
I'm finishing my PhD and looking for postdoc jobs. I've published a decent number of papers (and also have a fair number of citations), and want to emphasize this on my CV.  Should I actually state my h-index on my CV? If so, is Google Scholar the easiest/best way to compute this?  2014.03.12 EDIT: Thanks for the advice. I had originally planned to put my h-index at the head of my list of publications (as a clickable link to my Google Scholar profile).  Based on the advice from many of you I will just omit this altogether for now. My scholar profile is easy to find (for potential PIs who care about such metrics), and not explicitly stating my h-index myself avoids any negative connotations among those who object to the h-index or calculating it via Google Scholar (e.g. Google includes self-citations, arXiv/non peer-reviewed papers etc).
12312
My earliest PhD graduation date is 10 months away. Funding permits me to stay 1–3 months longer, so the final date is still uncertain.  It is never too early to make contacts for possible post-docs. But how long in advance is too early to formally apply to post-doc job openings or funding opportunities? Depending on the bureaucracy, the path from applying to starting can probably be anything from a week up to a year — someone I know is applying with  which had the opening advertised in August, application deadline in October, will have interviews in December/January, and the commencement of work only in September, 13 months after the initial job advertisement. My personal guess is that the long time between interviews and starting is to create a level playing field between those who do and those who don't need to go through a visa application procedure.  If I'm too early in applying for a post-doc, a hosting institution might prefer someone who can start earlier and where the graduation date is more certain. For example, in my case the graduation date is still uncertain, so there is a risk in accepting even if they are willing to wait. Project funding might also require the money to be spent rather soon.  If I wait too long, there might be a considerable period where I'm between jobs. Having a long (>6 months) period between jobs is a disadvantage for me. Maybe it's also a disadvantage for a hosting institution (I'm not sure).  How do I find the balance? For example, considering the duration of funding and visa applications, does it make sense to apply e.g. ? Or is it in any case virtually inevitable to have at least several months before my PhD graduation and the start of a post-doc?
77369
I'm currently applying for a Ph.D in Germany. Next week I'm sitting down with my potential Ph.D advisor to have a talk about the program.    Currently I'm collecting questions about things like   teaching duties included? working hours   what's the salary? vacation? budget for conferences?   I think I'm missing some important stuff.  My real question is: What should I ask my potential Ph.D advisor in advance, before actually signing a contract / starting?  (The question  is related, but I feel it doesn't fit my situation)
36628
I am preparing to submit a paper with a friend who is working at a tech company.  The company that he is working with is in no way associated with our research work.  Is it appropriate to list his employer as his affiliated institution?  Otherwise, I would leave his affiliated institution field blank.  Or, should I list the institution where he graduated from 2 years ago?  Update: Thank you very much for all of your feedback, answers, comments, and suggestions.  We really appreciate it.  I discussed with my collaborator and we will likely be listing him as an "Independent Researcher".  Although, we concluded that it wouldn't be unreasonable to list his employer purely as a personal affiliation (or point of contact) as long as he got approval from their HR department.
113600
Last year, one of my friends received a competitive PhD offer (including a full-time research assistant position) from a highly prestigious university in Canada, however her request for Study Visa was rejected because of some Social Tie issues. This year, she has a plan to apply for universities in Europe and Australia. Is it worth mentioning her last year offer in her emails to the potential advisors or put it in her CV in order to increase her chance of acceptance? Roughly speaking, the acceptance in the aforesaid Canadian university is considered harder than the European and Australian universities she wants to apply.