I've never recommended anybody, but I would definitely round up if you think the kid will do good in graduate school.
This kid would absolutely excel at the lower tier safety school for which I am recommending them. So I am rounding up. But it is ridiculous, especially given the backdrop of lower tier safety school.
I once heard a professor rant about how another professor was recommending more than five students as "among the best five students he'd ever worked with."
How can there even be a lower tier safety school for grad school in math? What do you do, develop remedial cutting edge incomprehensible math theory?
I had one that asked me to rank top 1% with a description like, "This student is well-prepared to become a leader in the field of biomedical research" and 10% as "this student is outstanding and will have a successful career in the field of biomedical research." Um, OK, but this student is a pre-med junior applying for summer internships? And I cannot gauge what you are asking? He was a really, really good student.
The other thing that bugs me about percentages is that I've TAed courses with huge enrollments, eg sections of 400 students. This automatically puts the smart kids I interacted with in a research setting into the top 1% when compared to thousands of others who just wanted to pass and move on.
When somebody in a course I TA'ed asked me for recommendation I told them to go ask a real professor if they wanted a letter that would help them.
"This student will excel at remedial cutting-edge math"
I guess safety-school math grad school could either be remedial cutting-edge math or cutting-edge remedial math.
What can you do with a math phd from a second tier safety school? In my field, a phd from the top school in the discipline is a risky bet, and a degree from a safety school would be utterly worthless.
You can go for other degrees even with an undergrad math major.
8, 9:
You can teach at a community college, get a lecturer (or TT) position at a small liberal arts school. I actually know one person that got a tenure track job right out of school, but it really didn't seem like the kind of department most people would want to work for. Some go on to post-docs at other lower tier safety schools. I know one guy who's working at the NSA, but he was kind of a special case and could have gone elsewhere.
The best people usually bolt after masters' degrees and become business analysts, computer programmers, or some such. A handful reapply for better PhD programs. I knew some people who got into top-notch places after acing their coursework -- maybe about one or two a year.
I did undergrad at a place that could be classified this way and that's roughly what I saw, anyway.
8, 9:
You can teach at a community college, get a lecturer (or TT) position at a small liberal arts school. I actually know one person that got a tenure track job right out of school, but it really didn't seem like the kind of department most people would want to work for. Some go on to post-docs at other lower tier safety schools. I know one guy who's working at the NSA, but he was kind of a special case and could have gone elsewhere.
The best people usually bolt after masters' degrees and become business analysts, computer programmers, or some such. A handful reapply for better PhD programs. I knew some people who got into top-notch places after acing their coursework -- maybe about one or two a year.
I did undergrad at a place that could be classified this way and that's roughly what I saw, anyway.
8, 9:
You can teach at a community college, get a lecturer (or TT) position at a small liberal arts school. I actually know one person that got a tenure track job right out of school, but it really didn't seem like the kind of department most people would want to work for. Some go on to post-docs at other lower tier safety schools. I know one guy who's working at the NSA, but he was kind of a special case and could have gone elsewhere.
The best people usually bolt after masters' degrees and become business analysts, computer programmers, or some such. A handful reapply for better PhD programs. I knew some people who got into top-notch places after acing their coursework -- maybe about one or two a year.
I did undergrad at a place that could be classified this way and that's roughly what I saw, anyway.
If you do an undergrad there you can become an internet commenter that gets frustrated when his screen appears to be frozen and comments three times.
What can you do with a math phd from a second tier safety school?
Night accountant at an airport Marriott.
Interesting concern -- I looked at boarding school recommendations (for HS) last year, and they go from "excellent, top 10% this year" to "one of the top few I have ever encountered" (and, on traits, like "Academic Potential", "Responsibility", "Emotional Stability", "Overall Evaluation as a Person").
Clearly they are trying to get the teacher to make a judgement that this student is truly extraordinary, the student the BS wants to accept. But, if I had to fill out a recommendation, I'd have no idea how to deal with that, practically. Really there are only 3 people who one can put into the "Top few I have ever encountered" for "Overall Evaluation as a person" (and, odds are they would be people I was related to). But it's got to be the kiss of death to put them into 10% for this year, right? So, the kids whose teachers are liers get in?
They have to be a specific type of liar.
I hate those percentage things so much. I can't go an check something that's not one of the top couple options if I want the student to get into graduate schools, but then it's obvious lying and I don't know how to calibrate the level of lying. It makes me even more mad when they ask like 10 such questions.
The only thing I hate more is recommendation websites that I'm only going to use once but nonetheless have incredibly complicated password requirements.
I've decided that anything like that is going to mean that I'm going to deliberate refuse to remember or write down the password. The "forgot password" process is always easier.
I almost did an Ask the Mineshaft because I had to write a recommendation for some for speech language pathology and I had no idea what kind of information they were looking for. And their website was totally unhelpful.
I ended up writing a truthfully glowing* letter, emphasizing academic skills, interpersonal intelligence, research skills and curiosity, and aptitude for clinical work in diverse settings. Heaven only knows if those are the kinds of things they want to know.
*Luckily the candidate is one of the most top-notch people I've ever worked with.
What can you do with a math phd from a second tier safety school?
Night accountant at an airport Marriott.
Ouch.
Also, probably wrong. They would probably want an business degree, like an MFA (Master of Finance and Accounting).
IIRC, the Google internal referral form had a similar problem when I was there. The top option was something like "the best person I've ever worked with", and the next was either "top 5%" or "top 10%".
I can't unambiguously recommend anyone I've worked with as "the best", so that's out. But top 5% or top 10% or whatever the number was is a gross underestimate for someone who was (just for example) a technical fellow at another large company.
Vaguely relevant and has probably been discussed here before. Make sure you hire some crappy people every year, managers, so you can fire them when you're told you have to eliminate the bottom 20% of your team regardless of whether they're all actually good performers.
In a somewhat odd resonance, I once gave advice to a night manager at a Ramada on how to go to grad school in math. (He was a recent immigrant from Nepal, and had no idea how the US educational system worked.)
Just what advice did you give him? Did you tell him that getting into grad school in math in the United States was determined by giving a series of blow jobs, each one more surprising than the last?
The only thing I hate more is recommendation websites that I'm only going to use once but nonetheless have incredibly complicated password requirements.
I hate them soooooooo muuuuuuch. Also the numerical rankings in 20 different categories. But what I hate most of all is the ones where it turns out I can't upload a letter at all but am expected to write answers to questions I can't see until I click through to the site. (I haven't seen this for grad schools, but for summer internships.)
So tedious. Letters of recommendation were the only academic thing I did while I was on leave, other than checking in on my dissertation advisees.
The advisees, meanwhile, have figured out how to manage me. One just sent me a full draft of his dissertation, and scheduled a phone conference with me this week, presumably to make sure that I read the damn thing in a reasonable amount of time.
On articles, I just read the abstract, methods, and results.
I can never understand the method. I just read the abstract and the discussion.
I never understand the discussion. I usually write the methods section.
I suppose I could understand the discussion if I applied myself. It's just that there's a stupidly fine line between simply restating the conclusions and irresponsibly speculating beyond the scope of what your research can tell you. The discussion has to dance on that line.
OT: I don't use K-cups because I'm an environmentalist (and because I'm cheap and drink a whole pot of coffee every morning), but I'd rather drink tea than have this kind of thing catch on.
I'm not at all opposed to making coffee by pouring hot water over grounds. I mean writing things like:
A barista at one of my favorite coffee shops once offered the following pour-over recommendation: "I would go with the Yirg-Z today. It's a little humid and those seem to be extracting best."
Hasn't that kind of coffee-nerd stuff had a long enough run?
29: The trick is to say that you thought there were a lot of interesting things to talk about in the draft, and recommend that the two of you basically just go through the draft as it stands.
Then just prompt them to start describing what's in the first chapter or whatever, and you just occasionally break in with questions that you've thought up on the spot based on what they said. If you make sure to occasionally re-ask questions they already answered about the thesis a while back and force them to double back around to explain things you could absolutely keep this up for long enough that either they'll run out of time and have to go, or you can just say "I have a (ten-minutes-from-then) meeting that I have to be at - can we wrap this up quickly?" The whole thing doesn't take any longer than a normal phone call/etc. would, but you don't have to do any prep. for it ahead of time so it saves a lot of time overall, and also you look Socratic!
there's a stupidly fine line between simply restating the conclusions and irresponsibly speculating beyond the scope of what your research can tell you.
Irresponsibly speculating beyond the scope of what the research tells me is practically my entire job description.
36. I didn't know you worked for New Scientist.
The cooking one or the one that re-purposed Nazi scientists?
MHPH, I don't throw this term around much, but do you think J Robot truly needs you to mansplain her professorial job to her? That seems over the top even for you.
Not that it necessarily makes much difference, but I think MHPH was mansplaining methods for J Robot to not do her professorial job while looking as if she had.
to not do her professorial job while looking as if she had
Wait, isn't that the job?
Is that mansplaining or Standpiping?
Yeah, I feel we shouldn't be condemning men for explaining to women how to skate by at work by appearing to do much more work than they are actually doing, because this really is an area where men seem to be reliably superior to women.
Of course, this is a man typing this so it's possible that women are in fact much superior to men at doing this, and they've fooled me as well.
Rarely have I been more glad that I stopped my academic career with my B.A. I may complain about my job and the situation could very easily get worse before it gets better (but then again, maybe it'll be fine. Who knows!), but man, I would hate working in an environment with so much of these kinds of people-ranking and office politics.
29/35: I feel the Socratic method of advising would work well in some cases, but not one who is managing their advisor as well as this one seems to be.
If you think "lie to your students and don't do one of the basic bits of your job" is explaining to someone how to be a professor I think there's more than just sarcasm about the number of bad/irresponsible/unprofessional professors out there being missed...
Sarcasm is easy to miss, you're right.
27 -- The same advice I give everyone: He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.
Inside a sarcasm it's dark, too dark to see.
If this is the academic bitch/praise thread, I've got a terrible/great one.
We all were more-or-less mandated to help woo incoming first year students. I chose the least intrusive but hugely obnoxious task of writing "hand-written notes of congratulations and welcome and what they might expect" to high-achieving students who have been accepted here.
But! Our amazing secretary handed me the cards apologetically and said, "Just write one, and I'll copy it onto the rest." I love her.
52: That's wonderful.
While I'm still procrastinating, and really need to start reading soon, I do actually want to do a good job advising this student. My two grad advisees are quite wonderful.
To make yhis totally explicit: I was joking. I may have to accept that I can't pull off deadpan humor because my normal persona is... dumb? Hard to say.
top1% students will have some fun in their textbook.
top5% students will have some fun with their textbook.
top 10% students will have some fun beyond their textbook LOL