The Unofficial SMART Scholarship Forum

Update: Our lab has had so many issues with student abuse, the department is mad. They have stated that they need to re-evaluate my advisor's continued employment here, but have promised to wait until after I defend to protect me. My SF is delaying dealing with the issue of pay and has not responded...

I just want to say that I requested a few extra months and they didn't have any problems with it. They extended the length of the commitment only by the exact number of months for which I received additional funding.

I've also had a hard time getting a response lately.

Unfortunately the time limit in my department is 10 years. It was difficult to track down information for my professor because he is somewhat new to the school, having only started work there two years before I applied. I am hoping to be the first person to graduate from the lab while taking less th...

Does anyone have any experience using SMART to advocate for PhD students to graduate in a timely fashion? I've completed all the requirements signed off by my committee during my prelim/qual exams, but am being held hostage by my lab PI. He repeatedly threatens me by telling me he won't let me gradu...

Retentioner: Would you mind PMing me your SF location? I would *love* to be able to say that this policy is not being followed by other SFs. No offense taken if you don't want to be the test case, can totally understand that. My SF is using the exact same logic for me. I am arguing that I have produ...

Thanks, MLW62, that was actually a really helpful response after what took a very weird (and super childishly offensive) turn on this thread.

In other news, still no word from my SF on them being willing to work out an arrangement so they don't tear my personal life apart when I graduate....

I applied for a leave of absence, and it went pretty smoothly. They didn't have any issues with it as soon as my POC from my SF emailed saying they were fine with the new graduation date.

Hi! I recently passed my prelim exam and am now officially a PhD candidate, but the big asterisk on my passing was that my committee wants me to look in to extending my deadline to graduate. SMART only provides 4 years 9 months before I MUST graduate (according to the way things were run for my coho...