u/steinerific

A lot of people seem to be gearing up to apply to Ph.D. programs, so I wanted to provide one piece of advice that I haven't seen come up recently. I am a PI and admissions committee member in a biomedical Ph.D. program, and I have read a lot of applications. For US applications, especially at public institutions, students often have the right to request the letters of recommendation. May seem weird, I understand, but it is there. I cannot emphasize this enough: you MUST waive this right.

Your letter writers will be told if you have waived this right or not. If you do not, it means they know you will be able to read their letter. They will write this differently than if they know it is confidential. As an admissions committee member, I know that they have written it differently and I will discount these letters. I will interpret a great letter as average and an average letter as poor. The applicant also comes across as suspicious, unconfident, and distrusting. It does you more harm than good. WAIVE THE RIGHT TO SEE THE LETTERS.

Apologies if this is a common question - I did search and didn't find a similar topic recently.

I mostly use Tumblr on the iPhone app. I am scrolling through a specific blog and get distracted, I get a text, have a meeting, the light turns green. When I go back to the app, it has returned me to the top of my dashboard, losing my place in whatever blog I was reading. This has always happened on occasion, but over the last month or so it happens almost every time I leave the app (not quit, simply go somewhere else on the phone and then come back). Why Tumblr's engineers think I would want to be anywhere other than exactly where I was is a mystery. It's annoying.

Background app refresh is off. I've seen a couple of posts about turning off endless scrolling - that's not even an option in the settings. Any ideas?