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epinephrine

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    2015 Spring

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  1. Does anyone have any tips in general? I'm trying to figure out everything I need to do/buy/pack before I make the move (barring the visa process). Specific answers w.r.t. moving from hotter climates to colder cities appreciated.
  2. Any international students here? I'm freaking out a little, they haven't sent us any information regarding visa applications yet.
  3. Hey there! No I'm planning to come in the fall- need to spend some time with family since I'm an international student, I dunno how often I'll be able to come home. You're going in the summers then? By the way- do you plan on taking graduate housing or getting a flat on your own? UC hasn't really done anything to put us in touch with the rest of our batch yet- other schools have... that would've made house-hunting and that sort of thing really convenient. Who're you interested in btw?
  4. I feel exactly the same way- I'm so glad I'm not the only one. The day I got accepted by my dream school I could barely believe it. I couldn't stop grinning, my roommate was sick of me. And then I'd randomly burst out crying. I have the classic case of senioritis- I worked more on my thesis last semester than most people in my class, and this semester I can't get myself to do ANYTHING. I used to really enjoy working but now it feels like all that was a means to an end.
  5. At some point I also felt like I'd reached a sort of equilibrium when it came to things like labs I wanted to work at, funding etc., and eventually started to consider just reputation, and that sort of thing. This is when I took advice from my current PI really very seriously. If you have a good enough relationship with your PI that's definitely something you should do.
  6. I feel like all the 'numbers' in applications matter far less than everybody assumes they do (including me, when I was applying). I thought all my GRE scores were really low (and faced a lot of criticism on this forum for that too ). I wish I'd mailed people like Hijojo did though.
  7. Your credentials don't look bad at all. Do you have good LORs? Don't stress too much over the subject GRE, it's a pretty easy exam. I studied for a couple of days for it using a princeton book, but I realized while actually writing the paper that what helped way more than my couple of days of studying was random pieces of information from undergrad courses that I didn't even know I had stored away in my head. I still screwed it up, but that's because in my country we have to take the paper based test for the subject GRE and I miscalculated the time it would take to fill up the answer sheet :/ :/
  8. I'm with Err and Symmetry here. I get that talking all the languages is a skill, but I could really extend that to any point. You should know all three of the natural sciences, and math, and coding... and so on. I think it's perfectly alright to choose a specialization early as long as you accept the interdisciplinary nature of all of the sciences right now, and then 'learn the languages' that come with the field. For example the theorist is usually conversant in physics, math, and coding, and usually some other field of chemistry too. And a nucleotide chemist is in organic chem, and biochem. And so on. As Err said, you need to know enough to ask someone. But getting back to the topic at hand, I think even if you do choose to specialize, there's usually a lot to explore even within a sub-field as long as you don't get really really really focused (which I actually do think is a bad idea). I don't think it takes that much to zero in on a sub-field in some cases. For me it was really easy to figure it out, and it wasn't like I was chasing after the idea of specializing, I just found something I liked way above everything else. I also decided, after choosing to specialize in theory, to do a summer internship in a fluorescence imaging group just to make sure I was really really sure. It got to a point that the professor I was working under got so sick of my attempts to 'fit in', he ended up making me do a short theoretical project for his group. That said, as far as courses are concerned, it's never a bad idea to take courses that aren't in your specialization, you never know where an idea might hit you. Don't stress too much over the subject GRE, it's a pretty easy exam. I studied for a couple of days for it using a princeton book, but I realized while actually writing the paper that what helped way more than my couple of days of studying was random pieces of information from undergrad courses that I didn't even know I had stored away in my head. I still screwed it up, but that's because in my country we have to take the paper based test for the subject GRE and I miscalculated the time it would take to fill up the answer sheet :/ :/ The regular GRE is like the easiest exam in the world. If you've reached the end of your undergrad in chemistry, there's really no way you need to study for the quant exam.
  9. To add to that list ^ of schools with good research in MD, U C Berkeley Cornell U W Madison U C Irvine I'm not too familiar with QM, but I know U Minnesota Twin Cities and U Georgia are supposed to be good.
  10. To be very honest, I'm going to look for a place with flatmates. Or graduate housing. I'm not too enthusiastic about living by myself in a new city (country!).
  11. Haha yeah, I'm taking all of that with a pinch of salt. Just very very excited about the program! Have you figured out what you're going to do about housing? Is graduate housing a good option?
  12. How little my low-ish grade, bad subject GRE score, and lack of publications mattered in the end. Might have affected my results in the high-ranking fancy schools- stanford, for example- but I got the school I wanted anyway. I also kind of hate how I'm beginning to treat my last year as a means to an end. This sucks.
  13. Heyheyhey! I'm accepting UChicago's chemistry program! It's pretty much my top program, so I'm pretty pumped too! Super-scared about stuff like the cold and umm, the crime rates (which is all anyone can tell me about now that I've picked Chicago), but really really excited about everything else.
  14. I sent a mail to UIUC, they aren't done yet, said my application is still being reviewed. Cornell sent a very non-specific reply.
  15. Is that the Chemistry program or Chemical Physics? I applied to Chemical Physics, and I have no idea if anyone's getting into that. I'm a little disappointed, UIUC takes a lot of people from my undergraduate institute every year, I really expected an accept.
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