Hijojo

Yay physical chemists! From your description, it sounds like you're doing everything right so far. I have no how competitive physical/theoretical chemistry is compared to organic or biochemistry, but from my (albeit n=1) experience, I think you'd be competitive for the schools you mention. As for things you can do now: I know you mention that your program doesn't have much p-chem focus, but could you branch out into the math, computer science or physics departments more? I think having some formal coursework may look better than self-teaching. I don't think it's absolutely necessary, but it's something I wish I did more of as an undergrad and it could help. Otherwise, I think the biggest thing you could do is starting to figure out who you want to work with and network. You mention these top schools, but research fit is more important than rank, so I suggest focusing more on who you want to work with than. And once you figure out who these people are, seeing if you can meet them in some way - one of the most helpful things I did was to meet with a bunch of professors that I was interested in working with at a conference. Does your advisor have connections to these people? Can you use that? Good luck!

Harvard actually posts the average scores to those admitted to the program last year - it's 163 Verbal, 166 Quantitative, 4.8 Analytical and 812 Chemistry (see here: http://chemistry.harvard.edu/pages/admissions-faq). Those are high scores, obviously, but gives you an idea of what it top schools count as good scores (and remember, 50% of people scored below that! Though I have no idea what the standard deviation is on those numbers.) You can also email the department directly and ask if they can give you the average or range of students admitted last year - I did this for the Chemistry GRE, since I had some concerns over my score (660 - 38% percentile, I think). Some schools responded, some didn't, but here are the answers I got: "The range for the CHEM GRE for our incoming class was 610-890." "If your area of interest is organic, you should strive to score in the 70th percentile or higher for a competitive application. If your area of interest is inorganic or physical, you should strive to score in the 50th percentile or higher." "We don’t have a recommended minimum score on the GRE, but competitive applications usually have the Verbal and Quantitative in the top 33%, and the AW at or near the top 50%. The subject GRE is optional, but if included the top 50% would also be competitive. " "The minimum GRE score is 70% quantitative, 40% qualitative, and 3.0 writing. Most admitted students have 80% quantitative, 80% qualitative, and 4.3 writing."

After reading my post again, I see that I used plurals to refer to my experience, when I'm really thinking of a particular visit. (Just thought I'd clarify that; sorry about any confusion.) But it was the first experience I had with a potential grad program and meeting grad students in my field, so it stands out to me. Anyways, in the experience that I'm thinking of, all the students I talked to just seemed unhappy with everything - didn't like grad school, didn't like the facilities, didn't like their PI, didn't like the department, didn't like their research, tried to dissuade me from applying to grad school. It felt to me like the whole experience had burnt them out pretty badly. What exact factors in the program led to that I'm not sure, but I hope the things I mentioned above would bring that out in a program. (Also, disclaimer: I'm sure this depends in a large part on the student and PI.)

I'll also be visiting Caltech for the March 19 - 21 weekend. I'm super excited about it! (Though this reminds me that I still need to reserve a shuttle to/from LAX). There's a lot of things I like about the program - the school has a ton of resources and great researchers, I like its size and location a lot, and as a physical chemist, having JPL so close seems fantastic. There's a ton of reasons that I want to go there. I'd say I'm leaning towards it right now, but I think that the visits are going to be a deciding factor for me. One of the things that I'll definitely be looking at closely during the visit is the department's atmosphere - is it a in-the-lab-every-night-and-weekend sort of deal? High pressure environment? (I realize grad school is this in general, but how will it compare to other schools?) Do the grad students seem to enjoy being there and in their labs? My visits to other very-highly-ranked schools in the past did not make them seem like particularly healthy environments, so I'm curious to see how Caltech compares.

Aaaaand I'm officially done with application season - I decided to withdraw my application from UC Irvine since I don't plan on attending there after my other acceptances. I'm excited for visiting weekends, as busy as that month will be. After having so much trouble job hunting, it's nice to have some choices finally.

I visited MIT when I was first starting to consider graduate school and I felt the same thing that people above were saying - the students in the lab really didn't seem to enjoy being there and it didn't feel like an environment I'd like to do graduate work in. Of course, that was only be interacting with a single lab, but I think it's a good thing to watch for. Some of this may be endemic to top schools, I suspect. While it's not generalizable to all of MIT or Harvard, I think the point is to carefully look at what the department's environment is like, since they're both top programs.

I got that email today as well! Super excited, of course - I was most worried that my Chem GRE might sink me here (I know it's generally the least important part, but it's also, you know, Caltech). It's actually a tricky decision - Caltech is obviously amazing, but I really like some of the POIs at other schools as well. I guess I'll see how I feel after the visits!

I like the idea of program specific threads quite a bit; thanks for starting one! I'm not sure I'll be visiting - it's a bit farther down on my list and I'm not sure about many days I can get off from work in late February and March. But it's relatively close by and a good school, so I'd definitely like to see it if I have the chance. Personally, the biggest draw to me is that they have a number of people working on stuff I'm interested in. I have fairly narrow research interests so I only have 2 or so POIs at each school, but there's a number I can see myself working with there. (Actually, letsdothis, we may have some POIs in common - I'm interested in spectroscopy, too, though from more of a physical and less of an analytical perspective). As for cons, I'll echo what others have said - I'm not sure I want a school that large. Also, as someone who's living in the midwest right now, I'm not particularly sure I want to stay here - I'm more of a coastal person. And for me, my top choice POIs are at different institutions (including both UPenn and UVA, which I've gotten into)

No, we don't need to wear suits - the impression I have from past discussions is that roughly business casual is totally acceptable. There's a good blogpost here that gives some advice for visiting weekends in chemistry: http://notthelab.blogspot.com/2013/01/tips-for-grad-school-recruiting-weekends.html

There's an agreement among most graduate schools that students have no obligation to respond to any financial offers before April 15th - ie, schools can't take away your money if you don't accept the offer before then. Stony Brooks is on that list of schools, so you have plenty of time. Though most acceptance letters I've seen have stated if you don't respond by April 15th, then you're in danger of losing your financial offers. If you want more information: this is the agreement: http://www.cgsnet.org/april-15-resolution

Yes, LORs are generally considered one of the most important aspects of an application (along with things like research experience and the SoP), while the hard numbers are usually considered less important. But a 3.68 is not going to hurt your application either way..

Accepted to Wisconsin-Madison today! Like others have mentioned, mine was in my spam folder, so everyone should definitely make sure to check there. I've been particularly antsy about admissions this week (this site is wonderful, but does not always help with paranoia and anxiety), so it's a nice relief. I doubt that the lack of news from Caltech means a rejection, considering only one person has heard from them - from the previous years' results, the Caltech acceptances tend to go out in waves over a couple of days/weeks.

I agree with all of these (especially the first two) and will also mention asking about where alumni end up after graduating as well - I think that's a big one. I've also asked about time-to-graduation and completion rates at a school.

Got accepted to UPenn today! It's one of my top choices, so I'm super excited. Also, I have a phone call next week with a POI at University off Virginia to talk about the ongoing research there - has anyone else had this experience? What was it like? Since I've already been accepted there, I'm not too too nervous about it, but of course I want to make a good impression. I've read some of the relevant papers and am thinking of questions to ask (maybe about advising style or student outcomes), but I'm wondering if there's any other things I should do to prepare.

Wow, congrats to everyone who got into schools today! That's super awesome I suspect there'll be some more results tomorrow - it seems to me like schools are trying to get some decisions out before Winter break starts. I definitely agree that most the experimentalists use some amount of theory for their projects, but in my experience, theoretical calculations with things were mostly a means to the end goal. As opposed to the more theory-based groups, who were really interested in diving into the finer details and doing the complicated calculations that things like Gaussian can't necessarily do. Ideally, I'm interested in a group where I can do both - I'm personally more of an experimentalist, but I also really want to be able to do the complex calculations to understand the underlying theory On the whole, I think the most important aspects of an application stay roughly the same from school to school - LORs, research experience, department fit, that sort of thing. I think it's more in the smaller details where subjectivity comes more into play - the graduate coordinator at UPenn told me, for instance, that it would look worse to not submit a Chem GRE score than to submit a one that's on the lower end of things (as opposed to other divisions, where not submitting might be viewed more favorably). Of course, meeting POIs and making favorable impressions is also a subjective way that can be very important in applications.