ChemSet

Hey, I got accepted by Vandy on December 18th. After all the visiting of schools I finally accepted my offer today. I do know however that their coordinator send an e-mail about a week ago asking anyone who had not accepted/declined to please make a decision as soon as possible because there were a number a students on the waitlist still that they would like to get back to. I would strongly recommend e-mailing Sandra Ford (she is great) and asking about your status. Just be honest about your concerns and she'll tell you the truth, whatever the situation. Hope this helps! Best of luck.

I'm waiting on Michigan. I haven't looked if others have received word from them, but I haven't heard anything. I applied Organic, but in general I'm not really getting worried until I've seen a decent number of other students reporting acceptances or we at least get close to Feb. No need to worry until we know there's something to worry about! I just got accepted to the last school I thought I would get into, so trying to predict this stuff is a crapshoot!

I was accepted to Penn today. Pretty surreal, I will have to go on a widespread motivational speaking tour for students who found chemistry later during the course of their undergrad and worry about becoming competitive applicants. One year of research, no publications, bombed the chem GRE, and I still got into Penn. Feels good! I really appreciate how personable and thorough all of these departments (at least the schools I've encountered) are with this whole process. They could have written me off for a school like Penn for a number of reasons and I can't help but feel like they gave me a chance to convey how strongly I feel about this. Great day! Congrats to everyone else on acceptances, you've earned them no doubt!! Very cool to hear about you great scientists prospectively studying at places like Berkeley, Yale, Scripps, UNC, etc. I'm anxious that some have heard from UWashington and Michigan, I do love those schools. Can't wait to start hearing about UC Irvine and Santa Barbara, for my sake! We're the future of chemistry, guys. Who knew!

Got acceptance from UC Riverside. Offering Eugene Cota Robles award, Summer 2015-Spring 2016 total stipend of about $43,000. Sheesh, that is tempting! I have a question... am I supposed to reply to these acceptance e-mails? Something like, "Thank you very much, I'm looking forward to visiting." at least?

I think you have a great head start in terms of the now, that you are actively thinking/planning how to go about your goals moving forward. The old grades will likely end up something you should mention, but you can bolster it with some Biology classes and just do your best do clearly distance who you are now from who you were when you had a harder time. Especially work on acing the biochem/chem-related classes for some more relevant evidence of your aptitude in chemistry, and just keep steady. I've known a bunch of very bright students who felt like they weren't doing everything right if it wasn't done as soon as possible, and that's how people burn out. I think there's a lot of (underrated) merit in making huge strides from a time you maybe weren't prepared for the workload and building a case that you've taken the initiative to grow and improve from then. And of course just keep getting that experience in the lab/industry/wherever. Good luck!

My suggestion would be to not worry so much about the cookie-cutter numbers. You don't have any glaring holes, at all. You have a great GPA, tons of research, and solid LoR's, which I'm pretty sure is the consensus trifecta around here. I would think if you just put enough thought into conveying who you are both in chemistry and in the rest of your life, you would be an incredibly appealing applicant. I mean, Military Linguist/Intelligence? To me, that brings to mind that you're incredibly bright, focused, dependable. I think something we all fall victim to with these apps sometimes is being so particularly concerned with selling the things we've already done - which in the end don't contribute to your grad school at all - and forgetting that (I would hope) these schools are looking for those who haven't only lived up to some impressive potential, but still have a great deal of potential left to fulfill once they get to their program. I'd say your profile embodies a lot of potential and you should apply anywhere you want. At the end of the day there's only so many ways to differentiate between a dozen applicants with similar GPA/GRE/X Years research, and it'll really just be up to a couple individuals at a school liking who you are on top of that. Best of luck!