NYLA

They are just acs subject exams. They are medium in difficulty, some people fail them. If you fail you get more chances to retake them, but you must eventually pass them all in order to progress to candidacy. Some of the details are a little foggy. it’s probably not worth fretting about until you actually commit and arrive.

Regarding transferring programs: this is definitely doable via a few avenues. These are things that I've seen or heard of people doing (either to or from the schools I went to) 1) If you have a contact (a PI at another program) that would be willing to take you in (and you know they are and the program is a better fit) you should try to contact them directly; but usually this requires a pre-existing connection with a PI 2) You can reapply to graduate schools in the next cycle. Ideally you would leave your current program with a masters degree; unfortunately a bad record at your current program will not help you here 3) Contact the chair of a department that you were previously admitted to and you may be able to arrange a transfer to that program But before you do any of these you should really evaluate what it is that's making you miserable in graduate school; if it's the location, your advisor woes, and/or the subfield you have found yourself in then there might really be a better fit for you. If it's school itself or chemistry as a whole then I would advise you to spend some time really looking at what you want to do instead and go for it.

I can't believe it but I was awarded this year ! Last year I didn't even get a third reader Last Year: E / F E / G This Year: VG / VG E / E E / E I'm feeling super lucky!

Since when was UC Berkeley a safety school....

Just my two cents - You should really just go to the visitations and speak to graduate students in the labs you are interested in. People from the outside have wildly different perspectives on lives in the labs you've mentioned. Some students will complain about how hard they work, others will say its great, even if they are working comparable hours and on similar projects. It's all related to how you perceive your own academic environment, so ignore everyone else and make the decision that is appropriate for you.

I suspect it differs by department. My program coordinator (Chemistry) told me that she would send an email in the first week of June.

@Eigen: I'm assuming this person is applying to be admitted for Fall 2013, which would correspond to this upcoming application season. So I was in a similar situation; I had actually never taken inorganic chemistry prior to taking the GRE chemistry exam. I'm sure that it affected my score negatively, but you can still survive (I scored a 770 I think, which was not something I was terribly proud of but I was not ashamed either). I think the best thing you can do is identify specific subjects within the topic and learn them for the exam (For example I learned how to count ligand electron contributions onto a metal because I thought that it was one of the most common inorganic-type questions). Fortunately the way they divide their questions up leave a lot of general chemistry in what they define as the "physical chemistry" portion of the exam. I don't remember many questions that required really deep understanding of physical chemistry, just knowledge and remembering important formulas. Alternatively I think a roughly equivalent approach point-wise would be to learn to identify questions you absolutely have no experience with and leaving them blank, and instead focusing entirely on material you've previously covered. I think this would be helpful if you don't have a fairly good textbook or friend/tutor to assist in your learning process.

After several failed attempts at hitting the submit button I finally managed to accept Columbia University's offer! So stoked.

I'm fairly sure that if you haven't heard by now it's a no for almost every school

Hi, So I'm sure I'm not the only one who is heavily considering who they will work for at the actual graduate school in the decision making process, and I'm having a hard time deciding because at each school I like very different people (although the overall research topic is roughly the same). What it's boiling down to is an argument for old-ish advisors (well established, recognized names) vs young-ish advisors (come from great backgrounds but relatively little experience as a PI). I was just wondering if any current students would weigh in with their experiences to help us incoming students out?

Me too. Oh well. Happy that they sent the email though.

When do you all think it's time to give up hope...?

They don't cover even close to the same topics (in my opinion) The GRE Chemistry, for instance, includes topics in inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry AND physical chemistry. The MCAT may have brief ventures into organic chemistry but definitely does not include most of the stuff on the chemistry GRE. The Princeton Review is the only company that I found made a prep book for the GRE chemistry (and it was soso).

Agreed... I'd be happy to pick from what I've gotten but I feel like these other schools are just trying to drive me mad. (I'm really irked by Harvard at the moment because for some reason I feel like everyone has received their official notice except for me..)

Not an expert but UCLA does offer a number of fellowships that they offer to entering students; but I don't believe they receive significantly more money than anyone else. After a year you are actually eligible to become a teaching fellow though, which does include a raise (brings you closer to 30k). But generally one of the complaints of graduate students at UCLA is that they don't have a lot of money to live, which is true because Los Angeles is flipping expensive