rockbender

I'm not sure about MS vs non-thesis. I assumed most of them were PhD...? But maybe someone who is actually familiar with Stanford can help with that question... The School of Earth Sciences IS divided into 4 departments, so I guess 16 new students per department. But are the departments completely isolated? Do the grad students in "Environmental Earth System Science" never talk to the people in the "Geophysics" department? That seems pretty insular... but at the same time, can you imagine if they all tried to get together in one room?

AGREED. I 100% prefer email over phone calls, especially for mundane things like ordering a pizza etc. I can understand why the prof would include that in his signature, but it does come off rude (IMO).

I am on the fence about applying to Stanford's School of Earth Sciences. I know they have a great program there and it's very well respected in the field... but I am a little put off by just how BIG it is. They had 63 new graduate students this year! If every cohort is that large, there would be something like 300 grad students currently enrolled. It's hard to imagine getting personalized attention when you are one among so many... Does anyone have any experience with Stanford? Either from being a student there, knowing someone there, visiting, etc. I'm afraid that if I went there I would just become a number (grad student #167), and I was hoping for some insider information about whether or not that is true. Thanks!

I always worry that they will be annoyed by such content-less responses, but at the same time it is the polite thing to do... I think in the CHE forum discussion, the situation is even trickier - since the prof gave a negative response, I don't know if that really qualifies for a response. I guess that would depend on the tone. BUT since my emails were generally positive (though not enthusiastic) I think I will respond with a thank you after all. I'll get on that now! Thanks everyone for the help!

Hey guys, Sorry for another email question. I know these aren't very popular... but I got some pretty generic emails from profs, the standard "sure apply to our program, you could be a good applicant." I know the proper etiquette is to respond to these emails in some fashion, but I have no idea what to say. Is it really just "Thank you" and that's it? As in Hi Professor Monkeys, Thank you for taking the time to respond to my questions. I look forward to submitting my application in January. Sincerely, rockbender That feels a little abrupt, but I don't know how to pad it with (meaningless) niceties. I don't have any specific questions for these people, as they said that their lab groups were full but I should apply to the geochem group at large. Their emails were very short and didn't really encourage further communication. Any advice?

Agreed, you should add more about your background. You could also attach a CV if you have one, and then say they could take a look at it if they want to know more. That's where they can look for your GPA and GREs if they want to see them.

That is a pretty standard response, not bad but not enthusiastic either. If you are really interested in the program, then you can still definitely apply. Probably it would be a good idea to contact some other people in the program though. If you aren't really interested or committed to that program, then I would say move on. You should only apply to places that 1. YOU are really excited about and/or 2. the POI is really enthusiastic about you joining their group. If neither of those things are true, it's not worth your time.

Some applications have an optional section where you can upload a statement to explain a low GPA or a bad semester or something along those lines. Do the schools you are applying to have something like that? Personally - I would do the above^ and ask a letter writer to talk about your situation rather than doing it in your SOP. Unfortunately I think it would be difficult for you to mention without it coming off as "making excuses." It will sound much more legitimate coming from a letter writer (an authority figure who knew about and was sympathetic to your situation).

About 2 weeks ago I emailed a professor about potentially working in her lab. She was not originally on my radar, so I wasn't super committed to making the contact, and when she never responded, I let it go. But she did respond! Today! Her email was actually pretty nice and sounded encouraging. Her research is along the lines of what I would like to do in grad school (though not exactly), and she is from a very well respected university in my field. HOWEVER the deadline for the school's application is in about a month, and approximately 3 weeks earlier than any of my other applications. Basically my application work is on hold until after NSFGRF is turned in (Nov 19), so I seriously doubt I could get it done (well) in time. Plus I feel like it would be kind of unfair to my recommenders, who thought they were getting a break between NSF and my applications. If she had responded sooner, I would have been happy to add the school to my list instead of some of the other less exciting ones that are currently on there. But at this point, I have pretty much decided that I won't be applying to her school. So.. What should I say in response to her email? Should I tell her that I no longer plan to apply to the school? Do I feign interest and then just not turn in an application? Do I respond at all?!?! Thanks!

When I was drafting my emails to POIs, my advisor told me that I should ask whether or not they were planning to take students the next year. As in, that should be a very standard question that professors receive. However, there are many reasons a prof might choose not to take students (maybe they took 3 new students last year and are already overloaded, maybe their latest grant didn't get funded) so I definitely wouldn't frame the question in terms of retirement. Just ask whether or not they are interested in or planning on taking on a student in the future.

Agreed. I think whether you go into Applied Math or EE, you will need to raise your Quant Score. You need at least 160+, preferably 164+ (which would put you in the 90th percentile).

Most earth science programs accept students from a variety of physical science backgrounds, and I'm sure this is true for oceanography in particular. For example, the URI Graduate School of Oceanography website says: "URI offers Ph.D., M.S., and B.S. degrees in the Department of Ocean Engineering. This program specializes in the application of engineering principles and technology to solve problems in the ocean and coastal waters.... Specializations include ocean renewable energy from wind, waves, and tides; marine spatial planning, ocean robotics, ocean instrumentation and data analysis, underwater and sub-bottom acoustics, acoustic tomography, marine geomechanics and soil mechanics, marine hydrodynamics, coastal engineering and near-shore processes, marine environmental modeling, ocean drilling, ROVs and AUVs (remotely operated and autonomous underwater vehicles), and coastal and offshore structures....Graduate enrollment is open to students with undergraduate degrees in engineering, mathematics, physical sciences, or other technical disciplines." (emphasis added) Your computer science background would make you a pretty good candidate for a project heavily based on computer modeling. That said, you would probably have to take classes in basic earth science and oceanography. In my undergrad dept, plenty of grad students would take basic undergrad courses (like mineralogy or sedimentology etc) to fill in gaps in their own undergrad preparation. THAT SAID I don't know how this all would apply to an MS rather than a PhD. In a PhD you have a lot more time to catch up on basic coursework than you have in an MS. I would recommend talking to the schools you are interested in and seeing what they say about required coursework... but if you are really interested in oceanography you should definitely go for it!

Agreed - you definitely need a letter from someone in your MA program, preferably your thesis advisor. Also, how do you know that he is "rough with recommendation letters"? If he wrote someone a bad rec, it might be because... well the person deserved a bad rec. It doesn't mean that he will necessarily write you a bad rec. The best way to ensure a good rec would be to follow rkg2012's advice: Just try to talk to him more! The more you talk to him, the better he will know you, and the better rec you will get out of him! Good luck!

I thought that AW score would be the least important one as well, but I'm not sure that is always the case. I talked to my current advisor (at top 20 school in my field) about the GREs and whether or not they are important, and he said that the only score that he looks at for prospective students is the AW score. I'm in a science field, so the AW scores are often lower than, say, the Q scores. People tend to underestimate the importance of writing, but science, after all, is "publish or perish" and the ability to communicate your work in writing is essential. My advisor says that the AW score is much better predictor of success in graduate school than the Q or V scores. So that's a different perspective... One other professor in the dept seconded this opinion, but I didn't get to talk to him long enough to hear his reasoning. Besides those two, no one else that I have asked has mentioned the AW score in particular. My take is that most schools don't care about AW scores, but some care a lot (I guess my school?). Probably best would be to talk to someone at the school to which you are applying to see what their take on AW scores is.

What exactly are they looking for under "Proposed Program" (after putting in the proposed university)? Do I just say a "Doctoral Program"? or "PhD Program in Whatever"? I am confused because below they ask for the Graduate Department and the Highest Degree that you expect to earn, so the "Proposed Program" question seems redundant. Am I missing something here?

Thanks guttata, I will probably end up doing that... Re: delaying until the last minute, I actually wasn't planning on applying for the fellowship this year, but all of the POIs that I contacted told me that I should. The sense I got was that I needed to at least apply to be strongly considered. Now I am scrambling to put something together in 3 weeks. Alas. By good I mean something I won't be embarrassed about. I don't expect it to be good enough to win a fellowship given the scramble. I'm also not worried about getting edits; I have at least 6 people who have offered to edit it once I can put together a draft. I'm just stuck at the draft part...

Hey everyone! Question for you all... I have two potential directions that I could go for my project proposal: 1. Write something related to the work I did for my thesis (mantle geochemistry), even though I have no intention of continuing anything like that research in grad school. The benefit would be that I am already familiar with the field and the proposal would be easier to write. 2. Write something related to the work I want to do in grad school, even though I have no real background in it (paleoceanography). The benefit would be an intensive introduction into the field and the opportunity to work on the proposal with a potential advisor at my top school (still waiting for a response from him about helping me with the proposal, but I pretty sure he'll say yes). Which direction do you think would be better? I am way more interested in #2; I'm just worried that I won't be able to catch up on enough of the literature in the field to write a good proposal before the deadline...

Yes, retake it. The Nov date should be fine for Dec deadlines, but if you are concerned you could check with your schools. Re: the low AW score, if you didn't do this last time, sprinkle some ETS-vocab words into both of your essays. I personally didn't think I wrote a great essay, but I'm pretty sure that the few fancy vocab words I threw in boosted my score. It's relatively easy to do on the test date, so it might help if you don't have time to dedicate to raising both the Q score and the AW score by brute force studying.

I agree with the above posters; you should really consider retaking the general test. The rest of your application looks great, but it would be risky to assume that it will make up for the low Q score. Have you contacted any POIs at the schools you are planning to apply to? You could maybe drop your GRE scores and see how they react. If they respond negatively, you should take it as a sign that you absolutely need to retake the GREs. It shouldn't be too hard to raise the Q score. The above advice is great. I would add that the "brute force" approach (doing hundreds of practice problems) is actually very effective for the GREs - the more problems you do beforehand, the less likely you are to be surprised by a weird question on the actual test.

Thanks for the great advice! I will definitely just send the follow up email, and I'll try to include some palliative phrases about the preliminary contact being lost in the void. I think the qualification takes off any accusatory tone that could be interpreted from such an email @surefire - Good to know I'm not the only one asking so many questions about etiquette! Sometimes I feel like such a noob... but I guess everyone was at this point sometime in their career, right? lol

I emailed some professors several months ago, and I never got a response. (I don't know why I thought emailing them in July would be a good idea. It clearly wasn't.) I figured that they were busy/away for the summer and that I should wait until the fall to send them a follow up email, which is what I did. However - it has been so long since the first email that I wonder if I should just "start over" rather than "follow up". It seems silly to say "Hi, I contacted you earlier about..." when that earlier was over 3 months ago. At the same time, it would be silly if I sent them an email very similar to the first and realizing that it sounded familiar, they found the old one hidden in their inbox. What do you think would be the better approach? Sorry for all of these questions - I am clearly clueless about email etiquette. I did search the forum for previous posts but I didn't come across anything (though maybe I missed something?) Thanks for your help!

Has anyone else gotten a response from a POI that mentioned the "fiscal cliff"/political uncertainty? I just received the following email: "Thanks for contacting me. It's too soon to know if I will have funding for a new student for next fall, and I probably won't know until admissions decision time (February). I'm waiting to hear about the effects of the "fiscal cliff", as you might imagine. Nonetheless, I hope you will apply to our program and even if I don't have the funding, there may be someone else with similar interests that will have funding." I'm not sure if this is a genuine concern about funding availability or if it is just a jazzed-up version of the standard response of "sure apply to our program, why not?" My impression is that he is not interested in talking with me any further, but I can't tell if the "fiscal cliff"/financial uncertainty is the true reason or just the excuse he is giving me. None of the other POIs that I have emailed have mentioned it. I wonder if the "fiscal cliff" is something I should be concerned about - especially how it might affect acceptance rates in this year's application cycle... Is anyone else thinking about it?

I am under the impression that for grad school apps you should be submitting a CV, not a resume... However I also have a lot of questions about how to build a CV. Most of the ones I have looked at (from professors) focus heavily on publications, talks, and professional activities - none of which I have. I do have research experience but how much detail should be included on the CV? Should I include an abstract? Or just a sentence or two etc? Anyone out there have CV writing advice??

Wow, I completely disagree with the above commenters who suggest talking to Professor D. I say forget Professor D. She may be a very nice person who could write you a great rec, but you need someone who is going to be reliable. The last thing you want is to be constantly worried about whether or not she will complete and upload the letter by the deadline. Considering that you have made so many attempts to contact her and she has not responded, I think she has already established that she is flaky and/or disorganized, neither of which are qualities you want in a recommender. Talking to her in person may just make her feel guilty/obliged to promise something that she will ultimately not follow through on. I think it would be a big risk on your part to pursue her as a letter writer. That said - DON'T take it personally! I doubt that she doesn't want to write you a rec. She is probably just lost in her professorial disorder (as many of them are!) I would ask Professor C. It doesn't matter that he doesn't know your grades, as your transcript will provide that information.

You probably won't need it. If you can remember things really quickly, then sure put it on your "to remember" list, just in case. But to be honest - most math problems on the GREs have little "tricks" that you can use to solve them. For example, a problem that might look like it needs the quadratic equation might be easily solved by process of elimination. http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/prepare/quantitative_reasoning Check out the ETS page on the math section. They explain the 4 different types of questions and offer math review and conventions PDFs at the bottom. I think you would be better off learning as many of the "tricks" as possible, rather than trying to memorize complicated formulas. These "tricks" are covered in just about every GRE practice book. I know those books are expensive, but you might be able to borrow some from a library. I borrowed 4 books (Barons, Kaplan, Peterson's, ETS) from my library and they were super helpful with the "tricks" and tons of practice questions! I highly recommend using a book to study for the GREs, especially the math section. Peterson's and ETS were the better ones. Good luck!