shadowclaw

I don't think it's so much that they won't take the letter seriously if you didn't waive your rights, but I think it could raise a red flag. What Eigen says is true - by waiving your right to see the letter, you are allowing your LOR writer to give an honest appraisal of you without the concern of retribution or awkwardness if something unfavorable is written. If you don't waive your right, it could imply that you have some negative quality that you don't want brought up in the letter. If you are otherwise a stellar applicant (great GPA, GRE scores, SOP, and lots of research experience), then it probably won't matter. However, if you are a marginal applicant, I think the adcomm would be concerned that you didn't waive your rights. This. You should be able to tell what people will write a great letter for you. If you can't, it means either you haven't cultivated good relationships with your professors and advisors or you haven't been a good student or researcher. The resulting letter from someone you can't trust to right a good letter won't be very good, even if you get to see it or even make changes.

I e-mailed a POI the other day to remind him to submit a sponsorship letter to the grad school and the department secretary (I need a major advisor in order to be admitted to the program like most EEB programs). I started the email with something along the lines of, "All of my application materials are finally in. The graduate school just needs your sponsorship letter." He responded with "Thanks for the update. I'll take care of the letter." I feel like that's a very unenthusiastic way to respond, which might indicate that he has better prospects or is just neutral. On the other hand, would he provide a sponsorship letter to all of is applicants, or just the one he really wants? So much overanalyzing. I also wonder how many people applied for his lab. The due date for applications was January 15, and he put out an ad for the position on January 5 (one of his grad students dropped out suddenly after last semester, which I think gave him a last minute opening). How many people would have found the ad in that 10 day period?

There are people who worked their way up the ranks at fast food places and ended up making 60-70k after only 5 years or so. Sometimes I wish I didn't take my grad assistant position in my masters program. The pay really sucks... I get about $700 per month after taxes. I used to work at a Pizza Hut, and if I stayed I could have worked almost full time as a driver which would have earned me $1500 a month after taxes because I was getting paid $8 an hour plus gas money and didn't have to claim tips (which were at least $100 a night). C'est la vie.

Asking a recommender for a copy of their letter is somewhat in bad taste and might even greatly offend your writer. It definitely sends the message that you do not trust them to write a good letter. If I were a professor and my student asked to see a letter before I submitted it, I would tell them to look elsewhere for a LOR. If you aren't certain that someone will writer a strong letter for you, then you shouldn't ask them to. But of course that is just my opinion. I agree with the general consensus that you should try to get into a research-based masters program, funded or otherwise. High grades in graduate courses will help offset your low uGPA (although to be honest, this still might haunt you even after getting a masters degree), and doing a thesis (as well as publishing your results) will help show the adcomm that you have the capability to be a productive scientist and successful student. I second the idea of looking at state schools for neuroscience or biology programs. They aren't always funded, but they are inexpensive if you do have to pay.

I still like my thesis and I'm writing it at the moment. I'm actually very fond of writing which is probably why I'm enjoying myself. However, once I get comments back from my committee and later on the graduate school (who are apparently extremely anal about formatting), it's quite possible that I will not enjoy my thesis at all. I will admit that some days I definitely don't feel motivated to do any writing, like several days over winter break that I spent binge watching Babylon 5. I wouldn't say I was bullied into my thesis, but half of it was handed to me by my advisor. However, I knew what this project was going to be about before I even applied and quite frankly, it's the perfect project for my research interests. Plus it involved traveling abroad, which is a huge bonus. The half that wasn't handed to me by my advisor was what I approached him with as a potential project, and it meshed quite nicely with what he wanted to do, so it's pretty much win-win.

morning dew

Glass menagerie

Don't get me started on gender roles. There are few things more infuriating for me than the concept that anything aside from pregnancy and childbirth can be assigned to one gender. Then again, Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in Junior was pregnant... but seriously, why do gender roles still exist? There's no reason why a woman shouldn't be the breadwinner and no reason why a man can't be a stay at home dad and do the cooking, cleaning, etc. It also seriously aggravates me when people say that someone who doesn't fit an old fashioned gender role must be gay. Really, why should sexual orientation have anything to do with your career or hobbies? When I was a teenager, I took karate classes at a school run by two women, and my mom insisted that they were lesbians. It still gets me mad that she thought that without any other information to base her assumption on. I think she saw them 3 times and didn't know anything else about them other than that they owned a business and were athletic. Arrrg.

Yeah, even though I wasn't nuts about taking a biostats course, I was at least looking forward to learning R so I don't have to get so frustrated trying to use it. Plus it's a useful skill for ecology PhD positions. I'm still baffled as to why we're using SAS when the course was taught using R in past semesters and most of the class is made up of ecology-orientated students. At the moment, I have to use SAS for assignments because the professor wants us to turn in our code as well. So I don't even have that option.

mind game

Long John

I've been to the Texas A&M wildlife job board, but not the one you mentioned. I also browse the OSNA job board. I've been thinking about getting a summer position whether I'm accepted or not, because, well, I'll need some money.

Lot lizard

acid burn

I'm definitely trying to stay positive! Generally speaking, I've felt pretty good about the majority of my applications, but I have moments of doubt. Like right now haha. I know I still have lots of time before decisions will be made. It sounds like you are the ultimate ecology applicant. I did a variety of research projects and field work as an undergrad, but most weren't related to ornithology. Actually, they were pretty diverse. I've got some interesting skills that aren't really applicable to birds! Then again, one of my committee members decided to work in the field after undergrad before going to grad school, and she worked all over the country and with any organism she could find. She turned out ok I really hope I do get the NSF GRFP... I'm quite proud of that application, and not only would it make schools want to accept me, but the stipend is soooo much better than what most programs are offering.

Congrats, sfrie! That's so great that they accepted you without an interview. I think that means that you're an awesome applicant. Now you too know for certain that you're going to grad school in the fall. I am so jealous of you and FoggyAnhinga! I haven't given up hope on UNC yet. Especially since my POI took a really long time to reply to my e-mails when we discussing the opportunities in his lab. Maybe he's waiting for some quiet time in his office to take care of it

Congrats, FoggyAnhinga! I was wondering how much research and field experience you have. I suspect that your research interests broadly lie in ornithology, and you are doing really well with interviews and your acceptance! Field experience is something that I lack... I briefly worked on two bird banding projects plus I did my thesis research which was mostly field observations and some museum work. In the event that this application season is a bust, finding some bird projects to work on in the next year seems like the best way to strengthen my profile.

Also, who posted to the results that they were accepted to UNC's EEB program? Anyone?

Port authority

My husband hasn't been too involved with the school selection process. Because of the narrowness of my research interests and the way EEB admissions work, I have a very limited pool of programs to choose from. I tried to avoid applying to programs in big cities (like NYC, LA, etc) because I know he'll hate it. At the same time, I made an honest effort to find programs in places he would like to live (such as New England and the Pacific Northwest). Ultimately, it came down to me finding a great research fit, and that meant applying to some programs in less desirable locations. I haven't had any interviews yet, but he won't be coming along. He could potentially take the time off from work, but he doesn't get vacation pay, so we can't afford it. If I get multiple acceptances, I will certainly get his input to help make the decision. However, no matter where we go, his job prospects are the same, so it will really just be a matter of where he thinks he'd like to live.

GeoDUDE, I definitely understand that R has its advantages. In fact, R is the only program that I can do all of my analyses in one place, and the only one that is free. I will certainly like R more once I learn to use it properly, which is one of the reasons I'm so aggravated with my biostatistics course. I feel quite certain that I won't have much need for SAS in my field, while R is the preferred program and we are barely going to touch on it, even though in past semesters R was used. However, I'm always going to be annoyed with command line interfaces. Which is funny, because I'm only a few courses short of a B.S. in computer science. You'd think I'd like it. I'm still waiting for when I can feed some data into the computer and verbally tell it to analyze it.

Ineedenak - UNC does an interview weekend sometime in mid-February. I don't know the exact date. I did a Skype interview with my POI prior to applying and he gave me a general timeline and that's when he said it would be. Someone called UNC earlier this week and they said interview invites would be sent out at the end of this week or early next week, so it seems a little odd that you're doing a Skype interview. Are you international or really far away away (like Hawaii or Alaska)? If so, maybe inviting you to the weekend is too costly and they're doing a Skype interview instead. I don't know.

New hope

Dear mailman, Thank you for putting the junk mail into the mailbox and dropping my W-2 forms into the snow. I think it's especially awesome that you then ran over them with your car and ground them into the snow really well.

It's funny you should say that, because I usually get angry looks if I try to give him plain mac and cheese. Typically, I have to add tuna or bacon to it for him to be happy (and the tuna only makes him a little bit happy, because fish isn't real meat). If I make my mom's recipe instead of using a box, he's satisfied with it having no meat because it's a cheese explosion. It uses a giant block of Velveeta, which I'm not sure is actually real cheese. I used to work with a girl who was almost a vegan. I say almost because she regularly ate garlic bread made with butter and gummy bears, and her mother-in-law told me that she routinely makes desserts for family dinners and tells her it's made with soy milk when really it's made with regular old milk. Which is really mean, but the girl didn't actually have any ethical objections to meat and dairy. She just believed she had an allergy to milk. Anyway, her husband is a meat eater and they have two kids. She chose to raise them vegan and so far there haven't been any issues with Dad eating meat. However, they're only 5, so it's unclear if there will be issues when they get older.