St Andrews Lynx

I'd advise you to stick at it for a bit longer. If the main problem is that you know nothing and don't like the classes...that will pass. It might just take a while for the knowledge to sink in or click, so give it time (it took you 3 years to get your UG and become a specialist in your first field, after all) Learn about your new field outside of the classroom - read the newest journals, look up more interesting textbooks in the library. Attend seminars or a conference. There must be some aspect of the field that gets you excited. Do talk to your advisor if you're struggling to adapt to the new field, but don't indicate to them that you want to switch. It's better to admit there's a problem early, rather than hide the fact and flounder in your research later. Hopefully your advisor will come up with less dramatic ways to address your problems & give you useful advice. Hope things get sorted for you soon.

...I actually can't see much wrong with that as a SOP. The conciseness is refreshing. A possible suggestion for the OP. How about writing practice essays on topics closely-related to your assessed pieces, but which will never get marked by anyone so and don't count towards your final grade. I'm guessing the fact that you know your writing contributes towards your final mark ("This thing I write *has* to be good") is causing the anxiety. Writing an article as practice won't have the same level of stress and you can be free to play around with it. Maybe not even a whole essay, just sections or paragraphs to get the creative juices flowing. I sympathise with your writer's block - I always find it very difficult to start getting words out when faced with a blank document. I think I'm a better editor than writer - the first draft is usually hideous garbage...and I'm OK with that. Good luck!

Get a good night's sleep the night before. Eat a filling breakfast with lots of fibre & carbs. Bring a waterbottle with you and keep hydrated. Wear comfortable shoes. Don't drink too much coffee. The biggest challenge of a schedule like that will be keeping your energy levels up!

...I'M EATING MY PRIDE.

Well, qualifications, GPA, research experience and the academic pedigree of your father won't count for much if you don't interview well. Your paper file can only get you up to the point of an invite to interview...if you then turn up in person and the AdComm don't think you're a suitable match for their program...you'll get rejected. I was rejected from all the PhD programs I applied to in the 2011-2012 cycle. Yes rejection hurts, but please hold on to your dignity. Bitterness isn't going to help you in the long run, it'll only make you do things that you regret. Sense of entitlement won't get you anywhere either, certainly not in the most competitive PhD programs. Re-apply again to Psychology programs next year. Perhaps there are schools out there that are a better match your research interests. Network with more professors in your field, it will give you experience of "interview-like" situations and how to establish rapports with faculty. Make sure that your SOP and letters writers aren't undermining the other parts of your application.

I'm v. pleased to hear it. Don't forget to take care of yourself mentally & physically while you're in grad school, because it can be rough.

This thread makes me glad I'm one of those geriatric grad school applicants who has already graduated... (The writing up and submission of my final year research project clashed with the weekend of a ballroom dancing competition. I figured the UK-wide competition would be more enjoyable and life-enhancing than the Chemistry research project ever could...so when I got back from the comp on Sunday night I headed straight to the computing lab, stayed up until I was too tired to type, then submitted a final draft on the Monday afternoon. Drank a lot of atrociously bad coffee in the process. My overall research project mark was a mediocre 60%...but damn I don't regret prioritising the DanceSport) Good luck to all final year chemists!

Check the results page and search for Chemistry PhDs to find out when these schools sent their acceptances and rejections this year and in the past. The grad schools' biggest priority is always the students they want to accept, a lot of places will wait until March to send out official rejections, despite having made their decisions in January/February. Trust me, I know from painful experience. Your other option is to phone up the schools in question and ask about the status of your application. I suspect that since you've not heard anything yet (mid Feb to March is when most Chemistry programs are hosting accepted students at their visiting weekends) you're going to be looking at more rejections than acceptances. Sorry I can't be more encouraging.

sophiak119, as others have said, please talk to a counsellor if you're having suicidal thoughts. Look, I was rejected from all the programs I applied to last year. It was shameful admitting that to my friends, family, colleagues, etc (and admitting to myself that I wasn't as good as I thought). Applying to grad school is time-consuming and a lot of people get more emotionally-invested in the procedure than they expect. But as I'm sure you can see from reading around the forums, it isn't that unusual to get rejected from all the grad schools we applied to on the first attempt. More people are applying to PhD and MA programs, while the schools are finding it harder to get funding. The end result is that a more people than ever are getting rejected and forced to re-apply. Everybody understands how crazily competitive the application process is, no one will consider you any less of a person if you don't get any offers this year. A bad first attempt wasn't the end of the world for me, and it won't be the end of the world for you. I took time strengthening my application, re-applied and got acceptance letters. Sure it took a year out of my life, but as far as I'm concerned it was worth it. It sounds like you've got so fixed on the grad school applications that you've lost sight of the bigger picture (ie, that grad school is not the be all and end all of your life). Spend a day hanging out with your friends doing something fun. Take up a new sport. Volunteer for a charity. Have a mini weekend holiday to a nearby city. There is more to your existence than getting into a graduate program.

I've got plenty of questions I want to ask, and so will visit and then make the decision. I think I know which one I'm going for...but the visit will allow me to gather extra (vital) information, talk to the faculty & grad students and make sure there are no warning lights flashing at any point when I'm there. Also, I'm kinda excited about a US holiday...

Doing a PhD will almost certainly be a more intensive experience than your previous MAs, so I'd question the wisdom of doing an additional job on the sly. At best it would hamper your research productivity. Hiding the job from your advisors and the rest of the Department for 5 years would tough, too. People would surely notice that if you were untraceable at set points during the working week. Without knowing the specifics of the fellowship I can't really comment on how serious the "don't work rule" is. If the fellowship gives you enough money to live on then I wouldn't bother with the second job. If you are set on working as well, perhaps take a year off from your second job while you settle into the PhD program and concentrate on the research...

Re. paragraph 1 - most research groups websites have lists of their former students showing where they end up. You can check out where people from your safety schools ended up. Or else if you have names then you probably can search their career trajectories on LinkedIn. If you get your PhD from a lower-ranking school then there are Community Colleges, Small Liberal Arts Colleges and all the universities below yours in the rankings. If you've studied at a place where you support yourself through more TAs than RAs, you'll be in a better position to get a teaching-intensive SLAC job than a student who went to Harvard and spent 6 years doing research. Re. paragraph 2 - I guess it depends what you mean by "recognised"...and where you're looking. I know of PIs at public state universities who reel in a lot of federal & industrial grant money (the grant review panels must therefore consider their work valid). Looking at the latest batch of American Chemical Society Award Winners I can see quite a spread of universities from which the winners come from, including the state schools and places I wouldn't have considered as chemistry strongholds. Given that you have several years of industrial experience already (& a network within the companies), I'm not sure how much additional benefit a PhD from an elite institution would give you over a PhD from a non-elite school when it came to finding jobs...

Constructively planning a re-application cycle is going to be better for your general wellbeing than full-time angsting about your outstanding applications. If you do get an offer this time around...well, then the planning hasn't done you any harm. If you don't get an offer...you're already sorting out a Plan B (as everybody says, you need a lot of time to prepare a good grad school application)

I was guilty of that last year - applying to the most elite institutions I could. I bet I'm not the only person for whom that didn't work out. With hindsight I would almost certainly have struggled in the competitive atmosphere of those places, so I'm glad that I applied more broadly and prioritised based on fit/atmosphere, not reputation.

Try your hardest not to take the rejections as a criticism of you. You as a person are awesome, intelligent and talented. They rejected a piece of paper, not you. I understand where you're coming from, since rejections across the board happened to me last time around. Parents didn't necessarily understand, life felt as if it was on hold. Just remember (if you chose to re-apply next year or put grad school plans on hold) that you do not have to be stuck in a cubicle for the rest of your life. You also don't have to "suck up" and submit to difficult people, learn the tricks to manage them or start a dialogue. Difficult people are easy to deal with when you know what makes them tick. Treat the rejections as a learning curve. Good luck with everything.

If your advisor spoke with the older student about you then that's not necessarily a bad thing. The way I interpret this: your advisor thinks you could benefit from more guidance and asked the older student to help mentor you through the project a bit more. That is a good thing. It suggests he has not "given up" on you and is looking for ways to help you improve your performance in his group. Whilst working in industry I had a European supervisor who was blunt on several occasions about the weaknesses he perceived in me. My first instinct was to be stung by the comments, but I realised that he did not mean to be negative and wasn't criticising me personally - he wanted to help me. We ended up having a great working relationship with really high levels of mutual respect, simply because we were both honest about ourselves and didn't take professional feedback personally.

Each school (and Ad Comm) weigh up applications slightly differently. Some put a lot of weight on research experience and are prepared to ignore lower GPA/GRE scores. Others order candidates by their GPA/GREs first and then look at research. Or else someone on Princeton's Ad Comm is good friends with one of your letter writers, etc...

Sometimes interviewers ask questions that are designed to throw the applicant: to see how they respond under pressure, what their thought processes are like and determine where their knowledge barriers lie. I don't think that emailing an extended answer is necessary, just leave it be. In future interviews if you get a question that you can't answer, I think it's OK to say "I need a bit of time to think about that - can we come back to that question a bit later?"

Hopefully it will come across as a positive thing to your advisor - especially if the individuals involved say that "we're all good" (it would be different if they said anything along the lines of "wildviolet went crazy and yelled at us for no reason"...). I don't think you get any bonus points in grad school for niceness, so stand by your actions and don't apologise for asserting authority. Good luck, hope they behave themselves from now on!

Tell them that you've changed, so that they can look out for email from School Y and not be concerned when they can't find anything from School X in their inbox.

I had difficulty with my "between undergrad and grad" status when it came to finding funding for internships in the UK...and I'm a Brit! My recommendation would be to try and sort something through unofficial, informal channels. Have you worked for any firms in the US that have branches in the UK? Do your mentors (academic or industrial) have any connections to British companies? If there are email addresses that you could forward your CV to, then go for it. It's surprised me in the past just how effective this approach can be.

Me, personally? Could not live with my parents for 5-7 years. I'm having a tough time right now being back at home while I look for work. I've become used to complete independence. The silver lining of living with parents at least is that you don't sign any type of rental contract with them: so if they drive you crazy you can find a flat and escape quickly!

Rutgers have already had their first visiting weekend (Friday 9th Feb) and will be having their 2nd one on the 8th March. I suspect that means the vast majority of their offers of admission have already been sent out...

I'm sorry to hear about the rejections. I know how hurtful they can be, especially when repeating an application cycle. There's always multiple paths to the same dream, perhaps failing for the 3rd time around is simply a sign that you've been pursuing your dream in a way you're just not suited to. What is it you want out of grad school? Intellectual challenge? Finding out more about something that interests you? A qualification to further your career? There are other ways to get these things out of life. Quit your current job and find a better one. Take night classes, find a hobby or a volunteer position in your field of interest. Go travelling for 6 months and see where you end up. Please don't waste whole years of your life i. consumed by PhD applications ii. regretting things. Getting a PhD isn't worth that. Good luck and take care of yourself.

Will be 25 when I start grad school. I've spent a year working full-time in industry and living abroad, so I feel like I've acquired "life experience" and maybe even a bit of maturity. Don't think the age of my cohorts matter too much - I look forward all to their youthful energy!