GeoDUDE!

I think its very fair for you to discuss this with your new POI and Dept chair, and try and figure out how the department handles these situations, fwiw.

Ivys are also notorious for not giving tenure to productive professors, and if they wanted to pay someone that much they would try and snipe someone from another school. That being said, If he has passed quals and is on his way to defending, the department should rally around the student and help him finish (and his advisor could to no matter where he goes). We just sniped 2 professors from an Ivy, and all their third and fourth year students are in residence at my school, but will go back and defend at their original school and get the degree from there as well.

No. That being said, students at my MS department did this, and the best of them ended up getting funding (through other assistantships on campus, like working for the department of waste). Also, every student had at least a 1/3 tuition waiver, regardless of assistantships. Also figure out how fast you can get instate tuition. Also, talk to your advisor about what kinds of funding you can work on getting if you were to end up going there. The thing is, I'm not sure it will be easy for you to get funding. If this was 2 years ago, I think it would be a different story, and in 2 years the job market might be good again. But there is no guarantee a MS will get you a better job than a BA right now, all signs point towards mudlogging for a lot of people.

Did you ever figured out what happend? This seems to contradict your old posts. Edit: gratz!

Certainly it was my MS thesis that got me into the programs I wanted to get into. I probably would not have been looked at otherwise. So I'm not sure how nonthesis masters are looked at in academia, I know that in my field (earth science) they are not worth doing at all for industry or getting into a PhD program. Those are the type of programs that industry sends their already good employees to as a part of benefits. If you want to go into research, you should pick research degrees imo. Then again, it might be more common in the humanities/social sciences.

Wouldn't you want to settle and have less requirements if you felt you didn't have much time?

Is it a 9 month or a 12 month stipend? I think general rule of thumb (but I don't know for international applicants) is take out 20%. It probably is less, but if you budget with 80% of your money, you will be better off in the long run.

I get emails every day.

Not that I know of. Some apartment complexes have roomate matching. Sometimes on craigslist people are looking to just fill 1 spot , and thats a good way to go about it.

That's really unfortunate... My guess is that the Graduate school rejected you despite your department recommending you for admission? Does the graduate school (not department) have minimum GPA/GRE scores?

No, did this happen to you? Perhaps you misunderstood what he said? perhaps your not rejected ?

The research you do will determine your career opportunities, not the name of the degree. For example, I have a MS in Geology, but have taken very few geology courses. If you are not doing research for your degree that will limit your career opportunities in earth sciences.

If its a publicly available data set, it's fair game. For example, most seismology graduate students use publicly available (and published) seismic records for their research. There is often more data then there are people to process. IMO, using already collected data for a masters project is perfect: perfect to build on (find inconsistencies in the data set) for a PhD project. Think about applying for the GRF next year: "I have used this data set, and this data set doesn't all us to observe x, so I need to go and collect this to observe x". What may be unethical (IMO) is that you got the idea to use this data set (for what you want to do) from this other POIs research grant, and if you were to do the same thing with this other POI, it could appear like you are scooping the original POI. Beating someone to the punch happens a lot, but hopefully much of the time its because both people had the same good idea independently of each other. So you have to decide if the idea is tied to his grant or not, and perhaps include this POI in the conversation. It all depends.

I know EOS (the AGU publication) sometimes posts internships. You might also see if a professor in your department could use a summer research helper for field work, tough academic internships tend to focus on people who have no yet graduated undergrad and there isn't much point giving a graduate student an internship outside of industry or national labs since they should probably be working on their own research instead. My friend did an internship at New Mexico National Labs, and they paid super well, but I think they were looking for people with some graduate school experience, but you might want to take a look at the NL pages (LLNL, NMNL, Argonne ect..). Overall though, I think the time to look for summer stuff has probably passed, I remember as an undergrad REU applications were due in like early march, so getting recommendations ect. everything together this fast might be tough. Also, I don't think REUs are available for graduating seniors.

It all depends on when the grants are turned in. You can largely assume 6-7 months after they are due. For example, we turned in a grant for NSF geophysics in December and expect to hear in May/June.

It depends. The department likely knows already who will get offers if others decline at the april 15th deadline. They likely won't review applicants (though again this could depend on the department). A lot of those times those spots go unfilled, unfortunately because they do not want ot take what they consider a less quality candidate and their 2nd and third choices for those spots have already accepted some where else. It depends on what state, but in California that's how it works. My department (and I'm sure other UCs) only pays 1 year of out of state tuition, after that you are expected to establish residency and only the instate tuition is waived.

Fwiw it takes 1 full year to go to instate tuition in california.

Lectures, workshops ect always have free food. Also, anytime you are helping out with something you tend to get food. Also, like at least in my town, they have a bunch of apartment recruitment things where they have like pizza to meet new roommates, and sometimes I go even though I'm not looking for an apartment. Yes, you might say thats unethical, but, they almost always order more food than needed, so its not being wasteful.

Long Beach is a cool city too. Congratz!

Actually I don't know anyone who works for the USGS! Most of my friends in industry ended up in smaller firms in Houston, and some ended up at companies like schlumberger. I think working for the USGS would probably be a good way to keep your job, though there are other dangers (like govt defunding you).

I think you are misinterpreting what I've said. Sure research experience helps, but lets think about why it helps. It probably mostly helps from enriching your Statement of Purpose and your Letters of Recommendation. But you don't need research experience to have those things. Another thing that research experience helps you with is building skills. Things like programming, writing ect. Again, to develop those skills, you also don't need research experience. There are plenty of people who are very good numerical programmers and problem solvers that don't have research experience. I think you see a lot of people get into graduate school with research experience, not just because they have research experience, but most top students have research experience. And then there is something unsettling about your argument itself: you attempt to make a statistical claim (look, here are 3 people who got rejected from top schools) without really thinking about the statistics themselves. Where did those students get in? Don't a majority of people who apply with research experience, good grades, and test scores get rejected from schools like that anyway? What's the selection bias of people who post on grad cafe or in the results section? I don't know the answers to these questions, but I do know I have friends (especially who were engineering majors) who are now in physcs,chemistry, and earth science grad schools who did very little to no research experience because their course list didn't allow them to have time to do it. So the statement: "Good GPAs and GREs alone are not sufficient to get into the top programs in physics/chemistry/math just like good GPAs and GREs alone are not sufficient to get into the top programs in earth science."' is true, but no one made that claim. People who good GREs, and good GPAs also probably have strong letters and a maybe a good statement of purpose. At least the ones who make it into graduate school do. Not all of them have research experience, I have personally met those people. PS: where did I say its easier to get into graduate school without research? I just said its not as important as people make it out to be. Those are two different statements.

IDK if I have said this before but next year's cohort of students seems like it will be really small... we have only had a few students visit.

I think there are probably skills you can learn that will help you get/keep a job in oil industry (just like any other). It just depends on what kind of geology you want to study. I'm not too industry oriented, so I dont really know what those fields are. I know my friends who all studied seismology still have jobs.

Maybe... but who says they are going to hire the same amount of people? Once companies cut fat companies aren't necessarily looking to build up to the same size. Furthermore, there will be more people in the job market: Recent grads and recent layoffs instead of just recent grads. More competitive market means lower pay than before. With the amount of layoffs I think it will take a few years for the market to recover. But thats just speculation. Getting a job in geology isn't as peachy as it was 1 year ago, thats for sure.

My guess is all the oil internships for 2015 are already gone at big companies. Especially with the downturn in oil prices. Going into the job market within the next couple years is probably going to be rough for most people.