GeoDUDE!
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Posts posted by GeoDUDE!
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I think A looks better, but it comes with the risk of an untenured POI... what would happen if s/he does not get tenure? Are you admitted to work with that person in particular, or could you change? Do you know anything about how their publication record is, if they've had any students, etc? You say "just started", but I don't know how recently that means.
Unless your POI not getting tenured would be an absolute disaster (I admit to not being that educated about what would happen in that situation), I think it's still a lower risk option than B, where funding isn't guaranteed...
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.
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Well, I was accepted to The University of Tulsa so far for MSc in Geology; however, my advisor told me that there was little chance of receiving funding due to competitiveness. My question, would you consider going for your masters, (to work for oil/gas companies), even though you were forced to take on a sizable amount of debt?
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.
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Just got an email from the graduate school saying that the department at Nebraska recommended me and they said congrats !!!!!
Did you ever figured out what happend?
This seems to contradict your old posts.
Edit: gratz!
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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.
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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.
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I get emails every day.
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Are there any services for finding roommates?
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.
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Well, I got a rejection today from Nebraska. I called the department up and they told me to email my POI and the committee chairman. I don't believe I misinterpreted him. He said that I would have a place regardless of funding at Nebraska. He said that I would be able to work for him so this is my situation now after I told my family that I was admitted. This is a nightmare it really is
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?
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Is it common for a POI to say you're admitted but then the school rejects you ?
No, did this happen to you? Perhaps you misunderstood what he said? perhaps your not rejected ?
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So I basically have a choice right now between pursuing a Masters in Geology (University of Tennessee) or Environmental Geology (Rutgers University)... however I have some doubts about Environmental Geology. I'd originally applied because I heard good things about Rutgers and I thought my potential advisor's research was interesting, but now that I'm doing more in-depth research on this I'm having a hard time finding much info on how exactly Environmental Geology differs from "regular" Geology, and what my career prospects would be with that degree.
So far it seems to me like Env. Geology is more specifically related to remediation and stuff like that, so my concern is that it would be more limiting in terms of career prospects. Can anyone give me some feedback on this?
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.
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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.
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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.
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Does anyone know when NSF grant decisions are typically received? Is there a specific date for all decisions to be made by?
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.
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So I know at most schools they give you until Mid April for you to decide on acceptance. If a lot of students decide to go elsewhere do they send out another round of acceptances after that? Does anyone have a good understanding of how it all works?
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.
So one must establish one year of residency before applying for in-state tuition is what you are saying? With that said, lets say I go to a Cal State school...the first year I'd pay out of state and then the second year I could pay in-state?
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.
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Fwiw it takes 1 full year to go to instate tuition in california.
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Free food, eh? What are the free food opportunities I should look out for when starting school?
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.
- pcato1 and Threeboysmom
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Got into CSU Long Beach today with TA for 1st semester, followed up by RA funding. Fellowship under consideration still. Hope everyone hears back here soon too.
Long Beach is a cool city too. Congratz!
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Working for USGS ?
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).
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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.
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.
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UC Davis- I didn't receive a first round offer and POI doesn't think any of their candidates will be chosen for admission, low funding.
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.
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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.
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Why do you say that ? Won't prices be back up ?
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.
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About this I applied to Shell's grad school internship but haven't heard anything. Are there any other companies offering internships to new graduates ? I hate that since I was a pre med for the majority of my undergrad I never looked into internships until relatively recently :/
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.
"Top5 + Generous Funding + Young Assistant Professor POI" vs "No.20 + Less Funding + Stronger Advisory Support(?)"
in Decisions, Decisions
Posted
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.