GeoDUDE!

In 3 weeks it will be almost April. If you haven't heard from them by then, you probably won't until on or after April 15th. I would email your POIs at the other places asking about your application status (as you have an impending deadline) and have to make a decision before April.

Absolutely won't mind. Thats what they are there for.

So much. SO MUCH (like I found out my advisor's first grad student just got a TT from creeping). Its ok though, I feel like that kinda creeping is politically correct.

Ask your POI, where their students who have graduated have gone. Ask the the graduate chair what postdocs theirs students have.

I think cohort matters a lot for a masters student, but less for a PhD. You think it would be the opposite, but the personalities of cohorts change from year to year, so its inevitable that you won't get a long with some people as a PhD student since there are 5-7 cycles of students while you are there. But with a masters, there are only 2 cycles, so there are less chances of meeting people you get a long with. I think its hard to tell the nature of who you will be friends with at departmental visits. The guy who was super quiet there during visits is super goofy here now, and is one of my better friends. People change/nervous in those situations. But also trust your gut. Social life in graduate school is important.

Me to! There was a bit of a mixup on fastlane but it all got sorted out. Thanks for post you got your offer I wouldn't have emailed them again.

ESS is one of the top atmospheric science programs in the country. Other research I do not know much about.

Its happend before to a member on this forum. He was very inappropriate during his visit (and I think he has a mental condition akin to asperger syndrome) and the offer was recinded. Note that even if you get your official acceptance, it can still be rescinded. It probably won't be though unless you do something overtly stupid like sexually harass someone.

They encourage students to apply because 1) they genuinely don't know who they are going to take 2) don't know if who they want will accept their offer 3) don't know the number of spots available until the adcom first meets 4) don't know who else is taking on students that might stop them from getting a new student and finally 5) don't know their funding situation.

I think you should reapply to those places with a higher GRE and better rapport to POIs. You might do better next time around. Schools that have excellent volcanology/geomorph programs that I know of are LDEO, University of Hawaii, University of Alaska Fairbanks, University at Buffalo, Syracuse(experimental none the less) and here at UC Davis.

Spring admissions happens more than you think because faculty get an NSF grant after the fall admissions season (they are often awarded in may/june for geophysics) and they aren't able to get a student on a TA. I think you should contact individual PIs about it. They are mostly based on research funding though since most if not all of the TAships tend to be taken up in fall (to get as many students as possible).

I think you should target more private schools. I know UT austin, CSM and Texas A&M are known to be good for industry, but its more expensive for public schools to take an international student vs a domestic student so that is working against you. Mind you, public schools do take international students, so still apply. You should also contact professors in a few months to see how your research interests fit with them and see if they are taking on students that application cycle. Those programs are fairly competitive, but you also have a strong application. You should target 320 on your GRE at least. Seeing as you were among the best students in your country, you should have the LOR to back that up. I think you will be fine.

You're asking people to make decisions for the benefit of yourself, not themself.

This is 100% false. Wanting something for yourself is not selfish. Wanting something at the expense of others is. Grow up.

I think its a bit selfish to suggest this. Considering they worked just as hard as anyone else to get those acceptances, they should have the time they need.

If your top choice is higher ranked then it is unlikely that you will be able to leverage your other 2 offers. You might try these threads: There are many others actually, so if your interested i just searched "negotiating" Have fun!

No, it is not common. It is common, however, for quantitative method courses (statistics, ect) that are graduate level to involve some sort of learning in R or Matlab. In graduate school you will have to self learn, maybe audit a class. This won't keep you out of graduate school. Its important to note that all the GIS stuff that is done with python can most likely be replicated (and probably already has) with Matlab. I'm a really big advocate for learning matlab, as it teaches you the basics of programming and you can do almost anything you want in it as long as speed isn't a concern (and its actually faster at most stuff than python). Its 100 dollars for the full student version - simulink (which you dont need), but in my opinion thats a small price to pay. When you are ready to publish with the the code that you write on the tsudent version will still work on the full version at your lab (I'm assuming that any reasonable geophysics research group has a copy of it... but you might find ones that don't). Most of all, I think you can learn matlab on your own. www.projecteuler.net has a bunch of math problems that require programming, and its perfect for learning in matlab. Yeah, I think you have a chance, especially if you get As in classical mechanics and E/M. Work hard on getting 160+ on the Q section of the GRE too. You aren't in a quantitate field, and building that case (however irrelevant the Q on the GRE is) can only help. You seem very confident, and I think if that shines in your application that will help you. Where you get in though will depend. There are some professors might take you on, other professors might only take math,cs or physics majors. It really depends on the research. Seismology and potential field geophysics seems to be the most flexible in backgrounds, since a large part of it is field work and data sampling and a lot of the analysis software has already been written. Physical Oceanography/Atmospheric caters more towards mechanical engineers, mathematicians and physicists, at least from the people I know in those fields. I think your profile could probably be on par with any geophysics or geology major wanting to get a thesis based MS. There will always be holes in an application, for example mine was never having taken an earth science course (pretty relevant lol) and a poor undergraduate GPA. I still made it in, I'm sure you can to. Another REU you might look at if you have a free summer (and they are free to apply to) is the LDEO one. I think WHOI also has one, but I'm not sure.

I really think you are over thinking this.

How else would you figure out if he's taking on students? Why is this a sensitive question? This is the first thing I asked every single one of my POIs.

From an admissions stand point, I would take differential equations. If thats the prereq, thats the prereq. From a physics stand point, I am not sure how you can teach someone a meaningful geophysics course without linear algebra unless it just covers potential fields. In fact, the first thing my advisor asked me when I was inquiring about graduate school was if I had taken linear. You need to be able to solve for tensors in geophysics. Differential Equations is a purely mechanical class that shouldn't be too difficult to self learn if you are talented in math. Another thing is I find it weird that Diff eq and calc 3 do not have a linear algebra pre req. Perhaps in calc 3 or diff eq they teach you the necessary linear algebra (Row Reduction, Basis, Eigenvalue/vectors). My calc 3 course required linear before taking it. It all depends though. You don't need much math to learn from Fowler's book, and a lot of people teach from it. But if you end up going to a school were you are required to take a Turcotte and Schubert or Stein and Wysession based geophysics course then you will have a lot of trouble without linear. Then again, you might just be able to pick it up as you go... there are people who have done it! Another thing is programming. I think if you are going into seismology, a lot of the programming might be done for you depending on the project. You might need to learn Matlab/GMT, but people in seismology labs tend to share code (like autopickers) and you just need the programing for graphics, which is easy enough to learn. On the other hand... if you are going into novel modeling ( not plug and chug shear wave splitting, yes, anisotropy measurements still make a ton of assumptions) you will need matlab/gmt and C++ or Fortran (yes, people still use fortran, it won't die). But these I think are things you can learn in graduate school too. You also probably don't need to have all of this by application time, but at some point you will need to learn all of this. Hope this post helped

It's very hard to enter a geophysics program without linear alegebra.

Funded masters is always good... And if he has a good track record it can set you up for a good job or a PhD program. I did an unranked funded masters before my phd.

At least he has the courtesy of telling you.... a few people at my masters institution arrived to work with their professor only to find out that he had retired and was halfway across the country!

I think its probably close to 50/50 in geology for masters degrees. Especially with the downturn on jobs, I would not go, unless I could pay for it out of pocket without owing. Even then, I would have reservations. Paying out of pocket probably means taking out or paying 50k including living expenses. I think it would be rather tough to have a job and do a Thesis based masters.

Why would it mean you are rejected ? Its been less than 24 hours.