GeoDUDE!

should probably ask them.

The program I am in had a Jan 15th deadline. My last letter came in Jan 20th. On jan 24th I was accepted. FWIW, if they what you it wont matter too much.

Your record sound looks very similar to mine when I was applying to graduate school the first time, I'll send you a PM

FWIW my friend is a PhD student at VT (he loves it btw), and he had a low GRE, i think somewhere in the mid 150s on both. He also had a masters degree when he applied.

Sorta. First off, GSR and TAs are employees, that ultimately make the school more money than they cost (Research grants have overhead and TAs teach courses that undergrads/grads might pay for). The reason these positions are more difficult to get is because there are limited number of them. Second, its interesting, that my current Earth Science department does not admit anyone without funding, MS or PhD. This is common for many top tier programs, though there are professional masters degree programs that students can pay for at other schools. So while you might be able to pay for a masters of geology, it may not be researched based but class based. I know Colorado School of Mines allows students to pay for a Thesis based masters. But the idea behind it is that a student who is doing a research degree is there to do research, and shouldn't need an outside job to sustain him/her. I think it really depends on the school: top programs have more spots for PhDs because they would rather fund someone for 5 years vs 2 years. For my MS, I went to a lower end school that forgave my low gpa (3.05), but at that school you actually must have a MS before you do a PhD. I would say that the criteria for admitting a masters student is lower, but I don't know if that makes it actually easier to get admitted into a funded position, as there are plenty of excellent students who do not get in. It's hard to say, probably easier, but not as much as you would think since the earth science industry (oil and gas) loves people with masters.

When you apply for jobs do you tell them that you don't require a salary?

Academic dishonesty in undergraduate education can get you expelled. Academic dishonesty in graduate school can ruin an institutions reputation. Do the math.

So many people have applied it seems.... cricket cricket cricket

You should take everything the graduate program asks for admission seriously.

The most interesting topics are talking about Kanye and getting ladies. Everyone has an opinion on those things.

Honestly, If the POI doesn't take it well after you apologized, then, i'm sure you will find a better advisor. While what you did is rude, holding a grudge against a young student for making a fairly harmless mistake is petty imo.

It depends. Do you have a reason to reply ? If you have questions.... I would ask them, obviously. Not that these questions should be about research, and the program, and not "what are my chances" ect. These should be good questions, things that only he/she could answer. If you do not have questions, I would thank him for his response and that you will apply. Just make sure not to waste his/her time, professors are busy!

Well. Your going to need a letter from your current advisor. Without that, it would be hard to reassure the new programs that you can make it through the program. Have you talked to your advisor? Perhaps you can switch to a masters track because you are so unhappy. Students who don't communicate their needs to their advisor tend to be unhappy. If you have a good advisor, he/she will think its their job to make sure you get through graduate school with the best way possible. So talk to your advisor, or professors that you are close to.

Thats good. I'm glad your not one of the many serious undergrad robots who usually make posts like this. Many of my colleagues make it to graduate school only to find they haven't developed the social skills required to succeed. Having friends is important, learning to trust people is important. More than that, graduate schools want to take people more than robots. Remember, its your colleagues in graduate school that you are going to collaborate with to make great scientific studies, its your colleagues who are going to send you promising graduate students. Its your colleagues in graduate school who you are going to ask for advice down the road. While your research is your own, running the program is a group effort. ~

Enjoy college.

I just did the power prep... for got how long those were. I finished early on both them. I dont even spend anywhere close to 50 hours studying for graduate classes in an entire semester, can't imagine anyone needed to spend that much time for a test as easy as the GRE.

Thread is very dead this year, but maybe it will pick up in december--->feb like last year.

Yes. If you got paid, then you were an employee (and not a volunteer).

As long as you can afford the application fees, there is no reason why you shouldn't apply: not applying just means on missing out on potential opportunities. You just need to be realistic in how your application season will turn out. You can always apply again after your GRE scores are up next year, again if you can afford it.

Maybe you should ask the program coordinator/head of graduate program. I'm sure you will get a good response.

You should not devote 20% of your SOP to how you fell in love with science. Your applying to graduate school, it is assumed. You can do that in a sentence if you really want to. You have 1 paragraph devoted to the "purpose" part of the statement of purpose. Isn't that too little? You also do a lot of telling and not a lot of showing. You say you have overcome your adversities... how? Was it just the break? what did you learn during that break? Take an image from your academic life, a problem you solved, describe it with passion, show them that you have solved a problem and why that is evidence for your ability to succeed in graduate school. Get specific, Oh i couldn't measure X in the normal way, so i found a way to do it with Y. Its often not the big ideas that make someone fail in graduate school, but the inability to move day to day. You want to convey understanding; here you sound like a big eyed child at an orphanage waiting for someone to pick you.

Was it a generic email? Then It's probably no big deal. If its an email from someone who aligns with your research interests, and is specific, then its a big deal. Departments looking to increase their application pool pay ETS to get people who say they are applying to specific fields emails all the time. Thats one of the ways ETS makes money.

I think rising_star and telkanru have given good advice. A PhD is a long process, and sometimes doesn't start the way we want it to. However, if you wanted to do your PhD in french cooking and they want you to research in chinese, that details a fit problem. However, if they make you take classes in Chinese cooking, but you still get to do french cooking for your dissertation, then it appears you had misguided expectations for what kind of structured training you were going to receive. I'll give you my own example. I'm a computational geodynamist, I took 9 classes for my masters, but still, my new PhD program wants me to take 6 more (a full PhD here starting from a BS is 8 classes, so only 2 less). These courses include petrology, sedimentology, minerology, all the courses that have some tangential relevance to my dissertation, but I could easily finish the dissertation without ever taking those courses. Courses suck. Every time I go to one, i feel the hot breath of hell breathing down my neck. I'm so over it. I have 5 more quarters of this. What up with that? Well, thats the price I have to pay for getting to do the research I want with the person advising me that I want. Its a compromise. Perhaps you realized that the compromise is too big, but I warn you, almost every PhD program requires you to take classes you do not want to take. Thats just graduate school. Perhaps your expectations of fit is too high ? On the other hand, if you are not doing the research you want to do, then that does represent a fit problem, and you should probably talk to your advisor about this. I would also like to state that if you have your own funding, then, of course you can work on whatever you want (given the parameters of the funding). Weither you can get good advising on that topic is another matter, but these are issues that should be talked about with your advisor (it sounds like you like him/her). It might be time to recalibrate expectations, and perhaps you will be happier for that. I really want to stress that the problems you might be having might be nonunqiue to your program, but something that many departments do.

I think it would be unwise to resign yourself to less competitive programs just because of the GRE, especially if you think you can handle the pressure of a high ranking program. I know I have spent a lot of time revealing that your chances are less than you might have liked, but it is not as if you have 0 chance, and why wouldn't you be the exception to the trend? If you can stretch yourself, apply to more schools instead the same # but less competitive. Do you have specific research interests ? Do you want to do a PhD after your MS ? There are a lot of things to come into play. The reason why I say this is the less competitive programs are more likely to accept you, but they are less likely to give you funding if you are accepted as a MS student. Anyway, have a good talk with your advisor.... i'm sure you guys will work things out.

just a quick search: http://www.geos.vt.edu/preapplication/ shows that while they don't have a strict cutoff, they do publish the bottom of what their typical students. Vt's lower limits are low, but his scores are even significantly lower than that. And i'm not sure Vt is as competitive as Stanford, UT Austin, or Wisconsin. Quick searching the other departments, and the average admitted with funding applicants is around the 80th % in both sections at the top tier schools. I know that my department ranks students in 5 bins: 1 outstanding 2 Good 3 average 4 acceptable 5 denied. A small committee does this sorting, and then professors present their choices to the adcomms after they have been binned. There are more 1's than there are spots, and professors are encouraged to nominate students from the 1 bin. That does not mean that 2,3, and sometimes 4s don't get in (5's, obviously almost never get in), but generally if a student is rated a 1, and a professor nominates that student, that student will have no trouble getting through the adcomm. My feeling is that your GRE is bad enough that it could take you down a bin or two. I don't agree with that assessment, but students have to be parsed someway. Also, if your POI has funding, that also gets you through. But you need to give them a reason to look at your application, so hopefully you have been contacting them and your letters will dispel this inconsistency. Its also important to note that my department (and many other top departments) do not accept students they cannot fund (and departments that do often don't accept them for Thesis based tracked masters unless they have funding). If you are willing to self finance a masters, that changes the game completely, but getting into graduate school is not easy. At least it wasn't for me. I hope you don't take this as a discouragement or anything: I just think it's important to know what you are up against. When I first applied i didn't: I had tons of research experience and great letters and got completely rejected from all the programs I wanted to attend except 1. Like Usmivka has said, he does know one who got in with terrific research. But what is terrific research in the eyes of the adcomm ? thats completely subjective unless there is an external peer reviewed publication attached to it. I would again, ask my advisors, how do I get this terrible GRE past the adcomm gracefully. Ask them to go to bat for you. If they are willing to write you terrific letters, they will be willing to help you a little bit more.