GeoDUDE!

I do find it hard to believe that if you are applying to PhD programs that your GRE scores are playing THAT big of a role. Yes, your scores are super low, and it becomes really easy to reject you over someone else, but top students aren't courted because they did well on their GRE. Letters and SOP are the core of any strong application. I'm only familiar with a few schools admissions process first hand, but all of them put very little weight on GRE when the student had made a strong connection with their POI. I think it is possible to be considered a top student, even with your GRE score. You have spoken in the past about your application to UT, where you contacted many professors. I think that is very weird: most top students contact very few faculty even at large universities because they have a coherent idea of the problems they want to solve as a scientist. I'd be willing to bet, that if this is reflective in your SOP, it could be holding you back. Though, you did get an offer, which is really good, so you dont really have anything to worry about at all.

I guess you are the exception then? I'm not sure what you want me to say. Congratz on your offer

my guess is that the friend is a top student. pool of graduate students that get into top schools is relatively small, since most of the top programs have very diverse departments. While 10 is a lot, I'd say its only rare because most people don't apply to 10. The average of a good student is somewhere in the range of 5-7 and could get in at around half depending on funding, ect. I rarely see people who apply to many schools only get into 1 program: often, if you apply to more than a few programs and one accepts you, you should be competitive at other schools too.

Do not do a PhD without at least 5 years of guaranteed funding.

this is a good question to email the director of the graduate program there.

we've already had accepted students visit, so I'm guessing most of the offers are out (davis).

You have a lot better stats than I did when I applied for masters. Not having math,physics, and chemistry is probably your biggest fault: You should have at least 3 semesters of calculus , 1 year of physics and 1 year of chemistry. Doing those classes will help your application imo if you do get rejected. I'm in my 4th year of grad school and I still havent really taken a geology class (and have a masters in it!). Depending on your subfield, geology is among the least important things to study in .... geology.

That's kinda crazy that you were rejected with stats like that! Did you only apply to places like MIT ? Perhaps you should ask one of oyur letter writers for some ideas. I'm sure they will help.

Previous EAPSI person here, all the countries go to the same orientation in DC. It's necessary, and its also cool to meet everyone your going with, so you can plan stuff. You'll get your plane ticket about a week before if its like last year.

I think that's a valid concern, though, there is a clear language in which earth science is communicated to other earth scientists. So I think your fear might be mitigated by that just a bit. Also, for example, while I don't have a geology background I have to teach geophysics to geologists. Part of being a scientist, and being in a graduate program, is learning that language, or to use a better word, "indoctrinate" . The people who do very narrow research tend to be graduate students. Professors, on the other hand, tend to collaborate with many different people, work on different aspects of things all under a research "theme". I've never been to a geology conference (unless you count AGU, but geology tends to be small there), so I don't know much of what your talking about. I do know that I attend talks on many different topics, and over the years, it has become easier and easier to understand different types of research. I think that will be the case for most scientists, the younger they are, the harder it is to wade outside their subfield. As they become more comfortable with the language of research, they can wade out into different waters.

I just think it means more collaborations on papers, similar to the life sciences (where they often have 10 authors on their papers).

I've only met 1 person in my specialty that doesn't have a physics or math degree. Some of them are double majors, some of them have engineering degree, but my particular brand of geophysics (and really, any brand other that exploration related geophysics) is not possible to study without the advanced physics/math/compsci courses, and so a geology background tends to make you unqualified for this type of research. So to answer your question, all the geophysicists in my program tend to be from outside of geology. All the geochemists tend to come from chemistry, ect. Our entire program is 50/50 I think it is very common at the better programs to see many people from outside geology. Though, even sometimes two geology degrees are different. For example, both the asian and european geology programs tend to be a lot more intellectually rigorous than US programs in both field applications and quantitative applications. I think only 3/10 geology majors take calc 3 in the US, and that's something I took freshman year.... that may be a minor quibble, but to really be an effective earth scientist this point, even if your methods aren't heavily quantitate now, you are going to have to at least work with people are quant heavy. I think its also important to note, that geology as a pure field is shrinking. Over the last 20 years or so, earth sciences has gone from a very qualitative, descriptive science to a more quantitative discipline. Fewer dissertation every year will be purely based on field studies. My department, most known for its contributions to field tectonics (Moore) has shifted to a more lab and computational based program. This is a sign of a maturing science, not a bad thing.The same thing has happened in the life sciences too. We got more applicants this year than last year.

Another thing is, a lot of people in earth science programs do not come from geology programs in undergrad. I'd say my program is close to 50/50 on that front, so that might have some influence as well.

1) in 2010 there were ~24k geology undergraduates. Physics I think is around 6k. By contrast biology and psychology are among the 10 most popular majors. Geology is small. Also the geology application process tends to be more lax than other fields, and frankly less competitive (unless you are talking about the top schools) 2) MS degrees tend to be industry oriented, so a lot of people doing a MS degree tend to come from companies. Also, a lot of people do MS degrees at their undergrad institution. PhD people tend to travel, put out more applications, so they are more inclined to seek feedback on them. That's just a guess. Also in the US, you don't need a masters degree before getting a PhD. More people in PhD programs (at least top programs) come directly from undergrad. 3)Earth sciences is heavy on mentorship, so while rankings might be a general guideline, the actual field rankings are probably inaccurate from US News. There is a heavy bias towards larger programs, but no one would argue that Brown for example isn't one of the best geophysics and best planetary science programs in the world, depending on what you want to do. For example, there is no one who I could have done my PhD with at PSU, and maybe 1 person at ASU. I'm probably in one of the smallest subfields of earth science though. My point is that Earth science has many subdisciplines that really the ranking of the overall program should be just a general guide line. I'm not really sure there is a quality of education difference between the 1st rank school and the 30th ranked school, but I don't really know. I think the programs that get the most applicants are the ones with the best oil and gas connections. Many of these applicants are international. University of Houston gets some of the most applications despite (i could be wrong) its ranked 64th by USnews. I wouldn't be surprised if it got more applicants than ASU or PSU.

Congratz ^^ I'm glad it seems grad cafers are doing a bit better this year than last year.

I would be optimistic too.

The number doesn't really matter, the real point I was trying to make that even the higher ranking schools don't get everyone they want at first. This should make sense, since within say, the 30 or 40 best earth science programs, the relative strength in each subdicipline not constant (some schools are better for geochem, geophysics, ect), but they are generally all higher quality in everything they do, so they get all the strongest applicants. So it should be logical that the smaller departments that are well respected tend to be good at a few things, and only take students for those things, instead of the larger departments like UT which has everything, but isn't necessarily the best at everything. 70% is pretty low considering WHOI is easily one of the 5 best programs in the world. At my MS institution (~10 faculty), an unranked department we would have all our funded offers accepted usually, and then even have more people come who are unfunded. So I admit that that there is some speculation on my front, but my impression for my current department (smaller than WHOI, but larger than 10 faculty) is that our matriculation rate is usually in the 80s to 90s (and my year was 100%). The sad thing is a lot of departments only offer 1 round of acceptances, or have very small wait lists, so even if they dont fill all their spots, they dont try and fill them afterwords.

Usually the larger the department, the lower the matriculation rate of acceptances. I think even WHOI is in the 70s (I forget the actual number, this could be way off). Smaller departments tend to be more careful about who they give acceptances to.

I like this statement more: I didn't perform up to my potential during my first three years, but when I matured a bit, figured out what I actually enjoyed studying, I excelled. The wording is important, because you don't want to sound like you are making excuses for your bad grades. Everyone takes classes they aren't interested in. EVERYONE. Everyone with a 3.5+ GPA got good grades in classes they were bored out of their mind. You need to recognize that.

If what I remember is correct, you applied to work with 10 people at UT Austin: imo thats a major red flag. Show's a clear lack of research focus. Maybe your GRE scores are holding you back... but maybe fit is also an issue? I don't know how you can write a coherent statement of purpose when trying to work with so many people: how can you outline what you might do with 10 people in a short paper?

A few things I'd like to address: At least in the Earth Sciences, a 310 would be considered "competitive" in the sense that GRE is really only used as a cutoff in my field. In Biology, it might be different. I'm not going to speculate about things I have little experience in... which brings me to Really? Are you telling me that asking someone to learn (or relearn) simple a simple task, perform them under pressure, and do well really has nothing to do with functioning in a graduate program? Have you ever taken a qualification exam? What about a thesis defense? But what is more absurd, is that you aren't in a PhD program yet you claim to have such insight! I don't know everything, but in my 4 years of graduate school, the thing that most students struggle with is not what they learn in class, but what they have to learn outside of class. Classes are easy, thats why no one cares about grades once you get to graduate school (at least in my field). The "math" section of the GRE is called "Quantitate Reasoning" for a reason. Taking an integral, calculating a p value is memorizing a formula, there is very little reasoning in that. So what you are saying is that "you'd do better" if they didn't ask you to think. I'm not saying you aren't capable, I'm just trying to shed some perspective: being able to identify what kind of interest (compounding vs not, for example) a word problem requires is more important than any of that because you are matching words to quantitate behavior. No one, not even ETS itself, would say its a perfect predictor. Furthermore, even graduate programs would probably do away with it if they could. But so many people send in applications to graduate school, that they have to make some sort of quick cut somewhere. Either that, or they'd have to take less graduate students so they could hire full time admissions staff. Time is money, time is research. How else would one determine someone's maturity if not by the choices they make? I agree, but your threshold for "commiserating" seems to big a bit higher than mine. That's fine, but I'd argue calling something completely useless when one has very little experience in what they are talking about a bit more than commiserating. It's a lot like Patriot fans saying they lost to the Broncos because of a missed extra point: games aren't won and lost on single plays ever. Just like applications, for the most part aren't ever rejected because of 1 thing. Sometimes they are, but being completely shut out of programs, at least in my field, speaks to deeper problems than just a single measure of their score. But to be honest, I don't really know anything, as I am not on every single adcom (or even 1). The trouble is, when you think you know, that is often the time you stop thinking.

The problem with the GRE isn't that only a few people score high on it (certainly, this is what we want), but just like the SAT there are certain groups of people that continue to underperform, and that has a lot to do with income. That being said, the point i've made before is that the GRE is high school level material that you have an endless amount of time to study for: If someone really wanted to score a 310 and they had the mental capacity for a research based MS/PhD they should be able to do it (barring any disabilities). At what point do we stop blaming our upbringing and sit down and study? I don't know the answer to that, but it complaining about it in a way that many do on this forum comes off so immature that i'd argue that a low GRE score is the least of their problems. I really sympathize with people who have lower scores: my UGPA is 3.05. What I don't sympathize is people who just say "I don't test well", and then right it off. There are some people who have disabilities who can't test well, but the vast majority of people who score low are probably unprepared for the GRE, an exam that tests High school level material. Another thing about graduate school: it's often now how much you work but how you work. If you really need to invest a significant amount of time to prepare for the GRE, you should be worried about self learning complex ideas in graduate school. Your advisor won't be there to help you with all of the material, or even most.

Why not ? Apply for everything.

The women that come to our campus visits often wear jeans and a nice blouse/sweater. Honestly, if you come in REI garb no one will judge you. Takeruk's advice that wear what's comfortable. I'd probably wear some nicer clothes (I wore a nice button down and chinos), but honestly what you wear will be the last thing on peoples mind unless its outrageous.

It is normal at the larger programs like LDEO and URI. At my program, it could also happen because there are a few people doing research in every area, but its less likely since contacting POIs ect is a big step in getting in. I dont think it means that your other POI is not taking an interest in you. It just means that perhaps you have someone else you can work with there! The things you are interested in working on now will not be the only things you will want to do research in the future. If you are a succesful scientist (graduate student) you will be able to think of many more research problems, even in areas slight different than yourself. If these people seem like some people you could work with, and you really like the program overall, you should respond thanking them for looking at your application and start asking them questions. But only do this if you think you could work with them. You might find that you like them better!