GeoDUDE!

I think people overestimate how much time they spend working: you still need to be a human being. It is true that going to a top 10 + having a great POI that places you could be great for your career, but only if oyu are happy working there. You still need to produce great work, nothing makes up for that, and in my opinion being happy helps you do that more than most things.

Davis is probably more liberal than SF. (Friendly)

Just be yourself, you have all the leverage.

Yep. And when your in grad school get used to people checking your profiles all the time!

That's weird... I have only known people who are applying to get it! I could be wrong in this regaurd.... And yes they, can, from solicitation: This call for graduate fellowship proposals, entitled NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship (NESSF) Program – 2016-2017 Academic Year, solicits applications from accredited U.S. universities on behalf of individuals pursuing Masters or Ph.D. degrees in Earth and space sciences, or related disciplines, at respective institutions. Students admitted to, or already enrolled in, a full-time Masters and/or Ph.D. program at accredited U.S. universities are eligible to apply.

It's actually harder in someways to get fellowships once you are in graduate school: competition increases, and there are less of them to apply to. NSF GRFP is easiest to get your first year applying when you arent a graduate student, for example. There are more applicants, but the quality of the applicant for the award is significantly less than that of 1st and 2nd year graduate students, since awards are proportionally weighted and judged from education level. We have some good success in our department in getting GRFPs because there is a class every new graduate student takes designed in writing the award. Hertz fellowship, arguably the most prestigious fellowship in the US, is almost never awarded to 1st or 2nd year graduate students. NASA's earth science fellowship is disproportionally awarded to prospective graduate students. And this makes sense, as these awards are mostly designed to get students into great programs. Once you are in graduate school, you have more of a supportive infrastructure so these organizations tend to focus less on people already getting educated and wanting to expand the pool of people who can be educated.

Yeah, it's a bit disconcerting that we do accepted student days: especially since we only get 10-15 new graduate students a year 1 bad apple can really hurt a incoming class.

If I remember correctly, I applied to 6 places: 2 funded all their students the first year through fellowships or Research Assistanceships (I got into 1 got rejected from the other), 2 of the other places did not have funding for me (they applied but grants were denied), and the final 2 had funding for me. I only applied to schools where the POI said they were either applying for funding for a student like me (and that would affect admissions) or they had funding for me. When I applied for my masters I got lucky and got a TA since, despite my GPA I had a lot of research experience, teaching experience, and a high GRE. Getting funded tends to be easier for PhD students as almost no one does a PhD without funding, where as you can lure MS/MA students by reducing tuition a little bit and the promise of a job ( which right now isnt a promise at all).

the other problem could be that you applied to work with 11 people at once place.......

That's pretty competitive, but pretty in line with my departments statistics(maybe UT is slightly harder?), though we get less applicants and accept less people. In general, getting into competitive grad school programs in the sciences you are looking at 5-15% acceptance rates.

Fwiw, what is very common in our field is accepted student vitists: where the department lobbys for your commitment to the program. This is pretty competitive, and if you have a very focused field, they probably know where you were also accepted (at least possible places). I'd go there expecting to learn a lot about the program: I think its important to remember that interviews are not just there for the department to find out about you, but for you to find out about the department. Ask good questions. Graduate students are more often measured by the questions they ask and not the things they can immediately answer.

That is pretty rare in EPS, to get an interview before acceptance, so I'd think as long as you don't do anything alarming you will get admission.

I don't know about ontario, but in LA, a chemistry degree can qualify you to work for Areospace companies and tech companies (if you know how to program). I'm also sure that pharmacy companies ect. Are you applying to all jobs you MIGHT qualify for ? Just because they want experience doesn't mean you shouldn't apply.

This is exactly what I have observed. There are plenty of candidates that have technical knowledge.... and how you solve problems is important, but going into academia and research requires not only the ability to solve problems, but tell everyone exactly how you solved that problem. It's the latter that really gets POIs excited.

In the natural sciences application numbers tend to be low outside of 20-30 schools. That doesn't make competition any easier, though, as people tend to apply to the less popular schools because they have a good reason too, while the more popular schools get applications regardless of fit and location.

It's your fault.

So you haven't received an offer yet... and he's asking you to respond by February ? Is UIUC in the council of graduate schools? If this is a funded offer, you should ask if there is a reason he's asking you to ask earlier than the CGS deadline. If the fellowship has that deadline, then you may have a decision on your hands. If its a RA/TA offer, you might ask one of your professors what you should do. To me this is a red flag: if there is no funding reason for the February deadline it might mean this professor has very little confidence in attracting students of his choice.

THe real question is if you are even qualified to enter a masters program.... I think it might be difficult for you to get into one. Did you take general physics courses: Electro/Magnetic Dynamics, Quantum Mechanics, Classical Mechanics and Statistical and Thermal Physics ? If you have taken those classes, you should study for the Physics GRE. If you can score high on that, you will get into a masters program in the US. If you haven't taken those courses, is it possible for you to take those courses as a non degree student at another college? That might be the best option. I think that a masters program can help you get into a good PhD program in the US or Europe (its actually required in most european schools). I just think you might have difficutly getting into one.

I think it depends. I think a lot of POis like talking to their prospective students at least once before throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars to educate them.

it would be good if you could list projects that you thought were really interesting, and why. IE, when he/she asks, tell me about your research interests?, have some specific papers in mind that you really like. They don't have to be his/hers but they should be related and it should be fairly obvious why you want ot work with that POIs.

I'll just say that all my PI's students (i'm a geodynamist) except 1 have been a physics major in undergrad. All three of the geophysics faculty here have degrees(BA/BS) too. Especially if you are modeling focused (instead of observational or exploration geophysics) a physics background is more important than a geology background . I really encourage you to read Takeruk's post carefully, as its mostly spot on to what I have seen. The Earth Science programs you are applying are to as competitive as top level physics programs. I think there might be the case were lower ranked geoscience programs are a bit easier to get into than lower ranked physics programs, but I think thats mostly because there is still a decent amount of oil funding at lower ranked earth science schools ( I mean outside of the top 30 or so). But at top level programs, in all sciences, funding is generally plentyful (even if faculty there want more, departments always want more money), and they can take as many students as they can hold. If you are a really strong candidate, fit with a particular PI, and a candidate like you doesn't come around often (every few years), they will make sure you have an offer. This is still possible with a low cGPA. It all depends on the type of argument you make with your statement of purpose, interviews (meeting or speaking with POIs is important) and letters of recommendation. With a masters degree, they want to see someone turning into a 3rd year graduate student, not someone who needs the training of a 1st year. They want 5 soild years of research, instead of the 3 or sometimes even 2 they actually get out of candidates coming out of undergrad. This is because, as all graduate students realize, your ability goes up exponentially year to year. What you can accomplish year 1 is very small then what you can accomplish in year 3, if all things go well. You need to show that progression.

you should apply to the schools you want to go to... your scores/stats aren't so far off that you couldn't get into any school you want. Admissions isn't linear, there are many ways to make a compelling argument for admission. I did so with much worse stats than yourself (~3.00 GPA).

I'm a science graduate student at UC Davis... I have some insight.. though it might work differently in your department THe colleges of sciences at UC Davis has an outline for how each of their departments pay their graduate students. You can expect your monthly stipend, depending on your experience level to be between 1600-2000 a month after taxes. A little more after you pass quals/orals. If you have preliminary exams you tend to start at step 1 or 2 of TA or GSR (graduate student researcher). thats on the lower part of the pay scale (1600 dollars). IF you have previous TA experience (like a masters), you start at step 4 or 5, depending on your department, which is around the higher end of the scale. Most Grad student stipends here, for 9 months, are around 19k pretaxes. At UC Davis, if you start in the fall quarter, you will be first paid on/around November 1st as typically the quarter starts at the very end of sept or oct. Most leases start in sept here at UC Davis, some in august.

you know what is also crappy. being hungry.

Take a look at your thesis. Look at the authors you reference. Apply to work with those authors. That is if you want to continue on a similar research path.