GeoDUDE!

you will only be able to find out from them, put on your big boy pants.

I say graduate student unless its a very specific question; I've always found the distinction pretentious even if its valid.

Pro tip: Only buy what you can afford to replace or move.

Do the PhD. This isn't even a question.

You spend to much time talking about what you have done and almost no time on what you will do. Its a statement of purpose, not a personal history. State the purpose for which you want to enroll in this program.

The one you are most likely to complete.

I really think it depends on how much "catching up" you need to do; I found my graduate level classes to be significantly easier than my undergraduate classes. If you are an average or lower end student in your program you are probably going to need to do more work to compete with the better students in your program.

buy a laptop.

"Will this plan work?" Most people don't get into graduate school; There are more rejections than acceptances. People with 4.0 GPAs and stellar test scores get rejected. The better question is, "Could this work?"

I dont know; rounding whole degrees could potentially offset the point ~50 km. While that isn't a huge distance, if it is near a boarder or in an area where there are many small countries you might find that you might find that instead of Croatia you are in Slovenia. just a thought.

My suggestion? Learn to program. Take CS classes on the side, online, anywhere you can. Solve problems on project euler. Learn C++, Python and Java. Learn how to make iOS apps. The tech industry is very liberal, especially start ups, for people who are self taught and creative. You quite simply will not be successful in an engineering program; you are about 10-15 classes short of being prepared (depending on how much math, physics, and chemistry you have had). And these 10-15 classes might be significantly harder than any class you have ever taken as an undergrad, both conceptually and competitively. Econ grad programs are SUPER competitive. Even if you could be successful in one, which I dont really know what kinds of classes they cover, I do know that even econ/mathematics majors have trouble getting into econ graduate programs.

Even in the sciences, as an undergraduate, research can only cover so much unless its significant (high impact publication). Moreover, as in any field, its the letters of recommendations and personal statement that will get you accepted. Lacking research, GPA or GRE/Test scores might get you rejected, but its the letters, personal statement, and perhaps interviews/connections that will get you funding.

I'm fairly certain you can load in excel sheets to google earth and do it. I Know you can load an excel or text document into ArcGIS, there are some GMT packages that can also do it. If you don't have arcgis, then you will probably need some programming skills.

Some programs have average GREs in like the low 150s high 140s.... look at SLP and MSW profiles here. If it is a mean across all graduate schools at the university, surely the fields where people do not score high on the GRE will lower the average. Its also important to note that GRE tends to be over emphasised by an applicant: once you get to a certain score the rest of your application will weigh higher in determining your acceptance.

It doesn't seem like 1 D would destroy anyone's academic career, I would look at the choices you made beyond that course. 2 As 1 B and a D = 3.25 GPA. To be blunt, you might consider doing something that does not require graduate school. If you feel like you are studying your ass off and you aren't getting good grades, the material might be to hard for you. Another possibility is you think you are studying your ass off when you really aren't, or you are being incredibly inefficient. Either way, some evaluation is in order.

bsharpe, we are in very similar situations. I did my undergraduate in physics, then moved to geology for my masters (and now PhD). I am a computational geodynamist. My first year i\I spent writing a 3-D navier stokes solver, so I had no real tangible results for my thesis up until a few months ago (and will be defending in 3 weeks !!!). That did not stop me from going from a completely unknown/unranked masters program to a top 20 PhD program in earth sciences overall, and perhaps one of the best in my field. I had no publications, and a few conference presentations. Having a publication is probably going to be impossible at this point, since at least in my field, it could take 3 months just to get through the reviewing process. That means you need to have a publication submitted by next month! Writing a manuscript is no short deal. The three things that will matter most in your PhD application are: 1) How well your master advisor recommends you for PhD ,2) How eloquent your statement of purpose is with respect to future research propositions and fit within their program and 3) How eloquently you can talk about your research in your interviews with POIs. Social skills are also important to getting into a good research program/lab, so practice up. When you go on visiting days, they are more likely to want to keep the people who get along with everyone than those who awkwardly sit in the corner. Even if you are good at social situations, its good to keep in practice. Scientists are more or less normal people. Another thing that strikes me is that you actually think you have the knowledge of 3rd and 4th year PhD students. Perhaps you do, but I highly doubt that: a 3rd or 4th year PhD student is writing his/her dissertation proposal at least and has probably read 150-200 papers on his/her topic. Are you really telling me you have read that many papers, in depth, on your subject? Furthermore how many 3rd and 4th year PhD students in your field do you know? Is your sample statistically normalized ? Lets stop making claims that raises expectations. Just do good work. A scientists career is one meant to look over a long arc, not a 1 year period. Another note about PhD admissions. My new advisor cared about my masters grades only because of my low undergraduate grades. If you had a good GPA in undergrad, no one will care if you got a 4.0 in masters program vs a 3.5. so TLDR: Your doing great, dont stress out, finish your program normally and go on to a great PhD program. You really arent going to be able to objectively decide what a POI thinks about you vs another student, so just focus on doing objectively good work and everything else will follow.

That is wrong. Desktop computers are significantly more powerful than laptops. Dye sizes of the CPU are bigger, they are better thermally, and the firmware is more efficient. There are laptops with desktop CPUs, but those are 3-4 inchs thick, and cost 3-4k. Furthermore, we are just talking about consumer grade products. Once you get into industry grade componets, it is no question. Haswell consumer simply cannot compete with the Haswell Xeon architecture. What you probably mean is that laptops are powerful enough to handle what was once thought to be demanding tasks. That is true, you can even do some light video editing on a 11inch macbook air. IT will still take a while, but the edits will resolve. But never ever delude yourself that desktops arent 2-3x more powerful with stock cooling. Better cooling systems (mineral oil, water, industrial fans) can net you much higher clock speeds than standard CPUs as well, something not achievable in laptops because of the thermal constraints. If processor A and B are both 2.5 ghz, it does not mean that processor A and B are equal. Think of processors like wheels of a bike; some bikes have bigger wheels, so when they go through 1 cycle, they travel further than smaller wheels.

IMO, if you are having trouble getting good grades (3.5+) and do 30 hours of research per week you are probably doing something wrong, and should wait to apply for PhD. Unless your graduate school is different from the rest, graduate classes are meant to be less time consuming than normal classes. Even if you spent 5 hours a week on each class, assuming you are taking 3, 45 hours a week is not a lot of time to invest in school, and less than I do, and I still find time to go out to bars and have friends. If you are studying all the time, your work will suffer. Have some fun. Being an adult is about working and having fun.

You haven't really offend people with the topic, but more over your lack of acknowledgement that some people could take this seriously. Someone once told me to think before I spoke, and I've always tried to take that advice.

I think a large difference comes from the differences in our backgrounds: With a BA in physics I was offered and declined 3 jobs, all paying over 60k a year (one was 80k). Entry level jobs in computer science can pay 6 figures in Mountainview CA, and while the cost of living there is high, the hours a graduate student tends to work is often greater, diminishes their earning potential in industry relative to industry experience. While there is some inherent value to the degree, if you expect to make more money with a PhD than a masters degree you are severely misguided. You also have to figure supply and demand into the equation: a large part of the reasons why science graduate students deserve to be paid more is because there aren't that many of them. While admissions to the top schools are of course competitive, if you do a good enough job, at leasts in physics, there will always be an open TA spot of for a physics major that makes the minimum requirements. The reason being is that industry salaries are very competitive. Where as for many fields, to obtain a high quality job it is almost necessary to get a graduate degree, in the sciences this is not the case. Like it or not, Degrees aren't of equal monetary value.

I don't know how you even derived that, so I'll explain further. You state that that you have an opinion, but this then this opinion has no truth value. These are your words. you say "You do know that my opinion does not denote 'right' and 'wrong', don't you?". So then I asked, what the point of the opinion was. Anyway, this is proving to be useless. You asked a question of us, probably knowing the answer. I will bow out.

Then what value does your opinion have? If you say you don't think something should happen, then basically say there is no truth value to that opinion, why even give it in the first place. Geeze.

I can't understand why you think it is wrong that people feel a certain way. As if feelings are supposed to be rational. I know it is hard to see a universe where you are not the center of it, we are all programmed that way.

Why do you think you will be a good candidate for grad school, beyond people with higher GPAs? Find and answer and use it in your statement of purpose. Just because you have a reason for your low GPA doesn't mean you have a reason that you will be a good graduate student. First, shoot for thesis based masters programs. You will not get into a PhD program unless you have very good connections, publications, or just plain lucky. Look for places that do not have a minium GPA for grad students. Below a 3.0 in grad school is failing, you are severely under that in perhaps less rigorous classes. You need to be completely candid about your GPA. You need to have something you can contrast that GPA to show them academic promise. You need to prove to them that despite your GPA you learned enough information to survive in graduate school. You need to expect that you will fail at getting into graduate school your first time around, and will probably have to take classes as a non degree student to raise your GPA, preferably graduate level classes. You probably will have to pay for your masters, as most GA/TA/RA spots are given to the people entering the program with the best GPAs. The person who wrote this post: http://3dpancakes.typepad.com/ernie/2005/03/re_phd_with_low.html had a 2.4 undergraduate GPA and is now a full professor a top 5 department in computer sciences. He has great advice. Good luck.