GeoDUDE!

I suggest you post this in academia.stackexchange.com, as there will be more faculty (in CS no less) That might have some experience with how to handle this situation. I think there is a reasonable way to to do this depending on the nature of how you approach your current department and how healthy it is.

I copy and pasted my SoP to the 1 UC school I applied to.... and got in...... not suggesting you copy what I did....

I'm just trying to tell you what you want to hear.

It will not affect you negatively.

Just chiming in, but getting through graduate school, no matter what field, requires certain skills. I've known plenty of would be brilliant physicists fail out of graduate school for other reasons. I'm not sure if the GRE tests those things, but being a successful graduate student can have very little to do with how strong you are in your subfield.

Catria, read this : http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/the-myth-of-im-bad-at-math/280914/ Plenty of dumb people finish graduate school (not suggesting you are one). A PhD doesn't mean you are a genius.

if you get the minimum GPA required for your PhD program no one will ever know and the only one who might care is yourself.

You say you must stay in houston... but have you looked at UH's placement record in academia? I know its a good department, but its a very industry oriented department. One thing you might ask your POI about is their student placement.

Why don't you talk to your POI there at UH? If your POI really wants you there, he/she will help you with the admissions process. He/she after all did tell you to apply again. I think its fairly common to reapply to places, especially at the texas schools which get a lot of candidates. I know someone in my dept who applied first, didn't get in, but had good a good rapport with his poi so when he applied the next year (after working retail for a year) he was accepted with full funding! I know there are other universities that are good in geoscience in houston (Rice?). Have you thought of applying there? I am very sorry for the loss of your daughter, I think that your perseverance to finish college (and get a good geology gpa) is compelling. I wonder if instead of using that in your SOP you write an addendum so that your SOP can solely be based on research. Here in the UC System we have a statement of diversity which is perfect for that. What is your subfield ?

I disagree that you will have higher impact in experimental vs theoretical: if you are doing truly novel work it won't matter. I also disagree thta modeling allows you to publish faster. One of my simulations takes about 3 months to run on ~500 cores. This isn't that uncommon, this is why there are several NSF funded high computing centers. I actually don't think it matters which you pick.... though I picked pure modeling (over an offer to do both analog and computer models) because I thought while doing both would be cool, the computational skills I am learning now give me a better back up plan : I can work for companies like google, goldman sachs or even bloomberg.

@Amelu that's fine, just note that a PhD might make it harder to teach at "earlier years", but what is more grave, if I may speak bluntly, is that people who go into graduate school mostly for the "love of it" and "wanting to master it" are typically the types of students who take 10 years to finish their PhD, or even more likely, drop out. The one's who finish are the ones who want a job that love what they do AND what they love to do requires a PhD. They want to rule the world, so to speak. Its why so many academics are narcissistic.

I think a lot of this depends on why you are getting a PhD: are you going after academic jobs after? If that's the case, you are probably better off not getting a PhD if you do not get fully funded. If you are already behind the 8 ball on funding when your a PhD student... how are you going to outperform people for jobs who have already been awarded full funding? Like it or not there are teirs of grad students, and in this job market (any field) only really the best get academic jobs (and not necessarily the jobs they want).

Yes, both cycles all my POIs responded to me from cold emails.. but this also might be the case because my specific subfield is starving for grad students and there are very few people who the proper mathematical and computational background required to really get through a research program like this at the undergraduate level. It depends, some of them I asked beforehand if we could meet. Some people I just went up to their poster / after talk and introduced myself. If i didn't have a substantive question I didn't talk to them. I have also been introduced to people through colleagues/advisor ect. They release the program beforehand, so plan your days! Mostly I searched the AGU catalog to see if they were going to be there beforehand.

It depends. I got in to a school probably because I met a POI at AGU. The thing is though I was at AGU because I was presenting, and he wasn't a POI that I knew about until I met him: we had about an hour chat and he ended up telling me to apply. If you are going to GSA just to meet POIs, I would skip it. If you are going there for research reasons, then that is a good reason to go. Though it might help if you are memorable and you have some deficiency in your application.

I guess I'll start this? -------------------------------- Undergrad Institution: (School or type of school, such as big state, lib arts, ivy, technical, foreign (what country?)... Overall Reputation in Biology?)Major(s):Minor(s):GPA in Major:Overall GPA:Position in Class: (No numbers needed, but are you top? near top? average? struggling?)Type of Student: (Domestic/International, male/female, minority?)GRE Scores (revised/old version):Q:V:W:TOEFL Total: (if applicable, otherwise delete this)Research Experience: (At your school or elsewhere? What field? How much time? Any publications (Mth author out of N?) or conference talks etc...)Awards/Honors/Recognitions: (Within your school or outside?)Pertinent Activities or Jobs: (Such as tutor, TA, SPS officer etc...)Any Miscellaneous Accomplishments that Might Help:Special Bonus Points: (Such as connections, grad classes, famous recommenders, female or minority status etc...)Any Other Info That Shows Up On Your App and Might Matter:Applying to Where:School - Department - Research InterestSchool - Department - Research InterestSchool - Department - Research Interest

How will you get in if you don't apply.

It may be for different fields, but I feel like if you are having difficulty coming up with original research, you are not reading, talking and collaborating enough. For me it flipped, first I had trouble coming up with ideas except for the projects handed to me by my various advisors, then all of a sudden I had read enough literature to start seeing holes myself. But what has been more helpful is talking to people about their projects, and then when you have an interesting question, it keeps rolling into a project. At this point, I have too many problems I want to work on, and am finding it harder and harder to work on dissertation, despite how interesting I found it when I initially came up with it. I've seen it first hand. I think a lot of students think that most ideas from professors are thought of alone... but how many single authorship papers do you see? Great studies are difficult to do alone, unless your Albert Einstein. As you become a more senior researcher, collaborations happen naturally. I'm entering my 4th year of graduate school and it just started happening for me without pushing. I give advice and some code to people, and "i've just earned myself a spot on their paper". Because my name is on their paper, they don't mind that I get the inside info of their results and do a further work study. And guess what, their name is on that paper. This might be a science/modeling thing, but I've noticed it for other people to. I am not worried about people stealing my ideas (except my dissertation) because honestly, if you are smart enough to come up with one, you can come up with another!

I think the end is Goku

It depends on what you want to study in atmospheric science. Among the best are Scripps, Woods Hole Joint Program, UC Irvine. University of Rhode Island and Uni Hawaii are also great programs. You will find that all earth science disciplines are scattered across different departments due to the interdisciplinary nature of the earth sciences.

It all depends, but whenever I give a presentation I do the following: Give a succinct explanation of the problem problem being addressedDescribe the background and previous work on the problemGo into how I either attacked the problem (methods) or how the paper being presented attacked the problemdescribed the significant resultsaddress the implications for said resultsaddress the limitations of the results describe future workIf you can do all this in a presentation it will be interesting and engaging.

So eloquent. http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2015/9/8/9249681/broke

No.

I'm not sure how much environmental science programs require having a faculty sponser, in earth sciences it largely depends on the place you are applying. For example, my program its virtually impossible to get in without contacting your advisor, but in some programs they just take the 10 best candidates and let them decide which labs they want to go to. Some do a a little of both, which I think is the most common. If you think you are a good fit for the department as a whole (would work with multiple people if needed) then I would go ahead and apply. If your POI did not respond, and he/she is the only person you want to work with there, do not apply. That's what I would do, but I would also talk to professors/advisors at your school for better advise.

Will you be going up any hills? Then using a fixed (freewheeled) bike might be also doable: some people like the look of them and they tend to be lighter and easier to maintain. I personally ride on a specialized hybrid, and I almost never shift gears on my commute to work, but thats because there are no hills in the city i live in.

Telkanuru has good advice. I also think it's worth going to a bike shop known for their service: I don't think there is much quality difference between specialized, trek and fuji at the 500-800 dollar hybrid bike range (or road bike), so the place you get it will often have more of an impact on your riding experience. IF you think you want to go on weekend bike rides over 10 miles or so it might be worth getting a road bike. One thing to note is that road bikes are thief bate, so you should invest in a high end lock (50-80 dollars) and a cable or keep your bike inside during the day. I live in a huge biker town, and haven't had any theift problems in a year: I notice people who get bikes/accessories stolen are people who do not lock up their bike properly. Make sure that when you buy your bike/lock the bike shop shows you how to do it and be diligent about it.