bsharpe269

I dont see how the OP did anything wrong in this situation. To compare it to the sciences since that is being brought into the discussion, I think that many students would be upset if their rotations were chosen for them and they got one that was not going to give them the experience they needed. I also dont think this necesarily is a reflection on the quality of education at that program. A graduate coordinator probably sets up all of these placements and has to with the limited knowedge about the situation. The coordinator is not actually going to give the rotation a try for himself so it is very likely that even a great school might set up a placement that seemed good on paper but for one reason or another, would not actually be a good placement for a particular students. In that situation, I dont see anything wrong with a student respectfully asking for a placement that was a better fit for what they were looking for.

Do you guys know how strict the disease related rule is? I do reserach in biophysical modeling but the specific current application has been related to a medical issue. I could apply our methods to a large number of different things but the current application is a pretty big issue right now that is getting a lot of attention and I know I could write a great proposal about it. Do you know if a situation like this is ok? Do you they just want to avoid someone doing a drug development sort of project or do you think my project would be pushing it and I should change it a bit?

My first comment is that I would never personally consider going 60k into debt for a grad progam. This is even more true since you are interested in becoming a writer. The rule of thumb is to never consider going more than a year's salary in debt for a masters degree. I think this rule is even generous. That being said, I just saw a sort of similar post the other day that I (and a couple others) had the same response to. Grad school is not like undergrad at all. The number of hours that you must spend on courses is probably double in undergrad than grad school. This doesnt mean that you will not learn in grad school... you are supposed to learn in a different way. For example, I am working my MS and am applying to phd programs so I spend at least 30 hours a week on research. I also spend a lot of time reading interesting papers in my field or even studying on my own from other textbooks that I am interested in. In grad school, you will not be spoon fed information like in undergrad. It is your responsibility to take control of your education and learn as much as you want to. So given that you arent satisfied with the difficulty of your classes (this is normal BTW, the classes arent meant to take all your time or else you wouldnt have time for more imporant things), what are you doing on your own to learn and better prepare yourself for your career? I would assume that you have found or are looking for part time internships, are reading tons of papers in your field, going to as many seminars as possible to make connections, etc. If you arent doing these things then that is the problem and you should take ownership over your education. The role that the institution plays is in providing seminars, access to journals, connections to internships, the ability to build relationships with professors. Really, you are paying for these things as much as the classes. I hope that might help a bit... you totally have to transition to a different mindset in grad school which can take some time. I was also frustrated with the ease of my classes at first but now know that if they were any harder than i wouldnt have time for my research which I value more. Good luck in whatever you decide!

Well if you get a good score then I do think it could help offset the GPA. If you get a bad score (and send it) then it could hurt you. I think it just comes down to whether you think it is worth the studying and how well you think you can do. If you think you can score better than 65th percentile then I think it would probably be worth doing.

what is your Q?

I was in a similar situation in the spring when I didn't get a fellowship I had applied for. I handled it like others on here suggested and sent an email thanking them for letter and included some positive outcomes if the application. For example, writing the research proposal and having my PI edit it was a great excercise in learning how I could explain my research interests better. I think that sending a follow up email is a great idea and leaves the door open for asking for additional letters in the future.

Agreed. I know multiple people who went through this program and all had job offers before graduation.

That's not a horrible quant score but if I were you then I would retake and shoot for 163+ Q

I think 7-10 is a good number.

I am in a different field but wanted to say good for you for standing up for yourself. It is easily to let yourself get pushed around in situations like this and it is great that you are taking control of your education. Good luck in whatever you decide!

I agree that it really depends on the details. Is there a reason that the others didnt work? Is the result only seen occasionally? Can you replicate it? I can think of plenty of studies where the result in one case would be worth discussing, even if not seen in all. I can think or plenty others where this wouldnt be the case. Discussing in more detail with your PI or is you dont trust your PIs judegement then someone else who understands the reserach more would be helpful.

Yesterday I only had a chance to glance at this but I had the chance to read it in more detail and I can give you a few more bits of advice. Take them with a grain of salt since I am in a different field and am currently writing my SOP too so I dont have any more expereince than you do at this... it can always be hepful to get second opinions though. So I already mentioed the intro. I feel like an intro should capture the audience and already give them a feeling for why you are a uniquely good candidate. Other than that, one thing that I noticed is that it seems like you sort of put your CV into words which makes the essay a bit more formulaic and less passionate sounding. Going into more details about a few things instead of glazing over many things may give you the opporutnity to expand on some of the things you are most passioante about. Along the same lines, I have read that a good excercise for improving your SOP is to try to minimize the number of times you use "I." We oten say things in SOPs like "I am excited about", "I decided", etc which makes the essay flow less. For example, you say that you decided to that a masters in bussiness because blah blah. It is obvious that you decided to get a masters since it is on the CV so the phrase "I decided" can be choped and the sentence can be rephrased and made more powerful. Usually when you find the phrases that you start with "I ..." you can identify places that are messing up the flow of the essay and not adding anything that someone couldnt guess from your SV. You will of course need to say "I" sometimes but I think it is overused here. In SOP advice articles, I have read that instead of saying that we decided something, did something, enjoy something, etc, that we should show it. If you can indenify the places in your essay where you tell about something you enjoy or feel and change them to examples or stories that show that feeling without having to say it then I think you can being a lot more personaility and passion out of the essay. Sorry for pointing out problems... it isnt a bad essay at all! It is clear that you have tons of experience so I think the main thing that you should shoot for is to bring out more of your personality in the essay which maybe the advice above can help with.

Yes I highly recommend that modification! In grad school, the classes you have taken start mattering a lot less and knowledge is much more important. One of the most important skills to have as a grad student or academic is the ability to teach yourself material instead of having it spoon fed to you in class. Showing that you can do this by skipping the intro physics courses and taking the ones relevant to your major instead will show you can teach yourself material which is be great during the application process. Don't forget programming!!! Is say a course in programming is as or more helpful than the math and physics. It sounds like you'll have a great transcript.

Thanks for the input. You are right that I am not interested in a hands off mentor. I think I am pretty independent yet I do think it is really beneficial to have someone around to bounce ideas off of or get feedback from. I'll go with your advice and keep trying... If anything this could be a good exercise in learning which PIs are very interested in recruiting and developing good students and which have other priorities.

I would not start the SOP with a story about your first introduction to your field. It is pretty cliche and does not add much. I think that you should be able to connent every idea that takes up significant space in your SOP back to the question "what makes me a more suitable candidate for this program that the rest of the applicants?" I dont think that a story from your teenage years adds anything.

Awesome, congrats! I am sort of just starting to do this (hesitantly) now. I have contacted 3 professors so far. 1 is an all star famous professor whose work I am in love with (like read for 8 hours straight and finally pull myself away level of in love with) but I have heard iffy things on his committment to mentoring students... and these iffy things came from comments from other academics who I really respect. He never responded to my email. The other 2 are respected professors at respected institutions but arent necesarily famous like the first guy. They both responded enthusiastically saying that they would keep an eye out for my application, commenting on the strength of my CV, etc. The lack of response from the first guy put me a bit on the fence about whether I should keep contacting professors. There are at least 5 other "famous" professors that I dream of working for. I know their work well and think that I can comment on it intelligently in an email. Do I go ahead and send them an email with the "it cant hurt" sort of attitude? Or should I stick with only contacting the not so huge in the field professors? Any advice from anyone on this stuff?

No one can tell you your chances at all with that little bit of info. Publications arent expected for MS (or even PhD) programs so you dont need to worry about that. Your GREs are good. From the little info you give, you seem like a good candidate but we would need to know more about course history, LORs, etc to tell you your chances and even then, we can really only guess. Your dream schools are nearly every engineer's dream schools so they will be highly competitive. You should certainly apply but all apply to some middle ranked schools.

I would reschedule since I think you can do this for a fee and study for the quant. There's little point in retaking it now if you haven't put any work into improving the score. Clearly, The last method yo used to study for the quant didn't work so I would try a different method this time. Anyone can do high school math so it is just a matter of finding a study technique that works well for you.

PhD programs care a lot more about research experience than a .2 GPA difference.

I was a math undergrad who did biomath modeling and bioengineering research during undergrad. I have now moved into computational biophysics work and am in the process of applying to biophyics grad programs. I really think my math major was a great foundation. I have classes in proofs and modeling which have been nothing but helpful. That being said, I think that some but not all of the math classes required for a major will be helpful for your goals. For example, modeling, linear algebra, and differential equations will be great for you. I don't see any reason for you to take abstract algebra or geometry though. A couple statistics classes and programming (maybe a python class) would be just as useful as the math. My advice to you is to just take the relevant classss without doing the entire second major. The major will make you graduate late and you will have to take a lot of extra classes with it that will not be that useful to you. Instead of that, why not just identify the math, stat, comp sci classes that are relevant to your research goals and take those classes? You could probably get a math minor out of that method and I do think the minor will give you the math background you need for your research goals. If you want to take a couple more classes after the minor then that option will be open to you. I think this plan would be better than graduating a year late. Honestly, if you are interested in waiting an extra year before applying to grad school then that year would be much better spent in a full time research position than classes.

Honestly, even if it doesnt sound helpful at the time, "go read papers" is the absolute best advice that you can get. Have you done this much after it being recommended by professors? It took me around a year of consistantly reading papers in my field (like 5 a week at least) to finally find my particular niche. Now that I have found it and along with it, all of the big names in my subfield, there is absolutely zero doubt in my mind that I want to go to grad school. So even if you arent looking for advice to go read papers, I really think that it is the only way that you will figure out whether you have a passion for this stuff or not. Now that I found my specific passion, I can easily read papers in this area for 8 hours straight and the time flies by because I love it so much. If you do go straight to PhD then it is really important to have a well known advisor who has a history of placing students well. It is hard enough to break into academia with a well known advisor! It sounds like a masters might be a great option for you. I am in the second year of my masters and currently applying for phd programs. I was a lot like you (though different field) my senoir year. I had sort of narrowed in my interests but wasnt sure. The masters has been an amazing experience and has really helped me figure out my interests and goals! It sounds like you have a good resume now though too so I am not trying to necesarily dissuade you from applying to PhD programs as well. As far as creating a good resume, I think the answer is just reserach research research. The more and the deeper you go with it, the better.

I haven't done much with mine and will be applying for December/ January deadlines. Right now I'm just focusing on reading as many publications from possible mentors as possible so that I know their work as well as I can. I'm taking notes on this that will be used in my SOP but I haven't actually written the SOPs yet.

^ This I would make sure you are fully funded and if not, defer or apply for other programs for next year. 99% of STEM programs fund their students so choosing to attend one of the few that doesnt makes no sense and is a waste of money.

Definitely retake the GRE. If you do really well then you can prove that you have the intelligence to do well in grad classes despite the bad grades. I advice you to apply to more masters programs. I am in the 2nd year of an MS degree after finishing college with 3.3 GPA. I have loved every minute of the MS degree, have been able to narrow in my research interests, gained tons of research experience, made great conenctions with professors for letters, and my MS GPA is 4.0. It has been an amazing experience and has prepared me for PhD programs very well.

This really depends entirely on your specific research interests. The best way to find the big people in your subfield is to look at the big conferences and see who is speaking at them. From here, you can pin down schools with a lot of people doing research in your area of interest.