unbrokenthread

1. POI is actively publishing and nowhere near retirement--I'm reassured by and enthusiastic about the idea that this professor has momentum in a field that I'm really, really interested in. 2. Funding situation is good. 3. It's really, really far from home. 4. It's a really good school. 5. Cost of living is reasonable, esp. in comparison to where I live now. 6. The lab's research fits really well with my postdoctoral plans. Basically everything is kosher except for the location, but it's something I can put up with if everything else falls into place.

Truer words, yo. Truer words. Oh my gosh.

The version I was most comfortable with came in at about 1500 words. There was one school that required <1000, and I made it happen, but it felt like pulling teeth.

Mine was one page--I had name/address, objectives, degrees, major research history, publications, and then professional affiliations/honor societies/etc. My research projects covered enough of a breadth of subjects (molecular biology, ecology, microbiology, materials science/chemistry) that I feel like my particular skill set was at least implied. I guess we'll find out how well that worked in a month or so.

That's...really reassuring, actually. Thank you!! I'll keep trying.

HAHA so it is. I haven't been on the site in a while. Seeee?

...Your recommender points out that you've been calling Penn State UPenn for the last month or so. Your SOP to that school has already been submitted, in which you repeatedly refer to them as UPenn. Your multiple attempts to request to reupload your SOP before the Penn State application deadline are ignored. /whimper (I'm not even applying to UPenn. /pout)

If the application allows it, that's OK. But you will need to check with each program individually to see if they require you to pay ETS to send them official scores in order for your application to be complete. About half my schools required that.

Hmmm, good question. I would still mention your interdisciplinary interests in your SOPs for these schools, as they do boost your fit with the institution. I recently applied to two departments at UW and essentially stated that I believed that you can't study what I'm studying (astrobiology) and have one (biology, early evolution) without the other (geology/planetary science), hence I was applying to both. This is a school that seems to really like interdisciplinarity though. If you do not want to make your interdisciplinary interests a "hard line" - a requirement for you - you might present it as a bonus. Ex: I look forward to doing X research in Y field. My interests in Z have informed my interests in Y... And this is how you can suggest interdisciplinary work without pressing the issue. This is also a way to bring up the fact that you are applying to multiple departments at the school, if you choose to do so. Hope that helps!

The number of applications will be limited by a few things: -How much money you have to spend -How many hours you can put in before the application deadlines (these apps can take a long time...) -Your perception about the cost/benefit of applying to each -Your grades, test scores, etc. I applied to 7 departments across 6 schools, which is fairly conservative, but it's also all I could reasonably devote time to, as I have a lot of other stuff going on right now. I'm also in a fairly niche field and I have a lot of research experience, so that altered the way I approached my applications too. Application season is well underway, so it's important to look at deadlines when you pick schools; for instance, a couple of my schools' application periods end tomorrow, 1 December 2013. My latest application deadline is 5 January 2014. I'm not sure if finance schools are different, but I imagine that they're in the same general range. I'm not in your field so I can't speak to specifics about picking professors or institutions. Good luck!

What I would recommend (speaking not as an accepted grad school applicant, yet, but as an English tutor who has seen many people through letters, scholarship applications, etc, and who has so far never had an abstract/research proposal of my own rejected *crosses fingers*): You want to tell a cohesive story. Some of this is done in subtle ways--for instance, I prefer (and usually recommend) to keep the narrative's voice* and tense** consistent throughout. * If you spend the first paragraph talking about what you did at age 12, it should be with the wisdom and hindsight of your current age. Focusing on how cool you thought it was at age 12 doesn't tell the committee anything; letting them know that you are self-motivated enough to follow your passion and dedicated enough to do it for a Really Long Time tells them a lot more about your potential for graduate success. This wisdom (and self-awareness, I think) should thread itself through the entire application. This will create consistency of voice. It will make you sound confident. You will present yourself as someone who has their sh*t together. **This is just mechanical grammar stuff. If you want to use quotes, one of the big no-nos that people do is drop in a quote and then fail to provide enough justification for its use. This makes the reader wonder why the quote was included when they should be thinking about how much they like you. Many successful essays have been written that use the opposite approach--using a quote and then spending the rest of the essay referring back to it as a theme--but care must be taken not to spend the entire essay justifying it instead, as that takes the focus away from you and your accomplishments. This is why I usually recommend integrated quotes (..."so I picked myself back up, brushed myself off, and went 'once more unto the breach,' as Shakespeare put it" - cheesy example, but that's an integrated/embedded quote). This will create consistency of tense, whereas if you use a quote by itself...some quotes are written in past tense, but you may be telling your story in present, etc. Doesn't sound like it's a big deal, and a committee might not point it out by name ("gee, these don't have matching tenses. PASS." Yeah right!), but a well-constructed story will outshine a heavy-handed one any day of the week. Anyway, integrated quotes help with the professionalism in many cases. Also remember that a deft, professional, engaging intro doesn't have to be witty or creative; if your greatest quality is your passionate drive to succeed, for instance, just making sure that the committee sees that represented in the way you write might be a very good hook of its own. Good luck!

Ditto--good luck to all! When do applicants typically hear back?

Yes, you have a shot. Rest easy and good luck!

Me: Biology/microbiology/space science emphasis. You: biology/related. Alternatively, English.

I've gone about it by asking them right up front: So-and-so, Would you be willing/able to write a strong letter of rec on my behalf? I'm applying to x schools this quarter in fields A and B, and the deadlines range from Dec 1 to Dec 16 (or whatever). I feel like you have seen some of my best work in this department and I would appreciate your input. etc etc. I like to give them a little bit of a reason why I chose them in particular, but I also like to leave them a clear out, because sometimes they just plain don't have time. I don't want them feeling guilty whenever they think of me, lol.

Double check the rules about taking the GRE back to back--I think it's once every 30 days. If you take it too soon after, your scores could be invalidated.

Loric-- Takeru has expressed the value of my degree to astrobiology pretty well already (thanks!). So I guess we should start with the English. Long story short: if I wanted a 4.0 I shoulda been an English major right out of high school, but I was bored to death and I needed a challenge, so I went into science. Picked up the English as a double major in my third year here to serve a few purposes: to fill out an academic year (otherwise i'd have graduated in fall, and that's a bit useless if I want to go straight into a PhD--my family/living situation is such that it would be a hell of a lot easier and smarter for me to just transition straight over to grad school instead of waiting six or nine months); to make myself a better communicator, in science as well as in general; and of course, for my own self interest. The undergraduate work is still a bit easy for me, so I've subbed out a few grad courses for undergrad credit, and that's been great. My degree has given me training in both classical/early English literature and in rhetoric. The rhetoric is really the meat of it--this is the art of argument, and has helped me tremendously in both speaking and proposal writing, among other things. One of my grad courses was essentially a class on interdisciplinary rhetoric, and it blew my mind to hear all the misconceptions humanities majors had about science and scientific communication. (It goes both ways, though. Science majors aren't a whole lot better with the misconceptions about humanities majors.) But really, in the end, the English major is for fun. I can find applications for it all over the place, but I'm doing it because I enjoy it. (In my spare time I'm VP of our honors society and ~once a year I give a talk on how to market your skills as an English major, since this is something that (in my experience at least) English majors have nooo idea how to do. The stereotype that English majors are unemployable is totally BS in my opinion. That, however, is a soapbox for another day. ) And here we come to the science. My research interests have morphed a bit over time--I started out interested in field biology/organismal biology, got experience in marine bio, and then followed the trail of opportunities available to me and ended up doing more molecular bio/genetics based work. I applied for a NASA internship in astrobiology, and I got it, but I didn't get my first choice of project, which was microbiology--I got chemistry/materials science instead, and I loooved it. I loved the project, I loved learning new skillsets, I loved the environment and working in a big team of really fricking smart people. Oh man, I was *so* sold. Buuut I still wanted to tackle astrobiology questions from a biological perspective. So that got me to where I am now: working on an astrobiological research project using microbiology. (Not to mention applying for graduate school to do similar stuff to what I am doing now.) So to me it's not a matter of whether my degrees are relevant. I do know what I'm getting into, insofar as I am capable of knowing at this early stage in my career. To further answer the question of how astrobiology might be approached from a biological/zoological perspective: Takeru is correct to say that we can use extremophiles here on Earth as possible analogs for life on other planetary bodies. Additionally, space is filled with organic compounds! We have many hypotheses/assumptions about how they form, but our actual, concrete knowledge of chemical evolution in space environments leaves something to be desired. (See Takeru's comment about the lack of data.) In situ space experiments are reeeally expensive. (Getting better though--nanosats and small payloads are becoming more popular, and are a lot more financially feasible.) So, you could tackle it from any number of angles: what lineages of bacteria/etc can survive in space radiation environments? or what conditions favor the formation of organic compounds? or in the case of spacecraft assembly facilities, what does it take to kill radiation-resistant bacteria? Or you could tackle it from an evolutionary perspective and investigate how unicellular organisms formed, or how unicellular organisms can give way to multicellular organisms. A lot of work has been done here in the Volvocales (Volvox, Chlamydomonas, etc). Either way, we are most successful when we collaborate with experts in other fields. Personally, that's a big part of the appeal of this field for me. I s'pose it has its pros and cons, but to me, these are prime conditions for some really good, novel research to be done.

There is a thread on it that helps! I'm going to fill out the GRFP with one lab/advisor in mind, and tailor my proposal to that. Whether or not that's the research I actually do, I have no way of knowing now--but my understanding is that the GRFP readers just want to see your ability to propose a well thought out research project. You're not necessarily married to the project you propose if they give you the fellowship.

Pretty much everything is done except the SOP/personal statement. My letter writers haven't submitted yet, but there's still plenty of time. I'm going on temporary hiatus to turn my attention to the NSF GRFP application, but once that's turned in, it's pretty much all coasting from there. Sooo ready to be done with this!

Thanks for your replies, all. I've already done with a professor at one of these schools and it went very well IMO. I got a "we'll be in touch," at least. But the professor was a really excellent fit for both my short- and long-term interests. So I'm hesitant to accept that publications are mandatory. My investigations into the graduate student bodies of my depts of interest seems to reflect that as well. Takeru, in re: biology--that's what I'm doing with two of my schools. I definitely agree that it's a good idea.

Hi Kris, No, it wasn't--I solicited him after reading one of his papers and looking him up, basically saying I thought his research was Super Exciting (not BS--I really do think it's amazing) and was he considering more grad students for 2014? And if so, could I ask him some more questions, whether by phone or email or whatever he preferred? He offered skype and his availability. I was super busy and I also panicked a little bit when his availability was like, immediate, lol, so I worked out a time with him for the following week. That gave me time to chill out (and more importantly, to prepare). So it wasn't necessarily framed by him as an interview, but I approached it as one. I think you're fine! It seems like your interaction was set up as casual from the outset. At any rate, I seriously doubt it did anything to hurt your chances. Good luck!!

Hi guys, I realize this might be better appended onto another thread. Apologies in advance! I didn't know which one to add it to. Anyway, I had my first interview this morning (PhD biology, evolution emphasis). I was expecting something along the lines of 20 minutes but it went on for just shy of an hour. It felt very conversational and hardly like an interview at all. He wanted to know about my research experiences, about my double major, about the talks I'd given and posters I'd presented (and this led to a tangent about the importance of speaking skills/talks/networking/etc, which I think we were totally on the same page about). He asked me about some of my questionable grades as well and gave me a chance to explain them. He wasn't judgmental about it at all. (At least not openly. ) He then asked me if I had any questions for him, and I asked: --Where are you taking your research in the near future? (I was also wondering about the strength of his funding, but he provided that info in his answer, so I didn't have to decide whether to ask outright, lol.) --How often do you meet with your grad students? --Do you have weekly group lab meetings on top of the one-on-one interactions? --Do you require your students to present at conferences/give talks/etc a certain number of times per year? --And because I'm pretty interdisciplinary, I asked whether or not he would be OK with me occasionally taking courses outside my main degree requirements. He requested some supplemental information, which I provided. I thanked him right afterward via email, said I looked forward to applying, and his reply seemed warm and encouraging. All in all the experience was way less stressful than I anticipated. Fingers crossed! And good luck to all of you!

So are you speaking of US citizens who are currently living out of the country but hoping to return (in your case, in 2015)? As long as you're a US citizen, I don't think it matters all that much. There are other concerns that might be associated with your time abroad (like whether or not you were in school or doing research during that time), but those are secondary to the citizenship issues. Or did you mean people who don't have US citizenship?

As an undergraduate, I've been taught to refer to someone as "Prof. ___" or "Dr. ____" unless told otherwise. The majority of my academic relationships with professors have continued on this track, but in research, I've found that professors (spanning subfields of biology from marine bio to genetics) generally prefer first names. In fact, I've even received advice to the tune of "If a potential PhD advisor wants to keep you on a last-name basis, you don't want to work in their lab" (the logic being that you are now their peer; you are being trained to enter the intellectual conversation at an equal level to others in your field, and should be treated as such) In the past I've called my PIs by their first names (with prior permission) but referred to them as "Dr. ____" during talks. This seems to make everybody happy. Thanks for all the input!

I swear I searched for this, but I couldn't find an answer--sorry if this is a repeat question! I always address potential advisors as "Dr. ___" in my first email to them, but if they sign their response with their first name, does that imply that I should address them by that name in the future? Would it be more of a faux pas to refer to them as, say, "Bob," or to continue to call them "Dr. ____"? Thanks!