riceandbeans

And just an FYI, if you are getting fellowship money, they might not withhold, in which case you will get to learn about the joys of estimated taxes.

I lived in a coop for a year in college, and considered living in one now that I'm in grad school. My experience in undergrad was pretty good. Great people, awesome food, someone was pretty much always around if you wanted human contact (even if it was just to site in silence at 10am on a Sat with lots of coffee and scrambled eggs trying to recover from a hangover), and I really enjoyed working together with a group of people to make the house a nice place to live, both in terms of physical stuff and inter-personal relations. We did have some minor issues (dinners were vegan and but there was a dairy fridge for the vegetarians, and we had a several week debate about whether or not it was ok to add cheese to the vegan dinner if you weren't vegan), we wound up with some interesting decorations (think ~100 origami cranes hanging from the ceiling in the kitchen), and it does require a surprising time investment. You will want to be home for dinner (which take a lot longer than eating by yourself), you will have to spend time cleaning every week, there are house meetings (and any disagreements will make these run a long time, especially if you are doing things conflict resolution style or require unanimous consent to make changes to house policies), parties will occur when it's not convenient for you, and be prepared to share everything. But the payout in terms of house community totally outweighed all of the downsides, at least for me. Now that I'm in grad school, I did decide to not live in a coop, but that was mostly because at this point in my life I wanted a level of privacy that just wouldn't be possible in a coop setting. I would say that if you are a pretty easy going person or willing to sacrifice some stuff in order live in a group setting, then seriously look into coops. But I would suggest that you look for ones with an interview process (it makes it more likely that the house gets along well), and clearly defined rules about everything from chores to inter-personal conflicts.

Once upon a time, I worked in a big lab where there was a huge multi-year experiment running. I went in as the low person on the totem poll, but, due to the lab manager leaving and not being replaced, pretty soon was doing everything (ordering, scheduling, running multiple types of testing, running interference with veterinarians, training undergrads and other techs, etc). And it was terrible. But I realized after awhile that I had kind of done it to myself. I had just sort of picked up other people's jobs that they were dropping the ball on, and they were more than happy to let me do that (not necessarily because they were lazy, but because everyone in the lab was overworked, even if the extra work was coming from teaching or coursework obligations). So, after taking a big step back and figuring out why the situation was as bad as it was, I figured out how to fix it. I did two major things: 1) I realized that our protocol (your lab must have one somewhere), while perfectly adequate at explaining the big picture of the experiment, didn't actually tell you how to do the day to day running of the experiment and all it's parts. So I wrote SOPs (standard operating procedures, not statement of purpose) for everything. And I mean everything. I wrote one on how to schedule tests, what supplies needed ordered and when, how to organize the drug closet, and on and on. It was a pain to do, but then when someone asked me a question about how to do some annoyingly small thing they should have figured out 3 months ago, I'd hand them the SOP, tell them what page to read, and then walk away. It saved a lot of time in the long run. 2) I worked on my delegating skills. Everything I felt comfortable handing off to someone else, I did. And I handed things off to people at every single level of the lab food chain. I told other techs that they were in charge of schedule certain kinds of tests. I figured out what data the grad students were analyzing, and suggested that if they were analyzing the data, they might want to run those tests so they were in control of the data quality. I asked postdocs if they would be comfortable dealing with the vets, since they were on a more even playing field with them. Everyone got their very own undergrad that they were in charge of training and supervising, and then what they did with that undergrad was not my problem (I assumed that they'd use that undergrad to help them with whatever aspect of the experiment they were focusing on). If there was a really awesome and together undergrad (it happened from time to time), I let them run experiments on their own (once I was sure they were capable, of course). And then if something wasn't getting done that I had delegated, I brought it up with my PI. (I actually talked to my PI before starting to give responsibilities away to make sure he understood that I was really overworked, and I really needed to cut down my workload, but I wanted to do it in a way he was comfortable with) So, yes, it still felt like I was the only one in the lab who knew everything that was supposed to get done, and I was still really busy, but it was a manageable level of busy and I was able to make time (note, I'm saying make, not have) to do my own side projects. As the only paid RA, everyone else in the lab will look at you as the person who knows how to get the nuts and bolts stuff done. Also, it helps to realize that, even though you want to be good at your job and want the research to go as smoothly as possible, at the end of the day it is not your research. Note: The above is based on my experience in a similar (but not exactly the same) situation. I wanted to share with you how I dealt with it, because I thought it might help you figure out how to make your situation better. I don't want to imply that you created your own problem like I did, because I obviously don't know all the details and because you are not likely as much of a push-over as I am. I just wanted to illustrate that it might be time for you to take a giant step back, look at the whole picture (not just the grad students), figure out why it's messed up, and then come up with ways to fix it (and you might realize it's un-fixable, and then you need to get the hell out). Because staying in a lab where you a running non-stop for 60 hours a week and have been given responsibilities that are way too big for your pay grade is not a good plan. You don't want to start grad school already burnt out.

You might want to err on the side of business casual (or at least khakis and a nice sweater/button down) for the interview part of the visit, since they are still evaluating you at this point and you probably want to make a good first impression when you're meeting faculty.

NYU did phone interviews last year for bio-anth candidates. Illinois did not do interviews last year (they did subsidize a visit after acceptance, though).

Your professors know how hard it is to get in, even for people who are well-qualified. It took me two rounds of applications, and the response of my letter writers after the first round was "don't worry, a lot of people don't get in the first time, let me know when letters are due next year."

This is from the "Current Application Package Status" page: Deadlines for the Application Package FASTLANE GRFP APPLICATION: Due by 5 p.m. submitter's local time November 15, 2010 (Monday) - Interdisciplinary Fields of Study November 16, 2010 (Tuesday) - Engineering November 18, 2010 (Thursday) - Chemistry November 18, 2010 (Thursday) - Computer and Information Science and Engineering November 18, 2010 (Thursday) - Mathematical Sciences November 18, 2010 (Thursday) - Physics and Astronomy November 19, 2010 (Friday) - Geosciences November 19, 2010 (Friday) - Psychology November 19, 2010 (Friday) - Social Sciences November 22, 2010 (Monday) - Life Sciences OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPTS: November 22, 2010 (Monday) REFERENCE LETTERS November 22, 2010 (Monday) Reference letters must be submitted on or before the deadline; three reference letters are required as part of your GRF application. Applicants are encouraged to use the "Check Application Package Status" feature to ensure application completeness. This, along with the fact that my adviser told me the e-mail he received also said the letter of rec was due the 22nd (my field of study deadline is the 19th), leads me to believe that all letters of rec are due the 22nd, regardless of field of study. But you could always e-mail the people at the grfp operations center (who are really helpful and nice) to double check.

I'm guessing the application process in geosciences is much like other small science fields (ie, ecology), where you aren't so much applying to a program as to a specific adviser. In which case, the program acceptance rate is irrelevant. What will determine whether or not you get accepted is how much funding your potential adviser has that year, how many other students are applying to work in his/her lab, and how much he/she thinks you are awesome. Even in programs where the school funds all the grad students, which faculty members get to take students varies from year to year. Thus, a "safety" school will be one where you are the only student applying to work with an adviser who has funding for a student, which isn't really something you can predict ahead of the application season during which you are applying.

I would actually say that an additional MA is not necessary for bio anthro programs if you want to focus on primate behavior (if you want to study morphology, it's probably a different story). Far far more important is your research experience, particularly if you want to do field work. I had very little anthro coursework going into my PhD program (two anthro courses I took on the side on route to my BA in biology), but I was able to show that I had significant research experience (1 year in the field, 3 years in a captive setting). Your SOP should be able to convince them that you know about your specific topic of interest, but being able to show that you know how to do research and are capable of living in the field will be a very important part of your application.

I know that Society for Conservation Biology has a searchable database of academic programs (found here: http://www.conbio.org/Resources/Programs/). You should be able to search the faculty database for genetics, which would give you a good list of active researchers doing conservation genetics (and where they are currently teaching). I'm sure other societies have similar resources.

A lot of ecology and animal behavior research on animals primarily involves staring at them (ie, recording behavior) and collecting non-invasive samples (ie, poo). And even if you end up doing mark-recapture type stuff or minimally invasive genetic sampling, usually there is no lasting harm to the animal. But if you want to stay away from animals entirely, you can always go the plant route, which can involve questions from the molecular level all the way up to the macro macro stuff.