Vene

I see nothing wrong with this letter. Teaching is definitely a part of being an academic, so the experience there is absolutely relevant.

I would be surprised if anybody even notices.

Typically the GRE is required by the graduate college, so the program is forced to require them and may not have the authority to waive them.

At a Midwestern Fortune 500 I used to work for entry level PhD chemists made around $70-80k starting. I would expect that the salary would be higher on the coasts, so hitting $90-100k wouldn't surprise me. And I wouldn't take the ACS numbers seriously, it's such a skewed sample.

Your GRE is probably good enough for practically everywhere. The GRE is the least important part of your application. Get it in the top quartile and your application will reliably be looked at. But, it is not enough to get you into a particular university. That depends on your GPA, your LORs, your SOP, and any additional experience in your field of interest (generally research experience or other scholarship).

I think this advice sounds pretty good (based on my limited experience). There are caveats and subtlety to the statements being made and it is very much an opinion piece. If you break one of the rules here or there it probably won't destroy your career, especially if you break one of the rules carefully (such as doing your undergrad and grad degree at the same institution, that doesn't appear to be the black mark it used to be). After all, there is no single 'right' way to do a PhD, live your life, or build your career.

Well, your GPA and GRE looks pretty similar to what mine did, but you have publications and I didn't. So, I'm inclined to say you're in a good position. Top programs will be tough, and you'll want to have good LORs and a good SOP. But, your stats are perfectly reasonable. I believe that the GPA from both degrees counts, as graduate schools generally want to see your entire academic record. Your most recent BS will count for more and I doubt that any admission committee will do more than glance at the fact you previously did an engineering degree (if your engineering GPA was a little higher it would be a point in your favor).

To add to what TakeuK said, your 3.61 "bad" GPA is actually higher than my cumulative GPA. You'll be fine.

You include the transcript. Some of my credits were done at a community college and I absolutely was required to include those. In fact, my degree granting institution just listed it as generic "x credits at Y college" on the official transcript (I was given a copy that I opened upon graduating) so those grades may well be essential.

Dr. LastName is generally safe (and on the conservative side), but I've not met a professor yet who didn't go by their first name. I do generally use Dr. LastName for when I email somebody that I don't talk with much, but in person I use their first name regardless (and there have been times when I didn't realize somebody was a professor/doctor until after being introduced). That said, I err on the side of formality during presentations when referring to a professor. Remember, as a graduate student your relationship with professors isn't so much a student-teacher relationship as much as it is a junior researcher-senior researcher relationship.

Letters from academics are best. If it's from a professor you worked with, but didn't take a class with, that's perfectly fine. A supervisor from an internship is a good letter choice, but I'd avoid more than one non-academic reference.

Something to keep in mind us that the GRE percentiles are not like the SAT/ACT where a very large segment of the population is tested (in some states all high schoolers take the exam). The GRE is only taken by those who are interested in graduate school, so it's a select group who have a history of strong academic performance. So, people who easily were in the 90th percentile or higher in the past could easily drop to a percentile they've never seen before, even though it is still a good score.

Patents absolutely count as research. They're less common for academics than journal articles, but they're still fantastic additions to an application.

Personally, especially considering your V and Q scores, I don't think your AW score will matter unless you get something like a 1. It is seriously the absolutely least important part of your application and the rest of what you have looks great. I also don't think there's any need for you to take a subject test. That's more useful for international students or if you have a deficiency such as a non-science major. Or, naturally, if a program that interests you explicitly requires it. Instead, work on writing an awesome SOP for where you're interested in attending. It will be a better use of time.

I don't believe Michigan has a voter ID law, so your drivers license shouldn't be of any significance. If you wanted to vote in Michigan, I don't see why you couldn't if you're willing to change your residency although I agree that nobody will complain about you keeping yours in California. But, as an aside, I don't really think Michigan is a swing state as it has a 30 year streak of voting for the Democratic Presidential candidate. Although individual districts may swing and I could see someplace like Lansing or Grand Rapids swinging, but I don't expect that for Ann Arbor (no idea which university you're at).