[Chemistry Grad School Chances]

The grades matter but not as much as research and letters of rec. You need to commit a lot of your time to research and convince some people that you are a great candidate for graduate school. Chemistry graduate school is about the research and I think that schools looking at your application need to know that you have the ability and desire to do graduate level research. The way that they are going to know that is through your letters of rec and your statement of purpose.

This is just coming from someone who is finishing up the application season. I would just drill it into you...research, research, research...get to it. In synthetic research it would be difficult to make much of an impact in 1 semester and I would imagine the same has to be true for pchem research. It is good that you are getting into research this summer for sure.

[Damage Control]

Sorry but this is a bit pathetic. If you acted "proactively" by mentioning this to them it would not look good in my opinion. This is not something to be concerned about at all.

[Chemistry Fall 2010]

I'm interested in organometallics, and have applied to:

Toronto

British Columbia

MIT

Michigan - Ann Arbor

Washington - Seattle

Actually, I haven't applied to the two Canadian schools yet (Canadian deadlines are generally later).

KevinM, you don't have to answer if you don't want to, but I am curious: where are you applying?

From your list, I only applied to Washington. Also applying to a few schools in the northeast but no top 10.

[Chemistry Fall 2010]

Applying to 6 schools as of now.

Doing organometallics.