Eigen

Hmmph. Board ate my post when I tried to put in a hyperlink. Anyway- I find that the sharpie pens (I use the Sharpie Grip Stick Fine Pens http://www.amazon.com/Sharpie-Stick-Point-Colored-1758054/dp/B002M1HQ0M/ref=pd_sbs_op_4) don't bleed at all- either through the page or on the page. I've been using them over a year, on a variety of papers, and haven't had any problems. It's actually one of the reasons I use them- they don't bleed, they're waterproof, and they have good, lasting colors. I do have some fine point sharpies I use around the lab for marking stuff up, and on the occasion that I use one to write, I find they bleed worse than the pens, by a good bit.

The main difference here, I think, is field dependent. It's rare and a good thing for someone in the STEM fields to have had teaching experience through the point of writing a syllabi- most of the time, teaching in those fields is grading/lab TAing, in which you don't really create syllabi and exams and design the course. From that perspective, it's worth mentioning the design/planning aspect.

So first, is the MS that your institution grants a coursework MS or a thesis based MS? If it's the latter, you'll need to pick an advisor/committee, and you should probably let them know before you pick, just because you could cause some serious resentment if they think they're taking on a PhD student and you turn out to be an MS student. Also, does your program fund MS students? If not, you may be in for some funding cuts if/when you decide to switch paths- although this isn't a given. By and large, if you want to keep up good relations with the department/professors (and since you want to go on and work in the area, you probably do), I'd talk to someone sooner rather than later. Probably the best bet is to sit down with your DGS or your graduate advisor and ask them how to go about it/what can be done, etc.

I completely understand- I had to re-write the syllabus for a course I was taking in a very new direction from the previous instructor last year, and it took quite a bit of time to iron out all the details. I think it will be a good display of teaching experience, and would probably be worthwhile to include there.

It seems like you may be defining syllabus a little differently than what I'm used to. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to expand on exactly what was in it? I've made up several, but none were near the workload you seem to be intimating, so I'm thinking yours might be a bit different. Publications usually only contains peer-reviewed publications. If anything, I'd think your syllabus would go under teaching experience- usually a syllabus is made to design/lay out a course of study, so it's a course preparation type thing.

This. Saying to mention her name in your application mostly just ensures that your application will be sent to her when you send it in, and that she'll be scheduled to talk to you on any interviews. It doesn't really imply that you're getting preferential treatment by mentioning your name. Similarly, saying she'll interview you in January means that once the application process is complete, and if you're invited for an interview, she will look at you in more detail then, and meet with you. Most professors really don't make significant advances this early in the season, before they've seen the full spectrum of people that are applying. If you're a phenomenally outstanding candidate, or can really contribute something to their area of research they might- but usually, they'll wait until the next stage in the process, after you've made it past the first cuts in the admission committee.

I almost exclusively use the Sharpie pens. Black for general work, red for grading, and blue for marking up papers. They write smoothly, on almost anything and are comfortable to hold.

It also depends on what the schools require- some just require the recommendation, some have "surveys" or specific forms for recommenders to fill out.

I had one Professor want to do this for my NSF recs. I ended up telling him I didn't feel comfortable writing my own letter. He said that it was fine; and he just wanted to make sure it was strong enough. He ended up writing a letter and then having my advisor look over it, which worked out pretty well.

I agree with the previous two posters- don't contact the DGS asking if you're a good fit, and with who. It can come across like you didn't do your homework on the department, and so don't know which professors you would be best to work with, and are fishing for someone to do that work for you. Wading through papers and bios can seem overwhelming, but it's really worth the time. You want to e-mail people after you've familiarized yourself with their work and can talk about it knowledgeably. You want to tell them and convince them that you're a good fit for them, not ask them.

To be quite blunt, that low of a gpa especially in your masters will be quite hard to overcome. There are usually minimum GPAs that schools as a whole require, often around a 3.0. There are people who get in with lower, but many of them have much better graduate GPAs. That said, I'm not in social work so things might be a bit different there.

The way I prefer to do it is to list them under the skills and experience section of the resume as a few bulk points aimed at showing what Ingot out of a course. It's also possible to discuss them in your SoP. That said, I really don't think many adcoms care much about advanced coursework.

I'm guessing it's a money-savings related move. If they have, say, enough money to bring in and fund 3-5 students each year, it's in a lot of ways more beneficial for the students and a better flow for the department as a whole to wait and bring in 6-10 students every other year. You can offer more classes that way, etc. I could be wrong, though.

And most of them don't get replies because of it.

I'm not sure why you felt the need to quote the part of my post where I explicitly said that I realize it wasn't possible for everyone to do, and then wrote three more paragraphs on why it wasn't possible for you to do. You have posted your situation before, and you were one of the specific cases I had in mind when I wrote that caveat. I don't, however, think that you are the norm. Hence, with that caveat, my post was targeted at the majority of people who seem to have this problem, not the specific set of outliers I pointedly excluded. I'm also not sure where you jumped to "secret" requirements... The cases I mentioned were specific and explicit policies, and the professors would respond to e-mail requests asking the requester to meet them in person. While e-mail is convenient, it's also really easy to have things slip by unnoticed or unremembered. Ideally, that would never happen, but sadly it often does. And not that I'm saying everyone should do it, but for the record I took time off of work and drove a couple of hundred miles to ask for my recommendations in person, and I'm personally glad I did. Asking in person puts a face and a personal touch to the request, and the immediate response was quite helpful for my personal state of mind.

Also, I'll note that you asked them to "contact you if they had any questions". While it may have been implied by the rest of your e-mail that you wanted a response, you didn't really ask for one- you didn't ask if they had room in your lab, etc. As to your other questions about their research- answering research questions posed by unknown potential grad students falls pretty low on the priority list for most PIs, and as has been noted it's a very busy time of the semester for most. Also, it's only been a week. I'd wait another week or so, and then just send a simple follow up e-mail- Something like "I'm sure you've been busy, I just wanted to make sure my last e-mail didn't get lost in the system." I think lots of people (from what I've seen here) expect way too snappy of replies from professors in general.

I don't think I'd recommend this. Seems like you'd just be drawing attention to something that would otherwise fly pretty much unnoticed.

You're worrying way too much over a B. If you had a ton of them, it might be something to worry over, but 1 B in a field not related to what you're doing now? Don't worry about it.

Marketing. I know our program does it to make students aware of our program if they might otherwise have overlooked it. It doesn't significantly increase your chances of getting in. We mostly use it just because it's a good pool of people applying to graduate school in our field with a reasonable amount of ability. You can "buy" from ETS databases of e-mails of people who say they want to be contacted- you can either get them segregated by score, or just get all the applicants in your area. I think we were targeting 1300+ composites last I checked, but that was last year- they asked a couple of current grad students to help with the writing of the letters.

It's not that hard to read the requirements of the universities you're interested in and make an assessment based on your credentials. If you really need advice, go to faculty currently in your department in your area of interest, or current graduate students at your school. They should know plenty when it comes to helping you choose. If you go to conferences, many of them will have a "grad school Q&A session", that gives you a chance to ask faculty/current graduate students whatever questions you want about admission. Other than that, I completely agree with Sigaba, and would even take it a step further to say that if you really need a counselor for graduate school admissions, you probably need to take some time to learn a bit more about the process before applying anyway.

Personally, I don't get the trend of sending e-mails to professors as a means of asking them to write a letter for you. I actually think it's much better to set up a time to meet with them and ask them in person- it gets you a fast response, and they have a chance to ask you any questions they have about the program, etc. A lot of the faculty at my undergrad institution actually made it a policy that they would only respond to requests submitted in person (save extenuating circumstances), and I see from the CHE forums that it really isn't an uncommon policy. I asked for all of my recommendations in person when I was applying for grad school, and made time on a visit home to swing by my old school and ask for letters during my first year of grad school when I was applying for fellowships. We just did the same for my wife so she (first year graduate student) could ask for letters. I realize it's not always possible, but I don't think everyone I see sending e-mails is doing it because it's not possible to get to their institution/professor. I've mentioned this in other threads, but e-mails, especially those from students/that don't *need* an immediate reply, can get buried really quickly. As a grad student, I get probably 15-20 e-mails on the average day that I have to respond to. My PI gets somewhere around 75+ per day that he has to respond to. Half the time he can't even find drafts of our manuscripts that he's expecting us to send, much less requests for letters of recommendation. The sad truth is that in the ranking of importance, letters of recommendation from past students are sadly quite far down the pile- requests from senior people in the university, grant reviewers, journal editors, and current graduate and undergraduate students take higher priority. If you e-mail and don't get a response within a week, follow up. If you don't get a response within a week of the follow up, try calling or going in person. A week gives plenty of response time, but if they didn't respond to the first two e-mails, chances are they aren't going to respond to the third, fourth or fifth. Getting worried when less than a week has passed is expecting a response too quickly, imo.

Maybe you should modify your premise a bit to "Friends don't let friends get degrees there is no market for"- something that's true at the undergraduate and the postgraduate level. That's not to say that there aren't some degrees that you find personal worth in getting, regardless of the job prospects, but it seems like there are an astounding number of people that don't do any research into the marketability of a degree before they get it.

Very carefully. I'm thinking of doing some complex DNA structures on mine :-D

It's not recommended. In addition, it's better if all of your rec-writers have PhDs.

I would just put other scholarships/fellowships in the "Awards and Honors" blank left for you earlier in the application. As to letter writers: I'd get at least one of the three from your new institution. Applying as a second year, I used my old thesis advisor, and two current faculty. I'd say you should be able to get at least one faculty member at your current school on board by November of your first year.