Eigen

Here's a thread from a week ago that's almost identical: It should help you get started. To download PDFs from Safari, get the GoodReader or Zen Reader app. With GoodReader, if you put "g" in front of the URL, it will open an embedded PDF in GoodReader, or at least it should.

You might have to give a bit more detail on what kind of setup we're talking about... I'd suggest either a CAD program (if we're talking more mechanical setups) or just a vector drawing program. We draw most of our figures in Adobe Illustrator... Can take a while, but then you can cannibalize said figure for future modifications.

No idea about number of applicants per discipline. The top schools usually do some combination of strong encouragement and outright pressure to apply for them, or at least that was my experience when I interviewed. My understanding is that they try to mirror the distribution of awards given to the distribution of applications received, so it varies from year to year. But you should be able to get something of a feeling from looking at the awards given in your discipline to the overall number of awards given, and then using that ratio to roughly determine the number of applicants in your discipline from the overall number of applicants.

Honestly, this sounds like it's something your Chair (Advisor) should be taking care of. They are the ones who should be leading the committee, solving disputes, etc. That's why you have a chair! Sadly, though, I've heard plenty of cases of students having problems with their committees due to interdepartmental politics... Talk to your advisor, come up with a game plan, and stick to it. See if they think you need to change out committee members.

I'm sure this varies, some... But in most fields, the NSF Fellowship is one of the most competitive fellowships out there, and as such, being an "NSF Fellow" is *great* for your grad school and post-grad school career. You have to separate the two (some) from a causal relationship, but if you look at NSF Postdocs, NSF Career Awards, and even NSF grants on the whole... You're more likely to receive the later ones if you also received the early ones. NSF likes to fund people that it has funded previously. Even an Honorable Mention will open some doors to you. Beyond the prestige, there are funding opportunities that are only available to NSF Fellows. If you plan on applying next year, then it's not at all a waste of time to apply this year. I do agree that you shouldn't put it higher than you apps... But I disagree the the GRE is all that important. More and more schools are placing less and less weight on GRE scores. Obviously, if you get the fellowship and don't get in it was a waste of time... But I would say it's beneficial to work on both the NSF app and Grad School Apps together- you can have your grad school applications submitted by October, and still have a nice chunk of time at the end to work on your NSF app before it's due.

I think it's important to find someone who is interested in you, and your research (and is correspondingly there to help you) but is hands off enough to allow your research to be your own. Most PIs seem to either view their grad students as extra pairs of hands to carry out the research they design, or as individuals who they fund and guide, but don't overly direct. Some PIs are too far into the latter category- they are so hands off you really don't get any mentoring or help on your projects. Some are so far into the former they only see you as a glorified lab tech. You want someone who lets you work on projects that interest you, as long as they fall within a certain range, and someone who will let you explore and develop those projects; while simultaneously keeping up with you and your research enough to adequately support you. Oh, and they should have good funding! Nothing more frustrating than a nice PI and cool projects, but not enough funding to keep them running.

Sadly, no. The Bio labs yes, our lab no. And if I order one for the group, it will get broken/dissapear within a few days. Hence why I'll be getting one for myself.

I've been thinking I should get a watch as well... Although I'm not sure how often I'd wear one, in the lab- they don't go well with gloves, often times. This is one of the ones that's been tempting me- would look professional, should feel good on my wrist, and isn't too bulky, so it won't get in the way. I'm thinking about getting a clock/timer that I can clip to a belt loop as well, and the two of those should make a nice pair.

I don't think an "in-control feeling" and "being a graduate student" go together very well! It's important to strive for a work-life balance, but actually maintaining one consistently, especially in your first year, is very hard to do- although some of this depends on what discipline you're in. Most of the time, graduate student life doesn't fit on a nice, regular schedule... Which makes it hard to plan for. Over the course of last week, I had two mornings I got to my office before 8... And then a few nights I was there until 5 am... And then a few mornings I didn't get in until after lunch! Recognizing when you're getting too tired, when you're getting too stressed, and making yourself stop and take time off is the best advice I can give you. You have to learn that there's always more work to do, and so learning what good break-points are to take a few hours off is great. Sometimes I'll stay and work until 7 or 8 at night... Other nights it works much better to leave the lab at 4 in the afternoon, have a nice dinner, and then come back and work more later. You just have to put time for yourself as a priority, and make sure you take it.

You can, yes, with the caveat that you have to be enrolled in a program by the acceptance deadline. If you're applying for the NSF and grad school at the same time, you can just pick one of the potential advisors you want to work with, and write a proposal that goes along well with their work. If you get the NSF but don't get into a program, you have to decline the fellowship. You aren't tied to the research proposal you write, so it doesn't really matter which potential advisor you pick to write based on- choose the one with the most obvious broader impacts, in my opinion.

For our department, we had an orientation session the week before classes started... And we didn't register for classes until after we'd been through orientation, and met with our advisor in person. Most of the programs in my discipline have entrance exams, and you register for classes based on the results of those exams. Basically, we ended up registering in August, the day before classes started. For most programs, there shouldn't be any worry of classes filling up, so there's no rush to register. Heck, I've forgotten sometimes until a few weeks into the semester to actually register for the class I'm in! In your department, if you can't figure out who else to ask, I'd go straight to the department chair, and ask them what the proper procedure is. But really, give the department admin a bit longer to get back to you- people are in and out a lot more in the summer.

Mine was quite specific. I broke it down into 3 8-12 month stages, and discussed the experiments I was going to be doing at each stage, as well as possible alternatives if things didn't go as planned. Here are some sample grants from past years, I can say that they all looked quite different from mine. As to how many awards per discipline... I'm not sure. I'm also not sure you'd be able to find data on applicants by discipline, but you might be able to. You can certainly browse through the awards/honorable mentions given in the past by discipline, but no one I've talked to knows if each discipline gets a set number of awards up front, or not. To give you a rough breakdown, in my sub-field there were 11 awards given out, in the broader field of chemistry there were 158.

There's a good post on the CHE forums in the tech section on iPad apps. Goodreader and Zen Reader are both good for PDFs. PDF Expert is supposed to be the best, but it's more expensive. I use Notetaker HD to take notes in seminars, and it's pretty good. I also use Keynote, the mac equivalent of PowerPoint to give presentations with a VGA adapter.

I'll just throw this out there... But even if you move with your advisor, you'll probably still get your degree from your previous school. Usually, once you've passed official candidacy, even if you move schools you still get your degree from the school you became a candidate in. When I started, we had a group transplant from a much higher rated university to our school (top 5 to way less), and all the students that had passed their orals, while officially registered here, would received their actual degree from that top 5 school... And kept their committee at that same school. They just had to go back a few times a year to meet with their committee, revise drafts, and then defend.

They were optional the 09-10 year, though.

I don't think it's common for undergrads to have first author papers, but I don't think it's all that uncommon either. I have a number of friends who had them. And I think it's quite common for graduate students... We're expected to have several first author papers before we graduate, and really need a nice bunch to be competitive on the job market. But then, in STEM fields (other than pure math) the usual convention is First Author is the grad student who did most of the work/wrote it up, and the Last Author is the PI who edited/led/funded the project.

I plan on trying to get one of the NSF Nordic Research Opps in my last year, so I can go spend a while working abroad before I graduate.

I'm assuming "GPA with CC" is combining the GPA from when you were at community college with your current institution? I've never seen anyone combine/average GPAs from two different institutions. Most apps I've done would have required you to give the cumulative/major GPAs from each of the institutions you attended, not average them together.

I had one reviewer for my NSF application specifically mention my long involvement in our major professional organization (American Chemical Society). I think how important this is depends on the field, in Chemistry there's absolutely no reason not to pay the $100 a year for membership.

Depends how many prof's you're meeting with, but I'm a fan of "read their papers from the last 5-10 years", so you can be up on their work. Then ask about the current directions of their projects- remember that the publications that are out are things that are in the past, they'll be taking that work past that stage already. Then ask where they want to take the projects next- what spots they have that you could fit into, what directions you could move in. At this stage, you'll want to be familiar enough with their work to give ideas/discuss possible future directions if asked. I think it's really important when looking at any group to think about what portion of their research interests you, and what you would like to do in that area, how you would like to make it your own. These kinds of ideas/motivation can be really attractive to the faculty as well. Just a few suggestions.

Cool, is this the Grad Student offshoot of ProfHacker? I browse there occasionally, and have found it to be quite useful.

Look at the programs and see. Most engineering programs are quite up front with what they will require you to have/have taken before starting off. That said, I find engineering programs are much less accepting of other undergraduate degrees than other areas... None of the ChemE programs I looked at would accept a Chem degree, even with a ton of overlapping coursework. Just check with the schools you're interested in.

It is very field dependent, but StrangeLight has some good points. For my department/school, a B is the lowest passing grade you can get in a class and *not* go on academic suspension... More equivalent to a C in undergrad. It's not something that will kill your chances, for sure (your research and such will be much more important), but it's something you need to be aware of when you're applying.

Good thing you don't have to choose one or the other, then! Information here is delivered in a friendly fashion, but most of the time we're only guessing/drawing from relatively small pools of knowledge to answer questions. Information there is delivered much more harshly, but comes from the people that are actually making decisions about admissions/hiring, and as such is likely to be less guesswork and more fact. It's also a nice introduction to what academia is like once you're no longer being shielded by your advisor(s). A lot of it is a difference in level... Here, it's mostly undergraduates posting, with a few graduate students that have been accepted and are back giving advice. CHE is very few graduate students, next to no undergraduates, and a lot of very senior faculty. In some ways, posting about admissions there is like someone asking about undergraduate admissions on here. For the more midline approach, there's the PHDcomics Proceedings... Which is primarily graduate students, with a mix of post-docs and profs and a few people applying thrown into the mix.

I post there pretty regularly. It's a nice group of people, and the information/help can be pretty invaluable. They're just very opinionated, and very blunt in their opinions. And most of them are very, very far past grad school. You won't find as wide of a group of Search Committee Chairs, Deans, Academic VPs, Department Chairs and general faculty anywhere else, though. A lot of them just tend to be of the mindset that they should dispel what they consider to be illusions early, I think.