Eigen

I had dropped most of my highschool stuff by my Junior year. If you have some really prestigious awards, they might be worth putting on there, otherwise leave them off.

Unless there is a strong reason not to, you should make sure you're certified. If there's something specific that prevents you from doing the certified program, it won't cripple your app.... But it will certainly make it stronger if you do it. It's a distinct benefit to applying to grad school, if nothing else it is a minimum slate of coursework that a university can count on you having. While it's more important for going into industry than to grad school, remember that the vast majority of those students you're competing against for admission and fellowships will have it. It won't be *required* for any school that I've seen, but I would definitely recommend doing it. The rigor will help you when you get to grad school. As to the organic course, should you go to grad school, a lot of what you'll be doing will require spec. analysis, most of which you need to be fluent in doing on your own. More research or lab experience always looks good on an application.

I felt the same way about my 760. I know the question that screwed me up, and I feel I should have done better. I talked it over with the head of my department when I applied, and he told me that he didn't think it would make much, if any, difference when it came down to it. While an 800 is what you shoot for, a 760 is still respectable, and is only 1 or two questions off of an 800. Both show you know your basic math skills. Honestly, at the level you need your math to be for a Chem PhD, the stuff that the quant section shows is relatively meaningless.

Also keep in mind that for most graduate degrees, it's not so much the prestige of the school that matters as the renowned and connections of the actual professor you will be working with. Look at the two programs, see which professors interest you, and then look into their publication records, collaborations, past students, etc. Personally, I lean towards a more laid back program, as long as you can find a professor with a good reputation and decent funding. Having a life outside of your PhD is important, and maintaining a marriage takes some time. You'll do better work if you have something besides work going on.

The advice I would like to echo is to get to know your professors. More than any other part of your application, your letters of recommendation can either make or break your application. They need to be good, but they also need to be from professors who have had the time to really get to know you. Keep up the research, as well. More and more graduate schools are moving towards an even heavier "prior research experience" bias, at least in the sciences. I would say worrying about studying for the GRE now (or really ever) isn't the best use of your time. A few weeks of review before the test should really be all you need to get a decent score. Keep your GPA as high as possible, but don't work it at the expense of personal relationships with your professors and research experience. Vandy's a good school, recommendations from there should get you quite far.

To add on, we had a biology major start with us last year. He had a bit rougher of a time in the intro classes, but the school took him fine.

The issues you're having are the primary reasons I didn't apply to top 10 schools, but mostly 10-50 schools. It's definitely possible to find a school with smaller groups, professors with good contacts, and good funding, where you'll get more contact with your boss and less stress. If the school is relatively well known, and your boss has a good network of contacts, you'll be fine at smaller schools.

Actually, most of the international students I know did better on their Quant than a lot of the domestic students I know. Mostly because it's much more important to have at least a moderate (500) verbal score as an international student than as a domestic student, due to the subsequent worries about a larger language barrier with international students. That said, memorizing large lists of words that most native English speakers don't know either isn't really harder for international students than domestic ones, especially because the GRE is very particular about which definition they use, and very consistent.

There is certainly an obligation there. But if you're truly unhappy, then it is certainly possible to try to either switch to another group in the same program, or try to transfer to another program. The main hangup will be your adviser, imo. If you try to transfer to another group, that group will more than likely want to talk to your adviser about it... Especially if he's well known in the field. "Poaching" grad students, or looking like you're poaching grad students is quite poor form, and would reflect poorly on the group you want to transfer to, so they would want to make sure that was not the case. So you will need your adviser to be OK with you transferring, imo. If you don't think your adviser will be, then you could take it up the chain and talk to the graduate adviser for your department, or even the department head about the problems you have and the possibility of a transfer.

If I recall, my applications had slots for each previous institution, with a slot to place the GPA at that institution in. And you will submit both transcripts.

For books that you don't plan on using past the semester, it can be helpful to talk to other grad students and get a shared copy. We all have bookshelves in our offices, and we bump books (even library books) around from one office to the other pretty regularly.

From what I saw, it's not really made for organizing anything other than e-books. It's primarily just an "on computer" textbook system that allows you to get cheaper textbooks. And being that (from my experience) graduate texts are far less printed than undergrad texts (and rarely available as e-books), I doubt it would be that useful. There's also the fact that you can only copy or print from the book in limited fashions, which makes it much less useful for me. I should add that my experience with textbooks for grad courses was this: Either it's a great book, and you'll be using it for years to come.... Or it's not worth buying at all. For the former category, I'd prefer an actual hard copy of the book to keep around, make notes in, etc.... And for the other, well, they aren't worth buying, so why bother?

I'll tag in with Socialpsych here- most of the grad students in my department exercise regularly, and are generally in good shape. Many of them much more so than when they were undergrads, mostly due to the ability to set their own schedules. For instance, instead of having to get up at 6 to run before class, now I can consistently get up later, get into the lab later, and then just work later at night.

How much research experience do you have? Publications? And how good are your letters or recommendation likely to be? 1200 is the GRE cutoff I see most frequently. I'm assuming you're an international student?

I visited one school before I got in (the summer before applications) and it made the process much smoother. The others I didn't get to visit until after applications had made it in that fall, but that was mostly due to a busy semester. Visiting helped a lot with the decision process. I'll also echo picking a few "Good schools that you have a nice shot at", and focusing on those. I see a lot of people applying to a ton of schools, and I personally went the route of picking a few schools I'd be really happy at, and spending a lot of effort in my applications there (read all the pubs from the last 10 years of any group you're interested in, include some mild critique and suggestions for further research in groups that interest you, etc). It worked well for me, made applications less stressful, and meant I only had to decide between a few schools I really liked.

I'd also recommend asking over at the PhD comics forum... Mostly grad students and faculty there, more suggestions for how to deal with it. Additionally, I'd talk to your adviser. Are they one of the ones that thinks it's horrible? See what their take is on how to proceed from here.

I'm not sure. I looked and couldn't find it on the site as well. If I have a chance, I'll ask one of our AdComm members next time I see them.

That is what I was told when I applied. I haven't verified it recently. Have you heard otherwise? I found similar information on this site:

Your GRE score is fine, don't worry about it. Most schools want to see, most importantly: Research experience and good letters of rec. Good grades are also beneficial. My score was only a bit higher than yours (660V/760Q) and I had no trouble with any of the schools I applied to (got full fellowship offers from Tulane, Vanderbilt, Penn State, the three schools I applied to). As with you, I applied more to the 10-30 schools, with Tulane as in in-state fall back.... Interestingly enough, their research program impressed me the most, hence why I'm here. Make sure you research the prof's you want to work with well, and tailor at least a paragraph of your statement of purpose towards discussing their research and how you see yourself fitting into it. Personally, I didn't take the Chem GRE... If you do well on it, it will help your application, I'm sure. Bottom line, I would say your scores are fine. Focus on the other stuff. And as for the writing scores? No one takes them seriously. The way they're scored is really hit or miss. The writing samples themselves are sent to the school, however, and they matter a little bit. If you have previous publications they can look at, that will help significantly. If you want to talk more, feel free to send me a PM and we can talk.

From what I know (you don't say what program you're going into), the AW score is the least important, by far. It's graded by english graduate students. Then the grades from several are averaged. Most schools don't take the scores that seriously, but the GRE does send your actual writing samples to the school- and that's a bit more important.

Ah, sorry, I didn't look it up before assuming. LSU up the road also has an MPA program, if you want to take a look at that.

I would say study for the math. It's all lower level stuff, and with repetition you should be able to at least get a 500. There are lots of good study guides available. As to university choice, is there any particular reason you're looking at UNO over staying at Tulane? From what I recall most masters programs here are unfunded, but I'd imagine the degree would take you a lot farther than one from UNO would. ::edit:: Also keep in mind that the Kaplan practice tests tend to give you lower results than you will get on the real GRE.

IMO, the excellent recommendations and the internship at NASA will mean more than the 1570, but it's a nice score. Congratulations.

If you have the initial offer, then you *do* have it in writing. I would say you can certainly ask why it was lowered without coming across poorly. It may be that the department's financial situation has changed, or it may just be that they forgot what they had previously offered you. A short e-mail, simply asking if the amount in the most recent award letter is correct (since it differs from the one you were previously sent) is a good place to start. Emphasize you just wanted to double check before you signed it. Depending on the response, you can work from there. Pay-cuts happen. My PI had too many people to fund this summer, so we all ended up with pay-cuts to make it work. It may just have been that they didn't have the funds they thought they did to support the new grad students this year.

Along with all the other advice, I would suggest that you not worry too much about the GRE. While it is certainly field dependent, no one in my entering class (or the students I know from previous entering classes) spent much, if any, time studying. Your score needs to be solid, but it's often the rest of your application and not the GRE score that will make it or break it, in my experience.