Eigen

Also keep in mind that at most schools, taking a graduate level course as an undergrad will not get you graduate level credit for said course. There are generally separate grading schemes and assignments for the two sections of the class. This also means that should you want to transfer credit (I transferred two classes worth), you had better be prepared to defend (in my case, to a committee) that you did work worthy of graduate credit in the classes you want to transfer over.

It's doable, but I would encourage you to broaden yourself instead. Taking masses of graduate classes won't be as beneficial as, say, more research experience. My PhD program only requires 6 graduate classes in total, and the general consensus is that classes aren't that important. All the prof's would prefer we take the same time to teach ourselves new techniques, keep up with current literature, etc. You'll learn more by spending your time keeping abreast of several of the better publications in your field than in a graduate class, imo. In my experience, graduate level classes are about teaching yourself moreso than simply pushing harder, more advanced material. This isn't to say they're easy, they are certainly time consuming and challenging. I took a few myself, but instead of taking a lot of graduate classes, I'd suggest branching out and taking courses from related disciplines and spending more time on your research.

Depending on the school, in the US an 80% would actually be considered a B-, or the equivalent of a 2.67 GPA. Some of the large schools don't use +/- grades, but quite a few do. A +/- system usually works something like: 97+-> A+, 93-97, A, 87-92, A-, 93-97, B+, etc. But equating a % grade to a letter grade is nearly impossible to do with any certainty. I've taken math classes where a -16 to 30 was a C, 30-50 a B and anything above 50 was an A. One of the main reasons it's so hard to directly compare them, is that professors/programs may either curve the scores (by changing the percentage grade) or simply change the percent range for each letter grade. Graduate grades tend to run on scales like the ones I just mentioned in most US schools- anything below a B- is a failing grade, so the grade range is extended accordingly.

From a US perspective, I would say your two GPAs are pretty much equivalent. In the US, graduate GPA's are expected to be much higher than undergrad GPAs, with anything below 3.0 being academic probation in many programs. I'm not sure what you mean about the US having a completely different grading system- but then I'm not so familiar with Canadian grading systems in general, I've only looked at a few institutions there. Grades in/out of your major are often looked at differently. While you're expected to have a good overall GPA, many universities also look at both an "overall GPA" and a "Major GPA".

I had to give my deposit for our current place before we signed the lease. It was part deposit for the house, and part deposit to ensure that he would reserve it for us.

Is it just me, or did you copy/paste the exact same post to three different subsections?

You said no spiral notebooks, but that's what I've found to be the best (used them for the last 5 years), due to the fact that I can fold them over and they take up half the space. Specifically, I use law rule notebooks, with at least 20lb paper- no bleeding, and the 1/3-2/3 split of the law ruled paper helps me organize my notes a lot. If I keep notes on one side, I can do diagrams and definitions, annotations, etc on the other portion. I assume you didn't want spiral due to durability issues, I guess it depends on the notebook. With 20lb paper, not only do you have no bleeding, but my notebooks from 5 years ago still have lost no pages. Just my 2 cents.

Also note that if you will owe under $1000, you do not have to pay estimated taxes quarterly. My school does not take taxes out of my stipend, as it is from a fellowship, so I have to estimate the yearly taxes and pay/not pay estimated taxes based on that. Being that I'm married, after the standard deduction I usually owe under $1000, but I have to check each year.

I don't know anyone who has had to pay tuition for a PhD program (I'll stipulate in the US here, I don't know that many people who did PhDs outside of the country). In the sciences, I was told that if you aren't getting tuition+stipend, you need to apply somewhere else. Masters are a totally different bag, with an arrangement more like what you are suggesting- you get a TAship that covers a portion of tuition.

I think lab sciences or not is also a deciding factor. Even the professors look at you strangely if you dress up to go play with concentrated acids, work in the machine shop, or change the oil in your vacuum pump. Wearing clothes you don't mind ruining, however, often means you're on the low end of the looks/professionality spectrum.

Quite a bit- it's a nice school, and the department is great. I find it interesting coming from a large state school; here the graduate population is almost as large as the undergraduate one, so there is a lot more attention paid to graduate students in the overall school design, I think. You should convince the Tulane library to offer Mendeley support/classes along with Refworks and Endnote- I think it would get a lot larger portion of the school using it.

Thanks for the comparison, it was quite helpful. To those reading the link, do note that it seems to be on Endnote X3, not the new X4 version, as X4 can extract information and create citations from a PDF.

Our OSHA inspections seem ok with shorts (assuming they're longer cargo shorts) as long as there is full foot coverage (no sandals, ever). But then, we're *supposed* to wear lab coats, too.....

That's exactly what happened to me, actually. I was in slacks/shirt/tie, and overdressed compared to everyone else. I wasn't in a group visit, but the grad students I met with were wearing shorts/t-shirts everywhere I went, in addition to a large portion of the professors. Being overdressed was a bit embarrassing, but it was better than a bad first impression from being under dressed.

Even my boss usually wears cargo shorts and t-shirts during the spring-summer-fall (It's New Orleans, it's hot here!), so I don't feel bad wearing the same. Come to think of it, I think that's how most of the professors in our department dress, although there is one who favors Hawaiian shirts and shorts, so it's not completely uniform.... I try to dress up a bit more when the weather allows (slacks and a nice shirt), but when it's over 105 here, there's no way I'm wearing long pants, and thankfully, no one in the department feels that I should. I dressed up a good bit more on my graduate school visits, however- slacks and a button down shirt. I think it's a good idea to conservatively overdress until you see what everyone else wears, and then dress down to a level you feel comfortable with.

Actually, I was looking at the X4 edition of Endnote today... And it says that it can import a file of PDFs and extract the bibliographic information from them.... A few other useful features of the newer versions of Endnote: You can attach individual figures to the citation, coupled with their captions, and then directly copy them to a new document. And also, you can "mass edit" your references, and add a new tag to every reference in a subgroup or library, either appending it to an existing field, or adding a new field. Quite useful for those times when you decide to re-organize your structure.

And it gets even more difficult if the names/titles have unusual symbols. The other thing to do is watch the Endnote website. They have sales pretty regularly for students- and honestly, even the normal price isn't that bad. You can also download a free trial from the Endnote website, if you want to try it out. I have Endnote X2, and I've been thinking about upgrading to X4 on my own- I think Endnote Student is somewhere around $100, which for as often and as heavily as I use it (every day, often constantly open on my computer), it's well worth it. I didn't like Endnote Web as much, or Refworks- I prefer to have a hard copy of my database saved to my flash drive as a backup in case something happens to it. And while rare, I've heard of the online reference databases experiencing errors and data wipes- and even a small risk isn't worth it to me, not when it comes down to losing my whole reference library. Thankfully, Endnote is exceptionally easy to back up. It's one file for all of your references and their associated documents. is the link to student pricing from Endnote. It's $115 from Thompson Reuters, if MIT doesn't offer affiliations with any of the other student sites. I'd also check here to see if endnote is offered at a discount through GovConnection.

Endnote will not extract the information from your PDFs automatically. I have yet to find a journal that did not have a function to export a citation to endnote, however. It took me about 3 hours one day to migrate my 200ish PDFs into endnote- I just had to look up each journal again, and download a citation. Once you're already using it, you download a PDF and the citation at the same time. As for the citation formats- I'd bet that it has the one you're looking for. It has every journal format I've ever even heard of in Chemistry, and you can easily create new formats or modify the existing ones. Its literally thousands of citation formats pre-loaded, however. I also find it quite common for a journal to have an endnote template available that they request you use for submissions. If your library connection allows it, endnote will also browse and find the full text for any citations you've entered. I'd be quite surprised if your department/school didn't have a license available to it, however. Have you checked with your department or the library?

In many of the hard sciences, entrance exams are common, and you can't schedule classes until you've taken them at the departmental orientation. I know last year when I started we didn't register until the day before classes started.

For a PC, I have found Endnote to be great. I use it to keep all my references organized (being able to attach up to 45 different files to a reference is great), and just used it for an 87 reference review paper I wrote. It worked flawlessly. It's not free, but then it's really cheap, and most departments/schools probably have it for a discount or free. The other nice thing about Endnote, is that the mac and PC versions work well together, which means my boss (who uses a mac) and I can easily share references/reference libraries.

You can often find percentiles by anticipated discipline, those are much more helpful in analyzing how good your score is.

This is my idea. 3 courses my first semester, 2 my second, and hopefully a transfer course. After that I'll either take one more course when one comes around that interests me, or just take independent studies (read: research based) with my adviser for the rest of the credits I need. Of course, I've already got a review article I'm supposed to be writing, and a nice, multi-faceted research project- and my adviser mentioned to me yesterday that he wants to give me a second project to work on sometime this semester.

4.0! I also got my lab set up, research started, and got handed a review article to write, which made for an interesting end of the semester. I think the biggest change was the almost non-existent winter break- Finals over on the 13th, I worked until the 22nd, then came back on the 28th. Two more classes next semester and my course requirements will be done!