Eigen

I can post on this more later (at an interview now), but it would be really helpful to know the name of the chemical - you can PM me if you don't want to post it.

I'm in a different field, so take this with a grain of salt, but that seems like way too much time on classes. You want your classes done as fast as possible, with as little relative work as possible. They're just not that important in grad school. Being focused on classes is an undergraduate mindset you need to get out of. Research isn't something you can do by days- you need to be doing some every day. You our need to change how you look at TAing. Between the tuition and stipend, you're getting paid a lot of money for a really small amount of work. Do it, be happy, and move on. You're spending more time worrying about this and talking to people about this than the likely difference in teaching load.

I mean, I get the frustration, but this really isn't that bad of a position to be in. I've had to help a lot of grad students from different departments negotiate TA overloads, and some of those have been up to 40+ hours. That's not to say that just because other people are worse off, you shouldn't try to improve your situation, but I really think you're over-stating the issue. Every department has heavy and light loads for TA assignments. Everyone that has a TA assignment has a skill set that they are able to TA- maybe from undergraduate experience, maybe from a double major. You have a particular skill set, and accordingly, are TAing classes that go with that skill set. You're perfectly within range of your contract, but you don't feel it's fair because other people are teaching less than they "should" be. Either way, on a per hour basis, my guess is your stipend+tuition remission is a very, very nice hourly wage for 20 hours of work, and 20 hours is a pretty decent load to have.

20-30 citations is honestly quite a lot. Generally, a good citation rate is around 1/citation per year, with older papers tending to get more. Last statistics I saw, something like 50% of papers were never cited (granted, this was not specifically in chemistry), and another 25% were only ever cited once.

It's nice to hear all the options. I've done long trips with dogs before, but only ever short trips with cats- and am currently looking at two possible Visiting positions 2k+ miles away, so it will be a several day road trip to either of them. Our cats have done OK on shorter moves before, so I'm hoping it won't be an overly traumatic experience for any of us.

Yes, and more than appropriate, I'd say it's expected of someone maturing into an independent researcher. You do need to be careful that you don't cross disciplinary "norms" in starting collaborations, but certainly you should reach out to your peers and learn from them.

You're conflating an awful lot of your experience as a high school teacher with what is appropriate at the college (or even graduate) level. K-12 education has a large component of accessibility, including making what can be significant exceptions to course design and requirements in light of student disabilities. Post-secondary education, on the other hand, rarely asks "what can we ask of our students that they can all do" or "what can still be done by students with disabilities", but rather "what is going to be required of these students when they finish, what skills/knowledge do we feel like they need to have". The latter approach is also highlighted in the approach to students with disabilities at the college level- college courses are not required to change course assignments and objectives, or except students from those assignments, based on disability if the assignments/courses are considered necessary to the field. So you keep talking about your experience as a teacher, which is fine, but it's clearly not at the post-secondary level where things are quite different, and that is what is being discussed here.

For one, you may not end up being out money. NSF fellowships have been getting pretty consistent raises, so it's likely that you'll be making a larger stipend as an NSF fellow if you delay a few years. What is the likelihood that you will graduate in 6 years, and not want any extra, funded time? I was convinced that I should drop part of my existent fellowship (was on a 4 year fellowship, won the NSF in my second year) because "no one ever takes more than 6 years to graduate", then ended up taking closer to 7, with the extra 9 months having to be paid at the departmental RA level (an immense pay cut relative to the NSF). I would say, as a general rule, ensuring you'll be well funded for as long as possible is key. Staying that extra little time at the end, having a bit of a less of a rush to graduate, or getting to push out a final paper without financial stress are all really nice things to have.

As mentioned, you're probably better off going with faculty. You would probably be OK with researchers who have since received their doctorates, but I wouldn't base your application on someone judging them as "less knowledgable" about what you need or less appropriate to write your letters.

And even then, most GPA cutoffs are set by the graduate school rather than by individual programs. Even if the program likes you, they have to like you enough to cash in favors with the graduate school to get the requirements waived, and that can be a lot of trouble.

In my experience, you can either have a low GPA, or low GRE, but both will make it really hard. You didn't give percentiles for your GRE, but those scores seem really low. Ideally, you want 80-90th percentile, and below 75th is going to give you a hard time. Many schools have a 3.0 GPA cutoff for undergrad, so you're already at a disadvantage there. Your GPA went up for grad school, but 3.6, relatively, is fairly low for a grad GPA. Mu best advice would be to get your GRE scores up, as you need something to countr the low GPA. Your publication record is good assuming they're in well-thought of journals, but with low stats you might be running into cutoffs before people look at the rest of your application closely.

Why would you assume you'd hear back before April 15th? That's the deadline that accepted candidates have to accept/reject offers, which means schools then have to re-offer to other candidates if the students they were most interested in reject their offers. It's very early in the season to assume you should have gotten a rejection notification- some schools don't send out the last batch until summer.

Well, on the one hand, it seems none of the universities are a very good research fit. I can't, in good conscience, recommend anyone going to a PhD program where they only have a single PI/research group they want to work with. My general recommendation is that you should not attend a program unless there are at least 3 research groups you'd be very happy joining. On the other hand, you still haven't given any real information for any of us here to go on. Giving professors and a generalized description of what you want to do doesn't allow any of us to help you figure out how you would fit into those groups. Do the projects you want to pursue align with the research in those labs? Did you get along with other graduate students/the PI when you visited/skyped? Have you emailed and talked to graduate students in any of the labs? None of us can tell you how well your background and experiences help you *fit* with any research group unless you tell us something about it. All I can note is that while all of the groups you mention are technically "materials" groups, they're very different in the subset of materials research they do, the applications of that research, and the approaches and methodology they apply. It means it should be relatively easy to pick one over the other based on your personal interests, as they're quite different researchers. You also didn't mention, but have you talked to each of those professors? Do they have room in their research groups, and are they interested in taking you on? Have they discussed what project of theirs you'll likely be working on?

That still says nothing at all about your research fit with the faculty at any of those schools.

1.5 years of research experience is definitely on the low side, and unless offset by a particularly batch of work, is likely to raise issues. I'd actually say it's even worse if it's 1.5 years spread over multiple labs/projects, as that raises the question of whether the applicant has done long-term project work and has the stamina to carry projects through in graduate school. That said, 1.5 years is a good amount- it certainly won't get your application thrown out right away, but it's just not competitive with people who have 5+ years that are applying.

I sync all of my data to GoodReader via either DropBox or Box (or any other server based storage) usually as PDFs. It has pretty good annotation tools, that I use for both articles and data files. I know people that also use it to teach, by hooking up the iPad to the projector and using PDFs. As a digital whiteboard.

I'll be honest, I've been on both sides of this as well, and I'm generally of the opinion that you make time for the people that are really important to you. When my closest friend was writing up and went through a six week period of not having time to do anything (and I mean even take 15 minutes to grab coffee), not answering phone calls, and only rarely responding to texts or emails, I told him that he was being a crappy friend. I was making the time to be there for him (and had for the last 6 years), and he wasn't able to do the same for me. It got through to him, we talked, and we've both considered it a turning point in our relationship. We're across the US from each other now, but we still make time to Skype and drink a beer weekly, no matter how busy our week has been. It's a lesson I remembered when I wrote my dissertation- I was in a time crunch, and needed to write a lot in very little time, but it wasn't worth neglecting my marriage, my family, or my friends during that period. I have undergraduates that still need mentoring, and friends that, well, still need a friend when they're having problems in their life and someone to talk to. There will always be busy times in your life, but going through a multi-month period where you don't have any time to spend 1 on 1 with your closest friend isn't healthy, either for you or for them. To be honest, your writing will go better if you don't do it for 18 hours straight a day either. Take breaks, use those breaks to take care of the other things in your life. The next step of your career isn't suddenly going to make you have more time- things will likely continue to get busier and busier. By setting a schedule *now* that lets you keep your priorities in check, it will benefit you moving forward as well. Now, as Juliet said- if your friend is exaggerating, you may already be putting enough priority on her. Or maybe she really isn't as high in your priorities as you (or she) think she is, and it's a good time to re-evaluate that.

Sure, but I've never seen a school accept comps/quals credit from another institution, even in the case of transferring PhD students. Especially in the case of a student having failed comps at the new school more than once. It's like making the argument during a grade appeal that you've gotten A's in other classes or at other schools- it's rarely pertinent to failing a current class.

I use my iPad mini about 20% for work, but it's really nice when I do have it. I've never been one to take electronics to class at all, so I can't speak to taking notes on the iPad (or a laptop) I always just did it by hand. What I do use my iPad for in relation to school is primarily storing PDFs (I have every paper I've downloaded in grad school on there and organized), and showing data. I really do like a tablet (vs a computer) to show data to my PI/visiting speakers, as it tends to be less awkward to put it on the table between us, and we can easily notate/diagram on the graphs/images I've taken. I also use it as a digital repository for my lab notebooks- I take pictures of all of them with a scanner app, and store them as searchable PDFs- but that's a lot less useful for someone not in bench sciences. Since lab notebooks aren't supposed to leave the lab, that lets me have a copy with me in my office/at home/when I'm out of town and need to check some detail of a procedure. It's also nice for those times when I'd like a screen bigger than my phone, but don't want to lug my laptop around. I use it a lot for administrative meetings, when I need to be able to reference draft policies and documents, but don't want to have a computer open in front of me. The iPad mini is nice for that, because I can slip it in my back pocket, but the screen is big enough (for me) to easily read a letter-sized PDF without zooming. I find it similarly useful at conferences when I want to do a quick check of a paper someone's referencing, but don't want to squint on my phone or pull out a laptop. I use it a lot more for personal things than work- it's my primary e-reader, for instance. Our public library has a fantastic ebook checkout system, and I read 2-3 novels per week when I'm unwinding. In short, if you have one I'm sure you'll get good milage out of it, but it's definitely not something you "need". That said, the new iPad Pro (with stylus input) for note-taking might be something else entirely, but it's too expensive for me to want to check out.

You don't say what field you're in, but shouldn't the difference between "not understanding due to awkward writing" and "not understanding due to conceptual difficulty" be pretty obvious? I know I find it pretty easy to tell the difference between a paper that gives me a headache because the way it's written isn't clear, and one I have trouble understanding because I'm lacking some conceptual background.

A large part of the *point* of a thesis is to show that you're able to come up with an interesting question or area of research. Asking other people to give you topics largely obviates that point.

Just to reply to your original post: I think people worry about ranking too much. I chose a much lower ranked school with some fantastic PIs over several top schools when I was starting off, and one of my close friends did the same. He's now an NRC post-doc at with an exceptionally competitive profile, and I'm seeing similar interest as I'm applying. What ends up mattering at the end of your PhD is (1) your CV (2) your ideas and experience, and (3) the connections you've made. Going to a top-tier school can help with all of the above- you have excellent faculty and great facilities, and usually the funding to go to conferences and make connections. But it doesn't guarantee it. Similarly, going to a lower tier school can make getting the publications, experience and connections you need more difficult, but if you're choosing a place with PI's you like that are well funded (and let's be honest, Duke is still an excellent school) it's not as big of a concern. The most important part of being a competitive graduate is that you find a place for your PhD where you, personally, can do your best work with supportive mentors and the facilities and funding you need to progress.

Just FYI guys, this post was from 2012. That said, I'm surprised your CO and advisor signed off on that cursory of a report- mine never would have.

Quality Group 1 is still subject to division among field lines though, isn't it? My understanding was that the field-based numbers of awards were set prior to determining who gets an award.

I deferred one year, in retrospect I should have deferred two. There's no assurance that they will, but NSF has given cost-of-living raises each year (including retroactive raises). 30k to 32k to 34k. Everyone is comparing letter rankings (because it's what you have), but that's not what's used to decide the awards. Think of letter rankings as an A B C system- the reviewers still give numerical scores for each application (Z-scores). You see your letter grade, but you also had a numerical score associated with your application. It also changes from reviewer to reviewer (scores are normalized to some degree to weed out too-easy and too-hard reviewers), as well as discipline to discipline. They try to keep the awards in each discipline proportional, so if you're in a very popular sub discipline with lots of applicants, you might need a more competitive score to get an award than someone in a smaller discipline. The school you're attending also matters to some degree (they try to use NSF awards to spread money to good applicants at institutions with lower numbers of other NSF grants), as well as your background and demographics.