Eigen

I don't notice a consistent difference between fields over multiple years. A particular department might want more of one than another in a given year to balance things out. Grad school is competitive overall, and schools want students that have shown they're consistently interested in the area they plan to study.

My worry about your application is less GPA and GRE scores, as these don't matter as much as you seem to think. I'd worry more about the fact that your undergrad is in ChemE rather than Chemistry, as well as the fact that not only is the research experience short, it's in a different field entirely. The most important thing for grad school is usually fit- showing that you're prepared to jump into a research program, and a ChemE degree with Neuro research experience doesn't strike me as the ideal background for PChem. If you could wrangle 3 really strong letters, that would help a lot- and they'd need to speak to your ability as a physical chemist.

IMO, coming from a MA program, having been in class with a letter writer doesn't mean much. They need to speak to your ability as a researcher, not your ability as a student. This means your committee members, that read and approved of your scholarship (thesis) are some of your best choices.

In general, my feeling is that you want to have 3+ POIs at any school. Multiple factors can effect availability, and you should make sure that there are several faculty who you could potentially work with. I know some other people focus on one person, but I think the flexibility and benefits to a committee down the road are quite helpful.

If someone you feel knows you well (Dr A) thinks that another professor (Dr C) would be a better person to write the letter, why not ask that person? I can certainly see the argument that someone on your committee is a better choice for a letter than someone not on your committee. You mention you're getting a letter from your committee chair- who is the 3rd writer? How does their letter mesh with the others? Have you asked your committee chair what they think?

Personally, I would do it in person. Some of this depends on (1) your relationship with your advisor and (2) policies at your school. Does your school have defined vacation policies for graduate students/RAs? If you have a reasonable relationship with them, I'd drop by their office and tell them you need to buy tickets for going home around Christmas, and wanted to make sure there weren't any particular dates you needed to be around. Do you have reason to expect that your advisor will need you around for particular dates during the break? If not, I would tell them the dates you plan on being gone, and then say that you can shift them if needed.

Just putting it out there- emailing the graduate director to ask if GRE or GPA or anything else is more or less highly weighted is a really bad way to start a dialogue with the program, and will not likely lead to direct answers.

Generally, Universities take 50% or more off the top of the research grant as "overhead" to pay for electricity, water, and lab/office space. Usually, the money comes to and is held by the University, with funds available to the professor There arent deadlines, per se, but usually yearly progress reports. Often funding is doled out per year, over a set number of years. Grants usually have have budgets that say what the money can and can't be used for- supplies, equipment, salary. A a lot depends on the grant and granting agency though.

This isn't strictly true. While no one can decide for someone, or know what is best for them, even strangers on an internet forum can help an individual think through their options and provide insight on possibilities.

For a comparison, at my school, an NSF fellowship, including the cost of education allowance to the school and my stipend together covers about 50% of my "cost" to the school. It's a benefit, but they're still having to outlay a significant chunk of money to get me there.

It didn't really add any coursework for me to do a math minor, but bio has a lot less base math requirements. That said, I think a basic Bio degree should also have all of the necessary pre-med coursework built in, so you should be able to put electives towards math. I wouldn't worry too much about taking "extra" courses to prepare for med school, if that's the issue.

It's a very personal decision. I was pre-med and chemistry throughout undergrad, and was interested in an MD/PhD joint program. What I ended up deciding was that since I was interested in doing both, but also might be interested in just the PhD.... I'd do the PhD first. Med school accrues quite a bit of debt. A PhD, on the other hand, depending on where you end up, can pay a living wage. I'm no longer interested in going back to med school, and after having friends in joint programs, I'm really glad I didn't do one. That said, I didn't have to do any modifications to my class schedule/prep either way. Take the MCAT, take the GRE. Coursework should be fairly similar between the two tracks.

I should say that the tacit understanding from my University was that it would add to my funding time. Not that we're a department that particularly limits years of funding, but the intent was that getting the fellowship meant they would commit to me for that much longer.

You would generally ask the PI of the lab to write the letter, and they get information from the graduate student you worked with as appropriate. I've had my PI ask me for this several times for undergraduates who worked with me. If you're really worried about it, approach the graduate student before you approach the PI, and they can talk to the PI about writing some portions of the letter.

I do agree that this is largely field specific. While not everyone agrees, in most bench sciences it's pretty well understood that taking on an undergraduate increases the amount of work for a graduate student, rather than decreasing it. Similarly, they are rarely simply there to help the graduate student- they usually end up with their own research project that must be supervised and managed by the graduate student/faculty member they're working for. That said, I think the difficulty you're describing is universal- even if the reason I'm working with the undergraduate is to help them grow, at some point they need to be cut off from having to run every little thing they need to do by me, and they need to learn how to look up basic information themselves. One strategy that I've found helpful is to set the rule in place that they need to try to figure something out on their own first- and then they can explain to me what they tried, and what problems they're having. It means I can critique their process and help them modify it for the future, rather than giving them a protocol to follow. The other strategy, that is less for the students growth and more for ensuring good results.... Is to learn how to write very detailed procedures and protocols. I have such written up for every piece of equipment in our lab, as well as a number of data analysis protocols. They're step-by-step, such that it's almost impossible for someone to not be able to follow them. I would probably default to the latter approach for a freshman, and the former approach for a senior, with some transition time between them. I usually also have the benefit of long-term relationships with my undergraduate RAs- they start in the freshman year, and I get to keep them until they graduate, usually. So I can walk them through from not knowing anything to being independent.

Happened to me, definitely not just humanities. Pretty common everywhere I'm familiar with.

Thanks for the response, and thanks for sharing- I completely agree with the message. I think far to often we're trained to rely on our mentors/rely on authority, and the transition from that to taking control of our studies can be rough- and quite honestly, a bit scary. It extends from being the person most knowledgeable about your degree and what should be happening there to being the one most knowledgable about your actual research- by the time you're defending, you are likely to be one of the most knowledgeable people in the niche you've carved out for yourself, and taking ownership of that can be a really difficult step to take.

I'm not sure if there's a question in here somewhere, or this is just a general post (venting, perhaps?), but something stood out to me very strongly as being quite different in your situation. In my experience, meetings such as this (with your committee) would be planned by the student, and it would be the student who sent out the invitations/materials/set up the time when the committee could meet. With that said, how would someone who you know had recused yourself from the committee get an invite, and someone you knew was supposed to be on your committee not be there? Was your committee chair the one that set up the meeting and invited people?

Without a general discipline, it's hard to give more specific advice- especially because in my experience, if you're on a fellowship, you're not usually allowed to be an RA. You'd be a graduate fellow working for/with a faculty member. That said, I think it's totally reasonable to be asked for time sheets, and certainly legal. Even if you're not being directly paid from a grant by this individual, they are acting as your supervisor.

What might be more difficult is getting a rotation in, say, pure physical chem if you came in declaring chemical biology. Generally, departments try to take in people in disciplines that match groups that are looking for students- I know sometimes we wouldn't have any space in groups in a different discipline than what someone applied in some years. Others it would work out fine.

Paper vs computerized. Computerized tests give you increasingly difficult questions the more you get right, paper tests can't do that.

If the deadline is November 1st, I'd expect her to submit in the last week of October. Lots of academia is about triaging work, and doing things more than a month before you need to is rarely in the cards.

The problem with that is that biomedical science has the lowest pay/highest unemployment of any of the sciences right now.

It's a good paper. Biomedical sciences of all the hard/soft sciences are in the biggest crunch- more supply than demand.

The tricky part for this is that it's a leap of faith. You generally have to decide that you're leaving your current institution, make peace with your advisor(s) and get them supportive enough to write a letter. And then apply to new schools. It's not kosher, and generally will go very poorly if you apply while still a student at your current school, without them knowing that you're intending to leave. Admissions committee's will see that you're a student at your school, and I know cases where faculty at the new schools have then contacted advisors at the current school to ask what was going on. Without full support (or at least grudging support) from your current institution, you'll throw up huge red flags from the places you're applying. Another option, if your school allows it, is to try to switch to an MA track and finish by the end of the year. Then you'll get something out of the experience at your current school, and it makes a clean(er) break leaving. Additionally, while I think your comments about getting a job are valid, I wouldn't necessarily expect another school to have the same vibrant intellectual community (especially in your sub-field) that you see at conferences. Sure, the cohort will be larger, but there are lots of stories on these forums of people being quite disappointed with the lack of intellectual connection within their cohort. Some are great, some not-so-great, but hoping you'll have a wonderful group of peers to share ideas with and bounce things off of isn't always what works out.