Eigen

The fellowship didn't have an early deadline. The OP didn't make the cut for the fellowship, the department said they could pull strings and get him a one year fellowship if he really wanted to come. They told him they could only do it for one applicant, and would lose it if the person they gave it to didn't come. He could have gone without the first year fellowship and full funding. Also, as per his official offer letter, he has until April 15th to officially accept. He would just be backing out on a personal assurance he made to the department that he would go, and cost them to lose the fellowship they could have given to someone else.

Also to add, you could have simply declined the fellowship. You still would have had the admission and what sounds like full funding, and could have waited until the April 15th deadline. The only thing they needed an immediate acceptance on was to nominate you for the special 1 year fellowship.

It's not about what decision you made, it's about what you do once you make a decision. I'm not sure what I would have done in your case. Personally, I got awarded a major fellowship at one of my finalist universities the day after I accepted another offer. The timing sucked, but I made a decision and stuck with it. And I'm still happy with my decision. A lot of moving through life is realizing that you can't always have all the options on the table at one time- you'll frequently have to decide between a sure thing now, and the potential for something better a bit down the road. And you'll have to learn to make a decision, and stick with it. The job market is definitely like that- you may get an offer at a good university while you're scheduled for an interview with your dream school. You can stall, ask for extensions, and try to get them both on the table together, but chances are you'll have to choose one or the other. In your case, I think you made a solid decision. Both are good schools, one gave you a great funding offer and pushed to get you there. You accepted. Go with that, and enjoy your time at OSU.

These are names for different, very general, types of exams that schools give. Each school tends to be a little different.

I just wanted to agree with the above post. You gave an in-writing commitment to the department that you would go. Could you get out of it? Sure. But it would screw over the department and another applicant, and would start you off with a bad reputation. Also note that the entirety of the CGS resolution relates to funding offers, not admission. You accepted the departments offer of admission, and that's not discussed under the CGS.

This will depend strongly on the school. Either they'll let you jump straight into one lab, if the PI is interested, or still want you to do the rotations as an educational experience. Generally, what I've seen in the latter cases is that your PI who's lab you'll come back to will suggest specific rotations to pick up skills/connections/work with potential committee members. It's a great time to go to a new lab and learn a specific skill, or get access to a particular instrument.

The bus system is pretty bad, but it's a relatively bike friendly system. That said, it rains. A lot. So take that into account if you're planning on being carless. I know a lot of people at Tulane that have gone without a car, but Tulane itself has a good shuttle system around town, and most of them lived uptown, which is a bit more bikeable and has closer housing/grocery stores/etc than UNO.

Alternately, contact your new department and see if there are any current grad students looking for a roommate. I know we frequently have openings in apartments that have had graduate students in them for years- someone rotates out, someone else rotates in. If you want to PM me, I can give you more specific suggestions.

Ok, this thread has long since stopped serving any purpose than generating reports. Locking it. If you found portions of the discussion useful and would like to carry on those discussions in another thread, feel free.

Being as that question was asked almost 3 years ago, I doubt they're still looking for an answer.

If by profiles you mean accounts, then no. The results page doesn't require a login, and isn't directly tied to the forums.

NLB has to rule on the ability to unionize. See the problems MIT & Yale are currently having, and the back and forth on Brown. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_student_unionization is a good summary. Basically, it seems like each case that comes up before the NLB gets handled differently, which shifts the precedents back and forth. State supreme courts can hear an appeal of rulings, and that's whats happened in some states that have allowed unionization. Cal State schools are a really bad example, though, since they didn't get accepted into a teaching union or anything related to higher ed, but are rather subsumed into the United Auto Workers union.... And apparently, get very little say in what happens at the collective bargaining table, with UAW just handling it.

Tagging on to what TakeruK said, a large portion of the books I suggested are targeted at faculty and professionals, not students of any level. The Kathy Barker book in particular is written to new PIs on lab management, for instance, while "Professors as Writers" is definitely targeted at, and recommended by, professors.

So has the NLB reversed it's last ruling that graduate students could not be considered employees and unionize? Last I recall, that was the major barrier to such unionization.

0 for undergrad and 0 for grad school. Went to a regional state school and worked + scholarships for undergrad, and got good funding packages for grad school. But to be honest, I wouldn't have done grad school if I'd had to pay for it.

You can use publications to rank, but I can think of a handful of molecular biologists with very few publications (~15 total) that are considered at the top of their field. As you become more familiar with your field, you get a better feel for who the major players/respected researchers are.

Our department no longer gives out funding prior to visits/Skype interviews. Tooany bad experiences with someone who looked great on paper, and turned out to be less than expected. Everyone that visits now is on the list for acceptance and funding now, assuming they don't really turn out to not fit in at all. Not saying yours is the same case, but it's possible.

I think having colleagues you enjoy is exceptionally important, as is having a mentor you work well with. That said, neither of those necessarily need to be either your group-mates or your PI. You can have colleagues in your department that you have lunch with, bounce ideas off of, and collaborate with even if they aren't in your group. Similarly, you can have a mentor outside of your PI- in some cases, it's even helpful to have a second mentor even if you really like your PI. In your case, I think it's going to have to come down to a gut call- neither situation seems bad, as neither situation has a lot of negative interactions- just good vs very good.

All of mine were solo, and most of them were dig into my knowledge type chats. Either presentations of the PIs research with time for me to ask questions and comment, and/or questions about my research, what I'd been working on, and details of schemes and synthetic transformations and such.

All of ours were 30 minute interviews. Definitely a long day!

Note that many large graduate schools will have one, or more, full time administrators who do nothing other than deal with graduate admissions and paperwork. We even have one for our department that does mostly this. Then think of how much you're paying in app fees, and think that those are split between one or more administrators salaries. It's not like this money is going to the admissions committee. Also think about the number of people the school will bring out for interviews or visits, and how they fund those.

Unless you had several cycles of revisions or took like 4 mos. doing revisions, I wouldn't think it's normal.

Woah, 7 mos for an ACS journal? There's something going on there. Usually turnaround for ACS journals is shorter than RCS journals, and for most of the chemical sciences, turnover for a paper decision is 3-6 weeks. That's been pretty true for everything I've reviewed as well. We had one take 2 mos and got a heartfelt apology from the editor.

This is not necessarily true. There are schools that aren't signed on to the CGS resolution, and there are also schools every year that break it. It's a "gentleman's agreement", with no direct repercussions other than a growing bad rep for making students decide earlier. If the school says they have to decide in 3 weeks, they may well have to decide in 3 weeks, as much as that sucks.

Sounds pretty normal- I'd even say a bit light, at least for my department. Most of our prospectives meet ~9 faculty, and then breakfast, lunch and dinner with grad students and other faculty. Most of my visits at other schools were about the same.