Eigen

Actually, in a thesis based masters, you probably have done research with multiple faculty. Either in rotations, or as committee members for your thesis. They don't have to be your single, sole advisor for you to have done research with them. There are also collaborators who you've done smaller more specific projects with. And that's even more true as an undergraduate. Between your primary research advisor, collaborators, and possibly independent study-based research, you should have multiple faculty who have worked with you in a research-based capacity. And as for the "forms", they aren't as important as the letter itself. And there are lots of questions that don't exactly relate to research, but they should be answered from the perspective of a research advisor, as they're trying to get at how stable/easy to work with you are.

The honest truth in the eyes of your recommender? It's something they'll want to back up in their letters either way. If they're going to rank you as truly exceptional, they'll want to discuss how many students they've advised and worked with, and why you stand out as at the top or near the top of that pile.

IMO, whether or not it's appropriate for "second family" to write a letter for you depends on what context they've primarily seen you in. I shadowed, and then worked for, a Veterinarian for 6 years, through highschool and college. He was a mentor and like a second family to me. I would have had no problem asking him to write a recommendation when I was thinking of applying for Vet School, or similarly, any related field. The problem with the situation here, is that you didn't know this guy in a professional context. You worked as a nanny for him. Had you actually worked for him, or with him, or extensively shadowed him, than the situation might be different. But since that wasn't the case, he would not be able to write you a professional recommendation, but rather a personal one.... And personal recommendations really don't have much of a place in an application.

There's no harm in trying. You can always get good feedback for the next cycle, and apply next year. That said, my impression has been that broader impacts are very important- they won't win you a fellowship if the intellectual merit isn't there, but given that you have a solid proposal, you'll need them to win. And I think it's also important that you show both a history of service work and outreach, as well as future plans. If you just have good plans but nothing to back it up, it's similar to a grant proposal in which you have an interesting idea, but have no preliminary results/prior work published in the area. I'll also mention that your use of "extravagant" and the tone of your post seems to suggest that people who did these things weren't also busting their asses in school and working to keep up with rent.

Every application I filled out had a limit of 4 or 5 other schools, and definitely not a requirement to provide an exhaustive list. So while I think it's worthwhile to answer the question honestly, there's no need to list all 19 schools you would be applying to, but just a good selection of them. As to applying in different disciplines- this may be different between the lab sciences and social sciences, but a lot of our top applicants the last couple of years have been applying to a range of disciplines, although with related interests in each (think Molecular Biology, Biophysics, Chemistry, etc), and it hasn't hindered their applications at all.

Out of undergrad, I would see this hurting your application. Out of a Masters, I could see this being even more damaging. To what degree, I'm not sure- and there may be more discipline specific answers that could help. But in general, letters saying you're a good student aren't very helpful at all, because your transcript already shows that. Letters that are helpful will discuss your research potential, quality of your work, etc.

Yeah, I would be almost positive a 4+1 BS/MS program wouldn't count. I know our school doesn't even really consider those graduate programs, so I doubt they'd meed the NSF criteria for an eligible masters program. On the other issue, transferring, here's what the NSF has to say about it:

Just out of curiosity, since I don't know your project, why do you jump to "it's for the DoD, it must have potential weapons applications"? I get the other concerns with your research, but not that. The DoD funds a ton of research that isn't related to weapons- including a lot of biomedical research on wound healing, tissue regeneration, anti-viral drug development, etc. that has much wider implications to medicine as a whole.

You're overthinking it. They're standard questions, just answer them honestly and move on.

Two excellent posts by TakeruK and Julliet. I've made about a wedding a year since starting grad school, and none of those was I even in the wedding party. It's important to be there for your close friends, and (hopefully) this is the only chance you'll have to be with them at their wedding. Travel expenses aren't that expensive that you can't save them up this far in advance pretty easily, and most PIs would be very understanding of needing the time off. I had a friend who had all his professors shift his finals end of the first semester (PhD) because he was a best man in a wedding. Towards the end of your second year, you should have adjusted, have a good relationship with your PI, and be almost done (or done) with coursework, so it should be pretty easy to make it, time-wise.

Just a little extra insight here- When you get awarded and accept an NSF Fellowship, you are then assigned to the NSF program officer at your institution, who manages yearly status reports, reserve vs active requests, and any other issues. Basically, the NSF-GRFP acts as a grant on which the institutions NSF program officer is listed as the PI. So as mentioned above, you can't really use your "reserve" years to go to one institution, and then "active" years at another. You still have to turn in yearly progress reports while on reserve, as well as be working towards your stated degree.

Oh yeah! Languages! Forgot languages! I loved Latin, and found it very useful. But I'd personally say 3-4 semesters of a language, students choice. My personal preference would have been German or Russian, but we didn't have those, so I went with Latin instead.

Same general response, imo.

Personally, I think the sciences are under-represented as general education requirements. Were I designing a core curriculum, I'd require: 2 courses above Algebra/Trig in mathematics 2 courses with labs in Biology, Chemistry and Physics. I think along with this push, departments would have the resources (through more students) to design courses designed to be rigorous, but for non-majors. I also think 3-4 courses in the Social Sciences would be good- with at least one at a higher level (junior/senior course). 2 English courses past composition. 2 courses in History/Political Science. And personally, I think an introductory course in Renewable Resources/Environmental Science would be hugely beneficial across the board. Its a rough outline, and would probably need to be intensely revised for a particular type of program, taking into account the offerings, but you get the gist. What I found, personally, was that students majoring in the sciences were way more likely to take a wide array of upper level humanities/social science courses. In comparison, most students majoring in humanities & social sciences took as few and as easy of science courses as possible. It's a rough generalization, but I see it reflected at my current institution as well. Most of the science grad students have significant grounding in at least one SS/Humanities discipline (second major, multiple minors) but most of the SS/Humanities grad students have little to no background in any of the life or physical sciences. People view the sciences as "hard", and as such their presence in curricula is minimized relative to the SS/Humanities general ed requirements.

The rest of your post i agree with, mostly, but this I disagree with strongly. A lot of biochemistry is very quantitative, but there's also a lot of memorization that has to go into it. It's not really any different than having to know a bunch of integrals or derivatives, or having to know a bunch of organic transformations. At some point, there's a lot of bulk material that you're going to have to learn. It's not about making it hard "somehow", but about requiring you to learn all those things that you need to know if you're going to work in the field.

As a start, I would say if your son is interested, he should be posting here rather than you. I would also say that, depending, he might be someone who would benefit from taking some classes as a non-degree seeking student, to refresh the memory of some of his professors. In my experience, a professor who had the student, even one who remembered their performance in class, but who didn't know them any more than that can't write a very convincing letter of recommendation.

From my experience, making a B isn't that big of a deal. It's still a passing grade, and other stuff's more important. That said, what your instructor is asking you to learn sounds very typical. My undergrad biochem classes, we had to be able to draw every structure, as well as every transformation at every point in each of the metabolic cycles, including biosynthesis of all of the amino acids. It's just a lot of time, and a lot of memorization.

To add on, generally "professor" positions are tenured or tenure track, the exceptions being "Professor of Practice" and "Visiting Assistant Professor". What you want to look for are Assistant, Associate and full Professors, as a general rule.

Are you applying for a PhD? If so, usually, you don't apply to a school because you "like the school", so much as because there are a few professors there who's work you really like and would be interested in working with. Then you correspond with those faculty talking about their research, whether or not they're taking students, etc. And then you focus on 2-4 of them in your statement of purpose. Researching the faculty at the schools is a huge part of applying to programs, and one of the most important parts. 30 faculty really isn't that many- some of the schools I applied to had 70+.

If I recall, I used it as an opportunity to briefly talk about their work, and how it fit in with my interests.

You don't mention a discipline, so that makes this a bit hard to advise on. Personally, what you're getting given seems like easy work that will help you make connections in your field- getting in touch with people, helping organize a conference. And helping to organize and go through data isn't a bad thing either- it might be an easy lead in to a part on an upcoming paper. In the lab sciences, everything takes a "group" mentality- all tasks are divided up. Some of us do the ordering and talk to sales reps, some do the health and safety inspections and paperwork, some maintain instruments, spaces and labs. And we all grade for whatever class the PI is teaching.

In the US, any tenure track faculty member is usually involved in advising, from my experience. In fact, students graduated is one of the things usually required for a tenure package.

Didn't study much at all. Took a couple of practice tests (the ones on the disc ETS sends you) to familiarize myself with the format. Did well enough to get into all the schools I applied to, so I didn't worry about taking it again.

Mostly? Ability to annotate PDFs in the program, as well as the ability to pull metadata from PDFs. Those may be things that are in X4, though. And neither of them are a big deal, just would be convenient. Also, while I can get X2 through my department, my wife's department doesn't have it. So if I get a copy of X6, I can upgrade and we can both use it.

It's almost all family time for me. Between my family and my wife's family, we've got a lot to fit in. We usually do our extended families each over Christmas (5-day weekend), and then another 4-day weekend at New Years for immediate families. Our anniversary is also the week before Christmas, so it's usually nice to take a long weekend and go do something for that.