Eigen

I guess it depends how expensive your state school. My tuition was around $1600/semester full time- some state schools are definitely cheaper than others, especially the non-flagship state schools.

The ACS requirements are stated a bit differently- there's some variability in *which* upper level courses are/may be required. You have general chemistry requirements (2 courses) Foundational Courses- Analytical, Biochemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Physical Chemistry, of which Organic and Physical are year long (2 semester) courses. In-depth coursework- 12 hours of advanced classes that build on one of the foundational classes. At least when I got my degree, that was fulfilled by 4 of Instrumental Analysis, Advanced Organic, Advanced Biochemistry, QM and Advanced Inorganic. Coursenames might vary, and there's flexibility to include additional upper level courses there. I'm pretty sure for a program to be ACS certified, however, all 5 of the in-depth areas must offer courses. For labs, a total of 400 lab-hours are required, distributed between foundational and in-depth coursework. Undergraduate research is also required to be offered, and can count for some of the in-depth coursework and some of the lab hours, depending. Practically, almost every certified chem major I've run into took primarily the same courses I listed above, with differences in one of the in-depth classes, usually, mainly between those that took a second biochemistry and those that took QM.

Man, I completely missed those fields in the second post! So, to update, Usmivka is absolutely correct. And imo, a biology/biochemistry major will prepare you better for genetics and Aquatic Ecology than a chemistry major will, and a geology major would leave you better prepared for Oceanography, unless you're going specifically into Geochemistry, in which case it's a tossup. Which leaves me a bit confused as to why this is in the chemistry section. Along these lines, you mention that there's research going on in Wildlife, but that you're not interested in it... It seems like Wildlife research would be fairly close to Aquatic Ecology, at least in terms of the basics of the research. Different sampling techniques, but similar background and theories. It's not that you can't take a Chemistry major on to those fields, but lacking the chem courses wouldn't be a big deal at all.

I think the lack of research combined with the lack of courses will make grad school quite difficult. You're missing 3 PChem courses, Instrumental Analysis, Organic Synth, Advanced Inorganic/Organometallics and a second Biochem course from an ACS certified curriculum. I assume you've had labs with all of the courses you mentioned? You might be in a position where you'd be able to get into an MS program (say, at your local state school), and then move on to a PhD program, but that MS program might not be funded. Could you, at this point, transfer to the state school? You've got about two years of chemistry coursework left in a typical curriculum, which would be a fine time to transfer. You mention that your husband won't allow you to do a summer program, but how will that work out with you going on to a PhD, where you'll have to move (likely quite far) and be working a good many more hours a week than you are now?

Because after 18 pages it had devolved and was no longer productive? Either way, it was locked a year ago. Why bring it up now?

Depends on the system of the school. Some schools start an application when you submit the first thing, be it GRE scores or something else. So if they get GRE scores and having nothing else for you, they start a file with those scores. Other schools just look to match GRE scores with applications. If you're worried about it, it's worth checking with the schools you're looking to apply to, to double check.

Depends on the school and program. I have had several schools very clearly state that they don't keep GRE scores that come in before they have a file on you (and in fact, I had to pay to resend them to one such school). Other schools will start a file when they receive the scores. It's worth noting that you don't have to have a finished application, just have started one for the system to register you most places. As to app dates opening- all my schools but one had them open in the summer, and the "late" school opened applications in September. I think I had all of my apps submitted by early October.

It's in that awkward in-between time... Both too early and too late to switch easily. As Ktel said, if you switch now, you're not really giving School X a fair chance, and it will show. But they've already committed, which means that if you leave, they may well loose the funding they were going to give to you, and probably can't easily take on a new grad student for the spot you have. I would also encourage you to see what other faculty at School X you might want to work with, if your current PI has such a bad rep among the grad students. I definitely had second thoughts my first semester, but it smoothed out after I got settled in.

A lot of my department live together- probably about half. It works out quite well for everyone that I know. No one tried it before their second year, though, so they all knew each other going into it. My wife and I are slitting our house with someone from my cohort, and it works out great. We're at opposite ends of the department, but we have a lot of the same frustrations and stresses, so it's really helpful to have someone there that knows what you're complaining at and you can vent to. We also knew each other for two years before we moved in together, so we had a pretty good idea that we would be compatible- we just re-signed a year lease, so it's worked out quite well.

Exactly what TakeruK said. You're resume should be short (I've personally heard one page, if possible) while your CV continually grows. Mines around 4 pages now, and I'm slowly removing most of my undergrad stuff. The rule of thumb I've heard is that most high school stuff should be gone by the time you finish undergrad, and most undergrad stuff should be done by the time you finish your PhD, but that most grad school stuff stays on forever. Obviously, some things from undergrad never leave- pubs, major awards, presentations, etc. but some of the more minor stuff you start replacing with more recent and relevant work.

Technically, I consider all exchanges of articles to be short term collaborations, which proctects them under the statutes of the agreements I have signed through my institution with publishers. Secondly, I don't send any articles out to people doing "for-profit" work, and I am a strong believer in the fact that academic research should be open access. Our user agreement stipulates that I can share research with collaborators, that I'm not to have in excess of 5000 articles downloaded at any one time, and that it's not to be used in a for profit sense. So I'm quite careful to obey the letter of the agreements, even though I don't believe in the spirit. I have friends in non-academic reseach settings that have asked me to do the same thing, and I won't, since I can't technically obey the letter of the law. It's the same thiing that allows me to send out a copy of an article that I have that is slightly off from a published article- ie, final paper as submitted vs. proof from the publisher. Technically, they only copyrighted the article that we both agreed on post-proof. It's a very shakes loophole, but that's what most professors use to put PDFs of their papers online, and its mostly accepted. As to your second point, I'm not in a "book" field, I can't remember the last time anyone needed a copy of a book for research. And since most people in my field pay the editorial costs for journals, I'm definitely not taking royalties from any other researcher. And honestly, I'd prefer people to get a free copy of my work and actually have it disseminate than make royalties off of it, myself. There's a huge pushback against the current practice of closed access publishing from within the Ivory Tower, so I think it's questionable to say that it undermines the economic model of the Ivory Tower (again, book fields accepted, we're talking about articles here). It's why NSF and NIH require any work done with their funding to be published open access, it's why the PLoS journals are taking off, and it's why journals in my field have been moving to upfront payments by the authors for publishing costs vs. a subscription model for non-print access.

I'd get a friend that's still in school to either let you use their login, or send you articles, rather than getting a journal subscription. I send lots of articles out to friends at schools with worse journal access, and swap articles with peers who have differing journal access to myself. I know most of my professors and friends do the same.

Most local universities (especially publics) will have a program to allow community members to access library resources, although almost always on-campus only. Call them up and ask! It may cost a little ($40-$60/year), but it's by far the cheapest way.

Our school would allow you (potentially) to do an interdisciplinary degree- but you'd just get one diploma, not two. You would, for instance, be accepted into the PhD English program, and then find an advisor in Library Sciences who wanted to work with you, and do work that straddled the two fields. Not quite the same as doing two degrees at once, though, which I think most schools might have a problem with.

This is best explained by the following chart: As well as the preceding strips.

Yeah, that seems awfully late for a GRE date to me as well. I think I took mine in August or September, and I still had applications that were waiting on it. Also, I think it's a bad idea to go into the test planning on taking it multiple times, personally.

I don't think a hook is bad, as long as it's not one of the hugely obvious cliched hooks that most professors who have read hundreds of SoPs will have seen a great many times and will view as a (relative) waste of space.

They probably haven't released the solicitation (and thus the date) for the 2013 fellowship year. It's usually sometime in early-mid November, or has been in the past.

I'd be interested in reading the article, would you mind posting a reference for it? A DOI would work great as well.

I can say that you would probably stand out in your application, and that it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Personally, I'd say you can do as much with individual review as with refresher undergrad courses, coupled with some basic refresher courses once you get to grad school. The first thing you'll want to do is hook back up with your undergrad research advisors and professors, since you'll need them to write you letters of recommendation. They also might have some good advice for how best to approach grad school. If I were you, I'd say you've got nothing to lose by applying this season- I think the exact factors you mention here could make a quite strong statement of purpose, and you have some defined interests for future goals as well.

I'm betting they're talking about a quarter system as opposed to a semester system.

Undergrad % acceptance rates are really, really bogus though. Most universities have a variety of ways to quasi-artificially inflate them, just so it can look like they're more selective. Also, prospective undergrads (at least the higher tier students) apply much more broadly to schools. Most prospective grad students are likely to be a lot more focused in their search and subsequent applications.

You don't give nearly enough information for any kind of a reasonable answer to your question. How extensive is your research experience? Is it in the area you're looking to apply? What are your GRE scores/what are they likely to be? Will you be able to get several strong letters of recommendation? Do you have faculty and schools narrowed down to a particular sub-discipline that you're interested in? Also, you're asking a combined question about an MS and a PhD, when the two are likely to be quite different. MS programs are often easier to get into, but are more difficult to get funding in. Conversely, PhD programs are generally more difficult to get into, but often fund all admitted students.

You're trying to compare apples and oranges. Undergraduate admissions, degree of competitiveness, prestige, etc. with graduate admissions. The two are not similar enough to compare, imo. As was pointed out above, just getting into any decent PhD program puts you a step above most undergraduates at any institution, so trying to compare whether it's more "prestigious" to have gone to Harvard as an undergraduate or graduate is rather a moot point, and kind of a silly comparison.

Go for it. I'm two years younger than my wife, and I know a number of other couples with similar age differences. As has been said, once you get older, the couple of years matters less and less.