Eigen

Honestly, it's because you're in biochemistry. It's an immensely saturated field, and hard to get jobs at even at the MS/PhD level. The chemistry degree is probably giving you some leg up, but you're steering it into a much more crowded field. You'd probably have a lot more success if you went the analytical route. Chromatography always seems particularly in demand, as does solid background in MS techniques. UPLC-MS is getting huge for protein/DNA fragment analysis. A lot of getting a job is reading trends in the field and making sure your expertise is (a) something that will be in demand, and (b) something not a lot of other people have. So find what you could "develop" into given your current skill set.

It is somewhere between rare and not appropriate for a professor to tell you they would accept you as a grad student before you've applied to the program. It's one of the reasons I discourage people from directly asking this question- you almost never get a good response, and you put pressure on someone to sidestep the application system at the same time.

My point was that you don't need to know if they're accepting students before you apply. That's the whole point in picking schools with multiple potential PIs. I can't see what you gain by asking them that now, and think you'd be better off introducing yourself, saying you're applying, and asking an insightful question about their work.

Honestly, only some of this needs to be done before you apply. You don't need to know all of the faculty are taking students/have funding when you apply, just before you accept an offer. And if you take out those parts, it's easier to contact faculty without "over-selling" you wanting to join just their lab. Then you can send a more general email as a student who will be applying, and is reading out to faculty who they have particular interest in. My personal advice is... Don't contact someone unless you have specific and relevant questions to ask them. Ask about possible directions for their work- something like "I'm really interested in the work you did in X paper 2 years ago, and was wondering if you have plans to pursue Y direction?" You can include some things about yourself and your background as you ask these questions, which comes across less pushy than an overt "sell". If you can get a conversation started, you have more opportunities to sell yourself down the road. Keep the first email short and make it have a specific point.

There are also the "quasi-tenure" positions a lot more schools have for lecturers that are rolling 3-5 year contracts (I've seen one school with 10). It's not "tenure", but it serves a very similar purpose.

Trying to do anything for this fellowship (or honestly, any grant) without sounding cheesy is.... really difficult. Embrace the cheese!

NIH requires that all pre-prints be uploaded to PubMed within 1 year of publication, or you lose your grants. They don't pay the journals for open access, rather, they go around copyright- you don't submit the exact same article to NCBI as you do to the journal- you submit a pre-print. It's a cheap way of sidestepping copyright, but since the vast majority of research in some fields is funded by the NIH, no journal wants to go against it, so it works out well. Otherwise, that journal would just stop getting NIH funded research published there. It's one of the few cases where the journal ends up being strong-armed, rather than doing the pressuring.

Just putting in a plug for Andreotti. She's got some amazing research, and I think would make a fantastic PI from my interactions with her.

Hah, no jab at VAP's intended- I'm one, after all.

I'm assuming this is a typo, but I think you probably meant a "tenure track" faculty, rather than a "tenured" faculty? American systems have the "tenure track" line (Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor), where only a Professor is guaranteed to have tenure. Then many universities have "Lecturers" who are often full time, but not tenure track- they are teaching as opposed to research faculty. On the other hand, you have "Research Professors"- Research Assistant Professor, Research Associate Professor, Research Professor who are non-tenure track research faculty. Both of these tracks are (generally) full time "renewable" positions- not tenured, but assumed to be reasonably permanent. There are also the less permanent positions- Visiting Assistant Professors and Adjunct Professors/Lecturers. The former is not assumed to be permanent (it's usually a limited time contract) and adjunct professors/lecturers who are frequently not full time, or not assumed to be full time. Ideally, you get your letters of recommendation from tenure track faculty- and even a letter from an assistant professor will likely serve you well- as they can ideally speak to both your research and coursework abilities. As to the above list, there is obviously (by this thread) a lot of debate about who earns what title. There seems to be a strong thread of argument that only full time, tenure track faculty should be actually called "professor" in the classroom, with a counterargument that any of these faculty members should be called professor. It may be pedantic, but I'd argue that there's a serious undercurrent here in terms of how people's work is valued- I frequently associate arguments that lecturers shouldn't be called "professor" with a strongly negative evaluation of their work, and a hint of the older academic caste system, which is something I feel like is slowly fading and not a good thing.

I didn't actually make an appeal to authority. I just pointed out that this particular argument seemed surreal to me. And the surreal part, to me, was that in general I find those looking forward to a position are more protective of it than those doing the job. It's like the stigma of new PhDs wanting everyone to call them Doctor. If I'd wanted to make the appeal to authority card, I'd have used my authority, not someone else's. Also, to edit in: the opposite of an appeal to authority has already been made, by @EmmaJava accusing @rising_star of taking the issue personally due to not being a real professor. The fact that already entered into it was part of what made the whole thing surreal. On the derailed topic at hand, I think arguing that a lecturer (the original post by @EmmaJava wasn't about TAs, the topic to which its now pivoted) doesn't deserve the title of professor. Including, apparently, some of There are countries where that is true, and "professor" is an earned title, but the US isn't one of those. I think it's pretty hard to argue that a long term, full time lecturer doesn't 'deserve' to be called professor, but that a VAP does just because it's part of their job title. Everywhere I've taught enforces the right of anyone teaching in a college classroom to be called professor, if we're adding another data point. Granted, there weren't TAs teaching classes at these places, and I think that is a separate discussion from whether lecturers are professors. If we really want to follow the strictest sense of the law, you don't deserve to be called professor until after promotion to full, as in the UK.

Watching someone argue with a professor about who deserves to be called professor under what circumstances is a bit surreal.

Glad it all worked out for you!

This is more true for private than public schools, and depends on the difference between in and out-of state tuition. If the out-of-state tuition is twice in-state, the school is effectively choosing between two in-state graduate students or one out-of-state student. Some state schools accordingly require you to become a resident to lower the tuition. In other words, they'll pay the difference during the year it takes you to establish residency, but after that either you pay the difference or you establish residency. See some of the Cali schools for this.

But that's not what you said- you said you can't establish residency while in school. You can establish residency while in school, you just can't immediately become a resident for tuition purposes. If you do establish residency while in school, your tuition will go back to the in-state value after you've been in the state for a year. Most undergrads don't establish residency because they can't meet the requirements- and it's usually not worth it. It means they (usually) can't be on their parents insurance, can't go back home and work a job over breaks, etc. Most graduate students do establish residency, but don't have to- they can opt to consider themselves students and go home to register a car, get at drivers license, etc.

Thought some of you might not have seen this and find it interesting: Almost a perfect inverse trend between doctorates granted and job postings. One of the more comprehensive data sets I've seen. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/08/28/more-humanities-phds-are-awarded-job-openings-are-disappearing

You can, you just don't have to.

Everything has an impact, it's hard to gauge exactly how much impact it will have, or whether the time/effort is worthwhile. In general, the most important part of a chemistry graduate application is showing that you're a capable researcher and your research experience and interests fit the group you're applying to. This is why some universities prefer applicants with post-baccalaureate experience- research or a degree. It shows that you have more time in the lab and are going to be able to "hit the ground running" when you start. Grades and GRE mean (relatively) little- they show you'll be able to handle the coursework, but that's a pretty low bar to pass. A PhD is a research degree, and your preparation for research is the key factor to getting in. It makes profile evaluations really difficult, because none of us are in a position to evaluate your research- you've done several projects, but not more than a year of total work, although it will be more by the time you graduate. We also don't know how deeply you were involved in those projects- did you direct them, or were you just working on them? Did you contribute to the design and planning? For comparison, my undergraduates that I consider competitive for top positions have (usually) at least 3 or 4 full-time summers of research experience, where they are active in designing the projects they work on. Most also have experience during the semester, some up to 2-3 full years of work. Granted, I'm at a really good institution and most of my students go on to top PhD programs. The other key component that none of us can guess at are your letters- ideally, they'll speak to your ability to walk into a lab and start producing quality data in a self-directed fashion, because that's what most PhD advisors in chemistry want.

Waterloo: A student is eligible to apply for direct admission to the PhD in Chemistry - Co-operative program if they have a first class Honours Bachelor of Science degree, or the equivalent, and is a Canadian citizen or landed immigrant. Course requirements are reduced by 1 course for students admitted directly to the PhD program from a Bachelor of Science (BSc). So not all bachelors, but definitely not a hard requirement of an MS. As to the immigrant status... The MS as an admission req mentions domestic students only as well, so I'm guessing it's confusingly written. For UBC, you're looking at the college wide page, not the chemistry program. UBCs chemistry program does direct admit. https://www.chem.ubc.ca/graduate-admissions

Not true for chemistry, or at least not a universal requirement. McGill's program does direct admit with a BS, I know, and I'm pretty sure others do as well.

You're looking for general rules where none apply. How much you share with someone depends on that particular relationship, not some imaginary and enforced personal-professional divide. Many of my work colleagues are just work colleagues. Some are also friends. Some of my friends have no connection to what I do. I think of it in terms of a venn diagram with personal and professional overlapping with friends. Some friends are just personal, some are professional. Some of my personal and professional life overlap, some doesn't. I think you're going to have a really hard time in grad school if you make no friends with whom you can discuss classes, professors, advisors, exams... And moreover, I would consider that "professional", just like I talk to my colleagues about research woes, how our classes are going, etc.

C'mon people. It's harder to put the trolls back under their bridge after they've been fed.

Depends on the wording of what the school requires. Since you're not saying what they require, I can't guess as to whether they'll be acceptable or not. But generally, if a school lists requirements for the letters, meeting them isn't really optional in my view.

I've never seen a requirement like this, but if they ask for specific recommendations and you don't have them, I'm not sure they'd even consider it- they might consider the application incomplete.

Yeah, this kinda goes back to our discussion about standalone programs, but a lot of people that do the work you're interested in won't be in (or necessarily affiliated with) a structural biology/biophysics/biochemistry program. Some may be, some may be in biology, chemistry, biomedical engineering, biomedical sciences, etc.