Synth

Hey lotus, It sounds to me (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), that you're depressed and that's preventing you from enjoying chemistry and potentially the graduate student experience. I don't think it's fair to say that you're not passionate about chemistry, or that this isn't what you want to do- because depression and loneliness is incredibly real and all consuming, especially for lgbtq people in the sciences. I say this as a third year lgbtq graduate student. I love chemistry, I know it, but when I was depressed it was hard for me to feel like I liked anything. All I felt was that it was miserable and lonely. The most important thing is addressing the isolation and depression that you're experiencing. Without addressing that, moving from field to field or job to job isn't going to matter very much. What helped me the most was finding people to talk to (especially people who are lgbtq in the sciences), and realizing that I had options (even if I didn't end up taking some of the options, like transferring). Let me know via pm if you need a contact. I have quite a few contacts in various chemistry positions. I know of quite a few graduate students, postdocs, and professors who are lgbtq and have gone to graduate school all across the country and can offer some perspective on what different things that you could do to address the isolation that you feel without feeling like you have to give up entirely on your graduate career. I hope everything gets worked out! Synth.

For me the ranking goes: 1. Do I like their work? If I don't, I don't care how famous they are, or how cool of a person, I would not want to spend 5 years working on a project that I don't care about. 2. Do I think they would be a good boss? (Would I be okay working under them- would they push me to do better, without driving me to quit? Are they good enough at their job that the lab is funded, or do we constantly have to recycle solvents, etc. etc.) 3. Where do they place their graduates? If you want to go into academia and this professor is really famous in placing people in industry, that's not particularly helpful. 4. And then finally within that, prestige is important as well. But I find that this is strongly correlated with 3.

If you're connected in terms of friends from uni who have gone to grad school, etc. asking them to ask around is definitely another good route to go. I get a significant portion of my information from asking friends and friends of friends, etc. and eventually if all goes well they'll connect with someone who either 1. worked in the lab under the person, or 2. if it's a younger prof worked in a lab with that person (either postdoc or grad student) and can give you an idea of not only impact of the person, but also what kind of person that professor is like to work for.

Out of curiosity, who is the new faculty member?

I was just notified that application decisions for MIT are now available online. I don't know whether or not this is true for everyone- but just a heads.

This depends a lot on the school from what I can tell, some of my friends that are already in grad school told me that post Feb. 15th is where it's reasonable to start questioning the status of your app, though it depends on the school. I would advise against saying things like, "I want to plan all my trips at once," but rather just send a friendly email asking them when you can expect to hear back. I would also look at the gradcafe survey and see if anyone's heard back yet in your department. If not, I would advise against sending an email. I also wouldn't count the super early admits (Mid January) because from what I can tell those are the top candidates that get notified that early- as in they get admitted before the committee reads through all the applications. Of course this varies from department to department, but I would see if their "general" admit notices have gone out (this will obviously be different for schools with rolling admissions.) But just in general try to get a sense of whether or not schools have probably made a decision on the applications. But yeah, if it seems like several decisions have gone out, it's late enough in the game that I think that it's perfectly reasonable to ask a question about the status of your application.

Just send an email to the admissions coordinator, I've already rescheduled 3 visits. If they're already willing to fly you out, in general they'd be willing to fly you out at any time before the deadline (typically April 15). I didn't even have to provide a reasoning, just that I was having difficulty making their "preassigned weekend." Once you've been accepted, it's a little shocking how accommodating schools can be. Here's a sample bare bones of an email I sent: "Dear XXXX, My name is XXXX, and I'm emailing you to let you know that unfortunately, I will not be able to visit XXXX during the official visit weekend. Visiting XXXX is important to me, and so I was wondering if I could possibly visit at a separate time? I was hoping to be able to visit on the XXXXX. <- (offer several dates here) I apologize for the inconvenience, and I hope that something can be worked out. Thanks, XXXXX" Best of luck. Hope this was helpful

I didn't apply to Scripps. But Berkeley has a ton of visitation weekends. Every weekend from Feb. 25-27 to March 18-20, 4 in all. Hope that helps. Best of luck.

No. I'm pretty sure it means that they either a. haven't decided on you yet b. you might be in the upper middle tier, and they're waiting to see how many people accept/reject early, to get a better idea of class size, and then they'll decide whether or not to admit you. Which I guess is the same as a. If you notice the gradcafe survey, they've already sent out several definite rejections. I'm pretty sure at Caltech they don't reject and then sit on the rejection for weeks.

I have a quick question for people visiting Stanford. Other than Du Bois, Trost, and Wender, who are y'all planning on visiting with while you're there? I'm having difficulty compiling a list. I was thinking maybe Kanan and Waymouth. Anyone have any thoughts? I'm willing to branch a little bit outward to supermolecular/organometallic/physical organic. But probably not as far as physical or theoretical.

I have a friend who applied Chem and also has to interview, most of the Chem interviews are when people are interested in biochem- the places where he applied under Biochem have interviews, i.e. Brown, UCSD, but the places that he applied under Gen Chem, I don't think he has interviews. I have yet to hear of an interview process for people interested in PChem/Organic. Though, I have heard that Scripps invites people out for interviews, regardless of what branch of chemistry they're interested in. I didn't apply to Scripps, so someone that did will have to verify whether or not this is true.

I thought it'd be nice to have an area just for the organic chemists, to share their experiences on visit weekends/profs they've visited where they're currently thinking about going, and all in all, just a place to meet other people interested in doing organic chemistry for the next 5-6 years of their life!

I can't seem to edit my last post. But, yeah, it seems like Harvard has sent out some acceptances for all branches of their chemistry. Org, Phys, Biochem. Best of luck guys.

Some of PChem is definitely out. I know three people have already gotten their letters. (I haven't heard of a notification by email yet) I just haven't heard of a organic yet, but I don't know how they do it. I've also heard of people last hearing as back as mid Feb. So I'm not sure how they do it. Perhaps they also do it in waves.

It sounds like Harvard's P-Chem notifications have gone out. Has anyone heard anything from their Organic side? Does anyone know if they send it out as a batch of Chemistry? Or do they split it by division?

March 26-28. As far as I know, there's only one. My friend who's doing inorganic (I'm doing organic) got the same weekend notification.

By email on Friday.

Heard from.. MIT Berkeley Columbia Wisconsin Madison waiting on Harvard Stanford