magnetite

@emmuhhs Cool. Boulder is really nice, I hear. I never got a response from the professor I'd really like to work with, so I'm not getting my hopes up too much. Thanks for the insight.

You got in? Congrats!

@Tidus That's fine. I mainly wanted to know if they've sent out invitations to their open house weekend, which it seems they have. Thanks.

@Tidus Are you visiting the earth science department? Do you know anything about their oceanography department?

Rejected from one of my top programs at 11:05 pm on a Friday. Three rejections so far, no acceptances, and not enough beer.

Only?

Next time you guys do an overnight road trip, check out this light pollution map beforehand. It's basically a google maps overlay that shows where the best spots to see the night sky are. I found a nice spot in the Texas panhandle to see the Milky Way galaxy on an overnight trip to Denver a few years back. I grew up in the city and had never imagined so many stars would be visible. I just got out of the car, looked up, and was fortunate no cars were passing by on the highway, because I literally fell down from shock. That trip provided motivation to pursue astronomy as a career, though that's now changed to planetary science. http://darksitefinder.com/maps/world.html

Saw a few rejections from CU Boulder, both for master's degrees. That's the only program I've applied to that hadn't had any updates posted, so I'm assuming they're just starting to look at applications.

@sjoh197 Have you watched those movies with the cast commentary? All of the hobbits had such a great rapport with each other and the commentary is quite funny.

@Euler I've had a few of those dreams the last month. In one of them, I got waitlisted at Caltech and was elated. Not even in my dreams can I get into that school.

I put my school email address on all of my applications, so fortunately I'm insulated from all of the gmail spam. The regular school spam, though, not so much. I've marked a lot as junk and unsubscribed from emails from a few professional societies, but junk still makes it through occasionally.

So in my case, since it's been over two weeks now since the interview and my follow up email, would it be out of the question for me to send another email? If I do, I'll have to make sure it doesn't scream of desperation, as I'm not too confident of my prospects elsewhere.

I had a phone interview with a professor two weeks ago, but the next steps weren't discussed. I sent him an email the next day with a question I forgot to ask but I haven't gotten a response. The call was mainly to talk about my experience and research interests, so I'm not sure if it was an interview per se. Since I haven't heard back yet, I'm assuming the professor passed on me.

@Euler It does seem to be a pretty nifty way to find the shortest path between two points. I'm sure in the next lecture we'll unlock its true power.

We just covered Euler's equation for calculus of variations in my classical mechanics class today. Fun times.

@hippyscientist Kind of like, who'd want to be friends with someone like me?

As I'm still waiting on six applications, I'll continue enduring the Feburgatory for everyone else here. You all can live vicariously through my anxiety!

@nevermind If I manage to get accepted somewhere, I'm sure studying will be the last thing on my mind!

@nevermind Congrats! That's an incredible funding package.

@SickSlickensides Do you know if Arizona State's open house weekend for geological sciences is on March 3, like for their astrophysics department?

My top choice school has already assigned me an email address. I won't lie and say I haven't been tempted to actually use it and pretend I've been accepted.

Got my second rejection today. Figured this would be a good spot to whine about it. I'm slowly losing hope in my other applications. At the same time, I'm almost excited in a way to get another chance, should I get rejected everywhere. Another year of refining my interests and actually applying for the GRFP would be helpful.

Welp. I'm among those rejected from Woods Hole today.

Hi all, I'm an older student as well. I just turned 32 and have applied to eight graduate programs. After this spring semester, I'll have finally earned a bachelor's degree. I've got four different schools on my record, which I didn't really mention in my statements of purpose for the applications. Most of the schools have already sent out invite requests and acceptances, so I'm a bit worried that I won't get accepted anywhere in this cycle. Particularly, I'm concerned that I didn't adequately address my academic history in my statements of purpose. I didn't really mention it at all. To elaborate, I started college in 2002 and dropped out after three full semesters. I had a hiatus for a year, before going to a community college and getting an associates degree. I then worked for about five years at the same company. While there, I registered for a single class at a third university to help with the job. The company went bankrupt back in 2011. I was unemployed for about six months and during that time I decided to go back and finish my bachelor's degree, to help in getting another job. I eventually did find another job, but it was managing a fast food restaurant. I still wanted to finish the degree, though, and it'd have to be done online, so I registered for a few classes at yet another community college with the intent to start a fully online program at a local state school. Long story short, I found a better job with regular hours M-F, just down the road from the very first school I attended. My boss there told me he'd be flexible with my school schedule if I wanted to actually attend classes in person, since some of my work would need to be done over the weekend. At that point, I decided to go back to the first school and pursue a completely different degree, which required catching up on math courses I hadn't taken yet. Four years later, I'm just about done with the degree. Along the way, I've been involved with research, including a summer internship and two conference poster presentations. I've also started a club based on what I'm applying to graduate school for, where we hosted a talk by a former manager of a prestigious NASA mission and have done some outreach. I mentioned all of this in my SoP. Do any of you have similar academic histories? If so, how did you address yours in your SoPs, and when contacting potential advisors? I sent my CV (which includes the date I got my associates degree) and research interests to a few professors before sending in my applications. A few of the responses I got back mentioned things in the CV that weren't included in the email, so I know the professors at least skimmed the CV. How big a deal is all of this? Am I just overreacting, considering I've only seen one rejection thus far?

@rising_star Thanks. I'll check out that thread.