sk8er determinant

Hey i went to a cuny college for undergrad and I'm quite familiar with the chemistry professors at Brooklyn college. From what i know, youll be doing your rotations in the professors labs, which will be in their home campuses. Unfortunately some CUNY campuses are bit difficult to get to, so just a heads up for lab rotations and taking classes (if they're being taught at home campuses, not at the graduate center building). From what i know is that many of the instruments in the schools are shared among the department in the school and also campuses as well.

@chemiegrad Chem GRE isn't a huge factor, but it's probably used as a tie-breaker or something. If I may be honest, I don't know how much did my Chem GRE weigh on my application hahaha. Anyway, I know Harvard's Department of Chemistry has the average general and Chem GRE scores, and GPAs for the 2016 incoming students so I suppose that's something to refer to. I've already applied and am leaving the overpriced island in August :-)

@chem1995 my cGPA was 3.5, my major GPA was 3.89. my gen gre scores were 160 v/163 q/4.5 a, and my chem gre score was 60th percentile. 3 publications, bunch of presentations and 3 years of research experience. hm i thought everyone would've gotten their results by now... your duke onelink wasn't updated still?

Have you taken your Chem GRE? It's required for Harvard.

My gut feeling is the following. I'd honestly say that you should rule out the research fellow from the consideration. What I've seen is that letters from folks who have a Ph.D. will carry more weight than those who don't. I'd do two professors you've done research with, and one professor who taught you.

Hi all, So I've basically heard back from all the schools I wanted to hear back from, and I've decided to accept Duke's offer. If anyone's attending Duke for Ph.D. in Chemistry, how is the department, and what's the department culture like (i.e. are there supergroup meetings, literature club, and any other clubs and meetings geared towards chemistry students)? And how is living in Durham for you, personally? I've been hearing great things about Duke as a graduate school, and I'd really like to get more unadulterated views on the school and the department. (Also if you've been accepted to Duke, is anyone going to be at the Chemistry visiting weekend on March 3rd to 4th? I'll be there!)

i got an offer from duke last monday (jan 30th.) my guess is that duke hasn't finished sending out offers yet. best of luck!

oh damn! i submitted mine on the 31st (i applied for organic chem). getting rly nervous now but like damn congrats again! EDIT: ok I'm so stupid I sent mine on the 30th idk why I thought November 31st existed....

whoa congrats on your acceptance to princeton!!! may i ask which division you applied for, and when you submit your application?

oh i haven't either, but it's totally my fault for sending it on the due date (i needed some time to save the money i need for sending the dec 15th apps). truthfully, i'm very anxious about it, as well as for other schools lol

still waiting (i applied for organic as well.) i sent my app on the 15th so I wouldn't be surprised if my app is the last batch of the apps to be looked at.

@Dibenzofulvene @meteora @L543 @jeromass hi all! so I just checked my wisc app and now, I no longer have "available for recommendation". Instead, I have Chemistry PHD FALL 2017-2018 "Your application has been received and will be reviewed by your program. Please refer to this page for updates." with all the checklist. That's my update on it.

whoaaaa congrats @Dibenzofulvene on ya acceptance!! so yeah my wisc portal grad application app is back to "normal" with bunch of numbers-available for recommendation- pending review. very nervous to see what the result will be!

hey @Dibenzofulvene! I just checked my wisc account and it says that my Grad Application Status page is unavailable. Did you perhaps get the same message as well?

Mine says 12/16 which is quite odd because I definitely submitted on the 15th...I suppose that's when they got my application? Hm... Would definitely love to know what that means

Hi everyone! So I just checked MyWisc account and in the Grad Application Status, it says "Chemistry PhD - Pending Review "(some bunch of numbers)~G153~G00~Available for Recommendation~12/16/2016~1182 - Pending Review". Can anyone tell me what that means?

@St Andrews Lynx that's what I'm worried about too. I fear that the admission committee and POI—rightfully so—may doubt my potential to carry out synthetic research at the caliber that they are expecting. My PI and another professor who read my SOP both stressed that I have to some how sell my computational experience to the synthetic chemists, so I wrote about how I have a lot of experience performing calculations for experimental groups (one of which got published on JOC this year.) and that I am very interested in learning synthetic methods as well. I've also combed through the papers that professors published, and I specifically chose POIs who had used both synthesis and computational methods. If possible and if I do get accepted, I'm going to inquire if I can start my work in summer to get as much time as I can learning synthetic methods. At my institution, there is only one professor who is doing organic synthesis, and his lab is full

@Coburn whoa congrats!! Also to everyone, I'm concerned about my chances at schools with December 1st deadline. One of my professors was super busy and submitted the rec letter on the 6th, and UC Berkeley says that the deadline is the 1st. I'm wondering if that'll affect my chances a lot because that was something beyond my control (and of course I reminded the professor to submit it. The professor told me to be on the case about it in case she forgets, so I did)... I'm getting really worried!

@amino1990 I'm very familiar with Alabugin's work! I was studying enediyne and he did some computational and experimental work on the species so I read lot of papers from him. What about McMahon at Madison? I believe he does physical organic chemistry as well (whose work I'm also very familiar with since I read a lot of his papers for one of my projects I worked on.) I didn't know Tantillo only takes domestic students--which is bit odd--but I'm crossing my fingers that you get into UC Davis! Working with Tantillo would be major.

@amino1990 thanks for the input! Just wondering, who are you interested in working with? I'm guessing Ken Houk and Dean Tantillo are few of them?

@Dibenzofulvene Abigail Doyle is also one of the professors I'd like to work with! I'd love to work with MacMillan but I have this trepidation that he'd find my computational background (I have very limited experience with synthesis) to be troubling, given his prominence in the synthesis world. But I'd really love to work with Robert Knowles though—his work on using proton-coupled electron transfer as catalysis is so cool, and one of the main reasons why I chose to apply to Princeton! Prof. Shomakers is also one of my top choices! Her, Prof. Yoon, and Prof. Stahl (I actually just watched a video seminar by him on youtube today) are the top three professors I'd love to work with at Madison. It'd be very cool if we do end up being in the same lab haha

Hey everyone! This is generally aimed for graduate students but open to all the prospective Ph.D students out there too. My research experience in chemistry has been using computational methods to study organic chemistry. I've done some cool theoretical stuff (such as thermally activated quantum mechanical tunneling in reactions, and isolobal analogy) and some stuff that's in conjunction to experimental studies (two separate projects on benzazepines and nitrosamines that we are collaborating with two groups). Now, I'm set on doing synthetic work during graduate school, and of course I'll use computational methods to corroborate experimental results. But I'm concerned that this will be seen as a red flag to admission committee or to professors because I've expressed in my SOPs that I'm interested in doing synthetic work (I've expanded more on my computational background and my experience in doing computational work for experimental groups). Do you know anyone or even from your experience who has made a switch from computational to synthesis? And if so, was it a huge challenge? Any advices even? Thanks in advance for helpful comments and discussion!

@Dibenzofulvene oh yeah, I noticed we're both applying for Wisconsin, BU and Princeton. who are some professors in those schools you'd like to work with?

I'm interested in Zhang and Byers groups. Not catalysis but I'm also interested in Liu group since my first research project dealt with isosteres and his research sounds really cool.

No need for math at all. Although, for kinetics questions, I had do couple of integrations to get the integrated rate laws because I forgot the integrated rate laws for all three orders... I am absolutely terrible in math, but it was just basic integration so that saved me. The rate law questions are designed such a way that the numbers work out very clean. Absolutely no calculations needed for QM. Basically, if there are any calculation questions, the numbers will work out, or you can use dimensional analysis as catalyzemecpatain said. I mean the higher level math is required to understand couple of topics while studying, but no need to do partial differentiations and solving for 10x10 determinant (imagine....)