robot_hamster

I think it depends on the circumstances surrounding this last semester. Were you dealt a bad hand in professors with teaching/grading methods that don't work well for you? What I mean is different people learn things differently. I've had one professor teach something and I was completely unable to absorb the information. Then another professor taught the same thing and I was suddenly able to understand it because their teaching style fit well with my learning style. Were there other things going on, like a lack of time to study or procrastination on your part? I agree with the poster above, we can't know if you can make such a huge turn around during this next semester. Only you can know that. If your grades were partially due to circumstances, then you might be able to do better in a better set of circumstances. If this wasn't the problem, then it might take longer to bring your grades up.

Does your adviser have any publications? You may be able to figure out their interests that way, plus your adviser would be more impressed if you did some research on them first before simply asking them what they are interested in. I'm not really sure what you mean by best type of support. Your adviser should be willing to help you with whatever your thesis interests are, so don't let what you think they are only interested in deter you from pursuing something you would really enjoy doing.

I have mentored for years. Not through Big Brothers/Sisters, but through a school program. I am certainly not a perfect person. Plus I have no money and I didn't grow up as "well off" as other people. I was a non-traditional student as an undergrad. I worked hard and fought like crazy to make my way through. So I suppose I have that going in my favor. I'm not a very extroverted person, but a lot of the high school students in the program aren't either. A good mentor doesn't have to be perfect. A good mentor is someone who is caring and reliable. The program I'm in usually tries to match people up who have similar personalities and interests. You won't always get a good match, but when you do it can lead to a very strong relationship. You are someone they can talk to, sometimes about things they feel they can't tell their parents or teachers. It is something that can be wonderful at times, but not so wonderful at other times. So my advice is to keep an open mind and don't have any expectations. Don't try to force anything on them, just guide them. Hopefully that helps.

In all my classes, anything 90 or above is technically an A. Is your professor distinguishing between A-, A, and A+?

I thought I would update this. I guess there was nothing for me to worry about. I just got my big fat rejection letter (email) today. I wasn't even granted an interview.

Is this a SOP for admission? It would be better to just focus one. So pick the one you want to do most and talk about that. It's okay to have a Plan B, but you want your SOP to suggest that you know what you want. So have a Plan B, but don't talk about it initially. You can always bring it up later in conversation, like with your adviser.

This is just my personal preference, but I am attracted to schools that appear warm and inviting. Not sure how you would portray that in a recruiting e-mail, but I think it is something worth exploring. Obviously you would have to do it in a way that wouldn't over attract applicants that aren't a good fit, as Behavioral mentioned.

You would think someone who be at least reprimanded for such unprofessional behavior. If this is, indeed, a true story.

This is what I was thinking. I would really like to get an idea of what employers are looking for and this seems like a good way to do it. The trick though would be actually getting an interview. You bring up some excellent points. My guess is that this job isn't the result of lots of new projects, but I'm betting it is something that could be cut if they were suddenly looking to cut corners. There are people in my family that work for the city (different areas), so maybe I can ask them how things are looking from where they are.

I just use Power Point. It is installed on all the computers at school so there's no worrying that the presentation wouldn't work. It's supposed to convert between mac and pc, but sometimes there are problems with things like images showing up. Power Point is easy to use and can do some fairly sophisticated things. We were playing with Power Point for one class where we had to "tell the story" without using words. We used the animation functions and some of the presentations turned out pretty cool.

If you look at my post above, it is with the government (city government). I live in the midwest.

Some classes are offered in the evenings, but some are during the day. I have some required classes, so those have to be taken no matter what time of day they are (I can't just choose something else). Otherwise, I don't think they have a problem with part-time students. I know several people who have a career and they decided to try to squeeze grad school in around their work schedule. I'm really not sure how well I would handle it. I guess it depends on the hours of the job (i.e. would they absolutely need me there between this time and this time). I was thinking of just applying in hopes of getting an interview, but maybe not actually get offered the job. It would be good practice. Unfortunately, it is through the government and they have strict rules about not calling the HR department. Basically, if you make it through the first cut then they will contact you, otherwise they don't want to hear from you.

Statistics is used for it, but statistics is used for a lot of things. Perhaps that is why you aren't interested in the classes, since they aren't directly related to what you really want to do.

So you don't think it is silly to apply? The position is full time (40 hours), I suppose that might delay me even more with graduating.

I normally don't tell others what grade I got on stuff. People don't normally ask though either. It's usually just the "innocent" glance in your direction as you gaze down at your paper/exam that had just been handed back to you in hopes of making out what it says at the top in red. I usually put stuff away right away so that way it's not sitting in plain view of people nearby. Not that I am embarrassed, I just don't think it's anyone's business.

I guess I can add that the reason I am interested in this job is because I very rarely see job listings for this.

Whoops, looks like we were writing out posts at the same time.

Did you apply for any bioinformatics or computer science programs when you were initially applying? I guess I'm not sure why you would go with statistics if you were interested in bioinformatics.

That is true, it would depend on where the money is coming from. Since I am a TA and not a RA, my funding comes from the larger umbrella. So it really wouldn't matter what my focus area was as long as I was in that department.

What do you mean by switching majors? Some programs will let you switch your focus area as long as it is in the same department and you have someone willing to work with you. Completely changing programs, on the other hand, is very different. You would most likely have to reapply to the other program.

I was just looking through the local want ads and I spotted a job that sounded right up my ally. It wants the applicant to have a BA/BS plus 2 years experience. I don't have any professional experience really, just stuff that I have done while I was in school. I was hoping maybe a MS could be substituted for experience. Anyway, I am not on track to completing my degree and it most likely will be delayed until next December (a year from now). Would it be weird to apply for the job? If by some miracle I was offered the job, I wonder if it would be unreasonable to ask for some flexibility in the schedule. For example, what if I had a class that was in the afternoon (as some of the classes that are offered are) rather than in the evening. Has anyone ever done this?

I think in this situation, it is fine to be formal when addressing the person in the email. Then see how they sign the email when they respond back and then go from there.

I can try to answer some of these. Time depends on whether or not you need to do field work. I have seen people work on their thesis starting shortly after their first semester and finish their final semester (so let's say 3+ semesters and the summer in between). I have also seen people do it during their final 2 semesters. As far as length goes, it can vary. I think 50 pages is manageable, usually they expect it to include a pretty deep literature review (at least at my school you do) so that takes up some room. Let's see, my school just has you present your thesis to your committee and anyone else you want to be there. I haven't heard of anyone being rejected after defending their thesis since their committee would be approving everything prior to this. Finally, in regards to depth of the research, my thesis is really just a large expansion of a research project I thought up. I have seen other people do something that would practically qualify as a PhD dissertation. I suppose it depends on what your research topic is and how far you are able to "run" with it. Sometimes you stumble upon something really good and it takes you farther than you originally thought.

I think it really depends on the situation. For small assignments, professors seem to be more "forgiving" when it is a class full of 1st and 2nd year undergrads. For the class I am TAing right now, the professor has told me not to worry about it so much with the small stuff. Just as long as they at least say where they are getting the information from. For large assignments, like a paper that makes up the majority of the grade, then professors seem to be less tolerant. I haven't had to deal with this yet, but I could see a student getting a zero for the paper if it was obviously plagiarized. What's weird though with some of that plagiarism software is that you will often see high percentages of plagiarism given to papers that weren't really plagiarized. Like the software isn't looking for word for word, but just similarities. So if you're paraphrasing and using similar terms it can look to the software like it was copied.

I was always told that you only do a non-thesis if you know for sure you won't ever want to pursue a PhD. If you think you're going to go on for a PhD, it is helpful to have done a thesis.