BlueRose

I am in a scarily similar position. Having the first acceptance - even if it's not my #1 choice - is a weight off the shoulders. (I got it a few hours ago...I'm a wee bit drunk, and well-fed. Yay!) I've got four schools in the mix, and they are all plausible choices. All of them have strong points, and all of them have a near-deal-breaker or two. I've got one that's the smallest bit above the others - and I'm not sure that there's any rational reason for this - but I would be happy at any of them. And if I get more than one acceptance, I'm going to be pulling my hair out. In fact, I've already started pulling my hair out. I think I've resorted to seeing the ambiguity as a good thing - if the decision is close, then it means that either alternative is a good one. I'm just trying to imagine myself as a student at each place, trying to see what opportunities will be open to me, and trying to make the best choice I can. In summary...I sympathize. Also, I'll pick yours if you pick mine?

That depends on your definition of "reasonable commute". Driving from Stanford-Berkeley takes a solid two hours (off-peak), and 3+ if you're anywhere near rush hour. One option might be living in San Francisco. There's reasonable public transit to both Stanford and Berkeley (not much time savings, but you can work on the Caltrain/BART). This might be more than you can afford, though. A cheaper option might be to live at an intermediate point in the East Bay. (Maybe Fremont?) It gets more urban-ish the more northward you go...in the case of Hayward/Oakland, not necessarily in a good way. Congratulations, btw. And good luck. <- former Silicon Valley resident

At my last interview, at dinner (after several hours of bar-hopping), my table got into a heated discussion of religion. I was stuck in a corner between that group and two people from the program...I had the sense to keep silent and make small talk. Awkwardly, because I was dog-tired (jetlag+interviews+beer). That was the worst I've seen, though; not exactly the stuff of legend. (Personally, after being "on" all day for interviews, I don't have the energy to do something legendarily stupid - no matter how much free alcohol is involved. Maybe I'm just getting old...)

I went through the same thought process - I had a cute childhood story, which tied into both my early interests and my late-hour field switch. But I decided not to go there. Really, most of us were geeky little children. It's not a distinguishing factor. My first paragraph of the SOP ended up being something like the first paragraph of your post. You could really say something like that. I thought of it as more of an executive summary than an opening paragraph, really. "For years I had planned on going into genetics research, but within the past year I have switched over to immunology. I'm most interested in autoimmune diseases and hypersensitivities, which obviously could be classified as a mix between genetics and immunology. As a student, I have been inspired by professors who have combined excellence in basic research with a commitment to teaching. I hope to follow their example by pursuing a career in academics." (Obviously, you would tidy that up - and insert your own goals! And it's just my $0.02, but it worked OK for me.)

for x in range(1,26): print x

Bring earplugs. Seriously. I was introduced to the wonder of earplugs at a competition in high school. As the only girl on my team, I was stuck rooming with the girls from Rural Backwater High. The competition was two days long; after the first day, my team was in the finals, and their team was out. The other girls decided to hold a party that night, and told everyone to come to their room. I had just parked my exhausted butt in bed, 11:30pm, when they showed up with a herd of friends. And I explained the situation, politely shoved the friends out - but as quickly as I could get rid of them, more arrived. Around 1:30am, I gave up and went over to my teammates' room. Where I nearly kicked down the door, but nobody woke up to let me in. I curled up in the hallway lounge. Around 2:00am, the security guard found me, thought I was a bum, and tried to run me off. I came back at 2:30am, saw a bunch of people still in the room, and threw a full-on hissy fit. Crying, throwing things, you bet. It worked, and the room cleared. Except for my room-mates, who decided they needed to take showers and otherwise goof around. I got about two hours of sleep. The next day, I complained to my team, who filled me with Diet Coke - and explained that they had all been wearing earplugs the night before. No wonder they didn't hear me banging on the door. Since then, I have not traveled anywhere without earplugs. In fact, I wear them at home, too; my apartment is next to a fairly busy street. And I did get revenge in the end. The next year, the girls from Rural Backwater were back. I was team captain, and so was the girl who had organized the party. And we got to play each other in the opening rounds. Normally, if my team was substantially better than our opponent, we would go easy and let the younger players get some experience - not this time. I was in, my best players were in, and I told them to show absolutely no mercy. The final score was something like 350-4. Morals: the world is small, payback's a b*tch...and earplugs are awesome.

Given a choice, I would prioritize rank over research fit for grad school. (I don't mean the specific US News et al rank, I mean general reputation in/out of the field.) This is because, as grad students, people change their minds about what they want. Maybe you will stay in the sub-subfield you picked as an undergrad. Good for you. Maybe you'll do something else entirely. If you chose an obscure school with a good reputation in some field, you're fine within that field, but you'll generate some head-scratching if you leave it. This is even more true if you go for the one star professor; outside that very specific research area, people won't know Prof. Star from Prof. Schmuck. And besides, as a grad student, you may not have anyone else to go to if Prof. Star doesn't have room / is hit by a bus / is a raging psychopath / etc. Conversely, a big-name school will leave your options open. The name will get you the benefit of the doubt; IIRC, one of those ranking surveys a few years back put Princeton Business School in the top 3, despite the fact that it doesn't exist. For a postdoc, the reputation of the specific professor is everything. But for grad school? I don't think I would choose on that basis alone. Of course, productivity trumps all...

I hated the "You didn't get in? Why?". Because then I had to explain. Without crying. Which worked maybe 30% of the time. But this thread has inspired me: I shall go and acquire some bourbon for my desk. Always be prepared...

I had an experience like that last year, and it actually worked out quite nicely. We had both done research in the field, but knew some people better than others (for instance, her dream PI was a former boss of mine), and had some different perspectives on where the field was going. Much information was exchanged. It was a little awkward, but worth it. Besides, they can't keep you up all night without keeping themselves up too.

So I'm going to be moving on in a few months, and making a fresh start in another lab. I'd like to use this opportunity to start better habits, especially in keeping track of and documenting my research. Right now, I have some degree of organization, but I don't think my systems are anywhere close to optimal. Therefore, I ask the Internet Hive Mind to share its secrets. How much do you write in your lab notebooks? How do you organize your hard drive(s)? How do you track your samples? If you've got a good system that works for you, share it here! If it helps, I'm both a lab person (experiments, samples, etc) and a computer person (giant datasets, analysis code, etc). Humanities people should join the party too, though; I know those fields have their own organizational challenges.

At least it will probably be early April, instead of dragging on into the summer. Unless Congress feels like extending the stimulus (yeah, we wish). I'm actually quite calm about it. Mainly because I have no idea how much it's going to matter. If I get in somewhere, then whatever; my field gives full funding to pretty much everyone, so the major benefit would be that I don't have to apply for fellowships again. (Okay, I admit the process was useful, but it was a non-trivial timesuck.) If I don't get in somewhere, however, winning the NSF would be my only hope. Last year I managed to get on a waitlist, of the "call us if you get a fellowship" variety; I hadn't even applied for fellowships, so that was that. I have no particular reason to believe that won't happen again. And I really don't want to be stuck in application purgatory for another year. Really, really do not want. But I won't know until probably a week or two before NSF results come out. Besides, stressing about the NSF would distract me from my new favorite pastime - stressing about interviews.

I remember doing something like that for undergrad. Might I suggest using an absolute rank instead of relative? (You know...rate it from 1-5, or whatever). This will show the real magnitude of the differences between schools. For example, suppose I have offers from A, B, and C. (Yeah, I wish. But never mind.) And I have location as one of my categories. Maybe A and B are in pretty good locations, not my absolute favorites, but I'd be happy to live there. I would give them both 4 out of 5. Maybe C is in a horrendous location, in the cold, snowy butt end of nowhere, and a five minute drive for my least favorite relative. I would give it a 1 out of 5. Simply rating them 1, 2, 3 wouldn't capture that. But I suspect that my gut is going to make the decision, and then I will get busy on stuff like this to rationalize it.

I plan to ask about faculty at other schools. Grad students talk amongst themselves (at conferences and such), and they know who does shoddy work, who's a #%@$ to their students, and so on. And they have no reason not to tell me that they think Prof So-and-So at U. Somewhere Else is a #%@$. I know I have been brutally honest when asked questions along those lines...but then, I've got a deficient brain-to-mouth self-preservation filter anyhow.

I wish I had started earlier. I went back and forth about applying this round, finally deciding to give it a shot in mid-November. Which was nuts, considering most schools in my field have a Dec. 1 deadline, not to mention the NSF at Nov. 22 and then flying home for Thanksgiving. I gave myself only a day to pick schools (and I'm switching fields, so I didn't already have a list in mind). I finished my last two SOPs while hiding in the bathroom at work on the day of the deadline. It got done, but with more cost to my sanity than was strictly required. I wish I hadn't let last year's epic-fail of an application cycle mess with my head. I wish I had chosen the advisor, instead of the project, for my undergrad research. I went to my undergrad to work with a pair of well-known professors - and I did, and I impressed them - but they were both too lazy to write a LOR. Believe me, I will be paying much closer attention to time management skills in screening potential grad school advisors. This mistake almost cost me my career, and I'm not making it twice. I might wish that I had chosen my schools more carefully, but honestly I'm not sure my list would have changed much. Maybe I should have aimed higher, but I didn't know that at the time - I thought I was aiming high as it was. Although the reality of applying mostly West Coast is starting to sink in (I'm on the East Coast...so many planes...sigh.) I also wish I had done more with my unemployed time. Looking for a job and freaking out does not take all one's time, even if not knowing when it will end makes it hard to plan stuff. I could have at least been reading, and maybe I would have realized sooner that I was in the wrong field. But I'm getting interviews, and if I get in this cycle, then I regret NOTHING. I'm starting to think about my future. Maybe I'm not screwed. Maybe I can do this after all. Hope FTW!

In "real" grants, you have to submit progress reports and such, and failing to meet the goals you stated will hurt your ability to get more funding. For these grants, you do have to tell NSF what you're up to, but they'll rubber-stamp it as long as you're still in basic science. If you're wrong, you do something else. I think most people do anyway - heck, I'm not even sure where I will end up for grad school, much less which lab and what project. That said, you're still going to have to convince people that your idea is plausible. But for better or worse, the disciplinary spread is pretty broad in these panels - and remember, they're reviewing the whole thing in 15 minutes, max. I'm not sure they'll catch subtle mistakes. I also said something rather stupid that I wish I could take back. There was a statement of the form "all known A have property B"...all but one, and I found that one. (Yes, there was some very late-night editing involved.) But unless I have the bad luck to find someone who remembers my poster on this better than I do, it probably won't matter. The argument holds - at least it did before I started deleting stuff - and it's a minor point anyhow.

It wouldn't surprise me if they did. I checked my official name, and there's nothing bad on the first page. The second page contains a flamewar and a mildly disturbing play about grave robbers...both me, yes. I have an unusual last name, so nowhere to hide. This reminds me to do a better job of linking to my official name in social networking (I go by a nickname socially, but official documents and publications are under my full name). My website doesn't even come up under my official name...must fix.

I'm not sure you'd need a certificate to do that. AFAIK, the people around here trying to sell me stuff (expensive microscopes, mostly) got their jobs by knowing the product and having some people skills. Again, what Eigen said. I'd also add that some techniques are far more "industrial" than others. If you spend the next six years staring at fruit fly wings, you're going to have a harder time of it than somebody who spent that time culturing tumor cells, even if you were both doing basic research. They don't want to train you (unfortunate, but true). It's competitive out there, and they're probably hiring for an immediate need, and they're going to take the person who has done Specific Technique X a million times during their PhD. Never mind that six months from now, that project will be dead, and the person will be doing something completely different. Everyone knows this, but such is human nature. If you're set on industry, I recommend trying to weasel your way into that scene however you can; there's probably a networking group in your area. If your school has an alumni database, you could even email people who have gone to industry and ask to talk to them over lunch. (People are amazingly willing to do this.) This will give you a better perspective of what you're getting into.

I'm operating on hearsay, now, but I've heard that getting management-type certificates is one of the worst things you can do. It implies that you expect to come in and get your own group to manage right away, and you'll be upset to find yourself in a subordinate role. Mostly they want to see if you can adapt to the culture in industry (team-oriented). If there's any way for you to work with industry, whether for a few years before grad school, as a collaboration during grad school, or even just hanging out with industry people, that's a plus. Also, what Eigen said.

I'm applying for PhDs now, but I'm several years out of undergrad, and have worked in two very different places (biotech startup, academic lab). So I think I'm going in with my eyes wide open. - A PhD is preferable to an MS because you are more likely to receive funding as a PhD, i.e. you won't be drowning in debt after grad school. This is true; MS programs can be obscenely expensive. But if you factor in the time difference, it's not so bad. (2 year masters)*(-$40K/year) + (4 years working)*($60K/year) > (6 year PhD)*($25K/year) - Earning a PhD is a 5 year investment. If you're lucky, good, and smart in your choice of model systems, it's possible. If your PI allows it, that is. Ask around and choose wisely. - A PhD will give me an edge in industry job applications. - PhD is required to advance into a higher position in industry. Yes, it does. Credential inflation is real. I thought I could get away with entering with a BS and working my way up; I saw no particular reason why I wanted to go to grad school when I could do the same kind of work in industry, only with better resources and twice the salary. I went to a startup, kicked butt, and got promoted to a mid-level RA position. Then the startup went out of business, and oh boy did reality set in. I couldn't get hired to save my life. Somebody gave it to me straight: "Look, you can clearly think for yourself. We can't hire you for a BS-level position. And we can't hire you for anything else, because you're a BS." The same thing happened to my former boss, who had his MS (and was the best scientist I've worked for, PhD or no). If you don't have a PhD, you'll be doing grunt work. That's how it is. If you stay a grunt, you'll be replaced by people who are cheaper than you are, either fresh grads or people overseas. Good luck getting hired after 40. If you move up, you'd better pray nothing happens to your company, because you won't be able to take the promotion with you. Most people move sideways, into sales, administration, and the like. You'll be competing with underemployed PhDs for those jobs, and will be at a disadvantage (if only because clients are unduly impressed with the PhD). - Even if my plans to enter industry fall through, I can always seek to become a college professor/researcher. LOL! Good luck with that. Grad students, especially the ones who go straight through, tend to get stuck on the idea of being a professor. They have no idea what it's like out in the real world, and imagine it as some horrible anti-intellectual wasteland (encouraged by their own professors, who they have not yet learned to question). Some people will take *anything* in order to stay in academics. This means that even the horrible jobs, in awful locations, with the dumbest students imaginable, are swamped with highly qualified applicants. It's not as bad as the poor suckers in humanities have it, but still. - It's difficult to re-enter academia once you're in industry, so I might as well earn my PhD while my connections with my undergrad profs are still fresh. Somewhat true. A few years won't hurt. More than that, and you might have a problem; you'll forget the coursework you don't use (most of it!), and your letters might not be as fresh as they could have been. Also, if you're working in industry, you might have a harder time accounting for yourself, with fewer publications and maybe some of your work under non-disclosure. How naive I was. What I've slowly uncovered since, by reading various forums on the internet and looking critically at what I *actually* see around me: - A 50% average attrition rate is not uncommon among PhD programs. - Only 70% of new PhDs will find employment after earning their degree, and 70% of those who find employment become post-docs, which pays approximately 35k, which is comparable to the salary of a start-up position in industry. - Requiring *7 YEARS* to complete a PhD is the new norm. Yes, this is all true. It's not the easiest path, nor is it frankly the most economically rational. Postdocs usually make more than 35K, but not much more. - The length of a post-doctorship is indeterminate, and there's still no guarantee that one will enter a tenure track after being a post-doc since the market for professorships is so grim. In biosciences, multiple postdocs are the norm. The academic window of opportunity seems to be 5-7 years post-PhD...before that, you don't have enough papers, and after that you've gone stale. The industry window is earlier. This means that you can go for academics, barely miss, and then you're done (and looking at a career change as a broke 40-year-old). - MS are actually *more* competitive than PhDs in entry-level industry positions, since a PhD is often seen as "ivory tower" and suggest to the employer than that one has myopic career interests. This can be true. It's hard to find a competent MS in some cases; they've all gone off to PhD. But you don't want the academic MS for that. They're looking for specialized technical skills (large-scale fermentation, biostatistics, etc). - While a PhD is required for higher industry positions, without several years of entry-level work experience, it does one no good. Yeah, you'll get hired at entry-level, even as a PhD. But you'll get promoted much faster.

- Chuck Norris doesn't throw away contaminated cell cultures. He stares at the contaminants until they pack up and get out of town. - Chuck Norris can be washed, autoclaved, and reused. - Chuck Norris had already printed out his thesis when his advisor told him to add a footnote. Enraged, Chuck Norris threw his thesis into the air and gave it a massive roundhouse kick. His foot went so fast that it made a whistling note; the note was, of course, a B flat. The thesis sailed across the building and hit an exterior wall, creating a bulge that was several feet in diameter. This became Chuck Norris's new office. He was given a tenured professorship the next week.

Yes. How it happened: I proposed a half-baked idea at lab meeting. By the next day, I had run a few calculations; the laws of physics weren't in my favor. Unfortunately the lab head absolutely loved the idea. This didn't end well, and I wound up quitting the lab in disgust. I wasn't going to leave it off; I had publications to explain. But I certainly didn't ask this person for a letter, either.

I've thought about doing test prep (GRE, MCAT, etc). The going rate for private MCAT tutoring around here is $65/hr - you could make a decent living on that. It's part-time work, but you could spend the rest of the time doing whatever you please. You could do whatever research you wanted, especially if it's theoretical work (cheap!). No faculty meetings, no grants to write...sigh. There are moments when this is my Plan A. But I'm afraid that if I don't have to care what the scientific community thinks of my work, I'll turn into a crank pretty quickly. ...and I'd have to hang around with premeds all day. This will also make me cranky. Realistically, my Plan B involves getting a job as a data-wrangler / grunt programmer, ideally in bioinformatics. There's plenty of work there; not thrilling work, but respectable and important work, better than a large swath of white-collar geek jobs out there. That's one reason I've gone more towards the computational side. I like my Plan B options there better than the perma-postdoc / lab grunt positions for experimentalists who don't make the cut. If I'm right about where my weird interdisciplinary field is headed, I'll be perfectly positioned to transition back in a decade or so, and I'll look darn smart doing it. If not, I'll get a middle-class job pushing electrons in the bowels of some vast research conglomerate. There are worse outcomes in life, to be sure.

Agreed. I tried to go for the "hook" approach, but it just felt forced. So I cut the cutesy childhood story and got right down to business. Also agreed. I did that my first year. You may have to ask around for the kind of help you want; some people will work with you on big-picture stuff, others are better with the nit-picky grammar, so decide what you need and say so when you're scheduling an appointment. I wish more schools accepted CVs. I took this approach whenever I could get away with it. Otherwise, they got a shortened version of my NSF essay tacked onto the end (a prose CV, more or less). I did highlight the relevant parts in the "fit" section, but I would have done that anyway. I'm working on my last school now, and they don't even take supplements, so I'm going to have to add the teaching portion of my NSF essay too. Eventually. In a not unrelated note, I've been posting a lot today.

My algorithm looks a lot like UnlikelyGrad's, only with more cursing. For fellowship and first-choice school: 1) Write down the prompt. 2) Carry prompt around in pocket for a few days. Think about stuff that I want to say. Write little notes to self. 3) Read statements that other people have written. Take mental note of elements I can use: structures, formatting, rhetoric. Also note what doesn't work and why. 4) Organize notes into vague outline of talking points. Edit until satisfied with content, logic, and projected length. 5) Write crappy first draft. I have to force myself to not see it as a submittable, judgement-worthy artifact. So I write by hand, in pen (no delete key), in my worst handwriting, with liberal use of LOLspeak and swear words. 6) Repeat #5 as necessary. 7) Type up lunatic scrawlings from #5 and #6 and edit into a presentable rough version. 8) Starting with the most important bits, go into polishing mode. I start with the important bits because the polished version is usually longer, so something might have to go...also I might run out of time. 9) Read final version. Decide that some paragraphs are in the wrong place. Move them. Inevitably, I've written a decent conclusion somewhere in the middle. Put that at the end. For all schools: 10) Re-read department website, taking notes. 11) For candidate advisors, read / re-read at least a few key papers. 12) Edit "fit" portion of essay, weaving in bits about advisors, resources, etc. For all schools after the first: 13) Write down prompt. 14) Realize that the school wants the same information, only distributed over a different set of essays. Sigh deeply. 15) Bribe self with Diet Coke. Let the copy-pasting begin! 16) Read resulting essays to make sure they still make sense. 17) Read them again to make sure all references to first-choice school have been deleted. For all: 18) Submit! 19) Wake up in the middle of the night and realize you've said something stupid / untrue / nonsensical. 20) Curse self. Wonder if McDonald's is hiring. Wonder why they would hire you. 21) Re-read essays. Yes, you really did say that. Curse self again. But hey, the rest of this isn't bad...