waddle

Off-topic, but inter/multi-disciplinarity and collaboration seem to be buzzwords for everything nowadays. Like, "In our lab, we take an interdisciplinary approach to exploring the cellular machinery of toothbrushes." True this. But at least we're not in high-energy physics, where they have publications like this (>2000 authors!).

I got excited for a couple of seconds, and then started reflecting upon why I decided to pursue a career plagued with long hours, low wages, and bureaucratic mishaps. Meh.

My school uses a standard A = 4.0 (A+ doesn't exist) scale. But I do know that some schools have a 4.33 scale (i.e. A+ = 4.33), and I believe MIT uses a 5.0 scale.

I'm still calling my current (undergrad) research advisor "Dr. Gerbil" even though he doesn't mind being called by his first name. I figure once I'm either a grad student or (maybe) once I have a Ph.D., I'll move to a first-name basis.

Job prospects are pretty bad in any of the life/physical sciences. On the bright side, at least bio/chem/biochem-whatever has industry opportunities for Ph.D. holders. Sounds like you're into industry, not academia, so you'll have more leeway, probably, if you end up going to a school with industry connections. Just a word of caution, though: big pharma jobs aren't very stable nowadays; Pfizer laid off ~10,000 employees last(?) year--that's more people than Amgen even employs!

Dig a hole, crawl in, and cry myself to sleep. Alternatively, just use the back side of the rejection letters as scratch paper. Sorry, off-topic, but this totally made me envision a grad student wannabe burning dung cakes. "Self-Pity: Powered by Natural Gas"

Well, to be fair, having their student get an A in their class doesn't really help an assistant professor get tenure. Having them spend more time in the lab, and writing papers, however, does.

At one school I visited, I was told by grad students that their advisors didn't want to see A's on their graduate record. An "A" indicated there was time that the student could have been spending on research; the professors there apparently liked to see a straight-B record.

^ ditto what she said.

I have never heard anything like this. At the most, you might need to take some undergraduate geology coursework, e.g. sedimentology, if you are lacking some background. But nothing at the intro-level.

Too late to do this now. If the professors are interested, they will contact you.

A letter from a high school teacher is a big no. Job supervisor, maybe. Try sending your old professors an email. They might actually remember you. (Try trawling the forums for previous threads from people who have lost contact with professors.)

Wow, thanks everyone for your responses. I fear I may have been unclear about the comment that students at Ivies are "pretentious & rich, and care little about anything but seeking fame or fortune". I'm not implying that the Ivy institutions have little in the way of frats or sports. I don't give half a hoot in hell about those things, and at any rate, we don't have that where I go to school, anyways . (My undergrad university is about as community college-like as you can get, so I have no real idea what a frat or a football game is--in fact, I've never been to a college sports game.) I was more concerned with the academic culture; where I go to school, most of the student body (~90%) is of some ethnic minority, and faculty here really do have to go out of their way to assist students in the learning process, as the community here is just a hodgepodge of so many different socioeconomic backgrounds. I find this type of campus culture (or lack thereof) to be very fulfilling, and I can't really imagine what it would be like to be around students who didn't have to pull a 40-hour workweek and raise kids while completing their bachelors degree. I guess my main concern is that the Ivies will be too uniformly elite for my comfort. Nonetheless, I'll go and see what it's actually like at the campus. I appreciate all your help!

Hey guys/gals, I very recently got an invitation to fly out to one of the premier institutions in my field--and probably in most other fields, as well--for a visit/interview. I know most people would be thrilled to have an opportunity like this, and while I appreciate the chance to visit, I'm pretty apprehensive about the whole thing. Although I applied to this school because its research & people are amazing, I don't feel motivated to go to this interview/visit. A short while ago, I visited a less-highly ranked (but still awesome) school, but I didn't have this kind of negativity at all. I fear that I'll feel like I won't belong or that I'll stand apart in a negative way from the community at this very 'prestigious' university. (I don't know if this is a case of the impostor syndrome, or what.) For a long time, I've been of the belief that (to put it bluntly) students of the Ivy League (and I'm using "Ivy League" very loosely here to encompass all top-ranked research-focused small private universities with huge endowments) are generally pretentious & rich, and care little about anything but seeking fame or fortune. Now, obviously this is an over-generalization (and I sincerely apologize to any of the students/alumni of these schools who are on The GradCafe--I don't mean any offense, I admire you greatly, but there's no better way I can express my thoughts), but to what degree? I've spent my entire undergraduate career at a public institution that is not known for anything, and nobody I know personally is an Ivy graduate, so I've got nowhere to turn. So here's where I need your help, GradCafe members, especially those of you who have experienced life at both types of universities. What's wrong with me? Am I unfairly prejudiced against schools that are generally perceived as prestigious? I would really like to clear up any doubts before going into this interview, and I'm imploring you to help me do this. With gratitude, waddle

Here's a psychology one that is often used as a starting point: http://sites.google.com/site/gradappadvice/home Some previous threads: and It's probably good to use these as guidelines, but keep in mind that the SOP is a description of what you want to do--nobody else should be able to write the same essay as you. It's easy to fall into the trap of modeling your essay too closely along the lines of other people's (I was guilty of this in my earlier drafts, too), but if you let your voice shine through, the end product will be better than a generic SOP. Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now; good luck!

Heh, you at least did better than me! The only other set of eyeballs that read my SOP belonged to my father. Well, that's what I get for procrastinating until the day before my first deadline, right?

Be careful what you wish for, lest you end up like Irina Spalko: B-b-but isn't the whole point of a Ph.D. to get into a perpetual cycle of low-wage jobs?

From what I've heard, a Ph.D. is not so much the determinant of your career, but a license to practice professional science. I can think of one fellow who did a Ph.D. in immunology, and is now working as a postdoc doing some truly awesome isotope geochemistry, directly determining the body temperature of extinct fauna from the fossil record (i.e. he's building a paleothermometer to find out whether dinosaurs are cold- or warm-blooded, using their fossilized bones). A Ph.D. isn't your career, but rather a ticket to a career.

There, there. NOBODY USES CHUCK NORRIS. Nobody who gets out alive.

What's wrong with that? Isn't the point that their successful mentoring of you, their Ph.D. student, will help them get tenure?

The Large Hadron Collider was mistakenly labeled the world's most powerful atom smasher. It's actually Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris doesn't coauthor papers. He needs no collaborators. Chuck Norris' Erdős number is -1. Chuck Norris really made an impression on the interviewers. His impact factor is ∞. Chuck Norris never attends meetings. Meetings attend to him. Chuck Norris has won the award for Best TA for four years running. He can really teach students a lesson. Chuck Norris got his Ph.D. without defending his thesis. None of the committee members wanted to try him.

I came across this article a while back. Feeling stupid apparently gets you pretty far in science.

TVTropes will ruin your life.

Take it again.

I've heard from two professors at one school; one of them wants a phone chat and I'm supposed to go meet the other in a few days. Not a peep from the other programs, though.