starmaker

But how do you determine who actually has research aptitude or fit with a department's faculty based on a test? A test of undergrad-level subject material doesn't tell you who's going to be a good researcher. And it doesn't test aptitude, just current ability. I've generally thought of intangibles as a benefit to less privileged students, because it means that a program can take, for example, the fact that you didn't do well in your early college years because your poor high school didn't prepare you for college, into account, and not count it so strongly against you. Or, maybe you went to a low-quality undergrad college because you couldn't afford to go elsewhere, so you don't do as well on subject-matter tests as the people from top colleges, but you have a glowing recommendation from a faculty member at the more prestigious place where you did summer research, assuring the grad programs that you have great research aptitude.

I don't know what field you are hoping to go into, but grad programs in many fields do give full rides to all students, plus a stipend - they pay you to go there. You can definitely get into a good grad program starting out at a community college, if you use your time there wisely. However, I wouldn't discount four-year colleges just because of the money. You don't know what kind of financial aid they will offer until you apply and get accepted. Some of the most prestigious four-year colleges in the country offer extremely generous financial aid to low-income students (because they are rich schools and can afford to do that). For example, at MIT, more than a quarter of undergrads get a full ride, and at Harvard, anyone with a family income under $60k gets a full ride. There are also very good colleges like Berea in Kentucky, where everyone gets a full ride. If your family doesn't have much money, you won't be paying the sticker price at most expensive schools.

If you have the money (about $100-150), try PosterSessions.com. They will send you a PowerPoint template so that you can design your poster as though it were a PowerPoint slide. Then you send them the design, and within a couple of days they send you a pretty poster (optional: a nice cylindrical carrying case). I discovered them when I did my first poster presentation - it was less than a week until the conference and I was panicking, because like you, I had no idea how this was supposed to work. I did my poster design in a day once I had the template, and received the poster two or three days later. Make sure you don't overdo the text on the poster. This is a very common newbie mistake, just like with slide presentations, and it makes it more difficult for people to read your poster. The idea is that you are explaining the details while they look at the summaries and figures. I largely agree with moralresearcher. The idea is that you stand around at your poster for a long time, in a sea of other people doing the same thing, and interested people stop by to look at your poster and talk to you. Some will want to talk to you for 15 seconds, others will want to talk to you for 15 minutes, with most people wanting to talk for a couple of minutes. Stand a bit to the side of the poster, so that you're not blocking people from seeing it as they come by. But make sure that you're not accidentally blocking someone else's poster in the process. The conference might have its own rules about how large the poster should be. You should check with them. Good luck! It is a wonderful feeling when someone is really interested and compliments you on your poster!

You could switch jobs to something at an industry or government research lab (e.g. Microsoft Research, IBM Research, BBN, SAIC, MITRE, the NSA, a DOE national lab), which would get you research experience. Or, you could talk to professors at local universities, see if one would be willing to let you volunteer in their lab.

Which fellowship is that? The highest ones that I was aware of were 36K.

I just went through the interview process (for permanent jobs, not internships). I saw a range of interview styles, but the most common pattern was: Step 1 - 20-40 minute phone interview, usually with a technical person, but sometimes with HR. Step 2 - Full-day in-person interview, interviewing with 6-10 separate people at 40-60 minutes/person, possibly with a research talk. Some places had either a second phone interview or a second in-person interview, though usually not both. A couple of places also had in-depth at-home programming tests. The in-person interview at one place was 10 different people plus an hour for me to give a research talk to all-comers, and lasted nearly 9 hours. I was ready to fall over by the end of the day, and then I had to go to class! For one of my phone interviews, the interviewer expected me to be at a computer with a C++ development environment and screen-sharing technology. As we talked on the phone, he sent me code and problems to work on, and I was supposed to solve the coding problems (while he watched what I was doing on the screen using the screen-sharing program) while explaining my thought process to him over the phone. That one was a [expletive] disaster. I don't have a headset for my phone, and I discovered that trying to hold a phone, talk intelligently on it, and type code intelligently, all simultaneously, is not one of my strengths. The questions that I got usually involved talking about my skills and/or past experiences in detail. And what I could bring to the relevant group. Most of my interviews didn't have a lot of code-on-a-whiteboard questions. There was one where I had 15 minutes to sketch out a design for a radar system on a whiteboard, and then had to explain my design and the various decisions that I made, which was actually sort of fun. Edited to add: If you're interviewing at a medium-sized or large company, I highly recommend checking out Glassdoor.com to see if anyone has posted any interview experiences for that company. Especially interview experiences for job titles that resemble the one you're interviewing for. It might be worth looking at for a small company as well, but there aren't likely to be as many people posting about a small company.

Yeah, this is actually to your advantage. Please don't think that you need to give this up in order to be a "good" grad student. The people who feel like they must get a PhD or else they've failed at life? Those are the people in a position to be exploited or abused by advisors, to spend years in a state of misery, to suppress legitimate doubts, to let the rest of their lives decay. When you truly don't feel that you have any alternative, you're effectively imprisoning yourself. You're leaving yourself vulnerable to forces that you can't necessarily control. And when you know that you can leave anytime you want, when you feel like your program is truly voluntary, but you still want to be there in spite of whatever is annoying you at the moment, it's a very affirming feeling. Even for people who really really want the degree, who can practically taste their own desire, having a backup plan that you'd be genuinely happy with if push came to shove, is better.

(About to be) A staff scientist (MS-level) at a mostly DARPA-funded research firm, working on morphogenetic and swarm robotics. They'll let me work there part-time while I do a PhD (once I get to that point), and fund me, which is exciting! Also I'm a part-time MS student in CS. Also I'm on a volunteer search & rescue/disaster relief team. I have worked a couple of other research jobs before this, and enjoyed all of them - that's why I want to do a PhD, because I have enjoyed doing research so much! - but this new job that I'm about to start is by far the closest to what I actually want to do for my PhD work. My about-to-be work PI knows some of my PhD-program POIs.

What sort of "own funding" are you talking about? Are you talking about being wealthy, or are you talking about, for example, a big multi-year fellowship, or working for a company that will fund your advanced degree? In the latter two cases, it's something that you can bring to the program's attention without looking like a jerk who wants the school to take them because they are rich - after all, it is a sign of merit if you win a fellowship or your company has enough faith in you to pay for your PhD! Having your own funding (and here, I am talking about your own merit-based funding, because I don't know what happens in the other case) can help you, but it will not get you in if you're not competitive. You might come free for the school, but if they don't think that you can pass classes and quals, complete a dissertation, and in general represent their name well during the course of your career, they won't let you in. Having your own funding can help if you're a "maybe."

I really hate Macs. A lot of people swear by them, and of course those people should get Macs, but I find them horribly unintuitive, plus Apple's marketing irritates me. I like various Linux stuff (Ubuntu is kind of nice, Debian seems fine), Windows XP, and Windows 7.

I want to be a research PI. Research PI jobs exist in my field in academia, industry, and government - there's not a job shortage. I could work my way up to being a PI in some non-academic organizations with just an MS, but if I lost my job at one of those, I'd have a harder time finding a new job without a PhD, so I'd rather get one if I can. And besides, I want the research training. I love research, and I think I'm pretty good at it for this stage of my career, but intensive training under a higher-level researcher is a great way to improve.

It's not just you. When I was applying to MS programs, I got into both of the ones that I applied to. One of them was the school where I'd been doing my post-bac work. I chose to go to the other one, which is a little higher-ranked, and, more importantly, better set up for students who work during the day. But the professors at the post-bac school had been good to me, even though the school bureaucracy hadn't. I cried when I clicked the "decline" button for the post-bac school, because I felt so bad about turning them down. I felt like a horrible person. I felt even worse when I got a note from one of the post-bac profs, who had been one of my recommenders, asking about my MS plans, and I had to tell her that I wasn't going there, especially since she sent a sad reply. On the plus side, when I explained my reasons, it prompted her to push the department to offer more evening classes and funding for part-timers. So you're not alone. But, as a number of people told me at the time, you don't need to feel bad. You're making decisions based on what's right for you, and the programs that you turn down will get other good students.

Even if there's enough funding for all PhD students, they're still going to like the idea of one that they get for free. A big fellowship guarantees nothing, but it won't hurt you and will often help. I think it's more a school thing than a field thing. Schools with more rigid bureaucracies are less likely to reverse a rejection or waitlisting.

It's not just a matter of outstanding LORs (though those are essential). An outstanding LOR from someone known by the admissions committee (and/or by your POI) is even better. Given the choice between "outstanding" or "known to the committee," you'd want to go with the former, but if you can get both it will give you a big boost. Bringing your own funding (for example, because you won a fellowship that pays tuition + stipend), is helpful. If the program doesn't have to worry about funding you, they have less reason not to take you.

After I got my BS, I got a job doing applied AI research at a small government contractor. My MS is a part-time program, and when I started it, I was still working at that company. I lost that job about a year ago, and got another one working on imaging science research for anti-suicide-bomber systems. That was a contract job, and my contract ran out three months ago. Later this month I'll be starting a new job at another contractor, working on morphogenetic robotics. I expect this one to last - it's close to a dream job. This one will also put me through a PhD program - it'll let me work reduced hours and provide me with funding. And my new boss knows my top POI at my top-choice PhD program - they were grad students in the same lab at the same time. It's been pretty good money. I've been able to save up almost 100k, including retirement savings, since I got my BS in 2007, even with paying for a wedding. Generally good working conditions too - I've been able to balance work and school commitments without too much difficulty. I certainly recommend it, but you need some sort of relevant background. Usually, for a defense/security research firm, that's physical sciences and engineering. Some research firms, including the first one I worked for, take people with psych backgrounds, and some have biodefense or other life-science-based programs and take life scientists.

If any of y'all want to know about Tufts or Northeastern (I saw that somebody got into both), I did post-bac work at the former and am an MS student at the latter. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Just a note: You have the names of the two schools that you have been accepted to listed in your signature, and the context provided by your post (i.e. that X is near lots of Native American communities) makes it pretty easy to tell which of these is X and which is Y. I don't know whether you actually care about keeping the info secret, but I thought I should mention it in case you do. I would say, negotiate with X for more funding. Tell them that you'd like to accept their offer, but unless they can raise the funding you'll have to go with Y. If they really want you, they may be able to come up with more money. If there's a specific prof at X who wants you in their lab, and who has influence in the department, they may be able to pull strings on your behalf. If X can't raise the funding to something that you're happy with...ultimately it is up to you to decide what trade-offs to make, but in your place I'd go with Y. Then again, I have relatively broad tastes in study. You might not.

This often means that you're on an "informal waitlist" - just as jmacnomad said. Your best info will come from the programs themselves.

If you actually want to go to law school, have you considered doing a law-related internship, instead of going into a master's program that you don't care about? Here are some examples of law-related internships that don't require you to be a law student yet to participate. http://www.helium.com/items/1696195-top-pre-law-internships-in-washington-dc In addition to the programs listed there, Legal Aid has internships for people who aren't yet law students.

Graduating from a top-10 program (using the rankings that you yourself cited) won't enhance your chance to get a better job? And given that you pointed out (correctly) that undergrad rankings aren't the thing to be looking at here, why do you then cite a different undergrad ranking (Washington Monthly) that puts Berkeley on top? You mention that it's important to go with a top-10 program, but how exactly do you tell that? Berkeley, Stanford, CMU, MIT, are all pretty obvious. But there are some schools that get different numbers in the NRC regression rankings, the NRC survey rankings, and the US News rankings, and that are in the top 10 in one or two of these but not all three. And what about subfield rankings? The top programs in general also tend to be top in many subfields, from what I've seen, but there are a few that are significantly better-ranked in a particular specialty than they are overall.

Any decent public admin program is going to require some econ (which uses math), some statistics, and some quantitative data analysis. Math and science programs are not the only things in this world that apply math. A below-average GRE score won't kill you if the rest of your application is good, but your math score is not just "below average," and I think most social science programs (including those that apply social science like public admin) will see it as a red flag. I suggest doing the paperwork to get your disability documented and get the calculator and extra time, and then retaking.

If what you want to say in your application is likely to change a lot between now and the application deadline, it's probably too early (if it's a month from the application deadline and you still aren't sure what you want to say in your application, that's a problem in itself). I've already poked a bit at what I want to say in my SOPs for the 2011-2012 app season, and I've compiled a ton of info on possible programs, advisors, and fellowships, but I probably won't finish my apps too early because I want enough time to develop a relationship with my MS thesis advisor, so that he can write me a better letter. And most likely, when you applied to colleges, you applied both to schools that you'd like to attend in a perfect world, and schools that you were sure that you'd get into (and some in between). Do the same for graduate schools, with the caveat that you shouldn't apply for any program where you'd rather not get into grad school than attend that program, no matter how sure you are that you'll get in.

This seems to vary a lot by school and field. In my department at my school, a 3.5 average in your graduate courses qualifies you for the field's honor society, and you have to stay at or over 3.0 to stay in good academic standing. So for me a B is in no way equivalent to a D - I took a class last semester where the class average was in the B/B- range. I have heard, though, of programs/fields where anything out of the A range is considered a red flag. The idea that As are somehow "ultimate achievement" seems off to me. True achievement, in any field, is making important contributions as a practitioner (and in scholarly fields, you can even work on this as a lowly student, as you'll already be doing research and/or doing implementation projects). Doing well in class is successfully jumping through a hoop.

That's one way to do it. If your advisor is friends with conference organizers at other schools, he or she may also be able to help you get a volunteer spot for conferences at those schools. There are conferences that are not affiliated with any particular department, that sometimes ask for all-comer volunteers, and there are conferences put on by professional societies where you might be able to volunteer by contacting the professional society. Oh, also, your department will probably bring in visiting scholars to give talks sometimes, and you can attend their presentations and network with them.

Depends on what factors you care about. Any reputable ranking should publish its methodology. Are you looking for pure reputation? Excellence along various axes that are valued by academics? Job placement numbers?