tso123d

I can only speak for chemistry (and even this based almost exclusively on hearsay), however I am becoming increasingly convinced that where you go to grad school can unfortunately matter a lot in terms of your chances of subsequently gaining employment, especially if you are interested in an academic position. The problem is that the competition for professorships is so fierce that in many cases it may be hard to be seriously considered, let alone receive an interview offer unless one has a doctorate from a top ranked program. I found the following article: http://pubs.acs.org/...education1.html to offer a sobering analysis of the realities of the academic job market. In this article, a group of researchers who studied the effect of one's grad school choice on success in finding an academic position concluded that: Having said all that, of course there is another side to the story. Clearly it's not possible to fully separate correlation from causation here, i.e. on average stronger candidates will be admitted to higher ranked schools and these individuals will then find it easier to get a job easier because they are more able, not because of the name on their diploma. Furthermore, if you are an exceptional scientist who can produce truly outstanding results in graduate school and post-doctoral work, chances are you will one day become a professor, no matter where you went to grad school. I'm sure all of us know such individuals who have successfully climbed the academic ladder. Nonetheless, unfortunately for every such success story there are probably ten people for whom things did not turn out ideally, so one must look at such stories in perspective. Of course going to a higher ranked school offers no guarantee that you will one day become a professor (or any kind of successful scientist for that matter), but it does look as though it can give you a real advantage for the former. tl;dr: The academic job market is incredibly competitive and, for better or worse, where you go to grad school can have a significant effect on your chances of being employed.

I heard back from Harvard today. I'm pretty excited, now my application season is officially over...

No, I don't think it would "look bad" if you decide to begin in the fall, after all, that is the standard route. On the other hand, it is possible that by starting early you may have an advantage in joining the group you want. But also consider the other side of the equation. This will be our last summer before a busy 4/5+ year long haul, so this may be the last chance for a while to take it slow and do something for fun (not that research isn't fun of course ). I think if there is one specific group that you want to join, maybe you can try to communicate with the potential advisor in concrete terms before/during/after visiting the school and directly broach the subject of joining his group in the fall. It's possible that he may be hesitant to commit in advance, but there is also a chance that he may just do that. By the way, I'm actually considering the same situation. I have to say that I'm strongly leaning on the side of putting grad school off until the fall. Even if I don't travel as much as I may want to (I found it's scary how expensive it all is), at least I would get to relax for a bit, something I haven't done in a while, and which I'm afraid I may not have a chance to do again in a long long time (in fact I shudder to think that this may be the last time I get to take a three month vacation until retirement ).

Are you referring to the base stipend or to any additional support offered (i.e.fellowships, etc)? In terms of the base stipend, I didn't get the impression that Berkeley's offer was all that different from most other schools I heard from, crudely adjusting for cost of living. But maybe I'm underestimating how expensive the area is...

Hy ep, nice to meet you, I'm I also in materials. You're right, unfortunately (and strangely) there's not a lot of us around, at least on this forum.

Yup, saw that too, which made my (short-lived) post irrelevant, lol. Anyway, from last years it seems like Harvard sends acceptances in a batch and then rejects in a batch a few weeks later. So I guess those of us who applied there will know whether we got it in or not based on whether we get an answer in the next few days or not...

Sweet, I just heard from MIT by e-mail. By the way, the letter did make it sound like admissions to the department are made by sub-field (I'm classed as p-chem).

Not a bad two days, eh?

My application season has gone well so far so I don't really have any huge regrets. However, if I were to do the last four years again I would change some things: 1) Taking a summer off was a mistake. Doing research in the summer when you can work full-time is probably the best way to learn about your field and in some ways the only chance to make significant progress on a given project, so in retrospect it made little sense not to take advantage of an opportunity to do this, especially when I had not better plans. In addition, I didn't realize how soul-crushingly boring four months of doing nothing would be. All my friends had jobs and so I was stuck essentially on my own. By the end I was almost praying for the beginning of the semester. 2) I regret starting my applications fairly late. I actually thought I was doing fairly well early in the fall, I chose potential programs of interest, talked to people about letters, etc. But when I started working on applications, I was surprised to find that the whole thing took longer than I had anticipated. Maybe the biggest problem was that I decided to apply for the NSF fellowship only a month before it was due and in the end I was almost racing to finish the thing (good thing I work best under pressure). On the other hand, after I had the NSF statements written, I wrote my statements of purpose and other essays fairly quickly as I already had an idea of what to say and could even cannibalize the NSF personal statement/research statement. I still ended up applying close to the deadline for most programs though... 3) Finally I would probably apply to fewer schools. But it's easy to say this now after I have gotten some offers, it was a completely different situation when I was in the middle of applying and stressing out about my chances at the schools I was looking at.

Sweet, I just heard from Stanford. The only two schools I'm now waiting for are Harvard and MIT (though I'm afraid chances for the latter aren't exactly looking great now). Yes Luce, I think (/hope) that this may be the case for the inorganic, physical, etc. programs at some schools, unfortunately though there's no way to know for sure right now. I guess we'll find out soon enough...

I got a phone call, I think most people did. By the way, are there any non-orgo people here? Just wondering as it seems like almost everyone is synth. org.

I was actually wondering the same thing. For instance in chemistry virtually no programs have formal interviews (by which I mean meaningful interviews, which act as a round of selection as opposed to simple recruitment meetings). I believe that's true for most programs in the sciences and engineering. The biggest exception is for the life-sciences where it appears that interviews are the norm. What the reason for this difference could be I have no idea. And in some cases the distinction seems to be completely arbitrary, e.g. in "chemistry and biochemistry" departments people interested in biochemistry don't have interviews but where a slightly different departmental arrangement exists, all of the sudden people wanting to wok in biochemistry are classified as being of the "life-science" type and have to go through interviews. In any case, I don't really see what would justify having such a different approach for admissions to different science programs. Perhaps it's just a matter of tradition?

Hey Sami, do you mind sharing when and how (i.e. e-mail/phone, etc) you heard from MIT?

This week I also heard from Berkeley and UNC. I'm pretty excited since the schools I've gotten into so far include most of my top choices, so whatever else happens I'll have a nice selection to choose from.

I didn't realize that any chem programs had an interview stage. Do you guys know if this is a real interview process where further selection takes place as is the case for bio programs or is this just a campus visit by another name?

Both. However, I have only received e-mails in which the financial support was outlined, I was told that full details will be in the package I would receive by mail (which they said had already been sent out).

As an update, so far I've heard from UCSD and Northwestern. All else will have to wait for the end of the holiday shutdown it appears.

Congrats! So looks like they have rolling admission. Hmm. maybe I shouldn't have waited until the day before the deadline

Whew, I'm finally finishing up my last applications. Now for the long wait!

Nope it's not just you. And my deadline is tomorrow, it should be interesting

In the first group, is the problem only the fact that the majority of the members predominantly spoke Chinese, or do you mean more by "group dynamic." For instance, did you find your workers to generally be friendly and helpful, or the opposite? If it's the first case, then if I were in your place I would choose the first group. I understand that it can be somewhat uncomfortable to be in that situation and you may feel isolated to some because of your different cultural background, but I think over time this problem will tend to decrease as you get to know everyone better at a personal level. And I think ultimately (baring extreme circumstances of course), professional considerations should take precedence, since after all the main purpose of graduate school is to prepare you for your future career. Also, how familiar are you with the second group. Since you've already worked in the first you already know the bad, but I'm sure also some of the good. On the other hand, it's possible that you may find your impression of the people in the second group change when you start to work there. From that point of view, opting for the second group appears to be a bit more risky.

Since we're all sharing: GRE: 1450+ Chem GRE: 890 GPA 4.0 at an R1 2.5 yrs research I have to say that I felt a lot more confident in my chances with those stats until I saw the stats of others here

Orgo sure seems to be well represented here. I am going for materials chem.

I guess I'll add that I'm applying to UCSB, UCSD, Northwestern, UNC, Harvard, MIT, Bekeley.

So who else here is applying to graduate school for chemistry for next fall?