SyntheticOrganiker

As I reach the denouement of my grad school tours, I just wanted to provide a quick recap for future applicants. 1. Don't get stressed out about not getting into a summer research program. I had an immensely dififcult time in getting into one, but got into all of the graduate schools I applied to. 2. As expressed exhaustively, you can get into any graduate (and medical/law/whatever) school from not the greatest undergraduate institution. I was really concerned about not having connections to the synthetic community, but it has apparently not mattered too much (however, connections will not hurt). 3. While tons of visitation weekends may sound fun (and are fun), they can be quite exhausting (the traveling, discussing science, and literally constantly being asked if you have any more questions) and if you procrastinate (like me), final school work can pile up. Therefore, be careful about how many you plan to go to.. 4. Don't be concerned when you get PIs you didn't sign up for on visitation and others you wanted to meet with are not on your schedule, it could just be too many people wanted to meet them (and often you will be allowed to meet with them if you just ask the coordinator). I found that I had the most interesting conversations with people that I didn't initially think about talking to. On a totally unrelated topic: Chaospaladin, the forum is an excellent resource for getting questions answered. That being said, constantly asking questions that can be easily answered through google, or common sense in some cases, and then acting as if people should be constantly answering your questions, is annoying. It is also concerning because in graduate school you will be expected to find the answers mostly for yourself. While other people will help you, you need to learn how to answer these questions yourself. Good luck.

No, any top program (and most all programs for chemistry) will put money forward for visitation. Yale actually is providing funds for travel, they were just later in indicating so.

I too am confused about the lack of information from Yale about any reimbursement. It's already a hassle for me to go, so if they aren't paying, I won't be attending.

My advice (from someone who knows nothing about the process): Retake classes if and only if they don't interrupt the MUCH more important weakness in your profile - lack of research experience. You should spend your time getting more research, whether it's in inorganic/organic/bio chemistry...whatever, just get research. Any incremental increase in your GPA will be meaningless if you don't have the research experience to demonstrate to the better PhD programs that you won't just waste their money and fail out. How do you even know you want to pursue a PhD if you only have 1 month of research experience (you could end up hating the stuff after 2 months, and you literally have about 5 years of research, so you should probably know if you enjoy it for an extended period of time)? You could easily teach highschool chemistry/biology/whatever with just a bachelors and a teaching certificate, and I think community college with only a masters (although I have no idea about this one). Either way,main point: RESEARCH.

I'm fully considering all 5 that I'm visiting, but 2 are ahead of the others with a 3rd coming up. For me, I think it'd be disingenuous to go visit a school when I had my mind pretty much already made up (if they were paying for the transportation), but I guess one never knows until the program is actually checked out.

@luce373 I'm also planning on visiting 5 schools (out of 7 total) and will also be attending the ACS meeting. It'll be stressful (especially due to my strong distaste for traveling), but I think it's worth meeting the professors leading the field and seeing if my decision becomes obvious (although I doubt it will). We shall see if it is worth it.

@ michaelangelo Not to sound trite, but you wait. Take your second choice acceptance and wait until the April 15th deadline (but certainly submit if you haven't heard back yet). Hopefully, if you applied, the NSF GRFP will be out by then and if you get one you can contact Harvard and see if they will then accept you. I don't know how many people turn down Harvard, so can't say what chance there is you will get in. Just get excited about the other top programs you've gotten accepted to and hope.

Don't try to get over the feeling, your students are constantly judging and evaluating you. I think people are quite correct, and so are you, about not doing your own work during the lab period. I know that if I had a TA and they were not actively involved in coming around and asking if everything was going well, I would assume they really didn't want to be there.

@ organicnerd Please go be bitter/ a troll someplace else. Do not try to diminish the accomplishment of the people on this forum, we have all worked our butts off for this. The US's policy towards international students may not be fair, but that's certainly no one's fault on this forum.

Got the Columbia Email and the Harvard snailmail.....now what's Yale up to?

This doesn't seem like a real thing, but anyways, the stipend from Berkeley is really not on par with other offers from other schools. Berkeley is an expensive place to live and I don't want to join the throngs of hobos

It's great to take advice from people, but always remember that some people have vendettas against others (not suggesting that any of the cases mentioned here are due to that, but it's good to realize that scientists are people too)

For the sciences, I think it's also important to ask how often they meet with their students? Once a week, once a month, once? How much time are you expected to spend in lab? (just don't ask it in such a way that a 40hr work week will be a hardship) If there aren't teaching requirements but there are teaching options that you want to pursue, you could ask how they view students who teach one or two semesters. Some of the more sensitive info may best be asked of graduate students if you visit (they probably won't respond in a documented way) Edit: Also, if they are a big deal, then you may want to ask how often they are away for conferences, talks, etc.

What are Columbia's visitation days if they sent that information? Thanks. (This information may already be in the thread but I'm too lazy to try and find that)

Those are the same three I'm waiting for.