Faraday

No fall break until thanksgiving here, and I decided I'll be staying around through then so I am hoping to get some productive research done during that time. It's very hectic to have to balance that, teaching, and my own classes right now. Since my hometown is so far away I'll be taking off 6 days during Christmas time so I hope to have earned that by then.

Your SOP should be the culmination of several months of work. Obviously you are not spending every waking hour during that time working on it, but once you get the first draft done (the hardest part), you will likely go through many revisions before the final product. Looking back at my files I have 9 different revisions saved. Each time get feedback from peers, professors, etc. and mold your SOP into the best product it can be. Look at other sucessfull SOPs, take a day off and think about yours, and then go back and make some changes, etc. The process is more like sculpting than building something out of legos. I wouldn't worry about length on your first draft. Even if you have over 2 pages (and your goal is one page) you can easily cut that down to one with good feedback from peers, professors, etc. It is easy to ramble on about something for a prargraph that can be succinctly said in a sentence or two.

You can do a "Results Search" to see what some of the hard statistics of students in the past were. That's probably gonna cause more stress than anything though. loginofpscl said everything else quite well.

You shouldn't be aiming for top schools simply because they are highly ranked... Target schools that have professors doing research that interests you in your targeted area. Granted, most top schools will have plenty of options, but double check there are at least a few professors you would want to work with wherever you are applying to and discuss why that school is a particuarily good fit for you. Your GPA might be a bit of a red flag to some people, but very strong GRE scores can help offset that, and your statement and LORs will still be much more important for your overall application package.

I think you could mention you are writing a paper. I mentioned one that is submitted and under review in my personal statement. Also, I went back and revised my statement into two sections: Intelectual Merit and Broder Impacts. I think I like that organization.

I happened to have a meeting today with a professor at my graduate institution who was a reviewer for the NSF GRFP as well as other NSF grants in general and she had a few useful things I will pass along for everyone here to know (mostly applicable to the sciences). Some of this has been said, some has not, but I will repeat everything for posterity. No jargon in your proposal. While people in your overall field will be reading the proposal, someone in your exact subfield might not be and getting too specific will cause them to not be able to gain much from the short quick read you applications will get. In the same light, minimize your abbreviations. The Broader Impacts section is without a doubt the most important aspect of your application. The expectation is not necessarily that you will be an incredibly brilliant scientist with a groundbreaking research proposal. If you do, and it is clear you have a very bright future in research this will greatly help your application, but the majority of reviewers look for the broader impacts criteria. Broader Impacts can best be summarized as leadership. Leadership might come in the form of student-led group at your undergraduate or graduate institution, or maybe from outreach education as has been mentioned previously. In the case of the latter, there is a strong desire to see people helping underprivileged minorities. I the case of science, they want to see someone who is can contribute to the community and effectively communicate science. This is in line with the NSF view of how it wants to see science promoted. Summarized, there is an expectation that each and every candidate will walk on water and be able to go to Haiti and tutor young middle schoolers in the basics of science made possible by your diligent studies of French and volunteerism in the local inner-city neighborhoods... There can also be some benefit to overcoming extraordinary circumstances. Some heartfelt story about abuse you suffered when you were younger can certainly grab their attention, but you need to connect it to something worthwhile, don't simply try to tug at the reviewer's heartstrings Lastly, be sure your research proposal can be summarized in 2-3 clear and distinct sentences. What happens is the applications go through a few rounds of reductions from all of them to the finalists. The finalists are then scored and ranked by score. There is an arbitrary cutoff applied and everyone above that cutoff gets a fellowship, and most people below will not. In some cases if one reviewer in particular likes you application, they can champion for you to get the fellowship even though you were below the cutoff, but in these intense negotiations it is important that the reviewer championing your candidacy can summarize your worthiness to other reviewers in a quick and succinct manner. So I think the moral of the story is to sell your broader impacts as best as you possibly can. I don't have experience mentoring underprivileged minorities but I have been teaching, tutoring, and mentoring other students at my undergraduate university, and well as some high-school mentoring (non-minority) for three years so I will try to talk about how that ties into my passion for teaching and education and show my dedication to continue to reach out and inspire and enlighten future scientists, and hope for the best with that outlook.

Saturday was a combination of laundry and studying for an upcoming midterm. Most of Sunday was spent trail running and climbing some really amazing mountains. Unfortunately when I got back I was so exhausted I took a long nap, managed to do a little grading, and then collapsed and wet to bed around 8:30. I didn't manage to get anything "productive" done, but it was a lot of fun! It also means now this week as I try to continue studying, all I think about is how winter is coming and the beautiful weather is disappearing and all I want to be doing is spending time in the outdoors.

Be sure to ask/address something specific about their research, not just generic generalized topics. I've heard professors tend to get quite a few generic emails from prospective students (especially foreign applicants) this time of year so you want to stand out from the crowd.

I would recommend the same thing with a government internship (in biology check out the NIH SIP). You will be working in a similarily professional and organized environment but doing research that might be more similar to that which you would expect in graduate school.

To Eigen or other members with chemistry knowledge in the NSF process: I am thinking about including a general reaction scheme for my proposed synthetic project as I'm not sure it can be clearly described only in text. Is this taboo on the NSF applications? I see no mention of guidelines for figures/schemes, only for the general page formatting of essays but it appears their rules are very strict for that...

I think you will find natural product synthesis and new reaction discovery are common research topics in a lot of synthetic groups. You can check out Organic Links for a comprehensive listing of all "Organic Chemistry" groups in the United States. Keep in mind some of these groups might be more physical organic or chemical biology-based in their direction as opposed to synthesis.

The only top school that doesn't require the Chemistry GRE is MIT. Given that applicants to MIT probably applied to Harvard, Berkeley, Caltech, etc. (schools which require the subject GRE), being competitive with those other applicants would almost necessitate a chemistry GRE score. If you are head to head with someone for admission and they have the score and you don't, maybe that could be the deciding factor. Why don't you take a past Chemistry GRE (there are at least three available in other threads on here as I have copies of them) and see what your score is. If you are in fairly good shape then you might not need to brush up on too much, and at least then you will know what kinds of questions to focus on. The tests don't vary much from year to year. If you don't do so hot and you would need a lot of work to look competitive then maybe consider spending your time on other aspects of your application. Obviously if you are really set on Harvard as your top choice then you just have to find the time to study no matter what it takes...

I'm sorry, your question wasn't clear to me before. You have until April 15 to accept any offers and not lose out on any potential funding opportunities. Coinciding weekends are usually not a problem, most schools have at least two visiting weekends and if you still can't make one of those they will usually offer an individual visit. I would advise going to the visitation weekends if possible, as often visiting at another time means you might not quite get the same experience and potential PI's might be busy (they usually make themselves available on visitation weekends).

Most weekends take place February-March. The three I went to were back-to-back-to-back starting the last weekend in February. Usually visits last Friday-Sunday, although I had one that started Thursday and I find a weekend is a pretty good amount of time to get a feel for how well you fit in as long as you know what to look for. Did that answer your question?

personality flaw

The latter point is good to know, I will probably have to tone things down a bit in the research proposal. That's good as I was a little lengthy there. It will be interesting to see how I do. I have lots of research experience: two summer fellowships at a government lab, several years of research during undergrad, multiple presentations, and will likely a very high-impact paper (third author) paper based on some physical/analytical work I did this past summer by the time November rolls around. Unfortunately, however none of that research was in synthetic organic chemistry, the government work was analytical chemistry and the undergraduate research was related analytical and physical chemistry. Since I've started graduate school I've already joined a lab (informally) and things are going well there, I love the synthetic research and in just a few weeks I have learned a great deal but in terms of synthetic research I am still a "newbie". Any suggestions for how best to spin or sell the previous research in the best possible light? I have a pretty good grasp of my new group's research goals and directions so my research statement should be solid.

Is there a breakdown somewhere of how the 2,700 awards are doled out amongs the disciplines and sub-discilines. I'm particuarily curious about chemistry and chemical synthesis.

As a [former] MD resident I can say for certain Boston is a lot more than 3-4 hours away from MD. If you are willing to go there then your potential area of schools has widened quite a bit. You might be interested to check out University of Delaware. They have a relatively "up and coming" department of younger organic chemists doing interesting research over a wide range of topics. UD would also be quite convenient for you coming from MD.

Worry about getting accepted to the schools you have PI's you are interested in first. It's unlikely bumping into them at a conference, watching a speech they gave, exchanging an email with them, or gossip will give you a realistic idea of what they will be like. If you are a domestic student all universities (that I've heard of) will fly you out and wine and dine you. During these recruitment weekends you will get individual or small group meetings with potential PIs. That will be your opportunity to meet them and get a feel for how you would interact with them. I agree with St. Andrews Lynx, you'll get a feeling pretty quickly for how they run their lab, and worse come to worse you can always ask something along the lines of, "How do you see your role as a PhD advisor as it applies to your interactions with students." Good luck with your applications!

I think in general guys are not always going to "get it", we have a tendency to not be very observant about these things. That said, what you have done so far doesn't sound like it should be sending up huge "i like you!" messages to some people in terms of flirting. Asking personal questions isn't going to send those signals most of the time. Go ahead and ask him out. There are good times in a conversation when you can ask it without seeming too direct and yet if you ask a question like that the intentions should be more obvious than your actions so far. I agree that saying "date" might scare him away, even though my personal policy is to always make it pretty clear that it's a date so you can make that call. Worse come to worse he says no and at least you have closure, I think the not knowing is what is killing you. If you don't use the word date, use little "keywords" that psychologically hint in that direction. Something like "Hey, would you like to grab lunch/coffee together sometime? How about [insert date you think he is usually free]?" Suggesting an exact date (like tomorrow) gives him less of a chance to shrug it off if he's shy about it. Let us know how it goes, good luck!

If you need to ask, it's safe to say it's too early.

I was told there should be information sent out after the deadline (April 15th).

"Two Princes" by Spin Doctors

"Midnight City" by M83

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