UnlikelyGrad

I agree with the poster who says that you need to do something to keep from burning out in grad school. With that said, given your personality, I recommend that you do something that doesn't involve other people. If you tell a professor, "I love to hike" he would not think that you didn't have fun. Ditto if you say you like to go skiing, biking, swimming... Physical exercise is good for the brain. So choose a solo sport and get into it.

OMG. Harry Gray is like the super-coolest dude on the face of the planet. I wonder if he still remembers me? Nah, it's been way too long.

Another vote for loose-leaf paper + 3-ring binder. This allows me to store my syllabus, handouts etc. in the same storage unit as my handwritten notes. Also, if I forget my binder at home or something, I can easily take notes on a loose piece of paper and add it later. I am a copious note-taker. There's something about the act of writing stuff down that helps me remember it later. (I usually don't go back and look at my notes ever--I just need to write something to remember it.)

This is the absolutely critical stage: they clearly still need your LoRs and/or your transcripts. No one in the department will see your file until everything is in at the graduate office. Collecting stuff is really the only thing the grad office does when it comes to admissions, as far as I can tell.

Oh, I'm not doing what I talked about in my SOP at all, but that's OK with me. What I discussed in my SOP is what I want to do long-term. I'm using my PhD years to get 1/2 of the tools I'll need to do what I want, and I figure I'll try to do somewhat different sort of stuff as a post-doc to pick up the other 1/2 of the skills I need. Then, as a professor, I can combine them in my own unique way.

When I was applying, two schools shoved the (chronologically) first two transcripts of mine, which were in my maiden name, into a file with my maiden name, thus leaving my application file (with my married name) "incomplete" for a good month. They never said anything about it to me. I finally figured out what was going on, called the departments, and rectified the situation.

I don't personally, but I have a friend who's been a TA for ( ?) 3 or 4 years, I think... Yes, he does have to teach the class completely on his own. I think his first year or two he got stuck with freshman composition-type classes, but as he gains seniority he gets better classes, like American Lit (which is his specialty).

Agreed, especially the bit about tables. I taught myself more advanced HTML using Annabella's site...wow, can't believe it's been 12 years!

Don't worry about your age. Thirty isn't that old. Research: what sort of job do you have? Some CS/EE jobs could easily qualify as "research" of a sort, albeit of a non-academic sort. In your shoes I would find two projects I worked on that come the closest to academic research and get LoRs from my supervisors in those projects. I suggest getting the third LoR from a prof from your master's program, if possible. (How many years has it been since you graduated?)

Last year it was the first week of April, if I remember correctly.

I'm a big fan of public transit, and, conveniently, I get a free student bus pass. I survived my first year of grad school without a car and only wished I'd had one a couple of times a month. And if I'd lived closer to campus--if I'd started out living at the place I live now--I don't think I would have missed it much at all. So yes, it's doable.

I agree. This is how I got as good as I am at networking (which, granted, is not terrific...but I am at least average now, instead of painfully shy). One thing that really helped me was doing volunteer work. Although most of the work was stuff I loved, every now and then our group of workers had to go and "recruit" and community fairs. We had some awesome networkers in our group (Rotary Club president, etc.) so I watched them work, looked for behavioral patterns, and imitated them. By the end of my time there, I was able to recruit as many people as they did. Yes. Play a game: by listening to a lecture, can you find anything you have in common with your professor? Very few people lecture without dropping in some personal details now and then. Even if you don't have something in common, think about these personal details and think about how you can use them to make a connection with the prof. "I notice that you like to use baseball analogies. I like baseball too. Do you have a favorite team?" My best connections have been made by finding something that the other person has in common with me.

A hook doesn't have to be a childhood story. It can easily be stating your purpose. I just sent them a copy of my resume whether it was asked for or not.

Hey, just because I don't intentionally write cursing into my algorithm doesn't stop it from happening at regular intervals.

I've written not just an SOP, but a bunch of personal essays for fellowships (2 years in a row). Here's what I do: (1) Look at the prompt. (2) Brainstorm what character attributes I have that will impress people who want to hear about the prompt. (3) Consider anecdotes/data/experiences/etc. that prove that I have those attributes (4) Write up paragraphs involving stuff from #3 (5) Put paragraphs in order and add transitions (6) Think of a really good 'hook' for the beginning (7) At this point the draft is almost always way too long, so I go through and examine which things can be shortened, and which things are unnecessary enough that they can be cut completely. (8) Now I write a conclusion. Some people might do this earlier in the process but I have a hard time writing conclusions.

Welcome! I am a geochemist and like to think I know a little bit about Mines. Admissions here is...odd, to say the least. There's no real admissions meeting, per se. I'm more familiar with the chem department (geochemists can apply to either department) but from what I hear from my advisor, the geology dept is just as laid back as the chem department. Basically, the head of the adcomm looks over your app to make sure you're not a total loser. If you're at least marginally acceptable, your folder gets passed around to any profs whose research interests might align with yours, and if any one of them likes you, you're probably in. (Whether or not you get funded is a completely separate matter; I have no idea how that works in either department.) As far as I can tell, it's rolling admissions here. I had a transcript hiccup, so my app wasn't officially complete until 1/31 or so, and my acceptance came in some time around the beginning of March. I do know that most profs are gone right now--classes don't start until the 12th--so assume you won't hear anything for at least a week after that, if not longer. Just out of curiosity, who are you thinking of working with? I don't know the Engineering-type profs as well as the straight-Geology folks, but I know lots of people who do know...

You know, I thought I already posted to this thread, but I guess not? Oh well. It's been a busy Christmas. I addressed teaching for the first time in one of my early posts: http://unlikelygrad.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/teaching/ Yes. This. It works for lab classes just fine; I did this the first semester and the second semester I not only used the notes to revise my approach, I passed them on to all the TAs who were teaching the lab for the first time. I didn't just take notes about what I needed to highlight in my pre-lab lectures, but also common mistakes that students made and how to help them recover from those errors.

$48 only lasts you 2-3 days??? What in the world are you buying? I can feed a family of six for almost a week for $48. Learn to cook cheaper food--and be glad that you get something. Some of us don't qualify even though our income is pretty low.

For one thing, your school day will certainly be less structured! Fewer classes, more independent study. What your day would look like would be very dependent on your major/program, though.

Interesting list of books, waddle. I used Harris as well, which I still think is pretty good and use as a desk reference (even though it doesn't refer to some of the analytical methods I use in research: Skoog does a more thorough job of that.) To give you an idea of how old I am, when I was an undergrad, I used Miessler & Tarr 1st ed. in inorganic; I think it was a brand new book then...but I didn't like it very much as a text. I used Housecroft. And when my dad (who's in China on a cultural exchange program) was asked to teach inorganic for the first time in 30 years, he borrowed my Housecroft...and said it was the best inorganic book he'd seen. (My sister also lent him a couple of inorganic books.) Organic: I used to have a bunch of organic books which my dad gave me for desk references...he taught organic for decades and had been given many free copies by textbook publishers. He also preferred the mechanistic approach. But this didn't work so well for me; I hadn't even looked at o-chem for 15 years before I took the test, so I preferred Maitland Jones, who has a very conversational writing style. As for p-chem: I used to work for a p-chemist. He used Atkins for his classes, even though he actually preferred MacQuarrie. The reason he used what he considered an "inferior" book is that he thought MacQuarrie was too intensely mathematical for most of his students. But he suggested I use it as a reference, since math is a forte of mine. Thomas Engel's book isn't too bad, though, especially if you're a bit math-deficient.

I think my name is pretty obvious. I started my grad school journey with some incredibly major handicaps, and I really didn't think I would get in anywhere. I've considered changing my username/blog name to something that would last me past grad school, but I think it's too late for that now: over half of the people who come to my blog through a search engine are searching for me by name. My avatar is a landscape shot from the city I now consider home. I <3 Colorado and hope I never have to go to California again. (A stupid thing to wish: I'm actually in California right now.)

Yikes. That sucks. I'm sorry.

What sort of structures?

YES!!! This. And as another poster said, you really have to have research interests that align with the prospective advisor's. So: what are your interests? Biochemical modeling? Materials science? Fluid properties? Astrochemistry? What sort of computational chemistry is your cup of tea: molecular dynamics? ab initio? DFT? If you want suggestions from us on where to go, we really will need more information.

My experience with LoRs (not just for grad admissions but also for fellowships and the like) is that if things are due Friday at midnight, 2 of the 3 will submit at 11:30 pm on Friday, while the "early one" may actually do it before 5 pm. Actually, my "early guy" submitted his the day before this year...I nearly died of shock.