UnlikelyGrad

I've found that people who are complete and utter jerks online are frequently quite nice in person. Probably because they wouldn't dare say such mean things to someone's face. P.S. One time I was talking to a friend about my "modus operandi" and he got all shocked because he'd never heard someone actually say the phrase out loud. I think people who read a lot tend to use "big words" in normal conversation because they don't know the difference between "everyday" vocab and literature-type vocab. It's not pretentiousness...a better description would be cluelessness!! I say "modicum" in conversations too.

Ummmm. You've never priced Bay Area housing, have you? Off campus, expect 1 bedroom apartments to go for ~1200-1500/month, homes (the run-down tiny sort) around $1800-2000/month. And this would not be in Palo Alto, but rather in neighboring Mountain View. I'm about 2 years out of date, but I doubt things have changed substantially. My understanding is that the grad apartments are reasonable in cost--if you share, that is. Maybe $1500/month for a 2 bedroom? (It's been 3 years or so since I heard figures on this.) They are pretty tiny though. Being carless: I'm pretty sure that one of the free circulator buses that run around the Stanford campuses also runs by a grocery store, not to mention the Stanford Shopping Center (an upscale mall). There's also a free bus from Stanford to San Antonio shopping center--Walmart, Target, Sears, Ross... You can also take the shuttle to the Palo Alto transit center to pick up trains to San Francisco or San Jose if you want to go have some fun.

Str2T: I am so glad there's another person out there in my boat! I have 3 siblings who went to grad school. At least 2 took the GRE back in the days before the Analytical Writing, and managed to get perfect scores on both Quantitative and Analytical. Thus, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when my mom called, asked what I got, and said: "What? Only one 800? Chrissy and Jim both got two!!" (Way to rain on my parade, Mom. I guess my 790 Verbal isn't an accomplishment to you.) The funny thing was that her next statement was: "I don't know what Courtney got though; she won't tell me for some reason." Really, Mom? She won't tell you for SOME REASON? Oooh. I sense a blog post coming on...

Sorry, didn't see that you were at DU. I'm a big fan of public transit, so I'm going to recommend living in Centennial near the light rail line (which also stops at DU). I think my friend M says that housing is affordable in Centennial and she hasn't complained about the neighborhood yet (and she's the sort who would complain if there was a problem).

I'm in the Denver area. Since I don't have a car right now, it's hard for me to comment on neighborhoods on the other side of town. I can give you decent advice about the west side of town, but what I say about the rest of Denver is probably hearsay. I do have officemates and/or friends who live (or have lived) all over--Aurora, Thornton, Centennial, Highlands Ranch, downtown...so may be able to find out for you. Questions: (1) What part of Denver are you considering--or, alternatively, where's your school and how much of a commute are you willing to put up with? (2) What do you consider "affordable"? There's an undergrad from my school who hangs out here from time to time. Maybe he can give better advice... FWIW, I think Denver's a great place to live. Big enough to have almost everything you need, but small enough that you feel like you have elbow room*. The weather is great. (Yes, this is coming from a former California girl.) Public transit is pretty darn good for a town this size, too. Plus, you have the most majestic views.** *I realize this may not be an issue for some, but I got almost claustrophobic living in Silicon Valley. **see my avatar--this is what I see every morning while walking to the bus stop!!

I think they pulled the info. At the beginning of the section, it says such data are available in Appendix II. On the copy I pulled up, it goes straight from Appendix I to Appendix III.

Generally speaking, they ask about your research interests (most of them don't remember, even if they read your app folder) and tell you what they do. You wouldn't necessarily lead the discussion--for the most part, they tend to drive it. But do have a couple of standard questions ready to ask people (could be about the school in general, not just their research) in case the conversation flags. With that said, if there is someone that you REALLY want to work for, read their papers before you go and write down some questions about their research. Better yet would be to suggest a tack you could take that would grow their research in a new direction. What should you be aiming to learn from the trip? I would suggest the following as starting points: (1) Whether you could actually work with those potential advisors. (At least one person I'd earmarked as "really want to work for" ended up being a jerk) (2) What the "personality" of the department and/or potential advisor's lab is like (3) Whether you think you could bear to live in the town (4) Whether current grad students enjoy the program--if not, why? (Some reasons for dislike are very personal, like "I can't stand snow" whereas others, like "We have to TA 3 sections of lab" would be true for everyone.)

Maybe we should piss everyone off and start using "its"!

FYI: My department's adcomm is just now getting around to looking at applications. (I got my acceptance the first weekend of March last year.) So if you've applied to less-prestigious schools, there's a possibility you aren't getting a reply because they haven't looked at your folder yet.

Agreed. I can't be friends with every single student but I try to be on good terms with everyone.

I, too, try to keep everything under control--my weekends and (for the most part) evenings free. I usually succeed, though there are, of course, big deadlines which crop up from time to time that screw everything up.

I got two of my four accepts on Tuesday morning. One came on another weekday (can't remember which one), and one came on a weekend (I think Sunday). The weekend acceptance came from the school I'm now attending, and from the prof who became my advisor--that's how they do things here. When I first got the email, I was shocked to hear anything on a Sunday. However, now that she's been my advisor for six months, I realize that she does a lot of email-catching-up over the weekend, since she has no classes, office hours, committee meetings, etc. then. I'm curious how many other people with weekend admits were getting emails from profs as opposed to Official Department Contacts?

I feel compelled to write something, but I don't know what to say. You already said it all.

Do you know how many people usually apply?

Not to mention the IRS. Here's my GRE story: I started with the AW section. In the middle of the second essay, something weird happened to my computer. I could not type inside the entry box without it doing really bizarre things. I flagged the ETS rep down, and he spent five minutes figuring out what was wrong and how to fix it. Then he said to me... "okay, get back to work, you have 10 min left," or something like that. I asked if I could restart with a new prompt, since it wasn't fair that I'd had 5 minutes of test time wasted by a computer issue. He said he could restart, but then I'd have to restart from the beginning of the test--i.e. my first essay (which I thought was pretty good) would be wiped out. In other words, I'd have to write 3.5 essays instead of 2. I didn't think I'd have enough energy to get through the test if I had to start over, so I chose to go on. Needless to say, I didn't really have time to edit this second essay as much as I wanted He told me he'd put a note in my file to "let the graders know about the problem." But since one of the graders is a computer, I'm sure no adjustment was made to my score...

As I've mentioned before, my sister had both of her girls in grad school. (Note that she wasn't young either--I think 32 when #1 was born.) She went on to do a post-doc at a government institution, then landed a TT job at a R1 university. She just got tenure. My advisor waited to have a child until after she got tenure. But she did end up having one. So no, there's no guarantee of either barrenness or ostracism from academia. Hang in there.

After last year's debacle, I am voting for April 30, which is also (conveniently) a Friday.

Agree. I didn't apply to any schools I didn't have a serious interest in attending, so I didn't feel comfortable making a decision until after I'd visited. Since I somehow managed to squeeze all four of my school visits into a 2-week window in March (around spring break), I ended up making all the decisions at the same time, i.e. the week after I got back. I notified the two obvious rejects some time around April 1 and the third one a couple of days later--which was hopefully enough time for them to offer admission to someone else.

You're right--at least for chemistry, which is the field I have most experience in (both as a chemist and as the daughter of a chemist). My advisor is applying for sabbatical for next year. Luckily, it's early in the game for me AND I have a couple of "supporting advisors" who will be there to pick up the slack. But I imagine we'll get the first paper written via email.

I prefer #1 too. And btw, anxiousapplicant, it doesn't look 1970's-ish: it looks 1770's-ish. Which is why I love it so; I'm an old-fashioned kind of gal.

As a moderator, I will probably be here in a couple of years...or you can always contact me via my blog, which I intend to keep up and running through my grad school years (at least). I may have to rename it after that, though.

I thought it was a valuable experience, even after spending one night on a particularly uncomfortable couch. I got more juicy gossip from my hostess when we were off campus, chillin' in her living room, than I did from all the other grad students combined throughout the rest of the visit. It helped that she worked for one of the people I was considering as an advisor.

I really enjoyed those one-on-one visits with faculty. OK, I admit, there were some faculty members I didn't really like meeting. But I still walked away from those meetings with a VERY solid idea of what I thought of individual faculty members/program in general/department as a whole.

Ummm...how in the world are people going to know that anyone in your family has a degree in science etc.? Would this really affect your chances? My dad has a Ph.D. in chemistry and three of my siblings were NSF fellows...family connections clearly didn't affect their chances, and I seriously doubt they will affect mine. (Especially since I have a different last name than they do. Though both my married and maiden names are quite common.)

My first PI gave me the link to this paper, which is a good read. http://202.198.131.190/downloads/jiao'an/Writing%20a%20Paper.pdf