UnlikelyGrad

It's entirely possible that we may have met at ACS since I was at my school's display for at least part of the undergrad thing. BTW, I had the idea to apply primarily to MS programs because I didn't think I could get into PhD programs. My former mentor shot that idea down. He told me to apply instead to only PhD programs...but at a broad range of schools. I did, and amazingly got into 4 of 9. I'm so glad I took his advice.

Be specific...what sort of analytical chemistry? And do you want an RA or would a TA be acceptable?

Bfat: Like you, I started out at a 'big name' school. Unlike you, I left because I couldn't hack it academically. I transferred to a Cal State U school, and eventually ended up getting accepted at a top-10 school. (I ended up not going there, but that's another story.)

I would choose the most advantageous major! BTW, anyone who can get a good astronomy + physics GPA is probably a good student, so whether or not it's the program you're applying to, it would be good to put that down.

Others have mentioned that members of their cohort tend to help one another. One thing I like about my school is that *EVERYONE* helps each other. For example, my officemate just asked me if I had ever done a hydrogenation reaction!! (Actually, yes, as an undergrad, about 20 years ago.) She never has, and neither has anyone in her lab--though they're synthetic organic chemists and I do environmental stuff! So we talked about how that worked, though I admitted that my memory was pretty fuzzy. I can ask anyone around here for help, and I'll usually get it--if the person I ask can't help me directly, they usually know who to ask. I love my department!

You know, it's funny, people say that professors "play favorites" with me...this was true in undergrad, and it's frequently true in grad school as well. (I've probably been "teacher's pet" in >50% of my grad classes.) There are good reasons for this, though: (1) I make an effort to connect with my profs outside of the classroom. (Not so much in undergrad, definitely MUCH more in grad school.) (2) Also, I always treat my profs as people rather than as automatons whose sole purpose is to help me. (To this I add: good manners go a long way.) (3) I work my butt off. I do all of the assigned reading before class starts. Sometimes I even read ahead a couple of lectures. Plus, I'm one of those weird people who LIKES doing extra problems in math-based classes--not for the sheer joy of it, but because I like the satisfaction of getting a concept down and being able to do it backwards and forwards without much effort. I try to really get into whatever-it-is I'm studying. (4) If I get a question on a quiz/test/assignment wrong, I want to go over it afterwards until I can work it correctly. If I can't figure it out on my own, I'll talk to the prof to help me understand what I did wrong--even though it won't affect my grade in the future. Now I don't know about you, but in addition to being a student, I've also been a teacher. And I *LIKE* students like me. They're so much more enjoyable to have in the classroom. You can talk to them without feeling like you're getting cavities drilled at the dentist. Some of these students are not necessarily at the top of the class, but they really WANT to succeed...and I want to help them. On the other hand, there are the students who don't do anything unless they absolutely have to; the students who do everything at the last possible minute; the students who treat you like you're a piece of shit because you actually deigned to mark their assignment down. I'm always happy to see these students go, and I generally count their evals as worthless. (Of course you didn't learn anything from me. You didn't ever crack open the textbook.) I look at some of my fellow grad students, and they're just as bad as the recalcitrant undergrads I've had to deal with. And they constantly gripe about how Dr. X doesn't like them, how Dr. X seems to act annoyed with them when they go to office hours...at least one of these people comes to ME for homework help when we're in the same class, and she doesn't want a hint, she wants me to work the whole damn problem for her! Yeah, Dr. X would get annoyed at her during office hours if she tried that on him. Now, the department head doesn't seem to like me very much, but that's a different cup of tea. (I've never taken his class.) To him, I'm annoying, because I'm constantly asking why they do A, B, or C in the freshman labs, when it might be more effective/better teaching to do X, Y, or Z instead...I'm sure he finds me way too outspoken.

Just out of curiosity... Did you put the plagiarism policy on the syllabus? If so, did your professor approve the syllabus? If he did, it's really his responsibility to enforce it. Tell him you'll do all the legwork. My own philosophy is to come down very hard on cheaters. Luckily, all of the profs I've TAed for (and my school too) have much the same philosophy. But I can definitely see that it would be hard to enforce without the prof to back you up. Good luck!

You enjoy snowboarding and you went to Chicago?!! As for me...it's a good thing I like CO, because I'm now in a joint-custody situation with my ex and moving would probably equal losing the kids.

Ummm. It's Boulder. They probably were 'on something'. Seriously, MJ is legal for "medical reasons" in CO, and there are plenty of doctors who will write prescriptions for quasi-legal "medical reasons"... But people in CO do tend to be unusually nice. Living here has been good for my mental health; don't know if it's nice people or lots of sunshine or both.

OK, really? I hate to say this, but your mental health NEEDS to take priority over your boyfriend. Period. I don't care how good you think your relationship is: if he's not willing to let you do /supportive of your doing what you *almost certainly* need to do, you need to tell him to take a flying leap. A bit of background: I discovered that I suffered from severe depression about 3 months into my marriage. My husband told that it was "no big deal" since "everyone gets a little blue now and then" (seriously? I was suicidal at some points) and that therapy was no good since "all they will do is talk"--and he had a severe dislike of medication, too. I spent 15 years listening to him say (and accepting) that I shouldn't get treatment. Finally I convinced him that I should get treatment, but he would only let me do it if I were willing to pay for it out of my own money. (This was at a time when the total amount of money he let me spend on myself would have paid for 2 or 3 visits. Tops.) I put up with this for another 5 years. I spent 20 years of my life being depressed, anxious, and occasionally suicidal, because I didn't want to upset my husband. The depression affected every aspect of our marriage--but so did the intense control he exerted over every facet of my life (including mental health treatment). We are not married any more, I've been in therapy for almost a year, and I'm SO much better off than I used to be. And HAPPY. I say: get on medication. You've given other treatments a fair try, and you need to do this for your own good. If your boyfriend doesn't like it, tough. Now, he may change his mind if he sees a big improvement in you--in which case, great! Things will work out just fine. But if he isn't supportive of your getting the help you need, you really are better off without him.

OK, I may not be a lot of help since I'm just now starting to apply my research to oceanography (of the chemical variety). But my advisor has done a fair bit of oceanography in the past, and in fact was a post doc at WHOI a looooong time ago. First of all, don't be too sure that people won't know your profs from Mexico. Oceanography is not a huge field; most people doing chemical oceanography tend to know each other, and the same may be true for physical oceanography. My advisor is quite familiar with researchers in Australia as well as various parts of Europe, for example. I would recommend that you get your LoRs from people who you have done research with at all possible--which may require going back to your undergrad institution for at least one of the letters. I think you stand a pretty good chance, but do recommend that you consider adding a couple of "lesser" schools to the mix. Wish I could recommend actual schools, but I don't know the first thing about physical oceanography. I *DO* know that having either Scripps or WHOI on your CV would be a major coup. My understanding is that the UW program is pretty darn good (esp. with the collaboration with NOAA), but it just doesn't have the "name brand appeal" of the other 2. I would give WHOI a shot if I were you, even with the added hassle.

I wouldn't call the weather "mild" after living in coastal California, but the part about the sunshine is true. On several occasions I have literally seen sunshine in the morning and a blizzard in the afternoon. The blizzard generally runs overnight--dumping a foot or two of snow--and into the morning of the following day. Then, the next afternoon, it is sunny again. I LOVE IT HERE. And yeah, walking along Lakeshore Drive is a good way to freeze your butt off. (My sister used to live a few blocks from the lake.)

Nothing wrong with this! (I try not to be materialistic, but I do love fast cars...) I think you're actually spot on. Sometimes we grad students get so wrapped up in the trivialities of the here and now that we forget to look forward to the exciting things in the future. Future plans can be grandiose ("I will change thousands of young minds when I become a professor!") but they can also be pretty humdrum...for example, I want a bigger house. And I want to travel internationally. And I want a car that has fewer than 170,000 miles on it--bonus if it is a sports car! And clearly, I can't do these things with a grad student stipend.

Aww, why not? Before I moved away from campus, I regularly got 20-30 mph winds at my place--and at least once every week or two, gusts would hit 50-60 mph. Of course, I lived right at the edge of open space where there was nothing to stop the wind: no trees, no buildings, etc. between me and the mountains. Nowadays I live in the middle of a tree-full neighborhood and things are a bit better, but I still get a reasonable amount of wind out there. And, of course, campus is close enough to the mountains to be hit with serious gustiness. I know it's the wrong state, but sometimes I just want to sing, "OOOOOOOOOklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plain!" It gets mighty windy here, too, Behavioral!

It's not quite the same as your situation, but I moved from very temperate coastal California (after growing up on the edge of the desert) to Colorado. I have to admit that I was a wee bit freaked out about the whole winter thing, though I thought it would be fun to have seasons. Layering is really the best way to handle things. Get good thermals (NOT cotton--some of my wealthier friends recommend silk, but I've settled for microfiber). Get good socks (again, NOT cotton). Get lined leather gloves. And definitely get a nice warm hat. I'm not usually a hat person--I detest hats, actually--but when it gets cold (or worse, cold and windy--boy, does it get windy here!), a hat is an absolute must. In fact, on really cold days I usually have both my hat AND my (insulated) jacket hood on. Winters aren't as bad as I was expecting them to be--in fact, I really enjoy them now.

Depends what I need to do: For writing, it has to be a deadline. Nothing else works--I think I've tried everything under the sun. I do try to write a paragraph or two every day just as a matter of habit, so that I have *something* down when a deadline looms, but there's still WAY too much to do the day before deadline. For lab work, I put on some good dance music and dance around the lab while I get things done. Sometimes I sing along, too. If people think I am weird...they're right.

Absolutely. Most groups in my department have more than 5. I think my advisor is the only one who has fewer. My group shares a lab space with a large-ish group, I think 19? Or maybe 18, one just graduated... Anyway, the way they make it work is that the 2 postdocs and the senior grad students are all responsible for helping out the junior grads when they get stuck. The senior grads seem to have a "position," i.e. official ICP-MS repairperson, FFF-meister, etc...so the first-years know who they can go to for help for any given problem. Of course the senior grad students are constantly complaining about how impossible it is to get time with their advisor...one had just finished revisions to a paper and couldn't re-submit it without the advisor's say-so, but he had no time to review it...another just postponed her thesis defense by a month because the advisor hasn't had time to give it a last reading. When I hear stories like these, I'm glad to be in a small group. I should add that I disagree that the well-known profs necessarily have the biggest groups. My advisor is quite well-known in her field; her papers are always thorough and rigorous and many are are still cited 10+ years after publication. She focuses on quality rather than quantity (she insists that her grad students must cross every 't' and dot every 'i' before a paper is even submitted) and this applies to her grad students as well as papers. She is very, very particular about who she'll take on as a student, and she works hard to make sure that her students are all funded. (This is NOT the case for most profs in my department who have large groups.)

I guess I do this too. Some of my expenses are big things I pay once or twice a year, and so I budget 1/12 of the yearly amount every month instead of trying desperately to come up with a huge lump sum. For example, I basically pay one month's salary, twice a year, for health insurance for the kids. It's a lot easier to set aside 1/6 of my monthly salary than to live on nothing two months out of the year. I do the same thing for home & auto insurance as well. And yes, I do put aside a few dollars each month so we can have a vacation of sorts every year. Although, admittedly, I can only afford the sorts of vacations that involve (1) camping or (2) visiting relatives.

Are you kidding? I have to support 3 kids and myself on less than $2000/month and still save money? I do have a Roth IRA...I started it years ago. Now I'm letting compound interest do its work while I take a little break from making contributions.

My religion is very important to me too, and it's not just a one-hour-a-week kind of thing. I am very involved at my church and sometimes spend 5+ hours/week doing church-related stuff, in addition to normal services. And that doesn't count things like reading and praying. This may seem like a high time commitment but I actually find it easier to focus on my graduate studies when I make God a priority in my life. One thing I've done that really helps me squeeze religious stuff in is to download various religious texts (Bible, inspirational messages, etc.) to my iPhone. Then I can read any time, any where, when I have a few free minutes. (The other day I was in the dentist's chair, waiting for the anesthesia to kick in, and I whipped out the iPhone...)

I liked Barron's and Princeton Review, each for different reasons, and felt that using both of them in combination gave me a serious boost.

I agree with Eigen about the importance of the research recs. The research may not have occurred within the halls of academia, but it's still sort of academic. When people say they want "academic" references, they mean that they don't want LoRs from people who have nothing at all to do with your field. For example, my sister, a prof, says she has seen letters from football coaches as well as dorm resident associates--stuff like that gets your application tossed on the discard pile pretty quickly. I was also a non-trad applicant who worried about LoRs. I ended up with one stellar LoR, one strong, and one mediocre. That was enough to get me into 4 out of 9 of the schools I applied to (including one top-ten school). Given your target schools, I think that you should be fine with the LoRs you are considering, so long as you get at least one that emphasizes your research skills.

Just out of curiosity, why go in debt for a wedding? There are lots of ways to have a fabulous, but still inexpensive wedding: Buy your wedding dress used, and then resell it afterwards. (Both of my sisters who did this actually came out a little ahead. Wish I'd done that, but oh well...) When I got married, we paid for a photographer to do posed shots before the ceremony, plus pics of the ceremony itself. But we didn't pay him for the full day--we just asked our relatives to take lots of photos during the reception, and to let us see them afterwards so that we could pick out any we liked. That worked pretty well, and ended up saving us hundreds of dollars. Food does not have to be from a $40/plate caterer or restaurant giving a sit-down dinner...at least 4 people in my family (including myself) have done some combination of "do-it-yourself" stuff and delivered food--set it out buffet style, with (nice) disposable plates, and you're set! Also, when funds are tight, it's wise to take a "getaway weekend" afterwards rather than a 2-week honeymoon. Go local, to a quiet B&B or something. Then do a big awesome trip a few years later when you're done with school, and call it a delayed honeymoon. (My parents didn't get their honeymoon until their 10th anniversary!)

I have an off-campus committee member. She's my advisor's collaborator. (I'm currently paid by a joint NSF grant.) And yes, she does have a lot of expertise that no one here at MyU does. Also, the work she does is much closer to what I really want to do after I get my Ph.D.--I love my advisor, but her research interests cover only about 50% of the stuff I want to do when I'm done here. I must admit, I would love to have my off-campus committee member offer me a job after graduation (she works at a very well-known university, and her PhD advisor is the closest thing to "Founding Father" of the sub-field I really want to go into)...but there are mundane reasons why that wouldn't work out. Sigh.

What a great idea!! I've actually used the "what not to do" format in working with younger children (jr. high/high school), but for some reason it never occurred to me to use it with college students.