InquilineKea

Hm good idea - I'll try the community colleges out and see what I can get. There are a few community colleges that aren't a painful 1.2 hour-long commute away (like my local university) Yeah - I'm still allowed to check books out. The only problem is that they don't allow remote access. I'll still ask them if they do allow remote access. I just found a way to painlessly wget articles from both Nature and Science. Those were the easiest though. Anything from ScienceDirect seems much harder. Does anyone have any ideas? As a sample article, http://www.sciencedi...ournal/00191035 Then I can use my remote access proxy into the article, and I get http://www.sciencedi...=/sdarticle.pdf But, the issue is - how to easily get from the first URL to the second URL (seeing that I won't be able to get the second URL once I lose my remote access). There's a bunch of space in between. =/

Yeah - well - I know that i can get it after accepting it for UChicago (I asked a student there about it), and Chicago is where I'll most likely end up next year (though there are other options too) Unfortunately, my library does not grant remote journal access to alumni, and the local libraries have zero journal access.

Oh wow - I didn't realize that wget follows redirects! I'll have to try that sometime. Is there any reason not to use ssh -C? I'd think that it would be good as a default option

The GRE computerized test auto-adjusts for difficulty. So if you're relatively strong but might not hit 100% at the hardest questions, you might benefit from a test format where you didn't get all the hardest questions handed to you

Yeah - I usually use my school's library server as a proxy. I just know that I won't be able to do it once I graduate - hence the issue.

Hm, what sort of VPN did you use? How were you able to use it? I still have SSH access to departmental computers, but non-GUI programs can't download journal articles. If I try to SSH -X (which means window access), the lag becomes unbearable

So, remote journal access is super-important to me, and I have a very nasty commute to my university (where I can log into departmental computers with journal access), so I'd much prefer to have journal access at home (also, I need access to a wide variety of journals too). Right now, I'm trying to delay graduation as much as possible just so that there won't be any "loss of journal access continuity" between undergrad and grad school. But are there any other options? When do people usually get that sort of journal access? Technically, the next school year is a gap year for me, but I've delayed my graduation such that I'm still in UG throughout autumn.

I got so addicted to Quora that I practically stopped going everywhere else for 6 months. It takes some time getting used to though. http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/04/ff_quora/ shows its real ambition. Basically, there's a lot of contributor fatigue on Wikipedia (http://gawker.com/5827835/wikipedia-is-slowly-dying) so people get more excited about contributing to Quora

Yup definitely. That - and all sorts of skills are useful. It's not like math/CS, where you're completely useless if you're not analytically talented enough.

Regarding outreach - does outreach on the Internet count? I'm essentially the top answerer for both atmospheric science and planetary science on Quora, and am one of the top two answerers on astronomy, astrophysics, neurobiology, and several other sciences too (profile is at http://www.quora.com/Alex-K-Chen). It certainly isn't traditional media, but it could actually be a big hit in a year or so. I'm also a panelist on Reddit AskScience and a supporter on Physics Forums (and am quite active on both), though I ask more questions than answer on those. I even made a thread about it here: http://www.quora.com...-of-Science-Q-A == And by (1), how well do you usually get to know such people? Simply by emailing around (and getting them to introduce me to each other), I've gotten myself quite acquainted with all the top scientists in my field surprisingly quickly (perhaps since there are almost no other undergrads in the field)

I'm considering applying to a few biology departments, perhaps some evolutionary biology+genetics ones. I've very thoroughly self-studied a huge range of biology textbooks (also self-studied my way to a 5 in AP Biology) and can expect a Biology GRE score to be in the mid-700s at the very least (with some prep to cover up my blind spots, I can probably get it up into the 800s). I also 3.7'ed a graduate level neurophysiology course. But the biology program in my school is very rigid, so I pretty much can't take anything in it.

http://www.gre-subject-tests.com/thread6.html has some but they're all out of print.

Yeah, unfortunately, the ecologists all love to go outdoors, so they don't go on forums much. I've been actively looking, but the best ones (right now) are just at places like Physics Forums.

So I can score in the 700s in the practice test despite getting completely pwned by all the plant+fungi+developmental biology questions, as I know nothing about them (but I can easily try to pick those topics up over a week). Also, does it also *always* have a huge amount of developmental biology questions?

So I just went to http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/UHNAI/CASS2011/, and it was definitely one of the highlights of my life (although a few other participants disagreed =P). So what are some other good summer programs/workshops? I'd prefer those that are free and that are intense on either journal article discussions/research discussions or on computer simulations. And those that take those in between college and grad school.

See http://www.quora.com...in-other-fields for a very good analysis I'm also tending to agree with him. For one thing, earth science professors don't have to deal with hordes of undergrads who take their courses just to fulfill requirements (this often means that they have more emails/office visits from students who most likely don't care about their subject and who don't really want to hear about their research ever again) - something that math, physics, chemistry, and biology professors have to regularly deal with. I mean, in most departments, it's quite *rare* for a professor to *want* me just after talking to them. In the atmospheric/earth sciences, it's actually VERY common. For another thing, it's not a field that tends to attract those who chase prestige or money (or who want to prove that they're smarter than everyone else). Sure, some might be into the oil companies, but my experience is that earth scientists tend to be environmentalists. And as a last point - it's an area where *all* types of skills are valued. Analytical skills are highly valued, as are fieldwork skills (and one does not necessarily have to be exceptional in all of them). It's not like math, where you're "useless" if you're not analytically capable enough. == I'm sure that a lot of the above things are true for astronomy, but less so. I've heard horror stories about some astronomy departments (particularly from twofish_quant over at Physics Forums), and how there's an "elite club" of Harvard/Princeton people in astronomy. And the Chicago astronomy department had famously denied tenure to Sean Carroll, in large part because of his blog.

Astronomy departments almost never interview them. I'm not so sure about the atmospheric science ones.

http://www.quora.com...s+for+planetary (guide I wrote to resources there). I come from the exoplanetary atmospheres/astrobiology route though, so my route is kind of different. Mostly I look at professors who are connected with atmospheric science professors I know (I also email professors who are in the field, and ask them for suggestions). And I google authors of papers that I find interesting (not only from the journals, but also the science magazines). The science magazines are actually pretty good at identifying the people who are doing pretty phenomenal research.

Haha, I should do that. But my signal to noise ratio is usually lower than that of most, since I will include mistakes and tentative conclusions in my posts (posting mistakes/tentative conclusions helps me develop the motivation to correct them later). But I write far less if I'm not allowed to make mistakes/tentative conclusions. In other words - I'm one of those types of people who edits my posts far more frequently than everyone else

Lol, what if they switch their replies from first-name into their initials (all capitalized)?

Hm, I often just put them somewhere that Google can index, and then google InquilineKea + "idea in the paper", which often brings up the old paper/idea. Alternatively, Gmail works too. But in reality, I frequently lose track of the important stuff. CiteULike might help with googling though. As could Quora (when you forget the name of a paper, semantic-based search becomes important, and Quora's search is a bit more semantically based than Google, but still far from complete) And now that I think about it, digitization is more important than ever. Google Desktop is still horrible at processing external hard drives, but an application that can do that is probably not far away (or already here). Semantic-based search is going to make finding things A LOT easier. And since academics have to travel a lot, it's kind of messy to carry more and more papers around all the time. One thing I do want, though, is a batch scanner that can process staplers, along with a reliable OCR program. If those two things can be done (along with semantic search), then maybe it will be super-easy to find old papers.

It depends on field. I'm in a field where I have gigantic amounts of original ideas - some which work, some which don't work. The most challenging part is the implementation, which is what I'm weak at. I do get the sense that it's A LOT harder to get original ideas in math/physics/chem as compared to other "more open" fields.

Hm though - the thing with ideas is that a lot of times, people forget where they heard the idea from (professors have a lot to do, and they often forget a surprisingly large amount of info about their students). Alternatively, the same idea may have come up multiple times. One possible tip for retaining ownership: Post all your ideas on a site that uses non-abusable timestamps. That can clearly establish that you had the idea at that time (and probably first)

Wow.. I've heard some nasty stories that came out of certain fields. On the other hand, I've actually had advisors who actually gave me more credit than I deserved (which I'm thankful for but don't explicitly acknowledge due to awkwardedness)

"Regards" is for informal letters? I know that it depends on the professor, but it *can* be used by a professor who's mad at you (see http://www.phdcomics...hp?comicid=1413). I just use "Hi/Hello" in the beginning and "Thanks" in the end. I'm still way too low in the academic hierarchy to say anything but "Thanks". Because each and every time, I'm grateful if any academic replies to any of my emails. It's something they're doing for me, after all. But is there anything wrong with that?