Jimbo2

Dear Professors, If you were to informally canvass your retired predecessors and ask them what the most rewarding experiences of their life were, none of them will answer with the hundreds of hours they sat per week in front of a computer by themselves in an office. I suspect they're all male because a certain sex is more predisposed to take responsibility for supervising children should people actually try and have a family, which puts them at a productivity disadvantage relative to the other sex. You'll be getting 40 hours a week, up to 60 depending on special circumstances involving rigid, uncontrollable deadlines. If placement is so difficult following graduation, perhaps the field as a whole should be ponzi scheming training less Ph.D.s and using the leftover money to pay its graduate students a reasonable salary. Thanks, Students P.S. lol@$20,000 annual salary for 100 hours of work a week. Shame on you.

... so is this application taking over anyone else's life?

The connotation here is that being born into a situation of opportunity makes a person less respectable when they succeed. 1. The shame in coming from money is that you've been handed a position in life rather than earning it. 2. You can't buy a position in graduate school and you can't buy your thesis; you have to work and earn these distinctions. Therefore, while there certainly are people that are born into situations that put them in an advantageous or disadvantageous position to succeed at the graduate level, there is no shame in succeeding here because of the opportunities a person is born into. For example, I was raised in a military family and I know many people that had virtually the same upbringing and therefore opportunities that I had. These peers exhibit the full spectrum of success and failure in life: some have used the same opportunities I have had to earn important jobs and others have wasted these opportunities and are drug addicts that live with their parents. Your opportunities might provide you a door, but you have to walk through it in graduate school. This isn't your dad's business that hands you a big salary job after skating through college.

I would recommend talking to the professors you worked on research for. They'll give you a good description of the application process and will probably also have suggestions (and maybe connections) to labs that you'll be competitive for. Also, non-response on emails is common; I'd recommend politely calling prospective professors and asking if they have time to talk about the future of research in their lab.

My advice would be to have a meeting with your advisor and explicitly agree on what it will take to graduate this year. I read about this concept in Philip Guo's ebook and that sounds like a good strategy. Making the path to graduation unambiguous sounds like it could help you overcome the seeming lack of progress in graduate school.

http://www.pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir.htm, which took me only a couple hours. This one is also good, but is longer: http://www.amazon.com/Getting-What-You-Came-For/dp/0374524777/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345143763&sr=8-1&keywords=getting+what+you+came+for.

I'd take it easy during the summer -- grad school is all about that guilty feeling that you should be working on something. You'll have plenty of time to feel guilty once the program officially starts haha.

I ended up taking a year between undergrad and grad school to build research experience and it really helped my application. If you do take a year off from school, my advice would be to try and work in a few labs so that you get multiple LoR and have a more well rounded resume.

Also, P90X is an infomercial-advertized fitness plan that's actually worth taking a look at if working out at home will fit better into your schedule.

If you're looking for fitness advice, a good source is http://forum.bodybuilding.com/. You have to sift through some bro posts, but there's a wealth of good information on how to get/stay fit. There's also good discussions on alternative fitness goals, e.g., bulking vs cutting, how much cardio you want. If you're interested in the cardio side of things, http://www.runnerswo...mmunity/forums/ is a good resource as well.

Definitely would not include it. #1 It's pretentious no matter how you slice it. Might as well include the admission statistics for your program in the signature. #2 Anyone that's actually seriously considering you for any sort of advancement or opportunity will have your official CV, which will include the fellowship. #3 Anyone that's familiar with the NSF GRFP knows that luck/diversity plays an enormous part in receiving the award; from my personal experience, people that make a point of letting you know that they are fellows are the ones that have benefited the most from luck/diversity rather than actually being the top students in our program (not trying to be offensive, just objective). To be honest, including "NSF Fellow" in a signature looks like someone's compensating for weaknesses elsewhere. #4 Four line signatures in chain emails are annoying; your boss probably won't like it. So yeah, I'd omit it.

Hey CF19, I'm a grad student in a marine bio field that hopefully can help you out. I think you might be in better shape than you think because, from my experience, marine science fields place greater emphasis on applied knowledge than theoretical in relation to other fields within biology, so your experiences in the Marines might be a strong part of your application and you can quickly make up any deficiencies you have in knowledge of general biology. For instance skill sets in boating, scuba diving, taxonomy are just as important as your knowledge of concepts taught in biology courses, e.g., if I'm netting fish at night in choppy conditions, it's very important that the person I'm working with understands how to drive and handle the boat rather than they have good "biology book smarts." The other concept that's very important is knowing how to work as a member of a team because fieldwork in programs related to marine biology is very team-oriented. I'm thinking with your background as a Marine you will have a strong background in the importance of teamwork, leadership, and attention to detail, as well as possibly having some experience on boats, which will all be very important when applying to graduate school -- a student can learn the theory/background knowledge related to his research, but it's much more difficult to teach them intangibles such as responsibility. As far as steps you can take to strengthen your application, I would recommend reading Cambell's Biology book bookhttp://www.amazon.com/Campbell-Biology-Edition-Jane-Reece/dp/0321558235/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337816403&sr=8-1 and taking the Bio GRE to demonstrate that you are knowledgeable about broader biological concepts despite majoring in a different field. Research experience is tied to letters of recommendation, so it's important to begin working in a lab, or volunteering if you have to, to build experience and a reputation that can open doors for you. Once you get a feel for the more specific concepts that you would be interested in developing as a graduate student, begin reading the relevant literature (google scholar is a good place to start) and start contacting profs to see what the funding landscape looks like. Hope this helps!

I should also comment: grad school is a ritual of humiliation (according to a book I read) and being thought of as an idiot compared to experts in the field is part of the process. But it sounds like you're on the right track! Keep reading!

Unfortunately there are no appeals... and nobody that didn't get the fellowship agrees with their reviews (including me haha). For example, I got a "good" (i.e., the average score) on my IM by one reviewer despite having completed 5 different research projects directly applicable to my field including an NSF REU, 6 presentations, ~10 technical reports, and attending the (undisputed) top school in my field in the nation, all of which I made very clear in my application. The reviewer said that my academic record was "good, but not outstanding;" if I got a G instead of a VG because my undergraduate gpa is a 3.4, I would argue that is complete BS for the purposes of this application, and they have no business cutting the GRE scores but keeping often subjective and inconsistently inflated transcripts. The reviewer also mentioned that I don't have a peer-reviewed publication, but having original research go as planned to the point where it produces publishable results is a matter of luck and in fieldwork-based aquatic ecology you can't just churn out peer-reviewed papers. But I digress .

If you're willing to do volunteer work, it would be a good idea to look to volunteer in a genetics lab at a university in your area. This would allow you to get more research experience (maybe a publication?), build a reputation with someone that can write you a letter of recommendation, and make a convincing argument that you've been involved with work that has focused on genetics for a significant period of time and would like to pursue this area in graduate school. Although I study ecology in graduate school, my application process indicated that potential PIs care more about your research experience and reputation than grades or GRE scores, so I would be hesitant to pay money for more genetics courses, unless you think that you need to become more knowledgeable in that area. I was rejected my first round of applications and spent the next year getting as much research experience as possible, and that strategy worked for me when I applied the following year. Good luck!

i wish they would give you your percentiles and z scores. not really sure what the harm would be -- maybe you could tell if someone reviewed your application and another person's based on an identifying z score number? Tough luck for the people that got a bunch of Es and no award. Boise State syndrome -- do perfect and it won't matter. you were screwed from the beginning because the strength of your schedule (or harshness of reviewers) wasn't tough enough, and it was always out of your control

anybody willing to post their essays and review sheets?

One man's fair is another's excellent? Grrrr

awesome find. not the most helpful reviews (didn't really say what I could do to improve anything), but it was interesting to see. IM/BI VG/VG G/VG ("applicant has a good but not outstanding academic record" -- thanks dude!) VG/E got HM

it's in the excel file on the awards announced page

sorry not sure about that. i would assume if you're still doing a psychology field, you're in good shape. can't decide if i should be happy with an HM. i do have next year left, so that's cool.

it isn't a problem, people go to other programs than they specified on their application all the time Well, see everyone next year and congrats to everyone that got an award. Tomorrow begins the therapeutic 2012-13 NSF essay writing experience.

Note for next year's folks.... Uploaded at 3:30 AM EST

it's up. got an honorable mention. :/