Usmivka

I actually would worry about GRE scores not arriving on time--this is how many programs make an inital cut, and decide whether or not to look at the rest of your packet. I don't think Nov 3 is too late though, I think it is probably OK. This isn't really the same as waiting for supplementary info at all, since they will never need that unless you make the first cut.

Harvard (33% of grad students are international), MIT (38% of grad students are international), and the University of Southern California (26% of grad studentsare international) are the three schools that pop to mind as having a high percentage of international students. MIT especially, but many of them are Canadian, eh? USCs international grads are primarily Korean, Chinese, and Indian. I think Harvard international grads are particularly Europe heavy.

I'm surprised anyone at the Padre's thought twice about it honestly. I mean, people get pissed off all the time and vent at whoever they think has wronged them. Is this truly the first time someone has written back to complain about spam/form letters? The truly unprofessional thing here, in my view, was the management office using their e-mail list of rejected job applicants for direct marketing. Super un-classy.

MS or PhD? If an MS, this is unlikely to change regardless of what happens. As a PhD student you may have a little more hope. In one year, very little will change in terms of the money offered by the university unless you publish some great papers or get some nifty patents. Can you apply to any Korean government fellowships for study abroad? Good luck!

MIT and ETZH are very comparable. Several faculty split time between these two institutions. That said, MIT is difficult to gain admission to. Caltech is of similar standing, but in Pasadena, which is not everyone's favorite climate--it has the advatage of being attached to NASA's JPL however. The University of Washington is well regarded in the field and high international recognition if you are planning to return abroad. There are several great California state schools, like UCLA, but they are experiencing severe financial distress which may translate into more restrictive admissions and funding. USC (southern california, not south carolina) is particularly well known in Asia and the Pacific, but is less appreciated in the US overall--it has a reputation from decades past as a party school for rich kids, but the graduate programs are really top notch and they are about 50% international students. It has well known engineering programs and and an very strong alumni network for job placements if you want to go into industry in the US. Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) has similar materials science program to ETH Zurich, but has the disadvantage of being in St Louis, which can be culture shock for Europeans. It does provide plenty of research opportunities and a generous funding package to pursue research though with great professors. Texas A & M has a number of great engineering programs, but I don't specifically know about materials science, and not everyone enjoys Texas. *I'd more or less ignore the rankings, except as far as very generally pointing you towards some names you may not have heard of. They tend to do a poor job reflecting the quality of research and publications and standing within the field, and underrank or ignore some of the field leaders while elevating some humdrum contenders. I don't have the links anymore, but take a look through the forums, there are several discussions about this. Besides, who your adviser is and what research you are doing is always much more important than a departments "rank." **If you want to work in the US, US universities are better known and generally better regarded for industry, and often for academia. That said, materials science and engineering may have it's own quirks that I am not aware of.

they score it within 2 weeks or so. but it goes into their mail center after that, which can be overflowing at that time of year. then into snail mail, and may need to get through intercampus and interdepartmental mail as well. so 4 weeks is probably fine, 6 seems on the long end, but safer. are the extra couple weeks really going to help you that much (over Thanksgiving no less, I could never study over that time, I'd be in a food coma!)?

To the best of my knowledge, this is common but not the only approach in the Earth Sciences. Ecology or anything biology-ish is sort of its own world though, so you might check the Biology thread as well. I and several of my peer group came in to our program knowing exactly who we would work with before we applied, and had already confirmed funding potential and interest. Maybe half of my cohort came in with more general interests, but they had narrowed things down to maybe 2-3 profs they wanted to work with and been in contact with all of them. You can check with the department you want to apply to and find out more about how they decide on admits. The grad programs I'm familiar with have 4 tiers of decision making, listed below in order of cutoff: 1. Did you turn everything in that you needed to? 2. Did you make GPA and GRE cutoffs? 3. Have you been in communication with the profs, and are any of them interested in hosting you? 4. As a tie-breaker, do you have a compelling personal statement, letters of rec, extracurriculars, publications, external funding? If all of these, a prof you previously did not talk to may cold call you, but life is generally easier if you already fit criteria 3. For contacting, there are a number of posts in the admissions threads about exactly this subject--check them out! I'd keep it short and sweet to start with, offering your name, stating that you are interested in MS work with them, one sentence of your background, and what about their work you find compelling ('you've published on using genetic markers to trace population exchange, which is something I'd be interested in applying'--not too specific or focused on one project, otherwise they may say they aren't working on it anymore and more or less dismiss you. 4-5 sentences total. Attach a CV for them to look at if they are interested. Half will probably not respond without further prodding (a phone call or follow-up e-mail 10 days later would be appropriate), most of the others probably won't have funding or aren't currently taking a new student. You'll find a few that are worth talking more to, but no reason to give them your life history or get into great detail about projects until you know if both of you are willing and able.

I've been thinking a lot about this lately. I have someone who I consider to be an excellent adviser, but dislike my topic. Being a good adviser and open to my thoughts, they will let me shift gears after I wrap up my current project. But I've already spent a good chunk of time on something I'm not super excited about and actually find somewhat unpleasant (I suspect fieldwork location is not such an issue for a physics student), and will have to spend a good while longer to get it to a good stopping point. So I suppose for me, although I'm very grateful for my adviser, it would sure be nice if I hadn't gotten sucked into this particular topic. I do think the most important thing is your adviser, but be willing to talk to them from the get-go about alternative projects you are thinking about if you aren't jazzed about what what they want you to do--you will do better work if you are excited about it, in my opinion.

The solicitation is online if you missed it: http://www.nsfgrfp.org/

Depends on how fast you are. See the program solicitation (http://www.nsfgrfp.org/), GRFP tenure cannot be concurrent with another federal fellowship, including postdoc grants. You must either complete the fellowship (3 years funded plus 2 years reserve) or terminate it prior to accepting another federal funding opportunity. Mostly this is a problem for people who want two grad fellowships, not a grad followed sequentially by a postdoc.

This seems to be working really well, thank you!

I'd double check this, it may be incorrect. As of 2011, you could not take a NSF GRFP in combination with another major fellowship (more than a few thousand dollars). That was a rule change from 2010, so it seems unlikely that they would switch back the very next year.

I agree that other members of your department who have recently gone through quals are an excellent resource. They may be able to tell you how they organized their study, provide copies of old exams or practice exams, mention whether any faculty members had a particular focus to their oral or written questions that has been consistent over multiple years of exams, or just provide moral support (which can be nice). It is unclear to me from these posts what format the exam will take. Is it an oral exam? Written? Both? General knowledge or presenting you prequals work?

I was trailing a partner, so the biggest factor to me was location. So I applied to one school. Had I not gotten in, I would have been perfectly content working as a bench jockey though. That said, if I hadn't had that constraint and was applying, I think the most important thing is who my potential adviser would be and how we clicked during pre-application meetings on campus or at conferences. Time and cost are more or less irrelevant in my field, eveyone gets stipends for the duration of the PhD.

I'll give you a generalization, with all the caveats that go with generalizations: departments with common office areas and shared lab spaces seem to be friendlier. By this I mean a) all the offices are concentrated in one part of the floor or building, not hidden away at the back of individual labs, and b ) the folks that interact with each other more in large, open floor plan labs (for example three "labs" in one long room) seem to make friends quickly, perhaps because they are forced to be more socially conscious by the shared space. The first point I think is generally applicable. The second is definitely biased towards fields with physical lab facilities, as opposed to work that is more solitary by nature, like programming or writing.

I don't know your field, so this is generic: Preferably right now. Plenty of time for them to get back to you and not so late that your e-mail is lost in the milieu that comes with every other prospective writing at once. In my field, the adviser has often already picked their candidate by the time applications roll around, and if no faculty member is actively lobbying for your admission, it tends not to happen. Also see the threads about how to approach advisers, how to write the e-mail, when to write/call a second time, etc. Better minds than mine have given this a lot of thought and but lots of great advice here in the forum.

My labmates are both Canadian, and had a colossally difficult time with finding a first rental. Both ended up living for about 6 months in what were essentially boarding houses with the landlord on site in order to establish a rental history. But I know plenty of other folks (also all Canadian, so this may not be totally applicable if you are moving from elsewhere) who had smooth transitions and just used their history of bill payment as a substitute for credit history. A letter in hand from your parents, a printout of your bank account showing sufficient savings to pay 5-6 months of rent, and a letter of support from your graduate institution confirming you have a job (grad stipend) and what the pay is should be plenty so that you can sign on the spot. But this is all anecdote, so I defer to any international students who want to comment. ps Your University's grad student housing will avoid all these prereqs and any issues, and will give you a rental history. This could be worth it to avoid the hassle when you first move, and they often allow month to month leases, so you could move into your own place whenever you have sufficient credit history. Also, as an international student, you won't have to pay state taxes on any stipend income if and only if you live on campus in school housing. Off campus, you will be responsible for both state and federal taxes.

I am learning a lot from this thread! It just ate my morning. My own thoughts, for what they are worth: Regardless of whether or not you believe that paper sharing rules are legitimate or just, accessing and sharing papers in the manner described--with a "friend" with no additional legal status, such as being incorporated as a non-profit, or university affiliation, who is not part of any access agreement--is most likely not allowed by your EULA (it is explicitly forbidden in mine). I have no problems sharing articles with another academic in my field, but I'd hate to risk my own or my library system's access by sharing another's work product (as opposed to papers I wrote) with an unaffiliated member of the public. I agree it is unjust, since taxpayer money paid for the research and most likely the journal publication fees, but the three University library stystems I've used specifically have warnings against unauthorized access of electronic materials in this manner.

I also tend towards streaming shows that I can start/stop/watch whenever, even if that is for 5 minutes at a time (I may be a little antsy when I sit too long...). I do have a TV, but only watch it with headphones--I really dislike having to listen to my neighbors TVs through the ceiling and floor when I'm trying to work (I live far from my office/lab and often have to do work wen I get home in the evenings), so I go out of the way to make my TV silent ot everyone else in the hopes that others will return the favor--a forlorn hope, I know. Anyway, with headphones, I might as well just plug my laptop in and use the TV as a giant screen anyway. The reception is terrible if I try to use the TV to watch live shows, and we can't get cable in our neighborhood. If you are a sports fan, there will be others like you in school. You could pick some key games (say one per week/month depending on your itch) to make social events, which can also be hard to steal time for in grad school (e.g. all go to a near campus pub or to a grad student's apartment, where working while watching is more normal). I definitely also watch more TV than I did as an undergrad, again going from none to some.

I think two weeks is a reasonable interval. The roommie may have been in finals or otherwise unable to think about it at the time, or the exiting roommate may not have gotten back to her about the furniture or something else you asked about, or they may have been busy enough that it slipped throught the cracks. If they don't respond to #2, then I'd be concerned about your second point. You could try to find out why the previous tenant left? This is something I always ask about anywhere I consider living--it has saved me some real trouble, and when I don't ask, things tend to go horribly wrong for otherwise predictable reasons. On an unrelated note, I think it is odd for a school to assign you a roommate in this manner (as a grad student), but this may be more normal than I knew.

I was definitely ambivalent about grad school. I enjoy it very much now, but I believe I would have been just as happy continuing my previous job. The deciding factor was that my partner was moving to start a PhD program, and it was easier for me to start graduate school and be on the same timeline as her. But if I hadn't been accepted I would have taken a research tech job and been perfectly OK with that (and better paid, :/).That said, I was very confident that grad school would be a good thing for me regardless, so once I was accepted I didn't have too many second thoughts. I think the folks that post on a grad school specific forum tend to be at the more focused (towards academia) end of the spectrum, so I wouldn't be too concerned if you don't reflect everything you see. It takes all kinds, and certainly there are folks who are not super focused on grad school as the 'be all and end all' and can still do well for themselves in a program.

Short of that drive, e-mailing to set up a phone conversation about what you want to cover (letter of rec, what you'd like highlighted in it, why you are asking them...) may work well. Although I'm sure they'd appreciate you showing up in person. Regardless, you should follow emmm's advice and contact them specifically in regards to letters of rec.

I'm not sure I'd call it a win-win...PhD programs in geology are generally funded, whereas this may not be the case for a Masters. Do everything you can to strengthen your application so you can get the all expenses paid version of grad school. That may mean taking courses this summer (if there is still time). I think research and letters of rec go a lot further than GPA and GRE, but they may not compensate for material that is considered the basis of your chosen field. And if you haven't taken much math in college, then not having at least a statistics course will most likely be a deal breaker for admissions. Doing a Masters first and then a PhD may not make sense depending on where you plan to apply. For example, my program does not give credit for any prior Master's work--you have to take all the same classes and do the same research progression as the students coming directly into the PhD program.

3rd year post-doc? That seems like he/she is already overdue to head onto something else, probably elsewhere (assuming the 2 year postdoc typical in the natural sciences). Will this present a problem?

By and large I think these are all good points, but I think these particular courses are unecessary for graduate work in Oceanography, Aquatic Ecology, or Genetics, the three fields listed. Some would be useful, but not all would not be expected. On an unrelated note, did ACS recently update its guidelines or something? Because I have an ACS certified degree, and (short of trama induced amnesia related to taking a chem degree), I'm don't think I took all those classes. Or maybe the names are throwing me off, or perhaps there are alternative courses that fall within the same ACS core competencies? I'm ogoing to go look at this now...