gabriele

Thank you! This information is really useful and quite relieving. I didn't understand these dynamics because I come from Europe and here the situation is quite a bit different (admission is more professor-bound). My specific case is probably something intermediate because the university is canadian and I have to decide my supervisor in the first month.

After contacting a potential supervisor with whom I share research interests, I've been admitted to a PhD program 7 months ago (fall admission, program starts in Sept.). I accepted the offer (in big part) because this professor could take a student, and in fact, upon my admission the department wes informed that I would have joined his group at the start of the program. The professor in question turned me down a few days ago for funding reasons (is that possible?), that is less than a month before starting the program. I didn't really know that this could have happened but now I should find another supervisor. I'm starting to contact other professors in the same university but I think I'm quite late.. Should I mention that I'm contacting them so late because of this fact?

Thank you all for the support! I feel better knowing that this is a common situation (and this usually doesn't mean a lack of interest). I'll wait for few days and then send a remainder or try to contact him by other ways (such as phone or administration).

Thank you for your advice! But what DGS stands for?

Hi! I've contacted a professor before applying to graduate program X (my top choice), asking about positions in his group, the response was prompt and positive. Now I've been admitted and he was assigned as my faculty contact by the department. I sent him another email asking generic questions regarding his group, like how research projects are assigned, how a student is followed in his group etc.. I contacted hiim because I'm trying to decide between different schools and want to have some interaction with potential advisors before deciding. I sent this email 6 days ago and still no response. I really want to go to this school with this professor, if I can't work with him I'm not sure I'd want to go there. I've also other very good choices. Have you ever been in a situation like that? What should I do? Write another email? Waiting some more time?

I've got a similar vaguely worded interview request, but I don't know if this was intentional. I received a mail with a generic "Prof. X wants to talk with you", without mentioning specifically an interview. I've not metioned him in my sop, but I guess that this will be just like an interview.

Hi! I'm looking with my partner for a PhD position in the USA for the Fall 2012. We'd like to get some advices for our admission. We are italian students. It would be really great to get admitted in the same city or, why not, in the same campus. We can sacrifice the university ranking/prestige for this purpose. Our field of interest are Computational/Theoretical Chemistry(me) Material Science/Thermochemistry (her), we already have a Laurea Triennale (equivalent to a BoS) and hopefully we're going to take a Laurea Magistrale (equivalent to a MSc) in Phisical Chemistry on July 2012. We already have done a 3 month long research internship (+thesis) in our University (it's required for graduating) and we will do another 9 month internship (+ thesis) for our MSc. We have a very different grading system and since almost all of our exams are oral our average scores are variable but they're around 27/30 - 28/30 where 18 is the minimum required to pass the exam. We don't know if our grading is comparable with US grading system. The fact that our exam are oral means that the grades are not very objective, it much depends on the professor: for example sometimes is just impossible to take a 30/30, or to refuse a grade when you get > 27/30. We're not top students but we are pretty good. We are studying and hoping to get a good TOEFL score, we believe we can do well on GRE quant but analytical writing and verbal won't probably go very well (as as you can see from my poor writing skills:-). About our letters of recommendation we will ask to our internship mentors (pheraps two researchers and full professor). We have a pretty good relationship with them and they appreciate us. Considering this situation do we have any possibility to get into some grad school (we need funding)? What is the school level in which we can aspire (approximately)? How do you suggest to proceed? What can we do to improve our possibilities? Thank you very much for reading, G & V