nechalo

California Institute of Technology (Caltech): March 1-3 or March 22-24 Cornell: March 2-4 or March 30-April 1 Georgia Tech: March 15-17, April 5-7 MIT: March 30-April 1 Northwestern University: March 8-10, 15-17, 29-31 Scripps: Feb 23-25 or March 1-3 Stanford: March 1, 8, 15 or 22 (may combine with a Friday visit to Berkeley) UC Berkeley: March 1-3, March 8-10, March 15-17 or March 22-24 UC LA: January 27, March 2 or March 23 U Chicago: February 16-18 or March 8-10 U Florida: February 17-19 or March 16-18 UIUC: Feb 17-18 or March 2-3 or March 23-24 or March 9-10 (Pchem) or March 30-31 (Pchem) UMich: February 2-5 UNC Chapel Hill: March 9-12 or March 30 - April 1 UPenn: March 16th-18th UT Southwestern (Interview): Feb 2-4 UVA: March 15th-16th University of Washington: March 9-10 Yale (General Chemistry): March 22-24

California Institute of Technology (Caltech): March 1-3 or March 22-24 Cornell: March 2-4 or March 30-April 1 MIT: March 30-April 1 Northwestern University: March 8-10, 15-17, 29-31 U Chicago: February 16-18 or March 8-10 U Florida: February 17-19 or March 16-18 UIUC: Feb 17-18 or March 2-3 or March 23-24 or March 9-10 (Pchem) or March 30-31 (Pchem) UNC Chapel Hill: March 9-12 or March 30 - April 1 UPenn: March 16th-18th UT Southwestern (Interview): Feb 2-4 UVA: March 15th-16th University of Washington: March 9-10 Yale (General Chemistry): March 22-24

The only UCSD updates I see in the database this year are about interviews, not acceptances (I didn't think chemistry did interviews so I actually thought they were for biochemistry instead). Were you accepted after an interview? I haven't heard back at all and I'm in Physical/Organic Chemistry; I'm curious about where my place is right now. In other news, Northwestern seems to be making acceptances now! I saw one in the database yesterday and I got an acceptance by e-mail from a PI today! So excited, they are one of my top choices!

I e-mailed UCLA and they said they are reviewing applications but decisions will not go out until late January/early February which is still a couple weeks away. There is one acceptance posted in the database but we don't know many details or why it was so early.

At least slower than I would wish there are approximately the same or more results in the database than this time last year though. We'll see it accelerate now that the holidays are over and they've had time to review after coming back from break. One I am interested in hearing back from soon is UT Austin, I heard they usually have a visitation date in February so you'd think they'd be sending out their first round of acceptances soon... Some others on my list have a history of not making many or any acceptances until later January/February anyway.

I'd definitely like to see them as well. I've taken the test, scored well, and won't be taking it again though. Would be interesting.

that's a really good tip, as someone who recently took the chem GRE I agree that the old tests were indeed the best study material. I only had the two posted online though. I took one really early on to give me an idea of what it would be like, and give some stuff to focus on. I then went through both of the exams the night before the test to help review and get into "GRE chem" mode.

I recommend the ACS subject review guides for general, organic, and physical (none for analyt or upper inorganic). You may find them at your library or they're not too expensive.

There do seem to be quite a few early acceptances this year, congrats! I just noticed an acceptance to UCLA on the 21st, I wonder if that person is around here? They didn't post who called them (POI, or other.) or their profile stats. The earliest I saw from UCLA before was late January and it's a top choice of mine so am curious hah.

I called and they said score reports were mailed to us on the 10th; the same time score reports were sent to schools. But I haven't received anything in the mail yet, which might be normal but seems like it's taking a while Is there a list of scaled scores/percentiles for the most recent batch of scaled scores? That way I could self-report my score to the schools that either don't require official scores for the review process or haven't received my official scores. I got an 870 according to the mystatus page of UT Austin's online application.

Just an update to what was discussed before: UT Austin received my scores on the 13th and posted them. They only show my score, not the percentile. Kind of a funny loophole to avoid paying ETS for early scores; this was only a day after the phone in date XD.

That is funny, must have been somewhere very close to NJ (where ETS is, I believe). None of my schools even seem to put the scores online from the reports. oh well. I'm thinking I have a good shot at getting mine in the mail tomorrow (I'm in Ohio). I'm expecting/hoping for above 70th percentile which I think would be solid especially because chem wasn't my major (ChemE was). And will help confirm I actually know chem (classwise, I'm only deficient the inorganic sequence anyway) What type of score is everyone hoping for? Is it true that Northwestern's average admit only has a score of 694 (comes out to just above 50th percentile)... or maybe they meant 69.4th percentile?...

You should post your results to the database; I personally had no idea any chem departments made decisions that early. The earliest I've seen in the database has been beginning of December (someone at U Florida just this year) I started submitting apps mid-to-later November and finished my last one today. No admits for me yet though.

Nice! that is very early. My last LOR writer is apparently writing a masterpiece so I'm not even quite done with applications. I'm looking forward to hearing about visitation weekends... I think it'll be very important to me to visit and talk to POI in person.

For those studying for the Chemistry GRE: The above are all great references, but studying for the subject GRE shouldn't be reviewing all of undergrad. Personally, I didn't care to give the subject GRE anywhere close to that amount of time. (cumulative exams and PhD exams are different though) I'd recommend to first drop any advanced or not-core curriculum stuff. You really don't need to review The Art of Writing Reasonable Organic Mechanisms - it is a fantastic book for upper level studies of Ochem but just about worthless for this general test. The biochemistry is questionable as well... there may be a little but not a lot on there. My advice for anyone with limited time: (less than a week up to a month for prep) Start with ACS prep books for their standardized General, Organic, and Physical Chemistry exams: http://www.examsinst...Guides_c_1.html Check your library and library extensions they should have copies floating around for free. The book's format goes: quick intro to specific section > practice problems with explanations > practice test (answers, but no explanations) That'll cover most (I'd guess > 70%) of the exam material. Your reference books from undergrad will come in handy to explain in more detail the more forgotten/difficult concepts, but these prep books will be able to "drill" you much more quickly and efficiently to uncover those deficiencies and resolve many of the quick ones. The ACS Organic and Physical prep books may also be helpful for the exams you take once you are in grad school, especially any exams meant to discover "deficiencies". Again, though, the goal of studying for the Chem GRE shouldn't be learn everything but to cover as many quick problems and quick concepts, and then move on.

The website says December 23rd or if you pay extra you can have yours by December 12th: http://www.ets.org/gre/subject/scores/get They may be made available sooner than that though, I think the Oct 15th people had their's a little sooner. you can find out for sure if they're available or not by calling.

Thanks for the reply. I didn't see your post until just now, sorry. I sent him an e-mail a few days after I posted this (face-to-face would've been better in retrospect, I need to get better at just asking for that even with as convenient as text/e-mail is). I said that I understood it being justifiable and I wish I could have helped make it up in any way. Also, that I take responsibility personally and try to make the best of a bad situation but try harder to learn from mistakes... I thanked him for the experience in his lab and how that's plenty for me, and then offered to withdraw the LOR request. he replied: "I have no problem writing a strong letter for you nechalo" I guess I'll just hope he had in mind a good definition of strong. His terseness can be scary but he's always like that through e-mail. Should've done face-to-face for sure. When it comes down to the soul searching and conversation with myself part... I don't know what else to say. I didn't realize at the time the situation was bad. I suppose I can start by working on that piece of social awkwardness... I love research, and had a great time with it and then again when I wrote a term paper on the results of the research in a later statistics class. But there was no time limit on this research, nor was there much pushing from the grad students (was exclusively an undergrad project). The three weeks to me didn't seem so detrimental. They also weren't consistent weeks and I always communicated all of them and when I could be back. I had planned to make up for it the following quarter. What happened those three weeks: I had mono for one, and this was also around finals week with final projects (I remember spending an additional 20-30 hours one week in ChemE group meetings and in front of CHEMCAD trying to get it to converge and give reasonable numbers) and during a time where a lot of employers were around campus doing interviews. I do see how the last two can be seen as putting myself in front of the team...

Learning tons of new words is a sure-fire way to help your Verbal score. I highly recommend the 500 Kaplan words - I thought the cell phone app in particular was very helpful. It's free, convenient and a good way of going through common words. The quickness of accessing synonyms and example sentences helps a lot. I saw a few words from there on my exam which were easy points I would never have otherwise got. I wish I could add more words to that thing, I found it hard to learn words as quickly through any other method. However, for me, the reading comprehension section is still what saved my score. I wouldn't discount it - my engineering education has trained me to be logical and that thinking lent itself well in untangling the reading passages (and possible answers!) that were presented. The way I saw it is that everything I need to know is right in front of me, and with enough scrutiny I can figure it out. It's not like that with the vocab; some may argue to learn roots but, personally, I was wayyy too behind in GRE verbiage to consider entering that league.

The diagnostics tool is working for me as of today. I took the test Sept 29 (but you put in "Sept 11"; 11 for the year the test was taken in. What I learned: I SUCK at GRE words. Reading comprehension sections: 19/20. Text Completion and Sentence Equivalent: 10/20 (7/10 on first section, 3/10 in the second section.) Still netted me 89th percentile (more than I needed). I even am more proud of my score just an indicator that I need to expand my vocabulary? :/

Does anyone know exactly how much the department code matters? I'm applying chemistry, and when I had the option of sending my GRE scores I wasn't allowed to get my phone to check my notes on specifically the department codes the schools asked for. I ended up sending them all to the "Chemistry - Other" code. No school asked for that code though. I imagine I can call them to make sure they found their way to the right place; I would feel stupid if I wasted those free score reports sending them to nowheresville :/

How important is the Chem GRE score though? I think only my app to UCSD will be incomplete without it, everywhere else either doesn't have much of a comment on Chem GRE scores or says they are recommended but not required. And UNC says specifically not to send them. Anyway I'm taking mine this Saturday... so hopefully it's not too big of a deal. Or maybe I should call UCSD to make sure the relative lateness with them is ok? Can't imagine it being a big problem, schools should have even mine by early January.

I first took this professor's class which I received an A in. I got to know him from going to office hours a lot. He offered the research position without me even asking for it. I worked in his lab for 6 months. Everything went pretty well and the research was presented by me and another undergrad at two undergraduate research forums. It's not a research area I'm particularly interested in pursuing further but still a great experience and important part of my background and application, since universities love any prior research experience/presentation of research. After the first quarter (3 months), he personally asked me to come back for another. But the next quarter, he didn't. He said his grad students said I missed 3 weeks which was not acceptable. I replied with the reasons why I missed those weeks (bad flu, interviews, and end of quarter group projects and finals; every absence I had informed the grad students ahead of time with my apologies and offering to reschedule, however they weren't great at getting back to me. I forwarded him the e-mails with my response.) He never responded to that e-mail. I also asked him if we could meet to talk about grad school and if he could recommend anywhere/anyone to look into but he never really made himself available. I asked him if he could provide a (strong) letter of recommendation several months later and he agreed to write a letter. I'm really worried, however, that he's not very happy with me. The absence thing certainly wasn't a great thing (was a very bad quarter for me, but the missed time is not defining of my work ethic). Or maybe he sensed that I wasn't absolutely crazy about the research area. He's a sort of guy of very few words so it's hard to read him. I've had offers of LOR from a couple of other people which could replace his, but both of them are further from my intended research area than the prof in question. Personally, I think this prof is a great candidate based on most of my prior experience with him but I'm still worried. I've considered e-mailing him again, saying something like if you feel any less than comfortable in writing a strong and accurate letter you are free to pass on this task; you've already provided a lot of help for me... What do you think?

Applying to: UC Davis, UCLA, Northwestern, UCSD, UT Austin, Georgia Tech, U of Maryland, U of Florida, U of Washington, NC State Interested in some combo of physical, computational, and/or organic chemistry UC Davis and UCLA are definitely my top choices. Thinking I should maybe knock the list down a bit... but all of them look really nice to me. Good luck everyone!

More data! Was surprised they were up I just checked it randomly today for the first time in a month. I took the test 9/29 projected: 640-740 Verbal 750-800 Quantitative actual: 161 Verbal (89th percentile ~620 old scale) 167 Quantitative (95th percentile ~800 old scale) 4.0 AW (48th percentile) I knew the verbal score would be inflated; makes sense to me though. They (likely) based the projection on students who took (and who studied for) the old GRE. Just sort of shows just how much scores change depending on how you study for a specific format. I see they're finally distinguishing between the top quant scores now... not good for me because 167/170 looks a little yucky since I'm going into physical chemistry :/ side note: totally bombed the AW! (seems so many here did really well, good job!) I didn't study for AW besides reading the sample ones but I kind of like that sort of writing exercise. I wish I would've practiced more.

Just wondering, did you include a CV or resume with your e-mails, or just talked about your research interests? I am also wondering what is appropriate when e-mailing potential professors, also what sorts of things are good to discuss this early on. You seem to have had some very positive responses!