TakeruK

That sucks! I think the policy at most schools is that they will accept AP credits to fulfill elective or breadth requirements, but not pre-requisites. So, for example, students who are majoring in Physics won't benefit from AP Physics credits (although the exam might have counted for other high school requirements or help gain admission in the first place). But in your case, it sounds like if you had received AP Physics credits, it might have covered your Physics requirements in this chemistry program

It's not super weird. I am at a US school right now and we have a visiting graduate student who will be here for 2 years. The student is doing a PhD program at another US school and is working with a prof at that school, and collaborates with a prof at my school. They are finished all of their courses so it's just research work left in their PhD. Although I am not 100% certain that the student must be at my school to finish the project, I think the student is only here mostly for the experience and to make wider connections. I think the student is paid by their supervisors at their home school and I am not sure who covers the "overhead" fees (computer usage, office space etc.) It could be the student's home school (since the student is no longer taking up space in their home program) or maybe the prof that is here at my school, or some combination. Maybe it depends on the field, but in mine, I don't think it's that uncommon for a student to be in a program at University X but work in an office with people from University Y and/or Institution Y (e.g. a NASA lab, soft-money institution, government research agency). Usually X and Y are geographically close, but not always!

This is interesting and good to know about the United States. Thanks for sharing

I have similar experience to you but in my "calculus based physics" classes, the problems were done with calculus! For example, you may be expected to solve differential equations to determine the equations of motion for various cases. So, I guess it would really depend on the school/class!

Reimbursement for mileage probably depends on the policy at each school, but the government rate was something like 50 cents per mile in 2012.

If that is the case, then definitely take the calculus based physics course first term. I am not in chemistry but I remember the jump from algebra based physics in high school to calculus based physics in college was pretty steep (and I was a physics major!). So second semester physics might be really really tough without first semester calculus physics!

Terminology might vary between fields, but here are some examples: "Winter/Summer School": Generally a small meeting targeted at "early career" (grad students, postdocs, profs looking to branch out into a new expertise). People get together at some place and they spend a few days, or a week, or even several weeks in tutorial/workshop type sessions learning a particular skill, or learning to work with a particular dataset. Example: http://astrostatistics.psu.edu/su13/. These types of meetings are sometimes combined with research presentations to break it up and so that participants can learn what others are working on. These types of meetings also tend to be very focussed workshops so there may be homework to do in the evenings and/or weekends. Sometimes you have to apply for these schools and spots might be competitive. "Conference": Generally a large and regularly occurring meeting. Also generally hosted by national organizations for that particular field. For example, here is a really large meeting that happens in San Francisco every year: http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2013/ and here is a smaller meeting that happens in a different city every year: http://aas.org/meetings/45th-meeting-division-planetary-sciences. These meetings are attended by everyone who is interested and at all stages of career, although you will often see many post-docs, and grad students about to graduate networking here to try to find their next job. The main goal of these meetings is to let other people know about your work and to learn what others are doing. Usually, there are oral presentations in the morning and afternoon and then poster presentations in the late afternoon or evening. Since this event is usually a way to get a large number of people in the field together, sometimes side-meetings occur at the same time as the annual society meeting. If the meeting is run by a society, their member annual meeting (where they elect officers etc.) will generally happen in one of the evenings. The normal way these conferences work is that you submit abstracts a few months ahead of time and the conference organizing committee schedules presentations as oral or poster. Oral presentations take up more time so they are usually harder to get and usually considered more prestigious. However, usually as long as you pay to register, you will be able to attend and at most conferences, if you have legitimate research, you will at least get to present a poster. Some societies that host meetings may have a policy that every member is allowed to present at least one thing per year guaranteed. There isn't usually evening "homework" and in fact many people will take advantage of evenings to socialize with friends from other places that they might only see at these conferences! Sometimes there are organized social events as well. "Symposium": Sometimes this is just another name for one of the above, but sometimes this just means a very focused and specialized conference. In my field, this generally means a meeting of a few hundred people (where a general meeting/conference could have thousands or tens of thousands of participants) and the focus is on a very limited scope (where a conference would cover almost everything relevant to the field/sub-field). Symposia (or whatever your field might call these types of meetings) might not happen every year. For example: http://dunlap.utoronto.ca/observational-research/iaus-299/ In the sciences, students who are presenting research can usually successfully ask their supervisors to pay for the costs of travel, accommodations, registration etc. Depending on how your lab/group works, you might be expected to submit abstracts to conferences as appropriate, or sometimes your PI will direct you to go to certain conferences, or sometimes you have to be proactive and find out interesting meetings and ask your PI to send you. Also, sometimes people pay out of pocket, especially if they are an undergrad and not presenting research, because in some cases, it's worth the investment. But a lot of meetings might have grants you can apply for, and your own department or student groups might have travel awards too. Finally, as "NicholasCage" mentions, many scientists also take advantage of the conference as a way to get to visit an interesting city. I think it's definitely a "perk" of this career, and if you can combine both travelling and learning/presenting science in one trip, then why not? Generally, grad students can probably go to at least one or two meetings per year, depending on the funding available in their group. International meetings might also be really fun if you can justify it! And conference organizers often purposely plan meetings in fun places once in a while (as I said, it's "perk"). In 2011, the American Division for Planetary Sciences decided to have their annual meeting in France, (jointly hosted with their European counterparts). This happens once in awhile. I took advantage of this opportunity to get a paid trip to France. Many others had the same idea and it's not uncommon for people to arrive a week early (or stay an extra few days/week) to be a tourist in whatever place they're visiting

One of the most useful parts of GradCafe is the "Results Search". Click on the link in the navigation bar above, or go here: http://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php You can just type in "Physics" in the search, but there are a lot of Physics programs! I found it helpful to search something like "Physics Cornell" if you applied to Cornell, for example. By default, the results are sorted by date. I find it helpful to go back and see approximately when applicants heard the good or bad news. For example, if you search "Physics Cornell" and go to page 3, you will see that people first reported results from this program on 2 Feb 2013. There is a big stream of "Accepted" in the first week of Feb 2013 and then a big list of "Rejected" in the second and third weeks of Feb. This gives you a timeline of when to expect to hear results! If you then go back further, you can see what happened in 2012. For this same example, I see the same pattern--acceptances sent out in the first week of Feb, rejections sent out a week or two later. There are exceptions of course, but this means you can probably expect to hear back from Cornell Physics, one way or another, by mid-February. So I would suggest you do this for all the schools you applied to. Be careful that schools might have different spellings, so use wildcards and general terms. For programs with interviews, people tend to put this information up too, so you can get an estimate of when to hear from each program. Finally, please make sure to upload/submit your own information to help others too!! Overall, I don't think many Physics programs have interviews (there may be some Skype meetings though). I mostly applied to Astro and Planetary Science programs in my year and only 1 out of 8 schools conducted interview (and that interview was via Skype). Another resource you can look at is www.physicsgre.com. It seems like most Physics students will post their profiles here and you can really get a good sense of timelines etc. from threads like this: This year's applicants: http://www.physicsgre.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5203 Last year's applicants: http://www.physicsgre.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4669 Profiles of applicants from 2008-2012: http://www.physicsgre.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5061 In the last link, you can follow links to Open House dates of each program in each year if you want to get a sense of when certain schools will be flying students out to visit! Finally, neuroscience and Physics? That's cool!

biotechie gives good advice! Also related, I think that when writing technically, many adjectives are "flourish" words, especially if they are words like "interesting" or "excellent" or "very". Cutting them out not only saves space but also helps you look like you are not just patting yourself on the back by calling your own work "excellent" etc. But sometimes to go as far as cutting a few hundred words, you might have to actually pick and choose the content! And sometimes it's better to just remove an entire section rather than trim a little bit off every other part.

I agree with fuzzy. Also, are you simply getting reimbursed for gas, or are you getting reimbursed for on a mileage basis? When I drove to visit one of my schools, it was on a mileage basis and I drove down with my spouse and we also made some (very short) detours/side trips to see other cool stuff on the way. So, I made sure to only claim the mileage as indicated by Google Maps between our start and end destinations! I think it's more fair to be reimbursed on a mileage basis, in my opinion, because driving costs more than just the cost of gas!

I think this is really going to depend on each couple. This may be an important factor for some people. But to other people, they might be looking for someone who is Jewish, or someone who is educated, or someone who has brown hair, or someone who drives a truck, or someone who hates olives. So, sure, having debt might be a turn off for some people, but it might not matter for others, and the experience you get in grad school might make you more "dateable"! I think you have a solid plan of getting your education completed while trying to achieve your other goals. So I think you should go ahead and do what you want for yourself and find someone who will want to be with you because of who you are, instead trying to make every action turning into some ultimate "most dateable" type of person. There are just so many different types of people with so many different desires that there is no way you can be "more dateable" in category without knowing that it won't make you "less dateable" in another. So, look out for yourself first, I say!

I am not sure if "typical" is correct, because in my experience, this has never been a problem in the 3 departments I've been to. But obviously, my experience may be skewed but yours could be too! I think something like a quarter of the graduate students in another department on my campus are married to each other! My current school's official policy is that relationships are okay but if a graduate student is involved in a relationship with someone in the class that they are TAing (grad students are TAs for both undergrad and grad classes) then they must let the department know that a personal relationship exists. I don't think this means they have to identify the other person in the relationship though, and then the prof/department will make arrangements to avoid any conflict of interest (e.g. assign that student's work to be graded by the prof or another TA or switch TA positions). Everyone should always be aware of the "norms" in their department and act accordingly to protect their interests. But at some level, the department cannot control everything--so if there are enough people that don't like the policy, they should do something! Also, I think it is pretty hypocritical to not allow relationships between graduate students when relationships between professors aren't that uncommon (especially through spousal hires).

When I attended grad school in snowy regions, I usually wore snow boots to school, but then changed into a pair of more comfortable shoes indoors. Most of the offices in my hallways had boot trays for people to put their snowy boots in (so that the melted snow doesn't spill everywhere). So, I think that if you only wore snow boots, it would be understandable, but if you will have a place to store your stuff while you're visiting then consider a change of shoes too! I'm not in biology but for every visit/interview I had, they generally set you up with an area to leave your bags/coats/umbrellas/etc for the day. Sometimes you might even get a desk. So you can ask in advance or you can just bring the extra shoes and not change into them if you can't take off boots.

That's cool and I'm all for that. But as a non-American, my opinion doesn't count I didn't know that STEM was a legally defined term in America though, how naive of me! And also in case you're curious, SSHRC award committees are divided into different disciplines and "Literature & Fine Arts" make up about 20% of the SSHRC awards granted each year!

This is one way to do it. But in most the courses I TA, I usually say that I am not required to reply to any emails at all, no matter how nicely formatted. The only surefire way to reach me is to find me during scheduled office hours, or in lectures/labs where I am scheduled to work as a TA. That is, I am not their TA whenever they can reach me. I try to emphasize that TAing their course is one of many roles I do so while I will always make the attempt to respond to an email or if they find me in my office and I'm not busy, I'll be glad to try to help. I don't give any instructions on how to write an email because I don't think it's useful to require a student to have an opening/closing, although it would be nice. Since I don't make any promises on how I respond to email, I don't make any requirements outside of the standard University code of conduct (i.e no offensive language etc.) But I don't really think it's worth my time to teach my students how to write and opening/closing. I rather spend my time teaching them about angular momentum or something. I also would rather have my student be free to ask a question about angular momentum instead of worrying about the format of their question. I think that the formality of email should depend on the context. I want my interactions between my student and I to be informal, not the way one would address a professor and definitely not the way one would write to a professional elsewhere in the workforce. I expect that my students have already learned to write professional emails so that if they ever write to Prof X. at Different University Y to ask about a summer lab position, then they better be writing top notch professional emails! As long as they are polite to me, I'm happy. It's their own fault if they think they can address someone they don't know at another school the same way as they address me (i.e. someone who is their advocate for the course they are taking).

In several different threads on GradCafe, particularly when the term "STEM" is used, there has been some side discussions about the use of this phrase. Rather than continue to side-track threads with this discussion (as I have been guilty of in the first few threads), I thought it might be better to discuss this on a completely separate thread devoted to this topic! (btw: I think this is the first time I've started a thread? lol) I'll start by responding to this comment, posted in I've read essays/articles discussing the fact that perhaps the STEM fields are actually saturated with applicants and as has been mentioned in this thread, we might actually be in a situation where there aren't enough jobs for everyone who is interested in STEM and adding more applicants won't help. These essays make some good points, but there are also many counterarguments: 1) The diversity of STEM workers do not represent the diversity of the general public (in terms of gender, race, socioeconomic backgrounds etc.); STEM research might have only been accessible to certain portions of the population in the past. The general belief is that many people who choose STEM fields do so early on in their schooling and in fact, in some places, the education system works so that you need to have taken certain pre-requisite classes in high school to take a Science or Engineering major in University. So, I think we can work to increase the diversity of STEM workers by engaging young people from all backgrounds in STEM--exposing them and letting them decide if they are interested. 2) The amount of jobs available in STEM is a direct consequence of how much money there is to create these jobs. Scientific research, especially the fields without real military or economical practical purposes, greatly depend on government, corporate and/or private donor support. If the overall general scientific knowledge of the population is increased, it may result in more public support and understanding of scientific research, resulting in better/cheaper technology and better quality of life for all. Also, I think the pursuit of human knowledge is pretty valuable too. Ideally, governments listen to their people so an increased scientific knowledge might mean more support for STEM in the government. Corporations are led by private citizens, and donations are made by private citizens. People don't fund what they don't understand so an increase in scientific knowledge can lead to better support for STEM research and STEM jobs by these citizens. Also, an overall increase in knowledge is not a bad thing and it can lead to people naturally understanding why some things, such as homeopathy, is nonsense. As for comparison to the arts, unfortunately I don't really know how much funding the social sciences and humanities get in the US. I have heard that it is much less though and that is unfortunate! Although ultimately, budgets are indeed a zero sum game, so if STEM "wins", the Arts/Humanties will "lose". But the reality is that both "STEM" and Arts/Humanities are very small slices of a much larger pie of money so that right now, it's possible for both STEM and Arts/Humanities to make gains without cost to the other. One way to look at this, that is relevant to us, is to look at government funding for PhD programs in social sciences and physical sciences (STEM). In Canada, there are 3 main governmental funding agencies for graduate students. NSERC is the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council and SSHRC is the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The third one is not relevant here, but it is for Health Sciences. These awards are for roughly the same amount for students funded under NSERC or SSHRC. Both agencies fund in two tiers, one at $35k/year and one at about $20k/year (NSERC is 21k, SSHRC is 20k). They also both have a very limited amount of the most prestigious awards, which fund at a level of $50k/year for 3 years -- usually each school has a quota of X awards per Y years and X is the same for all three funding agencies. However, it's important to also look at the total number of awards funded, not just the amount per award. I just picked the 2012 award year (for tenure in 2012-2013) because not all of the 2013-2014 awards are taken up yet and that can still change. And, I am counting PhD award applicants only, not Masters level. Here are the stats: For SSHRC (download xls files here: http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/results-resultats/stats-statistiques/index-eng.aspx); Award info here: http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/funding-financement/programs-programmes/fellowships/doctoral-doctorat-eng.aspx) Total Applicants for the 2012-2013 school year: 4448 Top Tier awards granted: 416 Second Tier awards granted: 1769 Overall funding rate = (416+1769)/4448 = 49% Approx. total money awarded (Top Tier awards are 3 years, second tier are 1-4 years, assume all awards are 3 years long): $149.8 Million For NSERC (stats here: http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/NSERC-CRSNG/FundingDecisions-DecisionsFinancement/ScholarshipsAndFellowships-ConcoursDeBourses/index_eng.asp?Year=2012) Award info here: http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Students-Etudiants/PG-CS/BellandPostgrad-BelletSuperieures_eng.asp Total Applicants for the 2012-2013 school year: 1628 Top Tier awards granted: 233 Second Tier awards granted: 426 Overall funding rate = (426+233)/1628 = 40% Approx. total money awarded (assuming all awards are 3 years long): $51.3 Million These numbers show that Canada is actually funding a slightly larger percentage of SSHRC students than NSERC students (49% vs 40%). But, while SSHRC is often the main/sole source of funding for many SSHRC fields, there are other ways for an NSERC student to get funded. So we can say these numbers are pretty much equal. If you look at the total money spent on SSHRC and NSERC students, you'll see that while the government spends three times as much on SSHRC than NSERC, there are also three times as much social sciences and humanities students as there are "STEM" students. So, overall, the Canadian government spends an equal amount on SSHRC and NSERC PhD students. In the US, I think the NSF funds both social sciences and STEM, right? I don't have any experience with NSF (non-American!) so I have no idea how to find statistics of the competition results. They don't seem to make this information available from the main page that tells you how to apply etc. So maybe someone else can see if the funding is roughly equal? But what's my point? The US isn't Canada! Well, first I am trying to show that it's completely possible for a country to fund both the STEM fields and the Arts & Humanities with no one losing. Canada isn't a superpower and we don't have fancy things the US has (e.g. aircraft carriers, tanks, Amazon Prime, etc.) but we aren't really living in poverty either. Funding both STEM and Arts & Humanities equally has not caused an apocalypse. Secondly, in Canada, there is definitely fewer students in STEM fields than Arts & Humanities. Thirdly, maybe this explains why I don't think STEM and Arts & Humanities aren't really competitors. We are both working to increase human knowledge, and advocating for STEM fields is not the same as advocating against Arts & Humanities.

You make a good point but I think we might be derailing this thread, so why don't we move this discussion to a different one? I'll start one shortly and PM you the link? (Edit: It's now here: ) I agree that we should always be frank to visiting prospective students. I don't give the whole "Don't get a PhD!!!" speech, because I obviously don't believe that (or why am I in such a program) but if they ask about my future plans or future prospects, I will honestly share all of my concerns. If they ask about what I think about certain professors or courses or any aspect of the department, I will truthfully share them. I think the goal of these visitation weekends is to provide the prospective students with as much truth and useful information as possible for them to make their own decision. I think the truth should include the caveat that we are not actually minted PhDs yet and what we say is only from the limited perspective of our positions as grad students and from talking to other people who have succeeded or failed at whatever career attempts post-graduation. Ultimately, even though the department may be trying to "recruit"/"convince"/"woo" the visiting students, and even though I might really think Visiting Student X is an awesome person and would be a great colleague, I think about what I would want to hear when I was in their position and I give them the truth!

Congrats! I don't personally know anyone who has done this before. But I have seen policies in place at departments that would apply in these cases. They vary a lot from place to place though. I definitely would not reveal this information until admissions decisions have been made. Once you have some offers, I would definitely look up the graduate handbooks / policy guides online at all of the schools' webpages and see what kind of leave policy they have for students who are new parents. Also check policies for deferring admission. Sometimes schools won't let you defer so taking a leave might be an alternative. Maybe letting the faculty know about your pregnancy after they have accepted you, at some appropriate time (usually when it's your time to grill the schools about their programs because you're making the decision) could be a good thing since they might also help you find the right resources and/or arrange for ways they can help you. I don't know what your plans are and I don't want to assume that you are necessarily wanting to take much time off at all. I just wanted to suggest looking up the leave/deferral policies for each school in case knowing possible plans of action can be a comfort while you wait! Also note that while some schools may have very generous leave policies, they might require you to be enrolled for a certain amount of time first, so check that too. Whatever you decide to do, I hope the best for you and good luck!!

Yikes, did all these things happen to you? I think a "no" is appropriate in all of these cases, but of course, there is a difference in how you say it! I think that many graduate students will encounter some of the situations below so I will also provide an analysis: This did happen to me and my colleagues at one of my past schools. Exam proctoring counts as TA work and in Canada, TA work is paid hourly. I will leave out major details but basically the department was asking graduate students who was not assigned to TA a particular course to proctor an exam acting as a Graduate TA but they wanted to only pay a fraction of the hourly TA rate (while the actual TA for the course, working the same exam would be paid the full TA rate). It took awhile (and required help from the union) for us to say "no, you can't do this" and eventually the practice stopped. This has not happened yet but if it did, then see above. (Unless you were able to trade one TA responsibility for another--e.g. the prof whose lab you covered would cover something for you in return and both parties are okay with this arrangement). These things are okay to ask only if the prof is able to ask them in a way that actually allows the student to feel comfortable answering freely without consequence (well, not the "take all the credit part" of the second example). However, it's very hard to judge if a student is actually comfortable enough to answer freely, given that the relationship between advisor/professor and student is not exactly equal. Definitely tricky scenarios and really depend on each relationship between prof/student--actually I don't really think there are very many cases where the first scenario would be really appropriate either! It's strange to me that an individual (whether it's a professor or a student or a staff member) would be personally responsible for opening the building to the "public". In every school I have been to, I have had keys or the ability to unlock my building's door for my own personal access but I would never let someone else in (unless they were coming in with me) and definitely not to "open the building" like an employee might open a store for the business day. As you said, the safety and liability concerns is way too much responsibility for a person! In every school I've been to, representatives of the University (e.g. janitorial staff or security staff or plant services or electronic locks) are the ones that officially open the building to students during official hours that the campus/building is open! So this is a definitely absolutely "no"!!

I would rephrase Loric's advice as "Learn to say No" Grad school is a timesink that will eat up as much as your time as you allow it to. So, Loric is right that you definitely want to not commit to anything big right away until you get settled in a bit. However, I also think that it's really important to commit to other things that really important to you (i.e. necessary to maintain your health/sanity) sooner rather than later (e.g. that weekly tennis class) because it can be really hard to motivate yourself to do something non-school related when you're super busy. If you commit now, before you're too busy, then you will be more likely to make that tennis class (or whatever) fit in later! And I think learning to say No will be important throughout all of grad school and beyond too!

I agree that STEM is not a "field", it's a phrase used to refer to a collection of loosely connected fields. So if you wanted to be correct, you could say e.g. "Physics is a STEM field" or "Physics is one of the many fields in STEM" etc. Right? I also agree that STEM is a buzzword because it does fit the definition below. However, "buzzword" generally has negative connotations as "meaningless". This part isn't in the definition you gave and I don't think STEM is meaningless. It's a quick way to refer to this collection of fields and just because it may only currently have meaning in today's vocabulary does not mean that it does not have use. I think STEM is very meaningful to people who use it to communicate today. For example, how else would you refer to the fields that uses the principles of science, mathematics, engineering and technology together? One might argue that "math" is part of science and "technology" is part of engineering, so really, we could convey the same idea with the phrase "science and engineering". I agree that STEM is one of those manufactured acronyms where words are added just to make a nice snappy short phrase. But STEM is still easier to say that "science and engineering" and when we use it, people know what it means. In another thread you had suggested "not Arts and Humanities", I think? But fields such as accounting, or cosmetology are also "not Arts and Humanities" but we don't mean these when we say STEM. Also, STEM is still more convenient than "not Arts & Humanities"! Those reasons aside, there are other practical reasons to use buzzwords like STEM. When scientists/academics want to communicate to politicians, it's important to be "on message" and have the scientific community present a single, coherent message to the government. It would be terrible for us to be fighting amongst ourselves during a meeting with senators and other policy makers. Sometimes, it's useful for e.g. astronomers to work with chemists to achieve some political goal. Between all scientists and engineers, if we agree to portray the message "STEM fields needs funding" or "STEM fields needs more trainees--we should rethink our high school programs to get young Americans excited about STEM fields", we can all deliver the same message that will benefit us all. It would make us appear disjointed if I said the above but said "astronomy" instead of "STEM" and Quantum Buckyball, for example, said "chemistry" instead of "STEM". So, I hope you will agree that it is useful to have a phrase to mean "science and engineering related fields" that we can repeat over and over again to people who need to hear the same words over and over again (e.g. politicians, donors, etc.). But since the words do have meaning, as long as everyone who uses it knows what they mean by it, it doesn't matter if it's a manufactured buzzword! Whether or not you want to say STEM or another phrase to mean the same thing is just a matter of semantics.

It may not be a good idea to generalise grading in the hard sciences in this way. While it's true that a failing grade is hardly ever a good thing in the hard sciences, the goal in our grad programs isn't to get all As and A+'s either. Grades are also produced/awarded differently I think. Unless the student did not complete the work at all, when a student gets a failing grade in the hard sciences, I would see it as a sign that the instructor has failed in some way. In my hard science graduate program, professors constantly tell us that we should not worry about getting As. Getting a B but spending a few hours per week more on research is more preferable than getting an A. Of course, they would say this since they pay us to do research, not take classes, but ultimately it's in our own best interests too--few post-PhD positions will want to see our transcripts. In my opinion, grades are good for indicating a student's level of mastery of the course material and I would award an A to any student who masters everything I wanted the student to learn. So, if I am 100% successful at my job, every one of my student should have an A (i.e. an A isn't "perfect" to me, it means "meets all standards"). But I know another school of thought awards letter grades to distinguish/comparatively rank students against the class. At the graduate level though, I agree with you, Loric, that passing vs. failing really is the only important outcome of a class, especially in the hard sciences. Some graduate programs do only award Pass or Not-Pass/Fail and I think that's probably the way all graduate classes should go. There is no need to recognize or reward going beyond a "Pass" in a graduate class, in my opinion. But we're digressing into grade philosophy! For the OP, definitely check the "fine print" in all of your fellowship or offer letter materials. You should also talk to people in your actual program, rather than worrying about what people on the forums say about what each grade means because as I mentioned above, many different programs do it many different ways!

Cool, also nice new avatar

This is true, but in the sciences, the whole point of the PhD program is to train you to be an independent researcher, producing new knowledge. You don't have to be at this stage to get into the grad school. You just need to demonstrate ability and potential to be an independent researcher. One step at a time!

You are not "behind". Right now, this is the perfect time to look for research experience for this summer, but don't feel bad if you don't get something in your sophomore year. I did not start as a full time paid research assistant until the summer after my third year. But I was in a program where we did 16 months of pure research after our 3rd year so by the time I graduated, I had a lot of research experience! The program is a 5 year program but I think the year spent doing research is well worth it. There is no hurry to finish, as others have said! In my 2nd year, although I talked to a lot of people to try to get positions, no one would hire me for the summer because I did not have enough background courses yet. Eventually, I just sent emails to professors I would have wanted to work with, one at a time, asking if they would consider taking me on as a volunteer to introduce me to the research. I kept emailing people until I got someone to agree to let me basically mess around on their computer cluster (our equivalent of a "lab") and I taught myself a lot of things that summer (the prof was away for more than half of the time too). So, it might be too late for you to work with that particular prof, but there are probably others! Also, just because you are interested in organic chemistry does not mean that you have to work in organic chemistry! I am now in grad school to study planets. In undergrad, I was hired to work in groups studying medical physics, cosmology, and asteroids! The point of undergrad is to get research experience. So talk to all chemistry professors that might interest you. Eventually if you do intend to go into organic chemistry, you would want to do a thesis in that or some other larger project. But for now, you have a lot of years/time to just explore research and figure out what you like. The diversity of experience will help you get into grad school and also discover what you like. I'm going to repeat this: this is the perfect time to be asking professors about working with them in the summer. Look up profs over the break and talk to them as soon as you get back next month! Finally, daniele's advice about reading is good. I am very bad at reading though, and I am certain I would be a better scientist if I am better at keeping up with the literature. Personally, I find it very difficult to get started reading papers because they can get incredibly jargony and technical. I have some pieces of advice. One advice is to just power through it. You don't have to understand everything--actually at first, if you can understand like 1 key point the article is making that is probably good enough. But the more you read, the more you are exposed to and the more you will start finding patterns and key themes in your field. Secondly, you might want to have a strategy other than just finding the latest literature and reading journals cover to cover. That is still a good way to expose yourself, but you may find that your field/topic may have some fundamental papers that most modern work now cite. If you find out what these papers are, they can be a good start. I would recommend starting with the journal "Annual Review of ______" (where ____ may be Chemistry, or Physical Chemistry, or whatever you are interested in). These reviews are lengthy but they are epic. They get the leaders in the field to write about their area of expertise and they assume very little prior knowledge from the reader. The reviews tend to cover the history of what we know about a particular topic, outlining past theories and why they are good/bad, bringing the reader up to speed on the current knowledge and usually ending with a prediction of where the field will go next. Thirdly, I found that discussing journal articles with others really help. A lot of programs have discussion groups where grad students meet weekly to talk about an article. See if you can join in. There are also usually "reading classes" at the 3rd and 4th year level for undergrads where a prof will meet with the class to discuss some key papers in the field. Definitely take one in the future, but for now, you can try to google to find class websites for these types of courses at your current school and other schools around the US/world. Find these websites and see which articles are assigned for reading, then go and read them!