Quantum Buckyball

You don't have to send it. Most school will only look at your subject GRE score if you told them you were interest in applying for their fellowships.

Yes it is possible to get accepted without a subject GRE score.

That's really good! just sit back and wait

Have your recommenders submitted their letters yet? If so, then you should hear om them as early as December. Networking > Good Scores

It depends upon if you're an extremely competitive and well-rounded applicant or not. If you have a phenomenal & outstanding profolio, meaning have (1) 2+ first authored or second authored original research publications in a high-impact journal (2) have at least a prestigious national grant, or fellowship or scholarship (3) summer internship at prestigious/well-known places (4) oral presentations or poster sessions at national/international conferences (5) teaching assistantship or research assistantship (for a minimum of 1 yr) (6) volunteer experience within the chemistry community (i.e. outreaching) (7) 90 percentile on GRE, GPA, or chemistry GRE (8) number of high-advanced level chemistry courses taken. If you do indeed have a very strong profolio and letters of recommendation, then you should be expecting to hear back as early as December . The deadline for schools to make a decision is April 15th, 2013.

didn't get to apply this year but I will next year.

I don't know if they still do that or not but at least it was like that back in 2003. I saw it on her CV and it was not a terminal MS.

What you can do is that you could apply for their Masters program to see if you can get your foot in the door or not and then work your way up. One of my professors from undergrad had a GRE score around 1000-1100ish (around 2003?), and she got in Yale's MS Chem program and did really well. Then, she got accepted to the Yale's PhD program in Chem...It might take you couple more years to finish, but it'll all be worth it in the end

pickled squash

fill out an application and let him/her know that you're interested and you'll be submitting an application soon. You don't need to talk to him/her in person at this moment. It won't hurt if you live nearby the school but since you don't, then I probably won't bother with it unless he or the department is offering you to fly/drive there.

I woke up one morning in Summer 2007 and decided to become a professional chemist, I was totally inspired by Elle Woods

I used to think that impact factor was the only thing that determines weather a journal is "top tier" or "low tier", but not anymore after I entered grad school. For instance, the field I'm in, one of the top 5 journals only had an impact factor of 1.95 back in 2011. Does that mean the journal isn't good? I I doubt it, mainly because it's a highly specialized field (i.e. Optics related). My former PI told me that although impact factor is somewhat important, but you also have to pay attention to the authors, there are a lot of well reputable/knowledgeable/experienced authors in the lower-tier impacted journals mainly because they're either on the editorial board or an editor-in-chef.

If you're naturally gifted...then yes ..... It would probably take me at least a month to go through all the materials, I'm a slow reader hah.