Quantum Buckyball

The scientific community is very small (as in each sub-division). It could potentially harm you and prevent you from landing a decent, good post-doc position after graduation.

I really hope I hear back something by next Friday.

Do you know how many seats they're offering this year?

You should contact ETS as soon as possible via E-mail. Then, make a copy or forward the conversation to the admission office and let them know that you're still waiting to hear back from ETS.

Option 1 - do some volunteer work for one of the chemistry faculty, it's usually easier to get into an assistant professor's group because they always need people, especially free labor. Option 2 - apply to an entrance, lab technician position (lab tech), although the pay might be low but this will give you some kind of lab experience Option 3 - audit advanced level chemistry courses, or the ones you made a C or D in. I think you might be able to get away with Cs..but probably not Ds. Option 4 - convince a grad student at your school that he/she needs a lab rat and you're willing to come in on weekends to do research.

Don't you need to accept their offer first and then you can defer the entrance term? I've seen people done it for medical school and other health-related field, because the tuition cost is so much higher there. ($0 vs $200,000). I don't know if they would do that for PhD though, because essentially they're paying you to go there and there are other excellent applicants who are as good as you out there. I think it's definitely possible if you know which group you want to join and sign some kind of contract with the POI.

It has gotten a lot more competitive and difficult to get into a grad school now. Even for a non-ranked, low-tiered school, you will need a minimum of 1000 on your GRE. The admission process for grad school is completely different from undergrad's. They usually careless about your GPA or GRE, and tend to focus on your research experiences, number of publications, internships, etc. To my knowledge, admission committee will turn down applicants with 4.0 GPA and above average GRE if he/she does not have any research experience.

Thanks! I'm not too worried about it, yet. The visitation weekend doesn't start until April 1st so we still have about...2 weeks........and yes it might be the longest 2 weeks that's for sure

I emailed Maria twice and called twice, she told me they don't have a decision for me yet but I should be getting one by the end of next week.

Nope not yet.. but they emailed me back saying they'll make a decision by the end of this week though. They received over 200+ applications this year and I know there were a lot of applicants have a master degree in chemistry...

You should tell them you're still interested in going to their school. However, you do need to tell them why you want to switch to a Master program from a PhD though, even though it's something personal. It's best to just go ahead and let them know as soon as possible.