Advice for 2016 applicant!

[becbec]

Hi! So I am in desperate need of some advice. I was recently rejected to the 4 geology programs I applied to for Fall 2015 and am now trying to regroup and get ready for the Fall 2016 application season ( I want to study mineralogy/petrology). I have spoken to some of the POI's at the schools I was rejected from and they told me to make my GRE scores more competitive, which I certainnly plan on doing ( I signed up for a prep course and will retake the GRE as soon as I can).

 

Anyway my real problem is what to do in the meantime. I obviously can't just sit around for the next 6 months and am really torn between getting a job and taking some classes at my community college. In my undergrad I didn't take Calc or Physics and I don't want that to hurt my application for 2016 because many schools reccommend having two semesters of each. I also just had a job interview the other day and am almost positive I will get the job, but it will be full time and I won't have any time to take any other classes.

 

I just have no idea what to do! Should I get a full time job and gain experience in my field (It's a microscopy position)? Or should I go back to school and knock out some classes that would make my transcripts stronger? I have spoken to some of my profs from my undergraduate program and they're giving me mixed advice! HELP!

[GeoDUDE!]

I don't know if your doing a PhD or not: I don't know how you can do graduate level earth science work without calc or physics. I'd be pretty shocked if you could get into ANY program without a year of each, to be honest. I'm sure its possible, but you need to show some sort of working knowledge in the basics. Petrologists (and mineralogists) need to be able to ground their work with geophysical observations (if they are doing experimental work) and that comes from geophysicists. How are you going to read papers? 

 

Can you do both? Get a job and take calc 1 and physics 1 ? Thats going to be very similar to what graduate school will be like, in terms of workload. 

 

4 programs is not a lot. If your application isn't stellar, you should apply to around 10. 

 

what's your research experience? if you have a reasonable amount, more field experience won't help as much as filling in those gaps. 

 

Do you have a professor who can write a recommendation that highlights your quantitative abilities ?

 

Are you applying to top departments ? 

[idiochromatic]

So, you can certainly get into grad school without a full year of both calc and physics (I had calc but no physics; I'm at a great program now). What you did or didn't do in undergrad (so long as you got good grades on what you *did* do) doesn't condemn you as much as others might think.

 

Here's what I suspect is difficult in your situation.

 

1) It sounds like you have a lack of quant classes altogether--no calc and no physics makes me wonder what classes you might have taken--geo classes can be more or less quant and if you were in a department that let you graduate without calc or physics, my guess is that your undergrad program was less quant than many grad programs want you to be. Vs my situation, I had taken a year of calc, some chem, etc., and had a job history and a GRE score that made it clear I could do quant work. Figure out a way to show that you can do quant work.

 

2) Applying without a year of physics wasn't a huge deal for me because I do geochemistry work; physics is certainly relevant and it's a gap I need to fill, but my ability to do the work I applied to do was not in doubt. As Geodude points out, your lack of calc/physics may be more of a red flag because that background may not be consistent with your stated plans.

 

3) In your application, you should acknowledge what you need more of and state how you plan to do it. My personal statement acknowledged my course deficits and discussed what I was doing to rectify it before I would even step foot on campus. This shouldn't be a long thing, just 2-3 sentences, but it displays maturity and self-awareness. It also gives your PI something to point to when the adcom brings up your background.

 

4) If you think you can't work and take classes at the same time... well, that's what grad school is, like Geodude says, it's basically a fulltime research job with classes on top of it (if you're doing it right). Community colleges frequently have evening courses. If your difficulty is purely scheduling, see if you can negotiate a late start/late exit 2x a week or something to permit you to take classes.