Write to professors who do the type of thing you're looking for. If anyone's doing it, they'll know.

http://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/list...fm?unitid=5049

I don't know if this list is useful since I'm not a CS guy and I didn't exactly read anything but it seems like there are alot of options.

that was my first resource but the site is really poorly maintained. i couldn't even find the REU i participated in last summer on the site because it is listed in the wrong category.

Hey guys,

Didn't read the entire thread but I have a couple of questions...
So if anyone has followed any of my other threads here I originally wanted to go to medical school after a year off following my undergraduate degree (BS Biochemistry). I joined a research lab a year ago and I have really enjoyed it. I have enjoyed it so much I have decided to join a second lab where I have started my own project already. My grades are not that great (~3.6), I will probably be able to get good letters of recommendations as I will also be a teaching assistant for a 400 level biochemistry class next semester. I have yet to take the GRE as this decision to go graduate school instead of medical school was made about a week ago. I am not going to be applying to a top program. I will be likely applying to all my in-state schools (OHSU, OSU-Oregon schools basically) and a couple of out-of-state schools (UW etc). I have started to check the due dates for admission for Fall term and many of them are due the first week of Janurary (This in consideration for financial aid). I think it would be very difficult for me to take the GRE, write my essays, do well in school and continue to be in 2 labs. I could apply later in the year (April/May) and try to get an excellent GRE score and just apply for admission without financial aid.

So my questions are basically this...does applying later significantly hurt my chances of getting into a program(I understand that I basically have to pay for school myself then-but hopefully it will be instate tuition). Keep in mind these are not top programs. If I am accepted into a program is there a chance of receiving a full scholarship/everything paid after a successful first year, or will I have to pay for everything myself? I am still considering taking a year off and trying to get published with one of my labs (the graduate student I am working with is a year or so away from getting published and I may be listed as one of the authors if I am able to contribute in the next 7 months). What type of other EC's can I do to boost my chances of getting accepted? Other than the 2 labs I am currently in, being a teaching assistant and volunteering 200 hours at my local hospital I don't have many other activities (POKER haha). I do have membership in the Biochemistry honor society, chemistry honor society and biology honor society but it's rather boring and just a "filler" (I don't even have time to attend their monthly meetings as they overlap with the time I spend in one of my labs).

Anyway, just give me your thoughts please.

Also,

OSU YEARLY tuition for in-state graduate students is about 11k, so I can probably easily make that playing poker, so financial aid isn't a huge deal to me, it's just being accepted into a PhD program.

Try doing some searches on various listservs. For instance, ecolog often has postings for REU spots, even though they're often more field-oriented. It also might be fruitful to search in related fields and propose something in line with your interests that relates to what the researcher is doing. For instance, a few people I know do experiments, data crunching, and modeling on invasive species. Folks like this might be amenable to having an REU competent enough to work on a modeling exercise, even if this is not explicitly included in their REU.

1- These questions would be better answered by the graduate admissions coordinator at the U's to which you are applying.

2-Grad and med schools are different beasts. The extracurricular nonsense is much less important for grad school.

3-fwiw, I didn't decide to apply until like late October to grad school and got everything together for a January deadline. Since admissions committees have to schedule multiple people around busy schedules, it's likely that meetings will be delayed, and might give you a few extra days here and there. Again, admissions coordinators will have better answers.

The difficult thing about getting good letters of rec for me is that I had a plan on how I would get them, but I have yet to fulfill it. Basically I was going to ask one letter of rec after a 2 years of research with a postdoc, one letter of rec from a professor after 1 year of research and 2 more letters from professors that I will be teaching assistants for this year. Basically all these letters need to wait until the middle or end of the school year for them to be as good as I want them to be.

This was going to be the biggest leak in my medical school application so I thought that by doing research in 2 labs/being a teaching assistant, I would be able to get great LOR's, which would still likely be the case but now I am only probably going to be getting 1 decent LOR. I have put so much time into volunteering/research/other activities this past year that I never went to any of my professors office hours. I know I am the one to blame for this, but since applying for graduate school basically pushes up my LOR deadlines by 1 year how should I go about getting the other two?

I am currently in 1 class right now (Biochemistry Lab) where I have a 100% in the class half way through and I feel that I have spoken a lot with the professors in the past 5 weeks of class. If I really push myself to go to his offices hours I may be able to get a decent LOR from him as I am going to explain my desire to get into biochemical research.

I could try to get an LOR from a non-science class as well. I could email professors from past classes were I had done really well but I doubt most would even remember me.

Argh, why did I decide grad school so late!

Edit: Another LOR I could get is from the hospital, but that LOR would be more about "character and diligence" than my academic ability. I think 1 letter from a "professional" and 2 letters from a "professor" is what the schools am I applying are looking for.

pedigree means a lot once you start talking about grad school+. also, you'll just have more opportunities to do things that interest you at a bigger, better school. i'd highly recommend applying to grad schools that are at least a tier higher than you think you can get into just in case.

I actually just had an interview with a lab called NECSI

http://www.necsi.edu/


though they were quite vague. the guy was a post doc and seemed positive but basically said "we don't know what we will be doing when summer comes around so we want to talk to you in late spring". right now this is my first choice but hopefully they will give me something more tangible in the next week or two.

While we're on the topic of LORs, I could use some help.

I'll be doing an MS in stats next year. Where is still TBD, but with my numbers and background I'll get in somewhere good. At this point a PhD is not really my intent as I plan to go into industry or Biostats but we'll see.

I have already asked for two LOR but need a total of three.

The two I have already asked for will be strong. One is from my upper-level Stats professor and I go to his office hour all the time, we talk about stuff beyond the scope of class, I have the highest grade in class etc.

The other is from an Econ professor of mine who thinks the world of me. While having an Econ professor write one is not optimal, it's still a quantitative discipline so it'll be relevant.

For my 3rd I really have no idea. I didn't take a Math class in college until Junior year (Calc I and II from high school, didn't become a Math major until then), so I really don't know our math department that well. I got A's in 3 of the 4 math classes I took last year, but those professors don't really know me. I did well in class, got good grades, came to office hours every once in a while, etc but they don't really know me beyond superficially. At the same time since I'm applying to Stats programs, it seems like a bad idea to have two non-Math professors write recs. Should I just bite the bullet and ask one of my math professors that kind of knows me? Another Econ professor?

Subscribing. I thought I'd posted in this thread in the past, but I guess not. Someday I might be back in here for advice.

Can the math professor can say something more than "this person got an A and came to office hours sometimes"? If not, a letter from someone in a semi-related field who knows you well would probably be better. You want to provide admission committees with something they couldn't see on your transcript.

I'm not sure if this is true in all fields, but in my field you are not expected to have three super strong recommendations coming out of undergrad, so I wouldn't sweat it too much .

When you guys are asking for LORs, be sure to ask the prof if it's ok for you to write the first draft of the letter. Most of us will appreciate that for several reasons:

1) It saves us time
2) You know yourself better than we do
3) It saves us having to remember everything you did

And the advantage for you is that you can fluff up the letter with all your extra-curricular activities, etc, that we wouldn't know about. Then the letter looks strong, instead of "he got an A in my class and sometimes came to office hours."

maybe i'm totally off base, but couldn't this come off as unethical/offensive? i could imagine a professor taking this the wrong way.

Actually I've heard many professors ask to you to write your own LOR and they will sign it. But they also ask that you include your personal statement, transcript and other information as well. The average class size for my sciences classes at UW has been something like 200, I doubt every professor will remember every student from every quarter the past couple of years.

I don't know if a student asking/offering to do this would be taken the right way by all professors? I know some professors I talked with seemed to think that a student writing their own letter (even in draft form) was not in the norm. I can understand giving the professor your statement of purpose.

Personally, I had no input into any of my letters (apart from my actions, ldo), and I would have felt weird if I had any. The whole point of the LOR is to get an outside perspective on the students ability to succeed in a graduate program, right? We have the personal statement to make our own case.

You can always ask in a way that is not offensive.

"I understand that you're a really busy professor, so if it would make it easier for you, i'd be willing to write up an outline or draft of the LOR for you...."

If they take offense at that, then they're a dick.

In theory yes. In practice, we are extremely busy.


You heard right. Of course, not all will, which is why you ask politely.

That is huge class size, even for a school as big as UW.

As for letters: If you can't articulate your positive qualities, how and why should you expect someone else to? I think this is a key quality for good grad students (and researchers in general): developing an argument as to why what you think about something (including your own talents) is important.

Looking at the registration numbers for the upcoming quarter 200 students is actually on the smaller size of classes that I have taken.

General Chemistry Classes (100 level)
~350 avg/class
General Biology Classes (100 level) *** Only 1 class section offered
~700 avg/class
Organic Chemistry Classes (200 level)
~300 avg/class
Higher level biology classes (Molecular,Physiology etc...)
~175 avg
Physics (100 level)
~250 avg
Biochemistry (Pre-med series) *** Only 1 class section offered
~700 avg
Biochemistry (Long series)
~200 avg
Physical Chemistry
~150 avg

So as you can see even all the way up to the highest class levels available for undergraduates the class sizes remain very high at UW. The just keep consolidating the number of classes taught, so that instead of the class sizes getting smaller, the number of classes being taught gets smaller. For example, there are probably 1200-1500 freshman taking general chemistry (4 separate classes taught). After the general chemistry series approximately 900 will continue on to organic chemistry (3 separate classes taught). The smallest class I have ever been apart of was physical chemistry (class of 89 students...about 30 dropped after the first week lol).

Basically you are going to have to make a significant effort to get a good LOR from a professor at UW. That's not to say it should be easy or is easy at other universities but it's hard when you are competing every week with 30 other students for office hour time with the professor.

Hey guys, i have a quick question about grad school admissions.

So my friend (not me) is applying to PhD programs in biology (specifically immunology). She has a really high GPA, great LORs, good research,...etc. She took the GRE in September, but was really sick, and wanted to cancel it after just doing the AW and Quant sections. So, she quit the test, it said "you won't receive your score" so she thought that was tantamount to having the score cancelled. She retook the GRE a couple weeks later, and crushed it.

Flash forward to now, and she goes on the GRE website. She sees that the first GRE she took was not canceled, and her verbal is 200. When she sends her scores to grad schools, she's going to have a 1500+ GRE, and then a terrible score underneath it. ETS can't cancel it, and she's e-mailing the admissions officers at the school's she's applying to about it. Given her record and most recent GRE score, its obvious that the first score doesn't jell with anything else. She's really concerned that they'll toss her application out before looking at her other stats because of the score. Since she's applying for a PhD, is the admissions process more holistic, than say applying to a master's program? Is there anything else you guys would recommend she should do?

I would recommend that she contact the admissions officer AND her potential advisor immediately by phone and explain the situation to them. Our admissions officer (i'm in a different field) would just toss the 200 out of her file.

Not sure what to do about ETS. That could be a legal matter, but i'm no lawyer.

Agree with Black Peter. It's definitely acceptable to have contact with admissions folks at this point, and it shouldn't seem weird to them at all if she calls. Depending on the particular school/department, it may also be a good idea to also call the secretary.

+1, but I'd contact (by phone) the grad chair or whoever handles admissions.

gre score for physical sciences programs dont mean ****. i score like a 1200 and got into a 10 ten school for chemistry. Thank god its almost over this has been a real hell. i would advise not to do a organic chemistry phd.

How important are GRE scores for PhD programs in civil engineering? I took the test today and got a 520V and 800Q, will the 520V hurt my chances if I'm applying to top tier schools (MIT/Stanford/UCB/UIUC/Purdue/UT@A)