waiting for grad school acceptance

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Neuroscience sounds fascinating! I'm an entomologist. Although a PhD is not really necessary to work in pest control or public outreach (which is what I'm doing now), I miss being on the front lines of research with an assortment venomous arthropods crawling up my boots. I want to make a career in academia, so that I'll never have to give that up again.



That's exactly how I felt when I was declined from the last grad school to which I applied. The prof I was talking to was telling me things like "very impressive!" and "I look forward to seeing the rest of your application," then BAM, rejected on the first day of review. I was crushed and didn't apply to another school for 2 years after that. I am really lucky that a former professor of mine kept in touch all of that time. Now I am applying to a program at his school. We'll see how this goes!

I agree with you that schmoozing is distasteful. The way I went about it instead was to just stay involved in my field, and in doing so, I remained in contact with people who might be interested in my research.

I am in the sort of the same situation that you are. I have been accepted to a Grad School in the US, as part of my PhD. Now I am raising enough money so that I can afford to go. Not much I can do except, wait, pray and work my ass off when it counts. My parents swear to me that I am going but I am one stressed out bunny at the moment.

Thank you for the advice, AngelRho. And thank you to everyone else for the sympathy and confirmation that my rejection was odd (and no, I didn't get a reason for being rejected). I appreciate it. Random question for you, Fern- what is your particular specialty in entomology? What type of venemous arthropods? Ants? Bees? Wasps?

No, I certainly don't think I know everything. I'm happy with myself the way I am in EVERY way but in my academic knowledge. I feel so inferior every day not being taken seriously despite my passion and knowledge in the field. I long to learn how to truly analyze fMRI data (just started self-teaching myself with a book), learn how to do MANOVAs, and discover so many things about the brain abnormalities in neuropsychiatric disorders. I have always had a thirst to learn that will never be quenched, and so many of the professors I was close with told me how grad school was WHERE I needed to be. They said that I belong where I can focus and learn all day long.

My college advisor, who I'm close with, said I should "broaden my horizons" in the field, but I think it's silly to spend a ton of money and years of your life doing research on a topic that is NOT your EXACT interest. The trouble is that there aren't a whole lot of neuroscience grad programs that focus on neuropsychiatric disorders from an fMRI perspective. Most work with rats (which I did in college and loathed) and/or with the cellular/molecular level. This is all fascinating to me, of course, but it's not MY passion. And within fMRI-level, my TRUE passion is psychotic bipolar I mania, and you wouldn't believe how FEW programs even study bipolar disorder to begin with. Most psychosis studies are schizophrenia. I just don't want to get my doctorate studying a disorder that isn't my true passion and then never be looked at as an expert in the disorder I DO want to learn about, you know? I'd be more than willing to go for a schizophrenia program, if I knew that I'd be able to do bipolar mania research within that or as a post-doc or whatever.

And as for it being like dating, I've never been on a date. So, that analogy is lost on me.

It's just frustrating how I literally read advanced science textbooks of all sorts for fun and for my own benefit, trying to better myself and learn the things that I should be learning in grad school but am not due to not having been accepted. All of my professors and my best friend from college (also a neuroscientist- he just started grad school this year) said that the only thing that they can think of for me being rejected is that they wanted to see more research experience on my resume. So, I started a data entry job at a big psych research company six months ago, and I hope to be able to transfer to an fMRI/neuropsych study job after working here a year. (Policy says you can't transfer until one year in a position.)

One thing is for sure, though- I want my doctorate more than anything, and I will NEVER stop trying. It's my dream, and even if I have to completely teach myself graduate-level studies, I will do so.

Myrmecological behavior and diversity is my specialty, though I am interested in that of other social insects as well. So right on the button, yes. Because many of the species I've worked with (genera Pogonomyrmex, Solenopsis, & Paraponera) are argued to be some of the most painful stinging insects found on earth, at any given point during field work it is common to see my pants duct-taped to my shoes and/or my raincoat. At my current job I deal with insects from pretty much every order though.

91 - I'll cheer for you if you cheer for me! Maybe with our powers combined we'll both make it into grad school. lol

OddDuck - That sounds like a rough situation. Are there foundations for Bipolar disorder? Perhaps you could check there for prospective advising professors.

Sounds like a plan mate.

Are you Aspie? Do you know how hard it is for some of us just to accept the prescription "Just get to know them". I was in a seminar tonight where we were told to "cultivate relationships" with faculty. How do you do that???? I try to stop in to ask about things or ask about feedback or advice but it seems that some of them just really are in a hurry or don't have much to say.

BTW @OddDuckNash99 - I concur on graduate school cynicism. I have some new hope now, but it still seems to be constrained by the ability to network, "cultivate relationships", and pick the magical combination of things to get you noticed -- all that has little to do with passion and output.

What are you planning on studying? I suspect I have a clue, but...

My postgrad (PhD) specialization is international security. My undergrad major was in philosophy and I do have a couple of articles running around on natural theology.

Heh...you're not going to get any more secure than you will in the states, then. Excellent choice if you come here.

We aren't without problems, though. While you're here, maybe you can suggest better ways of securing our borders. I'm sick and tired of all the Canadiens we have here.

Blame Canada! Studying in the States is a huge oppertunity. You guys have most the best universities.

I think even NTs have this problem with cultivating relationships with faculty. Professors can see through you if you just want to suck up to them for a good letter of rec. But they love talking about their research! So as someone passionate about my field of study, I would often ask professors questions about their research. Also, as an experimentalist, I like to discuss...well...experiments. And often, ideas often bounce around and talking with someone may generate ideas for a cool experiment, which is one of the many reasons why professors and grad students love talking about their research. Another thing is, as a researcher, sometimes the things we do are too theoretical or requires too much background to understand, so we love it when people want to hear what we're working on.

I was in somewhat of a similar position to the OP(I was twenty two and two months away from graduation. I applied to two different graduate schools and about 600 different jobs(No, I am not exaggerating). I got rejected from one of the schools I applied to and I got an offer from 2 out of the 600 jobs which I applied to. I even accepted the job offer one week before graduation. Currently I am working at a software company and plan to complete a MS degree at night. I have no immediate plans for a phd since if I remain working at software companies a phd is not necessary.

I'm trying to get into an Immunology PhD program this summer or fall, but so far a bunch of grad schools that I've applied to have frustratingly rejected me. I have a college GPA above 3.0 and 2 years of research experience, but my GRE scores aren't very high. The admission committees mentioned in those rejection letters that they've received more applications than they can accept and had to reject some of the most-qualified applicants too.

Right now, I'm applying for both research jobs and post-bacc research programs around the country as a PLAN B.

Yeah, the first grad school I applied to was unimpressed by my GRE scores. Luckily, I just kept studying and retaking it until I scored about 200 points higher, which is about the difference between being in the 30th percentile vs the 75th percentile. Interesting isn't it?


Oh right. In other news, I GOT INTO MY PHD PROGRAM! YAAAY!
;_; I'm so excited! All of those years I foolishly listened to people telling me that I wasn't smart enough to peruse this career, and look where I am! Here's where the real work begins I guess.

W00h00!! !! !

Congrats!! !! !!

So now you start your next 4-8 years of academic hell. Best wishes to you!

Hahaha! My thoughts exactly!