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Going to grad school 12 years after getting a BS | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 hidden)

[new] Another Recommendation (none / 0) (#2)
by Vanes63 on Mon Jul 31, 2006 at 07:03:58 AM PDT

Letters of Recommendation, I've heard, are VERY important but since you have a plan for that, I would recommend sticking to your plan and working on making it excellent.

About your prospective university, sometimes it is best to send an e-mail to the graduate advisor or recruiter in the department or some professor and ask them what they look for in students. I do not know much about the University of Oregon, for example - do they focus on teaching or research? Depending on which one they focus on, your efforts spent tutoring college students or trying to find a research grant that is looking for students could be better decided upon.

I also want to be a professor. Being a professor requires one to multitask many different things at once: teaching classes, researching, faculty meetings (this part I do not know if I look forward to so much lol), and other things. Keeping up in your particular area is important, are you reading the journals, are you keeping up with new trends? Do you have enough base-knowledge to keep up with the journals or at least know where to look? You could use this time to explore yourself mathematically. Pick up math books and go through the exercises, go through the American Mathematical Monthly's and look for problems to work on.

Besides YMN and AMS, you could also join MAA (Mathematical Association of America), they often have regional meetings that allow you not to have to travel too far to go to them (and the Texas MAA meetings are enjoyable, fyi). Sometimes those meetings have graduate and undergraduate talks and posters, so you can see what other students are doing.

If you send professors at your prospective school at e-mail, ask them what they are looking for and work really hard at getting your name known there and really making a great application (have you looked at what their application entails? personal statement? GRE Subject?), have really good scores and grades, then your worries should subside. Also, looking into multiple programs may help make your application even more competitive by giving you an idea of what other schools are also looking at.

I would also like to point out that there is a difference between their "ideal" student and their "average" student, you may find that you fit the average much better than the ideal. I know a school that I asked the graduate advisor what GRE subject scores they were looking for, around 80-90th percentile he told me. When I talked to graduate students one quoted the average at 20-30th percentile or so. That shocked me. So talk to people, talk to a lot of people and look at other answers to the same question around the YMN website, I know they are around here somewhere.

Good luck and keep us updated.

Going to grad school 12 years after getting a BS | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 hidden)

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