PhD Scientist, low undergrad GPA, 750 GMAT NWJD Forum

[ResolutePear]

I get a little annoyed when people on here don't consider a PhD in the hard sciences to mean much.

While the few classes I took may practice grade inflation, and that may be the case why my graduate GPA was almost 4, I was doing research and teaching as well from the week I arrived in the program.

I ran my own lab and performed independent research approximately 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, 50.5 weeks a year for slave wages for 6 years in a stinky lab, inhaling fumes, that no one working in "the real world" would ever have put up with. I had annual reviews, progress reports, and regular oversight, despite no financial incentive to produce results and no reasonable, predicted graduation schedule. It was the hardest thing in the world to come in to work the morning after an important reaction failed and find a way to work around the problem. I handled the extra weight as a TA that the rent-a-lecturer organic professors weren't willing to pull, and oftentime felt like I was lecturing myself. I wager that I had just as much real world experience as anyone else on this forum.

My graduate career matured me as an individual far beyond the person who got such a low undergraduate GPA, as the letter of recommendation from my advisor will attest. My research made the cover of a major scientific journal in February. I built character and serious, professional academic skills, and as much as an undergraduate GPA should be taken into consideration, so should all that I've accomplished and done to grow above it in the years since.

Now you are just venting. You are annoyed because you are poorly-informed. If you did your research, you would realize that a PhD in hard sciences, while still valuable, is quickly deteriorating in its quality and persuasiveness without a supporting performance in LSAT.

Getting into a PhD program in Biology and Chemistry is extremely easy. I will not get into details here, but anyone disagreeing with my assertion has a different definition on "easy" from me. Due to the high demand of human labor to perform hands-on biological or chemical experiments, recruiting graduate students is the only viable approach. We are cheap labors. Nothing more. It's no longer a training system like used to be 20 years ago.

When the admission dean at Berkeley was asked about the trend of recent applicants' pool. One trend he spotted is that more and more people with advanced degrees are applying to law school, including people "...with PhD in molecular biology..." Not a good sign, I must say. And here you are, still arguing we deserve some respect for our PhD degrees and the hard work behind this title. It is completely irrelevant. You will not be compared to other applicants, you will be compared to your peers, people also having PhDs in hard sciences, but at the time can score high on LSAT and write good application essays. Although I doubt there is any quota on how many PhDs a school will recruit, but I imagine they would stop at a certain point because we are non-traditional applicants.

To conclude: you are not unique, there are a sizable pool of PhD applicants and you are competing in that pool, not the general applicants. This is the assumption. And you have to re-organize all your arguments based on this assumption.

The lesson here?

Do your PhD in Nuclear Physics. There's always business in making WMD's or keeping you from making WMD's.

Or, you can always go work Intel/TI. But that's no fun.

/nonsense

[thegor1987]

I get a little annoyed when people on here don't consider a PhD in the hard sciences to mean much.

While the few classes I took may practice grade inflation, and that may be the case why my graduate GPA was almost 4, I was doing research and teaching as well from the week I arrived in the program.

I ran my own lab and performed independent research approximately 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, 50.5 weeks a year for slave wages for 6 years in a stinky lab, inhaling fumes, that no one working in "the real world" would ever have put up with. I had annual reviews, progress reports, and regular oversight, despite no financial incentive to produce results and no reasonable, predicted graduation schedule. It was the hardest thing in the world to come in to work the morning after an important reaction failed and find a way to work around the problem. I handled the extra weight as a TA that the rent-a-lecturer organic professors weren't willing to pull, and oftentime felt like I was lecturing myself. I wager that I had just as much real world experience as anyone else on this forum.

My graduate career matured me as an individual far beyond the person who got such a low undergraduate GPA, as the letter of recommendation from my advisor will attest. My research made the cover of a major scientific journal in February. I built character and serious, professional academic skills, and as much as an undergraduate GPA should be taken into consideration, so should all that I've accomplished and done to grow above it in the years since.

Now you are just venting. You are annoyed because you are poorly-informed. If you did your research, you would realize that a PhD in hard sciences, while still valuable, is quickly deteriorating in its quality and persuasiveness without a supporting performance in LSAT.

Getting into a PhD program in Biology and Chemistry is extremely easy. I will not get into details here, but anyone disagreeing with my assertion has a different definition on "easy" from me. Due to the high demand of human labor to perform hands-on biological or chemical experiments, recruiting graduate students is the only viable approach. We are cheap labors. Nothing more. It's no longer a training system like used to be 20 years ago.

When the admission dean at Berkeley was asked about the trend of recent applicants' pool. One trend he spotted is that more and more people with advanced degrees are applying to law school, including people "...with PhD in molecular biology..." Not a good sign, I must say. And here you are, still arguing we deserve some respect for our PhD degrees and the hard work behind this title. It is completely irrelevant. You will not be compared to other applicants, you will be compared to your peers, people also having PhDs in hard sciences, but at the time can score high on LSAT and write good application essays. Although I doubt there is any quota on how many PhDs a school will recruit, but I imagine they would stop at a certain point because we are non-traditional applicants.

To conclude: you are not unique, there are a sizable pool of PhD applicants and you are competing in that pool, not the general applicants. This is the assumption. And you have to re-organize all your arguments based on this assumption.

Blatant engineer's anti chemistry trolling. Some astronauts are PhD chemists therefore it is difficult.

[robotclubmember]

Blatant engineer's anti chemistry trolling. Some astronauts are PhD chemists therefore it is difficult.

I don't see your point, or your contribution to the discussion? Lol.

[thegor1987]

Blatant engineer's anti chemistry trolling. Some astronauts are PhD chemists therefore it is difficult.

I don't see your point, or your contribution to the discussion? Lol.

My point is OP shouldn't expect to get into Northwestern because of his PhD, but that's no reason to downplay it's difficulty by calling it extremely easy. Extremely easy my arse, the chemistry GRE is harder than the MCAT, it's got physical chem, analytical chem, ochem, inorganic chem, these are all hard sections. Are you kidding me? ok the MCAT is more competitive so you have to get more questions right to be average, but still the substance is very difficult.

Still OP has great prospects for IP, and no there is NOT ample amounts of PhD, those programs are such a huge time investment, 6 freaking years, that weeds out a lot of people. Add a JD to that and that is 13+ years of higher education including undergrad. That right there is one small portion of the population. People on here talk about how law firms can just pick and choose among PhD hahaha

OP should still apply to NU but it likely won't happen. Still worth the app though

[09042014]

I strongly disagree that a PhD shouldn't be weighed more than undergrad. A PhD in Chemistry is much more impressive than a 4.0 in poli sci. Unless the PhD is from a TTT program.

However law schools really value the LSAT, and law schools have to apply the USNews game.

Northwestern will overlook a bad GPA if you have other accomplishments but not if you can't show that you are competitive on the LSAT.

OP needs to restudy and retake the LSAT. Or do a part time program and get a patent agent job.

[bollandi]

I get a little annoyed when people on here don't consider a PhD in the hard sciences to mean much.

While the few classes I took may practice grade inflation, and that may be the case why my graduate GPA was almost 4, I was doing research and teaching as well from the week I arrived in the program.

I ran my own lab and performed independent research approximately 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, 50.5 weeks a year for slave wages for 6 years in a stinky lab, inhaling fumes, that no one working in "the real world" would ever have put up with. I had annual reviews, progress reports, and regular oversight, despite no financial incentive to produce results and no reasonable, predicted graduation schedule. It was the hardest thing in the world to come in to work the morning after an important reaction failed and find a way to work around the problem. I handled the extra weight as a TA that the rent-a-lecturer organic professors weren't willing to pull, and oftentime felt like I was lecturing myself. I wager that I had just as much real world experience as anyone else on this forum.

My graduate career matured me as an individual far beyond the person who got such a low undergraduate GPA, as the letter of recommendation from my advisor will attest. My research made the cover of a major scientific journal in February. I built character and serious, professional academic skills, and as much as an undergraduate GPA should be taken into consideration, so should all that I've accomplished and done to grow above it in the years since.

Now you are just venting. You are annoyed because you are poorly-informed. If you did your research, you would realize that a PhD in hard sciences, while still valuable, is quickly deteriorating in its quality and persuasiveness without a supporting performance in LSAT.

Getting into a PhD program in Biology and Chemistry is extremely easy. I will not get into details here, but anyone disagreeing with my assertion has a different definition on "easy" from me. Due to the high demand of human labor to perform hands-on biological or chemical experiments, recruiting graduate students is the only viable approach. We are cheap labors. Nothing more. It's no longer a training system like used to be 20 years ago.

When the admission dean at Berkeley was asked about the trend of recent applicants' pool. One trend he spotted is that more and more people with advanced degrees are applying to law school, including people "...with PhD in molecular biology..." Not a good sign, I must say. And here you are, still arguing we deserve some respect for our PhD degrees and the hard work behind this title. It is completely irrelevant. You will not be compared to other applicants, you will be compared to your peers, people also having PhDs in hard sciences, but at the time can score high on LSAT and write good application essays. Although I doubt there is any quota on how many PhDs a school will recruit, but I imagine they would stop at a certain point because we are non-traditional applicants.

To conclude: you are not unique, there are a sizable pool of PhD applicants and you are competing in that pool, not the general applicants. This is the assumption. And you have to re-organize all your arguments based on this assumption.

Get off it. While the numbers certainly show that there are an increasing number of candidates with advanced degrees, students with Master's degrees make up the vast majority of this pool. It's been relayed to me by three associate deans in the T20 that a Ph.D. in a hard science would mostly void a GPA that falls below the 25th percentile. Outside of Berkley, GW, BU, the applicants that hold a Ph.D. in a real science are few and far between.

Unless you've completed, or are in the advanced stages of, a Ph.D. program in the hard sciences from a reputable program, your opinion on relative ease is without a single drop of merit. My written and oral qualifiers are the most difficult gamut that I've gone through. Three hours of rapid fire questions and critique on a dissertation proposal tacked onto a successfully funded NIH grant proposal would melt most people's faces off, somewhat figuratively. I'm not sure how difficult things have been for your Phoenix College doctorate, but clearly you're a flame or one of the aimless that float through a program on the bare minimum.

"Due to the high demand of human labor to perform hands-on biological or chemical experiments, recruiting graduate students is the only viable approach. We are cheap labors. Nothing more. It's no longer a training system like used to be 20 years ago."

- Ph.D. candidates in science aren't glorified lab techs. We manage lab techs, junior grad. students, rotation students, summer med. students, clueless undergrads, etc. I've published numerous peer-reviewed manuscripts, been invited to speak at two international conferences (no, Canada doesn't count), lectured for medical school courses, adjunct instructor for genetics/cell biology/ molecular microbiology at a nearby university, and a sh*tload, if you will-and you will, of other opportunities. These are the things that deserved my acceptance into a number of fantastic law programs.

Do I think I deserve some respect for my Ph.D.? You're goddamn right I do!

OP should run through the Ph.D. Boost blog for some interesting supplemental info.
http://phdboost.blogspot.com/]

[thwalls]

I get a little annoyed when people on here don't consider a PhD in the hard sciences to mean much.

While the few classes I took may practice grade inflation, and that may be the case why my graduate GPA was almost 4, I was doing research and teaching as well from the week I arrived in the program.

I ran my own lab and performed independent research approximately 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, 50.5 weeks a year for slave wages for 6 years in a stinky lab, inhaling fumes, that no one working in "the real world" would ever have put up with. I had annual reviews, progress reports, and regular oversight, despite no financial incentive to produce results and no reasonable, predicted graduation schedule. It was the hardest thing in the world to come in to work the morning after an important reaction failed and find a way to work around the problem. I handled the extra weight as a TA that the rent-a-lecturer organic professors weren't willing to pull, and oftentime felt like I was lecturing myself. I wager that I had just as much real world experience as anyone else on this forum.

My graduate career matured me as an individual far beyond the person who got such a low undergraduate GPA, as the letter of recommendation from my advisor will attest. My research made the cover of a major scientific journal in February. I built character and serious, professional academic skills, and as much as an undergraduate GPA should be taken into consideration, so should all that I've accomplished and done to grow above it in the years since.

Now you are just venting. You are annoyed because you are poorly-informed. If you did your research, you would realize that a PhD in hard sciences, while still valuable, is quickly deteriorating in its quality and persuasiveness without a supporting performance in LSAT.

Getting into a PhD program in Biology and Chemistry is extremely easy. I will not get into details here, but anyone disagreeing with my assertion has a different definition on "easy" from me. Due to the high demand of human labor to perform hands-on biological or chemical experiments, recruiting graduate students is the only viable approach. We are cheap labors. Nothing more. It's no longer a training system like used to be 20 years ago.

When the admission dean at Berkeley was asked about the trend of recent applicants' pool. One trend he spotted is that more and more people with advanced degrees are applying to law school, including people "...with PhD in molecular biology..." Not a good sign, I must say. And here you are, still arguing we deserve some respect for our PhD degrees and the hard work behind this title. It is completely irrelevant. You will not be compared to other applicants, you will be compared to your peers, people also having PhDs in hard sciences, but at the time can score high on LSAT and write good application essays. Although I doubt there is any quota on how many PhDs a school will recruit, but I imagine they would stop at a certain point because we are non-traditional applicants.

To conclude: you are not unique, there are a sizable pool of PhD applicants and you are competing in that pool, not the general applicants. This is the assumption. And you have to re-organize all your arguments based on this assumption.

I had a long drawn out comment to this but realized that you're just trying to get a rise out of me. But you are correct is saying that you are not unique. If you went to a program where you were just cheap labor who was promised a degree after 4-5 years then you are a tool. On the other hand, if you worked for a boss that let you design your own research, and y'know, do science-y stuff, then you actually earned your PhD.

Unfortunately, I am sure that you fall squarely in the tool category. Also, using phrases like, "not a good sign, I must say", in order to sound smart and educated makes you sound neither smart or educated. Grow up.

[thwalls]

I get a little annoyed when people on here don't consider a PhD in the hard sciences to mean much.

While the few classes I took may practice grade inflation, and that may be the case why my graduate GPA was almost 4, I was doing research and teaching as well from the week I arrived in the program.

I ran my own lab and performed independent research approximately 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, 50.5 weeks a year for slave wages for 6 years in a stinky lab, inhaling fumes, that no one working in "the real world" would ever have put up with. I had annual reviews, progress reports, and regular oversight, despite no financial incentive to produce results and no reasonable, predicted graduation schedule. It was the hardest thing in the world to come in to work the morning after an important reaction failed and find a way to work around the problem. I handled the extra weight as a TA that the rent-a-lecturer organic professors weren't willing to pull, and oftentime felt like I was lecturing myself. I wager that I had just as much real world experience as anyone else on this forum.

My graduate career matured me as an individual far beyond the person who got such a low undergraduate GPA, as the letter of recommendation from my advisor will attest. My research made the cover of a major scientific journal in February. I built character and serious, professional academic skills, and as much as an undergraduate GPA should be taken into consideration, so should all that I've accomplished and done to grow above it in the years since.

Now you are just venting. You are annoyed because you are poorly-informed. If you did your research, you would realize that a PhD in hard sciences, while still valuable, is quickly deteriorating in its quality and persuasiveness without a supporting performance in LSAT.

Getting into a PhD program in Biology and Chemistry is extremely easy. I will not get into details here, but anyone disagreeing with my assertion has a different definition on "easy" from me. Due to the high demand of human labor to perform hands-on biological or chemical experiments, recruiting graduate students is the only viable approach. We are cheap labors. Nothing more. It's no longer a training system like used to be 20 years ago.

When the admission dean at Berkeley was asked about the trend of recent applicants' pool. One trend he spotted is that more and more people with advanced degrees are applying to law school, including people "...with PhD in molecular biology..." Not a good sign, I must say. And here you are, still arguing we deserve some respect for our PhD degrees and the hard work behind this title. It is completely irrelevant. You will not be compared to other applicants, you will be compared to your peers, people also having PhDs in hard sciences, but at the time can score high on LSAT and write good application essays. Although I doubt there is any quota on how many PhDs a school will recruit, but I imagine they would stop at a certain point because we are non-traditional applicants.

To conclude: you are not unique, there are a sizable pool of PhD applicants and you are competing in that pool, not the general applicants. This is the assumption. And you have to re-organize all your arguments based on this assumption.

Get off it. While the numbers certainly show that there are an increasing number of candidates with advanced degrees, students with Master's degrees make up the vast majority of this pool. It's been relayed to me by three associate deans in the T20 that a Ph.D. in a hard science would mostly void a GPA that falls below the 25th percentile. Outside of Berkley, GW, BU, the applicants that hold a Ph.D. in a real science are few and far between.

Unless you've completed, or are in the advanced stages of, a Ph.D. program in the hard sciences from a reputable program, your opinion on relative ease is without a single drop of merit. My written and oral qualifiers are the most difficult gamut that I've gone through. Three hours of rapid fire questions and critique on a dissertation proposal tacked onto a successfully funded NIH grant proposal would melt most people's faces off, somewhat figuratively. I'm not sure how difficult things have been for your Phoenix College doctorate, but clearly you're a flame or one of the aimless that float through a program on the bare minimum.

"Due to the high demand of human labor to perform hands-on biological or chemical experiments, recruiting graduate students is the only viable approach. We are cheap labors. Nothing more. It's no longer a training system like used to be 20 years ago."

- Ph.D. candidates in science aren't glorified lab techs. We manage lab techs, junior grad. students, rotation students, summer med. students, clueless undergrads, etc. I've published numerous peer-reviewed manuscripts, been invited to speak at two international conferences (no, Canada doesn't count), lectured for medical school courses, adjunct instructor for genetics/cell biology/ molecular microbiology at a nearby university, and a sh*tload, if you will-and you will, of other opportunities. These are the things that deserved my acceptance into a number of fantastic law programs.

Do I think I deserve some respect for my Ph.D.? You're goddamn right I do!

OP should run through the Ph.D. Boost blog for some interesting supplemental info.
http://phdboost.blogspot.com/]

Damn straight.

[ThreeYears]

I get a little annoyed when people on here don't consider a PhD in the hard sciences to mean much.

While the few classes I took may practice grade inflation, and that may be the case why my graduate GPA was almost 4, I was doing research and teaching as well from the week I arrived in the program.

I ran my own lab and performed independent research approximately 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, 50.5 weeks a year for slave wages for 6 years in a stinky lab, inhaling fumes, that no one working in "the real world" would ever have put up with. I had annual reviews, progress reports, and regular oversight, despite no financial incentive to produce results and no reasonable, predicted graduation schedule. It was the hardest thing in the world to come in to work the morning after an important reaction failed and find a way to work around the problem. I handled the extra weight as a TA that the rent-a-lecturer organic professors weren't willing to pull, and oftentime felt like I was lecturing myself. I wager that I had just as much real world experience as anyone else on this forum.

My graduate career matured me as an individual far beyond the person who got such a low undergraduate GPA, as the letter of recommendation from my advisor will attest. My research made the cover of a major scientific journal in February. I built character and serious, professional academic skills, and as much as an undergraduate GPA should be taken into consideration, so should all that I've accomplished and done to grow above it in the years since.

Now you are just venting. You are annoyed because you are poorly-informed. If you did your research, you would realize that a PhD in hard sciences, while still valuable, is quickly deteriorating in its quality and persuasiveness without a supporting performance in LSAT.

Getting into a PhD program in Biology and Chemistry is extremely easy. I will not get into details here, but anyone disagreeing with my assertion has a different definition on "easy" from me. Due to the high demand of human labor to perform hands-on biological or chemical experiments, recruiting graduate students is the only viable approach. We are cheap labors. Nothing more. It's no longer a training system like used to be 20 years ago.

When the admission dean at Berkeley was asked about the trend of recent applicants' pool. One trend he spotted is that more and more people with advanced degrees are applying to law school, including people "...with PhD in molecular biology..." Not a good sign, I must say. And here you are, still arguing we deserve some respect for our PhD degrees and the hard work behind this title. It is completely irrelevant. You will not be compared to other applicants, you will be compared to your peers, people also having PhDs in hard sciences, but at the time can score high on LSAT and write good application essays. Although I doubt there is any quota on how many PhDs a school will recruit, but I imagine they would stop at a certain point because we are non-traditional applicants.

To conclude: you are not unique, there are a sizable pool of PhD applicants and you are competing in that pool, not the general applicants. This is the assumption. And you have to re-organize all your arguments based on this assumption.

Get off it. While the numbers certainly show that there are an increasing number of candidates with advanced degrees, students with Master's degrees make up the vast majority of this pool. It's been relayed to me by three associate deans in the T20 that a Ph.D. in a hard science would mostly void a GPA that falls below the 25th percentile. Outside of Berkley, GW, BU, the applicants that hold a Ph.D. in a real science are few and far between.

Unless you've completed, or are in the advanced stages of, a Ph.D. program in the hard sciences from a reputable program, your opinion on relative ease is without a single drop of merit. My written and oral qualifiers are the most difficult gamut that I've gone through. Three hours of rapid fire questions and critique on a dissertation proposal tacked onto a successfully funded NIH grant proposal would melt most people's faces off, somewhat figuratively. I'm not sure how difficult things have been for your Phoenix College doctorate, but clearly you're a flame or one of the aimless that float through a program on the bare minimum.

"Due to the high demand of human labor to perform hands-on biological or chemical experiments, recruiting graduate students is the only viable approach. We are cheap labors. Nothing more. It's no longer a training system like used to be 20 years ago."

- Ph.D. candidates in science aren't glorified lab techs. We manage lab techs, junior grad. students, rotation students, summer med. students, clueless undergrads, etc. I've published numerous peer-reviewed manuscripts, been invited to speak at two international conferences (no, Canada doesn't count), lectured for medical school courses, adjunct instructor for genetics/cell biology/ molecular microbiology at a nearby university, and a sh*tload, if you will-and you will, of other opportunities. These are the things that deserved my acceptance into a number of fantastic law programs.

Do I think I deserve some respect for my Ph.D.? You're goddamn right I do!

OP should run through the Ph.D. Boost blog for some interesting supplemental info.
http://phdboost.blogspot.com/]

Wow, that's a long first post. I wonder who you are.

I have a PhD, in Microbiology/molecular genetics, if you bother to click on "profile", you can also find out I did get it from a "reputable institution". Do I think it's easy? Yes, I do, I think it's extremely easy, you pay your due diligence and you get rewarded. Nothing complicated. If you think 3 hour oral exam, writing a dissertation, getting criticized and publishing are the most difficult things to do, you are the living proof of the deteriorating quality of the pool of PhDs in sciences.

[ThreeYears]

I get a little annoyed when people on here don't consider a PhD in the hard sciences to mean much.

While the few classes I took may practice grade inflation, and that may be the case why my graduate GPA was almost 4, I was doing research and teaching as well from the week I arrived in the program.

I ran my own lab and performed independent research approximately 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, 50.5 weeks a year for slave wages for 6 years in a stinky lab, inhaling fumes, that no one working in "the real world" would ever have put up with. I had annual reviews, progress reports, and regular oversight, despite no financial incentive to produce results and no reasonable, predicted graduation schedule. It was the hardest thing in the world to come in to work the morning after an important reaction failed and find a way to work around the problem. I handled the extra weight as a TA that the rent-a-lecturer organic professors weren't willing to pull, and oftentime felt like I was lecturing myself. I wager that I had just as much real world experience as anyone else on this forum.

My graduate career matured me as an individual far beyond the person who got such a low undergraduate GPA, as the letter of recommendation from my advisor will attest. My research made the cover of a major scientific journal in February. I built character and serious, professional academic skills, and as much as an undergraduate GPA should be taken into consideration, so should all that I've accomplished and done to grow above it in the years since.

Now you are just venting. You are annoyed because you are poorly-informed. If you did your research, you would realize that a PhD in hard sciences, while still valuable, is quickly deteriorating in its quality and persuasiveness without a supporting performance in LSAT.

Getting into a PhD program in Biology and Chemistry is extremely easy. I will not get into details here, but anyone disagreeing with my assertion has a different definition on "easy" from me. Due to the high demand of human labor to perform hands-on biological or chemical experiments, recruiting graduate students is the only viable approach. We are cheap labors. Nothing more. It's no longer a training system like used to be 20 years ago.

When the admission dean at Berkeley was asked about the trend of recent applicants' pool. One trend he spotted is that more and more people with advanced degrees are applying to law school, including people "...with PhD in molecular biology..." Not a good sign, I must say. And here you are, still arguing we deserve some respect for our PhD degrees and the hard work behind this title. It is completely irrelevant. You will not be compared to other applicants, you will be compared to your peers, people also having PhDs in hard sciences, but at the time can score high on LSAT and write good application essays. Although I doubt there is any quota on how many PhDs a school will recruit, but I imagine they would stop at a certain point because we are non-traditional applicants.

To conclude: you are not unique, there are a sizable pool of PhD applicants and you are competing in that pool, not the general applicants. This is the assumption. And you have to re-organize all your arguments based on this assumption.

I had a long drawn out comment to this but realized that you're just trying to get a rise out of me. But you are correct is saying that you are not unique. If you went to a program where you were just cheap labor who was promised a degree after 4-5 years then you are a tool. On the other hand, if you worked for a boss that let you design your own research, and y'know, do science-y stuff, then you actually earned your PhD.

Unfortunately, I am sure that you fall squarely in the tool category. Also, using phrases like, "not a good sign, I must say", in order to sound smart and educated makes you sound neither smart or educated. Grow up.

thwall, it's not cool to call a fellow Wahoo "tool" or "sound neither smart and educated", i am disappointed.

[bollandi]

I get a little annoyed when people on here don't consider a PhD in the hard sciences to mean much.

While the few classes I took may practice grade inflation, and that may be the case why my graduate GPA was almost 4, I was doing research and teaching as well from the week I arrived in the program.

I ran my own lab and performed independent research approximately 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, 50.5 weeks a year for slave wages for 6 years in a stinky lab, inhaling fumes, that no one working in "the real world" would ever have put up with. I had annual reviews, progress reports, and regular oversight, despite no financial incentive to produce results and no reasonable, predicted graduation schedule. It was the hardest thing in the world to come in to work the morning after an important reaction failed and find a way to work around the problem. I handled the extra weight as a TA that the rent-a-lecturer organic professors weren't willing to pull, and oftentime felt like I was lecturing myself. I wager that I had just as much real world experience as anyone else on this forum.

My graduate career matured me as an individual far beyond the person who got such a low undergraduate GPA, as the letter of recommendation from my advisor will attest. My research made the cover of a major scientific journal in February. I built character and serious, professional academic skills, and as much as an undergraduate GPA should be taken into consideration, so should all that I've accomplished and done to grow above it in the years since.

Now you are just venting. You are annoyed because you are poorly-informed. If you did your research, you would realize that a PhD in hard sciences, while still valuable, is quickly deteriorating in its quality and persuasiveness without a supporting performance in LSAT.

Getting into a PhD program in Biology and Chemistry is extremely easy. I will not get into details here, but anyone disagreeing with my assertion has a different definition on "easy" from me. Due to the high demand of human labor to perform hands-on biological or chemical experiments, recruiting graduate students is the only viable approach. We are cheap labors. Nothing more. It's no longer a training system like used to be 20 years ago.

When the admission dean at Berkeley was asked about the trend of recent applicants' pool. One trend he spotted is that more and more people with advanced degrees are applying to law school, including people "...with PhD in molecular biology..." Not a good sign, I must say. And here you are, still arguing we deserve some respect for our PhD degrees and the hard work behind this title. It is completely irrelevant. You will not be compared to other applicants, you will be compared to your peers, people also having PhDs in hard sciences, but at the time can score high on LSAT and write good application essays. Although I doubt there is any quota on how many PhDs a school will recruit, but I imagine they would stop at a certain point because we are non-traditional applicants.

To conclude: you are not unique, there are a sizable pool of PhD applicants and you are competing in that pool, not the general applicants. This is the assumption. And you have to re-organize all your arguments based on this assumption.

Get off it. While the numbers certainly show that there are an increasing number of candidates with advanced degrees, students with Master's degrees make up the vast majority of this pool. It's been relayed to me by three associate deans in the T20 that a Ph.D. in a hard science would mostly void a GPA that falls below the 25th percentile. Outside of Berkley, GW, BU, the applicants that hold a Ph.D. in a real science are few and far between.

Unless you've completed, or are in the advanced stages of, a Ph.D. program in the hard sciences from a reputable program, your opinion on relative ease is without a single drop of merit. My written and oral qualifiers are the most difficult gamut that I've gone through. Three hours of rapid fire questions and critique on a dissertation proposal tacked onto a successfully funded NIH grant proposal would melt most people's faces off, somewhat figuratively. I'm not sure how difficult things have been for your Phoenix College doctorate, but clearly you're a flame or one of the aimless that float through a program on the bare minimum.

"Due to the high demand of human labor to perform hands-on biological or chemical experiments, recruiting graduate students is the only viable approach. We are cheap labors. Nothing more. It's no longer a training system like used to be 20 years ago."

- Ph.D. candidates in science aren't glorified lab techs. We manage lab techs, junior grad. students, rotation students, summer med. students, clueless undergrads, etc. I've published numerous peer-reviewed manuscripts, been invited to speak at two international conferences (no, Canada doesn't count), lectured for medical school courses, adjunct instructor for genetics/cell biology/ molecular microbiology at a nearby university, and a sh*tload, if you will-and you will, of other opportunities. These are the things that deserved my acceptance into a number of fantastic law programs.

Do I think I deserve some respect for my Ph.D.? You're goddamn right I do!

OP should run through the Ph.D. Boost blog for some interesting supplemental info.
http://phdboost.blogspot.com/]

Wow, that's a long first post. I wonder who you are.

I have a PhD, in Microbiology/molecular genetics, if you bother to click on "profile", you can also find out I did get it from a "reputable institution". Do I think it's easy? Yes, I do, I think it's extremely easy, you pay your due diligence and you get rewarded. Nothing complicated. If you think 3 hour oral exam, writing a dissertation, getting criticized and publishing are the most difficult things to do, you are the living proof of the deteriorating quality of the pool of PhDs in sciences.

Did you happen to knock down all of those straw men in your publications as well? Indeed, I clicked on your profile; I've always found that buying into self reported information posted under a moniker leads to absolute truths.

[PinkCow]

This thread has truly devolved into an intellectual manhood measuring contest.

[ThreeYears]

Wow, that's a long first post. I wonder who you are.

I have a PhD, in Microbiology/molecular genetics, if you bother to click on "profile", you can also find out I did get it from a "reputable institution". Do I think it's easy? Yes, I do, I think it's extremely easy, you pay your due diligence and you get rewarded. Nothing complicated. If you think 3 hour oral exam, writing a dissertation, getting criticized and publishing are the most difficult things to do, you are the living proof of the deteriorating quality of the pool of PhDs in sciences.

Did you happen to knock down all of those straw men in your publications as well? Indeed, I clicked on your profile; I've always found that buying into self reported information posted under a moniker leads to absolute truths.

Typical logic fallacy: attacking the merit of the opponent instead of addressing the argument directly. Really? that's the best rebuttal you could amount?

It's obvious that you can't handle the truth. The truth that more and more science PhDs are taking this alternative career path and the competitiveness edge is quickly disappearing, also the truth that a guy said something you don't like to hear is a fellow PhD, provided that you have already completed yours.

[ThreeYears]

This thread has truly devolved into an intellectual manhood measuring contest.

Nah, I am Asian, I avoid this kind of contest.

[The Real Jack McCoy]

I don't do this very often, but: this thread brought the lols.

[bollandi]

Wow, that's a long first post. I wonder who you are.

I have a PhD, in Microbiology/molecular genetics, if you bother to click on "profile", you can also find out I did get it from a "reputable institution". Do I think it's easy? Yes, I do, I think it's extremely easy, you pay your due diligence and you get rewarded. Nothing complicated. If you think 3 hour oral exam, writing a dissertation, getting criticized and publishing are the most difficult things to do, you are the living proof of the deteriorating quality of the pool of PhDs in sciences.

Did you happen to knock down all of those straw men in your publications as well? Indeed, I clicked on your profile; I've always found that buying into self reported information posted under a moniker leads to absolute truths.

Typical logic fallacy: attacking the merit of the opponent instead of addressing the argument directly. Really? that's the best rebuttal you could amount?

It's obvious that you can't handle the truth. The truth that more and more science PhDs are taking this alternative career path and the competitiveness edge is quickly disappearing, also the truth that a guy said something you don't like to hear is a fellow PhD, provided that you have already completed yours.

I can certainly do much better, but my thoughts would ultimately lead to the banhammer. Best of luck on the rest of your cycle.
Ok, one more!
Out of fear of you slaughtering any additional Jack Nicholson lines, I'm going to preemptively use the rest of the good ones.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
I only take viagra when I'm with more than one woman.
Now comes the part where I relieve you, the little people, of the burden of your failed and useless lives.
Beer, it's the best damn drink in the world.
You make me want to be a better man.
I must be crazy to be in a loony bin like this.
When we make mistakes they call it evil. When God makes mistakes they call it Nature!

[thegor1987]

I get a little annoyed when people on here don't consider a PhD in the hard sciences to mean much.

While the few classes I took may practice grade inflation, and that may be the case why my graduate GPA was almost 4, I was doing research and teaching as well from the week I arrived in the program.

I ran my own lab and performed independent research approximately 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, 50.5 weeks a year for slave wages for 6 years in a stinky lab, inhaling fumes, that no one working in "the real world" would ever have put up with. I had annual reviews, progress reports, and regular oversight, despite no financial incentive to produce results and no reasonable, predicted graduation schedule. It was the hardest thing in the world to come in to work the morning after an important reaction failed and find a way to work around the problem. I handled the extra weight as a TA that the rent-a-lecturer organic professors weren't willing to pull, and oftentime felt like I was lecturing myself. I wager that I had just as much real world experience as anyone else on this forum.

My graduate career matured me as an individual far beyond the person who got such a low undergraduate GPA, as the letter of recommendation from my advisor will attest. My research made the cover of a major scientific journal in February. I built character and serious, professional academic skills, and as much as an undergraduate GPA should be taken into consideration, so should all that I've accomplished and done to grow above it in the years since.

Now you are just venting. You are annoyed because you are poorly-informed. If you did your research, you would realize that a PhD in hard sciences, while still valuable, is quickly deteriorating in its quality and persuasiveness without a supporting performance in LSAT.

Getting into a PhD program in Biology and Chemistry is extremely easy. I will not get into details here, but anyone disagreeing with my assertion has a different definition on "easy" from me. Due to the high demand of human labor to perform hands-on biological or chemical experiments, recruiting graduate students is the only viable approach. We are cheap labors. Nothing more. It's no longer a training system like used to be 20 years ago.

When the admission dean at Berkeley was asked about the trend of recent applicants' pool. One trend he spotted is that more and more people with advanced degrees are applying to law school, including people "...with PhD in molecular biology..." Not a good sign, I must say. And here you are, still arguing we deserve some respect for our PhD degrees and the hard work behind this title. It is completely irrelevant. You will not be compared to other applicants, you will be compared to your peers, people also having PhDs in hard sciences, but at the time can score high on LSAT and write good application essays. Although I doubt there is any quota on how many PhDs a school will recruit, but I imagine they would stop at a certain point because we are non-traditional applicants.

To conclude: you are not unique, there are a sizable pool of PhD applicants and you are competing in that pool, not the general applicants. This is the assumption. And you have to re-organize all your arguments based on this assumption.

Get off it. While the numbers certainly show that there are an increasing number of candidates with advanced degrees, students with Master's degrees make up the vast majority of this pool. It's been relayed to me by three associate deans in the T20 that a Ph.D. in a hard science would mostly void a GPA that falls below the 25th percentile. Outside of Berkley, GW, BU, the applicants that hold a Ph.D. in a real science are few and far between.

Unless you've completed, or are in the advanced stages of, a Ph.D. program in the hard sciences from a reputable program, your opinion on relative ease is without a single drop of merit. My written and oral qualifiers are the most difficult gamut that I've gone through. Three hours of rapid fire questions and critique on a dissertation proposal tacked onto a successfully funded NIH grant proposal would melt most people's faces off, somewhat figuratively. I'm not sure how difficult things have been for your Phoenix College doctorate, but clearly you're a flame or one of the aimless that float through a program on the bare minimum.

"Due to the high demand of human labor to perform hands-on biological or chemical experiments, recruiting graduate students is the only viable approach. We are cheap labors. Nothing more. It's no longer a training system like used to be 20 years ago."

- Ph.D. candidates in science aren't glorified lab techs. We manage lab techs, junior grad. students, rotation students, summer med. students, clueless undergrads, etc. I've published numerous peer-reviewed manuscripts, been invited to speak at two international conferences (no, Canada doesn't count), lectured for medical school courses, adjunct instructor for genetics/cell biology/ molecular microbiology at a nearby university, and a sh*tload, if you will-and you will, of other opportunities. These are the things that deserved my acceptance into a number of fantastic law programs.

Do I think I deserve some respect for my Ph.D.? You're goddamn right I do!

OP should run through the Ph.D. Boost blog for some interesting supplemental info.
http://phdboost.blogspot.com/]

Wow, that's a long first post. I wonder who you are.

I have a PhD, in Microbiology/molecular genetics, if you bother to click on "profile", you can also find out I did get it from a "reputable institution". Do I think it's easy? Yes, I do, I think it's extremely easy, you pay your due diligence and you get rewarded. Nothing complicated. If you think 3 hour oral exam, writing a dissertation, getting criticized and publishing are the most difficult things to do, you are the living proof of the deteriorating quality of the pool of PhDs in sciences.

I think you are just bitter about your unfulfilling field of study, at least us chemists can do something useful like sequence the human genome then when we hand it over to you geneticists all you can do is conclude some lame probabilities and weak correlations for genetic diseases

[thwalls]

I get a little annoyed when people on here don't consider a PhD in the hard sciences to mean much.

While the few classes I took may practice grade inflation, and that may be the case why my graduate GPA was almost 4, I was doing research and teaching as well from the week I arrived in the program.

I ran my own lab and performed independent research approximately 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, 50.5 weeks a year for slave wages for 6 years in a stinky lab, inhaling fumes, that no one working in "the real world" would ever have put up with. I had annual reviews, progress reports, and regular oversight, despite no financial incentive to produce results and no reasonable, predicted graduation schedule. It was the hardest thing in the world to come in to work the morning after an important reaction failed and find a way to work around the problem. I handled the extra weight as a TA that the rent-a-lecturer organic professors weren't willing to pull, and oftentime felt like I was lecturing myself. I wager that I had just as much real world experience as anyone else on this forum.

My graduate career matured me as an individual far beyond the person who got such a low undergraduate GPA, as the letter of recommendation from my advisor will attest. My research made the cover of a major scientific journal in February. I built character and serious, professional academic skills, and as much as an undergraduate GPA should be taken into consideration, so should all that I've accomplished and done to grow above it in the years since.

Now you are just venting. You are annoyed because you are poorly-informed. If you did your research, you would realize that a PhD in hard sciences, while still valuable, is quickly deteriorating in its quality and persuasiveness without a supporting performance in LSAT.

Getting into a PhD program in Biology and Chemistry is extremely easy. I will not get into details here, but anyone disagreeing with my assertion has a different definition on "easy" from me. Due to the high demand of human labor to perform hands-on biological or chemical experiments, recruiting graduate students is the only viable approach. We are cheap labors. Nothing more. It's no longer a training system like used to be 20 years ago.

When the admission dean at Berkeley was asked about the trend of recent applicants' pool. One trend he spotted is that more and more people with advanced degrees are applying to law school, including people "...with PhD in molecular biology..." Not a good sign, I must say. And here you are, still arguing we deserve some respect for our PhD degrees and the hard work behind this title. It is completely irrelevant. You will not be compared to other applicants, you will be compared to your peers, people also having PhDs in hard sciences, but at the time can score high on LSAT and write good application essays. Although I doubt there is any quota on how many PhDs a school will recruit, but I imagine they would stop at a certain point because we are non-traditional applicants.

To conclude: you are not unique, there are a sizable pool of PhD applicants and you are competing in that pool, not the general applicants. This is the assumption. And you have to re-organize all your arguments based on this assumption.

I had a long drawn out comment to this but realized that you're just trying to get a rise out of me. But you are correct is saying that you are not unique. If you went to a program where you were just cheap labor who was promised a degree after 4-5 years then you are a tool. On the other hand, if you worked for a boss that let you design your own research, and y'know, do science-y stuff, then you actually earned your PhD.

Unfortunately, I am sure that you fall squarely in the tool category. Also, using phrases like, "not a good sign, I must say", in order to sound smart and educated makes you sound neither smart or educated. Grow up.

thwall, it's not cool to call a fellow Wahoo "tool" or "sound neither smart and educated", i am disappointed.

Then I guess we'll have to sound neither smart nor educated together.

[Patriot1208]

I don't do this very often, but: this thread brought the lols.

I was like WTF. Thread progression:

OP asks for advice
OP gets advice
OP does not like advice because it hurts his self esteem
OP creates an alternate account to make it look like someone else will massage his e-peen.
Now everyone who was trying to help OP just realizes he's an aspie fuck who gets all his self worth from a largely useless degree.

[krad]

I don't do this very often, but: this thread brought the lols.

I was like WTF. Thread progression:

OP asks for advice
OP gets advice
OP does not like advice because it hurts his self esteem
OP creates an alternate account to make it look like someone else will massage his e-peen.
Now everyone who was trying to help OP just realizes he's an aspie fuck who gets all his self worth from a largely useless degree.

bahahaa best post ITT

[thwalls]

I don't do this very often, but: this thread brought the lols.

I was like WTF. Thread progression:

OP asks for advice
OP gets advice
OP does not like advice because it hurts his self esteem
OP creates an alternate account to make it look like someone else will massage his e-peen.
Now everyone who was trying to help OP just realizes he's an aspie fuck who gets all his self worth from a largely useless degree.

Isn't this the life-cycle of all TLS threads?

[Patriot1208]

I don't do this very often, but: this thread brought the lols.

I was like WTF. Thread progression:

OP asks for advice
OP gets advice
OP does not like advice because it hurts his self esteem
OP creates an alternate account to make it look like someone else will massage his e-peen.
Now everyone who was trying to help OP just realizes he's an aspie fuck who gets all his self worth from a largely useless degree.

Isn't this the life-cycle of all TLS threads?

Naw, most turn into meme's, inside jokes, and people mocking confused posters.

[robotclubmember]

I don't do this very often, but: this thread brought the lols.

I was like WTF. Thread progression:

OP asks for advice
OP gets advice
OP does not like advice because it hurts his self esteem
OP creates an alternate account to make it look like someone else will massage his e-peen.
Now everyone who was trying to help OP just realizes he's an aspie fuck who gets all his self worth from a largely useless degree.

Well I don't know if that suspicious poster who just joined is the same guy, but this is why I don't like sharing advice on this site. People come under the premise that they are seeking special insights about something they don't know under the auspices of an established community, but what they really want is confirmation of the ideas they conjured which would most favor their position. Then when special insights are shared, they get defensive and disappear. It's a waste of time.

/thread now?

[masochist]

I don't do this very often, but: this thread brought the lols.

I was like WTF. Thread progression:

OP asks for advice
OP gets advice
OP does not like advice because it hurts his self esteem
OP creates an alternate account to make it look like someone else will massage his e-peen.
Now everyone who was trying to help OP just realizes he's an aspie fuck who gets all his self worth from a largely useless degree.

bahahaa best post ITT

+1000

[bollandi]

Just to point out the painfully obvious, my account was created nearly 15 months prior to OP. While I certainly am for peen massage, I'm not OP.