moo

waitlists?

legal? certainly. law does not require you to attend.

spring application deadlines tend to be sometime in the early fall (mid-august is the earliest I've seen). as usual, check with the schools you're interested in. few programs accept spring applicants.

go where the money is; you'll be much happier in the end. (unless, of course, you're so rich that $100k is peanuts. I don't know, some of the people here must be)

nah. in north america it's not unusual for one's graduate degree to be in a somewhat different field from their undergrad. a friend of mine went from english literature to computer science at the university of waterloo. I know a girl who went from chemistry to control systems engineering at caltech. I am an electronics undergrad who got accepted into aerospace engineering grad programs at cornell and princeton (I mention school names only to demonstrate that it's not third-tier toilets accepting across fields out of some desperation, but the universities in the top 5-10.) the point is, if you have a clear enough vision, going from chemistry into physics will not be a problem at all. besides, it's not like these fields are all *that* apart---both are natural sciences, and having a solid background in chemistry is a definite asset in many areas of physics. so yeah, go for it. a cogent statement of purpose is all you really need. I believe the emphasis on `publications` on this board is misguided.

each school has its own.

if the school says that it doesn't care about the department codes, that means that it uses your application rather than these codes to route your scores to the correct department. basically, don't worry. oops, had no idea a thread at the top of the view could be so stale ;).

why wouldn't you mention the prof by name?

no denying, it's cute in that morbid train-wreck fashion ;). too bad ideas like this only work once.

it's impossible to know, but I would be concerned that giving a detailed explanation for a small blemish on one's record would simply draw unnecessary attention to it. since statements of purpose are normally restricted in length to one or two pages (500-1000 words), I think one should look for a more positive way to use up almost a quarter of the alotted space. as for me, I didn't bother explaining marginal performance in a couple of my upper division math courses (complex analysis and group theory). applied and got into control engineering---a very heavily pure-math-oriented field---at damn good schools.

heh, moby ****. **** cheney. lovely.

nope.

eh. public school == tight with money.

eh, attendance is way overrated ;).

GPA: put down the last school's GPA, unless the school asks otherwise (duke does). that's what I did. as far as I can tell, this field is essentially ignored in the admission process---the schools use all your transcripts to figure out your standing anyway.