<p>I've got a couple questions about these...</p>
<p>1.) Every school requires about 3, and if I'm not mistaken these are submitted online by the recommender. If you're applying to 3-4 different schools how do you go about asking your recommender to take the time to individually submit 3-4 letters? I have no experience in this, but if I were a prof, employer, ect., it seems like this could become a bit tiresome if even a handful of students/employees are asking for such...</p>
<p>2.) Did you plan ahead about which profs you were going to ask? The reason I say this is because I generally don't interact a whole lot with mine. However, I now see that this might be a problem if I do apply. I do, however, have one semester left in which I could make a point to form a more personal relationship with one.</p>
<p>3.) Given that I have no research experience, and no real interest in gaining any at this point - how are letters from employers viewed? What are some of the things that admissions people are looking for in the letter? What are your thoughts about coaching the recommender about what you would like them to say?</p>
<p>1) Generally they don’t mind submitting several, as a lot of applications ask for the same thing in their letters and all they have to do is change a few words in the body. The advent of online letter submission has made this nearly a non-issue. I had my recommenders write 10 letters each (crazy, huh?) since I applied 10 places on account of my iffy GPA, and none of them seemed to mind.</p>
<p>2) I planned ahead, as do most people, so I don’t really know what to tell you here. Make a concerted effort in your last semester to get to know a professor. It may be too late, but the best way to do this is to try and get a position helping out in a research lab since then you will know that professor and he has firsthand experience with you in a research setting, which is the most important thing to grad schools. I am not sure if professors would invest the time training you for only a semester of work, though. Then again, your third point makes it clear that you don’t want to do this to begin with so it is sort of a nonissue.</p>
<p>3) I had 2 letters from professors and 1 from an employer. If you can get 3 from professors that is best, but it is generally accepted that you can usually get away with one letter from an employer. It helps immensely if that employer has a very good opinion of you and has a M.S. or higher so that they can say from experience that your strengths will be shown in grad school. The most important thing that the admissions people are looking for is an indication that you will be able to succeed at their school and bring value to their program, which means they want to know not only if you have scholastic ability, but also the practical know-how to get things done in the lab. As I mentioned before, if your industry recommender has a graduate degree, it would possibly be useful to politely suggest that they mention that based on their experience in graduate school, your strengths will allow you to excel in one or both of scholastic work and research. Of the two, research is at least as important if not more important to the school since (A) that is where they make their money, and (B) that is the most visible indication of their program’s quality (people look at the research done by and institution when making opinions, not the grades of the students).</p>
<p>Just out of curiosity, why are you so opposed to research experience? You do realize that graduate school is all about research, right?</p>
<p>1) The professors will write the recommendation in Word and should save it. Then when you ask for a school, they copy and paste onto the website. It’s usually a sentence or two at most that needs to be changed and takes a few minutes.</p>
<p>2) Go to office hours and ask meaningful questions. That’s the best thing to do. If you ask a professor that doesn’t know you, you will generally get a very vanilla letter (“So and So was in my So and So class and scored X out of X. He was ranked X out of X. He did particularly well on the so and so assignments… State is an excellent university that prepares it’s students well…” etc.)</p>
<p>3) Employer letters are viewed as OK. Not as good as a professor’s letter, but employers usually get to know you much better and can write more about your work ethic.</p>
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<p>Not professional programs</p>
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<p>Very ! I’m not going to lie, put me in their shoes and I just would’ve looked at you like you’re nuts… but good to know not everyone’s like me 
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<p>Really there’s multiple reasons; lack of time (both until I graduate and extra time to spare for research during the semester), not a lot of interest, plus I’ll be the first one to admit that I’m a little out of place in a research lab.</p>
<p>My interests are professional, not academic. I’d be looking at a one year, non-thesis PetE degree – probably at UT or TAMU. Due to the lack of funding for such a degree I’ll probably sign on with a Oil services co this fall when I graduate, and apply for the following Spring term in hopes that I’m based in Texas with the service co in order to gain residency. </p>
<p>I think I’ll have a very strong app from an employment standpoint, avg GRE scores for those schools (750,500), slightly below avg GPA, and be lacking a bit with the academic recs… I guess I just need to figure out a way to change that. </p>
<p>Thanks, lots of good advice</p>
<p>Frank,</p>
<p>As a person working at a company, references from employers or coworkers are more than acceptable. Since you’re still fresh, if you can find one person who can comment on your academic ability it’d help out. In my case, I contacted my high school chemistry teacher who wrote a nice letter of recommendation for me. (I wrote one for him a few years back, so he owed me a favor). </p>
<p>Also, I’d encourage you to take classes as a non-matriculated student first. It will give you a chance to be sure that you want to be a student again before you bug everyone about references but it also gives you a chance to prove yourself as a parttime student. (I am assuming that you’re not planning on quitting in the spring.)</p>
<p>I hate research myself so don’t feel bad that you aren’t doing any. It’s not my cup of tea.</p>
<p>frank, just so you know, in Texas, to be a resident for tuition purposes, you have to do one of four things over the course of 12 consecutive months:</p>
<p>1) Own a house/property in Texas
2) Own a business in Texas
3) Hold a professional license in Texas
4) Be gainfully employed in the state for reasons unrelated to student status
5) Be married to a Texas resident</p>
<p>Basically, you need to have at least 12 months in state under your belt in order to be an in-state student. Just figured I would warn you since it sounds like you won’t be at your oil job long enough to really fall into that category. That goes for both UT and TAMU (as well as other Texas public schools as far as I know).</p>
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<p>lol, perhaps a little unorthodox, but it actually is. Working for an oil service co is a little bit like boot camp - great training, but not something you want to do for life (even a short one). From what I hear 100 hr weeks are easy to come by, 24+ hrs on the jobsite with no sleep is a frequent occurance… the list goes on. Generally these companies spend 200K to train you within your first two years, so if you last that long (and many don’t), you become very marketable across the board. </p>
<p>If I get based in Texas, and there’s a high chance I will, I gain residency in one year. Thus, I come out of UT or TAMU, the two most recruited PetE programs in the world, with no extra debt and a year of highly valuable experience. At that point I’d walk into the job I really want without breaking a sweat… </p>
<p>The way I look at it is like this, any service co on the planet would lay me off without blinking if it was in their best interest… I just reverse the logic.</p>
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<p>Yeah my statement was misleading, I meant the following spring as in the year after I graduate - not the spring one month after I graduate…</p>