BTFO

For letters of rec, I think the most important thing is a very strong letter (or preferably plural, letters) from undergrad professors who can attest that you can do strong academic work -- even if it is not in this field. Ask around, but my gut would say that if you go with three letters, you should have two letters from undergrad profs who knew you well and can say what a smart, good student you are, and one should be from somebody (not necessarily a professor) in this field who can attest to your experience and passion.

That's generic advice. Sometimes it varies with field. (For example, the advice I just gave would be pretty good for law school. It would be less good for grad school in mathematics, where three professors would probably be a better idea. But my guess is it's good advice for agroecology).

One thing I'm noticing on these pages, by the way, which is unusual in the fields I hang out in, is that many of the departments are strongly encouraging or even requiring that you contact and talk to faculty members before applying. Look carefully at any programs that you're interested in and see if they require this. An example is here:

http://nres.illinois.edu/graduate/future/apply ("All applicants are strongly encouraged....") I'm seeing similar stuff elsewhere, but not everywhere. (Berkeley explicitly said it is not required).

lol, thanks Stackelberg. That makes me feel a little better.

I don't remember if you're going for MS or PhD, but at least for PhD you're not really going to the school so much as you're joining a Professor's lab, hence having 2 or 3 Professors you want to work for is essential.

lol I got a 4.5 on written. I'm at least smart enough not to use words I don't know.

Yeah that's what Ive seen Too semck. So not only because of my weird background but also for that reason I've been doing the "back door" thing and emailing oekoke straight up from various departments. Some of them are starting to remember me haha. Which is probably good. I have gotten from the beggining the impression that, although the application is important, it is something of a formality - or at least the informal process is equally important - at least compared with extremely competitive fields like medicine or law or engineering.

Well, that really varies by field, Valis. In math, even for a Ph.D., departments are not going to be that interested in you already knowing who you want to work for.

MS, but yeah that's always good grad school advice

Interesting. Maybe not for STEM then, but for Bio/Biochem/Chem/Bioengineering that's the case. Of course, plans change, sometimes they're not looking to take another grad student, etc, but when people are introduced at talks in my field they always start with who's lab they worked in, not which school they went to.

That's good, Thucy.

Incidentally, that's the second time I've seen you write "oekoke" where I expected "people." Google is unhelpful. Is oekoke from another language?

Oh, yeah. GREs are gonna be a thing. Why did have to remind me?

"Incidentally, that's the second time I've seen you write "oekoke" where I expected "people." Google is unhelpful. Is oekoke from another language?"

No, Thucy just isn't a touch typist.

@abge, You know, that's what I was thinking too. The reason I remember, in fact, is that the first time, I spent about a minute and a half trying to figure out if there is some hand position where you would write that when you tried to write "people." But I couldn't find one, hence my confusion.

I mean, "o" is next to "p" and "k" is next to "l", so it's not that hard to imagine?

Each wrong letter is one key away from the proper one. He's probably typing with only a few fingers.

I guess so, Valis.

people
oekoke

You start out hitting to the *left* of p, then you hit *down at to the right of* o, and then to the left of p, and then to the left of l. Hmm, so I guess maybe it's one letter to the left, with the left hand. Let me try that.

oeioke

Close enough! I guess the thing that has never made sense is the first k, and it still doesn't, but something like this is presumably what is happening. Weird that an otherwise good typist has done it twice on the same word. (I very often want to type "Hellow" instead of "Hello," though, a throwback to my typing "Hello world" far too many times).

*right hand.

Typing is all muscle memory, so it's not too surprising that there may be some words you're more likely to mess up than others. If you learned it wrong, it may be hard to break.

I still can't spell guarentee.

or definetly

I guess if you want to be "rational" then maybe that makes sense, abge. But isn't it more fun to hypothesize that Thucy, due to the ministrations perhaps of a mischievous sibling, has been secretly conditioned to be unable to distinguish between the words "people" and"oekoke," and is at this very minute wondering what we're all talking about?

https://xkcd.com/573/

Typing i snot a joke.

I use this site on my phone guys. Lol. You'll notice a lot of random capitalization and "tb"s where "th"s should go, and yes, that autocorrect classic: oekokpeople or variants thereon.

I am fortunate that I was not required to complete the GRE: Verbal Reasoning portion on my phone

"I use this site on my phone guys."

Is that why your writing score was so low?

What's this score has to do with Greece?

What's wrong with the old GR?

Checking in to be a braggart and report that I got a 6 on the writing, as expected

*does the wacky dance*