My generic advice to potential graduate students:

You should have GRE scores around 1,200 when combining verbal and quantitative scores to be in the top of the pack. In addition to GRE, I also look at GPA, and work history. I figure that two out of those three should demonstrate aptitude and fortitude (there's no logic to that rule of mine; I use it because I had a good GRE and worked a long time for a very few employers, but I had an average undergraduate GPA). You'll need to have official copies of GRE and GPA for formal applications, but you'll probably share those informally with prospective advisors midway through the process. I won't ask for any of that until I get to the stage where I'm pretty sure that I'll have money. I refuse to accept graduate students into my program unless I have funding to support them (salary, tuition, and research expenses). One problem that this creates for me is that by the time I'm confident enough of new funding to offer an assistantship, you may have committed to another program or professor in this program. The deadline for applying to LSU’s Graduate School for the fall is 15 May; you can apply after that but the cost of application doubles from $25 to $50. Unfortunately, I generally don’t know if I’ll have money until after many students have accepted offers elsewhere. C'est la vie.

Trying to apply what I think I know is an important test. Since 1993, I've worked very closely with different committees of the Coastal Wetland Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act Task Force, which spends about $40 million/year building wetland restoration projects. I've been part of a crowd that helps select which proposed projects will be built, and one of a few academic scientists who have assisted with planning monitoring activities and analyzing monitoring data. I often am surprised at the insensitivity of wetlands to our restoration efforts. I try to expose my graduate students to this work because I believe it is valuable experience.

Baton Rouge is a good place to live; it's close to great food, great music, great festivals, and lots of wetlands. The cost-of-living here is fairly cheap too (see the salary calculator at http://www.moving.com/Find_A_Place/Calculators/SalaryCalc/). Louisiana is a happening place for wetland research and management. See http://www.crcl.org/ for an NGO perspective. See http://www.lacoast.gov/ for a restoration perspective. See http://www.osradp.lsu.edu/ for oil-spill research. Despite Louisiana's well deserved reputation for poor quality education in general; the state-funded research environment far exceeds that in most states.

I strongly suggest that you contact about a dozen prospective advisors. We all compete for research funds; you should follow the money rather than tie yourself to a particular advisor who might not obtain funds when you're ready for graduate school. Regardless of where you go, I suggest that you ask prospective advisors for names of current and recent graduate students so that you can learn a little about the environment that you are asking to enter (tell them that you are checking out living conditions in the area rather than their suitability). I believe that I'm a perfect major professor, but you should test that hypothesis by contacting my previous and current graduate students.

I also suggest that you decline to study anywhere that does not offer you a research assistantship. A teaching assistantship is a poor substitute because research costs are bootlegged somewhere, somehow, and little time is left for research. On the other hand, the majority of graduate students in the U.S. get by on teaching assistantships. Attending graduate school without an any assistantship is a hardship that I strongly suggest you avoid. Proposals that I prepare this year will have RA budgets set at $20,000/year for 2 years; out-of-state tuition is waived; in-state tuition is paid by the university (but students must pay fees which run about $700/semester). Again, use a salary calculator to make sure you're comparing apples to apples. Shop around and follow the money rather than the faculty because faculty compete against one another for those funds. The year you want to start graduate school may not be the year that I write a successful proposal.

Good luck,

andy

Andy Nyman

http://www.rnr.lsu.edu/nyman/

School of Renewable Natural Resources

LSU

225 578-4220

jnyman@lsu.edu