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Hello all! Good luck with all of your interviews and decisions! I was in your shoes two years ago, and I definitely don't want to relive that stress. But, interviewing was a great experience and really helped me narrow down what I was interested in and what type of people I wanted to work with. If you have any questions about programs, let me know! I obviously know the most about JHU, but I did go on several interviews to other programs.

Hopkins acceptances will be somewhat staggered this year depending on fellowships/RAships. I know each RA professor is making their decisions separately, and they may contact the students themselves when they decide or the department may contact. Also, the fellowship acceptances from the first weekend and the second weekend may be sent out at different times. So, even if you see that other people have been accepted, that definitely doesn't mean you won't be! I believe we are offering more RAships this year than in the past, so that complicates the process a bit and may make things a little slower.

By this point, you might already have a list of the places that are really worth visiting for you. If you have several invites already, you may want to just decline any future schools that don't rank high enough to be worth visiting.

It's probably likely at this point that we are only accepting people who have already received invites, but I'm not in any way involved in admissions, so I don't know anything definite.

You should wear business professional for the interview day (I wore a blouse with a black blazer, black slacks, and nice flats for most of my interviews. A lot of people were like me, some were just a bit more casual.). For girls, don't go too heavy on makeup or perfume but do try to look put together. For the other days of the weekend, it depends. If you could be around faculty, you should wear at least business casual. If it's a casual activity with grad students, jeans are fine. The grad students will definitely be less dressed up than you, so you won't be too casual there. I doubt clothing is a make or break type of thing, but I do know impressions are important, and you want to leave an impression that you are an intelligent and capable student that is an excellent fit for their graduate program.

That happened to me at several schools! It might be that they know those labs aren't ones that you're interested in, but those faculty are on the admissions committee and want to interview students for that reason. It also could be that the other faculty you are interested in are traveling that weekend and they wanted to make sure you got three interviews. It could also be that those faculty liked your profile and requested you. In any case, I wouldn't straight-out say you aren't interested- skim their papers so you are prepared, and, if they ask you about your research interests, be honest without talking bad about their particular field. I can only speak for JHU, but, unless you are international, I think we have sent all of the interview invites we are going to. (That's for PhD, the Masters program is completely separate.) I did get my Columbia interview quite late last year, I think it may have been later than this, so there's still plenty of hope for that one!

I definitely got interview invites from BME programs later than this last year! I recommend checking out the results page here for programs that you applied to to see if they have sent out invites/acceptances yet. But, even if they have, you don't need to panic. A lot of schools have staggered invites because of having different sub-programs or having some faculty being slow to make decisions. It's still early, so there's plenty of time to hear back from programs. In other news, Hopkins's first interview weekend is next weekend, and we're really excited to have you guys here!

I think that one came while I was at my JHU interview, so that was mid-February.

Also, just as an FYI, I got accepted into Harvard SEAS last year without any Skype interviews because the PI I got accepted with just didn't do them. So don't panic and assume you were rejected just because you don't have any Skype interviews lined up - there still could be good news coming!

When I was in the middle of interviews and trying to narrow down schools, I got so tired of people telling me I'd "know" when I had found the right school. I kept asking people how they picked, and several of them said they picked the place that felt right. It annoyed me because I wanted real advice on what to look for and how to decide, but I ended up doing the exact same thing. Once you find the top couple that check all the right boxes, the final decision really is which place feels right. Good luck!!

Totally doable (and actually exactly what I did for those two programs)! Be sure to request to stay with a current student on Friday night (that's an optional night, but we'd love to have people hang out in Baltimore a little longer). I will say Berkeley/UCSF's weekend is a little more tiring than others because you visit both campuses, but having the first day to just do fun things makes it easier.

No problem! It is definitely in ballpark range of NSF. (Although you do get a one-time bonus from Hopkins in addition to NSF if you win!) If you have any specific funding questions, definitely ask Hong Lan. She's our program coordinator, Yeah, I did eight interviews... I got ten offers and ultimately declined two, but I probably should have filtered a bit better. Part of my decision to go on so many came from the fact that I only applied to two schools for undergrad, and I chose my alma mater because they gave me a scholarship and the other school didn't. With graduate school, I didn't have to worry about the finances and could go wherever I wanted (and got accepted), so I had a really hard time narrowing things down before my visits! Ultimately, I don't regret it at all. I was considering every school I interviewed at, and the interviews gave me a great feel for where I was interested and what research excited me the most. Having so many interesting conversations about research helped me pinpoint what I was the most excited about, and visiting that many schools made me realize exactly what I wanted from the graduate school I attended. If I had done my research better before applying, I might have been able to narrow the list down, but it was a great experience for me to do it this way. The toughest parts of doing so many interviews are scheduling them all and the fatigue. By numbers 7 and 8, I was pretty fried (especially since both of those were after a week-long international trip with an organization at my school). I still tried to be as prepared as possible and consider each school fully, but I don't know if I got as much out of those visits as I could because I was pretty drained. Scheduling is also a pain. I actually set up as many in a row as I could, so my schedule was 1 by itself, 4 in a row, 1 by itself, international trip, 2 in a row. That helped cut down on time in airports and missed classes, and was less fatiguing than doing them all separately. I also had to do two alternate weekends because I couldn't make the main weekends due to scheduling conflicts. I was able to get away with it in coursework because I only had one regular class and my ChemE senior design project, and I basically did design non-stop in January so my group didn't hate me for skipping out on them for most of February/March. By the end of my visits, I had it narrowed down to three programs, and I pretty quickly narrowed it down to two due to fit. They both had pretty similar pros and cons lists, so from there, it was really a feeling more than anything else. I kept coming back to Hopkins for the intangible reasons, and everyone I knew said they knew I'd end up here just because of the way I talked about it. But Hopkins wasn't my first choice pre-interview, and may not have even been in my top three, and my top choice pre-interview didn't even make my short list after I visited because it's so different being at the school and interacting with the people in the program than it is looking at a website. My feelings and impressions weren't justified in the slightest, but that might just be me. I was way off-base for several programs, especially about the personality of the program and the people in it. There were two interviews I could have skipped, looking back. One of them I added at the last second even though I was starting to narrow down on where I wanted to go and the other wasn't a super great fit on paper, but I had fooled myself into thinking it was. The biggest thing you can't ignore is your research fit. From websites and papers, you can start to draw up a short-list of who at each school you think you would be interested in researching with, and if there are schools that really don't have a great fit, that's where I'd start to cut down the list. Also, if location is a factor for you, that's an easy one to cut your list down with. Seconded on the no stone unturned comment. I was afraid I'd end up regretting my school choice if I didn't check out every program I was interested, and I can say confidently that I made the right decision for me. By the time I decided, I knew for sure that Hopkins was the best fit and that I'd be happy here, and I was confident in it because I had looked everywhere. It was a really great feeling when I finally accepted my offer. (Sorry for the novel guys...)

I don't know what the standard stipend will be for the incoming class, but it will be in the about 30K range. Everyone offered admission into the PhD program will be offered that stipend, full tuition coverage, and health and dental insurance. If you are offered acceptance, your acceptance letter will have the exact stipend amount you are being offered. I believe Hopkins was just slightly less than Stanford/MIT, but that was more than made up for by the cost of living difference (Baltimore is a much cheaper city to live in than SF/Palo Alto). I wouldn't ask about funding in the interview just because you will have guaranteed funding with your acceptance. If you do have funding questions, Hong is the best person to ask since she will know much more than individual professors will about that. If you want to know if a professor will have funding to take on new students, that is a fair interview question (although I'd phrase it more along the lines of just asking them if they are taking students). The professors are required to fund the standard stipend if they take you into their lab. I will say I don't know how it works for international students, but Hong should be able to answer any questions you have about that.

With interview weekends overall, have fun! Seriously - it's a chance to visit a new city, hang out with some pretty awesome graduate students (I'm not biased at all), learn about interesting research, and decide if you can see yourself there for five-ish years. Take it seriously because you aren't guaranteed acceptance and it is a professional event, but don't stress yourself out to the point where you're a nervous wreck.

I didn't apply to Duke, but I did attend a bunch of other interviews. My experience was varied depending on the professor. Nearly all of them either had my application in front of them or had read it, so they were at least familiar with my background. Probably about half of my interviews overall were with professors I requested to meet with, and the other half were with professors who had either requested me, were involved in my particular subspecialty, or were in some way involved with admissions. A lot of the interviews started with them asking about me and my background, so kind of like a 90 second elevator speech. Then, we usually either started talking about their research or mine. Most of them started with questions about my research or wanted me to give a summary of what I had worked on. Some had really specific (sometimes quite difficult) questions about my project, but most were pretty straightforward and just wanted to know what I did and what my results were. For their research, some would just start describing their current projects, some had a particular project they thought I would be interested in, and some asked if I had any questions or specific projects I wanted to talk about. I pretty frequently got asked why I applied to XYZ school, what I was looking for in a graduate program, why I was interested in their lab (if I requested them). They always asked if I had any questions. The interview style varied a ton based on the professor. Some were like a 30 minute conversation where I never really felt like I was being evaluated. There were a few where I didn't say a darn thing the entire interview and they just talked to me about their work and the program, but this wasn't too frequent. There were also ones where I was asked a lot of specific questions about my research, the techniques we used, why we tried one method over a different one, etc. Honestly, most of them were pretty fun! Within BME as a whole, post-interview acceptance rates are high, so you're already past the biggest hurdle if you have an interview. That meant a lot of the professors were predominantly interested in having a conversation and getting a feel of who I was as a scientist and sharing information about their labs. I learned so much from the people I interviewed with and got the chance to hear about some really fascinating projects. Even in labs that I didn't request meetings with, I usually found that their projects were interesting. There was the occasional really tough interview that was nerve-wracking, but most were pretty enjoyable. My biggest advice is to go in prepared to discuss your research projects and theirs. For yours, that means refreshing your memory on the goals of the project, the methods you used and why, what your biggest challenges were, and what your results are. This isn't a research defense by any means, but you want to be able to have an intelligent conversation about the work that you've done. For theirs, I recommend reading at least the abstracts on their recent papers. If there is a project you are particularly interested in, read through a couple papers on it. It's best to have a few questions prepared about their research - they don't have to be ridiculously specific, but you should have an idea of what they're doing and why it interests you. I'll be honest - with eight interview weekends, I wasn't the best about preparing for each interview ahead of time. If you have the time, definitely read up on the papers from each lab! Just don't make yourself sick with stress if you can't. I did a marathon of straight interviews, and I stressed myself out far too much because I didn't think I was prepared enough when I actually was just fine.