funkydays

Do a little research ahead of time on each faculty you are meeting. Go to their lab website (if they have any) and pubmed their lab's recent publications. It'll give you a sense of what their lab's current focus and you can tailor your interview questions based on those. Like @peachypie said, have a few notes to take along. I think I wrote about 3 sentences for each faculty member to help me remember what I've read or seen. For questions to ask, that is up to you. Graduate school interviews are a time for the school to see if you are good candidate, but ALSO a time for you to figure out is this school a good fit for you. Ask questions that you find important in a graduate program. If you don't know, then sit down and think about it. Think about why you applied to X school and fill in the gaps at the interview about any lingering questions you might have about the program. Overall, graduate school interviews are pretty much similar. You do a little research on faculties and the program (if you haven't done so already) but the remainder is up to you to figure out what information you want to get out of the interviews.

I think it's always understandable that when you move away from your home city, you'll feel a little disconnected with your friends. They are in an established community and so they don't necessarily "see" the one-sidedness of their relationship with you. Does that make any sense? I think it's hard to maintain the same relationship you had with your friends especially if they haven't really moved outside of the circles of their home town. Long distance friendships are hard. If these are truly important friendships to you, then put in the effort and try to adjust your expectations. If the friendship was meant to last, then you two will adjust to some middle ground to stay in touch. Your situation has happened to me when I left my hometown as well and many of my friends have never lived outside the town. I realized that we were at different places in our life: they were establishing theirs in our hometown, but I was just starting in a new place. And for friends who have never experienced "new place", it's hard to relate to or maybe someone might even feel like you "escaped" while they are stuck. In any case, I think it's important to remember that you're at different places in life, so it's understandable that you and your friends would not be on the same page in terms of support. It takes time and adjusting for that to happen. Like @piglet33 said, videochat is your friend. Schedule a time to update each other on your lives and such. I usually skype with my best friend once a month and text occasionally. In any case, take this as an opportunity to meet new people if you want (at or outside of school). I guess I have a slightly different experience with meetups than @random_grad ... I've met some really great friends through meetup outside of academia, and it doesn't feel like anything has changed since I've moved away (other than not seeing each other, but we frequently email/chat like before). It takes getting used to, meeting strangers and finding the right group, but if you want to meet new people in a new city, I think it's a good starting point. There's no real easy answer to this, but I hope this and everyone else's answers to you illustrates that you're not alone in this. Best of luck.

I'd like to also suggest meetup groups as @rising_star had mentioned. Especially if you'd like to meet people outside of grad school life. It was hard for me to meet new people and trying to do that through the internet can be a bit awkward. It took a few meet ups to get used to the feeling (not to mention force myself to attend) but I met a great group of friends. I think I tried four or five groups before finding a good group of friends (we've all since move out of meetups, and just hangout), so it took time but worked out in the end. I think it also was a beneficial exercise in general to apply to networking.

Are you looking for a PhD program or a MS program? (there are thesis based MS programs) Also, there are a few helpful online tools that will calculate your GPA. http://www.foreigncredits.com/Resources/GPA-Calculator/ http://www.wes.org/students/igpacalc.asp You can select the appropriate country and calculations will auto adjust as you input each course you took during your 4 years. Here is also a helpful tutorial on how GPA & credit hours are determined: http://www.wikihow.com/Calculate-GPA Hope that helps!

Agreed.

It's a bit difficult with adcomms, since they'll only be able to give you information on the specifics of your application rather than the actual interviews. I would also note that it might not be that you were "bad" at the interview, just that a lot of people did better in terms of making an impression. Some programs also have students weigh in on an applicants fit as well. So if you might have seem unsociable as a whole, it might made you seem not a good fit. If you were just "ok" but nothing terribly wrong, there's nothing the school really can say specifically in terms of feedback, right? They'll tell you that you were fine, and that's that. And unfortunately, if you're in the "possible accept" and not the "definite" category, you have to go out of your way to make an impression and bring your social A game.

Congrats!

If that's the case, like everyone said, talk to your advisor/recommenders and make an informed decision, whether it is accepting the offer or trying again in the fall. If you decide to apply again, I would definitely recommend contacting adcomms of the schools you applied to (or if you know faculty members who've been on an adcomm) and try to get some CC to improve your application for the next round.

If you are posting to honestly get our opinion, then you need to tells us more. From what we're reading, it seems like you are basing your decision solely on the program's ranking and you think you could get into a higher ranking school. If you don't like the program because of XYZ reasons (not in your research area, funding, the people were weird), then state that. We are not mind readers who can divine your opinions on this program. If you are worried about jobs and research opportunities, does this mean that the program doesn't fit your research interests? The alums have not gone into the industry you are looking to for future career? Then those might be reasons for not going to said program. Right now, based on your responses, it seems like your perspective is really narrow and you are fixating one minor-ish thing (rank; unless the school is ranked extremely low with very little funding availability) rather than big picture things.

I second @eteshoe. I don't think you should judge a program solely on the ranking. There are still good programs regardless of rank, so you should be focussed on making decisions based your own research about the program (program strengths, research interest, etc). Make an informed decision based on your research on each school or find out why they received the ranking that they did. Make a decision based on reasearch fit, future career prospects (do the students go where I would want to go in the future? Industry heavy? Academic heavy?, etc), and other aspects that are important to you (funding, particular advisor, location, etc)

Based on your comment, you said psychiatry/cognitive/neuroendo as your interests. Those are closely related fields of interests so you might not need to just pick one. I suggest you take a look at the research the faculty does at each program and decide which would align best with your interests. UMass Amherst does a lot of basic research, so you'll see a wide range of topics and fields of research (evo devo, plant, human, etc). UMass Med is half basic, half biomedical. So there are some labs that do basic research, but there's also labs that are doing translational med or are researching a specific disease model. So it's really up to your own interests and what type of research you would want to do in the future.

Thanks! I'll be heading to UMass Med Worcester!

Hi all, just wanted to finally say "I'm going to grad school!" WHoo hooo! I'm generally an occasional poster/mostly lurker, but you guys were a great support system through the whole process. Definitely reduced some of my anxiety about the whole process. So thank you guys! You guys are awesome! I hope to be semi-active here, so I can give back what everyone else has given to me in terms of encouragement & advice. And YAY grad school!