OverzealousMuch

Wow, thank you so much for your responses. I appreciate the validation of the gut feeling! Asaprocky, I think for the exact same reasons you described, I feel more wanted at Stanford than at Berkeley. I don't really care too much about the graduation requirements; we'll work hard no matter where we go. Thank you for the advice; I think I'm about ready to choose. Hopefully I'm done agonizing. Cheers!

I am an undergraduate at JHU, and I work in a chemical biology lab on the Homewood campus. So here's what I can tell you about the program here: The chemical biology research here is pretty fantastic, easily our best division of chemistry. The above posters are correct; it's very easy to collaborate with the med school as needed. One caveat: people in the chemical biology program tend to take a long time to graduate. One of the groups (I won't say which) had a 12th-year graduate student finally get his PhD last year. In my group, we just had our 7th-year graduate and we have a 6th-year and 5th-year who aren't even close to finishing up yet. So you do good research here, but it can be a lengthy process. It probably depends on who you work for and how efficient you are as a researcher. I'd be curious to know which faculty here you are leaning towards. Also, although Baltimore is definitely more of a city than Ithaca or U-C, it's no sprawling metropolis and some the area around the campus is quite downtrodden and crime-ridden. But if you know where to go and when, Baltimore is a pretty cool place to be for your PhD studies. Hope this helps.

Hi all, I completed all of my visitation weekends about 2 weeks ago and have been agonizing over my decision ever since. After visiting five schools, I fell in love with three: Columbia, UC Berekeley, and Stanford. Though objectively all these schools are incredible for the research I want to do (organic chemistry with applications to biology), my gut feeling is to attend Stanford. I don't want to choose a school on a gut feeling, so I was wondering if anybody has some sort of insight into the organic chemistry department at Stanford. Much obliged for any thoughts you can give me.

So... Anybody else STILL waiting on MIT?

I sent an email to the graduate coordinator. I don't know about any links, though there might be one somewhere.

For those waiting on Penn, I just declined my offer of admission there. Good luck to all still waiting, and I hope one of you can grab my spot!

I was accepted a couple weeks ago. Haven't seen much activity from them recently though. Perhaps there's a second wave coming? Or they're done...

Yeah I was informed unofficially that I was accepted back in December... Then three more professors informed me that I was in, still unofficially... But I still haven't received the official letter in the mail, although I did get an official acceptance via their website. I'm pretty sure you're concretely in if the directer of graduate studies emailed you though. Don't worry about it. Speaking of which, what is the funding information for Yale? I guess I'll be notified soon, but just curious.

Sorry, UPenn, as lellies just said above. Rookie mistake just saying Penn

Well, I just got into Penn (organic chemistry). They're sending out emails now, I guess. Not quite as notoriously late as I postulated Good luck! Hope you get good news.

I applied to Penn. But speaking to some grad students I know, Penn can get back to people notoriously late in the game...

I got into Columbia as well (I was one of the posters). 163 (91%)/164 (89%)/5.0 (93%) on GRE, 760 Chem GRE, 3.81 GPA. 2.5 years of research in a biorganic chemistry lab, no publications as of yet (but possibly one soon *fingers crossed*). Interested in organic chemistry. Three awesome LORs. I received my email yesterday morning. I'm surprised anyone was sending out acceptance emails on a Sunday morning... But I can deal