rrphenix

Hey aaa63, No its for all graduate students, I was just a little shortsighted when I made the title. Its more about getting to know one another, the city and the university before we all get there.

Hey everyone, If you are heading to Northwestern in the fall, I've gone ahead and made this facebook group with the hopes of connecting the incoming graduate students, regardless of major. Check it out and make sure to invite anyone else you may know from your class! Hopefully it will prove useful for answering questions about the city, the university, the process of moving, finding roommates or anything else you might think of. https://www.facebook.com/groups/325338467568974/

Hey Guys, I have recently run into a little bit of a dilemma when it comes choosing exactly what department I will be applying to at a specific school. To give you a little bit of background, I am a chemical engineering graduate interested in applying bio-engineering PhD programs with a specific focus on synthetic biology. My main dilemma is that synthetic is a very broad field of study that intersects with more than just bio-engineering it has researchers in the fields of cell biology, structural biology, chemistry, physics and many more. The boundaries which define it are quite blurred. My dilemma is that in one school I am applying to, there are multiple bio-engineering professors with research interests that align with mine quite well. The complicating factor is that there is one professor that I found in the department of Chemistry whose research interests read like a line for line paraphrase of my statement of purpose. Obviously that lab would be the best fit for me by far on a 1-for-1 basis, yet I hear over and over again that you should never apply to a program for just one professor. What do you guys recommend, should I apply for bioengineering and go for a relatively good fit? or apply to the Chemistry department listing that professor in particular as my interest. Or is there a way better third option that I haven't considered.