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Thanks! Not yet. I'm not really holding my breath. As far as selectivity goes that would be Hopkins and Duke, and I didn't get very enthusiastic replies to my initial emails at either school. At Northwestern I got a lot of pretty good feedback early on, though I didn't know how much that meant since they hadn't seen my app at that point. Pending finances or intangible things like potential personality conflicts with profs or potential lab-mates, I would happily attend any of the schools I've heard from so far. So at this point anyone else I hear back from is just about pride and options. Looks like you applied to a lot of programs as well. Any acceptances yet?

I think some of my friends are sick of hearing about this, so here goes. I applied to 13 Biomedical Engineering PhD programs (13!). I have some strong qualifications: 1590 GRE, 4.02 GPA during a 1 year BME Masters (at my undergrad institution, so there was no real admissions process to speak of). I have some major weaknesses too though: Undergrad semester GPAs started at 3.6 but steadily declined to 2.7 by the end of senior year -- hated my major. My only real research experience is the job I've had since last August. I also had a gap year between my BS and starting the masters, where I just felt sorry for myself and audited some BME classes. I had another year after the Masters where I worked at a bookstore and did some SAT tutoring with a small company. My current research job is great (prof at a small local school pays me as a lab manager, but aside from minimal duties I get to conduct my own research), but I had no idea how much it would make up for these previous gaps. Point being, I really wanted this Ph.D., and felt like somebody might take a chance on me, but had ZERO idea where I would fall in the admissions game. To further complicate matters, I am only interested in BME programs with a strong neural engineering program. That limited the field down to a relatively small group, many of which are extremely competitive. So I decided that my only real option was just applying to as many as humanly possible and seeing what happened. Enough of the sob story... Now for the jealousy part. I wasn't expecting to hear anything for another few weeks, but I got accepted to Utah the other day and couldn't stop staring the screen with an enormous, stupid grin for at least 10 minutes. Finally I knew this thing was happening for sure. The next day I was invited to Florida, and a few days later accepted to Northwestern. I have never been as excited as I am right now. I still have a lot of schools to hear from, and I'm sure a lot of them will be rejections, but goddamnit I am going to grad school! If only there were a smiley that could express my relief. high fives all around.