piano5115

ok this is going to sound very whiny so I apologize ahead of time but I've been in a bit of a funk this past week because I got rejected from my top choice. The weird thing is I didn't even realize it was my top choice until I got rejected from it. Also they sent out an encouraging "we're really happy you applied for us, adcom is undergoing final review" email that totally made me optimistic >_< I feel like I shouldn't complain since I already have 3 interviews lined up and I have friends who don't even have one. But at the same time I feel bummed thanks to the results page I know a bunch of invites have gone out for schools and by virtue of not receiving an invite that basically means I'm out and am basically waiting for a bunch of rejections. I feel like due to the competitiveness of the programs I applied to, if you get an invite to one of the top programs its a sign you'll be invited for a bunch of other top programs while if you don't any then...sucks to be you. Which honestly wouldn't be such a big deal if my parents weren't completely " have you heard back from harvard yet?" EVERY 5 SEC!....gotta love asian parents lol I'm sure I'll be happy and excited once I'm back in school! But this winter break of not having to do anything means I'm just checking the results page every day, which is horrible for my mental state. *sigh* oh well! OPTIMISM! If I force myself to listen to happy songs I'll cheer up right? lol

hmmm anyone know if Stanford is done sending out invites? There's a scattering of responses from the results page but not from my program

I'm pretty sure it's a typical thing they're sending out to people that are considered minorities (I'm asian). I received 2 email ( I applied to 2 different twin city programs) that were exactly the same.

Doing a bit better since i last posted I basically took the week of the holidays off to enjoy time with family and friends which reminded me that life does not equal grad school app process. It was weird, like I was honestly annoyed that the adcom people weren't going to met until jan but SO RELIEVED at the same time that I didn't have to check my email ever hr like a maniac. Now that we're in Jan and basically at the start of the flood of responses for science majors (i'm a biomed phd hopeful) I'm starting to get anxious again. Cue to nightmares (legitimately dreamed that it was march and everyone rejected me, and the school that had already asked me to interview called to rescind that offer) crazy email habits and checking the results page of this site every 5 sec lol. I do feel a bit different from last year though. I'm starting to get less terrified of the end results and more excited about the random cities i'll be visiting and ending my senior year with a lot of fun memories hopefully this excitement can carry me through the next couple of weeks! Best of luck everyone!

Hi BrookeSnow, there's a lot of different opinions but I gave my letter of rec writers boxes of godiva chocolate. Other common choices are nice wine/booze in general and gift cards. Personally, I didn't really feel comfortable given them booze (also didn't know which type they liked) and I don't like gift card because it's attaches a monetary value to their service and many prof don't want to think of them being "paid" for their letters. The best gift is something personalized but I can't craft stuff for my life so I figured a box of godiva reached the price range I wanted (~$30) and could be regifted if they didn't like it....but who doesn't love chocolate?!?! Hope this helps!

Columbia (Pathobiology & Molecular Medicine): 2/15-2/17 Emory University (Neuro): 1/31-2/2 & 2/14-2/16 NYU Sackler (Microbiology): 3/7-3/8 Northwestern (DGP): January 24 - 26 or February 7 - 9 or February 21 - 23 Stanford (Biology): 2/27-3/3 UCSF BMS: 1/24-1/26 OR 2/7-2/9 UCSC PBSE/BME: 1/24-1/26 UF (IDP): 1/27-29 and 2/24-26 U Mass Med (Biomedical/Neuroscience): 1/31-2/2 and 2/14-2/16 U Chicago (Biomedical): 2/21-2/23 Washington University in St. Louis (Biochem): 1/25, 2/8 WashU (Devo, Stem Bio): 2/8, 2/22 WashU (Evo, Eco, Pop): 2/22 WashU (Human Gen): 1/11, 2/8 WashU (Immunology): 1/18, 1/22 WashU (MCB): 1/11, 2/1, 2/15 WashU (Microbiology): 1/25 WashU (Neuro): 1/18, 2/1 WUSTL (Plant): 2/1, 2/15 University of Wisconsin-Madison (Entomology): 2/3-2/5 Quick question, for Stanford does anyone know which program? or is it all of them?

Just heard back from Northwestern's DGP program (chicago medical campus) ! They have 3 interview dates (i'll post it on the other thread too) January 24 - 26 February 7 - 9 February 21 - 23 Did anyone else hear from them? Ahh next week is going to be insane >_< Best of luck to everyone!

Same question lol! looks like a couple of us are applying there! Congrats Biotechstudent!

so so so so so true! Although for me it's not a husband but rather my uber sweet room mate. I feel like I've been a horrible person to live with semester from stressing out about where to apply, to stressing out about turning things in time (although to be fair one of my recco came in 5 hrs before the deadline, 5 FREAKEN HOURS AHHH!) to stressing out about interviews, in between stressing out about lab and stereotypical midterm/finals. she's totally been supportive about this whole process but at a certain point I feel like she's started/already think i'm crazy. Ugg and at another point one of my friends congratulated me on finishing my apps which dragged out to the deadline despite my nice weekly breakdown plan where I finished early Nov (HA!) and said "Congrats! Now you don't need to stress anymore and enjoy life again!" to which I give him apparently a "wild crazy look" and started laughing like a maniac for 2 straight min....... uggg It's just really weird. Like logically I know the whole process will be over in a few months and I just need to be patient and wait, because I really can't even do anything at this point, but I can't seem to stop myself from clicking refresh on the results page/ checking my email obsessively. Hopefully it'll be better once xmas break is here? right?

ah yes, the stereotypical Chinese attitude of if you're not #1 you're nothing... I think that if I was in China I would have gone insane with the college entrance exams...let alone all the pressure of going abroad >_< The thing is, it's really hard give a knowledgeable advice as domestic students from the US. Most phd programs consider international students their own application pool, distinct from the people applying domestically because of the additional difficulties of visa/immigration status. I would be wary of the 690 from NW just because I don't know if it's the overall average of the incoming class or just the international students, since international students tend to do much better on the test and these are the people you're really competing with. My advice would be to talk to professors at your school, especially those that typically write recommendation of people going abroad, and ask them what they think would be the next logical step. Or ask theother international students that are abroad now. It's better to get advice from people who are already have experience with the process. Good luck!!!

One thing you can do to help you decide is to email the program directly and ask them what their average GRE subject scores are and how impactful GRE subject scores are. From what I understand, schools who don't make it a required field (even those that say "strongly/highly" recommend) don't consider GRE subject scores to be a very decisive value. It's something that can help you if you did really well, or hurt you if you did really poorly but if you're somewhere in the large murky grey zone it shouldn't really affect you. I hear you about Chinese students though lol. I'm Chinese but grew up in America. There's a lot of international Chinese students at my school and when I hear how perfect their scores were coming in I'm always impressed....and slightly frightened lol

someone got an interview from yale already?!?! if you're lurking around here Congrats

I'm not quite sure about chem department since I'm doing bio here but a quick google search yielded that we have 512 doctural students this year with a 5.3 year completion rate. Granted that's probably the number of chem +Chem bio people (which is a smaller department than chem) , I still don't think that the incoming class number size decreased. Also I realize that the field of study is much more important than the general school reputation but as you mentioned Berkeley has one of the best chem departments. I only mentioned the school reputation because it's correlated with funding (which I double checked and saw that we have the #1 NSF funding, out competing rival schools like Stanford and Harvard) which would obviously impact the financial situation of the department. I don't want to sound argumentative but I just don't think that the budget cuts are impacting the incoming class sizes significantly, at least in the science degrees. Also congrats to everyone who just finished apps Isn't it such a relief?!?

This is a great idea! The UChicago Biomed Interview for all 4 of their clusters (Cancer Biology, Immunology, Molecular Metabolism and Nutrition and Molecular Pathogenesis and Molecular Medicine) are doing interviews on the same weeked: Feb 21-23,2013

Ahh! Just got my first invite for interview today!!! I'm so excited It's for UChicago, Molecular Metabolism and Nutrition PhD program. If anyone else hears back from the Biomedical sciences let me know! All the Biomedical Science programs are interviewing the same weekend (Feb 21-23).

Thank you for your response! The program head got back to me saying that she noticed it too and it was weird but everything was properly submitted so I don't need to worry about it. yay!

Hi guys, I was just wondering if any of you guys ran into a similar problem. I submitted my app to Stanford on time and using there online checking thing I see that my GRE scores arrived, my recco letters are there and my payment's been processed. But my application status is still "incomplete". Did anyone else run into this problem? Or even know what it means?

I've actually talked to a couple of adcom prof about this question as I was really surprised when a professor asked me this on an early interview. It seems like the consensus is that it's a good idea to be truthful about the answer. Like Thinker123 said this suggest (especially if you have interview invites from the other programs) that you are a really good candidate and that they should be competitive and give you an offer. I personally was worried about this question because the school that I was interviewed at is somewhere I considered a "safety" school and felt like this question was trying to get a insight into me in where their school ranks in my personal list of schools, like how badly do you actually want to go here? I didn't want to appear snobby nor make it obvious that they were my safety because, as you know, it's all about the "fit" and I didn't want the adcom committee to think "oh she doesn't want to come here, we're obviously just a toss-away safety, we shouldn't waste any money trying to recruit her", which wouldn't even be true because I genuinely really like all the programs I applied to. But ya, according to my professors that just me overthinking it lol. Since faculty usually have an idea of what most top programs are like they're just using this question to gauge how much you know about the field you want to go into (like if you're applying to programs that are drastically different from one another that would be a bit weird) and how competitive you think you are. ahh that was a really long winded answer, sry! but i hope it helped

definitely >_< Anyone else feels like they backed themselves in a corner? When I was looking up programs this summer, people (parents, prof, advisors other grad students etc) keep on telling me "only apply to schools you really want to go to" which of course results in me apply to pretty much only the most competitive programs, which I realized is a choice I made of my own, so if I do get rejected I feel like I can't even blame anyone but myself. I don't know, it's just really depressing to realize that we all spent so much time agonizing over each sentence in our SOP, studying hours for the tests, kissing ass for the reccos and at the end of the day the admin council spends what, like 15 min per app? I know the system is so generic because an admission council simply can't go in depth with the number of applicants but I keep on thinking to myself, what if I don't get in anywhere? The school may promise their rejection isn't a "reflection of your talent" but at the same time isn't it? I feel like every rejection letter is a snarky "you were good, just not good enough" statement. I suppose though I'm being melodramatic. I am extremely lucky in that I didn't have to pay for any part of this expensive project (yay Asian parents obsessed with big name schools!) and am still in school so if I really don't get accepted I still have a few month to look for a job. And in the greater scheme of things I will still leave with a bachelor from an amazing undergrad and no debt so I'm in a very lucky position. But at the same time I have been pretty much obsessing over the process for the last 2 years. I can't imagine what I'll feel like in the end if all the effort was for nothing...

Ugg I saw I'm actually kinda happy that I took that school off my list (Love seattle tho!) It's gotta be discouraging to hear a reject this early on in the game. I have friends who are hearing back about interviews from rolling admin schools, ahh I just want news already lol

Finished all of my apps (12) and currently waiting. Ugg I thought filling out the apps was the hard part >_< but the waiting is horrible! it's so crazy that people are already hearing back from their schools! Is it true about the UCs tho? I'm currently going to Berkeley and while there's always a budget crunch I definitely don't see it playing a major factor at the graduate school level. Berkeley was one of the best funded schools (I think we tied with MIT for most NIH funding recently?) in the sciences and UCSF has a ridiculous amount of money. It may be true for some of the other UCs but I feel like for the top UC, they have to be competitive to get the best grad students. I know the stipend here is about 28 K, which isn't really great for such an expensive area but definitely on par with the other elite programs

Undergrad Institution: Top public university (go bears!) Major(s): Integrated Bio Minor(s): GPA in Major: 3.00 (so low ;_ Overall GPA: 3.23 Type of Student: Permanent resident GRE Scores (revised/old version): Q: 167 V: 162 W: 5.0 B: 800 (87%) Research Experience: 1 year at molecular bio lab, summer industry internship, 1 year in signal transduction lab (which is what I want to do in grad school), no publications tho >_< Awards/Honors/Recognitions: High Honors (clearly before I took organic chem ; Pertinent Activities or Jobs: member of women in science, Language tutor for 2 years, PR assistant for 3 years Any Miscellaneous Accomplishments that Might Help: Young Artist Diploma in Piano (prob not going to help, but was a huge part of my life ) Any Other Info That Shows Up On Your App and Might Matter: Really good undergrad, good rec letters Applying to Where: 12 schools including top choices UCSF, Stanford (Really would love to stay in the bay area!), UChicago and of course in compliance to every Asian parent.... Harvard At the risk of sounding really nerdy, I'm glad this site exists so that we can all talk to each other about our experiences! I thought that doing the apps was the hard part but I'm finding that the waiting part is much more emotionally taxing >_< good luck everyone! And hopefully we won't spend all of the holiday season thinking about this lol