ion_exchanger

I love this idea! Thanks for posting! 1.) What are you interested in researching? What scientific quesiton/problem most intrigues you? I'm interested in researching infectious diseases, I find them interesting. I'm especially interested in using the structure of proteins to design vaccines. A secondary interest of mine is diseases related to protein translation. Protein translation is a really fascinating and intricate process. It amazes me how involved it is, and if just one thing goes wrong, for example the amino acid isn't activated, there are disastrous results. 2.) What do you think is the biggest challenge facing researchers today (i.e. open publication vs. journals like Nature; securing funding, lack of scientific literacy, etc.) Several answers to this question, but working in infectious diseases, I would have to say that one I have been thinking about is the smaller funding budget for diseases and disorders that "seem" less important than others. I think about those investigators a lot. 3.) What's your favorite microbe, and why? (Or ecosystem, or organism, or whatever) Lol. I would have to say E.coli. I express proteins in E.coli, I've studied E.coli's own proteins. You can do everything with E.coli. I love it. 4.) Favorite lab technique? One that was hardest to master? I would have to agree 10000000% with Leuco. I spend most of my time expressing, purifying, and attempting to crystallize proteins. I think crystallography is just the coolest thing ever. I geek out about it. When you get the purification conditions just right and are able to produce protein in large quantities, you feel great. When you optimize the conditions to produce large and/or diffraction quality crystals, you feel great! Least favorite, PCR and cloning. It's so wishy washy. Sometimes it works completely, sometimes it doesn't work at all. There are sooo many components. If your polymerase was used by someone other than you and wasn't kept on ice, if your dNTP mix isn't right... I could go on and on. 5.) Thing you're proudest of accomplishing in the lab? Biggest screw-up you ever had in lab? I was most proud when I could troubleshoot protein expression and purification or crystallization problems by myself without having to ask my mentor, and how proud she looked when I told her everything that happened. I was also proud when I received my first summer student as a postbac, which I thought was too soon and I thought that I would totally mess things up, but when my student became semi-independent I was a proud mama! Haha. Another proud moment was when I first searched for myself in the NIH directory. I used it to find info on scientists, and now my name is listed there. EEK! I haven't had a major screw up in the lab yet, knock on wood. Once I made my ion-exchange buffers and accidentally put the equivalent about 200mM salt in the wrong premade buffer, and thought I wrecked the HPLC, until someone told me that some buffers, i.e. histag purification buffers, have salt in both buffers, so no need to worry. Just a day in the lab.

I had a research project for undergrad, and I had one for post-grad. I always started with my most recent experience, which happened to be the one I was working on the longest. If there was time, which usually there wasn't, they asked about my undergrad project. It happened to be company confidential, so I couldn't talk about it anyway. Katethekitcat is correct, you don't know which project a professor will be interested in. There was one professor that I spoke with who only read my undergrad project, he didn't get past that because that one grabbed his attention. Be able to speak about it. If you only worked on a project for a short period of time, like 3 months over the summer, know enough about it to speak intelligently about it. I have always been told, once they stop asking you questions about it, they are satisfied that you know what you are talking about. Other questions I was asked include: Where do you see yourself in five years? (probably still at this school! lol) What are your biggest strength and weakness. Another bit of advice, I agree with the above poster of having your research speech prepared, but be careful of being over prepared. You don't want your statement to come off robotic. For these interviews, as well as job interviews, I tend to prepare less, just so that they answers will feel more natural, and it looks like I'm not giving a textbook answer.

Sorry that I am copying an pasting, for some reason the quote feature isn't working for me... WIll they be asking me about every detail of my research? They will ask you about general things, not every single aspect of it. You should be able to talk intelligently about it, as mrmolecularbiology said. Unless you are at a particularly competitive school with very hard interviewers, no one will grill you about specific techniques such as ion-exchange chromatography. They will ask you questions that they feel like you should know anyway. A lot of times the researchers will not know about your particular research/disease/techniques. For one school, I was told there would be an admission committee interview, while other schools I would interview one on one with professor of interest. Tips on either of these interview structures? I had both of these interviews. The one on one with professors are nice. I wrote a long entry on my first interview experience last year in the 2013 cycle around January 20th or so, it's buried somewhere in there if anyone is interested in reading it. For the one on one with professors, I just took wrote down a brief summary of their research and read it on the train to interviews, so that when they started talking about their research it wasn't so foreign. These professors love to talk. The most common structure of these interviews for me was talking about my research, them talking about their research, and any time left was spent answering your questions or talking about the school. These interviews tend to go by really quickly. Sometimes they will take you around their lab if there is time. For the admissions committee, my committee meeting was two people who had my complete application in front of them, with my transcript and SOP. They had looked through it before hand, and asked me any questions about it. They asked about what I wanted to study and my future goals, which were listed in my SOP. They asked me general questions about graduate school and asked me what if questions about various scenarios that may come up in graduate school. I would say for these interviews, review your SOP and try to anticipate any questions that they may ask about it, or your application, such as grades. I was expecting someone to ask questions about my horrible freshman year, but no one did. Someone else might, so just review your file and anticipate questions. Did you bring anything to your interviews? I went to staples and bought a nice professional fold notepad that had notebook paper and a pocket for my extra CVs and notes about the interviewers, and it also had a calculator, which was neat. It is a good investment and I have used it a lot. This is not necessary though, because all of my interviews had a "swag bag" that was filled with a small notebook, pens, paper, and folders about the school, so even if you came with nothing, you would get this. I advise people to get a nice folder like I had, its not terribly expensive. As far as a presentation or anything, I didn't bring that and I don't know of anyone who did. I guess it couldn't hurt, but for most people just talking was enough, especially when the interviewer pulls you up to their computer and shows you their most recent slide presentation.

Yes don't worry about your roommate. On these interviews, everyone is on their best behavior. I don't know if your school will be as thoughtful as mine, but the only school where I had to stay overnight in a hotel with a roommate took care to make sure that our roommates had separate research interests from us. So while we were all interested in biophysics, crystallographers shared rooms with NMR people. The majority of programs have applicants sharing rooms, so don't stress. I'm positive everyone will be on their best behavior. I will suggest that you are nice to all of your fellow candidates. Since the programs are all so similar and popular, they are sharing applicants, so there's a good chance that you will see the people you are meeting at these interviews more than once.

I only have one grade available. I'm still receiving the grades for my last assignments, and not very happy about them.

My program (biochem and molec & cell bio) requires 32 credits. You take ~15 each semester for the first year, and one elective the second year. That equals 5 classes for me. After the first year your lab picks up your tuition, so the less credits the better. The people who already have a masters only take 9 credits, three classes.

Thanks! Just finished my last final. First semester of grad school is in the books. Can't wait to go home and collapse.

I'm one of the only students in my program that does not have a masters degree so I'm taking a full course load. I have five finals, three within 24 hours of each other. I'm exhausted.

It honestly depends on the school. All interviews mean that the school thinks your application is strong enough for you to be admitted. All schools are trying to impress you and show you reasons why you should choose their school. Some schools are just verifying that you are a good choice on paper. Other very competitive schools have only a number of spots to fill and are trying to pick the best applicants to offer admission, and may wait-list the others.

I have a degree in biology, and applied to biochemistry and biophysics programs. A solid background in biology with classes in general and organic chemistry should be enough to suffice in getting accepted. The programs I applied to recommended a semester of biochem and maybe a semester of physical chemistry. The majority of people I met on my interviews were biology majors.The students in my program have not taken physical chemistry. Try interdisciplinary PhD program, that have work focused on biochemistry, the requirements may not be as many.

I'd say that having a publication can only help you, no one will think of it as a fluke. They'll just view it as a great opportunity you had to publish. I will say that if you do have publications, you should know every aspect of the paper, in case a hard professor asks you about various aspects of the paper. I see this happening at competitive schools (Hopkins).

I agree. I was accepted into what I consider to be top programs without publications. My cohort also lack publications.

It really does depend on the school. I interviewed at two places where the interview was more of a formality, and reassurance that you matched your application. The program I chose was a competitive interview; everyone's application was good enough, but they needed to narrow the field down to a few. From talking to my fellow interviewees, Johns Hopkins was notorious for inviting way more people than they were going to take.

Ad comms definitely look at your Facebook, so even if your page is completely private, try to have an acceptable picture/cover image. You can also consider making your page unable to be searched.

GSK interviews tend to be early to mid January from tues-thurs.

Exactly. The first invites rolled out around dec 20th, with GSK being among the first.

I applied to GSK last year. At the deadline my gre scores were MIA. They automatically extended the deadline for me as well as others with incomplete applications. They will probably do the same this year. Just try to get it resolved Monday. GSK sends out their invites pretty early, usually 12/20 or 12/21.

My statement was the same. I made no mention of wanting to become a professor or P.I. I just said that I wanted to become an independent research scientist and wanted to get the most training I could. Even when asked on interviews I told people that I had no interest in academia or heading a lab. I don't know of many schools that fund masters, but there are fellowships that pay for some or all if the costs. I didn't want to limit myself to a masters just because I didn't want to be a professor or P.I, and that shouldn't be a prerequisite.

I am still getting used to this trend, and it still makes me a bit uneasy. I generally call them Dr/Professor X until they say to address them by their first names.

I study like I've never studied before. I read lecture notes, I read the book, I read online and I even read papers to study. I get the tests and I freak out. The first test I did pretty well, but the second... I read the questions and get immediately intimidated. An hour after the test, before I've looked up the answer, I think of all the ways I could have answered the question.

Is anyone having an interesting time getting used to exams? The exams I had in undergrad were a bit different, and I'm trying to adjust my study habits in order to do well on the exams. I'm concerned that I'm coming off as unintelligent. -__-