scienceowl

Hi there! I'm a European MD who moved onto doing a PhD in the States. I'm hoping I'll have some useful advice for you, since we come from similar backgrounds. (also, some of the negativity in this thread is bringing me down, so I'd like to show a more cheerful perspective) I wanted to get a PhD because my goal is to devote myself to bench research exclusively in the future. Technically, I could have done this by doing a research fellowship or a postdoc (many of my friends have done this), but research at this stage requires more scientific independence, critical thinking skills, and frankly, experience. Because, when you think about it, these are positions that come right before you transition into being a standalone scientist. Also, for getting a good postdoc position, your research experience matters a great deal. I'd gotten my feet wet as a med student, but I was nowhere close to being ready to function independently, nor did I have any strong publications. I tech'ed for a while after moving to the States, and had good publications afterwards that could have potentially allowed me to find a postdoc position, but I still preferred to take the longer route of a PhD, because I thought that in the long run, it would teach me to think like a scientist a lot better than just moving onto a postdoc. Your case is a little different though - or might be, depending on how much of your career you want to be dedicated to research. If you would mainly like to be a clinician who does research on the side, it's definitely a good option to take a fellowship/postdoc route. A PhD is a significant time investment, and if you don't see yourself devoted to running a lab in the future, might not be worth it. (I don't really plan on practicing as a physician, so it was a more clear-cut decision for me). And especially since you want to do a residency later on, it could be a red flag for residency programs that you have been away from the bedside for so long - I cannot stress this enough, a lot of residency programs place importance in how long it's been since you've graduated (some programs even impose rules regarding this, not more than 5 years after medical school graduation etc.). It's not going to make or break you in terms of getting into a residency, but keep that in mind. That being said...after factoring in all these other things, if you do want to do PhD, then go for it! Don't let any of the possible negativity and/or prejudice you will encounter stray you from your direction. A number of people were leery of me as an applicant because they 1) doubted my investment to research, and kept saying I would probably go back to medicine anyway or 2) were unsure my credentials were appropriate for biomedical research, because like you, I went to medical school straight after high school. So you might get a few raised eyebrows, for totally valid reasons (Also for invalid ones, occasionally. Sadly, there's this deeply ingrained "I'm better than you" struggle between MDs and PhDs that is utterly pointless - ignore that). As long as you are truly passionate about your commitment to science, it will show, and you will pull through. And finally, remember that, as physicians and/or scientists, each of us are different. My mentor always says there is no one-size-fits-all in science. Draw your own path to reach you career goals, regardless of what you choose to do in terms of your training. Good luck!

whoops, sorry, accidental downvote. my bad if there's any way to take it back let me know..

A bunch of schools I applied to last year "highly recommended" the subject GRE. I didn't take it, and they still interviewed me (and accepted me). Only one school that "required" it didn't offer me an interview. My advice is that unless you have a really bad GPA or have studied something totally unrelated to biology, don't take it.

definitely avoid controversial issues. these include, but are not limited to your opinions on politics, religion and race. this stands true not just for the interviews but also for the social gatherings you'll attend.

yes, they are different programs with different adcoms.

I didn't apply to Princeton, but when I interviewed at Yale BBS, I got the impression that their research focus was very cell bio heavy (we attended a poster session for m2p2, mcgd and immuno programs). I'm not really sure what you mean by translational, because that's a pretty broad definition, are you thinking something along the lines of disease-focused research? Model organisms? Clinical trials? Targeted therapy? Regardless, my advice to those interested in cancer has always been to not narrow your interests down to a disease, but to a biological phenomenon. In that aspect, many programs are excellent and have a niche area they're very good at. For cancer bio, I think a big factor is choosing somewhere with a dedicated cancer center - that helps with funding and collaborations. Sloan-Kettering and Harvard are both pretty great examples of this and have awesome programs. Also, keep in mind that you don't absolutely have to join a cancer bio program to work on cancer. A lot of schools have recently started cancer bio programs, so it's more important for the research legacy to have been established than the program being defined as cancer biology.

One of my mentors once told me you should have an "elevator spiel". This means you should know how to outline your research in two sentences if someone asked you what you work on in the elevator (as far as I can remember, in his case, this happened when one of our institution's Nobel laureates asked this question to him on the elevator, LOL). I'm not saying you should memorize two sentences and shoot them off, but be prepared to briefly outline your project(s) ie. why you did it, what you did, and what important research question you were able to answer/the impact of your research. Then, if you are prompted, you can delve further into details of your work. I worked on several things during my time as a tech and knew pretty much all my projects inside out. One of those resulted in a first author publication, the other I was helping someone else with - but I still made sure I was able to discuss it. This is the most important thing - you should be able to give off the impression that you have the potential to think like a scientist. It's less important to describe how you do a western blot compared to being able to explain why you did that western blot and what purpose it served in advancing your hypothesis (or not). Of course, some people may still ask you technical questions - but in my experience, this is because a) they are trying to understand if you really did the work described in your CV yourself and/or b: the questions are born out of genuine curiosity on how the experiment was done (these are, after all, scientists, it's in their nature to be curious). For instance, I had developed an in vitro assay for my project that one faculty was really curious about and asked me to describe in excruciating detail, because they were looking to do something similar. And if you really have no idea about something, just say it's a great question but you don't know, honesty always works out what else...I didn't take a poster handout with me, though that seems like a good idea. What I did was to take the figures from my paper with me, and go over them briefly if someone wanted to know more about the specifics of my research. As previous posters have pointed out, my advice is to know what you're going to say beforehand, but not memorize it so it sounds robotic and rehearsed. Think of it as a more conversational form of poster presentation. And finally, relax! Faculty love talking about science, and are always happy to engage with applicants who are also excited about science, so everything will work out. Good luck

Hmm...the details are kind of fuzzy because I remember emailing back and forth a lot to figure out the details...but as far as I can remember, Harvard paid for one flight (to Boston) and UCSF paid for my returning flight (from San Francisco) right off the bat. I think I ended up paying for my Boston -> San Fran flight myself, but was later reimbursed for it by Harvard, though right now I'm having difficulty remembering...it could have been UCSF that reimbursed me. Anyway, I think the best thing to do would be to keep trying to contact the administration in both schools and ask their opinion on how they think the arrangements should be made. This sort of scheduling dilemma happens every now and then, so they're bound to have experienced it before and will probably be happy to help you out.

I'd say go for it. Last year, I scheduled a few back to back interviews because my significant other was also doing job interviews at the same time. I interviewed at Boston then flew out to San Francisco the same night, got there at 1AM after a 7-hour flight, and did my interview the next day. I think the adrenaline keeps you going so you wouldn't be worn out

I'll agree with everyone else here. I think maybe only top of the top of the top schools would have a GRE cut-off to discard applicants. Most schools don't use GRE scores as a determinant for a good applicant. Overall fit is the most important thing. Go for it and good luck!

Well, I'm not in neuroscience, but I can give you my general opinion. any kind of publication helps for grad school applications. It doesn't matter that much what position you are in the authorship line. That being said, you should be able to talk about the science that's been done, how you contributed, what the purpose of the research in the paper was and how the experiments done helped accomplish the goal of the research...etc. I wouldn't worry about whether the paper's actually been accepted that much - one of my papers was being reviewed at the time I was applying to grad school, and I put it down as under review in my CV (very few schools will ask you to provide a pmid or medline index number when you write down your publications). as for first author publications, it's not that common for an undergrad to have one. Realistically speaking, and especially in medium to large-sized labs, undergraduate students will rarely be granted their own project. Most likely, they will work with another student/postdoc on their project (and their names will often be on posters/pubs afterwards, or it least that's how I've seen it in labs I've worked in). Occasionally, an undergrad will get a small scale project of their own, but those are usually good for posters, or contribute to another larger scale project in the lab later on. Ultimately, of course, it depends on how long you've been in that lab, how big the lab is, and what the mentor's MO is. It's more likely for someone who's worked in a tiny lab for 2 years to have a publication than someone who was in a big lab for 2 months during summer, and vice versa. In either case, applicants are evaluated based on the stage of their education at the time of application. If you've done a masters or worked as a tech etc. it's sort of expected that you produce something during that time period. I think in those cases, a first author paper would set you apart from other applicants. but as an undergrad, any kind of publication is pretty impressive. to reiterate, being able to talk about the science is the most important thing. Being able to explain the reasoning behind what you did is good, saying you did a bunch of western blots because your PI told you to is not, you get the idea ^^ I hope I was helpful!

I remember getting linkedin views from adcoms last year, so they probably look you up online to some extent.

I remember having some problems with my documents showing up as uploaded on my GSK application last year. It was pretty close to the deadline, but when I emailed them about it, they took care of it really quickly. I also remember the deadline getting extended for some reason (application fee or documents, I can't remember, it's been a while and there were so many applications!) I don't think it'll be a problem, I bet tons of applicants are in the same situation. Just shoot them an email, they'll probably get back to you on Monday. The deadline shouldn't be an issue since this problem is outside your control. Good luck!

Do you plan to apply for any pre-doctoral fellowships? You usually need to submit transcripts for those, so it could matter in that case.

I don't think UCSF BMS requires the subject test either. I interviewed there without taking it. I don't know about all their programs though, maybe some of them do. In my experience, GRE scores matter very little (unless you tanked it) and only serve as a cut-off for initial screening. I wouldn't worry too much.

Sure. My two main interests were developmental and cancer biology when I was applying, and for some schools I applied to specific programs - like cancer bio, genetics and development, cellular and molecular bio etc. but mostly I tried to apply to umbrella programs because I didn't want to restrict myself to one field (research interests can and often will change through the course of grad school) - these will typically be called "biological and/or biomedical sciences" programs, some of those programs will be interdepartmental or interdisciplinary. Harvard, UCSF, UT Southwestern, Yale, WUSTL, UNC-CH and CSHL all have interdisciplinary/umbrella programs. Some schools, like the University of Michigan asked that I specify which program I was interested in (and faculty/admissions committee members from those specific programs interviewed me) but there was no commitment required (ie. I was allowed to join program B even if I was admitted to school under program A). Very few schools (Columbia and Sloan-Kettering) asked me to apply for a specific program to which I would be admitted into and would be restricted to (I'd have to join a lab within that program etc). Other schools like JHU had divided programs but were less strict about what lab/department you could join. In a nutshell, every school/institution has different policies on program specifics - most of which can be found on their application websites. My advice would be that you apply to an umbrella program, since you say you're interested in "broad coverage", so you can sample different things and decide what you like once you start grad school. Of course, it's not going to hurt for you to give specific interests in your personal statement or at interviews, it's always impressive to send across the message that you're focused and have direction.

I think high-profile is kind of in the eye of the beholder. It's maybe too early to say this, and I certainly didn't really listen to it when people told me during application season, but program prestige isn't everything, and I came to understand that later on - it certainly impacted my decision when picking a school. Ideally, like biotechie said, you should make sure there are people at that school you're interested in working with (I would make sure there's several, not just one) - because after all, what matters the most is who you do your graduate work with, and not the name of the program/degree. And of course, some institutions are stronger in some fields, and not so strong in others, and I would keep that in mind when applying. As for the GRE and TOEFL, I would take them now-ish. My schedule didn't leave much time for preparation either (I was working full-time), so I thought taking the exam early would provide me with some buffer time to retake. In the end, I didn't need a do-over, but better safe than sorry, right? And I wouldn't worry too much about the GRE verbal score - don't neglect it, study hard for it, but my impression was that schools don't really expect individuals whose first language isn't English to score an 800 (or 170, whatever the scale is now), which is why there is a TOEFL requirement. Exams are occasionally used as an initial filter to weed out unsatisfactory applicants, so just make sure not to bomb them. I would think that say, Harvard, would probably filter out someone who got a 300 on either part of the GRE, but everywhere else, I don't think it's a strict filter unless the scores are really really low. Finally, don't take the subject GRE if you don't come from a biology background, very few schools absolutely require it (CSHL doesn't ask for it, from what I remember), and I got interviews from most schools that "highly recommended" it, so it's not a super strict requirement. Edit: forgot to add this -- in terms of publications, my situation was that I had one accepted paper, and two under review. In your CV, you can put these down as "manuscript submitted" if your paper was just sent in and/or is under review, "in press" if accepted, or even as "manuscript in preparation"if you're still in the process of writing.

If CSHL is your top choice, maybe you should also apply to Stony Brook's program. From what I remember, CSHL is pretty competitive and accepts only 9-12 people every year, but students enrolled in Stony Brook's PhD program can join CSHL labs. They should have more information on this on the admissions website.

I hear Clown College is extremely prestigious and very highly ranked among schools for the biomedical sciences. Alas, I did not take the GRE subject test for clowning around on time, so I wasn't able to make the application deadline. So jealous! :D

No harm in calling/emailing them to ask if they would consider flying you in. If it really is going to be cheaper like you said, I imagine they would be interested.

Occasionally, yes. Certainly, if it makes you uncomfortable to discuss anything you deem personal, you should politely say so, but most of the time, people interviewing you try to get to know you as a person and not just as a future scientist. I think someone else might have already mentioned this, but personal factors can play a huge role in making the decision of which school to attend: significant others, family, children etc. are some of these and a lot of programs will send feelers out to see how such factors will potentially be influencing your decision - nothing wrong with that. I would steer clear of giving opinions on religion or politics (or anything that could lead to a major difference in opinion, you get what I mean) though.

Some schools will re-imburse for checked bags, some won't. I would look through the instructions to see if they state this specifically. If they don't say anything, I would assume you won't get re-imbursed for checked bags. Also I agree, Southwest is awesome!

That sounds about right. Start with name, where you're originally from/grew up, where you went to undergrad/got your advanced degree if you have one, and what you work on currently (if applicable). Go with the flow, it doesn't have to be rehearsed

I checked the results board for 2012 and 2011 stats, and Sloan-Kettering always sent their invites on the friday before the week of Christmas. Which means they should be sending them out tomorrow. Yikes.

I submitted mine in late november, got the "your application has been received" email, nothing else yet.