biotechie

I completely agree with this! In biomed, you shouldn't accept an offer to a place where you can't afford to live on the stipend. $27,000-$35,000 is the range of stipends I've seen, and you should be able to live comfortably most places (maybe not California). I turned down an offer because I knew I couldn't live on the stipend, but I ended up at my dream school, where the stipend affords me a comfortable apartment very close to my school. I'm able to save money each month and could add a car payment if needed. In my case, I had some health issues last summer, but because my stipend goes so far, I was able to take care of them without taking out loans. In my opinion, it is more worth not having a vacation each year (though I do go on one) or name brand shoes than it is to go deeper into debt to continue to have a certain quality of life. There are some things that are not dispensable, but I find that so long as I budget, I get to do all of the things I want, and I'm very happy. I have health insurance, including dental (but not optical) that I don't pay for at all. Also, as a student, I get back nearly everything I pay into federal taxes, and my state has no state income tax. If at all possible, pick a place where you can afford an apartment + utilities on less than half of your stipend and where your other expenses will be low enough for you to put back a bit. If you can't do that, see if you can afford it with a roommate.

I'm in biomed, but what I'm going to tell you is the same everywhere. PhD programs care much more about what you have done than where you went to school. If you want to do research, they want to see that you've done some research (and working in a lab for 6 months at your school is better than an REU in my opinion). If you want to teach, they want to see you doing outreach, etc. They want to see that you're well-rounded and that you're passionate about what you're aspiring to do. I went to a school that is far less well-known than FAU. I got into a biomedical sciences PhD program in my dream school my first round of applications (I did do a M.S. at my undergrad, but I was assured I wouldn't have needed it). If you have what it takes, you'll get in, whether you came from Harvard or a small liberal arts school. As @rising_star said, you'll be starting all over if you go to a new school as well, and this could potentially weaken your application as these professors will have less time to get to know you. When it is time to help you prepare for grad school and write you letters, they won't know you as well as some of your professors now, will. I was able to go into applications with letters from professors that had known me and watched me develop as a scientist for over 4 years, and I know they wrote nice letters and they really know me. I also went in with extensive research experience... something I couldn't have gotten so easily at a "better" school. My education in many ways was much improved over these "better" schools you're speaking of; instead of fighting juniors and seniors for a few precious, coveted spots to research under a post-doc, I researched directly with professors starting as a freshman. For grad school, residency won't matter; you become a resident wherever you move, usually as a requirement for your contract to get your stipend and tuition waiver. I guess the end of this rant is that I think you shouldn't transfer. Instead, I think you should spend a lot of time getting involved in a bioengineering-type lab, though any research will help you. You also need to start thinking about where you want to go to grad school. Remember, while everyone makes a big deal out of rank, it really isn't that important. What matters the most is that you're a good fit for the program you ultimately join and that you can be happy there. A "good" program is not necessarily the same as one that is "highly ranked." That may mean interviewing at a "top 10" institution and choosing the "30-ranked" institution over it because you like it better or you feel more at home, and that is totally okay. You need to identify schools that have lots of professors you think you would be happy working under as not every one of them will take students every year. You need to study for and take the GRE early next summer so you have time to retake it if needed and start figuring out who you might ask for letters of recommendation, one day. Good luck!

Give them a few days. Even if the adcom met today, they may not send out anything today. Sometimes it takes a while to craft the emails and some programs have to submit the paperwork for the applicant post-interview for the school itself to accept their applicant before they can contact them.

Honestly, if I didn't have my crock pot, I'd probably starve. I'm in lab from 8:30 am to sometimes after 9 pm, so when I get home, the last thing I want to do is cook. An example of a week of crock pot meals for me: Sunday: A 2-3 pound beef roast with potatoes, carrots, and red peppers. Make gravy from the juice and there's the meal. Store leftover veggies separately. Then divide the meat. Keep about 1 pound of it back and shred it to 1-inch chunks. Then use the rest for sandwiches or open-faced meals/lunches. Monday/Tuesday: Eat the leftover non-shredded for sandwiches. Eat the veggies, too, plus salad. Wednesday: Make chili in the crock pot using the 1 pound shredded leftover meat. Cook on low until you get home. Thursday-Saturday: Leftover chili in any way you want: Chili mac, chili with rice, chili cornbread bake, etc. Include salads. Since I live by myself, I could technically eat this for lunches every day, too, but I usually end up sharing or freezing some. That whole week of meals runs me about $15, cheaper if the roast is on sale. That with fixings for my lunch, other veggies, drinks, and snacks runs me about $25-30 a week, so $120 a month. If you join a Co-op or shop at farmers markets, you can go even cheaper. Just pick things that are versatile and can be combined to make lots of different things. Another favorite I have is beef stew in the crock pot.

I did take a printout of a couple of my more complicated figures as I was coming in from a M.S. and expected more rigorous interviewing. While I pulled a single figure out in one interview, it was highly unnecessary. They'll be much more impressed that you have a good grasp on your data when you can draw things out for them or discuss casually and still get your point across.

My latest interview invite was in March. If you haven't heard by mid to late February, I would probably assume rejection.

Reading over at least a few abstracts and looking up stuff that's over your head should be sufficient. From my experience, PIs tend to talk more about stuff they're working on now, and they want to have a scientific conversation with you. They want to know you can keep up and that you can think like a scientist. They don't expect you to know their research well, but they do expect you to be able to converse with them.

I think this looks very nice, and way to go with the comfortable shoes! This is close to on par with what I wore for my interviews (in 2013) and what I've seen applicants wearing the three years I've been here. I personally would wear nicer slacks than that, but if you wear exactly what is in the picture, you'll look plenty nice enough. If they were denim or denim-washed jeans, I would say now. On top of whatever you wear, being humble, but also exuding confidence looks very good on most people (so long as you're being sincere). Good luck!

I can confirm all of this is true, especially the jeans thing. Colored pants are okay. Khakis are okay. A business suit or something similar is okay. Jeans are NOT okay. I know this from experience watching two years of students come in after me. We as current students are asked not to wear jeans when we help with interviews, so I'll also be dressed nicely when I help at interviews at my school. For interview day, you should be pushing more towards business formal, but not quite there. I talk a lot about it in that blog post I keep posting. You have some room to throw your own style into it, and there are interviews that aim more toward business casual the whole time rather than business formal. They're not judging you on your style, and jeans are generally okay for every day once you get to grad school, but they really do want to see that you are putting in the effort. The fact that you care about your interview enough to dress up appropriately does say a lot about you and how serious you are about graduate school and the program, but it really is also important that your outfit be "you." You can probably get away with jeans for a grad student outing where there won't be faculty, but remember, those students are also working with the adcom. Keep what you carry around on interview day to a minimum; they all seem to do a good job of giving you lots of snacks and water to keep you going during the day. I got nice little laptop bags at my interviews, and I still use one of them. The swag is because on interview day, they're trying to recruit you as much as they're interviewing you. Relax. Stop stressing. It will be okay. Interviews are actually VERY fun.

Guys... We've been over this. Schools have a schedule they send out these things, and the poor admins that are in charge of scheduling/calling/emailing have whole programs to run in addition to that. You shouldn't call them unless you have a problem with your application (like a letter writer is going to be late or you have materials missing). Calling them to nag about your application is not only rude, but it also can cause them to put negative marks on your application. The admins keep track of who calls, etc. Be patient. It will either happen or it won't. Calling will likely NOT get you the information you desire as they are only given the information on a need to know basis.

It does say "Last Modified 12/30/2015" so they may not have refreshed in the system recently.

We've been engaged for well over a year, now, and we haven't planned anything as we're waiting for him to move here. However, I also don't have time to plan a wedding more than 10 hours away! We're planning on doing a wedding when it gets closer to time for me to write my dissertation when my lab work slows down a little bit, a sort of last hurrah before the insanity begins. We'll either take a short honeymoon then or do a big one (like to Europe or Australia) after I graduate. That said, it is going to depend on your progress as a graduate student, what your PI allows, and your program. Most programs don't give you actual vacation time as graduate students are paid at 50% time and are not full-time employees. My PI makes sure I get about 2 weeks off each year and the occasional random day, but I also work most weekends. I don't have to sign up for the time I take off unless I'm taking an unpaid leave of absence, which I don't recommend unless something is really wrong. That goes on your record. Your boss is also paying for your stipend out of grant money, so if you're gone for a while and there's no progress on your project, that's a problem. Are you in a project that has not given you good data in 6 months? You probably shouldn't take time off. Your PI might not be okay with you taking a whole month off to finish wedding prep, get married, and go on a honeymoon under normal circumstances, but especially if you've not published. It also looks really bad to others if you're gone all the time. People who finish their PhDs in the normal 5.5 years are most often the people who are around and working. I highly recommend against scheduling a wedding before you're done with classes or your qualifying exam. For most of you, that's 2.5 years into grad school. This is because your lab time is limited until then, so taking time off to leave and get married really takes away from getting things done and could make your PI less than happy with your progress. If you do get married in grad school, go home for a week or so to get married, and then go on your honeymoon some other time, that way you're not gone too much. You don't HAVE to split them up, but it is a good idea. If you're not wanting to split them up, consider making up the time on weekends you normally wouldn't work. I think the best times are right after your qual, when you're sortof expected to take a tiny break, and right before you start writing your dissertation. A lot of engaged women try to get married right after their qual, and then aim for baby #1 around the time they're writing their dissertation as most schools offer the bare minimum maternity leave. I don't want kids, but I definitely couldn't imagine having one in graduate school. The best thing you can do is be honest with your PI. When you get engaged, tell them. They'll most likely be happy for you, and they may bring up the topic of your wedding and honeymoon right then and there. Find out what their expectations are of you and what they'll be okay with ahead of time, before you start planning your wedding.

My program was set up such that we finished classes when we finished rotations, so as soon as I got done and joined a lab, I was writing my qual. I'm a lucky one in that I didn't have to spend 2-3 years doing coursework. However, I don't think I've had a week under 50-60 hours since before my qual. I don't mean sitting around waiting for incubations 60 hours a week. I mean always-on and at least mentally engaged if not actually doing science. Peachy is right. There is ALWAYS something to do and always something you're behind on. You still need to be producing data when you're writing fellowships and writing papers. If you're lucky, you'll have another backup project in case something catastrophic happens, but that also means you're working on two projects. My boss is a pretty cool dude and will occasionally chase me out of the lab to get me to take a break, but other than that, I don't take much time off and I work most weekends. I do go home at Christmas, but that's about it. My fiancé is long distance, so I talk to him while I work. Since I want to go into academia, I know that I'm not going to have more free time later. You need a supportive family/group of friends to be a graduate student in the sciences. Students who do put in the work do well. Those that go out of town every weekend or who ALWAYS do only the 9-5 won't do as well. Very quickly you'll see who in your cohort can hack it and who can't, and it will be obvious who will make it in academia and who will go in other directions if they elect to stay and graduate. I will be honest with you. Graduate school isn't easy. However, it is worth it. I love what I do. I highly recommend that you schedule in some things that are not science to help you keep sane. Note that I said SCHEDULE in. If you don't, you'll never get around to it. Now I play with a community band once a week and I have a graduate student friend that is helping me train for a 5k. I also cook at least 1-2 times a week in my crock pot. Otherwise, I would starve...

The middle one looks too frumpy to me, but I'd say the other ones are good! To be honest, they're all three probably fine, though I'd avoid skirts if at all possible (even with tights). Sometimes schools take you out hiking in the local area, etc. One school offered to take us skiing, though they'll let you know ahead of time for something like that.

I didn't wear jeans at any of my interviews, and I very rarely saw others do so. Stick to the more comfortable casual side of business casual for those types of events. For your interview, go more formal, but not quite business formal. For example, a mis-matched suit for girls, or a dress shirt and slacks for a guy.

To me, that kind of thought process is very closed-minded. There are lots of reasons the PI's you're interested in might be busy. Maybe they're out of town or maybe they're not taking students next year. Regardless, you should read up on the professors you'll be interviewing with. Honestly, if you have a rotation, you probably won't end up with your main POIs, anyway. I know very few of the people in my program who actually joined labs they thought they would be interested in. I definitely didn't. I joined a lab in a completely different field. Having interests is great, but don't put all of your eggs in one basket. You're going to find a program that feels like home, and you'll know it when you're there. If rotations are something your program does, focus on how the students in the program are, and how you feel you fit into the coursework and student body. Perhaps you'll find research that interests you, but you just don't know about it, yet. The abstracts you find online only represent a portion of their research, and they don't include whatever cool projects they are currently pursuing that they haven't made public yet. If you look at it as you might get to learn something new or different that you didn't know you liked, you'll like it a lot better. Most schools ask you for a list of POIs, and then they see if they're available. If not, you'll get assigned someone. However, the most fun interviews I had were with PIs I didn't pick, and I feel like they ended up being my strongest advocates for admission as they were the most excited.

Whoops. I keep forgetting everyone isn't back, yet. We started back up on the 4th. I really didn't have a problem with falling behind, even in my crazy molecular biology grad class that I was taking with the PhD students. I got permission from professors to have audio recorded from the classes I missed and I also got notes from a couple of different friends for each class. I highly recommend both of those things!

You guys should let your professors/TA's know you'll be missing classes as far ahead of time as possible and why... then you'll know ahead of time how badly your attendance will hurt you. I missed courses during my M.S. for interviews, and even the class where attendance was mandatory let me off for them. In addition, since I was also teaching, I had to make arrangements for a substitute.

I don't have a good resource, but I also hate the ranking system. You should be most focused on the faculty they have and resources you will have available to you. Are there faculty doing things you're interested in that are being productive and are taking students? You may also find some info in a comment I made here that is helpful:

How long have you been sitting on interview invites? You really should let schools know whether you're interviewing within a couple of days of your invite. They have tons of plans they need to make to get you there, and then they also have other students they could invite.

No. I still got invites in February, and my last one was in March. Just be patient. If you haven't heard by mid-March, then I think you can start to assume rejection. You can also sorptive predict based on when schools send out applications/rejections.

I had a small leather messenger bag, but both places I attended interviews at gave me a bag to carry! You should NEVER do this. The only time you should contact the admin is if you had a problem submitting your application. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop calling and spamming these poor admins. You're just adding to their stress and odds are you're adding bad marks to your own application. The calls don't increase your chances of interview and they more likely increase your chance of rejection. These admins are at their own busiest time of the year, scheduling interviews, booking travel, dealing with weather-related travel delays, etc. The last thing they need is someone calling them and sounding like they're begging for an invite. On top of that, nearly all of those admins don't just handle interviews. They have entire programs to run with students that depend on them. In my case, over 100 students depend on hour admin for a myriad of things. I spent time in her office working on something today and she was starting to get pretty miffed at the number of emails and calls she was getting. They don't control the adcom and they don't control how/when invites get released. You calling to find out your application status is a waste of time because usually they don't know, and even if they do, they're not allowed to tell you. If 300+ of you started emailing her, she would go crazy and not be able to get any work done. Then how would you feel next year as a first year struggling through your hardest classes with an admin who is unavailable to help you get a tutor lined up? The best thing that you can do is look at the results system to figure out when invites normally come out, but also stop freaking out. It will either happen or it won't, and life goes on either way. Freaking out now isn't going to help you. Imagine if people with the adcom got on here and saw all of this (and they do)?

You should know your research, but the PIs will be more excited to talk about their own research. I actually went into some detail on mine, but I was coming from a M.S. program rather than undergrad. They asked about how I was looking at epigenetic markers and one was excited when I was able to recommend a good monoclonal antibody, but other than that, they just wanted the "story-book" version of my research. Most PIs will expect you to be able to talk about the basic science behind what you did as well as how you did your techniques, but don't expect your entire interview to be about that. They'll actually spend more time talking about other things, usually their own research. They like to show you things they're currently working on (often unpublished) and then see what kinds of new directions or hypotheses you make. Sometimes they just want to make sure you can follow it. That's why you should spend a good chunk of time reviewing abstracts from the professors you will be meeting. Also, and this is VERY important, make sure you have permission from your current/former PI to talk about their/your research, especially if it is unpublished. Wouldn't you hate to be the guy that gets them scooped?

You're welcome. For when it gets buried again, right now it is showing up at the top of the blogs tab on the front forums page (because there were recent comments). You should be able to find it easily in the blogs even if it gets buried there, too.

This might not be the post you meant, but maybe it will help: Feel free to comment questions on the post or pose them to me, here. It might take me a day or so to get back to you as I'm in the middle of trying to finish a paper for publication.