literally gaussian

Just got an acceptance from Harvard via phone! Friends - Keep your phones charged and nearby!

Hello! I'm the one with the graduation picture in the facebook group. I don't think we talked much, but I remember being very impressed.

Hey, nibblingsushi, are you in Boston right now? I've run into several gradcafe people here. I'm rooming with naabh4 actually. He's a super cool guy

Hi, are you as nervous as I am?

Just heard from Stanford via phone

I suppose I could request an interview with him, but that would probably reflect negatively on me since they made a point to let me know that he's moving away. It's too bad, I was really looking forward to possibly meeting him. I think I could recognize you from the Harvard PiN group You can probably find me as well. I'm one of the Korean-Americans in the group. Do you want to stay in contact before the interviews? Just shoot me a message if you want my email address

Congrats to nibblingsushi and ak1921 on your UCSF invites! I have to admit I'm pretty jealous. I just found out that one of my top professors of interest at Yale (Dr. Matthew State) is moving to UCSF this year to chair the psychiatry department. You guys can tell me all about how awesome UCSF is if we run into each other in Boston or Baltimore

I just got an interview invite from Yale via email. That was pretty unexpected, I had given up on Yale after hearing about the phone invitations these past couple of days. I look forward to meeting you all in Connecticut edit: Phone call from a prof soon after.

All the coursework you mentioned will be important. Also try to teach yourself neuroanatomy from the appendices of an intro neuro text. (Learn the regions and subregions of the brain and their basic functions). I would argue that a class isn't necessary since it's mostly memorization. Depending on how deep you want to delve into fancy fMRI analyses, it may be useful to take some coursework in physics, calculus, and statistics. If you want to do more basic experiments, this would be superfluous. But bear in mind that these concepts are very commonly used in your field. Familiarize yourself with statistics at the very least. PDQ Statistics is a good, short introductory book. Learn MATLAB. This is critical for cog neuro researchers. You don't have to be a maestro by the time you enter grad school, but you should be flexible with the program. Read a beginners text like "matlab for dummies" and practice at work. Ask your PI for some datasets you can fool around with. More important than your resume is your familiarity with your field. Coursework is important, but always leave time to read relavant papers in your field, especially from potential advisers. Anyways, you seem to be on the right track. There's only so much you can do in a year and you seem to be a strong candidate already. Best of luck to you!