AGradStudentHasNoName
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Posts posted by AGradStudentHasNoName
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1 minute ago, Oddich55 said:
Columbia University - Biomedical Informatics interview =). January 27th - 28th.
Jealous. I applied to Columbia CS because my POI there has appointments in both and told me to apply in CS.
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18 minutes ago, hihello742 said:
Hey All,
A general question about "non-traditional" applicants.
How do big California UC's and top-tiered schools view students who have taken time off to do research in an industrial/company setting? I come from that background, and explained why I want to go back to a Ph.D. clearly in my SoP's. However, I have strong research experience in academia of 3 years and Rec Letters from academic Post-doc's. However, I'm still really concerned about elite schools "looking down" at students who are not from a "pure and straight" path, like straight out of NIH or who stayed in academia all their life.
Would love perspectives from similar-background students.
Thank you guys!
FYI: I'm in mid-20s, so not "Old" old.
I'm in a similar situation as well, but in computational biology. I'm hoping that it is a plus. I don't know why it wouldn't be. More experience, diversity of experience. More mature meaning you are more deliberate and know what you want out of life and why you are getting a PhD.
At least in CS (and I think this also applies to computational biology) there is great respect in academia for the work being done in industry and vice versa (tho some in industry think industry is better/more advanced).
Maybe regular biology is a bit more rigid on this subject.
I am 31 if you consider that "Old" old lol.
I think one of the reasons we don't see as many people with this type of background is that it is very hard to get a job in industry in which you are actually doing research and not just some tech work with just a bachelor's degree. You are competing with a TON of PhD's out there for those jobs.
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1 hour ago, Oddich55 said:
Just got the invite to interview at Yale's Computational Biology/Bioinformatics Program. Interviews February 3rd - 5th
Nice. Looks like you are hitting every one so far! Best of luck.
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4 minutes ago, ilovelab said:
It depends on the program. I remember when I got accepted to Michigan PIBS they wanted a class size of like 60-70 but they interviewed over 200 of us (I think it was like 230.... there were A LOT of us at the interview). Some schools like PENN are transparent as to their post-interview acceptance rates. The PENN CAMB interviews seem more like a sanity check than a tough interview based on their numbers. For each program it fluctuates year to year based on how many total students they have/how many graduate etc.
I don't know a lot about this, but I could imagine that even if they are going for a class of 60-70, they might accept 200 if they expect their admission rate is 32.5% right? Not all people accepted attend.
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3 minutes ago, desmond.bo said:
Big congrat!
Finally we got our own comp-bio post! Still waiting (keenly) for the interviews that supposed to come out tomorrow.
Bad sleep for quite a few days. Jesus! Applications are literally killing people...
Let's not get too hasty. The ones I mentioned have previously released December 17th at the earliest. Only if the week structure and holidays of this year pushed them to release earlier or some other factor changed will they send interviews tomorrow. While I am hoping that they do go out tomorrow, I am assuming they will go out early next week.
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Fair enough. I do recall that vandy has a big sum of money and is trying to sequence a ton of their patients. They are also the biggest hospital for a very large region.
I entered with an all or nothing/got nothing to lose mentality. We will see how that works out for me.
My background is very genetics heavy tho have done some work on ML on EMR data as well as ML on a few other data sources (histology slide images, cerebral blood flow velocities). I have POIs who work on both biomedical informatics and genomics and in between. Hope to see you at Harvard, Cornell, and Stanford.
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26 minutes ago, blc073 said:
I would love for you to come up to me and say, "Hi, my name is kokobanana."
How can we make this happen?
craigslist
im really just trying to be funny, no offense. But you could PM a meeting time/place
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On 12/15/2016 at 10:00 PM, Oddich55 said:
lol! I'm totally new on here - been stalking, but never piped up. Decided we, more comp-oriented people, need a place to hang out and talk. I'll pop it up right quick here.
Undergrad Institution: Liberal Arts College
Major(s): Double Major: Bioinformatics and Biology
Minor(s): Biostatistics, Computer Science
GPA in Major: 3.85
Overall GPA: 3.7
Position in Class: Top
Type of Student: White Male
GRE Scores (revised/old version):
Q: 166 (91%)
V: 160 (85%)W: 4 (or 4.5 don't remember) (59%)
Research Experience:One lab @ undergraduate institution for two years - two genome reports as publications, software submitted as a publication, at least 1-2 publications a month or so out.
Another lab @ medical school for a year now - genome-scale network analysis software/microbial annotation pipeline projects/RNA-seq analysis project.
Another lab for summer - Computational Neuroscience paper published, Signal Analysis paper will be submitted in a few weeks
Lots of posters at 3 different conferences, as well as a few talks at smaller research meetings
Awards/Honors/Recognitions:Several undergraduate research fellowship
National Research Award - Honorable Mention
Pertinent Activities or Jobs:Many different jobs - programmer, web developer, tutor for disadvantaged kids.
Any Miscellaneous Accomplishments that Might Help:
Special Bonus Points:Foreigner, technically. US Permanent Resident Status.
Any Other Info That Shows Up On Your App and Might Matter: Don't know (?)
Applying to Where:Columbia University - Biomedical Informatics
University of Chicago - Genetics, Genomics, Systems Biology
Stanford University - Biomedical Informatics
Northwestern University - Biomedical Informatics
Vanderbilt University - Biomedical Informatics
Duke University - Computational Biology/Bioinformatics
Harvard University - Biomedical Informatics (under BIG)
Cornell Tri - Computational Biology
University of California: Berkeley - Computational Biology
Yale University - Computational Biology
University of Washington - Biomedical Informatics
University of California: San Diego - Computational BiologyNice. Looks like you know whats up for sure.
I applied columbia cs instead of comp bio because my POI said he has basically full control over the students he admits through that program. And I like the idea of a CS PhD + MD. And I really almost applied at UCSD. Good program. Pevsner among others.
Didn't know about the BI program at University of Washington. Personally I think the genome sciences program is where it is at. But I'm biased.
Vandy and Duke. Are you a southerner? I'm originally from the south and my parents wanted me to apply to vandy (2.5 hrs drive from them) but I just decided that I'd rather keep my current position than do that. Nothing against them. Is the vandy program good? I couldnt find many profs whose research clicked with me.
And berkely. According to us news and world report they are top 4. But I could just not find enough professors with common interests to justify the extra essays lol. After Lior Pachtor left for caltech...
Why no MIT? UCSF? CMU-Pitt? (edited in) and Princeton QCB? (I didnt apply to the latter, but probably should have)
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Maybe this thread will get some of the lurking comp bio ppl out of the woodwork. There must be more of us, tho I wouldn't mind in the least if the competition was less fierce this year.
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14 minutes ago, Oddich55 said:
Hey all!
Just thought we should start a thread for Comp Bio/Bioinformatics/Biomedical Informatics to track all of the programs and what's going on and stop us from hunting everywhere for news! =).
I applied to 12 schools and the only one I have heard back from, so far, is Duke Computational Biology/Bioinformatics - interviews Feb 9-12 or Feb 19-20.
I don't see your "profile" (quick outline of your application/background) in your previous posts. Why not throw it up with a list of schools and we can waste time/agonize a bit more lol. You got an invite at duke which says you are at least that good.
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5 minutes ago, Oddich55 said:
Ah geez. The stress is real. I applied to all three of those =P. Which other schools did you go for?
see my signature lol.
My list is embarrassingly top heavy. But I have an MD (cs undergrad, currently working in algorithms R&D) and already have a job at a well respected biotech "startup" (we were, now 130 ppl) in the same position/same title as many people with phd's from places like stanford cs, mit csbi, etc. So If I dont get in to any of them, then I stay in a good position or move to some other good industry position...
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Yo. I'm still waiting on all of my programs. There is a possibility that tomorrow has some news from Harvard BIG, Cornell tri institutional program, or UWashington genome sciences, but a slim one as it is 1 day before any of them have previously sent out invites...
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7 minutes ago, Lurpelis said:
Does BIG send out theirs when BBS does?
From previous years it doesn't look like it. I really hope they go out tomorrow, but that would be 1 day earlier than any previous year. Probably have to wait for next week...
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I applied to both Cambridge Mathematical Genomics and Medicine as well as the Sanger Institute 4-year program. They are both 4-year programs fully funded through the Wellcome Trust Foundation which is where most of the funding for the Sanger Institute comes from. The first year is classes + rotations and then the following 3 years are research. Also many programs at Cambridge can be funded through a Gates Scholarship, but that is another difficult thing to get.
I am interested to learn more about the pluses and minuses of a UK PhD (DPhil) vs US. I talked to a professor there when I was out there for a conference but of course he is going to say their system is better and doesn't abuse grad students as cheap labor as much. Also I already have an MD and undergrad in CS so there is a certain amount of coursework that might be redundant in a US program, but then again I'm sure I can find enough non overlapping courses as well. But it might be a good idea for me since it is shorter, I'm a bit older with more experience, and have done more relevant coursework already. Having said that, I don't want to rush things and be less prepared or have fewer publications. Not wanting to rush things and building a solid publication history is why I am doing a PhD instead of immediately doing a post doc anyway.
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3 minutes ago, blc073 said:
It just came off a bit arrogant, that's all.
Sorry if I offended. I just thought people should know that it is perfectly okay to ask for a different weekend if they need to.
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1 hour ago, blc073 said:
I guess I'm just not following why this post was necessary.
Why are any of these posts necessary? I'm just killing time.
Also it might help for people here to have realistic expectations and not overly stress about a very common situation.
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45 minutes ago, Bioenchilada said:
If you're tactful, you could ask about being moved to the other one.
Why do people act like this is a big deal? I guess I have a bit more experience with job interviews than most here. If you can't make a date for whatever reason people will work with you. I'm phone interviewing someone on Friday and he had to reschedule due to another phone screen. I didn't take that as a slight at all. If he is good, we will give him an offer (after an on site interview). If he isn't, we won't. Simple as that. A candidate would have to insult the company to me for it to hurt his chances. Like, okay if a person said "I can't do your interview because I have a way better interview at google that day" I might worry that he would rather work at google than my company. But if he said "I'm sorry but I'm busy that day." or "I'm sorry but I already have a prior obligation on that day." I would think nothing of it.
The people dealing with the interview dates are not the ones deciding on your admission anyway.
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Where are you guys (or girls) planning on traveling?
Also lets start suggesting ways to pass the time while waiting for interview invites. I'll go first.
1. play pokemon sun/moon
2. play fallout 4
3. look at cat gifs
4. work? so hard to motivate right now...
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I'm gonna quit my job and hike the pacific crest trail before grad school starts. And if I don't like that I'm gonna go ski bum in new zealand. Suckers! Of course I can only do this because I have been working for a number of years and have some money.
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11 hours ago, abc0111 said:
Does anyone know the difference between Cornell's computational biology and Tri institutional computational biology and medicine programs??
31 minutes ago, desmond.bo said:I applied to both. Seems like the tri-institutional is technically under the Weill Cornell rather than the Cornell itself. But tri-institutional has more connection with MSKCC, so would be more associated to cancer I guess?
I applied to the tri-institutional one only. The faculty listings for the tri-institutional one have more than 4x the professors, tho some are more clinical or translational. The Sloan Kettering affiliation does make it much stronger in cancer and depending on your advisor you can live in NYC after the first year or two. I spoke with a Sloan Kettering professor who told me that. And the Weill Cornell Medical College and Sloan Kettering affiliations should make it better for more clinically relevant stuff or to get clinical collaborators for samples/data.
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I don't know RoR, but for any language, you absolutely have to have some small but not too small (requires around 100-500 lines of code at least for the minimal working thing) project you want to do. Then just google questions you have and build it. When it is built, you will be at a place from which you can make stuff and learn more if you so desire.
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Thanks @blc073. I did email two people for schools that should be reviewing this week and got short but positive responses. Here's hoping. Might email a few more closer to the time they will review applications. Of course I don't know this for sure, but presumably a week or two before interview invites go out which I mostly know from gradcafe historically.
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So here is a question. And I know this is probably just waiting anxiety making me want to do SOMETHING lol. But I contacted professors back in August or September and it has been a while. For the ones that I had meetings with or from whom I got some positive response, should I shoot them a quick email now reminding them who I am and to look out for my application? I know this is unlikely to change any outcomes, but who knows.
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6 minutes ago, openmicrobenight said:
Anyone know when CMU-Pitt starts sending out interview invites?
Historically from the grad cafe results search it is a bit all over the place but looks like late january/early february so a bit later than most.
Edit: this is for CMU-Pitt comp bio. You didnt specify but i inferred from the rest of the thread being comp bio.
2017 Computational Biology/Biomedical Informatics PhD Applicants and Admission Results
in Biology
Posted · Edited by AGradStudentHasNoName
Woot! Replying on both threads because I'm so anxious to hear back from my programs lol. I might have applied to both CS and BI at columbia except it said explicitly on the application "If you apply to two programs at columbia, both of your applications are subject to dismissal" or something like that.