xzjohn

Thanks, buddy. I just checked my e-mail. Nothing there. Do you think I should call the department? I remember I called them a few weeks ago and she told me no information could be given over the phone. UPenn said they can't be encouraging if the applicant doesn't get a response by Feb.15.

hey, guys I found someone posted his rejection from UPenn on Feb.16. He got notified by e-mail to check the web system. Anyone else got any response from UPenn?

I would say this is POSSIBLE, but not necessarily. Getting a RA is usually an agreement between the professor and you, not involving any other parties. As long as the professor is willing to sponsor you, you'll get it. But, I must repeat the point. Every PHD student admitted with full financial aid is guaranteed for funding throughout his PhD study, usually up to 6 years. This means there typically is a professor who endorses his application and indicates his willingness to support him for the next 5~6 years. I would say a professor usually admit 1~2 students per year and sometimes he doesn't admit new students in a few years. And, you have a specific background and this will limit your chances greatly. i.e. if you're a biomechanics guy, I don't think you'll get a RA from a faculty doing imaging stuff. Anyway, good luck.

I'm glad it's helpful to you. As for your chance of getting financial aid, I'd like to start with how the program works. As far as I know, many BME PHD program is structured as below: 1) You get admitted to the PHD program with a fellowship for the 1st (academic) year. But, you're considered as MS candidate (thesis option). 2) By the end of the 1st/2nd semester, you have to choose an advisor. 3) Your advisor will provide you a RA position after the first year, when you fellowship ends, till your PHD graduation. 4) Within two years, you get your MS degree 5) After your MS degree, you can proceed to the PHD. A qualifying exam may be replaced by the MS degree defense. It depends on individual program. 6) Get your PHD in 3~4 years beyond your MS. Some don't have such a MS-PHD structure but the financial transition is the same. Like what I said before, most grad programs use fellowship to finance 1st year students and we, international students, are highly restricted to get fellowships. NIH, NSF, DOD, etc offer a number of fellowships or permit the grant recipient to use a portion of the funding to offer fellowships. But, only domestic students (sometimes, it's even more restricted, only US citizens) are eligible. So, if you wanna a RA, you have to compete with those students holding fellowships. Typically, they'll start working in his advisor's lab since the 2nd semester. The point here is they are NOT paid from his advisor's grant till his fellowship ends. Of course, they have an edge over you for this reason from the advisor's standpoint. As for TA, it's really rarely in BME grad programs 'cuz BME usually is a small department compared against EE/CS and not many undergrads register BME courses. Those who do BME courses are quite possible pre-meds. Maybe they're smart enough and don't need a TA. As far as I know, Northwestern and Upenn do offer TA to BME PHD students in their 2nd or 3rd year, if any slots are available. But, you can always find TA/RA outside BME. One of my friends is holding a RA in a cell biology lab while she is doing a MS in Biostatistics. For me, I was fortunate to get the fellowship at the very beginning of my MS program and found a RA after the 1st year. When the grad program admits you with full financial aid, that means it has secured enough funding to cover your entire grad study. If you wanna get loans to finance your education, probably you have to get it from financial institutions in your home country. If you plan to get one from American source, I think you have to be in a top university, like MIT, Yale, etc. They offer institutional loans. Commercial loans from US banks requires a credit-worthy U.S citizen as co-signer. Good luck with your education.

Hey, there I think probably I'm more qualified than others to answer your question, 'cuz I'm an international student doing MS in BME now in America. First of all, I'm from China, where I got my B.S in Material Sciences and a conjoint B.S in biology. I got admitted to the BME MS program at UAB with fellowship in 2006. There were two reasons why I applied to MS, rather than PhD. 1) Let's be honest, it's really hard for international students to get into BME PHD program. Seriously, I would have ended up with a bunch of rejections if I applied to PHD programs. Unlike most science and engineering PHD programs, BME does NOT enroll international students quite often. You'll find the majority of grad students in a BME lab are Americans while in labs of other majors, quite often international students dominate. The reason may be complicated but the fact is pretty evident. The odds is against us. Even though not many chinese students apply to BME programs each year, those who do apply typically would submit applications to more than 20 PHD programs. And, in the end, most of them got a pile of rejections only. Those few lucky guys can usually only get one PHD fellowship. 2) For MS program, it's much easier to get into, even though financial aid is typically unavailable, especially at the point when you got the admission. It is quite possible to get a research assistantship in the 2nd semester. If you're qualified, you can even get an assistantship outside BME department, say from mechanical or chemical engineering department. I think it's better to jump into the pool, if you wanna learn how to swim, rather than practicing in your bed. So, I went ahead with MS applications and got a handful of admissions without financial aid and only one with fellowship ( I withdrew all revolving applications after getting the fellowship). If financial aid is your top concern, many alternatives are available, such as PHD programs in Mechanical, Materials, Chemical, etc. They are much easier than BME to get in and they carry a full financial aid package for newly admitted PHD students. After getting admitted, you can always choose a research advisor doing BME research. If you do want to get into BME MS program with full financial aid, based on my homework in 2006, only two programs are for you. The 1st one is John Hopkins' MS program and the 2nd is the one at UAB. At this point, I'd suggest you contact individual faculty for RA positions. Many BME PHD programs offer fellowships for 1st year students and they have to secure a RA position in the first few semesters. In such a case, technically, you have to have a faculty endorsing your application, who is your "potential" advisor after you get admitted, during the admission process. Otherwise, it's quite possible to get rejected. To be honest, funding is becoming more and more hard. International students are not eligible to receive funding through federal government. As you know, many research projects are supported by National Institute of Health (NIH) and so we can't take RA if this position is paid from a NIH grant. So, basically, only University/grad school fellowships or faculty's funding from private source can be used to hire us. Another thing is the economy. About 5 years ago, NIH got a huge amount of money from the appropriation to support biomedical research. Now, the money is up. What's worse, the Whitetake foundation was closed a couple of years ago. The new tenure-track faculties in my department are suffering from these things. If they can't get a grant, we can't get a RA.

Applied to Biological Engineering at MIT. I gathered information from some other online forums and found, in 2007, MIT sent out interview e-mails from Jan.20 to Feb.22, according to the self-reports. Denial letters, dated around Feb.15, were received by mail in around March 5. Those who were rejected after interview got letters around March 25. Just searched the results and found two guys had got interview e-mails on Jan.17 and Feb.7. But I got nothing, by now. :shock: MIT department staff just replied my e-mail, saying "the department will let you know about your application when we can". I sorta feel I've been rejected but haven't got the official letter because they haven't started sending out denial letters. I'm not quite good at reading between lines. So, what do you think about his reply? BTW, I'm on the wait list at Caltech, also bioengineering PHD program. Does anyone have an idea about the chance I get admitted? FYI, I've got rejected by biomedical engineering PHD program at Northwestern. They sent out the offers and some denial letters around Jan.20, and rejected those on the wait list on Feb.6, including me. You can log on the application system and check out your decision. GOOD LUCK.