aba1984

I am officially going to give up on trying to email UT Houston and just assume a rejection since their last interviews are coming up in 3 weeks. At least the application was $30, so I am not too sad about not getting any replies. I was looking forward to moving to Houston, but since now I only have one interview in Houston, my time will be better spent on focusing on my Baylor interview instead. If anyone interviewed at Baylor but decided on another school, please share some advice about your interviews. I would deeply appreciate it.

It's quite a long drive. You're gonna have a ton of traffic lights once you get out of Atlanta...good luck.

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Yup. Delta flights have been cancelled for all of Tues, Wed and Thurs from Atlanta. They call you if they cancel it.

If you're one of the 4,000 cancelled flights that has an interview weekend coming up in two days, how are you going about it? I feel so bad that I will have to ask about being moved to the very last interview weekend when most others will already have their acceptances by then. So jealous of the people who will be able to go and I will be left behind.

Yes. You have to make sure everything is perfect - grammar, typing, everything. In my SOP to WashU, I accidentally had some cut and paste text from another university at the bottom and let's just say they were the only school that straight out rejected me out of the 9 I applied to. Bummer because it was my first choice, but what can you do? Bottom line - make sure your SOP is perfect. You seem to have some grammatical errors in your posts, that's why I brought it up. Good luck.

On 1/31, was told that Vanderbilt IGP is still reviewing applications. On 2/6, was told that we should hear back next week from UT Houston (very vague answer though). Of course, sometimes you can't take their emails literally. I'm sure some of those vague emails are just them buying time or being too busy. Hope that helps. Good luck to you!

How did your statement of purpose look? Did you get feedback on it?

If you email a program to ask whether you will receive an interview or are rejected and they reply to you that you will be hearing a "decision" very soon, can you pretty much say that is a rejection? I ask because I've never heard anyone use the term decision for interview invitations, but I have heard them use it obviously for rejections. You guys agree?

You know, I think these final interview dates will not make sense to us sometimes. As I said before (esp. with the snow storms and strange weather), I'm sure some of us will get rejections not because we were not qualified, but because we were in that final stack of applications they couldn't get to. It sucks if you paid for an application fee, but that's why we apply to so many schools. Congrats on the Minnesota interview. That's an awesome school - went there to visit last summer and it was a really nice campus. That place was huuuuuge and they have this supercool art building!

If you get an acceptance after your pre-interview but the acceptance letter only gives you a few days to respond, how do you politely tell them that you would like to take more time to decide? I don't exactly want to sound rude by calling them out on the April 15 date since this is my current school and I don't want to burn any bridges, but I still would like to indirectly imply that they should give me more time since this is an important decision for me. Any advice? Did any of you have this situation?

I haven't heard from them either. Kinda strange that I was invited to Baylor but not there...thought it would be the other way around. I left a voicemail for the director (Karen) and will let you know if I hear anything.

How about a line that asks people why they chose that school over their other offers?

Is anybody applying to University of Arizona by any chance? Did you have your interviews yet?

Yeah, my next interview I'm going to introduce myself and immediately tell them I have questions or talk about my thesis before they even pull out their powerpoints. Definitely not gonna get waitlisted next time around. Lesson learned.

I know exactly what you guys mean. I wanted the same opportunity as you did. The only reasons why I think they might do that is if most of the people they send offers to tend to go elsewhere (so they choose to impress rather than "grill" you), or if they had already made up their mind before you got there or needed a certain percentage of ethnicities, age groups, etc. and the interview was just an informality. I guess admissions have a reason why they do interviews the way they do - there's a reason for everything.

It's ok. Don't really want to open that can of worms. It had no effect on me other than to consider other PIs. It's funny actually because I don't even want to have biological kids. I wanted to tell him that me and my fiance plan to adopt a little baby girl, but then I was like, "too personal, don't get sucked into that conversation" and I just steered back to his research.

I was drinking water the whole time, but that's by choice. My group was a nice group of students - they had maybe one or two and were perfectly fine. I doubt it counts against you as long as you know what you're doing. Even the program director was drinking a little, but he was calm and approachable the whole time.

Today I got waitlisted at UAB - Genetic and Genomic Sciences program after my interview One of my interviewers asked me point blank if I wasn't too old to start a PhD since I'd want to have kids some day. And from my point of view, the beer bottles circling around after interviews were a bit too excessive for my liking. One of our graduate student guides had a bit too much to drink and was blurting out curse words while we played games. The next morning, she did not show up for our tour and I ended up having to drive in my own car because we were not all able to fit into one car. Should've seen it coming that I wasn't their ideal candidate, nor were they the school for someone like me. This is why you go on interviews, to make sure you fit into the school. One day, we are going to laugh at all this and smile how we all eventually got into our perfect schools

After some excruciating thinking, I decided to decline my March 6 interview. I can only do one more interview because of my schoolwork. Apparently, I am still in the running at WuSTL, Vanderbilt and UT Houston. Hopefully I can get some answers from them next week and get it over with finally so I can focus on my thesis.

Yes, my last interview was more like a lecture. Kind of disappointing because I had all these questions about their research, but for those who didn't have time to read the profs' research, it was a blessing. I think as long as you can reiterate what they say and pick up on their keywords, you should be ok. Honestly, I overprepared for my last interview, but it was my first one and I didn't know.

I know. I just have this scenario in my head in which I accept the invitation and the next day my top school invites me for the same date. Sometimes you just want that rejection and move on...

Just got an interview invite for March 6 for one of my schools. Feeling horrible to say the least since I still have my top choices pending and this is the final interview weekend out there. WuSTL put me on a waitlist last week and told me I should hear back next week. How long do you think you can take at most to reply to an interview invitation? I was thinking if I wait until next Tuesday, it will be somewhat reasonable, but anything beyond that might be pushing my luck. What do you guys think, how long are you allowed you take to respond to an interview invite? (they didn't specify anything in their invitation)

By the end of May? I think most of us will already be moving by the end of May

Is anyone still waiting to hear from UT Houston? I was told that the committee were meeting 2 weeks ago but no word yet. How strange...