AlexM451

Other fellowships aren't releasing notifications until mid-May. If you get NSF, does this mean you have to accept/decline before you find out about other fellowships? Is it unacceptable/illegal to back out once you've accepted? Is there a way around this?

In other news, HOORAY UCONN!!!

Good point, thanks!

In the essay prompt, the NSF asks us to include posters, presentations, publications etc..., but we also list this info in the education section of the application itself. This seems kind of redundant to me, and it would be nice to have extra space on the essay. What are you guys doing about it?

The 16th.

This was really helpful to read, thanks!

I took biochemistry two years ago, and I'll just list a few tips from my experience: For molecular structures, draw them until you know them. You will undoubtedly have to know the structure of all amino acids and nucleotide bases by heart, if not some enzymatic mechanisms. This also goes for metabolic pathways, draw them out repeatedly until you know each intermediate, the enzyme that produces it, and anything else significant about the reaction. For quantitative calculations, the best advice I can give you is to just keep doing problems. Obviously, if the prof posts a practice exam/problems, do them until you know how to reach each answer. The rest is conceptual molecular biology, if I remember correctly. If you don't quite understand the rationale behind a particular biochemical method, read up about it, or better yet, just ask the professor for clarification. Biochemistry is a lot of memorization, but it's an incredibly powerful tool for a research scientist, and (depending on the prof) the class isn't as scary as people make it out to be. Hope this helps!

To specifically answer this question for the three fields you mentioned: Biochemistry: No way you'll be working with animals, you'll undoubtedly be doing in vitro work with purified enzymes or perhaps immortalized cell lines. Microbiology: It's hard to avoid working with animals if you're studying pathogenesis, but general microbiology, bacterial physiology would not require work of that kind. Genetics: Usually animal models are useful for work in genetics, simply because you want the most physiologically accurate environment to look at expression, or to identify a physiological function associated with the gene you've knocked in or out. But I suppose they're not used in every lab, especially if you're studying the molecular biology of transcription, or something of that nature. I'm not really into killing animals either; unfortunately, I'm working for a pharmaceutical company so it's a necessity. Hope this helps!

You might consider comparative physiology, which has a ton of applications to medicine. One subset of this is comparative microbial physiology, an especially useful field for developing new antibiotics (as 99% of all microbes on earth are uncultured and uncharacterized). This way you can study phylogenetic relationships while also being cognizant of their relevance to developing medicine.

What resources are you guys using to find apartments/roommates, just craigslist?

Anyone else going for BBS?

Hello, I've also been accepted to all three of these schools, but for microbiology/immunology, not neuro. My visit to Yale was decent, I thought they had an excellent program, but a little sparse in the number of micro faculty. The program was one of the most course-oriented ones that I explored, which may or may not be for you. I grew up 20 minutes outside New Haven, so I can tell you it's not nearly as dangerous as people say it is, but it is pretty limited compared to NYC in terms of activities. I just visited Rockefeller a couple days ago, and I had a miserable time, to be honest. This may have had something to do with the pouring rain, but it was truly the most disorganized interview weekend I'd been to. Rockefeller was my top choice for a long time, it carries a very prestigious name in the field of biology and offers amazingly affordable housing in a great area. However, I got the impression from the professors I talked to that Rockefeller has an extremely unstructured program (they called it "flexible"). Every PI seemed incredibly busy to me; they kept moving my interview schedule around to accommodate the professors' schedules. In the end, I had the feeling that going to Rockefeller would leave me completely on my own, with little or no faculty mentorship. Columbia offered a small program with a friendly atmosphere and great (but relatively expensive) housing on the upper west side. Even though the campus is all the way up in Washington Heights, it's just a quick subway ride from the rest of Manhattan. The program is more structured in terms of coursework than Rockefeller's, less structured than Yale's. And the faculty there have been following up with me constantly, saying how excited they'll be to be working together. Columbia probably boasts the smallest lab size of all of these schools, to boot. So that's my two cents, and I hope it helps, but keep in mind I was interviewing for micro/immuno. I'm sure you can't go wrong attending any of these schools, unless you're in some really obscure field. Good luck with your decision!

I called the dept. today and they said they hope to send out final decisions this week by email.

For what it's worth, I just got back from interviewing at Rockefeller and it was by far the most disorganized interview weekend I've attended. My faculty meeting schedule was changed 4 times because all the faculty were so busy, and I couldn't help but think this might reflect their attitude toward grad students. The housing and city environment are awesome, but I just feel like I wouldn't get very good mentorship at there.

Nope, it's the Biology program. But I visited on Feb 22-23, and there was still one more interview weekend after me, so I don't know whether to write them off as a probable rejection yet.

Has anyone gotten a post-interview notification from MIT yet? I visited 3 weeks ago and have yet to hear a word :\

I've been to 6 interviews so far, and I can tell you that every one of these schools has had a plethora of interesting labs to work in. I want to do microbiology/pathogenesis/immunology research right now, but I'm trying to remain cognizant of the fact that a lot of people change their research interests in their first year of graduate work. So I've resolved not to make my decision solely based on how many PIs are studying pathogenesis at each school, but to consider the intangibles a little more. A few schools had extraordinary research atmospheres, and I just got great vibes from them; some schools emphasized the community aspect of the grad student population more than others. It is very possible to shift your research interests during the transition from grad student to post-doc; my PI studied renal physiology as a grad student and now studies immune cell function, so you won't pigeonhole yourself into the research area you do your thesis work in. I think what really matters is that the school (and location) provides an environment that makes you enthusiastic about research and happy to be there.

I read Lehninger's Biochemistry, and Alberts' Molecular Biology of the Cell cover to cover, got a 92%. Seriously one of the hardest exams I've ever taken in my life.

@any1butme2 You should TOTALLY let your transmembrane helix show! Any scientist worth their salt would get a kick out of that!

My schedule has only 4 interviews, I applied to the Microbiology track. Good luck to you.

I was considering growing my "patchy" beard out until I was put in my place by the Genomic Repairman. How emasculating.

Sorry NeuroNerd! I should be more aware of the gender ratios in science, I'm the only guy in my 6-person lab!

What he said.

What kind of person posts their GPA as a facebook status?

Is it a terrific place to do research? I got accepted for Micro, but I've heard from lots of friends and faculty that Harvard is a really cut-throat environment. I've heard stories about experiments being sabotaged, and collaboration being discouraged due to its uber-competitive nature. Having said that, Harvard is the top program for Micro in the country. What do you guys think?