tepidtenacity

There was a topic for accepting, so there should be one for declining as well

from what I've seen on interview visits, the people who know where they are going is in the minority. People will probably be making their decisions up until the deadline, unfortunately.

They only have to give you till April 15th if they're part of the university consortium "The Council of Graduate Schools". Otherwise, they can give you whatever deadline they want.

I talked to a prof that did her PhD at MIT (ChemE), she said that it's actually very difficult to get back into academia since MIT is so industry oriented, ie MIT has a ton of industry connections, not so much academic connections. Not sure if that's good or bad for you.

Very cool, I guess I'll do the FASFA then.

This might be a stupid question, but is there any benefit to filling out the FASFA if I've been offered a tuition waiver with $25k stipend? (all bio phd)

Number 2 for sure, first one looks like some artifact preserved from the dark ages.

I did a summer stint at a top 10 ivy, and out of the 3 research labs I was in contact with daily, none seemed like bad people. Really, when you're at somewhere great like that, you really don't have to worry about funding, and all the PIs I met were extremely supportive of PhD candidates being first authors, etc. Same goes for resources; they have so many instruments, clusters, etc. that there is not too much competition for them. In fact, I'd say there is a bit of camaradarie when discrediting another top 10 ivy's research, etc. I'd say the biggest thing you have to worry about is face time with the PI. I have to say, I saw my PI maybe 2 days out of 3 months simply because he was flying around the globe giving conferences, and when he was back, he would be holed up writing grant applications. I guess if you're a superstar you're in demand.

Ok, I've been getting attacked a bit, so let me defend myself a bit. He also showed me his entire resume/transcript, and I know his entire research history since the little he's done has been with my housemate, who complains about him stealing credit and not being a contributing force. I don't know about the rest of you, but for me the most important thing in grad school is the environment, including professors and other grad students. I expect other grad students to provide good feedback and insight into my projects, just like I will do for them if I am knowledgeable in their field. Thus, I was worried that this program selected primarily for people like the person in question, which I am sure would not help me out at all and probably would detract from the research environment. That being said, I have visited the college and established that he is indeed a dud and that the other grad students are pretty freaking brilliant (much more than myself), so this whole issue has been cleared up. Thanks for all the good responses; I guess it really was contingent on my visit there.

The interview offer from one of my top choices was sitting in my spam folder for a whole week... for some reason, the follow up email wasn't considered spam, so I saw it but it sure confused me. It was a one-liner saying "Please confirm the faculty you would like to interview with." and I was like, does this mean I got an interview, or if I choose the wrong people, I don't get my interview? lol

3) I'm doing an interdisciplinary field, and his field is partially covered by mine. 2) Yep, I was planning on talking to some people from his field when I go to visit. 1) Is this true? I was under the assumption that grad schools don't want people with potential, but rather people who have already developed skills, know what they want to do, etc.

Is it wrong to dismiss a program based on its lack of selectivity? I was lucky to get acceptances at two very good programs. I have a classmate who also go accepted into the same university in an unrelated field (but still one they are very highly ranked for). The problem is that I do not believe this classmate is qualified at all; for example, he would routinely struggle with homework with classes in his major, and would always ask me if he could copy mine. I feel like I'm being completely snobby, but the fact he got in really shakes my faith in the program's reputation. Am I wrong in thinking like this?

Definitely not me. I'm struggling to finish them before the deadline, and every single program description screams "We do rolling apps! We start filling spots immediately!", which makes me worry how many people have already submitted their apps, and how many spots there are left.

Sometimes I feel like I can't progress on my apps. Each week I eke just enough for the next week, while my apps are just stagnating. I'm trying to cram all the weekly stuff I need to do into fewer days, and also trying to dedicate a specific day (or whole weekend) to working on apps. It's kind of working out, but it definitely isn't easy.

I don't think you have anything to worry about. You sound like a killer candidate; GREs mean nothing compared to research, and you certainly demonstrated you can do that.

Well, I've talked to a ton of professors trying to get as much out of them as I could about the app process, and I found out that general GREs mean nothing, and are only used as a filter (and apparently the cutoffs aren't too high), so I won't be retaking mine. Most of them also said the writing part didn't matter too much, as long as it wasn't atrociously bad. nutmeg: You actually seem like a strong candidate to me. The only thing that might hurt you are programs pre-filtering based on GPA, as then they'll never see your research background. What journal did you publish in? viva: lack of research might hurt you, but you have a mighty strong GPA. Don't really know the field so I don't know how much weight they put on research background. Anyone know of any good structural bioinformaticists outside of Harvard, Yale, RPI, UCSF, UCSD, WashU, Hopkins, and UMich? Still trying to finalize my list of programs (way late, I know)

For me: GPA: 3.6 (cumulative)/3.6 (major) from liberal arts college (tier 2 ivy) ---> double major, double minor, i dunno if that's a good excuse GRE: 780Q/650V/? AW 3 months research experience in a top 5 lab senior year research project at a midrange lab Applying to programs in sysbio/computational bio focusing in protein structure prediction, modeling, or methods for measuring stochasticity. Schools: MIT Harvard Yale Princeton Washington University some more, still looking Plan on retaking the GRE, heard higher scores are good for financial aid. Plus thinking it was the same as SAT + no non-science course in 2 years + not studying at all = fail. Should get a higher vocab score the 2nd time around. Two questions: 1) Do I have a snowball's chance in hell of getting in any of those? 2) Anyone else applying to compbio/sysbio programs going to take the subject GRE? It says optional...