pyrocide

I took off a few years after UG to work as a tech in a lab and got a few papers in the works, but I got into a PhD program with a 2.9/4.0 uGPA. A lot of times adcomms prefer someone with strong skills in the lab more than someone who is excellent at getting As. If your record is pretty substantial (I'm not too familiar with atmospheric sci but you're looking pretty damn good), I wouldn't lose hope yet.

Ahhhh, I have a fun story. I contacted a POI at the school and it seemed like a decent fit. After meeting with him he recommended applying to a specific sect of the biology department and I complied. Much later I started to see interview invites on the results page and started to get nervous about my app. The application website said my app was complete, but I still had this funny feeling about it. I called the department office a few times--each time the program coordinator wasn't at her phone and of course I wussed out about leaving messages since I was so sure I was being paranoid. However, nerves got the best of me and I decided to call one more time. When I got a hold of her, she told me my app was incomplete--they hadn't seen any of my rec letters. Turns out that even though the graduate school had received all my materials, they had forgotten to attach my rec letters when they forwarded my application to the department. Luckily the department was still willing to consider my application and just a half hour later they asked if I was interested in a Skype interview. I'm extremely glad and absurdly lucky that I kept calling. They're one of my favorites and despite all that silliness they're my first acceptance! I'm still waiting to learn a bit more about one last program but I wouldn't be surprised if I end up with them next year!

Do you ever see a rejection to someone from your Alma Mater, and the rejectee is all like "[school's] loss!"? Every time I see that I can't help but think http://thesearethings.com/work/hatersgonnahate/img/hatersgonnahate-01.gif.

:D :D :D :D How awesome! Congrats!

Oh man, these next few months are going to be fun. Here's my to-do list: Rebuild my souped up powerwheels car, race it at maker faires around the midwest Go to a whole bunch of concerts Trip to FL with boyfriend--gonna go to some of the amusement and state parks (as well as a Rob Zombie show ) Join a rock climbing gym Learn how to use a laser cutter and a 3d printer Run a half-marathon and a whole bunch of 5Ks and 10Ks Submit a first-author paper Move to Boston!

I'm gonna assume caffeinated = me. 2.9/4 GPA @ top5 UG GRE v/q/a =162/156/4.0 GRE subj: (biochem) = 73% (with a 95% subscore in molec bio/genetics) One LOR from leading scientist in cancer/developmental bio, others from experienced heart development/heart repair profs. Decent SOP. If I missed anything else you'd like to know, just holler and I'll post.

Might not be as sparkly as some on here but it still makes me feel pretty special. I also know I got the standard reply: the prof said he enjoyed meeting me at the recruitment weekend.. but I didn't go to the recruitment weekend, heee. Still has my name on the top of the letter, so therefore this email was not missent, so I've got that going for me, which is nice.

Admitted to a PhD program today. Didn't have to do a masters first, but did work for 2.5 years as a lab tech to get a paper under review. Never lose hope, and never ever ever give up.

It says I ran out of upvotes; IMPOSSIBLE My sheer exuberance cannot be scaled by mere upvote limits. Tl;dr: Thanks guys! :D

Oh my god I'm going to grad school Acceptance from Boston University this morning.

I'm waiting on Tufts' straight up bio dept (not sackler). Sorry I have no news for you on PiBS. Fight the good fight, it ain't April 15th yet.

What program in BU did you apply for? Also, if you don't mind sharing, what program at Tufts did you apply to?

Luckily for me I was always kind of mature for my age: when I was pretty young I had to look after my much younger sister a lot, and my family faced some weird prejudice things from neighbors that probably exposed me to bad people a little too early in my life. It all made me understand the restrictions of adulthood very fast and as I grew up I had an easier time with things like jobs, paying bills, and moving across the country to a big city for UG college. I started reaching 'adulthood' levels of maturity junior year in undergrad (~20, 21). The situation kinda hit me over the head with "it's time to grow the f*** up," but that's okay--it was rough at the time but in retrospect I don't think I would have had it any other way. In general it made me much more perceptive, patient, and kind. Going through all that helped me a whole lot for after college when I had to deal with much more serious things like family and financial issues. And of course, like every other human, I have my moments of giggles and fits, but I do what I can to at least pretend I'm being reasonable.

Depends on the major. They'll take their own ME and CS/EE engineering students quite a bit, especially for a quick 1-1.5 extra yrs for MEng. Pursuing a PhD in life/chemical sciences and engineering there is pretty much actively discouraged. A lot of very talented MIT UGs don't even bother applying. Of course, there are always exceptions, but they can be quite rare.

Thanks! After an interview a prof said they would begin sending out acceptances soon after their recruitment weekend. Been real nervous for the first week of March!

Nah, there was a little bit of silliness with my application and the dept. and I didn't discover that til February. I'm guessing they had already extended all the available offers for the recruitment weekend at that point but still wanted to talk to me so they conducted a Skype interview with me instead. Good luck at the interview, hope you have a great time! Maybe we'll be kinda-sorta cohorts later!

I had skype interviews for a program at BU with 2 professors (one-on-one interviews), one of them was the director of the program, and the other was the admissions chair. I was also a little weirded out by that, but then again, I had met one of my POIs when I previously visited the campus. I see BU is one of the schools you're interviewing at--they list on their interview page that they only usually have prospective students interview 2-3 people. Heh, after experiencing that I assumed that interviewing 5 or more was odd but it looks like it's actually the norm, at least according to this thread.

I've seen only one result for Cell+molec bio on the results page, at least for this year (used "boston university molecular" as search term). Any time dood! Good luck and hopefully we might be cohorts!

What part of the bio department? I'm applying to MCBB, which is related to straight up bio (same program coordinator, a lot of prof overlap, same interview weekend). I think most if not all of the bio-related departments are having their recruitment weekend the last weekend of Feb: http://www.bu.edu/mcbb/for-students/biological-sciences-recruitment-weekend/ . I got a skype interview instead of getting sent to the recruitment weekend, but that might have been a special circumstance due to a weird mixup that had happened with my app. However, I saw an interview posted pretty late on the results page for MCBB, so there may be some hope for a skype kind of thing. edit: grammatical error

Oh man, I feel pretty lucky. Came out of UG with only $4.8K in debt after going to to a college that was $42-43K a year. However, that school also had an average award of $40-41K for need-based financial aid, so I was very very lucky in that regard. Only a bit of that left to pay off, and I anticipate no loans needed for graduate studies.

Thought I should share:

The amount of detail required for successfully tackling the GRE is daunting--it's pretty much like Biochem/cell/molec trivia (Undergrad edition). I don't know much about Shaum's outline reviews, but since they have the word "outline" in them, I'm assuming they won't have the level of detail you'll need. They might have good prep questions though, from the short bit of reading I've just done on them. However I'd like to stress: if you don't think you have a lot of time for studying before the April test, I'd recommend giving yourself more time and take the one in October, if you can.

Don't forget cell biology, there's a whole section on that as well for GRE: Biochem. I bought one of the kinda acceptable study guides (it was published in 2007 or something) and the only thing in it that was relatively useful was a little bit more of a breakdown of the topics list given by ETS. I echo the use of relying on your old textbooks from UG. I took it since it was required for one school, I've been out of school 2-3 years, and also to try and rectify a mediocre GPA. Also, thought there'd be less plants and ecology. I did pretty decent from studying Lehninger's Biochem textbook and Lodish's Molecular and Cell Bio textbook--they had a lot of info for the ETS topics and incorporated many topics together to give you a more concrete understanding. I felt like I could have used another source for plants and viruses, but that might have just been my own lack of exposure to those fields. I also made heavy use of taking notes: I had pages and pages of organized, (even color-coded) study notes and they were extremely helpful. They'll be helpful later for grad school classes as well. Good luck and make sure you take the time to study! The BCM GRE is quite a commitment.