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Cary Grant was in North by Northwest with Eva Marie Saint Eva Marie Saint was in Superman Returns with Kevin Spacey Kevin Spacey was in Pay It Forward with Helen Hunt Helen Hunt was in As Good as It Gets with Cuba Gooding Jr. Cuba Gooding Jr. was in Lightning Jack with Paul Hogan Paul Hogan was in Crocodile Dundee with Linda Kozlowski Cary Elwes, George Takei

You should only be in trouble for about 3 months out of the year. I come from Minneapolis, and this past winter was much shorter and more mild than what I'm used to. However, coming from the Southeast, you should prepare yourself for a real winter with sub-freezing and occasional sub-zero temperatures and several inches of snow.

Jonathan Pryce was in Leatherheads with John Krasinski John Krasinski was in License to Wed with Robin Williams Robin Williams was in Night at the Museum with Ben Stiller Dev Patel, Julianne Moore

:/ Well, hopefully that just means UIUC wasn't the right place for you and that one of the other programs from which you've received an interview is!

Besides being exciting, it made me feel that the year's gone by so fast! Four of us who volunteered to be "guides" at our recruitment dinner last night met each other for the first time at the same dinner a year ago...thinking about that is just crazy!

It's so exciting hosting recruits! I really want to know who I'll be seeing again in the fall now!

In my opinion, choice of advisor is so much more important than choice of university. Have you asked your POIs at each of your top universities if they think they will be accepting students into their labs in the fall? If not, this might make the decision easier (or harder, depending). I also want to say that I think working for a "famous" professor as a graduate student might be overrated. Last semester, I did three lab rotations (one with a famous professor), and I had to choose which lab to join late last semester. I knew I wanted to join my current advisor's lab, but I felt I had to find out whether it would be significantly better for my career to join the famous professor's lab. After an extensive search, I could find no advice stating that it was advantageous to join a famous professor's lab as a grad student. All of the advice I found said that a grad student should join the lab with which he/she has the best fit. I think this advice is so common because, unless you're planning on winning an NIH Early Independence Award, the work that will get you your faculty position will most likely be the work you do as a post-doc. Grad school is a place to get the training you need to become an independent researcher, and as long as you're in a lab where you will have the opportunity to receive this training, make interesting discoveries, and publish frequently, I think you will have the opportunity to do the work needed to get the post-doc position you want. As far as I can tell, the main advantage of working with a famous professor is increased visibility of your work. This would certainly be advantageous for a post-doc, but I do not see it being as advantageous for a grad student. It may make it easier for you to ultimately get the post-doc you want, but I suspect it won't be nearly as much help by the time you are applying for faculty positions. There are also many disadvantages of working for a famous professor. For me, the most important one is that there are a lot of "extras" that come with being a student of a famous professor. For example, the students in the famous professor's lab in which I rotated have to constantly make slides for the numerous talks this professor gives. Again, this is nice for the visibility of your work, but, if that visibility isn't going to do much for you, I feel it ends up being a big time-suck. The famous professor hosts a seminar series each semester, and his/her grad students have to entertain the invited speaker for a day each week. On the one hand, this is a nice opportunity for networking, but, on the other hand, you have to take time out of your day to drive to the speaker's hotel to pick him/her up and to shuttle the speaker from meeting to meeting. That doesn't exactly help you get your research done. The group also produces a calender each year, each student has to volunteer to TA for a week each semester for the professor's classes, etc., etc. The list goes on and on. Access can also be an issue with famous professors. Every productive professor is incredibly busy, but famous professors are that much busier. As I'm sure you can imagine, this can become problematic in a number of ways. So, for what it's worth, I would not put "potential to work for a famous professor, which will help me achieve my career goals" anywhere on your pro/con list. Hope this helps!

So you hang on to your spam in your inbox forever? That would drive me nuts!

Just a comment on the quoted sentence: I immediately label+archive/delete emails as I receive them. The only ones I keep in my inbox are ones mentioning things that I have to remember to do/monitor/follow up on, so my inbox forms a sort of "To-Do" list. I even send myself emails if there's something I'm afraid I'm going to forget to do. I have to agree, it is SO satisfying archiving emails that have been in my inbox forever, and I love the (increasingly) rare occasions when my inbox is completely empty.

I would encourage you to attend as many as you think you can manage. For me, the interviews unexpectedly turned out to have a huge impact on how I perceived the programs, and they could help you rank your schools more strongly. I received two of my interview invitations in late February/early March, and I was exhausted from already attending several interviews and missing a lot of class. I ultimately decided to attend those interviews because I reasoned I might regret not giving a program a chance, but I did not think I would regret missing a few more days of class. In the end, those last two interviews did not change my impression of the programs, but I am still definitely glad that I went.

If you're planning on packing up everything in your car and driving across the country, I would definitely recommend getting the more reliable vehicle before you move. Moving is stressful enough without having to worry about your car breaking down... In my current city, people start signing leases for the next year in October. Since I had a laundry list of things I wanted in my new apartment, I decided that I needed to sign a lease ASAP after committing to my current program. As it was April at the time, I was finishing up my Honors thesis and getting ready for finals, so a trip to look at apartments was out of the question (especially after already having missed class to attend seven interviews). As such, I did as much research as I possibly could online and ended up signing the lease for my current apartment sight unseen. It has ended up working out for me, but I would definitely recommend against doing what I did if at all possible. If you are going to take a trip to find your apartment, I would set up viewings beforehand. In my current city, landlords are required by law to give at least 24 hours notice prior to entering an apartment, and I suspect similar laws are in place in most parts of the country. Such delays between finding an apartment you are potentially interested in and getting to look at it will make your hotel stay longer. Setting up viewings before going will also allow you to iron out any scheduling problems beforehand rather than while you are on your trip. Before planning such a trip, I would definitely check online to see if the timing of the trip is appropriate. In some cities (like my current one), housing options will be advertised months in advance of the start of the lease date. In my experience, this is especially true for companies that cater to students and have housing options close to campus. For these cities, it would be advantageous to take your trip as early as possible to prevent someone else from getting the apartment you want. For other cities, housing that is advertised will have leases that start anywhere from immediately to up to a month after the advertisement is posted. For those cities, it would obviously not make sense to plan an early trip as the options available then would most likely not be available for the time you wanted to move in.

Unless there are others whose research interests you just as much, I recommend meeting with the same professors. Remember that the faculty who interview you will be evaluating you, and their evaluations will determine, in part, whether or not you receive an offer. Personally, I found it was easiest to impress the professors whose research interests were most in line with my own. You also should have plenty of time to interact with other faculty members during the interview's social events.

I tried to make it clear that the numbers I gave referred to the number of students who accepted their offers. In my opinion, a fairly liberal estimate of the number of offers given out is twice the number of students who accepted their offers.

Yeah, it's tough...I'm glad I was never put in that position! See this post for my thoughts on minimizing interview conflicts:

I don't think it's fair to say that most programs accept most of their interviewees. Last year, I estimate ~60 people interviewed (in person) for Biophysics/Bioinformatics at UCSF, and there are only 13 new students in those programs. For Computational and Molecular Biophysics/Biochemistry at WUSTL, I again estimate that ~60 people interviewed (in person), and there are only 11 new students in those programs. For QCB at Princeton, I estimate that ~40 people interviewed (in person), and there are only 8 new students in that program. Even if one assumes that these programs made offers to twice the number of new students, not one of these programs crack the 50% interviewee acceptance rate.

I recommend seeing which programs have their interview dates posted/looking at the interview dates your programs offered last year and figuring out the interview schedule that contains the fewest conflicts. That way, you can commit right away to those interviews that you know won't conflict and stall if you are waiting to hear from programs that do conflict. Also, if an invitation to interview says something along the lines of "You are invited to interview on this day in this month," do not assume that this is the only interview weekend available. This was said to me a couple of times last season, and, if I had not already known about other interview weekends offered by the programs, I would not have been able to attend all of the interviews that I did. If you have a conflict or potential conflict, you should always ask if there is a second or alternative interview weekend available.

I unofficially committed to joining a particular lab at the end of the semester! I'm only in the second week of my third (and final) rotation, but I feel very confident in my decision. I've been thinking about this for weeks, and I read (skimmed) a ton of advice this past weekend to verify the logic behind my decision-making process. In the end, I felt like I was just looking for reasons not to go with this PI, and I couldn't find any. For the past year or so, money has been very tight in the lab I'm joining because a funding agency dropped the ball on a huge grant they had formally agreed to fund, so I was concerned about having to TA next semester (or more often than I would like). Remarkably, my new PI told me today that he has saved enough money to fund one or two new grad students for at least the next several years, so I guess I never had anything to worry about. Additionally, in past years, my new PI had received only ~50-80% of the supercomputing allocations the group had applied for from various sources. This year, all applications yielded 100% of the allocations requested, including one particularly huge one from a major national supercomputing facility. Needless to say, this is quite exciting, as these allocations will allow us to do some really remarkable and exciting science in the next year. To top it all off, my new PI wants me to submit a late abstract for the Biophysical Society Meeting based on the work I did during my rotation with him earlier this semester. Really, the only way things could get better this year is if I win one of the fellowships I am applying to. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a Hertz interview invitation some time this week or next!

I applied!

I'm in!

Things are going very well for me! My classes are really easy, which means I have plenty of time to work hard to impress the professors I rotate with. I'm only a few days into my first rotation, but it's been great so far! The PI clearly has high expectations for me, but I feel confident that I am up to the challenge. I also already feel that I have established a good enough relationship with the other two professors I would like to rotate with that I will not have any problems getting rotations with them as well. Perhaps I am only feeling so positive right now because I moved into my apartment five days before the start of the term while we were going through the program's "boot camp." Those five days were soooo long and stressful (for a variety of reasons), and it was such a relief when I was able to get everything set up before the start of the term. Perhaps it's also because I have an example of how bad things could be going. One of the new students in my cohort is still stuck in Iran due to problems with his visa...I would be quite distraught if I were in his shoes. Of course, I do have some concerns, but they are about future issues that are definitely beyond my control, so I'm trying not to dwell on them too much at this point. I just have hope that things continue to go the way they've been going (and find a way to deal with them if and when they don't).

Scripps Research Institute - All programs University of Iowa - Immunology, possibly Biosciences umbrella University of Pittsburgh/Carnegie Mellon University - Molecular Biophysics + Structural Biology University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center - All PhD programs University of Utah - Molecular Biology Vanderbilt University - All programs Washington University in St. Louis (WashU/WUSTL) - not sure which programs (at least DBBS and immunology)

I will also be around to answer any questions about any of the programs to which I applied and especially about the Center for Biophysics and Computational Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Later on, when you're deciding where to go (or maybe now, if you're deciding where to apply), I can also answer general questions about the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities (though probably none that pertain to any biological graduate programs) and about the Twin Cities in general. In case I decide to change my signature at some point in the future, here is a copy of it: Attending: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - Biophysics and Computational Biology (1/10, email; 3/20-3/22) (1/10, email) (4/10, website) Applied (8/8) - Interview/Visit Offered/Attended (7/8) - Rejected (5/8) - Accepted (3/8) - Admitted (1/8) Carnegie Mellon University-University of Pittsburgh - Computational Biology (1/22, email; 2/20-2/22) (2/28, unofficial email; 3/18, official email) Johns Hopkins University - Molecular Biophysics (4/11, email) Princeton University - Quantitative and Computational Biology (12/30, email; 2/6-2/8) (3/11, email) Rutgers University - Computational Biology and Molecular Biophysics (2/18, email; 3/26-3/27) (2/18, email) University of California, San Francisco - Biophysics (1/13, email; 2/13-2/15) (3/3, website) University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center - Molecular Biophysics (1/2, email; 1/9-1/11) (1/13, email) Washington University in St. Louis - Computational and Molecular Biophysics (12/19, phone, email; 1/30-2/1) (3/12, email)

I've only visited Champaign-Urbana once, but my sense is that she would be treated like any other woman. The undergraduate and graduate student bodies as well as the faculty at Illinois are extremely diverse. (I don't have any data on religion, but, according to CollegeBoard, only 53% of the undergraduate student body is white, and the rest is international students and ethnic minorities.) So, if nothing else, the non-university-affiliated people of Champaign-Urbana will be used to seeing a diverse variety of people around town. However, I also suspect that, if she were to come across someone from the immediate surrounding rural area, she may have more problems with being treated differently. I know @sweetpearl16 is currently a graduate student at UIUC and is still active on this site, so perhaps she can give a more complete and less speculative answer to your question.

Congratulations on your acceptances! I'm so glad everything worked out so well for you! Please don't take SciencePerson101's comments to heart or think that they reflect the general attitudes or opinions of the people on this forum. He/she has a history of making mean-spirited and rude comments in many threads and has come close to being suspended for his/her behavior, jsyk.