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This is a great topic! Here are the four I came up with first. Scene from Crash: Ending to Gravity: Another Scene from Crash: Ending to Stardust:

I still have to graduate and finish my thesis. After that's done (3 weeks left!), I will probably continue working on thesis-related research into June. I have two week-long family trips to the Jersey shore and the Boundary Waters planned, which I will start to look forward to once the semester has finally finished. I'll probably take another weekend trip somewhere close-by with my boyfriend before he starts his new job. Other than that, I hope to go up to my family's cabin a few times and spend lots of time relaxing and reading papers authored by the professors I want to rotate with. My lease doesn't start until a week after I am required to be in Champaign-Urbana, so I probably won't be moving there until the last minute to minimize the costs of living in a hotel.

Every program I applied to this year (see my signature) had some people doing genomics research. Some people were computationalists, while others with experimentalists, and, in most programs, it was said that it was possible for students to do both if they wished (though there are some who advise against it). For your interests, you really can't go wrong with Bioinformatics or Computational Biology programs. Quantitative Biology is another "field" you may want to look into. If you want to be closer to the experiments, it's probably better (in general) to look for programs administered by Biology or other natural science departments, rather than Computer Science departments. Contrary to what bsharpe269 said, I do not think Biophysics programs will be well suited to your interests. The experimentation done in this field is most commonly going to focus on using tools like NMR or X-ray crystallography, and the computation tends to focus on analyzing these data or on physics-based modeling, at least in my experience. Genomics does creep over into biophysics, of course, but it's not central to what biophysics is about.

I second the recommendation of the Tenant Union. The list of the number of complaints filed against each company within the past five years is a must-have when looking for an apartment.

I just signed a lease for an apartment at UIUC last week. When I was doing my apartment hunt, I used Google Maps to check which buses serviced which apartments when. They have features that allow you to easily get a sense of how often buses come at different times in the day and how long you can expect your commute to be. Of course, once you have settled on an apartment, I think it would be wise to check with cumtd.com to verify the accuracy of the information on Google, as not even Google can be perfect. For the Ginger Creek apartments, it looks like you have options leaving every 15-30 minutes from 6am to 10pm. Looks like the commute (to Loomis Lab in north central campus) will take 30-45 minutes. In my opinion, this seems like a long daily commute. I considered options that were a similar distance from campus, but spending an hour and a half on a bus every day didn't seem like something I could do, so I opted for a closer option. You'll have to decide for yourself whether this commute is doable for you, whether the expense of parking on campus every day is worth cutting your commute down to 10 minutes each way, or whether a different apartment will be better for you. As for recommendations, I was looking for single bedroom / studio apartments, and central air/heat was a must for me. My price ceiling was $800/month, but I ideally wanted to be paying $700\month or less. With these criteria in mind, I really liked this apartment complex and this apartment complex from Bankier. Unfortunately, I found out that smoking is allowed in all Bankier apartments, and this ended up being a deal-breaker for me since I planned to sign the lease sight unseen and was therefor unable to check whether the apartments smelled of stale smoke or not. I seriously considered this apartment from Edward Rose & Sons, but they are also a 30-45 minute bus ride from north campus. The availability they have is in a new building which is supposed to be completed in July, and they aren't yet letting people sign leases for the apartments in this building. Instead, they put you on a "priority list" after filling out a lease application, and they say you will have your pick of apartments based on your position in this list. I also liked this apartment from MHM Properties, but the management company has an online reputation for being "sleazy." They were not responsive (via email) to questions I had about the apartment, so I decided it was better to go a different way. The apartment is also quite small relative to the other apartments I considered. Finally, I also briefly considered this apartment complex from Amber Pointe, this apartment complex from Garden Courts, this apartment complex from Regency Apartments, and this apartment complex from Water's Edge. I decided that all of these apartments were too far away by bus, with the exception of the apartments at Garden Courts, which do not make it clear on their website whether they actually have any apartments available. Ultimately, I decided to go with an apartment complex managed by Kennedy Wilson. The apartment I got was the last one available in the building, so I won't post a link. With the exception of this apartment complex, none of the other apartments they have available match my list of criteria, and the one exception is also too far by bus from campus for my taste. However, if your criteria are different than mine, I have to highly, highly recommend Kennedy Wilson. The agent I worked with was extremely detailed and helpful as I berated her with dozens of questions in email after email. She even went to the apartment and took several pictures for me so that I would know exactly what I was signing a lease for. At this point (without having lived in their apartments yet), I cannot speak highly enough of this company. Anyway, I hope this has been helpful. Let me know if there are any questions you think I can help answer. Good luck finding your apartment!

Sounds like a tough call! I did my undergraduate in computer science and physics at the U of M, so, if you have specific questions about the U or the CS department, just let me know. I can even talk about some graduate courses, as all CS undergraduates are required to take two years of graduate courses at the U. A couple of things to think about: One, the US News rankings are based primarily on peer assessment surveys, so the reputations of programs within the programs' community tend to play an important role in these rankings. Depending on who you're asking, these rankings may give a fairer indication of the perceived quality of the CS programs relative to one another. Second, I wonder what the person talking about student "quality" is basing his or her opinions on. When you talk about "quality," do you mean the impressiveness of the students' research/abilities/things of that nature? Has the person that you're getting this opinion from worked extensively at both schools as a graduate student? Maybe just visited both programs? If so, I will say that, when I visited various graduate programs for interviews, I was definitely impressed more by students in some programs than in others, but I think it's important to keep in mind that these judgments are based on first impressions, which can be very wrong, and that they are very subjective. I wonder also if by student "quality" your source is instead referring to the general environment of the two schools/the general attitudes held by people at the two institutions. There are a lot of stereotypes about Californians, especially Southern Californians and Angelenos. There are also a lot of stereotypes about Midwesterners. Some of them are more true than others, but I think the applicability of the stereotypes will be significantly diminished within the university communities and especially within the CS department communities. I think these stereotypes can be considered when you are thinking about whether you will like the environment you live in, but I don't necessarily think they should be heavily considered when making judgments about the programs themselves. Third, you mention that the Twin Cities is not that great of a location. While I don't think it's as much of a tech hub as LA, I will mention that all of the major tech companies (Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc.) do recruiting events at the U. So, while it might be easier to get a job at a mid-sized or start-up tech company out in LA, having the opportunity to get a job at a major tech company should be no problem at the U. More generally, the Twin Cities is a large metropolitan area, so I don't think there is much you'd be able to find in LA that you couldn't also find in the Twin Cities. Fourth, something I don't see you mention is cost of living. Living in Minneapolis is considerably cheaper than living in LA. If you want to check it out for yourself, I recommend this tool: <http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/>. So, if you can't get paid at USC, or if you have to pay your own way for a little while, you will have to worry about the higher tuition as well as the higher cost of living. Even if you think you can get paid, you should consider what kind of standard of living you can afford at USC versus the U of M. Fifth, I will say that more famous or well-known professors tend to have more funding available to them. If you definitely know you will work with the professor you mention at USC if you go there, then maybe funding will not be as challenging as you expect. (Then again, it could be just as challenging as you expect. It's hard to know!) Finally, I will say that I have loved being an undergraduate at the U and in the CS department. I think it's a great university and department with great people, and I don't think you would go wrong choosing to go there. Hope this helps! Like I said, let me know if you have any specific questions about the U. Good luck with your decision!

Yes, definitely very concise! But I thought it was still pleasant enough.

Got mine too! Now my season is officially over!

"Well, I hope you like being out in the cold in the middle of nowhere..." My current research advisor, when I told him I was going to Illinois. He was kidding, of course, but I found this comment amusing considering we are hundreds of miles to the north of Champaign-Urbana, and it definitely gets colder here than it does there.

Really? Is it a college town? In Champaign-Urbana, most leases start in August, but the leases for the more popular apartments are usually signed in October of the previous year. Thankfully, undergraduates there mostly live in 2 or 4 bedroom apartments, so there are still some studios and 1 bedroom apartments left for me!

I don't know anything about these particular programs, but I did visit both Rutgers and Illinois for their Biophysics/Computational Biology programs. I have decided to attend the University of Illinois, so you should keep my bias in mind as you read this note. The stipend I was offered at Rutgers is more than $8000 more than what I was offered at UIUC. When you factor in cost of living, the stipend offered by Rutgers is still higher, but not by much. I recommend using this tool <http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/> for estimating how far your stipend offers will go in each city. I will also say that, at Rutgers, a huge red flag for me was that a current grad student told me he was offered a stipend similar to mine, but, when he actually got into the program, the actual stipend he received was somewhat less than he had been promised. (Yikes!) Another red flag was that some current students at Rutgers pointed out that, while my offer states that I should expect to receive a full assistantship for each year I am in the program, the kind of assistantship is not specified. It seems that students of PIs who don't have much funding have to teach pretty much every semester to get paid. As a TA, it is my impression that the amount you are paid at Rutgers seems to be set by the university, and this amount seems to be significantly less than what I was offered. Some current students told me that the TA union at Rutgers recently went on strike (or maybe just threatened to go on strike?) to get higher wages and better working conditions. They also qualified this by saying that there had recently been talk that they might go on strike again because Rutgers had been discussing converting some TA positions into lecturer positions, which are not eligible for certain benefits, or something to that effect. Perhaps this is a common problem at many universities that I am simply ignorant to, but this was certainly the only school where such a problem was brought up (unprompted, I might add). At least in my program, I have been told it is quite a competitive process to get a teaching assistantship at Illinois, and it is explicitly stated in my offer letter that most students are supported by research assistantships after their first year. I should note that Rutgers students that I talked to who worked in labs with well funded PIs did not seem to have much of a teaching load. However, even these students said their stipends were not high enough to live close to campus. The public transportation in Piscataway and New Brunswick is not as good as it is in Chapaign-Urbana, so these students have to drive to work every day. This was not something I wanted to do. In general, I would say that the students at Rutgers seemed MUCH more concerned about money than the students at Illinois were. To give some concrete examples, at Illinois, students talked about buying houses or condos, while at Rutgers, four students discussed at length how they were going to divide up a $9.00 bill... For me, the contrast was pretty dramatic. Piscataway is arguably a better location on paper than Urbana-Champaign. It is well connected to New York and Philadelphia by train, but, then again, Champaign-Urbana is only a two to three hour drive from Chicago, St. Louis, and Indianapolis. There are even regular trains and buses from Chicago to Champaign and back. I had expected Champaign-Urbana to feel like a suburb, and I was surprised to see high-rise buildings in downtown Champaign and Urbana. One of the current Illinois graduate students characterized the cities as "micro urban," and, without having lived there yet, I have to say I completely agreed with her characterization based on what I saw. I feel like I had a great research match with some of the professors at Rutgers, but I feel like I have just as good of a match with more professors at Illinois. The program at Illinois is also larger and seems more established, which I like. Finally, it seems to me that the program at Illinois is better funded and has access to more resources than the program at Rutgers. These may be factors you want to consider for your own programs. Finally, as you mention, Illinois is ranked higher than Rutgers in biology. In the latest US News rankings, they are also ranked much higher in chemistry (6 vs 60), physics (9 vs 29), and computer science (5 vs 34). A similar story is told in the 2010 US News rankings and NRC rankings. Mine is an extremely interdisciplinary program with professors who hold appointments in all of these departments, so these rankings are relevant to my program. Overall, I think these rankings also paint the picture that Illinois is a more highly regarded university than Rutgers is, at least in the physical sciences. Of course, whether or not this is actually true is open to interpretation. Obviously, the most important thing for you to consider is research fit. You say this is equal for the two programs, but I find that a little hard to believe. How many PIs at each university are doing research that interests you. Do you know which ones expect to be taking on new students into their labs in the fall? Does everyone you're interested in working for look like good mentors on paper? (Are they publishing frequently? Do their students seem to be getting first authorships on these papers? Do they have tenure yet? If not, is there any concern that they might not get it/you will be competing with them to present your research at conferences, etc./they might leave the university unexpectedly? Are they old enough that they might retire or pass away unexpectedly? Are their students getting jobs doing things that you are interested in doing after grad school?) How is the curriculum fit at both schools? (Do the classes sound interesting? How many do you have to take?) I believe these are all important questions to consider when you are evaluating your research and curriculum fit at different schools and when you are evaluating where to attend in the fall. Anyway, as I said, I have decided to go to Illinois. I made this decision primarily because I believe the research and curriculum fit at Illinois is better than it is at Rutgers. I also believe it is the safer financial choice based on what I heard from current grad students, and I believe that the program at Illinois has a better reputation than Rutgers. Finally (and importantly), I was completely blown away by everyone I met and everything I saw when I visited Illinois. That's not to say I wasn't impressed when I visited Rutgers, but Illinois clearly left a more significant mark. This only happened with one other program where I didn't ultimately end up getting in, so, for me, the obvious choice was Illinois. My point is that I think it is definitely important to consider how good the programs are for you on paper, but I think it is also important to consider your gut instincts. I hope this analysis has been helpful to you! Let me know if you have any questions I may be able to answer. Good luck making your decision!

Officially admitted by the Graduate School at Illinois! In a couple days, I can set up my university email! It's all becoming so real so fast! Anyone else started their apartment hunt yet?

Thanks! I feel so fortunate that everything turned out so well for me when it could so easily have turned out very differently. Congratulations to you too on deciding where to go! I'm sure you'll do great things there!

Anyone moving to Champaign-Urbana this summer?

I have officially accepted the offer from the Biophysics and Computational Biology PhD Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign! I can't wait to start in the fall!

Excited to say that I have officially accepted the offer from the Biophysics and Computational Biology PhD Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign! Now I just have to find an apartment and finish out this semester before I can finally relax a bit. Good luck to everyone else on making their decisions! You have T-11 days to April 15, so it should be over for you soon too!

I visited this program during the Pitt interview weekend this year, so I can share what current Pitt students told me. My general sense is that there is some definite extra red tape that comes with having the program split across two universities. The advice I got was that this red tape is manageable, but you should take matters into your own hands and be persistent when you need to get something administrative done. You should not assume that everything will work out, even if you put it in the hands of the proper people. The example they gave was that it can be very difficult for Pitt students to get into popular CMU classes and vice versa. You should have no problem with the required curriculum, but electives can be more challenging. You may also want to read one of my previous posts where I discussed some other differences between the CMU and Pitt sides of the program. (As I note in the original post, some of the differences can be found in the student handbook, but others cannot.) The post can be found Of particular interest may be the following quote: So, while it is definitely possible to switch from the Pitt side to the CMU side (according to the student handbook), you may or may not find it challenging to become matched with a CMU advisor due to the difference in advisor matching procedures. That is to say that some CMU professors may not participate in the rotation program through Pitt. (I think this is unlikely, but it is a definite possibility you should ask about if you are worried about it.) As the program has already told you, students are admitted to one school or the other based on their stated interests and the professors they have stated they are interested in working for, not based on their background. The students and professors on both sides of the program come from a variety of backgrounds/departments, so it's not like the CMU students/professors work on computer science research while the Pitt students/professors work on physical science research. Consequently, I don't think it's fair to say you think you might have a better fit on the CMU side due to your undergraduate training in computer science. I think the only way you can judge where you belong is by looking at the research being done by the faculty on both sides of the program. My advice to you is to go through each of the faculty member's lab pages, get a quick gist of what their research is all about, quickly eliminate those professors whose research doesn't interest you at all, read further into the pages of the professors whose research sounds most interesting, maybe read some of their recent publications, and get a list together of who you are most interested in working for. Once you have done this, start emailing those professors you are most interested in working for to see if they expect to be able to take on new students in the fall and/or are able/willing to take you on as a rotation student. I think only then will you be able to judge whether you were admitted to the wrong side and be able to judge whether or not this will be a problem. I suspect you will find that you were matched to the correct school. In addition to talking to current students, I think you should feel free to contact the program directors with any questions you may have. The Pitt director has repeatedly said that I should contact him if I have any questions. They obviously know the program inside and out, and they will be able to give you a unique and truthful (albeit biased) opinion/answer to some of your questions and concerns. Consider also talking to the coordinators, as they will have another different perspective and area of expertise. Hope you found this helpful! Let me know if there's anything else you want me to comment on.

Judy Greer was in Elizabethtown with Kirsten Dunst Kirsten Dunst was in Marie Antoinette with Jason Schwartzman Jason Schwartzman was in Bewitched with Nicole Kidman Nicole Kidman was in Moulin Rouge! with Ewan McGreggor Ewan McGreggor was in Big Fish with Steve Buscemi Jonathan Pryce, Ben Stiller

I thought you (and anyone else who never heard from Hopkins Biophysics) might be interested to know that I met two people today who interviewed there this season, and they both said that they were grilled on their research in each of their six interviews. They said that they talked for the whole half hour, and the professors who interviewed them didn't really share anything about their own research. It's probably not very fair to judge a program (and especially a highly competitive one) based on their interview process, and the experience may well have been completely different for the other candidates. However, at the very least, that sounds like a terrible first impression to give your potential new students, and it makes me feel better about never hearing back from them.

I never thought I could be as blown away with UIUC (or any school, for that matter) as I was with UCSF...but I was! I can't wait to accept their offer! I was so worried it would feel like I was settling for a program that I wasn't truly in love with, but now I know that just won't be the case. It's so strange to think that today I saw the places I'm going to call "home" and met the people I'm going to call my colleagues for the next five years! Good luck to everyone who still has to make a decision! I wish it were as easy for you as it has been made for me.

I don't have any advice, per se, but my opinion is that it seems that the dollar amount of a stipend is generally quite fixed. My impression is that the amount of money a program gives you can be increased through scholarships or fellowships, but, beyond that, their hands are probably tied by the university or department administration. I think it probably looks bad to have different students earning different wages when they are all part of the same program and all doing (roughly) equal work. Additionally, I think it could potentially create a difficult working environment for students in the program if they knew certain people were making more or less than they were. Finally, as @persimmony mentioned, it is common for your thesis advisor to pay your stipend after you join his or her lab, which means you could be at a disadvantage when it came time to join a lab if the PI you wanted to work with disliked the arrangement you had made when you were admitted. For all these reasons (and more, I'm sure), I feel that any program will likely be disinclined to negotiate your stipend. I think it's safer for them to stick to scholarships and fellowships. Having said all that, you are obviously an exceptionally qualified and highly desirable candidate. Program B may well be willing to do anything (within reason) to get you to accept their offer. Then again, all of the programs to which you applied likely have many exceptionally qualified and highly desirable candidates they would like to join their program, so maybe this will not be the case. I don't think you'll ever really know unless you ask. The problem with this, of course, is that such a request could very easily be taken the wrong way. I'm inclined to think that this question pops up from time to time within every program, so it's probably safe to ask. However, I think you should keep in mind that whoever you ask may have a different perception of you after you ask the question. (E.g., "@elanorci is smart to try to get the best out of an offer before accepting it," or "I'm surprised @elanorci seems to be more concerned about money than research.") This may or may not matter depending on who the person is and whether he or she is ever in a situation where he or she may act on his or her perception, but I think it is something to consider.

Alright, now that I'm (pretty much) done I can finally post here! I got my first acceptance way back in January, and I was actually at my first interview weekend. They had given us a little bit of time to relax at the hotel between the end of the interviews and the start of dinner. Some of the interviews really hadn't gone very well for me, and I was feeling a little down. I was checking my emails and trying to get things ready for my next interview when I decided to check my spam on a whim. And there it was! I was so excited that I told my roommate right away, but I had to calm down quickly to get ready for dinner. I didn't even have time to tell my family and SO until after I came back from dinner. It was such a relief not to have to worry about how the rest of the evening went, and it was really nice to have an acceptance so early on. It gave me a lot of confidence going into my other interviews. I got my second offer on my birthday. I don't remember exactly what I was doing, but I think I was just checking my emails in bed. I had just come back from interviewing at my dream program, so I wasn't as excited as I otherwise would have been. However, I didn't have time to do anything special on my birthday, so it was definitely a nice little present. I got my final (though still unofficial) acceptance the next week right after waking up. It was a nice start to my day, but the feeling I got definitely didn't compare to the feeling that came with my first acceptance.

I'm still waiting on my official acceptance from CMU-Pitt and my official rejection from Johns Hopkins, but, with my rejection from WashU yesterday, I pretty much know what options I'm going to have for grad school. It's funny how things work out. I finalized the list of grad schools to which I was going to apply back in August. Then, in October, I swapped out three programs in a rushed panic after I realized the original programs were focused much more on experimentation (rather than computation and theory) than I originally thought. It just so happens that the three programs I swapped in are the ones that have made me offers. Even though I was rejected after all four of my competitive interviews, I don't feel (too) disappointed. I only feel grateful for having the opportunity to visit a bunch of new schools and cities, and I feel extremely fortunate that I made the decisions I did back in October and that I now have offers from three programs where I can definitely do the research that I want to do in grad school. Now I just have to make the hard decision about which program will be best for me. Hopefully, this will be made easier after visiting UIUC next week and Rutgers the week after that. To those who have received fantastic offers of their own, congratulations! Good luck deciding where you want to go! To those who have not, good luck next year or with whatever path you decide to pursue! With some more hard work and a bit of random luck, I'm sure everything will turn out just fine for all of us.

Finding a new definition of pain and suffering in the belly of the all-powerful sarlacc as you are slowly digested over a thousand years.

Cher was in Burlesque with Kristen Bell Kristen Bell was in When in Rome with Danny DeVito Danny DeVito was in Big Fish with Ewan McGregor Ewan McGregor was in Moulin Rouge! with Nicole Kidman Nicole Kidman was in Bewitched with Jason Schwartzman Jason Schwartzman was in Marie Antoinette with Kirsten Dunst Kirsten Dunst was in Elizabethtown with Orlando Bloom Orlando Bloom was in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King with Peter Jackson Judy Greer, Steve Buscemi