peachypie

I'm not in psych but I am in the biological sciences here are my answers: I wore a suit (pants and jacket with blouse and short heels for my interview day). Some interviewees were also wearing suits others were a mixture of more business casual (nice pants + sweater or blouse cardigans etc). Wear what you are comfortable wearing. The other events I wore nice pants and a sweater, nice pants and a blouse type of thing for the non-interview day. Sometimes I wore boots or flats or short heels again. I am comfortable doing a lot of walking in heels so that wasn't an issue of mine but a lot of people have that problem. Business casual will be fine. My thoughts are its always best to be slightly over dressed than under dressed. the people you interview with will almost always be under dressed from you but thats ok. My idea is make a good first impression and wear what makes you feel confident.

Would you still cancel if you found out that they ask you to pay for the costs that your accepting of the interview has incurred to them? It definitely isn't out of the question. i had at least one school said that if you choose to cancel your invite you will be responsible for the airfare/lodging that they cannot get refunded. Is it competing with other programs or is it just that you don't want to go? If it doesn't compete I'd strongly recommend you attend for a few reasons, 1) that you aren't guaranteed acceptance at any of your other programs, 2) it allows you to visit another institution which is great for comparing and contrasting 3) look at is a possibility maybe for collaborations, or post docs or to check out a place you may be interested in later. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Cancelling on an interview you already accepted an invite to is just bad form.

I had roommates at only 2 of my interviews. I had 0 problems with either of them. they were fun and it was exciting to chat, learn about a possible new classmate! For the most part you'll be close in your schedules, i.e. you'll be wanting to get up to get ready for interviews, stopping back before going out etc. i would recommend just saying, hey do you mind if I am in bed by this time or if I wake up at this time to get ready? My roomies were really accommodating and laid back. Just set out something ahead of time if it is important to you. You'll be in a hotel so you shouldnt have to worry about the amount of hot water.

It all depends on the school. I had some schools where I had a travel day and I literally didn't meet anyone until the next morning so i had dinner by myself and hung out in my room. I had others where grad students picked us up and dropped us off for maybe an hour or so and then we reconvened for a casual student meetup (food and drinks at a bar). I also had others where we got in and met up and went to a faculty's home for a catered dinner. The first night is pretty casual even if faculty were there. I am even thinking that first night faculty dinner may have been optional. Its really going to vary, but usually you'll have at least an hour or two to sneak away from arriving to showing up if not the whole night. These first nights were always low key and over pretty early so I always had time to relax and get rest or read if I wanted to as well.

You should have probably thought about this before you went and accepted interviews to all the other programs; however hindsight is 20/20. Since you are local they DEFINITELY should be able to arrange something for you. You won't need travel arrangement or hotel. They'd just need to at a minimum coordinate a few professors for interviews and arrange for a grad student to give you a tour. Seems pretty easy to me.

I don't think anyone cares if you drink or not as much as if you are willing to hang out with the students or something reasonably social. It is easy to avoid drinking at the poster sessions or whatever things you may be doing with faculty and students since there is generally food, people you are talking to, bathroom breaks etc. If you are out to the bars with students and are REALLY paranoid about not drinking, just go to the bar and ask for like a tonic with lime....you can sip that all night and no one will know its not a vodka tonic with lime. Just requires a little skill in discreetly ordering a tonic with lime.

I apologize that I can't really speak to the international applicant but if you were domestic definitely. I wouldn't classify Purdue as a highly competitive micro program. My understanding is that they are decent, if you get an invite to interview you are essentially in.

I would consider rural to be underrepresented and may constitute as diversity. At least at my UG diversity would include being raised/living in a very rural, urban environment as one of the qualifications of diversity. Others include socioeconomic, ethnic/nationality, first generation citizens, first generation college students etc.

I was with you until I read this: "I just wanted to get it out there. I'd be really pissed off if I wasn't admitted anywhere. It's not that I feel like I deserve this more than others; it's that I've worked too hard to get denied." The only person you need to be pissed with is yourself if that is the case, I think part of this process is learning that you are the only one that can help or hurt yourself. Then when you said "its not that I feel I deserve this more than others, its that I've worked too hard to get denied"...I realize that it may be difficult for you to put yourself in another's perspective but my answer to that is....so has a lot of other people. You aren't the only one. There is a bit of your immaturity showing in all of this and maybe it will be good to gain some perspective outside of your own world. If you don't get in or struggle this year then fuel that "aggravation and anger/pissed off" into taking the gre again and crushing it so that you don't feel that you are uncertain of your next application cycle. Again as many others have noted, there is a lot of time yet. I don't know your field precisely, physical chem? but I am in the sciences. There are still plenty of interviews to go out yet, some of your schools may have sent some out and others within the next week or two would be my guess. Just relax for now, what is done is done. Game plan for both an interview and a rejection and that is where your energy should be at this time.

If a school wants to pressure you to make a response to them prior the april 15th deadline I'd highly question their motive. For many of my interviews (even the ones that had multiple weekends) I received an offer of acceptance within maybe 1-2 weeks. i waited to finish all my interviews before I made my decision, but was prioritizing and ranking as I went. I still made my final decision about a month before the April 15th deadline. every school would love to know prior to april 15th, if they signed the resolution that is about where it stops in what they can do. If they didn't then I guess they can do whatever they want but again, why?

I had pretty much 0 technical questions except for some very basic stuff when I was explaining my research. Basically things I should know very well right off the bat. HOWEVER, I have heard from fellow interviewees that were at the same interviews as myself that did have some fairly technical questions. For whatever reason they also tended to be still in undergrad. They may not have had as much research to discuss so the profs decided to get more technical with them? Other stories include interviews turning down a path to make the applicant uncomfortable if they sensed you were full of shit. I honestly had 0 of these interactions, all my interviews were really normal. I will say this, if you go in and you clearly know your stuff, they back off right away. its kind of like the GRE where the first few minutes/questions will determine where the interview goes. If they see any reason to suspect that you are not confident in what you are saying, are intimidated or scared they'll hone in on that. (this being some profs not all, and typically the ones your buddy will warn you about ahead of time.... i.e. "this guy can be a real ball buster"). My advice is know what you know, admit what you don't and keep it at that. PIs hate BS, so don't blow smoke if you can't back it up.

I took the time to write handwritten thank you notes to everyone. I also got a small gift for each of them, something within the 5-10 dollar range. Chocolates or tea or something like that. I gave these out after i had officially decided on my school so I could include that in my note. I also sent out quick emails to let them know what was going on once I had gotten some invites (some I worked with at the time so that may have something to do with it). I feel like a handwritten note is just a touch more personal and appreciative than an email. Also when I have written LORs I really appreciated a nice note because its something I could put up on my desk for a bit too. an email you can't savor quite as much. its all preference though.

It will fluctuate and it largely depends on a) how many spots they hope to fill and if there is one interview weekend or multiple. I'd say you should expect at least 15-20 on average. If it is part of an umbrella program then it may be like 30-40 with a portion of that being for your interest or department.

I honestly would not think that. They actually try to plan to not compete with schools they are known competitors for this reason. It is more about the schedule/timeline that application cycles take and the semester break as well as the april 15th deadline.

Still don't see evidence that they didn't.

1. How is it not a credential when it plays a role in the cost of that student? the university and the government see these applicants differently. 2. The above point is largely why i think international students are held to higher standards. 3. where did you get that the domestic applicants are "good enough"? No evidence that says they are better? Maybe in this cycle the domestic applicants were all better/higher qualified/did more relevant work/talked to profs/visited the university/expressed a strong interest in the program...more so than the international applicants? 4. No matter how much weight you give residency you CANNOT CONCLUDE THAT AN INTERNATIONAL APPLICANT IS 'BETTER' THAN A DOMESTIC APPLICANT.

How in the world do YOU KNOW that all the international stack was thrown out? Were you sitting there when it happened? There are plenty of international PhD students at the University of Wisconsin, how did they slip through the "throwaway stack" you speak of? Again school's can go do whatever they want when they want to have applicants, there is literally no rule that they have to do anything to your application. They choose what is best for the department. The univeristy of wisconsin is in no way hurting for applicants or solid research students. Again remember international applicants cost more for the university and would likely mean the department would have to take less students than if they stuck to domestic. I honestly believe if the applicant had touched based with a faculty member and showed some inclination to wanting to go there they'd probably get an invite. If you throw your name into a pile as just another name, you'll be treated like one. Its a competitive pool, you have to do more than the bare minimum and I think that is what we are looking at here.

As geodude wrote, it shouldn't take you that much time to submit an app for one school. Also again, I see no evidence that they didn't review the application. That is currently justin123's assumption. There are a myriad of ways to screen applicants and sometimes you just don't make the cut. Again I wonder if maybe the applicant would have spent some more time talking to profs in the program maybe the application would have gotten more consideration as well. there is no saying that some of the onus of a rejection was not with the applicant and not the school's issues, but rather the performance of the applicant.

I'd try your best to get it to 2 pages. Imagine how rockin' it'd be if they stopped reading it at 2 pages, still worth it? I can almost assure you that if you take some time in editing you can get it to 2 pages. And as others mentioned, it'll read better when you do.

There can be more than one round of invites, but that may change year to year. I would say if you haven't heard anything into January then maybe you can assume you are going to get rejected. if they start having interview weekends and you haven't heard anything, then I think you can begin to make that assumption.

I think 10 hours minimum for sure, typically larger chunks of time are way more useful than anything. I'll also say that its great to do that much and don't feel pressured, but if you are considering working in a lab and/or want to get a position there or something....put a little more in. You should want to be there as much as you can.

I'm sure it has happened to me. I have no issue with it. Just how the cookie crumbles.

WHOA...danielewrites.... "fired for being so honest"!?! Your whole premise banks on how unethical it was for the university to be so shady and then say someone should be fired for being so honest unlike business institutions who have prevarication down to a science?! You need to watch your logic. My whole issue in what justin123 is saying is that the whole argument is based on the ASSUMPTION that the university did not review the application. If they never reviewed your file how would they know you were an international/domestic applicant? Your application was not unseen. School's are able to do what they want with your application, there is no contractual obligation that they fulfill to you. period. Here is a killer ,what about all the domestic applicants who apply? How are they sorted? How do we know they even got all their applications reviewed? They probably didn't. I'm sure most applicants went in some early round of dismissals without much review, but that is just how the system works FOR EVERYONE. Is it a shock to you that an international applicant who will cost the university more money than others would maybe rank lower on priority of review? There is no saying there aren't international students at UW-Madison for PhD....but maybe they reached out to professors beforehand, established a relationship, maybe they visited campus, had a connection to a program, who knows...but it wasn't you. The university didn't do anything wrong, you are just unhappy with not being given a priority that no one gets. The only true data I see here is this: you applied as an applicant. you were rejected. Here are a few things you may not have considered...when people bug the admin's during the application period, they get a reputation for themselves. It already becomes known what kind of applicant and therein what kind of student is the one emailing imploring information and I can only imagine what kind of emails had been written to this person. Also domestic applicants are prioritized too. Did you know that when they get a lot of local or nearby applicants they can afford more applicants to come in? That means heaven forbid that its easier to get an invite if you don't cost as much to get there. A school says we can interview 5 applicants or 15....which one do you think the school wants to do? If you are an international applicant and will take the cost of 5 domestic applicants that means you have to be worth losing 5 other applicants to take that spot. Justin123 even admitted himself that UW-Madison was not his top choice. So he would have gone, and declined an offer likely. Yet is calling the institution unethical for not prioritizing his application. Sounds to me like UW-Madison actually screened the applicant pool correctly.

I will say i read at least 1-2 papers for all my interviewers.... but again i was probably over preparing. It went well for me, because I actually had PIs tell me I got extra points when I referred to something they recently published. It also made it super easy to ask questions about their research. Pro tip: if you can get a prof talking about his/her research...your interview will be over in what feels like 5 minutes. If it is your top choice I'd at least read abstracts of a few papers of your interviewers. It will do wonders for you. You have time in airports and sitting around, so there is plenty of time to look at some recent pubs. I just went to pubmed, put in the pi for author and looked at recently published. sometimes someone else is publishing, like a grad student (Good signs!) and they are the last author. if this is your top pick and these are the PIs you are interested in working with...this won't feel like work, it'll actually be interesting and fun to you!

5 weeks is not a lot of time in the research world. I'll say you may want to focus a bit more on the research you did prior to the new lab since this is the one you mentioned in your SOP as well as where you did, my guess, most of your research experience. 5 weeks is long enough to figure out where reagents are and get into some basic/foundation work! i'd focus on the lab and work you did the most true research in, spent the longest time, did the most independent work. Of course, still mention and discuss your current lab but no one is expecting a lot of research to have been completed in 5 weeks. again the point is, figure out if the person who says they worked on research of xyz can talk in depth about what they did. If you can't answer what you were doing, why, the science behind what you were doing and how it applies to the subject etc...thats what they want to know. If you say you worked on digestion of food by zebras, lets see if they can talk for 5 minutes about relevant digestion of zebras. Do they know a zebra has a stomach?! What does a zebra eat? Did you look at a variety of foods outside of a normal zebra's diet? etc. How did you control for this.