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I think it might be better for you to ask an academic counselor from your university or call a potential grad school's graduate admissions administrator to ask these questions. This thread is full of applicants, not applicant readers so we might not have the most accurate answer for that. That being said, not everyone in a BME PhD program has a BME (or even an engineering) background. Good luck!

After agonizing for a really long time, officially chose MIT Biological Engineering! However, was also awarded the Whitaker so I may or may not be deferring a year depending on if I can make the technical stuff/logistics work!

I don't want to look!! I keep refreshing and wincing

It's also "early April" now... so it's not like it was a dumb thought.

.......

The website is down...! is it today??

applied and received finding, Chem/Bioengineering PhD (~$28,000 + a Dean's Fellowship)

I won't wait that long I'm holding off on deciding because I still have one more visit weekend but then I'll pick Monday/Tuesday and my spots will open up!

Tough decisions for me too. I think I have it narrowed down to JHU, Harvard-MIT HST, MIT BE, and UW based on research opportunities.... Hopefully I can figure this out before the 15th haha

Ohhh thanks for this! I am been wondering when stuff usually comes out. Looks like it varies a lot. I didn't read through this whole thread because I just found it, but can someone give me a quick overview of how the notification works? I heard from other students that they usually post online (but where exactly on the website? or will it be obvious from the front page?) way before they send out the emails. Seems reasonable to me since that's how the Goldwater Foundation does their award notifications as well. Can't wait.... want to find out now!!! Mine has changed a lot. Or maybe changed isn't a good word. I think I've just become very quickly exposed to a ton of research area that I didn't know were research areas, and feel like I could love all of them. Thankfully you don't have to pursue the exact project you describe in your NSF proposal in graduate school!

I really like the program at Penn! I'm still considering it... I agree with countofcristo that Philly was not my favorite (seems like a place that would grow on you though!). That's not a big deal though. What I particularly was not a fan of is the fact that you sort of get pigeon-holed into a lab from the beginning (unless you match with multiple people and get the opportunity to rotate). A secure spot was cool until I discovered I was interested in many different research areas and would benefit from a rotation program. That being said, if you know that you for sure want to be a part of the lab you are accepted into, it's a great idea and offers a ton of stability and assurance in terms of a spot in a lab as well as funding!

accepted at MIT BE and Harvard-MIT HST!

Got a call today - officially accepted to Stanford! For those that are curious, I did 2 interviews via phone/Skype with professors and did not attend the on-campus interview/visit weekend. March 12-14th! Good luck on the scholarship search!

For penn it's special, you only get admitted if you have a research match with a professor based on your feedback and his/her feedback on your interview. I corresponded with my person of interest and he said he would love to take me on, but that of course they cannot tell us anything definitive until after recruitment is over. The feeling I was getting is that you are basically in if you like a prof and they like you back. also the all people you are allowed to interview with have funding to share with incoming students, which was a nice little security blanket to hold on to. There were 17 my week. Also honestly I wouldn't waste any time worrying, just go there and talk to the students and professors, and see if you hit it off or not. If you don't, you won't want to go there anyway haha :)' Let me know if you have any other questions about the penn interview!

UPenn was awesome! I got some profs I wanted to talk to and some that I didn't request. The profs can request you as well. You can ask Kathy about who is on your list - she told me when I emailed her about it. The interviews I had were not very technical in nature at all... Also you get your itinerary thursday when you arrive, and you don't interview until Friday so you have the evening to prepare. Philly was decent. It's not my favorite city by far but I felt pretty safe and comfortable there. More importantly, the UPenn bioe department was fantastic. I wouldn't worry about living area b/c they actually do apartment tours in all the common living areas in the city (center city, graduate hospital, and west philly, and university city) on Saturday morning/afternoon. My interviews were mostly them telling me about their research and them asking me what I am interested in doing. Let me know if you have any other questions (reply here or PM me!) I would be glad to share more about my experience at UPenn last weekend. Yeaaahh... to agree with the other person, probably so? The interviews are this week and last week. Unless they have a waitlist of some form and you are on it. I would ask Kathy Venit (the secretary about it). She's very nice and responds pretty quickly to email.