heelandcoo88

So it sounds like you got into Penn, mattchurgin? Congrats, that's awesome I got 24K from GaTech and 25.4K from Colorado. I haven't heard from UCLA about funding yet. I think 25K is pretty typical. I know it's not much, but after having very little income over the last four years, I'm actually pretty excited to be getting paid at all. Especially after hearing from friends in the social sciences who have to fund their own way...

When I visited Colorado, I reviewed each professor's research before the interview (I had seven, so there was a lot to keep straight in my head!). I didn't seriously review any of their papers, since I wasn't given the names of who I was interviewing with until the day before the visit. However, I was already accepted at Colorado, and it wasn't my top choice, so the motivation to seriously prepare wasn't as strong, haha. In every interview I had, the professor didn't seem to expect me to know anything about them and happily talked about their research for a good portion of the interview. I didn't encounter any awkward silences; it was more like having a friendly scientific conversation rather than a cut-throat interview. Of course, I'm sure this varies based on the school. I'm also interviewing at UW, and I'm curious about the acceptance rate after the interview stage. I thought that they only took about 20 per year, though maybe that is the number they enroll and not the number of admissions offers they make. I will probably put a lot more work into preparing for the UW interviews than I did CU, especially since there are fewer faculty interviews (4 vs. 7). And hopefully we'll find out who we're talking to more than a day in advance! I applied to the NDSEG and NPSC fellowships, and haven't heard anything yet.

@mattchurgin: How did the Penn interview go? I'm interested to hear how other schools do things. I visited CU-Boulder last weekend and really enjoyed my time there. Has anyone else had good visit experiences? Or made any exciting decisions?

@ FrenchytheFry: It varies from school to school, but my general perception is that it's a very good thing to be invited! For most schools, especially if they are paying your travel expenses, they are just checking to make sure you're not crazy and that you'd actually be a good fit for the program. It's more of a recruitment for them, and there's generally a pretty good chance of being accepted after the visit. There are a few exceptions though. I've heard that JHU is more serious about the interviews and that admission afterward is not as common. Also, there are open house events that everyone who applied to is invited to, so I don't think they have a large bearing on whether or not you are admitted. I'm by no means an expert on this topic, but this is what I've heard. Good luck! @toiletpaper: I'm sure it's not entirely too late. I still haven't heard back from three of the seven schools I applied to (though I know Duke and MIT have sent out some interview invites). I think it depends what schools you applied to. I think that most of the big schools (JHU, UCSD, UCB, UW Seattle, UPenn, MIT, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Stanford, Cornell, GaTech) have sent out some invites, but some of them could be doing it on a rolling basis. Waiting sucks, hopefully you'll hear something soon!

Soooooo, am I correct in thinking that everyone who applied to UCLA got the invite to the BME Open House with absolutely no additional information? There seem to be a couple of people on the results thread who received it, and I got an invite myself as well. I'm probably not going to attend, as I'm visiting CU-Boulder that weekend, plus I get the feeling it's not funded. Kinda weird, I wonder if they'll be giving out admission information soon?

Wow dspampin, CONGRATS on the Hopkins interview! That's big time Hopefully UW will sort out the paperwork issue soon. Did you apply for the Biological Engineering program or the HST/MEMP at MIT? I applied to biological engineering, but I haven't heard anything yet. In other news, I got an invite to the Georgia Tech recruitment weekend this morning from a POI. He also wanted to do a phone interview some time this week! Scary, but exciting! The recruitment weekend is March 28-30, so it looks like I'll be going straight from Seattle to Atlanta. Good way to start the week

Invited for an interview at the University of Washington today! Pretty pumped... I definitely needed some good news after the Berkeley rejection. The interview dates are March 25-28.

Let us collectively mourn the end of the Berkeley dream. Except for those people who were invited for interviews, to whom I (jealously) say Congrats! Even though the rejection was completely expected at this point, I was still clinging to a tiny bit of hope. Oh well. One down, six more to go... @mattchurgin, hopingandwaiting, dspampin: Congrats on the admits/interviews!!

Undergrad Institution: State school with a decent (but not amazing) engineering reputation Major(s): Bioengineering Minor(s): GPA in Major: 3.93 Overall GPA: 3.92 Length of Degree: 4 years Position in Class: at top Type of Student: Domestic white female GRE Scores: Q: 760 V: 640 W: 5.0 Research Experience: 3 years of research experience, including 2 summer research programs (one through my school and one through Amgen Scholars). Have worked in chemical engineering, bioengineering, and physiological science labs. No publications but will have an honors undergraduate thesis Awards/Honors/Recognitions: Many departmental and university honors; Goldwater Honorable Mention Pertinent Activities or Jobs: 1 summer in industry at a health technologies company; member of AIChE (held several officer positions), Tau Beta Pi, SWE Applying for PhD at: UCLA – Biomedical Engineering IDP - Pending UC Berkeley/SF - Bioengineering – Pending (but pretty sure I was rejected) University of Washington - Bioengineering - Pending University of Colorado-Boulder – Chemical and Biological Engineering – Pending Georgia Tech – Biomedical Engineering – Pending Duke – Biomedical Engineering – Pending MIT – Biological Engineering – Pending

Just for everyone’s amusement, here’s the dream I had last night… I was at MIT for an interview weekend (a dream in itself, really), and instead of interviewing the candidates, they had us take an exam. Everyone was working away, when I suddenly realized that I only had a blank piece of paper. They hurriedly gave me the correct exam, but I was already way behind everyone else. I started working on the first section, titled “Verbal,” but soon moved on to “Math and Science” when the person next to me whispered that no one cared about the verbal section. I breezed through the first couple of questions in the math/science section, as they were the exact same problems I’m currently reviewing for the FE exam. But then the questions started getting weird and nonsensical. Everyone was getting up to turn in their exam, and I still had most of it to finish. One of the questions asked us to set up a PCR reaction. I was like, “OK, no big deal.” But the reagents were unlabeled except for a cryptic mark, and in order to figure out which ones to add, we had to logic-out a murder mystery. And you had to use the correct pipette for each reagent, also cryptically labeled and weighed down so that it was difficult to lift. I finally broke down crying because all the other candidates were talking and laughing about how easy it all was while I was trying to concentrate. I eventually snapped at them to shut up, and then they all gave me the evil eye. When everyone else had left, the admissions officer finally came to kick me out of the room and to tell me, “Sorry, you’re just not ready for this.” And then I woke up. Ahhhhh...

Just for everyone’s amusement, here’s the dream I had last night… I was at MIT for an interview weekend (a dream in itself,really), and instead of interviewing the candidates, they had us take an exam. Everyone was working away, when I suddenly realized that I only had a blank piece of paper. They hurriedly gave me the correct exam, but I was already way behind everyone else. I started working on the first section, titled “Verbal,” but soon moved on to “Math and Science” when the person next to me whispered that no one cared about the verbal section. I breezed through the first couple of questions in the math/science section, as they were the exact same problems I’m currently reviewing for the FE exam. But then the questions started getting weird and nonsensical. Everyone was getting up to turn intheir exam, and I still had most of it to finish. One of the questions asked us to set up a PCR reaction. I was like, “OK, no big deal.” But the reagents were unlabeled except for a cryptic mark, and in order to figure out which ones to add, we had to logic-out a murder mystery. And you had to use the correct pipette for each reagent, also cryptically labeled and weighed down so that it was difficult to lift. I finally broke down crying because all the other candidates were talking and laughing about how easy it all was while I was trying to concentrate. I eventually snapped at them to shut up, and then they all gave me the evil eye. When everyone else had left, the admissions officer finally came to kick me out of the room and to tell me, “Sorry, you’re just not ready for this.” And then I woke up. ANYWAY, I don't know anything about UPenn other than what's shown up in the results section. Does anyone know if it's common for schools to send out invites in different rounds? Because I know Berkeley sent out some, but the optimist in me is hoping that they only sent them out for the first interview weekend and that another round is being sent out for the second interview weekend. But I think I'm just trying to make something up to make myself feel better. Also, for anyone who applied to Georgia Tech, I just heard this from my friend who is the BME program there: "This year the interviews will be in late March, but they're thinking that if they invite students so late, they may risk losing some. As a result, they're considering contacting the students in the next few weeks not necessarily to accept them, but to tell the students that they're still being considered/the application is competitive."

I've had "status update" emails from every school but UW, who I haven't heard from since early December when I first submitted my application. Kind of nerve-wracking... I wish they would at least let me know that they received all my application materials! I saw that two interview invites went out from Berkeley last Wednesday, but I haven't heard anything from them. However, no rejection yet either, so I guess that's a good sign! You applied to a lot of schools, dspampin! I thought seven would plenty, but the deafening silence is making me wonder if I should have applied to a few more. Congrats on the interview and acceptance, thecircumstance! What area of research are you guys interested in?

Just thought I’d see if there are any other BME/BioE applicants lurking out there. I’ve been anxiously nosing around the forum for the last couple of weeks, and I would love to share my angst with others. I’ve yet to hear back from any schools, though I have noticed that a couple of the schools I applied to have sent out interview invitations. Eeep. Though you are all my competition, I wish you the best and hope you are handling your email checking obsession better than I am!