poweredbycoldfusion

I got off a waitlist today. They told me I literally had a day to decide. I've already made my decision (going to another program), so it's kind of a moot point.

Whelp, it's over. The predoctoral fellowship is done notifying.

It sounds like you want to do A, but I'd do B. (And this is regardless of wanting to stay/leave academia.) What sells me on it is that the lab is well run. This means that there's a highly functional lab manager in place that can get stuff done, so you won't ever be stuck like that again. It also sounds like there might be older staff scientists in lab B who have institutional knowledge of how a lot of things work and could be very valuable resources. My PI sounds very similar to the PI in lab B (although we're not pumping out nature papers...), and I really like that highly independant type of work environment. I think it just depends on how you work and what you want to get out of your PhD. I know people who *have* to work at the bench with their PI, but I'm fine seeing my PI 1-3 times every week (some weeks only in lab meetings). However, I wouldn't call my PI aloof. Also, don't under estimate a PI that has the weight to go to bat for you. That's important and having money means your cool project won't get dropped because the lab didn't get a grant renewal and can't fund it (although that's happening at bigger labs these days).

I saw a red flag student during interviews. It was awkward.

Reddit has a group for almost any city. The moving to city guide there was a great jumping off point.

Anyone get an honorable mention thing yet?

You sound like you REALLY don't like this place. That kind of attitude is going to show around the other grad students and PIs. That's not a good thing and could end up hurting your career in the long run. It might be best to just try again verses going somewhere that you hate or where you act like you're entitled.

Everything needs to be over 50%. If you have strong LORs and a good (3.8+) GPA, you can get into good programs with 70%+ in both sections. If you have a lower GPA, even good GRE scores won't get you into top programs.

Lots of schools are on spring break and interviews went later this year because of bad weather out East (there's bad weather out West, too, but drought isn't delaying interviews). I'm waiting until April then shooting emails to any program I haven't heard back from, which is 2.

Honestly, anyone getting a PhD with the dream of tenure track in the life sciences needs to do some reading. Could it happen? Yeah, but science careers had an article about a student who got their PhD at Harvard, did their post-doc at Princeton, published a bunch, won prestigeous fellowships...and was not able to land a tenure track position. The fact is, those jobs are going away. If you want a career in research, and potentially academic research, either of those institutions will be perfectly fine, but neither can garentee you the elusive tenure track prof job.

To add a story, I emailed a grad student I'd met from the program I attended interviews at (and was then subsequently waitlisted at) to thank her and get clarification on how the school does admits. She said that there are usually two rounds of admissions: the first candidates (contacted directly after interviews) and the second round (after they see who has accepted/rejected them). She said that she got off the waitlist late March the year she applied, so it does happen.

At least in biomedicine/biosciences, programs have X number of spots to fill and X amount of funding for said spots. They want to fill those up with their top applicants first. However, top applicants typically have a lot of choice in where to go to grad school and have equally good offers from other schools. This is why biosciences send out programs in waves. Maybe most years they need to make 50 offers to fill 20 spots. Maybe some years they need to make 40...or 60. But they can't make them all at once because they're not sure how many of the initial round of invites (say, 30 top candidates) are going to accept.

I think you know which school you've got to go with. (Aka WUSTL)

Honestly, I don't think it is. There are very few people that get offered those special fellowships, and funding is funding. You can ask your top choices about fellowships and funding, but going to a lower choice just because they threw in some extra $$ seems a bit silly. Now, if you have a tie--you like multiple programs equally well--the one that gives you a special fellowship and shows more interest in you could be a valid way to break your decision.

Things have gone a bit quiet around here. It feels like it's at the point where most of the first round acceptences have been sent, and everyone is either waiting on a school or is in the process of making/finalizing their decision.