madbiochemist

This was definitely my experience staying with a roommate during interviews. We were both so exhausted that we watched like 1 30 minute show together and fell asleep immediately. I didn't really hear of anyone being kept awake by a noisy roommate. If he's really uncomfortable, he can book his own room, but the department won't pay for it. At best they'll pay for the cost of sharing and you'll pay the difference. It shouldn't hurt admissions chances if you stay separate, but they'll probably be annoyed that they had to deal with a last minute change. These visits are really hard to plan and expensive, so try not to fault the department too much.

Er, I that would vary based on who you're interviewing with. Some faculty really like puzzle questions, some people will have you do math, some (majority) just want to know you'll be a hardworking/decent scientist. I can't say for sure that you'll get a certain type of question over another. Keep in mind that interviews are usually 30 minutes. They could ask those really specific questions, but I think people tend to want to know that you can design an experiment to test an interesting hypothesis and then be able to interpret your data. They're not so interested in whether or not you know exactly how mass spec works, but if it's an integral part of your previous work they might ask some basic questions about how it works. Here are some examples that I could see happening: 1. You're an imaging student and you included an MRI-based project in your SOP. You should know how MRI works, its limitations vs other imaging methods, and how MRI helped you with your project. 2. You're a CTE student who was characterizing a population of cells using FACs. You should know the surface markers you used, maybe some other populations that would have been in your sample, and maybe what those surface markers are. You should probably generally know how flow cytometry works. Another fun question is if they present you with a hypothesis similar to what they do or what you included in your SOP and ask you how you'd test it. For the most part, they'll just want to know what you did, why you did it, why you're going to grad school, and what projects you're interested in being involved with. Just know your research as well as you can. Practice going though each project in <2 minutes and <5 minutes. Try to learn a bit about their research if you have time. Really, if you're interested in their work and you were interested in your work it'll be fine. I know it's stressful, but really try and take the opportunity to learn about someone else's research!

I found it helpful to read papers from each PI I was interviewing with, so I could ask them thoughtful (hopefully) questions about their research projects like why they chose to use one polymer over this similar polymer, why they think they had this particular unexpected result, etc. I had questions prepared about their research in case things got awkward. I feel like it might have helped my interviews and helped me get a feel for each PI as a scientist, because the professors all talked to me for about an hour instead of the scheduled 30 minutes. My first interview I was really really nervous, but when I realized I got to ask these awesome scientists questions about their work for an hour, I actually had a great time.

Interviews start next week for JHU BME! As a first year who recently went through what you're going through, I'm looking forward to meeting all of you who are coming! Also good luck to everyone in their grad school search! I hope you can find your perfect fit. Also feel free to send me a message if you want to know about living in Baltimore/interviews/the program. I've really liked living in the city so far, despite all the bad press we get.

The dates for you are different because a bunch of imaging professors got together and decided they only wanted to do one weekend this year... Sigh... If you guys just wait a bit, we're sending out an informational email in the next few days to all of the interviewees. Email which day you want to attend, but please wait on booking flights.

It helps to interview with that person, but it's not necessary for admission. I would suggest emailing them to ask whether you could speak to them over the phone or via skype if you haven't talked to them before. That way you can talk about available projects, fit, the lab environment, etc. We'll match you with people in your general interest group so your interviewer won't be totally out of the blue. Plus, you might find that a professor you've never looked into is doing something really awesome and want to work in their lab or do a collaboration instead! No, don't purchase your plane ticket or hotel! An email should be coming your way soon from our travel agent for booking flights and the department will book your hotel. Reimbursement takes a while, be forewarned. Don't be afraid to send multiple emails. Our administrative assistant does the work of 10 people, but sometimes she gets pretty swamped. It's pretty high (70% is a good estimate), but I think that's indicative of the caliber of students we invite, not whether the interviews are easy or not. Some interviewers do ask incredibly challenging questions, but their main goals are to see how you fit with the program, that you think critically, and you're on your way to becoming a good scientist. Basically, you should prepare to interview with the professors you chose on your form by reading their papers and coming up with some questions, read through your personal statement again and really know your research, and have some questions about the program/Baltimore/Hopkins ready to go. If you have any more questions about Hopkins, feel free to message me. I know the pre-interview anxiety was terrible on my nerves/mental health, so I'm willing to help out.

Congratulations to the students who will be interviewing at Hopkins! I'm a current first year BME PhD student there and I know that we're really excited to meet all of you during the interview weekend. I also wanted to say that if you haven't received an interview invitation yet, it might still be on its way. I believe they're being sent individually so it takes some time to send them all. I think I got mine last year around 10-11 pm on the second day they sent them out. That being said, they should all be out by the end of the week.

BME is an incredibly broad field, so it's not uncommon that people switch interest areas from another type of engineering to BME. I would say that BME allows it more than, say, a chemical engineer trying to switch to mechanical engineering, just because biology is so complicated that you can find an application for any STEM field. As an example, my BME PhD program, we have many people who majored in mechanical, chemical, and electrical engineering as well as computer science, biology, chemistry, and math majors. As long as you can demonstrate to an admissions committee that you have a reason for making the switch and highlight what your experiences could bring to the table, it wont be a problem. I majored in biochemistry in undergrad and found a good fit for doing a BME PhD. I know that it's even easier for people with any engineering background at all to get into a BME program than it is for a biologist, because some BME departments think that biologists can't do math (I was actually told this during an interview). If you're planning on doing a BME PhD, definitely take more biology relevant to your area of interest if you can. Not only will it help your research and coursework in graduate school, admissions committees like to see that you've gone above and beyond your degree requirements to prepare for their program. BME PhD programs are as well funded as any other engineering program, which are (generally) much better funded than science or math. You'll get a stipend (can vary widely between 18-37k), tuition waived, and probably health insurance. You still have a lot of time and I wouldn't limit your search to only public US universities. Since PhD programs in STEM waive tuition, public vs private isn't really an issue. I don't have any advice on the schools mentioned, but I wish you good luck in your future applications!

Heh. It definitely depends on the school. I got 79th percentile in quantitative. Kind of embarrassing among my peers. Oops. When I interviewed for the my BME PhD program, I was told that I was borderline between getting an interview and not because of my math GRE score, but one of the professors saw that I had won a math scholarship as a freshman so I got the interview. My interview went well and I got accepted. I don't think my school cares as much about the GRE. Other schools probably do, because it was my only top 10 acceptance.

Your GPA and publication number is kind of low. Are you writing any more publications between now and next fall? I think your GRE is competitive. Just make sure you are able to tie your research experiences and future directions together really well in your personal statement. How would you fit in with those programs? Send it to your letter writers before they write their letters so they can tailor it to your specific application. If you have a strong personal statement and all of your letters are strong, I think you'd be a good applicant to those programs. Also, that seems like a lot of places to apply, so unless you're not doing anything else other than working on these all day I would try to narrow it down to about 6-8 schools you think your interests fit really well with.

Thanks for the input! Last year the organizers asked if there was any interest in having a completely separate non-alcoholic event and there was interest, but also concern that if people didn't go to the regular event that they would miss out on socializing with most of the department. Instead they booked a room at a bar and set up a bunch of non-alcohol related games. I actually didn't drink at all and still thought it was pretty fun, so I think we'll probably gauge the interest in a non-alcohol event and either do something similar to the previous year or plan a simple board game night with desserts. I don't think the department is willing to pay for separate hotel rooms for students. You can get your own room, but it's basically on your dime. I'm pretty sure they charge the student extra if they want to stay separately. The department also has students stay with grad students to 1) save money 2)get the grad student's opinion on other students (one of the interviewees I roomed with was bashing other interviewees and was really negative but we didn't know until we actually spent more time with her) which has probably more weight in admission than it should 3) give students a general feel for safe/nice areas to live (I'm in Baltimore, so that's an issue). I've heard really positive things from my interview class about their hosts, with the only negative comments being that some people lived a bit far from the airport. I know that the department is unwilling to pay for a hotel Friday night, so either you stay with a student or you pay for your own hotel room. Technically interview stuff ended on Friday night, but our department booked through this awful travel agency that made most of us stay until Saturday evening so we had no choice but to stay with a student or cough up extra money. We're letting students book their own travel I think, so the students should be able to leave after the main stuff on Friday if they really wanted to. The comments on diversity are great! I know our women in engineering type organization had a representative give a talk, but it might be good to do a diversity social as well! I think it's really interesting to hear about admission from the other side of things now... For example, if you don't go to all of the events, it's not directly a black mark, but since the students wont know you as well they probably won't remember to say anything about you. I also am sure I'll feel really weird about having any power in someone else's admissions decision.

Thanks! I had a frustrating experience today. We're working on a rotation project together at my advisor's request because it's easier to train two people at once. Well, we were presenting today and she tried to give the half of the presentation that I agreed to give and had practiced. I can't tell if she's just oblivious or is trying to one up me to our PI... She always does that in meetings too. I don't understand why, since we've both been guaranteed full funding and acceptance into the lab. I guess I'm just ready to work alone...

So the first year PhD students in my program are basically in charge of making interviews happen. We don't pick who comes, who they interview with, or book travel, but we're supposed to take care of everything else. This seems like a whole lot of pressure to put on the newbies, so I wanted to hear what you loved or hated about your interviews, things you wish would have happened, or what you're hoping for when you do go. Any horror stories? Anything that made you decide that you wanted to definitely go to a school? Some info about what we do: The weekend goes from Wednesday-Saturday Students stay in a hotel until Friday night, when they stay with current PhD students to get more of a feel for life here We have a fancy formal dinner with the faculty and current students We have a bar crawl with the current students on the Friday night There are the typical one-on-one interviews with faculty plus the department gives a ton of talks We did a student housing tour, where we actually toured the different places that people lived and they gave us the pros and cons of certain neighborhoods Any advice would be super helpful so I can bring it up to the other first years at our meeting! I know it's early in the process, but we apparently need to book venues and stuff pretty soon.

Definitely contact people you're interested in working with. Make sure to read up on some of their latest papers and really think about how you could be a good fit and learn a lot from their lab. It would be a huge mistake to send out a generic email to a bunch of different professors. It should take 30 minutes to a couple of hours to get familiar enough with their work to craft a good email. That being said, it shouldn't be to long either. Just ask whether they are accepting Masters students next year (they may or may not know yet) and whether they would be interested in working with someone of your particular expertise. I think it would be better if you had someone who really knows you and your accomplishments to do this. Your coursework sounds sufficient to not limit you. Your GPA is a bit low for PhD, but I think it will suffice for Masters if your research experience is rigorous. Make sure to mention your publications and presentations if your SOP. Reviewers don't really care as much about GPA as they do research experience and how well you "fit" with their program.

You don't need to go for pithy. I would say that you shouldn't go for pithy, because it could sound really gimmicky and it puts you at the mercy of your reviewer's sense of humor. Just make a cohesive story between and within your essays.

Are you thinking about universities in the United States? PhD or masters? Staying in genetic engineering or bioinformatics? Without your publishing or presentation record it's difficult to say, but based on your GPA I would primarily apply to mid-ranked BME PhD programs or higher ranked masters programs with a 1-2 applications to top 25 ranked BME programs, because you never know unless you try. That might narrow down your search, but it's important to really understand your research interests and that will narrow it further. BME is an incredibly broad field. Also, did you take differential equations? Some programs require that.

I've been really lucky to get into the grad school and lab of my dreams and was excited to start my first research rotation. When I interviewed, everything seemed basically perfect and I really enjoyed myself there. However, I just started my first rotation along with another first year PhD student. We're training together all day and our advisor also suggested we write a review paper together on my proposed thesis project, which she has hardly helped out with so far. She's relatively nice, but she's outspoken, almost to a fault. When we meet with our potential PI, she dominates the conversation and when I try to say something, I almost always get interrupted and can't finish my train of thought. I'm getting really upset that I can't get my questions answered or comments heard because she talks over me when I try to ask something. I'm getting to the point where I kind of just want to leave the lab and try somewhere else instead, even though the research, the other grad students, and the PI are great. I'm also worried that everyone thinks I'm a complete idiot because I've basically stopped talking in lab meeting because I know I wont be able to finish saying anything anyway. It doesn't help that I switched fields and already feel like a failure almost all the time. Any advice on what I should do?

Hi! I'm a 1st year BME PhD student at Hopkins. It's great you're thinking about things early! I can't say much without knowing your research interests, but it sounds like you'd be a strong applicant for Masters programs. If I were you, I would work on trying to raise that GPA. I think the average undergraduate GPA for our Masters is around 3.7. That said, admissions is always a holistic endeavor and if your research, personal statement, and reference letters are great it shouldn't matter as much. Maybe try looking at top 15-25 programs and see if your research interests line up!

The only disadvantages of taking the GRE multiple times are time, cost, and money. Admissions reps will not look down on your application for trying to take it again; many people take it 2 times so it's not unusual at all. I have no clue what the cutoff is and I'm sure it varies by department. I don't think it's necessarily a hard line. In particular, my quantitative GRE score was the same as yours (considered really low here), but I had gotten some math scholarships which compensated. Admissions tend to try and take a holistic approach and consider the entire application, but when there are 500 other applicants they take some shortcuts with the score. Take some time to research departments that have really strong programs in computational medicine, explain the reason why you don't have as much bioengineering background, and really hit hard on what your experiences will bring into your program. You might also consider applying to a Masters program to get some BME research experience.

Sending them an email to let them know you're interested in their work before you apply is a great idea. However, make sure you do your research on their lab (read a couple of current paper and their website) before sending an email. Ask a question about the papers that you couldn't find by googling. Ask whether they will be accepting any new students for fall 2016; professors don't always take students every year. You could also ask a bit about where projects are heading and what you could expect if you were accepted and started working in their lab. Just make sure the emails are thoughtful and not generic and you'll likely get a response. If you send a generic "Dear Sir/Madam, I am very interested in your innovative work and would like to be a graduate student in your lab" email, you will likely never get a reply and can actually negatively impact your chances for admission. Be specific. Be thoughtful. Do your research. Crafting a good initial contact email should take at least an hour, including the the you spent researching their lab. Good luck!

Hi! I'm currently a first year BME PhD at Johns Hopkins University and just went through the application process a few months ago. I think your experience as a medical doctor could potentially make you a good fit for JHU! Our department is very focused on interdisciplinary and translational research with our medial school (the department is jointly managed by the medical and engineering schools) and someone with a medical background could be a really good candidate. However, the international application pool is very competitive, so if you could possibly take the GRE again and raise your quantitative score 3-4 points and your verbal score 4-5 points, I think you'd have a very good chance at getting in. If not, I still think your application would be competitive here (or at other top schools) as long as you have a strong personal statement and recommendation letters. These are much more important than test scores. Test scores sometimes just serve as a cutoff, as in the school won't look at students with scores below a certain threshold. After that, it doesn't matter what your score is. Other schools look more holistically, but even there test scores rank low on the priority list. Finally, the schools you apply to depend upon the research you want to get involved with. Really try to research prospective departments and see if your interests line up, otherwise you could have a perfect resume, perfect scores, and glowing recommendation letters and still receive a rejection based upon "fit" with the department. I know there are lots of universities to look at, but if you know what research you want to do broadly (prosthetics, tissue engineering, neural interfacing, imaging, etc) it will quickly narrow down the departments you could potentially apply to. Good luck!

That totally depends on which school you're applying to and what fields they really excel at. For example, a school like WashU has a really high standard of admission for BME, but a bit less so for other majors. A school might have an amazing aerospace engineering program but an average chemical engineering program; it would be easier to become Chem-E there.The competitiveness depends completely on the department.

Are you looking for a Masters or PhD program? Would you have your own funding or would you need scholarships?

I actually really liked the interview weekend, but they had me do 5 or 6 interviews so I was busy the whole time. Nobody has gotten reimbursed yet, but we should be getting checks in 2-3 weeks from now. I'm going there in the fall and I can let you (bme15Applicant) know when I get my check back. It is really frustrating to eat $600 in airfare costs. I had to buy two plane tickets because my first flight out of Baltimore was cancelled and the next one wouldn't leave for 5 days! If you're not seriously considering a school, I definitely agree that going on the visit is a complete waste of your time and their money (or your money, in the case of JHU). Just stay at home and reflect on all the other awesome visits you'll get to go on! All that traveling is exhausting.

You should definitely apply if there are some groups you'd want to work in! I'm entering the JHU BME Ph.D program for tissue engineering in the fall. My math GRE was low, but they looked at my entire application and realized I had won math scholarships and competitions so they wanted to give me a shot at the interviews. Be clear in your application how your experience feeds into the particular project or subject you're interested in (writing the NSF GRF proposal helped me with that) and tailor a cohesive story. Applying to grad school isn't really the same as undergrad. I applied to 8 programs (JHU as my dream, several other great ones, and a couple which I thought were "safe"). In the end, only two accepted me because I fit what they were looking for in students. Good luck with the application process! It's a stressful time. After submitting your apps, I suggest avoiding forums like this and instead enjoying time with friends and family as you'll likely be moving away for grad school.