sfrie

shadowclaw-- No word from my POI about UNC, but he is new to the school, so I expect he doesn't know. I can't imagine it will take much longer since most of the other departments at UNC have already gotten back to their applicants, but who knows with EEB. I'm just sitting tight until the end of the month (and frantically checking my email/the website daily).

As a heads up: If anyone else applied to UCLA's EEB program, I just got word from my POI that the admissions committee is about to start meeting (likely next week).

I started off around a year ago looking for PIs that had similar interests to me (I had a very good idea of what I wanted to study beforehand). I basically sent all POIs emails stating my interests, a sentence about my experience, their research focus (i.e. some sort of proof that I knew who they were/what they did) and inquiring if they would be taking graduate students in the next year. Something that hugely helped was attaching a copy of my CV to every email and offering more details upon request. I got very positive responses from everyone I emailed and ended up having informal skype interviews with all POIs prior to sending out applications to their respective universities. I'm really hoping it will pay off when I hear back about my applications since I've already heard from multiple POIs that I'm their top pick! Best of luck with the whole process. Can't tell you how happy I am that applications are done, though this waiting period is quite suspenseful.