thorerges

Never took it, wasn't necessary for Harvard/Penn/Columbia/Yale anyway. It depends on your specific application - in general, only take it if you don't have a lot of research experience and need a quick resume booster.

I received an official rejection from both the programs I applied to at MIT back in Jan. If you haven't been rejected yet, I think they're either A) Very late on your application for some reason or B ) Just looking at a potential waitlist.

I applied this cycle. Yale MCDB.

Whatever makes you feel better - I can assure you I am not the only person who has gotten a phone call with an acceptance. Regardless, I ended up choosing Harvard.

Well, I applied last year to Harvard and MIT and they rejected me. This year I just applied everywhere I can but I knew all along I wanted to go to Harvard or MIT - for Genomics those are the top 2 choices for most grad applicants. Good luck with everything!

Thanks!! Stanford gave me a call and said I am accepted, as did UW and Caltech.

I would disagree with this. As late as it is - the experience + letters are #1 and #1.

Undergrad Institution: Unknown public school, no reputation at all, no resources. Major(s): Molecular Biology, Chemistry Minor(s): Mathematics, Computer Sciences GPA in Major: 3.83 Overall GPA: 3.78 Type of Student: Male - being a minority doesn't help anyway. GRE Scores (revised/old version): Q: 87th percentile V: 80th percentile W: 98th percentile Research Experience: 1. REU at Caltech at a big lab. Got a letter from there. 2. REU at a lab at Harvard, did terribly - no letter. 3. 2 years experience as an undergrad, one first author pending. 4. 2 years as a research tech at an ivy league school, 2 letters from there. 5. 2 publications, one co-first author in review, and several pending. Awards/Honors/Recognitions: Usual stuff, nothing fancy. Any Miscellaneous Accomplishments that Might Help: I work out a lot? Special Bonus Points: Friends with several faculty at Princeton who helped me out. Applying to Where: Harvard - BBS MIT - Biology MIT - Comp Bio Stanford - Genetics UCSF - Biology UPenn - Mol Bio UPenn - Bio Columbia - Biology Caltech - Biology Duke - Genetics UW - Genome Sciences Yale - MCDB Accepted - Harvard BBS, Duke, UW, Caltech, Yale, Upenn (both programs), Columbia, Stanford. Rejected - MIT, UCSF Not terrible. Time to get to work at grad school.

Anyways, I would say technician for 2 years should do the trick (thats what I did and I got into all my top schools).

I am going open a thread on this very topic. I will link it here.

I think the most important thing to show is that you know something about their work, ask relevant questions about a future plan for their current projects. If they talk to you about experiments, ask them how they're so sure of the data etc...

Anyone know how long it takes for schools to reply post-interviews?

They finalize everything by Jan 20.

Yes they are. My PI is on the admissions committee and he was just reviewing applications right now.

Immediate Problems: 1. Too short. You need 5 paragraphs. An introduction, conclusion and 3 paragraphs in between. 2. You need at least 3 sentences in each paragraph. 3. In your concluding paragraph, you need to somewhat agree with the text but highlight a summary of why your logic is superior.

I am taking the GRE next week. Been studying for about 1.5 months from Manhattan and Magoosh. Two questions: 1. What was your last minute study schedule like? 2. I scored a 160 on the Manhattan Prep mock, and a 166 on the ETS POWERPREP II - Any emphasis as to which I should believe? I'm so nervous!!

Hello all, So I have applied to various programs around the country. I think I am a very competitive applicant for top schools. I am co-author on one paper in Science Translational Medicine, and a second author paper in PLoS Computational Biology. However, for the second author paper, I never actually spoke to the PI, just the post-doc who I worked with. Here is the catch, the post-doc and the PI actually hate each other, I know this for a fact that the PI wants him out of the lab. So I just asked the post-doc to write a letter for me and even though this went against my intuition, i really had no other choice - I had done some stellar work for this publication (It had gone out for review in both Science and Cell before reaching PLoS Comp. Bio.) Is this something that comes up frequently? Am I advised to just ignore this LOR for my next application? I have heard that institutions ignore Postdoc letters, is this true?

i wouldn't be worried about the GPA too much. If you have all those papers, you are looking at top schools.

Some people have already received rejections now, and many to-be rejected applicants have yet to hear anything. This too, may give a false impression, there is no difference. The ones who were rejected first were simply people who were at the top of the pile and got looked at first.

i haven't heard back, but that isn't really a good thing. Stanford got a ton of applicants.

As difficult as it is, medical schools deal with even more applicants. It is not hard to have a database and simply tick rejection and then have a very, very simple software that sends all sure rejections an e-mail that is personalized. Pay me a couple of grand and I can do it! It is simply a matter of, why send right away if we can wait? Otherwise, a lot of the time it is the actual faculty (e.g MIT) who send e-mails en masse, the whole process is as quick as an email.

Absolutely not.

Where did you hear this from?

I didn't think it was cool either. Completely ridiculous, I went ahead with my plans anyway.