Ari_OP

Thanks for the responses, everyone! This is definitely helpful. To clarify - this school does have a lot of great things and fulfills a lot of my related/secondary research interests. There is one professor who works on my primary interest - fibromyalgia. After interviewing and meeting with him I do think I'll love the school, so I'm heavily leaning toward accepting an offer at this point. The question is more if I should hold out for a potentially slightly better position in the future while taking some time to try out working in biotech. TXInstrument11 - I'm starting to think that if you like the people and have any interest in that school, that it would be worth it. I'm half way through my first year out of undergrad (didn't get accepted last year) and it's not necessarily easy to find a relevant job within the necessary time frame before applying again.

My husband and I applied at the same time originally. We both made a list of schools we liked and then chose where to apply based on similar locations to each other's lists. I didn't get in the first round and needed another year for my bachelor's, so he went to the one school he got into and we did long distance for a year. Now he's finishing his master's, I've moved to where his school is, and I'm applying. I gave him a list of schools, he looked up the areas to see if he could find jobs, and I narrowed the schools I applied to accordingly. We discuss possibilities along the way, but as a master's student he doesn't really have time to join me on visits.

I was rejected from all the schools I applied to last year. It was difficult for me to get something else lined up because aside from graduating I was also planning a wedding and moving across the country during that time. I assumed it wouldn't be too hard to find a lab tech job once I moved, but I was wrong. Ultimately, I found a job with a biotech company (albeit almost completely unrelated to my work) and spent the rest of my time focused on getting in touch with prospective mentors. Networking, I've learned, is critical. Anything you can do in terms of networking will be beneficial. I still might not get the result I'm looking for this year, but I'm optimistic about the future because through talking to people (which is terrifying for me as a super introverted person) I've learned about the variety of the field and opportunities.

I applied to six schools for a PhD in neuroscience. So far, I've been rejected from my top choice (UCSF) and only heard about an interview from one - City of Hope - even though professors at every school have expressed interest in working with me. I just met with a professor at Stanford in person on Friday and it went phenomenally. He's going to put in a good word for me, but he says he doesn't have much power at this stage (it also might be too late). He also suggested looking into jobs with Genentech and Merck. San Francisco is really the center for pain research (my focus), and I would love to work for this professor. City of Hope looks to be a great, versatile school, but my opportunities to work on pain would dwindle. In your opinion, would it be better to accept a grad school offer or go to SF, work at a biotech company or get my clinical lab science licensure and apply again next year to Stanford and UCSF? TL;DR - Might only get into one school. To auto accept or consider better future opportunities that with a bit more risk?