biochemgirl67

Do it! Every single admissions person I've talked to has seemed understanding and willing to help. Except UTK, but the people at UW from that program are super nice.

The specific program. It was on their website as the primary contact.

So I called and they said they are in the process of completing the interview invites for immunology! You can call and ask and they'll look you up to see if you are on the list. I wasn't, but I kinda feel like it's a blessing. I just previously had looked up apartment prices in the area and OH MY GOODNESS they're really expensive.

Hmmmm... Maybe I'll call for immunology. But thank you!

Thank you! I will be sending spectacular vibes your way for doing this for the rest of us!

Please post on here if you do! I'm dying to find out! (And I applied to immunology too, by the way)

Someone just put a Stanford Biosciences Immunology result on the survey for an interview. If anyone is this person, could you please confirm on here? It would make me very happy to know if they are actually sending out invites, even if I didn't get one.

Here's how I did it. I only had room to talk about one professor in depth so I chose one I really liked and talked about why, including a connection to a recent publication to show that I read the paper. However, I only had room to discuss one professor in depth so if I mentioned others it was through a list. I'm not saying what I did was the best, but just that it's an option. Maybe you can mesh taking about your personal connection to the prof and his work to balance it. But you should mention him if you're communication has been meaningful to you.

If it means anything to you, I personally think you'll get some good offers. I can't find your profile of stats, but you've applied broadly to many schools and that's always a good thing. It's too early to be thinking you're rejected and that's just depressing anyways. Hold out until the end of January and I bet you'll get some invites.

I received an invite earlier in December in the first wave of invites (December 17th). I would probably say they already released their invites but of course I couldn't know for certain. Maybe check their website early next week? They definitely did say everything would be released by late December though.

It's considered a pretty prestigious school here and internationally. In my personal opinion, (I'm from the Midwest, just for reference) it's an awesome school.

It's a good school! But to find out if you think it's good for you, go to the department's website and pick out the faculty members you like. Then go to PubMed and search their names. The results will show you what they actually work on (besides the rarely updated lab websites) and how productive they are and what kinds of journals they publish in. After all that, you will 100% know if you like the work that goes on there. But yes, to quickly answer your question, I believe it does have some nice work coming out of it! I'm no expert though.

Money, facilities, collaboration. I don't go to a prestigious undergrad. It's a good school and the faculty were all educated at top 10 schools, but my department and university and not top 10. This compares easily to Harvard. There was so much more money there. The department I worked for had excess money so they bought everybody a backpack. If you wanted testing of any sort you just did it. You could buy the fancy equipment for ease of use. Our flow cytometer broke and a part was ordered that day. At my home institution, we are greatly limited to the testing we can do due to expenses. I have to engineer set ups rather than just buy the expensive plastic pieces. It's made me an inventive scientist, but it was also nice to be somewhere where the money and funding wasn't such an issue. Elite institutions foster great science at a high rate of speed in part due to the money, I think.

I just want to see it. I didn't like LA when I was there for the symposium but... I've heard good things about the bay area. But I'm like 90% sure it won't be an issue. My current approach with both Stanford and Rockefeller is to expect nothing and therefore not be disappointed. (although secretly I really hope Rockefeller comes through)

I've released my angst to the great beyond and am trying not to think about it. Doesn't help that Stanford starts up again next week. #firstworldproblems

I think we know the answer to the question already; indeed, prestige has an impact on success. It's why we're all reaching for the stars on our applications. However, I think it's worth noting that in this age of limited funding, incoming grad students are probably more concerned with a department's prestige or the quality of work coming out of a particular program than the overall institution. For example, the University of Tennessee is not prestigious. It just isn't. However, their microbiology department plays host to some of the national experts in marine microbiology. If you were an aspiring scientist interested in those things, you may choose UTK over some other more canonically prestigious place because the program has better research coming out of it. The elite institutions are elite for a reason. I think we can all agree that it's important to go to a good school but that the definition of "good" can actually vary. And finally, a name of an institution will not help to get you published. It's all about the validity of your work. Well, weird sporadic politics aside.

Well I might also look into a job outside of academic research to make money and to get more diverse experience. The people I met who spent a couple years in industry have been highly motivated and successful. If there are no options for your field or you loathe the idea, that's fine. But I personally think "real world" experience is a big deal. It shows you're a capable candidate. And saving your paycheck for a couple years may allow you to apply broadly to many schools.

Here's another option, just for the heck of it. You could get a job and work full time either instead of or while getting your master's. Many people in my part of the country do that and it seems to give them an overall focus for their career plans. It makes them attractive to PhD programs because they have an enormous ability to state what they want and why they want it. In addition, how bad could getting a paycheck be? I have literally 0% of an idea how easy it is to get a job in your field, but in mine, I can easily get a job in industry working in a lab. Just another option!

Lol yeah. I just like knowing the truth. It's made my holidays 100% better. So I'm glad I can help someone else with my rejection!

Look into patterning and limb development to give you a solid intro to what you say you're interested in. Adcoms really understand that you are developing interests rather than stating project goals. In addition, I would suggest applying to umbrella programs rather than a specific department to give yourself some leeway. Maybe sign up for a developmental biology class at the senior/grad level for next semester to be able to say that you like whatever it is at a deep level. You could also take a course in molecular genetics at the grad level to get a crash course in techniques used in the field. I did, and it really helped me understand the application of molecular genetics to other fields. In addition, the SOP is as much about how your experiences fit your goals as what you want to do. Don't worry about writing that SOP now. You'll write it at the end of next summer after you've had hopefully a summer research experience plus a semester of research and course experience to bolster your goals.

Broad interests at this point are okay. Really, they are. HOWEVER, you do need to be working towards narrowing your interests. You cannot honestly be broadly and equally interested in ALL of molecular biology because it's simply too much. Instead of working on where you want to go, you need to be working on the what you want to do. And the way to do this is to get on PubMed and start reading papers. The statement of probably being happy with any project actually can come across as poorly thought out and actually immature in a way. It means you haven't put enough time or effort to delve sufficiently deep into a given topic to determine whether or not you actually have long-term, late night, and persistent interest in it. For example, I have decided I am interested in molecular signaling in the context of the both the immune system and the host:pathogen interface/grievous diseases such as cancer. Now, this is actually really really broad if you think about it. Am I interested in transcriptional networks interfaced with signaling pathways? Yes! Could I study intercellular interactions that change cell behavior on a molecular level? Yes! Would I be interested in the way that pathogens perturb the host/immune systems through signaling? YES! I underline that interest with my graduate-level classes and diverse research experiences. My direction will probably change, but my foundation (based on the literature, coursework, and research) allows me to highlight my developing interests and prove that I've given it some thought. My advice would be to do the same thing; take a highly specialized class, read a bunch of papers, and FORGET ABOUT CHOOSING GRAD PROGRAMS FOR NOW. You have plenty of time. You'll make better choices if you really can know what you want before you start choosing. I would hold off on making that list until at least the end of spring semester.

So my fall grades come in today and it turns out one of my professors from the series of microbiology graduate classes I took this semester forgot to put in grades. Now I get to wait for him to do that before I can submit them to Princeton. How do you just forget to submit an entire class of grades??? I'm just venting because it's the worst time of year for tthis.

Congratulations!!!

When I emailed the coordinator, he said all the invites were out and he would send rejections in a couple weeks. So... Yeah. Accept NYU.

You should call them. (Or email) Because they completely understand the scheduling hell we're going through. Both places I called were very helpful and did not seem annoyed at all. However, their offices may be closed now. (I tried to call University of Tennessee yesterday to ask when their interview dates are and they were closed until next week.)