kangaroomr

You were right! Got accepted on Thursday!

Oh hey that's me. Like you, I basically put together too few applications. It was also done last minute when I first applied because I was going back and forth on whether I wanted to pursue a PhD due to all the negative aspects of academia. Ultimately I decided the opportunities a PhD can provide is what I wanted. To add to that, one of my mentors made a point that even if you're qualified, part of graduate admissions is random. Your essay might have been worded in a way that irked someone on the admissions committee. There might be 20 other people who applied the same year you did and had waay more research experience/paper authorships than you did. Who knows. Research experience counts more because at the end of the day that's what a PhD is about. It's about doing research and the PhD is the pathway to get there. Think of it as a means to an end. There is more to life than school and many other life/career trajectories you can't possibly predict. That's my philosophy at least. If you get a research job and get into the nitty gritty of it you may realize you don't want to do that for the rest of your life...or you might realize you really want to. Then you can apply again the next year!

Has anyone heard from northwestern?

Legitimately shocked. Just got straight up accepted to georgia Tech (bioengineering with home school at ECE)

That’s awesome, thanks!

ok my question got answered. Just got invited to northwesterns recruitment weekend. They must be staggering invites. Holy hell, didn’t get in last year but you try again and things fall in place. Godamm. I’m speechless

Wondering about northwestern as well. Anyone hear from case western or usc?

Looks like Stanford came out too

Congrats! What were the interview dates?

I don't believe in safety schools. That assumes I HAVE to go to grad school. I don't. I'm here for particular reasons and to do particular research at programs with particular resources. I honestly could go look for a job in industry and make way more money. If anything you might consider NEU a safety school since they're a relatively new program and don't think it's ranked that highly.

so certain i'll get rejected you had to say it 4 times thanks for the encouragement. we'll see how it pans out this year.

Undergrad Institution: decent school in the northeast (no ivy league tho) Major(s): Electrical Engineering Minor(s): Biomedical Engineering GPA in Major: 3.4/4.00 Overall GPA: 3.4/4.00 Demographics/Background: First generation college student (immigrant parents), also grew up in a cult so education was never really a priority GRE Scores: Q: 168 (95%) V: 159 (82%) W: 5.0 (93%) LOR: 1 very good letter from my current supervisor (MD doing research), another 1 from tenured professor who also works with my supervisor, 1 from undergrad who supervised my undergrad project (though he hasn't submitted it so not sure if this is gonna count) Research Experience: Worked on a BCI with EEG in undergrad for a senior project, no publications, just presentations (~ 1 year) working as full time RA in epilepsy using EEG, MEG and MRI (a little over 2 years) Publications/Abstracts/Presentations: preparing a first author manuscript to be submitted in the next few months 1 coauthorship from current RA position 1 first author poster at a major conference a few months ago 5 coauthorships on other posters at major conferences Awards/Honors/Recognitions: dean's list one semester, graduated from honors program Fellowships/Funding: None, was planning on applying to NSF-GRFP, NDSEG and DOE when I get into grad school and get a stronger profile Pertinent Activities or Jobs: Was on executive board member for a student organization dedicated to building devices to enable independence for people with disabilities Other Miscellaneous Accomplishments: I did 3 co-ops as an electrical engineer each 6 months long so I have roughly 1.5 years of industry engineering experience Research Interests: BCIs, neuromechanics, neural engineering, movement restoration technology and neuroprosthetics Institutions/Programs: USC BME MIT HST University of Pittsburgh BioE Northwestern BME JHU BME Georgia Tech BME (ECE home school) UC Berkeley-UCSF joint bioengineering Stanford BioE BU Computational Neuroscience Northeastern BioE Case Western BME Comments: This is my second time applying after getting rejected everywhere last year (only applied to 6 elite schools but did get interviews at 2 so i was close)

You should also look into the HST program at MIT/Harvard. They have a neuroimaging track and lots of faculty doing neuroimaging work at the Martinos Center

Nowhere since I got rejected everywhere

This gives me stupid hope that probably won't change anything...I visited Feb 24th but got rejected last week. too.