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Hello all! Good luck with all of your interviews and decisions! I was in your shoes two years ago, and I definitely don't want to relive that stress. But, interviewing was a great experience and really helped me narrow down what I was interested in and what type of people I wanted to work with. If you have any questions about programs, let me know! I obviously know the most about JHU, but I did go on several interviews to other programs.

Hopkins acceptances will be somewhat staggered this year depending on fellowships/RAships. I know each RA professor is making their decisions separately, and they may contact the students themselves when they decide or the department may contact. Also, the fellowship acceptances from the first weekend and the second weekend may be sent out at different times. So, even if you see that other people have been accepted, that definitely doesn't mean you won't be! I believe we are offering more RAships this year than in the past, so that complicates the process a bit and may make things a little slower.

By this point, you might already have a list of the places that are really worth visiting for you. If you have several invites already, you may want to just decline any future schools that don't rank high enough to be worth visiting.

It's probably likely at this point that we are only accepting people who have already received invites, but I'm not in any way involved in admissions, so I don't know anything definite.

You should wear business professional for the interview day (I wore a blouse with a black blazer, black slacks, and nice flats for most of my interviews. A lot of people were like me, some were just a bit more casual.). For girls, don't go too heavy on makeup or perfume but do try to look put together. For the other days of the weekend, it depends. If you could be around faculty, you should wear at least business casual. If it's a casual activity with grad students, jeans are fine. The grad students will definitely be less dressed up than you, so you won't be too casual there. I doubt clothing is a make or break type of thing, but I do know impressions are important, and you want to leave an impression that you are an intelligent and capable student that is an excellent fit for their graduate program.

That happened to me at several schools! It might be that they know those labs aren't ones that you're interested in, but those faculty are on the admissions committee and want to interview students for that reason. It also could be that the other faculty you are interested in are traveling that weekend and they wanted to make sure you got three interviews. It could also be that those faculty liked your profile and requested you. In any case, I wouldn't straight-out say you aren't interested- skim their papers so you are prepared, and, if they ask you about your research interests, be honest without talking bad about their particular field. I can only speak for JHU, but, unless you are international, I think we have sent all of the interview invites we are going to. (That's for PhD, the Masters program is completely separate.) I did get my Columbia interview quite late last year, I think it may have been later than this, so there's still plenty of hope for that one!

I definitely got interview invites from BME programs later than this last year! I recommend checking out the results page here for programs that you applied to to see if they have sent out invites/acceptances yet. But, even if they have, you don't need to panic. A lot of schools have staggered invites because of having different sub-programs or having some faculty being slow to make decisions. It's still early, so there's plenty of time to hear back from programs. In other news, Hopkins's first interview weekend is next weekend, and we're really excited to have you guys here!

I think that one came while I was at my JHU interview, so that was mid-February.

Also, just as an FYI, I got accepted into Harvard SEAS last year without any Skype interviews because the PI I got accepted with just didn't do them. So don't panic and assume you were rejected just because you don't have any Skype interviews lined up - there still could be good news coming!

When I was in the middle of interviews and trying to narrow down schools, I got so tired of people telling me I'd "know" when I had found the right school. I kept asking people how they picked, and several of them said they picked the place that felt right. It annoyed me because I wanted real advice on what to look for and how to decide, but I ended up doing the exact same thing. Once you find the top couple that check all the right boxes, the final decision really is which place feels right. Good luck!!

Totally doable (and actually exactly what I did for those two programs)! Be sure to request to stay with a current student on Friday night (that's an optional night, but we'd love to have people hang out in Baltimore a little longer). I will say Berkeley/UCSF's weekend is a little more tiring than others because you visit both campuses, but having the first day to just do fun things makes it easier.

No problem! It is definitely in ballpark range of NSF. (Although you do get a one-time bonus from Hopkins in addition to NSF if you win!) If you have any specific funding questions, definitely ask Hong Lan. She's our program coordinator, Yeah, I did eight interviews... I got ten offers and ultimately declined two, but I probably should have filtered a bit better. Part of my decision to go on so many came from the fact that I only applied to two schools for undergrad, and I chose my alma mater because they gave me a scholarship and the other school didn't. With graduate school, I didn't have to worry about the finances and could go wherever I wanted (and got accepted), so I had a really hard time narrowing things down before my visits! Ultimately, I don't regret it at all. I was considering every school I interviewed at, and the interviews gave me a great feel for where I was interested and what research excited me the most. Having so many interesting conversations about research helped me pinpoint what I was the most excited about, and visiting that many schools made me realize exactly what I wanted from the graduate school I attended. If I had done my research better before applying, I might have been able to narrow the list down, but it was a great experience for me to do it this way. The toughest parts of doing so many interviews are scheduling them all and the fatigue. By numbers 7 and 8, I was pretty fried (especially since both of those were after a week-long international trip with an organization at my school). I still tried to be as prepared as possible and consider each school fully, but I don't know if I got as much out of those visits as I could because I was pretty drained. Scheduling is also a pain. I actually set up as many in a row as I could, so my schedule was 1 by itself, 4 in a row, 1 by itself, international trip, 2 in a row. That helped cut down on time in airports and missed classes, and was less fatiguing than doing them all separately. I also had to do two alternate weekends because I couldn't make the main weekends due to scheduling conflicts. I was able to get away with it in coursework because I only had one regular class and my ChemE senior design project, and I basically did design non-stop in January so my group didn't hate me for skipping out on them for most of February/March. By the end of my visits, I had it narrowed down to three programs, and I pretty quickly narrowed it down to two due to fit. They both had pretty similar pros and cons lists, so from there, it was really a feeling more than anything else. I kept coming back to Hopkins for the intangible reasons, and everyone I knew said they knew I'd end up here just because of the way I talked about it. But Hopkins wasn't my first choice pre-interview, and may not have even been in my top three, and my top choice pre-interview didn't even make my short list after I visited because it's so different being at the school and interacting with the people in the program than it is looking at a website. My feelings and impressions weren't justified in the slightest, but that might just be me. I was way off-base for several programs, especially about the personality of the program and the people in it. There were two interviews I could have skipped, looking back. One of them I added at the last second even though I was starting to narrow down on where I wanted to go and the other wasn't a super great fit on paper, but I had fooled myself into thinking it was. The biggest thing you can't ignore is your research fit. From websites and papers, you can start to draw up a short-list of who at each school you think you would be interested in researching with, and if there are schools that really don't have a great fit, that's where I'd start to cut down the list. Also, if location is a factor for you, that's an easy one to cut your list down with. Seconded on the no stone unturned comment. I was afraid I'd end up regretting my school choice if I didn't check out every program I was interested, and I can say confidently that I made the right decision for me. By the time I decided, I knew for sure that Hopkins was the best fit and that I'd be happy here, and I was confident in it because I had looked everywhere. It was a really great feeling when I finally accepted my offer. (Sorry for the novel guys...)

I don't know what the standard stipend will be for the incoming class, but it will be in the about 30K range. Everyone offered admission into the PhD program will be offered that stipend, full tuition coverage, and health and dental insurance. If you are offered acceptance, your acceptance letter will have the exact stipend amount you are being offered. I believe Hopkins was just slightly less than Stanford/MIT, but that was more than made up for by the cost of living difference (Baltimore is a much cheaper city to live in than SF/Palo Alto). I wouldn't ask about funding in the interview just because you will have guaranteed funding with your acceptance. If you do have funding questions, Hong is the best person to ask since she will know much more than individual professors will about that. If you want to know if a professor will have funding to take on new students, that is a fair interview question (although I'd phrase it more along the lines of just asking them if they are taking students). The professors are required to fund the standard stipend if they take you into their lab. I will say I don't know how it works for international students, but Hong should be able to answer any questions you have about that.

With interview weekends overall, have fun! Seriously - it's a chance to visit a new city, hang out with some pretty awesome graduate students (I'm not biased at all), learn about interesting research, and decide if you can see yourself there for five-ish years. Take it seriously because you aren't guaranteed acceptance and it is a professional event, but don't stress yourself out to the point where you're a nervous wreck.

I didn't apply to Duke, but I did attend a bunch of other interviews. My experience was varied depending on the professor. Nearly all of them either had my application in front of them or had read it, so they were at least familiar with my background. Probably about half of my interviews overall were with professors I requested to meet with, and the other half were with professors who had either requested me, were involved in my particular subspecialty, or were in some way involved with admissions. A lot of the interviews started with them asking about me and my background, so kind of like a 90 second elevator speech. Then, we usually either started talking about their research or mine. Most of them started with questions about my research or wanted me to give a summary of what I had worked on. Some had really specific (sometimes quite difficult) questions about my project, but most were pretty straightforward and just wanted to know what I did and what my results were. For their research, some would just start describing their current projects, some had a particular project they thought I would be interested in, and some asked if I had any questions or specific projects I wanted to talk about. I pretty frequently got asked why I applied to XYZ school, what I was looking for in a graduate program, why I was interested in their lab (if I requested them). They always asked if I had any questions. The interview style varied a ton based on the professor. Some were like a 30 minute conversation where I never really felt like I was being evaluated. There were a few where I didn't say a darn thing the entire interview and they just talked to me about their work and the program, but this wasn't too frequent. There were also ones where I was asked a lot of specific questions about my research, the techniques we used, why we tried one method over a different one, etc. Honestly, most of them were pretty fun! Within BME as a whole, post-interview acceptance rates are high, so you're already past the biggest hurdle if you have an interview. That meant a lot of the professors were predominantly interested in having a conversation and getting a feel of who I was as a scientist and sharing information about their labs. I learned so much from the people I interviewed with and got the chance to hear about some really fascinating projects. Even in labs that I didn't request meetings with, I usually found that their projects were interesting. There was the occasional really tough interview that was nerve-wracking, but most were pretty enjoyable. My biggest advice is to go in prepared to discuss your research projects and theirs. For yours, that means refreshing your memory on the goals of the project, the methods you used and why, what your biggest challenges were, and what your results are. This isn't a research defense by any means, but you want to be able to have an intelligent conversation about the work that you've done. For theirs, I recommend reading at least the abstracts on their recent papers. If there is a project you are particularly interested in, read through a couple papers on it. It's best to have a few questions prepared about their research - they don't have to be ridiculously specific, but you should have an idea of what they're doing and why it interests you. I'll be honest - with eight interview weekends, I wasn't the best about preparing for each interview ahead of time. If you have the time, definitely read up on the papers from each lab! Just don't make yourself sick with stress if you can't. I did a marathon of straight interviews, and I stressed myself out far too much because I didn't think I was prepared enough when I actually was just fine.

I had two interviews where we had the option of staying the night with the current student. One of them was in a city with a fairly low cost-of-living comparatively, and it really helped me get a feel for what it would be like to live there as a graduate student. The other was in a very high cost-of-living city, and seeing what the graduate student life was like there was one of the reasons I decided I was not interested in the school. I agree that showing you how you can live as a graduate student may be one of their goals, but it definitely can backfire if the city is expensive!

It entirely depends on your field and the specific program. For example, in chemical engineering, very few programs do interviews. Most of them just accept the candidates they want and have an Open House weekend later in the spring. In biomedical engineering, however, most programs do interview prior to acceptances. But even within BME, there are a few programs that do acceptances without interviews - Harvard and Cornell are two that I know of. Programs that do formal interviews will rarely (if ever) accept someone without an interview, so it really depends on the programs you applied to. Check out the results page and see if any of your programs have a history of doing interview weekends and also when they typically send out notifications, and that should give a good idea what to expect!

I think you're panicking because of the stress of your research project but that you're actually doing fine. You have an excellent GPA, especially for engineering, and I'm assuming you can get the GRE scores to match. My undergrad was ChemE, but I went the BME route instead of chemistry. I don't know anyone I interviewed with that had extensive publications, and I did interview with many people who had none, including at MIT and Stanford (although this was BME, not chemistry). I believe graduate schools care more about the time and effort dedicated to the research than the results that came from it. I spent three years in my undergraduate research lab and don't have any publications to show for it because it was a difficult project with a lot of challenges that came up along the way. The publication I do have is from a summer internship where they had a clear experimental plan before I started and everything went right with the research. My undergrad experience wasn't worth nothing just because I didn't publish, and it taught me a lot more about the challenges of research than the successful project did. If you're really concerned, do you have any opportunities to present? Like an undergraduate symposium or a regional conference? Those are great experiences that let you share your work and have something to "show" for your efforts. I also think a thesis would strengthen your application if you have the time for it. Also, be sure you apply to several schools! I'm not saying to apply to a bunch of "safety schools" (that really isn't even a thing for graduate school), but you should apply broadly within the type of schools you're interested in. That also improves your chance of being successful.

Also, it's perfectly fine to ask these kinds of questions at the interview, especially if the details on the website are confusing (like in this case). They'll also talk more about the coursework in one of the information sessions during the interview weekend.

In case someone else has this question, too, here's my answer: I'm a current first year in BME at Hopkins. The website on the med school curriculum is frustratingly incorrect. It is correct that you need 36 total credit hours with 18 in biology and 18 in engineering. For biology, you can opt to take some of the medical schools courses or you can take graduate-level biology courses or a mixture of both. You are in no way required to take all of the first year medical courses! Each one is a significant number of hours, so most people who choose to take the med school courses only do two or three. The pairing of anatomy + immunology + histology or pharmacology is common, and so is SFM2 (macromolecules, cell physiology, metabolism, and genetics combined in one course) + immunology. If your focus is neuro, a lot of those students take the nervous system course which nearly covers all the hours and possibly immunology or a graduate course. You are welcome to take as many medical courses as you like, and some people (myself included) take more than the required biology hours, but most people just get the 18 hours and call it good. The engineering coursework is much more like what you're used to. Nearly all of the classes are 3 hours, so most people take 2 or 3 classes each semester they aren't doing medical coursework. It's common to finish all of your course requirements by the end of your second year, but some people wait longer because they want a lighter courseload or want to take a specific class that isn't always offered. You don't have to be done with classes to take the qualifying exam; you just have to have taken enough biology and engineering courses to make up the committee members.

I do know acceptances are done differently for international students. If you don't do the campus interview, I would assume that your acceptance would be 100% on the PI interview. My guess is that, if you decided to come visit, your travel expenses would be covered up to the amount covered for domestic students, but that's complete conjecture and you'd have to talk to Hong Lan for actual answers. I'm sorry I don't have better information about the travel part I do know that we offer all international students the option of using a Skype interview in lieu of an in-person interview because of the travel difficulties, and just doing the Skype interview will not hurt your chances at all! There are several international students in the class who all just did the Skype interview. There is no difference between the two interview weekends other than there are a minor few professors who may be available only at one weekend or the other, but that should be indicated on the website. The program doesn't make any acceptance decisions until after the second weekend, so your chances of admission will not be affected by the weekend you choose (I attended the later weekend last year). The activities are all the same as well, so, if you decide to come, just pick the weekend that is more convenient for you!

I'm not @fuzzylogician, but one helpful thing you can do is read up on the professor's work ahead of time and think of some interesting questions you would want to ask! This way, if you freeze up in the moment because you're so excited about their work, you have pre-determined, intelligent questions to ask. Plus, then you get to learn even more about the things that make the professor awesome and have a better interaction with them. Also, remember that they chose you to come on this interview. That means someone in a position to decide these things decided you are a good fit and they are interested in getting to know you better. So when you feel self-conscious, try to remember that they picked you to be here, and that means you already did something to impress them!

Glad to be of assistance! I know both of the people who posted last year in real life, and they're ridiculously nice and helpful. I remember how reassuring it was to get answers from people who had done it before, so I wanted to pay it forward. It's a good sign that they are taking students if they are interviewing. If there is someone in BME you want to interview with that isn't on the list, I would email them and ask if they are taking students this year. I'd be willing to guess most professors are. We do have challenges with faculty availability on interview weekends because everyone is so busy with traveling and conferences, so not having availability is not a guaranteed sign they are not taking students! The interviews are 30 minutes each, and you will likely interview with three faculty (definitely at least three). Each faculty member has a different interview style: some will talk about their research nearly the whole time, some will ask you about your research and have specific questions to ask, some will just let you explain your research, and I've heard rumors of at least one asking math questions (but that's not the norm)! Not at all! There are several schools that do direct acceptances without interviews. Cornell and Harvard SEAS both do that.

I wouldn't worry about it! I also didn't talk with any POIs before my interview (I actually didn't talk to any POIs at any of the schools I interviewed at), and it didn't seem to be a problem. Getting to the interview is the hardest part - the goal of the interview is just for you to determine if JHU is a good fit for you and if you are a good fit for JHU. The percentage of interviewees accepted will depend on the number of RAships being offered. Hopkins does first-year funding through two ways - training grants that allow students to rotate and RAships that offer direct placement in a lab. I believe (but I'm not 100% sure) last year we were asked post-interview if we would be interested in an RAship because they knew some students were not interested in rotating and would be fine with direct placement. It definitely is a high percentage of students admitted. I have no idea about the stats at Hopkins in particular, but I think overall at the eight programs I interviewed with last year it was at least 75-80%. That's completely conjecture, though, and I don't know what it'll be for Hopkins.

Congrats! Looking forward to having you here.