Extra Espresso

Ooh, I'll get to meet lots of you this interview cycle! So excited!!

Thirded on the Johns Hopkins interview! I have a concert I have to play in during the first interview weekend, so I am accepting the second one. Will I see any of you there?

When I got my interview at MIT, I knew I was waaaaay too excited to try to spell out Massachusetts correctly, so I just put MIT (can't embarrass myself that way!) I just searched for my field or MIT to avoid sifting through the millions of Maassaaachusett in the results

Ooooh, that's great! Thank you! I don't know about Facebook, but my LinkedIn profile has definitely seen a surge in views since I turned in my applications. One view was from a grad student at a school I applied to, and the rest don't show me any information but location, but they are all areas I have applied. I can second that the high humidity is miserable. Super miserable. Thankfully, it's actually quite nice outside in the spring and fall, and winter isn't too dreadfully cold, so it's only the summer months that are truly miserable.

national pride

Draft pick

@Edotdl Thank you for the reassurance! I'm feeling a lot more confident about it now after talking to people. That was actually a mistake in quoting on my part! I didn't mean to revive a way old topic- I was actually trying to quote this: Somehow the complete wrong quote ended up in my post - oops! Sorry everyone!

This. So much this.

I'm hoping it has a positive effect on my sanity. I'll have so many other things to focus on, so my mind won't have time to stress about interview invites!

One of my programs has one posted interview and two posted rejections and it's radio silence over here. I'm hoping in this situation no news is at least not bad news!

There's a chance I'll be going from a warmer climate to a colder climate as well, and I'm kind of nervous about it! I've never lived anywhere where it actually gets very cold, so I'm looking at it as my next great adventure.

I hope not! I think they'll forgive you, especially since it's your undergrad school. If you're super worried about it, you could email the admissions office and ask if they could update your SOP with a corrected one. I did that for my two most grievous errors (e.g., mixing up the department in the header and multiple times in the SOP). The three that I left uncorrected are ones were I said essentially "I want to get a PhD in biomedical engineering" and their programs were bioengineering, or vice versa. I'm really hoping they just overlook that part.

Thank you!! I luckily was able to switch out the worst offenders, and I am hoping that the minor mistakes fly under the radar. It now only affects three of my applications, so I am very relieved.

I think it's a topic you'll definitely want to address in your SOP. Obviously you have proven that you are a strong student, with your recent GPA being a 3.9. Where it asks for the cumulative GPA, I think you need to put your GPA including all classes even the ones when you were struggling with health problems, but in your SOP, you should state that you have a 3.9 for the last 100 credits and some short statement about the reason for the low grades. From what I've read in other threads, a short explanation without too much detail is best as long as you address it. Also, if you have a strong relationship with one of your LOR writers, you could ask them to address it. I don't have any experience with your particular field/program, so you may want to see what others from your area say!

Also, I'm going to copy over my profile from the other thread in case applicants in the future come check out the thread! Undergrad Institution: Large state schoolMajor(s): Chemical EngineeringMinor(s): NoneGPA in Major: 4.00Overall GPA: 4.00Position in Class: I'm assuming around top 2-3%Type of Student: Domestic White FemaleGRE Scores (revised/old version): revisedQ: 170V: 170W: 6Research Experience: 3 years in my undergraduate research lab, Pharmacy School: independent project on chemotherapeutic drug delivery: 9 first-authored presentations-- 3 national conferences, 2 regional conferences with one award, 4 school presentations (all official symposiums), 7 second-authored presentations-- 4 national conferences with two awards, 1 regional conference, 2 school presentations 3 summer research internships, all different labs: specialized NIH internship (not the general SIP), two at a biomedical institute near home, worked on a polymer lyophilization project, a metabolomics project, and a proteomics project, four symposium presentations First-authored publication from NIH internshipAwards/Honors/Recognitions: Goldwater, three Undergraduate Research Fellowships, Top Chemical Engineering Student Award (chosen by department), Phi Kappa Phi Top Student Awards for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd years, several departmental scholarshipsPertinent Activities or Jobs: Peer Tutor through library program, help found BMES chapter at school and served as VP for two years, Tau Beta Pi, Omega Chi Epsilon (ChemE honor society), Phi Kappa Phi, AIChEAny Miscellaneous Accomplishments that Might Help: Band for four years (first chair on instrument for most semesters), traveled for one week internationally in two semesters on concert tours, took one chemical engineering lab abroad last summerSpecial Bonus Points: Applied to NSF, super strong LOR (PI from undergrad, PI from NIH internship/publication, professor and research collaborator with undergrad research PI), large variety of research skills, took 5 years to complete degree because of band/research Applying to Where: All BioE/BME Hopkins, UCSD, MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley/UCSF, U Penn, Cornell, Columbia, Harvard, U Virginia, U of Washington

Thank you!! I'm hardcore jealous, pterosaur! I'm hoping it's just that the professors I am interested in haven't contacted people. *crosses fingers* Either way, I've got less than two weeks before the other schools I am interested in start sending notifications, so hopefully good news is on the way!

I'm in the same boat with the big city! That was actually something I was looking for when applying to schools, and, thankfully, pretty much all of the programs in my field are located in or near big cities. I'm so pumped.

I'm out of reputation for the day, but I agree! Consolidating would make it easier for us all to communicate.

If I could, I 100% would. I explained the situation in my response to the invitation, so I'm trying to have hope! Thank you - that does make me feel better.

Thank you!! I am so excited about MIT's program, so I really want to make the interview work. That makes me feel better that there was a small group on a different weekend - hopefully it won't affect my chances!

I didn't even see this thread- I've been posting in the other BME thread floating around here! I got an interview for MIT's BE program - so excited!! I'm really nervous because I have to ask for an alternate weekend. @tuckbro, do you know anything about alternate interview weekends at MIT?

I got my first interview notification two days ago, and I am still on top of the world! Probably going to celebrate with a margarita. It's basically expected in biology and bioengineering. I believe it's also common in chemistry but not chemical engineering, which strikes me as odd. I'm applying in bioengineering, and 9 of the 11 programs I applied to have interviews.

I got an MIT BE invite two days ago (BEYOND EXCITED), so I can confirm that they have at least begun sending invites. Last year, I had a friend get an invite towards the end of January. I'm not sure what that means about this year's invites, though!

That sounds really cool!! Definitely different from my field of interest, but I can imagine all of the possibilities!

@pterosaur Congrats- that's so exciting!! What research area are you hoping to go into?