Extra Espresso

Oh lord. I can see myself now doing that exact same thing! Thank you for the reminder. :)

floatingjellyfish, check the website - most sites have the specific time when the application is due posted on the site! All of my are either 5 PM or 11:59 PM local time on the deadline, so I believe your assumption of tomorrow night is correct, but you should check to be sure.

First of all, @Gram Positive and @Gram Neutral, I <3 your names. I took microbio last fall, and it was seriously one of my favorite classes ever. And thank you all!! I'm finishing UW's app right now (due in ~4.5 hours), and this is helping me procrastinate and feel more confident about my apps! I intend to scour the rest of this thread tomorrow AFTER this app (and my digital controls project) are done. It's so easy to be super paranoid about all of this, especially as the deadlines loom closer!! Gah, I sent my scores a week ago..... I'm a procrastinator, and I'm so paranoid they won't get up in time. I'm pretty much hoping for leniency/mercy with that.

Three of my apps are due today, SIX documents for my sorority (I'm President) had to be submitted today, I had an exam yesterday, two projects due Thursday, performing in a concert tomorrow, and MY SORORITY PEOPLE WILL NOT LEAVE ME ALONE. Like, I am busy. Stop. I'm sorry you don't know what page breaks are, don't know how to use Excel, don't know how to copy images into Word, don't know what you're going to do with your life, etc. I. Am. Busy. And, I am not your computer science teacher. STOP.

Note, I am applying to BioE/BME PhD programs even though my undergrad is ChemE Undergrad Institution: Large state school, known for chemical engineering but not particularly prestigiousMajor(s): Chemical EngineeringMinor(s): NoneGPA in Major: 4.00Overall GPA: 4.00Position in Class: I'm assuming around top 2-3% (as far as I know, there are three people with a 4.0)Type of Student: Domestic White FemaleGRE Scores (revised/old version): revisedQ: 170V: 170W: 6Research Experience: 3 years in my undergraduate research lab, Pharmacy School, not particularly well-known PI: independent project on chemotherapeutic drug delivery using liposomes and nanoparticles, 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, two Undergraduate Research Fellowships from school and one from an outside organization, 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: President of service sorority chapter, 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 (but not a lot directly related to tissue engineering which worries me), 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 Worried about the fact that I want to do tissue engineering research but I don't have a background in it - thoughts? I'm afraid that the broadness of my undergraduate research combined with the fact that I want to go into tissue engineering will make me look flaky or unfocused, but that's not the case at all. Also worried about being in school for 5 years. I haven't addressed it all in my personal statement- should I?

I think people need more information to help you out. When were your apps due? I know many apps are due now or in a few weeks for PhD programs, so you certainly will not have heard back from those. For your scores - what programs did you apply to? What schools? Where do they fall in the rankings for your field? Are they super competitive or not? How's the rest of your application? Research experience? LOR? SOP? All of this would make it much easier to answer, and, even then, we're just a bunch of people in a forum speaking from personal experience.

So, one of the schools I'm applying to (with a deadline of tonight, no less) has on their website that "rarely takes less than six weeks for Educational Testing Service (ETS) to send GRE scores and for GRE scores to be properly uploaded into an application." I sent some of my scores ~1 week before my first round of deadlines, same with official transcripts. ETS reported that my scores had been reported 2 days after I ordered them, so I was feeling confident. Now, much less so. Thoughts?

@pali123 MIT does have a cutoff for GRE scores. According to their website, you can expect it be around 160 Q, 156 V, and 3.8 GPA. If you're below that, I would take it again if MIT is your choice (are you applying next year like your banner says?) Stanford doesn't post averages, so they may grade more holistically. I've also heard MIT's first pass at applications is by computer, so I can see why they have cutoffs. For engineering, I know quant is mega important, but verbal is not nearly as much so.

If you can change it, I would. Pretty much everything I've seen on schools' pages says brevity is appreciated and don't submit things they don't ask for, so I think they would much rather you adhere to the page guidelines. All that being said, if you can't resubmit I don't think you're in the automatic rejection pile, but it will possibly (probably?) hurt your application in grading.

@pali123 Thank you for the vote of confidence! It's nice to hear from someone else's experiences! (Isn't that why we're all here?) I'm in mega-crunch mode on applications now - three of mine are due today (JHU, Stanford, and UW), and I still have to submit UW. Thank goodness for super understanding references who forgive me for giving them one week's notice on letters... @TTTYYY I've heard in engineering that verbal above 150 is just fine. I'm not sure how it works for molecular bio and other type programs, but I feel like it doesn't matter too super much.

Going to jump in on this as well! Undergrad Institution: Large state school, known for chemical engineering but not particularly prestigiousMajor(s): Chemical EngineeringMinor(s): NoneGPA in Major: 4.00Overall GPA: 4.00Position in Class: I'm assuming around top 2-3% (as far as I know, there are three people with a 4.0)Type of Student: Domestic White FemaleGRE Scores (revised/old version): revisedQ: 170V: 170W: 6Research Experience: 3 years in my undergraduate research lab, Pharmacy School, not particularly well-known PI: independent project on chemotherapeutic drug delivery using liposomes and nanoparticles, 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, two Undergraduate Research Fellowships from school and one from an outside organization, 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: President of service sorority chapter, 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 (but not a lot directly related to tissue engineering which worries me), 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 Worried about the fact that I want to do tissue engineering research but I don't have a background in it - thoughts? I'm afraid that the broadness of my undergraduate research combined with the fact that I want to go into tissue engineering will make me look flaky or unfocused, but that's not the case at all. Also worried about being in school for 5 years. I haven't addressed it all in my personal statement- should I?