Extra Espresso

I wrote this to answer a question in the questions and answers forum, but I thought people over here may find it useful! I wrote it from the STEM perspective, so feel free to correct me/add details for other fields. 
If you think you may want to apply to grad school, there are several things you can do now to set yourself up well for your future applications if you end up deciding to apply to later down the road. 
1. Keep your grades up! This goes for getting a job post graduate school as well, but GPA tends to be a reasonably large factor in the admissions process. The most important classes will be those related to your field of study, but you will also want to have the highest overall GPA you can manage. 
2. Start/maintain strong relationships with a few of your professors. Talk to them during their office hours, go above and beyond in their class, chat with them regularly, create relationships with them. When the graduate school application process rolls around, you are going to need professors to write recommendation letters for you where they vouch that you are an amazing student and have strong potential to succeed in graduate school. The best letters come from professors that actually know you well and can speak to their personal relationship with you. 
3. If you end up in a lab research-centric field (like biology, chemistry, engineering, etc.), start in undergraduate research as soon as you can. The best way to do this is to poke around on professor and department websites and search for their research blurbs. Read through those until you get a feel for the types of work that interests you. Obviously your interests are going to be broad and undefined at this point - that is absolutely fine. Just find a few things that sound fun and roll with it!
Reach out to those professors (either by email or by actually going to their office) and ask if they have any openings for an undergraduate research assistant. Be persistent! It is HIGHLY unlikely that you will be able to get into the lab of the first person you talk to (depending on your department/university), but you will get absolutely no where if you don't try.
The easiest professors to get in with are ones who you have had class with and already have a good relationship with (see #2), so you can always start there!
4. Use your summers wisely - do something with your summer breaks that is meaningful. This can be a summer internship, a volunteer experience, an outreach program, a study abroad term, or something similar. Whatever you do should be something that gives you a new experience and helps you grow as a person. Get out there, explore, try something brand new, broaden your horizons, all those cliches. Not only will you grow, but you'll get a better feel for who you are and what you want you want to do, and you'll also have something to talk about in that beast of a personal statement you eventually have to write.
Summer internships are an amazing way to get some research experience. If you are having difficulties getting into a lab at school, look for an internship that typically takes students with little research experience and use that as your springboard into the field. Internships are also a great way to explore research that's different from what you are doing at school and can help you narrow your broad research interests!
5. Do something with the research you're doing. Publications are the gold shining star of a graduate school application, but it can be extremely difficult to publish your research as an undergraduate (this depends on your lab). Whether or not you are going to be able to get a paper out of your research, try to find avenues to present it. Most research universities offer some type of undergraduate research symposium where undergrads present what they've been working on. There are also regional conferences as a part of the big national societies that students frequently present at. You can also present at a national conference (depending on your lab)! This is also an option with any research you do over the summer - be sure to talk to the people you intern/work with to see if that is an option. 
6. Get involved with something you are passionate about outside of the classroom. So now that I've harped on the huge importance of research, I can move on to the other stuff. Do something outside of your classes/research that you are excited about. This can be band, sports, outreach to local schools, volunteering at a food pantry, working for the school newspaper, photography, something.
Get involved and not just on the surface level. Show commitment to the activity/organization. Take on a leadership role, branch out and start a new organization, or something along those lines that shows it is important to you. The goal here is to show that you are a real person with interests outside of school and also that you are committed and motivated. It's much, much better to be deeply involved in a select few things you are passionate about than to be barely involved in twenty different activities. 
7. Look into awards, prestigious scholarships, etc. that you may qualify for. There are tons of awards and scholarships out there that will recognize you for all of the hard work you have been putting in. Depending on what your interests/fields are, you can join honor societies like Phi Kappa Phi or Phi Beta Kappa or field-specific ones. You can apply for the Goldwater Scholarship when you have one to two years of college remaining if you are in STEM. There's also Fulbright, Truman, Marshall, Rhodes, Gates Cambridge, and a whole slew of other prestigious scholarships that you can look into applying to. A lot of professional societies also have undergraduate awards and scholarships that you can consider for your individual field.
Your university probably has an office/person to assist people in applying for these types of awards, and I definitely encourage you to find them and talk to them about your options! There are also specific awards for minorities if that applies to you and first generation college students. While these are not nearly as important to your application as a strong research background and recommendation letters, they can definitely be extra jewels in the crown. 
8. Keep track of everything that you are doing. You are going to be busy during college with lots of class, activities, research, and summer plans! Start a resume, CV, and list of classes (with course number, full title, number of credits, professor, textbook, your grade in the class, and a one-line blurb about what you did in the class). You can find good templates online for a resume and CV, or you can talk to the career office at your school for help. You will thank yourself later for starting early because it's so much easier to remember all of the details about your involvement when it's actually happening than three or four years down the line! 
9. Keep in mind the components of the graduate school application so you can plan ahead as necessary. For every field, your graduate school application is going to have several key components: GPA (major and overall), GRE scores (verbal, quantitative, and writing), two to three recommendation letters from faculty, a CV, and a personal statement. For some fields, you may also need a subject GRE score, a writing sample, and/or a portfolio of your work. This is why I said keep your grades up (#1), have good relationships with faculty (#2), do research (#3 - 5), and start your CV early (#8). 
10. Do your research! When you reach your junior year (probably the spring of your junior year), you should start thinking about what grad school programs you might be interested in, what you want to study, and what you need to prepare for your applications. You should also think about when you want to take the GRE and set up a study plan. I won't go into more detail here because there's TONS of information about both of these things on the site, and that's still a while away for you. 
11. Take a deep breath and enjoy college.  I listed tons of advice here, but the last thing you need to do is stress out. By already thinking about what you need to do to prepare for grad school, you're way ahead of the game and you're going to be just fine. Take the time to enjoy your college experience because undergrad can be a whole lot of fun, and you don't want to miss out on that! GOOD LUCK!  

I wrote this to answer a question in the questions and answers forum, but I thought people over here may find it useful! I wrote it from the STEM perspective, so feel free to correct me/add details for other fields. 
If you think you may want to apply to grad school, there are several things you can do now to set yourself up well for your future applications if you end up deciding to apply to later down the road. 
1. Keep your grades up! This goes for getting a job post graduate school as well, but GPA tends to be a reasonably large factor in the admissions process. The most important classes will be those related to your field of study, but you will also want to have the highest overall GPA you can manage. 
2. Start/maintain strong relationships with a few of your professors. Talk to them during their office hours, go above and beyond in their class, chat with them regularly, create relationships with them. When the graduate school application process rolls around, you are going to need professors to write recommendation letters for you where they vouch that you are an amazing student and have strong potential to succeed in graduate school. The best letters come from professors that actually know you well and can speak to their personal relationship with you. 
3. If you end up in a lab research-centric field (like biology, chemistry, engineering, etc.), start in undergraduate research as soon as you can. The best way to do this is to poke around on professor and department websites and search for their research blurbs. Read through those until you get a feel for the types of work that interests you. Obviously your interests are going to be broad and undefined at this point - that is absolutely fine. Just find a few things that sound fun and roll with it!
Reach out to those professors (either by email or by actually going to their office) and ask if they have any openings for an undergraduate research assistant. Be persistent! It is HIGHLY unlikely that you will be able to get into the lab of the first person you talk to (depending on your department/university), but you will get absolutely no where if you don't try.
The easiest professors to get in with are ones who you have had class with and already have a good relationship with (see #2), so you can always start there!
4. Use your summers wisely - do something with your summer breaks that is meaningful. This can be a summer internship, a volunteer experience, an outreach program, a study abroad term, or something similar. Whatever you do should be something that gives you a new experience and helps you grow as a person. Get out there, explore, try something brand new, broaden your horizons, all those cliches. Not only will you grow, but you'll get a better feel for who you are and what you want you want to do, and you'll also have something to talk about in that beast of a personal statement you eventually have to write.
Summer internships are an amazing way to get some research experience. If you are having difficulties getting into a lab at school, look for an internship that typically takes students with little research experience and use that as your springboard into the field. Internships are also a great way to explore research that's different from what you are doing at school and can help you narrow your broad research interests!
5. Do something with the research you're doing. Publications are the gold shining star of a graduate school application, but it can be extremely difficult to publish your research as an undergraduate (this depends on your lab). Whether or not you are going to be able to get a paper out of your research, try to find avenues to present it. Most research universities offer some type of undergraduate research symposium where undergrads present what they've been working on. There are also regional conferences as a part of the big national societies that students frequently present at. You can also present at a national conference (depending on your lab)! This is also an option with any research you do over the summer - be sure to talk to the people you intern/work with to see if that is an option. 
6. Get involved with something you are passionate about outside of the classroom. So now that I've harped on the huge importance of research, I can move on to the other stuff. Do something outside of your classes/research that you are excited about. This can be band, sports, outreach to local schools, volunteering at a food pantry, working for the school newspaper, photography, something.
Get involved and not just on the surface level. Show commitment to the activity/organization. Take on a leadership role, branch out and start a new organization, or something along those lines that shows it is important to you. The goal here is to show that you are a real person with interests outside of school and also that you are committed and motivated. It's much, much better to be deeply involved in a select few things you are passionate about than to be barely involved in twenty different activities. 
7. Look into awards, prestigious scholarships, etc. that you may qualify for. There are tons of awards and scholarships out there that will recognize you for all of the hard work you have been putting in. Depending on what your interests/fields are, you can join honor societies like Phi Kappa Phi or Phi Beta Kappa or field-specific ones. You can apply for the Goldwater Scholarship when you have one to two years of college remaining if you are in STEM. There's also Fulbright, Truman, Marshall, Rhodes, Gates Cambridge, and a whole slew of other prestigious scholarships that you can look into applying to. A lot of professional societies also have undergraduate awards and scholarships that you can consider for your individual field.
Your university probably has an office/person to assist people in applying for these types of awards, and I definitely encourage you to find them and talk to them about your options! There are also specific awards for minorities if that applies to you and first generation college students. While these are not nearly as important to your application as a strong research background and recommendation letters, they can definitely be extra jewels in the crown. 
8. Keep track of everything that you are doing. You are going to be busy during college with lots of class, activities, research, and summer plans! Start a resume, CV, and list of classes (with course number, full title, number of credits, professor, textbook, your grade in the class, and a one-line blurb about what you did in the class). You can find good templates online for a resume and CV, or you can talk to the career office at your school for help. You will thank yourself later for starting early because it's so much easier to remember all of the details about your involvement when it's actually happening than three or four years down the line! 
9. Keep in mind the components of the graduate school application so you can plan ahead as necessary. For every field, your graduate school application is going to have several key components: GPA (major and overall), GRE scores (verbal, quantitative, and writing), two to three recommendation letters from faculty, a CV, and a personal statement. For some fields, you may also need a subject GRE score, a writing sample, and/or a portfolio of your work. This is why I said keep your grades up (#1), have good relationships with faculty (#2), do research (#3 - 5), and start your CV early (#8). 
10. Do your research! When you reach your junior year (probably the spring of your junior year), you should start thinking about what grad school programs you might be interested in, what you want to study, and what you need to prepare for your applications. You should also think about when you want to take the GRE and set up a study plan. I won't go into more detail here because there's TONS of information about both of these things on the site, and that's still a while away for you. 
11. Take a deep breath and enjoy college.  I listed tons of advice here, but the last thing you need to do is stress out. By already thinking about what you need to do to prepare for grad school, you're way ahead of the game and you're going to be just fine. Take the time to enjoy your college experience because undergrad can be a whole lot of fun, and you don't want to miss out on that! GOOD LUCK!  

I wrote this to answer a question in the questions and answers forum, but I thought people over here may find it useful! I wrote it from the STEM perspective, so feel free to correct me/add details for other fields. 
If you think you may want to apply to grad school, there are several things you can do now to set yourself up well for your future applications if you end up deciding to apply to later down the road. 
1. Keep your grades up! This goes for getting a job post graduate school as well, but GPA tends to be a reasonably large factor in the admissions process. The most important classes will be those related to your field of study, but you will also want to have the highest overall GPA you can manage. 
2. Start/maintain strong relationships with a few of your professors. Talk to them during their office hours, go above and beyond in their class, chat with them regularly, create relationships with them. When the graduate school application process rolls around, you are going to need professors to write recommendation letters for you where they vouch that you are an amazing student and have strong potential to succeed in graduate school. The best letters come from professors that actually know you well and can speak to their personal relationship with you. 
3. If you end up in a lab research-centric field (like biology, chemistry, engineering, etc.), start in undergraduate research as soon as you can. The best way to do this is to poke around on professor and department websites and search for their research blurbs. Read through those until you get a feel for the types of work that interests you. Obviously your interests are going to be broad and undefined at this point - that is absolutely fine. Just find a few things that sound fun and roll with it!
Reach out to those professors (either by email or by actually going to their office) and ask if they have any openings for an undergraduate research assistant. Be persistent! It is HIGHLY unlikely that you will be able to get into the lab of the first person you talk to (depending on your department/university), but you will get absolutely no where if you don't try.
The easiest professors to get in with are ones who you have had class with and already have a good relationship with (see #2), so you can always start there!
4. Use your summers wisely - do something with your summer breaks that is meaningful. This can be a summer internship, a volunteer experience, an outreach program, a study abroad term, or something similar. Whatever you do should be something that gives you a new experience and helps you grow as a person. Get out there, explore, try something brand new, broaden your horizons, all those cliches. Not only will you grow, but you'll get a better feel for who you are and what you want you want to do, and you'll also have something to talk about in that beast of a personal statement you eventually have to write.
Summer internships are an amazing way to get some research experience. If you are having difficulties getting into a lab at school, look for an internship that typically takes students with little research experience and use that as your springboard into the field. Internships are also a great way to explore research that's different from what you are doing at school and can help you narrow your broad research interests!
5. Do something with the research you're doing. Publications are the gold shining star of a graduate school application, but it can be extremely difficult to publish your research as an undergraduate (this depends on your lab). Whether or not you are going to be able to get a paper out of your research, try to find avenues to present it. Most research universities offer some type of undergraduate research symposium where undergrads present what they've been working on. There are also regional conferences as a part of the big national societies that students frequently present at. You can also present at a national conference (depending on your lab)! This is also an option with any research you do over the summer - be sure to talk to the people you intern/work with to see if that is an option. 
6. Get involved with something you are passionate about outside of the classroom. So now that I've harped on the huge importance of research, I can move on to the other stuff. Do something outside of your classes/research that you are excited about. This can be band, sports, outreach to local schools, volunteering at a food pantry, working for the school newspaper, photography, something.
Get involved and not just on the surface level. Show commitment to the activity/organization. Take on a leadership role, branch out and start a new organization, or something along those lines that shows it is important to you. The goal here is to show that you are a real person with interests outside of school and also that you are committed and motivated. It's much, much better to be deeply involved in a select few things you are passionate about than to be barely involved in twenty different activities. 
7. Look into awards, prestigious scholarships, etc. that you may qualify for. There are tons of awards and scholarships out there that will recognize you for all of the hard work you have been putting in. Depending on what your interests/fields are, you can join honor societies like Phi Kappa Phi or Phi Beta Kappa or field-specific ones. You can apply for the Goldwater Scholarship when you have one to two years of college remaining if you are in STEM. There's also Fulbright, Truman, Marshall, Rhodes, Gates Cambridge, and a whole slew of other prestigious scholarships that you can look into applying to. A lot of professional societies also have undergraduate awards and scholarships that you can consider for your individual field.
Your university probably has an office/person to assist people in applying for these types of awards, and I definitely encourage you to find them and talk to them about your options! There are also specific awards for minorities if that applies to you and first generation college students. While these are not nearly as important to your application as a strong research background and recommendation letters, they can definitely be extra jewels in the crown. 
8. Keep track of everything that you are doing. You are going to be busy during college with lots of class, activities, research, and summer plans! Start a resume, CV, and list of classes (with course number, full title, number of credits, professor, textbook, your grade in the class, and a one-line blurb about what you did in the class). You can find good templates online for a resume and CV, or you can talk to the career office at your school for help. You will thank yourself later for starting early because it's so much easier to remember all of the details about your involvement when it's actually happening than three or four years down the line! 
9. Keep in mind the components of the graduate school application so you can plan ahead as necessary. For every field, your graduate school application is going to have several key components: GPA (major and overall), GRE scores (verbal, quantitative, and writing), two to three recommendation letters from faculty, a CV, and a personal statement. For some fields, you may also need a subject GRE score, a writing sample, and/or a portfolio of your work. This is why I said keep your grades up (#1), have good relationships with faculty (#2), do research (#3 - 5), and start your CV early (#8). 
10. Do your research! When you reach your junior year (probably the spring of your junior year), you should start thinking about what grad school programs you might be interested in, what you want to study, and what you need to prepare for your applications. You should also think about when you want to take the GRE and set up a study plan. I won't go into more detail here because there's TONS of information about both of these things on the site, and that's still a while away for you. 
11. Take a deep breath and enjoy college.  I listed tons of advice here, but the last thing you need to do is stress out. By already thinking about what you need to do to prepare for grad school, you're way ahead of the game and you're going to be just fine. Take the time to enjoy your college experience because undergrad can be a whole lot of fun, and you don't want to miss out on that! GOOD LUCK!  

I wrote this to answer a question in the questions and answers forum, but I thought people over here may find it useful! I wrote it from the STEM perspective, so feel free to correct me/add details for other fields. 
If you think you may want to apply to grad school, there are several things you can do now to set yourself up well for your future applications if you end up deciding to apply to later down the road. 
1. Keep your grades up! This goes for getting a job post graduate school as well, but GPA tends to be a reasonably large factor in the admissions process. The most important classes will be those related to your field of study, but you will also want to have the highest overall GPA you can manage. 
2. Start/maintain strong relationships with a few of your professors. Talk to them during their office hours, go above and beyond in their class, chat with them regularly, create relationships with them. When the graduate school application process rolls around, you are going to need professors to write recommendation letters for you where they vouch that you are an amazing student and have strong potential to succeed in graduate school. The best letters come from professors that actually know you well and can speak to their personal relationship with you. 
3. If you end up in a lab research-centric field (like biology, chemistry, engineering, etc.), start in undergraduate research as soon as you can. The best way to do this is to poke around on professor and department websites and search for their research blurbs. Read through those until you get a feel for the types of work that interests you. Obviously your interests are going to be broad and undefined at this point - that is absolutely fine. Just find a few things that sound fun and roll with it!
Reach out to those professors (either by email or by actually going to their office) and ask if they have any openings for an undergraduate research assistant. Be persistent! It is HIGHLY unlikely that you will be able to get into the lab of the first person you talk to (depending on your department/university), but you will get absolutely no where if you don't try.
The easiest professors to get in with are ones who you have had class with and already have a good relationship with (see #2), so you can always start there!
4. Use your summers wisely - do something with your summer breaks that is meaningful. This can be a summer internship, a volunteer experience, an outreach program, a study abroad term, or something similar. Whatever you do should be something that gives you a new experience and helps you grow as a person. Get out there, explore, try something brand new, broaden your horizons, all those cliches. Not only will you grow, but you'll get a better feel for who you are and what you want you want to do, and you'll also have something to talk about in that beast of a personal statement you eventually have to write.
Summer internships are an amazing way to get some research experience. If you are having difficulties getting into a lab at school, look for an internship that typically takes students with little research experience and use that as your springboard into the field. Internships are also a great way to explore research that's different from what you are doing at school and can help you narrow your broad research interests!
5. Do something with the research you're doing. Publications are the gold shining star of a graduate school application, but it can be extremely difficult to publish your research as an undergraduate (this depends on your lab). Whether or not you are going to be able to get a paper out of your research, try to find avenues to present it. Most research universities offer some type of undergraduate research symposium where undergrads present what they've been working on. There are also regional conferences as a part of the big national societies that students frequently present at. You can also present at a national conference (depending on your lab)! This is also an option with any research you do over the summer - be sure to talk to the people you intern/work with to see if that is an option. 
6. Get involved with something you are passionate about outside of the classroom. So now that I've harped on the huge importance of research, I can move on to the other stuff. Do something outside of your classes/research that you are excited about. This can be band, sports, outreach to local schools, volunteering at a food pantry, working for the school newspaper, photography, something.
Get involved and not just on the surface level. Show commitment to the activity/organization. Take on a leadership role, branch out and start a new organization, or something along those lines that shows it is important to you. The goal here is to show that you are a real person with interests outside of school and also that you are committed and motivated. It's much, much better to be deeply involved in a select few things you are passionate about than to be barely involved in twenty different activities. 
7. Look into awards, prestigious scholarships, etc. that you may qualify for. There are tons of awards and scholarships out there that will recognize you for all of the hard work you have been putting in. Depending on what your interests/fields are, you can join honor societies like Phi Kappa Phi or Phi Beta Kappa or field-specific ones. You can apply for the Goldwater Scholarship when you have one to two years of college remaining if you are in STEM. There's also Fulbright, Truman, Marshall, Rhodes, Gates Cambridge, and a whole slew of other prestigious scholarships that you can look into applying to. A lot of professional societies also have undergraduate awards and scholarships that you can consider for your individual field.
Your university probably has an office/person to assist people in applying for these types of awards, and I definitely encourage you to find them and talk to them about your options! There are also specific awards for minorities if that applies to you and first generation college students. While these are not nearly as important to your application as a strong research background and recommendation letters, they can definitely be extra jewels in the crown. 
8. Keep track of everything that you are doing. You are going to be busy during college with lots of class, activities, research, and summer plans! Start a resume, CV, and list of classes (with course number, full title, number of credits, professor, textbook, your grade in the class, and a one-line blurb about what you did in the class). You can find good templates online for a resume and CV, or you can talk to the career office at your school for help. You will thank yourself later for starting early because it's so much easier to remember all of the details about your involvement when it's actually happening than three or four years down the line! 
9. Keep in mind the components of the graduate school application so you can plan ahead as necessary. For every field, your graduate school application is going to have several key components: GPA (major and overall), GRE scores (verbal, quantitative, and writing), two to three recommendation letters from faculty, a CV, and a personal statement. For some fields, you may also need a subject GRE score, a writing sample, and/or a portfolio of your work. This is why I said keep your grades up (#1), have good relationships with faculty (#2), do research (#3 - 5), and start your CV early (#8). 
10. Do your research! When you reach your junior year (probably the spring of your junior year), you should start thinking about what grad school programs you might be interested in, what you want to study, and what you need to prepare for your applications. You should also think about when you want to take the GRE and set up a study plan. I won't go into more detail here because there's TONS of information about both of these things on the site, and that's still a while away for you. 
11. Take a deep breath and enjoy college.  I listed tons of advice here, but the last thing you need to do is stress out. By already thinking about what you need to do to prepare for grad school, you're way ahead of the game and you're going to be just fine. Take the time to enjoy your college experience because undergrad can be a whole lot of fun, and you don't want to miss out on that! GOOD LUCK!  

I wrote this to answer a question in the questions and answers forum, but I thought people over here may find it useful! I wrote it from the STEM perspective, so feel free to correct me/add details for other fields. 
If you think you may want to apply to grad school, there are several things you can do now to set yourself up well for your future applications if you end up deciding to apply to later down the road. 
1. Keep your grades up! This goes for getting a job post graduate school as well, but GPA tends to be a reasonably large factor in the admissions process. The most important classes will be those related to your field of study, but you will also want to have the highest overall GPA you can manage. 
2. Start/maintain strong relationships with a few of your professors. Talk to them during their office hours, go above and beyond in their class, chat with them regularly, create relationships with them. When the graduate school application process rolls around, you are going to need professors to write recommendation letters for you where they vouch that you are an amazing student and have strong potential to succeed in graduate school. The best letters come from professors that actually know you well and can speak to their personal relationship with you. 
3. If you end up in a lab research-centric field (like biology, chemistry, engineering, etc.), start in undergraduate research as soon as you can. The best way to do this is to poke around on professor and department websites and search for their research blurbs. Read through those until you get a feel for the types of work that interests you. Obviously your interests are going to be broad and undefined at this point - that is absolutely fine. Just find a few things that sound fun and roll with it!
Reach out to those professors (either by email or by actually going to their office) and ask if they have any openings for an undergraduate research assistant. Be persistent! It is HIGHLY unlikely that you will be able to get into the lab of the first person you talk to (depending on your department/university), but you will get absolutely no where if you don't try.
The easiest professors to get in with are ones who you have had class with and already have a good relationship with (see #2), so you can always start there!
4. Use your summers wisely - do something with your summer breaks that is meaningful. This can be a summer internship, a volunteer experience, an outreach program, a study abroad term, or something similar. Whatever you do should be something that gives you a new experience and helps you grow as a person. Get out there, explore, try something brand new, broaden your horizons, all those cliches. Not only will you grow, but you'll get a better feel for who you are and what you want you want to do, and you'll also have something to talk about in that beast of a personal statement you eventually have to write.
Summer internships are an amazing way to get some research experience. If you are having difficulties getting into a lab at school, look for an internship that typically takes students with little research experience and use that as your springboard into the field. Internships are also a great way to explore research that's different from what you are doing at school and can help you narrow your broad research interests!
5. Do something with the research you're doing. Publications are the gold shining star of a graduate school application, but it can be extremely difficult to publish your research as an undergraduate (this depends on your lab). Whether or not you are going to be able to get a paper out of your research, try to find avenues to present it. Most research universities offer some type of undergraduate research symposium where undergrads present what they've been working on. There are also regional conferences as a part of the big national societies that students frequently present at. You can also present at a national conference (depending on your lab)! This is also an option with any research you do over the summer - be sure to talk to the people you intern/work with to see if that is an option. 
6. Get involved with something you are passionate about outside of the classroom. So now that I've harped on the huge importance of research, I can move on to the other stuff. Do something outside of your classes/research that you are excited about. This can be band, sports, outreach to local schools, volunteering at a food pantry, working for the school newspaper, photography, something.
Get involved and not just on the surface level. Show commitment to the activity/organization. Take on a leadership role, branch out and start a new organization, or something along those lines that shows it is important to you. The goal here is to show that you are a real person with interests outside of school and also that you are committed and motivated. It's much, much better to be deeply involved in a select few things you are passionate about than to be barely involved in twenty different activities. 
7. Look into awards, prestigious scholarships, etc. that you may qualify for. There are tons of awards and scholarships out there that will recognize you for all of the hard work you have been putting in. Depending on what your interests/fields are, you can join honor societies like Phi Kappa Phi or Phi Beta Kappa or field-specific ones. You can apply for the Goldwater Scholarship when you have one to two years of college remaining if you are in STEM. There's also Fulbright, Truman, Marshall, Rhodes, Gates Cambridge, and a whole slew of other prestigious scholarships that you can look into applying to. A lot of professional societies also have undergraduate awards and scholarships that you can consider for your individual field.
Your university probably has an office/person to assist people in applying for these types of awards, and I definitely encourage you to find them and talk to them about your options! There are also specific awards for minorities if that applies to you and first generation college students. While these are not nearly as important to your application as a strong research background and recommendation letters, they can definitely be extra jewels in the crown. 
8. Keep track of everything that you are doing. You are going to be busy during college with lots of class, activities, research, and summer plans! Start a resume, CV, and list of classes (with course number, full title, number of credits, professor, textbook, your grade in the class, and a one-line blurb about what you did in the class). You can find good templates online for a resume and CV, or you can talk to the career office at your school for help. You will thank yourself later for starting early because it's so much easier to remember all of the details about your involvement when it's actually happening than three or four years down the line! 
9. Keep in mind the components of the graduate school application so you can plan ahead as necessary. For every field, your graduate school application is going to have several key components: GPA (major and overall), GRE scores (verbal, quantitative, and writing), two to three recommendation letters from faculty, a CV, and a personal statement. For some fields, you may also need a subject GRE score, a writing sample, and/or a portfolio of your work. This is why I said keep your grades up (#1), have good relationships with faculty (#2), do research (#3 - 5), and start your CV early (#8). 
10. Do your research! When you reach your junior year (probably the spring of your junior year), you should start thinking about what grad school programs you might be interested in, what you want to study, and what you need to prepare for your applications. You should also think about when you want to take the GRE and set up a study plan. I won't go into more detail here because there's TONS of information about both of these things on the site, and that's still a while away for you. 
11. Take a deep breath and enjoy college.  I listed tons of advice here, but the last thing you need to do is stress out. By already thinking about what you need to do to prepare for grad school, you're way ahead of the game and you're going to be just fine. Take the time to enjoy your college experience because undergrad can be a whole lot of fun, and you don't want to miss out on that! GOOD LUCK!  

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. 

I wrote this to answer a question in the questions and answers forum, but I thought people over here may find it useful! I wrote it from the STEM perspective, so feel free to correct me/add details for other fields. 
If you think you may want to apply to grad school, there are several things you can do now to set yourself up well for your future applications if you end up deciding to apply to later down the road. 
1. Keep your grades up! This goes for getting a job post graduate school as well, but GPA tends to be a reasonably large factor in the admissions process. The most important classes will be those related to your field of study, but you will also want to have the highest overall GPA you can manage. 
2. Start/maintain strong relationships with a few of your professors. Talk to them during their office hours, go above and beyond in their class, chat with them regularly, create relationships with them. When the graduate school application process rolls around, you are going to need professors to write recommendation letters for you where they vouch that you are an amazing student and have strong potential to succeed in graduate school. The best letters come from professors that actually know you well and can speak to their personal relationship with you. 
3. If you end up in a lab research-centric field (like biology, chemistry, engineering, etc.), start in undergraduate research as soon as you can. The best way to do this is to poke around on professor and department websites and search for their research blurbs. Read through those until you get a feel for the types of work that interests you. Obviously your interests are going to be broad and undefined at this point - that is absolutely fine. Just find a few things that sound fun and roll with it!
Reach out to those professors (either by email or by actually going to their office) and ask if they have any openings for an undergraduate research assistant. Be persistent! It is HIGHLY unlikely that you will be able to get into the lab of the first person you talk to (depending on your department/university), but you will get absolutely no where if you don't try.
The easiest professors to get in with are ones who you have had class with and already have a good relationship with (see #2), so you can always start there!
4. Use your summers wisely - do something with your summer breaks that is meaningful. This can be a summer internship, a volunteer experience, an outreach program, a study abroad term, or something similar. Whatever you do should be something that gives you a new experience and helps you grow as a person. Get out there, explore, try something brand new, broaden your horizons, all those cliches. Not only will you grow, but you'll get a better feel for who you are and what you want you want to do, and you'll also have something to talk about in that beast of a personal statement you eventually have to write.
Summer internships are an amazing way to get some research experience. If you are having difficulties getting into a lab at school, look for an internship that typically takes students with little research experience and use that as your springboard into the field. Internships are also a great way to explore research that's different from what you are doing at school and can help you narrow your broad research interests!
5. Do something with the research you're doing. Publications are the gold shining star of a graduate school application, but it can be extremely difficult to publish your research as an undergraduate (this depends on your lab). Whether or not you are going to be able to get a paper out of your research, try to find avenues to present it. Most research universities offer some type of undergraduate research symposium where undergrads present what they've been working on. There are also regional conferences as a part of the big national societies that students frequently present at. You can also present at a national conference (depending on your lab)! This is also an option with any research you do over the summer - be sure to talk to the people you intern/work with to see if that is an option. 
6. Get involved with something you are passionate about outside of the classroom. So now that I've harped on the huge importance of research, I can move on to the other stuff. Do something outside of your classes/research that you are excited about. This can be band, sports, outreach to local schools, volunteering at a food pantry, working for the school newspaper, photography, something.
Get involved and not just on the surface level. Show commitment to the activity/organization. Take on a leadership role, branch out and start a new organization, or something along those lines that shows it is important to you. The goal here is to show that you are a real person with interests outside of school and also that you are committed and motivated. It's much, much better to be deeply involved in a select few things you are passionate about than to be barely involved in twenty different activities. 
7. Look into awards, prestigious scholarships, etc. that you may qualify for. There are tons of awards and scholarships out there that will recognize you for all of the hard work you have been putting in. Depending on what your interests/fields are, you can join honor societies like Phi Kappa Phi or Phi Beta Kappa or field-specific ones. You can apply for the Goldwater Scholarship when you have one to two years of college remaining if you are in STEM. There's also Fulbright, Truman, Marshall, Rhodes, Gates Cambridge, and a whole slew of other prestigious scholarships that you can look into applying to. A lot of professional societies also have undergraduate awards and scholarships that you can consider for your individual field.
Your university probably has an office/person to assist people in applying for these types of awards, and I definitely encourage you to find them and talk to them about your options! There are also specific awards for minorities if that applies to you and first generation college students. While these are not nearly as important to your application as a strong research background and recommendation letters, they can definitely be extra jewels in the crown. 
8. Keep track of everything that you are doing. You are going to be busy during college with lots of class, activities, research, and summer plans! Start a resume, CV, and list of classes (with course number, full title, number of credits, professor, textbook, your grade in the class, and a one-line blurb about what you did in the class). You can find good templates online for a resume and CV, or you can talk to the career office at your school for help. You will thank yourself later for starting early because it's so much easier to remember all of the details about your involvement when it's actually happening than three or four years down the line! 
9. Keep in mind the components of the graduate school application so you can plan ahead as necessary. For every field, your graduate school application is going to have several key components: GPA (major and overall), GRE scores (verbal, quantitative, and writing), two to three recommendation letters from faculty, a CV, and a personal statement. For some fields, you may also need a subject GRE score, a writing sample, and/or a portfolio of your work. This is why I said keep your grades up (#1), have good relationships with faculty (#2), do research (#3 - 5), and start your CV early (#8). 
10. Do your research! When you reach your junior year (probably the spring of your junior year), you should start thinking about what grad school programs you might be interested in, what you want to study, and what you need to prepare for your applications. You should also think about when you want to take the GRE and set up a study plan. I won't go into more detail here because there's TONS of information about both of these things on the site, and that's still a while away for you. 
11. Take a deep breath and enjoy college.  I listed tons of advice here, but the last thing you need to do is stress out. By already thinking about what you need to do to prepare for grad school, you're way ahead of the game and you're going to be just fine. Take the time to enjoy your college experience because undergrad can be a whole lot of fun, and you don't want to miss out on that! GOOD LUCK!  

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. 

I wrote this to answer a question in the questions and answers forum, but I thought people over here may find it useful! I wrote it from the STEM perspective, so feel free to correct me/add details for other fields. 
If you think you may want to apply to grad school, there are several things you can do now to set yourself up well for your future applications if you end up deciding to apply to later down the road. 
1. Keep your grades up! This goes for getting a job post graduate school as well, but GPA tends to be a reasonably large factor in the admissions process. The most important classes will be those related to your field of study, but you will also want to have the highest overall GPA you can manage. 
2. Start/maintain strong relationships with a few of your professors. Talk to them during their office hours, go above and beyond in their class, chat with them regularly, create relationships with them. When the graduate school application process rolls around, you are going to need professors to write recommendation letters for you where they vouch that you are an amazing student and have strong potential to succeed in graduate school. The best letters come from professors that actually know you well and can speak to their personal relationship with you. 
3. If you end up in a lab research-centric field (like biology, chemistry, engineering, etc.), start in undergraduate research as soon as you can. The best way to do this is to poke around on professor and department websites and search for their research blurbs. Read through those until you get a feel for the types of work that interests you. Obviously your interests are going to be broad and undefined at this point - that is absolutely fine. Just find a few things that sound fun and roll with it!
Reach out to those professors (either by email or by actually going to their office) and ask if they have any openings for an undergraduate research assistant. Be persistent! It is HIGHLY unlikely that you will be able to get into the lab of the first person you talk to (depending on your department/university), but you will get absolutely no where if you don't try.
The easiest professors to get in with are ones who you have had class with and already have a good relationship with (see #2), so you can always start there!
4. Use your summers wisely - do something with your summer breaks that is meaningful. This can be a summer internship, a volunteer experience, an outreach program, a study abroad term, or something similar. Whatever you do should be something that gives you a new experience and helps you grow as a person. Get out there, explore, try something brand new, broaden your horizons, all those cliches. Not only will you grow, but you'll get a better feel for who you are and what you want you want to do, and you'll also have something to talk about in that beast of a personal statement you eventually have to write.
Summer internships are an amazing way to get some research experience. If you are having difficulties getting into a lab at school, look for an internship that typically takes students with little research experience and use that as your springboard into the field. Internships are also a great way to explore research that's different from what you are doing at school and can help you narrow your broad research interests!
5. Do something with the research you're doing. Publications are the gold shining star of a graduate school application, but it can be extremely difficult to publish your research as an undergraduate (this depends on your lab). Whether or not you are going to be able to get a paper out of your research, try to find avenues to present it. Most research universities offer some type of undergraduate research symposium where undergrads present what they've been working on. There are also regional conferences as a part of the big national societies that students frequently present at. You can also present at a national conference (depending on your lab)! This is also an option with any research you do over the summer - be sure to talk to the people you intern/work with to see if that is an option. 
6. Get involved with something you are passionate about outside of the classroom. So now that I've harped on the huge importance of research, I can move on to the other stuff. Do something outside of your classes/research that you are excited about. This can be band, sports, outreach to local schools, volunteering at a food pantry, working for the school newspaper, photography, something.
Get involved and not just on the surface level. Show commitment to the activity/organization. Take on a leadership role, branch out and start a new organization, or something along those lines that shows it is important to you. The goal here is to show that you are a real person with interests outside of school and also that you are committed and motivated. It's much, much better to be deeply involved in a select few things you are passionate about than to be barely involved in twenty different activities. 
7. Look into awards, prestigious scholarships, etc. that you may qualify for. There are tons of awards and scholarships out there that will recognize you for all of the hard work you have been putting in. Depending on what your interests/fields are, you can join honor societies like Phi Kappa Phi or Phi Beta Kappa or field-specific ones. You can apply for the Goldwater Scholarship when you have one to two years of college remaining if you are in STEM. There's also Fulbright, Truman, Marshall, Rhodes, Gates Cambridge, and a whole slew of other prestigious scholarships that you can look into applying to. A lot of professional societies also have undergraduate awards and scholarships that you can consider for your individual field.
Your university probably has an office/person to assist people in applying for these types of awards, and I definitely encourage you to find them and talk to them about your options! There are also specific awards for minorities if that applies to you and first generation college students. While these are not nearly as important to your application as a strong research background and recommendation letters, they can definitely be extra jewels in the crown. 
8. Keep track of everything that you are doing. You are going to be busy during college with lots of class, activities, research, and summer plans! Start a resume, CV, and list of classes (with course number, full title, number of credits, professor, textbook, your grade in the class, and a one-line blurb about what you did in the class). You can find good templates online for a resume and CV, or you can talk to the career office at your school for help. You will thank yourself later for starting early because it's so much easier to remember all of the details about your involvement when it's actually happening than three or four years down the line! 
9. Keep in mind the components of the graduate school application so you can plan ahead as necessary. For every field, your graduate school application is going to have several key components: GPA (major and overall), GRE scores (verbal, quantitative, and writing), two to three recommendation letters from faculty, a CV, and a personal statement. For some fields, you may also need a subject GRE score, a writing sample, and/or a portfolio of your work. This is why I said keep your grades up (#1), have good relationships with faculty (#2), do research (#3 - 5), and start your CV early (#8). 
10. Do your research! When you reach your junior year (probably the spring of your junior year), you should start thinking about what grad school programs you might be interested in, what you want to study, and what you need to prepare for your applications. You should also think about when you want to take the GRE and set up a study plan. I won't go into more detail here because there's TONS of information about both of these things on the site, and that's still a while away for you. 
11. Take a deep breath and enjoy college.  I listed tons of advice here, but the last thing you need to do is stress out. By already thinking about what you need to do to prepare for grad school, you're way ahead of the game and you're going to be just fine. Take the time to enjoy your college experience because undergrad can be a whole lot of fun, and you don't want to miss out on that! GOOD LUCK!  

I wrote this to answer a question in the questions and answers forum, but I thought people over here may find it useful! I wrote it from the STEM perspective, so feel free to correct me/add details for other fields. 
If you think you may want to apply to grad school, there are several things you can do now to set yourself up well for your future applications if you end up deciding to apply to later down the road. 
1. Keep your grades up! This goes for getting a job post graduate school as well, but GPA tends to be a reasonably large factor in the admissions process. The most important classes will be those related to your field of study, but you will also want to have the highest overall GPA you can manage. 
2. Start/maintain strong relationships with a few of your professors. Talk to them during their office hours, go above and beyond in their class, chat with them regularly, create relationships with them. When the graduate school application process rolls around, you are going to need professors to write recommendation letters for you where they vouch that you are an amazing student and have strong potential to succeed in graduate school. The best letters come from professors that actually know you well and can speak to their personal relationship with you. 
3. If you end up in a lab research-centric field (like biology, chemistry, engineering, etc.), start in undergraduate research as soon as you can. The best way to do this is to poke around on professor and department websites and search for their research blurbs. Read through those until you get a feel for the types of work that interests you. Obviously your interests are going to be broad and undefined at this point - that is absolutely fine. Just find a few things that sound fun and roll with it!
Reach out to those professors (either by email or by actually going to their office) and ask if they have any openings for an undergraduate research assistant. Be persistent! It is HIGHLY unlikely that you will be able to get into the lab of the first person you talk to (depending on your department/university), but you will get absolutely no where if you don't try.
The easiest professors to get in with are ones who you have had class with and already have a good relationship with (see #2), so you can always start there!
4. Use your summers wisely - do something with your summer breaks that is meaningful. This can be a summer internship, a volunteer experience, an outreach program, a study abroad term, or something similar. Whatever you do should be something that gives you a new experience and helps you grow as a person. Get out there, explore, try something brand new, broaden your horizons, all those cliches. Not only will you grow, but you'll get a better feel for who you are and what you want you want to do, and you'll also have something to talk about in that beast of a personal statement you eventually have to write.
Summer internships are an amazing way to get some research experience. If you are having difficulties getting into a lab at school, look for an internship that typically takes students with little research experience and use that as your springboard into the field. Internships are also a great way to explore research that's different from what you are doing at school and can help you narrow your broad research interests!
5. Do something with the research you're doing. Publications are the gold shining star of a graduate school application, but it can be extremely difficult to publish your research as an undergraduate (this depends on your lab). Whether or not you are going to be able to get a paper out of your research, try to find avenues to present it. Most research universities offer some type of undergraduate research symposium where undergrads present what they've been working on. There are also regional conferences as a part of the big national societies that students frequently present at. You can also present at a national conference (depending on your lab)! This is also an option with any research you do over the summer - be sure to talk to the people you intern/work with to see if that is an option. 
6. Get involved with something you are passionate about outside of the classroom. So now that I've harped on the huge importance of research, I can move on to the other stuff. Do something outside of your classes/research that you are excited about. This can be band, sports, outreach to local schools, volunteering at a food pantry, working for the school newspaper, photography, something.
Get involved and not just on the surface level. Show commitment to the activity/organization. Take on a leadership role, branch out and start a new organization, or something along those lines that shows it is important to you. The goal here is to show that you are a real person with interests outside of school and also that you are committed and motivated. It's much, much better to be deeply involved in a select few things you are passionate about than to be barely involved in twenty different activities. 
7. Look into awards, prestigious scholarships, etc. that you may qualify for. There are tons of awards and scholarships out there that will recognize you for all of the hard work you have been putting in. Depending on what your interests/fields are, you can join honor societies like Phi Kappa Phi or Phi Beta Kappa or field-specific ones. You can apply for the Goldwater Scholarship when you have one to two years of college remaining if you are in STEM. There's also Fulbright, Truman, Marshall, Rhodes, Gates Cambridge, and a whole slew of other prestigious scholarships that you can look into applying to. A lot of professional societies also have undergraduate awards and scholarships that you can consider for your individual field.
Your university probably has an office/person to assist people in applying for these types of awards, and I definitely encourage you to find them and talk to them about your options! There are also specific awards for minorities if that applies to you and first generation college students. While these are not nearly as important to your application as a strong research background and recommendation letters, they can definitely be extra jewels in the crown. 
8. Keep track of everything that you are doing. You are going to be busy during college with lots of class, activities, research, and summer plans! Start a resume, CV, and list of classes (with course number, full title, number of credits, professor, textbook, your grade in the class, and a one-line blurb about what you did in the class). You can find good templates online for a resume and CV, or you can talk to the career office at your school for help. You will thank yourself later for starting early because it's so much easier to remember all of the details about your involvement when it's actually happening than three or four years down the line! 
9. Keep in mind the components of the graduate school application so you can plan ahead as necessary. For every field, your graduate school application is going to have several key components: GPA (major and overall), GRE scores (verbal, quantitative, and writing), two to three recommendation letters from faculty, a CV, and a personal statement. For some fields, you may also need a subject GRE score, a writing sample, and/or a portfolio of your work. This is why I said keep your grades up (#1), have good relationships with faculty (#2), do research (#3 - 5), and start your CV early (#8). 
10. Do your research! When you reach your junior year (probably the spring of your junior year), you should start thinking about what grad school programs you might be interested in, what you want to study, and what you need to prepare for your applications. You should also think about when you want to take the GRE and set up a study plan. I won't go into more detail here because there's TONS of information about both of these things on the site, and that's still a while away for you. 
11. Take a deep breath and enjoy college.  I listed tons of advice here, but the last thing you need to do is stress out. By already thinking about what you need to do to prepare for grad school, you're way ahead of the game and you're going to be just fine. Take the time to enjoy your college experience because undergrad can be a whole lot of fun, and you don't want to miss out on that! GOOD LUCK!  

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. 

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! 

You might get some replies, but honestly this is such a broad question it's hard to give a full answer without writing pages upon pages. In fact, people have written articles and books on this subject. As a first pass, why do you want to do a PhD? Do you need one for your desired career? Is there a particular research question burning in your veins that you just have to study more? A PhD is a difficult path for those who come in with great conviction and is even worse for those who just stumble into it. There are lots of articles out there about career prospects for PhDs, and most will agree you shouldn't do it unless you need to, or you do it with the realization that you might never get a job relevant to your degree. Beyond that, your post doesn't really reflect any deep thought on your end (you don't even tell us what the subject is you want to do a PhD in!), and I think it's unfair to expect others to do your soul-searching and research for you. 

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!

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!

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...)

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...)

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 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. 

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. 

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'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!
 

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. 

Hopkins did send out interview invites yesterday for all the focus areas within BME! If you didn't get one, it doesn't necessarily mean you won't (so don't panic yet).
As far as the Skype interview goes, I'd assume it's because they got your application and are interested in you. It's not the official interview since it's just with the POI, but it is a good sign. 
If you all have an questions, you're welcome to message me!

I found out on June 7 that I had gotten a late award, up from an Honorable Mention in April. Super excited!