Neuro15

Agreed.
Besides the personal peace of mind and the ability to ensure all your materials are in in time, no. The adcom will not meet before the deadline, and the review process does not account for when an app was submitted (provided it was submitted before the deadline). 

It's that, a quick google search yielded a presser from UA announcing it. 
http://www.massspectrometryconsortium.arizona.edu/welcome-cbc-professors-rebecca-page-and-wolfgang-peti
 
Rising Star is dead on though, his most recent pubs say Brown because that's where the research was done and where the grant was awarded. 

I've heard of it happening before. Usually it's to pick up a particular technique, so that even if the PI can't take you it's a valuable rotation. I think the PI will certainly understand if you choose to rotate with a different PI though. 

Agreed.
Besides the personal peace of mind and the ability to ensure all your materials are in in time, no. The adcom will not meet before the deadline, and the review process does not account for when an app was submitted (provided it was submitted before the deadline). 

Not really.

I think you have a pretty diverse list of potential schools. Your stats, though your GPA is not that great, are pretty strong since you have a lot of experience, have publications, and will (hopefully) get really good letters from the PIs you have worked with. I would be surprised if you didn't get a couple of offers; however, I must warn you that Neurobiology programs, as opposed to umbrella programs, tend to be smaller and more competitive, so I would keep that in mind. 

Usually, having publications is not an absolute requirement for graduate school admissions. Many people are admitted without any publications at all. 
I would also advise against taking the feedback too literally unless you know the feedback was carefully crafted for you. Some things are hard to give good feedback on (e.g. your letters or your essays) so admissions committee may just look at the easiest quantitative thing to point out and say that. This doesn't mean that there are no other things needing improvement.
For the publication aspect, you could consider applying to a wider range of schools next year. Some schools won't care about pubs as much. One potentially worrying thing is that looking at your experience, it sounds like you have worked on many projects since your freshman year but still have no publication, not even a co-authored one. Maybe this is normal in your field, but to me, this could be a concern. Even in my field, it's not always possible to complete a publication-worthy project in just one summer since research is unpredictable and things can go wrong. So, my advice is to ensure your application not only say what projects you worked on, but what you accomplished as the result of your work. For example, I supervised one undergrad a few summers ago on a project that didn't result in a publication but answered a very very important question for our future work. (We needed to know if we should try to run future projects with a more time-expensive but more accurate method A instead of continuing with our less accurate but much quicker method B). So, in the letters for this student, we always emphasize the outcome of their work and how their summer work has informed years of future work. 
So, be sure to do this in your SOP and your CV discussing your own work, as well as talking with your letter writers. Share the feedback from the schools with them and ask them if they would be willing to emphasize the impact of your work even though it was not a publication.
I also have some other advice that could help.
1. Remember that admissions is somewhat random/stochastic, so not getting in doesn't really mean it's a judgement of you as a person or a scientist. How many schools did you apply to last year? If it's less than 6, consider applying to a larger number of schools. If you applied to lots of schools, then look at the list again with a mentor (i.e. someone who knows your abilities and interests well) and consider whether the types of schools you're applying to are a good fit.
2. Your sidebar says that you are interested in Ecology or Anthropology. Applying to multiple PhD fields is not that normal unless there is a much closer connection between those two fields than I would expect. Maybe you already did this, but you really have to treat them as two separate applications. Make your Ecology PhD application completely different than your Anthropology application. For point #1 above, this means you should be applying to at least 6 programs in each of these two fields, maybe more. You may also want to have different letter writers. And do not mention that you are also applying to the other program. At some schools, you are not able to apply to 2 PhD programs and/or you must mention them. Unless it is a rare case where the same school is a perfect fit for both programs for you, or unless the school allows multiple program applications without the programs knowing about your other one, I would only apply to one program per school.

Well thanks for the honesty I suppose. I'm going to be blunt with you, so try to not take offense, but you seem awfully arrogant. Some of your points are valid and I agree with; there are currently too many PhDs being trained. At this rate it's not sustainable, it's simply not. But to say a PhD is not worthwhile unless you stay in academia is silly and myopic, and should someone choose industry over academia that does not make them any less of a scientist. Many PhDs are choosing industry and alternative careers simply because they find academia is not an attractive option. Being on an entirely soft money salary fighting tooth and nail for grants in order to feed your family isn't exactly everyone's idea of a stable career, and if you can't see that then perhaps you should reflect on the current climate of academia a bit more. You know what percentage of PhD graduates end up in tenure track positions? It's low. While academia was once the default path, it's quickly becoming just the opposite and schools are changing to reflect that. 
You are exactly the the type of person I am looking to avoid for rotations. I hope during the course of your training you take off your blinders, because your narrow mindedness is something that is not a great character trait. 

Well thanks for the honesty I suppose. I'm going to be blunt with you, so try to not take offense, but you seem awfully arrogant. Some of your points are valid and I agree with; there are currently too many PhDs being trained. At this rate it's not sustainable, it's simply not. But to say a PhD is not worthwhile unless you stay in academia is silly and myopic, and should someone choose industry over academia that does not make them any less of a scientist. Many PhDs are choosing industry and alternative careers simply because they find academia is not an attractive option. Being on an entirely soft money salary fighting tooth and nail for grants in order to feed your family isn't exactly everyone's idea of a stable career, and if you can't see that then perhaps you should reflect on the current climate of academia a bit more. You know what percentage of PhD graduates end up in tenure track positions? It's low. While academia was once the default path, it's quickly becoming just the opposite and schools are changing to reflect that. 
You are exactly the the type of person I am looking to avoid for rotations. I hope during the course of your training you take off your blinders, because your narrow mindedness is something that is not a great character trait. 

I did not, and I don't push people to do so if their program has rotations. If you don't word it properly, it can come across weird, and I also like to talk to people about things like that in person, which is something I got to do at my interview.
Don't get too hung up on picking the perfect project for your PhD; the most important thing is to find a mentor who can teach you in the way you need to learn, a lab environment that you can work well in, and a project that will both get you the publication(s) you need to graduate and the skills you need for your next step, whether that is postdoc, industry, or something else. If I had only rotated with the PIs I was interested in, I would not have met my current PI as they weren't even at the school, yet. I even changed fields and am now in love with this one, so I'll stay in it. However, as you're in neuroscience and those skills are highly technical, I would recommend you don't change fields because it would be really hard to get back into for postdoc. I'll look for the "perfect project" or "perfect corner of my field" for postdoc, which shapes what I'll do the rest of my life more strongly than my PhD studies.
What you should do is make sure there are several faculty at the school you're thinking of attending that have projects you think might be interesting. Perhaps not all of them are taking students, but there will be a few that are. Check online and see what their funding situation looks like. Then check their publication record and try to get a handle on how their students/postdocs are doing. Publications will usually help with this, but a lot of labs also publish awards and graduation events on their website. These are the things I did for the PIs I was interested in, though I didn't contact them until I accepted my offer as the program had over 100 faculty to choose from, so I was sure I could find someone good. If you're very sure you want to attend there, reach out to the PIs to find out if you would be able to do a rotation. I would only schedule the first and second as you may meet some PIs when you get there that are doing more exciting things. It is a little late to do so now as it is close to the April 15 deadline, but still worth a shot.

Going to backpack in Europe for a couple weeks. Schools going to be stressful, might as well relax a bit before it starts  

Going to backpack in Europe for a couple weeks. Schools going to be stressful, might as well relax a bit before it starts  

Going to backpack in Europe for a couple weeks. Schools going to be stressful, might as well relax a bit before it starts  

Well thanks for the honesty I suppose. I'm going to be blunt with you, so try to not take offense, but you seem awfully arrogant. Some of your points are valid and I agree with; there are currently too many PhDs being trained. At this rate it's not sustainable, it's simply not. But to say a PhD is not worthwhile unless you stay in academia is silly and myopic, and should someone choose industry over academia that does not make them any less of a scientist. Many PhDs are choosing industry and alternative careers simply because they find academia is not an attractive option. Being on an entirely soft money salary fighting tooth and nail for grants in order to feed your family isn't exactly everyone's idea of a stable career, and if you can't see that then perhaps you should reflect on the current climate of academia a bit more. You know what percentage of PhD graduates end up in tenure track positions? It's low. While academia was once the default path, it's quickly becoming just the opposite and schools are changing to reflect that. 
You are exactly the the type of person I am looking to avoid for rotations. I hope during the course of your training you take off your blinders, because your narrow mindedness is something that is not a great character trait. 

Well thanks for the honesty I suppose. I'm going to be blunt with you, so try to not take offense, but you seem awfully arrogant. Some of your points are valid and I agree with; there are currently too many PhDs being trained. At this rate it's not sustainable, it's simply not. But to say a PhD is not worthwhile unless you stay in academia is silly and myopic, and should someone choose industry over academia that does not make them any less of a scientist. Many PhDs are choosing industry and alternative careers simply because they find academia is not an attractive option. Being on an entirely soft money salary fighting tooth and nail for grants in order to feed your family isn't exactly everyone's idea of a stable career, and if you can't see that then perhaps you should reflect on the current climate of academia a bit more. You know what percentage of PhD graduates end up in tenure track positions? It's low. While academia was once the default path, it's quickly becoming just the opposite and schools are changing to reflect that. 
You are exactly the the type of person I am looking to avoid for rotations. I hope during the course of your training you take off your blinders, because your narrow mindedness is something that is not a great character trait. 

Well thanks for the honesty I suppose. I'm going to be blunt with you, so try to not take offense, but you seem awfully arrogant. Some of your points are valid and I agree with; there are currently too many PhDs being trained. At this rate it's not sustainable, it's simply not. But to say a PhD is not worthwhile unless you stay in academia is silly and myopic, and should someone choose industry over academia that does not make them any less of a scientist. Many PhDs are choosing industry and alternative careers simply because they find academia is not an attractive option. Being on an entirely soft money salary fighting tooth and nail for grants in order to feed your family isn't exactly everyone's idea of a stable career, and if you can't see that then perhaps you should reflect on the current climate of academia a bit more. You know what percentage of PhD graduates end up in tenure track positions? It's low. While academia was once the default path, it's quickly becoming just the opposite and schools are changing to reflect that. 
You are exactly the the type of person I am looking to avoid for rotations. I hope during the course of your training you take off your blinders, because your narrow mindedness is something that is not a great character trait. 

OP your username is annoying AF, your posts always make me cringe. Does GRE matter when you consider yourself a "FailedScientist" good luck in your future, I'd suggest choosing a different career path if you've fucked up on interviews so many times. Peace dawg

Well thanks for the honesty I suppose. I'm going to be blunt with you, so try to not take offense, but you seem awfully arrogant. Some of your points are valid and I agree with; there are currently too many PhDs being trained. At this rate it's not sustainable, it's simply not. But to say a PhD is not worthwhile unless you stay in academia is silly and myopic, and should someone choose industry over academia that does not make them any less of a scientist. Many PhDs are choosing industry and alternative careers simply because they find academia is not an attractive option. Being on an entirely soft money salary fighting tooth and nail for grants in order to feed your family isn't exactly everyone's idea of a stable career, and if you can't see that then perhaps you should reflect on the current climate of academia a bit more. You know what percentage of PhD graduates end up in tenure track positions? It's low. While academia was once the default path, it's quickly becoming just the opposite and schools are changing to reflect that. 
You are exactly the the type of person I am looking to avoid for rotations. I hope during the course of your training you take off your blinders, because your narrow mindedness is something that is not a great character trait. 

Well thanks for the honesty I suppose. I'm going to be blunt with you, so try to not take offense, but you seem awfully arrogant. Some of your points are valid and I agree with; there are currently too many PhDs being trained. At this rate it's not sustainable, it's simply not. But to say a PhD is not worthwhile unless you stay in academia is silly and myopic, and should someone choose industry over academia that does not make them any less of a scientist. Many PhDs are choosing industry and alternative careers simply because they find academia is not an attractive option. Being on an entirely soft money salary fighting tooth and nail for grants in order to feed your family isn't exactly everyone's idea of a stable career, and if you can't see that then perhaps you should reflect on the current climate of academia a bit more. You know what percentage of PhD graduates end up in tenure track positions? It's low. While academia was once the default path, it's quickly becoming just the opposite and schools are changing to reflect that. 
You are exactly the the type of person I am looking to avoid for rotations. I hope during the course of your training you take off your blinders, because your narrow mindedness is something that is not a great character trait. 

This is a much more reasoned post than your initial one, but it does reflect a deep misunderstanding on your part. A PhD is much more than just learning techniques and gathering data. It's an entire way of thinking, critical analysis and skepticism, and personal dedication that can be applied to pretty much every aspect of your professional career. Being formally trained as a scientist is much more than knowing how to pipette well, and is often necessary for upwards movement in places like industry.
I never said getting a PhD is a good idea from a salary standpoint; that's not what I meant by soft money. What I meant is that often times academia positions only cover a portion of one's salary. At top institutions it's not uncommon to have zero salary support. That means you pay your entire salary through your grants. If your grants go, your salary is effectively zero. That is a constant threat that many people do not want to deal with.
Most people go into a doctoral program for the same reasons you said, they love science and love asking and answering questions that are currently unknown. But people have different end goals, and that's something you should learn to respect or you will end up as that guy who no one likes in the program.
 

Well thanks for the honesty I suppose. I'm going to be blunt with you, so try to not take offense, but you seem awfully arrogant. Some of your points are valid and I agree with; there are currently too many PhDs being trained. At this rate it's not sustainable, it's simply not. But to say a PhD is not worthwhile unless you stay in academia is silly and myopic, and should someone choose industry over academia that does not make them any less of a scientist. Many PhDs are choosing industry and alternative careers simply because they find academia is not an attractive option. Being on an entirely soft money salary fighting tooth and nail for grants in order to feed your family isn't exactly everyone's idea of a stable career, and if you can't see that then perhaps you should reflect on the current climate of academia a bit more. You know what percentage of PhD graduates end up in tenure track positions? It's low. While academia was once the default path, it's quickly becoming just the opposite and schools are changing to reflect that. 
You are exactly the the type of person I am looking to avoid for rotations. I hope during the course of your training you take off your blinders, because your narrow mindedness is something that is not a great character trait. 

Well thanks for the honesty I suppose. I'm going to be blunt with you, so try to not take offense, but you seem awfully arrogant. Some of your points are valid and I agree with; there are currently too many PhDs being trained. At this rate it's not sustainable, it's simply not. But to say a PhD is not worthwhile unless you stay in academia is silly and myopic, and should someone choose industry over academia that does not make them any less of a scientist. Many PhDs are choosing industry and alternative careers simply because they find academia is not an attractive option. Being on an entirely soft money salary fighting tooth and nail for grants in order to feed your family isn't exactly everyone's idea of a stable career, and if you can't see that then perhaps you should reflect on the current climate of academia a bit more. You know what percentage of PhD graduates end up in tenure track positions? It's low. While academia was once the default path, it's quickly becoming just the opposite and schools are changing to reflect that. 
You are exactly the the type of person I am looking to avoid for rotations. I hope during the course of your training you take off your blinders, because your narrow mindedness is something that is not a great character trait. 

Well thanks for the honesty I suppose. I'm going to be blunt with you, so try to not take offense, but you seem awfully arrogant. Some of your points are valid and I agree with; there are currently too many PhDs being trained. At this rate it's not sustainable, it's simply not. But to say a PhD is not worthwhile unless you stay in academia is silly and myopic, and should someone choose industry over academia that does not make them any less of a scientist. Many PhDs are choosing industry and alternative careers simply because they find academia is not an attractive option. Being on an entirely soft money salary fighting tooth and nail for grants in order to feed your family isn't exactly everyone's idea of a stable career, and if you can't see that then perhaps you should reflect on the current climate of academia a bit more. You know what percentage of PhD graduates end up in tenure track positions? It's low. While academia was once the default path, it's quickly becoming just the opposite and schools are changing to reflect that. 
You are exactly the the type of person I am looking to avoid for rotations. I hope during the course of your training you take off your blinders, because your narrow mindedness is something that is not a great character trait. 

First off, your opinion is not truth. 
First off, lets talk about your example of journalism. In this day and age, do you honestly think it's a bad thing to have well educated scientists writing about science for the general public? There's a reason that's part of NIH and NSF's outreach goals (communication to the general public). 
Consulting? Depending on what you want to consult about, having a PhD is a valuable credential and well spent. 
Looking back at your original post, your arrogance is astounding. You seem to be sure that you know better who to allocate to projects (masters students vs PhD students) than people who have experience managing researchers. You seem to think that as an applicant, you're in a position to say who should or should not be allowed into a program, moreso than the people who are actually writing grants to fund those researchers. 
Personally, I don't look for someone who's life is dedicated to science. I think that's an attitude that leads to burnout. I also don't just pick students who want to go into academia. I pick students who I can forge a good professional relationship with, and who have a positive attitude, a good work ethic, and who have interests outside of our research. 
And as for your comment on picking advisors:
That's the advice I give to every one of my undergraduates applying to grad school, and what I gave to every prospective graduate student I met. Attrition from people who didn't pick based on a god mesh of personalities is huge in grad school- and grad school is about training and learning, and you do that best when you have a good fit of personality with the person you're working for. I can guarantee the mentor is picking people they mesh with in return.

I've been mostly holding off on commenting until I saw my pal @Bioenchilada post, so I figured I'd chime in as well.
Pretty much everything that Bioenchilada said was on point. Having gone to an Ivy League for undergrad myself, and knowing that prestige of school and overall funding =/= grad school experience or funding, I only applied to like 1 Ivy only for their program during my application round.
That being said, I'm now at UCSF and had some misconceptions before I even got here, so let me address some parts in the section I quoted above.
1. UCSF is TWO campuses - Parnassus and Mission Bay. There is literally a Biophysics program, there's TETRAD for more pure sciences research, not to mention powerhouses like QB3, etc. There isn't necessarily an engineering department besides the joint program with Berkeley, but I'm actually rotating in a bioengineering lab next quarter. So many innovations come out from UCSF because engineering research is being conducted here (with applications to medicine, obviously, but that are generalizable). 
2. On the money issue:
You're not going to graduate school to get rich while you're there. Whether it be NYC or SF, the cost of living in these desirable places is pretty much the price of admission to be in the theme park. I did originally have qualms about this, as I even calculated that at some other schools I might be able to save up about $20K across 5 years or mortgage a house, but is that the point of graduate school? Also, if I'm going to be somewhat destitute, I'd rather do it in graduate school, not when I'm doing a post doc (note, loads of post docs love being here, and they get paid even less than graduate students due to the UC-wide post doc union). As someone from a low income background, with no family to support me, it's not as bad as you think. Once you get over the mental barrier, you realize that even here people can live fine on our salary. I won't say it's necessarily comfortable or thriving, but it's enough to survive. You forgot 4 other important things that UCSF does to offset the cost. a. You get two years in heavily subsidized student housing. b. You get a $4K relocation-allowance which you can use for anything before coming to UCSF (helps to offset costs of moving). c. Some programs provide you with a laptop and other goodies for matriculating (some have additional housing funds). d. There is a cost-of-living allowance given to people that live off campus, and even then you can find off-campus housing for under $1000/mo. It might mean not having a single studio, but that's just the way it is. Final point: anywhere you go, fellowships do not supplement your income directly. Some programs might give you extra money, but this is incredibly rare as your stipend is set by NIH/NSF standards, so usually programs that advertise these bonuses do so because their stipend is on the lower end of the spectrum.  Now, I'm going to flip around some of your pros form Princeton.
3. Quality over Quantity. I'm not sure why you would put that as a pro, as if somehow UCSF's overwhelming amount of faculty is indicative of lower quality? You do realize that UCSF is the number one recipient of NIH funds, right? No school anywhere hires people without their own sources of income, and a scientist's ability to maintain funding is pretty much a straight correlation with the quality of their work or its impact. Obviously UCSF is a purely medical/science university so there will absolutely be an overwhelming amount of faculty to choose from, but that is not a sign of lower quality.
4. Tons of money and funding. Princeton may have a huge endowment, but you'll almost never see any of that money, especially since those endowments tend to be trapped in undergraduate services or things that don't spill over into your science. You may get better career services, free food, and other things, but graduate programs tend to be maintained through training grants, tuition remissions, and funding overhead. At any top program, you're going to see programs tell you that you're covered by the program for X number of years, and then your PI guarantees the rest of your funding; of course, in the case of something catastrophic, like your PI losing funding or leaving, top programs have mechanisms to still support you. So look out for that information from places you're interested in. 
Finally, I'm going to address this since it's so insidious.
Get.Over.School.Prestige.To.Non.Science.People.
I don't know why people feel like they need to somehow boost their egos by thinking that people not in the sciences need to recognize their school - as if that was a metric for anything. If I had listened to my family, I would have gone to Yale or MIT since they didn't know about UCSF; luckily, I know better and have no need to be used by family and friends as some talking point to other people they're trying to impress. I went where I thought I had the best fit with the program and my interviewing cohort, in addition to the science being conducted there and where I would be living for the next 5-6 years. Additionally, UCSF has huge recognition on the West coast in all circles. I also see that you turned down Harvard and MIT interviews; so really, if non-scientific reputation means anything to you, you should have taken those interviews, since while it seems that UCSF doesn't hold a candle to the prestige you desire, Princeton realistically pales in comparison to those other two as well, and even more in the sciences.