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Anyone there or going there?

I recommend wells fargo in the US in general. Up until a few years ago wells fargo was the west coast bank and Wachovia was the east coast bank. Wells Fargo purchased wachovia,and I think that wells fargo has officially taken over most if not all of wachovia branches now. So if you have wells fargo, you can easily bank and use atms in probably all american cities and without extra fees. Credit unions vs banks: Credit unions are good if you want to take out loans and start a savings. There are often fees or restrictions to get accounts there. They usually require higher minimum amounts to keep account open. These are less in banks but you pay higher interest and save at lower % rates. I personally have a credit union and a bank. I do most of my banking at the bank and keep savings in the credit union. Check with people in your program though too. They may have deals or suggestions on what to do.

I was looking at U of toronto I think for the sciences. My boss would have paid for everything but tuition was over 2x as expensive for non-Canadians. This would probably make it hard to find a position at least there

I may be applying for this over the next few months. Good luck to everyone that applied this last year

I would look for a lab doing research within your current area of interest and try to get a job there. I would check out the NIH post-bac program that you are probably aware of

Doing a summer program at a particular school will help you get into that particular school, if you do well there. Some programs even wave application fees for their summer students. I did a REU a long time ago, and we got heavily recruited by that particular school. I did not apply there, but summer students likely would have received at least an interview there. This is true for most schools. The top 5-10 schools are probably the main exception to this.

A lot of people applying to graduate school probably considered medicine, and switched to science at some point for similar reasons as you mentioned. I would not mention your interest in medicine and just talk about how you volunteered in a lab and fell in love. Some people that do not get into medicine do apply as back up, so I would not mention it

You need to decide if you want your PhD or not. If you want your PhD, try to find a new lab there even if this means starting over. It is unfortunate that you are two years into it, but it could have been worse for sure. Is there something there that you like more, if you do have to switch. It sounds like you did not have the background for your project anyways, so this may be for the best. I ran into a similar situation, and I ended up leaving the program to reapply to graduate schools/labs. It will ultimately end up taking me even longer now. I can discuss this more with you via private message, if you were interested. I am currently applying now.

I do not know much about the funding in the UK for stuff like this. You may want to contact PIs of interest and see if they may have a spot for someone. I assume that you are a US citizen. If so, I would look at the NIH summer or post-bac programs. They have the US version of what you are asking for and it is a great place to work. You have to contact individual labs to find a position there. Some labs are better than others for giving you a real research project, so ask the right questions before picking one. I would avoid the clinical labs too.

If a PI already has an existing R01 and did not do this, can they hire someone for a short term period of time? Summer rotation labs for people starting graduate school is a good example, since they are not likely registered as a student at the time that they are being paid. I was under the impression that the people paid on a R01 are flexible, but I heard that one may not list short term positions. This may not be true though.

Anyone know if NIH has any funding policies regarding how to fund these or not? Can PIs fund 2-3month projects on grants?

This is required of students by many programs. You do not need to supply them a gift. I would send them a thank you email I think that most students enjoyed this. They get free food and alcohol, and they appreciate this aspect of it. We had unofficial contests to see who could get the most recruits to matriculate into the program too.

The article described a larger wave that happened next to campus around the time I was there. It resulted in a Duke graduate student being murdered in the apartments next to campus. The suspect ~1 month later murdered the student body president at UNC and made national news (much more rare to hear about this stuff in Chapel Hill). This was a more famous crime wave a few years, but crime is a regular problem in that same area where international students live. I have also lived in a city that is near the top 10 for murder rates, so I am used to big cities with lots of crime. I would not call Durham an average US city in regards to crime. I am in a city now that is probably over 10x the size of Durham, and I have heard about fewer major crimes here in a year than I did in a typical month in Durham. I would not dismiss it as an average city in regards to crime. However, it is not something to stress about like many people do there. If you are cautious it is probably fine. There are definitely schools in more dangerous areas (Hopkins medical campus, WashU, etc) Anyways, enough of this tangent...

Duke and Durham historically have bad relations. Durham was mainly a Tobacco manufacturing city and was a fairly poor area. Duke is a rich kids school. This is claimed to be the reason behind the crime. Some people in the community will come by and target people in the Duke area. We probably heard about 2-5 armed robbery reports in this area/month. Most of the time it was people doing stuff that common sense suggests one should avoid (e.g like walking home alone at 2am in a bad area. There were even some drive by shootings at the hospital. There have been strings of more crime: http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/2332198/ If you use common sense, then Durham really is not too bad. It helps if you live in more safe area. I lived there for several years and I did not see anything myself. I used common sense and moved my car to center of campus before it was dark and tried to not walk in areas that I should not after dark. You do have to be careful in that city in general. If you make a wrong turn, you can end up in very bad looking areas. You just need to use common sense and treat Durham like you would any large city (even though it is only a medium sized city) Durham and Chapel Hill are close to each other, but Chapel Hill is a safe area. I had friends there and they were always scared to come to Durham. Durham has a bad reputation. Chapel Hill is college town, and people love that area. Most of the students there live in neighboring areas like Cary. They have a better public transit system I believe. If I remember right, parking was bad at UNC, so people like to use public transit there. It has been awhile since I interviewed at UNC, so I could be wrong about parking there. UNC is one of the best public schools in the US, so it would be a good place to get a degree from. Raleigh is not too bad either. In general this whole area is a pretty nice area to live. They have small, medium and large cities. You can live in the type of place that you prefer to live, and go visit the other types when you want. Raleigh and Durham sprawl and do not have the big city feel (e.g. a downtown, skyscrapers, etc). There are a lot of 2 lane roads surrounded by trees and an occasional business or home. Durham at least has a lot of parks and trails for people to use. You are also two hours from the NC coast (good beaches) and three hours from Asheville and mountains.

I think Duke had a very small number of "graduate student housing", but no one lived in them. Most international students lived in housing next to campus. There are some nice new housing units there, but they are expensive. This area of campus is relatively dangerous though (do not walk home alone at night). Most international students tried to get a car and moved it onto campus when parking was free. I recommend trying to get a car and moving away from campus ASAP. There are a lot of decent apartments 10-20min drive from Duke. SW Durham is a good area to look, but I would see the place in person or rely on current students to suggest places. Northern Durham had some decent places too. Every other block in durham tends to be a bad neighborhood, so you have to be careful and use your common sense. I lived there for a few years, and I did not see anything too bad personally. You just have to be careful there. Living away from campus will decrease the odds of one being a victim of a crime.