Epigenetics

I'd prefer not to speak in more detail on this forum.

Didn't get into my dream program. Felt like the interview and weekend went really well, but turns out I was wrong. Any advice on getting over a place you were 100% ready to move to? It was my dream to go there for like the past six years so it's really killing me, but I'm trying to put it out of my mind because I have one more interview left.

Nah my friend already got in, I think I just didn't get into this program, which is totally fine it was a bad fit. Thanks though!

Anyone know/heard from Genome Sciences at UWashington? Interviews were last Monday, saw that someone said they heard yesterday, curious if that's accurate/the timeline therein.

Ironically the closest I've come to being "grilled" were two professors that had genes from the regulator I study come up in their screen, and we had a 45min conversation about what it might mean and if it is real (this regulator comes up in a lot of screens...) but it wasn't what I would call grilling, more like "let's have a conversation". Also I have had no professors assume I knew what they did, I've even had a couple be like "I did not read anything about you please give me an intro". Most of these professors tbh are just professors doing their thing who have these scheduled for them by their department, and aren't doing anything too intense for this process. I think most schools schedule you with someone on the admissions committee as one of your several interviews but even then... maybe this is because I'm applying mostly to broader biology/biomedical/genetics programs that I'm getting a skewed portrait but I have no impression so far that any of my six interviews are actually interviews.

Oh that's not what I'm saying. The admissions committees meet again after the interview weekends, my point is that the interviews themselves don't provide significant new information aside from if people are insane.

Also like genuinely curious if anyone has had an interview so far that you genuinely thought would be useful to someone in deciding to admit you or not. Not one of my interviews so far has resembled anything remotely as useful to admitting me as my application did. I have trouble seeing how those could/would be used as a deciding factor in admissions decisions.

Most of these programs know who they intend to admit before interviews. These interview processes aren't actual interviews, they're recruitment weekends. Also please don't give me nonsense about "there's only 4-6 spots" no, there's 4-6 final spots after people matriculate on average per year, but the programs admit many more people than that. I know some programs can be more narrow but that is not standard.

Uhh first of all programs make admissions decisions before interviews, you're not stealing someone's spot. Second, if you weren't that interested in the programs you shouldn't have accepted the interviews, that's on you for wasting their money and time, there was a time to withdraw and it has long passed. Have fun bro.

Also like... assuming an MD/PhD is a 5-6 year process is a generous estimation, you'll be lucky if it's under 7-8 years.

Just go to the interviews, it's a big dick move to cancel now, and at minimum they're great networking opportunities.

They're completely different programs. Harvard BBS is very broad and flexible, rotations are organized by the students, the curriculum is very flexible apart from a few base courses, and there are a huge number of hospital faculty available to you as well as anyone in "HILS (Harvard Integrated Life Sciences)" across the campus. Harvard Med has faculty at all the hospitals (MGH, Dana-Farber, Boston Children's, Beth Israel, Brigham and Women's) so there's a lot of faculty who do medical research from varied angles (from basic to clinical) that you can work with. MIT Biology is much much more rigid, no rotations for the first semester, then everyone does three 4-week rotations before choosing a dissertation lab. Also the classes I think are a bit more set in stone but I may be wrong on that. In MIT biology your faculty has to be in the biology department, not anyone at MIT who does biology, so the choices are more limited. Also no MIT faculty have hospital or medical affiliations, they're all basic science, so while they may collaborate on medical problems or work on models of disease, they don't have the same access to patient samples/clinical research as Harvard does. Both programs are rather large, although I think BBS is a bit larger (65-70 for BBS per year to 50 or so for MIT as far as I know) but the general philosophies and structures are vastly different. A really good example of this is the Harvard/MIT Health Sciences Technology program, where MIT and Harvard partner so that MIT can have a more medically focused resource. This really only matters if you want to do actual clinical work or work with patient samples, as otherwise you need to get them from a collaborator, which also isn't impossible at all but I think speaks to the broader philosophies and focuses of the two programs. Harvard has several other biology PhD programs that vary in the faculty you can work with and the structure, but even the most rigid (I have a friend in Immunology which is very rigid) doesn't have the hard structure to rotations that MIT does, so I think in general Harvard can be said to be less structured but obviously there will be corner cases to any such assertion.

One of my close friends is on adcom and says that's not true, they are looking to cut it down but they already did that before the interviews.

I think that's called science. You shouldn't be giving firm or definite answers if you're on the cutting edge, and that's fine.

Don't overinterpret one set of failures, the application process doesn't mean you aren't good enough, it can mean a lot of things. Getting more experience is always good, especially post-graduate, and you don't have to be committed to a field yet.

I've been working as a computational biologist for ~18months now. I was also lucky that my undergraduate research was completely independent, my professor pretty much gave me a project and said "do it". It's an academic setting.

I was in Harvard OEB for undergrad, I love this department, good luck guys!

I didn't apply out of undergrad because I did not want to go straight from undergrad to grad school. I would say get a research tech position and work in a lab full time, it's a completely different world from undergrad research and programs really care about your LOR and research experience, both of which will be aided by post-grad research experience.

I'm not going solely by rankings, I made a list off the top of my head and it included all of those except WUSTL, I was just including it for reference. Also I included Berkeley in my original list so I don't understand your correction there. Obviously other schools have talented faculty and programs too, but having been to genomics conferences I would strongly argue that Harvard, Stanford, UWashington, MIT, and Berkeley have the greatest concentration of faculty doing cutting-edge work in this field. You can also look at centers for big NIH programs like ENCODE, Roadmap, and TCGA which are largely among those few schools. Again, all of this depends on what you want to work on and who you want to work with, so rankings are largely unimportant for choosing a PhD program, but that is my answer to the above question.

I would say any of the six schools listed here are great for it: http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/genetics-rankings (Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UWashington, WUSTL, MIT) I also think biomedical informatics as the program was set up had a specific focus, I'm a computational biologist but I applied to genetics because I thought it was a better fit for my brand of genomics research. It varies, PhD programs are all about fit to the program and the professors you want to work with. I don't think any school has such a monopoly on a field that everyone clearly goes there.

I think interview offers were sent out in December. I did not apply to BIG though.

No it's not. I don't know of any PhD program, Harvard included where I currently work and went for undergrad, that has more than a 50% yield. Stanford isn't the only/best bioinformatics program.

I wouldn't assume the fact they're planning to have fewer students enroll means they're admitting fewer. Even if they want a class of 4-5, they may have to admit 15 or more to get that number to enroll. Just because it's a big name school doesn't mean it has 100% matriculation

Lol Stanford Genetics also did that, my PI went to Stanford for her PhD and says they do it on purpose since it's one interview weekend, they want you to network etc.

I think you're fine. They would've e-mailed you if they didn't have the official report and needed it, I know a few schools I've heard from have been like "if you haven't sent the official score report please do so." Send it now but I wouldn't freak out.