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Did you hear back from UNC yet? I STILL haven't, but I accepted an offer from another school (University of Rochester SMD) since I had decided that I liked the research environment and location there better all along. It just bothers my ego to not know about UNC though. Also congrats to all the Harvard people, I did an MS at the Harvard School of Public Health and it was an awesome experience! Unfortunately Harvard doesn't really have the faculty or specialization to support my discipline (Tox) so I decided to apply to different schools this time around.

Your ability to work well with your research advisor is way more important for your success and happiness than the specific research topic. If you program has rotations, you'd also have some time to figure that out.

The very first interview weekend, January 26th I believe. I did reach out to the PI about it a few weeks ago and he said that we could touch base when I found out about my acceptance. I'm still pretty split on the matter of which school to go to, my other option, the location isn't as cool and hip as chapel hill, but the students in the department really truly support eachother, and I don't think I'd get quite the same camraderie at UNC, even though the students seem pretty happy there.

Yeah so here's the thing. I still don't know! i emailed BBSP since they said mid march at the interviews and they gave me an incredibly vague email saying that they hadn't made all decisions yet and that I could expect to hear back by early April.. At this point, while UNC was originally my first choice, it honestly sounds like I'm a backup in case enough people reject their offers for their ~90 seat goal, and to be honest, that feels bad. Anyway if I did get in, my top choice PI here, I want to make sure that I can secure a rotation in his lab before I commit to the school. He takes students from 3 different departments, so I'm worried that there could be competition, especially since I've been unable to discuss this with him until I actually get an acceptance, so other people could have in theory taken all of his rotation spots. BTW, I just posted another thread which discusses my decision making process.

Hello, So I applied here as well and it's now late March and I still haven't heard anything back! Have you heard anything? I emailed their coordinator and did not get a response. I also have a friend in that program now as a first year (who convinced me to apply) and said that they had interviewed people February 2nd. So weird for them to be this silent though!

I got rejected from Brown's pathobiology program after an interview and I felt it was because I wasn't a great fit for the research of the faculty members taking students, and they seemed to imply that I wasn't the type of student they were looking for. I have an MS in a tangentially related field while they seemed to mostly want people that had been a lab tech after undergrad before starting their program. I wasn't too miffed about it since I knew it wasn't a good fit. Also I'm waiting for a school to accept me that I interviewed at in January. They said they'd have acceptances out by mid march, but after asking them about it, it seems like they'll be sending out offers until the beginning of April. These rolling processes are frustrating since it's not apparent whether they think you're a low priority student to recruit, or if the delay is simply due to administrative bungling (ie. are they just unable to get the right people together to discuss my application compared to that of others in other departments).

So I saw on he results search that someone got waitlisted for UNC's BBSP today, is it at all common for schools to send out those on the wait list before they send out acceptances?

Anyone else still waiting on UNC's BBSP? I visited 6 weeks ago and made up my mind 3 weeks ago after finishing my other interviews, but I still don't have an acceptance yet. It's been kind of frustrating for me since I probably want to do a summer rotation so I don't have to get a horrible barista job over the summer, but I can't really talk about it with professors until I actually get accepted.

I would go to Japan and be an English teacher, it would be so すごい lol, just learning more Japanese while helping people learn English and getting to eat amazing Asian food all the time. Ive already gotten into my 2nd choice school and I'm waiting to hear back from my first, so I'm almost sad that I won't be able to live in Japan for a while

Oh the only reason I'm trying to figure out rotations this early is because I want to do a summer rotation. A lot of schools have rotation info sessions in the fall for faculty looking for rotation students though.

Are you going to meet with them in person? I assume you'd already interviewed, but I think meeting them in person is a good call if its not a huge distance for you. In my situation, the school I plan to go to is a 12 hour drive away and I'm pretty broke right now, so I'm just relying on emails and maybe calling them if it gets to that. My first choice (UNC BBSP) hasn't gotten back to me yet, but I assume based on how the interviews went that I'll be accepted. The only caveat to that is that I can't really email professors right now to talk about rotations since I'm not accepted yet, even though I've seen all of my other choices and gotten all of my other offers, so my mind is almost made up. For me, the only way I won't go to UNC if I get in is if both of my top 2 of the 4-5 professors I want to work with can't let me rotate, but as I've said I can't really ask one of them details about a rotation until I get in (I actually tried doing this since my mind is made up, but they said that we'd talk once I've been accepted). I'd be really scared of committing to a school without knowing if the people I want to work with can take me in their lab. I'm not really sure what I'd say in person, but I'd say in your email to get their attention you should say why you want to work with them. In my case, I was moderately interested in the subject area of their work (even less so than some other things I've been more interested in), very interested the disease state they work on, and I really wanted to get to try to work with their model organism, so I mentioned all of these things that make me think I'd be a good fit. I didn't mention this, but I also thought that the professor would be a good mentor for me based on how the interview went. If you haven't met the professor yet I'd probably ask them what direction the lab is going on the next few years while you'll be at the school, what is their mentoring style/expectation of hours like, will they let you take classes/TA if you want, what sort of things are their students working on, what sort of small project would you work on for a rotation, what sort of day-to-day techniques do they do (ie. if you despise PCR but love flow, maybe don't join that lab?) and most importantly, if they have funding to take you on as a full time student for the rest of the PhD if you really enjoy your rotation there. The last part varies depending on schools, ie. UNC won't let rotate in a lab that doesn't have the funding to take you full time from a rotation, but I've heard of other people from other schools getting told that they probably wouldn't be able to stay in the lab after a rotation and letting them rotate anyway, or hiring a postdoc over a grad student instead with that funding at the end of a rotation.

I'm still waiting to hear back from UNC (applied to a different department than comp bio though) and I've decided to go there over my other top choice if I am accepted (I wish they would hurry up and tell the rest of us already, I visited 6 whole weeks ago!) At least in my experience with my own field (Tox) I felt as though UNC really understands where the future of the field is going, which is towards more of a high throughput -omics, and even come computational approach to solving environmental health problems, which I realized would be more valuable to me than my other offers who seem to be more old school (ie. their department head told me that he thinks big data is a fad that will go out of style in the future). Besides that UNC is a huge school with such a huge amount of people to work with in diverse areas, and I honestly felt like the people I met at UNC include the PIs I wanted to work with the most, so I have an idea of my what my first two rotations will be, with a list of 2-3 for the third (though I might branch out and rotate in a different department instead depending on how I'm feeling). I'm coming from the Northeast where my other main choice is located and this past winter really convinced me that I hate and despise the cold, so UNC is good for me weatherwise, though UCLA would probably satisfy the warmth requirement for you too! Are you more of a city person or would you prefer small town with a relaxed attitude? That might help you, I know I think the local food scene in Chapel Hill is great, and I'm tired of big cities personally.