Chemcat

Wonder when Berkeley is going to send out rejections...

Reach out to Kiessling and Raines' graduts students at Wisconsin. The ones I spoke with were very helpful and the profs recommended emailing their students to get a feel for lab environment. There are a lot of reasons to choose a grad program and being close to family and a fiancé is definitely a good one. Honestly based on what you wrote you had the least negative things to say about Harvard, whatever that's worth.

The interviews aren't intense at all, compared to the other program I've interviewed with. It's essentially informal conversations about your research interests and the research that their group does. I asked some questions about moving from synthesis into chemical biology and tried to get a feel for the PI's mentorship style. I'm interested in Cravatt, Wiseman, Kelly, and Romesberg. Definitely know your own research, know why it's important etc. But also be ready to discuss your future goals and ask questions about the program. Honestly I don't think they cut much at this point, assuming you give them no red flags (behaving poorly, getting very drunk in front of profs, insinuating you're not interested in Scripps, etc.). Also heads up for those without interviews--they only invited 17% to interview this year (if I remember correctly) so that's slightly less than in the past. 4 of my 7 interviews were group interviews so don't be surprised if you get that when interviewing with a popular professor.

I visited La Jolla this past weekend and loved it. I wasn't expecting much, but the visit was well organized, the interviews were interesting, and the graduate students were great to talk to. It has moved to the top of my list for graduate school...

The first thing my PI told me when I was considering applying and just not accepting offers if I didn't get into a top program is that that would be fine and I could reapply to schools that rejected me and be successful but that no school that had extended me an offer would offer me a place again if I turned it down. This is because they are looking for people who are serious about their program and research, and one of the biggest tells for someone who is not serious is someone who has turned down your program before. Yes, you are allowed to have second thoughts and doubts, but that doesn't mean you will be afforded the opportunity to join that program again.

Honestly this is a very bad move. No school that accepted you will accept you again after you reject your offer. If you apply again to only Boston programs (I guess if you're looking for high ranking programs that would be MIT, Harvard, BC is pretty good?) The chances of MIT accepting you after rejecting you once aren't great especially knowing that you got into other top 10 schools. It sounds like you didn't get in for fit, not qualifications. So I'd just accept an offer you have, especially if it's a top 10 school.

Has anyone emailed Yale and heard about their timeline? (Willing to email myself if no one else has, but figured I'd check here first.) It's the last school I'm waiting on (assuming UCB is just sending rejections late) and I'm so curious (Yale MIT and Stanford were my top three programs of interest).

I know of a few people who have heard back-- mostly for synthetic.

Do you think it's too late to hear from Yale? I don't know what to think at this point...

I think a lot of Yale went out yesterday (still no news...)

...what if we weren't rejected by MIT... is this a waitlist situation?

I was accepted a few weeks ago--visit weekends are March 2-4 and March 16-18

no isn't it coming out in the next three days?

I haven't heard anything but I also know not all divisions do interviews--I know interviews are big for inorganic but I'm not sure if they're big for chem bio.

Piggybacking off of this, has MIT sent out chem bio acceptances yet? I've seen a lot of inorganic acceptances go out for MIT...