samman1994

It appears it isn't universal, but common for most canadian schools For example, university of toronto you can, but university of waterloo and university of british columbia you can't (for international students). These are both for chemistry programs. Waterloo- https://uwaterloo.ca/graduate-studies-academic-calendar/science/department-chemistry/doctor-philosophy-phd-chemistry UBC- https://www.grad.ubc.ca/country/united-states

Sorry man, don't really know much about their Chemistry programs; however if you only have a BS, PhD programs in Canada require a minimum of a MA.

Just keep in mind, there is a good possibility the guy from yale might not work out. I would make sure you have contacted at least 2 other people within Yale that you would be interested in, and see if they are also accepting students. So if this guy doesn't work out, you have a back up plan and don't end up wasting your time.

As someone who was an undergrad, but was in a lab with almost entirely grad students, I was in a similar situation. Mine primarily came from age however, I was 19 at the time, and the person closest to my age in the lab was 26, and the rest ranged from 28-37, so quite the gap. Initially, I had my undergrad friends, but made all my lab members and fellow lab members from nearby labs, simply colleagues and acquaintances. As time progressed however, and I matured a bit more, I was able to relate to my lab mates a lot more, and things did get a lot more personal. There are some people in my lab I clicked with, and we even hang out outside of school, and talk about everything ranging from stupid alcohol adventures to vacation and even marriage. There were others who's personalities simply conflicted with mine, and we remained simply colleagues. From my experience, it is important to actually make good connections in grad school, and especially friendships more than just colleagues. The connections and networking you can make will really help you a lot in all future career and academic fields you decide to pursue. I also still have friends from my undergrad who I still hang out with and talk, and friends outside of school completely unrelated to my school or lab. It really comes down to a personal choice, but I think you can really enhance your academic/grad experience if you do make good personal connections with your colleagues (more than just simple chat). You'll gain good friendships, great networking connections (especially since they're in your field), and overall I personally think make your lab experience more fun. One time in our lab, we ended up getting really drunk (someone had just defended their thesis so party) and we did nothing but talk about how bad we felt for treating bacteria like shit, and how thankful we were there was no bacteria rights group because we would be screwed. Those are the type of experiences that I remember and keep with me during my academic career. Tl'dr see who you click with, and who you don't. If you click with them, I think you should make it personal, if you don't, just keep it professional. Making good personal friendships will make your grad experience more enjoyable and is good networking as well.

Hello, Both those schools actually do have very good biochemistry programs. Interesting enough, found out for the stuff I'm specifically looking for, the more popular schools with good Biochem programs (Berkley, Caltech, etc.) don't actually really have much of what i"m interested in, but schools like university of Wisconsin, or university of north carolina or conneticut, have really good programs for me.

There are multiple labs that actually do what I'm discussing. Each school I am applying has at least 3+ faculty doing said research. But I understand, thank you!

Ah I understand, thank you!

I don't know how psych works, but if it the MA programs anything like Chemistry or the life sciences, then it would actually be in your best interest to reach out to them. However, do not ask them whether they think you are in a good program (that is the job of your counselor or advisor) or send them your CV. Also, if you are looking at the schools program itself, and it isn't explictly explained online, then call/email the schools dept. and not a faculty member. The only time (at least in my field), you contact the faculty member is if you want some information about them explicitly (i.e. is their lab accepting new students, do you want to join their lab, etc.), you should not contact a faculty member for general questions. In regards to my field, if you contact them regarding joining their lab, if they do plan to only be there for a year, they will tell you. My PI used to get very annoyed when people would send her, instead of the department, general emails regarding programs and whatnot.

Hello everyone! A couple days ago I decided to visit my old research lab, drop by and say hi and meet the new students. While I was there I overhead a discussion between a guy discussing how he was in honors and top of his class back in high school, to another lab member. The other lab member, a bit annoyed, replied that it was nothing special and everyone at the school was top of their class and was honors when they were younger. This bothered me a little bit, because there is an ideal that if you're in a top STEM field, you must be very smart and always have been successful or a genius etc. I of course didn't say anything there, didn't really want to expose my past to everyone, but I think it's important to know their statements are not true at all. First and foremost, I never really had difficulty with school when I was younger, in regards to understanding subjects, I was just lazy. Never put in the effort, never had good grades (both elementary, and middle school). High school is when I was introduced to drugs, women, and well all the beauties of life so to speak. I got heavily involved with weed, then as time progressed, acid, ecstasy, even some amphetamines. I never really liked the high of anything other than psychodelics however, so I primarily stuck with hallucinogens, but I did try basically everything I could get my hands on (curiosity killed the cat). My focus shifted away from school to drugs and women, to the extent I ditched almost my entire sophmore year, with the exception of the first few weeks and test days (I wanted to make sure I was still borderline passing high school). Also got into a lot of law problems due to dumb criminal activities (e.g. one day stealing meds from a pharmacy, another day grafitti, etc.). This went on until, for a compilation of reasons, my high school my junior year decided to expel me from the entire district (the decision went very high up, and they didn't want me in that entire region). So, no school for me! This of course only gave me wayyy more freedom to do the stupid shit I was already doing. The main crowd I hung around with were kids who were expelled from school or recently graduated homeless kids, so now I had even more time to hang out with them. Anyways, senior year I decided to enroll into another school (rather my parents did), As usual, I showed up for the first few weeks, and that's when I met a girl, and not gonna go into detail, but she pulled me out of that crowd. I dropped all the drugs except for weed, started showing up to school (because she was there), and started actually planning for my future (we ended up dating for 3+ years). I decided I wanted to go to college and get a degree in Chemistry. At the time, my GPA was a 2.2, so without an SAT I had absolutely no chance anywhere. I ended up enrolling for the SAT, barely got the minimum score I needed with my GPA to apply, and applied to one university only (stupid i know, but it was the only one I wanted to go to). I got in! Needless to say, old habits and techniques die hard, and my first 2 years didn't go really well. I broke up with my girl, got back into the old crowd again, and shit went down hill. This time however, I decided to pull myself out, I couldn't hang with the old crowd. My mentality had completely changed, and to me, their life no longer seemed pleasent or even tolerable, but a waste of time. I pulled myself out, and by my 4th year I ended up making myself one of the top students in my classes during the semester, and graduated with a BS in Chemistry. I am currently applying to PhD programs across the board to get into my desired programs (which I think I'll get into at least one of the schools). My point in this post is, there is an ideal that I saw throughout society and even among my peers, that people in good STEM programs (e.g. Ivy league schools, or the UC system, etc.), have always been the super smart and talented genius kid. While that is somewhat true from the people I met, I think it's important to note, it is not always true. People from all backgrounds, good and bad, go to these programs and institutions, and just because you made some bad decisions in high school doesn't mean you're future is effectively fucked (as people used to tell me). A few people in my old crowd are actually in the same boat, and are now in the process of getting their bachelors in their desired programs as well. Anyways, their conversation bothered me on a more personal deep down level because I thought to myself, well I didn't go to honors, and was never top of my class. Does that make me an idiot then? Everytime my peers discuss their past, it was always something along the lines of how great and successful their life has been, and I've never really shared mine because I didn't want them to think, wait we have a druggie loser kid who get kicked out of high school here? It might not change how my boss or others view me, but I want them to have the image that I've always been this great smart guy and on their level (especially now that i'm asking for LOR and maybe some connections from my PI). But it's semi-anonymous here, no one knows you, so I thought I'd share my story, and see if anyone wanted to share theres.

Well in regards to the short list, I was going to make a list of 10 schools from all the schools i've looked at (3+ faculties each), and then email them. From how many have room and funding, then I'd narrow it down to 5 and apply then (rather than make a shortlist now and add more later). But thank you both for your help by the way! It has really helped give me new ideas and methods to finding the ideal future PhD program for me!

I'm afraid I have personally never encountered this, but I have a friend applying for optometry school, and they I believe ask specifically where it should come from and how many (i.e. say 2 from industry or wherever you have done clinical work at and 2 from academia). From what he has told me, its better to not give refererences than give more than they want form a certain source (i.e. giving 2 from academia and 0 from industry is better than 4 from academia).

Well in regards to my field, it could be either in Chemistry, Medicine, or Bio from what I've seen. I have not yet looked at the programs, nor maps of the schools themselves (still just trying to get a list of schools and faculty I'd be interested in), but those are all good things to keep in mind so thank you! Also, I know you guys said go based off papers (and I have for some of the schools), but would you just reccomend then typing protein NMR schoolname when I'm searching for faculty? Like I said, my previous technique was just typing in schoolname dept. of structural biology/biophysics and looking up faculty, but that apparently doesn't seem to work to well, and now I don't know how many faculty I've actually missed.

Hello, So this is probably a very newbie question, but I have seen repeatedly on here and on the PhD programs i've seen online, that you need a thesis advisor and then to finish your program you need to write a dissertation and defend it. It usually seems like your first year is finding a thesis advisor, and then the following years are writing your dissertation, and your final year is defending it. I have only ever seen a MA program. In this program you also write a thesis and try to defend it, but this appears to be different from that. For a MA program, it is simply informin g your department of everything you've done (research wise) in your project during your time there. A dissertation however seems a bit different, but quite honestly, I actually have no idea what it is? A google search just shows that a thesis defense is what I described above, but a dissertation appears to be 1) longer and 2) something completely different from what you're actually doing in the lab. I've also seen on here that often times they discuss getting funding for *Your research, not the PI you work under. I am very unfamiliar with the way a PhD program works in general, and now a few questions have arised from this. 1) Is a PhD dissertation completely different from what you're doing in the lab you join? Is it similar in regards to concept but different in theory? 2) Do you work in the lab, and do your own project on the side? From everything I've read it appears you need to have your own unique project different from your PIs, but if so, do you work on both yours and the PIs? 3) If your dissertation is similar to your PIs, can you just use your data to back up your statements? Do you need to acquire your own data? I've seen multiple times on here people stating getting funding from their PI so they may obtain I guess their own data. If so, does the PI need to fund you for your project? What if they don't? In general, I am completely unaware of the entire process, so this question is primarily: Can someone please explain how the PhD dissertation process works? The only thing I know about programs is from MA programs where you just do your PIs research, attempt to finish it, then just explain/write everything you've done. How is a PhD program different from it?

Damn, now I have to go back through all my schools and try that. I usually just type the school name and structural biology and biophysics department and just go from there. Thnkas again!

Out of curiosity, how did you find Feski, Reiter, and Chazin? I looked here https://medschool.vanderbilt.edu/mpb/people/biophysicsstructural-biology at different instructors, and I couldn't find them at all. But looking at their web page, your right, they do protein nmr, but you can't find them on their structural biophysics, signal transduction, metabolics, etc. And in regards to my interests, I am interested in protein folding, dynamics, and structure. There are a variety of way to address this issue (Cryo, xray, fluor, NMR, optics, computational, etc.). Some labs do different types of biophysical techniques, but the biophysical technique I choose to focus on is NMR. I have a lot of experience analyzing a variety of NMR techniques as well as even having a hand in developing some. I am not opposed to trying other types of biophysical techniques, in fact a lab that would do say Cryo, xray, and NMR would be great (more experience)! However, most labs at the most either do 2 biophysical techniques, or collaborate with another lab for the rest. I've also looked at papers as well, but often times papers that have structural information are usually a collaboration with an actual structural biologist. So I just go to where the NMR experiments were run (as said on the paper), and look from there. It's a relatively big field globally speaking. From my search of international schools (since that was also part of my plan), NMR is huge, especially in Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, France, and Canada. I find it, along with Cryo techniques, as the future in the study of proteins and disease . Solid-State is expanding to become one of the primary technique for studying membranes, the amount of dynamics information you obtain is great, and better probes and pulse sequences are coming out allowing even smaller concentrations/volumes than before.

Just looked up Iowa State, it's a good add thank you! Interesting thing is, looking at my list, the bigger schools (ivy leagues, big name biochem schools e.g. berkley, and most of the UC schools) don't really focus on protein NMR even though it is a huge field (albeit an expensive one). Even big schools that do have good NMR facilities, usually only have one person do protein NMR (e.g. Columbia has Palmer, Vanderbilt has Chuck Sanders, Rensellar has Chunyu Wang, etc.). Anyways thanks again!

I'm not really into that field, so I can't be one state about your application, but in regards to schools, it just comes down to money. I restrict my list to schools that have a minimum of 3 people I would be interested doing research in, and then from those schools, I narrow it down to my top 10 most desired. From there I ask around to see if anyone knows the faculty members (they might have a terrible personality or something like that), and cross them off. After that, I look at stipend amount and location (e.g. most schools give enough for your own place, but if say you want to go to New York City College, it an expensive city, you will have to find a roomate and that may or may not be problem for you), and narrow my list down to 5 schools. Like I said all this is for money, most schools can cost anywhere from 50-175 dollars for each application (not including sending GRE scores), so I plan to spend under 500 for my entire application process.

I actually found very little in Vanderbilt for protein NMR. Most of it was either crystal, Cryo, or theoretical. I have not looked up Iowa state yet actually, thank you for the reccomendation! Believe me, each school takes me over an hour because of that. Some schools have it beautifully categorized what methods they use, what they focus on (e.g. protein structure, protein dynamics, nmr, etc.), other schools (looking at you Harvard) just have entire lists of faculty by name and 1) Don't show their research on that page, you have to go to the persons individual page to see research interests 2) Don't have an option to organize/categorize by research. Meaning I have to go look at multiple different schools, click on sometimes over 50 faculty ranging from everything to bio-organic synthesis, to crystallographers, to people working in vivo on rats. On average, it appears most departments have a structural biology and biophysics section (usually under school of medicine), and that's where the protein NMR people will be. Vanderbilt has that as well, and there are almost no NMR people in both their signal transduction section, or their structural bio/biophysics section. Sometimes, you have to check out the NMR facility page itself, and then it'll show people who do research with the NMR, but aren't even shown on the faculty page for the school. The whole system is absolute garbage and a pain in the ass. Some faculty literally have one sentence on their research interest with no lab page (that can be accessed via their school faculty page), others have one sentence research interest with a lab page that has 404ed. Others even worse have a lag page, but never updated their research section on there, and it just says "will be added soon". Some faculty are in multiple departments, some aren't in any departments. Some are in incorrect departments (just because you do collaboration with a structural biologist, does not mean your core faculty member is a structural biologist). Some of their research interests are not updated, so you'll see a protein NMR lab on their faculty/lab page, but their publications from the past 5 years indicate all they do is computational/theoretical work. Some have faculty up that have long retired or moved from the location. It's also difficult to even find out which schools do NMR research and which don't, many places that have NMR centers, only have one faculty that does protein research (I'm looking at you columbia). I've been basically trying to go based off of schools with NMR centers form this site http://www.spincore.com/nmrinfo/facilities_s.html. It's primarily what's made the search bearable compared to randomly looking up every major university from every state. I've actually made another post that i will update soon once I have a more thorough compiled list, where I want to basically state every school that has good protein NMR research.

Thank you for your advice! Unfortunately, I am going into specifically protein chemistry (structure, dynamics, binding) using exclusively NMR (I don't care for optics, crystal, or Cryo), meaning I usually exclude RNA and DNA nmr research. That narrows down my list severely, to the point I usually at most will have 3 professors who are even working on that. Because the field is relatively smaller however, collaborations are actually quite common amongst other protein NMR researchers across the country, so I don't think that'll be too bad. Honestly for my GPA, it really came down to my first 2 years, which is seen via my transcript. I came straight from high school, and carried that same mentality, and took me 2 years to basically realize college is a whole other beast. I've narrowed my list down to the point, most universities I don't think really would be considered top 10 except for John Hopkins and Brown University. I have Scripps Institute, State College of New York, Uni of Conneticut, Uni of Arizona, Uni of North Carolina Chappel Hill. So not bad schools, but I don't think they rank suuuper high.

Damn John Hopkins was my number 2 school. Also, you could always check their website (those are usually updated regularly) and email the through there. Anyways thank you for your help and advice!

Thank you for the input, I also have a low GPA (3.00) and low GRE (50% in quant), but good research experience and LOR, and am applying this year for PhD to 5 programs. I am looking at structural biology and biophysics however, so I think that is a little bit less competitive than neuroscience or immunology. However, I believe structural biology and biophysics do fall under the school of medicine for like 90% of schools, so I think the program itself will probably be under Biomed or something like that. I also plan to follow the same path, basically try and convince the PI they want me in their lab and to push me through their system since my academic application is so weak.

That's the plan! Thank you! By the way, does that imply if I don't make a good connection with a faculty member, then my chances aren't good?

Sorry forgot the first half. I am looking at PhDs. I don't have the money to finance a MA, but with a PhD you can get a stipend, so money wouldn't be an issue.

Thanks for the reply! I do plan to retake the GRE (albeit I don't think i'll get higher than the mid 150s). I am also applying to a field that I have a lot of experience in. So I'm hoping I can convince the PI ahead of time that I'm the type of person that they really want in their lab. I do plan on personally reaching out to ask if they have funding and room regardless, but will also attempt to sell myself in the process.

From what I can recall, I think USC and UCLA were really big in cancer research. Although I was looking at in regards to molecular/cellular bio. So most of the cancer research i saw was in regards with RNA function and structure.