catsareme

If you can, just south of Montana, Wyoming has Devil's Tower which is amazing and instead of going through North Dakota, I'd go through South Dakota. Mount Rushmore, The Badlands, Custer State Park, etc. are all absolutely amazing.

Hey! I'm also going to WashU and currently live in CWE (for about 7 months) so if anyone has any questions feel free to message me!!

Do you have any research experience at all?

I'm currently living in St. Louis, if you have any questions about the area let me know! Hopefully they take you to City Museum while you're here visiting!

Accepted to UCSF's TETRAD program!! That's a wrap on my interviews! Good luck to everyone else as they finish theirs! I've got one visit day left at UToronto then have to start making this hard decision ? Applied: 9 Interviews: 5/9 WashU DBBS, UGeorgia ILS, UCSF TETRAD, UW-Madison Genetics, Iowa Genetics Accepted: 6/9 UToronto, UW-Madison, WashU, U of Iowa, Georgia, UCSF Rejections: 3/9 Attending: Washington University in St. Louis DBBS

@pnc95 I'm in a very similar situation as you. Better program fit vs. better research fit. @StemCellFan how do we make a decision based on mentors accurately? We can get some info from graduate students on visits and based on the 30 minute or so interaction we had with them on, but I don't feel like I could accurately make a strong judgement until I actually work with them. So when it comes to rotations, I think choosing a better mentor vs. better research fit makes sense. But when it comes down to an initial school choice, I'm in the same boat as pnc. Program fit vs. research fit, and not sure what to weigh as more important Applied: 9 Interviews: 5/9 WashU DBBS, UGeorgia ILS, UCSF TETRAD, UW-Madison Genetics, Iowa Genetics Accepted: 6/9 UToronto, UW-Madison, WashU, U of Iowa, Georgia, UCSF Rejections: 3/9 Attending: Washington University in St. Louis DBBS

Awww, buddy, it's ok

Are you 100% decided that you aren't going? If there's no travel involved for you, it'll be another opportunity to network, discuss science, and learn more about graduate school in general from new people! If you really want to cancel, you could say you've received (and accepted/will accept) another offer and do not want to possibly take away an offer from someone who would be able to utilize it. Ask to remove yourself from consideration in order to not take away from other candidates. However, my advice would be to still go through the interviewand then, if you are to get an offer, decline it right away so someone can move off the wait list possibly.

Accepted to WashU's DBBS Molecular Genetics and Genomics program!!

I missed a call from my top choice PI at WashU last night but they didn't leave a voicemail/didn't pick up when I called back and I'm going to be DYING at work today because I have no service D: D: D:

I wore a dressy white shirt with a black blazer over top and then red dress pants and black boots for interview days for business casual. But there are definitely people wearing dress pants with sweaters or nicer tops too, not everyone is in a blazer/suit! All other days are normal casual, I usually went with jeans and a sweater or something like that.

I've finished two rounds of interviews so far and I emailed every person I interviewed with and tried to mention, particularly the ones I was interested in working with, something we discussed or a specific project of their research that I was particularly interested in or thanked them for how much they taught me in our half our meeting. My first interview weekend, I also sent a thank you email to a graduate student that was extremely great to me that weekend because they stood out.

"and with that one brief email, another dream dies. Now, where's the wine? " -Harvard rejection

I was sitting at work when I got an email saying that my admissions decision had been updated on their portal. I had no idea if that was good news or bad news, since it was so general. I sat around at work for an hour or two before I got the courage to open it (I didn't want to cry at work). Opened up the portal, opened up the attachment, and there it was. Accepted. I teared up at work anyway I was so excited and I stared at and reread the letter probably 100 times.

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