AnonNeuroGrad

no one's commented and I don't think I can be much help but it's certainly problematic that you did poorly in your two quantitative classes problems aside. If I was reviewing your application, I don't see significant evidence you would be able to handle the quantitative work that BME entails which I, the reviewer, would already be skeptical of because you're coming from neurobio.

why are you learning languages? Go do some research

I've always heard it said that, when you go to industry, they won't understand your work and advisor's work so much as they will recognize the school you went to?

I think it really depends on the sorts of programs but I feel like the filters apply to overall GPA more so than the major GPA purely because that is more inobvious when staring at a pile of 100. I had a 3.2 overall and 3.0 in major but I found myself rejected from most places despite having a very strong research record. I'm saying that I think you will be mostly fine because you'll be getting second-looks. I think that major GPA matters but overall GPA is where the filter is first applied.

If you’re comfortable, you can PM me on the BU GPN GroupMe (I’m the guy who started it) else just PM here on grad cafe. I know a bit of the professors personally and have opinions about the schools I interviewed at that I can share privately. We were at the same interview. If you can’t tell who started the GroupMe, just look at the last names haha

I’m a bit of a special case but I can help you out. I have heard a few things from the program. Feel free to PM me.

Congrats on the offer at BU GPN! I interviewed but haven’t heard any unofficial/official offer yet. I can’t help you directly with your decision since I know next to nothing about Mt. Sinai and what your priorities are in a program but I’ll just say what I think about BU. For me, their greatest strength was that they have a solid computational program and around a third of the interviewees were computational which was a big plus for me and there are only a few other schools offering this sort of program (Chicago, CMU/Pitt, UW, Princeton, UCL, and Columbia among others). They also have a legend like Nancy Kopell and well-known names like Uri Eden in the computational realm plus Michael Hasselmo who is one of the most prominent for grid/place cells. If any of these are your interest, go to BU over Sinai. I do rodent systems neuro work and they have a relatively large number of these like Jerry Chen, Ben Scott, Alberto Cruz-Martín, Jeffrey Gavornik, and a few other I’m forgetting. I might be stuck in mouse systems/comp neuro world but I would say certainly BU is more well-regarded than Mt. Sinai. I spent a year searching for programs focusing on these topics and Mt. Sinai never came up once. BU is definitely one of the top schools in the world for computational work up there with Northwestern, UCLA, and UW. I would say that, if you’re interested in translational medicine/research, Mt. Sinai is probably the better choice. I also like the vibe in Boston more because it’s so much “academic” (probably the top place for this feel in the world): after the visit I hung out with some friends at MIT and Harvard and everywhere we went there were grad students. In NYC it’d be more vibrant with more to do I suppose and a much greater diversity of people’s if that’s a priority for you. Boston is overwhelmingly white (the city not the students). Going to Boston would be a “all science all the time” feel. I should add that, if you’re considering industry, BU is the place to be. Labs like Alberto Cruz-Martín’s were really embedded with industry with active collaborations. As far as bad impressions go, I didn’t feel like BU was all that collaborative with any of the other schools especially given the proximity. As a note, I felt that Harvard and MIT were far more collaborative and my friends there were continually moving between both campuses (and Harvard medical) for class/lab. Not sure why this is. It also felt like the students were working pretty hard compared to my other interviews but I think this just comes with the territory being in Boston and being one of the better neuro programs. It’s certainly a popular one since they reportedly got over 500 apps; for reference, NYU got over 600 and Harvard got around 560. Also, they said about 10% of the students are at the Longwood campus which I fell would be lonely since it’s a 30 min shuttle ride away. You’d be here if you worked with someone doing macaque stuff.

It seems to me like you should choose the neuroscience program because you are interested specifically in neurodegeneration but I value highly having the greatest amount of PI's to choose from (and neuro has no restrictions). I do know also that UCSD Neuro seems to be engaged in a lot of SciComm (Alie Caldwell and others in the dept.) which I think is a plus for you. I do think that the prestige of the department becomes more of a factor when looking at industry positions and so I don't see any real advantage to the BMS as you've described it. You could certainly do an industry post-doc anyways. I would only say go to BMS if you possibly did not want to go into neurodeneration but these are probably questions to ask your mentors esp. if you have any in industry.

I will say though, you probably have an okay shot at the middle-tier of schools with your current experience (those in the 2nd and 3rd lists). I just think it would be beneficial to take a bit more time but now is still early enough that you can take a few months to decide before prepping for the next cycle. The application process is incredibly expensive (I spent $1,500 on apps; $500 on GRE stuff; $800 to send myself to network at a conference; $900 leave without pay to interview) so remember to apply for every fee waiver you can if you decide to apply.

Let me clear this up for you: stipends for neuroscience are never that low and there is no potential to work study while in a PhD program. Stipends are typically between $24k and $38k pre-tax for neuroscience but to receive this you must commit to a TAship or RAship but as to which it will be for when is dependent on the program and often the amount your adviser is able to fund you. Many programs will pay your first year so that you can complete your rotations but after that, the adviser pays and that adviser can say you need to TA to help out with funds but ones with more money can just say keep on doing research. I think there are some exceptionally well-funded programs out there in which the program pays and you never need to TA. Others will require you to TA. Boston University GPN has zero teaching requirement while Carnegie Mellon Biological Sciences asks you do a 5 hour/week for one semester a year your entire time as a grad student. Of course you can get a fellowship that removes you from any TA duties and those stipends are usually around $36k to $40k for 4-5 years sometimes less (they come with some strings attached). When you sign your contract to be a grad student, you agree to take on no other jobs so you're entirely dependent on your stipend. Of course, many students will take up side jobs like tutoring or nannying to supplement their income and it depends on your PI as to whether or not they will get pissed. What is the catch-22 here? Yes, you should be reaching out to professors for potential positions but just know that most get filled internally before they make it out but there are a few computational neuroscientists that will post job postings on SfN's NeuroJobs, Twitter, comp-neuro mailing lists, departmental emails, etc. Some big-time comp. neuro. people I've seen hiring entry-level RA's in the last month or so are Sam Gershman (Harvard), Dora Angelaki (NYU), and SueYeon Chung (postdoc at MIT with Haim Sompolinsky). Unless you're a very good fit, it can be very hard to get a position. I work at the Allen Institute for Brain Science and we typically have 50-200 applicants for a single RA opening but that's very dependent on if its close to graduation time or not (and it's getting there). Your research situation is not ideal and I believe that although it isn't expressly a negative, I've noticed that admissions committees seem to want to see people past undergrad doing serious research in academic labs as RA's or in postbacc programs like the NIH PREP that have the possibility of putting out papers. I think your current position is detrimental and doubly so because it is not neuroscience.

That's a lot to unpack there but before I go further, you should know that a PhD should not just be stumbled into or as "just a thought", it's a serious endeavor you need commit the next six years of your life to. I can say assuredly you will never find a stipend above $38,000 and those will be in high CoL areas like San Francisco, the South Bay Area, New York City, and Boston. You have good experiences but I think you still need to do a ton of thinking on whether a PhD is right for you and how to take care of your student loans.

I hate lists because it is so much more nuanced than that. I focused my applications based on particular papers and research collaborations that stood out to me (which is what you should do as well). I'm about to tell you a list (in no particular order) of places that do great work in comp. neuro. but this shouldn't be taken as comprehensive and know that I am biased by groups doing systems work as well in what's called "latent space inference" or "manifold learning" in the United States. Look at who is presenting at Cosyne/CNS/CCN for a good idea of comp. neuro. I don't really make a distinction between many computational and systems neuro since they're so tightly integrated. Adam Calhoun has a great blog post on this and the network graph shows you the current who's whom of the field and their main collaborators. I've starred the "top five schools" imo. I'm intentionally making a long-list so that you can decide who are the top ones in your desired subfield. If I didn't give PIs, it's because I'm lazy. Here's my top ten list Stanford* (Surya Ganguli, Krishna Shenoy, Dan Yamins, Scott Linderman, EJ Chichilnisky, Google guys like David Sussillo and Jon Shlens) Princeton* (Jonathan Pillow, William Bialek, Carlos Brody, David Tank, Sebastian Seung) NYU (Wei Ji Ma, Xiao-Jing Wang, Dmitri Chklovskii, Eero Simoncelli, Dora Angelaki) Columbia* (John P. Cunningham, Mark Churchland, Liam Paninski, Stefano Fusi, Ken Miller, Randy Bruno, Niko Kriegskorte, Larry Abbott) UCL* (Gatsby Unit and Sainsbury-Wellcome) (Matteo Carandini, Ken Harris, Maneesh Sahani) MIT (Mehrdad Jazayeri, James DiCarlo, Joshua Tenenbaum, Michale Fee, Mriganka Sur, Mark Bear, Haim Sompolinsky [half-time in Haifa, Israel]) University of Washington (Adrienne Fairhall, Rajesh Rao, Eric Shea-Brown, [many Allen Institute scientists]) UC Berkeley (Hillel Adesnik, Jack Gallant, Bruno Olshausen, Fritz Sommer, Linda Wilbrecht) Carnegie Mellon/Pittsburgh* (CNBC) (Brent Doiron, Rob Kass, Bard Ermentrout, Byron Yu) University of Chicago (John Maunsell, Jack Cowan, David Freedman) And an extended list including many systems people UC San Diego (Tatyana Sharpee, Terry Sejnowski, Thomas Albright, Bradley Voytek) Harvard University (Sam Gershman, Chris Harvey, Cengiz Pehlevan, Mackenzie Mathis, many others) Caltech (Markus Meister, Doris Tsao) Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown (Christian Machens, Zach Mainen, Leopoldo Petreanu) UCLA (Jonathan Kao, Dario Ringach, Josh Trachtenberg) UCSF (Massimo Scanziani, Vikas Sohaal) ETH Zurich (Ben Grewe, Valerio Mante) Oxford (Tim Behrens, Tim Vogels) HHMI/Johns Hopkins (Janelia Farm) (Marius Pachitariu, Vivek Jayaraman, Davi Bock, Karel Svoboda, Reza Shadmehr) Cold Spring Harbor Labs (shared students with SUNY Stony Brook sometimes) (Anne Churchland, Anthony Zador, Tatiana Engel, Adam Kepecs) Boston University (Chandramouli Chandrasekaran, Ben Scott, Nancy Kopell, Mark Kramer, Uri Eden) Toronto (Joel Zylberberg [affiliated through York]) Penn (Diego Contreras, Josh Gold, Konrad Kording) University of Rochester (Adam Snyder, Thomas Howard, Greg DeAngelis) Baylor (Andreas Tolias, Jacob Reimer) Washington University in St. Louis (Keith Hengen, Northwestern (Daniel Dombeck, Andrew Miri, Sara Solla) Brandeis (Eve Marder, Gina Turrigiano) Brown (Jerome Sanes, David Sheinberg, Wilson Truccolo) UT Austin (Alex Huk, Dana Ballard) Tons of Germans that I have no idea what universities they are at EPFL An extended extended list of places that still do this work and are up-and-coming or may be more systems oriented or I know less about but are worth applying to Georgia Tech (Chethan Padarinath, Eva Dyer, Chris Rozell) University of Oregon (Cris Niell, David McCormick, Yashar Ahmadian, Luca Mazzucato) SUNY Stony Brook (shares with CSHL) (Memming Park, Giancarlo La Camera, Alfredo Fontanini, Braden Brinkman) UC Davis University of Southern California Duke UNC Chapel Hill Yale UT Houston Rice UCSB Let me know if you have any questions. If you have a specific set of interests, I can try to think of some faculty!

Publications aren't necessary but it certainly helps to have them. I've had friends get into every top school you could think of without any. To assess whether or not you'd get in, you need to post more stats (GPA, anticipated GRE, anticipated quality of letters, research items, research experiences etc) and also what sorts of schools you want to apply to. I was accepted to SUNY Stony Brook with an additional fellowship for computational students; Stony Brook is a great school for comp. neuro. and probably the best for it in the state after NYU, Columbia, and Rochester (maybe Rockefeller or Albert Einstein). I can give you whatever details of my app that you'd like, just let me know. I will end by saying that neuroscience programs now are incredibly incredibly competitive so no ones odds are good for top programs except a select few. You sound like you are still very unsure of programs and your interests so I think it might be a good idea to work in an academic lab for a year or, better, two.

Oh okay just making sure. I've spoken to undergrads who think that the 20 hours actually means anything. I've never heard a student or program describe their compensation in terms of their hourly rate instead of the total pre-tax stipend for each year. I've never heard of a stipend above $45k unless they were somehow in an exceptionally well-funded program and won additional fellowships.

At least for biosciences, that "max" is completely meaningless. Many students are spending >50-60 hours per week on their research. Anything less than 40 and your PI is gonna be pissed.

You're not applying for your parents or your friends; presumably, you are applying to further your interests and advance in your field. In my subfield of comp. neuro., Ivies like Dartmouth and Cornell are largely unknown but non-Ivies like Carnegie Mellon and UCL are in the top programs (even above Harvard according to many). Go to the best school in your subfield that has faculty you'd like to work with in a place that you could live. Johns Hopkins is absolutely world-class and better than many/most Ivies for many programs. Baylor for many programs as well (not sure of pathology obviously).

You need to factor in cost of living. Two programs I applied to have $30k stipends but one is in Pittsburgh and the other in Boston. Pittsburgh has a CoL 50% less than Boston.

depends on the program and location. In neuro, a very high CoL (bay area or NYC) might get you a stipend around $38k while one in a low CoL might get you $26k. Some other programs will go as low as $12k and you have to take out loans to survive. Your RAship isn't 20 hours btw.

If it makes you feel better, a friend of mines got rejected as a first-year because he had one reviewer completely misunderstand his proposal and rated him a "poor". The other two reviewers rated his proposal "excellent". I had another friend get auto-rejected because his proposal went a few lines over the limit after the upload because one of his figures got reformatted during the upload.

I think the general public isn’t that aware of OHSU outside of the west coast because it’s a primarily graduate institution like UCSF or Rockefeller but, as much as I hate rankings, I’d put it somewhere between 30-50th in the United States. That depends on subdiscipline though and I’d say it is great for translational/developmental/molecular work. Not really good for computational work. PI always matters most tho as you know. I’d say it ranks similarly to UC Davis, UC Irvine, Wisconsin, Utah, Oregon, etc which are some of the other places that people who got in had also applied to (three friends I know applied OHSU). just my personal opinion but I’m sure many people would disagree

same from Stanford Biosciences (includes neuroscience)

I'd say 0% tbh. They seem to be winnowing it down slowly but I'd move on. Edit: I told my friend in BCS that I hadn't heard anything and he didn't say "oh well you should keep waiting to see" but said "oh sorry you won;t be coming here" so I'm assuming they're done done except for exceptional cases (a lot of people decline invitations which won't/didn't happen)

BCS or Media lab? I assumed BCS was done

Exact same email I got; congrats on your interview and see you there

To improve your application you need to both try to work for a big name and get publications with as high authorship as possible. I can tell you that a position having both or even either quality is really unachievable if you use Glassdoor/Indeed/LinkedIn or even university websites. It’s an unfortunate truth that these tend to get filled internally usually or through word of mouth. Utilize your network and try emailing PIs whose work interests you especially new PIs (they haven’t started their lab yet) because they are necessarily hiring a tech/lab manager