AnonNeuroGrad

Not sure but I can ask. I work directly with many of their professors daily and know a ton of their grad students. One girl, who served as a grad student rep. on their ad comm is a coworker of mines! I'm a little leery about asking questions before knowing whether I'll get an interview or not but you can just send me any that you have and I'll try to ask around. I'm personally trying to find out when interview emails go out, interview dates, and what typical successful applicant profiles look like.

You're the only person who I saw applying to Princeton Neuro and CMU CNBC but just a heads-up that their interview weekends were the same last weekend and my friend had to deny one.

I'm just hypothesizing but it would probably be sometime that week if not that day; I read the calendar wrong! It looks like they have it slated for the 17th to the 20th of January for interviews so you're good. I'm guessing the Friday and Saturday are the actual interview days. I have a friend who got asked to interview for pretty much all 12 of the schools I applied to (swap out UO for Berkeley) and she said that only Princeton and Carnegie Mellon (and one other pair I forgot) overlapped that year. If it's any consolation, her application profile was about as strong as yours but I can't comment on fit. She was quite a bit more computational though.

My list is fairly similar: Harvard (PiN), CMU/Pitt (CNBC PNC), NYU (Neural Science), Columbia (neuro), Princeton (neuro), Stanford (neuro), UW (neuro), UCSF (neuro), UO (neuro), Boston University (neuro), MIT (neuro), UCSD (neuro). If it helps, I know that Harvard has their admissions committee meeting schedule for the 17th at noon which is the last day before winter break so you can assume that interview invitations will be sent out that afternoon. Also, in my conversations with UW Neuro, they usually are fully-prepared to send acceptances to everyone they interview (40-50 people of around 500-600) and have offered 100% in the past.

Undergrad Institution: Top 100 liberal arts universityMajor(s): Math and BiochemistryMinor(s): NeuroscienceGPA in Major: 3.1Overall GPA: 3.2Position in Class: AverageType of Student: Domestic MaleGRE Scores (revised/old version):Q: 164 (88th percentile)V: 167 (98th percentile)W: 6.0 (99th percentile) Graduate Institution: Top 5 Public UniversityDegree: M.S. Applied MathematicsGPA: 3.7Position in Class: ?Type of Student: Domestic MaleResearch Experience: 3 academic years in neuroendocrinology and biophysics (one third-authorship in a small journal). 2 REU's. 1 2nd-authored poster at SfN.Awards/Honors/Recognitions: Several awards for travel, summer research grant, academic scholarship (half of tuition), and awards for tutoring/mentorship.Pertinent Activities or Jobs: 3.5 years of research at a premier neuroscience research institution. 2-3 posters authored (2 large-authorship and 1 first-authored). 3 publications (all large-authorship) in eLife, eNeuro, Nature with three more in preparation (1 3rd-author, 1 large-authorship, 1 potential first-authorship MS thesis) but probably no more than 1 submitted by application time. Possibly one or two more I'll be included on. Also work as a mentor for underprivileged science students. Several years of serious programming (software development-ish level) in Python with some Matlab.Special Bonus Points: Completed MS in Applied Math consisting of 36 credits (see above); very well-connected through my current institution Any Other Info That Shows Up On Your App and Might Matter: Institution is very very well-known in neuroscience and pretty much universally-lauded (you could probably guess it). Research Interests: Computational neuroscience especially dimensionality reductive approaches to large-scale datasets in mouse with calcium imaging and visionApplying to Where (tentative in no particular ordering): CMU/UPitt - PNC (NC & ML) - Doiron, Kuhlman, Yu, Chase, Batista UCL - Gatsby Unit - CortexLab (Harris and Carandini), Hausser, Mrsic-Flogel UW - Neuroscience - Brunton, Shea-Brown, Fairhall, Gjorgjieva, Rao Harvard - PiN - Cox, Harvey Princeton - Neuroscience (QCN) - Berry, Bialek, Brody, Pillow, Tank, Witten Columbia - Neurobiology and Behavior - Cunningham, Kriegskorte, Paninski Stanford - MBC - Ganguli, Newsome, Yamins UC Berkeley - Neuroscience - Adesnik, Sommer, Olshausen UCSF - Neuroscience - Feinberg, Scanziani Caltech - CNS - Meister, Siapas UCSD - Comp. Neuro. - Callaway, Sejnowski, Voytek, Rangel, Azim NYU - Neuroscience - Simoncelli, Rangan