myoate

Oh also Columbia has been admitting masters students like mad in recent years, so classes will be hard to register for and super crowded. During exam season the campus is absurdly full and unpleasant. Class experience at Columbia nowadays is a shit show, so if you are interested in classes I definitely would not recommend Columbia.

Can't speak about the research since I'm not in your field, but I have worked/studied at both schools. Morningside Heights is pretty chill and you have your own beautiful campus, albeit small, while Weill Cornell is just individual buildings, so Columbia certainly has that old-school feels to it. However, WCM definitely has better/more modern facilities, especially compared to the decrepit Fairchild building that houses Columbia Bio. Food options are very limited near both campuses. Both campuses are about a 20-40min subway ride to the more exciting parts of Manhattan.

Best of luck!

Don’t think Stanford or MIT will send out interviews until early to mid Jan

Usually ghost you until everything’s finalized after the interviews. Most programs send out official rejections in March and April. Thus for now no news is bad news.

What’s your Stanford Biosciences home program?

Not sure if it’s possible to get multiple interview invites to Harvard HILS programs, so I was wondering if getting an interview invite to BBS means rejection from SSQB

Anyone heard back from Harvard Sysbio yet (aka ssQBio)??

Thanks palyndrone! Best of luck

I will be applying to PhD in computational bio in the fall and I'm a little worried about my LoRs... I have been doing computational bio research with my current PI for two years. We have an amazing relationship and I have no doubt that his letter will be great in every way. However, I am not sure about the other two letters, since I only did research in college with my current PI. I have three options for the other two letters: CS professor I took several classes with. I loved his teaching and actually TA'd for him as well, but since I've never done research with him, he said he is willing to write a letter but cannot comment on my research skills. A biologist collaborator of my PI's. I am part of the collaboration project and work closely with a postdoc in this collaborator's lab. The collaborator himself doesn't really know me, but I think his postdoc likes me. I'm actually not sure if he's willing to write one for me. My high school biologist PI. I started doing research in high school and my PI back then loved me. I know it's usually a bad idea to ask high school PIs, but I did help him with some data analysis while I was in college. I actually landed a mid-author on the resulting paper, although my contribution was limited (just helped with data analysis of one experiment). In fact, I think regardless of what I do in the end, the other two letters will be pretty insignificant compared to my main letter. My question is how much will the lack of strong LoRs (I only have one) hurt me? And any insights on which two of the three recommenders I should choose? Any tips or advice are appreciated!