2020bioE

Last year I heard back on Jan. 24 from a mass email from the chair of graduate studies.

I'm a current UCSD PhD candidate. I emailed professors beforehand but never heard back for informal interviews, etc. although we did have a short conversation. I received an invite for official invitation on Jan. 20, 2020, and the interview weekend was Feb. 13 and Feb. 14. UCSD had two interview weekends; I believe the second one was two weeks later on Feb. 27 & 28 but I could be wrong. The first interview weekend was for more wet-lab based stuff and the second weekend was for more computational-related people. I don't know whether the interview invitations were all sent out at the same time. Hopefully these data points from last year are helpful or help quell the anxieties, keeping in mind that I have no idea how things are going to go this year because of COVID! I know the graduate student organization is preparing a virtual interview agenda though. If you have any questions, let me know, and I'll try to give you an answer

Chiming in from the previous cycle.... I applied to 8 engineering programs and heard nothing official until January 15! The engineering pipeline seems to be a bit slower than biomedical sciences where I heard back like late-ish December. Covid could impact these results but definitely no need to worry yet. If you want a frame of reference, the latest positive response I heard back was an interview invite in late Jan (Jan 24).

I had a 3.6 and got into one of the top 5 engineering programs in my field! I was outright told by a professor at MIT that my GPA was probably too low to even be considered, though.

My profile was posted here last year when I applied: https://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/120576-bioengineeringbiomedical-engineering-applications-for-2020-admission/?tab=comments#comment-1058709412 But I'm open to any questions and other stuff about the process if you have them! FWIW I didn't apply to ChemE programs but all in all I think they're fairly similar since there is a lot of overlap with bioe.

Chiming in -- I applied for the 2020 Fall cycle and I received admission to a top-5 BIOE program with a 3.6 GPA from a public university. I wouldn't say that your GPA is worrying as long as the rest of your application (letters, essays, etc) is solid.

Thanks. Yeah, it was way too much money for a master's -- I was also told there is no options for funding even in the form of TAing. To your question, I think it depends on the specific field you're interested in as some programs/departments are known for certain focuses. Certain schools are good in certain fields (UCSD biomaterials is good, UCSF drug delivery/pharmacology-related fields) and some schools focus heavily on one aspect of research (I think Stanford is generally more focused on tool development and basic biology? I could be wrong though). What I did was roughly judge the schools I was interested based off their overall ranking and then tried to get a sense of the department that I fit the best. In general though, schools like Stanford/MIT/BU/Duke/GATech/UCSD/Columbia/UCSF-Berk/Northwestern/Harvard/UPenn/Caltech come to mind.

Yep. I interviewed at Columbia and would have no idea what my status was if I didn’t reach out to the individual PIs that I talked with. Still haven’t received reimbursement for the visit, lol. Props to MIT/Stanford/Princeton for sending the rejects early.

Shoutout to UPenn for giving me absolutely no response this entire time.

I heard from the PI that funding has dried up and they were only able to renew a postdoc and take on a current master's student this year. The communication was much appreciated but nevertheless disappointing. Columbia offered me an unfunded masters which I can't afford to take so I'll probably be accepting my PhD offer at UCSD. My other alternative is to work for a year or two first and take company funding to help me get into grad school, but I'm worried about how future admissions cycles will look.

Oh yeah good luck to you all!! Hopefully everyone at minimum gets a fair evaluation and not like some of those shitshows I've read here or on reddit

Senior undergrad here. Absolutely praying I get an honorable mention or better.

I have not received an invitation for a one-way interview, but I did interview on-campus in mid-Jan. Thanks for the reassurance. Not super confident about my chances but good to know there's some hope.

If I've not yet heard anything from Columbia (MS/PhD), is it likely a rejection?

I don't think so. I followed up with a prof at UCSD and then received no response but he's listed as one of my interim advisors. UCSD is rotation and not direct-match though.