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Anyone heard from University of Washington? I know on their website it says that interview weekend is March 6 so perhaps they haven't sent anything out yet, but it feels very late!

I just had a group interview on Friday and one thing I really noticed was people stepping on each others toes to try to be impressive. My advice: take space, make space. If they ask you to go around and share something, you don't need to give your entire life story and philosophy no matter how interesting it may be. If you're in a session about diversity, don't play into the oppression olympics, and if you know you have a lot of privilege it is much better to acknowledge that than to try to dig up some experience of marginalization. In terms of questions: you'll likely be with faculty that you'll never work with in the group interviews. Ask big picture questions about the program as a whole (how do students fare on the job market, what are the strength and weaknesses of the program, what is the general life contentment of students), and save the nitty gritty detail questions (how does summer funding work, do grad students collaborate on projects, where is most data collected) for interviews with your PI. I hope this helps! All in all, just be present and try to show some personality and awareness.

This is just my two cents so take it or leave it: in my experience academics are chronically informal. Not to say that you should not dress up for interviews, but it actually might work to your advantage not to be in a full pant suit. Some other options: dress pants and a nice sweater, sweater dress/sweater tunic with tights and tall boots, blazer with more casual blouse, dress pants and nice blouse. Lots of places like Banana Republic and Jcrew are having amazing sales right now. I've also found that thrift stores/consignment shops have really really good selections of professional clothes because it's often high quality to begin with and people don't wear them too frequently before donating. Just remember that as much as they're judging you as a professional they're also judging you as a person they want to hang out with for the next 5-6 years, so my approach is to keep some personal style in there. Hope this helps, and good luck!