mgg59

Just made one:

Thought I'd start a thread for any grad students starting at Illinois in Fall 2020...

I committed to the chemistry PhD program. Perhaps there should be one forum for all UIUC incoming graduate students and others for individual fields as necessary?

Anyone know if the Biological Chemistry track at UT Southwestern has started interviewing people?

I applied to the Biological Chemistry track, but haven't heard anything yet. Has anyone gotten interviews for this track yet?

Yeah I also had the same wording in my offer letter about the stipends. But I'm more concerned about overall research funding/ability of the school to retain professors because the Illinois state government is notorious for budget issues. That article I posted mentioned how some of the big Midwestern public schools are having professors taking higher paying positions at other schools which have more money to spend from endowments, etc. For example UW Madison had two well known chem/biochem professors recently take positions at MIT for salary reasons. I don't think it's a major issue, but it's something which I hadn't been seeing getting discussed on the forum. And cool, hope to see you there.

UIUC is one of my top choices , and also the only acceptance I have gotten so far. I'm hoping to get into a good ChemBio or Bio-organic research group so I will be there during the ChemBio visit weekend on March 13-14. I thought I would bump this thread for the 2020 cycle since it hasn't been commented on in a few years. Only one thing that I'm a little concerned about is the state's budget issues (refer to this article for more info: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/10/midwestern-public-research-universities-funding/542889/). I really hope that any funding cuts over the next 4-5 years won't affect my stipend or research funding if I decide to go there. I'd be interested in seeing what the rest of you think about this and also about the current pros/cons of this program.