mmsseeff

Oddly enough, I just sat in on a group meeting with a director of graduate studies who told interviewees to go contact any PIs they were interested in ASAP because it would be helpful to know how interested somebody really is when they sit down as a committee to finalize acceptances. At this point, there's nothing to lose by contacting them. It might have been better to do it before, but you can't change that now so do what you can control.

Networking is often a big factor and not just the school you go to. It just happens that top schools (or rather, top programs) are often great for networking.

I'm assuming you didn't apply yet. Apply to both of them and decide when/if you get into either of them. Apply to other schools in the area too. Even very well-qualified candidates don't get accepted sometimes.

Did you hear from them today?

The decisions from the first weekend came out later than what they had originally said, so it seemed like they were waiting to send out both at once. I heard from them, but other people I met during the first weekend said the staff (KK, BB) don't reply to status emails so they don't know what's going on either. They haven't been doing what they did last year nor what they said they were going to do at the visit. It's also unclear if they did add the third weekend or not. I imagine they'll send out anything else by next Friday, as that's the deadline to apply for PREP, which they sometimes refer people to.

No idea. Somebody said (in January) they might add a third interview weekend (in February). If they did, I imagine any final wave of acceptances would be a week or two after that. Did they tell you when they were going to send out acceptances for the second weekend?

The result page.

There was a wave that went out on Jan 31st and one of the people that posted said they interviewed Jan 23-25th.

I'm sure they're interested in your plans after graduation. Many students apply to PhD programs because they're motivated to become a professor and this is becoming increasingly competitive/difficult, so I'm sure they'll want to know more about why you want to get a PhD.

There's always a chance but with the GPA and GRE (potentially) being low, you'll need to have really strong LORs, personal statement, experience, etc.

Yes. It means the program and/or labs in the program would need to spend less money.