iamasmurf

Hi, hope you hear about great news from other programs soon! I'm an international student with a 3.5 (3.8 major) undergrad & ~4 grad GPA (US top 15 institution), 333 GRE, years of research experiences and currently leading a NIH U01 consortium workgroup of 8 academic centers project with a first-author pub (very long pub cycle, took us several years to plan, still collecting data). Strong letters (know for years, got me jobs and collaborating on current work, most rank me in the 1% percentile - last cycle a school accidentally sent me my whole package when scheduling interview so i saw the rankings). One of them is a distinguished professor emeritus, very known in the field, wrote I am one of the most intellectually gifted student in 40 yrs career etc. I also discussed about my application with two other distinguished professor from different unis, they basically said I could get into any programs that I wanted. Then I applied to three programs last year and only got interviewed at one, waitlisted (a public university so international status impacts decision there). So here I am, second application season. Now I always take application advices with a grain of salt... This year the programs I applied to do match better and I already got some interview invites that I thought my background would not be competitive enough - you never know! Do the program have a network of faculty that you can rotate with? Some programs do not allow incoming students to rotate with previous employers/PIs, ideally there would be a few other PIs that you could receive mentorship in addition to your current PI that wrote you the letter. Admission gets tricker for a committee based admission program even if you have connections. I also have a friend whose PI wants him very badly. His PI is on admin committee but he didn't get an interview last cycle.