[2023 CSE PhD Applicants and Admissions Results]

Just making a thread for this as I couldn't find one. Saw many NRS/BIO interviews coming back -- are interviews a thing for CSE?

[2023 Neuroscience PhD Applicants and Admissions Results]

4 hours ago, ManifoldsAreMadeUp said:

Yes, they really do (http://www.rdgao.com/blog/2021/12/23/). I've never served on committee but I've spoken to about 3 people who have for neuro. Here's a hypothetical admissions review process:

1) Committee convenes and the director pairs up faculty/student reps with each pair having someone who's already done admissions once. If faculty have messaged the committee to "keep an eye out" for a particular student, these may be flagged.

2) Each pair (sometimes trio) is given 50-100 applications to read and they're given 1-2 weeks to discuss and rank. Each team picks their top candidates (maybe 5-10) to discuss in open session. All others don't make the cut.

3) All the teams reconvene and the top candidates are discussed and balanced and approved for the director.

4) The director then takes that list and extends invites.

The whole process can take only a week or two. Applications are read to varying degrees which is highly dependent on the reviewer. Maybe a student rep remembers what it's like to apply and really takes their time reading all of the material; maybe it's a busy junior faculty member with a newborn and they blow through the apps in one night; maybe it's a senior faculty member that is fixed in their views of what a "high-quality candidate" is and just checks off boxes. You never really know. I've heard of people who never read statements of purpose or only focus on LoR's or some other method etc. It's why it's so crucial that if you have a bad circumstance (poor GPA for instance), that you are upfront about it in both your statement and LoRs because then it makes it hard for the reviewer to look at that number and trash your app. 

Why do committees do it like this? It's essentially the same format as NIH grant study sections and (I think) initial screening for search committees (new TT-professorships). A lot of the strategies for a good PhD app mirror what's taught in academia and is known as "grantsmanship". In an ideal world, they'd take their time and carefully review each applicant but in reality, professors are busy people who (mostly) eschew committee work. At least from my time in a neuroscience institute helping screen techs for hiring, it's extremely clear a large proportion of applicants are unqualified so it's pretty easy to chop it down. The remaining people are all excellent and would succeed so it's just a matter of discussing them.

It's also why there's so much randomness in the process even if you are a high-quality applicant. Maybe the committee is trying to balance out all the computational people with wetlab and as such, disproportionately many comp. neuro. people get cut despite being a good fit. Maybe the program just hired two new computational faculty and will want to make sure that these new hires are likely to get students and thus go for a computational heavy set of interviewees. Maybe the lab an applicant wants already took a lot of students last year or they failed to get demonstrable funds this year and would be available for students. There's a huge number of hidden factors.

Wow! Thank you so much for your insight. Dang, I realize now how much more intricate and rich this process is. 

[2023 Neuroscience PhD Applicants and Admissions Results]

Can someone clarify something to me about how this works? Seeing the buzz about getting interviews: do admissions committees really work that fast? Like for a Dec 1 deadline, the adcoms read that person's SOP, evaluated their transcripts and LORs and put them in a pile of "top candidate--interview" within two weeks?