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zenna

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  • Location
    London
  • Program
    neuroscience

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  1. I'll happily check it out

  2. Hi guys I would be most grateful if people would critique my SOP. I would be happy to reciprocate. Please PM me or post here and I will PM you. Thanks Zenna
  3. I'm not really qualified to say as I am just a student like yourself, but my hunch is that this is true. Most applications I have seen for doctorate programs really just ask for your research objectives, they're not too interested in why you love the field so much. In my application for my MSc, I was transitioning from electronic engineering to bioengineering and spoke about how my previous experience related to the new work I was going to do. So my advice would just be coherent, concise and don't ramble on about things like how you love the subject so much. That doesn't mean it should be boring though!
  4. I am in a similar situation and am unsure whether I will mention it in the SOP or not, it will of course be in other parts of the application but they might get overlooked. But I think it is possible to mention it without boasting. Normally I say things like I was fortunate enough to be a recipient of the X scholarship, or something along those lines.
  5. For those schools that allow the submission of SOPs as pdfs, what are peoples thoughts on adding images to the SOP. By images, I generally mean diagrams helping to outline a point, perhaps describing previous research that has been done. This is probably unconventional, but I don't see why a well judged image would not be beneficial to an application; humans generally like visual things, and it certainly makes one memorable. As an example, I included an image in the research objectives document (in some ways similar to the SOP), for a well known scholarship and was successful in that application. I was trying to explain my research in small world and scale free networks, and an image makes it much easier to understand the difference between the two. Granted, the commission was likely less scientifically literate than the people who will read my SOP. Anyhow, any thoughts?
  6. I am lucky enough to be an Fulbright Scholar (coming from the UK to study for a PhD in the US). I want to ask two questions: Firstly: I just took my GRE, the scores I got were 670V, and 710Q. I hoped to get higher than that in the quantitative section but somehow got flustered by one of the first questions. Do you think I should retake this? The schools I am aiming for are top tier as shown below. Secondly I want to find your opinions on institutions to study at. Eventually I am interested in large scale brain simulation. My first degree was in electronic engineering and second in biomedical engineering with neurotechnology. By brain simulation I hope to model large numbers of accurate neurons, as well as simulate environments. I am also very interested in using evolutionary methods to optimise cortical structure and even learning rules. Work I have currently does has used fmri data, and methods from graph theory to analyse schizophrenic brains. Please see the collections in my mendeley profile at http://www.mendeley.com/profiles/zenna-tavares/, to see the kind of research I am interested in. So the kind of institution that is ideal for me is one with a strong neuroscience department, but also with a strong computing and engineering and modelling resources; and ideally a history or at least potential for collaboration. The location is also very important. I have only visited Miama in the US, so most of my information about different places comes from these forums and from friends. I am from London and expect that I would like New York very much. I have also heard great things about Boston. Essentially, I don't to be somewhere that is too far out in the sticks, and ideally has a fairly cosmopolitan environment. Through the IIE, I have to select six institutions. My current short list (roughly in order of preference) is: (all neuroscience departments) MIT Stanford Columbia Caltech Princeton NYU Berkeley Rockefeller Cornell-Weill Yale Harvard I also need one backup, which at the moment is: Rutgers-Newark (chosen just because it is very near new york, and one of my professors recommended it to me) or Brown (as I am in contact with an enthusiastic professor there) Any advice or comments are appreciated Zenna
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