cogneuroforfun

I don't really see a problem. What part of it is troubling to you? Many of the bigger molecular labs seem to have everybody more or less working together on big projects. When it comes to publications, they typically have long author lists, with one or two obvious lead authors depending on the focus of the paper.

I don't disagree with your overall point, but how does this work? Larger, research-oriented state or private schools are just that, oriented towards research. Professors frequently focus more on research and their labs than teaching (although this is a generalization, and there are fantastic instructors at big schools, too). For all the advantages of smaller LACs, greater opportunity for research experience is not one of them. Just to be clear, I am differentiating between LACs (four-year universities) and big universities (undergraduate + graduate programs), not state vs. private or prestigious vs. mediocre, which some of the posts seem to be mixing up. Harvard and Yale are prestigious and research universities, not LACs. In any case, research trumps most everything else, as long as the "everything else" passes some threshold of being good enough.

If you're going for a research PhD, research experience is absolutely essential. If you're more interested in clinical or applied domains, relevant internships are probably just as essential.

If you don't have access to Matlab, learning to use Python will definitely help you, whether you stick with Python in grad school or end up using Matlab down the line. Looking at an online course for Matlab would be great to give you problems to solve and programming techniques to learn, but do know that there may be some differences beyond syntax. Some built-in Matlab functions may not exist for Python and vice versa, so you may run into cases where in Matlab you could just use some basic command, but have to do something more complicated in Python.

Yeah, uh, Boston (Harvard, MIT, BC, BU, Brandeis) and NYC (Columbia, NYU, Weill Cornell, Rockefeller, Albert Einstein) alone have tons of options, not to mention Dartmouth, UConn, Yale, Penn, Penn State, Maryland, Johns Hopkins, Virginia, Duke, UNC, NC State, etc, depending how far south you'd still be happy going. As I understand it, anywhere between Virginia and Boston is a relatively easy train ride. While those are all good schools, they aren't all top notch, so that also gives you a nice range of places to apply to.

There is certainly crime in New Haven, but it really isn't as bad as the reputation, in my experience. That link that phoskaialetheia posted is fairly representative of the "good" and "bad" areas. I've lived in East Rock for two years and never had any problems, whether I'm walking home at 10pm or walking my dog at midnight. Wooster square and downtown are also perfectly fine. Once you start getting west of Prospect or Howe, south of the medical school, or east of the Wooster area, things get shadier, although plenty of grad students live on Mansfield (just west of Prospect) or Howe and seem generally ok. But those are kind of the borders where you start getting into worse areas. In general, if you want to live further out from downtown/campus area, you should go 10-15 minutes away; Hamden or Orange are fine little suburbs, but Fair Haven and parts of Westville are not great.

On the other hand, I wish I had some idea of what I wanted to do earlier than junior year of undergrad. I would have applied to more universities for undergrad, taken some different classes, and generally done more things that I would have enjoyed AND helped further my goals, instead of things that I enjoyed and didn't necessarily help me that much. Its never too early to start thinking about your interests and possible future careers, just know that your interests will likely change.

It is definitely true that any particular LAC may have plenty of research going on that is interesting to you. But it is also true that most bigger, research-oriented universities will have more labs working on any particular topic, as well as more diversity in what topics are being researcher. So while it isn't true that you won't be able to get research experience at a LAC, your options may be more restricted. Still, like neuropsych said, you can (and should!) do full-time summer research gigs, whether you end up at a LAC or big research U. If a LAC is the best fit for you and they don't have a lab doing exactly what you're interested in, getting experience in even a loosely-related area still "counts" and will be a huge positive if you do end up applying to PhD programs. Anecdotally, there are plenty of people in my PhD program that went to LACs, but I think all of them took a year or two after college to get full-time research experience (although many of the people who went to research universities also took time off).

I agree. Basic programming will help in any field where you do data analysis that is more than tabulating survey replies (and maybe even then). If you're doing molecular stuff related to schizophrenia, it may not be so useful; most people there seem to just use basic office programs and do simple t-tests, and there isn't much quantitative analysis necessary.

My top criteria: interest in the lab's research, the degree to which I meshed well with the PI's personality and mentoring style, quality/prestige/popularity of work done in the lab (well-respected, solid projects on a hot topic means more high impact work, better career prospects, etc.), prominence of the PI (but up-and-coming and recently tenured are both great; mainly, I didn't want an assistant prof. who had three years til tenure review and hadn't done much, or a professor who'd been tenured for 20 years and had checked out).

It sounds like you're doing the right things to improve your chances next year. I would only emphasize two things: 1) Apply more broadly! I know you're planning on doing this, and that is essential. If you want a job in academia especially, you'll never get to be very picky about where you live. Basically anywhere that offers you a TT job has to be a good enough location for you. Family is certainly important, but you pretty much have to go wherever is the best fit and gives you the best chance at future employment/success. 2) I'm surprised that many PIs/departments dissuaded you from contacting potential advisors. Look at it this way, if you apply to a program to work with one or two faculty and they don't have room for a new student, then you've wasted your application. The research fit could be great, you could be competitive for the program, but no room in a lab = no room for you. Since you have specific research interests, this is a real concern. Besides letting you gauge whether your labs of interest have space for you, contacting PIs also shows your interest and gets your name out there. Several faculty (not on adcomms) have told me they typically keep track of the people who have contacted them and specifically ask to look at their applications when they come in. While they don't have the final say about who gets admitted, they can tell ad comms of their interest and act as an advocate for applicants. Unless a PI specifically says not to contact them, I would go for it.

For the people putting fellowships in their signatures, don't you think it would be weird for PIs to list their grants or awards in their signature? How pompous would it seem if a Nobel laureate put "Prof. X, Nobel Prize" in every email they sent you? As a more common example, should every newly funded assistant professor put "Prof. X, R01..." in every email? How about everyone with a first-author Science publication adding the citation after their name? That's just weird and completely unnecessary. If someone wants to know your accomplishments, they'll ask for a cv. Putting something like "PhD candidate, Department of blah, blah University" is a completely different situation; if the person you're emailing doesn't know who you are, having "firstname lastname" isn't going to give them any information. The extra stuff is actually necessary to tell them who you are.

I'm also in an umbrella program, with people joining labs in psychology, psychiatry, cell biology, biochemistry, neurobiology, etc. I'm pretty surprised the lab/department affiliations are so set in stone. Just off the top of my head, we have physics students in neurobiology, neurobiology students in psychology, and labs with cell biology, biochemistry, basic biology, and neurobiology students in them. Is it really the case that you can't officially join a department that fits your background better and still join the lab that fits your interests best?

hejduk, are you going for unfunded PhDs? Unless the stipend is very low in a high COL place, you really shouldn't need to go in debt for a PhD.

One thing to keep in mind is you don't really need linear algebra. It can be a big help and shortcut, but you mostly just have to be comfortable working with data in arrays (rows and columns). When you're actually doing analyses, you can cut things up into one dimensional vectors that are simple to work with. Working through a simple tutorial on line to get used to the Matlab syntax is a good place to start. Practice using for, if, and while loops. Once you feel comfortable manipulating arrays and using simple loops, make some fake data (just simple x,y coordinates is fine). Plot the data as a line. Make a histogram of the data and make a bar plot. Figure out how to make a loop to scan through the data and return only certain x,y pairs. Split the data and do a t-test to see if your arbitrary groups are different. Once you can manipulate the data in these simple ways, figure out how to import data from a text file. Practice writing data back out to a text file. If you can do all that, you can certainly start looking at your real data. The best way to learn is to just start trying to do stuff. I have never taken a CS course or done any programming before Matlab, so they are definitely not prerequisites for learning, although they would help with all that early simple stuff. But you're not learning programming for the sake of programming, you're learning it to make data manipulation and analysis easier. Your Matlab code can be clunky and inefficient (and make a CS major shudder), as long as it does the analysis you need.

Take graduate level classes to show you are prepared for them and can do well in them, not with the hopes of the credit transferring. You will very likely be unable to transfer the credits, but taking these courses and doing well in them is one more big indicator that you are qualified for grad school.

Just try logging into the 'apply' page; that still works for me, even though the award page says my username/password isn't right.

I applied to that category and have received no notification yet, so who knows.

Even just being able to use basic loops to format data, sort it, etc., saves you so much time compared to making massive Excel spreadsheets and doing things by hand. Also, anyone currently at a university should be able to get a free license for Matlab through their school and/or department. That was the case at both my undergrad and grad school, and I would think at most major universities. One more quick benefit of Matlab and then I'll stop gushing about it. There are tons of custom pieces of code written, in addition to all the built-in functions. Unless you're the first person to want to use some technique, you're almost certain to be able to find a function posted online that does it in Matlab. Even if it isn't exactly tailored to your needs, it gives you an example to modify and build on.

Matlab Matlab Matlab Matlab Matlab. Regardless of what other programs the lab uses, you can use it for most any data analysis and statistics. Many labs use Psychtoolbox, which is a plug-in for Matlab for programming behavioral tasks (stimulus delivery, subject responses, etc.). Many fMRI labs use SPM, which is another plug-in for Matlab for neuroimaging data analysis. I also think that Matlab is a pretty friendly introduction to coding and programming in general. You can learn many of the basic programming skills that will be useful in any language, but are somewhat more intuitive and easy-to-learn in Matlab (in my opinion, anyways). I learned Matlab first, then learned C++ (the lab I'm in programs tasks in it), but still use Matlab for most things. You just don't need a really low-level language for most of the things you'll want to do. Edit: Just to add, I think being proficient in Matlab was a pretty big boost in my application. It is a very versatile skill to have in basically any field that handles large amounts of data.

What would go wrong between now and matriculating at your program? If you have the final offers from all the programs, accept the one that you think is best and reject the others. In any case, it is pretty unethical and may cost other people spots in programs. Of course, if you need time to weigh your options, definitely take all the time you need. But once you've made up your mind and accepted a program, there is absolutely every reason to send in your official rejections to the others.

I'll trade you my reviews for your award

I did not apply to live at HGS, so I don't know first hand. As I understand it, if you want to live in HGS, you should fill out an application to live on-campus immediately, like as soon as you get your acceptance and decide to come here. I think as long as you do that, you have a good chance of getting in. It looks like the application opens April 1 this year. I don't know anyone who has lived anywhere Yale-owned besides HGS, but it looks like there are other options. The ones on Prospect street are not much more convenient than any of the East Rock places in terms of location (unless you're at Divinity), but they may be cheaper or have better amenities than non-Yale apartments. I have no idea how many incoming students opt for Yale housing. I think it is fairly common for people to stay in HGS for a year and then get an apartment, so I would guess the majority of the students in HGS are first or second years.

If you guys have questions about housing or anything, I can try to point you in the right direction. I'm a second year PhD at the medical school and live in East Rock, but people in my year got apartments downtown and in HGS, so I have some familiarity with them too.

I applied to the SDS program two years ago and did get an interview (or maybe it was an open house/already admitted thing, I'm not positive). I got the word quite a bit before now (like mid/late February), but their timeline might have changed since then. This was for the Behavioral Decision Research track, and I indicated I would want to do the joint Psychology/SDS track when I could.