bernard

Ultimately what matters is how many high-quality publications you have if you intend to stay in academia. So you want a supervisor who is pretty active in research. In terms of school, MIT and Berkeley are about equal, but Berkeley has a slight edge.

Pick Berkeley. I am not sure you'll be laid back at Berkeley. In either place, you will be expected to work very hard! Just look at the influence of Berkeley in CS undergrad curriculum right now. In algorithm, we are using Christo's textbook. In AI, we are using Stuart Russell's textbook. That tells me a lot about the strength of Berkeley in CS. In fact, I don't want to start a war here. I think it is probably even better than Stanford's CS.

In CS department at U Washington, Ruzzo and Tompa are the main profs working on computational molecular biology. If you apply to the CMB interdisciplinary minor within CS, you can even choose supervisors from Genome Science department and Fred Hutchinson Center. I know these two places have done very amazing work. I guess my supervisor will either be Ruzzo or Tompa plus someone from Fred Hutch or GS.

My research area is bioinformatics, in specific developing computational theories and tools used in genome duplications, evolutionary biology, and structural biology. Bioinformatics is a pretty new area and not many schools even have a bioinformatics department yet. So it seems like we can only enter CS or Bio program for now, and do a interdisciplinary work in the program. What area are you in?

I felt like I have to say something here. I am sharing some of my experiences here. I apologize for going off-topic. I think even though one has first-author publication, as an international student, you must bring something extra, like very strong LORs coupled with very strong grades. If I had done my undergrad in USA and I was US citizen, then I probably can get into any top university with just a first-author publication, and normal LORs. (I was told that in 90% time, undergrad do not have first author publication when they apply). It's not fair standards are higher for international students, because schools must admit very few of them due to enrollment limit. It definitely helps if your supervisor has connections with profs at top schools. By connection, I mean whether or not your prof is known at the top schools. In two of schools I got accepted and at Berkeley where I interviewed, I remember my supervisor told me those schools contacted him before or after acceptance to let him know about my offer. One school even called him to check on me before accepting me. So having someone at top school who know your prof can be helpful. But then, working for a good professor is not enough. You have to stick with him for a long time to get a strong letter from him. I believe no one can pull a first-author publication without working for about 2 years in his lab. In my case, I sticked with mine for 4 years, and ended with a first-author transaction paper, a very very strong letter, according to my interviewer. (I didn't get accepted at Berkeley not because I'm not qualified, but because the prof did not know I was international student until near the end of our talk.) Those are my thoughts. I come from a top 10 school in Canada, and my school was a bit unheard of to some people. I have to do way more to show that I am as capable as someone from great school like UM, for example. I also did poorly on verbal and did not do any subject test. I hope my post helps future applicants. There of course will be people who are jealous. Just ignore them.

If I know that I have an acceptance from Berkeley, I will definitely decline all other ones! It is not a question of top 10, but rather which one is your top school, and knowing that you have a good shot at it (in my case, because I have been interviewed by Berkeley)

I asked by email the professor who interviewed me whether there is a decision made on my application, and he replied that a decision will soon be emailed from the department. Is this a good sign? Is he not willing to disclose decision or not willing to tell me directly that I have been rejected?

I think what got me into top program was a first author publication while still being an undergrad and having two majors: biochem and CS. My gre was horrible (verbal 460), but quant is 800, and I didn't do subject test. So my little advice would be to apply to interdisplinary field and have a double major.

This Friday is 13th, an extremely unlucky day. I think it is unlikely to hear acceptance on this day.

Anybody here got accepted to MIT EECS area II?

Princeton, UToronto

I had an interview, but I still have not been accepted yet. So, my view about interview is that you get one because you are a borderline candidate (in which case committee aren't sure whether to admit you or not), or you don't get one because you are overqualified or just so unqualified for admissions.

Thanks for the insider's news. Waiting is near the end!

kyrpoff, I suppose you are international applicant, like me. Congrats on gaining admission to Stanford. Care to share your GRE scores?

Anybody in BIO stream heard from Berkeley? I hope decision has not been made yet for this stream... But it seems that majority of acceptance has been sent.

PCP, congratulations. Can I ask you what your area is?

I am international applicant and I was Berkeley-interviewed two weeks ago. I also haven't heard back... I am really worried now. (I remember I was told in the phone that I would hear by end of next week)

You need a bit of luck to get into Stanford. Your school is good but your GPA is not. Try and see. If you have a paper, that will be a different story. (I predict that you will be good enough for MS .) If you do get MS, be expected to finance your study. Advice: apply broadly!

I have no experience in the biotech world, as I am research type and want to go to academia after PhD. But I hear from online forums and from my colleagues from my current biochemistry lab that the fame of your PI and school's prestige are very important. Fame of PI - In any job, you need to get strong letters of recommendation from your PI. Employers do not really know the big scientists names, but they will be impressed by titles like HHMI investigator or chair of some departments. So preferably you want your PI to be well known and to be at least professor in the university. Senior professors likely will have more experience in writing a strong letter of recommendation. Prestige of school - School's general ranking is more important. This is because employers generally know that highly ranked schools will produce good graduate students no matter what field they are in. But school and prestige aside, I think your performance in graduate school is really important. If you can publish high-impact papers in your study, you will come across as a hardworking and intelligent person to the employer. For example, if you have just one first-author Nature paper, you will be judged very competitive in just about any job. Lastly, it matters whether the work of your PI has any industry connections. For example, if you work in structural biology and protein structure modeling, this area usually has connection to pharmaceutical industry, in drug design (such as the design of inhibitor for enzymes that are implicated in diseases). If you work in development of methods and technologies (such as microarrays, sequencing, mass-spectrometry, hplc), these areas are also in good demand in industry. A little bit about me: I am a senior undergraduate doing a double degree in computer science and biochemistry at a Canadian university. I didn't consider UK schools because they are kind of far from where my family lives (which is in the eastern Canada). My interests are in computational biology which is a really broad field. I have worked before with protein structure prediction, inhibitor design, and a little bit of comparative genomics. Since I have no interest to go to industry, I am open to research in a lot of areas. It is quite normal that a lot of people here in Canada have not heard of UTSW, maybe this is not the case in US. The professor who said he never heard of it was a 70-year old professor in mathematics but a leader in bioinformatics. The other professor who confused the name was ironically a biochemistry professor... Sorry about the long post...

For the past few years, the admit decisions were always in the first two weeks of Feb (usually around Feb 10-15). But this year people are starting to get admission at the end of January. Isn't this odd to anyone? And so far only 3 people are reporting admissions. There must be more to come on later dates... (I hope they are admitting in rounds this year.)

UT Southwestern ranks high probably because of its volume of publications contributed by its large faculty. But I doubt its publication/PI is ranked so high. A few PIs are really well known though. So it depends how well your interests align with them. Unless you can get into these famous PIs' lab, I would not go there if I were you. Besides, not many people have heard of the school (I talked to two of my profs, and one confused it with Northwestern and the other said he's never heard of it). So this is something to think about... What area of biochemistry are you interested?

Brown is out of question. Cambridge - good location, excellent research going on, I know the university has many collaborations with MRC laboratory, where a lot of Nobel winners and big scientists work. If you can find a research supervisor from MRC, that will be golden. UT Southwestern - large place, a lot of scientists to choose, but not many star scientists in biochemistry. So, Cambridge all the way...