singlecell

Great, hi theodidactus and mwincoming. Mw, what are you studying? Do either of you have ideas about neighborhoods yet? Ideally I want to live ~3 miles from campus in any direction so I can get a workout commuting by bike. Congrats on your acceptances and decisions!

Yes, I am in that boat, sort of. My stipend amount is guaranteed but I expect that the number the gave us at interview weekend for the monthly health plan fee, will increase based on what I hear on the news. I am not horribly worried though. Cost of living in Madison is very attractive coming from Chicago.

I voted for the last option in the poll. It took me a while to be *sure* I wanted my Ph.D. In the end, I realized that I would regret not doing it, and I don't want to have that regret. I am in love with doing research, and in the biological sciences graduate school is mainly about doing that research and getting paid to do it. Moreover, being paid to learn more about my field and not having to worry about paying the bills is like a dream come true after the struggles of putting myself though undergrad. Lastly, being accepted to a program with full funding for the next 5-6 years, well, you just can't beat that kind of job security in today's economy.

I used to think house centipedes were the worst bug around until I went hiking in Michigan. There were these... things, centipede-like in shape but bigger, blacker, grosser, and spinning huge silvery cocoons in the crooks of tree branches. I don't know what they are but I still have bad dreams about them.

The schools I applied to for Micro held interviews.. all expenses paid sorts of things. Congrats on the acceptance, I will keep fingers crossed for you to get called off the wait list! It is a very good sign. I think it's all right to ask where you stand in the wait list, the head of the AdCom at one of my schools said he would give you some idea of your rank on the wait list if you asked.

Since you are still an undergrad now, I think you could still do an REU or SPUR program. However I know that the summer programs have early deadlines, so search for those really soon. Those programs are designed for undergrads and you get to conduct research and participate in seminars and present your research. They will typically give you a good stipend plus housing. I am tempted to say what the "good" school for micro are, but I'm afraid it would just be my opinion. The rankings are probably less important than finding a good fit with your research interests.

It's official, I will stay in the Midwest and attend UW-Madison. Anyone else coming?

I also appreciate socialpsych's advice. I am keeping the decline letter short and sweet. And since I know they have people waitlisted, I am declining ASAP.

Yikes, do not ask that professor for a letter if you are not confident she will write a glowing one... So what if she expects to be asked, if she has anything remotely negative to say, you don't want the admissions committee to read it.

Your letters of recommendation will be really important to the application. I am fairly certain that I got interviews based on one particular letter writer's recommendation, she is a National Academy of Sciences member and is a well-known researcher in the subfield of microbiology I want to study. Her name and endorsement got my application noticed. If you like Plasmodium (or anything else), figure out who is doing respected research in the field and try to spend the time between now and the next application cycle teching or interning for them. You can earn their letter of recommendation, align your statement of purpose with that research interest and then apply to schools which are strong in microbial parisitology (or whatever). The focused approach worked really well for me.

off the top of my head, human genetics or evolutionary biology. Degree in genetics and going to work for a paleoanthropologist might be fun, sequencing neanderthal DNA... or work on something like the National Geographic Genographic project https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/index.html.

I would pay more attention to how research is funded within the department. When I visited Madison, I got the impression that Microbiology research was well funded by NIH and DOE, even DOD money. That should not be affected by University budget cuts since those dollars come from federal, not state, dollars. If you are worried, I think it would be okay to ask someone you met in your department of interest. I might email some current graduate students I met there to feel out if they are worried about the Collective Bargaining issues.

Yes, me too. I have only ever visited Madison once and I would like to know more about what it is like to live there.

I wish I had good advice, but all I can do is commiserate. I just got back from my first recruitment weekend where I had two interviews with myself, the professor, and another recruit. I did not enjoy the format. The other students (and me, I think) were courteous and tried to share the time but it is not possible for the PI to give you each equal attention. When the two students have different ideas and questions the conversation can not flow as it would in a one-on-one meeting. The only saving grace is those two professors were not my top choice people. I would have been REALLY upset to share time with my first choice profs. Meh.

I love this idea! I am going to buy some scrubs for long lab days

Thank you for your thoughts

So (in your opinion) is middle author in Science/Nature or even second-tier (PNAS/JBC/Cell/etc) greater than first author in Obscure Specific Jounal? Incidentally, I am applying this cycle with zero papers but posters at 4 national meetings.

I have to disagree with the 'easy to keep' part. I have lived with and without a car in Chicago and life is far simpler and cheaper without one. They don't call the ticketing vans the "Department of Revenue" for nothing! City stickers, different parking permits needed for each residential street parking zone, not to mention the parking meters were sold to a private company. Biking is generally good here, but pales in comparison to Seattle.

That's good, since I am planning to go into biofuel research (as a microbiologist). I need to watch the state of the union video still, but I understand that Obama is pushing more money for clean energy research.

maybe this goes without saying, but check your Spam folder. One of my invites (from UW-Madison) got caught in my gmail spam filter, since I had marked sooo many emails from random universities as spam.

From the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, I found some fun (or not so fun, depending) facts. http://www.bls.gov/oco/ Jobs for chemists are expected to grow by 2% by 2018, which is classified as "slower than average" growth. Biochemist and biophysicist positions are expected to grow by 37% by 2018, which is classified as "much faster than average" growth. note that the site lumps together all education levels for each group for the industry growth figures. Also, they do not differentiate between organic and inorganic chemists. Much more detailed stats are available at the website. I hope this helps? Should we trust 'the man?'