Haustier

Definitely do not go back and get a bachelor's in biology...that would just be insanity. I would suggest finishing the masters at John Hopkins followed by getting an entry level research position (you may have to settle as a technician to begin with) at like a national lab or within industry like at Novozymes. Learn some of the techniques, get some good letters of recommendations, try to get your name on a paper (even 2nd or 3rd author would be ok) and then try applying to a PhD program. This route would only take a yr or two, hopefully...and you're making some money at least. My understanding is that for most programs, the research experience and related LoR can trump all other factors including GPA and GREs

It tends to vary from school to school as to what they will accept. For instance, my undergrad was in Chemical and Biomolecular engineering and some biology schools flatly rejected me b/c it was an engineering and not a science degree (even though my research was in microbiology). I even had one school ask me to withdraw my application from the Biomedical Engineering PhD program for the same reason (Which is really funny as BMED and ChBE are really closely related...it would be like a CHEM major applying as a BioCHEM). My advice it to try applying to programs that are highly interdisciplinary...think that would be your best bet.

You never know, but they do seem to have alot of money to throw around. They paid over $2k for my flight and then put me up in a suite which was rather impressive. Also, we had a psuedo-mafia driver to and from the airport which was totally awesome.

I got the same thing like 2 weeks ago....was it from UNC? lol I tried inquiring what 'on hold' meant and was told that I'm not wait-listed, not rejected, and that my application is indeed complete....so that was no help. Let me know if you figure out what it means

So this is getting really depressing. Its almost March and I still have no acceptances at all. I applied to 10 schools only 1 interview and 3 rejection (so still 6 with no word, but as I wasn't invited to interview it doesn't look good). I've got a feeling the school I interviewed with is going to waitlist me at best as apparently the first round of acceptances went out today. So for undergrad, I went to a top 5 program and was in the top 5% of GPAs. Also I've got 5 semesters of research (w/ a fellowship) and what I thought to be 4 really good letters of recommendations. I'm really confused as to what the adcoms are even looking for anymore. However, all the rejections I've gotten thus far tend to read something like "well we didn't think you would consider accepting anyways, so we just went ahead and rejected you" I thought I would be in pretty rare supply as I have a dual degree in engineering and molecular genetics. That and my research was in bacterial genetics...and it seems like everyone I interviewed with was a cancer biologist. The only silver lining is my top schools haven't sent a rejection yet, but then again I haven't been offered to interview either.

So I've got an interview next week and have no clue as to what I should be wearing for it. The only guidance given by the university is "casual attire" and "make sure you're wearing comfortable shoes." So I assuming definitely not a suit and probably not a tie either. One on hand I don't want to be under-dressed, but I also don't want to be over-dressed. Any suggestions?

So I applied to 10 schools and have only heard from 2 of them as of Feb. 2 The odd thing is that most of them are very close (within 2 weeks) of finishing all interviews, so I would assume that as I was not invited to interview that I am rejected. However, I wrote 3 of the schools in question asking for an update to be told that my application is "on hold." Now I asked and they said I'm not wait listed, not rejected, not accepted, and my application is indeed complete, but they are rather 'holding the application.' Anyone care to speculate what in the world this means?

I think the big elephant in the room that everyone is missing is the type of program she is applying to: Psychology. From my experience, psychologist really like to over analyze everything, so the last thing you want to do is potentially give them ammunition.

It would be clearer if I knew how many people were invited or even how many seats are open. However, the department only has about 60-something grad students at any time so I would assume there are no more than 6-10 open seats. They are paying for travel, hotel, and food so thats a good sign at least. Part of the reason that I was really unsure of things is out of the 5 or 6 professors I've chosen to meet with, 3 of them are from an allied department (i.e. they are certainly not on the admissions committee for the dept I applied to).

Interviews for engineers are extremely rare......of course unless that is you're a biological engineer for some reason. Then again, I've never understood why biologists always interview but chemist never do

So I got an email to attend campus in the coming weeks at a very prestigious university whose name I shall not mention. However, the invitation asked for a list of 3 (or more) professors that I would like to meet with during my visit. Now my question of course is: So is this an interview or am I pretty much accepted and they are trying to fit me w/ groups for 1st yr rotations? I mean if it was an acceptance then I would go ahead and commit right now (The only school higher on my list is MIT and thats really never going to happen as they have like 800 students for 5 seats). Opinions?

Some schools take a really hard stance on paper authorship. For instance, in my group there are generally only 2 names on the papers: the PhD student as first author and the PI as the 2nd author. Sometimes a post-doc might show up as a third author depending on how much they contributed. But it seems like alot of the people with publications on here, if you pull their paper from PubMed there are literally like 12 authors on them.

I'm not sure how much stock I put into some of the profiles on here. For instance, I saw someone say that they got rejected from Berkley Bioengineering and they had 6 papers and one of them was in Nature....that is highly unlikely. In my Bioengineering group, we recently had 2 PhD candidates graduate. They had 4 and 5 papers respectively...but thats over 6 years. I think it really depends on the field.

Historically, GT is one of the dead last to send out anything. From everything I've found on here and from what my friends have told me, don't expect anything before mid-March. My understanding is that the applications are just now being sent to the admissions committee members. I think MIT take a while too, I think their first round of acceptances go out in mid to late Feb.

It depends on which LoR is missing. For instance, if two of the letters are from tenured professors and the remaining one is from a post-doc then it might not be such a huge deal. If the LoR that is missing is from your PI then that could be a huge problem. From my experience at least, the university will probably contact you to request an additional letter if you have been short listed based on your other material. If you don't get short listed then they will probably out-right reject the application though.

Being too broad can be dangerous as it makes it appear that you still have no strong focus. However, on the converse I think far too many people make their SoP far too narrow and alienate programs. Even saying that you would prefer molecular genetics or biochemistry might be too broad depending on the program as in many schools those sub-disciplines are housed in different departments.

I'm in a same boat with the exception that I applied to 10 departments whereby half are biology programs and half are bioengineering programs. Strangely, I haven't heard a peep out of any of the ones with the December deadlines (nothing on the results on here either), but the January ones are making some noise. I'm strongly suspecting at least 2-3 out of the 10 will make decisions in the next week.

It really depends on the department at Rice. For engineering and science they are crazy fast. It seems like they make most decisions within the week of the application deadline. Not so sure about Sociology though However, it seems like all departments have a higher volume of applicants than last year (ranging from 120 to 150% of 2010). A major problem, at least at my current undergrad university, is they accepted far more ppl in 2010 than is normal, so the departments are saturated. Meaning, the number of acceptances this yr could be lower than normal. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, I'm in the same boat

So I was curious (keep in mind I'm referencing only engineering departments), but do my GRE scores really even matter at all? I was told by 3/5 of the top 5 engineering schools that they are weighted incredibly low. As a matter of fact, Ga Tech inferred that they don't even look at them at all. I've heard that the GPA of your Math courses far far out weight the GRE period. Also, out of the 9 schools I've applied to only 3 required official GRE scores. The reason I ask is my verbal and analytical scores were great (84, and 86%), but my math score was horrible (only 580). However I've got a 4.0 in all of my math course (up through Calc 3 and Diff Eq.). So I would think the math GPA would trump the GRE scores, any opinions?

Its really bizarre, but they clearly stated I am not on the wait list. Also they said that my application was complete....so I'm not really sure what the hold up is. Based on the Results section, it looks like they sent out interview invitations in Dec and early January. However, there last interview session is in only a week or two. If they are going to reject me I'd rather they just say "You're Rejected" so I can move on.

Ok, so call me crazy, but I was under the impression that there were only 3 possible admission decisions: Accepted, Rejected, Wait-list. Well I got an email from one school saying that my status has been changed to "On hold".....what does that mean? I wrote back to ask if it was equivalent to being 'wait listed' and they said it is not equivalent. So does anyone know what it means?

Ok, so I was curious of anyone else has had this problem. So I submitted the Bioengineering PhD application to John Hopkins like right after Thanksgiving. Last time I checked it was in early December to make sure they had received everything. Sure enough they had my recommendations, fee, transcripts ect. (I got confirmation of submission) So I open it up today to look at the status (well after the application deadline) and I kid you not....the application was COMPLETELY empty. Like it didn't even have my name or what program I was applying for. All the recommendations were blank....everything. So I wrote admissions to find out what the problem is....can't wait for the response. Oh yeah, the one thing they did get was my $125 application fee. Anyone else had this happen? Am I just out of luck?

Okay, I'm in the same boat as the original poster involving UNC BBSP. It looks like the first two rounds of interviews have gone out (Dec and early Jan). Should we now assume that no additional interview offers will be made?

Is the April 15th deadline legally binding...short answer is no. The reason that some universities push for earlier acceptances is generally due to a significant backlog of wait listed candidates which is understandable. Its just like, for instance, at my university there is a section of the academic code which prohibits professors from assigning projects or giving tests in the week before finals, however, it happens all the time. Even though it is formally written in the academic code, its not really legally enforceable. Likewise, the April 15th situation is more of a guideline for admission departments. Think about it, if you're running admissions and you make 20 offers and its April 1st and only a couple of people have responded and you've got 10 people on the wait list....what do you do? You force all outstanding offers to be answered immediately and then start moving through the wait list.

Alright, so its my final semester as an undergrad bio-track ChBE at Ga Tech and of course I'm committing academic incest by applying to Ga Tech's Bioengineering program (#2 ranked). So here is my current problem. First off, this school doesn't interview and first round acceptances aren't made until late...like mid-March. One of the classes I'm taking this semester is taught by....you guessed it....the Chair of the BioE Graduate Admissions Committee and he seems to like me. Should I perhaps suggest that he take a good look at my application and push put it on the top of the stack or should I just not say anything and stay completely out of this.