virion

The only one of those I interviewed at was Stony Brook and, without knowing anything more specific about your work, I would say there's no reason to think you haven't got a good shot there. edit: oh, current scores. Your Q score is probably below a threshold which is automatically filtered out by a lot of programs (pure speculation). Above comment is assuming you get it to 80%+ and I would really try to get the AW to 4 or better. I had a 4, which was disappointing to me. I did just fine with it.

Absolutely retake the GRE, then you've got a good shot. Some of your more competitive schools will probably come down to reference/UG institution quality.

Sorry couldn't help it. I'm sure you know your amino acids, but hey it's a biology board .

True, but I tried to avoid stating it in the first letter (depending on the schools, it might seem like bragging or something rude/strange?). Without exception so far, though, they asked in their response so of course I told them.

I agree with everyone else. If you appreciate their time and their work, send the letter regardless of whether their program is rejecting you or you're rejecting their program.

Make it 0.1% or even 0%. As they're waiting indefinitely for that to solidify, perhaps they will consider the benefits of heating their own agarose. Hilariously passive aggressive notes are another option.

Kind of. But reading my post it sounds a bit worse than it really was. Most of the "interpret my data" type questions, I quickly figured out, were looking for fairly elementary answers. In one case where I thought I was struggling to answer, I was trying to come up with something much more specific than they had in mind. As I mentioned, they hadn't expected me to do much/any background reading in advance.

I agree. For a lot of my interviews, I either read or browsed a recent publication of that professor. In basically every case, this was overkill as they didn't expect me to be aware of their work (maybe the organism or gene being studied). A tough interviewer might ask you what kind of project/questions could be developed from some data they show or describe to you. I had a couple instances of that.

There were 21 people on my weekend, so about 100 interviews total (for the umbrella program, you choose one of six programs your second year). I am still waiting to hear back from a school I just interviewed at before making any decisions, but Pitt is very much in the running as I was extremely impressed with the program. So no, it isn't as though I've preemptively declined in favor of another acceptance currently.

Not a big deal. I said U Pitt pretty much every sentence before I visited. Similarly people in the PNW know "U dub" means University of Washington Seattle, but I would of course get blank stares from other applicants when I said "U dub" on the east coast.

They have five interview weekends, one of which is March 17th. I'm not sure how late they send out invites, but perhaps it's still possible for that last weekend. I received my invite about a month before my January interview. And just FYI, I see that you always call it Pitts - I don't think anyone there does. Sounds kind of negative maybe? So it's just Pitt.

Does it make any specific threats about if you change your decision later? Assuming they're part of this CGS stuff, I wouldn't feel the slightest bit of guilt retracting that acceptance after getting a better offer. "Inactivated" on Feb 3rd? Is this a competitive school? I'm assuming that they're either a high ranking school so full of themselves that they have no respect for other people's schedules, or they're so low ranking that they need to dupe people into accepting before they get other offers.

Sure, I'm aware that this is their situation of course. And I know that they work hard to calibrate the number of offers they give (presumably considering each applicants stats and therefore likelihood of attending) based on what has happened previous years. It's also the reason they contact accepted students to try to persuade them into joining. I just didn't know that they could actually force an earlier deadline.

They want to know so that if you turn them down they can offer your spot to someone else. It doesn't sound like the kind of situation GR was describing. You shouldn't need to wait until April 15th, as you should have a clear idea of where you've been accepted/rejected long before that. It does not sound like you should have any reason to worry about waiting a few weeks. Unless you're an international applicant or applying to schools with abnormal schedules, I imagine you'll have a fairly clear picture of your situation by early March.

Thanks for the insight. So the CGS agreement sounds a bit more loose than I had figured. The only official acceptance letter I've gotten so far has included a copy of this agreement, and mentions that the deadline for a response is strictly April 15th. At the interview, it was stated that we may be contacted as encouragement to hurry our decisions along, but that this doesn't change the April 15 deadline. What sort of situation leads to a two week window? Is that something that is official and stated in the agreement you sign, or is it simply explained this way over the phone or via email?

Correct, they cannot retract the offer before April 15. So to answer your second question: there is no reason to accept now and decline later. According to the CGS statement included with my admissions letter (which lists just about every school in the country on it), "In those instances in which a student accepts an offer before April 15, and subsequently desires to withdraw that acceptance, the student may submit in writing a resignation of the appointment at any time through April 15." Having said that, it's a dick move, and one of the reasons for standardizing April 15th as the deadline. Since you're under no pressure to accept, don't make their lives more difficult than they need to be. Just wait. The only reason to accept early is if you've made an absolute decision and want to get the ball rolling on choosing your first rotation, enrolling for the summer, etc.

Yes. There is something called the Council of Graduate Schools which ensures your right to take your time deciding up until April 15th. A school might contact you to encourage your acceptance, but they don't have the right to apply any actual pressure.

For situations like this, are schools generally prepared to offer all 60 people acceptances if they deserve them? Presumably, there is something "wrong" with the 4 who weren't extended offers. Frequently people suggest that some folks simply didn't match up to their statements or had an interesting story like vomiting on a professor's carpet. I'm sure not every interview weekend is this exciting. So is it sometimes actually a matter of not accepting the 4 least qualified candidates?

I'm in the middle of a UCI interview right now. While none of your stats on their own would disqualify you, as a whole I would say to boost whatever you can. If you already have your degree, at least retake the GRE. If more lab experience is possible, it would of course be most beneficial thing you could do to improve your chances.

Alright, I will try to round up funding for some control applications. Let's meet back here in Septermber.

I'll just set up a paypal account for donations then.

Did it really say that last sentence twice? What happens if you apply with an absolutely terrible record? Normally they're a little more generic, probably for that reason. "We've received hundreds of extremely qualified applications [implyingbutnotstatingthatyou'reoneofthem]."

Right. It's an archive which proves to be useful years down the road. It would be nice if gradcafe put a little notice on the submission page telling people not to do that, and directing them here. If these people knew about the forum I doubt they'd be trying to communicate via a survey.

Even worse/funnier is when people are hungry for more details from folks who got rejections. But here's my new favorite: "to the Rice app w/interview-- what time zone are you in? any change to online app detailing interview?" I've only seen one person reply to something like this. "To the person who asked...". Also marked as spam of course.

It generally starts out as fairly broad. I mean you might be discussing 6 months to years of work in 5-10 minutes. The specific questions come when something sparks their interest, relates to their work, or doesn't quite make sense to them.