dhm0219

The broker fee is a one time fee when you sign a lease, as I understand it. A "full fee" is equal to one month's rent, and half is half a month's rent.

As am I. And I keep finding the perfect place. Except that it always costs 30% more than I can afford =(

Just filled out my acceptance form for the offer from MIT! Very excited to be done with this whole process and to get started in the fall!

I'm coming to MIT in the fall as well, nice to meet you folks. I will be moving with my fiancee, and I got to see one Westgate apartment when I came to visit. I was not a fan, but here are my thoughts: - $1,300/month for a one bedroom. It had a very spacious living room, medium sized bedroom, but the kitchen and bathroom were essentially closets. It would be impossible to have two people in that kitchen at the same time, so that was a major negative. - I believe utilities were included, but parking was not, and we will have a car. From what I was told, a single parking space comes out to >$1,000/year. - We would ideally like to live in a small 2BR so that we can turn one BR into an office. From what I was told it is basically impossible to get a 2BR if you don't have kids. Also, you are required to put down a deposit when you list your preferences, so if you don't like the room you are assigned to, you have to lose the deposit if you choose to live elsewhere. - This was a little unclear, but it seems that you need to re-apply for your room after your first year, which means that even if you end up in a place that you love, you may have to move the following year anyway. - The rooms felt very much like dorm rooms in that they were old, had very little character, and were a bit depressing. All in all, I think we're better off looking for something off campus. It will likely be a bit more expensive, but it's important to us that we have a space that we like and that won't depress the hell out of us, having to come home to it every night. We've been using padmapper to look for places, but we were walking around Kendall the other day and noticed that there are a lot of new-ish looking large apartment buildings a few blocks from campus. Anyone know anything about these places? Are they affordable for grad students?

Anyone know what the situation is with on-street neighborhood parking passes? Do they issue these in Cambridge? And what do they cost?

I'm not sure about relative price, compared to Seattle, but with only New York to compare to I have always thought that produce was really cheap. There are also some awesome CSAs that I don't personally subscribe to, but I have a lot of friends who have been really happy being a part of them. http://www.farmfresh.org/food/csa.php?zip=02903

I'm interviewing at the last recruitment (this weekend). Hopefully they get back to us quickly. I so badly just want to know where I'm going so I can start planning my life...

Yeah I mean unless sending the letter was aimed only at helping your chance of acceptance, I would still send it. If you're truly grateful that he took the time, then thanking him shouldn't be dependent on your admissions result.

Of course. You should absolutely talk about your preliminary results and just show that you have a sense of what they mean, how you should interpret them, what the caveats are, and what you will try to do next. Remember that they are likely not interested in the actual result, per se, but rather your ability to understand the result and think critically and creatively about the progression of the project as a whole.

Mind saying where?

Not I. The closest I've gotten to a question like was either general questions about what I would like to study, or, in some cases the PI would talk about a few open projects and ask if I would be interested in working on any of them. In my experience, though, the interviewers haven't really even expected me to know what they work on, so questions about a specific thesis project would be very out of place. Maybe it's different for Pharmacology, though?

Part of it is preparation, part of it is acclimation. For preparation: Wear layers. When it gets really cold I (a guy) wear an undershirt, T shirt/sweater, sweatshirt, and winter jacket. A hat is a must during the cold winter, especially because the wind can be really bad. When it gets really bad I will wear longjohns or PJs under my jeans, and you need to have good waterproof boots. Your apartment will likely be cold during the winters and at night, because unless you live in a new apartment building, most buildings and houses in New England are old and not very well insulated. You can crank the heat all you want, but you will end up paying enormous energy bills and wasting a lot of the heat as it seeps out the leaking windows, doors, and walls. So get a bunch of sweatshirts to wear around the house, warm pajamas, and lots of heavy blankets for your bed. As for acclimation, there's not much you can do. I have live in the northeast my whole life and don't mind the cold at all, as long as I'm prepared for it. I will regularly go out in short sleeves during the fall and spring and am only really bothered by it during brutal stretches during the winter (this winter has been amazingly easy). My fiancee, on the other hand, has lived in New England with me for 7 years since moving from California, and she still absolutely hates the cold. She bundles and wraps up in blankets, but she's pretty miserable from November through March. On the bright side, though, you will never enjoy the first warm days of spring as much as you will after having endured a brutally cold winter =)

Brandeis is in Waltham, not Boston. I haven't lived there, but I'm sure it's cheaper than renting in Boston or Cambridge.

Don't give up hope on TJU. I just got an acceptance from a school I interviewed at three weeks ago, and I know they starting sending offers two weeks ago. A lot of schools do waves of offers, where they make offers to their top choices and people who they are fairly confident will accept first, and then as they start to hear back from those people they slowly release more acceptances. If you do end up taking the year off, focus on a few things: 1) concrete evidence of your results. This means abstracts, posters at conferences, papers if at all possible, etc 2) think about the big picture of your research as you're doing it. As you know by now, you need to be ready to field questions beyond the minute details that you deal with every day in the lab, and more focused on why you are doing what you're doing and what the next step(s) would be. 3) contact PIs at the schools you are most interested in ahead of time. This has the potential to really help your application. 4) work on your SOP. From people I have spoken to who have worked in admissions at the school where I am currently working, the SOP is one of the most important aspects of the application. Taking the GRE again probably couldn't hurt, but I actually don't think GRE scores carry as much weight as research experience and your SOP. Good luck!

Do not bring a powerpoint to your grad school interviews. Even if the figures are great and super-clear, the interviewers want to hear that you're able to talk about your research and think critically about it. They don't care about your data and you're not there to educate them about your findings, they just want to see that you really understand your research and can answer questions about it.