wakuwaku

Hi ymmit, I was at the Jan 29-30 interview weekend at Caltech. Congrats on your decision! There's some great science going on there, but I'm from NorCal and I couldn't bear to betray my homeland. I'll be starting at UCSF Neuro in fall 2010 (deferring one year because I got a Fulbright grant to do research in Japan).

Oddly enough, I'm in the same position as you, except I'm deciding between UCSF Neuroscience and UChicago Neurobiology. Things are a little bit different for me since I'm both an SF native as well as an undergrad at the U of C, but I'm definitely tied up in knots about which one to pick. As far as the med school being a resource at the U of C, I can tell you that there are plenty of labs that have access to the hospital and it really just depends on what your PI is studying whether you'll be working with human samples or not. On the point about UCSF being closer to your established network, don't you think there's also something to be said for making connections in a completely new place? Along with that, in my own experience of trying to get advice about where to go, I've been told a few times that it's good to see how science is done in a different part of the country, as each region (West Coast vs East Coast vs Midwest vs South) has its own flavor. I guess the rationalization behind that is that you'll eventually have to settle down in one of these areas so you should try to figure out what works for you. I've also been told that I can't go wrong with either program, and I think the best advice I've gotten so far is to just go with my gut because there's no logical way to go about this. For me, I think that means UCSF, but a lot of that has to do with my research interests being matched better and the fact that I have my parents and many of my relatives here. Good luck whatever school you choose!

Hiya there. Just adding in another result. I applied for a Fulbright to do neuroscience research in Japan. Got an email from the Japanese agency earlier today that I have been selected for a grant. No interview was required. I've been accepted to a few fantastic PhD programs but haven't decided on one yet, but I'm 99.9% sure I'll be deferring for a year.

Hiya, I've been lurking on these forums for a while now, and figured it was time to contribute. Here are my stats: Born and raised in California, but currently an undergrad at the University of Chicago, pursuing BA in Biological Sciences with specialization in neuroscience -2.5 years research experience in neurobio lab; working on honors thesis project -3.8 GPA; GRE: 790 Verbal, 800 Quant, 4.0 Writing (yeah, idk) Applied: UCSD, Neurosciences UCSF, Neuroscience UChicago, Neurobiology Caltech, Biology NIH-Cambridge-Oxford, Biomedical Sciences Accepted: UCSF, UChicago, Caltech, NIH Rejected: UCSD Neuro (but I got an interview with their Bio program and am still waiting on a decision) I also might choose to defer so I can go to Japan next year to do research at one of the RIKEN Institutes, but I don't find out about that until May.

Hey there, I'm currently an undergrad at the U of C. At the lab I work in, there are students from three different programs--Organismal Biology and Anatomy, Neurobiology, Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology. They treat the undergrads here like doo-doo, but from what I can tell, they take good care of their grad students and they all seem pretty happy; I'm definitely thinking of staying to do my PhD here. As far as discussion, there are always different kinds of talks to go to and I always see people talking about science, but it's also easy to talk to people about non-science things. One thing I really like about the biological sciences here is that it's really interdisciplinary; as you've probably heard, most faculty are in more than one department, so PIs tend to have pretty wide interests and are working on questions that involve all these different areas of science (e.g., my lab works on development, neurobiology, and evolution, and we also have a collaboration going on with a lab in chemistry). I don't know where you're from, but you might also want to consider how you would feel about living in Chicago. Winters can be brutal--trying to walk on icy pavement + slush in -4