mop

I would agree that high quality papers top journals are what gets a good postdoc. Name of a school you went to means nothing if you publish sub-par research in a bogus journal lacking controls etc.

There will be 5-6 interview weekends, though research interests are broadly grouped in certain weekends

Yes they are split up into different interest groups. The interview weekends are also divided up somewhat as well. Congrats on the interview !!!

UNC BBSP will send out interviews in waves through January as the committees have time to read through all the applications (1300). It happens this way every year. Don't freak out if you haven't got one yet.

3-4 weeks in the summer is not common in lab based programs. Yes for Thanksgiving, Christmas/New Years it is expected to take time off, and maybe a short time other parts of the year, but a whole month will not make any PI happy no matter how relaxed they are. A week probably would be fine for most PI's at my program.

Everyone will ask you to describe your research and what your role was. This is one of the biggest things, you need to be able to comfortably explain your past research to someone who is not in your field. I.e. you worked on transcription factors and you are interviewing with someone working on signalling pathways.

They mostly want to see how well they can recruit against other institutions who are trying to get the same student

Coming from someone at UNC, I think you have a very good chance at an interview

When I rotated most PI's recommended having one "risky rotation" i.e. 5-6 students fighting for 1 spot or a lab that might not have funding. The other two should be safer, i.e. the labs have funding and less students. Definitely expand your horizons on research topics, I ended up in a lab very different from what I worked on as an undergrad.

When I interviewed for phd programs it seemed to me that most every other applicant had 1 or more years of experience (I had three). Two is probably more common. So with the amount that you have, I think you can apply, but probably should have some backup plans, also apply to post bac/masters/anything to get you more research experience and apply again the following year. @ERR 3 years on paper is very good, especially if you had a letter to back it up. I don't think it is quite equivalent to yolk.

In a STEM field myself (biology) this seems to be a common experience. Work/reading papers creeps into free time. If you want to have free time, just plan for it, block out time in your day for you. Otherwise if you start reading a paper or something, then see an interesting citation and go read that one etc etc suddenly you spent more hours reading than your original intention.

It is common that funding is tight or professors are busy and won't respond. Keep on asking.

Agreed, it is better to have safe funding, nothing worse than not having a thesis lab to join at the end of the year. It does happen occasionally so be careful with your choices

Not heavily undergrad. Everything in Carrboro tends to be more grad student/professional/hospital and med school types. The undergrads are more concentrated in Chapel Hill itself.

Research and good letters of rec are the real keys, get as much research experience as you can.

UNC BBSP hasn't sent out very many offers yet, still two weekends to go and the admissions committees want to see more applicants before making decisions.

Yes it is very common to get POIs you did not ask for. don't worry about getting profs you didn't ask for. There will likely be about 40 or more inteviewees, making it impossible to schedule 200 individual interviews. PIs are busy enough as it is, or they could be out of town, etc. The empty one interview slot you should have free to do whatever, though there will be a location to hang out with other applicants. The extra slot just helps with the scheduling.

If you intend to enter a PhD program then more research is probably the most important thing. If that is what the honors thing gets you that is great, although you can likely get research experience without the program. It depends on what exactly your school does.

When I interviewed last year I think I saw maybe 1 guy out of multiple interviews wearing a suit. It won't hurt I suppose, it is just not necessary, most people wore business casual.

There are going to be 6 interview weekends for BBSP, if you can't make it you could try rescheduling to one of the others. The weekends are grouped by interest area though, they try to have all the applicants of certain subfields, like neuro on the same 3 weekends or whatever. This is fairly normal for BBSP I've heard some PIs say entering class size BBSP admissions is aiming for about 60-65 or so. No idea how many actual admissions offers will go out.

I am fairly certain application reviews are all at the same time regardless of status. They will only do phone interviews for international students though, so they will likely be set up separate from the interview weekends (6 weekends). I don't know when the phone interviews will be.

Don't stress about it too much, after the apps are all in there is nothing you can do about it anymore. last year I wrote out all the past times invites were sent out for the programs I applied to and they did not match up very well with when I got interview invites. ps. if anyone has questions about UNC BBSP feel free to shoot me a pm or post

I had some invites around 10-15 Dec. last year for schools with Dec 1 deadlines. But then I also had one in February....... Try not to worry too much, relax and enjoy the holidays

There is no minimum gre requirement for UNC. PhD programs are holistic, other factors in your application can shore up weaknesses. Go ahead and apply, worst comes to worst you just lost the application fee, no real harm in trying. UC Irvine has some top notch stem cell labs

The new student isn't respectful enough to get off the phone when in a meeting for 20 minutes seems like a red flag. If she is confused tell her she was very disrespectful and the group doesn't want her. If this is the only impression that the PI has of her then I would say the PI is right to reject her.