persimmony

Yeah I remember freaking out a little when I had to schedule Duke and Boston back to back, but I was lucky enough to get the interviews within a few days of each other to work everything out before confirming. I replied to the UW-Madison email saying I've already committed to interviews on both dates but do not want to miss the opportunity to interview with them as well...I just gave them all the days I was available. If worse comes to worst, I'll have to reschedule my UC Denver interview to the earlier time slot and miss my boyfriend's yearly company weekend getaway...which I already RSVP'd to. My calendar is getting quite sloppy...

Just got a University of Wisconsin-Madison CMB invitation via email! Really wasn't expecting that after that initial email saying they had over 400 applicants. Edit: both weekends they offer interfere with interviews I've already established. WHYYYY

Do you happen to know how many of those people get extended an offer of admission?

Have you tried emailing BU?

^ Wow did one of the schools sell your email or something??

Well I know UC Irvine CMB wanted me to reply by Jan 3 to accept the interview (I did) so maybe if people declined they will invite more?? Also, they said the interview weekend would be Jan 26-27, but in the closing statement it read: "We typically interview 40-45 students during each weekend, and thus, you will not only have the opportunity of seeing the campus and meeting faculty and graduate students, but also meeting other applicants who could become classmates. We hope that you will be able to join us for one of these weekends." ...implying that there may be more than one weekend of interviews. Hopefully you hear from them soon.

^ Thanks, good to know. I'll tell her August to be safe.

Wow looks like a lot of notifications from grad schools already for the day...and I'm just sitting here refreshing my email. Next week should be interesting.. Ok this might be a dumb question, but does anyone have any idea when these programs would start? Fall 2014 seems a bit vague, and I can't find any info...I imagine each school would start at a different date. It'd be helpful for my PI to know in advance how long she has me for (IF I even get accepted. Big IF).

Seriously. You'd think a well established concept/method such as PCR would work flawlessly every time. In theory it should! Just like everything else... In the past, I could spend half a day doing genotyping that would show up no bands. Then repeat the next day with new primers maybe, and it still wouldn't work. So frustrating. Then I do the exact same thing on day 3 and voila! Magic. Nowadays, PCR works ~90% of the time for me. Maybe it just works better in the winter months. Who the heck knows.

http://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php?q=boulder+mcdb Looks like last year interviews went out starting next week.

I'm interested in stem cell research. I'll be at the Duke DSCB interview too.

I had a similar dilemma when scheduling my Duke and BostonU interviews. My problem was trying to figure out who would pay for my flight from Duke to Boston. Duke ended up paying for my flights to Duke and to Boston, while Boston paid for me to go home. I'm sure they deal with this all the time, so just be honest and tell them you are interviewing at another school in the area prior to their interview and your flights have already been covered. If anything, they should be glad.

Did you bring anything to your interviews? I'm thinking of bringing a nice folder that has a notepad in it in case I want to jot something down. I might bring a copy of my poster presentation (with permission from my PI of course) and probably notes about the interviewers.

Sorry if this has been asked before, but how do I prepare for these interviews and what kind of questions/atmosphere/structure can I expect? Currently I'm just looking forward to them and have prepared a binder with tabs for each school. I've printed out the summary of the program from their websites as well as the research interests of each professor I listed as a potential interviewer. Should I bother with reading their papers? Will they be asking me about every detail of my research? Some things like mouse strains and the details of manipulating their genetic expression is a bit over my head.. For one school, I was told there would be an admission committee interview, while other schools I would interview one on one with professors of interest. Tips on either of these interview structures?

I had a hard time deciding between UC Denver's CSD program or the Biomedical Sciences umbrella program (which includes CSD). I decided to go with the latter because the program admin told me that "The CSD program gets around 10-15 applications each year, invites ~6-7 students to interview, makes ~3-4 offers, hoping to admit at least one or two." In contrast, the BMS has a much bigger pool so I thought I'd have a better chance. Anyway, It's a small program that invites few people so if you haven't gotten one yet I'd call.

CU Denver biomedical sciences program invite via phone! I'm pretty sure they tried to call me yesterday. So if you get a 303 number pick up!

I'm a female, would it be "business casual" to wear a dress? I wore something like this (http://www.lulus.com/images/product/large/bMGi6651redB.JPG) with black thermal leggings and nice dark grey ankle boots when I presented a poster at a nearby university, and my PI said maybe I should wear that outfit for my interviews. I think it might be too casual. Thoughts?

Hmm I saw your stats on page 3, they are pretty impressive. You definitely have a better GPA than I do (mine's 3.65) and we did pretty similar in our GRE except my AW score was a lot lower. I have a bit over 1.5 years of research experience, a poster presented, and a paper submitted for review...so you beat me in the research dept. If I got a BU PiBS interview, you are bound to get one soon, and several others. Unless your SOP was awful since you have me beat every other way.

UC Irvine- CMB interview~

I don't know if anyone else applied to UC Denver's Biomedical Sciences Program, but the admin told me that they will send out interviews tomorrow and/or Monday. Crossing my fingers..

^ ^ haha same here. I just saw CMB at UW-Madison and my eyes popped. Here's what they sent: "Thank you for applying to the Cellular and Molecular Biology (CMB) Graduate Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for Fall 2014. Your CMB application file is now complete and will be reviewed by the CMB Admissions Committee. Please keep in mind that our Admissions Committee is reviewing over 400 applications for consideration. You can expect to receive an official admissions decision via the online status check system by the end of January 2014."

I got Duke to cover the expense from Duke to Boston, so looks like everything is good to go. Thanks for the advice!

I submitted mine Nov 11, all the letters were received by Nov 25.

I'm going to have to do the same thing, but flying from Duke directly to Boston. Who is paying for your san diego--> boston flight? SD or BU? Trying to figure this out for myself at the moment.

Good that's what I was hoping would happen! So let me ask you, how did arranging flights work out? If Duke is going to pay for me to fly there and Boston is paying for me to fly home, who's paying for me to get from Duke to Boston?? I'm trying to get this figured out with the people in charge of arranging this, but they haven't emailed me back.