Invited for interview at UCI

[pharmalife]

Hello!

I have recently been invited for Interview Day at UCI for the PhD program in Pharmacology. Does anyone know anything about the interview process (eg. what goes down, what kinds of things are asked, what to/not to do, number of invitees vs number of admits, etc). Any information would be greatly appreciated!

[neuroinformagical]

I don't know if my info is worth anything, but all of my friends are neurobiology grad students at UCI (I work here) and I have one friend in pharmacological sciences. They seem very similar in that they're rotation programs and not direct admission. In neurobiology, each student requested a list of faculty with whom to speak but was told only like a week in advance of their visit whom they would be interviewing with. Many of them got a seemingly random assignment of faculty (but maybe I just happen to be friends with unlucky people haha). So in that case, they had to lean heavily on their ability to talk about their own research and grapple at topics to connect with the interests of the person they were sitting with. One of my friends was happy that she had a vague understanding of the research of various faculty in the department. They were assigned to a current student buddy who walked them to their interviews, whom they later got to mingle with at an evening party. I don't know how many were invited, but I do know that neurobiology has, for the two years I've been here, had prospective students behave questionably by the end of the day that earned them no admittance.

Edited January 4, 2019 by neuroinformagical