Princeton Neuroscience PhD

[mtnbiker8]

If there are any current or former students on here, I'd like to hear your thoughts on the program. I'm applying to Neuroscience PhD programs this year. Princeton wasn't on my list because of location, but I'd like to add it. There are a few labs that I'm interested in. If I got in, it would bring me close to a sick parent.  All things being pretty equal, for that reason, I'd choose it over my current top choice programs. I looked up some threads and found a Princeton vs Stanford comparison from several years ago. Someone observed that students seemed "slightly unhappy" at Princeton. Can anyone chime in on where that might have come from? Princeton being a sleepy town or something else? I wouldn't be okay with the latter. A collegial and supportive environment is probably the most important to me. I want to work in academia and a program that encourages students to publish is also up there. Any insight into what makes this program unique or separates it from peer programs? From what I can tell the department seems comp oriented...I've been working in a lab but come from a more traditional bio & psych background. Are they mainly focused on recruiting students with strong quant backgrounds? Does it feel interdisciplinary? Thanks!

[AnonNeuroGrad]

13 hours ago, mtnbiker8 said:

If there are any current or former students on here, I'd like to hear your thoughts on the program. I'm applying to Neuroscience PhD programs this year. Princeton wasn't on my list because of location, but I'd like to add it. There are a few labs that I'm interested in. If I got in, it would bring me close to a sick parent.  All things being pretty equal, for that reason, I'd choose it over my current top choice programs. I looked up some threads and found a Princeton vs Stanford comparison from several years ago. Someone observed that students seemed "slightly unhappy" at Princeton. Can anyone chime in on where that might have come from? Princeton being a sleepy town or something else? I wouldn't be okay with the latter. A collegial and supportive environment is probably the most important to me. I want to work in academia and a program that encourages students to publish is also up there. Any insight into what makes this program unique or separates it from peer programs? From what I can tell the department seems comp oriented...I've been working in a lab but come from a more traditional bio & psych background. Are they mainly focused on recruiting students with strong quant backgrounds? Does it feel interdisciplinary? Thanks!

I don't attend but it has one of the very top computational units for studying the mouse what with the QCN and Professors Brody, Tank, Bialek, Pillow, and Seung. Most other big places doing computational work, except UCL, have a focus on macaque i.e. CMU (Smith, Yu, Batista, Chase), Stanford (Ganguli, Shenoy, Linderman, Yamins), or Columbia (Churchland, Paninski, Miller, Fusi, Kriegskorte). 

They also have some faculty that are big names doing cog. neuro. like Daw, Cohen, and Niv. I was also super impressed with the work of new faculty Dr. Catharine Pena who really skillfully integrates transcriptomics with early environmental/social trauma in mice.

I also need not remind you that Princeton is a very difficult place to get into so I hope your application profile is stellar.

Edited March 18, 2019 by HawaiiLee808

[kalman_gain]

17 hours ago, mtnbiker8 said:

If there are any current or former students on here, I'd like to hear your thoughts on the program. I'm applying to Neuroscience PhD programs this year. Princeton wasn't on my list because of location, but I'd like to add it. There are a few labs that I'm interested in. If I got in, it would bring me close to a sick parent.  All things being pretty equal, for that reason, I'd choose it over my current top choice programs. I looked up some threads and found a Princeton vs Stanford comparison from several years ago. Someone observed that students seemed "slightly unhappy" at Princeton. Can anyone chime in on where that might have come from? Princeton being a sleepy town or something else? I wouldn't be okay with the latter. A collegial and supportive environment is probably the most important to me. I want to work in academia and a program that encourages students to publish is also up there. Any insight into what makes this program unique or separates it from peer programs? From what I can tell the department seems comp oriented...I've been working in a lab but come from a more traditional bio & psych background. Are they mainly focused on recruiting students with strong quant backgrounds? Does it feel interdisciplinary? Thanks!

The program is interdisciplinary, most students work across two labs. You're right they are computationally oriented but they do their best to get everyone up to speed, this includes a math bootcamp that's required of incoming grad students to attend in August before the PhD begins. In terms of student happiness, I get the sense that it's what you make of it. If you try to be social and kind, you know like a decent human being you'll have no problem making friends, and having a good friend group will count for a lot in graduate school, especially given that the town is rather small.