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Biomedical Sciences PhD Applicants (Fall 2022)


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1 hour ago, winterishere2020 said:

Just saw a lot of interview invitations on the result page. Did anyone get one? Is it a mass email from the admission committee or a personalized invitation?

I believe it was a mass email from their general phd email account. I think it was a big batch of interview invites + rejections all together.

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4 hours ago, biomedtrack112 said:

I saw that Temple is still accepting applications, does anyone know of any other schools that are still accepting apps? 

I know Rutgers, Howard, and UNT are still open

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1 hour ago, winterishere2020 said:

Just saw a lot of interview invitations on the result page. Did anyone get one? Is it a mass email from the admission committee or a personalized invitation?

Can you link to the results page. I see a lot of people talking about it but I can't seem to find it.

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55 minutes ago, BlondeScience said:

Same :( huge bummer but still holding out that some other invitations will roll in.

I am honestly shocked... I expected to at least get an interview. I graduated with an engineering MS from Columbia University. I work at Mount Sinai for more than a year, have a co author publication, literally manage a PhD project by myself and serve as the lab manager. I had two PIs that literally wrote they will gladly accept me to their lab. (One of them is the one I currently work for) What else more do they want????

Edited by Bioenglover
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1 hour ago, Bioenglover said:

I am honestly shocked... I expected to at least get an interview. I graduated with an engineering MS from Columbia University. I work at Mount Sinai for more than a year, have a co author publication, literally manage a PhD project by myself and serve as the lab manager. I had two PIs that literally wrote they will gladly accept me to their lab. (One of them is the one I currently work for) What else more do they want????

@Bioenglover Hey! I know this is frustrating but they apparently give importance to so many other things as well such as your motivations, SOP, your transcripts, diversity, socio-economic background, and many more internal things like the number of students they recruit per speciality track within each program. On the admissions portal, they actually have courses listed + years of academic experience they expect in each one of those courses. I recently got rejected from UW MCB and it made no sense to me because I thought I had the perfect profile for their cancer biology specialization but then life had other plans. Keep your head up! At the end of the day, we'll all get into at least Tier 1 programs and none of these names will actually matter. 

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2 hours ago, Bioenglover said:

I am honestly shocked... I expected to at least get an interview. I graduated with an engineering MS from Columbia University. I work at Mount Sinai for more than a year, have a co author publication, literally manage a PhD project by myself and serve as the lab manager. I had two PIs that literally wrote they will gladly accept me to their lab. (One of them is the one I currently work for) What else more do they want????

Please forgive me if this is a silly suggestion but... is there any possibility they could have made a mistake?
Like a simple admin error?

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2 hours ago, Bioenglover said:

I am honestly shocked... I expected to at least get an interview. I graduated with an engineering MS from Columbia University. I work at Mount Sinai for more than a year, have a co author publication, literally manage a PhD project by myself and serve as the lab manager. I had two PIs that literally wrote they will gladly accept me to their lab. (One of them is the one I currently work for) What else more do they want????

sorry to hear that... what track did you apply for? maybe that's a really competitive one

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3 hours ago, Bioenglover said:

I am honestly shocked... I expected to at least get an interview. I graduated with an engineering MS from Columbia University. I work at Mount Sinai for more than a year, have a co author publication, literally manage a PhD project by myself and serve as the lab manager. I had two PIs that literally wrote they will gladly accept me to their lab. (One of them is the one I currently work for) What else more do they want????

Hi, hope you hear about great news from other programs soon!

 

I'm an international student with a 3.5 (3.8 major) undergrad & ~4 grad GPA (US top 15 institution), 333 GRE, years of research experiences and currently leading a NIH U01 consortium workgroup of 8 academic centers project with a first-author pub (very long pub cycle, took us several years to plan, still collecting data). Strong letters (know for years, got me jobs and collaborating on current work, most rank me in the 1% percentile - last cycle a school accidentally sent me my whole package when scheduling interview so i saw the rankings). One of them is a distinguished professor emeritus, very known in the field, wrote I am one of the most intellectually gifted student in 40 yrs career etc. I also discussed about my application with two other distinguished professor from different unis, they basically said I could get into any programs that I wanted. 

Then I applied to three programs last year and only got interviewed at one, waitlisted (a public university so international status impacts decision there). So here I am, second application season. Now I always take application advices with a grain of salt...

This year the programs I applied to do match better and I already got some interview invites that I thought my background would not be competitive enough - you never know! Do the program have a network of faculty that you can rotate with? Some programs do not allow incoming students to rotate with previous employers/PIs, ideally there would be a few other PIs that you could receive mentorship in addition to your current PI that wrote you the letter. Admission gets tricker for a committee based admission program even if you have connections. I also have a friend whose PI wants him very badly. His PI is on admin committee but he didn't get an interview last cycle. 

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As of 1/5:
Applications out: MIT EECS, Stanford BMI, UCSF BMI, Penn GCB, Harvard SSQB, Tri-I CBM, UCLA Genetics and Genomics Track, MSSM Biomed Sci, and Emory PBEE

Interview Invites Received: UCLA (12/10), UCSF (12/12), Stanford (12/16), Penn (12/21), Emory (12/22), and MSSM (1/4)

From what I've gathered, it seems like I'm probably out on Harvard and Tri-I since invites have already happened. MIT (app deadline was 12/15 and it's a huge program, so they may not interview everyone they want to admit. EECS dept calendar has "Grad Admissions Round Up" scheduled for 1/18-1/24).

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10 hours ago, Bioenglover said:

I am honestly shocked... I expected to at least get an interview. I graduated with an engineering MS from Columbia University. I work at Mount Sinai for more than a year, have a co author publication, literally manage a PhD project by myself and serve as the lab manager. I had two PIs that literally wrote they will gladly accept me to their lab. (One of them is the one I currently work for) What else more do they want????

Oh no! You might want to reach out to the two PIs who recommended you? If they know anyone in the admission committee they may have an answer to why the decision was made. 

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Thank you all for the comments. I applied to the Immunology track (and my project deals with immune response to metabolic changes), but Mount Sinai specifically mentions that you do not have to commit to an MTA until the end of the first year.

 

I guess I'm so frustrated because I came back to academia after 3 years of industry experience, and it's exhausting to be so underpaid and work for so many hours with such low appreciation. I am a mother and the past year have been extremely hard, and I was really counting on continuing my work as a grad student to not waste another year. 

I think I've decided to give up! I'm too old for this ? (and I am honestly happy about it). I'll find a well-paid industry job which I'll have more interest in and that will not make me feel like I have to apologize for every decision I make. 

 

Good luck to everyone!! we are all talented and capable, don't let anything discourage you

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4 hours ago, Bioenglover said:

Thank you all for the comments. I applied to the Immunology track (and my project deals with immune response to metabolic changes), but Mount Sinai specifically mentions that you do not have to commit to an MTA until the end of the first year

I could not speak for Mt Sinai. I applied for NYU Vilcek open program, three rotations & choosing tracks end of year 1.  My statement is very targeted on that specific track. Based on convo with a current student (same track group, different track) and some prospective students (different track groups), different track groups do interviews on complete different days (different months). For the track group I choose, very occasionally students choose different tracks than what they proposed when applying. I also applied to WUSTL DBBS umbrella program which claims students can change program freeishly after 1 year as long as in good standing, both me and my friend got an interview for different sub-programs but again completely different admin and everything. I somehow feel that the open program is a trick - basically you can do whatever you'd like once you get in, but before you get in, let's see if you have focused interests. Maybe this is only my perception, because my research interests are in a very peripheral area of biomedical sciences. There is literally no other tracks other than the one I chose that is possible for me to be in. I am curious to hear from other's experiences. 

Edited by XXXXXXphd2021
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1 hour ago, XXXXXXphd2021 said:

I could not speak for Mt Sinai. I applied for NYU Vilcek open program, three rotations & choosing tracks end of year 1.  My statement is very targeted on that specific track. Based on convo with a current student (same track group, different track) and some prospective students (different track groups), different track groups do interviews on complete different days (different months). For the track group I choose, very occasionally students choose different tracks than what they proposed when applying. I also applied to WUSTL DBBS umbrella program which claims students can change program freeishly after 1 year as long as in good standing, both me and my friend got an interview for different sub-programs but again completely different admin and everything. I somehow feel that the open program is a trick - basically you can do whatever you'd like once you get in, but before you get in, let's see if you have focused interests. Maybe this is only my perception, because my research interests are in a very peripheral area of biomedical sciences. There is literally no other tracks other than the one I chose that is possible for me to be in. I am curious to hear from other's experiences. 

Out of curiosity, of these two institutions, which one are you leaning toward as your favorite and why?

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