Good sign or bad sign?

[Johndg2]

Hello, I've applied to 10 programs in Cell and Molecular Biology and I have not heard anything yet, no interview invites, no rejections, nothing. I realize that it is still early, but I noticed 2 of my programs have emailed out interview invitations. It's possible that there are multiple interview sessions for those programs. It's the norm I think to get invites in January and Febuary and to get rejections in March or April. If you want to view my stats and programs I've applied to, look a few post down (Johndg2). I think I'm a pretty strong applicant with lots of research experience. I know for instance that U of Utah won't even start reviewing applications until mid Febuary. Oof.. I just wish I could have a decision either way now. So, what do you think, good sign,bad sign, tough to call. Good luck with your applications, we should all get in somewhere.

[lab ratta-tat-tat]

I think it al depends when the deadlines to submit materials was. If it was January 15th, you wont hear back until the end of this week or later, but if you know they do interviews in mid february, you can guess they have to invite applicants for interviews earlier in order to make travel arrangements and push the necessary paperwork along for that process.

Don't give up hope yet!

[newms]

I think you still have time to hear back, so don't give up hope yet. Is an interview required for admission in your field or do some applicants get admitted without interviews?

Edited January 20, 2011 by newms

[Haustier]

I'm in a same boat with the exception that I applied to 10 departments whereby half are biology programs and half are bioengineering programs. Strangely, I haven't heard a peep out of any of the ones with the December deadlines (nothing on the results on here either), but the January ones are making some noise. I'm strongly suspecting at least 2-3 out of the 10 will make decisions in the next week.

[UBCbiograd2009]

I wouldn't fret. I applied to the University of Miami, to their Marine Bio & Fisheries Program. Submissions were due Dec. 1 and I did not hear back until just last week when I was invited for a recruitment event at their Marine and Atmospheric school campus. This was only two weeks in advance of the recruitment event. So it took 7 weeks to hear back from them. I don't think I'll be hearing back from the other schools until later because their deadline for submissions were all Jan. 15th.

I also have the feeling that larger universities like the U of Miami take longer to review applications simply because they have many more applicants due to the size of all their programs. The smaller universities don't have as a large of programs, so fewer applicants to review. (Obviously I'm not saying that larger schools are better because Cornell is smaller, but has a much better research reputation than the U of Miami).

[UBCbiograd2009]

Sorry for the bad grammar above. I'm hungover.

[angrygirl]

You should apply to University at Buffalo IGPBS program...it seems they don't reject anyone. There are a lot of losers in my PhD program! And I'm in Neuroscience!

[Xanthan]

You should apply to University at Buffalo IGPBS program...it seems they don't reject anyone. There are a lot of losers in my PhD program! And I'm in Neuroscience!

Man, that's pretty harsh. Is it possible you're the one student in the cohort that nobody likes?

[Hatem]

You should apply to University at Buffalo IGPBS program...it seems they don't reject anyone.

Really?!

Are you serious?

[thebigbang]

Its sort of true. They tend to overadmit. I used to work at UB in a lab that had a lot of rotating students from IGPBS. They also admit a lot of international students. Its a double edged sword, though. They admit too many students and there are too few labs with training funding.

Really?!

Are you serious?