Accepted on Provison

[cappuccino]

Hi,

So last week i got acceptance from one university for PhD degree but on the provison that i must identify a Faculty member willing to fund me thorughout my enrollment by April. I thought there will be always rotations so that you can meet the faculty in person before starting research.

I am stuck now. I have emailed two profs but its been almost two weeks and i haven't heard from any of them yet. should i directly call them up? Pls pls suggest what should i do now?????

Shivani

[Bukharan]

Perhaps, a follow-up e-mail (the e-mail should be really nice)? Yes, you could also try calling them.

[beanbagchairs]

Aside from what Bukharan suggested, you can also try to identify other PoIs whose research interests you

[eklavya]

So last week i got acceptance from one university for PhD degree but on the provison that i must identify a Faculty member willing to fund me thorughout my enrollment by April. I thought there will be always rotations so that you can meet the faculty in person before starting research.

I am stuck now. I have emailed two profs but its been almost two weeks and i haven't heard from any of them yet. should i directly call them up? Pls pls suggest what should i do now?????

i know this sucks. happened to me with one school. but i had applied to other, better programs. so i dropped the school from my list of potential grad schools. did you apply to only one school, or multiple? in case you didn't, or if you haven't heard from other schools yet, you should definitely contact few more profs at this school and explain your situation. the ones who haven't emailed you back could be busy, or the emails might have been buried in the inbox, and so on. therefore you might want to send another email, preferably in the morning hours. i don't recommend calling them, as they might take it as 'interruption'.

[wtncffts]

I'm glad in my field funding isn't generally tied to a specific prof's research. Is this the norm with all life sciences/biology programs? Doesn't the department or grad school have funding or opportunities for TAing which come out of a general endowment?

[eklavya]

I'm glad in my field funding isn't generally tied to a specific prof's research. Is this the norm with all life sciences/biology programs? Doesn't the department or grad school have funding or opportunities for TAing which come out of a general endowment?

it totally depends. in my field, some students are funded entirely by their professors (RA position) whereas some are funded by the dept (TAship) whereas some are funded by the dept and/or the grad school through fellowships. but no matter where the funding comes from, the student is guaranteed full funding until the completion of their degree, given that the student's annual academic and research progress is satisfactory.

[Xanthan]

I'm glad in my field funding isn't generally tied to a specific prof's research. Is this the norm with all life sciences/biology programs? Doesn't the department or grad school have funding or opportunities for TAing which come out of a general endowment?

My impression is that it depends on what area of the life sciences you're talking about. Programs that are primarily about human-based/biomedical research tend to do lab rotations, with only minimal or no TA work, and often even no RA work. Programs that are non-human based (ecology, evolution, botany, ect) are more likely to have you sign on with a prof at the start, as well as do TA and RA work. I'm going the biomed route, and looking at a lot of program websites, I didn't see any that required identify a mentor without doing lab rotations.