2012 Applicant Profiles and Admission Results

[blacklotus90]

Now that interview invites are pretty much all out, I figured I'd post my info in the hope that it will help others. I was so worried at the beginning of the application season and over-applied (14 schools in all >.<) and the interview results have been so far encouraging. I'm still pretty worried about the interviews themselves as I was a terrible interviewer for ugrad apps, but we'll see after the first one this Friday (Chicago). TGC has been incredibly helpful and reassuring in my grad school search so I'd like to wish a big thank you to the community!

Undergrad Institution: Ivy

Major(s): Computational Biology (Biosciences Track)

GPA In Major: 3.38 at application but higher now

Overall GPA: 3.36 at application but higher now

Position in Class: no idea, gpas aren't calculated by the school

Type of Student: domestic, male

GRE Scores (old scoring format):

Q: 800 (94%)

V: 640 (92%)

W: 4.5 (72%)

Subject (Biology): 880 (97%)

Research Experience: Researching since sophomore year of high school, work with microarrays, synthetic biology, and computational biology. Have been undergraduate project manager on my current project since freshman year of university. Publications incl. 1 3rd authorship, 2 manuscripts in preparation, and numerous abstracts/posters/presentations. Writing thesis on genetic network inference.

Awards/Honors/Recognitions: various small scholarship/award type things but nothing big.

Pertinent Activities or Jobs: ^mostly the research experience. Have also volunteered setting up a local free school organization and building computers for nonprofits.

Any Miscellaneous Accomplishments that Might Help: I've taken a huge number of CS/bio classes at my school (at this point I think >20 classes in my major) and run a Comp bio club. My CV included a number of relevant class programming projects and both laboratory and programming skillsets.

Special Bonus Points: Several of my LOR writers are pretty well known and I think they wrote me pretty complimentary letters, they have been excellent inspirations.

Any Other Info That Shows Up On Your App and Might Matter: GPA was terrible freshman year but improved greatly after that point. (>3.6 discounting freshman year)

Application results: see signature (will update in a few minutes)

Edited January 19, 2012 by blacklotus90

[ryanmor]

Got an e-mail from a POI from Yale EEB today about a phone interview/chat. He said that they just met for an application pre-screening today.

Were you communicating with this POI prior to submitting your app?

[alexhll6]

finally got interview from Mt. Sinai (neuro). they are sending out invites now.

[ryanmor]

Never mind, just heard back today from a POI at Yale EEB. Got an interview for later in Feb.

[PrescribedBurn]

Just got an interview invite from Chicago CEB!!!

[lukereding]

Indiana sent out their recruitment invitations via email today.

[OldGrad2012]

Just got an email from a POI about a potential interview from UNLV BioSci. Has anyone applied for this school or program? Was rejected from University of Michigan PIBS and UW GS programs.

[Aquasplash]

Programs I have given up on:

Harvard (Cancer Biology): Didn't get invited and they're done sending interviews

MIT (Biology): Seems like only one wave and I was not part of it

I gave up on them too. Just got a rejection from MIT. I am at a conference at Harvard right now, at this very particular moment. Can't even explain how painful it is to be here and then knowing that you were not "good enough." Sigh!

P.S. I am interested in cancer biology too. You'll be great and will get into a school. You're inspiring enough to be a cancer survivor.

Edited January 20, 2012 by Aquasplash

[goldenbuff]

I gave up on them too. Just got a rejection from MIT. I am at a conference at Harvard right now, at this very particular moment. Can't even explain how painful it is to be here and then knowing that you were not "good enough." Sigh!

P.S. I am interested in cancer biology too. You'll be great and will get into a school. You're inspiring enough to be a cancer survivor.

Thank you for the encouraging words! I hope things work out well for you. I just got my formal rejection from MIT as well. I definitely saw it coming though and it doesn't really bother me. Honestly, I expected to be rejected by most (if not all) of the "top tier" schools that I applied to because of my GPA (3.3ish) and my lack of publications but I only applied to schools I would really like to go to in places I'd really like to live so any offer is one I would accept without reservation. Since I've already got one interview, I'm at peace. Any further positive responses are just icing on the cake.

Happy Friday everyone! Here's to a stress-free weekend!

[OldGrad2012]

^{Hi all,}

^{Just got another rejection by email from City of Hope Bioscience. Any one applied for this program or school? So far I have three rejections UMich Pibs, UW GS, City of Hope.}

^{Applied to UC Davis, Stanford, WSU, UW, OHSU, UCLA, University of Arizona, UC Irvine, UC Santa Cruz, UC Riverside, University of Arizona, Scripps, UCSF, USC, City of Hope, UMich, UNR, UNLV, ASU, Baylor , University of Houston,and UAB}

^{Rejected: UMich, UW, City of Hope so far.}

Edited January 21, 2012 by timt99

[sysbio]

Acceptance from Washington University in St. Louis for Bioengineering. Email sent yesterday with a notice to check today. So I checked just after midnight.

The acceptance also included an invitation for a recruitment weekend mid Feb or late March with other students. I'm really pleased!

[dhm0219]

Just got an invite to UCLA-ACCESS. Just waiting on Stanford now, although I'm starting to give up hope on a late invite from them.

[greenertea]

Question for all (might as well ask here as well as the college confidential forum), are you really supposed to send thank you letters/emails to professors you interviewed with? That seems a bit unnecessary to me.

[Pitangus]

Indiana sent out their recruitment invitations via email today.

More on IU:

My POI informed me on Thursday that the lab will not be taking a new student. I had expected this based on information and conversations over the last year or so, but thought I might be able to get away with doing rotations during the first year... apparently due to unspecified concerns this year, applicants without an advisor lined up will likely be rejected without an interview.

According to the results board, my rejection should be coming by mail next week.

Good luck to the other IU EEB people; I hope you all were able to find advisors.

[spew]

Question for all (might as well ask here as well as the college confidential forum), are you really supposed to send thank you letters/emails to professors you interviewed with? That seems a bit unnecessary to me.

You definitely don't have to. If your main interviews are only with 2 professors, it's not a bad idea. However, if you have a schedule with 5 of more professors, I wouldn't bother. The idea here is that when you interview with only 2 professors "all of your eggs are in 1 (or 2) basket." In other words, their opinion is heavily weighted so it's important to leave the best impression, plus it's doable to write 2 emails. But oppositely, when you interview with a lot of professors, your chances are spread out (assuming you didn't blow it with each of them), plus it's simply harder to write so many emails and still appear sincere.

Edited January 22, 2012 by spew

[Krypton]

Actually, IIRC, I didn't send thank-you letters until after I got my acceptances (which were sent out soon after interviews). I thought, that way, it didn't look like I was "fishing" for admission. Granted, when I did that, I wasn't thinking of what I would do if I weren't accepted... probably not write any letters? Also, I guess it would be awkward to send a "thank you" to a professor before you're accepted, only to have that very person write back denying you admission.

There's an easier "flow" anyway to writing thank-you letters AFTER you've been accepted, as you'll usually get several congratulatory e-mails from your interviewers, and your "thank-you" can just be in response to those e-mails.

And yeah, writing thank-you letters is completely optional. Being admitted is not contingent on writing some nice letters.

Edited January 22, 2012 by Krypton

[eponine10642]

Question for all (might as well ask here as well as the college confidential forum), are you really supposed to send thank you letters/emails to professors you interviewed with? That seems a bit unnecessary to me.

I've sent out thank-you emails to professors I interviewed with (before I was offered admission), as well as the secretary who helped set up everything, and my main grad student host. I didn't do it to "fish" for admission, I just did it because I wanted to say thank you because... I was thankful? I dunno. I'm sure it's not required, but if you want to say thank you, then just do it. If you don't, then don't. Just be yourself.

[lukereding]

Writing a quick thank-you email takes two seconds and is a polite, humanly decent thing to do, seeing as how these busy people took their time and money to meet with you. You don't have to be a sycophant, just be genuine.

[SamreenF]

Well i applied to Rockefeller neuro, WashU neuro, Emory, baylor college of medicine and USC neuro programs,.. have these universities sent thier interview or acceptance emails?.Is it so that due to heavy amount of applicants some might not be informed about the decisions.

Did anybody else hear from these unis yet.Iam an international student btw.

[dhm0219]

Writing a quick thank-you email takes two seconds and is a polite, humanly decent thing to do, seeing as how these busy people took their time and money to meet with you. You don't have to be a sycophant, just be genuine.

Yeah, keep in mind how busy these folks are (not just the PIs, but the current grad students too). The last thing they want to do is take time out of their schedules to sit down with prospective students and answer the same half dozen questions over and over again when they have stacks of grants to write, papers to work on, and labs to run. It only takes two minutes to write a quick thank you email, and it certainly won't hurt you.

[coonskee]

I wrote thank-you cards. I was raised to always, ALWAYS write thank-you notes, so it seemed natural for me to do. My cards varied in degree -- I had four interviews; three were great (one was with someone who had already taught me) and one was meh, and the length and content of each card varied with how excited I had been at meeting the prof and learning about their research.

If you have like eight different interviews (or the, what, 10 that Cold Spring Harbour does?), then writing emails to all of them could be superfluous... but it still seems natural to me to write an email or note if you met with one or two PIs who really got you excited about the program. *shrug*

Anyway, just my $0.02

[spew]

I wrote thank-you cards. I was raised to always, ALWAYS write thank-you notes, so it seemed natural for me to do. My cards varied in degree -- I had four interviews; three were great (one was with someone who had already taught me) and one was meh, and the length and content of each card varied with how excited I had been at meeting the prof and learning about their research.

If you have like eight different interviews (or the, what, 10 that Cold Spring Harbour does?), then writing emails to all of them could be superfluous... but it still seems natural to me to write an email or note if you met with one or two PIs who really got you excited about the program. *shrug*

Anyway, just my $0.02

How soon after by mail did you send it? I imagine it could take a couple days to receive + a day or 2 to write. What if they made up their mind by the time they get your card?

[Krypton]

What if they made up their mind by the time they get your card?

Why should that matter? The idea isn't to influence their decision with a thank-you note/card. In fact, you better hope they DON'T think you're trying to influence their decision with your thank-you note/card.

Edited January 23, 2012 by Krypton

[coonskee]

How soon after by mail did you send it? I imagine it could take a couple days to receive + a day or 2 to write. What if they made up their mind by the time they get your card?

I actually wrote the cards the night after the interviews and dropped them into a mailbox the next day (a weekend) in the same city. I also sent a quick email saying "in case the USPS sucks" (not in those words) that just had a generic thank-you to it - basically, my failsafe in case the cards get lost.

Why should that matter? The idea isn't to influence their decision with a thank-you note/card. In fact, you better hope they DON'T think you're trying to influence their decision with your thank-you note/card.

Exactly. I imagine they had already had a good impression of how they'll score me right after the interview. I don't think a card will turn a "no" into a "yes," so that's not the main reason for my sending it - I want to thank them for their time and reiterate my interest in both their program and research! If it makes me a little more memorable, awesome; if it doesn't - well, at least I was polite, and it only cost me $3.00!

[greenertea]

Thanks all for the advice. I think I'll stick with a quick email after acceptance. I still feel semi-awkward, since I know they're busy people and I don't want to clutter up their inboxes with a thank you email that probably means little to nothing to them and will only take up extra time in their day to read.

My new question is, do you thank them if you get rejected? I'm not trying to get out of being a "decent human being", but I haven't heard of sending thank you notes until recently and don't want to create an awkward situation.